Why I'm doing what I'm doing
I wrote an intro about myself on the 100pmf Discord. Thought you may enjoy reading it.
My name is Eli Finer and I'm your host.
I'm 43, married and I have two kids. I've been a dev for about 25 years which might be more than some of you have been alive. I've been a life coach / therapist for 15 years and to my great surprise I've become a full time marketer about 3 years ago.
I started many projects and businesses, some more successful, some less, some absolute, complete and very miserable failures.
It took me way too long to accept that being a good developer (or manager, or coach, or any kind of professional) is not enough to create a money making business. We need to understand the fundumantals of business - sales, marketing and finance.
I was laid off from the best job I've ever had when COVID hit in 2020. Despite the fact the company I worked for was incredible, I still felt bound by the definition of my role there (dev / architect / team lead).
I woke up the next morning after my last day there with a firm decision I was never going to hold a job again and will make this "business" thing work one way or the other. The next 3 years I went through about a dozen ideas, projects and nascent businesses. I talked about everything that happened to me on Twitter and people started asking me for advice. To my surprise I realized I had answers, especially around how to find early users, customers and traction.
It took a while longer but a framework formed in my mind, a framework for find product market fit that didn't depend on throwing things against the wall hoping something would stick. A framework to find a real problem you could solve, real people who would pay for it, a real fit for your product.
I taught this framework in cohort-based courses for about a year, refining, improving, finding holes and plugging them, seeing people succeed and stumble and fail, constantly adjusting and improving.
I don't have a fool proof system here. But it's fool-proofer than anything I've seen and it's time to take many more people through it, plug the last remaining leaks, and turn it into something that anyone can follow and everyone can succeed with.
Most courses and self help books have something like 1% true success rate. For every thousant people through the course, 10 make it. I suspect these 10 people would have made it anyway - course or no course. It's enough to create good testimonials and attract thousands more, but it's not enough for me.
When I said that I was going to take 100 indie hackers to PMF, I didn't mean 100 participants. I meant 100 successes. I meant that every one of you will reach PMF. I can't promise that because there are so many personal things that can happen that will throw you off, but I can make sure I do everything humanly possible to help you along.
I'm not limiting my approach to only the practical aspects of marketing and sales. I'll teach you everything I know and I'm sure you'll exchange a lot of knowledge among yourself as there are people much more knowledgeable than I am for every aspect of marketing you can think of. I'm going to help you overcome the mental aspects of this as well.
Procratination, fear of failure, burnout, doubt - these all have place here and I'll help you deal with them. Rejection, failure, impostor syndrom - these are constant companions on our road to financial and personal freedom.
We can't make it without conquering our minds, without calming our hearts, without resolving our past experiences and our limiting beliefs about business, money, and success.
And we're going to do all of this and more here.
Most of what I'll offer here will be paid, but I know that some of you are barely scraping by and I'll do my best to make the prices work for everyone. If you want to purchase something or participate in a workshop but can't afford it at all - reach out to me and we'll make it work.
Now let's get to work.
There's a lot of it.