LEARN THEN APPLY

Hi there!

Some quick updates:

1. I was a guest on a podcast!

I spoke with Jakob Greenfeld about discipline as a creator, startup ideas, and when you should charge for your product.

2. I have again failed in being consistent with my productivity system.

The main reason? I haven't been updating the to-dos in the morning or beginning of the week. (I told you the Review step was why most people fail!)

So I've set daily alarms to remind me to do that. I'll report back with how it goes.

3. My "Viral" Tweet

Last week I recorded a dumb little parody of my favorite podcast. Both hosts retweeted it, and it went about as viral as someone with 99 followers can go 😂.

I was noodling on the idea for at least a month before I decided to push record and do it. It took like 45 minutes total.

This is your weekly reminder to put 💩 out.

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🧠 LEARN

        The Challenge

I've mentioned the niche-wedding-marketplace project on this newsletter for at least 6 months and still had nothing to show...

I was caught up in marketing strategies... logos... social media pages... monetization...

But still had nothing to show.

Don't get me wrong, those are important things to think about! But until you build something, you're just hypothesizing.

When I catch myself going in circles in my head, I now just type down my thoughts and move on.

It has freed my mind up for solving more important things like...

How do I build this??

        Resources

📹 How to Create a Marketplace with Softr

I came across this video from Doc Williams' Twitter.

Doc experiments with different tools to create quick drafts of various business ideas. (It's been an inspiration for some future Learn Then Apply content coming your way 😏.)

I was planning to build my minimum viable product (MVP) using marketplace creation tools like Sharetribe and Yelo. But they're very expensive (starting around $70 a month) and the more I looked at sites built on their infrastructure, the less I thought it was right for what I wanted to build.

So I decided to build my MVP in Softr.

Softr lets you create websites using data from Airtable (a database tool, kinda like Google Sheets).

I gathered some information about vendors I've been in contact with and built manthrakodi.softr.io

        Insights

As I mentioned in last week's insight on creating productivity systems, you don't know what you need until you try.

Here are some things that happened because I finally built the MVP:

• I was able to share the pages with the vendors and get feedback on what they'd like to be featured on their page.

• I realized that the pay-to-list model I wanted wasn't going to work because the incentive for vendors isn't strong enough yet.

• I now knew what to further research; like how WeddingWire pre-built pages for vendors early on and let them "claim it".

All this progress was made for free.

This MVP will help me understand what the vendors and couples like about the platform.

If I need something more robust in the future, then I can go with one of the pricier options or pay someone to build a custom solution.

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🚀 APPLY

        Project Updates

Semi-big project.. I'm thinking of buying a condo or house soon. Some good content coming your way 😊

I've also been updating my thread on my progress on Manthrakodi.

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✌ See y'all next week

If I don't send a newsletter by next Wednesday (1/27), venmo request me for $10 @monitormonkey.

Have a great week!

<3 Aswin