Feeling down... no progress yet

I spent 8 years to build a product that never saw light.
I took a 6 months break from working, living off savings to build 6 products and write 2 books, and I make ramen money from them.
I bought countless domains, paid for landing page templates, put money in Ads and other services that support my business.
I spend every evening and weekend to write, market, SEO, and build my current SaaS.
I regularly tweet, and post on Mastodon and LinkedIn to build a follower base and learn.

It's a thought process. You can quit and settle on a comfortable, but somewhat limiting, life. Or you can keep going, learning, changing, iterating, failing, and starting again with a chance to get the life you want.

I chose the second one, despite the fact that some days I feel like I want to throw away the laptop and go live on a farm.

Followed you on Twitter, feel free to drop a follow as well @skwee357

Maintaining a startup while working a day job is no small talk. It's admirable how committed you are. I hope you have success and perseverance.

Something that inspired me while in the arena today: "If you're evenly split on a difficult decision, take the path more painful in the short term" - Naval Ravikant

Hey David, can definitely relate!

There are tons of "down" periods when it feels like almost anything you do is insignificant and not leading to results. There's also a major "delayed gratification" aspect to solopreneurship, in general.

I try to remember that every single step IS still a step forward, and as long as I'm taking action, I'm making progress towards results.

Keep it up man 💪

Hey check my history for what’s worked for me in terms of cold LinkedIn stuff. I have a detailed post on it. Happy to connect as well. I’ll add you on X. My handle is aarrrauditor

Did you do user and market research, before making this product?

Love it man❤️,but can anyone help me like stay in a call with me and help me start a good side hustle from home even if it doesn’t make much money a month anything will do i just need a professionals guidance

I understand. But don't be discouraged. The journey is not linear.

Have you tried using your own social media groups to gain feedback?

It's an iterative process. You just need to try unique ways to reach out to people. Maybe go to a Cafe and ask some people on their laptops?

All the best 👍

I connect with this post. Work at a Job, then come home and work on my own projects. Launch them and see 0 to no traction :(

Hi David,

I am sure your sleepless nights would have yielded in progress towards your goals. The key to stay motivated and committed is by looking at the delta from your each iteration. Personally this has helped me a lot.

Don't let down yourself. Let me know if you are up for a call. We can connect and discuss.

Remember that the world won’t stop if you take a week or 2 to have a break and spend some time with family. It will help you reflect and allow you to jump back into the project with a rekindled passion.

I’ll shoot you a follow, feel free to get me @tompwu on twitter

Reading about other people's struggles is what gives me motivation to continue pushing forward. @basilsage Maybe it's a signal that you need to take a night off and spend it with the family or maybe you're discouraged by the lack of visible progress. Either way, feeling down is natural, but this feeling will pass. Next time you feel down, come back to this thread and it'll improve your outlook and give you some perspective. I'm reading the comments and marveling at how hard people try, fall on their faces and get up to fight another day.

As the saying goes, we might not all be in the same boat, but we are in the same storm!

I share the same feeling but I prepared for it. Let's keep our fire @basilsage

Thank you for sharing David. I feel you, I'm in the same situation, been building outside my 9-5 software engineering job. My product is not yet launched and there is still quite some work to do. Let's keep the focus and work towards the long term goal, good luck!

I feel you, David, I also work on my project after day work. Yesterday I created a post on Reddit about my product with a link to a landing page where you can join the waitlist. I got almost 300 visits but only one email on the waitlist. It's very discouraging but as you said it's part of the process. So good luck with your startup.

just keep going!

Hey David, don't worry about the lack of progress. Some of the best ideas come to me in the middle of the night. Keep pushing through!

Oh this sounds too familiar. I have been developing SAAS 2 years just like you before it saw the daylight. Now we're live a bit more than one year and the project is still on the side of my primary work.

You need to think about it as a marathon and not a sprint. Building something takes time. The way I think if I'm very down is that even if I make a small step forward it's better than nothing. Then you look after one year and can be proud of the progress. I have started writing release notes on our website so that I could look into progress myself. It's more for me than customers :)

If you burn yourself, that is hard one to recover from and will set you back 3-6 months with some scars :(

What I found helpful is having very disciplined routine and networking. Routine is individual (I have also a 4 year old kid, making it extra challenging), but dedicate the amount of hours that is sustainable. Take care of yourself, and take at least a day off. Your mind needs rest!

And networking helps to see that you're not alone in this. Everybody is working hard in real life. Avoid social (linkedin, etc), because that just brings you more down seeing how "successful" everybody is, but reality is very different when you talk to them.

Best of luck with your project!

Performance marketing can give you the highest ROI.

Fuck organic social media. Fb ads, Google ads, amazon ads, seo to an extent but rhe amount you need to spend on digital PR or the risk of buying links makes it worse atm. Email can be good depending on the return rate of customers and average buying cycle. Influencer can be good depending on the industry and product.

Stay away form branding and creative, stick with performance marketing. That's what moves the needle for most businesses, until you're in a company that does b2c 10+ mill revenue, branding qnd creative marketing is minor. Tiktok qnd Spotify have pite tial but rn aren't as good as FB and Google for most companies yet.

Let me explain a bit about what am saying. B2B or B2C where the customer doesn’t care about the „lifestyle“. I imagine something like a company selling light bulbs or so. As a customer, when I need a light bulb I will buy a light bulb, I don’t care if a company like Osram have a fancy instagram page. In best case, I see an ad „Best light bulb, cheap, better than the competition“ and I click on the ad. No fancy stuff, just the product. That’s what I imagine, the user meant. And I would agree, stay away from the creative stuff in this case. It’s only costly but brings no real value to this specific audience.

Creating a startup at nights and weekends is a hard and painful challenge. 14 hours work days (8 + 6 night shift) is not easy and not what you can do daily.
When you get to speed with your stuff after getting back home and resting a minute, suddenly you realise it's time to catch some sleep before the morning, but you can't fall asleep as your brain is at full speed now but body overexosted.

After few weeks you get to the hard times of making decision: take a rest, to push harder or to give up.

Then you open your laptop, it is 23 o'clock now and your mind is blank. You seat there, you look at things and you can't move forward.

I guess that's where we meet here.

I think many of us were there. I think this is where most people, especially the wanabe-preneurs never get.

Because it is all that tough, man!

It is great we have this community. We can have high fives here but we can cry into each others arms, get a hug and move on.

I have watched lastly the 'Alone' series (netflix, maybe somewhere else). Every solopreneur should see this (season 5 and/or 6)! All the emontions but also the hard work to set traps (aka products) baites (aka added-value) and disappointment on seeing them empty but limitless joy on catching something (aka getting a paying customer)!

Be strong there, all you creators, makers, entrepreneurs!

Cheers!

That's just a phase. I understand you... Don't worry, you'll get pass through it.

Hey man, I feel you. I’m in the same boat and recently posted about being in a very similar position!

I also had a pretty low moment a couple of weeks ago. I felt stuck, kind of hopeless and like you, doubting whether what I was doing was the best return on the time I was investing.

Much to my initial resistance, my wife recommended a few podcasts to get my head in the right place really helped to re-energise, take a step back and figure out the best next steps (in short, the higher ROI actions).

The ones that resonated with me personally and I found most encouraging were:

• HOW you CAN build your body and mind to take on 2024 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-high-performance-podcast/id1500444735?i=1000640198200
• Casey Neistat - The Untold Story https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/casey-neistat-the-untold-story-i-was-a-homeless-dad/id1291423644?i=1000638145640
• The 2 minute trick that beats procrastination - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-diary-of-a-ceo-with-steven-bartlett/id1291423644?i=1000638650524

TLDR; perseverance wins!

Just keep learning, pivot if needed and learn from the great community around who’ve already been there.

Something else I found helped make things feel manageable and get small wins (if you’re not already doing) is break all of the things I have to do down into small explicitly actionable tasks, and only have max 3 in my to-do list on a Trello board at any one time.

Keep going, we’ve got this.

You are implementing what many dream of and aren't able to work on it. Love your dedication and perseverance. Wish you the best of luck and success!

You're not alone friend thanks for sharing

Dude Im in nyc and down to grab some drinks; coffee / tea / liquor. I'm definitely not near starting but recently gotten into Python | Django and will build 5-10 web apps using mostly Python / Django (maybe streamlit and NiceGUI once comfortable with Django). I have a podcast, Amateur builders, where my co-host and I talk about tech! Also followed u on X btw

Hi @basilsage,

First the bad news:

• A usable / lovable product takes years longer than anyone admits
• Beta testers aren't something you should be attempting to get on a product with known issues
• If you don't really like programming / designing then it will be very difficult to determine if you are wasting your time or not

Now the good news:

• You have a lot longer to finish your product then you think. The "competition" is likely not breathing down your neck because what you are attempting is just so difficult.
• If you do like programming / designing then you can just consider this a hobby that might eventually pay instead of worrying too much about ROI.

I live in California and don't do Twitter but am happy to connect via Zoom if you want a second opinion on your project.