This sh*t is hard but it's worth it

I think I'm like most of you, I've been building things outside of my 9-5 for years. I've had some success here and there but nothing crazy or life changing.

Got hold of Claude Code over the holiday break and became obsessed immediately. I built a few small apps and decided I want to commit to something.

I set a new year's resolution to make $1 online. It may seem foolish but I really didn't know if I could do it. That happened for me in late February and it's been a wild ride ever since. I wanted to share what I've learned along the way.

1. Talk to lots of people and increase your surface area

- In the world of starting from 0, it's critical that you put yourself out there. I recommend doing this today. Get on here and on X, find topics that you like and start replying/posting. Send people messages about things you are genuinely curious about. Make it fun, find people you like talking to.

- Most people are cool, just be helpful and funny

- Your entire goal is to meet people, make friends and learn. Do this indefinitely. One day you will wake up and you will have tons of notifications. Those are new friends and customers.

2. Build things to solve your new friend's pain points

- Part of making new friends is understanding their dreams and goals. Ask them what they want you to build. Build it and have them test and provide feedback.

- Look, solving your friend's problem is fun. Even if it doesn't work, you're putting out creativity and effort into the world. Do this as a habit and you will have more friends and potential customers.

3. Don't be scared

- Of competition, of rejection, of failure

- The world is positive sum, everyone can have what they want if they work for it. If you are building something that already has competition, good. Learn from them. That means people are paying for it and might pay you for it.

- Don't live your life from a starting point of fear. Make a conscious effort everyday to overcome this tendency.

4. People will help you

- The stupidest thing I've ever done was isolate myself for years dealing with a horrible problem I had. Don't be like me...

- Find someone who has achieved something you want to achieve and send them a note telling them you think they are great. You will be shocked how many people you look up to will respond.

- Always try to help other people first. But never be afraid to ask for help

5. Work on the biggest problem

- This probably seems trite, but dang it's true. If you don't have a product, don't work on anything else until you have a product. If you don't have any customers or people to give you feedback, do not work on this until you find them.

- Avoid productivity traps, no amount of OpenClaw tinkering or Obsidian setup is going to make you money

- Avoid people telling you there is a secret way to make money or get around the system. Do not spend your time in search of shortcuts. Work on the biggest problem.

6. Put the customer first

- Treat your users like gods. Talk to them, help them, implement feedback and let them know. Offer them refunds, make it easy for them to say yes.

- Every interaction your users have with you or your product should be unbelievable. Go above and beyond...beyond reason.

7. Just use Claude Code or Codex for your building

- Get in the terminal, tell it what you want. You don't need a billion skills or crazy memory setups or AI Agent org charts. It's all noise.

- Get a claude max sub and go back and forth with claude code for 2 weeks building exactly what your customers are asking for

- Don't give up when you hit a wall. Take a break, clear your thoughts and come back. You will get through the wall, I promise.

8. Make a demo video

- This part sucks if you're not used to it but it's worth it. Mostly because it forces you to scrutinize your user experience. You will catch annoying things that you would have never seen in casual use.

- Suffer through it and at the end you will have a tool that you can reuse over and over. It is a compounding asset and you will need the skill regardless.

- Put it in the hero of your landing page, my conversion skyrocketed when I added mine because people could actually understand what they get with a subscription.

- Use Focusee, CapStudio, Cap/so for this. Spend more time than is reasonable making it great.

9. List yourself on directories to drive traffic

- Take the time to make a plan for your launch. It's cheesy but you need users. I had a lot of success with product hunt alternatives (there are many). Some like Peerlist have great communities you might find yourself coming back to for fun.

- Number one applies here: message, comment, reach out, interact. With everyone who chimes in or looks at your product. Ask them what they like and what they don't like.

10. You will feel cringe and humiliated while trying to get your first customers

- It's part of the process. It's just brute force helping people and sales. You have to get over it and be resilient.

- You will get ghosted a lot, it's ok. You will meet some crazy people...it's ok. Just keep going. Set yourself a daily reach out target and just check that box ad nauseum.

- Eventually you will figure out your conversion. So if you send 100 messages and 1 person becomes a user, you have a 1% conversion rate. Is that an awesome rate? no...but now you know. If you are willing to send the messages, you will get customers.

Hope this was helpful. I love helping which as I mentioned is necessary for success.

These are lessons I learned while creating my product which was designed to help builders find, build and sell something that works and makes money. I'm always happy to help anyone in their journey and open to feedback. Let me know if you get stuck and I can see if I have any more tips.

Peace