Building a community, IndieHackers and how to build longlasting businesses - Rosie Sherry

I see a lot of people trying it and failing. These days, I like to think that people need to have trust in you if you're going to build anything. So if you want to start something, build up trust with people. And the way to build up trust is by showing up. It's by having conversations. It's by, you know, putting content out there, putting tweets, whatever it might be, you know, Contributing to Facebook groups or forums, whatever it is. But you need to build up that trust and figure out. But but by doing that, you end up figuring out what it is you actually need to do.

Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Zavaroness. This is my chance to interview interesting people from all over the world, my chance to learn something, share their experience, and who knows, maybe one of you will build a business like that because of it. I'm here, we're looking to meet more interesting people. Today I have an interesting guest, not just because of the way we met because I kind of stalked her on Twitter and said, hey, would you mind jumping on a podcast? And she was so gracious to say yes. But because I've been following her for a couple of months and I found the fact that I was really enjoying it, and then she posted this ask me anything about her leaving her position, I said we have to talk. So Rosie, first of all, a huge thank you for being here. How are you?

I'm good, thanks, and thanks for having me.

So in every episode when I meet people, if I do it in my own native tongue, uh, in Hebrew here in Israel, or if I do it in English on an international, I always let the guests do the kind of elevator pitch. You can tell us whatever you want. Are you ready?

Uh, I'm gonna have to be, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, go for it.

Okay, so I'm, I'm Rosie Sherry. I live in Brighton in the UK. with my family and 5 crazy kids. Um, and I guess I call myself a community builder. I've been building communities for 15 years now, originally kind of starting with meetups and then a co-working space. And then, um, I was a tester at the time, so, um, I went on to—

Could you explain what is it? A what?

A tester, software tester. Um, so just like you have developers You can have testers who test.

This is the QA?

QA testing, yeah.

Okay.

Um, so yeah, I started a community around that. That was around 2007. I bootstrapped that, or indie-hacked that as I would say these days. Um, and yeah, I did that for 10 years. That was interesting. I, I grew it, um, to, I guess, a 7-figure company. We did events all around the world. We have online forum, online community, all those kind of things. Um, and then, yeah, a couple of years ago, I, I, um, I had the opportunity to lead the community at IndieHackers. And so I jumped on that to, to do— yeah. And that was, that was fun as well. But yeah, basically I'm all about communities.

What happened to that business?

Uh, it's still there, it's still going. Um, so yeah, it's interesting, right? So I, I, I founded it, I own it or co-own it now. Um, and I guess, um, it's tough like building a business and then especially like a community business, um, where you kind of get attached to the people. You want to do the best for the people. And it's, you know, a sustainable, profitable business. It provides, you know, us an income. It provides, you know, pays, pays, you know, 10 employees. But it's still there, basically running. I'm kind of one-third owner with my— and my husband's another one-third owner. But along the way, I kind of decided that I didn't want to do it anymore. And I managed to luckily find someone else to lead it, um, and then co-own it. Um, I kind of call him like the 3rd co-founder, even though he came on like years later. And the idea around that is that the vision we had together was that I needed to step back and my husband needed to step back, but he was there to take the company forward. In whatever way, um, he felt was, was right. Um, so that's kind of how it's worked out. It's, it's literally taken like 4 or 5 years to get there, to that point of where I'm literally not doing anything day to day. Um, you know, obviously I still get involved here and there, but, um, yeah, I guess like it's— some people would call it passive income, but Really, it's just like a good business there that has good people working there and doing good things.

I think you're mentioning without even noticing all the pillars that are what is difficult in a business. So it's a family business. Scaling a community is really difficult. And then scaling a business is really difficult. So you chose to go for all 3. And then if that wasn't difficult enough, you made the decision to exit and bring in someone else to manage it, which is a Totally different, other kind of difficult.

Yeah, it's tough. And I had tried before, like I tried a few things to like release myself from it and I'd failed a couple of times. So like, by the time I got to like, like Richard, the current CEO, I was, you know, I was always a bit unsure whether it would work out. But sometimes I think you have to trust the process and keep trying.

What do you think are the key elements for people listening to us now when thinking about stepping away from their business? What are the key, I don't know, findings or a few tips that you would give someone when they start looking for that new old co-founder? You know?

Yeah.

That's important.

Yeah. I think like, What's worked for, for me in the end is that Richard, who's kind of taken over, is that we worked together for a long time before we committed to him taking on the role. So we worked together for like 2 years. He helped me do some events. Um, he had his first speaking gig at one of my events. Um, and he, he believed ultimately in like what we were building, and he had like shown that over time. And I, I think that's just, just so important because it's like you help build up a relationship, you help build up this trust, and it's not someone that's just coming in just for the money. Um, and that, that's really, really hard to find in people. And, um, it's— for me, I don't, I don't think it's a job that you can just hire someone for it, and especially when it's like a community-focused company. Um, it's, it's so easy to kind of get it wrong or for someone just to say they don't want to do it anymore and walk away. Um, and luckily that hasn't happened, happened yet. Um, but yeah, I mean, I think the key was working together and making sure like, um, we aligned with, with our visions. Not that we always thought the same things or believed exactly in all the same things, but mostly we aligned with wanting to change the software testing industry and trying to do it in a positive way. And I think that's, uh, that's hard to find. It's hard to find someone who, who, who can align with, with what you want. Um, but then I guess on top of that, it's also for me like letting go of a community that you've started or that I started That's like super tough. You know, I had been building it up for like 10 years and to slowly let go of that and let Richard kind of make those decisions. And sometimes he would make decisions that, you know, I wouldn't have made. But, you know, I have to learn to accept that as a founder to just let him learn his own ways as well. Um, so yeah, that, you know, it's, it's, yeah, by the way, you're taking it right.

Oh, this is, it's interesting because you're, I see you like pondering and trying to remember things and I'm like, wait, she's after, you know, and where sometimes I meet people at the, the early stage of, and I've been contemplating a lot whether I should put someone in my place and is it possible, and, and I love the creative side, the content, the strategy, and then it's not necessarily a CEO role, right? My title says Chief of Happiness, okay? I don't believe in these titles, they're a joke to me. But 2 things that are interesting to me: what is the thin line in your opinion between building a community which is your community, your people that you love, and, and a case where people said, hey, take our money And, and that was an issue for you, you know, when it was either the community or the money?

Yeah, I mean, it's tough. Well, I, I ran the community for like 3 years without really making any money. I made bits of money here and there, but really nothing significant. And it was after those 3 years where it was like it was taking up more of my time, um, and I, I just said to myself, I was like, I have to turn this into a business or I'm not going to do it. Um, so I think, I think like for me sometimes like I make decisions and I just go with it. And that after the first 3 years, that was like me making that decision and I, I just stuck with it. Um, and because I had like—

The community gets mad? Do you have any issues turning that into profit?

I worried that they would get mad, but really they didn't. There was no reason for them to. The way we ended up making money was to do events. So I had run the online community for 3 years. People had trusted me. And then we charged for events. And I don't think people can complain about that, right? It's like if you host an event, you kind of got to pay.

So basically that means you're building on top of. You're not charging them £5 a month to join the community, but basically you're building on top and giving them more value or additions. What was the platform you were using at the time? Was it Facebook groups?

At the time I started it with Ning, which I think is still around.

I think so. Yeah.

And it was really cool at the time when I started it. 2007. I was like, oh, this looks cool, I'm gonna start a community with it. Um, and that served us, to be honest, until like— I think we, we ditched it in like 2015. We were like, we had reached our, our limit at that point. But you know, 8 years of using Ning as like the foundation of, of a community, it was all right.

Um, where's the community now hosted?

It's a mixture of a custom-built website and Discourse and Slack, actually.

Okay, interesting. Do you believe in the concept of hosting, staying as a Facebook group? Because I've seen, and we'll discuss IndieHackers in a minute, but you're building the groups outside of those platforms, outside of Facebook and everything. And I'm starting to notice that more and more companies are also starting to build outside and websites with a form, going back old school?

Um, I, I, I have ethics, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend Facebook ever, basically. Um, that's, you know, that's me. I don't like Facebook. I don't like them for their ethics. I don't like the closed Facebook groups. They control too much. It's, you know, it's just hard to build good conversations and good relationships Facebook groups, in my opinion. Um, so—

Could you explain? That's a very interesting point, and, and I want people to hear your opinion about it if it's possible.

Yeah, I mean, it's like, it's the whole way that some of these platforms are going, you know. It's algorithm-based. It's not, it's not people, it's not people-focused, you know. It's all focused on like the, you know, trying to, uh, you know, kind of ad, ad type-based stuff. And, um, just the content ends up not really being what users want, in my opinion. Um, and it's easy to miss content just because, like, Facebook controls it. They control what you see. Um, and, and there's loads of, you know, uh, stories around this. There's loads of stories around, you know, the, the, um, political campaigns and, and how, how people can, like, Manipulate the content. Manipulate, manipulate, yeah. And I'm much more of a person who likes things to be more in control of the people. So I would much rather Facebook didn't have so much control around things. It's the same with Google as well, to some extent, but in different ways. So it's like Where do you draw the line? Um, I draw the line with Facebook. I don't like it. I still have an account because I feel like I have to for certain things, but, um, yeah, just the way they're going with Instagram and WhatsApp and changing their privacy terms constantly, and, um, it just, it just doesn't feel right. And yeah, these days I don't really bother going into all like the details around like every specific thing that they're doing wrong. I just don't have the headspace, but I think they've annoyed me too many times to have any trust that they have my intentions at heart.

So you go, you also recommend that people go and build on forum-based, other platforms, build their own community with their own website. Is that the way you look at it?

I recommend that they own as much of the data as they can. That they have control over the payment details, they have control over the content, over the emails of all their subscribers. And there's quite a few platforms out there that integrate in many ways. And I think when you're building a business, you have to have control over these things, otherwise it can kill your business. If Facebook decides to do something, it can, you know, it can easily kill, kill everything that you've worked hard, hard on for years to build up. Um, and for me, that's just not, not a good business strategy. Um, so yeah, control your data. Find, find the tools that you, you have more control over, even if it's harder to set up. Um, it's just so, so important these days.

So you did A community that turned into a big event business, global events, New Zealand to England. And what was the point where you said, okay, I'm out now, I'm going to look for the next step, and you find yourself in IndieHackers?

Yeah. Yeah. So I officially left Ministry of Testing like 2 years ago. I had spent like 10 2 years before that, like working with Richard and building up that relationship. But I knew from, I guess, 3 years before I left that I wanted to leave. So it was like, you know, it's a long process. It's tough. And it's a tough process, if I'm honest. It's like when you own a business, you can't just quit. You know, it's so hard to just, you just can't. And, and that's almost suffocating sometimes. Um, so yeah, I took, I took my time. I managed to find a way out. You know, it took, it took a while, but, um, uh, and then I, I, I found an opportunity with Indie Hackers, um, which basically was about, um, when, when Indie Hackers launched, Courtland launched it as kind of text-based interviews of people making money on the internet. And I had been one of like his first few interviews, interviewees. And so when it came around a couple years later, when I, I saw that he was looking for help, um, he was actually looking for social media help, and I was just looking for something else to do. I, you know, I just didn't want to do Ministry of Testing stuff, and I felt like I was always being pulled back into Ministry of Testing Because I didn't have another job to do. So I thought, I like IndieHackers, I want to hang out on IndieHackers more. I can do their social media or Twitter as it was. You know, I did that for Ministry of Testing. So I stuck my hand up for that with, with Courtland. And then we chatted and then based on that chat, he offered me the opportunity to lead the community instead. Which was better, obviously. But, um, for me, for me, it was, you know, I, I was just keen to try something new. I was really curious about indie hackers and how they ran as a community, and I felt like I could learn a lot. And on top of that, I felt like running Ministry of Testing all those years, I'd kind of lost touch with a lot of what was going on in the indie world or the startup world. So I kind of saw it as an opportunity to Hang out there, learn what everyone's doing, get back up to date with with everything, and get paid.

So it was but it was less about the money; it was less about the title. And also you had your Ministry of Testing as a main business, I assume. So how was it jumping into a new business after so many years?

It was it was interesting. There's I think there's a lot of similarities with indie hackers and Ministry of Testing. But the biggest difference for me was because IndieHackers was acquired by Stripe. And the way they've approached it is that Stripe just fund what IndieHackers are doing. And they don't, IndieHackers doesn't make any money. So they don't accept any kind of money for anything, for advertising, sponsorship, events, you know, they don't charge for anything. So for me, that was like the biggest difference. And it was kind of nice, um, having that. It's like you can focus in on the community instead of worrying about trying to chase the sales and stuff like that.

Um, yeah, could you give, uh, um, a quick explanation? Because there's a lot of people listening to us now and watching this on YouTube who have no idea what we mean when we say indie hackers. Could you give a short explanation? There's a lot of people from Low-Tech, by the way, who make a great Yeah.

So I would explain indie hackers as people who want to live an independent life. Um, I'd say that that definition has probably changed over the years. For me these days, it's about having freedom of choice in how you live your life. And people do this in different ways. Some have jobs and start up side projects on the side to make a bit of money or just to learn. How to, how to build stuff online. Um, but then there's other people who go all in building like a business with intention of being like a mostly solo founder, um, to, you know, growing up, growing, you know, bigger businesses as well. Um, but, you know, I think there's people on the scale of every, you know, from 1 to 10 of indie hacking. You can, you can get all sorts, all sorts of people But mostly I think it's just people wanting the freedom to explore things and, and create things in a positive way with, with the goal of making money one day.

So buying freedom and also making the right profit to sustain that freedom lifestyle, I assume. And the interesting thing is we can find people who do newsletters, people who do content, there's people were actually high-end developers or C-levels that left their jobs at Amazon and stuff like that. There's, uh, um, there's people who have no clue what they, they were supposed to do and suddenly found different platforms that are no-code, people launching courses and so on. You met or discussed or had conversations, I assume, with so many of them. Can you give us one or two that— Were mind-blowing at the time?

Uh, yeah, I mean, let me think. So a bit— one guy that's done well is Daniel Vassallo, and he was an engineer at Amazon, and he, he kind of got popular because, like, you know, he wrote about how he left his $500K a year Amazon job, um, to to go independent. And, you know, he's done pretty well. A mixture of content stuff, a mixture of— he's got a product that doesn't make much money. He's made a lot more money from content stuff recently. And he also works part-time at Gumroad. So he's like that kind of— he's got a bit of everything almost going on. But, you know, it works for him. And, you know, he's, he's very open and honest about like everything he says. Um, let me think another one. I'm trying to go through the podcast people.

By the way, I think Riverside was a late episode. I think it was the last one, the one before. And this is the platform we're using now, which by the way, I already reached out to them to interview them, and they're Israeli by origin or have some connections, um, to Israel. There was an amazing guy, I think, that they were doing the Flight Anomaly newsletter that was like a $4.5 million revenue, if I'm not mistaken, just from finding weird flights or cheap flights in the US. That was interesting. So yeah, I think—

A lot of like completely random stuff, and I think, I think that's, that's the beauty of it. It's like hearing these stories, you're like, wow. How did they do that? You know, or how did they come up with that? Yeah, so I think it's amazing and inspiring to just keep seeing these people succeed in very different, different ways.

And you had the pleasure of running that community for a long time, and then a few months ago, I think last month if I'm not mistaken, I saw suddenly an huge post on the Indie Hacker forum, Ask Me Anything, that you did where you explained that it's time for you to go.

Yeah, it was, it was such a hard decision to make. So I ran the community for 2 years and I think, you know, I put my heart into it and I very much identify as an indie hacker. And I never want to leave, you know, I'm still there like as a member. But I felt like it was the right time for me to leave. I was kind of 2 years in, I wasn't really growing personally, so I guess I get a bit itchy feet when that kind of happens. But yeah, I struggled for like 2 months trying to make that decision. What did they change in my mind?

What is the way— so on one end you said 3 years, I wanted to leave, I knew it was a process, I'll do it for 3 years, which is, by the way, amazing. I think that's very huge, unbelievable that you had the stamina to endure that process, which is interesting. I think most people just, oh yeah, he's good enough, I'll go. So, and I think that proved that it works. It's been there for a few years. And what was the moment when you decide? Because again, it's about a community. People know you, people follow you, you're someone in that community. So how is it to make that decision that it's time to go, that you feel that you're not growing anymore?

Yeah, it's, you know, it's tough. I I can hear myself echo again. But, um, I, I, you know, I was upset about it many times trying to make the decision. Um, and yeah, I, I don't know, it's like sometimes you kind of just need to do it, right, for your own, for your own mental health. Um, and I, you know, I never did, did it for the money. Um, I did— not that I'm rich or anything, but I've still got Ministry of Testing and I get income from there that kind of, you know, is enough for us to live on. And so me quitting is, you know, okay for us financially. So, you know, that's— I always recommend, like, if you can get into that position, you know, do it. Because, um, in life it's just so powerful just to be able to walk away from a situation that you don't feel 100% happy in. Um, but it's, it was also a very different situation from Ministry of Testing because it was not my community. As much as I loved it and I felt a part of it, um, I didn't own it. It's Courtlands, it's Stripes. Um, so I could walk away. And going through 3 years of Ministry of Testing of hanging on, I didn't want to do the same with, with Indie Hackers. Um, so, you know. That's— I guess I should be grateful for that as well. Sometimes it's, it's good not to own communities.

And, and I think you're working on courses, right? Community courses. And then you've written a post about how you made certain X amount of dollars doing that. There's always this, um, um, imposter syndrome where you— can I teach, right? Is that okay? And you've definitely had— you definitely have the track record. How did it feel doing the first course?

Oh, I feel so uncomfortable. So I'm midway through it. We're doing a cohort course, um, and it's like, it's so new to me, um, and yeah, I feel— I honestly feel outside of my comfort level, um, trying to figure out the best way to do it, trying to Uh, record videos. And, you know, I'm keeping the video simple, but still at the same time, I, I feel really uncomfortable doing that. Um, I'm much more comfortable with podcasts, you know, just like on the spur of the moment, like, you know, no editing. For me at least, I'm quite happy to do podcast type stuff.

But do you use a teleprompter?

No.

For the course?

No.

People told me I need to use a teleprompter for the course, and I just wing it usually. And now trying to put everything into a script and then doing it through the teleprompter, and it feels a bit weird to me.

Yeah, I can't do that, you know. And I've read lots of stuff about how to, how to be a speaker, how to present, how to do videos, but I just can't. I can't do it how other people say it, and I just kind of wing it. I create slides and then, you know, in my head I have like a picture of what I'm going to say on the slides. And then I record myself saying some stuff and, you know, it's probably far from perfect, but I can't, I just can't script it. It's just not me. And that's probably why—

Are you going to scale it?

Sorry?

Are you going to scale that course business into another 6, 7 figure, or is that going to stay a side hustle? Is that just to get out of your comfort zone?

It's to get outside of my comfort zone. It's to give the world what I think it needs. I think people need to learn how to build better communities. And I think I have a shot at kind of helping people do that. Is it a 7-figure— is it, you know, a new business? I don't know. I've got another job now, so there's only so much I can do.

Plus you need to take care of like 5 kids.

Yeah. Plus I have 5 kids.

Which is a side business. That's a side hustle.

Yes, that's a full side hustle on top of it.

I can tell you that I would love to share your course when you feel like it. And even, by the way, I wouldn't mind hosting a live ask me anything here in Israel because there's so many people building communities and trying to monetize them. Even though it's in our language, communities in my opinion are similar. It's about people, it's about the connectivity and everything. And so many people are trying to find different things. And all the courses here are kind of the same by people who did okay, now they became the teacher. And in my opinion, you've done it. You deserve to be heard and we need that, you know, and for me, there's always this contrast between these.

Yeah. And I think for me, what I'm enjoying the most from the courses is not necessarily the videos that I'm preparing, but because we're doing like a cohort course and we've got a Slack set up and we're doing all these things as part of the course, we're doing live, like On Capiche FM, we've done live conversations. A bit after this call, actually, we're going to do a Twitter Space as part of the course. We've got all sorts of stuff happening throughout the 6 weeks that we're doing it. And I love that stuff much more than trying to just present ideas. It's like, you know, it's very actionable. It's just like we're working together, we're talking through ideas. And I, for me, that just feels more real and also more community-focused, which is probably where I feel a bit more comfortable doing things rather than like presenting and trying to come across as, as an expert.

I, I can relate, and I think I can share with you that next week, probably after this episode is aired or before this episode deserve, actually. Um, I'm gonna launch a new blog, a website for my company, um, with a forum. We have a newsletter that's almost at, um, 2,000 people now, and give all the information for free. So we're not gonna sell anything, and basically the agency is gonna profit from the clients, but we're gonna teach people. And I decided to quit colleges and universities and all that because I believe the world is changing. And I believe you can get all the information you need either for free or for people who are actually now doing it like yourself. So I'm trying to see if in our language we can give as much content out for free with the understanding that if I claim I'm this good at marketing, right, if I build the biggest website, then I've proved that. On the other side, in English, building in public So you're going to now do something with that? You're going to talk about your courses as Building in Public?

Yeah, I mean, I, I've been pretty open in the past, uh, 18 months or so with everything that I've been doing, uh, on Twitter, mostly on Twitter. I, I kind of, kind of share day-to-day stuff, um, I share everything I know, and then I try to give updates about things that, that I'm working on. Um, I've had a paid newsletter that I started last July, um, which has gone all right. Um, and I did that to build a habit of writing because I didn't have that habit and I really wanted to build that habit. Um, I'm thinking of changing it up now, which is a bit awkward, like having to explain to the subscribers, but I think I'm basically going to make all the content for free and I'm switching platforms to something else. But, um, I've got the habit of writing and I just want more of the content to be out there for free and then to maybe teach as a way to, to make some of the money or just like figure out different ways. Um, but yeah, I struggle with the fact that all the content's behind a wall at the moment and I, I feel like I need to change that.

Um, it's interesting. I'm thinking, I was, I'm thinking, I'm actually, I actually posted the question that I'm not sure how that went on Indie Hackers, but because I was thinking about doing some of the content behind the paid wall of Patreon, for example. But then it's not just that, but it's also the live sessions, because I do a lot of consulting with startups here and I'll meet different companies and I love it, but sometimes I just, I don't have enough time. So once a month, this is the package: you'll get the newsletter, you'll get my thoughts, you'll get my ideas and everything, but you also get get access. And, and I don't know, for $15 you can get the access, whereas I'm not going to charge you a few hundred dollars for a session. Um, and I'm not giving them anymore. So I'm trying to find what's the mix and how can we scale that. So, and then young people or people starting their journey take that for free. But people need the next step. They understand the value and I think they might be willing to pay, you know, because you will still charge for the courses, right?

Yeah, exactly. And I think it's also interesting. There's like, some people are really happy to pay like one-off fees for like courses, but then when it comes to subscription, they're more reluctant to do that. Um, and yeah, I think it's like there's no right or wrong, right? Um, you kind of like have to, have to find your way with what you feel comfortable with and what your peop— what you feel your people will, will pay for. Um, and yeah, I don't, I don't have strong opinions on what's right and what's wrong. Um, but I think Everyone needs to kind of experiment with all of these things to find the balance of what's right for you and what's right for your people. I can. I'm community lead at a company called Orbit. So they're a community software tool. I guess you would call it. Um, and basically they pull data in from all your communities online. So, but, and to make better sense of it, so for example, my community, community Rosieland I call it, and we're active on Substack, Twitter, Slack, Um, and, and now we're— we've got like a custom forum as well. So Orbit can like pull in all that data together so that you can make sense of where all your people are hanging out. And, and it kind of brings the profiles together. So if you can look up one person and see how active they are, or you can see who your best members are, and basically— or worst members— to figure out how do you pull people in More often, and how do you engage better with them? How do you build better relationships?

Is it based on data or language? Can any language be used?

Well, it's data-based data and content. So you know, integrates with increasing amount of platforms. So at the moment, it's GitHub and Slack. Discord is coming. It integrates with discourse. So yeah, I mean, I mean, what one of the reasons I'm really interested in it is because so many people want to start communities and and they feel like they need to build a home for that community, like that a website and forum and all these things. And it's actually really really hard to do that, and you probably only want to do that much further down the line once you're more established. When really, I mean, I had this issue at Indie Hackers as well. It's like we had the community on Indie Hackers website. But we also had a very active community on Twitter, but I had no way of connecting the two people in any way. If I wanted to see if someone on indiehackers.com was tweeting, I would have to go and manually do it. Whereas by having the software that does that for you and brings the information to you almost like a CRM kind of view, It just makes— it helps you make much more sense of who your community is.

I love the idea, by the way. I think it's awesome. I'm just trying to think if we can use it in our language. And I'm gonna try now and build a forum much like any forum, like IndieHackers, same concept and everything. And I wanted people to have a safe place to talk about things. We're not gonna sell any ads. We're not gonna do any banners or nothing. It's ours. We can do whatever we want. And the hopes that people will come and be able to share in different chat rooms and stuff and not necessarily just this group and no one knows you in the other group and so on. And really hopefully building a community. And I have a feeling it will be very hard to start because here in Israel Everybody's very focused on Facebook groups. Looking at Facebook groups, or if people— and I have a feeling that people will start going towards their own websites, same as people here 2 years ago told me newsletter, no one opens a newsletter, who wants an email? And now the craze here is 2 years late, but it's happening. And by the way, I'm having fun writing the emails. My question is, do you think people should monetize it? They should drive that as their business, or some people should just have that as their side hustle supporting the main business?

I think it depends.

I think you did, you did both sides. That's why I'm asking.

Yeah, it depends. It is I think it's really hard to get traction on anything to make it your full-time income. I see a lot of people trying it and failing. These days, I like to think that people need to have trust in you if you're going to build anything. So if you want to start something, build up trust with people. And the way to build up trust is by showing up, it's by having conversations, it's by by, you know, putting content out there, putting tweets, whatever it might be, you know, contributing to Facebook groups or forums, whatever it is. But you need to, um, build up that trust and figure out— but, but by doing that, you end up figuring out what it is you actually need to do. But I think a lot of people want to have it figured out at the beginning, but actually I think people need to go through a process of Just doing stuff and, and, and seeing what happens. Um, that's at least that's, that's how I've always done it.

Interesting. Any, uh, interesting, um, tips you have for people starting out as indie hackers, kind of trying to find their way, except for joining the Indie Hackers, I think, uh, forums and being part Yeah, um, I would try to make friends on the internet.

I think friends on the internet is like probably like the best thing that's out there. Um, and it's hard.

Make sure you show up also, you said.

Yeah, show up. To make friends, you need to show up, right? Um, so you have to show up and, and try to find some people that you, you feel like you identify with and You don't need a lot of friends to make it worthwhile. You can have 5 friends and that's— that, that could be amazing. And it could change your life. 5 friends can massively change your life.

I think, I think that was very good. Definitely. I think it's a great takeaway value. Where can people find you if they're looking for you?

Probably the best place is Twitter. @rosasherry.

Yeah, I found her on Twitter. You should do it. Um, I wanna first of all say a huge thank you, and I really meant it when I said if you ever want to do anything here in Israel, I'll do it. Tell me what you want, I'll try and help with anything. And I'm so happy I reached out. I really enjoy reading your stuff, so thank you for that. Um, and, uh, yeah, it's about making friends I love it. Yeah, I wish you all the best with your new venture, your work, and I have a feeling you'll do some more amazing things in the next couple of years.

I hope so.

Rosie, thank you, thank you so much for being here. So, um, my dear friends, thank you if you've listened so far. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Zavaroness. If you ever need anything, feel free to reach out, and hopefully if you're doing something interesting, you know someone who does something interesting. I would love to talk to them and get some more inspiration like we just had now. Thank you, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye-bye.