50 karma · joined August 30, 2023
Are there any good resources you can share to learn this specific way of programming?
Your new job is salesman. It's a fun job but rejection is tough and your cannot "force success".
Unlike software dev, where you can sit in a room and make something work... your success in sales is dependent on other people.
I have built two firms now. One was purely marketing. the other was marketing tech. And, while my expertise is in marketing and marketing tech (as well as hiring, leading, creating processes and all the other things you need to be a good business owner...)
My main/core skill is selling.
So my question to you is... do you want to be a salesman?
I wish someone asked me this before I started my first business..
As for software dev being volatile, I agree. But it's not volatile for everyone. A good electrician is rare. A good programmer is rare.
If you are moving based solely on your neighbors success, I urge you to speak to 30 other elecs before you make the jump.
If someone is fully embedded into the AWS eco, and want to move... I havent seen a good solution for this yet. It's also hard to do because the answer to "move to what" will be different. Just a thought.
BTW, I am an early startup selling to startups. I am curious: how do you sell to enterprise? how does that even work?
In and out of jobs when things didn't go to plan.
Here is what I can tell you about my experiences:
1. Learning to, and mastering how to sell is everything. No business starts with the best product because great products takes a long time to build. But every business needs revenue. Clearly you know this because you had a successful ad agency. But it sounds like you stopped selling that for what? Lesson: never, ever stop selling.
2. But the mistake you made was throwing away a 500k/y agency because your investors didn't like it. The mistake you made here was playing someone else's game. Lesson: play your game, and only your game.
3. Your desire to go to college is something I understand. You are in two minds (I think). Part of you wants business success, the other part wants stability. But there is a third option. This option I learned far too late. That is this: you do not need to work 100% of the time to be successful. You can build a successful business over time. With a team, over time. This is not something investors like. By accepting investors, you are forced to make quick (often stupid) decisions. Lesson: build one (or more) good businesses over time. Stick to it.
I want to make one thing stand out here... working 16 hours a day doesn't create success because it's 16 hours (I know some cleaners who work 16 hours per day in my building).
What nobody will be honest about is that there are only 1-2 things that actually move the needle. The other "activities" just make us feel like we are being productive.
If you cannot post a message to help because "there is nothing in it for you"... please tell me what you got from posting this?
I really wanna know
I ain't mad at that. Everyone needs to play the game they can play. I agree with their decision.
Common lisp verbosity is a feature. It make's it very clear what is happening. Everyone understands.
VBA is built in. That is the reason.
Its the same reason emacs users use elisp.
4 years later, I can build anything I want with lines of code in 3 languages. Best part = building is free (it takes time tho) + it's fun.
My advice to you is to decide what you want to work on by building things.
It's true that learning CS is important. But you can just read books + do youtube lectures on the side from the big colleges.
The tech dream you are referring too is about building things. There is a lot to that but nothing beats actually building things for users.
Also, remember that knowledge work (like tech) still have people working at 70 years old. I have conversations with programmers who are around that age. They haven't slowed down.
To answer your question, where do I begin, start by building something that you would have used in a PM role. Once you have the project in mind, the details will fall into place (google!)
localhost... right?
> git instaweb
1) you should have started while you had a job. Because freelancing will be as slow as the side project you tried to start.
The same energy for sales, marketing and branding required for a startup, is the same for a freelancer.
2) You need to learn sales and marketing. Which are two different skills. Traffic --> lead gen --> lead handling --> sales.
The good news is that you do not need many clients. The bad news is they are new skills and will take time to get good at.
Like you, I went travelling, and Im now a freeelance programmer. But I built a business over the last decade where I learned these skills. So getting clients is just the same: sales and marketing.
By the way, upwork is a good way of practicing these skills. While it's a race to the bottom, getting responses and haveing sales convos is good practice.
Why do people write hollow drivel that doesn't actually say anything?