indie hacking

I’ve been an Indie Hackers podcast listener for a long time now.

Everyone asks what happened to the Indie Hackers podcast because it was so good and well-loved, but the truth is that it’s currently dead for a really simple reason – it stopped being fun for those doing it. (I’d like to get to the point that I can make decisions like that).

Channing's confirmation the pod has stopped: https://t.co/6Ygw5gutma

— Pete (@petecodes) October 26, 2023

But even though there’s been no new ones since 15 June 2023, there are still 283 episodes of great chats online with all kinds of Indie Hackers; normal people trying to build sustainable businesses made possible by the Internet.

I’m going to have to make it a practice to take notes for episodes moving forward, but here are the 15 episodes that I have listened to according to my Overcast:

• #008 – Growing a $600,000/mo Business by Starting with Direct Sales with Nathan Barry of ConvertKit
• #049 – Everything You Need to Know About Business with Josh Kaufman of The Personal MBA
• #090 – Inventing the Company That’s Right for You with Natalie Nagele of Wildbit
• #092 – The Business of Bringing People Together with Derek Andersen and David Spinks of Bevy
• #098 – How to Make $2.5MM as a Solo Founder by Teaching What You Love with Adam Wathan
• #165 – The Power of Unbundling Communities with Greg Isenberg
• #166 – Writing Code to Sell $200,000/Month of Cookies with Sam Eaton of Crave Cookie
• #185 – How Courtland Allen Built Indie Hackers, with Ben and David from Acquired
• #190 – Indie Hacking in the Passion Economy with Li Jin of Atelier
• #200 – Every Indie Hacker Has an Online Course in Them with Andrew Barry, Marie Poulin, and Ali Abdaal
• #212 – Actionable Steps for Building the Right Business with Arvid Kahl
• #219 – How to Make Your Business Model a Win-Win-Win – with Dan Shipper and Nathan Baschez of Every
• #225 – Growth Tactics, Audience Building, and Brains with Julian Shapiro of Demand Curve
• #277 – Addictive Products, Embracing A.I., and Crossing $26k/mo with Lane Wagner of Boot.dev
• #283 – Making $8k/mo Targeting $100M/yr with Lukas and Liz Hermann of StageTimer.io

a personal indie hacking playbook

Even the choices of episodes above kinda show where I’m headed to or at least where I’d like to be. The next step is to start. So here’s my understanding of how to be an Indie Hacker:

Step 1: Decide how much you’d like to earn. (10k/month, 120k/year)

Step 2: Keep a list of ideas and continuously add to it. It can be in this format:

Problem:
User:
Idea:
Who pays:
First Step to validate:

Step 3: Choose one and commit to it for a set amount of time (8 weeks?)

Step 4: Build (possibly in public), Ship (definitely in public), Earn

Step 5: Review. Continue or close shop and choose new idea.

next steps

Start the list of ideas. Choose one by tomorrow. I have 8 weeks until my sabbatical ends – so it’s about building the discipline to start Idea 2 even while having a day job.

Bismillah LETS GO.

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This is sorta Part 2 to a post called defining the kind of business I will build which turns out I published almost exactly a year ago. There I defined a list of 10 things my business will or won’t be, so that’s gonna be useful to add to my list as well.

I even quoted Indie Hackers again then.

While – like I admitted in this post – I haven’t started building a business, it’s not like I’ve been standing still either. So while I can feel crappy about not starting 1 year ago, I can also forgive myself, believe that the time passed has given me more to start with…and just start.

See you tomorrow.