This episode is dedicated to young & versatile Aprilynne Alter, the brains behind the project Tenderfoot that’s gaining pace amongst college students striving to land the best internship opportunities out there.

At the tender age of 22, Aprilynne is a force to reckon with. She worked with all her might towards landing her dream job as a financial analyst on Wallstreet which she thought was her calling from the time she was in 2nd grade. But soon after landing her dream job, it dawned on her that big finance wasn’t where she was meant to be.

So many people are just stuck in places that they don’t enjoy being for too long, because they’re afraid to quit.

When she decided to walk away from her dream job just a few months into it, Aprillynne was at crossroads. What was she going to do with her life? What was she qualified to do? They were all questions that were playing in her head.

But instead of letting this roadblock demotivate her, April set her sights on the multiple creative side projects she already had ongoing. Tenderfoot was one of them!

Listen to the full podcast and hear what she has to say about bringing her startup dream into reality & all the big plans she has set for herself.

Aprilynne’s Book Recommendations:

The Moontide Quartet Series by David Hair

Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks

Where to Find Aprilynne:

Follow her on Twitter: AprilynneA

Find her on LinkedIn: Aprilynne A.

Catch her on YouTube: Aprilynne Alter

Find her on Twitch: aprilynne

Follow her on Instagram: aprilynnealter

Episode Transcript

Intro [00:00:00] 

Welcome to Founder Story. You go to podcast series on breakout startups and the secret heroes behind them. Each week we bring you a fresh new take on leading figures in the start-up landscape, as we deep dive into their startup journeys. 

Desiree [00:00:17]

This episode, we have Aprilynne, the woman behind Tenderfoot. Arpilynn, welcome to the show. 

Aprilynne [00:00:23]

Hi, thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

Desiree  [00:00:25]

How are you doing today?

Aprilynne [00:00:27]

Pretty good so far. 

Desiree[00:00:29]

So, the first question I’m going to fire you is briefly tell us who you are and what did you build? 

Aprilynne [00:00:36]

Yeah. Okay. So I guess I started off again with like my background, I suppose, in on wall street as a financial analyst. That was kind of the goal that I had ever since I was in second grade to get there.

And then once I got there, I realized I hate it here. I realized that I did not like big finance at all. What I thought to be my dream career actually was not fulfilling whatsoever. And. At that point and kind of going into it. I already had a number of different side projects that I was working on. And one of them was Tenderfoot, which is a platform to connect students with internships at startups, with creators, with nonprofits, with crypto projects, or really with any other non-traditional opportunities.

And so after a couple of months at my full-time job on wall street, I decided, you know what, it’s time to quit. So I quit my full-time job, went full-time on my startup and kind of the rest is history. 

Desiree[00:01:24]

Um, so just to touch back into your, because initially you were a financial advisor. Was there like a point where, because from what I understand your story, you already had Tenderfoot as a, like, um, a side project.

And then it was just like, it’s slowly taking over since like how I’m going to slide out and put more time into Tenderfoot into the place like Tenderfoot was taken over. So was there any, and in that question, was there like any particular preparations you had to do? What was your thinking around it? Walk us through that moment. 

Aprilynne [00:01:54]

Yeah. Okay. So, I’d say I started working on Tenderfoot and this was around early March of 2021. Um, that point I’d actually abandoned a previous project that I had before that. And so I was, I had like a couple of days where I was thinking, gosh, I have nothing to do with my time right now because my full-time job will start in April.

Like I can’t just do nothing. I have to be building something. Um, so I really. Thought about like what, uh, what do I think I’m uniquely qualified to do? What do I actually care about? That’s kind of the idea of Tenderfoot it was born, because I thought, okay. Because I was recently a college student. I know what being a college student is like, and I have interned and worked at startups before.

So I know what that experience is. Like, why don’t we just merge those? And so I started working on tenderfoot again in early March. My full-time job was supposed to start in early April. And from that period that also coincided with building an audience on Twitter as well. And I would say like that was probably one of the biggest, probably the biggest factor in me deciding to actually take the plunge and quit my full-time job.

Um, on point I was working on Tenderfoot more and more. Normally by myself with kind of a co-founder that I had at the time, but also just sharing so much of our journey publicly on Twitter. And I was meeting so many new folks from all around the world who are so interested in what I was building with Tenderfoot and asking, you know, when we were going to lunch.

And so as I kept doing more and more work on it and user interviews and kind of the entire process there, I started thinking. Maybe, maybe this is like, I was just felt so much more energized by the work that I was doing on Tenderfoot, versus the work that I was doing at my full-time job at that point, Tenderfoot kind of became like my full-time job.

And I would just do my real job, whatever I could in between whenever I had extra time, um, when it came to the actual decision to quit my job, that was first of all, terrifying. Um, You know, I’m young and like have like an entire career ahead. And I come from like a somewhat Asia background too. So we have these Asian ideals of parents coming in and saying like, oh wait, we want your future to look this way.

And coming in and saying, Hey, actually, let’s scrap all of the dreams that you had for me and do something else that was terrifying. Ultimately. I was actually able to connect with this woman named Lynn Thai. Uh, I found her through the indie hackers podcast actually listened to an episode with her, um, and reached out to her individually because so much of her story resonated with me.

And she sent me some like awesome talks and, uh, episodes and articles, things that she went through and her decision to quit her traditional path, which was medicine. And I went through that and something that really stuck out with me is kind of two main words like phrases. One was life is too short to do something that you don’t love.

I’m like, yeah. Do I really want to spend the next 30 years of my life in a job that I do not love? That sounds even scarier than quitting this job. And the second one was the advice to be the best quitter you’ve ever met. The idea is that so many people are just stuck in places that they don’t enjoy being for too long, because they’re afraid to quit.

And so now be the best quitter you’ve ever met, quit everything, because the more things that you quit, the closer you get to discovering what you actually enjoy doing. Um, and I did all the math and realized that, okay, I can give myself one year to work for myself to see what I can do with it. And if after that one year I was still struggling, I would go and find another job.

Um, probably within startups, no longer in big finance, but yeah, to see what I could do with that one year. 

Desiree[00:05:23]

Wow. I think the question I was, I initially planned with this is would you say that, um, Tenderfoot was born out of the things that you went through prior to working, or was it more of the indie hacker community?

Because from your definition is not necessarily indie hackers, but people who were, people with startups, people who literally, um, bootstrapped into building on startups. So which of the two would you say, what was the birth of Tenderfoot? There we go. 

Aprilynne [00:05:55]

Yeah. Um, it was, it was, it was nothing my own prior experiences.

I was only really introduced to the indie hacker community. Once I started being active on Twitter, which came a little bit later. Um, when it, when it came to the Tenderfoot itself, I was still like too early for me to have met the indie hacker community. At that point, I was just thinking, man, like, What am I actually good at?

What, what value can I actually provide? Because the product that I worked on before Tenderfoot was in the, in the senior care space. And I realized from that, I was like, okay, I can be working on something that I care about, but doesn’t necessarily align with who I am and what my own personal experiences are and what I’m uniquely qualified to do.

And so what is something that really fits not just like fitting a market, but fitting myself as a person that I know that I’m good at. Um, that that’s where the original idea was born. And then everything kind of like after that, in terms of growing, that came from the lean startup model and then as well from the Indie hacker community and realizing, oh, wait building an audience on Twitter. Building a social media presence is one of like the most competitive advantages that you can have in this space, um especially in my own audience, which is targeting on one side students. And on the other side, uh, founders it’s like having a presence on Twitter was huge.

Desiree[00:07:12]

I think with you as well. This is kind of the impression I had because I was like, oh my goodness, she’s so young. But then it’s like, you have that when you use, you start talking, I think to myself, woah there’s a whole, there’s a mindset there. There’s like, you got the it’s either, it is the indie hacker or that’s. I don’t know how to describe it’s like you have this mindset, which is like driven is really mature for your age. And that’s not too bad. Um, so on that note, what I would say is going back to the beginning of Tenderfoot, what how was version zero for Tenderfoot? Was it like just a. A placeholder page. Was it just something basic? Was it like some website? How was it at the beginning? 

Aprilynne [00:07:53]

Yeah, in the very beginning, it was just a placeholder page.

Um, so I was working with our friend at the time. I had kind of like reeled him in by saying like, Hey, please, can you help me build this thing? And he was like, eh, I’m like, okay, don’t worry. It won’t be anything serious. Just like a side project. It’ll be fun. I’ll do all the rest. Just like code this for me please.

He was like, okay. Um, so yeah, at first it was just like a landing page where people could express interest and there were some forms that I guess you would, you would fill out when you said that you were interested on the student’s side, some info about your school year and kind of like what you were interested in, and then on the startup side, more about like where you were at as a company, what your size was kind of like what you were looking for in an intern.

And, and that was it. That was it. 

Desiree [00:08:40]

How is it in terms of growth right now? Is it still the same or is it more now as you’re looking to add more features? 

Aprilynne [00:08:47]

So, there’s like this whole bunch in the middle, I’d say, because that happened for a bit. And then we got a lot of interest in people signing up. And then at that point I did, I connected all the, a lot of user interviews with people who had signed up from Tenderfoot and from people who were just on Twitter as well, went through that and made a couple of them of manual student to start-up internship matches as well.

And then at that point I ended up splitting ways with my co-founder. It was just not a great fit and like where I wanted to take the company. And then he was doing it more as a side project. I did have my eyes set on another co-founder that I really wanted to bring in. I truly felt like he was the best person in the world to build this company with me, but he was it, he was stuck in India.

Um, because this is when, when COVID was raging in India, closed their borders. We were able to have lots of conversations. He’s a dear friend of mine and I was able to bring him on board, but we decided to like wait to continue building Tenderfoot until after he was able to get back into the states, just so we could start at least in the beginning, more in person.

Um, and that was probably one of the best decisions that we could have made because something that happened more recently in which we spent two weeks together in person at his place, just doing Tenderfoot all day long. And it was just magic. Those moments were like sitting on the floor and whiteboarding, and we came up with like an entirely kind of new idea of what Tenderfoot would be in exactly how to build what we wanted to do and exactly how to get there.

Um, so like as much as zoom calls are nice in this day and age, there’s nothing. I think that really can replace the magic of working with someone in person. So at this point, we are currently in the process of building out entirely new landing pages, um, to express kind of the new features that we’re building out.  

So I’m working with a designer right now, working a lot on the copy right now and Akash my co-founder is working in the backend as we speak. 

Desiree [00:10:45]

So, yeah. Um, the question I would ask is where did you get the resources you already touched on the people, um, and the funding to basically support Tenderfoot at the moment.

Aprilynne [00:10:55]

Okay, awesome. So in terms of the tools itself. Um, so far, it’s really just been kind of like what my co-founder and I have been able to talk with each other kind of moving forward when it comes to our landing pages, I’m actually building, uh, taking the dev support away from that, so that he is focused more on building the app and the product itself versus we are outsourcing our website design to a designer.

And the landing page build to a Webflow designer as well. Um, so we were trying to like outsource as much as we can in terms of the landing page built. Cause those are marketing pages and in our opinion, the dev time should not be kind of taken away to work on more marketing-related things. So yeah. In terms of resources overall, I think that the indie hacker community in general has been very helpful.

Um, Just want to kind of in terms of growth, I don’t do any real marketing for Tenderfoot and Tenderfoot’s kind of in like in hibernation mode for a while, even. So we have new signups almost every single day. And the reason for that is just because of the social media presence that I’ve built for myself and kind of mentioning Tenderfoot here and there and just having it pinned to my profile and having so many people more interested in that.

I think that’s pretty much it when it comes to resources and tools. I mean, if we get very, very specific, I can give you like our tech stack and I’m not sure if that’s what you’re interested in. I will say I did teach myself how to use Figma very early on, um, which has been a fantastic tool and being able to design and kind of like see visually where we want the platform to go.

For funding, both my co-founder and I do have like a set budget. I think we have like $10,000 each that we’re willing to spend on outsourcing in the first year. So that’s kind of where most of the funding is kind of going towards is outsourcing to make our lives easier. And we can afford that for the time being.

Um, otherwise we are planning on being bootstrapped for as long as we can. Um, before we feel like we really want the external funding to help get us to the next level. We firmly believe that we can get very, very, very far. Simply just bootstrapped. Um, we don’t really want to bring in the other factors that comes with VC funding until we have our head straight and kind of know where we’re going and where the direction of the company so far.

Desiree[00:13:15]

I definitely agree with you because funny enough, when I heard your story, I was like, I think she’s more. Like your, because people following you for what you’re doing and the fact that you it’s like, if you say that tomorrow, you’re going to become a model. People will be like, yeah, I’m jumping on that. Or tomorrow you decide to like, I’m going to operate. Um, Tenderfoot to a car company will be like in the following that because people are more following you as a person, as an individual because of what you’ve done on Twitter and what you’re building on YouTube. So I, on that, I would say based. Okay, this, because I have a list of questions in your social media mindset.

Let’s start with, um, because you’re, you’re on Twitter. You’re a YouTuber. You’re on Insta? What’s which of the platforms would you say is your favorite and what has been your challenges on them? 

Aprilynne [00:14:05]

Okay. Yeah. And I will add to that too. Like I’m also on Twitch. I Twitch stream sometimes as well. So I like a bunch of different social media platforms that are kind of roiling around here.

Um, for challenges, I’d say. Kind of in terms of like the reason for building this like social media stack as I call it, um, my primary audience, my first audience was on Twitter and building that up and I absolutely adore my Twitter audience. This is my, my favorite audience out of everyone is my Twitter audience because those are the other, indie hackers, other, the other builders.

Those would be other people who are more interested in me for my own journey. Um, as opposed to kind of like the things that I’m creating. Much more personal brand-oriented. Um, so far the challenges on Twitter has been just to keep content up, uh, with everything that I’m doing for YouTube, it’s tough to also like find the energy to create content on Twitter.

But at this point I’m more like in maintenance mode of Twitter, I’m not trying to actively grow my Twitter account anymore. At this point, I’m almost at 13,000 followers on Twitter. I feel like that’s a large enough communities, like feel the network effects of it. I don’t really feel the need to grow it very much more other than just like organically and trying to post every day if I can. 

With YouTube. I could talk about YouTube forever. Um, YouTube is much more recent. I started my YouTube channel eight months ago, but it only really blew up, um, four months ago or five months ago. Uh, And at this point, YouTube is kind of the primary source of my income. Um, but in this YouTube channel, I talk about something that’s completely different from everything else that I’m doing.

I talk about NFTs, um, and there’s kind of like lots of we could get into if we wanted to the reason for why I’m talking about NFTs. When myself, I don’t really care about NFTs as a person. I’m not that interested in them, I believe in the overall technology, but I also believe that 99.9%  of the projects out there will lose all value in the next three to five years. So we can go into that. But the main challenge with YouTube is. Strategically planning this expansion beyond NFT content, to more of the content that I actually care about, which is emboldening people to take nontraditional paths while doing so in a way that does not entirely kill my channel.

Um, because niche shifts within YouTube have to be treated very carefully. Otherwise the algorithm will just be like, Nope, no more views for you. Um, so that’s kind of happening there. With Instagram, I added Instagram because I felt like I should. I’m terrible at posting on Instagram. I never post on Instagram.

It’s awful. Um, it’s just there, but, um, however, Instagram is great for me in terms of. People finding me and DM-ing me. I get most of my inbound communications through Twitter DMS and through Instagram DMS. Um, so I was still tried to monitor my Instagram DM, like at like 30 messages a day from both like Twitter and Instagram.

It’s kind of insane. So that’s kind of, I guess, for the primary purpose of Instagram right now, for me, it’s more of an inbox as opposed to me actually posting and then with Twitch. Finally that’s just for fun. I stream myself gaming, so it really has nothing to do with NFTs nor with building startups, um, potentially trying to like also stream myself building stuff, um, or stream myself, scripting videos, or stream myself copywriting or something else.

We’ll see. But for the time being, it’s just a fun way to chat with community members real time. 

Desiree [00:17:43]

Oh, the juggle in social media. In a nutshell, what I’ll say with you is, um, you actually touched on it. What. What all done. How do you manage the different algorithms in each of the different platforms? 

Aprilynne [00:18:00]

Yeah, the, the, I would say I know far less about Instagram and Twitch than I do YouTube and Twitter.

I know the far, most about YouTube, so with YouTube. I could talk about the YouTube algorithm all day long for that. I really focus on algorithm a lot. Um, most of the content that I create is kind of geared towards the YouTube algorithm and as for like building for people on YouTube. Um, well, the challenge there is that again, I can’t really expand my niche away from NFTs quickly.

I have to do that very slowly because of the YouTube algorithm with Twitter, it’s all about who your audience is. So of course we all know that threads perform better on Twitter than normal tweets do. Um, memes also perform very well, but I’m not funny enough for memes. Um, but people do tend to really look forward to my threads, but.

My audience on Twitter is different from my audience on YouTube. So if I post anything NFT related on YouTube, people love it because anything NFT related on Twitter, even if it’s great content, it just tanks because that’s not what my primary audience on Twitter is. And I’ve done that very intentionally.

I don’t want to get involved with NFT community on Twitter at all. Um, because there’s a lot of toxicity. So on Twitter, it’s more a matter of like trying to tweet consistently make threads when I can, um, and stay away from NFT related content there. 

Desiree [00:19:25]

Okay. Would you ever consider, I don’t know, um, get, getting a team to be in charge of social media or would you always say no social media is going to always be the core of me, 

Aprilynne [00:19:34]

um, when it comes to outsourcing I’ve considered this a lot at this point. So the, the things that I’ve considered outsourcing one was kind of the management of comments and messages, just because I got so many of them. And then also all of the comments that I get on YouTube too. First of all, some of the messages can be very toxic, um, and abusive.

And then also just like the volume of them overall, it’s just a lot to manage. So if I were to outsource, that’s probably the first thing that I would outsource is kind of like inbox and comment management. Um, someone who can go through those, filter them out for me, let me know what I need to reply to, and then maybe reply to them, um, using templates that I put together for them. So that’s probably the first thing that would be outsourced. The second thing would be that that would be outsourced, would be repurposing content across different platforms. So if I have a YouTube video, can we cut that into a short that can also be posted as a reel on Instagram that can also be posted as a video on Twitter?

Um, if I have a video on YouTube can then also be turned into a thread on Twitter. Like what are the other places that we could repurpose the same piece of content? I would probably also have a person for that beyond that. I don’t think I would outsource too much more, especially in the content creation side, um, in terms of new content, because that’s kind of what I enjoy doing, um, to never try to outsource the things that you actually enjoy, uh, to be part of the process. 

Desiree [00:21:06]

Definitely important and, um, going back to Tenderfoot. So is it essentially your first users came from your online presence or did, was there another way that you got through your first users? 

Aprilynne [00:21:18]

Pretty much all of my users have come through our through my personal online presence, which is wild. There have been thousands of signups on our waiting list so far, and they’ve all just come through my personal usually Twitter Some, sometimes other kind of like articles that have been written or podcasts like this that or other things, but for the most part, it’s just been through Twitter, which is insane. 

Desiree [00:21:43]

The next question we have, I would touch on probably if you could go back to your younger self, what piece of advice would you give?

Aprilynne [00:21:53] 

Oh, just like quit, I would say quit. Um, it’s I think overall it’s more kind of the, the courage to be non-traditional to say, look, you don’t have to go into finance. You don’t have to do these things. You don’t. I mean, and like, I’d say, I kind of broadened that out to saying plan less, embrace more chaos into your life.

The the, I,  I’m, a metaphor that I like to use. It’s like in, in chess, you know, like it’s, it’s better to have a bad play than no play, its better to have some sort of direction than have no direction at all. But if you’re like, hyper-focused, I’m like, I’m going to get that weak G7 pawn. I’m going to get that weak G7 pawn and you can put me miss out on like a full-blown king side attack in which can end with a checkmate.

It’s like, you’re really screwing yourself over. You’re doing yourself a disservice by tunneling on like one particular path that you think is right and ignoring all the other opportunities that can spring up while you pursue that path. And if I think about where I am now versus where I’m a year from now, pretty much everything in my life has changed.

I’m living in a different place. I’m friends with very different people. My circles are completely different. I’m doing very different things and I could have even imagined. A year ago. Um, so I would say be much more open, um, don’t focus on your plan so much. Don’t be afraid to just abandon a plan of yours that you had before, because so many incredible opportunities can come out on that path and you have to be ready to take those doors pretty much. 

Desiree [00:23:35]

And on that, I’m glad you said this because it’s touches on to the next question, because one of the things comments you said was you had a very perfectionist, you liked the image for perfection. So how did you get to break in that?

Because that’s quite something because we always want to. Like strive for success and success means there’s no failure. So how is it that you were able to break the mould in and just embrace the chaos? 

Aprilynne [00:24:01]

Part of it was honestly going through therapy.I think that therapy is great, I think more people should go into therapy. Just screw that, that, that, that stigma, if any that that therapy has.  a lot of it did come through some, like, not, not to get like super down deep into this path of where like inner child work and like understanding why I felt the need to be a perfectionist the most of my life. And then after that, it was really kind of the courage to understand and to know that not everybody is going to like you, and that is okay. Um, and, and to know that you can be who you are. And just that, and that is enough. I think as soon as I started showing up as myself and less, so like a mask that I had to put on and less like I need to be this picture perfect model of who I am, what I think success is. And also redefining what I thought success was for myself. Was it money? Was it prestige? Like what involved success and redefining that for myself. Um, I, I was able to really just like get into a much better mindset. And I think like finding a core group a core community of people that I really resonated with, which was this entire online community of indie hackers, which I like never met before in person just connected through Twitter in a way that I could just, that they knew me through my thoughts.

They knew me through my tweets. And that was who I was. I mean, that was just a huge part of really understanding that like, okay, I can be whoever I am and I’m a pretty cool person. And that is enough. Um, and not feel the need to be someone that I’m not.

Desiree [00:25:45 ]

I think in that respect, this is what I would say the world misses. Is that sense of just be you because it’s like, there’s always, especially with social media. It’s that sense of, okay, I’m doing this all I’m paying for this certain level as um, especially thinking it from the sense of like, the people will have the parents that has that old school mentality, you have to go to college, you have to go to university nine to five, and that is their definition of success.

And that’s because that’s their generation. And obviously now we’ve passed by pandemic. We have a massive technology wave, social media. So it’s all these things. Um, changed the definition of success. That’s kind of where I was like, you were the fruits of that now that you didn’t follow that route, you decided to find.

What your inner calling was. And that’s exactly what I say. It’s amazing because this is where you are right now. Um, moving forward to the next question, what would you say? What plans do you have for the future of it? Is it is your thinking what you already mentioned that Tenderfoot is there. But to be continued, where would you say is your thinking at the moment?

Aprilynne [00:26:55]

Oh, there’s so many things planning for that for the future. One is Tenderfoot for sure where we’re making a lot of progress on that. And I’m super excited to get our next versions of the landing page and start building out the app. Um, I’m also creating a content house, so I’m going to be living with, uh, three other content creators, and we’re going to be travelling the world, going to a different country, every three months.

So it’s going to be a completely new experience. I’ve always wanted to travel, but I’ve never really had the chance to do so myself. Um, I was really scared of travelling alone, so it’s a great opportunity to travel, really live in different countries, not just vacation, but live there and being surrounded all the time by other people who are also creating at all times.

Just like a lot of creating cool content with cool people and cool places that’s happening. I’m also just starting to build out a cohort-based course on NFTs with a super awesome person as well. So it’s kind of going on in the side and yeah, that’s kind of, for the most part, the things that I have going on, trying to build out my YouTube channel a little bit more, but also start that transition, that expansion kind of away from NFTs and more towards what I actually want to be talking about.

That’s going to be a full journey. Yeah, that’s kind of the overall journey so far, at least like short term. 

Desiree [00:28:08]

Well, it sounds good. It’s at least you have a plan in the head, but definitely enjoy the journey of what you’re doing. Um, even though you touched on tools, what no code local tools do you depend on daily?

Aprilynne [00:28:24]   

Figma, would probably count in this. Um, I use Figma every single day for literally everything related to visual art and graphics, even things that probably would probably be better, not in Figma. Like I do all my thumbnail designs for YouTube in Figma, just because of how much I love using Figma. Um, so yeah, I use Figma literally every single day for a variety of different things that Figma wasn’t even designed for.

But I love it. 

Desiree [00:28:56]

And the last question I have for you is name three books that’s changed the way that you think 

Aprilynne [00:29:03]

Three books. Okay. Hmm. One would probably be the, uh, uh, moon tide quartet. This is like a series of a fantasy series by David Hare. Um, at this point I read pretty much exclusively fantasy novels. Um, I realized like, Hey, you know what.

I love reading, but I only love reading fantasy and that is okay. I do not have to push myself to read books that I don’t enjoy reading. Um, so that kind of was my first foray into like super high fantasy that I absolutely adored, like, okay, I need to read more of this. So that was also kind of goes with the theme of don’t push yourself to do things that are not, you kind of embrace who you are.

And that book series was like, okay, I love doing this. I’m going to keep doing it. 

Next one is Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks, uh, such a great book. Um, one thing that stuck with me is the idea of like homework for life, um, which is basically every single day, just take like five minutes to write down something that was story worthy about your day.

And the idea is that you start over time collecting your days and you can’t see change in small doses, but over the long period of times, if you’ve collected entire year of different days and memories can see, oh, so that’s what I met that person that would change my life. That’s when I had this idea that would change my life, um, which has been super impactful.

Let’s see a third book. hmm

Desiree [00:30:25]

Well, it can be a podcast if there’s no other, cause I know you’re more listening to podcasts and yeah. 

Aprilynne [00:30:30]

For, for, for podcasts, it’s definitely the indie hackers podcast. Um, I think just hearing stories from people who were similar minded as me was huge, some of the biggest connections, like I first heard of this guy named Ali Abdall YouTuber from that podcast, he was a guest on it.

And that was really what prompted me to think. Wait, maybe I can do YouTube. And now I’m doing YouTube. Lin Tai, I met first through hearing about her on that podcast and she really gave me the courage to literally quit my full-time job. Um, it’s actually incredible kind of the power that podcasts can give to people and hearing other from hearing from others whose stories truly resonate with them.

Desiree [00:31:12]

Then thank you for being here and sharing us with your journey. That is a wrap from us really. 

Aprilynne [00:31:19]

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.

Outro [00:31:23]

Thank you all for tuning in. If you liked the episode, spread the word, share it on your socials. You can follow us on Twitter and Insta for more sneak peeks of what’s to come until next week. Keep on building.

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