This is the first week I’ve been officially working for myself. Some of you may enjoy reading about how my business is going and a weekly update is a good opportunity to reflect on progress and goals.
Table of Contents
Business plan
This is the first iteration of my business plan using the lean business canvas model. I’m working with a business coach to help develop and refine this model. It’s helping me get more clarity about BugHunterSam as a business.
During the first business coaching session we covered the blue section of the canvas:
- customer segments
- value proposition
- distribution channels
- customer relations
There was some things to work on clarifying. I need to get even more specific about my customer segment, focus on one thing, get my value proposition more understood and formalize my customer relations.
So much guilt
First off, this week has been full of guilt. Guilt for wasting time. Guilt for not focusing. Guilt for taking things “easy”. Guilt for not exercising enough. Guilt for not doing any study. I have watched a lot of edutainment on YouTube and given my brain plenty of time to do “nothing”.
So to combat this guilt I started a daily journal in a word doc. I note down key achievements, conversations with new leads and potential TODO’s to follow up on at some point.
Most of this guilt comes from not making any progress towards BogLogger. I thought this was going to be the first thing I should work on. However consolidating my marketing strategy and setting up more business foundations has been more of a focus. this has still been important work but it wasn’t what I said I would do 😔.
Consolidated Marketing
A few years ago I challenged myself to a #100DaysOfLinkedIn to practice engaging the community and to see where I could add value to others. I now have a bunch of template messages I use on LinkedIn when connecting to new people:
Thanks for connecting. I help people with tech, mobile apps and testing. I often speak about these topics on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/samconnelly
Is there anything I can help you with?
Regards,
Sam
My template linkedIn message for new connections.
Got a few potential clients
This has been my biggest win this week. I have 3 leads for different forms of work. One is a content marketing strategy for a new bug tracking tool on the market, one is in person training on skills for software testers. And the last one could be a potential long term engagement helping a team build out back end automation frameworks and helping guide a team in owning their own quality engineering practices. I’ll keep you posted with how this pans out :).
Announced let’s test
Asked if live exploratory testing was a good idea on linkedIn/Twitter. And got people booked in for the next two Sundays. Woop Woop. If you are interested in participating please email me.
Prepared for a move
I’m moving next week for cheaper rent and a larger place. There’s been quite a few balls in motion for this, from selling stuff I no longer need to organising a clothes donation drop off.
Attended Future of Testing
Stayed up until 3am this morning to attend the future of mobile testing. I’d like to watch more of it but I just couldn’t keep my focus for that long. I atleast got some sketchnotes done of the first keynote and some free stickers out of it.
Wrote a blog
Wrote a post on timezone testing and posted it to r/programming on reddit. It’s doing surprisingly well compared to my recent traffic.
Released a YouTube video
Released mobile app test strategy gaps video on Youtube, this is also some of my best viewed content to date so far. Collating 203 views in 3 days so far. Which helps me to understand that the is an underserved market for mobile app testing and it’s good motivation to focus more on this area.
Bought more stuff
Bought a second hand DSLR camera from gumtree for $200. I’m stoked about this purchase. It’s time to upgrade my webcam for higher quality video content starting next week. I’ll be picking up this camera over the weekend. Also bought some desk LED lights for better lighting. You can see my existing hardware set up here.
Applied for Centrelink
Applied for government support, this will make my savings stretch from 3 months to up to 6 months, but considering the 3 potential clients this week I may not even need this as a backup. However there still might be some “growing your own business” training/support that I might be able to get too.
Focus for next week
My focus will be moving and starting the re-recording my career tips for testers series to be better quality to be posted up on Udemy. Working on a draft content marketing proposal for a client. Refining my business plan.
As you can see, the guilt I’ve felt has been completely unfounded. I’ve actually achieved a great deal this week. I’ll be sharing this blog post with my psychologist so they can see how I’m practicing self compassion too.
There’s a good ted talk about ‘originals’ effective creative people – people who are in the middle of the spectrum of precrastinators and procrastinators tend to be more effective. Precrastinators don’t procrastinate at all – extreme procrastinators – really don’t get any shit done. But those who put space between problems, there seems to be something about that really works… you seem to be following the same pattern – don’t feel guilty is what Im saying