Clarifying the Milestones

As I approach my 3rd major milestone, I’m beginning to have a better idea of the timeline for each one. I’m not much for deadlines, I already have enough deadlines in my life. I realize that not having deadlines slows me down but it also removes pressure.

Not to say that there’s no pressure. The sheer fact that I am making the milestones public puts tremendous pressure on me to show progress.

I’ve listed these milestones in what I believe will be chronological order but I may be wrong. Since I’ve listed them, I think it is important to clarify some of the more ambiguous ones, beginning with the first profitable month without a salary.

Profitable Month (w/o salary) —

Right now I’m not paying myself a salary. I’ve put myself on the hourly payroll but I can only afford to pay myself for 10 hours of work per week.

This milestone represents the point in which the business can pay for all of it’s own expenses not including labor.

Break Even Point —

This is the point in time that the company goes from being in the red to being in the black. As soon as this happens, I’m going to begin increasing my hours to reflect the actual amount of time I am working. Doing this will push the company back into the red. I want to stay as close to zero as possible without going over.

This will be a balancing act. All of the profits at that point will go straight back into the company, mostly into paying myself a living wage.

Profitable (with Salary) —

This is probably the most important milestone for me on this list. My goal is to have a $52k salary ($1k per week). This is what I was making at my previous job and it means so much to me to be able to get back to that point, so I don’t worry about paying for food, clothing, shelter, and living a healthy life.

As I said before these milestones may not be in the right order or new ones may be added along the way. For this post I wanted to clarify where I am and where I want to be with this company in the near future.

To Do List

1. Reach out to Instagram influencers.
2. Fix the orders spreadsheet, link to re-order form to it.
3. Reach out to new contact at favordelivery.com.
4. Fix profile at delivery.com.
5. Write the Craigslist ad.
6. Design car decals.
7. Find local bulletin boards to attach flyers / business cards.
8. Create a pitch deck for b2b sales.

This story is part of a series documenting the journey of a 2016 Dallas startup called Feather. For your reference here is the Table of Contents for the series.

Previous Story: What Happened in the Last 9 Days

Next Story: Feather’s Advertising Results and Conversion Metrics

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