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From comfortable job to comfortable freedom

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

Qstyle

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Hello everyone,

It's hard to figure out where to start. There's so much to tell before I can continue with the path I'm on now... (But iff you want you can skip down to the next title)


I'm from Belgium, mid-thirties and work from home as a production designer of steel structures for offices, manufacturing buildings, etc... Cad drawings, production files, cutting and welding instructions. It's with a decent pay, I choose my own hours, I have a nice apartment even though it's not finished yet... I'm still saving to get the last things done, but it's better than average. It's a good investment for when I sell it in some 20 years+.

For about a decade or so I know I need to make money in a different way than by the hour. Trading money for time is not the way to live. I knew it then and I still know it today. It's a crappy feeling every time I need to get behind my computer. I'm good at my job, but I hate the fact I don't earn anything when I turn away from my computer. I've come to hate my job since I can't sit in the couch anymore and watch tv without thinking I could be earning more, I feel guilty when I'm not doing anything at that moment. It's a nagging feeling every time I'm sitting somewhere, drinking with friends, spending an evening with family at the table,... We all need time off to unwind, and yet...

The first time I read TFLM I couldn't sleep for days. My brain went totally haywire. MJ confirmed a lot I already knew. I've had even less free time since then. Especially since I've been convinced for a very long time already that there's a ton of money to be earned online. Either by selling something in great numbers... Or trying to drill into a big market.

However, I've always doubted whether I could earn enough with the small online market Belgium and The Netherlands has to offer (approx. 16 million Dutch inhabitants). I was always envious of Americans (the most obvious big market online). Yes, I live in Europe, but the borders still exist and the language barriers make it even harder. Europeans seldom search for something across the border. Nearly everyone can communicate in English, but when we shop online, we return to our own language most of the time. Warranty is also a difficult issue when buying something abroad so we just try to avoid it or don't think about it when we do order something abroad.

I've tried a lot online as soon as I was past 20 and started discovering what possibilities there were online. I launched different websites, blogs, sold on second hand websites, tried a one-product one-click Webshop with Facebook ads, day trading, buying and selling from Alibaba... The list is long, the results are none. I've always played safe however. I never invested more than I felt (very) comfortable with. The biggest loss I ever encountered were Japanese knives I imported. About 550€ on purchase and shipping cost. There are still a few in my closet. Every time however I knew what I did wrong, I lost interest and couldn't persist long enough. Some of them weren't even the right fit (couldn't reach decent volume overtime), I just wanted to sell things to make money. The nagging feeling kept me going, trying new things, investing time in searching for the next big thing I should try.

To prove to myself (and everyone else) I will eventually make it I did something completely different. November 2016 I took on a bet with the wife of a friend of mine. We both wouldn't drink any alcohol for a full year. There were (and still are) some difficult moments, but after 9.5 months I can tell with certainty I will reach my goal. And if I can reach that goal I can reach any goal I will set for myself.
I also tried to adopt a new lifestyle. I've always been quite sportive, but because of my sedentary lifestyle I've always been on the heavy side. 25 years of playing handball has taken its toll on my body and a tear in a tendon in my shoulder is slowly ending that career. However, power training gave my amateur career another boost. Following a strict training schedule has increased my strength, created a mass of tight muscles around my shoulder decreasing the tension on the tendon and made it possible to add a few more years.
Together with the power training I had to adapt to a different style of eating too. Protein rich to create muscle, but also to diminish hunger. After a year of training and eating I feel better than ever. I look better than ever.
There's so much that I've achieved personally the last year... So much positive vibes that I can build upon... It's quite intoxicating. The nagging feeling is still there, but I want to go forward. I need to go forward. I need another goal in a few months.

My next goal will be the biggest one yet. I want to live in New York for at least a year. It's only been set 3 weeks ago. It won't be for the coming year, but sometime in the future it will happen. I don't know why. I just feel like it's something that I have to do. How I'm going to achieve this is quite related with the path I'm working on now. My next business attempt.


Introduction to my current path.

As a steel structure designer I'm technically well educated. Give me a drawing of a building and I won't have much difficulty explaining what's on it. My practical knowledge is something completely different. There's little time to visit buildingsites, because time is money. A lot of my knowledge about a buildingsite is from hearsay. When in meetings, before, during or after the construction, I get feedback from the sitemanager, architect or even the workers and I keep a note of these things. Mental or written. Big or small. But I've always had a feeling I didn't know enough.
About 3 years ago I started educating myself. Fabrication of building materials, the processes of prefabrication, administrative quirks of the building process, detailed transport, handling and installation of all kinds of materials... There's so much to learn and every time I search for some info I get interested in more.
From day one I've put everything online. It was primarily a library for myself, but since I had to look for it all over the internet I wanted it to be accessible to everyone. It was a simple Wordpress website. Easy to navigate, clear pictures, responsive template.
Over the past years the articles kept growing and the traffic started increasing. I used a lot of the knowledge I gathered the past decade about building websites and generating traffic. I researched possible traffic of topics I wanted to write about and added those with the highest possible traffic first.
Slowly my focus started shifting from 'me' to 'others' since several possible high traffic articles were about topics I already knew a lot about. The articles started to be more about educating others in need of information that wasn't easily available online. At times it felt like a rut, just trying to write the best possible articles. And even though sometimes there was a lot of time between new articles, at different times I crunched out several in a short time period. Luckily, I kept going and the website kept growing.

I had a contact page online for visitors to ask questions or give suggestions for new articles. And once in a while I received an email, but it wasn't a regular thing. Most of the time it weren't suggestions, but questions about their personal problem. Something related to their own building or house... I tried to help them as good as I could.
About a year ago I got my first 'aha!' moment. Someone contacted me and asked a quote of a product I had written an article about. It's not something you can go buy around the corner at the local home depot. I informed them the website was purely informative, nothing more. Several more inquiries followed after that. There was a market out there and my website was channelling it.
So, 3 months ago I decided I needed to do something with that market. I contacted manufacturers and got to an agreement. I'm adding a (similar to dropshipping) Webshop to the website.
However, we're talking about highly customizable building products. It's not just a simple 'add to basket' Webshop. It's so highly customizable, and the weight and size makes calculating transport fees quite complicated. It's to difficult for me to program, so I contacted Woocommerce developers to write a fully custom Webshop with extended possibilities to expand in the future.

If there's one thing different with my previous endeavours, it's that I'm going all in now. It's a massive investment (to me) to get the Webshop built. However, knowing there's a market already gives me some comfort. I also researched the competition. None of them are as flexible as my Webshop will be. The few that there are offer extremely basic options and require written inquiries which result in a personal quote several days later. Mine will instantly generate the right quote.


The path I'm on now.

I met with the developers yesterday.
  • In September they'll be doing the groundwork, digging through all the information, determining all the variations, setting parameters per category, etc...
  • In October they'll do the actual coding.
  • November I'll be adding all the data, products, prices, variables per product etc...
  • Somewhere in December we'll be doing a lot of testing to make sure quotes are coming out right.

If all goes well the Webshop will go live the 1st of January. Both January and February are slow months for the manufacturers since it's mid-winter. The ideal moment to sort out the last bugs if there are any.
When spring is in the air all should be fully operational.

When the Webshop generates a consistent basic income I hope to quit my job and write articles full time, simultaneously adding related products to the shop. Eventually, if all goes well I hope to achieve my latest goal, I should have the possibility and freedom to move to New York and run the shop from there.

So, fingers crossed for the next 4 months and thanks for reading.
 
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Qstyle

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Well, the first week has gone by and no word from the developers yet. I wasn't really expecting anything, but some kind of progress report would have been nice. Even if it's just to keep my own energy up.

This week I decided I need to add some e-books to the shop. Since the products I'm selling need some specific tools and attention during construction and require some know-how about finishing up the details, it seems to be the best idea to bank on that. So I'll be writing a few how-to guides with detailed instructions.
I started with outlining the structure of the e-books. All of them will most likely be somewhat a copy of eachother, so I'm trying to be as thorough as I can to reduce the time I need to invest in them when adding the details.
The next weeks I'll be adding my personal knowledge and sketches/visualisations I can create with my Cad-program.
When that's done I'll be contacting some old colleagues, they have a combined knowledge of 100+ years in construction. They'll gladly share their know-how and improve my books over a good meal and copious amounts of beer...

This weekend I'm going to add some 'download me' buttons around the website to verify which e-book I should write first. I'll add a subscription line on the downloadpage to get them notified when the book is finally done since there's nothing to download yet. Hopefully it'll spark the first few sales when the Webshop goes live.
 

Qstyle

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Today I had a few setbacks with my current business and an acquaintance. I misjudged the situation. Learned my lesson.
It kind of destroyed the momentum I had the past weeks. Normally I would fall back on my discipline, but I couldn't get anything done in the morning. There was an absolute lack of motivation.
Halfway the afternoon I tried to suck it up and started grinding away. It was unpleasant. I got a few pages done on the e-book. I'll continue to write some more during the evening.
It's times like these I'd rather have some more like minded friends to talk to. I've got great friends, but almost none of them will know the struggle to get to the FL.
Hopefully tomorrow will bring some much needed energy.
 

WealthChaser

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Hi QStyle,

Thanks for sharing your process. If you were interested in getting a 'shop' launched, I highly recommend checking out wix.com (was squarespace.com). They have tons of shop templates that integrate with Pay Pal. Very cheap monthly rate to host as well. This may save you some time / investment of development. As a developer, I cannot tell you how many times I have set up a family members store on wix.com to save on time and money.

If you are looking for a very unique store, you may have to rely on your development team.

I will be watching your progress, best of luck :)

Matt
 
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MJ DeMarco

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It's times like these I'd rather have some more like minded friends to talk to.

We're here 24/7 ! What you're experiencing is quite normal.
 

iizu

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Sounds awesome. Reminds me of what Gary Vaynerchuck preaches about: Start documenting. Start doing(most of his followers don't follow that advice though.)

About the product:
Is it something you can make one at a time?
I mean if you have a people asking for it and you know the manufacturers, why not ask for a pre-payment and make one?

The webshop is surely nice and needed for scaling, but you could make your first sale and get some motivation.
 

Qstyle

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We're here 24/7 !
Thanks!
However, I've had my fair share of forum addictions. I'm not really sure it will benefit me since I'm behind my screen the whole day (and more). It might cost me precious time.
On the other hand it might help keeping the momentum going, seeing everyone grinding away at times. Knowing I'm indeed not alone.
Time will tell...
 
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Qstyle

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About the product:
Is it something you can make one at a time?
I mean if you have a people asking for it and you know the manufacturers, why not ask for a pre-payment and make one?

The webshop is surely nice and needed for scaling, but you could make your first sale and get some motivation.

The products are to big to put in stock and there are to many vatiations too. However, production time is quite short and very normal in the sector so I don't worry about my first sale. I'm more wondering how much I will sell and what prices I will be a able to negotiate in regards to volume within a year. It's rather necessary so I could calculate what margin I should take. However, no one has a globe to see the future, so it will be a rather calculated guess.
There are so many questions right now of which just a very select few could be answered. It's exciting, but at the same time a source of quite some insecurity.

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-G935F met Tapatalk
 

Qstyle

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So, today I had a meeting with a potential supplier of additional products that will be sold in the Webshop. These are a necessity for the installation of the main products but are more easily found in various other webshops. I won't be able to compete on price with them since my volume won't be as high as those other shops, but I can't not sell them. It's a service to my customers, offering them the possibility so they don't need to visit a different Webshop to make a second order.
I'm still contemplating whether I would take a healthy profit on those products, risking my customers might indeed visit a second Webshop, or just a slim profit to ensure I can note the extra orders.

Back to the supplier. The representative was quite positive about my ideas and by hearing him talk I noticed he considered himself a slowlaner, looking for a way to the fastlane too. So he admired the fact I was setting up my own Webshop and all the effort that already went into it.
However, he was thinking as a representative and was listing numerous problems that could occur on the construction sites since there are so many variations in the main product I will be selling. Because of those variations there are even more solutions with their products that each have their own possibilities but also limitations.
The problem was, he was thinking about everything they sold and all the problems that could (even highly unlikely) happen. They were having problems themselves to create a database with their own products, variations, possibilities etc. None of the programmes they contacted in the last 8(!) years could solve their issue. And because of that he wasn't sure they could help me out. They only would deliver me their products if they were sure there wouldn't be any problems in the future, thus evading having to look for any solutions at all.

I defused the whole problem by limiting the amount of products I initially wanted to sell, both of the main product as their product. I suggested we'd start with the most simple combination and go on from there. It seemed to clear his head and he saw a lot less complications. Once I have the first problems cleared out of the way I have my way in and I'm assuming a lot will get much easier going on from there.
He promised to get back to me first thing after the weekend since he had to consult with someone at the main office, but I left the meeting with a positive vibe.

As for the e-book, I've written some pages every night for the past days and it's coming along nicely.
We'll see what next week will bring.
 

Qstyle

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Time for a new update.

The potential supplier of additional products got back to me but tried to let me down easy. They weren't willing to risk any problems. Their loss, I still have a few other possibilities. I'm going to contact the next one this week.

The past week I added a few more pages to the e-book. I also added two salespages for two e-books I will be selling and added a subscription line with a 50% off possibility when the books are launched. After a week I got 3 email addresses for one of them. It almost felt like a first sale, but more than that, it was confirmation that there is indeed a need. So I'll be focusing on that e-book first.

Haven't heard from my developers yet. I'm going to contact them myself if I haven't heard anything by the end of this week.

1st of january is still a long way to go. Waiting is the hard part for now.
 
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Qstyle

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I tried to contact my developer on Friday, but I couldn't get a hold of him. I expect he'll be calling me back tomorrow.

One of the additional products I will be selling in my Webshop are screws. Customers will be needing lots of them when buying my main products. Lots and lots of them. And since they will be focusing more on the price of the main product, the price of the upsells will be less scrutinized. It's a no-brainer to add the screws since the quantity and better margin will make a decent difference on the bottom line.

However... One screw isn't the other. I knew there were some differences and I needed to dive into it some deeper, but I'll be needing all my free time next week to call suppliers and try to get enough answers to figure out why I'm looking at 90+ different screws (not including differences in length).
Luckily, I have a few positive spins on this journey.
- I'm likely to end up quite an expert in screws when I'm signing on my supplier. I don't want any surprises coming from my customers.
- With all the knowledge I'm gathering, I'm also taking a ton of notes which will be used to write an extensive article that'll end up on the website. I'm not finding enough info myself, so it's a great way to attract more organic traffic.

I'm glad I finally dove into this chapter. It's something I dreaded for a few weeks. I guess it was a little fear of the unknown. But I have to take this hurdle before the Webshop is built, otherwise I'm losing time. Having finished Unscripted this weekend did help too. It gave me a great boost and helped me plot out, more clearly, the road I still need to take before I can launch.
 

Qstyle

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First things first.
  • Developers are nicely on time, hitting the right targets as discussed before starting. All the coding should be done by the end of the month and I can start adding products in October to start testing everything.
  • A new supplier was thrilled to work together. They even have more products than I expected which is a big plus. We'll be discussing prices and details the next days.
I was going through the analytics of the website in the weekend. It's always been there, but this time I actually noticed almost all my traffic is organic (or direct). I then used google's webmasters tools and got confirmation that there aren't any outside links to my website. It's never worried me before, but now I'm starting the Webshop, I can't rely on google and their algorithm alone...
So, I need to start working on some quality links. How, I'm not sure yet. I don't write everyday articles that can be shared through social media. It's more like a Wikipedia with articles about different topics in construction.
  • I was thinking about guest writing an article for some construction related websites, but they're the big boys... I'm not that professional and I'm not sure my writing is good enough for them. I'll have to make a list and see if I can get a foot in the door somewhere...
  • I could contact manufacturers of items I wrote about. Yet, those too are some serious hitters. Asking for a backlink feels like begging, there's no real value for them yet.
  • There are some construction related forums I sometimes come across when researching an article. People with the same question looking for answers. I've got the answer now, but it feels like spamming when I would add a link. It feels more hones to post the answer directly. I'm not even sure if posting links is allowed by some.
  • Social media:
    • IG: I have no idea what pictures I should take since I'm not weekly adding articles, not even bi-weekly, so engagement would be very low.
    • Facebook: I thought about creating a page/group, but I'm not sure what information I could share. Or how I could create value to actually engage people. It's construction, there's nothing sexy about it. It's purely information. There could be more value for architects... but they won't be my customers...
    • Twitter: I'm not a big fan, I don't even use it personally. And again, there's not much to tell.
Social media could get more interesting when the shop is actually live. Visiting customers and checking out their projects and take before/after pictures, get some decent feedback, different channels for customer service...

Next problem: getting to know my audience. That's a tricky one. Since google analytics has to anonymise search terms when people are logged in, I only have about 5% that's still available. I'm not sure if it's representative for the other 95%. So I'm not sure how and why people find my articles. I'd like to know what people are looking for so I can actually help them if I know it's not on the site.
I tried a pop-up plugin for a while. First at the bottom corner. After a while smack in the middle of the screen. After about 2x 1000visits, I had about 0 engagements. I still haven't got a clue.
So I'm left to using keyword research and anything that's related. Highest score is the next article I write about. The strange thing is, my best visited article is one I knew was a very big question for a lot of visitors, but nearly impossible to figure out using keyword research.

Oh, how I hope I will laugh about all this next year.

If you got any tips or suggestions, I'm all ears.
I'm also thankful you took time to read my deep thoughts and struggles.
Cheers!
 

Qstyle

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I guess it's time for a new update.

I think I'm finding myself in the desert of desertation.
I'm getting regular feedback from the developers. They're advancing steadily. But they're not done yet.
There's still November when I need to input all the products and December to do rigorous testing....
I can feel the bills piling up. I'd love to make my first sale, just to get confirmation. Knowing my investment is a smart move.
Pulling the plug would be stupid, so I'm just going forward, deeper into the unknown...

I have a client from my normal business that placed an order. It's something of a first sale, but it's actually just a client (which I consider a good friend by now) doing a good deed, helping me building some volume to get better prices. So it's not a real sale. It's not someone unknown from the internet that stumbled upon my Webshop and made a purchase... I don't consider it a first sale.
I have a second quote running, also from a client from my normal business. There's a nice profit to be made. But I still don't count it as a real sale if the order comes through.

A close friend asked for a quote too. He actually declined. At first I was disappointed. After half a day it gave me better insight. I started questioning myself why he declined. Price. He knew a contractor where he could get it cheaper. So, how can I compete with that? It actually gave me better insight in the work I still have to do.

I have to convert the website to a brand. Right now it's just plain information, there doesn't need to be an image or a brand.
When I'm selling products it needs to be more than just a simple Webshop.
The brand should reflect reliability, confidence, experience, honesty, efficiency.
The consumer is getting a lot of useful info on how to use the products, in-dept articles on production of the products, transportation,...
They're getting a nationally produced product, straight from the production line, while a lot of vendors sell second- or third-choice products (produced in batches and sold overtime or with minimal (sometimes almost invisible) damage from production errors). My prices reflect top-quality, not the cheapest available. The brand needs to reflect all of that... I need to do a lot more research to get this done.
I also decided to never give a discount. Quality has it's price, giving discounts reflects the possibility of not always delivering the best product or best price I could give.
To counterbalance other vendors I plan to add additional free products to every purchase. I still have to figure this part out though.

I'm also planning on clearing my agenda, when necessary, after the first 10 orders have come in to follow them step by step. I want to document delivery (by the manufacturers carrier) to make sure everything is according to our agreements. To make sure everything is handled with enough caution and so forth. I'm planning on asking the customers several questions upon delivery on why they choose for my products, how they found the Webshop, what their plans are, possible pictures of their projects...

As for gaining more traffic to the website in order to maximize sales as soon as I'm launching, I wrote another article with high search volume. I optimised several older articles and started linking manufacturers on the relevant pages.
I'm plotting out some new routes, on how to connect with architects and finding out what articles I could write for them. I'm thinking about leveraging linked-in to gain traction with manufacturers, find out how they could connect with my audience and try the use that knowledge to sell some advertising space or something... These steps are still a bit of a blur and less important than the Webshop. When I have some spare time I try to work on these...

That's it for now. Thanks for reading.
If you have any questions or suggestions, just let me know.
Cheers!
 
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Qstyle

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It's been a very long time since the last update. Too long, so here's another one.
The shop is finally live, since about 3 weeks.
The bad news is, development has cost me twice as much as I anticipated. I wanted to start with a very basic setup, but since the products are very customizable which influences the price, and shipping costs had a lot of variables, we ran into a number of problems.
And even though the shop should be basic from the start, it had to look professional enough, since we're not talking about 20€ items. If it looked shady, no-one would trust it.
And third, there are a lot of expansions I'm planning so everything had to be developed so we wouldn't run into major problems in the future.
But, I kept moving on and it's finally live.

I'm still adding products on a weekly basis. I started with the most basic ones which are at the core of the shop and I'm now adding accessories. I'm also contacting other producers to expand the type of products which are all linked to the main products. However, I need a little more development for that to be possible and for now I'm not willing to invest a lot more.
I installed a chatfunction which is live when I'm working my regular job and I've had a decent amount of questions and inquiries already. I've had a decent amount of phone calls too. I try to go above and beyond when answering questions or providing information and several have informed me it's the reason why they will place an order at my shop.

However, I've not received one yet... At least not from total strangers. My personal client base has placed a few already, but that's not what I'm working towards. I want organic sales and maybe create a brand in the long run too.
So, I'm trying my best to get noticed by google. SEO has been on top of the list from the beginning, I joined two local forums to help answering questions (but linking to the shop is of course forbidden, the username is all I have for now), I got one website to publish an article I wrote for them which did link to the site.
I launched an adword campaing to drive traffic and it does so, but not one conversion yet. There's no competition, so I'm not sure why there aren't any sales. My guess is people are looking for information, not really to buy the product. Even though prices are clearly added. While writing this I went back and made some changes, we'll see what changes.
I started a Facebook page to start growing a consumer customer base with posts regarding consumer problems. I had a personal LinkedIn page without any posts, only contacts and personal info. I started using that to post information for businesses and growing that side into another customer base and I created a twitter account solely to follow giants in my sector to find interesting articles and inspiration for myself to write about.
I've been using and reading about social media a lot, but growing a customer base is something entirely different and quite hard. Especially since I don't have a lot of articles to share. It's not a blog with short posts, but long and comprehensive articles, so I have just about 50. Not all of them relevant for social media, yet get a ton of organic traffic. With the time I can spare I can squeeze out about 1 article in 2 weeks. That's not enough for sharing on social media... It's a struggle, but I'll keep pushing on.
I'm also stuck on finding out how to grow my possibilities to get noticed by google... There aren't many websites I can connect to and some of them want to sell me a partnership, not let me write something for them. I've researched and tried about every possibility to get my website picked up on (relevant) websites. It feels like I've hit a big wall and no way to get through it. The only way out seems to be writing more articles, growing the website bigger and have others come over the wall from the other side. Sadly, it feels like a daunting task looking at how slowly I can push out the articles.

Along with that struggle, the waiting game has started too. The desert of desertion. That first sale really has to come through to confirm my belief I've got something good going on.
So for now, I keep going forward, believing it will take off.
We'll see.

Cheers.
 

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