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Potty Training is a short-form learning platform built around a fairly stupid joke and an idea I genuinely believe in.
A lot of us spend the small gaps in our day scrolling.
You sit down, open your phone, watch a few Reels, scroll through TikTok, and five or ten minutes disappear without you really deciding to spend them that way.
I started wondering what an alternative could look like.
Not another serious educational platform asking for an hour of your evening.
Something designed specifically for those tiny gaps.
And there's one gap almost everyone has.
You're already sitting on the toilet. You might as well do some Potty Training.
The basic format is deliberately small.
Sit down. Pick a subject. Spend about five minutes learning something. Answer a few questions.
Done.
A lesson might introduce a concept through a handful of simple cards, explain unfamiliar terminology as you encounter it, ask you to apply what you've just learned, and finish with a short quiz.
The subjects themselves can be incredibly broad, but I'm particularly interested in practical knowledge people regularly encounter in their careers and lives.
Marketing. Operations. Business. Personal finance. Digital tools.
The kind of subjects filled with terms that become completely ordinary once you understand them but can sound like another language beforehand.
CPM. Ad spend. Split testing. Psychographics.
If nobody has ever introduced you to that world, why would you even know which questions to ask?
We tend to think access to information solves access to education.
It doesn't completely.
The internet contains an extraordinary amount of knowledge, and AI has made exploring unfamiliar subjects dramatically easier. I think that's amazing.
But there's still a first step:
You need to know that the thing exists.
If you've never encountered a concept, you don't necessarily have the vocabulary required to search for it.
Potty Training can provide that first exposure.
It isn't intended to turn somebody into a marketing professional in five minutes or replace a degree, a proper course, an experienced teacher or genuine professional expertise.
It's an introduction.
Something that lets you say:
Oh. That's what CPM means.
And now you have somewhere to start.
I don't want Potty Training to become TikTok with educational text on top.
The interactive part matters.
When you encounter an unfamiliar term, you should be able to tap it and understand what it means without leaving the lesson.
Then use it.
Match concepts together. Fill in a missing answer. Solve a small calculation. Move tiles around. Choose between possible explanations. Type an answer yourself.
Finish with a quiz.
These interactions are deliberately simple, but they interrupt passive consumption.
You're not just being shown information.
You're being asked to do something with it.
That's one of the things I enjoy about good language-learning apps, brain-training products and interactive course platforms. Small moments of participation make learning feel dramatically different from simply reading a page.
Potty Training takes that principle and compresses it into something you can finish before your legs go numb.
I love learning.
Over the years I've ended up learning bits and pieces across a fairly broad collection of subjects, particularly through building businesses, projects and systems.
I've also spent a lot of time trying to explain things I've learned to friends, family and my partner when those subjects become relevant to something they're doing.
Building software has given me another way of doing that.
Instead of explaining something once, I can research it properly, structure it, turn it into an interactive experience and make that explanation available whenever somebody wants it.
That possibility genuinely excites me.
Potty Training is as much something I want to use myself as something I'd like other people to use.
There's always another subject I know almost nothing about.
The toilet joke gives the project permission not to take itself too seriously.
That doesn't mean the educational material shouldn't be taken seriously.
I'd want the underlying coursework to be properly researched, clearly sourced and careful about the distinction between an introduction and expertise.
But everything surrounding that can have a little fun.
Progress can earn sheets.
Sheets can accumulate into rolls.
Courses can award badges. Larger groups of lessons can finish with more substantial quizzes or milestones. Friends could compare progress or appear on leaderboards.
There's plenty of room to make learning playful without making the information itself a joke.
If Potty Training ever becomes a commercial product, one principle I'd like to preserve is that learning shouldn't require paying every time you become curious.
Someone who simply uses the app and completes coursework should be able to progress.
A virtual currency gives me an interesting model for that. Complete lessons and earn sheets or rolls. Use them to unlock more material.
For people who want to move faster or access particular packs, there could eventually be reasonably priced purchases.
But I don't want the fundamental loop to become:
Pay us or stop learning.
The product should reward curiosity and participation first.
The individual lesson almost isn't the interesting unit.
The accumulation is.
Five minutes isn't much.
But five minutes spent understanding personal finance today, marketing tomorrow and operations the day after starts creating a surprisingly broad foundation.
You don't need to become an expert in everything.
Sometimes knowing that a concept exists—and understanding it well enough to recognize it the next time you encounter it—is enormously useful.
That's the behavior I'd like Potty Training to encourage.
Instead of automatically reaching for a feed whenever there's a spare moment:
Learn one thing.
Then get on with your day.
Potty Training turns five minutes of mindless scrolling into short, interactive lessons that make useful knowledge easier to discover, understand and actually apply.
The approach
Research led. Concept driven. Every decision is intentional.
Interested in working together
I take on a small number of engagements. Reach out and I'll set up a call.