Transcription
(Applause)
Thanks so much.
So usually at conferences, I talk about UI design and Figma and aligning design with code. And so as you heard, this time I want to do something a little different. So rather than focusing on the product that we built, what I want to do is I want to tell you a little bit about the area, like the way in which we build them that we create for ourselves. And when I started, I didn’t think much about that. And the first time I actually considered how important that is, is a while ago when I was invited to podium discussion and they told me the topic was agency. And I was like, OK, it’s about running agency. I don’t do much with agencies. And they were like, no, no, it’s not about agency. It’s about agency. And I was like, OK, it’s not my first language. I think I’m lost in translations. Let me look that up. And when I looked up this term, I really fell in love with the term because here’s a short thing of what it means. I just got rid of this one. And it’s the power to make independent choices and take control over one’s work and career. And I noticed that this was really the reason why I was working the way in which I was working, but I never had a word for it. So I looked it up in my mother tongue. It was German, and it translates to something like “Handlungsfähigkeit.” So I think we’re going to stick with agency. There’s a little more punchy for us today. Let’s stick with that one. And what I noticed in that discussion was that it was such an important aspect for everybody in that group talking about the work and the way in which they work. But it looked very different for everyone. So what I want to do today, I want to tell you about my way and my idea of agency that I found in the way of working and a way of building products and creating a company, and that is solopreneurship. So what is it? Well, in a traditional setup that we’re used to, it’s usually there is a hierarchy, there’s a team, and different people are responsible for different things in that team. And as a solopreneur, there’s just one person running the show. So that means you create a product, you maintain the product, and you also grow that product. And when we focus on the growing, it’s usually not so much with taking on funding or investment or taking on and hiring people, but it’s much more about leveraging modern technology and using more organic growth to achieve that. So let me tell you a little bit how I ended up with this, because as these things happen, it was by chance. So I started off as a UI freelancer, actually, here in Berlin, was my first time working. And when people and companies and startups, when they hired me, there was a design team and there was a development team. And I find myself a lot of the time operating here in this magic little area where design and code meet, also known as the area where people try really hard not to strangle each other.
So yeah, if you really have very little self-respect, I highly recommend working in that area. But it’s really great because you learn a lot and you understand a lot, you understand why things go wrong and why people are frustrated. And so when the pandemic hit, and I found myself with a little more free time on my hands that I would have wished for, I took these learnings and these findings and I put them into an online course. And this is the thumbnail of the first course I ever created about that topic. I put that online and within a few weeks that went viral and I literally could live off that one course.
That never happened.
(Audience Laughing) That’s a total lie. I mean, come on. So the truth is I did create the course and I sold a few copies. I’m really sorry if you bought one, the quality was really bad. I’m not refunding, it’s too late now.
But what also happened is you really wanted me to tell you that story. And I really would love to tell you that story. That story of know this overnight, effortless success. And I was throughout this product and I wake up in the morning and I’m like, everybody sees the true genius I really am. But it just, it sounds a bit like a modern Harry Potter if you think about it. And my story is not that I woke up being the Star Wizard one morning. It felt more like I was Dobby the freed house self.
But what happened is that this area that I started working and I noticed I really enjoyed it and other people found it very relevant too. Because as UI designers, we’re a bit stuck in this middle here and we need to understand what’s happening on both sides without sort of jumping into those skills. But it’s gonna make your life so much easier that you can prepare your designs and talk to the teams around you. So I carried on creating articles and products and courses around this topic. And my little platform called Moon Learning by the way grew nicely. And I got invited to speak at lovely events like this one about these subjects.
So this never really happened. But what did happen over time was that I saw this really slow and steady organic growth happening. And most important what happened is that for the first time in my life, I jumped out of bed and I was really excited to carry on working on this product and polishing it and developing it further. I always liked my work, but it felt very different and I felt the sense of agency I was talking about. But what also happened is that with my product growing and especially as the financial returns from this product were growing, people noticed they started asking me questions. And it was always the same questions.
Are you gonna hire people now? Are you gonna grow this? Are you gonna turn this into a real company? And suddenly people started introducing me as a founder at events. And I had very mixed feelings. I still do about this word. On one hand I was like, I’m not a founder. I just like making this stuff. On the other hand, I was like, it’s like flattering though. It’s like people see this as something larger, something important and something like with a vision. And I really wanted everybody to see my product like this because I loved it so much.
But I was a bit like, I don’t know what these founders do. Like I don’t know how that worked. And everybody seemed to have such a clear idea about what you had to do the next steps in the business plan. And so I did what every sensible person in my position would do. I took a deep breath and I went into panic mode. And I was like, I have to find out what these founders do. I have to find out how this works before people find out that this is just me making Figma videos on a 10 euro IKEA desk in my bedroom.
So that’s what I did. I went out and I found myself some founders to shadow them and basically just do what they do.
But this is, so really,
you’re liking this slide a little too much. So this is a really versatile slide because I actually stole it from Amy Hubes talk about diversity in design systems. So thank you, Amy. I could use it for a lot of things. No, it wasn’t as bad. It was really nice. And so I got all the advice that I wanted and a great thing I didn’t even have to ask. You know, they just told me everything I had to do. That’s great. So lovely. And so the thing is though, I was a bit like, yeah, I should do this, but something in my head whispered. And how about if we just stay over here and do it by ourselves? Because the ideas that I saw, all I saw being praised around me, the more I looked into this world, was the focus on funding growth and the end goal, the happy ending I was always told about, that was this exit, another fairy tale to achieve.
And this is really great for many, but it just didn’t feel like what I wanted to do. And now, jokes aside for a minute, I wanna be really clear about this. I don’t wanna bad-mouth the traditional startup approach. There is companies, they need that funding to build the products and there’s relevant products that they want to build. And it’s not an easy road. It can be very challenging and I have great respect of this. What I want to do today is that I think as a society, especially as people working in tech, we give a lot of spotlight to this one way of building, like it’s the only way. And that leads to a lot of us when we want to build a digital product, trying to follow this and molding ourselves to this fairy tale. And just because you can make yourself fit in, it doesn’t mean you’re in the right place.
And the thing is, if you’re not in the right place, your product is not in the right place, it’s not nice for the team that you’re leading either. I like how many pictures you’re taking about this. I’m just hitting a nerve here. So what I want to do, rather than taking anything away from this way of building, is that I want to open up a little bit. And the thing that I can tell you about is building as one, but I’m sure there’s a lot of in between these two where you can find the way that it’s right for you.
So let me tell you why I think entrepreneurship is so amazing. Well, first of all, it’s the autonomy that comes with it. I build what I want to build, how I want to build it, when I want to build it. There is no politics, there is no overhead. It’s really great. There’s obviously another side to this story as well, but that’s going to happen with any way of building a product that you’re going to try out.
I’m the master of my own time.
And when I say that, people usually say, oh, that’s great, you can take a holiday whenever you want to, you can pick your kids up from school. And that’s true, I do all of that. But what I mean is I am the master of my own work time, and that is a lot of my lifetime. And if you’re in a position of having the luxury to structure how that work time looks, not only content-wise, then this is really a privilege that I think you should take. Because my days, they used to look like this.
Everybody seemed to be able to jump in by calendar and put in a meeting. And the thing is, they have nothing against meetings.
If you work in a team, they can be great, they can be very productive. But I want to build stuff. And if you’re giving me this little gap here, then my head just doesn’t do it. I can’t build good quality products in these little time slots. I just don’t function like this. So my work days, they now look like this.
I’m the only employee, so there is no Slack channel. There is hardly any emails. I really keep them to a minimum. And if you want to have a meeting with me, you can, but you better have a good reason.
And this is really great, because I can literally focus the whole day on building. Now, as having at another conference, I gave someone the gist of this talk, and I said, it’s about me all day long building this product, being concentrated. And she just looked at me in horror, and she was like, “That sounds like my absolute nightmare.” And that’s really important. This isn’t the right solution for everyone, but that’s what I mean. If you have the liberty of structuring your day, and you might want to have this meeting to energize you, then do that. It’s really going to change the way you see your work. The other thing is the speed. As a solopreneur, you’re going to have to build, because of the constraints, very simple products. And you can build them quite fast. So I can just throw out a product. I can see what happens. I can see what people say, and then overnight I can literally pivot. And what also happens is that you’re going to see these side products appearing, because you put stuff out there, and people are going to get interested in stuff that you didn’t even think about. So it’s a very dynamic field to work in.
Now this is one I wasn’t sure to put that slide in, because I actually like that I don’t have a team I work in. And it’s a bit of a strange thing to say on a stage, because it puts me in that corner of, ah, she surely is a bit of an antisocial nerd that probably can’t take any hierarchy and is like playing Zelda games in her free time. But this is really not true, because I actually don’t even like Zelda that much.
So, a bit of a red flag, I know. So the thing is, with a team, again, there is different ways, but there isn’t one better or worse. But we give this meaning of you can only grow, and you can only learn in a team. And that is surely right for the majority of people. Teams can feel wonderful. I had great teams I worked in, and they can feel a lot like this. But to some of us, also depending on the kind of team and on your kind of personality, a lot of the time this might also happen. And if that happens, then you’re fine to just go and work by yourself. When you work by yourself, you’re not locked away in some basement. There is a lot of collaboration. I’m at conferences like this. I meet amazing people. I am not working in isolation. I just run the core business by myself, which I work much better and thrive much better like this. And I’m much more joy and of use to anyone else that partners with me this way. Now, another controversial slide I wasn’t sure to put in. Talking about money, it’s a bit weird, isn’t it? And the Germans in the room are probably like, ah, they figured it out. Yes, I am from a village near Stuttgart. I like talking about that stuff. So the thing is, I also, again, I find it quite relevant because when we start these small ventures, a lot of the time they happen by accident and they are a side project. And we don’t give a lot of attention to the side project because, again, the idea we have about a business and how a business has to operate is we look at the revenue. And if we look at the revenue with a startup with funding and a solo venture, then you can’t really compare that. But if you switch it around, you have to look at different things when you’re running a solo venture. You have to look at the profit margin. And if you look into different solo ventures, the profit margin, that’s amazing. A lot of them run way above 90%.
And the reason for that is that you don’t want another expensive hobby. You don’t have funding. So you need to build that stuff at a very low cost and you need to make a profitable quite fast, even if it’s just your side project. So let me give you an example. Running Moon Learning, this is what it costs me to run among 320 euros. You can see it’s all like little bits and bobs like little software and hosting and all of that.
And the thing is, I showed you before this small organic growth that doesn’t seem too impressive, but these costs are not gonna rise much if you’re having a digital product. So this whole thing here, that’s all yours. So it can be very, very profitable running those small businesses. You have to share them with your government. Of course, we like doing that.
So how can we do that?
So I think there are three pillars to start and break this down so it doesn’t seem so overwhelming. And the first one is you need to build something and to build it, just get started. All you need these days, bit of technology. I would recommend starting with a digital over a physical product if you want to run a company as one. Not because I don’t like physical products. I really like them. I like all the crafting I see, but it’s gonna be just a little difficult with returns and with all these things being one person. What you can do if you have a digital product is you can offer this to a global market right away. And you’re not competing with the large companies. What’s interesting as a solopreneur is this small audience, this little niche market that you can dive in. And this is large enough for you as one person. And it’s not interesting to a lot of other companies. You have to keep it simple because of the constraints you have with money and time and being one person. And this is actually my favorite constraint because you end up with really great products if you have to keep it simple. It’s not about an MVP. You keep it like that.
One thing that I feel really, really strongly about is that you need to own the core. A lot of the time people say, I have this idea and I have this amount of money that I want to invest. And they find a developer to build this product or service. And then they say, once it’s built, I take it and then I run it. And I think if you do that, then you’re outsourcing the heart and soul of what you’re building. And that also means all the things I showed you, the speed, this whole thing of movement, that is all yours, you’re losing all of that. Also, you’re always gonna depend on a person, how much they’re gonna charge you, when will they have time? Because you’re not gonna have a static product. So own that core. If you know how to code, then it’s gonna be quite straightforward. You can build your own products. But even if you don’t know how to code, these days you can learn how to code quite easily, but you can also use a lot of platforms that were created for just that. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You can just jump in. And a lot of them, you can just build your own and you can get going. It’s gonna look very different down the road.
The other idea we have is that we build one product and then we try to reach this magic line where we can live off this one product and it’s gonna be a bit tedious, but we’re getting all this freedom for it. And again, I wouldn’t look at it like this. I would much rather look at it. It’s a variety of products, because you’re not gonna notice once you start building, you’re gonna end up with this little portfolio. Again, there are different ways that this happens. One of the ways to do this is, if you have a look at the indie hackers, who’s familiar with the indie hacker movement here in Berlin? That’s a few hands up in for Berlin. So the indie hackers is a little bit what I’m telling you about, but it’s a little more tech focused still. And what they do a lot of the time is that they look at existing small problems they encounter and they create a very, very simplified fast product for it. And these products, when I say fast, it’s usually like two weeks and they just ship it. There you will see stuff like 12 products in 12 months. And so they try out all of these little things and they see what takes off and what doesn’t. So a lot of the time these products are not even related. So that could be one way of seeing it. Or another way, which is what I personally do a little more, is I say, I have this expertise, in my case it’s UI design. So let’s say you work previously in design systems, then one of these pillars could be you’re having an app that you’re running, you’re having a plugin, you’re having a book, you’re having a course. You’re selling a framework, a design system, some basics like that. And you’re doing some freelancing as well as one of these pillars. And all together, what happens is that you’re creating this bar and you’re going to be much faster able to reach this. Because as a solopreneur, there is no market research. There is no strategy. There is no advertising and things that you’re doing to push certain things. It happens by chance, but it’s going to happen. And weird things take off you never even thought of. And other things we thought were absolutely brilliant, nobody cares about. Let me give you an example. This is an article I wrote four years ago. And it was about explaining RAM units to designers, root font sites and all of that, and why I think it’s relevant for designers. I wrote that literally like my kids were playing football and I was bored and I wrote it on my phone and I thought absolutely nobody is going to be interested in it. I put that online and that one really a lot of people read. Apparently people are really passionate about RAM units, something I didn’t know about. Someone was so excited about the article that they made a playlist, Pixel to RAM and there is the Pixies and REM in it. I thought that’s really cool. People also really hated it. And they like wrote the evil emails about I shouldn’t be using RAM units as a design. I didn’t expect that. But what did happen is that literally from Smashing magazine read it and said do you want to write an article and do you want to do a course and then I ended up doing a talk and it’s how I met Mark and this is how I’m here today. So I think that’s enough proof that most random things happen when you just put your stuff out there. Once you cross this line then you’re in this beautiful playground where you can add to existing products, you can create new stuff and you’re really having this little universe that you created for yourself with a very low stress level that I personally haven’t found anywhere else. So the second pillar, that is automation.
Automation always sounds a bit mean, doesn’t it? But it’s not about that. It’s really about automation so you have time to focus on the things that you want to do which is building your product. And automation and that stuff, like in my example, it’s very basic things. Signing on members, signing off members, invoicing, common question, common problems. In order for automation to work, what you need to do is you need to decouple time and money. So if you’re selling one hour of your work for X amount of money, that is, you can do that, it’s freelancing, it works absolutely well. But it’s just not going to work with that sort of automation. So if you say I want to grow this without taking on more people, then you need to decouple this.
Again, if you know how to code, you just sort of set up your own automations. If you don’t, they’re great tools. With Stripe, all sort of membership management, signing on, all sorts of invoicing, you can do that with Stripe. Zapier, I use a lot. You don’t need to know code. You can connect different apps and stuff around. And it’s really, you need like a one hour online course to understand how to deal with Zapier. And then you can build pretty much anything you want on a relatively basic level. Now, this last one is growing it, growing it without hiring people. And yes, here it is, the big word with a few letters, AI. Know what you’re going to think. It’s like half of the room is like, finally, someone is mentioning it. I am getting my money’s worth. And the rest of the room is like, I can’t believe she’s putting AI in this talk now. It’s like so annoying. And yes, don’t worry. It’s not as bad as you think. It’s actually worse.
And it’s hear me out, hear me out. So I have to go back a little bit. So to understand what I want to talk about this AI part is Back to the Future, my favorite movies from the 80s. And Martin McFly travels to the future. And he has this cool stuff like a hoverboard. And this is my favorite scene, watching it from today’s point of view. It’s like all these fax machines. So in the future, they live communicate with fax machines. It’s how we imagined the future in the 80s. It’s very quiet because you’re all German. So you’re like, yeah, some future merch.
So the thing is, so I’m not going to tell you crazy new AI things to automate this. And then you’re going to run this one million euro business without, you know, with these robots in the back. It’s not about that. My AI is just a fax machine. It’s very, very basic, simple stuff. But to me personally, as one person, it makes a huge difference to being building the stuff that I want to build. The obvious ones is the LLMs, the chat GPTs and the Clords. I don’t create my content with them. Maybe I could by now, but I actually don’t like it. I really like creating my own content. But what they do is they take off like a lot of work in the background for me. And especially I really like writing articles, but I’m dyslexic, which is not really a match made in heaven. So that was really great for me. It really empowered me to do a lot of stuff that I could not have done before. But where for me in the last year, this became incredibly powerful is cursor. So if you don’t do knows cursor.
Yeah, few people, not that many. So cursor, I love cursor. So curse is really great. And this is for me where LLMs and AI, this is where they empower me. So what it does is literally you have your LLM in your code editor, and you can talk to it. It’s like a super patient developer that you’re talking to. You can ask all the questions and it’s going to help you to build stuff. It’s originally built for developers doing more advanced work. So what you can do is you can debug and you can do like doing the real stuff. But what you can do, as you can see here, you can just go in and you say, I have no idea what I’m doing. I want to build a website. How does that work? Then you can say, I want to connect to a database. How does that work? What is a database? How can I just even integrate MailChimp? And it’s going to tell you where to click in MailChimp and what you need to do.
And it’s really, really empowering because you don’t need to know any code. You can simply just start talking to it. And the great thing is that you do have a proper code editor. So you can go in there, you can alter stuff, and you’re not in this black box anymore. And you can really also learn how to code and how things work. Really encourage you to try it out. It’s incredibly empowering. And a lot of the things I’m building these days, I could not have done three years back.
Another thing that I do a lot is, remember I was talking about going into niche markets? So these niche markets, a lot of the time people don’t, they’re not necessarily going to speak English. And all my content is in English. And it’s very time consuming to translate it in a lot of these languages I simply don’t speak. So what I do is I use AI to do that for me. So this is my original video.
Did you know that you can link Figma to a spreadsheet and not only pull in real information, but also swap components and instances?
Let me show you. And then I run the AI and I am voice cloning it and I’m translating the content. And then I can, for example, have everything in Spanish as well.
And then I can use a few more examples. So I can use the AI to translate it. But again, all I do, I use a third party tool. I use Rask, there’s Hagen, there’s plenty of others. It’s going to write a transcript and then it’s going to translate it in the language I want. And the interesting part is actually that the difficult bit is that it has to have the same meaning. So I can translate it in real English. And then I can translate it in real English. And the interesting part is actually that the difficult bit is that it has to have the same length. So it fits the video. So that’s the part where I really need AI. And then in the background, you just need 10 minutes of your voice and it does the voice cloning. Now, this is my content and this is my voice. So this is really great for me. But obviously, there are different sides of the same coin. And there is a lot of ethical concerns about that, which is not the topic of my talk today. And again, this is my content and my voice, but definitely there is larger stuff to consider in the end for all of us.
And last example I want to show you. So this is like all the courses I created and I have all of these courses. And what happened is that people jump into one course, but I don’t know where they jump in. So I don’t know if they took the beginners course, if they forgot stuff.
And what happens is also there is more content, there is articles, there is YouTube videos, there is Figma files. So there’s this whole universe of UI, the way that I want to teach UI. But when you’re taking the course, you’re always at one moment of time. So it’s a very linear experience. And so what I’m doing is I have my own little, this is just a mock up. So I’m currently working on this. And so you’re hearing my voice and I’m leading you through these courses. So the idea is that you can just ask questions and I’m going to point you out where to go. So it’s important that we then use all these styles and variables in our components. What is a Figma component?
A component is a reusable design element that can be used across multiple designs for easy updating. We covered this in video 4-1-2-11. You might have missed it. Do you want me to play it again?
And I also have a more detailed article about this topic you might like.
So yeah, it’s only the typical chat part that replies with a voice. But the thing is, as I said before, I’m just using what I have right now. It’s my little fax machine. And from there, it’s just going to evolve and I’m going to change it and adapt it to my needs and the ideas. And I believe if you take these three pillars bit by bit, then it’s actually not that overwhelming to get started in building these things.
So if you’re now saying, ah, I really like that, I want to have my own product, but what on earth am I going to be building? By the way, my favorite illustrator ever, Christoph Niemann. And there’s usually two kinds of people. So one side is I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to be building. And the others are like, my idea is so brilliant. Can’t even tell you because you’re going to copy it. So for the brilliant ones amongst you, I have really bad news. There are eight billion people in the world. The chances that someone already had your idea and already built it is really high. And this is the good news for all the uninspired ones amongst you. It doesn’t matter. Just take any idea and get going. It’s going to look very different three years down the road anyways.
You’re also not going to be the best. I don’t make the best online courses. Maybe I do, but it’s not about that. Think about it a little more like if you’re buying a cookbook, you don’t go to the shop and you say, I want the best cookbook you sell. You go in the store, you look around and there is a cuisine and a way of learning and looking at this that’s going to resonate with you and that you’re going to go with. And so it’s all about finding that little niche market. So if you create the product, the idea is that this audience is also going to find you once you find that audience. It’s a really beautiful space to operate and it’s a really nice space. It’s still the Internet. People are not always going to be nice. You have to deal with that. So I brought you an example. This is I’m going to read that. Don’t worry. So this is two reviews I got literally in the same day. This is the real reviews. I took a screenshot. So first one is this is a well organized course that is delivered in a professional manner. I feel confident to start designing in Figma now. Also, I must say the teacher has an incredibly soothing voice.
She’s a great teacher, but she could also have a career doing voiceovers. Consider that. The second one was the voice sounds like a fake Alexa voice. It’s very annoying. Also, the pacing of the lessons is very slow. There’s nothing I can do about this. If there is a bug, I need to fix it and stuff, but people are just going to love and hate your product. It’s going to work like this. This is why God invented the refunds. So we’re good.
So I don’t have any magic thing I can tell you of how to build it. The only truly important advice I can give you is pick anything, start making it, and then you’ve got to show up for yourself every single day and take all of these little steps for visibility.
So go and build something that’s yours, and I promise you it’s going to be great.
Thank you so much.
