What's scary about indie hacking?

Starting out with no audience or fans.

Everything happens at a snail's pace and nothing seems to move the needle. Best practices, popular growth strategies, what worked for other creators, advice from gurus. Nothing makes a difference.

Until you hit a critical mass. Then a self-sustaining chain reaction kicks in and pretty much anything you throw at the wall sticks.

🤡 customers

Usually, starting something new that I'm not confident in. I find that once I get going with something, it tends to be smooth sailing. But taking that first step to get started is a sometimes a real monster.

For example, staring at a blank canvas when I'm about to write a blog post is truly awful. The same is true when I'm about to prep for a podcast episode. Etc. I find lots of ways to procrastinate and avoid starting at all.

I used to think this was just laziness. But at least some part of it is fear. Fear of a big unknown. So nowadays I focus on making the first step a baby step, so it'll be less scary.

I only have one strategy for this, and it's the same every time: learn. Make the first step learning. That's it. Give yourself zero pressure to act. Instead, find some blog posts, some podcasts, whatever, and just learn.

It's almost never scary to learn. In fact, it's kind of fun. And the knowledge you gain sets you up to make the next step easier to take.

The build in public part. That's when things get real. You've spent so much time on the whole process. Putting it all online made me felt vulnerable.

I think there’s something inherently nerve racking about putting something out there that’s almost entirely you’re own. When you work for someone else there’s always a distance between you and the product. When you’re the maker, you tend to take things more personally.

direct sales 👻