Staying resilient through 18+ failed product attempts – here’s how Marie Ng does it
Indie Hacker: Marie Ng (@threehourcoffe) @threehourcoffee
Creator of of: Llama Life @llamalifeco
Marie Ng bootstrapped her productivity app to over 700 paying customers. In a recent interview with her, I learned that before she found success with Llama Life, she’d had at least 20 other attempts at creating a successful product (or service)!
I was so inspired by her resilience and it got me so curious about how many “fails” the average indie hacker has under their belt. And how indie hackers manage to keep going.
Here’s a piece of Marie’s story:
“I’ve actually tried to start something around 20 times.
I have a folder on my computer dedicated to dead projects and ideas that never quite took off. It’s basically a graveyard of ideas. Some are just landing pages and mock-ups that no one seemed interested in, so I moved on.
Two of those times, I did end up selling what I’d made for a small sum. And even though it wasn’t a lot of money, it still gave me confidence that people actually saw value in what I was making.
I’d say of the other 18 ideas that I took action toward, I got really serious with five of them. All five of those eventually failed and I ended up having to go back to corporate for two years to save up enough to start the journey again.
So much of indie hacking is about being resilient and trying again. The path is very rarely straight."
This is how Marie stays resilient:
"In some ways resilience comes from experience — you may have failed so many times, but had one small success amongst the failures. That one success shows you that it’s possible and gives you the energy to continue.
That said, resilience out of context or without a healthy dose of reality is not necessarily a good thing. What if you’re resilient and keep going with something that’s never going to work?
Here are three ways to help with this:
- Be super self-aware, check in on yourself, on your progress, measure stuff, if things aren’t working change it up.
- Define resilience against a much higher order goal e.g. maybe your goal is to have a successful business, not necessarily a successful project. Maybe the goal is to not return to working for someone else. Because it's a higher aspiration if you fail on a project or on a task, it’s easier to keep going because you have that overarching goal to work toward.
- While internal motivation is an important part of resilience, I also find that external motivation is helpful. Like this wine I saved until I hit 500 paid customers."
Now I’m so curious to hear from other indie hackers. How many times have you “failed” in the past? How do you come back after a failure and stay connected to your resilience?
Your story is really inspiring, Marie!
One thing I'm constantly struggling with is deciding when to give up on an idea and move on. My biggest fear is that the idea would've been a success, but I labeled it a failure too soon without giving it a chance to get traction.
There are early acquisition channels (building in public, sharing your project on forums, maybe paid ads) that must be leveraged before you pull the plug.
How do you decide when to stop and move to the next idea?
oh great question @robert_balazsi!
I so resonate with your fear about giving up too quickly. I've personally been grappling with this exact conundrum lately. I find that for a project to be truly sustainable for me, I have to experience at least one of the following. 1) have fun working on it. 2) learn in a meaningful way while I work on it. 3) and/or what I'm building scratches my own itch, or the itch of someone I care about. If I'm not experiencing any of those things, I very rarely regret giving up on an idea.
Anyway, I'd love to hear what @threehourcoffe has to say about when she decides to throw the towel in. And what early acquisition tools she finds most important to try before making that decision.
I really like your criteria Teela. Right now I am experiencing all 3!! 😅
@robert_balazsi you don't need a ton of exposure to help decide, but for me and Llama Life it was the intensity of customer love. So, I'd done another project before, which was similar in terms of the functionality of Llama Life and that project died. The difference now with Llama Life is that customers have some strange intense love for it. It's not for everyone of course, and that's ok. But the ones it resonates with, they really love it. And I know this because I get emails from them. Whereas before, I hardly ever got emails.
It's different for each business, but I'd try and look at the intensity of love or engagement with the product, even amongst a small group of people.
Thank you such much for the replies, Teela and Marie! :)
Yes, both passion and positive feedback are excellent motivators. If you deeply care about an industry, you'll much more likely to stick around.
If people show their appreciation, it starts a feedback loop, and it somewhat makes you accountable not to disappoint them.
Bonjour Marie! ✨Many thanks for sharing not only your success but also your failures! It is SO helpful to be reminded that everyone has their struggles, and everyone weathers storms. I remember reading once that @stephsmith shipped 4 different products before she made any money. And that really stirred my spirit. I'm going to add your story to my inspo list! 🌹
As for my own failures. I have three projects right now that are beyond ready to launch...and I haven't been able to bring myself to launch them. A year ago I launched a meditation product with a friend and it royally flopped - after 6 months of work. And our friendship baaaarely survived.
I stay resilient by keeping the big picture in mind and only working on projects I genuinely enjoy. I'm playing around with external motivation. @threehourcoffe have you replaced your bottle of wine with another external motivator?
hi fleur!
I can really relate to the struggles with your friendship. For my latest project I started it alone but for one of my previous ones I did it with a friend and it was HARD.
So many tense moments and it ended up failing because we had different excitement levels around the project and naturally if one person is not as excited and they don't put in the same effort...then it causes tension. We ended up stopping that project and luckily we are still friends :)
I have replaced the wine motivator with getting a LaMetric. I've been eyeing this gadget for a while now but it's a little bit pricey. lol.
https://lametric.com/en-US
Good luck with your business!
Whoa, that is some tenacity! Love it, thanks for the inspiration.
@threehourcoffe, did you ever get imposter syndrome when products weren't working out for you?
totally. And I still get it every now and again. I think it's pretty normal. And I guess would be worrying if we didn't get it? haha. Maybe the opposite is over confidence? and that's not great either.
Yeah, it seems to come with the territory!
Great story @teela_na! Thanks for sharing @threehourcoffe.
I can't even count how many times I've had ideas that either never took flight or royally crashed and burned. 😅 I find that's part of the joy of indie hacking though...it's not really about getting it "right". It's about doing your own thing, on your own time, on your own terms, and knowing the feeling of full accountability for your successes and your failures.
Having said that, there was a time in 2017 where I almost gave up. I'd just shipped an ebook I worked almost a full year on and I ended up getting 12 downloads...total. It was somewhat devastating. I took a two month break from making. Let myself feel my disappointment. Did the little things that brought my joy (like walks, hot tea, watching the birds in the park). And waited to see if the spark of enthusiasm would return. And it did! My next project was a productized service that ended up bringing me (and a handful of customers) a lot of joy. So, I've learned to have faith in the process.
p.s. I love LLama Life's branding. So charismatic!
Thanks re: branding, @LucyAnimus
And agree, it's totally about doing your own thing and what feels right.
I think I was born to make Llama Life - it was an idea I kept coming back to time and time again over the years. And it's my second attempt at this type of app. I got diagnosed with ADHD about 10yrs ago and ever since then have been obsessed with creating tools around focus. Productivity isn't the most 'sexy' category but it is something that I'm passionate about - not because I'm super great at it, but because I feel the pain point so strongly.
Keep up the great work!
Yes! 🔥 Love the way you've summed up indie hacking here. And I love how you recovered...the little things are so often the big things. When the spark finally returned did you get to work right away? Or did you spend a bit more time licking your wounds?
hah, good question! Did I spend more time licking my wounds...no, not really. By that point I was just so relieved to be inspired again I sort of dove back in head first. This is the process I've come to have faith in. It's a sort of dive in head first, either celebrate and rest, or surrender to the disappoint and rest. And every time that I manage to actually surrender to that process, I am newly inspired. So far, without fail!
Marie, well done staying persistent. 🔥
thanks Sam!