What's up, everybody?
This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you're listening to the IndieHackers podcast.
More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making a lot of money in the process.
And on this show, I sit down with these IndieHackers to discuss the ideas, the opportunities, and
the strategies they're taking advantage of so the rest of us can do the same.
This is part two of my conversation with Peter Levels.
If you missed the first part, that's cool.
Just go back to last week's episode where we talked about Peter's company's remote OK
and the rebase.
Let's talk about money.
As Tyler Trinkis asked this, he's a good example of somebody who's moved to Mexico.
Yeah, I know him.
He's in Mexico City.
He's all about Mexico City.
Mexico City's pretty cool.
I've been down to his conference down there, but he wanted to know how you're handling
investment in money now that your projects are making $3, $4 million a year or something.
I'm just curious more from a broader psychological aspect or perspective, too.
You asked people on Twitter, what should we talk about?
And a lot of the questions were like, are you happy?
Does money make you happy?
Or what do you know about happiness now that you've had these successful projects?
I look at you and you're like, OK, I'm carrying my laptop around in a grocery store bag.
So I don't know.
That's not how I imagine my life.
What is your relationship to money now?
Yes, I think it's very interesting because I remember in the student days, I was making
like $300 or $400 a month and now much more.
So we talked a little bit about this on DM, too.
I think almost this is also a touch topic, right?
It's like money and capitalism and stuff, but you need a base amount of money to be
comfortable.
And I think money, like, do you know F.I.R.E., F-I-R-E, F-I-R-E, F-I-R-E, F-I-R-E-E, F-I-R-E-E.
Yeah, financially dependent, retire early.
Yeah.
So they have this concept where if you save, like, let's say you save $100,000, you can
take out $4,000 a year, sorry, you invest this $100,000 in the stock market, like in
ETFs and stuff, and then you can perpetually kind of take out 4% per year.
So $4,000 a year.
So if you have like a million dollars saved after like 20 years, you can take out $40,000.
So $40,000 is about some money you can maybe live off.
So that means that having a million dollars can give you $40,000 the rest of your life
kind of perpetual.
So then you're kind of retired.
So I think that's a much more interesting way to see like millions, you know, or seeing
money that it's not a million dollar, it doesn't mean you could spend a million dollar, a million
dollar means you can spend $40,000 per year.
And I think money in a way is a scam because, and this is like controversial, but it like
the narrative and culture, we talk about this on DM, like the narrative and culture is that
especially as a guy, if you make money, you get successful, you know, suddenly you get
you get women, all this stuff, you get power, like it's from I think Scarface and stuff,
like you get the money, Scarface, all the rap songs.
Yeah, so it's bullshit, it doesn't work like that, nobody cares about that.
Like really people, everybody's just looking for another nice person to be a boyfriend
or girlfriend with, to be a partner with.
And if you meet people that do want you for your money, you don't want them because they're
gold diggers, right?
I don't even meet those people.
So people don't really care, like really people don't care about this stuff.
And that's like the biggest shock, not that I did it for that, but like, it's all a scam.
It's a society narrative that like, you need sports cars and a big house and it's all like
I rented this big architect Villa because I wanted to do it.
So I rented it this year in Thailand and I lived there with my ex-girlfriend and it was
like really beautiful, like Instagram, like amazing, and it was really boring also.
I was so bored and I felt lonely.
It was like too much space and I'm not saying it in a like humble, brag, cool way.
I'm just saying that as, you know, to test that you need to test that lifestyle and really
quickly realize that's like, I'm much more happy with a grocery store bag in a hotel
room, you know, than this kind of luxury life that you see on TV and movies.
It's just, I don't think it's real.
I think it's, I think it's artificial.
It's stick state is signaling, right?
It's signaling that you're right to other people, but that's not an intrinsic way to
get happy.
I think.
And I don't need to signal.
I'm like happy.
I mean, I'm okay.
I yeah.
It doesn't add anything.
Why do you think that is?
Like, because it seems like from the outside looking in, there are a lot of rich people
who really also love like those trappings of being rich.
Like they love their huge mansion.
They love their like designer clothes.
Like they love like they're like bougie ass stuff.
And like, it seems like that doesn't provide, you know, any happiness to you.
Like, are they just status signaling, you know, do they really not like it or is it
just something unique about you that makes that stuff just unnecessary?
It's a good question.
I, we don't know, right?
But I, like, I've never had much motivation or incentive to signal.
I mean, my status signaling would be like, look at this cool thing I made, look at this
cool website I made and it works now.
And like, it was really difficult and challenging and now I made it.
And that's like, that's like signaling because it's, that's like this creativity kind of
stuff.
And you could argue, this is like, you could argue it's showing revenue signaling already,
right?
But I don't really do it for that.
I do it more for transparency, but I do think it's, it's like, we're tribal people, right?
We're like humans are animals and people are tribal, which means they, they need to signal
the tribe, their status.
And, and maybe then my status signaling is in a different way than the classic way of
like, look at all this ownership I have, right?
Right.
The way you signal depends on the tribe that you're a part of.
And if you're part of a tribe, that's like, okay, we're a bunch of makers and we like
to build things to be financially independent.
And you signal by like, you know, building cool stuff and like, you know, generating
revenue from your projects.
And if you live like, uh, with a bunch of people who are like in some fancy suburb of
LA and the way you signals by having a really big house and a really nice car, then you
don't care about, uh, building projects online.
Like you care about that kind of stuff.
And I like the tribe that you're part of personally, because it's like, it's more productive.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's the hits in the only hat.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I do think it's a trend though.
Like I never know if something is a trend or it's just like me and my kind of art tribe
kind of doing it, but I do see trend of like being more about intrinsic, pure motivations
and happiness and less about like, you know, capital and ownership and material goods and,
you know, cars, sports cars, flashy clothes and stuff like, like, look how we dress usually.
We all wear like basic t-shirts that are like $10 and you probably the same.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I'm wearing my robe that I got on Amazon for $25.
It's like super comfy.
It's like wearing a blanket.
It's kind of nice.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
I got the hoodie too.
So yeah, we dress like kids pretty much.
So yeah, it's having a really big house also takes a lot of maintenance and management
and you see these rich people that are crazy lives.
It's so much fucking work and they're, they're, they're stressed out of their mind.
They're burned out from just like existing.
And I think the real key for me, the benefit is like not having to do anything like that,
not having to manage a lot of people and just sit in my, on my bed and do in the Acre podcast
and just chill and not after all those obligations, right?
I read a book recently.
It was about like, uh, it's by Anderson Cooper.
He was like a journalist, this reporter, but he also like comes from like this Vanderbilt
family.
His dad's last name was Cooper, but his mom's last name is Vanderbilt.
And she was like, you know, like the sixth generation of the Vanderbilt's.
And they were like, at some point the richest family in America and like the 1800s and the
late 1800s.
And they got to the point where it was like the third generation of kids and they just
had like a ton of money that they had inherited from the previous generations of people who
were like sort of building this, this empire, like Cornelius Vanderbilt.
But the kids like at that point, like what did they care about?
Like they didn't have any business savvy.
They didn't have any ambition.
They didn't have any like acumen in that area.
Like they just cared about being part of high society and like status signaling.
And so they just like squandered the greatest fortune in America by doing nothing.
Yeah, giant elaborate houses and throwing these crazy balls and just showing off as
much as they could to try to like cling on to this status they had of like the richest
of the rich people.
And uh, it was like you said, like in these houses costs like hundreds of thousands of
dollars a year just to maintain.
And by the time it was like thirties or forties, like they're all broke.
The kids were all broke.
Like it all disappeared and there's nothing left of it.
And like, that's what I think of when I think of like old money and I think of like new
money.
It's like, don't, don't do that.
Man, there's so many lessons there.
Like, um, it shows again where we sat in the start, like it, you, you adapt to this stuff
so fast.
You adapt to like big houses and cars and like crazy, uh, rich extravagant parties and
stuff.
Like it all gets, uh, you know, the hedonism part of it as well.
You all probably adapt to this, but it takes some effort to imagine that because it's,
it seems so nice, right?
It's like, wow, these cool parties, but you probably get used to that too.
And then it's the same thing.
So I think if you take the effort to imagine that and like, okay, let's not do that.
And instead like live, live in a more conscious also to yourself manner of like, what do I
want to do?
And what, and my life is so simple now.
Like all I do is like, I wake up, I drink coffee and I open my laptop a little bit.
I talk to my friends.
I code a little bit.
I go for a walk.
I go to the gym every two days.
Andre lives here also.
So I see Andre a lot.
It's not a guy Javi lives here and we hang out and it's very simple life right now.
And uh, also cause of COVID of course, but I don't know, I'm happy and it's, I'm happy
with like, there's this quote I read on Twitter this week.
Like if you're not, if you can't be happy with your coffee, you cannot be happy with
a billion dollars.
Same thing.
Like be happy with simple things and my dad says the same thing.
Like all he says is like you wake up and he drinks tea and he eats a cookie and he's
like, this is like life.
This is the best thing.
Like basic, basic shit, you know, like, and this data on this, there's studies that show
like buying a house after six months, you're at the same level of happiness, marrying,
buying a car like after two months or something.
So hedonic adaptation, the hedonic treadmill is a very interesting concept.
It is, and it's especially like relevant when you're like, I think organizing your life
in a way where you're always chasing these big goals because like we're chasing a goal.
You're essentially saying, okay, like there's a thing I don't have right now and I would
be happy if I had it.
And like, that's dangerous cause it's like the flip side of that is like, I'm not happy
right now.
You know, I'm not happy unless I get this thing, right?
I got my coffee.
I'm happy with the coffee.
I need a billion dollars.
Yes.
Yes.
But this is such a difficult concept to grasp and that's why people work their ass off until
they're 80 or 70 to, you know, or whatever to get there.
And I mean, so this is always, this is a really sensitive thing to say because you always
have these rich people to say like, ah, the answer is not unwell, blah, blah, blah.
But it's bullshit.
Of course it is.
Like if you have enough money that you don't need to work, that's a great benefit.
Financial independence should be, everybody should get that.
Like universal basic income should be for everybody.
It's so comfortable and nice to not have a boss.
It's amazing.
But after that, like it doesn't, like when I passed like one million a year in revenue,
that was like exceptional and now it's two million a year in revenue.
And it's like, it's just a number.
It doesn't mean anything.
You pay more tax and that's it.
And you, so then how do you like navigate that transition?
Because like before you get there, like there's definitely, I think a difference between having
that financial freedom and not having it.
Right.
Like I think there is kind of a happiness change.
There is kind of like a burden lifted off your shoulders and you're like, okay, I can
make pretty independent.
Yeah.
I got that million dollars.
Like 40 K a year and like, wow, like that's a whole bunch of stuff I no longer have to
do ever.
If I don't want to, how do you adjust to that?
Because like, okay, well now you need ideally, like maybe you don't, you know, maybe new
things that make you happy.
Like some of the old goals you had, like you've sort of accomplished.
And I think that that can be pretty jarring for a lot of people, you know, a lot of people
like get really rich and then they like commit suicide or they like, you know, I'm depressed
because like the thing they were chasing like no longer even matters and they don't feel
that difference.
They just harmonically adapted, dude, athletes, right?
Athletes when they retire, always like you have a lot in Europe with footballers.
When they retire, they get really depressed.
I think in us of NFL players as well.
But I think it is jarring because this is because society promised you that this would
have solved everything.
This would solve your, your money situation, your, your friend situation, your relationship
situation, your money solves everything they say.
Right.
And it's just not true.
It's, it's just simply not true.
It solves some things and then you need to, like you say, it's jarring.
So you need to go back to like, okay, what, what really makes me intrinsically happy?
And it was probably the thing that made you start working on stuff when you were eight
years old, right?
Like making something like creating games or apps or whatever, or paintings or drawings
that you didn't do that for a reason.
You just did that because it was fun and that's how you got here.
Yeah.
And it's really like awesome to be in a position where the thing that you did to basically
earn your financial freedom is also one of the things that you like doing the most.
And I think if you have that, then once you get to that point of financial freedom, you
don't have to change anything because you're like, ah, what got me here?
Actually I really love, I love the process itself.
So like, even if the goal is gone, like the process is his own goal.
And it's like, if I look at my life, I love coding.
I love designing.
I love sitting down and making a new project and like I've done it a bunch of times for
free with no hope of any money, just because it was fun to do because I have some idea
that I have in my head and I want to get out.
And I think I've also like probably much more so than you like allowed myself to be sort
of co-opted and it's like, well, I'm doing this for some goal, right?
I'm doing this because I'm trying to like get to financial freedom and et cetera, et
cetera.
And like at some point, like the goal can kind of co-opt the process and you become
like more obsessed with like the reason you're doing it than like the fact that it's fun
to do.
And I think with me, like what I have experienced has been the kind of like, you know, this
was like, I kind of got the goal, okay, achieve what I wanted to achieve.
And now it's like, well, like, do I even like doing activity anymore?
Like I forgot what that was like because I haven't done it just for its own sake in so
many years.
And so it's like, I kind of have to like relearn like my love for that, if that makes sense.
And I also have to sort of get over this like weird mental state that I think Silicon Valley
is like really toxic for depending on the tribe you're part of is like, we're like,
no, no, no, it's like not good enough to just do something for its own sake.
You have to be going for some bigger, better goal.
You know, why aren't you starting the next bigger company to get to the next level of
wealth or fame or success?
And if you have that, like in the back of your mind, it can be so hard to just appreciate
doing simple, fun things because you're like, well, just like enough, you know, am I using
my full potential?
Like you get this nagging, unnecessary feeling that I don't think needs to be there, but
can take some work to kind of shrug off.
I think at the stage you're in now, if this is the stage you're in, which you just said,
I would just start a new project or that's what I would do, right?
I would just be like, yeah, I don't really feel all this stuff.
Next thing.
Let everything just let the old thing run and be automated.
Like it's all automated.
So I'll just go work on new stuff and try new stuff and then I'll dive in something
new because I'm bored with the old.
And first of all, I love indie hackers, but I would, I almost think like you have so much
creative energy to create things that it'd be lovely to see that energy be funneled into
a new project, like something different, you know?
I like the way that you've done it with Nomadlist.
It's so smart.
Cause it's like, you can like, you're doing these things that are new projects, but like
you said, it's also kind of like a marketing trick because these are like so part of what
Nomadlist is that like they could be part of it.
It could just be like Nomadlist slash rebase, Nomadlist slash jobs, right?
And with me, with indie hackers, like I don't have that separate strategy where I do these
different things.
And so it can kind of feel like the slog around, I'm working the same thing, same thing, same
thing.
But if I could maybe take a page out of your playbook and just do different things, cause
like most of the things I'm interested in doing are very related, but they could have
a different name, live on a different website and just feel fresher.
Yeah.
And you can always put them back later, right?
Yeah.
What about like the practical parts of money and investing?
Like I know a lot of people who make, you know, more money end up switching from this
mode of, you know, okay, earlier I was trying to earn my freedom, but now that I'm here,
I'm trying to protect what I have or I'm trying to like invest it wisely.
That's a whole different skill set, you know, like building a startup is very different
than like investing in crypto or the stock market or, you know, ETFs, like whatever.
So how do you, like, how has that changed for you?
Like, what are you, what are you doing with your money basically?
Yeah.
So I've been tweeting a lot about ETFs.
Like I know the thing today is to tweet about crypto, right?
Investing crypto.
Yeah.
And I mean, of course, but I think crypto might be the future and I invest in crypto
too, but investing in the stock market is also the future still, I think.
And a good way to invest in the stock market, and I learned this from Matt Cutts from Google.
He had a blog about how he invests his money and he wrote about, he puts almost all of
his money in Vanguard ETFs and ETFs are funds that you can buy.
They're just like stocks, but instead of a stock, one stock, like you buy like a Microsoft,
you buy a thousand stocks at the same time through an ETF.
So it's like a basket of stocks.
And that means that if Microsoft goes up, you profit, but if Microsoft goes down and
Apple goes up, you still profit because they balance themselves, each other out.
So you get a more balanced return.
Diversifying.
It's, it's, it's very cheap.
It's like the fees are 0.01% with Vanguard or something.
It took me like a year to understand all this stuff because it's kind of complicated.
It's not very accessible, but I think more people should learn about it because with
most brokers, you can just open an account like interactive brokers or I don't know the
trade apps and you can buy an ETF.
And I know it makes more sense from your, you know, your gambling casino hearts as we
all have.
Like you want to gamble your money.
Like I think Apple's going to go up, but statistically over the long term, it makes more sense to
diversify your money and just put it in a basket of stocks.
And that's what ETFs are.
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.
And it's something that I hear associated with like, like it's like the beginning of
your career, right?
Like you don't have any money.
You're trying to do something.
You're the opposite of diversified.
You're like, I'm going all in on my startup.
All my money is going to be doing this thing.
All right.
And then when you start to make your money, it's like, okay, well, like, I don't want
to lose this.
I don't want to be like a super risky, I mean, I guess there's some people who are like,
I'm putting it all on, you know, crypto, but like it's probably not the wisest thing.
And if you want to like sort of maintain what you're doing and like maintain your lifestyle
and keep the freedom that you have and you're not sort of obsessed with just like getting
more and more and more and more, I think it's not uncommon at all to do what you're doing
and sort of like diversify, try to keep it stable and then focus on what you love rather
than just like obsessively trying to make as much money as possible.
100%, I think it's common with like tech people that are very well read and stuff, but I think
it's very non common with people who aren't and they usually invest in individual stocks.
And that's statistically just a very bad idea.
It just underperforms over the long run.
So I think that's a good thing to talk about, like to tell people like, you know, kind of
avoid individual stocks.
But yeah, this is not financial advice podcast, but you know, you asked me, but I do also
invest in crypto.
I've been buying Bitcoin since 2013 when it was like $32 Bitcoin.
And I had, I used to have 162 Bitcoin.
So I had like, I think it would be like $11 million now.
And I lost it all.
I day traded it away.
So that was also a lesson like don't day trade, just hold, huddle, you know, and, and yeah.
I've had similar things happen where I owned Bitcoin and Ethereum back when they were subbed
a couple hundred bucks.
So I spent a lot of time trading and the 2008 market, like after the crash or whatever, with
very little money because I was in college, I like had a consulting job.
But like, in hindsight, if I had just not day traded it and I just like kept the stocks
that I bought and just not touched it for the last 12 years, it's like all of that's
like 10 X.
So it's like, okay, well, lesson learned, you know, yeah, lesson learned, but that's
a lesson you need to, you need to become 30 to learn that.
But if you're 20, you can skip this whole lesson.
You can like just buy now, buy these diversified stock funds and hold crypto, but hold it for
longterm, you know.
When you're 20, 10 years seems like an eternity.
If you're, if you told 20 year old courtroom, like, oh, just hold for 10 years, I'd be like,
uh, I'm not going to be alive in 10 years, the world might be over in 10 years, like
10 years.
Are you kidding me?
Like, what are you talking about?
Now, like 34, I'm like, okay, 10 years seems reasonable.
It's not that long.
I'll be patient.
I think when I was 20, I was reading Mr. Money Mustache randomly, this blog, and he was also
about the fire movement and about compounding interest.
And I learned all this concept and he said something like, even if you don't make a lot
of money, just start saving now, like pay off all your debt and start saving every month,
like like a hundred dollars.
So I started logging like this, the groceries I bought and I started buying a hundred dollar
less groceries a month to save this hundred dollars.
And after a year I had like $1,200 saved and I was really happy.
And then I put it in a, I think a CD, like a deposit for like five years and got nice
interest.
So it was like, cause he was like, you know, the compounding interest, when you start early,
it really adds up even if you don't make a lot of money.
So I was like, okay, cool.
I mean, these are good lessons.
Also what you said about like people losing their money, it's really common with rich
people that they lose their money, really, really common.
And there's like this friend Gabor who made an ETF website, like a blog explaining ETFs.
He shows that if some, some rich people who lost all their money, if they would have just
put it in an ETF of the S&P 500 for, you know, 20 years, this is the amount of money they
would have made.
And this is like a lot of money, like hundreds of millions, but instead they're bankrupt
by investing in shady deals.
You know, can you imagine if you lost all the money that you made from working on your
project?
It's horrible.
Like, yeah, I cannot imagine having that kind of personality where you just, you start investing
in just random stuff and you lose everything.
I mean, Elon Musk did it again, Elon Musk, but he invested all his funds from selling
zip to, I think, or PayPal into SpaceX, right?
Just huge gamble.
It's my route.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I mean, if it would have ruined him, we wouldn't hear about him now.
So, but I don't think you should take these outlier results as examples to do things
in life, you know, I think you should look at statistics and studies to see what you
should do.
And to me, that sounds like ETFs and Bitcoin Ethereum and mostly ETFs.
What about like, you were talking about your investing habits, there are people on Twitter
who also wanted to know like, you're just like your productivity habits because like
you ship a crazy amount of stuff.
And like we were saying earlier, like you haven't missed a day and over a thousand days.
And I think, you know, that's not common.
It's very difficult, I think, for people to get onto the treadmill of working, you know,
consistently at all.
And then it's very easy to fall off that treadmill and like, you know, after I'm getting back
on, it's like, what are you doing to help you sort of be so prolific and productive?
Yeah, so I use a site called Wip, it's kind of a competitor to IndiaX a little bit, wip.co.
And it's kind of like a tracking system for your to-dos for indie makers, kind of made
by my friend Mark, I think you should buy the websites, I think you should acquire IndiaX
should acquire Wip, I've always tell you, but I think that would work really well together.
And you can just log your to-dos on Telegram, this chat app, and also on the website.
And it's a very easy way for me to, I also log like my live stuff, like sometimes even
food logs and stuff.
Yeah, so I just do like slash done, fix bug, join button on Nomad list doesn't work hashtag
Nomad list.
And then that show at a screenshot, sometimes a video and that's it.
And that gives me like a really accountable public log of what I'm doing.
And yeah, it's really nice.
Like, I think Jerry Seinfeld talked about like this chart where you cross on the calendar,
you do like a cross and you don't want to break the chain when you like want to learn
something or something.
And I think that's the same thing, you want to do the streak, you don't want to break
the chain.
And yeah, and but even without that, like I just it kind of just like happens where
I wake up and I check, I check like the errors I received, my robots send me like errors
on Telegram, like what happens when I sleep, for example, and I kind of check like, okay,
this is a problem I need to fix.
And so my robots kind of control me and manage me and give me instructions what to work on
the next day.
And so I kind of need to because people are like, like, I don't have much staff, I don't
really, I have some contractors, but they don't really develop.
So it's kind of on me to keep, you know, the customers happy.
And it's really fun to do that, I think.
Yeah, you're number two on the leaderboard, you've got like 1040 days shipped in a row.
And then Nils, right above you, they have 1114 days.
Nils is on the island next to me.
So it's kind of funny.
Yeah, he's also in Thailand, so there's a, it's like this, this whole product is super
interesting to me because it's like, like whip, it's kind of like social in some ways
because like you can see everyone else who's shipping and like, and I guess in a way that
makes you accountable, especially if you get to like really hiring a leaderboard, like,
you know that people know that you're hiring a leaderboard, you probably don't want to
lose that status.
But then also there's this idea of like building in public and it's like, there's almost like
no better place to do that than like Twitter.
Because like you get the most feedback, you get like, because I posted on whip too, and
it's like really good for me, solitarily is like motivation, like I don't want to break
the chain.
But then if I want people to respond to me and post on Twitter and on any hackers, we
kind of tried to do this too, like these product directory pages where you can sort of have
a timeline of your progress.
But it's like, I feel like no one's really cracked the code of like, what's like, what's
the best way to sort of help people with their goal of building in public and ideally help
them like build an audience as a result for that.
And then, you know, simultaneously solve this problem, we're like, you're motivating them
and making them accountable and helping them like, be productive.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I think Twitter is the easiest, right?
Because it has this whole audience already has like millions of users.
So everybody can see your tweets.
But you probably don't post like little updates, like fix the color of this button on Twitter.
No, it's too small, right?
It's too, it's too basic, but you want to you want to show like a big, big feature or
a really big problem you solve, you want to tell the story kind of that's more for Twitter.
So this is more for small things.
But yeah, the building in public thing, like for a while, I thought live coding was going
to be a big thing.
Like the build in public live coding, right?
It was like the 24 hour startup, I think we had with pet walls and our man made that.
Yeah, exactly.
It was like, kind of looked like it was going to be a thing and I've tried it.
It's so stressful.
Like I can't do it.
And I think that's the problem kind of with it, like you need to sit there for hours,
like people watching you and it's really fun, but it's too, too intense for me.
And yeah.
So I don't know.
Even the gamers who do that are like constantly stressed out about like having to always be
performing because it's like not enough for them to just like play the game and be good
at it.
They have to entertain this audience on Twitch, he's going to like criticize and scrutinize
their every move.
It's like, do you really want to be on camera for hours while you're working and having
a bunch of like, I don't know.
And I kept leaking API keys like every stream I leaked API keys was insane.
And then I would get stuck on a, on like a problem, which everybody, every day I get
stuck on a problem where I just need to walk around and think about it or lie down.
But you can't lie down because there's 90 people watching.
So you're trying to fix this problem and it's sweating and it's stressful.
You see the viewers dropping because it's not interesting anymore because they only
like when you're making new stuff and in respect if you can do it, but I can't do it anymore.
Like it's just, it's just too intense.
I've never tried it and I never planty.
Yeah.
Yeah. I also have like, uh, like my, my sort of productivity tricks are I've kind of copied
like your note, your sort of, uh, post it.
Yes.
Yes.
I love posts.
Most of my post-its have always been like, okay, like little reminders to myself.
So like, if I show you my monitor, I've got like these reminders and like my romantic
relationships, like here's how I can be better.
It's gonna be more vulnerable.
Well, nice.
Nice.
My like, you know, like other parts of my life, like exercise, I have a little, like
I have a post-it note where I look at it and like I have to do 20 pushups.
And like, dude, I consciously avoid looking at it most of the day, but then I sometimes
do.
And it's just like, whatever.
I just ended up doing pushups every day because of this note, but I never see you lose this
thing.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
You see it, you lose, but you do post-its, I think for like tasks and like productivity.
Yeah.
Well, you have to do that too.
And I just started doing that a couple of years ago.
I love it.
It's so easy.
Yeah.
It's so simple.
I use windows for it.
Like not windows operate.
I use the window of like hotel rooms or apartments, whatever.
I put it on the window and I make like a grid of things.
And then on the other side, I do the stuff that I, that I finished.
So I take it, I put it on my laptop and I focus on that task in particular.
And then when it's done, I take it and I put it on the finished part of the window.
And so it's kind of like a combo of using post-it notes and also using the whip chat,
but post-it notes, I mean, it's really nice.
Like you can really like, I'll take like a, uh, an hour or something to figure out like
everything that I need to do, every like bug that's remaining or, and I collect everything
from online and I write it down.
And I saw this study, I think that said like writing things down on paper, you use a different
part of your brain than if you write it down digitally.
So there's something about writing on paper that's different.
And I think, I think that's true for me.
The physical act of taking the post-it and like, okay, this is what we're going to do
now, fix the join button on Nomad list and I put it on my screen and I work on that.
It's really nice feeling because I don't want to fix the join button on Nomad list.
I want to finish this to do this.
So it's like a hack.
I want to take this post-it note, put it on the window.
A movie.
Yeah.
Yes.
That's what it's really about.
It's not about the bug.
You know, I hate the bug.
I don't care about the bug.
Right.
So do you ever almost like forget to do, uh, to do like any day?
Like if you have, has there ever been a day where you almost like lost your thousand day
streak because you forgot to do something and the guys do something like late at night
or is it just automatic?
And so obvious and easy to almost, yeah, no, almost.
I just, I do it when I wake up, I do a small thing immediately.
Yeah.
So it's a habit and you don't want to lose the streak, you know, so you see that book
is like the most popular book on Amazon and every category and every in human history.
It's like the most way.
It's like he changed.
We're like the best.
I had him on this show and I had him on a different podcast called brains and I talked
about his book and it's like, he just tweeted like, yeah, it's the best selling book on
Amazon period.
He's crushing it.
And like every, every tech guy, well, every tech bro or something, all you want to call
it is like, yeah, man, you shouldn't make goals.
You should create systems.
I know.
I know.
It's book.
Yep.
And my mom was telling me the same thing.
I'm like, huh, mom, great, great systems is set to go.
Damn it.
This book is too popular.
It's crazy.
I want to ask you about one more topic before we get out of here.
I'm curious about like your thoughts on just like the future, you know, cause you're like
always on the web.
You're sort of like, you know, tweeting about web three and crypto and like trying live
coding and stuff like that.
And I like tend to get like my head like buried into like work, you know, and then I come
up for air every year.
I'm like, what's going on?
What do you think about these like new trends?
You know, what do you think about web three?
What do you think about crypto?
I've been trying to like get into a little bit more and research it and I think it's quite
cool and there's some upsides and downsides, but I don't, I don't know what you think.
So what are your thoughts on all this?
Yeah, it's a man.
It's like, it's taking the world by storm.
So last week I was retweeted by Jack from Twitter and my notifications went crazy cause
I reposted this meme about web tree, which was just a picture I found somewhere and I
posted it.
I was like, it's kind of funny.
And it showed like web tree, this funnel of water coming out and then going into the mouth
of like feces, like fancy capital investors, like a lot of water and then some drips were
left for the retail investors.
And I mean, the kind of sound like it's matched with what I saw on the, cause I follow a lot
of web tree projects and I follow which projects are new.
There's a telegram channel, you can follow everything.
And I, what I was observing was that every, almost every project I saw was like, there
was a big, I'm not going to name, but a big PC for him in there.
And I was like, interesting there in every web tree project.
And then I saw Jack tweeting about, so I was like, oh, this meme kind of makes sense.
So I tweeted and it was like insane.
It went like crazy.
And then Jack retweeted and I got so much hate and also like, I think 600 tweets or
something, 1000 tweets.
So it's a sensitive topic to talk about cause they're so like, I'm a crypto investor.
I'm invested in it, but I also can criticize it kind of, or, or mock it like as a joke,
like, come on, it's everything should be mockable.
But apparently you can't do it with web tree.
And I got blocked by, I got blocked by Mark Andreessen and Chris Dixon, but I didn't even
mention them.
I just posted a meme about web trees.
So I don't know.
It's just all kind of funny, but so they're watching cause you post a meme and Jack retweeted
it and they saw it because he retweeted it probably and they're like, and then they blocked
Jack and they blocked me.
It's just a cartoon, it's so ridiculous, but I mean, and Mark Andreessen followed me before
that.
He was a follower.
So yeah, sad.
But anyway, it's, it's all kind of interesting.
I do think it's a, it's a future in many ways, like the smart contract stuff.
It's like a computer, a really slow computer that's decentralized and stuff.
Everybody knows how it works by now.
I think what I really don't like about it is that a really big percentage of the projects
are pump and dump, how they feel like they're pre-mined, then given off to VC investors
to buy into, and then they end up like I know people in this, in this crypto world and they
go to the big crypto exchanges.
They pay money.
Like I think it's 150 K to get listed.
And then this coin, once it gets listed, everybody who knows it's going to get listed already
bought in, which is inside of trading, but it's legal cause it's crypto.
And then it pumps 10 Xs and if you invest 100 million, you just made a billion dollars.
So I mean, this is legal, but is it, maybe we would be doing the same thing if we had
all that money, but all I'm saying is that I don't, man, it's so difficult to criticize
cause I don't really, I'm not very well debated with all this stuff.
I don't have all the data, but I think the technology is very promising.
I don't like all the pumping and the, we're all going to get rich because I don't think
that's not possible.
That's not how it works.
And you need to get in now this FOMO stuff.
It has all of the red flags of every internet bubble and, and tulip bubble and stuff.
And I don't, I don't think that's interesting stuff.
Like I bought an NFT too.
I bought the pull suite NFT by pull sites, pull suite they're called now as like a members
card.
And, and it went up a lot and, and then people are like, look, you get it.
This is how it works.
I'm like, no, I don't get it.
Why?
What are we doing here?
Like there's no intrinsic, like I like pull site and post suite.
I like the concept, but a lot of these entities, there's no intrinsic value in there or it's
very, you know what I mean?
My gut tells me something's really off.
I think there's like a lot of like this excitement, like, okay, this is a revolution for artists.
You know, I know a handful of artists who've made a lot of money and so therefore like
every artist is going to be able to make money.
You know, it's a revolution for music, you know, like now every musician is going to
be able to make a lot of money.
Like what feels off to me is like, well, like there's still going to be like the power law
dynamics, like the most popular people are going to get the most listens and watches
and whatever.
And there's still going to be people who are probably pretty good who aren't that good
at marketing, who like no one sees their stuff.
And so I don't see how crypto is really going to like suddenly make everybody rich.
It seems like really scammy and doesn't make any sense.
But it gives like really smart, reputable people saying this.
To sort of interrupt, but the argument for that, I think that they have is that you become
part of, you become owner of the project, right?
So even if you're not the person that's successful, you're in early and you're part owner, just
like a stock.
And I think that's actually promising because it would be interesting if I could just list
Nomad List as a public company with tokens.
But the SEC doesn't allow that because that is a financial security.
So I do think if the SEC changes their law that, you know, I can just list or mint like
Nomad List tokens and people become an owner and I can go public with a small company.
That'd be great because an IPO now you need a hundred million revenue.
I don't have a hundred million revenue.
So that's the thing that I'm the most excited about, which is I guess in a way like these
tokens are allowing like the average person to quote unquote, like invest in different
projects and stuff.
And like you get a lot of bad things with that and you get a lot of good things with
that.
Like the sort of meme that you posted that's showing, okay, like, you know, the VCs are
like taking most of the returns for these crypto projects and the retail investors are
getting drips.
Like I think that that is probably true.
Like the VC, there's like a 16 Z is probably the most notable one.
But like also if you look at the status quo of startups, like there isn't even little
a little drip for the retail investors.
Like if you're the average, there's no way for you to invest in Uber or Airbnb.
Like you only the VCs got in.
And so it's like, is it still kind of a VC run game?
Yeah.
But is it better or worse than what we had before?
I think it's better.
You know, like you can get into all these things as a normal person.
And often the VCs are just buying tokens that any other person could buy.
You know, maybe they get a few advantages or something sometimes, and maybe they get
like a tip and some insider trading, but like you could, you could buy it too.
And the average person can't become an angel investor in Silicon Valley and say, know the
right people and have enough network to be an accredited investor.
It's just like, it just never was accessible.
And so I kind of think it's a move in the right direction, but with that you get like
scams and you get, you know, pump and dump and people who are like, oh, there's average
people investing now.
Like I can fool them much easier than I can fool the VCs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The bathroom.
I mean, it's, it's exactly.
And like, I went here, um, football golfing, there's this football golf place here.
And as I talked to the owner and he said, he invests a lot in crypto projects and stuff.
And I was like, that's really cool.
Cause it's like kind of older guy and, uh, he puts a lot of his money from his business
into credit price.
And I'm like, that's cool.
But I really hope that it works out for you because you know, you got to pick the right
ones too.
And it's kind of scary and it's all positive.
Like we're all going to go to the moon and it's all like going, going up and stuff.
Like, but that's, I mean, that's not always how it goes.
Like a lot of people can lose money.
And I know there's a libertarian streak in the world, especially in the U S of like,
well, it's your own responsibility.
You know, and it's like, yeah, but I mean, yeah, but it's, it's really sad to see people
lose a lot of their money and you know what I mean?
And, and maybe it's cause I'm Dutch, but in Holland we grew up where you, you don't want
to see your neighbor go bankrupt.
You want, you want everybody to be kind of like happy and financially happy.
And man, if you go look in history of the stock market and I think 1900 or 1890 or 1910
where there wasn't a lot of regulation, a lot of regulation was created to, I mean,
also to protect investors and also in a bad way, because now you need to be accredited
and you need to be rich to invest in like, you know, startups and stuff.
So that's not good, but a lot of stuff is to protect people.
And this political territory again, but, and I don't know if you need to protect people,
but I do know that it's, it's a lot of people can lose their life savings.
And how do you, is that, what do you do with that?
Like, sorry, you made the wrong mistake.
We're all trying to figure this out.
Like the world's changing so fast, like a year or two ago, a fraction of the people
were talking about this stuff.
They're talking about it now.
And like, no one knows where the future's going to be, but like, there are these ideas,
like you were saying, like universal basic income, you know, like, or like the broader
idea that appeals to me is like creating a floor below which people can't fall.
Like you don't want to see your neighbors go bankrupt.
Like you don't want people to be like struggling to eat, you know, and like ideally as a society,
like you can keep raising that floor higher and higher and higher.
Like I don't know if universal basic will be like the thing, but like there are things
that like, once we create, like people don't fall, once we invent technology, like that
technology exists and it spreads and we don't tend to revert, you know, and like, like new
technologies make the world a better place.
And so if we can create like a really safe floor where it's safe for people to experiment,
then I'm like 100% cool with people like placing crazy bets, trying to get as high as I can.
And if they lose it or whatever, like at least they can't fall that far, you know.
And so I hope like that's the direction society is moving in.
But like, we're kind of getting, it's not like a perfectly straight line to get there.
It's kind of jagged.
We're like, okay, well now anyone can invest in crypto, but the floor is not quite there
yet.
So you might lose your shirt.
So do you think you'll do any crypto stuff with like no bad lists or your projects?
Because like, if you had a token for a no bad list, a token for Modok, a token for rebase,
like I would 100% buy some of your tokens, partly because you're not going to IPO with
any of this stuff most likely.
Yeah.
I would buy any hackers too.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
100%.
Right.
Yeah.
I've thought about it a lot.
I'm going to be so cool to be able to buy tokens and the projects you believe in that
you know, aren't like vaporware, bait and switch type pump and dump schemes.
So I think the regulation has to change with the SEC allowing for tokens to have actual
ownership of companies and projects, because right now they don't allow that.
And the only thing you get is voting rights usually.
Voting rights is not real ownership and I know that they do that because otherwise it
becomes a financial security and they go to jail, but the SEC needs to change that.
And then following up the European union, whatever financial authority they have, they
do need to do the same thing and the same thing in Asia and whatever, because then you
can have really nice like actual ownership tokens and with voting power also.
And then I can give dividends.
Like I'd love to give dividends as a company to the owners of the company.
Why not?
It's super cool.
And I think we're going to get there within five years.
I think it's going to happen.
And that would validate the whole web tree scene almost overnight, I think, because it
would not be bullshit.
It would be real ownership.
And until then, if that doesn't happen, we don't know what all these tokens mean.
They don't mean anything right now.
Not ownership for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I've done like some token investing where like it's an interesting question because
if I look at like the things that I bought, I don't know if I cared about ownership.
It would be nice to have ownership.
Like if I bought stock, like technically that gives me some rights and stuff.
But like a lot of the other things exist.
Like you can give dividends to people who own your token.
So I got like an airdrop because I owned the ENS token and they paid everyone who owned
any of like their domain names, like literally like 15, $20,000, which is nuts.
And there's a lot of projects they're going to do that.
And you can like, you get voting rights.
You can sort of like delegate your voting rights to others.
And so I guess my question for you is like, how important is the ownership?
Like if people can like essentially profit when your company, you know, increases in
value, if they can sell the tokens, if they can get voting rights, if they can get distribution
and dividends, like why do they need the ownership rights?
Man.
Yeah.
That's a good question.
So you got, I was a week too late with ENS registering to not get the airdrop by the
way.
So I didn't get it.
Oh yeah.
But who cares?
Like if you, if you say to get dividends from an airdrop, I assume that that means you get
tokens from the same project, which people are trading on.
So they have value from trading on them, which is different than giving dividends from the
money I make from customers that I then give to you as an owner.
That's true.
They could do that, but it's not, you're right.
That's not what they did.
You want to have some kind of intrinsic value in the core where it comes down to.
So you have a lot of tech companies like Amazon.
They don't even give dividends.
I think they don't even make profit.
They just reinvest, right?
Because there's a hope in the future, they might issue dividends when they are like big
enough or something that's priced into the price.
That's part of the deal kind of you still own the company, but they're not.
So it's, it's the same as not owning it, but having a token, but at least there's some
kind of like as a stockholder, you can also vote.
You can say like, okay, we want now Amazon to start giving dividends.
How do you do that with a project that doesn't really give dividends?
Like you can issue more tokens, but issuing tokens about what, what's the value there?
The only value is some kind of concept.
Just trading it.
Right.
Some kind of, yeah, this is, this is going to be big.
Like we, you cannot live forever on, this is going to be big.
You need to have some, you know what I mean?
It's like the needs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's true.
Eventually the growth stops and yeah.
And otherwise if it's not, it's an MLM and we know a lot of MLM schemes schemes in America,
like Amway, all that stuff, allegedly I should say legally because I don't want to be sued,
but you don't want it to be that.
So I think they would really, really legitimize this whole thing if it became real ownership
for me.
And maybe it's because I studied business also, we had finance.
So I know a little bit about all this options and stocks work and stuff.
And yeah, there was this new law in America that let you crowdfunds talk kind of thing.
There was like the safe.
Yeah.
They raised the, they raised the limit on like how much you can crowdfund basically
to enrich investors.
And so, yeah, I think I held it with Gumroad and got like a ton of people.
Yeah.
There's already going getting closer.
So I think we're, we're almost there.
And it's unfair that if you don't make, you know, a hundred million dollars a year, $50
million a year, you cannot IPO.
It's like, why can't I IPO?
I don't want to sell my company to some person.
It would be much more fun to sell to the people who use it and then they can, you know, vote
and they can tell me to hire people and they, and it can be like a board of directors and
stuff.
That would be super cool.
There's another thing you can do with these tokens that you can't really do with stock,
which is like, you can use them as kind of currency.
And so let's say you had like a Nomad, a Nomad coin or something.
You could do like a job listings, like people buy them in terms with the coin or like if
you own the coin, like you can get access to the community forum or something like there's
like little like sort of things you can do that give the coin intrinsic value beyond
just like speculating on it.
It's interesting.
It's like a very Wild West type thing, but I'm not very optimistic that like we're going
to see the SEC, like no one knows.
And I'm not very optimistic that he's just going to be like, okay, you guys, you know,
here's our official stamp of approval.
Go for it.
You know, it will legitimize things like they have no idea what to do.
They've been pretty mild on crypto.
They've been pretty embracing though, like the last few years or so, and they're leading
like if they do something, the rest of the world follows is to see us, you know?
So I think they really have the power to change things.
Yeah.
You notice better.
I'm not American, but it'd be very interesting if they do that.
The social tokens thing, I think it's interesting because I run a community.
I run like the biggest remote worker community kind of on Slack and on the internet.
And if the token of a membership, the price is dominated, sorry, is dictated by the market,
like these, these friends with benefits, I think of FVWB social token I saw.
So the token becomes like a thousand dollars.
So now it's become an exclusive community where, which is kind of good in the way, but
also kind of like not my thing.
Cause like with Nomad list, it's usually like 80 or 90 or a hundred dollars lifetime fee.
And people, it means that every month there's 500 new nomads that come in and they, it's
kind of like a nice churn vibe where it's like a cafe.
New people come in and there's some old people still and new people and it's, it gives a
community like this, this fuel of like, like refreshments and communities that, that don't
do that.
They kind of die out.
I feel like they get still and, or they become too exclusive and, and, and I can see it.
Like if I, if I raised the price too, too high, I would get like a hundred, a hundred
signups a month and a community would start dying.
People were like, why is the chat so empty?
So I price should be dictated by the market for a community kind of so.
I agree.
I thought about doing this for indie hackers.
I don't think I will just because it's like, because any hackers are part of Stripe, it's
like, I immediately have to go to like Stripe's legal team and it'll be a whole, just a whole
maybe much bigger than just me as like an individual.
But I was thinking about the same problem too, cause it's like, I don't like the idea
of creating a really small exclusive community.
That's really like hard to get into and whatever.
So it's like, okay, well if it costs like a certain amount of tokens to get access to
the community, like you could like potentially lower that over time as the token price increases.
So they're like, okay, joining is always the same price, you know, but like, you know,
if you've invested in a token earlier, you still make money.
Like a token can still appreciate, but like, you know, it's valuable for other reasons
rather than just access.
So I don't know.
I think there's a lot of experimentation.
I hope you do something cause I want to like, the thing I like the most about web three
and these tokens is like, I want to see like all these different creators who are building
their stuff.
Like I want to be able to invest in them.
And right now it's impossible for me to invest in them because they're not a hundred million
dollar companies.
And I hope web three goes in that direction, dude.
I think that's the, that's the like what he called killer app, one of the killer apps.
And I do still, I really believe in Bitcoin.
Like I have a lot of Bitcoin and I do think it's, I think I'm starting to pay my contracts
with Bitcoin soon because the trouble.
So I, I work with a contractor who does customer support and she's a Filipino.
And she, when I, when I hired her kind of as a contractor, she was living in Vietnam
and then she moved to Morocco now.
And then when I tried to pay her, I was in Holland, I think, or no, I was in Portugal.
So I was, I was a Dutch person in Portugal, paying a Filipino worker in Vietnam with a
Singapore company.
These were five entities and I tried to do all these, I tried to transfer wise and pay
near and stuff.
And they were like, I had to talk to customer support because they're like, why is your,
your house in Portugal, but you are Dutch and your company is a Singapore and your contractor
is Filipino in Vietnam.
It's all doesn't add up all red flags.
And then we could do this with Bitcoin with the lightning network within half a second
with almost no fees.
Now Bitcoin has become cheap and fast.
So this completely solves it.
And we need to remember we are like, you know, Europe and America, but most of the world
is not Europe and America and their finance, their money system doesn't work like ours.
And it's not easy at all.
And it's very difficult to pay people in the rest of the world, like Asia, Africa, Latin
America.
I think Bitcoin might help with that a lot.
For sure.
Yeah.
Well, listen, dude, thanks so much for coming on.
Do you want to let listeners know where to go to like, I guess, follow you if they don't
already follow you and see what you're up to?
Yeah.
So I'm on Twitter.
Mostly it's levels IO, which is L E V E L S I O.
And from there you can see all my websites in my bio and see my crazy, stupid tweets
every day where I see your progress bar of $5 billion a year.
Yes.
Cool.
Thank you, man.
Thanks for having me.