I want to offer a li
[2023-03-21 03:15:17 PM] : I want to offer a live workshop to better understand common pains reported by my Ruby on Mac customers. Eventually, I want to create a course and/or ebook, but want to start with a workshop to get feedback and understand the problem better. My initial thought was to limit the initial cohort to 10 people, and give it for free in exchange for feedback about the content and my teaching style. Is 10 a good number, and is free a good idea, or should I charge for it at a discounted rate?
Then once the first workshop is done, and the feedback is incorporated, do I do it again with the same people, or another set of 10? If the first workshop was free, at what point does it makes sense to start charging? Once the feedback is unanimously positive?
For those of you that have taken this approach, what has worked for you? Thanks!...
<@U5JRKTEHY> If you'
[2023-03-21 12:10:08 PM] : tedmyoung If you're open to sharing, I'd be interested in your experience with Mastodon's value to your business and any advice you have about it. Thx :slightly_smiling_face:
Hello! I would like
[2023-03-15 02:13:42 PM] : Hello! I would like to get your thoughts:
1. How much time do you spend on one thread? Some threads can have 50+ comments, but most practice lessons focus on spending 10-15 minutes collecting notes. Are you looking at all the responses before moving on? Is it the goal to get through as many threads as to see patterns and build on them over time?
2. I'm curious if anyone has had a career doing a number of things, and now choosing an audience is a bit of a challenge. I've done a number of roles in communications, web dev, marketing, fundraising, business advisory, accessibility, and AI, in the last year, and I could go on! AI & accessibility is what I'm known for. My current area of focus doesn't bring enough watering holes. I attempted to start with an audience in the HR/DEI space with a focus on accessibility, but the content is very much centred around compliance. I don't have the expertise to write ebombs without research on this. I'm either not seeing enough watering holes or unfamiliar topics. I want to change, but I am stuck. What would you suggest?...
Hi friends. I need s
[2023-03-15 02:12:02 PM] : Hi friends. I need some advice please on the right thing to do. When I first launched Ruby on Mac, I had 2 versions: Basic and Prime, and it was a one-time cost with free updates forever. Then, when I added the Ultimate version, I limited Basic and Prime to 1 year of free updates. And a few months ago, I removed the Basic version, meaning no one new could buy it anymore.
Now, I'm trying to figure out the best way to announce the change to the original Basic customers. On one hand, I don't want to have to keep maintaining and updating it, and on the other, the original customers might expect to keep getting updates forever. I was thinking of sending them an email explaining that I stopped selling Basic and that unfortunately, I won't be able to keep it up to date. However, they can still use the version they have now, but it's not guaranteed to keep working forever.
If it stops working, then they can upgrade to Prime or Ultimate. But since the price of Prime/Ultimate might go up in the future, they can take advantage of a 20% discount if they upgrade in the next 48 hours....
<@U036HQ571NK> how c
[2023-03-11 05:39:47 PM] : lnlrz how could you look at this as a "yes and" scenario instead of an either/or?
A specific question
[2023-03-07 04:02:03 AM] : A specific question is - I get the impression some waitlists/timed entry are not genuine - e.g. it intentionally holds you and sends some warming up emails, but it's based on how long ago since you registered, rather than genuinely opening to all at that time. Any opinions on whether that's more effective (or does it upset subscribers who realise it)? :-)
A datapoint that aga
[2023-03-05 08:47:30 AM] : A datapoint that again proves that what one "feels" might be quite different to the facts of the matter at hand. For ages I've had this strong feeling that my newsletter subscribers are made up of two audiences that maybe have a 20-30% overlap and I had perhaps been over-indexing on a couple of unsubscribes that I occasionally get when I do more messaging around a biggish ebomb that I maintain (which is what I thought one of my audiences centered around). I was strongly considering more or less killing off this bigger (but harder for me to figure out how to help) audience to focus on the smaller one. I tested this by sending an email to the whole list, asking them to update their preferences to pick one of the two interests they'd like to receive newsletters about (the bigger ebomb stuff or my more "niche" topic) - or they could select to receive Both. I let them know that everyone is currently defaulted to Both. I wholly expected to get a lot of people to be switching to one or the other. Lo and behold, of those that have opened the email (about 40%, which is standard for me) basically no one switched their option. 95% are still on Both. I also had this new option to choose activated on my ebomb update and all 20 of the new signups also have opted into receiving both sets of content.
So even if over the course of the next few emails I get people switching, this initial response was really different from what I had expected. The bigger ebomb (and its lovely audience) will stay and I won't be wringing my hands anymore each time I send out emails on one or the other topic....
What do you do when
[2023-03-04 07:59:19 PM] : What do you do when your audience thinks they are already experts? I was a little nervous about my audience because they can have very strong opinions, but today I noticed some folks giving advice that was downright dangerous and continued to do so after someone corrected them. Is that just a bad watering hole? Or a bad audience? Does anyone else experience this with their audience?
Curious question.Ea
[2023-03-02 04:07:55 PM] : Curious question.
Early in the course part 1, it recommends setting up a wordpress site just to get going. Theres also a list of a few recommended plugins at some point.
Is there a reason that none of the plugins are for SEO? Such as Yoast, which is often found amongst plugin recommendations for wordpress...
Now that <https://tw
[2023-02-23 09:45:18 PM] : Now that taxes are done my business budget is officially reset for the year :smile: Would love to know: What are the tools, products, courses, etc that you invested in and used for your business last year that you loved?
Hi, all :wave: I'm
[2023-02-21 05:08:46 PM] : Hi, all :wave: I'm currently working through the 10 Questions exercise (~37% thru the course). I'm looking at watering holes of product managers in tech (nearly all of whom work for SaaS co's of varying sizes).
I can't help but notice certain types of questions that, though they may not shout pain verbally, are asked over and over and over. They tend to be:
(1) how to best use an ubiquitous industry tool (Jira),
(2) which certifications should they get and from which vendor, if at all, and...
One other clarificat
[2023-02-20 08:54:37 AM] : One other clarification: "a 30x500 has peers, newbies and clients" isn't a requirement, it's a set of potential variations. They CAN (and likely do) have those three subsets, but it's a way of widening your options, not limiting them.
Eg for any professional audience you belong to, you could focus on any one of those three subsets....
<@U023EDRS014> audie
[2023-02-20 06:59:07 AM] : Adrienne Wood audience selection is pretty tough imho! I've changed 2 or 3 times over the years. I'm sure alex will provide a solid answer to this one, but if you can help us by being a bit more specific about your own situation then that would be good - unless of course your audience is chainsaw artists, in which case that is pretty cool :slightly_smiling_face: ... The other thing I found really hard myself but was fundamentally the right advice, is to just pick one a...
A 30x500 audience ha
[2023-02-20 06:00:24 AM] : A 30x500 audience has peers, newbies, and clients, so a game developer is an audience, while a gamer is not. We're aiming at selling to businesses, not consumers. But are we also aiming at selling only to businesses providing services not products?
Fred, a chainsaw artist who is hired to create custom sculptures from stumps in people's yards, has clients and is providing a service.
Marla, a chainsaw artist who sells sculptures at her store, has customers and is providing a product.
Therefore, Fred would be part of a 30x500 audience, but Marla would not, even though both are operating as businesses and not just hobbyists?
Is this an accurate read of the 30x500 audience definition, or can "client" be read as "customer" as well?...
i could use a little
[2023-02-17 09:44:15 AM] : i could use a little bit of help with something. here’s a little bit of context and then i’ll share my question.
i recently started offering consulting services to my subscribers. two people took me up on my offer, which was a deliberately vague offer of “hire me for consulting”. what both these engagements ended up being is that my clients pay me to ask me questions, show me code, etc. and i give them guidance on their work. from what i can tell so far my help has been genuinely needed and impactful. and on my end, it’s been enjoyable and lucrative. so i’d like to go further in this direction. i’m thinking i’m going to now make a more specific consulting offer where i seek people who are similar to my existing clients, and i offer a similar service.
what i’m a little bit stuck on is how to pitch this service. i can describe what this service is and who it’s for, but i’m having trouble doing so concisely. specifically, i’m having trouble giving this service a name. or maybe it doesn’t need a name. in any case, i opened up my text editor to try to write the page that pitches this service and the words just won’t come out. any ideas would be much appreciated!...
It was the same with
[2023-02-14 06:34:30 AM] : It was the same with Gary Vee's jab jab jab right hook for me, which turns out was not entirely a coincidence
More social proof that the ideas work
https://twitter.com/amyhoy/status/1607943369397010433?s=20...
I have a question ab
[2023-02-12 09:42:14 AM] : I have a question about context mixtapes! I have a sequence that I started ~2 years ago called "Saturday Comics" with about 17,000 subscribers, and 48 emails that go out every week or 2 on Saturdays. It's been a big success but I've run into a few problems with it:
* People keep getting to the end of the sequence, and they're kind of disappointed that it randomly starts and stops
* I really struggle to keep adding things to it (theoretically there are like 100 great emails I could add to it, but I have a very hard time with this)
* People sometimes get confused and think that they're getting my newest work, when they're actually reading something that's 4 years old...
Has anyone here read
[2023-02-11 06:40:45 AM] : Has anyone here read "The MOM Test"? And how does it compare (if at all) to doing safari? Is it better, worse, supplementary or simply a waste of time? Or perhaps just a completely different thing?
It's a book that's been on my radar for a while because I'm a big believer in on-going conversations with customers, but I'd like some input on it first, from anyone who's read it :pray:...