Ship in Six

Challenge #3: Budget to Ship It

In lesson #3, you learned that if you want to ship, you've got to be willing to ship a v1 — messy, imperfect, incomplete.

Now it's time to put that lesson into ACTION!

Here's a tip the pros use to ship again & again & again:

Treat your launch date like it's carved in stone.

This rule isn't about being a hardass. It's about thinking with an economical mindset:

  1. Your launch date is a fixed deadline, so
  2. you have a fixed amount (of time) to spend, so
  3. if you overspend on one thing, you’ve gotta cut something else

So spend your precious (and finite) schedule on essentials first: one core outcome for the user — provided by one core feature.

That means:

  • the single most valuable video or chapter
  • the single most valuable worksheet or form
  • the single most valuable format
  • the single most valuable software feature

Everything else is a nice-to-have. Really! And nice-to-haves can come later. You can add as many as you want… later. After you Ship in Six.

It's far better to ship an incomplete project than never ship at all.

(There's just one exception: If it's an app where the data will have value, and other people will be using it right away, you MUST have a working automated backup feature. First, do no harm!)

Use this worksheet to plan your ship-it budget:

click to download workbook 3

If you want to Ship in Six… you've gotta know what you can drop.


Remember the story of Freckle and all its missing features, and JFS and its 24 hour v1.

Amy

Did you get this lesson from a friend?

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Here's what comes next

  • WEEK 1 — Start at the End, Design Your Destination
  • WEEK 2 — Cut Without Remorse, Break It Into Bites
  • WEEK 3 — How Do You Stay Motivated?, Finish Something Microscopic
  • WEEK 4 — The Myth of the Big Win, Creating the Little Win Habit
  • WEEK 5 — The Life Changing Magic of Shipping 1 & 2
  • WEEK 6 — Myth of the Big Launch, The Fear of Shipping
  • BONUS WEEK 7 — You Shipped! Now what?