Ask IH: Has anyone experienced being rock bottom?
I often think that everyone has hit rock bottom. What caused it and how you recovered from it?
I often think that everyone has hit rock bottom. What caused it and how you recovered from it?
Yes, twice. Both were startups or endeavours that I poured my WHOLE life into and were doing well, and were then basically gone overnight.
How do you recover? Realise you’re still alive and healthy, you have people depending on you, and that you have a choice...
You can wallow in self pity and blame your situation on the universe.
OR
You can move onto the next thing.
I've been trying so many projects but it's always been either that no one find it interesting or it already exists. I'm still trying. I launched anyone and see if people like it.
"... or it already exists ..."
So?
Your product will not sell itself. It has to be sold.
How many types of car exist in the world?
Accounting packages?
Cheeses?
Cleaning products?
....
Wines?
Word-processing software?
Zebras?
Almost everything already exists. However, if you have created a good product or service which fulfils a genuine need, then the only person standing between it and financial success is you.
Now you have to become a businessman.
Now you have to sell.
Yes, that's true.
I may be getting the wrong end of the stick here, but launching products and having them not take off is ABSOLUTELY NOT hitting rock bottom.
If you think that’s rock bottom then you’re doing well in life.
Oh right. Thanks for the cheer up :)
In the early days of my freelancing career I came very very close to having no money. There was a month where I had about $50 in the bank and was experiencing stress because my friends were wanting to go out to eat and spend $10 on food.
It really sucks to be strapped for money, and it definitely changes your mindset. It made it harder to make rational decisions. It costs more to be poor since you can buy things that'll save money later (higher quality things for example). It's part of what makes me really want to help other people find good jobs, whether indie or not.
I also took a year off at one point to make a go at a SaaS and burned through $30k of savings with little to show for it. That sucked and was definitely demoralizing. I think it did though contribute to my current opinion that it's much safer to hold some kind of part time remote freelance work on the side until you can make your product business work. It's a nice compromise between trying to juggle products and a full time job, but it can lengthen your runway significantly depending on your burn rate.
Freelancing is one of the most efficient methods of making money I know of, even if the ceiling for income is lower than with products. But, the ceiling is still pretty high especially for developers!
Currently I work ~20 hours a week on 4 different small client projects and spend the rest of my time working on the business I "care about" without money pressures.
What freelancing service do you use and recommend for beginners?
I've gotten a job or two from Upwork, but it wasn't my favorite setup.
I found a job or two from the monthly Hacker News who's hiring freelancers thread, always worth checking.
But all of the best freelancing jobs I've gotten were from relationships:
One job: sitting in a coworking space and a person said "You said you were freelancing, I'm taking a full time job, want my client?" I've worked with this client for 3 years now.
Another job: I emailed a person saying thanks for writing this cool article about niching. My niche is Django web development. Other person emails him says same thing. Person shows other person my website. Person joins my mailing list. I see person and send email saying hi what's up. They say "Person said you do Django, so do I." We chat. Two months later "my client needs another Django dev, are you interested?" They are my primary client now.
A third job: Someone was interested in freelancing so I took them out for coffee and we chatted. 3 months later they emailed "I didn't end up being a freelancer, want this client?" They were my primary client the first half of this year.
My best advice for someone starting out is:
Determine what you are offering. Specialize in some way. "Developer" is not as good as "Web Developer" is not as good as "Django Web Developer." To start out niching into a certain technology is a pretty good choice. Rails, React, Wordpress are strong choices if you don't have a preference and are in webdev.
Build a simple website that explains what you do.
Increase your "luck surface area." The jobs I got above were "luck" but I increased my luck by talking with lots of people. In person works well but if you are intimidated by in person networking email seems to work as good or better.
Any time you enjoy something a person writes, send them an email and thank them. If you meet a person at a meetup, send a followup email and say it was nice to meet you. If you see someone post something interesting on Indie Hackers, find their email and say hi. Reply to comments like the one I posted (you are already networking!). If you make it known somehow what you are interested in freelancing about, and tell other people, you may eventually find yourself being referred.
There's a lot more to this but this is the core idea of what I'd do to find work now. And, this method takes time so I advise not quitting your job and diving into freelancing immediately. But over time it yields a lot higher quality clients in my experience.
Would love to chat more if you have any other questions! My email's in my profile.
This is specifically for financial rock bottom. I've also experienced a good ol' fashioned existential crisis, and those are fun. I've found a whole lot of help in that regard from Stoic philosophy and Buddhism. Going out on your own seems to often force a level of introspection that triggers thinking about the meaning of everything and your place in the universe and that can be scary to work through, but I ultimately feel much more existentially healthy now than before I was forced to deal with all of that.
Some books that have helped me:
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking
And counter-intuitively An essay called The Gervais Principle about the true nature of companies
Hey Azhan!
I think you can find answers to your problem, in this article 👉 https://andrewchen.co/after-the-techcrunch-bump-life-in-the-trough-of-sorrow/
Thanks.
By Rock Bottom -- do you mean that you've just reached the limits of your own (current) abilities?
Sort of. I've tried the maximum potential but doesn't seem to attract many customers.
Do something else. If people don't like it immediately, you're in the wrong business for a solo person.
Imagine you made a special flavor ice-cream that nobody would try just hearing it, seeing it, or smelling it.
You literally couldn't get them to taste it.
Finally, you convince somebody to taste it -- and they LOVE IT! It's the best ice-cream they've ever tasted.
They tell all their friends. Nobody cares. They don't to try it.
What do you do?
Thinking of one. What's your opinion about using the same domain with a different website?
I suggest you open a Google Doc -- share it publicly here. Tell us what the details are of what you're trying to accomplish, what you've tried, why you think it's not working etc.
I could do.
Everyone has a different rock bottom. Humans generally perceive their worst as THE WORST, regardless of how bad it is objectively speaking. Do you have this feeling now? What happened, if so?
My rock bottom was about six years ago. I had just bought a house with my SO, but a month in I found out she was cheating on me. We tried to patch it up for a year, but couldn't, and had to sell the house at a pretty substantial loss. I took out a loan to pay my part, started working really hard, but (in retrospect) got caught up in depression and began a pretty terrible relationship, making it all worse.
I got out of it by tackling one thing at a time. First: figure out a way to tackle the debt. I made steady progress on it, month by month, and managed to pay it off in two years. Second: realise that the new relationship I was in was horrible. I didn't know it because I had forgotten what a good relationship was. Took friends and my now wife to help me understand that. Third: heal. This is the hardest.
It took me a few years, but now I have a wonderful wife, a lovely son, solid financials and a strong psyche again. You just have to tackle one thing at a time and make progress every day. Some days it's a small thing (like making your bed), and some days it's a big thing (like finally paying of the last of your debt). But over time it all adds up, and one day you'll realise you're not at the bottom anymore.
It's good to see you're doing fine now. I guess breaking it down makes it easier to overcome.
Try to understand why you are down. Is it because you have run out of money or is it because of some other issue.
For me it was having a good product in hand but ur Ming out of money. I came out of it by borrowing from friends and family at no interest.
Identify what's the root cause of your feeling and emotion and try to solve it.
Once you do it you will be fine.
Remember you are not alone and the Indie Hacker family is behind you.
I would say it's money than anything else.
I know and I can relate to it because I have been through this. I had a growing SaaS product but no money to sustain the company and myself. It was tough.
Do not loose hope. Try to borrow money from friends or family. See if you can sell some jewels to raise money.
If not take up a part time work and take care of your survival.
Figure out a way to solve your financial problems. Please avoid high interest loans.
Have faith and keep hope. All the best.
Yes. I am not religious in any sort of way at all, but I kid you not it got to a point where I got down on my knees and genuinely prayed to God. And a voice in my head answered and told me what to do. That is how you get out of rock bottom. Stop talking about how the way you would like it to go, start listening to the way it will actually go. That 'God' or inner voice is your guide.
I do that to help me recover.
The universe responds to being asked. It does not respond well to being told. You must keep asking it and your being will put together piece by piece in order to achieve or accomplish what you have asked of it.
What's kind of rock bottom are you referring to? Personal or related to a product/service you're running? Huge difference (or not).
Your product is not getting any customers, not getting any interests etc...
I see - you'd be better off showing your product here and asking for help in regards to how we can help to help you grow it.
Sometimes it just takes a small change to find product/market fit or make a sale.
In terms of how to cope with it. The best idea is to put the product out there to see if perhaps it's that the product is not something people need. Perhaps you're simply targeting the wrong people. It can go in so many ways.
What's for sure is don't lose hope, there's always a solution or alternative.
Just out of curiosity - what's your background? Tech, marketing, other?
Cheers!
Experiencing it as we speak. Will let you know if / when / how I recover from it.
https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/how-long-do-tough-times-last-09016c0f7f
Thanks. I look forward to hearing about your experience.
This comment was deleted 2 months ago.