82. Creating 6-Figure Projects Online (With a FT Job!)

I started to create things online in 2018. Why don't you do this full time? The same way that we were a little bit early to remote work. I think we're seeing the same kind of trends for building small profitable businesses online. What the heck is internet pipes? Having this internet. savvy skill set is so valuable. The same way that's helpful for you to know how to walk, talk, to drive, to cook. You actually geek out over the stuff. Finally felt like I could build things.

It's kind of scary if a bunch of people buy. Honestly, it was really stressful. You promise anything, you better commit. That can lead to its own form of chaos. This is real humans that you're talking to, selling to, trying to inspire. a given day and trust me you found all the oh it was a complete meltdown we actually stuck both financially and reputationally i want to continue creating things for decades

There's almost like a mob mentality, a hunger for the person who has risen to fall. People can sniff this out. Is there anything, as you've created over these last years, that you think people misunderstand about Steph Smith?

Drum roll, please. Welcome back to the Shit You Don't Learn in School podcast. This is Calvin Rosser. And this is Steph Smith. And today we're going to be talking about creating projects online. Yeah. Okay, so Steph, you are my wife, but you're also a relatively known indie maker in the last five years.

or so you've started a blog that could not stop going viral a mass a twitter audience of over 150 000 people and created multiple digital products that have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue now you did all of this while excelling at a suite of demanding and interesting full-time jobs. So you are, from my perspective, and I think from a lot of people, a very interesting person to talk to about creating projects online.

deep dive today into the creation launch and ongoing efforts with your latest project, Internet Pipes, but also to look at how you think about creating things more broadly and maybe even what your future looks like. But before we dive into that juice, the juice that the audience has signed up for here, I have one question for you. What is it? Are you proud of what you've achieved over the last five years? Well, it's always a moving target.

But as you were talking, yeah, I think so. I think I started to create things online under my name in 2018. So if you actually do that math. By the end of this year, that's seven years. And in some ways, it feels like I've done a lot of things. And then in other ways, it feels like I could have done so much more in seven years. But I do think maybe...

As you said, an interesting facet of that is that I've worked full time throughout that entire period. Okay, good. I'm glad you're proud because otherwise, if you weren't, we're going to have to have a little discussion about that. But it sounds like your head is in the right space. I think I propose this topic, but why are we doing this episode? Like, why did you agree to it? The first thing is that I hope there are many more people like me doing this in the next few years.

and certainly the next few decades. And I think that's almost inevitable. The same way that we were a little bit early to remote work per se, and then there was this big confluence of events that came together and just made it so much more widely available. I think we're seeing the same kind of trends for building small, profitable, sometimes even massive businesses online that anyone can kind of do. People sometimes refer to these companies of one.

Someone who designs, develops, markets, et cetera, their entire project. And we've seen people like Peter Levels go viral because he was an early person. But I can count...

A dozen or so of my own friends who I've met while we were nomadic who are doing the same thing, maybe not quite at the same scale, but certainly this is a very viable path. And I think... a lot of people are kind of cluing in but maybe are still on that early side of the curve of like not really knowing how to do it they might know okay i can start a youtube account and get rev share but there are so many other options Yeah, I guess I too am an online creator and...

I think some of the ways I've gone wrong over time is there's sort of endless things that you can do on the internet. And maybe what I'd like to focus on today is what we both call something like projects. You could go start an e-commerce business on the internet that generates $100 million.

in revenue, endless other things of that nature. But we're really talking about things that are maybe more accessible, things that you personally did with a full-time job, which is unusual, but you were still able to do it.

And that actually have a shorter lifespan than say like some business that you're trying to create generational wealth from and that you want to exist for hundreds of years. And I think that is actually one of the coolest things about creating online is that you can create something that lasts. two or three years, that's personally fulfilling to you, but also that brings in supplemental income or actually a full-time income. Yes. And I think that's actually such an important point because...

Most people do think of things in a very binary way where it's like, I'm going to drop out of college or I'm going to quit my job and I'm going to go all in and I'm going to raise funding and really, really. build something massive. And even if they're not going for a moonshot, they still think about, okay, how am I going to build a really big business? And they also assume that that business is going to take over their life for, let's say, at minimum, three to five years.

But I think what I've seen both with myself and other creators is that there is another option, which is to. I intentionally call them projects, not products, but to create things that they just want to see exist in the world. Sometimes they make no money. Sometimes they make very little money. And sometimes they do make a surprising amount of money, which we'll talk about with internet pipes, for example.

But that velocity of being able to just say, I want to create this and maybe I'll keep working on it, but also maybe I won't, is what I've seen work for so many of these kind of indie makers who, by the way, are making so much money that indie makers kind of...

dilutes the impact that I think they're having. But people like Pat Walls or Peter Lovells, they have created dozens of projects, right? And most of them have failed. Only a fraction of them have they continued on for, let's say, more than a few weeks or months.

I think it would be helpful to actually get very specific here and why I want to talk about internet pipes and the story behind it, the pre-launch, the launch, et cetera, is just to get tangible about what it looks like to have an idea and then to bring that idea into the world.

and then to continue working in that or not over time. So I want to zero in on that and then talk to you later about some of your broader ideas because you've got that noggin that's tapped into the creator verse that people should hear from. Okay, let's do it. Okay, so.

First, what the heck is Internet Pipes? This sounds like a plumbing company or something for the online world. Yeah. So I always struggle to explain what Internet Pipes is. So I'll give you kind of the.

one or two liner for other people, but then I'll, I think more importantly, give you my view of it and why I created it. So the one liner is it helps people make sense of all the data online and To make that really practical, there's all of these subreddits, all of these purchases happening on Amazon, all of these Google searches, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

There are billions of people who are interfaced with this crazy thing called the Internet. And we have a lot that we can learn from that data. And now, because the Internet is into a few decades. We now also have tools to make sense of that data. So not just the Amazon, but the tools like Helium 10 or Jungle Scout that make sense of that data. So Internet Pipes is, I guess, an information product that shows people how to use those tools and how to think about that.

There is a community where people who are equally jazzed about those things can engage. And then there are events and other features that have evolved to kind of augment all of that.

So that's kind of like the business pitch, but really the way I think about internet pipes is I feel like having this internet savvy skillset where you just understand the information flows on the web and how... deep these rabbit holes can go and how much you can learn from them and be fascinated and inspired by other things you find there is so valuable, but so many people don't know. how to do that the same way that if you exist in the physical world, it's helpful for you to know how to walk.

talk to drive to cook like there's all these foundational things that people should know how to do yet when you think about the number of hours that people now spend online and don't have any of that foundational understanding of again, just crazy experiment of billions of people. I think it's kind of crazy. So internet pipes was my foray into taking what I think I've done over the last couple of years in understanding that world.

and serving it to other people so i think of it as kind of like an api or a connection to my brain if that makes sense yeah it sounds a little bit like you learned some things early on via your career about how to operate on the internet i actually remember an aha moment for me when we were first growth marketers and i learned that you could record the screens of people who are on your website

and go back and look at those recordings and see did they spend a few minutes on the website what did they click on like you actually got this behind the scenes data and as a user of the internet after i was like oh my god it opened up this aperture of it gave me like a

better base of understanding like what is happening when i'm going online but also if you have a business this is a very useful skill set or if you want to find ideas or even i'm thinking if i was an academic and i wanted to do some research that was somewhat unique a lot of the things that I've learned in that you present internet pipes kind of helps people do that. And I think what's underrated is that most people don't realize that these tools exist, but they can also help.

whatever endeavors they're on be more successful and one super simple concrete example of this is how all of these websites like google or amazon

Amazon is a perfect example, actually, because it's a storefront. If you take the physical storefront that exists in the normal world, you can only have one storefront. But Amazon has A-B tested the shit out of everything they do. And so there's... benefits of understanding the contours of the digital world like you said the fact that you can record the fact that you can see

traffic flows and where they connect and the actions that people are taking. And you can test how if you change something, people respond to that. And all of these things we learned, at least at the outset, from being on a growth team, but many people never learned that.

Right. So they might even be running an e-commerce store and benefit from the fact that they can access everyone around the world without realizing that there are all these other things that they can benefit from by just being digital. Yeah, I've noticed the skill gap with developers who are obviously...

you know, understand how the online world works, they actually create things. But when they go to build a business, they don't really have a sense of how things can be marketed or how to get their product in front of customers because they don't really understand how that part of the online world works. It's like you can create.

the webpage, but you don't know how to get people in front of it or understand why they might come to it from these different sources. Also academics, by the way, there are so many tools now with AI that Someone might be really good at understanding their field and they might know to go to something like ChatGPT to summarize a paper. But there are tools now where you can see an entire web of how all the papers connect. You can see, for example, how many papers have referenced insert.

thing here and how that's trended over time you can use tools like consensus to basically get a consensus meter based on the top reference papers on a particular question like do blue light blockers work and you actually get kind of a gauge of that immediately So there's all these things that, you know, even really talented people who understand their field well will reach for the really broad things. Again, something like a chat GPT or Claude, which certainly has its place as well.

When the right people find the right tools, they can just do so, so much more, but they're often so busy that they don't have the bandwidth to think about what tools are out there. You just actually brought me back to my senior year of college when I had to write a thesis.

And it was, it was a very scary prospect for me. I didn't know what to write about. Once I found a topic with my advisor, the process of finding the relevant papers or things that had been done, or even the starting place to how to think about creating an intro. Interesting addition to the existing research that was all done in this really archaic way. And I don't even remember exactly how we found the papers or the books, but.

Now that I'm thinking about some of the tools that exist in internet pipes and that you've sort of made me aware of, like that would be almost a more fun thing to do. And I think I could have done it way better today than I could have done back then. By the way, I also did academic research in... university and one summer I was in Scotland and I did a whole summer's worth of research only to find that basically my entire summer project had been done by someone else way before.

I did that summer, meaning had I seen that paper, I could have saved three, four months and all the funding that went into that research. But we just didn't know. So there are really practical applications of this. But actually, when I talk about Internet pipes, I try to stay away from being like. Like, oh, join Internet Pipes to start your next business or to write your thesis. Because again, I actually think the key value is really that people gain this foundational.

internet skill set that they can apply to just about anything. In fact, I joke in the beginning of internet pipes being like, you know, you can even use it to find better snacks or things that seem really silly like that. Better snacks. Peenie beans. That's our new pitch for the landing page. Do you want to find better snacks? Okay. So this is your latest project. You have done some other things. We can talk about those later, but I just want to talk about project selection for a second.

how did you decide that it was time to bring this idea into the world and of all the ideas you could have brought why was this the next one yeah so i think steph before you answer that actually i just noticed we just got a sale from internet pipes which i don't know if people have ever created online and they get like stripe notifications or we use lemon squeezy for internet pipes it is

so fun and dopamine inducing to receive a sale of a product and be like, oh, wow, I was just sitting here recording a podcast about this thing. And oh, now I have a little bit more money in my bank account. It really is like a cool thing if you can make it happen. It is. And obviously nothing is totally passive income, but it is nice that previous you put in work that now future you is enjoying when you get those notifications.

but coming back to your question i created internet pipes specifically because it was something that i had clearly seen one people ask for and two that i actually was in a position to provide and ignore paid products. I think that's the simplest framework that people can follow. And in this case, the unique spin was that there are actually tons of other products out there that'll say like, here are these things that are trending or here's this market.

map of something. But when I actually used to work on a previous product called Trends, The most common question I would get asked was, okay, how do I actually go and find this myself? And so I heard that enough. Combined with, again, this conviction that I have that just this is an important skill set and we're entering a phase where a lot of people are thinking about reskilling. And so that combination made me think, OK, I can actually do this in a way that.

I can't really think of that many other people who could create internet pipes. Maybe that's also an interesting framework if people are thinking of what projects to create. How many people exist on this earth that could create? particular thing. For example, I did a book before about doing content right. Now that is a broader spectrum of people who could write about content.

But then if you really think about it, how many people had worked for one of the top newsletters in the world? How many people had worked on a growth team and grown a blog to like millions of readers every single year? If you think about it from that lens, again, I think it was true for that. project as well. And so internet pipes, I think, was even fewer people that could have created this. Maybe a meta mistake that...

people make is they want to be a creator or an entrepreneur because it's cool or it enables freedom or a certain lifestyle, or at least you think it will. But sometimes people start from a place of having no experience having done anything. and they expect to go into the online world.

and go create something that everyone wants. And it's certainly possible, say, if you created an e-commerce product. But when you're talking about sharing your expertise in a way that other people might want to buy, I think that credibility piece is actually very underrated. And I personally have underrated it in different things. And then also the fact that you actually geek out over this stuff. Like you spend a lot of your free time just browsing around the internet, doodling.

I'm always, you know, criticizing you for this. I'm like, hey, come hang out with me. And you're like, no, I'd rather be online. And I'm like, what? But it's true. It literally is just how you spent your time. And so I think it. made a lot of sense. And I guess you hadn't created something for a couple of years. And I think you felt that it was time to try your hand at something new. That's actually a really good point because...

There's some sort of saying where people are like, what do you do for fun that other people think is work? And that's... exactly what I had been doing. I would share things that I found on some of these tools, whether it's like an app that was trending or a subreddit that was surprisingly big. And I had been doing that just on my Twitter account for years and paying attention to the fact that sometimes those

things really took off because people found them interesting and in doing that I was able to build up the conviction that people wanted that thing but then I still validated that as well like I did a pre-order right

which further validated that people wanted that thing. I went on a podcast to talk about it and was able to read the comments and see again that people wanted this thing. And I had years of... those feedback mechanisms to say okay this is what people wanted but I think you're totally right even with my blog which did really well in its first year it did really well because I was one of the few people

around the world which sounds crazy today who had worked remotely for several years and had certain things to say about that and that's often my biggest piece of guidance to people especially with information products because it's a really slippery slope to start being seen as kind of scammy or trying to like grab the bag kind of vibes. If you're putting something out there that you don't actually have expertise on or isn't unique in any way, shape or form.

Right. You might be able to do that once, but you try to do it again and people are like, no, I don't trust this person, which is something I want to talk to you about later. The kind of importance of reputation and how you even think about maintaining that over time.

But let's go to the pre-launch period. So you have this idea. You went on the My First Million podcast. You mentioned that you were going to create internet pipes at the end of it. And you had a pre-sale page that you put up, I think the night before, probably an hour before knowing you. Yeah. And enough people listen to that podcast that hundreds of people bought it over the next 24 to 72 hours.

And I think by the time you were actually pre-launching the product, there was almost a thousand people who had bought something that didn't even exist in the world. How did you feel when that happened? I want to understand like how you felt. Like, was that, oh, it's validated, but also did it change how you even thought about what you were going to create? Yeah, of course. It felt really good to see, like you said, it was right at the end of an episode. So I think something that.

people do wrong sometimes. And I actually did this wrong with a bunch of my early projects is I made a big launch out of something to start. And the problem with that is that it's really hard to see the signal from the noise around.

are people paying attention because I put all of this effort into this big launch? You know, let's say it's trending on Product Hunt and people just see it at the top and you can't really tease out, is this something people really want? Or is this just a launch that I had kind of...

built up in some way. But in this case, what I had done is I just kind of put it right at the end, which meant that someone had to stick with the podcast all the way through. And then there was probably, yeah, like a 20 second call out.

Being like, hey, if you think this is interesting, go check it out here. Now, granted, this was a really big podcast. But what that did is, one, it made me feel really good that it's like people really want this because they had to stick around, right? This is not being shoved in their face.

But then two, oh, wow, people really want this. And now there's hundreds of people who have put their credit card down. And so as these people were flowing in, the price kept going up. And we had... set up this tiered pricing model which meant I saw the price going up and up and up and by the way I don't know if you remember this there were several points on that journey where I was like

Should we stop? As in like, should we stop raising the price? Because I wasn't sure if what I had originally imagined would live up to these like increasing price points. So yeah, I think generally I felt this combination of excitement and then anxiety around what I then had to go create.

Yeah. So one of the questions I had for you was how you thought about pricing this. And as you mentioned, like you created this tiered pricing model. So if when 20 people buy it, it starts out at $30, then the next people pay $50. But I guess because that made you... sort of nervous eventually we sort of capped the the pricing thing at least before the launch what made you nervous was it just that people may not actually get value out of this or you couldn't live up to it like why

Why did you want to stop in some way? And I think you actually have a different philosophy of pricing than I do, where I probably would have kept raising it even further. But in the end, I look back and you actually probably made a smart decision because of how you think about. What people get out of the products you do. Yeah, there's two facets. The first is just purely like mathematical. If people remember this from eighth grade calculus, there is.

uh eighth grade calculus i think i took calculus in 11th grade but what track were you on whatever it was eighth grade math class where basically there is a curve right where depending on how you raise the price, you may get more money with each sale, but that may diminish the number of sales that you generate so i saw this even with doing content right where before the launch before people actually saw what the product was there's no reviews i capped it at around 30 because i saw a tan

decrease in the conversion rate as people were hitting that page once it was above 30 before launch. So there was purely a mathematical approach, but I think the more meaningful thing that I care about... is less the amount of money that's driven and more the sentiment of someone who buys the product after it launches. And specifically, I want every single person who ever gives me...

money to feel really good about giving me money. And there are a few mechanisms that I really care about in order to make that true, which means simple things like a very, very, very flexible refund policy so that no one is ever upset with a purchase. That's pretty rare from our experience, but I think having that in place makes me feel good. But similarly, I just want a product to probably be underpriced so that when people buy it, especially in those early stages, they just feel awesome.

about their purchase and by the way there are marketing reasons for this too right because then they're more likely to go and share it but genuinely as a creator i care about that from more of the psychological reputation perspective where people are just like, oh, I know that if Steph put something out there.

It's hopefully going to surpass my expectations, or at least I can see her putting in the effort to making that true. And I think that's actually pretty counterintuitive. At least it is to me where. you want to essentially underprice something so that people feel good.

some people think they want to squeeze as much out of the price as possible like the pricing equation is like how much can we charge such that it's like reaching that maximum amount on the curve the math curve that you're talking about from eighth grade that i never saw but uh

I actually think you have a good approach to that. And I've heard many people, including those who have paid the higher price for internet pipes, be like, this was really useful to me. And I think in the end, that is a good thing if you're thinking about. creating over the long term. I also think the tiered pricing is really helpful here. If any creators are unsure of what to price it at, you can think of tiered pricing as the market helping you decide.

Right. And I think that's actually been really helpful for me as someone who does skew more to being like, let's just really underprice this, like let's sell this for $10. It was helpful for me in several of the products I launched to start really low. at a point where many people got in real early.

I have friends now who I met through internet pipes who joined at $30, who have joined several events, who didn't even know there were events, by the way, when they purchased it. They didn't know there was ongoing emails. They didn't know it was anything more than just like, they thought it was. a PDF and they happily paid $30 for it. And ever since they've been really happy, but those people came in at 30 at what I would have priced it at, but that market mechanism actually helped me.

come closer to what the market thought was reasonable yeah and i think this tiered pricing is actually a good safeguard against what i would critique this idea of underpricing things is like you could dramatically underprice things you know there's something someone wants to pay two thousand dollars for but your psychology only allows you to

price it at $20 and maybe that's fine, but you're sort of missing out on this gap here, but the tiered pricing helps you get closer to what many people would be comfortable paying for it. Yeah. But I think also something that's benefited me.

and I hope to maintain this by not launching too many paid projects, is that if you can, with every project that you launch, have a group of people who is very happy with their purchase they're extremely likely to buy from you again which is what we saw between doing content right and internet pipes i don't know if you remember this you helped me write an email that we sent

within a week of internet pipes launching, and it went out to the Doing Content Right customers. And that single email was a five-figure email.

Just that email alone, because hundreds of people bought again. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. So now you had.

hundreds of people almost a thousand buy the product the pressure is on you have to go create this thing when you first pre-launched this did you have a sense of what you were going to create was there a clear outline and you were just gonna kind of chug your way to the finish line or did a bunch of people buying it and you thinking more about it actually shape the project because in my mind it's like

It's kind of scary if a bunch of people buy something and just sort of had this one line pitch on a podcast. Yeah, honestly, it was really stressful. This one more than other projects I've worked on for that reason. There was so many pre-buyers. And the price was higher than I originally had guessed. And originally, I think this was even on the landing page. It was going to be like a list of 30 tools or something and maybe videos to show how to use those tools.

Because of that pressure, it ended up turning into something completely different. I mean, still aligned with that goal, but way more broad. I think now there's over 100 tools. that are covered in internet pipes and then you know it's spiraled into things like a deal directory and i've mentioned events several times a discord community i think

For better or for worse, it had to expand for my own psychology, if anything. And then I do think where I was... set up well is if again this was a product or an idea that I hadn't spent years thinking about before I probably wouldn't know how to transition from that idea of 30 tools but because this is something i've thought about a lot it was actually pretty easy for me to expand it from that original idea to what it is now and how did you know when it was good enough to launch

I've thought about this with like writing an essay. At some point, you kind of have to call it done and it can always be improved in some ways, but sometimes you overwork it too. How do you know when it's good enough? Honestly, you don't, which is why for most of my projects, I just have a time deadline and that's it. And it's this constant fight between this pretty ambitious.

probably crazy deadline. So in this case, it was what, two months or less for internet pipes and my own psychology of wanting to perfect it and make it really good. And I think that's actually important for people to think about is like how much. Does your own psychology push you to make something great? Because if you're someone like me that really, really cares about that reputational element, then you actually need time to be kind of against you.

If you're not, maybe you need some other constraints to make sure you're putting something great out there. In this case, it was just like, okay, this is the date. that these people are expecting something to show up and once you have the time deadline i think there are a few mechanisms you can set up to make yourself feel like the product is ready one of them for example is that for all of my products these days

There's always got to be like some sort of chapter or thing near the beginning where I've designed it such that hopefully if people just go through that one thing, the whole thing is worth it. Now, of course, there's a lot more, but like... That is like an automatic win. I think the chapters even called that in this case. I think another really simple filter is just.

If the average person were to go through this, how many new things would they be exposed to? Because you can teach someone really valuable information, but if they kind of feel like they've heard it before. I don't think they interpret that as as valuable. And so with internet pipes and other products, it's like, how many new things can I expose someone to? Okay, so you've just spewed off what I think are some nuggets of gold. However...

I do want to go back to the actual history of what happened. What did your last week look like in terms of creating this project? Actual history being What was that actually like trying to get this thing over the finish line? Because I remember a little bit of like chaos. You threw out the good frameworks there that make it seem pretty simple.

What was the internal experience and actually the external experience too in the household that we live in? Oh, it was a complete meltdown because it was like truly around the clock. This is where, again, I think there's a tension and I tend to just go full force into the tension of just being like, this is the date I set. So it is what it is. But in this case, that final week, it was not. In fact, I think we delayed it a little bit.

so that it could be ready. But it was very much trying to pack it in, staying up all night, recording videos, getting your help, putting everything into Notion. And I don't know, it was crazy. I remember having a full-time job for at least three weeks to help you get over this finish line. Yeah, but again, you know what? It's like Parkinson's law, right? Like the-

Project will expand to the time allocated to it. And again, maybe sometimes I compress it too much, but I think if I had another month, it would have been the same product. In fact, I think it could have been a worse product. That time constraint helped me. stay focused. It definitely was crazy. I definitely needed your help. So thank you. But I do think I don't think another month would have helped.

I agree. I just wanted to kind of point out that these things aren't as like linear as they sometimes sound. And there is often a lot of chaos as you're trying to bring something that is good to the world because. You're trying to get it right, but you also have time deadline and there's only so much that you can fit in in a given day. And trust me, you found all the hours of the day to work on this thing. Now, Internet Pipes is launched, okay? It's the big launch day.

Was that exciting to you? And what were you paying attention to in the first few weeks? Because from my perspective, okay, so now all these people have the product they paid for. There is this potential thing that people are like, wow, this isn't what I signed up for, or there's this risk when you pre-launch things that aren't fully articulated. What were you thinking about and doing in those first few weeks after launch? Good question. I think the first thing is...

messaging is so important with these products because what you promise really impacts the way people interpret it so again if i had launched internet pipes and i was like if you take this you're gonna start a business and it's gonna be great and thrown out all these false promises, I think it'd be very easy for people to interpret it negatively. However, the approach we took was like,

This is the product. It's here for sure, but it's also a work in progress. There's all these other ideas that we have to make it better. For example, monthly emails. would you like this and turns out yes people liked it so we built it in hey we're going to run a few events we're going to see if this is valuable so it was kind of like this is the beginning and not hey it's here and this is all it'll ever be

If I had to characterize what you're saying, you're kind of saying that you created something. Hopefully it's good enough that people are happy about it, but you're also going to experiment with improving it over time. It's not like a published book with a traditional publishing house where. This is the final thing. Like there really are no edits, but I think for these digital products, you actually have.

leeway to improve it over time, to take feedback from people, to figure out what's not clear, to add things that maybe you didn't get to in that first MVP. And to your point on time constraints, i think that's a way to give yourself the freedom to do things in a shorter amount of time because you know that you can keep updating it you know all these nft projects from

2020 2021 they're like hey we're gonna change the world we're just starting with 10 000 profile pictures and we're gonna use that for revenue to then go build this company and like how many of those things actually played out very few if any that was an example of some sort of grift of promising way too much that existed in that space, which would be a terrible thing to do. Yeah, that is the fine line that...

creators are going to have to figure out for themselves is how much do you launch with and how much do you promise is coming? And if you promise anything, you better actually commit to providing it in some way or else it is a grift, quite frankly. But if you can provide something that is worth the original purchase at first go, then everything else is like the cherry on top.

And you can kind of interpret it that way. And your customers can as well, right? Where they're like, oh, this is really nice that I may be getting these extra things. And they're even more delighted when those things happen. And talk about a delta between not to make internet pipe sound.

so much better than some of these nft projects but many nft projects have launched like two events and then internet pipes this year has already done over 50. i think it's fair to say that internet pipes is a little better than almost all the nft stuff maybe not almost all but point is people should be really careful with what they promise and think of the difference between

launching something that says there's going to be these amazing events and that's part of the product. And then when those events aren't delivered, that sounds really bad.

versus the approach i took which was actually to say there here's this product which doesn't include events and people bought based on what information was being delivered and then the events just happened to happen on top where people were pleasantly surprised like think of the delta in psychology there as a customer to me that's a

pretty big difference. It also gives you leeway as a creator. So like events in this case, I wanted to ask you, like, why does internet pipes have so many events now? Because when we were thinking about this project, the idea wasn't to get people together to do like rare fruit tastings. And yet that's now happening.

To your point on messaging there, you're just like, hey, I'm going to experiment with these things, see if people like them. And I think that's useful for the psychology of people who are buying it, but also for you. Because you didn't create this project because you wanted to start an events business or to run a bunch of events. You don't even know if you like that because that isn't something you were doing before. And so it's also a hedge against you promising to do things that.

you don't even want to do. Yeah. And I've had several people ask me why, number one, I don't charge for events or number two, I haven't set up a subscription. And it's precisely for those reasons. I've managed to set up internet pipes in a way where it's a win for everyone, including myself, without it being this permanent wait. that it could have become. So for example, had I turned it into a subscription,

Well, then people would then be expecting a certain amount coming every single month. And all of a sudden that would be a weight on myself and people would probably have a more negative view. of the value that they were getting every single month. Similarly, I could have made the events paid for. Like any individual event, you pay 50 bucks and you come, you do your rare fruit tasting.

I suppose that could have worked, but it would have, one, reduced the number of people who went to events and got value from them. Again, put more pressure on me to make it incredible. And then... What I can do instead is run these events for free, have more people go to them. And then in a way, it's a small marketing engine for internet pipes for future.

people who want to attend those events so I guess I just set it up in a way where it's low lift for me it's low expectation for the customer that doesn't mean the events can't be great it just means that there's less pressure to make it this ongoing infinite thing for sure just to like get into your headspace of how something like events even came to play and we're gonna do a full episode on some of our thoughts about conferences and events more generally

How do you go from I'm creating a project to help people make sense of the internet and to use this new skill set they have to see the world differently to then hosting in-person events in different cities? that are social gatherings, not necessarily tethered to that content. Like how does that leap happen?

It was, again, from experimenting and listening to what people wanted. Now, events are interesting and I don't even know if they were the right call because they do take a lot of work and they don't impact everyone because not everyone lives in SF or New York or LA. But it happened because when Internet Pipes launched, we did a get together in San Francisco and New York just because I happened to be in those places at those times.

It was really clear to me at those events that people like being around other people who are interested in these rabbit holes or navigating the web and seeing that in person. made me want to try running more of them, but it also... made me want to test out a thesis I've had for a while which we'll talk about in the other episode which is just around many events being quite terrible in my opinion like not the kind of thing that people actually connect at and so I used it as a forum to

see that out by most events having some sort of activity appended to them. And then also find a way to make those events.

tied back to internet pipes to your point because it's not immediately obvious and one way that i did that was for some of the events there would be a monthly theme so rare fruit tastings okay so let's say we ran five rare fruit tastings across different cities which a couple hundred people go to in total well there's over 2 000 people in internet pipe so how do i make the rest of them

find value in this okay i make a spreadsheet of all of the rare fruit i make a template that anyone can run their own tasting with and then i read a report that goes out to everyone in the monthly email that ties it all together So that, again, everyone's kind of involved in this kind of weird idea that is a rare fruit tasting, even if they can't attend in person. That's cool. I didn't realize you did all that with the rare fruit tasting. You're kind of a beast.

I mean, what I will acknowledge is I do think Internet Pipes has expanded in a way where it's not necessarily, again, super obvious what it is. But now, in a way, I just see Internet Pipes as being this. place where I can expose people to new interesting ideas.

I think I've attended some of these events and I think you learn things as you launch products and why I think people were interested in connecting in person. So like we know there's like a loneliness epidemic in America and probably around the world, but especially if you. or this type of person to buy internet pipes and you geek out on online stuff, you're as you call yourself terminally online.

And that has downsides to your social life. And so it's kind of cool how these digital products can bring people together. But I don't know if I would have done it just because it's a lot of work to host these things.

It is a lot of work, but it becomes easier each time. And like you said, most of your friends growing up are people who just happen to be... geographically proximal to you and the internet is this wonderful thing that connects us based on different ideas and i have found that the different events that we've run in cities The kind of people that sign up for something like Internet Pipes are a unique breed. It's a filter on the web. And so I think it does make sense for a lot of digital products.

that also filter people to maybe consider events. But just like you said, it is a lot more work. All right.

I've heard something from a lot of people when they hear about internet pipes, how many people have bought it, all the success and good traction around it. Why don't you do this full time? Like, have you thought about making a proper business where you have someone who runs your events, where you maybe, like you said, charge a subscription, really make this thing your main thing, like a business?

For a lot of people, it seems to have the potential to do that. Why have you not done that? I've obviously thought about it because there's an opportunity based on the data and the sales that have come in, but I think it... ultimately comes back to the psychology element where I just want this to be fun and in order to make it fun I've learned from all of my projects That it's really nice to have your financial stability in one place. And then it's really nice when your passion projects.

also make money but also having it set up such that it doesn't have to. I think that's the reason why I haven't gone all in. with my time or again, kind of like financial stability where it's like the only thing I have going. But I think in a way you could argue I've gone all in creatively. Like I really have made it the product that I want to see exist.

i'm doing a lot of these extra things like weird fruit tasting events or factory tours things that absolutely don't need to be there because i want them to exist and i want them to be part of the product and so i think I would separate those two ideas. Again, it's like going all in with your time versus your creativity and the energy you have. And an important question is like, let's say you didn't have a full-time job as well. What would you do with that extra time? I'm not.

necessarily asking you but you have to ask yourself oh yeah what would you do with that time and i think this is probably a common mistake that people make which is they take this thing that may be generating money or they kind of had this idea if i had unlimited time to work on this thing it would make a lot more money or it'd be this much better And I don't know how you feel about internet pipes in this framework, but I think most of the time actually having that constraint.

as you were talking about, maybe having a full-time job that makes you feel financially secure so that you can pursue your passions freely without too much pressure. Those constraints are actually helpful. And when you just have unfettered time, that can lead to its own form of chaos that...

is disruptive both psychologically and towards what you end up creating or how you think about it yes exactly it totally changes the way that you monetize something what you choose to put into a project but also Speaking of internet pipes in particular, I actually don't know how much more I would change. Like, what would I add? There's already an event a week somewhere in the world.

There's already monthly digital events. There's already a very active Discord community. There's already all the information, like literally my brain dump. Those things all exist. There's probably... a few small things here and there that I would add, but would the product really be any different?

I mean, I don't think so, but let's just take someone else who goes into this situation. If you were to go all in on it, I think you actually would feel pressure to do things that you may not even want to do to like justify the fact that you went all in. An example would be like. hiring a person to run events so that you could scale those up. And then all of a sudden you have to manage someone and you're like,

running this like partial events business too. And it's like, did I even sign up for this? Or did I go on a podcast and say that I wanted to share these interesting things that I've learned along the way? And you can like, it's so true. End up kind of slowly. It's almost like the ethical slippery slope, but it's the creative slippery slope where you end up doing a bunch of stuff that you never even wanted to do, but you had to justify because, oh, you know, I quit my job to go all in.

Yeah, let's actually talk through that slippery slope. It's like, oh, tweets about trends and then people say they want it. So then you go and create a product about trends and then you do. some tiered pricing model and then a bunch of people buy it more than you thought so then you change the product and you make it bigger and better than you originally planned and as part of that you test events and then because of that

And the fact that those go semi-well, you expand them. And then all of a sudden, you're doing many events per month. And by the way, we're here already, right? But then, to your point, I could continue, and I've chosen to draw the line here. I could then go, okay, wow, this is going really well. We've got over 2,000 people in the community. It's now time to quit my job.

time to hire a community manager oh no now this community manager costs more than i expected so therefore i need to increase prices oh now that prices have increased now i need to do more marketing because less people are buying and oh no now that less people are buying less people are showing up at events maybe i need to go hire some digital community manager it's all just like you can see how that spirals and i can see that which is again why i've chosen not to continue

to the fullest extent but i think to your point a lot of the kind of creator advice out there or it's not even advice it's like the creator culture around wouldn't it be cool if you could go all in on your project and i do think there's merit to that but i also think people should be kind of eyes wide open yeah if they're going to do that yeah and it ends up with you

renaming yourself Steph Internet Pipe Smith and your whole identity is this one project. That's also an important point is just this idea of expiry, right? Can you set up? a system for the things that you've built so that it's okay if you no longer want to work on them anymore. Right. And there is the trap of like, you do build something successful in something that you are at one point interested in.

Like, let's say you built a brand around being interested in behavioral psychology. Now you're like this guru who gives these frameworks to people and you've built a little business out of it. But at some point you're like, wait. We can learn about our psychology, but we can't change our programming. And actually, this is kind of a silly thing to be thinking about all the time. And maybe you've just changed in a way where like it's not as interesting to you or you've seen the.

polls and the thing that you used to promote, we actually stuck both financially and reputationally and identity wise. around this thing and you can't really move forward and if you want to create over the long run i sort of have this belief that you need to be able to reinvent yourself and anyone can do that at any time But when the cost of doing that, both identity-wise, financially, whatever, is really high, it's almost like its own form of golden handcuffs in the creator world. Yeah.

We have a friend who's a very, very successful social media creator and something she said to us recently stuck with me was she said she would never launch a product. She would never launch a product, whether it's like a... consumer product whether it is an information product like she was like i will never launch anything she said she has a few clients a month they pay her super well she treats them really well and that is

more than enough for her. And I think she's also very, very tuned in to her reputation and also the longevity of her career in this space. And I thought it was both really interesting and for her unique

subset of things she's optimizing for perfect and i wish more people would think like that honestly and you know what's interesting i remember hearing her say that and i was like Oh, no, because I actually want to buy your products because you're fucking cool. And like, you like interesting things. I'm like, can you just make it for some friends? And and it was interesting to hear her talk about that. Actually, I wanted to talk about a conversation that I.

sort of overheard you and her having in a dinner we were at. But it was about the idea of reputation and how you think about managing that over time. maybe the pitfalls that other people fall into? Or what were you guys talking about? Because I thought that was interesting. I think we're both, as I said, just very, very cognizant of the way that we appear online. And I think that comes from a place where we both...

Not even because of financial reasons, but we both want to maintain our longevity in whatever space we operate in. Like I truly doesn't even have to be under my name specifically, but I want to. continue creating things for decades. And I don't want some short-term optimization to hinder my ability to do that effectively. Maybe a really broad

observation that I have of many creators is that they just forget how there's other humans on the other side. I know this sounds really simple, but if you put out a tweet and you see a thousand people like it, that's just... a number on a screen. But if you actually imagine, like imagine giving a keynote to even 300 people, right? All of a sudden that becomes very real.

If you put out a tweet or a YouTube video and you see number go up or you see thousand likes or retweets or whatever, that can be really exciting and you can feel like you're building a true connection or audience. all of those numbers at the end of the day are like real humans on the other side who can flip a switch in terms of their interpretation of you if you start to kind of forget that again this is not some like

just purely digital play space. This is like real humans that you're talking to, selling to.

working with trying to inspire and so i ultimately just i think i've taken the frame and this friend that we were talking about has taken the frame where it's like we only pursue things that we actually find exciting and interesting and in fact some of the work that we see her put on social media when we've been to her house she's really tinkering away and she's excited to show us you know what i mean like on that one-to-one level

The same thing that she would post on Instagram, she would literally go and say to us across the dinner table. So is that the key to safeguarding the reputation just to do things that you're interested in? Because when I was hearing you guys speak, I was like, okay, you're talking about hundreds of thousands or millions of people in her case, and you can't.

really control what other people think. And a dynamic I've seen a bunch of times now is someone gets really big and people are really excited about them. But eventually there's almost like a mob mentality, a hunger for the person who has risen to fall. And they can make what I think is a small error.

that people kind of pile onto and they're like, oh no, this person's now a hack. And the reputation falls pretty easily. I think people generally think this like reputation is something that takes forever to build, but it's easy to destroy. Do you feel 100% in control of that? I think you made some good points in that conversation, which primarily is that you really can't control as much as...

Maybe the two of us think we can, but you can certainly put things in place. So in her case, she's again, she's like, I'm never going to sell anything. In my case, I'm going to sell things, but I'm going to have things in place like, again, a really, really flexible refund policy. Tiered pricing so that the market sets the price.

There are things that you can do as a creator that many creators don't think about, which I think just puts them at higher risk. But I think ultimately the highest risk things you can do are, again, just things that... feel counter to the kind of person you are because i think ultimately at the end of the day people don't get destroyed because they do something that's like so bad for any human they get destroyed because

Whatever action they took was counter to the way that people interpreted them. Right. So even at this dinner, we talked about MKBHD with his panels app and like is launching. an app for screensavers all that bad absolutely not if another creator did it no one would care it was just because it was counter to the way that people had interpreted him and so that's why i think the simplest filter is just

would I do this in real life? I think that's another reason why you should be careful about what people get to know you for. Because it leads to you not being able to tinker around and to launch something that's not perfect. And then you get, I don't know, taken down by the mob who's like, wow, I thought you were someone different. Like that kind of sucks too, because it limits your creative flexibility over time as you change. I think one personal example I had of this is.

My website got a lot of traction over the last few years with book notes. So I'd read books, I'd summarize them. And if you searched man search for meaning summary, my website would come up. At its peak, something like three quarters of a million people came to my site. for book notes and that drove newsletter subscribers and stuff. And so the trap for me was actually like, oh, wow, I have traction in this one area where that's something I just do anyways.

But the mentality when you think, oh, how could I take that further would be I could become the book notes guy on Twitter. And I set an email up around all my book recommendations. And then I do things for authors and earn money for that to push their books. And then I'm on book talk and suddenly I'm out there, you know, with my face in front of a book. And there was actually some appeal to that. But as I thought about it, I'm like.

I just want to read whatever I want to read and I don't even want to feel the pressure to summarize those things over time. Because, I don't know, if I start reading more fiction or memoirs, they're less summarizable. And so do I have to stick to self-help categories because those are easy to do or because more people buy them? And when you go down that thinking, it's like...

Not perfectly clear, but it is clear enough that it's like, oh, I don't want to be the book guy. Yeah. And I can't emphasize enough that people can sniff this out. You can sniff it out on Critters You Follow. You can sense when someone is optimizing for something that seems to be working versus genuinely excited to share it. So to talk about a specific point of this idea of.

safeguarding your reputation or building a following online about things that you care about. I think it's probably impossible to build an online following that. gives you the fullest sense of who a person is. So you're known for specific things. I'm known to a very small number of people for specific things. That's certainly not everything about who we are.

I think podcasts are maybe the one exception where you can almost give a pretty full picture of your personality if you allow that to happen. Is there anything as you've created of these last years that you think? People misunderstand about Stuff Smith. I should flip this back on you because I'm curious if you think knowing me.

If you think there are misconceptions about the way people interpret your wife. Well, that seems like a non-answer. Just flipping the question around. I can give you my perspective if you don't have one. I mean, I do have a few things. well let's hear them and then i'll tell you what i think if it's anything different okay well i think i think i'm more fun you think people don't think you're fun

Yeah, well, I think the way that I've been branded and sometimes maybe this is because I'm too mindful or curated around like what I put out there. People might interpret that as me being. less fun. Like, to be concrete, I've heard many people say something along the lines of, oh, wow, you must be really organized. And I know being organized is mutually exclusive.

from being fun but there is an underpinning that i get the sense of when they say that where maybe what they're really saying is that i might be a little uptight and i actually think along the spectrum of people out there i'm actually not uptight. Do you agree? I do agree with that. You're very chill and very disorganized as well, in case people are interested. But that's one of the benefits of having me around because I'm a little bit more organized.

I do think maybe that's a general trap of when you build a following and people look up to you for one reason or another. They almost assume that you have your whole life together or that. There's some sort of image of perfection that I don't actually think that you put it out there that you have everything together. But I do think like as you become known as someone who's very creative, who who's been successful, who knows how to find business ideas.

who knows how to manage a full-time job while doing that. There is this sense that you have things figured out and you may not see that full side of the person, whether it's their doubts, their insecurities, et cetera, even in the face of that. call it surface level success. Yeah. And I was working on an article about this for the longest time and I never published it, but it's around this whole idea that just, you know.

As your audience grows, the things that you're willing to say to them changes. Because even if you just think about who are you most comfortable with and probably the silliest and most candid and even controversial with, it's probably your partner. And then it's your... family and then it's your extended family and then it's your co-workers and then it's a stadium, right? It's like this expansion where depending on the level you're at, you're going to act slightly differently even.

in real life and then when you have an audience and you can't even see who the other people are on the other side you do build up a filter and that filter by the way is not just in terms of like saying something controversial it's also about what parts of your personality you put out yeah for sure even separate from the personality i've experienced how

your audience can start to label you maybe one very simple example is a lot of people think of me in terms of content and i know i've fed into that to a degree but in my head i think that i'm probably more analytical than a really strong writer or some of the things that people have come to know me for. But that's, again, just the way the game goes, I guess, where other people kind of define you.

That's true. I mean, I'm still waiting for your Excel course, if we want to call it that, to come out because maybe that is something that people, they see glimpses of, but you're sort of like a spreadsheet wizard.

more than anything like that's what drives you and then i i think why some of your writing and other things take off is because you're surfacing interesting things coming from that analytical perspective Instead of, you know, using the most beautiful or crisp language like a poet would to describe the. ineffable feeling of what it means to be in love see i couldn't even craft that sentence but truly i think that is an aspect of me that is missed in the wider

understanding. I did my degree in chemical engineering. I played chess growing up competitively. I'd much rather spend my day in a spreadsheet than a Google Doc. I hated English class and loved calculus.

chemistry and physics. It's interesting how those things even in my own brain get lost sometimes because this is the kind of work I do now. Anything else? I'm sure there are others, but now I want to hear from you. I feel like you already covered it, but there's an element of goofiness and fun and appreciation of, say, cute little things. Like you find these niche accounts on Instagram or maybe not so niche. They may have large followings.

But, you know, the little frog thing that you showed me, someone knits these frogs that hang out and drink tea and stuff. And I think there is like an underbelly of like goofiness and not taking life too seriously that maybe is missed in this, you know, badass woman who. is so good at business so good at navigating the web good at the job she does it misses that side of you that i like very much and have gotten to know very well just by the nature of being the husband

Oh, another one is I'm 5'3". Well, what do people think? You're like 6'10"? Or is it shorter? No, no, no. No one thinks I'm six foot or anything close to it. But I think probably... people are surprised that i'm as short as i am because i've definitely met people who are like oh you're kind of small that reminds me of you know lex friedman the podcaster i for a long time thought he's like

some six three eastern european guy and he's really like five six or i don't know he's a small guy and it's it's just funny when you have that perception of someone and it's like are you wearing the suit like he does to appear taller or whatever but then you see him next to joe rogan who is also very small and it's like wow these these guys are pretty short i'm reading a reddit thread that says that maybe he might even be five three five four so lex

We're the same height. Yeah, exactly. Which no shame on being short. It's just, it's funny. These perceptions we build of people for no real reason, right? Just like a vibe you get. And you and I, maybe we've talked about this before. But I think one of the beautiful things of remote work is back in the day, you would enter a boardroom because you had to be in the office.

and your physical appearance i think mattered a lot more if you were taller louder whatever it favored sort of these like men with good genes that would actually carry a weight in the boardroom that It still probably does today, but in a world where you're just communicating digitally, the way in which people perceive you, I think has the potential to be more results oriented in a way that is very good for everyone.

Very good. I actually can't wait to see some of this data that comes out, speaking of data, over the years about how certain demographics may be accelerated in their careers due to remote work.

Okay. I have a couple more questions for you. That's it. Okay. Let's do these last ones. Rapid fire. Rapid fire. Okay. All right. I'm going to start speaking really quickly. What? What is your philosophy of working with other people? Oh, see, no one's asked me that question because you're the only one who's seen, as they say, how the potato gets baked.

what's that saying they definitely don't say how the potato gets baked maybe how the sausage gets made that's that's like that's maybe in canada in canada they talk about the potatoes honestly the potato sausage the sausage one is it's not vegetarian friendly so but you could do soy chorizo or something how the soy chorizo gets okay yeah in any case how the potato gets baked you've seen

how I am very particular in creating projects. And that means I see a project through end to end and I'm not very open. to bringing other people into that fold specifically for my own projects. I think I am collaborative enough in like a work environment where it's not my project. It's not under my name in the same degree. But I think ultimately my decisions there ladder up to my focus or you could even say obsession with how my reputation holds in the long term.

So basically what that's ended up as is like, you're the only one that I am willing to work on projects with. I guess I should feel honored. I don't know. I love your perspective on this. Like in some sense, I think that decision. has been really helpful because I have protected against these terrible co-founder stories that you hear or even just...

a product going in the wrong direction because you have to kind of compromise between your perspective and someone else's. But then I also wonder if I'm losing out on, you know. bringing in someone who does have a much stronger, let's say, technical skill set than I do, or moving more quickly. Yeah, I mean, both things are probably true.

You could benefit from working with other people, but you also benefit from not doing it. I mean, it is interesting that you choose to work with your partner, which introduces like, I don't know if we've talked about this on the pod, but when you work with your partner, you're like mixing work.

and your home life and that has its own sort of complications as well but you seem to enjoy doing that enough to make those trade-offs have we done an episode on that because i've heard from several people that we should because We are an interesting married couple, also creator couple, and there aren't that many people who choose to do this.

I think we've mentioned that you're difficult to work with, but maybe we should really do a deep dive on that one. I think we should, because I also think we can go even further into this psychology around. I genuinely think I am way harder to work with on my own projects versus others. All right. We got another episode. That's pretty exciting. The season endures. I do think if people are considering if they want to work with other people, it's worth just writing down in priority order.

their values and by the way like a value could be long-term reputation a value could be oh i want to only work on this for this period of time or i want to make this amount of money why are you doing this is really what i'm getting at and being really honest about that in isolating that for myself because that long-term

reputation and the way I show up online is the most important for me. That naturally does not jive very well with someone else coming in unless they're really willing to yield to my perspective, right, on just about. everything which just doesn't work is what i'm getting at but other people that's not true obviously um and so i think that is something that not enough people actually do and actually are honest about yeah i mean you find out the hard way

I don't know if I've ever shared the story of when I worked with someone and it really didn't work out, but that was a good lesson too. And I think we'll save that one for the episode where we talk about those things. Oh, yeah. Woo. Just getting anxiety even thinking about that starting to sweat.

Okay, two more questions for you. The first is, do you remember, say, let's just call it the week before you launched doing content right? I think what you had maybe 6,000 Twitter followers, your blog had gone viral a few times, you had learned how to code, you created a few projects around that. But doing content, right was I would call it your first

really successful project. Over time, it generated hundreds of thousands of dollars revenue. Your following grew significantly. Which is true, by the way. Prior to doing Content Right, I basically made zero dollars online. Articles that went viral and all that, but... It was the first project that really made a dollar. I remember as you're launching that, we were like, well, what would we be happy with you making from this? And I think it was something like a thousand dollars.

It was a thousand. Okay, a thousand dollars. And then you dramatically exceed that, like to the surprise of everyone in our two-person, very small family. And it's exciting. But what was that like, that experience of having something really take off in that way where it's not just that people liked it, but they actually paid for it and it led to a series of good things? It felt really nice because I think...

Most creators are really impatient and they try to make money right away from whatever they're doing. And I had intentionally not done that, right? So I started probably writing online in what, 2018. I hadn't released anything for years. And so there was this kind of question mark of one, can I do it? Because by the way, I had tons of other friends who were quote indie makers who were making money. And I always just questioned like.

I kind of call myself an indie maker, but I haven't really made a dollar. So am I really a maker? Am I just someone who happens to write a few things online? So it felt really nice to cross that chasm. for myself because I think that's the underrated part we talked a lot about psychology today but being a creator I think there's just a lot of self-doubt because you compare yourself to just about everyone else out there and

You really do, before you can validate that people want the things that you think should exist in the world, doubt that that will be true. And yeah, I think after that, it was a really nice... transition for me individually to feel like, okay, I actually have things to say. And by the way, the tiered pricing model was really helpful there because again, I didn't have that confidence. And then seeing people push me to charge more.

was also really validating and i do think it was a kind of pivot point in my quote career you could say as a creator which by the way a lot of people also get that wrong which they hear that i sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of doing content right and they think oh of course you have over 100 000 followers on twitter no like you said at that point i had around 5 000 followers on twitter and it was actually the product

that yielded attention that drove more followers. So it's true I didn't start out with nothing, but I think that's actually what a lot of people get wrong, right? They think, let me build up the audience and that will yield customers. for my product but the things that have built my audience the most are actually these products like doing content right or internet pipes or our podcast they were like parts of the puzzle yeah one of the things that surprised me about your audience in particular is

It's a generally positive group of people who are pretty aligned with how you see the world. And it's also a fairly commercial audience in that people will buy things from you because they trust you. and that's really different from someone who has say a million followers and they were just shit posting or something

And then all of a sudden they're trying to sell them a product. And now that I'm thinking about it, one of the reasons for that is because your products generated the audience. Like people liked what you made and they didn't just think you were funny or posted the best memes.

or these other ways in which people kind of hack their way to an audience. But it is, I think, rare. The way that you did it, whether it was intentional or not, actually led to maybe a more sustainable and interesting outcome if you want to be in the game for the long run.

Yeah, and I think people might not believe me in saying this in its entirety, but I'm pretty sure just about everything I've put out there, I put out there because I had something to say or I wanted this thing to exist. And it wasn't from the... place of being like i want to grow an audience the audience has been a byproduct what about that yoga tweet that you put out that went viral was that something you really wanted to put out there

Yes, I know it sounds so stupid, but that yoga tweet actually happened. That's why it wasn't one of these like, think boy, let me talk to chat GBT and come up with yoga tweet. It was something that happened to me. Let me actually read it out because it is cheesy, cheesy. It says, my yoga teacher always starts class with this line.

Quote, congrats. The hardest part is over. You showed up. End quote. Feels like that mindset applies to most other things. Worrying about a task often is far worse than the task itself. Starting is the hardest part. Okay. Yes, cheesy.

89,000 likes, 27,000 retweets. Crazy. Still to this day, the most engaged tweet I've ever had. But here's an example of, yes, maybe this could have... been spat out by some tweet generator but in this case it actually happened i went to a yoga class i had a yoga teacher who said this i didn't tweet it right away but then a few days later i was going through a task and it was one of those tasks where like you put it off for days or weeks or months and then the actual thing is like way easier

Then you realize and you just had to like start it. So the tweet was from my first person experience. And yes, I would say this one is maybe not my standard, but everything I tweet. actually just comes from my brain. Actually, on that note, you know how a lot of creators will have these tools that schedule tweets and they'll have, you know, in their Notion or Evernote, all of these planned tweets and they're like workshopping stuff. I don't do any of that.

Good. Just had to make sure. I figured you probably tweeted that after you like... I don't know. We're thinking about some tasks for four months and then it took five minutes. That experience is so funny and I bet very universal. It's like you just have this thing weighing on your mind and then you literally focus for 20 minutes and.

the thing or set of things is done. And you're like, why did I do this to myself again for the 400th time? I know. I know. That's why the tweet was so well liked because it was universal.

I don't know. I feel like I could have tweeted that and the algo wouldn't have picked it up. So maybe you're just lucky. You're just lucky. The Twitter algorithm likes you. Anyways, here's my last question for you. What is the most rewarding part of creating for you? Why do you say that you want to create for the next few decades? Like when I first met you, the word creation was not coming out of your mouth. You were just living, bopping around. And then all of a sudden you built.

an online presence, you've built these products. I think a lot of people feel that desire. Sometimes they don't actualize it. But what is it that gets you going? Well, I think the reason I wasn't creating much when we knew each other originally is because I didn't have the skill set. And so the thing that gets me jazzed up now is that most things, because I'm not thinking about, again, these crazy moonshot businesses that will take thousands of people and decades to build.

I'm talking about really simple things like my Excel game or a coffee table book that we want to create, like really accessible projects that now with my skill set. whether it's development, design, marketing, writing, et cetera, like I can do it. And that is so empowering. In fact, I think a couple of years ago, I said something along the lines of, I finally felt financially secure.

And it wasn't because of any number in a spreadsheet or a banking app. It was because I finally felt like I could build things. That was why I learned to code in the first place. And I think that's the best part of not even having an audience today. Like you could wipe my audience and yes, I would be sad, but I also would still feel just as quote rich because I feel like I can.

come up with an idea that I want to see in the world and make it. Well, and that's really cool. I'm glad you said that because as we were speaking, I just deleted your Twitter. So you're starting from zero. I mean, that's something that. Gosh, that could be a whole nother episode, but I think more creators should really mentally prepare themselves for that reality. Well, that sounds ominous. And honestly, I love ending on an ominous note. Keeps people intrigued, so they say.

And thanks for doing this. It was fun. I actually learned some things about you here, which is why I wanted to do this. I actually think that you think about this, not in just an interesting way, but also a very accessible way to people. And you're not preaching from the mountaintop. You're just doing your thing and kind of do it in your own way. And that's very inspiring. Well, thanks for doing this. I feel like it was a lot more interesting for me than most interviews I do because...

If I go on other podcasts, often they want to know about the numbers. They want to know about specific marketing tactics. And I don't think they often really think about the creator psychology behind these products. And I think that actually really matters for all the future creators that I hope exist. Cool. Well, there actually is one more thing, which is I have to do something you're not going to like me doing. What? Yep.

I'm going to have to say, if people found internet pipes interesting, you can Google internet pipes, find the website, you can go to internetpipes.com. It's pretty easy to find. And in fact, I remember when we launched the product, when you search internet pipes, you would go to a Wikipedia.

page that was series of tubes. And I think that page now ranks like number six. And actually your product is now there. So you took over one of Google's searches with the product, which is also kind of fun to see that stuff happen over time. Whoa. Also, yeah, we have like the top five list. Yeah, I know. Series of tubes. Wikipedia is now number six, right? That's so cool that we have so many.

of the top rankings now. But thanks for the shout out, Cal. You know better than anyone else how much I hate making those. So thanks. No problem. That's called being a partner. I guess if people made it this far, maybe we should just give them a code. Okay. S-Y-D-L-I-S. Sidless. You can use that code to get a secret discount when you go to internetpipes.com. All right. Thanks for listening. Until next time.