Building a profitable website (Studiolist.org)

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I got sick… and (partly) tired of how the auditions for our theater play were going. The process was horrible (and yes I believe my absence in that one session where the process was decided had an influence on that). These were 4 weeks in which the side-project theater group turned into a full-time unpaid position and where I became a „full-time copywriting analyst” for a website (at least for 10 days).

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It was a week with 4.5 days of being in bed (it was probably about time that I got sick) and 2.5 days of light-weight productivity. In a way, my body did an act of revenge and got back the tranquility time that I was supposed to have during my sabbatical the week before (which I didn’t have).

Anyway.

This is what happened in week 6 of building Studiolist.org in 2020:

Context 00:07

Most important things (MITs) 07:20

Conclusion 13:55

Context

Sick for 4.5 days (Saturday to Wednesday noontime)

Yet, I’m kind of back into a work rhythm

Single focus vs. duality (I’m not the person to single focus over a long period; I want and need at least 2 activities that I can do half and half, e.g. Studiolist tech business work plus theater group)

No Stoic Serenity shows (possible hiatus)

Most important things (MITs)

Studiolist:

Tech talk and tech stack: Svelte (via), Tailwind CSS, Node.js

did video training about web design that converts (via Copy Chief)

4 new bass traps for my own studio (will be listed on Studiolist in the future)

Copywriting Examples:

started working on the mobile website analysis for Gravy For The Brain (first article)

Theater group:

Sick leave but communicated online and with prospective new actors to join our group

Obstacles:

Sick

Solutions:

see my conclusion below

These two things that I originally mentioned last week remain my central areas of:

Website Copy Analyses (case studies)

Studio profile pages

Conclusion

After the recovery from my cold this week, I now swore to myself:

Eat healthier (and more) to get these 2k calories per day

Work 8-hour days (not these crazy 12–15 hours)

Get out of the house and exercise (more)

Today I stopped working after 8 hours. I could have continued working on the mobile website analysis that I mentioned above, but by intentionally pausing I’m allowing myself to leave work unfinished. I want to practice that and treat myself more sustainably.

Rob W. James who I’ve mentioned last week for the first time also shared a plan to live longer that resonated with me:

Simple plan to live longer:

Sleep more

(Safely) pick up heavy things

Eat things that were grown or raised

Walk more

Sit less

Don’t “take it easy” as you get older

Keep learning & challenging your brain

Stop smoking & drinking

Don’t text and drive

Although I do have occasional thought of wanting to live shorter and end the suffering, I am still too curious to continue.

You can see all my pending todos publicly on WIP.chat: wip.chat/@alexanderkluge/pending.

Take care, and see you next week!

Cheers,- Alex

Permalink: naii.io/studiolist/6

FYI: Studiolist is the largest search-engine of voiceover recording studios for voiceover artists, audiobook narrators, YouTube creators, and podcasters.

2020 is my last shot to make my 2017-born startup Studiolist.org profitable* with a „labor budget” of 32h a week and a money budget of 12k EUR (which are all my savings).

*profitable means € 770 / mo, because these are my current fix costs: naii.io/2020/costs in an average month.

I’m documenting everything on YouTube (naii.io/youtube) and on my blog naii.io/studiolist with an included newsletter.

Subscribe at studiolist.substack.com

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Studiolist is the largest search-engine of voiceover recording studios for voiceover artists, audiobook narrators, YouTube creators, and podcasters.

2020 is my last shot to make my 2017-born startup Studiolist.org profitable* with a „labor budget” of 32h a week and a money budget of 12k EUR (which are all my savings).

*profitable means € 767 / mo, because these are my current fix costs: naii.io/2020/costs in an average month.

I’m documenting everything on YouTube (naii.io/youtube) and on my blog naii.io/studiolist with included newsletter.

This is what happened in week 4+5 of building Studiolist.org in 2020:

Context 02:49

Most important things (MITs) 04:28

Conclusion 10:15

Context

Sick

2 weeks to catch up incl. sabbatical

Dream meets Reality

Quite a lot of theater group work despite being in sabbatical

Also a lot of theater group work after the sabbatical (feels like a full-time job or east least a 20-hour part-time job, but pro-bono)

Most important things (MITs)

It was 2 weeks with 7 days of close to no obligations and a week with full obligations that made me sick eventually. This is what happened…

Studiolist:

Worked on the design of a new „Hello” page for Studiolist (I shared a super early draft last week behind the scenes at only one place: GFTB)

Lots of organizational work on paper, computer, phone, and so much noise inside my head

Copywriting Examples:

New website: copywritingexamples.com

New tagline: Where voiceover professionals improve their sales copy. You learn from real-world case studies. Published every week.

I’m super proud that I kicked this thing off. It works in tandem with Studiolist, and I made a short intro video.

Theater group:

Session 22 + 23 theater group

both very productive sessions also thanks in parts to the absence of our „troublemaker” - as harsh as it may sound

Searching for more actors - a lot of time with email and social media

First 5 confirmed guests (we only have seats for 80 people)

After our 1st paid guest - she’s a RAMMSTEIN fan - received her a personalized ticket (with name and photo) she said: „I am gonna PRINT this ticket. Never had a nicer one in my life. :D (Not even the Rammstein ones.)“ - WOW!

Our play now has a name: At the Hour Of Annihilation - A-H-A“) and it’s about that coronavirus. Five months ago when we started working on the play, we never expected that this kind of virus would make it into the news!

Location and date are also confirmed: April 18th at 8pm inside of the GARAGE cultural center (Berlin-Pankow).

Since session 23 we also came up with a cool name for our ensemble: Last Thespians (so sophisticated). It only took us 3.5 minutes. The session was great with plenty of fun!

Stoic Serenity podcast:

3 new episodes

About voiceover:

Partly attended the „Sound Engineering 101” session with Toby Ricketts (last 20 minutes) but I think I will watch the whole thing - looked cool the way he explained it! :)

I learned from Brent Allen Hagel about „Voice Building.“ There are 2 schools of thought in branding your voice/skills:

Use your regular voice + acting for each project

Create a unique voice to match each project

Other work:

I sent the last email of the „December” campaign for my anime/webcomic friend Mar Exposito. She is such a cool person with so much energy - unbelievable! And she also wants to help with Studiolist.

Obstacles:

Too little food

Too little movement outside

Too much computer time

Solutions:

Get out of the house every day

I want to continue the habit of taking a walk after getting up (when I did I felt good), followed by 3 minutes of Headspace meditation and 4 minutes of Tabata workout.

I understand my obstacles intellectually but creating new habits to overcome them is hard.

Also, with so much social media exposition through the theater group promotion work, I got addicted again. Horrible! It means, I started to keep checking emails and social media compulsively. I’m happy when the marketing time will be over.

I thought about not publishing Stoic Serenity anymore but it’s too valuable for me and others to miss it.

Conclusion

I enjoyed my first sabbatical week in 2020. I lived from day to day (pretty much how I was living in my 20s as a student). Allowing myself to be free of obligations is great. Before the sabbatical (on Friday week 3), I joined my grandma to listen to the New Year’s Concert at Konzerthaus Gendarmenmarkt where the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg were playing. Here are photos and a video.

Few more words about the sabbatical

Even though it feels challenging for me to just take time off, I also know I need it. It’s crucial for my long-term well-being and it’s an investment into my health sustainability (if that’s a word). My goal is to establish a habit where 180 business days per year becomes normal (for me and hopefully others)

The only obligation I fulfilled during the sabbatical was joining our theater group Tuesday session. We meet once a week and we will perform on April 18th. So time is not on our side.

I was trying the sabbatical to eat healthy food (especially raw food) and make movement a priority. I wanted to explore rather traditional (or boring) ingredients like lentils or potatoes. Gijs Heerkens’ approach inspired me to take more care of health, food, fitness. And I learned from Rob W. James:

You probably know what you need to do. Stop searching for THE small thing you might have overlooked.

During the sabbatical, I fell in love with these songs and things…

RAYOWA’s Better Man which is a very CHIC-esque / Nile Rogers / 70s disco-inspired piece.

Then Rejoicer’s Heavy Smoke Feat. Iogi to chill and Katy J Pearson with Tonight, such an ear-worm.

These are strong candidates to make it into the soundtrack of our theater play.

Also, Tropic Thunder (2008) caught my attention and I probably didn’t get most of the joke. I watched it in 3 stages because I didn’t exactly enjoy it (some parts I enjoyed). But I watched it for educational purposes and because Robert Downey Jr. (RDJ) talked about it so much in his conversation with Joe Rogan.

Robert Downey Jr. about Ben Stiller

From RDJ, I also learned that Ben Stiller is probably the closest thing to a Charlie Chaplin - quote (talking about the movie Tropic Thunder):

Ben (Stiller) who is a masterful artist and director probably the closest thing to a Charlie Chaplin that I’ve experienced in my time… he writes he directs, he acts, he…

if you had seen him when he was directing this movie he would have been like I’m watching David Lean, I’m watching Chaplin, I’m watching Coppola, he knew exactly what the vision for this was.

he executed it and it was impossible to not have it be an offensive nightmare of a movie and 90% of my black friends were like… dude that was great!

I DID IT, I DID IT, I DID IT

I started watching THE SIMPSONS from season 1 on. I never watched the English original but now I did and I even found a version where Matt Groening and his co-creators explain the behind the scenes of episode 1 - super insightful!

I also played Uncharted 1 (PlayStation) with my brother (though I’m really bad at it ^^). We played in his newly built house just north of Berlin. It was about 6–7 hours of playing - a full-time job. It’s great that a sabbatical allows me to do stuff that „Non-sabbatical Alex“ would never do!

Other things

I read „How to feel like you have enough“ and I watched how an ENGLISH FAN EXPERIENCES BORUSSIA DORTMUND ATMOSPHERE vs RB Leipzig - Dortmund is my club!

We had a really good time celebrating the bday of the life partner whose partner is the brother of my brother’s wife’s mother (I have no idea what that means). Thank you, Bianca, Calle/Kalle, Theo, Helma, Susanne, Dirty Harry, Dense, broane, and mum.

During the sabbatical, I was feeling already recharged to a degree on Thursday but I was looking forward to the next 3 days of my sabbatical.

After the sabbatical (this week)

I continued watching The Handmaid’s Tale (season 2).

The six factors of psychological well-being was a cool finding. Thanks Matt! He also emphasized that I should read 12 Rules for Life. I will soon.

About my health

On Tuesday, I probably worked so much (for the theater group) that I felt sick. So, I spent much time in bed on Wednesday and worked using my phone (making notes). That sick feeling continued on Thursday and found its climax on Friday morning. The cold-and-flu from last night didn’t work.

Normally, when I’m feeling sick I’ taking took a relaxing bath and sleep longer than usual. Sleep, water, and tranquillity work wonders. Maybe also against the new coronavirus?

The most important note of the past weeks was…

the one note I got most clarity from because it also resulted from clarity.

I defined two main areas that require my attention:

WCAs (case studies) #copywritingexamples

Studio profile pages #studiolist

These are the two big things to handle.

There’s so much clarity in seeing this small sheet every that it makes me happy. But it was also the result of one month having a relatively cluttered mind. So that makes it extremely valuable.

Review of January 2020

I’m feeling great that our group is in the process of realizing a new exciting creative project. In terms of excitement, it feels similar to my 2013-released short film „Single*“ about the value of friendship, a stupid bet among two friends, and the power of an individual to shape his destiny

Our theater group is also being organized pretty professionally. Call and I are doing our best as the project manager to keep it that way yeah.

January 2020 is over and my interim conclusion is…

My idea of having a dream year is still valid but I made adjustments (and will continue doing so) along the way. For example, I felt two strong ideas were clashing this week:

Wanting to spend my dream year

Making Studiolist profitable.

What do I want? That’s the question.

My answer for now:

When I’m living my dream year it makes my life richer but makes the progress for Studiolist slower. That’s the price I’m currently paying. But if I want profitability for Studiolist, I (probably) need to pay a higher price and make sacrifices towards my rich life/dream year. Still pondering

Anyway…

You can see all my pending todos publicly on WIP.chat: wip.chat/@alexanderkluge/pending.

Take care, and see you next week!

Cheers,- Alex

Permalink: naii.io/studiolist/4+5

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Slow down, pause, and breathe.

It’s sabbatical.

Get intentional distance from daily obligations.

Rest

Travel

Project

(pick one)

Every 7th week I take intentional distance from daily obligations.

I want to recharge, prevent burnout/workaholism, and work on other projects, travel, or just enjoy leisure time.

For 7 days I live from day to day. My goal with taking sabbaticals is to work not more than 180 business days per year.

Learn more: https://180businessdays.blog (inspired by Sabbatical.blog from Sean McCabe/seanwes.com)

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Studiolist is the largest search-engine of voiceover recording studios for voiceover artists, audiobook narrators, YouTube creators, and podcasters.

2020 is my last shot to make my 2017-born startup studiolist.org profitable* with a „labor budget” of 32h a week and a money budget of 12k EUR (which are all my savings).

*profitable means € 767 / mo, because these are my current fix costs: naii.io/2020/costs in an average month.

I’m documenting everything on YouTube (naii.io/youtube), on my blog (building.studiolist.org) and on Substack: naii.io/studiolist (blog and newsletter).

These are the questions I answered for week 3 in 2020 building Studiolist.org:

How are you doing? 00:49

What did you work on this week? 01:39

Obstacles 06:11

Solutions 08:58

Want to work on next week 11:00

Anything else? 12:12

Condition / Constitution / Mood

Lots of sleep (not sure why, but probably because of eating insufficiently)

last weekend was without work - only free time, music-making, dancing at Tresor (Berlin) with a friend, and again sleeping (a lot, e.g. 18.5h from Sun to Mon)

Had some days where I felt the roof was falling on my head and had many thoughts (too many thoughts) - felt overwhelmed regarding Studiolist (so many ideas that popped into my head)

Worked on this week

It was a week with lots of thinking, admin work, and things I didn’t plan to do but still, this is what I worked on:

MIT (Most important things):

👷‍♂️ publish version 0.1 of Studiolist - a simple table that is sortable, searchable, and filterable

I didn’t publish it because I found out about Tailwind CSS (a CSS framework) that I want to use but it takes some time to learn it

❌ design Hugo blog like Substack blog - I didn’t prioritize it and I still had conversations about the localhost issue through the Hugo community

The time I spent on Studiolist and Studiolist-related activities incl. documenting this week: 12 hours and 34 minutes. I haven’t completed this week’s episodes so you can another 2–3 hours to it. My goal is to spend 20 hours with Studiolist.

Also:

✅ Started the official Studiolist blog hosted via Ghost(Pro) - called „Copywriting Examples“ (website is already up, the content will follow) - the plan to get traffic to Studiolist via those blog articles

✅ Lots of technical things I dealt with but Studiolist progress in terms of something one can see is close to nil (one shouldn’t underestimate how much work/effort is necessary behind the scenes of a product/service)

✅ Three new episodes of my Stoic Serenity podcast

👷‍♂️ Dealing with feedback: Receiving pretty direct feedback from my brother saying „The Studiolist website sucks“ was hard to swallow

Of course, I know it does not look like something good at the moment but I also know that there are so many other things that were important than the website… the site worked fine for now, but now it’s time to make it prettier - therefore his feedback was timely

And then another kind of feedback that I received where that person had good intentions but it was not encouraging but rather destructive (didn’t appreciate that); she wanted to challenge my perspective and make me think much more long-term (like 5–10 years) in terms of making Studiolist profitable; that’s advice that I don’t need at the moment because - if listening to it - it would kill my momentum (which I don’t want, of course)

Obstacles

Lots of naps

Theater group

Feeling overwhelmed with so many thoughts in my head

Feeling impatient when realizing that I don’t make progress as much as I would want because that thing needs to be done before the other thing (which I didn’t know before)

This compulsive feeling that I have to have an inbox with zero emails so that I have peace of mind and work on what’s really important and urgent

Administration like domain set up on Ghost(Pro) or doing finances (I HATE DOING FINANCES; as soon as I can afford it, I will hire a virtual assistant who does that for me; I’m (very) happy I have a tax consultant already)

Communication via the various online communities and via Basecamp especially former client (instead of scheduled 10 minutes it became 1h45m) but that’s over now with her

Social life, e.g. the new year’s concert I went with my grandma (it was a misunderstanding and it did cost 5h30m of my time on Friday; it’s why I didn’t send this week’s episode of Building Studiolist on Friday)

Perfectionism, afraid of shipping what’s imperfect and therefore procrastinate though I got better at it

Integrating my Stoic Serenity podcast into my daily routine - should I really do it as the first thing of the day? It could „steal“ valuable energy…

Doing other work that is less important, like making a logo for Copywriting Examples and a banner (I did as part of setting up my Ghost(Pro) blog so it was kind of important but not right now)

Dealing with distractions like feedback

Solutions

Focussing on only the important + urgent work right now (be less scattered)

Breaking down bigger pieces into smaller chunks of work to avoid overwhelm

Resist the urge to check emails multiple times per day - review Solution #5 from Week 1

Make Friday my finances day (Monday stays my clean inbox day)

Have a dedicated amount of time for my social channels (WIP, Indie Hackers, seanwes, Copy Chief, Telegram, WhatsApp, calls?), this could be 20 minutes, 40 minutes or an hour

Previously mentioned solutions

👷‍♂️ Meditation in the morning (not every day but some) - still super valid!

👷‍♂️ Going to bed earlier (worked partly) / Adding more self-discipline to get into a less messed up sleeping cycle

👷‍♂️ Starting the habit of checking my emails only twice a day.

❌ Starting the habit of having 3–5 meals and micro meals

❌ Starting the habit to go to my studio office

❌ Starting the habit of letting an 8-hour countdown run on my phone

❌ Starting the habit of cleaning my inbox only once a week (Monday morning) and checking what I’m calling my „social inbox” (social media) every Friday afternoon.

❌ Stretching the night before going to bed helped to relieve the lower back pain (only did this in week 2 but not in week 3 anymore)

It’s still all a bit wild and all over the place. But I’m positive I’ll establish a working routine soon.

Want to work on next week

Nothing. It’s my sabbatical that I’m taking every 7 weeks for one week.

During this time, I can recharge and be lazy, get intentional distance from my obligations, work on other projects or travel. I’ll see what I’m going to do. I will live from day to day and plan nothing. That is the point of this kind of sabbatical.

My overall goal with taking sabbaticals is: I don’t want to work more than 180 days per year on my business.

You can see all my pending todos publicly on WIP.chat: wip.chat/@alexanderkluge/pending.

Anything else?

finances - credit card fraud solved puh

stopped working as a professional with my last client - this means I just gained 12 more hours for Studiolist (in total about 32h per week); we’ll continue as collaborators

renewed my Copy Chief subscription (I was hesitant to do so because of my shrinking budget but then deiced that 799 USD will be a good investment for the year - especially regarding Copywriting Examples)

Session 21 of theater group (great and effective and pre-session work was also well-appreciated)

finished „How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)” and started The Handmaid’s Tale (with „Peggy Olson“ from Mad Men - great actress!) - where I learned the Latin phrase „Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum“ (Don’t let the b**s grind you down)

learned a paraphrased version of a Bob Dylan quote that goes like: „A person is a success if they get up in the morning and they get to bed at night, and in between they do what they want to do.“ - LOVE IT!

had this thought: „You’re old when it’s taking you ages to make a decision.“

read a great comic about belief-shifting and the backfire effect

I also want to express that I want to live 2020 as my dream year which includes:

building up Studiolist (obviously) and documenting it weekly,

but also sharing copywriting examples (through the official Studiolist blog),

working in my theater group,

sharing Stoic philosophy through text and voiceover,

creating audio-only ads (Harmon Brothers inspired) that includes learning how to make music,

and not to forget my little Tabata workout and meditation routine.

I’ll also be going to three voiceover/podcasting conferences (two in Orlando, Florida in March and one in London in May).

And - if the funds suffice - I’ll take the September off and travel around India. But that’s still uncertain.

All of that while living ascetically here in Berlin (Germany) with a lifestyle that costs around 767 EUR per month. Yes, the costs rose from 671 EUR to 767 EUR because I bought the Copy Chief subscription (799 USD/yr) and I included the planned (and upcoming costs for Ghost(Pro) which are 348 USD annually. I’m not afraid to make this investment and train myself to think boldly and with an abundance mindset as opposed to a scarcity mindset - though my situation could (desperately) ask for a scarcity mindset.

Take care, and see you in two weeks!

The sabbatical is just coming at the right time. I want to relax, especially mentally.

Cheers,- Alex

Permalink: naii.io/studiolist/3

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Studiolist is the largest search-engine of voiceover recording studios for voiceover artists, audiobook narrators, YouTube creators, and podcasters.

2020 is my last shot to make my 2017-born startup https://studiolist.org profitable* with a „labor budget” of 20h a week and a money budget of 12k EUR (which are all my savings).

*profitable means € 671 / mo, because these are my current fix costs: naii.io/2020/costs in an average month.

I’m documenting everything on YouTube: naii.io/youtube, on my blog (building.studiolist.org) and on Substack: naii.io/studiolist (blog and newsletter).

These are the questions I answered for week 2 in 2020 building Studiolist.org:

How are you doing? 00:23

What did you work on this week? 03:46

What obstacles did you encounter? 08:00 + Solutions 08:53

What do you want to work on next week or even finish? 10:32

Anything else you want to talk about? 12:02

Condition / Constitution / Mood

Generally good (a little stressed by this troublemaker in our theater group)

On the weekend (Jan 4 + 5) I felt a little bit on the edge of being sick with sneezing and feeling cold - maybe that’s why I was sleeping so long (my body was fighting without me noticing it)

And regarding my micro habits mentioned last week:

a little bit of compulsiveness checking emails and social media (so that’s work in progress to reduce this compulsiveness) but I’m still having in mind to clean my email inbox only once a week

Did some meditation

Ate a little bit better

Didn’t go to bed before 11pm but at least managed to get up in the morning hours two/three days

Didn’t go to the studio office but I walked several times outside at least

Didn’t let an 8-hour countdown run but I became more aware of how much time I spend working

Worked on this week

It was a week that felt too short with almost 20 hours of working for the theater group (part-time job?) and in the name of frustrations with tech but still, this is what I worked on and finished:

✅ set up blog - Get Hugo working - Hugo community helped!

✅ set up building.studiolist.org - incl. https (Let’s Encrypt)

✅ try Hugo framework

✅ create MVP - list of all verified studios incl. DataTables | Table plug-in for jQuery and „Implementing A Pure CSS Collapsible”

✅ Signed my first affiliate agreement for Studiolist - with a big global player in the voiceover market. yay ;)

✅ Paid for the 4 bass traps for my studio - this should create an RT60 (reverberation time) of 0.6 seconds. Let’s see how feasible voiceover recordings are in this still empty studio office of mine (only desk and chair are inside right now)

✅ Three new episodes of my Stoic Serenity podcast

Obstacles

Theater group work took a lot of time this week (incl. challenging interactions) - I’m close to 20 hours of work time and 10 hours is the maximum I defined - and I worked on it not only on Tuesday though Tuesday is supposed to be my dedicated theater group day (just to keep things organized)

Lower back feels a little better (probably thanks to my Tabata workout and that I actually left the house several times this week and walked a bit)

Still a rather messed up sleep cycle though I’m (for the most part) following my routine

Solutions

I’m feeling a routine evolving because of my week structure that I defined and it includes to start the day (Mon, Wed, Thu) with at least 2 hours of philosophy

Stretching the night before going to bed helped to relieve the lower back pain

Adding more self-discipline to get into a less messed up sleeping cycle

Yeah, and about the theater group… we’ll have two other people return next week (they are mainly contributing to the script) so that will help to have more positive vibes in the group

Want to work on next week

publish version 0.1 of Studiolist - a simple table that is sortable, searchable, and filterable

design Hugo blog like Substack blog

You can see all my pending todos publicly on WIP.chat: wip.chat/@alexanderkluge/pending.

Anything else?

cool and relaxed breakfast with grandma and ma in a café - fricking expensive as well (but ma paid ^^)

started Tabata (4-minute HIIT workout routine on the home-bike) on Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 20s exercise, 10s rest, 8 reps

read about the ketogenic diet, Bulletproof Diet, and Paul Chek’s no-diet diet

an insightful interview with Mindvalley CEO Vishen Lakhiani on the Blinkist podcast

learned about: Producers HATE ME for Revealing these 10 Secrets (YouTube)

some success with the December email campaign I helped my anime/webcomic artist friend with: she’s now at 6 Patreon supporters and received 3-figure donations from 3 people

BIG MISTAKE I DID ON WEDNESDAY - I got up and directly answered notifications on Trello regarding my theater group (and all of a sudden 4 hours of my important morning time were gone)

started the Harmon Brothers „14-Day Script Writing Challenge” (day 1), the company is known for making great video ads (like Lumē); they’re funny and sell - my role model for This Podcast is Full of Ads

Robert Scobleizer, the tech journalist, added me to one of his Twitter lists - because of my work on Studiolist

learned about a French proverb: „The words that you have not spoken; you are their owner. The words you have spoken, they own you.“ (powerful!)

interactions in the Indie Hackers community

a cool chat with voiceover chap Jon Eric Wagman :)

continued reading Atomic Habits by James Clear

started watching „How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)” - a German Netflix show; pretty good

no client work this week because she (the client) didn’t feel well and it seems that she probably doesn’t want to continue working with me (or least make changes). If that was the case, it would be kind ok because working on Studiolist, working with the theater group, and doing the Stoic philosophy podcast three times a week feels like a good amount of work already. But we’ll see next Monday when we’ll talk.

Take care, and see you next week!

Cheers,- Alex

Permalink: naii.io/studiolist/2

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Studiolist is the largest search-engine of voiceover recording studios for voiceover artists, audiobook narrators, YouTube creators, and podcasters.

2020 is my last shot to make my 2017-born startup https://studiolist.org profitable* with a „labor budget” of 20h a week and a money budget of 12k EUR (which are all my savings).

*profitable means € 671 / mo, because these are my current fix costs: naii.io/2020/costs in an average month.

I’m documenting everything on YouTube: naii.io/youtube, on my blog (building.studiolist.org) and on Substack: naii.io/studiolist (blog and newsletter).

These are the questions I answered for week 1 in 2020 building Studiolist.org:

How are you doing?

What did you work on this week?

What obstacles did you encounter?

What do you want to work on next week or even finish?

Anything else you want to talk about?

Condition / Constitution / Mood

Feeling a bit of self-pity probably as a way of being my own obstacle in achieving something great with Studiolist. The weather here in Berlin, Germany might play a role - it’s dark, cold, and only a little sunshine.

Also lower back pain from sitting too much and spending too much time in front of the computer (for work and leisure stuff)

Shallow breath and pumping heart after only 5 minutes on the home bike riding 2 kilometers (no fitness)

Worked on this week

It was a short week with New Year’s and so on but still, this is what I worked on:

drafted a Studiolist visual and tagline: ESCAPE THE BOOTH | RECORD EVERYWHERE

sketched Studiolist website design and logo design inspired by Kurzgesagt, Marketing Examples, Nomad List

thought quite a lot whether to use Ghost or Ghost (Pro) for my blog that will be hosted on building.studiolist.org but decided to go with Hugo (gohugo.io) which I tried to set up locally but even after more than two hours I couldn’t get it working (I couldn’t connect to the localhost:1313 - still don’t know why… as soon as it works I will set up Hugo on the aforementioned live site)

Did set up a Substack account where I’ll cross-post what I will be posting on building.studiolist.org

Found for an easy alternative to SQL to avoid working with abstract databases; I thought of something plain-text-file-based and decided to opt for SQLite (that’s my best option so far)

In my mind, I was making things complicated regarding Studiolist… so after a nap, I got up and wrote down: KEEP IT STUPID SIMPLE (KISS)… Studiolist is first and foremost a list of recording studios. That’s it. And then I sketched a list with studio names, location tags, and a click-to-open arrow icon to see more details of the studio (e.g. name, contact person, mics in use, preamps in use, my impression of the studio)

Obstacles

Lots of thoughts which paralyze me

Messed up sleeping cycle - going to bed at 7am and being in bed until 6pm

Eating insufficiently

No workout. No getting out of the house

Checking my emails too often

Solutions

Meditation in the morning + writing down the night before the one most important thing (MIT) that I want to get done tomorrow

Starting the habit of going to bed before 11pm the latest to have a rich night sleep

Starting the habit of having 3–5 meals and micro meals

Starting the habit to go to my studio office as soon as I’m done with the bureaucratic stuff in my home office in the morning. Going to the studio I will walk or run - not public transportation.

Starting the habit of checking my emails only twice a day. After my MIT in the morning is done. And after all the other important things of the day are done and before I got to bed. ACTUALLY I FOUND A BETTER WAY: I WILL ONLY CHECK EMAILS ONCE A WEEK (ON MONDAY).

Starting the habit of letting an 8-hour countdown run on my phone and whenever I’m taking a break I’m pausing the countdown. I don’t want to work more than 8 hours because doing deep work for 8 hours is a lot (and as far as I heard and learned not even doable… more like 3–4 hours of deep work are doable but of course there are exceptions)

Starting the habit of cleaning my inbox only once a week (Monday morning) and checking my what I’m calling my „social inbox” (social media) every Friday afternoon. This does not include interactions in my communities (WIP, Indie Hackers, seanwes, Copy Chief) because doing community interactions is helping me or I’m helping someone else.

You can see, there are many micro habits I want to establish.

And it’s all the basics that are not working properly. Once I get the basics in order things will fall into place smoothly and I can tackle the essential work that moves the needle the most.

Want to work on next week

set up blog - Get Hugo working

set up building.studiolist.org

try Hugo framework

create MVP - list of all verified studios

You can see all my pending todos publicly on WIP.chat: wip.chat/@alexanderkluge/pending.

Anything else?

started my Stoic philosophy podcast side-project with its first 3 episodes

cleaned my inbox and did finances (incl. pesky credit card issues - it was probably stolen) for a couple of hours (to have zero emails starting 2020 - super important to me)

organized my todos locally and in Basecamp

continued Mr. Robot Season 4

watched Blue Is the Warmest Color (La vie d’Adèle) - great film!

community interaction in the seanwes community and Indie Hackers

after 6 weeks mainly staying in the house (except for Christmas family meetups) I went outside and took a walk and I did ride my home-bike again (yeah)

helped my mum get back to reading her beloved books by removing all the old books from the big shelve and move them into the basement (after 2.5 hours the shelve looks much nice, cleaner, and more aesthetic)

Building a profitable website (Studiolist.org): Recent Episodes

Building Studiolist.org