Providing value 🤲
In life and especially business, everything is about providing value.
We block and ignore advertisements, commercials, and marketing ploys because they are annoying. To put more specifically, most of the products they're selling don't provide us with any value.
That is why there is a lot to learn not from companies, but from brands. When a product is useful and creates confidence in your expectations of the company, then a special connection is formed. This connection converts a company into a brand.
Suddenly, you're buying products not because they immediately provide you value, but because you believe in the brand and in the value that it has provided you before.
If you can provide value, then you can build trust, which then allows you to form business.
How can you provide value?
Don't expect anything out of anyone. If providing value builds trust, then I suggest figuring out what sort of value you can provide.
For myself, I try to provide value through my newsletter, articles, and podcasts. I share across different platforms so that anyone is able to access my content. Running my own podcast also helps with my business, IronMic, because being my own customer helps me understand problems a real customer may be having.
It's not always about content creation either — if anyone is looking for advice or feedback then I try to give my most honest and constructive thoughts.
Small things compound into meaningful connections, which means that you should listen to hear what problems people are actually having. Perhaps then can all aspects of business be tailored for real people and provide value in solving real problems.
🗂 Tab Dump
- Lystof - Create, Curate and Collaborate on Lists.
- Headliner - The simplest way to create shareable video clips from your podcast, radio show, or audio book.
- Spider - Turn websites into organized data without coding.
- eDEX-UI - A fullscreen, cross-platform terminal emulator and system monitor that looks and feels like a sci-fi computer interface.
- oclif - The Open CLI Framework
- Storeon - A tiny event-based Redux-like state manager for React and Preact.
📅 Past and upcoming updates
I released a new podcast episode this past week about my thoughts on copying code. I respond to the "you're not a real developer if..." argument and provide some useful tips for copying code while also maintaining a clean codebase.
Speaking of the podcast, I also recently tweeted a thread about the importance of reflecting on your progress. Did you know that I published my first video of the podcast over a year ago? It's insane to see the difference between my first and my most recent videos. Had I not read that book and started making videos, perhaps I wouldn't be here even writing this newsletter!
So I hope that your takeaway from this is that if you have thoughts on starting something new, especially if it will provide value to others, then go for it.
Feel free to reply if you need some support or have some feedback for me. Until next Sunday, have a great week 👋