I'm Alex, and for the first time in my life, I wanna take a break.
Scaled down my business a lot. Stopped traveling. Chilling and enjoying life.
And most importantly. Writing.
I've been blogging daily for half a decade. Now I want to organize everything into books.
Everything I've learned making $1M in revenue from my personal projects, after building and failing with 20+ products over the span of 7 years.
(Revenue: $100k/year | Profit margin: 90%)
๐ฆ Twitter/X๐ผ LinkedIn๐ฅ YouTube
๐ธ Product Hunt๐ธ Instagram๐๏ธโโ๏ธ Workouts
I'm having interesting thoughts and realizations again. This used to happen all the time. I'd walk around and an interesting thought would come to me: - Could be about work - Could be philosophical I would take out my phone to write it down. Would happen every day. That stopped happ...
Writing my books and going back in time is interesting. I see myself acquiring knowledge and learning stuff. Things that I have to remind myself of. Past Alex was wise. He was locked in. Thinking about business 24/7. Not like me now. Farting around and enjoying life.
Everything I do feels hard. Apart from one thing. Writing. I sit down and lose track of time. Yet another reminder to finish all my books this year. Book 3 coming out soon. It has a title. "Learning through scars".
In Athens for a couple weeks to celebrate my birthday and see my friends. I miss my home base already. And I haven't felt this feeling in many years.
- Write all the books - Get clarity through the books on what I should do next - Start a new business and pivot/revive CyberLeads
It's so weird that it feels like I'm in uncertain territories again. After a few years of clarity and certainty. The positive is that at last, I am able to sit down and write the books.
Currently doing what I did last year when I wanted to revive my Twitter account. Tweeting, experimenting and taking note of the results. Last year it took me like 5 weeks to figure it out and start that momentum going. Now I'm on week 4 since I started tweeting and I think I've got it ag...
I need to wake up my X profile. It's dead at the moment. I have done this before. So I know I can do it again. It's no use just jumping from book to book. I need some banger tweets to go viral. Gonna craft some this weekend.
Book 2 is live. My favorite of the series so far. You can find it in the Book section.
Book number 2 coming out this week. It's my favorite book so far in the series. And I think it might remain for a while. Excited.
Yesterday I launched my first book. Here's what I tried: - Twitter / LinkedIn - Product Hunt - Email lists - IndieHackers - HackerNews Even though I have an audience of 50k followers across all platforms, everything flopped. Apart from one. Hackernews. Which is ironic. Cause it's...
Preparing for the launch of my first book. It doesn't feel like a "make or break" moment. Probably cause I'm gonna write and launch 10+ books this year. Or maybe because I'm not really writing to become famous or make money. Anyway, I'm chill about it.
It used to be so hard to hit inbox zero a few months ago. I would have 25+ emails every day to respond to. Clients, partnerships, Slack messages, notifications about automations breaking, the list goes on. Now it's so easy. Takes 5 minutes every couple of days. So nice...
Life is so beautiful lately. I've stopped traveling. Living by the sea. Spending time with friends. Meeting new people every day. And writing. Waking up without an alarm clock. Walking slowly. Zero stress. I miss this so much. It's so worth the decrease in income. I'm happy.
Started editing my first long essay/book for re-launching. Sounds stupid, but I am inspired by my former self. Even though, technically, I was 1000X less "successful". I did most things right. Arguably, better than even today. Going to be implementing things I used to do, again.
Not sure if travel is good for personal growth. Yes, you meet people. Yes, you experience cultures. But the constant change of environment does not help with sticking to things. This year the goal is to travel slower. Like change house every 3 months as opposed to every 3 weeks.
This year I can hear the little voice inside me telling me to "lock in". I wanna work. The last couple of years I've been optimizing having a good time. But now I don't really care.
Happy new year!
boring business + exciting life > exciting business + boring life
opening slack and gmail every morning are like opening Pandoraโs box. a tiny dose of adrenaline that lasts a couple minutes until you realize that everything is ok and nothing is urgent. luckily these last weeks of the year things are chill :)
Some days I feel like I donโt even deserve to make money. Cause Iโm not doing what has to be done. Or I am doing the wrong things. What I should do: - Writing - Posting - YouTube Marketing in general. And keep improving the product. What I'm actually doing: - Managing a tea...
Wow I cannot believe i just used that buzzword. But in this case it's true. Powerlifting lifts progress better together: - Strong legs from squatting help with deadlifting. - Strong traps from deadlifting help with bracing for bench. - Strong triceps from bench helps with pressing. - Str...
extremely excited for next year.
Great entrepreneurial filters: - not launching - not launching products again and again after failing - not finding a profitable product - not finding a reliable distribution channel - not adapting and improving the product over time - not adapting and improving your channels over time ...
Everyone running an agency is thinking โhow can I attract better clientsโ? Yes, youโll get them better results. But that doesnโt mean you are better. It just means you are selecting better and easier clients. It's like the college football gym coach that could prescribe any exercise and ...
Put me somewhere by the ocean and everything in my life falls into place. Relationships. Family. Friends. Work. Fitness. Happiness.
Nothing like living by the sea. Nothing like it.
Opening Slack and email feel like opening Pandora's box. It's a lot better than it was in the past cause I have my (amazing) VAs scan it for me, which usually happens before I wake up. So if they haven't DM'ed me or I don't see anything bad posted on Slack I know nothing urgent has happened...
Back in 2020/2021 when I was first making it, I felt like a trillion bucks. And was living my life like I'm the main character. Running marathons. Triathlons. Writing books. Traveling. Nowadays I've found myself going through the motions every day, without too much new memories.
I have achieved everything I wanted to achieve in life. It's not a lot. But I did it. The irony is that truly not much has changed. You are who you are right now. Not your accomplishments. If you're cool people will wanna hang out with you. If not, they want. And if people wa...
Some days I wonder where motivation comes from. A place of confidence. A place of excitement about the future and life. Or a place of low self esteem and wanting to prove yourself.
i feel like i've kinda lost my edge: - i felt like i was 5 years ahead of the game - nowadays not as much i remember that in 2018-2020: - i was looking for remote work - and wanted to travel the world i was also: - building in public - with no funding - heavy automation - and knew t...
It's crazy how much of my happiness is in my body. When I'm not well physically it's so hard for me to find my happiness inside my mind. With logic. The food poisoning story reminded me of this. Even though I'm recovered I still cannot feel happy cause my body is fucked up, haven't be...
Recently my best friend ran his 2nd marathon and we were talking about how it feels the week after running. You are walking slower than every grandma and grandpa on the street and have to be careful of every single step. It's like a "grandpa simulator". Makes you appreciate your youth.
Thank you Thailand for the the welcoming gift.
Body loves stability. Mind loves variety. To travel or not to travel. Maybe I should start looking into building a base. Or just travel slower.
Body and mind craving for stability. There is a lot of hidden cost to the nomad lifestyle. Need to travel slower this coming year.
At the airport. I love it. I feel alive again.
Going to Asia for the next few months. Thailand. Korea. Japan. Excited.
Been working a lot lately. And it's been a hard year in general. Too much travel. Too much work. Not enough memories. Hopefully next year will be better.
I've never taken my business to the next level by incrementally improving what I already offer. It's always been new features, new product or new price. Why would it be different now?
Everytime you have a health problem you realize how stupid you were for caring about other things. Literally nothing else matters. It's health. Then happiness. Then everything else.
Experimentation is true work. Testing new features. Channels. Team structures. Workflows. Onboarding flows. Whatever.
Been taking the train instead of the plane when it's convenient. I like it.
For the happy person, life is comedy. For the sad person, life is tragedy. Whether things are going well or not.
Why agencies are timeless. Agencies focus on solving a problem, which can be timeless. The market changes all the time but you change with it. For example, Iโve changed so many tools over the past 2 years. A product focuses on providing a specific solution to a problem. This is harder to...
How to scale. Do things that donโt scale. Forever.
Compounding in business is not always the case. It's only the case if your business has network effects or if your growth channels have network effects. If your business model is in mediocristan aka no network effects, no economies of scale, as you get bigger, gravity (churn) keeps you down...
The game of business is simple. It's like life. The goal is to survive. And slowly improve your odds for survival in the future.
7 sales calls booked in a single day. Statistically thatโs one booked client.
Read a blog post that argued that a billion dollar company is the same as a solopreneur with a small team. Marketing + Systems CRM + Systems Sales + Systems Fulfillment + Systems Product + Systems Automations + Systems Itโs the same shit, just at a different scale. You just have to ...
Found this in my notes, I was probably procrastinating on tasks and my VAs were following up with me. Employees: - Less capable - Less motivated - More reliable Founders: - More capable - More motivated - Less reliable
The more people in a group, the dumber they are. Think of tourists. Or ninjas in movies. I thought of this while watching a group of tourists today. They had outsourced their thinking to someone else. Completely. Had no idea where they were. Where they're going. How they're going. ...
Gonna start youtube again.
I love travel days. Yes. They are tiring. But some ancient reward system is being triggered. You feel alive.
Today it's my brother's birthday. Tomorrow it's my father's birthday. Happy days :)
Back in my hometown. Get weird feeling being here. A tiny bit of nostalgia. And a lot of "i wanna get the away from this place". Most of my friends don't live here anymore. And the only thing that makes me come back here is my family. Honestly, it feels like a random place I hap...
I saw an email waitlist for a new product the other day. I think they are completely outdated (unless you have an audience). Waitlists were great back in 2014, when tech was hard and the cost of building an MVP was too high and risky. But the bar has risen. You can build a fully funct...
My most impactful changes have always been the simplest ones. No fancy AI. Or crazy automations. It's simple things like tweaking the copy. Changing the positioning. Removing steps in the signup or onboarding process. Adding little human touches. Thought experiment: - There are no "fu...
A crazy thing I cannot even explain: - I cannot innovate when I have a business partner - My best ideas come in solitude I wonder if it comes from a lack of confidence. Or if it comes from a place of ego. As in I know what's best. Even when I'm wrong.
There are two rat races: - The "I wanna climb the corporate ladder" rat race. - And the "I wanna be an entrepreneur and take over the world" rat race. So many people can see the first race race and are blind to the second one. So many people build their own business, momentarily gain th...
In December 2020 I handed in my notice at work. My plan was to go full time on CyberLeads. During a meeting, I was bored I opened my notes to write. Title: What would I do if I was a millionaire Like, actually. I wake up tomorrow and have $1M. What do I do? I write down a bunch of ...
Look. I did something I told myself I'd never do. I buried myself with work trying to get to $1m/year. And in the meantime I postponed all the things I enjoy. Like writing on this blog. It's humbling to admit, but it's not as easy as I thought. It will take time. And to be hones...
No matter how much I get into YouTube, music, cinematography, whatever. There is nothing that impacts me more than reading & writing. Was reading "Die with zero" yesterday and it shook me. An experience you don't live today, you never live. Because you will not be the same in the futu...
February was a great month. I'm trying to battle my thirst for MRR, since the Playbook is doing pretty well and has been getting consistent sales. It costs $3k once. And it's a bargain really. Maybe I should focus on that! Maybe that's the next little lever of growth.
Update for January '24: Have officially escaped fulfillment after 2 years of sweat, blood and tears. Literally tears. This is what my tiny team looks like: - 3 VAs - 1 operator The operator is a great friend of mine that I met through Twitter and then New York and Colombia in real life...
CyberLeads just turned 4 years old today. Valentine's day of 2020 is when I launched. Covid times, so no date night or romance for me. My girlfriend at the time was in another country and I was stuck in a little room in Italy building projects, trying to escape my brand new 9-5 job. I...
I've been writing daily since 2020. Part of the reason was because writing is a transformative experience. It's like sculpturing, but you're carving yourself. But daily blogs don't do that for me. Only long form blog posts and essays. That are like books. So the goal this year is t...
My 2024 goals: - $1M/yr business while working 2hrs/day - 10K subscribers on every platform - Write about everything I've learned In other words, achieve my dream after so many years. Then secure it by building distribution everywhere. And write about my entire journey. The beautif...
In Cyprus for the next month. When I'm in the UK and in Cyprus, I tend to work a lot. And the rest of the year I don't. I'm usually in places like Colombia, Thailand or Greece. Where life is too good. These two months I'll be working on a new tier for CyberLeads. It's called "Done With ...
After all these years, I still love flying. It's magical. You are in a flying bus. Literally. Going to a new place. With new people. A new language. New friends. New adventures.
There is a fine line between capturing moments and being present. I believe you can do both at the same time. With a phone in your hand, you are accessing your emails, work, friends, social media and missed calls all at the same time. It's so hard to remain present that way. With your...
Recently one of my wildest dreams came true. I got recognized as one of the best one person million dollar companies. And from a massive podcast, the My First Million podcast. How did it feel? Well.. Life is still the same. As beautiful as it was before.
Being half English and half Greek, I was lucky enough to be exposed to two completely different cultures growing up. One anecdotal thing I've noticed (of course it may not be true across the board, I don't want to generalize) My English side of my family and friends hate talking deep and ph...
I feel like I'm pretty sensitive and therefore good at reading people. However, sometimes it's hard to understand how someone is feeling. Especially from just a look or photo. Are they sad? Are they content? Or are they numb?
Up until now, I would write a blog post and then try to find a photo that matches. Now I'm trying something different. I just grab photos and try to analyze what made me take them. Sometimes it makes you think. What did I find interesting or beautiful enough to take this photo? Oth...
Communication without words is beautiful. And this is coming from someone who loves writing. Which is using ONLY words to get your points across. But sometimes communication with no words is better. Like a little love between two new best friends that actually can't talk to each other.
In street photography you are supposed to be a ghost. However, some of my favorite photos are when the subject recognizes your existence, moments before the shutter fires. With my friends we call it "getting busted". Zoom in to see better.
My favorite type of photography so far is street photography. Raw, little moments of random peoples' lives. With my phone I would be terrified to take a photo of someone. With my camera I feel fearless. It's one of those things where it's as awkward as you make it.
Sometimes the way forward is backwards. Like finding your old self and having a conversation with him or her. I just went through my Twitter timeline and I prefer my content 10X more than the stuff Iโve been posting this year. A lot of inspiration from my old self today. Iโve lost tou...
There are many times where I wonder if I am living my life in a timeless fashion. I want to avoid living my life completely according to my era's Zeitgeist. Not because I am a snob. But because old things are Lindy is biology. The most lindy lifestyle is the one that is closest to...
During my 3 months in Thailand I would see Buddhas everywhere. I am not a religious person. But religion (in my humble opinion) is just philosophy or a way of life, that in order to give weight to it and get everyone to follow it, people gave it a face and a supernatural story to it. And...
Life is Sysiphitian. You are always tidying your room. You are always working on your diet and body. You are always working on your happiness and fulfillment. And thatโs fine. Actually itโs even fine. Itโs NORMAL. We will always be working on ourselves and fighting entropy. Nothing is st...
Bought a camera recently and have never been this inspired to capture moments. I have been traveling the world for years and even though my phone has an amazing camera, I have almost nothing to show. Bought this camera 2 weeks ago and have taken more photos than I had all my life before tha...
Not sure if you can tell, but I've fallen in love with photography lately. One thing I have noticed is that people look the most beautiful when they are not trying.
Woke up with an alarm clock today. Honestly, it made me realize how blessed I am to wake up whenever I want. Waking up naturally is a signal of true wealth.
I remember once my mother told me that I change my mind easily. As if it was a bad thing. "You change your mind so easily, Alex". Well, that's a good thing. It shows a healthy, plastic brain. It shows that you are still young. Imagine if we never changed our minds? If we believed today t...
The point is not to become a cold stoic that denies their human nature. Itโs a tool to try to approach a situation rationally. But we should embrace our emotions. They are what makes us human. Really in love with Epicurianism lately.
Was told the other day that I have everything figured out. But itโs not true. I have everything figured out โfor nowโ, maybe. In reality, I could lose everything by next year. Life is unpredictable. And that makes it beautiful. Like the stoics say, everything you have is โborrowedโ, y...
Same timezone with VAs makes things so much better. Like, 10X better. Async doesnโt work as well. Thatโs my experience.
Making money has made me realize I don't really care about it. Honestly. I know it sounds pretentious but it's the truth. I live in Greece, Colombia and Thailand and barely spend much of my money. All the things I like are not that expensive (dancing, martial arts, fighting, sex, traveli...
Sounds so stupid but the societal norm of weekends works great for me. During the week I train and work. And maybe go to an meetup or something. Then on the weekend I do cool shit. Like hiking, rafting, diving, cooking courses, dancing classes, whatever. Anything to just be off my lap...
Some days I feel like an idiot writing instead of doing video. But then I remind myself that I'm just gonna do the shit I wanna do. Something I would do if money didnโt exist. Write books, travel and have interesting conversations. YouTube is too cringe for me.
Marketing is not forcing someone to buy something. Itโs staying top of mind and waiting. As long as you are selling something useful, they will come at some point.
Sometimes I bash myself for not growing as fast as possible to $1M/year. But itโs not a race. And I just realized that I now handle around 15 clients with 3 VAs while barely working. Whereas a year ago I died trying to handle the same amount of clients by myself. I am progressing. ...
Recently heard about this interesting variation of the 80-20 principle. As the founder in a small business, you can't expect to replace yourself completely. There is no way you can do that. But you can easily replace 80% of what you do. Then what is needed is the final 20%. 10% in ...
Story of my life. Battling my perfectionism. Have stopped trying to automate and delegate 100% of my business. Just draw the line in the sand. Two hours per day. Twenty clients. $1M/year. And just live your life. Once againโฆ it doesnโt have to be perfect. Maybe itโs per...
In a new Airbnb in Thailand. Have been here for a week. Thatโs the amount of time it takes me now to feel at home. Used to be one month but Iโm getting better. Find the supermarkets. Order supplements, etc. Get used to the place. Little rituals. This place is awesome. And so cheap....
So far my experience training Muay Thai in Thailand has been mixed. Quite a few gyms completely catered to tourist and beginners. And some gyms dedicated to pros that are in the middle of their fight camps. And then there is me. Right in the middle. I used to fight pro, but that was y...
I've been in Thailand for some time now training Muay Thai. It's been a childhood dream of mine. To come and train here. Directly from the source.
Some days I get AI existential angst. Then I remember that humans only care about other humans. Will always want to compete and relate to each other no matter how much better than us machines become. We still play chess. We still have math and spelling competitions. And we still ha...
We are for a crazy ride during our lifetime. Conservative prediction: - We see continuous growth Wild predictions: - AI apocalypse - AI utopia/dystopia where (the rich or everyone) live forever with 3D printed hearts and bodies
Navigating a rapidly changing world is difficult. Timeless things even in a world with really advanced AI and possibly even UBI: Status. Philanthropy. Competition. Sex. Community. These things will never go out of fashion.
I have realized that these two things make me feel super secure: - Money in the bank - Profit to expenses ratio I prefer to make $20k/month while spending $2k/month in business expenses. Than making $40k/month while spending $15k/month in business expenses. I ran a little audit of my e...
All major epiphanies in my life have come from moments of boredom. Or during runs. I am thinking of throwing away my AirPods. Good ideas come when your mind is at rest. Not when it's consuming podcasts and books all day. We are thinking other peoples' thoughts more than we do our own. ...
5 years ago I was employed and making $6,000/year. Yesterday my business generated $6,000 in profit. So.. I made in one day.. What I used to make in a year.. While working less.. This doesnโt even feel real. What the actual fuck.
2 is the ultimate number for diversification. Itโs just about the minimum effective dose. Itโs not about being perfectly diversified. Itโs about having insurance. About surviving. Avoiding ruin. Thatโs it. Example: I thought that I needed a second business bank account. But,...
Why copycats dont work: I want you to picture this normal distribution meme: https://i.imgflip.com/56amfo.jpg In the far left, it is โjust copy a successful productโ. In the middle its โit has to be unique, customer interviews, surveys, etcโ The far right its โjust copy a successful b...
True work begins when the TODO list ends. When youโre on top, youโre tempted to take a rest. Thatโs the time to double down and implement systems so itโs always chill like it is now. Iโm on Inbox Zero and Task Zero with 20 clients. I could either rest and wait for entropy to kick in a...
Was at a bar in London having a drink with a girl. The barman brought just my drink. A few minutes later, her drink was still not there. We were wondering if he forgot about it. And we were thinking of reminding him of it. As you can imagine, this is not the ultimate customer experien...
All I want is to stay at 20 clients. We can do this! $1M/year with 20 clients at $3k/month. And another $20k/month or so from the newsletter.
I recently went through the ultimate stress test. I had eye surgery and couldn't work a lot or at all some days. I flew to New York and couldn't work a lot either. I scaled up to 20 clients. And Gmail introduced the biggest breaking changes in cold email history. Yet, I still manag...
I keep reminding myself that I am already at my final destination. I get stressed and feel th e need to work and sometime I don't wanna go out and want to stay home. Then I ask, what would a cool young millionaire do? Well, whatever the fuck he wanted. In this case he would go out. Th...
Gmail just made the biggest breaking change in cold email history. Initially I was stressed and annoyed as hell. But Iโm gonna use this to my advantage. This is the ultimate stress test. And why I want to remain small and nimble forever. Small is beautiful and less fragile. Letโs s...
I recently experience the biggest breaking changes in cold email history. Gmail is cracking down on cold email and I had to change systems all over the business. And then train all 3 of my VAs on the new SOPs and how to do things. Super stressful. Made me wonder what I would do if I h...
Itโs all about the story. Take Jake Paul for example. His skills are mediocre at best. Yet he is one of the biggest draws in combat sports. Most people are obsessed over being the best. When they should obsess over having an interesting story instead. Itโs not about what you do...
My heroes used to be humble millionaires and billionaires. The ones that hardly spent their money. Like Bill Gates and Zuckerberg. Now my biggest hero is fucking Tom Cruz. He is spending his money to live his ultimate lifestyle. Heck, he's actually a superhero in real life. Flyi...
Shiny object syndrome is real. Everyone is chasing AI now. I have seen this play out before. And every time it seems that "this time it's different". My goal is to not be fancy and make goals that are not business related. Boring business. Exciting life. Not the other way around. ...
A little thought experiment I love playing with: What would my service look like if it cost $30k per month? Here are some things that come to mind and would like to include: 1. Optimize client's LinkedIn and Twitter profile 2. Set up LinkedIn and Twitter posts for them 3. Podcasting and ...
I recently increased my prices from $2k/month to $3k/month. No change what so ever. People are still subscribing. I feel like I could charge even more. But I want to improve my service even more before I do that again.
Today I jumped on a sales call for my $3k/month plan from a prospect that found me from Google. Hadn't read my blog. Doesn't know me from Twitter. Or some podcast interview. Just plain cold. So many objections. - Why should we trust you? - How are you different to others? - What can...
Treat whatever you do with the utmost respect. That way you will become a pro and fall in love with it. I treat sending fucking cold emails and analyzing the responses as if I'm building rocket ships and electric cars.
Half of the days I wanna devote my life to this game and keep growing my business until Iโm 80. The other half of the days I just wanna go off the grid and stop this rat race. Paradoxically, you get into business to escape the rat race, and end up in a new one if you are not careful.
In business, I like to aim for peace. But I remind myself to embrace war also. Because it's unavoidable. This is the life. Just remind yourself that all your peers and all the people you admire also go through this daily too. Shit happens in everyone's business and life.
Little observation from running hundreds of cold email campaigns. The money is in the follow ups. True. But that is for warm leads! Not cold! If you are constantly following up on cold leads, you are just annoying and spamming.
On a call with a fellow agency owner. He is 45 and told me that by the time heโs 50 he wants X, Y and Z. Oh I see.. so this never ends. Beautiful and frustrating at the same time.
So many people praise delayed gratification as if it's some sort of virtue. But it's more nuanced than that. "Live as if it's your last day" is terrible advice. But who guarantees that you will be alive in your 80s? I think the best is to meet somewhere in the middle. Heuristic for...
I recently hired an agency on purpose to see what it feels like to be on the other side. Here is what makes a service business great: - Being proactive and pushing them almost as if youโre their boss - Seeing progress and updating them constantly - Being friendly to them and transparent ...
I just realized I have published 1000 blog posts. Damn.. I wouldn't say my writing is that good haha.
Happiness is very abstract. Here is my favorite heuristic to measure my happiness levels. How excited am I for the next day when I go to bed? How excited am I when I get up in the morning? For example, itโs Friday night and I canโt wait for Saturday morning to get up and work.
In a service business, you need a good fail safe strategy. What do you do if things go terribly wrong for your client. Let's say if you generate little to no results. If you can keep them happy even in that scenario, then you aren't afraid to scale. It's like having great take down de...
Platform risk everywhere. Twitter. Gmail. Heroku. Stripe. Banks. It's unavoidable. It's good to try to diversify a little (2 is enough, I've written about this extensively). But at the end of the day, the only defense is taking out dividends. That's it. Having money aside for 10 ye...
Random little note on my phone: Smile more. It changes your whole world around you.
I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I wonder what I'll do once I hit $1M/year. Do I coast? Do I sell? Do I scale? I feel like staying small maximizes your odds of survival. Small is beautiful. And less fragile.
I'm not the first and definitely won't be the last to reach $1M/year solo. But that's not the point. I'm here to kick the door in and show even more people that it can be done. You don't need VC money. You don't need connections. You don't need offices. You don't need employees.
This year I wanna do as many things as possible that scare me: Up next: - Psychedelic retreat - Fight camp in Thailand It's been 7 years since I last fought. Yikes.
Got a tattoo. That's it.
A little note on my phone from a few weeks ago: Working from the NY public library. My life is a fucking movie. I can't fucking believe it. I'm felling that feeling again. PS. I hope it doesn't come across weird, but there are many times I wanna cry of happiness. I'm so grateful fo...
Flying is no longer a self reflecting experience like it was in the past. Itโs like taking a bus. I used to think about my life and come out of the plane inspired with a plan. Maybe I was subconsciously afraid of dying but now I'm too used to it! Maybe I have to smoke before boarding...
Love niche premium businesses. Here is one: www.supercoopers.com One car. Zero competition. Insane prices. Starting at $200,000...
I am so accustomed to fires and always working. So much so, that the other day I had nothing to do and was bored as fuck. Not sure what to make of that. I need to go out asap and live.
Just two years ago I signed a contract for $300/year with a customer. Today I closed 3 clients at $3k/month each. No contracts needed to be signed either. Wild. From $300/year... to $100,000/year... to who knows where...
In your business there will always be fires. A good firefighter doesnโt just put out fires. He or she also addresses the issue so that next time it doesnโt happen at all. Or itโs resolved faster. Or itโs resolved by someone else.
Everyone knows Peter Pan. The boy that never grew old. That never became a boring adult. Could the same apply for businesses? Normally a business starts cool and young and small. Then becomes old and boring. But I wanna stay a child forever. Both in business and life.
I wanna throw away my AirPods. I used to go for runs and forget everything. Now I go on runs and listen to fucking business podcasts and never switch off.
Now that I run a business with assistants, I have changed the way I see businesses. Was ordering a coffee today and was trying to guess their SOPs and their training. Business is beautiful. Or Iโm becoming boring.
I think solo bootstrappers are extremely well rounded. Compare these two: Boostrapper: - Knows a little bit of copywriting. A little of accounting. A little of customer support. A little design. A little product. A little sales. A little marketing. A little fulfillment. A little hiring. A ...
One of the perks of having sales calls with people is that I can get an inside look of what other businesses look like. I can just ask without feeling bad. Was talking to an agency owner today. - 80 people - 7 million revenue - 2 million profit - Add taxes on top of that - And it's 2...
Watched one of my favorite short films again today. It's called Zima Blue and it's from Love, Death and Robots. Love it. Reminds you that we deeply want to reconnect with our child self.
Watching a documentary about Arsenal. It's crazy how humble these multi millionaires footballers appear. They just work every day. And experience failure every week almost. Even extreme winners experience failures all the time. Maybe that's why they are winners.
In football, the more money a team spends, the better it performs and the more trophies they win. Is the same true for business? Probably yes. But just like in sports, there are exceptions.
Lately I've been chilling. I feel like I'm close to my biggest goal, $1M/year. However, that's like celebrating when you rock or drop your opponent in a fight. The fight is not over. This is exactly when you should be focused and not celebrating. Don't play with your food too much. Go fo...
I have productized almost everything in my agency. All I wanna do is sales, marketing and handling edge cases. That's it: - Sales - Marketing - And fire fighting
The ultimate state of mind is this for me: Telling myself in my mind says that I donโt care. While my actions clearly show that I do care. A lot. It's the perfect balance. You can't lose that way.
I believe you can learn almost anything. My second VA is a star now. He turned around 180 degrees. Fast. Maybe people overcomplicate hiring too. It wouldn't surprise me.
A note I found on my phone from a few weeks ago: My life is weird. In the best way possible. Iโm working at a cafe in Colombia right now. Itโs pouring. And a little grandpa is happily eating his street food next to me and looking at my screen from time to time. The weird thing is that...
In 2020 I was charging $29/month for CyberLeads. Now I am charging $2,997/month. Thatโs a 100X price increase. In 3 years. Wild.
You can stress test your business in many ways. Here are my favorite: - How many clients can I handle? - How little can I work and grow?
Two sales calls today. Both with similar companies. One was terrible. The other closed on the spot. Reminds you that we overestimate our abilities. Same with clients. Same effort, different results. Same with products and businesses. Makes you think.
I feel the shackles of fulfillment coming undone. I feel like I am almost free to run like a wild horse. Back to what I love doing. Marketing and Sales.
Nothing is inherently boring. We just find some things boring because we have been seeing it all our lives. Which means that it has withstood the test of time. Which means that the most effective things in the world appear to be boring. Even though once upon a time they were technolog...
It feels like my network is compounding. I have started DMing people and asking to meet up or asking for favors. It's something I have a hard time doing but I'm trying to cultivate. To my surprise, most people are more than happy to help me. And I'm starting to get special treatment in s...
I always felt like having my name and face on my business was a weakness. Now I feel like itโs a strength. My clients trust me because our incentives are aligned. They know that I truly want them to succeed since my name and โbrandโ are on the line. Skin in the game.
Itโs Monday. Notoriously my hardest day. I have to catch up on: - All my emails - Fix all broken automations - Update all my clients - Do client work I used to max out alone at around 8 clients. Now I have around 15 clients. Onboarding 3 of them at the same time. An I just worked ...
Little thought exercise to remind yourself that big wins are composed of many small wins. I think James Clear calls this the law of marginal gains. Here is how it applies to business. If you increase: - 20% in lead flow - 20% in closing sales - 20% in price increase - 20% in retentio...
We live in a world where everything is becoming a commodity: - Code (no code tools) - Media (GPT) - Labor (automation + outsourcing) The only things I believe will matter are: - Authenticity (being human) - Social proof (track record) - Brand (people know you)
Sales calls are not my favorite thing in the world. They kinda stress me out. But when I work out and socialize consistently, they are even enjoyable. And I even close way more clients. So a little hack I'm developing is persuading myself that working out is a revenue generating activ...
I'm in New York for a week or so. If you're here, let me know. DM me on Twitter or LinkedIn.
2022 was reminiscent of 2020. At the end of 2020 I was going crazy and could not wait to quit my job to focus on CyberLeads. At the end of 2022 I was going crazy and canโt wait to hire and escape fulfillment. I hope 2023 is reminiscent of 2021. Where I coasted and doubled over the year. ...
At some MMA fights. I love the human element of perseverance and striving to be the best at something. I have realized that business is my biggest passion. It speaks to me more than fighting. Thatโs my jam. Itโs what I can truly excel at. And I have to find itโ s mission. Maybe g...
The most important equation in business. It's called the equilibrium equation, and it tells you with your current churn and acquisition rate at how many clients you will hit equilibrium. Example: - 20% churn - 4 new clients per month That seems to be my most likely scenario. What wo...
You probably already know Alex Hormozi. Everyone in business is trying to post content like his and be him. But his content is really good. Here is my favorite video of his: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yflKMUffctE
Restructuring. This set up can take me to $1M/year. One VA for the newsletter. One VA for the service. This time next year Iโll be at $1M/year.
There is so much abundance in the world. Of everything. Money. Talent. Jobs. Love. Uploaded a virtual assistant post, 70 applicants in an hour. Many with a personalized cover letter. They even mention my personal website. What a world we live in.
A couple weeks ago I spoke with Jordan Ross from 8 figure agency. I told him I am constantly hitting a ceiling at around 10-12 clients. I asked him what advice would he give to me in order to scale. He simply said, hire an account manager. I will probably hire a second virtual assista...
Note from a few weeks ago: I just cannot do fulfillment anymore. I donโt know why. It's not that it takes me a lot. Maybe a couple hours per day. But those two hours are the most productive ones. And I'm blowing my load on that every day. I'm working IN the business instead of ON t...
First time I see influencers working. Itโs weird. It's all about distorting reality.
Accidentally opened January โ22 TODOs, instead of January '23 TODOs. No pretend work. This is where I first started having sales calls for the enterprise โDone For Youโ plan. The TODOs are: - Follow up with X - Create and send proposal with Y - Have call with accountant to move business ...
Elon Musk's Twitter take over was completely Machiavellian. In his book, The Price, he talks about this style of take over. If you take the throne by force, you have to be ruthless and wipe out the old guard straight away. Do all the horrible stuff upfront, be feared, then slowly regain ...
I'm in London at the moment. At a football game. I mean the real football. Watching Arsenal. So crazy, most footballers are younger than me. Even though I'm still in my 20s. These kids are exceptions. They have surpassed many great filters. Blessed with talent. Had a passion for the ...
I see many people do this. They build a $1M dollar business and then think: You know whatโs better than one 7 figure business? Two 7 figure businesses. When in reality this is the right way to approach things. You know whatโs better than one 7 figure business? One 8 figure business.
A little note rant I found on my phone: Promise to myself. Never again will I use buses or public transport late at night just to save money. Just ruined my night, missed the bus and took an hour to find a taxi or Uber. Just got in the taxi. I donโt give a fuck if itโs even 100 euros....
When I am doing work that gives me energy, I am productive no matter where I am. But when I have work to do that I donโt want to do (like accounting, client work, etc) I am 10X more productive at a library than at home. Just go to the library, get done in a couple of hours and go home. T...
The first step to turning your service business into a productized service is by changing your frame. I hate the word clients. A client is someone who has your phone number, calls you at midnight and treats you like an employee. I either call them "people" or "enterprise customers". My g...
Decided to record my daily blog posts and post them in my new podcast called "$1M Solo Business". Reading is not for everyone. If you prefer listening, this is for you. This is the link to the podcast on Spotify: And if have I set this up correctly indeed, you will be able to find it on ...
Currently writing down my goals for 2023. Realistic. And at the same time they sound insane. Coming soon in a blog post.
Merry Christmas to whoever is celebrating it today. Not at all religious, but who does not an excuse to spend time with family and loved ones. I am alone on Christmas day for the first time in my life actually. Strange.
This past month and a half I've been in monk mode. Not really going out and socializing as I was in the rest of this year. I don't want to. I'm working super hard, training hard and working on myself. I love little seasons of my life where I can 10000% selfish and work only on myself.
I haven't written for a while here so I've forgotten to give you an update on my life. I am currently in Colombia. It's cool. The reason I chose this place is because I'm learning Spanish and dancing in this season of my life.
Writing my next monster blog post. I have realized that these Long Essays are the things I am most proud of. Not my viral tweets. Or my revenue milestones. But actually documenting my journey. Shit, if they become long enough they could be turned into a book.
Super cliche, but the only way to move forwards is to make little improvements ON your business every single day. Little by little, brick by brick, time is on your side. On the flip side, if you are only working IN the business, time is against you. You are remaining constant and over time ...
Damn, haven't written in months. So easy to slip off your habits. It's normal. We are not robots. But it's important to get back on the horse.
Many times I just work with my mind on my phone. I'm on a bus, train or plane I just think of ways to improve my systems, automate stuff, delegate stuff etc Then I take notes on my phone and implement them the next day or week.
I used to be obsessed with MRR. I used to think it's the ultimate metric. Then I progressed a little and realized that it's really about revenue. Then I realized that it's about profits. Now I realize that it's about cash flow.
Every month I manually gather every single company that just raised money. Sometimes I wonder, why are these companies so overvalued and raise so much money? The answer is simple. Because there is too much money in the world and not enough makers.
No one wants to hear your advice: - When you are starting out, you have no credibility, so anything you say doesn't matter - When you succeed, you are an anomaly and suffer from have survivorship bias, so anything you say doesn't matter So just do shit. And tell how you did it.
Running a business is like cleaning your room every single day: - Cleaning up your inbox - Cleaning up your TODO list - Cleaning up bugs and code The list goes on and on.
A productized service can almost never turn into a complete SaaS. You can turn it into 80% SaaS, but you will still have that 20% left. For the 20% I think the best way is building a team or even better finding a partner to run it. With a profit sharing model. Maybe that's what I do n...
I love that I'm running a "SaaS" style newsletter and a productized service at the same time. Love both business models and I enjoy comparing them. Here is a little nuanced difference I have noticed: - The job of a SaaS founder is to identify next levers of growth. That's it, other than ...
Hit above industry standard levels for my productized service. When I say industry standard, I mean in the number of leads you deliver to your clients per week. When it comes to the service, I believe I was already way above the industry standard when I started this service 8 months ago. ...
Today I had an offer to sell CyberLeads. Didnโt even jump on a call to hear them out. I'm not in the game of building and selling businesses. I'm in the game of building and running a business for the next 10 years AT LEAST while traveling the world and having fun. I would hate to go ...
Every time I go to document and delegate something to my assistant, I realize that it could be automated 90%. Thatโs because Iโm breaking it down in little small steps. I end up automating the 90% while delegating the rest. The 10% that is not worth automating or doing myself.
You never know where you will end up if you listen to the market: - One year ago, I ran just a newsletter. - Six months ago, I ran a newsletter that happened to have a service on top. - Today, I run a service that happens to have a newsletter in front. I think a great skill you develo...
Was going through my notes today and was looking for my "September TODOs". While searching, last year's "September TODOs" popped up. I cringed.. This time last year I was lost. Couldn't find how to break the $50k/year barrier. I was running a bunch of experiments. And one of them worked....
First time sparring in years. Haven't forgotten anything! I was actually really damn good and went 10 rounds. But had a rookie problem of closing my eyes the other person closed distance and entered what we call "the pocket". Closed my eyes and shit. Haha. Told the coaches for a laugh...
Recorded a podcast with a new friend. He is an independent artist focusing on painting. As of now, he is selling his art through his network online and is generating around $5,000 per month. I think it's an interesting pod! Should be up in the next few days.
I've been hanging out with an abstract painter lately, Chris. Cool dude. It's so interesting to me that some people are expressing themselves outside the boundaries of our vocabulary. With painting and shit. Abstract thoughts. I am so logical haha. I live within the realms of logic and v...
Why Iโm not jumping on the image generation AI trend. I feel a little FOMO. But when I dive deep it goes away. Why FOMO? Insane opportunity. In what sense? A lot of money. Well, I honestly don't care about becoming a billionaire. Another reason I'm feeling FOMO is cause it feels re...
Sometimes I am in awe of what I've built with CyberLeads. Today one tiny automation broke. Took me almost an hour to do things by hand. And with that automation it was literally one click of a button. Iโd love one day to record a video and show everything I have built!
Leave me in a noisy cafe with my laptop and Iโm happy. I love the energy. The wilder and louder the better. It works like alpha wave music for me.
In the future, looking back, our times will be super nostalgic and vintage. The 20s. Think about that when youโre outside walking. Enjoy the moment. It's magical.
Used a website today to order food online. Last time I used it was 5 years ago. Since then, it has became worse. Bloated. After all these years. And all these developer hours. It's just worse. People are not able to keep things simple. We want to add and improve things all the time.
Books can seem slow and boring. Two main ideas. And 300 pages dragging it home with examples and repetition. I used to criticize those books. But maybe that is not a bug. It is a feature. You carve in one or two important ideas into your brain. That can be priceless. Even if itโ...
Was talking to Jim Raptis the other day on my in person podcast. We were saying that building a SaaS is definitely not the best option when starting out. And honestly, I lost a lot time with trying to go for SaaS for so many years. But you should always look at the bright side. You know ...
Went to MMA again today. I have to do this at every location I go to. It's one of the things I love. Maybe just as much as business and traveling.
I'm in Cyprus at the moment. I hate generalizing but from my personal experience Cypriot people are the warmest and kindest I have ever met. A friend came and picked me up from the airport from another city an hour away. Others have offered me to stay at their place. Yesterday I went to an ...
Traveling again. Writing this from a cafe in the airport. I love it.
Sorry for skipping so many days. It's not a coincidence that once again I'm in my hometown in Greece. I am never inspired to work here. I'm barely just doing enough to not fuck up. Anyway, I'm going to start blogging again from today. And I'm flying tomorrow and leaving. By the way, I...
Since I was a baby, every single August I was in the mountains of Greece with my father's side of the family. This is the first year that I'm not. For many reasons that may be a little too personal for this blog post. But life is change. Otherwise it's death.
And I'm away again. This time in Athens. Here to see my best friend and also go to some greek islands with old friends from Milan. Will also record another podcast episode with one of them! Spoiler alert: he was an X colleague of mine so we might shit on our company.
An excellent decision making heuristic. - What advice would you give yourself? - Or what would someone far more advanced than you do if they took over your company?
I recorded two podcasts recently. I found myself (even though I hate doing it) giving advice. And then a few hours later, during a conversation with a friend I realized that I don't always follow my own advice either. Damn it. Humans are stubborn.
I'm starting a podcast! An in person one. Everywhere I travel I carry two microphones with me. If I meet anyone that is interesting, I invite them over for a chat. Mostly entrepreneurs and indie hackers. Have two episodes coming out this week!
I'm in the UK today. New environment. From the crushing waves of Gran Canaria, to the green gardens of England. I love traveling so much. It inspires me.
Found out today I'm mentioned twice in a book. Achievement unlocked.. I guess.
Everything seems to be under control in my business. Is this the calm before the storm? Expect the unexpected.
Something I learned today. The best way to keep your mind healthy and young is not intellectual exercise. It's physical exercise. Yet another reminder that the body and the mind are one thing. Not two.
Took out my friends for dinner today. It's my last day in Gran Canaria. One of the nicest periods of my life. Will definitely be back!
I love noisy cafes to work from. The noisier they are the better.
Itโs nice to socialize a lot and end up missing your own company. Itโs nice to be alone enough to feel the need to socialize again.
Saying I was lucky with CyberLeads can protect me from envy. And it's honestly the way I feel. I got lucky. But itโs not really useful to the other person. Still thinking how I should approach this.
Many people tell me I look nothing like my profile pic. That's funny. I'd love to change it, but I believe that changing image damages your brand.
People think that ARR is like a yearly salary. Man, if I stop working on CyberLeads for just 3 months my ARR will drop to something like $150k. Less than half. In just a few months.
Was talking to a friend yesterday. He has been working on a product for 6 months. And now he was telling me that develop it further and then try to get people to pay. Delivering first and charging last is potentially business. And potentially philanthropy. Charging first and then deliver...
Have been going to dancing classes every week. By far the best way to meet new people. Will become a part of my life. Everywhere I go, I will do MMA and dancing.
Having a little buffer in your life is not laziness. It's smart. Planning to work 4 hours per day will end up with you working 6-8 hours. Always expect bullshit to come up.
Since last year when I started learning Italian and now Spanish, I find many parallels. Learning languages is helping me with learning other skills. Like dancing. And MMA.
Randomly checked on a copy cat today. Website not live anymore. They quit. Typical.
If you take some time off to recharge on the weekend, Mondays are awesome. You can't even wait for the time to wake up and continue working on your business. Your creation. Your work.
Been training MMA 2-3 times per week for the past month or so. I had forgotten how much it helps with my mental help and my confidence. It sounds stupid, and maybe a bit sad, but simply training MMA makes me more confident than putting 5 years of work to build a business did.
Best hack to get in shape? Live by the beach and go there every day.
I love operating and improving something, rather than constantly innovating. It's nice to go through seasons where you're building new things, but in reality I like working on something and building upon it for years. Like tending a Bonsai tree.
I am obsessed with new places. Not sure why. Today I just changed coffee shop for work. Iโm in a big shopping mall right now. And feels so different. I'm in a part of town I've never been to before. And it feels almost as if I moved house again. Why do I like this so much?
This time last year I was in Palermo, Sicily. The nomad scene was non existent. But the good thing was that I ended up hanging out with locals, learning the language and understanding their culture. Here I am speaking English all day, which sucks. There is always good and bad in every...
Too many events in this city! It's nomad paradise. Just today there is: - Yoga at 17:00 - Beach volleyball at 18:00 - Calisthenics workout at 18:30 - Meetup at 18:30 Also been invited to a dancing class on Wednesday, a spa retreat on Wednesday and a road trip on the weekend.
Fell in love with writing again when I wrote "3.5 years of building products". This week I will start writing "4 years of building products". Wish me luck.
Hiking will be my new weekend activity. That's it. That's the blog post.
Been experimenting with adding external constraints. One of my goals for the year is to get out of the house and socialize more often. Almost daily. On Sunday, I sit down and add on my calendar all the things I'll do (apart from work and working out with my personal trainer). This wee...
I am ready for chaos again. Started accepting enterprise clients for my "Autopilot" plan again. Took some time off after my first batch of clients. Things got really crazy there. Actually I cried a couple of time working and stressing at 4AM. Will write about it in 4.5 years of building ...
While writing 3.5 years of building products, I realized something interesting. The true value of writing is keeping it short. Cutting out all the fluff. Like a sculptor. Remove stuff until it's ready. Not add.
At last. It's ready. Spent all my free time last week writing 3.5 years of building products. You can find it in the "Long Essays" column on this website. I didn't write anything new. Just compiled my drafts from that period and turned them into a story. Hope you enjoy it.
Spent all the day hiking today. No better way to clear your mind than tiring your body. I am 100% re energized to get back on the horse on Monday.
Nothing brings down your stress levels like being outside. Even if it's just for a walk. Or even working outdoors. I always try to remind myself this and I always forget and end up staying home all day. And then I wonder why I'm not feeling super happy.
Writing 3.5 years of building products. A little late but I'm sure you'll love it. Will post it next week.
Everyone says that you should scratch your own itch. Or have experience in the field. But beginnerโs mind is a real advantage. You are not polluted by the existing solutions.
For the past weeks I've been in Las Palmas in Gran Canaria. What a fucking cool place. - Perfect weather all year round. - Beautiful beach. - European vibe, good infrastructure, etc - Spanish, my favorite language in the world - Many many nomads and nomad events Will stay here till A...
Half way through the year. Took a little break this past month in order to: - Relax, think and re group - Socialize and live life - Systematize my processes for scale Today is the first day of the rest of this year. And from what it seems, it's going to be the craziest year of my life...
Sorry for not posting. Was with family and you know how it goes. Just booked my tickets to Gran Canaria, in the canary islands. Change of plans. Going to Colombia in September. The reason is that I want to be close to Europe as I have promised to see many friends over the summer.
Flying to the UK. Left my house this morning. Almost cried. Spent a whole year in Sicily. Had an amazing time. I love that place. But now it's time to move on.
Been a while since I worked till lunch break. Love it. I donโt want to work zero hours per day. Thatโs boring. I donโt want to work eight hours per day. Thatโs too much.
Iโll give this agency thing 6 months. If it doesnโt work out, I kill it. Or find a way to do it that doesnโt stress you. For example, pick good clients. Also, have the money back guarantee. Also, actually provide a good service. This is not for the feint of heart.
Packing my stuff to music. Getting ready to leave Italy for good. Best feeling in the world. Change. Like flipping a page in a book and finding the beginning of a new chapter.
Started truly productizing my service. First step? Call them customers. Not clients. Changed the naming everywhere and in my mind. BIG DIFFERENCE.
Had my first therapy session today. It was strange. But I am excited about this. You donโt need to have problems to have a therapist. The same way you need to be overweight to have a personal trainer.
Turn stress into excitement and have fun. Whatโs the worst that can happen? Close my business and start from scratch, while having a huge audience, skills and money aside for 5 years? Big deal.
Familiarity is a weird and warm feeling. Iโm at the supermarket in Palermo now. One that I always used to go to. Feels nice. But you know which feeling I like better? The feeling of new.
In Sicily again. Living by nature is amazing. It makes me forget about work. It's also a life hack to being lean. Just live next to the beach.
Missed a few days of blogging. But that's life. All you can do is get back on the horse and keep going. Let's do this.
Little daily steps every day compound in the long run. Been continuously booking calls for my clients. And the booking rate is accelerating all the time. Almost every day I have a booked call. This morning I booked a call with the CEO of a $10M/yr funded startup. Feels good. Now I wan...
Sent the monthly list. More than 100 hours of research. Never going to outsource this. Happy new month.
I have a hard time being present. Iโm living my dream life but this year has been so crazy that Iโm literally working all day. I wanna reach the quality of life I had in 2021 with my current revenue and ultra happy clients.
I support, help and inspire other makers, friends and relatives to do the same thing and live their life free and independent like me. But Iโm not sure this is for everyone. I donโt want to pretend that this is easy. It's not.
Some days I feel like an invincible. Iโve been forged in the fire and nothing fazes me anymore. Competition. Exposure. Stress. Other days I feel mortal. Like a few days ago. Went viral and hated it. Stress management is for life. It may get easier over time but you will always have to ba...
It's 2020 all over again. Running in Paris to get rid of my stress right now. Can see the Eiffel tower in the distance. Is this real life? My life is surreal at the moment. It wouldn't surprise me if I woke up in my bed in Greece and I was 23 years old again and broke.
Build credibility by building products that are meritocratic. The product does exactly what it says. No need to trust you, I can see it. Software is the best in that sense. Build wealth by using your credibility to go high ticket. By offering a service/solution now that people trust you....
My competitive advantage is that Iโm in a boring market: - No one wants to enter it. - Everyone that is in it does a half ass job. That's it. Nothing else.
The Olympics are a scam. Building the next Facebook is a scam. Their quality of life sucks. They just are brainwashed by society and are like monkeys at a zoo. Trying to achieve the highest performance for glory. I prefer to be a lion in the wild. Doing whatever the fuck I want. Who c...
People have told me that I have inspired them. That means the world to me. If my blog has changed the life of a single person, then all this writing has been worth it. PS: I already know for a fact it has for a single individual that is now killing it. So I'll keep going forever.
I want 20 clients. I want zero meeting policy. I want to be picky. Work with clients that will make my life easier. And I want to charge $3k per month. That's it. I don't want to dominate the market. I don't want to disrupt anything. I just want to live my life.
Building robots that execute tasks and automate things. One of the best feelings in the world. That's it. That's the blog post. I'm going for a run.
Not sure you know of this, but I grew up speaking perfect Greek and English. However, growing up in Greece, I remember visiting my family in the UK and being frustrated not being able to express myself and sounding stupid. Now it's the complete opposite. My life is on the internet. Where...
Following up on yesterday's blog post about linearity and exponential growth curves. Looking back at my 4-5 year journey building businesses, it hasn't been linear. A little pattern I found. One year is calm. The next is crazy. Repeat. Here is what has happened to me so far: - 2017 was ...
Progress is never linear. I think we were completely brainwashed in school. I firmly believe that the default growth curve is exponential. The problem is that exponential curves look linear before they start picking up. And in the real world there is a lot of up and downs along the wa...
It's funny. Earth can be paradise and hell at the same time. It's in a super state. On one hand, it's hell. We need to eat each other to survive and we are all competing against each other non stop. On the other hand, you can find love, peace, family and friends. My paradise state: Being...
I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Above $8k/month, my quality of life has completely stopped improving. If anything, it has started declining because I have much more work. From now on, I am not fighting to grow my revenue at any cost to achieve financial freedom. From now...
For a second this morning I opened my eyes and I didnโt remember where I was. You know that funny feeling. When your mind thinks it's somewhere else. I thought I was in Greece. "Damn, I am in France." How nice.
In two months I am going to Colombia. Shit... I speak zero words of Spanish. I don't want to be like I was when I first went to Italy. And I don't want to be the tourist that expects others to speak their language. I want to show respect. I want to speak the language.
Two and a half years ago I had just launched CyberLeads. I remember going through all of my customers to find my favorite one so I can niche down. My favorite customer was an outsourcing agency. I remember seeing that they are making $1M+ per year. I almost pissed my pants with joy. Wow....
I always wanted to be a nomad. Even when I was in school. I remember reading a book, when I was in high school, of a guy that traveled to Thailand to train Muay Thai, to Brazil to train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and to the US to train Boxing. It's called "A fighter's heart". I loved that book. ...
Nothing like a new environment. Starting fresh again. At last I left Greece and I just arrived in Paris. Working from an awesome cafe now. They are playing Cuban music. Inspired.
Read a tweet this morning that founders live in dog years. A quarter feels like a decade for another individual working in regular job like my previous one (career wise). That's how I feel now. Q1 is ending in 2 days. And my life has transformed. Went from $6k/month to $20k/month with a ...
I may sound like a broken record but I really want to write all the content I owe. So much has happened over the past 6 month that it will be a shame if I don't get them down on paper. Content I owe: - February monthly blog post - March monthly blog post - 3.5 years of building products ...
Someone asked me yesterday if I want to sell in the future. Sell and do what? Build a business from scratch? Become a serial entrepreneur? I donโt want to sell my business. I prefer to make money with my existing business, without working a lot. Build a sellable business. But never sell.
Most clients are amazing. 8/10 of my clients are amazing. 2 of them are somewhat stressful to have. Because I just launched this service offer, I took up any client that came my way. However, from now on, here are my goals to reach by the end of this year: - I want to manage 10 client...
My goals and number change all the time. You can see that if you toggle the "Time travel" bar on this website. It used to be $500/month. Enough to live by as a cockroach in a cheap country, like Thailand. Then it became $800/month, the same amount most of my friends in Greece made when w...
When you systematize things, you can achieve crazy results. It took me two months to run my first campaign for my first client: - Go through their case studies - Identify target customers - Set up new email - Set up email technologies - Start warming up new email - Gather leads from my d...
Working all day and all night lately. I have 10 clients right now on the Autopilot plan. Sending emails on their behalf. Setting up campaigns. And so on. Last night I stopped working at 3am. Haven't done that in years. Quite depressing and disappointing to be honest. It's like I'm ...
Comfort zones expand. And what once was stressful, then becomes normality. First time I went vira, I couldn't sleep for two days. Now it's nothing. First time I went on a podcast to talk I was very worried. Now, it's nothing. First time I had a meeting with a client, I was very stressed....
So right now I am stuck in Greece. And if you have been reading this blog for the past few years, you would know that I always fall in depression and lose my will for life here. In a bar right now, working, and it's playing Italian music. Can't wait to leave.
The last few days I've been living as if I was a student again. Drinking, smoking, clubbing. First day I felt like an old man. But by the third day I was back in full form. As if I time traveled to my university years again. It was fun. Had some interesting conversations as well. Peop...
Visiting my brother for the weekend. He is studying in a city in the mountains of Greece. Snowing right now. Everything is white. And as you can imagine, it's freezing. Going out with a bunch of 20 year olds today. Sometimes I feel old around them, even though I'm only 27. Weirdly, I don...
I had a couple of people unsubscribe from CyberLeads yesterday. Normally that would stress me out. But this time it didn't. I always thought it would take a second product to make me more chill and relaxed. Or a fuck ton of money aside. But just the second offering I have now (the agency) i...
Some days I feel like a genius. Other days I feel like an idiot. Today it's clearly the second. My competitors are out there raising money, running ads against my name, building a team and expanding in new markets. I spent all morning naming my robots after my favorite philosophers. Even sp...
Ever since I started offering custom services and I have clients, my email workload has increased. For the first time in my life, I felt inbox fatigue. One week ago, I started using Superhuman. It's a paid email client and it's supposed to help you get through your emails super fast. The...
Sometimes the world can be very demoralizing. When you are young, you feel like the world was completely designed by humans and society and that we can redesign it if we want. But the older you get, the more your realize that the world just is. What if the world is like this, because itโs just...
A lot of work today. Working on the monthly lists for CyberLeads. In front of the TV of course.
First time in my life that I've been glued to the TV and Twitter all day. Usually news is 99% noise and 1% signal. Hence why normally I don't follow the news at all. At this time though, the news is 99% signal and 1% noise. So many things going on at the moment. I'm like a lab mouse on c...
War is stupid. Every war is a civil war. Regardless if it's in the Middle East, Europe, etc. That's it. That's the blog post. And sorry for engaging in politics. I know you don't follow me for that reason.
I never engage or follow politics, as it's far too complex for any individual to truly understand. Even more importantly, it's something I can't control at all. However, this war in Europe is too hard to ignore. It's depressing. Disappointing. And disgusting. History repeats itself. A...
Was super stressed lately. Thought about it for a while, and what do you know.. I hadnโt exercised for a week straight. How typical. And how predictable. We are weird animals. And lack of physical stress causes mental stress. Went for a long and fast run. Breathing in as much as I could ...
Today I am working from a cafe with my friend Jim Raptis. You can find him on twitter here: @jimraptis He is probably the most talented UX designer I've met. We talked about business, design and life while working on mundane and boring tasks.
Added time traveling to this blog. You probably have seen it already. It's weird that I have achieved all my goals but I am still chasing imaginary numbers on a screen. Building a business has transformed from a vehicle for freedom to a vehicle for self improvement. A video game where I'...
Going to start Spanish lessons today. It's always been my favorite language. And I am thinking of moving to Colombia in June. Also, last week at the Acropolis I heard some female tourists speaking in Spanish and I literally fell in love just by the sound of their voice.
Back in Thessaloniki, my home town. This week in Athens kinda brought me down to earth. Hanging out with communists and shit. Talking about poverty and inequality. Not glorifying million dollar businesses and MRR charts, as I normally do on Twitter. I'm guilty of this too. I am thinki...
Oh my god. It's been years since I've participated in political debates. I had forgotten how much people love talking about politics in Greece. Labor vs Capital. Communism vs Capitalism. Greece vs Turkey. Exhausted. I honestly want to throw up with these subjects. I have no team. I ag...
In Athens for a few days to see my best friend from uni. It's been a while since I was here. Not as terrible as my city, Thessaloniki.
Just create content for one hour in the morning. Everything else falls in place. No need for SEO. No need for anything else. Fuck it. After creating content on Twitter, LinkedIn and on my blog, everything else is playing catch up. It just happens automatically. I like simple system...
CyberLeads is two years old. Going out to celebrate.
Sat down today and wrote down all of the monthly blog posts I owed. I had them all drafted. But now I finally have the story written down.
When I am on the move and traveling, I get many ideas. When I'm on a shitty bus. On an airplane. At a cafe. Or on a run in new city. Or even when I do random stuff. Like building a side project. Or taking up a random Zoom call. (Even though I avoid both like the plague nowadays) Just had...
I'm officially a resident of Cyprus! That was my last legal job to do on this island. It's crazy how quickly everything happens here. Low bureaucracy. These jobs took multiple times longer in Italy. Plus, half of them couldn't be done because of "reasons". Love it.
Tomorrow is my last job that I have to do on this island. Register at the municipality and become a resident. I have a house. I have incorporated a company. I have found an accounting firm. I have everything else set in place. This is the last piece of the legal puzzle.
There is no nicer feeling than changing environment and scenery. I don't know why. You just feel alive. I'm in a shitty little bus right now about to go to another city in Cyprus. Nothing crazy. Just going to stay for a couple of days at a friendโs house, because I have some work that ha...
Crazy growth lately for CyberLeads. Never seen anything like it. About to reach $100,000 per year with this simple newsletter. I haven't done anything new. Anything different. Not even tweeting or getting much traffic. I think the results lag the reps. This is the reward for my efforts i...
If something works, there is no question. It just has traction. Whether thatโs a new product. A new distribution channel. A new pricing model. A new business plan. If something is to work. It just works. If you feel like you are pushing, let go and move on. Be ruthless with yourself and ...
Haven't worked this much in a long time, because I'm transferring my business from Italy to Cyprus. A lot has to be done before the end of Q2 and I want to get them done by the end of Q1. In Cyprus: โ Incorporate company โ Rent a property โ Open business bank account โ๏ธ Start bookkeepin...
I'm so far behind my writing that it pains me. So much is happening, but I can't really find the time to write about it. And I don't just want to write about it for you. Honestly, it's mostly for me. Number one, because it helps me really clarify my learnings. Number two, because I wa...
Starting tomorrow I'm blogging again. Enough of this shit. I am experiencing new things. I am taking notes. But just don't post them because I feel they have to be refined before going live on this blog. From now on, if I don't have time, I will post them as they are. Straight from my notes...
I'm in Cyprus right now looking for a place to rent. Super stressed to be honest, hence why I haven't been writing. Sorry for that. Will try to find a few minutes per day and let you know what's going on in my life. Things are pretty crazy here.
Woke up at 08:30 without an alarm today. My natural waking time. Made a coffee. And just sat down to work after almost 3 weeks of doing fuck all. A feeling of excitement and happiness has flooded my body. I want to work. All humans need to do something and have a mission.
Last night I had a profound though about my strategy in 2022. This time last year, I was planning to do many things. I have to give myself credit, I actually did almost everything I said I would do. Worked on SEO. On my personal health. On eliminating single points of failure. On growing...
Haven't worked almost at all the last few weeks. First I was sick. Then it was Christmas. Then it was New Year's. Still. CyberLeads grew. It pains me to say, but the cold harsh truth is that just tweeting and word of mouth (which isn't me doing anything) does 80% of the work. My job i...
Happy new year everyone. Took the last week off because I was with family, eating and drinking all day. I truly hope that all your dreams come true this year. For you. Your family. Your business. And every one you love and is close to you.
This last week was a fucking nightmare. I came to England and the next fucking morning I felt sick and came down with the flu. Ended up being bed bound for 4 days in a row. Shivering, curled up in a ball suffering from pain. Fucking vicious. Anyway, at least I'm somewhat better now and c...
As per title. Still fucking sick. Slight improvement. Hope I'm back to normal and able to walk and stuff in a couple of days. Came all the way here to see my family just to be in bed all day. Funny how life works.
Still sick. Still curled up in a ball in bed, shivering. On a constant cocktail of painkiller and begging for this to end as soon as possible. If this is what getting old feels like, it fucking sucks. We are so lucky to be young and healthy.
Turns out the tightness and stiffness wasn't from sitting down all day yesterday. It was because I was coming down with the flu. I am writing this retroactively, as on this day I was curled up like a ball in total pain. The flu is fucking vicious.
Crazy how tight my body is from the travel yesterday. I had a 3 hour direct flight from Palermo to London. And it took me another 2 hours to get to my mother's place. So I was sat down all this time. And then I didnโt have the time to work out because they had prepared dinner. Then we sa...
Arrived in England! Although it may sound weird (it does to my family) I have missed this place. Central and Northern European countries inspire me to work and create. I don't know if it's the cold fresh air. Of if it's the cozyness of the homes. Or just the fact that I'm changing scener...
Getting ready for my flight to the UK tomorrow. It's been 10 years since I last went for Christmas. And in general, two and a half years since I last visited. I've missed it so much.
The end of the year is coming soon. As always, I turn introspective, look back on the past year and look ahead to the next. Head buzzing with ideas. I jump out of my bed to write them down before I forget them. Building an online business is addictive. It's the best video game I've ev...
People have a tendency to "systematize" things. Oh, I will build this funnel and split test here and voila! I will get one new customer per week! I am guilty for this too. However, I'm seeing more and more that funnels don't work like that in the real world. People don't land on your ...
All of last week, I was using an alarm clock to wake up and get work done. All because I had to fit my extra training in, which takes time. Although I was accustomed to using alarm clocks all my life, ever since I became self employed at the start of this year I stopped using one. This w...
Competed in BJJ today! It was a super awesome experience and nowhere near as stressful as competing in kickboxing or muay thai. It was mostly fun! I lost 3-2 on points. The funny thing is that I have no idea how. I'm an idiot and don't even know the point system. I felt like I was DOMINATIN...
Competing in the BJJ grappling tournament tomorrow. Flying to Milan later today. Wish me luck!
I've been changing my mind completely regarding what scaling a business means. I used to think it means decoupling your time and efforts. Instead of selling 1-1, sell 1-N. Instead of increasing traffic by writing blog posts one by one, find a way to auto generate blog posts. But I thi...
WARNING: LONG POST! The great thing about having a blog running for over a year is that you can look back and see what you were up to! Out of curiosity, I went and saw what I was doing this time last year. I remember going crazy. It was almost the time I gave my 1 month notice at work. ...
I'm in the middle of a mini weight cut right now. The reason is that in grappling matches you don't weigh in the previous day. Or even a few hours before you fight. You weigh in just before you step on the mat to compete. So in order to be confident and have a good breakfast on that day, I ...
After yesterdayโs blog post, I realized that I have friends from all over the world. People from Italy, Greece, Cyprus and the UK reached out to me to catch up on the dates I will be there. With some people it makes sense location wise. With others not. But honestly I will try to meet ev...
Booked my trips for the next few months. 17th of December -> 7th of January (England) 7th of January -> 7th of February (Cyprus) 7th of February -> 7th of March (Greece) 7th of March -> 30th of June (Italy) 30th of June onwards (Who knows) If you happen to be in these areas, let...
Have been training daily at this point. Injured. Will probably fight injured. This mini fight camp reminded me that I have never fought healthy. And it has made me respect professional athletes even more. I couldn't do this for a living. All I want is for this to end and get back t...
A tweet of mine sort of blew up. Every time this happens I get nervous. Even though it's happened multiple times now and there is nothing to worry about. Why? I don't know. Maybe it's all those fucking notifications.
Grappling is by far the most injury-inducing sport I have ever done. Sadly, after every single practice I leave with some pain. - It could be my right knee swelling. - It could be my lower back hurting. - It could be my sternum injury flaring up again. - Or a new type of pain on my colla...
It's December and I just came back from the sea. The weather is still nice and kinda warm. The water.. freezing. So freezing that it makes you feel alive.
Have been busy with the monthly list. As always.. I finish it at the last minute. If there aint no drama and stress, it aint worth it. It has to feel like Bruce Willis defusing the bomb with 2 seconds remaining, saving the world.
When you have momentum, rolling the dice seems easier. During my triathlon last month, I said that I felt like competing in martial arts again. So, I picked up wrestling and BJJ this month. Would I have done it if not for the triathlon? Probably not. That gave me some momentum. Well, yes...
Everytime I talk with a prospect for CyberLeads and I don't pretend to be a company, it amazes them. Today someone told me that they felt as if they were in a small Italian restaurant, talking to the owner of the business. I love that analogy. The internet hasn't changed us. If anything,...
Had a chat in Italian, for the very first time, with my friend and ex-flatmate from Milan. We spoke for two hours non stop, with only one switch to English for a word I didn't understand. I was so happy. Especially when they called me fluent. Learning a new language is fucking hard. But ...
I saw a guy from my school on Instagram. He is a footballer and he was the most successful person in our school because he turned pro, had a promising career and was making good money while the rest of us didn't even know who we were and if we wanted to go to university or not. Fast forward...
A small thing I'm proud of is that I'm able to hold conversations for hours without talking about business. I remember that this time last year I couldn't shut up about it. People would ask how I'm doing and I would reply with work stuff. This year it's the opposite. They have to pressure m...
Batching tasks together is the ultimate life hack. Why didn't I do this all my life? Examples: - All marketing content on Monday - All emails on Wednesday - All accounting tasks on Friday PS: I strongly recommend reading "Mind management, not time management" by David Kadavy.
Lately I've been hitting 1,000+ weekly unique visitors from Google. Conversions are still super poor. So it's not that I'm getting customers left and right. The opposite. I've only gotten 4 customers from Google all of this year. But we'll get there. The important thing is to make little st...
I've been very mindful of consuming content lately. I almost feel like I have to protect my mind. There are only a few hours per day I can be concentrated and focused. And there is only a limited amount of dopamine you can get every day. Rather than getting my dopamine by scrolling on my...
Lately I've been trying to be outdoors as much as possible. Partly because these are the last nice days on Autumn. But also because I am so much calmer and happier when I do so. For example, instead of reading a book at home, I read it outside. Or instead of thinking about a business pro...
Just as I was celebrating reaching $5K MRR yesterday, I received my tax bill. I was at wrestling practice, in the locker rooms, getting ready to go out and train. I receive an email from my accountant. "Hey Alex, hope you are well. Here are our tax filings for 2021." It hit me like a ...
Told my landlord yesterday that I'm leaving the house and Italy in six months from now. Just that little act alone has energized me big time. I feel on my toes. I feel change. I feel momentum.
I think I have a new favorite poem. Heard it on a podcast and instantly fell in love with it. The Man In The Glass, 1943 Peter Dale Wimbrow Sr. When you get what you want in your struggle for self And the world makes you king for a day Just go to the mirror and look at yourself And see ...
Yesterday I went to an MMA gym. The familiar smell of sweat, rubber mats and humidity made my skin crawl. It felt familiar. In good and bad ways. Good, because I love martial arts. Bad, because it reminded me of terrible fight camps. I did three sessions back to back. Wrestling. BJJ. Ki...
It's mid November. And this is what my neighborhood is like today. Waves. Seagulls. Sun. People surfing. Beach full of people sunbathing. Things like this make all the shit infrastructure and bureaucracy of Sicily worth it.
Re-reading "The four hour work week" by Tim Ferris. The first time I read it was in November 2019. Exactly two years ago. A LOT has changed since then. Back then, I was at $100/mo and had failed 20 times to build a sustainable business. I had just accepted a full time job and felt lik...
Had to import all my clients into a software program yesterday. This was to issue electronic invoices and send them over to the Italian government. My customers are from Moscow. New Delhi. London. Rio de Janeiro. Paris. Cairo. The Bronx in New York. Hong Kong. Singapore. Tokyo. What a world...
Every time I feel my learning curve slowing down, I start writing. The "2 years of building products" blog post I wrote in late 2019 changed my life. I went through every single failed product of mine in detail. Analyzed what I did wrong and what I did right. Inevitably, that helped me form...
There is a hacker trying attacking the CyberLeads website over the past few days. Failed SQL Injection attempts. Failed probing attempts trying to find files, routes and ports. Failed DDoS attacks. To be honest, I think it's a bot. Because it's probing for "admin.php" files and route...
Yesterday I completed a triathlon with almost no training. The only thing I trained for was the swim, for a few weeks. The first day I went for a swim I did 150m. By the end of the second week I was swimming 1km with ease. Thatโs the blessing of being a beginner. You get newbie gains. ...
As you know, lately I've been training a bit for a triathlon. At least once per year, I like doing something really physically demanding and difficult. Don't know why. It's almost spiritual. Back in university it used to be fight camps and fighting in kickboxing or muay thai. Last yea...
It's not that I haven't been blogging. It's just that I haven't been posting them here. I always write down a few thoughts every single day. Why is it that when you put something off for a single day, it becomes exponentially easier to do again? If you miss one workout, the next day it's 50...
Derek Sivers has the best personal website in the world. I just discovered it yesterday and it's exactly what I aspire my personal website to be like in a few years. Retro. Full of knowledge. Enough to fill a bookself. You can check it out at sive.rs
Lately I've been going out with some local Italian friends. It's great. And I love going out with friends. But sometimes I love even more when I get back home and lay in bed. Planning the future and what Iโll do the next day. All excited and shit. Busy and happy in my own little world...
Last night I was waiting for the bus. It took forever. And I know from personal experience that here in Sicily buses sometimes never come. There was a taxi nearby, I could see it. But it took a while for me to realize that I'm not broke anymore and can afford it. And that I SHOULD take i...
I used to dream of becoming famous, respected and admired. Now all I want is to become rich, free and uncancellable.
Feeling lost with my SEO efforts right now. On one hand, it's frustrating. Does anxiety about your company ever go away? On the other hand, it's familiar. I have been through this a million times. If it was easy, everyone would do it.
Why niche down and not just go into a big market? Why dominate a small market and then expand, instead of just starting in the initial market? Isn't 5% of a large market better than 90% of a smaller one? Sure. But don't forget of power laws. The Pareto distribution is found everywhere. A...
Not going to lie. Building and launching a new product was not fun. Programming is not fun after all either. I turned into a gremlin this past week. Never left the house. Eat like shit. Slept terribly. Drank too much coffee. All I wanted was to finish this project so I can get back to Cy...
Now that I launched HumanFocused.AI I've been thinking about what I want to do with this. I picked a generic name on purpose, in order to be able to extend it. Here are some things I would like to do: - Open source it - Build accessibility tools for people that suffer from blindness - De...
Epilepsy Blocker 2.0 is ready! Actually it's called HumanFocused.AI now! It scans the web and reports dangerous content for people with photosensitive epilepsy. I like it because it provides value to millions of people out of the gate. A lot better than the previous version, where people...
Today I will build Epilepsy Blocker 2.0! Not sure how it will be called though. For anyone that doesn't know, it's a chrome extension that works like an AdBlocker and blocks dangerous content that could cause a seizure to anyone with photosensitive epilepsy. This is not a business ventur...
Indiehackers is a gold mine. Listened to two podcasts today while on a walk. Itโs been a while since I last did this. I thought I had graduated from the IndieHackers forum. But I haven't. The podcast is brilliant. I am glad I did that today.
Here are some elements that formed the perfect internet business for me a few years ago. A platonic form, if you will. Perfection. - SaaS - Word of mouth - SEO - Is you passion - Is technically challenging - Blue ocean without competition - Zero employees But platonic forms donโt e...
Deleted fucking Instagram and YouTube from my phone again. Straight away I continued reading my book. Started studying Italian again. Got on top of my game. I didn't force myself. It just happened. We are like fucking lab rats on cocaine when exposed to social media. Apart from Twitte...
For the past year I've been focusing heavily on SEO as a distribution channel. But as I've started having some success with it, I've noticed that it also has it's flaws and volatility. Ok, maybe the traffic remains somewhat constant. But people come and go according to their wims. And that ...
After work, I took my Kindle and went to the beach to chill. As I was swimming underwater with my new goggles, studying the fish and just looking at the sand, I couldn't help but feel guilty. If I stop and think about my life, I have to pinch myself. My life is amazing. Why I am constantly ...
Really into swimming these last few days. Trying to hit the triathlon distance of 2km. Initially, I thought it would be easy. "2km? Come on, I have ran a marathon. And I regularly run 10km and it's so easy." Around a week ago I went to the sea to give it a try. The beach here is co...
My sister is running the Paris marathon next month. I ran a marathon this time last year and I had no interest in running a marathon again. However, this would be an exception because my sister raised money for charity. For cancer research, specifically, because we have lost both our grand...
Trying to speak Italian has made me understand how fortunate I am to be a native English speaker. Not being able to speak a language fluently is a pain in the ass. You are essentially not even yourself. You canโt express yourself the way you want. You canโt have interesting, deep conversati...
Yes, but am I truly productive? Thatโs a question Iโm always asking myself. Because entrepreneur life is async. You are not cutting trees. You are planting seeds. You canโt measure your output immediately. Many weeks I feel like Iโm killing it because Iโm getting customers even though I...
New technology I learned about: Software that identifies which companies visit your website. 1. Get visitor's anynomized IP/location 2. Search public database for company with the same IP/location Done. Super simple. But effective. A single heuristic + code = magic
Languages are like engineering. Your raw materials are the words. 10 nouns x 10 adjectives x 10 verbs = 1M sentences I go. I eat. I want eat. I go sea. I love you. You can start playing. Then you have the grammar, which is like engineering protocols. Say you want to say something a...
When I take the afternoon off and go swim, exercise, etc - I canโt wait for the next day to come. I lie down in my bed, tired and happy, with my mind is buzzing with ideas. I am reminded of how much I love what I do. Contrast that with the days I work till late. I lift my head off my laptop...
Itโs 8pm. Jut got back from a late afternoon swim. All the windows are wide open in my house. You can only hear the cicadas and the waves. How is this a Monday?! Today was a very productive day too. Got up at 08:00 and got a lot of stuff done. I believe this time next year my business wi...
Want to accelerate your learning curve? Write. I realized it the other day when I was chatting with my family. The most impactful, profound and crystal clear, well thought-out thoughts and concepts are the ones Iโve written about. Not the ones I have read. Or the ones I have heard on a p...
How ironic. Last week, I posted about having 2FA and a security protocol I was proud of. 2FA everywhere. A second phone that unlocks with my fingerprint left at home only for 2FA. All of a sudden, that phone stopped working! Done. It transformed into a brick. I rushed to disable 2FA f...
Talking out loud while programming helps. Probably because I'm thinking out loud and listening to my own thought process. Especially as a solopreneur, it's easy to get lost in your mind. Maybe I should start streaming.
A book I recommend people to read is "Mind management, not time management". The main thesis of the book is that we are not machines, so not all days, hours and months are created equal. You can't expect yourself to be creative or analytics or anything else every single day. A smart hack...
Made a bet with a friend of mine from Milan. One his birthday I will call him and we will talk in Italian. I can already speak and express myself. But I sound like a fucking 5 year old. Language is a creative process. Almost like engineering. You are engineering sentences and trying to b...
I've started having Italian lessons daily. Went on a website called Italki and booked a few teachers. I might leave Italy next year and I will never forgive myself if I don't learn the language. You may leave a country, but habits, memories and languages come with you.
Sometimes we optimize for growth. Other times for stability. In the beginning of this year I wanted to 10x my business. However, a few situations throughout the year changed my mind. Specifically, a banking situation. For a whole day I thought I lost 80% of my money. That day left an imp...
I'm starting a daily newsletter. I can't expect people to visit my website every single day and read my content. I should make an effort and try to deliver it to them, if they want. From tomorrow I will start sending out a daily newsletter!
Yesterday I was programming and talking out loud. Probably because I had drank far too much coffee. But it was crazy how much more productive I was than normally. Maybe I should stream...
Have my family visiting this week, that's why I have not been so consistent with my writing. I just found out that my mother has shared "2.5 years of building products" with pretty much everyone. Friends. Family. Colleagues. Told me that everyone loved it. A bit cringe, but it's my story...
I have received many messages lately regarding this blog. Some suggested some features too, which I added. - Show the daily blog column by default. - Add "Previous" and "Next" buttons on blog posts. I know I am behind. Behind on the daily blogs. The monthly blogs. The "3.5 years of buildi...
Almost a month without writing. How the fuck did that happen? I was still working. Still taking notes. I just forgot to post daily (and monthly) blogs. Time to get back on the horse!
Just had a flashback and remembered what I was doing this time last year. I was sitting in exactly the same spot I am sitting now and was stuck in a React code base at work. Trying to get a customized ChartJS graph load and show properly on all screen sizes. I also remember having a problem wi...
Taking notes is the ultimate super power. Otherwise you forget 80% of what you want to do. This week I've been thinking very deeply about the future of CyberLeads. Things I could do. Things I might do. Things I will definitely do. Hundreds of bullet points and ideas across multiple note...
In my daily blog post yesterday, I spat out the thought of writing a mega blog post called "3.5 years of building products". So far, I have written "2 years", "2.5 years" and "3 years" versions. This year I thought I didn't have much to share. I was planning to wait until December and write...
I want to write the three monthly blog posts I owe. I have them already drafted, so it shouldn't be too hard. Going to upload them by the end of the week and I'm planning to write even more long form blog posts now. Maybe it's time for a "3.5 years of building products" as well.
Hearing a father screaming to his kids in the house next door. He must be on the edge. Yes, he is on holidays. But his is a barking dog. There must be something else going on in his life. We mostly focus on the kids, but forget that parent are people too. Stress. Broken dreams. Mid-life ...
Experimenting with a weekly schedule. I have been a huge fan of daily rituals, but the latest book I read "Mind management, not time management" really changed my outlook. Let's see how this goes.
I love fixing single points of failure. This time is my online security. Building a business and achieving financial freedom is one thing. I've done that. But keeping it intact and securing it is another. A few weeks ago, my sister was hacked. Nothing crazy, and nothing targeted. Just so...
Yesterday I was trying to explain to my younger brother why I read books. "You are fucking old. You know there is YouTube, Documentaries and Wikipedia, right?" I paused for a second. I felt pretentious. Am I thinking books are worth it because they are harder to complete than a video or ...
I'm on the balcony of our family summer house in Greece. I have been coming here every August since I was ten years old. And every single year, I sit on this balcony and look back on the previous year. And think. A little retrospect. "Where was I this time last year professionally? Perso...
I am on holidays in Greece, in the mountains. I found Homer's Iliad and Oddysey on an old shelf. It's sort of a compressed version for teenagers, around 200 pages. I let down my Kindle with the self help book I'm currently reading, which is awesome by the way, and started reading. It'...
Reading a fun little book called "Mind management, not time management". It's interesting. Many things from the book just reenforced my existing behavior. But one thing that I will try is having a weekly routine and feedback loop, instead of a daily one. Lately, I had fallen into the ...
When I stop working on my business, it nosedives. Is this a feature or a bug? You could argue that itโs a bug, because I canโt take long breaks without feeling the negative effects of it. But you could argue that itโs a feature for the same exact reason. I canโt take long breaks witho...
And.. I'm in Greece. Another love hate relationship. I went for a long run yesterday, along the sea front. The same place I used to run when I was 15, 16, all the way up to 22. So many times. So many thoughts. And.. to be honest, I'm sort of proud of myself. I am living a life t...
On Monday, I take a walk and think about how beautiful Italy is. On Tuesday, the bus never comes and I curse. On Wednesday, I eat some food and relax by the sea smiling. On Thursday, I am speaking with my account about the crazy bureaucracy and I get stressed out. On Friday Saturday a...
Today we went hiking on mount Etna with my sister. It is the most active volcano in Europe. 3,000 meters tall. Moon like craters and Mars like terrain. We didn't go to the summit like we wanted, since there were no tours at the times we wanted and suited us. We went to 2,500 and hiked for a...
This time last year I blew up online for the second time. The amount of stress I went through was crazy. I don't really enjoy attention, so it was all new to me. One year later, my life is pretty much full of online exposure. Only this time it feels normal. Hopefully next year the ...
Have been working out a lot lately. Two to three workouts a day. I've built up to it. I bought a pull-up bar which I have been abusing every morning. I also run with my sister daily. 3K along the sea front - then jump into the sea - then return another 3K. And I also do my normal work...
Running your own business is not a personality trait. Nor is your job title. I think we get confused in our little bubble, thinking that our business, revenue or growth define us. But normal people usually donโt care about that. They just want someone cool, interesting and easy to hang o...
Rewatched Pixar's Soul today. What a fucking movie.
I made so many memories on my holidays around the island. And I was so much in the moment - that I didn't write a single word. Even though I wanted to. I sat down today and went though all my holidays, in my mind, as if it was happening again. You can find them on the Daily section. From...
Someone suggested I should make some arrows to go through the daily blogs without having to navigate back all the time. He is right. Also, another person told me that the width get's fucked up on large screens. I checked it. She is right. I will fix both today.
Today my sister is visiting from Holland. She is going to stay here for ten days and then we are going together back to Greece. It's been more than a year since we last saw each other. We will hike mount Etna together. A 3,000 meter active volcano. My sister is a fitness freak. Runs m...
Yesterday we left super late to return to Palermo. On the road we listened to the broadcast of the football match. The roads? Completely empty. Everyone is in front of their TV, watching the match. I am getting messages in my family group chat from England. Everyone outside, wearing England...
Today we are returning back home. And today is the Euro finals. Not to blow my own horn (!!!)BUT AS I PREDICTED(!!!) Italy and England are in the finals. I donโt really care who wins. Honestly. I should support England - being half English. But I want passionate people to win in life. An...
Today we are going to our final destination before returning home. We are going to Taormina, a beautiful coastal town on a cliff in the north east side of the island. It looks like Monaco to be honest. And itโs a rich personโs holiday location also. Tennis courts. Restaurants with $70 plates. ...
Left this morning from Ragusa to go to Syracuse. A city on the east coast of Sicily. Jahid was right. It is amazing. Our favorite place so far! A Greek colony. With Greek and Roman structures and buildings. This side of the island is super Greek and Roman. The west side, where I live, is...
Last night we went out in Ragusa. Such a beautiful place. Completely human centered. No cars. We walked around for hours and then sat somewhere to eat. We went to a place called โThe Four Catsโ. But in reality, it had around 50 cats outside. The owners were in love. Haha. The food was gr...
Yesterday we visited the Greek temples of Agrigento. And I swear to god, I will never forget them. They are so well preserved - a lot better than the Greek temples we have in Greece. We put an audio guide in our airpods and walked around. We were discussing how in the future they might have...
Last night we arrived in Agrigento. A little city in the south of Sicily, where the Greeks used to live thousands of years ago. We got to the city and tried getting around the center. Huge mistake. I could hardly even turn without scratching the paint of my rented car. And it was a double r...
What is the point of having โfuck you freedomโ if you never use it? Sounds silly to say, but itโs hard to use it effectively. Meaning, without sacrificing your productivity and without feeling guilty. I caught myself touring Sicily with my girlfriend and thinking about work. While drivin...
We decided to tour the island of Sicily with my girlfriend. Itโs been a little while now since Iโve left my place to go elsewhere. The reason is that I feel as if we are on holidays anyway. We donโt feel the need to pack up my bags and hit the road. We are ten meters from the beach. Always ...
On one hand, having and sticking to a program is deeply satisfying. Eating clean. Sleeping at regular times. Doing the things you want to do every day. Itโs both mentally and biologically satisfying. But on the other hand, this creates routine. And routine creates zero memories. Even if ...
Italians play football with a burning passion. With a certain kind of flair. And with mean intentions. They try to score with every opportunity that is given to them. And they never give up. Even though I'm not a football fan and I'm not Italian, I can't help but root for them through and t...
Iโm reading too much lately. And Iโm sacrificing writing in itโs place. Hell, I never thought I would ever say this. In all of my life, up until a year ago, I had read a total of 5 books to completion. A couple of Harry Potter books when I was growing up and a couple of self help books in u...
I used to think that working hard is the difficult thing of being an entrepreneur with no one to push you. Now Iโm realizing that itโs the opposite. Not working is actually the hard part. Understanding that itโs totally fine to take a break, since your inputs and outputs are not linearly co...
Happy 4th of July to all my American friends. Today I was reminded that Iโve never visited America. And that when I was young, it was my dream destination. I remember watching skateboarding tutorials on YouTube when I was 13-14 and all the guys showing the tricks were Americans living in su...
If I could go back in time, meet my 20 year old self and show him myself now at 27, I know he would be disappointed. When I was 20, I wanted to conquer the world. Change the world. Build a legacy. Become a billionaire. Become a rockstar. I think itโs an age thing. All little kids look in th...
People usually go through โquarter life crisisโ, after school or college, when they start their first job. Itโs the profound shock that life might not be like a Hollywood movie after all. Maybe youโll just be working a 9-5 in a soulless cubicle for next 50 years. Looking back, I think I went t...
A few days ago it was my birthday. I turned 27. And as always, I took a few days off to reflect on my life. Itโs something Iโve been doing ever since I was a teenager. I remember being stressed and reflecting on my life when I was 14 or 15. Kinda sick, but itโs true. โHow was I this day las...
I have guests at my house at the moment. It's me, my girlfriend and two friends of ours. It's lovely. We go out for drinks. Go to the beach. Go to museums. And so on and so forth. However, the last few days I can't even concentrate for two minutes on anything. I think it's the alcohol. ...
Sometimes I fear of sounding like a broken record. Yes, I have a story. And the story is not really unique either. That of failing for a long time and then succeeding. Most stories are like that. The difference is that most people hide it, while Iโm embracing it. Sometimes Iโm afraid th...
I would never have guessed it, but I have online friends. Fellow entrepreneurs from Twitter, with whom I regularly chat through Zoom. Itโs kind of trippy, because although Iโve never seen them in real life, I feel them like friends. And to be honest, we have more in common that many of the peo...
Reading โFooled by Randomnessโ by Nassim Taleb. Itโs the only book of his that I havenโt read yet. On one hand, Iโm happy that Iโm close to finishing reading his work. His books are hard to read and take a lot of effort and time. And they are completely worth it. But Iโm also quite sad that...
The weather has improved a lot in the past few weeks here in Sicily. It's officially summer time. All day in flip flops. All day half naked. And every day at the beach. It reminds me of Greece. And it reminds me of the place I used to go for holidays with my family when I was young. The ...
Have some friends from Greece, staying here at my house in Sicily. Itโs so nice. Still able to get work done. And then off to the beach with friends and for drinks at night. Sometimes I catch myself off guard, thinking how nice it would be to be left alone to get to work. But why? Wasnโt th...
Sometimes I feel that Iโm doing the right things. After all, my revenue and MRR are growing. My churn is dropping. And my life is improving. But could I be doing everything wrong? For example, who is telling me that Iโm not growing just because Iโm at it for a long time? Or because Iโm incr...
Was talking with a friend last week through emails. He is a few steps ahead of me in his entrepreneurial journey, pulling in around half a million in revenue. Main traffic channel, SEO. Anyway, he did a small analysis of my work so far and it was really interesting to see how open minded and n...
The best (modern) business book of all time for me is Traction. Itโs co-authored by the founder of DuckDuckGo and itโs full of useful nuggets. Itโs main thesis is that startups die due to lack of traction. Not lack of product market fit. And you canโt predict what will work. You have to try...
I feel like organic social reach is reaching itโs maximum capacity. Yes. I can still bring in customers through sheer effort. But Iโm not experiencing crazy growth at this stage. Churn and new MRR and quite close, resulting to slower growth. Looking at my conversions and stats, I feel the l...
Yesterday we went for a big family dinner. My girlfriend has family down here in Sicily. Uncles. Aunts. Cousins. And nephews. It was full of people. And of course, I was the only person that wasnโt family. Everyone had heard about me, since I was the reason my girlfriend is all of a sudden ...
Earlier this month, I decided to take the leap and go away from Gumroad and go to Stripe. I did it because Iโm paranoid and afraid of platform risk. And although it was far more complex to calculate taxes with Stripe, it was a battle I was willing to fight in order to own my subscribers. Ye...
Early on this week, we didnโt have water for around 6 hours. Yesterday, we didnโt have electricity for around 5 hours. Today, the elevator isnโt working. Italian problems. Itโs funny, the south of Italy reminds me of Greece so much.
Yesterday I rewatched โFord vs Ferrariโ. Itโs about a battle between the two companies. On one hand, you have a factory-like company in Ford, ran by Henry Ford II. He jumped into the office in a helicopter for two minutes per day. Had no idea who worked for him. Or who his customers were. Didn...
After nearly two months of using my mobile phone's 4G data and hotspot, I have internet. Feels good. Might start chatting with others and podcasting soon :)
I am a big proponent of actionable goals. What does โReach $10K/monthโ even mean as a task? It doesnโt help with what you have to do today. And itโs completely meaningless once you reach that goal. Around this time last year, I stopped setting non actionable goals. It was when I hit $1k ...
My girlfriend went to Germany for a week to see her parents and go to a doctor's appointment. That means that I am completely alone in this beautiful location by the beach. While I'm a bit bummed out, I must admit that a part of me is excited. While re inventing Cyberleads, I want to go ...
Next month I'll be running an experiment with turning Cyberleads from a newsletter into a database. While I'm preparing the ground work, my head is continuously spinning. Even though I've set up everything so they are 100% reversible if things go bad, I've been thinking what could happen. ...
I want to add a live demo on Cyberleads' landing page. As of now, there is a "View live demo" button above the fold. While that's good and people click on it, it requires action. Why don't I just add a live demo straight away embedded on the landing page, instead of having a static image...
I've been experimenting lately with turning Cyberleads in sort of a tiny database. But as I was redesigning the landing page, I realized that I started to become vague. The previous tagline was: "700+ companies that just raised money and are looking to outsource to agencies. In your inbox. ...
While my robots are helping with compiling the Cyberleads database, I've been tweaking the landing page. I'm always terrified of updating the copy. Because one wrong move is all that's needed to make your product seem completely different. Or super complicated. When, in my case, it's just a...
I'm not a good back end developer. And I'm a terrible front end developer. Honestly, I don't even enjoy programming websites and apps. The only thing I love is writing scripts. Robots that work for me while I sleep. Right now I have a monster robot running and cleaning up the data from m...
Yesterday was one of the worst days in recent memory. It gave me flashbacks of an older time. As I was chilling, I got a notification of a new paying customer. Amazing! A brilliant video product agency from Brazil. It made my day. This was my first Stripe subscriber ever since I left Gum...
In March I migrated from a no code platform to a Ruby on Rails app. Also, this week I migrated from Gumroad to Stripe. With those two things and with platform risk out of the way, I am now in the fortunate position to have optionality. I could leave Cyberleads as it is and keep doing my thing,...
Another point of failure I addressed this month was leaving Gumroad. Yes. It's a little sad. Yes. I love Gumroad. As a company. The people that work there. Literally, everything about them. But there is something very specific to Cyberleads that I am afraid. And that is privacy laws. Off...
Lately I've eliminating a few points of failure. It was a high level plan I had set out to do in Q1 of 2021. But you know... Life gets in the way and things take a little longer. Better late than never tho. Anyway, the first point of failure I addressed this month was splitting my money int...
Many people talk about serendipity. But mostly in the context of moving to a vibrant place in order to meet new people and bounce ideas around. I haven't heard anyone talk about increasing through your own mind. Especially in a remote setting, this kind of serendipity can change your life. ...
Today I spent the whole day on the beach reading books, with my girlfriend. Lately, I have a recurring ill thought that crosses my mind. A voice that tells me that I don't deserve what I have. A hobby that has turned into a job. A perfect location. Living on one of the most beautiful island...
The last few days I've been thinking a lot about the synergy between robots and humans. Robots, not in the sense of human like androids that walk and talk like us. But, simply, code. I don't know why this is a recurring theme in my mind. Maybe it's because I've been writing and running a lo...
I've noticed that for anyone that's a half decent engineer, building new features is not hard. Heck, you can build pretty much whatever you want, without code, in a fraction of the time it would take 10 years ago. Yet, what is truly difficult is adding those features to the copy of your lan...
I always remember a tweet I saw a few years ago, about Ryan Hoover, the founder and ex-CEO of Product Hunt. The tweet was from a Product Hunt employee, saying that the most impressive thing about Ryan is that he iterates in very small, yet very fast steps. His GOTO question when a new idea ...
I don't really know what to write about today. This is a common thing when I'm not consistent with my writing and I miss a few days in a row. But I have also noticed the opposite pattern. When I start writing again, I know that I won't be able to keep up with ideas. It's funny how the world...
On one hand, it's annoying that humans are not as consistent as robots. Unlike robots, we a constant battle between slacking off and doing the things we are supposed to do. And no matter how hard you try, we will always at some point fall off the horse. Like James Clear says in his book,...
At last I have internet! That was the final piece of the "moving and setting up a base" puzzle. I didn't enjoy this process. The last two months have been a whirlwind, but at least we are done. For the next year or so, I'm not going anywhere. I'm right by the beach. In a beautiful place. In...
Some days I get new customers and I feel like it was a productive day, even though I did hardly anything. Other days, I do a lot of things but because I didn't get new customers I feel like it was an unproductive day. Which is a huge illusion! Money and customers come and go as a result of ...
Nearly finished with moving. All that's left is a WiFi connection. Went with a fiber connection, but as with everything lately, I've had a problems and hiccups with contracts, etc. Hope to have it sorted by next week. Honestly, I have no idea how digital nomads and perpetual travelers d...
Missed many days of work. Reason being that I am moving houses and it's a lot of work. For legal and business reasons, I have to rent a long term apartment under a normal contract and transfer my residence. That's not as easy as booking an AirBnb. I had many problems. Many people also viewi...
One year ago, I blew up on Twitter for the first time. I went from being lost with Cyberleads, to discovering a clear and repeatable distribution channel, that also comes natural to me. Organic social reach. I had around ~500 followers one year ago. Now I have around ~10k. This just reminded m...
Two are the most important qualities I want to cultivate. Patience. And the ability to quit without ego. At first sight, they seem contradictory. How can you be patient and quit? Well, you have to be patient on the macro scale. Never give up on your dreams for example. But there are a...
Whenever I speak with friends of mine that don't have goals, I feel kinda sad for them. Not because chasing goals brings you happiness. In fact, most of the time chasing goals makes you unhappy. But because they have nothing to work towards and improve themselves. I used to be like that as ...
This time last year I was in a rough spot. I had a few customers, and I was struggling to find new ones. Meanwhile, my initial customers from the launch were churning, since the product was still very immature. I was trying everything. Direct Sales. Quora. Blogs. Sponsoring newsletters. Twi...
Running a subscription business entails a few daily dopamine hits. - The new subscriber alert. - The new cancellation alert. - The customer support message. - The positive feedback email. - The negative feedback email. Out of all of the above, nothing makes me happier than the positive ...
I'm looking for houses at the moment. My goal was to live on a budget here and have a super low burn rate. However, I'm noticing that a little bit of money can skyrocket my quality of life. Let me explain. Right now I'm torn in between three places. Option number 1: Live in the city of P...
Went deep into my notes today. Found an essay I wrote while being bored at work, a little over a year ago. A bit dramatic, but I still wholeheartedly agree with what I wrote. Here it goes: Offices. Where man spends most of his life. Working. Giving back to society. It's the way the moder...
Lately I've been reading different types of books. I've tried to break out of my comfort zone and read other stuff. Not just self improvement, business or philosophy books. I'm currently reading some simple Italian story novels. Has helped me to improve my Italian. I'm also trying to experimen...
Back in high school and uni, I remember I used to get motivated in an annual fashion. Every New Years, Christmas, Easter or my Birthday, I used to look back and reflect on the past year. And would feel motivated to continue. When I started working a full time job, I started getting motiva...
For the past 6 months, I've been trying to develop a new distribution channel for Cyberleads. Namely, SEO. But I have to admit that I've failed miserably. After six months of consistent effort, I'm still at zero. Literally and figuratively. I was thinking about it yesterday and it reminded ...
Calling and booking appointments to find a new house. I hate these kinds of jobs. But they have to be done. Depending on people speaking English is tough. Because Italians don't really speak English. Especially Sicialians. And my Italian is still basic conversational. Not good enough for...
Back in October, I decided that I wanted to get in shape again. I hired a personal trainer. Started sleeping better. Started working out again. And started eating healthier. The literature on sleeping and working out is pretty straight forward. There is some battle going on about how heavy ...
Random thought of the day: As a whole, the world is amazing. Flying metal planes. Trains that go up to 300km per hour. A magic box that keeps your food cold or frozen. Warm water. Groceries at your fingertips from all over the world. Prawns from Argentina. Bananas from Africa. Avocados from...
New goal for the next 3-4 years, until I turn 30. Build a small, independent internet business with minimal costs that generates $1M/year. That's $80K/month. Have no full time employees. No offices. Maybe a couple part time remote workers or freelancers. Super arbitrary goal! But why not...
My intuitions were confirmed. Some locals told me that the area I live in is indeed pretty rough. You should never walk by here. Let alone live here. Yesterday at 9PM at night, as I was hanging my clothes on the balcony, I saw three people boiling heroine in a spoon, one meter away from my ent...
Looking for a new place here in Palermo. I like what I'm seeing. Compared to Milan, prices here are less than half. I used to pay close to $1k for a private room with a private bathroom in Milan. Here, with $500 you can rent a whole apartment with two bedrooms in a great area. I think I ...
Yesterday I went to pick up my girlfriend from the airport. The airport here in Palermo is one hour away from the city, by train. As I was waiting at the station, bored, looking at the walls, I remembered that on this day last year I was working. And that if I were still working for a compa...
Nothing more satisfying than being on top of your things. Doing what has to be done. Yesterday, I finally took my drafts from the February and March blog posts, and finished them. You can have a look at them on the "monthly" column of this website.
My internet is good enough to work on Cyberleads and watch Netflix or whatever. But, unfortunately, it's not good enough to record podcasts. Which is truly a bummer. I really want to record podcasts this year, but I tried talking to people through Zoom and it was always cutting off. And ...
A huge trap I always fall into is believing that I am one step away from the perfect environment to work. As you have guessed, it's usually my evil and cunning procrastination disguised in sheep's clothing. A few examples: The last week before moving from Milan to Palermo, I didn't work ...
I remember that I used to jealous of athletes when I was in school. In an age where the rest of us were trying to figure out who we were or what we wanted to do, they had a purpose. In our teen years, they already had a path and goals. In our early twenties, some of them had a career already, ...
One thought that made all my crypto FOMO go away: Instead of speculating on whether Crypto or the Dollar will prevail, focus on the one thing that will never change. If you are useful and provide value, you will be rich. Because people will pay you for it, no matter the currency. Will El...
Ever since I quit my job, I've been struggling with shiny object syndrome. I don't know if it's 2021, or just me having more time now to ponder on bullshit. Bitcoin. NFTs. Gamestop. OpenAI. Clubhouse. Bitclout. The list goes on and on. We are all obsessed with whatโs new. Or whatโs chang...
Today I found out a fellow solopreneur sold his business for $1M! Maybe my old self, around two years ago, would feel jealous. But today, I honestly could not be happier for the guy. He was at $20k MRR and probably sold at a standard 4x ARR multiple, which means $1M. I am at $5k/mo. Not ...
My new place here has some bullshit wooden chairs. A lot worse that the chair I had in Milan. And nothing like the fancy, $1000 chairs we had at my previous day job. After just one week here, my back is already fucked. However, today I started googling and reading, and found out that there ...
Almost all things that are worth it are fucking hard. And I feel it's the same way with SEO. I've been trying to nail SEO down for Cyberleads, but it's been hard. However, I know it's worth it. It's leverage at it's highest form. Once you nail it down, it will work and distribute your pr...
A professional opera singer lives in the same building as me. My landlord told me that she performs at the Teatro Massimo. You know, the place where they killed Michael Corleone's daughter in Godfather III. Since she's a pro, she practices all day long. And you can hear her crystal clear. ...
We are close to the end of the first quarter of 2021. At the beginning of the year, I got a blank piece of paper and started designing my lifestyle again from zero. I noticed that there are a few things that make me happy. And they are small things, that I can do every day. Some of the t...
One of my favorite artists of all time is Ai Weiwei. He is a Chinese artist and activist. Was prisoned in China for his art. And was kicked out of the country. I remember finding out about him by accident, in 2015. I was in London to visit my family, and my sister happened to recommend an a...
I feel like switching up your working environment can be very beneficial. Every time I change place, my brain feels refreshed and eager to work. The same is happening again now. I have sorted out the basics: found where the supermarkets are, have full fridge, know where the bank is, etc. ...
I wish I could say that I love it here in Palermo. So far, I don't like it. Reminds me too much of the bad aspects of Greece. The infrastructure, the way people drive, etc. It's funny. Even though I'm still in the same country, it's a completely different vibe. Milan felt like Germany...
Murphy's law says that whatever can happen, will happen. Well, yesterday, almost everything went wrong for me, while traveling from Milan to Palermo. - First of all, the previous night I couldn't sleep. I was just staring at the ceiling. So, I only slept three hours. - Woke up late, and ...
Not much to say. Tomorrow I'm leaving for Palermo. Everything is in a single suitcase. Now, all I have to do is catch my plane. Goodbye Milan.
Yesterday I calculated how much money I spent in Q1. I was going paranoid. "Why the fuck did I spend so much money?" "Why didn't I forecast taxes and shit like that?" Reminds me that I'm on a very steep learning curve. I'm completely green and naive. I know that this time next year...
Calculated what I made and what I spent so far in Q1 2021. Made around $12k from Cyberleads, but spent over $9k. Very disappointed. I thought I was frugal and didn't spend much. And the worst part of it is that it legitimately wasn't my fault. I hardly spent anything on myself. 80% of...
Today I emptied my room and put everything in a single bag. Brains are funny. Because my stuff are ready to leave, my brain is also ready to leave. Cannot work. Cannot do anything. Although I like it here and I have a good time with my housemates, my brain cannot wait to leave. It's i...
In five days I'm flying to Sicily. I can't wait for my brain to be stimulated again. Milan opened my mind. I managed to grow here a lot in a single year. But now this place feels almost like my hometown back in Greece. An environment my brain has gotten used to. The interior of my hou...
Today I gave away all the stuff I don't need. Now - OFFICIALLY - all my things fit in a single suitcase. I put everything in bags, loaded myself like a mule and went to a specific charity organization in town, where they accept clothing. What I like about them is that they don't just take t...
Half way through March. I knew this would be a hard month. I had, and still have, a lot on my plate. Legal things regarding my business. Moving houses. Giving away the clothes I don't wear anymore. And more. This time next week, I'll be in Palermo. I haven't been able to double down and put...
Today something almost magical happened. A breakthrough moment. All of a sudden, I started speaking Italian! No, I'm not talking voodoo magic. Since I went full time on Cyberleads, I've been studying daily. Mainly, the 1000 most common words, which contain 80% of daily language. Thanks agai...
Not caring about the price of my cart at the supermarket is one of the biggest improvements in my life, over the past year. It's a small thing. But it's a daily improvement, and a daily stress that has gone away. Good quality food. A full fridge. And not caring about the price of products a...
Went through some old notes on my phone today. It's a trip, going down memory lane. Usually, it's nice. You cringe at your old self and feel better about yourself now. But this time, it was different. Some of those notes were really emotional. Saying that I give myself a year to succeed...
I miss training martial arts. I miss the fact that you are allowed to behave almost like an animal for an hour or two, several times per week. And it being completely socially acceptable. All of our lives, we are pretending as if we are pure intellect. That our bodies are just meat bags tha...
Had a look at Bubble yesterday. Wow.. if only I knew of it five years ago. I wouldn't even learn coding. I would have built everything with it, in a fraction of the time, with even better design. Not gonna lie, I'm even tempted to use it now. The problem is that I understand it's shiny o...
Exactly one year ago, the first quarantine started here in Milan, and we started working remotely. Even though we were all scared of this new possibly extremely deadly pandemic, personally, I remember my quality of life improving one million per cent. Going to the office is what killed me m...
1PM. Worked for four hours. Already done for the day. This is exactly the lifestyle I want.
I feel guilt when I focus on my business, instead of myself. For the last two weeks, I've been rebuilding Cyberleads with code. - To move away from my no code tool, and avoid platform risk. - To automate a few very specific things. - To be in a flexible position, where I can extend Cyberlea...
This week I rebuilt Cyberleads, using code. I no longer have the constraints of a no code tool. I can pretty much do whatever I want. Amazing, right? Well.. actually no. - I could do things with design that I couldn't do before. - I could slowly turn it into a platform like BuiltWith or Crun...
A very underrated power of people running "low" tech businesses is that they don't have to code too much. Newsletter businesses. Media businesses. Ebook businesses. People selling courses. People running communities. When running a high tech business, like a SaaS, there is always something ...
Lately I've been coding a lot. Moved from my no code tool, to my own custom website. The reason is that I don't want to be locked in a tool and have severe platform risk. However, it sucks to be programming again. While programming, you are living in a closed, bounded, deterministic worl...
Today was bitter sweet. I said goodbye and shut down to a project of mine that was making money. It was a stupid bot that pushed commits for you on GitHub. I built it completely for fun, but it ended up going strong for over two years. And it was my first project that ever made money. If...
Started writing the monthly blog post. For February. A few things I'm writing about: - Being naive and green - Inevitably, making mistakes - Avoiding ruin - Avoiding shiny object syndrome
Last summer, I came to the realization that I was slowly becoming fat. And that can't eat like I used to. Being 25 and eating as if you are 18 is not going to work for you. The pivotal moment was when I saw a photograph my girlfriend took of me. I was on a boat, sitting with a smile on my face...
Monthly list sent. Always super stressful. But always feels great when I hit send. Now, I know I have time to work on my business. On distribution. On marketing. On the product. On everything. I have so many things I want to do!
I'll keep this short. I'm back in Milan now, finalizing the monthly list. The funny thing is that this time next month, I'll be preparing the monthly list from Palermo. Sounds insane just to say, since I've done literally nothing to prepare for moving. Yes. All my stuff fit inside one b...
Yesterday I returned to Italy. Took the bus from Germany. But it took eleven hours to get back. The reason is because we had four border controls. One in Germany. One in Austria. One in Switzerland. One in Italy. In the first border control in Germany, two Turkish guys were asked a milli...
Yesterday I lived a real nightmare. I made a huge mistake, that could have damaged me really badly. And I'm still on my second month being self-employed. Yikes. A few days ago, I got a notification from Revolut, saying that I am eligible to upgrade to Revolut Bank. It's still Revolut, bu...
The last few days I didn't have much to do. I started working on things for the future. When running an online business, some days you work for a while and you are done. Meaning, you have handled everything urgent that had to be handled. Customer support emails. Bugs. Invoices for customers...
Spent the last few days migrating Cyberleads' website from my no code tool, to my custom website. The reason is that my blogs have started to rank on Google! I don't want to invest more in my no code tool and be locked in there. Especially since it's capabilities are limited and it might sh...
Got an email from a new customer today. He went on to explain how they got to subscribe to Cyberleads. Here's how it all happened: ---> Your name popped up while browsing Daniel Vassalo's twitter ---> Checked out your Twitter ---> Checked out your awesome blog content ---> Discovered Cy...
Lost three days of writing. I'm writing this blog post three days late. I wasn't fucking around. I was still working and still doing everything else I am supposed to do. However, I lost the first day of writing. It was quite rare and felt bad. I almost got out of bed to write, but didn't. ...
Today I went for a long bike ride with my girlfriend. The weather is great here in Munich. Even though it was snowing like crazy last week. While leaving, I closed my laptop and left a task half done. I hate doing that. As a result, I left the house with my usual guilt. That of not working ...
Yesterday I overheard one of my girlfriend's meetings at work. She works as a designer for a healthcare startup (around 100 people). They were discussing and analyzing the pros and cons of changing the copy of a small button in their app. You know the drill. Talking in a "professional" way....
Money is weird. It's almost as if it's attracted to the people that don't lust over it. And won't spend it either. You know, the cliche that rich people are simple. And don't spend much money. And the cliche that people living on salaries many times wear Luis Vuitton and Burberry on their w...
Feeling like shit today. Stressed and depressed. Mostly because of some taxes and expenses I hadn't taken into account. I'm scared that my runway might be shorter than I thought. Right now, I'm in the process of listing down with my accountant every single business expense I'll have 2021. W...
Yesterday my accountant contacted me and requested some money. He talked in some jargon language and asked for one thousand dollars. "Bla bla bla bla bla. $1k this month." What. The. Fuck. I'm here saving and managing my personal expenses diligently, and out of the blue these kind of exp...
Today I'm doing something completely awkward and outside of my comfort zone. I'm uploading my first podcast episode. In this one, I sit down with my friend and fellow indie hacker, Lachlan. I cannot even describe how much I cringed editing it. But, I know I'll improve over time. We al...
Didn't work today. Spent some quality time with my girlfriend. Now I'm ready to go to bed. I quickly drafted a plan for the week and wrote this blog post. This coming week, Cyberleads will turn one years old. So much changed in a year. And it was so unexpected. What seemed like random...
I constantly hear people talking about platform risk. "Oh, you need an email list. You have to own your platform." In my own anecdotal experience, I've never been able to utilize an email list. And I don't subscribe to newsletters, either. However, I thought about it. Why not add an emai...
A tweet of mine did pretty well in the last few days. But no matter how many times it happens, it always stresses me out a little. Usually, the best remedy for this is a long run. No phone. No AirPods. No audiobooks. No music. No nothing. Slowly, while running, you start thinking and solvin...
Today, someone asked me a question on Twitter. - "How many years have you been hustling for?" (actual message, not my choice of words) I usually respond "three years" to that - because it was three years ago that I discovered Pieter Levels and the indie hacker movement. However, the rea...
Today I'll be writing the monthly blog post for January. I'm ten days late. But, the ideas will be accurate. Luckily, I had drafted it on the 2nd of February. I was just overloaded with all the writing I did in January and I couldn't be bothered to sit down to finish it. I'll do that today.
Next month I'm leaving Milan and moving to Sicily. Going from the very high north, to the very low south. From almost Germany, to almost Africa. Last night I saw a documentary on Netflix. It was about Palermo, the capital of Sicily. The place I'm going to. It was the epitome of negative ...
What is money well spent, and what isnโt? And what is the point of money, anyway? I started thinking about this yesterday. I took an Uber to get to the train station of Milan, so I don't have to drag my huge bag in trams and buses. It cost me 20 euros. I started wondering. "Am I wasting ...
I'm on a bus right now. Going from Italy to Germany. Milan to Munich. Long trips are almost spiritual experiences. They are hard. They are tiring. You are forced to think. And you arrive slightly changed. You have no WiFi. No YouTube. No distractions. It's just you. You are not comfortable....
Ten percent of the year has already gone by. Normally, my reaction would be to feel stressed. "Oh, shit. I have to work harder. I'm running out of time." For example, this time last year, I would be freaking out. Actually, I think somewhere in a daily blog post I talk about it. This y...
Today I spent some time automating mundane tasks and processes. Some things with 'no code' tools. Other things with code. Mostly around generating new blog posts and around cleaning up data. Oh boy, did I enjoy it! A few weeks ago I wrote in "Why I Quit My Job" that I hate coding and ...
Sometimes I feel all grown up. Other times I feel like I'm still a kid. Sometimes I feel both at the same day. Like today. I'm working on my business. Sounds like an adult thing to do. But at the same time I'm listening to a playlist called "LoFi Pokemon". It reminds me of my childhood y...
It's been a bit over a month since I quit my day job. I honestly didn't know what to expect. Would I become a different person? Would I be stressed all day long? Would I become lazy again? Or would I become more motivated than ever? Well, none of the above happened. And, frankly, not muc...
Two months ago I ran a marathon. Out of the blue, without much training. That's 42 kilometers. Today, I couldn't even run 5k. I cut my run short and ran 3k in total. I was reminded that nothing is static. You are who you are now. Not your past. And not your future. At any given time, ...
Sent out the monthly list. Having a beer right now to celebrate. Sometimes, during the month, I get impostor syndrome. Especially this month. Maybe it was because it's the first month I'm full time on Cyberleads. My default answer when someone (or myself) tells me they have impostor syndrom...
No matter how many hours I have, I always finish the monthly lists at the last minutes. Even now that I don't have a day job. It managed to beat me down to the ground. I always put more than 100 hours into them. And not matter what, I manage to finish them at the very last minute. I thin...
Sometimes I wonder if I'm working on the right things. I run a tech business in the lead generation space. But lead generation is an old and saturated market. Whereas AI, remote work and GPT-3 are up and coming. I just started a video podcast. But podcasting is almost 20 years old now and p...
Today was the first time I've ever felt sick of Milan. Coming from Greece just one year ago, everything still felt new to me. The language. The neighborhood. The buildings. The people. Today, however, while returning from the supermarket, I stopped to take a quick photograph of the sunset. ...
Often when I'm working on something, I take a step back and ask myself. - Am I iterating? - Am I being a perfectionist? - Or am I procrastinating? Procrastinating means you are scared of doing the things that matter. Perfecting means you don't understand leverage. It's a low leverage a...
Uploaded "Plans for 2021" yesterday. People seemed to like it, which is always nice. It took more time to write than I was hoping. But, at least it cleared my mind. Enough writing for now. I'll cut back for a bit. Just daily blogs for now. Time to focus on my business.
I love that it's been over a year since I started writing daily. At any point, I can just scroll down and see exactly what I was doing and thinking one year ago. Did that this morning. And wow. I'm so grateful I can look back, otherwise I would have forgotten everything and wouldn't appreci...
A lot of writing this month. More writing than coding. More writing than marketing. That would be unacceptable, if it were not for it's introspective nature. At least it clears my mind and sets me on the right path. In the next few days, I'll upload "Plans for 2021". That will be my last lo...
Today was a weird day. I worked too much. And now I'm all stressed and tired. I don't want to work on my business all day long. And if I work more than five hours per day, I've noticed it's diminishing returns. I don't get much done. And all I manage to do is not recharge my batteries fully...
Just recorded a second podcast. One hour long again. I'm slowly starting to get the hang of it. I just have to put in the reps. It's super awkward, cringe and out of my comfort zone, but I'll upload the podcasts on this website this Sunday. I also finished writing "Plans for 2021". I wil...
Still writing "Plans for 2021". I was expecting it to come out small and simple. But, it's turning out a bit larger than what I thought. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Probably a bad thing. Maybe my mind is not clear enough? Anyway. Today a new housemate came to stay in our h...
Three years of building products is released at last. You can find it on this website, under the "Long Essays" tab. It was great for organizing some ideas and lessons I had in my head, floating abstractly. Now, after that thorough introspection, I'm ready to write "Plans for 2021". It...
Exactly one year ago I wrote my first daily blog. Before that I was blogging weekly. But it wasn't good enough, as I wanted daily accountability. Reading it, I cannot help but notice how scattered my writing was. And my scattered writing makes me wonder if I had a scattered mind. Did ...
Today I talked with a Cyberleads customer. Big company. Many employees. Multiple offices. Might sound scary, but it was not. They showed me how they use my lists, etc. It was very insightful and I took many notes. I know many people would be hesitant to present themselves as a company of...
I love having structure in my life. I used to be in denial and romanticize going with the flow, like the stereotypical artist. Now I admit that I enjoy being structured. It gives me peace of mind. Lately, I've been doing everything I have to do, and by the time the night comes I feel con...
Today I recorded my first podcast, with a maker friend of mine, Lachlan. It's not an interview. Not a formal conversation. No agenda. Just a chat. We recorded one hour and the time flew by. Then I edited the footage. Took about ~2 hours to do it. Now I'm trying to upload to YouTube, b...
Saw some MMA fights today. One of my favorite fighters, Max Holloway, was on it. His performance was impecable. Honestly, one of the best performances of all time. It inspired me. In his pre-fight interviews, he was talking about showing up every day, discipline, learning to fail, res...
Still writing. I'm a little frustrated, because the piece is not turning out the way I wanted it to. But then again, nothing goes exactly according to plan. Today I was thinking about how lucky I am. Normally I would have been working all day, today. Actually, I would have been workin...
Still writing "3 years of building products". I'd say I'm at ~50%. Not my best piece of writing. The reason is that I haven't managed to make it much of a story. It's mostly a list of things that I learnt this year. "2.5 years of building products" covered so much of the journey, and the...
Still writing "3 years of building products". The worse thing about these long essays is that it's hard to know what to include. Constraints create freedom and help you be more creative. Now I can write about anything, and I'm a bit stuck. Not much inspiration. I actually wanted to qu...
Tried recording a podcast yesterday for the first time ever. It was with my best friend from Greece. Just a 30 minute chat, in Greek. It was to try out my gear and see what it looks and sounds like. Now I'm in the process of downloading the recordings and editing the video. This is wh...
Just started writing "3 years of building products". It's a blog post that recaps my 2020. "2.5 years of building products" covers what happened until July 2020. But, I was not able to cover everything. In that blog post I emphasized on idea phase. That's because most people were asking ...
Updated the blog's design. Will be writing more long form pieces, so they will not fit in the nav bar any more! Removed the "Weekly" column and added a "Long Essays" one. Also updated the text on the homepage. I'd love a fresh pair of eyes, so please shoot me a DM on Twitter if you ha...
Nothing is easy, and all skills require years to master. I started working on SEO a few months ago, and I'm getting slapped around. Zero results so far. I'm getting humbled. It took more than two years to start becoming good at building small internet businesses. It took more than two ye...
Now that I have more free time, I want to pick up one new hobby. Not many. Just one. I decided it to be podcasting. It's easy to start. And all the gear can fit in my suitcase, which is important for the new lifestyle I'm designing. I also want to have deep conversations and meet new peo...
My mind is so peaceful and quiet. The opposite of what I expected. My girlfriend started working again today. She's a designer, working remotely from my place here in Italy. Seeing her work and participate in meetings made me realize that I don't have a job anymore. Now it feels real. Ho...
Just wrote the December blog post. You can find it in the 'monthly' column. By the way, I have to update the blog. The writing on the homepage is outdated :)
No more relaxing. It's time to go pro. I'm never, ever, ever going back to work in an office. I promised that to myself yesterday, when I returned my equipment. I just have to stick to my plan. The few "hard things", that if I do them, I will be able to have an "easy life". Waking up ear...
Today I took my professional equipment back to the office. Work laptop, chargers, etc. Even since leaving the office building this morning, I feel like a new era has began. It feels real now. Scared? Yes. Excited? Very. Today marks exactly one year since I came to Milan. A lot can hap...
I updated all my blog posts with the new format. I took the chance to read them as well while doing it. I ended up reading every single blog post I've posted this year. It was very helpful, especially since I am in the midst of planning out my year's plan. I went to the dark places of "i...
Getting ready to close out the year with two monster blog posts. Going to write "3 years of building products." and "Plans for 2021". I want to clear my mind and have a nice, simple and clear plan going ahead. Time is not an issue any more. But direction can still be a problem. Before...
New format for the blog. I will have to update the other blog post titles also. Fresh start to this year. Just sent the monthly list. Today, just out of curiosity, I checked out a few competitors. Both direct and indirect. It did absolutely nothing good for me, apart from making me nervo...
New Year's Eve. And here I am, banging away the monthly list. There are no holidays. But at the same time, every day is a holiday. I wouldn't change my new life for anything.
So strange to write "Day #364". I remember writing "day #1" - close to one year ago. So much has changed. All for the better. All my anxieties have turned into excitement for the future. Man, what a ride....
Man, I love writing so much. One of my best decisions of 2020. I've already started writing "3 years of building products" and "Plans for 2021". Can't wait to get all these bullshit, abstract thoughts out of my head. Analyze them. Throw away most of them. And then formalize the rest in t...
Wow.. The amount of people that have reached out to me in the last two days, because of "Why I quit my job", is insane. I'm so happy that there are so many like-minded people out there. Twitter is amazing at connecting us from all over the world. People we would never be able to meet nor...
As many of you already know, I decided to leave my job to focus full time on Cyberleads. I've been asked many times about my reasons, so I decided to write a blog post that explains them. You can find it on the nav bar of this website.
Got an email this morning while I was drinking my coffee. Close to $1k of sales just arrived into my account from the past week. "Great, that's another whole month of oxygen... If ever needed." That's was my first, spontaneous thought. I'm very happy about that. I'm planning to spend ...
Apparently, wanting to become a millionaire instead of a billionaire is considered a revolutionary idea in tech. That's so crazy. Since when is being a millionaire is not enough? Just asking that out loud makes me cringe and understand how ridiculous of a statement it is. Talking abou...
Sometimes I'm afraid that I'm locked in an echo chamber and I don't know it. I find myself constantly nodding and agreeing with most of what I see. Either when reading stuff from the people I follow. Or when reading books. Or when having conversations with others. How is this possible? E...
I see many people focusing on metrics. Twitter follower growth rate. Monthly Twitter impressions. Who followed or unfollowed them. Conversion rates on landing pages. Number of words written on blog posts. Or number of blog posts on a personal website. At first I thought I was missing ...
Today I woke up and wrote "Day One" on my notebook. First day waking up, self employed. I am my own boss now. With the good and the bad that comes with it. I am no longer an employee, being fed milk from the tit of a company. However, I no longer have a nice, cozy salary rolling in ev...
Today was my last day at work. Unfortunately there was a little bit of drama. What would be a warm goodbye, ended in a very cold goodbye and a fuck you. Disappointed. But what can you do. And who cares. Now, I'm free. And no one is going to spoil this day for me. I haven't felt so ...
It's easy to engage in low level thinking and conversations. Who said what. Who meant what. Who "won" an argument. Most of the times you shouldn't even think about it. You have bigger things to think about. If it won't matter in five years from now, it shouldn't affect you. Have cl...
Was just listening to an old Joe Rogan podcast. He had an old school, rich entrepreneur type of guy. One with hundreds of employees. He was so cocky. You could tell he is surrounded with yes-men in his life. He was laughing at his own horrible jokes. And thought that even the stupid pseudo ...
Still working a lot for my day job. Closing things up before I leave. Haven't worked on Cyberleads at all for almost a week. On the bright side, I just found out that my last day is on Wednesday, not Thursday. So, four more work days to go...
Haven't been blogging lately. My mind is all over the place. Catching up on emails. Catching up with my accountant and Italian paperwork. Catching up with tasks that are left at work. I have one week left. I'll miss everyone, and the cozy feeling of a standard salary rolling in ...
Just re-read "2.5 years of building products". Wow.. I had already forgotten some stuff. I have to document everything. Because it's priceless. In 20 years they will be gold for me. Especially during this period of my life. Quitting my job. Going full time. I have so many thoughts and...
Last week I ran a marathon. It wasn't planned. I didn't train for it. I didn't sign up for any race. I didn't receive a medal. Or take a celebratory picture. I just went out and did it. Somewhere throughout October, I found out that there was a half marathon here in Milan. So, I enrolled. I...
This year, my Christmas present will be the best one I've ever had.. Can't talk about it yet, but will let you know very soon! On another note, I'm very sorry that I haven't written the October and November monthly blog posts yet. I'll get to them this weekend. October was my worst mo...
I'm sorry I wasn't active. It wasn't that nothing happened. The opposite. This month that just passed (November) - was the craziest month of the year for me. Will write about everything shortly!
Last month I asked every single colleague of mine to recommend an accountant to me. The reason is that foreign professionals in Italy are eligible for some tax benefits, but you need an accountant to help you. Italian burreaucracy is hell. My main criteria were: - Speaks English - Knows t...
Oh god. What dread. I'm trying to deal with the Italian government, and it's really bad. Nearly as bad as Greece. I have a few more paperwork stuff to do, and then I'll have Cyberleads up and running as a proper business. This is my number one priority right now. I have one more month...
Yesterday I saw a movie with a fucked up father-son relationship. Being from a broken household (divorced parents, etc) - it hit me. But the most interesting thing about this movie is that I didn't identify as the teenager. I identified as the father. That's strange, because I'm prett...
It has been nearly a year since I installed "Cold turkey" and unistalled all social media apps from my phone. I have set up a timer, where they only unblock on Sundays. The only thing I use is Twitter. But, that is for work. However, I unfollowed some people that tweeted too often, so thing...
As humans we have very limited energy. There are only so many things you can do in a day. I was reminded by this again. Since last month, I have been eating very healthy, working out three times per week, and running twice per week. I still work my day job. Eight hours every day. Straigh...
Have been thinking of what my ideal lifestyle would look like. I usually end up on one structure. - Very few material possesions. - One hobby that makes me money. Cyberleads. - One hobby that keeps me fit. Working out at home, at a gym, or a martials arts school. Running. - One hob...
Shiny object syndrome is real. We all want to be excited. We all want to think that our next idea is the next big thing. But 99% of the times, it's not true. It's hard to find something that works. If you have something that is working and generating revenue, stick with it. Especially if it...
Nothing makes you grow faster than throwing yourself in the fire. Itโs actually a hack. As Nassim Taleb says: โWhen you are on fire, you run faster than in any competition. When you are not anymore, you become dumb again. You may lose your sharpness, you will never lose what you learned...
Today I was invited for a QA with a group of people building small projects. I'm generally not a big speaker. I'm usually quiet. But when it comes to building internet businesses, I cannot shut up even if I try to. It's the thing I'm most passionate about. Sometimes I wonder if I'm ev...
Sometimes it's hard to find pretend work. It's sneaky. It tries to reason with you. Justify why you are doing it. Right now, SEO for me is my pretend work. I've been pretty much posting a new blog post for Cyberleads every single day. Automatically, that means slacking off on writing these ...
Found this note on my work laptop. It's from March, 2020. Just a few months ago. My whole dream was to reach $800 MRR, aka $10k ARR. Some months since then, I have made three times that amount. But as you can imagine, I'm still not content. I still have the hunger to grow Cyberleads. ...
I remember a few months ago reading about Nathan Barry's story with ConvertKit. For anyone that is not familiar, Nathan started an email marketing tool, ConvertKit, as a side project. For about a year and a half, he was not actively promoting it, and all growth happened through his social m...
Today I was reminded how much the internet is like the wild west. I put on the Cyberleads website a "30 day money back guarantee" I used to have it back in the day, when I first launched, and very few actually asked for refunds. It was a net positive. Added it again yesterday, to see ...
Balance is an illusion. Doing multiple things, at the same frequency, at the same pace, at the same time. Being present. Working for the future. Working for yourself. Working for your company. Working out. Spending time with friends. Spending time with your partner. No one can do that...
Change happens in pendulum swings. When one idea bursts into the scene, it usually comes with a bang. To cancel out an opposing idea. Don't worry. I'm going to talk about politics. I'm talking about entrepreneurship. A few years, or even months ago, every one in the indie hacking scene w...
The biggest individual factor that affects happiness is worrying. At least for me. A person with no real struggle in his life. Healthy. Loving family. A degree to fall back on to. Four limbs. A health brain. I think this is universal. Even the richest prince worries about things. I wa...
Today I woke up and wrote "Day 1" on my digital notebook. The beginning of the month is day one again. I'm motivated and have a small feedback loop to analyze from the previous month. I've set my goals for this month, and have already started going towards them. Nothing crazy. Just keep ...
Last day of the month. Finalizing the monthly list. Another month gone by. Another month that I made more money with my side projects than I did at my day job. It's been four months in a row. It's starting to get real. The ride is bumpy. With many ups and downs. But, I'm optimistic. ...
You have to have faith in your systems. If you have found something that works, you should double down and trust in the process. I'm saying this mostly as a note to myself, as the last months and a half have been a bit rough for Cyberleads. Not a lot of traffic -> Few new customers -> Dr...
Another week gone. Another month nearly gone. We are 80% through the year. It might seem that the year is over. But if you apply the Pareto principle, you'll realize how much can happen in the remaining two months. That excites me. And it should excite you too. Two months to go. Br...
My excitement and happiness levels are extremely tied to Cyberleads. Even though I don't want to, when someone subscribes I get excited and pumped. When someone unsubscribes, I become quite sad. I have talked about this before. You are not your business. You are not your MRR. You are ...
Sometimes people ask for your opinion because they want to hear it. Other times they just ask out of politeness. They don't care what you think, especially if you disagree. Today at work we were asked to write down things we like and dislike in our company. Anything. I wrote that I would...
I still remember the day I found a Pieter Levels YouTube video and looked him up online. I remember finding his Twitter profile. Up until then, Twitter was a website I had logged in once many years ago. I followed Bill Gates and Barack Obama, and then logged out. Never went back. My mind ex...
Sometimes things are simpler than they seem to be. I started doubting everything the last few days. My pricing. My payment gateway. My CTA button. My hero section image. Everything. Why did I fall in MRR last month? Could it be A? B? C? A and B together? B and C together? And so on an...
I was thinking the other day that I am as transparent with my emotions on my blog, as I am in my real life. I don't hide much. And what I don't write about, I usually don't talk about in real life either. That means that I share the same amount, with thousands of strangers that read this...
Started with SEO. I'm so fucking excited. I subscribed to Ahrefs. I have some keywords with low difficulty and large traffic. And best of all, I can pump out many of these. SEO will be the main growth engine of Cyberleads, long term. I'm constantly going back and forth as to if I like my...
I keep coming back to stoicism. I'm not a philosophy expert as you can tell, but I find it to be the most complete guide to living life. Just focus on what you can do. Forget about the things you cannot control. Yesterday I saw an ex-competitor start again with his product. In a differen...
To VAT? Or not to VAT? That's the question. What dread.. Why is it so difficult to start a business in 2020? If it weren't for Gumroad or Paddle, etc, I would be lost. I went with Stripe for a few days, instantly came back to Gumroad. My god... It's a wormhole. I would either have to ...
Every single time I post something transparent on Twitter, I worry about how vulnerable this leaves me. I'm willingly giving a detailed, inside look into how much money I'm making. How I'm making it. How I'm getting traffic. How much it converts. How I launched. Everything. But at the same ...
I've been pretty active on Twitter recently. I'm writing this daily blog and drafting a nice tweet first thing in the morning. I'm going to be posting every day from now on, and wait for the results. It's easy to get dissapointed and start doubting your self or your method when you don't...
I fucking hate coding. Honestly, I'm done with it. I wanna do higher level stuff. No more talking about system processes and databases. Sometimes at my day job I feel like I'm in the lab, designing the perfect bullets for a gun. While, I would prefer to be the hunter. Or another metaphor...
Another day, another competitor quit and shut down. I'm going to lie, I enjoyed going to their website and getting a 404. Not that I have anything against them. I don't even know them. I honestly wish them all the best. And even if they were killing it, it wouldn't affect me. They wer...
I have a blocking software on my laptop called "Cold Turkey". I added it to block YouTube, my arch nemesis. I used to get into wormholes every day for hours, and wanted to get rid of it. It blocks YouTube for me, it is very hard to uninstall and you can't kill the program. I mean, I can ...
That's it. Daily blog and tweets are my number one priority from now on. Promoting Cyberleads is the most important thing. So I'll write a small blog post to get my brain working, and then draft a tweet. First thing in the morning. While I'm fresh. And I won't touch any other task unless...
The last two months I have been doing pretty much the same things. I have doubled down on what's working but haven't done much else, really. Zero creativity. The "athlete vs artist" concept I wrote about in "two and a half years of building products" is still something I'm working on. ...
We are so fragile as solopreneurs. One day you get a new paying customer and feel like you can conquer the world. The next day a customer unsubscribes and you feel like you should polish your CV again. The reason is that we have direct contact with the source. The customer. The new one. ...
The last few days I have been integrating some new features into the Cyberleads website. I have focused hard on agencies, and I am moving towards being a no-brainer for them, compared to all my competitors. It's a vastly smaller market, but still large enough for an indie business. This wee...
Aaand... BOOM. It's live! The sequel to "2 years of building products" has been published. It took over half a month to write, and honestly, I could edit it forever. But fuck it. I think it's great. It tells the story and pushes the narrative I want to push. Basically to not give up e...
Ahhhh.... At last. My monster blog post "2.5 years of building products" is ready.. It took so many hours, and honestly, it will never be 100% ready. But done is better than perfect, and I really want to share it with everyone. Especially people on the idea phase. This is for them. ...
Damn.. I was going to write something about fitness and health, but I saw that we are on day 265 of the year. This massive, crazy, insane year is coming to an end soon. All we have is 100 days. I really want to prioritize my fitness and stick with it for the last 100 days of the year. A...
Yesterday I appeared on a podcast for the first time. The show is called "Bruno Talks" and it was a video interview. It was a lot easier than I thought. I'm sure I'll cringe and probably never watch it, but it didn't go bad. I was in the zone, talking and flowing. For sure I said some...
My back is fucked up. I mean tight. Badly. All my left side from the neck to my hip. My hip even started clicking and I googled and saw that this is the cause. Hahaha. What the fuck, am I getting older? I believe it's from sitting in a chair for eight hours straight all the previous ...
Remote work is amazing. I miss it already. It's a huge jump up from a "quality of life" perspective. As you probably know, I am spending this week in the office in order to meet some new team mates in person. The new guys are great. I could easily be friends with them even outside of wo...
Been in the office three days in a row now. Day 1 --> 10/10 experience Day 2 --> 8/10 experience Day 3 --> 5/10 experience By Friday, I think I'll have had enough.
Yesterday at the office it was surprisingly pleasant. Almost, worryingly pleasant. I saw many people I'm familiar with but hadn't seen face to face for ages. Met some team mates that joined remotely and knew them only from Zoom. Had a great time chatting and getting instant feedback on i...
Back in the office this week for my day job. It's been months. I've been working remotely since the beginning of March, so it feels strange to be back here. Everything was different back in January and February. I mean, of course, the whole world changed. But my world changed a lot as well....
Just some random thoughts I had while I was on a run. I felt like shit prior to going for this run, but when I started pushing myself I became another person. I woke up. Nothing is static, everything is in motion. The planets, atoms, your business, your character. Sleep on your busi...
I love programming after all. I was building some scripts for Cyberleads new feature, and I couldn't stop and take a break. It's like magic. My day job had sort of killed that love I have for programming, but I realize that I still enjoy it. Actually, it's not even the code. It's the act...
Today Iโm working on a great feature for Cyberleads. The ability to forecast if a company needs your services. Since it's complex and subjective, it will not be fully automated. I'm starting with design, development and marketing. The largest categories of agencies. There is a lot of ...
Am I crazy that I remind myself daily that I'm going to die some day? I'm not a special flower so I'm sure there are many people that think the same way, but I haven't met any yet. Me. You. Everyone you love. Everyone you hate. Everyone you care about. Everyone you don't care about. We are ...
I've left my home town at last! Let's start working! I already wrote and published the monthly blog post, and I'll post it on Twitter later today alongside revenue numbers and metrics. Last but not least, this week I'll also post a long-awaited blog post. It's called "2.5 years of indieh...
I received a pair of Airpods as a present. I started running with them on, listening to audiobooks, etc. Ok, my runs were great. The book I was listening to was motivational as well so I ran like crazy. But my runs were not clearing my mind. So, yesterday, I went running like I used to. Wit...
Oooff.. That was stressful. The list has been sent though. Now I have three more days before returning to Milan and getting back to serious work.
One last day for this month. This time tomorrow, the stress will be over. The monthly list will be sent and I'll be planning for what's next. I'm rested and have a lot of things in my mind for September. Can't fucking wait :) And sorry for these lack-luster blog posts. When I get bac...
I've been very quiet the last week or so. It's because I am trying to finalize this month's list. A looooot of work went into this one. Will be finalized at the last minute as always. My best list yet!
Just booked my return flight to Milan! It's next Sunday. The 4th of September. Super super happy.
What is stronger? Our inner state? Or our surroundings? I feel like I'm my old self right now. Exactly the same I was before leaving.
What is the opposite of inspiration? That's exactly what I'm feeling right now. Once again, I'm back in my hometown. I can't even work here. Neither for work, or Cyberleads. I don't know why. I just want to get back to Italy again. My holidays were amazing, and I'll miss my friends and fami...
Time goes past fast when you're with friends. Tomorrow is our last day. Before returning to our concrete jungles. One of us is returning to Athens. One of us to Vienna. One of us to Munich. Me, to Milan. A bit sad really. But then again, it's the finite nature of things that make them pr...
It's always fun to be with people that know you to the core. They never get impressed with anything. It's funny. It keeps you grounded. For them, you'll always be Alex. Or John. Or Helena. Whatever. No matter how much money you make, or how many positive comments or recognition you get f...
The last days have been slow, since I'm on holidays and I'm finding it a bit hard to concentrate. All I want is to be on the beach, reading my book and talking with my friends. However, things are going as normal. As long as I do the two or three most important things I have to do, things c...
Right now I'm on holidays. Me, my girlfriend, my best friend and my girlfriend's best friend. So, two men and two women. It's really cool. We rented a big AirBnB right on the sea, in Chalkidiki, in Greece. We arrived yesterday, and we went for a late night swim, chilling on the beach and ta...
It's hard to get inspired in a house full of noise. Siblings, parents, neighbors, friends. Although it's fun, there is just too much noise. It's no surprise I haven't blogged in days. Sorry for that. Both to you, and to myself. Writing is therapy. I'm always calmer and more relaxed when ...
One of my favorite things is looking at old notes. Seeing where I was twelve months ago, and where I am today. I've been doing this ever since I was twelve or thirteen. Looking at my progress. If I don't cringe at myself of one year ago, something is wrong. As I was growing older, throughou...
Yesterday I had a very strange pain in my arm. I felt my right arm numb and it was hard to move. It was like I was losing control over it. I'm always cool and never, ever go to the doctor. But this time it was different. A daemon entered my mind and started whispering in my ear. "Maybe you ...
Yesterday all day I was driving. We drove up to our family summer house in the mountains of Greece. I know what you are thinking.. You went to the mountains in Greece? Are you fucking serious? Yes, but the sea is just a 15 minute drive from our house here. And in about a week I'll go on hol...
Working from a coffee shop right now. I like it. It's the first time I'm doing this, and it's not as bad as I thought. It's quiet. It's peaceful. It has AC. The people that work here are super friendly. It's cheap. Greece seems so cheap to me now that I'm back. I had forgotten what it w...
Saw a maker complain that he was copied. He builds in the open and is transparent about revenues. He is killing it. It comes with the territory. We all know what we sign up for. If you are getting more upside than downside, like me, continue doing it. If not, stop it. Iโm in an even wors...
Today I feel a bit better than yesterday. I don't feel like vomiting so much when looking outside my window, at the same old buildings. You are probably thinking that my hometown is some dirty ass village with goats and shit everywhere. Actually, my city is super pretty. It's called Thes...
Just landed in Greece. Came here for August, to spend time with family and friends. Can't decide how I feel about this. On one hand I'm glad to see everyone I care about and catch up with them. On the other hand I feel like I'm going backwards. I swear to god, when I got out of the airport ...
Sorry for not writing my normal, long, daily blog posts. After that viral tweet, business is booming. Also, this month's list is huge, and I'm literally working 8 hours every day on top of my day job. So, as you can imagine, I'm drowning in red bulls, black eyes, dizzy and sick of spread...
A great day. A tweet of mine blew up, kind like the one about my first $50/mo customer! It honestly feels amazing, yet so much less stressful than last time. You get used to everything, after all. Maybe running a business, even a large one, is not that stressful after some time. You can ...
I read yesterday's blog post again. What the fuck, so cringe.. Talking about drinking espressos on my little balcony in Italy, and about how traveling "has changed me". I'm not a travel influencer for fuck's sake. I build products and train martial arts. That being said, it's hard not to...
Drinking my second espresso this morning. Sitting on my little balcony working on this month's list for Cyberleads. Listening to the people walking by and speaking in Italian. Trying to undestand what they are saying. Getting a lot better at it. When I first came to Italy six months ago, I ...
Some systems broke down today at work. Maybe simple systems are more robust after all. Decoupling is good, but you then have more points of failure. Reminded me that I want to read "Antifragile". It's all about risk and points of failure within systems. Taleb is always an Odyssey to r...
Never write about politics. Never write about politics. Never write about politics. Never write about religion. Never write about religion. Never write about religion. Ok, I said it. Today I lost an internet friend because of a blog post of mine on virtue signaling. It sucks, but I kn...
A great assymetry in life and business. In life: We spend most of our energy thinking and trying to win people that don't care about us. We spend less energy on our friends. We spend the least amount of energy on the people we know truly love us. In business: We spend most of our en...
Should we do the things we don't want to do? Or play along our strengths and preferences? On one extreme you have people that can do things they don't necessarily enjoy. They can power through them. They struggle. They work a job that pays well but don't want to do. They never complain. Pro...
There is nothing worse than not doing what you are supposed to do. And usually we don't do the things we are afraid to do. The things that put us even a little outside of our comfort zone. Even little stuff. Like posting in Facebook Groups instead of Twitter. Twitter used to be outside my c...
Yesterday I saw a kid in a wheelchair. It broke my fucking heart. I was drinking beer with my girlfriend in a square in Milan. We were chit chatting. You know, the usual stuff. Talking about life. The future. The past. Our dreams. It was night time, perfect temperature. A mother came to the...
While I was running, I drifted off for a few minutes. I started thinking of all the money being spent in the world every day. I thought of my customers at Cyberleads. I know that some have made x100 times their money back, but I also know some that wasted their money, as they did not use the l...
Sorry for the missing the past few days. I was traveling with my girlfriend across the Italian riviera. It was lovely. Italy is so beautiful.. seriously. Italian cities beat Greek cities and it's not even close. Greek islands are beautiful, but our cities are ugly as fuck. Here in Italy ...
Shit, I totally forgot about this blog. And now I can't really remember what happened last week. Oh yes, I returned from Munich to Milan with my girlfriend. The journey was lovely - driving through the Alpes. The temperature is night and day compared to Germany. I actually preferred the wea...
Losing a customer sucks. It always does. It's rejection. Even though it's not personal, it feels like it. Many times someone unsubscribes and my whole day is ruined. Not as in I cry or anything. But my excitement for the day can go from like an eight to a five. But if I reason about it like I'...
Back in Milan. Went for a run at my favorite place. The canals. One minute from my house you'll find the canals of Milan. They span around 20km each way and you see beautiful colored houses everywhere. The forest in Munich I ran in was prettier, but it was too pretty to think of ideas. The ...
I have a hard time being present. I catch myself thinking about my side projects even when I'm out with friends and supposed to unwind. This year I've gotten a lot better at it. Here's why. My full time job enforced me to compress the amount of time I can work on my own things. It used to b...
Ever since I started building online businesses, my idea of what competition is, changed. I had only competed in combat sports before that. There, by design, when one man wins, another man has to lose. Sometimes in devastating fashion. It's a zero sum game. That might be the reason I kept b...
After two weeks in Munich, I'm back in Milan. It's funny, because I've only been living here for a few months but I felt like home when I arrived. The shittier metro felt better. The louder people that don't speak English seemed nicer. Even the chair I'm sitting in right now is sweeter t...
I want to go on a good streak. Like, at least twenty days of doing everything I'm supposed to, every day. For me that's tweeting, working on Cyberleads, studying Italian, reading a book. Oh, yeah. And of course I have my day job as well. My day job is a bit hectic the last weeks. We have be...
I sent the monthly lists, at last. That sets me free to work on growing Cyberleads again. It's like the shackles have been undone. Today, I also have to post a monthly and a weekly blog. Can't wait. I also got a message from someone asking if I am ok, since I missed a few days of blogging. ...
Once again at the end of the month, once again running against time to finish the monthly list. I have another two days to finish it. I hate the end of the months.
Nothing makes you grow faster than throwing yourself in the fire. It's actually a hack. As Nassim Taleb says: "When you are on fire, you run faster than in any competition. When you are not anymore, you become dumb again. You may lose your sharpness, you will never lose what you learned...
There are some small thoughts that are so difficult and abstract to explain. They're also so small that it make no sense to discuss with others. This blog is about one of those small thoughts. I have noticed that when I'm almost too confident and I try new things, I always pay for it. Nothing ...
Today I got a little burnt out. My little brother is taking his entry exams for university, and his next course is "programming". Of course, I've been helping him by doing lessons with him through Zoom. They have to write programs in pseudocode. Some exercises are a bit difficult to be honest....
Time passes quickly. I'll be 26 in a few days. I'm at a university campus right now in Munich, visiting my girlfriend, and most people are younger than me. You can't tell physically, as these three to five years are not visible on the body. But I've been through their phase and I'm done wit...
I feel guilty when I don't work. Even when I don't really have anything to do. The healthy approach would be to go out and do something completely different to get my mind refreshed. I prefer to sit in front of my laptop and "fake work" on my products. Nowadays I only work two to three hou...
Today I went from Milan to Munich, to see my girlfriend. I had three choices. Plane. Train. Car. The plane tickets cost 250 euros and you get there in 1 hour. The train cost 150 and you get there in 10 hours. By car it takes five hours. But I don't have a car here in Italy. A friend of mine...
Have writer's block today, but I have to write something. Just came back from a run, full of new ideas. Ideas like these never used to come when I trained MMA or kickboxing, nor when I used to lift weights. If I could sum up what each one gives me, it would be this: - Martials arts gi...
I caught myself being greedy today. A friend of mine was telling me how he's killing it with his business and is growing twice as fast as me. I felt an urge to grow faster. All night yesterday and all day today I was thinking about it. Where I'm at was suddenly not good enough. As always, I...
Today I managed to wake up early. At last. Yesterday I realized the simple stupid truth. The hard part is not waking up early in the morning. The hard part is going to bed early. Of course it will be a struggle if you go to bed at 01:30 AM and want to get up at 06:00 AM. That's stupid. W...
Another week gone by. Summer is here. Everything is beautiful. Cyberleads has started to look like a small little real business! I redesigned the website. It looks a lot more professional. I also got a business email domain! I got to $1.3K MRR running Cyberleads with a Gmail account. ...
I love Italy. It's such a beautiful country. I like to call Italy a better version of Greece. And Italians are like a better version of Greeks. From the way they drive, to the way they dress. But it's amazing how similar they are. I felt ZERO cultural shock when I got here. I feel more of a...
I just took a big risk. Like, 5 minutes ago. I wish I could say what it is, but I can't. You will understand why in a few months. It's nothing crazy, but it will certainly light a fire under my ass now. The steepest learning and growth curves exist outside of our comfort zones. I took this ...
I realized the other day on my run that the fact that I am in another country where I can't speak the lingo might be affecting my mental state. I can't gossip. I can't eavesdrop. I can't critic what someone is saying. Their accent. Their tone. Their choice of words. I am numb to all those disc...
New design! The last few days I re designed the website for Cyberleads. Initially, I was not interested in doing it. I'm not a believer in design being a needle mover - especially in the early stages of a startup's journey. Even if conversions increased 10% - let's say from 1% to 1.1%, with...
The last few weeks I've been half assing it a bit. I hate it. I honestly do. There is something really strange that happens when you are consistent. Without trying, magic happens. Trying hard here not to sound like a fucking dork, but honestly, when I do all that I'm supposed to do and don'...
I don't know what to say. I don't know what to write. I just found out that a client of mine closed a $42k/yr client through Cyberleads! That's amazing. Number one because it means I'm building something useful. Number two, that means that maybe I could charge even more, once I lock in my d...
Yuck. This past week was the last week of the month. Again, I left A LOT of work for the end. You know when you're on a run and you want to stop badly? Like, really want to stop? You have a sharp pain in your stomach, and your lungs are burning? You feel like you're going to fucking faint if y...
Wednesday morning. 6:30 AM. Quiet. Everyone asleep. The sun is out already. I remember in the winter, when waking up at this time felt completely unnatural. It was pitch black. Dark. This past week has been insane. Once again, it was the end of the month, and I had to finalize the lists of the...
The last days sucked, to be honest. I have a lot of work - at my day job - and I haven't been able to work a lot on Cyberleads. To be honest, I don't have to. All I have to do is work is this: - Work on the new lists - Tweet and share my progress - Get feedback from existing customers ...
Monday. I love Mondays. It represents change. A second chance. You can start clean again. Woke up at 07:00 today. I'm working now, before starting work at 10:00. I also just wrote my weekly post. Week number 21. By the way, all my anxiety as to the percentage of the year that has gone by is...
A strange week. A 50/50 week. Half of the week was super productive. Doing exactly what I have to do. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I woke up at 07:00 AM and worked three hours before work. I also ran every day. Studied Italian. Read a book. I'm reading "War of Art" at the moment. It's awesom...
Hmm. It seems like I kept my promise. I actually slept in two days in a row. Shame on me. But, I managed to squeeze some work in today before work. On a side note, I've been really improving my Italian, it's getting molto benne. Also, yesterday was one of the very rare days I didn't work at...
I needed sleep. Monday through Wednesday I woke up at 07:00 AM. I averaged 7 hours of sleep per night. That sounds reasonable, but I generally need at least 8 hours of sleep. Especially when I exercise. Today, Thursday, I tapped out to exhaustion. I woke up, and said "fuck it", and went back t...
Wednesday. I fucking hate Wednesday. It's bang in the middle of the work week. Today I woke up at 07:30 AM. I slept great. Last night, after work, I went for a run. I pushed myself a lot. By the time I was home, nothing mattered any more. I was buzzing. I slept like a baby. Today I'm a bit ...
Tuesday today. Both yesterday and today, I woke up at 07:00 AM to put in three hours of work on Cyberleads before work. Work starts at 10:00 AM. Today I want to write about momentum. I've talked about it several times, but it's a concept that fascinates me. I'm always thinking about it. Mom...
Building businesses is very counter intuitive. Our logic often leads us to do things that are actually harming our progress. Although I had read about every single one of these points, I had to learn the hard way about them. That is by losing months on end on each one. - When ideating, don'...
Another week. Another tweet that brought thousands of visitors to Cyberleads. Another week with new paying customers. It seems like I've cracked level two of the game. That of finding a distribution channel and a (somewhat) predictable way to acquire new customers. Things are looking pretty...
Life is a struggle. I remember hearing that many times growing up. I always thought it was some melodramatic bullshit. But now that I'm getting older, I'm thinking that it may be true. Not that life is hard and therefore turns our life into struggle. But that we need struggle in our life. Even...
Today I woke up super late. I was having a beer through Zoom with my best friend from Greece until about 1AM, so I woke up today at about 9:00AM. I just opened my work laptop. I didn't get anything done today. I might do some stuff during lunch break or if I have some downtime during the day. ...
This morning I woke up and saw the latest UFC fights. The main event was Ferguson vs Gaethje. Ferguson is an unpredictable monster with unlimited cardio and an iron chin. Gaethje is a pure bred fighter, that never takes a back step and is not afraid to throw himself into the fire. Gaethje won....
Retention is more important than growth. That thought always pops in my mind. Even on my run today. It kept coming to me. My revenue is good enough as it is. And I'm sure my revenue will increase in the future. But the best way to grow is with users that stick around for a long time. If you...
I waited for a couple of days before writting a new blog. The reason is that I was very stressed after my last article went viral on HackerNews. This blog would have been a lot more emotional. Every time I put something out there that get's traction, I get a pump of adrenaline and endorphines....
In the past week I haven't done much. Haven't tweeted. Haven't coded. Just collected the lists and sent them out. Although I rested, mentally I didn't rest much. I feel this sense of urgency, that I have to keep the ball rolling. Right now I'm relevant. People remember who I am. The more time ...
Yuck. What an awful week. Spent in spreadsheets. Wrapping up the lists for the month. Honestly, if I knew how much work is needed for these lists, I might have thought about it twice before starting Cyberleads. Kidding. Not really. Or am I? The whole week I was working 5 hours per day on...
Whooof. Today I woke up tired as fuck. I worked four hours before my main job, and then another three I think in the evening. On the list that is. I'm on track though, if I keep up this pace until Friday. Work is also stressful. We are working on a Covid-19 remote patient monitoring syst...
This week was pure chaos. Last week I was saying how time is going by and I'm not making any real progress, but this week things went completely ballistic. A random tweet of mine went viral on Twitter, and around 10.000 people visiting Cyberleads. https://twitter.com/alexsideris_/status...
This is the last week of the month. As always, I have left quite a bit of work for the last minute, so I have some catching up to do. Today I woke up at 05:00 AM and continued with this month's list. I'll have to continue at this pace all week long. But at least I'll be able to relax when t...
At last my notifications have stopped on Twitter. The past few days have been crazy. It's nice and refreshing to have peace and not multiple notifications and messages every few minutes. Now I can concentrate again. I can work again. That is exactly what I'll do today, work on the list o...
I knew it. Someone already copied me. I'm not mad at them, but it just put me off. I want to share my journey, and I've always shared the good and the bad. But I'm maybe a bit naive, sharing the good stuff like that. Dunno. If I kept quiet, I wouldn't have been copied. But, I wouldn't ha...
The last two days have been surreal. My twitter exploded unexpectedly from a random tweet. My Twitter followers doubled. My MRR doubled. https://twitter.com/alexsideris_/status/1252656159636545538 It's funny cause late last night I went into a bit of a panic mode. I tweeted that I got a $10...
Startup life is a rollercoaster. Especially in the early days. Both results-wise, and of emotions-wise. Yesterday, reality grounded me in it's most eloquent way. That is by punching me in the face. A tweet of mine went viral on Twitter. Well, for my standards at least. Around 1K likes with...
I can't seem to pull the trigger when it comes to cold outreach. It's one of those things that I don't like, but then again, who likes it? That's the difference between people that make it and people that don't. The latter prefer not to do it and stay comfortable. I find that the best wa...
Today I woke up to a pleasant surprise. A $50/mo subscriber! I asked him where he found Cyberleads from, I am waiting for a response. Maybe it was Quora. Maybe it was ProductHunt. Maybe it was Reddit. We'll see. I started reading a book called "Traction" yesterday. It's co-authored by th...
I'm always rested on Sunday, so I end up going to bed late. So I'm always tired on Monday morning. That sucks. Today I have to follow up with a guy on LinkedIn. That's it really. I also have to post on Quora and Tweet like I do every day. I still have not made my list yet. That's bad. That'...
It's already week number 16. Week #6 was when I launched Cyberleds. Since then 10 weeks have passed. Week 1-2: The first two weeks after launching I spent them figuring out the product. I launched without a product, so I was running around like a headless chicken. Week 3: I spent one wee...
Yesterday I finished with my initial list of prospects. Out of ~50 companies, I found people to connect in ~25 of them. All in all, I managed to have one discussion, which was pretty helpful to be honest. Another guy is always telling me he will subscribe and he never does. Now he came back an...
Haha. Woke up, opened up LinkedIn and saw a message from someone roasting me. I asked for his feedback and said that I respect his time and that I would be happy to pay for it as well. The problem that I made a stupid mistake. I got his name wrong because I was copy pasting the message and...
I feel a bit better now that I committed to direct sales for this month. I know that it's not pretend work. It's actual work. Just get some customers. I have two people that are interested, but I don't want to jinx it. Unless they actually subscribe, it's all talk. Right now it's 07:00 A...
Morning! Just finished the weekly blog post. We are half way through the month. I need to get going. I just made my LinkedIn profile more complete, now I'll go and connect with people on LinkedIn. Bye!
Sunday is always a day I enjoy. Nice, chill, relaxing. Maybe drink a few beers on the balcony in the sun. Plan for the upcoming week. Excitement. It can be sour though if what I planned the previous Sunday is not completed. Let me go and check what I said last week. Ok I'm back. Here it is:...
Yesterday I started reading "Skin in the game". It's a very controversial book, written by an eccentric entrepreneur slash philosopher, Nassim Taleb. His main thesis in the book is that theory is bullshit, and that any kind of academic theorem is based on an oversimplified version of reality. ...
Today I started reaching out to people on LinkedIn. Also, I decided I will tweet about everything on Twitter. I will tweet the way I blog. I got good feedback for my tweet storm yesterday, so that motivated me. And by good feedback, I mean ONE comment saying "thank you for being transparent...
Hey. It's been a while since I have been in a bit of a rut. Yesterday and today, I woke up at 08:00 AM. That's far too late, since I start work at 10:00 AM and my goal is to work 4 hours on my own stuff. Yesterday was one of my worst days ever. I felt like shit when I went to bed. At least I w...
I often panic. Especially before this corona thing. I felt like I had to do things fast. "In two months I want to be ramen profitable" or "This time next year I want to be a nomad" Of course, timelines like that are not realistic. If everything I did went according to plan, I would ha...
So, yesterday I defined my target customer. Agencies that help startups go remote or hire remote developers. I started searching manually on Google, but boy was that tiring and hard. Had collected two companies in about 20 minutes. No bueno. So I went, and found about ~60 that are quite goo...
Monday, 6th of April, 2020. Today marks EXACTLY the end of my three month trial period with my company. They want me to continue here, and I'm very happy for that, since I am learning a lot. The only way I would have been caught in a dilemma is if I were ramen profitable and I could beco...
Yesterday, I was looking into direct sales and was looking into Nathan Barry, Jason Cohen and Steli Efti. Here are two articles so you have an idea: https://marketingexamples.com/direct/jason-cohen-sales https://nathanbarry.com/sales/ And two talks: Steli Efti on IndieHackers: h...
Today I realized something very, very cool. One of my customers, who has been a customer for 2+ months now, since the day I launched is a startup from Toronto that's making 1-10 Million dollars in revenue every year. Wow.. I have a million dollar company as a customer! Seems like my goal fo...
I feel nice.. fresh, clean, focused. I know what I have to do. No distractions. I have Cyberleads, that's it. B2B, low maintenance, in tech. Now I have to grow it. It's that simple. When it comes to creating small internet businesses, there are some steps along the way: 1. Idea 2. Build...
Today I got up in the morning super pumped to write a lot of blog posts. Right now, it's 10:00 AM, sunny outside :) I am going to write on weekly post I owe, one monthly post for March, and a mega post for Q1. The reason I am a little bit behind is because things have been crazy at work. Th...
I missed a few days, the reason being that I was compiling the list of startups for March for Cyberleads. The funding rounds did not take a hit from the covid situation, if anything, it increased. One reason for that may be that they are pushing to finalize deals before things get more craz...
Last week I was talking of launching yet another product. What the hell is wrong with me? This is my dilemma. Option 1: Have multiple products in different verticals that can re launch on PH on a rotating manner. Option 2: Double down on one product with low churn and make it a business. ...
I'm not going to be building anything new. I'll focus on Cyberleads. That's it. Period.
Bad start to the day, I woke up at 08:00 AM. Ever since I started working from home due to Covid-19, I sleep like a log. No stress, no nothing. So some times I don't even hear my alarm clock. Luckily, since I aim to get up at 05:00 AM or 06:00 AM, I never sleep past 08:00 AM. That's when my ba...
OK!!!! Let's report our finding and conclusions for Angelstep and compare with Cyberleads. - Name: Cyberleads - What:Monthly newsletter of newly funded startups - Results: ~1000 unique visitors, 10 paying subscribers. - Name: Angelstep - What: Monthly newletter of active investors - ...
Let me be honest, I think I have anxiety the last few days. Although I have written about it in my blog post "plans for 2020", in the top right of the homepage, I fell into the same trap. The trap being placing non actionable goals. Every single time I have seen some "success" it was when I...
New me.. aaaaaand.. I woke up at 2 hours later than I wanted! 08:00 AM :( Anyway, I did most of what I wanted. I launched Angelstep on Facebook and it got a bit of traction. Some interest, but no paying customers. Tomorrow I launch on Reddit. If I get 0 customers, that's it, I leave i...
It's funny how a bit of blogging get's you on the right track mentally. Yesterday, after writting about my laziness and articulating what I've been doing wrong the past week, I slept like a baby. Today it's Sunday, March 22nd. This time last week I was getting ready to launch Angelstep.c...
Let's be honest here. I have started to slack off a bit. I had a small notebook where I write what time I get up in the morning, if I work out and how many hours I work out every day. I write in green what is good, in red what is bad. I have stopped doing it. Basically, ever since I star...
Yesterday was Angestep's epic fail launch. On the other hand, Cyberleads is doing ok, I still have 7 paying customers for $29/mo. However, I truly believe that Angelstep is a good idea, I see so many people paying for databases of investors and such. I am certain. Although my PH launch w...
So today I launched Angelstep.co, it didn't go well. I got up at 05:00 and had 4 hours to prepare. 09:00 in Milan is 00:00 in San Fransisco. I prepared everything, the landing page wording, the product hunt tag line, the image, the description, the images, the initial comment. I also pr...
So all this week I was working remotely from home. Initially I thought this was the best thing ever, but it wasn't. I have no clear boundaries of work, personal projects, and rest. Before this, I woke up at 05:00, worked until 08:00, went to the gym until 09:00, and was at the office by ...
Wednesday, March 11th, 2020. Since Monday, I have been working remotely from home, they forced us to because of the corona virus. This gives me theoretically a lot more time, but the truth is that I don't feel that motivated the last two days. Monday sucked, I worked from my bedroom and ...
Shit is crazy right now in Milan. Iโm basically living in a ghost town. Yesterday they announced that the city is quarantined, which basically means there is control for entering and exiting the city. In the beginning I got flashbacks of Chernobyl, the mini TV series, but after looking it up I...
Finished the list at the last minute, on the 29th of February, at night. Sent it out the next day with a small feedback form. Straight away, one guy asks to cancel and a refund. I do it and I'm bummed out. Like, very bummed out. I never got so hurt by negative feedback, but this one was ...
Sunday. Went to bed last night at 01:00 AM. For me, nowadays, that's my definition of being a bad boy. I woke up in the morning and created a small feedback survey. My mind was all over the place, and my question where way too many and too specific, so I went for a walk. It's difficult to a...
February 29th.. Tomorrow is March 1st, which means I have to send out the first list to my nine paying customers. (they were ten, but one of them asked for a refund because he was FURIOUS he didn't receive the previous month's report upon sign up) I simply did not have one, so offered him a re...
I hope my manager doesn't read this, but if you do, sorry Marco! :D All jokes aside, when you work, you always have a few moments of downtime when you have a mini break at your computer. At those times, ideas come to you. Anyone that has travelled on a bus, train or plane with no TV, book o...
Yesterday I was stressed because I could not sort out the email collection situation for CyberLeads. But fortunately I found a great service and the results are pretty good. You send a request with name and company name and it gives you the email. For example, Alex at CyberLeads and it resp...
Itโs February 23rd, Sunday. This time next week I have to have the list ready. Shitโs about to get real, and the pressure is on. So far, I have everything sorted out apart from the emails of the CEOs. Now I have a bunch of company names and CEO names, and need an API that given a name, ...
Today I woke up at 04:30 AM. I wanted to put four uninterrupted hours into CyberLeads before work. Although it sounds extreme, keep in mind that I went to sleep at 08:00 PM. So I slept 8 hours, which is normal. I woke up and did what I talked about yesterday. Applied many filters to ensure ...
Wore up early in the morning, 6 AM. Iโm going to pump out some leads. Yesterday morning I tried to get some leads from online resources and enrich them and add them to the list. It took foreverโฆ Like, 5 leads in two hoursโฆ This can't be happening. This is not feasable. Iโm panicking. Today ...
Today I went to work and I was the happiest Iโve been in a very long time. Iโm so proud and everything seems nicer. The city, the people, the weather, the future. Everything is great. I went to work and wanted to work hard, since last week I was sick for the first part of the week and in the...
This week was the best week of the year. Actually, the best week of 2019 as well. Maybe even 2018. Maybe the best week of my two year journey so far. TLDR; Validated a new product and instantly went up to $150 MRR. Plus, it's B2B and in tech!!! I found it! Long story: I am so happy and...
So yesterday was a crazy day, I launched a product at last! And guess what, I think I validated it already! It's in the lead generation space, a monthly newletter with a list of hundreds of startups that just raised money. Three people subscribed for $29/mo and about another three were aski...
At last this illness is wearing off, today I feel like a new man.. I'm still struggling with the validating proccess. I know some people fear launching but I just wanna launch. Here is my situation. I have a space that is already validated. Lead generation. I have an idea that is already...
Wow, so I missed a few days again. The reason is that I got sick, which is something that I was actively trying to avoid. I went to the library the other day and some motherfucker was sick and coughing and sneezing next to me. I was furious but I didn't say anything and didn't get up and leave...
I think this week has been the best week yet. I may not have the numbers to back that claim, but my brain seems more calm, disciplined and optimistic. The reason for that is that my priorities are straight. Firstly, I made up my mind that I should focus on growing GitGardener. There is no reas...
Yesterday I sent many instagram DMs and emails. I got replies and many are interested. Of course, interested does not mean a done deal, many times I get back to them and they don't reply, so I followed up with some yesterday. So far I have -theoretically- one affiliate deal (50/50 split) with ...
It's 5:30 AM. I went to bed one hour earlier in order to get up one hour earlier. Now I have three hours to work before going to the gym at 8:30. Yesterday I sent just a few DMs to Instagram accounts that post programming memes and such and asked them if they would be interested in an affiliat...
Yesterday I sent a few messages to large instagram channels that have a big following in programming. You know, like instagram accounts that post programming memes and shit. Got a few responses, and I'm in talks with someone about an affiliate deal. Basically, GitGardener is at around $200/mo ...
Missed the previous days, please don't ask why. It's funny how one day of going out and changing your sleep can change everything. Momentum is like walking on a rope, there is no balance, you are either getting closer to your goals or not. I'm back now and will be blogging daily. With a new fo...
This last week was ok. Not great, not bad. I continued to wake up at 6 and worked for two hours in the morning. Product Hunt Ship is not working at all, but maybe it's the product's fault, not the website's. But I don't know if I can justify $80/mo for it. I continued to tweet everyday, and...
Yesterday I went out for a beer with my colleagues and although I had a great time, I came home later than usual, and slept like shit. I also had about an hour's sleep less, so in the morning it was the first time I actually thought about sleeping in. If you had asked me about a month ago, ...
I remember once reading that perfection is not when there is nothing to add, but when there is nothing to be removed. While brainstorming about my new product, I had fell in the trap of adding features in my head of what the product would do. But then, I realized I am assuming too many thin...
Monday morning.. I like it to be honest, the weekend was unproductive as hell. This week I'll focus on one idea only, so I'm not scattered all over the place. Structure. The idea is a tool that generates leads for your dev product. It uses APIs like GitHub API, StackShare API, Twitter API, ...
Have you seen the movie Limitless? If not, this guy finds a pill that makes him super smart and productive. He takes it, writes a whole book in a day, cleans his house, get's his shit together and goes to sleep. The next morning, the pill has wore off and he is back to being a useless wannabe wri...
This week everything went perfect. I stayed on track, and I'm solidifying those productive habits. Wake up at 06:00, work till 08:00, go to the gym till 09:00, be at work at 10:00. I'm basically living for those four hours before work every day. Work is super interesting as well, I'm learni...
Saturday.. I slept like a baby, 10 hours. When I woke up though, I didn't have that drive to work on my projects. To be honest, I did nothing. However, I had promised myself that I would leave the house and explore the city, so that's what I did. I took the tram, went into town and got o...
Today waking up was a real struggle. I was tempted to sleep again for another three hours. But these three hours are the most important hours of the day, working on my projects and working out. They keep me sane and happy. Eventually I got out of bed and did everything as usual. The gym sessio...
This morning went great. I woke up again on time, and did what I had to do. I'm getting better as well. In two hours I do what I did all day back home. Strip the bullshit and just do what has to be done. Emails, Reddit posts, etc. Went to the gym as well. To be honest the week is creeping u...
I just love this feeling. The last experiment worked. Waking up earlier in the morning and working then as opposed to working after work in the evening. You should do the things that are most important to you first thing in the morning! I don't feel guilty anymore, even though I put in 2 hours...
Today I did what we spoke about yesterday. I woke up and worked two hours before starting work. Honestly, it was the best decision ever. I really give it my all at work so when I get back home all I want to do is eat, relax, read a book, blog and go to sleep. This way, if I can keep up with...
This is the 20th day of the year, and this is my first daily blog. I feel like weekly blogs can make you slack off a bit with your introspection, so Iโll start writing every single day. Thatโs the best formula for forming habits for me personally. I am better at going to the gym every day than 4 ...
Completely different week. If I were to grade week number one as a 4 of out 10, week number two gets 8 out of 10. I managed the gym situation, I go in the morning. Yes, at 08:00 AM.. Me, that used to wake up at 12:00 every day. Itโs not as hard as it sounds to be honest. I wake up at 07:00 ...
This week was strange. For one, I had to get organized and find my where abouts. How to get to work, how to get back, what are the things I need for home. I started work on Tuesday, since Monday was a national holiday here, like in Greece. I was a weird experience. Actually, funny fact, work i...
So, this was the first week of the year, and it was cut in half. During this week, I moved from Thessaloniki, Greece to Milan, Italy. I also wrote the "2020 plans" article discussing my strategy for this year. As I am writting this article, I am getting ready to go to bed because tomorrow I start...
This is not a success story. This is not a "humble brag". In 2018 I start with a goal of reaching $500 MRR through my side projects. Six months in, I am at $50 MRR, riding a huge wave of momentum. Fourteen months in, I am at $200 MRR and have three profitable products. Now I'm two years in, I have shut...