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DeveloPassion's Newsletter 205 - Building in Public: The Creator Transition Begins

A newsletter discussing AI, Knowledge Work, Knowledge Management Systems, Zen Productivity, Personal Organization, and everything in between!

Sebastien Dubois

Sebastien Dubois

— 14 min read
DeveloPassion's Newsletter 205 - Building in Public: The Creator Transition Begins
A newsletter discussing AI, Knowledge Work, Knowledge Management Systems, Zen Productivity, Personal Organization, and everything in between!

Hello everyone! I'm Sébastien Dubois, your host. You're receiving this email because you signed up for DeveloPassion's Newsletter. Thank you for being here with me ✨

If you enjoy this, please forward it to your friends 👍. If this email was forwarded to you, then don't forget to subscribe and become a supporter. You can also follow me on X, Bluesky, and Mastodon.

Welcome 

Welcome to all the new readers ❤️

Another week, another newsletter! I hope that you all had a great one 🤩

It's been two intense weeks since my last newsletter (the big 2025 review). I've been heads down building, creating, and... recovering from a padel injury that sent me to the hospital 😅.

Remember how I said in my yearly review that my body was telling me to stop? Well, it got more insistent. First sports session of 2026: padel. Result: strained muscle in my left leg. I could barely walk and had to go to the hospital...

I've been working remotely this week because walking is still quite a challenge... But the positive side is that I was still able to code and work on my new store website ;-)

The body knows. We just need to listen better. I just yet don't know how =)

On a heavier note, we lost another close family member this month. The funeral was on Tuesday. It's hard on morale to lose multiple loved ones in less than a year. But so is life. But the show must go on (or so they say...). We're lucky to have memories to keep them all alive in our hearts ❤️

The big theme of these first weeks of the year? I'm slowly starting to shift my focus to supporting creators through Knowledge Management, sharing my expertise and experience with building a business on the side, and giving a lot more attention to marketing and sales. The pivot I announced in newsletter 204 is officially underway.

Alright, let's gooooo 🚀

This Week's Highlights 

  • 🏪 New Store Website Coming: I'm building my own store website from scratch
  • 💡 Obsidian as an OS: Why Obsidian is more than a note-taking app
  • 🎮 Note Village: A fun experimental Obsidian plugin that turns your notes into a village
  • 🌐 Concepts website: Almost 2K concepts now!
  • 🎥 Two new YouTube videos: Life Tracking and Periodic Reviews with Obsidian
  • 🦵 Personal update: Injured, but still shipping

Before You Go Any Further 

I want to reach more people. Got 20 seconds? Then share the link with one friend/colleague who would benefit from joining us! And of course, don't forget to also mention the Knowii Community ❤️

And if you bought some of my products or courses? Then please leave a rating/review. It really helps a lot ❤️

Knowii News 

New community members joined us recently. If you're reading this: THANK YOU. You're making all this possible. It's wonderful to see the community grow.

Two new Knowledge Explorers workshops happened so far this month, and new ones about AI and Claude/Claude Code are coming soon for Knowledge Builders & Knowledge Masters.

Life Tracking with Obsidian 

Ever tried tracking your health, sleep, or energy levels? It's painful and it's boring.

I built the Life Tracker plugin for Obsidian to solve this exact problem for myself. In this video, I show how to track your life data effortlessly and visualize it beautifully; all inside Obsidian, with full privacy and control.

👉 Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrHwD1QWako

Periodic Reviews and Journaling with Obsidian 

Learn how to implement an effective periodic review and Journaling system. From daily planning to yearly retrospectives, Interstitial Journaling, and my Journal Bases plugin for Obsidian.

This workshop covers:

  • What periodic reviews are and why they matter
  • The concept of interstitial journaling
  • The layered approach: Daily → Weekly → Monthly → Quarterly → Yearly reviews
  • Setting up Obsidian for journaling with the right folder structure
  • Essential plugins and my Journal Bases plugin

👉 Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHdccDohK10

Both videos are free on my YouTube channel! Paid Knowii members get access to deeper workshops (including past recordings and future events), exclusive community discussions, and all my products included in their membership.

The community continues to grow and I'm planning more workshops and events for the coming months. If there's a topic you'd like me to cover, let me know!

Join the Knowii Community: https://store.dsebastien.net/l/knowii

The Lab 🧪 

Building My Own Store Website 

This is a big one. I've been working on this for about two weeks now, and I'm really excited to share what's coming (really really soon!).

The Problem

My current store page on Gumroad (https://store.dsebastien.net) is... limited. Really limited. Gumroad is great for selling digital products (if we put the 10% fees aside), but their store pages don't give me the control I need; far from it. I can't customize the design properly, can't organize products the way I want, can't showcase testimonials effectively, ...

I explored different options. Shopify looked promising at first, but the ecosystem requires buying and paying for many extensions to get all the features I need (testimonials, subscriptions, referrals, affiliate marketing, etc.). Also, limited ways to fully control the storefront itself. Too many constraints, too many costs. Probably not a good idea for me right now.

So I decided to build my own. From scratch. On top of Gumroad for the actual payment processing (since that part works very well).

What I'm Building

The new store website includes:

  • Custom design & branding: Full control over the look and feel. Not limited by templates anymore
  • Fully responsive: Works beautifully on desktop, tablet, and mobile
  • Powerful product organization: Categories, tags, featured products, best value, best sellers, bundles, etc. All organized exactly how I want, and providing various ways to explore
  • Beautiful homepage: Clean design with animations, and my actual sales data is integrated
  • Command palette: Quick navigation à la Obsidian/VS Code. Press Cmd+K (or Ctrl+K) and jump anywhere instantly
  • Testimonials done right: Reviews, ratings, and testimonials properly displayed on product pages AND a dedicated testimonials page
  • Privacy-preserving wishlist: Store your wishlist locally in your browser (no account required). On the wishlist page, you can also generate a shareable link to send your wishlist to someone else (perfect for gift ideas! 🎁)
  • Powerful product pages: Structured using the PAS Framework, and including storytelling elements, media carousels for images and videos, timelines, and a ton more (screenshots below)
  • Newsletter signup integration: Email capture throughout the store
  • Help, FAQ, and support pages: Finally, proper support documentation in one place
  • Powerful SEO and AI SEO support: Because what's the point of a beautiful store if nobody can find it?

👀 Want a sneak peek?

The test version is already live! Check it out here: https://testcf.store.dsebastien.net

Knowledge Forge - Sébastien Dubois
Courses, Systems & Tools for Knowledge Workers and Creators. Build your personal knowledge system and boost your productivity.
Knowledge ForgeSébastien Dubois

Browse around, explore the product pages, check out the testimonials section, add things to your wishlist. I'd love to hear your feedback!

The official launch at https://store.dsebastien.net is coming very soon, with a special discount to celebrate 🎉
I'll let you know once it's there.

Here are a few screenshots (for posterity)

Homepage & Navigation

The homepage welcomes visitors with a clean, animated hero section:

Featured products are highlighted front and center:

The command palette lets you navigate anywhere instantly with Cmd+K:

A clean footer with all the important links:

Browsing & Discovery

Navigate around easily:

Browse by categories to find exactly what you need:

Or filter by tags for more granular discovery.

Product Pages

Each product page starts with a hero section featuring real stats/reviews:

Media carousels showcase images and videos:

Click to maximize and see the full detail:

Video embeds are integrated directly into product pages at various locations:

Clear pricing tiers and variants for products with multiple options, making it easy to compare offers:

Key benefits are highlighted clearly:

What's included in each product, laid out visually:

Timeline explaining what results to expect:

Storytelling Components

Product pages include various structured storytelling elements:

For example, the origin story explains why the product exists:

And those storytelling elements come in different shapes and forms:

Honest pros and cons to set the right expectations:

Solution sections with color-coded highlights (thanks for the idea Sofia!):

Testimonials

Actual customer testimonials displayed on each product page:

Also with success stories highlighted:

A dedicated testimonials page showcasing all reviews:

More testimonials as you scroll (and click on to see the full product page):

Wishlist

Save products to your wishlist (stored locally, no account needed):

Share your wishlist with others via a unique link:

Help & Support

A comprehensive FAQ section for each product (as well as a general FAQ page:

And a TON more things. I really can't wait to LAUNCH this. I'm just busy with the last adjustments.

Concepts Website: Almost 2K Concepts! 

The concepts website keeps growing! I've been adding tons of new concepts over the past few weeks, and we're now approaching 2,000 concepts 🎉

If you haven't checked it out yet, head over to https://concepts.dsebastien.net

It's a free, searchable knowledge base covering Knowledge Management, productivity, AI, personal development, mental models, and much more. Each concept is a bite-sized explanation you can quickly scan and learn from.

Perfect for when you encounter a term you're not familiar with, or when you want to explore new ideas. Oh, and it's open source!

Note Village: A Fun Obsidian Plugin Experiment 

Sometimes you just need to build something fun. And the Note Village plugin for Obsidian I've created yesterday on a whim is exactly that.

What if your notes were... characters in a village? What if you could "talk" to them and see them walk around in a game-like environment?

I've been experimenting with this idea yesterday evening, and it's turning into something pretty fun and interesting. It's a gamification layer on top of your Obsidian vault. Your notes become villagers. They have personalities based on their content. You can interact with them.

Is it useful? Maybe. Is it fun? Absolutely 🎮

Here's the evolution over just a few hours:

The fun part is that not only do notes "come alive", but you can also chat with those (thanks to AI). Basically, the content if the note is used as a starting point for the conversation. And conversations are persisted in the vault. So it can actually be useful to explore ideas further. For instance, I had a conversation with Mr Abraham Maslow about his life that taught me a few things:

This is VERY experimental (and it will probably remain that way), but I had fun building it.

Other Updates 

I'm super psyched about the results of my last promotions. The end of year promotion generated $500+ revenue, brought new paid members to the Knowii Community, ...

I've also decided to increase the price of the AI Ghostwriter Guide (from $19.99 to $49.99) and the price of the Obsidian Starter Kit (from $49.99 to $129.99). It's a pricing experiment more than anything, but I think it better corresponds to the value of those offers.

I've also decided to upgrade my Claude subscription to the "Max" tier. I was hitting the ceiling too often.

Lastly, I've also released a new version of my Obsidian plugin template: https://github.com/dsebastien/obsidian-plugin-template and also released a "manual" mode to my Dataview Serializer plugin for Obsidian.

Obsidian: A Markdown-Based Operating System 

Building Note Village came from a realization I had a few days back and that is now crystal clear to me: Obsidian is a Markdown-based operating system.

Most people think of Obsidian as a note-taking app. A really good one, sure, but still "just" a note-taking app.

It's actually so much more than that.

Thanks to Obsidian's API and plugin architecture (i.e., what enables developers to add new features), the only limit is your imagination. Think about what I just showed you with Note Village:

  • I'm running a game inside Obsidian
  • Every NPC in that game is actually a note in my vault
  • I can have AI-powered conversations with those NPCs
  • The game can read and understand note contents
  • And it could do so much more!

In fact, nothing stops me from taking this much further:

  • Conversations that improve notes: Every chat I have with an NPC could automatically refine and expand the underlying note's content
  • AI agents that take action: I could ask an NPC to "go check my mailbox and list my most urgent emails", and I could make that work quite easily
  • Automated workflows: "Add this feature to my store website" or "Create a draft for my next newsletter" or "Find all notes I haven't touched in 6 months and suggest which ones to archive"
  • ...

The notes become living entities that can act on my behalf. My knowledge base transforms from a static repository into an active assistant.

This is what excites me about Obsidian's future. It's not competing with Notion or Apple Notes. It's already a platform; an operating system for knowledge work where Markdown files are the universal substrate and plugins are the applications. File over app principle for the win!

The store website I'm building? The concepts website? My AI Assistant? They all connect back to my Obsidian vault. Everything flows through those Markdown files.

Obsidian isn't just where I take notes. It's where I think, plan, create, and increasingly, where I execute.

And we're just scratching the surface of what's possible.

And I'm going to help more creators realize that Obsidian is really the perfect command center for them!

Building in Public: The Creator Transition 

As I mentioned in newsletter 204, I'm shifting my focus from "PKM for Knowledge Workers" (too broad IMHO) to "Content & Knowledge Systems for Creators."

And I've starting laying the groundwork:

  • Content strategy refinement: I've been thinking deeply about what creators actually need. Not just another productivity tool, but systems that help them create consistently without burning out
  • Marketing mindset shift: I'm finally giving marketing and sales the attention they deserve. The store website is part of this. I need to present my products (much) better
  • Creator-focused content: The articles I published (on tagging systems and creative momentum) are directly aimed at helping creators build better systems. And that's just a start

The goal for 2026 remains the same: default-alive business with $10K/month in revenue. And I believe serving creators is the path to get there.

If you're a creator, whether you write newsletters, create courses, build products, or share knowledge in any form, I want to hear from you. What are your biggest struggles? What would help you create more consistently?

Reply to this email. I read everything.

Weekly Challenge 

This week's challenge: Document your content creation process.

Take 15 minutes to write down exactly how you go from idea to published content. What are the steps? Where do ideas get stuck? What takes the longest?

You can't optimize what you don't understand. And most creators have never actually mapped out their process.

Bonus points: Share it in the Knowii Community and get feedback from other creators.

Latest Articles 

The Tag System That Finally Made Sense for Me 

From perfectionism paralysis to discovery freedom.

👉 Read it: https://www.dsebastien.net/the-tag-system-that-finally-made-sense-for-me

Creative Momentum: Why Most Creators Fail Before They Even Start 

Inspiration follows action, not the other way around. Here's how to build creative momentum even when you don't feel like creating.

👉 Read it: https://www.dsebastien.net/creative-momentum-why-most-creators-fail-before-they-even-start

Quotes of the Week 

Inspiration follows action, not the other way around. Momentum creates inspiration
The world's most effective knowledge workers and leaders aren't necessarily smarter than everyone else. They just have systems for capturing, organizing, and retrieving knowledge that multiply their natural abilities
Making money online is not that hard. The key ingredients are community, consistency, persistence, and patience
Freedom is the destination, Indie Hacking is the way
Progress is the engine of motivation

PKM / Thinking / Learning 

AI 

That's it for today! ✨

About Sébastien

I'm Sébastien Dubois, and I'm on a mission to help knowledge workers escape information overload. After 20+ years in IT and seeing too many brilliant minds drowning in digital chaos, I've decided to help people build systems that actually work. Through the Knowii Community, my courses, products & services and my Website, I share practical and battle-tested systems. You can follow me on X 🐦 and on BlueSky 🦋.


I am an author, founder, and coach. I write books and articles about Knowledge Work, Personal Knowledge Management, Note-taking, Lifelong Learning, Personal Organization, and Zen Productivity. I also craft lovely digital products.



If you want to follow my work, then become a member and join our community.


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