Product Startup Podcast Episode 034: Stay Motivated When Money, Time, and Skills Feel Limited

00:00:00 Filip Valica: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Product Startup Podcast, a podcast that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors, product designers, and other industry professionals. This podcast is run by Mako

00:00:11 Filip Valica: Design + Invent, and hosted by Filip Valica. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial idea to putting your product on the shelf. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business. Now onto the show.

00:00:26 Filip Valica: The Product Startup, Episode 34. Feeding motivation and starving procrastination, and limiting beliefs like the lack of money, time, or skills. If you've sat on an idea or if you've lost your momentum, this episode is for you.

00:00:42 Filip Valica: Hi, everyone. Happy New Year and welcome to the Product Startup Podcast, where we talk about turning ideas into successful products step by step. I'm Filip Valica, and thanks for listening.

00:00:53 Filip Valica: In the last episode, we talked with Khierstyn Ross. She's helped creators raise over $1.1 million through Indiegogo and Kickstarter. Make sure to check out episode 33. if you want to hear more about what you must do to make your crowdfunding campaign a success

00:01:08 Filip Valica: and some of the top mistakes people make when launching their products. I know New Year's resolutions can seem trite. Jims across the country will burst at the seams for the next month before returning to normal levels.

00:01:19 Filip Valica: Despite overuse of the word resolution, it's really important to take stock of where we are heading. Today I want to talk about some steps that you can take to help launch and grow your business. Listener Graham wrote in, it's a bit overwhelming for me right now.

00:01:34 Filip Valica: I guess I'm struggling with the self-belief thing to begin with. Seems procrastination as a self-preservation strategy is still a strong point for me, but I'll chip away at that. Listener David wrote in with a counterpoint to that.

00:01:46 Filip Valica: If you're not motivated, maybe it's not worth going forward. Not sure on that one. I'm super conservative with my money and investments, and I'm always afraid of encouraging people who are on a bad track. So I will address both points today, but before I dive in,

00:02:00 Filip Valica: I want to say I don't have all this figured out for myself. I also have my bad days and sometimes bad weeks. Life can get in the way for sure. I sometimes struggle with conflicting priorities and

00:02:11 Filip Valica: focusing on the tasks that yield the most value for me. But I have tried a lot of things that didn't work for me and I've noticed the same struggles in others. So this episode is for my younger

00:02:20 Filip Valica: self that really needed a kick in the rear 10 years ago. For my friends who struggle, you need to know that I battle many of the same demons. If you think this episode is to departing, from my usual tactical advice, never fear.

00:02:34 Filip Valica: At the end, I'll summarize my points and show how you can take action if you're feeling stuck. Addressing motivation, procrastination, and limiting beliefs goes way deeper than some motivational desktop wallpaper. I learned by doing, and it's taken

00:02:48 Filip Valica: me a lot of time and trial and error and some outside perspective to figure out what works for me. It's certainly an involving journey. So if you struggle with some of this, and you're half the stubborn perfectionist that I am, I can tell you that a good part of the

00:03:00 Filip Valica: solution is keeping an open mind and having the willingness to change your habits. On the show, we've talked to Shark Tank winners, small business owners, inventors, and subject matter experts. They've given us a lot of tips about launching products and navigating product development.

00:03:15 Filip Valica: Behind every successful product or business was a founder who worked tirelessly for months or years before catching a break. It's clear to me that if we don't spend the time to better ourselves, then our products and our business will not have the fuel they need to grow.

00:03:30 Filip Valica: We are the catalyst in that business and the products that we create. We are that common denominator. So as founders, we care more about what we are building than any of our customers, employees, or contractors ever will.

00:03:44 Filip Valica: No one can match our vision and drive, yet sometimes we stand in our own way. I know that I'm my biggest obstacle, and a parable that really illustrates this is a tale of two wolves. A grandfather is talking with his grandson.

00:03:57 Filip Valica: He says there are two wolves inside of us which are always at war with each other. One of them is the good wolf, which represents things like kindness, bravery, and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed, hatred, and fear.

00:04:11 Filip Valica: The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second, and then he looks up at his grandfather and says, Grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather replies quietly, the one you feed. I want to help you feed the good wolf.

00:04:25 Filip Valica: I want to help you feed your positive daily habit. and good inner voice so you can take the action and make progress with your ideas. Deep down, why do you want to launch a product or create a business? Is it to have more money?

00:04:39 Filip Valica: A supercar in the garage and a summer house in the traffics? A better work life balance or nomadic lifestyle? Are you driven to solve a problem or fill some unmet need?

00:04:49 Filip Valica: I'm certainly motivated by most of these, but one of the deepest drivers for me is that I want to make an impact on the world to leave an imprint. And this is not something that I realized through brainstorming, although that can certainly help. It was more of a death by a thousand cuts.

00:05:05 Filip Valica: I'm definitely hard-headed that way. About eight years ago, I realized that creating a career by following the same path my bosses took didn't make me happy. I was working 60-hour weeks and competing with my engineering peers who are pretty much doing

00:05:18 Filip Valica: the same thing for the chance to win a 3% pay raise. I was even cross-training my counterpart in Singapore to eventually take my job. And I grew to hate this hum of fluorescent lighting and was actually jealous of the guys with window cubicles.

00:05:32 Filip Valica: I realized that if I played my cards right and kept at this for a few more years, that my reward wasn't anything I even wanted. I would be promoted to my boss's position where I would work even longer hours and practically sleep in my office. It's not like we were saving orphans here.

00:05:47 Filip Valica: This was a business. So I made up my mind that if I was going to do this long term, that at least I wanted to be my own boss and do it for something that I believed in. So I attended small business workshops around this city as a entrepreneur.

00:05:58 Filip Valica: I learned a bit about everything outside of engineering, and I found out about a local small business plan competition and entered it without even having an idea. My plan was to force myself into action, force myself to get off the fence and do something.

00:06:11 Filip Valica: So I treated it like a second job, putting in 30 to 40 hours a week for a few months outside of work. During the competition, I came up with a product idea that I had to scrap a month before the deadline. I scrambled to pick up a new idea last minute.

00:06:24 Filip Valica: I'm a huge DIYer, and I saw that maker spaces and hacker spaces were just getting traction. So I settled on improving on their existing business model, a co-op where members pay a monthly fee

00:06:35 Filip Valica: to get access to industrial fabrication equipment that's usually too expensive for any individual to own on their own. I won second place in the competition that year, working by myself, beating out plans written by teams of three. But I couldn't bring it to market.

00:06:49 Filip Valica: I needed too much capital for a high-risk business. I realized that even if everything went right, I would just end up being the equivalent of a health club owner, and that's not something that I would enjoy. I loved making things, but would that role make me happy?

00:07:02 Filip Valica: Instead of creating, I would just be balancing fixed equipment costs and maintenance against fluctuating membership levels, all for the chance to make half the income I was already making. So I did nothing and sat on the prize money.

00:07:15 Filip Valica: In the meantime, I'd bought a foreclosed house and stripped it down to the studs to make it livable. It took me two years working after work. and on weekends. I got a new job. I was promoted to supervise an engineering team and we were

00:07:27 Filip Valica: working on new product development. My fiance started graduate school and we got married. Something else on the horizon always occupied my focus, but in the back of my mind, I still had that itch. That

00:07:38 Filip Valica: nagging voice wouldn't go away. I slowly grew to dread the drive into work every morning. My job sapped my energy. I worked with great people on tough projects, but I realized that I was spending

00:07:49 Filip Valica: way more time solving internal company problems rather than really what I went to school with and what I enjoyed. Slowly, the work became less rewarding even though my salary kept increasing. I gave my day job

00:08:01 Filip Valica: the best part of my day, but I wasn't making much impact on the world. I could have been hit by a bust in my role would have been filled by the next guy in line. I was also making over six figures working for a company with great benefits. So if I just kept course, be reasonably well off.

00:08:15 Filip Valica: I felt trapped. I couldn't leave. I'd achieve the goal that I set for myself. as a kid. I grew up watching my mom work two jobs and stress about money and I thought money doesn't buy happiness was just a phrase that only the rich used. With a house renovated

00:08:30 Filip Valica: and my wife graduated, we were a dual income household with little overhead. We had no stress. Why messed that up by leaving a lucrative career? I only recently realized that the absence of stress

00:08:41 Filip Valica: is not the same as happiness. When our daughter was born, I thought about the legacy that I wanted to leave behind at the end of my life. Being a good son, husband, and father was certainly important

00:08:52 Filip Valica: to me, but it wasn't everything. It wasn't enough. I wanted to leave a positive mark on the world in a larger way. This is the deep motivation I think of every day. To me, our core motivation

00:09:03 Filip Valica: has to be powerful enough to pull us out of bed when it's cold in the morning or we haven't had enough sleep, persistent enough that it nags us when we're wasting time, deep enough to push us through the distractions that provide instant gratification.

00:09:16 Filip Valica: So for me, these motivational quotes, desktop wallpapers, Instagram feeds, Facebook posts that we read, they just scratch the surface. They don't create this lasting change because they don't really go deep enough to address our core motivation.

00:09:31 Filip Valica: Now, this doesn't mean that we have to do this by ourselves. Surrounding yourself with like-minded people can make all the difference. I absolutely believe that we're the average of the five people that we spend the most time with.

00:09:43 Filip Valica: One change I made early on has made a huge impact. I dropped negative people from my life years ago and it's paid dividends. We only have so much brain capacity, so much energy in a day and I never realized how much

00:09:56 Filip Valica: of that I was wasting on people that were pulling me away from my goals. So take some time to think about why you really want to launch your product and run a business. Feed that good wolf. As for the bad wolf, it's easy to put things off and procrastinate.

00:10:10 Filip Valica: We have too many priorities and obligations every day. Sometimes our inner voice tells us that we don't have enough time or money or the right knowledge or skills. We fear making mistakes so we don't take any action. We can't mess anything up if we don't do anything, right?

00:10:24 Filip Valica: Or we freeze when confronted with too many decisions and we don't know which path to take. So one of the reasons that we procrastinate is because we don't align our work with our core motivation. We make promises to bosses, family, and friends.

00:10:37 Filip Valica: We spend too much time on tasks that don't help us make meaningful progress. I know this is hard. I certainly can't be the best husband, father, son, friend, business owner, and employee every day.

00:10:49 Filip Valica: Many of these will take a hit and I'll end up really frustrated. So depending on how we respond to stress and challenge, we may also be making it worse. When I get stuck, I redouble my efforts, I work longer, I work even harder.

00:11:03 Filip Valica: I have to do something, anything, to move that needle. And because of this, I've accomplished a lot in my life, but I also take on a lot more than I should, which only makes the issue worse and leads to burnout. So for much of my life, I've tried

00:11:15 Filip Valica: to do more in the hopes that I get on top of my to-do list and free up my time. I don't know if you're like me, but my list has only gotten longer as I've gotten older. I will always want

00:11:26 Filip Valica: more, and there will always be more fires to put out. And if you're also a type A like me, you plan out every hour of free time, even if it's just in your head. So I carry a full plate all the time.

00:11:38 Filip Valica: As an employee, I did a good job of staying focused on work at work and left it there for tomorrow. I had no problem managing a department, a budget, working through inner office politics. I was organized and on top of things. All that changed when I started the product

00:11:53 Filip Valica: startup and launched my own products. Now there was no limit to how much time I can spend on researching a new product or building an audience or networking with people or just exploring

00:12:03 Filip Valica: marketing and sales. There's no end. No finish line. No goal post. No indicator to ding. You've gone far enough because I can always do more or pivot in another direction. Knowing that something had a

00:12:17 Filip Valica: change, I tried these four methods for setting and working towards my priorities. I'm still struggling with some of them to stay consistent every day. There's certainly a work in progress. The first

00:12:27 Filip Valica: method I tried was to track time on task by asking myself is what I'm doing right now supporting my priorities, my life goals. Is the work valuable? I write the result in a simple log. Sometimes I get

00:12:40 Filip Valica: lost in the task and I can't see the force through the trees. I tell myself, if I can just knock this out, then I won't have to deal with it later. Except even when it is a five-minute task and it rarely is, it takes me another 10 minutes to get in the zone on the next task. Of course,

00:12:55 Filip Valica: there are a lot of critical tasks, so I get a bunch of small things done, but I don't produce anything meaningful. The purpose of this method is to be more mindful of how you're spending your time. By tracking it, you can begin to manage and change it. Same as if you're

00:13:07 Filip Valica: trying to lose weight by monitoring caloric intake. I'm still working on this method. I hate tracking because it's yet one more thing to do, and there are apps out there that will track time spent in programs, but I haven't found them to be detailed enough. The second method I use

00:13:22 Filip Valica: is journaling, writing out a to-do list the night before or the morning of and focusing on those goals that day. The goal of journaling is to spend time refocusing at night when ideas are still fresh, or in the morning when I have the most energy. I stuck to this for a couple days until

00:13:37 Filip Valica: something urgent would come up in the morning and immediately derail me. My to-do list just got longer and longer. I also wasn't good at journaling. I didn't even want to take the 15 minutes to journal because I thought I would just be better off knocking out one more task.

00:13:50 Filip Valica: The third method, saying no more, has worked the best for me. I feel less obligated to people and less pressure to say yes to tasks that aren't in line with my goals. This doesn't mean that I focus only on myself.

00:14:03 Filip Valica: One of my top priorities is to deepen my relationships with friends and family. Now I just say yes to them and no to acquaintances or business contacts who can't articulate how they can help me meet my goals.

00:14:15 Filip Valica: The fourth method, setting reoccurring appointments on my calendar to block off time, has really worked the best for me. So, for example, I allocate Tuesdays and Wednesdays for calls, interviews, and

00:14:26 Filip Valica: meetings with clients. I love talking to people and it energizes me, but it also pulls my focus and I can't seem to get much done in between meetings with people. I set Mondays to edit the podcast and produce notes and schedule my social media, and this leaves me with Thursday and Friday

00:14:40 Filip Valica: to focus on my products and client deliverables. The benefit of this method is that it's easier to table a last minute task that comes up until the right day. Tasks can't grow outside of the time that I give them. Another reason that we procrastinate is because we tell ourselves that we don't

00:14:54 Filip Valica: have the time. Modern life is busier than ever. Some of the most popular articles online cover life hacks and productivity tools promising to squeeze out that extra 30 minutes in our day. For every new tech that makes our life easier or frees us from doing work,

00:15:09 Filip Valica: it seems that we just get another that feeds our addiction to stay connected. That sweet, sweet hit of instant information. That notification icon waiting to be reset. More data for us to ingest, process, and presumably

00:15:23 Filip Valica: act on. There's even so much noise out there that we can buy apps to roam social networks for us and like, comment, and befriend others in our place. When I was still single in my early 20s, I played video games

00:15:36 Filip Valica: a lot. At one point when I lived close to work, I even drove home to play at lunch. Even though I worked out at the gym every day, I would come home tired and I wanted to unwind and mentally turn off. So

00:15:47 Filip Valica: I turned on the TV and checked out. I thought I needed that. I deserved it. In fact, I earned it.

00:15:52 Filip Valica: I dropped video games cold turkey early, but my TV watching habit continued until my wife and I had a baby. We operated on my daughter's schedule and some things had a drop.

00:16:02 Filip Valica: To my amazement, I could live for months without watching TV. I realized that my crutch didn't even do anything positive for me long term. It didn't reduce stress for me. It just pushed it off until tomorrow. This wasn't a reward. It was just inhibiting my progress. No, I didn't throw away

00:16:17 Filip Valica: our TV. I still watch a few hours a week. But now it's something that I want to see and it's not just a way to unplug and escape. I'm not advocating anyone to take on a huge life change to force

00:16:27 Filip Valica: things, but you can simulate the effect well enough. One technique that worked for me, probably also because I have a competitive personality,

00:16:36 Filip Valica: is racing myself. My wife had some post-pregnancy complications and I was in charge of our daughter's late-night feedings. At first, I couldn't get much else done. Then I started to challenge myself to do tasks in the two hours between bottles and diaper changes.

00:16:51 Filip Valica: Once I built a workbench in two hours. It wasn't my best work and I would never post it to the woodworking forums I endlessly researched. But it's functional and it organizes my space and I use it to build projects, which was kind of the point.

00:17:04 Filip Valica: Now that our daughter is older, I set artificial limits on the time I spend on projects. There are even free timers that you can use on your phone or computer. I use hourglass on windows. It sits in the background with a meter that fills up as I approach my deadline

00:17:18 Filip Valica: taunting me to finish the task. I also realized that we will never have more time than we have right now. When I was single, I had more time than when we got married. Now that we have a daughter, I can't figure out what I did with all my extra time. The busier you are, the more you are forced

00:17:32 Filip Valica: to manage your time. Also, I can't talk about time management without talking about the level of effort that goes into completing our work. As an engineer, we were rewarded by reducing

00:17:42 Filip Valica: manufacturing or labor costs and reducing the risk of the company and investors. Mistakes cost money and injured people and the environment. So we were rewarded by reducing those mistakes.

00:17:55 Filip Valica: I'm also particularly detail-oriented, especially in design. It can be the details that can set a product apart from competitors. The details can also cost you.

00:18:05 Filip Valica: So it's probably no surprise to you, but it actually was to me, that I struggle with perfect is the enemy of the good. For the longest time, I felt that you either did tasks well or you didn't do them at all, except maybe my well was other people's nearly perfect.

00:18:20 Filip Valica: What started a change in my mindset was seeing other small business owners taking night classes to improve their businesses. Many of these owners were taking their first accounting class and they couldn't even balance their books. Some didn't even have an understanding of the basics of marketing.

00:18:34 Filip Valica: But despite that, they were still in business, years after they started. They didn't know what could go wrong and they just plowed ahead, figuring it out as they went. So in a way, they had this benefit of ignorance. Their business didn't have to be perfect, it just had to work.

00:18:48 Filip Valica: I try to practice the 80-20 rule now where 20% of the work leads to 80% of the results. The hardest aspect of this principle for me is knowing what 20% to focus on.

00:18:59 Filip Valica: So one way I try to manage that is doing a quick search to find the critical steps for each activity and sticking to my time limit. And that way at least I will get some of the basics handled.

00:19:10 Filip Valica: Another popular limiting belief that feeds procrastination is the lack of money. I frequently get emails at start with. I have this great idea. Can you introduce me to an investor that will help me launch it?

00:19:23 Filip Valica: Yet, many of these same people haven't taken a single step to validate their idea. It's a common misconception that investors will take wild risks and roll the dice on startups.

00:19:32 Filip Valica: Certainly some might, but those that are still around 10 years later take calculated risk doing their homework on the product and the market. We can validate our ideas ourselves with little or no upfront money.

00:19:43 Filip Valica: We have access to online resources and nonprofit mentors like SCORE to help us research market data. We can have conversations and talk to people about ideas for free in person or in online forums and Facebook groups.

00:19:57 Filip Valica: We have tools like Jungle Scout and Unicorn Smasher to help pull sales demand from Amazon so we can see how well our competitors are selling. Work on your idea enough that other people demand to pay you for it.

00:20:10 Filip Valica: The vast majority of ideas that solve an urgent need get funded somehow. at the very least, our target market should be interested enough in our solution to put their name down on a list that then we can use for pre-orders or crowdfunding.

00:20:23 Filip Valica: I talk about this in detail in episode 10. I have an idea, now what? Also, if you haven't had a chance to listen to the full backlog of podcasts, episode 12 covers how seven founders and small business owners tested their product ideas on a tight budget.

00:20:38 Filip Valica: Another big limiting belief is that we think that we lack the skills to take our ideas to the next step. Now, here's the point in the episode where I rock the boat. I've heard many experts say,

00:20:49 Filip Valica: you can take on launching your product yourself, but leave blank up to the professionals. That could mean leaving the packaging design of the experts, or leaving the branding or the search engine optimization, or the detail design, or anything else to the pros,

00:21:04 Filip Valica: which also sometimes happens to be the field that that expert consults in. And I understand the intent here. Why risk the future of a product or business on something that was sloppily put together,

00:21:14 Filip Valica: like a logo made using clip art or package design made by a cousin who has used Photoshop one time? Based on what I've seen, most DIY nightmares are because people veer off script.

00:21:25 Filip Valica: They assume that they understand the subject well enough to break the rules and go against the template or the guidance that's already out there. That doesn't necessarily mean that the only solution is to hire an expert.

00:21:35 Filip Valica: My problem with this stance is that it encourages this black and white thinking, either you hire the pro and succeed, or you DIY and you're destined for failure. The world isn't just black and white, and this binary thinking sets us back prematurely.

00:21:49 Filip Valica: We begin to believe that if we just can't do this one thing, perhaps we can't do any of the other steps to launch our own product or create our business. Maybe we shouldn't take on any of it until we can hire expert help.

00:22:00 Filip Valica: So we stall because we don't know if we should risk so much money up front for a roll of the dice. I'm not suggesting that anyone can learn engineering on YouTube or any other skill that takes years of careful study and practical experience.

00:22:13 Filip Valica: There's absolutely a time and a place to call in experts. I'm a huge DIYer. I grew up taking things apart, fixing things. I took my house down to the studs with minimal knowledge of renovations and no mentors to consult.

00:22:27 Filip Valica: Yet I repaired it to code and I saved an insane amount of money. Not too long ago, kids took woodworking metal shop or home economics classes. in school to learn practical skills that would last a lifetime.

00:22:39 Filip Valica: People grew up maintaining their own house and car and making alterations to clothes. And I'm not suggesting that we go back to the 60s, but there's a certain amount of freedom that you can get from being self-reliant. I plan on turning my daughter into my shop buddy, not because I expect her to make furniture

00:22:54 Filip Valica: when she gets older, but so she will learn how to create, experiment, and become more independent. We miss out on so much by not taking risk and trying things on our own. Through my engineering work, I have access to fast, precise manufacturing machines.

00:23:08 Filip Valica: But when I designed a new product and need to build a prototype, I reach for tools that give me quick results. That usually means wood, foam core, or cardboard. Using simple materials, I'm able to build mockups and get quick feedback in minutes or hours.

00:23:22 Filip Valica: After we hash out some of the basics, usually by iterating the design a few times, only then do we start to 3D model and consider 3D printing or fabricating our prototypes. But maybe you're still not convinced. Learning and researching on foreign topics may not be the most fun,

00:23:37 Filip Valica: but we can still learn a lot about the process by being involved in each step as much as possible. It makes us an educated buyer so that we can decide exactly where we need the most help. Then we can ask experts the right questions.

00:23:49 Filip Valica: Many of the guests that we've had on this show have followed the same path. In the last decade, the maker and DIY movement has seen a surge in popularity. Online tutorials can help you get started from the comfort of your company.

00:24:01 Filip Valica: couch and many tools are easy to use without prior experience. In fact, I started the product startup without hiring an expert. I modified a WordPress theme for the site, and I found graphics

00:24:11 Filip Valica: that I liked and emulated the style using online tools like Canva and open source software like Inkscape and Gimp. I asked fellow podcasters what programs they used to edit their audio

00:24:22 Filip Valica: and learned what I needed to know on YouTube. If I'd hired experts to design the website and edit my podcast, it would have cost me thousands of dollars and I would have likely not even started.

00:24:32 Filip Valica: There are so many templates that provide 80% of the results for 20% effort and many of them are free. So take advantage of them. I'm not suggesting that I've done an immaculate job. I'm happy to take input and improve on what I've built. Maybe one day I can hire these experts to bring

00:24:47 Filip Valica: me that final 20% of the way. But in the meantime, I'll continue producing content for people that want it and learning a lot of the practical skills along the way. Of course, I'm not suggesting that you should always DIY.

00:25:00 Filip Valica: If you've got more money than time, you can always outsource skills that you don't want to learn. You can hire experts that have built products before or freelancers to do the legwork for you. I recently was forced to hire a contractor to put a fence up, and I realized that most of them

00:25:13 Filip Valica: didn't have a clue about the work that they were doing. My experiences have certainly made me a bit picky. If you want to dig into this topic more, check out my article on the product startup.com, linked in the show notes, how to make a prototype even if you're not.

00:25:28 Filip Valica: not an expert. Just don't get stuck on thinking that there's only one perfect way and that you must absolutely hire an expert to get you there. According to the Small Business Administration,

00:25:38 Filip Valica: the SBA, close to two-thirds of small businesses will survive in the first two years. But we can't let fear of failure stop us from taking action. I know that it's easier said than done. We tell

00:25:50 Filip Valica: ourselves, I don't want to look bad in front of friends and family. Why should I waste my time money on something that won't work. One of the ways that I've learned to minimize the cost of failing

00:25:59 Filip Valica: is to start small and compartmentalize that risk. So for example, my first product was a privately labeled product that I imported into Amazon before I invest in a brand new patented product of

00:26:10 Filip Valica: my own design. I've also done something similar with the podcast. You'll notice that I change something small every few weeks. If you go back to the original couple episodes, you should notice a difference in the format. I'd love to create the perfect product or the perfect show from you from

00:26:23 Filip Valica: the beginning but the ideal show is different for everyone and it's tough to get feedback especially on a podcast where listeners are driving or working out or listening so i put out episodes based on bits and

00:26:35 Filip Valica: pieces of what i'd like from other shows and test a few things at a time some of you will write in and tell me if i'm going in the right direction and slowly i think i'm honing in on something that

00:26:45 Filip Valica: resonates a while back i tried introducing each show with a one to two minute sound clip following the trend set by some popular podcasts. The intent was to get the content to you as fast as possible.

00:26:57 Filip Valica: But many of you thought that it was distracting. It was hard to tell when the podcast was starting. You don't need that perfect product from beginning. Start small and make changes and iterate while listening to your target market. Sometimes we get hung up on testing and iterating our work

00:27:11 Filip Valica: because it can seem like a failure. We spent time and money on something and that didn't work out. As an engineer, I look at failure as data. Each test is just another data. data point that will lead me towards the right path. So going back to the business plan

00:27:24 Filip Valica: competition, the first idea that I had was for a product called the sunflower. Imagine a solar panel on a seven foot pole with a battery and a base designed to look like a giant sunflower

00:27:34 Filip Valica: in a pot. I expected consumers to park it in their backyard for night lighting and charging of their electronics and something that would break down for camping and travel. I even had add-ons planned like outdoor speakers. But I had to scrap my idea because I couldn't find a market for it at the

00:27:49 Filip Valica: time. Not enough people were interested for the cost. Alternate solutions at the time like generators produced much more power for only slightly higher costs. And talking to people first hand, without the aid of the company I was working for in my day job, was certainly a lot different.

00:28:03 Filip Valica: I heard a lot more nose. The engineering didn't matter. The aesthetics didn't matter. And all the time I spent coming up with the add-ons and ways I could market it didn't matter. As long as

00:28:14 Filip Valica: I didn't have a buyer. So without this failure and without this one data point, I might still be trying to learn that valuable lesson today, which is test your product, validate your market.

00:28:24 Filip Valica: Sometimes we feel failure so much that we think, if I don't start anything, I can't fail. So I try to flip that around. My deepest motivation is actually the fear of regret, the fear of

00:28:35 Filip Valica: not acting. Regret that I will squander the years that I have in this life. Regret that when my daughter is old enough, I'll tell her that she can do anything and become whoever she wants, but Dadda picked the safe, risk-adverse path, and stayed stuck.

00:28:49 Filip Valica: Regret that I will be retired, sitting on a recliner, and telling my grandkids about what I wanted to achieve instead of things that I actually did. This fear has turned out to be one of the most powerful motivators in my life.

00:29:04 Filip Valica: When we came back home from the hospital with our new baby, I started writing content for the product startup. I hated writing because it didn't come easily for me. I was also working on it late at night after work when I had the least energy in the day and it wasn't exactly the top thing on my mind.

00:29:19 Filip Valica: I launched the site a year ago after I built a backlog of articles. I promoted it on social media. Yet no one visited to read them, of course.

00:29:28 Filip Valica: So I started this podcast three months later. I didn't even have a plan to monetize the site. I just knew I had to do something to get the ball rolling. I wanted to talk to the owners of successful product businesses and I assumed that other people out there did as well.

00:29:41 Filip Valica: So for the next six months, I published two podcasts a month and did a lot of work behind the scenes, but I didn't see any growth. My downloads from March through September were a straight line.

00:29:52 Filip Valica: I was spending a lot of time every week and giving up on other things in my life for a project that wasn't getting anywhere. Finally, at the end of September, I started to see a 20% month-on-month growth.

00:30:03 Filip Valica: I can't tell opportunities that have opened up for me as a result of taking action and sticking with it. I've met some amazing people and learned that there are many paths to success. But most importantly, you are here now listening to this.

00:30:16 Filip Valica: Hopefully, this show has helped you and made an impact on how you approach turning the ideas in your head into real products. Remember that by taking no actions, you guarantee a 100% failure rate.

00:30:27 Filip Valica: So as I promised early in this episode, here are the takeaways that you can use to take action if you're in a rut. What are your core motivations for starting a business? This needs to be something that you don't have to remind yourself of every day.

00:30:39 Filip Valica: it should be a part of you. Keep that daily motivation by starting small and setting realistic goals. The intent here is to get a win as easily as possible to encourage your brain to continue with this new habit. Raise the bar once you've created this habit. It usually takes about three weeks

00:30:54 Filip Valica: for a daily ritual to become a habit. Do something small every day and make progress on meaningful work. Here's where I insert cliches of putting one foot in front of the other and eating elephants

00:31:04 Filip Valica: one bite at a time. But seriously, make it easy on yourself to make progress towards your goals. Reduce the negativity in your life as much as you can. Surround yourself with people that help

00:31:15 Filip Valica: you reach your goals. Create an accountability partner with someone that is going through the same thing. I did. Do you have any limiting beliefs? No time? There's no better time than today.

00:31:26 Filip Valica: Even if it's creating a list of tasks that you need to do and prioritize them. While working, I sometimes spent my lunch break outside writing and sketching in my journal. What task aren't helping you achieve your goals? Replace those with a chunk of time that you dedicate to working on your

00:31:41 Filip Valica: idea. No money? You can certainly do a lot on your own, even if it's only to prove that the market exists, something that many people fail to do. Learn a new skill that you can transfer to launching a product or running a business. Talk to your target market about your ideas and

00:31:55 Filip Valica: start making a list of potential customers to reach out to. You may also find it helpful to make small conscious changes to your mindset and rewrite some negative thoughts. If your job is frustrating you, you may find areas of it that can transfer to running a small business. And instead of just a

00:32:10 Filip Valica: job, maybe look at it like pay training with free tuition. Don't look at failure as the end. Look at it as data. Start a project and invest some money into it just so you can learn something. Risk a set amount of

00:32:21 Filip Valica: money that you would be willing to lose and walk away from. I don't have this unwavering belief that I will be successful. I'm working on that every day. I actually do have one of those motivational quotes above my desk that reads,

00:32:35 Filip Valica: Success is inevitable as a reminder. I don't know if what I'm doing with a product startup will work out or if my products will take off. But what I do believe deep down is that I need to do something. My motivation to push forward doesn't waver.

00:32:48 Filip Valica: I also know that most problems out there have solutions. So chances are that if I get stuck, I can also get unstuck. So my parting words do you, every day choose to feed that good wolf. one that keeps you motivated,

00:33:02 Filip Valica: starve procrastination, starve your limiting beliefs like the lack of time, money, or skills. You'll get there if you get out of your own way, and this could definitely be your year. So let me know what you thought of this episode. You agree with what I said,

00:33:16 Filip Valica: did I miss something? What's helped you get unstuck? Go to theproduct startup.com and hit contact me or shoot me an email to fill up at the product startup.com. Join me next week as I speak

00:33:27 Filip Valica: with Paul Potratz about creating a branding strategy for small businesses. I'll see you guys next week.

00:33:41 Filip Valica: Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Product Startup Podcast, the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market and turn it into a big success. This podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent, the first firm in North America to provide

00:33:56 Filip Valica: global caliber end-to-end physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product businesses. If you're looking for product development help on your invention,

00:34:05 Filip Valica: head over to macawdesign.com, that's m-a-k-o-design.com for a free consultation from one of Mako-design's four design studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.