Build In Public (BIP) Newsletter #3​
Hi Reader, it’s Friday, and here’s this week’s edition of my Build In Public newsletter.

I’m Pierre, documenting my journey of starting a software consulting business from scratch.

Metrics Update

• LinkedIn: 684 impressions, 287 members reached, 13 engagements (likes, comments).
• Audience breakdown: 14.9% executives (nice, this is who I’m targeting!), 11.1% software engineers.
• I’ve been focusing on growing the exec audience, so seeing that part increase is a win.

Time Management Struggles & GTD Implementation

As many of you know, managing time while building a business is hard. I’ve tried a few methods, but it’s tough to find the right balance between structure and flexibility. For the past few weeks, I’ve been scheduling tasks into my calendar by setting appointments with specific purposes. This method works somewhat, but it’s too rigid for me. Some tasks need more flexibility, and frankly, I just can’t keep up with every single block of time being accounted for.

The real kicker, though, is the constant mental load. I’m thinking about my business all the time—client interactions, ideas, tasks I’ve forgotten about, problems that need solving. My brain doesn’t stop. And it’s seriously affecting my sleep.

So, I decided to dust off the Getting Things Done (GTD) book by David Allen and implement it using Notion as my new dashboard. I used to use Taskwarrior, which was great, but it was command-line only and hard to add tasks on the go. Notion’s flexibility and the ability to dump all my thoughts into an inbox has been really helpful. It reduces cognitive load because I know it’s stored somewhere and will be addressed eventually.

The downside? Notion is slow—especially the web app, which lags a bit. Still, I’m sticking with it for now because it works for the purpose of just getting everything out of my head. It’s still a bit of a discipline to review the inbox and next actions regularly, but overall, I can already feel the mental relief.

Cold Emailing & Prospects

This week, I dove deeper into cold emailing, learning a lot from Fanatical Prospecting. The message is very similar to cold calling: be honest, brief, and don’t pitch—just aim for a discovery call. There are nuances with spam filters and the medium of email, but the core principles still apply from cold call scripts, which I talked about in an earlier newsletter.

I was thinking about automating this process once I’ve got my prospection emails ready, and looked at Apollo.io for email outreach. It looks solid, but it’s expensive and focused mostly on US companies. Plus, my email provider limits me to 20 emails per day. However, automation isn’t necessary yet because I’m still in the early stages and doing this on a small enough scale that manual outreach works fine for now.

LinkedIn Update

On the posting front, I’ve changed my approach a bit. I’ve moved to using Buffer to schedule my posts. It’s just easier and frees up mental space for other tasks. I know I might be sacrificing some reach because of LinkedIn’s potential penalty for scheduled posts, but honestly, I’d rather save the time and cognitive load.

Lead Magnets and AI-Generated Images

I’m also thinking about lead magnets. I’ve heard they’re a solid way to boost cold emailing response rates, so I’m brainstorming what kind of useful, downloadable content I could create. I’ve got a few ideas, but I’m still figuring out the best way to deliver them. And if you have any ideas, reply to this email as I'd love some inspiration.

Oh, and I’ve been experimenting with AI-generated images for my LinkedIn posts. I was skeptical at first, but I have to admit—the results are actually pretty impressive. It’s a quick way to get visuals that look good and stand out, so I’ll definitely be using it more moving forward.

Final Thoughts

That’s it for this week! It’s been a busy one, with some wins and some challenges, but overall I feel like I’m making progress.

As always, feel free to hit reply if you have any thoughts or want to chat. I read every message.

Have a great weekend, and see you in the next one!