This should only take about 7 mins to read.

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Building your first business doesn't need to be hard.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of doing business coaching with some up-and-coming entrepreneurs. Two of the three are looking to build a SaaS product but are stuck figuring out where to start and what tech stack to use. Their ideas (for a first product) are a bit vague, and they think too big. I am not a dream killer by any means, but trying to build the next Facebook is probably not the best use of time when you are just getting started.

So I broke down the steps to start something low-risk to get their feet wet.

3 components:

1. Ideas

Most of my ideas stem from problems that I have or problems that I notice other people have. I am fortunate enough to have a service agency where we work with clients, and their problems become our problems, and we solve them. I recommend keeping a notebook or your Apple notes app close to you at all times. When you have a problem, write it down.

• What was the problem?
• What was I doing when I ran into that problem?
• What solution do I need to solve that?
• How does this problem affect me on a daily basis?

Keep track of those questions and keep going back to your notepad. Tally up the number of times you run into that same issue. If it’s more than three times, you have a problem that needs to be solved.

Here is an example:

One of my recent problems was keeping specific project and client information in one place. A central hub. We use so many tools:

• Slack
• Asana
• Zendesk
• Hubspot
• Stripe
• Qwilr

And there is client and project information scattered all around. It’s organized, but it’s not in one single place where I can get a pulse on a project. What did I do? I created thymeline.co.

Thymeline is a chrome extension + web app that lets you quickly capture and save important information into a TIMELINE view.

It saves the timestamp, date, URL, and any information you highlight on a website or tool. Extremely useful.

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2. Rough outline:

Break down your idea into a few smaller pieces, such as:

Overview:

The general idea and the solution it provides.

Where did the idea originate from, and why is it relevant?

User journey:

How does the user interact with the app? How easy is it?

Visualize this and put it on paper so you can see it yourself. You will find some gaps you can fill while you draw this out.

Find potential users:

Figure out who your customers are.

My example above with Thymeline.co is primarily geared towards project managers. This is the demographic that I am after at the moment.

Reach out to those people, get their feedback and give them a free version of the product to use. They deserve it.

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3. Building:

Most of these first-time apps should be built with no code for the sake of time, money, and upfront investment. The chances of your first app being a big success are low but not impossible. If your app or service takes off and it’s built on no code, you have a good problem on your hands. Don’t underestimate how powerful and scalable the no-code tools are.

Focus on a simple build, a simple app, and a simple solution. Solve your own problem.

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Top of mind topic: Making mistakes

A lot of people are are afraid of making mistakes because they feel like a failure. My rule of thumb: if you're not making mistakes, you're not growing and learning. It's part of the process of immersing yourself into entrepreneurship.

Perfect is not an option.

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Challenge: write down all of your mistakes. Just do it.

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2-3 of the tweets from the week.

Tweet 1: Amazing thread by Eddy Quan, I was blown away by the flow and the story telling here. MUST READ.

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Tweet 2: A tweet from my good friend and how colleague Rahul who is helping my build up DropVoice (our new Shopify app)

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Tweet 3: This is my twitter thread from this week about business building and taking the first step.

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Podcast stuff:

Guests on the latest episode of my podcast were Brian O'Connor and Harris Fanaroff. It was awesome talking to these amazing people.

• Brian is a solopreneur that helps small businesses grow. He is sharing the knowledge that he acquired during six years being a management consultant, focused on helping Fortune 500 companies with their growth strategy. He was once already a guest on this podcast during season 1. I would highly recommend checking out that episode if you want to learn more about him. It was
• Harris is the founder of Activate Onboarding, a platform that solves problems involved with onboarding employees. For over 8 years, Harris has worked with HR professionals. With the remote culture evolving in the past few years, Harris started seeing that a lot of issues are arising when trying to effectively bring people into an organization. So he decided to create a solution that improves day 1 of onboarding new hires.
• Both Brian and Harris are heavily focused on growing their digital presence and providing value to people through social media. During our conversation, they gave a sneak peek at how they use their platforms to connect with people, start conversations, understand their audience, and help others solve their problems.

Tune in to listen to the full conversation. We talked about the benefits of finding a niche, how to decide if you should build a product or service, what it’s like to build a side hustle next to a 9 to 5 job, the difference between Linkedin and Twitter, and more.

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Check out the Podcast Episode

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One tool I like or use:

Tool of the week: Typefully

URL (affiliate): https://typefully.com/?via=zlatko​

Why Typefully is so awesome:

It's the best Twitter thread editor by a long-shot. It's so easy and so powerful. Especially if you are sharing your threads with others to get help with hooks or content structure. People can leave comments and give you easy feedback. Highly recommend this.

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That's a wrap for issue #22

Email me at z@zlatkobijelic.com if you are building something. I'd love to know what you're working on and if there is anything I can do to help you.

Random question:​
What's one thing that you did this week that made you happy?

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Checkout some of my products here.

If you are interested in 1:1 business coaching, go here and see how I can help you.

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Follow me on Twitter​

Follow me on LinkedIn.

Listen to my podcast.

Download Dropvoice for Shopify.