#272 – Escape Rooms, Side Project Marketing, and Getting to Ramen Profitable with Marc Lou of Habits Garden
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But it's gone .

on what you do .

for valentine today. I got some rose petals from whole foods, and I kind of spread them out on the floor of my bathroom. And then I i've got like, no, I moved departments a couple month ago, my new one to go. Just watched a movie in the time of Sarah and went up for A A nice stake dinner before that. So was real .

chill bing.

what's going on? Hey, what's up, mark? What what did you do for valentine's day?

Mark, just remind me there is a valentine day.

Well, that that is that only an american .

holiday that I know there a lot of holidays that I just assume our world legs and american that turns out like nobody .

else even knows. I think friends friends might do IT is just have been married for five years and every day he's pretty much the saying, we work from home. There is no saturday, there is no sunday. So he feels like you leaving the same day over and over, which is a beautiful day. But we forget about things like valentine will listen.

Men, if being married for five years means that I get to now, have to do these these like four holidays. Maybe i'll be proposing tonight.

Anyway, mark, we should introduce you to the audience you are, uh, mark, love on sounds like the name of someone I don't have on the show of my mom but like you're in mark love on.

I think your english in french is just review.

Oh, that was way fancy.

I don't. I was like A, I was in my mind little bit and that were last year. You tweet that you two hundred followers, uh you you are burning through your savings and you had three startups, which is like a admittedly a lot of startups a today.

A year later, you have thirteen startups. You have fourteen thousand followers on twitter. And I think you just got to roman profitable. So you have sort of reached the first big milestone as an ny hacker where you can completely survive and pay for all your bills and need as much roman as you possibly can dream of uh and you don't have to do that anybody else done like it's it's all you you've made IT.

yeah somehow. I mean, this is pretty new to cross the roman profitability. So this is it's a good A A good achievement. IT feels less stress. The the whole story of I was building in the dark for a couple years before. So if it's a bit successful, if you put in that way, I think i've been in and out for about six years and I only started taking me thirsty in doing in public about a year ago, as he said. Well.

I think what I find impressive about IT is like something changed, right? Like I don't know if I was the building in public or not, but like going from three projects at thirteen is like that's ten sorts and twelve months. That's huge.

And IT seems like you haven't fun doing IT like I read your tweets like you're you're basically a comedian and holy your tweet. Look at your products. They're all really well design like these aren't like shabby products like you put in your art and soul into them.

You had in cool little graphics of like you know cool flowers and your photo, your head kind of spending around as the logo on some of them, like half your production, make me laugh out loud when I see them. And they're working and actually making money. I guess the process you are going through, like most import of super stress, I got to broken out of money tomorrow. What i'm gona do? They have trouble launching but you're just like cruz, make an money and .

haven't fun on the way you do yes actly um I think i've taken things very, very seriously at the beginning. Um I started building, started thinking I was the next mark zab. I've been doing this for years in at the downsides when you know the sort of crash things like that, I was really terrible.

And so early year, like last year and thanks to you guys the the hiking journey, the building, empty community, I started ed, taking things way more simply and just be like, okay, i'm just a guy in my bedroom doing what I like, I built and and that really changed my my mindset and how I handle downsides. And I started building startups very quickly, like, like trying to imitate what Peter levels do. And I loved IT and I could see on my twitter that it's it's working well um when I do things without too much emotion ons when I do IT quickly, it's inspiring for some people and it's working for me. So it's a Better job.

That's the thing specifically that i'm most impressed about is like number one, it's just the quantity and the quality. We are quality, the quality. But it's like what is I think you've got eleven products in the last whatever thirteen or fourteen months.

And the only way to do that is if you have like an immense amount of discipline to like key projects, small and then move on like I can't tell you how many. I mean, probably probably every single month we have a trending post on the hackers that's like, you know the next who's going to do twelve products and twelve months. And those things always fizzle out.

And it's either usually because people just don't ultimately get started, they fail to start twelve times or they fail to like get to the finish line twelve times. And very, very few people do both consistently over the period time that you've done IT. And it's like I think that that's the biggest chAllenge. Like people just have to spend a week doing design and they have to be a weak talking to people and they have this been a weak coding, right? But you just like having, you know, so what is zip through the whole cycle consistently for a while.

I think that's why I don't say much goals and I didn't tell myself i'm going to build twal startups and a twelve month because I feel like when you do that, you tell your mind that you're going to have all that. So you get excited, you have the depine rush and you're super into IT and you super predictive for a week or two.

But after he feels like IT fit out because, you know, you cannot build twice, strap up in twelve hours so you don't get the things you told you. You're bring you gonna get into a short period of time. And so I just don't set goals at my i'm gonna show up every day. I'm gonna at my deck at seven every single day.

Yeah, have a friend who does this you like. Every time he's going to start something new, he tells everybody like not only what he's going to do, but like exactly how much money is going to make and how successful you like. He creates a vision of like the end, the goal and everyone's like bought into this like end result and how amazing IT is and how successful is going to be and then like he pride goes home after that.

It's like, well, now he didn't have any of those actual achievement yet. He just has always hard work in front of him and everybody is can't already celebrate the achievements. So it's like there's no opposite to that. It's like now now a screw .

p yeah I feel like expectations are a kind of internal fight we have to manage in order to keep going.

agreed. There's something smart to on the approach you said, like you're basically not taking IT seriously, which is the same thing that Peter levels does that he told me was that the intentionally on twitter tries to look dumb r and like less sophisticated than he actually is like he tries to look he doesn't know what he's doing.

Number one is is inspiring other people like go like this city, you can do IT I can do IT right, but like actually is not. That is a super smart guy, but also himself. Like for the same reason that you're doing IT. Like if you don't put things on a pedestal, you don't have these high expectations and you can't veal crushed at the end when IT doesn't work out.

Yeah totally. I felt like this journey is actually at just an international fight with yourself.

I do do to say good. And I feel like we haven't put out the amount of products for the hackers nearly that you have marketing. Like you know, you're last year, probably last three years, we haven't put them any products out, but we have created features and like but on the ground with a lot of the elements of indie hackers and a huge amount of that lung gev ity is being much more input focus, right? Like figuring out what we like to do so that we have like the energy to keep doing that over and over again. And we don't have like some two year goal where if we don't hit IT in two years, we're going to feel hugely deflated IT.

to your point, training like I think if we did any hackers way that Peter levels does his business because Peter level has no that list is a giant hub for digital. No mad, any hacks is a hub for ani hackers. But when he does like a feature, he doesn't say like, hey, this is the no madness job board.

He packages that up like it's completely different product. He gives its its own domain name and he's like, so this is remote OK. It's like a mote job board, right? But we just have like the hack job or so everything we have feels like it's a tiny feature that's part of this bigger project versus everything feels like this like small new twelve starts ups and twelve months type thing.

And I think that other way is like much Better be as market like what you're doing, like when you actually launch everything as its own product from begin to end. It's own domain name is the one thing like you can build in public and you can like get excited about every single thing that launches way more than you can about like an incremental improvement to a feature of a bigger product. So one of the things I want to do for andy hackers is, uh, we've got this profile pages.

Every any hacker on the website has a user profile. And if you go there, you can see I go to any hack that common. I like mark luu.

I can see your profile and I can see that it's like essentially, here's all the post you've made. Here's all the comment chief made on the right. Here's all the products you've made. It's kind like a social media profile like I want any hc have kind of a linkery thing and mark, you have this for yourself and it's awesome. I kind of want to just steal IT.

So if you're got to like mark lew, mac L O U 点 com， you've got like your andy hacker link chy page, where is a photo of your face? Make A A layer expression says you're ety act here, twenty nine years old, you're one and a half thousand dollars a month and revenue living in bali and your tagline says. I was fired everywhere, so i've decided to always work for myself.

Even I lope has fired me. I love smiling and people who smile. I pursue freedom. And I know that you've got a section where you can see eleven of your startup.

You can see, you know, one was acquired, one is knew, one of them, your building to do from making revenue. I love this page. It's like mark as an add action at a gLance. So I guess it's want to ask you like, can I steal this concept for the india ckd com website and make other people profiles look like yours?

But even all of the dark color theme, like any hacker's is like that dark blue. It's kind of distance as a purple. You don't see IT a lot. There's like dark purple. It's like be very easy for us to live.

I think it's Z Z U I theme is a library for tAiling. It's a pretty good one to use this for all my project. The teams is that I think nice.

Yeah, looks really good. And you ve got a eleven start of time here. So I wanted talk about some of these, like, because a lot of them were kind of related to to some soft. I've got going on real life china. You want to talk by one, which one which understands I T the most?

I'm really into habit. So I M just going to start at the top because he looks like one, two big ones. Yeah, you got two.

But IT seems like the one that to making the most money. So you ve got habits. Garden, let's make in seven hundred and sixty seven hours a month without some detailed about them being sold. But then what's the other one game of I list?

Visualize habit is a habit. Garden is making seven hundred, six seven dollars a month. Says beat procrastination with the game of fied habit tracker.

And I says, you got six thousand plus users on that one. Tell me the story about about habits. Garden.

how did you start this, mark? He was about a year ago. I wanted to make a habit tracker with the github contribution board, the one that you have like a square per uh contribution you make. And you see the whole year with the list of those square. Yeah so I just made this one and I added computers and I shared IT on twitter and I got a good feedback. People said they loved IT and the fact that they were having fun taking me, their habits make them more um consistent and I have no idea that I was like, how about you know, I turn IT into a complete game, something where people don't need notifications but instead they got inner motivation doing a game instead of feeling that they have to do the work, just things like that and so I added quest.

I added achievements um and I added the whole thing call the garden where you can plant flowers with um the you earn from the quest and then you and look flowers as you go through your progress in your habits and Normally after a mount of your consistence you would have a look most flowers, you would have a beautiful garden and you can play with your friends you have a little board where you can see he was the most consistent person of the week and it's pretty much cious story. And I keep in herring on that product. I think it's the one I focus I spend most of my time on and um and I build side projects that visualize habits that are on purpose of you know like what Peter level does is like it's the small version of a big garden that aims to promote. I I get .

spent off kind of like marketing version of the APP. Yep, you okay. So hold that fasted to me.

How does that actually work? You got habits garden. That's the main APP. It's a hab tracker. You complete your habits, you get the school of a visual garden and then you've got visualized habit, which is like the marketing pair down like how does that marketing recent work?

So I think that was december last year. Um new year resolution is a big thing. And I thought, how can I combine new year resolutions in habits? And same as we said before, that golf setting can be a motivating to start.

So expect, how does a mini habit that I do five minutes a day will, uh, translate if I do IT over a year? Although I thought of that, the main habits, which is like exercising, reading books, meditation, how does that look like every year? And know, so if if you go there and you set up your workout habits and you tell you gonna work out that fifty minutes a day, it'll tell you how many hours of work out you're going na do in a year, and he's gona show you a fun data about things like, you know, you're going to a burn like this amount of calories, this, which is the equivalent of hundred twenty big max.

It's like a calculator, basically for all these different .

habits yeah totally. And at the end, if you want to start those habits and making a plug to habits garden and you can even import them directly into the trucker sweet.

So i'm on here right now like I want to write I want to write for, let's say, like forty five minutes a day. So I click right, there's a whole, a great of different habits. You choose which one that could be code right.

Drink water, learn an instrument, read more. So I say forty five minutes a day i'm going to do at four times a week, five times a week. And then I click ad habit and then it's just sort of automatically calculates basically how much that's going to be if I reach my goal.

And then I can import that into habits. Garden, okay, this is man, this is genus. So you don't like launch, this is its own like individual product and try to get a major traffic to this. And any traffic that goes to this automatically feeds .

into your main APP. And you can kind of clearly see that the flow like the function of that, because visualize habit, you don't have to log in, like there's minimal friction, like just getting in there, like investing, like here's my habits, like know I want to have, like just looking at the grid, like code, meditate, cold shower, like these are all things that I personally like and then it's like, okay, well, if you want to really track these habits and kind of play game with them, then you take the like higher friction step of joining a hab garden. You're like your big one yeah.

I think the conversion rate for this one is the best of a head so far because it's pretty seamless. And about thirty percent of people who visit the site will build their habits grade and go on. Have his garden come.

Wow, that's huge. man. Is this game fiction? Staff work? I i've used a bunch of to do the steps ah I think I use habet a once, which is kind of another one like years I can barely ever remember using. I think I tried IT, but what habits garden like the way works is like i'm actually taking playing farm villers or something like when i'm doing my to do list like I get this really cool looking garden. Does that actually motivate people to be more productive?

Yeah it's it's really hard to get people to understand the game. And I understand that it's it's a game. Me if I have a chequer, but when they do and they take IT thirsty, then they become crazy about IT. And I have a couple of users, like maybe thirty users, who have been turning up for about a year. And every single day you see them in the little bar, you see them completing their habits.

It's like a tale of two brothers because of mister time to get this like history mix but like I swear I introduced you to habita and IT probably was like five years ago, I don't know but like habita mark, if you're familiar with that, that's like this other habit tracking APP. It's like an RPG you like have a character and courtland said, stabbed using that game.

Like, I use habet a every single day and I pretty much haven't missed, I don't know, a day and like like four years. And not only do I use habet ca, but I also use there's another indie hacker who has this APP called every day. It's kind of similar.

It's like years IT has IT like a grid for your different habits. But I like doesn't have any real game element. It's just kind of simple, like i'm a sucker for these things and it's like what you said you have like, no, a small number of users or a few users who were like super devoted. And yes, it's like the way that my brain works compared to the way that, for example, cotoner brain works like i'm already sucked, ed, and i'm already like. I wonder if I can like, do half of my habits on habita and then like, move the other half to like habits garden and like, you know, if that much overhead for me yeah.

happy decades. Actually one of the reasons I created habits garden because I I traded and it's lovely, like the concept is is amazing. I just feel like this a bit of overhead when you get on the up, there's a lot of things.

And that made me keep the concept of having the game. I just make IT in a way that is a bit simpler, where you don't have to think too much when you log in into the APP, keeping the mechanics of having random loose inquests and unlocking achievements. I love those. I try to incorporate some of them into a habit curtain.

you know, would make me use something like this because I use exactly zero productivity apps. Uh, i'm big on social accountability. Like if I get like a little garden or a little character or whatever and nobody sees IT, like I just I don't care.

Oh my god, is just pixel on screen. But if I had, like, I give my twitter background, for example, was my habit garden garden. And so like what i'm doing task, like everybody who falls me on twitter can see, like my twitter background is like full of all these lush plants.

嗯， 你来 玩 饭 吗？ Like being lazy. It's just like there's a dead bn whi field.

Like I think I would do you like that? I would show the october. I would care a lot. You can like the same way and get hub like you see those like that graph and everybody likes like share, like company of the world, like something about the social ability for me is big.

Or if I had to, like in my apartment, like right now the walls, my apartment are mostly kind of empty. And I want to put like art or something on the wall that's kind of a conversation piece. And I have like a little screen when I do that pigs, a small screen that they showed my habit.

ten. And people came over like, so what is that? I think that's how productive I was last week. Like that would get me actually caring about the game fiction and chani. I don't think you need that step.

but I need other people see IT. Well, habita does have like i'm in a party this morning, like is like whatever seven rand and other people who have habit a and you know we have our characters with little health bars. And if you mess up and you don't do your habits, then every single person on the team, like their little health bar, gets knocked down.

So not only do you feel, hey, I I want to keep the streak up, but like, I don't know, a week ago I didn't meditate and this woman, Sarah, was like, you chaining what the fuck like like I feel, I mean, you know, i've never met her before. SHE doesn't keep up with her stuff either. But like, kind of know, I mean that literally the reason why I still .

have who who is and why SHE in your group just .

rain in person, right there. Thousands of people that use a beg you to say you, they have their own little form hey mark, not trying to shoot on your APP and saying something else is Better. But like if you have a social up, you get people like me where I completely agree I don't like a medica because it's too complicated so that's the reason why I got a second APP that's like simple and it's just checking things off but like something about the fact that there are people who like, yeah why didn't you like work on the hawker is like knock out that .

objective yeah because .

not to give me they're just for that element .

of IT yeah that's right. Yes, I think the social accountability part is missing and have his garden. But I heard you got them and i'm gonna d the product and i'm gonna reach out.

Okay, do you make a picture frame? I have a gardener, or you make a witter back ground. I right now on the year, I promise I will set my background to that.

I will buy a big frame. How did you how did you charge for this? Like what's the business of this month, people paying uh, subscription fee?

Yep, it's a paid up seven days after trial and then it's I think in nine a month or ninety year.

And how did you get like the initial set of users for IT you just launched on protestant? I know you also build on public tune twitters at helping at all hundred percent.

but at the time as I build me up, I had no following on twitter. He was about a year ago I got so lucky shared on I think hack news and he went he went viral um for some reason and I got about ten thousand visitors on the site in a day. And that's how about the first paid users and I think if this didn't happen, I would probably have moved to another APP.

Every time somebody tells me they launched on hacer and use, the first thing I do is package and look at the comments, because those comments are always so sweet. Let's see, seems like you get some nice comments. The first one said, b onest. O P.

You are making this actually just to proclaim whatever is you actually had to be doing this time, didn't you not just getting like a wonderful site, a second one that says the good I really appreciate that the free trial doesn't require a credit card that just freeze the features. That's a very happy is common. They would hate you if you require the bad, he said.

I think there's a bit of a bootstrapping problem here. You want me to set up a system to make me do more stuff. I'll get started on that leader, which I think is actually a real, a real problem, right?

Like for a loud productivity apps, like to get to that aha moment, you have to do a lot of work. You got to like start, like making about, okay, what are my tasks? What are my habits? Like, the very first thing you ask what to do when I log in is work.

Yeah it's actually my struggle of the day um of of the day, like it's spending most of my time on this. Ninety percent of people who sign up will never show up after twenty four hours. And so that's a pretty back because that that means that get to roman profitability, I would need just so much users i'm we're working on that park is on the end fono.

When people use the game for seven days for free, then I think eight percent of them become paid customers. So I have the final is pretty good at the end, but at the beginning is pretty terrible. And in getting to that, I have a moment is, as he said, he's really hard.

What was that percent? He said eighty percent become paid customers. Yeah.

if they play the game consistently for five or six days.

wow. So you get people to go week of playing and there like they're on the back, they're set, they going to start paying you. Yes, I saw you tweet about some of the stuff on twitter.

You did like usability test causing. So I have a friend who is working on a mobile APP. He's on a similar situation.

Where is apps? Pretty good people are coming in the top of the fun of the running ads. People are like download the APP and using IT.

And then they are also not coming back. And he's been trying to like talk to them to find out why they're not coming back. But none of them not going to happen a call just sponde to emails and no ones like it's just radio silence. You do the opposite like you asked people to basically help on a call with you and at least thirty people said yes. How did you get those people to say yes and and what happened during this course?

So I did that on twitter. I shared, I shared the link and I asked no users to hopefully jump the call with me. And basically for ten minutes that would go over the APP and cheer the screen, and just go over the basic signa process in the unwarned, on the APP and see what's happening.

And then I realized that the data I used to see, the database, which is that ninety percent of people never shop. After twenty four hours, I started to make sense because ninety percent of the goals I had did not understand the up. Like they would have fun when they sign up because IT doesn't require any email.

And then the APP becomes um clotel with features and stuff and they just don't get IT. And then they're like, are we done with the call? And that there was a tty bigger realization for me to to see that. Yeah the classic way .

to solve this problems to start up is the coffee shop test where you literally walk in your end of coffee shop at your laptop, you go up to somebody who's in line or something to hey or buy your coffee. If you use my apa like a manager to, you just pick up your shoulder and then you just like watch somebody try to figure out your APP and like, see what that i'm already experience is making, even if you like spend months designing. And up is usually so painful. The first few times you watch somebody .

try to do IT with you and you spend those days building the up, and then you see someone we trained to click on the wrong buttons. And all it's be for a huge .

question that I have about that is like there are so many different potential customers that you could have. And of those potential customers, I don't know if you have people like me, I Carry with me all of the like background knowledge of exactly how to user up that you need to. I don't really need like much of an on boarding, whether if you get something like IT, really in this case, it's like i'm someone who are already tracks habits, right?

I think my habits is like my luggage and it's like all I need is a new suitcase to put IT in. And if you have like a new core suitcase and I just like an easy customer to on board or whatever, right? Whereas if you're taking anyone else like say, courland, I don't know the court on tracks any habits. Like even if he gets your APP, the investment that he'll have to make to, like I don't know, like figure out the features of APP and then like come to a decision about what kinds of habits you wants to start tracking. I start tracking the first one, the next one like is is night and day.

And I just like I don't know about in your situation, but i'm like men if there's some way where you can find like nothing but potential customers who have read James players atomic habits, right? Anyone who finish the end of that book, for example, like they probably in the block with like seven different habits that they want to start on tomorrow, right? I feel like you should just be stealing users from other habit trackers as opposed to trying to like fine net new ones even though obviously it's like kind hard to get someone to stop using the already video with.

I think, yeah, this is smart movie brave. I think I should double done on targeting people who or using abc a, but are not satisfied because it's too complicated as you said.

Yeah ah there is something to be said for getting the right people on the top of the final. But channel, you're just one of the ten percent, man, like you're just one of the people do you have on a called market? You would just know everything.

But like did you did you fix this, mark? Was that like obviously talk to these people? You see the like ninety percent of them you that just filling up the user interface also stuff they don't understand.

I'm curacy how that turns out. That's like your your high screening APP. Uh, on your page you ve got what virally bought, which is have something based on the scape rooms.

And then I think game with IT is other one is right. yes. So i've got an escape room.

I actually owned escape room kind of order. I'm trying to it's like a really jankez escape room. I open an airbnb with my girlfriend last october. And one of the cool, creative things that we're doing inside of IT, besides the aesthetic design, is we put a sk ammar hunt inside of IT, which we've sense ly branded into escape room, which is insect increased.

Interesting because I don't know you want to put those words together, and people just want to do on a escape room way more than they want to do a skate hut. But essentially like that kind of one of selling importance for airbnb, like you get there, there's instructions in the welcome guide and we've got always clues head and all over years of always from puzzles and then people at the end of giving us like these awesome reviews because they go through our escape. but.

The problem is like we haven't forget how a market to shit like generally like our guest are discovering at once. They book and you know maybe the talking in their friends were like, really like the word is not getting out about IT as I can, independent a scape and business which would be dope, because people who wanted to do escape room in seattle, who like a skate room enthusiast, would like find our airbnb and maybe even book at night just to do the skate room. So both of your apps, like game wagon and vary bt, are two products that you ve built, are basically try to help with this problem.

Like I need arguably both of these things, but because both of them have the same sort of value proposition on their websites virally about, for example, ples grow your escape room with game of vacation marketing in game widget says turn traffic in the customers. Game widget engages your visitors to the fund game to grow your escape room. This is automatically give me to run done on these. Like how how do I use these things?

So very really but is one of my first startups study in two thousand and eight. I really want to move to body and I saw the product before um before even headed. And the ad is to help so escape from businesses to get more conversions by offering a free online mini game.

So IT connects with their facebook page, and IT allows anyone to play a mini escape game on facebook messenger with a chatbot. So you would have this um these automated answers that you to do riddles to self bozzle. You will get points for this.

And when you reach a certain number of points, you will get a discount coupon for the escape business. And so as keep on businesses that uses IT insured with their audience, have a fun tool to engage with them. And then the boat, the chatbot, will do the work to convert them into paying customers.

The the issue with the product is that he requires the business to work with. So if you just put IT on your facebook messenger page and you don't do anything, then nothing will actually happen because you need to share you with your gts. And so based on on that friction, I created game with IT, which is is is a similar concept, is using a game to get people to book something with you.

But instead of you having to to share IT to your audience, IT sits on your website is a little creep that adds on to your website, and then IT ends the game on your website. So as a visitor, you can just play the game right away. And at the end, if you escape the game, you say, get a discount coupon for the business and you can use IT. And really me right away on the website. And I stopped working on virally buds a couple years ago, but it's still bringing some money because I had customers and game with IT was required last month.

Nice, amazing gratulations. IT was again kind of the same pattern, got the main business. And then in order like make the main business easier define or more accessible, you made that kind of been outside project of IT. But in this situation, like a spend outside project was like more successful. And you saw that I think .

I spend more time on very really but and I got almost started thousand dollars of revenue for IT over the last four years. wow. And I I make damage .

IT really .

quickly back in friends um for a few months and I I did not try to grow the starter because he didn't feel right for me. And like I started to lose interest for the b to B B. I feel like disconnected from the buyers. And I just I sold a few and he was making about hundred dollars a month and I bread quickly after that and I I saw IT. But I am pretty sure game, which IT would have been, would have been able to go farther than very really.

But who did you, who did you sell to? Who bought for forty three hundred box mro.

a vier and mro acquire, which I think are acquire.

Now what was that like? What was that have never actually sold to start up on a microscope?

E, yeah, IT was easy, was a bit daunting at first, because you have, especially me and prince and I have all the legal stuff to read, eventually understand how f of the words. But no, he was seamless. Um the transaction was made through this school, so I was pretty sure I will get the money somehow.

I I anna use game budget actually, because i've never I feel like i'm the only person at this point who's never done in the scape room. So like maybe maybe having this like digital version will help. And am also a little bit traumatized.

So I don't know. Maybe five years ago, I had this girlfriend, and we were thinking about what to do for a date. And I mentioned escape room cells.

Like all you looking on yp, tok, calm or something. And as I got, what about, what about in the escape room and her eyes look up and he is like chaining. The best first day that i've ever been on my entire life was an escape room.

Like, I went out SHE like named the guy. I went out like with this guy, mike. Like we didn't personally have any chemistry, but like the a scape room itself was so amazing.

I was like, hands down, my best first day. I also like, excited, not like, oh, awesome. Like, okay, we're to help this, uh, this escape or him like this weekend and SHE was like, well, I don't want, I don't want to do with you.

I was like, what do you mean? She's like, well, especially now that I just told you like my best first day was in escape room, there is no way that it's going to live up to that. And then it's just going to be kind of awkward like you're going to ask me like how how IT compares and SHE literally rejected SHE rejected my like request and this is like you two years into us being together.

This isn't like a new girlfriend at the time. And honestly, like since then, i'm like scary escape rooms. Like I don't want like a doesn't i'm kind of P T S D about IT. So maybe i'll did my toe until like a digital version with with game budget is going .

to messed up though you don't go on an activity first like I don't I like your first day to be something that so stimulating that the girl has a great time even if he doesn't like you. Like you mess up. So I think you I think you should get a Better ratio.

but I would argue that escape rooms are a good way to see things you Normally don't see with a typical date.

Oh, that is true. You don't have access, like at this person, you know, work in a group, how are they with communication? So I almost like a interview date, so I want to like to future what to filter. You are based.

And I had this conversation like a couple of days ago with my girlfriend, and I just booked of a ticket, a flight to switzerland, and she's west. And we always talk about us being sort of good travel partners.

And specifically, the thing if you're dating someone, especially if you're getting someone sort of like IT is a new, is when you have good times, everyone is really capable of putting out a good phase and like kind of being like their best self. But you never know who the person is that you're dating or even even like a friend ah. You never know like someone's true colors until you have adversity together, until you have like something I can know, you're barely on time for a flight.

Like how does the other person react? right? Like you have to choose whether you to be an airbnb or a hotel and you like airbnb s and they like hotels.

Like what do they do? right? You never know.

like you need to know everything like my friends, we are kind of a group sleep over a couple of nights ago and uh a couple of my friends like maybe watch this reality show that the super into called love is blind. I don't like season three episodes, like fifteen or something, so I guide never seen IT. But the whole concept of the show is like, these people date each other without ever even seeing each other.

All they do is talk. And then they have to like proposed marriage, the person sight unseen that they like, and then they get to see the person and it's like, oh, you know, it's cool. It's really about what's going on in your heart, you on one hand, but the other hand, like half of these couples like now aren't physically attracted each other.

They don't like each other like they haven't lived together. So they don't know like what it's like to live together. They haven't gone through, as you like, tear point any adversity together. So they have no idea how they deal stress. They no idea how they communicate with the group.

They have no idea how they can find with their friends is like a whole giant checklist of things I think probably like experience with the person before you decide to get married. And these people did like none of them. So mark, I guess that's a point there and you're favor maybe we should be doing escape rooms on the first state.

Yeah, that's IT here, basically testing your product on the market from the zero.

So what should I do to try to grow my escape room, which is like embedded within this airbnb? S, you can even do IT unless you put the B, B, the cat of people. You know, one of the sort of lines on your website that I am interested in this go viral in your local community. How do I go viral in my local community? With my escape?

I tried to solve that by having people play on the facebook messenger, chat butt with friends so you could invite a friend, and both of that you will sold those puzzles. And I try to find, again, make sense to two incidents lizer people to do IT. Um that's the I D behind the headline of go very all in your local community because I I hope people would share with their friends which which uh, some did have you seen .

any other escape rooms like doing in the job of the are marketing in like other creative ways? Because i'm just like trying to figure how I could do the shit.

Uh no, I think they do the typical um that at the end can take a picture with your friends and they're are they offer they'll fer discount if you if you share those pictures and social media kind of like we did that we escape in X, Y, Z minutes.

right? The other makes a sense. They can one of the only risk viral, seek up putting us on like google maps. Like if you have a physical business, you can just be in the google maps of results. So somebody searches like a scape room, like hopefully we would pop up where is like most airbed and bees don't like have something like that.

I don't even know. I had the bus in like I don't even know how a scape rooms work, but I i've always have one question. Obviously, some people are Better at puzzles than others. So what happens if you have a group and just nobody is smart enough to get out of a particular and stuck forever?

Do I don't escape? Room was like friends. Mt, where everybody y's smart and we didn't escape like it's not just about being I was hey.

i'm doing this podcast from the escape room right now.

They let you out of the escape room. Um you just don't get to take that picture that says like we escaped in fact, theyll give you perhaps and they will give you a little picture frame that says like we failed and you take like this picture of shame uh that they .

put on the incident page showing .

the names of that's sick some of them .

have Walker turkeys and you can ask the game master to give you a clue. And you have like a limited set of clues you can ask.

But yeah, you don't want to pass everything in one of you. I just fail. But I like that idea. I like both these business ideas alive with that that you sold uh game with IT. Why weren't you interested in and working on IT anymore? I mean, IT seems like a pretty simple business like you build this, which is a kind of works, kind of doing sales to get to take these businesses you already have like a lot of experience, like why did you lose the passion of selling to businesses?

And that's a good question. I'm still thinking about IT. I think IT goes to it's because of the fight b to B. I didn't feel close to businesses at I don't I didn't care if they make more money on this like I didn't have any passion for this and I was not really aware of IT, but I think translate me being lazy and not wants to work on IT.

And it's it's a big shift because when I when I close those two products, I started to build in public, I started to in the high. And most of the startups you'll see shipping today are related to the people B2C sta rts. And um I don't know, you just feels more real, more um pleasurable there if you excited to work on because I can share the APP to my friends. Just spins and spins of the motivation do what's .

your like how are you so prolific? Like I mentioned that before, a lot of people talk about twelve startups and twelve month. And this is kind of one of the characteristic features of being in into hackers, kind of building these small things.

But like, I don't know when push comes to shove, most people don't actually still have IT in them to dislike. Keep going. Like, what would you say is the secret of this for you?

And I said, I have no expectations at all, like I ship something and I am very pessimistic. I'm thinking is not gone to work so I don't have the rush, the up and downs. Also, I make IT very short.

Um I tried to never spend more than a week or two on the startup. So if he fails, which is the case ninety percent of the time, I don't feel emotional. I don't have any downside.

I don't have to wait until I will have another product. And I see all those startups as a collection. You know, when you play to put key mon cards, maybe as a kid, you play that you collection, then you have the rare card. You have this card. I see all my startup as a collection of things that I ve built. And I feel like every new start up I build is adding to the collection and he tells the story about my life at this point until I feel like if it's offenders doesn't matter because you still i'm growing a little collection of memories.

I love that framing. Actually you tweeted something about like about your habit tracking. Er you're like, oh, I own a habitat acting APP das six thousand users and it's like I don't see very people talk about their andy hacking projects that way like people would like old school bricking morner businesses will talk about like that say H I own a farm and I own a restaurant and I own a hotel.

But I guess an ani hacker, if you you got like six products, like you can say, yeah I own I own this thing you know this got this many users and I own the other thing that's got whatever and it's like a you're right it's a deca pokemon card or like a like a portfolio businesses that yours I think viewing IT like that is kind of inspiration and a lot more fun. I think one of the call things too that you do besides just um being prolific as like you tweet about IT right like half the stuff I know about you was comes from your twitter account when you have grown to fourteen thousand violins and just a year and another thing I think I like to will struggle like I struggle with that I don't even like tweet. I start tweet months ago like hopefully pick back up again this year.

But what your twitter strategy how are you growing so much? How are you building in public? You said you're emulating peer levels, like what parts of how he's to eating and how he's building in public are you are emulating. They're actually working for you because the fact that grow your account, like I don't eec some crazy percentage in a year, means whatever you're doing is working.

Yeah, he took me a long time to crossed one thousand followers. At the time, I had strategies, I had plans that was rethinking about my vio on twitter. And then something kind of happened about six, seven months ago, and I was a fuck, is he doesn't feel right and then I stopped thinking.

I started to share really transparently what I was doing. I started to see myself as um just a guy who instead of building legos, I build startups and I have a collection of startups. And I stopped tweet my bill.

I stopped testing my tweet. I stop thinking about when to tweet your things like that. And I just go with the flow and and basic IT sounds we twar. But I started to think less and just be .

more me when I look at your stuff yeah sure on twitter. But also you know you have a lot of post on in the hackers like almost any of your posts that I see your hilarious like you're really funny yeah a post that went sort of viral on andy hackers where it's just a video of you superimpose and joe rogan studio and like you made a video or it's like you cut together things that do it's at as podcast and it's hard to seem like you are getting interviewed by joo gan IT was hilarious a went viral on our on our site and you're funny but IT also looks like the things that you're doing, like you're having a blast about IT as well. And whenever I see that, whenever I see someone who looks like they're having a really good time, I O are you just like a really good actor or are you genuinely like enjoying, you know, being on the treatment on twitter? It's at a because if you found a way to actually have fun, like that's stuck can hack, like that's exactly like then everything else is on autopilot like what you said like you don't have to do so much thinking because like you're doing .

the thing you already want to do yeah it's a really good point that that video that day meant I had such a good day yet I woke up and I had no idea i'm going to do and I like I get to make a video for the product tech launch for that product for visualize habit and then I don't know some things going on in my head and like h i'm onna make a video with the organ and then the whole day was just a like, you could ask my wife, he was next to me and he could hear me laughing in the room.

He could see me like walking to get the micmacs phone here, running back to the room. It's it's hard to to get those moments. But when they come, how many? They just so good.

My body shot talks about having, like the perfect toosday for him, it's like the ultimate goal of like being an entrepreneur. A founder is just like figuring out how to struction your life. You know, get the money you need the business you need, the lifetime le, you need to just like the perfect tuesday, every tuesday and everyone's day and every thursday, just like the monday in days of your life.

But I think that exits for your worklife too. Like a lot of us talked about, like, I want to work so I can have the perfect like, you know, home life, personal life, but I want my work like to be like perfect. And for me, a big part of that I think, is kind of what you said if like waking up in the morning and not knowing what I am going to do today and then just doing whatever sounds fun in your case, maybe that's making like a video with rogan.

But for me, it's like I don't like having a much of shit scheduled out. I don't like having a huge plan for the next nine months of everything. I'm in a code and build and I have to do this.

But I could do that like I kind of like just planning around the cHennai. I think we should run andy actors more like that. Like I know I would enjoy IT more of every single day. We just wake up and figure out like what are we doing today? Are the very least like what are we doing like, you know.

this week it's funny. I think we come at IT from two different sides. I love the idea of crafting. There's this guy, Andrew huberman, he calls at the unit of the day. So it's like you just think about what your perfect day is like and you build up from there.

And for me, there is some planning involved in like I think you can do IT either way, you can do IT where you're like the perfect day for me is I wake up and like there is no google calendar. Like there no there's no like habit tracker, right? Is none of that stuff for me.

Like I just have a bunch of projects that I love. I love hanging out with my girlfriend and like I love doing this podcast like this to meet doesn't necessary feel like work. But I guess if you see IT that way, like maybe there's like a clash of whether you do planning or you don't do planning.

I don't think a lot of the planning comes from having like like a multistep process. If you're like, hey, i've gotten you know launch my product once I. Unch, I can like get the conversion data. And then once I do that, I can like improve, you know, the on board fun. And once I do that, I can build new food.

And you have this whole giant process of steps have to go through and you can just like booked out the next six months of your life and you don't have that much a way to do other things because anytime you like take a detour from that path, at least for me, is going to be little voice in the back of my mind that's like i'm fucking up like i'm not doing what I should be doing well now is going to take a longer and every time I won to track like that and less happy like i'm coding anything for long more than a few months, like i'm not that happy. I'm always the happiest when i'm doing really small products, really small launches, really small features. And I go from like idea to design to launching in releasing IT and under a week because then I just feel free, I feel unburned. And like to mark point, like failure is in his bad IT doesn't work out like I don't feel like I just like wasted three months or a year my life I feel like at a week long experiment .

that was fine yeah crown and i've ever read ah that book finite and infinite games of fun philosopher book this guy and there like express is almost exactly we are talking about. And this really is a little bit academic for a lot of people's ste. But the whole point that he goes into as uses as this term, living horizontal.

And so you kind of visualized the horizon like you go when you get to the horizon. And then by definition, when you get there, the horizon moves back. And so if you think about projects, you can say, like, look, what I want to do is I don't want to have a plan that like, know presupposes that you like five years out, way beyond horizon.

Like this thing is gonna en a step a and step b and step c, like it's going to get to the horizon. I know the immediate things that I need to work on, and I know the steps I need to take to work on those like competently. But then when I get there, that's when i'll make the decision about the next thing, right. It's not a huge master plan, but there is like a little bit of planning involved.

You know, IT is it's like as I love that you say, it's about like play and looking at the amazon page two and it's just like essentially saw that playing games, it's driver like an obstacle course and I play an observable course is like like american anja worry you got to go through the entire course beginning to end if you fail at a part you're got to keep doing that part forever and ever, ever and ever until you get IT right and only then can you move to the next part you know like if you're trying to grow the na across um and we need IT to be you know ten thousand posts today or something.

We just failed that forever until we get IT for over the next step and I hate that shit. It's like very draining but is a playground you show up and as like a million times you can play. You just like you get on the swing set if you want to swing, you get on the monkey bars.

You want to do the monkey bars. You get on the slide if you want to slide, there is no gatekeeper. There is no getting stuck doing something that you don't like.

Mark, just once, like I make a youtube video, is talking to joo gan like you can just do that and that doesn't matter like he's not held back from doing that because something else. So I like that style for IT. I think that kind of like my ideal, my dream. And quite Frankly, there's nothing stopping me from just doing that right now. I could just switch to that sale.

It's kind of outside looking in, but that almost feels like I mean, again, mark, like when I look at you, I just go like looks like this guys having a blast IT looks like he's running his projects almost exactly the way that we just described. Know you say, oh, I had a project that was uh you know, making money, but I was sort of business to business. I know I wasn't having a lot of fun, so I scrapped that. I saw IT like how how does your work self fit in the way that we're talking about this?

Yeah and with you with this as having fun is the number one thing. Sometimes I know I have to do things that are not really fun, like now I push notifications to the and it's not really fun, but I know I have to push through to have more for later. But if these not funny tasks or go over for too long than I just move on.

you're a spotted like most any hackers really want to be at, right? Like the vast majority of indie hackers have not gotten started or they don't have an idea or they're struggling to like make their first dollar or you know that they got like ten or twenty bugs coming in a month, but they haven't gone the wrong profitability. You're not in profit.

You have done in a giant and rare products. You can work on whatever you want every day. Um what you is right rather .

he also told me he has a personal chef through that .

in there as well. You a what's said about you ve got a personal .

shaft that sounds beyond roman and profitable IT is at the shift since is the best productive ity c phone. So I don't do groceries, I don't do meal plans. I eat super healthy foot vegetables and enroll me IT is so good for for health and productivity and it's about in vallies IT cost about two hundred dollars a month, excluding the groceries. So in total for four hundred dollars about they have five meals, five days a week of lunch and dinner prepared and yeah, i'm not going .

back too good. My big thing used to be the like, my dream to have a personal chef because I love eating. Like I count down with the number of meals I have to like I twice a day, three hundred and six, five days a year, I want to live another and fifty years.

Like I got thirty six thousand meals left. They Better, everyone of those males Better be good. That's going I might look at because it's going my favorite things.

So I always thought to be dope. Like just like I know i've made IT to have a personal shape, but is expensive. Man, it's super expensive.

So I am getting from you as I got to bali the fruit, two hundred box a month. M, B, set. Yeah.

that's that's a good part of living. Anything in southeast asia, IT doesn't cost much to get a cleaner, to get A A chef, to get a driver. And um I tried to tweet about this and some of them go viral because some people in the west to realize that life could be different somewhere else.

You mark uh, twelve months you become a sensation. Um you are in a lot of ways still starting out. You just got to row in profitability. Huge milestone. And of all of the things you figured out in the last like twelve, thirteen months, what's one piece of advice that you would leave for people that are listening?

Don't spend too much time on loan product and build and sheep and .

kill fest that's IT .

shorten sweet. right? thanks. The time for.