What the Small Product Lab taught me

Spoiler alert: to call the Small Product Lab (SPL) a great experience for me would be doing it an injustice. Through this free initiative by Gumroad, I finally started and finished a real book. The thrill I felt when I compiled the PDF was indescribable – the joy of accomplishing a life-long goal. It may be a self-published book, but seeing my words in a professional-looking file – just like the hundreds of other eBooks I’ve bought – was incredible.

As I’ve mentioned before, this was not my first time trying to create something like this. I’ve even spent quite a bit of money before in the hopes that skin in the game would get me over the line when things got tough. Nothing before has ever worked, and yet the totally free Gumroad challenge is what ended up working. Why? I have a few ideas.

Small, Actionable Tasks

Although I wrote the book in a marathon weekend, it was not the first thing I did. Instead, over the course of the week I built momentum through the completing of myriad comparatively small tasks, as set by the Gumroad team. This worked in a few ways:

• Small bites: It’s how you eat the elephant, and something that, as a programmer, I should never forget. The constant small wins each day gave me the feeling that I had a head of steam going. I didn’t need to do everything at once, I just had this little chunk to handle. Much less intimidating.
• Stretched the comfort zone: I am not a born marketer. My natural inclination is to beaver away on something for as long as possible, then quietly release it and only tell my friends about it. SPL tasks often included marketing missions and other things I was uncomfortable with. Without needing to accomplish them, I might never have told anyone about this.
• Built a habit: I knew that every single day I would have something to do for SPL. I became accustomed to making time every evening for the day’s assignment. It became a habit to sit down at my computer after dinner and, instead of opening Facebook, check my inbox for the daily cue and get to work. Once you’re working, it’s easy to keep working. Getting started is the hard part.

A Group of Peers

Doing things on your own is hard. It’s so much easier to go on that trip if you have a friend going with you. It’s easier to try for that personal best if your workout partner is cheering you on. SPL has this built-in in the form of a private Facebook group of people all going for the same ambitious goal. It can be lonely plunking yourself down in front of your computer every night after work, when you could be doing other things. Having the SPL group to go to, reminding me that I wasn’t the only one sweating and fretting over my project, and spurring each other to new heights, was a godsend. They are a fascinating bunch of people with an even more fascinating range of finished products.

A Deadline

Unlike previous attempts, “taking things at my own pace” and usually translating that into glacial – or no – progress, SPL had a defined, tight deadline. I knew going in that, as of day one, I had ten days to get something–anything–finished and up for sale. I didn’t even have an idea at the start. I didn’t get the idea until day two! And yet, with the spurring of that deadline, I released my first book on time.

If there’s something you’ve been dying to do, don’t put it off. Set yourself a goal date. Your project can’t wait any longer. If you need more impetus, do what I did and post about it. Tell everyone you are releasing something on your specified date and start taking preorders. I know that for me, as soon as I had my first preorder there was no going back. I could not disappoint a friend like that.

Support of friends and family

I saved the best for last.

Deadlines might be big, but the support factor was the secret sauce. I first posted to Facebook tentatively, after much encouragement in private from a few close friends. It took me a day of agonising to finally put the word out that I was writing a book. It’s hard to explain that fear, but it was a physical struggle – sweaty palms and all. I was sure that people would be laughing at me behind my back, questioning my knowledge – even openly mocking me. I refused to check the Facebook post for a day, afraid of what I’d find in my notifications.

What happened was the complete opposite. People rallied around the project, commenting on my blog posts, liking Facebook posts and spreading the word. Preorders came in from friends, family, and people they shared the landing page with. Even now, over a week after launch, the support is still coming. My radio appearance was because of the help of a friend, and I may even have another media post coming up.

I used to dislike the word “network” in terms of people because I always thought of it as seedy and fake – collecting people you don’t know into a web – but now I understand that I have a network of great people that are ready and willing to help me and it isn’t because I’ve spent lots of time shmoozing or handing out business cards. It’s because they’re awesome. I really could not have done it without them.

Thank you, ladies and gents. You’ve been tremendous.

So what does this mean for you?

It means that if you’re sitting on the fence, with or without an idea, you need to just take the leap and do it.

Commit to a deadline, rally your friends and family, get your ass in a chair (or into whatever situation your particular creation needs) and get going. Start small and build your momentum. In just ten days you might surprise yourself with what you can produce.

The biggest takeaway I have from this is that if I can do it, anyone can do it. So go forth and do it!