Goblin: turn & face the change (tldr: be brave)

Hi friend!

It's been a minute since I updated everyone. I hope you're doing great.

I'm SO GLAD that the weather is cooling down. I'm so excited about fall--I'm unapologetically doing pumpkin spice face masks and drinking spiced cider teas over here.

I tweaked my neck last week and couldn't drive/move for a couple of days, then parlayed that straight into a week of COVID. I'm finally started to feel like a human again today and I'm trying to process all the thoughts, ideas, and emails I've missed in the last week and a half.

Turn and face the strange

Bowie and Tupac have both taught me about dealing with change. I've always been someone who loves change (probably to a detrimental extent sometimes), but I've been struggling with this one.

My goal for this month was to get Goblin to a point where I could start charging money. It turns out this is more a psychological mountain to climb than a product/coding one.

I feel like my app is still really basic and not where I want it to be, but also the costs are piling up and it would really help if I started charging (even if it was just a little bit of money). So what's the problem?!

I feel guilty asking people for money!

It feels gross. Why is that?! I've talked to a few other founders about this and they could relate to how I'm feeling. This article on coercive marketing was super interesting. I'm not a sales person. I do not like to interact with sales people. I really like everyone in my community, but I don't want them to feel pressured or guilty at all if they decide to opt out of signing up after their trial is over.

It's a tangled rats nest of emotions.

I've decided to just be extremely transparent about the whole thing. I'm going to put the breakdown of my costs and where the money is going on the pricing page. I'll tell everyone that they shouldn't feel guilty if they decide not to subscribe. I'm going to be myself and say something like this in the near future:

  "you can now sign up for paid subscriptions. don't feel guilty AT ALL if you decide not to subscribe. we're still besties. the money is going to help me continue to develop Goblin into a platform to help you manage your life and cultivate joy."

It's okay for me to ask for money and it's okay for people to say no.

I gotta be brave!

Build in Public Updates

App Updates

• I released a new feature: Goals! You can now create a goal and it shows up front and center in the app home page. You can also associate sidequests and mission tasks with the goal so you can monitor your progress. More details here.

Addition vs Subtraction - Molly G. on how companies are bad at subtracting things

"Meetings are a symptom of a larger problem"

Thank you so much for reading!

--Molly Retter