Daniel Vassallo - Indie Hackers Podcast
Episode #177 of the Indie Hackers Podcast: "Mastering the Lifestyle-First Approach to Indie Hacking with Daniel Vassallo" - published October 20, 2020
Overview
This was a good listen. After listening to 1 Second Everyday - Indie Hackers Podcast and much enjoying it, I wanted to give another episode a try. I actually asked Chat GPT for the best episodes of the podcast, liked the title of the first one it told me, and listened to it.
The person being interviewed was Daniel Vassallo, who had been working at Amazon for 6 years, I think as an engineer, earning a high salary ($500k+), and then quit his job to pursue his own things. The podcast was recorded about a year and a half after he quit. A theme was that he pursued several different areas, including developing a SAAS business, a couple other software products, and bringing him the most income were actually some e-books and video courses that he published.
He has an interesting success story with the ebook/courses because he created them in a small amount of time (weeks or a couple months) and made a lot of money off them -- over $100,000. The software pursuits were more slowly growing, with the SAAS pursuit being the strongest "bet", but not something he was actively putting more effort into at the moment. (I wonder if this product has grown in the last five years.)
Books/course publishing
I'm more interested generally in the creation of profitable software products, but it was kind of interesting to hear about the book/course pursuits, too. It makes me wonder what skills I have that I might be able to turn into technical writing or course material. At the same time, I wonder, even if I did have ideas for those things, is my time better off spent on making cool/profitable apps, which interests me more and feels more attuned to my skillset.
I feel a bit silly talking about myself in that way, though, because I generally view myself as having a broad range of skillsets and having many different interests, which includes writing. But I don't normally think about writing in terms of creating something directly with the intention of making money off it. Writing something technical, like a guide on how to get better at some skill, feels more boring to me than writing fiction, or writing a guide on how to do something but having it free on the Internet. On that last point, though -- it's cool to have free skillsharing on the Internet, but at some point, it could make sense to develop whatever "guide" it is with more depth and have the "premium" version be the profit-driven book or course. There can be a balance.
A recent example of this is the book "Hypnosis Without Trance" by James Tripp. Well, it already is a book in the first place, which in itself is in theory a profit-generating item, but there are a couple (not too many) lines in the book alluding to an online course/program for those interested in going more in depth. I didn't mind this promotion (/ the existence of the course) because I got a sense that the author was putting the core information into the book, so I wasn't missing anything, but I could imagine that someone might want to go further, or have hands-on instruction and feedback, thus making the course also valuable to them.
Notes
Some thoughts/highlights I noted about specific parts of the podcast discussion:
- You can work on a project and publish it, and let it sit for a while, without actively working on it, and come back to it in the future.
- This made me think of my work on Specific Main App Pursuit I'm Currently Working On. Sometimes I view it as: if I have even a little bit of success on it, it'll be The Thing that I am always working on. But by this advice, I don't necessarily have to adhere to that. I can get a core form of my app out, and just let people use it and see how it goes. Then I can pick it back up at some point and make improvements to it, or go harder on marketing it more. (But also probably smart to take initial traction and develop from there right away. But still, there can be a breaking point at some point.)
- The host made a brief comment about the strategy of asking yourself what your future life/lifestyle looks
- A perk of having your own business / not having a corporate job is that you get to decide what you want to do every day. Which pursuit to focus on. Reminded me of the "fall downhill" advice from Hank Green Tells Me To Fall Downhill -- rather than someone telling you to do one specific thing and you having to follow it (or risk job security), you can make the decision on what to work on, and that might be the "easier" thing or the path of least resistance -- the thing you most want or feel like doing in the moment.
- Working on multiple things at once can help smooth out the risk of putting all your eggs in one basket. It might feel scary to work on one thing for six months and then there's a moment of seeing if you'll be rewarded for it, or if it doesn't pay off. Instead, if you work on a couple different things at once, there's less pressure on any one thing. It's a way of diversifying.
- I like this advice because it's in tune with how I operate. I generally already have different pursuits going on. At different scales too -- different coding projects (or ideas) as well as non-coding projects also (though usually not with a business focus).
- There's a tradeoff here of losing focus on any one thing. It really depends on the person's working style. I think I accel at working on different things at once, and I feel the nervousness that Mr. Vassallo described, of wondering if the One Thing you're focusing on will work out. I don't really ever take that risk, though. Doing so is just not how I operate.
- I've tried sometimes to focus all my attention on one thing, and, at least for a recent time I did this, I would get stuck or lose motivation on the One Thing, procrastinate it and not make much progress, but still tell myself that this is the Only Thing I am allowing myself to work on, and nothing else, and so I don't make progress on anything. If instead I had allowed myself to switch between things more, I may have reduced the strain of needing to get the One Thing right (which paradoxically might raise motivation for it), and I can make progress on multiple things at once. Again, I seem to excel and feel most motivated and rewarded when I'm making incremental progress on a couple hobbies/projects at once.
- Host mentioned in the morning he likes to read some random(?) blog posts - the value of being exposed to new ideas/concepts/things that may not be what you normally consume / learn about. I like Kagi Small Web for this purpose. I recently added it to my RSS feed viewer app (I use Feedly on Android) - specifically, the RSS feed for "appreciated" posts.