Similarly, when I was a kid, naturally I would often decide I really wanted a certain toy. My mother would usually tell me that if I still wanted that toy in a few weeks, “maybe” I would get it.

This was clever, because I would usually forget about it. But sometimes, my desire would persist. Sometimes, I would maybe get the toy.

This advice is useful not only in love and toys, but also in ideas.

If you love an idea, set it free. If it comes back, you’re onto something.

What’s fueling your idea?

Excitement for an idea can be very powerful. It gives you the momentum to pursue that idea. But sometimes – eventually – the pursuit of that idea is no longer fueled by your love for that idea. It’s fueled by all of the things that have been put in place in order to pursue that idea.

Investors, employees, leases for office space, and TechCrunch articles can have dangerously seductive qualities. They can make you feel powerful, give you the sense that your idea has merit, and that you’re spending your precious moments in a worthwhile pursuit.

But these things carve grooves that only get deeper. They can create false forces that guide your actions.

You thought you were your own boss, but now you’re a marionette.

This can go on for much longer than the life of that idea. Not only are you in deep, but now other people are as well. They’re spending their precious moments in pursuit of your idea. The marriage persists, but the love is gone.

If you love your idea, let it go

The next time you get really excited about an idea, whether it’s the healthcare portal that is going to revolutionize the industry, or that from now on you’re going to drink 8 glasses of water a day, do yourself a favor: pursue it just a little bit.

Try it on for awhile. Daydream about it with a Moleskine and a glass of wine.

Then let it go. If it comes back to you, you may be onto something.

Ideas take time to grow. You do, too.

About 5 years ago, I decided to do a little talk to teach developers about design. It was called “Design for the Coder’s Mind.”

So many things weren’t quite right about it: the name I chose didn’t have punch, I was just okay at expressing my ideas, and my presentation skills were also just okay. Most importantly, not many developers were interested in learning about design.

It should have been harder to let go of that idea. I had loved design as long as I could remember.

I might have decided to continue working on that idea. To plow through the things I wasn’t so good at, and to persevere through the lack of market interest.

But I was still thirsty to try other things. So I did the presentation, and let the idea go.

Two years passed before I gave that idea more thought. Lots of things happened not only to bring the idea back to me, but to improve my chances of pursuing that idea successfully. I wrote about other things on my blog and got better at writing and expressing my thoughts; and I messed around in improv and sketch writing classes at Second City, which improved my presentation skills. I freelanced just enough to support myself while I built passive revenue streams.

I was pursuing lots of other ideas: I had a roommate-meeting service, I built a food photo-sharing app with some friends, and I started making YouTube videos. I was learning how to better articulate myself, how to create things that were appealing, and how to navigate my own curiosity.

While I was doing these other things, though, my idea was maturing. More people started sharing my presentation, and more people were asking me about learning design.

When love is strong, it’s easy

One day, the idea came back to me in full force, and I was ready. The name didn’t have enough punch: “Design for Hackers” it would be. The concepts needed that special something: a compelling topic to open the mind to deeper ideas.

I wrote one blog post and had a book deal.

When the idea came back to me, I was ready. Ready for the writing, the marketing, the speaking.

When I was asked to drop everything to write a book, there wasn’t much to drop. I was free to pursue it, and the idea had persisted enough that I felt as if I had no choice but to do so.

Most importantly, the idea was now ready. People wanted this and there was little question it would succeed. Everything fell into place.

I’ve always operated this way somehow, but I’ve learned to trust it. Heck, this blog post sat in draft form for months until I woke up this morning – the concepts suddenly clear in my head – and finished it.

But it will work for you, too. The mind can’t be open to making creative connections when it’s too focused on producing a result. Like Archimedes’s famous bath, you need to wait for your Eureka moment.

If you love your idea, let it go.

If you love your idea, let it go http://t.co/LzV8U22w3j

— David Kadavy (@kadavy) June 13, 2013

To me, my business is just a bunch of stuff. There are a bunch of cells in my body that work together to turn stuff into things, sometimes for reasons I understand, sometimes for reasons I don’t. (“Reasons” are just stuff anyway)

But, to my accountant, my business is a bunch of things: dollars, time periods – months, quarters, years. All of the dollar things that I spend and make have to go into these things, and also into category things.

To the government, my business is its own thing. It’s even an “S-Corp” type of thing. There is stuff inside the thing, and stuff outside the thing. You don’t want to mix stuff outside the thing with stuff inside the thing. That’s bad.

The world moves forward when people turn stuff into things. It’s all just a nebulous collection of atoms, but they comprise “customers,” “markets,” and “technology.” You have to turn stuff – whether it’s raw materials, bits of code, or even thoughts – into things to create a “product.”

I really just want to do stuff all day, but no, I have to turn that stuff into things. That is, if I want to keep doing stuff.

My thoughts are just a bunch of stuff, and I have to turn them into word things. Then I package them up into something with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Stuff doesn’t have bounds like that, but things – like this blog post – always do.

One time, I even turned my thought stuff into a book thing. All of my thought stuff had to be put into word things, into paragraph things, into chapter things, and so on, like a bunch of Russian dolls inside one big Russian doll.

The cool part of turning stuff into things is that when you’re done people can put the thing in their brain with all of the other stuff in there and it gets mixed all together and sometimes even turns into other things. That’s how the thing you made came to be anyway: you mixed things in with your stuff and then it became things again.

It’s kind of brilliant, because people can then say they made that thing, and they can get things for that: “recognition,” “money,” “cred(it).” This is part of the fuel that gets people to turn stuff into things.

The challenging thing about this system is that some stuff is way easier to turn into things. Numbers, for example, they already are things. Since the number things represent the dollar things that represent all of the stuff, it only follows that people who control the number things representing dollar things get more dollar things.

Then there’s the other stuff that’s pretty easy to turn into things: like house things, car things, and ham sandwich things.

At some point in time, each of these was brilliantly transformed from stuff to thing. Now it’s just stuff that’s easy to make things out of. Some of it is important, but not that interesting.

Then there’s big piles of other things that are just made of stuff: degree things, marriage things, insurance plan things to protect your stuff things from unexpected appendicitis things. Then all of the law things that make things out of all of these stuff things; and the public office things of the people things that turn stuff things into law things.

Damn, there’s lots of things in the world. Things are easy to see. Things command your attention. You have to be looking hard to really see the stuff.

There’s the challenge: with all of these things in front of you, how can you ever see the stuff well enough to make things out of it?

You have to see the things for the stuff that they are. Call their bluff things! You have to see the stuff for the things it could become!

Most people, once they have things in front of them, it’s game over. They’ll smack their alarm thing, drink their coffee thing in their car thing, go to the job thing, then watch the TV thing or comment on the Facebook thing. It’s so easy.

But it’s also so hard. These things are robbing them of their stuff.

If you learn to see the things for stuff and the stuff for things, suddenly the things won’t overpower the stuff so much. The supposedly urgent email thing from the boss thing, and the oh-my-god-buy-this-stuff-thing-or-you’re-ugly-fat-and-stupid-thing on the TV thing will just look silly.

Suddenly the what’s-this-thought stuff will become the look-at-it-this-way thing, and the what’s-this-feeling stuff will become the here’s-what-I’ll-do thing. Suddenly the line between stuff and things starts to blur.

This is how really interesting things are made. When people start to see stuff: untapped desires, cultural trends, the very thoughts in their heads, human interactions, etc., and realize they can make things out of them: groundbreaking mobile devices, musical acts, books, social networks, and other stuff things that you can’t even dream of.

Don’t let all of the things make you lose sight of the stuff. The stuff, well, that’s the good stuff.

Go out there and make things out of stuff: kadavy.net/blog/posts/stu…

— David Kadavy (@kadavy) April 24, 2013

Let the fact that this is the first and only guest post in the 8-year history of kadavy.net be testament to how much his energy and passion for his craft have personally influenced me over the years. If you’re an entrepreneur, I think you’ll find inspiration in his story of making the most of his resources, however limited they may be. –David

Here’s Joe:

Everyone feels they have a good idea for a movie. I have, since as long as I could remember. Also, like everyone else, I never pursued it, because I thought it was impossible. The film business is a magical land that can’t be broken into, so I never entertained the thought past occasionally saying “they should make a movie like…”.

The Source of My Inspiration: Terrible Horror Films

My eventual path to making a film, unfortunately, doesn’t start with inspiration from an amazing film, but from working in a tiny Blockbuster Video (translation: only mainstream movies – no artistic indie films here), surrounded by crap. I was a night manager there for too long, and passed the time sifting through the terribly mediocre selection of bad films.

There’s an endless sea of big action films, obnoxious rom-coms, and poorly-produced direct to DVD horror films. I’m obsessed with horror, so I watched just about every one of these terrible, 4th rate horror trash movies: Draniac, King of the Ants, Bloody Murder 1 and 2, Python… all laughably bad and not worth Googling.

The amusement I got from their poor quality was quickly replaced by depression. How the hell did this garbage get made?

I spent that year cooped up at Blockbuster thinking about the awesome films I wanted to make, fueled by my distaste for the terrible films I was surrounded by.

Around this time 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead were released. Seeing these films was a revelation. Here were two drastically different movies, technically about the same thing, both with low budgets. What blew me away was their inventiveness and originality in a film genre that most people had written off as being over.

I felt it deeply. I could do something original and cool, like these guys. Or, at least, better than the garbage I was seeing at Blockbuster. But that confidence would quickly erode away when I started thinking about how to actually make a movie.

Making a Feature-Length Film Seemed Impossible

Here’s what I thought I needed to make a feature film, and also the reasons I didn’t finally do it for several more years:

1. MONEY: This is the big one. I figured I would have to get at least hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, to pay for a crew, actors, location permits, lots of equipment, etc..
2. Time: I thought I would have to quit my job, or at least go on a 9 month hiatus, to focus on the film full-time. Perhaps I could edit and have a part time job, but I though a majority of the production had to be done full time, without “distractions.”
3. Lots of equipment and a big crew: I would also need to hire a 10+ person crew for the production and who knows how many more for the post production aspect. I’d have to provide all the equipment for them. We’d be working 8 hour days for months, so again, I’d need big bucks to pay them, insure them, rent them equipment and feed them.
4. Knowledge: I would hav to be an expert on everything related to every aspect of the production. Why would the lighting guy listen to me if I didn’t know the difference between certain light bulbs or set ups? He wouldn’t! No one would! They would all pick on me on my own film set! Yeesh, I projected a lot of hostility on this imaginary crew I never hired.
5. Luck: Even if I could get all of the above things, the best I could hope for is getting the movie into big time film festivals and selling it. At this point I’d be in so much debt that I’d need to score a big pay day or the debt noose around my neck would strangle my financial future to death.

All of this was easily enough to scare me out of even attempting to make a feature-length film. But, now several years later, I finally created a feature-length film. Here’s how I figured it out.

Starting Small. Starting Short.

Since I had none of the “essentials” for making a movie, I devised a plan to start off making my own shorts, and learn every aspect of filmmaking that way. I cut my teeth writing my own shorts, borrowing camera equipment, and enlisting my friends to dedicate their time to my various projects.

I made short after short, refining my filmmaking abilities. Many of the shorts I made were downright awful. But, it didn’t matter; making crappy films was better than making no films, because:

• I learned how to make films on a budget: That budget being $0. This lead to lots of creative solutions, like writing shorts around resources I had for free. One short, Scatterbrained!, is me and my friend Tim talking around an overhead projector. Why? We had a night to shoot something, an old projector my mom had sitting in her classroom, and I could print transparencies at work for free. Or Wheelchair Werewolf, which looks like an old movie trailer because I didn’t have great sound equipment or special effects so I made the video’s inevitable poor quality one of it’s strongest features. Also, There’s a place in my hometown where residents can rent, for free, wheelchairs, walkers, canes, etc. for sick family members. I told them I needed a wheelchair for my “sick grandma” for the weekend. Don’t judge me.
• I learned how to work with actors: This is an often-overlooked, but critical, part of filmmaking. Actors are people: they have lives and will be late, or have trouble following instructions. Also, actors are actors, so they want to bring their own ideas and collaborate with the director on their part and not just show up and do line readings.
• I learned who I work well with: Much like entrepreneurs do “founder dating,” making these shorts was a form of “dating.” I started to really understand who I wanted to work with more in the future.
• I learned from my mistakes: I got chased out of a public place by the police. I filmed next to a running refrigerator (leading to terrible audio). Fortunately, I learned these things on small projects that could be adapted more nimbly, instead of having these problems lead to a tangle of other problems on a bigger project.

Here’s the before mentioned Wheelchair Werewolf. One of my bigger successes. It was accepted into several horror and comedy film fests, and won 1st place at the Abertoir Film Festival in Wales. Like I mentioned before, the style and look of the film was born from me accepting my technical limitations at the time and using them to my advantage.

The Challenges

It’s a good thing that I started small with these shorts, because they came with great challenges of their own, that would have been insurmountably frustrating had I met them on a bigger project, like a feature-length film.

Trying to “make it” in a non-industry town

One of the glaring challenges that I faced in trying to become a filmmaker was simply where I lived. Being in Chicago I had no access to the film industry. Not that being in LA or New York entitles people to anything, but in Chicago there’s no one looking to discover or meet with new talent. This is why most actors and filmmakers leave. Over the past 10 years some of the biggest films have been shot in Chicago, but still the industry doesn’t feel the need to look for talent other than in its own backyard.

So, why didn’t I move to LA? Because I shouldn’t have to.

The way I saw it, moving to LA would just set me back 8 years. I would have no equipment, no locations, and no personnel that I was comfortable working with. Additionally, everyone in LA is trying the same thing I am, so now everyone’s too busy working on their own films. It seemed a move would actually limit my resources.

Since my goal is to be a self-sufficient filmmaker – rather than an actor, writer, grip, or whatever, I didn’t see the point of spending 10 to 15 years trying to work my way up through industry bureaucracy. Why do that when I could stay in Chicago and work on my craft, using the resources I already had?

Skipping Film School

Another thing that went through my head as I was trying to become a filmmaker was similar to the debate you hear a lot of in the startup world: “Do I really need to go to school?” Or, in my case, “do I really need to go to film school?” For me, I decided the answer was “no.”

Every person I knew that attend film school regretted it. It’s would be incredibly expensive, it would take a very long time, and most importantly it would rob me of the very thing I was trying to do: become a self-sufficient filmmaker.

Like any other artistic or creative endeavor, you only learn by doing, and I was able to get my shorts made on my own. The only issue was to make “great” shorts. To do so I needed the experience and to keep working at it. I didn’t need to pay through the nose hoping I’d get secret tips from a film professor (who doesn’t even make films) or working alongside students who are all fighting for the same limited resource the film school promised them upon admission.

Getting equipment

The very first short I worked on was a collaboration with a couple of friends of mine who happened to work for a video production company. We were lucky enough that their co-workers agreed to help out by shooting and editing the short with company equipment.

Here, I'm using an office chair – pushed by an actor – instead of an expensive dolly.

While it was nice for them to help, I learned from the experience that if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself. Having three people involved muddled the creative vision. Additionally, the crew members were helping out on their free time, with their equipment, and they wanted creative input as well. Everyone involved was talented and had the best intentions, but 5 guys pulling one project in 5 directions doesn’t work. Thank goodness it was just a short film, because it was a shitfest. You’ll never see that film.

Just about everyone is no more than 2 degrees away from a camera owner who’s also an aspiring filmmaker of some sort. They’re dying to shoot some stuff, as long as you ask. So, that’s what I did.

My friend Ed volunteered to shoot my next few films, and eventually he was comfortable enough with letting me borrow the camera on my own. These days, he has a new camera, and lets me borrow his old one whenever I want. Many filmmakers would scoff at the idea of using an old camera, but I always relished the opportunity. For me, it’s about the story, not the film quality.

Getting locations

Getting locations was approached in a similar fashion: I looked at what I had for free first, confirmed I could use them, then wrote something that took place there. For instance Sassy Cops was shot primarily at the office Ed works at, or Action City Bathroom was filmed entirely in, you guessed it: my bathroom. Other great locations were found right outside my door and all around Chicago. Frosty Heart and Chinese Star Cop both use the city as a backdrop.

Locations still fell through, in which case I would change up the script to accommodate locations I had. Stakeout, was originally meant to take place in a record store and had nothing to do with cops. The record store I was going to film in kept dragging their feet, so I changed the setting: put them in a car and gave it the opening line “Man, I hate stakeouts.” Even named it “Stakeout” to drive that point home. Notice, the stakeout element of the short is minor, it’s all about the inane conversation about the name of the band they’re listening to.

Getting actors

Actors pitch in as crew. Actor Rick Stockel does sound, since he's not in this scene.

Since I have been a part of the Chicago comedy scene for well over 7 years, I’m surrounded by aspiring actors and comedians. So, getting actors was pretty easy for me. I would make it a point to use a new actor in some capacity for each short. To my above points about learning to work with actors and “dating,” I wanted to have a large pool to draw from in the future. So, having new actors come in for an hour or two was a great way to get a feel for how they work.

Although my friends are talented and nice, they’re still human beings with lives. I didn’t want to force or guilt them into dedicating a lot of their already rare free time. I purposely would write lots of small parts in my shorts, something we could knock out in a few hours. They were helping for free, so the quicker I could get them in and out, the better. Plus, having more people in my shorts meant there were more people who were incentivized to share them once they were done.

SXSW Film: The Big Break – In My Thinking

After several years of making shorts, I finally got into my first “real” film festival at SXSW, in 2009. I was under the impression that being in a fest like SXSW would cause my view counts to soar, get attention across the film community causing a tidal wave of new fans, and would gain the notice of the industry in the form of managers, producers, or investors for a bigger project. Getting acceptance to a big time festival would surely be the crowning achievement that would propel me to the next level, or so I thought.

A Tale of Two Festivals: SXSW Film vs. Interactive

To my surprise, the film festival was a bust. Instead of the industry people I thought would be at my screening, it was instead attended by other filmmakers, who seemed to look down on my short because it was low-budget, and low-production-value.

Trying to share ideas with other filmmakers only added to my confusion and disappointment:

“If you don’t mind my asking, what was your budget?”

“I do mind you asking.”

I would have been thrilled to answer questions like these, had the roles been reversed, but the culture of the film festival was not one of sharing.

It seemed every other filmmaker at SXSW went to a film school and/or lived in an industry town, and had come with the notion of being discovered too. But unlike me, they were carrying around a big amount of film related debt and a bigger sense of entitlement.

If I went through film school and was now living in LA, I would have walked around the fest with a chip on my shoulder too. It’s sad. Even sadder, I got the sense that the SXSW film festival was considered “settling” for a lot of these filmmakers. It’s not a festival that usually sells films.

I realized this route of “being discovered” and working my way through a traditional system did not work. I was surrounded by people waiting to get picked from a crowd of virtually millions, all wanting and doing the exact same thing.

A culture of sharing

This photo pretty much sums up SXSW Interactive for me.

Luckily, since David was also at SXSW, I spent a majority of the time with people in the interactive portion, and the experience greatly shaped my filmmaking attitude and life today. At the same festival, intermixed with depressing self-entitled filmmakers, was a passionate group of young entrepreneurs who shared my ideas on pursuing your passion with limited resources, and finding creative ways to reach your goals. Everyone I met was so excited and happy, talking about new ideas and ways of distribution. I was meeting people who were successful at the thing I was trying to do: reach people.

They had a business, I had my movies. As I told people why I was at the fest, the conversations would sometimes reach a fever pitch about the possibilities of content online.

One thing that kept coming up was “why don’t you make a full-length movie?” Up until this point I had convinced myself it was impossible. But this was the first time I had to be accountable for this attitude, and I didn’t have a good answer.

If someone could build a business with no money, start small, and grow it to be a job they love, why couldn’t I do the same?

My business would be my movies.

Making a Lean Movie

My time at SXSW lead to an epiphany: I already had everything I need to make a movie. I was already untangling my mind – taking notes inside of a book cover – on my flight back from Austin.

I was looking at it all wrong, looking at it from the angle of all the things I didn’t have. Before, I was floundering around, with no real direction, held back by vague fears of a leap I never fully thought through. After seeing how these entrepreneurs had used their resources, I went through my list of imaginary roadblocks and dismantled them one by one:

1. No money: Make the film with the resources I have now. Write a film that can be made for free.
2. No time: Instead of making a big, 6 month or year commitment, work on it during the nights and weekends, around my current life, and let it take as long as it takes.
3. No fancy equipment / no crew: Make it with borrowed equipment, whatever I could get my hands on. Like with the shorts, be a one man crew. Ask production friends to help out – sparingly – as to not burn them out. Same with the cast: don’t use anyone more than a few days unless they agree to work that much ahead of time.
4. No knowledge: The only way to learn how to do it right is to do it wrong first. I knew this process would be an invaluable experience for making movies. I would get first hand experience in every aspect of filmmaking.
5. No luck: If I make it for free, I won’t have to worry about selling it. Furthermore, I can share it generously online. I can use new tactics for getting people to see it, tactics traditional filmmakers tied to debt could not. I could use the movie as a “calling card” to make more connections with fans online, use it as a tool to build a bigger audience.

I would make this film the exact same way I made my shorts. I had been making shorts for 5 years, but instead of 3 more years worth of random shorts, why not make a full-length movie?

Getting money for my movie

I raised $2,000 using Kickstarter. This is, of course, nothing compared to some of the more recent success stories. To be honest, I could have done the film without it, but raising money on Kickstarter gave me some important side-benefits:

• A built-in fan base: The little amount of money each backer donated was enough to keep her paying attention without being concerned about her investment. This built-in fan base also gave me all of the following:
• A feedback loop: I knew I would be releasing parts of the film as they were completed (more on that later), so I automatically had people to show that content to. Based upon their reactions to pieces of the film, I could make tweaks as I worked.
• A marketing team: Each backer got Executive Producer credit – and many of them were in the film (for reasons I’ll talk about in a bit). So, they were incentivized to tell others about the movie. Did I mention that David is an Executive Producer? Mwahahahaha!
• Personal accountability: This was a big and daunting project, but having those backers helped me realize that this was a real thing people actually cared about, and made it something I couldn’t back out of. I didn’t want to let my backers down.

Just like my short films helped me get better at filmmaking, marketing to my Kickstarter backers also taught me about how to treat a fan base. I gave out fun things that would hopefully give the backers more incentive to share and talk about the movie: digital downloads, posters, producer credits, voice-mail messages… Stuff related to the movie we could give away and not spend a lot of money on but the backers would feel they were part of something.

I used the meager Kickstarter funds for these filmmaking necessities:

• DV Tapes
• Parking (for city shoots)
• Props and wardrobe (all from thrift stores)
• A Vimeo account to host the movie

All of the short films I made cost me nearly nothing, and with the Kickstarter backers, I had ample funds to make this entire full-length film using $0 of my own money.

Marketing while making

The movie I made is called “Master of Inventions,” and it’s about the world’s worst inventor. From the beginning, I thought about how this subject would help me break down the production of the movie into more manageable chunks, while making it easier to market online:

• “Invention” commercials: Since the movie is about an inventor, it would naturally include many of his terrible inventions. So, I could release complete “commercials,” and produce them just as I did my shorts. The commercials could help me build a following – and my MailChimp email list – as I made the movie.
• Digestible scenes: I made sure to write some scenes that could stand by themselves, because I knew I would be releasing them during production. Since I was producing scenes in short spurts (with a small number of actors, at a particular location, completed in one day), production was nimble enough to accomplish this.
• Lots of actors: I had worked with tons of actors over the previous 5 years of making shorts. So, besides the few major parts there were in the film, I also had plenty of smaller parts. Since shooting would be sporadic – mostly on weekends – I wrote parts small enough that an actor could come in for a few hours, do their part, and their commitment would be over. The added benefit to this was that more actors = more people sharing the movie once it’s done.
• Outtakes: With shooting being sporadic, (for example, the lead actor absent-mindedly shaved his head and put our production on hiatus for 5 months) I would have to use the time in between shoots to edit and market the movie. So, in addition to the invention “commercials,” I also released outtakes of the film.

This more iterative approach to making a film – which would be shunned by traditional filmmakers – not only helped me produce and market the movie on an extremely tight budget; but it also kept me motivated throughout production.

The positive feedback kept people talking about the movie and served as leverage to get more people on board. The frequent releases of material showed the Kickstarter investors I didn’t take the money and run. Most importantly, their support gave me the energy and inspiration to keep moving.

Here’s an example of one of the outtakes I released during production:

I knew this film was not going to be of perfect quality. But utilizing the skills I developed from all the shorts: losing actors, props, location, or whatever didn’t faze me too much. I could deal with everything that was thrown my way.

My Minimum Viable Movie is finally complete!

Now the movie is finished, and I present it to you for free! It’s already a success because it’s completed, it looks how I want it to look, the response from the fans has been overwhelmingly positive, and most of all I can share it with the world for free and not worry about paying off a debt. I’ve proven it’s possible – and to future fans and investors, Master of Inventions is the proof I know how to make a full-length film, and market it to the world. If this is what I did with $2,000 imagine what I could do with $2,000,000. Yooooo!

Check out the first 5 minutes above, and if you’re hooked:

• watch the full movie at masterofinventions.com
• Sign up for my email list: get bonus features, a welcome-pack collection of my short films, and to stay up-to-date with my future filmmaking endeavors
• Keep up with my blog, where I share my experiences in film making and marketing

Watch Master of Inventions: Win a Copy of Design for Hackers!

I’m actually one of many, many, actors in this film – I even have *one* line. Watch Master of Inventions, and email my line to david at kadavy dot net (include “MOI” in the subject line). The 10th person to email my line to me will win a copy of my book, Design for Hackers. –David

P.S. I may be biased, but I really think it’s a great movie. Like any Minimum Viable Product, the production value is definitely rough around the edges (which Joe will openly admit), but Joe has proven that he is a great storyteller – and hilarious, as always.

Best-selling author, David Kadavy!

I was aware that yesterday Design for Hackers ranked as highly as #18 overall on Amazon, but I hadn’t really been called this before – especially not from one of the world’s largest publishers. This was for real.

Even Chris was surprised to be saying this. Weeks earlier, as I prepared for the launch, I asked him what was the ultimate, maximum thing I could possibly expect to achieve with this book.

“Usually, we try to go for top 100 on the Computers & Internet category.”

When I asked, timidly, whether I should go for NYTimes best-seller status, he said it was “not possible.”

Just a “Technology Book”

As I understand it, the reason was that Design for Hackers is what is referred to as a “technology book,” in the publishing industry. Everything about these books is designed to get them out quickly enough that they aren’t out-of-date by the time they are released. The timeline is breakneck fast (I had 6 months to write – long by “technology book” standards), and (maybe because of this?) the price tends to be much higher (around $40 cover price) than your typical paperback (around $15). Plus, the audience is much, much smaller.

Somehow, on launch day, my book easily burned through #1 in the Computers & Internet category, all of the way to #18 overall on Amazon (currently #32). Author Central says there are over 8,000,000 books being sold on Amazon. #18. Wow.

Design for Hackers blew past many mainstream titles: Go the F**ck to Sleep, Dick Cheney’s In My Time, and even past Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Body. (It’s only sort of coincidental that “4 Hours” is part of the title of this post. I really admire, and have learned a lot, from Tim’s work. This book couldn’t have happened without many things I learned from The 4-Hour Work Week)

This despite nearly everything that usually comes along with a mainstream book release. I can hardly count the number of things that weren’t exactly how it “should” be done about this launch:

• The release came earlier than I had expected, so I didn’t have time for the standard “pre-order push.” This helps determine how many books are printed and shipped, and helps with NYTimes best-seller status, so it was purportedly not that critical.
• Probably somewhat due to the above, Amazon ran completely out-of-stock within about an hour. It currently says it “Usually ships within 7 to 13 days.” Who buys a book that is that back-ordered!? Apparently, you do, and I thank you for that. (my publisher has informed me that they are working with Amazon on getting the book back in stock)
• There were ZERO reviews on the Amazon page. The book timeline has been fast, and this book is a pretty in-depth read, so there wasn’t time to get genuine reviews up. (There is currently a review up from an early reader)
• Most physical bookstores don’t have the book on their shelves. Not that there are many left. But, the other day I wanted to drop by my local Barnes & Noble to sign some books, only to find out they still weren’t in stock.

Not to mention that I have no publicist, no literary agent, and no staff.

So, how did this happen?

I’m not going to pretend this is a complete mystery just for the sake of appeal. I worked with what experience, resources, and relationships I had to do the best launch I could. I, of course, want this book to do very, very well. I talked with friends like Noah Kagan (AppSumo), and Ramit Sethi (NYTimes best-selling author of I Will Teach You to be Rich) to see what advice they had. I made sure to keep an email list, and cherish its subscribers, and to try to coordinate a launch in which I get lots of people to all buy my book at once.

There are a few things that I can posit (besides a hunger for design literacy) contributed to such an amazingly successful launch: my email list, Hacker News, and Kickstarter.

The email list

This group of folks has by far had the most impact (though most of them come from Hacker News, which I’ll talk about next). I’ve built it up since I announced the book deal. I tried to give them content as it came along, though honestly, I didn’t get as much out as I had planned because the book-writing was just too intense. I’ve had plenty of unsubscribes, but many have stuck with me along the way. I’ve gotten to know many of them, gotten their feedback and support, and learned a lot about what they need to learn about design.

So, after posting on my blog, I emailed these amazing people and explained to them my situation: my book is out > I want it to do well on Amazon > please buy it.

Hacker News

Incredibly, there were not one, but two links related to Design for Hackers on the front page of Hacker News all day yesterday: the blog post (which wasn’t a gigantic surprise), but even the Amazon link (which was a huge surprise). The blog post alone got over 10,000 views yesterday. 10,000 views on a post that basically says “hey, here’s my book, please buy it?”

Since the Amazon link actually performed better on Hacker News (and is now on the Amazon best-seller list), I can only imagine it got much more traffic.

Kickstarter

A couple of weeks ago, I also had a successful Kickstarter campaign. Part of the reason I couldn’t coordinate a “pre-launch” was because it took nearly a month just to get my campaign accepted to Kickstarter. It got rejected twice, but I kept working on it. Honestly, it turned out much better because of it.

The Kickstarter campaign had a number of benefits. I also suspect it may have had the killer benefit:

• I got to practice launching. I don’t have a ton of experience launching things (other than blog posts). It was good practice in trying to convey what I had to offer strongly enough that 138 people – many whom I didn’t know before – took out their wallets and gave me money to tour the U.S..
• It built awareness. I was amazed at how much people rallied around the Kickstarter campaign. I’m sure many people who hadn’t heard of my book before did because of it’s success.
• It built my confidence. When you spend most of your day behind a computer, in your apartment by yourself, you sometimes have no idea if anyone really cares about what you’re producing. It’s always nice to have positive feedback and be reassured that there will be some people who are interested in what you’re offering.

And the killer benefit?

I ordered the books for Kickstarter backers, in succession, on Amazon yesterday. It may surprise you that it was actually much easier (and just as cost-effective) to just send the books to my Kickstarter backers through my Amazon Prime account. Yup, I paid Amazon’s full price for each of them. One side-benefit was Kickstarter uses Amazon Payments, so I got to use my balance from that to buy the books (so, I didn’t have to pay Amazon Payments fees on that portion). I knew I was going to be busy with the launch, so I hired a contractor to do the ordering for me.

Not a ton of orders. “Only” 70 books. They were doing it so fast that Amazon’s fraud department called to make sure the activity was authorized. “Are you buying things today?” “Yes, I most certainly am.”

So, while my blog post was going viral, and many of you were kindly buying my books, my Kickstarter backers were also having their books ordered for them. This may have helped with the ranking.

I say may because Amazon’s rankings are a big mystery. The only thing I really know about them is that they are updated very rapidly – probably by the hour.

I was told through a couple of sources that if I ordered all of the books from the same account that the orders wouldn’t affect my ranking. Other sources said that it might. I suppose that it probably did.

That’s It?

Of course, these things didn’t materialize out of thin air. This is just what I did to make the best of what I had at hand. I still like to think that people have enjoyed my writing thus far around the Design for Hackers topic, and that they are generally amazingly hungry to learn more about design. It’s still incredible to me that something as seemingly mundane as fonts and colors is of such interest to so many people.

How far can this go?

In my conversation with my publisher this morning, he conceded that now, yes, it may be possible to reach the NYTimes best-seller list. Even with the lack of reviews, and out-of-stock woes, this little “technology book” could hit the mainstream. Could you imagine that?

Imagine a discussion on NPR about the hidden meanings of different fonts.

Imagine Conan O’Brien talking about design literacy.

Imagine Oprah talking about white space. (even if she hadn’t retired, this, admittedly, would be unlikely, but you get the idea.)

Furthermore, imagine the mainstream media using the word “hacker” for what it really means: someone with a thirst for solving problems, a passion for sharing, and a vision to reinvent his or her world.

Maybe I’m just dreaming, but you’ve already exceeded my dreams. So, thank you for that.

Sure, many sites grow much bigger, and much faster, but I think the value of slow, steady, growth like this is often overlooked, and is at the core of Being Yourself for a Living. Here’s how its done:

Stay true to yourself

This sounds incredibly trite and cheesy, but its really true. Its easy to get distracted by the latest trends, and spiral into writing useless “top 10″ posts about how to create the coolest Twitter background, but you have to follow your passions, interest, and experiences. The things that are really hot at any given point do have plenty of importance, but nothing is more important to focus upon than the unique perspective that you can provide. Fortunately, there’s only one you, complete with things that have happened to you, things you think about, and things you can’t help but do. While you are unique, you’re probably just unique enough that there are plenty of people who are interested in the same things that you are, and are interested in what you have to say.

Be patient, be committed

I was talking to an elderly man in my neighborhood the other day. He has been living in Lincoln Park, Chicago since he bought his house more than 50 years ago. A lot has changed in the neighborhood since then, and – as you can imagine – his house is worth much more than when he purchased it (even when adjusted for inflation).

It’s stories like these that have caused many people to seek real estate as an investment – often to their own financial peril. “God only made so much dirt, and there will always be more people,” they say. The problem is, the time to lay claim to your piece of dirt has mostly passed, and the way we interact with information has altered the way we interact with “dirt.” But information – and experiences – are not like dirt. There are always more.

What is 10 years, really, in the grand scheme of your life? If it takes you 10 years to build something great, there’s plenty more life to live; and if you’ve stayed true to yourself, you’ve had a lot of fun building it. Many entrepreneurs dream of starting a company, giving up most of it in exchange for funding, building said company, and cashing out 3 years later for millions. There is so much fervor around the success stories that have worked this way, sometimes its hard to recognize whether that is, in fact, what you really want from your career and life.

I once wanted this, too; but I can say with certainty today that I no longer do. I don’t love money enough, I’m not interested enough in such bragging rights, to muster enough motivation to put up with what a personal drain I imagine that to be. I don’t know if those are the things that motivate such founders, but I’ve definitely met some for whom money and acheivement are their driving forces. Why would you work so hard on something if you didn’t love it? If you loved it so much, why would you sell it? After 6 years of tinkering around, I’m finally making a very modest living off of the Kadavy, Inc. family. Most of this happened in the last year (I hope to share more about that in future posts). I can’t wait to see what happens in the next 4.

When you’re true to your curiousities, and accept that something will take a long time, you can more easily enjoy the whole process. By using only the resources you have at hand, whatever it is you build is yours the whole way.

Write with SEO in mind

Most posts on kadavy.net have come from answering this question: what do I know that I could teach someone else, and how would they search for it? When I had a lump in my mouth, and agonized over just what it might be, once I finally knew what the issue was, I set out to help inform other people who might be searching for the same thing. Instead of writing about mucoceles (whatever those are), I wrote about mucoceles using the language someone would use to search for them. This experience has paid for its own medical bills and then some. By using SEO best practices, you can make sure the people who are looking for what you have to share – actually find it.

Find an audience

Whatever websites there are that you like to read, those are probably the ones where you can find your audience. The first breakout post for kadavy.net was Eight Life Hacks for Health, Wealth, & Happiness. It was during the budding days of “Lifehacks,” and Lifehacker, naturally was a good place for such content. I thought of the post while in the shower, wrote it and published once I got out of the shower, and sent it in a quick e-mail to Lifehacker, who then published it on their site. I’ve had good luck being covered by Lifehacker a number of times over the years, and lately I’ve had good luck with the (amazing) community on Hacker News. You have to find out where your audience reads, and get in front of their eyeballs – usually, this will take some effort on your part (like sending an e-mail). Guest posts are another great way to reach an audience, though I’ve never actually done one.

Build upon your successes

Not every blog post is of use to a lot of people. Unsurprisingly, not that many people are looking for the meaning behind the movie “swimming pool,” or trying to figure out how to set proper book margins. But, a surprising amount of people have lumps in their mouths, or want to transfer their itunes library. Aside from poking around on Google Keyword Tool, its hard to know if many people will really care about a given blog post; but when you do have a successful post, build upon it. Write related posts, research related keywords and incorporate them into the post, or build a whole separate site. If you have a post that goes viral, try to think about what elements made it interesting to your particular audience. I’ve found that explaining design principles by using popular examples is apparently as much fun for others to read about as it is for me to write about.

So, take it or leave it. I’m not rich. I’m not famous. But, I got 100,000 page views last month and I’m happy about it. It may have taken a long time, but I’m not stopping any time soon. Hopefully some of my advice can help you reach 1,000,000 page views.

It’s called Being Yourself for a Living; and while it’s been done before – but reserved to those of massive celebrity and resources – it’s becoming more feasible for more people each and every day. Technology has brought us channels that allow us to express our unique personalities, to share our unique knowledge and experiences, and to explore our curiousities.

You may have just one burning passion. Some may say that BYFL will be easier for you; but not necessarily. In today’s world, boundless curiousity is once again an asset. You’ll have to know a little HTML at the least. The Renaissance Person is back.

It will start with a blurry flurry of snowflakes. “You lack focus.” But eventually those snowflakes stick together. Technology has brought us feedback mechanisms by which to see just which of those snowflakes stick. You now have a snowball, and the ground upon which you stand has been blanketed. Start rolling!

Hi, my name is Kadavy, Inc.. What is your name?