I've had one of those weeks where things popped up all day everyday which needed my attention. It's Friday and I feel like I've had an unproductive week just putting out non-crucial fires. All this guilt over a side project (Makerpad) which has brought in $20k this month (my 'real' job is investing in bootstrappers @ Earnest Capital). So no, I shouldn't feel shitty or unproductive at all.
I saw Derrick Reimer post about "Finding My Next Bootstrapped Business Idea" where he talks about his process of thinking for his next idea. Justin Kan also wrote a short Twitter Thread "Here’s how to build a company (or really do anything challenging) while being happy". This spurred me to think about this in my context and write my thoughts down.
I often revisit what I'm doing and the tasks I have to do for my side-project. I then write my ideals of what I want to be doing in my notes and keep as my mini-blueprint of 'wtf I'm doing'. After this week and those posts, I've got more thoughts than usual so I thought about writing them here.
Makerpad is a no-code focused platform for professionals & creators. This is what they can currently do:
I won't go into the backstory of Makerpad, I talked about it in other places which you can see in the About section.
Earn a comfortable living with some degree of predictable revenue
Money earned does not equal my time
Work on what I love, find interesting and gives me energy. Anything else should be automated through something like Zapier or passed on to a helpful girlfriend.
Shut the laptop at 7pm
Tasks should not be mostly reactive
Avoid scheduling/taking calls at all costs (I run 1-1s with Earnest portfolio which I love, most other calls are unnecessary)
Do not want to rely on employees/contractors
Do not want investment
Do not want growth goals ($30k/mo for 12 months shouldn't be viewed as a 'no-growth' year)
$300k/year - yeah, that is my $ goal. I feel with that income all my money troubles would be gone
Doubling my customer base should not require double the input from me
Sales process should be quick and repeatable (less than 2 weeks to close, with ~2 stakeholders involved and less than 6 emails)
Majority of sales become inbound
Focus sales to businesses and let the consumer memberships grow organically
Continue in the no-code market which is smallish but growing. I also think the wider market is there but untapped yet
Features and new ideas should be shipped within 5 days, preferably a few hours (Makerpad Hire took an afternoon to put together)
Audience is an extension of my twitter following
'Distribution' on twitter shouldn't feel as such. I like sharing about the possibilities and successes of others (in no-code) - think how Austen from Lambda School tweets.
I don't think about tweeting as marketing and would never want that to change
*Compromises will be made some of the time which is fine as long as it remains some of the time.
Here are the sources of revenue I have set up right now:
There's too many and many of the above do not coincide with my above principles of what I want. Here are some thoughts I'm having - feel free to tweet me your suggestions while I work through these.
Any thoughts on any of the above? I'd love to hear them
