Build build build
Or what my goals are for February
Finally the festivities are over. Christmas, New Year, Chinese New Year done. We can finally get back into the momentum of things again.
If there’s one thing I really want to do this year—right now—is to build, build, build.
I had set intentions to power up on marketing by launching a new type of product that I’ve never launched before. I also wanted to get more practice on being able to sense and act fast on opportunity, and gain more practice as a founder by launching new products through the year.
I had an open question for the year about my products: Will any of my indie products ever get to ramen profitability?
These intentions are but the tip of the iceberg. The real root of why I’m really feeling it now is because for the past 2-3 years, I’ve built way too little. I was getting my marketing game up, learning how to be a content creator, easing into a consistent Twitter presence, so much so that I definitely neglected the hacking part of “indie hacking”. In the first place, making things—the very act of creation, and willing things into being—was what made me want to be an indie hacker/solopreneur!
“I wanna be an indie hacker because I want to do more marketing.” said no indie hacker ever.
I’ve been putting the cart before the horse. Do interesting stuff, then tweet said interesting stuff. Not try to tweet interesting stuff out of thin air just because you should be “show up every day”. The former makes for good stories and storytelling. The latter – more likelihood of manufactured stories that feel forced, designed for the algorithm, for entertainment, for virality, for clicks.
That’s the key difference between being a content creator versus indie hacker, after trying both. Indie hackers build a product in public by doing first, then sharing. Content creators share first, because the product they’re building is an audience.
Nothing inherently wrong with being content creator, just that I’m realising that my personal ethos is not of a content creator but more indie hacker.
I just want to build build build. And then share cool stories in this digital campfire called Twitter with other builders and hackers. Not to win social status or get more followers but just to make cool things and tell a story!
That’s it.
So f**k this content creation flyhweel sh*t. I getting back to building.
Nice topic covered, Jason. After learning how indie hackers and other makers live and what they do, I see, that it has to be two separate ways of improvement: content creation and product building. Content creation can help with the promotion of products you have built, but if nothing is built, nothing to promote. Best stories are based on facts, not just ideas.