 you would never do anything great alone. Let me say that again. You would never do anything great or of any kind of significance alone. A lot of you guys are self-taught developers and you think that you can move the world by yourself, which a lot of cases you can do a lot of good stuff by yourself, but when it comes to great, impactful, meaningful projects, you're gonna always need to enlist the help of somebody else. I want to kind of go over some of that with you guys so it'll help you guys from making all the mistakes that self-taught software developers make and really put you in a position to take your career to the next level. My name is Rod, the IT guy, and I wanna help you guys really kind of take things up a notch in your development career and really put you in a position to win. That being said, guys, a lot of you guys are kind of like I used to be. When I used to start off after college, I had this whole mindset of man, I wasted my time with college. They didn't teach me all the programming languages I needed to. I had to do a lot of the teaching of software development to myself to really get the job that I want because guys, if you already know when you're dealing with a school or any college, they teach you just some of the fundamentals, not necessarily all of them. And the programming languages that I learned is COBOL and a lot of outdated programs. They're not gonna teach you the new stuff like Python or any of the new high stuff that a lot of companies are using. So I was very resentful of college degrees at the time. But I quickly learned that, hey, the fundamentals goes a long way. Maybe you don't wanna spend four years of a degree learning that, but it really kind of helps you accelerate your journey to be a software developer and help in all areas, even for certification, self-taught or any other educational source that's gonna allow you to actually learn how to code. That being said guys, we have to really focus on what we can do to take projects to the next level. And a lot of times we're in our own way and don't even know it. And I'm gonna give you guys some tips to avoid this and really put you in a position to win. That being said guys, before I get started, I have a seven step guide link below. It's free, it's gonna help self-taught developers really kind of take your skills to the next level and really kind of put you in a position so that you can leverage your existing skills. But networking also leverage the skills especially around you and kind of give you the best approach to attack this even though if you used to actually doing everything yourself and it kind of help you take your projects to the next level and give you access to our free DigiLink community. So go ahead and sign up for that, it's free. I'm gonna head plug that and go ahead and check that out. That being said guys, let me tell you a story. Well, early on in my programming career I just knew that I was that guy. I was gonna program anything and everything that I do I'm gonna program, I'm a programmer. That's the hat I used to wear all the time. And that was fine for a little bit when you're trying to learn how to code. But after a while guys, it's only 24 hours a day. You have to really focus on the high impact for projects. And a lot of time that does not include you writing code. Well, that being said WordPress, I needed a website. I wanted to start to really kind of expand my skills and start to offer my clients websites and all this stuff. And hey, at the time I did HTML websites. I did all the files, getting it up to the cloud and all that stuff and the thing was great. So I actually handwritten a lot of the HTML and stuff myself over the years. Well, probably about maybe five, six years ago probably a little later than that. WordPress came on my radar and I'm not gonna use WordPress, I code my own. Until John Simon, I came across a couple of his YouTube videos and I discovered he used WordPress. And I was like, why you use WordPress John? You're a programmer, you need a programmer yourself. And I forgot which video he was talking to is as a software development you are multiple hats. Sometimes you wear a coding hat, sometimes you wear a project management hat, sometimes you have the problem solver hat. And a lot of times you wear hats that are not developers and if there's a solution there that doesn't require you to write code to get the job done, that may be the best option guys. And my point being is sometimes something can software is out there that you can leverage to get that project done that falls within the lines of that customer technology stack. You can plug that in and you are still a developer guys. It's all about the problem solving guys. Don't let your ego get in the way saying you have to write the code. And from that point on, I started using WordPress and I love it. That was one of the best decisions that really kind of took my skills to the next level because not only I got access to canned software now I can see how other people write their codes, their plugins, their approach to architecture, all the integration pieces. I had instant access to all that overnight. And it just really start to focus in on where the gap's at. What I need to do to get this workflow done start this project, digitize this workflow. And it really kind of took my development skills up a notch even though it wasn't necessarily me learning new code. It was me accepting the fact that hey I didn't have to program everything. There are solutions out there that's canned, that's ready. And this is where Stack Overflow and all that come in at. Obviously you want to be aware of that solution before you plug it into any kind of customer stack or into your application. But at the same time if it's tried, true, it works. You know where to have a track record. Go ahead and put it in there guys. You will never do nothing of significance alone guys. Don't let your ego get in the way. We want to make sure as a self-taught developer you understand this. You don't necessarily just get in the code. This is the people who actually suffer the most from the self-taught developer because you started from scratch and you got this mentality that I can do it by myself. So don't fall into that guys. It's always good number two to network with specialists because even though like me, I consider myself a full stack developer. I originally came from being a database developer but now I'm a full stack developer. And as a full stack developer you kind of work with a lot of different technologies. Yeah, I know a little about a lot of technology and how they work as a whole. But when you start digging into the details you need a specialist. And I could actually, I have the skill set to go in there and learn the syntax and probably solve that problem but how fast it's gonna take me. Is there a specialist I can lean on that's not only gonna help me solve it faster but also gonna give me insight, help me save time and really give me insights on the approach and having more resources at my disposal. Again guys, you can't do it by yourself. It's good to leverage other specialists. Find the right one obviously. Once you find the right one you're gonna be in position to win guys. And number three, the client don't care about the detailed technology and the underlying technology you use. Long as it's nice it's something that they can tell their friends they use but at the end of the day they're worried about the problem being solved. And I don't care what they say about hey I need this latest and greatest technology at the end of the day if you solve that problem you're good with them. But let you don't solve that problem. They're gonna be troubled. You can come to them all day with the flashy code and the nice code and say hey I've done 80% of this project with all this nice code but you still don't have a solution to your problem. You have your people are stuck and need help and they'll have a solution. They are going to fire you. So it's always best to solve the problem. Start with the problem. Solve that problem. Don't get tied up into the specific technology the underlying technology because at the end of the day it does help to have a standard on the technology that you use as far as if you're working with a dot net shop. Let's look at the dot net options first. If WordPress makes sense for this it makes sense for that. No let's use it let's leverage it but at the end of the day guys you want to make sure that you solve the problem. You can always come back and improve that problem or put something into place that's gonna kinda make management of that stack or the application of software better in the long run but you want to solve the problem first. I know there's a lot of bad code out there that you have to clean up and yeah we're gonna allocate time to clean up that code but at the end of the day guys you can't let that get in the way of you not solving the problem because you're trying to clean up the code on the front end before you solve the problem and you don't have time to clean up the code. Solve the problem first clean up the code on the back end during maintenance time. That's the mindset to have when you have deadlines guys. So that being said guys the most important thing is to solve the problem. Self-taught developers don't let your ego get in the way. Please don't because you're gonna always be underpaid as is and you're not gonna really be able to solve the bigger or actually complete the bigger project and really leverage the technology that's already out there. At the end of the day guys software development is maturing. I'm pretty sure if it's been thought of it's been wrote in code. You just gotta find it in a way that's gonna implement into your project, your current project. So like subscribe to the content. If you agree with me comment below is you if you disagree with me also let's start a conversation and talk about the details. Like subscribe to the content. Again guys if you haven't signed up from bar seven step guide links are below. Like subscribe to the content. Again, how many times I said that. But yeah sign up for our seven step guide to help you soft self-taught developers get your coding skill to the next level and really get access to our community. And I'll see you guys in the comments. Peace.