It's all about following the Program

We're on the 29th of March. I'm living in London and the city is in a complete lockdown. Most of the shops are closed. Social interactions are becoming scarce resources. Time to take a break and thinking how can we help the Community.

I come from Belgium, where I studied Law. I started a career as Lawyer and quickly realised I wasn't built for that. I needed something less bureaucratic. Something exciting. Five years of study, dozens of books, thousands of hours spent learning things that I wouldn't use anymore in my life. That's what I thought.

I decided to do a master's in General Management, where I learned a ton of theoretical things about "how to be a good manager", "how to be good at marketing" or "how to craft the perfect business model". I thought I was ready to fly from my own wings. After all, what are these courses made for if I can't apply them? That's what I thought.

While I was studying at this Business School, I met @vladwulf. Vladimir is more than a genius, it's the perfect business partner. But before all, a brother. We went through many difficult things, and we never gave up. "Eyes on the Prize" they say. It's true.

We quickly started to work on small projects, and I tried to apply what I learnt during these Business School classes. But... it did not go as expected.

I realised that creating a startup is everything but easy.

Entrepreneurship is most of the time depicted as the American Dream. A group of guys in a garage that are creating what will become the next big thing. But it's 1% of what entrepreneurship REALLY is.

On Youtube, you will see many inspiring videos of "teacher but not makers" saying you what to do. These guys are the replica of what business school are doing: theory. Not practice.

These last three years, I've learned many things. Mainly from my mistakes, but also by reading the story of inspiring people like Jen from @lunchbag, or john from @8bit. I feel like telling my experience could help other people reaching their goals.

When I was doing Law, I developed a process to be able to 1] remember my mistakes and not replicate them, 2] operate everything thanks to checklists. I kept that while starting my entrepreneurship journey. {at least I kept that from my Law School tuition fees....]

The Program is all about that. A checklist for your business.

I want you to know what worked for us and what didn't. It won't be perfect. But perfection is imperfection {rule #1].

I hope to be able to provide you the keys to bootstrap your startup more efficiently. Step by Step. Together.

Three weeks ago, we've started a new side hustle. We will apply all our advice to our own side project and see if The Program is a success or not. [Successful = allowing us to diversify our sources of revenues. We're not aiming at being a million $ company].

Let me know at which stage of your business are you. In the meantime, I'm working on the first video "idea validation".

I've created a page "the Program" that will be [hopefully] validated in the next few hours. Don't hesitate to follow the page once created to get notifications when a new article is added :)

With Love,

Franzou