What's up, everyone?

This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you are listening to the IndieHackers podcast.

On this show, I talked to the founders of profitable internet businesses, and I try to get a sense of what it's like to be in their shoes.

How do they get to where they are today?

How do they make decisions, both at their companies and in their personal lives, and what makes their businesses tick? And the goal here, as always, is so that all of us can learn to build our own online businesses. Today, I'm talking to Christy Lawrence, the creator of an online software business called Plan. Christy, welcome to the NDACCH podcast, and thank you so much for joining me. Good morning.

Good morning.

No problem.

It's great to be here. It's great to be here interviewing you as well. You are full of energy. It's like 8.30 there in Sydney. I am approaching the end of the day in San Francisco. I'm one of those really annoying, annoying people that wakes up. It's stupid o'clock to start work. You're going to have to keep me awake.

So let's talk about plan.

I actually didn't know very much about your business at all until I sat down to prepare for this interview.

I won't judge you. Okay, great. Somehow you've flown completely under my radar, I think probably

because I'm barely on Instagram at all. But after looking at what you've done, I think everything you're doing and what you've achieved is amazing. So tell us a little bit about plan. What is it? Why do people use it? And how is it that you ended up building this business? I'm going to go reverse order of those questions. So the reason that I built it was that I was working in corporate advertising. And I am an illustrator. I'd love to come home and I

would illustrate at night and I started to put my work on Instagram and I started to make a little bit

of money and I was like, ooh, there's something in here. And my friends would ask me, what are you doing?

And I started consulting and I started that kind of started to take over my life a little bit.

And then I actually got the flu and the flu virus

went into my brain and it destroyed my vestibular function. So I lost the use of my balance and I

couldn't see and my entire mobility was pretty much gone for like a year. Wow. So yeah, it was pretty

horrible. I fell down a flight of stairs and crack my kneecaps. And that was when I was like, okay, Christy, you're probably going to have to be at home

and look after yourself now.

Yeah. But I was always one of those high achievers. So I continued to just kind of be at home and paint and draw to get me through, you know, being a mobile and the depression that comes with that. So I put my work on Instagram and then I was like, oh, I can subsidize the income that I'm now losing.

And I started making even more money. So I put my work on Instagram and then I was like, oh, I can, you know, subsidize the income that I'm now losing.

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