“I suck”.

It’s not the easiest thing to say to yourself while staring in the mirror. Yet, that’s true. I just sometimes feel like I turned into someone who talks but never delivers. How do I “unsuck” myself was my second thought. I am used to debugging the code, so maybe it’s time to debug my life.

I got some time off this summer while my family went away for a holiday. When I am alone, it always triggers thinking time. I slow down, talk less and think. It is usually not a pleasant experience though, since I am quite brutal in my assessment of what goes well and what I am shit at. Not everything is publishable, but I will try to do my best to cover some of the details.

As I was looking in the mirror, I noticed that there were a lot of things that I didn’t like about myself anymore. Somehow I transformed myself into a person who does not finish personal projects [1]. I have started a number of them with enthusiasm and good intentions, only to see them fizzle out halfway through. It is about time to understand why it happens, what’s wrong and how to fix it.

Mind you, this is a story about startups, so I don’t really suck at everything! I don’t want this to be a story of self-pity and since I still have this “Get up and fight!” mentality, I hope there is a happy ending here.

Problems inventory

I have always struggled with doing one thing at a time. There are so many things interesting in the world today. Just the way I am, I guess. There are pros and cons, like with everything in life. One disadvantage is that I tend to focus on something interesting and dig deep into the topic or idea, only to abandon it after a while. It may sound like a waste of time to some people.

An obvious advantage is that I have experience with plenty of topics, which serves me well when I need to have small talk with a stranger - much more likely I can find a common topic. Heck, this is how I started flying!

I realised and admitted to myself that I didn’t finish most of my personal projects. In my case, I think it is connected to the belief that I have to finish something before launching. An obvious nonsense.

Part of my problem is also that I try to tackle big problems (at least in my mind!). It would take ages to deliver even if I had a team and funding. Yet, I often try to do it all by myself. It never felt like it was ready to launch, so I never did. Since it usually took me ages to build any of my projects in the first place, it drove me to the point that I felt really burnt out with no end in sight. My self-esteem and well-being were really low.

Also, I acknowledged that my attention span for a new idea was around 1-2 months. It is certainly difficult to build a successful startup in a month or two.

Or is it?

Attempt at understanding

As I was thinking more and more about my issues, two things were quite enlightening for me: how I approached a significant change in my life from 0 to 1 and Roger Bannister. Let me explain.

0 to 1

Throughout my life, I have always struggled with making a significant change in either business, sport or private life and I have plenty of examples. Before every such change, I would drag my feet for a long time, but when I finally took the plunge, things often turned out ok. Just a few examples:

1. I never wanted to run sales in my father’s business in the 90s. I had a comfortable life and didn’t want to change that, but when I finally did - my wages went up 10-fold.

2. When playing sports at a new club or in a new league, it would take me almost a season to acclimatise and fully showcase my skills. Not every coach was happy to give me that time, hell, I didn’t even understand it myself at the time that I needed to be patient. But once I had enough time to get myself together, I would do quite well. That’s how I eventually won a national 3-point shooting competition, beating a future basketball hero in the process.

3. It took me over two years to convince myself that I should emigrate to Scotland. Always full of doubts that I was capable of making such a drastic change, picking up a new language and assimilating into a totally new environment, but when I finally did  -  things turned out just great  -  I studied at the University of Edinburgh, met a couple of great friends, and finally set up my family and business here. It wasn’t easy though  -  I left my home with a one-way ticket, limited English skills, no job and no place to stay, but I made it work.

I can see a pattern emerging here…

Sub-4-minute mile

I then thought about the sub-four-minute mile and Roger Bannister. It was thought at the time that it was difficult to run a mile below 4 minutes, … until Roger Bannister did just that in 1954. Before, people thought it was impossible, but after him “… the four-minute barrier has been broken by 1,755 athletes [as of June 2022].” Suddenly people realised it was possible. A small change can open up the floodgate.

Putting it all together

I thought long and hard about all these and I finally realised that:

1. it does take me time to take a plunge into the unknown
2. once I make the jump I am good enough to make it work and
3. maybe I just need a small quick win to open up the floodgate

I narrowed down that the main issue for me was the fact that I have never made a single dollar online on my personal projects. It felt like going to the gym to only work on my upper body, and neglect my lower body. In my case, I am pretty good at building software, I have just enough skills to build almost anything, but my “lower body” - launching, marketing and online sales - were my untrained muscles. So this is what I decided to focus on next with a single and simple objective:

Earn $1 online on any side project.

I have concluded that a single dollar earned online could be my sub-4-minute-a-mile event. If I did it once, I would learn a lot in the process and it could unleash the delivery of all my other ideas.

Around the same time, I found an article “I’m Launching 12 Startups in 12 Months” by Pieter Levels. Given that my attention span on any single project is 2 months at best, I could maybe turn this into an advantage. I could easily give all of my attention to a project at hand, but just for a limited time. Maybe it could work?

I could also work on removing any friction to deliver a project from an idea to monetisation, like documenting every step along the way and automating everything that could be beneficial to automate. Every new project would just take less time to launch and give me more time to actually spend on what’s unique.

Conclusion

Long story short, I will try to attempt the “12 startups in 12 months” challenge, but I will be quite relaxed about it - I am realistic and I don’t think the point is to make exactly 12 startups in exactly one month each. Here are some of my initial conditions:

1. Those have to be business ideas, something that can be monetised to at least $10k MRR. I am not interested in building open-source little projects like you would do for your CV at this point.
2. My main focus is on launching products. I want to train my “launching a product” muscle. I want to shorten the path from idea to launch.
3. Ideally, I want to scratch my own itch. I should be the first user.

What I am looking to achieve in the process is definitely being comfortable at launching projects quickly, but also:

1. One successful SAAS project that earns me enough money to cover the bills.
2. Define a blueprint for launching a new product quickly. Aviation is full of checklists and they are what make the industry safe and predictable. I hope to generate a “successful startup launching checklist”.
3. Something worth writing about and sharing with others.

So what have I done so far? I have taken a look at ideas in my journal (yes, I have ideas journal) and I looked through them with a view that those could be the ideas for my little startups. I asked myself: is it something I can plan, build and launch in roughly a month and people would pay for it? What if I change the scope?

I am already working on the first idea and I will follow up on this shortly.

Thanks for reading so far. I am pretty excited to see where it takes me.

Let me finish this by sharing with you my favourite quote:

“Never say never. Because limits, like fears, are often just an illusion. ” – Michael Jordan, 2009 Basketball Hall of Fame induction speech

Happy launching! ❤️

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[1] - To be clear, I am talking about myself and my side projects here, not paid work 🙂