Transitioning from side project to full-time Founder

As promised, here is an update on my experience of transitioning from working on Geeky Medics as a side project for 9 years to going full time (whilst also moving to Melbourne from England).

It’s now been almost 4 months since I took a leave of absence from my training as a doctor and moved from the UK to Australia to focus full time on Geeky Medics, an education platform for medical students (for more details check out the IH company profile and my milestone about going full time).

Below is a brief summary of my experience transitioning from a long-term bootstrapped side project to being a full-time founder.

THE FIRST FEW WEEKS

One of the first things that struck me when I landed in Australia and began thinking about what I needed to work on was the absolute absence of structure. I felt a sense of intense liberation whilst simultaneously experiencing dread that I no longer had the excuse that this was “only a side project” when I didn't achieve a particular goal.

Back when I was working as a doctor, I’d have a really limited number of hours to work on Geeky Medics, so I always made sure to make them count by prioritising exactly what I needed to achieve. Although challenging, the limited number of hours was useful in that it forced me to focus on 1 or 2 things that would be most likely to move the business forward. After going full-time I found it really hard to know how best to allocate the extra time to move the business forward most effectively. It suddenly became really easy to spend an entire day working on something that, on reflection, really didn't deserve that level of investment. I've gotten more effective at allocating this extra time over the last few months both by continually reminding myself how valuable time is as a resource and by timeboxing tasks.

Something else I didn’t anticipate was how different working on your company feels when you’re suddenly completely dependent on it to pay you a salary so you can survive. It is WAY different from having a side project that is not your primary source of income. When I wasn’t financially dependent on the company, I’d often prioritise tasks based primarily on what I felt like working on that day, which, although nice for you as the founder, probably isn’t the best strategy to build a profitable business.

This financial dependence, although stressful, has been very effective at forcing me to evaluate each task by asking “Will [INSERT TASK] lead to increased revenue?”. As a result, my task prioritisation over the last few months has been much more focused on increasing revenue and growing the size of the business.

On a similar note, I’m also now much more aware of company expenses, asking the question “Do I REALLY need [INSERT NAME OF POPULAR SAAS TOOL] and will it ultimately help to generate more revenue than it costs in monthly fees?”. I hate to admit it, but in the past, I’ve definitely decided to pay for SASS products mainly because they “did cool stuff”.

THINGS I HAVE FOUND HELPFUL

Task management

Todoist
I use Todoist to prioritise tasks I’d ideally like to achieve each day. What I find valuable is the ability to organise your tasks into projects and set levels of priority. This app has done wonders in reducing the cognitive load of trying to remember all of the tasks I should be working on.

Twist
I’ve now been using Twist for a few months as a project management tool to discuss and track development related tasks with my developer. We often will brainstorm feature ideas in Twist and work on them until we reach a relatively well-defined specification, then we’ll open an issue in Github and add the feature specification there.

GitHub issues
Once a feature is in active development, we discuss and track it directly on GitHub, so that we can tie the issue directly to code commits. We also use Github Projects with automation to track and prioritise issues that are currently in progress and those we plan to work on next.

Mental health

Gym
I’ve never been particularly good at going to the gym on a regular basis, however now I control my schedule, I figured I really didn’t have an excuse. As a result, I’m proud to say I’ve managed to go to the gym 3 days a week for the past 4 months! This has made me feel much happier in myself and generally more energised when I’m working on Geeky Medics.

Co-working space
Working from my apartment every day on my own quickly began to feel very lonely and isolating. Now I work from a co-working space for 2-3 days a week and that’s really helped with my overall mood.

Meet-ups
Attending meet-ups is not something I’ve previously done a ton of, however, since arriving in Melbourne I’ve attended two IndieHackers meet-ups which have provided a great opportunity to chat with like-minded individuals and share the challenges I’m experiencing (Thanks IH!).

THINGS I STILL NEED TO WORK ON

Delegation
Before I went full-time I cut back on expenses to ensure the business had enough revenue to cover my own salary. Most of these expenses related to freelancers who were helping with various aspects of the business (i.e. social media, editing of content etc). As a result, for the last 4 months, I’ve been responsible for pretty much everything other than technical development, which has been pretty stressful. Now that revenue has grown, I’m planning on building up a team once again to help share out the workload. This will be particularly important next year (March 2020) as I’m planning to travel through New Zealand and South America, so I’ll need some team members I trust to deal with issues whilst I’m offline.

Work-life integration
Because of the lack of a rigid schedule, work has definitely crept into time that really should be work-free (i.e. time with my girlfriend watching TV, laying in bed before sleep). I’m aware that this isn’t healthy and as a result, I’m working on establishing some clearer boundaries between work and my personal life.

A FEW FINAL LEARNING POINTS

When Geeky Medics was a side project I’d often fantasise that if I went full time and could spend 9 hours a day on the project, rather than the 2-3 hours a day I was managing at the time, I’d get 300+% more work done. In reality, this hasn’t materialised and I’d say that despite having quite a lot more time to dedicate to the project, the productivity gains haven’t followed anything close to a direct linear association with the time I spend working. I suspect that’s because when you have very limited time you focus only on the things that matter most to move the business forward. When you suddenly find yourself with more time, you get to focus on things that aren’t as critical, but these ultimately have a much less significant impact on the businesses progress, meaning your rate of progress doesn’t increase proportionally. I think that’s worth keeping in mind if you’re currently trying to bootstrap something alongside a day job, as you may not be missing out on as much as you think and by sticking at the job, you are financially de-risking things (i.e. you’re not worrying about paying rent).

However, I've found that one of the big benefits of having a consistent amount of time each day to dedicate to your company is the ability to take on much larger initiatives that may span weeks or months. Previously, I’d be context switching so much between my doctor day job and the company that trying to work on a specific project over the course of weeks or months was incredibly difficult and much less efficient (because I’d have to remember where I left off last and get up to speed before continuing to move forward each time). As a result, I’d often think smaller and only work on things I could achieve over the course of a day or two.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! I hope my experience of this period of transition is helpful for those of you who are considering when (or if) you should make the big switch to full-time founder. Feel free to ask any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them!

Cheers guys