Why and how we are approaching writing and publishing an e-book about men’s dress shirts.

In this series we are documenting the journey of building DULO, starting from Day 1. Every week we publish a new chapter that takes you behind the scenes of our process. With every article, we want to provide value to you, the reader. We share the success and failures, the opportunities and the challenges that we face while executing our vision.

If you are new, check out our previous post.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of e-books and even though we are not big on milestones, we have to casually note this being the 100th post in our Origins blog series 👏

Nearly 100 weeks of documenting how we’ve been building the business and funnily enough while writing this one, it feels both as if it has been a long long journey, as well as if we haven’t even remotely started.

So, yea, #100, yay, moving on.

As you can see from that little intro, from the beginning of our journey, one of our main marketing strategies has been to create a lot (blog, vlog, podcast) of content documenting our journey as well as entrepreneurship in general.

What we realize now, however, is that we’ve totally missed the mark on creating content around the actual product that we want to build this business around — a non-iron performance dress shirt.

It took us “only” 2 years to ask ourselves why are we not producing valuable resources for anyone interested in the dress shirt category and why are we not working towards positioning ourselves as an authority in that space.

Well… now we are.

Why are we publishing an e-book on men’s dress shirts?

A few reasons:

• To share our knowledge with others
• To help men with finding the right dress shirt for them
• To gain credibility by creating resources around our product — men’s dress shirts
• To have a piece of content that is easily shareable with people who are interested
• To start playing around with lead magnets and email funnels using the book

How are we publishing an e-book on men’s dress shirts?

There are a few steps in this process:

• Research the topic
• Write the actual copy for the book
• Create the graphics for the book
• Package the copy and the graphics together
• Publish the document as a PDF on our website
• Distribute it and let people know about it

We’ll expand with the details on these points in our next post.

The resources we will use to create an e-book on men’s dress shirts:

Tool #1: Canva

Price: FREE FOREVER plan for up to 1GB storage for photos and assets.

Helpful for: Creating a wide range of visual assets (think simplified Photoshop)

Tool URL: https://www.canva.com/

Use case: We will create all images and graphics for the book in Canva.

Tool #2: Shopify

Price: 14-day trial. Starts from $29/mo + around 3% fee on each order. (this plan will cover all your basic needs until significant growth)

Helpful for: Easily setting up a fully functional e-commerce store.

Tool URL: https://www.shopify.com/

Use case: Shopify is our e-commerce platform of choice for our store, but it also allows you to host files on their servers.

Tool #3: Google Docs

Price: Free

Helpful for: Document creation, sharing, and collaboration.

Tool URL: https://docs.google.com

Use case: We will use it to write down all the content, lay out the book, review, edit and collaborate on the copy.

This is what we have in mind for now and how we are thinking of tackling it.

In our next post, we will show you our progress and share how we approached it exactly, so stay tuned.

Better yet, sign up for our newsletter here so you will be one of the first ones to know when we publish the e-book.

Origins #100 — How to create and publish an e-book was originally published in The Needle on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This post was supposed to go out six days ago.

In this series we are documenting the journey of building DULO, starting from Day 1. Every week we publish a new chapter that takes you behind the scenes of our process. With every article, we want to provide value to you, the reader. We share the success and failures, the opportunities and the challenges that we face while executing our vision.

If you are new, check out our previous post.

We’ve been at this blog thing for about 2 years now, this post being #99 of the series, on a weekly basis.

I am (Julian) usually in charge of writing the majority of our “Origins” posts (nope, Marin is not lazy, he just takes care of the video and sound production side of the DULO content) and I usually try to write and post them on a Saturday, as the weekend is the only time we have 100% free to work on DULO.

The majority of our posts so far have gone out on schedule, but lately, I have been trying to catch up, especially with the last post, that went out nearly a week late, and this one with a 6-day delay.

Usually, we try to stay on track with content creation, so being late or not delivering a task I am responsible for, on time, bothers me a bit, both on a personal level, as well as being accountable to the other 50% of the process, aka the co-founder, aka Marin.

However, context and reasons matter and for us, the last couple of weeks, the focus and efforts have been shifted to a) updating the website in a major way and b) recording a lot of podcasts for the new season of The Early Days Podcast.

So, as long as efforts are being made in building one part of the business while putting others on the backburner, progress is made and that’s perfectly fine.

It’s a delicate balance of efforts when you are limited by time and finances, but it keeps you focused on the most important things at a point in time.

We have quite a few podcasts recorded now that we just need to produce to have a library of content that will last us a few months and with the website in much better shape, we can get back to regular blogging :)

Missing a deadline is OK.

We are not surgeons. Nothing is THAT critical.

There’s no need for unnecessary pressure and self-judgment, as long as we keep moving.

The journey of DOing and the dress shirt for DOers -> weardulo.com.

Origins #99 — Messing up is O.K. was originally published in The Needle on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our next move in spreading the DULO word.

In this series we are documenting the journey of building DULO, starting from Day 1. Every week we publish a new chapter that takes you behind the scenes of our process. With every article we want to provide value to you, the reader. We share the success and failures, the opportunities and the challenges that we face while executing our vision.

If you are new, check out our previous post.

Last year, by far our biggest success when it comes to marketing was a video collaboration with an Italian YouTuber that massively outperformed any ads or Instagram influencer campaigns in terms of traffic and sales.

You can watch the video here.

It brought up to 100 people to the site, on a daily basis, for around a month.

Given that it was a product review in the form of a gift recommendation for Christmas it also had a much higher conversion rate than any other organic traffic.

So, after we made a solid step (hopefully) into making our website more conversion “friendly”, by clarifying our message and product, we now want to take what worked, replicate it and scale it as our first big move into putting DULO on the map in a more substantial way.

Some stats for reference, for December, from that one video.

If you’ve been following us for a while, you know we try A LOT of stuff out, quickly, 99% of the time failing, but once in a while we do get a very clear data point of what is working and we keep it going forward.

Thinking about it, our first year in business was pretty much a sample run, gathering feedback and making sure that our product is up to par and represents the quality and value we want to bring to the market.

Having a positive reception by the people who have tried it out so far, with next to none returns or complaints, it gives us the confidence to now be loud about the product, making sure it reaches the people we think can benefit from the product and hopefully start scaling that process as we move towards a stronger focus on revenue.

EU Focus

Being based in Europe, we will first try to build a roster of European YouTubers for 2 main reasons:

1. We are one of the VERY few companies (if not the only one) who is building this exact product. There are many cotton non-iron shirt companies, as well as anti-stain shirts, but no one is building a product that is non-iron because of a technological performance fabric that irons itself out.
2. People would be much more willing to try a product out if the shipping rates are less expensive and delivery times are fast. Both things that we can pretty much provide only in Europe as we store and ship our products from Holland.

The Plan

Our next steps will be to start building up a list of people to approach, reach out to them, see what their terms are and what we can afford and freestyle it from there ;)

Do you know any European based YouTubers that would be a good fit?

Looking for a non-iron hassle-free dress shirt? -> weardulo.com.

Origins #98 — YouTube partnerships was originally published in The Needle on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our final version and what changed from the initial designs.

In this series we are documenting the journey of building DULO, starting from Day 1. Every week we publish a new chapter that takes you behind the scenes of our process. With every article we want to provide value to you, the reader. We share the success and failures, the opportunities and the challenges that we face while executing our vision.

If you are new, check out our previous post.

In our last post we shared the designs we had for our new homepage and now that the new page is live (check it out), I want to take you through and share the thinking behind it.

*You’ll see that the design changed a bit, but that’s the nice thing about still being a small operation, we can always iterate, learn from feedback and change things quickly on the fly.

The banner

We are trying to do 4 things here:

1. Show the product right away being worn by a happy human.
2. Aspirational high-level branding title, talking about the YOU instead of US. (positioning us as the guide, not the hero, the hero being the client)
3. A clear, fast and easy to understand explanation on the product level
4. CTA (second one in that view, including the one in the top nav)

USPs

Here we have the main benefits of the product in a format that is easy to scan.

Product row

- The first introduction of the actual product in an e-com context, showing our best selling items.

- Another CTA

Failure — benefits

- The negatives/failure of NOT OWNING the product and the cons in the long run (time waste), compared to the benefits of OWNING IT.

- Some visual cues with a non-iron and a time icon.

- Throw in another CTA in there with a different copy.

- And we close off with a solid number of hours that the product is saving, AN ACTUAL formula that Marin made to calculate how much time we are saving in total as the product reaches more people and time goes by, just in case someone asks. (I dare you to ask)

Testimonial

A review of the product from one of our most influential and better-known clients. It summarises the benefits of the product nicely while building up more social proof and confidence.

The plan/how it works

If folks happen to scroll all the way down to this section, there is a high chance they are somewhat interested in the product and here we want to propose a 3 step plan on the next steps to reduce friction and brain power from their side thinking about what they should do next, or which CTA to click.

Size form and guide

A little cheeky play on words, but also a section that is super important for people buying a dress shirt online, without first trying it on physically.

Based on our experience so far and feedback from people, we can assess quite well what size would fit best based on height and weight and therefore try to provide an additional service for anyone considering, as well as create a context for a 1:1 communication that can push towards a sale by proxy of good customer experience.

Social

A little motivational end to the homepage, which ties into the general brand we want to create and the people we want to talk to. Also a collection of images which showcase the product further on different people, while also adding another layer of social proof.

Nothing is ever finished, perfect or complete, but this new homepage has been a solid step both towards a better user experience, as well as a great exercise in branding and copy that we plan on diving into deeper in general for all our communication.

The next pages that we’ll tackle to bring the website to a consistently good experience will be the collection page, followed by the product page.

And here is the full page:

What do you think about the new homepage?

If you are on a search for a dress shirt consider checking out our products at weardulo.com.

Origins #97 — The new homepage is live! was originally published in The Needle on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Improving and clarifying the user experience.

In this series we are documenting the journey of building DULO, starting from Day 1. Every week we publish a new chapter that takes you behind the scenes of our process. With every article we want to provide value to you, the reader. We share the success and failures, the opportunities and the challenges that we face while executing our vision.

If you are new, check out our previous post.

We talked about giving the website a bit of an overhaul in our last post, in this one I want to show you our current work in progress design wireframe for the homepage and take you through some of the thoughts, goals, and decision behind the new version.

The general goal for the overhaul is to uplift the brand aesthetics, making it more consistent with our above average price point, while also introducing a bit of a more playful tone of voice in our copy and communication, while clarifying the message and explaining the product in a more concise way.

This is also a great exercise in trying to further drill down and find our target audience, who they are and how we want to be speaking to them.

*Copy in design is just a placeholder and work in progress ;)

Banner

THE most important section of a homepage. This is the first thing a visitor sees and also the only guaranteed real estate on the website that a visitor will see before/if he leaves.

For this section we need to:

1. Immediately translate the feel for a more premium brand
2. Clearly explain what we are selling
3. Give a clear CTA (call to action) for people that want to view the products.

Benefits

In this section, we introduce the failures of NOT using our product and the benefits of using it.

It’s also a nice play on the usual logic that 2>0, but in our case, 0 time spent taking care of dress shirts is better than 2h every week.

We also give a more visual cue supporting the “time” aspect with the “time” icon, another CTA and a strong element of how many hours our product has saved in total (roughly).

Properties

Here we do two things.

Introduce the product and the color combinations for the first time, as well as provide the actual benefits of the product, supported by a visual icon to strengthen the message (also if someone is just skimming).

Reviews

Social proof being very important, this section is moved up to where it was previously. We start off with our most well-known client’s testimonial and also give the option to read all our reviews for even more social proof support of our product from actual people that are using it.

Another CTA

A more playful section, including visuals, introducing a slightly different tone of voice of what we had so far and again another CTA leading to the collection page.

Size guide

From experience, we know that the hardest hurdle for us to get over selling a dress shirt in an e-com environment are the size concerns that people have not having tried the product physically.

We address this concern in this section, again with a little play on words (confirming the new tone of voice), visuals that provide information that we have an extensive size guide, as well as a form that people can fill in their height and weight (the black box on the left will become that :) from where we can give personal advice and based on experience suggest the perfect fit/size.

—

And here is the mockup design of the full page:

Full homepage

This is what we have so far.

As with any process, things might change a bit, but this is the general direction we want to take.

As always and forever, we appreciate, encourage and welcome any feedback, thoughts, ideas, and comments you might have regarding the said above, drop us a line!

Check out our dress shirts at weardulo.com.

Origins #96 — Homepage redesign was originally published in The Needle on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Starting off with the homepage.

In this series we are documenting the journey of building DULO, starting from Day 1. Every week we publish a new chapter that takes you behind the scenes of our process. With every article we want to provide value to you, the reader. We share the success and failures, the opportunities and the challenges that we face while executing our vision.

If you are new, check out our previous post.

Something that hasn’t been working for us is converting people ON THE website.

Most of our conversions are either through word of mouth, content or what we call “hand to hand combat”, which includes showing people the product personally or talking about it ourselves and thus exposing it through us.

Organic traffic followed by a conversion on the website, without a strong referral, hasn’t been a strong suit of ours and we think the reason is that we still haven’t nailed down a proper messaging strategy that clearly communicates the product benefits to the right people and does that through a fast, easy to consume and frictionless presentation, starting from the homepage.

So, as a first step, we are revamping the homepage to clarify the copy for it + do a redesign of the sections that we want/need to include on the homepage to hopefully increase our conversion rate.

We are basing this on the StoryBrand framework, and in this post I want to share some resources that have helped us understand better what we need to do and most importantly I will include my raw notes (as I’ve taken them during listening and watching) on that content, so you don’t have to consume/listen/watch the resources yourself (the links will be there if you want to).

The resources are 1 podcast episode and 2 videos, 1 hour in total to consume.

Building a StoryBrand podcast #65:

[NOTES]

1. The only messages that will penetrate are messages that have to do with our survival and they are so clear and simple that I don’t have to burn calories to understand them.
2. Is your message confusing -> YES, aspirational BS etc.
3. Communicate simply
4. “If you tell your story, you will lose money.”
5. You have to define something that the hero wants (quickly and simply)
6. You don’t want to burn calories
7. There has to be a problem -> define and tell how you solve it
8. People buy solutions to internal problems
9. Customers aren’t looking for another hero, they are looking for a GUIDE. You are NOT the hero, the customer is.
10. Be Q from the James Bond movies. All about THEM. (Gandalf, Yoda, etc. = guides)
11. Create a plan for the customer (3–4 steps). “Alright, here is the plan”
12. Call to action at this point. “People who ask receive”
13. Buy Now button in the navigation. Challenge customers to take action.
14. Give customers something to accept or reject.
15. Communicate the negative consequences to customers if they DON’T buy our product. (people avoid something bad happening)
16. Show people how your product can positively affect their lives. (goes along well with the previous point)
17. Show smiling happy people using your product.

Two videos that are particularly helpful to summarize the framework:

First video

[NOTES]

1. What do we offer? How will it make my life better? What do I need to do to buy it? (in the banner) [POSITIVE]
2. Clarity sells products
3. A strong call to action (“Buy Now”, instead of “Learn More”). Add it to top right as well and then repeat it in the middle of the header.
4. (below the header) -> element of failure -> “What’s it going to cost me NOT to buy your product?” (hassle/time, smelly, sweaty, uncomfortable) [NEGATIVE]
5. [SUCCESS] -> What will happen when they DO buy our product? Value and benefits.
6. A plan. 3 steps in order to engage your product. (e.g. 1. Get in touch for sizes/send us your height/weight. Can be an input form directly to provide that data 2. Buy product 3. Get your product/enjoy)

Second video

[NOTES]

1. BE THE LEADER OF THE PACK/Get on a revolutionary new bike [VISION OF THE FUTURE]
2. Repeat the CTA top right and the banner (no clutter in the top nav)
3. Negative aspect -> “Life is too short to sit in traffic”. Traffic is no fun. Don’t be held back. You were designed for more. and again the CTA <- It ain’t like that now (it’s bad right now) [FAILURE/COST section]
4. Position yourself as the guide -> express empathy (we have the same problem) -> show authority, illustrate competency to solve the problem. “We don’t just care about bikes. We care about you.”
5. More than X number of hours/minutes saved (all clients x times spend ironing). Shipped to X number of countries. $ of dry cleaning saved.
6. Get the products in -> collection row
7. Ask for the sale -> How it works -> The plan section (point 6 from #2) <- It’s not difficult to work with us
   *VIDEO EXAMPLE: 1. Get Fitted 2. Choose a bike 3. Lead the pack (could be similar to DULO)
8. Lead generator. Something in exchange for the email address. (bootstrapping guide?)
   * VIDEO EXAMPLE: “10 ways an e-bike will make and save you money.”, “Download our FREE PDF and start down the road to saving money”
9. Junk Drawer (everything you thought was important) -> Contact us etc. Things that don’t need to compete with the Buy Now button.

Will keep you posted when the new homepage is live ;)

Originally published at weardulo.com.

Origins #95 — Time to increase website conversion was originally published in The Needle on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our first try at building a local community.

In this series we are documenting the journey of building DULO, starting from Day 1. Every week we publish a new chapter that takes you behind the scenes of our process. With every article we want to provide value to you, the reader. We share the success and failures, the opportunities and the challenges that we face while executing our vision.

If you are new, check out our previous post.

We’ve shared a bit of our long-term vision for DULO which is to help other people start and build businesses through our content and eventually our accumulated expertise of building a business, as well as the network created through that process.

Even though that step is a bit more in the future and firstly we need to actually build a business, I still think there is some value we could provide by sharing our experience so far.

To achieve our vision we also understand the importance of building a community and proactively participating in it, so Marin took the initiative and organized a meetup here in Amsterdam on the topic of bootstrapping a business and marketing within that context.

For more details, check out Marin G’s event here.

There also seems to be a coverage gap on the topic of bootstrapping compared to the alternative of raising capital/funding.

Bootstrapping is how we are building DULO while working full-time jobs, so it would be interesting to exchange experience with other people who are doing the same and help each other.

Hosting events is also a good opportunity to network and build relationships that could be mutually beneficial in the long run, so we are looking forward to taking our first steps into that space as well.

We’ll let you know how it goes in our next update ;)

Drop down any ideas/suggestions/things to keep in mind when organizing such events!

Check out dress shirts at weardulo.com and follow us on IG.

Origins #94 — We organize a meetup was originally published in The Needle on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our framework for an unlimited runway.

In this series we are documenting the journey of building DULO, starting from Day 1. Every week we publish a new chapter that takes you behind the scenes of our process. With every article we want to provide value to you, the reader. We share the success and failures, the opportunities and the challenges that we face while executing our vision.

If you are new, check out our previous post.

We got asked to share our thoughts on how we approach “bootstrapping” the business a few times this week, so in this week’s Origins, I want to do exactly that.

I’ll take you through the framework we use to grow a business independent of external capital by self-funding it and being smart about expenses.

1. Keep the day job (can’t stress enough the importance and benefits of this point)

We are still working full-time as developers during the day and switch to DULO in the evenings and weekends.

2. Self-fund the R&D

We developed and produced our first collection with savings. We invested about 20k to make about 700 performance dress shirts for our first batch.

Looking back, it could’ve been much less, given the initial demand + having a smaller inventory will let you iterate on the product faster.

During development, create more samples and give them away to start generating feedback, an early audience/user base, and in general, a buzz around your product prior to launch. Many of these first “testers” will become your first customers.

3. Ship the whole inventory to your house = no recurring costs for storage/warehouse/fulfillment centers.

4. Fulfill all orders personally ($20 printer + some paper). Might as well include a handwritten note while you are at it.

5. By sticking to point 1, you now have a somewhat unlimited runway.

6. Spend what you earn (good rule in general).

7. Price your product at at least 3x the production cost, this way you can spend what you earn for any marketing efforts (including sending out free product) + the other profits will be going into funding the next production batch, for AT LEAST the same quantity (you don’t need profits for now (refer to point 1), you’re building that vital early audience/community/fans)

8. Rinse and repeat. The process will scale itself.

9. Rely on self-produced content (could be a separate blog post, let us know), word of mouth (make sure your product always over delivers), collaborations and giving away stuff as your marketing ammunition and in general in spreading the word about your product.

10. Keep your day job, until you don’t need/want to (the timing of this would strongly vary per person/goals/ambitions/discipline)

Now, all you need to do is to sell (duh), but that’s where you get to learn marketing, branding, distribution and content creation without the stress of a limited runway or investors breathing down your neck.

Would love to clarify anything or answer ANY other questions about our process!

Check out weardulo.com for our performance dress shirts. Follow us on Instagram for entrepreneurial content and daily updates.

Origins #93 — How we are bootstrapin’ was originally published in The Needle on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Focus points for the upcoming months.

In this series we are documenting the journey of building DULO, starting from Day 1. Every week we publish a new chapter that takes you behind the scenes of our process. With every article we want to provide value to you, the reader. We share the success and failures, the opportunities and the challenges that we face while executing our vision.

If you are new, check out our previous post.

If you’ve been following us on Instagram, you’ve seen a post about our goals and plans for 2019.

In this post, I want to go over them in a bit more detail and elaborate on the thinking and motivation behind these moves.

*Do keep in mind that as with most things that we do, we never set in stone strategies, but rather have a general direction of where we want to go and what we want to do and freestyle our way towards it with the resources that we can allocate, mainly time and financials.

So, here are the things that we want to focus on for at least the first few months of the year:

R&D of our second collection

As we are moving through and selling out our first collection we need to start thinking about the things that we have learned from it and create an improved product for our second one.

We can see a few main areas of improvement:

- More sizes and fits (can’t cater to many body types with only one fit)

- Streamline the look of our shirts in a more modern presentation (reduce any loose fabric, remove unnecessary stitching etc.)

- Look into more sustainable performance fabrics. This is a BIG one and a focus of our current R&D efforts. We are looking into things such as natural fabrics and/or biodegradable options.

- Improve our manufacturing process in terms of speed and flexibility of production.

Sell out the remaining inventory from our first collection

In a purely financial and logistical sense, being bootstrapped, we need the funds generated from our first collection to invest back and help fund the second.

Content strategy

During the past two years, we’ve gotten O.K. at creating content, but the distribution and letting more and more people know about it has been a weak point.

That’s why this year we need to start thinking more about WHO and WHERE we want to reach with our content, which in turn will dictate how we create content.

This also includes educating ourselves and understanding how the biggest platforms work and how we can leverage them in the best way possible to reach our people.

We also want to keep on improving the quality in terms of putting ourselves as a consumer of our content and understand how we can provide the most value, hence making it worthwhile the consumption.

Quantity is another thing that we want to increase, balancing it with quality and finding smarter and more efficient ways to create and distribute content, while also juggling it time-wise given our day jobs.

A stronger focus on LinkedIn

We are all about communicating and creating products for people that are building businesses and want to leverage entrepreneurship for their personal independence as well as bringing a positive change in the space they are creating in.

Our target group combined with the still good organic reach and network effect of LinkedIn (what Facebook had in the beginning and what Instagram is starting to lose) makes us want to be very active on it, while it’s still in the positive swing of the algorithm game.

Copy overhaul on weardulo.com

Branding, WHO we want to speak to and HOW is going to be another focus, so that will inevitably lead to a copy, as well as a design overhaul of our website weardulo.com

Exclusive drops/collections

We have some ideas around creating exclusive collaborations with people we admire and want to develop a win-win partnership with, for both parties, in terms of business, brand and positive change for the things we respectively care about.

There are a few names in mind that we will start approaching after figuring out our next product iteration that we’ll keep a secret for now, but will let you know once anything is concrete :)

So here it is, the initial wave of focus points for 2019. Some will change, some will stay, as they always do in the process of learning and building a business from scratch.

Thank you again for reading our posts and following along and let’s get to work ;)

Check out our performance dress shirts at weardulo.com. Follow us on Instagram.

Origins #92 — Plans for 2019 was originally published in The Needle on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Just keep showing up.

In this series we are documenting the journey of building DULO, starting from Day 1. Every week we publish a new chapter that takes you behind the scenes of our process. With every article we want to provide value to you, the reader. We share the success and failures, the opportunities and the challenges that we face while executing our vision.

If you are new, check out our previous post.

For the last blog of 2018, I want to share some thoughts on the year passed when it comes to building DULO and why we are super pumped for 2019 to get here!

Overall, 2018 was a very humbling year that taught us a lot of discipline and patience.

At the beginning of the year, we were only a few months in after launching our website and on the sales side it was quite slow, March, especially with 0 orders :D, Talk about being humbled :D

On the content side, it was also quite slow, as the only people consuming our content were friends and people we generally knew, with very few, if any, organically built audience.

Having said that, during those periods of low sales and not much progress on building a following there was one theme that was the key to finishing the year much stronger and very positive.

We showed up.

We kept on creating content.

We kept on experimenting.

We kept on trying to find our audience.

We kept on trying to nail our branding.

We kept on trying to get sales in.

We learned to be patient.

We learned to be disciplined.

Having said that, if I had to summarise the most important words for DULO in 2018 it would be PATIENCE and DISCIPLINE.

The notion of doing the work that needs to be done, without getting any visible results in the beginning, without anyone watching, is the only way to build the work ethic that will allow us to build something substantial in the long-run.

Being bootstrapped we also had no money to throw at anything, so every move had to be creative and cheap so that we can afford to make as many moves as possible until we start seeing some data points of the things that worked and the things that didn’t.

We are still very very early in the process, but there is a few more people reading our blogs, a few more people watching our vlogs, a few more people listening to the podcast, a few more comments, a few more people following on social media, a few more people engaging with our content in general and a few more clients and people wearing a DULO product.

A few more X a few more X a few more in a few more years becomes substantial.

Thank you for your support during the last year, we look forward to many more years of building this company with a community around it. We are just starting and we will not disappoint you.

Charged with even more discipline and patience, 2019 here we come 🔥

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Origins #91 — Wrapping up 2018 was originally published in The Needle on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.