Photo by Silas Baisch on Unsplash
Dear friends,
I wanted to briefly explain the reasons for the time gap between this issue and the last one. All the events that happened this year proved one thing to me - time is the most precious thing we have. We should be using it for the things we love doing, not just for the ones we have to.
As harsh as it has been, 2020 proved to be a trigger for change. For years, I’d been toying around with the idea of sustaining myself and my family with the things I love doing. Yet it wasn’t until this summer that I decided to jump head-first into the cold water.
This is the reason for today’s “unexpected“ issue. I would like to introduce a few podcast stories to your attention, which inspired me to take the plunge and are instrumental to me taking this decision. What I learned from all of them is that there is no such thing as a “perfect setup” or “right time“. It is always tough, but at the end of the road, you’ll know that it was worth the try.
Cheers,
Preslav
Podcast Episodes
Khan Academy: Sal Khan | How I Built This
“Sal Khan walked away from a high-paying job to start a business that had no way of making money. His idea to launch a non-profit teaching platform was ignited five years earlier, when he was helping his young cousins do math homework over the computer. They loved his clear explanations and soon he was posting free tutorials on Youtube, where they started to attract the attention of thousands of users around the world. Sal realized he could help democratize learning by building a free platform to teach math, science, and the humanities. Today, Khan Academy offers hundreds of free recorded tutorials in dozens of languages. During the pandemic, its popularity has surged to 30 million users a month.”
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts
How to Make $2.5MM as a Solo Founder by Teaching What You Love with Adam Wathan | The Indie Hackers Podcast
“Although Adam Wathan (@adamwathan) dropped out of college (twice!), he's one of the most voracious learners to ever appear on the podcast, and he's built a wildly successful business for himself by teaching others what he's learned. We cover Adam's journey from college dropout to software engineer, the lessons he learned from his first "failed" business, how he creates free content to build an audience, and the techniques he's used repeatedly to drive millions of dollars worth of demand for his books and courses.”
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts
Shopify: Tobias Lütke | How I Built This
“In 2004, German programmer Tobias Lütke was living in Ottawa with his girlfriend. An avid snowboarder, he wanted to launch an online snowboard shop, but found the e-commerce software available at the time to be clunky and expensive. So he decided to write his own e-commerce software. After he launched his online snowboard business, called Snowdevil, other online merchants were so impressed with what he built that they started asking to license Tobi's software to run their own stores. Tobi and his co-founder realized that software had more potential than snowboards, so they launched the e-commerce platform Shopify in 2006. Since then, it has grown into a publicly-traded company with over 4,000 employees and $1 billion in revenue.”
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts
Bonus Episode
So You Want to Launch a Newsletter: Tips From Writers | a16z Podcast
“The pandemic has prompted a reckoning within traditional media and, in parallel, a surge in the newsletter ecosystem. On Substack, readership and active writers both doubled from January through April. This episode reveals the behind-the-scenes experiences of four newsletter creators, all of whom launched roughly within the past year.”
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts