Big news: I’ve just launched my very first digital product – an experiential digital Soul Food cookbook! This isn’t just any cookbook; it’s a guide to creating a cultural experience while cooking.
The road to this launch was anything but smooth. These past few months have been a rollercoaster, with life throwing many hits. From Internet outages because the bills were piling up (yeah, that happened more than once), from health challenges and friend drama spilling into my space – it felt like the universe wast testing what it takes to break me down.
This past weekend, knocked down by sickness and stuck in bed for four days, I felt frustrated. I remembered how I’d planned to release this digital gem at the end of 2023. Sadly, that didn’t happen. This weekend I said to myself, look you have internet and electricity, and your email is working, you got this, you can get it done!
That’s the beauty of digital products. Even bedridden, I managed to whip up half of my cookbook using just speech-to-text. These recipes weren’t new; I’d been tweaking them during my culinary adventures. But I wanted this cookbook to be different – an immersive experience.
Creating this cookbook in 24 hours was a hefty task. My head was bursting with features I’d dreamed up, but reality check – bringing them all to life in one day was a stretch. In my last 6-11hours, I realized the vision I had could not be complete, that I needed to prioritize. I’ve been in the indie maker space for so long, and I totally forgot about the minimal viable product that I learned from books like Make Book by Pieter Levels. That I didnt need a complete product, I needed to create a baseline product, flesh out the special features and try to get feedback and traction from that!
So, I turned to folks on instagram who’ve been following my culinary journey, and thought, “Why not open up for pre-orders?” So here’s the deal: the main content is baked and ready for the pre-order crew, who can gain access to text version.
I’m thrilled to have taken this leap. As a motivator I tweeted I’d pay someone the last $3 in my account if I didn’t pull through with the launch in 24hrs. 😅
Looking ahead, I’m buzzing with excitement. I’ve got two or three more cookbook ideas simmering on the back burner, and I’m envisioning a community for folks like myself who want to elevate our cooking game, no matter our budget or circumstances.
Stay tuned for the lessons I learned in this 24hr build and product launch!
Check out the cook book here!