Day 76: Help yourself first to help others

It's starting to feel trite and ostentatious that today's title was going to be “Got my next $100 online”. I was following what I wrote yesterday: to write the biggest event of the day as the title. Something felt off so I gave it more thought. There would be more value in writing the reasons for the main events of that day as the title to the reader.









Today, i got my next $100 online ever and it came when I least expected it.



It was a junior from college that I was mentoring. He paid $100 for a lifetime subscription to my newsletter. I asked why and he told me it was because he believed in me. To be exact, these were his exact words from our Telegram conversation:



Nah man the whole point was to support you Paying it forward by paying it back You believed in me when nobody else did Now im believing in you

I didn't mentor him to get any paybacks of sorts like that. I mentored him because when I was his age, I wished I had someone to guide me.

I had friends who would tell me, “why are you spending so much time being nice”. And 100 other permutations of that sentence. Call me stubborn but I listened to none of that.

It did bite me from time to time and I'd questioned whatever I was doing. Why am I helping people to succeed when I haven't succeeded myself? That led me to bleed my pent up frustrations out onto an essay, Advice Doesn't Work, Action Does. I had to work on myself first before I could help others and give others less reason to attack me for helping others.

I did that.

Uncertainties crept into my bed at night while I slept – I had nightmares once in a while. They were about me not succeeding and being surrounded by people who looked down on me.



I felt the only way out was to keep trying and investing in good habits. They were habits that successful people had. And it must have contributed to their success in some way or another. So I kept faith and worked on forming up good habits. I worked on them every day for weeks and then months.

And now it's starting to show results. I'm so glad. I want to keep being nice and helping people.

I need to keep going at it and improving myself and getting results. So I can help more people!



PS: Thanks Yash for the subscription and for believing in me! Your well intentions will go a long way to helping me work harder. So that I may help you better and to help others too!



PS2: Huge thanks to my girlfriend for hearing me out. Today was also huge for me because she wrote about how she was getting inspired by me. Now, we're working on helping her develop good habits for entrepreneurs!







Other Thoughts



• Indie Hackers featured me on their Twitter and Top Daily Milestone emails

  • Listen to advice from successful makers

  • Execute on those advice fast

  • Make an effort to share in watering holes like IH, reddit, twitter

  • Include meaningful quotes that inspire

• Write an research essay about ISAs for Makers?