Jason Leow

I've always liked this particular definition of product-market fit:

When you get pulled forward by the product, instead of constantly pushing with little to no results.

But I've never quite sat down and thought through what it really looks like, so here goes – a mix of real world experiences and opinions, based on my journey running the only product that's pulling me forward - [Plugins For Carrd](https://plugins.carrd.co):

### What it truly means to be pulled forward due to product-market fit:

- When people want to help you succeed, like telling you great opportunities or connecting you to the right people with the opportunities. E.g. just yesterday someone tried to connect me to collaborate with another Carrd creator. Just today, someone told me to create keyword alerts on Twitter for "carrd", so that I can engage and share links - *why didn't I think of that before?*
- When I don't do much marketing yet the sales continue to come in. True story for my plugins project. The first 1-2 years I didn't do much active marketing, because it was a side project. But yet the sales kept coming despite.
- When I'm constantly pulled forward by new ideas and opportunities, to the point where I feel like I'm just reacting reflexively (in a good way). E.g. I saw someone do a RT hack to the Black Friday launch tweet, and immediately I had to just go tweak my launch tweet before it got sent out. Or someone asked a question about how to create a feature or solve an issue in Carrd, and I. Have. To. Go. Create. It. Now.
- When customer enquiry/support gets overwhelming. Ok not there yet for me, but even now with 3-4 sales per week, I'm feeling the additional customer support load. Imagine when I'm doing hundreds of sales a week or day!
- When I enjoy the work. Ok this is more founder-product fit but I feel it does link back over to product-market fit, because to make the product fit the market you need to iterate and improve it over time, and it's only sustainable over long term if I enjoy the work. Work like creating new plugins, helping people with their Carrd problems, talking to others about Carrd.

*What other things do you think indicates product-market fit?*

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/black-friday-34-off-for-carrd-plugins-afd3b7a598

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/black-friday-deals-from-indie-hackers-add-your-own-deal-in-the-comments-1db6dd2f55?commentId=-NHaWAO9t7_vU91D1ans

I'm upping the ante in a crazy way - offering 50% OFF any plugin(s) if you retweet this:

https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1595364033313398784

172 emails
18 newsletter subscribers
= 190 total leads

https://flurly.com/p/startup-bundle-carrd-plugins?coupon=BF2022

What I did to make it a more compelling offer:
- plugins provide the diff essential parts of a startup landing page, eg pricing, faqs
- released a previously unreleased plugin, and only available with the bundle
- upped the discount to 40% (compared to 34% for rest of plugins)

A gem of a tweet from James Clear:

“Mastery requires both impatience and patience. The impatience to have a bias toward action, to not waste time, and to work with a sense of urgency each day. The patience to delay gratification, to wait for your actions to accumulate, and to trust the process.” – @JamesClear

Replace “mastery” with “success” and now I understand better why my lack of results in my indie solopreneur journey been frustrating for me – because it requires navigating a delicate tension between patience and impatience, when all the while I’ve been just full-on impatient in everything.

That impatience is necessary, but not sufficient. My bias towards action helped me make lots of progress in terms of output, but not outcomes. The outcomes bit is where patience is necessary. Yet patience in results alone is not sufficient either. If I didn’t hustle and continually improve, patience would just lead nowhere.

Both are necessary, but either on their own is sufficient for success. And I got to hold both polarities together, with nuance. It’s like holding a slippery fish – not too tight a grip, but not too loose either, else the fish will find a way to jump back into the sea.

Expedite everything. Expect nothing.

https://github.com/trungdq88/Awesome-Black-Friday-Cyber-Monday

https://www.makerblackfriday.com/

https://plugins.carrd.co/#blackfriday2022

Little epiphany today: For the past 10 years since going self-employed, stress had always been the root cause of all my welbeing issues.

Relationship issues? Stress.
Chronic ailments? Stress.
Junk food issues? Stress.
Poor judgement? Stress.
Sleep problems? Stress.
Weight gain? Stress.
Low energy? Stress.
Gut issues? Stress.
Brain fog? Stress.
Injuries? Stress.
Stress? Stress.

Stress within a certain dosage is fine. It's stress that's not managed, relieved and let go off that becomes chronic and toxic.

And I've been trying to manage all the secondary problems that emerge due to stress, but doing nothing to tackle the root cause which is stress itself. No wonder I feel like I'm constantly threading water and only barely keeping my head above water. I've just been playing whack a mole on the symptoms all along!

So what's the external factors causing of all that unresolved stress?

- Not enough money, gigs drying up during pandemic
- New role, new responsibilities as father and provider
- Not getting the results I want as an indie solopreneur
- Not exercising, taking breaks, decompressing

Now I know. Many things I can influence and act on. A few things I can't control and change.

Act accordingly.

Used to worship the MRR gods, but now I wanna be this guy 😈


Truth is, showing MRR progress no longer makes sense to me.

It’s a relic of SaaS indie hacking, which I followed just simply because other indies are doing it. The only MRR I have right now is Lifelog, which only accounts for part of my portfolio of bets. My main income stream continues to be from my consulting, which comes in bigger, one-time sums but infrequently (like a few times a year). My Carrd plugins are small, one-time payments but more regular through the month. And also random one-time, seldom repeatable gigs like website design etc.

MRR is no longer an accurate indicator of my progress because I’m so diversified. I need something that shows that diversity… or not.

Truth is, more and more I’m questioning if sharing revenue updates and milestones are even helpful. Is it more harmful than helpful? How does it benefit me other than getting more likes and impressions? Does it even help others? Do I want people to follow me because of my revenue?

Increasingly the answers to those questions are – No.

Minimal downside, minimal upside. But the downside will only increase as the revenue goes up. Many indies beyond $10k are starting to stop showing their metrics too as it gives competitors a one-way intel into your business.

Also coming from Singapore/Asia, it always feels weird to openly share how much you’re making. Growing up it’s always been culturally taboo, and if you make a handsome amount of money, talking about it can come across as a douchebag. It invites jealousy, envy, and unwanted attention.

Right now, I’m thinking of at most showing annual revenue, or none at all… 🤔

But leaning more towards just nothing.

There I said it. I don't know how things had evolved to this stage, but I'm glad I added more nuance to that naive youthful idealism.

Sure, money *beyond* a point doesn't buy happiness. If you're shooting to be a billionaire to be happy, you're overreaching. But money does buy happiness, to a point and through many things. And the reality is, that point is a lot higher than we think, and we can buy a lot more happiness with money than we want to admit.

Money can buy:

- my products earning revenue makes me happy
- a nice meal outside with my wife, kid and parents, enjoying great food together
- a trip to Bali, Japan or some place we've never been, creating lovely memories
- a staycation where we have fun as a family
- healthy food and supplements that helps us feel healthier and happier
- financial freedom, and not having to stress about money
- sleep tech to help me sleep better, and feel more well rested and happier in the day
- biohacking equipment to help me develop a better quality of life
- courses, tools, conferences to learn new skills, enjoy the love of learning, not just for myself but for my child
- a nice home to shelter not just our bodies but our hearts
- supporting the livelihoods of my loved ones
- decent shoes, clothes to feel confident about myself when out
- a chance at a better life

All these would make me happy.

And there's so much more that money can buy that leads to happiness.

Why did I ever think that money doesn't buy happiness?

Where did I learn that from in my youth when I've not even earned a dime before? Nor suffered the pain of not having enough?

Youthful idealism, borrowed from some lame woke corner of society then (before "woke" even became a thing), taken on wholesale without nuance and understanding, and worst of all, believed with no direct experience to back up any of it.

Don't buy into that bullshit that money doesn't buy happiness.

Money does buy happiness.

And what happiness money can buy is often all the happiness we need to live a happy life.

Finally got on Substack.

👉 jasonleow.substack.com

I’m been meaning to move over from Revue for months. The email deliverability is so bad on Revue – it kept showing up in people’s spam inbox. I learned from the experts that Substack has the best email deliverability amongst the different platforms, so it’s a no-brainer.

But why today? Due to the rumours that Twitter’s going down. If the mothership goes down, I’m sure Revue would too. Moving to Substack that was an initial far-off hedge that’s becoming more real of fulfilling it’s purpose as the Twitter saga unfolds.

It’s also timely because I’ve been meaning to increase the frequency of my newsletter, from monthly to weekly. More real stories and musings from my indie solopreneur journey. I started with a monthly rhythm because I didn’t know if I could do a weekly one, and the last thing I want is to give myself work I hate and begrudge writing it. So I thought, since I’m already writing my monthly reviews anyway, I could repurpose them as sort of an update to those interested in following my indie journey. But now that I’ve published monthly for a while, it’s feeling more doable to up the cadence. Weekly is more engaging for the audience, the experts say, so it’s worth a shot. Besides, I already write pretty regularly about my products here on Lifelog. So it’s really a matter of repurposing some of them over to Substack. And with so much content already written here, I doubt I’ll have any issues making the weekly deadlines. Planning to publish one every Saturday!

Substack Saturdays, it’ll be!