A life changing trip, time for pivot, next steps

Dec 30, 2022

Pivoting this newsletter

TL:DR: From now, I will be sharing personal experiences and thoughts in this newsletter. This might or might not include business related topics. The ‘once per last Friday’ format is changing to ‘as life happens’ instead.

Why pivoting

The newsletter is growing too slowly. I am naturally discarding things from my life that is not fun for me or that do not give me a high enough return to justify the effort. At the same time I want to be focusing on my business instead of writing about it. Each monthly update is a piece of content that needs to match a specific level of quality and because of this it takes time.

Normally I would just stop the newsletter. I believe however that documenting my progress and thoughts for other people out there is a net positive for everyone. Because of this, I am changing the newsletter to a new format and topic.

What to expect from now on

There is going to be more spontaneous content from now on. I will be documenting things that I feel worth sharing as they go. I already have a few topics to share but you can get the idea by visiting alexstyl.com.

What not to expect from now on

There will not be any technical topics discussed here. If you are here because of Android or technical content, I share everything at composables.co.

There won’t be a monthly update any more but instead ‘as life happens’ updates.

Back from Asia from a life changing trip

I just got back from Asia. I feel like this trip was one of the best decisions of my life as it positively changed me and solidify things for me.

I am not going to full detail towards why I moved to Asia as I have already written about this. The main reason was to meet other solo business owners that grow their business online.

Before this trip I was often feeling lonely and depressed. I felt my environment as hostile as my surrounding would dream of a stable 9to5 job and be able to rest on the weekends. Every time I would try to share my thoughts, doubts or wins with people nearby me it would never ‘click’. People could not just relate to what I am going through. For the majority of the people around me what I am doing is pure madness. Who on earth would leave their well paid stable job to build their own business starting off from 0? The worst part is that I knew they were right.

All this got me seeking like minded people online and that’s how I ended up visiting Bali, Indonesia. I knew that other indie hackers were gathering there and I wanted to meet them. After being able to meet them it finally ‘clicked’. Indiehacking stopped becoming a ‘talking to my internet friends about hopefully making a business’ and it turned into a real thing. I met people of different backgrounds and experiences. People that have already ‘made it’, others that are a step ahead of where I am and others that are just starting. We were able to help each other, motivate and understand each other. That alone made the trip worth it.

I am currently back to Europe. I am not sure yet where I will be heading next. What is for sure is that it will be some sunny place, with good food and other indie hackers nearby.

What’s next

Most of my work around Android has been very well received so far. Composables.co has been growing some nice amount of traffic, with more than 7.5k unique visitors this month alone and people seem to enjoy my content around Jetpack Compose.

The original idea of Composables.co was to focus on short video content, teaching people how to use Jetpack Compose and Android. As a professional developer, I do not like long videos on youtube as they require you to ‘dig’ on information in each video to find what you like. Videos on Composables.co are focused on teaching you one thing only with each video, without any advertisements or unnecessary explanations. The problem is that it is way too demanding on my side to do right. As a one person business this is not sustainable in the long run.

Composables.co is not going away, but rather focusing on what works and getting rid of what doesn’t. There are a few ideas in the making. I would love to tell you more about it, but I feel like if I mentioned every single plan that I tried and failed would feel like spam. Stick around and consider subscribing to composables.co to see what’s coming.