How I'm building 12 badass products this year

What's the recommended amount of sleep again?

What am I doing?

TLDR; I’m setting up a simple system for my code and for my time.

For 2024, I am building 12 products in 12 months.

Like most indie hackers, I have a 9-5 job.

But to kick this challenge up a notch, I’m also a dad of two young kids — a 16 month old and a 3 month old.

The only real time I’ll have to hack on these projects is early mornings and late nights, and maybe during their nap time on the weekends.

Needless to say, a lot of my ideas, and even features, won’t make the cut simply because they require too much effort given the circumstances.

However, that doesn’t mean these products won’t be cool as hell.

These 12 products will be badass.

It just means I have to be super intentional and efficient with my every move — something that hasn’t always been my strong suit.

So if you’re ready for a wild ride, hop in and join me as I share my entire process with you over the course of the year.

I might fail or I might succeed.

Also, since it’s now March 2024, be on the lookout for my next couple of posts which will get you caught up on my January and February projects!

But I’ll add a few more details below…

Why am I doing this?

I love building and creating. It’s my “infinite game”. Hell, I even learned to code because I’ve always had so many ideas that I’ve wanted to build. I could never just be the “idea guy”.

So this year I’m taking my passion for building and supercharging it with a dash of intention and a handful of efficiency so that I can start marching towards my end game.

What’s my end game you ask?

Freedom

Financial freedom, freedom to do whatever I choose with my time, freedom to live life on my terms.

I’ve always had an oddly specific barometer to measure this freedom.

Here it is:

If I ever decided one night that I wanted to travel to, say Tokyo, that my family and I could hop on the next plane that night or the following morning and go — with no repercussions. No having to let my boss know, no planning ahead, no saving up for the year, none of that. Hell, we could go without suitcases and buy some clothes when we land. And even bring some friends with us too.

That’s the freedom I’m looking for in the long run.

But what about in the short term?

To get there, I’ve realized I should start to work backwards.

Ship more

It’s simple. I need to get more reps in.

The reason I’m launching 12 products this year is to build my shipping muscle.

No more wantrepreneur shit where I make a logo and a landing page then feel some false sense of accomplishment.

Even with 5 Product Hunt launches under my belt prior to 2024, and a number of other products I’ve built and shown to the world, this year is about shipping.

No time to get everything pixel perfect. No time to add tons of features (that no one wants anyway). No overthinking every little detail.

Some projects will succeed and others will not.

It’s a numbers game.

With each new project, I will get better, and the products I ship will get better.

My marketing skills, my sales skills, my positioning, my branding, my copywriting, my code — all of it will get better.

The knowledge gained from each product launch will begin to compound exponentially.

Creating a system

For starters — every product I ship will be monetized in some way.

No more “playing house”, no more wantrepreneur shit. You can read more about my struggle with that in my last post.

The goal is to make that sweet sweet internet money from every project.

But simply monetizing my products won’t help me launch them any faster.

Building a boilerplate for my stack

In order to move quickly — to solve bugs and add new features, to support my customers in a timely manner, all while still being a great father and husband, I need to come up with a system.

I wish I could tell you that I had every corner of my system ironed out, but I don’t.

To start, though, I’m creating Yet Another Boilerplate™.

That’s one of the lowest hanging fruits if I want to ship quickly.

My preferred stack is:

• GraphQL

• React

• Nest.js (Not NeXt.js)

• Prisma

• Postgres

• Tailwind

I can move quickly and confidently with it.

This boilerplate will also be wired up with everything else I (typically) need. Things such as:

• Auth

• RBAC

• Admin dashboard

• Web sockets

• Cron jobs

• Email integration

• Stripe integration

• Various frontend components

• Layouts

• Landing pages

• …and more

And yeah, I know what you’re thinking.

“Isn’t this the same thing as ShipFa.st by Marc Louvion?”

Yes, it’s just my own version of it. One that I can ship fast with.

Scheduled time for deep work

In addition to setting myself up for success when it comes to actually building, I’m also aiming to be more intentional with my time.

I write code for my side projects nearly everyday, but I’ve never been one to schedule time for this creative work.

Scheduling time for creativity? That has always felt like the least creative thing to do.

Creativity ebbs and flows.

I can’t just get into a flow state at 7am every morning or 9pm every night.

But I’ve realized — now more than ever — that I need some semblance of order with my schedule so that I can make sure I cover all my bases.

Family, fitness & health, my day job, my projects.

I need more of a structured routine for deep work and I’ve been inspired a lot by Pat Walls’ post about it here, so I’m taking a similar approach.

I’m slotting out time from 7am-9am every weekday, and from 9pm-11pm every weeknight.

Weekends will be more of a wildcard, but mostly reserved for family.

I’ll keep you posted on the specifics of where I land with this part of my journey, but would love to hear what’s working for you!

Internet Money

/ˈ in(t)ərˌnet mənē /

Money earned from internet-based business endeavors.