You need to talk to someone.
What I've learned this month about creating new opportunities.
Welcome to Dev builds #7!
It's been a tumultuous month—the hardest one yet—but I've earned my first internet money, which is a huge step forward.
I've learned some valuable lessons – maybe they can help you too.
Let's dive in.
What did I do?
I got back to work on Know.
I'm still excited to simplify my personal wealth management and solve this for a few others.
It will take time for this project to cover my monthly costs, though, so unfortunately, I had to pause it again and focus on making short-term income.
I failed to make money in various ways.
I tried to build and sell websites to wedding planners in New York City.
Conclusion: Cold outreach response rates are extremely low, and building a website, even with AI, for every pitch is too time-consuming.
I tried building custom web apps with AI and sending them as a Loom pitch to get jobs on Upwork.
Conclusion: Getting any job with a new profile without reviews, even with a pre-built app and a Loom pitch, is hard.
I tried to get UpWork reviews by looking for small, urgent jobs and being ultra available.
Conclusion: Urgent jobs don't appear as often as expected. I suspect that with some patience, this may work, though.
Inspired by the art in Vienna, I bought terriblygoodwebsites.com with a plan to sell beautiful, high-conversion landing pages as a productised service.
Conclusion: Good concept - but it will take too long for it to start generating income.
I spoke with my business coach, Daniel Vassallo, who suggested I don't need to spend time making a new product to sell—I am the product. To make money as fast as possible, I should focus on reaching out to my existing network to sell my existing product – web development services.
Conclusion: Great advice - I'm running with this.
I reached out to friends who may need help with web development.
This is the way.
I shortlisted 50 friends who might need web development help.
I messaged 15 of them, and 5 replied, which led to 3 opportunities.
What was the result?
My first € 360 of internet money and my first freelance client. I’ve gone from 0 to 1 🎉
I have two more potential freelance projects lined up: one from my neighbour (opportunity is right outside your door) and one from an old friend working on a startup in London.
An introduction to a leader at a prominent fintech company that could help me with Know.
An invite to a Slack group of builders also working on a finance app - we are stronger together!
What mistakes did I make?
I tried too many things instead of focusing on one. To be honest, this is my biggest mistake for the last 10 months.
I expected cold outreach to be easy.
I took too long to start warm outreach—I felt like a sleazy salesman. The truth is, though, if you genuinely want to reconnect with friends and have a valuable service to offer, you are helping them out.
What did I learn?
If you want opportunities to appear, you need to speak to someone.
Warm outreach is the way to get started, whether with freelance services, a new product, or anything else.
Just speak to the people you know and see if they need help.
If this is scary, start by messaging five close friends to warm up.
The Toolbox
Tools I've found this month that have helped me on my way.
Ali Abdaal shared his thoughts on how to get rich. You don't become an Olympic athlete without being obsessed. Either become obsessed or stop being upset that you're not an Olympic athlete.
I read $100M Leads by Alex Hormozi. Incredibly valuable for where I am on my journey.
Daniel gave me some sage advice. I'm so grateful to have him in my corner.
For the web developers, Adam Wathan shared a nifty trick for making cleaner borders on UI elements.
Thanks for reading.
If you have any extra things on your backlog, I would love to help.
Until next month
– Dev