Many of you who follow my blog and what I'm doing with YourPCM know I'm a massive geek. In fact, I'm probably beyond that term now (post geek?) as I love technology and think it'll save the world one day ...
It's easy to slip back into your comfort zone, so stay focused on your goal!
When I say, "Technology will save the world one day", I mean technology will be created and deployed to clean up Earth's biosphere and help us to keep it clean by providing us with unlimited free energy, which unlocks all sorts of possibilities. I may not live long enough to see it, but I know it will happen in the next 100 years or so.
"Now, I'm not an inventor of physical things, I'm a coder!"
I've spent over 30 years doing what I do; learning, experimenting, and refining. I'm so good at my chosen programming language that I can wake up in the middle of the night and have the code solution to something that's been baffling me. I also have that elusive skill of not giving up on a project until I find a way to make it do what I want it to do.
I like nothing better than spending a couple of weeks working on an idea and coding it into reality. I heard a quote recently that resonated with me, "copywriters create words and coders create worlds", or something like that (feel free to correct me) and, from my perspective at least, it's true.
When I'm in full flow, my universe is reduced from this infinitely sized thing we all live in, to just my mind, my hands, my keyboard, my monitor ... loop around as long as it takes ... and that's it. In goes coffee, out comes code. Nothing else matters to me when I'm coding. It is my happy place where all the worries of the world fall away and become irrelevant as I turn into reality (as far as web stuff can be called real) what my mind has visualised.
"And this is why I need to be careful and stay focussed!"
My goal for this year is not to make YourPCM an all-singing, all-dancing CRM with every possible bell and whistle I can imagine. I aim to grow my platform to a set number of subscribers in 2023. A point that my best friend (and ace business consultant) Kirsty Parris reminded me of this morning.
I'd had an idea. It was actually a couple of weeks ago when I first thought of it, but I like to let ideas mull over in the back of my mind under I get an "Ah ha!" moment with them. And this one was a good one that could generate some extra income from subscriptions by offering a paid-for service when a subscriber needed it. I'm not going to say what it is in case someone goes, "I want that! Make it work!", but it's on my whiteboard for now and I'll get around to it sometime in 2024 I guess.
Kirsty's reminder was very timely and it made me remember that apart from bug fixing YourPCM, I've promised myself not to touch the codebase for the rest of this year. It really is a great platform already so I don't need to add anything new.
I made that promise to myself because I don't want to fall into the 'one more feature' trap that so many technical founders fall into. I need to be out there networking, having 121s, doing demos, setting up free trials and getting as many people to take a look at YourPCM as possible.
"It's called founder-led marketing and that's what 2023 is all about, not coding!"
So, a big thank you to the lovely and always delightful Kirsty for her timely reminder, and it's back to being focused on growing my subscriber base again rather than falling back into my comfort zone of being a coder. There'll be plenty of time for that next year.
Love, light and logic ...
STEFFI LEWIS
The CRM designed exclusively for UK small business owners ...
Foodie, sci-fi nut, cat lover, brain aneurysm & cancer survivor, countryside dweller, SaaS entrepreneur, developer and networker.
Published my first website in 1993 for the Open University and am highly experienced with Windows Servers, SQL Server, HTML, Classic ASP, JavaScript, and CSS.
I've also worked as a professional photographer in Los Angeles, USA and been a vision mixer and producer for live television in my time.
I live in a village north of Milton Keynes with my two cats, Baggins and Gimley, and a large planted aquarium full of unruly tropical fish.
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