So you want to make a hit product. How do you know if your plan is a good one? How do you maximize your chances of success?
Releasing a new hit product is the best thing any company can do to grow and attract investment. A hit product can grow revenue and users exponentially with very little (or no) marketing investment and can be the rocket fuel behind a company’s ascent for years (think iPhone).
And yet very few products succeed at being the rocket boosters they could be. Most new products either produce only incremental gains that don’t justify the time and expense of getting them to market, or actually turn out worse than the current product, or never ship at all.
Building something users don't want to use is the number one reason start-ups fail. I believe this is entirely avoidable.
In helping companies improve their products, I’ve developed a framework to understand if a new product is headed for success or failure. This framework is useful when working with product departments and executives to get them to think about product development in what I believe to be the right way...
Read MoreEvery once in a while I discover a business that is succeeding despite terrible visual and user experience design.
This is a real anomaly these days, because over the last decade as engineering and manufacturing have become commodities, design has emerged as the key differentiator for breakout products.
Pretty much these days, you need awesome design to win...
Read More
This is a letter I wrote myself today. I have a ton of product ideas and I wanted to get clear on the process of turning those ideas into cash. I kept it simple because I believe it is simple. I hope you like it:
Making Money From Products...
Read More
Now that the big burn for 2016 is a pile of ashes, here's a calendar of the major regional events calling for your participation over the next twelve months. Clean the dust off your hot pants and venture forth to keep the vibe alive (p.s. let me know which events I missed and I'll add em).
October 2016
Sep 28th - Oct 3rd: Burning Seed in Southeastern Australia...
Read MoreI recently went to visit my brother in Vancouver and he taught me a powerful practice to increase happiness in only 3 minutes a day: A daily Gratitude Practice.
Here's how it works: Every day when you are with another person, ask them if they'd like to do Gratitude Practice with you. If they agree, one of you starts by listing ten things you are grateful for, followed by one challenge you are experiencing...
Read More
Finally someone (in this case the talented Moira Weigel) wrote an excellent article about fertility charting and technology. Check it out in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/23/fitbit-for-your-period-the-rise-of-fertility-tracking
Read More
At some point in the last 3 weeks I realized that fear is an illusion. I used to think that Fear and Love were the only two forces in the universe. Then my friend Andy told me that fear is an illusion. I thought he meant that it wasn't real and so I was confused. I sat with that for a few weeks.
Then my friend Mandy told me the same thing again. She told me that anytime I am feeling fear I'm actually living IN an illusion that I've created. I'm living in an alternate reality that is distinct from actual reality...
Read More
If you could remove one word from your daily conversations and vastly improve your relationships and your life, would you do it?
Here's the trick: Stop saying "I feel like ... " and say "I feel ..." instead.
When we say "I feel like ... " we're not actually expressing our feelings. It's much more likely that we'll express a judgement or a demand. And in most communication, judgements and demands are ineffective - they create distance and destroy connection. Actual feelings on the other hand are effective because they create closeness, trust and intimacy...
Read More
Setting goals is extremely powerful. It's a cornerstone of high performance and a way to tap into the unseen powers that surround us. When you set a goal and stick with it, things start to shift. Conversely, if you don't know exactly where you want to go and by when, you won't get there. There's just too much entropy in the universe.
A while ago after quarterly planning at Kindara I wrote out our 5 goals for the quarter and put them on the wall. After a few days it seemed ridiculous...
Read More
The word recreation means "activity done for enjoyment when not working" but I prefer to think of recreation in another way by deconstructing the word itself: re-creation can be seen as activities that we use to re-create ourselves. Taken this way, recreation is when we stop the action, taking ourselves apart, throw out the things we no longer need or that are no longer serving us, and put ourselves back together again using only the parts we want to keep.
Without recreation, there's no opportunity for sub-performing thoughts, frameworks, strategies, or relationships to get off the bus, so they just hang-on and continue bringing us down. Recreation is like spring cleaning for our mind, body and soul. Without it, our minds-eye view
Read More
My grandfather Philip J. Pocock passed away last weekend and today my family gathered for the funeral in Ottawa. Phil was known to all the grandkids as Big Daddy, a name coined by me (the eldest grandson) after I called him that at the age of two. He was a powerhouse of a man and a major force in my life, so on the occasion of his passing here's ten things I learned from Big Daddy:
Number 1. The world is a vast and interesting place, meant to be explored, and best experienced with an open mind. Look to be surprised and delighted, and often you will be.
Number 2. Ideas matter, and should be constantly...
Yesterday I was jonesing hard for my fix. I hate feeling like that. Today I feel better and more myself. Tomorrow I think I’ll be back to normal. My name is Will Sacks, and I am a sugar addict. Admitting this to myself has helped me kick the habit. But it's taken 2 years.
Here’s the story of how I got here, and what I’ve learned along the way. A few years ago...
Read More
I've written before about the four stages of competence and I absolutely love this heuristic. It's useful for any aspect of life where we want to improve and get better results. Which brings us to today's question:
How do you tell if you are incompetent at something?...
Read More
This week my grandmother Jasmine Dorothea Mary Jackson (later Pocock) left this life and entered whatever comes next. I'm flying back to Ottawa for the funeral this weekend, feeling overwhelmed. Though I only knew her in her 60’s, 70’s and 80’s Jasmine was a major force in my life and in the lives of her 7 children and 10 grand children. From a young age we called her Mummy's Mummy and the name stuck. Here are some memories as I airport-and-plane across the continent:
Read More
In 2006 I was living in my parents basement. I was newly single, dealing with constant debilitating back pain, unemployed and depressed. When I look back at the last 8 years, there are 5 books that changed everything and helped get me to where I am today. Here they are:
Read More