Don’t let tech get in the way from selling your product

“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.”

• Spanish Proverb

I taught a cohort in Gippsland where the average age was older than me (I was late 30s at the time).

They were a group of aspiring founders. We ran workshops that assisted them with marketing, sales, validating, operations, financials, development, and everything else they needed to know to get their businesses off the ground.

A common hurdle was tech.

The thought of needing to jump into code, connect automation, or set up a payment system was overwhelming for most of our students and often the thing they cited needing help with the most.

Understanding how to set up the technical things is a useful skill, and can be alienating to anyone unfamiliar with that world.

But know this.

Tech isn’t the reason your business is or isn’t getting off the ground.

It’s not even in the Top 100.

A good business solves problems for its customers.

The focus for any new business needs to be getting as close as it can to to solving the problem in order to help its customers.

Technical challenges can block and make it hard to get closer to the problem.

But technical challenges unto themselves aren’t the problem.

There is always another way to solve problems for your customers.

Can’t set up a Stripe account?

Send your bank details to get paid.

Can’t set up a blog?

Write emails to a group of people who have opted in to hear from you.

Can’t get the page to look how it needs to?

Yes it’s frustrating.

But if it’s not getting customers through your door that are paying, you need to let that go and accept it.

In 2023, the barriers to creating anything on the web are the lowest they’ve ever been. Software and tools exist that you couldn’t dream as little as a decade ago.

Don’t let an absolute reason stop you from selling your product.

Not sure if you’ve got one?

The clue is when you’re saying something to yourself that starts with:

“I can’t do X, because of Y”

The response to that is:

“You can’t X because you believe Y is the only way”.