Hey guys,
I’m really sorry about the long delay since my last post. I’ve been really pushing myself as hard as I can recently..must be something to do with turning 26 and wanting to make enough move out of my mum’s house!
The last time I posted was about three months ago. I still didn’t have a product or a team. Since then I’ve come across a number of challenges.
One of the biggest one’s was that I was almost kicked off the Cambridge Accelerator Program. I was told I wasn’t making enough progress and the grant I’d been promised the chance of was being taken out of my hands prematurely.
As you can imagine this came as a very big blow. It wasn’t so much the fact that I wouldn’t be able to receive their office space or mentorship. It was the hard hitting fact that they didn’t think my start-up was good enough anymore.
After a day of feeling like crap and mainly sitting in my shower weeping I decided that enough was enough and I would prove them wrong.
So I’ve sunk all of my money (including the small amount of savings I have) into my app now, which is re-branded to ‘Rize’ – http://www.rizenow.com. I’ve found an incredible developer who has been working for relatively low cost ($1000 per version). We’ve released V2 onto the iTunes app store and will be releasing V3 in a month…it will be then that I’ll have no more money so will be looking for grants or trying to boost revenue.
It’s been enough to impress the powers that be at the Cambridge Accelerator Program. They want to keep me on and will consider me for the grant in a month’s time. I was disappointed with their support over the last three months, but it’s made me rely on my own grit and determination, and I’m very proud of myself for it.
Alongside the app I came across Udemy – an online marketplace for courses – I’ve decided to spend a few hours a day working on creating an online course – ’30 days of mental well-being’ – and by a few hours I mean every second I have spare trying to develop it further. Due to my ridiculous work regime the course should be ready in a month – $30 – but I’ll be offering all of you bro’s free coupons to take the course and give it a nice review 🙂
So those are the newest updates for the business. I’m not seeing much money coming in from the app yet..about a dollar a day, but they’re MY dollars, and I earned them, and I couldn’t be happier with that! Sloth hop brings in about 10 cents a day..it’s around 2200 downloads, so although it’s not making money it makes me happy to know that people are enjoying it around the world.
In terms of music I left the blues band I was in – smoken joes – mainly because I didn’t have enough energy for it. After a year and a half I was no longer feeling excited about the band so I realised it was time to pack it in. I’m still with 4lab. The music’s going well. There are some disagreements within the band, while we try and navigate through all the up’s and down’s of a four person team with nothing to lead us but our passion.
Like I say things have been really tough. But thanks to my girlfriend and some awesome friends I’ve had enough support and encouragement to persevere. I hope this blog still provides some inspiration to others too, and it’d be great to hear from you. So please feel free to go ahead and leave a comment at the bottom 🙂
My next post will be on a subject I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while – ‘What makes a good leader?’ – it might sound like a corny title you’d find on linkedin or something, but it’s an important subject to me in a lot of areas in life, so hopefully you guys can have a look and let me know your thoughts too.
Keep persevering 🙂
Blueskies begins 
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