What I would tell myself at the start

A short list for the version of me who had just decided to do this.

Your background is not the handicap you think

I spent the first stretch apologising for not being technical. Wasted energy. The bottleneck in this industry is not people who can build things — it is people who can work out what is worth building. That was already my job.

Charge earlier than feels comfortable

Every piece of work I gave away to prove myself made the work worse and the relationship murkier. Being paid is not a reward for credibility. It creates the conditions for good work.

Small and live beats big and coming

Nothing you have not shipped is real. A modest thing in someone's hands teaches you more in a fortnight than six months building the ambitious version.

Write down what you promised

You will not remember. You will believe you will, and you will not. The gap between a business people trust and one they do not is mostly this, and it is unglamorous and entirely solvable.

The failures are the content

The posts people mention to me are not the ones where things went well. They are the ones where I explain what I got wrong. Buyers have read enough case studies. They are starving for someone honest.

That is where I am up to. More as it happens.