User Power
Value/Post Ratio
605%
- Oct 16, 2014
- 801
- 4,843
Wow, in 2 more days it’s been one year since the FLF came into my life. You all are an awesome community, there is so much experience, wisdom, and support here for anyone who is willing to listen, learn, and most importantly….APPLY it. This forum really is just a tool in your arsenal to success, its all up to you what you do with it. Almost anything you really need to succeed is here, someone has already done something like you are wanting to do, or can point in in the right direction.
I must confess, I am not where I was hoping to be right now, but I have no shame in that because I have busted my butt and it’s going to happen, it’s just delayed. The one piece of advice I have, the only one, is keep moving and applying, week after week…This is all about learning and putting what you have learned into practice. This is how you bring increasing value to the market over time, you must become an expert in whatever domain you are in, and apply that expertise to make your customers lives better…Dream big, build bigger...
You can have a full time job, and still do what it takes to move forward. You have mornings before work, lunch breaks, nights, weekends, holidays, and vacation time. I don’t believe in burning the boats until you at least have a raft to use instead.
Here is a summary of my process, certainly everyones is different. I am a home-brew programmer, not 1 ounce of formal education…but this is just my tool, there are 1000’s of different pathways to success.
Joined FLF and read and read and read for about 10 days.
Shut off the TV, I mean entirely shut it off, no netflix, nothing.
Identified my project, whether or not it succeeds is irrelevant at this point to me, I just want something to apply my efforts to. You HAVE to take a leap and start moving, this is really the #1 most important thing…period.
Around November 2014 I began to program my idea, using PHP and mySQL...Spent all my free time coding, researching, and reading…
Around Jan or Feb 2015 I responded to a post in the FLF about what different technologies where. Someone responded and said I was old school and there was a new wave of tech that was changing everything…something called a single page application. Now I was really butt hurt by this, because I had responded back to help someone out, and this A-hole was being mean and rude to me for no reason…But after about 3 days, I sucked in my pride and told myself I owed it to myself to look into this Single Page Application idea, what if he/she was right???
That’s when I discovered Meteor, OMG, 3 days later I walked away from 4 months of programming effort and changed to Meteor, which IMHO is the most amazing stack going. Really, I just walked away from 4 months of effort, I was only able to reuse about 15% of my code I had spent 4 months making.
Attended the FLF summit in I believe March, met tons of people, and was just excited to be around others with the same goals and energy I was feeling.
Also around March I was contacted by @tafy, and we began a regular, pretty much everyday Skype conversation. We shared everything that was going on, ideas, struggles, designs, etc...
@tafy convinced me that I needed to outsource a programmer, I decided, what the heck lets give it a shot….So I went to Odesk (now upwork), and found someone…
Things went pretty good for about a month. I mean it was pretty rocky, some code was great, some was just off base….I was quite frustrated a lot of days…But I took a hard look in the mirror, and realized…the problem was ME. Because I sucked at communicating what I wanted, I was too busy auditing and editing the code and not spending enough time developing my developer. Now, I must say if you are not a programmer, you probably would not struggle with this like I did because in my mind there was the way I wanted things done, and they were done a different way, and knowing what I wanted 5 months down the line I could see flaws that the programmer simply would not know...
Lesson learned…Communicate early, communicate often, check in often and redirect when things are going the wrong direction. Problem dramatically improved...
Then in about end of May, I hit a major roadblock…you see I had contracted with an Agency to program (this is basically a company with employees), now in reality through oDesk I had hired a specific person, but my programmer was changed to a different project, and they brought someone in to fill his spot…It was obvious to me almost immediately, this was not a skilled of a programmer, and equally horrifying I had to start from square one reacquainting this person with my project..
Right after I discovered this I suspended my contract, while I sorted out the issues I was having...
To make a long story short, I contacted the original dev to see if they wanted to work for me outside of the agency…yep they did, but one small problem, they did not have a computer that could do what I needed...
Hmmmmmmm….
Ok, what if I wire you the money to buy a laptop, and you work for me for a reduced rate until the difference is made up…Yep, cool, lets go…I must admit this was a little nerve racking wiring $1600 to a third world country…but worst case scenario I lose $1600 and best case scenario I get to keep the programmer that I had built a lot trust in….Ok, Western Union here we go...
2 weeks later, all back up and running….
Since then on the programming front it has been all about learning and refining our process. We have made several turns along the way, to new technology…we have hit technological roadblocks we have had to overcome…
About end of August, I realized we needed some help cleaning up our interface, so I found a designer, and have now been working with them…Score 1, now we can move even faster because all I need to do is come up with the specification and the designer and programmer work together to develop the design, and then the programmer implements it...
Beginning of September found a copywriter, have now spent about 20 hours developing copy for website, direct mail, and ad words...
Right now, I’m planning a trip to go meet with my developer in person, I want to build a development shop in this country composed of a developer, designer, and QA person…Hopefully have that operational in 6 months…but I’m laying the seeds for that happening...
Throughout all this, you have to keep learning, constantly making yourself better….Here are the books I have read (or listened to) in the last year...
The Millionaire Fastlane by Master MJ DeMarco
Advanced Selling Techniques by Brian Tracy
The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy
Good to Great by Jim Collins
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Start with Why by Simon Sinek
Ready, Aim, Fire by Michael Masterson
Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff
The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes
SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham
Zero to One by Peter Theil
The Founders Dilema by Noam Wasserman
SCRUM by Jeff Sutherland
The 4 hour workweek by Timothy Ferriss
The 21 Irrefutable laws of Leadership by John Maxwell
ZAG by Marty Neumeier
Ask by Ryan Levesque
The Boron Letters by Gary Halbert
The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank
Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins
Smart cuts by Shane Snow
Ca$hvertising by Drew Whitman
Positioning by Al Ries
The Robert Collier Letter Book by Robert Collier
One Simple Idea by Stephen Key
Building Single Page Web Applications with Meteor by Fabian Vogelsteller
Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk
Simple Success Secrets by John Carleton
Discover Meteor
and last but not least, I must give a shout out to @Andy Black ... if you are marketing on the internet you must read everything this jedi master has written here and on his site...
Business is like college, you must get educated…I feel 1000% more fit to succeed today then I did a year ago. How do you do it...
Turn off the TV, quit surfing time waster websites, limit how often you look at your email (2x a day is more than enough)…
Then dedicate time EVERY day, even on vacation and weekends, to read, learn, and grow...
And most importantly APPLY what you are learning, and keep applying, applying, applying...
See you all on the flip side, I’ll report back in 1 year from now...
I must confess, I am not where I was hoping to be right now, but I have no shame in that because I have busted my butt and it’s going to happen, it’s just delayed. The one piece of advice I have, the only one, is keep moving and applying, week after week…This is all about learning and putting what you have learned into practice. This is how you bring increasing value to the market over time, you must become an expert in whatever domain you are in, and apply that expertise to make your customers lives better…Dream big, build bigger...
You can have a full time job, and still do what it takes to move forward. You have mornings before work, lunch breaks, nights, weekends, holidays, and vacation time. I don’t believe in burning the boats until you at least have a raft to use instead.
Here is a summary of my process, certainly everyones is different. I am a home-brew programmer, not 1 ounce of formal education…but this is just my tool, there are 1000’s of different pathways to success.
Joined FLF and read and read and read for about 10 days.
Shut off the TV, I mean entirely shut it off, no netflix, nothing.
Identified my project, whether or not it succeeds is irrelevant at this point to me, I just want something to apply my efforts to. You HAVE to take a leap and start moving, this is really the #1 most important thing…period.
Around November 2014 I began to program my idea, using PHP and mySQL...Spent all my free time coding, researching, and reading…
Around Jan or Feb 2015 I responded to a post in the FLF about what different technologies where. Someone responded and said I was old school and there was a new wave of tech that was changing everything…something called a single page application. Now I was really butt hurt by this, because I had responded back to help someone out, and this A-hole was being mean and rude to me for no reason…But after about 3 days, I sucked in my pride and told myself I owed it to myself to look into this Single Page Application idea, what if he/she was right???
That’s when I discovered Meteor, OMG, 3 days later I walked away from 4 months of programming effort and changed to Meteor, which IMHO is the most amazing stack going. Really, I just walked away from 4 months of effort, I was only able to reuse about 15% of my code I had spent 4 months making.
Attended the FLF summit in I believe March, met tons of people, and was just excited to be around others with the same goals and energy I was feeling.
Also around March I was contacted by @tafy, and we began a regular, pretty much everyday Skype conversation. We shared everything that was going on, ideas, struggles, designs, etc...
@tafy convinced me that I needed to outsource a programmer, I decided, what the heck lets give it a shot….So I went to Odesk (now upwork), and found someone…
Things went pretty good for about a month. I mean it was pretty rocky, some code was great, some was just off base….I was quite frustrated a lot of days…But I took a hard look in the mirror, and realized…the problem was ME. Because I sucked at communicating what I wanted, I was too busy auditing and editing the code and not spending enough time developing my developer. Now, I must say if you are not a programmer, you probably would not struggle with this like I did because in my mind there was the way I wanted things done, and they were done a different way, and knowing what I wanted 5 months down the line I could see flaws that the programmer simply would not know...
Lesson learned…Communicate early, communicate often, check in often and redirect when things are going the wrong direction. Problem dramatically improved...
Then in about end of May, I hit a major roadblock…you see I had contracted with an Agency to program (this is basically a company with employees), now in reality through oDesk I had hired a specific person, but my programmer was changed to a different project, and they brought someone in to fill his spot…It was obvious to me almost immediately, this was not a skilled of a programmer, and equally horrifying I had to start from square one reacquainting this person with my project..
Right after I discovered this I suspended my contract, while I sorted out the issues I was having...
To make a long story short, I contacted the original dev to see if they wanted to work for me outside of the agency…yep they did, but one small problem, they did not have a computer that could do what I needed...
Hmmmmmmm….
Ok, what if I wire you the money to buy a laptop, and you work for me for a reduced rate until the difference is made up…Yep, cool, lets go…I must admit this was a little nerve racking wiring $1600 to a third world country…but worst case scenario I lose $1600 and best case scenario I get to keep the programmer that I had built a lot trust in….Ok, Western Union here we go...
2 weeks later, all back up and running….
Since then on the programming front it has been all about learning and refining our process. We have made several turns along the way, to new technology…we have hit technological roadblocks we have had to overcome…
About end of August, I realized we needed some help cleaning up our interface, so I found a designer, and have now been working with them…Score 1, now we can move even faster because all I need to do is come up with the specification and the designer and programmer work together to develop the design, and then the programmer implements it...
Beginning of September found a copywriter, have now spent about 20 hours developing copy for website, direct mail, and ad words...
Right now, I’m planning a trip to go meet with my developer in person, I want to build a development shop in this country composed of a developer, designer, and QA person…Hopefully have that operational in 6 months…but I’m laying the seeds for that happening...
Throughout all this, you have to keep learning, constantly making yourself better….Here are the books I have read (or listened to) in the last year...
The Millionaire Fastlane by Master MJ DeMarco
Advanced Selling Techniques by Brian Tracy
The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy
Good to Great by Jim Collins
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Start with Why by Simon Sinek
Ready, Aim, Fire by Michael Masterson
Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff
The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes
SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham
Zero to One by Peter Theil
The Founders Dilema by Noam Wasserman
SCRUM by Jeff Sutherland
The 4 hour workweek by Timothy Ferriss
The 21 Irrefutable laws of Leadership by John Maxwell
ZAG by Marty Neumeier
Ask by Ryan Levesque
The Boron Letters by Gary Halbert
The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank
Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins
Smart cuts by Shane Snow
Ca$hvertising by Drew Whitman
Positioning by Al Ries
The Robert Collier Letter Book by Robert Collier
One Simple Idea by Stephen Key
Building Single Page Web Applications with Meteor by Fabian Vogelsteller
Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk
Simple Success Secrets by John Carleton
Discover Meteor
and last but not least, I must give a shout out to @Andy Black ... if you are marketing on the internet you must read everything this jedi master has written here and on his site...
Business is like college, you must get educated…I feel 1000% more fit to succeed today then I did a year ago. How do you do it...
Turn off the TV, quit surfing time waster websites, limit how often you look at your email (2x a day is more than enough)…
Then dedicate time EVERY day, even on vacation and weekends, to read, learn, and grow...
And most importantly APPLY what you are learning, and keep applying, applying, applying...
See you all on the flip side, I’ll report back in 1 year from now...
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