Spreading thin

It's been quite a while since I have written anything here, so Hey!

I have been struggling to keep up with things when it comes to my business endeavor with warrn.io, my consulting gig with my previous employer (my primary breadwinner), and the expectations and weekly off time (not really) needed to prevent partial or full burnout, plus any other ambitions of mine.

I understand and know for a fact that I cannot have it all at the same time, but this is becoming truly unsustainable. From the last 2 weeks especially, I haven't been able to achieve any outcomes I'm proud of.

When I used to work full time, I used to build really really cool things and ship them to prod, then watch how people use them. Or give internal talks and get everyone up to speed on something I'd spent long hours on, in far less time than it took me to learn it. As cliché as it sounds, that helped channel my energy into something and gave me a dopamine boost out of it.

Now I don't have any of those dopamine hits anymore. Sure, I'm still able to deliver on the consulting gig, more than satisfactorily to my client, but it doesn't give me the hit it used to. Whenever I work on it, I feel like I'm doing an injustice to the business venture. Every minute of work on either one feels like a disservice to the other.

This is my public commitment to... what, exactly? I don't know. It probably is a cry for help at this point. But first, some acknowledgements. I have been super grateful and fortunate to be where I am today because of Hevo. Everyone there has been nothing but supportive, through and through. I cannot state enough how grateful I am to be in this situation.

So how do we go from here?

1. I have to figure out if I can work for Hevo without it hurting both my actual time and my emotional bandwidth.
2. Find a way to fund my business without having to rely on Hevo. That'd mean having at least 3k MRR as runway income. My expenses aren't that high, but having a number around that amount show up every month would let me focus on what I'm actually building without worrying about money.
3. Get more helping hands. I need to buy my time back. This is where the struggle and the money problem intersect, and where points 1 and 2 start to feel paradoxical.
   1. I need more people working on warrn.io. Why?
      1. Because I'm part-timing on consulting, and I want one part of the business managed by people who can dedicate all their time to it (code, shipping software, to begin with).
      2. This brings up the next question: why can't I go full time? Glad you asked.
         1. Read point 2. My COGS and personal expenses are high enough that going full time would be really difficult, and I'd run out of money fast, even with the credits I've received from YC and other places.
         2. I've been trying hard to get Hevo as my first customer. I'm leveraging the fact that I show up there every day, get their feedback, and they get the product.
      3. But I'm struggling to focus my energy in a direction that actually feels like progress.
   2. And I have to get more eyeballs on what I'm building, talk to more people, and get customers interested in trying the product. I don't know if this is an excuse, but I can't find the bandwidth for that either.

Closing thoughts

This post is incomplete, because I don't know where I'll go from here. There certainly are paths ahead. When I have an update, I'll post one.

Thanks for taking the time to read. If you have any suggestions, hit me up on X or LinkedIn if you are feeling professional :))