Thank you IndieHackers for reigniting my entrepreneurial fire, it’s been back as a little ember for a few months now but in the last couple of weeks of browsing your stories and posts the kindling has caught and we are off to the races again!
Since I was a teenager I knew a 9-5 wasn’t for me, every step I have taken since I was 15 has been to avoid the situation I have been in for the last 18 months. I ran a product and manufacturing business for 8 years after uni that was low key successful but never really hit product market fit, we had a bad month in Feb 2019 that really exposed the core weakness in the business and stopped us dead. Watching 8 years of your life, your heart and soul, disappear in a matter of weeks, is crushing. Telling staff who came back season after season to work for us that it was over, and seeing THEM cry, was crushing. Applying for well over 100 jobs in the following months and getting nothing back was crushing.
If you can’t tell, I was crushed.
I eventually realised that my side projects could get me a developer job. Since shutting down that business I have had two software engineering jobs and am about to start my third. The first one was just what I needed after loosing the business, my head was screwed, I needed a break.
The second was supposed to be a start up in a bigger company - a chance to flex my entrepreneurship product muscles again as one of two devs on the project. But “start up in a bigger company” is not a thing. The unique mix of personal and professional uncertainty that a start up brings is what creates the magic that companies are looking for when they say this. A bigger business just can’t replicate this in a healthy way. The project is a mission and vision wasteland and so I’m moving on again, third times a charm right?
I think 3 roles in 18 months is probably a sign though, time to work for myself again?
I’ve released half a dozen projects over the past decade, apps for factory stock management, fitness, financial planning and surveys.
All have flopped.
Deep down I knew these products would flop so I always dressed it up as a chance to “learn this new technology” to “develop” or to just “express myself” - do you need to sink 300 hours into a fitness app to “learn” a technology?
No!
I have been conflating my hobby of programming with making business progress, the act of building is valuable, therefore what I am building is valuable …. so if I put it out in to the world that value will be realised, right?
Wrong! Building stuff is safe, it’s comfortable and I can delay finding out if it really has value for weeks, months …. even years!
No more!
8 months ago I decided to get uncomfortable, I started making coding posts on Instagram as @allthecode, just educational carousels to begin after a few months I changed to posts of me, my thoughts and my stories … even embracing things like reels and stories!
I’m proud that I’ve hit just over 2,000 followers in 8 months and 3 awesome things have happened:
Going through Amy Hoy’s Year of Hustle course that IndieHackers recommends in the Getting Started section here has given me the idea for a career switchers guide to getting into coding. As a career switcher myself I know the things needed to prove to an employer that a self taught dev is a good hire. I’ve also kept up a steady stream of interviews in the past 10 months and in 9 interviews have secured 7 job offers (turning down all but 2 if you’re keeping up with the maths here). It is also a product that I know my audience needs as I get many people contacting me through Instagram asking for advice and help, which I gladly give.
I can think of a dozen reasons why this could fail and because there will be no coding involved my brain really wants me to listen to those reasons and not do it, it clearly wants its dopamine hit from coding!
So, this is my public declaration that I am going to build a product for an audience who are already listening to me, I won’t write a single line of code for it and I will build it following the Year of Hustle process.
I understand you perfectly, I understand the fire in your chest and your understanding of life and the desire to do something new, the same thing is happening in my head right now, I want to create my own applications to make https://androidbughunter.com/ them better every day and be just a happy person for that to do my favorite thing without any problems, I use the site for thousands of applications for bugs
Great to know I'm not alone in feeling like this
Lets go 🤙
getting going 😀
This comment was deleted 10 months ago.
Thanks, that's the plan