A Week of Progress

🎯 So where's that $50k goal at?

Ethan Glenny
May 12, 2024

Wow. Wow. Wow.

That’s what I have been thinking practically every hour this week.

This is Week 2 of The Unicorn Founder, and wow do I have a lot to share with you 🤠

I have updates on the much-anticipated $50k goal, the software developments, the leads to purchase the software, and a few other completely new discoveries that definitely shook my world up a bit.

This Week’s Update Overview:

🚩 Record-Breaking Certification: How I managed to get expert Glide certification in <2 days.
⚡️ Extreme Speed Product Building & Testing: The immediate steps I took to test the product
📚 Wisdom from the Ages: A few very powerful insights from over 100 collective years of real estate/startup/software experience.
💡 Birth of more Crazy Ideas: A few other skillsets I am adding to my portfolio of human abilities & business opportunities.
📍 Fundamental Reminder Revisits: What I have been reflecting and meditating on multiple times a day this week.
🎯 The Next Steps: The construction of the agency, proving the business model, and first revenue to be secured.

🚩 Record-Breaking Certification

First up: The low/no-code platform called Glide

It is essentially a way for you to build out custom internal management software tools which can be downloaded as apps onto your phone/desktop or used on the web.

The Benefits: Speed, functionality, simplicity + so much more.

Last week I mentioned how I was going to be learning how to “code” on Glide and how I wanted to get my three expert certifications by Wednesday.

I got them by Monday afternoon.

That might be a new record according to Glide on LinkedIn… I’m hoping that I’ll be getting a plaque haha 🥰

Here’s your proof.

What I wanted to prove, just like I did with my 4-year degree being completed in 2 months, was that things do not need to take long.

We are the reason they take longer than they should. We. Solely us as an individual human being.

Our mind takes in all that is around us, aggregates it all, and then forms an idea of how long x, y, z should take us.

Example: If you have only ever known that an honours degree in business takes 4 years to complete then you’ll only ever believe it can be done in that timeframe.

Especially when you have never been to university and are only looking in from the outside.

I wrote a brief post about this all here.

This topic is something deeply held in my heart, which I call: The mind that rages against the average.

⚡️ Extreme Speed Product Building & Testing

After I completed the certifications on Monday afternoon, I got right into using the platform and scheduled a meeting with my first “client” for the following day.

“Client” = potential client (Important to note this haha)

Tuesday afternoon I sat down with my client and discussed the problems they were experiencing at work - a little therapy session for them.

Immediately I had an idea of what I wanted to do and audaciously set the follow-up meeting to be at 8:30am the next morning, where I could showcase the version 1 of the software.

I hit the target.

Wednesday morning at 8:30am we were sitting in his office with his PA and they were testing out the first version of the app I had built them in the last 12 (including sleep haha) hours.

The app worked.

This allowed me to get more feedback that could be used to improve the app, plug in more data sources, and really build out the rest of it into something of industry-grade.

What I realised: The faster you can get your minimum viable product (MVP) in front of your users, the faster you can improve = the faster you can get to a product that can be paid for.

In addition: It doesn’t need to take weeks to get your first MVP off the ground. It can be done in hours.

What is required: Clarity.

The rest of Wednesday was spent learning more so that I could keep building more onto the app - remember I only started learning this code on Sunday, with practically zero technical knowledge prior, so I still have much to master.

📚 Wisdom from the Ages

I had three really pivotal conversations on Thursday and Friday with three people in completely different industries, backgrounds, and circumstances.

Within these conversations I got to hear the stories of two of the people, and the third person offered ideas for me to look investigate on my own.

3/3 of those people had “advice” for me.

Each person’s advice was different and conflicting with each other.

“Keep building, but like this.”

“Don’t think of this, think along these lines.”

“You aren’t seeing the bigger picture, look into this organisation and this industry.”

…

So what the heck am I meant to do?

→ Be still.

→ Reflect.

→ Evaluate what has been given to you and where you are currently at.

→ Move forward.

The “advice” I have been given not just by these three people but by practically everyone with an opinion has been tying me in knots.

Who do I listen to, who do I not?

This is where discernment is sooo important.

So what I’ve decided to do is to just take the next step forward with what I believe is the next best step I can take.

Which is…

To learn.

💡 Birth of more Crazy Ideas

To learn how to create animations in Adobe After effects.

To learn how to design incredible ideas on Figma.

To learn how to build 3D objects in Cinema 4D.

To learn Bubble, Softr, Webflow, and to keep learning Glide.

To learn deeply about branding, marketing, and videography.

To learn about running successful ads and ad campaigns.

In short: To become a creative powerhouse.

In the mean time, I will practice, train, and implement all of my learnings every single day into projects that can help people purely for free.

Develop a new business platform for a local startup founder without technical expertise.

Rebuild a beautiful website for a local creator on LinkedIn.

Rejuvenate the branding and marketing of an up-and-coming local influencer.

But why???

Product Market Testing.

There is a plan to this supposed “waste of time”. A very exciting plan. All shall soon be revealed.

📍 Fundamental Reminder Revisits

These are just things I have been reminding myself of this week, often.

Hopefully they may provide some value to you.

It is the process of going through fire that makes things pure.

So too with us; It is the process of going through struggle that makes us succeed [pick your definition of success].

Trust the process.

That which is difficult has value.

Few are consistent in choosing difficult.

Therefore, few bear the fruits of what difficulty produces.

All is not as it seems.

Do not presume others have had it easier than yourself.

And do not busy yourself with watching everyone else in their own lanes, going after their own destinations.

Focus on what you are doing, where you are going, and who you are becoming.

Comparison seeks to rob you of all joy.

🎯 The Next Steps

This week coming is filled with a lot of time and effort being dedicated to the up-skilling of myself.

So a lot of time going towards the web/animation/3D design aspect and the technical software building.

And these are the following projects that will be completed/started this week.

2 software projects in the real estate industry.
5 software projects in miscellaneous industries.
4 insane website builds.
A few other exciting things on their way which I’ll discuss next Sunday.

The rough idea of this all: To start testing the markets for their need for software and web design (that converts), of which will flow into the agency framework building blocks and be used as portfolio evidence.

From there, I will begin the process of applying the marketing/ad campaign knowledge I have been learning and will start marketing the agency in the US and EU → build an inbound lead generation funnel.

After clients are coming on board and I have executed really well for them, I will start hiring people to work in the agency, and then we start to scale.

😍 I know you loved this… right?

If for some super strange reason you didn’t love this… I need to know, so that I can fix such a problem - but that’s just hypothetically saying you didn’t love this…

🔋 Community is Power

Life is not easy, but having good people around you helps a ton!

1 Referral = Thinking of starting a startup/business? Get the Billion Dollar Case Study to get some points on where to start from the ones who have done it already.
2 Referral + = Are you interested in knowing more about other billion dollar companies? There is a lot of exciting research conclusions I’ll be releasing shortly as rewards.
5 Referrals = Exclusive access to a private slack channel of founders/entrepreneurs and even some investors from all over the world.

Did I miss anything? Hit that Reply button and let me know what you’d like to see.

Did someone forward this to you? You can follow the billion dollar company journey here.

Want to connect? Here is my LinkedIn.

Ciao!

Ethan