IAM979- Software Engineer Continually Improves His Skills

Inspired by Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Leonardo Da Vinci, Danny has succeeded in a variety of fields including software engineering, writing, photography, game designing, and more. He is continually improving his skillset by learning 3 skills every month.

• CEO Hack: Applying 1-50 rule before every project
• CEO Nugget: Continuously learning skills every month
• CEO Defined: Solving problems people have

Website: http://dannyforest.com/

https://skillup-academy.com

Medium: https://dannyforest.medium.com

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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[00:00:26.50] – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I Am CEO podcast.

[00:00:54.29] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Danny Forest of Dannyforce.com. Danny, it's awesome to have you on the show.

[00:01:02.10] – Danny Forest

Thanks for having me.

[00:01:03.10] – Gresham Harkless

Definitely. Super excited to have you on. The pleasure's all ours. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Danny so you hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Inspired by Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Leonardo da Vinci, Danny has succeeded in a variety of fields, including software engineering, writing, photography, game designing, and many more. He's continually improving his skill set by learning three skills every month. Danny, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:01:26.79] – Danny Forest

Yeah. Let's do it.

[00:01:27.70] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Let's do it then. So to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more about how you got started. Could you take us through what I call your CEO story? We'll let you get started with all the awesome things you do.

[00:01:37.09] – Danny Forest

Yeah. It started from exactly what you mentioned before, the three skills a month. It was October to twenty seventeen. I was in Cambodia, and I was working remotely, and I felt like I didn't learn as much as I thought I could. I was a software engineer for a long time. I figured that what if software engineering for some reason stops being that important? And I'm gonna I I'm gonna need to find new skills, to be relevant in the future. Right? And so I decided, you know what? I'm gonna try this new approach. I'm gonna learn three skills this month. I'm gonna be deliberate about it.

I'm gonna practice every morning, and see what happens. And I chose skills that I thought I could never do, like drawing, for example, as a deeply logical person. So, you know, I'm gonna try this, and I'm gonna shatter my beliefs that I can't do it. And it happened in eight days. After eight days of drawing every day, I was like, wow. I should have a drawing that, I mean, it's not professional, but it's already so much better than I thought it could be. And so I figured, you know what? After the month, I had such awesome results that I decided, I'm gonna keep doing that for the next month and the next month and the next month.

And I kept doing that over and over again. I did that for a full year, nonstop. And I did it again the next year, with, a bit of breaks sometimes. But I realized during that time that, you can learn so much more than you think you can. We live in an age where there's just so much information about everything, and it's become harder to learn things because there's information you can't trust, and you can't make sense of all this information.

And through all the skills that I've learned, I've realized that there are better ways to get that knowledge, to get all these skills into one place. And that's basically how I started the company, building SkillUp Academy to solve this issue. There's just too much out there, and you don't know where to start. So yeah. That's how it started.

[00:03:41.69] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I appreciate that. Love that story. I'm a big, like, I like to learn things, you know, type of person as well too. And I almost feel like you have to be in this world and the way things are changing, but it sounded like, and correct me if I'm wrong. It sounded like, I guess you start to build within yourself a certain, I guess, self-confidence, but also maybe even resilience as well too because I heard you say, I didn't think I could do this, and then you saw yourself after thirty days or a month being able to accomplish that. I feel like that is something that translates even though the skills are different, it has to translate into each new thing that you take on are different things that we're kinda that are being thrown at us.

[00:04:16.39] – Danny Forest

Certainly. And one of the things that that the cool thing about this is the habit of failure that you're building. People are afraid of failure. People don't wanna start new things, and this applies to CEOs too. Right? They're afraid of trying new things. Things that work, you just keep doing it, and you get better at it. But the habit of failure is what gives you the confidence to try something out, to do something else, and, like, not give up the moment that you try. And that has been probably one of the best habits I've built in the end. It was just the habit of failure, not even the habit of learning. The habit of failure was the most important part.

[00:04:52.00] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That's huge. And I think that anytime, you know, you're trying to blaze trails or do something different, especially, you have to have that skill because you have to be okay with being uncomfortable, being okay with not knowing and continuing and understanding that, hey. I may not be where I want to be, but I'm probably, a little bit better than I was a week ago or a day ago, and so on. And when you start to celebrate those wins, that's when you start to leverage that ultimate skill more than anything else.

[00:05:18.30] – Danny Forest

Absolutely.

[00:05:20.00] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome.

[00:05:20.89] – Danny Forest

But people think it's happening in one job. Right? Like, you learn you become good. Like, you don't remember in school. Like, it took time to get to where you are. And as soon as you accept the fact that things take time, you appreciate the small wins like you said.

[00:05:39.00] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. It's so funny you said that because I used to work with kids and they were four to five-year-olds. And so many times, like, teaching them how to throw, like I used to be a PE teacher, I guess you could say, but teaching them how to throw a football. And even the stand-up, you take all those things for granted. There was once a time when we didn't know how to walk. There was once a time we didn't know how to do all these things. So what you said resonated with me so much more because I only got that realization from seeing sometimes kids and not being able to do it to realize, you come a lot farther than sometimes we take or give ourselves credit.

[00:06:07.60] – Danny Forest

Yeah. I have a nine-month-old son. He's crawling and all that, but, like, he didn't at first. Right? Even turning was a challenge, and it's exactly as you said. We take that for granted. But when people think of skills, they only see, like, the skill itself, but the reality is every skill has prerequisites, that we don't realize. Things are as simple as, if we think about basketball, for example, unless you know how to run properly, you're not gonna be a good basketball player.

If you don't know how to jump properly, you're not gonna be a good basketball player. And it's true of every skill. Not just motor skills, but intellectual skills as well. And that's the kind of stuff that in SkillUp Academy, I'm trying to, like, really put forward for every skill. So that, like, when you go on YouTube, for example, and you're like, oh, the best way to learn whatever skill. You come you come across something. You're like, I can't do it. Why is that? It's supposed to be the best way.

But the reality is they assume that you have previous knowledge, they just don't mention it. So there's, like, this web of skills that's related that's completely invisible to everyone. The rules are like, we create the rules, so they don't exist. It's it's not a game. And so we gotta figure it out. And, again, that's what I'm trying to do with Skill Up Academy, make this more, like, this network more obvious.

[00:07:32.50] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That's huge. I love that phrase. Every skill has a free resonance. And so many times, we don't realize what those are, especially if we become experts or become good at it. Sometimes it's the hardest to be able to teach other people how to do that because we have perfected those prerequisite skills that we didn't even realize were there. So I love that you're looking at that in the academy. So can you take us through a little bit more of what we can find there and how exactly you're doing that and work with the clients you have?

[00:07:57.69] – Danny Forest

Yeah. It's been evolving quite a bit. So like, what you see today is actually what's different last week. So, we started being more about training and performing, the skills and showing you how to do things, it was a tough business to get people to do stuff. People people have the habit of, like, going more for knowledge than for for practice. And so we evolved more into through time collected so much data on skills that we've evolved more into a database or search engine for skills, like any type of metadata that you can find. I had a client that was asking about, like, the life cycle of some skills they were investigating.

And that's the information that's not readily available for a wide variety of skills. And so we went through our catalog of four hundred skills and figured out the life cycle of. Are they emerging? Are they, dying? Are they in growth? And so you can find all that information. The benefits of learning things, sometimes it's not obvious. Like, is it worth my time to learn this? Am I gonna get a job? Am I gonna be better at manual stuff? Am I gonna be more intellectual in these things? Am I gonna be able to learn some other types of music by doing that?

So we make we try to make all these connections again. And recently, we started adding jobs too. So what kind of jobs can you get the skills that you're looking for? And so, I feel like that's gonna be a bigger part of, SkillUp Academy. There's more money in, professional skills versus personal skills, which is a very recent lesson, and the reason for the pivot.

[00:09:50.70] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That's huge. Do you feel like that was what you would consider to be, like, your secret sauce? It could be for yourself or the academy or combo of both. Is it that ability to understand I wanna say the forest for the trees to understand these pre-prerequisite skills that you're able to build, not only help you in the skill you're trying to learn but so many others?

[00:10:06.50] – Danny Forest

Yeah. And I feel like, like, for CEOs, especially, is really like, for me, the most important thing is to, understand your team, understand understand every part of your team. By having this habit of learning new things every time and building your library with skills, you get to speak the same language as the people who work for you. And I think this is this is absolutely, amazing. I can talk to people doing e-commerce. I can talk to people doing, marketing. I can talk to artists, and we all speak the same language. Well, at least at least depending on where we communicate, we speak the same language.

[00:10:42.10] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That's huge. And I think in this day and age, I say so many times we forget about, like, the human aspect of business, but understanding those skills, getting to learn those foundational skills allows us that opportunity, as you said, so we'll be able to communicate in people in different ways, in different forms, in a different fashion. So I believe that's huge. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call that CEO hack, which could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have. Is there something that you feel makes you more effective and efficient in addition to everything that you, have been mentioning today?

[00:11:11.10] – Danny Forest

Yeah. There's one thing I've been doing for, quite some time now. I've started seven businesses, and many projects in in those companies. And one thing I do pretty much every time I start a new project is apply what I call the 01:50 rule.

[00:11:25.50] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah.

[00:11:26.00] – Danny Forest

And the 01:50 rule is, you ask yourself one question, and that is, what can I do in one day that's gonna achieve fifty percent of the results we're looking for? So people think think big. It's okay to think big. Right? But when you think big on a project, a hundred percent of the results, like, you think, I gotta build this software. I gotta build this and this and this. And, like, you do a timeline. You, like, do, like, a bunch of projects you know, like, tasks, and and you realize this is gonna take a year. It's gonna take a year. This is gonna cost that much. But this rule forces you to think about the results very, very like, in very, like, small details and figure out what is the fifty percent that I can do in one day and release today at the end of the day. I start this morning and I release at the end of the day. What can I do?

[00:12:16.50] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So that could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you hopped into a time machine you might tell your younger business self.

[00:12:26.20] – Danny Forest

Yeah. I would go with, what we talked about, like, continuous learning with, multiple skills a month. Just I think this is the best habit, both a habit of failure and also being able to communicate with your team. I think I think this is the best. I like, from my experience, it's the best thing, and I would recommend Young Me, the first business I started to just do that. I was a software engineer. I knew nothing about business. My business did okay considering, but we would have done so much better if I spoke all the languages of business.

[00:13:00.10] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Danny, truly appreciate that. I appreciate all the awesome things you're doing. I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping that different, quote, unquote, CEOs on the show. So, Danny, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:13:13.79] – Danny Forest

I'm not sure if this will be boring or not an answer, but, for me, being a CEO is about just solving problems people have. Like, true issues people have. It's about the people. Right? And even I have to remind myself of this every day. As entrepreneurs and CEOs, I like to work on your things, and sometimes you forget the end customer, but, like, being a really good CEO is thinking about the customer and, like, making their experience the best and solving their problem.

[00:13:47.89] – Gresham Harkless

I truly appreciate that definition, and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best they can get out of you, find out about the academy, and all the awesome things that you're working on.

[00:14:00.79] – Danny Forest

Yeah. Don't forget to learn. Don't forget to continue learning. There's I don't know how much time I have.

[00:14:08.60] – Gresham Harkless

Go for it.

[00:14:09.89] – Danny Forest

Yeah. Where there's a concept I've been writing about, since last year, which is skill inflation. So a lot of people are familiar with inflation in terms of, like, money, in terms of, like, investing and that kind of stuff. But when it comes to, when it comes to skill, it's very much a reality that no one's talking about, and disruptions in jobs are happening more and more. It's gonna grow a lot more too. Like, they predict that so currently, to succeed at your job, you need about 10:11 different skills to be able to do it.

They're predicting that by, five years from now, you're gonna need twenty-one already. And so if you don't learn these extra skills, you're gonna be left behind. And some books talk about that stuff and, about, like, getting left behind about, like, a useless class, some people call it. And so learning and taking, like, taking some time out of your day, thirty minutes, is good enough. At least it's a good start. It's a good start to build a habit, and that's the only way that, you're gonna be able to try to thrive in the future. So think about the skill inflation.

[00:15:22.39] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. And people that wanna get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to do that?

[00:15:25.50] – Danny Forest

Alright. Yeah. They can go to my website, dannyfofrest.com, and I've got a cute little chat bubble, which I do reply to. Otherwise, I'm actively working on Skill Up Academy now. So it's, skillup_academy.com.

[00:15:42.39] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. We redirect, and we'll update any information in the show notes as well too if, you let us know. And, I truly appreciate that skill of inflation reminder as well too. I have not heard about that, but it makes perfect sense when you think about all the skills that people have. And sometimes they have them, I don't wanna say innately, but you having to stay ahead and stay relevant, you have to have all of those main skills, but also those kinda ancillary skills I think we talked about as well.

So if you have that mentality of always learning, having that curiosity, and continue to try to do that, it's gonna allow you to be successful and probably even to, you know, go to an entirely different level in this future economy. So, truly appreciate that, Danny. I appreciate your time, and I'll also thank you for building as well, I hope you have a great rest of the day.

[00:16:26.70] – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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