I keep hearing that running a bootstrapped business is very little about writing code, so as bootstrap founders, I’m curious to know where you spend your time.
Professional learning, looking over analytics, researching marketing possibilities, implementing marketing, writing email newsletters, blogging, managing the process, managing your team, talking with customers, networking with others (on bootstrapped.fm of course!), thinking up that next big idea, thinking up ways to improve your current project, financial planning… that sort of stuff.
The above is what is known as “working ON the business”, whereas coding is “working IN the business”. To be honest though, many of us still need to write the code until we grow the team, but ideally that is what a business owner does, and even most of those get delegated when the time is right.
Similar to what Ryan has been doing, I have been spending much of my time outside of the app working on engaging with my users and their community. Having Lunches, Coffee, even throwing a few chats that relate to my user base and target audience. These chat Rooms have been nice because it allows us to engage and build trust and create some organic growth with the community. While I am doing that, I am also thinking of other features/tweaks to the app. Much of which are inspired by those chatroom discussions.