I write  everyday or owe myself 200 excruciating push ups.

Gabriel's Daily Blog

Sorry folks if you’re following me regularly. I missed the last 2 days as I was down with a suspected case of COVID. Maybe it’s just me panicking but my symptoms didn’t quite match that of a typical sinus. I went to the doctor and all’s fine. I just need to stay home for the next 5 days and if I don’t improve, I’ll have to do a swab test.

I missed the last 2 days as my medicine and Illness makes me sleep throughout the day. I’ve probably slept more than 14 hours daily for sure.

Day 109: Missed the past 2 days 😔 

It’s easy to forget how our forefathers built their wealth from nothing. It’s not only luck, but persistence and patience. Because of the progress they’ve brought about with their wealth and societal contributions, we enjoy today’s privileges. The same privileges also spoil us. 


We have had no taste of the sweetness of patience’s rewards. Everything today moves at a pace where we expect results to manifest quickly. Try a business model and bam, results should appear. If it doesn’t, we get upset. I’m a victim of such a dangerous form of thinking. 


I used to believe I should try as many experiments as I could. Eventually one of them would work. My mentor Andrew, said it best:

It should not come as a surprise that if you try every business model under the sun, one would surely work. 


The key to success isn’t to try everything and pray that it works. It’s to do the right things and have patience. Good things take time. It’s an oft repeated phrase that’s cliche today. But it’s still true regardless of time.

I’m currently busy with my compulsory military conscription. Hence it’s going to take a while for me to build Young Makers. I would be anxious I’m moving slowly, but I’ve learnt to get in touch with my feelings. Being a maker isn’t just about getting results. It’s also about learning how to become better at making as a person. Emotional mastery is equally as important as building.

It doesn’t matter how fast you can go if you don’t take care of your body and mind.

Day 108: Business is for the patient 

Twitter is now populated with police violence tweets. It’s a terrible time for Americans. My heart goes out to them. At the same time, I can’t help but feel worried.  The friends I’ve met online, that I know are kind people are struggling. They have to worry about what’s going to happen as they sleep.

its not a feeling anyone should have to feel. I suffer from anxiety issues at times, and can relate in that aspect. Constant anxiety can warp your mind over time. I hope all this will be over soon and things get better.

I won’t be updating on my progress for work today. It’s Blackout Tuesday and I’m supporting whatever change that needs to happen. 

Day 107: Blackout Tuesday

I'm preparing to sleep early today – it's almost 12AM here. I say early because I usually sleep around 1-2AM, much to the detriment of my health. In 6 hours, I'll have to rise early, 45 minutes ahead of sunrise. I have to do all these because I'm headed back for my compulsory military service tomorrow.

It'll be an 8 to 5 job, where I'll probably sit in some office or store room. I will probably not be asked to do much as I'm only there for 2-3 weeks. After I'm done with 3 weeks of service, I'll be able to complete 2 years of conscripted service.

This doesn't come easy to me because it affects my ability to work. The pay that I get from my conscripted service isn't a lot. It's probably somewhere between 400 - 600. College graduates from my course typically make 4-5K as their starting pay. I'm losing out with a huge gap. Also, the job market is so terrible now and I have to deal with this. I don't blame the country in any way but it's just that we're living in strange times.

The riots and deaths of innocent people in the United States is stirring my emotions too. No one should have had to face what they're facing. I can't say I understand fully what they're going through, because I'm living in the comfort of safe Singapore. Yet, we're so connected by fast moving media today, it's just really hard to not be affected by all that's happening. I hope that things will get better.

As much as I can, there's little I can do from where I am. All I can do now is work hard, serve the world in the way I know best – building apps and running my newsletter.

Day 106: Military Service (shrugs)

An innocent life was  taken. Riots are happening everywhere and people are going crazy.  It’s not easy to stomach all these. All these is happening while people are fighting for their lives with COVID still rampant. 


I’m still down with a slight flu. Only earlier, I sent out an email apologising to my readers. I messed up and couldn’t get an interview out for this week. Instead, I outlined what the future of Young Makers was. Within minutes, I had 2 unsubscribes.

It hurts but that’s okay. I expected it so it didn’t come as a nasty surprise. What energy I have left, I’m only able to spend it on people who stick it out with me. 


Day 105: The days are getting harder

Sleeping late at 4AM the night before was a terrible idea. I woke up with terrible flu-like symptoms. It affected my productivity for the entire afternoon. Thankfully, they were filled with 2 back to back meetings. These meetings didn’t require much of my participation. I simply sat in and listened in and answered questions if there were any for me. 


I became more productive in the evening after taking a quick nap. Worked on Young Maker’s new website. Mostly removed things I didn’t need. Added react components to create a modal (I find it “cleaner” than dealing with JQuery)

There were countless occasions when I wanted to over engineer and add more features. But I did my best to hold back and stick to my todo list. I have to finish this before work piles up.

Day 104: Every bit counts

For 3 years, I worked on a project. For the first year, I did a basic MVP to chase a girl, now my current girlfriend. I pitched around to many friends at every chance I got. Then, I met my co-founder Zachery. He felt there was potential and the UI could use his magic touches. We worked on it together between 2019-2020.

After launching, we struggled hard to get users. Zachery had to use the few $10 Starbucks cards he had to incentivise people to sign up. To stand a chance to win these cards, students had to review professors and courses on our platform. 

The first semester, I spent hours seeding it with data. Much of these data were sprawled around dozens of Google sheets and documents. It was a terrible way to compile reviews of professors and courses. One could never be sure if it’s veracity or relevance (courses change curriculum and professors regularly)

Once there were enough seed data, the site looked livelier. It wasn’t so empty like a ghost town, which people would have naturally avoided. Together with the Starbucks card campaign, we managed to hustle our way to 200 cumulative reviews. 150 were from actual users. Not too bad for a one month long MVP.

As the weeks went by, we had classes. But in our spare time, we worked on it further. Zachery made improvements to the UI, and I did the same for the backend. We also explored opportunities to grow the team and increase our visibility. That would ensure our platform would eventually become self sustaining. 


We had to experiment a lot to figure out what worked. It wasn’t easy and there’s many more stories to tell. But I’ll leave this for another post.

Today, we reaped the fruit of our labours unexpectedly. To most people, it wouldn’t mean much. Heck, my friends even wondered why I was doing charity. I accepted their chiding. 


I only knew I wished this platform existed when I was a freshman. That it could also be a community of people I loved hanging out with. It wasn’t apparent straight away. But over time, I realised I enjoyed working with my team very much. There’s no politics. The only pure intentions we have is to grow the project and benefit the community. In addition, we wanted anyone who came aboard to help to grow together as well. And we made it happen.

Earlier, we had a meeting with our college’s student association. We talked about many things. Nearer to the end of the discussion, one of the committee members said something in a sincere tone. It’s something I don’t think I’ll easily forget now.

"It's heart warming to see students helping each other in another way – building an app to build the community" 

I paraphrased it a little bit the idea is there. The payoffs for sticking to our passion came unexpectedly. It’s not in the forms you thought it was — money or prestige. It was gratitude and the impact we made. 


At times I feel sad I couldn’t make some money from this — we are still running a loss from paying for servers. And it’s burdening my financial situation, but I’ll figure something out soon. Fingers crossed.

Day 102: Passion pays, if you can wait

I'm at my 5th week of sending out Young Maker's weekly newsletter. Growth seems to be slowing down and that's to be expected. My only acquisition channels are limited to a few:

I might have already saturated these channels perhaps. I don't know for sure – I would love to know if there was a way to know though.

For a while, I've been seeing content marketing work for other content publishers. 

I was surprised to see CommonCog's summary of Obviously Awesome when I googled for it today. It was even the 3rd search result!

While I was researching on Manuel Frigerio, my next edition's interview, I came across an article. Manuel wrote it to share about his experience in growing his product, ReferralHero. He mentions that paid ads weren't really working. But content marketing did. His team wrote consistently for years and the old articles still had search traffic.

Seeing that CommonCog summary and manuel's advice... things just clicked. I already knew I had to work on my content marketing. I just deferred it because I was unsure of whether it would work out. This is a common trap that makers face, but we shouldn't give in to it and procrastinate.

I'll work on it tomorrow. It's going to be simple fixes - cutting what I don't need and adding only the minimum things necessary for content marketing. 

I'll stick to this list and just submit to Google. Once all that's done, I can work on compounding activities like learning and applying SEO tactics.

Day 101: Content Game

Mike DMed me on Twittwr to ask if I could help him with deciding on a product name. Thankfully I checked my DMs and saw it. It seemed urgent and well, it was!

After discussing for a while, he settled on TargetBear. It was 3 syllables and memorable. Most people know about Target in the United States. And bear 🐻 is an animal we’re all fond of. Coincidentally, the dot com domain was available. 


I asked Mike if he could wait for a day and ask me to pick a domain again. Not from a list but from memory. This would allow him to know if a name was sticky. If it’s sticky, people could easily mention his prosecution to friends by word of mouth.

But he said no. He had to launch it today and that was just the way he did things. It was to launch quickly and see which product works. Clicking through his website, everything feels exactly like an MVP. He explained in a tweet, he already did something like this before. He was merely productizing what he had built as a feature for another product. 

An hour ago, he sent me a link to TargetBear.com to tell me it was up. He really launched it in a day. I was blown away. I’m not going to sit back and let my newsletter search engine collect dust. I’ll find an MVP and build it within a day. And I’ll hit launch.

Day 100: Mike Rubini 

I'm down with the flu today. Before you think it‘s COVID-19, I don't think it is. I have been stuck at home for weeks since the lockdown.

It's probably because I slept late last night. And my quality of sleep is terrible – I wake up intermittently at night for no reasons.

Certainly, it affected my productivity for the day. But this taught me that it's important to watch our health and routines. Taking care of our mind and body well would help us to go further.

Day 99: Stay healthy to go further

Looking back retrospectively, I felt that my tweets could use a lot more improvements.

I want to value add my followers more. At the same time, roam is really great but it sucks for exposure. 

Day 98: Value Add on Twitter

 I noticed I get impatient easily. I dislike how people overthink problems. I know I do this myself sometimes but I’m more aware about it. The difference between me and others who overthink problems is that I work smarter.

I read a lot and incrementally try to implement suggestions in what I read. Some work, some don’t. The rate at which I fail at a micro level is probably quite a lot. 


If I were to succeed at a larger scale someday, I’d attribute a great portion of that to this trait. Learn fast, work smart, work hard. Not one or the other. All of them at once.

Patience isn’t my greatest strength but I’m sure I’m building it up. I get tested to my limits often, but the growth mindset tells me it’s okay. If I’m not stretched beyond my limit, I’m not growing. 


Day 97: Taming Patience

It's a little bit hard to write properly now because I'm not really in a mood to write. However, writing daily is a system to me and it keeps me going when I'm in the muck. It allows me to look back at things retrospectively and realize it isn't that bad after all. 

Today, I mostly worked on my full-time job and progress was slow. I made up for it by working after the usual office hours of 10.30 to 5pm plus. Interspersed between, I had some personal matters to settle. It can be quite taxing. I wished life could be simpler. That we were all more consciously in touch with our feelings and in more control of it. It would make interpersonal communications easier. This means less stress. Less stress means contentment. And contentment means being able to focus on the little joys of life.

But no, the ancient philosopher Lao Tzu knew this. As human beings, we love to create problems where there isn't one. The only way I could reasonably deal with this and stay sane is to just treat productivity as a mindset. I don't hold onto it as tightly. Just like how holding onto any object too firmly would end up tiring you out. In the worst case, you end up numbing or bruising your hands.

Productivity comes and goes, that's normal. All we can do is to treat it as a process that gets better over time with effort and tuning. Part of the process could include something like knowing what are our common distractions. Then, we can find ways to reduce them.

Regardless, I've also noticed that commitments help us to keep making progress. Even when shit hits the fan, we still get things done. I got my newsletter done. I got my work done. I got my building in public tweet done. I tweeted plenty today. I made progress, even if it's a mere 1%. It adds up.

Today's newsletter launch was great in many ways. I've actually published consistently for 4 weeks and it's very much a natural part of my life now. For the most part, I took in all the advice I could from readers and friends. In cultivating a habit of having a bias for action, I applied them quickly instead of deferring it to the next issue. Every progress made now is progress that compounds. I'm not going to squander that. The more I wait, the more I will cultivate the bad habit of waiting and never growing.

That's the one mindset I've noticed to work very well for me the past few months. I've grown a lot as a person and professionally. All these positive effects carried over to my friends in the form of positive influence – such as being an inspiration. Even strangers I have never met on the Internet started reading my blog. And they told me they're inspired to do the same.

I doubt it's the content I write. It's far from awesome. They're probably just remarking at my consistency. Seeing the results I've achieved professionally (revenue growth, community growth, audience growth etc), I'm sure they could see how consistency breeds progress.

To my readers reading this, start finding the simplest good habit you can build. Work on it today. Grow together with me.

Power through your bad days with good habits.

Day 96: 4 Weeks of Newsletter

I'm an absolute amateur when it comes to interviewing people. I won't deny that I have only a month of experience with it.


I had to settle administrative matters for the 1 month left I have of my mandatory military service. Spent the whole morning and early afternoon commuting to a camp for dental checkup. Then I went to grab lunch for takeaway and headed home.


Throughout the afternoon, I was having a conversation with Dru Riley. We bounced a lot of ideas and might be onto something. We will see. Dru's going to make it big with Trends.vc, his current flagship project.


Now, it was late afternoon and I started chatting with Mike Rubini. He's a successful consultant turned SaaS indie hacker. He's my 4th edition's interview for Young Makers. The questions I gave him didn't seem to draw out powerful insights. I knew I had to tease this out of him with further questions. I took to twitter DMs, where he's very responsive to my messages.


We bounced questions and answers back and forth over the next few hours. I was so intrigued by his story my eyes almost popped off. I‘m not going to provide spoilers so if you want the full story, subscribe to 

. Check out Edition #4 when it's out tomorrow.

Doing interviews like that with Mike and all the other interviews before his... it's one of the happiest things I can do in my current season in life. I get to interview and make friends with founders I respect. At the same time, I'm learning how to help them narrate their stories. I do that in a way where my readers will stay hooked and receive as many takeaways as possible.

I love interviewing founders. I want to get better at it and keep doing this for as long as I can.

Day 95: Interviewed Mike Rubini

I'll admit upfront that today was not productive for me at all. I slept late at 4AM because I got too excited. How could I not be? I managed to get a conversation with one of my personal indie hacking heroes, Amy Hoy. However, I don't regret this at all though. I had a pleasant chat with her – she's nicer than what I imagined her to be. I had actually thought she was going to chew me up if I said something wrong. Nah, she's actually really nice and understanding.

Sleeping that late was going to mess with my body's immune system. I had flu for the rest of the day and could not focus well. I will have to learn how to better manage my excitement. I'm here for the long game. I want to keep working at my full-time job because I enjoy it. There's a lot of overlaps with my side hustles. I'm paid to learn and my side hustles provide my company with new perspectives. 

Nearer to the end of the day, Indie Hackers retweeted my Deals. Rosie Sherry taught me how to work with community better. I'm going to schedule some time blocks to do a 100 things I learnt from Rosie Sherry. We'll see how that turns out.

I did a whereby call with Sunny Shah. He ran me through what he was building and man, it's really interesting. He's building a gamified habits google sheets. Over the call, he walked me through how it worked and I provided feedback. However, I was in a rush for the next call so we made this quick. Hoping to hop on another call with Sunny soon. Will figure out how to put his sheet to use.

Right after Sunny's call, I hopped on one with an old acquaintance, Justin. He was trained as a VC and is currently working as a product manager. He had heard of indie hacking for a while and stumbled on my Twitter. Intrigued by it, he reached out to me over Telegram and we arranged this call. He had a lot of questions, which I found really helpful. 

Somehow, my mentor, Andrew Kamphey's advice just floated in my head. Here I was applying it and doing an interview with my target user – an aspiring maker. I wanted to know what Justin was struggling with. I love how clear he is with his thinking. It helped me tremendously in figuring out how I can angle Young Makers better.

Before all this, I was worried about copycats starting to do interviews with makers. They were angled quite closely with Young Makers. It was stressing me out but I knew better this just meant one thing. I had to focus better and double down on my value proposition. The best way to do this was to speak with my target audience. All the things I read about product management, I had tried to apply them to my side projects. Now they were compounding in interest and making sense to me. I had actual use for them in ways I never envisioned.

I'm going to make Young Makers the best entry point to indie hacking. That's it.

Day 94: A Fear of Copycats

Many entrepreneurs throw a narrative bias about their success. They write about how much success they have had, but little about the breadcrumbs that led to it.

I resonate with what Louis Nicholls tweeted.

, you'll notice it's full of posts about landing pages, growth, epic launches and sobering failures... Nobody is posting about how they had to stay up till 2am on a Monday evening to add a California Addendum to their Data Processing Agreement.

In a way, that's a shame. Because a 'newbie' can easily get the impression that being a founder is just one constant rollercoaster of highs and lows... a journey. In reality, it involves doing quite a bit of boring, repetitive work - that you won't even be paid (much) for.

This is one of those areas that I hope initiatives like 

Atlas are going to improve for founders. Getting the boring stuff out of the way so that founders can focus.

Looking back retrospectively, I wrote about my successes. I also wrote about my struggles, but little of the failures. Or in Louis' terms, “the lows” of the rollercoaster ride. I'm going to do more of that.

I will do it in my tweets and in my daily journal.

I launched a special issue for Young Makers today and got 2 unsubs. It hurt a little but I was told by experienced newsletter operators this was alright. It was to be expected. We can't cater to everyone. It's better off that unsubscribers left so I could focus on those that matter – the ones that want my content.

It's hard to absorb this at first. In large part, I just felt that I had to know why they left. It unsettles me I don't have an explanation. If I had one, I would at least know where to improve. But no, not everything is going to have an answer.

Do you want to rule the world and control it?
I don't think it can ever be done.
The world is a sacred vessel and it can not be controlled.
You will only make it worse if you try.
It may slip through your fingers and disappear.



I'm no Taoist but there is a lot of wisdom in its texts. This quote helped me understand better that I shouldn't force things to go my way. There's no way I can force everyone to subscribe to my newsletter. The world works the way it is because it's the natural state of things. Everything is constantly in flux. The only way we can live in harmony with it is to move with the flow.

To be like water that adapts to the changes in its environment.

Had a conversation with Andrew, my Newsletter Dark Lord mentor earlier today.   He advised me to double down on existing models I already have. This came in time because I was getting a little overwhelmed running many experiments at once. Instead of going wide, I should have gone deeper.

Many changes coming soon but for the better good of every reader.

Day 93: It's not easy

I set my OKRs and stuck to it. It kept me aligned with my purpose for Young Makers. I knew why I started it and where I wanted it to go. More concisely, I want to help 1000 makers get to their first sustainable profits in 2020. Its madly ambitious because I barely have 230 subscribers. 


Statistics would say not all subscribers are new makers. Nor would they necessarily succeed. Hence I’d never be able to hit my OKR. That’s okay.

With an ambitious OKR, it forces me to be Creative. I can’t play by old rules. I can’t move slow either. Nor can I stop. I have to keep moving and iterate fast. That’s the only way I’ll get remotely close to my goal. Even if I failed, I’d still learn so much valuable lessons.

This sounds fluffy, but I’ll tell you why it’s not. That burst of energy gave helped me to look at things differently. Full time work pays me to learn how to build apps. I use what I learn to become better at building products. 


After work, I’d be drained of energy. But the ambitious OKRs fires me up. I tell myself to keep going because if I stopped, I would never progress. And I whipped out twitter and tweeted. I asked if any makers could help me put discount deals together for my subscribers. No replies but that’s ok. I DMed some personally.

Alas, my bootstrapping hero Amy Hoy DMed saying she would like to help. She gave Young Makers a $5 deal for a book that originally cost $19. I was beyond happy. I was glad I kept moving even when it was hard to.

Before all these, I was also helping my girlfriend to put together an email draft. She needed it to convert some sales leads I got for her through Indie Hackers. I wanted her to keep her momentum going. She already closed a sale a day ago and it was her first online dollar. Like me when I got my first online dollar, she couldn’t believe it either. However, she knew she was creating value and getting paid to do that at the same time.

When you keep trying and working smarter, the pieces will eventually fit together.

Day 92: The pieces are fitting 

It’s nice to be able to make some money from running Young Makers. However, I don’t think the money will make me truly happy. It’s just there to as an option.

The main goal has always been to help young makers. I know how hard it is to start something and fail at it. It can be tiring slogging away at a product. Only to know people aren’t going to pay for it. And to worry about having money to afford the lifestyle they want.

It can be easier. I want Young Makers to play a huge part in making that happen. 


By the end of 2020, I want to help 1000 young makers get to their first sustainable profit. Ambitious but worth a shot.

Day 91: Newsletter OKRs

My newsletter mentor suggested I practice writing with this framework in mind. Do it enough so it’s ingrained in my mind. 


Despite the relatively large surge in followers because of my progress with Young Makers. Having revenue, subscribers and building in public, I’m still shallow.

I lack substance and I feel it in my bones. I’ll be timeblocking slots to do the Poynter course. I’ll also do a Creative dive to explore new formats for Young Makers. 


I’ll have to think of how to write 2-3 evergreen articles weekly. Then link to them in my newsletter. I must use what I already have — roam research and help from better Writers than me. I can’t spend too Long on this. It’s hard to know if a format will work.


I’ll find the signals and as soon as I detect something, I’ll double down and hone in on it.

I’ll have to first finish next newsletter’s draft. Mike Rubini goes next!  Only if I clear this first will I have a peace of mind to focus on the 3 deep dive evergreen content .

Dy 90: Write like this

Am I plateauing? I’ll be honest here. Everyone thinks I’m a productivity beast or that I get lots of shit done in a day. They are so wrong. 


All I have been doing recently since I started my newsletter are these:

in between I would reply to tweets or telegram messages. 


I don’t care if my revenue is going up. im just not happy that I’m not creating great content ON MY OWN. I want to write essays with original thought that I can be proud of. I want to write well and damn well.

 I’m going to fix this. I’m going to turn down meetings that aren’t necessary. I’m going to timeblock my schedule and allocate time to improve my writing. No distractions during timeblocks.

just learning how to write better. No social media.

Day 89: plateauing?

[{"type":"paragraph","children":[{"text":"Down with sinus, sorry folks!"}]}]

Day 88: rest

Not going to eschew my words in previous posts. 

Setup my iterations / experiments google sheets and tracking each of them. Might become overwhelming and I'll have to create a framework for it.

“Doubt everything. Find your own light." 

No one's going to have all the answers anyway. We would learn much more implementing things on our own. We can't do everything, but we can try what we know has worked for others.

"My 1 repeated learning in life: "There Are No Adults" Everyone's making it up as they go along. Figure it out yourself, and do it."

It won't be long until I get to 10,000 iterations.

Day 87: 10,000 iterations

It was the first time I’ve ever ran a mastermind group. I’ve always wanted to form a community of my own. I wanted one that was full of energy, action and growing together. I don’t know if this group is it yet but I want to have a crack at this. I want to make it work so there’s a place for people to grow. Not alone, but together as a community.

I was so happy when Zac and Gian said they were really glad  to find Young Makers. It melted my heart and I’ll always remember this. Sometimes I feel like an imposter. But I’m doing my best to provide as much value as I can.

Ive also been thinking about how Eugene has been growing. He’s been more consistent than I am in Long-form writing. And the results are showing. I’m really proud of him. At the same time, Im not fulfilling two important criteria for success:


if consistency was less than 1.0,  no matter how much quality I put in, it would be useless. I’d still get less than 100%.

therefore I must be both consistent and put in quality work. Quality work is 10,000 iterations. 

Day 86: My First Mastermind Group

sustain the current revenue I have. Can I keep it growing? When I start seeing churn, would I feel terrible?

How can I help my fellow entrepreneur friends who have doubts. How do I help them get past it? How do I facilitate them not getting incapacitated by their fears?

I acknowledge all my fears and that I have to keep experimenting. It is not 10,000 hours I need to become an expert in business. It’s 10,000 iterations/experiments that I need to build a strong portfolio of products. One that is strong enough to make me the ideal monthly recurring revenue (MRR)

Day 85: Imposter Syndrome

Someone I knew saw the value of the newsletter mastermind group and paid $50. Later today, we're going to kickstart the first cohort and I'm super excited. 
I've been tweeting recently about how I'd like to start a Junto of my own. I was talking about forming my own community that I could level up with to my friend, Eugene. He said there was a term for it and it was "Junto"


One of these tweets resonated with my followers. I gave it further thought and came across a few tweets from entrepreneurs I respect. Simon Sarris wrote:

A lot of good thinking resembles play. I think its important to vocalize nascent and feeble ideas. But this can be embarrassing or get you axed. One of the great benefits of clubs, from ancient exclusive societies to today's secret slacks, is making space for this kind of play.

Reading this made me feel like starting my own Junto.

For the past week, I've been shadowing Andrew, my newsletter mentor. I've learnt how he does things and noticed one thing that stands out. He has a huge bias for action and that creates a sort of aura around him.

I wanted to copy that. Whenever I start to procrastinate a little, I tell myself to get off it and start confronting the task. Just do it and get it over and done with. This kicked off a chain effect and I started getting more work done.

A bias for action is a powerful paradigm to have.

Day 84: Bias for action + Start a Junto

This post will be 2-3 part series where I explore my journey in bootstrapping. The first of the series being this post explores the topic from my experiences in the trenches. I'll share what I've done, what I've learnt and provide you with a new perspective. 


Where credit is due, I'm very much inspired by a personal heroes, Rob Walling and Amy Hoy. Rob wrote 

, which explains his path in bootstrapping. He started from consulting and transitioned into products. Amy has a lot of useful articles on the topic on her bootstrapping academy, 30x500. I recommend readers to check them out.


 Those who aren't sure what the term bootstrapping is, it refers to running a non-VC backed business.

Like Rob's path, and the many students who have done Amy's course, I'm creating info products first. Doing so will allow me to build an audience from whom I can learn about their needs from. This understanding will allow me to build products they would pay for later on.


For the past few weeks, I've been working on Young Makers, a newsletter for makers. In each edition, I interview successful makers and break down how they succeed. Using what I've learnt, I write actionable advice into a Key Takeaways section. Readers can apply them on their current projects and if it works, they make more profits.


Before I go on, it's important to understand what I did before Young Makers. I worked on SMUMods.com. SMUMods is a platform where students in my college can review professors and courses. They could also buy and sell secondhand textbooks.


When I started the project in 2018, I didn't think too much about making money. By luck, I found Marc Kohlbrugge, a successful indie hacker in the same online community. I messaged him privately to ask if it was a good idea to pursue the idea. He suggested I try to monetise it early on. If it didn't work out, I should find a different idea. I didn't quite understand this back then. It might have been because I didn't see a need to make money.


I soldiered on and 2 years later, the project is still unprofitable. 

I was a hopeful entrepreneur who knew nothing about making money.

"I was a hopeful entrepreneur who knew nothing about making money."

Learning from my mistakes of not focusing on monetizing early on, I did the opposite with Young Makers. In the past 2 weeks, I've made approximately $213. It's not enough to pay me a full time salary so I can work on this full time. But it's incredible progress as compared to my previous side project.

Here's what I learnt... (coming soon tomorrow)

Day 83: Seeing like a Bootstrapper (From The Trenches)

In a bid to reach out to more makers who could learn from the interviews, I had to get more eyeballs first. So I went into the watering holes like Indie Hackers and Reddit. Today was the first time I ever posted on Reddit. It was nerve wrecking because I didn't know how people would respond to it.

All I knew was to try my best to provide value. I don’t expect anyone to check my newsletter out. My goal is to share what I’ve learnt in the interviews I’ve conducted. 

I spent a good 15 minutes to edit it and removed all affiliate links. After posting, I shared with friends and they upvoted it to show their support. However, someone “shitposted” my post.

Incredulous. I was visibly upset for around 10 minutes – yes, Dave3of5 managed to do what he sought to do, and that is to discourage value creation. I thought through the 100s of ways I could reasonably reply to refute him nicely. I couldn't do it. The best reason I could come up with to relieve my anger is this:

Dave3of5 is not a doer. He hasn't run any successful businesses. Nor does he know how to build communities. That must be why he has more comments than posts. He consumes more than what he produces. That's his problem, not mine.

I messaged successful makers like Harry and Pete, hoping to get some advice. Although Harry is a huge success on the subreddit I posted in, he said he still gets “shitposted” sometimes. He added that I shouldn't let it discourage me.

It made me think. If Harry was able to power through moments like these, so can I. I soldiered on and sought for ways to improve myself. At least, I need to improve the way I frame my posts, so people like Dave3of5 would have less reasons to find fault.

Earlier, as I composed myself and took to Twitter, I posted a tweet and was surprised by what happened next.

People were much kinder and commented with words of encouragement. It warmed my heart, really. They even shared useful tips like a post by Harry Dry:

And another fellow Singaporean maker that I enjoy following sent me this:

As to why there are nasty folks like Dave3of5 on the Internet? Arvid Kahl puts it across best in his tweet:

From the bottom of my heart: Thanks Arvid, Hendrik, Brian, Ramses, Kalani, Mate, Kristiyan, Elies, ClayNichols, Matthew, Eugene, Harry, Pete, Danny and Navin Pareek! If I forgot to thank you, DM me!

Many thanks to my girlfriend as well for her support through all this.

I learnt a lot from this experience. I know now too, who are my greatest supporters. I will remember them for a long time.

I'll keep going and creating more value than before. These shitposters ain't gonna get me. 

I will create so much value they will wonder why they were busy shitposting to begin with. They ought to start creating value too!

Day 82: Reddit Lessons

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