Every week I’ll dive into a curated list of links from the latest tech to just interesting reads, as well as updates on my latest entrepreneurial endeavors. Thanks for joining on this journey!

Topics for this week:

• Solopreneur

• Starting a YouTube Channel in 2023

• Side Hustle Temptation

• Personal Finance

• Brain Hacking

Solopreneur

“Solopreneur” is a term I’ve seen more and more on Twitter and beyond as it picks up steam. It’s just a new word for an existing concept but it captures the meaning well. One such person that’s been promoting the Solopreneur life is Justin Welsh. I’ve been following his content for a few months and he’s posted some ideas that were quite useful.

One post in particular was a thread of all the apps he uses to operate his business which was fascinating, but one small part at the end offered a shorter alternative to the initial 12 he listed:

“If I wanted to put this together cheap, here’s what I’d use:
- CRM: Notion
- Publishing: Buffer
- Website: Cardd or Dorik
- Course +Email: Gumroad
This stack would be about $70 a year + 10% fees from Gumroad.
It’s what I used for 2 years and crossed $500,000 with just this!”

That tweet/post specifically really resonated, so I’ll be diving into that stack more thoroughly and reporting back in the future. This glosses over the fact that $500k came from selling courses based on his knowledge, but seeing a simple stack that can scale to substantial results is worth noting. Links below if you’re curious!

Starting a YouTube Channel in 2023

Ali Abdaal has grown a substantial YouTube with nearly 5 million subscribers and established himself as an authority in productivity, which I appreciate. Efficiency is important to me. YouTube has been part of my overall plan, but I haven’t quite executed on it yet, but Ali offers some great advice for making the work involved in building a YouTube channel a little more manageable.

Essentially he breaks it down into 3 levels:

• Decide on Business or Hobby

• Practice

• Streamline

It’s actionable advice that unfortunately just takes time and commitment, like anything else. But it’s a good guideline to return to months in advance.

Side Hustle Temptation

Took a few bullets, but here’s some AI!

Stable Diffusion continues to be in the back of my mind, but close to the top of the list of AI tools to get familiar with. It has a web version now, but the real power is that you can download Stable Diffusion and run models on your own computer, tweaking the input and results and you see fit. Something like Midjourney online offers a handful of options to tweak, but Stable Diffusion gives you full customizability, with a learning curve of course.

One really interesting side hustle I ran across that takes advantage of Stable Diffusions’ flexibility was using it to make custom QR codes, transforming something real like a picture of a lasagna to also contain a QR code. It was a subtle “wow” moment when I saw it, so kudos to the Super Prime channel for the creative idea. Full video below:

Personal Finance

I haven’t touched on it much yet, but an interest in personal finance was what started me down the path to no longer working for anyone else but myself.

Reddit’s personal finance subreddit was one of the first sources of inspiration for how to become more financial independent, along with the Mr. Money Mustache blog. These were where I first learned about the FIRE term back around 2015 or so, planting the early retirement seeds.

One of the first and most important steps in becoming financially independent is understanding your current financial situation. One way to do that is through personal finance apps that have become quite popular: Mint, Rocket Money and Empower. I actually jump between all 3 unnecessarily but I like to have different perspectives. One app would normally be sufficient.

If you are on the road to financial independence, I would highly recommend investing some time in at least one of those apps. They are a key tool to personal finance success.

Brain Hacking

And finally, if you find yourself with a spare 3 hours, this podcast from Chris Williamson and Andrew Huberman has a number of useful gems. Admittedly this one leans toward “edutainment” rather than purely actionable advise, but worth skipping around some of the chapters.

My main interest was “Strategies to Become More Productive” which were a simple as writing the objective on a sticky note and continually coming back to it to remind you to complete that objective, given that the human brain has a tendency to wander. Larger suggestions were sun light exposure, exercise and other lifestyle choices which are a bigger, but beneficial commitments.

Full video below:

And that’s it for this week! Three newsletters down, we’re on a roll! Those are the links that stuck with me throughout the week and a glimpse in what I personally worked on.

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