Rethinking everything: A Personal Post Grad

If I were to restart my career today, knowing everything I do now, here’s what I’d do.

We live in what was once called science fiction.

What was sci-fi seven years ago is now the world we live in. We're living in an exciting time of rapid change, while we’re rethinking the systems and processes around our lives. We’re living post global pandemic. Autonomous electric cars are a thing. Working remotely across countries is normal. We have rockets that land themselves. Our entertainment is quietly curated by hidden AI systems, and we all have access to PhD level AI assistants. While I’ve been working away in my everyday life. The world changed around me.

This isn’t an essay—it’s a plan. A promise to myself.
After more than half a decade building software and teams in a big corporation, I left without a clear next step. I kept wondering: “If I put even half the energy into myself that I gave to that job, where could I end up?” So I’m doing something about it. Taking this time to rethink everything I know asking myself. “If I started my career again today with everything that I already know, what would I do?”

What you’re reading is the intro—a loose syllabus for what I’m calling my self-directed postgrad. It sounds more official than “a plan to take classes, build stuff, experiment, and learn.”

What got me here is quickly becoming outdated

I’ve spent more than a decade building products and services in many disciplines, companies, and countries. From the start of my career designing a whale shaped tea steeper and Blackberry packaging to later work with startups and huge corporations building body diagnostics testing labs and agricultural software.

I know I have valuable experience. Hard earned lessons from building global teams, and failing beautifully — along with a few wins. But it feels like what got me here is very quickly becoming outdated. Although I believe the underlying principles, and high level processes may remain the same I’m excited to figure this out.

Now's the perfect time to experiment and rethink everything that got me here. Rather than just consuming outdated books and essays, I'll experiment with tools building functional software projects that I can share publicly. AI is changing everything—and it’s time to rethink everything I thought I knew about building businesses and creating products. Roles are merging, approaches are different, and “the factories” that built software of yesterday are becoming obsolete.

My self directed post graduate program

With technology changing so quickly I don’t see a university able to teach what I want to learn. Instead I’ve curated a mini degree from solo builders, company demos, and youtube videos of what other people are building. I want to learn how to build profitable businesses and rethink how we build products working with our new AI friends. The course I’ve curated will require me to build tangible projects. Giving me something I’ll be able to share with each of you.

My promise

You don't need another person praising AI and selling you on how to optimise your life. That’s not me — I’m no glowing guru, but I’m no luddite either. I’m genuinely curious and excited by what I see. Not for the novelty of a new toy, rather for the potential changing how I could work in my own life, and to reflect on what I could have done differently in the past.

Format

I’ll follow the format below, for each projects, class, or topic:

1. Learn
   I’ll complete the coursework and study how others are building—focusing on the tools they use and the processes they follow.

2. Build
   I’ll create the course projects or my own, producing tangible work that shows what I’m learning and what’s possible.

3. Document
   I’ll write a Substack post for each course or project—especially when I’ve built something, had an idea, or reimagined a past process. Each post will be an accessible case study for others who want to build too. This could be weekly, but I’m avoiding hard deadlines upfront.

4. Share
   I’ll package each project with links, a write-up, and a walk-through video. Posting to LinkedIn (or elsewhere) is my way of going public—sparking conversation, learning from others, and staying visible.

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My Curriculum outline

With how much I believe building companies will change. I will split my “personal post grad” in two parts. I won’t just focus on just the “building” of products. Rather looking across all the roles needed to build a profitable business customers want. For most of my career the cost of development and time it took to iterate, limited what could be built. I believe now as the development “bottleneck” starts to disappear more time can be spent in other ways, rather than in the grunt work of just building the tools.

Part 1: Engin-nerding about design and building
Update what I know about product development, design, and how to bootstrap a business. Marinating myself in building projects with new AI tools and processes.

Part 2: Sales & marketing
Following the courses & books Alex and Leila Hormozi at Acquisition.com and Russell Brunson of Clickfunnels. Developing Irresistible offers, challenging how I think about marketing, and designing funnels.

Let me break each section down.

Part 1: Engin-nerding about design

Learning the tools, processes and approaches others are using to explore, test, build, and deploy with our new AI friends. I’ll be doing every lesson from the courses below. I plan to complete part one of this post grad by the end of July Giving me roughly 3 months to get this done.

1. AI Software development
   AI skills in Development by

   Mckay Wrigley
   an entrepreneur and AI developer from Salt lake city.
   Building with Cursor, V0, Replit, Model text protocol 101, building AI agents, Building full stack apps, RAG retrieval and more.
   Material: https://www.jointakeoff.com/
   

2. Product Management with AI
   How the CEO of Gumroad thinks of Product management in his company.
   Material: https://aitutorials.com/
   Seeing how Sahil, the CEO of a company I like, and learning how he is applying AI to Product management feels like a good move. I can only assume he would make these videos if he believes it's valuable for people in his team. I don’t need to be an employee to get the benefits.
   

3. Vibe Coding 101 – Andrew Ng & Replit
   Andrew Ng is a pioneer in AI and renowned educator. I've nerded out to his talks on YouTube, so even though this course may duplicate some of the lessons I'll learn from Mckay Wrigley. I think it’s worth my time.
   Material: https://www.deeplearning.ai/short-courses/vibe-coding-101-with-replit/
   Andrew Ng announcement: https://x.com/AndrewYNg/status/1904929635043074478
   

4. Experiment and test new processes.
   For this part of the post grad, I plan to follow along with a few youtube interviews from Greg Isenberg and try out some of the Startup ideas he’s shared. Three ideas i found interesting a perhaps worth exploring are:

   1. Using Reddit to identify and test problem cases.

   2. Building a directory site like John Rush or Frey Chu. Exploring the connection to AdSense to monetise or adding micro SAAS on top of a directory niche.

   3. Building micro saas products based on Fiver job postings.
      

5. Project | Outline a new process
   Reflect on everything I’ve learned above, then outline a proposal for a new product design process (or processes).
   

6. [Occasional calls & events ] OpenAI academy
   Throughout the next few months I will attend different event talks to hear how others are using OpenAI’s new tools as the world continues to change. If OpenAI is hosting events it makes sense to join.
   Material: https://academy.openai.com/

Part 2: Sales & Marketing

My project plan is intentionally vague for this part of my “Post Grad”. I don’t yet know what I’ll have built by the time I finish Part 1. But I know Russel Brunson and Alex and Leilia Hormozi are people I’ve followed for the last four years. I’ve got a little pile of their textbooks I’m itching to dig into. They offer a no B/S approach that I've watched others follow and see success. Just the bits I’ve read in the past already changed how I approached design.

I plan to apply whatever I learn from their textbooks/ courses to whatever business I build in Part 1. My back up — Should I not build any business in part 1. I’ll apply these learnings to my friends' award-winning chocolate business here in Bodø. (shop doesn’t yet ship internationally, but write me, we are still setting up new countries).

Course textbooks

1. $100m offer & $100m leads (https://www.acquisition.com/books)

2. Dotcom, Expert, Traffic secrets & Unlock. (https://secretstrilogy.com/get-the-trilogy-now)

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How I see myself and how I show up online don’t yet match. This program and learning in public is one of the ways I plan to bring myself to the world. I don’t have to wait until I’m a grandpa to talk about the things back in my day. The world is changing, and I’m excited to change with it.

Join my Substack to follow my journey, Let me know in the comments or send me a DM if you have course recommendations or want to collaborate on a project. Here we go!