How a cold DM in 2016 changed my life

6 years ago Matt asked if I could help with their iOS app. Little did I know that this was the first step towards becoming the expert in a very small niche.

Matt reached out because I had been tweeting about working with Turbolinks at my day job. I was attempting to port our existing Rails app to iOS and asking a lot of questions (and not getting many answers).

Turbolinks is a small iOS framework, now rebranded as Turbo Native, that enables hybrid iOS apps powered by Ruby on Rails mobile web sites. Popular apps like HEY and Basecamp are built on the framework.

I had never consulted before but figured I’d give it a shot. After a few messages and a Zoom call we agreed on an hourly rate and the project begin.

And we worked together for almost 4 years!

I built their first app with Turbolinks. Then when Turbo Native came out we redid the entire thing to work with the new framework. And then one more time when their company rebranded.

We built a ton of exciting features and added just enough infrastructure to keep the iOS app running without manual intervention. To this day they only need to open Xcode when a new version of iOS is released. Everything else is on autopilot.

When I was laid off at the beginning of 2021 I decided to go solo. Already having Matt as a client enabled me to keep paying the bills while I ramped up other work.

I also learned that no one else was talking about Turbo Native. If you needed help back then, good luck! I saw an opportunity to fill the gap and become the expert. It aligned so well – I had years of both iOS and Rails experience and was excited about the intersection of the two.

Since going solo I’ve helped 6 other companies launch their iOS apps in the App Store with Turbo Native. And consulted with twice as many.

It has been the driving factor in practically everything I write about, too. I even ran a workshop last month with 15 developers looking to learn the framework on their own.

In summary, I’m now all in on Turbo Native. My Turbo Native consulting business pays the bills and then some.

Who knew that an innocent DM could spark such a successful and fulfilling business! Thanks for taking a leap of faith, Matt.

Do you have any unread DMs sitting in your inbox? I encourage you to give them another look. You never know what hidden gems you might uncover.