How I control my destiny as an Indie Hacker, content creator and freelance UX coach.
"Create luck through consistency"
This is my favourite quote of the day, week and whole year as well.
The idea is simple:
"The more I show up, the more visible I make myself and the more chances I have of landing new opportunities."
The only thing I can CONTROL is how much I show up throughout the week.
Example #1
On June 2020 when I quit my job to become an IndieHacker, I started journaling in public and sharing my updates on @IndieHackers
Here is the post I published https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-decided-to-quit-my-job-and-switch-to-indie-hacking-for-the-next-12-months-i-will-share-my-journey-on-a-weekly-basis-237025a310
Scott (@kanga_bru) saw it, subscribed and also replied to some of my newsletters.
That's how we got to know each other.
I followed his newsletter as well and we kept in touch.
Long-story short, we recently decided to team up and he is now my co-founder at https://thinkoutloud.io/, the SaaS product I am building.
What did I do right here? "I showed up".
Example #2
Yesterday I launched my IH series and wrote a tweet about. Later I saw that IndieHackers retweeted me.
What did I do right here? "I showed up". I had no idea this was going to happen.
Example #3
A few days ago I commented on a post on IndieHacker and today I had a call with Omar a fellow founder.
We may team up and use my UX coaching service to help them launch their MVP.
The post: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/need-designer-ux-ui-10d47dfb0a
My service: https://gumroad.com/l/UFWCR
Example #4
I made a post on my LinkedIn profile to announce that I launched a UX coaching service.
The founder of https://www.wonder-path.com/ who is also part of my network on LinkedIn, reached out to me and we are now working together.
They were my first client!
Conclusion
These are just some recent examples of how showing up online helped me grow.
Is it stressful? Yes, but it gets easier.
Is it hard? Same
Is it fun? Yes!
Here is what @AlexLlullTW (my Twitter coach) advised me:
"Focus on what you can control and believe in your process"
Finally keep in mind that uncertainty is the sacrifice you do when you go the indie way and quit the full-time job benefits.
Uncertainty is now part of your life and you have to find ways to create your short and long-term fate.
Just stay strong, believe in yourself and keep creating.
Now or later you'll succeed. Just stay consistent ❣️
Very good point @jimzarkadas 👌 Showing up consistently does increase your "luck" surface and helps you optimize for serendipity. I have experienced the same many times (note to self to get back to tweeting 😀 ). Keep up showing up!
Thanks man, you too! It's so simple in theory but life gets so busy to tweet or write haha - it's really a mindset shift that takes time to adopt but we can do it :-D
True, it's tricky but easier than it seems. On that note, here's a product idea: a Slack bot that asks you questions related to life or business (you can set your preferences, etc.), and takes your responses, and tweets them on your behalf. Basically, a conversational way to ease you into "showing up" every day, that "lives" in the channel where you already spend most of your day.
That's a good one!
What happens at the moment to me is that when I am in a coaching session call, I realise I gave some good UX advise and then immediately open Notion and write it down. All these "good UX advise" come from a good question that the other person actually asked me.
Nice 👌 I couldn't agree more!
From my personal experience, this is by far the best way to come up with interesting, original content. As you said, it's a matter of building that habit and sticking to it, until you start doing it mechanically.