In this show, I open you the doors to companies and thought leaders around the world. With my guests, I discuss software engineering best practices and pitfalls, and how they strive to build software people love.
Starting a profitable business in six weeks with Courtland Allen
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In the beginning, I talk with Courtland about his journey to create the indie hacker community. I actually thought he created it right after graduating from college. But that's far from what happened. For many years, Courtland started all kinds of businesses with varying degrees of success. In 2016 he then quit his day job and had a runway of one year for building a profitable business (giving the cost of living in San Francisco).
Courtland tells me that the first six months of this new journey to building a successful business weren't really productive. But as he realized that he runs out of time and money, he made a plan.
He wanted to start something that he knew will be successful and brings in revenue within a short amount of time. So, he thought about all he had learned from his previous attempts and came up with a multi-phase action plan.
Yes, this time around, Courtland had learned that he should start small, and incrementally make his way towards the successful business he had in mind.
He explained that he started with the interviews on the website because when there is content on a website, people come to that site. Then, he started the mailing list, because it's easier to start a mailing list when you have content. Then, he contacted sponsors that would be a great fit for the website. It took Courtland only a few weeks from the initial idea to having the first sponsorship deal locked in.
He never intended to start the podcast. But after several requests from the community, he gave it a shot. Now, it's one of the most successful parts of the business.
Well, I talked about so much more with Courtland, like why he build the website and community functionality from scratch or whether or not he still is a founder. So, have a listen to the podcast or read through the whole interview in the transcript notes. Let me know how you liked in on Twitter.
Cheers,
McKayla