Jason Leow

I hated a 9-5, so I quit and started working 24/7 on my own products. 😅🙃

The irony isn’t lost on me. And the funny thing is, this story is way more common amongst founders than we admit. But I’m a willing victim here. Truth is, ownership of my misery changes everything. I own all the pains and gains. I can adjust my schedule and workload if I should so choose otherwise, not at the mercy of someone else. Everyone’s less free due to having to work, but I get to choose what will make me less free.

It’s the freedom.

Of course the caveat is: the 24/7 is not the aim here. It’s a consequence of (hopefully) a founder in the early stages of his startup. Burnout is real. Not here to make small of the ill effects of 24/7 hustling. No badges given here for coding late at night till early morning, working on weekends, missing out on major life events like your child’s birthday or wedding anniversary. I do recognise the early days building a business needs some hustling, but I’m constantly seeking to balance with family and personal time. Hard but trying.

I’m only human. When I do have to burn the candle on both ends, I whine and grumble. But taking a step back, I wouldn’t trade it for anything else. I’m living my best life and career, and I want to balance it better all the more to keep having this chance to live it.

The easiest part of it all – working on your own thing often doesn’t feel like work.

I can do this all day.

Black Friday’s coming. Some things I’m looking out for:

• Carrd subscription for 100 sites! I’ve looked forward to the yearly BF sale on Carrd for a few years now. It was 40% last year – a substantial discount in BF land. This time, I’m not just renewing but upgrading too, to 100 sites. Need more space to hold all those templates I’m making and all the expansion plans for my Plugins For Carrd business!

• The defining buys this BF is probably all from Leela Quantum tech. I don’t understand enough about the tech but it seems to have a noticeable effect on me after trying the HEAL capsule and prosperity card. They have 25% off for BF now.

- The [travel bloc](https://leelaq.com/leela-travel-car-bloc/, a quantum energy generator to protect the household from harmful energies and provide vitalizing quantum energy and supportive frequencies for general well-being.
- The abundance card for both me and my wife to help us create abundance in our life, and unblock any scarcity deficits.
- The calm and rest card for sleep. This will be interesting for my sleep biohacking! With such poor quality sleep lately, I’m quite looking forward to experimenting with this.

• The Mute snoring tech starter pack was a nobrainer immediate buy for me as I recognised it solved a clear and present problem for my sleep – my nasal passage narrowing when I lie down, making it hard to breathe and causing the snoring issues I had all along. Mouth taping didn’t work because I still needed to breathe somehow, and I would unconsciously tear them off in my sleep. I’ve been using Mute for some months now, and I can feel an incremental improvement. It’s not a huge lifesaver, but I can feel it helps open up my inner nasal passage a bit more. Definitely worth investing in getting a few more as backups. No BF discount spotted yet!

So what Black Friday buys are you thinking of? Do share!

A list of good reasons to not compare with other indie hackers on Twitter or any social media platform:

### Highlights reels vs reality
I'm comparing their highlight reels with my B-roll reality, their wins with my fails. Everyone airbrushes their projected image on social, so it's not a realistic apple to apple comparison anyway.

### Different stages of progress
I'm comparing people at different stages in their career. You'll never compare the wins or losses of a senior C-suite executive with a junior manager in his first job since college, so why should we compare that way between 2 entrepreneurs? Their 10 year journey to get to that point is not comparable to my 2 year milestone.

### Different starting lines
Unless they went to the same school, had similar upbringing, and same socio-economic environment growing up—basically your biological twin— there's not much basis for comparison. It's not a level playing field, never was, never will be. Someone from a rich family, rich country, great business environment, will always have an unfair edge. Our starting lines are all different.

### Different finishing lines
Everyone has different goals, even if they are direct, near-identical competitors. We start at a different starting lines, and we have a different finishing lines. Entrepreneurship isn't a race where everyone is running on the same track. Hell, we all aren't even in the same race, even for direct competitors! If my goal is about freedom, does it make sense to compare with someone who's goal is to make money? If I had only $5k monthly revenue but I achieved my goal of freedom, am I lesser off than someone with $100k monthly revenue but not yet achieved his goal of $1M?

### Different market conditions
Market conditions, supply and demand, larger economic forces beyond your control, all determine how well your product does. If your product is in a different market from someone else, even if both are indies, there's probably way more factors outside both of your control than we would like to admit. Uncertainty makes the grounds for comparison shaky.

### Different life situations
Everyone's life situation is different. I'm comparing my results from having to care for a toddler kid, being sleep deprived, and having many mouths to feed versus a single guy, no family responsibilities, way lesser time constraints. I'm starting the entrepreneur game in hard mode already, while the rest are in easy mode.

### Big life things vs little tactical things
Comparing the big things simply does nothing productive, and does no good for my mental wellbeing. So why do it? Caveat: Compare the little, tactical things though – like compare how someone markets their product with mine, so that I can learn. If it's strictly learning purposes with no emotions involved, it's okay.

*Any other good reasons we shouldn't compare with others?*

Why bring it back? Because:

"Short-form content to get the Attention
Long-form content to keep the Attention"
- @AlexLlullTW (https://twitter.com/AlexLlullTW/status/1589264849858691072)

Some hits and misses but the results look awesome nonetheless! Don't think I'll ever design my own app icon ever again 🤯

https://www.amazon.sg/dp/B0BLG1F5MW/ref=cbw_us_sg_dp_ags?smid=ARPIJN329XQ0D

OK I’m done with the old approach of working on weaknesses in order to improve and grow.

Maybe it’s just age. Maybe it’s experience.

I don’t know for sure, but I’m getting a nagging doubt that my old ways aren’t working, yet I’m still expecting results (because “show up every day”). That’s Einstein’s definition of insanity.

No more.

I’ve been beholden to that paradigm, because it had worked so well for me in the past. In sports especially. I learned that—as an athlete—you are only as strong as your weakest link. Because performance is a consequence of different attributes coming together – power, endurance, mental qualities. They are all chain-linked and pulling in the same direction like a chain when you’re performing. And where it breaks is always at the weakest link in the chain. People intuitively avoid working on their deficit areas because it feels bad. If someone is has good endurance, they keep using and working on it because it makes them feel good. In sports I’ve gained lots of improvement by working hard on those weak links. That’s how I’ve approached work and career. Focus on deficits, the strengths will take care of themselves.

But I realised this might not be true for indie hacking.

Because in sports there’s rules of the game, and the factors that lead to success are relatively straightforward and predictable. Anyone with the most power, endurance, technical skills and mental prowess wins.

But there’s no such straightforward formula for success in entrepreneurship.

In fact, for every best practice, you can find someone who succeeded without it. Every business 101 fundamental, you can find a business built without it.

You need to go to college, have an MBA. No – college dropouts are now billionaires.
You need lots of venture capital to succeed. No – bootstrapped startups are winning too.
You need an audience. No – ads, SEO, network effects can bring you to profitability too.

In a complex, unpredictable and diversified space like entrepreneurship, there is no weak links. Because there are no rules. No assured attributes that predict winning like in sports. Success is mostly opportunistic and random. Luck plays a major role even though most do not like to admit it.

So there’s opportunity for everyone to win, because the market accepts so much diversity. Just playing to your strengths is sufficient.

Hate money? Don’t bother with unlearn money mindsets. Just do business for my own reasons which I love.

Hate marketing? Then stop doing it. Don’t tweet 3x a day, write 1 thread a week, and all that nonsense. Just be fiercely authentic and genuine, help others, share whatever I feel I want to share and talk about.

Hate all the noise? Don’t worry about best practices and just do what I intuit to be working for me and my business.

Hate the fear of judgement? Don’t worry about how others opine of me. Let them accept me as I come.

I’m so past working on my deficits.

I’m just going to leverage on my strengths and assets, and go.

Strengths > deficits

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/gradient-text-in-carrd-f061dde40a

Biohacking is often very physical or tech-related, but for biohacking stress, I think there's lots of mindset and mental tricks that help. Stoicism is making a comeback recently and the Stoic's practical and inner ways to handle stress that [@dailystoic](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CkoxFiYA4qn/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=) talked about seems to be pretty spot on and relevant for stress management:

1. Focus on what you can control. Most of the thing that stress us out has nothing to do with what we can influence.
2. Prepare for it in advanced - not just do positive visualisation, do negative visualisation. "The blow you can anticipate lands the least heavy." - Seneca
3. Journaling - Write in morning what you're stressed about, and in evening, review how the day went, what you did. Did I really need to be so worried. Did my worry make anything better?
4. Have a hobby, different from work, from kids. Put some of that stress energy to good use.
5. Laugh at life, don't cry about it. Life is absurd rather than terrible.
6. Memento mori - almost nothing is worth worrying about in light of your fragile mortality.

I'm definitely guilty of overthinking things I can't control to the point it is more amplified than it seems. Always asking if it's something outside of my sphere of influence will be helpful in not letting stress run crazy. I just saw a [useful visual](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6995154047271936000) on what I can control and what I can't:

In my control:
- My boundaries
- My thoughts and actions
- The goals I set
- What I give my energy to
- How I speak to myself
- How I handle challenges

Out of my control:
- The past
- The future
- The actions of others
- The opinions of others
- What happens around me
- What other people think of me
- How others take care of themselves

Having more-than-enough advanced preparation for me definitely helps. For my consulting gigs, I often arrive 1h earlier to settle into the space and be ready. Preparation is also about setting the right expectations and mindset going in. As I've realised recently, [expectations can help, or hinder](https://golifelog.com/posts/expectations-1667690041647) – good to calibrate from the onset.

Writing here is my journaling in a way. But Maybe I should consider something analog and offline, where I can write 100% without inhibition.

I've failed at finding hobbies multiple times. So much that I gave up on hobbies. Maybe the word "hobby" is hindering. Maybe what I need is simply to do something different. Switch up the form. Sit at the desk too much. Go do some work with my hands. Tasks are too intellectual and cognitive? Do something wildly creative for a change – paint, draw, create. Too much solo work? Go work in teams for a short while.

I'm definitely too serious when it comes to life. Laughing at life would help. Having a sense of humour about failures and difficulties, making light of things, having a laugh at myself – all great ways to uncoil that stress spring building up tension within. My shitpost tweets are often attempts at this. Maybe that's why they work so well!

Lastly, memeto mori gives the overview effect on the planet that's our life. Just take a step back and a deep breath, and know that a year from now you might not even remember what you're stressed about today.

Stress biohacking, the Stoic way.

Expectations is spice. It makes things taste better. But used on the wrong thing, it makes things worse.

Expectations get me to my goals faster. If I expect my product to improve 1% every day, I expect that my daily effort will bring me there. If I expect that hard work will eventually get me to my goals, then I will work hard. Cause and effect, and the expectations of that cause and effect.

It works when expectation is aligned to reality. Only when aligned with reality.

But that isn’t always true, and when it’s out of whack, expectations hold you back than push you forward.

If there’s no product-market fit, working hard is working hard on the wrong thing, going in the wrong direction. Expectations that hard work will pay off won’t change the reality that you’re moving in the wrong direction, and will never hit your goals. No amount of reality distortion will change that. The sun will never rise from the west, no matter how much I believe it.

When I expect something to be my main project that will liberate me from 9-5, my expectations would be to keep hammering at it, keep trying to grow it till it does. It’s the Chosen One. I will reach my goal if I had faith and keep going. But it was on the wrong path from the start. No amount of growth hacks, promoting and selling will change that reality. No amount of faith will ever get you there.

So right matching of expectation to product or goal, is mission-critical. Basically, being realistic, and having good judgement to not let what I think I want cloud what’s really happening.

Lifelog suffered that. For too long I’ve expected it to grow just because I expect it to. Because it’s my first ever SaaS, my main project, my Chosen One. So I kept going. I’m pretty stubborn with keeping at things until it hits my goal. But I was so wrong this time. I was blind to the reality and the data I was shown. That it won’t grow till some big changes are made. More features to be built. Less expectations to be had. Little presumptions for MRR growth. Perhaps after that it will stand a chance.

So, no more expectations. It’s holding me and Lifelog back.

I’ll get back to before I had expectations, and just see the product as it is, as what it does, right now.

Just watch and see.

Gold nugget from James Clear’s recent newsletter:

“In some areas of life, value is unlocked by starting. Even a five-minute workout or a short walk can reset your mood and benefit your body. In other areas, value is unlocked by finishing. It does you no good to build a bridge halfway across the river. You need to complete the project to realize the value. Do you need to start or finish? Are you building a body or building a bridge?”

He’s probably talking about writing and creative projects, but I see so much overlap with indie hacking, making products, starting small bets.

When you’re still a noob and not launched anything substantial yet, it makes sense that starting has more value than finishing. Because beginners worry too much about the finished product too much. What if it’s not perfect? What if people laugh at my mistakes and bugs? Value is unlocked when you start. When you ship. When you launch.

The same thing for earning your first $1 from the internet. You can launch products all year but if your goal is freedom from 9-5, then you got to launch a paid product. Starting with that first $1 has immense value in opening up your mind and expanding the horizon on what’s possible.

Once you launch enough and are making some small revenue from your small bets, finishing starts to have more value. Launching is easy. Sustaining for the long game is finishing. Finishing as in truly finishing and hitting your goal. Usually that involves doing the tasks that you hate in order to get to a goal of say, ramen profitability. Learning marketing even though you’d rather code more features. Rethinking ads even though you don’t have a good impression of ads. It does me no good to keep building new things but not seeing them through to full potential. You realize the true value (of financial freedom) only when you finish.

And it’s not homogenous at each stage of progress, as a noob or a veteran. Even as a veteran, there will be tasks or sub-goals—like new work areas/opportunities—where you’ll benefit from starting than finishing. It’s more of what’s more predominant in your overall trajectory.

The trick is to not hold on to either stance too strongly, and be objective.

So do you need to start, or finish?

Updated .txt file
Updated new zip file for Flurly
Updated plugin changelog

Plugins For Carrd(https://plugins.carrd.co) launched in Dec 2020 as a side project. It started for fun. I was learning to code, learning Vue.js, and made tiny standalone apps that I realised could be embedded in Carrd as a feature.

So I went and created templates for it even before the Seller Program existed. I only had free templates at the start, but seeing the reception to the free ones, I then launched my first paid plugin in March 2021. The revenue is one-off, but modest in the first year (2021):

Dec $135
Nov $334
Oct $60
Sep $105
Aug $150
Jul $120
Jun $30
May $30
Apr $105
Mar $30
Feb $0
Jan $0
———————
TOTAL = $1099
Monthly average = $91.60

What's surprising about the revenue was how little I did to market it. I shared bits and pieces on social media, answered some questions, that's about it. It just kept growing *all on its own*. And now, in the 2nd year, revenue DOUBLED:

2022 revenue (as of today):

Oct $250
Sep $200
Aug $230
Jul $265
Jun $285
May $345
Apr $125
Mar $250
Feb $90
Jan $210
———————
TOTAL = $2250
Monthly average = $187.5

And that's just the numbers for plugin sales. It's not including the $1514 in cumulative revenue I earned so far in affiliate revenue (from the Referral Program) and templates 'donations' (from the Seller Program) in – just last month in October alone, the affiliate + template revenue was already $259. If this keeps up, it could potentially mean another doubled revenue stream!

All the while my other products either stagnated (Lifelog, Outsprint) or faded to zero (Keto List Singapore, Sweet Jam Sites). Outsprint only recently reviving again due to better pandemic conditions.

Except February, every month out-earned Lifelog. This is why I'm pushing Lifelog to side project status and Plugins to main project. This is even more poignant when I compare just how much marketing I did for Lifelog compared to Plugins. Not bad for what was once a side project huh...

It's crazy how long I've sat on this opportunity and didn't double down on it as much as the potential shows. Yet the Universe had been truly patient. So lately I've been trying to do more of what seems to be working:

- answering questions from new customers within a day or less
- helping people with their Carrd problems, answering questions without expecting returns
- creating more free templates and plugins and sharing
- promote without coming across as self-promoting, by adding "~ plugins.carrd.co" to my username, and signing off as "Jason ~ plugins.carrd.co" in comments

Just old school good service. Just being giving to a fault.

No growth hacks. No fancy tricks.

I'm not even talking about it that much on Twitter. Maybe that's the key......