Follow the Yellow Brick Road

This isn't a desperate attempt to ride along the coattails of "Wicked," which just dropped in theaters, but, given the topic of this post, which will become clearer in a bit (ed. note: by in a bit, we mean in the next post based on our author's inability to self-edit), the association is a bit ironic.

I'm slightly more than 6 months into my independent venture, and I'm still not entirely sure what I want my business to be once it grows up.  I think most people have an idea and work toward that idea until they reach a certain level of success or failure.  Often, an opportunity will present itself in the interim that may radically alter the primary goal, but there is a primary goal in mind, regardless of the ultimate outcome.

Not so with me.  I have some trappings of ideas or whisps of possibilities, but I didn't go into this with a clear vision of say, using AI to generate blog posts on topics related to generative AI (so meta!).  

If you've been following along for a while, you'll remember that I started with an initial hook - how far can I get using GenAI as my CTO/engineering staff and what lessons can I impart to others as a result?  The answer is pretty clear at this point without a sea change in the models used (and the seas look fairly calm from my vantage point) - GenAI excels at creating volumes of fake data that's useful for presentations and mock-ups, does fairly well as a coding assistant if you're using a popular language/framework and know to check its work, and is fair to middling at best for everything else.

I used that hook in an attempt to network via LinkedIn with the expectation that it would lead me to blog consistently (that's certainly true) and introduce me to people who might look at my work and say "Well, that's interesting, and I like your approach, do you think you can help us build/enhance our product?"  

The latter hasn't come to fruition, but I can't be impatient with timelines, especially if I don't have a timeline to match it against.  In a different world, I would've taken the approach of trying this same tactic while still employed and, only then, taking a leap once I have a clear path forward.  I'm not too concerned, because I came in with the expectation that I might either fail at my goal or reach it slowly, and I set aside a financial cushion to deal with that very distinct possibility.

During this nearly 7 month period there's a lot I've learned and can be thankful for:

• I've never blogged this consistently before.  By embarking on this journey, it kept me disciplined about documenting my efforts.  Succeed or fail, this is valuable if I reenter the workforce (or even if I don't) because it's a body of work that I can point to outlining a particular point in my life.  From an interview standpoint, this gives me a lot of material to mine with prospective employers.  If I stay on the entrepreneur path, prospective clients can view and quiz me about this material as well.
• My readership is steadily increasing.  It's not anywhere near enough that Google's clamoring for me to give them advertising dollars, but it's in the high double digits.  Given that previous blogs had a readership of 1-2 and at least one of those people was me, that's pretty impressive.
• I've learned that LinkedIn is the same ball of mud that every other social network is.  It has its uses, but there are trolls and fanboys aplenty.
• But, it has helped me form some valuable connections - even if they're shallow - to learn more about entrepreneurship and get a pulse on the work world that I generally ignored when I was gainfully employed.  If you're reading this blog because I met you through LinkedIn, then I find that to be a successful use of the platform and thank you whole-heartedly.
• I've collected a few leads for consulting gigs with one that's likely to pay off - more about that if and when the proverbial ink is dry on the e-contract, and I've vetted what I can blog about with my new paymasters.
• This, to me, is potentially the most exciting development.  Not simply because I'm going to get paid again, but because someone is actually willing to pay for my skills as an independent contractor.  This is one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to strike out on my own - to test the market for my worth as a tech employee with nearly 3 decades worth of experience.  I told myself that even receiving $1 would show that I'm valuable enough to have someone pay me.
• Travelectable, my fake travel website, has continued to prove invaluable for me as both a learning and marketing tool.  
• In addition to spurring a greater understanding of the LLM/GenAI space, it pushed me back to my programming roots.  
• As of the initial draft of this post, I've made 246 commits over the last 6 months, not including the separate repository that I initially used for crafting mock data.
• That mock data creation, in turn, generated a speaking engagement for me with the Software Craftsmanship McHenry County group, so, as previously trumpeted - I'm internet famous!
• A post on LinkedIn expounding the benefits of NoCode for Minimum Viable Products (MVP) and downplaying the need to overpay a software consulting firm for an overengineered equivalent spurred me to see if I could add the next major feature to the site under the simulated condition of doing so as an MVP.  My goal was to implement it in 80 total hours or under.  I finished it in 39,  but I'll leave the details around that work in an upcoming blog post.  This gives me (a) confidence in the ability to either compete with NoCode solutions or figure out how to use them in a complementary fashion for clients and (b) gives me a reasonable price point should someone actually ask for my services.  This is the first time that I can even begin to put a dollar value on my services.  That's one of the hardest things to establish as an entrepreneur.
• The MVP post also gives me impetus to try some other basic offerings that LinkedIn denizens have mentioned and see how I fare against those applications in my ability to create an MVP.

If I base the last 7 months on my monetary gain, I can say, categorically that I've failed spectacularly.  I've spent $1023.54 on a business that has yet to return a dime.  

If I base the last 7 months on experience, freedom, and potential, I can't claim that the sky's the limit, but there's obviously a lot of growth potential.  

And, if you notice, the cost of funding a business like this is very reasonable.  Half of that cost was based on incorporation fees with the other large expenditures bucketed for online IDE subscriptions, my ACM renewal, and the O'Reilly books virtual subscription that accompanies it.

I know if my business scales, my costs for maintaining infrastructure or services will too, but the costs certainly look reasonable at this point.  

And, as usual, I've droned on far longer in the preamble than I expected, so rather than simply burying the lede, I've moved it to an entirely different post.

Until next time, my human and robot friends.