I Skipped a Day
Yesterday was a whirlwind. As I wrapped up the day with final meetings, I thought about putting together a post. I could have done it. But it would have provided no value—for me or anyone else.
Never lose sight of the reason why you committed to do something
Why did I commit to 50 days of writing? It’s an experiment for learning about myself, my desires, my thoughts, and my capabilities.
I was going to do 100 days of writing at first. I got the idea from someone else. But I realized that I don’t need to do 100 days to learn. 50 days might even be overkill. So when I considered writing yesterday, I realized just how little I cared to write anything, and how little effort I would put into it. What would I learn from writing that article? Pretty much nothing more than I had learned by merely thinking about writing it, but with the added consequence of forcing a no-value creation.
After only one week, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned that even if I’m juggling multiple projects, it’s possible to write an article a day—and probably even maintain a certain level of quality—but I highly doubt it would be sustainable. I’m working on systematizing how I gather ideas and generate content. But even once I achieve that, an article a day would be a lot to ask from someone whose primary day-to-day focus is elsewhere. And even if it’s possible, I’ve seen enough people in action demonstrate that you don’t need to crank out that much new content to be successful. In fact, it might be counter-productive.
I still intend to complete my 50 days of writing. I’m not done learning yet. But I’ll probably skip a few more days here and there.
Other learnings
As I see it, my possibilities fall into three general buckets:
SaaS entrepreneurship
Solopreneurship
Job(s)
SaaS entrepreneurship
This would entail founding a startup focused on solving problems with a scalable digital solution. I’ve got a background in this sort of endeavor, so there’s a fit there. I’m doing exploratory research for one product now.
Solopreneurship
This is a very big bucket. It could entail any or all of the following:
Sale of digital artifacts (many solopreneurs sell Notion templates, for example)
Courses or lessons
Sell my time as an expert or advisor
Some other form of gig-like service
Deploy simple digital products for hyper-niche audiences (only possible for me because of AI-related advances in development)
Sell access to my content
Who knows what else…
Job(s)
This is the most reliable and the most limiting. I don’t think a lot of explanation is needed here.
Where I am
For now I am still toying with all three buckets. I’ll need to select a focus by the time my 50 days are uph. At this point, I’m leaning towards working on my solo hustles on the side, while devoting the lionshare of my time on either founding a startup or working a job.
Even though I have no hard data to go off of, I have a good spidey sense. This sense is telling me that there is “something there” for me in the solopreneurship bucket. I’ve been paying attention to what my aspirational comps are saying and doing. Anything of value takes time—especially getting from zero to one. But I think I understand the recipe (more or less). The key is to experiment, learn, hone my craft, and build a network. Through that process, I will learn how to develop a revenue stream and use success to fuel further growth using whatever flywheel I create.
That will take time. If I’m successful at systematizing my workflow (another good feeling I have), then I won’t have to dedicate all of my time to an endeavor that won’t happen quickly no matter how hard I work. If I’m right about all of that—and I’ll be paying attention closely over the coming weeks to see what experience tells me—then it will make sense to pour more of my time and energy into something else in the meantime.
Kieran Drew didn’t have any profit for a year—and no meaningful profit for the first 18 months. Since I initially thought I could do that in half that time, but reality tends to take at least twice as long as early estimates, I think this timeline makes sense. So it’s likely that that rest of 2023 would be spent on experimenting, establishing fundamentals, building a brand, honing my craft, and setting myself up for the building of a valuable network of people who value my free content more than other people’s paid content—which means they then will have “problems” that I am uniquely qualified provide solutions for. No profit there. Yet.
At least, that’s how it goes in my head—and how many who have already done this say it worked for them.