Newsletter #26: an event for freelance Shopify developers, 37signals's culture and the Psychology of Money

Hi there,

I hope you're feeling good and have nice plans to end the year smoothly.

This is the last edition of the year. I’m taking a 3-week holiday break and will be returning on Thursday, January 11th, 2024.

Today, we're discussing an event for freelance Shopify developers, 37signals's culture and the Psychology of Money.

Let's dive in.

Work

Do you remember how, in the last edition, I wrote that Friday was going to be a big day for me?

Now, it's time to share all the details.

When I started freelancing 4.5 years ago, I took on the habit of contacting every French person who had “Freelance Shopify Developer” as their job title on LinkedIn.

I’d reach out, asking if they'd be interested in a video call to connect, discuss our work and learn from each other. These calls were always pleasant, filled with positive energy. Some of these people became my closest friends: we send each other podcast-long vocals and go in vacations together.

Over the years, I’ve come to know 30+ French freelance Shopify developers. And I quickly noticed something interesting: many of them don’t know each other! But whenever I mention one to another, they’re always eager to connect.

So, on Friday, I organized an event in Paris to gather them all.

They travelled from many cities just for the event. We had people coming from all around France: Angers, Bordeaux, Dijon, Montpellier, Nantes, Paris, Villard-de-Lans. I felt so honored to have them here!

To add a special touch to the evening, I prepared a few surprises:

• I reached out to Shopify France to ask if they could provide some goodies, and they kindly accepted! So I was able to give each participant a personalized tote bag full of Shopify goodies.

• I organized a quiz about Shopify and its French ecosystem. The 3 winners received additional gifts I had personally purchased on Shopify Supply: a hoodie, a tee-shirt and a pair of socks.

• I hired a photographer to capture the event and ensure we’d create unforgettable memories.

It was emotional for me to see all of these great people get together and share laughs.

Thank you all for a wonderful night.

Inspire

Do you know Lenny Rachitsky?

I discovered him thanks to one of my friends, a fellow freelance Shopify developer.

Lenny is a former Product Lead at Airbnb. He now runs a newsletter called Lenny’s newsletter, which counts 500K+ subscribers. It’s a weekly advice column about building a product, driving growth and accelerating your career.

Lenny also runs Lenny’s podcast, where he interviews world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover concrete, actionable and tactical advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.

Two days ago, I watched an episode of this podcast and found it quite inspiring.

It was an interview of Jason Fried, the co-founder and CEO of 37signals, a company I wrote about in edition 15.

In this interesting interview, Jason shares key figures about 37signals:

• 100,000+ customers

• Less than 80 employees

• Profitable for 24 years straight

• Tens of millions in profit (not revenue) each year

Following the excitement that these crazy numbers provoke, Jason details how 37signals operates and presents the company’s culture.

Here are some elements that stuck with me:

• No board, no investor, no plan to go public

• No financial goals, no growth plans, no KPIs

• Every feature is built by a team of 2 people (1 engineer and 1 designer) in a maximum of 6 weeks.

• They established a gut-driven culture where priority is given to what employees feel, not just what they think or what the data seems to indicate.

• “Stay as small as you can for as long as you can. The only thing you can really control is your costs.”

• “No one ever went broke making a profit.”: you can go broke generating revenue (many companies did) but you can’t go broke generating profit.

Learn more by listening to this podcast on Spotify or watching it on YouTube.

Explore

This week, I read the famous book “The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness” written by Morgan Housel and published in 2020.

The goal of this book is to show us that doing well with money is not necessarily about what we know. It's about how we behave. In other words, we don’t make financial decisions based on a spreadsheet, we make them based on our personal history, view of the world, ego, pride, etc.

I really enjoyed this book. It was very interesting for me to see this idea illustrated with true stories and recent studies.

Here are my key takeaways:

• No one is crazy. We make decisions based on our own experiences. What seems crazy to me could seem very logical to someone else, and vice versa.

• The hardest financial skill is getting the goal post to stop moving. Life is easier when you can feel like you have enough and be fine with stopping there.

• The importance of compounding: Warren Buffett made most of his fortune after 60 years old. His skill is investing but his secret is time.

• Getting money is one thing, keeping it is another. Staying wealthy requires frugality and acceptance that part of what you’ve made is attributable to luck. Past successes can’t be relied upon to repeat indefinitely.

• We underestimate how often things fail, which is why we overreact when it happens.

• Some people think they want a fancy watch, a fancy car and a huge house, when really the only thing they want is respect and admiration.

• Wealth is what you don’t see. It’s income not spent. Its value lies in offering you the option to one day purchase more stuff than you could right now.

• Saving does not require a goal of purchasing something specific. You should save for the unexpected.

• Things that have never happened before happen all the time. Don’t rely on investments history as a guide for what is going to happen next. The worst past event is not the worst future event. It can be topped by an even worst one.

• We’re walking around with the illusion that our personal history has just come to an end, that we have just become the person we were always meant to be and will be for the rest of our life. We tend to never learn this lesson. Avoid the extreme end of financial decisions. The more extreme your past decisions were, the more you might regret them in the future.

Learn more about “The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness” on Google.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for reading this edition until the end.

I wish you wonderful holidays surrounded by people you love.

I'll talk to you soon.

Take good care of yourself.

Coralie