Derek Sivers and Building Product
Derek is a philosopher-king in the tech community. A maker first and foremost, his passion for music and coding spontaneously lead to founding the very successful CD Baby. I wholeheartedly recommend his blog sivers.org and the many gems he hosts there.
For me his most influential thought is hell yeah or no, which is also the title of his upcoming book. It’s a decision making rule of thumb that fundamentally goes: for any opportunity that reaches you, the default answer is no, unless it makes you go hell yeah. By using this simple rule you get to keep empty space in your life for things that really excite you. It definitely applies to established people like Derek (and Tim Ferriss, who also loves it) that are getting bombarded with offers and requests. However this simple way of thinking is even more powerful for the other side — for the people making the offers.
The corollary to the rule applies well to building and selling products. When you’re reaching out to your potential customers, you want them to go Hell Yeah. Not Yes or OK. Not just to accept, but to accept with gusto.
This seems obvious — everyone wants their customers to be delighted with their offering. Yet tailoring your offer for Hell Yeah rather than just a Yes requires a sacrifice. Your product and offer has to be made for a smaller audience in order to perfectly deliver on what they want and generate the enthusiasm. Going for Hell Yeah means aiming for less Yeses in total. Keep narrowing the border of your target group until you can delight the ones remaining.
I personally frame this approach like this:
I’m fine if 95% of people that see this are meh, as long as 5% are YES! YESSSSSS! FINALLY! It’s found me!
Humans don’t have time or money for anything less than Hell Yeah. Make sure your product is going for it.
Update: Derek likes the article 👍😁
