

Ask HN: Bootstrappers, what do you do during down time? - curiously

I wish things were always busy. By busy I mean, I&#x27;m getting inbound leads, I&#x27;m having conversations via email or phone, I&#x27;m selling, I&#x27;m quoting, I&#x27;m fixing stuff on the product.<p>Then it goes from crazy busy to suddenly quiet.<p>I just don&#x27;t know what to do with the down time. I get super uneasy and anxious. I try to do some content marketing but I make so little progress, it&#x27;s hard to see any result very quickly, so I switch to optimizing the web or landing page and then get see how my PPC campaigns are doing and then reading HN or listening to podcast on bootstrapping etc. I feel inefficient and spread thin.<p>I feel terrible when things are quiet. I have an urge to start cranking out updates and new features on the product but I stop myself, as I only decided to create features that enough paying users request.<p>I have a terrible habit of playing counterstrike and checking HN and reddit obsessively until I get a phone call or an email and then I have to do some work. I&#x27;m on the computer almost 15 hours a day. Basically, I have no life except on weekends I go out with friends but I&#x27;m always ready to answer email or live chat on my phone. Some days I just wait around and end up playing games all day.<p>When I was developing the product it wasn&#x27;t like this. Nose down, cranking out code, testing, but I&#x27;m doing much much less of that now and trying to meet my personal sales target, marketing (based on what little I know), fixing websites, talking to people.<p>If you are boostrapping your biz full time what are you doing when you are not talking with leads or busy? Is there anything else I should be doing? Am I going about this the wrong way? Really would love your inputs, especially if you are unemployed and you rely on your bootstrap business.
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jasonkester
Keep in mind that downtime is what you're optimising for.

The big benefit of building a bootstrapped business is that you're not
accountable to anybody. When you get to the point where you're making a nice
profit and things slow down such that you don't need to put in 40 hour weeks
anymore, that's an indicator that you need to go rock climbing.

Or surfing, travelling, playing with your children, salsa dancing, counter
striking, novel writing, or whatever it was that you were planning to do once
you hit it big and didn't have to work anymore.

Bootstrapped SaaS businesses have the nice side effect of giving you small
tastes of that success before you actually hit the point where you can do it
full time. My advice is to take advantage of it.

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jakobegger
I was in a similar position as you two years ago. I had an app with steady
sales, I handled rate customer requests, but for the most part didn't know how
to improve my app and ended up wasting lots of time.

Then I realized that my app was finished. There was nothing to improve.

I concluded that there was only one possible thing to do: start something new.
I made enough from my first app to support the family, and started working on
my second app.

Now I have two apps earning money.

Also, 15h per day is way too much. I work an average of 4h per day, any longer
and I lose concentration (unless I'm cranking out some interesting new code,
then I work any minute my kids let me)

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bromley
I wonder if you feel that you ought to be at your desk for at least the bulk
of the traditional working day... Other people are working 8+ hours a day, so
I should be too.

I struggle with that feeling. I've been bootstrapping my own business for
years, and I have a strong inclination to feel guilty if I'm not "at work"
while other people with more conventional jobs are at work. It can result in
me spending a lot of unproductive time at my desk.

I recently took a year pretty much away from work, to do my house up (mostly
building a home cinema, woo!). The business kept ticking over just fine with
me doing 20 minutes of emails a day on average, and a bit more here and there
to fix the odd pressing issue.

The time off reshaped my attitude to work-life balance quite considerably.
After a year of not doing much work on my business, I no longer felt so guilty
for not being at my desk. Now I go through phases of doing lots of work (I
reckon that when the motivation is there, one should run with it), but I also
try to do other things: meet friends for lunch, play tennis, learn Spanish, go
on the odd little holiday. My instincts still tell me that I should be at my
desk, working (or at least at my desk), but I've got better at seeing them as
illogical and fighting them.

A huge perk of having your own small business is having the freedom to
organize your time the way you want to. If you can have a successful business
without having to put in lots of hours, that's great. But you have to give
yourself permission to do this.

Sitting at a desk wasting time is pointless, but I can associate and I think
it's a natural inclination. But it's a very unhealthy inclination, in my
opinion much more so than the inclination to go and do something completely
different, something fun.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't be able to find productive business-
related things to do. Without knowing a lot more about what you do and what
you're looking to do with your business I can't really comment on that. But
with almost 15 hours a day at your computer, and "no life" (your words!) I do
think you might do well to try and address your work/life balance, which may
involve tackling the deep-seated feelings or instincts that have you sitting
at your desk so long when you're not being productive.

~~~
jarcane
_I wonder if you feel that you ought to be at your desk for at least the bulk
of the traditional working day... Other people are working 8+ hours a day, so
I should be too._

What I learned as a writer is, focus on output, not time-spent or schedules
met.

Set yourself a daily goal, but from there, be flexible in how you achieve it.
When I was still writing, I'd try and aim for about 2k words a day, usually
done off and on, but if I had an off day I just let it happen and took
whatever break I needed to let the creativity come back in its time.

The thing is, the traditional work day is lousy for creative professions (and
I count programming among these). It is a construct born of factory work, and
you can't produce a quality creative process under factory conditions.

Give yourself a break, and let the mind take the respite it needs to get
spinning again. I recommend taking a look out for John Cleese's insights on
creativity and the creative process, he has done some lectures and videos on
the subject that should be findable on Youtube, and they're very valuable
insight into the different pressures of a creative field versus a 'production'
one.

~~~
milesvp
This. I have to say my happiest and most productive period was when I didn't
have a desk job. I found a trick that worked really well was to start the day
with a list of accomplishments that I thought would take less than 6-8hours.
Often framing it like "I'll be happy if I do X,Y, and Z". If I finished in 15
minutes, I was done for the day. If I didn't finish by my 6-8 hour time limit,
then I was still done for the day, and tomorrow I'd try to break up the task
in such a way as I could finish parts of it in less than a day. I think an
important part, and something OP might note, is that framing the tasks in
terms of "happy if" really changes the psychology of the process. No longer
can you say "I did all this stuff and it's not enough", since you already
identified enough at the beginning. This coupled with the constant readjusting
of expectations really helps avoid feelings of anxiety. I'm not sure this
helps for a failing business (or if rent is due tomorrow) but it certainly
helps if you have even a month's runway.

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davidw
BTW, another place to ask this that's a bit more focused on bootstrapping is:
[http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/](http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/)

One thing I do is hang out on the forums where people congregate, giving out
some help. This generates good will, some links to my product, via a signature
link and nothing more, since I want to be kind of subtle about it. It is also
a good way to tune in to what problems people are facing.

~~~
curiously
nice! moving there from bootstrapers.io (community doesn't seem very active
anymore).

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asah
easy answer: take a break/vacation!!!

hard answer: assuming you've taken the vacation, some options, in order:

1\. if you're missing payroll, then cut staff & costs - you're bootstrapped
and don't have 6+ months of payroll.

2\. if you need help with leads, hire a startup marketing consultant (example:
[https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=764310](https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=764310))
to generate new growth hack ideas.

3\. if you believe in your business model and you're simply "ahead" of the
market, then use the time to "clean up" the business, e.g. automate things
that are manual/expensive/unscaleable.

3\. if you don't entirely believe in your business model, use the time to
experiment with pivots e.g. soft-launch radically new things and see what
happens.

hope this helps, adam

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chromaton
I think you've got this backwards. Your scheduled time should be focused on
building the business, whether that means new features, improving operations,
or marketing. Figure out which of these are the most important, break that
down into individual subtasks, and then schedule that out for the next week.

The stuff like sales and bugfixes are really interruptions to doing the stuff
which builds your business. Ultimately you want to hire people to help you
with all of the existing tasks within the business, and the only way you're
going to get to that point financially is by expanding.

As far as the HN and Counterstrike, you'll need to find a way to give that up
and focus on the tasks at hand. I typically only check HN in the morning and
at night, or when I truly have time to kill, like waiting for the dentist.
This post spoke to me, so I felt the need to respond. One trick I came up with
is to allow myself whatever timewasting activities I wanted during the day,
BUT I'd keep a running tally of how many times during the day these
interrupted what I was doing. My websurfing sessions rapidly diminished.

Finally, I'd agree with everyone here who recommends physical exercise. I've
got a goal to shoot for here, which helps with motivation: to win a 5K, or at
least my age group.

~~~
marcusgarvey
>The stuff like sales and bugfixes are really interruptions to doing the stuff
which builds your business.

Sales and marketing is what _will_ build a business....

~~~
chromaton
In general, I agree, but I get the impression that the OP is spending a lot of
time on small sales, rather than figuring out how to automate or delegate
those.

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dazne
If all you're doing is working all of the time, then you're not as effective
as you could be. By choosing to work within certain time constraints, you
could be more productive, while having the time for guilt-free play, which is
essential. Look up "Stuart Brown and Play". You'll know what I mean. The
important thing is to set boundaries between work and play. Look up Cal
Newport fixed-schedule productivity.

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lauraunderscore
Documentation. I'm pretty sure you can never have enough of the stuff! Being
proactive about it means you can point people in the right direction when
those inevitable questions come through.

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mpdehaan2
Do make sure you take enough time off to do "fun" things. It's easy to go
crazy for a year, but longer term, it builds up. This doesn't just apply to
bootstrapping but any environment.

My advice is DO treat it like a regular job, maybe one with some longer than
usual hours, but don't try to keep that pace constantly.

It's also pretty good advice that you will come up with some of your most
interesting ideas when you are not doing work things.

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davemel37
Zig Zigler says, "Always Be Prospecting."

The problem with making a sale is you lose your best prospect.

Build a reputation on Q&A sites, participate with relevant LinkedIn groups,
promote your content with Facebook ads (check out jonloomer.com for help with
this.) StumbleUpon ads and content amplification networks like taboola &
outbrain.

Always be prospecting.

------
codewithcheese
A habit I have created recently is to watch lectures/webinars/talks in the
background when I find myself idling in the internet. I usually play them on
my TV via Youtube. You will miss things, but this takes the pressure off. This
is how I watched all the 'How to start a startup' lectures. You can shift your
focus as you need and if you find something particularly informative then you
can pause what your doing and focus solely on the lecture.

Here are some good sources to get you started.

Amazon Web Service Webinars - [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT-nPlVzJI-
ccQXlxjSvJmw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT-nPlVzJI-ccQXlxjSvJmw)

Caltech -
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClGTZDyz3CSl92TgDqIr0nw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClGTZDyz3CSl92TgDqIr0nw)

Said Business School -
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHIqMEje_NFJ2u24CVaNQvg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHIqMEje_NFJ2u24CVaNQvg)

Yale - [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-
EnprmCZ3OXyAoG7vjVNCA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-
EnprmCZ3OXyAoG7vjVNCA)

Stanford - [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-
EnprmCZ3OXyAoG7vjVNCA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-
EnprmCZ3OXyAoG7vjVNCA)

And of course: Ycombinator How To Start A Start Up
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxIJaCMEptJjxmmQgGFsnCg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxIJaCMEptJjxmmQgGFsnCg)

There are so many great sources of education out on the web today. For
example: who are the thought leaders of your industry? You can probably find
video of talks they have given. What conferences serve your industry? They
likely have video of talks given.

My Company: [http://www.makemassive.com](http://www.makemassive.com)

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alltakendamned
I tend to make a quite strong distinction between 'work' mode and 'not work'
mode. Certainly when working on your own business, there tends to be some gray
areas. I also aim to set aside reasonably fixed time frames for work. So in
'work' mode, even if there's nothing to do right now (almost never in my case
but well), I'm always doing business development, research, planning/building
new features etc.

When I'm not working on my business, I tend to study (unrelated) topics, read,
travel or spend time with friends.

But why not build an extra feature? Even if it's not requested, it can make
your overall product better. Or work on increasing your conversion rate?

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mholubowski
I surf, read books, play basketball and live.

My company: LimeLeads

~~~
davidw
Getting exercise is a great answer. I always have a few ideas when I go out
for a bike ride; it helps both my mind and my body.

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jordanwallwork
Not wanting to work on new features during down time seems like a strange move
to me. If the addition of these features improves your product (and should in
turn hopefully help with your sales) then wouldn't that be a good thing to do?

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
"If"

He said (correctly, IMO) that he only works on features that enough customers
ask for. If no one needs a feature, then working on it is wasted time.

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jacquesm
Learning, reading, resting.

