162: Michele Hansen — Moving from Side Project to Full Time

The Bootstrapped Founder

I am talking to Michele Hansen, the co-founder of Geocodio, an indie SaaS business in the world of mapping and geolocation. I've been a fan of her work, both as a founder and as an active member of the Indie Hacker community for years now.

I followed her journey with the business just as much as her foray into writing her first book, Deploy Empathy. Michelle really gets the founder community, and she's a respected teacher of all things customer development.

In this episode, we chat about finding the right time to commit to a business, learning when to say no, finding your niche, and learning languages. Enjoy!

You can find Michele on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mjwhansen/. Also, check out her book Deploy Empathy.

Here is a short summary of the topics discussed in this episode:

How do you set boundaries with a podcast? 3:08

How do you judge what you say against what someone else would perceive as useful for themselves? 9:23

How do you make sure you serve the right customers? 13:06

Focus on what you already have instead of where you can go. 19:47

Work in progress vs. goals. 23:13

The journey is the interesting part, not the destination. 28:54

The challenge of self-actualization after a big transition. 31:58

What was the sign that it was time to go full-time? 39:14

The financial hurdle of being an entrepreneur in the US. 42:35

Where the fear of losing everything comes from. 48:09

The mean voice in your head speaking. 51:43

Being able to recognize your own growth is a big part of entrepreneurship. 57:38

Low expectations allow you to surprise yourself, which leads to a better result. 1:00:47

This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire.

Here's the blog post for this episode.
You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.