I hope it makes $1
jasonleow • 15 Apr 2024 •
I’ve always been a goal-setting kinda guy but the more products I build the more I realise having expectations gets in the way.
It’s always the products that you least expect to do well that do.
My Carrd plugins started as a side project for fun. I never expected to earn even $1 from it. Yet it turned out to be the most profitable amongst all my products. My very first serious business, my design consultancy Outsprint Design, started organically when I was approached by a contact in my network. I didn’t even have a business registration, logo or website when I did that first project. No grand vision. And it continues to be my main income stream. My personal newsletter about my indie hacking journey started in Nov 2022 and is now over 500 subscribers. Yeah 500 isn’t a whole lot, but I just kept publishing every week for the past 1+ years, and it keep growing bit by bit over the years. I still don’t have a plan to monetize it or anything, but it’s growing.
On the contrary, I expected Lifelog to be the one true SaaS to bring me to ramen profitability, but at ~$100 MRR it’s faaar from it. Same can be said of Sheet2Bio, Lists Kit.
Every time I expect results, it eludes me.
Perfectly summed up here by Marc Lou:
“I hope it makes $1” > makes $100,000
“I hope it makes $100,000” > makes $1
Entrepreneurship at its finest.
Is this some kind of perverse, inverse Murphy’s Law?
That instead of the worst that can happen will happen, it is what will happen is the opposite of the worst that can happen.
I don’t know. But what I do know:
Next time I build a product, I’m starting with “I hope it makes $1.”
Comments
Yes exactly, that’s always been the conflict I felt between setting a goal and not, cos can’t control fully. When I set a goal i expect results. But if i don’t, i feel adrift and unsure if i can ever make progress or achieve my dream.
True. Finding the balance in between is probably the complicated part.
I think it is just about expectation vs. reality. If you expect nothing, you get way more positive if it sells well. If you expect it to sell well, you’re also setting pressure on yourself.
Goals are a great way to track “success”, but I don’t think it makes sense to put goals on things you can’t control fully. Yes, you can optimize Code, SEO, and so on, but you can’t force people to pay you money.