Issue 9

February 26, 2024

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Start Today. Trust Me.

Week in Review

Last week is a bit of a blur but upon further reflection, it seems I mostly did what I wanted to do. It's honestly hard to keep track of what I worked on some weeks. I guess that's what happens when you attempt to work on 3 side projects while having a 9-5 job!

Right now, I'm just trying to keep all the balls in the air that I'm juggling. If I was only working on one project, I would want to keep closer track of how I'm spending my time. I'm learning that most solopreneurs and software-as-a-service (SaaS) builders don't spend enough time on marketing. If one of my projects ever gains traction, I will want to make sure I'm not spending too much time on one area of the business while neglecting another.

Valence

A few of us were able to meet last Monday and I'm glad we did! We devised a game plan for the next few steps as a team. We have 2 designers and 1 Product Manager on our team. So one step in our plan is to build the initial version of our Slack app with these 3 people in mind.

As a team, we're very good at saying what we're going to do, but we have to get better at following through and doing those things. This can be challenging when building SaaS with a small team. Of course, you can't force others to work. That is out of your control. However, I can lead by example and hopefully, that will motivate my team. So this week, I will communicate my needs and updates. And I will take a look at my action items and see where I can make some progress.

Daily Well

I didn't work on Daily Well last week. As I write this, I realize the accountability piece of my newsletter is working, sort of. I hate having to write those words — that I didn't work on something I said I was going to work on. Perhaps writing this week's newsletter and re-reading it will guilt me into making time for Daily Well this week!

After all, this was one of my hopes for my newsletter this year — to hold myself accountable for my side projects. If I'm procrastinating or slacking off, I want to call myself out. While I'd like to believe I have endless amounts of inspiration and never need to be reminded to do something, sometimes I need a nudge and public shaming to get things done. Tune in next week to see if I got the message. 😂

Agendaful

Two updates for Agendaful this week:

• I started working on the logo icon.
• I started working on the core functionality of the app

I didn't get much feedback on my icon sketches, but enough to move forward with the next step in the logo design process — creating a digital icon using Adobe Illustrator. And shout out to my mom for reading last week's newsletter and letting me know which ones she liked. 🙌

I've decided to turn three of my five sketches into digital versions. I worked on two last week. Here's a sneak peek of them!

A:

B:

I plan to create the third icon and post the three versions on X for feedback this week.

I also spent some time coding what will be the principal feature of the Agendaful app, the ability to add, edit, and delete agenda items. This required me to think through the data model for agendas and agenda items. And I had to figure things out like how to add the first agenda item to an agenda that hasn't been created yet and how to tell the difference between a new agenda item and an old one. This impacts whether data will be created or updated, ultimately in a database.

I finished writing code to add agenda items. Next up will be to make sure users can edit and delete them. I'm so excited to be working on this piece of the app now! This is the main premise of the app — to build collaborative agendas. There is still a lot of work left, but it feels good to finally work on what I imagine will be the main reason people use Agendaful.

One last thing…

Someone on X posted this:

And I replied with these five words:

What if I had started writing my newsletter 3 years ago? What if I had started building my own SaaS app 3 years ago? Imagine if you had started something you're passionate about 3 years ago.

Once time expires, it's gone forever. You can't go back to 3 days ago and change things, let alone 3 years ago.

Do yourself a favor. Start that thing you want to do NOW! Imagine how much you will learn, build, and share in 1,095 days or even in 365 days. Don't be like me and wish you would have started 3 years ago. Start today!

Thanks for reading this week. See you next week! 👋