I am sure you’ve heard the expression, “he’s a jack of all trades and the master of none”. Fast food restaurants are “jacks,” they carry everything under the sun, salads, burgers, shakes, pies, ice cream, coffees, breakfast burritos etc. And it’s all crap… “Five Guys Burgers” is a franchise burger joint that has a great product, unique setting and a business model that screams less. They have burgers (cheese, bacon or plain) and they have fries (cajun or regular); I believe you can get a hot dog too. But that’s it, they know they can make a killer hamburger loaded with the toppings and they can do it fast and well. Because their menu is small, the ordering is fast, the cooks have less to learn, less to prepare and less food inventory to store.
Now let’s relate that to our industry. I’ve met a lot of freelance designers or freelance developers that try to do too much. Their skill set is one thing and they try to do it all. I’ve seen programmers spend days on a horrible design instead of getting a designer to do it for a couple hundred dollars. Do what you do well and don’t pretend to do it all. There’s no shame in asking for help or getting someone to fill in your project’s gaps. Your code will look like crap to your users without a well designed UI. Designers, your designs won’t fly without good code behind them. Right now if your thinking “hey I can do both” your probably not good at either.
If you wanted it to build a product you’d find a way to get time to work on it. If you really wanted to start that new hobby you’d sacrifice something to find the time and money to do it.
I'll define a "Wannabe Entrepreneur" as someone who has never made money from their businesses. Here are the different types of wannabes.
In the past few years I've built go-carts, built a 200+ sq ft workshop, written several eBooks. How do I create a life where I have time to work on side projects?