Happy Publish Monday!
First, I have an announcement:
Until now, I’ve shared a reflection every month for the last 7 months. And I polished the shit out of them. Most have 2500+ words, 5 or more original illustrations, silly jokes, everything.
But they took too long to finish, 3 to 5 days of writing and drawing. Plus I had to cut a lot of things to keep them relatively short.
Now, I want to try something different.
I’ll write one email every Monday where I share my fuck-ups, wins, and real numbers behind becoming a solopreneur.
(Solopreneur = Someone who builds and runs a business on their own.)
What’s going to be inside?
I’ll do my best to keep these emails as succinct, interesting, and useful as I can.
(You’re reading the first one right now.)
I skipped my financial review last month and did July + August in one sweep this week. I knew why I was avoiding it – I’m losing money. 😅
I knew this was coming, but it’s unpleasant nonetheless.
The upside is, nothing gets you as focused as bleeding money every month.
Bleeding money gets you focused.
My primary intention is to make a living as a solopreneur in the next 12 months.
Why solopreneur?
Why 12 months?
Okay, let’s deconstruct these two angles: work and money. I’m sharing here exactly what I have and exactly what I do.
Right now, my savings are $8,479.
My monthly income from teaching a few hours a week is $400, and it will be $800 starting October.
My monthly expenses are $1,200 on average.
This means I’ll bleed $800 again this month (September) and $400 in October and further.
So if I cut 800 from September and then divide my savings by 400:
(7,679 / 400 = 19)
I get 19 months = ~570 days
I have 570 days before I run out of savings.
But I don’t want to get close to that. I want a reserve. So I’ll place the end of my comfort zone in half (285 days). Which would cut my savings to ~$3,840.
285 days is close to 10 months. I can work with that. A little extra bleeding or income will make it 12 months with an okay-ish reserve.
The income I want to reach is $2,000/month solely from what I build as a solopreneur (on average over 3+ months). That should be enough to make a basic living as a solopreneur even in London or Vancouver.
I’m not really optimizing on getting rich here. I just want to do this work because I enjoy it so much and making money is a necessary ingredient to balance this lifestyle’s equation.
Now, what exactly am I going to do to make this money as a solopreneur?
Let’s look at what’s happening in each of them right now.
I’m writing articles about topics related to being a solopreneur/writer/creator. It’s for people who want to pursue a similar lifestyle or just want to be more productive and creative in their work.
Last week, I wrote a big article about a new approach to work called the Full-Stack Freelancer. It describes how I manage my work as a generalist learning junkie.
I’m developing a course for solopreneurs/creators to help them design a system for optimizing their life and work.
On 1st August, I made a quick landing page prototype for the course on WordPress. I wrote/drew it before I even knew what it’s going to be. I guessed. 😅
There was no price, no date. Not a product, really. Just a broad description of what the course is going to be + a signup form for people to leave their email if they’re interested.
The page wasn’t very good, but it worked.
I started mentioning the course on Twitter, and out of 138 people who came to the website, 20 signed up to get notified when the course is ready. That’s 14%, nice.
138 visitors, 20 signed up
This week I took a day to upgrade the site.
Now it’s more targeted at creators who want to systematize how their creative output. I need to wait a week or two to see the results. (So far it seems to be worse than the previous shitty version. Ups. 😅)
I’m connecting with other solopreneurs, writers, and creators on Twitter. It works well as a way to meet like-minded people, test product ideas, and not lose your mind while working mostly alone.
My Twitter routine is:
What seems to work well for me is writing a good thread once a week.
I wrote one about how I got from 0 to 100 followers as an introvert who doesn’t like social media. 22 retweets in 3 days, 20,000 people saw it, 400 clicked on my profile, and 80 followed me.
Then I repeated the formula with a tweet about what I learned from bankrupting my first business 10 years ago.
Not as successful, but it got me to ~250 followers. That’s + 150% compared to the beginning of the month.
I’m still finding my balance for using Twitter.
For example, I know I’d probably grow faster if I spent more time on Twitter every day, but it would also make my life less enjoyable.
I tried being more active there and it makes me anxious. Going on Twitter for 20-30 minutes a day (on average) feels about right. (In reality, it’s more like an hour every 2 or 3 days.)
That’s it.
Quick favor: I’m trying to get these emails to more people who want to start an online business, write more, or just create anything on their own that might one day make a living for them.
If you enjoyed this, please, share it with a friend who might like it too.
Thank you for being here, have a great week, and see you Monday.
Bye.