2 builders who never spoke to each other

Solve your own problem and use it on itself

Build the thing you needed, run your own work through it, and your first proof point is a before and after you can show. Florin Pop tracked building his time-tracking app inside the app and went from twenty minutes of focused work a day to over four hours. Cory Zue searched for something better first and only built when nothing existed.

The method

1. 01

   Build the tool for your own problem and use it on itself, so the first proof point is your own before-and-after.

2. 02

   Search for an existing solution to your own annoyance first, and build only if nothing better exists, then post the tool in a handful of places and let usage trickle in.

What it returned

• 15

  Focused work went from 15-20 minutes a day to over 240 minutes within a week of the MVP going live; he tracked building the app inside the app.

• 20,000

  Zue built Chimp List Helper for unconfirmed newsletter subscribers after finding no better option, and about 20,000 email addresses were processed through it in its first eight months

Sources

• I built an app to track my working hoursFlorin Pop · florin-pop.com · How it started · 2025-02-02
• The Year Everything ChangedCory Zue · coryzue.com · The year I realized I can create things of value (April) · 2017-12-29