I'm launching 12 products in 12 months! Starting today, I'll ship a product each month till 07/24. I've been toying with the idea for a while. But the time wasn't right for me. Also, my mindset wasn't ripe. A few things influenced my decision. I'll start with the most recent. Like many of you, I've read stories about people who go through this experience and find meaningful signals from the market on the 7th product or so. A few days ago, I read this post (xitter.cf/hello_matthias/s…) on Indie Hackers by @hello_matthias. He recently quit freelancing and decided to do 6 startups in 6 months. His post resonated with me because of a few reasons. Like many people from an engineering background, I need to get better at these two skills: launching fast and marketing. Launching fast will help me in two ways. First, I won't feel so terrified to launch. I will have to launch, so bye-bye what's left of my perfectionism. (I've come a long way since 2020, but I still have a long way to go.) Second, I will learn a lot about making products. Means I'll have a lot to talk about. I want to expand on this. ↓ See, I believe the only way to become an interesting person is to do interesting things. Not read interesting things. Not talk about interesting things. Do. Building an audience is a great goal but I can't build an audience by sharing cookie-cutter content. I just can't. I'd rather not share anything if the alternative is to share generic posts. I'm not saying everyone should use social media that way. I'm saying, I have to use social media that way. Otherwise I just don't. Take a look at my most successful thread. It's about a laundry system we invented in our home. Has nothing to do with my online "persona". But if I hadn't been crazy enough to sell all of our dressers to start getting dressed out of IKEA buckets, that thread wouldn't have come into existence. And in the eyes of the 1.4 million people who saw me for the first time thanks to that thread, I wouldn't have come to existence. So... Do interesting things to become interesting. If I'm not interesting enough, I don't deserve a follow. And if I'm playing this audience building game, I owe it to the Internet to be interesting. But of course, the aim of 12 products in 12 months is not only to launch and become more interesting. I'll be looking to make money. This brings us to marketing. As I go through fast launches, my plan is to document everything and create content. And since my Twitter engagement is so low these days, I won't be feeling like spamming anyone (which I usually do). After all, if it's gonna feel like tweeting into the void, it can't be that bad. Going a bit more into the past, I discovered indie hacking in mid 2020. I was a new mom back then and I was trying to make an idea of mine into a business. The idea, Apparent, was to build the "Headspace for parents". After spending $1,000 to produce the sound clips, I understood my approach was wrong. Over the months that followed, I turned to content creation. I launched VisualNeuron.com. Creating visuals and freelancing made me my first real internet money. I designed visuals, animations, and websites for other entrepreneurs. That's when I realized I was on a better path. But not the ultimate path still. 9 months ago, I gave birth to my second baby. Now that I'm a mom of two, I'm super short on time. Me and my husband fully take care of our kids without any help (we live in a separate country away from our extended family) and our kids are our priority. So I have a maximum of three-ish hours to work every day. (My husband and I take turns.) But I don't want to use those three hours for freelancing. Over the past few months, I've come to the conclusion that freelancing is not for me at this stage of life. So I'm quitting it. I've decided to use this limited daily time that I have to get better at launching and marketing. My ultimate goal is to have multiple money-making assets (websites, platforms, info products, etc, don't know what they are yet) by the time my kids are off to elementary school. Means I have roughly 3 years to get to that point. I do have a few months worth of runway so I won't be terribly worried if I don't make money within a few months. As a baby mom, I try not to set overly ambitious goals. I care about my body's chemistry as I still breastfeed and plan to keep doing so for two more years. My baby's needs have top priority. My toddler is growing fast out of toddlerhood and I don't want to miss a minute of it. Two years later, I can work harder. So this is a good period to experiment. That being said, I do expect to start making money on day #1. No money = no motivation. But it's okay if I don't right away. I want to ship, ship, and ship, and that's the priority. My assets right now: - Parenting newsletter with 370+ subscribers (idle for a long while) - VisualNeuron Instagram account with 3,000+ followers (haven't shared a single new post since launch. Grew all by itself!) - VisualNeuron newsletter with 20+ subscribers (that I haven't sent a single issue yet!) - Twitter account with 5,400+ followers - YouTube channel with 120+ subscribers (last video was 1 year ago) My rough plan: - Launch monthly - Try to market outside of Twitter, wherever the customer of that product is (this feels terrifying!) - Document the process & learnings on Twitter I do have fears. What if I can't find any traction till the end of month 12? Well, I guess I can't know if I never start. I've always wanted to do this 12 x 12 thing and that's what matters. Finally, I don't guarantee I won't change my mind. If at any point along this journey it becomes unsustainable mentally, physically or otherwise, I will stop launching new things and figure out something else. With that, I'm announcing my first product later today in a separate post. Thanks for reading this far!