M&Ms: Vitamins & Medicine

Why the "Vitamins vs. Painkillers" framing for product building is no good.

I got all worked up and passionate about why the "Vitamins vs. Painkillers" is bad framing for those making & selling things online.

People who build products that resemble vitamins are usually said to be building something that's "nice to have, but not a need to have."

While people who build painkillers are said to be building things that are a "need to have."

But as someone who now makes and sells things online, I think the whole framing is B.S., and it may even be harmful.

To prove it to you, I'd like to tell you about Vitamin C.

You may or may not know, but if you don't get enough Vitamin C for long enough, you develop Scurvy.

Scurvy is a nasty disease.

But don't take it from me. I'll let a survivor from a 16th-century English voyage give you a taste of how bad Scurvy is:  "It rotted all my gums, which gave out a black and putrid blood. My thighs and lower legs were black and gangrenous, and I was forced to use my knife each day to cut into the flesh in order to release this black and foul blood. I also used my knife on my gums, which were livid and growing over my teeth..." This individual was lucky. He survived.

But, from the 16th to the 18th century, an estimated 2 million people died from Scurvy—and to think, all that from a Vitamin C deficiency.

Once people figured out why so much Scurvy was happening at sea, they started carrying oranges, limes, lemons, and anything else with Vitamin C on those long voyages.

One orange may not cure your pain or be a painkiller to you in any way while you walk past the fruit vendor.

But one orange would've been enough to save your life if you were sailing the Atlantic.

Now imagine being an orange salesman on one of those long voyages. To those people on that voyage, oranges aren't just a Vitamin that's nice to have & tastes good. It's medicine that would save their lives.

I've been building a product called smallbets.com, you probably already know. But to some people, this thing might seem like just a vitamin, a nice thing to have.

In fact, many come to our live classes about starting a newsletter, succeeding on YouTube, or how to do marketing, and many of them consume these passively—the same way you & I consume Vitamin D while taking a nice walk in the sun.

And on the surface, it can all seem like just that: a nice vitamin that tastes good.

But I've seen firsthand that this stuff can also be medicine for someone who wants to move on from their job, got laid off, or started their journey into business but is struggling to attract attention to their product.

And this gets at the heart of my problem with the "Vitamins vs. Painkillers" debate.

First of all, there is nothing great about painkillers in the long term. You can see how wrong some of the old product management blogs from the mid-2010s were in labeling products like the Amazon Echo as painkillers (just Google Vitamins vs. Painkillers).

But secondly, from experience, sometimes what's just a vitamin in one setting to one person can become life-saving medicine later to the very same person. And the only thing that changed was the voyage the person was on.

So don't listen to people who might push you away from building what might seem to them like just a Vitamin product. Build it anyway because vitamins are good for people.

But also, don't forget to look for that small group of people who might be on a long sail at sea and for whom your product is life-saving medicine. They’ll appreciate it the most.

---

*Shout out to my friends Terri Lonier & Chris Wong, who helped me think through this idea this week.

For those who don’t know, Terri sold 250k+ physical books back when it was hard to sell books. Terri now writes SOLO, a newsletter to help solopreneurs stand out.

And Chris and I taught people to start a newsletter & even create cohort courses in the Small Bets community together. Chris left a successful finance career behind to go off on his own and writes Unknown Unknowns.

---

Three Things: Intelligence, Envy, and Being Prolific.

Sometimes, you don’t get what you want out of life because you’re overthinking everything about it. Intelligence does this to you.

But being introspective enough to know that you might be overthinking and finding solutions to it is also a part of intelligence.

---

Morgan Housel reminds me of a great saying by Charlie Munger:

“The best way to stop people from envying your success is to deserve it.”

Of course, life is complex and doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes, we just get lucky & there isn’t much to deserve.

But sometimes, we get what we deserve, and when we do, it’s pretty glorious because no one seems to envy a ton of hard work.

---

Those are the people I admire most and aspire to be more like are prolific. My favorite rapper tattooed the word Prolific on his face.

People who are prolific in their writing, in what they make, and in their projects tend to eventually make some things that are pretty great.

---

Three Memes for some laughs this weekend.

“A Feature, Not a Bug.”

---

Servers Need Care, Too

---

When a Meme is a Good Feature.

---

That’s all I’ve got for you this weekend.

—Louie

P.S. You can reply directly to this email; it will get to me, and I will read it.