Create multiple small products instead of waiting for that big idea

Published: 2024-08-21

There’s a lot of hype nowadays around creating small products that supposedly earn a lot of cash in minimal amounts of time. There’s certainly a lot of appeal to not putting in much work and getting a lot of returns, but I don’t believe in that. What I do believe in, however, is that incrementally creating products and iterating in a practical way is a lot better and guarantees more success over the long run than simply waiting for that one big product idea.

Iterating on products allows making mistakes early

When developing a product, you’ll inevitably make mistakes. A lot of them. These mistakes are not necessarily technical in nature, as there’s marketing, sales and customer support to consider when developing a product, among others. Developing multiple products over time allows you to make these mistakes early and avoid repeating them when developing the next product, providing a more polished iteration each time.

If you were to wait for that one big idea, you’re guaranteed to make the same mistakes, potentially with no way to recover. If you’re forced to abandon your big idea, you’re back to waiting for another big idea to pick up the pieces.

Executing on one idea brings other ideas into focus

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have a lot of ideas floating about in your head. However, having an idea and actually executing on it are two very different things. I’m a firm believer in consistent execution, so by taking small consistent steps to implement your one idea, you’ll inevitably spawn more ideas that you then have the prerequisites and tools to execute on later down the road.

Consistency is the biggest and most important step

Above all, taking small and consistent steps every day is the most important thing you can do. This doesn’t just apply to products, but also to a lot of other things. When you’re consistently showing up and doing something useful, you’ll be in “the zone” far more often and able to consistently produce good results than if you were to just occasionally work on things.

There are downsides

When it comes to developing and maintaining multiple products, there are of course some downsides:

• Customer support can be more or less demanding depending on popularity and time
• You’ll need to maintain your product over the long term
• Marketing will need consistent effort for all your products

This means you’ll need to decide where and when to focus your efforts, and if you can keep all of your products running over the long term. Everyone has different thresholds for what they can support, so you’ll need to see what you’re comfortable with.