Jason Leow

I wanted to [build build build in February](https://golifelog.com/posts/february-goals-1675215463951), and I did it.

*Now what?*

March on, riding the momentum to keep building.

I'm not done yet. I feel a new season of aliveness. [The mental health pivot](https://golifelog.com/posts/here-comes-the-sun-1676784259686) I wrote about once in February was more important than it looks. Probably the most important thing that happened to me last month. Like a huge burden's been lifted off my shoulders. So much so that even on poor sleep days, I get through it fine. Not that I want to get into the bad habit of sleeping late again. But it just goes to show just how much deadweight I was previously carrying. All the background inner processing that goes on when chronic stress and anxiety is there. Since the inner pivot, health haven’t been the same. It’s gotten way better! No more chronic ailments. It really was psycho-somatic.

I've been trying to run a marathon while pulling along an elephant.

**No more.**

F**k the elephant and every deadweight before that. Screw the self-imposed rules and limiting beliefs. The finger to other people's opinions and influences.

Now, I am *the* f**king elephant and I'm gonna charge you down.

March on!

The shortest month of the year has passed.

I had wanted to [build build build](https://golifelog.com/posts/february-goals-1675215463951):

> I just want to build build build. And then share cool stories in this digital campfire called Twitter with other builders and hackers. Not to win social status or get more followers but just to make cool things and tell a story!

And I think I achieved it. 5 new Carrd plugins. A productive long list of improvements to my Plugins project. A banger month on Twitter. Starting on a new long-term consulting/coaching project with a non-profit client.

It was such a short month...it didn't feel enough! I want to continue this building momentum for the months to come.

Revenue:
- Current MRR (all from Lifelog): $109 (•$0)
- One-off revenue: $755 (↓$61)
- Total revenue: $864 (↓$61)
- Total costs = $385
- Total profit: $479 (↓$230) (excl. consulting revenue)
- Profit margin: 55%

Was helping someone with in the the DMs following this tutorial:
https://www.solodev.com/blog/web-design/how-to-add-an-infinite-client-logo-carousel-to-your-website.stml

Just passed 100 subscribers on my [Substack newsletter](https://jasonleow.substack.com)!

I started on Substack ~3 months ago on [19 Nov 2022](https://golifelog.com/posts/started-a-substack-1668822280392), but the true origin of the newsletter was back on 1 Jun 2022 on the now-defunct Revue.

[](https://jasonleow.substack.com)

It all started as a hedge against Twitter platform risk. In fact, it wasn't even a newsletter at all when I started. I started a Revuew newsletter then to collect emails in case of being deplatformed. Not the most compelling sign up call-to-action, I must say.

But over time I experimented. Iterated from a email collection point to a monthly Revue newsletter where I post my monthly wrap-ups. It was an easy transition because I've been writing these monthly reviews for years now. It's just copy-pasting over and publish – there I'm done! Then the next iteration was moving to weekly publishing and onto Substack, where I again repurposed posts from my daily writing habit here on Lifelog. I also gave it a proper [project status on Makerlog](https://getmakerlog.com/products/jasons-indie-solopreneur-journey) – now that means something. Now it's a place to share longer form stories about my indie journey, stuff I almost never share on Twitter. A kind of sneak peek behind the scenes in long form.

And guess what I love most about this project? The fact that I still have no clue what I'm doing or want out of it. 😅 The zero expectations part of it is an experiment in itself. Can I grow a project without wanting it to *be* something, without desiring to achieve *anything at all*? I've known for a while that for me, expectations hinder more than help. This is a project to see if what an expectationless project looks like.

I guess the next phase of 100 → 1000 is to see it unfold!

---

Weekly peek behind the scenes of my indie solopreneur journey here:

👉 jasonleow.substack.com

I've written a lot about [tiny Twitter hacks I learned](https://golifelog.com/posts/tiny-twitter-hacks-i-learned-and-love-part-6-1674712438527) over the past 2 years being serious on Twitter.

But recently I've thrown the whole playbook out the window, and going back to what got me started on Twitter—and indie hacking—in the first place.

Building in public.

Like, for real building. Actual products. Real sh*t. Doing what I love. Making stuff. Just simply sharing the joy of creating, and connecting with other makers who enjoy doing and reading about the same.

Not tweeting for the sake of "consistency". Not tweeting to get attention for your personal brand. Not talking about "mental models" or "cognitive biases", or "10 ways to use ChatGPT to get rich". Not building an audience. None of that Twitter guru creator BS. I gotta admit, for the past 2 years I experimented a lot in those areas. And I'm sick of it. It's just noise, in the end. I'm equally guilty of adding to that noise, in an already crazily noisy world.

I'm done.

It now feels great to be back building in public, sharing thoughts and ideas about indie hacking, and all my throughputs and outputs. My tweets had been scheduled a month out based on the old approach, but increasingly I'm writing a new tweet for the day, on the day itself, because I have things to share about what I'm building! I'm consistent but not as a end in itself but as a consequence of building. All the past and upcoming scheduled tweets are beginning to feel out of alignment, less authentic, too abstract, too forced. And all the creator accounts I used to follow – boring and bland. I'm kicking many of these accounts out of my engagement list and adding builders back in.

Which I should have always done to start with.

Thinking back, this was exactly how I started on Twitter in the first place, and got me past 1k followers. I just starting to build indie products under a 12 startups in 12 months challenge I set out to do, called [#1mvp1month](https://twitter.com/search?q=%231mvp1month&src=typed_query). Then I got tempted and influenced by the gurus, went off track.

Now I've come full circle. Back to my roots. Back to my why. Back to who I am.

Makers gotta make.

Randomly approached Gregor (who now own Zite) to ask if he's open to considering adding a "Promoted" ad section to the description of that Gumroad page which I can pay to cross-sell my plugins to your customers. He agreed.

Ad will appear on - https://zite.gumroad.com/l/free-carrd-course

Looks like [my pit stop for my social impact projects](https://golifelog.com/posts/pit-stop-for-social-impact-patronage-project-1677120042697) is going to be brief. Funny how with a proper closure, I'm able to move on and boy did I move on fast.

I just started another social impact project, this time on a topic close to heart:

**Inclusive design**.

Web accessibility. A11y. Design for disability.

Many names, all pointing to the same thing. Designing for the 100%, for everyone. Yes, that includes even non-disabled folks who don't usually think of themselves as needing any inclsuive design.

I was inspired by the idea of a community after I attended an event at SG Enable, an advocacy organisation for persons with disabilities. Asked around, and realised there isn't really any such community for Singapore.

So I started one myself. A [Telegram chat group community](https://t.me/inclusivedesignsg) as the minimal, viabe version of the community, to chat/ask about inclusive design practices, places, products, events and resources.


Once I did that, everything else cascaded along:

- Designed a quick emoji logo. A Singapore flag emoji with background that looks like a colour wheel, but in CMYK colours to represent the design community roots but also to metaphorically represent the "inclusive" aspect (all colours in the colour wheel).
- Immediately started adding friends and peers.
- Call me crazy but I went and bought inclusivedesign.sg domain for 2 years.
- Received 1 one-time coffee on Buy Me A Coffee from a friend who joined.
- Created a Google account and Gmail for inclusivedesign.sg - for emails and drives.
- Created a [Makerlog project](https://getmakerlog.com/products/inclusive-design-sg) to log the progress pf the project
- I didn't want it to just be a chat group. Thought we could anchor the community with a quick info product, a bit like how Keto List Singapore is run. Started exploring Softr and Siteoly for Google Sheets based directory listing sites, for starting the directory website MVP of local inclusive design resources.
- Ask around for links to resources to add to the site.
- Once the site with some resources are done, I would consider beta launching it to see if there's interest.

Excited for this new product and season of exploring inclusive design!

Onwards!

Listing directory of local inclusive design resources coming up!

The community for inclusive design in Singapore. Chat/ask about inclusive design practices, places, products, events and resources here.

https://t.me/inclusivedesignsg

Logo is in CMYK colours

Just hit 100 subscribers on my Substack newsletter!

It started as a hedge against Twitter platform risk.
Now it's a place to share longer form stories about my indie journey.

But I still have no clue what I'm doing or want out of it 😅

I guess 100→1000 is to figure that out!

Weekly peek behind the scenes of my indie solopreneur journey here:
👉 jasonleow.substack.com

2 years ago, it didn't even exist. Today, my very first Carrd plugin—the animated accordion FAQs—went past 1000 downloads.

If you're reading this and you've ever downloaded the plugin, thank you for your support. ❤️


It's wild to see this is even possible!

The plugin's origin story was completely happenstance. I was learning Vue.js two years ago and made these tiny little apps as learning projects. Felt it was a waste to let these apps collect dust, so I decided to embed it into Carrd to showcase my learning progress, and also to extend Carrd's features. A brain fart got me thinking of sharing it as a free clone site to others, and like they say, the rest is history. Those were the good old days, when I had to manually clone each site and transfer to requester. And I say it with reminiscent fondness. 😌

Months later, the Seller program on Carrd came into existence and sharing these plugins as templates are now so much easier to do - requester just logs into Carrd and downloads it directly. No manual cloning and transferring required. The upside is sometimes I get a referral fee if they don't have a Pro plan, but it's a bit of hit and miss as not everyone who downloads the template needs a pro plan. Sometimes, people would leave a tip (as it's set at $0 pay what you what). It's less about the money and more about the gesture – that someone found enough value in it to want to open their wallets in appreciation.

To be truly honest, I'm not even sure how this plugin (or any other plugin for that matter) gets around, lest say get to 1k downloads. I do share the link but only on rare occasions, yet the numbers signal it has a life of its own!

And I'm super grateful for it. 🙏

- Added group activities
- Added more contextualising on why waiting experience
- Ensured links added to external resources
- Added discussion on how to apply DT back to work

I just sent out a [Safe Distancing SG](https://safedistancing.sg) site closure post and [gratitude email](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jasonleowsg/safe-distancing-sg-site-closure ) to all my Buy Me A Coffee supporters, and to give notice that I'll be terminating the subscription payments from my monthly/yearly subscription supporters.

I mean, the site will still be live. I won't take it down yet. It's great to archive and for remembrance. All my other projects are still up. I can still continue receiving coffees anytime. It's just that I wanted to give my supporters a polite way to step down from the financial support. I'm also iffy about continuing to receive money when I no longer update the site and have no new social impact projects in the pipeline. Costs for domain etc continue though... so I will just have to absorb them.

So the #socialimpactpatronage project comes to the end of a season. A pit stop for indefinite period. At least until I can find another meaty social impact project to work on.

It's a bit of a bittersweet finale. That's the kind of territory from building these social impact projects. You don't aim for product longevity if you can help it. The ideal outcome is that the social issue is solved for good, the vulnerable group you're serving no longer exists, or had moved out of their challenging situation. In this case, it wasn't through my effort alone that we no longer needed Safe Distancing SG. The whole country had moved on, and the use case simply faded away.

Ending a product is a good outcome, in such circumstances.

And I'm grateful for it. For having the opportunity and privilege to build it, and to end it.

Thank you for everyone who lent a hand. Till next time, comrades.

Onwards!