#011 : CURIOSITY, CONTINUITY AND COMMUNITY

It has been a few weeks since I last wrote a Founder’s Diary entry. I keep telling myself I should be more consistent with it, but the truth is, with all the hats I am wearing right now, writing has been one of the harder things to keep up with. I feel guilty about that. I want to do better. This diary is where I make sense of my own journey, and when I skip it, I feel the fog build up. But sometimes the days take over before the writing can happen. So I am here now, picking the thread back up, and moving forward.

These past weeks have been a blur. Not the cinematic kind. The kind where it feels like your brain has 40 tabs open, all flashing for attention. Solo-preneurship makes that normal. Running 2 businesses, pivoting tactics, building systems, designing content, and now preparing to launch a global learning program. Some days it feels like I am juggling more balls than I even have hands for.

It is chaotic. But it is honest. This is the journey.

Somewhere in the middle of building RiftX, I went down a rabbit hole that had nothing to do with features or marketing. It was a human rabbit hole. I realized that if RiftX is meant to be a real learning platform for professionals, it cannot just be a library of content. It needs structure. It needs rhythm. It needs a community that supports each other. And it needs a design that grows with the pace of AI, not one that gets outdated every month.

That sent me back into the world of learning design and community building. Not in a surface-level way, but in a deeper, almost nostalgic way. Because it reminded me of the part of myself I had forgotten.

Before cloud, before sales, before the enterprise world, I spent the first 10 years of my career as a technical trainer. I taught thousands of IT pros around the world how to use Microsoft technology. At my peak I delivered 24 training weeks a year. That experience shaped how I think. It taught me how people learn. How they get stuck. How they absorb complex ideas. How to simplify without dumbing things down. I thought I left that version of me behind. But building RiftX made me realize I never really did. That trainer is still part of who I am.

So I asked myself how people can learn in the AI era, where the world moves faster than any structured curriculum can handle. The answer came down to 3 things. Curiosity. Continuity. Community. If people can stay curious, stay consistent, and stay connected, they will find their way through the noise.

A few days of pulling on that idea and AIin30 was born. Not as a polished program, but as an experiment. A hypothesis. I built it in 2 weeks. I launched it in 3. The structure, the lessons, the emails, the automations, the webinars, the community space. Everything came together piece by piece. I had no idea how many people would actually show up. Maybe 10. Maybe 40. Even a handful would have been enough to learn from.

Then the signups came. Slow at first. Then steady. Then faster than I expected. Today we are at 212 explorers. That number changed everything. Something that started as a small idea suddenly became real. People around the world were signing up to learn with me. They were giving me their time, their trust, their attention.

And now here we are. AIin30 starts tomorrow. Which means the experiment begins tomorrow.

And I would be lying if I said I was not nervous.

Will the format work for everyone? 
Will people return for week 2?
Will the email automations, the quiz triggers, and the communication flows fire correctly?
Will my ideas land the way I hope they will?

There is so much uncertainty. But maybe that is the point.

This is the part of the journey people rarely talk about. The night before something begins. The moment where excitement and anxiety feel like the same emotion wearing different clothes. The moment where responsibility settles in. When you can feel that this thing is about to shape the future of RiftX in ways you cannot fully predict.

AIin30 was never meant to be the finished product. It was always a question. How do people want to learn. What motivates them to show up. What derails their momentum. What sparks curiosity. What builds community. What creates continuity. I wanted real signals, not assumptions.

Tomorrow the experiment begins. And somewhere in the chaos of running a laundromat business while building a tech platform, I am realizing that everything is starting to connect. The trainer in me. The builder. The designer. The solopreneur trying to keep all the plates spinning. The desire to create something meaningful for people navigating this new AI world.

This is the middle of the journey. Not polished. Not perfect. But real. And these next 4 weeks will teach me as much as they teach anyone in the program.

I think I am ready for that.