Making a start.
To document the journey of my #BuildInPublic project, I’m going to publish a weekly post on my progress, learnings, stats, etc.
This is the first one.
Now, in an ideal world (thinking how Hollywood is going to turn this into a billion-dollar movie), I would love nothing more for my story to start with how I had a lightbulb moment that I knew would change the world, so I had to run home and start work on it immediately.
You know the kind of story I’m talking about, the one like The Social Network, where I’ll spend hours locked in a room writing, coding, designing, building until something that’s going to take over the world comes out the other end.
Unfortunately, I think the start of this story is going to be a little less exciting. There is no “aha!” moment to how I got here. I don’t currently have an MVP (minimum viable product) in my head on what I think the end goal of this will be. Will there even be an end?
This story starts with the culmination of years in marketing, a love of building things and taking things slowly to try and create a great product.
Of course, I have an idea. More of a solution to a problem that I would like solved. Being a fairly established marketer (I currently have 13 years of experience), I’d like to think I’ve run into some issues that most marketers face every day:
- Driving traffic and generating leads to a website or landing page.
- Securing a budget from upper management for better designs or running some ads.
- Training staff on marketing strategies.
- Convincing your boss that digital marketing is worth investing in.
And I’m not saying I’m going to solve all these problems, but I’d like to look back and say I did my bit. Even if it’s to help solve a problem within a problem.
So, this is my story…
I’ve never been one to sit still, whether that’s in business or real life. You can ask my wife. I prefer the idea of lying by a pool for 8 hours reading a book more than actually doing it. Give me 5 minutes of sunbathing, then I’m into the pool playing ball for the next 7 hours 55 minutes.
The same goes for business. I’ve had a 9–5 for as long as I can remember, but I’ve also had a 5–9. Some people like to call them side jobs or side hustles. Whatever you want to call it, I need to be working on something for myself.
And that’s how I’ve got to this point.
The whole #BuildInPublic movement has always fascinated me. For somebody to document their journey in front of the world shows courage. I’ve never been one to dwell on people’s thoughts too much, and I think that’s the reason why I’m drawn to it. The pros outweigh the cons for me.
Pros:
- Feedback on every stage of the build
- Being able to build a community
- Developing trust with potential customers
- Telling a story
- Transparency
Cons:
- Open to criticism (already got this point covered by not caring)
- Somebody stealing my idea (someone may do this once it is live anyway, so why stress about it now?)
That’s covered the how and the why, so let’s talk about the what.
My loose idea at the moment is that I’m going to build some sort of marketing dashboard for marketers and business owners.
I mentioned a few problems marketers face above, but the number one problem I keep coming back to, and especially when talking to clients, is proving how important digital marketing is for their business.
I can reel off a load of stats and try and wow them with numbers, but how does that affect them?
What does it mean for their business when we run a campaign and increase their followers by 10%? Like, what does that actually mean for their brand, their bottom line?
When someone signs up for an email newsletter from a landing page we’ve created, why is that important for the client? In terms of monetary value and branding.
“You had 2000 people visit your website this month, Mr Bob.” “Okay, great! Now how does that tie into the actual growth of my company?”
With the experience I have, I can spend time stitching data together and presenting it to a client so that it “makes sense” to them. But what about someone who doesn’t have the experience I have? Or the person who doesn’t live marketing day in, day out so don’t have the time?
How nice would it be where you can log in to a dashboard to see all the stats from all your digital marketing efforts in one place with clear indicators of why this is important or how X amount of site visits grew your business. There are different pieces of software out there that will help bring data into one place (Google Data Studio, Klaviyo, etc.), but unless you’re a data scientist, you ain’t making no sense of all those numbers!
Simplifying your digital marketing results in clear pieces of information that tell you how this affects your business would help so many people, I believe.
The first step.
My idea is out there, so what? Who the heck cares anyway?
Well, those are the two biggest obstacles I face.
So what? I want it to be a piece of software that solves a problem for the user. I want them to rely on it.
Who cares? Hopefully, marketers and business owners.
This is the first step.
I’ve come up with a name: Palby.
I’ve bought the domain: palby.io.
There’s an email address: hello@palby.io.
I even have a Twitter account: @PalbyIO (Come say hello!).
The next step is to create a community around the product, and I’ll most likely be using circle.so.
And then, who knows! It’ll be fun whatever happens.
Until the next post,
Corey
P.S. This post is part of a much longer series on my Twitter, check it out now.
P.P.S. Did I mention I have no experience developing software?
