How I Almost Gave Up On My Side Project Only After 2 Weeks
and made a friend along the way.
Imagine launching an idea only to find out 2 weeks later that someone has already been doing it and seems to be doing it a lot better than you are.
That is close to what happened to me last Friday. I started a weekly newsletter, Be Nice, curating customer service and support articles 3 weeks ago. On Friday, I received Support Driven’s weekly newsletter and my heart sank.
Not only does their newsletter has more content than me, they have built a community of customer support pros. They have regular AMAs and Google Hangout, podcasts and also a slack chat group!
I, on the other end of the spectrum, have no expertise in customer service or support yet. I started the newsletter because I wanted to learn more about the field (more about this below).
Give up? Pivot?
Persevere
I could have easily given up after realising how my newsletter seems pale in comparison. However, I didn’t want to give up so easily on my side projects again. I’m embarrassed to say that I have stopped working on many side projects because I met tiny obstacles along the way.
So this time, persevere, I must!
I sat down and gave this issue some thought. The first thing I was reminded of was the comment by Ben Rubin, founder of probably the hottest app now, Meerkat, on Product Hunt:
Indeed, it would be a very sad world if people easily give up on ideas.
Compete?
“there’s a very good chance that anyone in the world would come up with a better product / perspective”
The next thought that came to my mind was that perhaps I could find a niche to compete.
See, personally, I sign up for more than one newsletter for a topic; say, marketing. As long as I provide additional value to the audience, they would subscribe to my newsletter too.
Also, I can always fall back to the classic Facebook vs MySpace example.
Seeking Clarity
I know that writing out my thoughts helps me think more clearly so I typed out the reasons why I started the newsletter:
2 is better than 1
Through the process of typing out the reasons, it became clear. I realised that my ultimate aim for starting the newsletter is to improve the customer service and support field. I have had too many bad customer service experiences and I wanted to do something about it.
Instead of competing head on with the Support Driven Community, I want to complement them. This is not a zero sum game.
So I emailed Chase of Support Ops who sends out the Support Driven Community newsletter every week:
When I sent out the email, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I mean, isn’t it unconventional to email a competitor and say, “Hey, I know I can’t beat you. Let’s join forces? 😎”.
I received Chase’s reply the next morning and was taken aback slightly! He is such a lovely person and was so transparent and open with me. I was really glad that our mindsets are quite alike:
So I shared my thoughts on how I would modify the newsletter (it’s quite lengthy. You can skip this screenshot, if you want haha):
After reading my suggestions, Chase nicely invited me help him curate article links for the Support Driven weekly newsletters, which I gladly accepted!
For a start, I’m sharing a customer service and support related article a day, which would add up to 7 links a week. I feel that this is a good and manageable starting point, considering my other commitments.
Be Nice???
For all the Be Nice fans reading this, fear not! I am not stopping my weekly Be Nice newsletter.
After thinking through properly, I realised that Support Driven’s newsletter serves a slightly different purpose from mine. Their newsletter is mainly focused on informing the community members what happened in the past week and what’s going to happen in the following few weeks. My newsletter focuses on providing customer support pros with useful and quality articles related to their field.
In my newsletter, I’m also sharing articles about surprising and delighting customers/users, a funny article/video to brighten your day (because support is tough) and my thought of the week.
I’m still playing around with this format and would alter it to suit the needs and preference of my readers.
So despite my contribution to the Support Driven community, I would continue my work with Be Nice and curate valuable content for you!
Read Now and Subscribe
I’ve just sent out Be Nice Issue 3 yesterday. You can check out all 3 issues here.
If you want to get better at customer service and support, subscribe here:
(This is my 14th blog post of my 30in30 challenge — 30 blog posts in 30 days. Through this challenge, I hope to feel comfortable and more confident with writing and become better at writing.
This post would be reposted on my personal blog, www.AlfredLua.com.)
