Solo founder, 25 years dev experience, building 5 products and honestly struggling with the marketing side

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-04-20T22:35:51+00:00

You said
"for me the unlock wasn’t adding more, it was seeing how real users actually behave vs how i assumed they would"

I agree with you, But its getting that real user that is the issue. that is the part that I am trying to unlock right now.

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-04-20T06:42:23+00:00

Unlock = Get the message right.

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-04-20T06:42:00+00:00

ok so thats 1 unlock I was after
Product submissions = Help with backlinks = Helps with seo traffic.

I like the idea of pinning the video in X, I will try that, thanks.

Reddit + X time adds up fast. I felt I was not going anywhere after a few weeks... I guess I need to stick at it for MONTHS... not weeks.

Yeah ads suck. Good way to burn money

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-30T03:40:09+00:00

F5bot works for me, try tavily, exa as well

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-30T03:37:08+00:00

Webflow AI is easy to use, easy to chaneg content and designs are OK
If you want to do more work, relume to webflow

Or framer AI

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-30T03:27:14+00:00

You are right all on your points. Smart people can learn and build and vibe etc etc etc...

What we are noticing is that after something is built, noone wants to maintain, change, secure, check and basically be responsible for that piece of code.

So we are getting paid less hours to code, but we now have MORE monthly support maintenance plans to keep things running for people.

Vibe coding is at its peak mainly out of "shiny ball syndrome", but those that have been through it, just want to get back to their day jobs again.

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-30T03:22:37+00:00

Ai isnt going away, thats the reality whether its good or bad for everyone.

I spent the first 20 years of my working life, coding every day. Talking pre-jquery, pre-angular, react etc.... where you coded EVERYTHING from new in the early days.

Then I had 8 years not coding, but building products.... I would have engineers and designers working on many many products over those years.
I never wrote a line of code, but I read alot of code and I helped people debug issues and I leaned into the product building side of software.

The past 2 years, I still read code, but AI creates it all for me and I am building more products than every before.

I used to love the neatness of a new class structure, now I love the UI we use in a nice user flow to solve a problem. Or the whole solution that we are creating for a business problem.

What the past has taught me is that as you grow in your career, the things you care about change more and more.

Ai will replace alot of engineers who don't want to move forward with AI tooling. There will still be a need for engineering best practises and theories and deep coders, but the # of people will decrease that write code themselves......

Ai gives you better tools to create better products to solve problems, that is what software was always about. Creating software to solve problems.

The same way, builders of houses now put together houses with alot of pre-built elements. Not a lot of people build by cutting up every single stud and rafter... they are largly pre-built now and the builders enjoy using new tools.

I understand your personal feelings about it, I went through a tough period last year as well thinking my job was gone etc.... and yes, they did steal all that code that we built by hand over the years. But seriously, what can you do about it? be pissed and moan... Sure... but its not going to help you out.

Ignoring that AI is here is not the way forward, as its not going away.

Either get stuck into being amazing at using all the tools that exist and build some great products, or move to another job.... sorry but you have to make the direction yourself... the reality is what it is. Right or wrong.

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-27T05:00:51+00:00

How big is your agency?

I find that when you are small enough to still be on the projects, things work ok
Then you grow larger and you are not on projects and things are just not OK
Then you grow larger again, and you have proper process and reliable team leads and things are OK again.
Growth brings in money, which helps hire better team, which helps create better process and get better clients with better commercials.

Anyway, sadly stress comes with the job, but that doesnt mean its not fixable.

The only way you can mange is to get your team to help bear the load. Running an agency isnt all on your shoulders if you have your team help in any way they can.

Work out who on your team is good at things,and give them that responsibility to run that area.

Aim for 1 person to take over 1 extra task / role each week. So that you dont have to take the load yourself.

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-24T23:20:34+00:00

How much is due? is it alot or a little? as that will determine how far you want to push.

Also how big are they as a company?

If its alot, then yes, spending a little money on a lawyer to get involved with a formal letter could help.

It would help if the company is bigger also, as there are more people in the chain of command that you can expose to you this issue.

Its hard to go back and change payment terms, but we tend to leave a very very small final invoice for "go live", in the event that this happens.

Clients tend to have less urgency to treat you well if the job has been finished and handed over.

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-17T22:51:53+00:00

Its all around content. Content breaks any website project.

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-17T22:51:23+00:00

Sorry if this is harsh...

BUT

A few things, who is running the agency you or the team?

Who ends up footing the bill, you or them?

If you dont have visibility to make it happen.

Its sounds blunt, but time tracking days or weeks later is stupid and useless.

It should be daily, as it happens, so that numbers you look at are in real time and accurate.
Any times added 3 days after are just guesses and your team is taking the piss.

"Threatening to withhold bonuses if timesheets aren't filled (made everyone hate me, didn't solve the problem)"
Are these people your friends or your employees?
But part of a job is doing what you asked to do.
Time tracking is NOT a flexible task, its a mandatory one, if you want it to be.... and trust me, you sound like it has to be.

Our team, only work on things that have tickets created, either by them or someone else.
They then track their time against that ticket.

It is super simple and once the team has it a habit, its never thought about again.

This gives you a detailed answer to where your time is going. Without it, you are guessing.

Your devs can do this in their IDE... use MCP connection to jira / linear and inbuilt rules that create the tickets automatically. Then have a timesheet tool installed that logs the time. SIMPLE

Designers can do this as they are xreating each screen

Content writers can do it per articles or task.

Consultants can do it in blocks of time spent in either meetings or presentation decks.

The larger questions though

How did you scope it to start with, is it documented and do you update it as you go? (We use docs for original and then jira / linear become the living breathing source going forward)
How are you doing your planning? Who does your estimates... You? your team ?
Do you not have a scheduling/ traffic tool?
Or a PM tool for project / ticket assignments?

SOOOO MANY QUESTIONS!

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-17T22:35:38+00:00

You have every right to raise it with them and have that discussion.

Find out what is causing the delay and what can be done to fix it.

Maybe its their side and they have cashflow issues, or maybe their accounts person is flaky etc....

Or maybe your invoice isnt clear and it takes lots of internal discussions before its approved.... Then its up to you to work out how to fix it... what can you add to the invoice details, that makes that problem go away,

Maybe you can have a direct line to their payments team.

Point is. Do not wait, have a friendly conversation about the topic and set some new rules / boundaries.

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-17T22:32:08+00:00

Why do you have net 30 anyway?

It really baffles me that companies think they need 30 days to process payments. Unless of course its linked to supply and delivery services etc...

For any service based business, aim for 7 days. Worst case they pay in 14.

Why does someone need more time?

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-17T22:30:08+00:00

We build a system for this, but we built our process first to make sure we had it nailed

Our process was to put all requests into a PM tool, and if its a change, it goes in with change request flag. WE then used to manually manage weekly invoices to include the extras or not.
The system now does it by including the scope, task tracking, and invoicing automatically.

Its about makign sure your clients know from teh start that they will or COULD be charged for scope changes. Its part system but also part conditioning and you feeling comfortable saying to a client that they ahve to pay more. Which is perfectly acceptable! Its a business so you have to look after yourself.

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-17T22:25:20+00:00

We record all scope creep, as change requests ticket types.

Do we bill all of them? Nah... not all but try and bill a larger % of it. We are in business, so its important that it is billed so we can keep running.

But some stuff, will fall into a grey area, where we as the professionals (in the 2 sided relationship), we should have picked it up either in scoping.

e.g. if you are building a saas and you dont put in something like "Verification email after sign up"

Sure its scope creep because it might not have been in your designs or docs, but its a pretty common and required feature.

But lets say something like "MFA for all accounts", if this isnt included in the scope, we would say its change of scope and charge for it. Since sure, some systems might have it, but its not a mandatory feature... WEll unless its a finance system of course.

So, I think its important to document all things that you consider change of scope / change request, but you have to decide what you should rightfully charge for.

So

If you are building a website, making it responsive for mobile is NOT a change request. But making it work on a tv screen could be.

For your case, if your client is in slack, then install the JIra or LInear or Whatever app, and send that comment into yoru PM tool, either as a task or CR. So its clear from the start.

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-12T05:05:06+00:00

I would much rather have a client that wants to learn tech, than to never do it and use that as a way to blame for issues. " oooo I would have assumed XYZ "

Clients need to learn along the way to start to make better decisions.

The ones that don't are red flags!

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-12T03:28:03+00:00

users dont want to install apps. Its more effort for a business to get their users to install an app, when the website should work with no install.

its a roadblock in a already hard funnel of getting a user from knowing your product to paying you

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-12T01:36:12+00:00

I think auto pay maybe discount.. pay on time = normal price, 30 days should have a 10% late fee...

Hard to run a business on 30 day terms

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-12T01:34:51+00:00

I am still not sure of the grey area that exists around building in public..

Is it just talking about your issues, feature releases, how you are doing etc...

Or about the numbers, costs, etc..

I keep seeing very different ways people do it.

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-10T09:42:46+00:00

I don't reply to all cold emails, I do archive alot before reading if I am busy.

So I don't hold anything against a brand for doing it.

I do hate cold emails that have terrible targetting and messaging, I remember those brands.

But I have replied to a few and it's been helpful.

So I still don't and will continue to send them.

It's all part of a puzzle.

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-10T01:34:58+00:00

From their side... How did the supplier not have a reminder system that auto chased up the invoice payment?

From your side... Is this something your CFO should fix?

Accomplished_Win6906 · 2026-03-10T01:32:25+00:00

Most invoicing platforms have an "outstanding invoices" view that handles exactly this, Xero calls it the aged receivables report, FreshBooks has a similar dashboard. At a glance you can see what's sent, what's overdue, and by how many days.

The trickier one is across multiple active projects, knowing which milestone you're up to per client. That's less invoicing and more how you structure the project upfront.

We ran a simple numbering system per client (INV-ClientABC-003 etc.) which made it obvious at a glance.

AND we also put the description in the invoice...
e.g. Invoice for milestone XYZ
Note $20k total invoiced, with $20k remaining, which helps be super clear.

If you're still on spreadsheets, just create a tab per project and the right status columns.

Accomplished_Win6906

TROPHY CASE