I’ve been somewhat conflicted between going hard after product and letting my freelancing business stagnate. While this has caused some drama in my life (also fighting cancer through the transition) I was wondering what your thoughts are on the “hard road” of product and not killing yourself along the way. Or at least, keeping your about you.

I feel like I’m close to living off my product income (totally subscription) and I’m investing time in another one as well. However the road ahead is still going to be hard, treatments are expensive and bills need to be paid. In the mean time I’m considering getting a remote job (since I live in Mexico, originally from Calgary) or going after more contract work and investing more in growing my contracting business to get bigger deals. Been having this mid-product life crisis for a few years now and don’t know what path will lead me in the right direction.

I’m party afraid that getting a job is going to distract me from product, but at the same time, contracting can be stressful when my network is somewhat crappy at the moment.

Best,

I like Hiten’s framework for answering difficult questions, too. We could probably do an entire episode just on that topic.

Great interview.

The first one was this guy who says become a celebrity in your niche –

After that, I some how stumbled upon this guy who talked about story telling –

Then, I started thinking. This is the missing link in my business. My current blog is pretty cold and talks just about products I launch from a corp-like tone.

I’ve been struggling with what kind of audience I’d target. At first, I thought, the CRM space. But I plan on doing a lot more products outside of the CRM space. Then I thought, well the bootstrapper space is pretty small still and everyone in that space are in business or looking to start a business.

Then I remembered the book your launched and podcasting. It’s really strange but I just thought of 5 people I know personally I could get into a podcast today. So it takes a long time to even know what kind of audience to go after.

Always glad when I see the “new kids” (ie, productizing entrepreneurs ) making use of tried and true methods from outside our group.

Thanks for doing this podcast. Tom’s story is inspirational. I am also trying to make the transition from client work to services – so having him on was helpful to me.

Thanks for listening, Lesly!

I’ve been listening to Andrey on his podcast and was happy to hear him on here.