Jason Leow

Long time coming! Now I can have a proper emailing list!

https://twitter.com/pluginsforcarrd
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/pluginsforcarrd

Navigation menus are tricky to do in Carrd, and near-impossible to do one with multiple levels using Carrd's native settings. Yet it's a must-have website feature, especially for businesses.

So I made an unofficial plugin to do just that 👇

Made a demo here: https://meganavbar.carrd.co/

What do you think of it? Do you think it solves the Carrd navbar problem for you?

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/a-carrd-nav-menu-with-multiple-levels-e30c47b4cf

I just saw someone launch a custom YouTube automation app that’s completely run on Make’s automation recipes in the backend.

Welcome to the era of AaaS – Automation-as-a-Service.

(Unfortunate acronym, I know)

It’s crazy how far nocode automation platforms like Zapier and Make had come. Apparently, Zapier now supports 2000+ apps for integrations for 2.5+ million active users! That’s a LOT. Gone are the days where they were just fancy, nice-to-have conveniences for workflows. They’re integral parts of business ops. And now people even build SaaS off them, like some sort of white label software.

Writing’s on the wall
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It’s not surprising actually, if you track the parallels with other software platforms like say Wordpress. WP provided an easy way to set up a website for non-technical folks, just as Zapier did. But despite the low barrier, there’s still services that white label off Wordpress to make it even easier for businesses owners who want a site but are too busy to bother with learning how to use Wordpress. Similarly, learning Zapier recipes does take a while. It’s nocode as in it doesn’t involve having to programme it yourself, but it can still get pretty technical if you dig into more complex integration and automation workflows. The other advantage is that with a custom app, the user doesn’t have to go buy subscriptions for every automation platform – the white label AaaS takes care of that.

What’s the opportunity?
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So coming back, that YouTube automation app got me entrepreneurial juices flowing. If this guy can make a niche app on top of another app (that’s Make), then there’s a lot more other possibilities here. Imagine an automation app with ready-made recipes for every major social platform – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, Whatsapp, Telegram. Narrow down the niche even more, and have automation apps for say, ecommerce on Telegram (even this niche is huuuuge).

A quick Google search shows some of the popular tasks that can be automated for these niches:

- Message your team about potential leads/customers, e.g. Facebook ads → Gmail
- Consolidate info into a spreadsheet, e.g. add new Stripe sales as rows to Google Sheet
- Automate social media workflow, e.g. post new YouTube videos to Facebook, Twitter
- Create backups, e.g. Evernote → Google Drive

This idea is really making me think:

- What are some workflows I’ve experienced in the past that can be—should be—automated?
- Which one of these workflows helps people make more money, or saves they from a huge pain?
- What’s a high impact but tricky to DIY automation workflow that can be packaged into a convenient AaaS app that people would gladly pay for?

What else did I miss?

I just came across an interesting new API service called Bionic Reading.

How it works is you feed it your text, it edits the text and spits it back in a format to help you read with better focus, like this:

BEFORE vs AFTER

It was a mindblowing experience reading both in succession. With the “before” text, I found myself trying to scan through words quickly, and my eyes glazing over after a while through a wall of text that all looks the same. Basically, shallow reading.

But with Bionic Reading, I actually read the whole thing with proper focus and attention. I felt I read it faster and easier, compared to trying to scan the text in the “before” case. It’s amazing what a few bold letters within a word can do to your attention!

This new tech makes me wonder if it’s useful for Lifelog, since we do long form writing and reading here. If people focus better here, they can write better. If people read better here, they can interact more with one another’s posts. Encouraging a more mindful, in-depth experience and interaction is something aligned to how I like to develop digital products.

Might be fun to try!

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

https://flurly.com/p/floatingbutton-welcomevideo-single

https://flurly.com/p/floatingbutton-welcomevideo-unlimited

https://jasonleow.gumroad.com/l/floatingbutton-welcomevideo-single

https://jasonleow.gumroad.com/l/floatingbutton-welcomevideo-unlimited

There's a YC letter to founders about the coming economic recession that's making it rounds. It's pretty sombre, and a warning to startup founders especially the VC-funded ones. Of course there will negative impact across the board, whatever kind of business you are.

Downturns means less revenue and profit. Companies shrink spending. People earn less. People spend less too. So trying to improve your margins and reduce costs will be a great move for any situation, any business.

But there's one particular paragraph (the last one) in the YC letter that's worth a second glance, because it sounds like a great opportunity:

> "Many of your competitors will not plan well, maintain high burn, and only figure out they're screwed when they try to raise their next round. You can often pick up significant market share in an economic downturn by just staying alive."

I absolutely love how my default mode of existence—aka surviving, staying alive— as an indie creator, bootstrapped founder is now a strategic advantage in the coming economic downturn.

In chaotic times, cockroaches > unicorns.

In fact, like how they say cockroaches will become the dominant species in a nuclear apocalypse, there's a huge opportunity now for the little guys to hustle for market share and customers when your VC-funded startup competitors fail.

In crisis, there's opportunity.

It's going to be interesting to watch for headlines of SaaS startups shutting down. How fast can you move in to make a product that can capture some of that market as an indie founder? What market gaps will emerge?

Now is the time to chase that.

Now to try it out in IH and Reddit!

I just started a blog called Carrd Tricks (https://plugins.carrd.co/#blog) for my Plugins For Carrd project.

Nothing fancy. No Wordpress, Medium or Ghost. Just manually created pages in Carrd itself. Carrd isn’t the best platform for a blog to be honest, but I’m keen to keep the SEO juice on my site, so I have to work around it.

What inspired this was how I found myself constantly helping others with their questions about Carrd, on Facebook, Reddit, Telegram and Indie Hackers. Since I’m already writing answers for them, and since there’s probably more than one person who has that same issue searching on Google for it, I might as well repurpose them into tiny how-to tutorials and tricks to help more Carrd folks. Of course, the reward is the SEO juice.

This is another one of my experiments in spotting opportunities and leveraging luck. My rule is to follow inspiration, and act on it immediately before it fades. So I dropped all my other tasks yesterday morning, and hacked it out within 2h. It has just 1 tiny tutorial right now, but probably one of the most common and recurring questions. It’s scrappy. It’s minimal. But it serves the purpose. An MVP of a blog, so to speak.

SEO takes times to accrue. And I’ve also got to start sharing the links around. But it’s a start to a long game.

Will see if this will help bring more customers to my Plugins For Carrd project!

I guess I’m a bit of a productivity nerd. All along, I’ve been optimising my productivity for efficiency. That means trying to do as more per day, squeezing as many tasks as I can, checking off the to-do list.

A good day is when all the items on the list gets struck through.

But I think I’ve been doing it wrong.

Here’s what @ShaanVP has to say in his 5 tweet Tuesday newsletter:

"My system is called One Big Thing (OBT). Here lemme explain it to ya in 2 seconds:

• What’s the one outcome you need to make happen today?
• It’s not a task, it’s an OUTCOME (might require a few tasks)
• You put all your energy towards that

If you do that every day, you’ll outpace everyone. This is what productivity nerds get wrong. They go for efficiency (tasks per day). You want to go for effect (impact per day)"

Learning this was a face palm moment for me. But this isn’t some world-changing insight, isn’t it? Keeping the big picture, being strategic instead of tactical, the ends not the means – all common knowledge. But why did it still happen?

This is where the employee mindset is still so hard to unlearn. As employees, our roles are specialised or silo-ed, so performance is usually assessed on how many tasks we accomplished. Not the impact, not the outcome, because that’s belongs to everyone in the department/division/company.

So this is the real kicker: I’m still working like an employee for my own company. Not like an entrepreneur, the boss of my company. I created a job for myself, not a business. 😱

It kind of aligns to my learnings from my experiments in luck. I’m learning that I can’t just hunker down and work. I need idle time, free cognitive bandwidth to be able to flaneur and spot opportunities to be lucky. Spotting opportunities to leverage them is how one goes for impact, not efficiency. Just one good opportunity might be able to get me to my goal, whatever it may be – revenue, profit, impressions, likes. Tasks, how fast or efficient I complete them, how many I finish, has nothing on it.

Chase outcome, not output.
Seek impact, not efficiency.

Just One Big Thing a day. That’s it.

It started off as a way to get the image hosted somewhere, but thought I could use this as an experiment to see if this works better SEO wise borrowing platform effect on Imgur

Link: https://imgur.com/a/fFtJkJS

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

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

Website:
Stackbit?
Netlify template?
Publii?

Directory page:
Siteoly?
Sheet2api?

❌ “An idiot with a plan can beat a genius without a plan.”
✅ Be an idiot without a plan than a genius with a plan.

Especially for chance-driven environments like entrepreneurship and investing.

In Nassim Taleb’s book Antifragile, a turkey thought since he had a good, secure and safe life for 364 days of the year, he will likely have the same life for many more years to come. Until Thanksgiving came along.

Anytime you try to predict anything in a chance-dominant environment, you’re likely worse off doing so than just being an idiot without a plan, responding to what pops up opportunistically.

Yet that’s not what school teaches you. You’re conditioned to prepare all your life for the final exam. That’s not what business school teaches aspiring entrepreneurs. You write a business plan, come up with strategy, resource your company to execute to the dot.

All trying to be a genius with a plan.

No more that for me. I’m going the other now, thank you very much.

Be an idiot without a plan.