My Transparent 28-Day Challenge | Building a Startup | Channel & Life Updates
Aug 19, 2024Season 1Episode 169
Don Hansen
Hey everyone! I’m starting a new series (monthly) where I get real about my goals, challenges, and the changes I’m making. From recording a LOT more Youtube videos to reviving old projects and setting ambitious 28-day goals, I’m sharing it all. I'll be sharing channel & community updates in this series as well.
Disclaimer: The following may contain product affiliate links. I may receive a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on one of these links. I will only ever provide affiliate links for apps that I've used and highly recommend.
Hey everyone! I’m starting a new series (monthly) where I get real about my goals, challenges, and the changes I’m making. From recording a LOT more Youtube videos to reviving old projects and setting ambitious 28-day goals, I’m sharing it all. I'll be sharing channel & community updates in this series as well.
Disclaimer: The following may contain product affiliate links. I may receive a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on one of these links. I will only ever provide affiliate links for apps that I've used and highly recommend.
Hey everyone. So, as you know, I usually give a lot of advice for aspiring developers. This video is going to be a little bit different. I'm going to be starting a new video series where I share my goals and I'm very transparent about what I'm trying to get done, what I'm trying to accomplish and what I fail at, and so you know.
Don Hansen:
If you see my videos in the past or you've been in my live streams, you're probably well aware that I am a huge advocate against victimhood. I think it holds people back. I think it's pathetic and I think people are capable of more than that Right. And so I'm very much a hard ass on this because it's how I run my own life and it's how I've had to basically try to run, creating a content creation business and being able to put food on the table, and it's been extremely difficult and I failed an incredible amount of times. But a lot of the advice that I try to give, I do truly try to fill my life with acting on that advice, and I'm not always successful. But I want to be more transparent about what has helped instill this mindset in me, what has helped me become a software engineer when I did, but I want to just create a huge series of videos of me sharing both advice with you but also my progress with my life, and I'm hoping that it can help so you'll be able to see me be more vocal about it in my discord server. But essentially, um, I kind of just wanted to do like a monthly check-in, right, and I want to share you know maybe, what we're going to be doing for the month, any events coming up, any mini hackathons we're hosting, and I want to share my goals with you, most importantly, and if I'm able to achieve them.
Don Hansen:
So, to start with, I've taken a break from live streaming on YouTube for maybe a couple weeks now. A few weeks. It's been fantastic. I needed that and I realized I need a lot more breaks from live streaming, because I've been doing a lot of live streams for many years and I was just feeling burned out. It's really difficult for me to create videos and do live streams that I think are just meant to grow the channel, but when I do the same live Q&A every single week, I'm not doing it for me, I'm doing it for you guys, and I want to transition to live streaming on Twitch way more often, being transparent with a couple of the goals that I'm going to talk about, including building the startup that I'm trying to create. But I'd like to come back to YouTube maybe in two to three weeks and start doing live Q&As less frequently, right? So that's the first heads up. We're probably going to be doing live Q and A's still on YouTube. I'm just going to be doing it a lot less frequently. They will be free. You can come in, ask questions and I'll give you a heads up in my discord when I'm going to go live on YouTube. But I've really enjoyed the break and I don't think I'm going back to YouTube doing live streams every single week anytime soon. So I just want to give you a heads up on that.
Don Hansen:
But also, some of you have asked you know how my job search is going, because I mentioned that I was now starting to look for developer jobs because I wanted to get into coding again and I wanted to build stuff, and so I'll share my my history with that. I essentially pursued some warm leads from connections that I had that did not pan out. They're very, very good positions, very well-respected senior positions that I was really excited for, but it just wasn't a good fit. And one thing I realized because both of those were full-stack positions and I am weak with DevOps experience. Those were full stack positions and I am weak with DevOps experience. So that's kind of the feedback that I got in my interviews, where they had wished I could hit the ground running a little bit faster with the DevOps stuff. So that is an area I do want to grow with, potentially with the new startup that I'm going to be creating.
Don Hansen:
But I also felt rushed to get a dev job because money was tight and when I build stuff I I don't get money. That's not how my business gets money and it sucks because I miss coding. I really miss coding and I've actually started working on the startup and again, you can check it out on Twitch twitchtv, slash Don the developer, if you want to watch me code it live, but I miss it. But the good thing is, even though those warm leads didn't pan out, I actually got a huge surge of income with donations and technical mentorship requests and, by the way, I don't actually publicly advertise this, Like I don't have any links or anything for this but if you are looking for technical mentorship to really solidify a lot of your fundamentals with becoming a developer, email me at Don, at Don the developer dot TV and I will kind of just take people in with a case by case basis. I charge about 97 per hour and I give discounts if you buy bundles. I'm not really here to advertise that, but I did want to give people a heads up because I am mentioning it.
Don Hansen:
The technical mentorship requests have come in. They've brought in a lot of revenue, which has allowed me to significantly slow down the job search. So I don't really I'm kind of waiting for some warm leads to pan out over the next month or so, which I do have a couple coming my way, but I don't. I'm not rushed to go the cold application approach for a while, which is nice, because I have been wanting to revive a project called Twitch Sprout. That actually was a big part of why I landed my first developer job and I ditched it. I abandoned it years ago and I get to revive it. So I kind of have income to be able to pay the bills and I'm going to be working on that project for a little while and then I'll probably pursue the cold application process again.
Don Hansen:
But I'm going to be working on that project for a little while and then I'll probably pursue the cold application process again, but I just want to slow it down a bit. I want to make sure you know, if I go back to dev work, it's going to be a really good fit, because I love what I do now and I don't want to just go back to a dev job. To just go back to a dev job because there were also cons to some of the positions that I worked at that I just want to make sure that the next position I go into, when I finally break back into the industry, it's going to be more of a long term solution for me, Because if you look at my history on LinkedIn, I jumped around a bit. First company was awesome, but they were just going under. I wish I could have stayed at that first company for a long time, but either way, I'm going to be coding and that's what I miss. So I'm going to be building stuff on Twitch. I'm going to be building my startup, Um. So you're welcome to check that out, but in my discord I will probably post announcements about it, Um.
Don Hansen:
But also some of my goals I want to do over the next 28 days, Most likely when you see this video. I don't know it'll start around there, but I want to create 28 YouTube videos with no edits and I think those videos are going to be really awkward and they're going to be around developer advice and industry stuff and they might be some reaction videos to industry stuff. But 28 videos in 28 days. I want to record that many videos. That's insane. I've never done that many videos and I'm excited to give it a try.
Don Hansen:
And um, my goal is no edits unless I say something that's going to potentially get me in legal trouble. The goal is to not do any edits unless it's that reason. So that is the goal, and I feel like I intimidate myself by not. I don't create videos because I just psych myself out of it, because I'm like this is going to take so much prep and I'm going to sound so stupid, or I'm going to stutter, or I'm just going to lose track of what I'm thinking, or I just keep psyching myself out with so many excuses and that is all it is. The reason I have not significantly upped my video game on YouTube is because I just keep psyching myself out. That is my problem, that is my mistake, and so this is my attempt to fix that. So I'm probably going to create a bunch of really awkward videos, some which will be very helpful, but we'll find out.
Don Hansen:
Another goal of mine is to release one TikTok or Instagram reel per day for 28 days, A strategy you know a lot of you aren't content creators but a strategy I actually learned from Thor, who's a Twitch streamer is to release a YouTube short but don't publish it to your audience, and what that does is it only shows that short to new viewers and it brings in more subscribers. You never lose subscribers. I think it only lost one subscriber. I don't know how that happened, but I've gained tons where because, like, if you release a bunch of YouTube shorts, it tends to irritate your audience that's what I found and people just unsubscribe. Um, so I like to release reels and TikToks outside of my YouTube to then see what performs well, and then I use those to release them as YouTube shorts and I found that has really helped grow my subscribers on YouTube, so I want to commit to that.
Don Hansen:
I also weigh a little under 215 pounds right now. I actually got up to 261 pounds maybe two years ago and I've slowly been losing weight and getting back into fitness, and it has been very difficult. I am actually someone before I started this business. I am someone that was very athletic, I love bodybuilding, someone that was very athletic, I love bodybuilding. Um, and I have just let kind of like the times of. I created some bad habits during the pandemic and I just followed up on those bad habits and they snowballed and I gained a bunch of weight and I wasn't as happy as I usually am. I wasn't my normal self and I feel like that's been returning uh over the past couple of years and I feel way better than I did two years ago and that's something I haven't really shared with a lot of people. But that is something that is top priority for me and it's something that I'm going to continue pushing forward with. So within 28 days I want to get down to about 205 pounds and the ultimate goal is about 175. That's my very comfortable weight with a decent amount of muscle. So you know the 175 is going to be a longer term goal, but 205, I can reach uh within 28 days.
Don Hansen:
And then the last one is I've been wanting to read a book called Tao of React for a very long time. The way that I structure my React applications is. It's very modular, it's very feature driven and Talib React is almost like how I structure my React app, but just better in my opinion. So I want to explore that book. I want to see the conventions that he's come up with, the organizational patterns that he's come up with, and I want to implement that in twitch sprout as I build that. So those are my goals.
Don Hansen:
Um, in a month I'd like to update you again with how those goals are going. Did I meet them? Uh, really, just to show you like it's very easy to get swept up in emotion in life events that come up, and it's very easy and this is one thing that a lot of people found out and continue to find out my mini hackathons to even just keep up with project work every single week. Most people fail out of my mini hackathons because you have to keep up with the updates and you have to provide those updates, share them. People don't keep up with it. Most people fail out of my mini hackathons and that is goal. It's really just accountability for yourself and consistently doing a project for a longer duration. Maybe like 28 days is a common duration for us for those mini hackathons, but I want to show that, um, I I want to show how. First of all, show how hard it is to keep up with some of these goals, because it's not easy for me, but I want to show it just needs to be done.
Don Hansen:
A lot of you like, if we're being really truthful, a lot of you do not stay consistent with your habits for 28 days. You try stuff. A lot of you do these new year's resolution strategies where you wait until the end of the month and you wait till the beginning of the week and then boom, now we're going to go ahead and like this is when I changed my entire life and they try to do this massive change and it doesn't work. It takes a lot of small steps that snowball into more and more and more, steps that become easier to stay consistent with, and then it becomes um, becomes fun, becomes addicting to stick with your habits, Like it really becomes addicting. And a lot of you probably, if you're into fitness or you're into bodybuilding, anything like that running you probably figured this out where you know, after a few weeks, usually you know that can vary between some people, but after a few weeks usually you know that can vary between some people, but after a few weeks. You actually feel stress when you don't get to go to the gym that many times per week. You don't feel good about yourself when, because it becomes your de-stressor, because you also you know obviously there's going to be some chemistry that happens in your body that will cause you to feel a little bit more euphoria and feel good about yourself.
Don Hansen:
Other goals done, including your coding journey goals, including your learning to code goals, including the goals of completing this section of the course and then building something with the knowledge that you've just learned and not just doing it for a day or two until you give up.
Don Hansen:
I'm talking about pushing past that really, really annoying bug that has been haunting you in your dreams for the second time, and you still push past that. It becomes easier to get through the frustrations of learning to code, of feeling like you're too stupid, like the market doesn't want you, the market's too rough, like hiring managers don't want you. It feels way easier to just continue pushing forward and making progress with what you know you need to do, no matter how you feel, and that's the goal of the series. So hopefully, me being transparent about what I'm succeeding with and what I'm fucking up can help you with that and and if it doesn't, I'm really just going to do one of these videos per month. You can just skip it and go on to the other 27 videos that I'm going to be pushing out, so enjoy.
