Jason Leow

Borrowed code from video modal!

I've always loved the idea of a micro-SaaS and building tiny tools with code. SaaS has this impression of a huge wall to climb in order to launch it. So lowering the bar helps.

Here's one that I love, that I realised I'm already doing (for Carrd), but where the same principle can be applied elsewhere:

"💡 Simple side hustle / micro SaaS idea: Build useful @airtable scripts and post them on Gumroad. Research their community. Tons of folks asking questions… 😉 It’s a gold mine 🔥 Yet people are wasting their coding skills making notion templates or another twitter app 😅 Not only Airtable but there’s also @coda_hq @NotionHQ (formulas) , Sheets scripts (@Kamphey 😉) , etc…" – @CSMikeCardona (https://twitter.com/CSMikeCardona/status/1530959795498283010)

It's TRUE. I do the same for Carrd. But never quite saw the opportunity for it in other platforms. Pretty underrated opportunity!

- Folks using these platforms generally aren't technical folks. But since it's low-code, they might have encountered it, dabbled with it enough to be not averse to dealing with *some* code. Perfect situation for introducing code scripts for them to copy-paste.
- Power users often push low-code tools like Notion, Airtable to their limits, so being able to extend their Notion page to do more without learning to code could be something they might be open to
- I can imagine the code can be repurposed, say Carrd to Wix or Squarespace perhaps. So code once, sell twice!
- Low-code tools/platforms that can leverage this opportunity:
- Carrd
- Notion
- Airtable
- Google Sheets
- Wix
- Squarespace
- Coda
- Zapier
- Make

What other opportunities did I miss?

Now on to my 3rd 100-limit invite link: https://t.me/+H2CTlwe5Bco2MmQ1

I've been saying I want to do this forever, but I finally did. It really is more efficient!

Previous: 1h x 7 days = 7h
Now: 7 days content = 2-3h

Here’s an interesting idea that’s counter to the mainstream:

"I’m always surprised when I see people seek accountability to force themselves to do something. I’ve been deliberately organizing my life to remove as much accountability from it as I can. I want to adapt and change my mind without feeling beholden to anyone." – @dvassallo

I think Daniel is talking about external accountability, like accountability groups. Like Lifelog perhaps.

That’s an interesting thought experiment to try: Indeed why seek external accountability at all? Why force yourself?

I’m familiar with the usual arguments - to develop a good habit. To get started. To achieve something wholesome/worthwhile (e.g. good health, diet etc).

But there’s something else to be said about being motivated only by external accountability.

It isn’t sustainable as a habit forming lever in the long term. Over time, we rebel against the gaze of the other. Or simply ignore. And thus back to old habits.

People in the accountability group can come and go. Some graduate, some drop off. Hence leaning on something which isn’t always there for you, isn’t always the same for you, will affect your motivation too. Factors outside of your control.

Ultimately, there’s a point about how only intrinsic motivation lasts.

If you don’t have a deep ‘why’, a deep satisfaction, a self-driving reason why you want to do it, you will never last as long as you want.

And even while intrinsic motivation is what sustains, what about the parallel concept called internal accountability? It’s easy to conflate the two.

Internal accountability is you setting a target and being accountable to yourself, where no one else is watching. It doesn’t always work out. Forcing yourself to do what you’re procrastinating on can end up being counterproductive. Procrastination is a signal, it’s data - we got to learn how to listen to it even though it’s often described as a distraction, an impediment to our goal. Sometimes procrastination tells us we don’t want to do it, or do it this way, and we need to either change the way to approach it or to re-examine our goal in the first place.

Intrinsic motivation ≠ internal accountability

So is accountability mostly useless then?

That makes me think. A lot.

Maybe it’s useful for short term. But long term, nope.

The issue is when a short term hack becomes a long term strategy.

Not added back but more like I forgot to keep it in when i changed the pricing

⚗️ Next experiment: Adding a custom (sub)domain

I've been having horrid sleep. Hardly any deep sleep. Not feeling rested upon waking. And it's messing up everything downstream. Sleep really is the first mover.

When sleep is good, everything else just works, in virtuous loops.
When sleep is bad, nothing seems to work out, in vicious cycles.

The vicious cycles goes like this:

Sleep poorly
Energy goes down
Motivation tanks
Sleep even more poorly
x10 spiral downward to hell

I think I'm in a sleep slump.

Like writer's block, but for sleep.

And I'm out of ideas on what to do when sleep goes haywire.

What can one do when sleep goes awry without rhyme or reason?

A few things to do could be to run through a checklist of the usual suspects of poor sleep:

- Health - how's your health recently?
- Exercise - how you been exercising/moving enough?
- Diet - Been eating clean? Or junk?
- Stress - Anything that's stressing you out lately?
- Lifestyle - Any changes to lifestyle, routines, location, external environment?

So what can I do, right now? What's my go-to sleep hack(s) when sleep isn't going well?

My first thought was always: Forget hacks, go back to **sleep fundamentals**.

- Pay back on sleep debt - take 1-2 naps, go to bed earlier
- Wind down properly in evenings
- Thermal comfort at night
- Last food 3h before bed, eat clean
- Drink enough water in the day
- Destress, be less busy

Will try this and report back.

https://sheet2bio.com/ayush

There’s been a huge opportunity right under my nose for a while now, but because it’s doing okay on its own, I’ve often neglected it for other shiny objects, other projects in the portfolio.

That opportunity is my Plugins For Carrd project.

It’s been the one project bringing in revenue all on its own without me putting in much effort into marketing and distributing it. I dare say, it’s probably 100x less compared to the time and energy I put into marketing Lifelog. Yet, it brings in almost the same amount monthly. Some months, even more.

Another signal that it has potential: I actually love working on it. Every time someone emails or messages me a bug report or a plugin integration problem, I jump right into it. Even if I’m working on something else. And I love it. Being able to so tangibly help someone else, plus use my coding skills, was definitely more compelling than I had yet to admit to myself (now I do).

People email me ideas all the time, and ask me if this plugin can do this or that. I observe Carrd folks asking recurring questions on the Facebook group, prompting me with even more ideas on how I can solve it with plugins. There’s certainly a hunger for solutions beyond what the native Carrd settings can provide. Already I’m starting to see other indie makers trying out making Carrd plugins. I had a recent conversation with @mikecardano on Twitter - we talked about demand for micro-SaaS for low-code tools. Writing scripts and formulas for low-code tools like Airtable, Make, Carrd, Google Sheets to help other nocode users. There’s definitely a market.

Yet here I am, working on other things while my Plugins project is quietly screaming at me to listen.

I hear you now.

I can’t keep neglecting a project that’s been quieting generating revenue and say in good faith that I haven’t found a project that has potential to take-off. IT’S RIGHT THERE for the taking. Take it.

So I think I’m going to shift focus a bit.

Plugins should really be my main project not side hustle.

Why one-time payment?

Capitalize on the notion of an impulse buy. $50 for perpetual use is pretty affordable (I guess). Besides, paying yet another subscription for a site that just sits there most of the time had always felt dissonant even to myself (why would I pay $5 every month for that?). So one-time feels more palatable. One-time payment with no future updates also mean less tech burden on my part. I can quite literally set and forget (unless there's bug or issues with their current version of Sheet2Bio of course).

Will see how this unfolds and iterate accordingly!

[UPDATE:] Changed to $10 as per discussion with @poppacalypse

https://sheet2bio.com/timewilltell

https://sheet2bio.com/deepmusical

This creator journey often feels like a dance, like tango… 2 steps forward, 3 steps back.

Sometimes I do get net 1 step forward, but it feels less frequent than net 1 step backward.

But I beginning to realise, that net 1 step back isn’t regression.

It actually goes like this:

✅ 2 steps forward
❌ 3 steps back
✅ 2 steps forward
❌ 3 steps back
✅ 2 steps forward
❌ 3 steps back
✅ 2 steps forward
❌ 3 steps back
✅✅✅ 10 steps forward

I was simply gathering momentum, like on a playground swing.

For that one massive swing forward.

Because that 1 massive 10-steps forward swing from the momentum built up from smaller 2-forward-3-back swings would mean over a long enough timeframe the chart still goes trends upwards.

What I’m realising is that even the net 1 step backward is part of overall progress! 😮

Because backward steps bring the lessons, experience and insights. The forward steps bring celebration, motivation and data. But taking a 10,000ft perspective from above, both backward and forward are compounding steps of progress nonetheless.

Another tiny epiphany: It’s simply this @visualizevalue chart turned 90degrees clockwise -
https://twitter.com/visualizevalue/status/1385067484554858497

So time to hold on tight, because the massive swing forward might be incoming… All the while, just plain having fun.

@viking_sec asked me about consulting work, about how to get your name out there -

"I’ve got an idea for a fairly good niche. How do you get your name out there in your niche in a way that gathers attention from the right audience?"

It’s a great question! And I realised I’ve never wrote much about my design consultancy Outsprint before, and certainly never wrote about how I sustained myself in consulting all along, so writing out the answer for him was cathartic in a way. Putting it down here for reference and archive:

Caveats
Let’s get the caveats out of the way first. Honestly, it really depends on your niche. I can’t say my approach will work for everyone, so your mileage may vary. Please be discerning and filter out what works what doesn’t for you.

What worked for me:

Social capital
I was lucky in this aspect. My consulting was based off my previous employment ~10 years ago when I was a designer in a government organisation. I had some networks then, so when I left to continue doing the same work but as a external consulting specialist for government/non-profits, there was word of mouth effect that helped. I’ve never done any ads, done any marketing for my consulting agency. It was solely word of mouth.

Be known for a unique niche
Occupying a unique niche helped. Most design consultancies don’t specialise. They take work from wherever whatever. I only do “design for public good” - design-driven innovation in government and non-profit, so it’s easy for anyone to remember that “gov design guy”.

Location matters
My design consultancy was targeting local work only. Which makes sense because of the nature of government. But this helped me niche down further, instead of competing globally. Geographical advantage helps - it gave cultural context, networks and focus.

Overdeliver
I always felt that the best form of marketing was to do damn good work. Overdeliver on value, impress by going the extra mile. The lovely second, third order effects of that is word of mouth marketing, good deliverables that showcase itself, and ex-clients willing to recommend you to others.

Unique business model
Because I worked in government before, I knew how my now-turned-clients think, their painpoints and needs. I was in their position previously! I intentionally created a productized service package with clear deliverables and price (instead of buying man hours or per project quotations). That helped them understand what they will get at what cost, compared to more vague terms they might get with proposals from other design agencies.

I also made the price fall within the budget approval limits so that they can get approval through a less onerous approval process (we call it invitation to quote) rather than a lengthy more troublesome process (calling for tender), which most consultancies often fall into.

With the lower price also meant I needed to deliver a shorter project, hence I went with a design sprint model, everything done in 1 week. That also lowered barriers to trying me out, compared to other agencies where they have to project-manage for 3-6 months.

Build an audience
COVID dried up the consultancy gigs from government because they were focused on managing the crisis. But with the pandemic mostly over, restrictions lifted, public organisations are slowly getting back to thinking about service improvement. I thought I could start building an audience on LinkedIn now (since my LinkedIn networks are mostly local design folks), to raise awareness of my presence and offering again, and do some business development. It’s the first time I’m doing any form of marketing.

https://videobutton.carrd.co/

Pretty excited by this! I managed to crack the riddle on how to use native Carrd elements to trigger a custom code Embed element! Imagine all the different UI I can trigger.

- Pay button with modal
- Read more link/button with text modal
- Image lightbox to view each image
- Email modal to get sign-ups

I’ve been enjoying coding the Sheet2Bio landing page in just plain HTML, CSS and Javascript. (The bio pages are in HTML, CSS and Vue.js)

It’s such a joy to code using just a Github-Netlify tech stack.

So simple.
So uncomplicated.

Just like writing here on Lifelog, I write code on Github on the web app, and click publish. Netlify does the rest, automatically.

No hosting.
No libraries.
No terminal.
No backends.
No databases.
No frameworks.
No npm or yarn.
No code editors.
No components.
No versions to update.
No environment variables.
No endless node modules.
No tooling to install and set up.
No configs for eslint and prettier.

Sometimes I wonder if we had veered way off course when it comes to simplicity of tooling for web development.

OK sure one doesn’t need to learn everything on that list to deploy his first app. But still numerous enough. That was my experience too. Just getting set up with the tooling is a huge pain and barrier to entry already, before he can even deploy a simple “Hello, World!”.

I love that my time-to-helloworld is mere minutes using the Github-Netlify tech stack.

I wish every web app I create can be this simple and uncomplicated.

Question:

What’s the best way to get started with journaling? Do we need any templates or frameworks?

Answer:

The thing holding back most aspiring writers: Thinking it has to be elaborate and complicated.

Scrappy is better. Scrappy gets you started.

Just set aside 10min. Not 3h. Anyone has 10min in a day. It can be any time. No need to get up at 5am. Or stay up after the kids are in bed. 10min while on your commute home. 10min during lunchtime. 10min on the toilet.

Think about one question, concern or worry you might have for the day. It doesn’t have to be a huge life problem. It can be something tiny, mundane, small, like “I’m feeling anxious for my work presentation later” small.

And just write it down. Brain dump everything into whatever medium you have. It doesn’t have to be a fancy, beautiful notebook. You don’t need a space age pen. It doesn’t have to be on a $3000 Macbook, with a serious note-taking app with bi-directional linking and networked thought. Your phone, a text message to yourself, a napkin, or even a scrap of receipt paper will do. Just start.

And one last thing… do you need templates or frameworks? I think you would be able to guess it by now. No. Just start. 10min. Whenever. On whatever. Simple.

Start scrappy. Elaborate, complicate later, if ever.