So COVID is rough right?
I made it a bit harder for myself, I started my full-time independent journey during this period and as of now, I have nothing to compare it with.
But okay, I started a couple of months after the “big“ lockdowns started in Belgium.
Enough backstory let's start with my “Train of thought” and what I did to get myself some news exposure.
Train of thought
As you all are aware COVID is the hot topic at the moment.
And governments all around the world are trying to get the pandemic under control.
One of these attempts was done on a Thursday which was right before the Easter Monday. On this Thursday they decided that all small shops needed to work with an appointment system.
As you might already think right now, a lot of these smaller businesses didn’t know how to handle this and just decided to close their doors in the meantime.
I immediately thought this was a very bad move from the government and it felt like I should do something about this.
Then I started thinking
“How hard can it be to create something?”
“Shouldn’t take too long”
“Maybe a day or 3 to get something nice”
(Currently, already Friday, since I don’t follow the news that strictly)
I either start it now or I don’t.
One of my shortcomings is that I have a ton of ideas but I delay the execution of them…
But this time, I felt that I NEEDED to push this through, it was a solid idea.
“I will make a website which handles the schedules and I will finish this by Monday, I will make it free for people to use”.
So the rest of that evening I spent brainstorming of how and what exactly.
The work
On Saturday I eagerly started working on it, rapidly seeing it wasn’t going fast enough, since I set my deadline to Sunday evening since I wanted to use Monday as a distribution/ tweak day.
Sunday I started early focused and dedicated to getting this product finished. (Or at least a working and publishable website)
So focused that I didn’t even see the hours pass by.
Eventually, I had a working product (Or at least I thought at that point), I was exhausted and needed some sleep, so at around 4 am I went to bed.
The next morning I needed to wake up early to get this thing to the people who needed it.
So I started with testing it again, and as you might think I had to fix a bunch of bugs from the night before since a tired mind doesn’t perform as well as it felt the night before.
Distribution
Noone, finally I started sending a couple of emails to some businesses which might have use for it.
This didn’t feel productive so I thought, hmm this actually brings a lot of value to the economy and the local people, so let me try to write a small article and sent that one out to journalists and editors.
So I did, I wrote a small article (googled a lot about how to and who to approach) and then I send it to them.
Tuesday now, I got a call from this journalist who got my message and asked me a couple of questions.
After our friendly chat, he asked me if it was okay if he sent his photographer to take some pictures.
I surprisingly and enthusiastically said, “Yes, of course!”.
A couple of hours later he came and took a couple of pictures, this all felt really surreal to me I was hyped and confused.
Seeing it
First I got a message from my mom who saw it on a radio site, where they posted it. (Radio Reflex)
I was excited since this is the first posted one!
A while later I got the one from the photographer as well. It was in a regional newspaper! (HLN - Het Laatste Nieuws)!
Then after a couple of days, my story got covered on the national radio as well!
During this time I kept a close eye on the platform to see that everything was working correctly and even added some small convenience features.
Backlash
I got a ton of messages all congratulating me and being happy I did something back for the community.
It was a huge boost to my energy and my happiness, I never regretted losing some sleep over this project, seeing all the positive reactions towards it was totally worth it!
What’s next?
I will of course keep the site up for free and see how it evolves.
My approach now is gonna be a healthier work ethic, I will treat it as a side project.
But most important when I work on it, it will be with a big smile on my face.
Links
Video link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKuiBR4PxPs
The platform (in dutch):
https://afspraakplanning.be
Some article links:
https://bit.ly/3wKvNZ2
https://bit.ly/3igHuBD
My Companies website:
https://www.celegens.com