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My plan with the 30x500 course

I recently enrolled in 30x500. It's a premium course that I've heard wonderful things about for years. This post is about my plan going into it.

Running their ideas in a virtual machine

One reason I enrolled in 30x500 despite its high price tag is that I disagreed with a lot of its highly opinionated stances. Given that I'd seen multiple people succeed in a big way after the course, this suggests that it likely contains some truth that I haven't incorporated into my model of the world. That's often a particularly fruitful opportunity for learning.

Sometimes it's difficult to fairly evaluate or learn from something you disagree with, so I my plan is to "run it in a VM". I'm going through the material and doing absolutely everything I can to follow and believe its instructions. In an early video, Amy Hoy talked about research about how writing notes by hand causes deeper processing of information than typing it does. I've read of similar studies that suggest cursive has even stronger benefits, so that's how I'm taking notes.

Rather than apply the lessons to my current project, which I wasn't 100% convinced met all the criteria for a "30x500" business, I chose a new topic and audience. Instead of writing my own content management system like I usually do or using Gatsby, which I kind of wanted to, I'm using WordPress. That's what the course suggested. At each opportunity, I'm doing or at least trying to do exactly what Amy and Alex are teaching.

Of course, I'm not going to abandon Alchemist Camp during this. I have a loyal audience that includes paying customers. I'm continuing that work at the same pace as before and building a 30x500 product on the side. Depending on how it goes, I'll take some or all of what I've learned "out of the VM" and apply it to other projects I work on.

The product I'm building is still targeted at devs NOT at entrepreneurs here on IH. What I'm writing here is my experience with the course, not marketing directed at you.

Working at a high intensity to get a win

I know courses like this aren't a race. However, I also know myself and how much better it is to be riding a wave of motivation than dragging myself along semi-willingly. And the way it works for me is that whatever I'm working on—exercising, studying, building something... whatever—if I can get a win, I get more motivated. So I'm going to try to close the loop as quickly as I can. Even a small win is big if it gives me energy to achieve the next step.

Another factor in this decision is that my semi-crippling repetitive stress injuries have slowly improved to where I can spend almost twice as much time at the computer as I could a year ago. Using chopsticks with my right hand usually doesn't hurt anymore either. This means I can push pretty hard, but of course I'll back off if the condition starts getting worse.

So far, the course is exceeding my expectations. There's some overlap with what it's teaching and what I've already been doing, but there are some big differences, too. It's more systematic than I'd expected, even for a premium course and so far, it's improved my ability to analyze a forum thread even after just a few days.

My tentative goal is get content marketing going in earnest and attract 100 email subscribers by the end of the month.

#30x500 #progress-update #learning

  1. 3

    9 months after you’ve taken the course, how’s it going now?

    1. 1

      I've earned 2x what I spent on it (plus what I think I'd have earned without it). New products launching this year will hopefully grow that considerably.

  2. 3

    Are you finding the course worth it so far? What's been the biggest lesson?

    1. 1

      It's only been a few days, so it's too early to have been worth it yet. I'm more than satisfied with both the quality and the novelty so far, though!

      The biggest lesson so far has been the forum thread analysis practice and how much practice it takes! I have no idea why, but I've previously treated audience study as something you "just do" rather than as a skill you build.

  3. 3

    Thanks for these reviews. Love it. What have you found most surprising? What do you agree with?

    1. 2

      Most surprising to me is that they're suggesting writing very specific fixes to very narrow topics in their "educational bombs". I've generally leaned towards 3,000+ plus blog posts that cover all kinds of related topics.

      One thing I've agreed with long before starting was doing a tiny product first. This fits with the idea I've shared here earlier about how being prolific leads to excellence. (re: the pottery instructor example from What if Leopold didn't have a piano)

      1. 1

        I googled 'What if Leopold didn't have a piano' is it an article or book?

        1. 1

          It was a speech by Bill Buxton that's now ungoogleable, but he's still got a PDF summary on his site: https://www.billbuxton.com/leopold.pdf

  4. 2

    Hey @alchemist! Wanted to start this thread up again and see how things have been going the past 3 months. I'm thinking about signing up next week when they open waitlist enrollment.

    1. 2

      It takes work, but I've learned some very useful things about researching my customers. I've only just recently started applying the course to Alchemist Camp since I wanted to experiment with a new audience before the ongoing business.

      I'm about 70% through the course material, so far and I'm pretty confident I'll get a positive ROI from it.

  5. 3

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

    1. 2

      My first product is going to be something small, probably a short ebook.

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