Don’t Go Back to Your Comfort Zone (Interlude 1)

(This is an interlude of The Epic Guide to Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch — By Yourself. You can read Part 1 of that here.)

If you’re a coder working on your startup idea, at some point or another you’re going to get the itch.

You’ll notice it and try and put it to the back of your mind at first. But it’ll sit there and gnaw at you. At some point, it’ll be unbearable. This world of content marketing, creating ads, working on copy, and prospecting is a foreign land. You just want to go home.

Maybe you just miss the smell of dry erase markers, seeing the beauty of your architecture mapped out on a whiteboard, or the shiny syntax highlighting of your IDE.

It happens to all of us.

But you can’t give in.

Remember the 1980s spaceship guy from The Lego Movie? The one that, no matter what obstacle they were facing, just wanted to build a spaceship?

You can’t be that guy.

Just like in the movie, there is a time and a place to build a spaceship (sling code). When it’s the right time and place, go be the rockstar code ninja you were born to be. But until then, avoid your IDE like it has herpes.

Don’t feel so bad, either — this is really common, and not just with developers.

When people feel uncomfortable with something new, strange, and especially unpleasant, they tend to want to go back to the familiar. Even when going that route has no reason, merit, or advantage. Just look at the number of people who break up with someone, only to beg them to come back after only a few months of riding solo. It’s human nature. We crave the familiar and hate change, as much as we say the exact opposite.

So as you’re trudging through the barren landscape of building your initial SaaS customer base, full of strange (and often boring and frustrating) experiences in marketing, advertising, emailing, cold calling, selling, prospecting, generating leads, and whatever other form of torture you’ve chosen to inflict upon yourself, just remember the following:

Results come from actions. Only take those specific actions that lead you to the specific results you want.

You are not going to get any more customers from whiteboarding, architecting, designing features, optimizing some backend process, refactoring your code, writing unit tests, trying out a new framework, or reading up on some new technique or technology.

If you’re a developer bootstrapping, you just need to use the skills and tools you already have. They need to get you from Point A to Point B. If you work as a professional developer (or did at any point), you’ve most likely got the skills to do just that. You just have to use them and stop chasing the shiny red balls the internet mass produces on a daily basis.

Instead, you need to focus on the specific actions that lead to specific results that you want. If you want a six pack, you need to follow the right diet and the right exercise routine to achieve that. It’s not going to happen all on its own (unless you’re just a lucky ass bastard).

Same thing here.

If you want your business to generate enough money so you can have the life you want, you need to get enough customers for that to become a reality. So pretty much all of your actions need to be around getting customers. There’s not much room for coding fun things in there.

Prospecting can lead to customers. Do that. Marketing can lead to new customers. Do that. Just because it’s strange, uncomfortable, and you probably suck at it right now doesn’t mean you get to throw the towel in.

Do you remember the first programs you ever wrote? I bet you you’d laugh your ass off at how bad they are if you could see them now. The only reason you got good at coding is because you worked at it — every day. And that’s how you’re going to get good at building and running your SaaS business — by working at it every day.

Like this and want more? Now there’s more awesome! Continue on to Why Won’t You Talk To Me?! (Interlude 2).