You can’t be the best at everything so you might as well go for doing the things that you’re best at.
With a little bit of pragmatism, you’ll also go a bit out of your way now and then and not simply avoid filling your tax return just because” it’s something you don’t like doing”.
In the early days, it’s a bit of a bet: because you think what you’re building can have a huge impact, it means that you can skip through some things that are not fundamentally necessary at that moment:
- Hire a copywriter/a blogger
- Put in place your content strategy (or create content at all)
- Focus on great, converting design
- Hire some developers in-house instead of contracting them
- Etc.
So you’re looking to get ASAP to the point where your product has an impact, because you believe it can be profitable.
Build something grand
But that’s the deal: I believe you absolutely have to believe it’s a great product, this thing that you’re building, otherwise you’ll more 10x slower. A lot of people don’t do that and by that I mean they’re “merely building a product, to see if it works”.
Yes, there’s different stages in life where you might want to test things out but sooner or later you’ll want to build something grand — or you’ll have to resort to finding a huge excuse for why you didn’t: not in front of others (mainly), rather in front of yourself. That’s the toughest type of discussion.
So please aim as far as your mind can imagine.
Because if you don’t get to high-growth mode, you’ll feel uneasy. But you’ll also feel uneasy when you’re in that mode — let’s just make a deal with ourselves that it’s never going away.
(Bonus points if you can make it so that you start enjoying the thrill of feeling uneasy.)
Once the product’s got a bit of a shape…
… please don’t get stuck into the old ways. Hiring is needed, even though you’ve proven to yourself you can do a good job with fewer resources.
But the reason why I just talked about growth mode and uneasiness is that it feels uneasy to start hiring properly.
And the reason why I talked about building something grand is that you can start hiring properly only if you’re building something that, because it’s grand, has chances to become highly profitable.
Those were the points I was painting so they can converge into this point. There are just too many cases when the jump is not made. The jump into playing this (very risky) card of high-growth.
Otherwise, you’ll be stuck at the SMB level — which may be fine with you, by no means I’m judging that. But if it’s an internal struggle of why am I not growing and you’re:
- Not building something that seems grand to you
- Therefore not having a chance (at least in your head) of becoming highly profitable, so you would be able to…
- Start hiring properly when it’s needed (but that doesn’t happen)
Then this might be the mindset change that you need for growing your SaaS.
About Ch Daniel
I run Chagency_, an experiences design agency — we help SaaS CEOs reduce user churn. I write daily on this topic and in similar areas. Here are my best pieces.
If I’ve helped you, follow me here and reach out: LinkedIn | Twitter | Email | Quora | YouTube
I’ve also founded an app that went 0-200K users in its 1st year — chdaniel.com/app
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Illustration credits: Ricardo Polo
