Business update, week 29

February 10, 2026 at 10:50 AM

Hi Everyone,

Since the last update I:

• Expanded my LinkedIn following significantly
• Spent a few weeks completing a project that involves a variety of robotics concepts
• Began making daily educational posts on LinkedIn based on that project
• Started mentoring my first client - I think it’s going well!

As of the last update, I had started making educational posts on LinkedIn from the Robotics Prep page, and was trying to figure out how to improve their reach. I was also thinking about how to create the posts more efficiently, and publish them with a more logical ordering.

I took the next two weeks to complete a mini robotics project, a simulator for a robotics navigation stack that allows a simulated robot to drive between different points on a map. Once I had the project working, I made a list of all the topics that you’d need to know in order to build something similar from scratch. Then I planned out 7 weeks worth of posts that explain all of those topics. I published the first week of posts last week, and am sending out the second batch this week.

The posts still take a while to create, but I'm getting faster - it now takes one or two days to create a full week of posts, which is freeing up more time for me to work on other things.

For the last three weeks, I’ve been methodically expanding my LinkedIn network, specifically among people in the robotics industry. Every morning, I send out 15 connection requests to people who I have mutual connections with. I’d estimate that about 10 / 15 of those requests are eventually accepted. Since my last update, my follower count has grown from 290 to 600, with all of the new following coming from the robotics industry. My hope is that when I post things about robotics or advertise my services, those posts will get high engagement among my network, being especially relevant to that audience.

The educational posts from the Robotics Prep page continue to get extremely good engagement (% of people who see the post who stop to read it), but poor reach (# of people who are shown the post). I mentioned in the last update that the algorithm heavily prioritizes posts from personal accounts over pages, so this isn’t really surprising. The post I published from my personal account, kicking off the ‘Intro to Navigation’ series did really well - over 4,000 views with high engagement.

My social media plan seems to be going well in the sense that my reach is increasing and my posts are engaging. The question now is whether I can turn that into paying customers. None of my posts from the last few weeks have mentioned my services at all, they’ve been strictly educational, so it’s unsurprising that they haven’t driven any interest in the mentorship program.

In the next few weeks, I’ll publish a few posts that directly explain my mentorship program, and make the case that people should sign up for it. If the offer is compelling enough that it could make a real business, I would expect this to lead to at least a few more signups within the next few weeks. If my offer is reaching a large, relevant audience, but still not driving any customers, I’ll need to rethink the offer.

The last update is that I’ve been mentoring my first client for a few weeks now and I think it’s going well! I’ve done several technical practice sessions to help him prepare for interviews, and have created a variety of other materials to help him use his study time efficiently. I think he’s on track to land a job before too long.

I’m also learning a lot about how to run a program like this. I think the mentee experience is good already (I feel very confident that my client is getting significantly more value than the price they paid) but there are lots of things I can do to make it even better for future clients.

Until next week (or possibly 2 or 3 weeks from now, who knows),

Jake