#TheCommitals: Holla at your girl (Week 34)
How did you fare last week?
What's on deck for this week?
What's your goal for the month?
[Optional] Still on target for end of year goal?
[Optional] Brief description of project with link (if applicable)
@louisswiss, @helengriffinjr, @vimalin, @jpusateri, @Guidione_Machava, @natejcho, @DF_V, @davey, @VisionIsScary
@breedaddy, @janice
HOLLA!
I didn't do a mid-week checkin this week as I was formulating a plot
[Last Week]
Last week I fared so-so. I wanted to crank through and finish the 5th grade assessment, but I fizzled out about 33% of the way through.
Wrote a couple more blog posts on Medium
I did run through an excellent ideation exercise (and live streamed it for posterity) on The LIFT Show which will form the beginning of Phase 2 (live online classes) as my post for it got really great response. I kind of announced it on FB, gave it a $10 boost, and had a notable amount of engagement on it compared to Assessment Testing.
So I broke up the announcement blurb into features, broke the features up into needs, and scoped the needs out with categories and timeframe. Also made note of short-term substitutions I could use to get it launched faster. I went over to Zoom and played around with it a lot to see what I could do there to proxy some of the things I wanted to accomplish.
I revised my landing page thanks to some feedback from the wondrous @Janice
[This Week]
Formulating a plot.. follow-up!
While keeping a pulse on the local parenting community, a clear and shorter-term refinement opportunity on the LIFT Show concept surfaced and I'll be classifying a smaller feature-set for that today. I need to get my notes out into a mini-design doc like I did previously, as that worked out really well. Objective is to start selling it on Friday, 8/21
I will finish the 5th grade assessment today or tomorrow night and get it out of the way so I can focus on the LIFT Show ASAP.
Going to be driving all day tomorrow and not working so it will be a short week, and I have a fun film festival project to work on this week as well. So will need to focus on the tasks at hand. Today I need to spend that time necessary to get the pins lined up so I can just CRANK.
[End of Year]
I have a plan to finish Phase 1 and launch Phase 2, but I've never set a clear MRR goal. I should be able to, as I know the market size. So.. here goes.. gulp.
Goal: $10k MRR. Need this to be my full-time gig. So I'll need to get to 2000 subscribers or sell 192 tickets per week.
Saw this in the last week and saved it:
(Laughing!) I think we scared everyone with our monstrous agendas.
I'm cool without a midweek check in, if we use our weekly check in as a checklist we revisit throughout the week and the conversation is as lively as last week. But let's feel it out as we go. If you think we all a need a nudge, have at it!
For a "so-so" week you got a lot of shit done! Did you fizzle on the assessments because the demand for live classes is so much greater?
And what's the fun film festival project?
We are officially off to the 10K MRR races! Let's do this!
Yep! I fizzled on the assessment because of enormous demand in the classes. I knew I'd need to take some days and plan/flesh it out to see if there was something early I could talk about and maybe even start selling. I think I found what that is. Then I can set that flywheel in motion because I've extensively modeled the business there and it's INTOXICATING.
I need to know...
-Cost per engagement
-Engagement to Conversion rate
-Cost per conversion
-Conversion % for a lower tier subscription and a middle tier one.
This will let me know what short term Growth costs will look like, and I can come to terms with my true needs and see what I can bootstrap and start selling this or next week.
I also fleshed out an affiliate growth channel on paper and have thought about how to do them both simultaneously for rapid brand uptake.
Film Festival... one of my previous businesses was doing interactive cinema tech, and I got to meet a bunch of studio execs, movie theater execs, and marketing execs all through the country. So now and then when they have interesting small little tech projects sometimes they ask me. I don't have a fulltime gig right now except my own, which isn't creating revenue yet. So I'm helping automate the notifications of film festival entries and creating blocks of viewable content for them on the big screen.
That's a fun side hustle! Curious how they've been faring in the current climate.
Wait so you're taking the time off now? Or that's already happened? Is the game plan already in play?
Yes, took a couple days to sort out some details and get a plan together. I'm launching it later this week probably, after some major hustling.. but not much building!
LAST WEEK
THIS WEEK
Short week due to another round of camping starting on Thursday. But shooting to complete my first blog post and publish the website.
THIS MONTH
Super ambitious given only half the month remains, but I intend to launch my MVP by the end.
Website
Home[Completed]About[Completed]Contact[Completed]Thank you[Completed]Oops[Completed]Legal[Completed]Stripe integration[Completed]Blog Post
First draft[Completed]Onboarding
Pick mail automation app.[Completed]Module 1
Module 2
PROJECT
Name. Diversity Decoded
Tagline: Refactor your tech team for diversity.
Elevator Pitch: A daily newsletter of short, actionable insights for tech leadership to build and retain diverse talent.
Link: Coming soon!
Would appreciate feedback re the above and logo!
END OF YEAR
30K MRR. What the hell. Might as well go big or go home. In order to achieve that revenue, I'll need to provide value for 1000 subscribers.
Great product and logo! You mentioned the pivot is because of a new hustle, do you have an existing audience you're going to use to kick-start customer base or starting from scratch? I'm early starting from scratch so have been wondering how others have started out from zero.
Thanks!
I haven't any sort of mailing list. So this will prove interesting, But I have been leading DEI workshops, explicitly for engineers, for just over three years. So I have a touch of street cred on that end.
@Davey gave some great advice to leverage LinkedIn. I've been reading up on different strategies in anticipation of the launch.
Wow, congrats on the pivot.
Finding a hustle that has your passion is one worth doing.
Getting that kind of MRR goal would be awesome.
I can't wait to see what is coming!
Thanks, @vimalin!
This is awesome! Keep going!
Some small feedback on the project details/logo (feel free to ignore) :
IMO you're leaning a bit too heavily into the tech-related puns/copy. I think you can cut one or two out and still be clearly positioned toward tech teams while reading a little less ('hokey' isn't right word, but its close).
My suggestions would be:
Also, the logo and name are awesome 👏
Thanks for dropping in with the fab feedback! I'll likely keep the "tech" in the tagline. But I like how you've tightened up the elevator pitch!
👍👍
(Laughing!) I did actually think that you'd jump all over me if that sucker couldn't solved!
And recharging has been a requisite of 2020!
Last Week
This Week
Goal for the Month
Even with the push out I'm still planning to launch the Carme Desk ecommerce website by the end of the month.
Ooh. So who wins the headless CMS battle?
Sorry about the two week launch! But better to wait two weeks and have a strong launch, rather than launch on time and it be shit.
We're both launching sites by the end of the month! Let's do this!
I think for most use-cases, Contentful wins with polished out-the-box functionality. However, Sanity has capabilities of customizing the CMS in ways Contenful cannot. If your project has some aspect that is out of the ordinary for a CMS, I think Sanity may be the way to go. Still, everything I've done with Gatsby so far, Contentful would cover it.
Go team end of August! I need to get all the things done before school starts for the kids.
How did you fare last week?
Released an update for Vimalin. It was time, there was enough improvements and fixes in the code to validate a release. Besides that it had been too long since there was an update.
The one thing I do not want in a .x release is to release an update that has loads of code changes.
More changes would mean more testing needed which then pushes back the time line yet again.
I know developers who have perfected that technique and they are now a decade (yes really) out waiting for the new release to come to perfection.
Got a glowing testimonial from a user who wanted me to post it on my site (he insisted)
Discovered this free blogging for business course from Ahrefs that looks like it might be useful to watch. So am setting time apart for that.
What's on deck for this week?
Will mostly be working on the consulting day job, a new prospect arrived so that might generate some income.
But hope to spent some time for Vimalin, either working on eliminating more paper cuts and/or publishing the update at all the shareware sites that link to Vimalin.
Goal for the month
Making sure that Vimalin is going forward.
IOW, small steps forward.
🎉Congrats on the new release! 🎉
And wow. That is one helluva of a testimonial! You should make a t-shirt out of it! I'd be wearing that bitch everyday! Well played.
That course does look useful. Please share any useful nuggets revealed!
Definitely been taking a forced break. I shut down Automated API last week to clear some head space and reset. It's stagnation was uncomfortable in public, and having it completely unavailable has actually been comforting while I reevaluate and reorganize. Not sure what I'll end up doing with it long term as it still fills a need for myself.
Considering something in the document management space as this would solve a major headache. I'm thinking totally open source with a hosted add-on service....which perhaps is what I'll do with Automated API as well.
Taking my time to organize myself and prioritize parts of my life so I can prevent side projects from interfering with career advancement. I've definitely been letting that happen too much in the last year, and missed opportunities to push for bigger paychecks while chasing the 'new shiny' in bootstrapped startup-land. Anyone here have experience with that phenomenon?
Forced breaks are the most sorely needed ones.
Totally with you re bootstrapping versus rock-stardom at work. When colleagues are working crazy hours, I always feel a bit guilty pulling the plug to go work on my own thing.
At the same time, my portfolio of side hustles was responsible for getting me my new gig (and the bigger paycheck). So they needn't necessarily be diametrically opposed.
Week 34
Housecleaning:
@louisswiss, @daveroma, @natejcho, @breedaddy
Have y'all tapped out? Shall I remove you from the crew?
Yes, too much on the plate at the moment. I appreciate your effort in keeping this group together though; will do a better job at forecasting my workload before the next one.
Not a problem! And have fun with 'the plate'!
Still here #TheCommitals
I got you!