This story determines the rest of my life. Everything so far has led up to this point. Am I scared to be set back by years? Yes. Am I worried? Yes. Do I have a choice? No. I must come forward, take action, and confront reality.
1. Look at anyone’s achievements.
Before we get started with the story, I want you to understand something.
“She became a mother of four children.”
“He built an eight-figure business.”
“He’s a world champion chess player.”
Those things are easy to say. Even worse, a considerable contingent of the population would start to think of reasons why their achievement doesn’t matter. – Why isn’t the business nine-figures, only eight?
I fear that my achievements and failures sound silly.
“I created a mental math app with two subversions
for
different demographics.” – What do you need to learn to create an app? You must know how to code, design, build
systems, manage content, plan, and market. Each sub-task includes countless sub-tasks. For example, programming
consists of logic, math, architecture, syntax, automatization, data, and flow, to name a few. I aligned my
entire life with that goal. Thinking about my apps was the only thing I did. I even read books on addicting
users. It’s natural to underestimate someone’s effort.
Learning means trying relentlessly. How often do you need to combat giving up or resisting distractions? That's where real progress derives from. A chain is composed of countless insignificant pearls stacked. If you achieve something noticeable, you need to align everything. Achieving something means winning millions of small decisions. The fight is won the day before.
Let's reverse this logic. What do failures show if a win results from ten thousand small wins? They show a missing foundation, countless micro-fails, and countless misaligned decisions.
2. I failed so hard.
Failures are a part of everyone’s journey, a stepping stone to success. Yet, sometimes, failures are so monumental that giving up and never trying again seems like the right choice.
There was one specific failure that had the capability to overthrow my entire existence. That’s what this text is about. I face my biggest fear.
Two weeks had passed since I quit making short videos about the development of my app in February 2023. I decided to try something different—advertising. I had no doubt this was the right decision. The brave choice is usually the right one. Yet, I procrastinated out of fear of what reality might reveal. But I had no choice.
I set up my first ad campaign with voices in my head and waited.
I failed. I wasted fifty euros on a two-week ad campaign. Fifty euros isn’t too much. But the result wasn’t one I didn’t want to accept - fifty thousand impressions and precisely zero downloads. Maybe no one was interested in my app?
Let me tell you about a silly mistake I made. The starting page only showed the results from the first day, so I was essentially blind until I discovered that one could click the calendar icon. That’s why the payments were behind, and my account got suspended. This is an excellent example of first-try ignorance. Maybe my apps were wanted, and I was too incompetent to market them?
I had aligned my life with the development and marketing of my apps, and what if all that was futile?
I failed and built up even more fear as a result.
3. Failures are not what they seem.
Before we continue with the February failure, I want to document my experience with setbacks.
By June 2023, I had failed so hard—around fifty failures accumulated, causing a month of burnout. I wasn’t scared to do the tedious work or brave thing. Hence, I overstretched my edge. Other things contributed to my burnout, for example, a rejection from a girl I thought I loved. The transition from ‘more’ to ‘better’ in my work was also part of the reason. However, the failures perhaps played the most prominent role. Whenever something didn’t work out, I would move on and try the next thing. My resilience knew no bounds – not because of what lay ahead but what was behind.
Here’s an example of a failure. I got the idea to implement augmented reality features to make mental math more engaging and lean toward the competitive edge. In May, I got up and got to work. Before school started, it was clear that this idea was futile. I lacked the proper hardware and didn’t want to dilute my focus. A few minutes passed after I had eaten breakfast, arrived at school and continued to work. I failed and moved on instantly.
This was a relatively insignificant failure compared to the ones I had already behind me. I took a short break in April 2022 after the intensive nine-month programming course ended. I was 14 years old then and knew very little about content creation. I had a timelapse channel. I decided to try out building an audience for the sake of learning. So, instead of compressing a hundred clips in a two-minute timelapse, I uploaded the videos individually as shorts; these were new back then. – In 60 days, I created 375 shorts and gained almost a thousand subscribers, with over half a million views. Three hundred seventy-five tries were enough to determine my concept didn’t work. It gave me confidence nonetheless. So, I moved on and returned to programming; I started to work on my app. After publishing my first mental math app, I created higher-quality vlogs on the development of my app. After seventy tries, in February 2023, I had to accept it didn’t work out either. I moved on and started my current video format. And that’s where the advertising story from February starts.
Failures kill - I had moved on so fast that my mind couldn’t keep up anymore.
4. You can’t call me a quitter.
I’m a phoenix. This story would not have been inspiring if I had quit, given up, and decided to grow complacent. For I know what truly matters in life, giving up remains inconceivable. This is a story of how I will confront my biggest fears.
It was August 2023, one year after the app was released, six months after the first failed ad campaign in February, and two months after the burnout in June. My apps and brand saw massive upgrades during these six months of procrastination. Furthermore, I grew mentally. Now, a failure seemed much less likely.
I don’t want to paint a false picture. I had a high level of inner resistance. As of now, August, I have a level of discipline where I don’t even touch warm water, music, or sweets, and I get up at five every day. Still, I was scared. My future stands on the line.
What’s the baseline of masculinity? Being a man means confronting the world. Masculinity is about constantly leaning beyond one’s true edge and redefining what’s possible.
Pressure manifests motivation, and deadlines accelerate. It’s the end of the last summer holidays before 12th grade starts. It’s my duty to get over it.
After a nervous hour of walking, I found a peaceful and quiet spot on a bench. Retrieving my notebook and
pencil, I was enveloped in the pleasant summer air, basking in the golden light. The sky, a serene blue, and
the fields, a gentle blonde, formed a tranquil backdrop. Like soft brushstrokes, the clouds painted the sky
as they drifted past. In this serene setting, I felt a profound sense of belonging, where the winds seemed
to caress my heart.
The place where I determine my future shall be tranquil.
I sat down for hours, brainstorming new ad concepts. Slogans, graphics, and videos were all used to provoke desire in the viewer.
The next day, I created the first four ad videos.
Friday, August 18th
With two days left, my summer holidays were approaching their end, and the clock was ticking. The last six weeks were an incredible time full of changes, challenges, and growth—the only true pleasures.
Today, I won first place at a young entrepreneur competition, where I presented my apps with conviction. I also won first place last year. I didn’t hesitate to introduce my apps to the minister who visited this event. Today, I have destiny on my side; momentum makes me unstoppable. I ended my presentation with the words, ‘Yesterday I created four ads, and now my story begins.’
I am sitting on the train after a long day in Dresden; it is eight in the evening. The sun has already set, and twilight dominates. Only when I look far to the horizon do I see a remaining glow from the sunset, the horizon transforming from a vibrant red to a deep, enchanting blue. I am utterly alone on the train, surrounded by this breathtaking sight. Now is the right time to take action. I would transform a great day into a truly outstanding one.
Setting up the campaigns took one hour. – Things take as long as you want.
Now, I have overcome my biggest fear—the fear of failure.
5. I can’t lose
Tomorrow, August 21st, I get to go to school again. I'm starting and finishing 12th grade as a 16-year-old because I believe in speed.
Today, I went on a hike and ended up in the heavy and dense rain that I couldn’t see further than two meters. However, I knew I had to keep going because I was too far from home; there was no return. Each step was a testament to the indomitability of my spirit. I was surprised when I stumbled upon a little hut, a beacon of hope and safety, just as the rain was about to end.
I attempted to advertise because I knew that I had to move on. I needed to tell whether my attempts were futile or the beginning of something greater. I can’t lose. I can only learn or win. If success was easy, would it be desirable? God filters out the uncommitted ones and gives success to those who give it their all.
One successful ad can make a difference, but the first attempt is rarely the final one, just as the first love seldom lasts. I need to act, assess, and adjust.
Failures kill. – Why? Suppose life looks like a tree; every decision is a new branch. Every time a decision is or isn’t made, no matter how insignificant, the life trajectories branch out. Failures kill the paths that were wrong all along.
This story is a parabola for a love story.
1. Continuing from August
Two weeks later, it’s early September 2023.
I learned a lot from August's failed ad campaign. Yet, I believe I built a solid app. Now is the time to start one last effort to test my ideas. Here is what I plan to do. I will start an ad campaign that includes roughly fifty items in total. I created different videos, texts, titles, and graphics. They would all be competing, and the algorithm would determine the best. My budget is twenty euros daily for a week, which is ten to fifty thousand impressions daily.
This is the final battle.
I don’t care about the results anymore. I know I must move on. I learned my lessons. A visionary has a goal and doesn't care about anything else. Sometimes, a vision has a genuinely extraordinary outcome. - But there is a difference between a first project and a real vision.
Once again, the next few days will determine everything.
2. The story of my apps and my life
There would now be an infinite white room in a movie, with silence provoking deep reflection. It’s easy to say that my apps were just apps, but they shaped me forever.
At the end of 2020, I was 13 years old and had a vision for my future. I would become an entrepreneur. I would get started by learning how to code to develop an app. Back then, I also knew the importance of building an audience.
While I didn't know what my first software project would be, I knew that I would specialize in app development, as this would build touchable, interactive, and more valid software for a business. I looked up the revenue of countless apps and divided it by their user count. An app makes an average of cents per active million users per day. Some make significantly less, some considerably more. Two cents may not sound like much, but one million active users bring seven million a year, which is twenty thousand euros daily. – I unleashed endless motivation because I knew I would need to be right only once, and being right can come at any time.
However, after trying hard to learn how to code for up to fourteen hours daily, I burned out in the spring of 2021 and gave my first tries at building an audience.
In the summer of 2021, while my family was lying on the beach, I stayed in a hotel room in Mallorca because my programming course began.
A few months passed, and in December 2021, I built the prototype of a mental math app. My low mental math capabilities annoyed me, so I wanted to create one. I had no idea how impactful that decision would become.
After the programming course ended in the spring of 2022, I took a small break from programming, during which time I created 375 short videos in 60 days. – I never forgot my 2020 vision. During that break, however, I laid out plans for that app.
As I started, the work was arduous, tedious, and draining. In the summer of 2022, there wasn’t any artificial intelligence tool; I had minimal experience and still had a bunch of bad habits; for example, I wasted the evenings on social media, didn’t do sports, and ate noodles. Self-improvement didn’t exist either.
Furthermore, I forgot everything I learned in that course. It cost a thousand euros because it was real life and with real teachers. However, it was worth every penny because I didn’t forget how to teach myself things and work under pressure. It was money well spent.
I remember a summer day in 2022. I talked with someone during my internship in the college's electronics field. During this conversation, it hit me: I could add a game to my app to make it unique and fun—a mental math app that helps you make progress by making the progress more engaging. While that wasn’t the first time someone did that, it was the first time not targeted at children. One thing was sure: my skills were far too insufficient to implement such an endeavor. I did not have a choice.
I started working the hardest I had ever worked in my life. Before that, I didn’t even know how much I was capable of. 14-hour days weren’t rare. Even as my family forced me to go on two vacations because I supposedly wasn’t old enough to stay at home, I continued to grind in the airport, hotel, and pool.
Then, in late August 2022, I finished the prototype and published the app. Letting the product in the market while improving it is the only option; hence, I didn’t wait.
It was October 2022. My productivity massively improved with a bit of lifestyle change. Whenever I ran into an error message, I would do pushups or run outside to do pullups. That was the first time I started to care about my fitness, and looking back, I trained like a beast. I would do one hundred fifty pushups and fifty pullups daily for roughly three months. In October, I scrapped the entire app and started from scratch, with more coding and design experience. That’s also when I won the first business competition and began to record my development journey in short videos, which I abandoned in February of 2023.
In December of 2022, I left this “work, work, work” phase for the first time and started having free time, even if only occasionally. My productivity was higher as a result. Before December, I didn't talk to anyone and began socializing for the first time. I also got rid of all my bad habits, mainly digital addiction, for two weeks, although I slipped back in the coming winter, at least on a much lower level. It would take until March for my lifestyle to reach perfection.
January 2023 was beautiful; I had my first creative peak because I removed many distractions and constraints. January 12th was a school-free Thursday because every university had an open-door day. I sat in a physics lecture because my mother forced me to, and since I wasn’t rich, I had no right to object. These ninety minutes were so unbelievably mundane that my mind started to wander. That’s where I got many groundbreaking insights. For example, I decided to create a mental math app with games to align with the needs of older people. Older people have more time, cash, and desire for cognitive performance. Amazing. I got started the same day, and after two weeks, I was done.
In February 2023, I started advertising for the first time. I was in fear and failed. As a result, more fear built up, and it would take until late August for that to change.
Then, in March of 2023, I implemented another idea from January 12th. Mental math specialized for the gym. I planned that app and didn't just start it; for the first time, I even documented everything. It provided a testing ground for new ideas for my original app. After I created this app, I started to make my hair, and I started with my current video format. On the side, I developed a heavy crush on a girl at school.
In April 2023, I started attending business lectures and advancing further by creating polls to enhance my products. I also started to advertizse using posters. I went above and beyond with my apps and offered premium features for free—and I still saw no success.
My life and performance kept improving.
Until June 2023… I got used to working hard and doing brave things. And then I burned out. I had leaned too fast beyond my true edge.
The last outstanding yet futile attempt to push my apps into public perception was when I recorded a video of me solving ten thousand mental math tasks in eleven hours.
Then, in August, I won the second business competition and attempted the second ad campaign, which I failed. – Failures kill.
And now, in September 2023, the third and largest ad campaign failed.
What a journey…
Do I regret anything? No. Everything that happened had to. While others complain they failed, I'm glad I struggled and grew. This is a crazy story I will tell with pride at a campfire on a late summer night. I believe this is a truly inspiring story.
3. Results come at the end
I have failed; no one was interested in my apps. I don’t want to waste any further effort, so quitting my first project and moving on is the right choice.
I don’t know what the future will bring. I had a purpose: my apps. For almost three years, I aligned my entire life with them. Now, my main app is gone. Luckily, I have two other apps I must try—this time, without months of fear. Otherwise, I wouldn’t know what to do without a purpose.
To transition from one purpose to the next, I will attempt to do sports and read as my priority, as knowledge and fitness are never the wrong choices. I will also write more and create more videos; competence in expression is crucial to success.
I entertain the thought of deleting the first app from the internet and wiping anything related to it. That’s like getting rejected by a girl suffering for months and then thanking her for the resilience one got for free.** Making that cut also would give more meaning to my words. Generally, when a purpose ends, you need to make sure to close a chapter. Unless my apps require active attention, I will leave them online as a reminder of my capabilities.
I don't know where I will be soon, and I am excited about it. I have great hopes, desires, and even more dedication and commitment for this new period, just like the rope laid for years on my shelf and then replaced by a metal necklace.
4. Final insights
Every principle in this text was correct, from speed to resilience. Unfortunately, a few massive mistakes prevented my success. My stupidity. My initial cowardice. My ignorance. I created and then tried to market a product without demand. I’m a random 16-year-old without any team or funding. I wanted to do a mass project without a large budget or any experience. I severely underestimated everything. Maybe I was a decade too late with mental math apps. Perhaps my app wasn’t as fun to use as I thought. I fell in love with my prototype. There’s a reason business is considered the highest instance of character development.
*****
I wore a silver necklace with a cross my entire life because I’m an orthodox. Indeed, during my early teenage years, I had an atheist phase, but I couldn't deny the whole in my heart that came from a godless existence. Unfortunately, I lost my first necklace at school when I was seven. I got a replacement. When I was ten, this necklace reappeared in my school - life is never too shy to defeat insurmountable odds. It was already too small by then, and I got a new rope with a cross. I wore it for a while. In 2022, I got a new necklace, a silver one. I rushed to pick it up because I was busy programming, so my phone fell out of my pocket, and the screen has been shattered ever since. I, however, only had one cross and didn't dare to cut open the rope. Hence, the new metal necklace has been lying on my desk without a purpose.
On September 5th, 2023, I cut the rope to use the new necklace. I hesitated for years to do it. So, what happened?
My first idea, it's dead.
5. Learn from my biggest mistake
You see, I had an idea and implemented it. – This is nonsense. It’s wrong. It doesn’t work.
When you have an idea, talk to people. That will help you identify blind spots and potential desires and clear your vision. Attend a trade fair if your hot blonde, friends, or family know nothing about business.
Then, run ads; spend a hundred or two hundred euros. Try different titles and images. Don’t obsess over the ad quality. Very basic ads can do wonders. The point of advertising is to provoke desire, which can be done by showing a pain point.
I’m not an expert on advertising, creating offers, or interrogation. You must read books on these topics and talk to more advanced people.
Then, create a simple sales page where you collect email addresses and write, ‘This product is still under development.’ Write in the other person’s interest. If no people are interested, chances are, your offer sucks, adjust it or move on. If people are interested, that’s great.
Then, you use the emails to ask people for feedback while being fully transparent and grateful. In these emails, don’t be scared to overdeliver. People go crazy over templates, free courses, or case studies. Those people will be your first customers and decide your future. By giving you their email address, they have demonstrated interest.
Is spending hundreds of euros on ads expensive? Is it costly to try many ideas and potentially waste thousands of euros? No. Think of the years saved. Think bigger. I didn’t do it because I preferred the feeling of being productive to confronting reality. I also didn’t know that method existed at all. That’s understandable, but unfortunately, it was not a very fruitful way of thinking. What’s better, working for years on something wrong or working for years on something that can succeed? The lessons will be on another level.
6. I refuse to quit
I am indefatigable. What does that mean? I cannot be fatigued, I cannot quit, I cannot lose. When I fall, I stand up. This is the only way to live.
It was late September 2023, and I had to try the second app. I didn’t want to push the third app, as it’s too similar to the first one.
I ventured out for the final summer walk of the year amidst the enchanting summer dusk. The clouds, not their usual golden hue, were a mesmerizing grey that slowly transformed into a vibrant magenta. The sky, already fading into black, was a sight to behold. The wind had stilled, and a profound silence descended. I found a bench and sat, gazing at the awe-inspiring scenery. God blessed me with a brilliant idea in this moment of wonder.
I got to work on my second and most promising mental math app, one for older folks. On that walk, I got the idea to upgrade this app massively; I would add sports and exercise routines to it. After two weeks of work, I am done, and I get to try this app.
I tried and failed.
I don’t know anything.
The final battle was now over, and I was defeated.
Now, I can move on.
We have July 2024. Almost a year after August, I finally confronted my biggest fear. Here’s a brief review of what has happened since then.
September 2023.
I had a few extraordinarily blissful days. Now I could relax a bit. The sun shone, and I spent a lot of time in nature. I almost started to believe that I wouldn’t suffer from the loss of purpose and would be able to transition to my new endeavors.
I couldn’t have been false. I heard the girl I still haven’t overcome from June brag that she would spend the autumn holidays with a loser classmate, and my worldview almost collapsed. I couldn’t believe it; I thought she was intelligent. Why was that at the same time my apps failed? Then, my life went further downhill as I was surrounded by weak people on the final class trip to Venice. For five days, I was surrounded by ‘it’s okay to be weak, to rest, and when you eat sweets, you get to prevent burnout.’ It didn’t stop there.
October 2023.
I went on a family trip to Turkey because my mother still thinks I'm not old enough to stay home, which is nonsense. I hate pointless sitting at the hotel. Seeing fat people, unhealthy food, and sloth energy all around, I got even weaker to the point I started to pray on my knees. After the vacation, things didn’t look better. I intended to spend time reading and doing sports but was too undisciplined to read. I got effectively nothing done and tried to stand up multiple times. Then, my heart matters became even more painful when I observed this girl reading my texts. The text you are currently reading is not the original version – before late October, I wrote not a single time on love, and then when I let go of that crush, she started to show interest in me.
November and December 2023.
I had a mental and emotional battle with whether I should pursue her because, technically, she was now below my standards, but my standards didn’t come from life experience. My progress was meager because love became my primary purpose after the burnout, but even more after the death of my first idea. Some progress was made; for example, I wrote 39.700 words in twenty days after taking a rest day and started to get up at 3:30. Unfortunately, I got sick and couldn’t even do sports anymore. By then, it was already December, and to return to strength, I decided to start a project to create fifty videos in ninety days. In parallel, I began to feel depressed around Christmas because of my emotional pain, indecision, and weakness.
January and February 2024.
After a bad start, I got stronger. I decided to ask this girl out and got rejected. The next day, I wrote a brilliant love letter and got rejected again. Then, I invited her a third time and got rejected as well. Like with the apps, I only got over it after I failed enough. I demonstrated perseverance.
March and April 2024.
One year after I developed a crush on that girl, I got over her because 12th grade ended. At times, my heart was still confused. I decided I was ready to return to strength. I started to run ten kilometers a day with no excuses. By day five, on April 1st, I ran ten kilometers in a mere 39 minutes because I still suffered in my heart. Running gave me a sense of purpose. After I ran ten kilometers in 39 minutes, I had to take a rest day because the pain became difficult to handle, and that’s when I locked myself inside my room until I recorded ten videos. Finally, after a month, the race was there, and I finished 16th out of three hundred and fifty participants.
May and June 2024.
I finally returned to strength. I rediscovered my purpose. I started to focus on creating videos, reading, and doing sports. After the running competition was over, I observed something. Sports took only five hours a day, yet somehow, they used all of my mental resources. Therefore, I locked myself up for five days to figure out how to attain mastery over my tongue. I rediscovered purpose, focus, discipline, and passion.
I danced with this girl at the June prom because it was precisely one year after the first rejection. I can state without arrogance that everyone recognized me as a legend because of what I’ve done and been through. The graduation paper ceremony cemented my legendary status further.
It's not all sunshine and rainbows. Now that my apps failed, I couldn’t regain enough momentum to break free. Thus, my parents are forcing me to go to university, and I don’t have the right to resist. Above, we discussed that failures kill. What if I like ‘biomedical engineering’ and my entrepreneurial story ends as a result? I can still feel the impact of this failure.
Since the graduation paper ceremony, I have rebranded massively. I deleted most of my texts and began to rewrite many, including this one. My character became warmer, and my soul calmer. Once again, my mind is fully aligned with business.
Because of my perfect high school diploma, I was invited to a special ceremony. Hence, I printed business cards with my phone number, name, and website. Because I suffered from failure and heartbreak so much, I didn’t hesitate to give my phone number to hot blondes. – That’s why this struggle was worth it. Because I failed so hard, my resilience knows no bounds. Because my heart was broken for so long, my courage was endless. It’s said failures kill, but not me. I only know victory.
For my resilience knows no bounds,
change is my ally, time my biggest advantage.
I have fortified my mind and prepared for every conceivable move.
Uncompromising excellence is a true testament to the indomitability of my spirit.
- Kiryl P.
*Deleted as of June 2024 to keep purity, quality, and spiritual boundaries.
**Yes, I’ve done that. June 2024.