van life, building stuff

Hey friends, Ryan Doyle here. You probably know me from Twitter, Magic Sales Bot, or Sales.co. These are life updates, unsubscribe is at the bottom.

The Van

I finished the van. After I got it back from the Amish metalsmith, I had two weeks to complete it before I had to be in Austin, TX for my future brother-in-law’s bachelor party.

I aimed to be done on 11am the Tuesday before, so I could drive NY-TX in time. Ultimately, I was only 4 hours late. It took two straight weeks of going about noon to midnight on it, so I could work and then get to building the van.

Here’s a video tour of it, it’s definitely cool. Just look at this Utah pic below:

It goes HARD. You know what else is hard? Van life. I hated it. I did it for like 3 weeks. Always figuring out where I’m going to sleep. Trading quiet (nature) for connection (cities which are loud) for legality (campgrounds and truck stops). Not knowing where I’m going to work from or exercise (the van is subpar at supporting both). Constant goldilocks routine. Realizing how much I value my routine.

I realized fast that it’s not the life for me. But I loved building it. I learned so much about building something off grid, electricity, plumbing, carpentry. I’ve listed it for sale and will probably turn a little profit on it.

Oh well. I want to try everything in life and I got to try this. Now I’ll hang out with my family in NY, until my sister’s wedding in Jan, then probably go back to Bali.

All that quiet, isolation, and driving was good for my relationship with God. I got to listen to a lot of Tim Keller sermons (fantastic at speaking to secular minds). Listened to James Earl Jones narrate the Bible. Prayed about why this project has been written on my heart for years if this was going to be my experience of it. The size of any negativity in my life is the size of the opportunity to get closer to God.

Business part 1, Consulting

I’ve been doing growth consulting on cold email for 2 businesses for the last few months. My big $5k/m one just has not been seeing results. It’s a newer concept that people haven’t been responding to. We’re going to be done in a week and it sucks to lose that income.

My $2k/m one is really close to their Series A. We’re going deeper and they’ve got a cool concept that people respond to. Any pitch where you can say “I will make you money and you won’t pay me until I do” is a good one.

But ultimately, I’m not making enough. I’d go back to Bali today but it’s not fiscally responsible to do multiple trips back and forth at my income level. Again, God is putting me somewhere where I can focus.

Business part 2, Products

My goals have never been around service businesses or really interacting with other humans (client/employee). My goals have always been around freedom and that’s always been represented by saas and products for me.

I launched a deliverability tool that I quickly validated to death. That article is a new format I’m doing where I’ll write about these ideas as I approach them with cold email, a slightly less “luck centric” approach to the typical indie hacker “launch as much as you can” strategy.

I launched another idea on a database of everywhere you can do guest posts. I ran cold email to SEOs. 20 bites, no sales. Until the day I got on the road in my van, someone bought. So I’ve filled out the database some more since I got home and am launching more campaigns tomorrow.

I see the success of many databases and can easily see myself being a database guy. I like scraping. I can sell them via cold email. I’ve got 14 weeks until my sister’s wedding (I’d go back to Bali after that) and want to put my all into it to get it to $5k/m.

I don’t foresee it being easy but I see it generating learnings I can use in other DB products. Again, controlling what I can control and putting the rest on God.

Christ

Maybe you’ve noticed I’ve mentioned God more in this writing than in anything I’ve written before. I grew up Christian, went to a Christian Uni, rationalized myself out of faith, and started to grow back in it ~6 years ago.

Historically I’ve kept it in the background. Don’t want people to think I’m weird, didn’t have a lot of Christians I related to. But the older I get, the more I realize that it’s the foundation of everything good and meaningful in my life. And the less I care about having friends who don’t see the world the way I do.

It’s an area I can grow in the rest of my life. Building new friendships here, learning more here, spending more time here, I’m encouraged to be more open here. It’s what living’s all about.

Love,

Ryan Doyle