Catalyzing Serendipity ⚡
☕ Good Morning!
The pen is mightier than the sword! Like David Perell, Joe Balcom believes that writing has the “power to elevate and inspire” and ”its power is fundamentally exponential.” Whether you write for yourself or others, the end result will always be an “enrichment of life.” Your writing will become a reflection of the kind of people you want to attract, and over time consistency will build your voice and spark opportunity. As Derek Sivers’ experience shows below, it will catalyze “serendipity in your life,” triggering second and third-order effects in and around you. And taking this practice online, will open a “world of opportunity, increased accountability, and an expansion of mind that will change your life forever.” And while doing all this, “you might just be the spark that redefines someone else’s.” Read the post on Indie Hackers.
🚀 Make & Grow
We’ve been reading plenty on the importance of building and nurturing communities over the last few weeks. Charlie Ward founded Weekend Club last year as a paid IRL accountability community for Indie Hackers in London. Following lockdown in March, they now provide remote accountability sessions over Zoom and Slack, providing Makers and Founders early-stage product feedback as well as motivation to keep shipping consistently. Some of the 10 learnings he has made growing a paid community include: What works offline, rarely works online, implement community guidelines early on, choose the right tech platform, charge/raise prices, gamify the experience and build in public. Read post.
The Philosophy of Ed Latimore
He’s done it again! Justin Mikolay has organised and distilled the last 3,000 tweets by Ed Latimore. He’s split the former heavyweight boxers wisdom into two parts, the first focused on Growth, Self-Empowerment, and Self-Sufficiency Mindset” and the second on his “Curated Quotes on Living Your Life With Purpose.” My favourite has to be “let shit go” and “embrace what you want to become.” Read more.
Productized Service Ideas Cont’d
Robin Vander Heyden has produced another helpful thread on ideas for starting a productized service. His key learning is to pick a niche in a big market, create a landing page, provide a case study or social proof, add a payment form and then do some outreach to your first 50/100 potential customers. Read thread.
StartUp Inspiration
@ankitkr0 starts a useful thread looking for random websites and domain brands to inspire new startups. Some great examples include swiped.co, trends.vc, marketingexamples.com, productdisrupt.com, pageflows.com and emailmastery.org. Read thread.
🖥️ NoCode & Automate
The Rise of “No Code”
Found this article from early 2019 by Ryan Hoover from Product Hunt on the rise and potential of NoCode software and how it allows anyone to become a Maker. The past 1.5 years have proven him so very right. The boom of the NoCode community and flood of new apps using Webflow, Bubble, Zapier & Co. are evidence that coding knowledge is no longer required to build and launch a product, service or MVP. The post also lists a few useful resources. Read here.
Webhooks Course
A webhook is a method that enables an app or website to send real-time info to another application. The automation app Integromat has launched the first of a three-part course that teaches you the fundamentals of this tool and how you can use them in an Integromat scenario to receive data. Watch here.
Substack Side-Extension
Packy McCormick has added the landing/signup page notboring.email to his Substack newsletter notboring.substack.com. Reasons for doing this include more flexibility on page design as well as building up SEO juice under your own domain and receiving better user data. He also explains the NoCode tools he used to build the page, such as Landen.co, Zapier, WisePops and Gmail. Learn more.
💭 Afterthought
To finish the week, a downloadable wallpaper (requires Telegram) by Marc Köhlbrugge, with an all too important reminder for every Maker: “Just ship it”. Have a great weekend everyone and take care of each other!
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