Jason Leow

https://www.reddit.com/r/Carrd/comments/1110aav/testimonial_tweet_plugin/

https://m.facebook.com/groups/carrdusers/permalink/1240678446530209/?mibextid=qC1gEa

First [Twitter](https://golifelog.com/posts/twitter-platform-risk-1671411641106), then [Stripe](https://golifelog.com/posts/platform-risks-everywhere-1676106319991), now Heroku:

> My @heroku account has been deleted, bringing down all my applications. No message, no email. Has anyone ever had this happen to them?? ...Quite the audacity to not send a single email either. – [@dannypostmaa](https://twitter.com/dannypostmaa/status/1624689089332281344)

Platform risks everywhere. I feel like I don’t know these platforms anymore...

Some might object that these rug pulls are just remote, theoretical possibilities. But that's the thing. We don't know for sure how high the exposure is for us because that's the nature of black swan events. It's belong to unknown unknowns, not known unknowns.

But with monthly stories like this on Hacker News [[1](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32854528)] [[2](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33743750)], and stories of Paypal randomly freezing funds, hosting platforms shutting down servers, it's not a stretch to think it can't happen to anyone, even smaller players like us indie solopreneurs.

What's the solution then?

- Backup backup backup
- Get insurance coverage
- Diversify

Multi-cloud, multi-payment processor, multi-income streams.

Host not just on Heroku, but at least have back-ups or secondary instances running on Render, MongoDB Atlas, AWS. Offer not just Stripe but PayPal, PayPal credit card, ChargeBee, CoinBase, Amazon Payments, Alipay, crypto. Offer payments outside of major credit card networks and payment platforms, like services provided by local banks.

Double or triple work be damned.

Crazy I know. Especially for indies and startups who don't even have the time and bandwidth to be spread out across so many platforms. But short cuts don't sidestep reality. And that's the reality of financial and payments industry. Something to think about. And for the edge cases where you can't *multi-* your way out off, there's commercial insurance to consider for coverage.

And these incidents totally reminded me of being diversified in ways that platforms can't touch you. Because these platforms aren't services that we can switch away easily. These are the shovel platforms in the gold rush, fundamental internet infrastructure services that you can't run away from if you're a digital business.

That's why I'm even more grateful for my consulting work with local government organisations now! That income stream is outside of credit card networks, payment platforms, and not even really on the internet. Government payments to vendors will never be blocked by banks. Bunker-level hedge against platform risks there.

The one question that I'll leave fellow indie solopreneurs with to ponder (including myself):

*What's stopping a critical infrastructure/platform that your business depend on to randomly terminate your account? How prepared are you for that unknown unknown?*

Hit "esc" and see markdown preview

Tomorrow the last of the COVID restrictions in Singapore will be lifted. Most of the social distancing restrictions are already lifted but mask-wearing on public transport stuck around. Tomorrow, we hit 100%. The inter-ministry work team is also disbanded. A signal that normalcy is back.

For good.

The first COVID case in Singapore was reported on Jan 23, 2020. So we've just passed 3 years.

THREE EFFING YEARS.

If you're reading this—anyone reading this; breaking the fourth wall here—well done, you. We survived.

And I thought it's important to acknowledge you—whoever you are reading this—because of this line I chanced upon:

> "I wasn't myself for months and no one noticed"

I felt that. It really resonated. Hard. Personal story.

We were *all* not ourselves for months and nobody noticed. Because everyone was struggling. No one was spared. The virus was totally democratic and affects everyone, young and old, rich and poor, happy or sad.

Some days I walk around in town, and everyone seems happy and going about lives in a normalcy we craved so badly for just 2 years ago, and I get a sense of disconnect. Are we supposed to just move on like that? After all that collective trauma and hardship?

If you've never been acknowledged for surviving and perservering through, I want to do that for you now.

I see you. You did it.

*We* did it.

It's okay now.

We're fine now. You're fine now.

Woke up this morning to news that [Flurly got shut down by Stripe](https://flurly.com/blog/flurly-stripe-shutdown) with zero notice. All my Carrd plugins are on Flurly, so that means no one can buy my products! Not the 5am morning I expected, but dived into crisis mode. Scrambled all day to move my Carrd plugins over to Lemon Squeezy.

Quickly researched the top payment providers I knew from previous conversations – Lemon Squeezy, Payhip, Thrivecart. In the end, decided on Lemon S because:

- The UX was more fresh and modern. Saw a [tweet](https://twitter.com/_insiteful/status/1617277307496050688) before that it converts better – 9.6% conversion rate vs Gumroad 2.8%.
- All the features I need for handling digital downloads, plus more. I like that I can define variants for 1 product for my single license and unlimited license versions.
- Merchant of Record, which in finance dummy speak, safer and more protection for sellers.
- Heard they have an affiliate program coming up... something which I want to explore this year.
- Sadly, fees are higher on Lemon S. Flurly is 1% + 3.7%, compared to Lemon S $0.50 + 5% of total, with extra +1.5% for international payments, extra +1% for PayPal transactions, and +0.5% if I have subscription payments. Napkin calculations shows I got to pay 6.5% at least, and 7.5% if customer pay through Paypal! Trade-offs I guess... hope the benefits outweigh the costs.

Thrivecart’s lifetime deal was tempting though... maybe I can consider that if sales figures and volume go up. Payhip has good community features where members can log in to view premium content, which I might explore for my communities (Lifelog, 5am club) in the future.

### Implications for indies

After all is said and done, can't help feeling worried for JR who made Flurly. I used Flurly all this while from the start, and if anything, not sure he deserves such a ban and a hefty, mysterious $425k fine, and with zero lead time for customers to react, when he had been transparent and trying hard to resolve it.

It's disconcerting to ponder the implications for the rest of us indies.

Reading the [Twitter discussion](https://twitter.com/FlurlyApp/status/1624177183626530816), I also realised a few things:

- Never crossed my mind there's platform risk on Stripe
- Clueless about US/international financial regulations
- Clueless about Stripe T&Cs to prevent getting deplatformed

It feels like the ground is shifting beneath our feet for us indies. Nothing feels safe these days... first an economic recession, then blatant copycatting in the indie scene, then Twitter platform risks, now Stripe.

How can an indie solopreneur prepare for all this?

If there's anything that I want more for my work, it is what DHH (creator of Ruby on Rails) described so well in his blog post:

> "...it's the essence of a good work life: A place of calm for interruption-free pursuits of interesting projects. A portal to the state of flow." - [DHH](https://world.hey.com/dhh/how-it-started-how-it-s-going-baefaf09)

He was talking about his old basement office where he made his career-defining projects like Rails, but the main points were these key words:

Interesting projects.
Free of distractions.
Calm pursuit.
Flow.

That's what I'm after too. At the root.

Yes earning money is important. But it's a necessity, for survival, for family. Making projects that generate revenue isn't what defines creative success for me personally. It's not what can be counted - likes, impressions, page views, followers.

It's about being able to experience flow. The relaxed joy of creating. The calm pursuit of interesting projects, away from the noise of a noisy, noisy world. The aliveness of making something. Anything.

That's what truly counts. That which cannot be counted.

That which can be counted upon to feel a sense of satisfaction for a creative life well lived.

I'll die a happy man, if I could be close to that feeling for most days in a year, for most years in a lifespan.

Just let me create.

The testimonial tweets plugin is launched! Comes with a tutorial this time.

Use it to embed a wall of selected tweets - customer testimonials, reviews, or on any topic.

You can download it for FREE here:

🐦 https://testimonialtweets.carrd.co/

I fixed the bugs the same day he reported, and he bought the plugin the next day. Prompt effort works! 🔥

Is there such thing as anger that's right and good? Is there such thing as right anger?

The "right" prefix reminded of how the Buddha talked about the Noble Eightfold Path. It's a guide to end suffering, consisting of right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. It's essentially a basket of practices for moral conduct, mental discipline and wisdom.

What if emotion—like anger—can be mastered for good and right conduct too?

I've always felt anger was dirty. It's always associated with poor, disruptive and socially deviant behaviour that gets you in trouble with the law, or at least socially. I avoided the emotion like a plague. But yet the more I suppressed it, the stronger it arises. Or it gets expressed in the body, somatically, as unexplanable rashes or pains.

Lately I've been thinking different.

Maybe that emotion is there for a reason. Maybe it's there to protect us. If someone did something that angered you, it's likely that some personal boundary was crossed, and you should have done a better job at maintaining that boundary but didn't. So anger comes in to guard you. It drives you to act by pumping you up with adrenaline and blood to your head and hands. You feel hot everywhere, and you can't sit still till it gets expressed. Or directed at some action. If anger is fire, it can destroy forests and homes, or it can cook a delicious, nourishing meal for your loved one. We can react reflexively, or we respond mindfully. The emotion is morally neutral. It's what we do with that burst of energy that determines which side of the camp you are.

I've been doing it all wrong all this while.

I can ***use*** it.

Like a cook tending a fire to produce the best, most delicious results.

I can let it guide me out of unwholesome mental conversations.
I can use it to shake me out of passive victim mentality.
I can tap on it to push me to act fast and decisively.
I can allow it to make me stronger.
I can immerse in it to focus better.

I can use anger.

You'll like me when I'm angry.

The right sort of angry.

darkmodejs was fun to use but it reversed images (into negative images) which I can't find a fix for. In the end, I dropped darkmodejs and used vanilla Javascript and good ol' CSS to flip all the Carrd elements.

🌗 https://darkmodetoggle.carrd.co/

Thanks for the feedback, @CarrdDoni , @AJ10754 ! 🙏

I think this will be my next paid plugin! 😉

Someone in the Telegram Carrd chat group asked if toggling dark mode was possible in Carrd. I was intrigued to see if it can be done... challenge accepted! 😆

1h later... 👇
https://darkmodefree.carrd.co/

Used this library - https://darkmodejs.learn.uno/

Running a indie business has a lot more overlaps with running a restaurant than we thought. I like how [Ev's tweet](https://twitter.com/evielync/status/1622768668072443905) talks about it:

> After two years of launching a lot of products. There are 3 every creator should have:
>
> 👉 Gateway Product. Something free to get people in the door
> 👉 Taster Product. Something small to give people a taste
> 👉 Signature Product. Something big that sums up everything you do

Loved the labels - gateway, taster and signature. Feels just like a restaurant! Much better than saying "click funnels", "top/bottom of funnel", "lead gen", isn't it?

That got me thinking: Do I have this set up for each of my products, in those 3 layers? Thinking through:

### Plugins For Carrd
- Gateway:
- Helping the community with their Carrd issues on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Telegram, email
- (Future) Blog posts / knowledge base docs
- Newsletter
- Taster:
- Free plugins with limited free support
- Black Friday deals
- Signature:
- Premium paid plugins
- Bundle packages with custom support

### Lifelog
- Gateway:
- Tweets on writing and creator habits
- (Future) self-paced writing course for introverts. Possibly be an automated email drip campaign/course, or a Gumroad standalone download.
- Newsletter
- Taster:
- Free one month trial
- (Future) 1-month non-recurring payment for lower commitment
- (Future) Writing challenges, events
- Signature:
- Full monthly/annual subscription on Lifelog
- Being part of close knit writing community

### Outsprint
- Gateway:
- Posts and tweets on LinkedIn/Twitter providing value and showing social proof/credibility for design
- Free downloads of design tools
- Taster:
- 1-day Jumpstart workshop
- Short freelance stints
- Career conversation cards
- Design card decks
- Signature:
- Design sprint consultancy
- Consultancy on retainer
- Training/Coaching programme


Overall a great framework to think through with! So much more clarity thinking in these 3 layers. Thanks Ev! 🙏