I gave myself six months to make my newly founded app business to work out for me. In six months which was (in my naive opinion back then way more time than I needed anyways) I wanted to cash in big times in the app business. I thought to myself that I will “make it” until then. But funny enough, I didn’t even know what “it” was. I had no plan. I just wanted to rush from where I was to where I “thought” I want to be. I wanted the “instant success”.
I had this bizarre idea in my mind that if I could manage to make some more money that everything will work out just fine for me. Let’s just pop out some apps, outsource all the work and cash in the money to fly to some exotic island? Sounds good. Well, it sounded good to little not-so-clever-me back then.
But sadly, stuff in the real world works a little bit differently. And everybody who has ever started his own business could have told me that in advance. (Well, maybe he couldn’t because I would not have listened to him anyways. I was too busy getting rich fast!).
I dedicated all my time (day and night) working double shifts to achieve what I thought was an easy thing. I thought just because I read App Empire: Make Money, Have a Life, and Let Technology Work for You that I now know it ALL! Like this was some exclusive knowledge which was just reserved for me! (durr!)
Don’t get me wrong, this book IS a great piece of art and definitely helps EVERYBODY who wants to move towards getting something done in the app business. I would have been even MORE clueless about anything I was doing without this little piece of great guidance. But the problem was, I was lacking so much other stuff that was necessary to run a business.
I didn’t know how to build a team and how to talk to your people. I had no idea how to delegate work and how to be precise in your assignments and wordings. It cost me tremendous efforts to interview all the freelancers and pick the ones that fit my needs. I was truly frightened the first time I called a freelancer on Skype and interviewed him. I just had never done this before and therefore this new experience alone was too much for me to cope with (funny, hm?). I had no idea how to price the services, I didn’t even know how much an average app costs in development. I just assumed a lot of stuff. There was so much to learn!
And yet I somehow thought I will get rich fast (oh, little petty me).
But now here comes the upside of all this.
Although it took me WAY longer than I wished it in my worst case scenarios to take, although I threw out a lot of money which I didn’t even had, and although it was an extremely rough and difficult road I took, I can now gladly say that it was all worth it.
- If I would have just gotten rich very fast, I would have missed out on so much more. All the challenges that were involved in me getting closer to my goal, all the experiences and the learnings I accumulated. They shaped me into the person I am now.
- All the lovely people I was able to work with, all the new perspectives and insights I have gotten from them. I would have never had that if I would have cashed in big in my early stages just like I wished it to happen so badly.
- I would be missing out on all the new skills and talents I discovered for myself. I found out about stuff I am able to do, which I didn’t even know I was. In the whole process of me going from A to B, I cultivated all these new and valuable ideas and visions for myself. It made me think a lot about me and life and greatly shaped the way I view other people and myself.
- The “slow” process taught me to enjoy the process in itself and not just “try to arrive” somewhere else instead. It teaches you some pretty deep shit about life and happiness in general.
- You develop a DEEP and ROOTED attitude of true appreciation for all the good things that happen to you (and surprisingly even the bad ones, they often change yourself the most). You no longer take stuff for granted. And when you finally get what you went out to get for yourself you enjoy every little piece of it, because you TRULY earned it! And just because you know that, everybody sees in you that you are now different.
Good luck!
