Week 9: OPC Practice & Indie Developer Without Coding Skills

MRR Goal: $1000.00 Income This Week: $0

Accomplishments This Week

1. Cap4u almost ready for App Store submission, over 95% done;
2. Designed the Cap4u product website;
3. Automated drafting for the WeChat public account;
4. Updated harness-coding;
5. Went fishing with my daughter.

Reflections

A Bit Discouraged

I planned to release the MVP product in three weeks, and now it’s the fifth week and still not submitted to the App Store.

There’ve been some so-called technical challenges (like performance efficiency optimization for voice-to-text), and also some catching up in the tech area (like understanding basic GitHub and Git concepts, such as local directories, branches, workspaces, etc.).

I know I’m of average intelligence. Compared to those smart folks, I’m definitely slower. Sometimes this makes me feel discouraged for not being fast enough, but my strength lies in persistence.

Challenge of Making Short Videos

This is definitely a challenge for me. I’m not confident in many areas about myself, like appearance, voice, Mandarin skills, and my personality — I’m not very willing to put myself out there.

Another challenge, or rather an attempt I’m making, is:

1. In the past, I really resisted short and mini videos. Although I occasionally watch them, it’s mostly for entertainment.
2. Long videos on YouTube often serve as tutorials (for example, car repairs or solving everyday problems); meanwhile, short videos, for me, are more about instant gratification.

But, the truth is, common people’s attention is there, and that’s unavoidable. So I want to start trying to make some short videos.

My basic idea for short videos is to turn my written records into short videos. To this end, I’ve designed a skill: after I finish writing an article, it’ll extract the key information and essence from the article and generate a spoken script incorporating best practices from the short video field.

I’ll be doing voice-overs, stay tuned.

Slight Adjustments in Life

1. About twice, I spent my morning devotional and meditation in my closet;
2. About three times, I went out to walk the dog, giving me a short break from AI coding.

In the AI era, the challenges brought by my living environment and technology, especially the challenges to my faith, far exceed those of previous eras, like the impact of smartphones, mobile internet, or games. I know that many friends around me are facing the same challenges.

Once during a sermon, the pastor asked everyone: “Do you realize that you have a constant helper in your life? When you speak to Him, He grants you wisdom, gives you guidance, and becomes your ever-ready help. Do you know who this is?”

The pastor wanted to lead people to think about God, but when I was asked this question, my first reaction was: This is AI. I once joked that since ChatGPT came around, Christians pray less because you don’t need to pray for a lot of questions, you just ask AI.

This is indeed a big challenge.

On the Right Path

Despite the slow progress in product development, I’m also working on building a personal IP on social media. This is as important as developing products. Developing products and managing distribution/growth simultaneously is almost a consensus in the OPC (One Person Company) field. This is a step forward for me.

Because right now, product development is clearly urgent and important, while building an IP is important but not urgent and takes a long time to see results. I haven’t lowered the priority of this important but not urgent task, which I think is a correct decision.

(Learning to cheer myself on 😄)