1. Unlike Twitter, I almost never open the Clubhouse app. Occasionally I get a notification that someone I follow is speaking, and I get the option to drop in. The push system adds random pleasant surprises to my life.
2. I hate parties. The crowds, the small talk, the dressing up, the inability to avoid certain people... ugh.
But I like the idea of parties: An almost free opportunity for chance encounters that could lead to many things.
Clubhouse is my party substitute without the downsides.
3. The Clubhouse invite system has the potential to keep assholes out. If I invite you, my name will appear in your profile page forever. If you become an asshole, I look bad. So, I only invite people I know.
4. I don’t take notes, I don’t bookmark sites, I don’t add to ‘read later’, I don’t have an ideas list, etc. I consider forgetting things a feature not a bug.
My embrace of chaos fits well with the ephemeralness of Clubhouse. If I listen in, I listen in. If not, it’s gone.
5. If I spend an hour talking on Clubhouse, I seem to get more interest than if I were to spend an hour tweeting — even though I have just 3% of my Twitter followers there.
I don’t know what it is, but I sense some high-intensity / non-linear effect happening on Clubhouse.
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Which's the most important skill you should learn if you want to work for yourself? ...
Selling.
I don't think you learn this by reading about it, but by becoming determined to figure out what motivates people to take out their wallet and pay for things.
I started by observing my own behavior when I came to make purchasing decisions. Whenever I found myself choosing to pay for something (or choosing not to), I would try to reflect on why I was making that decision.
How to build a portfolio of small bets (without hating your life):
Remember that to thrive, you must first survive. The order matters.
Instead of trying to succeed, try not to fail. Make sure your self-employment arrangement becomes sustainable quickly by going for the low hanging fruit.
Low hanging fruit are opportunities that require very little cost, time, and effort — even if it means they're not the most enjoyable and have limited upside.
Try as many of these "small bets" as you can, and run them in parallel — no need to wait for a failure to do the next.
Start by taking notice of what people in real life ask you about. Chances are that if your friends are interested in something you're doing, the internet will help you find thousands more like them.
"But what if I'm not doing anything interesting?!"
Almost everyone is. It doesn't have to be anything spectacular. You might be:
- Learning a new skill
- Doing a side hustle
- Going for a road trip
- Remodeling your home
- Studying something obscure
- Losing weight
...
In a normal economy, almost everyone is able to make a living trading their time for money. But you definitely can’t say the same thing about product owners.
Everyone wants to decouple their income from their time — the problem is there’s no predictable way to achieve that.
...
You can’t ignore the odds.
If you want to take shots at the product business, you can stack the odds in your favor with the barbell strategy.
On one side do something predictable that pays the bills, and on the other side something speculative. Nothing in between.
...
You can do the barbell in parallel:
1. Find a low-stress job/gig that pays the bills and leaves you with some spare time & energy.
2. Use your spare time & energy to do whatever you want, without being beholden to anyone, and without risking anything consequential.