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OMDA's Progress Reboot

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

OMDA

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Hi all,

I came to this forum right about a year ago after reading Unscripted . Last year, I fell short of many goals due to a lack of drive, lack of execution, and a lot of shiny object syndrome.
That, mixed with a lack of firm commitment to my goals with entrepreneurship, and I coasted most of the last half of the year. It has felt embarrassing to admit this, even on an online forum where I don't show my face.

I did make a very small pittance with affiliate sales on blogging, but I let other events in my life kill my momentum there.

My current plan is to get down with serious commitment and keep the momentum going.

My current execution project is to sell an information product. I am an expert in mechanical engineering, and have run into a particular problem across industries and I see the value in a set of guides, spreadsheets, and other material for that problem. It's just one idea for now.

Over the past few days I've been piecing together a sales letter and am also reading Dan Kennedy's Sales Letter book to polish it some. I already have a website, but the small bit of traffic I have going to it is not the target market, so I will just make an area dedicated to the sales letter and drive traffic to it via ads.

This will be a pre-sale. In the past, I have toyed with this idea too much but was afraid to execute it for some reason. I kept fiddling around with book cover design, a logo, titles, and all kinds of things that didn't really matter. I'm already much happier by simply just making the sales letter in an industry that I am already familiar with. It's a much smaller step than going hard on writing sales letters for something I am much less familiar with.

I know that I can develop the product within a couple of months (hppefully quicker than that when I start seeing interest and get a fire under my a$$), but I am going to wait for the traffic to justify that.

I have other ideas, but I need to focus on the execution of this one and drive it to either: sales with product development delivery or moving on to a different product.

I'm also thinking about using this product, if successful, to drive consulting sales, or bundling with consulting offers on the back end. I have a very small email list that I developed last year, which likely could be expanded further with more effort. This one was developed by free guides related to my industry. I've had a small amount of feedback, which was positive, but I honestly don't have enough subscribers yet to read into any of that yet. My audience is not big enough yet.
 
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OMDA

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An update

I was driving myself crazy working my normal job and trying to produce things afterward. I got severely depressed when a hard winter hit here and I couldn't get out when I needed to.
This led to me taking a lot of vacation time this year, including visiting a foreign country and having an absolute blast, going to another country, and not wanting to go back home.

I am now in the process of selling almost everything. I have a one way ticket, am arranging a long stay visa in the foreign country, and am going to do what I can to actually make a living on my own without a normal job.

My savings is large enough that I can fail, get kicked out of the country if I don't satisfy the Visa requirements, and keep going somewhere else.

Just staring at a computer screen for even more time after work was killing my drive to do anything. Quitting and moving to a cheaper locale in the states didn't bring out any desire for me. However, being in a different part of the world that is lower cost and has a walkable life that doesn't require a vehicle put enough drive in me to execute and make things happen. I've been timing it such that I get a bonus from work and then bounce. I bought the ticket 2 months back, almost immediately after the trip.

The hardest part was actually telling my parents because even though they have lived across the country from me for over a decade, I knew it would upset at least one of them. I was right, and they tried to convince me not to do it. I dreaded that conversation but once it was over things have been moving well.

So I'm not making money right now outside of work. I have been cold calling some people for freelance over there but legally I have to wait for paperwork, etc. I will essentially have a 2-3 month hard vacation where I cannot legally work, but, I can do lots of other things to relax and build products without worrying about the lawyers at my job claiming that they own what I have done. This was a huge concern for me. My father actually went through that and the company claimed that they owned his work after months and months of effort on his part.

My savings is measured in years at the expected burn rate which I added a lot of extra fluff for things. I'm in no danger of going broke for years. And that is without touching my 401k and other emergency funds which are not liquid. Lots of reserve.
 

OMDA

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Update:

1 day of work left. I have got rid of a lot of material possessions and fly out to Europe in 2 weeks. I'm happy with my budget and I have some short term plans to develop some products based on my specialist knowledge to immediately try selling. They should only require 1-2 days of development time to be useful/sellable.

I'll try several of those and see if I get any bites.

Other than that, I'm feeling very free. I can afford to screw up a few times and not go broke.

It won't be fastlane until I'm making money without actively seeking clients, but I can already feel the shackles coming off.
 

OMDA

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A little embarrassed to be writing here again, because I still don't have my own running business, but here goes:

I ended up reading The Great Rat Race Escape this weekend. It shifted my mind back to what I need to be doing.

Long story short is I quit my high paying job and moved out of the country in pursuit of a freelance work visa. Due to work/visa restrictions while in Europe, it ended up being an exciting time with lots of interesting new things, but it was basically just a 6+ month long vacation until Covid hit. I ended up using self-taught foreign language and in-person sales skills to get multiple part time legal work agreements in two different languages, to legally prove I could survive to the embassy (longer, funnier, more detailed description maybe at some point), in a field that I have no real experience in...was very exciting.

Then, because those were barely survival earning rates and the time I spent doing that (when I had plenty of savings already) was going to be eating into really building a business, and Covid was coming. I ended up back in the U.S. in what ended up being one of the most free states. Currently working remote in a high paying job, but back to trying to figure out a real market and to stop sharping my needle or action faking. Lots of just enjoying life in the past year, but I see that my future is only going to be tolerable long term with CENTS.
 
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OMDA

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Thinking of how to get things moving, and I'm repeating a bit from my journal I've been taking:

  • Need to get into a better habit system. The past year of Covid really did a number to me emotionally, but I came out better for it but with bad daily habits. I'm working on toning down some vices. However, I need POSITIVE habits, and currently it's to work daily on coming up with some basic business ideas
  • When I was studying drawing or programming I would practice 1 hour a day first thing. This appears to be a good habit, especially before work and the gym, and the best way to build some momentum
  • I need to avoid my tendency to go into isolated tasks, meaning tasks that net no market feedback. A good example of this is picking up programming skills or what-have-you. It's very easy for me to just pick up a book and learn some programming skills, for example, until I finish the book. Then, I have completed that "goal" but I haven't really interacted with a market or tested any ideas. Open-ended tasks that involve just getting out there with ideas are very challenging for me as I tend to overthink instead of DO
  • A few ideas that I've come up with are, in general terms:
    • Sporting goods related to my favorite hobby. One, I slept on, and I'm not all that convinced it offers much but I'm going to do something much simpler and see if it still makes sense after that. Both, to execute, will require getting manufactured samples but that doesn't seem to challenging because it's closely related to what I do on a daily basis for work
    • A larger project, which is a better piece of sporting equipment that I haven't seen yet, and will be higher performance than anything out there. Would require lots of time and R&D to develop but it would be pretty fun for me. Not convinced the market is huge, but it's within my skillset to develop and even test myself
    • A guide book for product creation. I've worked on this in the past but I'm concerned that I tend to go too far along without market feed back. Last year, I played with this some by posting articles all the time on a blog until I started working again. I got some thumbs up and likes and some commentary, but it was still nascent
    • I'm sitting here munching on some Takis after a bike ride and cursing myself for giving into the idea, but then I thought about getting into a more healthy snack line. I know nothing about that side of manufacturing and the regulations thereof, but there's probably a lot of hungry stomachs in that field
 

OMDA

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Thinking through some ideas this morning:

  • Thought of another sports related product, and even found some interesting parts for that product that I didn't know were available. Could be interesting, but those parts have integral electronics and are quite expensive. Could be tiered without electronics for entry and could even do some R&D for custom integrated electronics for the mechanical parts but I think the market is too small to be that interesting. It's also a simulator for a sport I do so quite specialized and goofy to outsiders.
  • Could offer mechanical design services as a moonlighting exercise. I'm mostly concerned about pissing off my employer if something goes wrong here, but anything local that I would have easy access to is thousands of miles away from them and in a totally different industry where they cannot claim IP. Turns out the software I regularly use (solidworks) has some much cheaper options for Makers that I could get spun up on without forking 4k over for a complete seat, at the risk of just sitting on it. Could also go back into Fusion 360 as the price point is 1/10 of solidworks but it would require some fiddling around time
    • This really could be leveraged with my other analytical/engineering skills which are quite good
    • I have a few ideas that I could work through my design process, as I cannot share anything that I actually work on due to export controls and I don't ever want to violate those (federal penalties and all that). Would be similar to example client pages for web designers
    • Even thought briefly about getting some younger guys and running a design shop and just teaching them the basics and overseeing them. But that's quite a ways along without any clients. Need to do some acting first
 

OMDA

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Came up with some more ideas, but I'm trying to focus on what is going to get feedback, good or bad, the fastest.

  • Near-term, I have some content I can create (video, excel template, examples) for an example design method that I use at work. I've had some positive feedback before explaining some software that isn't well-known, but I've got some other things to share that I put together recently. Not sure of the benefit but at least it's action and I can get it out there in front of people. I've learned some basic video editing recently out of interest of putting together a video compilation of GoPro footage that I recorded while doing my favorite hobby and I can put that to use here.
  • Read this thread and got some ideas. Actually went and updated my LinkedIn because of this. Not sure yet how to find good leads on LinkedIn but I'll give it a shot: HOT TOPIC - (Audio) Who have you helped?
 
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OMDA

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Pulling together a video. It's taken some time to get all the tech to work at once. Spent about 3hrs recording but I need to redo a bunch and clean it up so that it is better and hopefully so that people will find it interesting. Going to see if I can get a response out of it but it'll take some time.
 

OMDA

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Got one video out. Meant to help a handful of people in my hobby and also test out the Descript app, which automatically transcribes audio/video and makes it incredibly easy to cut out "um" and other filler words, and even cut and paste or remove bad sections. Found out about it from Andy's podcast here: EXECUTION - Let's Chat Sales

Going to make another video or two and see if I get any feedback and pivot. Thinking of other things to get out there.
 

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