Ask HN: Bootstrappers, what do you do during down time?
Then it goes from crazy busy to suddenly quiet.
I just don't know what to do with the down time. I get super uneasy and anxious. I try to do some content marketing but I make so little progress, it's hard to see any result very quickly, so I switch to optimizing the web or landing page and then get see how my PPC campaigns are doing and then reading HN or listening to podcast on bootstrapping etc. I feel inefficient and spread thin.
I feel terrible when things are quiet. I have an urge to start cranking out updates and new features on the product but I stop myself, as I only decided to create features that enough paying users request.
I have a terrible habit of playing counterstrike and checking HN and reddit obsessively until I get a phone call or an email and then I have to do some work. I'm on the computer almost 15 hours a day. Basically, I have no life except on weekends I go out with friends but I'm always ready to answer email or live chat on my phone. Some days I just wait around and end up playing games all day.
When I was developing the product it wasn't like this. Nose down, cranking out code, testing, but I'm doing much much less of that now and trying to meet my personal sales target, marketing (based on what little I know), fixing websites, talking to people.
If you are boostrapping your biz full time what are you doing when you are not talking with leads or busy? Is there anything else I should be doing? Am I going about this the wrong way? Really would love your inputs, especially if you are unemployed and you rely on your bootstrap business.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 61.3 ms ] threadOne thing I do is hang out on the forums where people congregate, giving out some help. This generates good will, some links to my product, via a signature link and nothing more, since I want to be kind of subtle about it. It is also a good way to tune in to what problems people are facing.
My company: LimeLeads
He said (correctly, IMO) that he only works on features that enough customers ask for. If no one needs a feature, then working on it is wasted time.
I struggle with that feeling. I've been bootstrapping my own business for years, and I have a strong inclination to feel guilty if I'm not "at work" while other people with more conventional jobs are at work. It can result in me spending a lot of unproductive time at my desk.
I recently took a year pretty much away from work, to do my house up (mostly building a home cinema, woo!). The business kept ticking over just fine with me doing 20 minutes of emails a day on average, and a bit more here and there to fix the odd pressing issue.
The time off reshaped my attitude to work-life balance quite considerably. After a year of not doing much work on my business, I no longer felt so guilty for not being at my desk. Now I go through phases of doing lots of work (I reckon that when the motivation is there, one should run with it), but I also try to do other things: meet friends for lunch, play tennis, learn Spanish, go on the odd little holiday. My instincts still tell me that I should be at my desk, working (or at least at my desk), but I've got better at seeing them as illogical and fighting them.
A huge perk of having your own small business is having the freedom to organize your time the way you want to. If you can have a successful business without having to put in lots of hours, that's great. But you have to give yourself permission to do this.
Sitting at a desk wasting time is pointless, but I can associate and I think it's a natural inclination. But it's a very unhealthy inclination, in my opinion much more so than the inclination to go and do something completely different, something fun.
This isn't to say that you shouldn't be able to find productive business-related things to do. Without knowing a lot more about what you do and what you're looking to do with your business I can't really comment on that. But with almost 15 hours a day at your computer, and "no life" (your words!) I do think you might do well to try and address your work/life balance, which may involve tackling the deep-seated feelings or instincts that have you sitting at your desk so long when you're not being productive.
What I learned as a writer is, focus on output, not time-spent or schedules met.
Set yourself a daily goal, but from there, be flexible in how you achieve it. When I was still writing, I'd try and aim for about 2k words a day, usually done off and on, but if I had an off day I just let it happen and took whatever break I needed to let the creativity come back in its time.
The thing is, the traditional work day is lousy for creative professions (and I count programming among these). It is a construct born of factory work, and you can't produce a quality creative process under factory conditions.
Give yourself a break, and let the mind take the respite it needs to get spinning again. I recommend taking a look out for John Cleese's insights on creativity and the creative process, he has done some lectures and videos on the subject that should be findable on Youtube, and they're very valuable insight into the different pressures of a creative field versus a 'production' one.
The big benefit of building a bootstrapped business is that you're not accountable to anybody. When you get to the point where you're making a nice profit and things slow down such that you don't need to put in 40 hour weeks anymore, that's an indicator that you need to go rock climbing.
Or surfing, travelling, playing with your children, salsa dancing, counter striking, novel writing, or whatever it was that you were planning to do once you hit it big and didn't have to work anymore.
Bootstrapped SaaS businesses have the nice side effect of giving you small tastes of that success before you actually hit the point where you can do it full time. My advice is to take advantage of it.
The problem with making a sale is you lose your best prospect.
Build a reputation on Q&A sites, participate with relevant LinkedIn groups, promote your content with Facebook ads (check out jonloomer.com for help with this.) StumbleUpon ads and content amplification networks like taboola & outbrain.
Always be prospecting.
Here are some good sources to get you started.
Amazon Web Service Webinars - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT-nPlVzJI-ccQXlxjSvJmw
Caltech - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClGTZDyz3CSl92TgDqIr0nw
Said Business School - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHIqMEje_NFJ2u24CVaNQvg
Yale - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-EnprmCZ3OXyAoG7vjVNCA
Stanford - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-EnprmCZ3OXyAoG7vjVNCA
And of course: Ycombinator How To Start A Start Up https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxIJaCMEptJjxmmQgGFsnCg
There are so many great sources of education out on the web today. For example: who are the thought leaders of your industry? You can probably find video of talks they have given. What conferences serve your industry? They likely have video of talks given.
My Company: http://www.makemassive.com
Then I realized that my app was finished. There was nothing to improve.
I concluded that there was only one possible thing to do: start something new. I made enough from my first app to support the family, and started working on my second app.
Now I have two apps earning money.
Also, 15h per day is way too much. I work an average of 4h per day, any longer and I lose concentration (unless I'm cranking out some interesting new code, then I work any minute my kids let me)
hard answer: assuming you've taken the vacation, some options, in order:
1. if you're missing payroll, then cut staff & costs - you're bootstrapped and don't have 6+ months of payroll.
2. if you need help with leads, hire a startup marketing consultant (example: https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=764310) to generate new growth hack ideas.
3. if you believe in your business model and you're simply "ahead" of the market, then use the time to "clean up" the business, e.g. automate things that are manual/expensive/unscaleable.
3. if you don't entirely believe in your business model, use the time to experiment with pivots e.g. soft-launch radically new things and see what happens.
hope this helps, adam
My advice is DO treat it like a regular job, maybe one with some longer than usual hours, but don't try to keep that pace constantly.
It's also pretty good advice that you will come up with some of your most interesting ideas when you are not doing work things.
The stuff like sales and bugfixes are really interruptions to doing the stuff which builds your business. Ultimately you want to hire people to help you with all of the existing tasks within the business, and the only way you're going to get to that point financially is by expanding.
As far as the HN and Counterstrike, you'll need to find a way to give that up and focus on the tasks at hand. I typically only check HN in the morning and at night, or when I truly have time to kill, like waiting for the dentist. This post spoke to me, so I felt the need to respond. One trick I came up with is to allow myself whatever timewasting activities I wanted during the day, BUT I'd keep a running tally of how many times during the day these interrupted what I was doing. My websurfing sessions rapidly diminished.
Finally, I'd agree with everyone here who recommends physical exercise. I've got a goal to shoot for here, which helps with motivation: to win a 5K, or at least my age group.
Sales and marketing is what will build a business....
When I'm not working on my business, I tend to study (unrelated) topics, read, travel or spend time with friends.
But why not build an extra feature? Even if it's not requested, it can make your overall product better. Or work on increasing your conversion rate?