The brilliance of humanity is our ability to have ideas and turn them into something we share with the world.
Maybe you build a product or create a piece of content (writing, music, video etc…) or simply finish a piece of work for a teacher or a boss.
There is a common question.
Is my thing good enough?
(you also may have read last week’s article on the law of creation and be wondering how to make great content)
Well, this post is for you.
Product Market Fit
In business, Product Market Fit (PMF) is when your product matches what the market needs and wants, at a price it is willing to pay. There is a perfect harmony between the problem and your solution.
They say if you have time to ask if you have product market fit, you haven’t found it yet. Once you have PMF, you know.
You are so busy fixing things that are breaking due to high demand to spend time assessing if people like your product or not. Servers are going down, stock is empty. Everything you do is not to pursue new growth, it is to remove any blockers from your growth.
When we start in search of PMF and talk to users we expect a linear form of feedback based on the quality of our product. Just like this.
We quickly realise it is possible that we might have created something bad and re-draw our feedback graph. How very humble!
Feedback Reality
“The Mom Test” is one of the best books on providing a framework for reaching PMF. It reminds us that our moms will always be proud of the things we make and tell us nice things where at all possible.
It gets worse
However, the core point is that in reality, humans don’t want to make you feel bad.
Almost anyone you talk to in person will be nice. If they know you made a thing, they don’t want to hurt your feelings.
Ultimately, they want you to like them more than they want to tell you that your idea isn’t interesting.
There is a way to solve this binary and unhelpful feedback.
Number one - pretend that the product isn’t even yours. Otherwise, you can’t ever get impartial feedback.
Secondly, ask better questions:
Why would they use it?
Why not?
What do they currently use instead?
What are the switching costs from their current thing?
You also need to ask them personal questions so you can identify the real impact it could have on their life.
What are their personal problems?
What are the tasks related to the product they have to get done?
What are the ones the tasks they struggle with?
What are the things that don’t matter?
What are their other priorities?
What is the value of the tasks they do?
Change or die
Product creators need to reinvent their product as quickly as possible before they run out of money.
A mark of a good founding team is how quickly they can iterate and how many experiments they can run in a given time window. There is a reason Zuckerburg used to keep the motto “Move fast and break things”.
Founders must only care about the users and their problems, they cannot be wed to the solution they have already built.
Tearing up their current work and building from scratch is more valuable than being caught up with their sunk costs. Slow movement leads to the sinking of their entire company.
Some examples of companies that completely re-invented themselves to reach PMF:
Twitter was original a podcasting app, not a message board
Graze made high quality fresh fruit snacks before switching to cheaper dried food
Twitch was originally a live stream of one guys life, nothing to do with gaming.
They reached greatness because of a willingness to change their products
When a team is getting close to PMF, the user conversation changes, and people strive to get hold of the product. Users start raving about how amazing it is.
Any comment on a product being good or that they ‘might pay' for it is no sign of brilliance. The real mark of greatness is a user’s sadness if they can’t have your product.
The team behind the Superhuman app used a simple question to monitor how close they were to PMF.
How would you feel if you could no longer use this product?
A. Very disappointed
B. Somewhat disappointed
C. Not disappointed
Superhuman reckon if 40% of people or more are Very Disappointed you have hit the mark. They also asked 3 follow-up questions to help users guide them to improve.
Following this, you finally end up with a feedback graph with key thresholds that let you understand where your product is and what to aim for.
So we see that excellent products are not a lucky guess. They are the result of excellent founders’ ability to seek truth and solve problems.
Applying this to all creation
Feedback is the same for anything you make.
We can easily fall into the trap of asking people if what we have is good. Yet when we make something truly awesome we don’t need to ask anyone. They tell us.
If you tell someone a joke, you know if it was funny because they laugh. If it wasn’t funny they weren’t laughing.
It is the same for any creation.
People tell us when we do something that connects with them at a deep level, they get excited and emotional about it.
If you play music that is brilliant, people dance and sing, they follow you and get hold of your music.
If you make art that is beautiful, it makes people wonder, they take photos and buy your work.
If you write content that is amazing, people write back telling you that you blew their minds. They share your writing for you. They read everything you create from top to bottom and wait eagerly for your next instalment.
If you’re asking people about the quality of your work, your work isn’t good enough - YET.
If you’re trawling through analytics trying to find out if your content is good, it isn’t good enough - YET.
You need to ask better questions of your work and iterate faster.
My own failure
I started my podcast 5 years ago. It quickly grew to 10,000 listeners an episode. Then it kind of stayed there. Up and down a little and last year started to dip. Recently I’ve taken more ownership of it and it is growing again (20,000 an episode).
Three years ago I considered starting a podcast idea for reviewing the lives of epic thinkers of history. Telling their stories and diving into the mindsets and ideas that influenced the world. I didn’t get around it and kept doing my thing, hoping my audience would keep growing around my current work.
Competition
Ben Wilson started the podcast “How to take over the world” 2 years ago. With no marketing budget and no producer, he started a very similar podcast to my idea. Reviewing how epic figures from history grew to be so powerful. Ceasar, Alexander the Great etc...
For each famous figure, he studies a few books, does a lot of googling and makes a tonne of notes. Then scripts and records a podcast of just him telling their stories.
Organically his podcast has grown to be way bigger than mine is, in much less time. It is undeniably better than my current podcast. People love it and they share it.
I can’t pretend he has a bigger budget, industry contacts or any unfair advantage. He is just working on a better concept that more people want to listen to and is executing better than me.
He didn’t ask people if they like it. He didn’t sit around looking at his analytics trying to find the good part. His content was too good for him to waste time doing that.
People were telling him it was epic. They couldn’t wait for the next episode. They are begging him to make an episode on a historical figure they’d love him to review.
It was loved so much that his only priority was making more content.
Lesson
If whatever you are doing isn’t getting serious love or growing really fast, it needs to change. It doesn’t need another year of you doing the same thing. The biggest myth in content creation is that “it just takes time”. Just show up week in week out and wait for time to work its magic.
Nope. That is a recipe for going nowhere and wasting a lot of time.
If I’d been more like a ‘good founder’ with my content and truly tested my other ideas, I’d have a giant podcast right now.
Ideas are cheap. It is the execution that matters.
Hustle like a founder
Creators need to follow the mom test. Talk to as many people as possible about what they love and hate. About the problems in their lives and the things they are fascinated about.
Pitch them different ideas as if they aren’t your own.
Don’t feel any attachment to any idea of yours. You don’t get to decide what is good.
Quickly test what resonates and don’t get stuck with an idea because that is what you are already doing. Your current mediocre work is blocking you from doing brilliant work.
Whether you are making a YouTube video, a piece of music or even a work report for your boss. Make something that over-delivers. Craft the experience so the consumer feels it was made perfectly for them.
Look only for the sheer joy that someone can’t hide when they truly love something. Make them like it so much they would be disappointed to lose it.
Keep iterating as quickly as possible. Once you do something that is brilliant, it explodes.
Don’t wait around for your audience to improve over time. The world is changing, there will be more and more competition stealing your audience’s interest.
Instead, keep changing and improving yourself over time.
No Excuses
It is easy to find reasons for a lack of growth in our work.
Blogs were last decade.
No one reads emails anymore.
Podcasts aren’t designed for search, you need to be a celebrity these days.
YouTube is too competitive.
It’s too late to join TikTok.
You can’t break through in music without a label.
Art is for insiders.
The uncomfortable truth is that in any channel there are people starting now and going viral.
They are working harder than you, and on the right thing.
They are growing blazingly fast because they make something that resonates with their audience.
They may have done it on the first attempt, or they may have iterated 100 times to get there.
Mr Beast was making videos for 4 years before his first viral hit. It wasn’t like any video he had done before, it was much bolder.
He didn’t stop there, he was obsessed with viewers interests and behaviours.
He kept testing different ideas to craft his hit formula that has made him interstellar.
Other YouTubers are copying his formula because he didn’t copy anyone, he kept reinventing himself. Anyone copying him will only ever make something like Mr Beast, so they already have competition.
Don’t be insane
Doing the same thing and expecting new results is the definition of insanity.
The only insane thing should be your growth. Personal growth and your results.
Excellent products require excellent founders. If you want to make anything epic, you have to look at yourself and be humble.
You must reinvent yourself and your work to find new ways to amaze people.
Never wait for your audience to improve overtime.
Only use time to improve yourself.
Thanks for reading. I am fully aware I have plenty to improve on in my creator journey.
If you are interested in helping me create something better for you, please answer my own PMF survey.
It is only 4 short questions!
Bonus
1 - If you answer it, you get to see the 3 other questions that Superhuman used to reach PMF.
2 - Giving feedback is a great way of reminding yourself of things you should also be doing.
3 - Sharing is caring 🤗