[Progress] Watch me escape the 9-5 grind, and free myself from indentured time

[Edwin Fernandez]

I have been wanting to start a Progress thread for a while. MJ's recent post lit a fire under me.

MY CURRENT SITUATION:
-Full time employee(ugh) working as a SW developer for 6 years now.
-Family man with small kids (very little time to work on escaping the 9-5 grind, 1-2 hours night + several hours on the weekends)
-Buried in student loan debt $42K
-Absolutely obsessed with escaping 9-5 life in exchange for a more favorable life, I am missing out on 75-80% of my kids lives being at work. I refuse to accept this.
-I haven't watched a movie in about a year, and haven't watched tv or played video games in several years as a temporary sacrifice to gain more time. There is so little time now...

WHAT I'VE TRIED BEFORE
-MLM - Market America (way back in my late teens, lost so much money)
-Hustle arbitrage (craigslist, furniture, appliances) - Made little money, traded a lot of time for little money
-All natural Deodorant product- Failed, my ingredients didn't keep my friends from smelling, the product melted and the ingredients separated.
-Affiliate marketing- nada
-Drone video services - got the drone, got the business cards, made the website, not a single customer. - Failed at sales I suppose
-Online app that automated creation of youtube videos and uploaded them for monetization. (terrible idea, failed)

WHAT I AM DOING TO ADD VALUE NOW
I am currently working on building a freelance web development business. (I know, still trading time for money, and I had this concern but MJ personally said to me in one of his posts to not worry about the time commandment right now at this stage...)
I provide technical solutions for small businesses, helping them with their website creation, social media integration, marketing their business on social media platforms, high def photography/videography, content creation. I want to be their one-stop shop for all of that.

Right now my full time job is working on low level software stuff that is not related to web technologies, I am working on "back-end" stuff controlling hardware using C++ and Python.
So, I had to come to terms with the fact that what I am doing at work, what I already know, is probably not a good path towards starting my own business in my spare time. These skills are more suited for working for large companies. So I have been learning the web stack now, HTML, CSS, JS, PHP....

WHAT I HAVE ACCOMPLISHED SO FAR
-Finished online courses teaching the web stack (HTML, CSS, JS, PHP) from a great class and instructor(if you want to know which one send me a message)

-Created a website for a local barber, Jeff the Master Barber, helped him set up his affiliate links and created a website for him for free, (it has since expired), I also helped him with his youtube channel, the naming of posts and coaching him. When I started with him almost 2 years ago, he had about 6K following now he has about 70K. (Mostly his credit, he puts out so much content, but I can say I helped at least...)

- Created a nice Wordpress website for my father in law, an artist ( website has expired now)

-Reached out to a friend of a friend, owner of a local law firm, convinced her to agree to a re-design of her website for free. I worked on it tirelessly for 3 months in my spare time thinking this was going to be my big break into the freelance world. She stopped responding to my emails after a few months of me requesting her input on design decisions and asking her for content like copy writing and pictures. (Soul-crushing) I came to the realization she probably doesn't trust me with her companies site yet, due to my inexperience likely. But never got a response out of her, ghosted me, until...

-Some time later she reached out to me asking me to do another website for her, a small construction company she is investing in. This time paid! We agreed to 1500 for a simple 4 page site. I did the first draft, got the check for 1/3 of the price, $500, still waiting for content months later... (demoralizing)

-I have been speaking with a few other small businesses about doing work for them, a bunch of interest but nothing solid yet...I am not sure how to get more clients yet so I bought a course teaching me how to do so...

---

I am working on my social skills and sales by listening to Grant Cardone and RSD Owen, going to attend RSD event soon, listening to audio books everywhere I go, no music, very rarely, I don't drink and smoke on weekends like I used to, it was killing my ambition. I don't watch tv ever, or sports, no video games. I am trying to be more efficient with my time, using Trello boards for my work projects.
On the technical side I am taking online courses learning PHP backend code because that is where I heard the freelance money is.

Anyone out there see any flaws in my reasoning or what I am focusing on? If you read this much thank you for your time.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Edwin Fernandez]

I have been GRINDING every day, with the limited free time I have outside of work, family responsibilities, etc. I haven't updated in a while because I have been so busy.

My productivity has improved since I started waking up at 5am, everyday, weekends too, and starting the day stretching, listening to self help/business stuff while I make coffee and breakfast and getting right to work by about 5:45-6am, fully awake.

My morning rituals, at this stage of my development is learning new software development skills, I am learning PHP, and the React framework. I am learning these technologies because with them I will be able to offer the service of creating an e-commerce site or a membership site.

I created my own website to offer my services, didn't spend too much time on it. Over Thanksgiving vacation I created a website for bro-in-law offering his consultation services, www.jeffthemasterbarber.com, I just put a simple PayPal button on his site with a PHP contact form after they pay...

I finally finished off my second real client's website, www.kdjenterprises.net, it took me soooo long to do, and I waited months for content, it was a real drain, honestly. But it's finished!

I don't think I want another regular website client, I have a high paying job and don't need the money. I need the time!
I want a way to "productize my service", because this client asked for way too many modifications to the site. I am still trying to figure it out. But this is why I am thinking of offering a specific service like an Ecommerce site or membership site, so I can offer that as a package.

The big thing I am struggling with is how do I not trade my time for money...I really don't know, so in the mean time, until I find that real need where I can add some unique value, I will keep learning how to offer this service and work on figuring out how to productize my service.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Thomas Baptiste]

I have been GRINDING every day, with the limited free time I have outside of work, family responsibilities, etc. I haven't updated in a while because I have been so busy.

My productivity has improved since I started waking up at 5am, everyday, weekends too, and starting the day stretching, listening to self help/business stuff while I make coffee and breakfast and getting right to work by about 5:45-6am, fully awake.

My morning rituals, at this stage of my development is learning new software development skills, I am learning PHP, and the React framework. I am learning these technologies because with them I will be able to offer the service of creating an e-commerce site or a membership site.

I created my own website to offer my services, didn't spend too much time on it. www.vyveweb.com Over Thanksgiving vacation I created a website for bro-in-law offering his consultation services, www.jeffthemasterbarber.com, I just put a simple PayPal button on his site with a PHP contact form after they pay...

I finally finished off my second real client's website, www.kdjenterprises.net, it took me soooo long to do, and I waited months for content, it was a real drain, honestly. But it's finished!

I don't think I want another regular website client, I have a high paying job and don't need the money. I need the time!
I want a way to "productize my service", because this client asked for way too many modifications to the site. I am still trying to figure it out. But this is why I am thinking of offering a specific service like an Ecommerce site or membership site, so I can offer that as a package.

The big thing I am struggling with is how do I not trade my time for money...I really don't know, so in the mean time, until I find that real need where I can add some unique value, I will keep learning how to offer this service and work on figuring out how to productize my service.

Thanks for reading.

There is no fastlane in the web design/development business unless you create and monetize the next WordPress/popular CMS or similar product that is automated. Everything else from there is freelance and you will not be able to separate your time from it. I've read through what you've said and it seems like you're learning the technologies with no set goal in mind other than a membership website. So I have some questions that might give you more direction:

What problem is the site going to fix?
What is the target market/ what type of users is your site going to be directed at?
What value can you offer that is better than the current value offered to your target market?

 

[Edwin Fernandez]

There is no fastlane in the web design/development business unless you create and monetize the next WordPress/popular CMS or similar product that is automated. Everything else from there is freelance and you will not be able to separate your time from it. I've read through what you've said and it seems like you're learning the technologies with no set goal in mind other than a membership website. So I have some questions that might give you more direction:

What problem is the site going to fix?
What is the target market/ what type of users is your site going to be directed at?
What value can you offer that is better than the current value offered to your target market?

Thanks for your input. I understand there is no fast lane in freelance web development, however my hope is that it will detach from my time one day.

I really don't have a good answer to any of those questions you asked.

My current strategy is to get started working with businesses, working on my soft skills, and learning the technologies that these small businesses are using, from what I understand its mostly PHP.

This way once I spot a need I can be ready to develop the solution because I already have the skills to make a web app.

I am totally open to adjusting my thinking but I don't see a clear way to put out a product that people actually need right now. I figured I should just get started somewhere and start providing value to businesses and get on the right track eventually.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Edwin Fernandez]

I feel like I was wasting a lot of time "searching" for a need instead of working on myself, improving my skills.

By improving my mindset, technical skills, and soft skills, that need, that product, or service will be more easily observed from a higher vantage point.

I mean look at Fox, he started freelancing working with businesses trading time for money, now he pivoted to selling info products and is branching out. I am kind of thinking along those lines.

 

[Jeff Noel]

I feel like I was wasting a lot of time "searching" for a need instead of working on myself, improving my skills.

By improving my mindset, technical skills, and soft skills, that need, that product, or service will be more easily observed from a higher vantage point.

I mean look at Fox, he started freelancing working with businesses trading time for money, now he pivoted to selling info products and is branching out. I am kind of thinking along those lines.

Web design and web development is definitely good to create capital. It's better than wasting your time doing nothing. It might not respect CENTS, but it's a great way to gain capital to develop your fastlane idea.

 

[DVU]

I am learning these technologies because with them I will be able to offer the service of creating an e-commerce site or a membership site.

You do know there are done for you solutions for both of these that require 0 coding experience?

Unless you will be doing a large complex ecom or membership site with custom features, no point in doing that.

And you said it yourself that you don't want to trade time for money.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Edwin Fernandez]

You do know there are done for you solutions for both of these that require 0 coding experience?

Unless you will be doing a large complex ecom or membership site with custom features, no point in doing that.

And you said it yourself that you don't want to trade time for money.

I understand that, but those are the tools that we work with, it would be very inefficient to build something myself from scratch when I can use one of these tools and have 95% of the work done already. My thinking is that even though these solutions exist, a lot of small business owners have no idea where to start, it's like magic to them. My role would be to guide them through the process, using these solutions, and have the ability to customize if needed.

I get where you are coming from, thanks for the input, I know I'll find a way to conform to CENTS eventually...

 

[Edwin Fernandez]

Continuing this thread the INSIDERS section...