We have all heard and been inspired by success stories. Tales of success are great! From Apollo XI to Falcon Heavy, the original Macintosh to the iPhone– it’s so satisfying when the odds seem against us and yet we prevail. The problem with success stories is that they are only told by the people who have succeeded. This is called survivorship bias.

I’ve been self-employed for two and a half years trying to make a living in the App Store. My goal is to be earning enough money to provide for my family. I’m not there yet but I have made money. I have also checked items off my bucket list because l’ve been trying to achieve this goal. I want to share my story precisely because it isn’t a bona-fide success story yet. I hope I can inspire you with it–I hope my talk will help you try something you’ve been wanting to try.

I will tell stories of my business. My business partner and I travel to remote and beautiful places to capture aerial videos for our relaxation and meditation app. To make an omelet you must break eggs; We’ve crashed about $10k worth of quadcopters. I’ll tell 4 drone crash stories – how they shaped our business and attitudes about failure. I’ll tell the story of us attending WWDC and Alt-Conf last year while sleeping in our car.

I’ll talk about our marketing efforts, pricing strategies, etc. The difficulty we have, as artists, to promote ourselves and our product. The necessity of living on a tight budget has been a mother of invention for me. Resulting in new skills, personality traits, and possibilities.