It all started with the "grand announcement" of my 2022 goals. The big ones being to launch 6 products and reach $1k MRR by the end of the year. Measurable and specific.
TLDR;
- I have made tons of progress on other.link, and it's almost ready for first users
- accountability is important, so I found a friend to have a mini mastermind with
- I have almost double my Twitter follower count
- my internal debate of starting my own podcast. would you listen?
Product #1 of 2022: other.link
After right around 5 weeks of hacking away on my first product of the year, other.link. Basically, it's a URL shortener. At least to start. "A short link manager for creators" is the initial tagline I am going with.
The first version of the site/app is focused around having a good, smooth experience for users to create short links to share on social platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and more. User's will be able to select from a few different short domains that I will offer to everyone, as well as optionally use their own custom domain (if they want).
Even though it has only been ~5 weeks of working part time on development and design, I am VERY pleased with how it is turning out. And I am excited about the tech stack (Vue, Nuxt, Tailwind, Vercel, and Prisma).
Do you use a url shortener when sharing your links online? I personally have always used them with my YouTube channel (which is almost 14 years old now....oooff)
Accountability is hard, find a friend
With my rather ambitions goals of launching so many products, I need to be near constantly making progress. Coding and marketing. Like many other solo founders, I do not already have a builtin sounding board or accountability partner. So I found one. A twitter friend.
After meeting through Twitter and having a single video chat, my new friend Ryan Strickler and I created a mini mastermind. Our goals are simple:
- make progress on our goals (which are eerily similar)
- write, share, and commit to weekly tasks to move our own stuff forwards
- get feedback on ideas (and maybe product)
This is really the first time I have had some type of accountability to making consistent progress. And it is for sure helping me make more progress. Better and faster progress.
Sure, I'm not perfect. There have been some days or weeks that I did not accomplish everything I wanted to. But I am a big proponent of the "1% a day" mindset. If I keep making forward progress, then it all moves in the right direction.
If you do not already have a person or group that you can bounce ideas off of, or even just talk about the ups and downs of building a solo business, then I HIGHLY recommend finding someone. If you want, message me :)
My micro viral tweet with +150 new friends
One of my big highlights of the month was the big boost in twitter friends I got. All from going micro viral (at least that's what I am calling it). Here is the gist of what happened:
- I posted a single tweet
- it got way more views/interactions than I normally get (around 15k total)
- I also posted the same tweet to IndieHackers (read it here)
- it got ~600 views and ~100 comments in a day
It was quite the experience. Trying to be a good steward of building in public, I was trying to keep up with all the comments and replies people were making to both of the threads. Doing my best to reply to every single one. I ended up taking the entire day to reply to everyone. Lots of time.
All said and done, I gained ~150 new Twitter friends from the whole experience and got a decent amount of traffic to my various projects. If you want to read more about it, I wrote up a whole dedicated blog post about it. Sharing all the stats and more thoughts.
Should I start a podcast??!
It a question that I have been seriously considering this month. Making and publishing some sort of "audio documentary" as I build an online business.
Do you listen to podcasts? Do you listen to ones about startups? The classic "two people building their startups and talking about it"
I could either record the show solo, or with someone else. I am up for either I think. If I had a partner in crime for this audio adventure, then the time scheduling could get tricky/annoying with my personal schedule of parenting and being available mostly only on nights (like when I would work on my business stuff)
Whelp... the jury is still out.
👋 Thanks for reading this month's newsletter about my ramblings of building
PS: If you are interested in being an early user of other.link, then I would be happy to let you in the first batch. You can either DM me on Twitter or email me directly :)