A Day In The Life Of A SaaS Startup Founder
By looking over some of my other articles, you'll know that I've recently launched my new SaaS business - Hawk Prospecting.
This article is going to be more of a laid-back article where I talk all about my day-to-day life as a SaaS founder, running Hawk Prospecting.
Hawk Prospecting is a B2B prospecting software that helps agencies & salespeople supercharge their sales pipelines with our database of 2.5 Billion+ unique prospects.
It's the most effective way to find prospects to power your business.
Before launching Hawk Prospecting, I knew that as soon as I launched it, I will be in a race against time.
There will be no more time for laziness, no more time to procrastinate, no more time to do the things that were not moving the ball forward.
I knew that as soon as this product launches, I will have to shift the gears to gear 7 and do everything in my power to make it a success.
I strongly believe that Hawk Prospecting has the potential to be a multi-million pound company (even billion sometime down the line) and that it's only a matter of time till we're able to experience explosive growth.
The plan is to first validate that what I've built fits the market's needs, that people are happy paying for this product because it solves a problem, and then we can start putting the compound effect into action.
I've previously talked about everything I learnt from launching Hawk Prospecting and so today is solely going to be about what my day-to-day looks like.
My hope is that this either inspires others to pursue their businesses or shows people the truth behind running a SaaS company as a solo founder and stops you from taking a turn that isn't right for you.
The truth of the matter is that there are thousands maybe even tens of thousands of ways to make money and build a business.
However, at least 95% of those businesses will not align with the type of person you are.
It's all about finding the model that works for you and aligns with your vision.
Let's begin.
Wake up
I've said this before: my sleeping habits are not as good as they should be and it's something I must continually work on if I am to reach the point I'm happy with.
Nevertheless, the first thing I do is, like many other people, is wake up in the morning.
The most important thing about waking up is waking up with at least 8 hours of sleep - otherwise, I couldn't function properly.
It's crucial that I have the full 8 hours or else my energy will reflect in my mood and work ethic throughout the day.
The first thing I do when I wake up is start to rack up small wins so that It puts me in a good state of mind when I do start working.
When I build up small victories, it's like a trail of cheese leading to the big reward.
This includes getting up as fast as I can so I don't slip back into my bed.
After this, I quickly make my bed whilst reading out my affirmations and goals.
It's important that I remind myself what I'm working towards every day so that the vision is always in my mind.
What could possibly be worth sacrificing an extra hour or two extra in my comfortable bed? That's a question you have to answer for yourself.
Oftentimes, I also start to stretch because when I wake up, my body is extremely tired and tense.
Once this is done, I then go to the bathroom to clean myself and brush my teeth before I head downstairs.
I have a somewhat small bedroom and so it can get very depressing to work inside a small, dark cube for hours on end.
That's why everything I do, I do it downstairs in my living room.
As long as there aren't too many distractions, you should be good to go.
Morning routine
Technically, as soon as I start doing my bed, my morning routine has begun.
However, it truly begins as soon as I go downstairs and sit down on my couch.
Right in front of my couch, there's a large table which is home to the books I'm currently reading.
I've almost turned my living room into an office - something my mother is not too fond of.
As you can guess, the first thing I usually do when I sit down on the couch is pick up my highlighter and the book I'm reading - which is 'The E-Myth Revisited' in this case - and start to read.
I usually try to read at least one chapter a day, but it varies from book to book and so a better benchmark is reading for 20-30 minutes per day.
I get through less of the book than I'd like, however, It's because I highlight things that I find important to me.
As I read more and more books, I find myself highlighting fewer and fewer things.
For example, the first book I ever read when I discovered entrepreneurship, was 'Rich Dad Poor Dad.'
The highlighting in that book was pretty from the front cover to the back.
However, looking at my most recent books, 'Atomic Habits,' 'Zero To One,' etc, there's not a lot of highlighting going on.
A lot of times, especially when I feel like my mood is not the best it can be, I take a notepad and a pen which are also on the table near my couch, and write things down that I'm grateful for.
I then write down things, goals, that I want to achieve for the day.
Most of the time, especially now whilst I'm running Hawk Prospecting, I know what needs to be done and so the goals are somewhat the same every day.
Finally, I would have breakfast before moving on to the next task.
The most important part of my breakfast, to me, is tea. I have to have tea.
Other than tea, I would usually have eggs, pancakes, or something along those lines.
All of this was in my article on creating a powerful morning routine.
Article writing
Arguably the most time-consuming part of my day is the part where I sit down and write a full article.
I've challenged myself to write an article a day when I first started this blog.
I have managed to keep this up for 2 months (over 60 days), and I still have more articles to write about.
The main reason I'm able to do this consistently is because I already have a topic that I will write about when I sit down to write.
If I had to sit down and think of an article to write about, I most likely would have given up this challenge a few weeks into it at best.
Here's an article on how to never run out of content ideas.
I'm almost at peace with the fact that my content (whether it's YouTube videos, blog posts, business ventures, etc) is not destined for virality.
Therefore, I just have to put in 10x more work and effort than those blessed with the gift of virality in order to reach the same wavelength.
There are those that post one thing every month have millions of people queuing for it like an iPhone release day.
Then there are others, most people in fact, who work 1000s of times harder, put out 100s of times more output just to reach a similar point.
What is the secret? Is it luck? Is it smart work? Is it strategy?
Steering back on track, writing a blog is a lot easier when you know what you're going to write about before you start doing it.
Add on top of this the fact that I'm somehow naturally good at writing, it makes it a lot easier to push out up to 3000 words per day worth of writing.
Interesting fact: Yesterday's article on getting more work done in a day is my longest article so far with around 2900 words.
The reason I wanted to begin this blog anyways is that it's the one thing I never had, and still don't have, while building my business.
A single source of truth, a no fluff guide to business.
The way I speak in my articles is written in a way to connect and inspire, it's written in a way that people can relate to and feel like they're not alone.
I, first hand, understand how lonely entrepreneurship can be and so helping others realise they're not alone is important.
A byproduct of this is that when the compound effect starts to exponentially grow, I'll have a cool little business on the side!
That's why I'm able to write these articles every day - there's purpose and positivity behind it.
The workday
Finally, the real work begins.
This has been the part of the day that has changed the most since I launched Hawk Prospecting.
Currently, Hawk is at a very early stage. The most important thing right now is to establish product-market fit.
When this happens, it essentially opens up the floodgates for new business - it gives you the green light that it's truly go-time.
How do you know when you're there? You wouldn't need to ask.
Prior to starting my SaaS, I owned a marketing agency which I ran for around 6/7 or 8 months.
I adopted techniques I used in my marketing agency to drive how I grow my SaaS business in the early days.
For example, every day, I have a benchmark for how many professionals I want to reach out to.
I cold message 30 people per day on Facebook.
I cold message 20 people per day on LinkedIn.
Then the most time-consuming part, I answer 20 Quora questions per day.
I'm also looking into email marketing too as another means of reaching people.
I'm not sure if I'm being as efficient as possible.
I'm not sure if I'm being as perfect as possible.
What matters is that the work is getting done every day.
On top of all of this, I still have time at the end of the day to get more done.
Therefore, I even post in Reddit groups or message people on Slack too.
There are tons of ways to grow a business.
Content marketing, SEO, paid traffic, etc.
I'm not good at organic growth methods, only paid marketing, which is something I'm not going to be using until product-market fit is established.
Therefore, organic outreach is currently the only way for me to grow.
The actual workday is usually between 10-12 hours long (give or take).
In this time, I'd say at least half of that is spent on work, a little on procrastination, and the rest on doing things I have to do like eating.
In the meantime, I'm also trying to collect feedback from current users on the product and their experience with it.
It's proving to be a lot harder than I thought since a lot of people are not very interested in sharing their thoughts.
Another way I've also been trying to get feedback is by going into groups and looking for people who are currently using competitor products and asking them to test out our solution for feedback.
It's a new strategy I started looking into recently, but it should work well.
All it really takes is 5-10 high-quality users to give you solid feedback.
Therefore, most of my time is spent on getting people on Hawk Prospecting so that I can get feedback from them.
Product iteration
A few weeks ago, I would try to spend as long as I can on the computer to make myself believe that I'm getting work done.
However, I didn't know what I was doing - I just spent a few extra hours mindlessly scrolling the web.
That isn't called work, that is just wasting time.
Now, when I feel like I'm not doing anything, I just get off the computer.
It's so much better for you mentally and physically to get up and walk around, get up and let your mind rest for a while, than to stay at your computer acting busy.
So once all my outreach is done for the day, once I feel like I've done enough work and that there isn't much left to do I have two options.
I can either:
Get off the computer and just end my day
Look into ways to improve the product
I launched Hawk Prospecting early and so there are a ton of things I can add to make it a better piece of software.
The biggest issue with launching early is that I didn't spend time making the software friendly for mobile users.
To my surprise, lots of people in my market actually use their phones to view the software which is terrible for me.
Therefore, I sometimes spend a bit of time looking into ways to make it better.
It's already had major upgrades made to it in the last two weeks that have made it 10x better than it was at the start.
The most important difference was that it now works 5 different ways, not just through LinkedIn and work emails.
Now, you're able to use it with Facebook, LinkedIn, numbers, emails, and names+domains.
This gives people so many more ways to find the prospects they're looking for.
There was also a major problem that looked very bad from the outside looking in: when Hawk Prospecting doesn't return information on a prospect, a long error code popped up.
This made it look like the software does not work.
However, I have replaced this error code with an error message which makes a lot more sense to the end-user.
There are always going to be ways you can improve the product - if you know how then do it.
Other than that, just call it a day - you'd be saving yourself headache, time, and trouble.
End of day
After a long day, it's finally time to get some rest.
For the whole day, I've been working, writing, and working some more.
That's why I use this time to enjoy myself a little bit.
I watch YouTube videos, or a TV show on Netflix with my girlfriend before I go to bed.
Again, this feeds into the start of my day where I said there's space for improvement.
The earlier I sleep, the better off I'll be when I'm working the next day.
There's not much else to talk about here.
I hope this has helped you better understand what it looks like to be a SaaS founder.
In no way do I think I'm a role model to follow - in fact, I think there's a bunch I'm yet to learn too.
However, that is the purpose here. To learn and explore together.
Did you find this article valuable?
If so, please comment below and share this article around with others in your network.
Till next time,
Mohamad
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