Nearly no move is irreversible. Not working on a project of your own doesn't mean you won't ever in the future

This post was originally a reply to @jrleonr on this post. He's in a difficult situation right now, running out of money and having no asset to capitalize on. I shared what I would do in his situation as it resonates with my personal experience. But my answer is actually a general response to a broader question: what to do when you are in a tough (financial) situation but refuse to quit?

I have been in a similar situation 4 years ago, when my first child was born. Although not on the verge of bankruptcy, I was trying to create a product that never took-off. I was slowly but surely running out of money. I needed a plan B.

But what was the next best move (Disclaimer: I am an INTJ so I'm constantly thinking in terms of strategic moves 😇)?

Counter-intuitively, life is not like a chess game. When you loose a piece at chess, it's lost forever (and you're probably in a worse situation than before). You start with a lot of pieces that you loose over time. Life is the opposite: you start with little and you compound as much as you can. The velocity at which you progress depends on a cursor you put on a 'risk/reward' gauge. Feeling financially comfortable + no kids + plenty of ideas? → you can afford to set the cursor on high risk. Struggling financially or having people in charge who need care? → you probably should set the cursor on the less risky side of the gauge.

But the most important thing is: the cursor is ADJUSTABLE! It's not set forever. You set it based on your present situation and the foreseeable future. What you are obligated to do now doesn't obliterate your future -iif you bear in mind your long-term goal-.

It took me a while to figure this out. I always thought doing non entrepreneurship work would be a failure. But when things fall apart, it's better to have a flexible mindset than blindly stick to your principles.

Having all this in mind, this is what I did four years ago and my advice if you are in a similar situation : As a short-term solution I updated my LinkedIn profile with key words like "C++ developer" and "back-end engineer" (which I was pretty decent at) and my phone started ringing like crazy.

Head-hunters actually have alerts when new people in a given area amend their profiles with certain keywords. If you have listed your coordinates appropriately, they will call you.

After only two weeks, I was working within a new team as a freelancer. Head-hunters take a (rather big) commission on the deal, but you still have a very decent amount of money left on the table. They ask for your daily rate (DR) and ask for DR x 1.3 to the final customer (x1.15 is the bear minimum), ≥ 1.3 they get a bonus). Don't be too greedy, having an hourly paid job is better than no job at all, all you have to do is working 1 or 2 extra h / week to align with your expectations if you didn't get as much as you expected.

You can also ask for head-hunters to add you to their list, where they send every job offer they have to find someone for. I did, got subscribed to approx. 4 lists and I have received 847 opportunities at this time of writing over 4 years (I sort them in a special e-mail folder).

In addition to paying the bills, it will also buy you time. By not constantly having to think about money, you'll retrieve time to self-audit why you didn't succeed until now, and what to do next. Your stress will decrease and that will help you take better decisions.

The second benefit from working in a team on someone else's project is that you'll start noticing some real problems the company faces and how it deals with it in real-time. This could give you some bankable problems to think about / solve and hypothetically an early customer to test it ("Look I've designed this on my spare time to solve XXX we are struggling with").

Nearly no move is irreversible, not working on a project of your own doesn't mean you won't ever in the future. You have an urgent short-term problem to solve right now, in the few coming months (finding a decent source of income). Solve that, buy yourself time, decrease your stress, assess what went wrong, and go back to your ideas when you are better armed.

Good luck everyone!