Week 43 - got rejected by TopTal, found a new UX coaching client and more!
My strategy and progress
Build a newsletter community of UX-driven makers
By writing practical educational UX content.
Help companies w/ hands-on UX services
By working <= 25h per week and <=8800€ revenue.
Make user testing accessible to small teams
By building a simple affordable micro-SaaS.
What's new
UX newsletter community
I still struggle with publishing my next post. I've spent many hours writing it but I am still not happy with it yet.
I decided to take a step back and asked a friend and community member @nikwen_de to help me with a feedback session.
I realized that my process is finally the problem! I should treat each newsletter article as a mini-product. I should prototype, test and iterate until I have something I am confident with.
I actually did what I advice my community to NOT do. I didn't test it with users 😅
UX freelancing
I got rejected by TopTal because my portfolio wasn't detailed enough 🤨 Here is the link if you want to take a look:
https://www.notion.so/jimzarkadas/Projects-e2299a4b7992428b84b940907992fc01
However something unexpected happened...
@GinoNL reached out to me on Twitter, and made my week. He hired me to help him validate a product idea he is working on! ❣️
We will team-up with the 1-1 UX coaching service I offer and we will start working together next week. Our focus for will be on rapid prototyping and user testing.
In the meantime...
It was the 1st week with https://restocks.net/ the client that I got some weeks ago. It's a sneakers marketplace and I'll design their iOS and Android apps from scratch! 😍
I spent the whole week researching their users and ecosystem. This is the most basic step before designing anything.
By the way, do you remember what I promised you the previous week?
Do you remember I promised to share the contract terms of our collaboration with Restocks? Here it is!
https://jimzarkadas.com/ux-design-services/hands-on-design
You can find everything in there. How many hours I am going to spend, how much money I'll charge, and the terms of the contract. They decided to go with the 3x4h per month.
There is one thing I would like to highlight here...
@AlexAlexakis also introduced me last week, to one of their portfolio companies at @marathon_vc because they need some UX help. MarathonVC is a very popular venture capital firm in Greece, where I come from.
I met Alex via Twitter. I sent him a DM to share my excitement about the quality of the content he creates with his account @StartupPirateGR. We jumped on a call to get to know each other and ended up having mutual respect.
I made sure to stay in touch with him and now, I got an intro and a potential client from him!
Also we met with @GinoNL (my new client), on Twitter.
Networking is powerful and these are great reminders that I should keep it as a high priority.
3/ Think out loud - My SaaS
The last week we worked on the new landing page that we actually deployed a few days ago! Feel free to take a look and join the waiting list if you would like to give it a try!
That's all for last week 😀
Before I close this update, there is one personal highlight I would like to to share with you.
On Thursday I started volunteering for the https://www.projectfearless.org/ It's an after-school activity in Amsterdam for girls (ages 9-14) inspiring bravery & leadership with a community impact, and they use skateboarding as their main medium.
I reached out to them and they gave me the chance to coach a group of young girls and help them land their first skateboarding tricks. I really enjoyed watching them grow through my skills and knowledge. There is something magical into it! Also, working with kids was something really new to me.
If you are new to my journey, on June 2020 I quit my job with a year of savings (32.000€) to chase my dream of becoming a full-time IndieHacker. I had no specific plans or project ideas to work on. Only a goal, some savings and my skills. Since then I share every week what happens behind the scenes.
Feel free to join me on my journey, and to check all the updates I 've published so far!
Awesome post—as always! 👍
:)
This comment was deleted 5 years ago.
All of them reached out directly to be honest.
Restocks found me on LinkedIn and hired because I was the design lead at TicketSwap.com and they wanted all the insights and know-how I have from working there.
My two 1-1 UX coaching clients reached out on linkedin and twitter and I got to know them through the free coaching sessions I did in the past to help fellow IndieHackers. I also kept creating educational content and this acted as a daily reminder to them that I am still working on this and they decided to reach out.
Also some other clients in the past came through introductions of people I met in the past :)
Hope that helps!
This comment was deleted 5 years ago.