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[00:00:01.280 --> 00:00:09.200] That's something I encourage every indie hacker to do: partner with creators who have an audience or who can market your business.
[00:00:09.200 --> 00:00:13.760] We would never get to the revenue where we are now because I gave up two-thirds of the business to them for free.
[00:00:13.760 --> 00:00:18.800] Hello, and welcome back to Indie Bytes, the podcast for writing you stories of fellow indie hackers in 15 minutes or less.
[00:00:18.800 --> 00:00:24.880] Today, I'm joined by Sam Shaw, who's the co-founder of Typeshare, a writing platform made to create and publish texts across the internet.
[00:00:24.880 --> 00:00:33.040] Typeshare has made over $1 million in revenue since it was started in 2021 with over 80,000 users, currently at $34,000 MRR.
[00:00:33.040 --> 00:00:39.600] I'm speaking to Sam to find out how he started Typeshare as the first of 12 startups he was planning to build and what made this one stick.
[00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:42.400] Before we get into this episode, I'd like to thank my sponsor, Email Octopus.
[00:00:42.480 --> 00:00:49.680] EmailOctopus are an email platform focused on affordability with a very generous free plan and ease of use without some of the bloated features that other email apps have.
[00:00:49.680 --> 00:00:55.200] So you can focus on shipping and growing your audience, which regular listeners will know is essential for growth in those early days.
[00:00:55.200 --> 00:01:00.720] So to get started with an email platform that just gets out of the way, you can contact up to 2,500 people for free.
[00:01:00.720 --> 00:01:04.160] Head to emailoctopus.com or hit the link in the show notes.
[00:01:04.160 --> 00:01:06.000] Let's get into this chat with Sam.
[00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:07.200] Sam, welcome to the pod.
[00:01:07.200 --> 00:01:07.920] How are you doing?
[00:01:07.920 --> 00:01:08.960] I am doing great, James.
[00:01:08.960 --> 00:01:09.920] It's awesome to be here.
[00:01:09.920 --> 00:01:10.960] Thanks for having me.
[00:01:10.960 --> 00:01:16.400] Now, I get the pleasure of telling the TypeShare story because you have not done any podcasts before.
[00:01:16.400 --> 00:01:19.040] So we can start off with the background, Sam.
[00:01:19.280 --> 00:01:20.400] Where have you come from?
[00:01:20.400 --> 00:01:21.520] Did you have a job?
[00:01:21.520 --> 00:01:22.560] Are you an engineer?
[00:01:22.560 --> 00:01:24.160] Are you a product person?
[00:01:24.160 --> 00:01:26.240] How do you start all this indie hacking stuff?
[00:01:26.240 --> 00:01:31.120] Yeah, I mean, for my entire life, it's always been like, I'm never going to get a real job.
[00:01:31.120 --> 00:01:32.640] I'm going to do my own thing.
[00:01:32.640 --> 00:01:36.960] Like, I remember when I was a kid, I grew up on a farm and I remember my very first business.
[00:01:36.960 --> 00:01:38.960] It was literally called Pooh for You.
[00:01:38.960 --> 00:01:44.000] And we would shovel manure into these bags, and my mom would drive them into town and we'd sell them.
[00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:47.120] So I'd sell them to like my violin teacher or people at my school.
[00:01:47.120 --> 00:01:51.760] I probably made like five bucks doing that, but honestly, that was the first bit of money I ever made doing stuff myself.
[00:01:51.760 --> 00:01:54.960] And it didn't matter what it was, shoveling shit into a bag.
[00:01:54.960 --> 00:01:57.840] It was like, okay, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.
[00:01:57.840 --> 00:01:59.360] At least my own thing.
[00:01:59.360 --> 00:02:03.320] And I don't know, I just never really been the get-a-real job kind of guy.
[00:02:03.640 --> 00:02:11.320] Okay, so having a look in some of your previous ventures, Typeshares, obviously the one that you start, you're 26 now, started it in 2021.
[00:02:11.320 --> 00:02:15.640] So what were the things in your early 20s that you were starting and playing around with?
[00:02:15.640 --> 00:02:16.920] I'm seeing Lunar Loyalty.
[00:02:16.920 --> 00:02:18.200] I'm seeing Wavium.
[00:02:18.200 --> 00:02:20.040] Now, I was not technical at all.
[00:02:20.040 --> 00:02:21.720] I went to business school.
[00:02:21.800 --> 00:02:32.200] I didn't know how to code or anything, but like I spent most of my time in business school in the back of the class on my laptop, like messing around with WordPress or no-code tools or like web flow.
[00:02:32.200 --> 00:02:37.960] So yeah, lunar loyalty was really like every little city or whatever has a kind of a main street, right, with these small businesses.
[00:02:38.120 --> 00:02:47.160] The idea is I would go talk to these businesses and say, hey, if you kind of join this citywide loyalty program, people can earn and spend points at every different place.
[00:02:47.160 --> 00:02:55.880] So you could spend like 10 different restaurants downtown, earn like one pool of collective points, and then redeem those for gift cards at other, at really any downtown store.
[00:02:55.880 --> 00:02:58.840] So I spent most of my time in business school trying to build that idea.
[00:02:58.840 --> 00:03:01.800] Like, I think we ran that for like a year and a half.
[00:03:01.800 --> 00:03:10.440] Never made any money with it because I was doing what I now think is completely wrong, which is spending years building something before I had even gone downtown.
[00:03:10.600 --> 00:03:22.280] Like really what I should have should have done in hindsight is if I wanted to make that business a success, was go downtown, knock on every single door until I had like 100 businesses agree to pay me 50 bucks a month or whatever it is.
[00:03:22.280 --> 00:03:24.200] And then I say, okay, I'll be back in a month.
[00:03:24.200 --> 00:03:26.520] And then I come back in a month with the product, right?
[00:03:26.520 --> 00:03:28.040] Like that's how I do it.
[00:03:28.040 --> 00:03:31.560] Yeah, and that failed and that led me to want to do the 12 startups in 12 months thing.
[00:03:31.560 --> 00:03:32.520] Talk to me about that then.
[00:03:32.520 --> 00:03:34.200] Why the 12 startups in 12 months?
[00:03:34.200 --> 00:03:44.600] I've heard actually a lot of successful founders do this, but not a lot of successful founders do their first project in the 12 startups that ends up being the one that's a success.
[00:03:44.600 --> 00:03:45.040] Yeah.
[00:03:44.760 --> 00:03:48.720] It being the first one is probably 95% luck.
[00:03:49.040 --> 00:03:57.760] But the reason for the 12 startups in 12 months thing was kind of what I've been saying before is I'm really fed up with how I had done things.
[00:03:57.760 --> 00:04:01.680] Like, I hadn't made any money and I was like, okay, wait, I've graduated school.
[00:04:01.680 --> 00:04:05.040] I need to actually make money if I want to be able to do this long term.
[00:04:05.040 --> 00:04:06.800] So I kind of flipped it the other way.
[00:04:06.800 --> 00:04:14.480] I was like, okay, instead of spending years building things, if I do 12 and 12, then I'm going to be forced to build or sell something in a month.
[00:04:14.480 --> 00:04:16.640] And if it doesn't make revenue, I move on to the next.
[00:04:16.640 --> 00:04:22.800] Yeah, so TypeShare, I was just like, okay, what's a super simple idea that I don't have to really necessarily build before I can sell?
[00:04:22.800 --> 00:04:24.000] And it was like, okay, whatever.
[00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:26.480] I see people sharing these images of text online.
[00:04:26.480 --> 00:04:27.840] And I was like, okay, how are they doing that?
[00:04:27.840 --> 00:04:29.440] Most of them are going to like Canva.
[00:04:29.440 --> 00:04:32.880] And like Canva is not really a writing tool, or at least it wasn't then.
[00:04:32.880 --> 00:04:35.760] So it was pretty, I assume that might be a little bit of a frustration for people.
[00:04:35.760 --> 00:04:40.640] So I was like, okay, what if it's just a website with a text editor that you can make an image of your writing look nice?
[00:04:40.640 --> 00:04:42.160] And it's a super simple idea.
[00:04:42.160 --> 00:04:45.200] And I tried to sell it before building any of it.
[00:04:45.200 --> 00:04:46.400] And that's kind of how that started.
[00:04:46.400 --> 00:04:49.520] So how did you go about like building it if you're not technical?
[00:04:49.520 --> 00:04:51.840] Yeah, that was another big thing for the 12 and 12.
[00:04:51.840 --> 00:04:56.480] It's like, I need to learn how to code if I want to be able to do this stuff myself, right?
[00:04:56.480 --> 00:05:00.320] Because I had done stuff with co-founders in the past and I was a little frustrated.
[00:05:00.320 --> 00:05:03.120] I just want to do something by myself and see how that goes.
[00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:05.440] So I basically just googled everything.
[00:05:05.440 --> 00:05:07.120] I was like, okay, how do I make a button?
[00:05:07.120 --> 00:05:09.520] How do I center a button on a page?
[00:05:09.520 --> 00:05:12.400] And you kind of just take that and you kind of add up.
[00:05:12.400 --> 00:05:16.080] So I was like, okay, how can I put a text editor into this app?
[00:05:16.080 --> 00:05:19.600] So, how did you get the first signs that this was going to be the thing that was going to take off?
[00:05:19.600 --> 00:05:21.760] Did you ever get to slash that number two?
[00:05:21.760 --> 00:05:22.400] No.
[00:05:22.720 --> 00:05:29.440] The very first thing I did, when I had the idea that morning, I was like, okay, I'm just going to write a tweet saying, first startup is this.
[00:05:29.440 --> 00:05:35.080] And that got like, for B, it got like 30 likes, which for me was a lot because I had like, I don't know, like 50 followers or something.
[00:05:35.400 --> 00:05:39.080] So that was like the first tiny bit of indication that this had something.
[00:05:39.080 --> 00:05:41.560] So you launch, you get some likes.
[00:05:41.560 --> 00:05:47.400] Talk to me about the growth where you decided, right, this thing has legs.
[00:05:47.400 --> 00:05:50.120] I'm not going to make the other businesses.
[00:05:50.120 --> 00:06:02.040] My whole goal after I got the tweets or the tweet with 30 likes or whatever was, okay, I need to build this as quick as possible, but I don't really want to build too much stuff before I know people are willing to pay for it.
[00:06:02.040 --> 00:06:04.760] Because they might just be like, yeah, likes on Twitter or one thing.
[00:06:04.760 --> 00:06:10.680] But then if I launch it, people are like, it's a big step to actually put your credit card number in and press subscribe or whatever.
[00:06:10.680 --> 00:06:19.800] So what I did is before I'd really built any of the advanced features, I just sort of had the MVP where you could change the background color or change your font and put in some text.
[00:06:19.800 --> 00:06:22.600] That was like the MVP and that probably took me a couple weeks.
[00:06:22.600 --> 00:06:26.840] And then all I did was in the top right corner, I just put a button that said like upgrade to pro.
[00:06:26.840 --> 00:06:32.200] And you click that and it just explains what pro is and that's none of those things are built.
[00:06:32.200 --> 00:06:36.840] But there was a button there that's like buy for 150 bucks lifetime subscription.
[00:06:36.840 --> 00:06:43.320] And when I launched that, I got in a week, maybe $2,500 in pre-orders.
[00:06:43.320 --> 00:06:45.880] And that was like, I made my first dollar online.
[00:06:45.880 --> 00:06:47.400] I was like, okay, this is 100%.
[00:06:47.400 --> 00:06:48.520] There's something here.
[00:06:48.520 --> 00:06:49.160] This is the thing.
[00:06:49.160 --> 00:06:50.520] I got to focus on this.
[00:06:50.840 --> 00:06:59.240] So your first sort of year looked like seven months to get to 1,000 MR, four more to get to 10K, and then just another month to get to 15K.
[00:06:59.240 --> 00:07:02.760] So in a year, just over a year, you're at 15K MRR.
[00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:06.920] What were some of those inflection points and growth throughout that for you, Sam?
[00:07:06.920 --> 00:07:14.280] The biggest thing for me, 100%, was partnering with Dickie Bush and Nicholas Cole, who are the creators of Ship 30 for 30.
[00:07:14.280 --> 00:07:22.240] And like, that's something I encourage every indie hacker to do: is partner with creators who have an audience or who can market your business.
[00:07:22.560 --> 00:07:28.800] Because for me, like, I'm not really interested or that necessarily that good at marketing, let's say, and I don't have a big audience.
[00:07:28.800 --> 00:07:37.120] But like, partnering with people who have that reach is so powerful because they can focus on what they're good at, and I can focus on what I'm good at, which is building things.
[00:07:37.120 --> 00:07:38.720] And I think that's kind of like the indie hacker dream.
[00:07:38.720 --> 00:07:42.720] Because you always hear people like, oh, it's like, I got to spend time on marketing now.
[00:07:42.720 --> 00:07:43.520] It's like, oh, I got it.
[00:07:43.520 --> 00:07:46.080] Like, and you'd rather just be kind of building the product.
[00:07:46.080 --> 00:07:52.000] And like for me, I can spend 100% of the time building the product because I've just partnered with people that can market it.
[00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:53.360] And that exploded the business.
[00:07:53.360 --> 00:07:58.960] And I would have never, we would never get to the revenue where we are now because I gave up two-thirds of the business to them for free.
[00:07:58.960 --> 00:08:02.240] And to me, at the time, I was like, well, I'm giving up two-thirds of the business for free.
[00:08:02.240 --> 00:08:07.040] It's like, it doesn't seem right when we already had like a few thousand MRR because I was like, this is worth something.
[00:08:07.040 --> 00:08:13.120] But in hindsight, I'm getting an immense amount of value because I'm bringing on two people that can market the shit out of this thing.
[00:08:13.120 --> 00:08:16.960] How have you dealt with some of the challenges within the business?
[00:08:16.960 --> 00:08:20.960] One of which I saw recently was dealing with stalling MRR growth.
[00:08:20.960 --> 00:08:27.600] So at the start of last year, your MRR was stalling and you made one pricing change, which is like a big change to make.
[00:08:27.600 --> 00:08:29.520] Do you have any examples other than that?
[00:08:29.520 --> 00:08:32.080] Or you can just talk about that particular example.
[00:08:32.080 --> 00:08:37.680] Yeah, that's kind of the tricky thing they don't tell you about when you start this stuff is that the goalposts always move, right?
[00:08:37.680 --> 00:08:40.000] So like, I'm so happy when I get my first dollar.
[00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:41.440] And then, oh, we're at 10K MRR.
[00:08:41.440 --> 00:08:43.280] Like, that was always my dream at 10K.
[00:08:43.280 --> 00:08:47.680] And now we're at 34,000, which is like an amazing accomplishment, right?
[00:08:47.680 --> 00:08:50.560] But to me, it's like, I still just kind of see the problem.
[00:08:50.560 --> 00:08:57.360] But yeah, for stalling MRR, like you reach a point where your product can only sustain so much MRR, right?
[00:08:57.360 --> 00:09:02.680] Like there's a, there's a, there's a theoretical max, and that just depends on how many people are churning.
[00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:12.840] So our issue and the reason we're stalling is not because we're bad at marketing or we're bringing, like, we're bringing like $5,000 of new business into the doors every single month.
[00:09:12.840 --> 00:09:22.200] But we've reached a point now because of our size that we're also losing $5,000 or $4,000, $4,000 or $5,000 of business every month because of our churn.
[00:09:22.200 --> 00:09:31.080] And just to quickly answer your last question about the pricing thing, yeah, we basically had a $20 a month plan and we launched a $200 a year plan.
[00:09:31.080 --> 00:09:32.920] So it's actually better for the user.
[00:09:32.920 --> 00:09:36.760] They get a month free if they do the $200 a year thing.
[00:09:36.760 --> 00:09:43.400] And it's better for us because we capture that lifetime value upfront because our lifetime value, I think, is around $170.
[00:09:43.400 --> 00:09:50.040] So if we can get someone on a $200 thing, that means that we've made $30 extra dollars than we would have from them.
[00:09:50.040 --> 00:09:52.440] So we kind of pulled that revenue forward.
[00:09:52.440 --> 00:09:58.440] I could talk to you for hours about product hiring challenges.
[00:09:58.440 --> 00:10:05.960] But I want to sort of wrap that up into one question for you, Sam, which is you're now in the business, which is doing well.
[00:10:05.960 --> 00:10:07.000] You've created a job.
[00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:10.840] A lot of people, when they get to this point, they've ended up making a job.
[00:10:10.840 --> 00:10:13.160] They're just like, do I really want to do this?
[00:10:13.160 --> 00:10:15.160] But for you, it seems like you are in this.
[00:10:15.160 --> 00:10:16.360] You are like posting about it.
[00:10:16.360 --> 00:10:17.880] You're excited about the future.
[00:10:17.880 --> 00:10:19.800] You're tackling churn head on.
[00:10:19.800 --> 00:10:29.560] How are you building this business so you enjoy it and you are having maximum fun while taking on all that risk of being an entrepreneur and still enjoy the process of doing it?
[00:10:29.560 --> 00:10:33.160] The best thing for me was, it was as I know, because I've kind of done both things.
[00:10:33.160 --> 00:10:36.440] Like in 2023, we grew our team to like seven people.
[00:10:36.440 --> 00:10:37.960] So we had a bunch of developers.
[00:10:37.960 --> 00:10:40.120] I was making absolutely no money.
[00:10:40.120 --> 00:10:45.040] And like that whole year, like we didn't really do it properly because our MRR didn't grow, right?
[00:10:44.680 --> 00:10:50.320] And like developers don't exactly add to the MRR directly, they improve your product, which might add to the MRR later.
[00:10:50.640 --> 00:10:53.520] But for me, we didn't really kind of see that needle moving.
[00:10:53.520 --> 00:10:54.400] And I was like, you know what?
[00:10:54.400 --> 00:10:58.640] This needs to be sustainable for like 20 years if we want this to work, right?
[00:10:58.640 --> 00:10:59.600] Because that's kind of our goal.
[00:10:59.600 --> 00:11:03.040] We think really long term, like, how can we run this business for forever?
[00:11:03.040 --> 00:11:08.160] And for me, it was like, well, obviously, we need to make sure that the people that are doing the important work are happy.
[00:11:08.160 --> 00:11:17.040] So it was about kind of scaling down our team a little, taking the time to actually pay ourselves a bit of money, de-risk, like take money out of the business.
[00:11:17.040 --> 00:11:24.320] So that's kind of how I'm able to do this now and think about 20 years is because I'm finally or whatever getting paid.
[00:11:24.320 --> 00:11:30.560] And it's just like, you don't need to go crazy killing yourself to invest in or keep all the money in your business and suffer personally.
[00:11:30.560 --> 00:11:35.600] Like you can de-risk, take some of that money off the table because you don't know how long your company's going to be around.
[00:11:35.760 --> 00:11:40.320] Stuff happens that's out of your control and you want to make sure personally you're financially okay.
[00:11:40.320 --> 00:11:42.320] How are you making sure you're having fun with it?
[00:11:42.560 --> 00:11:44.160] Are you working long hours?
[00:11:44.160 --> 00:11:45.440] Like how's your day set?
[00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:46.480] I'd say I work quite a bit.
[00:11:46.480 --> 00:11:55.760] I work probably most of the like maybe, I don't know, six focused hours in the morning just on design stuff and then I'll have calls with users and stuff as much as I can.
[00:11:55.760 --> 00:12:00.080] But yeah, I just really enjoy the building and the designing of things.
[00:12:00.080 --> 00:12:06.880] And again, that's the great setup about this business is I don't need to worry about the things that I don't really like too much.
[00:12:06.880 --> 00:12:10.240] But again, I'm doing things I don't like sometimes, but that's to grow the business.
[00:12:10.240 --> 00:12:14.800] And I'm doing it because it's really, really fun to grow a business and solve the problems.
[00:12:14.800 --> 00:12:16.000] It's like a video game, right?
[00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:17.840] But in real life and with real money.
[00:12:17.840 --> 00:12:18.960] So to me, that's fun.
[00:12:18.960 --> 00:12:20.560] That's some way to look at it.
[00:12:20.560 --> 00:12:22.800] Real life, real money, just a video game.
[00:12:22.800 --> 00:12:25.440] Sam, I want to wrap up on this last sort of topic.
[00:12:25.440 --> 00:12:29.800] And hopefully, people can come away feeling a bit inspired about writing.
[00:12:29.040 --> 00:12:33.400] I'm a big proponent of people writing and sharing their thoughts on the internet.
[00:12:29.520 --> 00:12:34.920] You have a product for it.
[00:12:35.240 --> 00:12:41.960] How can we inspire some people to get writing on TypeShare, sharing their content, resources?
[00:12:42.520 --> 00:12:45.080] What can people take away from this if they want to get started?
[00:12:45.080 --> 00:12:49.800] I'll just give one bit of advice, which is that nobody cares as much as you think they do.
[00:12:49.800 --> 00:12:55.160] Nobody's waiting for you to publish something on Twitter, your whatever, your thousand followers, however many it may be.
[00:12:55.160 --> 00:12:58.280] Nobody is holding their breath waiting for you to publish something.
[00:12:58.280 --> 00:13:04.760] And that can seem a little like discouraging, but when you think about it, it's like that's an amazing playground for exploring what works.
[00:13:04.760 --> 00:13:11.000] And that's what we kind of encourage at TypeShare: you publish a lot of stuff, see what works, and do more like that.
[00:13:11.000 --> 00:13:23.000] So that's probably my one main piece of advice: just please, if you're trying to write online, you need to publish a lot more because you're not going to find one writer that you look up to who hasn't published tens of thousands of times online.
[00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:27.080] So just publish every day, publish consistently, and stick at it for a long time, right?
[00:13:27.080 --> 00:13:30.760] Like don't just expect success in a few weeks or a month or even a year.
[00:13:30.760 --> 00:13:34.840] Like stick with it, publish all the time, and you'll see success if you can do that.
[00:13:34.840 --> 00:13:36.920] What about some resources, Sam?
[00:13:36.920 --> 00:13:39.800] Apart from TypeShare's templates, where can people learn?
[00:13:39.800 --> 00:13:41.480] Should they do ship 30 for 30?
[00:13:41.480 --> 00:13:42.760] Should they read a book?
[00:13:43.080 --> 00:13:51.880] Yeah, there's a great guide at startwritingonline.com, which will just basically, it's like a 13,000-word ultimate guide on how you can start writing online.
[00:13:52.360 --> 00:13:57.480] And that is just like, you'll see a lot of the stuff that I talk about, a lot of stuff that TypeShare kind of promotes is in there.
[00:13:57.480 --> 00:14:09.720] So if you're looking for our very opinionated opinions on how you should write, because we think there are right ways and we think there are 100% wrong ways to do this, you can go to startwritingonline.com to look at that stuff.
[00:14:10.360 --> 00:14:11.640] Sam, you've been a great guest.
[00:14:11.640 --> 00:14:16.240] I end every episode on three recommendations, a book, a podcast, and Indie Hacker.
[00:14:16.240 --> 00:14:17.200] What have you got for me?
[00:14:14.920 --> 00:14:21.760] Probably my favorite one is Poor Charlie's Almanac by Charlie Munger.
[00:14:21.840 --> 00:14:24.080] I read that earlier last year, earlier this year.
[00:14:24.080 --> 00:14:26.080] Podcast, I really like Rework.
[00:14:26.080 --> 00:14:29.760] It's by the Basecamp founders, like Jason Freed.
[00:14:29.760 --> 00:14:30.640] And what was the last one?
[00:14:30.640 --> 00:14:31.920] Indie Hacker, Entrepreneur.
[00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:32.640] This might be obvious.
[00:14:32.640 --> 00:14:37.600] I don't really know kind of how mainstream he is now, but Dimitro Krausen or Crossen, I think is his name.
[00:14:37.920 --> 00:14:39.600] He runs Screenshot One.
[00:14:39.920 --> 00:14:43.840] I mean, I use him as an example because, like, that company is super simple.
[00:14:43.840 --> 00:14:46.480] I pay for it with TypeShare, and like, I will never churn from it.
[00:14:46.480 --> 00:14:47.920] He is like the most amazing support.
[00:14:47.920 --> 00:14:49.520] He's super friendly on Twitter.
[00:14:49.520 --> 00:14:52.000] Sam, thank you so much for coming on this episode of Indiebites.
[00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:52.320] Perfect.
[00:14:52.320 --> 00:14:53.920] Thanks a lot for having me, James.
[00:14:53.920 --> 00:14:56.560] Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Indiebites.
[00:14:56.560 --> 00:15:00.320] And as always, a big thank you to my sponsor, Email Otipus, for making the show happen.
[00:15:00.320 --> 00:15:01.680] If you enjoyed the episode, I'd love it.
[00:15:01.680 --> 00:15:05.760] If you left review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, it really does help me out.
[00:15:05.760 --> 00:15:08.080] See you in the next episode.

Prompt 2: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 3: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 4: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Full Transcript

[00:00:01.280 --> 00:00:09.200] That's something I encourage every indie hacker to do: partner with creators who have an audience or who can market your business.
[00:00:09.200 --> 00:00:13.760] We would never get to the revenue where we are now because I gave up two-thirds of the business to them for free.
[00:00:13.760 --> 00:00:18.800] Hello, and welcome back to Indie Bytes, the podcast for writing you stories of fellow indie hackers in 15 minutes or less.
[00:00:18.800 --> 00:00:24.880] Today, I'm joined by Sam Shaw, who's the co-founder of Typeshare, a writing platform made to create and publish texts across the internet.
[00:00:24.880 --> 00:00:33.040] Typeshare has made over $1 million in revenue since it was started in 2021 with over 80,000 users, currently at $34,000 MRR.
[00:00:33.040 --> 00:00:39.600] I'm speaking to Sam to find out how he started Typeshare as the first of 12 startups he was planning to build and what made this one stick.
[00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:42.400] Before we get into this episode, I'd like to thank my sponsor, Email Octopus.
[00:00:42.480 --> 00:00:49.680] EmailOctopus are an email platform focused on affordability with a very generous free plan and ease of use without some of the bloated features that other email apps have.
[00:00:49.680 --> 00:00:55.200] So you can focus on shipping and growing your audience, which regular listeners will know is essential for growth in those early days.
[00:00:55.200 --> 00:01:00.720] So to get started with an email platform that just gets out of the way, you can contact up to 2,500 people for free.
[00:01:00.720 --> 00:01:04.160] Head to emailoctopus.com or hit the link in the show notes.
[00:01:04.160 --> 00:01:06.000] Let's get into this chat with Sam.
[00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:07.200] Sam, welcome to the pod.
[00:01:07.200 --> 00:01:07.920] How are you doing?
[00:01:07.920 --> 00:01:08.960] I am doing great, James.
[00:01:08.960 --> 00:01:09.920] It's awesome to be here.
[00:01:09.920 --> 00:01:10.960] Thanks for having me.
[00:01:10.960 --> 00:01:16.400] Now, I get the pleasure of telling the TypeShare story because you have not done any podcasts before.
[00:01:16.400 --> 00:01:19.040] So we can start off with the background, Sam.
[00:01:19.280 --> 00:01:20.400] Where have you come from?
[00:01:20.400 --> 00:01:21.520] Did you have a job?
[00:01:21.520 --> 00:01:22.560] Are you an engineer?
[00:01:22.560 --> 00:01:24.160] Are you a product person?
[00:01:24.160 --> 00:01:26.240] How do you start all this indie hacking stuff?
[00:01:26.240 --> 00:01:31.120] Yeah, I mean, for my entire life, it's always been like, I'm never going to get a real job.
[00:01:31.120 --> 00:01:32.640] I'm going to do my own thing.
[00:01:32.640 --> 00:01:36.960] Like, I remember when I was a kid, I grew up on a farm and I remember my very first business.
[00:01:36.960 --> 00:01:38.960] It was literally called Pooh for You.
[00:01:38.960 --> 00:01:44.000] And we would shovel manure into these bags, and my mom would drive them into town and we'd sell them.
[00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:47.120] So I'd sell them to like my violin teacher or people at my school.
[00:01:47.120 --> 00:01:51.760] I probably made like five bucks doing that, but honestly, that was the first bit of money I ever made doing stuff myself.
[00:01:51.760 --> 00:01:54.960] And it didn't matter what it was, shoveling shit into a bag.
[00:01:54.960 --> 00:01:57.840] It was like, okay, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.
[00:01:57.840 --> 00:01:59.360] At least my own thing.
[00:01:59.360 --> 00:02:03.320] And I don't know, I just never really been the get-a-real job kind of guy.
[00:02:03.640 --> 00:02:11.320] Okay, so having a look in some of your previous ventures, Typeshares, obviously the one that you start, you're 26 now, started it in 2021.
[00:02:11.320 --> 00:02:15.640] So what were the things in your early 20s that you were starting and playing around with?
[00:02:15.640 --> 00:02:16.920] I'm seeing Lunar Loyalty.
[00:02:16.920 --> 00:02:18.200] I'm seeing Wavium.
[00:02:18.200 --> 00:02:20.040] Now, I was not technical at all.
[00:02:20.040 --> 00:02:21.720] I went to business school.
[00:02:21.800 --> 00:02:32.200] I didn't know how to code or anything, but like I spent most of my time in business school in the back of the class on my laptop, like messing around with WordPress or no-code tools or like web flow.
[00:02:32.200 --> 00:02:37.960] So yeah, lunar loyalty was really like every little city or whatever has a kind of a main street, right, with these small businesses.
[00:02:38.120 --> 00:02:47.160] The idea is I would go talk to these businesses and say, hey, if you kind of join this citywide loyalty program, people can earn and spend points at every different place.
[00:02:47.160 --> 00:02:55.880] So you could spend like 10 different restaurants downtown, earn like one pool of collective points, and then redeem those for gift cards at other, at really any downtown store.
[00:02:55.880 --> 00:02:58.840] So I spent most of my time in business school trying to build that idea.
[00:02:58.840 --> 00:03:01.800] Like, I think we ran that for like a year and a half.
[00:03:01.800 --> 00:03:10.440] Never made any money with it because I was doing what I now think is completely wrong, which is spending years building something before I had even gone downtown.
[00:03:10.600 --> 00:03:22.280] Like really what I should have should have done in hindsight is if I wanted to make that business a success, was go downtown, knock on every single door until I had like 100 businesses agree to pay me 50 bucks a month or whatever it is.
[00:03:22.280 --> 00:03:24.200] And then I say, okay, I'll be back in a month.
[00:03:24.200 --> 00:03:26.520] And then I come back in a month with the product, right?
[00:03:26.520 --> 00:03:28.040] Like that's how I do it.
[00:03:28.040 --> 00:03:31.560] Yeah, and that failed and that led me to want to do the 12 startups in 12 months thing.
[00:03:31.560 --> 00:03:32.520] Talk to me about that then.
[00:03:32.520 --> 00:03:34.200] Why the 12 startups in 12 months?
[00:03:34.200 --> 00:03:44.600] I've heard actually a lot of successful founders do this, but not a lot of successful founders do their first project in the 12 startups that ends up being the one that's a success.
[00:03:44.600 --> 00:03:45.040] Yeah.
[00:03:44.760 --> 00:03:48.720] It being the first one is probably 95% luck.
[00:03:49.040 --> 00:03:57.760] But the reason for the 12 startups in 12 months thing was kind of what I've been saying before is I'm really fed up with how I had done things.
[00:03:57.760 --> 00:04:01.680] Like, I hadn't made any money and I was like, okay, wait, I've graduated school.
[00:04:01.680 --> 00:04:05.040] I need to actually make money if I want to be able to do this long term.
[00:04:05.040 --> 00:04:06.800] So I kind of flipped it the other way.
[00:04:06.800 --> 00:04:14.480] I was like, okay, instead of spending years building things, if I do 12 and 12, then I'm going to be forced to build or sell something in a month.
[00:04:14.480 --> 00:04:16.640] And if it doesn't make revenue, I move on to the next.
[00:04:16.640 --> 00:04:22.800] Yeah, so TypeShare, I was just like, okay, what's a super simple idea that I don't have to really necessarily build before I can sell?
[00:04:22.800 --> 00:04:24.000] And it was like, okay, whatever.
[00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:26.480] I see people sharing these images of text online.
[00:04:26.480 --> 00:04:27.840] And I was like, okay, how are they doing that?
[00:04:27.840 --> 00:04:29.440] Most of them are going to like Canva.
[00:04:29.440 --> 00:04:32.880] And like Canva is not really a writing tool, or at least it wasn't then.
[00:04:32.880 --> 00:04:35.760] So it was pretty, I assume that might be a little bit of a frustration for people.
[00:04:35.760 --> 00:04:40.640] So I was like, okay, what if it's just a website with a text editor that you can make an image of your writing look nice?
[00:04:40.640 --> 00:04:42.160] And it's a super simple idea.
[00:04:42.160 --> 00:04:45.200] And I tried to sell it before building any of it.
[00:04:45.200 --> 00:04:46.400] And that's kind of how that started.
[00:04:46.400 --> 00:04:49.520] So how did you go about like building it if you're not technical?
[00:04:49.520 --> 00:04:51.840] Yeah, that was another big thing for the 12 and 12.
[00:04:51.840 --> 00:04:56.480] It's like, I need to learn how to code if I want to be able to do this stuff myself, right?
[00:04:56.480 --> 00:05:00.320] Because I had done stuff with co-founders in the past and I was a little frustrated.
[00:05:00.320 --> 00:05:03.120] I just want to do something by myself and see how that goes.
[00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:05.440] So I basically just googled everything.
[00:05:05.440 --> 00:05:07.120] I was like, okay, how do I make a button?
[00:05:07.120 --> 00:05:09.520] How do I center a button on a page?
[00:05:09.520 --> 00:05:12.400] And you kind of just take that and you kind of add up.
[00:05:12.400 --> 00:05:16.080] So I was like, okay, how can I put a text editor into this app?
[00:05:16.080 --> 00:05:19.600] So, how did you get the first signs that this was going to be the thing that was going to take off?
[00:05:19.600 --> 00:05:21.760] Did you ever get to slash that number two?
[00:05:21.760 --> 00:05:22.400] No.
[00:05:22.720 --> 00:05:29.440] The very first thing I did, when I had the idea that morning, I was like, okay, I'm just going to write a tweet saying, first startup is this.
[00:05:29.440 --> 00:05:35.080] And that got like, for B, it got like 30 likes, which for me was a lot because I had like, I don't know, like 50 followers or something.
[00:05:35.400 --> 00:05:39.080] So that was like the first tiny bit of indication that this had something.
[00:05:39.080 --> 00:05:41.560] So you launch, you get some likes.
[00:05:41.560 --> 00:05:47.400] Talk to me about the growth where you decided, right, this thing has legs.
[00:05:47.400 --> 00:05:50.120] I'm not going to make the other businesses.
[00:05:50.120 --> 00:06:02.040] My whole goal after I got the tweets or the tweet with 30 likes or whatever was, okay, I need to build this as quick as possible, but I don't really want to build too much stuff before I know people are willing to pay for it.
[00:06:02.040 --> 00:06:04.760] Because they might just be like, yeah, likes on Twitter or one thing.
[00:06:04.760 --> 00:06:10.680] But then if I launch it, people are like, it's a big step to actually put your credit card number in and press subscribe or whatever.
[00:06:10.680 --> 00:06:19.800] So what I did is before I'd really built any of the advanced features, I just sort of had the MVP where you could change the background color or change your font and put in some text.
[00:06:19.800 --> 00:06:22.600] That was like the MVP and that probably took me a couple weeks.
[00:06:22.600 --> 00:06:26.840] And then all I did was in the top right corner, I just put a button that said like upgrade to pro.
[00:06:26.840 --> 00:06:32.200] And you click that and it just explains what pro is and that's none of those things are built.
[00:06:32.200 --> 00:06:36.840] But there was a button there that's like buy for 150 bucks lifetime subscription.
[00:06:36.840 --> 00:06:43.320] And when I launched that, I got in a week, maybe $2,500 in pre-orders.
[00:06:43.320 --> 00:06:45.880] And that was like, I made my first dollar online.
[00:06:45.880 --> 00:06:47.400] I was like, okay, this is 100%.
[00:06:47.400 --> 00:06:48.520] There's something here.
[00:06:48.520 --> 00:06:49.160] This is the thing.
[00:06:49.160 --> 00:06:50.520] I got to focus on this.
[00:06:50.840 --> 00:06:59.240] So your first sort of year looked like seven months to get to 1,000 MR, four more to get to 10K, and then just another month to get to 15K.
[00:06:59.240 --> 00:07:02.760] So in a year, just over a year, you're at 15K MRR.
[00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:06.920] What were some of those inflection points and growth throughout that for you, Sam?
[00:07:06.920 --> 00:07:14.280] The biggest thing for me, 100%, was partnering with Dickie Bush and Nicholas Cole, who are the creators of Ship 30 for 30.
[00:07:14.280 --> 00:07:22.240] And like, that's something I encourage every indie hacker to do: is partner with creators who have an audience or who can market your business.
[00:07:22.560 --> 00:07:28.800] Because for me, like, I'm not really interested or that necessarily that good at marketing, let's say, and I don't have a big audience.
[00:07:28.800 --> 00:07:37.120] But like, partnering with people who have that reach is so powerful because they can focus on what they're good at, and I can focus on what I'm good at, which is building things.
[00:07:37.120 --> 00:07:38.720] And I think that's kind of like the indie hacker dream.
[00:07:38.720 --> 00:07:42.720] Because you always hear people like, oh, it's like, I got to spend time on marketing now.
[00:07:42.720 --> 00:07:43.520] It's like, oh, I got it.
[00:07:43.520 --> 00:07:46.080] Like, and you'd rather just be kind of building the product.
[00:07:46.080 --> 00:07:52.000] And like for me, I can spend 100% of the time building the product because I've just partnered with people that can market it.
[00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:53.360] And that exploded the business.
[00:07:53.360 --> 00:07:58.960] And I would have never, we would never get to the revenue where we are now because I gave up two-thirds of the business to them for free.
[00:07:58.960 --> 00:08:02.240] And to me, at the time, I was like, well, I'm giving up two-thirds of the business for free.
[00:08:02.240 --> 00:08:07.040] It's like, it doesn't seem right when we already had like a few thousand MRR because I was like, this is worth something.
[00:08:07.040 --> 00:08:13.120] But in hindsight, I'm getting an immense amount of value because I'm bringing on two people that can market the shit out of this thing.
[00:08:13.120 --> 00:08:16.960] How have you dealt with some of the challenges within the business?
[00:08:16.960 --> 00:08:20.960] One of which I saw recently was dealing with stalling MRR growth.
[00:08:20.960 --> 00:08:27.600] So at the start of last year, your MRR was stalling and you made one pricing change, which is like a big change to make.
[00:08:27.600 --> 00:08:29.520] Do you have any examples other than that?
[00:08:29.520 --> 00:08:32.080] Or you can just talk about that particular example.
[00:08:32.080 --> 00:08:37.680] Yeah, that's kind of the tricky thing they don't tell you about when you start this stuff is that the goalposts always move, right?
[00:08:37.680 --> 00:08:40.000] So like, I'm so happy when I get my first dollar.
[00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:41.440] And then, oh, we're at 10K MRR.
[00:08:41.440 --> 00:08:43.280] Like, that was always my dream at 10K.
[00:08:43.280 --> 00:08:47.680] And now we're at 34,000, which is like an amazing accomplishment, right?
[00:08:47.680 --> 00:08:50.560] But to me, it's like, I still just kind of see the problem.
[00:08:50.560 --> 00:08:57.360] But yeah, for stalling MRR, like you reach a point where your product can only sustain so much MRR, right?
[00:08:57.360 --> 00:09:02.680] Like there's a, there's a, there's a theoretical max, and that just depends on how many people are churning.
[00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:12.840] So our issue and the reason we're stalling is not because we're bad at marketing or we're bringing, like, we're bringing like $5,000 of new business into the doors every single month.
[00:09:12.840 --> 00:09:22.200] But we've reached a point now because of our size that we're also losing $5,000 or $4,000, $4,000 or $5,000 of business every month because of our churn.
[00:09:22.200 --> 00:09:31.080] And just to quickly answer your last question about the pricing thing, yeah, we basically had a $20 a month plan and we launched a $200 a year plan.
[00:09:31.080 --> 00:09:32.920] So it's actually better for the user.
[00:09:32.920 --> 00:09:36.760] They get a month free if they do the $200 a year thing.
[00:09:36.760 --> 00:09:43.400] And it's better for us because we capture that lifetime value upfront because our lifetime value, I think, is around $170.
[00:09:43.400 --> 00:09:50.040] So if we can get someone on a $200 thing, that means that we've made $30 extra dollars than we would have from them.
[00:09:50.040 --> 00:09:52.440] So we kind of pulled that revenue forward.
[00:09:52.440 --> 00:09:58.440] I could talk to you for hours about product hiring challenges.
[00:09:58.440 --> 00:10:05.960] But I want to sort of wrap that up into one question for you, Sam, which is you're now in the business, which is doing well.
[00:10:05.960 --> 00:10:07.000] You've created a job.
[00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:10.840] A lot of people, when they get to this point, they've ended up making a job.
[00:10:10.840 --> 00:10:13.160] They're just like, do I really want to do this?
[00:10:13.160 --> 00:10:15.160] But for you, it seems like you are in this.
[00:10:15.160 --> 00:10:16.360] You are like posting about it.
[00:10:16.360 --> 00:10:17.880] You're excited about the future.
[00:10:17.880 --> 00:10:19.800] You're tackling churn head on.
[00:10:19.800 --> 00:10:29.560] How are you building this business so you enjoy it and you are having maximum fun while taking on all that risk of being an entrepreneur and still enjoy the process of doing it?
[00:10:29.560 --> 00:10:33.160] The best thing for me was, it was as I know, because I've kind of done both things.
[00:10:33.160 --> 00:10:36.440] Like in 2023, we grew our team to like seven people.
[00:10:36.440 --> 00:10:37.960] So we had a bunch of developers.
[00:10:37.960 --> 00:10:40.120] I was making absolutely no money.
[00:10:40.120 --> 00:10:45.040] And like that whole year, like we didn't really do it properly because our MRR didn't grow, right?
[00:10:44.680 --> 00:10:50.320] And like developers don't exactly add to the MRR directly, they improve your product, which might add to the MRR later.
[00:10:50.640 --> 00:10:53.520] But for me, we didn't really kind of see that needle moving.
[00:10:53.520 --> 00:10:54.400] And I was like, you know what?
[00:10:54.400 --> 00:10:58.640] This needs to be sustainable for like 20 years if we want this to work, right?
[00:10:58.640 --> 00:10:59.600] Because that's kind of our goal.
[00:10:59.600 --> 00:11:03.040] We think really long term, like, how can we run this business for forever?
[00:11:03.040 --> 00:11:08.160] And for me, it was like, well, obviously, we need to make sure that the people that are doing the important work are happy.
[00:11:08.160 --> 00:11:17.040] So it was about kind of scaling down our team a little, taking the time to actually pay ourselves a bit of money, de-risk, like take money out of the business.
[00:11:17.040 --> 00:11:24.320] So that's kind of how I'm able to do this now and think about 20 years is because I'm finally or whatever getting paid.
[00:11:24.320 --> 00:11:30.560] And it's just like, you don't need to go crazy killing yourself to invest in or keep all the money in your business and suffer personally.
[00:11:30.560 --> 00:11:35.600] Like you can de-risk, take some of that money off the table because you don't know how long your company's going to be around.
[00:11:35.760 --> 00:11:40.320] Stuff happens that's out of your control and you want to make sure personally you're financially okay.
[00:11:40.320 --> 00:11:42.320] How are you making sure you're having fun with it?
[00:11:42.560 --> 00:11:44.160] Are you working long hours?
[00:11:44.160 --> 00:11:45.440] Like how's your day set?
[00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:46.480] I'd say I work quite a bit.
[00:11:46.480 --> 00:11:55.760] I work probably most of the like maybe, I don't know, six focused hours in the morning just on design stuff and then I'll have calls with users and stuff as much as I can.
[00:11:55.760 --> 00:12:00.080] But yeah, I just really enjoy the building and the designing of things.
[00:12:00.080 --> 00:12:06.880] And again, that's the great setup about this business is I don't need to worry about the things that I don't really like too much.
[00:12:06.880 --> 00:12:10.240] But again, I'm doing things I don't like sometimes, but that's to grow the business.
[00:12:10.240 --> 00:12:14.800] And I'm doing it because it's really, really fun to grow a business and solve the problems.
[00:12:14.800 --> 00:12:16.000] It's like a video game, right?
[00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:17.840] But in real life and with real money.
[00:12:17.840 --> 00:12:18.960] So to me, that's fun.
[00:12:18.960 --> 00:12:20.560] That's some way to look at it.
[00:12:20.560 --> 00:12:22.800] Real life, real money, just a video game.
[00:12:22.800 --> 00:12:25.440] Sam, I want to wrap up on this last sort of topic.
[00:12:25.440 --> 00:12:29.800] And hopefully, people can come away feeling a bit inspired about writing.
[00:12:29.040 --> 00:12:33.400] I'm a big proponent of people writing and sharing their thoughts on the internet.
[00:12:29.520 --> 00:12:34.920] You have a product for it.
[00:12:35.240 --> 00:12:41.960] How can we inspire some people to get writing on TypeShare, sharing their content, resources?
[00:12:42.520 --> 00:12:45.080] What can people take away from this if they want to get started?
[00:12:45.080 --> 00:12:49.800] I'll just give one bit of advice, which is that nobody cares as much as you think they do.
[00:12:49.800 --> 00:12:55.160] Nobody's waiting for you to publish something on Twitter, your whatever, your thousand followers, however many it may be.
[00:12:55.160 --> 00:12:58.280] Nobody is holding their breath waiting for you to publish something.
[00:12:58.280 --> 00:13:04.760] And that can seem a little like discouraging, but when you think about it, it's like that's an amazing playground for exploring what works.
[00:13:04.760 --> 00:13:11.000] And that's what we kind of encourage at TypeShare: you publish a lot of stuff, see what works, and do more like that.
[00:13:11.000 --> 00:13:23.000] So that's probably my one main piece of advice: just please, if you're trying to write online, you need to publish a lot more because you're not going to find one writer that you look up to who hasn't published tens of thousands of times online.
[00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:27.080] So just publish every day, publish consistently, and stick at it for a long time, right?
[00:13:27.080 --> 00:13:30.760] Like don't just expect success in a few weeks or a month or even a year.
[00:13:30.760 --> 00:13:34.840] Like stick with it, publish all the time, and you'll see success if you can do that.
[00:13:34.840 --> 00:13:36.920] What about some resources, Sam?
[00:13:36.920 --> 00:13:39.800] Apart from TypeShare's templates, where can people learn?
[00:13:39.800 --> 00:13:41.480] Should they do ship 30 for 30?
[00:13:41.480 --> 00:13:42.760] Should they read a book?
[00:13:43.080 --> 00:13:51.880] Yeah, there's a great guide at startwritingonline.com, which will just basically, it's like a 13,000-word ultimate guide on how you can start writing online.
[00:13:52.360 --> 00:13:57.480] And that is just like, you'll see a lot of the stuff that I talk about, a lot of stuff that TypeShare kind of promotes is in there.
[00:13:57.480 --> 00:14:09.720] So if you're looking for our very opinionated opinions on how you should write, because we think there are right ways and we think there are 100% wrong ways to do this, you can go to startwritingonline.com to look at that stuff.
[00:14:10.360 --> 00:14:11.640] Sam, you've been a great guest.
[00:14:11.640 --> 00:14:16.240] I end every episode on three recommendations, a book, a podcast, and Indie Hacker.
[00:14:16.240 --> 00:14:17.200] What have you got for me?
[00:14:14.920 --> 00:14:21.760] Probably my favorite one is Poor Charlie's Almanac by Charlie Munger.
[00:14:21.840 --> 00:14:24.080] I read that earlier last year, earlier this year.
[00:14:24.080 --> 00:14:26.080] Podcast, I really like Rework.
[00:14:26.080 --> 00:14:29.760] It's by the Basecamp founders, like Jason Freed.
[00:14:29.760 --> 00:14:30.640] And what was the last one?
[00:14:30.640 --> 00:14:31.920] Indie Hacker, Entrepreneur.
[00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:32.640] This might be obvious.
[00:14:32.640 --> 00:14:37.600] I don't really know kind of how mainstream he is now, but Dimitro Krausen or Crossen, I think is his name.
[00:14:37.920 --> 00:14:39.600] He runs Screenshot One.
[00:14:39.920 --> 00:14:43.840] I mean, I use him as an example because, like, that company is super simple.
[00:14:43.840 --> 00:14:46.480] I pay for it with TypeShare, and like, I will never churn from it.
[00:14:46.480 --> 00:14:47.920] He is like the most amazing support.
[00:14:47.920 --> 00:14:49.520] He's super friendly on Twitter.
[00:14:49.520 --> 00:14:52.000] Sam, thank you so much for coming on this episode of Indiebites.
[00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:52.320] Perfect.
[00:14:52.320 --> 00:14:53.920] Thanks a lot for having me, James.
[00:14:53.920 --> 00:14:56.560] Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Indiebites.
[00:14:56.560 --> 00:15:00.320] And as always, a big thank you to my sponsor, Email Otipus, for making the show happen.
[00:15:00.320 --> 00:15:01.680] If you enjoyed the episode, I'd love it.
[00:15:01.680 --> 00:15:05.760] If you left review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, it really does help me out.
[00:15:05.760 --> 00:15:08.080] See you in the next episode.