Should you grow your first product or build a second?

If anybody paying you is asking for something you haven't built, build that before you start anything new. The customers already exist, they'll use it the day it ships, and the value is proven, because they asked.

3 landlords, one month

In the landlord tool's second year, the same question arrived 3 times in a month, from 3 landlords who didn't know each other. Can it also remind the engineer who does the gas check, so I don't have to phone him?

The tool reminded landlords when a certificate fell due. It didn't do the next step, the one that took their time: getting hold of the engineer and booking him in. Every one of them, every year, rang him, missed him, rang again. (Engineers are hard to catch. Every landlord will tell you so.)

I built it in an afternoon. The landlord adds the engineer's email once, and when a check falls due the engineer gets a polite message asking him to get in touch. It's the best feature the landlord tool has.

The afternoon I nearly spent elsewhere

That month I also had an idea for a new product, and I was itching to start it. I had the afternoon free. The reasoning went: the landlord tool is doing fine, its customers are happy, a new product is where the growth is.

That reasoning is common, and for a one-person business it's usually wrong. A new product has to find its first 3 customers from nothing. A feature for the first one already has them waiting.

The test

Which request reached you from more than one paying customer in the last 2 months? If there is one, it goes first. Watch for a new idea that turns up the same afternoon those emails arrive. It's usually a way to avoid them.

The Second Product has the chapter.