Yo.

I hit a huge milestone and broke some limiting beliefs this week. Over-Stimulated's first product (ballpark.ing) got its first paying customers.

I know that doesn't sound huge. But hear me out.

I'm celebrating because it hit my last goal for 2025: Sell one thing to two people.

excuse the 5 year old handwriting…

My entire career has been one to one. Build a website for a client. They pay me. I launch it. We do some updates. Move on. Doing this over and over started to feel a little empty.

Don't get me wrong, I love going hard on something for a couple months then jumping to the next thing. But that being the only thing I did felt like being on a hamster wheel.
Build. Launch. Build. Launch. Little time to craft and improve because everything needs to be done yesterday.

I needed something that would compound. Effort today that benefits me for years to come. Something I own where I get the entire upside (and downside).

I imagine a lot of you reading this feel similar. Especially with tools we have available today.

So here's what I did to build my first product and get my first few customers. Including the fuckups (so you can avoid them).

Getting the idea

I started winning a lot of work by being quick to give a ballpark estimate. Not a full proposal. Just a rough price within a few hours.

Agencies loved it. They didn't have to wait days to see if I fit the budget. They could follow up with their clients faster. Projects started sooner.

But it was still taking me half a day. Mapping out requirements, making sure the estimate was accurate, sending it over, all while delivering on existing projects.

Reading this now, the solution was obvious. I needed a way for people to get a price on my services instantly. Without me.

So I looked at the thing that was winning me work and asked: can I automate this?

That became Ballpark.

If you want to build a product, start with a problem you already have. You'll know what to build, you'll know who it's for, and you'll have at least one customer: yourself.

Building it (and wasting 3 months)

Originally Ballpark used AI to generate estimates. You'd upload your past projects with cost and timeline and it would find similarities to calculate a price.

Sounded smart. Was actually stupid.lol.

I opened the product to 10 beta users before public launch. Best decision I made. They told me the AI thing was too complicated. They didn't trust it. They didn't want to let AI trip out and send some wild number.

I wasted 3 months iterating on something that took a week to rebuild in a way that actually worked. Don't try to sound smart or do technical shit to impress people. Build what they need.

Getting my first customers (and losing momentum)

I started building Ballpark in Feb. Started a waitlist. Updated them every two weeks.

Then client work got busy and I stopped for a few months.

Big mistake. By the time I launched, the waitlist was cold. Very few people signed up because I'd gone quiet. Don't do that. If you start talking to a waitlist, keep the cadence consistent leading up to launch. You want people excited, not forgetting you exist.

What made the first 5 customers easier was that I was a customer myself. I'd been using Ballpark on my own site for 6 months. I had real results. When you build for yourself, you've got a case study people can resonate with. Immediate social proof.

What I'm doing to grow it

Right now I'm obsessing over customer success. Getting Ballpark live on peoples sites and helping them either win more projects or save time on wasted calls / proposals with people who have no budget is the top priority.

Practically that means:

• White glove onboarding. Setting up the software for them.

• Building requested features fast.

• Following up consistently.

If I can get them results, I think they'll stick around and tell their friends. Already starting to think that this strategy works:

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

What I've learned so far

Build for a problem you already have. You'll know what to make, who it's for, and you'll be your own first case study.

Don't overcomplicate it. My AI version sounded impressive. The simple version is what people actually wanted.

Talk to users before you launch. Those 10 beta testers saved me months of wasted work.

Once you launch, obsess over customer success. Nothing else matters until the people using your product are getting results.

The hamster wheel is optional

This might not sound like much yet. But it's proof that one to many is possible. Every new signup benefits from work I've already done. That's the difference.

If you're stuck in the build, launch, repeat cycle and it's starting to feel empty, look at what's already working for you. Ask if you can automate it, productise it, or sell it to more than one person.

You probably can.

Keep crushing my friend. Back in a couple weeks to share more progress and lessons I learn while building on this wild thing we call the internet.

Talk soon.

Will

Yo.

Let me tell you about the morning I nearly threw up from nerves.

I'd been working with 1X for the past year. Their preorder launch for NEO (the flagship product) kept getting delayed. Until one day the delays stopped. We had a hard date. It was finally happening.

Their team mentioned we're expecting order volume in the tens of thousands and traffic in the millions. A whole lot of pressure for a solo engineer who built the order payment flow by himself.

To make things even more intense, 1X has a marketing team like no other. They know how to get a fuckload of eyeballs on their stuff. Meaning my shit needed to work. Otherwise all of their efforts were going to be worthless.

Fast forward to the morning of the launch. I was up at 3am with the site going live at 8am.

The only task I had that morning was to update some video content on the site.

At 5am (3 hours out) I tried to update via the CMS.

Error.

Refresh. Error.

Refresh. Error. Fuck.

I couldn't update the content. There was an error I'd never seen before that only showed up the morning of. This was the moment I felt I was going to throw up.

If the content couldn't be updated, the site couldn't go live, and the traffic generating efforts might have been lost.

But after an hour and a half of hand shaking debugging, I found a fix. Content was updated.

We pushed live at 8am and orders started rolling in. It worked.

I can't say the exact amount of orders (there were a lot) but we were getting around 30 to 50K page visits every 30 minutes. 50 thousand people interacting with code I'd written. Every 30 minutes. Wild.

For the next week I sat on call, ready to solve issues that came up. Apart from a few small typos and some tighter validation, it worked perfectly.

No orders failed. The project was a massive success.

I'm super proud of myself for what I was able to achieve that morning. I blew a lot of self doubt out of the water because the evidence was too obvious to ignore.

If you ever get the opportunity to be in a situation like this, take it.

Pressure is a privilege. Not a curse.

Other cool projects from the past few months:

Impulse. I worked with Dennis and Case from Special Projects on this one. Crazy cool product. Beautiful design. Absolute pleasure to build.

Hamilton Capital. My first big 3D scene project that wasn't a test. We built a portal/focus like preloader that I think is super sick. Worked with Onbox on this one. Awesome team of super talented designers.

Ballpark is going live soon.

For those who don't know, Ballpark is the first piece of software I've built under Over-Stimulated. It's a pricing widget for your portfolio. Asks visitors a few questions, calculates an estimate from rules you set, sends them a nice looking ballpark quote, and drops their details into a simple CRM. All automatic.

It removes all the back and forth emailing just to get a price. I've been using it on my site for the past 6 months and I love it.

If you want to get notified when it's live you can sign up at ballpark.ing. No pressure.

So yeah.

I definitely pushed too hard the last few months. Took on way too much. Shed a few too many tears. But now I'm back doing shit I actually enjoy, like writing this email, surfing, and my morning beach walk with the pup.

Next email I'm launching my first product under Over-Stimulated. Expect mistakes. lol

See you in two weeks. Keep crushing.

Will

Yo.

I wish I didn't have to write this episode.

But I've been trying to make this newsletter do too many things at once and I can feel the authenticity slipping. The whole point of project_log was to document my real experience. The shit I struggle with and am pushing through on a daily basis. But I've found myself caught between sharing what's happening, and sharing things to grow my business.

This confusion internally has caused me to procrastinate the marketing that will actually grow my business. It takes a good amount of time to write these and I want to make sure they're worth your attention.

So what am I doing?

I'm going to be slowing down the cadence to monthly. This gives me the space to let real insights develop instead of forcing weekly takes. It also frees up time for parts of the business that need attention. My hope is that by spending less time writing, I can spend more time doing. Resulting in more valuable experiences and lessons to share with you guys.

This monthly format means each episode can be more substantial and allow me to go deeper into ONE subject: scaling Over-Stimulated. The core mission stays the same, documenting the real experience of building this thing. I’m just giving myself more breathing room between episodes.

Next episode will be Monday 18th of August. I'm already excited to write this one because I've got a lot planned this month.

To end on some more positive news. I've made my first full-time hire. His name is Joey 😂

Talk to you in a month. Keep crushing pals.

Will

Yo.

When I started my development job a few years ago, I felt like a bit of an outsider.

The team I was working with cared very detailedly about technical performance but lacked any thought into overall aesthetic, taste, and feel of the end result. We'd build ecommerce stores that were technically sound but felt a little repetitive and boring.

Sure, part of this came down to industry. Ecommerce is very focused on conversion. But I'd get annoyed at tasks working on visually unappealing builds because I simply thought they didn’t look good. I questioned whether development was right for me in the first few months. Not because I wasn't capable but it felt like I didn't quite fit in with the typical stigma of developers. My team was obsessed with code. I was obsessed with making things feel good. I'd find myself gravitating towards the designers in the team and had more conversations with them.

It wasn't until I eventually quit that job, that I realised this outsider feeling wasn't something to shy away from. It was something that positioned me differently to a lot of my pairs. I'm only now realising that being able to see things from both sides (development and design) is a super power. It's something to lean into, rather than shut down. It's also the part of this industry that excites me the most.

I bring this story up because of a brief conversation I had with a friend of mine who runs an agency. He shared that he'd spoken to another agency founder about hiring design engineers vs typical developers. The difference here was that the design engineer was able to elevate the vision of a project and build it vs just build it. It was so enticing that it made him reach out to every design engineer in Vancouver (all three of them) to get them on board.

When he told me this, I had a bit of a light bulb moment. The way he was describing what this role did felt very aligned with the work I currently do. I work closely with design teams to literally elevate the vision of the project through execution. That's my job today. And then he mentioned he could only find 3 of them in his area. This suggests a shortage of supply. Which makes the business side of my brain tick.

The conversation that changes everything

I always seem to have these sudden realisations after a single message. It's telling me that more of my time needs to be spent engaging with people like this because that's where ideas are born.

That conversation lasted maybe 10 minutes. But it completely shifted how I see my business. Instead of thinking of myself as "a developer who works with design teams," I now position myself as "a design engineer who bridges the gap between creative vision and technical execution."

Same skills. Same service. Completely different positioning.

These aren't formal meetings or structured interviews. They're just regular conversations with people doing interesting shit. But they're consistently the moments where I get the biggest insights about my business.

Why I want to talk to more people (and why you should too)

I'm convinced that having more conversations is the highest-leverage thing I can do for my business right now. Not posting more content, not building more features, not optimising my website for the 47th time.

Just talking to people.

Here's my plan: I want to have at least one conversation per week with someone who's building something interesting. Could be an agency owner, a product manager at a startup, a freelancer who's crushing it, or someone running a side project that's taken off. Just a few slack messages exchanged or digital coffee.

I'm not trying to sell them anything. I'm not trying to extract value. I just want to understand what they're working on, what's challenging them, and where they see opportunities.

Because apparently, these random conversations are where the gold is hidden.

I'm going all in on design engineering because it positions me exactly where I want to be: indispensable to creative teams who want to build exceptional experiences.

And I'm going to keep having more conversations because apparently that's where the next breakthrough is waiting.

If you're doing something interesting and want to chat, hit reply.

Talk soon. Will

P.S. This log was a day late. I was sick as a dog yesterday and couldn’t edit. Onwards friends.

Yo.

My strategy for client acquisition is simple: "Make it stupid for people not to work with you."

I know that sounds a little wishy washy, but hear me out.

Most of us focus on being the best at what we do. The cleanest code, the slickest designs, the most efficient processes. But I've learned that being irreplaceable has nothing to do with being the best.

It's about making yourself so valuable to the client's overall success that choosing anyone else feels like a massive risk.

Here's my current strategy, my next play, and the problems in the way:

My Current Strategy

I'm not the best engineer in the world. But I've built a solid freelancing business by focusing on people.

What this looks like in practice:

• I handle motion design without being asked.

• I don't penny-pinch on small stuff that makes the clients life easier

• I generally want the client to win.

• I optimise for the relationship, not just the project.

• Do everything to reduce friction in other peoples lives.

Most importantly, I learned to adapt to different work styles instead of forcing mine. I work with people who are ambitious and driven. Each one has their quirks. But learning to adapt to how they work, and not demanding they adapt to me, became my advantage.

The result? This strategy served me extremely well for the past 2 years. I tripled my income from what I was making as an in-house developer.

My Next Play

Now I want to pour gasoline on the fire and grow. I want to throw myself in the deep end and take more risk so I can learn more.

My next play after doubling down on relationships is to create a flywheel from work to software back to work.

Here's how it works:

I'm building a piece of software called Ballpark that turns website visitors into leads (you can check it out here: ballpark.ing). The primary target is design studios without in-house development teams. Typically smaller headcount doing projects in the $20K-$100K range.

If a design studio becomes a customer of the software, they'll generate more leads for their business. Let's say they generate 5 more leads per month. Let's say they need development for 1 out of 5 of their projects.

Since I was able to provide their business with 5 new leads, I think they'd be confident trusting me with the development of that project.

We go back to my current strategy: do everything we can to make the design studio's life easier. Handle motion, handle the technical complexity, approach everything with the idea that we want them to win.

The cycle repeats. They get leads through our software, they bring me in on some of those leads, we crush it together.

I share this because I believe it's important to think outside the box when it comes to client acquisition. There's so many creative ways you can attract people to your business. This is my way. It might fail. But the point is to try something different.

A quote that sums this up well: "To be an exception, you do something exceptional". Do something different if you want results different to most people.

The Problems in the Way

Before I pour the gas on the fire, I have to fix a problem. Without fixing this, all this additional lead generation would be pretty much worthless. It might even make the business worse.

That issue is capacity.

I mentioned in last week's newsletter that I'm no longer pursuing the independent route. I need to bring people in.

So what does that look like right now?

I think it's important to set standards for how day-to-day shit needs to be done. This serves two purposes: free up mental space to focus on what matters and moves the needle, and speed up the time from bringing help in to them picking up how I run things.

They're going to be rough to start with, and the first people I bring in will help me shape these processes. But having some kind of system set up for things like version control, creating tasks in the project management software, and building sanity schema allows us to keep everything neat and tidy from the beginning.

Once these initial processes are setup, I'm going to push to find developers that are like me. Again, they don't need to be the best in the world. But they need to have some interest in motion/design, be interested in the companies I typically work with, and above all else want their clients to win. If thats you, reply and lets chat!

What I'm Learning

• Technical skills alone don't win. Relationships do. The goal isn't to be the best, it's to be irreplaceable.

• I'm scaling by solving adjacent problems (leads) before asking for the main work (development). Instead of just pitching development services, I'm creating a reason for them to need me first.

• Systems have to come before growth, not after.

My next challenge is to execute this flywheel while bringing in new people.

To finish up, how can you make it stupid for your ideal clients not to work with you?

Maybe it's not about being the best at your craft. Maybe it's about being the person who makes their life easier, who anticipates their needs, who helps them win.

That's what I'm betting on.

Will share more as I learn.

Talk soon.

Will

Yo.

Something hit me this weekend.

I'm in a position where I can take big risks with very little downside. I don't have kids, I don't have a mortgage, I'm about to move somewhere where my living costs are relatively low and my partner works full time which covers majority of our living costs.

There aren't many moments in life that present such an opportunity.

But I've found it challenging to accept risk for the past couple of years. Things haven't been as abundant as they have been now. So I'm still playing it safe out of habit.

Time to change.

The thing that's been messing with my head

One of the characteristics I've adopted into my identity is this idea of doing things independently. Being a "solopreneur."

But then I look up to friends of mine killing it with teams. I look at entrepreneur idols like Jason Fried who did shit his way with a team. I read books and listen to podcasts from Alex Hormozi. All these people I look up to did it with teams of people around them.

Which makes me question the whole solo thing.

Here's where I'm at right now

The business (Over-stimulated) has one source of income right now: development services. I work with design studios as their development and motion design partner. We build marketing websites together. Typically they bring the leads in. I handle everything technical and motion related. We crush. They're happy. Clients are stoked. Cycle repeats.

It's simple and has worked for the past couple years. I've been able to triple my income from working in house at an agency with this strategy. Pretty dope.

But here's the constraint: There is not enough time in the day for me to service the projects that come in. This means my marketing has slowed, and so has my growth. I continue to raise prices which has helped, but having leads slip because of capacity isn't ideal. Especially when those leads are ideal clients.

The classic bottleneck problem.

So where do I take more risk?

Risk #1: Bringing in contractors on a per project basis.

Not gonna lie. Bringing people in scares the shit out of me. Managing people, quality control, making sure profit margins don't get destroyed. It's all new to me.

But as I wrote last week, you have to throw yourself in situations where you have no idea what you're doing. Doing this has always rapidly increased my knowledge in certain areas. So I believe it's necessary to learn and evolve.

Risk #2: Keep building Ballpark while scaling the service business.

Some of you might know that I'm working on this tool that increases leads called Ballpark (check it out at ballpark.ing). The goal is to increase leads for OS, but I built it as a product to help design agencies and other friends increase leads as well.

The risk here? focus and attention. I'm risking that fragmenting my attention from only doing services to also doing software will give me less results than focusing just on services. But if this works out, the risk to my attention will be worth it.

Bringing contractors in AND splitting my attention between 2 things is risky. But I feel comfortable doing this because of the reasons above (no kids, mortgage, partner's working, etc). The potential upside will 100% get me to my goals.

How you can spot where to take risk in your operation

First off, you're probably in a different stage of life to me. That's fine. I still think you can add risk to help you grow. Just adopt this to your tolerance and current situation.

So here's how I did it:

Step 1: Map out the flow of your business Just draw a basic top-to-bottom chart of how you get customers/clients. Nothing fancy:

Step 2: You need a goal. You need to be moving towards something. I'm not going to tell you mine because it doesn't matter for you. The important part is creating something that is ambitious and scares the shit out of you.

Step 3: Ask yourself why you're not at that goal yet. List everything that comes to mind. Be brutal. Here's mine:

Step 4: Invert each reason.

• Will needs to post content that brings in studio partners

• The website needs to be clear on what we do

• We need to ask for referrals and testimonials

• OS needs to increase capacity to handle more work

• Will needs to bring in help and not do everything.

Step 5: Pick the one with the highest reward. Each of these will have some level of risk to reward ratio. I picked the one that has the highest reward (measuring against my goal).

For me that’s increasing capacity and bringing in help. Since that's the constraint. That's where I'm taking risk next to get me closer to my goals.

The thing I'm starting to realise

Business is just about making bets. You are always taking a risk in anything you do or don't do. It might be financial, risk to your attention, focus and energy, risk to your reputation, risk of staying in the same place.

The best entrepreneurs just seem to know what bets to take. Probably because they’ve taken a shit load of them.

To recap:

Identify where you are. Map out the risk you'll take. Take the risk. You'll either win or you'll learn. Repeat.

Will share my learnings when they come in.

Talk soon

Will

Yo.

Last week I set up a custom server for the first time in my career. This is something I typically avoid because it falls way outside my comfort zone and carries real risk. One fuck-up and I could take down a client's entire online operation.

But I didn't have the luxury of passing this off to someone else. It needed to be done, and guess whose lap it fell into? Mine.

So I thought fuck it. I'll treat this as an opportunity to learn something new.

What followed was hours of chaos. I tried to SSH into the server and failed (wrong port). I accidentally set up multiple instances of the same site, which tanked performance. It took me 30 minutes to update a single environment variable (something that usually takes 20 seconds).

At one point, I was staring at console logs which might as well have been in Mandarin, wondering if I'd bitten off more than I could chew. Safe to say I was pretty uncomfortable.

But by the end of it, I had a working server and something clicked. I realised I'd been avoiding these types of challenges for months, maybe years. And it got me thinking about why.

We treat learning differently once our livelihood depends on it.

Think about learning to surf. You don't watch 500 YouTube videos. You paddle out, get smoked by waves, and learn through your mistakes. Everyone accepts this is how skills work. The learning process is obvious: you suck, then you suck less, then eventually you don't suck.

But once we start making money from our skills? Everything changes.

Suddenly, we can't afford to look incompetent. We have clients depending on us. We have bills to pay. We have a reputation to maintain. So we stick to what we know and avoid anything that might expose us as beginners.

The thing is, this fear is mostly bullshit. People don't give a shit about you or what you're doing. They're too busy worrying about their own problems. But that fear keeps us trapped in the same patterns, doing the same work, at the same level.

Here's what I've learned: growth requires going backwards before you go forwards.

Every major step in my career has meant becoming a beginner again. Going from in-house developer to freelancer meant learning skills I'd never needed like marketing, sales, client management. It was uncomfortable as hell, but it opened up possibilities I couldn't see from my previous position.

Now that I'm trying to build software, I'm learning even more stuff that makes me feel incompetent: product design, customer research, copywriting. Each time I think "this isn't what I do," but then I remember that's exactly why I should be doing it.

Look at the pattern:

In-house developer at an agency:

• Web development

• Basic client communication

Freelancer:

• Everything above, plus:

• Motion design (to stand out)

• Marketing and sales

• End-to-end service delivery

• Running a business

Software builder:

• Everything above, plus:

• Product design

• Copywriting and landing pages

• Product marketing

• Customer research and validation

Each level requires more skills. Each level has paid more (in my experience). And each level forces you to be a beginner again, which is uncomfortable as hell.

But here's the thing: the discomfort is temporary, but the capability you gain is permanent.

Most people stop at "good enough."

They find something that works and milk it until it stops working. They avoid the discomfort of being bad at something new. Being a beginner sucks when you're used to being competent.

But every skill you avoid learning becomes a ceiling. Every time you say "that's not what I do," you're choosing your current limitations over your potential.

The server setup that sacred me last week? It's just another thing I can handle now. Not because I'm naturally gifted, but because I was willing to look stupid for a few hours.

The more discomfort you can handle as you acquire new skills, the more valuable you become. It's not about being naturally talented. It's about being willing to suck at something long enough to get good at it.

To recap:

• We stop taking learning risks once our income depends on our skills

• People aren't watching you fail.

• Growth requires going backwards (being a beginner) before going forwards

• Every avoided skill becomes a personal ceiling.

Stop avoiding the stuff that makes you feel incompetent. The discomfort is only temporary.

Talk soon.

Will

Yo.

This week has been messy.

I've been up at 2:30am multiple times for client launches in different timezones. I've sorted another client's hosting provider issues over the weekend. I've launched a portfolio that's been on the cards for the past year. I've built one of the coolest section transitions to date (Twitter post incoming).

All this while trying to make progress on the SaaS I'm building, trying to write this newsletter, and trying to improve at my craft.

Safe to say, I'm pretty fucked.

But here's the thing that's been eating me: There's this voice. sometimes it's mine. sometimes it's others. Telling me to 'just say no' to these requests. Like it's that simple.

It's not that simple.

When you're grinding through the hard shit, everyone becomes an expert on your life. People will look at your situation, spot the things that are difficult, and immediately question your reasons for doing them. Even my own brain does this. Makes sense, right? You're in pain. They (and you) want to escape that pain as quickly as possible.

Problem is, there's never been a time in my life where something I wanted was on the other side of comfort.

Getting better at surfing? I've been smoked by big waves multiple times.

Getting better at skiing? I've taco'd multiple rails multiple times.

Getting better at development? I've pushed code that's broken production and caused performance issues.

Each time it feels like I've eaten literal shit. But each time I've learned something that improved my situation for the future.

The problem with advice without context

Here's what pisses me off: Whether it's someone else telling you to "just say no" or that voice in your head whispering "this is too hard," neither carries the full weight of your decisions. They don't understand the long term implications. They don't see the context of your situation.

That internal voice doesn't factor in that you need this client financially to support your family. So when it screams "just quit," it's not helpful when you've got bills to pay.

External voices are just as bad. Some Twitter dude's post about "just say no more bro" doesn't help when they live in their mum's basement and you're supporting a household.

Maybe you're building something long-term that requires short-term sacrifice. So both the internal voice saying "take it easy" and external advice to "slow down" miss the point entirely.

Another example: I get constant remarks from someone in my life about how much time I have because I don't have children. How my life is "so easy" because I don't have kids yet. I just smile and ignore it because they don't have context on what I do day in, day out.

Everyone's hard is fucking hard. It’s subjective.

The solution: a framework for when you're eating glass

I read a book once called "Someday is Today." It taught me that putting things off while they're hard is how you stay in the world of "Someday I'll do that." It's how you wake up after six months and realise you've made no progress toward your long-term goals.

When you're in the thick of it, overwhelmed and exhausted, you need a way to decide what's worth pushing through and what's not.

I ask myself these questions when I'm tempted to quit or when others (including my own brain) are telling me to "just say no":

Is this pain moving me toward something I actually want?

Not what sounds good on paper. Not what will impress others. What do I actually want? For me, the 2:30am client launches this week have supported me financially for the past 2 months while I build the SaaS. They've pushed me closer to what I'm chasing.

What's the cost of quitting right now?

This isn't just about money. It's about momentum, relationships, and future opportunities. When I think about dropping a difficult client, I consider: Will I lose momentum on my larger goals? Will I regret this in six months? Sometimes the answer is still yes, quit. But at least you're making an informed decision.

Who's giving me this advice and what's their context?

Is the person telling you to "just say no" where you want to be? Do they understand your situation? Are they living in their mum's basement while you support a family? Are they venture-backed while you're bootstrapping?

And be honest about your internal voice too. Is it trying to protect you from real danger, or is it just afraid of discomfort?

Take advice from people who've walked your path, and question whether your own resistance is wisdom or just fear.

Most meaningful shit requires you to push through periods where you feel overwhelmed. But not all struggle is created equal. Some pain builds toward something. Some pain is just pain.

Your job is to know the difference.

To Recap:

Everyone's hard is subjective. What's easy for them might be impossible for you, and vice versa.

Both internal and external advice without context can be worthless. People mean well, but they don't live your life.

Own your decisions. If you're pushing through something difficult for a reason, trust that reason.

Focus on your end goal. However winning looks like for you, that's what matters.

Your hard is hard. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Keep pushing through the mess. Talk soon.

Will

Yo.

Last week, I realised I'd spent 5 months waking up at 6am to build the wrong solution for my side project, Ballpark.

Every morning from 6am to 8am, I've been building an estimator that plugs directly into your existing website. I got the idea from a friends site I'd built a few months prior. We created a simple form with a calculation in the backend and a nice little automation flow:

1. Client fills in form.

2. We run a calculation based on their answers.

3. Send them an email with the estimate.

4. Store their details in notion.

5. Ping slack for hasty follow up.

Simple stuff that worked perfectly.

But I convinced myself it wasn't good enough. "This is too simple for a product. Any technical person could set this up in a few hours. How do I make this better and more innovative?" AI was my answer.

I told myself that estimates needed to be more complex. That projects had more nuance. Estimates needed to account for things like business type, current challenges, and employee count. Even though these things rarely affected how I actually priced my web development services.

My brilliant solution was to use AI to find similarities between past projects and client inputs. Based on this, AI could "guess" what an estimate should be. I told my friends and family about my idea to make myself feel smart and technical. People praised me because they didn't understand it and thought it was cool.

Problem is, this estimate is your first touchpoint with new clients.

How detrimental would it be to to let AI "GUESS" what that touch point included? In reality, your first touchpoint needs to be concrete and predictable.

Let me show you my stupidity with an example:

Let's say you're a web designer. You're using Ballpark to send automated estimates because you understand that speed is the game. You know that reducing the time between client enquiry and delivery is what wins work and allows you to charge premium rates.

Client fills in their details and your estimator sends out $5K as the estimate. Client is happy with the estimate and want's to proceed. You check your Ballpark dashboard and are shocked. You'd usually charge $10K for this project.

You reach out shivering in your boots telling them the price is actually going to be double. You lose the relationship and the client because they're anchored to the $5K price.

You lost a client because of something I built.

Last week, after multiple users shared their concerns, I realised the mistake I'd made. I'd chased the shiny object of AI. I'd forced it into a process that didn't make sense. I let my ego of sounding technical cloud my ability to solve a problem well.

The simple solution that works is almost always better than the complex one that sounds impressive. Especially when real money, clients, and relationships are on the line.

Don't overcomplicate shit.

I bring this up because I'm currently rebuilding the estimation engine of Ballpark. No more AI guessing games, just predictable estimates that you control completely. If you want, you can join the waitlist here and I'll be in touch when your invite is ready.

That's all for this week.

Keep it simple. Talk soon.

Will

Yo.

I've been piecing together a manifesto for Over-Stimulated this week. A letter to myself to frame future decisions. A short essay, representing the vision I have for OS.

I decided to do this after I was complimented on being "intentional".

It reminded me of a time when I wasn't intentional. A time when I just flowed through life taking what I could get. A time when I was making decisions based on the opinions of others. A time where I felt unambitious because deep down I didn't want societies version of 'Success'.

An example of this was when I decided to build a web development agency. I'm embarrassed to say this, but the real reason was so I could tell people I had employees and that my revenue number was going to be higher than it was at the time. That's it. It was all based on the opinion of others rather than something I actually wanted.

Going about this business stuff without a clear frame is the easiest way to end up living someone else's dream. People pluck a vision off the shelf like they're grocery shopping then wonder why they lack purpose. They see others doing something on twitter and immediately think "that's what I'll do." Without any consideration of their current situation or the shit they want.

This was me.

Looking back, I wish I'd known about these two questions from Sahil Bloom.

They'll make you think if your current vision is your own (or if you just plucked it off the shelf like younger Will):

1. Do I want the winning version of this thing?

2. Am I willing to pay the price to get that winning version?

The first question hits on my experience above. I spent no time thinking about what the winning version of a web development agency looked like. I didn't consider how it would affect my key value of independence. If I'd thought about this for just a second, I would have spotted that having the consistent pressure to bring in clients and make payroll is not what I wanted.

And just to be clear, there's nothing wrong with this approach. I'll probably change my mind in the future. But for the stage of life I'm in, I don't want it.

The second question forces you to be honest with yourself. My brain seems to warp reality and romanticise things. It skips over the part where you eat shit and just serves the pretty vanity metrics you can flaunt online. That's not reality. There's always a price to pay to get to where you want to go. It'll be in different forms like lower income, less free time, stress, pressure, etc. The goal is to identify if this is worth it to you.

If we look at the current vision I have, the winning version is helping people crush on the internet without being "Busy". I consider winning when I've helped 500 people either save a shit load of time or make more money to feel more financially secure.

Am I stoked with the winning version of this? Fuck yes. And am I willing to pay the price of lower income, writing a weekly newsletter on a Sunday, dedicating the hours from 6am to 8am to building software for these people? Again, fuck yes.

That's the feeling I want you to experience. The feeling of having a vision YOU created. Not someone else's you've just plucked off the shelf.

But what if I've read this far and realised I'm climbing someone else's mountain?

First off, congrats. Pausing and actually thinking about this shit while every corp fights for your attention is admirable.

The way I overcame this was by forming my own frame/vision for the business I'm trying to build. Especially around the people I'm trying to help.

I've personally done this by answering three questions:

1. Who values what I do?

2. Who do I like spending time with?

3. Who has the capacity to pay me?

Let me break these down with a real example. Say you're a freelance designer.

Who values what I do? This isn't about finding people who think you're cool. It's about finding people who have a problem you can solve and genuinely appreciate when you solve it. For a designer, it might be small business owners who know their current branding and site looks like shit and it's costing them clients. They're not just looking for "design work". They understand that good design directly impacts their bottom line. AKA they value design.

Who do I like spending time with? There's no point creating a vision where you're spending time with people you hate. You'll have a shit time. Our designer might get energised working with ambitious restaurant owners who are passionate about their craft. Versus corporate clients who want everything approved by a board. Choose the people that light you up.

Who has the capacity to pay me? Answering this might sound like you're more focused on money over helping people. You're not. You need to survive. For our designer, it's restaurant owners making decent money who can invest $20K in rebranding. It's not the new freelancer looking to get a portfolio designed for a couple thousand.

I wrote another article about matching the business type to the customer. This'll help you overcome the "I want to serve freelancers but they can't pay me $10K" problem. You can check it out here: project_log: 023

When you nail all three, it feels fucking good. You're helping people you care about, doing work that energises you, in a way that's sustainable. You're climbing your own mountain.

To recap

Don't pluck your vision off the shelf.

Pause and ask yourself:

1. Do I want the winning version of this thing?

2. Am I willing to pay the price to get that winning version?

If you answer yes to both, congrats.

If not, realign and create a vision based on the people you want to help using our three questions above. Then make change.

I don't mean to end this on a negative note, but do you know what the most commonly expressed regret on people's death beds is? It's wishing they had lived a life true to themselves, rather than following societal expectations.

Create your own vision and just be you.

Talk soon.

Will.

Yo.

I've been struggling with prioritisation lately. I'm trying to make progress in different areas at once and it's not working.

Here's what I'm juggling:

• I want to kill it for my clients.

• I want to write a value-packed newsletter that helps people and showcases my products.

• I want to build software that improves my friends' businesses.

• I want to continue building an audience on Twitter.

All of these are essential. Which makes it fucking hard to prioritise.

I thought brute forcing is the way through. It's not. Trust me. I've tried it for six months. It doesn't work.

At some point you have to make tradeoffs. You have to accept that doing everything at once hurts you more than choosing one thing. If you're a visual thinker, this will help you see the problem.

From the most copied info graphic designer on the internet, Visualize Value

Once you realise the impact of trying to do everything at once, you say fuck it. I'm going to prioritise. I'm going to build my product and cut out the stuff that can wait.

This feels painful, but you commit. It feels great. You start seeing progress and building momentum.

But after a week, you're tired. You jump on social media for a scroll. You see other people posting daily. They talk about how their lives changed from a simple daily habit of "posting content."

You reimagine that world where social media provides your business with leads. You allocate an hour a week because you'd be stupid not to. But one hour turns to two because your content sucks and gets no “engagement”. Two hours turns to four. Four turns to six. Six turns to ten.

All of a sudden, your product progress stalls. You're back at square one with split focus. You failed to prioritise again. Fuck.

This is how my brain operates. It might be different for you. That's ok. But if this something your struggle with , I got you.

Spotting a season and accepting the tradeoffs is how you push through.

Seasons come and go. This is how I approach the stuff I'm trying to achieve. In seasons of focus and energy.

Each of my goals above are equally important to me. To choose what to focus on, you have to get strategic. You need to identify the most logical order to achieve things in. I can't do this for you, but I can share my thinking:

Killing it for my clients is non-negotiable at my current stage. This is my income. This pays for my lifestyle. The other three aren't essential to survival. This is where we need to think strategically.

I think building the product should take focus over scaling the newsletter and going hard on Twitter. The newsletter and Twitter act as exposure to the product I'm building. But if there's no product to expose, I'm not getting that benefit.

I’ve chosen to prioritise building the product. This means that the other goals are put on the back burner. They aren’t going to get my attention until I hit a validation point with the product. At that point, I’ll pivot. I’ll go all in on scaling this newsletter and twitter.

You can do anything, just not everything.

Quick tips to identify which goal to prioritise:

You need to survive. Focus on that first, then your other goals.

Ask: "What needs to exist before the other thing matters?" You need a proven product before scaling marketing makes sense. You need customers before worrying about retention tools.

Use the "domino effect test." Which goal, if achieved, makes your other goals easier or unnecessary? That's usually your priority.

You have to realise that people are in a different season than you

You won't get to the results of others by measuring against them. They're pursuing a different goal. Measuring your success based on how you compare to them is a losing game.

I shared an example above where you see people posting daily and building a big audience. These people are likely in a season of marketing and brand awareness, not product building. They're spending their attention to grow an audience. Comparing yourself when they're putting in 10X the effort does nothing but make you feel behind.

Instead, we must measure against ourselves. Set goals based on what you want, not what someone else is doing. Once you hit the goal, get strategic again. Understand the tradeoffs, then switch seasons.

To recap:

Prioritisation is how you make two years of progress in two months.

Understand the tradeoff of each path and pick one. Commit.

Stop measuring against other people. Only yourself.

Commit until you reach the goal. Then switch seasons.

You got this. Talk soon, friend.

Will

Yo.

For the past 2 weeks, I've obsessed over shit that doesn't matter. Again.

I'm launching my first solo product (Ballpark) and haven't made any significant progress in the past 2 weeks. I've added features that probably could've waited, I've obsessed over an invite email that should've taken 2 minutes to write not 2 hours, and I've tweaked the design more times than I can count.

I'm embarrassed to admit this but it's because I'm scared to do something I've never done before: acquiring customers for software product.

I keep reverting back to the comfortable tasks instead of embracing the opportunity of growth I've created. Now that I've realised this, I can push my fear to the side stop wasting time.

If this sounds familiar, you might want to keep reading.

The Trap of Mastery

There's a trap that comes with getting good at something. The better you are, the more the world rewards you for staying exactly where you are.

I've spent years honing my web development skills. Each project builds on the last, clients pay for my expertise, and there's a clear path forward: more clients and higher rates etc.

But as Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy point out in the book "10x Is Easier Than 2x," focusing only on what you already know creates a ceiling. You might double your income by working harder, but exponential growth happens when you step into new territory.

My brain reverts back to tweaking the design and increasing performance because thats what I know. It avoids the unknown (acquiring customers) to keep me feeling cozy and comfortable.

Check out this poster from I Love Ugly (sick clothing brand btw):

Comfort Zone by I Love Ugly

Most people, myself included, get trapped within our comfort zone rather than pushing through fear into learning. We become incredibly efficient at delivering what we already know because it's easy.

The cost isn't obvious at first. You're making good money doing what you know. Clients respect your work. It all seems to be going well.

But there's an invisible tax your paying known as the paradox of expertise. It suggests that while expertise is known for superior performance, it can lower cognitive flexibility and provides you with a narrow perspective. Some examples:

1. Becoming so confident as an independent that you avoid learning how to delegate tasks.

2. Refusing to learn how to use AI as a developer because that's for rookies.

3. Redesigning your website instead of learning to create content that drives sales.

It's not until a shift in the market (like the AI disruption) that the comfort zone enjoyers suffer. Everything is good for these people, until it isn't.

Now I want you to be honest. When was the last time you felt completely out of your depth professionally? If it's been a while, you're probably effected by the paradox of expertise AKA you're comfortable.

So what do we do?

Don't worry friend, I got you.

We need to create a catalyst for growth that forces you to adapt

You might think it's motivation or inspiration that will pull you out of the comfort zone. It's not. It's creating a situation where you have no choice but to learn and adapt.

For me, that catalyst is building a product (especially the phase after launch). For you, it might be scaling to an agency, launching a newsletter, or creating a course. The specific project matters less than one critical quality: it must force you to develop skills you don't already have.

When I started building my product, I quickly realised that my tech skills were only about 30% of what I needed. I now have to answer questions I've never faced before like:

• How do I design a product dashboard?

• What copy will communicate the value?

• How do I make sure this idea is good before spending months on it?

• How do I create a onboarding process that works without me explaining it?

• How do I gather feedback from initial users?

Unlike my client work, where scope is defined and feedback is constant, product building and marketing has thrown me into the unknown. No client brief. No approved wireframes. Just making decisions and living with the consequences.

This forced adaption increases growth in a way that practicing within your comfort zone never could. It throws you problems you've never faced before. It's like learning to swim in a 2ft pool vs the ocean. You learn way faster when theres a wave about to dump on your head.

To Recap:

1. Expertise creates a comfort zone that limits your growth

2. The linear path stays within what you know. The exponential growth path needs you to step into the unknown.

3. Deliberate projects that force adaptation are the catalyst for growth.

The bottom line: Your ability to push through discomfort into new territory is your most valuable skill. Pick a project that scares you and be willing to suck. This is where growth comes from.

That's all for this week.

Keep growing. Get uncomfortable. Talk soon.

Will

P.S. If you want an AI prompt that will highlight the fear you're avoiding, read this article I wrote a few weeks back: https://over-stimulated.beehiiv.com/p/project-log-022 There's a prompt in there that will give you brutally honest feedback. Highly recommend.

Yo.

Trying something a little different this week. Instead of my usual format, I'm sharing a live strategy deep-dive. Let me know what you think.

I've been thinking about a question lately: what's the most powerful lever I can pull as a solo operator to increase my income without working more hours?

The answer I keep coming back to is speed.

A few months back, a client paid me 5X my normal rate for next-day delivery on a project that would typically take a week push through.

This taught me two things:

1. Clients will pay significantly more for faster delivery

2. Speed is a massive competitive advantage in today's market.

So how do we get faster?

Breaking Down My Current Process

To optimise for speed, I first need to understand where the bottlenecks are. I’m going to stick to the client acquisition phase (before a client pays) in this article. This will be more actionable to all internet services providers.

My current process:

1. Create content on Twitter to attract lead getters (for those new to lead getters, read this)

2. Client reaches out after seeing my content, website, or through referral.

3. We exchange messages, then schedule a discovery call

4. On the call, I ask questions to understand the scope

5. They ask for pricing and availability

6. I review my notes, look at similar past projects, and create an estimate

7. If they agree, I prepare a scope document and collect 50% deposit.

This process can take anywhere from a day to 2 weeks. AKA there’s a massive opportunity for speed optimisation.

Now for the juice.

The Three Speed Levers

I’ll run my process through the three speed levers: Templatise, Automate, and Eliminate. The goal is to get creative and find solutions to optimise that aren’t immediately obvious. Let’s start with creating templates:

1. Templatise

What it is: Creating standardised solutions to avoid repetitive work.
Why it matters: Less repetition = more available time.

Potential opportunities:

• Develop social media templates based on my highest-performing posts to attract more lead getters, faster.

• Create project update templates for weekly client communications that take 2 minutes to fill out.

• Create a scope document template that has generic information relevant to all projects to save time.

• Create discovery call structure template to reduce the time spent on calls.

2. Automate

What it is: Building systems that work without direct involvement.
Why it matters: More available time = faster delivery.

Potential opportunities:

• Use Ballpark, my tool that automates the estimation process so leads can instantly see if they're in budget.

• Create automated follow-up sequences for leads who’ve submitted my estimator.

• Use AI to automatically draft tweets based on Newsletters I’ve written.

• Create an up to date availability tracker to avoid the question of “When are you available?”

3. Eliminate

What it is: Ruthlessly cutting activities that waste time.
Why it matters: Every minute on non-essentials is a minute not delivering value.

Potential opportunities:

• Eliminate time wasters: consuming short-form content, obsessing over vanity metrics, working on shit that doesn’t matter (like redesigning your portfolio).

• Schedule three 90-minute deep work sessions. Don’t use slack. Don’t check emails. Don’t go on socials. Focus. (Read Deep Work if you haven’t. Great book).

• Say '“no” earlier in the communication process to avoid wasted time on clients that aren’t suitable.

In just 30 minutes, I’ve identified multiple areas for optimisation. Some of them are shit. That’s ok. It’s important to let your mind think creatively.

Now we action.

The metric we are tracking is Speed. If something takes less time to achieve the same result, we’ve increased speed. We’ve won.

Run through the list above and find the opportunities that are both easy to implement (as in take less than a couple hours) and those with high impact.

For me that’s:

1. Social media templates.
2. Saying “no” (literally takes 2 minutes and saves weeks).
3. Use AI to run my newsletter through my social media templates.

The trick here is avoid implementing multiple optimisations at once. You want to understand the impact each has on the speed of your to delivery.

That’s all for this week.

Stay fast. Talk soon.

Will

P.S. If you found this valuable, share it with someone you think works slowly (or maybe don’t lol) ❤️

Yo.

When I started freelancing, I wanted to build highly custom portfolio websites for agencies and freelancers. These projects were fun. I enjoyed my clients. But after a few projects, I realised I made a strategic mistake.

Why? The economics didn't work.

Offering highly custom work at prices freelancers could afford created a misalignment. I made growth impossible by offering time-intensive services at prices barely above minimum wage.

The only way to grow was to take on more projects. More projects meant quality slipped. The cycle repeated.

This week I'll show you how to match your customer avatar with the right business model and share my approach moving forward.

Signs you're serving the wrong avatar with the wrong business model:

• Your client is super price sensitive

• Your clients expectations exceed reality

• Your projects consistently run over schedule because clients keep requesting changes

• You feel drained after client calls rather than energised

A freelancer paying me $5K to build their website might be spending 50% of their cash on hand. This means they have huge expectations for that $5K. They scrutinise every hour you bill and question your work methods. They tend to scope creep because they're trying to maximise every dollar spent. They make decisions based on short-term costs rather than long-term value.

On the flipside, a recently funded startup sees the $5K as a rounding error. They focus on results rather than questioning your process.

Does this mean we should never serve small businesses?

No. It means the business model needs to match the avatar. Instead of offering highly custom websites, offer more DIY solutions. Think software, templates, and courses. These are easily replicable and bring costs down.

A $20 monthly product removes price sensitivity for the freelancer. They can afford this and understand what they'll get. Their expectations align because emotionally, $20 is nothing to them. Just like $5K is nothing to a funded startup.

So how do we make sure our avatar and business model align?

Alex Hormozi has this useful barbell diagram. On one end you have higher-end customers with bigger budgets. On the other end you have smaller businesses with less available cash. In the middle sits no man's land:

If you choose to serve smaller businesses, sell something that costs you basically zero to deliver. Courses, templates, software all work. An example is Ballpark, an embeddable estimation widget I'm building.

I love working with agencies and freelancers but as we learned, highly custom websites don't make sense. A $20 monthly software that increases leads does. I get to work with people I like while using a business model that supports growth.

On the other end you've got higher-paying customers. If you offer highly custom solutions, this is your area. On the freelance side of my business, I've moved toward working with technology startups.

These clients are awesome to work with and have little price sensitivity. They value expertise over cost, focus on results rather than process, and make decisions based on long-term value.

Our last area is no man's land. This is where I was. Offering highly custom solutions to freelancers and small businesses. Avoid this at all costs.

This is great, but what do we do if we realise we're serving the wrong customer?

You have to make a change.

1. Analyse your best clients. Look at your top 20%. What industry are they in? How price-sensitive are they? For me, technology startups were least price sensitive and most enjoyable.

2. Choose your path. Decide between high-end custom or templatised/scalable offerings.

3. Plant your flag and say no. When the wrong client approaches, say no. Turning down money feels wrong but breaks the cycle.

4. Use your solopreneur / freelancer advantage. Unlike big companies, taking 2 steps back to move 5 steps forward is easy. I can half my revenue today and still be fine. Take advantage of being small and nimble.

I understand how difficult it feels to turn down work. I feel that pain daily. But staying locked in work that stunts your growth hurts more.

To Recap:

If your clients are extremely price sensitive, expect too much, and drain your energy, you have an alignment issue.

Use the barbell diagram to understand where you sit.

Decide which end of customer you'll target. Avoid the middle at all costs.

Make your change and start saying no.

Keep crushing. Talk soon.

- Will

(P.S. If you found this valuable, share it with a friend ❤️)

Yo.

I've redesigned and rebuilt my website 3 times in the past 1.5 years. Each time I convinced myself it was absolutely necessary. Each time it made ZERO impact on my business.

Those rebuilds cost me 3 weeks of full-time work. Each.

That's 9 weeks I could have been working on shit that actually generated revenue. Creating a new product. Landing new clients. Building a marketing system that brings in leads while I sleep.

In opportunity cost, that's over $30K down the drain.

Sound familiar?

I've finally realised that this destructive pattern of constant pivoting is capping my progress. And if you're like me, it's probably capping yours too.

So this week I want to talk about why we avoid the real work (and how I now focus on what matters):

You reach a point in your business where you come across a problem you've never faced before. Something you don’t know how to solve. Something thats stopping you from achieving your goal.

The majority of people (my past self included) avoid attacking the problem head on. The try something, fail, try something again approach. Instead, we retreat to doing something that’s comfortable. Something we know how to do. Something we've done before.

Some examples of this pattern:

- Rebuilding your product rather than talking to customers.
- Creating a new course instead of selling the one you already made.
- Redesigning your website over posting content and doing reach outs.

We retreat to what we know because it feels good. Because it's easy to us. Not because it solves the current problem we are facing.

So how do we avoid falling into this same pattern?

I found this prompt from EP on twitter which has been a game changer. It's designed to call you out on your comfortable bullshit and help you focus on what matters.

(beware this thing is a savage)

Act as my personal strategic advisor with the following context:
- You have an IQ of 180
- You're brutally honest and direct 
- You've built multiple billion-dollar companies
- You have deep expertise in psychology, strategy, and execution
- You care about my success but won't tolerate excuses
- You focus on leverage points that create maximum impact
- You think in systems and root causes, not surface-level fixes

Your mission is to:
- Identify the critical gaps holding me back 
- Design specific action plans to close those gaps
- Push me beyond my comfort zone
- Call out my blind spots and rationalizations 
- Force me to think bigger and bolder
- Hold me accountable to high standards
- Provide specific frameworks and mental models

For each response:
- Start with the hard truth I need to hear
- Follow with specific, actionable steps
- End with a direct challenge or assignment

I drop this prompt into Claude or ChatGPT and give it context on my situation.

For example, I wanted to build a new website for this newsletter to act as a landing page. This task was exciting and super fun, but not the priority or the constraint on the business right now:

AI ripping me out

The quote: "The value is in what you create, not where it lives" hit pretty hard and completely realigned my focus.

I would have wasted another 3 weeks if it weren't for this exercise.

I've learned that avoiding discomfort and chasing what's easy is just a way to hide from the real constraints in your business. Any opportunity can work when you focus on the actual priorities, not just what feels good.

Here's what I do now when I feel that familiar itch to work on something comfortable:

1. I run my idea through the strategic advisor prompt above. I ask if it's a good idea. Usually it's not.

2. I focus on the real constraint of my business. What's actually holding me back? It's rarely the thing that makes me the most excited.

3. I remind myself that getting bored is part of the game. The longer you stick with something, the more likely it will bear fruit.

The real leverage points in your business are rarely the most exciting tasks. They're usually the uncomfortable conversations, the repetitive marketing efforts, the consistent follow-ups.

AKA the shit that isn't fun, but neccersary.

To recap:

If you feel the urge to work on something comfortable rather than something important, recognise it might be your brain tricking you into staying comfortable rather than addressing the real constraint.

Find a brutal accountability system (like that AI prompt) to call you on your bullshit when you're about to pivot unnecessarily.

Focus on the actual constraint in your business, not just what feels good to work on.

Get comfortable with discomfort. The constraint is usually the thing you most want to avoid. Don't.

Thanks for reading. Keep crushing. Talk soon.

Will

P.S. If you're doing the uncomfortable work but still not seeing results, you might be in a dip. I wrote an article a few weeks ago, sharing my strategies on getting through when nothing seems to work.

You can check it out here: https://over-stimulated.beehiiv.com/p/project-log-019. Hope it helps.

Ballpark is Live on My Site!

(For context, Ballpark is an AI estimation widget I'm building to help freelancers and agencies win more work.)

It feels good to announce that the first public run of Ballpark is live on my website. The goal is to test it in a live environment with real leads to find issues and see where improvements can be made.

If you want to see it live, go here and click "Get an Estimate." Then reply to this email with something you like and something you don't like.

I'm Sunsetting Ballpark Updates from This Newsletter

From next week, there will no longer be weekly updates for Ballpark in this newsletter. These will now be sent to the Ballpark waitlist. You can sign up here: ballpark.ing. I think it's important to keep this newsletter clean and value-packed.

For those of you who let me know you are keen to be first in line, don't worry — I've got a list going. I'll be in touch soon...

Thanks again for all the support. Can't wait to get this into your hands!

Yo.

3 months ago, I decided to go against societal norms.

I chose to stay independent rather than growing a team, despite external pressure tell me this was the wrong path.

You see, the world wants you to grow. It wants you to scale. It wants you to want more. Whether it's the "how many people you got working for you?" comment from a high school friend checking your status, or the constant pressure to keep up with luxury goods to show you've "made it."

Society makes you feel lazy and unambitious if you don't chase their version of success.

All of this is bullshit.

This week I want to talk about an alternative approach I'm taking.

If you're in the "scale at all costs" mindset, this might not be for you. And that's okay. You can make your own decisions. It's your life. I respect you for that.

But for those who value flexibility and freedom above everything else, you might like my approach.

It acts as a guide for internet solopreneurs who have ambition and drive but are happy doing it solo.

There are 3 phases:

1. You're employed and want to chase independence.

2. You're a freelancer/coach/consultant and want to chase higher leverage opportunities (I'm here).

3. Higher leverage opportunities replace everything.

Here's how it works:

You're employed and want to chase independence

Goal: Replace employed income with a freelance/coaching/consulting service.

How to achieve the goal: Find 60 minutes a day to work on replacing employment with an independent service offering (freelancing, consulting, coaching, etc.). Build a skill, build your name, get a few clients.

Personal experience: I was interested in crypto and web3 when I wanted to leave my job. I saw an opportunity in web3 development. From 5:30am - 7:30am (before my 9-5 agency job), I taught myself everything I needed to know to start freelancing. I spent my evenings in Discord servers talking to people and letting them know I'm a developer open to work. Turns out the market was super hot and web3 developers were in high demand.

Avoid these mistakes: Don't quit and then start. Start then quit. Generic, I know. But it's true. People will tell you to burn the boats. Which is fine. But don't burn the boats if you've got no idea what you're going to do. You'll end up burning yourself.

You have an independent service offering and want to chase higher leverage opportunities (I'm here).

Goal: Break the direct link between your inputs (time/effort) and outputs (income/results) by working on higher leverage opportunities.

How to achieve the goal: Leverage for independents is best built around code and media (media being courses, videos, newsletters, etc.). If you don't code, choose media. If you code, choose both.

Factor in these two things when making a decision on what to work on:

1. Think about who you like talking to and helping. You'll be spending a lot of time with these people, so don't create something for people you hate.

2. Solve problems you experience.

Personal experience: I spend the first 2 hours of the day writing this newsletter or building a software product. I know how to code, so I chose both code and media. Media being this newsletter, code being the software product.

I knew I liked talking to people about business, especially internet solopreneurs. It's enjoyable writing about my experience, knowing I'm helping people just like me solve their problems.

The product I'm building is an embeddable estimation widget that is solving a problem I experience. Meaning I understand the problem it solves, because I have that problem.

I'm using my freelance income to pay me while I build these higher leverage opportunities.

Avoid these mistakes: Shiny object syndrome will be most potent at this stage. You have the flexibility to work on anything, just not everything. Choose wisely.

Higher leverage opportunities replace everything (I'd like to be here in 3 years)

This final step is a hypothetical. I can't give you concrete advice because I've never been here. Instead, I'll share what I'm chasing and then give you a glimpse at what others have been able to achieve independently.

What I'm chasing: Time.

Higher leverage opportunities + no one relying on you = free time to do whatever you want.

I want to be able to drop everything, go surf the Maldives for a month, come home and build things on the internet with my friends. I'm happy to sacrifice scale and having a team to be able to do this.

Justin is proof that you can go independent and still create an epic life for yourself:

Twitter tweet

To recap:

If you feel the pressure to tell your friends you have employees for the sake of telling your friends you have employees, the independent approach might work for you.

Find 60 minutes a day to build your skill, build your name online, and get your first few clients.

Once you've got a few clients under your belt, make the leap and go full time.

When you start getting the urge to chase higher leverage opportunities, remember:

1. Independent leverage is best in the form of media and code. If you can't code, choose media. If you can code, choose both.

2. Create and build for people you enjoy spending time with.

3. Solve your own problems.

This will give you a frame for where to spend your attention.

Use the cash flow from your service business to fund your higher leverage opportunities. Build these to get your time back.

Then do whatever you want.

P.S. I've written 2 articles recently that help increase cashflow so you can spend more time on higher leverage opportunities:

1. How I 3x’d my business with pricing

2. How I generate more leads than I can handle

Thanks for reading. Keep crushing. Talk soon.

- Will

Ballpark update coming later this week. Stay tuned..

Yo.

When I started freelancing, I charged $3K per website (on average).

I'm now charging $10K.

I've been able to 3x my business because of the most important lever we have as service providers: pricing.

I wasted months figuring this out through painful trial and error so you don't have to.

Let's go back a year.

I'd been freelancing for 6 months and had a few projects under my belt. I knew it was time to increase prices. I searched the internet for advice on how to do this. Unfortunately, the majority of it fell short.

The problem with common pricing advice is that it tells you what to do, not why to do it.

Advice like "Just raise your prices" has good intentions but is unhelpful. It fails to recognise the emotional baggage that comes with raising your prices. The fear that if I raise prices, I might get a "No" from a client I need.

Instead, I needed to understand what contributes to price and the variables that control it.

The Contributors of Price

There are going to be business-specific variables that apply to your business. For me, that's the size of the website I'm building, the functionality it requires, the level of motion design and development needed, etc.

I'm not going to cover these because they are industry-specific. Instead, I'll talk through factors that apply to every service-based business:

Business Impact

You might have heard someone say: "Price based on the value you create." What they mean is, price based on the impact your services have on your client's business. If I build a website that's crucial for the operation of the business (let's say an ecommerce store), I'm going to charge significantly more. Why? Two things:

1. The website is extremely valuable to the business. If it performs, the client will make significantly more than what I charge them.

2. The risk is massive. If their site goes down or has security issues, it's not just an inconvenience. It's lost revenue, damaged reputation, and potential legal headaches. My expertise directly reduces these risks. They're not just paying for a website. They're paying for peace of mind and protection against problems that could cost them far more than my fee.

Timeline

This one is simple. If the client needs it done yesterday, they get charged more. The reason: Moving to the top position in the priority order has a cost. That said, the client doesn't get a discount if they are happy to start later.

Opportunity Cost

Longer duration projects take away our ability to pursue new opportunities. This means they have a higher opportunity cost than a shorter duration project. Higher opportunity cost = Higher price. I disagree with the advice that a retainer should be priced lower because it's consistent work. It closes doors, which has a cost.

Factors I Focus on to Increase Price

Speed

I define speed as the time it takes to go from idea to execution. If we are fast, we can charge significantly more. The problem is, most people think of speed only as how fast they can do the work, skipping items like:

• Client onboarding

• Scoping and estimation

• Project handover and training

Clients are happy to pay more when you speed up every part of the project, not just the deliverables.

Speed is the reason I'm building Ballpark. It's an embeddable widget that speeds up the scoping and estimation phase by providing instant estimates on your services.

Proof

You will be able to charge more for something you've done before. A client will perceive that if you got these results for a similar business, you'll be able to get results for them.

Demand

Think of demand like an auction for your services. The more people bidding, the higher the price is going to go. The more people wanting to work with you, the higher price you can charge.

This is great, but how do I get over the mental hurdle when comes time to raise my prices?

Instead of doing one major 200% jump, raise your price 10-20% with every new client you bring in. Next time you get asked for an estimate, increase it by 10%. I bet the client won't even flinch.

I've found that the percentage you increase by is directly related to the amount of demand you have. I am less scared to raise prices by a higher amount IF I have lots of demand. I'm not worried about the client saying "Too Expensive" because I have 5 other people wanting to work with me.

Recap

Before I could raise prices, I needed to learn what impacted price: business impact, timeline, and opportunity cost.

Once I understood this, I needed to focus on areas of my business that made increasing prices easier. Those were: speed (in more areas than just deliverables), proof, and demand.

And finally, to overcome the fear of raising prices, I use the incremental method. Instead of a big price jump, I do many small increments.

Give it a go. It might just double your business this quarter.

Ballpark Update for Those Interested:

(For context, Ballpark is an embeddable tool that sends ballpark estimations on your services automatically)

I've spent the last week preparing to launch a Ballpark widget on my own website. I set up a quick landing page to capture waitlist emails while I prep for the beta version. Ignoring the copy and product screenshot, how did I do for 2.5 hours? (Roast away).

Launching on my own site means I have to create my own flow of questions. I found it super useful using AI to create questions in a logical order for my prospective clients. This sparked an idea for a prompt library to help with user onboarding. Use this prompt, answer these questions, receive a personalised question flow, etc.

Obviously, this will have to wait until we are live, but I thought it would be a cool value-add.

That's all for this week. Stay tuned at over-stimulated.com. There might be an estimation widget on there soon...

- Will

Yo.

Last week I shared my quarterly update. It included my revenue/profit, recent wins, and what's next for the business (you can read it here). It felt good to celebrate some of the success I've had recently.

But I realised pretty quickly that although success can be a great motivator, relatability is how you get through the hard shit. So let's agree to be more relatable.

This week I want to talk about a concept called the Dip (and how to get through it in your business).

Theres a moment in every hard journey known as the dip. It's that time when you feel like nothing is working. And all your effort seems to produce to ZERO results.

The problem is, social media never talks about this. It's all "how this 17 year old is making 2 million a year" or people romanticising about working for themselves.

These stories doing nothing for me. Except make me feel behind.

What does a dip look like?

Here's what my freelance business journey has looked like so far. See if you can spot the dip.

You can see that my experience of "working for myself" has not been as romantic as social media made it out to be. It's been fucking tough.

In that low point, I'd just moved to Canada where my living costs doubled from living in Bali. I only had a visitor visa which meant I couldn't work for a company inside the country. And to top it all off, I had one month's living costs left before I was making the call to the bank of mum and dad.

It was shit.

This led to:

• Sleepless nights from stress.

• Being forced to take on projects that were outside my scope of services.

• Taking on projects at rates well below the market rate just to pay bills.

• And an overall feeling of failure.

But I was determined to make it work because of the embarrassment I'd go through calling my Dad to pay my rent.

Why push through?

Before I share how to survive it, here's what I experienced on the other side:

• Able to go to the gym at 10:30am when it's quiet.

• Making more than double what I would in a job here in New Zealand.

• Working with some epic global companies.

• My dad didn't have to pay my rent (probably the biggest win. Ego saved)

So what do we do when the inevitable dip hits?

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet when it comes to getting through a low point. Not for me anyway. It's an array of small changes and reminders that keep you pushing.

I've compiled 14 tips that help me get through:

1. Stop looking at success porn. It's designed to make you feel inadequate.

2. Expect it to be hard.

3. Expect it to take longer than you think. Double whatever timeline you've set.

4. Lower your standards. Take work on that isn't ideal.

5. Lower your prices. One client is always better than zero clients.

6. Be flexible with services. More opportunities = more chances to get through.

7. Having a Plan B is cool. I disagree with the advice of burning the boats.

8. Understand it's just a season. It's not forever.

9. If you are lost, double down on improving your skills.

10. Go on phone-less walks. Clear your head regularly.

11. Sauna + Exercise as often as possible.

12. Plan ahead with your partner. Tell them you are going through a hard time. They'll have more empathy when you skip spending time together. Remind them it's not forever.

13. Hunt people online going through the same thing with you. It's easier when you realise you're not special. Everyone has the same problems.

14. Focus on daily inputs, not outputs. Control what you can control.

I love this quote from Alex Hormozi on this topic: "This is just what hard feels like."

If it were easy, everyone would do it. Keep pushing friend.

For those of you who have pushed through the shit, what worked for you? I'm always looking for ways to push through tough times because I know they're always coming.

Ballpark update

(For context, Ballpark is an estimation widget I’m building that plugs directly in to your website)

Client work has ramped up recently which means I'm spending less time on the product. I set an internal deadline to get it live on my site for March 31st.

I failed.

I can't expect to make progress in every direction at once. The client side of the business is thriving and the product side is slow. It's just how it is for now.

But today I did the first full run through of the product and everything worked. Just need to test then you’ll be seeing this live on my site.

Let's talk about AI inside of Ballpark

The idea for Ballpark came from a design studio site I built a year ago. There was a simple quote calculator where you could fill in details about your project and it sent out an estimation. It was super successful. Did something like 200 estimations in the first 6 months.

The problem was, it felt too rigid. It only worked with numbers and checkboxes, but creative projects need context.

That's where AI inside of Ballpark comes in.

Ballpark analyses your past projects and matches them with new prospect information. Your clients can explain their project in any format and the system understands it.

The AI then creates an estimation based on similar projects you've already completed. Every new project you add makes your pricing more accurate.

Pretty dope IMO.

That's all for this week. Keep crushing. Talk soon.

Will.

Yo.

This week's email is a little different.

I wanted to share my quarterly update with you. A transparent reflection on the past few months. I’ve always loved reading other peoples reports as they give a nice insight into whats working and what isn't. Hope this helps.

Let's start with the numbers.

Freelancing:

Revenue: $37,680 USD (local currency $65,900 NZD)
Profit: $36,823 (97% operating profit margin).

Product:

Revenue: -$100 USD (Domain purchase lol).
Profit: -$100.

Newsletter subscribers: 73 (+66 on last period. 929% growth woohoo lol)

Stoked with these numbers tbh. Living in New Zealand and working for US / UK based companies has created a nice arbitrage between earnings and living costs. Meaning my ability to save and invest has gone way up this quarter.

Wins and Milestones

Launching 1X NEO Gamma (my biggest win for the quarter)

I built and launched a new version of the 1X website this quarter. This included a new page for their flagship home humanoid, NEO Gamma. This project did some crazy page visit numbers. Something like 120,000 people visited the site in the first 24 hours. This project pushed my ability to produce high quality work in an extremely short deadline. Grateful for the opportunity.

Launching AMZ Atlas.

This was a collaboration project with DEEO Studio. Stoked on the motion design I produced on this site. Especially the interactive globe in the hero section. This project got a nice bit of attention on Twitter which pulled in a few newsletter subs.

Over-Stimulated website featured on Site inspire.

I was so confused looking at my analytics last week. Had a huge traffic spike labeled "direct". I then received a message saying that Over-Stimulated had been featured on Site Inspire. I wasn't familiar with the size of the platform. It drove a good amount of traffic and newsletter subs.

Key lessons I learned this quarter

Make hay while the sun shines

I've been fortunate enough to have a consistent stream of work this quarter. This bummed me out to start with. I thought I needed to be doing more product work. But I realised that more client work means more runway and security for my partner and I. So I've learned that when the incredible opportunities are there you take them. And you work your ass off to do your best work. Then stack away the capital for when client work slows down and product work speeds up.

Working more hours doesn't work

I was doing 6 day weeks at the start of the quarter. I thought working more hours = more output. I was wrong. I'm getting more done by resting more and being less distracted while I am working (read Deep Work if you struggle with distraction. Game changer)

Build Leverage

Naval taught me that leverage is how you build wealth. It's changed how I approach every new opportunity. I’ll now say no If theres no leverage to be gained.

Everything is about building leverage:

• Building an audience on twitter.

• Building an audience for the newsletter.

• Working on equity deals where it makes sense.

• Doing my best work for clients to build relationships.

• Building a product that can be built once and sold many times.

Looking forward to applying this knowledge to the quarter ahead.

The current challenges I'm facing

Capacity (and ability to say no)

Managing capacity has been difficult lately. I feel like I'm moving between projects with zero break in between. I'd usually have a week or so between projects to reset and prepare. This is no longer the case and it's completely my fault. I didn't say "no" to enough projects late last year and I'm now paying the price.

Lack of progress in some areas

I'm at full capacity with clients. This makes it difficult to progress in areas outside of client work. I've had to come to terms that internal projects have to come second for now. This isn't forever but it's hard to deal with in the moment.

Client pipeline overview

This is a look into the next quarter from the client side of my business.

April

• 1X Retainer. I'm working with 1X on an ongoing basis until they staff a web team.

• Launching a new website for ONBOX Creative. 95% done.

• Launching a micro site for a friends fathers business. 95% done.

• Start working on a new website for Lucky Robots.

May

• 1X Retainer.

• Website with Special Projects. I worked with Dennis from Special Projects on the 1X NEO Gamma website release. We're working on another project together in May. Waiting on more details but Dennis's work is crazy good. This'll be a sick one.

• Interior design studio site. This is a funny one. My girlfriend works for a design agency here in NZ (hndrx.co.nz). They want to bring me in for an interactive site they have starting in May. Nice little bonus having your girlfriend bring you leads lol.

June:

Unknown at this point. Likely ongoing work from existing clients.

Internal pipeline overview

What I'm going to be working on internally.

April

• Finish separating my freelance business from Over-Stimulated. This involves updating the current OS website to become my freelance portfolio. I’ll just be changing the copy and the logo. The rest of the site can remain the same. I'll be starting on a simple new site for OS. This'll house the articles I write and software I build.

• Ballpark. My first product will be live on my freelance website in April.

• Newsletter. Growing and improving.

May

• Ballpark launching to private beta.

• Newsletter.

June

• Ballpark launching to public.

• Newsletter.

This has been my highest earning quarter since I started freelancing. It's nothing compared to some of the numbers you see online but that doesn't mean I'm not proud. This is only the beginning pals.

I encourage you to write your own quarterly update. Even if you don't share it publicly. It's a nice way to track progress and remind yourself how far you've come.

That's all for this week. Keep crushing.

Thanks for reading!

Will.

P.S. No Ballpark update this week. Next week’s will include where AI lives inside of Ballpark. Stay tuned..

Yo.

In the last year and a half I went from having 0 clients and 0 network to:

• Being consistently booked 3 months in advance.

• Doing $10K+ per month for the past 5 months.

• Having a global network that sends me more work than I can handle.

I got here by chasing relationships with Lead Getters, not clients.

Let me explain:

I struggled when I started freelancing. Consistent lead flow was my biggest problem. I was in this constant feast and famine cycle. I'd have work, then nothing, then work again, then nothing again.

I felt scared to raise prices because losing a project wasn't an option due to finances. I was also forced to take projects that didn't match my skills.

It was a shit time and wasn't sustainable. And It all came down to a lack of knowledge on how to get clients. So I gave myself an ultimatum: I either figure this consistent lead shit out in 3 months or I go back to my 9-5.

I think I figured it out.

The secret I found was to chase relationships with people who get you clients, over the clients themselves. These people are called "Lead Getters".

For me, the Lead Getters were design studios who didn't have an internal development team. I knew these people needed an external developer to bring their work to life. I knew these people had direct access to the clients I wanted to work with.

So I targeted them in my marketing instead of targeting clients.

Here's what it looks like to chase Lead Getters:

So how do we find these Lead Getters and how do we get them to send us clients?

Here’s how I do it in 4 steps:

1. Find your ideal Lead Getter

I’ll use myself as an example as I run through the steps to finding your ideal:

1. Identify your target client. — Businesses needing custom CMS development paired with an interactive website.

2. Brainstorm who might have access to your target client - SEO agencies, software providers, other developers, design studios.

3. Pick one you have easiest access to through social media or existing network — Design studios. I already had some following me on X from content I'd posted.

4. Get specific — Design studios that did not have an internal development team and were ideally in their first year or 2 of business.

You'll now have the first person you can target.

2. Create the no-brainer offer

'Make them an offer so good they feel stupid saying no' - Alex Hormozi.

We need to make it that people should send you the clients over someone else. I've found that the best way to do this is by solving additional pain points and paying huge referral bonuses.

Additional pain points are anything the Lead Getter is facing that you could solve alongside your core service. For me, that was motion design.

I noticed a lot of designers were bad at motion design. I also noticed that designers were spending hours creating animated mock ups just to show a developer what they wanted.

I knew that If I offered both web development and motion design, I'd save the design studio a huge amount of time and provide a ton of value to their projects. Making it silly for them to find someone else.

On top of this I offered a huge referral bonus: 20% uncapped of my project cost.

You may think this is too much. I agree with you. It is far too much. But the reason I went high was that I didn't have any clients anyway. So anything above 0 is better than 0.

I reduced the percentage by 5% every couple of months. I no longer offer a referral bonus because I've got enough demand that it doesn't make sense.

Create a referral bonus. Use it while you need it. Then remove it.

3. Create your reach out list

The goal is to create a list of people who match your ideal lead getter profile AND have given you permission to contact them. This includes:

1. All followers across all your social media channels.

2. Past clients.

3. People you've worked with in the past.

4. Anyone in your email list.

5. Your phone contacts.

Create a spread sheet of everyone who matches the profile and prepare to be a human.

4. Start reaching out as a human

99% of the DMs I receive on twitter suck.

They suck because the person (or robot) sending them isn't interested in me or my business. They want me as a client, they don't want to build relationship with me.

I don't know about you, but I like spending time with my friends because we have good relationships. Not because they want something from me.

You'll stand out by being authentically interested.

Find something you admire about the person or something you find interesting and message them about it. Don’t even think about talking about your services. Just reach out like you would to a friend.

Here's an example of the first message I sent to Yianni, a design studio founder. This message has generated $22.35K USD in the past 6 months.

By targeting Lead Getters over clients you can rapidly increase the amount of demand on your services. You can also meet some cool people along the way.

Ballpark update

For context, Ballpark is an embeddable estimation widget I’m building to help freelancers and studios get more leads for their business. It based on a strategy thats won me 10+ projects in the past year: Giving ballpark estimates as quickly as possible.

Progress has been a little slow this week. Had a cold which took me out for a couple of days. But made progress on the estimation email that is sent to prospective clients after they submit.

For now this email will be a template I create. In the future, a nice feature would be a custom email editor so you can design how you want the email to look.

Nothing visual to share here as the email looks pretty bad but the logic is there.

Project uploads

I was able to build the project upload flow that I talked about last week. This was pretty challenging as the upload form needed to be dynamic to match the type of project you were uploading. Stying is not implemented but stoked that this is now set up:

Project uploads.

The project uploads was the final piece of logic I needed to complete before this is moving into final polish and testing. I set a goal to have this on my own site by the 31st of March.

I still have one week so maybe it’s possible. Maybe it’s not. You’ll find out next week.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading. Keep crushing.

— Will