Last Updated on May 20, 2013 by Owen McGab Enaohwo
Did you start your company to “Scratch Your Own Itch“?. That means, that you couldn’t find the right product out there to solve your problem. So you built the solution yourself.
37 Signals (the team behind Basecamp) talk about building for yourself in the chapter What’s your problem? in their book Getting Real. Both Basecamp and Campaign Monitor were products that the founders built for themselves.
Plenty of entrepreneurs, just like you have built new products because they needed the solution. We’ve done that too, but we took it a step further. We became paid customers of our own product SweetProcess. I’ve personally signed up for a plan and pay the monthly fee with my own money.
People might say that is crazy. Surely the only company benefiting is the credit card processor company. Yes. It’s true they are getting an additional 50c per month. But becoming my own customer, and paying real money for my own product has changed the way I look at the business.
At first I didn’t feel like paying.
My official SweetProcess account expired and I saw a form to add my card details to continue using the account. I thought I’ll come back to it later. I was delaying the purchase.
That same day, I needed to follow one of my own procedures, and unwittingly I saw the trial expired screen again! I really wanted to read that procedure, so the trial expired screen was effective. I entered my card details and upgraded my account.
Here is what was interesting. Even though I own SweetProcess and wrote the code for the payment screen I was staring at. My mind still was making the decision of whether or not the service was worth paying for. I even delayed paying the first time I saw the screen, because I didn’t feel like I needed to at that point.
Paying shifted my mindset
As I was paying, I was checking all the little details. Subscription form copy, thank you page correctly loads (and didn’t have my original test copy), my receipt is shipped, my account is correctly upgraded. It’s a different experience to check those things when you are paying real money.
I wasn’t sure how paying for my own product would turn out, but I’m pleasantly surprised with the outcome. My mental attitude towards SweetProcess has shifted. It’s no longer just the product I developed to systemize my consulting business, It’s also something that I pay for. And as such I honestly review it against the other products I pay for to determine the benefit I get.
I’m a happy SweetProcess customer
It’s funny, paying for a product can turn the way you interact with it upside down. You wont see things the same way again. Even knowing ahead of time that this was a manufactured scenario – and that there is no technical reason that you should be paying – you will still feel all the real emotions that a customer signing up would. If you are starting your own product, try it yourself.
I suggest taking yourself through the full customer spectrum, subscribe to your own mailing list. Trial your own product. Allow your trial to expire, then if you really do derive value from your own product, you will pay to continue using it like I did for my consulting business.
If you have any questions leave them below! (or try out SweetProcess for yourself)
Enjoyable article and congratulations on doing this for your company. I wish every company would eat their own dog food (so to speak) … they are missing so many opportunities and lessons.
@mike_korner:disqus I totally agree. By eating our own dog food we keep our eyes tuned into our product and also see how it works from our customer’s perspective.
Do it with SweetProcess, click here to learn more
Did you start your company to “Scratch Your Own Itch“?. That means, that you couldn’t find the right product out there to solve your problem. So you built the solution yourself.
Enjoyable article and congratulations on doing this for your company. I wish every company would eat their own dog food (so to speak) … they are missing so many opportunities and lessons.
@mike_korner:disqus I totally agree. By eating our own dog food we keep our eyes tuned into our product and also see how it works from our customer’s perspective.