Hey, this is the Daily Overpass, my name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today let's ask the question - what do you do when you're feeling low?
Ok, so if you watched the live-stream last Friday, you will know that my biggest app
called Ear Agent on Android, which generated most of my passive income, was suspended by
Google Play!
In fact, it was just a week before that someone mentioned in the comments that they'd had
a similar spy-themed app which had a million downloads which was suspended.
And I said as a response "this is something that I've feared for quite a while that that
might happen to me!
Even though I try to follow all the guidelines and comply with everything, it's just the
general creepiness of the app has always been there.
For the last five and a half years, my dread was that i would get this "your app has been
suspended" email, and I got it last Wednesday.
In fact, I got it just after I did the video on what we were doing for GDPR that day.
So, after 5 years I had this big fear that if I ever got that, it's gonna be a huge blow
to the company, it's gonna be a huge blow all over.
But it was always there in the shadows, like, that could happen.
And then I got it, I got that email.
So, how did I respond?
I wish I could tell you that I responded like "well, we saw this coming, we've been preparing,
we're just gonna have to work a little bit harder and push forward!!" but I didn't.
I'm ashamed to say that my first response was to sulk.
So, I went home, I said I'm not coming back into the office today, I need to do some thinking,
I need to think about the strategy going forward and everything like that, and I just went
for a drive.
I just went missing for the day.
And, you know what I do when I'm really low?
Like, last Wednesday, or if we have a really bad day with a client or something like that,
or just things are financially turbulent for the month for whatever reason, late payments,
whatever - I look at the job pages.
i look at jobsurf, which is a website I used to use when I was looking for contracts back
in the day.
And there's probably better ones now, I don't even know.
So I started looking for jobs, right?!
"Oh, javascript developer in London, 400-500 a day, West London", it's like, you know what,
I could do that!
It's like if you've ever been in a relationship and you get mad at one little thing and you
think "that's it, I'm leaving!" and you start playing through it in your head, all the ramifications,
like, no, that's not gonna work.
That's ridiculous.
Once you start walking through it, the impulse.
So my impulse is like "I should just go find a job".
And I have to bring myself back, because Is tarted thinking about it through it all saying
"hang on a second, we have this team that took so long to build!
We have Overpass, we have the branding, we have everything that we've been working on,
and we still have all these other applications out there!
We have all these clients, we have all these things that we've been building", and one
little hit and i just completely like "oh man, let's go find a job, whatever, this guaranteed
income that comes in.
So I started thinking about it.
I started playing it through my head.
First of all, the team that I'm in love with.
They click, they gel together, it took a long time to put them together.
What are they gonna do?
Just go and disband and just go join other companies?
No way, over my dead body!
Second, our clients need us.
I'm not gonna call up our clients and say "hey, I'm sorry, I decided to take on this
job, I'm not gonna be available anymore".
Because there's a reason they continue to work with us, it's because I can imagine them
going to another company and going to another developer and somebody saying "ooh, I don't
know, that's gonna be very difficult Dave", or whatever.
I'm not gonna let that happen.
and second, the idea of just going into an office, taking on a contract, going in there
every day, getting on the train, going into London, going in on the first day and them
saying "hey, thanks for joining us, it's Eric isn't it?"
"Yes" "So here's your desk over here.
I'm afraid the chairs a little bit broken because the last guy had some back problems
and when he left everyone took his chair and everything like that.
And the computers really slow, but just try to carry on with the code.
We'll have a meeting today at 10 o clock.
If you have a lunch, try not to take longer than 45 minutes because, you know, it just
looks bad.
If you leave before 6, please let us know".
I definitely don't wanna go back to that life again!
So I started thinking about there's loads of benefits, loads of things going for us,
it's just in those moments where you get hit with something, or you just feel low.
I look at the job pages.
I don't know what you guys do, but it's nice to know that it's still there.
That's a life that I'd never plan on going back to, but if I had to, I would.
Like I said, I would sweep elephant cages for my family if I had to, but by no means
do we have to.
The fact is that for the last couple of years we've been building up our client base, we
do more client work, we're building up our apps too, so the non-ear agent app revenue
is still significant, although it's not great, it's not enough to live off of but we're still
working on the portfolio and all that kind of stuff.
And I wish I could say that I stood my ground but sometimes i get low.
So, my question to you is - what do you do when you've had a bad day?
What do you look at?
Do you look at - ah I'm just gonna get out of I.T. altogether, oh by the way, I was also
thinking "I'm just gonna leave the app store.
We're just gonna do PWA's from now on.
That's what we're gonna do!
Progressive web apps.
Screw the app stores".
Really, we're still getting revenue from them and that's still the way to go.
I still think PWA's, while they're definitely a lot more attractive to me now, given the
problems we've had with both Apple app store and Google Play over the past three weeks,
I'm starting to look more into the PWA side, even though there's still problems with monetisation,
still problems with Safari, although those are getting better because they're bringing
web workers and all that kind of stuff.
So I'm starting to look into that a lot more, and of course we've got all the client stuff,
so we've gotta make sure that we give them the best service that we can, which we do!
So anyway, that's it for today, I'll talk to you guys tomorrow!