Bootstrapped Digest with Ashley Baxter Ashley Baxter

In Paul Graham’s essay, do things that don’t scale, he talks about you acting as the software, doing things manually that you plan to automate later. Currently I’m the software. I process quotes, renewals, cancellations and everything in between. The automated quote and bind system is in development, but there are so many benefits of doing things that don’t scale. Let's talk about them.

Following on from the last episode where I talked about why now is the right time to automate the business, in this episode I go into more detail about what’s required to do that. To date this has been a 2.5 year process and it hasn't been without its bumps in the road. I think I'm the first one-person business to go through this process and I feel so overwhelmed.

I've been MIA but this episode will explain why. This is the long, hard road to automating my business—a process that I'm 2.5 years (and counting!) into.

Despite being 4 years into building With Jack I'm not convinced I have product-market fit. Everyone has a different definition of what PMF is, so I go through some of the popular definitions and talk about how With Jack measures up.

I'm back with a long overdue update! In this episode I document what it was like bootstrapping my business through a pandemic as a solo founder. I share the challenges of the past year and the lessons I learned. We're still not out of the woods yet, but I now feel ready to talk about the impact the pandemic has had on my business.

We're 55% of the way through 2019! Coupled with the start of summer being quieter for my business, now seems a good time to revisit some of the goals I set myself and do a mid-year review. How am I doing? Am I on my way to achieving them, have they evolved into something new, or have I shelved them completely?