001 - Welcome to Hawthorne!
Hey, welcome to Hawthorne Interactive!
This is the first of many weekly updates to come. So let me start with the aim here. Each week, I'll share an update on what’s going on in the industry, what I’m working on, an how the business is doing.
Interesting Reads
I've been (finally) learning more about React Hooks as I try and use them in the applications I'm building. They're starting to click, though I'm not sure I'm 100% on board with them. I used to take a very aggressive approach to learning things as they were introduced in the industry. Getting burned by that a few times has made me way more conservative. Like, I don't want to learn something until it's been around for at least a year or two. Hooks are finally getting to that point, so I figured it was probably time to dive in. Of all the articles I read on using Hooks, these two were by far the best:
Speaking of being conservative about industry changes and new technology: anyone want a blockchain? I've been reading and learning a lot about them recently. After a few weeks of reading about blockchain, I feel like I'm starting to leave the "WTF even is it?" phase and entering the "Everything should use blockchain!" phase. The phase after that is "Okay, actually only some of these things should use blockchain." Anyway, Here are two articles I read that were really helpful in the "WTF even is it?" phase:
Off The Press
I've published three articles recently - one of which, I published today!
Brilliant at the Basics. This is the first in a series of articles I'm writing about Jim Mattis' book, Call Sign Chaos. I picked up this book on a whim as a way of trying to read something outside my normal reading "comfort zone" and, man, was it worth it. I took so much from this book. I mean, I skipped all the chapters about war and fighting. But the parts about leadership and management were fantastic! This first article looks at Mattis' idea of making your team brilliant at the basics. Think: reflexively excellent at a small collection of core, foundational skills.
Tips for Reading More with the Rest of 2020. Who doesn't want to read more? Reading is great! It's relaxing and peaceful. You learn a lot. Not to mention, it's just really fun. I've read 19 books so far this year and in this article I explain some of the things I've done to help me read that much. Some of the tips here are easy to start — like keeping a book handy or having the kindle app open on your laptop. Some are admittedly a little out there — like I now read when I take Sadie (my dog) on long walks.
Wise Management. In the world of education, there's this fantastic idea called wise teaching. A wise teacher is one who is both supportive and demanding, so their students excel while developing a strong relationship with their teacher. As a manager, I wanted to run my team such that we were excelling and meeting really high expectations but I still wanted to be able to grab beers with everyone. I've had plenty of managers that led really high performing teams, but most of them complete ass holes. I've also had managers who I became really close with, but often felt like I could slack off I wanted to because the relationship was more important than the work product. This article explores how to achieve both.
Full-time Freelancer
If you're here, then you probably saw my announcement: I'm leaving General Assembly, where I've worked full-time for the last two and a half year and part-time for about a year before that. I'm a big, mixed bundle of emotions about it. I am sad to be leaving General Assembly. This is the first time in my career that I'm not leaving a job because I hate it, but because I'm ready for something different. I'm also very excited about what's next for me.
For the last few months, I've been building up freelance work on the side with the goal of being able to support myself on it full-time. Well full-ish time. In this inaugural edition of the newsletter, I thought I'd share my strategy for how I'm going to support myself. I'm going to start by selling my time while I try to move into selling my knowledge. Then I'm going to try and sell a product.
Selling Time
If you work for a salary or by the hour, then you sell your time. Most careers work this way: you work a number of hours per week and get paid for those hours. If you're paid hourly, then you work more to earn more. If you're paid a salary, then it's a little tricker. You have to create more value, while trying to keep the number of hours roughly the same.
This is my starting point. I have two contracts for a set 10 hours a week and one that varies from week to week. So in a given week, I'm selling 20-35 hours of my time. Being independent of a particular company means the extra time left over is mine to allocate as I see fit.
Freelance contracts act as a sort of boundary with the companies I work with. We can negotiate more time, but there isn't an expectation that all my work time is dedicated to working for that particular company.
The remaining time gets divided into two things:
Getting more work. Always have to be selling more work!
Packaging and selling my knowledge.
You can't ever stop moving on sales as a freelancer, so I have to do some of that week to week. But the goal is to get to a point where I don't have to freelance every week and the way to do that is to get out of selling my time and instead sell something else, like what I know.
Selling Knowledge
Freelance work sets a nice baseline. I can work 20-40 hours a week and make a set amount. I can earn more if I need to, but I have to find and work more hours. So freelance work is consistent, but it isn't scaleable. I mean, I can only work a certain number of hours within a week, which acts as a ceiling on how much I can earn.
To get past that ceiling, I need to start selling something that doesn't require a one-to-one ratio of time to earnings.
The easiest thing that you or I could sell is what we know. We're actually already selling what we know and are good at. We're just doing it in a way that isn't scaleable. Rather than selling what I know by the hour, I want to get to a point where it's packaged into a product that anyone can buy at any time - an ebook, an online course, or something like that.
Freelancing gives me a consistent income to figure this out, which I'd like to do in the next year or so.
Selling what you know in an ebook or course has some limitations. From my research and from speaking to people who've done this, it seems the biggest limitation is: what you make will vary a lot from week to week.
If you have an ebook for sale for $20, you could sell 20 copies one week and 1,000 the next. Meaning, you earn $400 in the first week and $20,000 in the second! (Pre-tax, can’t forget that.) An extra $400 a week would be great, but I couldn't just make $400 a week.
Freelancing gives me the freedom to figure this out, but having a few information products for sale gives me the freedom to not have to freelance all the time. What do I do with that freedom? That brings us to phase 3: selling a product.
Selling A Product
The ultimate goal would be to build (or buy and then build) a software product that earns repeat income at scale. This part takes the longest, but also has the biggest (potential) pay-off. Building good software products takes a lot of time and it takes time for a product to gain traction and start turning a profit. So if selling an ebook or online course is on a ~1 year timeline, then selling a product is on a ~3-5 year timeline.
One advantage of freelancing has been that it's helped me generate a lot of new ideas based on challenges my clients are experiencing. This is great because it means I might have beta users who I can build the product around and there's some built-in validation that the idea might be good if multiple clients start running into the same issues.
There's still a lot to figure out in the next few years of how to make all this work, but this is how I'm thinking about it looking forward. Of course, if you have thoughts on any of this I'd love to hear them!
End Note
If you found this interesting, I would love it if you shared it with someone. You can forward it to them or send them to https://hawthorne.substack.com.
Otherwise, if you have question about anything in here, hit reply!
Have a great week!
Zakk