Happy Anniversary Coastal Chicago!

I'm taking another brief sojourn from angry rants to note a milestone - today is the 1st anniversary of me officially striking out on my own.

When I first started, I had a basic sketch in mind to drum up business (even though I had no concrete business plan to speak of) - create a mock travel website using AI tools and document the process for better or worse.  I was expecting to derive value from the site through increased engagement via blogging and LinkedIn posting.  This, in turn, was expected to generate leads for consulting work, generate requests for prototyping assistance, or spark ideation for an application I could run independently.  

While the results didn't meet my lofty expectations (when do they ever?), I can say that I've certainly had qualified success.

To start with, my business over the first year has earned a grand total of -$582.79.   That's not too shabby.  If my accounts receivable department were more on the ball, I'd actually be in the black, because I still have some consulting fees coming due.  I may not be paying myself the salary I deserve yet, but my life isn't simply a gaping money pit.

What are some key factors to point out that can demonstrate my qualified success?  To begin with, I've technically met all of my first-year goals above, even if not at the volume I wanted to achieve.

I created my mock travel website using AI

...and it's still running!  I haven't devoted more time to it in the last few months, because I had actual paying work preempting its development, which was the entire point of starting it.

I documented the process

I've posted here 49 times (not including this apparent 50th milestone) [apparently, it's 61 including this one.  I missed counting items below the fold.], discussing the site as well as other broad topics.  I didn't reach the suggested target of posting 2k+ words a week twice weekly, but I'm good for about a 1K-word post per week.  I do expect to keep the frequency up, but am relaxing my expectations on the word count.  I'd prefer to have consistent updates, even if they're smaller.  It makes me feel more productive.

I increased engagement via blogging and LinkedIn

This is where I've got hard numbers, and the numbers don't lie.  My readership on the blog for each post ramps up to over 100 people - not enough to make a living from blogging, but a huge increase from the 0 people I had reading this time last year.  My LinkedIn followers have increased 70% from this time last year.

Most importantly, at least one of the paying gigs I've got came purely through LinkedIn engagement.  The other was probably influenced by my frequent updates to the site, but also likely benefited from a previous long-standing relationship.  

My presence online also led to a presentation for a local meet-up.  While this didn't result in any financial windfall, it did give me new opportunities for networking that I didn't have before.  It also let me showcase a tool built for Travelectable's development and opine on the state of LLMs.

I generated revenue!

This was the scariest part of striking out on my own.  Though I was being irrational in my extreme thinking, I was consistently plagued by the idea that no one would pay me any amount of money for my expertise.  I worried that, yes, at the beginning of my career, I had core skills that led to employment, but my recent experience and resulting pay were simply the result of residing at large corporations for a long enough duration, where measuring the value of management is particularly difficult, and, thus allowing me to coast on my merits.

Honestly, I don't know if I'll ever reach the pinnacle salary I voluntarily left behind last year.  Even discounting the headwinds affecting software engineering now, I'm still skeptical I was worth the salary and bonus I received.

On the other hand, I now know someone will pay me for my expertise, and I have much more latitude to try things I didn't have the time or energy to explore before.  I've been able to scratch both my software engineering and management itches, and handle tasks at a pace that isn't going to lead to burnout.  

Hopefully, I'm still early on this road to self-employment, and even if I don't become a gazillionaire (which isn't my goal anyway), I'm optimistic that there are still some solid highlights to look forward to in the next year.

In the next post, I'll discuss my expectations for the year ahead as well as some simple lessons I've learned to date.

Until next time, my human and robot friends.