How to build your product-roadmap (for your part-time business)

It actually takes 6 months to plan, review, research, design, build and launch.

Dec 22, 2024

👋 Hiya, how’s it going? I’m Eve and I run the Part-Time Creator Club.

Each week I write about advancing your 9-to-5 career while building a successful side business. That means growth, building, communication and anything else that helps you work better (and happier).

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Learn how to write Medium, build your newsletter business & digital products to help you build on the internet. See latest post on the behavioural science behind Medium success here.

For the last year, I’ve been building my business in 2 hours a day.

A common misconception is people think you have to go ‘all-in’ to create a viable business on the internet. Going all-in is step 10, not step 1. First, you must have something worth stepping into, it might sound (and feel) good to hand in your resignation but it’s a short-term dopamine hit and it leaves you with a long-term (money) problem.

The real win is having a brand that you can go all-in with, an established business that allows you to live the life you want. Then you have the freedom to do whatever you like. To do that, you need to create a game-plan, in tech that’s called a ‘product roadmap’.

How do you plan your first year of business alongside your day job? This is how:

Step 1: Getting your mindset right

“Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years.” — Bill Gates

Rewind to 2018, this was my (one-year) goals:

Run a marathon
Make $1 million this year
Revonate my entire house

All of those things lacked one thing: realism.

It’s a mistake I’ve made far too many times. Here’s a realization I’ve had: Great plans are formulated by asking great questions.

I should have started with this: What do I want my Mondays to look like?

The reality is, you don’t need to build 12 products this year, have product launches every 2 seconds, and build a multi-million dollar business to feel good about your work, your future, and where you are. Well, I didn’t anyway. I thought I did until I asked myself how I wanted my life to look.

And that made me realize I didn’t need to make $1 million. Instead, $100,000 was a much simpler goal.

Ask yourself: how do you want your Mondays to look?

And you’ll likely find the answer isn’t a million miles away from where you are, so maybe the answer isn’t millions tomorrow, maybe it’s a little more this year.

That mindset, one of abundance and realism, one of knowing what will make your life better, is the best mindset to build your product-roadmap from.

Step 2: Your UVP

Building a product takes ALOT of work.

Starting from scratch is an uphill battle, instead, start from a place where you have a unique advantage, because you’ve been unknowingly working on your product for years. I call it your unique vantage point (UVP).

My first product was an evolution of what I’d been doing for years. I didn’t start out thinking I’d teach people with a 9-to-5 how to build a brand on the internet. But I’d been writing on Medium for 2.5 years and I’d learned a ton from the experience. I knew I wanted to help others like me who were struggling to write on the internet alongside their full-time job.

So I decided I’d create a product for that person: me right at the beginning of my journey.

So when thinking about creating your first product, don’t start from a blank slate, ask yourself these questions:

What do I have experience in?
What have I achieved in my life?
What do people come to me for?

If you’re creating content already (and hopefully you are), if not, I wrote about that in a previous write-up, then there should be a natural evolution from the content you create to the products you build.

Your content should be the starter, your product is the main course.

Image by creator - top-creators and time taken to get to 50,000 subs on Substack (including which niche they are in).

And remember, this is a long game, above is how long it took for the top creators (the best of the best) to get to 50,000 subs. Go slow and steady, focus on quality and you will get there.

Step 3: Find your ‘big idea’

If I’ve learned one thing as a Part-Time Creator it’s this: less is more.

Last year I decided to stick to one main product. I very nearly wrote a book and launched a new course last year, I announced both but decided to pull the plug later. Why? Because my attention was too stretched.

I couldn’t be everywhere at once and I felt the quality of the work would suffer. Something I didn’t want to happen. Instead, I decided to double down on the Medium Blueprint and forget everything else.

Remember: Less is more.

Here’s a list of products top creators are selling… notice a pattern here? More is not more, they don’t have hands in every pie — they have depth in one area and they focus there.

Image by creator - top-creators and the products they’ve sold.

Better to execute one brilliant product than to have 7 half-baked ones. It worked for me, over 600 writers have bought the Medium Blueprint making it a huge success for me and my business—it’s become my flagship course.

Here’s how I think about prioritizing my products for 2024 & 2025:

What do I have a unique advantage in (see above)?
What do I have the desire to create & shout about?
What do I think I could build that would be unique?

It might take 6 months to build a product. I don’t want to be turning up every day and feeling like my efforts are better spent elsewhere. Instead, I want to feel good about what I’m doing, I want to have a passion for the work.

So I prioritize:

The product I will enjoy building
The product I know my audience needs ( AKA it solves a problem they have).

And lastly, I spent time, a lot of time, thinking and rethinking the decision. It’s not a decision to take lightly so I would advise making it over the long-haul, take a few weeks to really let your thoughts stew.

I often find, when I spend longer making a decision it’s a better decision in the end. When it’s a big decision like this, spending the time on it is top of my list.

Step 4: Time

I’ve found there is MUCH more to building a product than you first think. You might think it’s as simple as having a product in mind and building the thing. I thought the same until I launched my first product. Building the product is only half of the battle.

Here’s what it really takes to build and launch a successful product:

Research and understand the problem you’re solving
Plan the solution (your product)
Building your product version 1
Review the product version 1 and make adjustments
Plan and design content
Plan launch
Write content for the launch
Launch
Iron out issues
Review the product and make improvements
Continous improvement

You see what you think might be a month to build something actually takes 6 months to plan, review, research, design, build and launch.

Hence the importance of getting the product (and the problem) right from the outset. The worst outcome is to spend 6 months building something nobody wants.

Pick something that you want to work on for 6 months, because as a Part-Time Creator, if you do it right, that’s how long it’ll take.

Conclusion

Running a part-time business on top of a full-time job and a full-time life is hard. But not impossible. And to be clear, my approach is not to work until 2 am to find the time. And it’s definitely about not spending all weekend behind your laptop and ignoring your family (a good life for me is a healthy mix of work and play).

Nope, instead, creating a part-time brand is about strategy. It’s identifying the activities that will give you your highest return and forgetting the rest. Do that and you’ll be a Part-Time Creator competing with full-time creators.

What about you…What are you thinking of building?

The Part-Time Creator Club

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