How to Think Like a Designer and Act Like an Entrepreneur

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Several years ago, I spent $10,000, and 9 months of my time to create a software product that I never launched because it quickly became bloated with features and riddled with bugs.

A year later, I spent $47.50 to create and launch a product in 3 hours. It sold the first copy within 10 minutes. Today Keynotopia is being used by more than 100,000 designers, entrepreneurs and product managers all over the world, and was mentioned by thousands of influencers, bloggers and news outlets.

My journey from a full-time employee to a freelancer, to a failing entrepreneur, and to a successful one later has taught me valuable lessons that I wish someone had told me when I first started.

Don’t wait until you know what you are doing

I used to wonder how successful entrepreneurs always knew what they were doing.

Then I realized that they don’t.

Instead, they act, get results, learn, adjust course, and then take more action.

They don’t wait until they figure everything out before they start.

They only figure out the first step, then learn everything else along the way.

In other words, they start before they are ready.

Most people want to know everything before they start.

They never will.

Courses, books, podcasts, and conferences won’t make you ready.

The only way to become ready is to act.

Nobody knows what they’re doing, so don’t wait until you do.

To overcome fear, create a bigger fear

For the longest time, fear of failure kept me from taking action.

Then I realized that I needed some courage in my life.

But how do people “acquire” courage?

Read a book? Attend a seminar? Hire a life coach?

And I started wondering: did I really need courage?

I just needed an opposing force to push me forward, when fear pushed me back.

So instead of going after courage, I decided to use what I already had an abundant supply of…

FEAR!

I created a fear of inaction that was much bigger than my fear of failure so that when the latter was pushing me back, the former was kicking my butt forward.

I pictured myself in my late 40’s, sitting in a small cubicle, lethargic and depressed, doing work that I didn’t care about, complaining about my boss, and waiting for my next paycheck.

My fear of that scenario was big enough to push me forward every time my fear of failure was holding me back.

If you have been afraid of failure, and that fear is preventing you from taking action, forget about courage.

Beat that fear using a BIGGER fear.

Scare yourself forward.

No one will pay you to follow your passion

Sometimes people ask me whether they should quit their jobs and follow their passions. Here is the answer currently I give them:

J. K. Rowling didn’t sell 400 million copies of Harry Potter because she was passionate about writing, but because she is a GOOD writer.

Steven Spielberg isn’t the top-grossing director of all time because he is passionate about filmmaking, but because he is a GOOD filmmaker.

And billions of people are using Facebook, not because Mark Zuckerberg is passionate about software, but because he’s GOOD at it.

People don’t care about your passion; they care about how good your products are.

To create good products, you need to be good at something.

To become good at something, you need a lot of practice.

And to practice a lot, you need to enjoy what you do.

That’s the only advantage your passion gives you: to work hard and to become good at something that you enjoy doing.

The right question isn’t whether you should quit your job and follow your passion, but rather how you can become so good at something that you enjoy doing so that you can use to create value for others.

Only then you get paid for following your passion.

Avoid the trap of passive income

The dream of passive income, popularized by many self-help gurus, is a total myth.

You may initially succeed at launching a product that starts making money in your sleep, but if you drop the ball, someone else who works 40 hours a week will copy your product, make it better, and put you out of business.

Don’t start something so you can work 4 hours a week, and spend the rest of your time laying on the beach, drinking mimosas, and making videos about how great your lifestyle is,

Start something that you enjoy working on a lot more than laying on the beach and drinking mimosas.

Divorce your income from your time

I started my journey as an employee with a fixed income, then became a freelancer with a flexible income.

In both cases, I was trading time for money.

But a few days after launching my first product, something happened that completely changed how I thought about time and money: I woke up in the morning and found that several people bought my product and deposited money in my account overnight.

I no longer traded time for money; instead, I was spending my time creating value, and that value earned income for me.

When you become an entrepreneur, you divorce your income from your time, because you can create something once, and sell it thousands of times.

The first time you launch something that earns money for you while you sleep, your life will never be the same.

Nobody cares how long it takes

In the spring of 1987, an aspiring Brazilian author sat down in his apartment, determined to leave home only when he finished the last page of his first novel.

Three weeks later, he had a 200-page manuscript ready to be sent to the printer. And later that year, he published The Alchemist, which sold 65 million copies to date, grossing hundreds of millions of dollars, and making Paulo Coelho one of the wealthiest and most successful authors in the world.

And people didn’t care whether it took him 3 weeks or 3 years to write it.

And I had similar experiences: There were products that I spent several months creating, and that generated far less revenue than products that I made in a week or even a weekend!

There is no correlation between the time you spend creating something, how successful it becomes, and how much money it makes.

That’s because people pay you for the value you create, not for the time you spent creating it.

The more value you create, the more money you make.

And no one cares how long it takes you to create that value.

Start with people, not with ideas

Many first-time entrepreneurs start with an idea and then figure out how to make it and sell it.

Successful entrepreneurs start differently: Instead of coming up with an idea (WHAT) then implementation (HOW), they start with an audience (WHO) and find a pain worth solving (WHY).

Starting with an audience ensures that there are enough people out there to sell your product to and finding the right problem to solve guarantees that they will buy your solution.

It’s hard to sell products to an audience that doesn’t pay for other products, and it’s extremely hard to sell a product to an audience that doesn’t exist yet.

A good audience is large enough to sell enough products to, already pays for products like yours, is easy for you to reach, and that other businesses are spending money to reach.

And the best audience to start with is the one you are already familiar with, or that you are part of.

Instead of coming up with good ideas, find a good audience, and then find some pain or frustration worth solving for them.

Keep a notebook of pains and frustrations

I used to be obsessed with ideas and constantly carried a notebook that I filled with new ones every day.

Then I decided to start a different notebook: one where I wrote my daily pains, and the pains I’m noticing around me.

Every time I noticed something that frustrated me (or someone else), I wrote it down.

One day, I wrote about how hard it was to create high fidelity prototypes fast: I could either use mockup tools to create low fidelity prototypes fast, or use Photoshop and Illustrator to create high fidelity prototypes slowly.

Both cases weren’t ideal.

I kept noticing the same pain with my clients and peers, so I started to think of different ways to solve it.

A couple of weeks later, I started using Keynote for prototyping and realized that I could build high fidelity prototypes fast with it. I wrote a blog post about how I was using it, and the results that I was getting, and shared it with other designers.

And that blog post became the catalyst for my first successful product.

Not all itches are worth scratching

Some itches will take you down rabbit holes where there is no audience to be served, no pain to be solved, and no money to be made.

How do you know if an itch is worth scratching?

• There are enough people who have it

• They are losing time and/or money because of it

• They are actively looking for a solution

• They have money to pay for it

• Current solutions are not good enough

• Those solutions are still making good money

Most other itches are not worth scratching.

To understand a market, start freelancing

What to do if you can’t find the right audience or the right problem to solve?

You start freelancing!

The best way to find people who have problems they want to solve, and who have money to pay someone to solve them, is to be that person.

And as you freelance more, you start noticing common problems that people are paying you over and over to solve.

And if you can figure out a way to turn your service (or part of it) into a product that you can sell those people, you will likely have a successful business, because you would have already validated the market and the demand.

If I didn’t freelance, I probably would not have noticed how long it took to create high fidelity prototypes for different clients, nor how much they were willing to pay someone to do it.

Freelancing is a great way to understand your target audience and to get paid while doing it.

Validate new products with content

Instead of spending a month or two creating a product, you can validate an idea by creating content that shows how you solved a common frustration using a simple hack, a new process, or existing tools.

Creating content before products helps you estimate the size of your market, the severity of a problem, and the potential value of your future solution.

It also helps you build an early audience, provide them value, ask them questions, and validate your ideas with them.

It’s one of the counter-intuitive ways of building a business: people first, products later.

To validate demand for high fidelity prototyping, I wrote a comprehensive step-by-step guide on how I used Keynote to do it, recorded a video showing the outcome, and create a small set of UI components that I posted on my blog for free.

Within two weeks, the guide was viewed over 10,000 times, was shared by many influencers in the design and startup communities, and the freebie was downloaded over 500 times.

More importantly, I was getting lots of requests to create more UI kits for Keynote and PowerPoint.

I couldn’t have asked for a better validation for my idea, and I started working on the product right away.

When everyone digs for gold, sell shovels

When you see a lot of people following a gold rush, find a way to help them dig for that gold.

Very few people who dig for gold will end up finding it, but all of them need the right tools and services to find it.

When many people were launching startups and raising money, I didn’t launch a startup. Instead, I launched a UX consultancy to help them create great products, because everyone needed it, and very few people were providing it.

And I ended up making money.

And when many people started getting into the business of making mobile apps, I sold UI Kits to help them prototype and test their ideas fast and cheap, using tools they already knew.

Very few apps make money, but the tools I sell people who create them make money.

When you find enough people digging for gold, go sell them shovels.

And you don’t even have to make those shovels yourself!

Execute as soon as you get inspired

One thing that separates top achievers from everyone else is their ability to execute as soon as they get inspired.

They don’t procrastinate, and they don’t write it down to get back to it later, because they know that inspiration has a very short life span. They instantly take action, and turn that inspiration into momentum, before it gives up on them and moves on.

When I saw that my original prototyping kit was downloaded over 500 times in 2 weeks, I got to work right away, and put together a WordPress website with a shopping cart and some simple graphics and launched it in 3 hours.

It was super basic, it was slow, and it only accepted PayPal, not credit cards.

In fact, it looked so basic that I was thinking of taking it down so I can work on it further if it weren’t for the fact that PayPal emailed me within 10 minutes telling me that I made my first sale!

Had I talked myself into waiting for a week or two to do it, I may have never launched it.

Next time you get inspired, act instantly.

And you don’t have to create and launch a product right away.

You can email someone in your target market, create a piece of content, or build a prototype!

What matters most is turning your inspiration into momentum.

Be 10% better, not 100% different

One of my most shocking realizations was that the most exciting ideas are often the least useful ones.

Why?

Most exciting ideas are very different from everything else out there.

And because they are very different, they usually don’t have a market yet.

And creating a new market is extremely hard!

Instead of coming up with ideas that are 100% different, find products that are already successful and profitable, and then find ways to make them 10% better.

Creating a 10% better product doesn’t sound very exciting, but it’s one of the best ways to make money and reduce startup risk.

When I started Keynotopia, a few prototyping tools out there were already making money. I just found a way to make prototypes 10% faster, and that looked 10% better. And that was good enough to build a profitable business.

Instead of coming up with ideas that are 100% different, find a product that you already use and pay for, and think of ways to make it 10% better.

Then go sell it to people like you.

First, go alone, then go together

Should you start a business alone? Or should you wait until you find a cofounder?

There is an African proverb that says:

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together!

When you’re starting out, your goal is to validate your concept as fast as possible with your target audience, and you can do it alone by using existing platforms, no-code tools, and stock designs.

Once you validate your concept and gain some traction, you can bring people on board so you can grow it into a business and go far together.

Everything is an experiment

Something interesting happens when you start thinking of your work as a series of experiments: you become more objective, more systematic, and you worry less about failure.

Each experiment starts with a set of questions and assumptions that you run through a step-by-step process to answer and validate.

Each experiment ends with a set of results that you measure, feedback that you learn from, and conclusions that you draw.

Each experiment is followed by a decision to move forward, change direction, or move on.

And each experiment if followed by a new one.

The only experiments that “fail” are the ones you never run.

Quantity leads to quality

One of my favorite stories comes from the book Art & Fear:

“A ceramics teacher divided his new class into two groups and told them that the first group would be graded based solely on the quantity of their work, while the second group would be graded solely on its quality. At the end of the semester, the group that produced lots of pieces also produced the best pieces. The group that spent a lot of time thinking and planning how to come up with the best pieces ended up with fewer quality pieces.”

The more things you make, the better things you make.

Give away great work for free

Some people worry that if they give away great for free, they won’t have enough work left to charge for.

I found the opposite to be true: when you give away valuable freebies, you get more feedback, new ideas, and more people end up buying your paid products.

More people get to know the quality of your work, establish trust in your brand and expertise, and feel grateful for the value you have provided them without asking for money in return.

A couple of months after launching Keynotopia, I spent three weeks creating a grayscale UI wireframe kit for Keynote and PowerPoint.

And I originally wanted to charge $49 for it.

Then I wondered what would happen if I didn’t charge for it, gave it away for free, and asked people to share it on social media instead…

That free kit became viral, was picked up by many design publications and bloggers, and generated hundreds of thousands of new visits to the website.

Many people who tried it came back and bought the paid product.

Don’t be afraid of giving away great work for free!

Don’t sell — Help people buy

Many websites pressure visitors with limited time bonuses, annoying pop-ups, and scarcity sales tactics.

Most people can feel the despair behind such tactics, and leave those websites feeling suspicious and uncomfortable.

My experience has taught me that helping people is the best way to sell them something.

Following Keynotopia’s launch, I created dozens of free video tutorials and written guides on user experience, UI design, and rapid prototyping. None of those guides attempted to sell the product; They were just teaching people how to design great products.

Those tutorials were viewed hundreds of thousands of times, and generated lots of traffic and sales, without trying to sell anything.

Instead of trying to sell your product, teach and help your target audience, and then let them make a purchase decision on their own.

People buy benefits, not features

People don’t buy a product for what it does, but for what it gives them.

1GB of storage is a feature. 1,000 songs in your pocket is a benefit.

An electric engine is a feature. Saving $2,000 a year on gas is a benefit.

When I created the landing page for Keynotopia, I realized that I wasn’t selling people 10,000 customizable UI components; I was rather selling them 10 hours saved on their next design project. To my target audience, that benefit is worth at least $1,000 and paying $100 to get it is a no brainer.

Don’t tell people what your product does; tell them what they get out of it.

A product is not a business

I noticed a lot of indie makers launch new products, generate lots of hype on Reddit, Hacker News, and Product Hunt, which leads to a surge in traffic and sales for a few days.

As soon as the traffic from those sites dies down, they get discouraged, and they move on to the next ideas.

Those makers confuse a product with a business, and they prefer to continue making new products, rather than turn their existing ones into businesses.

If you plant a seed, pour some water over it, then abandon it as soon as it sprouts to go plant a new seed somewhere else, you will end up with a bunch of dead plants, instead of a fruit garden.

You need to tend to the first plant until it grows into a tree, bears fruits, and then hire people to continue caring for it, so you can go plant another seed somewhere else.

For a product to become a business, you need to think about marketing, customer service, and sales, among many other tasks.

These tasks are not as exciting as making new products, but they are necessary steps in turning a product into a business.

Marketing isn’t just about traffic

I used to think that marketing was all about getting a lot of people to visit a website.

Then I realized that generating traffic was only half the equation and that I needed to turn that traffic into sales and to convert visitors into buyers.

Getting people to visit your website is just the first step.

Getting them to buy your products once they visit your website is the rest of the work.

And it’s hard work.

You need to focus on traffic and conversion to make a sale.

Focusing on traffic alone isn’t enough.

Copywriting is an essential design skill

I didn’t know that copywriting was such an essential part of the design process until I measured how much changing a single word on a landing page significantly impacted sales and revenue.

As a designer, knowing layouts, shapes, colors, and fonts wasn’t enough; I also had to learn how to write words that communicate value, educate visitors, and generate sales.

A website with strong words and elementary design will sell more products than a beautiful website with a weak copy.

Start by writing a great copy, then create a design that makes it look better.

To sell more products, tell good stories

One of the best ways that helped me spread the word about my products was documenting my journey and sharing it online.

I wrote about how I created and launched a product, which marketing techniques I used and the results that I got from them, and the lessons that I was learning along the way.

And those stories sold a lot of products.

Stories help customers connect with the human side of your business and build the necessary rapport and trust to buy from you.

People like to buy from someone they feel they already know.

And one of the best ways to get people to know you are the stories you tell them.

Don’t wait until your business is successful to share your stories; People will enjoy reading about your journey as well.

Your product is your best networking tool

Connecting with other successful entrepreneurs will have a great impact on your success.

And I found that the best way to connect with them wasn’t going to networking events, conferences or meetups.

That’s because successful entrepreneurs are usually too busy to go to those events.

The best way I found was to create products that others would recognize you for, as soon as you introduce yourself.

Your products will create for you a reputation that precedes you.

On more than one occasion, I introduced myself to someone, mentioned what I did, and was happily surprised that person already knew about my product, or has read one of my stories.

Creating great products and content is one of the best ways to expand your professional network.

And when you finally walk into a networking event and meet a like-minded entrepreneur, you get to skip the small-talk and jump directly into exchanging interesting stories and valuable lessons.

Closing thoughts

This manifesto is a work in progress that I am regularly updating it with new stories and lessons.

And I share those updates with my mailing list, so if you’re not a subscriber yet, you should join here.