I’m trying to build my own business. And I want to do it in public.

I’m not asking for much. I want to be able to make enough money to live in simple terms doing something meaningful.

The struggles

Last year I tried a couple of things:

•  I started making self-improvement worksheets. I sold a few copies through Gumroad at the beginning but the sales stopped after a few days.
•  Worked as a freelancer writing financial content. I was able to generate a fair amount with this.

Although the I was able to generate some cash with the freelancing gigs, I’m still trading time for money doing work I don’t like.
And I got burned out quickly. Having to meet deadlines made me super anxious, I couldn’t focus and my insomnia came back (I was sleeping as little as two hours per night).
Also, it doesn’t give me enough income to save money to travel back to my country to see my friends and family.

Indiehackers should focus on B2B

A couple of months ago, I saw a tweet from Pieter Levels citing Jon Yongfook saying indiehackers should focus on B2B.
So I started to do some research about B2B customer acquisition. I found that although there are a lot of tools an services focusing on that niche, a lot of them were broken.
Look at lead generation services for example. There are A LOT of companies that sell prospects lists with bad-quality and irrelevant data. So I realized that having a good set of tools is not enough. There’s always going to be a person validating the data or having to do online research to complete missing information.
I read many founder stories that were drowned in admin tasks. But delegating is not an easy task. It’s so hard to find the right people. And training them is pretty time-consuming.

The plan

My plan is to offer an outsourcing service.

Why a service and not a product?

A long time ago I read this post from Nathan Barry. What he said there made so much sense to me:

There’s a reliable progression that anyone can take to earn more and build wealth. In fact, I like to think of it as a series of ladders side by side. Each one can climb to different heights in both the quality of business and potential earnings.

So I need to learn to walk before running. Or, I need to learn how to provide a service before selling products.

Providing a service will let me speed up the process of learning from my clients.
I learned so much from my freelancing customers. It’s like a powered up customer research. They come to you with their problems and you get to ask them a lot of questions, because you’re trying to help them. It’s awesome.

I believe that an outsourcing company it’s a nice solution for these reasons:
– It will let founders and their teams to focus on what really matters. And to avoid having to do repetitive tasks that don’t have much value.
– Give work to people that need it. I met a lot of people with free time that was asking me how to do money online. I have friends that are struggling right now with this. And there’s a lot of skilled people around the world. I genuinely believe I can teach them how to make admin tasks to help companies.

Future challenges

There are still some internal and external challenges I’ll have to overcome, like:

• How can I get my first client?
• Is it a problem if I don’t have experience in all the services I’ll offer?
• I don’t have experience recruiting people.
• I don’t have too much money to invest. Although see the value of being self-funded, I’m not rejecting funding option yet.
• My mental health might take a toll. I might get more anxious and stressed.
• It’s lonely. There are two potential solutions to this:
  • Get a cofounder. It would be nice to share the struggles, the wins and the weight of the responsibilities with someone.
  • Participate more in the community. Share what I’m doing and build in public. That’s why I’m writing this.

Sidenote: I’m playing with a couple of ideas to solve this.
1. Making a mastermind group of people that are in a similar route that me (Let me know if you’re interested in this!)
2. Create an online coworking space. I’ve seen some Twitch channels that do this and it’s motivating.

So that’s it! I want to feel accomplished. But no only because I have a successful business. Because I created something valuable, something that helps others. I really believe that impacting other people’s lives it’s the best motivation you can get to love what you do.

So this is my pledge to take action once and for all. The next days I’ll be sharing more details about my plan. From the website creation, to customer acquisition, and potential schedule.

I’d love to know what you think! 

P.