My journey to entrepreneurship starts now
I invite you to join me on my journey to entrepreneurship. I will take you with me from finding my passion to having a profitable business.
Two things you should know: first, I share my journey at the time it happens – in real-time so to say. That means, it’s not a typical success story, told after the fact. This is happening right now.
Second, I do this as a side project next to my full-time job. I am a software engineer, in case you wonder. But currently, I am on parental leave. So, my current full-time job is being a mum of two little ones.
Learning by doing or learning by struggling
I think the essence of this experiment is that I share the real struggle. Joining me on my journey, you will see the ups and downs and how I handle them. Sometimes, I will succeed with what I do, sometimes I will fail. That’s why I think it might be interesting and helpful for you. You will learn with me.
Most of the time, we see the results of the struggle. The solution seems so clear, once found. But, if you want to learn, it’s better to actually see the process. The learning effect is much higher.
Learning from each other
My motivation to share my journey? First of all, I want YOU to become my accountability buddy. As I share this publicly, I am somehow hooked, aren’t I?!
Second, I also want to learn from you. I am sure you know much more in some areas than I do. I hope that each time you have some tips for me, that you share them with me.
What inspired me to look for people to join my journey was the awesome indie hacker community. I am part of it since 4 month, and lucky me, I already made some friends that inspire and help me.
Why I choose entrepreneurship?
It took me a while to reach this point. I always knew, one day, I am going to become an entrepreneur. But, it always felt like not now. My gut said soon, even though I did not know what soon exactly meant.
Last November, from one day to the other, it was crystal clear for me. It is not the future anymore, it is happening now.
Strangely, timing wise, it is like becoming pregnant. My circumstances are not optimal. Recently, I brought two wonderful souls to this world. Recent enough that the two keep me busy everyday from dawn to (much later than) dusk .
I am one kind of an entrepreneur: Full-time mum to a toddler and a baby, and aspiring entrepreneur in every free minute I can grasp. Still, if I worked my 40+ hours job, I would also have limited time to get something off the ground. So, why not now?
The right business idea
So, what is your business, you may ask. And, indeed, what a great question. Isn’t that how it all starts?
Unfortunately, I have no answer yet.
I hope you are not bumped! Because this is about finding the right business for me. Trying out things, finding my passion. As said, I am not writing this after the fact. This is not a polished version of how I did it. Instead, I take you with me on the bumpy road that lies ahead, with many twists, crossings, setbacks and hopefully many occasions to celebrate.
But, that’s not to say, I have no ideas. I have plenty. One of them, I already implemented as a MVP. It is an online platform for discovering regional products. Another one is a consultancy business leveraging the experience and skill set I already have. But more about that in a later post…
For now, let me explain my circumstances a bit better.
Money and Time Constraints
Currently, I’m on unpaid parental leave. Without an income my business budget is tight, so I plan to bootstrap the business all the way.
At the same time, I’m looking after a baby and a toddler almost 24 hours 7 days a week. That means, not only money but also time is a very limited resource. I will have to be creative to work with both constraints.
From the two, I do not fear working without seed money. But, I shake, when I think about realizing my dream while the toddler is jumping on my back, and I am soothing a crying baby at the same time. This will be a tricky one!
Learning and experimentation
I am a software engineer, I have a good technical understanding, and I am familiar with a range of programming languages. My role at my current employer can roughly be described as software engineer and data scientist. This will be my basic skill set I will leverage to start my business.
Looking at entrepreneurship, on the other hand, I am a newbie, with tons to learn. Skills and experience I lack the most are marketing and sales. Both will be crucial to my success. So I will have to pick them up, as I go.
Finding my passion
On this journey to entrepreneurship, I want to go from passion to business. To find a business that matches my passion, I will consider a variety of topics from data science to children books. I might try out blogging, podcasting, consultancy and product development. I really want to use my time during parental leave (a couple of months) to try all the things I wanted to do since years. But with a focus on my career, I always postponed, and postponed. Now, I make sure to avoid the “regret-because-I-did-not-try”.
Bootstrapping approach
I will use a variation of the minimum viable product (MVP) strategy. I will combine that with the, what I call, minimum viable skill strategy. That means, I’ll learn enough to get started and start as soon as possible. Then, I improve skills and product/business as I go.
My goal
At the end of my parental leave, I want to reach the following:
- I have an answer to the question: what’s your business.
- I have the skill set that matches the requirements of my business.
- The business aligns with my passion.
- It’s foreseeable, that the business can grow into something I can make a living from.
- Have fun along the way.
Number five is not just a filler to make this list more rounded. It will guide my actions. I will reduce, change and abandon without regret along the way, if I see that the projects or the stuff I am working on do not make me happy.
The first adventures I started is my little romance with consultancy work that I write about in the second post.
Join me on my journey to entrepreneurship
So are you ready to join me on my journey to entrepreneurship?
Following my blog, and subscribing to my email list, you can expect to see posts about:
- business ideas I explore
- progress of projects I started
- lessons learned about entrepreneurship
- strategic choices I make for my projects/businesses
- some personal rants about being a parent and starting a business
If you are interested, sign-up for my newsletter, so you never miss a post. As you know, you can always unsubscribe, if you feel my journey isn’t of value to you.
If you made it that far, I guess something resonated with you. I wonder what that is. Have you also just started your business? Or, do you run already a successful business? Please tell me more about you!