Case Study: Justin and Product People Club
Overcome the loneliness of solo-entrepreneurship
Justin Jackson is an entrepreneur from Canada. At one time, his Twitter bio simply read: “Professional burrito maker.” In that case, his ten thousand–plus Twitter followers may have made him the most popular burrito maker ever. Never mind his prowess with a burrito tortilla for now. We want to learn more about his experience as a nonstop innovator. The numerous products he has made over the years include the following:
Text Me, Slacker. An app that helps users engage existing customers and acquire new ones through SMS messages
Marketing for Developers. A guidebook for marketing software, apps, and digital products
Jolt. A guide that helps users come up with new marketing tactics
ProductPress. A plug-in that turns a regular WordPress site into a membership site
Product People Club. An online community where innovators and entrepreneurs can share their progress, give one another feedback, and track revenue goals
In fact, Justin enjoys innovation so much that he tirelessly encourages others to innovate as well. At the end of 2015, he created the Maker Challenge — a call for others to join him in creating a hundred new products.
I first heard about Justin when I saw his short video about the Jobs for which he hires coffee — you’ll read about that shortly. I contacted Justin to chat about his take on Customer Jobs. How was he using it? Was it helpful to him? Justin told me how he had applied Customer Jobs thinking toward Product People Club and also his book, Marketing for Developers.
In this case study, you’ll learn how Justin uncovered a struggling moment that his prospective customers faced, as well as how he created a solution for it to help them make their lives better. You’ll learn how he grew his business — not only by adding more features to an existing product but also by creating new products that extend the progress his customers want.
Justin learned about Customer Jobs from Ryan Singer and Jason Fried, product designer and cofounder, respectively, of the software company Basecamp. He said, “I saw that they were doing a Customer Jobs seminar at their office. I remember thinking, Oh, that’s weird. They haven’t done seminars like that before. That was the first time I heard about Jobs [JTBD].” Although Justin didn’t actually attend the seminar, it did put Customer Jobs on his radar. He said,
After that, I began noticing Ryan and Jason tweeting about Customer Jobs. Then, during an interview with Ryan, I heard him say something like, “At 37signals [the former name of Basecamp], we’ve been thinking more about why people hire our product — or what people are hiring our product to do.” I remember at the time thinking, Man, I’ve never thought about it like that before.
Their product, Basecamp, is a great example of Customer Jobs thinking. It’s a project management tool. In place of that, you could hire an assistant to manage all your projects for you. Both could do the same Job.
Customer Jobs differentiates emotional from functional. Justin once thought of Customer Jobs as an exploration of functionality — as a lot of people do: “At first, I was just thinking about Jobs as, literally, utilitarian jobs. For example, I’ve hired people to trim my trees. I’ve hired people to fix my plumbing. I’m hiring this product to manage my schedule. I’m hiring this product to make sure that I don’t miss any more meetings.”
The more he continued digging into Customer Jobs, however, the better he understood the emotional aspect of Jobs. Jobs as an emotional desire for self-betterment are something that stuck out to him. This interested him so much that he created that coffee video. “I love that emotional aspect [of JTBD]. When people go to a coffee shop, they aren’t just buying caffeinated liquid. They’re going for all these other reasons.” Some of his own motivations for going to coffee shops include getting out of the office to clear his head, feeling cool and creative hanging out there, experiencing the ritual of drinking coffee made the way he likes it, and feeling as if he’s part of a community.
This focus on emotional motivation and struggle helps Justin create successful products. In particular, it helped him create Product People Club.
How do you find a struggling moment when you don’t even have an idea for a product? The inspiration for Justin to create what would become Product People Club came from a moment of frustration: “I was consulting as a product marketing manager at a software company. Things were moving slowly with the team I was working with. I came home one day and wanted a distraction. I [thought], You know what? I’m going to create a new product.” But at that moment, he neither had a concept nor knew what struggle he wanted to solve. However, he did have a few ideas of where to start looking.
For years, he had been active in entrepreneur and innovation communities. He had a successful blog, newsletter, and podcast on the topic of entrepreneurship. His experience of interacting with his community told him that a lot of people were putting a lot of energy into solving a struggle about getting started as an entrepreneur. To begin, Justin simply started observing.
I decided to take a closer look at the patterns I had been noticing within my audience. I’ve been blogging, sending newsletters, and podcasting for a while. People would frequently write to me with questions or asking for help and advice. I had all this qualitative information, so I began looking through it. Could I find any reoccurring struggling moments that people were experiencing?
Justin was looking for recurring behaviors that signaled that people were struggling and that they were looking for a better way. All the while, he asked himself questions: “What do people — unprompted — complain about on Twitter?”; “What questions do entrepreneurs and innovators keep asking me over and over again?”; “What topics are talked about during Meetups about entrepreneurship?” He said,
There were two patterns I noticed. One is that people were lonely. People who are working on products and building apps are usually doing it in their spare time. They’re doing it in their basement, by themselves.
The other struggling moment I found was this frustration people had when they were just consuming lots of content. They were listening to all these great interviews on my podcast, listening to other people who are building and launching their own products, but they weren’t doing anything themselves.
Justin was seeing patterns and getting questions seeking advice on two main struggles: (1) loneliness and (2) how to sustain the motivation to finish building a product.
The people he was observing were solo entrepreneurs who were passionate about creating something but hit these two barriers. Some were in small towns where they couldn’t talk with anyone else about their struggles. Some exhibited concerns about being seen (or even seeing themselves) as poseurs. These barriers slowed — or stopped — their progress. A lot energy was pent up in these struggles, and something to release it was needed to get them unstuck. Justin said, “They just, they wanted to just fucking do it. They wanted to go out and build their own thing, but they were getting stuck. That’s where I got the idea for Product People Club.”
Justin had found a desire to change. Next, he wanted to test how many people were struggling and how intense this desire was.
How do you test if an innovation opportunity exists for a struggling moment? Justin believed he had tapped into an emotional struggle. Next, he wanted to come up with a way of measuring it. Was there an opportunity to create a product? As a test, he created a simple product: a chat room, capped at twelve people, that cost ten dollars a month to join. He put up a simple promotional web page that spoke to the frustrations and struggles of solo entrepreneurship and procrastination. The ad copy for the Product People Club stresses these struggling moments:
Justin’s simple web page had tapped into the two aspects of a JTBD: (1) the emotional motivation to better your life and (2) how life is better when you have a solution for your Job — that is, what it is like when the Job is Done. How did it work? He told me, “I posted the website to Hacker News, an online discussion group. Thirty minutes later, the product sold out. By the end of the week, I had a waiting list of almost four hundred people. It was clear: I had hit a nerve.”
How do you dig deeper into a struggling moment? Justin had confirmed that an opportunity existed. Now it was time to figure out how to make Product People Club (PPC) more successful. He began interviewing his customers to learn more about their struggle: “I started asking my customers questions in a very deliberate way. I talked to people about why they joined.”
Justin asked customers questions such as the following:
- How did you first hear about PPC?
- When did you first think about getting involved with PPC?
- Did you do any research before joining?
- What was going on in your life when you signed up?
Justin was uncovering specific moments of struggle and getting a better idea of what exactly his customers’ struggle was like.
That last question — “What was going on in your life when you signed up?” — is gold. The last customer I interviewed, when I was asking him about what was going on in his life when he signed up, he told me, “Well, I had just quit my job. I had decided I was going to start building products and consulting full time.” He then talked about being alone in his house all day, with no one to talk to. His wife would leave for work, and he felt isolated, which is tough when you’re working to start a business. He was also worried and scared about his future.
This is how Justin began to unpack the first part of a JTBD: the push — the struggling moment. The desire for progress for these entrepreneurs was “I want help managing the feelings of isolation as I start my business.” Through his interviews, Justin could qualify what it meant to feel isolated. He learned that these entrepreneurs wanted to interact with other people who shared the same struggle. Talking with their spouses or neighbors wasn’t helpful. In fact, talking with someone who couldn’t relate to their struggle could make them feel more isolated.
As Justin unpacked their struggle with loneliness, he began to tap into the second part of their JTBD: how life was better when they had a solution for their Job.
I learned that, when they joined the club, they would have this feeling of “Oh, finally! These are my people! These are people I can talk to about what it is like to have prelaunch stress!” Having the right people to talk with helped eased their anxiety and raised their confidence. It’s that sense of community, friendship, relationship, and human connectedness.
Now Justin had two important parts of a JTBD: (1) a struggling moment — help me manage feelings of isolation as I start my business — and (2) how things will be better — I’ll have the confidence to persist in being an entrepreneur.
His next step was to learn more about what these customers had already tried. This would give him more information about their struggle. His exploration of why they moved from one solution to another would also help him understand what customers did — and didn’t — value in a solution.
Studying past customer solutions tells you about the JTBD. Justin continued gathering data about his customers through observation, interviews, surveys, and customer e-mails. This uncovered solutions his customers had already tried.
Some examples of what he discovered as competition to Product People Club included the following:
- MicroConf. A conference geared toward self-funded start-ups
- 30×500. An online course that guides entrepreneurs from product research through launch
- Communities formed using an online chat application called Slack
- Creating a Meetup or attending one created by someone else
- One-on-one coaching from other entrepreneurs
- Clarity (which we featured in another case study)
Learning about what customers did and didn’t like about the other solutions they had tried helped Justin understand what progress he needed to deliver. In particular, he started to pick up on another struggle taking place:
[I also learned that] a lot of people in the community have revenue goals for their business. For example, they would say, “I want to do fifty thousand dollars in iOS sales this year.” As I dug down into those things, I began seeing trends. One was a desire to have independent income. The other solutions they tried don’t help with that goal. I felt that Product People Club could help some customers know how to replace, for example, a hundred thousand dollars in income.
Justin’s exploration of other solutions customers had tried gave him ideas on how Product People Club could distinguish itself. This helped him know where to take his product next:
What if we help you track that income you’re trying to get to? Maybe you are closer than you think or maybe you’re a lot farther and you should not quit your existing job. Right now, we’re working on a feature that will help people track their goals. That’s one thing I think about: how to help people measure their success as they strive to have completely independent income, only from creating and launching products.
Can more exploration of the customers’ struggle to change reveal other innovation opportunities? Justin’s awareness of his customers’ struggle for progress led him to uncover related Jobs and therefore more innovation opportunities. For example, what new struggles do customers face once they overcome loneliness? What happens when they have the motivation and confidence to launch their start-up? Justin has some ideas:
In terms of what’s next for Product People Club, I keep thinking about how we can help more people build and launch successful products. A lot of people are looking for help promoting their product after they finally launch it. They have no idea how to get it out to people. That’s an opportunity for another product that I’m exploring right now.
Justin is doing something interesting here; he’s exploring struggles related to the one he started with. He started by developing a product that helps people overcome the isolation of solo entrepreneurship by giving them the support and confidence they need to build their own products. Once his customers have a solution for that problem — once they are able to get that Job Done — they need help launching and promoting their new businesses.
Creating a product for related Jobs. Justin knew that his existing Product People Club customers would eventually encounter the struggle of marketing their new products. Could he have something ready for them when the time came? He decided on a combination of instructional and interview videos, a book, worksheets, handbooks, and templates. This combination product is called Marketing for Developers.
Justin delivers his customers’ progress. Justin is the most prolific innovator I know. Who else challenges others with, “I’m going to try to make a hundred things this year. Want to join me?”
Many factors contribute to his success. I believe that one of them is his ability to tap into people’s JTBD. He can sense a customer’s struggling moment, qualify it, and discover how he or she imagines life will be better once a solution is in hand.
I also admire Justin’s skill in understanding the idea of delivering ongoing progress to customers. He looks ahead and anticipates the struggles his customers will face. He thought, After I help customers maintain their motivation to launch their businesses, what will they struggle with next? This is what it is like to think about delivering progress to customers.
What is even more impressive is that he understood how not to go about solving this downstream Customer Jobs. When he decided to offer a solution for customers to promote new businesses, he didn’t fall into the trap of simply packing more features into Product People Club. Instead, he created an entirely new product. Why? He knew these solutions each solved a different JTBD. Had he done things the other way, he would have risked losing Product People Club’s focus on the Job it should be used for.
What’s the JTBD?
Here are two quotes from Justin that I find most helpful when trying to understand customers’ JTBD:
- Having the right people to talk with helped eased their anxiety and raised their confidence. It’s that sense of community, friendship, relationship, and human connectedness.
- Oh, finally! These are my people! These are people I can talk to about what it is like to have prelaunch stress!
Justin describes some good JTBD data: he focuses on these solopreneurs’ struggles, and he describes how things will be better when they have the right solution. And when I take quotes like these and match them with the rest of the data Justin gave us, I see the struggle for progress as follows:
More about: loneliness and isolation of solopreneurship, sense of community and human connectedness, keeping your motivation up, not feeling like or being perceived as a poseur, “just do it,” I’ll have the confidence to persist in being an entrepreneur
Less about: attending a conference, taking a class on entrepreneurship, talking with a mentor
With these data and the success of Justin’s Product People Club, I’d phrase one JTBD as follows:
Help me overcome the isolation and stress of solopreneurship, so I can have the motivation to finish my product.
Put it to work
Justin’s case study is a brilliant example of discovering an innovation opportunity through sniffing out a struggling moment. Let’s see how it reinforces some other important JTBD lessons.
Innovation opportunities are found through looking for specific data. Justin realized he had a treasure trove of data only after he began to investigate innovation opportunities; however, he needed an effective way to filter it. He did this by asking himself questions: “What do people — unprompted — complain about?”; “What questions do entrepreneurs and innovators keep asking me over and over again?”; “What topics are talked about during Meetups about entrepreneurship?”
Investigate your data for variations due to special causes. For instance, why are customers using a product other than intended? Or if customers have never complained about it before now, what’s going on? These are the types of questions that help you find innovation opportunities.
Know the difference between a struggling customer and a merely inconvenienced customer. Don’t look for evidence of just a casual struggle; rather, look for people who were putting a lot of energy into finding a solution. In Justin’s case, the community he was tapped into was reaching out to him and one another for help. These people were actively looking for a solution to a problem.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for an innovator is knowing how to determine if an innovation opportunity exists. It is critical to know the difference between a struggling customer and one who is merely inconvenienced. Aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators often move too quickly from observing a problem to hypothesizing a solution. Instead, be rigorous and look for true struggle. With the chotuKool, Godrej, Christensen, and Innosight jumped to a solution too quickly. Instead, they should have spent some time investigating if customers were really struggling and how intensely. But it turned out that there wasn’t enough of a struggle for customers to buy a low-end refrigerator.
Great advertising comes from speaking to the customers’ struggling moment. The promotional page that Justin created for Product People Club was simple. It didn’t need lots of bells and whistles. All it had to do was to speak to the customers’ struggle and show them how things would be better once they found a solution for it — that is, once they were able to get the Job Done. Justin met these targets so well that he sold out his product in thirty minutes. By the end of the week, he had a waiting list of four hundred people.
Digging deep into customer motivation reveals innovation opportunities. Don’t be satisfied with superficial facts about the customers’ struggle. Dig deep until you understand the struggle, its context(s), and how customers hope life will be better when they have a solution for their JTBD. You’ll see as you read on that a better understanding of the context of a struggle helps you understand how to grow your product.
Justin didn’t stop when he believed he had solved a struggle. Even when he had Product People Club up and running, he wanted to learn more about the struggle. As we’ve seen, he did this by asking a number of specific questions, and that helped him develop new features and grow his business through offering additional products.
You can deliver progress to your customers’ JTBD by offering a set of products that work together as a system. Perhaps the most powerful JTBD principle is that the study of the customers’ JTBD is the study of a system. We’ll look into that more later, but for now, notice two things that Justin did: (1) he created a product (Marketing for Developers) that customers would buy after using a different product (Product People Club), and (2) he designed Marketing for Developers as a collection of videos, reading material, worksheets, and audio material. Justin’s combination of products works together to deliver customer progress. This is an important distinction of JTBD theory: it avoids the problem of unfocused “Swiss Army knife” products that try to solve too many Jobs.
Learn more
This story is an excerpt from the book When Coffee and Kale Compete. You can download it as a free PDF, or buy it in paperback & kindle right here.
If you have more questions about Jobs to be Done, or want help applying JTBD concepts to your business or startup, contact me.
