Try this if you're ok with a long-term strategy that requires patience:

• Make a list of top 5-7 companies/people you'd like to work with (dream clients). Approach them with a problem or business challenge they have while also providing a solution or a partial solution and then ask for nothing in return.

The alternative: Get a day job (part-time/full-time) depending on how much money and free time you want and need and don't worry about contracting gigs. Use your free time and available funds to make your side project a reality. Sounds so easy and straightforward, right? ;)

Plain HTML, CSS, JS, PHP to prototype static sites. No framework. Dynamically generated pages and a database can even be left out but that depends on the kind of problem you're solving.

Great tip @EbrahimKhalilHassen - will do 🙏

• Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO 80 Ohms when working and traveling on the laptop.
• Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO 250 Ohms when working on my stationary setup in Berlin (Mac mini).
• EarPods (the ones with cable) when traveling - to save battery (though I have the AirPods with me as a backup).

The Beyerdynamic ones have gentle isolation - not too strong. They're also great for voiceover recordings, and I've seen in them in many of the almost 100 hundred recording studios I've visited throughout Europe, UK, and the US. I don't know if it's fair to say that they are "industry standard" (whatever that also means) but they have a decent share in the market, imho.

My best answer right now is a quote from Pieter's MAKE book:

Solve your own problems

The most important thing is to find ideas from solving your own problems. You do that by looking at your own life and observing what your daily challenges are. Then you see if you could make those challenges easier using technology. If you solve your own problem, it's very realistic that there's many more people like you who would also love their problem solved. And that's pretty much what a business is. Solving lots of people's problems in return for money.

In startups, this business can be in the form of an application, a website or even only just a physical service tied together with some technology.

Link: makebook.io/#2-2

That would be fantastic! And just today did I sign up for a new Mailchimp account. I’ll check and report back on what I can find.

This functionality is very important to me and an educational side project of mine.

Thanks @Jeff!

Wait, where/how to get that sticker?

I didn't understand how to actually send an email with MailHog so I abandoned it. Now, I'm trying out PHPMailer github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMaile…. I'm required (in general) to enter my SMTP login (username, password) which makes me feel uncomfortable. Is there a secure way to store the SMTP login credentials on the live server?

Bill looks promising! I've been using Billings (for years) - www.marketcircle.com/billings…. This version (no subscription) doesn't even exist anymore but it's still running well on the latest macOS.

Super! Thanks @Ryan DiMascio with the help of this article (www.joshstauffer.com/send-tes…) I got it running.