• Got internet connectivity working in QEMU in Docker for ESP32

• 4 cold outreach templates created

• 2 cold outreach emails sent (pre-template)

• 2 interactions with existing Deploy the Fleet customers

So I’m reading $100M Leads by Alex Hormozi. I know I know, but honestly once you get past the gym bro persona and the click bait title, the content is quite good. Similar to getting over Gary V’s energy and swearing to the pure gold content that lies underneath.

Anyway, nothing is ground breaking new for me so far (about half way through the book) but it has jarred me to the realization that I need to do more networking. Like, a LOT more. I’ve known for years that “it’s all about who you know” and I don’t know near enough people. Time to start changing that right now.

The problem is, I get dozens of emails a week of people telling me how they “love what you’re doing” and all sorts of other AI-generated slop nonsense to get me to respond (the worst is “my girlfriend showed me your website”). I HATE those emails and immediately delete them all. That said, I also realize that stuff works and I need to get over the “Nobody reads these” mentality. What’s my other option? Do nothing? Cold contacting here I come.

Biggest takeaway from the last two weeks is to just keep the foot on the gas. Keep trying things. Deliver something every single day.

Man have I blown that. Here’s an update. Full disclosure, if you’re looking for a motivational speech because you want to make the jump too, you should stop reading now.

Did I Jump At the Wrong Time?

This has definitely been the hardest my career has been mentally. And it really is a mental game. For anyone following this that is thinking about making the jump, Q4 is NOT the time to do it for 3 simple reasons:

• Christmas 💰

• House Insurance 💰 💰

• Property Taxes 💰 💰 💰

In my case, add on having to buy another vehicle and your bank account quickly begins to evaporate. Basically, Q4 is the most expensive quarter of the year, at least for me, and it’s a lot of sticker shock to absorb.

I Almost Broke

Between watching my bank account steadily drain, delayed payments from contract work and just generally feeling burnt out, I almost folded the cards. In fact, I TRIED. I reached out to a couple of previous employers and said I might be interested in returning since I was told that was always an option…until it wasn’t. I was informed that due to budget constraints, that was no longer possible, at least for now. So it was either look for a job or keep pushing forward on my own. For now, I’m choosing the latter.

What Does 2026 Hold?

I have no idea. I’m making steady income from contracting but it’s eating a huge portion of my available time. So unless I’m looking to build a consulting firm, I might as well have a job given the hours I’m spending. Politics aside, health insurance premiums in 2026 are gonna cost me…🤷…I really have no idea. Some people are floating around a 40% increase. In that scenario I would be paying more for health insurance every month than the mortgage on my house. Will I still have the grit to push through and bet on me? I honestly don’t know.

What I DO Know

• I’ve made it 5 months without a W2 job and I’m still here with a full belly and a bed to sleep in at night

• I’ve made a lot of mistakes and wasted a lot of time. I’m starting to think this is the SOP for this kind of journey

• I still don’t want a W2 job but I’m also a pragmatic family man

• I want to keep going but I need to be much more focused and deliberate

The journey continues. For how long? I don’t know.

• Ran ads for puck holders on Facebook and sold several more

• Lots of contracting work to keep up on paying bills

• Updated the puck holder website

• Created a new round of ads

• Dealt with a multi-day customer support issue on a puck holder

Running ads on Facebook totally worked and drove traffic to the site. I ran ads in the Seattle and Utah markets and both ended up at around 21 cents per click with a sales conversion rate of just under 1%. Honestly, I was pretty pumped about it considering I have no idea what I’m doing.

Instead of just blindly running the next round of ads I figured I’d make some changes to the website to try to increase conversions. I’m still in the zone where I don’t know if it’s the copy or the price that limits conversions so I’m going to play with one thing at a time.

I did find that conversions were better over the weekend so I’m going to run the ads this time for a shorter time and target the weekend.

I’ve also had several people reach out on Whatnot asking when the next stream is going to be so I need to get that planned as well.

Biggest takeaway from the last two weeks is to just keep the foot on the gas. Keep trying things. Deliver something every single day.

Ultimately there is only one number I care about, profit. Things like followers, impressions, and open rates can all lead to profit but driving those numbers up alone isn’t the primary goal. Yes, it’s more likely I will find Deploy the Fleet customers if my LinkedIn profile is more visible and organically reachable. So it’s a balance and I haven’t figured it out yet.

I saw a post last month on X that said something to the affect of “Hey founders, you can choose to burn out on either building or marketing. Which is it?” I’m feeling that right now. I have a lot I want to build but I also need to spend a LOT of time marketing the things I have already built. Balancing that time has been very hard for me.

Looking back at August I need to do an honest look at what worked and what didn’t.

What Worked

• Whatnot streams were pretty good. In just two streams I made a bunch of connections and moved some puck holders.

• LinkedIn posting went well and definitely grew my presence on that platform

• My daily ship-list from late in the month. This helps me focus on what to actually deliver day to day.

What Didn’t Work

• Spent way too much time refreshing notifications on LinkedIn. It’s important to reply quickly but I was too refresh-happy on this and it distracted me from focusing on other things.

• Production ESP32 streams were just ok. The idea was to stream 3 times a week and not worry about making the content polished but that is very hard for me to do and a lot of the streams felt boring. Felt weird to have “Production” in the title and then watch me fumble around for 10 minutes figuring out a build issue.

• Production ESP32 blog posts. I didn’t do enough because I focused too much on hitting the edge of my personal growth envelope instead of posting things I already know.

September Goals

I’m dialing back my goals as I balance contract work to pay the bills. My focus will be more on shipping things that can generate revenue than building social attention although that will still be in the mix.

• Ship profiling library for ESP32

• Sell 50 puck holders

• Dual partition updates on DTF (specific customer request)

• 12 pieces of content for Production ESP32 (newsletter, blog, stream)

• Reach out to 50 people for DTF to gauge the market

I’m always adjusting but this is how we’re starting the month.

• Deploy the Fleet

  • ✅ Developed a feature roadmap

  • ❌ Formulate a sales/marketing plan

  • ❌ Send at least 100 cold outreach messages (sent 0)

  • ❌ Add 20 new signups, at least 1 paid (1 new signup, 0 paid)

• Production ESP32

  • ✅ Send at least 2 newsletters out

  • ❌ Stream 14 times (10 streams)

  • ❌ At least 10 posts for the month (3 site posts)

  • ❌ Add 50 new subscribers to the newsletter (6)

Shortly after the August goals post I pivoted and said I was going to focus on Whatnot and try to liquidate puck holders. I did much better in that regard. I had two streams and sold 10 puck holders. Nothing earth shattering but progress.

By The Numbers (August)

This is the last time I’ll share these numbers (more on that tomorrow).

Community

• Twitter

  • Impressions: 3.6k (+3.4%)

  • Followers: 432 (+7)

• LinkedIn

  • Impressions: 44.6k (+381%)

  • Engagements: 614 (+211%)

  • Followers: 1956 (+7.2%)

• Newsletter

  • Open rate: 37% (no change)

  • Subscribers: 124 (+6)

Revenue

• Deploy the Fleet: $155

• 12D Sports: $142

I did take a little time off in August but not enough to justify my shortcomings. So where did I go wrong?

First, I spent a LOT of time on LinkedIn and it shows in the metrics. And certainly raising my social profile on LinkedIn doesn’t hurt but it’s not my primary goal.

Second, and probably most important, I was all over the map trying to do WAY too many things. Deploy the Fleet got zero attention while puck holders and production ESP32 got a ton of attention.

The results of the month have me re-assessing what my goals should be and how I spend my time each day. Solopreneurship is a grind and taking a step back to reflect and adjust regularly is going to be crucial. Tomorrow I’ll have what those adjustments are for the coming month.

In that same vane I’ve decided to do some Facebook marketing for puck holders. They were never truly marketed there. I’m going to start lighting up the 12D Facebook page with lots of posts targeting 4 markets: Capitals, Bruins, Kraken, and Panthers. I strategically picked those. Bruins are the top merchandise team in the NHL, Capitals still have the hype of Ovi and the goal record, Kraken are a newer expansion team in an extremely affluent and tech-savvy market, and the Panthers just won the Stanley Cup so there is a lot of hype there.

I’m going to do a combination of organic and paid ads just to see what happens in each market. I’ve come up with 10 ad ideas for each team and will start running against each market to see if anything pops.

What I’m Shipping Today:

• Ad copy for 4 target markets. 10 ads per market.

• Canva template for player countdown-to-season-start social posts

• Social media post schedule for 12D account

• Whatnot stream

• Picture assets for all 32 teams on the puck holder

Perfect is the enemy of good.

I can break down the bigger vision into smaller pieces that I can ship on a more regular basis. So I’m going to try to make this more of a shipping journal.

This morning I’ve shipped:

• Puck holder website changes (price, copy, page tweaks)

• Article on Production ESP32 and scheduled social posts for it

• Whatnot show prep for tomorrow

It’s easy to let that sort of thing stress you out but I try not to. After all, this is the freedom I’m looking for, I just have to get the income to a point where I can enjoy that freedom more 🤣.

August is almost over and while I’ve had a lot of output this month I’m starting to evaluate whether it’s the kind of output that’s pointing me in the right direction. That’s a hard assessment to make but will definitely be doing an audit at the end of the month to adjust for September.

And that’s exactly what I did. I sat there for 5 minutes until the first person showed up and then completely lost track of time for an hour chatting with fellow hockey enthusiasts, learning Whatnot, getting pointers from the community and even sold a could of things.

It was amazing!

I auctioned off two puck holders at a token $1 each to get comfortable with the process and say thanks to the two super helpful community members who joined and walked me through how to do various things.

People kept dropping in and everyone was super cool. This was in the middle of the day on a Friday.

It was just one stream but I’m hopeful for this as a sales channel to get these puck holders sold.

If you are trying to sell a physical good of ANY kind you need to be on Whatnot. It’s a 24/7 garage sale where you can chum it up with complete strangers that share your interest in niche products.

Been gearing up for the Whatnot shows, getting the recording area set up, adding products to Whatnot, and watching tons of other streams to get a feel for what the community is like there.

Have had a ton of fun getting back into the firmware side of puck holders and playing around with the display. I always get a ton of ideas on how to make the product better that I have to table because, no customers. But hockey really is a passion of mine so it’s fun to work in that space.

Next week will be the first show where I’ll give away a couple of puck holders and maybe auction off a few more for cheap. Will take some time to get used to Whatnot so I’ll try a bunch of different things like Giveaways, Auctions, on the spot listing etc.

So less than two weeks into this whole solopreneur journey I disappeared to the back woods of the Pacific Northwest for several days with a group of friends. I had this trip planned months before I even made the decision to jump. That said, it was great to completely disconnect at a cabin deep in the woods along the Hood Canal.

I’m back and as fired up as ever to push things forward. I decided at 30 thousand feet on my flight that aggressively trying to establish a presence in maker circles is a misstep and one that I’ve seen first hand multiple times. Yes, makers can lead to commercial use but it’s really a round about way of getting there and answering random ESP32 questions in forums is unlikely to lead to a lot of sales.

I’m going to continue focusing on creating production content and formulating a plan to market directly to potential customers. Right now that consists of LinkedIn Sales Navigator but I still need to spend time figuring that out.

I want to have 3 puck holders in view on the stream. One will have the current live view, one will have the Whatnot logo on it and one will be the interactive one. Also in frame will be instructions for interacting with the third unit which will consist of texting your team name to a phone number. When you do, that unit will update the logo. So people watching the stream can change what logo appears.

Anyway, it gives me something visual and interactive for the stream. Meanwhile I still need to figure out what, exactly to list and how to list so I need to spend some serious time with it. Maybe all next week I’ll do that instead of the Production ESP32 streams.

Streaming 3 times a week is creating a lot more pressure than I was expecting. I tell people it’s not going to be polished but then I feel like it can’t just be me turning on the camera. But I’m the boss here. I don’t have to create a soul crushing job for myself. That’s why I left corporate america. Will be making a change there. I still want to do the streams but I’m thinking Mon and Wed can be super raw that feed into a more polished stream on Friday. We’ll see.

Always making adjustments.

I spent almost 2 hours yesterday dealing with a dental insurance fiasco. Now that I’m self-employed I had to get my own dental plan. I’ve done this insurance thing for 20+ years and I failed to read the full benefits list of the plan I chose so I found out 3 hours before 3 of my kids had a dentist appointment that, beyond the cleaning, all family members under the age of 20 have no coverage. So, yeah, that was fun. All 3 got a clean report, no cavities. Thank goodness.

I went full DTF on all my social profiles so if people find me they will, by association, find Deploy the Fleet. Also submitted to G2 and Capterra to spread the word there as well.

With all of the content creation and logistics of being self-employed, not to mention my contract hours to pay the bills, I’m concerned about when I will have time to actually BUILD more for DTF. I need to be better about scheduling that.

Most of this week has been spent purely focused on Production ESP32 content. It has gone super well and the streams are going well but it consumes a lot of time. I have done absolutely nothing to push DTF from a sales and marketing perspective and have not written a single line of code for it this week.

I’m dedicating the rest of the non-contracting hours today to DTF biz dev.

Just prior, however, I did some content work from the stream yesterday and for the stream tomorrow. It could easily be a full time effort just pumping content. Prep work, creating, and then slicing up and re-using afterward.

I am trying two products at the minute.

• Restream.io for the streams. Had a rough go on the first one with some technical problems that have hopefully been resolved. Spent time with support yesterday.

• Descript for….I don’t know yet. I just did the free tier to get a feel for what it does

Ultimately I’m looking for hacks to make content creation easier using AI but I’m still fumbling my way through that.

All the details you gotta figure out. Trying to remember that it’s just technically working Day 2. Patience.

Today starts my first full week of going solo. My days are structured to be completely dedicated to my personal goals in the morning and then contract work in the afternoon. My peak performance times are in the morning and I want those blocks dedicated to me.

Spent the morning prepping for the Production ESP32 stream series which starts today. Really looking forward to that and growing a community there.

Also working on the Deploy the Fleet roadmap so I can get focused dev work going on expanding the capabilities of that platform.

Time to get to work.

My biggest problem in this journey is definitely going to be me and all the hair-brained ideas I have. Focus is going to be key for me to make real progress instead of just doing busy work that feels like progress but is really just busy for the sake of being busy.

But I also have to find room to be patient. I can’t eat the elephant in a day.

I can already feel the idea machine swinging out of control. I need to lock it down and push myself to real deliverables that make a difference. Easier said than done. Time for some sleep.

I've got a crazy crazy crazy idea but I'm going to give it a try. As I was looking at my DTF revenue and how $25 of the $155/month is my own money (testing) I thought "Oh, mercy, WTF am I doing?!?!?".

My puck holders keep coming back to me. Like…a lot. I can't shake two feelings

1. I want them out of my office

2. People will buy these

So, hang with me, this is all still formulating in my head. DTF is the long term play but it is, indeed, long term. I still plan to heavily cold call and promote it but it's just going to take time. In the meantime I plan to make content for Production ESP32. So far, we’re still on track from yesterday’s plan.

But then it hit me. You know what would make for a lot of great Production ESP32 content? My production ESP32 product called a puck holder.

What better social proof for an OTA service than to have your own fleet of production devices using your OTA service?

Now, I'm not looking to turn puck holders into a business....unless of course it takes off. Which is where the next part comes in: Whatnot.

The platform is new, and exciting, and has three things:

1. Incredibly high intent-to-buy shoppers

2. Niche shoppers

3. A massive audience of people interested in sports memorabilia.

A kind of perfect storm to sell a niche hockey puck holder.So I'm trying to accomplish 3 things.

1. Liquidate the puck holder inventory

2. Create a test fleet for Deploy the Fleet that allows me to learn a TON and experiment

3. Create content that boosts DTF’s brand

My plan is to do a stream with a giveaway of a few puck holders. Then, the next week, raise the price. Then raise it some more. See how it's going. If it works, the market will set the price and I’ll make a nice “profit” (I’m still very in the hole on these). If it doesn't, I'll continue to just give them away or sell them off super cheap.

I have approximately 450 puck holders left from our original run. Let’s see if we can put them to good use.

Have been doing a lot of optimizations on the ESP32 for low power battery applications and really enjoying the learning and growth there. Wish I had more time to share everything.

I’m not quite ready to say it out loud but I’m already considering a fairly significant pivot from my August plan I posted yesterday. I’m going to think about it more today and then I’ll post an update.