If there’s one thing I don’t like about my business it’s case studies.
I love hearing success stories. But I hate producing case studies. Interviewing people (and getting useful answers) is a talent in and of itself… and I’m not good at it.
You know who is good at it? Courtland Allen, the dude behind IndieHackers.
And Courtland got a case study out of one of our star alumns, Brennan Dunn, that makes me jealous.
Brennan attended an early, early, early version of 30x500. Back when the instructions for Safari were, basically, “Go and read forums to find pain.” Now things are much more nailed down, systematic, and action-oriented. There are workbooks! And rubrics! RUBRICS, PEOPLE! I learned as much from teaching it as he learned from taking it. Today’s 30x500 is more fail-proof, and much easier to execute.
Since then, Brennan has grown one business — his infoproduct “wing” — to nearly $1m annual run rate (ARR). And now he’s growing his new ecommerce personalization business even faster. The case study doesn’t really touch on the latter, but you’ll be hearing about it soon in one of our upcoming new podcast episodes (!!! yes we’re coming back !!!).
Without further ado, read the case study here: Double Your Freelancing on Indie Hackers.
But keep scrolling, because I’ve got a few editorial comments to add!
The “start blogging about all things freelancing” is, of course, not random pray & spray… but the systematic ebomb method that Brennan learned in 30x500.
Also of note: back before Brennan joined 30x500 — and he admits this himself in our upcoming podcast episode ;) — his great idea was to start “Airbnb for Home-cooked Meals” where, instead of booking a room in someone’s house, you’d pay a perfect stranger to cook you dinner (also in their house). I wish I could set that high concept pitch in Comic Sans to express the way I (and Brennan) feel about it as a prospective business.
So whatever minor failings he describes, below, for Planscope, consider the alternative 😂
Minor failings like this one:
Can you imagine if it was about Airbnb for Home-cooked Meals instead? 👀
I want to weigh in on this one though: Selling PM software isn’t actually that hard, in a pure and objective sense — look at all the successful businesses doing it.
Yep, selling SaaS (with its monthly charge) in general is harder than one-off transactions… it’s a much bigger commitment from the customer, for one.
But, Brennan took an early, early, early version of my class, and no doubt in part because of that, he made the same “mistake” with Planscope that I did with Freckle: We focused on selling software to freelancers and consultants. They’re not an ideal audience for subscription software because, by nature, their businesses are cyclical… and also, there are way fewer consulting agencies than there are businesses with internal PM needs.
Granted, this is a “mistake” that, with just a little Safari and ebombing effort, got Brennan’s app to nearly six figures annual run rate and Freckle to high six figs ARR. Booohooooo, right? Over the years, I learned how to sell Freckle better… and now teach our 30x500 students to aim for their BEST customers.
All’s well that ends well, though: Brennan was able to sell Planscope, the business, to a new owner so he could move onto the next step. SO: Not exactly tragic.
And it’s especially not tragic because the work to get there led him directly to the next step:
The way I recall it, it wasn’t self-doubt that held Brennan back, but rather the fact he had “SaaS Glasses” which are like blinders but in rhyme. He wasn’t thinking in terms of tiny products or infoproducts at all!
And my recollection is pretty trustworthy because I wrote about it right after it happened ;) Brennan’s first infoproduct — from conception to launch — was immortalized in my guide, . Which is as salient and important and inspiring today as it was 5 years ago.
Not so surprising, really, given that Brennan wrote the free stuff based on Safari, and kept writing more because his audience clamored for it!
If you can kill a pain for someone, save them money, or make them money… sure, it can be free marketing content, but if you tie it all together, it could also be a paid product (that also does lead gen for a bigger product). That’s the power of Stacking the Bricks. And people love it.
Speaking of stacking up those bricks:
Booyah.
Safari shows you where to start, even if you’ve got nothing to start with. Then as you make progress — stack up tiny wins — create bigger wins — customers will come to you and generate more insight. Going on Safari is great. When Safari comes to you? That’s magic.
The same has been true for me: The class that became 30x500 came from the way I saw my fellow developers & designers struggling with product. All subsequent overhauls of the class, and the rest of our products, have been inspired by learning how readers, customers, and audience respond to my blog, my writing, my talks, my class. (Plus, of course, regular “wild” Safari to keep things fresh.)
Nobody executes like Brennan. Nobody. Not even us. Moral: Look at what that man is doing, and copy it. (It’ll help if you’ve got a solid background in Safari and ebombing, of course!)
This whole section where he talks about his content strategy is super, super valuable. Don’t miss it.
Preach. My experience, Brennan’s experience, and the experience of a few other students early on informed our 30x500 mantra: Tiny Product First. That’s been our advice to students since 2013. And it works.
As I mentioned earlier, you will learn so much from being in motion. If you doom yourself to fail and struggle up front (by creating something way too complicated, unwieldy, or monolithic) you will lose out not only on potential revenue but also VALUABLE DATA.
Note: your tiny product doesn’t have to be an infoproduct. It could be a code library, Wordpress template, icon set, itty bitty single-serving app, and so on!
Here’s my parting comment on Brennan’s parting comment…
I agree with this (and the rest of the statement too). You’d probably figure that as someone who sells “information… presuming to tell you exactly what you need to do to start and grow any kind of business”, I would be against it. But no. I’ve designed everything I write, speak, record, and teach around this very idea.
Lots of courses out there sell tactics, techniques, “do this and you’ll succeed” — where this is, maybe, customer interviews, or buying ads to drive traffic to landing pages to “validate” your idea, to pre-selling things that don’t exist, to intensive onboarding, or emailing weekly or daily or never, to secret SEO tactics “they” don’t want you to know, growing your social media followers, exact types of content that will magically make people share, an extra annoying design for CTA boxes that your visitors can’t escape until they sign up, precise launch sequences that will work for any product, hard sell techniques to manipulate people’s psychology, etc.
A lot of this stuff is extra sleazy.
As for the rest, there is no silver bullet. Some of that stuff can work. Most of it doesn’t, at least most of the time.
The thing is, none of it will work if you don’t have a solid product, something your audience needs, wants, and is ready to buy. And it won’t work if that product doesn’t genuinely help people. And that shit definitely won’t work if you spend 9 months building a product in isolation, and then launch to… nobody. Or if your audience doesn’t buy things. Or if your audience is too broke to buy things.
On the flip side, if you get the fundamentals right:
- an audience that pays for value — things that save them money, make them money, kill pains, help them kick ass
- understanding of what they need, want, and are ready to buy
- educational content (ebombs) that help them, that they will share, and sign up for
- a product that kills a pain or multiplies their money
- a deep, framework understanding of how to persuade people by simply listening and paying attention…
(AKA ALL THE THINGS YOU LEARN IN 30x500)
These “LEARN MY SECRET 139109% GROWTH TECHNIQUE” tactics are either A. totally unnecessary, or B. the icing on the cake.
Yeah, the stuff you learn in 30x500 isn’t as sexy as a promise to light your PayPal account on fire, but it actually works. And it will give you the (boring, yet awesome) fundamentals needed for success with any type of product, as Brennan’s growth story shows.
Again, click here to read the whole case study.
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