Documenting My Progress

npm run dev

Build in public

It has become a pretty common mantra in the "indie hacker" / coding space to build in public and it makes sense. It's an exercise in personal branding and historically I have been quite poor at this, so I am pretty nervous that I won't stick to this, but here I am.

The goal here is to write frequently (at least weekly) here just as a way to log what I have done that week in order to get closer to my goals.

A Little About Me

Over the past 7-8 years I have been running an online ecommerce site called Royal Essence. My dream was always to be an entpreneur and I have been lucky enough to have been able to do that. The business was crazy throughout covid, and we have sold over 30M (AUD) worth of products in the past 7 years. Way beyond my wildest dreams.

After covid and with the cost of living crisis going on in our two major markets of Australia and the UK, the business has been struggling and myself and my wife have decided it would be best to work on different projects for a while.

Since the day we moved to Australia over 12 years ago we have spent 80% of our time together. This has been great, but also incredibly difficult at times. Some space / distance will be good for both of us as we try to navigate through parenting two young toddlers.

What I Am Trying To Achieve

I have always loved marketing because its a skillset that everyone is after and its something that makes me a better entpreneur ... sales cures all as they say and I have definitely found that to be true thoughtout my entpreneurial journey.

But here I am at 38 years old and I have never really been able to code. I have always been able to hack together a website, but I have never been able to build something from scratch and Ive decided that marketing is not enough. I need to be able to build things.

How I Plan To Do This

Short answer is I don't know. I have a few ideas of what I want to build, but I am not sure how to get there. I have started a few courses on Udemy and I have been doing a few tutorials on youtube, but I am not sure if this is the best way to learn.

Myself and the family have moved to the Philippines and its looking more and more likely that we will be staying for at least 4-5 years. This means our expenses are much lower and I can afford to take a few to learn coding while hacking away at a few projects. Don't get me wrong, I want to be making money as soon as possible, but at least this way I don't have to worry about paying the bills as much.

We plan to sell our house and assets in Australia and use the money to invest in stock. We are hoping this could provide us with upto $100k a year in interest / dividends.

Conclusion

If you want to watch a guy stumble his way through learning to code, then this is the place for you. I am not sure what I will be building, but I am sure it will be fun. I am not sure if I will stick to this, but I am sure I will try.