My journey building <a href="https://www.FindPlugins.ai" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">FindPlugins.ai</a>, a discovery tool for ChatGPT plugins. Learn how Next.js, MongoDB Atlas, Mongoose, Chakra UI, and TailwindCSS came together to form the ideal tech stack.

Building FindPlugins.ai

Loyalty programs are stuck in the past. What if your points were actual tokens? Trade them, swap them, maybe even sell them –  it's blockchain's next big move. Customers gain power, companies gain data, and loyalty starts to look way more appealing. I see the future of rewards being minted on a blockchain.

Blockchain: Rethinking Customer Loyalty

Here's a blog post of my Cockpunch NFT AI Art submission. I used my own NFT (#2017) as the starting point...

Cockpunch AI Art Competition

It’s important for Indie Hackers looking to build micro-saas products to have a reliable tech stack that they feel comfortable with. Here’s the tech stack that I currently use to prototype new projects quickly…

How I Prototype SaaS Apps Quickly

After 36 years on this planet, I'm finally willing to admit that I'm a builder, not an entrepreneur... It's time to change all that.

Time to evolve from builder to entrepreneur...

Five weeks. That’s all that’s left in 2024.
This plan isn’t about perfection—it’s about action. Commit, simplify, build, launch, and iterate. By the end, you won’t just have an idea; you’ll have progress.
Stop waiting. Start now.

A 5-Week Plan to Go from Side Hustler to Solopreneur

“If you’re not scared, you’re not taking a chance. And if you’re not taking a chance, what the hell are you doing?” – Ted Mosby An atomic essay on pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone...

If You’re Not Scared, You’re Not Growing

Ideas don’t spread evenly.
Everett Rogers figured this out and called it the Diffusion of Innovations. It’s the pattern of how new ideas and technologies move through society.
Here’s how it works...

The Rhythm of Innovation

Solopreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint. The journey can feel daunting, and it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the distance between where you are and where you want to be.
But progress isn’t measured by giant leaps—it’s found in the little steps forward...

The Power of Small Wins

Perfectionism paralyzes progress. While building Trendy.so, I learned that waiting for "perfect" nearly stopped  me from launching altogether. By shipping early, I opened the door to real feedback, iteration, and growth.  Progress isn’t about being flawless—it’s about starting, learning, and improving along the way. Done is always better than perfect.

Done is Better Than Perfect

Here's my week 2 update for my nights&weekends project, <a href="https://bit.ly/trendy-so" target="_blank">trendy.so</a>. This week I setup an automated CRON job to generate the news stories, built the login & user preference views, and I'm about to finish the daily newsletter service.

trendy.so - nights&weekends week 2 update

I'm kicking off the new year by revisiting Rob Walling's "stair-step approach" to solopreneurship.

My Stair Step Plan for 2024

We spent the weekend painting and remodeling our bedroom. Click the link to see the before and after...

Bedroom Remodel

As the new year rolls in, I always find myself getting pumped up for a fresh start and a new set of goals. It's the perfect time for solopreneurs like us to sketch out our learning and growth plans. In the ever-changing, fast-paced world of solopreneurship, keeping up means you need more than tech smarts. You've got to have that entrepreneurial spirit, a good grasp of business, and be ready to bring your innovative ideas to life.

12 Essential Reads for Aspiring Tech Solopreneurs

Curiosity is both the gift and the burden of entrepreneurship...

FOCUS

When talking to friends about getting started in web3, setting up a wallet is often the first confusing step. Here's an overview of why they are so important...

The Power of Web3 Wallets

Gather round everyone! It’s story time… Today I’m going to share an embarrassing story about the time I created a ton of video content and then deleted it all because I was self-conscious and embarrassed that others would judge me.

That time I wasted a month of my life trying to fit in...

With the new year upon us, I've decided to use this arbitrary date boundary as an excuse to force myself to experiment with some new technologies. As a result, I've decided to start a little <a href='https://twitter.com/search?q=%23buildinpublic' target='_blank' rel='noreferrer nofollow'>#BuildInPublic</a> challenge for myself that I'm calling <a href='https://12in21.com' target='_blank' rel='noreferrer nofollow'>12 in 21</a>.

#12in21

Similar to creating a website, starting a podcast requires that you have a hosting service to serve up your audio files. A lot of people I talk to, who are interested in starting a podcast, don't realize this extra step. I think a lot of the time they just assume that iTunes acts as the "YouTube of podcasts" and has you upload your audio files directly.

What I love about Transistor.fm 💛

As I gear up for some big things in 2021, I wanted to create a centralized portfolio website with links out to all of my various side-projects. I really like seeing people share those spreadsheets with a timeline of all their side projects, and I think I'll probably still do something like that here, but I also wanted a standalone website to really showcase the quality of my projects. My goal is to one day for a company around this SchoonLabs branding, and use it as an umbrella company over my various endeavours. Until then, check out some of the exciting projects I'm working on!

Introducing SchoonLabs.com

This perfectly sums up my life, and I have had such a hard time explaining that to people...&mdash; Dan Schoonmaker (@DanSchoonmaker) <a href="https://twitter.com/DanSchoonmaker/status/1331606435508129798?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 25, 2020</a>

I want to be an inventor

We're Buying A House!

I'm just glad I got to live long enough to experience some Star Wars-type technology

Elon's Rocket Launch

Some friends recently reached out to me for help creating an MVP (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">minimum viable product</a>) for a software idea they had to help families share information. I spent a bunch of time this Saturday hacking away at some new features for that app. Coming soon at <a href="https://trusting.co" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://Trusting.co</a>!

Hacking away on Trusting.co over the weekend...

View from my brand new <a href="https://twitter.com/AustinFC" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@AustinFC</a>season tickets!!Section 133, Row 13, Seats 19 & 20!!I am so pumped for next summer 💚

Austin FC Season Tickets

Over the weekend I randomly re-opened this project I started back in February 2019, and I'm pretty sure it's the coolest thing I've ever made.Now I have so much regret that I stopped working on it...

Bott

"Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat." - <a href="https://twitter.com/kevin2kelly" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@kevin2kelly</a>h/t <a href="https://twitter.com/JamesClear" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@JamesClear</a>

Friends are better than money

Found some free time this Saturday to finally sit down and really focus on adding some new features to <a href="https://casts.co" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Casts.co</a>. Thought it would be fun to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BuildInPublic" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">#BuildInPublic</a> and record myself while coding. It turns out, I look very angry while coding haha.

Everyday I'm Hustlin'

This "Contact Tracing" trend is ramping up quickly! There seems to be a lot of support for it by governments around the world. Is this a short-term saving grace, and possibly a long-term privacy liability? The <a href="https://LivingSecurity.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Living Security</a> team and I wanted to put together a quick video explaining exactly what Contact Tracing is, and open it up to a broader discussion. ❓ I'm curious, what does everyone think about it ❓ Blog Post - <a href="https://bit.ly/human-risk-management" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">LivingSecurity.com/blogs/contact-tracing</a>

Living Security Intelligence Update - Contact Tracing

So excited to announce our Series A funding round! We&#39;ve partnered with some amazing investors and will continue to deliver the solutions you need for your <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SecurityAwareness?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SecurityAwareness</a> program! <a href="https://t.co/Pjtt6spxYC">https://t.co/Pjtt6spxYC</a></div><div><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ExperienceSecurity?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ExperienceSecurity</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LivingSecurity?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#LivingSecurity</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Cybersecurity?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Cybersecurity</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/training?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#training</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SeriesA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SeriesA</a>&mdash; Living Security (@Living_Security) <a href="https://twitter.com/Living_Security/status/1247919863819091968?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 8, 2020</a>

@Living_Security - Series A announcement

I wish I could explain to you the feeling you get when your podcast shows up on your own podcasting app...

SchoonCast on Clipps

Brilliance Blindspot -- "You’ve been doing something for so long that it comes so naturally to you that you can’t even remember what it feels like to not know how to do it. You just take it for granted." - <a href='https://twitter.com/ramit' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer'>@Ramit</a> 🙌 💡

Brilliance Blindspot

Rather than learning all about the podcasting ecosystem by myself in a bubble, I want to share what I've learned the last couple of days so others who just getting started won't need to start at square one as well. This led me to the idea of creating an "open source" list of podcasting tools and services for others to use as an initial starting point.

CasterKit - A resource for podcasters

I finally took the leap and recorded my first podcast episode! Now, as a result of having more free time on my hands this week, I've started researching podcasting tools & resources to help me with the next steps...

Podcasting Tech Stack

What's that? You've never heard of Hacktober? Me either! Well, that is until yesterday, October 1st. Let's investigate this new internet phenomenon together...

Happy Hacktober

Had an amazing time at our <a class="hashtag" href="https://twitter.com/Living_Security" target="blank">@Living_Security</a> team build event yesterday at <a class="hashtag" href="https://twitter.com/k1speed" target="_blank">@K1Speed</a>! Love getting to work with this awesome group of people!

K1 Speed - Living Security

It's hard enough to build a successful project, don't continue to sabotage your progress by constantly starting from scratch.

Allow Your Progress To Compound

Missed field goal returned for a TD... so ready for football to be back <a class="hashtag" href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Madden?src=hashtag_click" target="_blank">#Madden</a>

Madden Tweet

I often have a difficult time trying to describe my dream position for this stage of my career. Over the last 3 years I've managed, through a series of fortunate breaks, to put myself in the closest position I could convince my employer to put me. But when I have a discussion with someone about what I "want" to do, I typically just fallback to some boring cookie-cutter industry-wide title such as "frontend engineer". But what if I want to be so much more than that? This is why I'm going to start working towards a new job title for myself, a "product engineer".

I'm a Product Engineer

After 6.5 amazing years, today is my last day working for Lithium Technologies / Khoros. I've had an amazing time working here, with truly some of the smartest, and hardest working people in the world. I can't even begin to describe how much I've grown and managed to learn from them all over the years.

The start of a new chapter!

With the world's growing interest in virtual assistants, I've been wanting to experiment with more audio-based technologies. This is how my original idea for my clip.ps project got started. I wanted to build something where users could upload audio clips, splice them together, and tell their story.

ClippPlayer & React-Waves

With Mother’s Day just around the corner, I thought it would be cool to use it as an excuse to try out 1-800-Flower‘s much talked about new Facebook chatbot. As a new feature to Facebook Messenger, my expectations weren’t too high because we all know it takes some time to iron out the kinks. After this first experience, my fears of an imminent robot apocalypse were quickly calmed...

My (rough) first experience with Facebook chatbots

My friend Chris came down to Austin for New Years eve and we went to <a href="https://www.k1speed.com" target="_blank">K1 Speed</a> for some go-kart racing. I just recently received my new Google Glasses in, and thought it would be cool to record a first-person perspective of our races. Here's how it came out...

Go Kart Racing w/ Google Glass

Recorded this at the recent Timeflies concert at <a href="https://www.emosaustin.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Emo's</a> here in Austin, TX. The concert was everything I expected it to be and more. Here's a sick video of Cal doing a Texas themed freestyle...

Timeflies (Texas freestyle)

Recorded this at the recent Timeflies concert at <a href="https://www.emosaustin.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Emo's</a> here in Austin, TX. Here's a video of a little acoustic freestyle set they did...

All Posts

Building FindPlugins.ai

Blockchain: Rethinking Customer Loyalty

Cockpunch AI Art Competition

How I Prototype SaaS Apps Quickly

Time to evolve from builder to entrepreneur...