Podcasts about brandon it

Brandon Liu is an open source developer and creator of the Protomaps basemap project. We talk about how static maps help developers build sites that last, the PMTiles file format, the role of OpenStreetMap, and his experience funding and running an open source project full time. Protomaps Protomaps PMTiles (File format used by Protomaps) Self-hosted slippy maps, for novices (like me) Why Deploy Protomaps on a CDN User examples Flickr Pinball Map Toilet Map Related projects OpenStreetMap (Dataset protomaps is based on) Mapzen (Former company that released details on what to display based on zoom levels) Mapbox GL JS (Mapbox developed source available map rendering library) MapLibre GL JS (Open source fork of Mapbox GL JS) Other links HTTP range requests (MDN) Hilbert curve Transcript You can help correct transcripts on GitHub. Intro [00:00:00] Jeremy: I'm talking to Brandon Liu. He's the creator of Protomaps, which is a way to easily create and host your own maps. Let's get into it. [00:00:09] Brandon: Hey, so thanks for having me on the podcast. So I'm Brandon. I work on an open source project called Protomaps. What it really is, is if you're a front end developer and you ever wanted to put maps on a website or on a mobile app, then Protomaps is sort of an open source solution for doing that that I hope is something that's way easier to use than, um, a lot of other open source projects. Why not just use Google Maps? [00:00:36] Jeremy: A lot of people are gonna be familiar with Google Maps. Why should they worry about whether something's open source? Why shouldn't they just go and use the Google maps API? [00:00:47] Brandon: So Google Maps is like an awesome thing it's an awesome product. Probably one of the best tech products ever right? And just to have a map that tells you what restaurants are open and something that I use like all the time especially like when you're traveling it has all that data. And the most amazing part is that it's free for consumers but it's not necessarily free for developers. Like if you wanted to embed that map onto your website or app, that usually has an API cost which still has a free tier and is affordable. But one motivation, one basic reason to use open source is if you have some project that doesn't really fit into that pricing model. You know like where you have to pay the cost of Google Maps, you have a side project, a nonprofit, that's one reason. But there's lots of other reasons related to flexibility or customization where you might want to use open source instead. Protomaps examples [00:01:49] Jeremy: Can you give some examples where people have used Protomaps and where that made sense for them? [00:01:56] Brandon: I follow a lot of the use cases and I also don't know about a lot of them because I don't have an API where I can track a hundred percent of the users. Some of them use the hosted version, but I would say most of them probably use it on their own infrastructure. One of the cool projects I've been seeing is called Toilet Map. And what toilet map is if you're in the UK and you want find a public restroom then it maps out, sort of crowdsourced all of the public restrooms. And that's important for like a lot of people if they have health issues, they need to find that information. And just a lot of different projects in the same vein. There's another one called Pinball Map which is sort of a hobby project to find all the pinball machines in the world. And they wanted to have a customized map that fit in with their theme of pinball. So these sorts of really cool indie projects are the ones I'm most excited about. Basemaps vs Overlays [00:02:57] Jeremy: And if we talk about, like the pinball map as an example, there's this concept of a basemap and then there's the things that you lay on top of it. What is a basemap and then is the pinball locations is that part of it or is that something separate? [00:03:12] Brandon: It's usually something separate. The example I usually use is if you go to a real estate site, like Zillow, you'll open up the map of Seattle and it has a bunch of pins showing all the houses, and then it has some information beneath it. That information beneath it is like labels telling, this neighborhood is Capitol Hill, or there is a park here. But all that information is common to a lot of use cases and it's not specific to real estate. So I think usually that's the distinction people use in the industry between like a base map versus your overlay. The overlay is like the data for your product or your company while the base map is something you could get from Google or from Protomaps or from Apple or from Mapbox that kind of thing. PMTiles for hosting the basemap and overlays [00:03:58] Jeremy: And so Protomaps in particular is responsible for the base map, and that information includes things like the streets and the locations of landmarks and things like that. Where is all that information coming from? [00:04:12] Brandon: So the base map information comes from a project called OpenStreetMap. And I would also, point out that for Protomaps as sort of an ecosystem. You can also put your overlay data into a format called PMTiles, which is sort of the core of what Protomaps is. So it can really do both. It can transform your data into the PMTiles format which you can host and you can also host the base map. So you kind of have both of those sides of the product in one solution. [00:04:43] Jeremy: And so when you say you have both are you saying that the PMTiles file can have, the base map in one file and then you would have the data you're laying on top in another file? Or what are you describing there? [00:04:57] Brandon: That's usually how I recommend to do it. Oftentimes there'll be sort of like, a really big basemap 'cause it has all of that data about like where the rivers are. Or while, if you want to put your map of toilets or park benches or pickleball courts on top, that's another file. But those are all just like assets you can move around like JSON or CSV files. Statically Hosted [00:05:19] Jeremy: And I think one of the things you mentioned was that your goal was to make Protomaps or the, the use of these PMTiles files easy to use. What does that look like for, for a developer? I wanna host a map. What do I actually need to, to put on my servers? [00:05:38] Brandon: So my usual pitch is that basically if you know how to use S3 or cloud storage, that you know how to deploy a map. And that, I think is the main sort of differentiation from most open source projects. Like a lot of them, they call themselves like, like some sort of self-hosted solution. But I've actually avoided using the term self-hosted because I think in most cases that implies a lot of complexity. Like you have to log into a Linux server or you have to use Kubernetes or some sort of Docker thing. What I really want to emphasize is the idea that, for Protomaps, it's self-hosted in the same way like CSS is self-hosted. So you don't really need a service from Amazon to host the JSON files or CSV files. It's really just a static file. [00:06:32] Jeremy: When you say static file that means you could use any static web host to host your HTML file, your JavaScript that actually renders the map. And then you have your PMTiles files, and you're not running a process or anything, you're just putting your files on a static file host. [00:06:50] Brandon: Right. So I think if you're a developer, you can also argue like a static file server is a server. It's you know, it's the cloud, it's just someone else's computer. It's really just nginx under the hood. But I think static storage is sort of special. If you look at things like static site generators, like Jekyll or Hugo, they're really popular because they're a commodity or like the storage is a commodity. And you can take your blog, make it a Jekyll blog, hosted on S3. One day, Amazon's like, we're charging three times as much so you can move it to a different cloud provider. And that's all vendor neutral. So I think that's really the special thing about static storage as a primitive on the web. Why running servers is a problem for resilience [00:07:36] Jeremy: Was there a prior experience you had? Like you've worked with maps for a very long time. Were there particular difficulties you had where you said I just gotta have something that can be statically hosted? [00:07:50] Brandon: That's sort of exactly why I got into this. I've been working sort of in and around the map space for over a decade, and Protomaps is really like me trying to solve the same problem I've had over and over again in the past, just like once and forever right? Because like once this problem is solved, like I don't need to deal with it again in the future. So I've worked at a couple of different companies before, mostly as a contractor, for like a humanitarian nonprofit for a design company doing things like, web applications to visualize climate change. Or for even like museums, like digital signage for museums. And oftentimes they had some sort of data visualization component, but always sort of the challenge of how to like, store and also distribute like that data was something that there wasn't really great open source solutions. So just for map data, that's really what motivated that design for Protomaps. [00:08:55] Jeremy: And in those, those projects in the past, were those things where you had to run your own server, run your own database, things like that? [00:09:04] Brandon: Yeah. And oftentimes we did, we would spin up an EC2 instance, for maybe one client and then we would have to host this server serving map data forever. Maybe the client goes away, or I guess it's good for business if you can sign some sort of like long-term support for that client saying, Hey, you know, like we're done with a project, but you can pay us to maintain the EC2 server for the next 10 years. And that's attractive. but it's also sort of a pain, because usually what happens is if people are given the choice, like a developer between like either I can manage the server on EC2 or on Rackspace or Hetzner or whatever, or I can go pay a SaaS to do it. In most cases, businesses will choose to pay the SaaS. So that's really like what creates a sort of lock-in is this preference for like, so I have this choice between like running the server or paying the SaaS. Like businesses will almost always go and pay the SaaS. [00:10:05] Jeremy: Yeah. And in this case, you either find some kind of free hosting or low-cost hosting just to host your files and you upload the files and then you're good from there. You don't need to maintain anything. [00:10:18] Brandon: Exactly, and that's really the ideal use case. so I have some users these, climate science consulting agencies, and then they might have like a one-off project where they have to generate the data once, but instead of having to maintain this server for the lifetime of that project, they just have a file on S3 and like, who cares? If that costs a couple dollars a month to run, that's fine, but it's not like S3 is gonna be deprecated, like it's gonna be on an insecure version of Ubuntu or something. So that's really the ideal, set of constraints for using Protomaps. [00:10:58] Jeremy: Yeah. Something this also makes me think about is, is like the resilience of sites like remaining online, because I, interviewed, Kyle Drake, he runs Neocities, which is like a modern version of GeoCities. And if I remember correctly, he was mentioning how a lot of old websites from that time, if they were running a server backend, like they were running PHP or something like that, if you were to try to go to those sites, now they're like pretty much all dead because there needed to be someone dedicated to running a Linux server, making sure things were patched and so on and so forth. But for static sites, like the ones that used to be hosted on GeoCities, you can go to the internet archive or other websites and they were just files, right? You can bring 'em right back up, and if anybody just puts 'em on a web server, then you're good. They're still alive. Case study of news room preferring static hosting [00:11:53] Brandon: Yeah, exactly. One place that's kind of surprising but makes sense where this comes up, is for newspapers actually. Some of the users using Protomaps are the Washington Post. And the reason they use it, is not necessarily because they don't want to pay for a SaaS like Google, but because if they make an interactive story, they have to guarantee that it still works in a couple of years. And that's like a policy decision from like the editorial board, which is like, so you can't write an article if people can't view it in five years. But if your like interactive data story is reliant on a third party, API and that third party API becomes deprecated, or it changes the pricing or it, you know, it gets acquired, then your journalism story is not gonna work anymore. So I have seen really good uptake among local news rooms and even big ones to use things like Protomaps just because it makes sense for the requirements. Working on Protomaps as an open source project for five years [00:12:49] Jeremy: How long have you been working on Protomaps and the parts that it's made up of such as PMTiles? [00:12:58] Brandon: I've been working on it for about five years, maybe a little more than that. It's sort of my pandemic era project. But the PMTiles part, which is really the heart of it only came in about halfway. Why not make a SaaS? [00:13:13] Brandon: So honestly, like when I first started it, I thought it was gonna be another SaaS and then I looked at it and looked at what the environment was around it. And I'm like, uh, so I don't really think I wanna do that. [00:13:24] Jeremy: When, when you say you looked at the environment around it what do you mean? Why did you decide not to make it a SaaS? [00:13:31] Brandon: Because there already is a lot of SaaS out there. And I think the opportunity of making something that is unique in terms of those use cases, like I mentioned like newsrooms, was clear. Like it was clear that there was some other solution, that could be built that would fit these needs better while if it was a SaaS, there are plenty of those out there. And I don't necessarily think that they're well differentiated. A lot of them all use OpenStreetMap data. And it seems like they mainly compete on price. It's like who can build the best three column pricing model. And then once you do that, you need to build like billing and metrics and authentication and like those problems don't really interest me. So I think, although I acknowledge sort of the indie hacker ethos now is to build a SaaS product with a monthly subscription, that's something I very much chose not to do, even though it is for sure like the best way to build a business. [00:14:29] Jeremy: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people can appreciate that perspective because it's, it's almost like we have SaaS overload, right? Where you have so many little bills for your project where you're like, another $5 a month, another $10 a month, or if you're a business, right? Those, you add a bunch of zeros and at some point it's just how many of these are we gonna stack on here? [00:14:53] Brandon: Yeah. And honestly. So I really think like as programmers, we're not really like great at choosing how to spend money like a $10 SaaS. That's like nothing. You know? So I can go to Starbucks and I can buy a pumpkin spice latte, and that's like $10 basically now, right? And it's like I'm able to make that consumer choice in like an instant just to spend money on that. But then if you're like, oh, like spend $10 on a SaaS that somebody put a lot of work into, then you're like, oh, that's too expensive. I could just do it myself. So I'm someone that also subscribes to a lot of SaaS products. and I think for a lot of things it's a great fit. Many open source SaaS projects are not easy to self host [00:15:37] Brandon: But there's always this tension between an open source project that you might be able to run yourself and a SaaS. And I think a lot of projects are at different parts of the spectrum. But for Protomaps, it's very much like I'm trying to move maps to being it is something that is so easy to run yourself that anyone can do it. [00:16:00] Jeremy: Yeah, and I think you can really see it with, there's a few SaaS projects that are successful and they're open source, but then you go to look at the self-hosting instructions and it's either really difficult to find and you find it, and then the instructions maybe don't work, or it's really complicated. So I think doing the opposite with Protomaps. As a user, I'm sure we're all appreciative, but I wonder in terms of trying to make money, if that's difficult. [00:16:30] Brandon: No, for sure. It is not like a good way to make money because I think like the ideal situation for an open source project that is open that wants to make money is the product itself is fundamentally complicated to where people are scared to run it themselves. Like a good example I can think of is like Supabase. Supabase is sort of like a platform as a service based on Postgres. And if you wanted to run it yourself, well you need to run Postgres and you need to handle backups and authentication and logging, and that stuff all needs to work and be production ready. So I think a lot of people, like they don't trust themselves to run database backups correctly. 'cause if you get it wrong once, then you're kind of screwed. So I think that fundamental aspect of the product, like a database is something that is very, very ripe for being a SaaS while still being open source because it's fundamentally hard to run. Another one I can think of is like tailscale, which is, like a VPN that works end to end. That's something where, you know, it has this networking complexity where a lot of developers don't wanna deal with that. So they'd happily pay, for tailscale as a service. There is a lot of products or open source projects that eventually end up just changing to becoming like a hosted service. Businesses going from open source to closed or restricted licenses [00:17:58] Brandon: But then in that situation why would they keep it open source, right? Like, if it's easy to run yourself well, doesn't that sort of cannibalize their business model? And I think that's really the tension overall in these open source companies. So you saw it happen to things like Elasticsearch to things like Terraform where they eventually change the license to one that makes it difficult for other companies to compete with them. [00:18:23] Jeremy: Yeah, I mean there's been a number of cases like that. I mean, specifically within the mapping community, one I can think of was Mapbox's. They have Mapbox gl. Which was a JavaScript client to visualize maps and they moved from, I forget which license they picked, but they moved to a much more restrictive license. I wonder what your thoughts are on something that releases as open source, but then becomes something maybe a little more muddy. [00:18:55] Brandon: Yeah, I think it totally makes sense because if you look at their business and their funding, it seems like for Mapbox, I haven't used it in a while, but my understanding is like a lot of their business now is car companies and doing in dash navigation. And that is probably way better of a business than trying to serve like people making maps of toilets. And I think sort of the beauty of it is that, so Mapbox, the story is they had a JavaScript renderer called Mapbox GL JS. And they changed that to a source available license a couple years ago. And there's a fork of it that I'm sort of involved in called MapLibre GL. But I think the cool part is Mapbox paid employees for years, probably millions of dollars in total to work on this thing and just gave it away for free. Right? So everyone can benefit from that work they did. It's not like that code went away, like once they changed the license. Well, the old version has been forked. It's going its own way now. It's quite different than the new version of Mapbox, but I think it's extremely generous that they're able to pay people for years, you know, like a competitive salary and just give that away. [00:20:10] Jeremy: Yeah, so we should maybe look at it as, it was a gift while it was open source, and they've given it to the community and they're on continuing on their own path, but at least the community running Map Libre, they can run with it, right? It's not like it just disappeared. [00:20:29] Brandon: Yeah, exactly. And that is something that I use for Protomaps quite extensively. Like it's the primary way of showing maps on the web and I've been trying to like work on some enhancements to it to have like better internationalization for if you are in like South Asia like not show languages correctly. So I think it is being taken in a new direction. And I think like sort of the combination of Protomaps and MapLibre, it addresses a lot of use cases, like I mentioned earlier with like these like hobby projects, indie projects that are almost certainly not interesting to someone like Mapbox or Google as a business. But I'm happy to support as a small business myself. Financially supporting open source work (GitHub sponsors, closed source, contracts) [00:21:12] Jeremy: In my previous interview with Tom, one of the main things he mentioned was that creating a mapping business is incredibly difficult, and he said he probably wouldn't do it again. So in your case, you're building Protomaps, which you've admitted is easy to self-host. So there's not a whole lot of incentive for people to pay you. How is that working out for you? How are you supporting yourself? [00:21:40] Brandon: There's a couple of strategies that I've tried and oftentimes failed at. Just to go down the list, so I do have GitHub sponsors so I do have a hosted version of Protomaps you can use if you don't want to bother copying a big file around. But the way I do the billing for that is through GitHub sponsors. If you wanted to use this thing I provide, then just be a sponsor. And that definitely pays for itself, like the cost of running it. And that's great. GitHub sponsors is so easy to set up. It just removes you having to deal with Stripe or something. 'cause a lot of people, their credit card information is already in GitHub. GitHub sponsors I think is awesome if you want to like cover costs for a project. But I think very few people are able to make that work. A thing that's like a salary job level. It's sort of like Twitch streaming, you know, there's a handful of people that are full-time streamers and then you look down the list on Twitch and it's like a lot of people that have like 10 viewers. But some of the other things I've tried, I actually started out, publishing the base map as a closed source thing, where I would sell sort of like a data package instead of being a SaaS, I'd be like, here's a one-time download, of the premium data and you can buy it. And quite a few people bought it I just priced it at like $500 for this thing. And I thought that was an interesting experiment. The main reason it's interesting is because the people that it attracts to you in terms of like, they're curious about your products, are all people willing to pay money. While if you start out everything being open source, then the people that are gonna be try to do it are only the people that want to get something for free. So what I discovered is actually like once you transition that thing from closed source to open source, a lot of the people that used to pay you money will still keep paying you money because like, it wasn't necessarily that that closed source thing was why they wanted to pay. They just valued that thought you've put into it your expertise, for example. So I think that is one thing, that I tried at the beginning was just start out, closed source proprietary, then make it open source. That's interesting to people. Like if you release something as open source, if you go the other way, like people are really mad if you start out with something open source and then later on you're like, oh, it's some other license. Then people are like that's so rotten. But I think doing it the other way, I think is quite valuable in terms of being able to find an audience. [00:24:29] Jeremy: And when you said it was closed source and paid to open source, do you still sell those map exports? [00:24:39] Brandon: I don't right now. It's something that I might do in the future, you know, like have small customizations of the data that are available, uh, for a fee. still like the core OpenStreetMap based map that's like a hundred gigs you can just download. And that'll always just be like a free download just because that's already out there. All the source code to build it is open source. So even if I said, oh, you have to pay for it, then someone else can just do it right? So there's no real reason like to make that like some sort of like paywall thing. But I think like overall if the project is gonna survive in the long term it's important that I'd ideally like to be able to like grow like a team like have a small group of people that can dedicate the time to growing the project in the long term. But I'm still like trying to figure that out right now. [00:25:34] Jeremy: And when you mentioned that when you went from closed to open and people were still paying you, you don't sell a product anymore. What were they paying for? [00:25:45] Brandon: So I have some contracts with companies basically, like if they need a feature or they need a customization in this way then I am very open to those. And I sort of set it up to make it clear from the beginning that this is not just a free thing on GitHub, this is something that you could pay for if you need help with it, if you need support, if you wanted it. I'm also a little cagey about the word support because I think like it sounds a little bit too wishy-washy. Pretty much like if you need access to the developers of an open source project, I think that's something that businesses are willing to pay for. And I think like making that clear to potential users is a challenge. But I think that is one way that you might be able to make like a living out of open source. [00:26:35] Jeremy: And I think you said you'd been working on it for about five years. Has that mostly been full time? [00:26:42] Brandon: It's been on and off. it's sort of my pandemic era project. But I've spent a lot of time, most of my time working on the open source project at this point. So I have done some things that were more just like I'm doing a customization or like a private deployment for some client. But that's been a minority of the time. Yeah. [00:27:03] Jeremy: It's still impressive to have an open source project that is easy to self-host and yet is still able to support you working on it full time. I think a lot of people might make the assumption that there's nothing to sell if something is, is easy to use. But this sort of sounds like a counterpoint to that. [00:27:25] Brandon: I think I'd like it to be. So when you come back to the point of like, it being easy to self-host. Well, so again, like I think about it as like a primitive of the web. Like for example, if you wanted to start a business today as like hosted CSS files, you know, like where you upload your CSS and then you get developers to pay you a monthly subscription for how many times they fetched a CSS file. Well, I think most developers would be like, that's stupid because it's just an open specification, you just upload a static file. And really my goal is to make Protomaps the same way where it's obvious that there's not really some sort of lock-in or some sort of secret sauce in the server that does this thing. How PMTiles works and building a primitive of the web [00:28:16] Brandon: If you look at video for example, like a lot of the tech for how Protomaps and PMTiles works is based on parts of the HTTP spec that were made for video. And 20 years ago, if you wanted to host a video on the web, you had to have like a real player license or flash. So you had to go license some server software from real media or from macromedia so you could stream video to a browser plugin. But now in HTML you can just embed a video file. And no one's like, oh well I need to go pay for my video serving license. I mean, there is such a thing, like YouTube doesn't really use that for DRM reasons, but people just have the assumption that video is like a primitive on the web. So if we're able to make maps sort of that same way like a primitive on the web then there isn't really some obvious business or licensing model behind how that works. Just because it's a thing and it helps a lot of people do their jobs and people are happy using it. So why bother? [00:29:26] Jeremy: You mentioned that it a tech that was used for streaming video. What tech specifically is it? [00:29:34] Brandon: So it is byte range serving. So when you open a video file on the web, So let's say it's like a 100 megabyte video. You don't have to download the entire video before it starts playing. It streams parts out of the file based on like what frames... I mean, it's based on the frames in the video. So it can start streaming immediately because it's organized in a way to where the first few frames are at the beginning. And what PMTiles really is, is it's just like a video but in space instead of time. So it's organized in a way where these zoomed out views are at the beginning and the most zoomed in views are at the end. So when you're like panning or zooming in the map all you're really doing is fetching byte ranges out of that file the same way as a video. But it's organized in, this tiled way on a space filling curve. IIt's a little bit complicated how it works internally and I think it's kind of cool but that's sort of an like an implementation detail. [00:30:35] Jeremy: And to the person deploying it, it just looks like a single file. [00:30:40] Brandon: Exactly in the same way like an mp3 audio file is or like a JSON file is. [00:30:47] Jeremy: So with a video, I can sort of see how as someone seeks through the video, they start at the beginning and then they go to the middle if they wanna see the middle. For a map, as somebody scrolls around the map, are you seeking all over the file or is the way it's structured have a little less chaos? [00:31:09] Brandon: It's structured. And that's kind of the main technical challenge behind building PMTiles is you have to be sort of clever so you're not spraying the reads everywhere. So it uses something called a hilbert curve, which is a mathematical concept of a space filling curve. Where it's one continuous curve that essentially lets you break 2D space into 1D space. So if you've seen some maps of IP space, it uses this crazy looking curve that hits all the points in one continuous line. And that's the same concept behind PMTiles is if you're looking at one part of the world, you're sort of guaranteed that all of those parts you're looking at are quite close to each other and the data you have to transfer is quite minimal, compared to if you just had it at random. [00:32:02] Jeremy: How big do the files get? If I have a PMTiles of the entire world, what kind of size am I looking at? [00:32:10] Brandon: Right now, the default one I distribute is 128 gigabytes, so it's quite sizable, although you can slice parts out of it remotely. So if you just wanted. if you just wanted California or just wanted LA or just wanted only a couple of zoom levels, like from zero to 10 instead of zero to 15, there is a command line tool that's also called PMTiles that lets you do that. Issues with CDNs and range queries [00:32:35] Jeremy: And when you're working with files of this size, I mean, let's say I am working with a CDN in front of my application. I'm not typically accustomed to hosting something that's that large and something that's where you're seeking all over the file. is that, ever an issue or is that something that's just taken care of by the browser and, and taken care of by, by the hosts? [00:32:58] Brandon: That is an issue actually, so a lot of CDNs don't deal with it correctly. And my recommendation is there is a kind of proxy server or like a serverless proxy thing that I wrote. That runs on like cloudflare workers or on Docker that lets you proxy those range requests into a normal URL and then that is like a hundred percent CDN compatible. So I would say like a lot of the big commercial installations of this thing, they use that because it makes more practical sense. It's also faster. But the idea is that this solution sort of scales up and scales down. If you wanted to host just your city in like a 10 megabyte file, well you can just put that into GitHub pages and you don't have to worry about it. If you want to have a global map for your website that serves a ton of traffic then you probably want a little bit more sophisticated of a solution. It still does not require you to run a Linux server, but it might require (you) to use like Lambda or Lambda in conjunction with like a CDN. [00:34:09] Jeremy: Yeah. And that sort of ties into what you were saying at the beginning where if you can host on something like CloudFlare Workers or Lambda, there's less time you have to spend keeping these things running. [00:34:26] Brandon: Yeah, exactly. and I think also the Lambda or CloudFlare workers solution is not perfect. It's not as perfect as S3 or as just static files, but in my experience, it still is better at building something that lasts on the time span of years than being like I have a server that is on this Ubuntu version and in four years there's all these like security patches that are not being applied. So it's still sort of serverless, although not totally vendor neutral like S3. Customizing the map [00:35:03] Jeremy: We've mostly been talking about how you host the map itself, but for someone who's not familiar with these kind of tools, how would they be customizing the map? [00:35:15] Brandon: For customizing the map there is front end style customization and there's also data customization. So for the front end if you wanted to change the water from the shade of blue to another shade of blue there is a TypeScript API where you can customize it almost like a text editor color scheme. So if you're able to name a bunch of colors, well you can customize the map in that way you can change the fonts. And that's all done using MapLibre GL using a TypeScript API on top of that for customizing the data. So all the pipeline to generate this data from OpenStreetMap is open source. There is a Java program using a library called PlanetTiler which is awesome, which is this super fast multi-core way of building map tiles. And right now there isn't really great hooks to customize what data goes into that. But that's something that I do wanna work on. And finally, because the data comes from OpenStreetMap if you notice data that's missing or you wanted to correct data in OSM then you can go into osm.org. You can get involved in contributing the data to OSM and the Protomaps build is daily. So if you make a change, then within 24 hours you should see the new base map. Have that change. And of course for OSM your improvements would go into every OSM based project that is ingesting that data. So it's not a protomap specific thing. It's like this big shared data source, almost like Wikipedia. OpenStreetMap is a dataset and not a map [00:37:01] Jeremy: I think you were involved with OpenStreetMap to some extent. Can you speak a little bit to that for people who aren't familiar, what OpenStreetMap is? [00:37:11] Brandon: Right. So I've been using OSM as sort of like a tools developer for over a decade now. And one of the number one questions I get from developers about what is Protomaps is why wouldn't I just use OpenStreetMap? What's the distinction between Protomaps and OpenStreetMap? And it's sort of like this funny thing because even though OSM has map in the name it's not really a map in that you can't... In that it's mostly a data set and not a map. It does have a map that you can see that you can pan around to when you go to the website but the way that thing they show you on the website is built is not really that easily reproducible. It involves a lot of c++ software you have to run. But OpenStreetMap itself, the heart of it is almost like a big XML file that has all the data in the map and global. And it has tagged features for example. So you can go in and edit that. It has a web front end to change the data. It does not directly translate into making a map actually. Protomaps decides what shows at each zoom level [00:38:24] Brandon: So a lot of the pipeline, that Java program I mentioned for building this basemap for protomaps is doing things like you have to choose what data you show when you zoom out. You can't show all the data. For example when you're zoomed out and you're looking at all of a state like Colorado you don't see all the Chipotle when you're zoomed all the way out. That'd be weird, right? So you have to make some sort of decision in logic that says this data only shows up at this zoom level. And that's really what is the challenge in optimizing the size of that for the Protomaps map project. [00:39:03] Jeremy: Oh, so those decisions of what to show at different Zoom levels those are decisions made by you when you're creating the PMTiles file with Protomaps. [00:39:14] Brandon: Exactly. It's part of the base maps build pipeline. and those are honestly very subjective decisions. Who really decides when you're zoomed out should this hospital show up or should this museum show up nowadays in Google, I think it shows you ads. Like if someone pays for their car repair shop to show up when you're zoomed out like that that gets surfaced. But because there is no advertising auction in Protomaps that doesn't happen obviously. So we have to sort of make some reasonable choice. A lot of that right now in Protomaps actually comes from another open source project called Mapzen. So Mapzen was a company that went outta business a couple years ago. They did a lot of this work in designing which data shows up at which Zoom level and open sourced it. And then when they shut down, they transferred that code into the Linux Foundation. So it's this totally open source project, that like, again, sort of like Mapbox gl has this awesome legacy in that this company funded it for years for smart people to work on it and now it's just like a free thing you can use. So the logic in Protomaps is really based on mapzen. [00:40:33] Jeremy: And so the visualization of all this... I think I understand what you mean when people say oh, why not use OpenStreetMaps because it's not really clear it's hard to tell is this the tool that's visualizing the data? Is it the data itself? So in the case of using Protomaps, it sounds like Protomaps itself has all of the data from OpenStreetMap and then it has made all the decisions for you in terms of what to show at different Zoom levels and what things to have on the map at all. And then finally, you have to have a separate, UI layer and in this case, it sounds like the one that you recommend is the Map Libre library. [00:41:18] Brandon: Yeah, that's exactly right. For Protomaps, it has a portion or a subset of OSM data. It doesn't have all of it just because there's too much, like there's data in there. people have mapped out different bushes and I don't include that in Protomaps if you wanted to go in and edit like the Java code to add that you can. But really what Protomaps is positioned at is sort of a solution for developers that want to use OSM data to make a map on their app or their website. because OpenStreetMap itself is mostly a data set, it does not really go all the way to having an end-to-end solution. Financials and the idea of a project being complete [00:41:59] Jeremy: So I think it's great that somebody who wants to make a map, they have these tools available, whether it's from what was originally built by Mapbox, what's built by Open StreetMap now, the work you're doing with Protomaps. But I wonder one of the things that I talked about with Tom was he was saying he was trying to build this mapping business and based on the financials of what was coming in he was stressed, right? He was struggling a bit. And I wonder for you, you've been working on this open source project for five years. Do you have similar stressors or do you feel like I could keep going how things are now and I feel comfortable? [00:42:46] Brandon: So I wouldn't say I'm a hundred percent in one bucket or the other. I'm still seeing it play out. One thing, that I really respect in a lot of open source projects, which I'm not saying I'm gonna do for Protomaps is the idea that a project is like finished. I think that is amazing. If a software project can just be done it's sort of like a painting or a novel once you write, finish the last page, have it seen by the editor. I send it off to the press is you're done with a book. And I think one of the pains of software is so few of us can actually do that. And I don't know obviously people will say oh the map is never finished. That's more true of OSM, but I think like for Protomaps. One thing I'm thinking about is how to limit the scope to something that's quite narrow to where we could be feature complete on the core things in the near term timeframe. That means that it does not address a lot of things that people want. Like search, like if you go to Google Maps and you search for a restaurant, you will get some hits. that's like a geocoding issue. And I've already decided that's totally outta scope for Protomaps. So, in terms of trying to think about the future of this, I'm mostly looking for ways to cut scope if possible. There are some things like better tooling around being able to work with PMTiles that are on the roadmap. but for me, I am still enjoying working on the project. It's definitely growing. So I can see on NPM downloads I can see the growth curve of people using it and that's really cool. So I like hearing about when people are using it for cool projects. So it seems to still be going okay for now. [00:44:44] Jeremy: Yeah, that's an interesting perspective about how you were talking about projects being done. Because I think when people look at GitHub projects and they go like, oh, the last commit was X months ago. They go oh well this is dead right? But maybe that's the wrong framing. Maybe you can get a project to a point where it's like, oh, it's because it doesn't need to be updated. [00:45:07] Brandon: Exactly, yeah. Like I used to do a lot of c++ programming and the best part is when you see some LAPACK matrix math library from like 1995 that still works perfectly in c++ and you're like, this is awesome. This is the one I have to use. But if you're like trying to use some like React component library and it hasn't been updated in like a year, you're like, oh, that's a problem. So again, I think there's some middle ground between those that I'm trying to find. I do like for Protomaps, it's quite dependency light in terms of the number of hard dependencies I have in software. but I do still feel like there is a lot of work to be done in terms of project scope that needs to have stuff added. You mostly only hear about problems instead of people's wins [00:45:54] Jeremy: Having run it for this long. Do you have any thoughts on running an open source project in general? On dealing with issues or managing what to work on things like that? [00:46:07] Brandon: Yeah. So I have a lot. I think one thing people point out a lot is that especially because I don't have a direct relationship with a lot of the people using it a lot of times I don't even know that they're using it. Someone sent me a message saying hey, have you seen flickr.com, like the photo site? And I'm like, no. And I went to flickr.com/map and it has Protomaps for it. And I'm like, I had no idea. But that's cool, if they're able to use Protomaps for this giant photo sharing site that's awesome. But that also means I don't really hear about when people use it successfully because you just don't know, I guess they, NPM installed it and it works perfectly and you never hear about it. You only hear about people's negative experiences. You only hear about people that come and open GitHub issues saying this is totally broken, and why doesn't this thing exist? And I'm like, well, it's because there's an infinite amount of things that I want to do, but I have a finite amount of time and I just haven't gone into that yet. And that's honestly a lot of the things and people are like when is this thing gonna be done? So that's, that's honestly part of why I don't have a public roadmap because I want to avoid that sort of bickering about it. I would say that's one of my biggest frustrations with running an open source project is how it's self-selected to only hear the negative experiences with it. Be careful what PRs you accept [00:47:32] Brandon: 'cause you don't hear about those times where it works. I'd say another thing is it's changed my perspective on contributing to open source because I think when I was younger or before I had become a maintainer I would open a pull request on a project unprompted that has a hundred lines and I'd be like, Hey, just merge this thing. But I didn't realize when I was younger well if I just merge it and I disappear, then the maintainer is stuck with what I did forever. You know if I add some feature then that person that maintains the project has to do that indefinitely. And I think that's very asymmetrical and it's changed my perspective a lot on accepting open source contributions. I wanna have it be open to anyone to contribute. But there is some amount of back and forth where it's almost like the default answer for should I accept a PR is no by default because you're the one maintaining it. And do you understand the shape of that solution completely to where you're going to support it for years because the person that's contributing it is not bound to those same obligations that you are. And I think that's also one of the things where I have a lot of trepidation around open source is I used to think of it as a lot more bazaar-like in terms of anyone can just throw their thing in. But then that creates a lot of problems for the people who are expected out of social obligation to continue this thing indefinitely. [00:49:23] Jeremy: Yeah, I can totally see why that causes burnout with a lot of open source maintainers, because you probably to some extent maybe even feel some guilt right? You're like, well, somebody took the time to make this. But then like you said you have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out is this something I wanna maintain long term? And one wrong move and it's like, well, it's in here now. [00:49:53] Brandon: Exactly. To me, I think that is a very common failure mode for open source projects is they're too liberal in the things they accept. And that's a lot of why I was talking about how that choice of what features show up on the map was inherited from the MapZen projects. If I didn't have that then somebody could come in and say hey, you know, I want to show power lines on the map. And they open a PR for power lines and now everybody who's using Protomaps when they're like zoomed out they see power lines are like I didn't want that. So I think that's part of why a lot of open source projects eventually evolve into a plugin system is because there is this demand as the project grows for more and more features. But there is a limit in the maintainers. It's like the demand for features is exponential while the maintainer amount of time and effort is linear. Plugin systems might reduce need for PRs [00:50:56] Brandon: So maybe the solution to smash that exponential down to quadratic maybe is to add a plugin system. But I think that is one of the biggest tensions that only became obvious to me after working on this for a couple of years. [00:51:14] Jeremy: Is that something you're considering doing now? [00:51:18] Brandon: Is the plugin system? Yeah. I think for the data customization, I eventually wanted to have some sort of programmatic API to where you could declare a config file that says I want ski routes. It totally makes sense. The power lines example is maybe a little bit obscure but for example like a skiing app and you want to be able to show ski slopes when you're zoomed out well you're not gonna be able to get that from Mapbox or from Google because they have a one size fits all map that's not specialized to skiing or to golfing or to outdoors. But if you like, in theory, you could do this with Protomaps if you changed the Java code to show data at different zoom levels. And that is to me what makes the most sense for a plugin system and also makes the most product sense because it enables a lot of things you cannot do with the one size fits all map. [00:52:20] Jeremy: It might also increase the complexity of the implementation though, right? [00:52:25] Brandon: Yeah, exactly. So that's like. That's really where a lot of the terrifying thoughts come in, which is like once you create this like config file surface area, well what does that look like? Is that JSON? Is that TOML, is that some weird like everything eventually evolves into some scripting language right? Where you have logic inside of your templates and I honestly do not really know what that looks like right now. That feels like something in the medium term roadmap. [00:52:58] Jeremy: Yeah and then in terms of bug reports or issues, now it's not just your code it's this exponential combination of whatever people put into these config files. [00:53:09] Brandon: Exactly. Yeah. so again, like I really respect the projects that have done this well or that have done plugins well. I'm trying to think of some, I think obsidian has plugins, for example. And that seems to be one of the few solutions to try and satisfy the infinite desire for features with the limited amount of maintainer time. Time split between code vs triage vs talking to users [00:53:36] Jeremy: How would you say your time is split between working on the code versus issue and PR triage? [00:53:43] Brandon: Oh, it varies really. I think working on the code is like a minority of it. I think something that I actually enjoy is talking to people, talking to users, getting feedback on it. I go to quite a few conferences to talk to developers or people that are interested and figure out how to refine the message, how to make it clearer to people, like what this is for. And I would say maybe a plurality of my time is spent dealing with non-technical things that are neither code or GitHub issues. One thing I've been trying to do recently is talk to people that are not really in the mapping space. For example, people that work for newspapers like a lot of them are front end developers and if you ask them to run a Linux server they're like I have no idea. But that really is like one of the best target audiences for Protomaps. So I'd say a lot of the reality of running an open source project is a lot like a business is it has all the same challenges as a business in terms of you have to figure out what is the thing you're offering. You have to deal with people using it. You have to deal with feedback, you have to deal with managing emails and stuff. I don't think the payoff is anywhere near running a business or a startup that's backed by VC money is but it's definitely not the case that if you just want to code, you should start an open source project because I think a lot of the work for an opensource project has nothing to do with just writing the code. It is in my opinion as someone having done a VC backed business before, it is a lot more similar to running, a tech company than just putting some code on GitHub. Running a startup vs open source project [00:55:43] Jeremy: Well, since you've done both at a high level what did you like about running the company versus maintaining the open source project? [00:55:52] Brandon: So I have done some venture capital accelerator programs before and I think there is an element of hype and energy that you get from that that is self perpetuating. Your co-founder is gungho on like, yeah, we're gonna do this thing. And your investors are like, you guys are geniuses. You guys are gonna make a killing doing this thing. And the way it's framed is sort of obvious to everyone that it's like there's a much more traditional set of motivations behind that, that people understand while it's definitely not the case for running an open source project. Sometimes you just wake up and you're like what the hell is this thing for, it is this thing you spend a lot of time on. You don't even know who's using it. The people that use it and make a bunch of money off of it they know nothing about it. And you know, it's just like cool. And then you only hear from people that are complaining about it. And I think like that's honestly discouraging compared to the more clear energy and clearer motivation and vision behind how most people think about a company. But what I like about the open source project is just the lack of those constraints you know? Where you have a mandate that you need to have this many customers that are paying by this amount of time. There's that sort of pressure on delivering a business result instead of just making something that you're proud of that's simple to use and has like an elegant design. I think that's really a difference in motivation as well. Having control [00:57:50] Jeremy: Do you feel like you have more control? Like you mentioned how you've decided I'm not gonna make a public roadmap. I'm the sole developer. I get to decide what goes in. What doesn't. Do you feel like you have more control in your current position than you did running the startup? [00:58:10] Brandon: Definitely for sure. Like that agency is what I value the most. It is possible to go too far. Like, so I'm very wary of the BDFL title, which I think is how a lot of open source projects succeed. But I think there is some element of for a project to succeed there has to be somebody that makes those decisions. Sometimes those decisions will be wrong and then hopefully they can be rectified. But I think going back to what I was talking about with scope, I think the overall vision and the scope of the project is something that I am very opinionated about in that it should do these things. It shouldn't do these things. It should be easy to use for this audience. Is it gonna be appealing to this other audience? I don't know. And I think that is really one of the most important parts of that leadership role, is having the power to decide we're doing this, we're not doing this. I would hope other developers would be able to get on board if they're able to make good use of the project, if they use it for their company, if they use it for their business, if they just think the project is cool. So there are other contributors at this point and I want to get more involved. But I think being able to make those decisions to what I believe is going to be the best project is something that is very special about open source, that isn't necessarily true about running like a SaaS business. [00:59:50] Jeremy: I think that's a good spot to end it on, so if people want to learn more about Protomaps or they wanna see what you're up to, where should they head? [01:00:00] Brandon: So you can go to Protomaps.com, GitHub, or you can find me or Protomaps on bluesky or Mastodon. [01:00:09] Jeremy: All right, Brandon, thank you so much for chatting today. [01:00:12] Brandon: Great. Thank you very much.

At DoorGrow, we teach property management business owners to build referral engines to feed them new owners and doors. In today's episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert sits down with Brandon Barnum, CEO of hoa.com to talk about how property managers can bring on new clients through Raving Referrals. You'll Learn [03:21] The 3 Steps to Getting Referrals [09:52] Automate the Ask [13:43] Hyper-Local Social Farming [22:24] Become the Expert [30:41] Incentivizing Referrals Tweetables “Most people feel uncomfortable asking for referrals, so they don't get many referrals.” “The more you ask, the more you get, that's just how it works.” “By having that team of people that you're recommending, they'll recommend you back as well.” “Coaching is the breakfast of champions.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Brandon: Most people feel uncomfortable asking for referrals, so they don't get many referrals.  [00:00:04] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:26] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:48] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGroww, and now let's get into the show. [00:01:13] What's up DoorGrow property managers. A quick disclaimer for this podcast episode. Unfortunately, the first few minutes were cut off by our streaming software. That means we will be jumping right into the meat of the episode, but quick intro for our guest today. Chatting with me in this episode is Brandon Barnum, CEO of HOA.com, the king of referrals, and he is here to talk with me about getting new clients through raving referrals. Enjoy the show. [00:01:42] I was young, I was in my twenties, and I had two daughters and I was like, "how am I going to take care of them or have time with them if I'm working a standard nine to five job?" Like there's no space for that. And so I was like, "I need something with more flexibility and freedom." And it's funny, you know, they say that this need or maybe pain is the mother of all invention. [00:02:03] I don't know. But yeah, so I had to figure something out. I can definitely resonate with that. And with daughters, it can be a little tough because I'm like trying to go through airports or take them places and I can't take them into the normal like my bathroom, but I don't want to go in to use the bathroom like without taking them, so I'm like, "do I take them in the men's bathroom with me so I can use the bathroom?" [00:02:23] Like things have gotten a little bit more easier nowadays, but it was difficult back then. So, Awesome.  [00:02:28] So you exited refer.com and would you still recommend that tool? Are you allowed to say? [00:02:35] Brandon: You know, it honestly, it has pivoted and the people, the company that bought us out completely shifted. [00:02:41] So we were a B2B platform to help people build their referral business. And the private equity firm that bought us really bought us for the database. So they've shifted. So it's no longer referral based. In fact, you can't even find refer.com anymore.  [00:02:55] Jason: That's wild. Okay.  [00:02:56] Brandon: Well, they bought it for the community. They bought it for 5 million members and 46 million people in the database. And so they chose a completely different path. They're about, I believe, to exit in their new venture. So. Wow. I wish I could say the tool exists, but it gave us the opportunity to build something similar here at HOA.com.  [00:03:17] Jason: Yeah. Well, okay. [00:03:19] So we're going to learn the magic trick to get current clients and vendors to refer like clockwork, right? That's the claim. So let's get into this. How does this work?  [00:03:30] Brandon: Well, there's a number of different ways that you can boost your business by referral. And one of the things that we teach is called the art of the ask, right? [00:03:38] Because one of the things that we know is most people feel uncomfortable asking for referrals, so they don't get many referrals. But there's an easy way, and it's three steps to ask for more referrals and get more referrals. And it's step one is setting the stage. Step two is listening for the referral triggers, and then step three is to A-S-K to G-E-T. [00:04:00] Okay, so let's unpack that a little bit, Jason. So, when you first have a new client that signs up for your service, what you want to do is at the end of that conversation, before you let them off the phone, off of Zoom, or in person, what you want to do is just say, "Hey, before I let you go. Can I ask you for a favor?" [00:04:18] Everyone's either going to say "yes," or "maybe tell me more." And then what you want to do is just say, "Hey, we're so committed to giving you a five star experience. And once we do, and you experience our service and we take care of everything for you, and it just runs like clockwork, would it be okay to ask you for referrals?" [00:04:38] Everybody's going to say yes, because you're not putting them on the spot right now. You're basically saying, "I'll do a great job for you and give you amazing service." Right? So that's step one is setting the stage. Now you're going to get some referrals right then because they're going to be like, "well, now that you mentioned it, I'm in this real estate investor group and I've got three other guys. We were just having this conversation about needing a new property management firm. So let me introduce you to Tom, Bobby and Susie." Right?" [00:05:04] Jason: Okay. So you ask the step one, you ask for a favor, you express that you're committed to five stars. So that's a nice pre frame, you know, experience, and then you're getting permission to hit them up for that later, basically.  [00:05:19] Brandon: At a later date, right? [00:05:20] And that's the key because you're not putting them on the spot now, everybody's totally comfortable. You're basically just saying, "I'm going to do a great job."  [00:05:27] Jason: Sure. Yeah, of course. "If you do a good job yeah. I'd be happy to do that for you."  [00:05:32] Brandon: So it's the easy "yes," and you'll pretty much get 100 percent buy in on that, right? [00:05:36] So that's setting the stage. Now you go into step two, you start serving them and you're listening for the referral triggers. And that's something like, "Oh, thank you so much. You guys did such a great job, right? I just, I love working with you guys." You're listening. For those expressions of appreciation, right? [00:05:55] And when you hear that, that means that somebody is in a peak referral state because they just recognize that you're doing a great job and they've expressed their appreciation for you. And that's when it's time to ask for referrals. And the way you do that is say, "I'm so glad to hear that. We love helping investors like you manage their properties and we're looking to take on a few more clients. So remember at the beginning we started working together, I told you we were going to deliver five star service. Well now that you know what our service is like, I'd love to see if there's any other investors you know that we can help."  [00:06:31] Jason: Yeah, this is really funny. It's like eerily odd to me because we use a very similar framework at DoorGrow for getting reviews from clients. And I like the idea though of the pre frame and setting the stage early on. So our formula for getting reviews is we like, identify peak happiness, which usually in property management is like when the tenant is placed. And then we reach out at peak happiness and then we first showcase the invisible. [00:07:00] So we highlight everything we've done for them. So, "Oh, we've got your tenant placed. We got the rent check collected. It should be hitting your bank account right about now." Like all this kind of stuff. Then asking, "how do you feel we've done?" Which is a loaded question because you've just pointed out all the good that they couldn't see. [00:07:15] And so, and then they're like, "Oh, you're great." So we're kind of intentionally making them say that, right? And so they're like, "Oh yeah, you guys have been amazing." "Oh, we love hearing that. Would you be willing to share that feedback online?" So brilliant. Brilliant. Yeah. So very similar. I've never even thought about just applying it to referrals, so this is great. I love this.  [00:07:34] Brandon: And Jason also you can ask the question too, "how would you rate us on a scale of one to 10?" Oh yeah. "How good are we doing for you right now?" Yeah, right. And the net promoter score says if you get an eight, nine or 10, then it's time to ask, we always recommend if it's less than a 10, you want to ask, "well, what would make it a 10?" [00:07:52] Right? If it's a nine or an eight, "how can we get to a 10 for you? We're so committed to delivering exceptional service and excellence to you. What would get us there?" And if they say an eight or a nine, "I'm so glad to hear that. We love helping people like you manage your doors." Yeah. So there you go. [00:08:08] Jason: Very clever. I like that. Okay. So what was your step three? It was some sort of acronym?  [00:08:14] Brandon: Step three is A-S-K to G-E-T. Now that's how it was taught to me. It's ask to get, it's a little different way of remembering it. And like my kids know. A-S-K to G-E-T. I pounded it in their heads and they're not afraid to ask for what they want. [00:08:30] But it was taught to me by my mentor, Mark Victor Hansen. He wrote those chicken soup for the soul books, and that's the way he taught me the art of the ask years ago, 20 years ago.  [00:08:39] Yeah.  [00:08:40] Jason: Okay. Got it. Okay. So it's not an acronym. It's just spelling it out. So you can remember it. Cool. I'm like, "this is going to be something really clever!" [00:08:49] It's just like ask to get, yeah, it's so simple. We don't ask often enough. Right. Okay.  [00:08:54] Brandon: So the more you ask, the more you get, that's just how it works.  [00:08:57] Jason: Now, this is kind of a system that you can build into the business, right? Like that's what we teach referrals, like build this mechanism. And so we create this open loop, like "would you be willing to give us feedback online?" [00:09:09] "Yes. Oh, I'd be happy to do that. Awesome. We would really appreciate that. Let me send you a link to make this easier for you. And I know you're really busy, but would it be cool if I followed up in a week if I don't see something come through? Would that be okay?" And they're like, "yeah." So then they're in this endless loop where you continually follow up. [00:09:26] "Hey, you know, you had mentioned that you'd maybe take some time to do this and notice, hadn't seen anything come through. I know you're really busy. Would you be willing to give us feedback online?" And we just keep this and we work at like a sales process. Like it's a pipeline until we get them to either do it or give them an out and say, "you know what, if you don't want to do it, it's totally cool. We appreciate your business." "No, I'll do it." Takeaway. So anyway, there's got to be more to it than this. Is that, or is it just simple?  [00:09:51] Brandon: That's one of the strategies. So the next thing we want to do is we want to automate the ask, right? So first we talk about how to get more referrals just in your regular conversations, and we give people a framework to make it easy for them and comfortable for the clients. [00:10:06] Now let's take that same strategy and let's automate the ask. How do we do that? We integrate similar types of questions into our invoices, our email signature. If you're doing a newsletter, you can incorporate a section around that. I recommend that one of the things you consider doing is to incentivize people. [00:10:27] The best way to motivate is to compensate. Well, you don't necessarily have to pay out cash like in an affiliate program or what we call referral rewards, but you may choose to. At the very least, what you want to do is have some sort of way to incentivize and reward those that send you business. So maybe it is for every new client you refer us, we're going to give you one free months of service or three months of service, whatever's right for your business model. You got to understand your lifetime client value. You need to understand your customer acquisition costs. And Jason, I'm sure these are things that you're teaching your guys. So I don't think we have to dig deep into those, but it's really about creating the mechanism so that your system is doing the asking for you, right? [00:11:15] All of your automations have integrated referrals. If you're doing mailers and statements, you can simply put those requests as a footer, if you will, in your statements, and that way your system is constantly doing the asking and reminding people that you appreciate their referrals.  [00:11:33] Jason: So, what would be an example of what might be at the bottom of an invoice or at the bottom of an email? [00:11:38] Like, like something like, "we don't hate referrals, do you know anyone?" I'm joking, but what would you typically put?  [00:11:45] Brandon: Yeah. I mean, you can do something as simple as "we love referrals," right? "The greatest gift you can give us is to refer someone who cares." It's really about your personality and your brand, right? [00:11:56] So there's some standard language that you can use. "We love referrals. If you know anyone who is a fit for us, an investor looking for us to take over and provide five star service, we're here for them." And then again, if you're rewarding them, then you integrate your incentive into the ask.  [00:12:15] Jason: Okay. I love this. [00:12:17] Again with our reputation secrets for reviews we also teach like identify all the touch points that you have with your customer And figure out where you can add in some sort of link or direction to get reviews. So I'm starting to think maybe I should take a look at everything that I teach for reviews and figure out how do I turn this into referrals?  [00:12:37] Brandon: It sounds like it's the same, Jason. I mean, everything that you're teaching is right on point. Now, just add that referral request into what you're doing. Now you've got the ratings, reviews and the referrals. You've got two different ways to ask for similar things that are both going to add to more business. [00:12:53] Jason: Wow. Yeah, definitely. But the referral thing is a lot more direct, right? Let's get an actual lead. Let's get connected. And instead of, you know, looking good online and waiting for traffic flow in. It's definitely more direct. So I'm liking this. So, okay. Automate the ask. [00:13:08] I'm guessing you have more points.  [00:13:10] Brandon: Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So many different things that you can do. One of the things that we teach is to become the expert, right? Become recognized as an expert. Now, many of your guys are probably already going to real estate investor groups. What are they teaching and training at real estate investor groups, right? [00:13:27] Yeah, part of the reason that you are where you are is because you are establishing your expert authority by having this call this group, right? You have elevated your status in the industry and that's what everybody that's listening should be doing too. We teach a concept called hyper local social farming, right? [00:13:47] If you think about the best realtors out there, they farm local communities. That's what they call it. They call it farming. And what that means is they're sending postcards to every homeowner in a specific neighborhood or HOA, and they do it regularly consistently because that consistency creates comfort and trust, right? So they become known as that top agent in that area. Well, we do that at HOA.com. It's part of our marketing platform that we've built, but we teach the strategy and I think it applies even to property managers, right? Number one, you can farm lists and I'm sure your guys are getting lists of non owner occupied properties and then doing direct mail and outreach. [00:14:34] to the investors, especially if you see that they have multiple properties that they own. Right? We have all that homeowner data at hoa.com. And so that's one of the things that we do too. But if you farm the communities and work specific areas, then what happens is you start to get the referrals from all the people that know each other in that area. [00:14:55] Or in that, that market, right? Because sometimes you're doing it down to the local area and other times you're working spheres of influence, if you will. Right. And so one of the other things that we teach is to teach others. When you establish that expert authority by teaching real estate investor groups, right? [00:15:15] Go partner with not only the real estate investor groups, but also the realtors in the area offer a course for investors into the specific real estate branch. We've just done this actually with raving referrals. So we created a raving referrals CE course, continuing education course for realtors. And now what we're doing is we're having different mortgage lenders, business coaches, and other professionals are becoming the certified trainer. And the beauty is, like I was just talking to the partner manager for REMAX yesterday. She manages all of North America. They've got about 80, 000 agents. Well, I thought we were primarily having an HOA conversation, which we were. [00:15:58] But when she found out that we had this CE course, her eyes and ears just lit up because their agents always need great content to grow their business. So somebody that is standing on stage and we help fill the audience, but somebody that's standing on stage delivering that content elevates their expert authority. [00:16:18] And now everybody wants to do business with them because they're seen as the expert they are.  [00:16:23] Jason: This is funny. So one of the strategies we give our clients, we have a course called the 411 on leasing that one of my clients I coached in the past kind of shared with us and we've kind of cleaned it up and we have our clients go and get this approved as a CE credit and here's this course on leasing that scares the shit out of real estate agents in handling leases because the number one source of complaints at any real estate office or any board of realtors, I mean, is usually property management related, not real estate related. And so they teach this class that basically scares the shit out of them and handling their own leases. And so then they just start referring the business to the teacher of class. So I love this idea. So they're teaching the CE course for realtors related to referrals.  [00:17:07] Brandon: Yeah. And what we teach is for the trainer, whoever it is, typically we focus on mortgage lenders and business coaches because they want to be in front of rooms full of realtors, but it works for a property manager too, right? You can become a trainer, go give a course. What we do is we partner with the title companies because as you know, the title companies exist to help realtors win more business, and they do that by providing training and tools, right? Technology to help them win. So we provide the title company with great content that is drawing their agents in and helping their realtors expand their business. [00:17:47] Because what we're doing is we're teaching the realtors how to formalize and activate their referral network. What we know about Realtors is they give a ton of referrals out and they don't get many back. And so if you want to win more business from Realtors, give more business to realtors, promote them, right? [00:18:06] And then the property management company, that's easy to do. It doesn't take much. You could have your list of five or 10 agents. They can specialize in different aspects of the industry. Maybe some are first time homers, some are luxury, some are Airbnb short term rentals, but by having that team of people that you're recommending, they'll recommend you back as well. [00:18:29] Jason: Yeah, that's great. I love it. All right, Brandon. I just want to milk all these ideas out of you. Like keep sharing because this is cool.  [00:18:37] Brandon: So next phase then is we've talked about activating the Realtors net network, right? How do we do that? We actually sit down with them. We teach something we call the referral partner blueprint. [00:18:49] And if you go to HOA. com slash blueprint, you can download this. It's a PDF document. But it basically walked you through all the different ways to create your referral team. You're what we call your trusted team. Now property managers have vendors that you use all of the time. And my question to you is you're referring business to those vendors. [00:19:11] Are those vendors referring you back?  [00:19:14] Jason: Yeah, it's a great strategy. We definitely have our clients focus on like vendors are great source of referrals. They know the bad landlords out there that they're doing jobs for. They know what it's like to deal with them and to not get paid. They would much rather have a property manager that they're dealing with. [00:19:29] That's good. Yeah, for sure.  [00:19:31] Brandon: Yeah. And they're in a perfect position. If they get hired by an investor to go work on a non owner occupied property, they're in a conversation, a dialogue anyway. And they can say, "by the way, have you ever considered hiring a professional property management company? So you don't have to come out here at 2 a. m. and, you know, address an emergency with one of your renters?" So being in partnership with them is key. We help the realtors formalize and activate their referral partnerships. Again, they give a ton out. They don't get many back at HOA. com. We've actually built a co marketing engine and it's all automated. [00:20:08] And so what happens is a realtor, after they come on board, they'll create their profile, and then they invite their trusted team. And on their profile, they get to feature the people that they know I can trust and recommend. So their mortgage lender, insurance agent, their painter, their plumber, their home inspector, property manager, their trusted team. [00:20:29] And what we do once those people join their network is the realtor also uploads their homeowner database. And then what we do is every month we send. An automated home safe report to the homeowners in their database from the agent or the pro to those homeowners and what it does is it gives the homeowner a monthly valuation report. [00:20:52] "Hey, your property has gone up by $4000. It's now worth $512, 000, right? Might be a good time to sell," and we include the estimated rental value of that property as well. The reason we're doing that is we want to help people find the resources that they need and they may see that, "wow, I could rent this house for $4, 000." [00:21:16] It might be time to make a move, right? So we want to stimulate that activity, but the home safe report, it goes out from the realtor featuring all of the vendors that they know, like, and trust and recommend, and the beauty is we do the same thing for everyone else. So the insurance agent is promoting the realtor to all of their clients. [00:21:38] The mortgage lender is promoting the realtor or the property manager. We help everybody work together as a team and automate the co marketing so that they're expanding the number of people that they get their message to. And everybody's recommending everyone else because a client for one can be a client for everyone. [00:21:58] Yeah. Nice.  [00:22:00] Jason: That is very strategic. I love it. So yeah, very clever. Cool. And I just got your guide. Like I put it in it's up on my screen. Super fast. And I'm looking at it here. Yeah, this follows a lot of the strategies that we leverage in getting our clients to get clients. [00:22:16] So this is really interesting, but I like the idea of the cross promotional campaigns and stuff like that. So. Very cool.  [00:22:23] Brandon: Yeah, you know, we started this company as the Homeowner Alliance and our original vision was to create like the BNI power team of professionals who serve homeowners, because there's nobody that's done that, right? [00:22:34] There is no referral network exclusively for pros who serve homeowners. So five years ago, we set out to create that. We actually started as the homeowneralliance. com. That was our URL and we were able to acquire hoa. com. Right. Home owner Alliance. We need to do shorter brand. But what we know is that people that are in this space do a ton of business together, but most of them don't have any systems about how to cross refer and cross marketing like BNI is great. [00:23:07] But once you leave the BNI meeting, then what?  [00:23:09] Jason: Yeah, I would say BNI is not that great. That's the feedback I've heard from so many people. Sorry, BNI. But the challenge is our property management clients will go there hoping to get a bunch of referrals. And what ends up happening is they have maybe one person there that could potentially be a client. [00:23:27] Maybe and they have maybe one person there that actually could connect them to something that's relevant or they might not and so they just they spend a lot of time investing in this with getting very little yield. There's better groups that you could either curate or be a part of or join, I think, that would yield a much bigger result, but that's my opinion. [00:23:45] Brandon: Yeah, and I agree, and I think it's industry specific, right? There are some industries that really thrive in BNI, and there's others that don't. Yeah. But the concept Is sound, right? The concept is let's build a trusted team of the people that we're cross referring my challenge with...  [00:24:02] Jason: your team, like the team that all like property managers are already connected to like property managers have accountants. [00:24:09] They're connected to lenders. They're connected to title companies. They're connected. They're connected to all sorts of vendors, like every housing related vendor there is, right? And they, and that's part of Building a property management business. You have to build a network and a team. [00:24:21] And so you might as well create that alliance strategically to facilitate that. So HOA. com on the surface, if people are assuming it's just related to association management would be probably a misnomer. That's probably not accurate, right? It sounds like you can help with facilitating some of this stuff happening that we're talking about. [00:24:43] Brandon: Yeah. We've really built a referral partner platform. That's what is at the core and what drives HOA. com. Again, we set out to create a platform to connect homeowners to professionals they can trust. Now we acquired the hoa. com domain after the fact, but that's our mission is to really connect homeowners in local communities with professionals they can trust. [00:25:06] And part of the way that we do that from an automation and a marketing perspective is we help people create their trusted teams, cross refer Cross market together. We automate that process. So it's easy, but we're creating community pages for every neighborhood in America, whether it's an HOA or not. [00:25:26] Jason: Yeah. And then we select top trusted pros that become the recommended property manager of that community the recommended realtor mortgage lender painter plumber And so we choose kind of like the bni concept. We're a community maker, but thank you.  [00:25:40] You're picking the kings of the champions for each, role in this community. [00:25:45] So okay, I love it. So, what's the process for a property manager to be one of those kings or queens of their local market in HOA. com. And how do you select them or how do they seduce you and get your attention?  [00:26:00] Brandon: They go to HOA. com up at the top, right? You're going to see a button that says, "become a pro." They're going to fill out that application. [00:26:07] We do background checks on people. We want to much like you said, before we jumped on the show, right? You don't allow everybody in, you only allow about 30 percent of people. If I heard you correctly. That want to be part of your Facebook group. Yeah, we take a similar approach, right? We're interested in quality over quantity and our reputation is at stake. [00:26:28] So we do background checks. We're going to check you out on social media. We're going to see what you're saying, who you are, make sure that our values are aligned. We don't just choose to do business with anyone and then we're going to make sure that you've got plenty of ratings and reviews that you got the experience and the expertise to take care of people. [00:26:46] So once that is complete and then you're approved, then you're on the platform and you basically create a profile. You invite your trusted team. You have the opportunity of claiming communities where you become the exclusive property manager for that HOA or master plan development. And that way you get remarketed to all those folks. [00:27:07] And then you have the opportunity to upload your homeowner database. So that every month they're getting a message and email from you with the value of their home. And then that home safe report has everything about their property in one location. Our goal is to be like Carfax for your home, but they're going to see all the square footage and you know, legal description, their mortgage information. [00:27:31] They're going to see a complete list of the sales transactions on that property. And then they're going to see a section, which is the trusted team, the recommended. providers, professionals that serve that community. And then they're also going to see local events. What's happening in your area. And ultimately, our goal is to create unity through community. [00:27:55] We want to connect people in the local neighborhoods so that they really get to know their neighbors and feel connected.  [00:28:02] Jason: I think that's super important nowadays because, you know, we've traded largely social networks for social media. And so we've lost the network. We've lost the connection in a lot of instances. [00:28:17] And. You know, it's been proven that the more time people spend on social media, the more disconnected, the more depressed they feel. And these really are psychological engines for stealing attention from us by leveraging dopamine and And it's extracting money from our wallets. And so either you use social media or it uses you. [00:28:38] And my daughter makes all of our social media posts, all my posts. Like I don't know where you really post anything, but she knows my voice. She knows how to write things the way that I would. And it's on my podcast. So she knows that. And so that allows me to use social media without using me as much, but I think everybody gets a little bit sucked in if they even have it on their phone. [00:28:58] Right. So, I love the idea of creating more connection and more community. So, for the random person listening to this that's not a property manager for some reason. Right. But they're just like, "man, I really am craving community." What could they do to be more connected to leveraging HOA. com?  [00:29:18] Brandon: Yeah. Well, so if they're a professional, they can sign up as a pro. [00:29:20] And one of the things that we do is we have a number of community impact events. Because part of the way that we bring people together is we give them a blueprint of how to host an event. You know, we do things like ice cream socials for the whole community, right? Or a watermelon eating contest. We do things like that, right? [00:29:39] Just fun stuff that bring people together and create a reason for families to come out and really build community within their HOA or neighborhood. So we provide all these guides to our pros, because again, some of the realtors, some of the property managers, they like to host events. And what's interesting is more often than not, when one of our pros approaches an HOA about doing a community impact event, the HOA gets behind it and they even promote it to all of the neighbors in their. [00:30:11] HOA because they don't typically have those types of events going on. Some do, but many don't. And so when, you know, a neighbor or a pro offers to do something for the neighborhood, they want to spread the word and get it out there. So what you're going to find is most HOAs will get behind it, especially if it's good for the community. [00:30:31] Jason: Sounds great. So yeah, maybe I should somehow get my HOA that I'm living in to do some of these things. All right. So Brandon, is there anything we missed in how to really get referrals going for maybe property managers or those listening.  [00:30:50] Brandon: Yeah, I think you've got to be intentional. You've got to have a plan what we recommend is that people start by doing a self assessment. [00:30:58] We have a referral score quiz. There are 10 Best practices when it comes to getting more referrals. And what we find is most often people have a couple of blind spots. There's a couple of things that they've never thought of before. And I'll give you one example. I had a mortgage company back in the early 2000s. [00:31:17] And I had this client come to me one day and he had referred me a client. And he calls me about two months later and he says, "Hey, I just want to know what happened with Mike Johnson." And I'm like, "Oh, great to hear from you. Amazing. We just helped Mike do his refinance two weeks ago and he closed on his transaction." [00:31:34] And then there was this awkward pause and he comes back and he says, "do you mind if I give you a little coaching?" And I said, "absolutely." You know, coaching is the breakfast of champions. And he says, "number one, it's a really good idea to thank people when they give you a referral," and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, how did I not? [00:31:54] How did I miss it? This guy was a VP for Intel. He had given me a number of referrals and I just hadn't even been aware to think about thanking the guy who was giving me this. Oh, I felt like just a capital L on my forehead. Right? The second thing he says is "it's also a really good idea to update people when they do give you a referral" and I'm like "doing! I'm an idiot!" Right? [00:32:21] And so what I did at that point, I had a mortgage company. I had 30 loan officers that were working for me. I printed up referral thank you cards. And they literally said, "thank you for referring." And there was a blank line and my people could write in the name of the client, quickly stick that in an envelope and send it out to the client to thank them for giving referrals, but if you're not thinking about it, then you're missing out. And that's one of the ways that you really build those relationships where people refer you on a regular basis because the trust goes up, especially if you update them on what happens, right? "Hey, thanks so much for referring Susie Smith." [00:32:59] She ended up becoming a client. We're now helping her with her properties and so grateful. And then you can either give them a gift. Starbucks card, movie card, whatever the case may be to reward them and give them that dopamine hit. So they want to do it again, right?  [00:33:16] Jason: Right, yeah, it's all about motivating them to do it again. [00:33:19] There's the idea you had mentioned before to incentivize, which is to throw money at them, right? But sometimes what really means even more to people is recognition. Like on disc assessments, for example, they have an economic score and most people's economic score is low. [00:33:33] Now this is B2B business owners. Economic score is generally high for most entrepreneurs and business owners and for salespeople. So realtors for sure. Generally everyone besides entrepreneurs and salespeople have a low economic score and which means they are recognition motivated. And so it's the gesture of doing something to show recognition. [00:33:54] Everybody likes recognition. Some people like money more, but if you do both, yes, then you're going to create a really solid incentive for these people.  [00:34:03] Brandon: How do you recommend that people recognize those that give them a referral? Do you have a system for that?  [00:34:08] Jason: I mean, I think the things that you mentioned are pretty solid, like a thank you card or something, but I think more. Depth is where magic happens. And so the deeper right so sending a card, that's nice, right? And that's a little deeper than an email, right? But the greatest depth would be "hey, let me take you out to lunch I really want you to know that I appreciate it," and looking them in the eye and expressing it would be the greatest step because there's more human connection and people like we mentioned before crave this nowadays and they will remember that forever. You know, I got chills just saying all that. [00:34:42] Brandon: Oh, I like it. Yeah. You know, one of the things we recommend too, is you give them a shout out on social media, right? I mean, you were just talking about the power of social media and here's why I love this strategy. When you recognize a referrer on social media, "Hey, I just wanted to give a shout out to Bob Williams, right? Bob recently referred over this client and we were able to help them with 10 of their clients. Properties. And we're so excited to be working with them. They're awesome people. So thanks again." Right. What are you doing there? Number one, you're feeding that, that dopamine hit right, of giving them that recognition. [00:35:18] You're doing it publicly by praising them. They're also going to tap into their relationships because birds of a feather flock together and that investor often will know others or that person will often know others who are investors as well. And you've also created social proof at the same time, right? [00:35:39] Somebody is trusting you enough to give you referrals. That social proof is good for you and for them. So if you can praise them on social media, if you do a newsletter, you can incorporate that. I started doing that back in 1997, right? [00:35:55] Where I did a week newsletter update on interest rates. I was in the mortgage business, but every week. I would include the people and thank the people that had referred me business. And what that did is it started to communicate and it was typically realtors, right? And what happened is other realtors would see that if they would be on my newsletter list and they're like, "Oh, Norma Reardon is sending business to Brandon. I've done business with her. She's high quality. If she trusts Brandon, I can too."  [00:36:25] Jason: Ooh, that is a clever, backwards evidence of social proof right there. That I love, that's clever. Yeah. Smart. Yeah. I like it. You've got a lot of ideas.  [00:36:36] Brandon: There's a few of them. You can pick up the book, Raving Referrals. Most of them are in this book. We haven't done one specifically for property managers. We need to think about that, Jason. We've got raving referrals for dentists, raving referrals for mortgage pros, and we're working on raving referrals for real estate agents right now.  [00:36:54] Jason: Hey, you want to coauthor a book? Let's get together and have that conversation... magic happen. So, yeah, and I think there's some cool stuff we could do together to do some referral magic. So, very cool. Well, before we wrap up anything else that you want to add, share, how can people get in touch with you? You know, anything you want to say about HOA. [00:37:14] com. This is your guy.  [00:37:16] Brandon: So best way to get in touch with me is at BrandonBarnum.Com. I'm sure you'll put that in the show notes on BrandonBarnum.Com. You can get the referral partner blueprint. So there's a link to download that. You can take the referral score quiz. That'll take you one to two minutes. [00:37:33] You'll rate yourself on the scale of one to 10 on the 10 best practices. And I guarantee. There's a couple of blind spots that are going to help you. The other thing you just mentioned, disc, this is a magic trick. This is called bank code, and this is a personality system that we teach. It helps you close more sales in less time and we did a research study to find out the impact of customizing your conversations and presentations for realtors on their listing conversions. And on average they increased their listing conversions by 123%. So more than doubled their closing ratio on listing conversions by understanding the personality style of the people that you're serving and selling and by customizing your conversation to the style that their brain makes buying decisions will help you close more sales in less time. [00:38:31] And you can take that bank code assessment. It's free. It'll take you 60 seconds and you can do that on brandonbarnum. com as well.  [00:38:39] Jason: Cool. All right. I will definitely check it out. All right, Brandon. Grateful to have you on the show. This was a pleasure. Appreciate it. And I think we'll definitely be connecting after the show. [00:38:50] So, all right. I love it. Thanks for having me, Jason. Appreciate it. Thanks for being here. So property managers, if you are a property management entrepreneur and you're struggling to add doors, you're adding plenty of doors, but you're struggling to figure out operations and you want to get your business to be what I call infinitely scalable, where you can continually add doors and stop stopping your momentum and break that hundred or thousand door barrier and hit your goals and achieve your dreams then reach out to us at DoorGrow We are helping people do this every day. This is what we do and we're confident that we can help you do it If you are positive and if you're active and willing to take action, we can help you get there. [00:39:27] So reach out to us at doorgrow. com and until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:39:32] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:39:59] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

info@endabuse.com; Psalms 51:12, Isaiah 55:1, John 6:54, 2 Timothy 2:22, James 4:7 Brandon: It's one of those things where, you know, you're doing the wrong thing and you just feel like you can't help yourself and can't get out of that despair. That's the whole point. The start of the addictive cycle is despair. And despair can be lots of different things. Despair is not necessarily what you think, in the way of discouraged or depressed. Despair can be loneliness. Despair can be boredom. Despair can be guilt. There are so many different things that would fall under the category of despair, right? And then there's a trigger. Right? So, you get triggered from the despair. Then there's the fantasy. So, the trigger can be cleavage. The trigger can be a commercial. The trigger can be a magazine sitting on the rack as you go by, you know, and you're in this despair, you have this trigger. So then there's the fantasy and then there's the acting out. After the acting out, you despair. The guilt and white knuckling mindset of, I'm not going to do this anymore, and I'm going to white knuckle it until I get in that despair again, and then there's a trigger and, you know, so that was one of the things that helped me a lot with counseling, getting into counseling and understanding the addictive cycle. It was the Lord pursuing me. It was the Lord showing me these things. You have a bigger problem than looking at porn. Your bigger problem is you're not looking to me. So, just not looking at porn is not going to solve it. I mean there's Buddhists and Hindus and all these people that are so pure in their way of living and not contaminating their minds and being at peace or whatever. So, they're way more disciplined than most Christians and conquered their selfish desires and all these things, but they're not walking with Christ. They're not walking in the light. They're in the dark. So, the point is not to just not look at porn, right? The point is to be satisfied in Christ and so the Lord is like, okay, yeah, the triage, we're going to stop the bleeding and you know, your wife now knows and so she's going to help you and you're going to have some boundaries. I needed that time. I needed the understanding, the destruction of what this is doing, right. And obviously, I knew it was wrong, but all the things that we say to ourselves is that it's not hurting anybody. It's just between me and God and I know I'm sinning, but it's not hurting anybody else. Wendi: I'm extremely thankful that you have overcome the sex addiction and I'm thankful that you are willing to open up about it here and because I know there are so many people that watch us that have been, you know, affected by people who did not stop and get help. They made it to level three and four and and so you know, and there's so much damage and you know, and so thankfully that was something that you recognized and like you said, you know, the whole getting busted, was God's way of rescuing you from that pit that you were in. And so I know that that if there is anybody that is listening to this or struggling, and they need any kind of resources, you can definitely email us and we will get you in touch with Brandon who can get you some direction in that because I know in just watching you I've seen the change up close and personal and I know that you don't struggle like you did.

About BrandonBrandon West was raised in part by video games and BBSes and has been working on web applications since 1999. He entered the world of Developer Relations in 2011 as an evangelist for a small startup called SendGrid and has since held leadership roles at companies like AWS. At Datadog, Brandon is focused on helping developers improve the performance and developer experience of the things they build. He lives in Seattle where enjoys paddle-boarding, fishing, and playing music.Links Referenced: Datadog: https://www.datadoghq.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwest TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Honeycomb. When production is running slow, it's hard to know where problems originate. Is it your application code, users, or the underlying systems? I've got five bucks on DNS, personally. Why scroll through endless dashboards while dealing with alert floods, going from tool to tool to tool that you employ, guessing at which puzzle pieces matter? Context switching and tool sprawl are slowly killing both your team and your business. You should care more about one of those than the other; which one is up to you. Drop the separate pillars and enter a world of getting one unified understanding of the one thing driving your business: production. With Honeycomb, you guess less and know more. Try it for free at honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud. Observability: it's more than just hipster monitoring.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Fortinet. Fortinet's partnership with AWS is a better-together combination that ensures your workloads on AWS are protected by best-in-class security solutions powered by comprehensive threat intelligence and more than 20 years of cybersecurity experience. Integrations with key AWS services simplify security management, ensure full visibility across environments, and provide broad protection across your workloads and applications. Visit them at AWS re:Inforce to see the latest trends in cybersecurity on July 25-26 at the Boston Convention Center. Just go over to the Fortinet booth and tell them Corey Quinn sent you and watch for the flinch. My thanks again to my friends at Fortinet.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. My guest today is someone I've been trying to get on the show for years, but I'm very bad at, you know, following up and sending the messages and all the rest because we all struggle with our internal demons. My guest instead struggles with external demons. He is the team lead for developer experience and tools advocacy at what I can only assume is a Tinder for Pets style company, Date-A-Dog. Brendon West, thank you for joining me today.Brandon: Hey, Corey, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Finally, like you said, it's been a couple of years. But glad that it's happening. And yeah, I'm on the DevRel team at Datadog.Corey: Yes, I'm getting a note here in the headset of breaking news coming in. Yes, you're not apparently a dog dating company, you are a monitoring slash observability slash whatever the cool kids are calling it today telemetry outputer dingus nonsense. Anyone who has ever been to a community or corporate event has no doubt been tackled by one of the badge scanners that you folks have orbiting your booth, but what is it that you folks do?Brandon: Well, the observability, the monitoring, the distributed tracing, all that stuff that you mentioned. And then a lot of other interesting things that are happening. Security is a big focus—InfoSec—so we're adding some products around that, automated security monitoring, very cool. And then the sort of stuff that I'm representing is stuff that helps developers provide a better experience to their end-users. So, things like front-end monitoring, real-time user monitoring, synthetic testing of your APIs, whatever it might be.Corey: Your path has been somewhat interesting because you—well, everyone's path has been somewhat interesting; yours has been really interesting because back in 2011, you entered the world of developer relations, or being a DevReloper as I insist on calling it. And you were in a—you call it a small startup called SendGrid. Which is, on some level, hilarious from my point of view. I've been working with you folks—you folks being SendGrid—for many years now. I cared a lot about email once upon a time.And now I send an email newsletter every week, that deep under the hood, through a couple of vendor abstraction layers is still SendGrid, and I don't care about email because that's something that I can pay someone else to worry about. You went on as well to build out DevRel teams at AWS. You decided okay, you're going to take some time off after that. You went to a small scrappy startup and ah, nice. You could really do things right and you have a glorious half of the year and then surprise, you got acquired by Datadog. Congratu-dolances on that because now you're right back in the thick of things at big company-style approaches. Have I generally nailed the trajectory of the past decade for you?Brandon: Yeah, I think the broad strokes are all correct there. SendGrid was a small company when I joined, you know? There were 30 of us or so. So, got to see that grow into what it is today, which was super, super awesome. But other than that, yeah, I think that's the correct path.Corey: It's interesting to me, in that you were more or less doing developer relations before that was really a thing in the ecosystem. And I understand the challenge that you would have in a place like SendGrid because that is large-scale email sending, transactional or otherwise, and that is something that by and large, has slipped below the surface level of awareness for an awful lot of folks in your target market. It's, “Oh, okay, and then we'll just have the thing send an email,” they say, hand-waving over what is an incredibly deep and murky pool. And understanding that is a hard thing requires a certain level of technical sophistication. So, you started doing developer relations for something that very clearly needed some storytelling chops. How did you fall into it originally?Brandon: Well, I wanted to do something that let me use those storytelling chops, honestly. I had been writing code at an agency for coal mines and gold mines and really actively inserting evil into the world, power plants, and that sort of thing. And, you know, I went to school for English literature. I loved writing. I played in thrash metal bands when I was a kid, so I've been up on stage being cussed at and told that I suck. So I—Corey: Oh, I get that conference talks all the time.Brandon: Yeah, right? So, that's why when people ask me to speak, I'm like, “Absolutely.” There's no way I can bomb harder than I've bombed before. No fear, right? So yeah, I wanted to use those skills. I wanted to do something different.And one of my buddies had a company that he had co-founded that was going through TechStars in Boulder. SendGrid was the first accelerator-backed company to IPO which is pretty cool. But they had gone through TechStars in 2009. They were looking for a developer evangelist. So, SendGrid was looking for developer evangelist and my friend introduced me said, “I think you'd be good at this. You should have a conversation.” My immediate thought was what the hell is a developer evangelist?Corey: And what might a SendGrid be? And all the rest. Yes, it's that whole, “Oh, how do I learn to swim?” Someone throws you off the end of the dock and then retrospect, it's, “I don't think they were trying to teach me how to swim.” Yeah. Hindsight.Brandon: Yeah. It worked out great. I will say, though, that I think DevRel has been around for a long time, you know? The title has been around since the original Macintosh at Apple in 1980-ish. There's a whole large part of the tech world that would like you to think that it's new because of all the terrible things that their DevRel team did at Microsoft in the late-90s.And you can go read all about this. There were trials about it. These documents were released to the public, James Plamondon is the lead architect of all of this nastiness. But I think there was then a concerted effort to memory-hole that and say, “No, DevRel is new and shiny.” And then Google came along and said, “Well, it's not evangelism anymore. It's advocacy.”Corey: It's not sysadmin work anymore. It's SRE. It's not on-prem, it's Sparkling Kubernetes, et cetera, et cetera.Brandon: Yeah, so there's this sense in a lot of places that DevRel is new, but it's actually been around a long time. And you can learn a lot from reading about the history and understanding it, something I've given a talk on and written a bit about. So.Corey: My philosophy around developer relations for a while has been that in many cases, its biggest obstacle is the way that it is great at telling stories about fantastically complex, deeply technical things; it can tell stories about almost anything except itself. And I keep seeing similar expressions of the same problem again, and again, and again. I mean, AWS, where you worked, as an example: they love to talk about their developer advocates, and you read the job descriptions and these are high-level roles with sweeping responsibilities, broad basis of experience being able to handle things at a borderline executive level. And then they almost neuter the entire thing by slapping a developer advocate title on top of those people, which means that some of the people that would be most effectively served by talking to them will dismiss them as, “Well, I'm a director”—or a VP—“What am I going to do talking to a developer advocate?” It feels like there's a swing and a miss as far as encapsulating the value that the function provides.I want to be clear, I am not sitting here shitting on DevRel or its practitioners, I see a problem with how it [laugh] is being expressed. Now, feel free to argue with me and just scream at me for the next 20 minutes, and this becomes a real short show. But—Brandon: [laugh].Corey: —It'll be great. Hit me.Brandon: No, you're correct in many ways, which makes me sad because these are the same conversations that I've been having for the 11, 12 years that I've been in DevRel now. And I thought we would have moved past this at some point, but the problem is that we are bad at advocating for advocacy. We do a bad job of relating to people about DevRel because we spend so much time worried about stuff that doesn't really matter. And we get very loud voices in the echo chamber screaming about titles and evangelism versus advocate versus community manager, and which department you should report up to, and all of these things that ultimately don't matter. And it just seems like bickering from the outside. I think that the core of what we do is super awesome. And I don't think it's very hard to articulate. It's just that we don't spend the time to do that.Corey: It's always odd to me when I talk to someone like, “Oh, you're in DevRel. What does that mean?” And their immediate response is, “Well, it's not marketing, I'll tell you that.” It's feels like there might be some trauma that is being expressed in some strange ways. I do view it as marketing, personally, and people who take umbrage at that don't generally tend to understand what marketing is.Yeah, you can look at any area of business or any function and judge it by some of the worst examples that we've all seen, but when someone tells me they work in sales, I don't automatically assume that they are sending me horrifyingly passive-aggressive drip campaigns, or trying to hassle me in a car lot. It's no, there's a broad spectrum of people. Just like I don't assume that you're an engineer. And I immediately think, oh, you can't solve FizzBuzz on a whiteboard. No, there's always going to be a broad spectrum of experience.Marketing is one of those awesome areas of business that's dramatically misunderstood a lot. Similarly to the fact that, you know, DevRel can't tell stories, you think marketing could tell stories about itself, but it's still struggles, too, in a bunch of ways. But I do believe that even if they're not one of the same, developer relations and marketing are aligned around an awful lot of things like being able to articulate value that is hard to quantify.Brandon: I completely agree with that. And if I meet someone in DevRel that starts off the conversation by saying that they're not in marketing, then I know they're probably not that great at their job. I mean, I think there's a place of tech hubris, where we want to disrespect anything that's not a hard skill where it's not putting zeros and ones into a chip—Corey: And spoiler, they're all very hard skills.Brandon: [laugh]. Yeah. And so, first off, like, stop disrespecting marketing. It's important; your business probably wouldn't survive if you didn't have it. And second of all, you're not immune to it, right?Like, Heartbleed had a logo and a name for vulnerability because tech people are so susceptible to it, right? People don't just wake up and wait in line for three days for a new iPhone because tech marketing doesn't work, right?Corey: “Oh, tech marketing doesn't work on me,” says someone who's devoted last five years of their life to working on Kubernetes. Yeah, sure it doesn't.Brandon: Yeah exactly. So, that whole perspective is silly. I think part of the problem is that they don't want to invest in learning how to communicate what they do to a marketing org. They don't want to spend the time to say, “Here's how the marketing world thinks, and here's how we can fit into that perspective.” They want to come in and say, “Well, you don't understand DevRel. Let me define DevRel for you and tell you what we do.” And all those sorts of things. It's too prescriptive and less collaborative.Corey: Anytime you start getting into the idea of metrics around how do you measure someone in a developer advocacy role, the answer is, “Well, your metrics that you're using are wrong, and any metrics you use are wrong, and there's no good way to do it.” And I am sympathetic to that. When I started this place, I knew that if I went to a bunch of events and did my thing, good things would happen for the business. And how did I articulate that? Gut feel, but when you own the place, you can do that.Whereas when you are a function inside of another org, inside of another org, and you start looking at from the executive leadership position at these things, it's, “Okay, so let me get this straight. You cost as much as an engineer, you cost as much as that again, in your expenses because you're traveling all the time, you write zero production code, whenever people ask you what it is you do here, you have a very strange answer, and from what we can tell, it looks like you hang out with your friends in exotic locations, give a 15-minute talk from time to time that mentions our name at the beginning, and nothing else relevant to our business, and then you go around and the entire story is ‘just trust me, I'm adding value.'” Yeah, when it's time to tighten belts and start cutting back, is it any wonder that the developer advocacy is often one of the first departments hit from that perspective?Brandon: It doesn't surprise me. I mean, I've been a part of DevRel teams where we had some large number of events that we had attended for the year—I think 450-something—and the director of the team was very excited to show that off, right, you should have seen the CFOs face when he heard that, right, because all he sees is outgoing dollar signs. Like, how much expense? What's the ROI on 450 events?Corey: Yeah, “450 events? That's more than one a day. Okay, great. That's a big number and I already know what we're spending. Great. How much business came out of that?”And that's when the hemming and hawing starts. Like, well, sort of, and yadda—and yeah, it doesn't present well in the language that they are prepared to speak. But marketing can tell those stories because they have for ages. Like, “Okay, how much business came from our Superbowl ad?” “I dunno. The point is, is that there's a brand awareness play, there's the chance to remain top of the mental stack when people think about this space. And over the next few months, we can definitely see there's been a dramatic uptick in our business. Now, how do we attribute that back? Well, I don't know.”There's a saying in marketing, that half of your marketing budget is wasted. Now, figuring out which half will spend the rest of your career, you'll never get even close. Because people don't know the journey that customers go through, not really. Even customers don't often see it.Take this podcast, for example. I have sponsors that I do love and appreciate who say things from time to time on this show. And people will hear it and occasionally will become customers of those sponsors. But very often, it's, “Oh, I heard about that on the podcast. I'll Google it when I get to work and then I'll have a conversation with my team and we'll agree to investigate that.”And any UTM tracking has long since fallen by the wayside. You might get to that from discussions with users in their interview process, but very often, they won't remember where it came up. And it's one of those impossible to quantify things. Now, I sound like one of those folks where I'm trying to say, “Oh, buy sponsorships that you can never prove add value.” But that is functionally how advertising tends to work, back in the days before it spied on you.Brandon: Yeah, absolutely. And we've added a bunch of instrumentation to allow us to try and put that multi-touch attribution model together after the fact, but I'm still not sure that that's worth the squeeze, right? You don't get much juice out. One of the problems with metrics in DevRel is that the things that you can measure are very production-focused. It's how many talks did you give? How many audience members did you reach?Some developer relations folks do actually write production code, so it might be how many of the official SDK that you support got downloaded? That can be more directly attributed to business impact, those sorts of things are fantastic. But a lot of it is kind of fuzzy and because it's production-focused, it can lead to burnout because it's disconnected from business impact. “It's how many widgets did your line produce today?” “Well, we gave all these talks and we had 150,000 engaged developer hours.” “Well, cool, what was the business outcome?” And if you can't answer that for your own team and for your own self in your role, that leads pretty quickly to burnout.Corey: Anytime you start measuring something and grading people based on it, they're going to optimize for what you measure. For example, I send an email newsletter out, at time of this recording, to 31,000 people every week and that's awesome. I also periodically do webinars about the joys of AWS bill optimization, and you know, 50 people might show up to one of those things. Okay, well, from a broad numbers perspective, yeah, I'd much rather go and send something out to those 31,000, folks until you realize that the kind of person that's going to devote half an hour, forty-five minutes to having a discussion with you about AWS bill optimization is far likelier to care about this to the point where they become a customer than someone who just happens to be in an audience for something that is orthogonally-related. And that is the trick because otherwise, we would just all be optimizing for the single biggest platforms out there if oh, I'm going to go talk at this conference and that conference, not because they're not germane to what we do, but because they have more people showing up.And that doesn't work. When you see that even on the podcast world, you have Joe Rogan, as the largest podcast in the world—let's not make too many comparisons in different ways because I don't want to be associated with that kind of tomfoolery—but there's a reason that his advertisers, by and large, are targeting a mass-market audience, whereas mine are targeting B2B SaaS, by and large. I'm not here shilling for various mattress companies. I'm instead talking much more about things that solve the kind of problem that listeners to this show are likely to have. It's the old-school of thought of advertising, where this is a problem that is germane to a certain type of audience, and that certain type of audience listens to shows like this. That was my whole school of thought.Brandon: Absolutely. I mean, the core value that you need to do DevRel, in my opinion is empathy. It's all about what Maya Angelou said, right? “People may not remember what you said, but they'll definitely remember how you made them feel.” And I found that to be incredibly true.Like, the moments that I regret the most in DevRel are the times when someone that I've met and spent time with before comes up to have a conversation and I don't remember them because I met 200 people that night. And then I feel terrible, right? So, those are the metrics that I use internally. It's hearts and minds. It's how do people feel? Am I making them feel empowered and better at their craft through the work that I do?That's why I love DevRel. If I didn't get that fulfillment, I'd go write code again. But I don't get that sense of satisfaction, and wow, I made an impact on this person's trajectory through their career that I do from DevRel. So.Corey: I come bearing ill tidings. Developers are responsible for more than ever these days. Not just the code that they write, but also the containers and the cloud infrastructure that their apps run on. Because serverless means it's still somebody's problem. And a big part of that responsibility is app security from code to cloud. And that's where our friend Snyk comes in. Snyk is a frictionless security platform that meets developers where they are - Finding and fixing vulnerabilities right from the CLI, IDEs, Repos, and Pipelines. Snyk integrates seamlessly with AWS offerings like code pipeline, EKS, ECR, and more! As well as things you're actually likely to be using. Deploy on AWS, secure with Snyk. Learn more at Snyk.co/scream That's S-N-Y-K.co/screamCorey: The way that I tend to see it, too, is that there's almost a bit of a broadening of DevRel. And let's be clear, it's a varied field with a lot of different ways to handle that approach. I'm have a terrible public speaker, so I'm not going to ever succeed in DevRel. Well, that's certainly not true. People need to write blog posts; people need to wind up writing some of the sample code, in some cases; people need to talk to customers in a small group environment, as opposed to in front of 3000 people and talk about the things that they're seeing, and the rest.There's a broad field and different ways that it applies. But I also see that there are different breeds of developer advocate as well. There are folks, like you for example. You and I have roughly the same amount of time in the industry working on different things, whereas there's also folks who it seems like they graduate from a boot camp, and a year later, they're working in a developer advocacy role. Does that mean that they're bad developer advocates?I don't think so, but I think that if they try and present things the same way that you were I do from years spent in the trenches working on these things, they don't have that basis of experience to fall back on, so they need to take a different narrative path. And the successful ones absolutely do.Brandon: Yeah.Corey: I think it's a nuanced and broad field. I wish that there was more acceptance and awareness of that.Brandon: That's absolutely true. And part of the reason people criticize DevRel and don't take it seriously, as they say, “Well, it's inconsistent. This org, it reports to product; or, this org, it reports up to marketing; this other place, it's part of engineering.” You know, it's poorly defined. But I think that's true of a lot of roles in tech.Like, engineering is usually done a different way, very differently at some orgs compared to others. Product teams can have completely different methodologies for how they track and manage and estimate their time and all of those things. So, I would like to see people stop using that as a cudgel against the whole profession. It just doesn't make any sense. At the same time, two of the best evangelist I ever hired were right out of university, so you're completely correct.The key thing to keep in mind there is, like, who's the audience, right, because ultimately, it's about building trust with the audience. There's a lot of rooms where if you and I walk into the room; if it's like a college hackathon, we're going to have a—[laugh], we're going to struggle.Corey: Yeah, we have some real, “Hello fellow kids,” energy going on when we do that.Brandon: Yeah. Which is also why I think it's incredibly important for developer relations teams to be aware of the makeup of their team. Like, how diverse is your team, and how diverse are the audiences you're speaking to? And if you don't have someone who can connect, whether it's because of age or lived experience or background, then you're going to fail because like I said that the number one thing you need to be successful in this role is empathy, in my opinion.Corey: I think that a lot of the efforts around a lot of this—trying to clarify what it is—some cases gone in well, I guess I'm going to call it the wrong direction. And I know that sounds judgy and I'm going to have to live with that, I suppose, but talk to me a bit about the, I guess, rebranding that we've seen in some recent years around developer advocates. Specifically, like, I like calling folks DevRelopers because it's cutesy, it's a bit of a portmanteau. Great. But it's also not something I seriously suggest most people put on business cards.But there are people who are starting to, I think, take a similar joke and actually identify with it where they call themselves developer avocados, which I don't fully understand. I have opinions on it, but again, having opinions that are not based in data is something I try not to start shouting from the rooftops wherever I can. You live in that world a lot more posted than I do, where do you stand?Brandon: So, I think it was well-intentioned and it was an attempt to do some of the awareness and brand building for DevRel, broadly, that we had lacked. But I see lots of problems with it. One, we already struggle to be taken seriously in many instances, as we've been discussing, and I don't think we do ourselves any favors by giving ourselves cutesy nicknames that sort of infantilize the role like I can't think of any other job that has a pet name for the work that they do.Corey: Yeah. The “ooh-woo accounting”. Yeah, I sort of don't see that happening very often in most business orgs.Brandon: Yeah. It's strange to me at the same time, a lot of the people who came up with it and popularized it are people that I consider friends and good colleagues. So hopefully, they won't be too offended, but I really think that it kind of set us back in many ways. I don't want to represent the work that I do with an emoji.Corey: Funny, you bring that up. As we record this through the first recording, I have on my new ridiculous desktop computer thing from Apple, which I have named after a—you know, the same naming convention that you would expect from an AWS region—it's us-shitpost-one. Instead of the word shit, it has the poop emoji. And you'd be amazed at the number of things that just melt when you start trying to incorporate that. GitHub has a problem with that being the name of an SSH key, for example.I don't know if I'll keep it or I'll just fall back to just spelling words out, but right now, at least, it really is causing all kinds of strange computer problems. Similarly, it causes strange cultural problems when you start having that dissonance and seeing something new and different like that in a business context. Because in some cases, yeah, it helps you interact with your audience and build rapport; in many others, it erodes trust and confidence that you know what you're talking about because people expect things to be cast a certain way. I'm not saying they're right. There's a shitload of bias that bakes into that, but at the same time, I'd like to at least bias for choosing when and where I'm going to break those expectations.There's a reason that increasingly, my Duckbillgroup.com website speaks in business terms, rather than in platypus metaphors, whereas lastweekinaws.com, very much leans into the platypus. And that is the way that the branding is breaking down, just because people expect different things in different places.Brandon: Yeah and, you know, this framing matters. And I've gone through two exercises now where I've helped rename an evangelism team to an advocacy team, not because I think it's important to me—it's a bunch of bikeshedding—but it has external implications, right? Especially evangelism, in certain parts of the world, has connotations. It's just easier to avoid those. And how we present ourselves, the titles that we choose are important.I wish we would spend way less time arguing about them, you know, advocacy has won evangelism, don't use it. DevRel, if you don't want to pick one, great. DevRel is broader umbrella. If you've got community managers, people who can't write code that do things involving your events or whatever, program managers, if they're on your team, DevRel, great description. I wish we could just settle that. Lots of wasted air discussing that one.Corey: Constantly. It feels like this is a giant distraction that detracts from the value of DevRel. Because I don't know about you, but when I pick what I want to do next in my career, the things I want to explain to people and spend that energy on are never, I want to explain what it is that I do. Like I've never liked those approaches where you have to first educate someone before they're going to be in a position where they want to become your customer.I think, honestly, that's one of the things that Datadog has gotten very right. One of the early criticisms lobbed against Datadog when it first came out was, “Oh, this is basically monitoring by Fisher-Price.” Like, “This isn't the deep-dive stuff.” Well yeah, but it turns out a lot of your buying audience are fundamentally toddlers with no visibility into what's going on. For an awful lot of what I do, I want it to be click, click, done.I am a Datadog customer for a reason. It's not because I don't have loud and angry opinions about observability; it's because I just want there to be a dashboard that I can look at and see what's working, what's not, and do I need to care about things today? And it solves that job admirably because if I have those kinds of opinions about every aspect, I'm never going to be your customer anyway, or anyone's customer. I'm going to go build my own and either launch a competitor or realize this is my what I truly love doing and go work at a company in this space, possibly yours. There's something to be said for understanding the customer journey that those customers do not look like you.And I think that's what's going on with a lot of the articulation around what developer relations is or isn't. The people on stage who go to watch someone in DevRel give a talk, do not care, by and large, what DevRel is. They care about the content that they're about to hear about, and when the first half of it is explaining what the person's job is or isn't, people lose interest. I don't even like intros at the beginning of a talk. Give me a hook. Talk for 45 seconds. Give me a story about why I should care before you tell me who you are, what your credentials are, what your job title is, who you work for. Hit me with something big upfront and then we'll figure it out from there.Brandon: Yeah, I agree with you. I give this speaking advice to people constantly. Do not get up on stage and introduce yourself. You're not a carnival hawker. You're not trying to get people to roll up and see the show.They're already sitting in the seat. You've established your credibility. If they had questions about it, they read your abstract, and then they went and checked you out on LinkedIn, right? So, get to the point; make it engaging and entertaining.Corey: I have a pet theory about what's going on in some cases where, I think, on some level, it's an outgrowth of an impostor-syndrome-like behavior, where people don't believe that they deserve to be onstage talking about things, so they start backing up their bona fides to almost reassure themselves because they don't believe that they should be up there and if they don't believe it, why would anyone else. It's the wrong approach. By holding the microphone, you inherently deserve to hold the microphone. And go ahead and tell your story. If people care enough to dig into you and who you are and well, “What is this person's background, really?” Rest assured the internet is pretty easy to use these days, people will find out. So, let them do that research if they care. If they don't, then there's an entire line of people in this world who are going to dislike you or say you're not qualified for what it is you're doing or you don't deserve it. Don't be in that line, let alone at the front of it.Brandon: So, you mentioned imposter syndrome and it got me thinking a little bit. And hopefully this doesn't offend anyone, but I kind of starting to think that imposter syndrome is in many ways invented by people to put the blame on you for something that's their fault. It's like a carbon footprint to the oil and gas industry, right? These companies can't provide you psychological safety and now they've gone and convinced you that it's your fault and that you're suffering from this syndrome, rather than the fact that they're not actually making you feel prepared and confident and ready to get up on that stage, even if it's your first time giving a talk, right?Corey: I hadn't considered it like that before. And again, I do tend to avoid straying into mental health territory on this show because I'm not an—Brandon: Yes.Corey: Expert. I'm a loud, confident white guy in tech. My failure mode is a board seat and a book deal, but I am not board-certified, let's be clear. But I think you're onto something here because early on in my career, I was very often faced with a whole lot of nebulous job description-style stuff and I was never sure if I was working on the right thing. Now that I'm at this stage of my career, and as you become more senior, you inherently find yourselves in roles, most of the time, that are themselves mired in uncertainty. That is, on some level, what seniority leads to.And that's fine, but early on in your career, not knowing if you're succeeding or failing, I got surprise-fired a number of times when I thought I was doing great. There are also times that I thought I was about to be fired on the spot and, “Come on in; shut the door.” And yeah, “Here's a raise because you're just killing it.” And it took me a few years after that point to realize, wait a minute. They were underpaying me. That's what that was, and they hope they didn't know.But it's that whole approach of just trying to understand your place in the world. Do I rock? Do I suck? And it's that constant uncertainty and unknowing. And I think companies do a terrible job, by and large, of letting people know that they're okay, they're safe, and they belong.Brandon: I completely agree. And this is why I would strongly encourage people—if you have the privilege—please do not work at a company that does not want you to bring your whole self to work, or that bans politics, or however they want to describe it. Because that's just a code word for we won't provide you psychological safety. Or if they're going to, it ends at a very hard border somewhere between work and life. And I just don't think anyone can be successful in those environments.Corey: I'm sure it's possible, but it does bias for folks who, frankly, have a tremendous amount of privilege in many respects where I mentioned about, like, I'm a white dude in tech—you are too—and when we say things, we are presumed competent and people don't argue with us by default. And that is a very easy to forget thing. Not everyone who looks like us is going to have very similar experiences. I have gotten it hilariously wrong before when I gave talks on how to wind up negotiating for salaries, for example, because well, it worked for me, what's the problem? Yeah, I basically burned that talk with fire, redid the entire thing and wound up giving it with a friend of mine who was basically everything that I am not.She was an attorney, she was a woman of color, et cetera, et cetera. And suddenly, it was a much stronger talk because it wasn't just, “How to Succeed for White Guys.” There's value in that, but you also have to be open to hearing that and acknowledging that you were born on third; you didn't hit a triple. There's a difference. And please forgive the sports metaphor. They do not sound natural coming from me.Brandon: [laugh]. I don't think I have anything more interesting to add on that topic.Corey: [laugh]. So, I really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. If people want to learn more about what you're up to and how you view the world, what's the best place to find you.Brandon: So, I'm most active on Twitter at @bwest, but you know, it's a mix of things so you may or may not just get tech. Most recently, I've been posting about a—Corey: Oh, heaven forbid you bring your whole self to school.Brandon: Right? I think most recently, I've been posting about a drill press that I'm restoring. So, all kinds of fun stuff on there.Corey: I don't know it sounds kind of—wait for it—boring to me. Bud-dum-tiss.Brandon: [laugh]. [sigh]. I can't believe I missed that one.Corey: You're welcome.Brandon: Well, done. Well, done. And then I also will be hiring for a couple of developer relations folks at Datadogs soon, so if that's interesting and you like the words I say about how to do DevRel, then reach out.Corey: And you can find all of that in the show notes, of course. I want to thank you for being so generous with your time. I really appreciate it.Brandon: Hey, thank you, Corey. I'm glad that we got to catch up after all this time. And hopefully get to chat with you again sometime soon.Corey: Brandon West, team lead for developer experience and tools advocacy at Datadog. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry and insulting comment that is talking about how I completely misunderstand the role of developer advocacy. And somehow that rebuttal features no fewer than 400 emoji shoved into it.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

-T’es peut-être juste pas dans le mood quand tu te mets à penser à ta liste d’épicerie. -On s’excuse pour tous les huissiers. Venez pas à la station. On a besoin de nos micros. -Finalement on apprend ce que la grosse Orange Julep représente. -Comme dirait Brandon: "It’s my time to shine". Ouin… peut-être pas!Voir https://www.cogecomedia.com/vie-privee/fr/ pour notre politique de vie privée

S1E1 – The Retail Avengers & The Future of Frontline Staff, Part 1Welcome to Season 1, Episode 1, the first-ever episode of The Retail Razor Show!I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top 100 Retail Influencer, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University's Center for Retail Transformation, and lead partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock and slayer of retail frankenstacks!Together, we're your guides on the retail transformation journey. Whether you're thinking digital and online, mobile, or brick & mortar stores, there'll be something for you!In episode 1 we dive into the future of retail frontline workers, with none other than Ron Thurston, author of Retail Pride, The Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career. Ron joins our Retail Avengers team on Clubhouse to talk about what retailers need to do to foster the right environment for their store teams.For more information about Ron, and how you can Take Pride Today in your retail career, visit Ron's website: https://www.retailpride.comThe Retail Razor ShowFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazorConnect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazorJoin our club on Clubhouse: http://bit.ly/RRazorClubListen to us on Callin: https://bit.ly/RRCallinSubscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShowRetail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPodHost → Ricardo Belmar,Follow on Twitter - ****https://bit.ly/twRBelmarConnect on LinkedIn - ****https://bit.ly/LIRBelmarRead my comments on RetailWire - ****https://bit.ly/RWRBelmarCo-host → Casey Golden,Follow on Twitter - ****https://bit.ly/twCaseyConnect on LinkedIn - ****https://bit.ly/LICaseyRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCaseyTRANSCRIPTThe Retail Avengers & The Future of Frontline Staff, Part 1[00:00:20] Ricardo: Hello. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. No matter what time of day you're listening. Welcome. Welcome to season one, episode one, the first ever episode of the retail razor show. I'm your host Ricardo Belmar, a top 100 retail influencer and lead partner marketing advisor for retail and consumer goods at Microsoft.[00:00:37] Casey: And I'm your co-host Casey Golden CEO of Luxlock and Slayer of retail frankenstacks, [00:00:43] Ricardo: retail, frankenstacks. I love that intro. I really need to get a tagline like that. Casey. [00:00:48] Casey: Slaying, frankenstacks. It's a messy job it's earned.[00:00:51] Ricardo: Oh, I believe it![00:00:52] Casey: So I'm super stoked to kick off our first episode ever of the show! [00:00:56] Ricardo: I am too. I am too. So let's talk a little bit about what the show will be like. This all started some months ago with the retail razor club on clubhouse and a powerhouse group of retail experts and thought leaders to just talk retail, talk tech and host some really good deep discussions on what we think people in this industry need to make a difference and to be a change maker.[00:01:14] Casey: Tell us more Ricardo, tell us more. I feel like we need some dramatic [00:01:20] music here [00:01:20] Ricardo: and maybe for episode two, we'll add some budget for dramatic music. So our goal is to cut through all the noise, cut through the clutter, make it all actionable. Let everybody learn from the people who've actually done things.[00:01:33] Anyone who's solving challenges and not afraid to expose the hard truths.. [00:01:37] Casey: And best of all, since we started this on clubhouse, we made it interactive. So people could ask tough questions and voice their opinions. [00:01:44] Ricardo: A hundred percent, a hundred percent all the way. This is an open forum. One that really moves the industry forward.[00:01:50] By sharing deep, deep knowledge, we started an amazing series of rooms initially called retail tech predictions 2025. But you know, our group quickly earned the nickname, the Retail Avengers, [00:02:00] Casey: Captain America., right here![00:02:02] Ricardo: And I am iron man, you know, you're right Casey. We really do need some dramatic music and we got to work on that [00:02:06] Casey: maybe by episode three next time, next time.[00:02:10] Ricardo: Yeah, episode three, that I'm going to take, make a note of that. Okay. So in each episode listeners will hear one of our fabulous clubhouse rooms and we'll bring back [00:02:20] guests from those discussions for a few last words. But don't think that's all we have to offer in future episodes. We're going to introduce new segments, extra guests, and we'll also have some unique interview sessions that we're going to record in another app called Callin. [00:02:32] Casey: Can't wait for those. [00:02:34] So Ricardo, who's our special guests for the opening episode. [00:02:37] Ricardo: We are starting up strong with one of the best out there. Ron Thurston, the author of the book, Retail Pride, former head of stores at Intermix and quite possibly, one of our favorite retail executives out there.[00:02:48] Right? Casey, [00:02:49] Casey: I'm a fan. Let's get to it! [00:02:50] Ricardo: Okay. So let's quickly introduce the rest of our Retail Avengers team and everyone will be hearing from them quite often in these sessions. So besides Casey and myself, we have Jeff Roster, fellow RETHINK Retail, top one hundred influencer and fellow advisory council member at the George Mason University Center for Retail Transformation and former analyst.[00:03:11] Then we have Shish Shridhar, the global retail lead at Microsoft for Startups.[00:03:16] Casey: And Brandon Rael transformation delivery strategy leader at [00:03:20] Reach Partners, and one of my faves, Trevor Sumner, CEO of Perch Interactive. [00:03:25] Ricardo: All right. So without further delay, let's give a listen to the Retail Avengers and the future of Frontline Staff, Part 1.Clubhouse Session[00:03:42] Ricardo: So with that my name is Ricardo Belmar. I host the retail razor club here on Clubhouse. Retail tech guy have been in retail tech for the better part of the last two decades, working at various different solution providers and managed service providers, and of course, I like to say the best technology in retail is the kind that's seamless and transparent that you don't even notice.[00:04:02] Jeff: Hi Jeff Roster co-host of this week in innovation and serve on several advisory boards and a former Gartner and IHL retail sector analyst [00:04:11] Brandon: Hi, Brandon Rael here. I'm currently one of the transformation and delivery and strategy leaders here at Reach Partners a consultancy. My background is retail and consumer products, industries, and I've been working in the strategy consulting space, focusing predominantly on digital and it's impact on organizations and helping companies transform and evolve.[00:04:29] Casey: Hi, Casey here, founder of Luxlock we're a retail experience platform and we are deploying an independent workforce and re-skilling them. So I love this topic of the conversation. Worked a lot in enterprise retail tech [00:04:42] and on the e-commerce side. So excited to be here you guys, fun conversation! [00:04:46] Ricardo: Definitely will be! Shish. [00:04:47] Shish: Hi, good afternoon. I'm the retail lead at Microsoft for Startups and I'm actually working on building out a portfolio of retail tech B2B startups solving complex business challenges in retail. Absolutely love the topic that we're we're we're we're talking about today. Looking forward to it. Thank you. [00:05:03] Ricardo: I see Trevor has joined us. Trevor why don't you do a quick intro. [00:05:06] Trevor: My name is Trevor Sumner. I'm the CEO of perch. We do interactive displays in IOT that detect which products you touch and like minority report. They just wake up and start telling you about the product, they call them shelf talkers. So I've been deep in retail and retail tech for almost a decade now. So excited to be on board with everybody here. [00:05:26] Ricardo: All right. Wonderful. We have a special guest with us this week, Ron Thurston author of the book, retail pride, which I highly recommend.[00:05:33] Ron, why don't you go ahead and give us your introduction [00:05:36] Ron: hi everyone. Thank you. Yes. My name is Ron Thurston and I am the author of Retail Pride, the guide to [00:05:42] celebrating your accidental career, which is really about recognizing the hard work that the millions of people that work in all of our stores all around the world do every day.[00:05:50] And my full-time role is as the vice president of stores Intermix which officially today is a freestanding business on its own no longer under the Gap umbrella. And so we have a lot of exciting momentum behind us now being privately held and it will be an exciting adventure. And I sit on the board of directors of Goodwill here for New York and New Jersey, which also has a really exciting retail component to it, which I'm happy to talk about.[00:06:18] So thanks for inviting me, Ricardo. [00:06:19] Ricardo: Fantastic. We're really happy to have you here with us today, Ron, this is a topic that I know many of us on the panel have been wanting to do for a while. Not the least of which is because of the added focus that retail frontline workers have seen over the past 15 months.[00:06:34] Frontline Worker Sentiment[00:06:34] Ricardo: I want to ask everybody on the panel, What's the sentiment these days about frontline workers, has it swung more positive to the point where [00:06:42] frontline workers are going to get the recognition that they deserve to have for the job they do and the service they provide to customers and retail brands? [00:06:49] Ron, I'm going to ask you to respond first because I'd really like to hear what your feeling is on that. [00:06:53] Ron: Sure. Thanks, Ricardo. I have probably never been more excited about the opportunity for store teams. And I think as customers have come back in and , every day it's getting bigger, the opportunity to recognize in many ways the increased skillset necessary to manage the emotional, the tougher part of retail in conjunction with more tech in conjunction with higher customer demands and kind of new ways to shop has put this pressure and, excitement back into stores and the training that's necessary. [00:07:29] The up skill in the hiring process has never been more important. They, kind of challenge of the value of the brick and mortar business in compared to e-commerce.[00:07:39] This is the time where more [00:07:42] than ever, we need highly skilled people that are, that work in brick and mortar, retail, and are compensated for that work and the business models that are evolving out of it.[00:07:52] And I think it's just every day, I'm more excited about what I'm seeing my own business and what I'm reading about every day.[00:07:59] Brandon: I could not agree more with Ron. , if anything, the pandemic has accelerated the recognition of how critical the retail staff or brand ambassador to the store associates and how important they are to run the operation of building that trusted relationship with the customer.[00:08:15] I consider that the retail associates, part of the last mile of fulfillment and not necessarily the product, but of the relationship of the brand or the brand equity. [00:08:23] people go to the store to engage, to get inspired, to discover. And, , I'm all digital first. We know everyone is digital first and shopping e-commerce, , percentage wise, it's still , 15% of the business is converted on ecommerce.[00:08:36] The physical stores are as critical as ever to bridge that digital and physical gap and the journey [00:08:42]may begin in the store may ultimately end on the retailer's app, but the store associates plays a vital role in that relationship.[00:08:47] Casey: A hundred percent. , one of our biggest goal, which was to deploy an on-demand distributed workforce and it's been pretty amazing to put a lot of people back to work and give them opportunities to sell products that they've never had access to because they worked at a single brand.[00:09:02] Shish: agree with everyone I think there is going to be a big transformational element to it as well. I kind of look at the convenient spot of retail. There's a lot of things that has accelerated, during COVID, , BOPIS in particular. And I think that is going to change what the frontline workers do and, how to do it.[00:09:23] For example, I think there's going to be so much more focused on click and collect orders, because, cashierless becoming more prominent and accelerated. I also think the assisting the self checkout will be one aspect that frontline workers will be doing more of. There might also be a lot of clientelling [00:09:42] that has accelerated as a result.[00:09:43] And also I think from the experiential part of retail, that's going to be a lot more skills and expertise needed because that is leaning more towards that personalized, aspect of it where engaging with customers becomes more more of a requirement. [00:10:02] Trevor: Yeah. I agree with that. I think one of the transformational changes underlying is data. Because of the need for real-time inventory and product information for BOPIS for better supply chain management and COVID is an accelerator for that.[00:10:17] All of a sudden, we've normalized all this data that we can now put in the hands of sales associates. It's not their fault. If you go to a Macy's and you ask your question about what inventory looks like. Yeah, go look at those screens. They're green screens, right? I think they were programmed with punch cards.[00:10:29] Now that has all been changing, right? So the data is now available in normalized and formatted. It's now accessible, not just to be a tablets and iPads in the hands of sales associates, but, even like with Theatro in [00:10:42] a, in a mic format in an ear piece. So that's one piece of it. The second Shish hit on around you have the experiential being more part of it.[00:10:49] And that means being able to do brand storytelling. And while I love the thought that that's all gonna be done by purchasing digital tools like that, I, the role as a sales associate is going to be critical.[00:10:56] Ricardo: Interesting points there about the added roles for store associates to do, especially in light of things like picking up online orders in the store, other operational processes, either for picking product off the shelf to fulfill those orders, that these are new roles, new skills, new functions, we're asking those store associates to do and asking them to leverage real-time data about customers they're working with or items in the store, whether it's product information or other operational components.[00:11:23] Frontline Roles[00:11:23] Ricardo: One of the things that I would like to get into next is what are some of these additional roles? We've mentioned a few now, which were brought about by the nature of the pandemic, but what other new roles are we going to see frontline workers in retail taking on and particularly what are the required skills and I'll reference, really interesting article that I believe was in the wall street [00:11:42] journal about Levi's offering machine learning training for their retail workers. Presumably because it's a recognition that the need to understand data is going to become so much more important in how these frontline workers work with customers.[00:11:56] So what does everyone think of that? [00:11:58] Ron: I can jump in Ricardo , it's Ron. I actually think that the, width of the skillset has become so wide today that it's kind of become less about we're all cross-trained and we're all good in retail. We could work in stock room and we can work on the sales floor and we can do visual merchandising.[00:12:15] I think it's actually become a little more segmented than said if I have a skillset that is highly engaged and motivated and I'm good on camera for live selling, I'm good in front of customers, I can sell via chat that you have that level of personality. It's actually fully embracing that and saying, let's give you[00:12:34] that kind of customer facing roles or chat roles and not try to expect you to also run out to the curb and do a BOPIS [00:12:42] order and also fulfill a web order in the stock room, or when can you work an overnight to change the visual merchandising? I think we have to say, we have a team of people who are really good at tech people who are maybe good at tasks and people who are highly customer centric because what's coming with the customer coming in today more than ever wants a level of engagement.[00:13:03] And has it's curious, wants to be educated, wants to be styled once all the things that they haven't had. And that, that skill is really high. So I'm actually even looking at my own organization and saying, it's actually less about cross training and more about specialization and being the best version of that specialty based on your skills and your experience and your personality.[00:13:26] Because today, we're also expecting you to be on Instagram. We expect you to live sell. We expect you to, kind of show up every day in a new most highest version of what that would look like in the past. [00:13:39] Trevor: I really loved that. And one of the reasons [00:13:42] is because, I think this provides a new sense of career pathing, and compensation structures.[00:13:48] And so, Ron, I would love to, to understand better how you start thinking through that as the head of stores at the end, you get certified as, an influencer or as a live seller, or for example, there are technologies where during your downtime, you might do online clientelling and reach out in on a one-to-one basis.[00:14:05] Are you.becoming a certified personal shopper. And each of these, has a course associated with that. Some type of certification, some real-time training and evaluation, but also a better pay, better training. And not feeling like you're stuck in a specific kind of job that says a generalist with no place to go.[00:14:25] Ron: I was just going to say it, and having led apple stores. That's very much the apple model. You are a specialist and maybe you in phone or Mac or in software, and then you're next. kind of even more of a specialty or in training or in genius bar. [00:14:42] And that every step is a career trajectory. And I think in fashion, we've also kind of thought of it as we all have to be good at everything.[00:14:50] And I actually think it's more of the apple model, which is very structured and create benchmarks for growth. I agree with you, Trevor.[00:14:59] Casey: I was just going to say that, now that sales associates are able to sell online and get that commission tracked and productivity tracked, it changes the entire model of every single salesperson is able and has the opportunity to become a million dollar seller and not make $35,000 a year or 40,000, $50,000 a year.[00:15:20] We've seen the most of having what the industry used stylists for before, which is doing content on a, on an Instagram or putting lookbooks together or working in, like a stitch fix model and putting outfits or clothes into a box. They're coming to us and they have the passion. They have the skillset, they have the know-how, but they've never talked to a customer before.[00:15:41] And [00:15:42] so they don't know fit, they just get returned. And so, being able to communicate with the client, maintain that relationship over time and learn fit. We've actually had to start segmenting just like Trevor was saying is we're essentially segmenting talent into different talent pools and putting programs together to bring people who have worked at Citrix for the last six years into being able that they would be skilled enough to walk into Gucci on the floor and do a million dollars in sales. And so it's been really interesting and I think that there's going to be a lot of, differentiation between I'm a stylist versus I'm a sales person or a personal shopper right now.[00:16:24] I can't get a single person to agree on what they want to be called because salespeople don't want to be called the stylist and everybody gets called and everybody's called the stylist on Instagram. If you can put an outfit together. So it's like almost [00:16:42] diluted that job title almost in a way where no, I'm more than that. It's been interesting. We're still trying to figure out what. What everybody is going to be called.[00:16:54] Brandon: Is this the transformation evolution of what a store associate really is? I think to Ron's point and Trevor's point, there certainly is doing an operation stocking shelves or whatever else. Actually, what I want engagement with the customer is blended with the arts and sciences of social media, digital marketing, and micro influencing [00:17:14] Ricardo: I agree. I think it's fascinating point here about segmenting and the skills and Ron I like how you compare that to an apple model. One of the things that comes to my mind when I hear everyone saying that is a sort of implies a need for more staff in the store, as you get more specialized, depending of course, on what kind of store it is for format. It is the size of the store. The product categories are in, but if I were to generalize it, it makes me believe that I'm going to need [00:17:42] more staff. The more I specialize in to handle each of these different aspects. And if I compare again to an apple store for me as a consumer, walking into an apple store, there's an overwhelming number of staff.[00:17:52] Trevor: And also think about the revenue per square foot. [00:17:55] Ricardo: That too. Exactly. [00:17:57] Ron: I think that [00:17:58] on a really high margin business, you do have more room for that.[00:18:04] Ricardo: So you distinguish between luxury retailers at that point versus a discounter value retailer, where the model may be sufficiently different, that you don't need to apply that. segmentation or specialization of skills. [00:18:15] Trevor: You mean there's not going to be stylists at dollar stores[00:18:21] Ricardo: that would be, the question, [00:18:22] Shish: natural progression, but there is a customer expectation, which is generally followed by retail tech, responding to it. And one of the aspects that's really happening out there is technologies providing capabilities to address some of these things. For example, expertise in stores.[00:18:39] Today there is an expectation for [00:18:42] expertise. When you go into a store, a specialized store where, electronics or something like that, where you need a store associates to have a lot more knowledge, but with technology capabilities, it is possible to sort of democratize that make available. The expertise from different stores right across all of the stores. And those kinds of things are really making it possible to, to address those expectations as well. [00:19:09] Trevor: Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I'm a big fan of is that's kind of pushing out a technology to the edge. And certainly I look at this through my perch lens.[00:19:17] Which is, when you think about putting the digital experience has guided product storytelling that is available to obviously all the consumers on their own, but also the sales associates. But similarly, if you've got an iPad in your hand, that's a training device for downtime.[00:19:31] That's a career pathing and improvement device. and you can make the most of the hours that you're in store. So I think this pushing technology to the edge and into the fingertips of everyone, has the ability for those [00:19:42] who have the motivation and the desire to hold those skillsets up rapidly than what was available to them in the past.[00:19:48] Ron: A bit of a counter to the, more is better is that this is an industry in brick and mortar retail that has not always been given the accolade as a career that it deserves.[00:19:59] And sometimes this, people that are highly committed and highly skilled, and this is very much an intentional career become that much better at their job. They are retained longer and sometimes it's kind of a quality versus quantity. And so you could actually have a smaller team that's highly skilled, very engaged, works really well under, whatever kind of product categories you're selling and the culture of the company, but provide a level of service because of their expertise and their commitment to the industry.[00:20:30] And that's, I think the kind of temporary nature sometimes of people in stores then requires, more of them versus fewer that are highly skilled. And then, so it's a conversation and a balance that I [00:20:42] think every retailer, is talking about today. [00:20:44] Ricardo: I think that's true. I agree with you I like to view the technology piece of that in many cases, equalizer, sometimes to address the point, you just mentioned about the temporary aspect of people coming and going, and then the turnover and some ways if done properly and seamlessly enough, I think the technology can help normalize that approach a little bit and compensate for loss of skill. When you have people that leave that were perhaps one of those high-end skilled individuals that really knew how to do that job. And therefore they could handle working with many customers at once versus perhaps some of the other staff that are newer at the role might only be able to handle one or two at a time, depending on the type of store environment that you were in.[00:21:25] Question from Evan Kirstel[00:21:25] Ricardo: I want to turn attention over to, Evan who's joined us on stage. Why don't you go ahead and give us your question for the panel. [00:21:30] Evan Kirstel: Yeah. Happy Friday, everyone. I've been most interested in the technology side of retail behind the scenes. I laughed out loud, referenced to green CRT screen [00:21:42] flashing. Sadly, see that far too often. [00:21:46] Ricardo: still see that too often. I agree. [00:21:48] Evan Kirstel: Yeah. Well, the other hand, I talked to a lot of clients who are participating in the kind of digital transformation of retail. And I'd love your opinion on who were some of the players to watch.[00:21:58] I mean, when I'm talking to a lot lately with Facebook workplace or workplace from Facebook, it's their enterprise communications division. So basically taking all of their messaging and video and apps and tools and enabling, or powering retailers like Petco and Domino's and others to improve the employee experience.[00:22:18] So think about, group messaging and calling video tension, live video streaming education, all kinds of analytics around that as well. Are you seeing adoption of more modern communication tools like that or others or what's most interesting to you when it comes to, real-time communication messaging, voice, video, or other apps within the frontline for the workers. [00:22:40] Jeff: Are we talking about [00:22:42] retailers or are we talking about services, service providers to retail? [00:22:45] Evan Kirstel: Yeah, the retailers are adopting a lot of these tools with their frontline employees, for employee engagement, employee communications messaging. We used to call the intranet, but it's basically apps on phones now.[00:22:57] Ricardo: And so we could look at this from both perspectives. I think Jeff, from the prospective of which retailers are doing this well, and what kind of technology are they using?[00:23:04] Ron: I mean, I can share what I use on today, which is retail zip-line line, which is actually used by all of gap, Inc. which is an incredible platform and not an intranet. But it's a communication tool. It's a tracking tool. It's a way to send out quick messages. There's a lot of functionality from multiple reasons. But I think within the store team at every level, day in day out, I've not actually not seen one that does that, come seamlessly that everyone uses without providing, devices to everyone, which is depending on the state and depending on what's happening, that can be a tricky conversation.[00:23:38] But so far that's what I've seen and, has worked really well for me. [00:23:41] Casey: [00:23:42] I'm obviously biased, but, there's going to be a lot more tools that are going to be coming in over the next, 12 to 18 months just because this was a really hard product to sell into a brand three years ago.[00:23:55] A lot of people, in this space that wanted to do it, had to pivot into doing something else because it was just a hard sell. But now I think that, It's going to be a requirement. Just as standard as, having a computer at work, if you have sales associates, and they're going to have to have a tool.[00:24:12] So I think we're going to see more of a standardized school. That's going to be coming out that more brands will start using the same one. But right now everybody's kind of spread all across the board. And there's reasons that brands are choosing one over the other. There hasn't really been one that does everything necessarily doesn't necessarily even do everything well, but obviously I'm biased with my own, but, there's pros and cons to kind of everything right now.[00:24:35] I think we'll see the leader next year. [00:24:36] Shish: And a lot of examples that I've seen, one of them is a startup that I'm working with, called askSID[00:24:42] they have to QR code, on wine bottles or the shelves and customers can scan it and it instantly brings an expert to them and they can ask questions have a conversation.[00:24:52] So this is one way that retailers have actually, really figured out how can they have experts in every store that knows their wines really well without necessarily staffing every store. [00:25:04] Another example I've seen as for call centers itself, where, the expertise that they wanted to provide was to a chat bot. So when a customer calls a call center, the challenges the call center person is looking up information. There's a lot of delays. They're following up an app in the background, doing the search, trying to find the answers to the question the customer wants. So what they're doing to empower this is there is a chat bot and AI based chat bot that is picking up the customer call at the same time in parallel to the human operator.[00:25:39] And the chat bot is [00:25:42] transcribing the call, learning the intent of the questions that the customer is asking, connecting to backe nd showing it to the call center operator at the same time. And this essentially means that the call center operators is far more intelligent in his responses is able to respond very quickly and efficiently to the customer.[00:25:59] So that was one area from a communications perspective that I thought was, very interesting. The third one is really empowering the store associates and, and today there's many companies that provide communication devices. for example, there's a company called Theatro that does a headset based communication device for store associates.[00:26:20] yeah, [00:26:23] Ricardo: love their solution.. [00:26:25] Shish: Turnpike turnpike is out of Sweden and they have, , a, wearable. DASSI wristwatches that send information over to the store associates and it's generally far more discrete, , and store associates can actually use those communication devices to talk to systems in the back [00:26:42] end.[00:26:42] So if they have a question about, do we have a certain product in stock right now? They can ask a chat bot the chat bot will look up the systems instantaneously and be able to get the responses. And this again, I think is another thing that's really transforming the frontline worker, in a way, making them far more efficient , with tools like this.[00:27:03] Jeff: Yep. Hang on, hang on a sec. Let me follow up on that question. Are you doing anything with voice, voice AI? [00:27:10] Shish: Yes. there is, a lot of, I would say controversy around voice. So in terms of voice, for store associates, the one scenario that I talked about last was one where store associates are actually using the headsets to talk to a chat bot.[00:27:27] So if a customer is looking for a certain product, typically what they would do is radio someone in the back room to say, do we have that in the back room? Or is it an order or something like that. But, in this situation they're actually using voice [00:27:42] to talk to a chat bot that is connecting to backend systems to determine if something is in the backroom.[00:27:48] If it does an order, if it's in a nearby store and it is providing the response by voice immediately to the store associate. And that to me is extremely powerful, where the store associates are empowered, but all that information that they using voice queries to query back end systems. [00:28:05] Jeff: How about sentiment or, sense of, either happiness or urgency in the invoice. I'm actually going to be talking to a couple of startups that are actually going to that level of sophistication.[00:28:16] Shish: So, , in call center, there is, I've seen situations where, when, someone calls a call center and the operators talking to that person, there is AI models that the chat bot that it was talking about earlier, that it's, transcribing the call looking at the intent of the questions. At the same time, it is also detecting the sentiment, of each speaker. So if there is, frustration, for example, it'll detect that and it will [00:28:42] notify the call center supervisor that here's the call where there's potentially a problem, and you want to listen to what you want to intervene. So it's actually detecting all of that.[00:28:52] Jeff: Yeah. Interesting.[00:28:53] Brandon: We also need to consider the human element of the organization, the frontline associates, or our ambassadors, how we want to refer to them. The stylist interacting with the customer technology are all referencing it innovative is right up there and on trend and having this be powered by AI AR , virtual reality or critical components of driving personalization, seamless, intuitive, and we're driving adoption rate by the store associates of stylists and the way.[00:29:25] Their ability to effectively serve the customer and effectively providing outstanding customer experience in store and connect that digital aspect of it as well. And help drive conversion as customers come to the store for advice or engagement or a building connection to the brand.[00:29:41] Ricardo: Yeah, [00:29:42] there's an interesting element there I'm reminded of one retailer I talked to a few years back who was deploying devices just as we're talking about and some of the feedback they had from their associates in the pilot stores, is that they were starting to feel like Batman wearing a utility belt because they were being asked to carry all this technology everywhere they went around the store. That tells us there's a threshold somewhere where it becomes too cumbersome to just hand over technology to the associates that way. I think that's a consideration, Brandon, maybe that's what you're getting at as far as paying attention to the human component of this, you can't just ask a store associate to say, here's three devices you need to carry around all day to do these three different tasks. Or there has to be a little bit more thought behind how transparent the technology is and how seamlessly it can be incorporated into their workflow in a way that makes sense. [00:30:28] Brandon: Correct. And we see companies do clienteling and then trying to streamline it to one app or one ipad or mobile first and it's worked for most situations, but again, it has to be connected to the [00:30:42] customer, empowering the store associates and driving outstanding customer experience.[00:30:46] Then I'd love to hear Ron's perspective on that. How technology can help the store associates drive a outstanding customer experience. [00:30:52] Ron: Yeah, no, thanks, Brandon. And you're exactly right. And I think the experience that is most, I think, recognized and celebrated by the customer is, how much history you have to the idea of in clientelling, which, the facts show that the average spend is that much higher.[00:31:10] The retention rate is higher. The return rate is lower. Like the benefits are enormous, but if you can say to someone, oh my gosh, like, let me. Quickly look at your purchase history on my phone, on my iPad that I have in my hand. Wow. It looks like you were here last month and this is what you bought. I have some things I know you're going to love.[00:31:28] And so you begin this relationship building with facts and with information that arms you to provide an exceptional experience. And so the technology kind of in your pocket provides you [00:31:42] information and then you can go and then, the client is entirely engaged because they, feel seen and heard.[00:31:49] They know that their business is appreciated. You can say that kind of along the way. I'm so glad that you came back. I'd really love to help you build on those wardrobe pieces or add that, that other. You know, the technology piece too. your last purchase here at apple. So there's, there's a lot that can happen with technology that just supports relationship building and all of the data in how that benefits an overall company is all positive.[00:32:15] There's no downside to it when done well, other than overwhelming at the store team. And that's where I think you can dial back and say, well, actually who's really good at this let's arm them. This person actually is much better just converting on the sales floor. Doesn't need to have the full deck in front of them.[00:32:34] So I think great leaders can look at that. I do at my own using hero in chat functions and who does confinements, who [00:32:42] converts, who sells more? You can dial in, and it's not one size fits all. And that's where people really, that retention piece starts to escalate because you would say thank you for recognizing that I'm actually not comfortable using this technology, but I'm really good doing this.[00:33:00] Let me do this more. That's a winning formula to retaining your team, building great client relationships and growing your business. But , that's where I put a lot of effort and time today. And, I believe that it really pays off. [00:33:14] Ricardo: That's not even advice specific to retailers organization, but many businesses adopt that approach and, let's call it company culture around how to encourage certain behaviors and how to reward people who are doing the job the best way they can. And also to create an environment that promotes this, the ability to do better and do more, whether it's with technology or without, or is that really, isn't the point, right?[00:33:39] This comes back to your earlier point Ron, about more [00:33:42] specialization and segmentation and the skills and the roles within the store. [00:33:46] All of this plays together into building that better company culture that fosters an environment that encourages this kind of activity and rewards people in these roles because they're filling a really important need for the retailer.[00:34:00] Ron: Yeah. I think that's where we had sometimes dug ourselves into our own trap of saying everyone needs to be good at everything. And then it'd be kind of to become a generalist as at all of it. And the customer's ability to remember their experience is diluted because no one really stood out in their mind, but we created that ourselves.[00:34:21] We created this kind of generic retail, you know, everyone's nice. Are you finding everything? Okay. And then you walk away and that, kind of generic version of retail, you know, Steve, Dennis likes to talk about Is what got us in trouble. And so that's where I'm saying it should not be generic. It should actually be very specialized.[00:34:41] We should hire [00:34:42] people with specialty, and invest in them and be better at what you hired them to do. And those are the people when you see NPS surveys that mention people by name, and I see it every day, you don't go home and write a survey about your experience and reference people's names. If you didn't have an experience that created, it's not through a business card in your shopping bag, you remembered their name because you were so engaged.[00:35:08] That's what happens when you invest in them. And then they deliver that to the customer. And it's like this winning cycle. But not everyone plays that game. And that, is so much fun because you see it in your business. And that's what we're all trying to reestablish today in our industry. [00:35:24] Ricardo: That is so well said, Ron, it's all about embracing the uniqueness and the skill sets that you're bringing into the environment and to the team and encouraging more of that to make the entire team better and ultimately that's reflected in the revenue that you're going to generate through that team, because they're such a [00:35:42] critical part of that process. [00:35:44] Question from Jeff Brand[00:35:44] Ricardo: I, I've, brought a few more folks up on stage so I'm Jeff, I'm going to go to you next , what was your comment for us? [00:35:50] Jeff Brand: Yeah, thank you. I'm an owner of a brick and mortar retail buildings. I'm a landlord, but I'm also a consumer and something that Trevor said, which was interesting to me is that his goal is to create engaging content for consumers that would draw them into the store, but giving them a lot of information to really engage them.[00:36:11] So what I wanted to find out about frontline workers, how do you make sure that the frontline worker knows more than the consumer does when they walk in the store? Because the consumer has the ability to research ad nauseum about the products they're going to shop for. [00:36:28] Trevor: I think that's a great question. I think about that often, right. 70% of shoppers think that they know more than the sales associates, because they have access to that very data. so I think there, are a couple of different ways to think through this. One is, making sure you've got all the [00:36:42] learning management systems for your sales associates, but the other way to think about it is to really think through proprietary tools that walk you through the category.[00:36:51] Most of this content out there is product by product. And what I'm seeing a lot of is digital tools that are being deployed in store and online to do a needs analysis and walk you through the category. I'll give you an example. If I'm buying a drill at home Depot, you got all the drills on the shelf.[00:37:09] But, I don't want to pick control, oh, this is this many Watts and this is that many Watts and great, well, what does that mean? , I don't know the difference between the wattage's . And , what will I be able to do or not be able to do what, walk me through, like, what do I need to strive for?[00:37:23] It's just like, Hey, Trevor just needs to make sure not to call the handyman too much, you know? And, and to look good in front of his wife, that he can fix some things or Trevor, you're really into home improvement projects to do a lot of serious work. And so, thinking through a category type tour and a needs [00:37:42] analysis and providing some of these proprietary tools, I think we'll create a type of guided experience that ends up lending itself in a differentiated way to what you can find out.[00:37:50] Jeff: And I also think we're really getting to , a paradigm where we shouldn't expect store associates to know more than customers coming in. If it's a passionate purchase. When I bought my kayak, I knew probably more about that. I guarantee you, I knew more about that kayak that I settled on, than the REI associates, because I researched it.[00:38:07] I spent days researching it. And so I think, we're sort of at that point where retailers just have to be comfortable with, sort of that, that maybe shift in knowledge and, accelerate and work with that and not necessarily try to fight against it.[00:38:19] Jeff Brand: That's very interesting. Thank you.[00:38:21] Ron: Yeah. And, I think apple again, does a really nice job of putting so much effort into training and yes, clients come in all day. And I remember when I joined apple as a store manager, The launch of iPhone two, and I was really nervous about, I don't know how this is going to work.[00:38:40] And [00:38:42] the calming kind of words are, they, customers will always know more than you do about the product. People are obsessed with this brand, but to say, you know what? I don't know, but I'm going to find out I'm going to help you learn how to use this. I'm going to find someone who's an expert in this particular skill of what you're looking for.[00:39:01] And if you can say, you know what, I don't have any idea how to do that, but I'm going to find someone that does, can calm it down. And the customer's like great, happy to make that happen. So I also think we don't always want to put so much pressure on ourselves. Everyone at every store has to be an expert in everything it's not realistic, but we can just drill down and think about expertise and putting the right people with the right customers for that specific ask that applies in all of our businesses, including, fashion for me. And I love this idea of it. Every experience should be unique and individual based on what the customer came in looking for.[00:39:41] Ricardo: [00:39:42] Yeah. I agree with that absolutely critical to deliver a great service that you want to have in your store. So Jeff, thank you for that question. [00:39:50] Question from Tim Tang[00:39:50] Ricardo: Tim, do you have a comment or question for us? [00:39:52] Tim Tang: Yeah, the question I wanted to ask you was, when we think about retail and we think about employment, frontline workers in retail, there's an enormously high turnover rate, as well as, some studies suggest, suggested very low engagement rate.[00:40:06] And I was wondering if you were aware of any progress or any meaningful innovations or any changes, in recent years on those two fronts.[00:40:15] Ron: Hi Tim. To answer your question on, on evolutions of the, great part about some of the technology that we're talking about, that there are ways to survey teams more quickly. So there's, apps like butterfly that where you can, you're in constant contact of how, how are you feeling today?[00:40:34] Kind of on a, on a scale of different faces or on numbers. How are let's check in with you about how [00:40:42] you're feeling, which is a really important, component to emotional leadership today, emotional intelligence. So you're, kind of constant checking in and, feeling connected, but I think , more importantly than anything that the quality and the intent of retail leadership today at the store level specifically, but at the multi-store space that all of us today in any kind of retail leadership that touches store teams and has influence on that experience, it is really our responsibility to do that in a way that is more emotionally, engaged than ever before.[00:41:20] And I think the idea of store visits that are checklist of numbers and. Store operations and audits and things that seem very tactical are really a thing of the past. And today I just, I was in stores all week. And what I did was spend time on the floor, talking to the teams, engaging with customers side by [00:41:42] side, learning how they're, how they feel learning, how they're experiencing the math challenge of week two and what it all means.[00:41:52] And that actually goes a really long way to engaging with those teams and say, I really appreciate that. Ron spent the day on the floor with selling with us today, and [00:42:01] I was able to ask questions and I was able to get solutions and hear what's happening at the company today. We just have to be closer than we've ever been before to what's really happening face-to-face with the customer and we have to listen and learn and act and engage and be curious more than ever before. And that's, that's what will change our industry. And that's how teams are repaying. And you, you learn, I come back to the office today with armed, with so much information about spending the week on the sales floor and about how people really feel.[00:42:37] And I can pretty much guarantee that those people I engage with [00:42:42] are happy that someone listened to them this week. I hope that answers your question.[00:42:48] Tim Tang: I think that's an interesting perspective, I mean that it's, if I'm hearing you correctly, it's the idea of using that customer feedback. That's kind of a motivator for the employees and you mean something to be celebrated, something to be highlighted, but it's, that kind of, positive feedback to get encouraged more out of the employee base.[00:43:06] Ron: Yeah. I actually think the employee feedback is more important than customer feedback sometimes. So that's the first thing that I would ask is how do you feel, how was your experience working here right now? How you feel having the math conversation it's uncomfortable. Let's do this together so that you can feel more comfortable when someone comes in and, wants to have a more difficult conversation.[00:43:27] So their feedback about their experience as an employee drives the customer experience that drives the business. And that's, why I would talk about surveys or being really close to them. That's what's going to change the game [00:43:39] Brandon: That ties back, Ron [00:43:42] to outstanding employee experience, customer experience. And you, you can say once that the, this empowered customer who has access to data to other brands and social media channels picked up once at the head of them and really personalize things.[00:44:05] Ricardo: That's a pretty impressive approach. And I say that Ron because listening to you describe how you've gone and collected that feedback on the floor reminds me of many retailer conversations that I had in years past and Tim may even remember some of these as in full disclosure for the audience, here Tim, and I used to work together.[00:44:26] And he may remember that being in some retailer meetings where we would ask them the question. When was the last time you were walked your store floor and understood both your customer and employee experience? And there, I think too many times that I remember being met with blank faces, when asking that [00:44:42] question?[00:44:42] And I always thought to myself, wondering how could they not have had a response for that? How could we be in a room full of retail executives that didn't have an immediate answer as to not only when was the last time they did this, what kind of feedback did they get? I would expect this is something you should know, because you're not going to be able to improve on your associates environment.[00:45:01] You're not going to be able to improve on that customer experience without ongoing feedback. And I don't think it's sufficient to claim that the feedback process could just be asking customers to fill out a response form and an email post-transaction or asking employees to do the same thing at the end of their Workday.[00:45:19] So please go in and fill out this survey form, but tell us how the day went. You really want to get that direct one-on-one feedback to really understand exactly how things are going. [00:45:29] Ron: And I would just add the store teams know that. And when decisions are made in the C-suite by people who have not spent time in stores and it impacts them, that's where [00:45:42] the problem lies is in the turnover happens because the responses will, did they not understand what we do every day? How hard this is the conversations that we have to have, and the workload that happens every day in brick and mortar stores. There's an assumption that people that sit in our leadership chairs don't understand that. And if you can demonstrate your at least willingness to show up and listen, you may not be able to solve every problem. If you use just show up and you say hello, I went to Greenwich the other day and some new team members.[00:46:14] And just to be able to sit in the morning, have a coffee, listen, where did you work before? I'll like, that will keep them going for months. And it was very little effort on my part and a huge return. And that's what all of us in leadership, we have to do that more. And particularly today, they're in a very difficult situation of being customer engaging.[00:46:37] Not only last year, it's still hard today. And that's why I just [00:46:42] encourage everyone be as close as you can, to the people doing the work technology aside. The human conversation goes a really long way. [00:46:49] Shish: Yeah. That's the great point also from the employee perspective, one of the things I'm looking at is, stores are putting more emphasis on customer engagement and employee spending more time with customers versus doing mundane jobs. And that's another transformation I'm seeing where automation comes in.[00:47:09] A very common example that I'm seeing in terms of automation is, on-shelf availability where almost every retailer is. Automating that in the past, it was, employees going round and making sure that the products are on shelf. And today they're looking at cameras and sensors to do that job so that the store associates can spend that time engaging with customers rather than doing that.[00:47:35] Ricardo: Yeah, that is absolutely an interesting point. And we could probably another room just on that topic alone and [00:47:42] going through the reality versus perceptions, right, automation, AI, and machine learning. What does that mean for other jobs? Whether we're talking about frontline staff or other roles within a retail organization, where's the balance you can draw between those areas.[00:48:00] So thanks Tim . That was a great, topic to touch on.[00:48:02] Question from Jeff Sward[00:48:02] Ricardo: Jeff, What was your question or comment for us and welcome to the stage. [00:48:06] Jeff Sward: Actually, the last conversation is going to be a perfect segue for my question, which is how does the frontline associates become, more useful, I guess, in helping the whole company understand the why of best sellers and worst sellers. Ron was describing these great interactions between sellers and customers that are data-driven about past history and prior purchases. So when the customer buys something, the system captures all the hard information, but it doesn't capture is the [00:48:42] why, why was something that bestseller, why was something a worst seller. Nobody sets out and puts worst sellers in the stores to begin with. So what happens? [00:48:53] Brandon: It's a great question. And I think that that's where it'd be social selling aspect comes in, that the sentiments could be the emotional multisensory sentiments through Instagram and Twitter and other feedback loop that retailers will receive from the customers. And it's not captured within the transactional systems, ERP systems, et cetera, social commerce, digital marketing is where that system lies.[00:49:18] So I think it's a very complex challenge to capture all the emotional sentiment, but that might be a place to start.[00:49:24] Shish: I totally agree. I think it's a data challenge. Many of the retailers that I work with, look at the other influencing data factors that will tell them why something a best seller. And this could be anything from the demographics around the store and the correlation of a certain [00:49:42] product or plan with that demographic, being the cause, it could be something going viral on the internet.[00:49:49] It could be other factors and influences that make something a best seller. And a lot of times is the inference models that they build from the combinations of data. And that typically is one of the approaches that many retailers use. [00:50:05] Ron: Yeah. And it's Ron. I would just add, I think again, Jeff, the more we can engage with the sales teams that are selling the product the better. So there's definitely feedback that can come through customers on social, or maybe it's live selling and you can capture information via chat.[00:50:22] There's a lot of ways to learn, but my office that's right out in front of, the design team for our own private label at intermix. And, you know, I spend a lot of time with them about this is what I've seen. This is what I've heard. Let's bring a team of New York stylist to the office and give you feedback from sketch review.[00:50:41] Like I [00:50:42] I'm, we're doing walkthroughs on sketches before they even become samples before fit before production. Like we stayed so close to it every step of the way so that we try to minimize the risks and the misses. I recognize that that's a small business compared to many people on this phone, but it's important that at every and every part that we've listened and we've learned and we've acted accordingly. , and I think the benefit from that is enormous.[00:51:11] Jeff Sward: Great, thanks, Ron. [00:51:12] Ricardo: Thanks, Jeff. For that question - good discussion topic, [00:51:16] Question from Amanda Fetch[00:51:16] Ricardo: Amanda, what is your question or comment for us? [00:51:19] Amanda Fetch: Yeah. Hello, thank you so much for the opportunity to join the stage. I know that the wave of the future has been to the point of the topic of the room, the future of frontline staff and how that's been sort of disappearing. We had, for example, Amazon Go in Rock Center where there is nobody to basically check you out. And, how now we have tech companies pivoting off of Amazon, like Facebook, [00:51:42] who is looking to have the live shopping Fridays and things like that.[00:51:45] Where again, it's not totally eliminating what we want to call a checkout. There's a human being involved, but again, it's online. So you still have the tech aspects, but so what I wanted to present to the panel and hear your thoughts on is what about, the customer of, for example, a Lulu lemon where their core is assisting the customer, what they like to call was more educating their customer on the fabrics and on the brand of things of that nature.[00:52:10] So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on companies like that. As the world's going to this really tech and to the point of the room, you know, future front Line staff.[00:52:18] If they start disappearing, what happens to companies or retailers like Lulu lemon, will they survive if we start seeing less and less of these, how do you see companies like that weathering this sort of tech storm that's coming on the horizon there? [00:52:33] Ricardo: Thank you for bringing up this topic. Where are we headed in the reality of more automation versus human interaction the [00:52:42] way frontline staff operationally works in a store as well as interacts with customers, as well as what's the customer preference going to be.[00:52:49] If we think about our consumers and what they expect when they come to the store. I think a lot of this depends on what the brand relationship is with the consumer I would argue that, for a Lululemon there is a consumer expectation that when they come to the store, they know they can count on the staff there.[00:53:05] Would that same customer have a similar expectation if they knew that they were going to be greeted by some kind of AI or a bot or some other automated process instead of a human being, I don't know that that would meet the customer's satisfaction for a brand like Lululemon.[00:53:21] I think that becomes a differentiator. So while there could be a discussion in a board room at Lulu lemon that says. You know, is our labor costs getting too high? Do we need to balance our a rising labor costs with some form of automation to handle certain customer interactions? I think they're going to conclude that they can't just [00:53:42] ignore this aspect.[00:53:43] I think that the filter you can apply to this is to say, is the brand relationship purely transactional.[00:53:49] If it is, then chances are a lot of that relationship could be replaced with automation, and to the retailer that's probably a cost saving exercise at some level. If that relationship is not purely transactional, if it's really based on what I think everybody on the stage would define as a real brand relationship where there's an emotional connection for the customer.[00:54:10] I personally don't believe that those relationships can be easily replaced with automation in that way. I think it requires a person to be involved, and I think it's required from the customer's point of view, but would younger generations be more okay with the thought of being greeted by some form of AI or automation rather than a human being versus an older generation?[00:54:33] I don't know that I can predict. But I think that would just be another interesting way to look at. [00:54:38] Jeff: I love that question so much because, I get asked all the [00:54:42] time is, so what is retail doing? Literally they're doing everything at all all the same time. So when I start thinking about, the role of automation and AI, there's clearly going to be a very significant chunk of retail that is going to embrace that. And there's going to be clearly another chunk of retail that's not. It's going to be high touch, high experience. And the best example I can point to right now is in an in and out burger, in and out burger has always paid well above market rate for, for really fast food jobs. And people go there. Me included, literally go by far cheaper solutions and sit in pretty darn long lines because we want that experience.[00:55:16] And I love the fact that people like that experience. And I love the fact that a retailer has created an opportunity for fast food workers to actually become, real career opportunities and a whole lot of people that are going to be running companies in 10 or 15 or 20 years really got their start there under that training.[00:55:32] So the answer is, we're going to see it's going to be the future is going to be all of the above. The key thing is what do people want and what do people want from their [00:55:42] retail experience. That's also going to be the big driver. So if, if all of a sudden the next three or four years people say, you know, I like the human touch. I don't want to be greeted by an AI. Retailers will respond. I think there clearly will be a lot more automation and there's clearly going to be a lot more people involved.[00:55:58] Ron: I definitely agree with, Jeff. I think it will depend on the business, but I would say today where we sit in the way the client is behaving, that her expectation of engagement and the time spent in the store and the amount of energy that goes into these very human interactions has never been higher.[00:56:18] And that may be a surge of, having spent 18 months online and really craving that human interaction. But I don't think it's going to completely pendulum swing the other way. I think there will always be a need for great human engaged selling, educational, retail. And for me that, that the best version of that, not just [00:56:42] in luxury will be the ones that kind of set the bar for

Brandon Edwards started his career in the issues management / crisis / grassroots / public affairs-focused healthcare division of a multi-industry, multi-practice Santa Barbara agency. In 2009, a toxic rift developed between Brandon's growing medical services division and the rest of the faltering agency. Brandon and his division associates bought out their piece of the business and formed ReviveHealth. It took almost 6 years to go from being issue based to what it is today – a full-service. integrated, all audiences, all channels firm serving B2C, B2B, and B2P, the business to physician/provider side. Santa Barbara was “an extremely high-cost market” with neither a strong employment nor a strong healthcare base. In 2011 decision was made to move to Nashville, TN, which Brandon refers to as “the Healthcare Capital of the World.” He cites Tennessee's central time zone, big airport, abundance of talent, and lack of a state income tax as major incentives for the move.  Brandon feels his agency has a “good business moat” – healthcare is an extremely complex business with major regulatory impacts. Even if generalist firms are good at strategy, they won't be able to deliver in-depth, healthcare-specific strategies or may lack corresponding creative skills. Firms that specialize in “creative” have the potential to propose solutions that could “send you to jail.”  In this interview, Brandon explains how too many medical organizations try to bring customers in through “the side of the funnel,” perhaps by marketing heart surgery to people (who may or may not have a heart attack in the next two weeks). “That's not how funnels work,” he says. “You need to bring them in through urgent care, primary care, preventative care, diagnostic care – some percentage of people that start in the top of that funnel are going to end up needing other services, whether that's PT or surgery of some kind, and all of the other attendant care that comes with it.” What makes an agency in this niche market work?  First, Brandon says, “You have to start with the right people that have the right talent and the right knowledge base.” Even then, it can take 12 to 18 months for a new hire's skills to become a “mature practice.” Strategy has come from a deep understanding of the healthcare business. To be effective, creative work, which comes from outside of healthcare –needs to be interesting and provocative. And process? “Healthcare is not a hobby,” Brandon says. HIPAA restrictions dictate everything the agency does, including information architecture, how information is shared with clients, and marketing campaign design. One early strategy core to the company was the idea of “being built to be sold,” merged, or transferred to employees through an ESOP (Employee Stock Option Plan). The intention was to always keep the firm as if it were “for sale tomorrow,” which informed hiring, compensation, professional development, branding, business development, and marketing decisions. Profits were consistently poured back into company growth. The agency did not expand by adding offices. Instead, it invested in hiring to expand and deepen capabilities, increasing offerings, and buying the tools, technology and data needed for “doing the job” now and in the future. ReviveHealth was recently bought out by IPG, Weber Shandwick, which Brandon says has been and continues to be “a really positive experience.” From the beginning, he built to sell . . . and then, he sold. All it took was sticking to his plan and “little luck”  Transcript Follows:   ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Brandon Edwards from ReviveHealth based in Nashville, Tennessee. Welcome to the podcast, Brandon. BRANDON: Thanks for having me. ROB: Why don't you kick it off by telling us about ReviveHealth and what the agency's superpowers are? BRANDON: Revive is a healthcare-only agency. We're healthcare focused. Located here in Nashville, which a lot of people know for country music, but it really is in many ways the healthcare capital of the world. It's a pretty phenomenal healthcare city. While we founded the firm on the West Coast, we relocated out here to Nashville in early 2011. Our superpower is really helping healthcare brands thrive. It's helping healthcare brands that want to lead the way. What we mean by that is really bringing to bear the full spectrum of marketing communications in the truest sense of the word “full-service” in a way that is very strategically focused on what we view as an underserved segment of healthcare. Most healthcare firms are dominated by pharma or government or med device; our clients really focus on the provider sector of healthcare. So hospitals, health systems, large physician enterprises as well as health tech and health services. ROB: It's an interesting place to get into. I think there's probably some interesting stories around the conviction to move. How do you go about saying, “I'm in California” – it's like the opposite of the Beverly Hillbillies. You're like, “Tennessee is the place where we gotta be.” BRANDON: It might be the opposite of the Beverly Hillbillies, but I'll tell you the people from Tennessee are probably tired of Californians moving here. There's no state income tax in Tennessee. It's a huge growth market, and yet everywhere Californians go, so go property values. We drive up home values in a very unflattering way. The story is actually kind of interesting. We started in California. I'm from California, my wife's from California, we founded the firm in California. We started the firm September 1st, 2009, and we all remember what was happening in 2009. The recession couldn't have been any worse. If you think about the unique aspects of headquartering a professional services business, particularly one that is highly specialized in healthcare, we were located in an extremely high-cost market without a strong employment base – without a strong healthcare base, actually. All of our talent was going to have to come from somewhere else. In 2009, no one could move to Santa Barbara because they couldn't afford to buy a home there if they couldn't sell their home. No one could afford to sell their home. If they were married or had a partner, that person couldn't find a job in Santa Barbara. So, we really reached the conclusion that for purely strategic purposes, we had to go where the talent pool already existed. We considered a couple markets, but it wasn't even close. Nashville was far and away the lead for us. It has a big airport, central time zone, really easy to get around, and has an incredibly deep talent base. I didn't initially know I was going to move my family here. We thought we'd open an office and staff it. My wife actually suggested we move here. I'd been on the road 150, 200 nights a year for our whole lives, and I think the entirety of her pitch was “If we move to Nashville, you'll get to have a lot more dinners at home and be with the kids more,” and that was it. She's a rare person that volunteered to leave Santa Barbara. ROB: Yeah, that seems like a direction that a lot of people wouldn't go, except what you said: to an extent, you were a frontrunner. I imagine this past season, you read about what's going on with real estate prices, and basically everywhere is functioning as a suburb of the California real estate market. I think you might've beat some of your friends to Nashville. BRANDON: Yeah. We were maybe the front edge of the wave in the summer of 2012, and now the wave is in full force. It's everybody relocating here. It's California, New York, Chicago, big cities fleeing to a slightly smaller city, but a city where, again, there's no state income tax. From an affordability standpoint, it's a very different animal.  ROB: When we think a little bit about your specialty, Brandon, what is it? What are the distinct needs both from a strategy perspective as well as a channels and distribution perspective of this healthcare group specialty market? BRANDON: It's a very nuanced segment. On the one hand, I think we feel like there's a good moat around our business from the standpoint that generalist firms can't really parachute into a highly specialized area like this and deliver the same kind of value and strategic counsel that we can. So our competitive set is a bit more limited. You also tend to attract people who have more specialized careers. In some ways, from a recruitment standpoint, it's self-selection. My phrase for it is “healthcare is not a hobby.” It's an extremely complicated business with an intense regulatory overlay, and it also is highly emotional for people. I think maybe finance is the closest area to it in some ways because of all those factors. From our standpoint, the tradeoff that most clients had before Revive was they could pick a firm that could really help them with strategy, but that firm was going to suck at creative. The flipside is you could hire a firm that was really creative and interesting, and some of the work they were going to propose would send you to jail. Being able to bring together this deep understanding of the business so that the strategy is rooted in a deep understanding of the business of healthcare, how the organization is going to make money if you keep its mission alive, coupled with creative that largely comes from outside of healthcare so that we have fresh ideas and really interesting, provocative, and effective creative, was really not a value prop that existed in our industry 12 years ago. ROB: It would seem to me that part of that story of being able to bring in those outside folks, those new perspectives, but not going to jail, also plays into process a little bit. How have you thought about the emergence of process, of getting that regulatory overlay and consistency across the organization? BRANDON: First, I think you have to start with the people part of it. I promise I'll answer your process question, but if you don't start with the right people that have the right talent and the right knowledge base, my view at least is there's no process that's going to save you from that. When we look at more senior level leaders in the firm in particular – I would say even mid-career and up – we look at people who already have a pretty deep established understanding of healthcare. If you bring in someone who's never touched healthcare and they've been in business for 15 or 20 years, I defy anybody to sit and explain HIPAA to someone in a way that's going to make any sense to them. There are so many aspects of the industry that normal people just cock their heads and say, “That doesn't make any sense.” It's like, you're absolutely right, and it's just the way it is. So I think it starts with people. From a process standpoint, you still have to have process and safeguards. We do extensive HIPAA training. HIPAA and the restrictions around use of data dictate everything about our information architecture, how we share information with clients, how you design marketing campaigns that can be effective and still be well within the bounds of those. So you really have to think through the processes in terms of not just what you do in a normal agency to get good work, but to get good work within the guardrails of what's allowable in the healthcare industry. ROB: That seems like a totally different mindset, and I can see that domain expertise from the experienced voices helping to train and bring up the next wave of talent. One thing I'm curious about – the timing of your focus in the space seems impeccable. The narrative of this past 10-15 years of the consolidation of the healthcare groups, the rise of these regional healthcare-group-sponsored office parks – it's a real thing. I see it all around me. How did you end up at the right spot on that wave? It could've been easy to be too early and easy to be too late. BRANDON: Yeah. I would love to tell you that it was incredible wisdom and vision on my end, and that just wouldn't be true. [laughs] I wish that's what it was. There were a group of us that were in another agency. We were essentially the healthcare practice, a place where I was a minority owner, and it was a multi-industry, multi-practice firm but had built up and created this healthcare presence within that firm. But that firm was very focused. It was essentially an issues management / crisis / grassroots / public affairs firm, so the healthcare practice we had built was very focused on those kinds of services and that kind of work for clients because that was the firm's positioning. And I think it was the right positioning for that firm. We got to 2009 and the rest of the firm outside of healthcare shrunk dramatically. Remember, this is the same time that the ACA was being debated and passed. This was the same time that there was going to be a substantial need for all kinds of expertise in the healthcare space, including marketing communications work. I think unfortunately, when you're in an agency that may be struggling a little bit – what do they say? Character is revealed by difficult times, not created by it. I think what was unfortunately revealed in that moment was a somewhat toxic culture in the other agency. So, when we looked to buy out the healthcare practice and form Revive, we really viewed it as an opportunity to go from being a healthcare practice in a diversified agency to becoming a healthcare agency, as well as an opportunity to really diversify the offering into truly full-service integrated marketing work. For us, there was this really great established base of clientele to work from and help to fund that expansion, but what started was a journey that took I would say 5-½, almost 6 years to go from being issues-focused to being a truly full-service integrated firm. ROB: From a channel mix perspective, you mentioned a PR and comms legacy; what does the channel mix look like today, and where is it heading within the healthcare space? BRANDON: I think the simplest way to put it would be it's really all audiences, all channels. We've gone from planning for earned to planning for earned and social to planning for every stripe of media and every stripe of channel and bringing in people with integrated planning backgrounds, bringing in people that are deep in digital and social and traditional. We actually plan and buy our own media across all channels. Very unusual for a firm our size. But one of the interesting nuances working with media buying, for example, in this space is that most media buying firms really want to buy large campaigns on a regional or national basis, and hospital media in particular is bought almost exclusively on a local community basis. The joke is if you go to work for a big brand, you're going to spend $50 million in $5 million chunks; if you go to work for a hospital, you're going to spend $5 million in $50,000 chunks. It takes a very different structure and thought process to create the media function. And that's just one thing. You still have to think about all of the creative and all of the different areas. We really think about all audiences, meaning we're looking at consumers, we're looking at current and past patients, we're looking at employers and brokers, we're looking at physicians and board members and donors, and then the people within those hospital or healthcare organizations that are purchasing from our health services and health tech clients as well. We really have both B2C and B2B as well as B2P, the business to physician side. It's really a robust channel and audience mix. ROB: It's a really fascinating mix, and it reminds me, as you talk about the regulatory overhead, I could see somebody 10 years from now – you mentioned Fintech earlier; I think various dimensions of Fintech seem like they're positioned both for some real growth versus synthetic growth, but also probably a good bit of regulation ahead. I think if somebody has a brain for that sort of thing, they might do well to start navigating the legality. There might be a good practice there. BRANDON: I'm sure you're in the same boat; I talk to a lot of younger people that are interning or are interviewing with us or whatever it is, and I think there's this tendency when you're younger to think about the sexy things, whether it's gaming or sports or whatever it is. Yet I believe in many ways, the best way to create a career that's going to maximize your value is to find these industries where you can develop indispensable knowledge. I think healthcare is one. I think finance is another. I think maybe once upon a time, defense department type work was. Maybe higher ed. There are some industries that require an incredible amount of focus, and perhaps the skillsets aren't as transferrable between working for one set of consumer products or CPG or whatever it is, but boy, it sure is value-creating for you from a career standpoint. ROB: Brandon, to switch gears a little bit, one part of your story I think we would be remiss not to touch on is the experience of being acquired. Many firms have that wish, but I think I heard recently maybe 1 in 400 agencies will actually ever be acquired. How did that process commence? Was that something you engaged in intentionally? Were you just sticking to your knitting and somebody took notice of what you were doing? BRANDON: We have a lot of flaws as an agency, just like any group of people does. But not being strategic and thoughtful isn't one of them. In our very first strategic plan, September 1st, 2009, when there were four of us, the strategic plan says “Revive is being built to be sold.” There's a little asterisk next to “sold” that says “It's not really about sold; it's about merged or an ESOP to employees or whatever.” But the thinking was, and I think a lesson learned perhaps from previous agency experience, is the worst thing you can have is an agency that you need to sell and can't. It's a bit like owning a home. They always tell you when you're younger, don't have the most expensive house on the street. You don't want to own a house you can't sell. And most people love their home – of any day they own it, the love it the most the day they put it on the market because they've done all the things to make it beautiful and have curb appeal. They've landscaped it, they've painted it, they've fixed all the little dings and scratches. I think agencies are a lot like that. We viewed it as we wanted to keep the firm always like it was for sale tomorrow, and that meant how we hired, how we comped people, how we did professional development, how we thought about our brand, how we did business development and marketed ourselves, how we paid ourselves. We took the view that the owners would comp themselves as employees. We would not take money out of the business; we would pour everything back into growth. So it was always about building enterprise value. We didn't really set a timeline on it. I think maybe in that first plan we said 10 years, and honestly we just sort of made hat up because it seemed like a long time. It turned out not to be. [laughs] But we went into it with that attitude, and it became a filter for every single decision that we made for the business. And I think in a lot of ways it helps to keep you from being selfish. It's really easy to have a great year and think “I think maybe we should pull a bunch of money out and go buy something cool” or whatever, I don't know. We didn't do that. The only money we took out of the business was for taxes, basically, and our individual compensation, which was set and didn't change much during all those years. We would call the question every year in strategic planning, and every year the answer was “No, we're good.” Then we get to the end of 2014. We had grown 60% that year. We had added digital content, social, we had purchased another firm, and we got to the end of the year and called the question of strategic planning, and the group unanimously said this would be the right time to look for a partner. “Let's find someone who has been through this process of integration and can help us do this better and help us grow faster and help us avoid the pitfalls that come with going from being a single discipline firm to a really diversified agency.” ROB: It's interesting to hear that intentionality from the start. I think there's probably some threads to pull on there. For instance, I think you mentioned casually ESOP. It would be good to dig into that. When you think about building from the start, a technology startup will think about issuing stock options to their employees to ensure that they get to share in an acquisition. But that's so often incompatible with a services organization. How did you think about employee comp, sharing in an exit, that sort of thing? BRANDON: Probably not as well as we should've. [laughs] I think you'd always be better at this the second or third time than you were the first time. Let me back up for a second: we had a great experience with the sale. We went about the process in a very nontraditional way. We had a great experience with the transaction. We had a great experience with the earnout with our buyer, which is IPG, Weber Shandwick. You hear all these terrible stories from people, and I will tell you that we had none of that. we had a really positive experience and continue to. Our executive leadership team – we had no senior level departures at the end of the earnout. That's very unusual. Just a good experience. That said, I think we could've done a much better job – I could've done a much better job – leading up to the sale. We did not spread equity around as much as we probably should've. It wasn't so much that we sat down and decided not to as just it hadn't been a part of our plan, and by the time we went to sell, it was probably too late to make meaningful changes to the equity structure. We had five shareholders and five phantom equity holders just before the sale, and we then converted the phantom equity holders to real equity right before the sale because that was our buyer's preference. ROB: What is phantom equity? BRANDON: Think of it as another way of creating an incentive compensation structure that doesn't represent real ownership, so it doesn't necessarily give a holder rights to a percentage of the firm's profit or something like that. The upside is it can be given and taken away just like a bonus would; the downside is it gets taxed in ordinary income instead of capital gains. So it's a little bit more attractive for the company, a little bit less attractive for the holder. It may be a little bit less attractive, but it's substantially more attractive than getting nothing. I think ultimately, I wish we had distributed a little bit more ownership to some key people, particularly some people who really killed it in the last 5 years, but once you've entered into the transaction, it's too late to change the equity structure. ROB: And it's definitely tricky often, and not necessarily in your case – turnover in services can be higher. You also are dealing with the multiples that you sell for, typically. They're not the same in services as they are in startup land. What I want to pull on a little bit now – you mentioned a couple things. If you're building the sell, what comes to my mind is you have to be carrying decent margins on your services to be attractive to purchase. But then you mentioned that you and your partners were also not taking money off the table. I think where that probably points the flashlight a little bit is towards the question of: how do you strategically reinvest meaningful margins to build a business? I think that's where a lot of people typically throw up their hands and just take the money off the table. BRANDON: Yeah, and I don't think that's irrational. I say this as a predetermined outcome for us because this is what we wanted for our business, but to be fair, it's not at all irrational or even maybe a negative to say, “I don't want to sell the business. What I want is to get it to a point where I don't have to work so hard and I can make pretty good money and it creates an annuity for me and my family.” Yeah, there's some dangers of that, but there's dangers in selling too. So I don't know that there's a right or wrong answer to it. I think in terms of reinvestment, we really looked at it in two branches. I'll tell you up front the one we decided not to do, and that was that we were not going to expand on the basis of offices. We were going to look at reinvestment in people and technology as opposed to places. We've never opened an office for a client. We've never been in that mode. We've always had as few offices as we felt like we could get away with and still attract the right talent. So we looked at it in two ways. Early on, it was really reinvestment in hires that would expand our capabilities – sometimes deepen them, but mostly expand them. The reason I think that's a reinvestment is very often, when you're bringing on someone to build out a new capability, there isn't going to be enough revenue there really to justify that hire for some period of time. Typically for us, it was 12 to 18 months from the day we hired someone to the time that was a mature capability or mature practice. We would look at reinvestment in building out these capabilities, and that meant a creative department, that meant a media department, that meant digital capabilities, social media, content, research, all these different areas over the years. I would say hand in hand with that was reinvestment in the tools, technology, and data that could make those people effective. What does our media department need to do its job? What does our analytics group need to do its job? And what are they going to need in the future? What do we need to do in terms of data-driven marketing, whether that's Salesforce or other platforms that we use? All of which carry pretty sizable price tags and some of which are more difficult to monetize with clients than others. I think those are the big two. I would say a distant third was the constant reinvestment in brand building and business development for our firm. We have spent about 5% of revenue on an annual basis from the time we had 10 people in new business and corporate marketing, brand building, for Revive to always be punching above our weight, always be growing. As a result, we're showing 12-year compounded annual growth rates of about 25% a year. ROB: Wow. Sounds like a good company to buy if you're IPG. That's good. And you're still there, which must mean it's also a good job. BRANDON: I would like to believe that they could've bought anything they wanted and chose us. I find that flattering and a statement of confidence from them. But yes, they've been great to deal with, and honestly I've been glad to be here. It's nice to be part of a really great company. ROB: That's great to hear. That's a good acquisition story. Brandon, when you're looking ahead a little bit, what's coming up for ReviveHealth, and maybe more broadly healthcare marketing, that you're excited about? BRANDON: I think in some ways, in our segment of healthcare marketing, the pace of change is accelerating to where many of the things we're seeing now in healthcare marketing are the things that you would see more commonly in other industries. Typically, hospital marketing in particular trails other industries by a few years. We're starting to see that gap close. We're seeing a great deal more emphasis on data-driven marketing and personalized marketing. We're seeing a great deal more emphasis on social media and social media engagement – which, given how personal and human healthcare is, is sort of strange that it's just catching up to other industries now. But I think the biggest shift we're seeing is a mindset shift from hospital operators who have been accustomed to spending the bulk of their budgets on traditional advertising to build brands to hospital executives who see the power of real 4 Ps marketing that will drive volume and profitable growth to their institutions in a way that I think is almost taken for granted in many other industry sectors. ROB: Right. That's actually really interesting because many hospitals are massive institutions, but now they're also living under an umbrella where there was just one location and now there's four, and there's an attendant group of facilities around it beyond that. It's “Who's the brand?”, but also “Where is my local version?” That's what it seems like to me as a consumer. BRANDON: Not to be too flippant about it, but I think we all drive around town and you see these billboards with “heart surgery this” and “knee surgery that.” Does anybody really buy on that basis? I mean, it's not like you drive around and say, “That's interesting. I hadn't really thought about it, but my knee does hurt. Maybe I'll have surgery after all.” It's sort of silly when you say it like that. To me, this industry just begs for highly targeted, highly personalized, data-driven marketing. If I get you into what we call the top of the funnel – urgent care, primary care, preventative care, diagnostic care – some percentage of people that start in the top of that funnel are going to end up needing other services, whether that's PT or surgery of some kind, and all of the other attendant care that comes with it. I think most hospitals have tried to enter the funnel from the side, and it's sort of a joke for us. That's not how funnels work, right? You pour things in the top and they come out the bottom. We don't get to come in and say, “I just want to find those people that want to have heart surgery in the next two weeks.” It's like, no, let's engage people who are going to need heart surgery in six months, in a year, in two years, in three years. Look at more the lifetime value of the consumer as opposed to the transactional value of the consumer, and recognize that physicians play a huge part in it. Most of us go where our doctors tell us. ROB: Right. It starts with being in the provider network at some point. BRANDON: Absolutely. Who you have contracts with from an insurance standpoint, what your medical staff looks like, how effectively referrals are processed, if you provide easy access for consumers – telephone, digital, as well as other methods. It really is all 4 Ps of marketing. It is not just promotion. I think the industry was pretty dominated by promotion prior to maybe 5 to 7 years ago. ROB: That is tremendously interesting. Thank you, Brandon, for sharing your journey. Congratulations on everything you accomplished leading up to and even after the acquisition. It's a great part of the story to tell, and it sounds like the national marketing community is better for it. BRANDON: We have a great team, and anybody that does what we've done in the last few years and doesn't acknowledge some meaningful amount of luck is probably not being honest. [laughs] You can work hard all you want, but if you don't have a little bit of wind at your back, it's going to be pretty tough. ROB: The humility is definitely welcome. We all need a little bit of that luck, and sometimes you have to survive long enough to be lucky. Coming out of 2009 is nothing to dismiss either. Thank you so much, Brandon. We wish you and your team the best. Thank you for sharing your story. BRANDON: My pleasure. Thanks. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Your Hosts: Dan, Mary Robinette, Howard, and Brandon It sounds like a mean thing to say, but it’s not a wrong thing to say. A publisher is a corporation, and a corporation doesn’t have friends. It has contractual relationships. We can make friends with people who work for publishers, but those are not the same … Continue reading 16.02: Publishers Are Not Your Friends →

Doug and Brandon spoke about the impacts that COVID and the related lockdowns have had on employers and job seekers. They also explore what can be done by leaders to ensure their companies recover into a bright future. COVID has certainly been the watershed event of this year. The impacts to the economy and people's mental health are all but certain to persist for years or decades. Learn more at hhttps://www.brandonlaws.com/ (ttps://www.brandonlaws.com) Doug's business specializes in partnering with companies and non-profits to create value and capture cost savings without layoffs to fund growth and strengthen financial results. You can find out more at www.TerminalValue.biz You can find the audio podcast feed at www.TerminalValuePodcast.com You can find the video podcast feed at>" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> www.youtube.com/channel/UCV5a4QbT-dXhpgb-8HJHdGg >" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> [Music] [Introduction] Welcome to the terminal value Podcast where each episode provides in depth insight about the long term value of companies and ideas in our current world. Your host for this podcast is Doug Utberg, the founder and principal consultant for Business of Life, LLC. Doug: Okay, I'd like to welcome Brandon Laws to the show today. Brandon is actually the Senior Director of Marketing. That senior part is really important.  Brandon: So Important. Doug: It's so important. Brandon: Don't forget Doug: For the viewers at home, Brandon, I have known each other for a really, really long time. I originally got him into into authors like Tony Robbins and Napoleon Hill, and, you know, got them turn them into econ dork, just like me. Brandon: Yes. Doug: Brandon and I are here to talk about is the dynamics of COVID for both job seekers and employers, because it's really kind of throwing everybody's life into a tornado. Brandon: Yes. Doug: And I think a lot of people are kind of grasping trying to figure out what to do. So Brandon, can I take it away. Brandon: Well, I appreciate you having me on. Glad to be on your, your podcast. I I've been working in the HR space for 12 years now in a marketing role. Doug: It's been that long? Brandon: It's been well October's 12 years. Yeah, I started in 2008, when, when everything was kind of hitting the fan, with the Great Recession and so. Doug: I said everything hit the fan.  Brandon: Right, right. And then and then it's happening again, and I'm sort of seeing this play out in more of a senior role, like, I'm looking at it from what's important to employers right now, what's important to employees. Doug: Yeah. Brandon: And we're trying to kind of bridge that gap, because it's really chaotic. Employers are scared employees don't know if they're gonna have jobs. It's, it's an interesting time right now, to say the least.  Doug: Well I mean yeah, let's start from the employer perspective. Because, yeah, because of course, right. You know, the, I think a lot of people who listening will be will be employees, but I don't know, a lot of people listening will be senior decision makers also. So to from an employer perspective, what are what are a lot of people seeing kind of what are they? What's going on? What are their what are the dynamics? Because, of course, it all flows downhill. Because if employers can't make it, then that means you have less employment, which we've seen. Brandon: Right. Doug: And you know, we're actually have to figure out how are we going to go back to getting all these people who are sitting on the sidelines to be able to do something productive? Brandon: Yeah, I think there's a challenge for employers right now is that there's so much uncertainty, I think, when when COVID hit, gosh, it's been what Martin mid March, most employers made the decision to switch remote if they could, and then others, you know, might not have that opportunity to go remote. So they're still like...

Brandon Fiegoli is the Product Manager at Butterfly Network, a company whose aim is to democratize medical imaging across the globe. The ultrasound probe they have developed is much more compact than the industry standard machines. It sends imaging files directly to your iOS or Android smartphone via their app allowing for a quicker, more flexible process.Butterfly Network launched their compact ultrasound probe and integrated app last October. Their launch was global, initially covering 11 non-English languages and 13 countries. Now they have clearance in 23 countries and their product is helping physicians battle the Covid-19 pandemic. Brandon joins us today to discuss the translation from start to launch and shares his advice for others looking ahead at doing the same.Topics: [01.14] About Brandon and Butterfly Network. [03.48] Why create this product and what applications does it have? [09.25] Why did you need language translation? [13.03] What had to be translated to meet regulatory requirements? [14.22] What were your top priorities for the translation project? [15.55] What preparation did you make going into the translation? [18.04] What technological challenges did you face? [20.24] What was your timeline for the translation? [21.50] What aspects of the process and collaborating with Smartling made it work? [23.50] What happened after launch and what happens in the future regarding translation? [32.54] How do you report back to the team about translation progress? [34.19] What kind of results have you had since launch? [35.24] What do you wish you had done differently? [38.09] How did you choose which markets to launch in? Resources and Links: Butterfly Network Website Brandon Fiegoli on Linkedin Smartling Website Full transcript which almost certainly contains typos (thanks for the forgiveness!)Announcer:You're listening to The Loc Show, presented by Smartling.Adrian:Hey, what's up, everyone. It's Adrian Cohn from Smartling. Thank you for listening to The Loc Show. My guest today is Brandon Fiegoli. Fiegoli, an Italian name. Brandon is a product manager at Butterfly Network. Butterfly Network is a digital health company whose mission is to democratize healthcare by making medical imaging universally accessible and affordable.Adrian:They have this beautiful handheld device that is able to create images that render on your iPhone or Android. Brandon is also a standup guy with a great story. So, let's get into it and thanks again for listening.Adrian:Hey, Brandon, welcome to The Loc Show. How is it going?Brandon:It is great. Thank you so much for having me.Adrian:I am pleased to have you. You're such a fantastic person to connect with. We've had the opportunity to chat on a number of occasions. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you right now and who do you work with?Brandon:Sure. So, I'm sitting in my apartment. I'm in Manhattan right now. Lived in Manhattan, and outside of Manhattan my whole life. At the moment, I work with Butterfly Network. I'm on our product team there. I lead a couple of our different product offerings, focus really across all of our core platforms, so Android, iOS, cloud, work on our international expansion, really a very broad role that has gotten me involved very, very deeply into our translation systems.Adrian:So, what exactly is Butterfly Networks?Brandon:Butterfly Network is a company that builds a handheld ultrasound system. And most people are familiar with ultrasound. If they've had a child, sometimes if you go into an emergency room. Hopefully you're not there too much, you may get an ultrasound. Ultrasound is a really, really cool technology. I think in the last 10 or 15 years, it's gained a lot of popularity largely because it's quick and also because it's safe. And I would say, most importantly because it's safe.Brandon:If you think about an x-ray or a CT scan, they're also quick, they bring that ionizing radiation. And with ultrasound, you can get a window into the human body with mere sound waves.Adrian:That's amazing. So, the innovation that Butterfly Network brought to the market though is that this thing is it's a handheld device, right?Brandon:It is. So, I'll share the story in just a second. I'll pull it out. It lives in this case. This is a handheld device that fits in my pocket. So, let me just grab the device here. Here you go. This is the entire ultrasound probe. This is actually a special probe, the butterfly probe is a special one because it actually works with your entire body.Brandon:In a traditional ultrasound system, there's usually a large cart. They get wheeled in as you imagine your 1980s computer to look on a cart, and they usually have three probes with them, a linear phase and a curved transducer. Our entire probe is very different because it actually uses semiconductor technology to function as all three of those probes.Brandon:So, we could dive into the semiconductors if you'd like or we can just keep going.Adrian:It sounds really interesting and what I think is particularly cool though is that this is a mobile device and it's corded. So you can actually plug it into your phone?Brandon:It is. So, the device comes in lightning and USB-C, works with both iOS and Android devices. It's incredibly flexible. Some people use it on tablets. Some people use it on their phones. We fit the entire spectrum.Adrian:So, what's the point of developing such a product? I mean, isn't what we had before sufficient?Brandon:Great question. So, we talked about first of all the size of ultrasound carts. You wheeled them in, but that's not really where the problem exists. The problem exists in their cost today. Their cost and the ease of use of those systems. So, if you think about a traditional ultrasound system, you may be able to get a used system on the order of $30,000.Brandon:But if you go out there and you buy some of the most advanced cardiac imaging systems, they could be upwards of $200,000. And I don't have to tell you this, but you would imagine that in many parts of the world, and even in many parts of the US, it's simply not feasible to buy one of those systems.Brandon:So, you think about it, an emergency room today may have one. A really modern very busy emergency room may have three or four. In a smaller setting, you may have one or you may have none. Now, we talked about this a lot as actually being able to replace that stethoscope. So, 200 years ago or so, you started with the stethoscope. You could hear into the human body. You start to hear if somebody has pneumonia, an arrhythmia and now, 200 years later in 2020, we're able to look into the human body. That's sort of remarkable.Adrian:It is remarkable. And because you have both an iOS app and an Android app, the image is rendered in the moment on the screen of your phone?Brandon:Absolutely. Plug the device in, sign into the app, plug in the probe and you're ready to go. We like to say pick a preset, not a probe. So, the probe actually does all the work for you in regards to focusing, in regards to adjusting the proper frequency whether it's deeper in your body, whether it's more superficial, all controlled by software.Brandon:Just for anybody out there listening, just to compare that sort of with traditional ultrasound technology, this is typically done with piezoelectric crystals. So, those are actually crystals that are grown in a lab. When you pass a current over them, they vibrate and that's how you generate the sound waves.Brandon:In our device, we're still using sound waves. However, we're using the technology that a digital camera may use today except we've added little silicon drums on the top of it and when that electric current gets passed, those drums actually vibrate to generate sound waves. We have about 9,000 microdrums on the transducer itself.Brandon:A traditional ultrasound machine has anywhere between 90 and 190 crystals. And because it's all software controlled, we can adjust how those little drums on the probe resonate. This is really where the innovation started, all with the semiconductor chip and then we sort of have built out the ecosystem with the various software platforms, with the storage, with all of that.Adrian:Wow, that technology allows you to look at a whole range of different things inside the human body to reveal whether or not a person is healthy.Brandon:Absolutely. So, I think at the most positive use of ultrasound, we talked about it a lot with obstetrics. So, pregnant women. One of the most positive experiences they can have is going and seeing their growing child. So, I think a lot of people have very fond memories of ultrasound in that sense.Brandon:The other side of the spectrum, people are using ultrasound for everything. Cardiac arrest, it's been very popular for looking at people's lungs. We call them B-lines for the COVID outbreak. The uses are sort of endless. Things like inflamed tendons, inflamed muscles, even ocular scanning. Basically anything, and when you think about the portability and the cost, and not necessarily having to go, have radiology bring you to go get an x-ray, it really is quite exciting.Adrian:That's awesome. I love technology and I specifically love medical technology. My grandfather was a surgeon. My great grandfather was a surgeon. My mother is in the medical publishing space. So, it's always like really interesting to me to see all the advances in science and technology that enabled doctors, physicians, people to take scans of their bodies or to learn more about their health or condition.Adrian:I'm particularly interested in how as COVID-19 became this global healthcare crisis, Butterfly Network was able to utilize its technology to help people diagnose themselves or others with the infection. Is that right?Brandon:That is correct. I wouldn't go as far as to say diagnosing. As people were getting more ill, we're able to go and actually take a look at the lungs and get a better sense of what's happening. We still are obviously relying on the actual test. However, this was an incredible tool and remains a really incredible tool to track how serious people are doing.Brandon:Often time, someone may say, "Hey, I'm not doing that bad or I don't feel that badly." When the labs come back, when the imaging comes back, you see something different and vice versa. So, this is just a massively helpful tool. When you think about COVID also, one of the big things they talk a lot about is contamination and the spread of it obviously.Brandon:Talk a lot about getting a CT scan for somebody's chest, those rooms that those CT scanners are in may be done for 45 minutes or an hour between patients while they get sanitized. With this, you drop it in a probe cover, covers the entire cord, covers the mobile device. You're ripping off that covering, you're patient to patient very quickly.Brandon:In COVID where every minute matter, this really became an incredibly powerful and versatile tool.Adrian:So, where, Brandon, does language translation fit into all of these?Brandon:It's a great question. So, language translation is an essential part of our business, I would say. So, if you go all the way to the top and you think about our mission from our founder, Dr. Jonathan Rothberg, his mission, our mission is to democratize medical imaging.Brandon:And to do that meant a couple of things. The first meant getting some groundbreaking technology. If you are going to democratize something, you probably need to do a little bit differently than it's being done today. So, they've been working on this technology for six or seven years.Brandon:The other thing meant, "Okay, now that we have the technology, how do you share it with the world?" And that's everything from education to commercialization and everything in between that. So, when you think about that and we've talked about this before, you really think about, okay, if we're going to give education, there has to be multiple languages. Not everybody around the world speaks English.Brandon:If you're going to sell in other languages, you obviously need to have information that's relevant, that's correctly translated all in those languages every other area of the business. So, from shipping, making sure that people's shipping information is communicated to them in a way that they understand.Brandon:I think we take for granted quite a bit that fortunately many people in the world speak English. However, democratizing this technology really means we hope to be in rural insert X country. And you could imagine that in those countries, they don't speak English. I guess the other point that I would be remiss if I mention was just about the regulations.Brandon:So, we are a medical device. We are FDA cleared, and obviously, we have CE mark and clearances in every country we ship in but part of that clearance, part of those regulations for us, especially as a medical device is that our labeling, that our information for use is in the appropriate language. And again, that's for safety reasons.Adrian:Yeah, so when did this translation journey start for you? What was it like? How long ago was it?Brandon:Yeah. So we started this, I guess, almost a year ago now. I've been asked to look at our international expansion as a company. So, everything from how do we store data safely in the cloud in other countries through how do we ship these devices and make them appear on people's doorsteps. We are sold largely via an ecommerce model, so unlike a traditional ultrasound system today, you're going online. You're certifying that you're a medical professional and you're paying and that device arrives at your door.Brandon:So, there was a lot of work streams that went on here and one of the big ones is obviously translation. And it sits, as I just described, over all of those. So, part of my role was overseeing that entire project. So, at that point, as we started looking at this, we realized it was going to be critical to our success and frankly, critical to even being able to do it.Brandon:The place we always start is at regulatory. So you can go to market and do a bad job marketing something but you're not hurting or breaking any rules. You may just not achieve your goals. For us, it really started with how do we legally sell this device? How do we meet the regulations so that we're not getting in trouble and we're not hurting anyone? And that started with regulatory.Brandon:From there, it moved on to things like data privacy and then it moved on to other work streams, how do we sell it, how do we market it, what do our websites need to look like? But our first goal is meeting those regulations and really finding a translation vendor who is going to be able to run with us.Adrian:What content did you have to translate to meet regulatory demands?Brandon:So, the information we have to translate is what they call the Information For Use, the IFU. And like many guidances you see today, it doesn't get hyper-specific. So, it says any directions that are needed to use the device in a safe and effective way.Brandon:For us, it became really important. Obviously, the instruction manual was the first place we looked. And then after that, of course, the UI of the system.Adrian:The mobile or the-Brandon:And mobile app and/or desktop app. After that, everything was sort of from there, it was about how do we commercialize it and how do we get our messaging into the right languages.Adrian:You started with how to use the product and actual product content. That was the baseline that you needed to translate to meet regulatory concerns. And then after you accomplish or started thinking about how to tackle that, you would move on to go to market content?Brandon:That's actually right.Adrian:Cool. That's still a pretty significant volume of work, I would imagine. Like I get products all the time and sometimes the user manuals are super thin and sometimes even for a simple device, they're really thick. What were some of your priorities when you started to consider how to go about accomplishing this project? What was important to you?Brandon:Yes. I think there were a couple of things and to be honest, not all of them were apparent to me when we started. I think first and foremost, we needed to make sure that the translations would be of high quality. So, again, if you think about the regulatory side of things and just the quality side of things as a brand, focusing more on the quality and the regulatory means that the translations are accurate. It means that people are "brought up to speed" with your product. What are they translating? Is it giving context making sure that they're familiar with it?Brandon:So, ours is obviously in the medical space. There's a lot of big words in our app. There's a lot of very scientific words in our app. Just last week, we were translating stuff about our fetal calculation packages which are the short name would be OB calc, so for obstetrics calculations, for measuring the size of babies, there was all kinds of abbreviations in there.Brandon:So, having translators that could work with that and understand it and ask questions when they needed to was really critical for us. So, the first thing was making sure that people had the right domain expertise. The other things were things like having a team that we could tightly integrate with and basically become part of our team.Brandon:There's nothing worse than buying a service and then you're only told, "Hey, the only way I can get in touch with these people is file a support ticket." Like that, at the volume we were running, at the rate we were running with, it would never work that way frankly.Adrian:Yeah. What were some of the things that you had to prepare as you went out to start translating all of those content? You talked about having two mobile apps, an iOS app, an Android app, you have a help center that you needed to translate and also support documentation that it sounds like it was user manual, maybe offline content.Brandon:It is offline content, yeah.Adrian:Offline content.Brandon:We did it in phases when you talk about that. Where we really started was two things. We've spoken with a couple of vendors. We had even tried a couple of passes just with some vendors in the industry as we're honing in. We wanted to understand a little bit about how they work and nobody on the team was particularly familiar with translations.Brandon:So, we would send out little bits of content and we would get them back and we would think about the experience. I'll be honest, we didn't have a lot of time. So, just given our company goals, given our volume of work, we had to move fast. When we got to Smartling, all of those things that I just mentioned, the expertise in the domain area, the reliable support team and I would say they sort of swarmed us. They sort of encapsulated us and said, "Here's the plan. Here's how we're going to implement this." And it worked.Brandon:And then obviously, the technical expertise was a big one for us. So, I personally had never thought about how this really works, but certainly putting a bunch of strings in a spreadsheet, sending them off to get translated and getting those back and pumping them in is not how it works.Brandon:There's a lot of really complex integrations that need to work seamlessly if you want this to just become part of your everyday process.Adrian:That is sort of like a requisite for a fast-moving company because the way I sometimes think about translation is it's a very layered process. From the surface of your phone like you see one language but if you turn it to the side at an isometric sort of view point, there are a lot of layers that go behind it that are each of the different languages that I don't use. I speak English.Adrian:But the Spanish user of your tool or the German user or the French user of your tool, they need to access the versions of the content that are behind the English version, right? Was that a significant technology challenge for you all to think about solving?Brandon:I will be honest. I'm thankful I wasn't the person who had to do that. I was the person sort of overseeing it. If you talked about the steps we took, so we found somebody who ... We got recommendations internally. We had one of our engineers actually recommend Smartling as they had worked with them in another company. We got, I call it swarmed on the overview. We got so many questions answered.Brandon:Everything from our quality team, how is this done? Why should I believe that these translators know anything about healthcare? Through how do you guys do your translation and edit steps? Somebody is translating it. Somebody is editing it. So, nothing is getting to us before there's at least two sets of eyes on it. Through people like Sergio as our technical solution architect, going and sitting with our engineers and looking at how our strings were set up.Brandon:For the year before we started doing this, the engineers always said to me, "No problem." When we're ready to translate this, we were wrapping our strings. We wrapped them in a special ID that says, "They're ready to translate." I said, "Great." We decided we're going to run a test. We sent something up to Smartling. They sent us back what they called pseudo-translated files, and those files basically take all the strings in the app and they doubled them.Brandon:And we found out two really important things. One, there is about 10% of the app that we just didn't have wrapped in those strings, in those IDs. So that was a bit of a project to find those. That was great, solved pretty quick. The second one was more of the important one. And that was what happens to the UI when German is doubly as long as English?Brandon:And at that point, we found out there were places were things broke. They didn't wrap properly. Buttons were pushed off the screen. That was another project that we implemented and we went through and we took an inventory of everything that broke. At that point, we had decided to go with Smartling. We were moving along on the API integrations and then we really begin to work through automation.Brandon:How do we automatically send those strings up? How do we pull them back? How do we merge that code back into our code base? And then I guess the other one would be what you just mentioned is how do you actually display those on the screen? So that required a couple of changes in our app. But it all happened. It was very quick. It was a little bit stressful but we had a really good core group of people focused on it and I think that that was critical to our success and to meet our very, very aggressive timelines.Adrian:What was the timeline? Because oftentimes, translation does sort of come in, in the last minute, and people like you are expected to make miracles happen and you do because you work hard at it but it can be a very stressful time. What sort of time were you working on?Brandon:I wish I could be lying to you and tell you it was longer. I believe these conversations started late in July and we went live October 1st in 13 countries. So, those translations were actually done, I believe our internal deadline was September 15th, and that was because for all regulatory purposes, did our own QA actually sent devices out to people in those countries and had them run QA on it to make sure everything we were sending to the public was safe and accurate. It came back really cleanly thankfully because I think otherwise it would have been really tight to hit that deadline.Adrian:That is an awfully fast deadline and it makes a whole lot of sense to me that you would have sent that out to experts for quality assurance given the value of the content and the type of content and complexity that it carries. Why do you think it went well?Brandon:I think it went well for a couple of reasons. I'll talk about us first then we can talk about you. Internally, it was a priority. It was not an option, as are many things at Butterfly. It was not an option to fail. So one way or another, that content was going to get translated. Joking aside, what that really translated to was a lot of people focused on it.Brandon:So it was a top engineering priority. It was a top priority to get the contracts with you guys through legal. It was a priority for me to be on top of it every time an issue was opened with the translators to respond to it quickly because we knew if we drop any of these balls, we weren't going to hit our deadline.Brandon:On the Smartling side, you guys really excelled in basically understanding the importance, the significance and then really running with us. And I think a lot of times you don't find that. We had a CS manager. We had a solution architect. We had someone on the language services team. We had our account manager when we realized we left something out of the initial order, we would be able to add that on. It was a really well-oiled operation, I would say, from that front. And there was daily check-ins and things were clicking.Adrian:So, you started this project in July. You finished the initial effort in September, to send devices out so that they could be tested for quality. You got thumbs up from the people who you sent the devices to. You go live with your, how many languages?Brandon:I think we got a bonus because I think we got Austria using Germany's. So I think it was 11 non-English speaking languages. I think we did adoption into English for the UK, and I think it was 13 countries. So, 11 languages, 13 countries.Adrian:Okay, so you've translated content to 11 languages ready to deploy for 13 countries. You deployed this experience in October, what happens next?Brandon:That was really the start of a lot of really exciting chaos. It was a really good problem to have. We had been building excitement for Butterfly to go global for a while. So, at that point, we activated all of our channels, marketing, digital marketing. And at that point, the requests, the sales started coming in for devices and we very quickly became a global operation. But we also learned a ton.Brandon:So, you jumped to the punch a little bit before, but things like our knowledge-base, things like our website and our website was actually part of that initial push. But things like our knowledge-base, things like video content, all of that still had to be translated. And I think one of the things that you and I have spoken about previously is, it's one thing to meet the regulations. It's one thing to launch internationally. But I think to be a global business and a global brand is a totally different ballgame.Brandon:I think it's nice to be able to say, yeah, we excel internationally. But people don't want to read your English content. They don't care. Even if they speak English, they want to see it in their language. It would be like I read a very little bit of Spanish, and even if I could get through the passage, I'm going to be more comfortable with it in my native language.Adrian:It's so interesting that you say that because all I speak is English. And the language translation problem for me is far less visible because English is my native language and so much content is in English. And when I think back as to like when I've been challenged most, it's when I'm forced to try and buy something that's not in English. I'm thinking about like holidays that I've booked in Italy or in Spain, Airbnb's or before Airbnb with a real bnb or a hotel and you're trying to decipher their content, a double bed is that two beds versus like a single bed that's a little ...Adrian:All of those things come into play and it certainly rings true with me that the effort to translate the content does have meaning that may be a little bit harder to understand for those of us that are English native speakers and don't think about language on a daily basis.Brandon:I agree with that fully. And I think we're given a lot of really amazing tools. When I read something when I get an email that's literally in Mandarin and this happens, I'll pop into Google Translate and in five seconds, I have an idea of what that email is saying. But I would say us trying to sell something and say, "Hey, Butterfly is in these countries," or not even, forget selling. Saying, "Hey, Butterfly is in these countries," but not giving the tools for the experience that, "Hey, we're really here and, hey, we've really invested in being here," I think is a whole other discussion in itself. And I think that was really important for us.Adrian:And I want to ask a question about that but before we do, I want to go back for a minute because you said something that really was interesting to me about how when you launched, it was not just that you flipped a switch and all of a sudden your translations were available through the app and on your website. It was a fully integrated company wide effort.Adrian:You're on the product team, you spearheaded and centralized this whole process. What was it like working with all of these different teams to coordinate a launch that's company-wide?Brandon:It was really fun. It was really challenging. I felt like I was running a flight crew at NASA although let's be clear it wasn't that fun. I think the last email I sent out on the night of September 30th, I think the subject line was something like "All Systems Launched."Brandon:So, it was a little bit of everything. It was excitement. It was frustration. It was everything. We're trying to meet regulatory requirements. That's our top company priority, above everything else is don't break the law and don't hurt anyone. Those are, I think, any company's priorities or if they're not, they should be.Brandon:So, make sure we meet our regulatory priorities but then it's things like you're getting pulled from the marketing team. I need this email translated or we need to start doing this. It was really a prioritization thing. We said we can do it all, we just needed to sort of stagger it. And we looked at it and we said, "Okay, regulatory, check." Now, we start getting emails in other languages for support, making sure that we can start to get that content actually sent over to them in ways that they understand. It was a little bit of everything.Brandon:Making sure that we're dealing with sending our shipping information in the right language, getting our quotes translated, it touched really on every bit of the business and I think the one thing we had going for us amongst a lot of things but the really important thing was everybody saw the importance. And while there may have been a lot of challenges, everybody was driving towards expanding imaging, expanding this device to other parts of the world.Adrian:You sure chose a great time to do that.Brandon:I promised it was completely by accident. It is really humbling and exciting to know that our device is making a difference. Our founder, Jonathan, whenever he's in the office, he loves to say he measures our success by the number of lives saved. And for anybody who's in business, I don't know that everybody can do that and I think it's really cool.Brandon:One of the things we love to do is to share those experiences, and a couple of them come in yesterday. And it just makes everybody remember how important all of these is.Adrian:Well, certainly, the product and the mission of the business is quite aspirational and humbling. So that's a really strategic advantage that you have and your colleagues have working there and serving the global community. I think that's really cool. The effort that you had to undertake to get this initial push out the door or the "All Systems Go" email that you got to send, that was just the beginning. I mean, you were able to get through that sprint. But that's not where the story ends, I assume.Brandon:It's not. Translation and localization today, I don't want to say are a part of our workflow, I would say are very close to becoming. So, on the technical side, things are running smoothly, I mean almost no thought which is great. The only thought is, "Hey, do we make sure that we merge all those strings before we send out the app?"Brandon:On the marketing side of things, things are really, really close. And that's not for lack of trying, it's that we are moving so quickly that the only thing I have to keep reminding that team is I need 24 to 48 hours to get that stuff translated. And to be honest, I think I've pushed the Smartling team really, really hard and they have not yet disappointed. I hope they don't hear this.Adrian:They probably will, Brandon.Brandon:I probably shouldn't have said that. They always deliver it and what I'm really saying is just getting people to remember there are humans looking at these strings and we can do it really quick. Just give us 24 or 48 hours before you plan to send this thing out and you'll get a really great result.Adrian:You're exactly right, like there is a human process here that has to be considered. But what you're also sharing with me is that you're still translating a lot of content. It's not like you had this initial push and then you're done. You're translating on a daily basis, weekly basis?Brandon:Absolutely. So, the way our tech systems work, actually every time code, we use GitHub for it to manage our code. Every time, what we call pool request, which is a bit of code gets pushed into our system, it actually triggers a process and that process actually calls the Smartling systems and sends those strings.Brandon:Every time every night, I believe it is, we automatically call Smartling and we say, "Bring these strings back, anything that's been translated that day." And that's where we talk about that app automation working.Brandon:On the support side of the house are knowledge-based just actually in the last few weeks. We've set that up to fully automate. We rewrote the whole thing and it's just about done. I think tomorrow everything will be back. And then we have some more ad hoc stuff. We have subtitles. I'm working with our video marketing team. We're working to get a bunch of our videos subtitled. We've done a little of it already. We're trying to scale that up.Brandon:We use the GDN, Global Delivery Network, to handle our websites, so making sure that that content, the right content is served. That's something that just runs because we're doing our user manual, I would be hard-pressed to find a service that we're not using at Smartling.Adrian:So, how do you report back to your team on the efficacy of this translation program that you're running for Butterfly?Brandon:Yeah. I think I said this jokingly to you before, the best report that I can give, no report, which is nothing is broken, nobody has said the word is wrong. We have forgotten a string, like that is my goal from a quality perspective. From an overall perspective, what do I say to people? I tell people all of our tech systems are translated. If we add a new piece of content, so the announcement that I'll be making next week when we launch it is that our knowledge base is translated.Brandon:It is now so ingrained in our processes that there's not a lot to say thankfully. And I think this is one of those things that is the less you say, the better. I don't think anybody is going to say, "Oh, wow, that's in French." But if it wasn't in French, I promise you we would hear about it. Just like if you go to Amazon.com, you're not going, "Wow, thankfully, they put it in English," but if the only way you could get to Amazon.com was in French, I bet you your top complaint would be that's it all in French.Adrian:So, measuring in terms of the number of people who can access your product or service is one of the most important benchmarks that you have as a company for language translation?Brandon:Absolutely. I think that's really well stated.Adrian:So, I think this is all really fascinating. The products now are available effective in October. How have the results been? Have you been able to ship devices around the world with some level of success and you get app downloads so that people are using those devices? Are you tracking this?Brandon:We have. It's obviously really important to our mission. So I believe we have global clearance in 22 countries, 23 possibly. And these devices are having more impact that we can ever imagine. You probably saw us tweet out the other day. Our probes are in every corner of the globe on the Mars desert testing, understanding what they can do in space. I know they went to Base Camp at Mount Everest. Whether they went up higher than that, I'm not sure.Brandon:Every corner of the globe, and it's amazing to me where we see people we can sell in those countries and deliver it at scale. But when you hear about these stories of people taking their probes with them missions all over the world, that's really where things get very interesting and I think the most exciting for me.Adrian:Yeah. Brandon, when you look back on all the success that you and Butterfly have had in delivering solution to all of those different countries, what do you wish you had done differently?Brandon:What do I wish we had done different? That's a great question. I wish we had more time. Anyone listening and any company who's about to do this, one of the reasons that we were very thoughtful about it is because we know that taking on translations, taking on localization, taking on support in other languages is a new thing that you have to account for. It's not always easy and I think having some time to develop that strategy, having some time to educate the company, your peers, your coworkers about it would be really important.Brandon:I think the other thing would just be to know a little bit more about how translation works. So, one of the things that was exciting to us about Smartling was the language pre-flight we did. It was a little painful for me in the sense that I had to go through our app and actually capture screenshots of all of our error states and everything. But being able to send up that context to the translators so that they can say, "Oh, this is what the word means in this context," improved our quality and actually, I think shortened our time to deploy so much.Brandon:I think having a platform, a transparent platform that I can go in and click through. We started this session talking about how if I had to do this over email, it would have never worked. I mean, how many emails a day could I send versus how many times do I go into the Smartling platform and actually look at something or adjust something? Doing it without that, I think, would be impossible. I would urge everyone to think deeply about their technology and the technology that they want in their partner. I think those would be the big things.Adrian:The first takeaway that you have, I think, is it's almost like a poetic one which is it's more than just setting up the integrations, translating the content and getting it out to the users. It's a commitment to your business and to your customer base that you are going to support them no matter what. It's a lot easier, let's put it in another way, Brandon. It's probably a lot easier to say you will support a new market than it is to take away that market.Brandon:I agree with that. The one thing I did know about translation when we started all these is once you start, you can't stop because people do notice. And you hold a commitment to your customers, to your users, to your patients that that content will remain high quality and frequent. And all of the things that you could imagine are really sort of prominent company.Adrian:And this is a question that probably would have been well-suited at the beginning but how did you choose the markets that you currently support?Brandon:Yeah. It's a great question. So, we looked at a couple of things. Like everything, it was multi-faceted. So everything from number of physicians and medical professionals, so looking at the biggest impact we could make, places where we were able to get regulatory clearance.Brandon:So for example, Europe, everyone in Europe or all countries in Europe use the CE mark. CE mark was something we had worked for, for many, many months. And we knew it was going to be really exciting because when you got CE mark, it opened all Europe. It also opened to all of Australia and New Zealand.Brandon:So, impact regulatory clearance developed ultrasound programs so we know that we're still in early days and we have a long way to go on how do you educate these users and how do you move past just ultrasound experts but also enabling people who are not familiar with ultrasound. And in a lot of the European markets and the Australian market, it's quite developed. So, this got a jumpstart to this democratization and now obviously, we circle back and are deeply committed and deeply focused on that educational aspect.Adrian:Wow, Brandon, I feel like I've learned so much from this conversation. And I am so impressed by all the amazing work that you and your team have put into delivering this solution to the global marketplace. Thank you, thank you for being on The Loc Show.Brandon:Of course, thank you for having me. It's fun.Adrian:Yeah, it was great to have you. And we're going to make sure that people know how to find you. The URL for your company is?Brandon:Butterflynetwork.com.Adrian:Butterflynetwork.com?Brandon:Yes.Adrian:And I really encourage everyone to go to their website and just check it out. First of all, for those of you who are marketers here, they've got a beautiful website. There's great product marketing. You can really understand the solution that they offer, see images of the product, see images of the image that the product shows on the mobile app. There's just so much cool stuff there. Brandon, we'll make sure that people can find you too on LinkedIn.Brandon:Perfect. Yeah, feel free to reach out. Lots of info to share, a really fun journey, really excited. There's more coming, so stay tuned.Adrian:We will do that. Thanks again, Brandon.Brandon:Thank you.Adrian:I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Brandon as much as I did. If you like this episode of The Loc Show, hit the Subscribe button so the next episode will be waiting for you. And if you loved this podcast, please leave a review. Five-star reviews go a long way. If you're not ready to give a five-star review, give our next episode a shot. We appreciate you're listening. If you have any feedback or want us to interview one of your favorite people in localization, just email me, acohn@smartling.com.

This is 32 minutes of remastered audio. Buckle up Nashville, this women loves you, and not for the dollars.- Brandon "It doesn't matter if I'm going to be ok, if others aren't" "Hell is not having anyone else around" I give love & gratitude & food, and it comes back to me. When we don't have that synchronicity, its a void" At about 8:00 in she references a group of chefs who are getting together to try to find a solution, they are called "Tennessee action for hospitality". --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/brandon-styll/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/brandon-styll/support

Adam: Hello everybody. This is Adam Evers. I am the CEO and founder of Believr, and this is Inside Believr, building an LGBTQ plus Christian dating app.Adam: All right everybody, this is Adam, and I have a special guest with me, Brandon Flannery. Brandon is like-Brandon: Hello. (Laughs).Adam: Brandon would you like to describe in ... Like, who are you? Who is Brandon Flannery?Brandon: Who ... That's such a, um, what's the word I'm looking for, like existential question (laughs).Adam: I can't go that deep on the podcast.Brandon: (Laughs). Um, yeah. I am Brandon Flannery. Um, I've known Adam since I was 14. Um, I, we've had some years together, and um, I am one of the co-founders of Believr, and I work with ... Kind of anything words within Believr as itself, and I also keep Adam in line (laughs).Adam: Fair, fair statement (laughs).Brandon: (Laughs).Adam: Cool. So, today, uh, what I wanted to do on the podcast is actually, um, so Brandon and I, actually the entire team, went through this massive process of really like digging through what we valued as a company. So right now, it's myself, Brandon, um, Pascal, Erika, and, uh, and Noah as well. And we all kind of went through values to figure out, like, what we wanted as our values as a company. Um, so we came together as a team, kind of talked and spit balled about all the values that we all like individually hold, and what we want, like Believr to stand for. Um, and there was like five main ones that kind of bubbled, and surfaced to the top.Adam: Um, and we're going to go through the first one today. Um, on the podcast, and kind of talk about it. Um, and then we can kind of talk to this. And like just, as a side note, Brandon and I have like, we have argued literally about probably every single word in every single one of the sentences that I'm about to read you. Um, we stayed up very late multiple nights talking about this, so these being like a tremendous amount to us.Brandon: And I'm on Mountain Time, so it was a lot later for me (laughs).Adam: (Laughs). That's fair. Brandon's like up until 3:00 a.m. in the morning, and I'm like, "We must finish Brandon." So, yeah. Um, yeah. Would you, would you add anything Brandon?Brandon: No, let's uh, well, I, I will add one thing. Um, as we go through the, the words, um, so we'll have our different values, you will notice that there are actually going to be verbs. And, the intention there is just that we wanted action around what we stand for it. Not just something like, uh, abstract idea, or um, or an adjective describing something. We really wanted to put movement, and um, action to every single thing that we're standing for. So you'll notice that as we go through these, you'll notice that within each of the words. Um, so yeah. But, w-, with the first one, as Adam said it'll be believe, and it's ... We'll be following that, um, format.Adam: Yeah, cool. Uh, and just FYI, we're only going to do believe today, Brandon. We're going to wait, we're going to build other ones, do the rest of them, just so you know. Great.Brandon: No [inaudible 00:02:54] worth, are we Adam? (Laughs).Adam: Yes. Podcast, every time. Get people excited. You got to release them, we have to get people excited, you know? One a week. One a week. We're not going to just divulge everything right now.Brandon: This is where he also keeps me on my knees, I want to say, "Here is everything."Adam: Yeah, and I'm like, "No. Build up the suspense."Brandon: Also though, I, I honestly think the one, the last one is probably the best, but that's just me. Um, and I think fourth is my favorite. Go ahead.Adam: I know, that's interesting. Yeah, fourth we fought on a lot too. Okay, anyways. Sorry. Sorry listeners.Brandon: (Laughs).Adam: Okay, uh, so the first one is believe, um, and I will read it to you now. So believe. We believe in love, we are a people of faith, and we trust that what we are doing has purpose. We believe that every person is worthy of love. We believe that God loves everyone, regardless of how they identify, and we believe what we are doing will create positive change within ourselves, the community, and in the world.Brandon: Uh, it's so good. (Laughs).Adam: I just whatever ... I don't know, I just like whenever I hear these, these values, I just get chills. Um, and I really like this one. Um, so yeah, let's talk about it. Brandon. Why was this one important to you?Brandon: I think the reason It had to be first, and the reason why it came to the surface to begin with is we knew that the pri-, uh, there'll be a lot of things that I'm really excited about with Believr, and what it's standing for, but really this came out of a need. Um, and a need was for LGBTQ people who have a faith in Jesus Christ, and so that, oh, can you still hear me?Adam: Yeah.Brandon: Sorry. My little old thing. It popped up. But, were people of faith, and um, uh, and, I, I wanted to be the, at the forefront, not just for the sake of sh-, showcasing that we are a platform that does put faith first, but more than that, um, we believe that we do believe in love, I do appreciate that Pascal really, rea-, really fought for that part of it. Because it is true that it's something that we, we do believe in, it's what we are fighting for. Um, and the fact that making a statement that says, "You are worthy of love," because I think so many of us within the community, especially growing up in, um, places of faith, um, and religious backgrounds were told that we weren't.Brandon: Um, and I think it was so important to remember every LGBTQ persons of faith. I mean, not everyone, we all have different stories, and it's nuanced, but to put that at the forefront of everything that we do, of our history, and what we are trying to, um, change, and what we believe, truly, uh, is possible, in spite of what other people have told us.Adam: Yeah. No, uh, that was good. Um, the only thing I would add is like for me, believe is, is really about like aligning just all the things that I think about Believr, so love, everyone has value. Everyone is worthy, and deserves love. Like, that's really important to me, and I think that's a big value that I'm glad that has like come through across the team. Um, the other one is like just that we want to create something different within the community, with this application. Like, we're not, just, we don't want to be like other apps, we don't want to be like other communities.Adam: We want to be different, um, and create a positive change in like society, and in ourselves, and in the community, and in the world ultimately. You know and I, what does that change, and what does that look like? I don't really know, but I think we're fighting for at least a positive change, um, moving forward and what does that, what does that look like? I think, like, we're i-, we're in this adventure, and we're going to find out, like, I think the thing that I think about first and foremost is like reconciliation with faith communities, and like the LGBTQ plus family.Adam: Um, what does that look like? I honestly, I don't know, but I think there is a growing movement, um, in progressive Christianity, and there's a growing movement just in Christianity in general to be more accepting, and, and have a broader theology than one that has been passed down, I think, for generations. Um, and I think this believe verb, if you will, kind of encompasses that a little bit, where it's like, "Hey, we believe that this is, has a purpose, and we believe that everyone is worthy of love, and that regardless of how people identify, like they are value. They are valued, excuse me.Adam: Um, that's just really important to me. So-Brandon: Yeah. I, I think also something that I'm realizing as we're chatting about it is, um, I know for us, um-Adam: Who's us?Brandon: Because we've had convers- ... Me and, you and I (laughs).Adam: Okay.Brandon: Um-Adam: Making sure.Brandon: Yeah. Uh, h-, i-, in the birthing moments of Believr, and all the way up 'til today, well there's been moments where both of us have been like, "l-, is this what we should do?" Or, "Is this right?" Or, "I got a life to live. Ow." And um-Adam: As we record this podcast, the technical [crosstalk 00:07:42] at night.Brandon: (Laughs).Adam: Or, a lot of your time 10 via my time.Brandon: Um, as life, you know, s-, the stressors of life come through, and we're trying to build this thing, I think there's been times where we're, we've been, are we ... Does this matter? Um, you know, and, um, is it worth it? Um, all the energy that we're putting into it. And, I just think of our time at GCF this past year, and the amount of people that approached us, and said how needed a platform like this is, and so it's just a reminder to me that yes, we're excited about it for ourselves, yes, we believe in the product, and we have a great team building something really beautiful. But, at the end of the day it is ... We believe that it, it really, um, is something that is needed, and we want to, we want to provide that, so-Adam: Yeah. Well, and it's the ... It's funny you say that, because I actually got a direct message on our Twitter account earlier today. Um, I won't name who the person is, because they're closeted, but I'll say, I'll read their direct message real quick. Um, the person says, "As a gay, or, as a closeted gay Christian, this means a lot to me. A community where I can be loved for who I am." And then they asked, of course, the burning, the most burning question that everyone asks, "When are you launching?" Uh, which I always think is funny. Um, but yeah. I think-Brandon: 10 (laughs).Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think like, um, uh, Brandon knows this but like, I don't think the rest of the community does, but like, um, whenever I get messages like that, or whenever we get messages like that, I, I, I screen shot them, or take them, and um, put them into our internal slack channel. Um, and, with a channel that's just called, "The why." Um, and the reason for that is because I think it helps all of us just really center on like why we're doing this. U, and why this matters.Adam: And why I think, um, you know this, this is just bigger than ourselves, and I think both of us probably ... Brandon and I both feel the weight of that. I know I do. Um, for sure, because it's just how many people have reached out, and said things, and mentioned things, and so I think believe, the verb there, actually encompasses a little bit about that too. Like, we're believing in ourselves, we're believing in the community, we're believing in something that's way bigger than either of us possibly could have imagined. (Laughs).Adam: Like, even the people that have just like reached out, or like, um, like encouraged us, or have been like, "Hey, I'm like rooting for you," and the text messages that I get, and the messages and everything it's, it's so, it's really cool.Brandon: And our, and our team, like I'm blown away by the, the people that have been sent our way. Because I am the product that is being created is amazing (laughs), and great job Erika and Pascal (laughs).Adam: I know, seriously. So, like-Brandon: It is, it is gorgeous. So-Adam: Brandon and I, we uh, we had a, we have a weekly meeting on Wednesdays, and we're recording this on a Wednesday right after, not right after, but we had a team meeting earlier this morning, and like, I, after our meeting I was just blown away with how, like good, the designs were, and like we're looking at screen designs today, and like how just smart, and how, um, thoughtful I think everybody is about like just every interaction, what we include, what we don't include, why we do it, why we don't do it. Um, I think that's just super, super cool. Um, oh, let's do something, let's do something fun.Adam: Um, what's something today that like, we talked about in the product, that we can talk about on the podcast, that we like debated on?Brandon: (Laughs). I mean, we debated about the profiles (laughs).Adam: We did. We did. So, actually this is in-, really interesting. So, one of the things that we talked about was like, how do we, how do we display people, and how do we do, um, profiles, and do them well. And like, one of the things that we thought about was like ho-, um, m-, uh, making the profile image, or the profile, like whatever, like really big in the f-, in the forefront.Adam: And so what we actually ended up deciding is, uh, making it so that you can either show your bio first, so your, like, you know, short, uh, 240 character like bio, or, um, you're able to show a picture. So it's up to you if you want to show either a bio or a picture. Which we came to ... Brandon do you want to talk to you, like how we came to that kind of decision?Brandon: Yeah. Um, I think that virtual spaces offer a unique nuance, versus being in person. So this is a point of contention with Adam and I (Laughs).Adam: (Laughs).Brandon: Uh, Adam said when you want to ask someone out, y-, y-, the first thing you notice is, is them, like how they look and things like that, and I'm just like, "You're not wrong." But, um, one thing I do love about virtual spaces is the fact of you get to, um, get to some deeper things, um ... I want to, maybe not, yeah, I'll take deeper things like than just the skin. Um, and so I wanted more data to appear more quickly about a person. Because I want to be able to read about who they are, and, um, what are, what are they passionate about? And, the, you know, within Believr, one of our number one things that we're excited about is the value space matching, you know. We wanted to see those, those values like first thing.Brandon: So, um, yeah. It was a point of contention, because I really wanted those things, and Adam really wanted a picture to be the very first thing. And so, um, I think it, what's really nice is where we're at now is you will have this really nice large picture of the person, you do get a percentage of, of values match, and then you do see the values, and then you can easily start scrolling, um, or you can do, or do the bio. So, yeah.Adam: Yeah. No, I, I think, uh, we, we definitely worked through that all together, and I really appreciated the conversation, and why, like Brandon's points, and my points, and I think we came to a good solution. And I think we'll be really, really, work really, really well for our users. So I'm excited about that. And we're doing user testing, which is kind of cool, so they can, they'll tell us whether or not it's a good idea or not. They're like, "That was stupid," and we'll be like, "Okay." (Laughs). Well, back to the drawing board. (Laughs).Brandon: (Laughs). Oh yeah.Adam: Well, I think that's about it. Anything else you would say, Brandon, before we wrap up?Brandon: Uh, thank you for your support. It means a lot, so ... To all of our listeners.Adam: Yeah. No, that's good. That's really good. Yeah. Thank you listeners, we appreciate it. Um, that's it for now. We'll be back next week with our next value. Um, I hopefully will relea-, will release it like sometime Monday or Tuesday, um, and then we'll get rolling. Uh, thanks so much for listening, and supporting us. Really appreciate it. Please feel free to, if you have any questions or comments, whatever, uh, feel free to email us, just hello at Believr.app. Just hello at Believr.app, and we'll get back to you. Awesome. Thanks guys. Bye.Brandon: Bye bye.

**Long episode with minor audio distortions during the topic segment** Nikeeta and Money fangirl out as they interview the High Priestess of QueerWOC, Alexis Pauline Gumbs! She joins us for our topic segment to talk archival research, love, and Black feminist miracles. Nikeeta gives us Black lesbian filmmaker history. Money wants us to channel Audre Lorde in order to heal. Community Contributors is poppin again!! Thanks yall! Finally, Money gets some numbers!!! Contribute to QueerWOC: https://www.paypal.me/QueerWOC Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/queerwocpod Use the hashtag #QueerWOC to talk all things the podcast Send us an email or submit your Curved Chronicles: QueerWOCpod@gmail.com 00:07:47 QueerWOC of the Week Sharice Davids, democrat elected to congress in Kansas Watch her campaign video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGa5qQsYY-g Read about her victory here: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/sharice-davids-lesbian-native-american-makes-political-history-kansas-n933211 00:13:35 Community Contributors Thanks Gabby, Emerald, Amethyst, Rawley Chyla upped their pledge Jeffrey - donation for ethical t-shirts Natalia (x2!!) - “Cant thank you both enough for the amazing content and dedication to community.” Brandon - It’s not much, but a sign of gratitude for what you all do. Our struggles are tied. Systems of oppression function as one. So it’s only fitting that the community mantra is basically WE ALL WE GOT! Much Peace & Big Love! 00:18:03 Mental Moment with Money Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself: posted by @Xicanisma_ created by Divya Victor, adapted by me to help us heal, create, and motivate What are the words you do not have yet? (Or, for what do you not have words What do you need to say? [write/say as many things as necessary] What are the cruelties you swallow day by day, that attempt to make you their own, until you sicken and die from them - still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language, ask yourself “what is the worst thing that could happen to me if I tell my truth?” 00:25:36 Word - “Sisters in the Life” Nikeeta tells us all about the history of Black lesbians in cinema by breaking down the anthology Sisters in the Life: A History of Out African American Lesbian Media-Making edited by Yvonne Welbon, Alexandra Juhasz https://books.google.com/books/about/Sisters_in_the_Life.html?id=RUNRDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false 00:39:40 Topic - Conversation with The High Priestess of QueerWOC, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs [@alexisPauline] Based in Durham, NC APG is a queer black troublemaker, a black feminist love evangelist and a prayer poet priestess, Alexis has a PhD in English, African and African-American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University. She is a daughter, a doula, and an afro-futurist time traveler through archival research. She is the author of M- Archive, Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity, coeditor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines; and the founder and director of Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind, an educational program based in Durham, North Carolina The Shape of My Impact: https://www.thefeministwire.com/2012/10/the-shape-of-my-impact/ Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=746 01:57:23 Curved Chronicles Money finally got some numbers at NWSA! Is your dating life more exciting than ours? Email us your dating adventures at QueerWOCpod@gmail.com Follow Money| IG/Twitter @MelanatedMoney Follow Nikeeta| IG/Twitter @AfroBlazingGuns

Guests: Brandon Hays: @tehviking | Blog Chris Freeman: @15lettermax In this episode, former Fronsiders, Brandon Hays and Chris Freeman join Charles and Taras to talk about the difference between a framework and a library, whether or not React + Redux a framework in itself, red flags to signal that you're actually building a framework, attributes of a good framework, how can you tell if you created a bad framework, and how you can make a bad framework better. Resources: Test Sizes by Simon Stewart This show was produced by Mandy Moore, aka @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. ** Transcript:** CHARLES: Hello everybody and welcome to The Frontside Podcast. My name is Charles. I'm a developer here at Frontside and today, we're going to be talking about the things that go into making a JavaScript framework. Because, hey, there's not enough of those in the world today, so we're going to talk about that and with me is Taras. TARAS: Hello, hello. CHARLES: And we've got two very special guests, who have a lot of experience with this topic. Mr Chris Freeman and Brandon Hays. Hey, guys. CHRIS: Hi, there. BRANDON: Hi, there. We're talking about the poofberry framework, right? CHARLES: What's a poofberry? BRANDON: There's a tweet that's going around right now that one of them says, "I don't know what I should be doing," and the next person says, "Oh, just use poofberry." What is that? It's like fluffnuts but the [inaudible]. Hey, dot, dot, dot. Then, it integrates with log bungler. CHARLES: There's a reason that I'm dying laughing. BRANDON: It's so true. CHARLES: It's so true, laugh, cry, laugh, cry. Let's start with kind of a very basic assessment here. Because there's a lot of different things that you can use to compose the applications that you build but for some reason, some of these things are grouped and considered as libraries and some of them are considered frameworks. I don't know that the boundary is very clear like I'll know it when I see it type thing. Maybe, we can start with what is the difference between a framework and a library? CHRIS: I have some thoughts of these. I feel like this is one of those questions that could easily just turn into an infinite bike-shed but I remember reading something a while ago that stuck with me for a long time. I'm pretty sure it's related to Java but that makes sense because if anyone is going to talking about frameworks, it's Java developers. But it was saying that the difference between a library and a framework is inversion of control and the idea is a thing that's a library is a thing where you are in control. You bring the library code into your code and it's up to you what you do with it. In a framework, the framework code calls you as I think what it said. It's like, you call the library code, the framework code calls you and -- CHARLES: In Soviet framework. CHRIS: Yeah, exactly. A framework says, "Here are a bunch of open spaces for you to put your code in and I will take care of the rest," versus a library is just like... I don't know, "Here's some things that you can use. It's up to you. What do you want to do with them?" CHARLES: Right, so in kind of like [inaudible], that would be basically, a framework would be the thing that's got the main method. I think the same thing in JavaScript and when you call it, does it actually implement the main method. In JavaScript, it'll probably like in node. Under that definition, it would be like, "Are you the main scripts when you invoke node? Do you control the main script?" If you were doing your own command line parsing, for example, you're looking at the process.rb and pulling off the command lines and doing all the things but even if you're using something like Yargs or option parser in Ruby, that's more of like a framework. I guess Yargs is a library because you're still implementing the script. You're instantiating the Yargs thing. TARAS: React calls render to figure out what to convert to DOM. Does that make React the framework? CHARLES: I think React as a library. That's a good question. What's the equivalent of the main method on the web? CHRIS: I think there's a very clear distinction, especially if you look at React versus something like Ember and I'm sure Angular does this as well. In React, by default, to build a React thing, you're going to pull in React, you may write some components, you may import them elsewhere but the main method is that you have an index.html with some div in it and you are the one that has to call ReactDOM.render and you pass it like document.query selector or whatever and then, your top level component and that can be as simple as complicated as you like or you can have a webpack plugin do it or whatever else. But the onus is on you to actually take that React app and get it starting up on the page versus Ember, it's like, "There's an index.html. It's fully wired up." There is one point where you sit down and say, "Start my program here," like Ember abstracted all that away. To me, that's the main method for a frontend application. CHARLES: Right and if you actually look at something that Ember generates, then look at index.html, they generate a script tag for you that instantiate your application and mounts it on an element. If you want to change that element, that's actually a configuration option that you can change but it still a configuration option that's consumed by the framework. In that sense, there is that inversion of control. I see what you mean like in React, you're the one who flicks off the first domino, like who's the prime mover. Is it you or is it the framework that knocks over the first domino? BRANDON: I like Chris's explanation and I think it's elegant to say because I was thinking in terms of structure. If it imposes a structure on you but really, the structure is there, it's like one of those Ikea shelf systems for you to put stuff into. If you're trying to solve a problem, here's a shelving system for you to put stuff into, whereas a library is just the tool that you might get out to put something together. Something that's multi-purpose but doesn't impose any structure on you or a ton of structure on you. My question is what's the usefulness of distinguishing between the two? TARAS: I think what's interesting and I had experienced this in a last couple of projects is that people, especially React when they kind of assume, because a lot of people entering to React not understanding the context within which React emerged and so, they're getting into React assuming that it has everything you need to build application that you need to build. A lot of them haven't necessarily built a single page application from scratch before and so, the jump into building something with React and then, it takes about a year for them to realize the full scope of all of the features that their application actually has and then, they kind of take a retroactive look and look like, "Okay, what do I have now?" and what emerges is that they've actually over the last year, they may be creating a framework without realizing that this is actually happening. CHARLES: They've imposed the structure of saying, "Here's the shelving system. Books about geography go here. Books on English literature go there and so on and so forth." BRANDON: But when you rolled your own framework, that's not how it goes. It's like, "You have to launch this balloon into the stratosphere to put a book on the shelf from geology." Taras, to your point, it sounds like the importance is setting expectations properly for people, so that they know what they're in for because kind of calling back to Ryan Florence's post a few years ago, you can't not have a framework. At some point, you will have a framework in order to ship something. I would actually take it one step further. My friend, Kyle talks about this that library is the smallest unit that you're working within a framework but that still doesn't take your code to production and put it in a debugable state. You need a platform. It's arguable, if you're handling deployment tasks and debugging tasks and operating software in production, you now have a platform and it's fair to say that Rails crossed that threshold at one point. It's fair to say that Ember has probably crossed that threshold, if you combine Ember with CLI deploy and the CLI tooling and all of that stuff. This almost like acts as a platform if you're owning and maintaining the software in production. CHARLES: Now, can I play devil's advocate here and say, the platform, is that necessarily predicated on a framework? Is there a pyramid where it goes library, framework, platform and one is built on top of the other? Why couldn't I have a library? Because what I'm hearing is the scope of concerns is just rendering HTML based on a state is a very small chunk. The actual scope of things that you need to do to get that code in production and have it be reliable and do all of the features that you want to do is just massive but why is that predicated on a framework? For example, one thing you have is a bunch of libraries out there, like routing for managing the title tag, managing all these things that you have to do for managing deployment, for building your application, for compressing it. There's all these different libraries out there. What if there was one massive library that just picked a bunch of other libraries but I was still in control? TARAS: I've actually seen this happen in the last of the projects. When people jump into building, they will eventually realize that they're building a platform but what happens before that is that they take user's requirements and they break those up by sections and then they assign them to a bunch of development teams who go and actually start to build. On one platform, they end up building five or six or 10 of siloed, packaged applications that have, in some cases, have their own dependencies, they have similar architecture, might not have similar architecture. Each team kind of implements thing differently and there's an expectation that once you package these things as npm and then you install them into one package, to one application when you run build, it's just going to work together. That's where I think, with the framework, it does create a foundation for these verticals to be implemented using kind of common foundation. This is what a lot of times that as if you don't realize that what you're trying to set out to build, the way that the projects get managed quite often, especially for big applications, for big platforms is that, it creates this period of about two years, where there's a lot of confusion and there's a lot of duplication and then, you end up seeing code that it's hard to put in production. CHARLES: Yeah, I agree. I'm curious then, because we'd started out talking about library and framework and talked about it takes two years to recognize that you're building a framework or you're building not a framework but a platform. Brandon, you said something very interesting. Rails for example, crossed the threshold of being more than a framework and actually, being a platform. What are the concerns of a platform that are beyond a framework? We talked about and using the kind of loose definition of a framework as being something where the framework create spaces for your code, to run your code so you can just take little dollops of code and they have one concern but the framework manages the coordination of the concerns but what's the next level? BRANDON: For the purposes of this conversation, I may have muddied the waters a little bit because I think it's more interesting to talk about the transition and the level of which you've crossed the threshold from being a library or using libraries or collecting libraries, into maintaining a framework because it's where you're going to experience more pain more than likely, than to me, the idea from works on my machine, to deployed and supported across a lot of users, it sounds like it's more interesting but it's not where we experience most of our pain actually. From my experience, maintaining frontend single page applications most of the pain is actually getting the damn thing to work on your machine and getting the libraries to collectively work together and then, getting that to production, it kind of enters back into an area of more known unknowns. I think that's a surprisingly a more mature ecosystem, still getting from this thing works on my machine to getting it out the door. That wasn't true when Rails was invented and so, Rails had to invent a lot of its own ecosystem around this stuff. Like I said, I don't want to muddy the waters too much. I think to me, the interesting question is how do you know you've crossed this threshold? What pain points are exposed when you start crossing that threshold or when you're pushing the boundaries of that threshold? Because you should not be using a framework if you're using React to do a select dropdown. I think of it as, if you're using it the way to replace something you might do with a jQuery plugin five or 10 years ago, you're using React like it's a library. One of the questions that you brought up was is the combination of React and Redux is a framework and I would argue that it is but I kind of want to throw that out -- CHRIS: Oh, interesting. CHARLES: I would say, it's two libraries stuck together to make a bigger library. It's like a monolithic library. BRANDON: But by the time you're actually using that to do anything, maybe the third thing in there is like transitioning states when you transition routes. At what point is that threshold crossed? I didn't build most of the software that led me to some of the opinions that I have about this. This was actually Chris Freeman's, though. I may defer to you on this. CHRIS: I think React + Redux constitutes if you look at what it does. You have like this view layer and this state layer. There's a set of opinions on there that is useful and there is the foundation for doing quite a bit but in my experience, you've already kind of alluded to this a little bit. I don't think it's a framework because as soon as you start using those two things, suddenly the next thing you hit is, "Wait. How do I handle asynchronous things?" There's a lot of different options for that. "Oh, now, I need to do routing. How do I incorporate routing into my React app but also in a way, that is amenable to state transitions in Redux but also, that is aware of the async stuff that I'm doing, that is going to possibly be triggered by my routes and by my Redux actions or by some other side of things?" Suddenly, you are very quickly pulling out a bunch of other libraries but also, probably starting to build abstractions on top of them because you're already finding a lot of common patterns that you're repeating over and over as you incorporate more and more pieces of the stack and then, you're writing a lot of glue code. I think that's the point where suddenly, you look back and behind you is the footsteps of this framework that's been walking alongside you the whole time. BRANDON: That is where I carried you, then dropped you, then sort of drowned you. CHRIS: Yeah. CHARLES: And then, kicked your core. TARAS: I'd like to suggest a way to think about this. As you guys are talking about, it kind of occurred to me is that it seems to me that libraries concentrate on how and frameworks focus on the 'what.' CHRIS: Oh, I love that. TARAS: Because if you think about for example, React is how geostack efficiently update DOM, then Redux is how do you wire together state across multiple components that might be in different parts of state tree and if you look at, for example, a React router or a kind of a routing component is how do you choose which components you want to render when you navigates specific URL. Because those things by themselves are not a complete solution but when you combine them together, what you get is you have a way of saying, "When I navigate to specific URL, I'm going to load specific data, provide that data to components and then, I would have a way to navigate through a different URL when you click on a link." From that, I think what happens when you get to the framework level is you actually have a kind of a bigger umbrella and under that umbrella, you have ways to address problems that you did not have previously. I think that's what framework does it is over time, it's a way of addressing concerns that cannot be addressed with a solution. They have to address with a collection of solutions and then, they provide a specific solution. I don't know if that's -- CHARLES: That actually sparked off a train of thought in my mind that perhaps what you really want to do is say, "I'm going to go a little bit like Lisp on you all," in the sense of every code at some point is data, that maybe every library, at some point is a framework. It's just that you can look and say, "What is the scope of the 'what' that I'm tackling." For some point, you can say like React is a framework. It creates this space where I can put my JSx, AKA the render function and I'm basically inverting control and so, what it is, it is a framework for efficiently rendering HTML or efficiently mapping an object to a fragment of DOM and then the DOM that gets generated from your render function, patching that into the HTML. You don't have to worry about that. There's that inversion of control. It creates that space but that's the only space that it creates. From that perspective, React is a framework for generating HTML but that's all it is but it is a library for constructing applications. Does that make any sense? I think as you layer on concerns, your framework create spaces for you. You use your library code to put stuff in and so, in the same way, I think one of the key realizations, I'm going to call up like BigTest and I'm not going to take credit for this, which is actually a blog post that I read at Google. I can't remember what it is but we'll link to it in the show notes where he said, "There are no such thing as unit tests. There are no such thing as acceptance tests. There are just tests of varying scope." They're all acceptance tests. To use that one thing, they're all experiments. It's just what is the scope of the test that you're trying to accomplish and his argument was we want to make that scope as big as possible by default and then, where appropriate, you narrow down. Maybe, the framework library distinction is a little bit constructed, kind of a construction of our own minds and what really is there, there's just frameworks of varying scope. BRANDON: Agreeing on a shared scope is actually probably the most important part of this conversation. We're referring to building end-to-end an application from data access to rendering to testing -- CHARLES: To deployment to routing. BRANDON: Yeah. CHARLES: To one day accessibility. BRANDON: Yeah. Adding that into the discussion is like a baseline of what constitutes an application. It's the percentage of people that are able to actually use it, the people that are locked out from using it by ability. That's a very useful frame for the discussion. Let's agree on the scope of what an application is and then, coming back to what Taras was saying is basically, when you're talking about the 'how,' that's a decision point. You hear a lot of people talk about decision fatigue in JavaScript and it's almost a played out trope at this point but it hasn't gone away as a problem, so what frameworks are doing is they're making a series of decisions for you that allow you to basically connect the pieces from end to end. Basically, somebody threw a rope bridge across the canyon and it doesn't have to be the best solution to get end to end but we have to solve the problem end to end. If we agree on the places end to end and the problem is when you're building your own series of libraries, you're like, "I'm going to choose best in class of A, best in class of B, best in class of C," and that sounds really good but if you're trying to build a bridge across a canyon and you're building in 10 best of class sections, for the type of connection we're trying to make here in the middle, we're going to use the best in class here. The weak point is in the connections, so you had better be the world's foremost engineer if you're going to be the person connecting all these disparate pieces that are each best in class, in order to bridge this canyon. That's the thing that's interesting to me and it's not even agreed in our industry that JavaScript-based web applications are a good thing or that the browser is web application runtime, those are things that are up for debate. But I think if we make that assumption, this is sort of the founding principle of where Ember came from and it executed to the best of its ability at the time and that philosophy is, I think you can prove it out in terms of results based on if you have two different applications, one of them is built by somebody trying to jam together best in class components and the other person is starting with an end to end solution with a community of people rallied around that solution. It's been interesting to watch those approaches play out over time. I know Chris has a very specific hands-on experience of having done both of these. I'm curious to get your hot take. CHRIS: There's actually a concept that I think about a lot in relation to this question. It's something that I actually heard come up again recently so the timing was great but it's called hypocognition. The idea is hypocognition is when you either just like can't see or can't understand some kind of cognitive representation of something because you don't have the words for it. An example is in Western cultures, especially like in English speaking cultures, there are not that many words for the color blue but in a lot of other cultures, they have many, many words for the color blue. After doing a big study they found that these English speakers actually have a harder time recognizing different shades of blue, like more of them just look the same versus other cultures where their brains are actually wired to see all this variety because they actually have the linguistic representations for these ideas already. When you were talking about maybe a library is a framework at some point, I think that's right on. I think one of the things that I think about a lot when talking about frameworks and seeing these debates happen on the internet about, "What is a framework?" but also like, "Do you even need a framework?" is obviously, there's a lot of people who absolutely... Like Ryan Florence. Ryan Florence clearly knows what a framework is. He knows what it takes to build a web application and he does not lack the words to define a framework versus a library. He's just made that choice and it's a very informed choice but I wonder if there's also a lot of people who are getting into web development for the first time and they look at something like a framework and it seems just absurd to anyone would want all of the things that like in Ember or in Angular is talking about, when they can make a basic UI with React and it's easy and fun and really cool. But then this two-year path happens and they look back and they've learned a whole bunch and now it's like, "Ooh, you couldn't even have explained this to me before," because all of the words would have fallen on deaf ears but now suddenly, it makes a staggering amount of sense. CHARLES: Right. I love that. BRANDON: You have to make a bad one. CHARLES: Just so that you can inherit the vocabulary to understand why you made a bad one. Now, you guys actually have some experience with this. Brandon, you gave a talk about it, which I think you should give more widely because it's fantastic but for those folks who may or may not be aware that they are walking this to your path, I want to talk first about what are the signs that you're walking along this path and then two, what are the consequences in terms of the cost you're paying for walking this path. Let's start with that first thing. What are the signs? How can you tell that I am building a framework? CHRIS: I think one of the telltale signs and one of the biggest red flags that caused me and Brandon to have a very serious heart to heart about our own personal framework was when we hit the point where you could look at a set of tickets for features and all you saw was 'framework features' that you needed to write before you could build the feature itself. You know like, "Oh, we have basic routing setting and we have it set up so that if you have a route transition and you would like a data request to happen when a certain route transition happens, that will happen," but then someone would like infinite scroll and we want to use a query param. When a query param changes, I want to update the query and fetch more records, except that the glue code that we wrote to tie our router to our redux async stuff is not aware of query params. It has no concept of what a query param is or what to do when it changes. Also, it has no concept of refetching the data without a full route transition, so what do we do, this person wants infinite scroll but I first have to implement several layers of framework code before I build the UI feature that you want? CHARLES: The basic heuristic there is ratio of direct feature code to code that supports the direct feature code and code that supports the code that supports direct feature code. It's anytime you're anywhere above that first layer on the stack. CHRIS: Yeah, I think Taras nailed it like what's the 'what' versus the 'how.' If you're asked a question that is concerned with the 'what' and you spend more time focused on the 'how,' then you might have a framework. BRANDON: I think people will think of building an application like a recipe. If you think of it in those terms, people think of frameworks as very restrictive but I'm a big fan of Blue Apron, a sponsor of this podcast. Thank you. They pre-select the ingredients and they give you the instructions and you know what to do, you still have to do the effort but you know if you connect these pieces together properly that you're going to wind up having a good experience and then, it gives you a lot of freedom to experiment and be creative beyond that, should you choose to. I think one of the signs that you've done a crummy job is that you're staring down, like Chris Freeman said, you actually starting to restrict your choices like, "I can't actually build you that feature because we don't have time to take on the amount of work necessary to build the support structure, to build you that feature," or if you find yourself writing a test framework. CHRIS: Oh, yeah we did that too. BRANDON: You know, we were real deep in this. There are developers that are like, "I really want to feel like I'm walking into a grocery store and selecting all the things necessary for my recipe," and so it really depends on what the problem actually is. If you're working at a giant megacorp and you have a two-year timeline to deliver something and their goals are not about delivering stuff on a tight turnaround, that's usually a recipe for a software failure anyway but let's say, that you're in the 5% of those types of projects that's going to succeed, that might be a good place where you can say, "What we're trying to do here is so custom and we have such a long lead time and a long leash and such a high level of internal expertise here that we should be shopping in the grocery store and we should be selecting all these things and we should be solving these problems." Basically, when is it time to use a framework? Well, when you don't have 10 times the time you think you do, when you don't have the ability to spend 80% to 90% of your time in the first three to four months of your project, maybe six months, debugging you're glue code in between the different libraries that you're gluing together and then coming back and realizing that you've painted yourself into a corner and you have to re-architect your whole framework, then you could be so proud of this baby, 18 months to two years from now, when you actually have delivered both a framework that took about 70% of your time and an application that took 25% or 30% of your time. CHARLES: Yeah. I think it's important to realize that people think we'll do it and we'll build it as we go but I want to call out right there, you will be spending 80% of your time and you have to be upfront about it. Of this two years, 18 months of it is going to be spent building this framework and six months of it is going to be spent actually writing the feature code and you have to be 75% of your tickets or your issues, whoever track the work, 75% of that has to be dedicated to the framework. BRANDON: If you're going to bake in that kind of overhead purely for the satisfaction of a single or one or two developers that like inventing things, that is literally the worst possible reason you could do that. That is almost like a guaranteed recipe for failure. It has to be for some other business reason like, "We want to be the company that owns this." There has to be business value attached in making that kind of investment. If you can't justify that at the outset, then you should probably just go ahead and lean on an existing framework and join a community of people. CHARLES: Yeah and I think one good litmus test for that is, "Is this a 'what' for which there is currently no 'how?' One of the reasons we're writing BigTest is because for the general JavaScript community, there are a number of acceptance test frameworks out there but the market is very, very limited. When we look to actually acceptance tests, our React application, this thing does not exist. Now, we had experience with something that was very like Ember specific and so, we kind of knew what the 'what' was, we experienced the 'what' but there was no 'how' for our current situation. That's like a place where you might be called upon where makes business sense to actually invest in a framework. I'll tell you another thing too is if you have made the decision to kind of follow the beaten path on the other areas, then when a framework is called for, you have the bandwidth. You've allowed for the buffer, for the margin, for you to write in with that framework, whereas if you're already just by default, maintaining all the glue code in every single thing, then if some unique 'what' comes along, for which there is no 'how,' you're not going to have a bandwidth to tackle it. BRANDON: Yeah. That's a real bad situation to be in. TARAS: There's something else that I find interesting is because there's a certain point, like this two-year mark where everyone's like, "We want to fix this now." I think what is interesting what comes next which is the three years of undoing all the stuff that you made because the biggest challenge, especially in really big projects. When your projects has to borderline into platforms and a platform threshold is when you have a multiple teams working separately to write separate modules that run, maybe in a separate Git repo and maybe, packaged in separate npm package and assembled together. Then what happens at that point, the question arises like how do you actually make this changes in this environment. Answering that question is actually really difficult. I think if you look at frameworks like Ember, Ember has made it their business to figure out exactly how to make this happen and I think they've done it really well but it's a really challenging endeavor, especially in incorporate environments where they don't have an update. You have like upgrades are like a curse. It's like a thing that you don't really want to ever do and because most quite often, they don't have the right testing habits in place to be able to support the change if necessary. I think what a lot of times happens is that the team that made the framework in the first place, they end up trying to maintain a fort but you won't have like 10 people and they only have machetes, you know? All you can do is run around and try to chop down little twigs but at the end of day, the trees is still going to keep growing. I think that's the really challenging part of being two years into a project, where you realize that you actually need something much more comprehensive than initially thought you needed. CHARLES: On that, assuming that you have decided that you are going to make a framework, it's a good business decision for you. Based on the criteria of this discussion, how can you assess whether it's good? Chris, you talked about needing to integrate query params with routing and asynchronous data loading and making sure all of that coordination happened and worked together easily. What's the difference between your framework just missing features kind of having holes in it that can be filled in, versus something that's not good and it's going to cost you lots of money down the road. CHRIS: Yeah. TARAS: One thing, if you look at what makes a good library of any kind, it tends to be like how effectively and how much words to take the address the use cases that you need. The problem is that to build a good framework, you need to understand the use cases. This is what usually happens over time. Two years in, you've actually understood the use cases and now, it's time to change and so, I think if you want to build a good framework, you actually need to understand those use cases quite early on or account for understanding use cases over time and that's a big question -- how do you figure out how to know what you don't know. CHRIS: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think about what you were just saying Charles and Taras like one of the things that I think has a big impact on and what this process looks like is the completeness of vision for what's your project actually is. If you have a very, very clear idea of what the entire product you're building is going to be or, at least what the key money-making feature is going to be and you can understand the ins and outs of that, then I think that's the point where you can look at what you have and say, "Have I created a good or bad framework? Does this framework have the ability to solve this one very important thing that I have to be able to do? If the framework doesn't do it, then I need to build my own but I now know what very important features I need to front load my framework with." I kind of think of it as imagine that you're like Jeremiah Johnson, the Reverend Jeremiah Johnson and you're going to go trekking through the woods for some unknown amount of time and you have no idea yet. You don't actually know where you're going. You don't know what you're going to see. You don't even know what's out there because you haven't done the research or whatever and you need to be prepared for anything, so you bring just a hodgepodge of stuff. If that's you at the beginning of your company or the beginning of your product and yours is kind of like... I don't know, we got to get product market fit and that means that we may have to kind of pivot once or twice or we need to be very flexible, then I would think long and hard before you commit to writing your own framework because you don't even know what framework to build and you might as well take a broad array of tools and use what you need. There will be times where that's frustrating and there won't be exactly the right tool for the job but 80% of the time, it's going to do just fine but if you know you have to do this one very special thing and you know that a framework is going to give you a lot of stuff that you won't need and it doesn't really excel at the one thing you do need, then don't force the framework. There may be time to build your own but just know that you need to go in with a very clear idea of what you're doing before you start building the abstractions that constitute a framework, rather than just like a constellation of libraries. CHARLES: I have a question on that then. Going back to one of the things we were talking about like React plus Redux. Your opinion, Chris that it is not a framework, so the question is does a framework actually exist for React? CHRIS: My guess is that many frameworks exist for React. CHARLES: Is there a public framework? TARAS: There is one called Fusion but it's [inaudible] what you would have imagine. It is essentially Redux and React together conventionalized. They addressed a bunch of concerns around service rendering and such but it does exist. CHRIS: How about Next? Next.js? TARAS: I'm not familiar with its features from a single page application perspective. CHARLES: I think it does have a router. It does bundle with Redux and this is one of the things that when you first started using Redux, it's like, "How do I even get my store to my components?" Yes, I can connect them but there's actually a lot of stuff that you have to do. First, you have to say, "I'm going to put my reducers here and then when I create my store, I'm going to fold all my reducers. If I've got a whole bunch of reducers in my application, I've got to fold them all together. I've got to pass them off to the store. When I create the store, I have to inject the middleware and then, everybody else just imports my store and then, I have to put in a provider and then, I can connect my components." That's actually a lot of stuff that you have to do and I think that, for example, Fusion just says, "Put your reducers here and we'll take care of all that process," and so it makes that decision for you, right? It says, "For state management, you're going to use Redux. For your reducers, they're going to go here. For your actions, they're going to go here." I don't know exactly how it's laid out but I remember reading the ReadMe, it was basically layering conventions over that. That's definitely going into framework territory but that's the only one that I know of, which is really, really odd. TARAS: There's something interesting that's happening also and this goes to what Brandon was saying earlier is that choosing the best in class, there's this 10 things but then, what if one of the best in class stops being the best in class. The fact that the creators of Redux was essentially saying that we needed to basically provide a way to do Flux that was better than 10 different options that were available, so here's Redux. We've created Redux but we don't really think it's ultimately the solution. We need to have something else in React that provides a foundation for us to be able to deliver a better state management than what Redux is, so what happens when one of the best in class is no longer the best in class? The bridge is already standing. There's people walking across the bridge already. How do you replace one of the chains in it? CHRIS: Over the course of six months while you figure out the differences in API between Flux and Redux and all the custom route transition data loading stuff you did with your Ajax library in your state management software that you put in a case statement inside there that you now have to change over. It's easy. It's no big deal. Don't worry about it. BRANDON: Just a simple matter of programming. TARAS: At least 25 years of collective frontend development experience is laughing like hyenas about the simplicity of building a -- BRANDON: Yeah, I'm actually looking at some of the old code that Chris wrote for trying to glue together, Redux Saga. I've been out of the game long enough to not know whether that's been superseded by some new or best in class piece of technology and even then, it was really challenging. This is true for frameworks too, is they don't really optimize for best in class. They optimize, hopefully for best fit for purpose but the world has moved on since Ember launched obviously. A lot of things have changed and it's, at least as difficult to try to keep that up to date with evolving trends and technologies and updates for a core team at a framework level as it is for you, as an engineer on the team. The difference is you get to outsource that work to a core team for a framework. Ember has not done a fantastic job in keeping up with. They've done a good job and they've tried their best but if there were more people working on it or if there was more effort applied to it or if it was a higher priority, you would see Ember being a more up-to-date framework using more modern tools. As a framework author, if you stay too close to the bleeding edge, all you're going to do is change out your build system. You're going to replace a Broccoli with webpack, with Rollup, whatever's after that. What's new in Packer? CHRIS: Parcel? CHARLES: Parcel. BRANDON: Parcel. You should immediately go build your framework with that and have fun. I am excited by the new and interesting stuff that's happening in these ecosystems and I think it's important not to get lulled into the siren song if your goal is to actually ship a piece of software on a timetable or a budget. TARAS: One thing, if it's a red flag, if you think this is easy, if you think your decisions can be made in this isolation without talking to somebody else and actually kind of flashing it out, then you're probably doing something wrong because a lot of these things are not trivial. There's a lot of thought, there's a lot of considerations used to go into decisions that you make, especially when you're creating something that is going to be used by more than a few people. I think that's really one of those things where it's hard to know what you don't know but if you think you know and you haven't done this before, you haven't done this a few times before, you're probably missing some pieces. BRANDON: Yeah, I agree with that. CHRIS: I think one of the things that's really enticing about React and Taras, you just hit on it but I've never felt as clever as when I was writing a React app. If I'm clever, I mean, clever in the same way that I felt really clever when I wrote some unbelievably convoluted Scala one-liner that six months later, neither me nor anyone else could decipher what it meant but at that time, I felt like a god of programming. That's how it felt like, "Well, a lot of the React stuff is addicting." It felt so much fun. It was so much fun until I really had to do something and it mattered for my job and there was a deadline and people were depending on me and I've realized that the clever thing I had done a month later was not the right clever thing but I can see how, if you're like what Taras was saying, where you are at the point where these decisions are easy. These decisions make sense. We're going to be fine and you haven't done it enough to kind of like know where all of the pitfalls are. That cleverness that you feel is fantastic and I can see why it takes two years before you look back and if the cleverness was finally worn off and then, you're just mortified at what you've done. CHARLES: Pride cometh before the fall. CHRIS: Yeah. BRANDON: It's like being a dungeon master in Dungeons and Dragons, where you're like, "Oh, look at this fiendish world." All right, cool. Now, you actually live there though. I have to move into an apartment on Mordor. TARAS: You know what's the funny flipside to that is that coming from Ember world where it's so normal to leverage the work of other clever people, like really smart people who've invested a lot of time to solve a particular problem, is that there's no stronger sense of being dumb than having to write it from scratch in React. That first feeling of like, "I've actually never had to implement this from scratch," and I feel like a bunch of applications before but because I've leaned on for accessibility, I've leaned on something that someone else has done and it worked really well for me and it was perfect. But now, I need to implement autocomplete from scratch in React and I have no support. I'm basically learning as I'm going on this and it's that sense of discomfort that you get from having to do it from scratch and then, comes the euphoria of having to figure it out. But if you figured it out, you figured it out in the last month. You've written it for the first time in the last month and you now understand what all the things that the Ember implementation does for you. It's an interesting psychology of doing this -- CHARLES: Yeah, it gives you a lot of perspective but you have to ask as a business owner, who may or may not be technical and this is the hardest thing for technical people who are business owners is to be able to not see things through a tactical lens. Is what you really want to pay for is to basically give your programmers this kind of a-ha moment of their own shortcomings because that what you want to be buying. BRANDON: Yeah, you want to maximize leverage. Your goal with technology is to maximize leverage. It's like being hired as a chef and you walk in and then you're like, "I'm a terrific chef. I worked in these fancy kitchens in New York and I'm known as a great chef," and they're like, "Okay, cool. Here's some flint and steel and a spear." CHARLES: Go hunt. BRANDON: You're like, "Wait, what?" Yeah, yeah, yeah. Show me what you can do. TARAS: We had a conversation in one of the previous podcast with Michael Jackson and we asked him, "What is the one thing you wish like React community would do more of?" and he's like, "I really wish React community have more conventions." All of this is to kind of say as like, there is a place for frameworks in React world. There's a very strong place for it. The question is how and what it said and how do you actually build it and when do you --? BRANDON: So we need a framework for making framework. TARAS: Getting really meta here. BRANDON: I totally agree with that and that's a great observation and that was actually the point of my talk as well, which is if I could convince people just to use Ember and improve Ember, that would be great because I think it's a really great starting point. But the React community is much larger because it had such a great adoption story. The adoption of Ember was very difficult and the adoption of React was very easy and it expanded to include the scope of full end to end applications in terms of what people thought the problem spaces they were thinking of with React. Ember was built to solve that but it was hard to get into. React was really easy to get into but it's actually hard to build applications with. I would love to see a dedicated subset of the React community, except the idea of shared solutions and the philosophies that made Ember into sort of a powerhouse of value delivery but built out of tools that satisfy the React community and a little more modular and a little more available for people to customize and built in that ecosystem. I'd really love to see that that included all of the main components of what we accept as, "This is an application framework. It handles testing. It handles accessibility. It handles data loading," and it doesn't have to be best in class in every scenario but it does have to be a reasonable bridge across that chasm and have a group of people look at this the same way. I would love to see a collective subset of the React community dedicate themselves to this idea. I don't know if that's too culturally opposed or even orthogonal to what the value system inside the React community. I haven't been able to fish that out but I would really love to see that emerge. this is something I would love to push for and I'd love to see other people jump in and push for as like, "What if 20 of us got together and decided we're all building our applications in similar ways, instead of one person saying, 'I'm going to use --'" Even create React app is kind of a Band-Aid on that, it isn't useful past a certain stage of life. I would love to see a group of people, though, get together that are sort of like-minded like that, the Michael Jacksons and maybe even Dan Abramov or a group of people that shared that set of values or came into React from the Ember community. That's actually one piece of advice I would give to people. You said, "How do you convince this engineer that they've built a bad framework?" Use a decent one. That's the biggest guide. Use a decent one. Build something in Ember and ship it to production and go, "Oh, I get it." If you've used a good framework, you can't go back to rolling a crappy one. Your standards have been ratcheted up. CHRIS: I wholeheartedly agree that you should try something else and Ember is a great option but I don't want to dismiss just like, "React is cool as hell," and there's a lot of stuff in React that's really, really awesome and things that I wish that will show up in Ember and they are starting to show up in Ember but they're taking a while and it'll be nice in there but who knows when that will be but I would encourage even more so is both sides, like Ember folks who are listening to this podcast, if you have never messed around with React because you feel some kind of tribal affiliation that you can't betray, please set that aside and go do something in React because you will learn a lot about why Ember does what it does and you will see a lot of really interesting things that will probably jostle some ideas loose in your brain. The same thing goes for React developers. You, 100% should spend a weekend building something in Ember and nothing about that means that you have to switch or it's going to change the path that you're going on at work but I guarantee you, you will go back to your React application with some new and fair useful perspective that you didn't have before and that's okay. That's great. There's no identity crisis that will come about as a result of that. CHARLES: That is a fantastic advice, Chris. It will only stretch you. CHRIS: Yeah. BRANDON: I think developers have been sold this idea of a competitive landscape by authors of these frameworks because it helps sell the framework. You can build and strengthen a community by leaning into the tribalism that can surround the usage of a tool. The older I've gotten as a person who was deeply tribalistic about Ruby on Rails when I got into it and Ember when I got into it, because I love tribes, I think tribes are awesome and it's a way to make friends but when you really lean into that, the costs are too high and experimenting with other technologies and noticing flaws in your own technology is not only not a betrayal, it's actually critical to your growth as a developer. The more people that do that, like Chris was saying, the better both of those ecosystems will get. CHARLES: Absolutely because having spent as much time in React as I have, I really appreciate the precious things about Ember. It will make you appreciate the things that you hold dear. It will make you appreciate the really, really, really special things about the tool that you're using and at the same time, it will highlight the weaknesses which you can immediately use to feedback and make your tool better. It really is a win-win situation. TARAS: I just want to do a little plug before we close up. I think the feels of working with Ember is actually gone into microstates and we're still getting our things together to make microstates look accessible and usable by everyone but that feeling of pleasure that you get from working with Ember and just things just being there for you, like we really want to reproduce that and make that available in React community and the stuff that we do in microstates is actually really designed for that. CHRIS: Yeah, I see that in BigTest too as well. That's definitely another place where it's like, "These people definitely used to spend time in Ember and they're now in React-land." It's cool to see that stuff getting ported over. CHARLES: Absolutely because it fundamentally changes your taste. Working with an application that doesn't have like a bolted on testing framework is like eating water soup. You just can't enjoy your life. It really is flavored everything that we do. On that note, we can go ahead and wrap up. There actually is some pretty exciting news. We're actually going to be launching a BigTest launcher. Up until this point, you kind of had to roll your own using BigTest for your assertions but using something like Karma to actually launch the browsers and we're actually launching our own launcher. I guess we've written our own launcher and we're going to be pushing it to NDM, not to overload the word launch. You can look for that in the next couple of weeks. There's going to be a CLI that ships with BigTest to help you do even more set up, to make it so that you can just drop BigTest right into your application, whether it's jQuery, React, Ember, you name it. That should be really, really fun. Be looking for that and with that, if anybody has any other remarks... BRANDON: If people are coming through RubyConf this year, I'll be there talking about management stuff. That's my only near-future conference stuff coming up. Hope to see some of the more Ruby-flavored folks out there. CHARLES: All right-y. Definitely, go to every single talk that Brandon ever gives. You won't regret it. I can base that on very dear personal experience. You won't be disappointed. You know, not to put the pressure on or anything like that but you could never put any more pressure on Brandon than he puts on himself. With that, we will say good bye. Bye Chris, bye Brandon. Thank you so much. This is a great conversation. It certainly clarified a lot in my mind -- TARAS: Yes, same here. CHARLES: -- About these problems. With that, we will say goodbye. Thank you for listening The Frontside Podcast. Please get in touch with us at @TheFrontside on Twitter or contact at Frontside.io on email. We do a range of custom services from full stack project development to JavaScript mentoring, to as you go JavaScript help desks kind of stuff. If you need to reach out to an expert, please get in touch. Our podcast as always is produced by the inimitable, Mandy Moore. Thank you very much and we'll see you all next time.

Frontside alum and original podcast host, Brandon Hays, makes a special guest appearance to talk with Charles about the evolution of The Frontside as a company: where it's been, where it's going, and more hopes, dreams, and goals for the future! Transcript CHARLES: Hello everybody. Welcome to The Frontside Podcast Episode 100. Here we are. Episode 100. My name is Charles Lowell. I'm a developer here at The Frontside and I think it's safe to say, your official podcast host. With me to celebrate the 100th episode, he was also here a few episodes ago but also was here on our first episode I believe, is the [inaudible] Hays. Hello Brandon. BRANDON: Hi. CHARLES: Welcome back to the podcast. BRANDON: Actually, are you going to light your trainee badge on fire now in a bucket, in a ceremonial pyre? CHARLES: I live in New Mexico, so I think I'm going to just after this, grab my shotgun and give myself a 21 gun salute. Just in my front yard. BRANDON: There goes old man Lowell again, with the shotgun. CHARLES: I'm just going to [gun shot sounds] in my own honor. BRANDON: I was at the Alamo this weekend, actually. And I don't know if it was just because it was fiesta in San Antonio but they had a demonstration, like a musket firing demonstration where those things are basically little cannons. They're just small cannons. It's very interesting. They're very loud. CHARLES: Yeah. They're small, handheld cannons, yeah. So wait, were you – what is fiesta? Now, as someone who grew up in Central [inaudible], I feel like I ought to know this. BRANDON: I don't know. We found out by accident because we were planning a weekend to go hang out and get drunk on the riverwalk and we took our families down with some friends and then they're like, “Oh, it's fiesta,” which is like a 10-day celebration of the history and establishment of San Antonio – which I did not know is a 300-year-old institution. So, it's like one of the oldest things in this entire western United States. So, it's pretty neat. It's different. It's weird. It's like 90 minutes from Austin. There's nothing in Austin that's older than six months. Every six months we must demolish something and then build a condo skyscraper in its place. So, it's kind of neat to be in a city where it has – walking around the Alamo, I'm realizing, “Wow. Setting aside any of the historical significance of Texas independence or whatever, this is just like a really interesting very old building. This is hundreds of years old in an area where there's nothing that's hundreds of years old.” So yeah, it was pretty cool. It was a good weekend and we got to see muskets being fired. And we saw a doctor gross my kids out by talking about the medicine of the day, in full costume and showing all of the procedures and threatening my kids with amputation. And it was a good time. We all had a good time. My nine-year-old thought it was the coolest damn thing he'd ever seen. CHARLES: Really? Did the have bloody saws and everything? BRANDON: Oh, yeah. CHARLES: Was it like a reenactment of 300-year-old surgery? BRANDON: It wasn't a full reenactment. But it was a graphic description using the tools of the time. CHARLES: Wow. BRANDON: Highly recommend, check out the Alamo. Super fun. CHARLES: That does sound really cool. BRANDON: I did not expect to have a good time and it was a good time. CHARLES: Yeah. Yeah, I know the whole reenactment with the musket firing is fun. And it is, it's actually an incredible building. Although there's been a big kerfuffle about something about how they're going to preserve the lawn. But I haven't really followed that too much. BRANDON: Yeah. Yeah, I don't care about the lawn. I care about – no offense, lawn, if lawn is listening. This is not weird, how Stanley broke our brains with the word ‘lawn'. CHARLES: That's true. BRANDON: Yeah. He broke us real good. CHARLES: Yeah. I can't see a lawn without a beard. BRANDON: So yeah. So, life has been pretty good, man. Let's see. I left Frontside September, October. CHARLES: 2016. BRANDON: 2016. CHARLES: So, it's been months. BRANDON: 18. Yeah, thereabouts, right? So, I assume that nothing happened since then and if I came back to The Frontside now, everything would be exactly as I left it. My posters are still up in my room. My Bon Jovi poster. You left my bed just as I made it, like kind of unmade. Everything is just preserved as a shrine to me. CHARLES: Pretty much. I mean, we did give away the mics to Goodwill. BRANDON: No. CHARLES: We actually did not give away those mics. BRANDON: I never even got to use them. CHARLES: I know. Well, you know part of the problem is we don't even get to use them that much either. It looks really cool and it plays really well, like our podcast studio. But you know, I'm now spending 75% of my time in Corrales, New Mexico. And at any given time, people are either working from home, or working remotely. So, a lot of times the podcast room tragically does not get used. But it looks so cool. People come in there and they're like, “Wow, you guys must be really smart and technical people.” BRANDON: I realize this is probably a rote stereotype at this point, but I am assuming the only reason that you moved is that you are dabbling in the production of meth. CHARLES: Pretty much. BRANDON: It's like, I want to learn a new trade. Programming, it's just – programming, how interesting does it stay honestly for 25 years? CHARLES: Right. Yeah, and you know, we've got some good techniques. Continuous integration, deployment, things like that. Test-first. These are things that can be applied to different verticals. And I was looking… BRANDON: [Laughs] We ship meth to production on the first day. CHARLES: Right. [Laughter] Exactly. So, I figured it was a market ripe for disruption. BRANDON: [Laughs] It's probably true. So yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. You all kind of scattered to the four winds in some ways. You have Elrich in Boston and you're in New Mexico most of the time. CHARLES: Joe is in [inaudible]. BRANDON: Oh yeah, Joe moved to New York. CHARLES: Yup. And honestly, the traffic is so bad in Austin that I'd say 50% of the time, people stay home rather than drive into our centrally-located office. So, that's actually something that we're struggling with right now because the bulk of the team is still in Austin. But the office space is underutilized. Our team size now, we have eight engineers. And five of them are in Austin. Our other staff is also in Austin. So, what do we do with the office? It's a big question. BRANDON: And that's quite a cultural change, too. Because when I was there, we would tell people, “We want to be able to do remote someday. But we just don't know how to get into that culture to change the way that we do our meetings and change the way that we do standups and coordination and communication.” I didn't feel like we had the tooling at the time. So, something – I knew that at some point there would be probably a forcing function to basically catalyze something to allow that to work. And I'm curious to know what that process was like there. CHARLES: I wish I could say that there was a process other than experiencing the force of the forcing function and then being forced into it and then just kind of dealing with it. I have not taken a poll of the other remote employees of which now I am one, at least for the time being. So, I don't want to speak for them. But it was less painful than you might imagine. And the reason is because – and it's one of those things you actually gave me this analogy back, probably three or four years ago and I love it – is sometimes you're hanging off of a precipice and you don't realize that you're toes are two inches off the ground. And then all you can perceive is the precipice and you feel the weight of your own body concentrated on your fingers gripped to the ledge. And you don't focus on the fact that you're actually, the fall is only two inches long. And that's kind of what we experience with the remote culture. Now, I don't want to say we were Pollyanna about it and didn't realize that this was the step that we were taking and making sure to check in with the remote employees. But one of the things is our communication styles were already very asynchronous both for our client work, for our internal work, using mostly Slack and GitHub pull requests and issues – certainly for the development portion, very little changed. What we didn't realize is that because of our involvement in open source, we were already acclimated to a distributed work style. We just didn't really realize it. We didn't have to change much. I think where we have a lot more work to do is kind of integrating people socially and making sure that conversations don't happen that aren't available for other people to consume asynchronously. So, if you're having some architecture problem and you're sitting next to somebody, you'll take that avenue rather than let it play out in chat or over email. And there is definitely a certain portion of that, but I think we still do a lot of pair programming. That's still our major mode. I'd say 75% of our code gets written as people collaborating. And so, while those in-office discussions do happen, the ramifications circulate rather quickly. And most of those are in the context of people pairing inside the office. Does that make sense? BRANDON: Mmhmm. CHARLES: So, I don't think the office and the physical space were as much of a bottleneck as we thought they might be. And so, because of the – a lot of people did work from home already because of the traffic. And we were involved in open source. And our communication with our clients is usually – we don't currently have any clients in Austin. So, that's all to say that the transition was actually quite natural. And I think there's some strong analogies between collaborating in open source and having a remote culture in your office. I think what we need to get better about is making sure that we get the team together at least twice a year, everybody together. Making sure that people are able to understand their priorities and get to circulate around and get introduced to a bunch of different people. And yeah, I don't know. There's definitely a lot of work to be done on the non-development front. BRANDON: It's interesting. The agile approach to things is to try something. I'm starting to think the agile and the scientific method are related where it's like, “Here's a hypothesis. Here's the experiment. Here's what we think we want to learn,” and then you learn it and you take the next step based on that information. And that failure is an option. I think that's the point of agile, is to make failure safe because it's small and you're guaranteed to learn from it. Like, the point is to learn. And so, I really, I'm starting to think that those are just basically the same thing. That agile is like the application of the scientific method to product development. And it sounds like you're being agile or experimental about your work. And the trick is, like any scientific discovery, the trick is in coming back around to it and analyzing it and deciding whether this was successful or a failure based on feedback and finding what the measurement was that you were trying to improve. So, the lesson there was, “Oh, people become disconnected from each other. We need to gather everybody for an all-hands periodically.” We didn't use to have to do that because all-hands was every week, at least. CHARLES: Right. Yeah, everybody was constantly – there was a constant chatter and you could just kind of, the context was just all sitting at that one table, in that one room on 38th Street. And all you needed to do was dip your ear into that pool of context and you're set. Whereas that's just not an option right now. So yeah. I think the danger with agile is not being concentrated in your experimentation. I think what gave us our fear about saying we're going to do remote work – because I remember we always talked about it. We danced around the issue – was are we going to lose who we are? We have a set of way that we do things. And there is power in kind of sticking to the framework of the way that you do things. Because you understand it and you know it. So, when you're pushing and you're experimenting, being able to say, “We're going to – push and we're going to focus on this one area and we're going to iterate on it and we're going to keep everything else static,” it's going to be the wall that we can walk along. But we are going to push in this area. And so, I think the dangers of you doing that in all the areas of your business or all the areas of your project, you're iterating and refining, nothing ever gets done. And so, it's kind of like once you get to some ground that's solid, when you do start iterating it, you start introducing instability. So, when you go remote you have to start thinking about remote work, whereas we didn't have to think about that before. We were essentially, the feature of saying that we were a one-office company and an on-site company is we didn't have to think about that problem. BRANDON: One thing that you were just taking about is this idea of concentrating so that your experiments are happening one or two or maybe three at a time instead of trying to run five experiments at a time. And yeah, there's another danger I think in agile of seeking local optimization where you're basically like – it's like taking a bacteria and running it through many, many, many iterations that's targeting one thing and it mutates into this weird thing that only does this one thing. Or a dog breed that the whole – did you see that, I don't know where this came from but there was some scientific findings that there was a dog that was bred in ancient prehistoric times that was bred to turn a spit to roast meat over. So, they bread a dog that the whole point of this dog was to turn a spit so that people could roast meat and go to sleep and let their dog serve it, cook for them I guess? CHARLES: Wow. BRANDON: That's pretty impressive. CHARLES: I would say like their dystopia is in the past. Or certainly canine dystopias. I guess we live in a canine dystopia. BRANDON: Not in my house. CHARLES: Not at your house. BRANDON: This place is known as a canine paradise. So yeah, I think that's a really interesting point though, that limiting the number of concurrent experiments so that you can actually respond to them in a meaningful way instead of just being like, “Wow, we learned a bunch of stuff we're doing wrong. Anyway, back to the grind.” CHARLES: [Laughs] Yeah. BRANDON: Back to sucking at everything. CHARLES: Right, right. BRANDON: That kind of feeds into a lesson that I have learned very, very, very recently in the interview process for looking for my first real job in over a decade. And that process is very humbling. And one of the humbling experiences was being rejected for a job from a very notable larger former startup here in Austin. And their interview process is really buttoned up. I got really deep into the interview process and at the end of it they're like, “Oh, you're not technical enough.” And it was really, it was like, I don't know. It was hard for me to process at the time but it's super easy now to look back and go, “Oh, I was definitely not a fit for that type of job if being able to write JavaScript on a whiteboard without the aid of Google to solve problems and refactor code is like a fundamental part of what is valued in a manager there.” That's just not going to be me. But one thing I – and it wasn't a colossal waste of time. There was a ton of time and energy I invested into that specific process, but I actually derived a ton of value out of it. Because every person I met there was focused on the same thing: their culture of making experimentation inexpensive so that everything there is framed in terms of an experiment. What's the experiment here? What's the hypothesis? What's the expected outcome? How soon can we get to a place where we can validate that outcome? So, it's kind of like everything is really lean. And yes, it does – like I asked, “What's the dark side of that?” and it can lead to optimizing for a local maximum. So, you have to pause every once in a while and reflect at a larger scale. But it changed my attitude about a lot of stuff. I tend to walk around fearing failure. That's more my speed. I'm afraid of failing because failure can be catastrophic. But that's because I take big swings at stuff. When I go give a conference talk, it better be the best conference talk of my life. When somebody's like, “Oh, that was the best conference talk I have ever seen,” I'm like, “Ah. I'm so glad you said that because if you'd said literally anything else I would have collapsed internally.” You know? The stakes are so high for everything. And making it safe for yourself to fail by treating things like an experiment and working with my teammates. And so, two or three scenarios over the phone in a week when I was managing the team at my last company, somebody would bring something to me and I'm like, I instantly went to all the reasons this probably won't work. “Here's the problem with this.” And I thought, and I immediately turn around and went, “Wait a minute. Bring me a hypothesis and the experiment and how we can experiment with this thing.” And he's like, “Well, we could try this next week and we'll know whether or not this is a good idea.” And we tried it the next week. It was like organizing an architecture team because we were waiting to hire an architect. And the results were mixed for reasons I won't get too deep into. But the fact was, it gave us the freedom to try things. And I'm trying to carry that spirit around with me now. It's been really eye-opening. So, completely like, just a 4% alteration in the way that I think about problems, but it has the ability to dramatically alter the trajectory of how I solve things in the future. CHARLES: So, do you include now inside the planning process experiments? Like, a certain number. BRANDON: Absolutely. CHARLES: So, the typical “enterprise” development is we have our features, we're going to do them in this order because they're this priority. And then agile comes along and it's like, “You need to take these things and you need to break them up into small chunks so that they can be accomplished in small time slices,” so that you don't basically bark up wrong trees. Or explore [inaudible]. BRANDON: Yeah, but that's almost like a stupider version of waterfall. CHARLES: But exactly. That's exactly my point. Whereas the problem is, there's no avenue for experimentation in there. Rather than saying the entire team is marching in this one direction that meanders around and focuses in on the local maximum, which hopefully is relative to the market landscape is the absolute maximum, saying, “We're actually going to be marching in one major direction but we're going to be sending out scouts at all points.” If you were actually – I've actually been reading a lot of ancient military history. And It's just insane that an army, or even a detachment, would go all in one clump. They're constantly sending out people. Information is really, really, really important. BRANDON: That's an extremely, extremely good point. I've actually – it's so funny, because I've used a very similar description where we are trying to chart a course to this ocean of opportunity somewhere. And we can't just send the whole team in a direction hoping that the ocean is in that direction. We have to have our Lewis and Clark. Somebody has to be the cartographer. Somebody has to be the explorer. And that means that there has to be a little bit more freedom for those explorers. I don't yet know how to translate that into software terms. I just know that that's a collaboration usually at most companies between product and development. That product is doing some of the exploring of the space and then development is doing some of the exploring of the technical capabilities and possibilities there. CHARLES: So, you see it. What's interesting is you see it in product planning, kind of in the large, with the waterfall. You see it in huge organizations. They have a research and development department. And I wonder if agile kind of saw the Balkanization of your feature set into very small component parts. Can you take the exact same principle and Balkanize your research and development and integrate it into micro-iterations? We have this R&D but we're going to integrate it into our day-to-day and week-to-week process. BRANDON: I think that is a really noble goal and I think I see some people making progress toward that. The company I interviewed with does it almost to a pathological degree where there is a point of diminishing returns where you're sort of bound to this process of experimentation. And at a certain point you can only achieve incremental results. CHARLES: Some of these problems, you just need to be able to think about them for a long, long time. I actually didn't read, I actually didn't see the talk. But everything from the title, Rich Hickey's ‘Hammock Driven Development', just that title resonated with me so much. I was like, “Yes,” because sometimes you just need to be in the hammock for six hours at a time. Or in the shower. Or hiking. Or doing whatever it is that you need to do to put yourself in a zen state where you're just, your brain is slowly turning its wheels. And it can follow every lead to its conclusion without any interruption. And sometimes that process can take hours. Sometimes it needs to take weeks. BRANDON: Right. I want to kind of pivot on that. Because that's actually one of the biggest things that I've learned in the intervening time since leaving Frontside, which is creating space instead of trying to maximize – one thing that I did when I was at Frontside and then did again at my next place and I'm realizing is really has long-term negative implications is cram as much into a work day, as much output out as possible. I'm very output-oriented. I want to jam as much into my day as possible. I want to jam as much software out the door as possible. And people describe working at Frontside while I was there as one of the most intense work experiences they'd ever had. Literally, I can project that, literally just from my own intensity of trying to cram all that stuff. And providing that space for developers to ruminate on hard problems, on some of the harder problems they encounter, providing space for managers, I've learned that a big chunk of what it is to be a manager is to be available. And so, I actually want to write a sign – I was on the fence about doing this but I think I'm actually doing to do this – I have an office and I'm going to write a sign and put it up on the door that says, “If I look busy, interrupt me and remind me I'm not doing this right.” So, creating the space to ruminate or to be available for discussion, people that protect their breathing room sometimes are made fun of, especially in American corporate culture. I walked in and they were just reading a newspaper. What the heck are you doing at work if you're just going to read a newspaper? Like no, this is actually really important time. CHARLES: I think it's, yeah, it's something that I think about a lot. And I know I've shared this analogy with you before. I don't know if I've done it on the podcast. But I saw and I can't take credit for it. I actually saw it at DevOpsDays I think in 2013. There was a woman giving a talk and she was just talking about managing developers. But one of the things that she was saying was that if you looked at a microservices architecture or you looked at just even your operating system, and if your CPU was constantly pegged, you were squeezing out 100% of every time slice, instructions were just flowing through that, you're going to have a very unhealthy, very brittle, very prone to failure software system. If our microservices were not available to actually service requests, and service excess requests, and service spikes of requests, then something is fundamentally wrong. BRANDON: I want to add to that a little bit, because the thing that I noticed in managing a team where I received a ton of pressure to peg everybody out at 100% – and it jived with my philosophy at the time of, “Hey, I'm 100% guy. Everybody I work with is 100% type people. And then, let's peg everybody at 100%. This is a startup. Let's get everything going,” and I realized very, very quickly that if you don't preserve a little buffer, 20% buffer in that level of intensity, there is no ability to share resources. Everything is now a silo. So, if you're going to peg all your CPUs out, part of that thrashing is that there's no time for people to share things with each other. And people become very protective over their little silo all of a sudden. And it causes us – it's actually like the first stage of a catastrophic cultural collapse if everybody's pegged out at 100%. And literally, just dialing down the intensity is often the only thing that's necessary to get people to feel comfortable sharing some of their time with each other. You do a really good job of that with the lunch and learns. You mentioned that y'all are doing better thoughtful lunch and learns and stuff like that. It's one of those forcing ways that you can force that and say, “Hold on. Stop the development and do some stuff where you're actually sharing things with your teammates.” CHARLES: Yeah. And we do that. My biggest concern is that that actually increases the intensity. So, one of the things we've done is we used to actually be very formal about our lunch and learns. It's like, “We've got to generate content and put it out on the web so that people can see us.” We backed away from saying – we're not going to do them as often and make sure that people can actually do them. Yeah, making sure that people don't feel overwhelmed by, “I've got a lunch and learn coming up.” The point is to share something that you're passionate about and maybe introduce some really cool ideas to ferment in people's head. Rather, that's kind of the goal. There are certain things that we do very much feel interested in generating content. But I think, we've kind of been dancing around the ideas of distributed computing and IoT and what are some of the others? BRANDON: If you say blockchain, I'm going to just virtually punch you in the face. CHARLES: [Laughs] I actually didn't. Did I say blockchain? BRANDON: No. I just was waiting for you to say it. CHARLES: Okay, no. I haven't. Well, because that's – but it is distributed computing in Web 3.0, right? These problems – and we're actually going to be podcasting about this next, so in two weeks you can tune in to listen to us talk about blockchain but in the context of distributed computing – and one of the things that we're seeing is now we're starting to pay the price of outsourcing all of our lives to these central services like Facebook and Google and Amazon. And I think now they're starting to build a credible and more mainstream movement to wrestle back that control and say, “What would it mean to have software as a service that wasn't actually dependent on some central thing?” What would it look like to have Slack where it's Slack that looked like email? Where everybody had their own email server, maybe not a bad example. But you've got an email at Gmail or Microsoft or Yahoo or your company-run that's big enough its running its own Outlook client or something like that. Email is actually a really great example. Now probably people are going to crucify me for saying this, but I think it's actually a good example of a distributed system that's worked well. I own all of my email. All the messages that you send to me, I own, and all the messages I send to you, I also own. But you also own the messages that I send to you. Information is duplicated. And it's fine. If I send you an image, yes it's on your hard drive or it's on your Google Drive. You send a message to me, it's got an attachment, I also have that attachment. But the point is that we can each own our email and we each own our email service. And we can change it up. That's not possible with Slack. That's not possible with Facebook. That's not possible with all these other sharing platforms. All of them are controlled by this one thing. And so, I think that that's something that we've been exposed to through the lunch and learns and I'm actually certainly very excited about it. It's not something that we're going to be investing in immediately. We're kind of dancing around that idea. But that's something that's come out of that. So yeah, we've kind of refocused it on, what is something that you feel good about? But back to the original point, I think that this is something that applies on all fronts. If you have a business where you can't actually take opportunities because you don't actually have people – so there's maxing out at the individual level, filling up people's workspace with client work or filling it up with what have you or having them work nights and weekends. There's individual maxing out but then there's like maxing out of your business. So, if you have – we're a consultancy – if you have 100% utilization or you're shooting for 100% utilization, that everybody is placed on a project, that is a brittle and unsustainable system. BRANDON: I wish you would have told me that 18 months before I left there. There were like two years where we were at 100% for two solid years. CHARLES: Yeah, yeah. We're still at 100%. BRANDON: Yeah. I wonder what would have happened if we'd had a little, if we had figured out how to build in space. CHARLES: Part of the problem – so, here's the thing though. Space, nice space costs nice money. BRANDON: Yeah. CHARLES: And so, that's the thing, is you have to charge more. And you have to say, “We are going to be more expensive than other people.” You have to be dedicated to be at the forefront of a cultural battle, essentially. In the same way that people were with testing, where it was very [controversial]. BRANDON: Yeah. You were with CI. CI is a given now, right? CI is… CHARLES: Yeah, like [inaudible]. BRANDON: This idea was semi-revolutionary when you and I were talking about this in 2012, 2013, that we ship to production on the first day. We don't even start building software until the CI system is set up. The first thing we do is set up Jenkins and tests and get everything, the pipeline working. And now, that's just what people do. By and large, that's how software is expected to be built. And the tooling has really come up around that. But that was an expensive way to sell software five years ago, that, “Hey, this is going to cost more than bringing in Cowboy Bob and having them come jam in your console for 40 days and ship a bunch of stuff that then will most likely collapse and you won't know about it and Cowboy Bob has ridden off into Juarez, Mexico.” CHARLES: Right, with his saddlebag stuffed with your cash. BRANDON: Yup. CHARLES: Yeah, no. So, you have to – the problem is, you know when you pick these battles, you need to be prepared to fight the war of attrition of they're not going to be able to perceive the value for six months, a year, right? You're going to have to ask your clients to bet on this strategy. And it's a bet. And you're going to have to say, “It's going to pay off in six months. It's going to pay off in a year.” And you're really going to start raking in like five years. That's when… BRANDON: Yeah. Try making that pitch to a startup founder that is borderline, that is on the verge of an anxiety attack, and you can kind of just figure out what my last year was like. And the… CHARLES: So, that's one of the reasons we don't really work with startups anymore. They have a five-year plan, but not really. BRANDON: Yeah. CHARLES: They're fighting for their survival. And they're fighting for the opportunity to have a legitimate five-year plan. And so, in that sense, it's maybe not a good fit for the way that we develop software, because you either need an extraordinarily prescient founder who has been through this before, knows the true costs of software development, and is pretty well-funded so that they can actually – because we're more expensive upfront, like a lot more expensive upfront and so sometimes they flat out don't even have the cash. And that's something that you can make a quick, “It's not a good fit,” but then there also needs to be this understanding and an acknowledgment that what you're really shooting for is your five-year dividend. BRANDON: Yeah. It is really interesting, the turn that occurs when a company finds product/market fit. By then it's too late to fix the problems. So, it's really tricky to find the balance of: how much energy do you put into the success case for a company before they have product/market fit? How much time and energy do you invest in betting that this is going to be successful versus betting that if it is successful, hopefully we'll have the time, money, and resources to redo a bunch of the things that we are going to have to apologize for later? And I think that's what makes… CHARLES: Right. Like, where do those two lines cross on that graph? BRANDON: Yeah. Because you and I have both seen startups completely sunk by somebody who was overly focused on building a scaleable architecture in a company pre-product/market fit. That is a common story where an engineer that doesn't understand the business value of what they're doing and only focused on “quality” will absolutely torpedo, they'll chew up your first million and a half of funding and leave the place in just a smoldering pile of ashes at the end. So, it is tricky. It's totally a difficult thing. But I think coming back to your point of being sort of a vanguard of cultural, the tip of the spear on somebody's cultural changes – DevOps would be one. People that were really investing in DevOps culture in 2010, 2012 saying, “Hey, this, automation, is the future of how software gets shipped, maintained, observed, supported.” And so, now it sounds like, so what is your big bet for the future? CHARLES: Boy. That's a great question. There are two bets. One you're going to like, one you're going to vomit. BRANDON: [Laughs] CHARLES: But that's okay. BRANDON: Yeah. I don't work for you. CHARLES: You need to serve, what is it? You need to serve the spiny urchin with the yellow tail. BRANDON: Is that a Sonic the Hedgehog reference? CHARLES: It's just a sushi reference. BRANDON: Oh, okay. CHARLES: Some people don't like urchin. Or maybe they don't like eggs. What it like, the roe that come with sushi. But they're on the same plate. So, I would say the first one that I've been thinking about a lot is optimizing for capacity and being able to handle spikes and not being at 100% both for people and for utilization. I think that's something that is – I don't see how you could have a healthy software development process if people are completely spiked on delivering, heads down delivering features for product. That is something that I'm betting on. Essentially, you could call it the 25% time but it's really about having excess capacity to exploit opportunities as they arise. And then being protective of that excess capacity. Because you can exploit an opportunity. Your CPU has a spike load up to 100%. But then make sure you [inaudible] down to 50% at some point, or 75%. And so, I would very much like to see Frontside have a bench where people can rotate out and they're working on different stuff that are not even client-related. They can recharge their creative tanks. They're not going to be idle. BRANDON: Yeah, I've really come around on – and I really hated this at the time – but I've actually come around to the thoughtbot style of working on a product where – because owning and managing a product and developing it as a side quest, the goal is not necessarily for that product to catch fire and become the world's next big thing and to replace your consulting revenue. The goal is to give people a sense of – think about all the stuff that you've learned in your side projects that you went back and brought to your work. And some of my biggest gains as a developer have come from having a side gig of some kind, some side project that that's how I learned Ember. That changed my life. And I would never have gotten to try it if I was waiting for somebody at work to tell me it was okay to do it. So, it's about taking that permission back for yourself and giving yourself permission to try stuff. So, it could be something like that, or it could be the content stuff that y'all do. Or it could be conference talks. It could be whatever. But the goal isn't necessarily to produce things that have a direct return. It is to create the space to allow people to flex some muscles of creativity that you may not get in your day-to-day work. And that's very difficult to offer to people in any company. Now having explored startups and larger companies, but I would say especially in a consultancy where the exchange rate is dollars for days. It's sort of like when I was freelancing. I could feel every vacation I took draining both real money and opportunity money out of my bank account. That's such a hard, difficult thing to do. And so, you actually have to create the budget ahead of time and say, “This budget is allocated to these things and it's already spent.” Anyway, that's really tough to do. CHARLES: It is hard. BRANDON: If you can exercise the discipline necessary to do that and create the environment for that, I would say you're ahead of 90% of companies in the industry. CHARLES: Yeah. Yeah, so that's something I definitely want to bet on, because I think that's where the best things come from. BRANDON: Okay. So, what's the thing I'm going to hate? CHARLES: Functional programming. BRANDON: Oh, Charles. Okay, I have to stop you. Do you know what I'm doing? Did I tell you this yet? That I am participating. When I told them this, I was like, “Charles is going to have a field day with this,” but I am participating in a Haskell study group. CHARLES: No way. BRANDON: And I'm like four exercises into this thing. I have to do four more for next week. And I'm like, “This is bizarrely easy, actually,” after as much JavaScript as you and I did in sort of a functional style and then learning Elixir. And I was like, “Wait a minute. The case statement is, Elixir just stole Haskell's case statements.” So like, so far I'm not finding functional programming to be onerous. Or anyway, but we'll see when we get to the static typing. But so far, I'm not getting any of that in the earlier lessons of the book. CHARLES: Yeah, the static typing. But the thing is, you can do – it's not 100% necessary. It isn't in Haskell, for sure. But I'm surprised. What inspired you? BRANDON: We have an architect at the office that was like, “Hey, I want to do sort of a functional programming book club.” So, we have a Slack group for FP study group. CHARLES: Are you doing ‘Haskell: From First Principles'? BRANDON: No. That one was a little actually intimidating. CHARLES: Really? BRANDON: Yeah. It gets into the lingo a little early. And we're doing one called ‘Get Programming with Haskell' that is a little more – ‘Haskell: From First Principles' is kind of math-oriented. So, for somebody with a math background but not necessarily a programming background, it's perfect. But for somebody with a programming background that is just trying to understand functional programming principles using Haskell, ‘Get Programming with Haskell' is actually a really great option. CHARLES: Okay. Actually, I have not heard of that one. BRANDON: The stuff that I'm looking at looks just like Elixir. So, it's early. But it's very comfortable so far. CHARLES: Yeah. So, this is the thing. It's all a matter of messaging and marketing. Because I really feel – so, it is like there are a lot of behaviors that you see sometimes in currently entrenched functional programming communities that I think are, well I think they're objectively repulsive. But I think they're also pragmatically repulsive and that they repulse potential community members. But I think a lot of it too is people talk about these things that are, they use abstruse terminology. And they're kind of chattering back and it's very jargon-oriented. And there's just – people operate with a different set of concrete things. So, when you and I are talking, for example we might talk about a Rails controller and that's a very concrete thing. You know exactly what I'm talking about. It's something that you have held in your hand, literally. Remember when we got that Rails codebase that came as a thumb drive? BRANDON: Yes I do. CHARLES: But the point is you knew that this had a Rails codebase on it. There were any number of controllers. And when I say controller to you, a controller is an abstraction, but not really. Once you work with an abstraction long enough, it becomes concrete. And so, part of the problem is just a mismatch in language where people are talking in their world about concrete things, things that you can touch and you can feel and you can exchange and they're very relatable. But from another person's perspective, they're talking about something that's totally abstract and totally opaque and totally what have you. And so, I feel like yeah there's a huge mismatch there. And that's been one of the big bets. The other big bet that I'm making is on this trying to make what is currently abstract to JavaScript and Ruby developers be concrete. And I think that we're going to see type classes like functor and monoid and semigroup and all these things, they're abstract to you now, become concrete over the next five years. And so, that's something that I'm betting on. BRANDON: Check out this – and I know that you have a good relationship with the people that did the other book, but it really does tend to come from more of a mathematical background. And this one actually does speak to people with JavaScript, Ruby, Python experience. Like, “Hey, here is how you will perceive these things.” And so, it's much more approachable. I'm still in the first unit of the book. But having sort of tasted it a little bit, it's like, “Wait a minute. This is actually extremely familiar and not super intimidating.” CHARLES: Exactly. And that was kind of – so, I read the other book. And I think I was also aided by the fact that I tried to learn Haskell probably for five times in the past. And so, I also had the benefit of jumping against the wall with the velcro suit and bouncing off four times. And fifth time, it stuck. So, I had just temerity on my side and a general feeling. But that's definitely – the lesson that I actually came away from reading that book was like, “Oh, there's a mismatch in concrete concepts.” It's using concrete concepts that are concrete to people with a CS background or mathematics background, or people who are brand new. Honestly, people who are brand new to programming who don't actually have JavaScript or Elixir or Ruby or any other thing to lean on, I think that the First Principles book is actually pretty decent for them, too. Because they don't have anything to compare to. BRANDON: They don't have anything to unlearn. CHARLES: Yeah, they don't have anything to unlearn whereas one of the things I took away was I was like, “Oh, man. I'm using semigroups all the time. This is something that I do constantly.” When I'm coding, I might do it eight times in a day. I just didn't have a name for it. BRANDON: Right. They're like design patterns, just at a micro level. CHARLES: Yes, micro-design patterns. Yeah, it's like a RESTful architecture for your code. In REST you only get five verbs. There's five methods, man. That's all you got. BRANDON: Okay, so those are two bets. And I want to cover one more thing because I know we're super overtime. But the last thing I want to be able to say about talking about what we've learned since I left Frontside but I want to put a bow on that. So, the two things that you're betting heavily on are functional programming as a basis for solid architectures in the future, like the work that you all are doing. And… CHARLES: I would also like to say, and this is something – let me just add one more thought. What I don't understand, and this is in no way like, I don't understand people who do the, “Saying goodbye to framework X.” That's not me with object-oriented programming. BRANDON: Often abstractions are like oversimplifications but they're really useful, sort of like Rich Hickey's Simple versus Easy. Like, “Hey, there's a lot of promise with that metaphor. It's a leaky abstraction but it's a useful abstraction.” And Gary Bernhardt's ‘Functional Core, Imperative Shell' is a leaky abstraction but it's a useful abstraction. If people haven't seen or experienced that, it's pretty good. The subtlety is that these are tools that are suited to certain situations a little better. And those same situations can exist in the same codebase, can exist in the same program. CHARLES: Yeah. I still, I love Ruby. I adore it. And in some ways, I've been researching functional programming and it's been going on for the last four years. So many times, people are like, “Oh, I just can't stand this tool anymore.” And I'm like, “Man, I still love Java.” I don't understand how learning to love something decreases your love for something else. BRANDON: That happens the first two times that you fall in love, is that you feel like you have the old thing less in order to love the new thing. And then you start realizing, “No, you are allowed to fall in love with new things without falling out of love with the old things.” I would almost use that as an interview question. Is there some way to use that as a way to gauge somebody's actual real concrete maturity as a developer? Because that is a mark of maturity. CHARLES: Yeah. I mean, you could say, “What's some tool that you no longer use that still informs your day-to-day routine?” BRANDON: Yeah. I guarantee you, people that were doing Smalltalk in the 80s think about it all the time. CHARLES: [Laughs] Yup. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. BRANDON: Alright. So, I want to cover one last thing. CHARLES: It's part of growing, right? If you're going to grow as a developer, you can't be shrinking at the same time as you're growing. Otherwise, you're like the same size, just in a different place. BRANDON: However, you don't get any Medium think piece points. Nobody does the one clap, two clap, forty, for blog posts that are like, “Why I'm still using some programming language but using one a little more than I used to use and this one a little less.” CHARLES: [Laughs] Zero claps. BRANDON: Yeah, zero claps on that think piece. I just want to cover one last thing before we wrap this up, and it is the fact that Frontside, the biggest gift that Frontside gave me was the mission for the next 20 years of my career. I think it could change, but I'm pretty confident about this, at this point. Being approximately 20 years into my career, I feel like I kind of have a feeling for what the next 20 years is about. And the Frontside really drilled that into me and helped me focus it and helped me dial it in. And it is this idea that there is an incoming generation of programmer that thinks about things differently than the previous generation in a pretty radical way. Because the previous generation all came out of the same schools. They all look the same. They all have a similar shared set of values in general. They created the Sil- – you know, I'm not actually going to be overly critical of the Silicon Valley culture that exists now. It is a result of the type of people that came out at the time that value innovation over almost anything else. People talk about ripe for disruption. The fact is, that has been an engine of economic growth and progress for society in a lot of ways that has a lot of costs that weren't factored in by a bunch of people who all thought the same way. And now, with people coming through code schools and people coming from different backgrounds and people coming from different environments, they're looking at programming and software as either an economic opportunity or something they didn't see that they could possibly do. Those doors were not open to that group of people before. There is a natural influx of people but many of them are bouncing out because they're not finding that group of people, they don't have a shared enough set of values that the people that are new are coming in and finding job opportunities, finding promotions, finding leadership positions. And so, I know now that my mission over the next 20 years of my career is to create those opportunities for people that have different backgrounds from me and different experiences. The career tracks, the promotions, endorsing and supporting and kind of sponsoring this incoming group of freshmen into our industry that come from different places, different backgrounds, different problems that they care about solving. They want to figure out how to solve the Flint Michigan water crisis instead of delivering socks to people in Silicon Valley, you know? So, I feel like we're at the beginning of a seed change in the value system potentially of our entire industry. But that's going to require training up the next generation of technical leadership. And I felt like the best thing I could do right now is learn to be a better manager, because I really like that job. And it provides the opportunity to find, hire, sponsor, promote and encourage those people to move into their own leadership positions. There are lots of other things that a person, you could be a VC and care about that stuff. You could have lots of different positions and put yourself in a position to do that. You could be a consultancy owner. You know what I mean? There are jobs that you can do that you can accomplish that goal. But it gives me such a sense of direction that when I'm looking for a job, I was looking for a home for that mission rather than just the thing that I felt like doing. Like okay, this job is important to me because I need it to house me and this mission so that I can support my family but have enough emotional overhead to participate in community stuff, but enough ability to lead within an organization, enough influence to actually push that agenda. So that the next generation of people are making better companies. So anyway, all of that came out of my time at Frontside where you and I sat around talking about: how do we build a place that is like a monastery? These were your words. You remember this? We want a monastery for code where people can just focus on becoming better developers. And underneath that though was the sense that this was a place of opportunity for people that might go somewhere else and stagnate as a developer. This will be a place to accelerate them. And so, that kind of spun me out and accelerated me into my mission. So anyway, I just wanted to point out that that was like, with a bullet, is the most important thing that came out for me in my time at Frontside, was that it clarified for me what I was trying to accomplish with the next couple of decades of my career. CHARLES: Wow. Well, that's fantastic. You definitely did a lot of that both here at Frontside and I mean you're continuing to do that. I definitely want to see more public speaking from you. Maybe some [inaudible] perfect. [Inaudible] at EmberConf was actually fantastic. But I mean, you're also able to help people find their mission, too. Like the talks you have at Keep Ruby Weird and even really, the first talk you gave at LoneStarRuby about moving Ember. It's always, how do I adapt what I'm feeling to my overall mission and then relate that back to technology? Man, I just can't wait. I can't wait. When are you going to hit the road again? BRANDON: I think this is the year. I'm going to start thinking about this stuff. I'm looking at the stuff that I wanted to talk about on this podcast and I was like, “Oh no, wait. That's like a dozen podcasts.” Like, no. Absolutely not. Not possible. I will say, I miss so much, this time that I spend with you. I don't want to let it go. I really miss working with you. I really miss having these conversations whenever I want. This has been a very, very special privilege for me to be able to do this with you today. And congratulations on Frontside continuing to thrive and grow and become more of its own entity and more of its own special flavor. And it makes me really happy to see the people coming out of there, that it's still doing its mission of making great software by making great developers. It makes me real happy. CHARLES: Yeah, yeah. Hopefully we can keep on keeping on. I do miss working with you. I miss the conversations that we would have in the kitchen which are basically an extension of this podcast. But I also, man, I really, really, really, really like working with the group of people that are here today. I've just seen them producing just some absolutely amazing things. And honestly, there's a selfish aspect to it, too. I get stimulated. My own thinking and learning is stimulated by the people that I work with. And like I said, the whole side note we had about distributed systems and IoT and just a constant ferment of things. So, I still really, really, really enjoy it. BRANDON: That makes me happy. CHARLES: And I'm really glad that we got to kick it today. BRANDON: Yeah, me too. CHARLES: I thought you were going to say that your 20-year mission was to have your perfect Emacs initialization setup. BRANDON: Oh my gosh. Some of these days, I'm going to figure out RuboCop. CHARLES: Actually, do you want to pair on that? BRANDON: Yeah, let's do that. CHARLES: Alright, everybody. I'm going to sign off. If anyone wants to continue the conversation, obviously you can get in touch with Brandon. He is misspelled @tehviking on Twitter. T-E-H-V-I-K-I-N-G. Always come at him. BRANDON: Don't @ me. CHARLES: [Laughs] BRANDON: I work for a really cool company and if you ask me about it on Twitter, I'll tell you all about it. CHARLES: Awesome. And we of course are Frontside. You can get us on Twitter at @TheFrontside or just drop us a line to contact@frontside.io. And we would love to talk to you more about this podcast and all the wonderful things that we do here, which includes building custom software that you can stake your future on, that's going to be good for the five-year outlook. So with that, goodbye Brandon. Goodbye everybody. And we will see you… BRANDON: Bye Charles. I love you. CHARLES: Me too.

Brandon Allen is coach, speaker, strategist and founder of New Work Revolution. Allen's mission is to bring the human element to every work environment. He has coached hundreds of small business owners, the federal government and done corporate training to assist leaders to come to new levels of understanding around how to connect and impact people around them. Brandon is the host of the New Work Revolution podcast and the creator of the Strategic Business Forum workshop series. When not transforming lives, Brandon spends time in Salt Lake City with his wife and four daughters. More about Brandon at http://www.newworkrevolution.com Interview Transcript Hugh Ballou: Greetings. Welcome to this version of Orchestrating Success. My guest today is long-time friend and a very capable individual, Brandon Allen. Brandon lives in Salt Lake City. He has worked with very high-level thought leaders who have been mutual friends. Brandon, I guess we met eight to ten years ago. We haven’t really spoken for a few years. I’m really glad to be reconnected. I am going to throw it to you to tell people a little bit about you, why you are doing this current business, and what brought you to want to do this. Brandon Allen: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Hugh. It’s always great to talk. When I think about the genesis of my career, I spent a decade in the corporate world. I was the COO of an Inc. 500 company. After working with a large company but also smaller companies, I got a real big insight into what does it take for a small business to scale and get to the next level? How do they get out of their way so they can really grow and get to that next level? I started a consulting company at the worst time you could start a consulting company, in 2008. Right in the midst of a financial crisis, I decide that’s the time I’m going to start a business. But since then, I’ve worked with hundreds of small business owners, thought leaders, and brick and mortar businesses, helping them get to the next level, grow, feel more confident in what they’re doing, have more freedom in their lives. I do some federal government work and consulting. I’ve done it in Utah and New Mexico for the federal government. I still do a lot of corporate training and government training. People ask me what I do. I say I’m a coach, speaker, and strategist. Ultimately, I am a person of deep curiosity. I love to connect people with people and people with ideas. I’m always curious about the world around me, and I use that curiosity to help other people get more curious about what they’re doing as well. Hugh: Wow. Since you and I last talked, you launched this business. We’ve talked incrementally but not about your business. The title that I see is New Work Revolution. Talk about that. What does that mean, and why did you choose that title? Brandon: The idea behind New Work Revolution is about humanizing work, putting the human element into work. We could talk about systems. We could talk about processes. We could talk about an ideal customer. We can talk about all these different strategies and plans on paper. All those things are meaningful. All those things matter. But if we get the human piece wrong, none of it works. There is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” New Work Revolution is about breaking the bonds that really tie people down. There are two facets to this. 1) I have been an employee who has worked with a less-than-desirable boss. There is nothing worse than working for someone that a piece of you dies inside every time you interact with them or see them. Everyone who has ever been an employee knows what I’m talking about. That’s tough. 2) On the flip side, there are a lot of business owners—as an example, I had a business owner who wanted to shut their business down because they couldn’t wrap their heads around the people-management part of their business. Through our work together, they realized that a lot of what was getting in their way was their own thought processes and limiting beliefs about team management. When they did it right, they experienced great growth and tremendous enjoyment within the business. I want to teach leaders how to be the best boss they can and still create accountability, connect with team members, and build strong cultures within their business so that when people work for an organization, they enjoy what they do. We spend 40 hours a week at least at work. In fact, the majority of our waking time is at work. We might as well enjoy the work that we do as well as the people that we work with. That is what New Work Revolution is about. How do we start a revolution to work differently, work better, lead better, and connect better as a group? Hugh: Enjoy your time at work. What a novel concept. Brandon: It’s crazy. So crazy. Hugh: The problem with common sense is that it’s not very common. Brandon: Yes, that is true. Hugh: So Brandon, I’ve interviewed a whole lot of leaders on this show. People have a different nuance. I learn from everybody, and I get inspired by everybody. I learn things from people that have very different approaches than I do. I don’t know that yours and mine are any different. We are unique individuals though. Let’s back up. This word “leadership.” My whole podcast is about leadership. I choose not to use that word because I feel like people don’t understand that word. Do you find that to be true? Brandon: Absolutely. Look, we use these words with no intention behind what we’re saying. Hugh: Say more. That was good. Brandon: One of the things that I do for myself personally and for leaders that I work with is I define what this means to you. Here’s the thing with leadership, Hugh. I use the example of college football. Nick Saban is the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide. By all accounts, Nick Saban is not a pleasant individual to play for, but he gets results. On the flip side, Dabo Swinney from Clemson, he’s a player’s coach, a guy that you’ll see dancing in the locker room, havin’ fun, a complete opposite in a lot of ways from what Nick Saban is. They win the national championship last year over Nick Saban’s team. My point in saying that is not because one style is better than another. There are many different ways to lead and many different paths to leadership. You have to define what that looks like for you. I have a leadership philosophy that I created for myself that helps me define how I want to lead. What does being a leader look like to me? How do I communicate that in a meaningful way to people that I do lead so they understand where I’m coming from and how I want to impact their lives for the best? Hugh: Wow. That is pretty profound. Defining your philosophy. Do you model leadership for people you work with? Brandon: Do I model it for them or from them? Hugh: Do they learn by what you do or what you say? Brandon: Both. The problem is what I say needs to be congruent with what I do. Here is why I say this. When I was a very young leader, 25 years old, I thought I knew everything about leadership. Oh my gosh, I am going to be the CEO of this company within five years. What I realized was the great business philosopher Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face.” That’s what happened to me when I got my first leadership assignment. I had a plan, I got punched in the face, and I realized through that experience that I didn’t know nearly as much about leading people that I thought I did. I transcended my own failure into success, but how I did it was I got educated and trained on where are my blind spots, what am I doing wrong. Before I changed those blind spots, I needed to set context with my team about what I’m doing. Hugh, if you are my employee, and we work together, and I start to create a thought about you that says, “Hugh is a no-good rotten piece of junk. I can’t work with him. He’s just impossible,” everything that you do starts to be seen through that lens. You could be out there feeding homeless people, right? I could look at you and say, “I told you he’s no good. He’s not working. H’s out there doing God knows what with this and that.” Now I have taken something that’s pure that you’re doing and I have ruined it through my own faulty filters. I have to go to my team and humble myself and say, “Guys, I recognize that I am not an effective leader in these areas. These are things I am going to change. I want you to hold me accountable to making that change, and I want you to recognize why I’m doing it so that you don’t misrepresent or misinterpret what I’m trying to do as something that is not for you when in fact it is something that’s for you.” I think it’s important to use our words to paint the picture, but then to go out and execute those words ruthlessly. As a leader, my only currency is my credibility. If I am a credible leader, I have a lot of currency with people. But if I’m not a credible leader, it’s really hard for me to move people when they don’t believe in what I have to say. Hugh: There is an awful lot in that. That was a whole lot of really good stuff, Brandon. I’m trying to track the questions that that prompted. The transparency piece. Early in my podcast series, somewhere in the teens, I interviewed a group of really profound leaders. One was Cal Turner, who went to his leadership team at Dollar General and said to his team, “I got this job because my dad founded the company. I have the vision to take this public. You have the skills; I don’t. I got the job because of my genes, not because of my skill. You got the skill.” Because he was transparent, they stepped up. They said, “Oh yeah.” Cal said to me, “Hugh, leadership is about defining your gaps and finding good people to fill them.” There was another part. He is a very faithful Methodist, and in his office, there are statues of the two Wesley brothers who founded the Methodist church. His dialogue, he said, “Yes, I am the boss, which spelled backwards is double SOB.” I am the son of the boss. There is a whole dynamic with families and leadership. The dynamic you hit on was people think that identifying those gaps is a weakness in leadership. You just positioned it as an essential strength in leadership. Did I hear you right? Brandon: Absolutely. I’ll add to that. Here is the thing about our flaws: Everyone else knows we have them, right? It’s hard to read the label when you are inside the bottle, but everyone can read the label except for you. We all have blind spots as leaders. We have things we know we’re weak at, and we have things we don’t know we are weak at that other people can see. What my team wants to know is am I aware of my own imperfections? We all have them. I remember I think it was Glenn Morshower. He was speaking at an event and said, “You know, ignoring your flaws or ignoring,” he talked about ignoring your sins or flaws, “is like getting in a pool and then saying you didn’t get wet. You are walking around and dripping water everywhere, and the whole time you are thinking, No one knows that I got wet. No one can see my flaws. That’s our flaws.” Our flaws are the water that is dripping off of us, everywhere we can go, that people can see. If my team is going to follow me, they will follow me more. They will be open to recognizing their own flaws when I am more transparent about what I have to learn and where I have to grow. Think about how ridiculous of a philosophy this is for leaders who say, “Don’t show weakness.” But then what they want their team to do is show weakness and invite them for training, development, where they need to grow. If I sit there and pretend I have it all put together, all I am doing is inviting my team to do the same. If everyone has got it put together, we’re screwed. Hugh: Absolutely. He said exactly the same thing. He pretended to know, they are going to say, I am going to show him. I am going to get him. It’s disingenuous. It’s not authentic. You have just portrayed as being open and transparent. Brene Brown talks about vulnerability. What I learned from the great teacher of conductors James Jordan who has written books on lots of topics of conducting, “In order to make really good music, the conductor needs to be vulnerable on the podium. Then we can invite good music-making.” That’s probably the same principle we have in corporate leadership. Brandon: Absolutely. Hugh: You said a lot of profound things there. I think part of it is that we have been taught leadership a certain way, and it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work now if it ever worked. We have to be the boss. We have to have all the answers. We have to be in control of everything. If we are able to clearly paint the vision and empower other people, which is what you just talked about and say, “Here’s my piece of it. I’m really good at this,” my position is, and Cal taught me this, skills and gaps, rather than strengths and weaknesses. I think we all don’t do some things better doesn’t mean I’m weak there. I like to say my skills are here, and my gaps are here, and that’s where I find really good people and elevate them to higher levels of functioning. Brandon: I like that. Hugh: I learn a little bit from everybody. I am learning stuff from you today that is great. I think if somebody that I am interviewing says, “No, I got that leadership stuff done,” I can’t help them, and they’re dangerous. Their mind is like a parachute. If it ain’t open, it ain’t going to work for this. What is the biggest challenge you see? Let’s talk about the business sector because it’s different than the nonprofit or church sector. In the business sector, what is the challenge? Is it the same or different for leaders in mid-cap or big companies versus entrepreneurs? Brandon: For leaders in smaller organizations, the challenge they have is time and resources. They know they need to train; they know they need to have intentional processes. They know they need those things, but they don’t always have the resources. Or they are not concentrating on putting those resources toward those areas. You have a lot of people who work in the organization who aren’t qualified or trained or anything else. Let’s take someone who is a dentist. You have a dental office, you have people who are in there. Pretty soon someone rises to the level of office manager. The reason why they are the office manager is because they have proven themselves to be capable, responsible, and effective in their role before that. Now we have put them in a leadership responsibility, but what got them here won’t get them to the next level. They need a whole different set of skills. A lot of business owners are ill-prepared to train and develop a leader underneath them because they don’t know what that looks like for themselves. In a larger organization, you see more of that. They start to invest in training and get people support at certain levels. There is still a gap there of a lack of investment in people and growth across the board. This is happening in larger companies as much as it is in smaller companies. When I do corporate training and consulting in a corporation, there are a lot of the same frustrations and pain points that exist in a smaller organization. It looks a little bit different. Hugh: Is that like the Peter principle of people getting promoted to a level of ineffectiveness? Brandon: Absolutely. Hugh: It’s different skillsets as you go up the ladder. However, if you go up the ladder, you know what‘s below that and how the organization works. Where I see death in corporate America is someone comes in a horizontal position for management, but it’s really leadership. With a Harvard MBA, they come in at a leadership level and they have no clue what goes on below them. Brandon: Absolutely. Think about this. One of my favorite leadership books is a book called Derailed by I think it’s Tim Erwin [it’s by James Siegel]. It’s five classic examples of disastrous leadership. One of them ran for president here recently: Carly Fiorina was featured in this book. That is the kind of book you want to be featured in. They talk about Bob Nardelli. Bob Nardelli was the CEO of Home Depot. He took over for Arthur Blank. He came in at a CEO level and did not understand what made Home Depot successful. They had a family environment. It was very down home. What he did was build an elevator that went straight from a private parking garage right to his office so he didn’t have to interact or engage with any employees. He created all these standardized processes and systems that were very cold and antiseptic because he wanted to be commanding and in control as the CEO. Coincidentally, he failed in that leadership assignment, not because he is not a smart guy or not capable, but because he didn’t understand the culture he was coming into and how it operated. He tried to completely change the culture, and the culture won. The culture won out. He lost, and he was fired. It was a colossal failure. Hugh: That’s a huge story. The story you just told of Home Depot is they hired somebody without regard to the culture. They were not a fit for the culture. That, to me, is one of the biggest deficits in hiring. I work with companies on hiring; there is competency, of course, and role and responsibility. The third component is the culture fit. What you just said is huge. It made me think of good leadership. Southwest Airlines, they say they are in the hospitality business even though they are an airline, so they hire for attitude. They hire for the culture. I’m sure they hire pilots just for attitude; that’s probably the number one factor. Everyone you talk to in the organization understands that paradigm. Brandon: Absolutely. I think that’s so important. Hugh: Yeah. Give me a story, for instance, of the impact that you’ve had with a client. You don’t have to use names or initials or locations unless you want to. What kind of results have you seen? I always like the consultant that says, “I’m a turnaround specialist. I turn companies around. I went into a company that was angry and depressed, and when I left, I turned them around. They were depressed and angry.” I haven’t told that in a long time. I am known for telling the same jokes over and over, but that one, there are people like that though. I know you, and I know you have valuable work. You told me I could ask you anything. Unless you would rather not, is there an example of here is where they were, here is how you Brandonized them, you went in and helped them gain the confidence and skills and systems to elevate to wherever they wanted to do. I prefer to say go to the top than go to the next level. You can do it sequentially. Give us a case study. What impact have you seen with your work with a company? Brandon: I will tell you one of my favorite examples. A dental client that I worked with in the Midwest got on the phone with me, and this was the first call. He said, “Brandon, I hate dentistry. I hate my partner. I hate my team. Can you help me?” And I said, “Okay. Let’s take a step back here. What is it about these things you don’t like?” We identified some core things. He said he was dissatisfied with his partnership. My next question for this person is: What conversations or communications have you had with this person about this issue up to this point? It got really quiet on the phone because he said, “You know what? I don’t know if I have ever talked to them about this.” Okay. That is step one. Step two: What kind of a culture do you want? What does the organization look like? What would the ideal organization for you look like, that celebrated the best of what you do, how you do it, and serve your patients at a high level? What does that look like? He had no idea. How do we decide who is a good fit for your organization and who isn’t? Doesn’t know. We started working on those aspects. How do we communicate and connect? Here’s the funny thing about the partner. Totally interested in doing everything he wanted him to do. He was just waiting for someone to ask him and talk to him about it. That was the easy fix. The culture, we identified it and put it together. We identified there were probably two to three team members that were not a cultural fit. Through starting to communicate about what kind of culture we wanted, those people self-selected themselves out of the organization. We brought in new people. Now we have a team fine-tuned and humming along. Their growth through this process, we didn’t come up with any fancy marketing strategies, we didn’t introduce some strategy that no one knows about that is a secret. We were more intentional about our communication. The culture that we wanted and identified where we want to take things. Through that process, they grew 30% in that year. Loved his team. Loved his partnership. Loved his business. It was a huge success. It starts with, as you said, I change leaders so that they can change cultures in their organization. If we change the leadership, we can change a lot of things about the culture and what shows up around that. But it starts at the top. When I was failing as a leader, my boss asked me one time, “Brandon, why are you guys doing so poorly?” I looked at him and did the most leadership thing I could do and said, “My team sucks. If I just had better players, I would win.” And he did a very leadership thing and said, “We’re probably not going to fire your entire team. What else can we do?” That’s where I thought about the skills I’m missing, the feedback I need. I went to one of my team members and sat down with them. They’d been at the company longer than I’d been alive. I said, “Hey, I want some candid feedback. What am I doing wrong?” They said, “Do you really want to know?” I immediately regretted asking as soon as they said that. Do you really want to know? I said, “You know what? I’m committed now. Get it out.” They said, “We don’t like you.” Hugh: Whoa. Brandon: Really hard to hear. I waited until I got to the car before I started crying, mind you. As I went home and thought about that, I thought, What about that feedback is true? How could that be true for me? I can take that feedback and say, “You’re just a bitter old lady,” or I could look at it and say, “What about that is really true? What is it about what I do and lead that needs to change?” I started investing in my own leadership journey and development in a way that I hadn’t before. I stopped assuming that I knew every darn thing about leadership as a young person. Through that transformation process, all I changed was myself. We went from being a mediocre office to one of the top-rated offices in my area. Then I was offered a bigger office as a result of that. I didn’t change anything else but how I showed up in the office and the interactions. That is what I did for the dental client that I just told you about. I did that for myself. That kind of process works. Hugh: You know what? You and I resonate on a lot of stuff. My whole perspective is the orchestra or the choir is a reflection of the leader. What they see is what you get. We want to blame them for poor performance when they are trying to follow us. The old saying is: If the orchestra respects a conductor, they play as the conductor intends. If they don’t respect the conductor, they play exactly as they direct. We are flawed as individuals. That is a very interesting story because we don’t change other people—we change ourselves and people change as a reflection of that. That was exactly what you said. Did I hear it right? Brandon: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Hugh: Leaders want to change everybody else. What you did was change yourself. That was tough feedback. We don’t like you. Brandon: It was devastating. It was devastating to hear it. I was at such a low point because here’s the thing. I had just gotten married. I moved my wife to a city neither of us had ever lived in before. I thought that I was going to get fired, and my wife is going to find out what a loser I am. I am going to be stuck in this city I had never lived in that I really wasn’t sure I wanted to live in. What do I even do? First time I get a leadership assignment, I run it right into the ground and blow it up. It was tough. But that was the exact feedback I needed to hear. I had to subordinate my ego so that I could internalize that and say, “You know what? How do we change this? How do I go from basically killing people’s morale to inspiring and empowering them?” That started that journey. Hugh: That is why you’re doing what you’re doing. Some people would call those failures, but I call them learning opportunities. Brandon: You hope they are. If we have the right mentality about it. Hugh: Right. If we have an open mind to it. Brandon, this is good stuff. It reminds me of the guy who goes to one of his colleagues and says, “What do you think?” He says, “You’re ugly.” He says, “Whoa, I need a second opinion.” “Okay, you’re stupid, too.” Good thing you didn’t ask for a second opinion. Brandon: I had to stop here. Oh my God, that was enough. I’d heard enough. We’re good. Hugh: That’s pretty profound that you were able to take that input and turn it around. I’ll bet when you showed up differently, that person became part of your fan club, part of your support system in a profound way because they felt heard. Brandon: She said that when I left, she would retire. That’s how we ended it. That person who said they hated me said, “When you leave, I’m retiring. I don’t want to work for another boss.” Hugh: You took lemons and made lemonade out of it. You saw that as an opportunity to move past that barrier. Wow. I knew you had a lot of smarts, Brandon, but you are giving me a lot of good stuff today. Brandon: Let me tell you this. I don’t know that all of that transformation came from a good place always. I was very committed to achievement and looking my best. Any feedback was information that I could take to perform at an elite level. I placed a lot of value on performing at an elite level. It didn’t always come from a healthy or good place. That’s why I did it. I’d love to tell you that I just really had this great heart that really wanted to do the right thing. But really what it came down to was my own selfish reasons, which I had to tackle later in my career. Hugh: That’s proof of transparency and self-awareness. You talk about the blind spots. I was speaking after one of your colleagues in Salt Lake City one day. He was out in the crowd and said, “How many people know your blind spots?” There were about three or four hands that go up. He said, “No, you don’t. They are called blind spots!” That was Brett. I thought that was brilliant. People are totally unaware of some of those things and unaware that they are not aware. What challenges do we have for lack of self-awareness with leaders? Is that something you have dialogue on with people? Brandon: Absolutely. You have all sorts of people that get into where they shut themselves off is self-awareness. You have that high achiever who gets their ego wrapped up in their results. I used to be that kind of a person. I am still this kind of a person on some level. This is ongoing work. But because of that, we shut ourselves off to the things around us, and we get so focused on winning. We think because we are winning that we are doing everything the right way or we don’t have anything to learn. Who is going to teach me something? Look how great I’m doing. You have that achiever. Then you have the person on the other end of the spectrum who is really beat down and then adopts the fixed mindset that says, “I don’t want to look bad. I only play in my lane. I only try things I know I’m already good at. I play it safe. I play not to lose, I don’t play to win, but because I have such a scarcity mentality, I’m just going to do the bare minimum here. I don’t want to stick my neck out because I don’t want to see what’s out there.” That person is also shut out of growth and development but for completely different reasons. It’s about identifying how we get into that spot of recognizing, “Hey, there are always opportunities to learn. What is the next lesson for me? How do I tap into that self-awareness for myself? How do I pull outside information to help me uncover blind spots?” That will come from someone else. Recognizing that. Or maybe we have an epiphany where we have a failure that maybe enlightens us to our blind spots. That is such a big part of really winning the inner game of leadership by understanding that self-awareness piece. Hugh: It is huge. I can’t work with anybody who is not willing to talk about that and willing to open up that dialogue and say, “Okay, I don’t know what I don’t know.” I find that the better they are, the more they want to learn. When Jim Rohn used to do speeches he said, “The people driving the expensive cars are right here in the front row. The people driving the Chevrolets and beat-up cars are in the back row. Or they are not here. The people who are high performers want to be better. They are in the front row.” He was a profound influencer. What are the reasons people give you for not wanting to grow their skillset? You work with people who say they want this type of result. Like you, you didn’t know where you had gaps. To me, there are reasons, and there are excuses. What are some of the common fallacies people have about leadership and therefore their own lack of ability to grow? What are some of the lies we tell ourselves or the fallacies that we have? Does that make sense? Brandon: It makes perfect sense. 1) I didn’t learn this in school. 2) I am not predisposed to be this type of a person. Therefore, I can’t be a leader. I need someone else to do it for me. 3) I’m just someone who likes to put my head down and work. I just expect other people to do that around me. I don’t need to build these skills or this leadership. 4) I don’t have time. 5) I can’t afford it. There are tons of reasons and excuses that people give for why they don’t learn more about leadership or invest in it. One of my favorites: I can’t invest in those people because if I do, what if they quit? Then I have just wasted all this time and effort in investing in them, and then they leave. I always remind them of a meme I saw between a CEO and a CFO. The CEO says, “We need to invest more into our people.” The CFO says, “What if we invest more and they leave?” The CEO says, “What if we don’t, and they stay?” It’s getting leaders out of that mentality of: Look, if I invest in these people, then they’ll leave. It’s almost like an abusive relationship. I don’t want this person to know that they can do better, so I am going to make sure that I manage their expectations of themselves to let them know that no one is going to love you like I love you. You will never be good enough for someone else; you’re only good for what we do and what I provide for you. It’s a weird type of thing that leaders sometimes do to keep people from branching out and breaking free of the organization to do other things. It’s very bizarre. Hugh: Wow. Wow. That is bordering on dysfunctional, isn’t it? Brandon: It is. But leaders do this all the time. Hugh: Wow. That’s pretty amazing. Brandon, tell us your website; it’s your company name. It’s newworkrevolution.com? Brandon: New Work Revolution because we are starting a revolution for leadership in organizations. My intention is to continue a revolution of powerful, great leadership in any organization that we touch. Hugh: And you have four daughters. Brandon: Yeah. Hugh: You are a proud father. I have seen pictures of you on social media with your daughters. You appear to be a loving father. Brandon: I try. Hugh: Your podcast is on iTunes. New Work Revolution. Same name. Brandon: Yep. Hugh: I certainly want people to find you. What do they find when they go to newworkrevolution.com? Brandon: A couple things that you’ll notice: there is an assessment you can take if you are a leader, and you want to go through an assessment and you can see how you’re doing. It gets them access to—I know some people don’t like this and don’t do it—but we do a call around that and talk about the assessment. It’s a free call just to assess where someone is at and how they’re doing. We take them through that process. There is an Events tab. You can check out what events we have coming up. We do very intimate workshops here in Salt Lake City, Utah around different areas of leadership. We are doing CEO Business Habits in November. You’ll find information about what we do, how we do it, that kind of stuff. Hugh: I want to encourage people to go visit. We’re coming up to the final part of this interview. Is there a topic I haven’t asked you about that you want to introduce here and say something about? Brandon: I think we covered some really great things as it pertains to leaders. What great leadership looks like. Self-awareness. Those kinds of things. I really feel like we have covered a lot of the good things that I think is pertinent to great leadership. Hugh: You had extremely good answers to my questions, which were not the hardest ones I can think of, but they were the hardest ones I could think of today. I’d like you to ponder on a closing thought, tip, or recommendation for people. Brandon, leadership is fundamentally based on relationships. Communication is also based on relationships. People don’t engage us with money unless they know the value they’re getting, and we have created that trusted relationship. I want to throw that in the arena if you want to comment. After you comment, what is a parting thought you’d like to leave with people? Brandon: Give me your question around trust again just to make sure I understood it. Hugh: Leadership is fundamentally around a relationship, in my world. Respond to that. What’s a closing thought you’d like to leave with people? Brandon: I think the people element is so huge. If we have good people in our world to really help us and support us, we’ve got a lot of great powerful things. I think about times where I have struggled, where I have needed help. Systems and processes didn’t jump in and provide the support I was looking for; it was people who did that. If you want to scale a business or grow an organization, the best way you can do that is have smart, capable people that you invest in that will help you further that. To piggyback off that, you asked for a final thought. My favorite leadership quote is by Lao Tze, who is credited with writing the Dao Dejing: “A leader is best when people barely knew he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, ‘We did it ourselves.’” We can’t get there without intention, without a philosophy on how we want to lead, on communicating, subordinating our ego, and then stepping back and letting smart, capable people do the work that we hired them to do and that we know they are capable of doing. Hugh: Awesome. I look really good because I hang around smart people like you, Brandon. You’re a gift to your clients and a lot of people I have seen you interact with. Your reputation with people I know is certainly very high. Thank you for sharing the wisdom on this podcast today. Brandon: Thank you for having me, Hugh. It was an absolute pleasure.

This week Jess hosts her husband, Brandon Ware, for a tell-all on being married to a sexologist. He shares his thoughts on nude beaches, sex toys, public sex and more. Sit back and listen as Jess and Brandon walk you through their sexual journey. Brandon Ware is a founding partner with The WareInToronto Group and is the top sales representative with Private Service Realty. He is passionate about his business and his warm personality, in-depth market knowledge and solid negotiation skills set him apart from others in the field. Follow Brandon Ware on... Twitter Instagram Facebook See below for this episode's transcription... Dr. Jess: Hi there! This is Jess O'Reilly I am Sex with Dr. Jess, your friendly neighborhood sexologist and shouldn't every neighborhood have a sexologist? I don't know, maybe my neighbors would beg to differ. I am here as always to help you cultivate sexual compatibility so that you can a happier, more meaningful, more loving relationship and of course compatibility is something that requires work. It is not about destiny and it's not about finding the right partner. It is about training your partner and treating yourself, to meet your partner's needs. It's that simple! Now today, I'm a little bit nervous and a little bit excited, because I have with me Mister hahah no Mister Sex with Dr. Jess. Brandon: The man behind the woman. Dr. Jess: The man behind the woman but really the man who stands beside me, and props me up. Brandon: You want to be careful with where I’m standing. Dr. Jess: Yeah. My husband, Brandon Ware, my life partner, the love of my life is with us. Brandon say hi. Brandon: Hey everybody, how you doing? Dr. Jess: He’s doing… Brandon: I’m expecting a response. Dr. Jess: He’s doing the Barry White voice… Brandon: It’s White Barry. Are you doing there? Dr. Jess: Hahah. Definitely Barry White. Hahaha. We are going to talk about our life, because one of the top questions I receive after, ‘hey is it normal that I like to put this up my butt?’ and the answer is yes. Brandon: Hahah. Dr. Jess: One of the top questions I received is, ‘what did your husband think about what you do?’ So babe let's start there, we're going to be talking about how working in the field of human sexuality impacts our relationship and our sex life. I don’t think we’re going to get too graphic. Brandon: Nope. Dr. Jess: But ultimately your life changes when something that is so pleasurable and also so tied your identity becomes your life's work. So we'll start with: Brandon and what do you think of my job? Brandon: I think it's amazing. The positives definitely outweigh the negatives. Where do I even begin? There are so many things that we've been introduced to, exposed to, as a result of your job. Dr. Jess: That’s good and bad? Brandon: Um yeah it’s a bit of both. Dr. Jess: Exposed sounds umm… Brandon: Exposed isn’t the right word, maybe introduced to is the better terminology. I mean, let’s talk about Desire Resorts. That clothing-optional resort down on the Mayan Riviera. Dr. Jess: Yeah so I talk about Desire a lot. It’s not just because I work with them, honestly it's because it was life changing for me. And I’ve talked about how it made the way I’ve felt about my body, but I also know Brandon's told me that, and I don’t think he’s told me in so many words because the first time we went there we were in our mid-twenties so it’s 11-12 years ago. Hahah Brandon is getting close to 40. Brandon: Ya the countdown is on! Dr. Jess: It’s okay you look younger and act younger. Too young. But I know it changed the way you look at women, so maybe you can talk about that, because the chance, the opportunity to go there is something that I think, really I only was confronted or encountered because I'm working in this field. So how does being around naked people and being in a playroom where people are actually having sex change our relationship?

We say goodbye to our friend and co-host of The Frontside Podcast, Brandon Hays. Brandon Hays: @tehviking | blog Transcript: BRANDON: Hello, everybody and welcome to Frontside Podcast Episode 48. It is a podcast, as you can tell from the intro music, about woodworking and dads and dads working with wood. CHARLES: And power washing wood. BRANDON: Yes and power washing, sanding decks. Today, we'll be talking about the difference between mortise and tenon joints and dovetail joints and when it's worth going through the extra effort for that dovetail. Our guest today is Charles Lowell, woodworking expert. CHARLES: Hi, Brandon. BRANDON: Hi. I think I've never heard anybody acknowledge the fact that there's new music in the intro. I don't know if that has been publicly acknowledged in the podcast yet. But I was on the selection committee for that music and we had many options and we went with the one that sounded most appropriate for, I don't know, a woodworking show on PBS but I like it. CHARLES: I like PBS. I like woodworking. I like the music too and the best part is I didn't have to choose it. I just had to promise to make music myself for 50 weeks running. BRANDON: It was about 150 weeks. CHARLES: About 150 weeks. BRANDON: Yeah. Charles, we are here in the new Frontside HQ, which is sort of still under construction. It's kind of cool, though. It's a different space. I haven't been here much so it doesn't feel like home to me yet, I don't know if it does to you yet. CHARLES: It's beginning. It's still unfinished in many ways. It's not painted. We just kind of have the bare minimum for survival. The kitchen is stocked, there's coffee in the cabinets, the grinder is set up, the bar is set up, the wall sockets are set up, and the wireless router is set up. BRANDON: Home is where the vermouth is. [Laughter] CHARLES: And cavernous is really the word to describe it. BRANDON: This is a shop that's clearly set up for a version of the Frontside that does not yet exist and it's interesting to see current day Frontside in a space that is clearly marked for a future version of this. CHARLES: Yeah, you feel small walking in. There are not enough people to fill all the seats that we have in here. BRANDON: Which is kind of cool. I don't know if you recall, maybe we'll save that discussion for later but there was a prior iteration of this company where that was very much the same thing. So it's kind of cool, like a little bit of an emotional journey to see this process start over again. CHARLES: Yeah, it is definitely a new space and it's a new era. BRANDON: Yeah, for you. Not for me. [Laughter] BRANDON: You guys can go right to hell. CHARLES: Well, it is a new era for you too. BRANDON: Yeah, that's true -- a new era of fun-employment. We wanted to do one final 'dadcast' because basically, as of officially 10 days ago or so, I no longer work at the Frontside and I've had people ask me and I was like, "I don't want to talk about it." And so, I think it's probably time that we -- I don't want to belabor it. Nobody handed me a card when I quit as the co-founder of the Frontside that said, "You are officially invited now to Medium.com to write a think piece about my incredible journey." CHARLES: [Laughs] You'll get that in the mail. BRANDON: Okay. It may be sent to my old address. It's sent to our old office, which is the problem. It's lost in the mail. So yeah, instead I'm going to do my incredible journey podcast and really just regale everyone with stories of what an incredible, incredible journey it's been -- truly incredible. CHARLES: Don't leave out the travelling with the fish and the cat, and like a little pug dog. You know like all those incredible journey stories when we were kids. BRANDON: Yeah, like Homeward Bound. CHARLES: Yeah, there you go. BRANDON: I think it is like Homeward Bound. CHARLES: That time that you fell into the water with the kitten, that was adorable. BRANDON: I don't know where I'm stealing this joke from but there is an Incredible Journey sequel with a squid and a cow, truly the most unlikely of friends. [Laughter] BRANDON: Here we are giving my swan song on this podcast. I've actually actively took a month off to think about basically to try to recuperate and think about like, "Is this something that I can continue to do." I purposely took off from the podcast which was agony because I so wanted to have those conversations that you all did with Noel, and with Yehuda, and with Sarah. They turned out really good. I'm so happy with the result of stepping back and realizing, "Wait a minute, I think I'm redundant." CHARLES: It was your idea to create the podcast, in the first place and the podcast has been infused with your personality. Even on the episodes where you weren't present, like you were behind the scenes, arranging it, making sure that it all happened. I can understand like missing that part of it. It really was like your baby, so to speak. BRANDON: What's cool and agonizing is first off, I want to acknowledge that talking about a podcast that you're on while you're on the podcast actually should cause the podcast to collapse in on itself in a recursive loop. CHARLES: You're witnessing a podcast singularity. BRANDON: Then I'm commenting about the fact that we're commenting on the podcast on the podcast. So before we jump into a stack level too deep, I just want to acknowledge that I've had this experience before where I've stepped down as an organizer or a maintainer of something and I've watched the project get better as a result of me leaving. The biggest fear a person has when they step away from something like this is that the thing will collapse as a result of them leaving. The second big biggest fear is that it will not collapse as a result of you leaving. CHARLES: [Laughs] BRANDON: It's sort of like, "Oh yeah. Okay, well, you know..." And the amazing thing is watching it get better. It feels a little guilty like, "Why did I let go of the steering wheel of this thing sooner so that..." Yes, the podcast was definitely my baby and I took care of everything and then I realized so much of that work, there are people that are actually better at this than me. When we brought Mandy Moore in to help with the editing and then organizing and she's taking a bigger, mega-role in all that stuff, she does a way better job than I did. I think that's true of anybody who does a bunch of things and that means, if you are the founder of a company, that's you. You do a bunch of things if you are a founding member of a small organization. As you start letting those go, you find that there are people that like doing the stuff that you don't like to do or are better at the stuff that you do like to do. It's always an interesting, humbling process. Just that alone right there was sort of the lesson I took out of it was that letting go is something can actually improve it. CHARLES: That's actually, I think, critical to the process whether it's open source, whether it's a company, whether it's some side project that you have. There's a phase where -- and really, I guess it applies to the whole start up cycle in of itself, right? There's a phase where you do have to do everything. But then at a certain point, the critical path is you do not do those things. BRANDON: It's before you think it's going to be too, so you always feel like there's always a leap of faith you have to take to say, "I think it's time for me to hand this off and pay somebody else to do something that I've learned to survive doing." And it's before you're comfortable letting go of that thing. And so, people that are uncomfortable letting go of stuff will just hold on to everything forever because there's no clear point where you just point at that and go, "This is the time to let that go." It feels natural. It's time. It's like your kids' first day at school. You're going to cry. They're going to cry and then everything's going to be okay. That was one big thing. Actually, it's kind of linked to why I left in the first place, which is I have historically been so bad at that skill. I have not exercised the muscle of letting things go and it doesn't feel ever appropriate to let things go. So I just took on more and more physical and emotional work and tried to cover more and more bases and did so like borderline adequately in all these different areas to where I just really burned myself out to the point where I couldn't get up and go to work in the morning anymore. I think anybody can relate to this feeling of getting up and being like, "Please don't make me do this again. I don't want to get up." It's like getting up and driving to a place where you eat dirt all day. CHARLES: That's a division of the Frontside. BRANDON: And you're like -- CHARLES: Eating dirt. BRANDON: You know what? It's okay but I had that yesterday. CHARLES: Yeah, it was hard to watch especially like standing right next to you and seeing that process unfold month to month and then compound over the years. BRANDON: Yeah, 'Hard to Watch' is the title of the lifetime movie of my life. [Laughter] CHARLES: Also, I believe it's the title of a Steven Seagal movie from the early 90's. BRANDON: It was a Steven Seagal documentary about getting his hair plugs. [Laughter] BRANDON: "I'll take you to the bank, the hair plug bank." CHARLES: Oh, you beat me to the punch. That's the exact joke that I was going to make. BRANDON: I did it. "I'll take you to the bank, senator." CHARLES: What am I going to do? I guess, I have to carry the torch of early and late 90's movie references around here. You just got to let that fart go. BRANDON: Yeah, there is a dearth of the 40-year old contingent here. Yeah, in the process, I learned a lot of stuff. But the problem was that it was too late to fix it in a way that felt super repairable so it was too late to try to like, "Okay, we'll just make these small tweaks and your life will get better. Okay, let these things go." I was advised by several people like, "Hey, man. You should totally see this thing through. The Frontside is right on the cusp. It's just having its breakthrough moment. The business is doing really well. The employees here are fantastic. Everything is just kind of teed up for 2017 being a banner year." And I just went, "Yeah, but it doesn't matter like how awesome the next city is if you broke down on the side of the road, out of gas." CHARLES: Right. There's a certain point where it doesn't matter if there's more water coming down onto your bucket, like your bucket is full, the bucket is full and it's just the fact. BRANDON: Yep. I'm fortunate to be able to take a little bit of time to think about what's next. I don't think there's much more to say about that aspect of it than that. It is not complicated. People burning themselves out is a thing that happens all the time particularly among founders. There's usually a recovery period and usually they get back on their feet. It's a bummer because I love the people here but I knew I couldn't do it anymore. There may be people with Psychology degree who is listening to this and they are like, "No, no, no. there's plenty more to say about your stupid brain." That's all I've got. It's just I kind of ran out of gas. I stepped away about six weeks ago and you all are doing amazing work, you're in this awesome new space. I don't know... There are a couple things I wanted to talk about. One of them being maybe do a little bit of a retrospective about -- CHARLES: Yeah, let's wind back the clock. Do you want to have a flashback? BRANDON: Let's have a flashback. CHARLES: All right. You actually joined on, was it September of 2013? BRANDON: And we had been talking for about six months before that. Potentially longer but it was really like we started talking in earnest in early 2013. CHARLES: Yeah, it was a long process, like everything we do. It's painfully slow sometimes but that process, by which we came together to try and really do something special unfolded over a long time because there was a lot to talk about. There were so many conversations, meet-ups after meet-ups, phone calls, and just like discussing what would it look like, what are we trying to accomplish. At that time, we're really very focused on pinning down like, "What are we going to do here?" But that was what the focus was. We were talking about the details of how we're going to make it run, who we're going to hire, all that stuff. It was all about what is the purpose of this. It turns out that a lot of people give that short trip but it can be and should be a conversation that takes six months. BRANDON: I don't think I've really acknowledged this too much. But I didn't really have a purpose at the time. I just wanted a shot at trying to build something. Eventually, I knew that if I didn't take it, I would regret it. I found your vision very compelling. You had a vision from the minute we walked through your space. All that was in it was a ping pong table and in the corner, you crammed yourself an intern. At one point, two interns and you were all crammed into one corner room of this big office for some reason. CHARLES: Underneath a marionette. BRANDON: Yes. CHARLES: A marionette from Mexico. BRANDON: Yeah, from Juarez or something and I had you walk me through the space and you're like, "I have a really clear picture in my mind of what's going to happen here." You probably can describe it better than I can. It was like, "Over here..." CHARLES: I actually want to hear you say it. BRANDON: I don't remember this, maybe but -- CHARLES: I do. I remember it very vividly but I'm actually -- BRANDON: Okay, so I remember you walked me through the space and you were like, "Over here, I see two people pairing on a really hard problem. Over here, I see somebody writing open source software. Over here, I see somebody writing documentation for some open source program." You had this really compelling vision of like a beehive of activity around collaborative, open source oriented, good engineering work that grew developers into great developers. It was super clear in your mind that there was a way to do this that what you needed was an engine of growth to hook that vision up to. And I was like, "I've never done this before. But I'd sure give it a shot." CHARLES: Yeah, and the thing is part of what was missing was this understanding that to make all of those things happen, to build that great software, and give engineers the chance to really grow into that role of producing that good software, that you need so much focus on that growth pattern and to foster. You can't just say like, "We're going to adhere to these engineering practices," and boom! Voila! Out of the mix will just pop great engineers. BRANDON: There's a tremendous amount of intentionality in the process of doing that side of it and then there's a tremendous amount of infrastructure underneath that to create. That was the part I think, we both underestimated was how much infrastructure work you and I would have to do over the ensuing few years. But you cannot let go of that vision because if it's all infrastructure, then congratulations. You have a business that makes money and has no reason to exist. Nothing is a bigger turnoff to potential employees in a hard to recruit industry like software development than like, "Show up and we'll pay you." I have a lot of those opportunities. Thank you. So, it was never that. We would rather pack up and go home than that happen. It was always driven by, "If we can't make the kind of place that we want to work, then we should just shut it down." CHARLES: That's definitely was a mantra and it's hard too because in order to make that place, you have to earn that right which means ultimately, you have to have a solid business. You have to take in more money than you spend. BRANDON: I don't want to sugarcoat the initial because we needed money in the beginning anyway. So my first three or four months here was drowning in -- like I showed up on the client and they're like, "Oh, good. You're the Rails expert." And I was like, "I've been a professional programmer for OO for like 14 months." I had worked really hard and studied really hard and I was able to perform job duties. But I was like, "I didn't come here to be a Rails expert." CHARLES: Yeah, but also what was interesting is they wanted you to be a Rails expert. I think I might have sold you as a Rails expert. BRANDON: Yeah. [Laughter] CHARLES: But the thing is as you came in, with an uncanny ability to wrap your hand around what they actually needed so you are probably an expert. While there was the implementation side, I think one of the best things that we brought to that project was focusing on the code that we didn't need to write and only writing those pieces which were critical. But yeah, so you came in for the first, about four months? BRANDON: Yeah, between four and six months. It was September to like January, February. CHARLES: Right. You've got to be the Rails expert in order to have a business so that you can actually play these things out. BRANDON: Yep. And I remember thinking, before I came on I was like, "I want to run a business but here's the stuff that terrifies me -- I don't know how to set up QuickBooks. I don't know how to set up payroll. I don't know how to sell a client. I don't know how to even find clients." And you're like, "I have all of that stuff set up already." So when people are like, "Wow, how did you get the guts together to start a business?" I'm like, "I didn't. I totally [inaudible] one. CHARLES: Well, the thing is you have to start a business at multiple phases, right? I had a business running that could adequately support four people. But then, obviously, we ended up growing and we ended up growing beyond four people. Then the infrastructure of the place, alarmingly, became inadequate so we didn't have to build from the beginning. BRANDON: Another thing that is difficult to learn in business is like it's a truism that is so often repeated that has become trite, which is the things that got you to where you are, are not the things that are going to get you where you want to go. It's trite because it's also not always true, like having a vision is permanent. I was describing this to somebody. Basically, the Frontside policies for a long time were very much like a startup, where people go, "You do the laziest version of whatever you can do in a certain area," so HR practices are lazy. "Hey, we don't have HR people." And then you pat yourself on the back for being a laid back work environment. [Laughter] BRANDON: We're really laid back. We don't have any policies or procedures or payroll? Hang on, hang on. Too laid back. CHARLES: We take a relax policy for vacation. We don't have any. BRANDON: Yeah, you either do or don't go. We don't know. We don't care. That vacation policy of like not having a policy, turns out the laziest form of that winds up being harmful to the people that work there. So we had to discover a lot of the stuff the hard way and start designing and crafting the experience of working here. CHARLES: The thing is that part becomes difficult, like having a clear vision and an idea of what it is that you want to accomplish with this company, it puts you in chains. I don't want to say bad but basically, what it does is it sets very hard parameters on actions that you can take in the things and the practices that you can engage in. It is a good thing but it can feel like you're being squeezed by your own parameters at times. BRANDON: Yeah, I think you and I in the past have called that 'value death', where we had all these values and we started the company as a manifestation of these values where other people may start a company as a manifestation of a business model. CHARLES: Right. BRANDON: It sounds pretty awesome. CHARLES: It does sound pretty awesome. But a concrete example of that is our health plan. We want a place where people feel secure in their living situation so we want to pay them a fair market rate and what benefits we do offer if we want to make sure that they're second to none, that is a really, really expensive value to have. BRANDON: A lot of places will buy that value back out of profit and we want it back out of our first dollar. CHARLES: Right, so it's hard then because it really puts you and the tradeoff is you have a lot less flexibility when it comes to your finances and you see that again and again. BRANDON: I talked to other people that ran businesses in the other direction. When they started with a business plan and a business model, then layered values on top as they were able to afford them. I was like, "Man, that's such a better strategy." And they're like, "No. it's just as painful," because now every time you add a value, you watch it take away the business that you've built. So it's almost the same emotional work, if not more, to try to layer and add those things on top as you go along because you watch your business become less and less of what it was and every time you do it, it feels like you're risking your business. So by absorbing a lot of that risk upfront and defining what we wanted, we actually kind of like we didn't have to move the stake in the ground. It was already planted there and we just had to figure out how to build the business around that. I never recognized that as a tradeoff because it's always like grass is greener over there. CHARLES: It's true and I don't bring it up like a complaint because I don't have any regrets. BRANDON: I got regrets all over the place. [Laughter] CHARLES: I don't have any regret for doing it that way, in the sense that maybe it's just because I have to compare everything to the way that we write software or maybe I just think about software too much. But it really is the outside in paradigm, right? You start from your intentions, your purpose and the system that you want to have and then you infer the processes and tactics that are required to realize that and make it real. BRANDON: As long as it's not crystalline and you can adapt it, then that's a great strategy. CHARLES: Yeah, but when you set those lofty goals, it means that the implications for the infrastructure are bigger than either one of us estimated. BRANDON: Vastly so. And you're right that we didn't quite grasp the costs associated with embracing those things. One of the costs is it requires a lot of thought. It requires a lot of time to manage and it requires defining processes. It just requires a lot of like mental and time overhead that goes into, and then financial overhead that goes into managing all these things that we really cared about. That collected together, we said, "This is who we are." And we've had to back off of a couple of them because we got in over our heads on, "Hey, we're going to try to reinvent apprenticeship." Instead of doing exactly what other people are doing, I know that 8th Light takes a year to design their apprenticeship and it takes about eight people. They weren't able to even take their first apprentice until they hit eight or nine people so they had enough infrastructure of support underneath that apprentice. Instead of learning from them, why don't we just do exactly whatever we want to do, whenever we want to do it because we've met a really cool person and experienced a lot of pain at trying to reinvent things that exist elsewhere, instead of trying to look at what else is out there? Again, this is not by way of regret. This is just one of those things that people do when they have their own thing is they feel like, "Okay, I'm going to do it different," and then they realize why other people all do it the same. CHARLES: Yeah, and I certainly learned like you have to stick strong to your principles but make sure that they're within scope. You know, make sure that be aware that for every value you hold that sits at the top of the pyramid and there's a whole base that needs to support that value. So by all means, hold the value but be aware that's the top of the cone and you have to account for the volume of the rest of it. BRANDON: It comes back to like how closely does this align with your vision of where this thing is going and why. Like, "This is going to allow us to recruit. This is going to put us in a situation where 12 months from now, we've got more senior engineers to help mentor the mid and junior level engineers." And being able to play that really long game is key and it's really difficult and requires patience that I had never possessed in my life before this. CHARLES: You are an enigma in that sense and that you're both impatient yet incredibly patient. BRANDON: Anything that I have that looks like patience is 100% fake. [Laughter] BRANDON: I will put myself in a situation where I can't have the thing that I want to do right now on purpose because if it was up to me, I would have every stupid trinket and gadget the minute like -- CHARLES: Man, I got my eye on a drone right now. BRANDON: Yeah? CHARLES: Yeah. I'm taking it a little bit of Charles to Charles. But yeah, I see what you mean. BRANDON: But you learn the law of the harvest which is you have to plant the seeds. If you cannot, there's no such thing as impatiently getting the return of the values that you want to instill. CHARLES: For me, I don't view patience as a personality trait. I view patience as a behavior. BRANDON: Yeah, it's a muscle that you learn to exercise. CHARLES: Yeah, it's a muscle. It is about impulse like understanding. You said it best -- the law of the harvest that you plant the seeds and you wait and you will get corn or wheat or pumpkins or whatever it is that you harvest and like dance under the moon or whatever. BRANDON: Obviously, pumpkins. I guess you figured out my plan now is to live out to a farm. It's Decorative Gourd Season. CHARLES: This is G-rated podcast. BRANDON: Yeah, all right. Yeah. I want to kind of pivot the discussion with the few minutes that we have left. I want to talk about because it's fun kind of reminiscing about how we got together. Before we pivot to where the Frontside is going, I want to talk about why this partnership worked. There were a couple things wrong with it. Namely, that you and I are both big picture people. My strong recommendation to people that are like, "I need a partner for my business. Cool. Make sure one person is big picture and one person is more detail-oriented," because somebody is going to have to fill that gap and handle details and you'll both hate it if you're both one or the other. But barring that, I would say this is one of my favorite partnerships I've seen in our business, in our industry. I'm very lucky to have participated in it. So I want to talk about a couple of things that have worked well with that. I think the most important thing in any relationship or particularly business relationship is trust. That sounds obvious and stupid but you don't understand how hard that is to maintain because so much is at stake. You're going to have differences of opinion. You're going to have differences of priority. There's going to be money involved, sometimes large amounts of money and that makes enemies of people really quickly. Our relationship of trust has been founded on six months sussing each other out for the fact when like I recognized this the minute I met you but it took six months to confirm that you were going to be the kind of partner that put my needs above yours and I need that because I'm going to be the kind of partner that tries to put your needs above mine. So when two people are striving to do that, you're going to have a solid foundation for a partnership and everything else is secondary. You hope that they have the right skill sets and you hope they have the right other personality traits. But the ability to put the other person's needs above your own, on both sides of that exchange is like with a bullet, to me the most important piece of this. First off, thanks for continuing to be that kind of person, as I've bowed out, that has not changed one wit and even the conversations we've had. I have a few other things but I'm going to bounce it over to you to talk about stuff that makes a partnership work in your experience. CHARLES: I think having that trusting relationship absolutely is the cement in the foundation. Throughout all of this, for example, it did not come to me as a surprise that you were burnt out on this work. I was able to be there the whole time and we were having very honest and very candid conversations about this throughout the entire course. While you did mentioned that we're both very high-level, big picture thinkers and you do want to have someone who is very detail-oriented to make sure that the operations are going to happen, I think that it's amazing what you can accomplish when you have two big picture people who approach a problem from two radically different perspectives. I think your mind works very differently than mine and I really appreciate the way that your mind works. It was always so wonderful to be able to attack a problem. I'm thinking in terms of pairing sessions, in terms of when we were selling something or presenting to a client together, when we were doing trainings, being able to recognize that this person is grappling with the exact same problem than I am and they're bringing a completely different skill set and they are pushing the ball forward using a set of moves that I actually don't even possess. Yet we're focused on the same goal and both even find the process of pushing it forward like enjoyable. I know there have been so many times over the course of this time, this last three years. Even quite recently, I think the last time this happened was when we were interviewing a candidate and it was like you were talking to one of the candidates and kind of explaining who you were and what it would be like to work here. I was like, "Wow, I just really appreciate your mind." Almost like if I could take your mind and hang it on a wall. I know it sounds kind of like Hannibal Lecter. BRANDON: That's super creepy. CHARLES: Yeah, I know. [Laughter] BRANDON: You're like Sylar from the first season of Heroes. CHARLES: Yeah, I was like, "Should I go for it?" Yeah. So let's go there. No, but really, I do. I really have an admiration for the way that you approach things. I don't know, it's just I feel like it's very rare to meet somebody that you have such a strong values alignment with and you get along so personally with and their tactics are completely and totally different than your own. Oh, not totally different, right? BRANDON: Yeah, different enough. CHARLES: The angle of approach. BRANDON: Yep. I loved that I wrote down a blog post about what constitutes a senior developer and at no point did I have any evaluatable technical criteria because that is how my mind works, because I don't care about that. People were like, "What sort of evaluatable technical criteria do you use?" And I was like, "I don't know. That's Charles' territory." And then you did that podcast with it and I just sat there and I re-listened to that a couple times actually as I was writing my conference talk about because it's actually really important to develop those and it's really important to have the signifiers that you have developed those. I couldn't have done any part of this without you. So I will always be deeply, deeply grateful for the fact that you saw something in me that you kind of gave me the shot that I was waiting for somebody to give me, which is weird. Like I was waiting for somebody to ask me to come and found a company with them then you did. That doesn't happen. I don't recommend to people to sit around and wait for the perfect partner to come along and ask them to co-found a company. I think what I learned through the process of all of this is, "Go ahead and be bold and do that." The rest of that is that stuff but do find a partner that you can have that level of trust with and don't settle for one that you can't, that would be like all the horror stories I know in business. CHARLES: I cannot even imagine. BRANDON: I've seen it and it's really sad. When you said it wasn't a surprise to you that I was burned out is because we had such a deep relationship of trust that when we finally started having one-on-ones, I was able to confide everything in you because I knew that you would take that information in the right context. You could be trusted with the raw part of my feelings. The fact that I was scared, the fact that I was frustrated and you wouldn't turn that into either a weapon or you wouldn't turn it into something that made you like me less or trust me less. I just could always trust you that I could tell you unvarnished truth. CHARLES: Yeah, that's certainly when you talk about lessons learned, that's actually a very personal lesson that I took away from this experience. And really this relationship is something that you show is like you can give somebody very direct, very frank feedback and how it is received and how it affects the relationship going forward has everything to do with your emotional intent towards that person. So if you are coming from a place of love, you almost have a free reign of the things that you can say because you're just stating facts and people know that there is that love in there. BRANDON: Charles, I love you but you have cream corn on your face. [Laughter] CHARLES: But it's true that you can get the same feedback from someone who is trying to use that as a weapon and trying to make you flinch. It doesn't even have to be malevolence. It can just be -- BRANDON: Indifference? CHARLES: Indifference but it makes all the difference. So I always try and replicate that with the other relationships in my life, with varying degrees of success but I learned that here. That's a very personal but very powerful lesson that I took away in having experienced that first hand. While we're talking about different skills and different lessons learned and very personal lessons learned, another thing that I took away from here, I said I always like to bring things down to the concrete. I feel like obstructions are dangerous. BRANDON: Yeah, they could obscure your intent. CHARLES: Exactly. So when I say like, "I really appreciate your mind," one of the things that I like is when you're talking, you paint a very clear picture, like your analogies and your metaphors. They're just always on point and you're always able to relate, whether it's we're doing something with software, whether it's an interview, whether it's designing one of our business processes, always able to paint a very clear picture and tell a very compelling story around why it should be that way. So it is focused me that I feel like I've been able to grow as a communicator and really kind of perceive that communication is really the one true best practice, so to speak, and making clear so that you can build consensus around people who are trying to cooperate to do something. It's affected the way that we write pull requests, making sure that you're laying out the facts in the order in which they should be. It means that if you want to accomplish something, you're going to have to convince people that it's worth doing and that is the key thing. Sometimes you can convince them with code but not always. BRANDON: It is a lever that can give you leverage when you're trying to make a point. But you have to recognize it for what it is. It's just an additional lever. CHARLES: Right. BRANDON: All right. Well, as we continue this, I'll volley back one more thing and then I want to ask you about the future of the Frontside. I kid you not. I think I'm actually going to do this. I'm going to change my iPhone lock screen to say, "Is this something Charles would say?" I've told multiple people this so I apologize if I've said this on the podcast before but we were partners for three years, which is as intense a relationship as marriage, if not more so. In those three years, you have said nothing that could even be construed or misconstrued to me as unkind. Not even neutral. Just kind, like inquisitive kind, caring, and the reverse is not 100% true. I don't have anything that I sit around and regret. But I want to thank you for giving me a standard of kindness that I can hold no other people to but I will try to hold myself to. You have made me a better person as a result of our time working together and that you just the deep, deep example of human kindness and thoughtfulness in your approach to the way that you communicate with people. I just want to thank you for all the things that I've learned here, other than my own ability to kind of make my own way in the world which I did not have before this company. The other big thing as an example of this is the kind of kindness that a person four decades into their life can continue to have, the lack of cynicism, the lack of snideness, the lack of anything resembling superiority, so I just want to thank you for that. Thanks for being such a wonderful person. I assume that's inborn and cultivated. I love you so much. So let me shift the topic in our last few minutes here and ask because I'm curious and I'm sure people will be curious. Let me phrase it this way. We walked around a big empty building and said, "Oh, I see this over here. I see this over here. This is going to be a great place where people are encouraging each other and growing as developers." Has anything changed as you're in this new building and walk around in a big empty space that doesn't have enough people in to fill it? And is anything changed as your vision for the Frontside, like I know you're hiring a salesperson and there are a couple watershed moments. CHARLES: Absolutely, and I think this is a watershed moment. I think tying it back to where we were when you came on. It was basically you and me are the two full-time employees. We had this company. We had this idea. We had this dream and we were able to, I think, realize that dream to a large extent. There were people pairing and it was right next to me this morning and I was listening into the conversation and I was not even a part of it. My heart's desire was to jump in the middle of it and get right in there because it sounded like such a fun conversation to have. But I held back and I just listened to it and appreciate it. For all of the wonderful knowledge and value that was being generated right before my very eyes, like it very much was a realization. I think of those dreams that we had back in 2013. In order to make that happen, we had to grow this company beyond just you and me. Now, we were up to almost nine people. I think, with you leaving, we're going to back to seven because we're going to bring, like you mentioned, a salesperson. So there was definitely a couple of phases of growth. We've talked about this on a previous podcast but we kind of had another watershed moment back in March where we realized, “Wait a second. We've cowboy-coding our business. We need to actually write tests, we need to write documentation, we need to shore up these internal structures to make sure that this vision is financially viable and sustainable.” And so we did that. I think that I want to actually like call out and say like, "I don't see that I could have done that without you. That's been the story of this place for the last six months. It is a fundamental transformation of how this company operates. You know just as well as I do that those changes that we put in place, those checks and those parameters and those processes had a profound impact on the viability of this company. But in the process, it also like it did. It burned you out. I think that this last six months and this last year in particular, were incredibly hard. So the next question and part of the problem was that you and I were kind of the single points of failure in that system. We stop cowboy-coding, we put in these checks, we put in the balances, we put in these measurements but we still had a system that had these two single points of failure. I'm not going to lie with your departure that is going to put a lot of stress on the company but it begs the question now, "Is a company that has one point of single point of failure a viable company?" So for me, I don't think the vision has changed that much. I still want to be a place where great engineering happens and where there is a space where engineers or people can come in and grow to be great engineers. But the thing is the change that I want to make is scalable. It needs to be distributed so the changes that we're making right now, the air that is beginning now is going to be introducing scalability so that I can exit or I am not necessary and the people who are here, whether it's eight people, 10 people, 20 people, they can continue this process and live under the umbrella of that vision without there being any one that's critical to success of the entire network. That's what I see coming and that's where I'm focusing all of my energy. BRANDON: Well, I'm excited to see what happens with it. Not excited to show up here to work anymore. [Laughter] CHARLES: But you got to come by and podcast. BRANDON: Every once in a while. CHARLES: Every once in a while. BRANDON: All right. I really love this place and what it stands for. Not just because I got to help define it. It's sort of like everybody loves their own kids. But I think even if this was somebody else's kid, I would love and admire this company because it has stood on principles that are hard to stand on. It's done things that are harder than just getting a business up and running and it survived, which says a lot. I ran out of tenacity juice but it doesn't mean this company has and I'm really grateful to have had a great co-founder that made that possible. It made me feel like I was capable of more than I felt like I was capable before I came here. So this has been a tremendously life altering experience for me. Because of your willingness to give me a shot to risk your business on this guy that you just felt like, "I like this person. I like [inaudible] together." CHARLES: Don't sell yourself short. You shine and you burn brightly. That's apparent to anybody who stands in proximity. BRANDON: Well, thank you and I am so grateful for having had this opportunity. I hope I can use you as a reference. [Laughter] CHARLES: "To whom it may concern..." [Laughter] BRANDON: I guess my wife is like, "Are you going to get a job?" And I was like, "I don't know." CHARLES: I promise not to [inaudible] you on the internet. BRANDON: Yeah, that's the best I can hope for. Charles, this has been really great. I appreciate getting to do this with you. I will miss these 'dadcasts'. CHARLES: I will miss them too. BRANDON: I wonder if anybody listening doesn't know what those mean. Let me reiterate the story. We obviously didn't talk about being dads. But we totally are dads. Stanley, when he used to work here would call the podcast, with just me and Charles, 'dadcast' so that stuck. The problem is if we started a side podcast called 'Dadcast', people would expect us to talk about dad stuff and we're not going to do that pretty much. CHARLES: Yeah, no. It really has stuck, It's like, "So, what's the format of the podcast this week. Is it going to be a dadcast?" [Laughter] CHARLES: "Or should we try, you know, organize a panel." BRANDON: I've heard from other people are like, "When are you going to do another dadcast?" [Laughter] BRANDON: So the answer now is '???' but we'll figure it out. CHARLES: Yeah, we'll figure something out. BRANDON: Oh, yeah. You all are moving to weekly, which is a pretty big deal. Maybe, we'll be able to slip one of those in there in a few months. CHARLES: We're definitely thinking about taking our podcast game up to the next level. We had Mandy, actually came to Austin last week and we ran over a bunch of different options. So yeah, we're thinking about going weekly and I'm actually pretty excited about the content of the podcast. But it's going to be distributed. It's going to be a lot more people doing a lot more stuff. BRANDON: I love that you're removing a single point of failure thing because I think a lot of what my inability or unwillingness to do that was part of what contributed to my burnout, which is obviously not a great way to run your business, to burn yourself out of being able to go back in. I'm glad that you're doing that and I'm excited to see where the Frontside goes. So Charles, thank you for letting me come on for one last show here. CHARLES: Yeah. Well thank you, Brandon. When I think about the future and you can take this as one last contribution, I feel like this is somewhat of a daunting task but I actually take solace in the fearlessness that you've given me, in the sense that I've seen you be fearless in learning Emacs. I've seen you be fearless and having really hard conversations with clients and be fearless in having those same hard conversations with our own employees that we see every day and just watching you operate gives me knowledge, just in the sense of an incontrovertible fact that, "Yes, I can do this and I can try." And so thank you for that. Thank you for everything that you've done over the last three years. BRANDON: I love you, Charles. CHARLES: I love you too, man. BRANDON: Okay. All right. Everybody, please if you have questions for this podcast, send them in. It's the @frontside on Twitter and if you have any feedback, it'd be really awesome if you leave an iTunes review on iTunes that helps people find the Frontside podcast and share with people. Tell them that I won't wreck future ones as best as I can. I won't interject and remove the opportunity to listen to cool guest that you have coming up. Anyway, thanks everybody for listening. And Charles, thank you for being a friend. CHARLES: [Singing] You have a friend and a confidant... and you know what? BOTH: [Singing] And if you threw a party, invited everyone you knew. You would see the biggest gift would be from me and the card attached would say: THANK YOU FOR BEING A FRIEND!

In this episode, LaToya Allen, developer at Big Cartel and founder of SheNomads talks about apprenticeship and mentoring, finding community while working remotely, how companies can be more inclusive for hiring women and people of diverse backgrounds in technology, and avoiding burnout and maintaining balance. LaToya Allen: @HashtagLaToya | latoya@shenomads.com Links: CodeNewbie Ep. 34: Newbie Story: LaToya Allen The SheNomads Podcast Garage Cowork (Polanco) Dear Tech Companies: Focus on Diversity, Not Foosball The SheNomads Job Board Women in Tech Wellness: Chicago Resources: Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby by Sandi Metz Exercism.io The CodeNewbie Twitter Chat Transcript: BRANDON: Hello everybody and welcome to Episode 44 of the Frontside Podcast. I'm your host Brandon Hays and I help run the Frontside. STEPHANIE: Hello, I'm Stephanie Riera and I am a developer at the Frontside. BRANDON: Awesome. And we have a special guest today, LaToya Allen. So you're a developer at Big Cartel, is that right? LATOYA: That is correct, yes. BRANDON: Cool. We wanted to talk a little with you today about your day job, your work with SheNomads, your recent blog post about inclusivity and how you balance all that stuff for people. We wanted to start, if we could, by having you introduce yourself for the listeners that don't already know you. LATOYA: Sure, my name is LaToya. I am a software developer at Big Cartel and I'm also the founder of SheNomads. BRANDON: Cool. We actually listen to your podcast and found out some cool stuff about you. One of the things is you used to tend bar. Would you be okay telling us a little bit about your story about how you got into software, what you did before that, and why you're doing this now? LATOYA: Absolutely. I was bartending in Chicago, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life because I knew that it wasn't staying up until 5 in the morning, making Martinis for folks even though it was fun and I do appreciate that time of my life. One day my yoga class got cancelled and I needed something to do. I ended up stumbling upon some coding tutorials and I really fell in love with it. I noticed that hours had gone by, I wasn't bored, I really felt engaged, and it didn't really feel like work to me. It felt like something that would be a cool hobby. I, like many people at that time, felt that you needed a college degree to become a software developer, so I really looked at it as more of a hobby. I started going to different meet-ups in the city and I discovered that wasn't true. And I was lucky enough to find people that are willing to help teach me when I was very early in my career. BRANDON: Cool. And I guess the rest is history now, right? You've had a couple of jobs since then and you went through an apprenticeship program and after the apprenticeship program, you're developing lots of different kinds of software. Are there any software projects you're working on now? I know I met you at Ember Conf but you're doing less of that now. Are there any software projects now that you're fun and exciting, like what languages are you using? LATOYA: At work, we are primarily a Rails app. I've been doing a lot of work in Rails, a little bit of JavaScript. I had the opportunity to learn Ember when I came on to Big Cartel. So, that was pretty cool. As far as side projects, I started an open-source project for SheNomads as a way to help teach folks how to do simple things like create a pull request in GitHub or just the basics of working with Rails. But SheNomads has become an entirely different thing since I started that, so I don't do any coding outside of work right now, unfortunately. [Laughs] STEPHANIE: How long was your apprenticeship? LATOYA: I was an apprentice at 8th Light in Chicago and I was there for one year as an apprentice. STEPHANIE: And is that where you learned Ember? LATOYA: No, when I left 8th Light, I landed a job working in FinTech for 6 months. And then after that, I went to Big Cartel and Big Cartel is actually where I learned Ember. STEPHANIE: What was your apprenticeship experience like? Do you have any advice or anything that you think really helped you along the way? LATOYA: I got to learn from some pretty great people such as Mike Ebert, Colin Jones, just off the top of my head. I learned from a ton of people when I was there. Ginny Hendry was also very helpful. Basically at 8th Light, they really focused on test-driven development and pair programming which test-driven development is a lot of fun and tests are great, that they're very in these days. I got to learn how to test-drive applications and languages such as Ruby, JavaScript, Clojure which is probably my favorite language that I'd never get to work in because it's not popular enough, I guess. I think I did a little bit of REST while I was there as well. And then I was working in frameworks such as Sinatra, Rails, and I worked in ClojureScript as well. STEPHANIE: Nice. I also wanted to ask if during this journey of becoming an engineer, were there any experiences that helped shape the way that you think today? And I'm asking this because I'm curious to find out where the 'She' in SheNomads comes from. And why not just make this a very general digital nomad type thing? Why was there a focus on being a woman? LATOYA: Because I am one. [Laughs] I'm a woman. I think that people tend to think in gender in terms of their own. So for me, it was just fair enough for all to come up with the name SheNomads. STEPHANIE: Gotcha! Obviously, there is a difference, it seems like, in becoming an engineer when it comes to being a woman. I've participated in a lot of events and usually I have women come up to me afterwards and talk to me. And they usually tell me their experiences and how they know that they haven't been participating. They know they haven't been going to hackathons and other events. And I asked them why and 90% of the time, their answer is they're just intimidated. They don't want to be the person raising their hand in a room full of guy developers and hoodies. They don't want to be seen as the amateur or the person that doesn't know. So, I wanted to see how your experience was if it was similar to that or if it was any different and see if there is anything you learned along the way. LATOYA: Look, we all know that tech has problems. I live at two different intersections in the majority of people that are in tech being I am both a woman and I am black. Being a woman – not just a woman, but being a woman of color in tech does come with its challenges. For me personally, I have never been one to shy away from raising my hand in a room or speaking up in a room. But I think that tech in a lot of ways did dole that part of my personality because I wasn't being listened to. I wasn't being considered. For example, there are plenty of times where I've been in a meeting, I've been showing my code and someone else takes credit for my work. And I just don't even bother to say anything because honestly, it's like, "What's the point?" At that point, you just find another job. Or I've been in situations where I say something to someone about the code or about a test or about a change that we should consider and then someone who happens to be male turns around and says basically the exact same thing. And while no one really reacted to what I said, people say, "Oh, that's such a great idea." I have also been in meetings where people don't even look me in the eye for the entire meeting which is very awkward when you're sitting in a room for an hour and you're the only woman in that room. And the person leading the meeting can't even bother to look you in the face. So I think that it's been an interesting journey. [Laughs] And don't get me wrong, there've definitely been a lot of positives with it. But to your question, those are some of the things that I've experienced and it certainly made me aware of how women or people who live at different intersections of the majority of folks in tech get treated and how we need to do better. STEPHANIE: Yeah. I think you and I are kind of outliers. I'm also a woman of color, I would consider, I'm a Latina. Nothing really stopped me from attending meet-ups and hackathons and I've always been very straightforward about what I know and what I don't know. So, that's never really been an issue for me but usually, I'd be probably one of two women out of a room of like 40 people. It's not very comforting. So that's why I'm wondering is there anything for women that aren't like ourselves, do you have any advice for women and for companies that want to be more inclusive, what can they do, how can they be more proactive or get over that fear or intimidation? LATOYA: Absolutely. So, one of the first things that I tell them to do when they are thinking about getting into tech is find communities that will be supportive of you because there weren't a lot of boot camps because Chicago was full of meet-ups. And because there were meet-ups like Chicago Women Developers, I was able to find that community [inaudible] and women were very forthright in sharing their experiences, both good and bad in tech. So, it definitely helped to prepare me a bit. [Laughs] But also when I had bad days, when I had times where I knew I wasn't being treated equally, it was easy to say, "You know what? I'm going to a meet-up after work because I can knock with you people." So, definitely finding a community. STEPHANIE: Sometimes, I feel like those negative experiences where you feel like you're not being respected or you're not being treated equally, at least for myself, that was like adding wood to the fire. That just made me want to succeed more. It made me want to become a developer. It just made me more passionate. I guess for other people, it can have the opposite effect. But I feel like the best revenge is to have them see you succeed. BRANDON: I wanted to ask kind of a follow-on question there about SheNomads. You talk about finding community being really important and you were lucky because you're in Chicago. But now, it seems like you're doing more travelling and there are other people that travel a lot. Is that where you found kind of a hole, the people that travel sort of nomadically? It can be difficult for those people to find a community. Is that where that comes from? Or what was the genesis of SheNomads? LATOYA: SheNomads started because when I landed the job at Bog Cartel, I knew – and I discussed this when I was interviewing with them as well, so it's very transparent. I knew for me working remote from home, that working remote from wherever I wanted home to be within reason as long as there's WiFi and espresso, I promise you I can work from there. [Laughs] So, I started my podcast actually because I had no idea how to work remotely. I had no idea how to pack a suitcase for three months and I didn't know how to find good co-working spaces. I didn't want to feel isolated while I was in the road. So, it kind of evolved. I started a Facebook group for it as well and that was very helpful because for example, I was in Tel Aviv, I was there for two weeks and I didn't know anyone and I really wanted to meet other women who worked in tech. And through the Facebook group, I was able to meet someone who ended up taking me to a co-working space that's sponsored by the government there with free food, free coffee, free WiFi where a lot of other people who happen to be digital nomads who work in tech were as well. For me, it ended up being this thing. It ended up being like an international community but that wasn't the intent when I started it. It's just like a lucky coincidence. BRANDON: And so now, you're putting a retreat together around that. Can you tell us a little bit about that? LATOYA: Yes. After I started the podcast, I started talking to them about their experiences. I knew that I wanted to really dive into it. I wanted to find a digital nomad retreat. But the thing is that the ones that I was coming across were very reflective as the tech industry as they are now. They're very young, people working for like 18-hour days and drinking beer for the rest of the time. And I looked at the attendees and it's like, "Okay, you're all men." [Laughs] And I didn't really want this thing for a week or two in a house full of drunk 22-year old dudes. It's just not for me. BRANDON: You don't want to stay in the front house, huh? LATOYA: Yeah. For me, I like my sleep, I like my yoga, I really like doing things like journaling and standing a long time. And I also enjoy what I do. So for me, I was like, "Okay, I want to be somewhere beautiful where I can have free WiFi, where I can practice yoga, and where I can talk to other people who want to work remotely but maybe want to explore a city." So I was working for Mexico City and I happen to have found the most beautiful house just south of the park. And I was speaking to one of my friends who was a yoga instructor and she said, "Yes, I will come. I will lead morning yoga. I will lead candlelight yoga at night. We could do some [inaudible] actions of people who are into it." And then I had been working in a co-working space in Mexico City and I told them about my idea. They offer to sponsor 30 hours for each attendee and that's Garage Cowork, it's in Polanco which is a gorgeous neighborhood in Mexico City. And then I used to work with a friend who's now the CTO of MealSharing.com. He said, "Hey, first of all I wish I could be at this retreat." But since it's women only, we talked about MealSharing.com sponsoring an authentic Mexican cooked meal for us. So, that's how they got involved. BRANDON: It sounds like things kind of fell together in a way that actually is going to create an experience that, I have to imagine, you're happy with the idea of. LATOYA: Absolutely. I'm very excited because if this already existed, someone else will be getting my money. But since it didn't, I just said let's make this happen and I feel very lucky that it all just kind of come together very organically. STEPHANIE: You recently had an article on Medium. I wanted to ask about that. What made you feel compelled to write this article about how companies approach what they write on their careers page? LATOYA: I had been talking to a friend who started tech a little after I did. And we had both attended the Sandi Metz POODR workshop together which is amazing. If anyone listening to this is a Ruby dove and you want to up your skills, I would highly recommend it. So we attended that workshop together, it was a great experience. I keep talking to women who are significantly underpaid, underappreciated, and are having all of these problems in tech. And so, I was just lying in bed on a Sunday night, working at careers pages and I was thinking about reasons that women leave tech because they keep coming in but it almost seems as if we're losing them too quickly. And I was thinking about these reasons why. I was looking at careers pages and it dawned on me that the careers pages of these companies were not very inviting and that I would not want to work on the companies based on those careers pages. Even though some of them, I knew people that worked at them and I knew that they were all about diversity and inclusion and they were paying women practically, if not the same, as what they're paying men. And I knew that they were positive work environments, so I knew that people were learning from them but the way the companies were presenting themselves was so different. So I thought, "If I was applying for jobs," and I'm not, I'm very happy at Big Cartel and I'm very happy with what I'm doing with SheNomads but if I was, I wouldn't apply at their company and this is why. And I just sat there that Sunday night in my bed, flipping through careers pages and I just noticed a common theme and it was that they weren't very inviting. They seemed to think that alcohol was a bigger selling point to the people they wanted to attract than things like maternity or paternity leave. Their pictures looked like they were trying to throw a party or something. I don't know. It was just – I was very surprised. STEPHANIE: Yeah, it seems to be the popular thing right now like this whole Silicon Valley vibe culture type thing. But it's interesting. I have two friends that are both recruiters for tech companies and mainly trying to find developers here in Austin. And last weekend, we were having the same conversation about how they don't like to admit it, but they have seen over ageism and just general discrimination. How they have seen countless times people that were definitely qualified for the position but because – I think one of their examples was a young lady but she was Indian. And this company that was looking, they were all white guys and they had rejected her because she wasn't "culture fit". But I find that very interesting because I think, as a company, you would actually benefit from having people of all kinds of backgrounds, someone who's 20 years old to someone who's in their 50's or 60's. They must have different sets of knowledge and experiences that could benefit the grander picture. LATOYA: You would think so, you think companies would think that way but unfortunately, a lot of people don't. For starters, if you are a person who isn't interested in working with women or people of color, you're going to look at a careers page in the opposite way that I would. You don't want to work with people over the age of 35, people with brown skin, people who identifies varying genders. Those careers pages are going to attract you. STEPHANIE: Right. LATOYA: Which is unfortunate but that's just the world that we live in right now, and I have had people say this to me as someone who is a woman and someone who is a person of color. But a lot of companies, unfortunately, once they have a base of all straight cisgendered males, for them it becomes a liability to bring in women or people that live at other intersections because they have to worry about things like the woman getting hit on because she's the only woman that these 30 or 40 men can look at all day which is ridiculous, I think. But at this point in time, sometimes they just say it's a culture fit thing when really this is a law-suing happen thing. BRANDON: I saw this rag regressive 1940's thing about a woman in the workplace. [Laughter] BRANDON: And it's both hilarious and really sad because that actually sort of regressive feeling has just kind of morphed into that law suit type of thing. It's the same exact thing of just like breaking that sort of mono-culture and people are fearful of it because they don't know what the consequences are going to be. That cost-benefit calculation doesn't happen because a lot of people in tech haven't experienced what a diverse workplace is and does and the benefits of bringing people from different backgrounds would care about different things. And so, I'm curious. We kind of talked a little bit and one of the things I want to ask you about we already kind of covered is why people don't do that. Why do people continue doing that if it's not that productive? I'm curious to see if there are things that you've seen companies do like what attracted you to Big Cartel and other companies that would be able to bring some people from different backgrounds? What are the things that companies do currently or you'd like to see them do that would make it more attractive and more inclusive? LATOYA: I think one thing right off the bat that I noticed about Big Cartel and one thing that I noticed about many companies in tech that I'm really excited about is that they put people first. And I think that when you operate from that standpoint, you're not going to have problems that come with creating a diverse or inclusive workspace. You're not going to have women wanting to leave because you're treating them like human beings. So, that's first and foremost. I think some companies really care about the people that work for them. They really care about their client base, their user base. So, for me personally, I always recommend that if people aren't happy at their current situations and they want to find something more inclusive, look for companies that put people first. That's the first thing. I think the benefits that they offer and the way that they talk about their benefits are really important. I have no intention of being a mother; there are lots of great mothers out there and it's a lot of work in the world's best [inaudible] in my mind, anyway. I also wouldn't ever interview with a company that didn't have a good maternity leave policy. It's one of the things that I look for upfront. So, even just putting your maternity leave policy and paternity leave, if you have it, on your careers page can be a really big seller. I think starting early on, once you have your core team in place, if you haven't already had women or people of color or someone who isn't like you, this may be a good time to stop and think about why that is and what you can do to pull in diverse candidates. And there's also reaching out to communities that do have them, like SheNomads is one example of many communities that exists. There are also bigger more established communities like Girl Develop It, for example. Reach out with them, host a couple of meet-ups at your space, if you have it. If you don't, figure out a way to work with them. BRANDON: Right. So you're saying if you make it a top-of-mind goal, you will find ways to reach out because there are people out there looking. LATOYA: Yeah. BRANDON: But they may just not be in your immediate vicinity. In my experience, that's the actual problem. The problem is that it's not in my proximity to see and know these people that are involved in these communities. And so, connecting into those communities naturally, organically, and through effort is a way that I've actually seen people grow that. That's how you can kind of go from saying 'I care about diversity' to actually growing a diverse and inclusive workplace. LATOYA: Absolutely. I think another thing that folks that can do is have a remote position. You get a remote culture going if it's something that you're comfortable with. I understand not everyone wants to work from home and not every company will do well having remote positions open. But if it's something you're open to, that is a great way to do it because you might be living in an area where all the people are like you. So, you're going to have trouble getting someone to drive in a car. So, there are two other ways that I was thinking that people can attract diverse candidates. I'm actually launching a Job Board for SheNomads. I got to the point -- it's actually once the article came out on Medium that a lot of people were emailing me wanting to know how they could find jobs and a lot of companies were emailing me wondering how they could find diverse candidates and like what they could do to be more welcoming to other communities. So I said, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm putting together a job board." BRANDON: So where is the job board? LATOYA: The job board you can find on SheNomads.com. BRANDON: Cool. There are a lot of things – and this is really what I wanted to drill into was the blog post helps kind of point at the problem, "Hey, your careers page is sending messages that are actively turning away people that you want working for you. You say you want a diverse workplace but it's so far down the list of your actual priorities, or at least whoever it is that's running your careers page, that you're actively turning people away that you don't even realize you're losing people through that funnel that are bouncing out before you even have a chance to meet them and know them and know what they can bring to you." And so, that's actually a really big deal and a big problem in tech. I also appreciate your jumping in and that we have some sort of concrete things a person can do. Get involved with GDI or with Women Who Code. We had a thing here in Austin and I ran the local Ember meet-up for several years and it's a lot of work and it was really challenging. One thing we noticed was that there were only two or so women, on the average, at a meet-up of 30 people. And I recognized it as a problem but I didn't feel like there was anything I could do about it. And so, I handed the reins of running the meet-up over to a group of people that included the women. And sure enough, the women were like, "You know, we might be able to do something about this." Stephanie actually got involved with this, and they held an event for women and it's changed the makeup of that meet-up significantly. You can have an impact on this stuff. You just, sometimes, have to step out and think differently about the problem. LATOYA: Yes. BRANDON: I'd like to shift gears a little bit and talk about – you're involved in so much stuff. Running SheNomads, running retreats, you have a full-time job, you're traveling a bunch and balancing all of that stuff, I have to imagine, is really tricky. And I'd like to dive into that and have you kind of talk about like do you ever get burned out? Do you feel like giving up? What do you do to manage that? Do you have preventative maintenance that you do? What is it that you do to try to keep all that together? LATOYA: One thing that I find very interesting is you asked me specifically about burn out because burn out is something that I recently experienced. I am not good at knowing that I'm setting myself up for burn out. I'm not even good at knowing that I'm in burn out until I'm there. For the most part, I think that I've gotten better as my tech career has evolved. So for example, when I first started, I was working a lot of hours. There were days when I had to be in the office at 7 in the morning because I was mentoring people who were in London even though I was in Chicago. So for me, there is no more of that. [Laughs] One thing that I really like about working at Big Cartel is that most of the team is on the West Coast, so I get to do things like sleep and if I want, I can go to the gym, I can run all of my errands before I even start my work days. Once I start my work day, all of I have to do is worry about work as opposed to waking up and not having time to do nice things for myself, not having time to run errands and I'm starting my day having all of these stuff on my mind. For me personally, working remotely allowed me to become a more balanced person as well. I don't like riding trains with crowded people. When I was working downtown, it would take me an hour to get to work every morning. If I have to go downtown in the middle of the day, it might take me like 20 minutes or half an hour just because there's not as many people running around. Also for me, I didn't particularly like going to the grocery store. At times, you can go to the grocery store if you have a 9 to 5 job. If I realize that I don't have anything for dinner, I can just tell my pair, "Hey, do you mind if we take a 20 minute break?" And then I can go to the grocery store and get whatever I want, knowing that I'm the only person at the grocery store. I mean, it gets a little bit to my inner introvert but I know myself well enough. Let's see here. Practicing yoga is something that's very important to me and taking walks as breaks is something that's very important to me. I think when you love what you do, it can be hard to take breaks. So, it's always nice to be pair programming with someone and have them say, "We haven't taken a break in a while." I find that when I work on my own, I don't take as many breaks. When I take a break, I pop my yoga mats always open. So, I'll do yoga for 10 minutes or take a nice little walk outside or just get away from my computer for a while. BRANDON: It sounds like working remotely kind of gave you the flexibility you need to implement your own self-care regimen, the one that works for you. LATOYA: Yes. And I would not have even thought to implement this regimen had it have not been for working remote, I think, because it's not as easy. It's bad enough being one woman amongst a hundred men but then you're that cliché woman with a pink yoga mat walking around the office trying to find some space. BRANDON: I actually did use to work in an office that had a yoga studio on site. LATOYA: That is so nice. BRANDON: Things like that do exist but I have to imagine that's about as uncommon as it gets. LATOYA: Absolutely. I had the idea of starting a meet up which I started in Chicago called Women in Tech Wellness. Basically, we get together and we practice yoga for an hour. And then after that, there's a little bit of networking. Luckily for me, Braintree is sponsoring the event which is so great because it allows us to keep it free. I think having free and low cost events in tech are really important because there are people that are trying to figure out how to break into this and if they have to spend $10 or $15 to go to a meet-up, they're not going to go. Also, it's nice to go to a meet-up where you might be stressed when you show up because you just left work but you know in an hour, you're going to be feeling really good. Plus the Braintree office in Chicago has this amazing atrium where we do the yoga. So when you're lying on your mat, you're looking straight up into the sky and you see plants and you see all of these amazing stuff. It's just a great place to do yoga. So, thank you Braintree. [Laughs] BRANDON: I think that's really cool. I have one question, though. Do you ever have the ironic circumstance of the things that you create to help you and other people find balance wind up actually contributing to your overall sense of being overwhelmed? LATOYA: Oh, absolutely. There's only 24 hours in a day and right now, I am all of SheNomads at SheNomads party of one. [Laughs] I would love to get to the point where I can afford to hire a couple of people just to help even if it's part time. So, absolutely. Doing a podcast is a lot of work, booking guests is a lot of work. I would say that organizing the meet-ups is fairly easy just because I'm lucky enough to have people that wanted to step in and help there. But yeah, I think having a few things on your plate other than work is always going to contribute to a little bit of imbalance. BRANDON: Stepping back and looking at the arc, you haven't been in tech for a million years but you've been in it long enough to start drawing some themes through it. If you look at your career like where it's been and approximately where it's going, are you starting to feel like there are some themes to the stuff that you do and some themes that are kind of common threads in it? LATOYA: I can tell you some themes in common threads. Yes, for my personal tech career. For me, I really care about code and I really care about people, so I'm glad that I was able to early on learn clean code and learn how to refactor and learn test-driven developments. First job I had at 8th Light taught me all those things. I think for me, that is a theme that will be throughout my career. Test-driven development, who knows, 10 years from now there could be a better way to write clean code, but for now, it's the best way I know how. And finding community, even though I am absolutely happy with where I'm working. Big Cartel does a great job at creating an inclusive space, but still I like being a part of a tech community. I know that's not for everyone but it's something that I think I will continue to do. BRANDON: From just my casual place of observation of seeing what you do, definitely finding and creating the communities that you want to see exist certainly seems to be a theme. And I think it's really cool that you do the SheNomads stuff. I think it's really cool that you run that podcast. For a person that hasn't been doing this for 15 years, I think it's really awesome that you found a community early on. It's something that certainly has accelerated my journey as a developer. I haven't been a developer forever, either. So I appreciate seeing you do all that stuff. I think it's a really good example for other people that getting involved can benefit everybody and you can have an impact in ways that are sort of uniquely yours. I mean, certainly the stuff that you do is sort of unique to you and your perspective and I think that's really cool because it winds up benefiting a lot of other people. LATOYA: Thank you. I wish I would have said that as my answer. [Laughter] BRANDON: It's sometimes easier to see from the outside in, even as a casual observer. STEPHANIE: I did want to make a comment about balance. That's something that's very important for me. It's something that I've been trying to implement in my daily life. I recently started going to the gym and I try to work out either early in the morning or in the afternoon after work. Sometimes, I realize that even when you try to do something, you still don't accomplish what you're trying to do like keeping that balance. I started this about two months ago. And last week, I realized that I was not in balance at all. I spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday really focused on trying to learn certain things. I was going over Clojure actions and trying to destructure and get rid of components and change the actions from where they originally were. I'm a junior developer, so I feel like if you are an apprentice, it's really hard to not be in this state of overdrive of like you really want to accomplish things. You really want to learn as much as you can and just be a sponge and absorb everything. But if you're spending eight hours, give or take, going over these things, at the end of the day, I just feel sometimes my brain is just like it's done. I can't even formulate sentences. I can't function. I just get home and I want to keep working on this but I just literally can't. I think on Wednesday, I just had a horrible headache and I got home and I was like, "I'm just going to lay down for a little bit." Laying down turned into a 3-hour nap and I will go [inaudible] 8:00 and I felt so much better. And then on Thursday, when I came in, everything just made sense to me. All of the problems and everything that didn't make sense before made sense. And I hadn't reviewed, I hadn't done anything, all I did was I got a nap. But I feel like there's definitely this struggle when you are wanting to achieve and prove yourself and to get to this next level, it's really important to try to remind yourself to give yourself breaks even during the work day because if you can't continue, if you're at this point of mental fatigue, it doesn't matter how much longer you're sitting in front of the computer, trying to read about it in the documentation, it's just not going to do anything. So, I wanted to ask if perhaps you ever had those moments of frustration especially in the beginning as you're trying to learn all of these difficult concepts. LATOYA: For me, yes. I love taking naps. I consider myself a professional. Luckily, Big Cartel is very flexible, so if I feel like I need a nap instead of lunch, I might take a 2-hour lunch break because I'm taking a nap. And for me, there's just something about resetting my brain through sleep that allows me to be more productive in a way that's just walking away from my computer and doing something else. Also, I spent two months this summer working abroad. So, I worked from the UK, Israel, Spain, Portugal, and Norway. So I worked abroad for two months and because of the time difference, I would wake up in the morning and work for three hours and then I would have all day to do whatever I wanted which primarily meant being a tourist in some of the most beautiful places, I've been very lucky to place my eyes upon. And then I would do another three or four hours pair programming at night and I think that I was able to get more done and I had a greater sense of clarity because I had such a big break. I was only working for three or four hours and that's it and you're taking three or four break because no one else is awake yet. It's almost as if you're working two separate days. I think I would like to go back sometime soon, actually, and do that again because I'm not getting up at three in the morning here to work for three hours and then take a break. STEPHANIE: Definitely. And that makes sense. It makes sense to stimulate your brain in a different way. Looking at the beautiful buildings and reading about the history and walking around and being outside. Even just a 30-minute break can just be just so wonderful and be like a refresher for the brain. Nice. Before we go, I wanted to ask if you have any shout outs. LATOYA: I do. I will give you three resources that I tell everyone who's a junior developer, where they should look in to break into tech and what they should look for. Number one, I kind of already mentioned a little bit, but Sandi Metz has a great book called POODR. She also has a POODR workshop. If you can go to that, I highly recommend it. I know that she offers scholarships for that as well, so you can apply. Number two would Katrina Owens' Exercism. It's a great way to learn how to code. It's also an open-source project. So not only can you go to exercism.io and pick a programming language and work with people on teams to learn how to code. But if you want to contribute to the open-source project, you can. And the third thing would be the CodeNewbie twitter chat. I love it. I really need to get my stuff together and be there on Wednesday nights. I believe it's Wednesday at 8 or 9 Central – don't quote me on that. But those are the big three things I like to shout out, even though you only asked for one. [Laughs] STEPHANIE: That's perfectly fine. I was going to ask you anyway if there were any open-source projects or programs that you are involved in. LATOYA: Yes, I have been involved in exercism in the past. I think I might have mentioned this, but I tried doing open-source project with SheNomads but I would need someone who's like at least a mid-level developer to come in and help out all of the juniors and the people that are trying to get started to learn how to code because my time is very thin these days and I'm trying to maintain some level of balance. STEPHANIE: Right. And that's a huge challenge too. So, lots of time management and just time is a resource itself. BRANDON: There are a lot of mid-level developers out there that are looking for, "Hey, how can I contribute to open-source?" So, it sounds like you have a project that if people out there are looking for a way to contribute to something meaningful, then you have stuff that you could certainly use help on. LATOYA: Absolutely. If you want to contribute, you can email me or tweet me, find me on Facebook, do whatever, and I will happily add you as a contributor to the project. BRANDON: That actually is the last question I want to ask. How do people get a hold of you to volunteer for this or ask additional questions or find out more about the retreat? LATOYA: The three best ways are number one, you can go to SheNomads.com and if you wanted to find out about the retreat or the job board, there are contact forms there. Number two, I am always on Twitter. You can tweet me at either accounts. My personal account is @HashtagLaToya and then I have a SheNomads account, so it's @SheNomads for that. And then the third way is email. My email is LaToya@SheNomads.com and I always am up for answering any questions you may have. BRANDON: Awesome. LaToya, thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate you sharing your experiences with us and you've certainly learned some unique things. I think your take on self-care actually is really sharp and something that people don't think were talked about enough. And it probably [inaudible] as a developer in lot of ways and I think people can learn a lot from that. I wanted to thank everybody else that's listening to this. I'm Brandon Hays. I'm on Twitter also @tehviking. We are @thefrontside on Twitter. And Stephanie, you are also on Twitter, is that right? STEPHANIE: Of course. I'm Stephanie Riera and I'm @stefriera. And thank you so much, LaToya. It was a pleasure talking to you. BRANDON: Absolutely. Thanks everybody and thank you, LaToya. We will see you all next time.

In this episode we cover how to handle apprenticeship, share with listeners how they can start participating in mentoring and apprenticeship in their companies and communities, and help people to understand the impact apprenticeship and mentoring can have on everybody involved. Links: open-source-ember-apps: A list of open source Ember apps Transcript: CHARLES: Hello everybody and welcome to the Frontside Podcast, Episode 42. I am Charles Lowell and with me is Brandon Hays, as well as some other really, really, really, really special guests, which I'm really excited to have on the show today. BRANDON: Really? CHARLES: Yeah. BRANDON: Just really? CHARLES: Really, really. [Laughter] CHARLES: I was thinking of 'really, truly' but no, I wanted to go back to 'really'. I don't know, Brandon, are you pretty stoked about the show today? BRANDON: I am. I'm really excited today. We've actually wanted to do this for a long time and we finally were able to line it up once we've figured out that we can record a podcast more than once every six weeks. So yeah, we're really -- CHARLES: Really. BRANDON: -- Really excited to have Taras Mankovski and Lennex Zinyando with us. We'll have you each introduce yourselves. But basically, the point of this podcast is we want to talk to you and you're doing some really cool stuff with apprenticeship through us, and Lennex is one of your earlier apprentices. From everything I've seen tremendously successful, Lennex, you're an awesome developer. So we wanted to talk to you, find out how you're doing that stuff but we'd love to have each of you introduce yourselves and talk a little bit about your background. So we'll start with you, Taras. TARAS: I'm really excited to be here. I also feel like I need to point out the fact that this is podcast number 42. Right? That's the meaning of life and everything. BRANDON: We would be very quite remiss to miss that. Thank you so much. We were so really excited that we forgot about this was the purpose of everything. CHARLES: That's right. We're sitting on the main nerve right now. This is it people. This is it. It's everything. TARAS: I'm really hoping that if you ask me questions, I'm going to answer them faster than this famous answer. I'm really glad to be here. I want to give a little bit of my story because I feel like a lot of things that I've doing over the last 10 years have been adding up to what I'm doing now. I have a pretty diverse background. Programming wasn't something I wanted to do because when I was 12, my dad gave me a Java book and he said, learn how to program and I'm like, "This is terrible." [Laughter] TARAS: That was a really rough introduction for me. Even though, I think I was always technically inclined and I did like [inaudible] for a long time. I did a lot of different things. Since I was a little kid, I always want to be a businessman before I think I even knew what that was. So my focus has always been on the business of things, and technology happened to be one of the only ways that I knew how to access that in a way that was actionable based on something that I could do. I've tried a lot of different things. One of the things that I did before was a company called Positive Sum, where we spent about four and a half years trying to figure out how do you build relationships where everybody who works with you wins. When that Positive Sum company and the being as 'zero sum' for me, I end up leaving and starting from scratch. I have another company called WRKTG, Inc which is like the mothership for EmberSherpa and that acronym refers to 'working together'. Everything that I've kind of have been doing has come from the perspective of how do we bring people to work together, and how do I make it possible for people to have a win-win-win scenarios. I think that's kind of what brings us to where we are today, with this conversation about apprenticeship. BRANDON: Cool, thanks for that. Then Lennex, how did you get into software and what was your background? I don't know if you come from a computer science background or you were doing something else. LENNEX: I'm Lennex Zinyando. I'm based in Harare, Zimbabwe. I've always wanted to work with computers since an early age. But then, access to computers was really hard to come by so I used to spend a lot of money going to internet cafes so that I could access the internet. After a few years of [inaudible], I went to work with a bank for a few years and I decided to leave because I really, really wanted to become a programmer developing software. I joined a local company that does mobile marketing as a technical support person. I worked with them for a few years and I met Taras on Twitter, sometime beginning of last year. Then, I paired with him so that he could mentor me. So now, I'm an apprentice at EmberSherpa. BRANDON: You said you met him on Twitter and you said, "Hey, I'd like to be your apprentice," but how did that interaction actually occur? Was there like a tweet that went out and said, "Hey, I'm looking for apprentices," or you just kind of saw that he was knowledgeable and you said, "Hey, can you help me?" How did that interaction first happen? LENNEX: Actually, I saw a conversation between him and another guy where the guy was - actually they're discussing how they could – I think they wanted to pair on it or something. Then, I just asked if I could join the process, be part of the team that was going to pair on it. Then Taras created this link for us and that's how it was started. CHARLES: So you just said, "Hey, can I join that pairing session?" And the rest is history at this point? LENNEX: Yeah, something like that. CHARLES: Now, you're a world famous software developer so it seems it works. [Laughter] BRANDON: Well, that's really cool. I'd like to ask you, Taras. Was that sort of intentional on your part? You said your arc was bending toward community and 'greater than zero sum' type work. As you were bending that arc toward that, did you have the idea of- I mean, your name was EmberSherpa on Twitter so clearly, you had some sort of training or guidance aspect to what you're doing. Was apprenticeship part of that model by then? Or is that something you kind of stumbled on? TARAS: I always imagine what things might look like. I imagine that there might be a scenario- I tried to do this with WordPress before which is create a scenario where I'm helping people learn and in the process they cultivate a community of people that follow what I do through helping them become like an engineer. It didn't work very well with WordPress but it seems to have worked with Ember. It's very much an [inaudible] process. I kind of went through a bunch of hardships trying to figure out a structure that is actually sustainable. That's the really hard part, I think, about creating like win-win scenarios is that you need to be sustainable and finding a way to make sustainable. That was really tricky. CHARLES: Yes, that's something that we're discovering as well, right? You identify these values and you say, "Hey, these are the things that I value," and then you discover how expensive they are in the process of trying to implement them and trying to do that in a way that you can keep going that doesn't basically require everything from you all the time. That's really hard. So it was something that clearly, like you cared about, you were trying to do it in WordPress. You said you ran into a lot of painful lessons there. I'd actually be curious and dig into a couple of those things that you are finding were not sustainable. TARAS: It's ironic actually, I found mentoring to not be very sustainable. From a business perspective, I think mentoring is a really great service but because it relies so much on people like myself who have to be like people that get to certain levels through their hard work, you end up wanting to get paid well for the work that you do. Then in that scenario, it becomes very difficult. Like offering mentoring services is very valuable but it's also a very premium service. So to be able to sustain myself and be able to offer a service, the businesses you want to pay for, and in a way that is going to benefit the company is going to benefit the apprentice and benefit me, those were difficult. But it seems to be shifting towards apprenticeship turns out to be the answer, for me at least. It was like one of things that was right under my nose but it took a really long time for me to see that actually apprenticeship is the answer to creating this scenario. It's really funny how something might be right in front of you but you might not see it for a year and a half. BRANDON: What's different about apprenticeship from mentorship, basically? TARAS: Mentoring for me is supporting a company that has a team of developers. Basically, the company is paying me to mentor their developers. It seems like a very fine distinction but the difference with apprenticeship is that the focus is on the individual and all the other things are kind of secondary. When I stop thinking about myself as a mentor or stop talking about mentoring and I start talking about apprenticeship, it becomes about creating structures for others to be successful like making that shift on creating opportunities for others to grow. It's one of those things where you shift your focus towards something else and it makes your path forward easier. That's kind of what I found with apprenticeship. Even though I was doing it for a while, like I started working with Lennex a year and a half before I made the shift, I really found focusing on the apprentice and making apprentice successful actually help me make my business more sustainable. BRANDON: So basically, by defining the problem scope as, "Hey, this is about an apprentice and not about how good a mentor I am," you basically discovered -- I think all businesses go through this at some point too, like anybody with a purpose ends up discovering that the thing that doesn't scale is your time, and the only way out of that is to develop a process that's focused on achieving an outcome. So apprenticeship is the definition of the process by which somebody gets better and focusing on them rather than non-scalable Taras' time. TARAS: Exactly. BRANDON: Lennex, you basically came on as an apprentice about a year ago. Can you describe the process, from your perspective of like what that apprenticeship has entailed and maybe even how that evolved over time? LENNEX: Initially, we worked on small apps. When I was trying to get the basics of Ember and to be honest, I didn't know a lot of JavaScript. So that process was kind of painful for me. It took a bit of time for Taras and myself to admit that and then I tried to focus a bit on knowing my JavaScript properly. But then after that, things have been going on smoothly. I would pair a lot if I would get a task to do with work on open source projects, and we've done [inaudible], actually contributing [inaudible], learning the whole thing, the whole process. BRANDON: So basically, you have commits on open source projects now out there in the world? LENNEX: Yes, I do. BRANDON: And how long have you've been developing software before you were basically doing that? LENNEX: Not that long. It was just a few HTML sites, a bit of PHP, then Ember is like the first programming thing that I've done. CHARLES: I think that's really interesting. Like part of the process, you seem to be describing as you kind of got thrown into the deep end of the pool. Like this is a new language for you, we're going to be doing open source projects that people actually use, and you were actually contributing working code into a real life. You know, thousands of people are using the code that you actually wrote in very early stages of your development career, which I think is a really interesting model. Taras, would you say that that is part of the model or is that just sort of a coincidence of how this went down? Like is that part of the design of the apprenticeship model? TARAS: It's certainly by design. I think there's something really beautiful about Ember, and it's the fact that it creates a possibility of an ecosystem of open source applications that solve the script problems and that is enabled by the fact that we have this collection of conventions. When I chose Ember as a technology to focus on, I kind of made a guess that this might happen. Then when I realized that Lennex needed to learn by doing real practical things, I went out looking for this applications and started off as being, first it was a HospitalRun, and I was kind of really uncertain whether the HospitalRun would even take it seriously because we're saying, "I'm going to help this person work on your application for free. Will you talk to us and tell us what we need to be able to make this happen and make it so that you can actually mark this code?" But it's proven that this seems to be something that maintainers of open source applications are willing to do, and now we have something like... Oh, I don't know what it is, but plenty applications. I have a list of open source Ember applications that we're adding to on a regular basis, and they're all opportunities for our future apprentices to contribute and improve their skills. Actually, they have something that they can show and say, "Look, I did this." BRANDON: So I'll grab that and put that in the show notes. That seems like something that just producing that list was important to your apprenticeship but actually, everything that you do when you do work on the public like this adds value elsewhere as well. Like that's a really cool and useful list for people to have of things that people can actually contribute to. TARAS: Yeah, and I hope that there are other applications that we don't know about that are going to get added to this list because if we can have more apprentices helping more open source applications, I think that's something that's really great for Ember. It's a win-win for everybody. CHARLES: So I'm curious, you've got this big list, 20, 25 open source applications that's actually a big list and I assume there's a lot of people. You talked about how making the shift towards apprenticeship allowed you to scale but I actually am curious about that process because like how does it scale? There is only one of you so how do you manage more than one apprentice -- two, three? How many is reasonable? How do you bump that number up and get more people coming along? TARAS: I think what's happening now is that my apprentices actually have their own apprentices. I think that's the key to scaling this because at a certain point what happens is, as I mentioned earlier, at one point, I paired with a hundred people and I realized that people have very common problems and depending on what stage they're in in they're learning, they all tend to have very similar problems. The way to scale [inaudible] a lot of people, I think, is to have the apprentice that just learned or apprentices that has a six months of Ember experience, they can support somebody who just started last week or started two months ago. They're actually really good persons to support that person. If I support somebody who just started Ember, it creates a situation where like I want to be able to help but I've answered this question so many times already that it becomes repetitive. It's actually takes away from the energy of me trying to explain this to the person. So having an apprentice support a new person is great for the apprentice because they get to grow. It's great for the person because they get really personal attention. BRANDON: I want to make a note. I feel like I should have noted this earlier. Part of the reason that we wanted to talk to you two about this is we've taken several swings at apprenticeship at Frontside, and we're in a sort of unique position in that. We don't see a lot of companies doing this very actively. I saw a company called Obtiva that had an apprenticeship model that I admired a lot. Then they got acquired by Groupon and everything that was good about that company died. I haven't seen this done a ton and our attempts have been kind of shots in the dark on this. It's been very challenging. Your approach to this seems to be working in a way that I have not seen happen elsewhere. What I'm hoping part of drawing out this conversation is the process of discovering what is working for you and what other people can adopt? Basically define how this is actually like it seems like a pretty successful case and how people might adopt that in their businesses, in their workplaces, and in even in their capacity. I love the concept of moving away from mentorship as a concept and toward apprenticeship where this becomes more of a defined process. I'm sure to you it felt like you're kind of fumbling around as well. But you seem to be landing on a lot of things that really seems to be working. Are you noticing any patterns in terms of somebody you get them working on real world applications, they tend to support each other, what other tools, I guess, or patterns are you using to help that process kind of stick with people and scale because this seems to last longer than just a couple months too, which is important? TARAS: I think one thing that I talk to our clients who - because we actually do sell apprenticeship. Part of the process of the apprentice evolving from someone who has never maybe done programming before or who is very new to Ember to actually being a good productive member of the team, is actually starting off doing something that is very low stress, doing something like open source contributions. Then, being in a situation where they're able to make a difference but there isn't a lot of pressure on them. So one of the ways that I set that up is I tell our clients that this person is an apprentice. The reason why you would want to hire this person is because first of all, if they have a problem, they can ask me. But also, this person, like a lot of things that we do on Ember are very repetitive. Their patterns that once you've taught, you can use that pattern over and over again. I think, at a certain point, if you implemented a few tables, implementing a fourth or a fifth table isn't that different than the first three, and you don't get that much more effective at it because you're still limited by how quickly you can type. So if an apprentice knows how to implement a table, then an apprentice is just as qualified to implement that table in Ember as I am, for example, especially if they have access to the immediate feedback that they need when they get stuck. What I've been doing is first, I've been very, very honest with people that I work with saying like, "This is what's going to happen. This is going to be the person working on your project, and this person is going to do be doing this work." Also kind of talking about the reality of Ember work which there are a lot of things that are really difficult that very smart and experienced Ember developers can solve, but there's a lot of work that we do in large Ember applications, that there's lots of paved paths for that, there's lots of just like assembly kind of the ground work and I think that's a really great opportunity for people who are learning Ember to get the repetition, the kind of muscle memory of understanding how to solve problems. I think the repetition of doing like 'data down, actions up', repetition of doing like working with computer properties, and repetition of writing tests. All these are things that apprentices need to do to become very good at writing Ember applications. BRANDON: That's actually my experience as well. I come from a nontraditional background and I knew that I got a sense for when I was trying to learn a new thing that it was a certain number of projects before I felt like somebody could give me something and I felt comfortable saying, "Hey, I can probably do that." It wasn't my first project and it wasn't like a hundred so have you kind of discovered a number in there of projects that somebody might have worked on when you talk about that repetition. Is there a number of times of repetition that you find people become comfortable with something? LENNEX: On number of projects, for being comfortable in Ember? BRANDON: Yeah, at what point do you start feeling comfortable and a little more confident that somebody could hand you something that you haven't seen before, and say, "Hey, I could probably tackle that." Is there a certain number of projects that you've handle before you felt like you could just jump in on that? LENNEX: Let's say for testing for example, writing an acceptance test. I wrote the initial test for HospitalRun. The next project that I did, I was really comfortable with acceptance testing. That was just one of those thing that I could do. I think just doing it once or twice is enough for you to feel comfortable doing something. I don't know about the other stuff, but then what I've done so far, that has been okay. CHARLES: That's interesting. What I'm hearing is you weren't doing like the whole slice of the application. You were focusing on, "Okay, the acceptance test. That is the thing that I'm going to take on. That's the thing that I'm going to own. I'm actually just not going to worry about everything that lies underneath it, or how to implement the acceptance test but I'm going to learn acceptance testing in an Ember application. Then once I've got that skill, now it's in my pocket and I can take it to the next problem." BRANDON: Lennex, at what point do you start feeling these things start to click together, where you have the tests over here and you have maybe understanding the router over there and you have maybe understanding components over here? Each of these things takes time, it's difficult, and it's a new concept. At what point do you start feeling that you have a full picture of how an application works and that you could kind of attack it from different angles? LENNEX: In my experience for HospitalRun, I did the tests and I did a lot of [inaudible] from Ember 1.X to 2.X. So I got to touch a little bit of everything. The next project in [inaudible], I implemented a feature. That feature has required me to use all the previous knowledge that I gained from HospitalRun to do something that actually [inaudible] and [inaudible] properly. In my next project, I'm now building an [inaudible] from the ground up using previous knowledge from all the other projects. So you're always building on top of what you got before. BRANDON: That actually sounds like an interesting pattern. Again, I don't know if this is sort of something you discovered or happens over time or even if I'm reading it right. But it sounds like you're really mixing up these tasks where some of them are kind of a deep dive on one small piece like, "Hey, I want you to write acceptance tests around this and you're familiar with acceptance testing." And then you have a thin slice of something like an Ember upgrade that touches all aspects of the code base but in a thinner area, as well as a ground up building of something, sounds like maybe later. Is that sort of mix of types of work intentional? Or is that just sort of something that, "Hey, if the work is there and if it seems like somebody can do then I'll grab it"? TARAS: I think some of things are very intentional like the last project that LENNEX is working on, I intentionally said that, "You now have enough experience doing all of them. You've been dealing with other people's problems for a while now. So I think it's time for you to make your own problems so you can actually understand that process a little bit better." But other things that are actually just very practical things like the reason why starting with testing. Why we start with testing is because without tests in place, I don't have guarantees that the things that Lennex is doing are not breaking functionality. Then what that means is if I don't have that guarantee, that means that the chances of me being pulled into something randomly is very high and then that's the kind of risk that I can't take. Actually what happens now is almost every conversation with new clients starts off with, "I know you guys want to do features but before we can do that, we need to build your acceptance tests suite." And so this is actually a very practical thing. I think part of apprenticeship program for us is actually teaching the things. It's a very practical thing. It's like we need to have tests to be able to do this work. BRANDON: Yeah, I mean it's one of those things. There is some debate in the community around like, "Well, how soon do you introduce that to somebody? Is it something that is an advanced concept?" I was not introduced to testing until much later in my development career. Basically, my first introduction to testing was somebody handed me the 'can't back' book called Test Driven Development which is all written in Java before I had learned to program, and I was like, "I don't get it." So that was my last attempt at testing for about two and a half years. It wasn't part of my process but when I did discover it, seemed like it did make everything easier. The fact that you're able to do that up front, I imagine probably saves a lot of time and frustration for people so they have something to like back up to during the course of their learning process. There's always like a place where they knew this thing was working. TARAS: I think there's another pattern that is underneath this which is very important to give people what they need to build to move forward. So with Lennex, when he started working on HospitalRun, I spent almost half a week, maybe almost a week setting up because they never had tests so we had to make it possible for him to write test, so we need to actually read the first acceptance test. What that means is that you need to go in and find all the problems with the app that prevent you from writing acceptance test and actually fix those problems. If I just said to Lennex, "You know, write an acceptance test for this," without giving him any paved path to do that, I think the chance of him succeeding would be very low. BRANDON: So yeah, you basically have to pre-shave all the yaks around getting the first one going. And from that point forward, they're likely to be able to carry the ball further. TARAS: Right. BRANDON: I have a question for you, Lennex, in that sort of vein is how do you know when you're stuck on something that is like well outside of your capabilities versus when you're supposed to stick with something because you know there's something you're supposed to learn? Is that a skill that you've had to develop or is that something that... I don't know, like I'm not sure how to deal with that with our apprenticeship, and I'm wondering how you've dealt with that? LENNEX: One thing that Taras has taught me is if I'm facing a challenge, I should work on it. Taras will say, "We're going for a day. If you fail, then come to me." It helps me to not give up easily. If it's beyond me, then after that day Taras is going to help me. By then, usually, I end up getting through that and finding a solution. BRANDON: Interesting. I have worried that a day was too long of a feedback loop to let somebody bang their head. But it sounds like you've landed on a day as being kind of the approximate amount of time somebody could spend and try to solve something themselves. Taras, is that basically a fair, like wind up being a good place to land? LENNEX: Well, for me and Taras, it will depend on different - a day usually means when you accept. So there isn't that much [inaudible]. CHARLES: But it makes sense when I think about it. I actually wasn't thinking about it in terms of that being an appropriate size feedback loop. But when you think about what you're actually doing when you're programming, a day is actually a very reasonable amount of time to struggle with a problem. So before you say, "Oh, man. I just need to find someone to pair with this on. I've done my Googling or whatever but I need to try and like roll back and look at for some prior [inaudible] on this or try and find connect with somebody who's sharing a similar problem." I think that actually makes a lot of sense, right? That's something that we all encounter in our daily lives. LENNEX: Yeah. TARAS: We know from people with experience how long sometimes it takes for us to understand something. CHARLES: Sometimes years. TARAS: Yeah, and I think it's really tricky. It's hard because learning takes time. That's one of the things that I'm a little... I'm not sure exactly how this is going to work but I know if clients are paying me to mentor their team, I'm going to be available to them within half an hour to an hour to answer that question because if the client can't afford to wait a day for them to get that answer. But for a person who is learning as their primary deliverable, I think a day is reasonable amount of time for a person to try to like even sleep on it. CHARLES: Right. It's true. It's a tough line. I think, Brandon, one time you said something that always stuck with me. You said that learning only happens when you bang your head against the wall so that your brain is soft enough to accept the answer. And you don't achieve learning without the banging your head against the wall first. BRANDON: Yeah, Brandon Hays, the king of violent metaphors. [Laughter] BRANDON: There is actually an important aspect to this that I don't want to drop onto the floor and that is the idea that part of this process is that you have people that have access to one another. That's part of how you are scaling it, that you're also kind of helping. It seems like you're helping build a small community of apprentices to help each other. So Lennex, my question is this, how often do you wind up using that network of people versus you feel like you'll just handle it on your own? How much do you want to have accessing that? LENNEX: I access it a lot. I usually get stuck, and then I know someone working on projects which is similar to what I'm doing. So again, I just easily ping him and then a few minutes or a few hours later, we're pairing on it. BRANDON: That seems like a way where you're able to do that without reaching out too much to Taras. It feels like you're asking for help and figuring it out. But it means that you don't have to roll up to the most experienced person for every single question, that you kind of started to build a network of people that stitching together your own mentorship in effect, I guess. LENNEX: Yeah, that's true. It's easier to understand the concept when someone is on your level or slightly above you when they explain it to you. Maybe for me, it's easier to understand. BRANDON: Actually, that jives with a lot of our experience. I can't remember what book this is from. I'm pretty sure it's stolen from another book but I read it from the book 'Pragmatic Programmer' where they talk about the zone of proximal development, where it's easier to learn from people who have just a bit more experience than you because they haven't completely forgotten how they learned the thing that you're trying to learn. After a while, expertise means that you actually internalize that to the point where you can no longer remember not knowing it. That can be really tough. I think that's actually something that a lot of mentor should probably know and recognize and understand. People that want to take apprenticeship on need to understand that you probably have lost a lot of the empathy. I know I have and it really bums me out because it doesn't feel like that long ago that I was a brand new developer. But I'll sit with somebody who's brand new and I forgot how I learned the thing that I'm sitting there trying to teach somebody, and you start getting that little burning sensation in the back of your head like, "How can you not know this?" You know that at one point you did not know this, but you don't remember not knowing it. It's a very strange sensation to have gone through all of that and then lose that empathy. So I feel like that's must be a really important concept. Another question I have for you Lennex is how much of your time do you wind up spending helping other people do that kind of stuff as well? Do you wind up doing participating as a mentorship stuff at this point? LENNEX: Yes, I do. Actually now, they are about three people that have reached out to me on Twitter, wanting my help. I've paired with them when they have their own projects. They're asking me questions. One guy that I helped with Ember stuff in our local community, and maybe because of the apprenticeship that I'm doing with Taras, they think I'm an expert in Ember. But I'm actually helping other people a lot. BRANDON: I think that's really phenomenal. That sounds like success to me. CHARLES: Yeah, I'm actually curious. Having been through this process and experienced success at it, were there any times where you kind of felt you wanted to throw up your hands and be like, "This is not working." What were those moments of frustration or mistakes that... Not mistakes, but were there any moment's frustration? What actually did you take to course correct on that? If not, that's fine too. BRANDON: Yeah, if not, I'll just know you're lying. [Laughter] TARAS: There were definitely challenges. Lennex and I both went through some difficult learning and questioned whether we're be able to do this. I don't want to speak for Lennex but there are certain things that you have to learn to be able to work with people, and they're not programming things. I think that's because obstacles that Lennex and I had have been related to communication and being reliable for each other, I think that's the part that's been hardest. But the reality, I think, is that this is what programming is, talking to people most of the time and building a network of people. So I think we need to, as a mentor to an apprentice, I need to help my apprentice understand this, and help them understand what makes me successful in my work with our clients, for example. BRANDON: You brought up one thing and I'm curious to get Lennex's perspective on this, which is being reliable for each other. I know it has been probably the single greatest challenge to our apprenticeship platform at Frontside, where we've brought apprentices on and the criticism that we had about our apprenticeship program is if I had 24/7 access to the mentorship that I needed, this process could have been done in three to four months. And instead, it's going to take seven or eight months. So it takes literally twice as long if they have to fight and scrap for every minute of mentorship that they get. I'm wondering, Lennex, if you've experienced something like that and how you've addressed it, if so? LENNEX: Maybe the thing with me is I really wanted to be part of the apprenticeship program. So I had to work really, really hard to make this work. But given that for me, this apprenticeship program has been 100% remote. There's no one standing over my shoulder or someone chasing me, asking me what I've done or whatever. I had to discipline myself so that if I get tasks that I should do, I should do then on time. Even if Taras is not available, he's not there chasing up to me whether I've done that. The other thing is I wasn't good at communicating early on. I would shy away from telling him when things are too complicated for me. I'll try to solve everything on my own until I discovered that some things you just can't learn on your own. You have to ask for help. Since then, things have been a bit better. BRANDON: That sounds like something almost universal to me. Every time we've attempted apprenticeship of any kind, maybe it's because we tend to select the people that we come into contact that say, "Hey, I like to do apprenticeship," tend to be people that are kind of self-starters. But they always tend to try to solve everything on their own. It becomes this coaching exercise of having to have that person communicate back to you. Is there a sort of a platform for that? Or is that just a style that you've developed where you're willing to reach out more frequently? Or do you have check-in points or something like that during the apprenticeship that are like standard? TARAS: We don't have anything specific. Something that I use in projects is like if you're actively working on something, if you work in a project and that's your deliverable, like half an hour or so much time you get to play around with it, and then let me know. But the emphasis is on the person building the responsibility of the deliverable and knowing what's necessary for them to build to move forward. So I'm seeing that now from Lennex which I didn't see before in the beginning but I see it now. Now, if he's stuck, he's willing to say like, "Oh, okay. I don't know what's going on here. This doesn't make sense to me." And I think that's really important. I'm not sure exactly how to cultivate that but for whatever reason, it's worked with Lennex. But I think we need to help people learn that that they have to take responsibility for their work. BRANDON: It seems to me that that's the process of learning to own their own thing, learning to kind of develop their own paths. Again, that's one of those things that winds up being a better apprenticeship pattern for the person and also is a thing that lends itself to making this thing scalable where you can benefit more people and have them help themselves in each other, rather than having to be the nexus point for all questions and all accountability systems and everything. So it seems to be working really well for you. I have one more question that I want to ask from both to Taras and Lennex. What you would say to people who are intimidated about taking on a role in mentorship knowing that, "Hey, that actually does sound harder taking on a role and trying to cultivate and participate in apprenticeship." What you would recommend to that person that is interested in it but maybe intimidated by it? Then Linux, the same question for you but from the position of somebody that's trying to break in and kind of scared and nervous that it seems difficult or scary or opaque. So can we start with you, Taras? What would you say to somebody that is like 'hey, this sounds fun and cool and everything but it sounds too hard'? TARAS: To be a mentor or to have an apprentice? BRANDON: Take on the idea or participate in apprenticeship in some way. Is there some way that you know that people could get involved that would not necessarily be super intimidating? TARAS: I'm curious what the person's intention is because if you want to help people and that's the emphasis, then you have things that are uncomfortable. Especially good things in a lot of times, they're uncomfortable until you get really good at them. If you feel uncomfortable, chances are you're not growing right now. For a lot of people that are very good technically, helping others, understand these things is the next step for them to evolve in their personal growth. If they really want to get better, having apprentice is a very confronting and a very challenging thing but it creates real opportunities to see that you're actually getting better and you're improving as a person and as a technical leader. BRANDON: Then, as far as [inaudible] said, "I don't see the opportunity for myself." My guess is there are people everywhere that could use help. Do you have any suggestions on where they can find people to help, ways that they can get involved? Do you have a place where - are you looking for additional people to jump in and get involved on the mentorship side or suggestions for ways that people might get involved? TARAS: I would love to help people who want to build apprenticeship systems in their companies. I would love to help those people if they're able to do that. Otherwise, I think that creating more systems in Ember community around apprenticeship, I think would be really helpful like making more systematic because right now, it's something that I do but I'd love for it to be something to the Ember community does. Then because from that, if we engage in that conversation, then we can create spaces where it will be easy for people to do this kind of things and find apprentices and find mentors. I'd love for this to be an Ember community thing. CHARLES: Well, it seems like this would be as good a place to start as any. So, here we are. BRANDON: Maybe after this call, we'll figure something out and put something together and tell people to look for that. If they want to participate in mentorship and they consider themselves Ember or Ember adjacent, I'd like to see something in the next little while that lets people participate in a more systematic fashion. That sounds like an opportunity, for sure. If there are people that want to participate in that, sounds like you're the person to reach out to. Then Lennex, for your sake, for people that kind of want to break into technology and are really intimidated by it, obviously you're in a remote part of the world and your access has been somewhat limited. Sounds like you even fight for internet access in your life, as well, which is a foreign concept to a lot of people. So what would you tell to those people that are intimidated by doing this, scared that they're going to waste somebody's time, scared that they'll fail at it? LENNEX: I think if someone really, really wants to learn, they should find a mentor or a good apprenticeship because learning from someone who's experienced, someone who has your best interest at heart, someone who's willing to put in the effort to teach yourself, you can beat that. If you find that that someone was willing to do that, then put in the effort and go through that program because usually, apprenticeship is tailored towards a specific individual helping the apprentice. Where else will you get that? BRANDON: And there's not a ton of access to that in the world so it sounds like that's a big problem. That's what they are fixing in the tech industry. So having you on to come here and talk about it, lend some expertise to it, and start putting some ideas, process and pushing that conversation forward, it matters a lot certainly to me personally. But also to what the point of what we're trying to do at the Frontside. If people want to get in touch with you all, how would they do that, Taras? How people get in touch with you? TARAS: I'm @EmberSherpa on Twitter, and Taras@EmberSherpa.com via email. I always try my best to talk to people as much as possible and be available to people as much possible. If anybody reaches out to me, I'd love to talk to them. CHARLES: Yeah, you definitely been accessible to us which is why we're talking today and I really appreciate that. I mean, you've been genuinely super helpful. We haven't really gotten into it in this podcast but we've worked with you quite a bit and are working to improve our apprenticeship program with your help. I can't tell you how much we appreciate it. Then, for you Lennex, how do people get in touch with you? LENNEX: I am @zinyando on Twitter, and lennex@EmberSherpa.com. BRANDON: Awesome. Well, thank you both very much. This was super enlightening. It's frustrating because I feel like we just barely scratched the surface. But I feel like there's some work that we need to do to put together some process around this. Maybe there's some blog posts or some further discussion around this to put this together. I would love to talk with you all again when we have something cool to share with people. But what you're doing already is so awesome. I'd like for more people to know about it because I literally have never seen it done as successfully, as consistently as I've seen the EmberSherpa apprenticeship set up work. Thanks very much for both of you all for putting that into the community and for sharing with us. TARAS: It means so much to hear you, Brandon, say this because I respect both of you very much. I think you guys have a really great reputation in our community, and it means the world to me to hear you guys say that. Thank you so much for having us here.

Recently, there was a flurry of activity around one of Brandon's posts about defining the term "senior developer". But he left the purely technical aspects of the role for later discussion, which left a lot of lingering questions. In this episode, Charles and Brandon dive into the technical side of identifying, hiring, and growing senior developers, and explain The Frontside's somewhat unconventional standards. Links: The Conjoined Triangles of Senior-Level Development Don't use animal names as an insult Transcript: CHARLES: Hello everybody and welcome to the Frontside Podcast, Episode 41. I am your host, Charles Lowell. With me is our other host, Brandon Hays. BRANDON: Hi, welcome back. It's been too long. It's been one week since you looked at me. CHARLES: And we were actually talking right before the start off that we don't have any witty banter prepared for this episode. BRANDON: Also, you just drop that hot Barenaked Ladies reference right on the floor, like an apple pie upside down. CHARLES: Right, you got to prep me for that. BRANDON: You're like, "Nope. Pass." [Laughter] CHARLES: Like I said, you got to prep me for that. BRANDON: "In Second 7, I'm going to drop a Barenaked Ladies reference." I'm going to send you three or four music videos. I did send you one that you didn't have time to watch about don't use animal names as an insult. When you say, you're not going to be able to riff off me on that one just yet either, but yeah, I respect you and I respect dogs so don't use dog as an insult. [Laughter] CHARLES: Is that 'They Might Be Giants'? BRANDON: It is not They Might Be Giants. It is three vegan randoes on YouTube. CHARLES: Is that the name of the band or is that just the content of the band? BRANDON: No, they're just three vegan randoes on YouTube. CHARLES: Okay, three vegan randoes is a pretty good band name. BRANDON: You'll immediately know they're from Portland so you could really pick a lot out of that from just the name of the band. We want to tight 30 today. We don't let people behind the curtain very much, Charles, where people don't see what it is that you and I do behind the scenes. But one of those things that we do is sometimes we will record a podcast and throw it in the garbage because we hate it, and this is actually one of them. You and I sat down and recorded this podcast before. Just like the hot apple pie Barenaked Ladies reference that I served you earlier, we just dumped it right in the garbage. We did not like the way that it tasted. We did not like its Barenaked Ladies references, and so this is our second attempt at this. Then the topic that we want to cover today is really important to us to not screw this up. So hopefully, we put a little more effort into preparing for this and thinking very deeply about this. The idea is that we want to understand from a technical perspective largely what it is that a senior developer is, what they do, how we can find them, how we sometimes miss that, and basically how we define a senior developer so that we can build that as a track for our people to grow toward and find the ones that want to come work with us and may self-identify a senior, how we can kind of verify that. That's the poorly defined topic in our industry, interestingly enough. CHARLES: Strange, because everybody seems to want that. BRANDON: Yeah, right. Everybody put it on their job descriptions. Anyway, I wrote a blog post about it. It did all the things that blog posts do when they sort of struck a nerve with the tech industry and they got posted around. I got called literal human feces on Reddit. CHARLES: Did they call you human feces or do they call you literal human feces? BRANDON: They said literal -- CHARLES: Did you literally get called literally human feces? BRANDON: I literally got called literal human feces. [Laughter] CHARLES: I shall wear it as a badge of honor. BRANDON: I was kind of like Ron Burgundy. I'm like, "I'm not even mad, I'm just impressed." [Laughter] CHARLES: People had some strong, strong, strong feelings about that. BRANDON: They did. So now, a skull in a cowboy hat and literal human feces are going to sit here and preach to you about what we think and how we're basically like willing to sink or basically, sink or swim for our business on this definition of senior developer because that actually is core to what it is that we're doing. I want to tee this up and then I'm going to let you just freakin' roll. I want to provide a little background. The cool thing is, I already wrote a blog post so I don't have to sit here and talk at your face about these things. I was going to tell you some additional thought I've had about this. But basically, the point of this blog post was that we generally categorize what it is to be senior developer in three broad categories that have a little bit of overlap. The three categories are technical skill, which is the one that people typically think about, evaluate for leadership and connectedness, which sounds all [inaudible] but the reality is it's actually very concrete and very important. The categories [inaudible] leadership is basically the idea that the more ownership you give someone over the broadest version of the problem you're trying to get them to solve, the better they perform. So if you give somebody a small task, they will maybe perform it. But if you give somebody ownership of the actual problem and the business problem that you're trying to solve or a user's pain point, they will find ways to solve that problem that you wouldn't have considered yourself. They will pull other people into their orbit to solve that thing. Basically, there's a sense of ownership and the experience they have in owning something all the way through to completion basically. Then, the technical skill one which we'll dive into in this podcast, that's what I want you to kind of drive the conversation around, is basically the idea that the more difficult a problem you hand somebody, the better they perform. A lot of times, that's due to experience, some of it is personality type, some of it is muscles that they like to exercise. Then, the last one is connectedness, which sounds like it's hard to define but it's actually the idea that the more people that are impacted and the more deeply people are impacted by somebody's participation in a task, the better that person performs. These people like to mentor, they like to be parts of communities, and they have a deep sense of empathy for the users that they build software for and the other developers that they're developing for alongside. CHARLES: Right, and I think that one of the reasons you got such a negative reaction, you kind of, I think, were assuming technical skill and then really kind of unpacking the leadership and the connectedness as absolutely key components to be what we consider a senior developer. So, kind of pointing out that especially from the leadership aspect, it's like you need to be a wholly-formed developer, you need to have those headlights on the car to see where it is that you're going and you can have a huge engine and like four-wheel drive and like big mud tires that can dig into any surface. But unless, you can actually see where you're going and perceive the problem holistically, those skills aren't going to be put to as good of a use. BRANDON: I think that's a good metaphor. The idea is that it's traction and direction in addition to the raw technical horsepower that you bring to the table. So pointing out and emphasizing these other areas, I think, made people - there was a lot of confusion. Some people reacted very positively to it like, "Oh my gosh, finally somebody understands that I bring more to the table than just my raw technical capability," especially people from -- CHARLES: I'm going to guess those were the people not in the literal human feces camp. BRANDON: Well, I didn't set up a Twitter poll or anything but I hope I can assume so. Then there were people that felt very strongly that I was overlooking technical skill. I was like, "No, no, no. That's a fair question. That's Charles's job here." And so that's why, at this point, I am going to drop kick this entire conversation into your side of the metaphorical foot game ball field. I think, football pitch. Pitch, right? Quidditch pitch. I'm going to drop kick the Quaffle into your side of the Quidditch pitch. CHARLES: Okay, all right. Well, let's unpack the technical skills that we look for. What we're looking for, I think, on the technical side, and this is going to seem obvious but what we're looking for is experience. We're looking for the quantity of experience and the quality of experience. We can roughly subdivide that into four key areas. First of all, what's the experience that you've developed around your curiosity? Maybe we should go and lay all these out. We look for curiosity. We look for rigor in your technical skill. We look for your ability and history for actually shipping things, and we look for you to be fearless when it comes to taking on new problems and sizing up the problems that you choose to attack. When we break down those experiences, if you are a curious person, you have been exposed to a lot of different technologies. So we're going to be looking for, you have an opinion on a bunch of different languages, a bunch of frameworks. We're going to want you to have tried a bunch of different things. We don't want you to have knocked your head against a lot of different problems, and then tried a lot of different solutions. That's going to be very indicative of your ability to bring a diversity of solutions to any given problem that you face. But it's not just the quantity of the experience that you develop. It's also like the quality. Like how much in the solutions that you develop are you looking to find the whole solution that fits your problem? How willing are you to do A-Grade work where you consider every corner case and you are willing to dedicate the CPU resources to find the best solution. Finally, what is the scope of problems that you're taking on? We've talked about the difference between quantity and quality of experience. You can make a career banging out WordPress apps. It's a great place to start but if you're doing it -- BRANDON: Or you can do a CRUD over and over again. CHARLES: Yeah, you could do CRUD over and over again. Like I said, that's a great place to start at the beginning of your career. But if 20 years on, that's what you're still doing, then you're going to have a lot of experience but is it going to be a high-quality experience? Are you actually taking on bigger and bigger problems, and is the scope of the things that you're tackling growing as you move throughout your career? BRANDON: It's interesting that's actually like fearlessness, that kind of technical fearlessness is actually a skill a person learns to practice. I was a very fearful developer a few years ago because I felt like if I charged into the bramble of a complex and thorny problem, that was going to cut me up and I die. It turns out, no, it just cuts you up real bad then you get back with thicker skin. And eventually you start going to the point where you start learning to tackle, you learn to take on things you don't understand because that's literally the job. CHARLES: I think it's important to point out that fearlessness is a skill. It is not a personality trait and it's something that you have to develop and you can actually take on problems that are too big for you at the given time and kind of have to know when it's time to step back from that. I know that's actually something that I even look for, anecdotally is asking a developer, "What are some of your greatest failures? What are the things where you took on way too much than you could chew? How did it make you fall down flat on your face?" Because that is an artifact and evidence that someone is practicing and taking on things that maybe are too big. Sometimes you're going to overshoot the mark. You know, you don't want to be taking on too little but one of the ways that you're going to do that is by accidentally taking on too much. And so I find that most people who have a senior level of experience have some big failure story. There's a skeleton in their closet of something they did wrong and they know that they can acknowledge that. I don't know. That's certainly how I feel about it. BRANDON: Yeah, I can agree with that. I guess you're saying you wrap all of those four things together like whether this person is willing to take on difficult problems, whether they actually complete them, whether they do them in a way that displays that they have enough experience to have kind of developed principles about how they approach stuff and whether they are continuously looking for new ways to approach problems. Like if you combine all of those things together is this like cool technical Voltron that exhibits a directed, focused kind of practice that over the course of 5 to 10 years yields basically a person that you can throw at any kind of technical problem and they will act like, I don't know, like nanobots just destroying that problem from the outside and until the problem doesn't exist anymore. It's thoroughly solved. CHARLES: Right. And I think that ties you to this propensity to ship. That's something that we look for. If this is a skill that you have, if you are at a senior level of experience, you will have a set of technical achievements that we can look at, that you have shipped and we can study them. Fantastically, as a happy coincidence you can see inside those things that a person has shipped. Are they rigorous? Are they curious and how fearless are they? What's the array of technologies? How unique are the solutions? How informed are they by different technologies and what is the scope of problem that you are trying to take on throughout the course of your career? So, having actual things that you have shipped whether it's products, whether it's libraries, whether it's open source, something like that, you want to be able to look at those and it is important. We don't rest everything on the GitHub. But I think at a senior level, you should have some equivalent that you can point to, public or otherwise. BRANDON: Yeah, there's some artifact that pops out of that, and if you made a career of 10 years and you come and say, "Hey, I have been doing this 10 years and I'm a very skilled senior developer but I can't show you anything." I understand that people will find themselves in situations like that but that's going to be, I think, the great exception of the rule. If you really don't have anything to show, it probably means there's some sort of practice, one of these traits that likely could use a little more exercise on that particular muscle, and that you've been leaning on compensatory muscles in other areas. So that's going to ding you in terms of like, how we evaluate somebody as whether they'll sync or not. And we're open to being surprised. Well, I should probably hopefully get to that before we end our podcast. CHARLES: I'd like to contrast it with what we look in, in a junior developer because it is very, very different. I think we've talked a lot about or there's a big conversation about, does passion matter in evaluating a candidate? I think passion is a word that's kind of fallen by the wayside but talk about maybe a less charged words like just caring deeply about a product or a solution or something like that. In a senior developer, to be quite honest, passion and caring is something that we expect to be there but it's not something that we look for because it's not something that we need to look for because if they do care about diversity with technologies, if they have this propensity to ship and they're taking on big problems, then that evidence will be there. So we're not looking for passion because it's either there or it's not. That's something that we look for more in a junior developer because we're going to be looking for that enthusiasm in the same way that you kind of track a hurricane. You don't know exactly what path it is but based on the weather patterns and the basic trajectory, you can find out essentially where it's going to end up. BRANDON: Yeah, I think there's a lot of talk in the industry about how passion, when people talk about looking for passion, what they're basically saying is we are looking to exploit people who are at the top part of their curve. When you look at how the undulations of a person's amount of passion over the course of their career, you have companies only want to clip off the top of that. As soon as you're not passionate anymore, you jettison that person. What we're looking for is somebody who's sort of stabilized that. So the passion part of it is like, "Oh, that's cool. The passion is in your past or it's in your present." But we understand that that is a sine wave and we're looking for the line in there that says, "Hey, sometimes I care more than I care about other times but the main thing is I produce things." Otherwise, instead of looking at as a sine wave of passion, you're like trying to exploit it at the top and then going, "Well, this is just going to keep going up and up and up," and you burn people out for that. Anyway, so it's not something we look for. It doesn't make sense. It's not sustainable and it's actually something that in a senior developer has stabilized enough that you're not going to see it. CHARLES: We look for, "Hey, here, we build things. So, if you're at the beginning of the career, are you following a path that will lead you to build good things and then at the end we're kind of towards the back half." We are looking at, "Hey, what are the things that you have built that are capable of building?" And that's the extent of it. I don't want to suck all the emotion out of it but the thing is that I want to suck the pressure out of it. BRANDON: Yeah, and the way that we try to assess that right now is we do this in a full day pairing interview. We do a lot of stuff that leads up to that and hopefully, the ancillary stuff we do around that helps gauge like, "Hey, this person is active in the community in some way, or they try to make contributions to people this way." We do our best to get a sense of the stuff that is not pure technical skill because delivery, it takes longer than a day. So, how well does this person deliver? How well do they work with other people? That stuff is very difficult to suss out in a day but you can generally get a sense of like technical experience capability. So I kind of want to focus on like during the course of the pairing interview, what it is that you're sussing out? How do you know a person in a pairing interview is exhibiting those technical leadership traits, technical skill traits? CHARLES: I'll beat this drum again. I'm looking for quantity and quality of experience. It comes down to little things. How comfortable is a person with their tool set and that demonstrates both the experience and you can tell if it's good experience or not. How comfortable are they with the command line? How comfortable are they with Git? Are they taking baby steps with it or they doing large motions in one kind of fell swoop? Like, how effortlessly is the muscle memory there? Whatever the tool set is, whether you're using iTerm, whether you're using C-shell or bash or whatever editor you're using, I do expect to see a familiarity that can only come through having done it again and again and again and again. So, if you're working with Git, for example, and you're kind of stumbling and stuttering at what commands to run or pausing, when you are parsing the output of a command if there's an error or something didn't go, what that says is either you don't have the experience which is most of the case or that has not been a priority in the experience that you do have. So there's like kind of a difference in the quantity and quality of experience. Some people move fast. Some people live slow but I want to say continuity that I'm looking for, in the same way that you can play a piano quickly, you can play it slowly but when people are missing notes, you can detect that. That's what I'm looking for, kind of with the tool sets. When someone is moving within a code base, I'm looking for confidence of motion. I remember an interview that we did recently where we were working in a code base. We're trying to get something running and this developer deleted like two directories at a time that caused like 10 files to be just missing from the code base. Just gone, at the stroke of a key. Then, we ran the test again, and lo and behold, like everything worked. Or the test that we were expecting to fail failed. BRANDON: Or was that the test directory? CHARLES: Sorry, what I meant was -- BRANDON: No, I know what you mean. They were comfortable enough in their understanding of the code base they were working in. CHARLES: Right. There was a high level. We were not down in the weeds. There's like you're applying very light pressure to the code base to make it move in gigantic swings so you understand the pressure points and you can zero right in on it. BRANDON: You can say you're looking for like, the aikido development strategy or whatever. CHARLES: Right, and then the other thing is being able to -- and this is important because I don't believe that every coding session or every pairing session needs to be this dance across the keyboard. Certainly there are times when you recognize that it's natural to stop, to pause, and have a discussion and say, "Wait a second. What are we doing here? Let's hash this through," and be able to converse at the higher level of where exactly are we going because normally you have fallen into this rhythm, or you've got a driver, you got a navigator but then sometimes you have to stop. You have to take your bearing and realizing when that time is and naturally transition into that, and be able to discuss the problem at its highest level where the code really and the tools that you're using really fade away into the background. They're not important. Then you can transition back and I'm looking for a pair in that conversation and I'm looking especially for someone who can teach me something. If there's a knowledge gap that I have or a perspective that I haven't seen, so when I'm looking for where it is that we're going, if someone helps me pair around a corner, that's a huge indicator that this person is senior. Because not only do they have that perception but they can also share it with me and they can effectively argue for it and make me see it, as well. BRANDON: Another thing for me in that same vein is the ability to be challenged. Like, for a person to challenge and be challenged. So they go, "Hey, I have an opinion about this," and you go, "Well, what about this?" And they're like, "Gosh. I never really thought about that." Or they defend their position or they push you on something, "Why don't you do it this way?" And you're like, "Well, I've always done it this way but let's try it your way." So the ability to challenge and be challenged particularly, that is sussed out in a pairing interview, you could probably do that asynchronously through a pull request and stuff like that. But just being able to suss out, whether somebody can challenge and be challenged as a part of the educational process means that this person sharpens the people around them and they're sharpened by the people around them. CHARLES: Absolutely. I am looking for that ability to be collaborative at that level and to educate those people around them just by virtue of their interaction. BRANDON: One thing that sort of heretical in some circles and it seems weird to me but if you look at 95% of jobs descriptions, they will tell you, "We are looking for X number of years in X technology," and I don't want to discount the years thing. The thing is gaining experience takes hours of practice, of dedicated practice and those hours add up to years. So you're typically you are talking in the scale of years when you're talking about experience so there's not really a way around the fact that you were going to be talking on the scale of years. I think that's not worthy of too much debate. It can take some people two years to learn something. It might take somebody else 10. But that you are talking about a scale of years. The thing that I want to challenge is the idea that language and framework experience is the thing that you're looking for. We have a lot of counter experience so that where people cross those boundaries and lines so I didn't really have that thought before talking to you about this so you kind of pushed my thinking in this regard, like why don't we care about that or why do we care less about that than others might? CHARLES: From my perspective, it kind of flies in the face of the way we operate. If we're requiring that someone have a certain number of years of one particular technology, we're asking them to be curious. We're asking them to be diverse. We're asking them to be able to be fluid and slot themselves into any problem space. So, why would we then demand all of those things and then, "By the way, you need to be able to be slotted into this problem space to come work here." I think that something that gets overused in the industry. I think it does make sense in certain cases. For example, not for a developer position, it's less than $250,000. Like if you want someone with five years of MySQL experience or something to manage who has to do micro-optimizations for these huge scale things and you want to pay them half a million dollars, because that's the thing that you need, you really need somebody with that much experience in that technology. Well gosh, they'd better be charging you a lot of money for that experience. Like, "You literally want to buy five years of my life? Okay. I can do that. But I'm going to think if that really is your need, that's what I'm going to be charging you for." But we're looking for people who will be able to move into any problem space that we come across and that necessarily implies language and framework. In fact, one of the things that I like best, I talked about evaluating for the ability to teach and that was inside the context of the one project that we're looking at, but I've had great experiences where someone has taught me something completely outside of certainly my level of expertise, and sometimes outside of what I've even heard of before. That's a much better like if we're working on a JavaScript project, and you can say, "Oh, this is how we do things in Scala, and maybe we can apply that here." Man, that is so valuable, and that has nothing to do with JavaScript experience and everything not to do with it. So what we're looking for is you to be able to bring to bear the arsenal of tools that you have developed throughout the course of your career and all zero them in on a problem and just blast it out of the water. So why would you limit that? Why bring one gun when you can bring 30, and one of them is a howitzer. BRANDON: That makes a ton of sense. It's the idea that is connected to our purpose which is like one of our purposes in existence is to advance the state of the art in UI engineering. That may sound like BS but it's very true. That is very much why you get up in the morning and come to work. It's like half of it is about creating a generation of leaders, and half of it is advancing the state of the art in UI engineering. Advancing the state of the art in UI engineering is not going to happen if you only bring people in who already think the things that everybody else is already thinking in UI engineering. So, we need people with orthogonal experience in other things so it's the diversity of experience that actually helps us get closer to that goal. Bringing tool sets from alternate languages and frameworks is a huge way to bring that to bear. I also think it's a way that our industry is like an adorable little baby. It's adorable. Basically, 95% of the people in our industry are generalists, and we hire, as if we're all hiring for the 5% that is a specialist because we don't know how to do this as an industry. We're just a baby. When you think about it, it is kind of adorable. We're all kind of making this up as we go along so if we can start like the goal here is to kind of push this conversation forward and understand, maybe it's counterintuitive to hire a passionate specialist when what you're looking for is a stable generalist, primarily as an industry. Start understanding, maybe these are some of the ways that we've accidentally been making our industry narrower and less diverse is we're looking for people that started programming on a TRS-80 back in 1984 or whatever. And so the problems that come along with that, we're starting to have to struggle and cope with now. So, anyway, in our own tiny little corner of the universe just for our local maximum of trying to build a better software consultancy, it makes a ton of sense for us to look for generalists. CHARLES: Yeah, that's definitely fits right with our value proposition is that we do UI but we can apply our UI skills to any number of problems. But it might not make sense. Like I said, if you're managing some gigantic database cluster and you need really, really, really specific skills, I just hope whoever that is you're charging a lot of money. BRANDON: Yeah, you can get away with generalizing and going, "Hey, I'm going to select for a lot of things." But if you're going to specialize, you basically have to go for money. I think we're getting into the place where we're pulling this into a tight 30 minutes. We've got to wrap this up. There's always a million more things to say on these topics but I feel like, I've learned a lot through the course of preparing and then doing this with you today to around like why we do what we do? What we're looking for technically? It'd be really cool, 'Hint, hint', that this turned into a blog post on your part. Because I do feel like it was the piece that was missing in people that kind of riled them up a little bit. It is an important piece like not to just -- CHARLES: It's okay people, we do care about technology. We do care about technical skill. In fact, we are a company dedicated to developing it. BRANDON: Yeah, that's true. People have to walk out with more of that than they walk in with or we fail. But that's not going to stop the people from yelling at you. CHARLES: Hey, it's fun. It's fun to yell on Twitter. BRANDON: It is funny. It's fun. All right, man. Well, this was really cool and I hope we get to do this again. We basically are in the process of kind of rebooting our podcast and getting in on track while we record it. Every two weeks at least, we have guests lined up -- CHARLES: Do we want to share like a sneak preview? BRANDON: Oh, gosh. Yeah, I mean with the people that we're talking to soon, we're going to have a conversation with Ember Sherpa about apprenticeship. We're going to have a conversation with Leah Silber about building communities. Then, there's a ton more in the hopper. This is going to be a really good rest of the year for this podcast and we're going to get consistent about it and we've hired help with it. We're really excited to have Mandy Moore. She's @DevReps on Twitter, if you are looking for any assistance with stuff like this. And we're really excited to start kind of kicking off a new -- CHARLES: A new era. BRANDON: But for those of you -- CHARLES: For those who like the intermittent, unreliable, yet sometimes pleasing dead cast, we'll interleave a few of those too. BRANDON: We'll do our best but this is yeah, for those people, I must apologize. I really liked how infrequent it was. Like, oh man. Maybe just check in every once in a while. CHARLES: Yeah, it's cool. All right. BRANDON: Charles, it's been great talking to and I can't wait for next time. CHARLES: Yep, likewise, man.

Where did all the entrepreneurs go? On today's episode Russell talks about his experience at a sushi restaurant in Australia. He mentions some of the pro's and con's of eating out somewhere that, unlike restaurants in America, doesn't accept tips. Here are a couple of fun things in this episode: Why people working in a restaurant are different than entrepreneurs. Why waitresses not working for a tip means Russell is thirsty! And find out if the sushi is actually any good. So listen below to hear what Russell thinks of Australian Sushi. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone. This is Russell Brunson and welcome to a beautiful, rainy, Australian Marketing In Your Car. All right guys. I'm not actually in a car now. I'm walking. This is my mode of transportation for the next three days. So, we're considering this the car. I'm here with Brandon and we're in Australia filming some really cool stuff. We just wanted some sushi. We walked by this sushi place. It looks amazing. It's called Sushi-A-Go. S-U-S … Sushi-A-Go? A-Go? Anyway, just walked by. It's lunch time. We just flew here from New Zealand so we haven't eaten yet today. So, we're starving. We walked by and the sign says, “Opens at 11:30am.” So, it's like 11:25. Let's walk up the block a little bit. Then, we turn back around. Because we come down … It's 11:28 when we get back. So, we're two minutes, technically, early. We open the door. We walk in to the fine establishment. There's a bunch of actual Chinese people rolling sushi. Which you know it means it's going to be good. It's not like in Boise where you get the white dudes rolling sushi. Or, the Mexican guys rolling sushi. This is legit sushi people making sushi. And, I can see the ocean from here. You now it's not flown in from across the world. This is going to be the good stuff. Two minutes early and we walk in. The lady stops us at the door and says, “We're not open yet.” We're like, “Yeah, it opens in two minutes.” And she say, “Yes.” She looks at her watch and says, “You're right.” So, okay, cool. I said, “We'll stand here for two minutes.” She said, “No, you need to leave.” So, she just pushed us out the door. Oh, okay. So, she pushed us out the door. She just walked back out and now she's allowing us in. Is that insane? So, my question for her and for you is where are the freaking entrepreneurs? The entrepreneur in the business would have been out here five minutes early. Probably an hour early hustling up business. Running around handing out flyers. Talking about how his sushi is actually legit sushi and not like crap sushi. He would have been out here selling it. Where the employee just pushed us out the door two minutes early because they were not ready yet to service us. Which is just insane to me. For all you guys, this is a lesson. You need to be better entrepreneurs and train your staff to be entrepreneurs. I guarantee entrepreneurs wouldn't have pushed us out two minutes early because they didn't want to work yet. Anyway, they opened the door and now we're going to go and have some legitimate sushi. Actually, I'm going to pause this podcast. I've never done this before. I'm going to pause it and we're going to come eat. Then, I'm going to follow up to let you know if it was worth it. I'm sure you guys are curious now. So, I'm going to pause it. We will meet back after lunch. All right. We just got out of Sushi-A-Go's. I don't know. What did you think Brandon? Brandon: It was pretty …. Actually, it was par. It was par. So, they have the sushi belt that goes around. The dudes were cutting sushi. It was all right. This one part they had these … I think it was salmon. Then dude brought us a big old blow torch and was like, woosh, blow torching all the salmon, which was really sweet. Then put on the stuff. Had this really good like smokey flavor. It was pretty good. What's interesting … This is another interesting cultural thing. Here in Australia, they don't tip. Because of that, the service sucks. The lady brought us out a water. The water cup was the size of one sushi roll. Usually when I eat sushi, I get really thirsty. I'm usually downing like six or seven large glasses of water. She gave me a little cup. Literally, it was probably … Brandon: Like a shot glass. Like a little bit bigger than a shot glass of water. I had to keep asking her to fill it back up. I'm going to go find some water because I'm kind of dehydrated. Anyway, that's been our Australia trip so far. I'm sure will send you guys more. Just wanted to give you guys a glimpse of what we are doing. Is that Randy? Brandon: No. Oh, it looks like him. Brandon: It totally does. Weird. Anyway, we lost one of our … One of the people in our party. We're trying to find him here in the streets of Australia with no internet access or anything. I appreciate you guys. Have an amazing day. I will message you guys again soon. Thanks everybody!

Where did all the entrepreneurs go? On today’s episode Russell talks about his experience at a sushi restaurant in Australia. He mentions some of the pro’s and con’s of eating out somewhere that, unlike restaurants in America, doesn’t accept tips. Here are a couple of fun things in this episode: Why people working in a restaurant are different than entrepreneurs. Why waitresses not working for a tip means Russell is thirsty! And find out if the sushi is actually any good. So listen below to hear what Russell thinks of Australian Sushi. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone. This is Russell Brunson and welcome to a beautiful, rainy, Australian Marketing In Your Car. All right guys. I’m not actually in a car now. I’m walking. This is my mode of transportation for the next three days. So, we’re considering this the car. I’m here with Brandon and we’re in Australia filming some really cool stuff. We just wanted some sushi. We walked by this sushi place. It looks amazing. It’s called Sushi-A-Go. S-U-S … Sushi-A-Go? A-Go? Anyway, just walked by. It’s lunch time. We just flew here from New Zealand so we haven’t eaten yet today. So, we’re starving. We walked by and the sign says, “Opens at 11:30am.” So, it’s like 11:25. Let’s walk up the block a little bit. Then, we turn back around. Because we come down … It’s 11:28 when we get back. So, we’re two minutes, technically, early. We open the door. We walk in to the fine establishment. There’s a bunch of actual Chinese people rolling sushi. Which you know it means it’s going to be good. It’s not like in Boise where you get the white dudes rolling sushi. Or, the Mexican guys rolling sushi. This is legit sushi people making sushi. And, I can see the ocean from here. You now it’s not flown in from across the world. This is going to be the good stuff. Two minutes early and we walk in. The lady stops us at the door and says, “We’re not open yet.” We’re like, “Yeah, it opens in two minutes.” And she say, “Yes.” She looks at her watch and says, “You’re right.” So, okay, cool. I said, “We’ll stand here for two minutes.” She said, “No, you need to leave.” So, she just pushed us out the door. Oh, okay. So, she pushed us out the door. She just walked back out and now she’s allowing us in. Is that insane? So, my question for her and for you is where are the freaking entrepreneurs? The entrepreneur in the business would have been out here five minutes early. Probably an hour early hustling up business. Running around handing out flyers. Talking about how his sushi is actually legit sushi and not like crap sushi. He would have been out here selling it. Where the employee just pushed us out the door two minutes early because they were not ready yet to service us. Which is just insane to me. For all you guys, this is a lesson. You need to be better entrepreneurs and train your staff to be entrepreneurs. I guarantee entrepreneurs wouldn’t have pushed us out two minutes early because they didn’t want to work yet. Anyway, they opened the door and now we’re going to go and have some legitimate sushi. Actually, I’m going to pause this podcast. I’ve never done this before. I’m going to pause it and we’re going to come eat. Then, I’m going to follow up to let you know if it was worth it. I’m sure you guys are curious now. So, I’m going to pause it. We will meet back after lunch. All right. We just got out of Sushi-A-Go’s. I don’t know. What did you think Brandon? Brandon: It was pretty …. Actually, it was par. It was par. So, they have the sushi belt that goes around. The dudes were cutting sushi. It was all right. This one part they had these … I think it was salmon. Then dude brought us a big old blow torch and was like, woosh, blow torching all the salmon, which was really sweet. Then put on the stuff. Had this really good like smokey flavor. It was pretty good. What’s interesting … This is another interesting cultural thing. Here in Australia, they don’t tip. Because of that, the service sucks. The lady brought us out a water. The water cup was the size of one sushi roll. Usually when I eat sushi, I get really thirsty. I’m usually downing like six or seven large glasses of water. She gave me a little cup. Literally, it was probably … Brandon: Like a shot glass. Like a little bit bigger than a shot glass of water. I had to keep asking her to fill it back up. I’m going to go find some water because I’m kind of dehydrated. Anyway, that’s been our Australia trip so far. I’m sure will send you guys more. Just wanted to give you guys a glimpse of what we are doing. Is that Randy? Brandon: No. Oh, it looks like him. Brandon: It totally does. Weird. Anyway, we lost one of our … One of the people in our party. We’re trying to find him here in the streets of Australia with no internet access or anything. I appreciate you guys. Have an amazing day. I will message you guys again soon. Thanks everybody!