A positive start to your weekend [FD138]

First off, let me show you what I’ve been drinking this week (and no it doesn’t rhyme with ‘schmisky’ or ‘schmalcohol’):

Coffee’s a fun hobby because you get to drink your mistakes.

Can’t do that with guitar lessons, can you?

When I play a wrong note on my guitar, I just get dirty looks from the neighbors and my wife says “hey, why are you playing guitar without pants on in our back yard?” but if I make a bad-looking coffee, at least I still have a coffee I can drink.

You really should try it sometime.*

First off, I really try to never share articles published on Medium. It’s a bad deal for everyone, really, and it’s only getting worse.

Having said that, I’d like you to also know that on those rare occasions when I do share something hosted on Medium, it must be pretty stellar.

Here are two articles that I’d like you to take a look at (despite them being published on Medium).

Let’s have a chat about custom iOS icons…

If someone told me in 2019 that a year from then I’d be having a discussion about custom iOS icons I wouldn’t have believed them, but… here we are.

Welcome to 2020.

I’m actually pretty stoked for him.

Right place, right time. Poised to pounce.

And frankly, those icons are tiiiiiiite.

But folks, let’s talk about this:

Wrong take.

The lessons you should take from this amazing story have nothing to do with building in public.

Actually, don’t get me started on building in public. That’s a fun discussion to have another day. :)

But the real story isn’t a fun twitter thread.

So, let’s look at the story…

This wasn’t your typical “How I Made A Buttload of Cash (and Here’s How You Can Too)” article. But only because the article leaves out the last part.

This article, thankfully, is mainly a breakdown of how Traf spent seven years preparing to be an overnight success — with a $28 set of icons.

Actually a pretty awesome outcome for him!

I got no beef with Traf’s writeup.

I have a lot of problems with how this post mortem — and others like it — is getting shared in the indie hacker, online entrepreneur, twitter-verse circles.

I just don’t want to see this kind of thing inspire a bunch of folks to drop what they’re working on and put together [checks notes] icon packs for iOS.

A pessimist looking at this from the outside could expect to see:

• People start selling similar-looking icons, for the same price, then…

• People start selling icons for less and less, until we start getting to $1 icon packs, then name-your-own-price icon packs, then to free icon packs in exchange for an email address, then to just free sites with pirated icon packs.

• Courses on how to make and sell icon packs.

• Indie Hacker-type articles on How I made $500 selling my course on how to make and sell icon packs.

• Well, that just leads to more Indie Hacker-type articles on How I made $500 selling my course on how to make icon pack courses.

• Product Hunt launches for icon packs, which then inevitably leads to

• Product Hunt launches for curated lists, directories, and newsletters sharing all the latest icon packs, articles, and resources.

• Launches of How I Launched My Business Selling Icon Pack podcasts

• SaaS apps designed to help people more quickly list their icon packs for sale

Look…

It’s a powerful thing when you discover you can  “create something once with sufficient effort, then sell it repeatedly with minimal effort.”

It truly is.

It’s really the whole point of any business, right?

But be careful how you characterize the results without also mentioning the experience, the effort, and… the luck that went into it all.

Get it wrong, and it creates a gold rush of the wrong kind.

And yeah… the gold rush has begun:

That concludes Issue 138 of The Friday Dispatch, folks.

Hopefully this took your mind off Twitter, Fb, and current events for a bit.

I mean, there’s nothing important trending today, in particular, is there?

Just tryin’ to keep it positive here, folks.

👀

😅

Enjoy your weekend!

-Ken

*The breeze on your legs is refreshing.