In the summer of 2020, selling Notion templates became a thing.
One of the first Notion consultants and creator, William Nutt, pioneered the path with the Bulletproof Workspace and then maker Janel Loi created Newsletter OS. Both were essentially Notion templates packaged as sophisticated digital products, which was new and exciting, so Twitter and the Notion community loved it.
The opportunist that I am, I saw a window to get it in on the action. I realized that most of our work was with entrepreneurs, agencies, and startups, so we could also build a premium Notion template that productizes this kind of work. Lo and behold — Entrepreneur OS.
Valentine, whom I hired full-time earlier, picked a date to launch, epically procrastinated, and pulled not one but nearly two all-nights to build the product. The launch was a mess but somehow the product did well on Product Hunt and Twitter, so we sold over $3k in the first week.
This early success was followed by a serious strategic mistake.
I grew disillusioned with the product, so I deemed it not useful and stopped working on it. Eventually, sales petered off and we quietly shut it down. I think this happened because I really cared about customer satisfaction, so I didn’t market/advertise the product. But I also didn’t prioritize solving this issue above larger and better paying (in the short-term) consulting projects. Looking back, I should’ve never stopped. It was clear that the growth rate of this product was faster than the consulting work and I should have realized that and focused on improving the product. I should’ve said “no” to consulting opportunities and focused on long-term leverage. It feels like I read and thought about those things at the time but still made the wrong decision.
But the game is not over. Recently, we re-entered a very different Notion template market with HiveMind and figured out a long-term growth strategy that came together having learned from the hubris of Entrepreneur OS. Lol I’m being dramatic :)
