49/60: Only 11 days left. Time to weigh options...?
Reflecting like a mirror
What’s gone right?
Consulting: I’ve signed 2 deals over the past 60 days. The latter one, assuming I can deliver on the milestones, gives me monthly salary for 12+ months. It’s a project I’m extremely passionate about, and enables my daily freedom. This was the whole goal of finding ‘what is next’ after Meta. Finding my freedom to operate how I want on a daily basis.
Metaverse Newsletter: Ran by two people who have never done a newsletter before, we have built very solid footing. We know people are getting real value out of it, the feedback means a lot
I did everything I said I would: Ultimately this is what I am most proud of, if you look at the post I wrote on the very first day - I actually delivered on every random idea I had. Either enough to prove it’s worth to continue doing, or enough to prove that I was doing it wrong. Either way, that’s progress
(excert from Builder Journey Day 1/60) Builder Podcast: More negative than positive, but still netted plenty of learnings on how to edit, and the style I want to go with. Just about turning them out at this point. /podcast
Where am I confused?
Builder Newsletter: This is pretty wild - I really started doing this as a discipline for myself to ensure that I kept moving on a daily basis. I knew it would be embarrassing. Recently, I sat down with an adviser of mine in Florida, and he told me, ‘‘I’m not really sure WTF the newsletter is about, but I’m still subscribed.’’ So I went into the data, and despite the total randomness of the content, it seems that hundreds of you have read at least 30+ of the possible 37 emails I’ve sent. Some of you have even opened all 37. My gut feeling tells me that (similar to what my adviser says), he doesn’t love the content, however he wants to support me, therefore he’s stayed subscribed. If that’s how you feel, email me! I cannot be offended, don’t worry. Or, if you do love the content and want more of it, this is your chance to influence my content strategy.
would love your opinion.. what should be our content focus?
(a) fundraise advice
*we focus on helping founders learn how to fundraise within the first 3 years of their business
(b) learning how to network
*intro or extroverts, it’s all the same, we unwrap the secrets to networking and show examples from business peoples lives
(c) weekly round up
*provides you with a weeks worth of cocktail hour conversation topics relating to business and culture
What’s gone wrong?
Builder Podcast: We’ve launched 2 episodes, 3rd on the way next week. Overall, I’m extremely bogged down by the time expense of video content creation. I really need to just sit down and edit all of the current episodes over a two day period. This will get me a backlog of content, and then I can begin recording new ones. — This podcast is the one thing in the ‘gone wrong’ pile which I foresee as being necessary to revive going forward, it feels like the place that can create the most luck. And I absolutely love recording these; my favorite thing. I’m setting time aside next week to really get this started.
Vouch: I’ve been hacking on a product for fun, it’s not something I want to put my weight behind, so it’s been on the back burner. However, I still made enough progress to have a product which works (great) for customers, and an an ugly Wix website. But as Paul Graham says, ‘‘if you’re not embarrassed then you launched too late.’’ — I will likely polish the website, and post to ProductHunt in the next 10 days, just to see what happens.
Doncor: This was an experiment to figure out if GPT could drive some inbound with me doing almost no work, unsurprisingly, that didn’t work. In total I had 9 loan request, 2 of them were quality enough to engage, but they didn't come from Substack they came from posting elsewhere. — I will likely shelve this idea in 10 days.
Kickstarter: I’m proud of what we did accomplish; setting up the campaign in under 60 days, launching it, and being featured on the homepage AND in their newsletter for music. We gave this a good shot, but the sad part is we didn’t get enough exposure to convert enough people. I’m starting to reach out direct to see if we can build buzz.
Builder Membership: Trying to charge so much money so early on was just dumb, lesson learned :)
What’s next?
Over the past 50 days, I’ve had a few viral successes on LinkedIn, we’ve sold subscriptions consistently on Substack, and I have a very valuable consulting offer. Net net, this experience has been a 10/10.
While I am not 100% sure, as I want to hear your feedback first, but my plan is to
(1) stop sending daily newsletters?, move to two per week. One will be the podcast episode for that week, and one will be the Weekly Roundup. I think the topic should be focused on ‘fundraising’ and ‘networking’ as those are two of my strengths. Wdyt?
(2) get a content schedule together which I follow strictly on a month to month basis, I’m taking a great online course right now which is helping shape my plan.
(3) Accelerate Metaverse Monday, we clearly have a nugget here, so now it’s about turning it into a business with recurring revenue streams. I think I’m going to launch an inexpensive online course for members to learn about building an AR/VR startup within the first 3 years.
The non-debatable of what I’ll be doing going forward is hitting the milestones on my consulting contract. The success of this contract directly correlates to me having the freedom to record podcast and write over the next 12 months. So it’s critical I deliver.
One more thing…
I’m launching a leaderboard - top people get their name and ad in the front of the newsletter every week
**we’re going to gameify this newsletter :)
If you refer 2 friends, I’ll give you 12 months of comp membership. What does that mean? I’m not 100% sure yet, but you’re going to want it when I figure it out.
You’ll notice the rewards get worse instead of better…
that’s because 2 referrals is MORE THAN ENOUGH!
If everyone could just invite 2 friends that would help the next part of this journey immensely
Earn your spot atop our leaderboard, get your name out in front of 1,800 subscribers :)
