That moment when you think your project is doomed and then...

I want to be completely honest with you.

NiceJourney has been a "work in progress" for quite some time now.

The first time we started discussing it was when my partner graduated from university, around 2 years ago.

We both were super excited to build something from scratch and to decide how to run our own business: we didn't want to work for Upwork or Fiverr, we didn't even want to become employees working for the same company for years. And, we genuinely wanted to offer a flexible alternative to founders and business owners who were tired of working with expensive communication agencies or unreliable design subscriptions.

For two years, we've built, always perfecting our strategy and website.

We also launched here on PH last November.

Sadly, we haven't achieved great results.

Only those who already trusted us before NiceJourney kept working with us. But no new customers.

So, at the beginning of this year, we started wondering if it was best to put our project aside and do something completely different.

We put a lot of effort into it, but maybe our idea couldn't be sold.

Suddenly, something unexpected happened: Someone scheduled a video call with us from our website.

At first, we couldn't believe it and thought that it was just a scam, but we played along and acted as if the video call was really happening.

We could only think about what could go wrong:

• It's a bot.

• They have no idea what we actually do and are wasting time.

• They’re going to ghost us.

But then, there he was: a real founder, with a real problem, who genuinely wanted to collaborate with us.

After the video call, we made a 7-day free trial and kept in touch for weeks, agonizing over whether he would disappear, but today, we can finally say it: We landed our first paying customer!

The craziest part is how it happened. It happened exactly when we were ready to give up. We had tried the entire textbook playbook: cold emails, LinkedIn outreach, networking events...

And where did he come from? A random comment we left on a Reddit thread.

He saw it, checked our profile, liked what he saw, and booked. We never would have accounted for a simple Reddit comment being our tipping point.

What we learned from this situation was not to surrender easily, even if everything seems lost, and to prepare for the unexpected. Sometimes, the biggest breakthrough comes from a side door you forgot you left open.

Did it ever happen to you to believe that one of your projects was doomed to fail, and then, something unexpected happened that completely changed the situation?