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15 Comments

Weekly Check-In (Week 44 - All welcome!)

  1. How did you fare last week?
  2. What's on deck for this week?
  3. What's your goal for the month?
  4. [Optional] Still on target for end of year goal?
  5. [Optional] Brief description of project with link (if applicable)
  1. 3

    Last Week
    Last week was packed full of yeck. A contract I was counting on has failed to come through so I’m increasingly more anxious to get a job. For me, this means following up on first round interviews/code exams and keeping the ball moving forward. It also means applying for everything half decent that comes through LinkedIn, Indeed, and Talent as well as some of the niche specific job boards. So it’s super time consuming and didn’t leave a lot of extra head space for working on my projects.

    I’ve also been running damage control on legendary amounts of drama, which is super distracting and stressful!

    This Week
    I’ve had a couple weeks of not working on my projects full-time so it’s a great time to re-evaluate Lift Academy in general in relation to where the country and market is, see if there have been any reinforcing or diverting shifts in my thesis.

    On Target
    Will see this week!

    1. 2

      It's awful when a contract doesn't come through.
      Sometimes you need to have those in order to be able to keep the rest of the game rolling. These things not going well, then take away your badly needed ability to focus.

      Wishing you a lot of luck this week!

    2. 1

      @Davey it might be worth splitting your marketing website into two sites. I think having separate messaging targeting kids w/ images & language they use would prompt them to sell Lift to the parents. Think about how all those Saturday morning commercials had us begging our parents for cereal, toys, or Chucky Cheese.

  2. 3

    How did you fare last week?

    I think I fared quite well, I had a goal to implement and launch a demo feature for order.ly that I think came out quite well. Any feedback would be great, check it out over at https://menus.order.ly/demo

    What's on deck for this week?

    I made a big backlog of bugfixes and enhancements to accomplish by November 14th, I think that holding myself loosely accountable for a two week sprint might help me stay motivated

    What's your goal for the month?

    By the end of this month I'd like to be printing physical advertising material and to have gone door to door to at least 30 physical businesses.

    I have a backlog of enhancements and bugs that I want fixed before I feel comfortable going and pitching that I have given myself 2 weeks to accomplish, after that I want to do one week of making physical advertisements via business cards / info flyers / whatever we can dream up to get people interested. Week three I want to pitch to around 5 businesses per day heading out immediately after my 9-5 concludes.

    [Optional] Still on target for end of year goal?

    I'd like to have ten paying customers in production by Jan 1st

    [Optional] Brief description of project with link (if applicable)

    A high quality mobile menu experience with a focus on usability and design, check it out at order.ly !

    1. 1

      So I check your demo and one question comes to mine. A patron "can only like a meal" or can they place an order on your app too?

      1. 1

        We have another app for ordering that we are going to integrate with the menu app soon : )

        1. 1

          Oh, great! From what I've seen, I believe you executed the solution well. As a delivery patron & UberEats user, I cross check my favs' menus to see if the item is listed. Then compare prices then look up pics and entree descriptions, and labels. I can never remember the name. I can attest the scrolling is a mess and annoying.

  3. 3

    [LAST WEEK]

    Content. Content. Content. It's hard to make time for anything else with a full-time gig. However, I was able to schedule a good chunk of content for LinkedIn, so hopefully, I'll have more time to work on actual promotion!

    Did get an excellent bit of feedback that a VP of Engineering was planning to make this required reading for their reports!

    • Finish polishing and proofreading the first three newsletters (1 - 3).
    • Figure out my publishing groove on LinkedIn.
    • Fix anchor links! (Thanks, @koaty, for the catch!)

    [THIS WEEK]

    • Finish polishing and proofreading the next three newsletters (4 - 7).
    • Finish scheduling LinkedIn content for November.
    • Revamp website to enable one free newsletter + fix anchor links.
    • Send invitation email to folks on the waitlist.

    [GOAL FOR THIS MONTH]

    3 of 14 signups.

    [YEAR END GOAL]

    333 subscribers and 10K.

    [BRIEF DESCRIPTION]

    Diversity Decoded is a weekly newsletter to help engineering managers refactor tech teams for diversity.

    1. 1

      Congrats on the VP buy-in. Is it possible to track the report w/ that VP's team to gauge the engagement?

  4. 2

    Last week
    Finally configured an automated process with my outreach. I'm using SalesQL to get emails then Zapier to connect Hubspot w/ Zoho mail. As I find leads one by one or do a mass lead generation I can add them to a list, then tagged them and have personalized emails sent. I've been struggling in this department because it so tedious to find & qualify leads, verify emails, and then research to personalize the message. Not to mention time invested in composing, editing, deploying emails. I'm now giving myself permission to take the time to screen and personalize my initial interactions.

    This week

    • Test my outreach w/ automated campaigns.
    • Website audit and copy edits.
    • Work on my MVP.

    This month goal

    • 3 client profiles created.

    Status

    • EOY Goal: case study - Reevaluating my goals for next 40 days.

    WIP

  5. 1

    w000t w00t! Finally!

  6. 1

    How did you fare last week?
    The problem I had last week with attaching a console before a user logs in, that I tried to solve for a whole week?

    Well... that's still a problem.
    On Saturday I figured to focus on the rest of the app and get that done and perhaps I could figure out a fix while not focusing on it.
    Nope, not fixed, but at least the rest is getting almost ready for the beta.

    What's on deck for this week?
    Sending out the beta to my beta testers.
    There's now 15 people who signed up for it.

    Resolving the "attach a console" issue for vimarun.

    Goal for the month?
    Release vimarun so I can get back to Vimalin.

    End of Year goal
    Keep on growing the sales for Vimalin.

    Brief description
    Vimarun - run VMware Virtual Machines automatically

    1. 2

      Have you search/post your issue on stackoverflow, dev.to, or github? Maybe someone else have attempted attaching a console? Or maybe pair programming w/ a buddy for a code review?

      Good job on redirecting your focus on tasks that'll have a greater impact!

      1. 2

        Thanks Helen, I know my way around developer forums, might spent too much time on them even, usually answering questions. My own questions are rarely answered at a forum, I sometimes try.
        To be frank I didn't bother trying this time.

        I should have stopped earlier, but was having too much fun with low level APIs and learning how it all fits together. As it wasn't work for a paying customer.. no harm done, besides burning some time and learning new things.

        So far I haven't fixed the problem yet (other more important things had to go first), but have in the meanwhile found an answer for a viable workaround in Microsoft's documentation.

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