Hey there!

Sorry I've been a little behind on the Maker of Habit. Turns out writing and editing a book all by yourself will take up all of your time and burn you out from writing for a little bit. But I'm ramping back up and I'm excited to share David's journey with you today!

Also, before we get into it, I want to share something with you! I put together a Twitter list of all 25 makers who have been featured on Maker of Habit so far and it's awesome. I've been checking it everyday because it helps me feel more connected to the maker community than my normal timeline. I highly recommend giving it a follow.

Alright, now let's get into it!

#026 - David Miranda (@panphora) - If at first you don't succeed, make and make again.

WHY HE'S FEATURED:

• Lost his job in October 2021, and is now indie hacking his way into a job!

• Building Polite Pop in public which looks AWESOME and is launching next week (If you’ve ever regretted annoying your visitors with popups, you’ll want to check out this demo)

• Has built a ton of different products in public over the last 2 years, including:

• The Freelance Rate Calculator, which is the top result on Google for those keywords and gets 1.5k organic visits a month 😍

• Remake, a low-code tool for building web-apps

• Animatize, a free tool for generating animations for your website and got 15.7k website visitors in 2 days after sharing on Hacker News and Twitter

• BuildsInPublic (which he made in 3 hours)

• Var, a way to collaboratively remix the way with others

• All around a great maker who is very open about their journey!

It wasn't David that first caught my eye. It was a little hedgehog that animated across my screen.

In true build in public style, he was demo-ing his newest product, Polite Pop, on Twitter, weeks before he was ready to launch. I thought it was such a fresh, interesting idea I had just had to dig more into David's work and where he was on his journey.

Turns out, David's journey is not far off from my own! He lost his job in October 2021, and rather than jumping right into a job search, he decided to play around with his own ideas first. He's launched a suite of really interesting products over the years, some which had some success, and others he has had to shut down. But that hasn't stopped David. He's up and running again with this newest product and I think it has a lot of potential.

David's also balancing being a dad to an adorable 1-year old, which makes his work output even that much more impressive.

3 Strategies that David leverages in his work:

• 📣 Building in Public - David is crushing the build in public game. He doesn't just share the final version of a feature, or stats about his recent launch, but the real behind the scenes of the building process.

• 🥅 Multiple shots on goal - Rather than sticking with his first idea, David has experimented with a lot of different ideas over the past couple years to see what works and what sticks. Sometimes we can stay married to our ideas or projects for too long, but David seems to know when to move on and try the next thing.

• 🔎 Transparency - David takes transparency to another level. He has a tendency to say what a lot of us are feeling but aren't talking about it.

In terms of habits, I asked David what 3 habits changed his trajectory as a maker.

3 Habits that Changed David's trajectory:

• 🏕 Changing my environment - Want to change? Change your environment. I struggled for years to complete any projects. It wasn't until I quit my job and focused 100% on a project that I managed to complete it. Now, when I want to accomplish something, I first think about who and what I'm surrounded by

• ⛳️ Set a goal before doing anything - Undefined projects and meetings have stolen countless hours of my life. Then I realized the power of setting a single goal for each project/meeting. Now, all my projects and meetings are more focused and more impactful

• 👋 Post the real things that are actually happening to you - When I was starting out, I thought marketing was an extra layer I had to add to everything. But then I started sharing the actual things I was doing/learning. Some people think you have to be someone different online, but it's better to just be you.

Thanks for sharing with us, David! Best of luck on the launch of Polite Pop next week! We'll be here following along.

Follow David on Twitter here 👉 @panphora to stay updated on the launch!

And be sure to follow the Maker of Habit Twitter list to stay updated on all the cool work of our past makers too.

Build new habits + stick with them

Looking to build some new habits? Harold is a quirky text-messaging bot that helps you build new habits with one text message a day.

You can use Harold to build habits like Trecia for example:

• Did you learn something new today?

• Did you tweet a thoughtful question that interests your target audience?

You'll be surprised what can happen with just 1 text message each day.

Psst. I wrote a book!

The Honest Guide to Indie Making is everything I learned when I went full-time on my side project.

You can check it out here.