Episode 25 of Morning Maker Show: Mr. Beast's chocolate is s***

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Summary

Join Dan and Sandra as they explore the thrilling world of indie hacking: from marketing mishaps to product fails, they've seen it all and are here to tell the tale.

Join the conversation & see the tweets/posts we read! Stop by our space 💬

Transcript

Sandra: we put too much pressure on ourselves. little to kind of learn something from the experience. I think when we started morning, make a show for me, it was so simple and so easy because I had no pressure. It was pure fun for me because we come -

two days in a week. We read updates. We, we, we write a newsletter, which is always fun. And then we kind of figure it out. Oh, maybe we can actually make something from this. And that was also the process of learning in which we are still on

Dan: Good morning, Sandra.

Sandra: Good morning, Dan. How are you?

Dan: I'm super good. I slept well. I'm full of energy. Ready for the week.

Sandra: That sounds good. That sounds good. And it's the best, best, this is the best way to start the week. That's for sure.

Dan: Yeah. How are you? Did you have a nice weekend?

Sandra: Yes, I have.

Adventures in Babysitting and Gaming

Sandra: I have become a responsible grown up person because I took a child that's going to be with me for the next seven days.

Dan: Just on the street? That's not, you know, that's not legal to take children.

Sandra: Really? Someone should have told me that. Um, it's, it's my brother. He's 12 years old. I'm planning to, um, employ him for the next seven days. Make TikToks for Morning Maker Show, Klu, HuntedSpace. I mean.

Dan: Yeah. Well, it's like an internship for him.

Sandra: Yeah. Yeah. Free McDonald's or something.

Dan: Yeah. They're cheap at that age. It's true.

Sandra: I mean, I, I don't know what to tell you. He asked me two times this weekend to buy him something on PlayStation.

Dan: Yeah.

Sandra: And I think I'm not supposed to do that. Um, You know, I don't think that's allowed with my mother, but she's away, so I make the rules.

Dan: Oh, it's so complicated, yeah. But it used to be like this when we were young, but they're just, you know There weren't that many things to do, but there was TV, I guess. And they were like, Oh, you cannot watch this or that. Like there's always restrictions. Yeah.

Sandra: There's always something, but he's playing a really good game.

It's like, um, Avengers, how it's called that Superman, Spider Man, Batman. Yeah, yeah. Avengers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. It's actually quite fun. I was planning, playing a little bit with him.

Dan: Are you at all into games and stuff like that, or you're too busy, you don't have time for games.

Sandra: No, no, no, nothing that interesting.

Dan: No. Okay. Well, I hope you're going to have fun with him this week. Looking forward to those TikToks.

Now,

Dan: now I need to follow him and all of that, but he's doing quite well, right?

Sandra: Yeah. He has like thousand, um, likes and views and I don't understand it, but it's like this thing that they do with these games things, you know, where they cut and it's very fast and blah, blah, blah.

Um, it's very interesting.

Dan: We're all destined to fall behind and be like, okay. This thing doesn't make sense anymore. I'll, I'll do my thing that I know. I'll do Twitter in 20 years. There's no one on the site anymore. You know, it's just us.

The Marketing Lesson from Mr. Beast's Chocolate

Sandra: But you know what's funny happened. Um, we went out yesterday and there is this YouTuber he follows probably a lot of people know about him, Mr.

Beast. Um, and Mr. Beast has a chocolate, um, chocolate that he's selling. So, um, Yeah. Yeah. So we were passing by the store and the store is so annoying. It's so pinky and it's attracting you in, you know, like the only job is go to into this store. So we went into this store and he saw the chocolate and he was like, Oh my God, I want this chocolate.

And then the chocolate is 10 euros. It's chocolate. Um, but he, he, it's a Mr. B's chocolate and he wants it and he wants it. And I'm like, okay, fine. Let's buy this chocolate. He bought the chocolate. He's eating the chocolate and he turns around to me and he says, Oh my God, this is so bad. And I'm like, really?

Because now it's a lesson moment. I can teach him a lesson now. Like, uh, you know, don't fall into marketing trap. No, that's

Dan: the wrong lesson. No, the lesson is, You see, if you do good marketing, you can have a bad product.

Sandra: But listen to me, what he told to me, it's so interesting. He was like, but there was so many people saying that it's a good chocolate.

Maybe they are paid. And I was like, yes, they are!

Dan: Wow. He is growing up so

fast.

Dan: Yeah. I've seen this. I think he also made a burger. Or some strange stuff. Yeah. And It's, it's good marketing, right? He probably has like a huge team doing this or, or what do you think?

Exploring the Power of Personal Branding and Product Creation

Sandra: Yeah, I think I was listening, um, to him saying that for him, it's not worth anymore to collab with the brands.

It's more logical for him to make his own brand, um, because essentially to pay Mr. Beast, um, to make a video is like. Bunch of money. It could take a marketing budget for the whole year of the companies. Um, so I think that's the reason why he's doing that, you know, just making his own things.

Dan: Yeah. It's not a lot of people that reach his, his scale, but YouTube is starting to be very popular for.

Indie hackers as well. So we've seen Mark do a lot of YouTube and I think he's monetized now. We, we, we had Dagobert on the show and he wants to do YouTube as well. Maybe we should do YouTube, huh?

Sandra: I think so. Maybe we could actually do, um, this video, like, um, podcast.

Dan: Yeah. There's something about. Seeing the humans as well like a bit of a connection and a lot of people go on YouTube just to listen to stuff as well, like not for the video.

So even you know music or yeah, whatever's something in the background. Yeah. I think It's time for an update.

Sandra: Yes. Um, Marc

A team doctors, sorry, marketing doctors, the free private beta for fast indexing has begun. I will gradually connect in the individuals who express interest in trying it out. Hashtag building public, um, fast index indexing.

I think it's something similar to. Parrot thing?

Dan: Uh, tag parrot.

Sandra: Yeah, tag parrot, yeah. Yeah,

Dan: um, no link at all. No website, but at this point, this, this is just how it is. This is the fact of life. Um, it seems like there is a wave of these products. It's very interesting. I don't know if it's good or bad, but when someone is very successful with one of these products.

There is a trend and then everyone seems to be creating the same product for a while. Yeah. And it's funny that, you know, the, the thinking is, well, if you can be successful, then what's stopping me for doing something better? Cause we all think, you know, we could do it better. But. I think, I don't know, maybe, maybe Mark has a good plan.

I think the key is then how do you distribute it and not how you build it, right? How do you reach your audience and how do you get customers? And that's the hard part, not, not the building, in my opinion.

Sandra: Yeah, for sure. I mean, like I've, I've, I've used, um, TagParrot a few months ago and I actually paid for it as well.

I think you, you were the one that suggested to me, but the difference is like exactly what you say. Like, how do they reach out to the customers and who they are actually targeting? It can be a great product, but if it stays only in the community, it's only great in the community. But maybe someone will be able to expand it to companies as well.

Dan: Yeah, that could be one of the angles. You, you look at the existing solutions and you see, well, they're clearly targeting X. I'm going to make mine for the Y target group.

Sandra: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, and then the pricing as well.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Positioning. And also the actual landing page, you know, it's, it's such a, such a simple thing to, to build, but getting it with the right message to, to actually, Convert the type of user that you want is a lot of work.

It's a lot of work. So, good luck to Mark. I hope this is successful. I hope he has a good plan for it. It's looking good so far.

Sandra: Yeah. Yeah.

The Impact of Building in Public and Community Engagement

Dan: I'll take the next one by Kelly Hu. Kelly Hu.

She says, building in public helps us stay accountable. Every Friday we stand 35 people and tell them what we did, plus our progress And plus our learnings.

It's been great practice and really motivate us to improve every week to reach our goals. Um, wow, this is like.

Sandra: This is another level of building publishing. Yeah,

Dan: yeah, yeah. It's, it's, I thought 35 people are, you know, on social media, but they're actually live on the stage, 35 people. Uh, this looks very cool.

So Kelly, she is building something called Hema. It's a type one diabetics and diagnostics, I think. Um, so they're engineers developing AI to help people track their exercise and understand how it affects their blood sugar. Okay, maybe not diagnostics, but like a, a tool to help you track. Your blood sugar.

This is actually a pretty cool company.

Sandra: Whoa, and it's quite big. I love it. I love how they took the building public, um, differently.

Yeah,

Dan: they took it literally, and that's very

cool. Uh, you know

Dan: what? I wonder where this is. Is it, I think I've seen something like this, um, there's a big community in Bali and I think I've seen like a coworking space where they do something like this, not sure where this is, but it looks like a freaking cool idea to, Also be located.

Maybe they don't go there every day, you know, maybe they just go a few days, but like, I would, I would die to have, you know, 35 people that do building in public and be able to meet up every week. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Sandra: That would be pretty cool. Um, this Friday I went for a dinner. And it was community.

I mean, community. It was a bunch of people for, um, Finland building their own companies. And then there were also, um, people from a bigger companies. And then we had just a chat and a nice dinner about like the product and how to grow the product. And it's actually super nice to have like a group of people where you can just chat about whatever is happening and then ask for advices and how do you survive and all of these things.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah, because that's the thing, your usual group of friends and so on, they don't really know what you're saying, I mean, they're okay, they try to understand, but they haven't, they haven't been through what you've been through, so it's kind of hard for them to relate, I think. Do you have the same opinion?

Sandra: Oh, for sure. For sure. Like, um, with most of my friends, I don't even talk about like, they know I do marketing, but they have no Klu. Like what exactly does that mean? Um, one of the, I know they have

Dan: no clue. Nice.

Sandra: But actually one of my friends told me that she saw on LinkedIn, she follows me on LinkedIn or we are friends on LinkedIn, whatever.

And she was like, you have a podcast? Like why didn't you told me that? And I'm like, I don't know. You never ask.

Like,

Dan: yeah, actually that was the first thing that I've done where people are like, okay, I know what's a podcast. I didn't. I know how to handle this. Like I can go and listen to a link and I got a lot of people that I didn't really think care about it, listen.

And they actually, some of them said they liked, and I was, what do you mean? You like to do, do you understand anything? Because it's, it's quite specific what we do. And of course. We don't, we don't do the classic thing where we have like a 10 minute intro where we explain what we're going, we just get into it, you know, and, but they said they liked it and then they, they said the guests were very interesting and I was like, wow, okay.

And I guess we're onto something here.

Sandra: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like it's so. At least at this point, we can say to people that we are doing a podcast.

Dan: Yeah, everyone understands that. Yeah. All right, wanna take the next one?

Navigating the World of Indie Product Development

Sandra: Mic. Miguel, Sarenas.

You guys asked, so I delivered. Here's a step by step guide to adding Stripe to your app.

Come check it out here.

Dan: So Stripe integration and any app, he basically goes through the checkout process. Building portal and webhooks and it's, it's literally, if you go to the link, it is completely free. Like you literally just open the link. And it seems like a super comprehensive guide, huh? Yeah. Ah, this is so, this is so cool.

Sandra: It's very valuable, very valuable, very, very, very valuable.

Dan: Ah, this is so nice of Miguel to put this out there. So yeah, you have code examples and everything. I think he has a, he has a newsletter too. And what is this? So it's a beehive, but it looks like a blog post or is it a newsletter? Okay, you tell me, do you know how this works?

Sandra: I think the, I think bee, bee or whatever it's called, beehive, beehive. com, yes. Um, I, I think they also have like, um, landing pages.

Yeah,

Dan: because it's interactive and you can navigate to

Sandra: different

Dan: pieces. That's quite cool. Yeah. Very nice, Miguel. I, I love, you know, just the spirit of you found out how to do something.

And then you think since you've went through so much trouble that. You might save others time so you make it free. That, that is just so nice.

Sandra: Um, and be, be ready because Miguel is one of takotreba.com people.

Dan: Oh yeah. Gonna crack here for sure. Oh yeah. Oh, I'm so looking forward to that. I'm so looking forward to that.

How is it going?

The Journey of Launching a Product: Insights and Strategies

Sandra: It's going pretty well. Like I should get things published for the first people, um, that like bought on the pre sale. Um, I still didn't, I said that I'm going to take off the pre sale, pre sale thing from the website, but I still haven't done that. Um, Planning maybe this week to, to take it off.

And then, um, once everyone from presale gets it and I get that first feedback, if I crash something or something bad, um, I'm planning also to, to launch it.

Dan: How do you plan to do it? Do you plan to release pieces of it or all of it at once?

Sandra: For the pre sales people, they are all, all, all, all four ones.

I'm not waiting doing the first guide. And then the second, because all the guides are extremely connected. So I want everything to kind of be there for people. So it makes sense for them to see the, the, the bigger picture.

Dan: Yeah, got it. Got it. Yeah. So, so another person from the community, Nico, he's making the, the Facebook ads course and his approach, if you've seen as to every.

Essentially step of the course to send something and say, Hey, part two is ready or part three is ready, you know, have a look and do you have any feedback and probably he's adjusting as he builds the course. And I thought that's very interesting, but also you need to be. Um, how to say you need to have like a pretty clear vision so you don't get derailed by people saying, you know, do this or that, and then you kind of slow down because of it.

If that makes sense.

Sandra: Yeah. I totally understand you. Um, yeah, for me that was like, because if you know, you can buy all of the guides separately, but then the goal is the same. Like even like having these three guys, the goal is like, okay, first is introduction to how to build your own channels and how to find the people and et cetera, and then how to launch the product.

And in these steps of launching the product, how to kind of like gain the momentum and find the right people. people and reach out to them. And then once you have the user's ability to follow, um, on Posthog and what is happening. So it's like this whole in one piece, there is possibly, probably possibility of me like releasing one by one.

But then again, I, I'm not sure, I feel like it's better to release it all in one.

Dan: Yeah. No, that makes sense if it's a, if it's a A to Z kind of thing. So of course, you know, each, each course has, is going to have a different vision and style and so on. So I guess if, if you already see how, how it should be built, then that's, that's, you know, better stick with that than, you Try to do something else.

I think I would do the same because if you do it step by step, my, my problem with that is that I wouldn't make enough progress and I would return to the first things and keep modifying them and not complete it. So it's easier in my mind, at least to, to get it all done. And, and then based on feedback, kind of go back and edit things, but I know it's, it's done.

It's already out there. People can already try it.

Sandra: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah, but what was the easiest part in this course? Was it setting up the payments, actually?

Sandra: Oh, that was the best part of it.

Sandra: was super easy. I did it with Lemon Squeezy. Um, I was surprised. How easy it was because, um, I know with clue we had so much issues and time loss, but of course it's a different, like, um, different, different and more complex pricing.

But for me, Like just, I mean, the only thing I was waiting for is for Lemon Squeezy to approve the store. Once the store was approved, it was just a link away. Yeah. And that was it.

Dan: We're spoiled today. Like you, you have an idea and then you apply for the store and then You know, a day or two, you can actually make money off the idea and you don't need to set up anything and they handle, you know, customer requests and people can cancel thing and manage their account.

It's, it's kind of, um, a golden era of, of building things. For sure.

Sandra: For sure. And I think we are living in such a moment that, um, whatever is on your mind at this point, you can test it without losing time in building it, you know? Um, and when you see some kind of initial traction, you just go with it and then you figure the things out.

I mean, it's such a good time to, to work and build and.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. I've, I've done that, you know, the past two, two products. I've put the idea out and sometimes it was just a tweet or maybe a tweet with a video max and then a pre order link and then I don't even do any automation with it so people go and then I see it in lemon squeezy I see okay there was a purchase and then maybe I give them access manually and then If I get enough pre orders, then at some point you think, yeah, okay, maybe, maybe it's good to automate it now.

And that's also like a good mentality to not over engineer things and just to, what's the simplest way to, for example, get payments. And I would actually recommend this instead of, uh, The waitlist approach, waitlist could be good if, if you have, you know, a specific type of product and you need more, more work for it, but nothing really validates the product, like people paying for it.

Right?

Sandra: Yeah. I hate waitlists. I hate them. I don't understand them. I didn't see the point of a waitlist.

Dan: It's, I think it's coming from these big. funded companies that will eventually, you know, they have like a very good pitch and then they will eventually deliver something and they probably have financial backing for it, but maybe it doesn't apply as well to indie projects.

What do you think?

Sandra: Not, I mean, I, I, I wouldn't put my time and effort into the wait list. Like, I don't know what type of a product it has to be out there that I sign up my name and I'm waiting for it. Like, I'm literally waiting the day that they're going to release it. I don't I don't know.

I'm not a big fan of it. I think if people and you are totally right. A lot of VC back company are using this method, probably because they can, um, but also the issue like I've talked with a bunch of them, and they You know, they stumble on the same problem where people don't actually go and visit that link.

So they put time and effort into building these waiting lists and use all the traffic they can, and then kind of over abuse this traffic because once the product is out, when they see that they, you know, List is not actually performing as they were hoping to perform. They go back to these overused channels and you know, it's already kind of late because it's so, yeah, not big, not big fan of the waiting list.

Dan: Yeah. Could be better to do early access if you can to, to beta product, but I'd still like, my first choice would be payment. If so, as we said, takes. A couple of days to set it up with lemon squeezy or whatever you use and then have that from the start. And then that's also going to give you a bit of motivation, right?

If someone pays is going to, yeah, we talked about this, the first dollar, you know,

Sandra: it's a cheeky, cheeky, cheeky, nice thing. But, um, it could be also like, just save your seat payment type of a thing, you know, there could be. multiple things, but there always needs to be money involved. Even when I was doing like the MVP with Klu, like there needs to be money involved because otherwise people don't care.

They just don't.

Dan: Yeah. This is a very interesting discussion. What about if you have a very good strategy with the waitlist and you actually can market this and do email marketing and you kind of have this planned out and, you know, maybe funneling people to other products that you have.

Sandra: Yeah, but that's already another stage.

Dan: It's another stage.

Sandra: That approach, you are already on the another stage.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. So maybe this is a, you already have a product and then you're making a related product for it and then you try to get, yeah.

Sandra: For sure. That's another stage. And it's a cool approach. I approve.

Dan: All right, Sandra, do you want to take the next one?

Yes,

Sandra: Sahil Godo, Godo, I went too confident into this one.

Unveiling Notfulltime.io: A New Era for Freelancers

Dan: Okay, okay, step back, step back.

Sandra: Sahil Godara.

Project update. Notfulltime.io website is 90 percent ready and people can actually start booking calls now. Let's help you level up your teams.

The Chicken and Egg Problem of Building a Marketplace

Sandra: What is this? Tell me there is a link.

Dan: There is a link, Notfulltime.io.

It says assemble your dream and then product team, AI team, development team, build a team of top one vetted freelancers and contractors from engineering, product management, design, data science, everything. Um, this looks, this looks very cool, actually. My only. The question is, how do you get, you know, this initial critical mass of people to hire and, you know, companies like there's a tick in the neck problem because you need both at the same time.

Right.

Sandra: Yeah. There was something already similar that we have discussed on how to bring this, um, both sides of the team.

Dan: It's a very tricky problem. I, I think maybe you can do this organically too, but it takes a while.

Sandra: I think my, my thinking and I could be wrong. I don't know, but I think it's always better to bring the companies in.

So understand the problem you're trying, trying to solve for these companies. Once you have the companies in, um, it's much easier to bring people

Dan: Yeah, completely agree.

SEO Strategies and Organic Growth for Startups

Dan: I think it looks like Sahil here, he's, he's betting on SEO. He has, this is like a pretty good strategy to target regions. So to, what you're doing is you're generating pages.

He has remote freelancing in USA, remote, remote freelancing in Canada, Germany, um, and so on. And he's. targeting long tail keywords that are, you know, very specific. And that might actually bring a bit of traffic once you get some, some backlinks. That's cool. It does take like months anyway. So it's gonna be there.

I, I also don't know. If someone has to pay, I'm not exactly sure if there's pricing here. I don't see it. That could also be the key. Like what, who pays and how much?

Sandra: There is also a lot of agencies and I don't understand how is this agency process is not automated yet because we are good start. All the agencies have already companies on board that they are working with.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. But, but do you mean these recruiting agencies as well?

Sandra: So maybe I would build actually or position the product for them and through them getting the companies.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. That could be a good idea. Yeah. It takes like this type of product is more. On the distribution, well, I mean, every product is right, but this, especially you need to do sales and put, you know, 75 percent of the work into the sales part and outreach and maybe cold outreach.

And then the 25 is the building. Like the building is the smaller part of this product. Yeah. But speaking about.

Dan: building stuff. You made a newsletter yesterday, which I really loved.

Sandra: I love writing that thing.

Dan: What's your process? Like I can't, every time you, you put one out and I'm like that, and I have something in your inbox.

And you have like a completely different, well, not completely different because, you know, we, we still talk about similar things like people building stuff essentially, but you have a slightly different approach, a different format. And it's so creative. I just want to know what's your process. How do you do?

Thank you.

Sandra: Um, first of all, I try to, um, understand the products we talked about on the show. And then I try to understand the problems that we are dealing with, like the yesterday opening with eye yoga. Then I try to connect these problems with everything my mother told me. So So I find, I try to find like this funny angle, but in the same time, the angle that makes kind of sense for people, because in general, I want people to read newsletters.

Like that's, that's because I'm someone like, I have few newsletters that I like and I try to read them and even then I fail. So I'm trying to write morning maker show as a place you actually go and read that freaking newsletter. So, um, talking about the products, yes, but also kind of like trying to find this funny, um, everyone can kind of acknowledge the pain.

I don't know.

Dan: Yeah. Is it a bit like in, in clue you, you have.

Sandra: Oh, very strict. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So you, you cannot be as creative perhaps, or, or you need to be creative in a different way.

Sandra: No, no, like the creativity in Klu goes more on the technical side, like how to bring something that is technically maybe difficult on like simplify ways, but I remember the first time we talked about the Morning Maker Show newsletter, you told me I can do whatever I want.

And I took that, um, religiously. So you know, there is ability with, with Morning Maker Show. to be as creative as I want. And I take it like as I'm writing a book or something like that. I, I, I'm crazy. But, um, I, just to, just to say one thing, I'm using Email Octopus for writing the newsletters. And at the moment we have like this crazy opening rate and, um, um, I don't want to say it because it's quite crazy.

It's like 70% Please

Dan: whisper it.

Sandra: It's like 70%, not like, it's actually 70%. And then, um, we have 8 percent off, like click through rate.

Dan: Excuse me? 8%. Click rate and what, what's the usual there?

Sandra: I don't Google it because I don't understand also what's

in fact.

Sandra: In the engaged audience as well. Yeah. And I think that's the key with like the big opening rate and the click through because our guys are really, really cool people.

Dan: Yeah, that's huge. I was thinking also, so Email Octopus probably tracks the, the opening. Well, okay. So. I, I know that some people, when you talk about opening rate, they say it's not as reliable as, as click rate, because there's also some email clients that kind of open the email automatically these days and you, and you don't like the AI something smart emails, but.

then if the click rate is, to me, it seems super high, like I, I maybe get one, two percent. Um, so I don't know how you did it. Uh, then that speaks for itself. Uh, it, it's actually, you know, the, the way you do things makes it like a story from A to Z. I, I just love that.

Sandra: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Shut up.

Shut up. Don't give me.

Dan: I'll shut up. I'll shut up. Yeah. Well, we're just it's Monday I need to you know, prep you for this week with your brother.

Sandra: Oh, yeah true. Give me more. Give me more compliments

Dan: Yeah, you're gonna have to feed him and you know I don't know what give him water and so I can can he drink water by himself or is that something you need to do?

Sandra: No, no, he can do that. I just need to bring him a water.

Dan: Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, new generations. Brilliant people. Brilliant.

The Indie Hacker Lifestyle: Navigating Work-Life Balance

Dan: Want to take the next one by Dima?

Sandra: Dima, um,

In my 10 years as an employed consultant and among people I know in general, I met maybe one or two who had a burnout. In my first year on Indie Hacker Twitter and hashtag built in public community, I've seen at least five people having one.

Um, quotes, imagine having a boss again. They said, okay, what's happening with Dima? Is he okay?

Dan: He's, he had the cold. So, fever thing, huh? He, he is right though. He is right. This is, this is a tough thing to do. It's, it's very tough. Um, I. I think it's important to talk about it for sure, for sure, because we have enough people glorifying it, you know, and that that's the whole MRR chart culture.

Sandra: Yeah. I mean,

there is so many things when it comes to our jobs, how do we call our job? Uh, indie jobs? Indie

Dan: jobs. Yeah, fine.

Sandra: There's so much. Things that are happening from the risk you are taking, you know, um, and then if you do have nine to five, then there is a pressure in that as well. Um, then there is this image you are building online and you don't want that to crash as well.

So you're trying to keep up with that image. Um, then you're trying to make money in the same time. And as we all know, we tend to sleep, tend to fail, which is totally normal. So there's like multiple things, but when you are working somewhere and when you only have that nine to five, it's your thing and you're free to go after that five.

And when you close that laptop, you are done, you know, but we can't

Dan: in theory. Yeah. In theory, not all jobs, you know, not all jobs.

Sandra: Not all jobs. Yeah,

Dan: but you have this better separation. That's true. And we don't, we're thinking of it all the time, working on it over all the time. And then the problem is that probably slows us down.

So it would be good to have the separate, it would be good to just say, okay, today, no work today. I go for a run, I do something that I like and I don't do or think about work. Then the next day you're maybe twice as productive or you get a new idea, a new perspective and so on. So yeah, well, there's another perspective that we could have and that is looking at, you know, Dima himself.

So if in one year he saw five people, you know, that burned out and had this difficulties. First of all, I'm sorry for them. But second of all, if you've done this for one year already, you're like in the top 90 something percent because most people already gave up. And I'm not to say that, you know, those people have tried, but this is, it's really not for everyone.

And it is very stressful at times. And then if this comes at the cost of your health or family or. You know, all of that. I don't think it's worth it. You need to have fun while doing it.

Sandra: For sure. It's the only way.

Dan: Yeah.

Sandra: But then also we all define the fun, fun of it differently.

Dan: Yeah. We have different thresholds.

Sandra: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. Congrats to those that have done this for a year. It's very hard and you've done something amazing. And I feel, I feel sorry for those that. Go through this. I, I, I tried to also share, you know, some things that are not as pretty about this every now and then. I think the problem with the community, which is usually very helpful is they tend to be sharing all the positive things, right?

Because that's the It feels good. And of course we should share the positive things, um, and, and have people be happy about us, but that means we, we were creating this false image that everything's positive where, you know, it's always up and down. So I'd like to see more people. Also showing that and when you do that, I don't know if you've noticed when someone shares, you know, I'm going through a bad period or whatever, the community is so supportive of that.

So, you know, don't be afraid to share. Well, this week's really bad. I'm, you know, thinking of quitting and God, we all thought of quitting a hundred times during the year, right?

Sandra: Too many times, actually.

Dan: Yeah. So, but you, you, you can talk about it. That's fine. I don't think, I don't see anything bad with that.

I mean, some people are thinking, oh, it will affect my growth or whatever. What people think about me. That doesn't, that doesn't work that way. I don't think so.

Sandra: Me neither.

Embracing Failure and Learning from the Journey

Sandra: I, I like, there is a fear of showing that maybe you're, or that's just me. You're not good enough. You know, if you quit, you're not good enough.

Have taken on your shoulders, but, um, it's very wrong approach because it doesn't mean that you are a bad developer or bad in marketing or bad in this. No, it's just like you've learned your lesson. You, you found out something, maybe you found out something that you're not good in, which is the best thing ever that could happen.

And then you can learn it. Like it's, it's not, um, we put too much pressure on ourselves. Yeah. very little to kind of learn something from the experience. Um, I think like when we started morning, make a show for me, it was so simple and so easy because I had no pressure. It was pure fun for me because we come every, uh, we come Two days in a week. We read updates. We, we, we write a newsletter, which is always fun. And then we kind of figure it out. Oh, maybe we can actually make something from this. And that was also the process of learning in which we are still on. Like, so taking the pressure is very nice. Um, there's always, um like if you can afford it or not, that's also a big, one of the big issues.

As well.

Dan: Yeah, exactly. It, it is also, you need to empathize with people that said, I'm quitting my job to do this. Which is again, that is why you have responsibility to, you know, show the, the true image. Because the people might say, well, you know, if this person can do it, I can do it too. No problem. And they quit their job and they have a different kind of pressure because maybe you have three to six months.

to do this and otherwise you're out of money, right? And that, and also that could be viewed as a, you can turn that into a positive thing. Well, I have six months to try this out. If I don't, then I tried it and I realized this is not for me and that's. still a positive and maybe you go back to often and realize, well, I could have done this instead, you know, and if you starting this has a, it's a huge positive, right?

Going through this, it's a huge positive, even though you don't succeed the first time. We see a lot of people that start doing their product and then go back to jobs. And then maybe a few years later, they come back or even Doug O'Byrd, right? He worked for seven months and now he's back to really hacking, right?

Sandra: Yeah, yeah. So taking it easy with no pressure, having fun and then being able to stop when you can't take a day off two days. It doesn't matter. Just take as much as you need and then just come back. But you do need to submit for a vacation period to me to be approved and then you can, you know,

Dan: Oh, you're, you're the manager for all Indie Hacker holidays?

Sandra: Yeah, yeah. So every single Indie Hacker in community, once they want to leave, they need to submit a vacation period. So someone can jump in and put the links from their products into the right tweets. I could make a product from this, actually.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, you could. I saw Philippe's holiday request was approved.

It's a very nice email that, uh, Yeah. You probably have this all automated when like you scan for tweets, right? Yeah. Yeah. For holiday. Yeah. Okay. And you, you know, is the paid holiday or how does it work?

Sandra: It's always a paid holiday. I want my. Yeah. The hackers, once they're back, I want them to be secure and fresh enough.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, you're living in the Nordic, so, you know, there's, there's some level of social benefits that you

Sandra: explore. And it's very hard for me to understand how other parts of the world are functioning. There was this, I posted this tweet that we only have five working months. And then, um, a bunch of people in the comments started saying that Americans are working during the whole summer.

And I was like, yes, correct. We have our dear Americans not being able to stop.

Dan: Yeah, it's quite, it's quite tough. I know some people that moved from America to Europe for work life balance. And then a lot of them. said, you know, we, we moved because we maybe want to have kids and so on. And some companies, they're literally give you two weeks of, of, um, paternal, maternal leave, depending, and that's it two weeks.

And you're back to work two weeks, Sandra.

Sandra: Yes, and it's also unpaid.

Dan: So, but there, you know, there's, there's different, like the, the salaries, salaries there are a lot bigger, right? You have hundreds of thousands in, in salary is, is quite common in, in, at least in the tech hubs anyway. So, yeah, it's a different way of thinking, but it's harder.

In my opinion, to get the work life balance when you don't have the culture of having these holidays, right?

Sandra: I would be very hard to function in U. S. I think so. Very, very hard for me.

Dan: Yeah. But even so, like the thing that we're building is very, How do you say it? You, you put pressure by yourself, even if you don't have a boss, like you're in the United States that says, well, you need to be back in four days.

You kind of get the holiday. We tend to put this pressure on ourselves anyway. And that's something I'm trying to be better at and not feel guilty if I take a few days off. And it's such a hard thing to do because at the same time, you're thinking I could have made progress on this or that, and you know, all the, all the pressure and.

Again, depending on your situation, maybe you need to make money, you need to get users, and then it feels wrong to take three days off. So I don't know.

The Importance of Taking Breaks: A Strategy for Success

Dan: Do you ever feel like that?

Sandra: Oh, for sure. I took the Sunday, Saturday off. I didn't even go on Twitter. And The whole, the whole day I was thinking about it.

Oh my God, I'm doing something bad. I'm doing something bad. It's, it's not a nice feeling. This, this, this thing that we have created in our heads.

Dan: Yeah. I wish I had some.

Sandra: And I came to Twitter back and I was so active and it was such a good feeling.

Dan: Yeah. So it was worth it in the end, right?

Sandra: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah.

That's the thing. until you, you go through it, you, you don't realize how important it is to do. And then when you see, actually this motivated me now, I can, I can go back. Yeah. I don't have a good way to deal with that yet, but I'm trying, I think maybe scheduling these things, like, could that work? It's just say in every three months you take some days off.

Brainstorming.

Sandra: Still you need to submit to me to be approved as a vacation thing. Do

Dan: you know all our emails? So if I, if I submit, just saying, do you know my, you know, my email? And he's just kind of send the approval to my email. That's how it works.

Sandra: Yes.

Innovative Ideas for the Indie Hacker Community

Sandra: You know what, Dan, you just gave me an idea. Now, when I go back to office, I will make a calendar.

Where everyone can submit their own, um, times, whatever it is.

Dan: So it's going to be, okay, so this is a product and we're going to have all of the IndieMakers holidays in this one product. So we know when we can contact each other, right?

Sandra: Exactly. And then these IndieMakers will put their, um, link to their products.

So rest of us can. Pay attention when we see the tweets or like Reddit or any channel out there that their product fits, we can put their link to their, their products. So we are kind of like, um, doing the work for them as well while off.

Dan: Oh my God.

Sandra: Oh my God. I can see already monthly subscription to this.

You

Dan: heard it here first. The only problem is this would be. Product number 125 that you're building at the same time. So finish the course first and then you do this. Okay.

Sandra: Okay. Okay. Fine. But this could be very fast.

Dan: Okay. You should have plugged your core either. What's the website? There's takotreba.com.

Sandra: I don't, I

Dan: can't believe I'm like doing marketing and you're the marketing person.

I can't believe that Sandra.

Sandra: You're very good. You're very good.

Dan: I think it's time for us to get to work. We had too much fun. It's speaking about being guilty. Too much fun. We agree.

Too

Sandra: much fun, too much fun. And it's very good. No vacation for us.

Dan: No vacation for us. Let's start the week.

Wrapping Up: Motivation and Community Support

Dan: Everyone, thank you so much for joining.

You are the most lovely people. I will just say every and single one of you, you are the best. Thank you for tuning in over and over again. We have past episodes on morningmakershow.com if you've missed them. We're also on Spotify and Apple podcasts. And. I just want to say, crush it this week, have a brilliant, brilliant week, stay motivated and keep shipping those awesome products.

Sandra: You are so good in this. Also, if you need a community, join us.

Dan: If you, if you want to chat with us, we have a discord, which you can join. There's more details on the website. Have a nice week, everyone.

Sandra: See you. Bye. Thank you, Dan.

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