Jason Leow

We just passed 100 members in the 5am club for creators! As of today we’re at 104 members – a growth milestone that I feel I should write about. I started it on 14 Aug 2021, so it took about 7 months to get to 100. I did a review when the group was at 90 members on 12 Mar, so it took about 1 month to grow 10 members! Surely a slow growth project, a labour of love.

What I love most about this project
It’s a great learning opportunity on community-driven product development. I started the group chat not thinking about a product, but just as a way to learn collectively about sleep. But in the back of my mind, I always knew the possibility of building something for it in the future. So this is my own way of learning by doing, for community-driven products.

What I found challenging about the project
Engagement. And patience. Thankfully it seemed to have reached a threshold at 100 where more members are active, posting their wake times, and chatting about sleep. From 0 to 70-80, it felt like messaging into the void. I was probably the one who’s active on the chat.

What my hopes are for the project
I wish to keep growing the club. The funny thing about sleep biohacking is, it’s an infinite game. You’re never done, or can ever be done done. So there’s always something to work on, some new or old lesson to learn and share. So likewise, I’m not sure there’s a endgame here for the community. It can keep going and growing. People will come and go, but everyone still needs to sleep, so there’s always a need for it.

Regardless if you like NFTs or not, those projects are proof of amazing marketing feats.

If a non-existent yacht in a fictional metaverse can sell for $650,000; if a jpeg on the internet can sell for $23.7M, it makes me feel we creators and indie hackers can market and sell any product even if we thought it’s too niche or expensive and no one will buy.

Honestly, I’m in disbelief at the crazy money people are willing to pay. But disbelief or no, I find it’s super intriguing and curious to learn about the marketing, hype and culture around it… I feel there’s likely bits we creators can learn from:

• Community...
• Incentive design...
• Marketing...

I just launched a beta for Sheet2bio, a link-in-bio page for creators. It’s an alternative to popular link-in-bio pages like Linktree and Bio.link, and what stands out is how you can use Google Sheets as like a CMS or admin dashboard to build and manage the link-in-bio page.

What’s Sheet2Bio
You can show all your links at a glance: products, content/writings, and social media profiles. One link to funnel your audience to the right offering they are looking for. Demo:

👉 https://sheet2bio.com/jason

Why I made it
It started off as an itch I needed to scratch - I needed a link-in-bio page but didn’t feel like signing up for yet another social platform. I used Google Sheets-based nocode tools like Sheet2site in the past and always enjoyed how easy it was to get up to speed on the interface because it’s all done on Google Sheets. Since then I’ve always tried to use Google Sheets as a small database/CMS in my products whenever I can. For example, the announcements banner in Lifelog here is updated via a Google Sheet. That meant I didn’t need to deploy my site to production for minor, frequently updated changes to website copy. The convenience and ease of use is the key. I think creators often have new offerings or calls-to-action, and being able to simply update it right away using the Google Sheets mobile app is awesome!

How - the tech stack
This is where it gets technical - skip ahead if you’re not technically inclined! Frontend built using Vue.js, with a Github repo and hosted on Netlify. CI/CD built right into Netlify means I make an edit on my Github repo and the code is automatically pushed to Netlify right away. Backend is Google Sheets of course - I tap on the API and use the data to populate each link-in-bio page upon page load. Everything follows from a JAMstack philosophy, to decouple the frontend from the backend. Right now I’m still manually creating each page. If and when this takes off, will have to start thinking about more automation.

Future feature ideas
Some future feature ideas - analytics, link tracking, custom domain, email newsletter form, integration with Notion/Airtable.

When is it available?
Beta is open now, and it’s free (for now).

👉 https://sheet2bio.com

But couldn't figure out how to make the border-radius responsive as well (wut!)

https://floatingwelcomevideo.carrd.co/

Gotta start thinking about how I can update them all in one go whenever I develop new features!

https://sheet2bio.com/indigo/

- fixed the display of blank buttons when a field is left blank

"I started dividing my to-do list into 1) things I have to do, 2) things I want to do, and 3) things other people want me to do. Life changing! I often don’t get to 3 and I finally realized omg, is this what it means to have boundaries?! 🤯🤯🤯"
– @jdesmondharris

I love the 3rd to-do list – a to-do list of things that others want you to do.

Because so often we lump them together with our own to-dos, and our priorities go whack. What I love most however is how this is a concrete way of having boundaries.

Having this others’ to-do list feels like a more introvert, composed way of asserting boundaries. You want me to do something? Sure, let me put you on the to-do list and I’ll prioritize it accordingly. You’ll have to wait though…

Now out with the “to-do, doing, done” kanban board to-do list, and in with the “have to, want to and others’ want to” to-do list!

- made close x btn bigger
- made overlay darker
- made position fixed so that it opens in center of screen whichever the location of the vertical scroll
- NEXT: video and modal needs to be responsive for mobile screens

The real idea you spent months perfecting. Zero demand.

The joke idea you tweeted on a whim. Validated demand.

Oh, how Fate loves irony.

I tweeted something as a joke. As sort of a satirical shitpost about how everyone and their grandma is launching a cohort based course.

Apparently the joke was lost on everyone, but instead of moving on, they stopped at my tweet and did something surprising - they replied about wanting to sign up!

So now the joke’s on me. 🙃

I wasn’t even planning to create a course. I don’t even like coaching! But now I feel like I must because of everyone’s kind support.

So now I’m seriously considering starting a cohort based course, probably associated with Lifelog. It might look like this, broadly:

Low-to-medium touch on time and socializing. Something great for introverts!
Low bar for commitment. Engage in pockets, at the edges of your day.
As little content/curriculum as possible, delivered over email or messages. Just enough to take the first step, and maybe the next.
Asynchronous. Check in, check out. Anytime.
Self-paced, broadly structured.
Free(?!), or freemium, like small payment for maybe events(?).
Write in public, chat on Telegram/Discord.
To be honest, I have no idea how that can look like. What should it even try to achieve?

Writing better? Or just developing a daily writing habit?

I should speak to users more.

*What else should I be considering? What other aspects of a typical cohort based course do you hate?

https://floatingwelcomevideo.carrd.co/

https://www.reddit.com/r/IMadeThis/comments/txha15/needed_a_linkinbio_page_but_wanted_to_use_google/