Since I discovered the Indie Hacking space in September 2024, I’ve been actively following more or less successful creators. There is one clear motivation for every Indie Hacker : making money. The goals to reach $10k per month, a $500k salary, or a 7-figures valuation are very common. Today, we’re gonna discuss about why these goals are everywhere in the Indie Hacking space, what is the problem with these goals and what are my goals.
These goals are everywhere
From small accounts trying to reach 1k MRR from their side-hustle or bigger ones trying to grow 5 products to 100k MRR, every one seems to have a monetary goal. For a good reason : people can follow your journey by tracking if your MRR increase or decrease. They will be happy when you will win and will help you when you will loose.
I am on a journey to grow 5 products to 100k MRR
— Tibo (@tibo_maker) February 10, 2025
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And people love when you are talking about money: YouTube titles, coworkers’ salary, holidays’ price. The activity does not matter, if you involve money, my ears are all yours. And this is quite cultural. In my country, in France, talking about money is quite taboo. If you earn more than your neighbor, you are bragging and if you earn less, you are complaining, so you don’t talk about money.
And you can start to spot the problem about money here : people use money to compare with each other.
The problem with these goals
People set up these goals to get validation from others. If you reach 1k MRR, people will congratulate you, you will feel validated and you will want to earn 2k MRR to feel even more validated. This is the first problem about : this creates a “vicious circle” where you’ll seek money for validation rather than personal satisfaction.
Talking about personal satisfaction, people sharing their monetary goal are often also sharing what they would do with this money. 99% of the time, it’s about buying expensive cars, 300 square meters house and a dream lifestyle. Even if it’s exciting and a dream for a lot of people (including me), this is not what motivates me.
What are my goals
What motivates me when I wake up is way more internal and way deeper. Even if I dream of having beautiful cars, a big house and an expensive lifestyle with my girlfriend (like my vision board can prove below), this is not enough to be successful.
But your life doesn’t depend on that, you can live without it. This means that in the bad moments, your brain will find excuses rather than feeling oppressed by the need of doing the work. So external motivations are not the right way to find success, in contrast of internal motivations. For example my biggest motivation is to help my parents.
I’m from a poor/middle class family, and now, even if I had the happiest childhood, I feel like it is my duty to help them, to make their lives the easiest possible. And this motivation is much stronger than anything else: you can abandon your pleasure, but you cannot give up making the lives of the one you love easier.
This is why I’m doing all this : building startups, writing blog posts, YouTube videos, … What about you ? Why are you doing all you do ? Is it external or internal ?
Finally…
Even if I told you that external motivations are not the best ones, they are important because you can’t live on other happiness. You need to want cars, houses and lifestyle to have the strength to try harder than anyone else.
So don’t give up you external motivations, but find your internal goals. Ask you these questions :
- What causes are you close to your heart? Hunger in the world, endangered animals, ecology?
- What are the goals of your friend that you wish to grant? A car, a trip, a house?
- Who do you want to help? Your family, your friends, homeless people?
With these internal and external motivations, you’ll always find motivation to reach your goals.