Becoming a Solo Founder - NodleStudios

• It’s been a month since I’ve recorded, so I guess it's time to do it again!
• I’ve basically been gone for three weeks, so not a lot of big moves have been made over the past month

The Stair Step Approach to Bootstrapping

• Rob Walling, from the podcast startups for the rest of us has talked a lot about the stairstep approach to bootstrapping
• The idea is that you start with smaller products, likely several of them... launch them or buy and grow them and move to bigger things and bigger projects with time

Several things that I said I’d do from the last episode

• Launch something in August
  • Likely a WP plugin, but possibly something else
• Two articles posted for WPSM
  • One article posted
  • Several ideas, need to start publishing articles somewhat regularly. Probably should make a schedule so I can stick to it.

What Happened

• A couple of rough weeks mentally
• It’s really easy to get inside one's head
• A couple of projects fell through
• Some questions about the future as it relates to current ongoing work
• Difficult to separate the job from me
• Almost two weeks where I just didn’t have a desire to do much 
• At the beginning of last week feeling better and then I got covid
• This week I’m mostly back into things

What I’m Doing

• Been trying to stay off of Twitter.
• Been trying to get away from my computer more.
• Trying to get healthy again physically
  • Exercise
  • Diet

What's Next?

• July 
  • Helping run a Bible School in Canada
  • Working on some SEO stuff on a plugin I co-own/run
  • Thinking about future projects and pushing toward launching one of them
• August
  • Launch new something, anything
• Might be bigger gaps in episodes, but I do want to keep recording for the deadline/motivation/story benefits

Yes, you read that right… “floundering” was the word I used as opposed to “foundering.” I don’t know if I need to explain myself more than that or not, but it sure has felt like the last six months, since I’ve made the move to freelancing instead of being an employee, have been rather like “flopping along like a fish out of water.”

It has been a while since I recorded, if I looked correctly the last episode was released on May the 29th.

This episode is basically a “what have I been up to the last 5 months” kind of an episode. In a lot of ways it feels like most of my time is spent just “getting through today” and not working on the things I need to be doing to get the flywheel going for projects that I hope will eventually pay the bills… but I guess that’s life.

One thing I want to be completely clear about in any of these podcast episodes is how not super polished everything is in the way I/we navigate the intersection of day to day life and operating a business.

Anyway… I hope you enjoy this episode. If you listened to it, I’d love to hear from you about what kinds of things you’re working on. Shoot me an email at [email protected] and say hi!

Take care!

I haven’t recorded for a while. I’d apologize for that, but it simply hasn’t felt right to sit down and go on about myself and what I’m doing while the world continues to be bombarded by COVID-19 and all the things that come with that.

So, why record an episode now? Because things are changing, and recently they changed in a fairly substantial way.

Today is Friday, May 29th, and yesterday was officially my last day with the company I’ve been working for for the past 4 years or so. Although I gave my boss a 3-month notice, I still feel somewhat bad about having left and knowing that someone else is going to have to figure out how to take up what/where I left off.

After a number of conversations with my boss, we’ve actually worked out a deal where I’ll be doing some freelance work for them. So, it hasn’t fully sunk in yet that I am now “out on my own.”

Freelancer not Solo Founder

I already can imagine people listening to this episode and saying... wait a minute, I thought he was trying to become a solo founder, why would he call himself a freelancer at this point. Why not go ahead and embrace the term solo founder?

Welp, the deal is that I haven’t founded anything yet. I will need to make money to pay my bills, so while I will be working towards the goal of being a solo founder on a number of different projects, my primary focus for the next months will be to make ends meet.

So, if you’re looking for a web designer or need a website built, I’d be happy to talk with you. You can head over to nodlestudios.com and find the contact page to get in touch.

What Comes Next?

While my main focus over the next several months is definitely on a number of client projects, I do plan to continue working on a number of my personal projects as well.

GoSelva

The first thing that comes to mind that I’ve got to start working on is my project management app, GoSelva. I’ve been using it for almost four months now I believe and I keep running into issues and things that need to be addressed.

Maybe you know how it is when you have an idea for something and you put together the very basics of what you need. At first, you’re just amazed that it works and are a little bit smug about how well it works, but as you continue to use it you start to realize all the little things that you hadn’t even considered.

The core of what I’ve got at this point is good, but the features are pretty lacking if I’m being honest. Right now it isn’t a lot more than a glorified todo list... which in some ways is exactly what I want GoSelva to be. I just want it to be a much smarter and more fully-featured todo list app. :)

Another App Idea

In case I’ve forgotten to mention it, I grew up on a farm and still live on a farm. So there are a number of things over the years that I’ve built small apps for. One of those apps is actually something that could be useful for other farmers.

Recently I was talking with a fellow and mentioned one of the apps that I have already built for use here on our farm. He expressed some interest in being able to do the same thing for his farm.

This particular app isn’t the biggest app in the world, but it is a bit time-sensitive. So I’m hoping to reconfigure and rebuild it so that it would be in a state where I could sell it to other farmers who might be interested in using it this fall.

Hitting the Road

One of the big reasons I’ve been interested in becoming a freelancer or a solo founder is the freedom that I assume it can give me. I realize that there are ways in which it is much more freeing to just work a 9-5 job and then go home in the evenings, but being able to make my own schedule, and more importantly, pursue and work on projects that mean something to me... well all of those things are parts of the reason that I’m at this point today.

I’ve always enjoyed travel and have made several trips over the past few years. Usually, they were either “go to a specific city for a month and continue working remotely” kinds of trips, or they needed to fit into a couple of weeks of vacation every year.

Next week I plan to embark on a 3-4 week excursion across the American South West. I’ll be doing some work along the way, but I’ll also be taking photos and hopefully producing a body of photography work that can be useful for a number of things.

The Podcast Going Forward

Now that I’m officially a freelancer I do intend to publish podcast episodes more frequently. It probably will be on about an every other week basis for now, but if I have something interesting that I’m working on I might go weekly from time to time.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for listening, and I’ll chat with you in another few weeks.

The world is a strange place right now. Work continues almost normally, although I worked from home the entire week this week instead of the normal 2 days at home and 2 days in the office.

As the US has been bracing for the impact of Covid-19 a number of things changed over the past week.

• My families farm is trying to understand how things might change as we head towards an earlier than normal PYO strawberry season.
• My church had our spring revivals from mid last week till mid this week. Virginia banned large groups, so we pretty quickly had to switch these services to "over the phone."

Maker & Marketer Update

• I basically did nothing over the past week on the maker front. I did try one thing so that I could reply to an issue on the Livewire Github. That ultimately led to me making a change for my production GoSelva app, but it was just a tiny thing.
• My week was extra busy with running the church services via phone in the evenings, but its also been difficult to focus on "extra things" in the "free times" that I do have.

Business Update

• I did pick up a side project at the end of last week. I think it'll continue, but I should probably double check.
• I'm also working on a simple website for some friends of mine who run a small restaurant. Hoping to build that out today or tomorrow.

Honestly its been a strange week and there are moments where I’m questioning everything that I’ve decided about this journey. Maybe now isn’t the time to be trying to go out on my own. Maybe I won’t be able to travel across the US in a van later this year… I guess time will tell.

That's pretty much it for this week friends. Thanks for listening and don't forget to be a little extra kind to everyone online and in real life... oh and stay safe!

Its Friday march the 13th.

I’m sure that I’m not the only one who has a fair bit on my mind right, as the US braces for the Coronavirus its difficult to focus on other things that suddenly feel a lot less important.

I did want to record this episode today though because even though we’re in a bit of a strange time (yes that’s an understatement), life does continue to move forward. Even if it does feel like a parallel universe at times.

• I’ve not gotten a lot done on NodleStudios projects over the past few weeks. 
  • Last week I was involved with a conference as the “tech guy” which pretty much took care of any extra time I had. I’m glad I’ve been able to help that event happen this year and last year, but things like this do come up and they do take more time and energy than I originally thought.
  • This week I’ve been doing catch up things that I didn’t get done last Friday/Saturday and now that its Friday again the main task for today is getting my taxes ready to submit to the IRS.

That’s about it on the “what am I getting done” these days front, but I did want to also briefly talk about a fairly big change that was put into action a couple of weeks ago…

About two weeks ago I quit my full time job. I gave my boss a 3 month notice. Why so long?

• He’s traveling for the next 7 or 8 weeks and I wanted to tell him face to face
• I want to give him plenty of time to find my replacement or shuffle things between now and the end of May
• I wanted to give myself some runway to make some changes and get some things ready before being completely on my own.

Why Are You Quitting Now?

• For the past almost year I’ve been working 4 days a week. 
  • At this point I’ve got too many irons in the fire to cram into one day each week (plus nights and weekends).
  • A lot of folks talk about building something “on the side” of a day job, and that sounds really great until you find yourself sitting in front of a computer for 14-16 hours a day.
  • So I’ve decided to take the leap and see what happens if I go “out on my own.”

Are You Ready for This?

• A couple of things that make me somewhat less nervous about this move. 
  • My boss and I are in talks of some kind of retainer where I could continue to do some contract work for him. 
  • I’ve got a number of leads from some friends and acquaintances for projects.
  • I am single and I do currently have a cost effective housing opportunity so I should be able to cut my expenses down considerably (and indeed am already doing that).
  • I am both excited and a bit terrified. 

What Are You Going to Do?

• So, what am I hoping to do? 
  • Web Design & Development 
    • For clients
    • Also for several side projects - maybe I won’t have 1 big thing, but instead have 6-8 small things.
  • Photography & Video 
    • I want to travel more and as part of that I plan to immerse myself back into the photo & video world.

A Few Concluding Things

• I’m super appreciative of my boss. At this point he is more than a boss, he’s my friend. Although he’d like to see me stay with the company he’s also (at least somewhat 😜 ) supportive of my desire to see if I can make it on my own.
• You can head over to becomingasolofounder.com to find out more about the podcast and to easily subscribe or listen to other episodes.

Let’s all stay as safe as we can in the coming weeks.

Thanks for listening and we’ll talk soon!

Some things changed at work this week. Not ready to talk about them just yet, but they will affect my work on NodleStudios projects.

It is Friday so I’m at home working through my list of tasks (in GoSelva) currently I’ve got 25 tasks remaining for today. Some of them will get pushed to tomorrow, others will get rescheduled to a future date. Some of them will get done.

## GoSelva
- Not a lot is changing in GoSelva at the moment. I continue to use it on a daily basis to manage my life.
- I did add one little feature this morning, I was counting the number of tasks I have to do today and thought that would be a nice little feature so I took 10 minutes and added it and deployed it.

## OhPeso
- OhPeso is open to the world, but its still very basic and has a lot of room for changes
- I did decide to open it up so that folks could register
- Reworked the home page a bit, need to right some words and some compelling reasoning for why a person might want to use the app
- So far the only folks who have created accounts are friends / family
- Feel free to sign up, it is free… :) 

## My Stack
- Laravel
- mysql
- Livewire 
- AlpineJS
- Tailwind CSS 
- Tailwind UI

This morning I thought I’d check and see if the domain name for the title I’ve given my podcast is available… turns out it was, so you can go to becomingasolofounder.com to find out more about the podcast!

Thanks for listening!