Back • 01/01/2023

My Year 2022 - The Beginning of My Adventure!

Written by Melvyn Malherbe on 01/01/2023

I went from a salaried developer working in isolation to a content creator who accumulated 15,000 followers and had the chance to help 200 people master React.

I quit my job to become independent and create the best French-speaking training platform.

In this article, I will retrace my year 2022... from what I remember!

I helped more than 160 people learn React. I went from 0 to 10,000 followers on Twitter. From 0 to 2,000 subscribers on YouTube. I published thousands of Tweets and posted dozens of videos.

All this, in less than a year!

I will try to do a retrospective every year.

A normal start to the year...

No ambition to share my content. My only ambition was to go out with friends and have fun. This year started in the snow, sledding like a madman.

I also started, in the company, to learn Swift and SwiftUI to develop iOS applications.

I loved SwiftUI, it's a bit like React but in Swift 😂

I also finished my project QoQlick which was made in Angular (😢) and C# (pretty cool).

At the beginning of the year, I learned iOS, Angular, and C# (which I mastered quite well).

iOS was another story, I had great seniors with me, but I didn't like the Apple environment... ironic for an Apple addict?

But this beginning of the year was also a huge turning point in my life... a revelation! I realized that...

I am capable of doing what I want.

I had never sat down to ask myself "What do I want to do in my life" and there, I had this question that lingered in my head for several months.

To find the answer, I remembered what I did when I was little:

I played Minecraft... a lot and I made Minecraft videos on YouTube.

Minecraft is coding in pvp version... no, I'm kidding! I spent my time on Epicube doing PVP Swap duels.

What I realized is that I loved creating, and even as a developer... when I saw Benjamin Code or others, it inspired me! I told myself internally: I want to do like them.

Seeing all this, I increasingly thought that I had to orient myself in this direction -> creating content around my passion.

Beginning of creation...

Yes, a lot of time passed... a lot of reflections and my first books devoured. I am motivated. I can and will have the life I dream of.

Problem: our society. I still had to make money in this story, under penalty of having to create content under a bridge.

So I went with a simple strategy:

I will launch a newsletter in which I will write and practice sharing cool stuff and when I have 1000 subscribers, I will offer the people who follow me the most qualitative course I can conceive.

But before that, I just share my passion.

And that's what I did... share my passion around the web and React.

I started on Instagram and, frankly, it didn't work out for me.

Honestly, "breaking through" on Twitter seemed impossible to me (my limiting belief) but I tried... for fun. Twitter was my network, it's the only one I use in my daily life.

So I launched my first threads and there: explosion!

I went from 160 followers to almost 1000 in 2 weeks!

Immediately, I started shifting my attention from Instagram to Twitter.

When I reached 2000 Twitter followers, I started talking about my newsletter and it worked quite well.

I also had my first Twitter dramas in July, then I went on vacation to rest.

During these vacations, seeing the extent that this part of my life was taking, I started to think:

What is the best way to learn React in 2022?

I wrote again and again until I found my famous CAPE method.

And I launched myself.

August - September

In September, I started creating exercises for BeginReact with the theory and everything needed.

After 2 months, I started recording videos for my training and I also started YouTube.

A brief stint on YouTube

The date of my first video was a long time ago! I started with YouTube, but I got like 8 views on my video. I did 0 promotion or anything and I was a bit ashamed, afraid that my colleagues would find this video (which actually happened)

Anyway, I resumed YouTube long after this time by promoting my videos so that the YouTube algorithm would be happy.

Back to BeginReact

After finishing the first module of BeginReact, I offered 4 people to join the adventure.

They all accepted. It was great, my first students without even talking about it publicly. Just by offering access with a unique price for people who sent me messages.

The feedback was really great, only super positive stuff, it made me really happy to be able to share my passion.

And there, I found a purpose in my life:

Helping other people by sharing my passion.

So I persevered and finished recording, editing, and publishing all the videos.

Every morning, I got up super early to record 1 to 2 solution videos for my training exercises.

Why?

I wanted to create the best experience, in which you see in front of you a super motivated, energetic guy who wants to blow everything up.

Obviously, my goal is to help as many people as possible and have more members, which makes me earn money, but I need money to be able to continue helping other people.

In the end, it's a virtuous circle for everyone!

Take YouTube for example, it's your attention that is monetized through ads, for videos designed to keep your attention.

For my courses, you pay for an experience that makes you enjoy from start to finish.

Problem...

When I make my videos, my content, my site, etc... I take enormous pleasure.

But, at work, my "main job" started to lose all meaning for me.

I wonder what I'm doing there, taking the train to go to an office where I can't concentrate for more than 10 minutes because people are talking all the time.

People often ask me:

How do you stay productive?

The answer is:

I set a timer, I do one task at a time, and I try to never be de-focused. Open spaces are my enemies. I see open spaces as a bottomless pit of distractions.

My colleagues were great, probably the best colleagues in a company.

But there you go, I started to strongly deviate in my ambitions and I was no longer aligned with life in this company in person (I couldn't work remotely).

Launch of BeginReact

The moment I had been waiting for so long arrived.

At the beginning of October, I did a pre-sale that I offered to the 100 people subscribed to my BeginReact emails.

20 people joined the training in 1 week, which is crazy for me, who came out of nowhere.

I also reached 5000 Twitter followers after 4 months. And there, I started making a lot of YouTube videos.

Then, on November 3rd, it was the official launch. 2 weeks to offer BeginReact at a reduced price.

Result, after 2 weeks: 140 people joined BeginReact.

I was overjoyed. Impossible, incredible. More than 1000 subscribers in 2 weeks to my newsletter. About 1 in 10 people who were convinced by my offer.

Very few negative comments, about 1%! (so 2) An ultra-high satisfaction rate.

I told myself: wow. I'm helping 140 people who were struggling to understand React... 140 lovely people who were kind to me. This is what I dreamed of.

Understand me: this is the first time I sell something. There, I realize the power of this phrase:

I am capable of doing what I want.

My goal was to have 100 members, and I thought it was almost impossible.

I achieved 140% of this goal. And since then, 60 more people have joined.

End of the year slump

A very difficult end of the year for me. My job in the company was losing its meaning, the motivation was no longer there. I only had one desire: to continue helping people with BeginReact.

So I decided to take steps to leave my job and not do like the others. But it was a much more difficult period than I thought.

I was confronted with immense social pressure:

No, you can't do that, life doesn't work like that!

Which created doubt in me. You may know, doubt is the enemy of man.

I had to debate and explain my vision to dozens of people, but I was in a parallel world, it was complicated to understand a guy like me, totally crazy who wants to do crazy things and create videos for amazing people.

In short, which makes me end this year with a not very positive relationship with my company and with myself. It's up to me to listen to my heart and do what is good for me.

I promise: the year 2023 will be incredible. I am ready to blow everything up.

Result?

I left my company on January 6, 2023, for better or for worse (no, it's not just in weddings that we say that).

If you too want to quit your job to achieve your dream or something else... send me an email at jeveuxrealisermonreve@melvynx.com and I will gladly respond.

You can join my club to not miss anything: https://codelynx.dev/emails

I plan to make this year a rocket that goes to the moon. See you soon and happy new year to you!