What's up, everybody? This is Courtland from Andy hackers dot com, and you're listening to the Indy Hackers podcast on this show. I talked to the founders of profitable Internet businesses, and I try to get a sense of what it's like to be in their shoes. How did they get to where they are today? Had to make decisions both of their companies and other personal lives and what exactly, makes their businesses tick on the goal here, as always, so that the rest of us can learn from it examples and go on to build our own profitable Internet businesses. Today I am talking to Greg Rog, the founder of a website called Learn You ex Great. Welcome to the show.

Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks

for having me. So we got coffee when you were in San Francisco a few months back, and I believe at the time he told me that learned us is averaging over $10,000 a month and revenue and you're only working on it basically one day a month. Is that true?

Yeah, that's partly true. It's nice Thio, talk about this and think about this this way. And this is how it works right now. I basically spent 21 day improving Learn your ex, the recording, your tutorials, basically updating the content that I have on the site and also answers answering some questions on So the things that are notes automated that I have to answer myself. But beforehand I had to spend a lot of time creating the contents. I probably spent about 1000 hours to create the content and create the website and put it life. And from there I made everything so that it's running on out of pilots, and I don't have to really work that much on this project anymore.

Supercool. So it's like the closest thing to passive income, and you can get to a day. A month is not that much to keep it maintained and keep it up to date and even 1000 hours. I think that's about six months of working 40 hours a week. What is a pretty reasonable time writing to create something that could basically make you 10 grand a month on autopilot? So I really want to dive into the how you actually build a business. Is that so passive? Because they're pretty rarely talk to somebody who's done that. But first, let's talk about what it is exactly. So learn you x, that iose, the website you X stands for user experience design. I think pretty much everyone knows what a user interfaces. But not everybody knows what user experiences. So in your words, what's the difference between you, I and you X

I'm gonna explain it and with a short story. So imagine you have a nap and you I iss user interface. So it's everything that you can see. So it's the colors that typography basically, how it's moved. It works. But you exes, bro. There. So if I give you this up and after five minutes, I just ask you. Okay, how was it? And you give me an answer. That's basically you X. That's how you feel about the up. That's the overall experience.

So you might say that you are is basically a sap set off you x u Ex's brother, Aunty wise. It's just the interface, the colors, the typography and stuff like this.

US is the overall experience, and your website is literally teaching people how to get better at user experience design through videos that you record yourself.

Yeah, so that's basically so that that's a library off high quality courses that I recorded myself and the courses cover you. I designed tools and also some topics from U Ex. So you have tools like sketch and framer and principal will be experienced designs. So now it's the big city, and the difference between learn your axe and than other resource is I really focused to bring Cree award examples and some beautiful examples and some practical approach to learn you I design. And this was the idea that actually came pretty, actually. So this is a mix before they really love the wing. Basically, you're I designed an education, which I have been doing for many years now, and I started by defining the problem. So I basically thought that there is a lack of materials for professionals, but also people who are willing to be professionals issue Y U ex designers that there is a lack off knowledge in terms of the newest tools. There's a lot of tools that are just basically brand new, and they have to constantly update their knowledge.

But on the other hand, there were there weren't a lot of materials that were create quality and really logically connected, specific, like well paced, engaging and good quality. So I spent a lot of time creating the continent preparing the content that that was the main part from this 1000 hours. And then it took me a long white to record them. I really it was one of the toughest thinks I guess, in my life to record all those courses. But I feel that this thing was really the the advantage of this project off and how and why it went so well is I really put the content first, and the quality of the contract concentrate matters

here. I talked to Vlad Mandolin, the founder of Web Flow, recently, and he was telling me how he was inspired by the single YouTube video of a guy named Brent Victor giving a talk about programming and design environments that kind of launch his entire career. And I think about my sort of journey is an anti hacker, and I was inspired back in 2008 by a video of David Hunter Meyer Hanson giving a talk at Y Combinator started school. He's basically yelling at all the sort of founders saying, Hey, you don't have to raise money You could just build something that generates revenue on the Internet and do it yourself. Yeah, Is there anything like that that inspired G? Was there any sort of talk our person, our idea that got you started on this course?

To be honest, I don't think that there was a single thing for me. It's I've been doing this for years and I've been seeing some patterns. I also saw some leverage that I have, because I I used to record courses for years now, and I've been designing your wise and I've been searching materials for myself. Basically, there was no one inspiration I got, but I really feel that this was pretty natural and apart from this. If you I'm talking about the YouTube videos and getting inspiration from there. There's also a thing that was really unique about learn you acts because I basically started a YouTube channel for learn You X with four videos and after probably after month, I got about five or 6000 subscriptions from those four videos alone, and one of them he 100,000 views. I guess so. I think that there is. Ah, this content first approach is pretty prominent on learn your exits.

This is something really valuable. And I really made this huge effort to create the next better content. And it it kind of made off with the videos on YouTube as well. You don't have to create hundreds of them. You just to create four. And you congrats. Re big audience from there. In my case, I believe over 10,000 subscriptions on this channel.

What was your plan when you went into creating these YouTube videos where you're like, Hey, I'm gonna make these videos. And if they work out and do really well, I'm gonna build an entire website full of courses and make money off of that and help people learn. Or were you doing it for some of the reason

I already have had a plan? I already knew that I'm gonna create this website with those courses. I did the research before I knew that people are paying attention to the noodles and there is a lack of materials like this. So I already knew that I will do it in some way. But I started with some easy steps that would validate the idea. So I first put some medium articles. I recorded those videos on DDE that I combined them basically mixed medium articles with, ah, YouTube content, which was like kind of like recycling this content and with it went pretty successful. Medium. There's a little teeth. They're also because you cannot. There's no way to put, for example, some kindof pixel inside your medium articles. But if you em but YouTube video,

you can then re market those people because you can create the Google lab that will re market people who watch your video. And that's how you can basically amber video in inside of medium article and then reach out to those people. So what I try to do initially is basically, I started recording. But in the same time, I tried to evaluate the idea that I had, and I tried to vie dated as much as possible. Before I put you know, a lot of effort into creating all the content

you say The idea you had back then is different than what you actually ended up with, or did all the evidence, all the validation and test you ran really just confirm sort of your first shot At what? The idea. What looked like

what I managed to do with this, um validation techniques was mainly getting out to an audience and gathering some audience from there and not really validating the idea which which didn't change that much. I thought that someone will give me like, some advice is someone give me hints on what they want What? What really has to be done. But no one was really doing that. If you ask people, what do they want? They rarely tell you. So this is also true. And, um, you have to ask better questions or just observe what they do and how they behave and then decide what they want. So I basically stick to my plan and I think that the side effects off putting all those materials out was that I quickly built some subscribers I offered. I always ask them for an e mail or or I basically has them to subscribe. Thio some on the medium. You cannot ask for email.

They don't have like that. They can't even email. But you can embed some form or something like this. So there were people pretty exciting about what I do already. They It wasn't like I learned something from they won. I tried to reach the audience. I tried to communicate. It's a bit earlier.

So you weren't really validating whether or not this is the right product ability. Kind of features that should have rather you're validating. Are people excited about this? You know where the people you're trying to write for Does your message resonate with them today? Exist in the kind of numbers that you need for this to be successful. When are they gonna subscribe and watch your videos?

Yeah, you might say that. My initial idea of I dating it and sending out some forms, what do you want? Was like, No, it didn't really work out. It was like more telling people that. Look, here I am. I'm gonna do something. Uh, I'm going to check whether this is interesting enough. If this register enough big audience sent. Yeah, that was it.

So I've been talking to Andy actors obviously for years now. I got lots of meet ups and I ask people who haven't gotten started yet. You know why? Why haven't you started? Because a lot of people were super excited and energized by this idea that they can create their own online business. And it can start off as a side project and make enough money for them to basically be their own boss and be a free sort of sovereign individual. But then they still don't get started and far away. The number one reason people don't get started is because they don't know what to work on. Like I don't have any creative ideas and kind of waiting for inspiration to strike. And here you are. Ah, you've been working in ur u ex designed for a while and you look out and you say, Hey, I want to create a resource how people learn how to do this thing. But one can argue people already know how to do this thing. There's already millions of people doing you. I design is already tons of resource is for people to learn.

Why did you even in the first place, consider that this would be a viable idea? And I guess, more broadly, how can other people look out on the world and see ideas like this that are right in front of them?

Yeah, it's It's pre difficult to define what to work on if you don't have any idea. I pretty much believe that all of my good projects they began from my own urge to feel some blanks in the market and by deeply understanding the field that I'm or working with. So basically, it's like solving your own problem, except that by teaching people how to solve it, it might not be your problem anymore because you already know it. And that's pretty much off my my projects. Ah, that's pretty much before I do. I try to pass the knowledge that already helped me. So I think the best idea for the project. This is basically that you know that it's effective and you don't have to really search for some ideas on what to basically do. The things you said about no launching anything. I kind of agree that it's really just about starting something about just putting something out there. But also I'm a strong advocate off not rushing that much. I mean,

it's when you're at speed, everything is blurry outside. It's really hard to concentrate, So if you slow down and focus and at your thing and you discover too slow, then I think you can end up with really interesting product and it's always best to create a product that's an answer for your problem that solve your problem. Obviously, everyone will say that and also to make the product for people who you gonna like working with because I love you and you're his designers. There are my guys. We hang out, we basically go to the conference together and we we you know, we can talk for hours. So that's pretty much the audience I want to talk to with my product as well. I don't want to go for a product that's trendy because something you know that there is money in it, for example, and and then you end up with people who you don't really care about, that you don't really want stuck inducted them in terms of this speeding,

I think that there is more to it. There's today, start up culture is all about pushing it quick. You know, the now why she started school started again and it aims for it. And again, I think, at four weeks from idea to validation. So four weeks off work, and then you launch M V. P. And this is the market first approach. You might say if there's an exceptional market, even the crappy products, or idea what kind of stick and then as a VC, you can put a lot of money in it and a lot of resources,

and it might just play well. But But that model is basically meant to serve easies and out, Off. I know how many companies are there now for start up school, but probably 30 or 40,000 companies, so they don't really need a lot to succeed, right? So, but for you being one of them, the oats might be 1 to 10 thousands, and I don't really know a better definition of fact than this. So So at the opposite side you have this product first approach where you put a lot of effort in your product in the development of the product, and you polish it kind of polish it first, and then you launch it when it's ready, and as long as you've done your homework. So you did the research.

You're, for example, solving your problem. Talking to potential clients. The Levering Value, et cetera. You don't really need to heat this exceptional market to be really successful, right and against what's common knowledge in the Starr report. I bet that that this market is everything is. It's really for exceptional markets and notary for in the hackers will suffice with smaller markets but leash enough to to know be crashed by huge players and probably survive this way. And I really think that was the case for for learn your ex and I pretty much did it because I took this product first approach. It can be pretty dangerous if you if you think too much if you procrastinate. If you put a lot of work on Dhe, then something ends up not being re successful. But but to be honest, I've seen a lot more companies,

and you can tell me that probably because I think I've seen a lot more people succeed with this product First approach, putting a lot of work in the product, and then then the ones that just put something out to the world like a quick M V B and then tried to polish it and then try to work in it. You had a lot off guests in your podcasts. And yeah, I wonder if if you have any

thoughts on that. Well, you actually wrote a really good block Post article on any hackers years ago. I think just a couple months after you launched learn you X and you were talking about the process you went through to get the product built and how you validated the idea. And like every step along the way, it's pretty fascinating that you went super in depth about everything you learned. And I think what struck me was how meticulous you were at sort of the strategy and planning thing. You really weren't just throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what stock like you're being very thoughtful about what you're doing and why you're doing it when that didn't mean that everything necessarily worked out. But it didn't mean that, like you were aware of why things could work out. You weren't just kind of crossing your fingers and hoping that you'd get lucky. And when I interview people and talk to them about their business ideas, I see the whole gamut. I've talked to lots of people who didn't be You didn't put that much thought into what they're doing, and they kind of got lucky because the things I didn't think about work that well and I talked to, I think, fewer people who were really thoughtful about things and he planned it all out.

But I would guess that if you were to look at the denominator, which is really hard to see, like out of all the people who succeeded, because they got kind of lucky how many people tried that approach. I don't know how people are trying. It might be much like higher than the number of people who are trying to be strategic. And so, even though you might see more people who just kind of get lucky, your success ratio might be higher for the people who are planning and really trying to think things through. So I think this is It's really hard to say. I'm kind of like you have more of a meticulous planner. I gotta want to leave things to luck. I wanna make sure the product's good and I wanna understand who might mark it is, and I want to try to understand, like what the distribution channels are, what's gonna work and try to like, as best, I can come up with all three of those things together and figure out if it makes sense. And if there's any holes in their look for reasons why it won't work,

because I think it's a safe bet, right, because it's really rarely that. I think, yeah, that's one or two or three out of 30,000 companies, really, who just, uh you know, that hockey stick effect or just product market. If it's right away and it's it's safer to basically prepare yourself and to learn more about what you can do, what you can launch. And yeah, obviously, the more you do, the more products to launch. You have this.

You get this intuition. I think that I I slowly I'm slowly getting this intuition. But also, I think more and more things you realize later that they appear random. This book, it's called Black Swan. I don't know. I forgot. Yeah,

I seem to let

Yeah, so, one of the takeaway says, is that almost all of the predictions fail and big things contained that can change history. Those great things can happen as a result. Off off mixture off link events but off the unexpected events. And like the butterfly effect, right, If you take small steps, you can often reverse engineered those events and dragged them down to to to a minor cost like connecting this flapping wings off off butterfly to hurricane in China being close in New Mexico. But the thing is, it only works backwards. So you mentioned my boss Ah, medium and I This is what I do. I try to give all the knowledge, all my learnings, I have to put it out.

I just If I learned something, If I get some something valuable, I have to put it out. I have to record a course creator tutorial. I have to write a medium post and I go meticulous. But I'm not saying that everything I did there and if everything I put in the post iss good for today and this is this might be sad, but you can't establish a country establish a framework for future success from from bus things from past learnings like this. So predicting catastrophic catastrophe every time you see a butterfly is useless. But the same thing applies. Do all those things you read about how to go from $10,000 to 100,000. You know, it's it's really it's really tough to to give a good advice. And I figured out that the best advice might be the one that basically is a case study of something pretty technical. So, for example, I puts this end,

this amount of money to read it or Cora advertising, and I put the correct the same copy that I put out there for for an ad. And then I can say that from this I got that money, people signing up, that many people paying. This is something that my my teachers something, but But it's really difficult. D'oh to give some great advice is, you know,

yeah. I mean, you don't know how advice is gonna work out in the future for other people who are not you and the exact situation that you're in when you did this thing. And even when you look back on why your particular project succeeded, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to correctly analyze why it succeeded. You know, I think about the past of indie actress all the time, and sometimes I'll tell people, you know I did this thing, I did that thing. But who knows? If I didn't do that thing, if it still would have worked out, maybe it would have. It's really hard to say, Yeah, in your particular case,

I think what's interesting and consistent across all the different projects you work on is that you're really an educator. Like you said, if you learn something like it's, you have this burning desire to basically tell other people what you learned and how you did it. And education is just such a powerful force in the world. Like if you're driven to teach other people, you're probably gonna be pretty successful because people love learning. People love figure out how they could improve their lives and their careers and their relationships, and they're obviously willing to pay a lot of money to learn things. Otherwise, courses and colleges would be out of business. And so the fact that you have that kind of bent maybe if you were wrong about everything else, all your strategies and tactics didn't make sense. We're completely in the wrong direction. The fact that you've like glommed onto this desire to teach other people might be enoughto sort of swamp all the other factors and overcome.

Yeah, and I always tell it to the people because sometimes I even try to pass some knowledge. I try to teach something that I've I've just learned and had some success with it, and it's pretty powerful. But people are not really encouraged to do this because they think that there are no experts in the field. They've not. They didn't spend, like, you know, years on the topic, and they don't find themselves themselves good. Ah, teacher in the subject. They are intimidated. So I don't think it's this is the case. I pretty much, um,

I pretty much work with, with probably 100 outers here and in our studios in Poland. And, um, I've worked with experienced ones with inexperienced ones, and I often see that people are really experienced in the field. They probably have some some difficulties transferring the knowledge. They don't really see this line between basics and advanced stuff, and everything is basically easy for them. So I think that it's even better toe to teach what you've already learned so even know being an expert on it. But if you know that this brought some effect. And this, for example, Um so let's say you want to teach people how to write code. I think that even if you don't know the next frame work, if you don't know react.

But you are software engineer. You are from the developer, and you are just learning react on dhe. You are in the great position to teach this technology because you know all the problems, all the common problems that people face when they learn. So it's not necessarily great to be, you know, you can be. Obviously, you can have a lot of experience and still be an exceptional teacher. But it shouldn't intimidate you to start teaching others that you don't really have that much experience. And I keep saying this to people, and I think that everyone can teach something, has something to teach, and this is a great way to start your online business or just, you know, positive knowledge on the Internet. Now you have so many different opportunities

to do that. So in other words, if you're one of these procrastinating Andy hackers who doesn't have an idea, you can just teach something no longer having Koskie's figure out what you wanna learn are something that you're already good at and figure out a way to teach other people. What's great about teaching is there's so many different places where you can teach. You could teach people over an email newsletter you can teach people through YouTube. Videos are setting up your own website like Greg did with his courses. You can teach people over Twitter you could teach you will in person, no matter how many other schools or educational Web sites or products exist. There's always some way where you can teach people through a new channel, using your own style and their own experiences, and probably find some people are willing to pay to learn. So I think that's sort of my favorite way for people to get started with their very first business.

Yeah, that's it. That's great way to start. And also you can say that there are many courses on the topic that you want to cover, but still, it's a good thing, Thio put it out. Put the content out, and this is because people like to learn from different people also similar to them on a map. It's not necessarily a bad thing to have another course on the react or angular or whatever, because someone would, you know, like your teaching style or yourself as a teacher. And there's a lot of people out there who, who might say that I might just choose you as a teacher. So for for whatever reason, so that's always a great way to start. Yeah,

I was just in South Africa earlier this year, and it really opened my eyes to the fact that the stat something like four billion people still aren't even online yet. Like a number of people who are coming online every day who are hungry to learn things and improve their skills is massive. And like you said, they want teachers and they want things that resonate with that. You know, if you get target quarters or something that you're teaching to, like these new people or any specific nature people, they're gonna choose you over all the existing stuff because it really resonates

with them. I would also say that its free and I have experiences in that, because I also for for the past 10 years I've been the recording courses and Polish I run a pretty big website here with video courses on different topics, and it's really great to start from the local market as well. So this might be interesting things. So running the project locally, it my son Pretty weird. But initially for me, for example, I never fought off running business in English, and that might be because off, I don't know. I didn't know English so well when I started and I started pretty early. It was pre YouTube was recording things, so ah, partly it was culture. Or maybe I got it from home from my parents,

but basically I also tried to some kinds of to give back to the community that shaped me in Poland and basically gave me all the skills that I have. I learned programming I learnt design through the help of those people, and doing things locally might be really beneficial life, I guess, because there are a few reasons. But the one I find really important is how rewarding it can be. And there has been many people I met during the events and conferences who basically benefited from my work, and sometimes it somehow influenced their life, or in a positive way or they found a new job or they opened their own business and it gave me really huge drive. If I started in English, I'd probably only see comments. It's not the same, right? But I met those people. I can tell you I can tell you a story. Actually,

there's a There's a story of a guy. He retired as a fireman and he had some time to kill. So he started Thio learn technology, And at that time it was freaky Alley back in 5 2006 probably because it was pre iPhone. I've been a teenager, and I recorded the course on the ground breaking technology, which was flashlight. I don't know if you guys Yeah, I'm pretty old. Now. I realized my flash. Yeah, that was a flashlight was acknowledge that would enable you to build apps for mobile phones. It was basically a lighter version of fashion buyer that God worked for, you know, no kiosk,

old phones before iPhone. So I spent humans developing, of course. And this was, like, the most exciting times of my life. And I said, like, mobile labs, this is the nice, great things, right? but I put it online and just like a few people and holds into this course, including the firemen. But this was pretty much of a disaster. I spend a lot of time on this and no one really occurred,

right? So I've been, I think, devastated, you might say. But 10 years later, I met the same firemen and I didn't know he ma. He recognized me on one of the best offices in the war, so I met him and he basically recognized me. He ran towards me and he hugged me. And he explained that he Bridget Discourse. And he explained how the course I made kind of inspired him to start the company. And now he runs one of the biggest death shops with more by ups in hole. You know, putting something on the Internet is like it's like sending a message in the bottle across the ocean, and lots of those bottles will drown or end up being unseen.

But sometimes someone will see then and just ah returned the message right, and I bet it's true. Also for foreign, the hackers man, there are hundreds of people who can give you similar stories within the hackers, and I think you should be really proud of it.

Like the point about doing things locally like this is a local fireman who ran into an office and Poland and with any hackers. It's like not a very local project, like I did not make it for other people in San Francisco. But when I go to other parts of the world and meet all sorts of any hackers working on their own projects, there's just nothing that could really replace the feeling of meeting somebody in person who's seen what you've done online. And I wonder how much you know having that experience has motivated you to do what you're doing now with learn you accident or other projects. You know, what is it that gets you out of bed to work on these projects? And how much of that is a component of helping other people on how much of it is a component of helping yourself in improving your

own life? That's a valid question, actually. I fought about it a lot. Thea Other day I think that it really gave me a huge Dr to pursue what I do and stories of people would they would they say when they meet me? How How it influenced their path. Obviously, it's I'm not that important. You know, they could have learned from YouTube. You can learn anything, anywhere but the stories that I hear. I think it's the biggest drive. I've never cared more about anything. I guess so. Making it local ISS. Good idea for for multiple reasons,

but to make it straight right now. Now, I probably wouldn't started in polish. Okay, so, uh, I know. Yeah, I'd probably go, Um, I probably go global first. I, uh English, but ah, it's a great idea to if you are, for example,

creating content. You can always localize it to your mother language, and you can simultaneously create an English version and and you're and you're a language version, and this is the language is pretty important. And recently I've been searching for ah, Chinese nanny for my two year old son. And, um, there's a huge, huge study on how certain language can affect thinking and acting and, for example, like Chinese, there are tonal language. Chinese is tonal language. It means that you can say the one syllable can basically mean different things, depending on how you Internet it night.

So it's proven that develops the hearing music skills and things like that. And that's one example. But once in a while I surveyed a large part of my oldest in Poland who spoke good English, and they clearly stated that they'd still prefer a course in polish. So maybe it's a founder in the founder abroad. You also have some edge over those big companies like, um, break and companies, right? Those people don't we know your language. They will probably never localize their product as good as you can. So this is also a great advantage. And really, you have to think of different languages as different ways of thinking. And even if that's another story, I'm a lawyer.

I finished law in the war, so and I was translating contracts. And the contract that has four pages in Polish usually has one page in English, so it's pretty much it's very different how you state sentences, how you explain things and how you understand things. And if you take Chinese, for example, this is a completely different language and completely different structures that you that you might use. So I think that there's a huge advantage in local markets and, uh, companies that, for example, might probably will to compete with eso. Big companies with online video courses like Skills for or Linda or Your name is doing this locally, but they won't take as much effort, and they probably won't be as successful as I'm on my local market.

This reminds me of kind of what you were saying earlier. Which is You don't want to be opportunistic about ideas. You want to do things that resonate with your personality that makes you feel good. But at the same time, there's so many opportunities. You know, you start thinking this way. You're like, Well, what about this language? What about that language? But everybody listening has something that makes them unique. They have something that they really care about, something they're passionate about. And it's almost always the case that you can start a business that has some of your own personality and care in it. With me for indie actress, for example,

it's like I live in San Francisco. Everyone around me is obsessed with start ups, and I just happen to be like the one person I knew who didn't really care about raising venture happily just cared about. You know, generating revenue like that was the spin that I put on basically helping people start startups. And for you, it's like there's probably lots of people who are helping people learn you x but for you year in Poland and you really care about this local feel. And so you started courses and videos and polish helping people around you and so encourage anyone listening to think about what makes them unique. And don't run away from that, like, inject that into your business and do something that you're authentically passionate about because it's gonna be a slog. I know with learned U Ex were gonna get into it. But here first, early day, like making these videos weren't exactly the most fun thing that you've ever done. And now you can sort of rest on your laurels and say,

OK, work one day a month. But in the beginning, it was like a huge slog. And if you're doing something you didn't care at all about, I struggled to imagine that you would have gotten through it.

Now if someone tells you that if you do what you like and never work a day in your life, it's a lie. It's a lie. I love creating content. I love putting it out there. I love high quality content, but I hated it in the studio when it decree moms and I was repeating myself over and over again, and I was like, It was frustrating. It was so my English was so bad and I had to repeat, and I have to re record every time, and I really hated it. And then I hated it. What? I had Thio fix older marketing stuff and then sales and probably deal with some paperworks and set up a company and accountants and thinks like this man, I hated it. So basically,

this is the outcome. I love the outcome, and this is I'm grateful for for the outcome and what I feel when I finally say it life but the process. Sometimes it's it's really painful, and you have to account for that. It's not. It's not the most beautiful thing, but and the other thing I tried to do is that's why I tried to automate off the boring stuff, and that's why I tried to write some pieces of software that will help me around this seamlessly, especially the boring parts.

So how do you get through this process of working for months doing something that ostensibly you love? But in reality, the actual nitty gritty of it is just boring and frustrating, and you don't have any customers yet, and you're not getting paid. What drove you to keep going despite those months of just drudge work?

Yeah, I had to finish. She is like you. I don't like to, um, spends time. You know, I don't like to give up its It's not the thing that's, Ah, that I don't really like to give up. And I really pursued this idea because I believe in the idea. So I knew that when it's painful because I didn't in pass, I knew that if it's painful, the results might be really good if it goes too easy. Sometimes it's just pure luck, But but often times you will fail. So I believe in hard work.

You can get lucky on the way. That's fine, but I think that the safe bet is just working outs and blood sweat tears just eventually come up with a good product and then, yeah, and then trust in your guts and follow its just be systematic justice. Don't don't give up at the beginning because it might be hard beginning, but But ultimately it will pay off.

That's a good point. But if you don't want to rely on luck, you really need to put effort and what you're doing. And also, if you want people to talk about it, to share it with their friends, to tweet it to retweet it just basically, be excited about what you're doing. You also need to put some hard work into it, and I think that doesn't necessarily mean you need to work hundreds of hours per week or anything crazy. You couldn't work a totally normal schedule and just focus ruthlessly prioritized, cut out all the other stuff that's not really court what you're working on and make sure you're focusing all your attention on the main thing so that you can work hard enough on that to do a really good job. And that's what you did with learn you X. He spent, you know, three months just putting together these videos and making them the best that they could possibly be. And even the US of your website,

your teaching people, you axe. And so you figured you needed to have really good. You ask yourself. And so it's a beautifully designed website that you obviously put a lot of time. And Karen, too. Somebody who's not working hard is not going to be able to compete with that. And somebody who's not focused he's doing a 1,000,000 different things is also not gonna be able to compete with

that. Yeah, that's another thing. Actually, I This is one of the experiments I run on learn You X because there were many of them. But I decided to make the website itself a bit unique. And I spent some extra time a layout and, uh, most of those learning sides they have, like, some simple landing page. They're all the same. They give you some, um, some credits about the authority give you some info about the course, and that's basically they are really the same. That one I created was pretty much different,

and I knew that you why And you ex people, they really care about details like this. They're also searching for an inspiration on the Web sites such as Dribble such as awards. You know, the F W. A. And I thought that would be really cool if I sign up for some contest like CIA, says Design Awards. And I actually received a few awards and it gave me the exposition to you and yours, designers and some high quality links as well. So I go out. I think that I got more hits from from single website like awards or CSS Design awards, then then from product hand, which I think I was 1st 5 on the right hand. But I don't remember exactly, but I got a lot more traffic from those websites and those were people who are really interested in my product. I think I got about 8000 hits from awards the day or in the in the week that they gave me the award and those were you RUS designers, so exposing the website to them this way. It gave me a lot off subscriptions and a lot of people interested in the idea as well, So

looking back with the benefit of hindsight, working super hard to get this website out Is there anything you think you could have just skipped Any of the hard work that you didn't need to do for learn you x to get to the point where it is today

Having a lot of a lot of things I could skip or just don't spend as much time and effort There were things I fought matter, but they were not so important guests. So first, I guess that I put a lot off effort in communicating to other people. Who are you? Are you ex designers that I am going to do this? So probably a month or two Before I basic, I recorded myself like I took a knife. I recorded myself and sent out personal message to all of the influencers I knew from the U. N U ex world to announce them that, you know, learn your ex is coming. And to be honest, I don't really know why. Now a lot of people do it. I guess a lot of people reach out to They try to reach out to some influencers, but no one will know.

Answer your cold man. It's It's like you are just so I think the good advice would be to just put it out there. Uh, then such for some people who support your ideas. If they can see it, they probably even interested or not. But just you know, reaching out to people was really time consuming and no one really cared, and I wouldn't care right now. I know it. But there was a lot of things that that I would probably ski pin and influencers. Where one of those things?

Yeah. You're trying to generate buzz before your product before it even launched. It doesn't seem like it. What? Well, how did your launch itself go when you finally released on us to the world?

I did this. Oh, and this is another thing. That's ah, went pretty much wrong. I guess so. I tried to make this beak lunch like I tried to. I put the counter on the website eso and then I probably I did some announcement that I'm going to launch this website here in there, and it was super stressful. It was. I think that at the time that the counter went down to zero, I was probably the most stressed person out there, and there were only like 10 more people on the Web site s O I I would never do it again and I would just put it out, Don't tell anyone just polish the website, tick some box and then and then spread the use because the launch itself was really It's really not that important, I think. And a lot of times you can see website that has a great launch and the grey and product hand.

They do great on hunger news like this. And then after a few days, you can see the traffic is going going down and you get really frustrated and the press to you. First year you were on this high, but then you go pretty low and this can be Yeah, So I I don't a I wouldn't aim for a big lunch anymore. I'll just try to launch as often as I can. So So instead of launching doing a big launch, just aim for one lunch a week so that you can lunch new feature every week or every two weeks, and it will get better from there.

Yeah, I completely agree with this whole idea that people put launch on a pedestal as if it's going to solve all the problems, I have this one big launch day and then I never have to figure out how to grow my product again. Everyone's gonna keep coming it eternally after my launch day. And the reality is like even if you do, you have a big launch day. That's just one day. And after that you have to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to get people to come back to the thing that you're building. Unless you have some incredibly viral sensation, which, in all likelihood, you don't most have started that viral. So I wonder what your strategy is Nowadays, you know your launches is a thing of the past. How do you continue to get people to come back to what you're doing? Learn you X

So every once in a while I sit down and I tried to update the material, and I think once every two years I'll have to re record all the content because, yeah, I think that's probably all of it would go down. I think that, you know, the tool changed a ah, the processes I wanted to be currents to be to be of an exceptional value and something from three years back. It's not anymore in this afterwards, especially so, Yeah, I think that I will re record the content. But it wouldn't take me 1000 hours anymore because because I have some some smart ways to organize myself around this around the content and probably then look myself for a month. And then we record the things that I need to and that's it. But I want to keep it current. But the thing is, you asked me about about passive income.

So a lot of people will tell you to basically put all the resources in one project and updated constantly. The thing is, obviously there's no such fingers, passive income that, you know, you might be aiming for a $1,000,000,000 dollar exit from your company and then okay, you don't have to work anymore. But it's not the case for most of us, and it might be just lucky. But how I define passive income is I can work whenever I want, so I can set up for a three month work from January to March and then I can take holy day, then I can, you know, work on some other projects. And I know that I have this time fixed for the project that Will Dan generate some some revenue and probably passive income for me is mainly about organizing myself so that I have time for everything. What whenever I want.

And of course, you know, especially in the makers, are often defeat involved in the project that they create and that they want to put a lot of effort in it every day and refine it so that it's perfect. You know, No, I d projects ever perfect, and basically you have to admit that so what I also discovered over over those years is, the more you scale the project. Also, the more cost it generates and the more the more effort it generates. So there's this exponential growth, growth and costs for a medium sized project. So if you have the company, if your company starts to end more but then you has a farm there, you start.

Unless so I know it's strange, but this is how it works, and it's relatively easy, I guess, to grow your project to one K to K five K or 10 k m r. While still keeping it Low Coast. And then you can use some ready made solutions for e commerce, accounting, customer service, automate everything and keep it simple. And you can have 125 10 projects like this. It's pretty easy. And then you can organize your time around this project and work wherever you can. So this is ultimately the the Holy Grail of passive income. For me,

James Clear has this great tweet and really pointed his written about in some of his books and block post that real wealth is not about how much money you have. But it's about your freedom basically to make choices about how you live. And what you're saying is that you want the freedom to choose what months, what hours you're gonna work, where you gonna work from what you're gonna work on and because you've created you know, these sources of quote unquote passive income. You have that freedom to choose.

Yeah, that's absolutely the way I think of it. Ah, I I once came upon for hour work week, which he obviously no. So at first I thought that this month, before people who re hate their work. And then I read the book. Obviously, I realised that it's about working efficiently on Dhe, so I preferred my work weeks to start like four hour work weeks. I could start them Monday morning, and then I could start another four weeks, four hour work week the same day, afternoon, right, and then the lever devalue.

But it's all about staying focused and staying efficient. What you do. So what I really try to do is not to procrastinate too much and really put the put the time where it belongs to you mentioned competition. I think that those who are doing a better job than you do probably work harder, as you said. But also it's possible that they just work on the right thing while you were pretending to work or procrastinating or, you know, organizing yourself around your work and stuff like this. So I really try Thio every focus on working efficiently and then leaving the time for 40 other things. And this might be work as well because I really like what I do. And then why would I just spent for four hours a week a week

on that so Let's talk about some of the practical realities of how you're able to work so little on learn you. X What are some of these techniques you're using to work more efficiently? And you know, what are some things you're not spending your time doing that other founders might be spending time doing?

I tried to out to make this much as a possibly can, and I try to use ah lot off no Coast tools and local tools, too puts, ah, this project on autopilot with marketing customer service. With accounting and things like this, there are a lot of things that you can out of might probably. I think you can automate 90% of the online business, depending what the what the businesses. But in my case, automation is really the launch, but for for anything else, because it gives me time to spend on and focus on the other things, and I'm using a lot of different tools. I controlled myself eso I can call the small pieces of software that will help me, but there is also a lot off no cold tools or local tools that will allow you to connect some things for for example, I use a lot I uses appear and integral meant a lot,

and those stools allow me to basically glued together different tools. So mailing list with my ah, with with spreadsheets with with different things that I used for marketing. And, um, I can have a chat bolt on chat Few World that will allow me to get some customer service. Thio. I used intercom a lot and their tools to organize yourself and to answer questions. The Boche answer questions and automatically answer questions. I use a lot of marketing automation, some flows that I built around e mails that I sent. You probably know Convert Kit. I know that use converted it right so you can automate a lot off things with with those like this. But on top of that, there's another layer that I often use. And,

as I said, I'm amusing. Stop here or Integra Matt to glue those tools together because ultimately you want to have one output from all those tools, and this is what I d'oh and this was really well, you can automate a lot nowadays.

You showed me Integra Matt when we hung out last year and I was blown away. It's actually a super cool visualization tool for making a lot of these animations, and it strikes me that you know how to code, right? You can actually write code yourself. And yet you're still using a lot of these no code tools, presumably to save yourself time. And it kind of goes back to what you're saying where it's not just about working hard, but you also have to prioritize. What should I work on? Just cause I can code something doesn't necessarily mean I need the code from scratch. If they're already existing tools, we're gonna sort of duct tape things together that might free up months or weeks of your time to spend on other things.

The thing is, I I've learned to go the when I was 15 or 16 But then I switched the Web design and although I probably could go and I think I I don't find it too exciting and it was taking too long for me. I kind of missed this, um, instant gratification that that you get from graphic design, motion design and why? And when I discovered those automation is boats crone a W. Islam die. I got like I suck in it for a long time. I was really like it was It felt like the missing piece off the bustle in my life just got in place, right? So? So the results are really quick, and there's a little cold required to make software that actually works. And this is the huge advantage that that those tools give you. Still, you have to understand some things that are going on under the hood and understand the Web. Our Web works. How AP ice work, how you can connect and combine other stools and the greatest benefit off. No coat is when you really know how to code and you basically take shortcuts with those stools.

It's a pretty rare combination to both know how to code, but also not be so passionate and obsessed with code that you don't just use it as a solution to every single problem. So I think most know cutters don't know how to code, so they're just like, you know, maybe they're confused about some of those technical details and how the Web works. But most developers I know are either afraid of no code are very skeptical of it and have no interest in learning any of it because it's it's not their passion.

I think that's your business. If you're running the online business, it can really hugely benefit from from hiring those snow cold stools. And I know it because I've automated a lot off my business involvement and probably saved hundreds of thousands of dollars. So it's really something that's you should take into consideration. So what do you do right now? There's a lot of confusion around. No code because it's still new. And under this no code FAC you often put those like square space and two rito. And first is just, ah, simple visual template editor for everyone, right? And the other eyes letting you build complexity wise for database management driven by JavaScript, right? So So this is really different software and there to that two aspects to it. So the first is those for people who have a little or no coding experience,

and then they can use Web builders, which are are a little better version off busy weeks that we know from 10 years ago, and they could make landing pages organized 1,000,000. Please organize middle increases and so on and so forth. But now they can even go further with Web flow you spoke to, Vlad went through. It's really great. It allows you to create the database and commerce you have bubble or other low, which will allow you to create up with some more advanced components as well. But what's even more exciting is the second aspect off. No coat those that gives you this super power to the people who already know how to code. They know how Web works. And thanks to the AP, eyes that are everywhere. Right now you can connect multiple tools you can called small ups, or use those solutions,

such as a P R inte grandma, to glue them together. And you can use tools like retail to create a Y that manages your database or something like this. But this is completely different word, right? The tools for no colors and for people who are familiar with the

idea. Yeah, it's a huge range out there of different tools you can use, and I think it's easy from the outside looking in tow. To form these judgments about what's used for weapon. You have to just try it to really understand where she's full on where it's not. And it has its own learning curve. Even if you're a developer like you're still gonna have to take the time to learn. How's Appier work? How Web flow works or how in Tiger Matt works, you can't just skip right by that. But anyway, we're running low on time. I'd love to have you on the podcast again at some point, but I feel like we barely even scratched the surface of how learn your experts and you have other projects and things you're spending way more time working on. And those would be fascinating to talk about two Before we close out here, I want to get to some of your general advice. You know, you spend so much time building these projects and learning a lot about you X and generating passive income and helping others learned to improve their careers. What do you think? Other indie hackers listening to take away from your experiences and your goals as they try to build their own online and businesses?

So the one advice I already gave you and I want to underlie the ones more is free not to rush to take your time, not procrastinate, but basically take your time. Put the project out there. But ah, not really try to make it in for your four weeks and basically take some time to create a really valuable content. And I think that most cases for me it's really paid off. But another advice maybe, would be not to worry too much. So sometimes something can occupy your mind for days and people rides mean things. And you can also have this problem with knocking too many doors and hearing no a lot, which is come on when you run Internet projects, and I think that it's really useful. Do as a founder get the state of the mind that will help you too patiently create your product and no, not no trash, but also clear your head from time to die time and not worry that much I've seen a lot of founders were really stressed out, and it's really very difficult being a solo founder,

especially if there's a lot to take. There's things that still juggle in your head and you can hear you hear it all the time. You hear about depression and anxiety in in context, off founders and company owners. So I think learn your ex is successful because how much attention I paid to it and how I basically try to not kill this project by interrupting it to grow by itself. I think it's really valuable to let it go sometimes and not to response to everything that you have to respond. You don't really have to. You just need to put your hats, toe work and improve the product. And, yeah, that that might be my advice,

something that I'm still learning how to do. Just sit back and let things run on their own every now and then and not stress. I was just Ah, on vacation earlier this year and vacations from her pretty rare thing. And there are days where I didn't work on any actors and was pretty weird to do that and see things not explode. Then I come back home and it feels like I have to work on this thing for 10 hours. The otherwise you know, this email is not gonna get responded to you or this other thing is not gonna happen, and it's usually it's okay to just let it go. So I love that advice, Greg. I hope to see you back on the show sometime soon. He let listeners know where they can go to learn more about what you're up to. You would learn you ex and your other projects as well.

Sure. So you can reach out to me a twitter. I'm at Greg. Underscore R o G. And you can go to learn you. Except I owe or coldest don't. How? And just send the message. I'm here and I'm very happy to answer all the questions. I've been in a position where I tried to reach out to many people and I couldn't get an answer. So I now I read carefully all the messages, and I tried to help as much as I can. So, yeah, you're free to talk

to me. Thanks so much, Greg. Thank you, listeners. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if he reached out to Greg and let him know he's on Twitter at Greg. Underscore R o g. Also, if you're interested in hearing my thoughts and take away from this episode, you should subscribe to the indie actress podcast newsletter. You can find that at any hackers dot com slash podcast. Thanks so much for listening. And I will see you next time.