$67k in 13 days from a bad product?

Am I dreaming?

I didn\’t realise the power of a personal brand… until today.

I mean, I already have in mind a few creators who are making an impact (and a lot of money) from their personal brands.

And I’m convinced I need to build one, and you need one too. That’s one of the main topics I will discuss here in the coming months.

But there was always something a bit abstract about it. Like if those guys (Justin Welsh, Dan Koe…for example) have some secret I don’t have access to and the money they make comes from years of marketing their products…

And even the connection between their content and how much they make is not clear.

I get it; the more (good) content you make, the more you sell your stuff. That’s simple, not easy, but simple.

But when you create content for years, I guess the correlation between what you publish and the income you generate is not obvious.

That’s why I was a bit shocked tonight when I hopped on Twitter and saw this tweet:

If you don’t know Pieter Levels, he’s a very successful and popular serial saas solo creator.

Yes, that popular.

So this cool guy, from his laptop on his couch (or maybe from a hotel somewhere), made a game, a basic flight simulator, using AI.

He did it for fun to test the latest AI models coding abilities, if I remember the story.

And he published it publicly and posted it on Twitter.

The post went viral — but he has a strong following and many fans, so not that surprising when you combine that with a hot and trendy topic (a little social media marketing lesson for you here).

And voila, 13 days later he reached $67k from sponsors who want to display ads inside the game.

I went to his link for sponsorship:

Yep, $10,000 to put your brand’s name on a cloud or some other object in the game.

Do you still doubt the power of a strong personal brand?

And I repeat: the game is not very good (yet)

I tried, it’s fun for 5 seconds, but that’s it. Nothing wrong with that by the way, he was just doing this for fun, as a coding experiment. He wasn’t trying to launch the next best flight simulator. And he’s improving it every day, so it will become good if he wants to, and thanks for many comments and voluntary contributors.

This is a bonus BIG lesson.

Imagine he spent 2 years (more!) working on this super high-end game.

First, there’s no way he could do it by himself. Those thing require full time teams for years to create.

Second, there would have been a good chance it would have flopped because the gamers didn’t like it or another studio could have released another game even better.

He did what he always did: build and ship fast, even crappy stuff, get feedback, iterate and make something people really want.

So if you’re trying (like me) to create the perfect thing because launching it, here’s a assignement for you:

ship this stuff in the next 15 days. By March 25 max.

Yes you can do it.

Yes, your brain screams it’s impossible. But it’s wrong.

It may be far from the ideal version you have in mind. But doing this will get you closer to this version than working on it for the next 6 months without any chance for the consumers to see it and get their feedback

Ship, learn, improve.

With Love,

Frank