July 2022 Status Update
It’s the first Tuesday of the month, and you know what that means!
It’s time for your starbeam.one monthly update.
It Be Awkward
There’s an expression that I learned from Jim Caldwell, a former Detroit Lions coach (and still my favorite after Jim Schwartz). He used an expression that, turns out, is also used in the military: get comfortable being uncomfortable.
That’s sort of where I am at with the present moment. Last month, I deployed the Friends & Family Alpha, primarily due to the fact that I had made a family promise that I would be making money from my endeavors by my birthday.
As a result, the effort was primarily done due to pride. I can’t live down a promise, now can I? In doing so, I now have a live application that on its face does all the activities it claims to do (and thankfully to this point does without exception). However, there are some quite critical functions it does not do, hence leading to the awkwardness that I am facing today.
The primary crux being that I cannot exactly promote this application until these features are in place.
It all begs the question for me: is it worth it to appease one’s pride by keeping promises at the expense of short-term progress? 🤔
Building an Administration Application
So what are these missing features, exactly? Well, for starters, if someone asks for a refund at the moment, we’re sort of in a lurch. This is my top concern. Of course, I am in a Friends & Family alpha and this shouldn’t occur. However, the application is still live and it only takes one person who has the bravery to start digging into this scenario to lead my world into a pit of hurt.
The other issue is withdrawals. Originally, I had intended for every withdrawal to be reviewed before being allowed. This review/policy check is currently not in there, and in its stead a $10-15 min/max window is applied with a once-per-24-hour limit. Again, not too big of an issue, but I would still like to have a little control over this before starting to promote my baby in earnest.
These two scenarios (and oh so much more) are answered with an administration application, which I am currently developing.
Status
The good news is that I am making really great progress on this story and am (currently) on schedule. The bad news is that there are lots of features to build out and it should take me the better half of this month if not more to finally flesh out.
During this time, I will not be promoting/marketing and it’s going to result in reduced statistics on The Dashboard (which are already suffering).
See: awkwardness.
What’s Next?
After the administration application is complete, I will be able to finally start branching out and reaching out to some artist friends of mine and getting some additional products in the marketplace, finally living up to the friends & family tag. It will take a few more weeks of awkwardness to get there, but once there we can get this show on the road again.
Stand-up & Shine (& Shill)
More information on the happenings of starbeam.one and my world in general can be viewed in the latest Standup & Shine (& Shill) seen here:
Until next time, stay bright out there. ✌✨