🗞 What's New: Juggling multiple products at once

If you're considering launching a second (or third) product, think about sustainability:

• Choose mostly low-effort ideas, build products that all focus on the same customers, and follow your enthusiasm. When managing them, prioritize.
• You know those days where you just don't feel like working on your SaaS? Try making one small commit per day. Train yourself to like the hard work.
• Working 10 days per month. $18K ARR. Vadim's design agency used Instagram to land its first client. Focusing on great onboarding helped, too.

Want to grow your business? Try running a promo in the Indie Hackers newsletter to get in front of nearly 70,000 founders.

by James Fleischmann

Succeeding with one product is hard enough. But how do you succeed with a portfolio of products?

How to find the right ideas

1. Choose (mostly) low-effort ideas.

Tony Dinh:

Build products that require low maintenance effort. SaaS products are very needy, and require constant attention: Customer support, keeping the system up, etc.

Downloadable apps are much more relaxed, with no server to take care of. There's only customer support. For me, most customers’ emails are feature requests, so they require no action.

Infoproducts are even better, with almost nothing to maintain.

2. Choose ideas that solve your own problems.

Rob Hope:

Work on things that solve your problems, things you're curious about, or things that level up your skills.

That means your motivation is unlimited, so you can find these hours in your day. Client work is often a struggle. Passion projects are not.

3. Choose ideas that focus on the same customer.

John Doherty:

It's easier to run multiple companies when they all serve the same customer. We serve digital agencies at both of our companies. People like Pieter Levels serve remote workers.

Pick one customer, and build multiple things for them.

4. Follow your enthusiasm.

Matthew Gordon:

The thing that kills more products in their infancy than anything else is the death of enthusiasm. Genuine enthusiasm is a limited resource. When it dies, the rest often falls like a house of cards.

Estimate your interest. Estimate the work. Estimate the work timeline. Do your estimates add up?

How to effectively manage multiple projects

1. Break everything into small tasks.

Felix Wong:

I break down my roadmap and goals so they're as small as possible. For example, if I need to publish four articles a month, I break it down into one paragraph per day, and I convert it into a routine. You don't have to force yourself to write a whole article in a day.

2. Prioritize.

Felix:

I decide what to work on according to the ICE scoring system:

• I: Impact.
• C: Confidence.
• E: Ease.

I take a task and give it a score for each of these categories. Then, I multiply them together. The highest number is the one I complete first.

3. Focus on one task.

Tony:

I break 90% of my tasks into small chunks of work that can be done within one working session (about 3-4 hours). This includes building, testing, deploying, and writing docs.

Because of that, I can be fully focused on one task of one product on one specific day.

On a typical working day, I only do one task. Then, I spend the rest of the day on marketing, customer support, and interacting with the community (mostly on X).

On other days, I do smaller tasks with a lot of context-switching, which I find quite fun and relaxing.

Discuss this story.

from the Growth Trends newsletter

🤖 Adobe unveiled some AI heavy hitters this week.

💞 Three ways to determine what your customer really values.

💻 Simplifying the management of your first-party data.

🍪 56% of UK consumers always accept cookies without thinking.

🎬 How Hollywood insures its biggest stunts.

Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.

by MakeSculpt

We've all been there. When the rosy period ends, or when things simply start to get tough, we start losing motivation to work. With nobody besides ourselves to hold us accountable, we slip into unproductive habits.

Here are a few tips to help you overcome this slump in motivation.

One commit per day

A git commit allows you to track the progress of the changes made to your project. Developers generally commit their code after working on a small feature, like centering a div.

Convince yourself to make just one commit per day. It is digestible enough not to make you want to procrastinate, while being meaningful enough to progress the project forward. Hint: You will likely end up making more than one commit!

Learn about dopamine

Dopamine is the chemical responsible for motivation. There is an excellent podcast episode by Dr. Andrew Huberman on YouTube, where he goes reasonably deep into the science behind dopamine and motivation. Some key takeaways:

• Don't do pleasurable activities before doing the hard work.
• Train yourself to like the hard work, not just the reward.
• You will likely feel unmotivated after you've had a dopamine spike.

Fitness and diet

Food doesn't just affect your gut health and looks. It also affects your mental health and clarity. Find out what kinds of foods help you think more clearly, and avoid the ones that make your mind foggy, at least right before you want to work.

Meat, for example, can induce food comas in some people, so they feel incredibly sluggish. Eating more than twice per day can cause some people to feel lethargic.

Secondly, hitting the gym is probably the cheat code to getting more work done. Working out even twice per week is enough to boost motivation for the entire week.

Discuss this story.

🛠 Five tools to save you time on your Product Hunt launch. Posted by Karthik.

📝 How do you build a waitlist? Posted by Shayan Ali.

📰 Growing a newsletter. Posted by Dimos Merachtsakis.

💲 Advice on funding a new project. Posted by Chris.

🧠 Is it burnout or a mental block? Posted by Thebigk.

🐢 Speeding up your API response time. Posted by Nitin K.

Want a shout-out in next week's Best of Indie Hackers? Submit an article or link post on Indie Hackers whenever you come across something you think other indie hackers will enjoy.

by Vadim

Three months ago, I launched my design agency, Sollas. It focuses on helping fast-paced startups save costs, while validating their concept quickly. I've recently hit $18K ARR with a team of three.

Our marketing strategies

Our core model revolves around delivering designed products (think web app, mobile app, etc.) within just seven days.

So far, we have helped four startups design their UX and UI. We got our first customer from my Instagram account (I have 30K followers).

Word-of-mouth has worked great, too. I asked the founders of the startups that I've worked with so far to refer me to their founder friends.

We're also currently giving cold outreach a go. It’s still the early days, so we have not gotten any clients from this tactic yet.

Our processes

• Onboarding: We start our collaboration by offering information about our workflow and procedures, ensuring that clients are well-informed about what to expect.

• Research and estimation: We perform research on the client’s niche and users. This essential groundwork allows us to handpick the most suitable design solutions and UX patterns for the project. Additionally, we provide a clear time estimate, which typically ranges from one to two weeks.

• Design: We create user flows, and once these initial concepts are approved, we dive into creating high-fidelity designs. Throughout this phase, we provide daily updates to the client.

• Delivery and presentation: We provide onboarding sessions for the team to familiarize themselves with the new design system.

Advice for founders

I'd like to share a few valuable insights on accelerating your product design process:

• Use commonly used, well-tested design patterns in your interface. Avoid cluttering your design; your primary focus should be creating a functional, streamlined MVP.

• Use design systems to expedite the design and development phases. They not only enhance the speed of design creation, but also provide a structured foundation for your product, making it easier to scale in the future.

• Keep your user interface simple. Simplicity equals speed. You can refine and enhance the visual elements later in the process, especially after you've tested the viability of your idea.

What's next

We plan to:

• Start offering development services, making us a full stack design agency.
• Build a strong email newsletter with freebies for founders.

Happy to answer any questions!

Discuss this story.

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.

Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to James Fleischmann, Darko, MakeSculpt, and Vadim for contributing posts. —Channing