March 2021 | Big fish ($3.1K MRR) 🐟
March was a month of change. I left Milan on the 22nd of March, with a one way ticket to Palermo, Sicily. My biggest reasons for leaving were: - I wanted to start a new chapter in my life - Milan is really, really expensive - Sicily is a tax haven for expats in Italy So, I ended up moving all the way down here. From the very high north of Italy, to the very low south. From almost Germany, to almost Africa. Literally and figuratively. Milan felt like Germany. Palermo feels like Greece. Actually, Morocco, to be honest. I feel as if I moved from Central Europe to Northern Africa. But, I'm sure I'll adapt quickly. And if I truly want to travel the world and go to Latin America, South East Asia and all those beautiful countries, I have to get used to a bit of bad infrastructure and a little bit of a culture shock. At least my internet is pretty good and I can work. Not good enough to record podcasts, but more than enough to run my business. Talking about business and Cyberleads, this month I decided to take my learnings from February and address some single points of failure. One of them was moving away from the no-code platform I was using to host my website. I'm planning to develop a huge blog and build my distribution through SEO and content, and being locked up in a service is not a good idea. So, I decided to leave. After pondering on whether I should go with Bubble or Ruby on Rails, I decided to go with the established open source technology, instead of the hot new thing. Shit happens. It's unavoidable. And one less thing to worry about is whether the VC backed tool I'm using for my business is going to reach it's growth targets or have problems and shut down. Just to gain a little bit of speed. In the end, things are simple. It's about survival and not dying. And the best way to maximize your odds for survival is to avoid huge mistakes. Not make the best and coolest moves every time. Just like tennis. 99% of success is not making unforced errors. I was reminded of this, by two quotes I heard in a film I saw recently, called "Big Fish". Quote number one: "A goldfish grows according to the size of it's bowl." Although this is somewhat an urban myth, it's partly true. And it's definitely true in business. No matter how good or talented you are, you are mostly going to grow in accordance to your market. Quote number two: - "How does the biggest fish in the river, become the biggest?" - "By not getting caught." That's it. It doesn't have to do anything crazy. It just has to avoid death. And I believe it's the same in business. That's what I'm planning to do, and why I moved here. My burn rate is less than half now. My taxes are less. I have infinite runway. And every month that goes by, I develop and stronger base and set even more money aside. I'm on my way to becoming a big fish. Not by doing anything crazy. But by simply avoiding ruin and playing the long game.
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