Hey friends, welcome back. I hope you enjoyed the previous reflections. In case you haven’t read them, check them out: last week’s reflections.

Now, onto my reflections for the past week:

A Quote I Liked

Growth Mindset

Most people don’t show up consistently. Many don’t show up at all and are stuck in the talking stage. Whatever big dreams you have right now, dream bigger! There’s less competition in big dreams because most are too caught up with hesitation and self-doubt to persevere every day, so they end up putting themselves down.

Tim Ferriss phrased it best in his post, “Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for “realistic” goals, paradoxically making them the most time- and energy-consuming.

If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too.

Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.“

Combine this perspective reframe with David Goggins's 1-Second Decision rule; basically, there’s a whole lot of 1-seconds between you and your dreams, and you just have to make it past each one mentally while you physically continue with the difficult process (but mentally phase into how it would feel like accomplishing it).

Entrepreneurship

A topic request from one of our readers: Starting business ideas in a field saturated with people who have had years of relevant experiences or have been doing it a while and are stable in the market.

I encountered this a lot when growing other startups and working on my own business ideas. The idea usually seems daunting because we view it so holistically, when in fact, each one of these players had to start from somewhere anyway. Here are a few things I consider:

Existing validation

Have these bigger players validated the need for a product/service like mine? In most cases, I have found the answer to be yes.

For example, if I wanted to create a PDF merging tool (with a twist, more on this later), there are already many successful tools that do exactly that. This gives me a good indicator that the market has that problem and wants it solved. The same can be applied to physical goods; think Native deodorant (here’s a great thread that summarizes their story) and the Nothing phone. These 2 brands launched in what I would regard as a “saturated market”, with Axe Body Spray and Apple & Samsung dominating, but were able to build a solid following anyway.

So if the answer is yes, I’d want to know more about how exactly these players are more experienced, and what I can learn from them. Are they exceptionally great at shipping new ideas/features, supply chain & production, distribution & marketing, or even scaling experiments that show promise? Search for these answers, they can form your framework for succeeding in the same space.

My niche, my moat

I make it a point to solve problems I understand because if I do not resonate with the problems, someone else who does will eventually meet customer needs way better.

If I’m still keen on entering a certain industry, it’s likely because I’m already a user myself and have relevant experience with the problems other users like myself face.

What do I like and dislike about the existing solutions in the market to solve the problem I have? With DIY Discord, I like how for each step in setting up a Discord, I could find easy-to-follow steps to get it done. I disliked that these were scattered all over (different sites or blogs, or hidden under different keyword searches). I have personally experienced the problem DIY Discord is trying to solve, and have helped many in my network solve the same. Other examples of a similar path are my landing page template that I personally use to validate ideas quickly, Yifan with OnePageSaaS, and Marc Lou with Ship Fast.

Do I have an idea of how they can be done better? Yes! Whenever I had to set up a Discord from scratch, I always wondered to myself why I didn’t document the process when I did it the previous time! I knew exactly what I would want to set up, and in what order. I just needed a detailed guide to serve as my reference point. So I’m creating it.

This is how I found my niche; a subsegment of the wider market where I understand in detail what the struggles are and what would help solve them. And my moat would be (1) how much I’ve interacted with the problem directly and indirectly (via my network needing it solved), and (2) the early community I have that helped me build the solution (which is why building in public is so effective because you get continuous feedback), which only compounds from here.

Why is knowing your niche and moat important?

By identifying the right niche, you get to find the most relevant, and often underserved segment of the market for you to start with. Launching a new idea/business publicly is all about positioning, and this is what I’ve found to be the best way. Remember the PDF merger example? The twist is what carves out a niche for that product idea to thrive. It could just be a feature that a good enough number of people want but haven’t gotten (e.g. merging PDFs and the table of contents automatically updates).

By leveraging on your moat, you get to survive and outperform your competition in a saturated market. Other examples of a moat can even be personalized service (how often have you gotten a personalized response & solution from a big brand?), speed of execution (an indiepreneur that cuts through the noise and ships features that other brands have neglected), or a loyal community (of people that respect and support you/your brand).

Show up

Sometimes it’s not always about the big players. When OpenAI’s API went live, lots of my friends had their doubts about launching their GPT-wrapper ideas (basically products that use ChatGPT at the core) but did anyway. They’re still going strong.

We tend to forget that most people aren’t willing to be disciplined enough to start, and consistent enough to consistently show up every day. When thinking about a rush of new players in the market, I believe that you don't need to be the best to succeed, just better than average.

There are lots more that come to mind, but for the sake of the length of the newsletter, I’ll keep it to these 3 main points. Let me know if you’d want to read more on this topic, if you need a second opinion, or if there’s anything you don’t agree with. I always welcome a productive discussion :)

Freedom

There’s a lot of contradictory advice that floats around when it comes to productivity and structuring your day. Some highly recommend time-blocking everything, some recommend ditching the calendar altogether.

I’m now somewhere in between. I used to time block every single thing (even sleep), and I’ve gone weeks where I completely cleared my calendar. What I found works best for me (at least at this point) is time-blocking time-sensitive stuff and leaving gaps for the rest.

It’s more stress on my discipline muscle but it takes the load off my creative muscle. Without the time blocks or specific instructions from someone, I have to be more intentional with getting stuff done and I feel like it’s a character-building exercise every time I have to.

But my thoughts have never felt more free after scrapping the fixed routine. I go for random walks, sit around in parks for however long I want, and let my creative juices flow then double down on when they’re at their peak.

This is the system I’ve built that works for me now. I don’t recommend any one system but I do recommend revisiting your systems every couple of weeks and asking yourself if it still serves you and is aligned to your priorities.

Homework

Stop underestimating yourself: What dream is the most important to you now? How can you make this dream bigger?

Reignite your lost motivation by broadening your horizons. No dream is too big; we managed to land on the moon after all.

Till we meet again next week.

Cheers to the future,
Ernest
indiepreneur, digital nomad, transhumanist

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