The First step to become a Solopreneur!
My journey from laziness to success
In this article, I’m going to share with you how I made the transition from laziness to achieve my goals. Keep in mind that there is nothing like math formula to help you achieve your goals. You must craft your own methodology. But, as we all learn by reference, I’ll show you my process. So feel free to cherry-pick the parts that you found interesting.
Before to start, I wanted to clarify that this blogpost will talk about how I achieved the financial independence by drastically changing my mindset.
This said, let’s get started!
About me
I won’t make my resume here but let’s simply detail what I achieved since the last 2 years:
- 3 blogs (Rubycademy, The Developer’s Journey, Increase Productivity) that generate few millions views per year
- A website to learn web development that generates a descent amount of money
- I’m a full-remote freelancer with multiple simultaneous clients
- I’m a proud father and husband.
How did I make the transition from laziness to building the lifestyle that I wanted?
The beginning
I literally spent a year watching everything about personal development. I’ve read all the blogposts, articles and books that exist on the market.
The result: zero achievement in a year..
And it’s not the fault of all these resources.. what they say is very relevant and it can save you a lot of time while achieving your goals.. The problem here was to START. So, as a developer, I sat front of my computer and.. I did produce absolutely nothing! I didn’t know where to start. Indeed, I needed to clarify 2 points:
- What’s the goal here?
- What’s the first step to achieve this final goal?
I put some words on what was the lifestyle that I wanted for the next few years. As it’s personal, I’ll not share it with you. But here is an example of what it could look like:
I want to only work 4h per day and generate 15k$/month. It MUST be a remote-only job. I MUST love my job.
Those assertions should be the last paragraph of this chapter of your life. This means that you must end up there (or beyond). Let’s say that you love game programming. You want to create mobile games. 2 choices, depending on your personality:
- You give 100% of your focus on creating your game. It’s a financial risk, but you can release your video game earlier.
- You split your time between another activity that generate cash (freelancing, drop-shipping, etc..) and your goal.
As you don’t want to generate millions here, you can split your focus between 2 activities to achieve your goals.
At first, you’ll spend more than 4 hours per day on your job because you need to setup things. But never add constraints that’ll force you to spend more than 4 hours a day on your activity. Indeed, always think about automation or delegation to avoid to do the redundant task by yourself. That’ll lower your margin. But in the long term that’ll help to keep the flame burning.
For each decision that you have to take you must think about the final chapter. Will that decision prevent you to achieve your goals? Now, that we’re more familiar with the notion of goals, let’s see how to define the first step.
The first step is always a quick achievement that helps you to test the market. So, if you already know what will be you mobile game, then create a demo or record a video. Put it online with a form to start generating a hype and create a mailing list. Indeed, if users are willing to give you their email after seeing your demo, this means that they’re willing to give it a try when your mobile game will be released.
Meanwhile, you start developing your game while you still get traction with your demo.
Conclusion
I know it can be difficult to imagine something and make it true. This is all due to the fear to fail or to start. But by clearly defining what you really want and by starting with a quick and rewarding achievement you’ll be able to achieve your goals! In long term.
In the next article, we’re going to talk about repetition & resilience. Stay tuned!
Voilà!
