The Hustle Almost Killed My Ambition

What nobody tells you after you quit your job to chase freedom

Quitting your job and going solo is one of the most misleading things you can do.

Before you quit, you think to yourself:

“I’ll have 16 hours a day to build my projects and grow my presence online. I’ll outwork everyone.”

At least that’s what I thought. And I was sure of it.

I had a YouTube channel. Daily LinkedIn posts.
A Unity game.
One mobile app with a partner.
Another in development.

I thought: “If I plan it correctly, I’ll make a fortune”

What I didn’t understand was how fast you can burn out, lose focus, and drown in your own ideas.

The Part No One Tells You About Going Solo

In the beginning, you’ll be filled with motivation.

I mean, you just took the biggest step of your life. If you are not absolutely f*cking excited about it, then you probably made the wrong choice.

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P.S.
Yes, fear and stress are a part of that excitement.

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And for a few weeks, maybe months, you’re unstoppable. You wake up early, stay up late, and “get things done”.

I managed to:

1. Post more than a dozen YouTube videos

2. Write a daily LinkedIn post (They are long)

3. Learn Unity and build a complete mobile game

4. Start a partnership and end it.

5. Build another app

All that without ChatGPT. Can you imagine?

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And then something happened.

Out of nowhere, I woke up one day completely unmotivated.
Couldn’t find a reason to get out of bed.
Nothing I built worked.
Nothing to show for all those hours.

I was depressed, lonely and useless.

And it lasted for the better part of a month.

I sat in front of the screen, trying to force myself to work, but nothing came out.

It felt like my life had collapsed. Like this new version of me was broken, permanently.

The Next 18 Months

Over the next 18 months, I kept repeating the same cycle. Full motivation, burnout, recovery, repeat.

And in the beginning of these 18 months, I learned what all the pros do.

They ship ideas fast and kill them even faster.

The idea is simple. You ship out as many MVPs as you can, as fast as you can. Then, once an idea catches fire, you double down on it.

On paper, it makes complete sense. So, that’s what I did.

I built dozens of products, shipped 12 and after each product I suffered a burnout.

Nothing worked. Nobody cared. I was failing miserably.

That’s when I started thinking that maybe I was not cut out to be a solopreneur.

I was running out of motivation, time, money and confidence. Something had to change, or I had to quit.

The Deal I Made With Myself

At some point, you just get tired of the cycle.

You have no clue what you’re doing wrong, so you don’t even know what to fix.

You’re stuck in an endless loop of effort without direction.

That’s when I decided that I am going to give this journey one last try. One attempt, at one project.

If it worked, great. I’d keep going.
If not, I’d go back to getting a job and build on weekends.

This was the deal:

1. Choose one idea and focus on it for 6 months.

2. Read the same 5 marketing books until I made my first dollar.

It sounded boring as hell. But I was desperate to make it work. And honestly, I didn’t believe that I would pull this off.

But this simple deal changed everything.

The Mindset Shift

The idea that I decided to take on is a Substack Post Ideas Generator.

I even called it back then ArticleGenerate.com.

It took me less than a week to build an MVP that includes:

1. A Substack like text editor

2. A personalized ideas generator

3. An outline builder for your ideas

And then I had 5 months and 3 weeks to keep building this damn thing.

So my brain immediately started looking for way to improve it. And the first thing that popped to my mind is:

“Find people who’ll want to try it. Give it to them for free, in return for feedback.”

And that tiny thought changed the entire course of my next eight months.

I didn’t know it yet, but that one realization, that my job wasn’t to build, but to fix, completely rewired how I think about creating products.

The “Let’s Make It Work” Mindset

Look, the initial idea I had sucked. It was so bad, that out of close to a hundred DMs I sent to people to try it, less than 10 actually did.

But those 10 that did gave invaluable feedback.

They all told me that coming up with ideas and writing articles isn’t the pain that they have. They lack the time.

But they do wish there was something like this for Notes.

That’s when it hit me. And boy, this coin drop was loud.

“There are plenty of tools that help you with tweets and posts on LinkedIn. Why shouldn’t there be one for Substack?”

And this pivot was the turning point in my journey.

The “ship fast” Orel would’ve just dropped the idea and move on to the next in line.

The “Let’s make it work” Orel found a way to turn an awful idea into a product people pay for.

It took me 600 days to hit my first real win. But when it happened, it changed everything.

Final Thought

Success isn’t about doing everything right. It’s about doing one thing right and doubling down on it.

Doing more doesn’t make you better. It just hides the fact that you don’t know what matters yet.

Once you choose one thing and go all in, life gets brutally simple.

Suddenly decisions are clearer. Progress is measurable. And for the first time, you actually feel like you’re making some progress..

If you’re still stuck, you don’t need another idea.
You need focus.

Pick one thing, stick with it for six months. Read, learn, and iterate until it works.

Your future self will thank you.

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P.S.
If you’re serious about focusing on one thing and actually growing your Substack, you should definitely use WriteStack.

It helps you plan, write, and schedule your Notes, so you stay consistent even when motivation disappears.

P.S. 2

This is the product that started as Article Generate :)

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