Frequently Asked Questions or FAQ

 

What is MarketingWeekOrProductionWeek (MPWeek)?

 

MPWeek is a tool for solo founders to structure their time so that both production AND marketing activities happen.

 

If you are a solo founder trying to make a side project into a real business then you are inherently going to struggle with "what do I do when?" and MPWeek answers that question for you.

 

Why do I need MPWeek?

 

I've been a solo founder most of my career and what I have seen is that I either want to do the production work for my business -OR- I want to do the marketing work -BUT- I never want to do both.

 

MPWeek builds an agile like weekly cadence for you -- one week you do marketing and the next week you do production.

 

This is Really Simple; Do I Need This?

 

Well, honestly, that's up to you. Personally as a startup founder, I have always struggled between when do I write code (my production work) and when do I tell the world about it (my marketing work). What I have seen is that I'm dramatically more productive now that I know "Ok this week I'm writing code and next week I'll market the results of that code.".

 

The simple fact that I can just go to the url:

 

marketingweekorproductionweek.com

 

and be told whether I should be doing marketing or coding is simply invaluable to me.

 

What is Marketing Week?

 

Marketing Week is when you are doing activities that are marketing your product or service.

 

What is Production Week?

 

Production Week is when you are doing activities that are producing your product or service.

 

But My Product Isn't Ready Yet -- Do I Need to Do Marketing?

 

Marketing is the act of creating demand for a product or service. Part of that demand creation is nothing more than market research and if you're a product creator, that market research is absolutely essential to your success.

 

Let's say for example that you were using the new OpenAI technology to create a new product. While you might think "Oh I need to write code every spare minute I have to get this to market", with MPWeek, you'd structure that into alternating weeks where you might work as follows:

 

During your marketing weeks:

 

• Go on Reddit to research possible markets for your new product
• Talk to a potential customer about their needs
• Examine a competitor

 

During your production weeks:

 

• Write a new feature based on your reddit research
• Implement a feature even better than your competition
• Build the needed infrastructure

 

As a pretty hard core software engineer, I often want to do nothing but write code and build the "best" product but that tends to result in a product that ignores market realities. MPWeek helps keep me better connected to actual users by bringing necessary marketing work into the product creation process.

 

What Features Does MPWeek have?

 

MPWeek has essentially three features:

 

1. It keeps track of alternating weeks from the moment you start using it and centers your life around a marketing and then production cadence.
2. It lets you define your projects (a project is something you create) and then build tasks for each project.
3. It lets you have a great feeling when you complete a task. We've noticed that a lot of founders are somewhere on the ADHD spectrum so we wanted to make it feel great when you say "I'M F*ing Done!" .

 

I Have Multiple Products; Can I Have Different Cadences for Each?

 

Nope! What I have found is that all startup activities are inherently additive -- if you are doing marketing work one week, the marketing work you do for project 1 will likely help you with project 2. Similarly if you are doing production work on project 1, that might help you with project 2.