Coming from a software developer background, the ability to make money was pretty attainable. It was hard work at times, but at the end of the day I was pretty much always employable. That is still very much the case. With entrepreneurship the story is much different. Everything is up
Selling is necessary skill when starting a business. Your entire business is selling something to people and them giving you money for it. You are not only selling a product, but you are selling your brand, yourself, and the company. This will be a new skill to acquire for me,
After a relaxing week long vacation I am back doing the damn thing. As much as I felt like I should be working, it was important to take a break and reflect on my next moves. I mentioned in a previous post that I was exploring starting a vending machine
When I run my ideas by people, I like getting grilled. I want them to ask tough questions so I can refine and iterate quickly. Ideally, I’d like to continue doing this daily, especially at the start of building a business. As much as I think I know, there&
An update on this blog. Initially I wanted to keep this as a pseudo diary to keep track of my journey through entrepreneurship. So far, I have written 44 entries. That is pretty good. It hasn't been everyday but it's been about 5 times a week.
In the past I have fallen into bad habits where I don't follow up or respond in (what I think) is a timely manner. Sometimes it's hard to stay on top of things due to life's responsibilities that seem to pile on. Creating systems
As my entrepreneurial career begins in earnest I am starting to gain clarity on what it means to me. I like the idea of being a solopreneur, but am starting to realize the importance of having like-minded people to work with. In the past 48 hours I have had two
I've always had trouble asking for help. For most of my life—both in school and at work—I spent too much time not asking for help when I could have really used it. Recently, I've been working on changing my mindset around this. Instead of
Sales has always been an anomaly to me. The way it is depicted in media, television, and movies makes it seem like it involves the scummiest people and always ends up with a loser. The salesman is usually wearing a fancy suit, perfectly quaffed hair, and a bunch of material
It's a new month (I know we're 9 days in), so it's time to set a new audacious, yet achievable goal. Instead of building an application this month, I am going to explore creating a real business that makes money. Maybe trying to make
The pressure to make money is slowly mounting on my conscience. Since being laid off, I have not felt too much of it, but as the days and months go on the reality becomes much clearer. The tech industry and job market at the moment are not as strong as
Over the past few days I have struggled with motivating myself to keep working on this project. I have gotten some good feedback, but obviously nothing that makes it seem like I have a business on my hands. That's ok. The primary focus of this project was to
As of right now I am the least busy I will ever be. The entire set of possibilities is open to me. Over the past 3ish months I have been exploring almost every opportunity that I have come across. Everything from car washes and vending machines to software startups and
One of the weaknesses I am trying to work on is frontend styling. Nowadays there's so many frameworks and libraries to choose from that I have gotten by without really diving deep into styling and CSS. I could probably continue doing that for the rest of my "
Time for the next phase. I made my first goal of launching a project in to the world (see here). This week I want to dedicate some time to styling and making it look slightly more professional rather than a site you might see from the late 90s or early
With this project progressing well, I’ve reached a point where I can take pride in a small accomplishment: I finally have a successful side project. In the past, I might have stopped here, content with the achievement, and moved on with my life. I would probably have stopped working
As long as one person uses this game, I would call it a success. Today, we can indeed call it a success. Not only that, but I also received some useful feedback on simple updates I can make to improve the experience. By conducting a pseudo "user interview"
Today is the first day of the rest of our lives. The first launch, albeit soft, was made all the way to the interwebs. Right now, anyone anywhere in the world can play this game. Perhaps this is the start of something extraordinary. Maybe? Probably not, but it does feel
Things are getting exciting around here. Launch day is just around the corner. There's no more features I want to commit to building at the moment due to time constraints. I may even set it out into the wild before the launch date. However, September 1 is the
I try to look at events in life as half-full. No matter what it's better to be an optimist and wrong than a pessimist and right. An interesting podcast I listened to today was with Ken Rideout. He seems like just a regular guy, much like myself. He
It's been exciting to set a goal for myself of launch this project in 2 weeks (I started it before, but I'm not counting that). I am currently listening to a podcast with Pieter Levels. He started many startups/side projects that turned into businesses including,
It was a good day. As I progress through this project I realize I need to take advantage of momentum. With a tight deadline like September 1st I need to make as much progress as possible daily. This isn't to say I need to burn the midnight oil
For as long as I have been involved in technology as a profession, trips to Hacker News have been a daily occurrence. It provides entertainment and education on what is happening at the bleeding edge of technology. Each day, there are interesting blogs, videos, and articles about everything from entrepreneurship
After the demo yesterday I started feeling more motivated to finish this project. A lot more can be learned from letting a product run free in the market. In the age of the internet it seems easier than ever to get something off the ground. I also don't
I finally decided to show this tiny project to a family member to get some much-needed feedback. This led to a significant realization for me: I can start gathering feedback on my idea and project before even launching anything. However, care is needed to ensure I don't change
In the stage this project is in I should use any and every tool to my advantage. I want to get as quickly as possible to a shippable product, usually referred to as an MVP. Launching fast and iterating is a skill I want to work on. Building in public
Sometimes it takes hours, if not days to find a bug in a codebase. It starts with the recognition that something is wrong or not working as expected. A moment of panic creeps in, but I quickly realize nobody cares and no money is on the line with this project.
As this project progresses, the complexity starts to creep in. I am now at the point where I can start thinking about persistent data stores and game logic. Tackling the data store issue was what I spent most of my day on. My main focus has been finding a solution
After a weekend in the woods of West Virginia, I have finally recovered from the 15 mile trail relay race. It taught me that preparation is key. If you want to put on a good performance make sure the hay is in the barn. Just like software development, endurance is
If I had to choose a couple of quotes to explain Stoicism, this would definitely be on the list. For me, it can be difficult to keep things in perspective when starting a project like this. As much as I want it to be perfect, it's much better
Getting back into coding has been fun. The last gig I worked on was in React and React Native. It's been fun and interesting learning more outside the context of "work." I don't have anyone to answer to about my progress except myself. There
Creating guardrails for my own projects has helped me get started and stay committed to making progress. Being deliberate about what I want to accomplish every day motivates me to make sure something gets done each day, no matter how large or small. When I have set goals in the