Jason Leow

It's easy to attribute winning the startup lottery to a prolific 5-year Github streak, hard work and consistent shipping.

I mean good on you for the effort!

But sorry (not sorry) to say... for every one win with that streak, there's 10 others with the same work ethic but didn't win.

No one talks abt the insane luck needed:

- That you arrived at the right time right place in market conditions that favoured your product and had hungry customers willing to pay for it. There's full of products in the graveyard that had all the right elements but were too early or too late or in the wrong country. Luck and chance often plays a bigger role in our success than we like to give it.

- That you succeeded by standing on the labour of giants before you. That open source software you used for free for your product? That genius AI API you paid cheaply for to integrate to your product? Even that programming language you freely code in like it's the air you breathe, that latest Javascript framework you fight with others on social media about, has people working on it tirelessly. Your work is so interdependent on others that any success you claim for yourself is tenuous at best.

- That you had the right people supporting you—a supportive family, friends and peers who encouraged you, mentors who guided you. No man's an island, we're social animals, but we conveniently forget that when success comes.

- That you had safety nets in terms of skill or savings or a job to go back to. That's some insane luck to be able to be in favourable circumstances to be able to do that. A sudden layoff or wrong career choice would have meant you never got there in the first place – that's the life of many others living in poverty, working their ass off in poor-paying jobs.

- A traffic accident, a sudden delibitating illness, all could have messed up your plans for hard work. Yet there you are, in good health, ready to take on the world by putting in the eneergy. Thousands of others who had the bad luck of an accident or illness wouldn't be able to do what you do even if they were just as eenrgetic, skilled or rich.

- That you were insanely lucky to be born in wealthy nation to relatively well-off family in the first place. Go tell that poor village kid in Africa that hard work is all you need to succeed. Try saying it with a straight face and clear conscience.

All I'm saying, when others tell you you were lucky to strike the startup lottery, just have the humility to admit you were. And be thankful the universe came together to make it work out for you over countless others who were just like you.

Rant over.

Just bought **careerconversationcards.com** for my latest project.

It's official once you bought the domain, isn't it? 😉

### Back story
Truth is, I made this product back when I just started indie hacking in 2018. It was part of an online store called Outsprint Store selling and sharing design tools for public good, and I built it as part of my [12 startups in 12 months challenge](https://jasonleowsg-wordpressblog.netlify.app/360/outsprint-store-first-mvp/) (I called it #1mvp1month on Twitter)! It's a spin-off side business built off my existing design consultancy business Outsprint, which works mainly with governments and non-profits to design better public policy and social services. Having done many consulting projects, I developed many tools along the way. Tools to help shed light on public and social issues around employment, technology, government-citizen relationships, and more. Tools that others have asked me to share. So I thought, “Why let these tools go to waste, after a project is done?” So that’s why I created this online store to share and sell design tools for public good. But the ecommerce store site had faded away over the years due to neglect and lack of demand. But the career cards had always had market demand, mostly through organic searches, word of mouth, but on an adhoc basis – I sold 2 decks to a local career coach in Sept last year. In the past, I've shipped this to the US before.

So I'm reviving it as a [side project](https://getmakerlog.com/products/career-conversation-cards), just for fun!

### What's the product about
This deck came from a project to understand people’s career aspirations. The team first used these cards as part of design research for the project, but that’s when something surprising happened. Participants were coming back to tell us – post-interview – that the session had been akin to career counselling, even therapeutic. Some said it helped them have better clarity of their career journey, and the questions we asked were questions that few people had asked them, not even their employers. Throughout the project, one thing that really stood out was how there was a hunger for such open conversations around career. Career conversations with employers and HR tend to center around compensation and performance. What seemed to be missing – and therefore the hunger – was talking about the why. Why do you work? Why do you want to work here? What really matters to you? It’s definitely not only money and promotions for sure. We knew we are on to something then, and these cards could play a role in making these conversations more common beyond the project. We improved on the deck thereafter, and here it is.


### Business model - how it's run
The business model is fundamentally a dropshipping business. I keep a few at home for local customers. And dropship the rest for international customers. I use Moo Cards for printing and shipping. The beauty of Moo is that they can print 50 different designs on 50 different cards, so that works for a card deck product. I just need to create a print job, and add my customer's shipping address and they'll take care of everything. I don't have to hold much inventory, nor handle any shipping myself. The trade-off is that it does cost more – at US$100 per deck of 50 cards, it's not cheap. But my customers are usually companies or people representing companies (often in HR or career coaching roles), not individual consumers, so $100 is within reasonable limits of their price sensitivity. I get around 80% prfit margin after accounting for the printing and shipping costs. That compensates for the IP and content work.

### Tech stack
It used to be built on good old Wordpress ecommerce theme, because back then nocode wasn't hot yet, and the only stack I knew was Wordpress. It served it's purpose back then as a ecomm store that can show multiple items for sale. But currently I'm thinking of just selling a single item (the career cards), it'll be just a single item sale ecomm site, so I don't need a full fledged ecomm capabilities this time. I'm thinking a Carrd landing page, maybe integrated with a Stripe payment link or with Shoprocket for shopping cart (as I need shipping address).

Looking forward to setting it all up and launching!

As part of my 2023 commitment to reinvesting profits to grow my product! This is my 2nd sponsorship 'ad'.

I've been able to get more regular sleep scores in the high 80% recently, with a few 90%s sprinkled in the past 2 months. I attribute it to my revised sleep stack:

- **5 sleep cycles every night**. I used to just wake up at a fixed time (4:40am) even if I slept late, thinking that regular routines is good as the experts say. But now I use a [sleep cycle calculator](https://sleepopolis.com/calculators/sleep/) to calculate my wake time based on [5 sleep cycles](https://golifelog.com/posts/waking-to-the-number-of-sleep-cycles-1673397710789). So I'm waking later now (after hitting the requisite 7.5h of sleep), but it's been great for feeling more rested on waking. I find I don't need naps much, and feel less sleepy during the day (which I learned was the best indicator of whether I slept enough/well).

- **Food affects sleep**. Thanks to the prompting of @therealbrandonwilson, I busted my own myth that I needed to have proper dinners so that I wouldn't feel hungry before bed and affect my sleep. The fear of hunger is overrated. In the past I would eat a full dinner and go to bed still feeling the food inside me. That affected my sleep in ways I wasn't aware. I usually skip breakfast now to do 16/8 intermittent fasting, then take a big lunch, so by evening I'll take light dinners or even no dinner if I'm still feeling satiated from the big lunch.

- **Less fluid intake in evenings**. Because I eat less now in the evenings, I find that I don't need to have as much fluid intake as well. If I do need some water, I try to sip it instead of gulping it down. That all works out well for better sleep because I don't have to get up as often in the middle of the night for the bathroom.

- **Magnesium L-threonate**. There's many types of magnesium supplements, and Andrew Huberman recommends the threonate type in his [sleep toolkit](https://hubermanlab.com/toolkit-for-sleep/). Apparently it's great for the brain health, cognitive function and positive effects on mental health. I used to take magnesium citrate-malate blend from Thorne Research—which is said to be calming for sleep—but since switching over, this seems to help a little better with sleep (unsure if it's compounded by the other things I did in this list). Perhaps in reducing the release of stress hormones (as shown in [animal research](https://bebrainfit.com/magnesium-l-threonate/)), it helped me sleep better?

- **Getting the body tired**. I always sleep better after I've done some exercise during the day, or have been out and about. There's something about getting the body tired enough so that sleep comes easier. If I spend the whole day sitting down in front of the computer, I'm mentally tired but the body isn't. I then find it harder to sleep, or even when I do sleep it's poor quality sleep. I stopped my daily morning exercise and walks in late 2022, and the sleep was bad. Since restarting my workouts, sleep is definitely better.

- **Sleep aided by quantum energy frequency**. This might sound a little woo woo, but I've been using [Leela's quantum energy frequency sleep card](https://leelaq.com/product/leela-quantum-frequency-cards/) to [help with my sleep](https://golifelog.com/posts/quantum-tech-for-sleep-1669592548893). Since [starting on it in late Nov](https://golifelog.com/posts/first-night-on-the-quantum-sleep-card-1670366307019 ), I noticed a flatter chart therefore deeper sleep in the first half of the night. It says on the website that it supports "a much more relaxed and deeper calm and rest" – seems to work as promised!

- **Less stress**. Realising that [stress was the root of much of my sleep woes](https://golifelog.com/posts/stress-is-the-root-1669075183118) had been an important epiphany in 2022. I do recall feeling stressed about survival in the later half of 2022 due to funds running out, and that definitely impacted my sleep. Stress is subversive when it comes to sleep. I might not be consciously aware of any ill effects or feeling anything 'bad' in the moment before bed, but it's an undercurrent that sweeps good quality sleep away without knowing. And true enough, since winning a $52k consulting gig in January, my stress level fell significantly, and I began to sleep waaay better.

- **Stability in routine**. Late 2022 when sleep was poorer was also when my kid's pre-school routines stopped. It's funny how they say structure is important for children. I say it's great for adults too! Because I could feel the difference when school restarted in January. Much more even-keeled on all fronts in life.

Sleep is such an infinite game. I started being serious about sleep biohacking in January 2020. It's been 3 years, and I'm still learning new ways to sleep better, and discovering new experiments to do.

Onwards to consistent 90% sleep!

Part 6 of tiny yet cool Twitter hacks that I’m slowly accumulating over all the daily practice and observing how others do it:

Read [Part 1](https://golifelog.com/posts/tiny-twitter-hacks-i-learned-and-love-1640567252125), [Part 2](https://golifelog.com/posts/tiny-twitter-hacks-i-learned-and-love-part-ii-1642293081196), [Part 3](https://golifelog.com/posts/tiny-twitter-hacks-i-learned-and-love-part-iii-1645066528768), [Part 4](https://golifelog.com/posts/tiny-twitter-hacks-i-learned-and-love-part-iv-1656294820581), [Part 5](https://golifelog.com/posts/tiny-twitter-hacks-i-learned-and-love-part-v-1662343563502).

- **A simple Twitter strategy**: If I had to [start over on Twitter](https://golifelog.com/posts/how-id-start-over-and-grow-on-twitter-as-a-creator-1662503663921), this is what I'd do: Reply thoughtful replies. tweet once a day, make like-minded friends, reply, reply reply. That's it.
- **Tweet once a day, or twice max**. I think there's an optimal number for number of tweets per day (tweet threads don't count), and anything more you start to spread out your impressions 'quota' across too many tweets. Twice a day is ideal I believe (Twitter meme lord @dagorenouf does this too). I used to tweet twice a day - one build in public tweet, and another for Lifelog, but since the Lifelog one no longer works, I [stopped it](https://golifelog.com/posts/change-of-twitter-strategy-for-lifelog-1663195916174) since Sept 2022 last year. I like once a day now as that makes it simpler for me as a creator. There's also a simple elegance to seeing someone's profile feed that only tweets once a day - it's looks clean, easy to read or scan through, and you get a sense quickly if the person is worth a follow. I'm most inspired by @theandreboso's account in that regard.
- **Alignment to authenticity**: There's something about being more aligned to your authentic self that feels really good. I started being serious on Twitter trying all sort of copywriting hacks and tricks, trying so hard to be smart, clever, witty, viral... but in the end, posting [this tweet](https://golifelog.com/posts/alignment-1664233941852) about what truly matters to me in my indie solopreneur journey felt so right that I want to tweet more of such stuff moving forward. Lower the noise on building an audience, crank up the volume on building my best self in public. Less about selling and marketing, more about genuine transparency and authenticity. Be real and human.
- **Replies + likes > tweets**. When it comes to the Twitter algorithm, [tweeting alone isn’t enough](https://golifelog.com/posts/replies-likes-greater-tweets-1664406942073). I tried it for the @golifelog Twitter account. Just 1 quote tweet a day, no interactions (likes/replies) to other accounts, for 1 month. The result was zero new followers, zero likes on any of my tweets. BUT after 1 month, once I started liking other tweets and replying occasionally, there's new follows and likes. The lesson? The Twitter algo doesn’t show your tweets to your followers if you don’t engage with other accounts. It's a *social* media network after all. The social aspect is the prime activity, not the broadcasting or content creation.
- **Repurpose your best replies into tweets**. A Twitter flywheel trick that had worked well for me: Since I reply way more than I tweet, I look through my replies to other people’s tweets, & [repurpose the best ones for 99% of my tweets](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1617161590775898113). As long as I keep replying, I won't ever run out of tweets to tweet. So far this flywheel technique had been the most effective in helping me sustain my daily tweeting habit. In the past, I would have to sit down and spend a few hours per week looking through ideas and tweet hooks I collected, and write them specifically for my tweet queue. Now, no longer. I just scroll through my Tweets & replies feed, and copy-paste over good ones, oftentimes as is. My tweet queue now is almost 1 month long. Sometimes before it goes out I might tweak it a bit. I really enjoy this way of tweeting, because usually the tone of the tweets is more conversational, informal and not trying too hard (to be witty, clever or viral). Just feels more authentic. Which makes sense because the replies were part of a conversation to begin with.
- **Platform risks**. Since the Elon Musk take-over, platform risk on Twitter had never been more real. It's good to start [diversifying](https://golifelog.com/posts/twitter-platform-risk-1671411641106) your distribution channels, and having Plan Bs. I started a mirror [Mastodon account and Telegram channel](https://golifelog.com/posts/twitter-plan-b-1671582153083) as Plan Bs. I also had a Revue newsletter to collect emails, but Twitter had since shut it down so I'm over to Substack now... see?! Platform risk is real!
- [**Channel-offer fit**](https://golifelog.com/posts/channel-offer-fit-1673576017319). I've always struggled to understand why Twitter, despite me having the most followers here versus any other social media platform, doesn't seem to help me with my products much. I get eyeballs for sure, but it doesn't quite convert. It was that way for Lifelog. And similar observation for Carrd plugins too. And my experiments in other platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Reddit were schooling me about how followers ≠ revenue. Like how there’s simply a better fit between the offer I’m offering on LinkedIn to the audience I have there, compared to the not-so-good fit between the offerings on Twitter to my Twitter audience. That's why I earn 90% of my revenue from LinkedIn even though it has 5x lesser followers. The main point here isn't that LinkedIn is better than Twitter. The reverse can be true, if your product/offer fits Twitter. I see this happen to so many indie makers. One of my top fav accounts @dagorenouf, used Twitter to market his logo design startup but it grew slowly to $3k/month over *years*. And then once he launched his Twitter course, it hit 800 sales in 3 months all via word of mouth, earning [$51k](https://twitter.com/dagorenouf/status/1618256943524593669) - many times the amount compared to his logo startup. That's because the course had a way higher channel-offer fit! So my lesson? Don’t listen to the BS that gurus say about growing a huge audience in order to monetize. Sell the right thing to the right audience and right channel. Buy intent is more important than attention and impressions. Followers ain’t revenue.

*What other tiny Twitter hacks do you know?*

I'm a simple man. I just want a few simple things in life now:

Earn enough
Feed my family
Stay indie

Despite all the intentions I set in the year about [8 forms of capital](https://golifelog.com/posts/2023-in-8-forms-of-capital-1672630377703), [open questions I have for 2023](https://golifelog.com/posts/open-questions-for-2023-1672709959575), and the [diverse portfolio of projects](https://getmakerlog.com/users/jasonleow) I run, I think if I had to narrow it down, those 3 things would be it. In fact, the first one is a function of the second, so I can even wittle it down to two.

Just being able to feed my family of 5 (including me)—2 elderly parents, my wife and toddler son—is my main mission in life right now. Being the sole breadwinner, the past 3 years had been challenging to say the least. We were in a survival crisis. I was in fight or flight mode most of the time. It was tough. My headspace wasn't in the best shape. I even tried looking for a job once, because things looked that bleak. Thankfully, it didn't pan out. I think after a decade of self-employment, I'm no longer seen as employable. Teh funny thing is, I don't see myself as employable too. So indie is the only path now. I have to make it work. Beside mere surviving, preventing my indie life being taken away from me is my next most important mission.

Maybe these are my real 2023 resolutions...

Just feed the fam, and stay indie.

Simple man, simple things.

Part of my aspiration of getting better at [being real and realistic](https://golifelog.com/posts/my-word-for-2023-real-1672530920033), is coming to terms with my bias towards over-reading into situations. And a huge part of that is forming narratives around experiences where there might be none.

Dwight from [*The Office*](https://twitter.com/theofficereacs/status/1446239854006874118) said it best:

> Ryan: "I don't get it. I don't get what I did wrong."
> Dwight: "Not everything's a lesson, Ryan. Sometimes you just fail."

Ouch.

But so effing true. Sometimes we just fail.

Sometimes we fail and there's no lesson in it. There's no benevolent universe trying to teach us something for our own cosmic growth. There's no life-changing insight or epiphany to be had except that we failed, plain and simple. There's no reasons that we can know why and how we failed, except that we did.

Failures are not always stories.

Most of the time, failure is just one data point with nothing to interpret, no trend to extrapolate. And the best thing to do next is to try again, or move on. No need to attach any ego to what happened, no loss of pride to what conspired. And no additional pride either, to what you'll do next. There's no "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger". There's just "Oh it didn't kill me. Next."

Just plain old equanimity.

Even wins—small or big—are not stories most of the time. We world-build around our wins like some fantasy Narnia. But even small wins are just data. If you shouldn't juice lessons from fails, don't try to squeeze out epiphanies from victories too. It's all the same, just 10x more tempting to do so because we love painting ourselves as smarter than we truly are.

Not everything's a lesson. So...

No more world-building.
No more stories.

It's the new year on the lunar calendar! For folks who know, happy Lunar/Chinese New Year! As usual, there's lots of well wishing that happens during this time, especially along fortune and abundance. That got me thinking about abundance versus scarcity mindsets for us indie solopreneurs.

> An abundance mindset is when you believe there are plenty of resources for everyone. A scarcity mindset is when you believe resources are limited.
>
> A scarcity mindset causes hyperfixation, leads to short-term coping instead of long-term problem-solving, and increases jealousy and stress. For a more abundant mindset, advocate for collaboration, practice gratitude, notice automatic thoughts and give when you can.
>
> [Source](https://rightasrain.uwmedicine.org/life/relationships/scarcity-mindset)


I think I've always been more intuitively on the side of abundance, but the past 3 years of true external scarcity had swung me over to the other side. It's so true about short-term coping, because when resources and opportunities are truly scarce, I grabbed at short term shortcuts. I launched a web design service which I thought could make some good cash. I set up accounts on Fiverr and Upwork for that, thinking it'll help. But I never liked that kind of work. In the end, it didn't work out. Unsurprisingly. I was constantly stressed and anxious that I won't be able to feed my family, and will have to go back to a 9-to-5.

Now that business seems to be getting back to more pre-pandemic levels, I'm now trying to caliberate and be more moderate and balanced. How does an abundance mindset look like for indie solopreneurs?

- Give give give give give give give give give give ask. Giving 10x before asking once. I think it's hard to be giving till it hurts when you're in scarcity mindset. Being helpful to a fault works if when you believe it'll all come back. And not just to paying customers, but non-customers and even fellow indies.
- Don't hoard money for personal gain but reinvest it back into the business or product to make it grow. I struggled with this a bit. When you don't have enough, it's easy to want to keep everything for yourself. But oftentimes you need to spend money to earn more money – that's a key part of an abundance mindset I feel.
- Sharing experiences, lessons, and ideas. Being transparent about struggles and difficulties. Building in public. Sharing important business metrics on open startup pages. I think it takes an abundance mindset to be able to be radically transparent and open. If you're constantly worried about people copying your product, concerned that there's a power/information asymmetry if people could pry into your metrics but you can't see their's, then that's more scarcity mindset.
- Constantly being intellectually honest and taking ownership over problems and lack of progress instead of externalizing, i.e. blaming others/competitors and external factors. There's certainly elements in any market situation that we cannot control. Trolls, haters and copycats will do what they will. Competitors won't let up. Even if it's not our fault and we tried our best, practising an abundance mindset means we focus on what we can do, and will achieve. No victim mentality. Optimism is an attribute of abundance.
- Feeling inspired and excited about other people's achievements. Anytime I feel jealous of others, I know I've fallen too far down the pit of scarcity. Because someone else's win doesn't mean I will or have to lose. Oftentimes we're so different in product or market, it doesn;t even make sense to compare. So why the jealousy? That's often just scarcity-induced anxiety, stress, impatience, frustration speaking.
- Feeling hopeful and excited about my future. I found that when I'm in scarcity mindset, I look at the immediate short term. I get frustrated by my lack of progress. I get fixated on what's not working. My mind feels hazy, I'm disorganised, scattered and inefficient. I feel impatient why I'm not there yet. I compare and feel unhappy. But when I'm in abundance mode, I feel excited and optimistic about the future. I feel grateful for how far along I've come. I can look back at my journey and appreciate that I've done a lot. I'm thrilled by what's already working, and eager to pursue opportunities I smell. There's more clarity in the mind, on what I need to do and not do. I feel effective in passion and purpose. And I can see that if I keep with my trajectory, things will turn out fine. The sky's the limit.
- Going all in and focusing on one thing for me is a sign of being tunnel-visioned by scarcity. That focus tends to blind me to real opportunities that arise on the side that can actually help me reach my goals of financial, time and location freedom, but I was too fixated on making my current vision of success come true that I fail to see that there's other ways to that success. When in abundance mindset, I see that I'm willing to try many small bets, keep what works, drop what doesn't quickly. I no longer hoard or hold on too tightly. I play, have fun, experiment and iterate, and let go without much worry.
- The body keeps the score. When in scarcity mode, I tighten up. I grab on to everything. I hunker down too much. I start to develop ailments that are natural consequences of all that closing up. I gain weight because I don't move as much and because I want to HODL. I get super stressed and anxious and it shows up on all manner of weird pains and aches in the body. I get ill more frequently, I don't exercise as much, I over-work. In time, these develop into bigger, badder health conditions. All symptoms of scarcity mindset.
- When in abundance, I naturally seek to master things. I want to improve and grow in mastery in skills of indie solopreneurship. I lean into the discomfort of doing things which I'm not naturally good at (e.g. marketing, ads), and try to find ways to enjoy the learning process. When in scarcity, I look for shortcuts and hacks in everything, often at the expense of near-term future. I mash together products, work-around stuff that doesn't feel good but "will do for now". There's a fine line between working out of desperation versus doing just enough to launch a MVP.

*What other ways can you practise an abundance mindset?*