Jason Leow

https://jsfiddle.net/bmuackfn/9/

I wrote before about how my Plugins For Carrd project has surpassed Lifelog and all other projects. I observed how I'm spending a lot more time making new plugins, doing customer support, answering questions, being everywhere. I can feel my focus moving into the project more and more, like it's my main project in practice. It's pulling me forward. There's good demand. People give good feedback on my products. Above all, I enjoy working on it.

Yet I say: No more main projects. All projects are side projects. All are small bets, even if they get big.

Am I being a hypocrite? Or in denial?

Nope. Because small bet mindset is about having a healthy skeptical perspective while grounded in reality.

I might be spending more time there *for now*, but deep down, I still recognise it for what it is:

- It's still linked to a platform. And there will always be platform risk.
- It's still a single project, so a single point of failure.
- It's shown potential at a scale of a small indie side project, but to grow it beyond? To thousands or tens of thousands of dollars of revenue per month? Very hard to say. There's no precedent. Nobody's really tried.
- Competitors are entering the market. Things will get harder, the business might get tougher to grow.

Hence, my point: I'm having no illusions about this being the One True project.

If it gets there, great, If not, no biggie. I'm still going to be diversifying my portfolio of small bets. Even though I have 3-4 active projects on hand now, I still think I'm not sufficiently diversified yet. I'm already thinking of new projects to work on in 2023.

Small bet mindset is about being a healthy, realist skeptic.

If there's any hard truths I learned this year, that would be this small bet mindset.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Carrd/comments/zva0ei/autoupdate_copyright_year/

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/auto-updating-copyright-year-cfc3b2873f

https://m.facebook.com/groups/carrdusers/permalink/1210108506253870/?mibextid=qC1gEa

🚨 PSA: 2023's coming. Don't forget to update your copyright year in your website footer.

Just made a plugin to help those with Carrd sites
↳ just type {{currentyear}} and it automagically switches that to the current year

Check out the demo 👇

https://copyrightyear.carrd.co

In short, the only factor for starting a newsletter was if I could sustain it.

Not whether it build trust and relationships.
Not whether it fits into my marketing plan.
Not whether it will bring in more revenue.
Not whether it establishes my expertise.
Not whether if helps build an audience.

In fact, I'm not even thinking much about any metrics or growth.

Because it's no point thinking about those metrics (yet) if I start a newsletter for a few months and fade away. *Why bother, right?*

The only thing that matters is whether I can keep it going for long term without burning out. It's about the long game here.

I actually hesitated even starting one for a long time. I thought I can try it partly for fun, partly to collect emails (as hedge against deplatforming), but never knew what to write about; if I would enjoy writing for an audience; whether I'll even enjoy it.

Then eventually I got an idea that the best way to start one is to repurpose whatever I'm already writing already. I figure that was my monthly reviews. It's more long form, and suitable for a newsletter. It provided a exclusive peek into my indie solopreneur journey building my portfolio of bets that I don't share much on Twitter or anywhere. Most importantly, it's something I religiously do anyway. All it took was copy-paste and click click click to schedule the monthly newsletter, and it's done, in a matter of minutes. That felt like the best low commitment and low bar approach to try starting a newsletter. Revue also made it relatively simple to start.

And after many months, I settled into the rhythm of posting monthly, and it became hygiene. That's when I started thinking if I could go weekly. Again, what can I post? Same tactic – repurpose content. I wrote everyday on Lifelog already, and every week there would be something about my indie products or ideas in that problem space. I have a 700+ day log of content to look through, surely that would be more than enough to post weekly without fail!

And so I did, just weeks ago. I moved my newsletter from Revue to [Substack](https://jasonleow.substack.com). It's all text, no images. Just stories and ideas. No fancy hacks. Plain and simple. I doubt I'll post daily, because that's more like Twitter or social media.


I got my Revue newsletter to about 55 subscribers, and since moving to Substack, it's now at 75. It's nice to see people interested in my journey. To be honest, I'm not even sure what to make of my newsletter. Is it a top of funnel thing? Or to build relationships? Or is it for monetization through premium content later? I don't know, and not too worried that I don't know. For now, I write for myself, and anyone getting any benefit is happenstance. It's also nice to grow something where I'm not trying to immediately extract value, and just see how it goes.

I'm in this for the long game. Whatever game that might be.

And get this: My Twitter following is 5x more than LinkedIn, yet LinkedIn is giving more than 90% of my revenue (through my consulting). Followers ain't cash.

I don't usually don't celebrate Christmas, but it's still fun to think about what I want for Christmas, as a writing prompt. So in order of priority:

1. Good health
2. Ramen profitability
3. Family time
4. Freedom and fun
5. Travel

You can't achieve anything without good health. As I move into my mid-40s, I'm all the more aware how fragile this bag of flesh and bones is. Without good physical health, I can't even chase after my toddler son, and play with him. Without mental wellness, I'll be too stuck in my moods that I can't enjoy what life has to offer. Riches and freedom are no use if I'm sick all the time. So health—and always health—is the first mover.

Ramen profitability is second in priority because to thrive, first you got to survive. Priorities priorities priorities. The dry season from the past pandemic years taught this lesson well and hard. I made the decision to continue with consulting instead of thinking of it as something transitory. And thankfully it always came through at the last minute, and saved me from having to go back to a 9-to-5. I learned the lesson of cockroach survival at all costs deeply. And the only way to be grateful for that lesson is to live it out properly in the coming years.

Family time is next in line. You're always replaceable at your job, but you're not replaceable at home. If I shut down all my products tomorrow, nobody will miss my presence in one week or month. But my absence will be sorely felt at home. As much as my indie solo career gives me lots of meaning, purpose and fulfilment, it's hardly the most important identity or core of what makes me ME. Writing this down is an important reminder to myself at least of what truly matters.

Freedom and fun is 4th in priority. Ok I covered my bases, so comes self-actualisation. Going indie was ultimately about freedom – freedom from location, people I don't like working with, projects I don't feel for, meetings I hate attending. It's also about the promise of financial freedom, whilst taking full control of how I get there. Fun is how I'd like to get there.

Finally, travel – the only luxury item on the list. I forgotten how travel feels like. And travel might have changed permanently for me in the next 10 years or so, because it'll be near impossible to travel solo. I can hope that there's still a chance I can do so. Yet at the same time, also find ways to enjoy a different way of traveling now, with a kid in tow. Maybe those memories will be different, and bring a different meaning to travel.

*So what do you want for Christmas?*

I helped him with his Lemon Squeezy integration to Carrd, and he bought 2 plugins in return!

Read this from recent James Clear's newsletter:

> Philosopher [Simone Weil](https://www.amazon.com/Need-Roots-Declaration-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415271029) on the value of risk:
>
> "Risk is an essential need of the soul. The absence of risk produces a kind of boredom which paralyses in a different way from fear, but almost as much."

This resonated loads! Now I know why I chose to do what I do, why this indie solopreneur path. Why even when employed, I chose to do riskier special projects. Because risk is an essential need for a human being.

Just as she alluded, yes, being in constant fear isn't good. But a constant absence of risk in life is also just as bad. Just many things in life, the dosage makes the poison. It's beneficial in moderate dosages but harms in large dosages. This process is called hormesis.

I think this mirrors what they say about stress, a physiological consequence of risk. There's good types of stress, called eustress, where you feel excited but there isn't any real threat. There's acute stress which isn't harmful in itself as long as the stressor's been dealt with and you discharge and relax after. Bad stress is chronic stress. Likewise you can say that about taking on risk in life. Some risks are fun and exciting, with no threat or ruin. Some risks are acute but dissipate quickly. It's the constant risks that feel inescapable that becomes toxic.

Another parallel is exercise. In moderate amounts, exercise actually helps you grow stronger. It's like lifting weights. During the exercise you actually tear micro muscle fibres. It's in the recovery that you grow stronger. But if you overdo it, your body can't recover and you injure yourself sooner or later.

That why I love this indie solopreneur path. When done right, it gives me just the right level of risk that I can have fun with, or recover from, thus making me stronger and smarter each time. That's also why I'm not a fan of back-to-the-wall scenarios where you take the leap of faith and go all in. That's waaay too much risk or stress, especially now when I have family to feed (it might be more manageable if I was single).

The risk makes me feel more engaged with the work I do, and I get more personal growth and fulfilment out of it. It keeps me on my toes ever so slightly, making me feel more alive than the stability of employment. I could never take anything for granted as an indie, make no assumptions, and offer no certainty.

Every action is a bet, and every result is at best a hint.

I'm never bored on this journey. That's why I love it so much and want to keep doing this for as long as I'm healthy and clear of mind.

Risk some, or die (inwardly).

The trick to reading and learning all the indie solopreneurship advice and tips is knowing that there's always fine print that they left out.

Example: "Raise prices*"

* up to a point, but where this point is located depends on supply/demand, price sensitivity, competition, anchoring bias etc.

The recent Gumroad price hike was a good example. Creators who said raise your prices are now leaving Gumroad due to Gumroad raising prices. Hypocritical much? Somewhat. But the original advice to raise prices always had fine print which they left out, and might not be aware even.

You can raise prices, but if you raise by too much, customers will feel it's unfair and go to a competitor. If you raise prices but no good convincing reasons were given, people won't like it. People might be willing to pay more if there's more value, like new features tio help them earn more money, but Gumroad did no such thing. And if your product is a commodity, you get customers who are price sensitive and no loyalty to your platform – a price hike would just scare them away to other commodity platforms.

So context matters.

Every indie advice/tip should come with fine print. If it's not there, go look for it, because there's nothing worse than following well-intentioned advice only to have it backfire in your face.

Ok so after writing about [platform risk on Twitter](https://golifelog.com/posts/twitter-platform-risk-1671411641106) and feeling paranoid about things there, I decided to do something about that and set up a Plan B in case things go sideways.

1. Replicate Twitter account on Mastodon
2. Auto-tweet to a mirror Telegram channel
3. Auto-backup my tweets and followers to Google Sheets

Setting up a Mastodon account was initially confusing due to the servers you have to choose. The original Mastodon server were closed to sign-ups, so that didn't help. The other servers were more niche topical sites which didn't resonate, or needed manual approval which sucks. In the end, I found the mas.to server which a few indie hackers are on, and went for it. Too bad there's no easy way to auto-tweet to Mastodon – you got to create a API key in Mastodon, then set up a Zapier webhook to do the auto-tweet via Twitter. Might explore that at a later stage. Btw this is my Mastodon handle:

### [@jasonleow@mas.to](https://mas.to/@jasonleow)

The auto-tweet idea got me thinking of using my pro IFTTT account, so I set up a applet to auto-message new tweets to a dedicated Telegram channel. So this Telegram channel now acts like a mirror of my Twitter account, and it comes with discussion feature activated too so followers can reply too. I like this setup – I've always liked building on Telegram, and run many communities on it. So makes sense to have a personal 'account' here to direct people to. The next step is to kill the connection to Twitter and have it auto-message via say Google Sheets. My Telegram channel here:

### [jason_leow channel](https://t.me/jason_leow)

I also created 2 more applets in IFTTT to auto-backup every new tweet and new follower into their respective Google Sheets. That way I at least have a backup of all my content and following moving forward. As for all the followers before, I had a csv file downloaded from one of those Twitter backup apps. So that would suffice.

Things feel more assuring and secure with this Plan B in place.

Now back to regular work! Enough of this Twitter drama and distraction...

But he had not written a single post... waiting to see if he cancels, before updating my MRR.

I've seen many founders reinvest part or whole of their revenue back to the product or company, especially in the early days. Many even don't draw any salary or keep profits at all till revenue gets big enough. They use the money in a few ways:

- @philostar buys writing services to write SEO articles for his 4dayweek.io job board
- @tibo_maker acquires small projects from other makers as lead gens for their own project Tweethunter
- Others hire freelancers or VAs to offset the work they hate so that they can focus on the work that moves the needle
- Recently I've been buying relevant domains for Plugins For Carrd as lead gens (e.g. plugisnforcarrd.com, plugemoji.com)

Watching them, I've always felt a tinge of guilt not reinvesting. Even if my product earns just $10 or $100, I keep it. Part out of laziness, part out of not knowing what I can do with such a small amount of money.

But taking a step back and looking objectively, that amount of money isn't significant to my lifestyle anyway. My main income stream is from Outsprint. Lifelog brings in around $100 per month. Plugins For Carrd a few hundred. I don't need NEED that money. If that money were to disappear tomorrow, it wouldn't hurt my lifestyle. *So why hold on to it?* That's a question I've never asked myself.

The other point in favour of reinvesting is the popular saying, "You have to spend money to make money". It's a the ultimate growth hack, isn't it? A very foundational one at that. With money you can grow the product or team to make more money. * Why not use it to multiply itself?* is another question I should have asked more often.

How should I reinvest should I choose to? Seems like there's a few ways to do reinvesting:

- Put 100% of every dollar earned back into the product until it hits a revenue target, e.g. $10k.
- Put X% of revenue back every month in perpetuity, and adjust up or down as it grows. There's a common 50-30-20 model in business where you allocate 50% to paying themselves, 30% to taxes, and 20% to reinvesting.
- Or a combination of both. 100% reinvesting in the early days, then switch over to X% later.

With a new year approaching, I'm leaning towards setting a new rule in the new year that I don't keep anything for any product till it hits a revenue target, say $1k. Spending up to $1k per month on growing the product sounds pretty significant. I can regroup and adjust again when I do hit that milestone (if ever!).

**New product practice in 2023: Reinvest every dollar into the product until it hits $1k.**

*What do you think of reinvesting?*

Mastodon server: https://mas.to
Profile link: https://mas.to/@jasonleow

Twitter changes had been pretty wild lately for creators and indie makers:

- Removal of tweet source
- Revue newsletter shut down
- Linktree and aggregator links banned
- Links to other social media platforms banned
- Risk of [suspension](https://twitter.com/maximehugodupre/status/1603416430644436992) from verification process from signing up for Twitter Blue, or from cross-posting

To be fair, Twitter's new owner Elon Musk did caveat that they will be doing a lot of dumb things in the coming days as Twitter pivots to a new mode. But the scope and rationality of the changes, and how it's done, had not been assuring. I'm beginning to get paranoid about platform risk on Twitter. To borrow a term from the crypto space, there's definitely a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt).

Thankfully, I'm somewhat diversified in terms of distribution for my products:

- Plugins For Carrd: Telegram, email, Facebook, Reddit, Indie Hackers (and soon Pinterest, Deviantart), Flurly, Gumroad, Twitter
- Outsprint: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter
- Lifelog: Telegram, Medium, Dev.to, Hashnode, Codenewbie, Quora, Instagram, Facebook, LifeBlog, Twitter
- Tech for good projects: Telegram, Buy Me A Coffee, Facebook, Twitter
- Building in public: Makerlog, WIP, email/Substack, Lifelog, Twitter

When I started being serious on Twitter, it was to market my products like Lifelog and Sheet2Bio, but a lot less so now. If all these Twitter changes happened during that phase, I would have been super worried. Right now I use Twitter mainly to build in public, and to build a personal brand so to speak. It's more top of the funnel channel for me now. To be honest, I'm not sure how much Twitter figures in my customer acquisition channel. Twitter is top referral for Plugins For Carrd, but does it convert to paid customers? I'm not sure – I only get very few DMs about my plugins. Most of my communication with Carrd plugin customers is on the other channels and email. Likewise, my consultancy remains mostly word of mouth, and now LinkedIn, no Twitter. I upkeep a Lifelog brand account on Twitter, but it isn't converting – what converted in the past was me sharing and talking about Lifelog (which I had since stopped doing because it wasn't working well).

Maybe all these FUD is a good catalyst to step back, reflect, and ask:

- *Do I really need to spend so much time on Twitter when it isn't 100% clear if it helps with my business?*
- *What about shifting my build in public presence to other Twitter-alternative platforms (e.g. Mastodon), or distributing to more platforms (e.g. Product Hunt forum, Discord, Slack)?*
- *Where else can I go to diversify distribution channels for my products/services even further? Slideshare, Flipboard for Outsprint?*
- *What else can I use Twitter for?*

The other thing I use Twitter for is make friends with other indies, learn from them. That's one aspect of the experience that I grew to like a lot. Now it's a big reason why I continue to engage with other accounts. It'll be hard to find equivalents to that experience.

*Came for the marketing, stayed for the community.*

That's definitely one thing I will miss if I ever get deplatformed or it gets too unbearable.

Hopefully this will not come to pass.

Gumroad replacements:

Convertkit
Kajabi
Clickfunnels
Lemon Squeezy
Podia
Thrivecart
Sellfy
Flurly
Whop
Shoprocket

Or just remove the middleman and go back to basics:
Shopify
Stripe
Paddle