Commitment in business?

Hello again my friend,

This is Behind the Product, where I write about the personal side of building something of your own. Today, I want to talk about commitment. Even though I mean it in a work- sense, it’s still scary to some people because it sounds like an irreversible moment with potentially serious consequences.

Now that we all have AI, the latest models are out, it’s another round of deciding what side-hustle or commercial endeavour to pursue. What happens if you don’t like the actual work? Or if someone else will do it better?

If another wave of better models releases in 3 months, then what? It’s hard to feel stuck with something when it feels like ‘better,’ is out there. I understand why people hesitate. I wrote about my own version of that in the post about waiting until we're desperate.

But I think we have to be willing to commit, and it’ll make things gets easier.

You know the pattern (or the person who’s so guilty of this):

And what happens to those customers? They’re sort of left behind as the creator chases the next rush, and they don’t stick around to see what’s next. So, the perpetual starter is always at square one.

Enter ‘commitment.’ Stick to something, and people have a reason to believe you'll still care about it after they choose to give you their time, money, and attention (provided it’s good, if not great).

We don’t want to be on a new project every week. But, we also get shiny-object syndrome…which brings us to the harder question: how do we go about this?

Let's lock in.

Between about 25 and 30 years of age, I probably worked on seven different side-projects. Dropshipping, courses, software, a paid community, all kinds of things. I've shared some of that record before. Naturally, if I’d committed to three of them or less, I'd be much further ahead today.

Now, with how powerful AI is, people are doing this in swarms. Everyone’s posting this new thing they built. Most people don’t have a common thread between any of it. No customer, no company, no…anything really. It’s just random stuff they had their new genius assistant make in a few hours.

You’ll see it soon too. Putting something together is becoming less remarkable.

Now, a we also see people dedicated to something beyond a weekend. For some it’s months. For others it’s years, if not a lifetime. Commitment is obviously not new, but it’s easy to forget when ADHD brains can suddenly do so much, so quickly.

The part I missed was how there’s flexibility. People write blogs for ten years without writing about exactly the same things every time. Tool-builders who listen to their customers can see they need something different from what they originally imagined. Individual projects can change while the work still moves toward something they care about.

That's the distinction I wish I'd understood better. You can commit to a group of people, a company or two, a problem, or an outcome without deciding every product you're ever going to make.

There can be an umbrella over the work, something that helps you decide which new ideas belong and which ones would just take you somewhere else again.

You can know whom you'd like to help without knowing what they'll eventually buy from you. Those aren't contradictory positions. Staying close to the same people gives you a chance to understand their work, notice what they struggle with, and try helping with something specific. You can back into an offer that way, rather than deciding the entire business in advance.

It isn't a guarantee that something will sell. There's a version of this where you spend years creating content around a business you're permanently about to start. You know how to reach people, but you haven't really tested what you can do for them beyond the posts.

That's the part I'd change. Make something they can actually use. It doesn't have to be your future flagship product. It could be a tool that makes one annoying part of their work easier, a resource you keep current, or something you run with them rather than write about from a distance.

And if you don't already have an audience, I don't mean you need to collect ten thousand followers first. Knowing who you want to help and having their attention are different things. Making something useful can be part of how you earn that attention.

If you like a company but can't think of a business idea, look at the people using its product. People do this with beehiiv all the time. What are they (beehiiv’s users for example) still figuring out? What do you find yourself explaining? What have you built for your own use that someone else might find helpful?

Thomas Frank is a good example. Alongside his Notion tutorials and templates, he offers Creator's Companion, a content-planning system for collecting ideas, researching, writing scripts, and managing publishing projects. He describes it as the system his own team uses, developed through years of actual use.

That's what interests me more than another impressive creator business. There's a direct relationship between what he knows, what he teaches, and what someone can use.

The years of using and refining the system matter: he's offering more than a clever layout he put together for a launch. You can learn how to organize your work in Notion from him, or use the system he's already put together. Those are different ways of helping with the same problem.

He didn’t need to remake Notion to make something useful for other Notion users. You wouldn’t need to build another beehiiv to make something useful for newsletter creators (if that’s your thing). You can replace this with any company or product.

There's a relationship side to this, too.

Milly Tamati runs Generalist World, a community for people with nonlinear careers. At beehiiv, I watched her keep talking about our product. People on our team engaged with her, our social accounts engaged with her, and it continued. Eventually, we featured her at our big summer release event.

Talking about a company may not get you featured. But, being familiar with the work and the people, can lead to relationships you wouldn't get from one launch post. It’s about how it improves over time.

The question isn't only "how do I get this company to notice me?" It's "what could I do for its users?"

Kevin Espiritu, the founder of Epic Gardening, has a story I really like about this. He was trying to come up with gardening products to sell while viewers were already asking about the metal raised beds in his garden. He recalls people wanting the beds and struggling to get them in America.

In an interview, he described the realization: "Why am I trying to invent all these different products when everyone just wants this thing that they can't get in America?" He approached the Australian supplier, eventually got an opportunity to distribute the beds, and says his first shipment sold out on preorder while it was still at sea.

There was real risk involved. He put $30,000 into that first shipment, and had to learn how to get it shipped, stored, and delivered. This isn't me telling you to casually order a container of gardening equipment. The useful part is how he found the offer. He'd been close enough to the audience to hear what they wanted, but was still busy trying to think of something else.

That's worth sitting with if you've spent months wondering what you're going to sell. Have people asked you to help with anything? Do they keep asking where you got something, how you set it up, or whether you could do it for them? Those questions don't guarantee a business, but they're a better place to investigate than an idea nobody has had any reason to respond to yet.

It also doesn't have to be something you invented. Helping the right people get something useful can be valuable work on its own.

Ben Collins didn't originally set out to build a Google Sheets business. In his account, he started a portfolio blog while trying to move from accounting into development. His Google Sheets posts started attracting traffic, and he gradually narrowed his focus around that work. He found the direction through doing it, rather than arriving with an audience already picked out.

The ways he served those people changed. He did consulting and training, then sold online courses. He also created free courses with solution templates and ran SheetsCon, an online conference for Google Sheets users. A course, a working example, a conference. Different things, but you can see why the same person might want more than one of them. He wasn't starting from a completely unrelated audience every time he made something new.

There's a useful detail in his story, too: he explicitly credits JavaScript instructor Wes Bos with inspiring his 30-day challenge course. He adapted a format he'd seen work elsewhere to a subject he knew. You don't need to pretend that every useful thing appeared in your head without precedent.

Maybe your version is a workshop. Maybe you and someone you know spend a month helping a small group finish a project. Maybe you host an event with a speaker your audience would love to hear from. If you don't have the idea yourself, a partner might, and you might bring the organization, marketing, or subject knowledge that makes it happen.

I'd start with one thing you can deliver well before announcing an entire series. You get to find out whether you enjoy doing it, too. That's information you won't get from designing the website for it.

The reason I'm interested in small tools right now is that AI makes more of them practical for someone working alone. You could spend a week or two getting a first version into the hands of people you understand. But that first version is the beginning of finding out whether it helps, not the end of your responsibility for it.

That gives you more to talk about as well. You can demonstrate it, explain a decision, show what changed after feedback, or invite people to try the next version. The work supplies material for the marketing. You're not constantly reaching for another opinion to post.

But "it gives me content" can't be the only reason the thing exists. A launch post doing well doesn't tell you whether anyone needed what you launched. Give people a chance to use it, work through what gets in their way, and look for something more concrete:

None of those proves you've found your forever business. Free use isn't proof of a paid market either. But these are things you can learn from while you're working with people, instead of deciding everything from your own enthusiasm.

The offer can change as you learn. Just deal properly with the commitments you've already made: communicate, support people through a change, refund where you should. Staying with a direction doesn't require keeping every product alive, and changing a product doesn't excuse leaving people stranded.

I don't think writing or teaching is going away. I'm writing this to you, after all. But if you want to offer something beyond the posts, give people a chance to try it. That might be a tool, a course, or time spent helping them finish something.

As always, thanks for reading!

Darwin

PS: Below, you’ll find a quick announcement I’m something I’m released.

Working at beehiiv, I've seen so many people get stuck trying to figure out what to write, for who, and how to turn it into something consistent. We build the software, add the tools, and release features. But we don’t really go into individual ‘discovery’ with every potential publisher. It’s just not possible, nor what we do at the company.

Content Profile is a newsletter-focused agent that edits, analyzes, and ideates with you to build a great newsletter. There are three ways to use it.

The code and installation instructions are on GitHub, if you'd like to try it. And if you do, tell me where it falls short (DM me there, or just hit reply). Would love feedback.

Yes, the profile will automatically scan for my updates, and install on your command. These updates are in addition to what it learns directly from you. It does not overwrite memories. It’s like a dedicated newsletter with best practices for your content bot, with a coach teaching it how to implement everything in beehiiv for you.

It comes pre-loaded with skills and my preferred writing style/voice, but it won’t publish for you. That action remains with the user on purpose.

It’s designed for people who see their newsletter as a tool for a commercial outcome (a better job, to promote their business, or if the newsletter is the business), not necessarily for a hobbyist.

Note, this is an independent project, currently in BETA (you may have to delete and reinstall if there are issues, I can’t push updates to your profile directly once you install it). This is not an official beehiiv product/release.

It’ll work on any model btw, so add any model that fits your budget.

Feel free to reach out anytime!

Thanks, as always, for reading.