The Real Worldbuilding Podcast Ep 01. Introduction to Worldbuilding, MVP pricing & negative comments
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Transcript from this episode
00:00:00:00
Hey, this is the Realworld World Building podcast. I'm your host, Lach, and thanks for joining me for the first episode. I think you'll love it if you're interested in bringing something unique and creative into the world, or if you'd like to learn how other people do that.
00:00:17:23
I'm going to focus on interviewing people who contribute to building a world to be excited about, be that through the creation of bars and cafes, the creation of culture and cultural spaces through their contributions in architecture, landscape, music, fashion, art and through all the creative disciplines that contribute to the creation of a world that feels unique and engaging.
00:00:43:10
I think the best place to start is to explain what the name means. World-building is a term usually used in the context of fiction and science fiction; it describes the creative act of creating a world that doesn't already exist. A perfect example is Star Wars. The Star Wars universe obviously doesn't exist in real life, yet so many people have committed huge amounts of time and energy to the development of its concept, its lore, the culture of the world, and the technology, leading to the creation of a huge and massive world that I personally find to be a delight to explore.
00:01:29:24
For me, world-building has always felt a little bit like there was something missing. I love engaging with world-building worlds. I've always felt that while fictional world-building is fascinating, it lacks something, and I've had a deep craving for the fictional worlds that I find so exciting to be accessible in real life in some way. I've never been satisfied with just enjoying those fictions and then returning to my ordinary life.
00:02:06:02
It wasn't until a few years ago that I realized that I'm actually obsessed with this concept of real-world world-building. What I mean by that is creating worlds that are almost like fiction, but in the real world, creating fantastical things that create the feeling of excitement that you would have as you explore some kind of whimsical or fictional or unique sensory place, some grand space, or something that hasn't really been conceived of or experienced yet.
00:02:36:12
So, I've been fortunate enough to meet friends online and connect with them through Instagram. One of my friends' name is Harrison, and he has a really compelling online bio. It says, "Using martial arts and education, I'm going to help create strong people with sharp minds and soft hearts." I find that really beautiful. When I reached out to tell him that, he asked me what my mission statement was. That was like a really strong question, and I had to think about it a little bit.
00:03:09:08
The one that I've been using for the last few years has been "building a world to be excited about." I've recently added the word proud to that mission statement, so now it reads, "Building a world to be proud of and excited about."
00:03:17:02
For me, that's about building a world filled with wonderful, unique sensory experiences. We've been gifted with our five senses, and I hope to build a world that engages them in experimental ways. Think of walls of mist or playing with the rainbows of light that come off the edge of a piece of glass, like a prism, or combining incredible aromatic herbs to create an indulgent olfactory experience. This is the kind of stuff that you would see in a movie when a character is discovering a new place, and those are the sorts of spaces that I crave to exist in our everyday lives.
00:04:25:17
I wish that our built environment, like humans are so capable of creating amazing things, and I kind of wish that our cities were filled with more sensory experiences and exciting experiences like the ones I'm trying to describe right now, so that it became a daily part of our lives to experience moments like that. I think we need more of these sorts of experiences, but I also think we need to put a greater emphasis on noticing and appreciating them when we're actually having them too.
00:04:55:26
So when there is a really special moment, if that's like a special sunset or a special moment in the sky, or we find ourselves in a really unique rural town that reminds us of one of the desert planets in Cowboy Bebop, I think it's really important to try and be connected to and appreciate those moments when we have them as well.
00:05:14:24
To add to that idea of the sensory experiences, I've talked about mental health in past Instagram posts and I'll probably talk about it in future podcast episodes. I'll talk about mental health and the relationship between mental health and the benefits of sensory engagement.
00:05:40:18
I personally have a long history of depression and anxiety, and I find like when my mind is in a funk, I'm not really able to make myself feel good. I often have a habit of trying to think my way out of my bad mood or the negative state that I'm in. I studied aikido for a while. It's a Japanese martial art. And when I was 19, I had this great teacher, and he taught me that you can't fix problems of the mind with the mind. Sometimes you have to fix problems of the mind with the body. And when your body's tired, you have to use your mind. And that advice has stuck with me for a really long time.
00:06:13:09
I found that idea to be really useful in relation to my own mental health and managing my emotional states and my moods day today. The lesson I've taken from that is that I need to try and seek out physical experiences to become re-embodied when I'm too stuck in my head.
00:06:31:10
Anyway, so this podcast is going to be my personal exploration of the concept of real-world world-building. I think you'll love it if you're interested in bringing something unique and creative into the world, or if you'd like to learn how other people do that.
00:06:45:25
I'm going to focus on trying to interview people who contribute to building a world to be excited about, be that through the creation of bars and cafes, the creation of culture and cultural spaces through their contributions in architecture, landscape, music, fashion, art and through all the creative disciplines that contribute to the creation of a world that feels unique and engaging.
00:07:11:12
Something that's always fascinated me is not just the creative process. A lot of podcasts explore the creative process when they interview people. It's really cool and it's really interesting to see people's creative process, but I also want to dig down into how to actually create the right life circumstances to be able to be in a position where you can create something special.
00:07:38:18
I find being a creative person has significant challenges. It can be really hard to manage your time and juggle that with finances, a new venture, your social situation, your family situation, and your housing situation. All of those things can combine to create unique and challenging circumstances which don't always make it the easiest thing to put a new creative idea out into the world.
00:08:05:25
I guess what I want to do is uncover those hidden stories about how people actually managed to create the thing that they've created, that has contributed to real-world world-building.
00:08:17:01
So yeah, this podcast is going to be about the behind-the-scenes, the struggles, the journeys and the insights and lessons that these creative people learn along the way as they're making our shared world a more exciting place.
00:08:31:23
When I haven't got an interview guest, I'm going to be sharing my own lessons and insights from my life running a design business. The first number of episodes is likely to be my weekly reflections that I've been pulling from my experiences at the moment as I'm launching a new product and juggling multiple different ventures, doing design work, trying to develop some online education, digital course stuff, and also developing the health plan too.
00:09:20:14
Thanks for listening to the introduction to the podcast. This is basically the general idea of what it's going to be about, but it will evolve over time. I wanted to thank everyone on Instagram who encouraged me to start this. The decision to make this podcast was made when I was making a two-minute reel to try and explain a few of the lessons that I've learned from running my business.
00:09:35:12
This week, I launched the Elle Planter. The original recording was 30 minutes long, and I've tried to edit it down to be more concise.
00:09:45:00
I just dropped the idea on my Instagram story. I said, "I can't believe it, I was going to sit down for two minutes to share a couple of ideas, and it turned into 30 minutes! I didn't expect to talk that long, but I'm thinking about turning it into a podcast. This is the concept for the podcast, what do you think?" It was pretty much my highest engagement story ever. I got so many positive responses from it, which was so cool! And so because of that positive response - and if you're one of the listeners who gave me a positive response, thank you so much - it kind of gave me the push to do something that I've wanted to do for a long time, which is to actually explore starting a podcast.
00:10:22:00
The thing about the podcast, too, is that I've been reading about business and learning about digital business for a while now. Everyone tells you you've got to do a newsletter, you've got to get your mailing list and have a way to contact your followers. You've got to own your follower list, kind of, instead of, you know, Instagram. I could get banned any day or lose access to my followers, but if I have people's emails, it kind of gives me a bit more security, I guess, and being able to connect with an audience of people.
00:10:53:21
But I've always found writing not to be my format. I don't like sitting down to write. But it was interesting because, to do this introduction, I actually wrote it out, and it was really easy to write it out when I was thinking about just speaking to you because it just feels like a, I guess, like a really organic or natural, fun and playful conversation.
00:11:12:03
So anyway, I just wanted to thank everyone who encouraged me to do this because I think it's like unlocked something for me in relation to like how I want to share my ideas and connect with people in a slightly more long-form way. I mean, Instagram is great, but it's so short. It's like 20 seconds, 30 seconds, maybe two minutes that you're saying some of my ideas.
00:11:33:18
And I'm really glad that you decided to listen to this podcast where I can share some of the things that I'm thinking in, like a slightly more drawn-out way where it doesn't have to be quite so edited and curated, and I'm just sharing the key information with a bit more background story.
00:11:51:00
So I hope you enjoy it. And apologies in advance for the audio quality. At the moment I haven't got a studio. I'm living in a one-bedroom apartment, and we've got baking going on and everything like that at the moment. So, apologies in advance for some of the audio.
00:12:07:11
And, you know, I promise in the future I'm going to buy a better mic, so at least I can get some cleaner sounding audio.
00:12:15:20
And then I guess one other thing is I was in a bit of a downtempo mode for the following kind of section of the podcast. I was pretty, I guess, tired, having dealt with quite a bit of negativity the last few days with some comments and stuff, but, you know, just let me know if you're cool with that vibe, too.
00:12:35:28
The thing with this podcast is I'm trying to be really authentic and trying to share the whole struggle and journey and the background of running a business, too. And so, in this case, I'm not in a perfect studio environment. I haven't got a good microphone. There are too many noises going on in the background, and my energy levels aren't always perfect.
00:12:55:05
But, I'm having a go, I guess. And I think that, maybe I can inspire you to have a go at whatever it is that you're hoping to be doing as well.
00:13:03:18
Anyway, sorry for such a long-winded introduction, I thought it would be cool to spend a bit of time just introducing the overall concept to you for the first episode of the podcast.
00:13:12:27
And, now I'm going to switch over to the content which I originally recorded for the podcast, which mostly focuses on pricing. It's like looking at how to go about pricing a product as you're testing the waters for a new product and how much to actually communicate as far as price on social media.
00:13:22:22
And then there's some stuff about sort of brand design in there as well. So anyway, I hope you enjoy listening and thanks again for checking out my podcast.
00:13:44:08 - 00:14:09:21
안녕, 안녕 by reflecting on business, business. You’re gonna copy everything. You're gonna copy everything. Okay, so we're going to say it twice so that we remember right? So today's been like a day where there's been a lot of negative comments. And we're focusing we're trying to like reflect on why people would be making these comments and also like how to best handle them.
Most of the negative comments that have been difficult to handle are ones that relate to price, rather than being comments that relate to like something technical like drainage - because it's pretty easy to respond with an expert answer in relation to drainage. But with something like price, it's very difficult to respond; you can't justify your price. I don't think you can because people have their own perception of what's valuable and what's not valuable and how people will value what you do will be different depending on what their values are.
00:14:40:02
And so like for example we were at Ikea, we were talking about BMW and how like BMW is a brand that's not for everyone. I mean every brand is a brand that's not for everyone, but like BMW as an example, like people who don't have a lot of money don't automatically assume that BMW is too expensive. Maybe they do, but it's not for them. And so it doesn't matter what they think. The challenge with social media is when you put a price on something, everybody is welcome to comment on that and like kind of make you or like bring your price down or bring the value of what you're doing down by like commenting, saying that it's too expensive.
00:15:17:25
And I sort of fell into the trap of trying to explain, like the cost price of, of a complex service, basically like the L planters are complicated and expensive. And there's been months and months of development that's gone into it. And then people commenting being like $3,000, that's too much money. And it's like, it's not even enough money for me to, like, make it worth a business. It's not worth even developing it further at $3,000.
00:15:41:15
So it's kind of been like an interesting thing to reflect on that. I sort of been talking about how to keep price on line and how to market your price, I guess. And so if we're talking price and with price being like the main driver that's trying to sell it, you're attracting price sensitive clients.
00:15:59:00
I think you're attracting people who are the wrong sorts of clients for the business, because that those are people who are shopping based on price. We had one person who was commenting being like that's so expensive. I was like, look, this isn't like Temu or Bunnings. Like the reason that's expensive is because it's quality. This is why it costs as much. I actually did a price breakdown and they were just like, yeah, but like Google's free, so good luck with your business. And I was like, firstly that doesn't even make sense. But secondly like find me something on Google that is as good as this icon. And then even it like it doesn't exist.
00:16:33:18
So just people nagging for for no reason. But I think that by putting prices online, you're exposing yourself to the wrong kind of attention.
00:16:41:18
And I actually think it's better. Like, I think it's okay to have a general like introductory price guide for people to introduce, like the general cost of like different types of landscaping or the general cost of like different kinds of balcony gardens, that sort of thing. And so I've had to do that. But actually listing a specific price is just opening you up to people who are price sensitive to criticize it, I think.
00:17:03:01
And so that's part of it. The other thing that we're talking about is like by putting your price not available directly on the website and actually focusing just on the value that you're creating instead.
00:17:16:04
You keep building anticipation around, like, the value of the product and how it can build into someone's life, rather than the price being like an opt in, an opt out sort of experience. When someone views that price, they might look at it and immediately like, decide it's too expensive for themselves, or they might decide that it's going to be worth it for themselves.
00:17:33:04
So I think that, like if you actually don't have the price easy to find, and a lot of businesses do this, especially for expensive stuff, you make people do an inquiry inside; the serious buyers actually reach out to you and say, hey, I'm seriously thinking about this. Some people will self-select out. They'll decide that they can't afford it before they even know what it costs. But that that way at least you're getting the people who value the product inquiring; if they know they have to make an inquiry to get a price from you, then it becomes less of a price discussion and less of like a price motive.
00:18:05:05
People are less motivated by price and like more motivated by the value, I think. And then I think also by making someone inquire about a price, they they will be more inclined to take time to imagine, like firstly spending the product in that life because they have to wait. There's a delay between requesting a price and when they actually receive the price. So they kind of have more time for them to imagine themselves with that product. That might even be valuable to delay given providing that price to the client for a reasonable amount of time so that they actually can sit on it and think about it and maybe sell it feels bespoke as well. Like if you if instead of responding immediately with a price, you could actually respond to the each person individually.
00:18:46:25
The other part is if they know they have to inquire about the price, that's usually an experience that relates to expensive product. And so it's kind of already setting them up to imagine it's going to be a bit more expensive than like just an off the shelf product.
00:18:59:23
Additionally, I think that the price being hidden means that the whole inquiry process is driven by understanding first the value and then after you've everything you've done has been about communicating the value of the product only at that stage do they usually inquire about the price.
00:19:17:27
You have their contact details so it can become a dialog instead of just a one way conversation where they look on the on the website to see the price and decide it's too expensive, and then through that back and forward, you can communicate and maybe negotiate to, price to see if there's something you can do to help sweeten the deal for them.
00:19:35:17
So then they've spent a lot more time looking for looking for the value first, understanding the value of the product first before they even decide, because it's a lot of commitment to reach out, give you contact details and ask for price. So they probably have to feel first convince that it's worth getting the price, which is cool as well, because that means that they will spend the time probably trying to actually understand if the product is a good fit for them first, before they even inquire about price, rather than letting the price first dictate if they're even going to look into a more.
00:20:08:21
So that's kind of an interesting thing. I'm going to change change all of the marketing and advertising so that there's no price being listed online.
00:20:18:21
Just to, I guess, change the experience of buying an unplanned tour and change the focus away from it being for price sensitive people. It's affordable and making it really cheap right now based on what it's going to cost in the future. Just so that I can lower the barrier to entry and build more traction as quickly as possible. But really, it's not a product for really price sensitive people. It's a luxury purchase. And it's a it's, you know, it's for people. The from a brand perspective, it's for people who are interested in, having a curated beautiful life and like having designer objects that work really well and run smoothly with everything else that's organized in their life. It's not for people who, you know, haven't got it. Maybe it helps organize your balcony, like with the add ons and stuff that we're going to be designing, but it's like a very much a.
00:21:04:26
The brand I started thinking a lot about brand before and thinking about like, what kind of brand I'll plant. It needs to be. And I didn't really understand yet. Like, but we've already got some of those questions answered now, which is kind of relates to like this is a product for people who aspire to have an organized life and be on top of their home. Their home should feel their home feels important to them, and that feels organized for them. And, they value a beautiful space. They value having a beautiful home.
Dealing with Haters and Pricing
Haters
One person was basically saying that my pricing is terrible and I should let my marketing and just start again. I responded very friendly, I think. My response to his first comment was, “Hey, thanks for the feedback. I guess working in the industry, my expectations of price are very different to regular consumers. To make something like this is a one-off custom payment, starting at 10K. I appreciate the feedback.”
My response was basically saying that I’m a professional in the industry, and so my expectations are kind of different around what things cost compared to, like, a regular consumer. So, somebody who doesn’t work in the industry and is purchasing a product rather than like being someone who’s familiar with what things cost.
I kind of have to explain, but I appreciate your perspective. Thanks for sharing that. It’s good to know when people are feeling price sensitive. I did polls on Instagram, like in the early stages of Alpine testing what people thought was expensive, and that was quite interesting to see how other people were responding to it.
I guess I had like a few conversations with other professionals who actually in the landscaping industry or in the field of architecture. And everybody was responding, being like, it’s crazy how little people understand the cost of construction and the cost of making something like this.
Pricing
00:32:40:23
This is one where I started learning about pricing theory and pricing theory is something that’s actually really fascinating for me. There’s this one time where I advertised this work to this customer who is on Gumtree. I have made an ad saying that, like, I can do, I own like an excavator and like a kanga.
There was this one time where I like, I had this client contact me and say, like, “I’ve got a clear this fun garden. Can you give me a quote?” And I said, “Yeah, I can give you a quote. Do you want me to come out and quote it to you, or do you want me to just quote online? I’m happy to quote by some photos if you want me to. If you just send me your address, I can work out how many square meters it is and work out how big it is. An estimate, how long it’s going to take me and give you a price based on that.”
And he said, “Okay, look like if you can just give me a quote online, that would be cool.”
So, I’ve quoted this guy $2,500 to like, go to his house and like, clean his garden and like, empty his nature strip and prepare some area for, like putting down some gravel. And I told him it’s going to take me like one long day or two days. I’m expecting it’s probably gonna take me two days, but if I’m really quick, I might be able to do it in one. He was like, “Yeah, that’s cool, that’s fine.” And I said, “So you’re happy with the price?” And he said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m really happy with the price. That’s great.”
So I got to his place really early on, like the first day and, I finished the job at 7 p.m. that day and then I said, “Okay, cool, I’m going to charge you the price that we agreed. I quoted you, right?” And he said, “Well, that doesn’t feel fair. You said it might take you two days.” And I was like, “Yeah, but it didn’t. And we agreed on the price beforehand.” And he said, “Yeah, but I thought that like if I’m paying you for up to two days, then it should cost that total amount. But if it takes less time then you’re earning too much per hour. And that’s not fair because like, you shouldn’t be able to earn that much per hour. I feel like you’re taking advantage of me.”
And I was like, “Well, the thing is, like, if it took me three days, you wouldn’t be okay with me increasing my price. Like, if we’re saying it’s going to take two days and it’s $2,500, then that’s like $1,250 per day. So then if it’s going to take three days, that’s going to be 3700 or whatever, you’re not going to be happy with that.” I said, “Yeah, yeah, I would have been I’m like, there’s no way you would have been happy with that. You were arguing with me over 2500, as if you would be okay with me taking longer. You’d say, no. That’s the quote.”
The nature of business with a quote is that before you even start the work, you agree on the price. And it doesn't matter what it costs to deliver that work. If both people from the outset agree that it's going to cost a certain amount, then that's what the contract is.
It was a really confusing thing because I went through the process of trying to justify it from a time perspective and an inputs perspective. I was like, I've been here since 7 AM. I've got to pay these material fees. I've been really productive in the way that I've planned my day. I've got to take the waste fees tomorrow, so I've got to take the waste down to the yard where I drop my waste tomorrow. I had a truck at the time. My truck was, like, full of dirt from his house, and I had to go and pay for that the next day. I had to spend time the next morning dropping that off. The night before I went to his house, I had to load up all my machines from another job and put them on the truck. And there was time there that he didn't see.
And I got to his house, and I did the whole job that we agreed on. And I said, are you happy with the work? And he said, I'm really happy with the work you've done. I said, I don't understand. I've done it faster, which means I'm not going to be in your front garden making you disturbed tomorrow. I've done my job faster. I've done the job we agreed on. I did it for a price that you said you were happy to pay. And you've told me you're happy with the job. So I don't understand why you have a problem with the price now.
And I do understand we had a problem with the price at the time. I mean, his problem was that he thought he was getting ripped off. Basically, he called a friend. And I... one other point, like, you know, I worked from 7 AM until like 7 PM, it was like a 12-hour day. And so it's like, if I had just broken that into two days, he would have perceived that as taking two days. You know, if I'd taken a long lunch in the middle of the day, that sort of thing, like he wasn't actually tracking my minutes, so I'm sure he would have perceived it as being more valuable or like more fair if it had taken me two days of being there because he thought, I think what he did is he just took my like $2,500 and then applied that across like, you know, 50 weeks or whatever that people work and times five. And then he got a figure that was like $500,000 a year. He was like, this guy's earning too much money, but it's not like that. But I think that the guy just had this perception that he was getting ripped off somehow, I was scamming him because he asked the plumber, he was like, is it normal for guys to make $2,500 in a day?
And it's like, it's kind of interesting because it's all around perception of value because, like, he was happy with the job, happy with the work, happy with the timeline. I did everything that we agreed on. But then he wasn't happy with the price after it took me less time than he thought it was going to take me. But it's like one of those things where sometimes you win, sometimes you lose with quotes. And like, if I had underquoted him and delivered the work and lost money on the job, like he wouldn't have cared. And so it's just the nature of business.
But, after that experience too, that was a really... like we actually had a really long negotiation around the price. I'm at the end of that day, he wanted to pay cash. And I said, like, you can pay me cash, but like, I'm I'm legit. I'm above board. The cash isn't doing anything. I'm not bringing the price down for you because it's cash. Like I'm trying to get a home loan, that sort of thing. And so, like, I need to show my business being legit. And we had this long negotiation talking about the price and going through this back and forth of, like, trying to understand why he wasn't okay with it, even though he agreed to it to begin with and was happy with it afterwards.
And it was fascinating for me because it was like that was when I was first having to go through the process of like, trying to understand pricing theory and like how value is perceived by people because, like, luxury brands, the materials that go into the luxury brands are not better than the materials that come in to other brands. They just have a brand name on them. And they do a really... they have a really tight grip on, like the feeling of, like prestige or luxury or whatever it is that they do. Like they have a really clear objective of maintaining that identity for their company so that they can, like, maintain a high margin on their products that they sell. So they invest a huge amount in marketing where you get styles, but it's like it's just so interesting how... Like the hidden, the hidden workings of pricing. I think I'm just constantly discovering and rediscovering, and I don't know why I haven't learned this lesson yet, but like, you can't really justify the price to people because people just don't get it either. They feel that it's fair. They feel that it's not fair.
And so I think that the way... in a way, like what goes into making the thing needs to be kind of a black box, it needs to be like, not that easy to understand, actually. Like how hard it is to make something or what it costs, because people really just have no concept of it anyway. I think that's kind of the solution. You need to just say this is the price, this is the exclusivity. You can't buy it anywhere else. If you want it, this is the price. And it's not about what the costs are. It's not about the inputs in any way. It's just literally based on the value of the object. Because you can't win when you're explaining it based on like, oh, I've got a 20% margin and that's lower than other people in the industry and like blah blah blah. When I just spent six months designing it, like, people don't give a shit.
And so it's really I think it's really just about connecting the right, the right amount of value exchanged and people walking away feeling happy with the amount that they paid for the product. And then you need to make sure that you know that the profit margins and the cost is still obviously essential. But it's like that's whole back end stuff that consumers don't see. Because, I mean, I like to explore like a transparent approach. I'm doing it right now where I'm trying to talk through the whole back end of my business and talk about like these sorts of experiences. But I think that like for, for the end-user, like, this transparency is not productive.
00:40:50:09
I also had a really unique experience with the customer this week.
00:40:56:06
Where I had sold some planters before. I think it was before they were even defined as planters. I hadn't called them that. I just said, like, when I first met with him, I had said I was when I was first exploring Balcony Gardens and seeing if there was a market for custom balcony gardens rather than doing like a modular balcony garden. That's what I was originally interested in. And the reason I started being interested in balcony gardens was because I thought it was an opportunity to do more high-quality work. I wanted to focus on smaller spaces with higher budgets so I could do like more detailed work and do something really intentional in those spaces.
Anyway, so I had met with this customer, and like when I first met with him, I was like started to float the idea of doing like a prefabricated, kind of planter module thing that I was going to be working on. And he was pretty keen on it. And we started talking about price in that first meeting, and he was like, you know, I told him, yeah. Anyway, we agreed on... we agreed on like $6,000 for like two units, just to clarify that that was like $6,000 per unit. So we're talking about $12,000. If you've been kind of like keeping up with the L-Planter pricing right now, they’re kind of being sold for about $3,000, which is like half the cost of what I'm trying to sell them for and plan to sell them for $6,000. That would be like a good business.
He kind of agreed to buying two and was really happy with that. And then... So, like through the marketing exercise that I've been going through with our planter, I've been, I've been like, marketing at really cheap. I've been marketing at
And like, obviously essential for studying your product and like, getting people to trust that and believe that it's real or whatever and like, believe that it's valuable, which I totally get.
I've learned a lot about pricing and brand perception. For example, I massively reduced the price of a product due to a marketing incentive. One customer requested a refund because he felt the price changes were unjustified and he no longer wanted the product. His perception of value was skewed by the price reduction. If I hadn't changed the price, he would have been happy.
This experience taught me that price consistency is important. It's better to increase the price than decrease it. If we need to lower the price, we should create a new version of the product with slightly different features. This will maintain the perceived value of the original product and avoid damaging our reputation.
I'm also learning about branding. My background is in design, but not brand design. I'm starting to understand the importance of human psychology and pricing theory in branding. This is my first experience where learning comes from feeling and experience rather than information. My understanding of branding is shifting from information-based to knowledge-based.
Key branding lessons include helping people self-select by making it clear who the product is for. This way, those who aren't interested won't waste their time, and those who are will understand the price point.
Overall, this has been an interesting learning experience. Launching a product for the first time has been tiring, especially responding to negative comments.
