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@Knugs
Thanks for sharing your story! How are you doing right now?
Yeah, that's the goal. Work smarter, not harder (=more).
Therefore I like to plan things out a bit more in detail beforehand. I don't want to start and work and work and work and then notice, that this doesn't work (haha) out for me or as I want it to.
I was there and I know that I can't keep this speed up for long, no matter how much I like what I do. I know what the (mental health) results will be and I won't sacrifice my (mental) health for work/money again.
I don't want to create an empire. No enterprise business. Just a lifestyle business.
Goals are high, of course, I already calculated what I "need" to live an easy life. Everything above is a nice plus. But depends on what's the cost-benefit factor for this plus.
I value time more than anything. In my last job, I cut down to 80% (~30hrs) per week, Fridays no work.
This was amazing. Never will I ever work full-time again (except to build sth that gives me more free time after some months/years).
I'm also rather a "kopfmensch" and tend to overthink and overanalyse too much. Important to not let yourself be paralysed by some thoughts.
When you working through some business ideas you need to validate each assumption you make. I cant stress how important this is, you will see me comment this on a lot of threads. Most concepts fail because they made a wrong assumption and didnt validate it. Then they figure out a year later that the entire concept is garbage, because they didnt spend the day to call some clients and validate their assumption. A rationale/logic does not validate an assuption. Customer surveys are best. Customer interaction will also allow you to act flexible and pivot quickly. The art to pivot is really important.
Lets take the "optimising SEO for blogpost" example. You heard a need from others in the business. So this is how I would do it:
Interview them, find out what their problem is and why they are having it but really understand their problem. Then try to replicate this interview with others in the same business; Do they also have that problem? Is it also for the same reasons? Do this 10/20x (depending how many you can get in contact with) but the general rule is the more; the better. Communicating a lot with potential future clients is also great from a different perspective. You get to know the customer persona and get a feeling how sales and marketing should be directed for them. If you feel good about the information you have its time to go back to the drawin board and conceptionalise your business concept tailored to these businesses. Every new assumption needs to be validated again. Most likely, people are quite supportive if you want to help them. It makes sense to offer your services for free to a few individuals to validate the remaining assumptions that are based on providing the service. But even before then, you should pitch and validate your sales assumptions with the same people you have interviewed (but at a separate date).
Now you are at a stage where you have gathered a lot of information but still havent paid a single dime towards the business. If you are happy with your validation and if your "clients" are happy with the work you provided then you most likely have automatically got yourself a functioning business. In case you havent, worst case you have spent time on a concept that didnt work out. In reality, this will be valuable time for you since you have gone into the unknown and learned a lot yourself.
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