From 6 Months To 6 Days - Builder’s Console Log (ep 3)
My Builder’s Console Log📅 2025-06-26
Transcript
[00:00] from six months to six days. That's the theme of today's episode on Builder's Console log here. I'm going to go over my journey of developing my first web app and how it took me originally 6 months to do and now it only took me 6 days. Let's jump in. Welcome back to Builder's Console log. In this video, I want to go over the topic of how knowledge compounds and how we translate that. Now, this topic parlays really well with a series that's coming out here on my YouTube channel and then of course, as you already know, exclusive episode on here at our school community. But in this series, I show you how to
[00:30] build out from complete scratch, no coding experience, your first software application, tubestamp.com. And funny enough, my journey when it came to web apps started with tubestamp.com and the original time it took to build out tubestamp.com when I just started was 6 months. But through this series, even with recording content on top of it, it took me 6 days to build out the exact same application and use case, which I don't know about you, is kind of a crazy metric. It's hard to really understand how much knowledge compounds until
[01:01] you've experienced something where originally when you approach that task, it took you a couple days, but then the next time you approached that task, it took a couple hours. Let me give a little bit more context here. So, when I was originally building out Tube Stamp, I was very familiar with iOS apps, the App Store, and everything of that realm. And typically with iOS apps and App Store, when you're developing in Swift and Xcode, there's a lot of native libraries within iOS that you can leverage within your app to provide value. Things like monetization you typically do through the app store anyways, which isn't that fun because
[01:32] they do take 30% in that context. But one story that I remember very much from when I was first creating Tube Stamp was when I was trying to monetize it and specifically monetizing with Stripe. Now, this is the first time I ever played around with Stripe documentation or just monetizing an application in this context in general. And I remember for me to finally achieve monetization in the app, it took three days. And not 3 days of like, oh yeah, I spent like 2 hours on Tube Stamp, took a break, came back to it the next day, 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours. No, no, no. These were like 3 days, 11 hours each hitting my
[02:03] head against a wall to understand how to do it. And then once I reached that third day and finally it was working, not only was that a huge relief, a nice little Eureka moment in software, but what that taught me is that especially with artificial intelligence and when doing more complex work that you're maybe not familiar with, you can do it. And I think that's the biggest thing that AI gives us that before artificial intelligence existed. Complex problems and trying to do complex things was a lot harder to achieve because you didn't have a 24/7 teacher there to help you
[02:34] out and point you in the right direction. Now, even with that teacher, it still took me 3 days. Then translate that all the way to now for me to do that exact same integration with Stripe probably would only take me 2 hours. Therefore, these small wins that you build over time through doing hard things and solving them, they actually compound and allow for way faster expediated results the next time you face that same issue. It's not like this is not your first rodeo. You're going back on that bull. You're like, "Oh, wait. I know where this messes up. I know what this air code means." And you
[03:05] can keep operating in that way. So, Stripe integration was one of them. There were other ones where, for example, connecting to YouTube's API. What was the ball game there? That took a couple days. Everything takes time. And I think that's the big thing that I've learned, not only in this content creation journey, but just learning in general. When you start a new thing, you're not going to be perfect. Even if, let's say, you wanted to do content, you're like, you know what? I want to do content. I want to do a YouTube channel. I want to replicate this content creator. Even if you got that content creator's entire setup, camera,
[03:35] recording software, mic, lighting, angles, everything, you bought it all, you're ready to go. You're still not going to be able to get to the quality of that content creator. And that's purely because of the experience and the skills you get by actually doing the action itself. I bring up that specific example as one thing that's hard to see when you're in the beginning of any new skill is that no one's perfect in the beginning. No one's born to be anything. When I first started content, if you watch my first couple videos, they were good. They got information across. But they're nowhere near where they are now
[04:05] when it comes to quality. You couldn't take me in 2023, give me this exact same equipment I have now, and then you're seeing this kind of quality. It just wouldn't happen. I wouldn't functionally know how to operate in that way. And it took years of understanding the best way to create a video for the cuts, the audio, the recording, how to actually speak in the video, and everything of that nature. I remember when I was creating my earlier content, there would be a lot of dead space or there'd be a lot of information in the video that could have cut out. like a video that maybe was 40 minutes in 2023, I probably
[04:36] would cut that down to 15 minutes now because I know what the viewer actually cares about. But the only way you can know what the viewer actually cares about is just through experience. Now, I translate this with software as well where end of the day, even with my tutorials, you're going to get a nice cut dry way of doing a task. But there's going to be little nuances here and there that you'll learn along the way. And that's just part of the learning process. Nothing is cookie cutter. You know, you go to Crispy Cream Donuts, give me like the 12 glaze. Those are amazing by the way as well. But nothing is cookie cutter like that where you just simply say, you know what, I want to create a software and you're able to
[05:06] create the most amazing best optimized software within seven days of learning. To kind of conceptualize this better, I would say that any skill that I've approached personally, that first year is building the muscle of the skill itself. You're not going to be perfect, but that first year, if you get through that, you will start seeing those small wins. You will see that error again that happened in Stripe, and you'll be like, you know what? I know exactly what to do. Solved in five minutes, done. So what this means though for me to go from 6 months to developing the same software in 6 days is our time and how we leverage that time and where we focus
[05:37] that time. You can't be perfect at everything. That's just the limitations of being a human. Maybe in the future once we have like an AI Corbin or AIU, we can kind of offload task and let them be optimized at certain things that you're weak at. Everyone's weak at something. But now in the present day, nowhere to focus. One thing that kills a lot of new businesses, new skills you want to adventure in is you divulge yourself in too many opportunities. Too many opportunities is actually a bad thing. You learning too many new skills at the same time is a bad thing. Realistically, I think the max amount of
[06:09] skills an individual could really learn and become really good at, you know, we're topping at two, possibly three, but even then, we're pushing it. If anything, it's becoming really good at either one or two skills and investing an entire year in that. Seeing the small wins happen around 8 to 12 months into that skill and then it compounds even further. I think the breakthrough for me in general when I can tell if I've spent enough time in a skill where I start seeing those small wins is the 8th month window. 8 months every single day, hours on end, focusing on that skill, crafting that skill, building that skill. 8
[06:40] months is kind of the milestone for me. Once I reach the eightmonth mark, I can tell, oh, when I originally approached this, like week three, I would have been lost. But now, we're not lost because we have the context of all those months to help us out and point us in the right direction. And the way I know it's 8 months typically, right, obviously there's going to be plus or minus, some deviation there depending on the skill you're trying to learn. But the way I know when you've really started harnessing a skill and then things start compounding a lot faster is when your mindset switches when approaching that skill itself. So, another example here
[07:11] is Photoshop. When I started my early development days of iOS, one thing that you needed to be really good at was design as well. So, I started with a free software called and then I transitioned to Photoshop and became really good at Photoshop, but I didn't really hone into that skill probably until like 2 3 years ago. But the mindset shift that happens goes from how do I learn this? How do I do this? And you're in a very much of a box cuz you're just limited. But then it goes to what you envision in your brain, you can translate into that. So for Photoshop, if I envision a specific thumbnail, I'm
[07:42] not limited by, well, that's a cool thumbnail, but I don't know how to do that. I don't really know how to add that shading effect. I don't know how to add that blur effect. You just know how to do it, and you can envision thoughts here into the product. Another example of that is software. You'll get to a certain point in software development where it's less of a thought process of limitation, but more of, oh, this would be cool. All right, I envision this. Let's just build it out. Less of how do I build it out? More of, we know how to build it out. We just got to put in the time to build it out. This is the switch. That's when you know you're leaning into a skill that is going to
[08:13] compound even faster. I will tell you from my experience from developing software. I'm creating another video here where we're going to be able to download an open source repo that I created for a local AI agent. You can check it out. I think it's going to be something titled along the lines of like how to create an AI agent in 7 minutes using cursor AI. In this video, I created an entire code repository that you can download and run a local AI agent locally on your computer and do a bunch of cool tasks. that code repo for me to develop that took me two hours. If you told me to make that exact same code repo when I just started my journey, it would take me like two three weeks
[08:44] because I just wouldn't understand the baseline of a lot of the skills you need to understand when it comes to software development and developing things of this nature. But this applies to anything. And I think the one thing you can take away from this episode is that knowledge truly compounds. And it's hard to see in the beginning. The first 6 months of you developing a skill, you're kind of in a dark room. You don't see the fruits of your labor yet. you don't really see those small wins yet. So, you're kind of like, maybe I'm just not built for it. Maybe this isn't for me. But in reality, you just got to keep pushing as I genuinely think anyone can code a software now if you put your head to the wall. Anyone could create a
[09:15] YouTube channel now if you put your head against the wall. Anyone can develop thumbnails if you put your head against the wall. The idea is though that first year is going to be the hardest year because you are still developing that skill. But once you get past that year, this stuff compounds like crazy. The thing that would have taken you a day to do before takes you an hour now. And as we know the most valuable asset in life is your time. How you distribute your time will directly correlate with where you go in life. So I hope you like today's episode of Builder's Console luck number three. 6 months to six days knowledge compounds. See you in the next