BootstrFM

[00:00:00] Hello, welcome everyone to already the fifth episode of Bootstr. Time is flying by, honestly, I still remember doing the very first episode, super nervous, sweating, being very scared everything would, you know, collapse or not go very well.

And look here, we're in episode 5, we've had some quite successful episodes in the past, last week was Pieter Levels who joined, and that was quite a wild ride. So, you know, I think it's safe to say at this point, Bootstr is here to stay. For those of you that don't know yet or are tuning in for the very first time, Bootstr is a weekly space where we talk about bootstrapping software. It can be software, it can be SaaS, it doesn't really matter that much. And the concept is as follows, we have a guest every week that we ask some questions to hopefully learn something from them or perhaps, you know, figure out how to go about our own problems based on how they are doing [00:01:00] things. And, That'll be the first 20 minutes of the show. maybe 25, depends a bit, and then the other half an hour will be discussion questions. Discussion questions are Open questions. So if you would like to contribute to the discussion, you can by clicking on the purple microphone icon on the bottom left, and, um, Dom, my co host, would you like to introduce yourself very quickly?

Of course. Hi guys, my name is Dominic. I've been bootstrapping for the past, I think, three and a half years now. I have the honor to be Erwin's co host for BootstrFM and, uh, the project I've been working on the most is called Helpkit. so, which is a no code tool that helps you to turn your Notion pages into a professional help center or documentation site. And, as an indie hacker, I've also already tried to bootstrap a couple of other projects. Some of them more or less successful, some of them absolutely not. That's the whole idea of why [00:02:00] we're doing this, to talk about what sticks and what doesn't. And, I think that's pretty much about me. Erwin, do you want to introduce yourself?

Oh, yeah, I didn't. Ha! I forgot about that. I'm Erwin, I think most of you have seen me come around on Twitter some time already. I'm building a product called Tailscan, which is a browser extension that lets you inspect things in the browser that are Tailwind based. And a whole bunch of other features. It's a product I landed on after failing a couple as well. And yeah, that is about me. I would like to also ask our guest for this week, Nico. Would you like to introduce yourself as well?

Hey, hi everyone. Well, I'm Nico. I started bootstrapping and everything related to, like, code and stuff, uh, a bit over a year ago. So I come from a marketing background, I learned to code and then I shipped lots of apps, until eventually some, uh, yeah, started to work [00:03:00] pretty decently.

Wow, cool. So specifically that I have lots of questions about because I think between Dom, me and you, I think you have probably outchipped in terms of quantity of products, I've chipped us, maybe at least three, four, fivefold. I don't know how much. So,

Yeah, I think I did 17 in a year or something. Like, yes, around 17 in over the last months from last July, from when I started. Like last year to, yeah, around this August, I think, when I launched, Talknotes, but yeah.

Absolute, absolute shipping machine, I dare to say. So, I think I found you on Twitter the very first time when you were building a product called ScrapSO. I think, or MakeLogo, of course, that one went before that. Um, but before that, I don't really know what you were building, so can you run us down, you know, what were the very early days of indie hacking [00:04:00] for you? Like, how did you even get into it, and what was your first success?

So, um Yeah, I started with like, so I didn't know how to code or everything. So that was the first thing. I wanted to learn like, okay, how can I make my whole, like, my products and have full control over it? Because I come from e commerce and to make a product in e commerce, it's like total headache. You have to, you know, suppliers, manufacturing in China, lots of things you don't control. So I was at a point where I was just, okay, the only real way I can Control the full logistic chain, sort of, is, uh, just by learning how to make the project myself and learning how to code. So that's how I really, you know, went into it. So I took a course, learned to code, and so I come, I mentioned I was coming from a marketing background. So I was running ads for clients as a freelancer. And that's where I started actually. So I made like an app that was like basic, copywriting, AI tools. [00:05:00] Very, the thing everyone was doing. But I ran, I tried to run ads.

So it didn't really work because the marketing is a bit different to run ads for. e commerce and uh, like software, but I still made I think two sales with recurring revenue. So that was honestly that was pretty fast. I think I think I launched the app in, like, September or something, and maybe a week or two after I made the first two sales, we were from the ads. So that's really how I got started, but it was like, yeah, it didn't really went anywhere, so I moved on, and then I don't remember all the apps I did, honestly, uh, but if some are interested, I have the whole list on my blog, but yeah, I did tons of them until, I made one that was called Photo Restore, and it's the same, it's like very basic app, it's just back then there was a new model that could restore old pictures, and I saw someone asking something in Pieter Level's comments Asking something like, [00:06:00] he was, so he just released his app for like avatars, and the guy asked, hey, would it be possible to use this technology to, you know, to make like a, to restore old pictures? So I saw that, I was at the gym, and I was like, okay, I'm going to make that product today, and so I just went back to the gym, make like a landing page, just very basic stuff.

I didn't have any product or backend or whatever, just a landing page with a typeform where you could pay. And I posted, I answered the guy, I just said, hey, I made the product. So if you're interested, you can just, you know, go for it. And the guy actually ended up buying it. So it was like, you know, a pack of, I don't know, like 10 pictures or something for 5 bucks. It's really nothing, but it's really nice to get like little wins like that. I think when you're starting out, it's fine if you don't make much money, but you already see, okay, I can make money online on my own. So, yeah, that was my first, like, real win, I would say.

Cool. [00:07:00] So, if I get it right, you're saying, um, you know, it's good to focus on getting, like, a bit of a smaller win, earlier on to get yourself motivated. That's very interesting. I never looked at it that way in particular, but yeah, at least it gives you, it gets you addicted to the dopamine thing, right? A little bit. Yeah, exactly. I think lots of people aim for, you know, like a massive win to see all of these, like those Twitter posts, like, oh, I want to reach 1, 000 monthly recurring revenue. I want to reach 10, 000, 100, 000, whatever. The way to go there is to first start making your first books online.

So, just focus on that first, or even like getting your first few users, like even if it's free or something, like if you're starting from nothing, at least, you're just getting a bit of feedback from the markets, even if it's not paid customer, but at least you get something. And then as you keep, okay, I got my first few users, maybe now I can try to, you monetize, make a 1 dollar or something instead [00:08:00] of going directly for the, like the massive wins.

And you mentioned that you sold, for the few dollars to the person, did you mean that as a customer or did you mean the project? No, as a customer. So the guy, I think the post can be found on Twitter, it's still there somewhere. I can try to find the link after. But yeah, it was just like A link to the very basic landing page, and it just worked. Like if you give people what they want, I mean they, they will likely, you know, give you money for it.

And what do you think that you do differently? Um, or that you learned how to do differently with all of that, that early experience? What is a big lesson that you drew from that, that you think is a little bit unknown to most?

I'm not sure if it's unknown to most, but I would say 100%, like, if you can monetize just do it, because all the previous projects I tried to launch were like a waitlist. So it's like, you know, just put your email and I will contact you or something. [00:09:00] And okay, it can give you, like, a little bit of feedback, but at the end, to get people from a waitlist, it's very hard, because they forget about you, or they don't need your product anymore by the time you release it, or something. So, instead, I would 100 percent recommend to do, like, pre orders. And that's what I did for Scrap, you mentioned earlier. So, like, making the app would have taken me a while, and instead I was like, okay, I'm just going to ask for money up front, and if enough people are interested, then I would just ship it.

So, yeah, I would say that's my number one thing, but as I mentioned earlier, if you're starting from nothing, it can also be interesting to start with some very basic things, like a free app or something, just to get used to, you know, getting users, because it's way easier, obviously, to get users for a free app than for a paid app. So that's another strategy that can work. If you're really starting from like zero, you don't have any marketing knowledge, then it'll be easier for you to get some users. But for what I learned personally, that would [00:10:00] definitely be like, don't try to just get the email or something, try to get for sales directly. And I think people underestimate, like with, if you have like a good copy, if you really make something people want, people will be happy to pay for it, even if it's in advance.

That's such a good point. I'm reflecting, of course, to my previous projects, and I did exactly what you mentioned not to do, which is having an email list, having people dedicated to that, and then, yeah, nobody ended up paying. So, validation is obviously not worth anything when you have a hundred people on your email list. It's good, but it's not. Yeah, it's not money.

It's always better to get, like, something direct. But you can, like, you can always monetize your email list, and I think, uh, Dan that's listening currently is a good example of that. He's doing many free products. But he has sales on the backend. So that can also work, but you need to be good in marketing. You need to be good in copywriting. When you're just starting out, that might not be the best [00:11:00] Option. And this is a good question to tie that in, and something that also I have been struggling with. What do you do when projects don't make the cut? Like, for example, that are not interesting enough for you to pursue?

So, for me personally, a project is interesting if it makes money. So, any kind of project I think would interest me. if it makes some, you know, some revenue. But if a product doesn't make money and I'm not personally interested in then I would just just move on like um, I think so on the 17 apps I made in a year I think there is only two of like, One who is really active, so Talknotes. The other ones are just like a bit, uh, I just either, you know, closed them, like, deleted them or something. Because it eventually just takes too much of your time, too much distraction. You can only focus on one thing. So, at some point, if you don't make what you expect from an app, it's just like, okay. Have I done [00:12:00] everything I could do for this app, like in my current, you know, skills? Because maybe you're not good in SEO and this app requires SEO, so you have a choice. Do you spend some time learning SEO or ads or whatever is required? Or maybe Upgrade your technical skills or whatever, so you need to take that in consideration. But then, I mean, if it's not particularly interesting and you don't think you can really grow it that much, just leave and don't waste more time.

Right, yes. And I mean, I suppose it also matters a little bit on the technicality of the product, right? Like, you know, if it has very back end heavy or like heavy services or something, then it's also costing you money to keep it running. But if it's something that is less expensive, I suppose it's easier to also shut down or easier to let it run.

Yeah, because also all my apps, are hosted on Heroku and, it's like, oh, it's only 7 dollar per month, but, when you have like 17 apps, then [00:13:00] it's, it starts to get a bit costly. So yeah, that's why at the end I was like, I'm just going to shut down every app that I'm not currently focusing on. And, it's just waste of money.

Yeah. 17 projects times seven is, what is that quick math? 120 bucks a month at the Without any other servers, yeah, that's quite a bit. Yeah, the only winner here is Heroku, so yeah.

An OG Heroku user, that's one for the books.

Yeah, it's uh, I like them, it's easy, I just click, and I really like that. You don't have to bother with like Git or whatever, you can just put your thing, it was easy.

And Nico, for you, I mean, Talknotes is going quite well, it looks like it's really taking off. I think, um, wait, what was your recent milestone again? Uh, so I reached 2, 000, I think, uh, last week, at the end of last week or something. Uh, it's slowing down a bit now, so before the growth was like really, really quick. Now [00:14:00] it's a bit more stable, because I haven't been working on it directly. I was busy, remaking and using Nuxt. But now I'm focusing back on marketing again, so I hope that's, uh Yeah, I'm aiming for like 5, 000 monthly recurring revenue within, I don't know how long, but as soon as possible.

Yeah, so I, wait, that was the question I had next. What is your next milestone and goal? So 5, 000 within a year or so. Okay, that sounds great. Uh, before a year. I really hope before a year. Okay. Like, the ideal scenario would be I don't know, within the next six months, uh, because I'm going to invest in ads and I'm going to invest more in SEO. So, uh, if I like, I'm going to increase the effort and money I put into the marketing, so I hope that the growth will follow, but, it's hard to predict. So I just hope for the best and yeah, I will see how it goes.

Ads, Oh, awesome. So you, have a background in [00:15:00] marketing, I think, unlike most of us. Um, I think for myself, it will be really interesting to see how you go about doing the ads for that and how that's going.

Yeah, so, yeah, that's how I got started with entrepreneurship. I just directly started with marketing, and before, Indie making and stuff. I was, uh, media buying, doing media buying. So this is like buying ads on Facebook. So I was just running ads, basically. And it's like, I won't be able to make, you know, like a whole course, just in five minutes. But, uh, so most important thing with ads, like lots of people think, Oh, but ads won't work for my product. I'm doing like B2B and stuff. But one thing people need to remember is that you're not doing like, B2B or B2C, whatever, you're doing business to person, like no matter what you're selling, you're selling it to someone, even if you're selling it to like the product manager of some random company, that's still a person that needs to be convinced.[00:16:00]

So yeah, like ads is just a way to, to replicate the Message at scale. So it's no different than just sending like 1000 cold emails to random people. Uh, at the end, it's just, you are, messaging someone through a channel. This channel happened to be like a social, social network or whatever. But yeah, that's pretty much how ads work.

And pretty much emails or even like, um, mail, like physical mail, like paper. The number one thing that's important is to catch people's attention because They just see so much stuff, uh, you need to kind of like, stand out, having something a bit flashy in the newsfeed or something. But yeah, you really need to catch their attention. So, yeah, I mean, that's not really, like, how to make ads, but that's how to approach it, at least. How to think about it. It's not like some kind of, you know, magic trick, that generates users randomly. It's [00:17:00] just, if your messaging is good, then you'll have a chance with ads. But if you don't have anything that works, then it's probably not going to work either. It's not like, uh, yeah, it's not like a magic trick basically.

to me personally, honestly, sometimes it feels like it, but it's, I suppose it's often when I only see like the, well, for example, when I only see the results that people put on Twitter. But yeah, so what I did learn of the past little while with newsletter ads specifically, so not even, not even, you know, Google ads or anything, but with newsletter ads, that copywriting already matters a tremendous amount. And, yeah, I think it might be safe to say to be You know, polishing your copywriting skills before getting into ads to begin with, for sure. How do you actually get started about this? About copywriting?

No, I meant, as going from zero to something with ads. Like, how would you do your first campaign, for example? well, So, as you said, I think the very first thing is like copywriting. If you don't know how [00:18:00] to convince people, you're not going anywhere. So that's the first thing to work on, like before thinking about ads or really anything. It's just spend some time studying consumer psychology, studying copywriting, uh, like, you know, sales, stuff like that. And after, okay, I know the basics, now I can try to run some ads. But I mean, running ads by itself is not very complicated. You just launch your campaign. You select your audience. I know you don't really need to do that anymore.

Facebook is really good at selecting audiences for you. Just say, yeah, whatever, just select people for me. But the one thing that matters is creative. So this is what people are going to see in the news feed. And, like, pretty much as I mentioned, like, you need something that really stands out. If you make a video, you have, like, two seconds to catch people's attention.

So, Any kind of advertising related to video, if within the first two seconds you don't make people want to, you know, watch the rest of the video, you're gone. People will not like we not watch [00:19:00] what you have to say because the attention span is very short, They have lots of way lots of better ways to get some dopamine than from a video ads So and they're not here for you Like they're here for to watch some youtuber or to scroll through their newsfeed and stuff like that So it's really up to you to make something that that read both like Okay, entertain them enough so they will want to, you know, keep watching.

So really now, ads is really all about the creative. It's not that much about the tactics, it's just how much can you first catch people attention and then convince them to buy.

I'm talking about that attention span. We talked about this with Pieter last week and I actually get to ask it and I'm not sure if he actually does it, but, um, what do you think about, you know, YouTube definitely is like a beast on its own and, you know, it's advertising is kind of known as to how it works when it comes to TikTok is a very interesting one. Do you think you'll try to figure that one out as well? Because it has huge upsides, [00:20:00] right?

Yeah, so I haven't, most of my experience is on Facebook, like Facebook, Instagram, like MetaPlatform in general, but I really want to give a try to TikTok, especially because Slack, so for Talknotes, it's a very broad product, like the average person could be interested by it. So I think TikTok works really well for that kind of product. And ads, like ads in general, like if you can have like a very broad audience, that's better. But I would approach TikTok as the same, I think. Like you have one, two seconds to really catch people's attention. I would say the main difference, maybe that You are less likely to get a click because, on for example, Meta, stuff like that, you have the desktop version, the mobile version, but in both cases, people can actually see, like, a big call to action.

But on TikTok, people are just used to, like, scroll, so I'm not sure. That's just a supposition. I don't have, [00:21:00] like, data to, to back that up, but I think it's, it might be a bit harder to get. like quality traffic from TikTok in general. But again, it really depends on the creative. If you can make good creatives and yeah, like targets. like an appropriate audience. I think that can really work. I know people who are doing really well with TikTok. I mean, I think, yeah, I think, Pieter is doing really well on TikTok. So yeah, that can definitely work, but it's really, really, really, like about, about the video, you really need to have something that stands out.

It's going to be very interesting to see, if you start dabbling into that. to see the outcomes. If you feel like it, please share on Twitter. Like, I'm very sure there's a lot of people that are curious about it at the bare minimum.

Yeah, I mean, I would start with Facebook because that's what I know the most, but yeah, I want to try YouTube to try like TikTok, I basically, I want to give a try to, to everything and see what works best for me.

And if you have, one piece of advice that you haven't mentioned yet, or one, well, I wouldn't want to call it a secret [00:22:00] because that's a little bit Cordy, there's obviously no secrets, but, um, is there one thing that you would like to share to the audience? Maybe some aspiring, booststrapper that's listening in?

I think Mark is really the, best for inspiring. But, I would say, well, I think one thing you mentioned, like, there is no secret. I think that's actually a really good one. Like, it took me a while to realize. It's like, you know, you see people posting their big wins, but I think most of the time they have no idea what they're doing. It's just, okay, it worked for me, nice. So it's just like if you keep trying, like, eventually something will work out, uh, providing that, you know, Like you get feedback from what you fail. So like, because I, so I felt seven, like I made 17 apps, most of them fail. But every time, you know, if you reflect on yourself, okay, why did this fail?

And for example, I figured out, okay, maybe if I don't do a wait list and ask for purchase directly, I have more chance of getting some money and you know if you keep doing that over and over at some point I think you will be good enough to really to [00:23:00] start making a few bucks and then you if you keep doing that you start to make like a an actual income and stuff so I would really say like it's not a secret it's just keep going and really try stuff, Just keep trying stuff and until something works out for you, like, it's just really dumb advice, but that's what has worked for me so far. I just keep doing, it doesn't work. Okay, next project, etc, etc.

Honestly, I think it's one of the best advices that also I have gotten and unfortunately didn't listen to, but definitely should have listened to. So, I don't think it's bad advice. No, I think it's amazing advice. Basically, Just keep at it and don't stop. Like, keep releasing, don't stop. Keep trying to do things and don't stop. Eventually something will catch on. Yeah, alright, I think that's great closing advice to chew on a little bit and think about for most of our listeners. Thank you, Nico, a lot for coming and for sharing with us your journey, the things that you've learned, and the things that we should learn from you as well.

I would like to ask you to stick [00:24:00] around if you have some more time for our discussion round. Yeah. Well, thanks for inviting me. Uh, it's a pleasure. And yeah, I have a bit more time, so we can do like a few questions and stuff, no problem. Awesome. Awesome. Dom, would you like to take it over for the discussion questions?

Yes, absolutely. All right. Also, thank you so much, Nico, for giving us your very precious time and inspiring so many Bootstrap Indie Hackers here in the space. That's absolutely amazing. For today, we have like 3, 2, maybe 4 questions that we're particularly interested about. But it depends a bit on the discussion, how we're gonna move and flow into it. The first question that I kind of broadly want to ask, and I think is very interesting, also specifically having Nico here, who is kind of like a marketing expert, so to say, is we're curious for you, those who are successfully having built a bootstrap product and are making hundreds of them are already, what is like the one marketing channel that you think is [00:25:00] working like the best for you?

And we are specifically asking this because so many times you see that I mean, it's a big, big trial and error and maybe just to give you a little bit of a background of how I started when I started Helpkit, I was basically just a developer. I had no idea about marketing. And then luckily I taught myself like the basics of marketing and I realized quickly, most of it is a bit boring. So I was sitting there writing some blog posts and I was like, Hmm, I mean, this is great, but like I need something else. And what kind of ended up really, really working for me was going into the site, projects slash engineering as a marketing strategy, which is the idea of building little free tools that help you to gain leads for your main product.

You can launch it a product and it can be a calculator or a free PDF, a guide, you name it. And that's the way how you get people in. And that was in the very early days for me, like a very important marketing channel And I think something that a lot of people maybe [00:26:00] underestimate. So I'm just generally curious for those of you who are building products, what did you find out is like a really, really good marketing channel for you? And also maybe we can start with Nico. So far you just told us that you've reached 2K MRI, which is absolutely amazing. You said that you had good traction. What would you say did the most traction?

So when I launched Talknotes, um, the first thing I did is to add it to directories. So I just I don't have a list. I know a lot of people ask me a list, but I just try to look for every, you know, website that lists startups. So you have like, technically Product Hunt is one, like, but, you know, you have like all those websites where you can list your startup and then you have like top 10 AI tools and stuff, you know, bunch of stuff like that. So I just spent like two hours non stop, grading, looking on Google, et cetera, finding those websites. I just added Talknotes everywhere. Then I posted on Twitter and [00:27:00] those two channels were how I got started. Like I got my first sales from that, so obviously Twitter took me like some time. It's like I had an audience already and stuff, but I think like the directories, that's like, most of them are free. It's just going to cost you a bit of time to like make a nice description because every time you have to read to write something and you don't want it to be duplicated every time.

So yeah, I think it's just like directory is really a good way to start because usually most of them will show like the most recent tools on the home page so you will get a little bit of Boost and you can see a few, like, people going to your websites and you can already see, okay, are people interested, are they signing up, are they starting the checkout or something like that. So yeah, I think that's like a really low effort way of getting a bit of users and seeing if the app can work. And if it doesn't work with that, like if you have traffic and they don't convert, then either the app is not [00:28:00] interested enough or maybe you didn't, you know, did copywriting right or something, but that pretty much guarantee you getting at least a little bit of traffic.

Yeah, I agree. That's actually a really, really great mention, listing all your, listing your products in all of these like two directories. I think this also comes with a very good added side benefit, which is that in the beginning, obviously, if you have a new website, you're struggling having very bad domain authority, so in order to boost that up as well, getting proper backlinks from all these tool sites, some of them actually have a really, really good domain authority, can actually be really good as well.

And then that in combination with launching on ProductHunt, I think that's a very, very solid start, I would say, for an indie hacker. So that's a very great mention. The one thing I didn't like notice with all of these tool sites is, right now, there's so many of them. And I also remember like in the beginning of Helpkit, I posted Helpkit to like every directory website I could find. It was a really, [00:29:00] really big pain to keep track of them and then like see if they actually posted it. But I do see now that sometimes like there is traffic coming still from these like links I posted like two years ago. So, Definitely very, very good advice. Um, while we're waiting or if anyone wants to join in, Erwin, I actually have no idea how you got started with Tailscan in terms of your marketing efforts.

I imagine you started bidding in public on Twitter, but did you have like any magic sauce for Tailscan to like grow in the beginning? Did you do like the cold, hardcore outreach or was there anything that got you started? Uuh,

You're asking me to give away my secret sauce. I'm not entirely sure if I want to. No, there is obviously no secret sauce. Um, there are a couple of things that are perhaps a little bit less well known or less talked about anyway. That I have mentioned in previous episodes, I think, at this point, but I will repeat for anyone that is interested.

I think one of the best [00:30:00] ways for me was, besides the obvious launching and product hunt, was setting up TweetDeck, which is now called XPro, I think. But you can still go to TweetDeck, I think yeah, tweetdeck. twitter. com. And you can very easily set some filters, you know, mentions for my product, mentionsTailscan or, um, mentionsTailwindCSS with at least 20 likes, for example. I would go every day through there, like, potentially also comment on things. With the Tailscan account, so the business account, not your account, but the business account. And because they see the name in their notifications, a lot of people are like, ah, curious, and they go and, you know, check it out.

I can always see like a bump of 20, 30, 40 people coming to my website, maybe an hour or two after I started liking some tweets. So that's, you know, obviously quite a bit of effort, but if you really need to get started with something, it's a reasonably good way. Don't be too salesy, it's my only extra advice for that, um, [00:31:00] that's an interesting one.

The other one that really helped me personally was, um, there was a YouTuber that reached out to me, can I please make a video about your product because it looks really cool and it's very related to what I have been making videos about. And so he literally just Made an entire video about it, eight minutes, and to this day, when you search for Tailwind tool, you lend it is like the fifth result or something. You see that YouTube video and I think that net me like 50 or 60 customers throughout the year and somehow it also services back again on YouTube once in a while. So if you can be befriend some YouTubers and they don't have to be that big, but some YouTubers in a specific niche, you never know. Perhaps that can lead into a feature in a video. And it's there forever, so whoever searches on something related again sees the video.

So many gems being dropped here. I love this. I think YouTube is also a very underrated marketing channel. YouTube is I think the second largest search engine in the world. So whatever [00:32:00] people search in Google, first of all, it might also get prioritized in their search engine ranking. But then also, people love to look at videos, especially for how tos. So if you have a SaaS product, especially in the B2B space, you might just end up, like on YouTube, with a good explanation video, and that can really help to kickstart.

That's amazing. Also, I saw the one video you were talking about, Erwin, from this, like, one developer niche YouTuber, and I've been, like, following him for, like, years, I think, and then when I saw Tailscan randomly being promoted while I was watching one of his videos, I was actually, like, really excited. I was like, what? How did that happen? So that's amazing. We also have, someone wanting to speak, um, Kaizo, Kizzo, if I pronounce your name wrong, I'm sorry. Do you want to chime in?

Um, yeah, thank you. So question to Nico, you mentioned that you've built 17 apps before, which is like really good to hear because all I see on Twitter is like Success Stories, so [00:33:00] it's maybe not nice that you had to go through this, but it's nice to see that we all struggle at this. So question is, I'm kind of on the beginning of this path, so I feel like I'm gonna make a lot of mistakes building stuff that are maybe not useful or will not get any traction. So question to you, Nico, what would be like top three or top five lessons that you took, um, by building those apps? Or by making those mistakes in the past.

Well, uh, I think the number one thing is the one I mentioned is like get the money as soon as possible. Like, if you can ask money up front to your customers go for it. Now, another one I would say, so, okay, let's say you have like a, an amazing app idea. You're like, wow, okay, that's the next big thing and stuff. But, and then you need to think, okay, how am I going to reach my customers? And like, if you cannot find a proper way to reach customers, you know, in a consistent way, then maybe the app is not, that's not a good app for you. I think that's a very important thing. Lots of people underestimate [00:34:00] is you really need a way to reach your customers directly.

Whether it's like, cold emails or ads or whatever you need like at least one thing. And like if you're making an app for like I don't know, like nuclear enginers and stuff like that, but you don't know any or you don't know how to reach out to them, then good luck trying to, like, you could make the best app in the world for them, like, good luck trying to make money from that, so, I think, yeah, that would be the number one thing, actually, even before, like, trying to get the money directly, is like, make sure you have a way to reach, to identify and to reach out your customers, like, immediately. When you start and yeah, I don't have one that come into my mind right now.

Uh, but like that's a very stupid one, but make something useful, not something that you like. I think lots of people like, you know, they make an app, they're really happy about it. Like, oh yeah, I made that, but okay, that's nice. But do people actually want that? And do they want to pay for that? Or is it just something that you want to do? [00:35:00] And it's fine to make apps you like if it's a hobby. But if you want to make money from it it's like, you need to satisfy the market. So, yeah, I would say that the main things I learn, sort of.

Also, just to chime in here, I think also one other piece of advice, at least I can give, is that you mentioned this, that you tend to see on Twitter, a lot of people tweeting about only the success stories, so it's kind of refreshing to see Nico, like having so many projects and now finally succeeding. I think that is the majority. Most of the time we just don't see people actually being public about it because they may want to, make you perceive that they're like a unicorn or some sort. I think one really important part in all of this is to recognize that it's freaking hard. I wrote a blog post about this like a while ago. That is that there was a point like on Twitter where it seemed like anyone that is like struggling to reach like $1000 in MRR It's kind of like a failure and I absolutely [00:36:00] hated this whole sentiment. And so then I wrote a blog post about it. Basically, the idea was just that I think reaching any sort of MRR, I think is a huge success and any milestone you make in reaching a new, like MRR milestone being a hundred dollars, 500, 1,000 I think you should celebrate and see it as a success in and of itself, even if the product maybe gets stuck, you know, at 200 MRR and you might have to venture out and build a new one.

I think the most important takeaway of this is that you realize, that's an amazing milestone in your indie hacking journey, and you should kind of cherish this moment. And, uh, another thing is just like, because all of this is so hard, and I just want to stress this, you need to take care of yourself, go to the gym. We had Pieter Levis here last week, and he was also very clear. Try to deadlift, deadlift your own weight, at least. I'm just kidding, partly, but just try to like, stay healthy and keep your mind sharp. I think that's like a very [00:37:00] important part in this journey. Cause you can definitely burn yourself out really, really easily, and that's what you want to avoid because it's kind of like, it compounds. In the beginning, you won't see a lot of results, but the more you stick to it, the more you train your muscles, quite literally, the better you will get. I don't know, Erwin, do you have anything to say to this as well or?

Yes, Kaizo, thank you for your question. I can confirm what Dom says, you've got to take care of yourself. So that's actually, you know, it's not related to Advice to, like, building or anything in particular, but I unfortunately, firsthand can tell you that, yes, burnout is very close if you don't watch it. It's a very, very hard path to take so don't underestimate it and keep, keep focusing on your mental health and your physical health as well. One extra thing I would like to say and the biggest mistake I personally made was confusing use and utility for just a lack of distribution.

And by that I was basically building a product for 10 months thinking that, you know, customers would come if I just [00:38:00] built this extra feature because that's what they really need. Meanwhile, I didn't validate that. I didn't have any paying customers to validate it with, and essentially I was confusing, um, lack of being able to distribute my product for continuously trying to Build something new, like more utility.

The bottom line of it is, build something that's extremely simple, build only the core. You don't need team features, you don't need invitation features, you don't need settings, you don't need any of that. You just need the core, core product, and if you can't move the needle or distribute it well or get customers from that, then don't build any additional features, kill it and move on, yeah, easier said than done, honestly.

I think that's great advice.

I would also add one thing. Don't get too attached to like monthly recurring revenue. Just, your goal is to make revenue, not necessarily monthly recurring revenue. Like, because everyone is posting that on Twitter. It's like the social norm and stuff. But you can make like good money without monthly recurring revenue. And again, I think Mark Luvian is a good example. I think he made [00:39:00] like, 20, 000 in a month or something like that, uh, selling a one time purchase. And makelogo. ai, my first really big success was also a one time purchase.

So, like monthly, like subscriptions is way harder to sell than just a one time purchase. There is way more, cost for the customer, so it creates more friction, stuff like that. So, at the beginning, like, it's actually good to start with one time purchase, like an easy way for the customer to purchase just so you can get this, you know, initial feedback. I was talking about earlier, it's like, it's okay if you sell for, you know, cheap price and stuff, but get started somewhere and subscription is usually the hard way of, doing that when you're just starting out.

That's also a great advice, especially because it reminds me of this very nice framework that Rob Walling, another OG bootstrapper, came up with called the StairStep Approach to Bootstrapping, for those of [00:40:00] you who maybe not heard it, there's a great blog post that he has written about, and also a book, but to give you, like, the very short rundown of it, the idea is that, When you start your bootstrap journey, there are so many things that you have to think about when building, be it the marketing, the development, the customer support, all of these steps. And his idea was to ease your learnings. You should, um, build products in different stages. And that's why he came up with like this kind of stairstep analogy where in the very bottom step, you have like a very simple like info product, you know, you make a PDF, you make a ebook, you name it very easy to build and then distribute.

And the reason for this is that you start learning how to market your product. Cause we developers are really like, we love to. Code stuff, we can do that pretty easily, I would say, but doing a marketing part is really, really hard. So starting out with a product that is very easy to build, but then the hard part is kind of focusing on the marketing and distribution aspect. It's kind of like the first, I [00:41:00] would say step in that kind of stair step approach. Some people actually are, they kind of make their first kind of stair step product their entire business and it can work and that's Even more amazing, his idea was that the further you go up the ladder of these stair steps or these stairs, you end up building an entire like software as a service application.

In the middle you have, for example, plugins, tools that are built on already existing tools. You can think of like Shopify plugins. I guess Helpkit is also in the middle cause I was building Helpkit on top of Notion. And, there's like a lot of like ecosystem apps already out there that you can build on top of on, and so the idea is like, going this, by climbing the steps up, you learn different things along the way, and that helps you to not get overwhelmed because. The one mistake a lot of people make in the beginning, and I certainly made it as well, is you start by building an entire software as a service application, and you quickly realize that this is a huge endeavor, [00:42:00] and there are so many moving parts, the development, the marketing, the customer support, doing the sales, that you get so overwhelmed, you might burn out .

I almost burned out and I really cannot recommend this to anyone. If I would have known about the stair step approach before, I just read about this like a year after I was actually making all these mistakes, I think it would have helped me tons and tons.

I just put it in the comments, by the way, for you, the stair step approach link.

Perfect. All right, I think it's maybe good to move on to the next question. There is another question that I'm personally really interested in, and if people here in the audience also have something to say, that would obviously be amazing. How do you decide on what to work on? Talking about building a SaaS is like a huge endeavor. There are so many moving parts. The question kind of becomes that at one point after you build your initial version of your product, how do you decide what to work on?

We developers want to build features all day, but we also need to do [00:43:00] marketing. So there's like ideologists like Jon Yongfook, a speaker we had on here, who has this idea of like doing the marketing and developing week, where essentially you do one week of pure marketing, one week of pure development, and then you iterate. Then you have people doing sprints, you have people doing like Pieter levels, not really thinking about anything and just going with the flow, waking up and then just rocking it, winging it. I'm certainly still kind of figuring out how I want to do this, two and a half years in building Helpkit now, I haven't found a really good way. I'm curious, like maybe also to start, Erwin and Nico, how do you do that? How do you decide on what to focus on? You wake up and then you're like, all right, what is it that I'm working on today?

So I would say overall I go with the flow. I know the direction where I'm going, but one thing that I think is really important is for me, it's like constantly marketing week. I know lots of people like one week I do marketing, one week I do programming, but [00:44:00] like, I think when you're starting out, particularly, you should only focus on marketing. It doesn't mean you should not, you know, fix bugs, add features and stuff, but fix a bug no one reported, or a feature no one asked for. For me, adding new stuff is a way of keeping existing customers or like, uh, accessing a new pool of users. So, I will build features. People ask if I see that, okay, maybe my churn is starting to get a bit high or something. But overall, I really try to focus on mainly doing marketing that doesn't mean I only do marketing because I just spent the last like two or three weeks programming nonstop and not doing any marketing because I was remaking the app, but I remade the app because it would allow me to do better marketing.

Now I can make like blog posts really, really quickly. So I would say like, yeah, we'll just focus on marketing only. I know like, some people also want to code and stuff. So like overall find what works for you. But for me personally, it's just, I know I need to do [00:45:00] marketing, like only do marketing. I don't have like specific plan or anything. I just know the overall direction. Okay. I know I'm going to focus on SEO. Then I'm going to focus on ads and then I feel like, on the day what happens. If there is a critical bug, then okay, I will just pause everything and fix it. But yeah, like overall, just I think marketing is the number one thing you should be doing, especially when you're starting out.

Yeah, I love this. I do definitely see the value in this. Also I think that in general. The thing you mentioned with if you think you need to add another feature instead of marketing, that's something I found myself in the early days, like so many times I was like starting my day and I was like, I actually, I should do marketing today. And what ends up happening, I just have this amazing feature idea. And then I spent like a week building this cool feature while I was like, yes, it adds some value to the existing customers. But did many of our customers actually ask for it? Likely not. And did I just procrastinate? [00:46:00] Very likely yes. So yeah, that's definitely a big part of this.

Erwin, how do you do it? Do you just wake up and have a whole plan ahead already? Or do you I don't know, do you do the Jon Yongfook method of like marketing versus developing?

So, interesting. I think I'm, I can't really tell if I'm unique in this sense, or if it's actually extremely common, but, I have a framework called absolute fucking chaos. I just made that up on the spot. No, honestly, I don't have a framework. When I wake up, I look at my Notion board, I look at the features. I'm like don't really feel like working on that right now. And I look, look at my blog and it looks kind of sad and the last thing I did, I published this like a month ago, so I You know, muster up some energy to write another blog post, for example.

I don't plan my day. I don't plan pretty much anything. The only very clear time that I do plan something [00:47:00] is, well, two times. It's obviously around, like, lunches or, like, you know, public commitment, or when my customers ask for a feature. Those are the two times that I do plan something and also the times, the only times that I give a time estimate. But besides that I'm actually winging it and it kind of works for me. So I guess not having a framework is also a framework.

Yeah, I love this. I think to a certain extent, have kind of like, I mean, we Indie hackers have like an internal, maybe to do list in our mind. Anyway, we kind of know, or you as a founder, you know, what's the best thing for your startup at a particular time. I do think that there is a case to be made that by just winging it, you might. Lose a bit of like clarity and focus that you could have otherwise maybe, I guess, more dedicated towards having something structured in a way, but yeah, I don't know. I gain happiness,

honestly, I gain happiness from not having stress from [00:48:00] having anything in my calendar.

But don't you think that, I mean, having something a calendar is like a whole nother level, right? Like, that's absolute no go for me as well. But like, don't you think that there's a beauty in like knowing what your next steps are and kind of being a bit more structured? At least that's what I'm like sometimes thinking about. I mean, I do sometimes plan ahead a week, but it turns out that the entire week's gonna turn out very different than what I initially planned it to.

Right. Yeah. I don't know. I think I'm a very firm believer of you know, different things work for different people, basically. It's, you have to get good at what you're doing, and you have to really own the framework, and not really think about, you know, can I improve this way and this way and get like 5 or 10 percent better? I think that's good to do, but I don't think it should come at a cost, right? So for me, I would get very stressful if I have to, you know, have all my days planned out, for example. And it would cost me so much extra mental capacity that I end up being less productive [00:49:00] because I'm worrying and I find it extremely hard to stick to a schedule.

So I think different things work for different people. You just have to be honest to yourself when something is not working. I think that's the most important part.

I think it's also a big, um, It hugely depends on the maturity of your product. I guess Tailscan right now is still being in like it's sort of early phases, getting more mature. You have like launched 2. 0 now. With Helpkit for example, I would consider it's like fairly mature. Like the features that are out, people like love to use. There is few, I would say, like big, big new feature requests, but there are obviously always bugs that come up. And at the scale now of Helpkit, at least what I see for myself is that I have a notion board that is all about like features and bugs.

Then I have a notion board that is about marketing and like, kind of like in the Kanban style, right? You have like to do in progress and then complete it. So I have one for marketing, I have one for features and bugs, but then I also need to do, obviously, customers, [00:50:00] customer support, sort of like every day, unless you want to pile things up. And so, your day is pretty much, like, structured in a way already, I guess. The important thing to learn in this is how do you really structure your day so you don't lose a lot of time. Um, I have, like, met Like a fellow indie hacker, we both know here in the co working space today. And he was talking to me that his product is growing, but he's drowning in customer requests right now.

He has features to build. He actually should do more marketing. And he's literally sitting there on his table and was like, how should I do all of this, right? How do I not spend my entire day on customer tickets today? We're growing so much. Finding some sort of structure in all of this, I think does help you to just be a bit more clear. So it's also a maturity thing, I guess. But yeah, in general, I do like the hashtag no calendar hashtag winging it method as well, and it seems to work. It's just at one point I think a bit of structure does definitely help a bit. There [00:51:00] is one more question I want to throw into the group.

And that is very I would say time sensitive in terms of we are soon approaching Black Friday. Most of companies right now already have the hashtag Black Friday deals go at Black Friday week deals going so what Erwin and I was like curious about asking you is your general opinion in we're coming up with Black Friday slash Cyber Monday deals.

There has been a Sentiment I think this year of more and more I would say even Indie Hacker products being or listing Black Friday deals I do remember a time where it used to be a bit less and certainly Indie Hacker fans of mine did not do Black Friday deals for the reason of thinking that the Black Friday deals kinda can devalue your product a bit, I guess, you maybe seem a bit cheaper or more desperate or you name it.

There is a counter argument to be made that people [00:52:00] during Black Friday already know that most products will be discounted. So them associating a product with kind of like a less of a value because you're doing these kinds of deals might also not be a fair argument, I would say. For me, myself for Helpkit, it's the first year doing a Black Friday deal. And the reason it's also the same that I just described is I found out that in, while last year I was thinking, Oh, I don't want to do a Black Friday deal. I want to be like opposite, kind of hipster, kind of cool. I want to keep the brand value. This year I kind of realized, you know, first of all, I want to try it out.

But second of all is I think consumers are in such a black Friday kinda discount mindset already that I don't think that Also being one of the tools that is offering a Black Friday deal is kind of discounting your product's value. But that's a question for the audience here. And what your opinion is about this?

Nico, are you going to do a Black Friday deal or you're not going to do it? [00:53:00]

Uh, I just changed the wording on the landing page from Launch Discount to Black Friday Discount. I'm not doing anything in particular. No, actually I'm thinking, I think I will increase the price. Like, I don't even know when Black Friday is. I guess It's Friday because I know it's November, but I think it works really well if you're doing advertising and, you know, if you have like a big channel of, to acquire new users, but if you are already targeting people who already know you, then you're just, I don't know, discounting your thing. So I don't really have, you know, like a proven, like backed up opinion on that, but, I know that in e commerce, this is a craziest time of the year because everyone is waiting for this moment to buy products, you know, for Christmas and stuff, but it's for physical products. So it's a bit different.

I'm not sure for apps, it change anything. But yeah, I'm not doing anything in particular, maybe next year I will try to run ads, something like that, but for now I just change the wording and I will probably increase the [00:54:00] price.

I think the sentiment is kind of like slowly also tipping over into like the digital product space. I've seen or I know a lot of friends of mine that are also talking about, Oh, I want to buy this product, but I'm going to wait until it's Black Friday because I know they're going to do a discount. The one thing I think that Indie Hackers, at least what I heard from fellow Indie Hacker friends, They're kind of scared about is that if you do end up doing a Black Friday deal, but you have a customer Signing up the day before you launch your Black Friday deal.

They might feel a little bit betrayed which Thinking about I think is not really a big of a concern you should have But that is something that I heard a couple of times now. There's always things you can do in order to circumvent the issue. In worst case, if you have one, two, three customers reaching out with this, just give them the discount as well, I guess. For example, but yeah, I think that's something that, that people kind of mentioned as a counter argument for having a Black Friday deal or Cyber Monday deal. I'm really curious, like [00:55:00] literally today, I launched the Black Friday deal. I discounted every Helpkit plan for 35 percent and I already made the first sale with the discount, literally after I posted it, like a lot, I deployed the changes after two hours, so the sample size here is one.

Which obviously is absolutely horrible in terms of statistics, but it is interesting, like, after two hours already having a first sale for the Black Friday deal. So yeah, Erwin, you have a digital, you have a product that is less of a SaaS, I guess, more of a, like, Chrome extension slash, like, utility tool. It only makes sense for you to do a Black Friday deal, I guess, but what do you think about it?

Uh, I think you're right, which is also why I started doing Black Friday deals. When was it? I think I put it, pushed it live, like, a few days ago. So just with Nico, I did not, I did launch just before Black Friday, so the original launch date of Tailscan was 2022, the 14th of [00:56:00] November, and so when I launched, I actually had a launch deal back then, and I transitioned that into a Black Friday deal. And I'm doing the exact same thing again this year. Now, what you mentioned, the downside of it is and I do notice this, is you train some of your customers to Wait for a Black Friday deal and especially if you offer yearly renewals It's very easy for them to just continue onwards with every Black Friday deal As a matter of fact, I do this as a consumer. I do this to some products as well. So I think you should really not forget that and and realize that it only makes sense when you are able to reach people you wouldn't otherwise reach Because if you are able to reach people you otherwise wouldn't be able to reach, it's essentially extra money. But if you reach just the same people, you just train the people that probably would have been already a customer anyway, then yeah, it just doesn't make as much sense. I think, for me as a utility tool specifically, it also makes a lot of sense to do perpetual licenses. Which is what I'm [00:57:00] doing this year, so no more years. The Black Friday deal was specifically towards the perpetual license, the one time license. It's just pay once and use it forever. And I think, yeah, that was a good choice.

So I just checked my dashboard actually from the launch itself and from the early Black Friday deals. I made 10, 000 in sales, which is quite a bit, and I expect that to be a little bit more from Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Don't forget Cyber Monday. It's the newly invented, um, holiday, I suppose, or newly invented day. Cyber Monday specifically for digital products. on the Monday after Black Friday,

Soon we have a crazy SaaS Tuesday maybe as well.

We should, we can invent that right here, right now. Or one specifically for indie hackers that do want to do Black Friday, say. Indie Tuesday, I call it.

Erwin, you said, if I understand correctly, you did already a Black [00:58:00] Friday deal last year, right? Yeah, correct. Can you talk us through a little bit about what you did in terms of marketing it?

What did I do in terms of marketing it? I think I posted it on a lot of directories. So there's a couple of GitHub. Lists, repositories, um, put it on Twitter, put it in one newsletter, but that didn't actually go very well, but I tried anyway. For this year, I'm doing the same. I did actually splurge a little bit on marketing. I think I spent like 800 or something on newsletter coverages for the next few days. And yeah, again, directories for Black Friday, and probably put out a couple of tweets. I think that's pretty much it.

Super smart. I think I just learned a new lesson, which is scheduling your newsletters for time sensitive events so you maximize your reach. That is so smart. Literally makes so much sense and I just realized that now, thanks for [00:59:00] sharing your magic.

I will be seeing your newsletter tomorrow.

I'm going on to every newsletter that is giving out sponsorships now and sponsoring them. For everyone in this space now, there's going to be a hundred Indie Hacker products now, all launching in like newsletters in the next few days. But no, that's a really, really great advice. And I also think that Doing these directories also really important. I've started doing now as well for Helpkit. And in addition to that, um, also one interesting thing you can possibly do is if you have, Try customers or free customers, sending them a newsletter, um, episode as well. Obviously don't make the big mistake of accidentally sending the Blackfire deal to your existing customers.

Cause that potentially can upset them. But other than that, I think that's a very, very, good marketing strategy, Erwin, with the newsletters. That's very, very valuable. We have Kaizo and Daniel. Kaizo, do you want to say something before and then We switch to Daniel.

I can wait as well. Yeah, [01:00:00] let's go for Daniel. All right. So, I want to say about my experience running Black Friday deal. So like last year I run with K2, but it kind of successful, but I didn't execute it very well. So I learned the lesson and do better this year. So I didn't do black Friday deal 4K two each year, because I, I recently have to decrease pricing, and so now with a deal, it's not going to sustainable. So if you build with SaaS and you want to run a Black Friday deal, I think you should structure a deal so that it not permanent.

Like for example, like you wait like 20% of the next three months or the next six months or the next whatever, right? And also it depends on your goal on running the deal. Sometimes it's to test the price, test at the lower price point, right? So for me, when I decrease the price for K2, it's actually very hard. So it's easy to increase price because Your [01:01:00] previous customer got grandfather in, right? So, so it easy, only new customer got the higher price point. But when you decrease price, it really difficult for me to communicate with the current customer. Right. So basically for people who already pay for the whole year and so if you want to, there's a price point for lower price, point Black Friday can be a good opportunity to do that.

Right? And also, so this year, I don't want to do it for myself, and I only do it for my two apps. They are both one time payments, so there is little cost for me to run the deal. So, there is, um More support, effort needed. But overall, I think it's a good idea. And so, my strategy is to run the early deal, like, one or two weeks before the actual Black Friday, the actual week. And I would not announce anywhere, not [01:02:00] social media, not on the landing page. They just got the deal after they check out. And so, after one week, right, I Officially, now it's on both my pricing page and on social media and on all other listing page. And so, there, I haven't received any refund request, or, you know, like angry email from customer who say, Oh, I missed the deal and so on. It's pretty smooth for me. So this is a lesson I learned from last year. So I hope if you're running any kind of deal, not just Black Friday deal, you can follow the same.

Wow. Thanks. That's a really interesting insight, especially the takeaway for like SaaS recurring subscription products here is that. Maybe rethinking the idea of doing a recurring infinitely recurring deal rather than. As opposed to more interestingly, only giving away a deal for the, like, let's say three months, six months, a [01:03:00] year, but then not having it recurring. I think it's an interesting aspect.

I think yeah, I just 'cause what Daniel said made me think of something, so I agree. Like, I think you shouldn't make, like, you know, the deal like lifetime or something. But what you can do for subscription is to sell like a one year pass. So it's like, uh, you know, you just buy the access for one year or something so it removed the subscription part, but It's good to generate cash flow. And one other thing that can also really works well is to have like different tiers of Discounts. So for example, you can say something like okay the first five people Like, or until this day you get like 50 percent off and then after that it's 40 percent and after that it's 30%. So it really adds like a fear of missing out and that can be either with discount or maybe you can try to add like a freebie inside the discount.

So I don't know, like a free PDF or something like that, you know, just add [01:04:00] more value instead of adding more discounts. That's also a way of creating like a fear of missing out, while not discounting your price too much.

Ooh, love this. Kaizo, you have also something to say? Yeah, but like, different topic. Okay. So, question to, like, all of you guys. How do you cope with all that period before getting any revenue? Um, because it obviously takes a long time to get some money. And one way is to, like, easy way, move to, maybe not that easy, but move to Bali, increase the runway. But then for many people it's really difficult to start in the hacking career because they don't know, what resources they need to have to even kickstart the whole journey. How do you cope with that? Do you have jobs or how does it work?

Um, I can answer like in my case, I was doing freelancing. So I actually stopped freelancing right when I started [01:05:00] indie making because, I lost my main clients and I didn't have any process to find new one. But, honestly, I wouldn't recommend to go full time like. Unless you have like a bit of runaway in front of you, like one or two years, or like six months if you really want to grind like a maniac.

But, if you have the stress of, you know, building something, like that's a lot. So, honestly, it's easier to maybe get started with freelancing. Get a little bit of income and just starting again. Now I can focus like part time on indie making or something. Um, there was lots of stories of people going all in and stuff like that. But, I don't think I could have done what I did if I didn't know, okay, I have like one year to make it. And one year is really short. Like, it was really stressful until I sold Make. Logo. ai. So it's like, uh, you will get stressed if you don't have enough time, which is not necessarily a bad thing because, like, pressure will, you know, get the best out of you.

But just be aware, yeah, it will be stressful, So it's [01:06:00] up to you, how you want, like, how much pressure you can support. Uh, I know some people are fine with just having, like, six months in front of them. For me, I don't think I could have done it without at least one year. Uh, but for someone who has like, nothing, really, just start, like, try to get a bit of money from freelancing or part time job or whatever. At least enough so you can move to a place that's cheap, you can move to, like, I don't know, Bali, Bangkok, whatever. Uh, whatever is cheap for you. And, then, okay, I have like, you know, six months, one year, two year to make it. So yeah, I think that, yeah, that's pretty much it.

I can chime in for Kaizo's question very briefly. For me, it's also freelance pretty much. I started out doing, um, pretty much 50 50. I would have like a 20 hour contract for a customer of mine and would pretty much have continuous money coming in that would at least cover my expenses. During my time with Tailscan, so exactly About a year [01:07:00] now. I've actually been freelancing very minimally, trying to really, really, maintain my level of, money in the bank and not necessarily increase it very much. So, for me personally, my risk tolerance is rather high and I do know that if I really, really need to freelance, I can probably You know, contact a couple of people and have some work within a week.

Um, but yeah, for me it's a low risk profile. I pretty much only have like four or five grand in the bank, which is like enough for what two, three months. That's it. And that's what I've been writing on pretty much consistently at for about a year. I think it's important to just realize what your risk profile is, and then act accordingly. That could be having a job and working in the evenings to build something. That can be freelancing, so it's a little bit more dynamic. Um, it could be saving, like not doing anything at all and saving up first and then going all in. It depends on what you're comfortable with and what your situation is.

Yeah, I would say having a runway of at least six [01:08:00] months I think is something you should definitely consider just in terms of having more mental stability so you don't think constantly about, Oh, how I'm gonna like survive the next month, you know, like having six months of runway I think is a Good proxy, preferably a little bit more if possible.

But yeah, that's definitely something I think you should consider. I think Daniel also did or is still doing some freelance work on this site. Do you have something to talk about this as well? Uh, no, I stopped it. So earlier this year, I did like one or two gigs. But then I stopped. So I tried to see if it's still easy to find a gig especially related to AI. And so it worked pretty well. And so, to your point of saving, if you have kids or family, then make it at least one or two years. Six months not going to last. So this is pretty personal. But even when I Save [01:09:00] quite, I'm not really retargeting very high and so, so I saved like two years and that one financial hit and we still struggle for like a couple of months and so if you are like me and not very retargeting very high, then yeah, prepare for the long run.

Awesome, awesome. Well, guys, I thank you all for tuning in. Thanks for all of you also chiming into the group discussion. I think that's a very valuable part of this. That's the reason why we're doing this. Doing it live, I think, adds a bit of serendipity to this whole discussion and having people joining. Like, Daniel, this is very, very interesting because I've been, like, seeing you on Twitter all the time so hearing a bit of your own thoughts and your hacks and tricks, I think, is something very, very valuable. Erwin, do you want to wrap it up?

I can. I almost wanted to wrap it. But for now I'll just speak instead of wrap. I wanted to all for coming. Nico for being a guest., Very much [01:10:00] appreciated and you definitely sparked something inside of me. Maybe I should be looking into ads, more and more and more and more. So I kind of want to, so thank you all for listening in. Episode five. This was episode six is the same time, next week, Wednesday. So if you have time again, please tune in. Feel free, we'll be having another awesome guest and yeah, thank you all for coming and I'll talk to all of you later.

Yeah, no, it's becoming a ritual to all of you. Start with this ounce again. Thanks guys for tuning in. See you next Wednesday. Have a good night everyone, or good day, or whatever it is here. Bye guys!