My name is Grace. Each month, I talk about what I tried and stumbled upon as a creator. I share exciting findings and honest learning along the way.
Since Issue #1 was out, my subscribers grew from 10 to 35. It was a whopping 250% increase 🤩. I’m flattered and appreciate your following. I hope I will not bore you from now on.
This is issue #2. Let’s dive in!
Mindset
Early this month, it was the Fall Break at my kids’ school. We took them to the Waco Mammoth National Monument in Texas, where fossils of 24 Columbian mammoths lay.
How these fossils were discovered was quite interesting (from A Mammoth Discovery):
In 1978, 21-year-old Paul Barron wasn’t out to make a big discovery. He was looking for something small: snakes.
It had been a cold spring in Waco, Texas, and when he picked up a bundle of wood to make a fire, a copperhead darted from the pile, terrifying his sister. She asked Barron and his friend, Eddie Bufkin, to clear the family’s house of snakes to protect her young sons.
The two men eventually wandered to the banks of a nearby creek, where Barron made a startling find. “As I was climbing, a piece of what appeared to be rock broke off in my hand. … It turned out it was a ball joint from a hip,” he said.
As Barron and Bufkin scanned the area, they spotted what appeared to be a femur, a tusk, and numerous other bone fragments lodged in the clay, covered with moss. “The tusk in particular was shot through with tiny little cracks,” he said. “It looked to me like if you tried to pick it up, it would probably crumble.”
Fortunately, Barron had spent significant time learning about the natural sciences with his Boy Scout troop and had even met the director of his local science museum as a teenager. He knew what he found at the creek was special enough to pay the director a visit. Though it took some convincing, once experts examined the trove of fossils, they quickly realized the great scientific value.
“It was like I stepped into a time warp or something,” Barron said.
He had discovered one of the richest Ice Age fossil beds in the world, and the only known nursery herd of Columbian mammoths.
If the two men did not wander near that creek, the fossils may have stayed unknown until this day or got stumbled upon by someone else on a different day.
It makes me think about the two different roles we play in our careers.
Some love being a helping digger for established business models, low risk, with abundant pay. They know “fossils” are there, and all they need to do is put in the effort.
Some prefer to be lonely wanderers: they keep trying, may hit a jackpot one day, or may find nothing in the end, but they cherish anything they’ve discovered, and the stories they’ve collected along the way.
I was once a hard-working digger with clear goals. I’m grateful that the career phase has granted me the freedom to wander now. I may find nothing in the end, but it will be an interesting ride.
Here we go - these are all the “places” I wandered in October 2022.
Writing
Medium
In October, I wrote about the Great Inflation in the 1970s on Medium.
Macroeconomy has been an interesting topic for me. As I was curious about how the US economy will unfold and how I should prepare financially, I started to dig out history and found tons of interesting facts. So I decided to write them down, just for my own interest. That became How Bad Did It Get?
The article did not get curated by Medium. I shared it on Twitter, and some followers liked it. I posted on Hacker News and it had almost no clicks.
In general, the interest was low.
The other day, I learned about the nature of random successes on Hacker News from Greg Lim’s newsletter (hey, give him a sub if you are interested in writing, and you will not regret it.). So I posted the Inflation article on Hacker News again, with a slightly different title, and went to bed.
When I woke up, my phone was full of Medium claps and new following notifications. This was the moment when I realized, holy moly, I hit the jackpot on Hacker News that night.
This proves to me again: luck plays such a critical role in overnight (literally) successes. One way you improve the odds is to try more. One try is too little of a data point.
LeanPub
LeanPub is an online publisher similar to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). It is a smaller book marketplace but offers much higher royalties (~80% margins).
I don’t track closely on LeanPub. However, it delivers pleasant surprises all the time.
I published two books on LeanPub a long time ago, and I sold 4 copies in October.
KDP
I try to keep brutally honest in my newsletter: I did not do well in KDP. The new book only made 1 sale, and some KENP read.
Hey, 1 sale with 0 reviews is a gain in my eyes. But reviews, reviews, reviews! I start to realize how important they are.
Apps
RedacApp (macOS)
If you remember from Issue #1, I built a macOS for fun. It instantly attracted a lot of attention on Twitter. I offered it for free, but some people still paid for it. However, in the back of my mind, I was skeptical about whether this could take off.
It is a utility app for a special occasion: when you want to share something with sensitive data with someone else. It is not something that you would use every day unless there is a profession that would need this all the time.
As I predicted, Gumroad sales lost steam, as time made the app lose its novelty. At that point, I was sad and discouraged … just kidding 🤣.
What did I learn from the previous section? Successes are random. It is still too early to give up. I still have more ways to try (marketing channels, pricing models, etc.). The current one I’m trying is to sell RedacApp inside App Store.
To release it in AppStore, I did some cleanups on UX (thanks to learnings revealed in a user study with my husband) and added critical functionalities that were suggested by users (for example, redact any part of the text, auto redact, etc).
Also, just throw a cliffhanger here: building this app is not my ultimate goal. It is only a bridge to another goal. Hopefully, I will share more about this goal in Issue #3. Stay tuned!
TallyCoin (iOS)
If you are new to my newsletter, TallyCoin is an iOS app that helps parents and kids track chores and rewards. I built it for my kids initially.
I did not do much for this app in October (in both development and marketing), besides releasing a special visual effect for Halloween and providing users a way in the app to review.
The Halloween-themed confetti was a surprise to my kids, and they loved it. If you are a user, did you notice that?
I got 6 5-star ratings on this app. I did start to see organic downloads trickling in. This makes me wonder whether I should start to invite users to write reviews for RedacApp. Zero reviews certainly do not help.
My kids have been an inspiration to build this app. All the rewards they have earned from this app can real money. They can buy anything or invest in stocks. (A few rules apply, for example, they cannot trade stocks, and can only invest long-term. They cannot buy candies with the money.)
Being financially responsible is something that schools don’t teach and sometimes intentionally ignore for fundraising purposes. This app is a simple tool to teach kids about all aspects of money.
A fun story - several kids at school laughed at my son’s shoes, which are not Nike. As a Nike shareholder, my son ignored the bullying behavior, and told them, “Thank you for your purchase!” 🤣
How I Select Small Bets to Work On
Even though successes are random, I don’t choose small bets randomly. It goes back to how I want to achieve from these bets.
At this stage of my life, I prioritize health, family, and freedom, rather than money or career growth. This requires minimizing commitments. Therefore, the bets need to be transactional, with less of ongoing services. This is why I chose books and apps.
As I admire how Pieter Levels and Tony Dinh are building businesses, I understand I’m not in that season of life. But seasons change, and I will change, too.
For transactional businesses, there are two ways to market them: self-marketing (e.g. paid ads, SEO, organic reach on Twitter) or being inside an already crowded market (e.g. Amazon, App Store).
Both of them have pros and cons. I’m open to trying both, and will talk about them more in the future!
Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think about this issue. Happy to answer any questions.
If you just stumbled upon this Issue and you like this, give me a sub! 😀
See you in a month!
What Grace's Up To: Issue #2
I like the wardley ontology of pioneers settlers townspeople (PST)
If lay this as a spectrum, the people who are closer to the pioneer spectrum tend to gravitate towards less well defined domains
Which in turn require a more “portfolio of small bets approach” than a concentrated focus behind small number of pursuits
I wouldn’t call myself a pioneer but I definitely like trying new things. Your piece has certainly made me think to do the same and layout all the various weird things I am trying in a single list