You Good? - Feb 28, 2022

It's Silly to Hide Your Brilliant Idea

I'll get into the 11 lessons at the bottom of this email but there's something I want to talk about first:

Nobody’s going to steal your idea.

Why?

Because your idea alone isn’t worth shit.

Unexecuted ideas are worthless.

So, tell everybody you can about your idea. When you do, you might catch a lucky break like I did.

I've two stories to tell you. One with a happy ending, and a sad one.

The Story with the Happy Ending:

This month I’ll be releasing my first software project: QuickCoach.Fit (QC).

Software’s really fucking hard.

I can’t code. I knew nothing about software development.

That made it even harder.

But independent trainers needed a free, slick, smooth, and simple solution to build and deliver their workouts.

Existing software solutions only serve influencers and gyms well.

For years, I told everybody about this gap in the market, hoping somebody would build it.

I’d even draw them a picture.

Years back, Alison’s friend told us she started a secret project.

We didn’t know what it was. She won't tell us, afraid that somebody would steal her idea.

It's been five years.

All we know is that her idea is to write a health textbook.

There’s no picture because it doesn’t exist.

I still don’t know what the text is about. She won’t tell anybody.

But I could've helped her.

I’ve literally written and self-published a textbook, sold 1,000’s of copies, and generated millions of dollars with one.

But because she thinks that her project is too special to share, I can't help her.

Sucks.

–

QuickCoach goes live on March 18th. It’ll be released in waves, a few hundred at first. Waitlist gets first access.

The QC waitlist page was hacked together in one day.

There was no thought put into it. I just wanted it to get up.

Then I kept going back and iterating on the words.

As I write this, the page still has outdated branding (it might be changed when you read this.) So, if you're picking up what I'm laying down, for the first three months, our only QC landing page had bad branding, an outdated logo, and bad copy.

It's so far converted 10,000+ emails with $0 in paid promotion.

Get something up. Shitty is fine. Something is better than nothing. Then, make it better.

There are a host of features present in almost all other fitness software platforms that do not exist in QC.

This is on purpose. Most of them have negative downstream consequences, making for a worse experience.

Just because something has historically always been there, doesn't mean it should be there.

For example, QuickCoach doesn’t have a calendar. You can’t schedule workouts.

Having a calendar seems obvious but it doesn’t make sense to me.

Why does a session for a client have to be scheduled for Tuesday at 9:30am (or whatever).

It seems needlessly restrictive both for in-person and online.

Our system works on a ‘what workout comes next’ system.

So you don’t schedule them in at times on a calendar. You order them.

When a client goes to train, they open their custom client page and whichever workout is next is what they see. If that happens to be at 9:30am on Tuesday, cool. If the client has to reschedule to later that day, also cool.

If they want, the client can sift through, skip, or choose a different workout if you've programmed any others to be available.

Here's the real problem though: If we built a calendar, the entire scheduling would have been forced to be built around it.

This would also have negatively affected the program building and client feedback aspects of the tool and more.
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It’s easy to add stuff. Simple tools are harder to build than complicated, bloated ones.

Always consider downstream consequences.

Most people copy others, who copy others, who copy others.

It’s human nature.

But most people, myself included, are making it up as they go, cluelessly walking around like the big dumb walking talking bag of carbon and nitrogen that we are.

Remove all pre-existing notions of how things should be and take it back to first principles. Don’t copy others, because, odds are, they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing either.

Solving the wrong problem a bit better than somebody else isn’t the solution.

Figuring out the right problem to solve, is.

QuickCoach is for the independent trainer. Not the influencer or gym owner.

As a result, it doesn’t have advanced automation or integrations with other tools or anything like that.

If you have 30 clients or less, it’s tailor-made for you.

If you have more than 30 clients, it’ll still work for you, but it wasn’t built for you.

You’ve gotta be laser-focused on your ideal audience and build precisely what they need. This must influence every decision you make.

You can't be for anybody.

Knowing who you're not for is how you best build the perfect product for your people.

If you don't, you'll have no idea what to include and what not to. So, you'll keep adding stuff.

Then, you'll be for nobody.

In 2019, when I decided I had to build QuickCoach because nobody else was going to do it, I didn't know where to start.

I downloaded podcasts, watched YouTube videos, and read books, getting into the mind of software.

At first, everything was foreign. It was hard.

As time went on, I began to get an understanding of what was important to know, who provided good information, and what pitfalls to avoid.

It’s incredible how much you can learn these days. But you must be willing to put in the work to learn.

Learning new stuff is uncomfortable. At first, it feels directionless. But, keep at it, and it'll begin to make sense.

Everybody’s shouting. Nobody’s listening.

Instead of stressing over what the best way is to point at fucking words in space on Instagram to some trending song, aim to have 5 actual conversations with people every single day.

You’ll be amazed how much scale you can achieve by consistently having a few conversations that go deeper than surface-level content every day.

The people you speak with will be in your corner because you took the time for them when nobody else did.

You don’t need more content. You need more conversations.

Speak to 5 people every day.

5 people every day for 6 months is 912 people.

912 people who care about you.

912 people who have gone deeper with you.

912 people who want to support you.

That’s enough people to fit into 13 school buses.

That's a lot of people.

You must have a focus. More isn’t better.

Doing more of the right thing, is.

Don't use LinkTree or any dumb shit like that. Be focused. If you have one spot for a link, put your most important link.

^^^That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Don't just put a whole bunch of shit there hoping that people will navigate it and find what they want. They won't.

Oh, and nobody gives a shit about your supplement discount codes.

Thanks for reading,
-Jon

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P.S. We built QuickCoach for you, and I hope that you check it out.

It’s simple program delivery software for both in-person and online training and is 100% free to use. Below is a screenshot of some of the features.

In addition to first access, the wait list gets first crack at usernames so if you want the best odds at getting your name or business name, be sure to put yourself on the waitlist here.