This is the 2nd sprint (end of July 2019) of our digital product design and development journey. Glass octopus is our journal of how we design and develop our digital product, as transparent as we can. We hope our story helps you in your startup journey, and as a message to all digital entrepreneur that you’re not alone in your journey.
One stone, two birds
We have a huuge ambition, but we gotta start small. We thought we want to build our own product while still having a bit of financial security. Problem is, we have a very limited time and resources. How do we get two birds with only one stone? By diversifying our product. Instead of giving up everything that we do and focus entirely on the product, we release each of the foundation of the product as a separate product that could generate cash flow.
This means breaking down our effort to create our own product (that is digital business design and development tools) into courses and frameworks as a separate product. This combined with our offline services means we could minimize our risk of running out of cash.
The thing about this risk strategy is that we don’t have to create something that deviates from our end goal, while having added influx of cash flow.
Aurora Assa
Woahh believe it or not it’s almost 2 weeks after my first biweekly journal. What a day!
Talk about my operation assistant services, like I told before I’m handling 3 clients, as of now I’m only handling 2 clients because our service for client in Singapore already done. So only 2 clients in my plate.
In the first week, sadly we must stop the service temporarily for one client because there are few invoices that not yet settled. But after few days of negotiation, they proposed payment scheme and we agreed to give them times to complete the payment, of course with signed in document as a guarantee that they will pay all the invoices. Long story short we are back to give our services again.
Another progress I made in a meantime was creating course video syllabus for RPS course project. Bit by bit I try to build up the syllabus course and the good news is I finished the concept and ideation for it. So now I have big picture about what should I explain in each course. The current challenge is how to make a good damn video course which can be understood by others and have a good value without eliminating reality that I’m the one who should talk in the video at least for operation part x_x
To solve that problem, we ready to smack down that challenge by creating our first Youtube channel. Wohooo yup, RPS will create Youtube channel and all of us will learn to create video and post it there. I know maybe it’s sound exciting for all of you but honestly me personally questioning myself, can I create a good video? Only God knows! So if you curious about our learning process, don’t forget to subscribe!!
Diny Octavia
I believe that practice makes perfect. I'm still learning to be a specialist in digital marketing land by doing the same work-tivities over and over again as a content planner, sometimes being an editor, copywriter, and one step closer to be a Vlogger, lol.
In the midst of my repetitive work-tivities, there are sudden meetings with our prospect-client in Jakarta. As a Healthcare company, they need someone who is able to maintain their brand through digital marketing. Actually, it was quite impossible when we heard their expectations (time and result) with the budget they are willing to spend. But then, our Captain makes a great offering, we'll see what will happen next.
The morning after, I had to bring myself to the Immigration Office in Bandung to take care of my old passport. Can you imagine? Lack of sleep and hungry belly just make my mood like a honey bear.
By the way, this week I've just realized that articles we've been collecting from the last month are so many~ and also I feel serene because I've just completed my first vlog. Wait and see on RPS Youtube Channel later ya, it has contained so much awkwardness.
Hendri Augustine Sugiarto
The last two weeks was stressingly good and I got plenty work done especially on the articles and the strategy part on how our product would roll on. Since we want to bootstrap our way as long as we can, I need to ensure we diversify our effort well between all the revenue pipeline.
As usual, the strategy was not as hard as the execution but I’m adapting more and more to switch fast between the cloud and dirt mode. The challenging thing is to keep myself spending too much time and focus on one area, and to move to other business necessity fast.
On the hands-on part, all analytics, search console, and seo has been set, and the newsletter has been cleaned and ready to go. We got the Youtube experiment up (watch it here), plus the Apple News feed!
Moving to the commercial matters, I’ve setup Hubpsot CRM and starts moving all business contacts there as we want to start generating revenue from our new offline services soon.
two more months till our milestone (which falls near RPS birthday as well!) and I can’t wait to see how far we can go. On a personal note, I really really need to do workout.🙄 I gotta fit some schedule for it.
If this helps you in any way, you might want to follow our newsletter where we post things about product creation and our journey on it.