Thread by @finereli

My wife @yaelfiner and I, we have a vision.

A vision of a life that doesn't depend on someone else's handouts or a daily 9-5 grind.

Here's how it's going so far.

🧵👇

We want to build a life where our work is the best expression of who we are, where family, parenting, work and a loving relationship are intertwined into a whole greater than it's parts. A life of freedom, joy and passion, and yes - affluence.

I'm 41 years old and @yaelfiner is 40.

We've got a 7 y/o son and an 18 months old daughter, and about CAD $4600 monthly expenses on an average month with no income.

We've been trying to build a sustainable online business for the last 18 months.

We first relied on the the COVID-19 payments, then on the Canadian parental benefits and lately on burning through our savings at an alaraming rate.

I worked on @wujuapp (wuju.app) for the first 14 months.

Then 4 months ago I took @shl's The Minimalist Entrepreneur course and started building @softdiscipline (softdiscipline.com).

@wujuapp has generated a total of CAD $1,574 in revenue.

I use it every day for my own sanity and stability but I can't find a sustainable market for it.

A couple of months ago I cancelled the few remaining paid subscriptions and turned it into a free product.

@softdiscipline has only generated $40 in revenue (if you can call it that) via buymeacoffee.com.

It's seen quite a bit of traction on reddit.com/r/getdisciplin… where I run free 7-day habit building cohorts, but offering a paid service or product has proven tough.

Our combined business expenses for the last 18 months have amounted to CAD $9,097 or almost 6x our business revenue.

~ 40% on coaching, training and outsourcing (that's cool)
~ 20% on experiments with paid ads and marketing (that's OK)
~ 40% on online tools and services (WTF?!)

This is actually the first time I'm looking at those numbers and I'm more than a little embarrassed by how little control we've applied to our expenses.

I reviewed our monthly SaaS costs once every 6 months or so, but these things add up quickly.

We alotted $50k of our total $100k savings to trying to get our businesses off the ground.

We've burned through $40k so far.

Combined with our rental suite income ($1100/month) and the Canadian child benefits ($1100/month) we have about 4 months of runway left.

This journey is hard.

We're lucky to have started with some savings, to have recieved so much from Canada and to have each other for emotional and moral support.

But it's probably 4x as hard with two kids and two parents both of whom want to parent and be entrepreneurs at the same time.

After playing around endlessly with our schedule, each of us gets about 4 hours of work on a good day, maybe about 12 hours of work a week.

Not having enough time to work, sleep, spend time with the kids and relax all in the same 24 hours is a constant source of tension in our house.

We keep pushing, pulling and adjusting but it's pretty clear we're just making all this up as we go.

I'm looking for a part time gig, likely teaching at @bloomtech.

@yaelfiner is diving into coding to build another high income skill for our family.

We need to regroup and extend our runway.

We may need to pivot a few more times.

But we ARE NOT GIVING UP.

And neither should you.

H/t @arvidkahl, whose podcast episode "What to Share at Which Stage" inspired me to write this.

open.spotify.com/episode/4rCF4F…

PS. If there's anything I mentioned in this thread that you'd like to know more about, shoot me a reply or a DM. I'm happy to share what I've learned.

This was supposed to say "@wujuapp has generated..."