Categorie: Business Kees

As a side project, I wanted to create something against excessive screen time. 2 weeks in, and this is how it is going:

– Reached 250.000 impressions with posts about the topic.
– Launched a web app that reached 10.000 visitors in its first 2 weeks
– Built a newsletter from 0 subscribers to 358 subscribers within 1 week of launching it.

Simply: WOW!

A clear signal that this is something people care about solving.

People don’t want their tech to dominate how they spend their time, they don’t want to be glued to their phone. They don’t want to feel enslaved by their technology.

There are some fundamental problems with how most technology is designed. Everyone who has seen the documentary “The Social Dilemma” or heard of Tristan Harris’s work knows how big this problem is and how much it shapes our world.

My small side project to help people improve their relationship with technology, is just the beginning. I am working on bigger things to help people use technology better.

If you want to follow along and see my next steps, you can subscribe to the weekly roundup using this link.

Thanks all for the support!

I dove into the science of why I have days where I get nothing done.

I go from opening socials, to answering an email, to scratching a minor task off the to-do list. I feel like I’m working, but no actual progress is being made.

So I learned why this happens, and it’s actually the same reason why people get addicted to cocaine:

It’s a vicious circle fueled by dopamine.

The more the brain is used to high levels of dopamine, the more boring other things start to feel.

And that is one of the reasons why cocaine is addictive. Such high levels of dopamine are released when someone does it, that everything else in life just feels boring to them. Their “dopamine tolerance” goes up.

So how does this apply to a regular workday?

Well, the higher the levels of dopamine, the more boring hard tasks will start to feel, and the less likely they get done.

So when we chase the “good feeling” of scratching small tasks off the to-do list, or scrolling through LinkedIn, we’re increasing our dopamine levels, making it harder and harder to start that big hard task that is truly important.

Crazy, right?

For 2 years I ran a marketing agency, but now I quit. I quit to start coding, from absolute scratch. Something I never thought I’d do.

Why?

Running a marketing agency is tough. But not the “challenging” type of tough. More the “push through it with pure discipline” type of tough.

And after 2 years of pushing through, I found out this is not something worth pushing myself for.

Not gonna lie, it feels like quitting. But it also feels like a relief, relieved from dragging a dead horse.

Why was it not worth it for me?

• More than 80% of my time was spent on getting myself clients, which gets boring and annoying.
• I’m a thinker. I love to strategize. But the things that grow a marketing agency are simple boring tasks that just need to be done. Executers excel here.
• The income is unstable. Per hour I make much more with marketing than with coding, but the projects are short. And impossible to predict how much I’ll make.
• It didn’t intellectually challenge me. I didn’t feel like I was learning. Yes I was learning skills and how to use tools. But I was not solving complex issues, and I missed that.

All these reasons, led me to stop my agency. And honestly, I wouldn’t have quit if I wouldn’t have found out how much I enjoy coding.

My start was simple: I coded for the first time because I wanted to create a specific small app. This took me 3 weeks as a little side project, and it worked!

I then realized I enjoyed it so much, that I wanted to continue and started to work for clients.

And it has been a much more enjoyable start than when I started my agency.

• There’s lots of demand. Instantly got myself a freelance gig allowing me to work however many hours I want, at a decent hourly rate.
• All my time is spent actually doing the thing: coding. There is no overhead such as meetings, looking for my own clients, or any of that stuff.
• It’s way more intellectually challenging, and there’s loads to learn. Exactly the challenge I needed.
• I have instantly created a great income that’s super reliable. I know exactly how much I’ll make each month, whilst having unlimited flexibility where and when I work.
• The reliable income and the fact that I don’t need to worry about not having clients, allows me to spend more time on my own projects. And I have a BIG one coming up.

To be honest, I never thought I’d go full nerd and start coding. But here I am, and I’m loving it.

And not gonna lie, I didn’t burn my marketing agency down completely. I am still serving clients and taking clients.

I just quit putting in all my time to grow it, get clients, and everything like that. I stopped building a business, and started seeing it as a nice side hustle that’s fun and brings in great money.

All that, whilst I prepare for a big move to New York City next week. And a big exciting project starting soon.

Want to stay up to date with that? Subscribe to my email list using this link.

Thanks for reading!

Kees Closed

Even though I didn’t have relevant experience, I got hired for my first freelance coding project. Big deadline I had to hit for them, and this is what happened:

Let’s cut the bullshit here and get straight to the point: I failed. I messed it up.

Took me 2 full days of hard work to just set up my coding environment and get everything to work.

And then I still had to start coding.

Got some stuff done, but not nearly enough. I had to tell them that I couldn’t make Tuesday’s deadline, and that the senior developer had to pick it up.

Felt horrible. I wanted to perform, and I wanted to impress.

Because well, they’re paying me $65/hour for this.

That’s €2000 they owe me for the past 3 days of work.

And I was excited about this, the project is truly exciting, I am spending money fast here in Japan, and I could use a big income boost like this one.

Plus I had never made even close to €2000 in such a short time before.

But.

I told him to not pay me 75% of it.

Threw away €1500 whilst I need money.

And above that, told him I’ll put hours in this weekend to learn the coding language he needs (Vue), without him needing to pay me.

I am choosing the long term. Valuable relationships where each one of us benefits.

Him getting quality work for the right price, and me delivering on that.

As I severely underperformed now, I am willing to take my losses and lose the €1500.

The result?

He sees me as a long term partnership now, and trust is incredibly high.

He knows I will give him fair rates and he knows his investment in me will be worth it, and I have even more incentive to do so.

Not the start I wanted to freelance developing, but very happy with this decision and this partnership. It feels great.

Oh and: coding is fucking awesome.

Kees Closed

Right now I’m testing and changing my profession so fast, I can barely keep up with it myself.

I want to have €36k saved up by end of March, and I need to make €10-15k per month to get there. (I’ll explain another time why I’m doing this).

For reference, last month I made €3,5k. So I need to triple my income, fast.

The only way to do that fast is by leveraging my existing skills, so I started with a list of services I could provide to businesses. For me this is:

• Cold email outreach
• CRM automation and optimization
• LinkedIn content
• Coding & development

But I had these skills last month as well, and I made €3,5k. Something needs to change for me to make 3x as much.

The change:

Less thinking, more execution.

Every idea I have needs to be tested fast. So that’s what I’m doing.

For example, I heard a friend of a friend making €15k/month by writing newsletters for cybersecurity companies. I know those companies have similar sales cycles to law firms (people only buy when something bad happens to them).

So I decided to try a similar offer for law firms, as I studied law for 2 years a while back.

From the moment from which I heard this idea, it took me 1 day to send emails to 300 lawyers.

This would have taken me 2 months, if I had wanted to do a lot of research and plan everything out perfectly before hand.

The reason why this testing is so important is because I find out very quick if there is potential or not. I avoid wasting loads of time on something that won’t work anyway.

The law firms is just 1 example, I have about 3 campaigns more going now which I am testing.

• Selling AI driven WhatsApp software to Fitness gyms. I coded this in 1 week and made a website: fitness-leads.nl
• Offering freelance coding services to small software companies
• Offering to set up cold outreach to promotional gift companies, like my current client Bambook.com

And I plan to launch a lot more. I abandon the ones that don’t reply, and double down on the ones that get traction.

That’s my approach to 3x my income in short time.

Let’s make it work.

Kees (closed)