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This is where I am 6 months after leaving my 6 figures job

After thinking about it for months, 6 months ago I made it official and left my 6 figures job (115k $) to focus on my own projects. Most things didn't go as planned, but I've learnt a lot, readjusted some things, and don't regret my decision.

Why I left my job

One year and a half ago, I accepted a new position in a newly created startup. I would earn a similar amount of money that in my previous role with more responsibility, but I was going to jump to a remote position. That allowed me to become a nomad and save a lot of money—a dream.

In one year, we released the product from scratch, iterated and got an exciting amount of funding $$$. But I was doing my job in autopilot mode and without any motivation as I was doing in my previous role. And before that. And in the previous one. The product didn't motivate me. The money didn't motivate me.

Working in autopilot is something very scary in general, but maybe more when you are a designer and you are supposed to be the creative guy who leads the design team. I was tired of work, and I was tired of design. Was that feeling of losing my life, boredom and meaningless work going to be there forever?

The hyper specialisation mentality inside the market made me focus solely on design and ultimately made me feel like shit. I'm not a specialist, and happily, I've learnt that's fine. I've been coding here and there since I learnt 8 years ago, so I felt ready enough for the challenge of building my own stuff.

My initial plan

When I took the decision, I had savings for 3 to 5 years, and I already had started building my first startup GouBlue with some friends.

At that moment, my idea was to combine a big bet with other small bets, spending half of the time in GouBlue and half of the time trying to make other small products as an Indie Hacker.

At the same time, I started my blog nomadsamurai.com, open only for friends, to stay accountable for doing it.

How the plan changed

During these months I had two big surprises that changed the plans completely.

I was leaving Switzerland (I used to live officially there) and all the pain of leaving my apartment in a moment that the contract didn't allow, selling all my stuff and doing all the paperwork frustrated me as I've never been before. I had several friends in Switzerland trying to move from their apartments at the same time, and all of them were suffering hell like me. So I teamed up with one of those friends and founded wetipi to solve the moving problem in Switzerland. We are working now on the MVP with a small team and looks like another big bet project that won't follow the bootstrapped path.

The second surprise came when, even with lots of savings, seeing my bank account going down made some of my nights an almost zero on my sleep account. I was very stressed. So much uncertainty in everything from one day to another made suffered a lot of anxiety. I was not productive, neither happy. Listening to other Indie Hackers, I decided to get a freelance contract to fill some hours per week and cover my expenses. It changed everything for good. I have to say that just filling some hours and having something stable helps a lot. Even if I have less time for my projects, it makes me more productive and focused on them. And I like working with my client.

Too many things, small reset and really starting Indie Hacker path

Trying to make two startups work, working for one client and growing my blog. I've always followed a philosophy of diversification to decrease risks, but those are too many things at the same time to add a small side hustle to it...

That's why I had to reflect on what was important in my life and my objectives, and why I decided to leave my job in the first place. I want to maximise freedom (from, not to).

I started too many big projects. And my desire to working by myself in small projects is not satisfied. So I made certain decisions this month prioritising that:

  • I have abandoned GouBlue.
  • I will continue working on wetipi because I really believe in it and looks like it can work. But it will be my last big bet startup with a >2 people team for a lot of time. (never say never)
  • I will continue freelancing some hours per week for my client for not seeing my wallet going down and have peace of mind
  • Due to the opinions I've received about nomadsamurai blog, I've now opened it to the public to see what happens. I will maintain it as it is now, as a tool for staying accountable and sharing my journey openly, but also as a way of expression, because I've discovered that I like to write. I also opened a Twitter account
  • In January I have already started two small side projects. Even if not much and slowly, I've done more than in these 6 previous months.

I will start building in public and continuing writing on Twitter and my blog. And if I can inspire or bring some value to some readers, that would be awesome!

You can follow me on my Twitter account if you are interested in my journey.

Cheers!

  1. 3

    Good job on reflecting and taking the necessary steps

    Imo it's always good to have inflection points and ideally schedule them upfront.

    I scheduled have goals for 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, 3 years, 5 years where I want to sit down and revisit what I'm doing.

    It's too easy to get lost in the day to day otherwise.

    1. 1

      Thanks, I also try to reflect every month, but as you said, it is necessary to have a broaden picture or you get lost easily!

      1. 2

        Haha yeah sweet. I've done the mistake too often to just keep working on something that wasn't going in the right direction then come out of my cave after 6 months and be like:

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