Friday Check-in #1 - Let's start this thing

Right. I have 25 minutes on a timer, so let’s do this thing.

A week and a day from now, I will leave Apple. Which means that, a week and a day from now, I will be completely free to pursue my dream:

To create a business that can sustain me for the long term.

That’s cool, but what’s this blog for?

The main goal of checking in is to keep myself accountable. I want to build a business and I have limited time, so the number-one way I see myself failing is if I do the wrong things.

Since the limiting factor is time and not money, opportunity cost is the biggest determinant of what “wrong” is. Wrong could mean “not valuable”, or “the right thing, but for too long”.

The Check-in

So, let’s go through what I want to do next week! Next Friday, I’ll go over what I actually did, and compare it to this plan right here.

My main goal is to: Get a product idea that will feasibly create a bootstrappable business that will sustain me.

I have lots of product ideas:

• A soundboard for D&D games.
• A sociogram SaaS for small businesses and schools.
• A mobile app that replicates a game show I love.
• …

However, I also have limitations:

• I can’t actually pursue any of these, much less build an MVP, until next week, when my contract with Apple expires.

Let’s see what I can do:

• I can do keyword research. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, or FB ads are excellent to gauge market size.
• I can read and learn. Currently, I’m reading through Feel Good Productivity, which is turning out to be a genuinely fresh take on personal development and productivity.
• I can research tools and tech stacks. I’m going to have to build a product at some point, so might as well spend some time learning the skills I need before everything becomes urgent. Maybe I’ll continue working through Designing Data-Intensive Applications.
• I can flesh out this page. It desperately needs some context about why it exists, and that context only lives in my head at the moment. I’m not really sure what I want to do with it, but I’m not going to let that stop me from doing something.

Assigment

Alright, that was a useful exercise. Let’s turn those into concrete goals. By Friday next week, I should have:

• Estimated rough audience numbers on Facebook and Google for all three ideas.
• Have a clear picture of the competition.
• Finished Feel Good Productivity, and taken notes, possibly in a public blog post.
• Decided what I want to do with this site. Do I want a newsletter? Do I want to post book reviews? Just this blog? Who knows! The future is exciting.

Look at that, there are 6 minutes left on the clock. I get to go and make coffee before starting work.

See you next Friday!