I Didn't Plan On Coming Back

5 months ago, I made a video on this channel saying goodbye and that I was done with Healthy Developer. And the last thing I thought would happen was that I'd be back here 5 months later after lying flat on my back. Well, I'm here to give you an honest update about what happened to me. And I've actually got an opportunity for you if you're interested that I'll talk about at the end of the episode. So, what happened and why am I back? Well, it has to do with my back. Uh, as I told you last time, I started a new channel called Developer Reborn, and I pivoted my business. I was trying to help people shift from being employees to being consultants that work for themselves that have a really premium offer. It's something, you know, I've done and that I wanted to help other people do, too. I started running these workshops. you probably saw in the community posts or if you're on my email list, you saw emails about it. But I started holding these four evening workshops where I would kind of teach people how to make a really high value consulting offer and then if they were wanted to go even further, I had an accelerator program like a six-month program they could do with me. Well, as I got to my third cohort, I had people coming in from the first cohort, the second cohort, the third cohort. The program was changing. I'm learning. I'm trying to be agile. As you know, cringe or as that sounds to some of you, I actually still think from a product standpoint, we should be agile about our services if we're going to help people. And I just got to this place where there were problems in the program. I was still learning how to overcome some of them. Some people were doing really well. Some people were struggling and it was just too much. It started to get to be overwhelming and it started to affect my personal health myself. And so kind of the final straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, was about again 3 months ago. Uh I got up this one morning. It was like 4:00 a. m. Couldn't sleep. I was kind of stressed about everything that was going on, trying to improve this program, trying to, you know, make it work for everybody. And I stood at my standing desk here that I stand every day, you know, whenever I'm working, whenever I'm coaching people. And I was just immersed like you've probably been many times in your career in just, you know, coding my website and writing up articles and tweaking these AI chat bots that I built to help people in the program and just trying to, you know, get everything as far as I could. And I'd been doing this for multiple days in a row. And I thought I'd been working for maybe like 4 hours or something. And I came out and checked the time at one point and I realized from 4:00 a. m. to when I was stopped and realized it had been 8 hours that I've been working just straight standing on very little sleep and I was like, "Wo, I need to lay down. I need to, you know, go back to bed or do something. " I was exhausted. So, I laid down to bed and my back felt a little bit weird, but not horrible. And then I woke up like maybe 2 hours later, took this 2-hour nap to try to make up for getting up so early in the morning. uh which I know you can't do if you're an employee, but when you work for yourself, you can kind of do that. And next thing I knew, I woke up and I was just in debilitating pain. I couldn't flex my back at all. Um just standing and getting out of bed just hurt so bad. Um, I'd had sciatica in my life at different times and uh I've had back problems since I was 19 off and on, but this was like the worst ever in that like um usually these things will go away in maybe like 2 days when I hurt my back or maybe the worst like a week. Um well, after two weeks, 3 weeks of this, I got into this situation. And this is something that may be helpful if you're thinking about like, you know, any entrepreneurial things you're trying to do. That's just right. The uncertainty of life. I got into this situation where I had to fill a new workshop and fill a new cohort. And uh I couldn't really do that unless I continued making videos on my new channel on Developer Reborn, the other channel. And I couldn't make videos because I couldn't uh I couldn't walk. I couldn't stand. It had been 3 weeks and this workshop was coming up in a couple weeks. And so there was just no way I was going to fill that workshop. there was be healthy enough. Well, that was the least of my problems because this just went on and on and I got really concerned and started getting really uh anxious and upset and just like I don't know how I'm going to make money. I don't know what I'm going to do. And so, uh I ended up, you know, getting some help from various people to just like encourage me through all of this. Uh I went to my doctor, of course. Um, you know, I didn't want to get surgery

so I found this guy, Stuart McIll. Some of you in one of the community posts mentioned him. I had actually already found him, but uh, he's out of somewhere in Canada. He's like an absolute kind of the definitive expert on back pain. And so, I got his book, started doing some of the exercises in it. They were kind of giving me some hope, but they still weren't really helping. I still couldn't sit. I couldn't stand. I was in so much pain. And eventually uh I started going to a physical therapist and the first physical therapist I went to really just made me worse. I every exercise he gave me I was in more pain. Um they kind of told me, "Hey, you might be in more pain at first, but usually it gets better. " Well, it had been like a month and a half. I'm going to see this guy every week. And it was just bad, bad, getting worse, worse, like just overall. And I was like, "Something's got to change. " So, I told him I was like, "Well, I'm thinking of going to a different physical therapist, but like before I go to a different clinic, is there anybody else that you recommend here? " And he hooked me up with this woman who uh does dry needling. I don't know if you've ever heard of this before. I had it done once in my life when it was very kind of experimental about 15 years ago. It's kind of like acupuncture in that they put needles in you, but it's not like, you know, to free the chi flowing through your body if you believe in all of that. Um, that's what acupuncture kind of claims. Uh, dry needling is literally to release muscle tension and muscle uh trigger points. And you know, I think if you know if you've been watching the channel for a while and you know about me, um, I have been a cyclist for a long time. Not professional by any means, but like it's what I do for exercise. And I just have all kinds of pain across uh, my muscles. Not horrible, debilitating, but you know, just like when I try to run, lift, even when I ride my bike, I've had issues with my legs. I've, you know, smashed them, foam rollers, lacrosse balls, all that stuff. It never seems to fully go away. Well, um, dry needling is supposed to really help with that. It It's kind of invasive, though. You know, somebody's sticking a needle in you and they're trying to hit a spot where you're going to get like a clench and then a release. And so I was like, "All right, I'll try this woman. " And the first three or four times I went to her, I was just more depressed every time afterwards. I was like, you know, God, I still I have to lay flat on my stomach. That's all I could do. I'd get up in the morning, eat breakfast in pain, sitting at the table, then just lay flat on my stomach like this. Like I couldn't even barely read my phone or anything. I just kind of listen to music or listen to, you know, sermons from Christian uh pastors that I listen to and pray and just try to get in a better headsp space, but I was just immobilized. I couldn't work. I couldn't do anything. Um so about the fifth dry needling session, I ordered a different desk. You might notice that behind me. And uh I got one that will go up and down. you know, I used to sit when I first started programming. And then after a while, I switched to standing and just stood for the last 9 10 years. And so with my back where it was at, I was like theorizing, well, maybe if I try sitting and standing, just even if I can only do it for like 2 minutes a day, you know, that'll help. And I did that. And I had one day where I was like, wow, I was able to sit for 15 minutes, which was, you know, if you've never had a back injury, sounds ridiculous, but that was huge to me. It really helped. Well, then uh eventually I started to up it a little bit more, and then the pain started to really go away. And I'm still at the point where like sitting in a car really hurts. I can't really be driven very far. Thank Thankfully the physical therapist is literally like 2 minutes from my house. They're super close. Uh but, you know, I've started going on a few walks here and there. Long story short, um that's kind of the injury update. But the reason I mention this is, you know, I'm trying to figure out, well, what does this mean to my career? business? What does this mean to the channel? What am I going to do? And and, you know, I want to be honest with you. I don't know for sure whether, you know, I'm going to continue to make videos on this channel or videos on Developer Reborn or both or one. You know, I I'm not in the headsp space yet to commit to that yet. But what I do know is what I've always been really good at and what I made, you know, all my money off of uh through coaching. You know, you may or may not know I offered like five different coaching packages for a while to help, you know, you and other developers with typical problems we have. Um over time, I narrowed it down to just one. I had this package called Career Compass. And the idea is to in four sessions, like just a few sessions, basically four hours with me, get clarity on what you should do next in your career. Well, uh I just decided through again some prayer, some talking to people and really just thinking logically what makes sense. I, you know, I'm still recovering. I can't do a full-time workload, but I still want to

help you and I want to make some income. Um, I decided I'm going to start offering career coaching again and offering career compass. So, if that's interesting to you, um, I'm taking on just a few clients right now. This is something that a lot of people, it's really helped. If you've never been to my website, there's a link below, but it's basically healthydeveloper. com. You can read some of the testimonials, but what this is it's basically, I don't know how much you know how coaching works. Uh, it's a little different than consulting where you go to someone, they tell you all the answers. You know, again, I've been doing this for about 6 years. Uh, I meet a person, they have an, you know, problem. Basically, they're overwhelmed. Usually, it's like, you know, AI is freaking them out or they have five different options they could do in their career. They don't know which or they've been stuck for a while. They have an idea they want to go a certain direction, but they're not really sure or they've always wanted to do something and they're just kind of freaked out of doing it. So, it's really uh something that honestly, guys, it's taken me years to get good at this and I'm still getting better. But, uh it requires just, you know, listening to you, really understanding like what's going on with you, listening for fear, listening for resistance, listening for excitement, and then asking you a bunch of questions to try to really get down to where I hear friction or logical inconsistency or, you know, some of these things. Um, and then helping you have the confidence and the clarity really that like, no, really, you've been thinking about this thing or you haven't been thinking about it. There's this better thing. This is what's probably best for you, you know, and it's not me telling you because I some, you know, guru that knows everything. I'm a coach. I'm trying to work with you to discover that. So, um, you know, if you're at a point in your career where you feel kind of stuck or, you know, you want to make a change, but you just haven't been able to do it or you're just having a hard time knowing what direction to go. This is what I do. I love doing this. Um, the again, the reason I shifted to developer reborn is honestly because after doing this package with a lot of people, some of them realize, you know what, I actually want to work for myself. And I had so many people that got to that point or got to the point that they realized they want to do consulting. I wanted to offer, you know, more for those people. But right now, um, I can't really deliver that program. I still have, uh, five people who are working basically every other week with me. They took the longer six-month program that they're kind of my experimental cohort, so to speak. meaning we're still kind of working out some of the bugs, areas where they've run into problems. I'm trying to help them with that and I'll still be meeting with them every couple weeks, but I'm not accepting anybody more uh into the workshop. I'm kind of putting that on pause for now. Uh but I am doing career coaching. So, yeah, thanks for being with me through all this and and listening to this. I know, you know, I'm not maybe your typical creator that just cranks out videos, you know, multiple times a week about every topic under the sun. I'm here to help you have a healthy career. I'm trying to be a honestly a coach that really helps people get further in their career. And uh part of the reason I do this is cuz I have my own health challenges and personal challenges. you know, everybody I coach who comes to me, if we do well together, I know they're facing, you know, some life circumstances too that make things complicated. And that's why uh this career compass package that I told you about, you go, you know, read about on the website. It starts with an interview. It's not a tech interview and then I'm like interviewing you to see how good you are at anything. It's not about aptitude at all. It's more about like how your career has affected you, your kind of personal situation. Nothing invasive, but you know, things that make sense. They're going to affect, right? Your energy levels, your level of drive, um, you know, areas where you've had real success in your career, you've been really inspired, areas where maybe you've had trauma or, you know, areas where bosses have treated you like crap and you've kind of like, it's happened to me, right? You've kind of shied away from, well, I'm not going to do that again. when really it's like well you might have had one bad experience with that boss you know don't let that completely stop you from something that you really wanted to do or maybe you were good at. So uh that's about it guys. I appreciate you listening to this and again um if any of you are Christians out there you want to pray for me that'd be awesome. Uh otherwise if you're interested in this is it is $200 to book the initial session with me. You know it takes my time. It's you know I value my time. I don't give free consultations. I used to do that and people would just kind of show up, not really be very invested and then just they wouldn't want to even work with me. Um, I found once I started requiring people to, you know, put a little bit of money down if you're going to actually consider working with me, more people actually move forward. They get more out of it and also I don't have any no-shows. You know, people will make sure they make their appointment when they paid for it. So

yeah, it is $200 to get the career clarity session. It's think of it as a consultation. But, you know, the idea is that in that initial hour, I'm going to try to help bring some clarity to your career, help you see something maybe that you haven't seen before. So, you walk out of that whether you work with me or not, feeling like, okay, awesome. I'm not crazy. I do think that this makes more sense. This is clearer to me. And then, you know, again, if you want to do the full uh four session package with me and we feel like we're a good fit for each other, let's say, you know, I'll offer you or I'll invite you to participate in that if you'd like. So, that's it. Thanks everybody. Uh again, I'll give you an update later down the road uh in the coming weeks or months on one or more of the channels and let you know, maybe what I've decided to do longer term. But for now, I'm going to be con, you know, resuming career coaching at Healthy Developer at least for the next, I'd guess maybe 2 to 3 months. You know, if it goes really well, I may do it longer. If I find a way to integrate both, you know, that's cool, too. And hey, if you got any questions about this or suggestions for me, leave them in the comments. I always try to engage as much as I can. So, until next time, thanks.