It was Monday. The whole day was full of video calls with new IndieHackers. I had already planned five of them from the previous week, leaving only a few spare hours to focus on other tasks. At some point I received this notification from Twitter.
Charlotte followed me. I had no clue who she was, so I started researching her profile. I saw that she is a co-founder of
AvidFM an upcoming startup that focuses on audio lessons.
“That’s interesting” I thought. Audio is a powerful medium to share information and it’s also a big hype at this moment.
The week before I wrote about
my strategic decision to find and hire mentors. The decision was still fresh and floating in my mind. Once I was done with my research I was about to close my browser tab and move on to the next task.
“Wait a second” I thought. I was feeling I was about to miss out on a business opportunity if I just close the tab and forget about Charlotte and AvidFM. So I took some time to think about it.
“I have decided I want to hire mentors. I have also decided I want to follow the stairstep approach and build micro-products that are easy to market and sell.” “That’s it. That’s my chance. AvidFM is starting now and I am sure they are looking for new creators. I have seen that I enjoy coaching IndieHackers and teaching them about design. What I could do is to use AvidFM team as my mentors and ask them to help me create a successful course. It’s a win-win deal. They want me to be successful as a creator in their platform and I won’t even have to pay for a mentorship fee in this case.”
Without hesitating I sent a DM to Charlotte on Twitter and explained her that I want to create online courses about UX design for IndieHackers. I highlighted that I needed some guidance and mentorship to move on faster and smarter. I also asked her to make a video call to get to know each other and learn more about her startup, AvidFM. A few hours later she got back to me and she was very possitive with my idea. We scheduled a call for the same day and we got to know each other. She explained me in detail why audio lessons could be the next big thing in the online education industry. She is pretty experienced with this topic since she also learnt English and coding by doing audio lessons and she highlighted some remarkable benefits of them. “With audio lessons, creators can be more original (no camera to look at and pretend), and spend less time on editing and creating content. Also the absence of video means that their audience have to use their imagination and interpret the course content in a more creative with less distraction.”
“Damn that’s cool.” I thought. It’s weird to teach design without video. But feels like a very interesting experiment. In the end what I want to teach is the mindset and the mental frameworks that people should use. I don’t want to teach how to use a design tool or how to draw shapes. UX design is more about strategy, copywriting and other non visual-heavy stuff. Once we were done with our call I was super excited. Charlotte was very straightforward and told me they will help with the course outline, course promotion and my overall strategy. They know the industry of online courses very well and they will mentor and push me to publish something as soon as possible.
“That’s it. I have no excuses now. Charlotte already acts like my mentor and our call felt like our first session. I made a great achievement today. I found a mentor, I defined my first micro-product and I took the decision to move on without overanalyzing it. It feels super inspiring. I have an audience, a valuable validated product, a mentor and marketing channels I know how to use. I am really curious to see how this experiment will turn out.”
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