After three years "wanting" to be an indie hacker, I'm going after my dream job

Three years ago, I quit my full-time job to explore entrepreneurship. However, I have not been very serious about indie hacking until a couple of months ago. Therefore, I did not make enough progress I want to have, and I want to share the lessons I learned from the past three years.

Right after I quit my full-time job, it became a reality that I no longer had a steady income every month. I did my Math, and I knew I had enough savings for at least three years. I was still anxious about money, so I decided to be a part-time consultant - I can still have some income to make me feel safe. I spent most of my time finding freelancing work. It takes time to find freelancing work, but I find something with my experience and reputation. This is my first lesson: I have the experience and skills people are willing to pay me. Freelance work does not come to me all the time, but it eventually comes to me. I do not need to panic and desperately find gigs. I could spend a lot of those time working on my project.

After I started doing freelancing, I became too busy. I had no boundary between my freelancing time and my project time. I ended up joining a start-up full-time after three months. For a very good reason - I want the experience of being part of building a start-up. I did gain so much experience and enjoy the process of building products for the start-up. However, I was so unsatisfied with my life. I worked 80+ hours a week, plus 5 hours of freelancing. After a year, the start-up was more stable and established, so I quit the start-up job. I decided to focus on myself. This is my second lesson: I learned that having boundaries is important. I need to prioritize my need and my dream first before taking care of others' needs and dreams - actually, their needs and dreams are not my priorities.

I soon found a consulting gig at an agency with good work and life balance. Bill by hours forces me to have a boundary. I can only give so many hours within a project; otherwise, I blow up the budget for the client. I ended up committing 40 hours a week and worked on my side project 20 hours a week. In the previous burnout experience, I learned that I have to take care of myself. I don't want to put myself in that situation anymore. However, I noticed my side-project quality is poor. I react to my ideas without thinking them through. I did busy work for nothing. At the same time, I see a pattern for my last three years' behavior - I tend to address all the busy work - consulting or full-time job first, then deprioritize my side-project a lot. For me, it is tough to say no to consulting and take on a full-time job. Everyone around me has a full-time job, and I should have one too.

This was my most significant mind shift last year:

1. I need a community to support me. I was so lonely in this journey and went back and forward with a full-time job, full-time consulting, and indie hacking. I was looking for belonging from the wrong community - of course, people who want a full-time job think having a stable full-time job is the right decision. Indie hacking - is not smart because I could make a significant amount of money with my engineering background working at a corporation. I could argue it is just a different lifestyle choice, but a lot of these behaviors I had were about finding belonging in a community.

2. I need to invest my time and money in indie-hacking if I want it to be my career. Instead of thinking, "I am losing money because I put hours that I can bill clients into a side-project that does not generate money." I shift my mindset to "I am investing in my indie hacking future." I truly believe put in enough time and energy, I will create a digital product that generates a steady income. In addition, I start paying for services and classes for things I am not good at - marketing, business, accounting, design, etc. Sometimes it works out; sometimes it does not. But as long as I make sure it is a manageable risk, I am willing to invest. I ended up finding someone who could be an excellent long-term business partner. At the same time, I gained so much experience and knowledge about other things in business - this helps me identify whether the people I hired did a good job.

All these lessons I learned are about understanding myself, identifying why I have the thought, and being intentional to make a mindset shift to change my action. It is a long journey, but it helps me have the courage to say no to more consulting hours, prioritize building a digital product company, and go after my dream career.

PS: Speaking of this, I am currently looking for a mobile UX/UI designer for my product MicMentor. If you are interested in helping me re-design the app. Please DM me.