How To Get Off The Couch And Start Building Something Real

📲 The Cold Open

Lessons from the week.

This past month, I got my first paycheck for free lance web development. It was for $138, and it was the most satisfying money I’ve ever made. It wasn’t like the jobs I worked in high school, it was different. I got paid, not just for my time, but my skills and agency to solve a problem. Let’s break it down.

Find Problems, Then Solve Them.

• Fall In Love With Problems, Not Solutions. This is something thats parroted all over builder Twitter, and I wholeheartedly agree. Find a pressing need in some industry. Scour online forums for what people are complaining about, then build a solution to that problem. By taking this approach, you validate your idea and find clients in one fell swoop.

• View Being Solo As An Advantage. As a solo founder everything falls on you. Coding, marketing, and managing relationships can be a lot to handle. But, it doesn’t have to be a weakness. You can provide something larger companies can’t, a real connection and personalized service. Let your passion to solve problems shine through, and people will be more than happy to pay.

But How Do You Find Clients?

• Talk To People. My first client was my brother’s friend. He’s starting up a personal chef business and needed a website, so I offered to make him one. It’s amazing to build skills, but that doesn’t matter if no one knows you have them. Talk to friends and family and search for people who need something, then go solve that problem for them.

• Get Online: Same thing. Thousands of successful business owners are online in places like Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook discussing their companies and problems they’re facing. If you take the time to be active and engage, you might just find your next big idea or client.

🗞️ Don’t Get Stuck On The Sideline.

Doing something real always beats out planning and watching.

I hate to admit it, but I’m kind of chronically online. For as long as I can remember I’ve spent a huge chunk of my free time scrolling Reddit and watching YouTube videos. With my recent dive into the entrepreneurship world, my algorithms have overloaded me with startup content.

It’s a constant stream of awesome products and genius founders, and my gut reaction is to think “Why can’t I just do that?”. I trick myself into thinking it’s good for me, and tell myself I’m learning. But this approach doesn’t work.

Think of any role model you look up to. I’ll choose LeBron. Does anyone seriously think LeBron got good at basketball by watching form shooting videos on YouTube? Of course not. He became the greatest by getting in the gym and putting in the work. Day after day, month after month, year after year.

The reality is a YouTube Video or a Tweet will not teach you how to do what you want to do. The only way to learn a skill is to practice the skill.

Throw away your fears and reservations, and jump into the deep end. And if you fail? Who cares. You’re at the same place as before, but now, you have the skills and experience to make your next jump even better.

My first step was starting this newsletter, what will yours be?

🚗 Fast Four

Four quick bullet points to think about!

• 🧰 Tool: Vite is great for frontend React apps. Super easy to setup and you can have a working prototype in no time. Using it for my current project.

•  🧠 Mindset: Launch your project before you’re ready. It will never be perfect, get it out there and start getting feedback as fast as possible.

• 🔥 Build Idea: Tariff Tracker. Tariffs have caused a huge amount of turmoil in the economic world, especially for small businesses. Write a weekly / daily report of new tariff developments and sell it to small businesses.

• 📈 What I’m Working On: Started work on an AI lead nurturing tool / text outreach tool. It’s been a huge leap in development difficulty but has been very rewarding. Want to follow me in real time? I’m on Twitter!

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