Hey - Good Sunday 🌞!
I haven't sent out a Sunday Beam in 3 weeks. Seriously, how are you doing? Hit "reply" and I'd love to catch up!
This email is going to be a recap of what I'm going through in my entrepreneurial journey - I want to share it with you because you'll likely go through the same in your journey.
Ready? Set. Go.
Recently, I made some critical decisions like pausing my course 30DaysinPublic and stopping to charge my community members a recurring fee. You can read more in my Sep income report.
This means I'll likely make <$100 in October. It is quite brutal!
When a product like 30DaysinPublic can make ~$2k, why stop?
Here's my belief.
I started creating online in Nov 2020. I spent 6 months creating free content for credibility building, then I spent another 6 months exploring different ways to monetize.
I've tried so many major digital products one can build: community, course, Notion template, consultation, book ...
It was a self-discovery period to find out 1) what clicks with myself and 2) what clicks with my audience.
And I can say with confidence that I've found it - my strength is in creating content + teaching people. It is what fuels me as a creator.
So I pause or shut things down because I want to free myself up to double down on things that will yield a better future.
Sunk cost fallacy is real. You might think "Kevon, you've invested so much time and energy already, shouldn't you keep going?"
Let's simply say: the best entrepreneurs know when to stop what.
Sometimes, there is no point holding on.
The other thing that is critical to my recent journey is my mindset shift on pricing. I realized:
What you value yourself is what people value you
At first, since I was absolutely new on the Internet and to the topics I talked about, I was afraid to charge more. I was afraid to look like a scammer. I was afraid if my work doesn't justify my pricing, my reputation is ruined.
Honestly, I still have no regret on charging low at first. I think every entrepreneur needs to go through this phase of doing underpriced work (I shared my pricing mental journey in this tweet thread).
Why? To build up credibility and a track record.
If I were to charge higher early in my journey, I missed out serving all the people I now call friends. I missed out having a 20-student cohort in July where I learned so much about what's missing in my course.
I don't think I could get to where I am today.
The reasons I shifted my mindset to charge more:
- I'm finally at a point I'm 100% confident my work is highly valuable to other people
- I have built up enough credibility so far. People keep telling me "Kevon, your content is top notch. Your advice is killer. Your work is worth so much more." This is a good signal.
- But most importantly, I realized when I was charging low, my mind was always jumping to building other new products because I needed to expand my revenue streams. If I charge higher and I can still get people to pay, it allows me to really focus and throw in ridiculous value into the existing products. And guess what - it makes the products even better. This means a super healthy cycle.
And so my decision to pause 30DaysInPublic (was at $119) and community ($99/yr) was to allow me to focus.
I'm doubling down on 2 main products: Build in Public Mastery (up to $700USD) and Showing Up Right (will be $99). I imagine myself to iterate them constantly instead of creating more products.
But you know what, up till this point, all this was just in my head ...
until I launched Build in Public Mastery 5 days ago and got 10 applications so far. It proves that this is working! The pieces are coming together.
My final thought is on sustaining myself as a creator and an online entrepreneur. If you look at the graph above, you can see that I am far from being successful monetarily. If I don't make changes now, it is likely that I'll have to give all of these out thinking I'm not good enough.
But now that I know I can solve people's problems and also make enough to sustain my family, I don't see why I can't keep going!
To sum everything up here:
- Build credibility first - it is a must
- Test out many different products & monetization to understand yourself and your audience
- Don't be afraid to shut things down to work on better things and focus
- When you charge people and they have so much good things to say about your work, it is a must to double down on something + charge more (while offering ridiculous values)
I don't want this Sunday Beam to be crazy long so I'll pause here. If you'd like to ask me questions, hit "reply" and I'm always here ready to chat :)
⭐ Inspirations for You
- The one and only true digital asset is .....? Yannick has the answer.
- Some builders spend all their time building and not talking about it. Some talk too much and don't build enough. Arvid sharing his 2cents.
- $7M run rate in 17 months - Liz did an AMA on Twitter and lots of good insights.
✍ Currently I Am ...
- Accepting applications to Build in Public Mastery (Nov 29-Dec 17)! I am keeping the cohort size to a max of 20 students and so far within 5 days of launch I already have 10.
- If you're interested in all the mindset exercises, frameworks and tools I use to grow my audience with building in public, check out the course website.
Enjoy a lovely Sunday. Maybe it is time to think about what you can shut down so you can better focus on the things that work?
Oh yeah, and hit "Reply" and let me know how you're doing! Love to chat.