Thread: awjt's diary of achieving financial independence.

I started a new business today.

While I have been a programmer for many years, and a consultant for more years, and a data analyst/father/breadwinner for even more years, it was today that I turned a corner. I opened a business checking account.

I already have an LLC. I already have contractor relationships with the government, and have had many clients over the years and lots of gigs. But for some reason, those never felt like turning a corner. So today, new bank account with $2k seed money.

Short term goals:
1. a viable website by the end of January 2012.
2. making actual sales and turning coin by mid February.

Long term goals:
1. all of it will be done within margin, bootstrapping this baby the entire way.
2. financial independence within three years.
3. to learn enough stuff that making beautiful, profitable websites and e-businesses becomes second nature.
4. to also produce useful back-end software that no one has ever thought of, and can be sold/licensed of its own accord.
5. eventual liquidation event and move to the next project.

I decided to start this thread and keep it as a journal, so that I am holding myself accountable to these goals and they don't just drift away like a forgotten dream. I am stepping up, doing this thing, and doing it well. When I have a test website, I will post the link for comments. Thank you in advance for any and all input/kicks in the pants, as needed, on this journey.

-awjt

what is this business about?

I'm creating a website for ordering food from local places online. This has been done, lots of times. But if you look closely at what's out there, they are deficient in lots of ways that can be improved.

I love how the adsense keeps perfect track of the content of my posts and naturally posts ads for all these deficient sites! lol. fml.

Made good headway this weekend. Got my office behind the house squared away for work: power, internet, cleaned up.

Also have development of one of the major website elements about halfway done. Need to learn more CSS3 and Javascript to make this happen the way I want it. People have told me, "oh just outsource it." And I'm like pffff. I have NO business outsourcing something at this stage, if I don't know EXACTLY how it's done. I am bootstrapping. I need to know everything in my website, down to every dusty corner of the code. Otherwise later on, shit will break and I'll be scratching my head as customers jump ship while the days click by as I'm troubleshooting stuff I don't understand. I don't want that to happen, so I'm doing it the slow, hard way.

Also, I have my hosting and software installs squared away. Did a lot of reading on that. Good progress this weekend.

Looking forward to next week.

Quick update. It's the day after Christmas. Every day since I last posted on the 18th, I have been hammering away at my site. Some days all I have is an hour, and other days I can spend hours on end working on this thing. I've run my idea by a few people (who I know won't steal it LOL) and their responses are positive. But more than that (because when you tell people about an idea they usually are encouraging), they have offered extremely good suggestions for how to make it work. That is, to me, the hallmark of an idea with promise: when people immediately tell you ways you might improve it. It means that they get it, and the idea didn't just whiz by them making them go whu?. So, that was encouraging feedback. I will be incorporating their suggestions when the time is right.

As far as tangible progress, I have written down the 23 major areas I will have to address before the site is fully operational, with 13 of them critical to the site's basic function, so I'm concentrating there on those 13 things in these early weeks.

Today, I finally completed the rudimentary javascript/CSS container for my images. THAT friggin thing was a lot of work! Took me like about a week to figure out the code for it, lots of trial and error. Next is designing the script that will process the users' picture uploads INTO that standardized container object. As well as taking "breaks" to work on the shopping cart implementation and other stuff.

What's fun is that I can see progress, one step closer to making this website a reality, each day something new. It's very exciting to see something take shape, like a sculpture or a huge complicated painting.

51 more days to launch, and counting...
Full Screen Countdown to Feb 15, 2012

Sounds interesting. Keep up the good work

Made excellent progress this week. It is very slow, meticulous, often frustrating work.

The automation scripts for my site are nearly finished, from user-upload to page display. There is a whole barge-load of stuff in between those two extremes, which I worked out bit by bit, including some Perl scripts, more CSS and Jscript. What's left is ironing out the small stuff, fonts, sizing, a couple other graphic design details, and where to put these pieces in the CMS system I'm using. Then testing and validation.

After that, complete overhaul of the basic template for the website, getting all the pieces and parts where I want them, behaving how I want them to behave. Design the user-content-creation pages. And so on... Lots of fiddling with stuff until it works how I want it.

That's not as fun as the coding, though. I have one more huge piece of code to write, which fortunately I can recycle from a past project: a zip code selector. I wrote code last summer in Java to take a zip code, calculate all the other zip codes within a given radius of miles, then draw those zip codes to screen, shaped like they are supposed to be, with colors and labels. I will need some kind of map with highways and major roads, and I'm thinking about using the Google Maps API for this, and re-writing my stuff to be compatible. If anyone has any input on best practices for this zipcode mapping issue that could save me some time, I'd be grateful.

My deadline is looming... 47 days... If I keep at it, at this pace, and don't slow down or get discouraged, I'll make it. The goal I keep reminding myself:

I have to have a PRODUCT so that I can at least have the chance at passive income. Without the final result, even a rough draft that barely functions, I have no hope of the passive income that I want. So it's all a drive to get to a working version. I can refine/tweak/revamp it later. It just has to work, and it has to work on Feb 15th.

I'm not stopping until this is true.

I am working this thing to completion. At this point, my goal is to have the thing complete by my deadline. It's easy to get all sidetracked by dollar signs floating in the sky in front of me, but that's ridiculous. This thing might never make any money. I'm going to try my damned hardest to make that statement not be true and to make as much as possible with it, but.... right now money is beside the point. At this point I just need to have the first version WORKING. By Feb 15th. It's going to be tough but I'm close. I have a basic site juuuuust starting to come together. The pages are starting to show signs of life. A few more weeks and I'll have my site. My goal is COMPLETION. Then I'll deal with the competition.

Getting closer...
1. I understand the basic structure of the CMS I'm using, and have help resources lined up for when I get stuck. Things are far less frustrating now than a week ago.
2. The structure of my site is about 50% complete. Menus, pages, organization, etc.
3. Now I'm configuring the store with products and product displays.
4. After that will be weeks and weeks of styling the site. I have ideas from the CSS Zen Garden, and will be tweaking the CSS to get a smooth, elegant, APPETIZING look to the site.
5. I am developing the sales, marketing and customer service models for how I'm going to go out and round up clientele.
6. Working on my brother, see if he will help me with this project Arm-twisting my bro takes time... LOL
7. I cut ties temporarily with the business associate I keep complaining about. He wasn't happy, since he saw me as the linchpin to all his ambitions. Well, he wasn't willing to honor my need to have part ownership, so I had to cut him loose. Sorry, friend. Hurts to say goodbye, but them's the brakes. I did what I had to do.
8. Yes, I am utterly obsessed with this project. It's actually a little bit unhealthy. My back hurts from sitting here coding all day every day and skipping meals and exercise. I should be more balanced, but I'm freakin' driven to finish this thing by my deadline. My wife goes, "Why don't you make your deadline Feb 13th instead, so you can spend Valentine's day with me?" I said, "Sorry hon, no can do. I'll spend a few hours on Valentine's day evening with you, but I will have to work on my project to be ready for the 15th." LOL. LOL.

HELL OR HIGH WATER I AM COMPLETING THIS PROJECT BY FEB 15TH!

Of course, as soon as I announce that things are less frustrating, that's when they get EVEN MORE frustrating. Currently, I am at a standstill as I figure out the structure: style, layout and scripting for my site. What a TANGLED friggin mess. I am using Drupal. I don't regret it, but let me explain.

Before I started, I thought about simply designing pages from the ground up. But then I realized that I'd have to retrofit a lot of things to them: a content management system for inventory, user login and permissions, a shopping cart storefront. So that's when I abandoned the idea of making thin, streamlined custom pages. And instead I started looking around at CMS systems. Of the major players available, Drupal seemed like the best one with the most appropriate core functions and modules, as well as the deepest user community to go to when I need help.

What I *didn't* realize is how much time I would be spending hunting down extremely small details. Rather than... actually building the site and laying things out the way I want them. I have spent the last WEEK doing this, and don't have much of a site to show for it yet.

This is good, though. What I have is the rudimentary ability to tweak things: customize the css, php, jscript. I couldn't do that a few days ago. Now I can. So that's what I have to show for it, but it sure is slow, hard work. By the time I'm done, I will be a web master and that won't be an exaggeration.

Now the slog of making it all happen... This is a seriously huge challenge. But I get up every day early, and go to bed late working on it. At work, in spare moments, I work on it. I eat lunch at my desk and work on it. I am working on this thing until it looks and behaves the way I want it to. I am not backing out now. I've come too far and I want this thing to work.

Originally Posted by awjt

Now the slog of making it all happen... This is a seriously huge challenge. But I get up every day early, and go to bed late working on it. At work, in spare moments, I work on it. I eat lunch at my desk and work on it. I am working on this thing until it looks and behaves the way I want it to. I am not backing out now. I've come too far and I want this thing to work

Good work mate, reminds me when i was working on my first product.......its almost done, keep it up!!

Thanks! I'm not stopping until it's finished. (and then the real work begins on the business aspect of making it fly...LOL... love the journey!)

And my little brother just agreed to help out as much as he can. I don't know why, but that is the most inspiring thing to happen so far. I'm PUMPED.

Hey man,

I'm glad you're learning so much as you truck through this Drupal's a catastrophe to work with at first, but once you get the hang of it it's very powerful.

I think you can do it

Neck deep in the Drupal 7 API. OY! Fortunately I can program, but it's still hard to go from 0 to 60 on a new API with a totally weird structure in a limited time. Time is the luxury I no longer have. I relish this challenge. It's either me or the Drupal API, and I am going to win. Some dumb little technology will not get the best of me!

Troy is right - it's a catastrophe, but I'm starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

As far as time spent, I've been on this thing every day at least 2 hours, usually more like about 6 or 8, in addition to everything else: job, kids, wife, house, bills. If you read about and watch all the inspiration YouTubes on how to become successful, the best ones make it the simplest: every day you need to be banging away on your project. Every day, another brick in your palace.

I get up and code every day. I go to bed after coding and only after my brain just doesn't function anymore. I dream code. I daydream code. I talk code with other code-talkers and anyone else who will listen. When I get distracted, I think about *other* code, and then snap back to the code I really need to be concentrating on. My wife is annoyed at me because I'm distant. My kids ask me every day, so how's your computer program coming along, dad? I just go, it's coming along, boys.

I am trying to find balance, but there is just no way. Not until this first phase is over, maybe I'll step it back just a tad for a week, then jump on Phase 2, which will be building the actual business. But then, I'm sure things will just be starting to heat up. I will be torn between my day job and raising this new baby. And a new real baby on the way...

But these are all good problems.

Gone are the days of feeling lost, no good ideas, no good plan, nothing going on, bored, angstful, feeling like life sucks. That never happens now. Every day, I wake up and I see the mountain of work I have to do, and sometimes I kind of internally tremble in fear at everything I have to do and feel overwhelmed and I have a little fleeting vision of me balling up a piece of paper and throwing it away, symbolizing scrapping my project.

But that makes me laugh because I realize how much STRONGER I am now as a result of everything I'm doing. I can program in a dozen languages. I can take a new API apart in a few days, and get some examples working. I can pick up a new language like I can drive a stick. I can envision something, take it apart, break it down, work out the structure loosely in my mind, and then work on the pieces bit by bit to create something that fits my vision. All while rocking my Bose headphones with some sizzling music. I wouldn't trade this process for ANYTHING. In this sense, the journey is extremely pleasurable. Frustrating, but I am learning to enjoy even that.

It reminds me of how, years ago, I started taking a JuJutsu class for P.E. credit in college. I thought, yeah, this will be fun! Maybe I'll get a different color belt! And then after practicing for a year, I realized, "holy shit I'm about to test for my brown belt." I was about to become an intermediate practitioner of JuJutsu. I could throw, wrestle, lock, evade, choke and lots of different stuff. And then I spent the next 10 years after that as a brown belt. I practiced 3 or 4 times every week for 10 years. I spent every spare moment thinking about girls and martial arts. Then my sensei said, we need to talk about scheduling your black belt test. A few months later, I took my test. This test involved defending myself blindfolded, sword, knife and gun attacks from multiple attackers, and 6 grueling hours of physical exertion, wrestling matches thrown in here and there as a "break," going through 800 different techniques in front of a panel of 5 expert martial artists. And then it was over. I was a black belt, because I showed up. I showed up every week for more than 10 years. I put in the hours. I put in the days, weeks, months, years, a decade of this. I didn't do it for sensei, didn't do it for a black piece of cloth, didn't do it because I needed to know how to kill people or feed my ego. I didn't do it because I'm ambitious. I didn't do it for status.

Do you have any idea what I'm going to say next? Any idea why I did martial arts for more than 10 years?

There was only one reason I did it. I did it, because that's what I do. It's who I am. I show up.

So, THIS... this little website... which I have about 29 more days to complete... This is nothing. I have been through much worse. Even if I never make 1 dollar from this thing, I will be positioned to do it again without the steep upward curve of learning new APIs and programming languages and having to baby step myself through the process.

If you are the type of person who fits this profile of always showing up, then you will make it. The key is to show up. Even on shit days, head is pounding, bills are overdue, wife or husband is bitching you out; that's when you use that negative energy to push yourself on HARDER. Keep going. Don't stop.

Are you gonna show up today?

Originally Posted by awjt

I talk code with other code-talkers and anyone else who will listen.

...

Are you gonna show up today?

I'm on Skype about 8 hours/day while I'm programming. Feel free to add me PM sent.

I showed up today and I'll show up tomorrow

Still working it... This is a major task, but I haven't stopped showing up. Every day. Trying not to stress about it either. My deadline is three weeks away. I'm a little nervous that I'll miss it, but I'm pushing hard to get version 1.0 done by the 15th. I'm doing it. I have learned a ton so far, so regardless of outcome, the process has been awesome. More later. No time for waxing poetic.

I have a feeling you WILL succeed. Keep us posted, will be keeping track of your progress.

Silently closing in on my goal.

Duuuuude.... Drupal is a fargin disaster. But I'm making headway... I will have a basic site by the 15th, but it falls short, feature-wise. I am not through with it yet, tho. Thanks to some fantastic resources like buildamodule.com, a book called "Drupal 7 Module Development," the lovely and oh-so-user-friendly Drupal API reference [/sarcasm], Google, blood, sweat, cursing and tears, I am approaching my goal... glacially. I feel like Superman on Kryptonite tryin to hack my way through Drupal. But it's coming together. I know more about Drupal than I did a month ago, two months ago when I started. Hell, I know more about Drupal than I did an hour ago, since I just figured some important shit out just now.

The struggle over this software has given me a bunch of ideas for other websites. Mainly now when I go to websites, I immediately see their flaws and I think to myself, how would I do this better? While simultaneously realizing how absolutely difficult it is to implement any of this stuff and make it look good.

As far as difficulty of programming tasks that I've undertaken, this is about a 9. It's good, though. (Learning CUDA was harder)

Later, when I hire Drupal programmers and/or outsource development, I will KNOW what needs to be done and how hard it is to do. I will have perspective and I'll know when I'm being put on or it's going honestly. I'll be able to manage the project and not be in the dark. Plus I'll be able to develop other sites and not have to spend 2 months learning the same basic shit. I can jump right to the advanced stuff.

It's all good. I'll check back in in a few days, right around the 15th to post up the website and get a little early feedback. Cheers, and to all those reading, good luck to you! GET YOUR CODE ON! XD