I quit my job 3 months ago with 12 months of savings. Here is my plan and the project I'll start with.
After reading the article "The Stairstep Approach to Bootstrapping" , I decided to focus on the following plan.
So far I've been a design agency co-founder (120k ARR), design leader for 5M+ users product (ticketswap.com), but it's my first time as an IndieHacker.
I set for myself two goals for these months:
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Grow my network and build meaningful long-lasting relationship with like-minded people in the tech industry.
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Disconnect my time from my income as much as possible. Stop selling my time and start selling products that will generate passive income.
Why?
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Bigger network = more opportunities. The more people I know and have mutual trust with, the more opportunities will show up. My favourite quote is "your net-work is your net-worth"
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Passive income = freedom. On top of this I'll learn how to build, market and sell products.
Keeping the stairstep approach in mind, the best way to start for me is to make a course on one of my biggest achievements in life.
"How I built a design agency, dropped out of university and reached €120k ARR"
This course will ignite the fire for me and will teach me how to ship, price and sell a simple product. The audience is clear and easy to identify so it feels like a good first shot. Once it's live I can focus on marketing and start building the next course. My goal is at the end of these 12 months to own at least 50% of my time.
What do you think?
i think a lot of ppl have the goal to get to passive income. do you have a product idea yet, or a process you think will thrash out that idea?
No, I didn't have any idea when I quit and decided to do this part of my journey. At this moment I am working on a course and in the same time I have some SaaS ideas I would like to explore.
Also I ll start doing a bit of freelancing in the next months as a side thing to provide me more stability since so far there has been no income for me from products.
Hey Jim, sounds like a good plan.. There is always a lot of conversations around making a "small" product first (and some people disagree), but I think from a purely mental perspective it's a great idea. Good luck
Thanks! it's exactly what you said. I think it comes to finding the strategy that works for you as a person. There is no golden rule that everybody should follow imho. In my case I am too inexperienced and afraid to go for a SaaS product that's why I took a step back and decided to teach myself marketing + sales by keeping product development complexity low. Iterating on a design course for example is way easier for me than pivoting a SaaS web app on my own. :)
Thank you for sharing this! The stairstep approach to bootstrapping is amazing!
No problem happy I helped!
Good luck Jim!
Thanks man!