Studiolist is the largest search-engine of voiceover recording studios for voiceover artists, audiobook narrators, YouTube creators, and podcasters.
2020 is my last shot to make my 2017-born startup https://studiolist.org profitable* with a „labor budget” of 20h a week and a money budget of 12k EUR (which are all my savings).
*profitable means € 671 / mo, because these are my current fix costs: naii.io/2020/costs in an average month.
I’m documenting everything on YouTube: naii.io/youtube, on my blog (building.studiolist.org) and on Substack: naii.io/studiolist (blog and newsletter).
These are the questions I answered for week 2 in 2020 building Studiolist.org:
How are you doing? 00:23
What did you work on this week? 03:46
What obstacles did you encounter? 08:00 + Solutions 08:53
What do you want to work on next week or even finish? 10:32
Anything else you want to talk about? 12:02
Condition / Constitution / Mood
Generally good (a little stressed by this troublemaker in our theater group)
On the weekend (Jan 4 + 5) I felt a little bit on the edge of being sick with sneezing and feeling cold - maybe that’s why I was sleeping so long (my body was fighting without me noticing it)
And regarding my micro habits mentioned last week:
a little bit of compulsiveness checking emails and social media (so that’s work in progress to reduce this compulsiveness) but I’m still having in mind to clean my email inbox only once a week
Did some meditation
Ate a little bit better
Didn’t go to bed before 11pm but at least managed to get up in the morning hours two/three days
Didn’t go to the studio office but I walked several times outside at least
Didn’t let an 8-hour countdown run but I became more aware of how much time I spend working
Worked on this week
It was a week that felt too short with almost 20 hours of working for the theater group (part-time job?) and in the name of frustrations with tech but still, this is what I worked on and finished:
✅ set up blog - Get Hugo working - Hugo community helped!
✅ set up building.studiolist.org - incl. https (Let’s Encrypt)
✅ try Hugo framework
✅ create MVP - list of all verified studios incl. DataTables | Table plug-in for jQuery and „Implementing A Pure CSS Collapsible”
✅ Signed my first affiliate agreement for Studiolist - with a big global player in the voiceover market. yay ;)
✅ Paid for the 4 bass traps for my studio - this should create an RT60 (reverberation time) of 0.6 seconds. Let’s see how feasible voiceover recordings are in this still empty studio office of mine (only desk and chair are inside right now)
✅ Three new episodes of my Stoic Serenity podcast
Obstacles
Theater group work took a lot of time this week (incl. challenging interactions) - I’m close to 20 hours of work time and 10 hours is the maximum I defined - and I worked on it not only on Tuesday though Tuesday is supposed to be my dedicated theater group day (just to keep things organized)
Lower back feels a little better (probably thanks to my Tabata workout and that I actually left the house several times this week and walked a bit)
Still a rather messed up sleep cycle though I’m (for the most part) following my routine
Solutions
I’m feeling a routine evolving because of my week structure that I defined and it includes to start the day (Mon, Wed, Thu) with at least 2 hours of philosophy
Stretching the night before going to bed helped to relieve the lower back pain
Adding more self-discipline to get into a less messed up sleeping cycle
Yeah, and about the theater group… we’ll have two other people return next week (they are mainly contributing to the script) so that will help to have more positive vibes in the group
Want to work on next week
publish version 0.1 of Studiolist - a simple table that is sortable, searchable, and filterable
design Hugo blog like Substack blog
You can see all my pending todos publicly on WIP.chat: wip.chat/@alexanderkluge/pending.
Anything else?
cool and relaxed breakfast with grandma and ma in a café - fricking expensive as well (but ma paid ^^)
started Tabata (4-minute HIIT workout routine on the home-bike) on Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 20s exercise, 10s rest, 8 reps
read about the ketogenic diet, Bulletproof Diet, and Paul Chek’s no-diet diet
an insightful interview with Mindvalley CEO Vishen Lakhiani on the Blinkist podcast
learned about: Producers HATE ME for Revealing these 10 Secrets (YouTube)
some success with the December email campaign I helped my anime/webcomic artist friend with: she’s now at 6 Patreon supporters and received 3-figure donations from 3 people
BIG MISTAKE I DID ON WEDNESDAY - I got up and directly answered notifications on Trello regarding my theater group (and all of a sudden 4 hours of my important morning time were gone)
started the Harmon Brothers „14-Day Script Writing Challenge” (day 1), the company is known for making great video ads (like Lumē); they’re funny and sell - my role model for This Podcast is Full of Ads
Robert Scobleizer, the tech journalist, added me to one of his Twitter lists - because of my work on Studiolist
learned about a French proverb: „The words that you have not spoken; you are their owner. The words you have spoken, they own you.“ (powerful!)
interactions in the Indie Hackers community
a cool chat with voiceover chap Jon Eric Wagman :)
continued reading Atomic Habits by James Clear
started watching „How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)” - a German Netflix show; pretty good
no client work this week because she (the client) didn’t feel well and it seems that she probably doesn’t want to continue working with me (or least make changes). If that was the case, it would be kind ok because working on Studiolist, working with the theater group, and doing the Stoic philosophy podcast three times a week feels like a good amount of work already. But we’ll see next Monday when we’ll talk.
Take care, and see you next week!
Cheers,
- Alex
Permalink: naii.io/studiolist/2
Week 2: I HATE TECHNOLOGY (but I also love it) - Building Studiolist