Jason Leow

I can earn $5k/m just from either one of these:

5 × $1000 websites
25 × Carrd plugin integration jobs
334 × Carrd plugin sales at $15 a pop
500 × Lifelog subscriptions at $10/m
1 × $30k consulting project over 6 months
1-2 courses at $2000-3000 per course
[New!] 25 × unlimited Carrd web design/support at $199/m subscription
[New!] 10 × unlimited Carrd design/support for unlimited sites at $499/m subscription

OK but it’s hard to expect to sell 334 Carrd plugins in 1 month when my current sales is like average 10 per month. So maybe I can do a mix:

2 × $1000 websites = $2000
34 × Carrd plugin sales = $510
1 × $30k consulting project per year = $2500

Or something even more realistic:

2 × $500 websites = $1000
1 × course at $1000 total sales
20 × Carrd plugin sales = $300
20 × Lifelog subscriptions at $10/m = $200
1 × $30k consulting project per year = $2500/m

Just breaking it down this way makes it feel so much more attainable! And assuring.

Anxiety levels going waaay down now.

When a joke tweet becomes serious... now the joke's on me to make a course! 🙃

https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1511010244582801413

How I structured my portfolio of small bets:

From selling time, to more leveraged/scalable income streams. It’s really a spectrum, where the endgame is to move the ratio of your time/effort spent from left to right:

Services → Productized services → Info products → Micro-SaaS → SaaS → Marketplaces

The goal is to go from selling time to disconnecting money from time. Of course, it doesn't mean I will only do SaaS in the future. I would still want to have a mix, a portfolio. But the ratio of time spent might evolve. I'm spending more time on the left side of the spectrum now, hoping to flip the ratio towards the right side in the future.

Taking a portfolio approach has it's benefits - it's more resilient and antifragile:

• Services (e.g. consulting): Immediate payoffs but more random, feast & famine cycles
• Info products: Higher payoffs in the beginning but fades away over time
• SaaS: Low revenue in beginning but builds up over time

They cover each other's shortcomings over their product journey:

In fact, now I'm thinking I could add more into the spectrum, and do some experiments in:

• Dropservices could go into the productized services stage.
• Courses could be a thing on its own, in between productized services and info products (since it's a mix of both)
• Where does ecommerce come in? After SaaS, before marketplace?

What else can I add?

Anyone else interested in a link-in-bio page using google sheets? Just DM me

Work under uncertainty:
- Hard work → Trial & error
- Focus → Many things at once
- Optimization → 80/20 rule
- Consistency → Intensity
- Avoid distractions → Embrace randomness
- Practice 10,000 hrs → 100 bets
- Goals → Stay in the game
- Efficiency → Slack in the system
– @davassallo
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Working in chaotic situations calls for a completely different approach to working.

We’re used to working in predictable, stable environments. School, sports, office. There’s a rule book for working there, and it’s about following the rules.

Hard work, reducing distractions, increasing focus, making things more efficient and productive, 10k hours of practice makes perfect, set smart goals and KPIs.

That’s the rule book there. It’s familiar, it assuring. and it works.

In stable environments.

But throw yourself into entrepreneurship, social media, the jungle and any environment where things are more influenced by chance and chaos, and that rule book gets ripped to shreds.

Working in chance-based environments like entrepreneurship requires a total 180 flip on how I’m used to working. This is a totally different approach to work and working.

Not rule book but playbook.

I’m going to need to transform my identity from diligent, conscientious student to devil-may-care, ‘lazy’, “let me copy your homework” opportunistic trickster.

Less Thor, more Loki.

Ok this is gonna require more rewiring than I thought.

I think I went too much the other way when it comes to embracing failure.

Yes failing is a sign that I’m taking risks, putting myself out there. With each failure, if I learn from it, iterate and improve my approach from it, then it’s not counted as a failure. It’s actually growth.

By associating failure as necessary to success, the only way to pave my way to success was through failure.

I was so wrong.

Failures—especially grand failures—are costly, inefficient, demotivating.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But to muster up a response after a big failure, is hard. Not too smart too. It’s so demotivating. What if you don’t pick yourself up?

Why go through the extremes of high highs and low lows?

Small wins can pave the way to success better than learning through failure.

I’d put grand failures on a moral high horse, on a pedestal where there’s none. As if grand failures are better and more effective in getting to my goal than small wins.

Indeed, why do I need to feel like a martyr and have to crash the plane in order to say that I survived and got stronger?

What am I truly after? My endgame (financial freedom), or being able to show off my battle scars?

I was so wrong. So so wrong.

Small wins > grand failures

Aaaandd it's live!

https://sheet2bio.com/jason/

- Use "I" more often than "you". More authentic, tweets do better, and it pulls me back to sharing my own experience rather than being a sage on the stage

What are the things that I usually don’t feel like doing but seldom ever regret doing?
What are the things that my future self will thank me for?
What would a lazy-ass regret not doing enough of?

Here’s mine:

• Planning
• Workouts
• Taking walks
• Taking it slow
• Sleeping early
• Writing to-dos
• Swimming in the sea
• Buying hardcopy books
• Spending time in nature
• Reading hardcopy books
• Writing cards to my wife
• Getting up from my chair
• Having coffee with close friends
• Buying grassfed/organic/free range
• Doing something just for making money
• Being patient with someone or something
• Messaging a friend I’d not talked to for years
• Paying for a nice, wholesome, healthy but tasty meal
• Buying high quality but expensive shoes/glasses/clothes/bed

Feelin' very productive today!

"Sheet2Bio is a playful startup with a playful voice. As a business, Sheet2Bio is cheerful, lighthearted and accessible. People perceive it as unique and trendy. Examples: Snapchat, Twitch"

What do you think?

Product name: Sheet2Bio
Product tagline: Manage your link-in-bio using Google Sheets
URL: https://sheet2bio.com

I could feel my curiosity and energy moving towards a few things naturally:

- creating more plugins for Carrd, peddling them more
- doing more build in public tweets
- making small bets again, e.g. Sheet2Bio, tweet remixer
- getting back to developing Lifelog features

For April will be keeping things semi-open and still follow my energy as an overall strategy, but keep doubling on those things which are pulling me in.

Will also work with an opportunist mindset rather than a hunker-down-in-hard-work mindset - "What opportunity can I leverage on today that will have the most impact for the least amount of work?"

So more opportunist-ing in April!

📈 Current MRR: $123
📊 1-off revenue: $250 (~150%🔺)
🐦 Twitter: Hitting 3k followers soon (261 new follows)
🔌 Sold 13 @Carrd plugins
🤒 Survived COVID

- To find tweets/accounts related to my writing tweet (so that I can engage these accounts/tweets), click on my tweet, scroll down to see "More Tweets"

I remember listening to a story by Sam Parr on the My First Million podcast about how Google kills projects even if they made a few hundred million in revenue per year.

Hundred million a year!

Hell that’s a whole lot of money! But it’s a pittance to the multi-billion dollar business that is Google, so comparatively, it’s nothing to them, and not worth the effort to pursue. These are good, functioning businesses, not just lame ones like Google+. Just killed because it’s deemed too small for a giant.

But imagine the potential of these products for us non-giants – solo entrepreneurs, indie hackers, bootstrapped founders. Even a fraction of that hundred million dollar business will be a life-changing amount of money.

It’ll be FU money. That kind of money that we can say we’re free. Totally, financially free.

I wonder if people had ever looked through the graveyard of Google projects and made an indie version of it.

Just look through the ideas here on killedbygoogle.com. There’s 264 of them currently. Just a quick scroll down shows some good potentials already

They might not all be million dollar revenue projects, but with some slight tweaks they can go on to be great indie products for niche audiences.

Makes me want to go make some now!

The recent hit on my MRR hit hard. Made me reflect a lot on my creator journey. I’ve also been thinking: I’ve been hustling on one product for some time now. Since Sept last year probably, and slightly over 2 years since launch. I think it’s time to pivot myself. I’ve given it a good go. Though I don’t think I’ll ever stop marketing Lifelog or developing it, my focus needs to change, it needs a change.

If anything, it’s for my sanity. For the creator spirit in me.

You can’t keep pushing without positive feedback. There’s only so much motivation and drive can do. After a while all the uphill struggles get to you.

Maybe finally moving to creating other products will help me with my revenue woes. Maybe taking some time away will benefit Lifelog. Maybe getting back to developing new features for Lifelog will help too - I’ve also neglected Lifelog’s development for some time now, since I went all in on marketing it last Sep. It’s been 7-8 months!

I don’t know for sure, but I do instinctively feel this is the right thing to do.

I need to feel creative and alive again. And I need to make. Create stuff. Anything.

I need to do something about my worries about feeding the family, so I need to make more products that could have a bigger payoff.

I need to restart my maker engine and start small bets again. Aggressively timebox my effort and commitment for each small bet, and curb my ambitions.

I need to start experimenting and having fun again.

Like how, just yesterday, I started on a small project for myself, called Sheet2Bio. It’s like sheet2site.com but for link-in-bio like Linktree. All done via Google Sheets instead of having to create yet another account on a social platform. I needed a bio link but decided to make one myself, and potentially for other creators.

Already, once I started on that, the worries become less worrying. Some hope and optimism returns. I can feel movement, and movement brings more motivation. The creative flywheel starts humming.

Creating in itself is an act of optimism.
Creating clears the head.

I create, therefore I am.