I thought I wanted to put a group together that actively builds together, but it's pretty clear I cant drag anyone along for the ride. Cancelled all calls booked. will go alone on this journey. Take care all.

I've been making a lot of progress on my company toucan.ee and I'm trying to figure out how to land clients. I'm good at communicating. I've been learnign from @Hilary Torn on how to do social media . I have started doing once a week posts on linkedin about the things I am developing. I post it on my site and then post it to the linkedin paltform. I am getting likes and all. I want to figure out from advice from you guys on how to land that first real client. I don't have that right now. I'm looking forward to joining the weekly tomorrow

Yo! Pretty busy this week, sorry for not being about. Wanted to gift you something to get started though. I was thinking more about the challenge and… I’m making it as easy as possible for you to get started so you have literally no excuse not to put something out next week. Repo template: https://github.com/dougwithseismic/eir-template-apify Here’s mine: https://apify.com/deadlyaccurate/answer-the-public It took one evening, and I’ve got a whole load of supporting docs to go with it: https://withseismic.com/apify-actors/answer-the-public There’s about 100,000 monthly brand search volume for AnswerThePublic, and no other Answer The Public Apify Actor exists. So I’m pretty confident that if I start ranking, I should see users come in — and until then, I can buy paid traffic. Sometimes all you have to do is be in the right place at the right time. This might seem like too much effort, and you might worry about doing something that might not see any gains, but… Earlier this year I posted one sentence in reply to a thread on a Cursor forum. Someone asked: “Where can I hire developers that are well-versed in Cursor and move fast?” I replied with something like, “Probably on this forum,” and dropped my GitHub. That led to a $30,000 USD contract two or three months later, for a Techstars alumni project with an absolute legend of a client. So go do it. Post it here. DM me if you have questions.. or better yet, post them in the comments so we can all help each other and answer them. If you really don't feel like you can code or you're getting stuck with it, I invite you to help me market mine and improve it or choose another Actor target, I will help you build it and we will market it together as a group. In? This is a new skill you can pick up using Claude code, using Cursor, using the JavaScript you already know. I’ve put everything together so all you have to do is fork the repo and get cracking.

How’s everyone’s weekend going? Working, with family, taking it easy? I’ve taken a proper break from the laptop and honestly feel great for it. It’s a three day weekend here in Prague, temps are dropping below freezing next week, and with a client project starting on the 24th, I’m taking some R&R. I wanted to chat about something that keeps coming up with people here. Juggling priorities. Most of us are in a similar situation: - working full-time - or working with clients - and building an idea on the side When I was starting out, the full-time job felt like “real life”, and the product I wanted to build was the dream. The escape. The thing that would replace working for someone else. But once I actually switched from full-time to client work, I realised something fast: - in a job you have one boss - with clients you have many - the problems you hate in full-time work often show up in client work too - some clients are great, some are not, and you’re still a service at the end of the day I didn’t appreciate how much stability and domain expertise full-time roles gave me until later. And now at 37, the idea of stability sounds… pretty nice. Not because I want to stop building, but because a stable base means you build better. That’s why I’m shifting again. Moving from short 6 to 8 week MVP sprints towards more long-term 6 month+ minimum. The hoep being that different rhythm, different responsibilities etc fits my life better right now. A quick version of my path so far: - full-time roles - freelance PPC and analytics - consulting - internal tools - growth engineering - running a voucher publisher for 5 years - back to client work - now interviewing for senior engineering roles in Prague - still building products on the side It’s not been a straight line. I’ve traded one boss for many. Learned a lot. Lost money. Made money. Lost more. Dealt with net-90 and net-180 cycles where affiliate revenue vanished overnight because someone changed policy. If someone had explained all that upfront, I might have chosen a different business to scale entirely.

So I've been a bit distracted lately with illness and kid stuff. But when the US government opened last week, they signed a new law that will basically wipe out the US hemp industry November next year. This is the industry my 3 year client works in, and I had a meeting with them yesterday and they were soooo sad. Its awful because they are the nicest people, it is a family run farm out in Oregon. This industry is really not organized and not technical. Two skills I poses, so I decided to do a little hackathon the next 7 days: - Build a website that makes it easy for hemp consumers to contact their representatives with email templates (based on why they care about the hemp industry) and even an easy way to call. The more noise the consumers make, the more likely a new law will be created. The goal is to make it extremely user friendly so even the granny who uses gummies to sleep will be able to use it. - The email template will include how much money the consumers state will lose with this hemp ban (varies state to state) - Website will include a counter for how many people use it, as well as a link to a petition (probably on change.org) to sign - After taking action, users get pre-filled social posts to share in one click ("I just contacted my rep! Join me: [link]") - track viral spread - AI generates personalized story paragraph for their email based on why they use hemp (sleep/pain/anxiety/business) - will see how much this will cost though - Interactive state-by-state impact dashboard: jobs lost, revenue lost, actions taken per state - visual, shareable map - "Thank Your Rep" follow-up: when a rep supports hemp, auto-email their constituents to thank them - keeps momentum - Media kit/press page with real-time stats, shareable graphics, your contact info - makes it easy for journalists - Create automations for X, Blue Sky and Reddit to respond to people talking about the ban and ask them to go to the website and create ACTION - Auto-DM influencers when they post about hemp ban: "I built a tool to help mobilize your followers: [link]" - Create an automation to outreach to farmers to share the website and help get people in action - Create an automation to outreach to hemp companies to share the website with their customers - Auto-post milestone celebrations: "10,000 people just took action!" - tag politicians/media when counter hits 1k, 5k, 10k, 50k - Email drip sequence to signups: Day 1 thank you, Day 3 next steps, Day 7 forward to friends - keeps engagement