This Week:
- The pivot I’m making to my software.
- Why I didn’t like going back to Phoenix this time.
- The unbelievable sunsets at this spot I camped at this week.
December 2024
| Su | M | T | W | Th | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12/1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 | 31 | 1/1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
Where In The World Was I?
- 🇺🇸 Phoenix area, Arizona
Metrics From The Week
I realized I had kind of lost a bit of my sleep routine lately, mostly due to “evening Peter” who’s always carb-crashed and tired. The morning after that 85% sleep I could feel it and decided to get back to prioritizing my sleep. I started my evening/sleep routine a bit over an hour before my Whoop’s recommended bed time. Ah sleep, what a wonderful thing.
Business Progress Update
Well, this week wasn’t exactly the pivot towards moving more quickly that I talked about last week. But, I did get some more valuable information and strategy.
One of the realizations I had was that I’ve been waiting for proper testimonial videos/reviews from my users, but I already had a whole bunch of messages that show good social proof. It seems like the objective of this early stage phase it to just get some people in, get them results, and get enough social proof to get the ball rolling.
Waiting for the perfect set of social proof isn’t necessary. I figure it’s time to move on.
So I took the testimonials I had and collected all the messages I had gotten from people and updated my landing page.
I also recorded both a demo video that I put on my landing page and an onboarding video for new users. I had been getting some people confused or unaware of some features, so it seemed like an onboarding video would be useful.
Aside from this, I did another handful of reachouts, posted my second lead magnet title formats post to a community, onboarded some more users, and had a call with one guy I met from skool. We had 2 good conversations, I got some valuable information and he gave me some good advice and ideas for scaling this up! It’s given me a lot to think about.
Going Public (Well, not public public 😄)
Taking a step back, here’s where I’m at.
From all the market research, conversations, and user feedback I’ve gotten: I’ve identified and validated a real problem (the scale to which I still have to determine), I have a pretty specific target customer, I have a solution that solves this problem, and I have social proof that it works and resonates with people. There’s also validation for this from competitors in the market and I’ve seen a new potential gap not addressed.
While I won’t say I’m done, I do think it’s time to call this “private launch” phase done. I don’t want to be stuck in this box of trying to send a couple DMs a week, onboarding a handful of users here and there to get feedback from a couple people. I want to help a lot more people and the only way to do that is to scale up.
I’m moving my new strategy towards getting more users, higher quality users, and continuing to refine my positioning in the market.
And my plan for doing this is scale up outreach, start making content, actually start charging users so I know they value solving this problem, then talk to them to identify their biggest pain points to help figure out how I can position myself towards a more premium solution rather than being compared to the rest of the tools as a commodity.
Will it work? There’s only one way to find out.
Final Days Camping
I spent about 2.5 more days at this first camp spot south of Phoenix. So beautiful!
Back To Phoenix
I headed back up to Phoenix to do some errands and do a little more urban van life.
That is, until I hit this tipping point of decision fatigue. I tried to explain everything in this video Finally cracking under the decision fatigue of van life. Basically, I was trying to make all these decisions both to optimize my time but also because Phoenix is a new city/area for me so I didn’t have all my spots mapped out.
I finally thought “man honestly, I just want to be back out camping in one spot where I don’t have to think about all this stuff” 😂
And this is kind of the first time I’ve really felt this, where I’ve been gravitating MORE towards camping than the coffee shop/urban van life lifestyle. I’ve been starting to see just how much time and decisions it takes to live in the city than camping out in some BLM/NF land.
So, I headed back out into the desert.
Saddle Mountain BLM
I stopped by this small little ranch and store called Saddle Vista Ranch to dump my greywater. The owner was this old guy, super friendly and talkative.
He asked me if I were going up to the Saddle Mountain BLM land and I said “uhhh I wasn’t planning on it” and he goes “oh man you HAVE to. It’s gotta be some of the best BLM land in the whole country. Just acres and acres of free camping.”
So he sold me and I went up there and oh my lord has it been good.
I went up the hill to watch the sunset the first night and WOW this might be the best sunset I’ve ever seen and captured in my whole life.
I took this with my phone:
And these with my camera the next night:
Absolutely unbelievable. That first/left one is absolutely being framed (when I have a wall to put it on 😂)
Creative Inspiration
I’ve been having some fun getting back to posting on Instagram (just stories for now). It’s given me a reason to take the extra couple steps to crop/edit a photo and take my camera back out to capture the beauty of our world.
And in the mindset of personal branding, I thought of doing some photoshoots because that’s the one thing I’m missing, photos of myself. Though it takes some of the fun and mystery out of it if I tell you that I took these, so instead I’ll just neither confirm nor deny this. Was it actually me? Or maybe it wasn’t? 👀
I talked about this creative inspiration in this video I just got back on Instagram and it’s affecting me already. But, I also talked about how I’m starting to feel that feeling that I specifically DIDN’T want: that urge to check Instagram to see if anyone’s liked my story or check to see how many people have seen it so far.
I hate this feeling.
So I’ve been trying to be more conscious of this lately and keep in control of it.
Self Confidence
Interestingly, I’ve noticed that I’ve gained a LOT of self-confidence over the past couple weeks since I started posting on Instagram.
It kind of feels weird to admit that.
I’ve just being seeing this life I’m living right now as something temporary. It’s not ideal and I don’t plan on living this lifestyle forever. Because of this my mind goes to “… and thus it must not be valuable.”
But in a weirdly selfish way, seeing the output of my own life and getting back into sharing beautiful photos that I capture has built up more and more evidence in my mind that “goddamn this life is cool as sh*t.”
I’ve been grateful for being able to live like this since it started, but what was missing was the pride behind it, that feeling of being 100% me and owning it.
Growth Tipping Point
Speaking of growth and change, I talked about being on this growth tipping point this week How it feels to be on the edge of a growth tipping point. In the business section above I mentioned how I’m done with this private launch phase and moving into a public launch phase.
The only problem? Going public, sharing what I’ve built, sharing the life I live, trying to find more people that I can help, all that takes self-confidence and owning my life and making content about it.
Ahhh and look at how that aligns perfectly with my thoughts about self-confidence above.
I’m realizing that this new chapter is going to require me to face fears about sharing my life and what I’ve built, about wanting validation, about fearing the unknown, and facing my limiting beliefs that just want me to be comfortable.
So I don’t know exactly how this is going to look or what my strategy ends up being, but all I know is that it’s going to require me to change and evolve.
Hemispheres
One of the more behind the scenes things I can share is that I’m still unfortunately being constrained by my battery/solar. I really wish I could be camping for longer, but I’m only able to squeeze out about 4-5 days before I run out of battery charge.
I’m averaging round about 900Wh per day of solar charge and I calculated that I use about 1.6kWh (almost double) per day with everything: starlink, charging laptop, fridge, etc.
And while I don’t think I’ve seen a cloud here in Arizona in about a week, the sun is so low in the sky that I’m only maxing out mid day at ~150W with my 350W of solar panels. I’m pretty sure I’ve cracked 300W mid day in the summer.
So it’s been unfortunate because I have enough water, greywater, and food to last at least 10 days in one spot. I would LOVE to be able to camp out here for longer, but I’m also trying to actually work out here 😅
For context, my laptop is basically constantly at between 17-35% charge, which I’m trying to charge from my external Jackery battery (that has its own solar panel), which is also barely squeaking by at 30-40% charge. Every time I get enough charge on my Jackery I just burn it all charging my laptop and I’m trying to float my “house” batteries as long as I can.
Man it makes me appreciate sitting in a home or coffee shop and just plugging in my laptop into the wall. Like you mean I don’t have to worry about where the energy actually comes from? It’s just infinite energy!
I’ll just see it as I get to experience more beautiful places 🙂 Grateful for every day!
What’s Next?
Heading back to Phoenix. Will I be able to survive the decision fatigue this time? 😂