Independence

As the new year dawns, our hosts look back at the year that was: the ups, the downs, the lessons they learned, and everything in between.

Handing work over to another person is a major step for any business owner, and as indies it can be especially scary. Curtis is potentially looking at doing some outsourcing in the near future, so he, Alice, and Jelly take a look at why offloading work is useful, what the downfalls can be, and whether it’s worth it in the end.

Managing press is an important part of creating products, especially around releases. Alice, Curtis and Jelly discuss speaking with the press, the resources they make available, and what they really need to be doing to improve their respective approaches.

• iOS App Marketing For Small Developers – Marco Arment (Vimeo)

To continue to thrive and grow, every indie needs to spend time learning and staying aware of their industry. Our hosts are no different, and they spend some time going over some of their approaches to learning, to staying on top of their game, and ensuring that they make good decisions.

• Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days (Amazon)
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (Amazon)
• Learn French With Alexa
• Startups For the Rest of Us
• iOS Dev Weekly
• How I Built This (NPR)
• Side Hustle School
• Udemy
• Cushion - Running Costs
• Stackshare

Making the jump from regular job to independence is not an easy thing. There’s a lot of moving parts that you need to account for! Alice, Curtis and Jelly each recount their experiences of going from full time work to where they are today: what they’ve done right, what they’ve done wrong and the lessons they learned along the way.

No indie is an island; we all have to deal with external influences on our projects, some better than others. From users to Apple and everything in between, our hosts take a look at the things that influence their workflow, how the mitigate the bad ones, and how it’s changed their approach to their work.

Stress comes in many forms, and being an indie comes with a slew of additional sources of potential stress that you might not expect. Our intrepid hosts recount the stresses they’ve experiences during their indie careers, discuss potential ways they manage stress, and pitch possible ideas for avoiding it in the first place.

Getting to know to strangers at conferences and meetups is hard, but an absolutely important part of being an indie; building and developing relationships with others in your community can make a huge difference to your work! Alice, Curtis and Jelly share their own experiences and troubles with networking, building relationships, and breaking the ice.

More often than not, your workspace is a reflection of who you are, and how you get things done. Taking this to heart, our three hosts look at the workspaces they each inhabit during their working hours, and whether those spaces are conducive to actually working.

• Adjustable Height Standing Desks (Fully)
• Topo Mini & Topo Anti-Fatigue Mats (Fully)
• Jelly's Old Chair (Twitter)
• "Let's Build" Videos (Tested.com)
• Curtis's Hue Lights (Twitter)

Customer support is a huge part of any business where you create products. Dealing with problems, handling requests and getting 1-star reviews all comes with the territory, so what is the best way to interact with customers? Alice, Curtis and Jelly examine their own practices to figure out what they’re doing right, and maybe give each other a little help with the process.

• The Customer Support Handbook, by Sarah Hatter (Amazon)