GutenBOOM!
How Being First To Market Powered the Most of My 2018
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Johannes Gutenberg
“Yes, it is a press, certainly, but
a press from which shall flow in
inexhaustible streams, the most
abundant and most marvelous
liquor that has ever flowed to
relieve the thirst of men!”
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@jcasabona
Gutenberg was
coming.
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@jcasabona
Photo by Sheri Bigelow
“Learn
Javascript,
Deeply.”
- Matt Mullenweg in 2015.
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@jcasabona
By 2017, we were
seeing real demos.
Target: April 2018.
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What I learned by
being 1st to market:
• Stay ahead of the news
• Partnerships are important
• Keep an open mind
• Do the work
• Establish authority quickly
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@jcasabona
Stay Ahead of the News
• You can’t be first to market if you don’t know
what’s coming
• Attend WordCamps, listen to talks
• Have conversations with people in the space
• Read blogs / news articles
• Find what people are asking for!
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@jcasabona
I knew Gutenberg was
coming, but needed a
little push.
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@jcasabona
Partnerships are Important!
• You can’t do it all alone
• Find people who compliment your skills
• Make sure you like & trust them
• Talk to them about ideas you each have.
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@jcasabona
Zac Gordon
approached me
after WordCamp
2017 and told
me I should
make a course.
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@jcasabona
Keep an Open Mind
• Look for opportunities
• Listen to ideas
• Consider them before just saying no*
• If you like it, figure out if you can make it work
*Some caveats apply
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@jcasabona
I thought it was a
brilliant idea! And it fit
in with my mission.
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@jcasabona
Do the Work
• Don’t just talk about it
• Make time to create an MVP
• Release that MVP as soon as you can
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@jcasabona
Zac and I released our
courses in early January
2018. Then we iterated.
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@jcasabona
Establish Authority Quickly
• We became a deFacto source for Gutenberg
education
• This lead to related work and contracts
• We both built our audiences
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@jcasabona
Rinse, Repeat! I followed this
cycle within the Gutenberg
space until it officially came
out in December.
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Powering my
Year
• Launching the Course
• Iterating
• Consulting Gigs
• Licensing
• Launching Related Products
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@jcasabona
Launching the Course
• I knew I was getting early adopters, but wasn’t
sure about much else.
• Based on feedback, audience, and value, I iterated
• I didn’t do that much marketing in the beginning
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@jcasabona
Biggest Takeaway:
Stay on top of
fast-changing markets.
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@jcasabona
How did I Iterate?
• Stayed on top of Gutenberg news for big
changes
• Added new modules regularly
• Completely updated the course twice
• Broke it into 2 courses: “Intro” and “for
Freelancers”
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@jcasabona
Biggest Takeaway:
Listen to your audience.
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@jcasabona
Consulting Gigs
• Course made people want to hire me to train their
clients and users
• Got hired to do webinars, workshops, and write
documentation
• This helped my bottom line more than sales
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@jcasabona
Course Licensing
• Organizations like Automattic and WP101 wanted
to license my content
• Agencies wanted to work with me on creating
similar, extended content
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@jcasabona
Launching Related Products
• Over the summer 2018, Zac and I
launched a “Theming for
Gutenberg” course to supplement
our other offers
• I created a workbook and
checklists to help
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@jcasabona
Biggest Takeaway:
Be aware of the
secondary opportunities.
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What should
you do?
• Look for opportunities
• Keep an open mind
• Find partners to work with
• Do the work
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Joe Casabona
Educator, Developer, Podcaster
@jcasabona
casabona.org/wordsesh/