Meet Cris Rat

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cris Rat a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Cris, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

This is a long one, so…
TL;DR;
You will be winging it a lot in life
SECRET: we’re all winging it. You’re doing fine!

Imposter syndrome seems to be something quite prevalent across Eastern Europe, particularly in my generation. Or at least I’ve seen it plenty. We never know or see enough and we all live in our own bubble.

It was a difficult time growing up. I grew up in Romania, post Communist days – the hatred of which, that I have, could fill the entire known Universe, and then some, but let’s not get bogged down on who hates what – suffice to say, they were tough times.
Things were hard for almost everyone, I wasn’t anything special. We all started having access to information and seeing the rest of the world ahead of us in mostly economic terms and our countries aspirations to join the EU and NATO (which we did and it’s been great). And we saw how behind we were. With tough times, come feelings which can be described as Imposter Syndrome (among others).
I didn’t know it was called that. But I didn’t like it.
So I wanted it gone. Spoiler – it may never be entirely gone –

For me, it was a really long, but conscious process. I tried to get over it by simply being better, all the time. Constantly upskilling and adding new skills to my skill stack. I was always learning “just one more thing”. That’s served me well, long term, of course. But, one needs to be careful to not fall into the “forever student” phase – at some point you have to go out there and do things.
When I was finally brave enough, that’s what I did.
I did a lot of things, took on projects, took on jobs, continued studying, always looking for the next challenge. And in time, I felt less and less like an imposter. At this point, I can say that I barely ever get that feeling – and all I need to do, if I get it, is to look behind me and think of all the things I’ve done and how far I got.
Or just think about all the people I work with, sometimes they’re in higher positions and utter morons.

My advice to you imposters out there: it really matters what you put into your head. As a trained hypnotist I know that more than most. So surround yourself with people who achieve, with winners, with doers. Avoid naysayers or doomers or toxic people. They will suck your energy like vampires. They feed on misery. You don’t need that in your life.
Listen to podcasts that inspire you. Read or listen to self-help books.
Tough things are tough. You will be tougher!

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

Professionally, there is quite a lot going on in my life.
I’ve been working in IT for 20+ years. It’s been a long road and I’ve seen a lot of changes.
Currently, I work what I would say are 2-3 jobs.
One is a full time cloud engineer. Then if that’s not enough, I have a few side projects (what you’d call bootstrapped projects).
Then I also take on client work (ie: freelancing on the side), which I use to finance my side projects. (hit me up if you need help with your cloud)
My job is not very exciting, unless you find cloud exciting.
My side projects are more interesting and they will me up with energy. Working on them powers me and pushing up code is satisfying. Far from the corporate world where it takes weeks to make a change, working on your own thing means you can make a change and push it up as fast as you can type.
So… my projects
My first project (out of at least 10) that I finally completed and delivered is called focus101.com
It’s a virtual co-working / body doubling platform. It helps remote workers (such as myself) stay on task, focused, productive and work together with strangers (and friends alike. Even enemies, if you’re so inclined).

It took a long time and a lot of work (not just from myself) to finally launch this in 2022. It works great, I built it for myself and I use it every day. As an entrepreneur you must eat your own dogfood.
And it’s tasty!

That project is feature complete, up and running (and fun fact, I am on it as I type this). Biggest mistake here was making it free and unlimited. Which means, users have no reason to upgrade. We might revisit that one… although thank you emails from our users do make us feel good, that won’t pay the lighting bill.

Then of course, like a serial and serious developer, I have others.
Recently I launched VladTheEmailer.com (pause for lols). Yes 🙂
That’s the name
It’s a transactional email service. Think of the emails you get when you register on platforms, or order confirmations when you buy online and so on.
I built it because I got frustrated with email sender providers and especially because I own the domain and it’s just too good not to do anything with it 🙂

There are other projects in the pipeline. One is experthub.co – a platform where you can monetize (or give away for free if you want) your skill. We’re all (yes, literally) experts at something and; with the right connections, we can match you to other people who need what you do (and are willing to pay for it). You can pre-register and you’ll be invited first when we launch. It also gives you a great shortname (first come, first serve, you don’t want to be John-117)

And… there is more, but that’s for another time.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I think my main drivers are:
Ambition – it can also be a flaw
Constant Improvement mentality – every day in every way, get better and better
Combination of skills that work well together – it’s a strategy

To give my advice to others.
First of all, I am not qualified to tell you what to do. It’s up to each and every one of us what we choose in life. Others can give opinions, which we can ignore or not. With that out of the way, some life strategy advice:
Combine skills that work well together. For example, a developer that has a basic/average understanding of design is a much better developer than one that does not. Trust me, I’ve seen it.
A front-end developer that has done a bit of backend, is again, much better than peers who did not.
So you can combine your skills (you don’t need to be top 1%, just above average) and the sum of its parts is greater than its total.

Constant improvement mentality – think compound interest. If you don’t know what that is, google it right now. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Always improve and add to your skills, what ever they are.

Ambition – that’s a tough one, what to say about it. Me, I can’t switch it off. We can all benefit from a bit of ambition. Always look to the future and expect good things. And work towards them.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

I am always looking for people to work on my projects with.
Designers / ui-ux developers, marketers, backend, front-end devs. The list is not exhaustive.
What I am looking for is self-driven people. I won’t chase you to ask “is it done yet”. You’ll find me a great person to work with and a good mentor (or you can mentor me in your own field)

Contact Info:

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