🗞 What's New: Reflecting and planning for 2024

As we approach the end of 2023, many founders are strategizing for the year ahead:

• Reflect by asking yourself what motivated you this year, and what drained you. Use that clarity to plan and identify your Anchor Pursuit for 2024.
• Build a powerful brand to attract new users. Start by writing out your origin story. Then, define your core values and your brand's "voice."
• $32 in total costs. Five micro-SaaS businesses. Five acquisitions. Santiago Poli built each app fast using no-code, and sold each one just as fast.

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by Kevin Bronander

As the year is coming to a close, it’s natural to look forward and begin creating goals or resolutions. But, to accomplish something worthwhile, you should reflect on the past before looking to the future.

Reflection

Comb through the things you've done this year, and capture the insights in one place.

Leverage all of the digital tools that you use on a daily basis. Review your calendar, reread your journal entries, and scroll through your social media accounts. Check out your photos, and even old texts.

As you move through the year, you will notice which events, people, and responsibilities you loved and want to do more of, and which ones you want to avoid.

Reflection like this helps you understand yourself and your reality better, and provides the foundation that you need to plan for the future.

Planning

Creating an effective plan starts with connecting where you are today with where you want to be in the future.

To create this clarity, ask yourself two questions five times:

1. What you're pursuing.
2. What you need to do to get there.

The first time you ask these two questions should be on an annual basis, so you can understand the big picture. With an understanding of the big picture, you can ask yourself the same questions four more times, drilling down the timeframe from annual to quarterly, then monthly, weekly, and daily.

What you need to do on a daily basis helps you reach where you need to be on a weekly basis, and what you need to do on a weekly basis helps you reach where you need to be on a monthly basis, and so on.

Breaking down ambitious plans into bite-sized chunks forces you to make incremental progress throughout the year!

Anchor Pursuit

An Anchor Pursuit is one habit or goal that serves as the skeletal system for everything else that you do.

It’s one thing you can commit to that will make everything else easier. It makes you feel good and moves you forward.

For some, it might be journaling or dinner with the family. For others, it might be meditation or therapy.

Exercise is a great example. It can be the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning, and gives you more energy to tackle the rest of the day.

An Anchor Pursuit gives you a chance to win the day by checking one thing off of your list. If you can do that one thing each day, you'll be transformed for the better by the end of the year.

Prompts for reflection

1. After reviewing the last 12 months, what is one thing you’d like to do more of, and one thing you’d like to do less of, in the upcoming year?

2. What are the actions you need to take on a quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily basis to accomplish your biggest goal for the year?

3. What is your Anchor Pursuit for the upcoming year? How can you guarantee you will do this every day?

This post is part of the Prompted Series on Indie Hackers. Subscribe for new insights and prompts every week!

Discuss this story.

from the Growth Trends newsletter

⌚️ Apple Watch sales will be halted over a patent dispute.

🎅 Santa stats: Inside the business of holiday cheer.

💲 Link to your product here. Our most affordable ad.

🔗 Brand mentions may be the future of backlinks.

🤖 How to create the best DALL-E prompts.

🎁 Plan your best seasonal marketing campaign yet.

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

by Thomas Griffin

Building a brand doesn't happen overnight. It's a very demanding process that requires research and hard work. Here's how to build a strong brand identity.

Create buyer personas

It's imperative to become familiar with the personality traits of your target audience.

One of the most effective ways to do this is to create buyer personas. These help you choose the right tone and aesthetics for your brand, and come up with personalized branding strategies to attract the right audience.

Conduct market research

Analyze your strengths and weaknesses, and those of your competitors.

This information tells you how your brand competes with others in the industry, and enables you to come up with fitting strategies to gain a competitive edge.

Define values

People connect with a brand because they want to associate themselves with what defines that brand.

Come up with a mission statement and core values that showcase what you believe in, and what you want to accomplish.

Your solutions are similar to what your competitors offer, so why should people choose you over them? It's your core values that foster a sense of representation, and make people want to associate with your brand.

Develop your brand's voice

The voice encompasses the way a brand designs and conveys its message to its target audience. It dictates the way you create and publish your content.

The voice of your brand should be the same across all channels, and in complete harmony with the personality of your brand. Experiment with various tones, formats, and vibes.

Tell a story

What's your origin story? Tell people how your company came to be, and what drives you to do what you do.

Be as original and truthful as you can. You don't need a fancy origin story to make your brand appealing. Just tell people what happened, and how it motivates you to keep the needle moving.

Name, slogan, and logo

Your name and slogan should be unique and easy to remember.

From a design element standpoint, take conciseness into consideration. You want your brand name and slogan to appear on your website's header, social media bio, email signature, etc.

When designing your logo, take care to select a color palette and font style that represents your brand.

Discuss this story.

by Rob Hope

Strengthen your landing page with these design, development, and conversion tips!

Keep the tone of your copywriting positive:

🚫 Chat software that doesn’t sell your info.

✅ Chat software focused on privacy.

🚫 A legal course that doesn’t ramble.

✅ A legal course that’s straight to the point.

Position your offering as a confident solution, not as a snarky competitor.

Subscribe to Rob's One Page Love newsletter for his favorite UI, design, and development finds.

by Santiago Poli

Many people think that to start a business, you need major initial capital, a team of developers, and months of preparation. But the truth is, what you need the most is the desire to do it. In the last month, I've sold three AI apps, with only $50 and one day of work on each project.

No-code for the win

When choosing my tools, I chose Bubble because I wanted to make web apps. I watched some videos on YouTube, then set out to make the first app.

My first idea was an app to help teachers generate tasks with the help of AI. I created it with Bubble, used Unicorn Platform to build a landing page, then used Canva to make a promo video and some images. Two weeks later, I was signing the Asset Purchase Agreement (APA), and one week later, selling the app on Acquire. My total costs? $32 a month for Bubble, and $8 for the landing page on Unicorn.

Marketing strategy

I decided not to spend any money on marketing. So, I created a lead magnet with Canva and ChatGPT, uploaded it to Gumroad, and shared it in teacher groups on Facebook and Reddit. Results? 117 downloads and 20 registered users. Within two weeks, I had received 25 letter of intents. I ended up selling the app for $1.7K. Best of all, my net profit was $1,688.

The next apps

After this, I wanted to do more. I set out to create my second app, Tiny Fables, a bedtime story generator for children. In this case, the sale was even faster. I made the landing page, recorded a demo video of the app, and put it up for sale. I didn't even pay the monthly cost of Bubble, as it offers two free weeks per app. It sold in three days for $800.

My third idea was an app that generates real estate property listings using AI. The result? Sold for $1.4K in less than a week.

Then, I created and sold Songsster, an app that helps songwriters create great songs with AI for $1.2K, and GetcontentAI for $750.

The takeaway

You don't have to wait to have a lot of money or an army of developers to start a business. There are tools and resources at your disposal that will allow you to do incredible things with what you already have. YouTube is free, Canva is free, Gumroad is free, and with Bubble, you can develop for free and pay when you deploy!

Discuss this story.

by Tweetmaster Flex

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Kevin Bronander, Darko, Thomas Griffin, Rob Hope, and Santiago Poli for contributing posts. —Channing