CompactColossus (CC)

I want to touch on this because its usually linked with a hefty expenditure - Legal Fees. There's definitely way to work around that with templates etc but even that won't save you if you decide to do business with shady people.

The thing is, how cheap is your self worth? What are you willing to tolerate and look past. I don't have a fool me once policy - I have a fool proof policy. Why would I even allow someone the chance to fuck me over if I can just weed them out at the beginning.

So you may be wondering, how the heck am I suppose to weed them out? The same way success leaves clues, so does garbage. Remember our lessons on collecting awesome people, the lesson I had to learn the hard way?

1. Lazy people hate the word HARD. Spend more time upfront talking about how
   challenging and dynamic the role will be instead of painting a beautiful (yet
   unrealistic) picture and see how they react.
2. Effort can't be faked, check peoples past body of work and that will show you their
   work ethic and output you can expect from them.
3. Check their attitude towards work, is it a pay check or do they do it out of passion
   and seeking fulfilment from the work they put out into the world.
4. Are they open to change because the truth is when you move fast pace its almost
   inevitable they'll experience changes in the first few months.
5. How do they perceive you? If they have no answer or say some shit like you seem
   alright/cool etc but you know you've demonstrated otherwise and to be way more
   impactful then they really either don't give a shit OR even worse they don't notice that
   'thing', the trait that would bind us to do really impactful shit together. They really
   should be responding with something TRUE but more raw, uncut and maybe
   even a little unhinged that's when you know you've got a fellow nutter in your
   presence.

HARD people are 'serious' people and that's not to say they won't fuck you over too but I'd much rather be fucked over in a hostile takeover type of way by someone capable and ballsy then to have my time wasted by dweebs with no Oomph in their step or fire in their hearts.

It doesn't take much to start. Honestly unless you make poor decisions such as trying to trademark shit or going for patents for god knows what reason you should be able to get from 0-10K with little to no funds invested upfront.

It's a game of strategy and framing. The easiest way to bootstrap is to create middle man businesses (to start). You want to be a connecter not a supplier, and sure as hell not a consumer. The magic spot with a lot of things in life and for sure with bootstrapped businesses is being somewhere right in the middle.

If you can get a website up (debatable if required honestly, I've heard countless stories of designers, freelancers etc getting their first few sales without even having one), setup a business email (probably the only investment I recommend, because it goes a long way to showing you're somewhat serious), and someway of reaching your desired audience (most critical) you should be on your way to 10K without delay... But I'm not a rapper.

What I am tho, is a fucking maniac when it comes to getting your first sale. Even before you have anything setup because NOTHING is more important than validating your idea, and the ONLY way to validate an idea is to find people who are ready to pay NOW!!!

We shipped CC before we even had designers on board. We went after clients and designers at the same frickin time because we knew we'd have a chicken and egg problem if we didn't do so with urgency. It was mission critical that we secure a job as fast as humanly possible to ensure the designers knew we could deliver clients and the clients knew we could deliver designs.

We focussed on seeking out the best designers and offering the ultimate no brainer, a deal they couldn't refuse. Remain completely autonomous doing whatever work you want and simply work with CC as a Design Partner. This allowed us to be agile from day one. And it also meant we could continue running CC without worrying about the designers salary.

So what we're the exec level strategies? 1. Reframe the job title to suit your business model and finances available to you, 2. don't delay, momentum is your friend so go after clients from day one. Simple yet affective as hell when executed with precision.

I always knew id be a serial founder. Truth is, I'm in love with the game! the game of starting things and putting them out to the world for maximum value and impact in return. But more than that, I'm in love with the people it attracts. The nutters who don't give a shit that It's hard, and do it anyway (sometimes naively).

To be honest I haven't always been inclined go head first into the 'hard' things. A lot of my early life was spent, and dare I say wasted by taking the easy road. Taking the safer option, the option with the guaranteed salary and retirement options. Now I may not be the smartest or the quickest to get the lesson but darn it when I do I fucking do, and it sticks!

The lesson was simple, hard was better for soo many reasons. 1. You attract really awesome people as the best people tend to want to work on the hardest problems, they want to do work that matters and to make their work matter and 2. Hard is what makes you fit in with these 'serious people'.

Even if we take the standard job as an example, a lot of people spend their time complaining that they aren't getting a raise or promotion while continuing to do the same thing they've always been doing (the bare minimum that's expected of them in their existing roles). But the fact is, that's not how it goes at all! You do the higher salary, higher level (HARD) shit and when the opportunity does arise It's a no brainer to asign you to the new tasks/role coz you're doing those things anyway.

In every organisation there are the 20% of people who do 80% of the work, that's who you want to keep an eye out for. Collect those folks in your rolodex and make sure they see how hard and engaged you can be when you really care about something. Don't bludge or be shit at your job either unless theres good reason to do so such as fighting against methodologies of doing things that are neither productive, or worthwhile. Show that you're a visionary and a big thinker, but more than anything show that you can take massive action and back it with massive results. Because Hard attracts Hard.

And that kids, is how I met your... uncle (my co-founder). Your mother too but that's another story.

It's 4am again, I'm browsing twitter because I'm on the other side of the world. So far ahead in fact It's a day into the future (Melbourne Australia).

I see a post on my for you page on twitter now (X) that reads "Roadmap to boostrpping DesignJoy to 100K MRR": https://x.com/BrettFromDJ/status/1679501620550434816?s=20

By this time I'm deep into working on my offshore hiring business but figure I could be swayed to do a side quest. I start mulling over the idea thinking how would I a non-designer make something like that work, after all DesignJoy is all Brett doing it himself.

Then it hits me, why I don't use my offshore hiring skills to find awesome senior designers offshore to take care of the design side of things. It'd be in the form of a collaborative partnership where I bring on cliental and they output awesome design deliverables.

From there it was off to the races and CompactColossus was born. Focussing on providing BOLD designs in an efficient manner without all the back and forth traditional design agencies required.