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  2. coding & marketing as a solo founder?

coding & marketing as a solo founder?

Hamed Baatour
9 replies
The mindest switch between those two is hard! Any tips for solo founders to balance between adding features & marketing at the same time? 👇

Replies

Fabian Maume
Warmup Inbox
Warmup Inbox
I'm booking some time in my calendar specifically for coding. I'm coding in Python and javascript so I actually booking time for specific tech, to avoid switching between both. I'm a marketer from training so switching toward marketing activities is quite easy for me. If you are a coder by training, it might be good for you to do the opposite: book some time in the calendar for marketing activities to help you focus.
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Hamed Baatour
InTab 2.0
InTab 2.0
@fabian_maume thanks Fabian for the suggestion! 🙌 I am actually a web developer by training and to make things even worse I am one of the most introverted types ( INTJ ) so honestly leaving the code editor is not easy as it's for you. I whish I learned marketing first 😅 but hey, better late than never I guess 🐌 one question though, I have tried time blocking but I found both tasks always fighting for priority. I mean you get DMs, emails and support tickets at random times and customers/prospects always expect instant replies. so how do you usually manage this? also I'm curious how your calendar looks like (coding sessions length/order/days...) 🤔
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Fabian Maume
Warmup Inbox
Warmup Inbox
@hamedbaatour INTJ is not problem to work in marketing ;) I'm using block of 3 hours. I'm ignoring any email and notification while I'm working on a block. If you loose a client because you didn't not respond within 1 hour, that is not a big deal. This client would have burn you more time than its worth. I'm setting monthly goal for the product development which is critical and blocking the time require to work on it. I'm also blocking 1 hour per day for unplanned workload in case emergency strikes. If the one hour isn't enough for urgent tasks, I'm postponing them for later. It is important to make distinction between urgent and import task. Whatever the number of urgent tasks you should allocated enough time to import tasks, before those important become urgent themselves.
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Hamed Baatour
InTab 2.0
InTab 2.0
@fabian_maume quote: "The client would have burned you more time than its worth." this is absolutely true! made me change my mind about using time blocking 😁 Thanks, Fabian! will definitely try to implement these zero distractions worktime blocks and see how it goes 😉
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Misha Krunic
Price2Spy
Price2Spy
It is difficult, there's no way around it. I've had a similar problem recently, where I would find myself trying to multitask and not get much done in any field. I think that the more you work on marketing activities the easier it becomes (something similar to building muscle memory). So the beginning will be difficult, but give it time, and it gets better.
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Hamed Baatour
InTab 2.0
InTab 2.0
@price2spy you are absolutely right Misha! the more you do the same activity the more monument you get and thus it feels easier. the problem as a solo founder is when you start talking to customers for example you most likely get a feature request or a bug that need to get fixed and.... the inefficient multitasking game begins! customer support/marketing/product are all necessary building blocks of any SaaS and I think there is no way to excel at all areas at the same time. maybe hiring is the only option here... 🤔 but I really don't want to manage employees/benefits/payroll and all that craziness 😒 what do you think Misha? maybe there is a middle ground here? contractors? automation? or maybe lowering expectations altogether and just work 🤷‍♂️
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Misha Krunic
Price2Spy
Price2Spy
@hamedbaatour It's difficult to give advice while knowing so little. Potentially everything that you've listed is a viable option, depending on your situation. One thing that you haven't listed, that you may want to consider is hiring a freelancer (as either a one-off or for multiple tasks). Maybe their services can help you with creating some content. But still, this is only a suggestion, you'll have to find out what works for you. Maybe try doing both activities yourself first, prioritise according to your goals, and see which specific obstacles you can't currently overcome.
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Hamed Baatour
InTab 2.0
InTab 2.0
@price2spy valid points Misha 👍 just for context, I have built https://intab.io a browser extension that lets you style any website quickly without writing any code. and speaking of marketing, I remember you're saying that you started investing in content marketing/SEO for price2spy back in 2020 during Nathan's "deal or bust" show so I was wondering... did you hire freelancers or full-time employees to do that? do they write highly technical content? do you coach them before they start producing content? have you seen great returns compared to your paid campaigns (AdWords...)? I'm curious because content marketing seems the channel that will drive most leads for InTab yet hiring content marketers seems counterintuitive because it's a bit hard to quantify the returns as results show only after a long time, unlike paid ads. would be awesome to hear your experience on that. 🧐 P.S a quick heads-up price2spy pricing page seems to be down right now... https://www.price2spy.com/en/pri...
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Misha Krunic
Price2Spy
Price2Spy
@hamedbaatour In my case, I guess it's the combination of all of those factors, some more some less. Also, thanks for letting me know about the pricing page, it's in the works, should be back up soon!
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