always something new

i absolutely love the bittersweet pain that comes from difficult situations testing your belief systems.

this last week took me through a lot more complex, mentally draining work, and was a beautiful chance to test how well i would do with still applying the “everything is easy” principle i mentioned last week…

while that certainly didn’t feel easy in the moment, it was so worth it… i am about to complete my javascript module and very shortly be on my way to even more complex shtuffffff.

so for all of you still with me here… welcome back to week 27 of the unicorn founder, there’s some fun stuff coming up that i am investigating and experimenting with

today’s menu:
→ the coding journey
→ youtube
→ podcasting
→ brain-food

THE CODING JOURNEY

this week

this week was a lot of theory,
and the projects that came after the weather app were all involved in focusing specifically on functions, without time being given to building an interface that displayed those functions working.

so for the weather app:
i needed to use a weather app api to retrieve specific data for a user-inputted city somewhere in the world, retrieve and store that info, and display it on the page as seen below:

onwards from that i built:
→ a recursive fibonacci sequence
→ a dynamic linked list
→ my own hashmap
→ a binary search tree
→ and a game called “knight travails”
———— this game involved moving a knight chess piece around a chess-board to try get it to a specific location using binary search trees and graphs ( excuse all the jargon )

onwards

honestly, i do feel very impatient to get to building more complex things that are my own projects… but i am trusting the process, ensuring i have a very secure foundation of knowledge built up before going on my own.

this week i am aiming to get through:
→ advanced html and css
→ react
→ databases
→ and hopefully nodeJS

so there’s quite a bit to still get through…

the value system i am continually fighting for within myself:
genuine learning is more important than completing the course.

the dopamine from the former is a slower release, whereas the latter is immediate, yet is unfortunately an illusion of progress occurring.

YOUTUBE

alrighttttttt… so i reallyyyy love long form content because of the opportunity it presents for you to actually build a relationship with your audience

and soooo… what i have been thinking is twofold:
1. i want to reiterate the things i am learning in order to solidify them further in my mind
2. i want to create content in order to document the journey that i am on

and so… the idea of creating content teaching principles that i am learning, with examples etc. of how it all works accomplishes both those goals

1. i am teaching what i am learning = the easiest way to genuinely learn something

2. i am creating content = the funnel to bring people closer to the documentation of my journey i am on

and if i’m being really honest, i love being in front of the camera yapping away,
and maybe one day people will genuinely take time out of their day to see that hahaha

that day will come… “mark my wordssss”

and this topic is a perfect segway into the next topic of podcasting… because it all involves putting content out there into the world

a quick point on why i am putting content out into the world

distribution.

okay that was the point, on to podcasting…

kidding, here’s the explanation:

we are now in the age where access to technology has never been cheaper, easier, and simple…

low-code, no-code, ai coders… all of these tools are available to literally anyone, anywhere in the world

and so the big difference between who’s tech company succeeds is going to be less about your app, and more about how that app is distributed.

because anyone reallyyy can get an app up and running in a pretty damn fast time… but how that person gets (and retains) their users is the most important part

and successful distribution relies on trust.

people trust you and the product you are selling.

so the more my beautiful little face is all across the internet, consistently, yapping away… the more implicit trust is given to me and the things i build.

why?

because i have something to lose.

this is something we don’t ever really think about but we place this implicit trust on influencers etc. because of the connection we make between their reputation and the things they put out into the world through their influence.

we believe that they wouldn’t put something out into the world that would be harmful, false, or damaging because if they did, and it backfired, well then they’re going to lose some sort of reputation they have painstakingly built up over the years…

although some influencers certainly don’t think like this lol

and so my hope is that i can build trust in my audience and therefore provide a platform to push the things i build onto, and by virtue of that, create a moat of distribution.

PODCASTING

yes, i am starting a podcast.

the process i am going to follow is to first start off with one interview a week and see if i enjoy doing it, if it aligns with my schedule that i want to keep, etc.
→ basically just test it out

and if i enjoy it, find it to be something worth giving time and energy to, then i am one hundred percent knuckling down on doing it consistently each week.

the people: i will be interviewing founders and ceo’s of companies over $1m annual recurring revenue, starting with ones based in south africa.

the content: i believe life & business are not separate things, but rather closely connected, so discussions around the interconnectedness of business success & life, and going down rabbit holes that pop up within that all.

the big idea: to create a space where people can understand the lives & minds of “successful” people on all different measures of “success”.

S I C K… will keep you all updated with that → hopefully gonna do the first interview this week!

BRAIN-FOOD

if everything is an experiment
that can only be proved or disproved
from trying curiously
then you can make no mistakes
no failures
and no commitments
that are cause for you to leave the path you started walking when you began the experiment
because all of it was an hypothesis from the start.

instead, your experiment grows, evolves, and takes up more room as you continue
until it turns into something that works
a success they say…

you never claimed to know the solution
nor did you pretend you were so great so as not to try something new
you were merely curious

and curiosity never killed the cat
it fed it.

so treat everything as an experiment : )

🕺 thanks for coming everybody

check out LinkedIn, X, IG, TikTok for daily updates/thoughts/ideas… and even YouTube for some longer form content I am putting out

connect with me there, or reply here.

Peace and Wholeness : )
ethan