Written by Mathias Michel from Germany who loves building useful things. Follow me on Twitter
Inspired by Peter Levels 12 Startups in 12 Months I decided to do the “4 Projects in 4 Months” challenge. I plan to do a sabbatical and work full-time on my projects for four months. This blog post describes the reasons why and how I am doing this.
Why am I doing this?
There are multiple reasons…
- Clarity: Pursue multiple ideas and figure out what I enjoy the most. Therefore, one goal is to be able to focus and clarify my next steps to obtain a target direction.
- Education: Try new things, improve my skills and learn new ones.
- Execution: Move from dreaming and thinking into doing.
- Business: Earn my first dollars (or euros) online. Nevertheless, this is not the main focus.
- Fun: And of course, just to try something new and have some fun.
My constraints
- Focus only on one project per month
- Unlike other people, I will not travel during that time.
- From a finance perspective, I use the sabbatical model for cashflow and 4 months of full time
- Share progress and post on Twitter with #buildInPublic. Post every month a blog post where I document my progress.
Which topics are planned?
Month 1: Extend einfachcrypto.de
The first month will follow my passion - cryptocurrencies and blockchain! I started a side project last year (einfachcrypto.de) and I have some pending ideas that I want to implement. For example, some content is still missing and I want to add utilities for the crypto research. This means I will split the month into sub-focus areas.
Goal
- Follow my heart topic, build utilities for myself and collect knowledge. The goal is also to help people and share information about cryptocurrencies.
- The goal is not to make money with this project but rather to grow an audience within this space.
Update: You can read the results here
Month 2: Helping a friend with marketing and setup of tools
I am already supporting a friend with technical and marketing consulting. He started a health coaching business and we want to scale his business in October 2022. I will update his landing page, find great webinar software and help him build a lead magnet like a free newsletter course.
Goal
- Increase knowledge in marketing and building a course-based coaching
- I will get a provision-based monetization, so this project is a potentially passive income stream
Update: You can read the results here
Month 3: Building a Micro SaaS (Micro Software as a Service) business
I subscribed to the Micro SaaS Idea newsletter. The idea is to pick one idea from this newsletter and build it.
Goal
- Use my skillset to build my own business including earning money.
- The first approaches fail mostly so the main goal is to start doing and get into building a SaaS. New ideas and insight will come along the way.
Update: You can read about the launch of illostration.com here.
Month 4: Open - no-code or MSaaS
I haven’t made a final decision for this month because I want to have the flexibility to decide later. I have two options here. Either I build something with a no-code platform (e.g. bubble) or I start another micro SaaS business from the newsletter. Maybe I can also combine them and do both. ;)
Goal
- I see a big potential in no-code. This will help me in my carrier and in my own business.
Update: You can read what I did here.
Follow me
I hope you are as curious as I am about how these 4 months will go. You can follow the daily progress on Twitter and my monthly summary here on this blog. I already archived one milestone by writing this article. But it’s still hard for me to write.🤷🏻♂️