Hello 👋 Finally calling myself an indie hacker! 🤩
Hey everyone
I'm Büşra and I live in Switzerland for 5 years now. I'm originally from Berlin.
I've always dreamed of independence and working for myself, having the freedom to decide WHAT I do and especially HOW. Even though I had a couple of attempts to start my own business during my studies, I always stopped at the beginning. Because this wasn't common in my family. We've always been employees with a fix and stable income.
But this wasn't me. I wanted to break out of this system.
Finally, last year in March, with 36, I did it. I quit my job.
I've been following some Indie Hackers for quite some time now, and I've been active in other ways in the startup scene. I've always wanted to "earn the honor" of calling myself Indie Hacker. After quitting my job, I started consulting and coaching in Product Management (I've been in PM for ~10 years now). But I didn't feel I could call myself IH with this.
Two weeks ago, I've launched a matcha tea online shop in Switzerland. The page is not finished, and I haven't finished the paper work yet to officially get started. But I made my first sale online. And now I feel I can say "YES! I've now officially started my IH journey!" 🤩
This feels SOOOOOOOO AMAZING!!!!!
Now, while I'm trying to get the shop up and running, I'm exploring different problem areas in product management with the overall vision to build things that make product people's daily lives easier. I want to make building products and businesses be less tedious.
At the same time, while I'm giving classes in product management, I'm exploring which of the elements I'm teaching live could be worth teaching asynchronously to help product people grow their knowledge and skills.
I'm always happy about advice from experienced Indie Hackers that I can learn from.
Yes, many many things are happening at the same time. I hope I can handle it 🤞🏼
Welcome, Büsra!
I wish you all the best with your online shop and your teaching. :)
What I really like is your approach to creating courses. It's good to get feedback from your audience. You might also want to check out @jimzarkadas' approach: He offers free 1-1 UX coaching sessions to other indie hackers and uses the insights to craft his UX playbooks. Works really well for him.
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/book-me-for-a-free-45mins-hands-on-ux-feedback-session-for-your-product-a-9y-experienced-product-designer-and-developer-round-5-afd65623d6
Thank you @nikwen :)
That's a great approach, thanks for the connection!
Happy to help. :)
Thanks for the mention @nikwen 🙌
@beesea I would be more than happy to jump on a call and get to know each and share with you everything I've learned so far from my journey 🙂 I quit my job as well 7 months ago without a clear plan and it has been a great journey so far!
Finally, congrats on taking the leap of faith and going for it. The best is yet to come!
@jimzarkadas nice to meet you! Happy to jump on a call :)
Newbie question: Is there a way on IH to send direct messages? I guess not? Shall I ping you on twitter instead?
You guessed it right haha - there is no DM functionality at the moment. You can ping me on twitter (twitter.com/jimzarkadas) or drop me an email at [email protected] and we can chat there!
VERY excited for you Büsra!!! Looking forward to following your journey to success 🤩
Thank you so much @seemcat 🤩
Such an exciting step to take! Thanks for sharing your journey with us!
How much time did you spend on your shop or other indie hacker projects prior to quitting your job?
Thank you @jkchu!
I worked 2-3 days to set up the shop. But summing up the real working hours, it was maybe 1.5-2 days. I still have to get a Stripe account, set it up and need to connect it to the shop. And refine the copy.
I didn't have indie hacker projects prior to quitting my job. I wanted but didn't have time. Hence the burnout - no time for nothing :( After the burnout I rested a lot. And then, during a Startup Weekend event, I pitched the idea that I've always had, validated the problem, got some early prospects, but full stopped because I couldn't build it and I didn't want to go the VC route.
just don't give up and don't worry. If you need grow up you should need to make it perfect as you see and i recommend for you book like "Rework" or "toilet paper entrepreneur". A passion your work is so important. I am also started to build my web service. good luck !
Thank you @bojack89
I've not heard about "Toilet Paper Entrepreneur" yet, that sounds interesting. I'll have a look.
Good luck with your web service, too! What is it about?
I am also work on my web service which helps to save favourite video content from social media but now I recently started to building. I work as a software engineer but same time i work my own project. While i am soloprener. I dreamt a long time to start own business but i didn't take time for that.
Congratulations
Thank you :)
Yesssss! 🥰
Yeeeey :)
Congratulations to your first sale, Büsra! Good luck with your online shop and your new career!
Thank you so much @felixhofmann
First of all congratulations! This kind of posts are very motivational.
If you have any technical questions regarding setting up your online shop, etc. feel free to ask.
Can you share your shop :D ?
Oh wow thank you @VLVD for your generous offer, thank you!
Sure. It's https://ceremonialmatcha.carrd.co/
I took out the "add to cart" button because I started to receive random test orders. Will add it back once I go live.
And I still need a good shop and domain name - ideas are welcome haha