Podcasts about chuck there

In today's episode of Building Texas Business, I speak with Chuck Leblo, founder of Interact One. Chuck shares his entrepreneurial journey from working in the corporate world, where he was overwhelmed by paperwork, to starting his own business. He offers valuable lessons learned from launching a side business while employed and the critical decisions that helped him succeed. Chuck leaves us with wisdom on building effective teams and maintaining a balanced lifestyle as an entrepreneur. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Chuck Leblo, the founder of Interact One, shares his journey from corporate America to entrepreneurship, detailing the reasons behind his transition, such as the overbearing workload in his corporate job. We highlight the importance of having a side gig while starting a business to ensure financial stability. He explains how his unique problem-solving skills were instrumental in the exponential growth of his business from a modest $14,000 to a whopping $140,000 a month. Chuck details his process of tackling a telecom company's issue of short duration calls and building a team of diverse fractionals to aid in problem-solving. He talks about the various challenges he faced as an entrepreneur, including the need to make decisions and pivot the business when necessary. We discuss the impact that COVID-19 had on his business and how he successfully managed to meet the new market needs. He emphasizes the importance of building a successful team of partners and fractionals and shares his experience in helping businesses navigate the remote working world. Chuck shares his experience of managing a large-scale door-to-door team in the deregulated electricity market in Texas and the challenges of the project. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance, sharing his personal experience and strategies. Chuck advises entrepreneurs to treat everyone with respect, earn people's trust, and widen their network to succeed in business. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller GUESTS Chuck LebloAbout Chuck TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Chuck Leblo, founder of Interact One. Through Interact One, chuck helps business owners solve problems and stresses the importance of building trust with clients as the foundation to successfully growing your company. All right, chuck, I want to thank you for joining me here on Building Texas Business. It's great to have you on the show. Now it's a pleasure to be here. So I know you've got a business or two you're involved with now and maybe others you've had before. But let's just kind of start by you telling the listeners kind of a little bit about yourself and the company that you've got and what it's known for. Chuck: Well, I'm pretty boring story, but so Interact One. Really, we're known for being problem solvers right, and not the type of problem solvers like I need a guy whacked right. Chris: Yeah, we have to stop the recording right now. Chuck: Right, right right, so I can say use the money, you can be my legal counsel, right. So, but now we solve problems for businesses right, and we've been doing that for about 17, 18 years now. I've always been known as a natural problem solver, from the time of a kid all the way through the military, through my corporate days and into my business. So it was a natural, natural evolution for me to just basically start a company that solves problems. Chris: All right. So I guess you mentioned a lot of, I guess, background going back from your childhood and military service. What was the real inspiration for you to kind of becoming an entrepreneur and actually starting a business? Chuck: Well, so 20 years in corporate America I was. I started out as a problem solver on an engineering basis right In telecom and then I got into the business side and I solved business problems which were more to do with like profitability right. And one day I was sitting there and I looked around my office and I just saw stacks in the business 20 years ago, right, everything wasn't digitized then. So stacks and stacks of invoices and contracts and lease cost, routing guides and all of this kind of stuff and I realized I was wasting my life away just doing that, just spending all my time. I was heavily compensated for what I did. Most people would die to have the job, but I was just like I'm not spending time with my family, I'm working 20 hours, sometimes 20 hours a day, right, and I said enough is enough. So I started my. At that point, you know, I had the funds available and I started my own company. Now, unfortunately in retrospect, I started a company doing basically exactly the same thing that I was doing for the telecom companies. I was controlling profitability for helping other telecom companies do that and then helping fortune 1000 clients and government agencies do it. So so that was like my little step in entrepreneurship, because I was really doing the same thing, but just doing it on my own. Then, about five years later six years later is when I really said no, we got to go full tilt into just solving problems. I want to solve them for all types of businesses. So really it was just sitting there looking at all the boxes and just to press the heck out of me. Chris: Yeah, the guy sounds like you're in a situation where you lost your motivation and you had to kind of look introspectively to go. How can I regain the motivation and inspiration I had about what it is I did? Chuck: Yeah. Chris: I wasn't excited about it anymore. Yeah, so. So you step out on your own, whether it was kind of that in that first venture or the five year later, let's talk about that. I mean, what were some of the, the lessons you learned that you were like, oh, I wish I to someone would have told me this. Right, it's like I gotta imagine some things kind of hit you in the face and you had to learn to adapt really quick to now you know, owning your own show. Chuck: Yeah, so the first thing I learned was when I took that first step, right where I owned the company, doing exactly what I was doing before, and what I learned was one it's feast or famine out there, right, as a consultant. It was a. It was feast or famine. The second thing I learned was it's okay to keep your toe in the corporate pond, right. So what I would do is, during those types of famine, I would go get a little gig you know, part time gig help a company out to pay the bills. One of the examples is we did an analysis for state government where we looked at five years of their telecom bills going back. We got them about five million bucks back, okay. So we renegotiated all their contracts, saved them about three million dollars a year going forward. Wow, it took us two years to do that analysis and to start getting that money back and we were paid on a contingency basis. We got a percentage of what we got them back. So two years without money. So if I hadn't known at the time that it's okay, it's okay to be, it's okay to be a part time entrepreneur, and in most cases it's better to get your side gig going before you take a full time side, before you take that side gig full time yeah. Chris: Yeah, that's interesting perspective because I don't know that. I've heard people use that term before, but I think there's some truth to it about that. Okay to be a part time entrepreneur, to kind of get your legs underneath yeah. Chuck: Now most people think that they have a side gig and then that side gig becomes their new job. I looked at it as that, that my business was my job, that I looked at the corporate America side as the side gig. Chris: Yeah, okay. So so you get you kind of learn that lesson and you move forward. What were some of the things, when you look back, that you feel like were the decisions you made that kind of set the foundation for your future success Because anything right, you can use any analogy you want, but also you got to have a strong foundation to be able to build from Anything that comes to mind that you really look back on and are kind of proud of the early decisions you made, in the way you set things up. Chuck: I think that you have to choose your clients wisely, right? There's an old saying out there that if everyone's your potential customer, no one's a customer. Right, you have to and I'm listening up, because I'm not perfect in any means. When I first started, I started going just after telecom companies, and that because that was what I knew. I'd spent 20 years in telecom and I had to learn all other aspects if I wanted to do this. So, you know, I became an expert at digital marketing. I already knew operations from telecom. I already knew finance from telecom. Right technology, of course I knew that one. I really know a whole lot about HR or legal, but what I didn't know was marketing and sales. So I had to become an expert in that Right. And that was really the catalyst is when I went from just being a just knowing, just doing telecom companies to now specializing in really all types of businesses, but only particular size businesses. So I learned that I didn't want to do business with those big fortune 1000s anymore. The big electric providers right, those were our clients. Telecom companies, those were the state agencies, government agencies and things like that. I didn't want to deal in that arena anymore because I can impact a small business much more. Right, if I save a small business you know $100,000 a year or fix a problem that solves, that's worth $100,000 or $200,000, that's much more impactful than getting a state agency back $5 million because it's not real money to them anyway. Right, it's just taxpayer money. It's not like they're going to give it back to the taxpayers. They're going to find someplace else to spend it. Chris: Right, right. Well, I think there's some truth to what you're saying is, as you're starting out with the new business, it's very important to be really laser focused about who your customer is and stay kind of within those bounds and not start to chase every little thing that may come your way because it may not fit your skill set, it may not fit your purpose and it can be distracting. Chuck: It can be distracting and it'll give you, you know, doubt as to what you're doing, whether or not you're competent, right, and that'll kill you as an entrepreneur. When you start doubting yourself and doubting your abilities than others will. Chris: So we've talked a little bit about kind of getting started as you were kind of moving through the process. You've talked about kind of focusing in, I guess after about five years on really just being a problem solver. Let's talk maybe a little more detail about what are some of the things you're talking about when you say you know we solve problems. I know they can vary, but I'm just curious about some kind of specifics, to the extent you can share some specifics on that. Chuck: Sure. First of all, I always tell people is your problem worth at least $2,000? Don't be gonna do me with a problem, right? That's not worth something. I'm not doing it for free, so let me give you an example. So about a year and a half ago I got called by a customer of mine, a roofer, and he goes hey, I've got this company that I want to outsource my back office to and I need you to vet them. So that's a problem. I said, okay, fine, let me vet them for you. So I did that and they were a good company, right. And about six months later after that, I get a call from that company and as owner of the company, and she held up a little sticky note and it said hire Chuck. And I said what's that? She goes. When we had our conversation I know that I knew that I needed a Chuck and I said, okay, so how can I help you? And she goes listen, I've been in business for almost a year now. We're an outsourced VA virtual assistance company and we're just not really making. We're not growing fast enough. We're going to get about $14,000 a month in revenue. And I said okay, and I took a look into our organization and we started making some changes and first thing we did was we rebranded her as a business process outsourcing company instead of a virtual assistance company. Then we made some operational changes with her personnel, helped her grow and hire the right people, got all of her people certified in the softwares that they were using so they could truly be viewed as an expert instead of just a virtual assistant. In less than a year they went from $14,000 a month revenue to $140,000 a month in revenue. Okay, just changes that. We did Another company, a telecom company, swiss telecom, a telecom company right, they were getting a lot of short duration calls that they were being billed for and they didn't know what the problem was. So we've got a problem. So we did an analysis of tens of millions of TCAP messages which are getting technical here in SS7. It's like a phone record, but it's the digital version of it, right and we found that what was happening was, down the line, one of the providers that they were connecting to, because, remember, you go through several switches. You call them the US, it might go here. Anyway, one of those switches was given back what's called false answer supervision, before the call was ever answered. So that's why they're having short duration calls. People would call, it would ring nine, 10 times, no one would answer and they'd hang up but it was showing it's answered. So we fixed that problem. So really, it's any type of problem. It's like I want to open a new location, okay, so one of the things that we do in our LinkedIn reach out, that we do how we find clients is we just ask people what their problem is and we tell them everyone. We tell them how we would solve the problem. One is what's the true problem and what's the real problem? Because a true problem or their problem might be I need more revenue. Okay, so what's the real problem? Or is the real problem you need more revenue because your costs are too high, because if your costs are too high and we bring in more revenue, we put you out of business because you're selling low cost, right? Is it because you're marketing? Is it because you just don't have the right staff in place? So we do that analysis and take them through that and either fix it for them and hand it back to them or, once it's corrected, we can monitor on an ongoing basis. Chris: So when you do these projects, you assume you're not just a one man show. You've got a team working with you, and how have you gone about, I guess, building that team around you to make sure you have the right people? Chuck: So what I? Did is listen. So experience is important, diversity is important right, and diversity from the sense of people with different backgrounds are going to have different ways that they interpret a problem and the corrective action that they would find for that right. So although I'm the chief strategist for the company, I don't really go by the title CEO, but I'm CEO and chief strategist. I'm more of a strategy kind of guy, so I do handle a lot of the problems. Chris: When you know, name of the companies interact one. Chuck: You're going to interact with me, right? In most cases, but what we did is we wanted to find people like me, because I don't know everything that lets surround yourself with people smarter than you, right? So we go out and we find fractional people just like me, right? Possibly someone that's got a full-time job, they are a CEO of a company or they're an entrepreneur that own their own company or they're an accountant, right? So we have a lot of people that are working with us for finance issues, it professionals, right, and we've built a network of these people to where we hold all of their information so that when a problem comes in, we have three or four or five in some cases, 10 people that we can send that problem to and see what their thoughts are on it and then engage that person the one that we want to engage with to help us solve that. And then we do the program management or the program project management of that and we have a lot of employees, but we have a lot of fractionals working for us. Chris: Okay, that's an interesting model. I mean it makes sense, given what you're doing, and then you can kind of pick the right person for the issue at hand, Absolutely. So we were talking a little bit earlier and I know you know we talked about challenges you faced and being an entrepreneur and I just want you know, maybe share, some of the challenges you've gone through and how that's impacted the business or changed what you've done. From you know, from a, I guess, a business strategy. Chuck: Well, I mean, if you're in business, you're always going to have challenges, right. So you know, starting from the very beginning, just being able to redirect yourself. You know don't beat a dead horse, redirect, you know, make a decision one way or the other lead, follow. Get out of the way all those little sayings they say is you know, do that? Make decisions. Some of the you know. The first one was switching from being just strictly telecom to really handling smaller businesses. That was one. Then we diversified into where we had our own public relations firm because a lot of companies, what they were, what we found is a lot of companies have an issue with actually people knowing who they were right. So we created that company and being able to to in the economy, be able to utilize, you know, both companies right. Listen when very small businesses, they can't afford a lot sometimes but they can afford a little bit and that's like the PR company. One of the challenges that we had with that diversification is when COVID hit. Right, we were leading up into COVID. We were spending probably 90% well, 70% of our business was from a revenue perspective, was coming from the PR firm and these are small clients paying $395, $500 a month, right, for our PR services. And the Interact One, the more consulting, the high dollar ones, was really just me at that time, okay, and when COVID hit, basically all those customers call me hey, we don't know what's going on. We've got to stop and we've let everyone out of their contracts, for sure, but we lost about 90% of that business, and at the time I really didn't know what I was. Yeah, it was a very big hit and they really know what to do. But then I started thinking well, people really have problems now. Right, they've got problems that need solved. A lot of problems were, you know, during COVID is. You know, how do we maintain a remote workforce? How do we keep our store open but just have deliveries? How do we keep our employees engaged out? You know, how do we give our customers engaged? How do we transfer our shop from totally brick and mortar to an online right? So it was a godsend for me as far as building back up or getting more involved in the Interact One business. But because if I didn't have that, I don't know where I'd be today. I'd probably be dipping my toe back in the corporate pond again, right, right, but you've got to be able to. Chris: Yeah, the ability to, I guess you know, kind of pivot when necessary and kind of keep going is critical, yeah, For an entrepreneur especially small business owner Yep. What other? I guess, excuse me, what other advice when you think about how you interact with your? You know your partners, your kind of your, these, maybe these what I would call maybe alliances you have with other fractionals. But maybe there are other type of partners you used to keep your business successful, whether that's you know banking relationships, you know accounting, legal. What are some advice you have on that, on you know best practices to make sure you kind of surround yourself with that kind of strong team that you need to kind of have a stable business. Chuck: Yeah. So, listen, a lot of small businesses out there, right, they try to do it all themselves, right and don't. Right, there are professionals out there that can help you and even if you want to build everything in house, you know, make sure that you know, like you said, have a strong relationship with a banker, a financial person, you know, some sort of business coach maybe to help you do things. What I do is I just try to treat everyone with respect and, as a consultant, sometimes we especially when we're solving problems, right, I can't, someone can't say something to me and me go well, crap, how stupid are you? Right, you got to treat that business owner with respect and sometimes, if they're making boneheaded decisions, there's a little bit of dance involved in it. Right, so be respectful and earn people's trust and with, whether it's your business partners like me, you know all the other C level professionals that I work with, right, because most of the people that we bring on as our partner or our hybrid or partner or fractional whatever you want to call it consultants that we lean on in areas that we don't have the expertise, they're all C level, okay, so you've got to be respectful of them and trust their decision. Now we have a leave at them. First, right, trust just isn't given. But you know, be respectful and widen your network. Right, you're only as good as the people that you're surrounded by. Chris: Yeah, no, that's for sure. And they're a reflection of you, right? If you're bringing them in, whether that's an employee and you're putting them on a project or a consultant, and you're bringing them in, whoever that client is sees them as a reflection of you. So it's important to make sure they align, you know, with your fundamental values, absolutely, absolutely so in what I think you referred to this a minute ago, when you're talking about certain problems, you've been helping people solve anything you've seen in the last couple of years where you've been involved and maybe in certain projects and develop some. I don't know if there are best practices, but I'm thinking about work, the work remote world we're in and helping companies kind of navigate to a place that can work for the business, to remain profitable but also allow for some of that flexibility. Anything you can share on that regard. Trust Right. Chuck: So one of the biggest problems Just in case. Chris: I didn't hear that clearly. I want to make sure the audio is clear. You said trust. Chuck: That's what I'm talking about Trust, right, that's my text is coming out Trust. So what happens? And it's instilled a sin from the very beginning? Oh, 40 hours a week, and this is your rate, right? And how do I know that my people are working if they're not here? And I can see what's going on behind the desk? And my answer to them is the work being done. Right, is the work being done? And you, as a manager this is what I tell the business owner you, as a manager, need to make sure that you're giving them the work that can be done in the time period that you want it done in, right? You know, if you give someone three things to do and they can do it in four hours instead of eight hours, well, those are the things you needed them to do and they did it. So why shouldn't they get paid what you would have paid them, which was eight hours, okay, but then again, if you don't have your finger on it to where you know how long it takes them to do something, then that's on you, that's not on them. And if you give them too much and they're not getting it all done, then that's when you've got to start looking into it. Am I giving them too much Right. Chris: So the main thing with work remote. Chuck: That I tell, like I said I tell people is trust your people Trust, trust yourself that you made the right decision when you hired them, right, or it's your fault anyway, and then trust the fact that they're working. I've seen businesses that are like well, they've got to log into this system and stay logged in. Okay, well, they could be logging in while they're taking a nap. That doesn't mean that they're doing the work. Well, you know, we make them have a zoom open so that at any time we can look and see if they're working. I said you know I would quit. I don't, I'm going to do the work, but if you're insisting on having a camera on me making sure that I'm doing work all the time, then it's not a right fit. Right, there has to be trust. Chris: Yeah, you're right. I mean I think you know, in addition to trust, I think what I've seen and I think you're saying this as well is you got to communicate clearly what the expectations are Right. So when you talk about these assignments, I mean you know not only is the word getting done, is it getting done timely and efficiently and correctly Right, and if so, then you know you're on to something. And if not, then you got to correct that from a work performance standpoint and be able to say look, this is what the assignment was, this is what the deadline was, and if it didn't meet the standards, be able to explain why. And then figure out what's the right corrective action from there. Chuck: Yeah, expectations are everything and then being able to you know, another thing you do is get buy in from that remote worker you know how, what can you do, how much can you do it? You know, it's like my telecom days, the old telecom days. You had what was called an occupancy rate, so you had a call center where people are answering the call and then, oh, I want 100% occupancy, which that meant that 100% of the time that people were on the phone. And it's not possible, right, even the best call centers run at 60 to 65% occupancy, right, and you got to realize the way your people are too. If you're paying them for eight hours, you know what you'll be good, you're doing really good if you're getting six hours of real work out of them. Because you got to stop and think sometimes, as, as American culture, we really, I guess we really think that our employee employees owe us when really we owe them. Chris: Yeah, that's a good point. So let's talk a little bit just about you know, maybe on your personal leadership style. How would you describe your leadership style? And first there, and then you know how do you work with some of your clients. Maybe help them with their leadership style when those opportunities present themselves. Chuck: Well, I think that in the business that I'm in, I have to be collaborative, right, you can't make all the decisions and do everything yourself, and really that's what business owners have to do all the time telling them that you're, you know, you're micromanaging your people, you know. Give them some room to breathe, let them have some creativity, let them help make decisions. Don't just tell them what to do, ask them what needs to be done, and that's kind of my leadership style, right. But then I always go back to problem solving. So I want to know what the real problem is, what, not just the problem, the problem, you think the perceived problem, but what is the real problem and how can we correct this with any decision that's made? Chris: Yeah, so kind of we talked a little bit about this maybe. But I want to ask you a maybe different way when you think about yourself and your career, any kind of setbacks that you've encountered, that you look back and go man, that was a tough time, or I made a boneheaded decision or whatever, but what I learned from it benefited me so much that I can look back and be grateful for that experience. Anything come to mind for there that you can share? Chuck: Yeah, Back when I kind of first started the Interact One on the marketing side, when I was learning marketing, I had a company come to me and it was like we want you to help us acquire more customers. You remember back when deregulation happened on electricity in Texas. Chris:So we started working. Chuck: The problem and the problem that we gave them was you need to have a door-to-door team that needs to be trained this way and done this way and do all this kind of stuff. And they said, okay, great, do it for us. And 286 people later right, five locations across the state of Texas, a lot of money, Thank you, but it wasn't worth it and it almost made me to where I didn't want to even continue. Right, it was so stressful having that many people that are working on a commission-only basis right, Selling electricity, training them, looking at Perf and all of that kind of stuff. So it was very profitable and it's one of the things that, if I had my if I go back in time, that's maybe one thing that I would have changed is I wouldn't have went down that path that took so much energy and took three years of my life to do that. I could have done much greater things. Chris: I believe, interesting. So that kind of segues well into the next question I want to ask you and that is how do you go about maintaining you know there's all the. You know the typical word is work-life balance, and I'm kind of a believer and I had some other guests on the podcast and I agree with this is more about work-life integration than how do you manage both, because you have work and you have your personal life and how do you integrate those so you can show up effectively in both? What are some of the things that you do to try to make that happen in your life? Chuck: I take naps. Chris: I love it. Chuck: I'm a big proponent of taking naps, but really OK. So I've got, maybe, a different viewpoint, because I did the corporate America gig for 20 years and I had my business, grew it very big, then pulled it back small again and I work because I want to work. There is no work-life balance. I have life and I work when I want to work. And if I want to work five hours this week, that's what I work this week. If I want to take a week off, I take a week, and I know it's different for a lot of entrepreneurs, you know. But I'm entering the, the, the twilight state. I don't look at that. I'm pretty dang old, right, and I think that for the younger people starting out, or you know, mid-mid-age, right it's important, right? Don't do what I did in the first 20 years of my career, where all I did was work and I saw my kids on weekends, which initially eventually led to a divorce, which meant that I only saw them every other weekend, right? Yeah, 14 years ago I started over again. Wonderful woman, she keeps me grounded and she is my life, makes me want to be a better man, and we started a new family, so that helps out too. So I've got an eight year old son now, right, and I've got an eight year old granddaughter and I've got an eight year old grandson right. Oh, wow, yeah. So it gives you the. It's allowing me to have a second chance with that and I'm not going to fail it. So, yeah, I don't necessarily know how you do it, whether it's working out or yoga. This is the one of the one of the people in the podcast. They were doing yoga and all this kind of stuff. I know that you have to have something that stimulates your brain at all points in time. I've got an eight year old that does that I've got. You've got to have something that exercises your body. I've got an eight year old that does that. I help coaches lacrosse team and the day after practices I can barely walk. So I don't know if I have a great answer for it. I know it's important, but I'm not there anymore. I just I work because I want to work. Chris: Yeah, no, I work great hours. I think what I love there. Everyone has a little different take on it because, look, everyone's situation is different and so you've got to get to figure out what works in your ecosystem and your environment, and that includes, right, the family and the business and the career and all those things, and those things can change over time. Chuck: There's another camp. Chris: All right. So yeah, I appreciate all this has been really good stuff. I'm going to turn it a little bit to the lighter side and ask you what was your first job? Like real job or entrepreneurial job? No, that real job, I mean I don't know, like in junior high you had to pay for route, or yeah. No, I didn't, I didn't do the paper route. Chuck: So my for my, as I was raised by a single mom, right, we didn't have anything. She was a waitress. So I went into the family business and I bust tables and lost dishes at a restaurant. Chris: That will humble you really quick right, make you hungry, and not just hungry to say I want something different. Chuck: Yeah, I know that I want. I always knew that I wanted to have something more than what I had growing up. Chris: I know you said you listened to some of the prior podcast episodes, so I know you're ready for this one Tex-Mex or barbecue. Chuck: Well, it depends where right Sure, you know. So I do my own barbecue. Okay, so if I'm eating out someplace, I don't necessarily do Tex-Mex very well, except for guacamole I'm a great guacamole. But so I would say, if I'm eating out, it's a text. I eat more Tex-Mex than barbecue, but I enjoy barbecue. Chris: Ma'am, I may have to see if you can ship me some of yours and I bet it's pretty good. Yeah, I make some pretty good barbecue. I love. The honest answer there was. It depends where, because so many of us have. Well, if it's, you know, if it's this that I'm hungry for, then it might be this barbecue joint or this different Tex-Mex place. So I have to share. I just saw and I share with my girls, you know the L L L L Roya in Austin in their signs. There, there was, I saw a picture of this. One says Texan a person who chooses a restaurant based on their chips and salsa. Chuck: You know that's very true, Isn't that true? Chris: What we need is a. Chuck: Tex-Mex barbecue. Chris: Yeah, but we have some of that here in Houston. We have some places that are using like brisket in their tacos and things, so it is. Chuck: They have Korean barbecue. Right, they have Korean barbecue, so why not? You know Tex-Mex barbecue and you know have more. Of. You know the beans would be more of the barbecue style beans with some jalapenos in there. So I put jalapenos in everything. So everything is Tex-Mex. Chris: I like it. Well, you and I may have to get offline and we may come up with a new restaurant concept here. Chuck: Yeah, so okay, last question. This one's out of the menu, yeah. Chris: Everything's out of the menu. Yes. Last question is, if you could take a 30-day sabbatical or you just get away, where would you go and what would you do? Chuck: Well. So sabbatical means something different, right, and getting yourself in a different thing. So I like, at least twice a year, we go to the Smoky Mountains, which is my, that's my spot, right. When I first went to the Smoky Mountains, I was like this is where I belong, right. But a sabbatical might be a little bit different, and I think it would be really cool to go over to Africa and do a photo safari. I don't want to shoot the animals anymore. I did that growing up. I don't need to do it anymore, but to get them on camera and to live in the camps and stuff like that would just be. That'd be something to be really cool, yeah. Chris: It's a bucket list item for sure. Yeah, that's great. Chuck: Well, Chuck, I want to thank you again for taking the time. Chris: come on the show and share your story. I love hearing kind of the career you've had and the way you evolved and I love this the way you're helping companies solve big problems, so really appreciate it. Chuck: Well, I appreciate you having me. It was fun. Chris: All right, we're going to stop the recording there. Let me see if I can actually do that. Hmm, no, here we go. I'm not the host, it won't love me, but they know where we stopped, so hey. I was talking, I talk enough. No, you did great. Look, we, you know I was watching our timer. Yeah, we were. We probably stopped the recording in minute 3435 and 30 to 40 minutes is our goal, so we were right in the sweet spot. And yeah, and it always goes so fast because you're just having a conversation and I think everyone gets amazed that I can't believe it went that well. We were actually talking for that long, but yeah. Chuck: In my business I don't talk, I listen. So it's hard for me to fathom that I'm. You know, when I listen like when I do a conference call with a client I one of the people you had said they use order. We use order also and it shows you the stats on how long each person talked and I always make sure and always tell the other people that make sure that the client's talking more. Chris: Yeah, what you're talking, you know. Chuck: you look at the the the recap and it says Chuck talked for 36 out of 60 minutes. Well, that's too much, Right? Chuck needs to talk for eight minutes out of an hour and let the customer talk. Chris: That's good, that was good. Chuck: I look forward to seeing the seeing the episode. Chris: Absolutely, we'll be back in touch. I don't know. So, josie, with my team and Mackenzie they're my marketing kind of folks and I can't remember the name I know you kind of came through, a group that was, you know, helps you book these things, yeah, thanks. We want a headshot, kind of thing and all that. Chuck: They're having great the ride up on me. All that kind of stuff yeah. Chris: Well then, what we'll do? We'll give you a little. Obviously, there'll be some advanced warning once we get it all packaged up and we have a date certain that we're going to release it, and we'll get it all to you and your people, and then it'll be, it'll hit the presses. Chuck: So also, and the next time I'm in Houston I'll look you guys up and we do lunch or something. Chris: Please do. I would love that Love to go grab some barbecue. Yeah, thank you All right man, I talk to you later. Enjoy the rest of your day. Bye, bye. Special Guest: Chuck Leblo.

  We're Live. Chuck is back in the scene but he's coming with not-so-great news! In this episode, Chuck and John Talk about how their lives have changed over the passing years.   Looking forward to the new paths that both are building towards their journey in entrepreneurship.   Chuck - “There are hours that I need to get back and just focus on the ones that I'm currently working on”

We’re Live. Chuck Starts by saying to the guys that during a business trip to Nashville, some things that happened there made him realize that his business’s focus has not been in the right place the whole time.   His Business is based on Technology but it needs to be focused on relationships, that’s where everything happens not on the technical side of things, at the beginning of most entrepreneurship this would be a common ground but the only way to build up your business is founding those relationships that make the difference.   Thought of the week   Chuck - “There’s always so much going on that sometimes you kind of miss the point of having a business”

Some of the most popular episodes we've aired have been with guests who have experienced the buying or selling process firsthand. Today's guest has acquired several businesses and is genuinely good at the acquisition process. In part one of a two-part series, Chuck is talking to Mike Nunez about his various acquisitions and his 9 super secret to tips to being a great buyer. Mike has been in the online marketing space since 1999. After gaining experience in affiliate marketing, he launched Affiliate Manager with his brother while he continued to work full time for Google. More recently, Mike has purchased several e-commerce businesses from Quiet Light. We'll hear about how Mike is becoming one of our top buyers, how he's realizing his dreams, and that one last goal he may just reach. Episode Highlights: What it means to be a good buyer. What values the seller looks for aside from the monetary value. Ways to put the seller at ease by focusing on what is important to them. The importance of having a plan in your approach to the seller. How to accept and value of the previous owner's advice during the transition. Why you should avoid poor positioned questions when working with the seller. The buyer needs to find what he wants – the fit has to be right for the buyer too. Finding the component that will help make the business yours and not focus solely on the money piece. The relationship of trust in your broker is also a key factor in being a good buyer or seller. Transcription: Mark: Some of the most popular podcasts that we've put out here at Quiet Light Brokerage are the episodes where we get the chance to interview either a seller or a buyer on their background or their journey of going through a buying an online business. And Chuck I know you had a good friend of ours, a good friend of Quiet Light Brokerage's and a previous podcast guest as well, Mike Nuñez on because he's acquired a couple of businesses from us and more specifically from you in the recent months. How did that discussion go? Chuck: Yeah it went great. Mike is what I would consider probably one of our best buyers. The way he's able to get on a phone call and just talk to people, and sometimes I use the word tactics throughout the call. I don't feel like when he's doing it he's being tactical, I feel like he's just a very genuinely friendly guy who is just really good. His experience is that he's been in internet marketing for 20 years I've been in it for 24 so he's almost up there with me. Mark: He worked at Google so he's got that on you. Chuck: Yeah, he worked at Google for four years in the paid search department. So he talks a lot about on this one so I ended up having to split this up into two podcasts because it was just going so long. So the first one we talked about his nine super-secret tips to being a great buyer and there was a lot of really actionable stuff in there that I think everybody is going to be able to get a lot out of. Mark: Guys that's awesome and you talk about the difference between tactics and just being a good guy and look they can blend together, right? I mean Mike isn't the type of conniving guy saying here's what I'm going to do, I'm going to say this phrase and that phrase to make sure somebody absolutely loves me and then I'm going to be able to get an additional 20% off. That's not the way he works. He is just generally a good guy. He helps a lot. He's got that help first mentality. We preach this all the time and Joe is the one that coined a lot of these phrases which is nice buyers tend to do better. And it's just really, really true that sometimes we need tips on how to do it. This is why Dale Carnegie wrote the famous book How to Win Friends and Influence People just to give us some actionable tips to be like how do you actually encounter people in a business environment in a way that will benefit you. And if you read the book you find out that a lot of it is; well it starts with that right disposition and who you are. And Mike is a good person. I love that you broke this out into nine tips. Are you able to give me any preview of any of the nine tips or do you not remember them offhand? Chuck: Yeah. So one of the questions is around positioning the way you ask questions I think it's a really good tip. I won't get into all the details but you'll see it in the video. Mark: Okay, so not just going out there and hammering people with questions in a very kind of combatant way but I'm sure Mike has a very unique approach to that. Chuck: Well, Mark I just said I'm not going to get into the details. Don't try to pressure me. Mark: Alright. You know what I was talking to Joe the other day and he's like do you listen to the podcasts, Mark? And I said no, I don't because I hear enough of you Joe I don't want to hear more of you and he records all the episodes. So he said your intros are getting to be too long so let's cut it out. Let's get to it. Chuck: Hey everybody today on the call we have Mike Nuñez. Welcome, Mike. Mike: Thank you, Chuck, it's great to be here. Chuck: So people may have heard your name before because we mentioned you quite frequently on the podcast. And the reason we mentioned you so frequently is because you're what I would consider my number one buyer. I think probably one of Quiet Light's top buyers and not from a monetary perspective. You do purchase a lot of businesses, you purchase a lot of large businesses from us but more so just from your personality; the way you interact with clients on phone calls like whenever I'm telling somebody how to be a good buyer I'm always in my head thinking what does Mike do and then I'm telling them what Mike does in order to be a good buyer. Because we're friends and I know you outside of Quiet Light but like I really do mean that. Like you are really a great buyer and you're easy to talk to. And if anybody's watching the video today they're going to notice that you look somewhat like a sports commentator with that headset on and you've got a suit and tie and the suit and tie isn't the normal way I see Mike but one of the businesses he purchased was a custom-tailored suit business so I guess he's got to rep that brand now. Mike: That's right. Chuck: But maybe you could tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Mike: Oh great. I'm happy to. And first, let me say thank you. That was super just kind of you to say. I always whenever I have any of these phone calls I just take an approach of what I want to hear and recognizing that these business owners have been working on this; their babies, right? And you just have to be careful as you ask questions because we all want to know where the opportunity is and I'm sure we'll talk much more about that here but we want to know where the opportunity is and the way that you find that is by asking questions. But it's a very fine line between asking questions and becoming insulting and so you just have to walk that fine line. But there's absolutely a way to do it and there's a way to lead these sellers into that and realizing that you're both kind of on the same team. But again; well I think we're getting ahead of ourselves or at least I am so I'll tell you a little bit about me to start this off. I've been in online marketing since 1999, I was in college at the time and I know that dates myself a little bit. The first job was in lead generation, online marketing. I moved in to travel doing affiliate marketing and travel. I eventually launched my own affiliate marketing business along with my brother that's still going today so its AffiliateManager.com. Last year we merged with a company called Rhino Fish to create the performance company which is our page search division. Overall that marketing company is about 22 people. We have 3 former Googlers myself included on that staff. So we're quite good at both affiliate marketing and paid search. I like to say so. We also have two other businesses or I have two other businesses; one is an outdoor equipment seller that I purchased from Quiet Light, another is a custom made to measure suit company that I purchased from Quiet Light as well. So overall I'm about 20 years down it hurts to say experience in online marketing and business and online businesses in general and it's been a really fun journey. I always like to say Chuck my dream used to be I want to be able to work from anywhere and now I'm there. The new dream is that I want to not have to work. So someday I'll realize that second dream. Chuck: I don't like to hear that because I think the term not working would be not buying additional businesses and you're one short away from a special goal that I; I told him if you bought a certain number that I would buy him a specific thing. So he's just shy of that goal. Mike: Yeah it's just without getting into too many details like we're talking about less than what is it 4% on millions of dollars that I'm short. Chuck: But I set this goal early on, right? So it's your fault that you haven't reached it. If you have just paid a little bit more in that last acquisition you would have hit that goal. Mike: We need to round up Chuck. That's what I'm saying. We need to just round up and I should hit that threshold. Chuck: I'll remember that on the next acquisition. We'll just round up. Mike: Right. Yeah. Only when it's in my favor, please. Chuck: So part of the reason I wanted to have you on the call today was one just to talk about maybe some tips or just maybe even not tips but just discussing what it is to be a good buyer. But then also from your perspective what it is you're looking at when you're looking to buy businesses. I know you have a specific criteria that you're looking for and your criteria is different than other people's. And I wanted to also maybe talk about some lessons you've learned along the way. So I guess to kick it off maybe let's just dive in a little bit about being a good buyer. So I would start off just by saying that you know I talked to a lot of people; constantly I'm on the phone and people are always asking me what it is to be a good buyer? And some people I talked to think that in order to be a good buyer it's about being aggressive in trying to negotiate. And maybe they're not thinking that as being a good buyer but they want to try to get the best deal by doing that and they'll say negative things about people's businesses. And you take a very different approach than that. So I think you already addressed it a little bit but maybe you want to dive into maybe the approach you take to negotiating and to speaking with others. Mike: Sure. I think it's important context to say both of the businesses that I've purchased from you Chuck and Quiet Light had multiple offers, were very much generating a lot of interest and so there were multiple potential buyers. And I don't want to say we were the lowest offer. I don't think we were. I know in both cases we weren't the highest offer either. Chuck: Yeah just maybe to add a little context before you dive into further, one of the; I think actually both of them said I wanted to sell to Mike. So they're talking to multiple people and they said get Mike up to this number I want to sell to him. Even though that number was lower than what some of the other potential buyers were offering. Mike: Yeah. Chuck: So I think that speaks a lot to you. Mike: Thank you again, Chuck. But I would say that therein lies the quote-unquote the secret which is money is valuable, right? They want money. If you're nowhere near what they're asking or if you're nowhere near what their magic number is, the rest of this conversation goes away. Let's put that aside. I think Quiet Light does an incredible job overall of valuing companies fairly and appropriately. And you know that walking in. So if you know that walking in okay this is a fairly and appropriately valued business now it's a matter of percentage points maybe either way and in either direction of that. The purpose of the call, at least the initial call is to identify; one of the purposes of the call is to identify what value is this seller seeking beyond the dollars because the dollars are going to fall within a certain range. So a good example for the suit business is the seller really cared about his people. He really cared about his co-workers that he's had for the last however many years; almost 10 years that have put in their blood, their sweat, their tears into this. And he wanted to know that they were going to be okay. And I think actually in the ranking of why I won the business even though I had a lower offer than other people had, that's probably number one is just feeling comfortable about that the new owner is going to come in and take care of the people that were there. And I made no promises. Let me say that. I didn't say I promise I'm not going to let anybody go or I promise; I said no, I promise I'm going to be fair and appropriate with everybody and evaluate everybody based on performance. And he was confident knowing that he had hired stellar people. And it was part of what was so attractive about the business is he had incredible people that were already working there so it made it even more attractive for us. So I think that was number one for him. Second I think there was a sense of patriotism maybe. So this is a European company. It was based in Europe. It's in a European country. And this European country is kind of known for textiles and for creating things and such. And so I think one of the other buyers; and again there's multiple people in here that you're kind of competing against and so you got to think of like a pros and cons checklist and I'm being compared to each one of these other potential buyers in their pros and cons checklist. One of the other potential buyers wanted to move the production out of Europe and into China. There's nothing wrong with that if that's where their connections are if that's where their factories are and such; great. That's where they want to move their production, good for them. However this particular seller wanted to keep production because of his pride for his country, because of his desire to benefit his country, he wanted to keep production in his home country. I didn't have any alternative contacts in China or in any other potential production areas and so I felt like that was important to them and so I made it known. And I think a lot of, and I think it's the second thing is kind of just listening on the calls. Maybe that's super-secret number two is listening and hearing what's important to them and asking that question okay let's move money aside what's important to you in the future of this company? And another good example of that is potential branding or taking care of the customers. I know this may sound a little bit cliché but this is their baby, right? They've grown this baby. They've watched this baby grow. They've poured their love, their sweat, their tears, their hours. The seller of the custom suit company is an example. I remember him saying like I can't remember the last time I took a vacation. He just poured everything he possibly had into this company. And so when you're that invested overall they just kind of feel a comfort level that the new owner is going to come in and do right by what they've built. They just don't want to see it go away and it's they've already got their cash at that point and they still care. And I will say one positive side effect and please know that this is partly or mostly; not even partly, mostly because of the owner and this is one of the criteria; we can talk more about this later, but one of the criteria that I look at is an owner that cares and they're selling for potentially a different reason other than they don't care about the business anymore. I think those are the ones that kind of phone it in afterwards. The two owners of the businesses that I've purchased are still very much invested. One of them still works full time in the company and works as hard today as when he owned it. And I am very appreciative for that. Same thing for the custom suit company, he chimes in all the time. Like hey, this is how we did things, this is how we did it. It's so helpful in the transition of a company to have the context of somebody who built this business from the ground up. And I think the super-secret number three there is when somebody is on your side, let them be. Both of their intentions aren't to harm the business in any way. They want to see it grow. And even though in both instances there's been times where we didn't quite agree on how to take things to the next level, we absolutely welcomed their feedback and sometimes they were right. Sometimes we were right. Kind of checking your pride and moving it to the side for a second when you're good at something and allowing them to tell you, yes I know you're good at this, let me tell you how what you're doing applies specifically to the business that you're purchasing from me. It's a really important lesson in the growth of the business which might be a good segway Chuck if it's okay with you to start talking about the lessons learned for some of the businesses or did you want more on…? Chuck: Before we move on you mentioned that both of the owners of the businesses were kind of still somewhat involved in the company. Is that something you're specifically looking for or was that just a happenstance of you buying a good quality business that had an owner that actually cared about the business? Mike: So in neither instance was it a requirement beforehand that the owner would stay on with the business post-acquisition. The first acquisition, the owner requested it. They said hey I see the plan and I didn't intend to call out these super-secrets but let's call it the super-secret number four is have a plan. Don't just walk in and say hey I'd like to buy your business. In that instance, I just so happened to be in London and as I'm trying to buy this business the owner of the business lived in an island off of the coast of Morocco. I had a free weekend while I was in London and I flew over and met with him and his wonderful wife and they were gracious. They took me to dinner. I insisted but they wouldn't let me treat for dinner. I think they were just thankful that I flew to go visit them and talk about the business; so just again that personal connection there. So while it wasn't a requirement that they stay with the business post-acquisition I'm always open to it if they're open to it. And I started talking about the plan; having the plan and being able to approach them. In both instances they got excited. One of them and I'll try to talk vague because I don't want to say anything about either one of them that they wouldn't want me to share. But one of them said when I said why are you selling it they said well I'm almost running out of ideas. Like I don't know what the next thing to do is. I don't know where to take this next and how to make it grow. And so for me, it's a choice of whether we stay at the level that we are now and continue happily down that path. Or do I allow my baby to grow by giving it to somebody who's going to take it to that next level? And so to be able to show them okay not only can we take it to next level here's how; yes, you recognize we have the experience before this on how to get this to that next level but here let me lay out the plan in front of you. And all throughout the while of reviewing the business and going to the website I have a checklist and I'll go over some of the points with you later today, here's all the opportunities that we think that we can have. And based off of those opportunities that's how we create the plan. And then we plug that into our for lack of a better word, our company acquisition algorithm to say okay is this worthwhile? And based off of the competitive advantages that we have with this business can we offer a little more? Do we need to offer a little less? Like where do we think that we're going to fit into this overall picture? So I feel like I didn't fully answer your question. The answer is no we don't require the owners to stay on post-acquisition. We are completely open to it. We prefer it. In both instances, they're both quite engaged overall. And just to reiterate the point maybe super-secret number five is if somebody wants to be on your side let them be. And in this instance, both the previous owners want to be on our side. They want to give us the feedback. We 100% remain open to receiving that feedback even if it's counter to what we want to achieve we'll at least receive it. I have a philosophy that you're not entitled to have a point if you can't justify it. And so if they come to me and say hey I think you're doing this incorrectly or I don't think you're doing this right. I tell myself okay, here's an expert that's owned this business for a long time, they feel strongly enough to come to me and say I think you're doing this incorrectly. I feel strongly that I'm doing it this way. But feeling trolling isn't good enough. I need to go pull data, go look at numbers, go say why are we doing it this way. And then I go back to them and say okay here's the reason why we're doing this way and they can poke holes in it or say no you know what that looks good. I wish I would have known that when I had the business. So I think that answers your question, Chuck. Chuck: Yeah I think so. And maybe secret; what number are we on, number six? Mike: I think we're on number six now. Chuck: Okay, so I would say super-secret number six, what you kind of just alluded to and what you didn't is you know when in school like high school or whatever and the teacher is like oh there's no such thing as a dumb question. There 100% is such a thing as a dumb question when you're talking to a seller. I would say super-secret number six is be prepared when you get on a call, be dedicated to the call that you're on, don't be in a car with a lot of background noise. Be at a desk, be in one place, do some research, if there's an interview to watch, watch the interview with the seller, read the package, ask intelligent questions about the business. It's okay to ask something that's already been addressed in the package if you want some additional information but show that you've actually researched the business because constantly when I'm talking to my sellers and we get off a phone call they're like that guy is not serious, don't connect me with him again. They want to know that you're serious and a way to show that you're serious is to have done some research ahead of time and ask intelligent questions about the business. And that's something that you definitely do. Mike: Thanks, Chuck. And I think that goes with having a plan. Like I don't have the time, I know you don't have the time, I don't have the time, I'm sure the sellers don't have the time to just sit there and answer questions that for somebody who clearly isn't prepared for the call it's a horrible signal to the seller that you're not serious about this that even if you do have the cash, even if all other things fall into place you're not going to be an organized person handling their business moving forward. So it's just an awful signal to send upfront. And I think one of the other things that you said; I don't want to say that there's bad questions, there's unprepared questions. Chuck: There are bad questions. I've had them on my calls. Mike: Okay. Chuck: And I know you're; Mike again this gets back to Mike being a super nice guy and doesn't want to; there are dumb questions and I've had many of them on my calls. Mike: I'm still going to stay that there's poorly positioned questions. And one of them might be hey Chuck I feel like this is a really dumb question and so forgive me for asking what's going to seem like a dumb question but it's just weighing on me and I need to ask it. That's a well-positioned dumb question. Another really good example of that is starting a call. I have a big belief and maybe this might be in one of the other super- secrets but we'll call it super-secret number seven, are we on seven now? So super-secret number seven, figure out what they want and give it to them. And again part of that is money but that's the beauty of working with a broker especially Quiet Light, that part's already figured out. That's almost done. They've declared that this is the multiple that they want now it's up to you to figure out does that fit within your company acquisition algorithm. Can I afford this based off of all of these criteria? And again I'll go through some of those in a little bit. Move that aside and now figure out what do they want. Do they want to stay on with the business? Do they want to hand it over to somebody who's going to keep the work within their country or somebody who isn't going to start selling poorly made products to their customer base that they've built up over time? Figure out what they want and give it to them. It's the best negotiation technique. If you walk into a call or a negotiation and you're trying to think how can I squeeze every dime out of this person on the other side of this phone call; I mean good luck to you, you may win or you may not. I have the philosophy of; I took a course from the Wharton School of Business one time and we talked about negotiation and one of the things we talked about was the difference between an average hitter in baseball and a Hall of Fame hitter in baseball is one in nine hits. If you can get one more hit in nine at-bats, that's the difference between average and Hall of Fame. The same thing with negotiation, if you can get one more hit in nine at-bats it's potentially a huge difference in the overall success that you're going to have. So same thing here, and so I approach the call as hey let's figure this out together and I'm listening the entire time trying to figure out what's important to the person on the other side of the call. Also, another; super-secret number eight is going to be disarming the call. It doesn't have to be this contentious conversation where I'm battling you for information. That's not the case. I start out almost every call and you can attest to this Chuck, and by the way, I've purchased a couple. I've probably had maybe less than 10 but several phone calls with people. Some of them after the call I decide this is not the right fit for me. I can't give them what they want so I just walk away and I go on to the next business. Other ones I've made offers for and maybe somebody else was giving something that they wanted and I didn't get that. But the two that I've got I'm very happy with thus far. But when I start the call I say hey I need to ask some questions and some of these questions might come across the wrong way. They may seem offensive or it may seem like I'm trying to prod or I'm trying to poke, all I'm looking for is opportunity. What opportunity exists in your business? And I'm trying to use it to go justify pulling this money out of other places and spending it and handing it over to you. So I'm looking for your help in bridging that gap here. And so when you position it that way and say help me get there it's amazing how they almost start to fall over themselves to tell you all of the potential opportunities in the business beyond what they've already written into the marketing package. And I'll even call that out. I've read the marketing package. I see that you see that this is an opportunity, this is an opportunity, this is an opportunity, based off of some research that I've done I think that this might be an opportunity. Is there a reason why you haven't attacked that market? Is there a reason why you haven't advertised on this channel? Is there a reason why this or this or that? And after you've position that I'm looking for opportunity, I want to make this happen, help me get there, usually they're quite open and willing to volunteer that information. So I'll call that super-secret number eight. Chuck: Yup, number eight. I can see the headline of this interview now; eight super-secrets of Mike Nuñez. We've got to get it to like 9 or 10 maybe. So yeah I think that those are some really good tactics. And I hate to use the word tactic because I don't feel like it's a tactic. I guess it is but like that's just your normal personality and maybe some people don't have it. But I think one of the major takeaways there is don't be super aggressive with a seller. Like the businesses we sell at Quiet Light, they're generally speaking super high quality with owners that care. It's not we generally; like sometimes we do but often it's not people that are just starting a business to flip, to flip, to flip. These are people who started a business because it's something they're passionate about and they're ready to move on for one reason or another and they want to pass on the torch to somebody who cares. And when you come in aggressive and if you try to beat down their business or things like that, that doesn't work. Maybe if you're working on a 100 million dollar deal and you got to like get in there and be super aggressive like that doesn't work with what we're doing at all. Mike: I just have to add to that Chuck because I think it's like if it works you should be worried. If it works it's probably not the right business. Like that's not; feel free to take this out Chuck if I shouldn't or can't talk about this but in the last offer I made I did not get the business. I made an offer but in our call, I recognized that what they were looking for was a quick close and a short close. They wanted to make sure that it closed. They wanted to do it quickly. And that was beyond the dollars and it was very fairly priced already, beyond the dollars that's what was important to them. And so for the caller just to give you an example of how much I personally trust after physically spending millions of dollars with Quiet Light already I made an offer, all cash so that they knew that this was going to close. I offered close at your convenience. And third I offered no due diligence. Now I wouldn't recommend that for everybody and all things. Chuck: I don't recommend that either. Do not offer to close. This is a certain special deal with a person that is a known entity that was trusted. You should always do your due diligence. Don't listen to Mike. Don't rely on us to do due diligence. It is your job to do the due diligence. Mike: 100% that was my decision that I was aware of this company, the numbers were small enough where even if this was a complete disaster it wouldn't be a disaster for me. But it was a complete cash offer, it was a complete quick close and I offer that with the hope that that was the value that they were looking for that was not a cash value that would allow them to choose me because they had; I mean I don't even know how many Chuck. Chuck: There were nine offers on the deal and you were; because of that they wanted to sell that component to you but the other offer was just so much; it was more money, the guy was willing to do a quick close as well so it just beats you out. They wanted to sell it to you. The other guy was just; it was a better offer with the other person. Mike: Understood. And so I got close right with the untangible non-monetary aspects of the offer.; it got me super close, right? I almost got that extra hit and that nine tenth bat. So just a good example of listening to what they want, trying to give it to them, and it's going to save you dollars in the long run. And the fact that they were considering me sounds like even though my offer was lower; yet again that seems to be the MO here overall. And by the way, I made a full price offer so it wasn't even like I made an under offer. I made a full price offer but somebody beat the full price offer and I'm still under consideration. Chuck: And just to let maybe another super-secret number nine; this isn't Mike's this is mine so I think that's like two of the nine. Listen to the broker. If I'm telling you something there's a reason I'm telling you it. Like when I say this is going to sell for at or above asking, it's probably going to sell for at or above asking. I'm not just trying to increase the price, right? I do represent the seller and I'm trying to do my best to get as much value for the seller but I'm not going to do that by lying. I'm going, to be honest. There's things I can't say to you. If you say well what's the other asking price is or what's the other offers, I can't tell you that but I will try to lead you in the direction of making an offer that's going to be accepted. Don't think that we're just; if I tell you there's multiple offers, there are multiple offers. I'm not just B-S-ing you. And we get it all the time where I tell people there's multiple offers put your best highest final offer in and then yeah okay asking price and I'm like put your best offer like I'm just telling you and then it goes for above asking and then the person is mad oh why didn't you tell me? I would've put a higher offer. And it's like I did tell you; I told you to put your best offer in. Like I don't want you to stretch, I don't want you to put an offer that makes you uncomfortable but you need to put your best offer in if you want to win this business. Mike: So I just want to say to that people have been kind of beat down and trained to not be trusting especially to brokerages. And at the risk of sounding like a Quiet Light commercial, it's just not the case with Quiet Light. And is it okay with you if I tell the story of how I found Quiet Light and why I just trust you guys implicitly? Chuck: I'm not sure of the story but please do tell it. Mike: I've had the affiliate manager and the performance company; the affiliate managed business overall since 2002. I started it with my brother and we built up the business. And in 2015 my brother passed away. He passed away fairly unexpectedly. And I was working at Google at the time and I had a decision to make; do I leave Google and come back to Affiliate Manager or do I sell the company? And so through some mutual contacts, I was referred over to Mark and Joe. This was before Chuck was there so I totally would've went to Chuck. But I went to Mark and Joe and just talked about the business and they asked me just great questions and they asked me for the P&L and they asked me what does the growth rate look like over the last few years. And we had been growing at like a 50%; no I'm sorry 100% rate year over year. We had doubled every year for the previous three years from '13, '14, and ‘15. And this is in January 2016 that I'm talking to Mark and Joe. And they even though this would have been a multimillion-dollar deal to sell that company; and I'm sure they do many, many multimillion-dollar deals which makes it easier to; I don't want to say turn it away but to give this advice. Chuck: So I will stop you there before I was with Quiet Light which was I've been about three years they weren't doing a lot of multimillion-dollar deals. So at that time a million, two, or three million dollars was a lot. It's just been in the last few years that we've really got up to where we're selling some of these really large businesses. Mike: So that makes it even more impressive, right? And I just remember this phone call with Mark and Joe so clearly where they said Mike when you sell this we'd love to be the brokerage for you. This is the wrong decision to sell right now. If you keep growing at this rate you will get what you want. Because of that conversation; I talked to other brokers who are ready to list my business or promising me the world and because of that especially now knowing that it would have been a very high multimillion-dollar deal for them and that they weren't doing as many at that time, for them to turn away that commission just gave me a level of trust with them that this is the company that I'm going to do business with. I am not comparing myself to Warren Buffett, Chuck. Not in the least. But one thing that he does that I love is he makes things easy and he; I don't want to say he takes shortcuts but he has built-in shortcuts. He can go from looking at a potential deal to executing a deal very quickly. And I don't know how he does it but my interpretation of how he does it is he identifies businesses and companies that he feels confident and he trusts. And so to me the implicit trust that I get from working with Quiet Light is a shortcut. To me, it gets me from here to this point. My comfort level right off the bat knowing that Quiet Light is not going to take a company that's shady or take a company that doesn't have solid P&L numbers or things of that effect, it's just such a comfort level. And if my comfort level was at a 90 pre these two deals because of what Mark and Joe did when they told me go continue to grow your business. It's at 100 now that I've actually purchased two companies and both of them are better than what I had expected. Now granted I'll take some credit for that that I've done the due diligence on it; I hired Centurica actually for both due diligences. We did the due diligence and we got into the company. Both of them feel; were over a year in on the first one, we're almost a year on the second one and both are solid. Both are growing. We just ran the numbers and after a little bit of a rocky start with the suit one because of some of the changes that we were making and that's what happens but we are now; November is our biggest month and we were up 30%. If you shift to include cyber Monday because everybody is obviously one of our biggest days. Chuck: How long have you owned that company? Mike: Since April of this year. So to go from there we beat our biggest day previously in the company not once, not twice, but three times by over 25%. So to beat your previous biggest day which was Black Friday; I'm sorry Cyber Monday last year, we beat it Black Friday this year, we beat it the Sunday after Black Friday this year, and we beat it again on Cyber Monday this year. So we literally doubled Black Friday. So it's been amazing. And again if my comfort level was a 90, it's 100 because of that. Like I'm not walking into a business that's a money pit or that has craters I didn't expect or potholes that I didn't expect. So I think that's just super important overall. Chuck: Awesome. So we're running a little long on this call, we've got a ton to talk about. So would you be interested in having this become a two-part segment where we'll end it here and then we'll keep going but we'll put that as a part two, to be continued? Mike: Yeah. But in case people are watching this on video just know that we cut it into two parts. I didn't wear the same suit on two different days. Chuck: We'll make a quick wardrobe change. Mike: Okay, I'll go change my jacket. Chuck: No. Mike: But that's fine. Yes, I'm happy to do that. Chuck: Alright. So, everybody, Mike Nuñez thank you for the interview today. And for everybody watching stay tuned. Next, we will discuss some of the lessons you've learned and what you're looking for when you purchase a business. So, for now, bye everybody and thank you, Mike, for joining us. Mike: Thanks for having me. Links and Resources: Affiliate Manager

How important is content marketing strategy to your e-commerce business? Crafting valuable content helps build brand trust with both existing and potential customers, allowing you to successfully grow your brand. Today we're talking all about content and smart ways to ramp up your strategy. Jeff Coyle is co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of MarketMuse. Coming from twenty years in the SEO and content strategy arena, Jeff's products use AI to accelerate content planning, creation, and optimization. With their spokes-of-a-wheel keyword approach, MarketMuse's content marketing strategy connects ideas, allowing clients to demonstrate product expertise. Episode Highlights: How content relates to growth and where to start assessing the need for your business. Strategies that help tell the story that you are trying to tell. How to gauge the success rate. Where the news dynamic fits into your content campaign. The breadth and depth of your content. Figuring out where the gaps are. When to hire an expert. How the Marketmuse suite of services help the writer. Using smart content to illustrate expertise. Why search volume is not the only strategy for content valuation. Some quick win strategies – aka one-page plans. Packages MM offers for different sized audiences. Tools and hacks Jeff recommends. Transcription: Mark: So there was a time early on in Quiet Light Brokerage when I was doing all of the Content Marketing for the firm and I was writing on average eight blog posts or articles per week averaging about 18,200 words in length. And I underestimated when I started on this kind of venture of can I do these eight to 10 per month; I underestimated how much work it was going to be and it was a lot of work because it's not just writing down your thoughts it's writing for the web and writing for SEO and understanding what do you write about next. It's amazing how quick the writer's block comes in. I know that you had a conversation with Jeff Coyle a mutual friend of ours from Rhodium and one of the founders of MarketMuse which is an awesome company; a great tool from an SEO and content marketing standpoint. You guys talked about everything content which is relevant to buyers, anyone looking to acquire a web-based business and grow it. I know it's been a huge part of our marketing plan. What are some of the things that you and Jeff talked about in this conversation? Chuck: It's quite great. I had a great conversation with Jeff and we're talking about if you've got a dollar spend where to spend it. Most people they're doing basic keyword research, they're looking for what's the keyword that's getting the most searches versus the keyword difficulty. And he takes it like way beyond that and they're looking at not just the specific keywords but what keywords are actually tied to other keywords that show that you're an expert in the topic. If I'm talking about like a specific thing but I fail to mention other words Google then thinks that I'm not an expert because anybody who's an expert would be using these other words or when you're just looking at keyword tools to look at the ones they're getting the most traffic you often miss the additional keywords that are in there. Mark: Right. And I know full disclosure I use MarketMuse with Quiet Light Brokerage and actually with my other company as well. I use their service and the general sales pitch is pretty simple. It's this idea of setting up pillar pages and having this kind of spokes on a wheel branch now so the example that they use I think in some of the marketing materials is if you're going to have a website on craft beer you should have a blog post on craft beer but you should also have an entire section on hops and an entire section on barley and malts and then even from there if you want to be all about hops and afford it to do a page on hops you should also have some satellite pages on imperial hops or these other types of varieties of hops and being able to have this kind of wheel with different spokes coming out. And you know what a bunch of SEO tools use this. Like I've been using Sight Bulb recently; a really cool software that diagrams out your site and the sort of hub sort of format. What MarketMuse does is they take a blog post and had topics so you say I want to focus on craft beer and they say okay if you want to really be known as an expert, make sure that you're talking about hops at least 10 or 15 times in this blog post. And make sure that you're also talking about different types of barley. And then you can use that and say well okay I'll talk about this in this blog post but what do I write on other blog post? It's made for me and I don't do a lot of the writing anymore but it makes the content creation process super easy; like the ideation part, I mean that's the hard part about all of this. How do you come up with new ideas on what you should write about? But I don't want people to think this is just a sales pitch for MarketMuse. It's a great piece of software, obviously, I believe in it from that standpoint. But I think from a buyer standpoint also from a seller standpoint having a solid content strategy is really really key. If you were to spend money; Chuck you've had a bunch of businesses in the past and I know you've used content, if you're going to spend your money somewhere for long term marketing dollar I'm kind of leading you to the answer here, where would you spend it? Would it be in the content marketing world or would it be PPC or what are the advantages in your opinion of this content marketing versus other types of marketing? Chuck: Yeah I mean it really depends I think on the type of business you have. Obviously, if you have a content-related business then you want to hop out as much quality content as you can. If you've got an e-commerce business there's different funnels and then buckets may be that you need to put your money in but you definitely need to be investing in content. Even on Amazon when you're thinking about like selling something on Amazon you go to some people's pages and the content is just horrible and it's so important. One of the things we didn't talk about but like when you're looking at Amazon you'll look at the questions people are asking and then answer those questions. So content is definitely important. We talked just a lot about what you should be writing about next. When you're looking at competitors sometimes you can actually see the direction they're going and then beat them and write a bunch of content. Actually, get in front of them because you look at their keyword list and you know the direction they're headed and you can actually get in front of them. Mark: Yeah for my money I think the two areas that are the most important for a marketing strategy at least long term return will be content marketing and CRO, conversion rate optimization. Those two things alone have such staying power where you invest now and you're going to benefit for years to come as opposed to PPC which is great because you can throttle PPCC; that's the reason people love it. You can throttle up and down. You can really find some gems and it's very immediate. But long term success I think is predicated on this content strategy frank that's something we've even bought a little bit at Quiet Light. I just got to give you a quick shot out Chuck because you are wearing a Quiet Light shirt. So for all those people that are watching on YouTube and I know it's not a ton of you that are watching on YouTube but those that are you can see that Chuck actually has a really cool shirt. I don't even have that shirt. Did you give me one? Chuck: I think I kind of bought Joe one but I didn't get you one so maybe I'll have to get you one as well. Mark: Okay, I think Brad gave me one and it was like enormous. I was swimming on the thing. Chuck: I think that's the one I have with Joe when I bought his it was too big for him so I have to get your size. Mark: Make sure you size it down and hey if we get a few extras of these maybe we can set up a contest for people that actually want a Quiet Light; I don't care what you do with it but it's kind of fun to give that away as a prize. Let's get into the episode. Content marketing is where I cut my teeth early in the Internet world. I love this topic. I think Jeff is one of the smartest people in the industry when it comes to content marketing [inaudible 00:07:02.0] good market views and this is definitely one to learn from. Chuck: Yeah absolutely and two things before we dive right into it; one they're giving a special discount. Again we're not trying to promote it. It's just a good product if you want it great but in the show notes, there's going to be a discount code to get a nice percentage off. And stay tuned to till the end of the video because I also asked Jeff for some additional tools that he likes to use. I always think it's fun to ask entrepreneurs what are some various tools that are unrelated to our discussion from what you're using so. Chuck: All right hi everybody Chuck Mullins here from Quiet Light Brokerage and today on the call we have Jeff Coyle the co-founder of MarketMuse and chief is it, product officer? Jeff: Yeah, Chief Product Officer, I manage the product data science and engineering teams as well as the marketing team at Marketing News. Chuck: Awesome. So I've known Jeff for a couple of years, we run in the same circles. I've been on the Internet world for quite a while. Jeff do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself? Jeff: Sure. I am as you mentioned the co-founder and chief product officer for MarketMuse. Prior to this, I've been in this space as Chuck mentioned for quite a long time; about 20 years as scary as that might sound in the search engine optimization content strategy game. I have generated like 50 million leads and not as an exaggeration for B2B technology primarily companies in the early part of my career. I worked as an early employee at a company called Knowledge Storm which sold to Tech Target which is also a great B2B publisher and an intent data and ABM platform for enterprise and mid-market B2B companies. I worked for them through their in-house team and in-house capabilities while I was there really focused on driving engaged users through content and content strategy. When I left Tech Target having already spoken with my co-founder about ways that we could grow MarketMuse I came on as a bit of a late co-founder and we've since grown the company to almost 50 people; really, really an amazing story about growth, building a new category about content strategy, what should you write next, what should you update or optimize next that's going to have the biggest impact on your business and everything that goes along with that from how do I assess my own authority, how do I understand where my gaps are, how do I know where my strengths are. And that's been the mission of our business is really to tell the story of I could spend a dollar on content; creating, optimizing, blah, blah, blah, tomorrow what should it be? And that's what MarketMuse is for; to tell that story. Chuck: Alright so kind of you alluded to it but today we'll get you on a call to talk about SEO and maybe more so how content is applicable to SEO. So maybe starting at the base when somebody either acquires a new site or maybe is looking at a site trying to think of how do I grow this site like where's my opportunity, what kind of analysis do you think somebody should start off with? Jeff: Well I think that traditionally the way that people have assessed sites for their strengths sometimes is only by looking at their current and existing rankings or their historical rankings. So it's a bit of you know kind of a tail wagging the dog assessment of where you're at, where you have been, but that as a starting point does provide some value as to where you are. It just doesn't tell typically the entire story about what it means to be about something. So when I'm looking at assessing a site for the merits of its; the collection of its content or its inventory of content, when I'm looking at is to say yes certainly I want to see performance. I want to look at also things that I might get out of my analytics package engagement. I have to understand the goals of the company the key performance indicators of the business. Am I driving those things? Can I peddle out of them? But divorcing those concepts for this point in discussion about conversion rate optimization and such from a search engine optimization or authority perspective I want to see where I've written great content so how much content have I created on core topics that I care about. When I do cover those topics how in-depth do I get and how successful does that; what kind of success does that yield when I write about a concept I care about when I get deep when I write high-quality content on concepts that I care about. Those two things really tell the story of your existing momentum on a concept. And so that when I'm assessing a site that's one thing I want to want to figure out is where do I have momentum? What concepts can I write about and I expect to be successful. And that's Stage 1. Chuck: Before we move on from that one how do we gauge that success rate; what do we think is successful, what are the indicators that say hey I'm already doing well here or I'm not doing well here? Jeff: Absolutely and that's the hardest part. And to run an effective content marketing team and a content production team for any company you've got to start at what are the key performance indicators? If I'm an e-commerce site the key metrics that I have is my average order size, it's my conversion rate close to a closed cart, it's my cart abandons, it's my total revenue. If I'm an affiliate site it might be an RPM metric and I have to be agnostic of and when I have agnostic a reference of affiliate and then I want specific combinations of affiliates because sometimes you can actually fake your books accidentally if you've got great affiliates on one page and not great affiliates on another. So it's really about I think engagement with affiliate opportunities in addition to revenue. You get a look at both of those things. If you are a publisher it's going to be RPM but also it's engagement with those pages. Because again how your ad server validates is do you have paid ads? So if you have a bunch of house ads and those have a different rate you want to always account for that because you might have great content this shooting off impressions engaged users clicks and such. So I always like to look at my current value per visit and then by the way from a B2B tech or something PI attorney; all these places are where MarketMuse does business so I like to kind of list a full fledge. I'm looking at my conversion to lead. I'm also looking at as far down the funnel as I can track and attribute. Every deal no matter what every situation you're looking at you always want to get it back to current value per visit and aspirational value per visit from a channel. In this case, let's say organic. So if I'm in a scenario I want to always be able to back that up. That's the only way I can truly define quantified value. And for MarketMuse obviously, that's the only way we can truly walk in the door and be confident in that ROI analysis. And that's why we've had to do this hundreds of times. When we talk to somebody it's to say how much do you really value each one of these visits? And if you can't answer that question it's okay, let's back into it, let's figure it out. How much is that truly about? Because then if you grow your traffic 20% you can say okay well that's worth this much to me. How much am I willing to invest in that? And that's how I define. So that's a long way of answering a short question that was actually really duped question. But the answer then is my quantified value metric. How much did I publish? How much did I update? How much do those act motions cost or those actions cost? And what was the efficiency rate on the content achieving some sort of baseline goal? I like to use recurring traffic from organic search as my goal. So I might get a boost from other channels and then it dies off. So I want recurring traffic at or above a particular baseline. So if I wrote 100 articles and 10 of them achieved my baseline of ongoing recurring traffic when I have 10 percent efficiency rate in that zone. If I updated 100 articles and 40 of them grew in traffic at or above a particular level. Then I've got a 40% efficiency rate on optimization. So when I talk about effectiveness of content I want to see how much should I publish, how much should I update and how often did that achieve my goals? I see ranges by the way just it scares the crap out of me sometimes, 1 to 2% of efficiency. Like I write 100 articles and only 2 get rankings. Quite often 40 and 45% at best practice that it's so wide. So you need to take stock today whomever you are and say how often did I write, how often did that yield recurring traffic; that's my efficiency rate. Am I in that 10 percent zone? I got some work to do. Am I above 20, 30, 40? I'm kicking butt. Now how do I take advantage of that? What do I do? No matter where you are there's always steps you can take to really maximize your earn. But it's a great question because so many people talk about ROI and they can't explain how they calculated. Chuck: Right. And it sounds like what you're saying is maybe like diving into your analytics but not looking at like how much traffic this page is doing but what is the segmented traffic; how much is coming from Google or Bing or whatever you're targeting. Maybe you're targeting link acquisition with an article then you got to figure out what's the value of a link that's coming in, how many did I get on this piece of content, and then maybe kind of summing up the value of all the different components. Like knowing what your KPIs are for the specific content. Jeff: Absolutely. And so the ways that I do that so it's manageable; there are ways where you can do that so it's manageable because [inaudible 00:16:38.2] I have thousands of pages or I published hundreds of pages how could I possibly do that? It's do it for the site level. Do it by site section; it's the way Google thinks about your site anyway. Do it by site section and then take your marquee pages and do a more thorough analysis of them. And marquee could mean your best pages that you feel are the best but they punch below their weight class, stuff that does really well, stuff that you invested a lot of money in. So build your plat; this is the stuff I'm going to do with deep dive but I'm also going to get my section level and sight levels metrics. An example might be that when Chuck writes an article he's on a 20% conversion rate to my effectiveness metric. But when Ron I don't know who Ron is but well just say Ron, when Ron writes an article he's 5%. So you're to get; you could do person level, you could do section level. You really want to get that slice and dice to know what's the thing that is causing success to happen or is it luck. A lot of sites a lot of B2B companies they rely on all of their authority for 5, 10 pages and they've got hundreds. Not only is it completely scary and unhealthy from a competitive space situation but if you're a Quiet Light listener it's an opportunity. I mean it's an opportunity to see a site that has a risk of ruin. It's an opportunity to see a site that has huge opportunity if they just publish the right content. So all of those things are what we're typically looking at. It's when I publish about Chevrolets it does real well when I publish about smart cars it doesn't. So when I get that site I'm shooting off about Ford and about gosh as my adjacent so I'm talking about; so it's really getting into when I get in how can I write about tangential or semantically related concepts, really expand my inventory in ways I know we'll have more success, and if I do want to cover other things. I think a reasonable expectation about investment need because I can't just go right kitty cats and crush it. But I know that if I cover what hubcaps should be on the PT Cruiser I can. And so those are the types of conceptual analysis, editorial content strategies I have been doing with years. Now you have data to support it. And that's where I think that the next phase of great Search Engine Optimization outcomes comes from this type of content strategy analysis for sure. Chuck: And one of the things I was reading the other day was just and I think everybody already knows this but they were talking about news websites and why don't news websites rank for everything. Like a news website gets all the links because everybody's linking to articles but yet they don't have the ability to rank for all topics, right? Certain news agencies actually get a lot more traffic for specific topics because that is maybe their topical relevance of their business. Jeff: Yeah. Oh, I mean news is so unique. The news algorithm has so many components and so from a Google news perspective and Google top stories there's components of real-time boosting. There's the concept of the fact that news articles appear in organic search. And they're coming from different channels of information. So they cross the chasm from just being news to being appropriate in search results. So then there's the dynamic of some of those items stay forever. Some of them are temporal and they're going to bounce out when that thing becomes less of a temporal story. We actually have a solution for that. MarketMuse allows you to analyze both serps and overlay analysis and it's called newsroom but that's neither here nor there. But the point of the message is what if you write news articles about this topic you care about but there's four to five aggressive publishers also publishing in that that have authority for news and you're just picking up the scraps. You can see that with solutions that are out there now. You're going to just see what those things are and then tracking that back to assessing performance. If I'm looking at my content items and I write 80 articles about some topic I get no news referrals and I get trickles in of organic and I'm writing it for the purposes of news, is that great? Let's say they get other KPIs, let's say they do gather links and they become powerful. But I'm not winning news, I'm not getting the organic search value that I think I should, how do I use that? How do I use the power that those pages are acquiring to my benefit? And most of the time when I see problematic content strategy; document the content strategy at a company they're not looking at their existing power pages. What content are they publishing that is gaining some value and how do we use that? Because I've got something that's a link magnet that every SEO in the world will go we need to do something with that but they don't necessarily know what that is. And a lot of times you see these link magnets and they're out there. They got a little bit of traffic upfront. They're not valuable enough to get recurrent traffic or it's not; it was a temporal staged story so they don't know what to do. And so weaving that article; weaving that item into some real good content strategy, that's the win. That's building my thought leadership, building my clusters of content, and hey this powerful battery. Plug the battery in here, plug the battery in here, and weave it in with internal link, weave it in with appropriate content, upgrade opportunities for conversions, there's so many things you can do to repurpose but when you get a winner use the winner. And we see that older people are scared to touch them because they're like it might break up. So these are the main dynamics that we run into with kind of the Assessment Authority and news as a special case. But it's so misunderstood what to do when you get a news winner. Because if you can predict that every time you publish a news story on Linux you're in the top three of Google top stories. Like, open that wallet every darn day. And I have clients that are in that scenario and we're like you must write about this every day and they cringe at first and I'm like here's the value that this produces; it's not just traffic. It's all the good stuff that comes as a result of that. It's also a long answer to a short question but I think that's usually a theme with me. Chuck: Alright, so number two you're about to say before I ask you a question? Jeff: Oh gosh I don't even remember what it was now. No, I'm just kidding. So it's kind of breadth and depth and then is the things that you see as being really high quality that you've written. These pillar pieces, the centers of the universe, the things that have acquired the KPI. How are those KPIs; they've acquired some metric that gives you that sense. So we've talked about how your existing momentum, well what are these cornerstone pieces, what are the center of the cluster pieces that exist and how are you using them today? Are you weaving them in? Are you using them to write then support pieces, etcetera? And how do you combine that with analysis of your target readership or user or buyer intent? So what's their purchase cycle; do you have coverage in the information phase, do you have coverage in the middle of funnel, do you have coverage late in the funnel, do you have post-purchase troubleshooting and adherence in ownership? So when you have a beacon of power really that's the time your mirror needs to be the most clear. I always say this. Like, stop tilting the mirror your way because you think you have success. The garbage in the game right now as I call it is people looking at search results and saying I need to write articles just like that search result item regardless of whether you want to argue differentiation it doesn't work. It only works if you have existing power to start to do things like that. What you have to do is just say with my site that I'm assessing, do I have coverage at all phases of the cycle that people would care about who are in this motion; I mean research, intent, decision, conversion, adherence, troubleshooting, whatever the metrics of the buy spying journey would be. And that comes to the why I say this way because the pragmatic approach is to say does this site truly represent my business as an authority and as an expert? What about this collection of pages or this content inventory tells a story that I actually am an expert? And so when you're looking at coverage, you're looking at momentum and what's been validated that I am an authority. But then it's also going to be like aspirationally if I truly were an expert what would I have covered? I can do that by doing competitive analysis or I can do that by doing semantic analysis and manual research. And so when you cross-reference; the punch line here is cross-reference the aspirational model against what you have and that's your gap analysis. So think about the outcomes there. I have gaps in this part of the bio journey. I have gaps, I have blind spots I don't ever cover these topics. I have blind spots here blah, blah, blah. I also have ranking gaps where I have striking distance keywords like I'm on page two that's that the SEO trick, right? Go tell them to update the pages where you're on page two and they'll go up a little and hey you did your job. So but if you weave that into this type of semantic analysis; this gap analysis, your content strategy becomes 2, 3, 10x more impactful overnight. And so compare that to keyword gap analysis, think about the outcomes. You get a word out of it. You get a word where you're ranking 12th and you think you should rank 5th. Well, now you know why. And then you know what you need to do. And that's the secret here. It's get yourself out of just keywords; get yourself into the content that's needed to plug the holes. Chuck: So we don't know what we don't know so how do we figure out what the gaps are? Are there tools you can recommend? How do we figure this out? Jeff: Yeah. Well I think that they're certainly on it and they're obviously not just the ones I present with MarketMuse but there are ways if you want to see. You want to be able to look at using your analytics, using any off the shelf Search Engine Optimization suite whether you are a higher-end person in a more enterprise or kind of using an [inaudible 00:27:29.2]. Looking at those pages; again all of your pages trying to organize them or you're looking at you don't want to buy those things, you've got analytics and you look at something that can crawl and analyze the structure of your site like a screening frog or a [inaudible 00:27:45.5] or a solution like that. Get a true understanding about your site and what it's about. What are the things where every time you publish it it's a winner or more of the time versus what's the stuff where you've been tilting at; aspirational goals. So looking at that or even looking at just traffic and revenue versions by section or by page type or by publish state because last year this was under this person's management this year this is under this person's management. Just a combination of this basic information from analytics and page-level data from a [inaudible 00:28:23.7] can get you at least started. And just to start thinking critically about your content inventory. A solution like the MarketMuse obviously is going to give you the sniper rifle to say go write this page, go fill this gap. But even if you if you're just looking to get kind of a basic understanding it can be easily put together to say gosh Chuck I don't know if we should publish any more articles about backgammon we're a chess site, it just hasn't extended. But when I write about you know particular defenses, we crush. Why don't we just lean into that? So you can make those types of decisions but then how do you get where we want to be a backgammon site. What are the ways that we can bridge the gap between chess and backgammon? How can we become more of an authority on strategic board games in general? So those are the types of questions that are out of this type of analysis, if you're real with yourself you stop publishing stuff that's not going to succeed. Try to figure out why it's not succeeding. That's where a person like a business like ours operates. But there's many out of an agency that knows the answer to these questions that can do that introspection that can do that analysis. But if you're analyzing your site I think it's truly to step back and say am I putting myself out there as an expert? Am I really showing it or was I chasing keywords? And it's always that oh man I haven't even thought about; I've just been looking up keywords, building lists, writing articles, keywords, lists, articles, keywords, lists, articles especially in the affiliate side not knocking always [inaudible 00:29:58.8] so much. It clearly comes out of a keyword list. And then I wrote the article some of them get linked together. Some of them don't. It's not leaving the web of somebody who actually knows their stuff. A great example of this; I've got uprise for every product in the world prices or reviews combination; bottom of funnel. That encompasses my contact strategy against this topic. It could have helped with that and then people wonder why they get hit when there's a quality change in the algorithm. It's because they're looking for that thing. They're looking for that stuff. You haven't told the story about buying that thing. Why are you the expert on pricing it? It doesn't make sense. And so that's the thing that; think about; get out of these search engine optimization shoes get into an editorial shoe. Hire an expert to say hey if you were writing an inventory of content about sound bafflers what would you cover; what are the things you need to know? And then cross-reference that against your stuff. Obviously, there's ways of doing both of those things taking technology like what we do. Chuck: So let's talk about that I know we don't want to like hardcore pitch your product but you have a great product that I think is a lot of value to a lot of people. So let's talk about like how your product can help and maybe even hit it as like these are the things that my product can do and some of the stuff people can do without the product so they could do it on their own but you're offering a service that makes it a lot easier. So let's talk about that. Jeff: So if I'm going to assess the value of a site; for example, if I want to see where there's areas of opportunity to create content or update content and be more successful. If I can get that hit list immediately and go execute on those plans; really move the needle quickly, that's a direct value of what one of the components of MarketMuse Suite. So MarketMuse Suite is a collection of; a combination of an automated content inventory and content auditing solution. We'll also take it to the next level and say after you build; after you say I want to create this page or update this page we'll build a comprehensive content brief for your writer. So it acts as a blueprint or an outline or a brief if you're familiar with what a brief looks like. And it tells a story so that the writer can be creative. So that the writer can research imagery; so the writer can research their sources and doesn't have to worry about is this thing going to have success after I hit publish. So many writers the anxiety they have; this is a huge pain point in the writing space is am I doing my keyword research correctly. Ask them. I mean that's the part I don't know. That's the part I really don't care about. I'm speaking from their standpoint. So take that mystery out of it. Take the SEO mystery out of it. Here's the outline we need you to follow. Be super creative. So we answer that question with that side of MarketMuse. We also have some point applications for doing competitive analysis so I can look at any search engine result page and understand who's got great content; high quality, who's got weak content, what are the gaps. And if I were going to put out true best in Class content on this specific intent, this specific topic what would it look like getting into the gritty details. Chuck: So what are some of those details? Jeff: Yeah. So what are the concepts that need to be included, what are the variants to consider, what are the questions to ask, what are the questions to answer, what are the internal linking; things you should do to internally link to other pages to tell the story that this isn't an orphan page on left field that actually weaves into your existing inventory and then grading your existing coverage and understanding how to interweave and to weave those things together. I have this great page; the one that you talked about, the news one, I want to make sure that it's linked. So all of those things we have point solutions so you can do a one-page analysis and get recommendations to improve it. You can get that one-page analysis and recommendations to make it equal to or better than your competitors every time and go head to head or against the whole field; questions and answers analysis, internal and external linking recommendations, and then we have for premium; one of our premium offerings is the newsroom solution specifically for Google News optimization. So basically the story is what should I write next, can you give me details as to how I would execute that so that you're getting me as close as you can to publishing? And then for all of my adjunct workflows; this specific analysis, this one-page analysis, we have applications to solve those specific goals to say okay why is Quiet Light Brokerage beating me for this topic? Is it because of quality; MarketMuse will tell you. Is it because of links and they have a worst page? Darn, they're more authoritative than me; what do I need to do? I need to go write a package of content. Tell me more of the story that I'm the expert because I don't have that off-page authority. So no matter where you sit it's giving you the advice as to what those next steps should be. And that's kind of the spirit of what we do. Chuck: So one of the examples I've heard you say before is like you're writing about a specific topic blue fuzzy widgets, everybody who writes about blue fuzzy widgets also includes pink monkeys and if you're not writing about pink monkeys then you clearly don't know about blue fuzzy widgets. You're not an expert. So maybe can you talk about that a little bit? Jeff: Sure. So our core technology is built on it. It's a topic modeling technology and it tells the story of what it means to be an expert on a concept. So it tells me by analyzing in some cases hundreds of thousands or millions of content items that people who know a lot about blue fuzzy widgets also know a lot about pink monkeys and so if you write about blue fuzzy widgets and you don't include pink monkeys you're not telling the story that you're an expert. So often in the market people have just looked at like the top 10 results to do this assessment. For so many reasons that I could get into there's a great article online called TFIDF is not the answer to your content and SEO problems and it goes into detail of each one of these logic challenges that exist. It's great for information retrieval. It's been around for 30 something years. Obviously, it's still being used. The challenge though is don't base your business content strategy and thousands of dollars of investment on that. And so what we were able to do is to say that but we're also then because we're analyzing so much data we're able to say that well guess what the top competitors aren't talking about orange donkeys and it's very relevant. That's a way for you to differentiate yourself. So you're covering the blue fuzzy widgets, your covering the pink monkeys but then you're going to differentiate yourself by also illustrating that you know all about those orange donkeys and that's what makes you special. And how does that drive back to true expertise? In this, we see constantly being successful with the best content strategies. They're writing about the table stakes content but they're also illustrating that they really know this stuff. And I always use more detailed examples but a cool one I always use for content marketing is a lot of people that write about content strategy don't talk about buyer personas. They don't talk about target audience. They don't talk about the roles on a content strategy team. Do you know why? Because they're chasing keywords. And if you can look at a search engine results page and go ooh, they're chasing keywords, there's my opportunity. Even if they're 9,000-word articles by HubSpot if you can find gaps in their game you can really take advantage of that and you can punch above your weight. And if you can pop a page that doesn't have as much traditional off-page authority link profile to build that beautiful cluster you can start ranking with undersized off-page pages and sections. And that's niche hunting. That's what the niche hunters talk about. That's what the UN fencers of the world; that's what they're really focusing on. How can I punch above my weight with undervalued off page sites? That's the way you get there; great content illustrates that you're an expert every time. Chuck: So we're thinking; traditional people when they're thinking about articles they're doing keyword research they're finding those low difficulty versus high search volume relative and then they're just going after that but what they're missing is just because people aren't searching for a specific word doesn't mean that it's not important. Jeff: You shouldn't have it in there. Chuck: Right. Jeff: Oh yeah. Chuck: Or specific words within content that you need to have to show you're in authority even though people; the average Joe may not be searching for that. Jeff: Exactly right. And that is the funniest thing about to watch the evolution in this market. When we first launched four years ago everyone when they would see a list of topics; this is the most interesting thing I'll say today, four years ago they used to look at that list and go why isn't it sorted by search point? And I said because that's irrelevant to what we're trying to do here. We're trying to tell you what it means to write that golden article to be an expert. Why does it matter what search volume is because you're so ingrained to use volume and PPC competition which that's another story for another day; crazy. Why don't do it? By the way, I'm not correlative to organic competition. I can get into that in a second but they're so ingrained; heavily so ingrained to use search volume as their North Star. They want everything to have search volume next to it so they can sort by it. So if we sort by that and then you discredit the stuff on the bottom, that's bananas. You're thinking about this from a content strategy perspective or from an expertise perspective. And that's what we see time and time again. Fun fact and I think you've heard me speak about this; it's totally exploitable. If you see competitors who clearly take topic lists and sorted by search volume you can; we usually call it chopping down a tree, you can chop down the tree. Every time it works because they have this strategy gap. You can predict what they're going to do. You can also chop down the tree in areas where they have blind spots. They will never fill them because they're using search point as a North Star. And so another way to say it is stop using that four square; that volume competition, you've all seen it. Alright, let's try to find those low competition high volume words. Sure those are great. Lean into those but that's not the whole picture of how you should write your content. Because the last thing I'll say about this is if you have no content at one stage of the purchase cycle and you think that you're not at risk with having content at another stage you've got another thing coming. It's going to catch up to you. Someone is going to fill that. Somebody is going to fill those intent gaps and crush you. It's just common. And we see it with publishers that have been resting on the laurels of their powerful content. They're just getting their tail handed to them by real content strategies every day. Chuck: So what are some quick wins you think people can have? Like okay, I have a let's say a site about; I don't know, let's just say a general content site, you pick the topic. What are some real quick wins I can get? Jeff: I like to call them one-page plans. So I'm going to find a page of interest. So something that's special about my site and maybe it's a small collection of pages. This is my page that's for some reason it's special. It's really long form, it's beautiful, it converts very well. Chuck: Are we defining special meaning like it's already getting traffic or I just think it's pretty? Jeff: I like it and it gets me some KPI that I think is legitimate and is giving me value. So it could be traffic already. It could be rankings that I am already getting; it ranks for lots of words. So that's a signal of comprehensiveness. A quick win could be to look at what that page is ranking for and pick out the words; this is using SEM Rush; using that to pick out the words in that list that the page doesn't actually satisfy the user intent for rewrite those pages; quickest win ever. So that one-page plan I rank this; I'll use a great example. Content Marketing Institute; I love that site, they have a wonderful page on LinkedIn profiles. It dominates LinkedIn profile marketing. They also rank for marketing profiles, not very good. And the site; the page just covers LinkedIn profiles. It doesn't cover generally marketing profiles. So they could beam their other zoom higher and now cover marketing profiles in general and write about other marketing profile presences as a cluster. All boats are going to rise. So you do that exercise, a quick win every time. You can find it. We call them content mismatches or unaddressed intent plants; always a win. You can always find one on your site because you've probably got pages that rank for hundreds of things. No one page can answer a hundred things beautifully. So when you go write that page people are like won't that cannibalize? No. I mean [inaudible 00:43:23.2]. Do I have to explain myself no? Chuck: So the key there is again you've got that one page; it's linking for a lot of words, you've got tons of words, you'll pick out the few that it's not ranking well for and then you'll link through that keyword to a new article that is specifically about that content? Jeff: Or expand it if it's a fit. If it's not a fit writing new but the key is it's not just that it's not ranking. I mean if it's not ranking for that's important but it could be ranking reasonably but not satisfying like user searches for that on Google and then they land on that page and like this sucks this isn't what I wanted. So if that intent mismatched so can you correct that and improve the page or do you need to do that in a new creation motion? So that is a tried and true technique. That's a recycle, recycle, recycle. Inside MarketMuse you just press a button and it tells you those plans which make life a lot easier obviously but you can do it. It's just that manual labor to use that one technique. And if you ask me for a quick one it's always a quick one. Look for that hundred word or more ranking page, find the word that this; read the page. You'd be surprised how many content strategists and CEOs don't actually read their sites; it's amazing. Read the page, know what value it has, and does this page get people to achieve that value. It can also be done on the back end. Andy Crestodina who works at Orbit Media; he is an expert in Google Analytics and content strategy. He wrote a book called Content Chemistry. Inside his analytics book; parts of the book, it shows you how to do this in Google Analytics by looking at exit rate and engagement gaps. So you can do it there or you can do it from keywords or any other ways but those are some quick ones. Look at your worst exit rates. So many people don't break those down by; they don't cross-reference those two things. So they've got a page, this thing is broken it's 90% in exit rate. Go back to the words that are driving the users to that page. What if all of them are out of alignment? You can just flash the content double engagement overnight. So there's so many wins that you can do with just a quick one-page plan analysis. I like to say pick one you like, get started, put few wins on the board, prove it out, and then decide is this something I want to get serious with and invest in technology that can support it. Chuck: I got you. Now when I started first looking at your product a couple of years ago and seeing kind of the wonderful amazing things you were doing, it was at a price point where I actually kind of like when high price points because it keeps; on really good things it keeps other people from being able to do it. But I guess you just launched a new price point for a self-service. Jeff: Yes. It's actually something we've been looking forward to doing. And we are a mid-market enterprise large publisher; people who have really invested in content that's traditionally been our target market. Chuck: Could you give an example of some big players that you work with? Jeff: Yeah sure. I'm trying to think of who's on this site. G2 Crowd is a customer and they're on there; we work with divisions of the Walmart Corporation, Home Depot, large e-commerce but also just great publishers. Business.com; love them so there's a lot of people who are publishing content. A lot of people I can't name and I wish I could. But if you type in MarketMuse case studies you can find a cool example from Tomorrow's Sleep on that one and how their site grew from 4,000 to 400,000 in a year with their agency that works with us. So that was always a big focus of ours. It was make sure that they can write content. Make sure that they can update content, that they've committed; they actually believe content can get them there because then life's going to be a lot easier for everybody. But we then also said let's look at the mirror. I'm always about looking in the mirror and look at the demand that we have. And so we really looked at who's coming in the front door saying we want to be MarketMuse customers. And right now having made that case internally or I just I'm not a profile of a customer that can spend tens or in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars on software. And so what we did was we right-sized for a specific target market, we right-sized a self-serve offering. And there is also a trial experience that everyone who's listening can go to the site. Go to MarketMuse trial. Go to MarketMuse, see the trial and you'll get an experience with your data; we've actually set this up so you can use your site, optimize a page, create a content brief, update some existing content like I mentioned, get that content brief and then there's also a special workflow baked in there that'll amaze you that I'm not allowed to explain but you'll see it when you get there. But you can do a competitive analysis, you can update a page, you get a content brief; by the way, take that with you it's free and make that decision of whether you want to become a MarketMuse Pro customer which is our self-serve offering at 499 a month. Quiet Light Brokerage Podcast listeners have a promo which Chuck will include in his notes which gets you a discount there. Or if you're a larger team, if you have four writers, if you write 10, 15 articles a month it's going to make more sense for you to be in one of our other packages; a bronze, a silver, or a gold, or a higher offering. So it gives you an understanding about the value that we provide, the opportunity to buy, to see if that's a fit, or to immediately recognize oh gosh this is what I need for all of my content items. I need one of the larger offerings. So the experience we typically is that people find the right car on the lot. Or they begin using and saying oh wow I need more of this. I was successful with the first thing I did. I know this makes sense. Making your content higher quality, that's the fun part about being in Market Muse; it's you never look at it and you're like oh man I wish I hadn't made that page better. You're always on this ongoing quest to do a better job, write better content that resonates more with your audience. And that's what we do every day. Chuck: Awesome. So to wrap this up I always like to ask people could you give us a few random tools not really related to what we're talking about but just things you like to use in your daily work or just regular life. What are some of the hacks you may have? Jeff: Man, there's so many. I love this. So a couple that I use, when I had some personal time management issues I tried everything. I tried boards with; con bomb boards and everything. And one thing that helped me analyze where I was spending my time was called Tomecular and it looks like an eight-sided dice and you put stuff on it. And as you're working on stuff you move the dice around and it seems so; maybe it's because I like touching things like that but it really gave me an understanding about where I was spending my time and I fixed some stuff within MarketMuse like the business organizationally just from that information. So that's cool. I love Boomerang. I think it's a beautiful solution for making sure you don't forget stuff if you get a lot of e-mails. It's a really good productivity tool. Chuck: Before you move on from Boomerang I think Google now have something similar built-in where they have the… Jeff: They have don't let me forget this. Chuck: Yeah. It's like a little reminder you can set for different dates and it comes back in. Jeff: Yeah. Boomerang has some features that I'm so used to being able to set and forget things pause so I don't know if Google's ever going to pause Google so that's something that, but I like Boomerang. It's not that expensive. You do need to watch your SaaS subscriptions though. That's another story. Another one I love, love, love, love is Full Story. Full Story isn't; they keep going a little bit a little more expensive each time you look at them. Good for them. It's like having a DVR on every user that ever comes to your site. You can watch the experiences; obviously anonymized but you can watch their experiences, build pattern matching, look at segments, and really get an understanding about why people are doing things. I mean I think that that's really valuable. Chuck: It's kind of like what is it Crazy Egg? Jeff: It's similar to a Crazy Egg but it's more of like a heat map reporting. They've got this capability and a handful of other solutions that are out. I just think Full Story has this like really robust like I can go in and I can find users that went through this specific sequence and just watch all the sessions. I mean so many times. Just learn from that to really tell a story and it really is powerful when you are already doing a new multivariate testing to really catapult that into the next level. I mean if I told you what conversion rates we have you'd blow up. But yeah I mean you really have to think critically and fly the flag of your customers so that when you do get these solutions they don't just sit on the shelf. I mean my goal every day is to make sure that the next article that every one of my clients publish is more successful than it could have been without us. And I think that comes through in our online messaging. It's not just that we're this secret weapon of the elite agencies which I know for a while that's what we were. It's that if you use MarketMuse your stuff will do better more consistently and then I will be happy. And if it does not happen then I and our entire team will not be happy. And we hope that our messaging comes through and we couldn't do it without these other solutions that we work with Full Story, like Pendo; Pendo is a beautiful thing, and some other metrics, some other things we use to really dive deep into our customer experience. Chuck: Awesome well I appreciate you taking the time to talk with everybody today. Is there a way that people can reach out to you or the company? Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. So MarketMuse.com, Chuck's going to post a promo code that's for the MarketMuse Pro self-serve offering as a discount. You can email me directly Jeff@MarketMuse.com, Jeffrey_Coyle on Twitter. I'm pretty active. LinkedIn, please. I typically don't say no unless you've sent me a weirdo request that tells me in an unreal way that you like my profile and you'd love to connect. If it's clear that you bought or sold a website before in your life I'm probably going to connect with you and want to talk in any light. So yeah please reach out and go check it out. We have a lot of content. I have a lot of; this conversation is like this throughout the web that I think can really level up your game and give you the ability to assess deals quickly without just hunches. You got to go with your hunches but it's nice to have hunches and data. Chuck: Yeah for sure. And a quick pro tip from me, if you're trying to get somebody to accept your LinkedIn profile and they don't know who you are, write a message. Don't just send the like later. Personally, I feel like if I've LinkedIn with somebody and I'm connected then I'm somewhat vouching for them so I don't just accept random LinkedIns. Like, everybody, I've accepted for the most part are people I've actually met in person. But then we go to these conferences and somebody sent me a request and I don't remember them so it's like just send a little message with them, take the two seconds to write. Jeff: Yeah, and make it from the heart. We can smell of that. Come on. I think MarketMuse is cool. Oh really do you? I do too. So I guess we are connected I love the thing but you know. Chuck: There you go. All right well I appreciate your time and thank you, everybody, for taking the time to listen and see you soon.   Links and Resources: MarketMuse MarketMuse coupon code (mentioned in the podcast): QLBMM Email Jeff Twitter LinkedIn

Dr. Chuck and Suzanne Lynn share the results of a recent study by the United Concordia Dental insurance company that shows how patients who take care of their teeth save thousands of dollars in annual medical costs and see a significant reduction in annual hospitalizations versus those who do not. Here is a link to the study. TRANSCRIPT: Dr.Chuck – Hi, I’m Dr. Chuck, welcome to Your Filthy Mouth. The dollars and sense of medical care. Insurance companies want you to stay healthy. Does anybody else? Stay tuned. Narrator – Your smile is beautiful and possibly deadly. Dr. Chuck is here to tell you how your mouth can hold the key to your overall health. Now, about that filthy mouth of yours. Suzanne – Hi, welcome to Your Filthy Mouth. I’m Suzanne Lynn with Dr. Chuck. And, Dr. Chuck, your intro really has my mind going here. First of all, why wouldn’t anybody want you to be healthy? Dr.Chuck – There’s a television commercial on right now from, I think Allstate has it. And there’s a gentleman sitting on a chair in the middle of the road and he says, “The facts are, all auto insurance companies “want you to drive safely, they don’t want accidents.” Well, why is that? The more premiums you pay and the less claims they have to pay, the more money they’re gonna make. Suzanne – Okay. Dr.Chuck – Makes good sense. Is the same thing true with medical insurance companies? Absolutely, medical insurance companies want you to stay healthy. In fact, one of the things we’ll be looking at today, this is from United Concordia Dental, the white paper’s called “The Mouth: The Missing Piece “to Overall Wellness and Lower Medical Costs.” Suzanne – Okay. Dr.Chuck – So do medical insurance wants you to be healthy? Absolutely, again, they’ll make more money. Suzanne – Well, you can’t get money, you can’t get premiums from dead people, right? Dr.Chuck – Well, yeah, and you’re gonna pay a lot less, you’re gonna make a lot less money as an insurance company if you’re paying out a lot of claims. Suzanne – I got you. Dr.Chuck – So the healthier you are, the more money they’re gonna save because you’re staying out of the hospital. Suzanne – Okay, that leads me to the question of who wouldn’t want you to be healthy, then? Dr.Chuck – Well, let’s see, who stands to make money if you stay unhealthy? And I know this is almost cynical on this thing. But when we start looking at it, do hospitals want you to be healthy? I think good hospitals want you to be healthy. I think caring doctors, we have a lot of caring doctors out there, we have caring hospitals, they want you to be healthy. And then we have others might have another motive on that. And when you think about it, our last episode that we talked about, why don’t hospitals have dentists? Because according to this study, there’s an awful lot of illness in the body that is caused from problems in the mouth. And these are problems that we can do something about. My thing is I can’t focus on things that we can’t do anything about. I don’t know how to do anything about pancreatic cancer. It’s horrible. 50,000 people a year die from pancreatic cancer. About 600,000 people a year die from heart attacks. And, according to the researchers, about 50% of those are caused by oral infections, we can do something about oral infections. And there’s something that the patient can do, there’s something the physician can do, and there’s something the dentist can do to really decrease oral infections in our population. Suzanne – So when you mentioned the hospital, unlike insurance, we’re not paying premiums to the hospital, they’re getting paid upon seeing people, fixing people, caring people, you know? Dr.Chuck – Well, that’s how they make money, you know? And they get their money mostly from the insurance companies, some from private pay, but the majority of hospital payments come from insurance companies. If you look at, this is again from United Concordia, the link with coronary artery disease. And by the way, this information is on the website, we’ve got a PDF that you can download, you can look, we got links, so you can look at all of it yourself and go over with a fine tooth comb, see what they have to say. But with coronary artery disease, if you will take care of your dental situation, they show that your medical situation, your annual medical costs, go down a little over $1,000. But your hospital admissions go down 28.6%. Suzanne – Wow, that’s incredible! Dr.Chuck – That’s a lot. Just by having a healthy mouth. Now that’s with coronary artery disease. Suzanne – So we could kind of do, when we call this dollar and sense, it doesn’t have to be S-E-N-S-E, it’s also C. Dr.Chuck – C-E-N-T-S, yes, Big cents. Suzanne – Yeah. Dr.Chuck – So cerebral vascular disease, if you take care of your dental needs, your medical needs go down $5,681 and your hospital admissions go down 21.2% Suzanne – Wow! Dr.Chuck – This was on my research. They’ve got, the nice thing about these hospital, these insurance companies is you’ve got hundreds of thousands of dental insured, you have hundreds of thousands of medical insured. You can compare the two and you can see if these take care of their dental needs, what happens to their medical needs? And that’s what this paper has to show. Suzanne – And right now, so far the stats you’ve shared is one out of four can not be going to the hospital. Dr.Chuck – Not be going to the hospital, that’s right. Diabetes, we have a diabetic challenge in our country right now and it’s only getting worse. If we look at diabetes, if you take care of your dental situation, your annual medical expenses go down about $2,800. But the hospital admissions go down 39.4%. That’s huge. Suzanne – Yeah, I mean, they truly they have no reason to skew these numbers. I mean, this truly is. They are comparing the medical front with the insurance. Dr.Chuck – They want you to be healthy. Again, realize the insurance company wants you to be healthy. And also on, if I can turn the page here, the outpatient drug costs for diabetic patients goes down to about $1,477. Again, so your outpatient costs decreased by taking care of your oral situation. Pregnant women, oh my gosh, your annual medical costs with a healthy mouth go down $2,433 on average. Suzanne – Wow! Dr.Chuck – So we looked– That’s a lot of diapers. and a lot of baby care that you can buy with that. Suzanne – It’s an awful lot. Dr.Chuck – It is. Suzanne – So again, the insurance company has the motivation to keep you well, to keep you healthy. Just like the auto insurance, they have motivation for you not to be in an accident, they want you not to be in an accident, medical insurance companies want you not to get sick. I don’t understand why more physicians aren’t pushing oral health with their patients. Now, there are some excellent physicians that really do this but they’re hard to find. Dr.Chuck – Right, right, right. And that’s the whole purpose we’re doing this is to try to connect the dots between oral care and the rest of your body. I’m having a hard time going back to the fact because in hospitals, there are doctors don’t they take an oath to? Dr.Chuck – Part of the Hippocratic Oath actually says if they come across something that they don’t know how to treat, they will seek the advice of someone who does know how to treat it. Well, if you’re not even looking for it, how do you know what’s going on? So this is why so many dental infections have absolute, I had a new patient this week. Nice guy, we did an oral exam on him, four abscesses four dental abscess going on inside of his jaw. Not one bit of pain from any of ’em, we’re showing them on the X-ray, you can see exactly what’s going, he has no idea these are going on. Now had we not done the examination, he would not know that they’re going on. But remember, and it’s not rocket science, every infection in your body, I don’t care if it’s in your hand, foot or your mouth, every infection produces pus. And that pus is being dumped right into your bloodstream, goes through, makes its way to the heart, to the lungs, back to the heart, and is pumped everywhere in your whole body. Is that healthy? I mean, again, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that’s not okay. Suzanne – Right, a simple dentist in a hospital, is what you’re saying? Dr.Chuck – Yeah, it’s– Dr.Chuck – I mean, an oral department would be ideal. But could we just please get a dentist in there until? Dr.Chuck – Well, at least diagnose that there’s an oral issue there, it could be gum disease, it could be dental infections, it could be an airway issue, it could be the bite, there are different things that can cause different problems within the the body. The hospital doesn’t have to be the one to fix it. But it would be nice if they would at least inform the patient, “Hey, you’ve got periodontal disease. “There’s a real good chance that that has “something to do with your cardiovascular disease. “Why don’t you go back to your dentist “and get that taken care of?” And that’s just not being done yet. Yet, they say that it takes 20 years, we’ve mentioned this before, 20 years before something that’s actually proven to be true with medical research, before it’s implemented into everyday care. Well, it was 19 years ago that the US Surgeon General wrote a large report on oral health in America that basically says you cannot have a healthy body with an unhealthy mouth, you need a healthy mouth. I’m looking forward to 2020 ’cause that’ll be 20 years. So we just got a few more months until this is gonna be widespread, maybe. Suzanne – Well, one of the ways that’s gonna help is people who are watching Your Filthy Mouth, sharing that with your dentist, having them speak up and not be afraid. Dr.Chuck – Yeah, this is not about us. This is this is about you. This is about your family. When one person has a stroke, it doesn’t affect just that one person, it affects their entire family. Suzanne – Amen. Dr.Chuck – When one person has a heart attack, it doesn’t affect just that one person, it affects their entire family. So we when we look at the 300,000 people that have deaths that could have been caused from oral infections, how many million people have that really affected in a negative way? Suzanne – Right, right. All right, well, we’re gonna come back with a question of the week and Joe’s got a good one. Hang on. Narrator – Here’s Dr. Chuck’s Question of the week. Joe – This is Joe. I wanna know if there’s a problem with using mouthwash several times a day? Suzanne – That is a good question. First of all, Joe, we’re gonna be sending you one of the Your Filthy Mouth mugs. I have to say that slow because it comes out your filthy mug mouth, if I say it too fast, but thank you for your question. Yeah, if you send your question in and we use it, you will get one also. But the question, just asked me about multiple times using mouthwash tells me that he’s maybe trying to cover something up, maybe he has bad breath. But is there a harm in that? Dr.Chuck – A lot of times that’s what’s going on. Most bad breath is caused from periodontal disease, gum disease, and so if you can clean up the gum disease, the bad breath goes away. But a lot of people have the idea that if we use the right mouthwash or mouth rinse, I’m not gonna have any more cavities and my gums are gonna be better. And that’s just really not true. You’ve got to get in there and you’ve got to clean your teeth, you’ve got to just spend that five to seven minutes, at least one time a day doing a proper job getting the bacteria off of your teeth, the mouth rinse isn’t gonna take care of that. Now, they’ve shown that about 26% of the bacteria in your mouth are on your teeth and the rest of the bacteria on your tongue and your gums, all around there. So, you know, yes, do mouth rinses help? Yeah, but you can’t rely on them to kill all of the bad bacteria. You have to still get in there and remove the bacteria off your teeth. Suzanne – Despite what the TV ads show, that that’s the magic cure. Dr.Chuck – Well, I don’t think there’s a magic bullet when it comes to oral health care. Yeah, other than doing the right things, eating less sugar, boy, that’s a big thing, and less carbohydrates. I mean, the bacteria can utilize the sugar, turn it into acid, utilize the carbohydrates, turn it into acid, and this acid gets into the teeth, it demineralizes the tooth, causes cavities, affects the gums. So, yeah, our diet, four things we need to be healthy. Number one is what we eat. Suzanne – Okay. Dr.Chuck – Okay, that does play a role. Number two, little bit of exercise. Doesn’t mean you have to pump iron, but you gotta get that body moving. Number three, a healthy mouth. That doesn’t mean a Hollywood smile. You don’t need a Hollywood smile to have a healthy mouth. But you need a healthy mouth and have a healthy heart. Okay, and the last thing is your attitude. Attitude does play a big role in our overall health. So those are four things. And by the way, all four are affordable. Suzanne – And we have control over ’em. Dr.Chuck – Absolutely. Suzanne – All right, Joe, good question. All right, well, let’s go back to talking about the topic today, is about dollars and sense of good oral health care. And before we started filming you shared a sample of, ’cause I can’t understand the idea of people not wanting to do the very best for someone that’s possible. You know, we’re talking about maybe in the hospitals if they can’t cure it or they can’t fix it, they don’t want to diagnose it or something like that. Dr.Chuck – Well, there a lot of examples in history where someone has come up with a real good idea and that idea has been squashed simply because finances, money. If you think back, there was an automobile, I think was called the Tucker, back in the ’50s, that it had a lot of advances. It had headlights that turned when you turned the wheel. It had– Suzanne – Genius! Dr.Chuck – But yeah, special. Well, that that automobile was eaten up by the big three, by Ford, GM, and Chrysler. And so we look at some other things, if you wanna look at when you get in, you know, a little bit out on a limb here, we’ll talk about Tesla. And he had all kinds of information on how we could have electricity for everybody for free. And soon after his death, all of his papers disappeared. And so you know, there’s a lot of things, you know, what’s the real motivation? So it doesn’t matter what someone else’s motivation is as long as your motivation is proper. And if you can be motivated to take care of your mouth and keep it good and healthy, oh, my gosh, the problems that you can avoid. There are other issues. The mouth isn’t the only thing, you know, and I’m not the expert. We are the messenger. And that’s the message we’re trying to get across to you. Suzanne – So the overall message of today’s show is there is a huge facts, like you said, we can show this on yourfilthymouth.com, to download this white paper, correlation between taking care of your mouth and saving a lot of money. Not just a little bit. Dr.Chuck – A lot, yeah. The insurance company wants you to be healthy. They really do. Suzanne – That’s good to know. Dr.Chuck – Yeah, they may have an ulterior motive other than your health, they make more money, and that’s okay. But at least they want you to be healthy. And we have to make sure what is the motivation of all of our health care providers? Do they wanna treat the symptoms? Do they want to get to the source? And that’s the question between every health care provider and their patients. Suzanne – Awesome, Dr. Chuck, thank you so much, great show today, thank you. Dr.Chuck – Oh, thank you. Narrator – This has been Your Filthy Mouth, a weekly podcast about how what happens in your mouth affects the rest of your body. This is important information, so please share it with your friends. Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button on YouTube, iTunes, and all the other podcast sites. And drop by yourfilthymouth.com to ask Dr. Chuck a question or find dozens of links to information about oral systemic health. We’ll talk to you next week.

Panel: Nader Dabit Lucas Reis Charles Max Wood Special Guests: Ben Nelson In this episode, the panelists talk with Ben Nelson who is a co-founder and CTO of Lambda School. The panelists and Ben talk about Lambda School, the pros & cons of the 4-year university program for developers, and much more. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Kendo UI 0:33 – Chuck: We have Nader, Lucas, and myself – our special gust is Ben Nelson! 0:50 – Guest: Hi! 0:54 – Chuck: Please introduce yourself. 0:58 – Guest: I love to ski and was a developer in the Utah area. 1:12 – Chuck: Let’s talk about Lambda School, but I think explaining what the school is and how you operate will help. Give us an elevator pitch for the school. 1:36 – Guest: The school is 30-weeks long and we go deep into computer fundamentals. They get exposed to multiple stacks. Since it’s 30-weeks to run we help with the finances by they start paying once they get employed. It’s online and students from U.S. and the U.K. 3:23 – Chuck: I don’t want you to badmouth DevMountain, great model, but I don’t know if it works for everyone? 3:43 – Guest: Three months part-time is really hard if you don’t have a technical background. It was a grind and hard for the students. 4:03 – Nader: Is it online or any part in-person. 4:11 – Guest: Yep totally online. 4:40 – Nader: Austen Allred is really, really good at being in the social scene. I know that he has mentioned that you are apart of...since 2017? 5:20 – Guest: Yeah you would be surprised how much Twitter has helped our school. He is the other co-founder and is a genius with social media platforms! 6:04 – Guest mentions Python, marketing, and building a following. 7:17 – Guest: We saw a lot of students who wanted to enroll but they couldn’t afford it. This gave us the idea to help with using the income share agreement. 8:06 – Nader: Yeah, that’s really cool. I didn’t know you were online only so now that makes sense. Do you have other plans for the company? 8:33 – Guest: Amazon started with books and then branched out; same thing for us. 8:56 – Chuck: Let’s talk about programming and what’s your placement rate right now? 9:05 – Guest: It fluctuates. Our incentive is we don’t get paid unless our students get employed. Our first couple classes were 83% and then later in the mid-60%s and it’s averaging around there. Our goal is 90% in 90 days. Guest continues: All boot camps aren’t the same. 10:55 – Lucas: Ben, I have a question. One thing we have a concern about is that universities are disconnected with the CURRENT market! 11:47 – Guest: We cannot compare to the 4-year system, but our strength we don’t have tenure track Ph.D. professors. Our instructors have been working hands-on for a while. They are experienced engineers. We make sure the instructors we hire are involved and passionate. We pay for them to go to conferences and we want them to be on the cutting-edge. We feel like we can compete to CS degrees b/c of the focused training that we offer. 13:16 – Chuck: Yeah, when I went to school there were only 2 professors that came from the field. 14:22 – Guest: Yeah, look at MIT. When I was studying CS in school my best professor was adjunct b/c he came from the field. I don’t know if the 4-year plan is always the best. I don’t want to shoot down higher education but you have to consider what’s best for you. 15:05 – Nader: It’s spread out across the different fields. It was a model that was created a long time ago, and isn’t always the best necessarily for computer science. Think about our field b/c things are moving so fast.  15:57 – Chuck: What you are saying, Nader, but 10 years ago this iPhone was a brand new thing, and now we are talking about a zillion different devices that you can write for. It’s crazy. That’s where we are seeing things change – the fundamentals are good – but they aren’t teaching you at that level. Hello – it’s not the ‘90s anymore! I wonder if my bias comes from boot camp grads were really motivated in the first place...and they want to make a change and make a career out of it. 17:34 – Chuck: There is value, but I don’t know if my CS major prepared me well for the job market. 17:42 – Guest: Probably you didn’t have much student loan debt being that you went to Utah. 17:58 – Nader: Why is that? 18:03 – Chuck talks about UT’s tuition and how he worked while attending college. 18:29 – Lucas: I don’t stop studying. The fundamentals aren’t bad to keep studying them. Putting you into a job first should be top priority and then dive into the fundamentals. Work knowledge is so important – after you are working for 1 year – then figure out what the fundamentals are. I think I learn better the “other way around.” 20:30 – Chuck: That’s fair. 20:45 – Guest: That’s exactly what we focus on. The guest talks about the general curriculum at the Lambda School 22:07 – Nader: That’s an interesting take on that. When you frame it that way – there is no comparison when considering the student loan debt. 22:30 – Chuck: College degrees do have a place, too. 22:39 – Chuck: Who do you see applying to the boot camps? 23:05 – Guest: It’s a mix. It’s concentrated on people who started in another career and they want to make a career change. Say they come from construction or finances and they are switching to developing. We get some college students, but it’s definitely more adult training. 24:02 – Guest: The older people who have families they are desperate and they are hungry and want to work hard. We had this guy who was making $20,000 and now he’s making $85K. Now his daughter can have his own bedroom and crying through that statement. 24:50 – Chuck: That makes sense! 24:52 – Advertisement – FRESH BOOKS! 26:02 – Guest: Look at MIT, Berkeley – the value is filtering and they are only accepting the top of the top. We don’t want to operate like that. We just have to hire new teachers and not build new buildings. We raise the bar and set the standard – and try to get everybody to that bar. We aren’t sacrificing quality but want everybody there. 27:43 – Chuck: What are the tradeoffs? 28:00 – Guest: There is an energy in-person that happens that you miss out on doing it online. There are a lot of benefits, though, doing it online. They have access to a larger audience via the web, they can re-watch videos that teachers record. 28:45 – Nader: Is there a set curriculum that everyone uses? How do you come up with the curriculum and how often does it get revamped? What are you teaching currently? 29:08 – Guest answers the question in-detail. 30:49 – Guest (continues): Heavily project-focused, too! 31:08 – Nader: What happens when they start and if they dropout? 31:22 – Guest: When we first got started we thought it was going to be high dropout rates. At first it was 40% b/c it’s hard, you can close your computer, and walk away. If a student doesn’t score 80% or higher in the week then they have to do it again. Our dropout rate is only 5-10%. In the beginning they have a grace period of 2-4 weeks where they wouldn’t owe anything. After a certain point, though, they are bound to pay per our agreements. 33:00 – Chuck: Where do people get stuck? 33:05 – Guest: Redux, React, and others! Maybe an instructor isn’t doing a good job. 34:06 – Guest: It’s intense and so we have to provide emotional support. 34:17 – Nader: I started a school year and I ran it for 1-3 years and didn’t go anywhere. We did PHP and Angular 1 and a little React Native. We never were able to get the numbers to come, and we’d only have 3-4 people. I think the problem was we were in Mississippi and scaling it is not an easy thing to do. This could be different if you were in NY. But if you are virtual that is a good take. Question: What hurdles did you have to overcome? 35:52 – Guest: There was a lot of experimentation. Dropout rates were a big one, and the other one is growth. One problem that needed to be solved first was: Is there a demand for this? Reddit helped and SubReddit. For the dropout rates we had to drive home the concept of accountability. There are tons of hands-on help from TA’s, there is accountability with attendance, and homework and grades. We want them to know that they are noticed and we are checking-in on them if they were to miss class, etc. 38:41 – Chuck: I know your instructor, Luis among others. I know they used to work for DevMountain. How do you find these folks? 39:15 – Guest: A lot of it is through the network, but now Twitter, too. 40:13 – Nader: I am always amazed with the developers that come out of UT. 40:28 – Chuck: It’s interesting and we are seeing companies coming out here. 40:50 – Guest: Something we were concerned about was placement as it relates to geography. So someone that is in North Dakota – would they get a job. The people in the rural areas almost have an easier time getting the job b/c it’s less competitive. Companies are willing to pay for relocation, which is good. 41:49 – Nader: That is spot on. 42:22 – Chuck: Instructor or Student how do they inquire to teach/attend at your school? 42:44 – Guest: We are launching in the United Kingdom and looking for a program director there! 43:00 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! End – Cache Fly Links: Ruby on Rails Angular JavaScript Elm Phoenix GitHub Get A Coder Job Income Share Agreement’s Definition DevMountain Charles Max Wood’s Twitter Nader Dabit’s Twitter Lucas Reis’ GitHub Ben Nelson’s Talk: Rethinking Higher Education – ICERI 2016 Keynote Speech Ben Nelson’s LinkedIn Ben Nelson’s Twitter Lambda School Sponsors: Get a Coder Job Cache Fly Fresh Books Kendo UI   Picks: Lucas Cypress Looking a Cypress as a Development Environment. Nader Egghead.io Nader’s courses on Egghead.io Suggestions for courses Charles Opportunity to help liberate developers Extreme Ownership Hiring a developer Sales Rep. for selling sponsorships Show note writer Ben Air Table

Panel: Nader Dabit Lucas Reis Charles Max Wood Special Guests: Ben Nelson In this episode, the panelists talk with Ben Nelson who is a co-founder and CTO of Lambda School. The panelists and Ben talk about Lambda School, the pros & cons of the 4-year university program for developers, and much more. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Kendo UI 0:33 – Chuck: We have Nader, Lucas, and myself – our special gust is Ben Nelson! 0:50 – Guest: Hi! 0:54 – Chuck: Please introduce yourself. 0:58 – Guest: I love to ski and was a developer in the Utah area. 1:12 – Chuck: Let’s talk about Lambda School, but I think explaining what the school is and how you operate will help. Give us an elevator pitch for the school. 1:36 – Guest: The school is 30-weeks long and we go deep into computer fundamentals. They get exposed to multiple stacks. Since it’s 30-weeks to run we help with the finances by they start paying once they get employed. It’s online and students from U.S. and the U.K. 3:23 – Chuck: I don’t want you to badmouth DevMountain, great model, but I don’t know if it works for everyone? 3:43 – Guest: Three months part-time is really hard if you don’t have a technical background. It was a grind and hard for the students. 4:03 – Nader: Is it online or any part in-person. 4:11 – Guest: Yep totally online. 4:40 – Nader: Austen Allred is really, really good at being in the social scene. I know that he has mentioned that you are apart of...since 2017? 5:20 – Guest: Yeah you would be surprised how much Twitter has helped our school. He is the other co-founder and is a genius with social media platforms! 6:04 – Guest mentions Python, marketing, and building a following. 7:17 – Guest: We saw a lot of students who wanted to enroll but they couldn’t afford it. This gave us the idea to help with using the income share agreement. 8:06 – Nader: Yeah, that’s really cool. I didn’t know you were online only so now that makes sense. Do you have other plans for the company? 8:33 – Guest: Amazon started with books and then branched out; same thing for us. 8:56 – Chuck: Let’s talk about programming and what’s your placement rate right now? 9:05 – Guest: It fluctuates. Our incentive is we don’t get paid unless our students get employed. Our first couple classes were 83% and then later in the mid-60%s and it’s averaging around there. Our goal is 90% in 90 days. Guest continues: All boot camps aren’t the same. 10:55 – Lucas: Ben, I have a question. One thing we have a concern about is that universities are disconnected with the CURRENT market! 11:47 – Guest: We cannot compare to the 4-year system, but our strength we don’t have tenure track Ph.D. professors. Our instructors have been working hands-on for a while. They are experienced engineers. We make sure the instructors we hire are involved and passionate. We pay for them to go to conferences and we want them to be on the cutting-edge. We feel like we can compete to CS degrees b/c of the focused training that we offer. 13:16 – Chuck: Yeah, when I went to school there were only 2 professors that came from the field. 14:22 – Guest: Yeah, look at MIT. When I was studying CS in school my best professor was adjunct b/c he came from the field. I don’t know if the 4-year plan is always the best. I don’t want to shoot down higher education but you have to consider what’s best for you. 15:05 – Nader: It’s spread out across the different fields. It was a model that was created a long time ago, and isn’t always the best necessarily for computer science. Think about our field b/c things are moving so fast.  15:57 – Chuck: What you are saying, Nader, but 10 years ago this iPhone was a brand new thing, and now we are talking about a zillion different devices that you can write for. It’s crazy. That’s where we are seeing things change – the fundamentals are good – but they aren’t teaching you at that level. Hello – it’s not the ‘90s anymore! I wonder if my bias comes from boot camp grads were really motivated in the first place...and they want to make a change and make a career out of it. 17:34 – Chuck: There is value, but I don’t know if my CS major prepared me well for the job market. 17:42 – Guest: Probably you didn’t have much student loan debt being that you went to Utah. 17:58 – Nader: Why is that? 18:03 – Chuck talks about UT’s tuition and how he worked while attending college. 18:29 – Lucas: I don’t stop studying. The fundamentals aren’t bad to keep studying them. Putting you into a job first should be top priority and then dive into the fundamentals. Work knowledge is so important – after you are working for 1 year – then figure out what the fundamentals are. I think I learn better the “other way around.” 20:30 – Chuck: That’s fair. 20:45 – Guest: That’s exactly what we focus on. The guest talks about the general curriculum at the Lambda School 22:07 – Nader: That’s an interesting take on that. When you frame it that way – there is no comparison when considering the student loan debt. 22:30 – Chuck: College degrees do have a place, too. 22:39 – Chuck: Who do you see applying to the boot camps? 23:05 – Guest: It’s a mix. It’s concentrated on people who started in another career and they want to make a career change. Say they come from construction or finances and they are switching to developing. We get some college students, but it’s definitely more adult training. 24:02 – Guest: The older people who have families they are desperate and they are hungry and want to work hard. We had this guy who was making $20,000 and now he’s making $85K. Now his daughter can have his own bedroom and crying through that statement. 24:50 – Chuck: That makes sense! 24:52 – Advertisement – FRESH BOOKS! 26:02 – Guest: Look at MIT, Berkeley – the value is filtering and they are only accepting the top of the top. We don’t want to operate like that. We just have to hire new teachers and not build new buildings. We raise the bar and set the standard – and try to get everybody to that bar. We aren’t sacrificing quality but want everybody there. 27:43 – Chuck: What are the tradeoffs? 28:00 – Guest: There is an energy in-person that happens that you miss out on doing it online. There are a lot of benefits, though, doing it online. They have access to a larger audience via the web, they can re-watch videos that teachers record. 28:45 – Nader: Is there a set curriculum that everyone uses? How do you come up with the curriculum and how often does it get revamped? What are you teaching currently? 29:08 – Guest answers the question in-detail. 30:49 – Guest (continues): Heavily project-focused, too! 31:08 – Nader: What happens when they start and if they dropout? 31:22 – Guest: When we first got started we thought it was going to be high dropout rates. At first it was 40% b/c it’s hard, you can close your computer, and walk away. If a student doesn’t score 80% or higher in the week then they have to do it again. Our dropout rate is only 5-10%. In the beginning they have a grace period of 2-4 weeks where they wouldn’t owe anything. After a certain point, though, they are bound to pay per our agreements. 33:00 – Chuck: Where do people get stuck? 33:05 – Guest: Redux, React, and others! Maybe an instructor isn’t doing a good job. 34:06 – Guest: It’s intense and so we have to provide emotional support. 34:17 – Nader: I started a school year and I ran it for 1-3 years and didn’t go anywhere. We did PHP and Angular 1 and a little React Native. We never were able to get the numbers to come, and we’d only have 3-4 people. I think the problem was we were in Mississippi and scaling it is not an easy thing to do. This could be different if you were in NY. But if you are virtual that is a good take. Question: What hurdles did you have to overcome? 35:52 – Guest: There was a lot of experimentation. Dropout rates were a big one, and the other one is growth. One problem that needed to be solved first was: Is there a demand for this? Reddit helped and SubReddit. For the dropout rates we had to drive home the concept of accountability. There are tons of hands-on help from TA’s, there is accountability with attendance, and homework and grades. We want them to know that they are noticed and we are checking-in on them if they were to miss class, etc. 38:41 – Chuck: I know your instructor, Luis among others. I know they used to work for DevMountain. How do you find these folks? 39:15 – Guest: A lot of it is through the network, but now Twitter, too. 40:13 – Nader: I am always amazed with the developers that come out of UT. 40:28 – Chuck: It’s interesting and we are seeing companies coming out here. 40:50 – Guest: Something we were concerned about was placement as it relates to geography. So someone that is in North Dakota – would they get a job. The people in the rural areas almost have an easier time getting the job b/c it’s less competitive. Companies are willing to pay for relocation, which is good. 41:49 – Nader: That is spot on. 42:22 – Chuck: Instructor or Student how do they inquire to teach/attend at your school? 42:44 – Guest: We are launching in the United Kingdom and looking for a program director there! 43:00 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! End – Cache Fly Links: Ruby on Rails Angular JavaScript Elm Phoenix GitHub Get A Coder Job Income Share Agreement’s Definition DevMountain Charles Max Wood’s Twitter Nader Dabit’s Twitter Lucas Reis’ GitHub Ben Nelson’s Talk: Rethinking Higher Education – ICERI 2016 Keynote Speech Ben Nelson’s LinkedIn Ben Nelson’s Twitter Lambda School Sponsors: Get a Coder Job Cache Fly Fresh Books Kendo UI   Picks: Lucas Cypress Looking a Cypress as a Development Environment. Nader Egghead.io Nader’s courses on Egghead.io Suggestions for courses Charles Opportunity to help liberate developers Extreme Ownership Hiring a developer Sales Rep. for selling sponsorships Show note writer Ben Air Table

Panel: Chris Fritz Eric Hatchet Divya Sasidharan Charles Max Wood Special Guest: Benjamin Hong In this episode, the panel talks with Benjamin Hong who is a Senior Fullstack Engineer at GitLab, Inc. who currently resides in the Washington D.C. metro area. Ben and the panel talk about Politico and the current projects that Ben is working on. The panelists talk about topics, such as Vue, Vuex, VuePress, Nuxt, among others. Check out today’s episode! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement – Kendo UI 0:32 – Panel: Hi! Welcome – our panel today is live at Park City, UT. 1:34 – Benjamin introduces himself. 1:41 – Panel: Politico is a well trafficked website and it’s well known. What are your thoughts about working on a well trafficked website? 2:22 – Guest. 2:44 – Panel: Why did you settle on Vue? 2:50 – Guest: ...I came onto the team and was passionate about helping. We built out the component types. I thought Vue was better suited for the team. 3:36 – Panel: That’s a large team – that’s a lot of people 3:45 – Guest: Yeah, at one time I was writing everything. A lot of people on the team right now didn’t know a lot of JavaScript – but having Vue helps everyone to move the project forward. 4:29 – Panel: They can write just HTML, etc. 4:38 – Guest: Yep, exactly. It helps with communication. 4:55 – Panel asks a question. 5:00 – Guest: I use an event bust. 5:20 – Chuck: Did you have to move from an event bust to Vuex and what was that like? 5:30 – Guest: We had to move into module-esque anyways. 5:42 – Panel: You probably have Vuex with modules and...? 5:54 – Guest: We are using your enterprise broiler plate! 6:05 – Panel: Yeah, every team uses their own patterns. What files would I see used within your team? 6:16 – Guest answers the question. 6:55 – Panel asks a question. 7:01 – Guest: We can keep with the recommended packages fairly well! 7:21 – Panel. 7:26 – Guest: Funny enough at London...we are starting to get a lot with our co-coverage. We have a hard time balancing with unit tests and...eventually we want to look at Cypress. 8:12 – Panel. 8:15 – Guest. 8:19 – Chuck. 8:38 – Panel: I always encourage people to test the unit tests. 9:00 – Chuck: As you adopted Vue what was it like to get buy-in from management. Usually they have a strong backend with Rails, and someone comes in and says let’s use X. How do you sell them on: we are going to use this new technology. 9:30 – Guest: We could really use the user-experience better, and also to offload things from the backend developers. Our desire was to control more things like animation and to specialize those things. That was my selling point. 10:32 – Chuck: I tend to do both on the apps that I’m working on. I told Chris that I was going to switch a lot of things to Vue – some of the things you said I am not interested in the backend b/c it’s too painful. 11:01 – Panel. 11:08 – Chuck: There are things that are really, really good on the backend, but... 11:18 – Panel. 11:24 – Panel: You get the benefits of rendering... 11:43 – Chuck: What are your challenges into Vue? 11:50 – Guest: It’s definitely the scale, because we were a team of 5 and now we are a team of 15. Also, the different time changes b/c we have some people who live in India. Getting that workflow and we are looking at STORYBOOK to help with that. 12:30 – Chuck: Every person you add doubles the complexity of the group. 12:40 – Panel: I think that is conservative! 12:49 – Chuck. 12:56 – Panel: I get to see Chuck in person so this is different! 13:09 – Panel: Challenge accepted! 13:18 – Panel: This is the roast! 13:25 – Panel: Are you working, Benjamin, on a component library? Are you working on that alongside your current project? How do you manage that/ 13:38 – Guest: Unfortunately, we have a lot of deadlines and everything is running in parallel! 14:00 – Panel: How do you implement expectations throughout your team? 14:13 – Panel. 14:16 – Guest: It’s for everyone to understand their own expectations and the team’s expectations. I have to be able to parse it out w/o giving them too much guidance. 15:20 – Panel. 15:25 – Guest: Yep! 15:30 – Panel: ...having to edit the same files and the same lines... 15:36 – Guest: We have been able to keep those in their own lanes! 15:44 – Panel: Yeah that’s no fun – I’ve been there! 15:53 – Chuck: You are working in the development branch – and then their thing breaks my thing, etc. 16:08 – Panel: You are doing dimensional travel! It’s almost like reorganizing a complete novel. 16:30 – Guest: You don’t want your work to drag on too long b/c you don’t want to poorly affect the other team members. 16:53 – Panel: Does that mean you use internal docs to help with the workflow? 17:03 – Guest: Yes, we use the common team board. 17:30 – Panel asks a question. 17:39 – Guest: Yes, that’s a challenge. I have setup an internal product called Politico Academy. 18:29 – Chuck: How do you fit into what Politico is doing? 18:45 – Guest: They are giving out cutting edge information regarding policies and that sort of thing. We have tools like compass to track your notes within the team and also bills. Politico Pro is like for lobbyists and those fees are very expensive. 19:23 – Panel: Do you have to create graphs and D3 and stuff like that? 19:35 – Guest: I am itching to do that and we haven’t really done that, yet. I would love to do that, though! 19:42 – Panel: Chris will be talking about that which will air on YouTube! 20:02 – Panel: Ben, you make decisions based on architecture – do the members of the team get to contribute to that or no? 20:27 – Guest: Yeah, I have a democratic approach. I want people to show their opinion, so that way they know that their voice is getting heard. I don’t make all the decisions, but I do give some guidelines. 21:11 – Chris: I like to time box it. I do the same thing, too. 21:49 – Chuck: Yeah someone would propose something to a new feature (or whatnot) and we would want to see if we want to explore it now or later. 21:55 – Panel goes back-and-forth. 23:26 – Panel: On that note- you want to make sure that each developer has submitted a pole request per day. What is universal in regards to coding practices, and code comments, and stuff like that and code style? 23:55 – Guest: We do PREMIER across the board right now. 24:55 – Panel asks a question. 25:08 – Guest: I like having more...if it can show WHY you did it a certain way. 25:33 – Panel: It’s good not to save the data. 25:40 – Chris: Sometimes a SQUASH can be helpful. 25:50 – Divya: I try to commit often and my work is a work in-progress. 26:08 – Chris. 26:13 – Chuck comments. 26:24 – Panel goes back-and-forth! 26:43 – Guest: They will write their code and then use Prettier and it will look terrifying b/c it’s like what did you just do. I want them to see the 2 lines they changed rather than the whole file. 27:13 – Panelist talks about Linting. 27:34 – Chuck. 27:39 – Chris: If it’s not the default then... 27:55 – Divya: When you manually setup your project you can run a prettier pre-commit. 28:00 – Chris: My pre-commits are much more thorough. 28:37 – Panel goes back-and-forth! 29:26 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! 30:02 – Panel: Can you talk about VuePress, please? 30:06 – Guest: Yeah! The guest talks about VuePress in-detail! 31:21 – Chuck. 31:25 – Panel. 31:44 – Chuck: I am curious about this – what’s the difference between VuePress and Nuxt? 31:58 – Guest answers the question. 32:19 – Chris adds his comments into this topic (VuePress and Nuxt). 32:47 – Guest. 33:02 – Divya. 34:24 – Chuck: If they are fluent in English and native in another language and it’s easy to figure where to put everything. 34:41 – Chris: Yeah they have a clear path for to clear up any documentation potential problems. 35:04 – Chris: ...the core docs and the impending libraries and the smaller ones, too. 35:17 – Divya: When you are creating the docs and you are thinking about NTN it’s important to think about the English docs. They say that it’s best to think of the language if that doc was to be translated into another language. 35:50 – Chris: Definition: “A function that returns another function” = higher function. 36:19 – Chuck: We are running out of time, and let’s talk about user-scripts. You have co-organized a group in Washington D.C. I tell people to go to a group to help like Meetups. What do you recommend? 37:00 – Guest: A lot of it is to be that community leader and show-up. To figure out let’s go ahead and meet. I know a lot of people worry about the “venue,” but go to a public library or ask an office for space, that’s an option, too. 38:15 – Panel: We have these different Meetups and right now in my area we don’t have one for Vue. 38:37 – Guest: Yeah, I recommend just getting it going. 39:04 – Chris: Yeah, just forming a community. 39:16 – Chuck: D.C. is a large area, so I can see where the larger market it would be easier. But even for the smaller communities there can be 10 or so people but that’s a great start! 39:48 – Guest: Yeah, once it gets started it flows. 40:02 – Chuck: What are the topics then at these meetings? 40:05 – Guest: I like to help people to code, so that’s my inspiration. 40:50 – Divya: I help with the Chicago Meetup and tons of people sign-up but not a lot of people to show – that’s our challenge right now! How do you get people to actually GO! 41:44 – Guest: I tell people that it’s a free event and really the show up rate is about 30%. I let the people to know that there is a beginning section, too, that there is a safe place for them. I find that that is helpful. 42:44 – Chris: Yeah, even the language/vocabulary that you use can really deter people or make people feel accepted. 43:48 – Chuck: Let’s talk about the idea of ‘new developers.’  They would ask people for the topics that THEY wanted to talk about. 44:37 – Divya: From an organizer’s perspective... 46:10 – Chuck: If you want people to show-up to your Meetups just do this...a secret pattern! I did a talk about a block chain and we probably had 3x to 4x a better turnout. 46:55 – Panel. 47:00 – Divya: The one event that was really successful was having Evan and Chris come to Chicago. That event was eventually $25.00 and then when Evan couldn’t come the price dropped to $5.00. 48:00 – Panel goes back-and-forth. 48:22 – Chuck: Where can they find you? 48:30 – Guest: BenCodeZen! 48:40 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! DEVCHAT code. 30-day trial. Links: Vue React Angular JavaScript DevChat TV Graph QL VuePress Nuxt Meetup 1 Chicago Meetup for Fullstack JavaScript Ben’s LinkedIn Ben’s Website Ben’s Twitter DevChat TV Past Episode with Benjamin Hong (MJS 082) Sponsors: Fresh Books Cache Fly Kendo UI Get A Coder Job! Picks: Divya Creator Summit  Chris “Chuck” Take a break when traveling to conferences and such Vue.js in Action Eric Stackblitz Charles The One Thing Self Publishing School Ben Ted Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert Vue.js Meetups

Panel: Chris Fritz Eric Hatchet Divya Sasidharan Charles Max Wood Special Guest: Benjamin Hong In this episode, the panel talks with Benjamin Hong who is a Senior Fullstack Engineer at GitLab, Inc. who currently resides in the Washington D.C. metro area. Ben and the panel talk about Politico and the current projects that Ben is working on. The panelists talk about topics, such as Vue, Vuex, VuePress, Nuxt, among others. Check out today’s episode! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement – Kendo UI 0:32 – Panel: Hi! Welcome – our panel today is live at Park City, UT. 1:34 – Benjamin introduces himself. 1:41 – Panel: Politico is a well trafficked website and it’s well known. What are your thoughts about working on a well trafficked website? 2:22 – Guest. 2:44 – Panel: Why did you settle on Vue? 2:50 – Guest: ...I came onto the team and was passionate about helping. We built out the component types. I thought Vue was better suited for the team. 3:36 – Panel: That’s a large team – that’s a lot of people 3:45 – Guest: Yeah, at one time I was writing everything. A lot of people on the team right now didn’t know a lot of JavaScript – but having Vue helps everyone to move the project forward. 4:29 – Panel: They can write just HTML, etc. 4:38 – Guest: Yep, exactly. It helps with communication. 4:55 – Panel asks a question. 5:00 – Guest: I use an event bust. 5:20 – Chuck: Did you have to move from an event bust to Vuex and what was that like? 5:30 – Guest: We had to move into module-esque anyways. 5:42 – Panel: You probably have Vuex with modules and...? 5:54 – Guest: We are using your enterprise broiler plate! 6:05 – Panel: Yeah, every team uses their own patterns. What files would I see used within your team? 6:16 – Guest answers the question. 6:55 – Panel asks a question. 7:01 – Guest: We can keep with the recommended packages fairly well! 7:21 – Panel. 7:26 – Guest: Funny enough at London...we are starting to get a lot with our co-coverage. We have a hard time balancing with unit tests and...eventually we want to look at Cypress. 8:12 – Panel. 8:15 – Guest. 8:19 – Chuck. 8:38 – Panel: I always encourage people to test the unit tests. 9:00 – Chuck: As you adopted Vue what was it like to get buy-in from management. Usually they have a strong backend with Rails, and someone comes in and says let’s use X. How do you sell them on: we are going to use this new technology. 9:30 – Guest: We could really use the user-experience better, and also to offload things from the backend developers. Our desire was to control more things like animation and to specialize those things. That was my selling point. 10:32 – Chuck: I tend to do both on the apps that I’m working on. I told Chris that I was going to switch a lot of things to Vue – some of the things you said I am not interested in the backend b/c it’s too painful. 11:01 – Panel. 11:08 – Chuck: There are things that are really, really good on the backend, but... 11:18 – Panel. 11:24 – Panel: You get the benefits of rendering... 11:43 – Chuck: What are your challenges into Vue? 11:50 – Guest: It’s definitely the scale, because we were a team of 5 and now we are a team of 15. Also, the different time changes b/c we have some people who live in India. Getting that workflow and we are looking at STORYBOOK to help with that. 12:30 – Chuck: Every person you add doubles the complexity of the group. 12:40 – Panel: I think that is conservative! 12:49 – Chuck. 12:56 – Panel: I get to see Chuck in person so this is different! 13:09 – Panel: Challenge accepted! 13:18 – Panel: This is the roast! 13:25 – Panel: Are you working, Benjamin, on a component library? Are you working on that alongside your current project? How do you manage that/ 13:38 – Guest: Unfortunately, we have a lot of deadlines and everything is running in parallel! 14:00 – Panel: How do you implement expectations throughout your team? 14:13 – Panel. 14:16 – Guest: It’s for everyone to understand their own expectations and the team’s expectations. I have to be able to parse it out w/o giving them too much guidance. 15:20 – Panel. 15:25 – Guest: Yep! 15:30 – Panel: ...having to edit the same files and the same lines... 15:36 – Guest: We have been able to keep those in their own lanes! 15:44 – Panel: Yeah that’s no fun – I’ve been there! 15:53 – Chuck: You are working in the development branch – and then their thing breaks my thing, etc. 16:08 – Panel: You are doing dimensional travel! It’s almost like reorganizing a complete novel. 16:30 – Guest: You don’t want your work to drag on too long b/c you don’t want to poorly affect the other team members. 16:53 – Panel: Does that mean you use internal docs to help with the workflow? 17:03 – Guest: Yes, we use the common team board. 17:30 – Panel asks a question. 17:39 – Guest: Yes, that’s a challenge. I have setup an internal product called Politico Academy. 18:29 – Chuck: How do you fit into what Politico is doing? 18:45 – Guest: They are giving out cutting edge information regarding policies and that sort of thing. We have tools like compass to track your notes within the team and also bills. Politico Pro is like for lobbyists and those fees are very expensive. 19:23 – Panel: Do you have to create graphs and D3 and stuff like that? 19:35 – Guest: I am itching to do that and we haven’t really done that, yet. I would love to do that, though! 19:42 – Panel: Chris will be talking about that which will air on YouTube! 20:02 – Panel: Ben, you make decisions based on architecture – do the members of the team get to contribute to that or no? 20:27 – Guest: Yeah, I have a democratic approach. I want people to show their opinion, so that way they know that their voice is getting heard. I don’t make all the decisions, but I do give some guidelines. 21:11 – Chris: I like to time box it. I do the same thing, too. 21:49 – Chuck: Yeah someone would propose something to a new feature (or whatnot) and we would want to see if we want to explore it now or later. 21:55 – Panel goes back-and-forth. 23:26 – Panel: On that note- you want to make sure that each developer has submitted a pole request per day. What is universal in regards to coding practices, and code comments, and stuff like that and code style? 23:55 – Guest: We do PREMIER across the board right now. 24:55 – Panel asks a question. 25:08 – Guest: I like having more...if it can show WHY you did it a certain way. 25:33 – Panel: It’s good not to save the data. 25:40 – Chris: Sometimes a SQUASH can be helpful. 25:50 – Divya: I try to commit often and my work is a work in-progress. 26:08 – Chris. 26:13 – Chuck comments. 26:24 – Panel goes back-and-forth! 26:43 – Guest: They will write their code and then use Prettier and it will look terrifying b/c it’s like what did you just do. I want them to see the 2 lines they changed rather than the whole file. 27:13 – Panelist talks about Linting. 27:34 – Chuck. 27:39 – Chris: If it’s not the default then... 27:55 – Divya: When you manually setup your project you can run a prettier pre-commit. 28:00 – Chris: My pre-commits are much more thorough. 28:37 – Panel goes back-and-forth! 29:26 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! 30:02 – Panel: Can you talk about VuePress, please? 30:06 – Guest: Yeah! The guest talks about VuePress in-detail! 31:21 – Chuck. 31:25 – Panel. 31:44 – Chuck: I am curious about this – what’s the difference between VuePress and Nuxt? 31:58 – Guest answers the question. 32:19 – Chris adds his comments into this topic (VuePress and Nuxt). 32:47 – Guest. 33:02 – Divya. 34:24 – Chuck: If they are fluent in English and native in another language and it’s easy to figure where to put everything. 34:41 – Chris: Yeah they have a clear path for to clear up any documentation potential problems. 35:04 – Chris: ...the core docs and the impending libraries and the smaller ones, too. 35:17 – Divya: When you are creating the docs and you are thinking about NTN it’s important to think about the English docs. They say that it’s best to think of the language if that doc was to be translated into another language. 35:50 – Chris: Definition: “A function that returns another function” = higher function. 36:19 – Chuck: We are running out of time, and let’s talk about user-scripts. You have co-organized a group in Washington D.C. I tell people to go to a group to help like Meetups. What do you recommend? 37:00 – Guest: A lot of it is to be that community leader and show-up. To figure out let’s go ahead and meet. I know a lot of people worry about the “venue,” but go to a public library or ask an office for space, that’s an option, too. 38:15 – Panel: We have these different Meetups and right now in my area we don’t have one for Vue. 38:37 – Guest: Yeah, I recommend just getting it going. 39:04 – Chris: Yeah, just forming a community. 39:16 – Chuck: D.C. is a large area, so I can see where the larger market it would be easier. But even for the smaller communities there can be 10 or so people but that’s a great start! 39:48 – Guest: Yeah, once it gets started it flows. 40:02 – Chuck: What are the topics then at these meetings? 40:05 – Guest: I like to help people to code, so that’s my inspiration. 40:50 – Divya: I help with the Chicago Meetup and tons of people sign-up but not a lot of people to show – that’s our challenge right now! How do you get people to actually GO! 41:44 – Guest: I tell people that it’s a free event and really the show up rate is about 30%. I let the people to know that there is a beginning section, too, that there is a safe place for them. I find that that is helpful. 42:44 – Chris: Yeah, even the language/vocabulary that you use can really deter people or make people feel accepted. 43:48 – Chuck: Let’s talk about the idea of ‘new developers.’  They would ask people for the topics that THEY wanted to talk about. 44:37 – Divya: From an organizer’s perspective... 46:10 – Chuck: If you want people to show-up to your Meetups just do this...a secret pattern! I did a talk about a block chain and we probably had 3x to 4x a better turnout. 46:55 – Panel. 47:00 – Divya: The one event that was really successful was having Evan and Chris come to Chicago. That event was eventually $25.00 and then when Evan couldn’t come the price dropped to $5.00. 48:00 – Panel goes back-and-forth. 48:22 – Chuck: Where can they find you? 48:30 – Guest: BenCodeZen! 48:40 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! DEVCHAT code. 30-day trial. Links: Vue React Angular JavaScript DevChat TV Graph QL VuePress Nuxt Meetup 1 Chicago Meetup for Fullstack JavaScript Ben’s LinkedIn Ben’s Website Ben’s Twitter DevChat TV Past Episode with Benjamin Hong (MJS 082) Sponsors: Fresh Books Cache Fly Kendo UI Get A Coder Job! Picks: Divya Creator Summit  Chris “Chuck” Take a break when traveling to conferences and such Vue.js in Action Eric Stackblitz Charles The One Thing Self Publishing School Ben Ted Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert Vue.js Meetups

Panel: Charles Max Wood Chris Fritz Special Guest: Kyle Holmberg & Alex Regan In this episode, the panel talks with two guests Kyle and Alex who work together in opensource. Kyle is a software engineer at AutoGravity interested in full-stack web development, graphic design, integrated systems, data visualizations, and soccer. Alex writes code and works with Parametric Studios, and he also loves puppies. Check out today’s episode where the panel and the two guests talk about the different frameworks and contributing to opensource. Show Topics: 3:03 – We got together because Alex mentioned his project. He was looking for something to get up running nice and easy. Boot Strap 4. That is a nice choice and I was contributing as a core team member at the time. He started with how do I get started with Boot Strap Vue. At the time I asked how do you do this...? And that’s how we got started. 4:03 – Guest continues more with this conversation. 4:30 – Chris: How did you start contributing within your company? 4:44 – Guest: There is a lot of autonomy with the last company I was working with (3 people there). I needed more fine tooth hooks and modals. Someone says X and you try to figure it out. So I was looking at the transitions, and there was a bug there. They hadn’t implemented any hooks, and I thought I could figure this out. From there, if you want a change I can help out. I don’t know if that change got implemented first. I started contributing some things to the library. I really got involved where someone (the creator of the library said you could be a core member. He took a trust in me. I started a lot in test coverage. That might not be the normal path to take. 6:39 – How long have you been developing? 6:42 – Guest: A year and a half. 7:00 – Chris: Any tips to opensource for beginners. 7:10 – Guest: Yes, having a thick skin. Everyone is anonymous on the Internet. People say things that they normally wouldn’t say in person. I figure if you put something out there someone will correct you. How can I get feedback? If you put yourself out there it’s like: failure to success. That process is what makes you better. 8:21 – Chris: Issues and chat like that. There is a lot of context that gets lost. When you just see the text it may seem angry 8:43 – Guest: I have a tendency towards sarcasm, and I have to save that to last. People come from different languages, and I’m not talking about software languages. English isn’t everyone’s first language. Good thing to keep in-mind. 9:14 – Internet is an international community. 9:22 – Guest continues this talk. Opensource is good to work on to get started with contributions. Especially with Operation Code it’s geared towards beginners; less complex. 10:30 – That is a good difference to show. 11:01 – Question. 11:05 – Guest. If you are a person with a lot of skin in their projects – I take pride in my work – I think if you have that mentality that you will want to submit to every request. Find some way to test every request against a...is this my concern or their concern? Figure out the boundaries. You will make mistakes and that’s fine. 11:54 – Panelist. 12:02 – Guest: Coming up with good interface boundaries for your libraries. 12:11 – Chuck: Once we figured out what really mattered than it makes it easier to say: yes or no. 12:26 - Guest: Conventional Commits. 13:06 – So Kyle what did you getting into opensource look like? 13:19 – Alex: Boot Strap. Operation Code. 15:07 – Chuck chimes-in about Aimee Knight and other people. Serving people and their country. You are helping people who have sacrificed. 15:58 – It is totally volunteer-based. 16:05 – Chris: What kind of questions did you ask Alex? How did you decide what to put in an issue? 16:25 – Alex: I tend to go to Stack Overflow. If it is in regards to a library I go to GitHub. Real time texts. Next.js – I just contributed to this this week. 19:21 – Chris: This question is for either one of you. For Questions and Answers – do you have any suggestions on what NOT to do when seeking help? 19:46 – Stay away from only asking a question in one sentence. There is so much information/context that you are leaving out, and that can often lead to more questions. Reasonable amount of contexts can go a long way. Code samples. Please Google the details for the markdown if it is a huge code. Context, context, context! 20:44 – I have an error, please fix it. Maybe that needs more context? 20:53 – Guest: What were you doing? There is a bigger overarching element. The problem they can see in front of them and what is the thing that you are TRYING to solve? 21:44 – More contexts that can help with a helpful answer. 21:53 – Guest: If someone used some learning tool... 22:13 – Chuck chimes-in. Chuck: It is something different that it could do something that you didn’t expect. 22:47 – Alex: Those are great moments. I love it when Kyle sees... That snowflake of your problem can help with documentation caveats. 23:44 – People are probably copying pasting. 24:05 – It can be the difference between understanding the page and not especially What not to do and what to do – any other tips? Can you have too much information? 24:32 – Guest: I am guilty of this sometimes. You can have too much information. The ability to converse in a real-time conversation is better. That’s my route to go. Maybe your problem is documented but documented poorly. Go to a real-time conversation to hash things out. 26:15 – Guest: If you do your homework with the different conversations: questions vs. concerns. Real-time conversation. He talks about GitHub issues and Stack Overflow. 27:48 – Chuck: My password is 123... If they can duplicate... Alex: Yeah too much information isn’t good. Some places mandate recreation like a JS Fiddle. Like Sandbox are cool tools. 29:32 – Is there a way to do the code wrong? 29:38 – Advertisement. 30:25 – Guest chimes-in with his answer. 31:31 – Question. If it’s opensource should they share? 31:33 – Absolutely. The difference that makes it for me is great. I can spot things that the machine can help me find. One small tip is when you provide code samples and GitHub issues use... The further you go out to recreate the problem there is a high payoff because they can get something working. The big difference is that it’s a huge pain to the person trying to convey the issue. If I do the simple version...I think you have to weigh your options. What tools are out there? Generate your data structure – there are costs to recreate the issue. 33:35 – Chris: 500 files, apps within the app – intercommunicating. All you do is download this, install this, it takes you ½ a day and how does this all work? 34:03 – Guest: You have to rein it in. Provide the easiest environment for it to occur. If you are having someone download a table and import it, and use a whole stack – you can try it – but I would advise to work really hard to find... 34:50 – In creating a demo keep it simple? 35:52 – Guests reply. 36:02 – Chuck. 36:07 – Chris: I learned about your experiences coming to opensource. Anything else that you would like to share with new contributors? 36:25 – Guest: Start with something that you have a genuine interest in. Something like a curiosity light bulb is on. It makes it more interesting. It’s a nice way to give back. Something that interests you. I have not found a case yet that I’m not compelled to help someone. Putting yourself out there you might be given a plate you don’t know what to do with. My learning experience is how welcoming opensource is. Maybe things are changing?  38:31 – Chuck: I have seen those communities but generally if they are there people frown down upon it. The newer opensource communities are very friendly. These projects are trying to gain adoptions, which is for the newer users. 39:17 – Guest: Final statements on opensource. Even if you think it is a small contribution it still helps. 40:55 – Guest chimes-in. It is important to have a platter for newcomers. 41:15 – Chris: I am curious to talk to you about how you’ve written React applications among others. Any advice? What resources should they 41:46 – Guest: Yeah. If you are making your new React application (from Vue land) there are many things that are similar and things that are different. As for preparing yourself, I am a huge fan of this one course. I had been coding (plus school) so 5 years, it’s okay to dive-into community courses. Dive-into a tutorial. Understand the huge core differences. He goes into those differences between React, Angular, and Vue. 43:30 – Guest talks about this, too. 45:50 – React doesn’t have an official router. Vue provides (he likes Vue’s mentality) other things. There is a library called One Loader. 46:50 – Guest: I was at a Meetup. One guy was doing C-sharp and game development. His wife had a different background, and I think they were sampling Angular, Vue, and React - all these different frameworks. That was interesting to talk with them. I relayed to them that Vue has free tutorials. Jeffry had an awesome Vue Cast. I think that’s what got me started in Vue. I learned from this tool and so can you! 48:11 – Chris: You aren’t starting from scratch if you know another framework? Do they translate well? 48:33 – Guest: I think so. There are a lot of ways to translate those patterns. 49:34 – Guest: React Rally – I just went to one. 49:50 – Chris chimes-in. Slots is mentioned 50:27 – Guest mentions the different frameworks. Guest: I went into functional components in Vue. I learned about the way... It helps you translate ideas. I don’t recommend it to everyone, but if you want to dig deep then it can help bridge the gap between one frameworks to another. 51:24 – Chris adds to this conversation. 51:36 – Guest: They are translatable. They are totally map-able. 5:46 – Chuck: Say someone was going to be on a Summit where they could meet with the React Core Team. What things would you suggest with them – and say these things are working here and these are working there. 52:12 – Guest: I would love to see... 53:03 – React doesn’t have a reactivity system you’d have to tell it more to... 53:15 – Guest chimes-in. Panel and guests go back-and-forth with this topic. 54:16 – Tooling. 55:38 – Guest: With React coming out with time slicing features how does that map to Vue and what can you say from one team to another. What is there to review? There is a lot of great things you can do with... 56:44 – Conversation continues. 57:59 – React has some partial answers to that, too. Progress. 58:10 – When Vue came onto the scene everyone felt like why do we need another framework? We have Ember, and... But with Vue it felt cohesive. It had an opportunity to learn from all the other frameworks. In terms of progress everyone is on the frontlines and learning from each other. Everyone has a different view on it. How can se learn from this and...? 59:12 – Chris: I am grateful for the different frameworks. Anyone comes out with a new tool then it’s the best. Creating something that is even better than before. 59:38 – Guest. 59:49 – Chuck: There are good frameworks out there why do I need another one. That’s the point. Someone will come along and say: I like what’s out there but I want to make... That’s what Vue was right? In some ways Vue was a leap forward and some ways it wasn’t – that’s how I feel. We need something to make things a bit easier to save 10 hours a week. 1:01:11 – Even Vue’s... 1:02:20 – Guest: In terms of why do we need another framework conversation – I don’t think we need another reason. Go ahead, what if it is groundbreaking it makes everyone do things differently and keep up. I love the idea that JavaScript is saying: what is the new framework today? The tradeoff there is that there are so many different ways to do things. It is hard for beginners. 1:03:88 – Chuck: How to find you online? 1:03:49 – Kyle states his social media profiles, so does Alex, too. 1:04:06 – Chuck: Let’s do some picks! 1:04:10 – Code Badges’ Advertisement Links: JSON Generator Ember.js Vue React Angular JavaScript Udemy One-Loader YouTube Talk: Beyond React 16 by Dan Abramov Badgr Kickstarter: CodeBadge.org Alex Sasha Regan’s Twitter Kyle Holmberg’s Twitter Kyle’s website Dev.to – Alex’s information DevChat TV GitHub Meetup Operation Code Sponsors: Kendo UI Digital Ocean Code Badge Cache Fly Picks: Chris Home decorating shows Charles TerraGenesis GetaCoderJob.com Swag.devchat.tv Codebadge.org Kyle OperationCode Yet Another React vs.Vue Article Hacktoberfest Alex Uplift Standing Desk System 76 Rust

Panel: Charles Max Wood Chris Fritz Special Guest: Kyle Holmberg & Alex Regan In this episode, the panel talks with two guests Kyle and Alex who work together in opensource. Kyle is a software engineer at AutoGravity interested in full-stack web development, graphic design, integrated systems, data visualizations, and soccer. Alex writes code and works with Parametric Studios, and he also loves puppies. Check out today’s episode where the panel and the two guests talk about the different frameworks and contributing to opensource. Show Topics: 3:03 – We got together because Alex mentioned his project. He was looking for something to get up running nice and easy. Boot Strap 4. That is a nice choice and I was contributing as a core team member at the time. He started with how do I get started with Boot Strap Vue. At the time I asked how do you do this...? And that’s how we got started. 4:03 – Guest continues more with this conversation. 4:30 – Chris: How did you start contributing within your company? 4:44 – Guest: There is a lot of autonomy with the last company I was working with (3 people there). I needed more fine tooth hooks and modals. Someone says X and you try to figure it out. So I was looking at the transitions, and there was a bug there. They hadn’t implemented any hooks, and I thought I could figure this out. From there, if you want a change I can help out. I don’t know if that change got implemented first. I started contributing some things to the library. I really got involved where someone (the creator of the library said you could be a core member. He took a trust in me. I started a lot in test coverage. That might not be the normal path to take. 6:39 – How long have you been developing? 6:42 – Guest: A year and a half. 7:00 – Chris: Any tips to opensource for beginners. 7:10 – Guest: Yes, having a thick skin. Everyone is anonymous on the Internet. People say things that they normally wouldn’t say in person. I figure if you put something out there someone will correct you. How can I get feedback? If you put yourself out there it’s like: failure to success. That process is what makes you better. 8:21 – Chris: Issues and chat like that. There is a lot of context that gets lost. When you just see the text it may seem angry 8:43 – Guest: I have a tendency towards sarcasm, and I have to save that to last. People come from different languages, and I’m not talking about software languages. English isn’t everyone’s first language. Good thing to keep in-mind. 9:14 – Internet is an international community. 9:22 – Guest continues this talk. Opensource is good to work on to get started with contributions. Especially with Operation Code it’s geared towards beginners; less complex. 10:30 – That is a good difference to show. 11:01 – Question. 11:05 – Guest. If you are a person with a lot of skin in their projects – I take pride in my work – I think if you have that mentality that you will want to submit to every request. Find some way to test every request against a...is this my concern or their concern? Figure out the boundaries. You will make mistakes and that’s fine. 11:54 – Panelist. 12:02 – Guest: Coming up with good interface boundaries for your libraries. 12:11 – Chuck: Once we figured out what really mattered than it makes it easier to say: yes or no. 12:26 - Guest: Conventional Commits. 13:06 – So Kyle what did you getting into opensource look like? 13:19 – Alex: Boot Strap. Operation Code. 15:07 – Chuck chimes-in about Aimee Knight and other people. Serving people and their country. You are helping people who have sacrificed. 15:58 – It is totally volunteer-based. 16:05 – Chris: What kind of questions did you ask Alex? How did you decide what to put in an issue? 16:25 – Alex: I tend to go to Stack Overflow. If it is in regards to a library I go to GitHub. Real time texts. Next.js – I just contributed to this this week. 19:21 – Chris: This question is for either one of you. For Questions and Answers – do you have any suggestions on what NOT to do when seeking help? 19:46 – Stay away from only asking a question in one sentence. There is so much information/context that you are leaving out, and that can often lead to more questions. Reasonable amount of contexts can go a long way. Code samples. Please Google the details for the markdown if it is a huge code. Context, context, context! 20:44 – I have an error, please fix it. Maybe that needs more context? 20:53 – Guest: What were you doing? There is a bigger overarching element. The problem they can see in front of them and what is the thing that you are TRYING to solve? 21:44 – More contexts that can help with a helpful answer. 21:53 – Guest: If someone used some learning tool... 22:13 – Chuck chimes-in. Chuck: It is something different that it could do something that you didn’t expect. 22:47 – Alex: Those are great moments. I love it when Kyle sees... That snowflake of your problem can help with documentation caveats. 23:44 – People are probably copying pasting. 24:05 – It can be the difference between understanding the page and not especially What not to do and what to do – any other tips? Can you have too much information? 24:32 – Guest: I am guilty of this sometimes. You can have too much information. The ability to converse in a real-time conversation is better. That’s my route to go. Maybe your problem is documented but documented poorly. Go to a real-time conversation to hash things out. 26:15 – Guest: If you do your homework with the different conversations: questions vs. concerns. Real-time conversation. He talks about GitHub issues and Stack Overflow. 27:48 – Chuck: My password is 123... If they can duplicate... Alex: Yeah too much information isn’t good. Some places mandate recreation like a JS Fiddle. Like Sandbox are cool tools. 29:32 – Is there a way to do the code wrong? 29:38 – Advertisement. 30:25 – Guest chimes-in with his answer. 31:31 – Question. If it’s opensource should they share? 31:33 – Absolutely. The difference that makes it for me is great. I can spot things that the machine can help me find. One small tip is when you provide code samples and GitHub issues use... The further you go out to recreate the problem there is a high payoff because they can get something working. The big difference is that it’s a huge pain to the person trying to convey the issue. If I do the simple version...I think you have to weigh your options. What tools are out there? Generate your data structure – there are costs to recreate the issue. 33:35 – Chris: 500 files, apps within the app – intercommunicating. All you do is download this, install this, it takes you ½ a day and how does this all work? 34:03 – Guest: You have to rein it in. Provide the easiest environment for it to occur. If you are having someone download a table and import it, and use a whole stack – you can try it – but I would advise to work really hard to find... 34:50 – In creating a demo keep it simple? 35:52 – Guests reply. 36:02 – Chuck. 36:07 – Chris: I learned about your experiences coming to opensource. Anything else that you would like to share with new contributors? 36:25 – Guest: Start with something that you have a genuine interest in. Something like a curiosity light bulb is on. It makes it more interesting. It’s a nice way to give back. Something that interests you. I have not found a case yet that I’m not compelled to help someone. Putting yourself out there you might be given a plate you don’t know what to do with. My learning experience is how welcoming opensource is. Maybe things are changing?  38:31 – Chuck: I have seen those communities but generally if they are there people frown down upon it. The newer opensource communities are very friendly. These projects are trying to gain adoptions, which is for the newer users. 39:17 – Guest: Final statements on opensource. Even if you think it is a small contribution it still helps. 40:55 – Guest chimes-in. It is important to have a platter for newcomers. 41:15 – Chris: I am curious to talk to you about how you’ve written React applications among others. Any advice? What resources should they 41:46 – Guest: Yeah. If you are making your new React application (from Vue land) there are many things that are similar and things that are different. As for preparing yourself, I am a huge fan of this one course. I had been coding (plus school) so 5 years, it’s okay to dive-into community courses. Dive-into a tutorial. Understand the huge core differences. He goes into those differences between React, Angular, and Vue. 43:30 – Guest talks about this, too. 45:50 – React doesn’t have an official router. Vue provides (he likes Vue’s mentality) other things. There is a library called One Loader. 46:50 – Guest: I was at a Meetup. One guy was doing C-sharp and game development. His wife had a different background, and I think they were sampling Angular, Vue, and React - all these different frameworks. That was interesting to talk with them. I relayed to them that Vue has free tutorials. Jeffry had an awesome Vue Cast. I think that’s what got me started in Vue. I learned from this tool and so can you! 48:11 – Chris: You aren’t starting from scratch if you know another framework? Do they translate well? 48:33 – Guest: I think so. There are a lot of ways to translate those patterns. 49:34 – Guest: React Rally – I just went to one. 49:50 – Chris chimes-in. Slots is mentioned 50:27 – Guest mentions the different frameworks. Guest: I went into functional components in Vue. I learned about the way... It helps you translate ideas. I don’t recommend it to everyone, but if you want to dig deep then it can help bridge the gap between one frameworks to another. 51:24 – Chris adds to this conversation. 51:36 – Guest: They are translatable. They are totally map-able. 5:46 – Chuck: Say someone was going to be on a Summit where they could meet with the React Core Team. What things would you suggest with them – and say these things are working here and these are working there. 52:12 – Guest: I would love to see... 53:03 – React doesn’t have a reactivity system you’d have to tell it more to... 53:15 – Guest chimes-in. Panel and guests go back-and-forth with this topic. 54:16 – Tooling. 55:38 – Guest: With React coming out with time slicing features how does that map to Vue and what can you say from one team to another. What is there to review? There is a lot of great things you can do with... 56:44 – Conversation continues. 57:59 – React has some partial answers to that, too. Progress. 58:10 – When Vue came onto the scene everyone felt like why do we need another framework? We have Ember, and... But with Vue it felt cohesive. It had an opportunity to learn from all the other frameworks. In terms of progress everyone is on the frontlines and learning from each other. Everyone has a different view on it. How can se learn from this and...? 59:12 – Chris: I am grateful for the different frameworks. Anyone comes out with a new tool then it’s the best. Creating something that is even better than before. 59:38 – Guest. 59:49 – Chuck: There are good frameworks out there why do I need another one. That’s the point. Someone will come along and say: I like what’s out there but I want to make... That’s what Vue was right? In some ways Vue was a leap forward and some ways it wasn’t – that’s how I feel. We need something to make things a bit easier to save 10 hours a week. 1:01:11 – Even Vue’s... 1:02:20 – Guest: In terms of why do we need another framework conversation – I don’t think we need another reason. Go ahead, what if it is groundbreaking it makes everyone do things differently and keep up. I love the idea that JavaScript is saying: what is the new framework today? The tradeoff there is that there are so many different ways to do things. It is hard for beginners. 1:03:88 – Chuck: How to find you online? 1:03:49 – Kyle states his social media profiles, so does Alex, too. 1:04:06 – Chuck: Let’s do some picks! 1:04:10 – Code Badges’ Advertisement Links: JSON Generator Ember.js Vue React Angular JavaScript Udemy One-Loader YouTube Talk: Beyond React 16 by Dan Abramov Badgr Kickstarter: CodeBadge.org Alex Sasha Regan’s Twitter Kyle Holmberg’s Twitter Kyle’s website Dev.to – Alex’s information DevChat TV GitHub Meetup Operation Code Sponsors: Kendo UI Digital Ocean Code Badge Cache Fly Picks: Chris Home decorating shows Charles TerraGenesis GetaCoderJob.com Swag.devchat.tv Codebadge.org Kyle OperationCode Yet Another React vs.Vue Article Hacktoberfest Alex Uplift Standing Desk System 76 Rust

Panel: Charles Max Wood (DevChat T.V.) Nader Dabit (Poland) Special Guests: Tomas Eglinskas In this episode, the panel talks with guest speaker, Tomas Eglinskas, and the panel talks to him about an article he wrote via Free Code Camp Medium. Currently, Tomas is a software developer at Zenitech. The panel and the guest dive-into lessons that not only apply to being a developer, but great life lessons that everyone can learn from. Check-out today’s episode! Show Topics: 1:18 – Chuck: Our special guest is Tomas Eglinskas. We want to talk to you about your article you wrote on the Free Code Camp Medium. How do you get something posted/published there? 1:29 – Tomas – It’s not that hard to get something published there. You can send your articles via email and they will publish it. You can get feedback and resend it, and perhaps they will publish it. 2:06 – Chuck: Quincy and you are besties, right? 2:11 – Chuck: We should get Quincy on this show. 2:21 – Chuck: How did you get into React? 2:25 – Tomas: How I got into React is a bit interesting. It started at the university; at first it was really, really hard for me. Time pressed on and I got hooked. It’s really, really fun. That’s how it initially started. 3:06 – Chuck: Article is titled: “The Most Important Lessons I’ve Learned After a Year of Working with React.” 3:18 – Tomas: What started behind it: I was doing my bucket list. I wanted to publish something at some point. I wanted to try to write and share something from my side of things. I wanted to prove to myself that I can/could. 4:05 – Nader: What do you do now with React? 4:13 – Tomas: We do everything: frontend and backend. In my company we usually use everything with React with production and with my own projects. I have tried Angular but I like React best. 4:45 – Chuck: I am curious...How do you get past that? Where my way is the right way. 5:10 – Thomas: That sentence came from when I was learning it. People would say: this is the way, or someone else would say: no, this is the way. People are afraid of doing their own projects and using the technology. Finding information and figure out what is right and what is wrong, but you eventually figure out your own opinion. There are so many opinions and tutorials and it’s frustrating, because there are too many things to learn. 6:26 – Chuck: Nader, what is the right way to do it? 6:33 – Nader: Yeah, I agree. It’s hard to decipher. What is right or what is wrong? How did you come to your conclusions? My best practices might not be the best practices for someone else. 7:18 – Tomas: Everyone is learning all the time. Their experiences are different. You have to decide what is best for the long-term. At least for me, it was practice and learning and reading from other people; from podcasts, articles, etc. I am open to say that I am not right, but want to know why it’s not “right.” Always trying, always making mistakes. I guess something like that. 8:42 – Nader: Don’t stick to the basics and become advanced. In any career right now you don’t know how to do everything, but to do one thing (topic) really well. The generalists aren’t the people they are hiring; they are hiring the specialists. 9:24 – Tomas comments. 9:37 – Chuck: There is something to be said – I think it’s good to know general things, but you are right. They are hiring the specialists. They are going to look at you differently than other people. You like your thinking challenged a bit. Where do you go to do that to upgrade your skills? 10:18 – Tomas: The silliest one is going to interiors. That’s the fastest way of feedback: what is right or wrong about my code. Going to conferences and Meetups, and doing projects with someone else. I was doing a project with a friend – everybody used Java – but we all used it differently. We all worked together and challenged each other. 11:43 – Chuck: Talking to people – asking them: how do you do this, or why do you do it this way? 12:01 – Tomas: Don’t be shy and have a presence. I guess in America there are a lot of Meetups, in my country we don’t. In the States you have the people who do the tutorials, and such. You can be challenged everyday. 12:40 – Chuck: It depends on where you are. Utah we have a strong community. It’s interesting to say. There was a talk given my Miles Forest at a conference. He would drive to Seattle to be apart of a users group to be apart of it – he would drive 2-3 hours to do this. Eventually, he made his own user group. 13:55 – Nader: I am here in Europe now. I have seen a lot of events going on. Just all of the countries I have heard of different events. I haven’t heard about Lithuania, where you are at Tomas. 14:28 – Chuck: Get A Coder Job. Find Meetups – I will tell people to do this. They will say: There aren’t any in my area. I tell them to type in different search words. To me, it’s telling because it’s “just TRY it!” You never know what will be out there. Go look and see if there is something out there for you. 15:28 – Nader: I agree. I learned a lot through those. 15:59 – Tomas: It is a dream to be an organizer of event but people are afraid that nobody will show. Nobody expected for people to show-up, but they did! Don’t be afraid – you’ll have a great time! 16:44 – Chuck: React is revolving so you need to be up-to-date – good point in your article. People want to reach some level of proficiency. You have to keep learning. How do you stay up-to-date with all of the new features? How do you know what to look at? 17:58 – Tomas: Don’t forget fundamentals. Now understand React from under the hood. You must know the reason behind it. I think that is the basic thing and the most important one, at least in my opinion. We get so wrapped up with the new things, but forgot the basics. 18:41 – Advertisement – Digital Ocean 19:27 – Nader: I am always checking Twitter. This is a good place to start, because I will see something being discussed and then maybe a year later how it all comes together. Twitter is real time. I follow the few top dozen important people through Twitter; Facebook people and other important people. They will talk about what is happening NOW and proposed things. Also, following people through Medium as well as GitHub. 21:01 – Tomas: I agree about Twitter. It’s fun to see what people are talking about. Things that you normally don’t hear through normal avenues. 21:27 – Nader: What interests you for the future? What do you want to specialize in? 21:41 – Tomas: As I progress, and I know more things (than I did before) I find that I want to KNOW more, in general! I am focused on React and try new things. I think about DevOps, but it’s important to know at some level different things as a whole: the backend and the frontend, too. Why is DevOps is important in the first place. I like to understand the system as a whole. And little by little I want to specialize in the frontend, too. It’s good to know the whole infrastructure, too. 23:23 – Nader comments. 22:45 – Tomas comments. 23:55 – Nader and Tomas go back-and-forth. 25:15 – Tomas: How big is your workshop? 25:24 – Nader: We just did one in Croatia. It depends really 2 days, etc. Different lengths. 25:47 – Chuck: Nader, how do people find these different workshops? 25:54 – Nader: Just follow me through Twitter! 26:11 – Tomas: I would like to attend. 26:19 – Chuck: What was one of these lessons that were the hardest for you to learn? 26:33 – Tomas: Not sticking to the basics. When you can show things that are more advanced. When you push yourself to know advanced topics then you are pushing those around you, too. You are encouraging others to learn, too! So that way both, you and the other people, aren’t stagnant. 27:51 – Chuck comments. 28:00 – Tomas: It’s not even “fancy” it’s knowing the basics. Tomas was talking about tutorials and other topics. 30:02 – Nader and Tomas go back-and-forth. 30:24 – Chuck: I think it’s telling and what you are pointing out in your article. Some people get to a level of proficiency, get the job, and then they go home, and that’s it. They aren’t pushing themselves. I’m not knocking these people. But there are people out there saying: Here is what I learned, this is what I want to share. 31:29 – Tomas: Yes, share your knowledge! 31:43 – Chuck: Other thing I want to talk about is another point in your article. 32:07 – Tomas: You will look at your code a few days/weeks later and you will say: Wow, I can do this better. Don’t bash yourself; learn from it. The most interesting screw-up was when I deleted a GitHub... 33:43 – Chuck: What is your good / bad story, Nader? 33:55 – Nader: My first job and have written the most terrible code. Go back a week / month later and notice major issues. The first year writing React was rough / interesting times. I learned a lot, because you are learning how the different architectural things work. 34:48 – Tomas: What was the hardest thing to learn? 34:56 – Nader: Something being “buggy” and over-complex. It wasn’t the original Flux, and it was a variant. Everything after Redux was easier. If you understand Redux then it’s pretty nice. 36:07 – Thomas: I think Redux was the biggest headache for me. When you are starting off it’s magic. 36:38 – Tomas: I like when people don’t over-engineer things. I am happy from time-to-time if you need Redux, great, if not then that’s fine. 37:28 – Chuck: Let’s do picks! Where can people find you, Tomas? 37:35 – Tomas: Medium. There are other things I want to talk about, so Medium is a good platform. A little bit of GitHub, too. I follow Twitter people, but I’m not active. In Europe, people use Twitter – we follow the famous people, but aren’t that active. 38:45 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! Links: Kendo UI Ruby on Rails Angular Redux Meetup Get A Coder Job Charles Max Wood’s Twitter Nader Dabit’s Twitter Nader Dabit’s Website Tomas Eglinskas’ GitHub Tomas Eglinskas’ LinkedIn Tomas Eglinskas’ Medium GitHub’s Twitter Free Code Camp Medium Tomas’ Article: “The Most Important Lessons I’ve Learned After a Year of Working with React.” Sponsors: Kendo UI Digital Ocean Get A Coder Job Picks: Charles CodeBadge.Org – Kickstarter Book – Get A Coder Job Video Course ^ Zapier ConFreaks Kent C. Dodds Nader Frontend Conference – December – Warsaw – Some speakers have been announced, not all AWS Tomas Egghead and Frontend Masters! Dribble – to progress as a frontend developer

Panel: Charles Max Wood (DevChat T.V.) Nader Dabit (Poland) Special Guests: Tomas Eglinskas In this episode, the panel talks with guest speaker, Tomas Eglinskas, and the panel talks to him about an article he wrote via Free Code Camp Medium. Currently, Tomas is a software developer at Zenitech. The panel and the guest dive-into lessons that not only apply to being a developer, but great life lessons that everyone can learn from. Check-out today’s episode! Show Topics: 1:18 – Chuck: Our special guest is Tomas Eglinskas. We want to talk to you about your article you wrote on the Free Code Camp Medium. How do you get something posted/published there? 1:29 – Tomas – It’s not that hard to get something published there. You can send your articles via email and they will publish it. You can get feedback and resend it, and perhaps they will publish it. 2:06 – Chuck: Quincy and you are besties, right? 2:11 – Chuck: We should get Quincy on this show. 2:21 – Chuck: How did you get into React? 2:25 – Tomas: How I got into React is a bit interesting. It started at the university; at first it was really, really hard for me. Time pressed on and I got hooked. It’s really, really fun. That’s how it initially started. 3:06 – Chuck: Article is titled: “The Most Important Lessons I’ve Learned After a Year of Working with React.” 3:18 – Tomas: What started behind it: I was doing my bucket list. I wanted to publish something at some point. I wanted to try to write and share something from my side of things. I wanted to prove to myself that I can/could. 4:05 – Nader: What do you do now with React? 4:13 – Tomas: We do everything: frontend and backend. In my company we usually use everything with React with production and with my own projects. I have tried Angular but I like React best. 4:45 – Chuck: I am curious...How do you get past that? Where my way is the right way. 5:10 – Thomas: That sentence came from when I was learning it. People would say: this is the way, or someone else would say: no, this is the way. People are afraid of doing their own projects and using the technology. Finding information and figure out what is right and what is wrong, but you eventually figure out your own opinion. There are so many opinions and tutorials and it’s frustrating, because there are too many things to learn. 6:26 – Chuck: Nader, what is the right way to do it? 6:33 – Nader: Yeah, I agree. It’s hard to decipher. What is right or what is wrong? How did you come to your conclusions? My best practices might not be the best practices for someone else. 7:18 – Tomas: Everyone is learning all the time. Their experiences are different. You have to decide what is best for the long-term. At least for me, it was practice and learning and reading from other people; from podcasts, articles, etc. I am open to say that I am not right, but want to know why it’s not “right.” Always trying, always making mistakes. I guess something like that. 8:42 – Nader: Don’t stick to the basics and become advanced. In any career right now you don’t know how to do everything, but to do one thing (topic) really well. The generalists aren’t the people they are hiring; they are hiring the specialists. 9:24 – Tomas comments. 9:37 – Chuck: There is something to be said – I think it’s good to know general things, but you are right. They are hiring the specialists. They are going to look at you differently than other people. You like your thinking challenged a bit. Where do you go to do that to upgrade your skills? 10:18 – Tomas: The silliest one is going to interiors. That’s the fastest way of feedback: what is right or wrong about my code. Going to conferences and Meetups, and doing projects with someone else. I was doing a project with a friend – everybody used Java – but we all used it differently. We all worked together and challenged each other. 11:43 – Chuck: Talking to people – asking them: how do you do this, or why do you do it this way? 12:01 – Tomas: Don’t be shy and have a presence. I guess in America there are a lot of Meetups, in my country we don’t. In the States you have the people who do the tutorials, and such. You can be challenged everyday. 12:40 – Chuck: It depends on where you are. Utah we have a strong community. It’s interesting to say. There was a talk given my Miles Forest at a conference. He would drive to Seattle to be apart of a users group to be apart of it – he would drive 2-3 hours to do this. Eventually, he made his own user group. 13:55 – Nader: I am here in Europe now. I have seen a lot of events going on. Just all of the countries I have heard of different events. I haven’t heard about Lithuania, where you are at Tomas. 14:28 – Chuck: Get A Coder Job. Find Meetups – I will tell people to do this. They will say: There aren’t any in my area. I tell them to type in different search words. To me, it’s telling because it’s “just TRY it!” You never know what will be out there. Go look and see if there is something out there for you. 15:28 – Nader: I agree. I learned a lot through those. 15:59 – Tomas: It is a dream to be an organizer of event but people are afraid that nobody will show. Nobody expected for people to show-up, but they did! Don’t be afraid – you’ll have a great time! 16:44 – Chuck: React is revolving so you need to be up-to-date – good point in your article. People want to reach some level of proficiency. You have to keep learning. How do you stay up-to-date with all of the new features? How do you know what to look at? 17:58 – Tomas: Don’t forget fundamentals. Now understand React from under the hood. You must know the reason behind it. I think that is the basic thing and the most important one, at least in my opinion. We get so wrapped up with the new things, but forgot the basics. 18:41 – Advertisement – Digital Ocean 19:27 – Nader: I am always checking Twitter. This is a good place to start, because I will see something being discussed and then maybe a year later how it all comes together. Twitter is real time. I follow the few top dozen important people through Twitter; Facebook people and other important people. They will talk about what is happening NOW and proposed things. Also, following people through Medium as well as GitHub. 21:01 – Tomas: I agree about Twitter. It’s fun to see what people are talking about. Things that you normally don’t hear through normal avenues. 21:27 – Nader: What interests you for the future? What do you want to specialize in? 21:41 – Tomas: As I progress, and I know more things (than I did before) I find that I want to KNOW more, in general! I am focused on React and try new things. I think about DevOps, but it’s important to know at some level different things as a whole: the backend and the frontend, too. Why is DevOps is important in the first place. I like to understand the system as a whole. And little by little I want to specialize in the frontend, too. It’s good to know the whole infrastructure, too. 23:23 – Nader comments. 22:45 – Tomas comments. 23:55 – Nader and Tomas go back-and-forth. 25:15 – Tomas: How big is your workshop? 25:24 – Nader: We just did one in Croatia. It depends really 2 days, etc. Different lengths. 25:47 – Chuck: Nader, how do people find these different workshops? 25:54 – Nader: Just follow me through Twitter! 26:11 – Tomas: I would like to attend. 26:19 – Chuck: What was one of these lessons that were the hardest for you to learn? 26:33 – Tomas: Not sticking to the basics. When you can show things that are more advanced. When you push yourself to know advanced topics then you are pushing those around you, too. You are encouraging others to learn, too! So that way both, you and the other people, aren’t stagnant. 27:51 – Chuck comments. 28:00 – Tomas: It’s not even “fancy” it’s knowing the basics. Tomas was talking about tutorials and other topics. 30:02 – Nader and Tomas go back-and-forth. 30:24 – Chuck: I think it’s telling and what you are pointing out in your article. Some people get to a level of proficiency, get the job, and then they go home, and that’s it. They aren’t pushing themselves. I’m not knocking these people. But there are people out there saying: Here is what I learned, this is what I want to share. 31:29 – Tomas: Yes, share your knowledge! 31:43 – Chuck: Other thing I want to talk about is another point in your article. 32:07 – Tomas: You will look at your code a few days/weeks later and you will say: Wow, I can do this better. Don’t bash yourself; learn from it. The most interesting screw-up was when I deleted a GitHub... 33:43 – Chuck: What is your good / bad story, Nader? 33:55 – Nader: My first job and have written the most terrible code. Go back a week / month later and notice major issues. The first year writing React was rough / interesting times. I learned a lot, because you are learning how the different architectural things work. 34:48 – Tomas: What was the hardest thing to learn? 34:56 – Nader: Something being “buggy” and over-complex. It wasn’t the original Flux, and it was a variant. Everything after Redux was easier. If you understand Redux then it’s pretty nice. 36:07 – Thomas: I think Redux was the biggest headache for me. When you are starting off it’s magic. 36:38 – Tomas: I like when people don’t over-engineer things. I am happy from time-to-time if you need Redux, great, if not then that’s fine. 37:28 – Chuck: Let’s do picks! Where can people find you, Tomas? 37:35 – Tomas: Medium. There are other things I want to talk about, so Medium is a good platform. A little bit of GitHub, too. I follow Twitter people, but I’m not active. In Europe, people use Twitter – we follow the famous people, but aren’t that active. 38:45 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! Links: Kendo UI Ruby on Rails Angular Redux Meetup Get A Coder Job Charles Max Wood’s Twitter Nader Dabit’s Twitter Nader Dabit’s Website Tomas Eglinskas’ GitHub Tomas Eglinskas’ LinkedIn Tomas Eglinskas’ Medium GitHub’s Twitter Free Code Camp Medium Tomas’ Article: “The Most Important Lessons I’ve Learned After a Year of Working with React.” Sponsors: Kendo UI Digital Ocean Get A Coder Job Picks: Charles CodeBadge.Org – Kickstarter Book – Get A Coder Job Video Course ^ Zapier ConFreaks Kent C. Dodds Nader Frontend Conference – December – Warsaw – Some speakers have been announced, not all AWS Tomas Egghead and Frontend Masters! Dribble – to progress as a frontend developer

Panel: Divya Sasidharan Charles Max Wood Joe Eames Chris Fritz Erik Hanchett John Papa Special Guest: No Guest(s) In this episode, the panel talks amongst themselves on the topic: how does one contribute to opensource work? They discuss their various ways that they contribute, such as speaking at conferences, recording videos for YouTube, podcasting, among others. Check-out today’s episode to get some insight and inspiration of how YOU can contribute to YOUR community!  Show Topics: 1:31 – Erik: Contributing to opensource – and being a good resource for the community. Contributing and still making a living. If people want to make this more sustainable and doing work for the community. 2:26 – Chuck: What do you been by “contributing” – because people could think that “code contributions” would be it. 2:50 – Erik: Answering people’s questions in a chat, code contributions, or doing a podcast or doing a blog posts. I think there are a lot of ways to contribute. Really anything to make their lives and work easier. 3:33 – Panelist: Can we go around and ask the panel individually what THEY do? It could be as simple as mentoring someone at your work. I’m curious to see what the panelist members have done. Sometimes you can get paid for those contributions. 4:40 – Panelist: I am super scared to contribute source code. I really love organizing things: Meetups, conferences, etc. That’s my favorite sort of work. It is also terrifying, though, too. Educational content and organizing conferences are my favorite ways to contribute. 6:10 – Panelist: Why is that attractive for you? 6:22 – Panelist: That’s a good question. I’ve already started planning for the 2022 conference. It’s very physical – there are people that are present. Very direct interaction. My second favorite is sometimes I will teach at local boot camp, and the topic is about interviewing. There is interaction there, too. 8:32 – Panelist: Why do you think organizing conferences is useful? 8:46 – Panelist: Top way is that I will hear stories after the fact. “Oh I came to the conference, met this person, and now I have a new job that pays 30% more...thank you!” Stories like that are rewarding. It’s a ripple effect. A conference the main thing you are putting out there are videos (main product) going to YouTube. The people that are there, at the conference, are interacting people and they are making friends and making contacts. It inspires them to do better. John Papa just goes out there to talk into the hallway. You can talk to Chris Fritz in the hall. Make yourself available. You are the celebrities and people want to meet you. 12:20 – Panel talks about how desperate they are to talk to Chris. 12:36 – Panelist: Going to conferences and meeting other people. 13:08 – Panelist: Taking part of conferences in other ways. That’s something that you do Divya Sasidharan? 13:33 – Divya: It depends on your personality. You get to speak as a speaker, because you get visibility fast. I don’t think you don’t have to speak if you don’t want to speak. Anything within your community that is beneficial. Or the one-to-one interactions are great. Having a conversation with another person that cannot respond. It’s nice to give a speech because it’s a one-way conversation. I like the preparation part of it. The delivery is the nerves, afterwards is a high because it’s over with. I really like writing demos. For the demos I put in a lot of time into it. It gives me the space and time constraint to work on those demos. 16:10 – Do you like the preparation or the delivery? 16:20 – Preparation part that I do not like as much because it is nerve-wrecking, and then the anticipation to go up there on stage. 16:55 – Panelist: I am nervous until when it starts. Once I start talking – well that’s it! Can’t go back now. 17:26 – John: I have given a few talks at a conference. 17:39 – Panelist: Doing good and contributing. I knew John Papa when he was in Microsoft in 2000/2001. I read about it. Everyone knew about him. It would be so GREAT to meet John Papa, and now we are friends! We get to talk about personal stuff and I learn from him. 18:42 – Chris: I have had moments like that, too. Act like they are a normal person. 19:01 – Chuck: After I walk off the stage people want to talk to me afterwards. 19:24 – John: For my personal style, I learn about talking at conferences. I spend a lot of times building a demo. I don’t spend a lot of times with decks. I work on the code, the talk separately. I whip that up quickly, so I don’t This is the story I am going to tell – that’s what I tell myself before I do a talk at a conference. Afterwards, people come up to you years later – and they give you these awesome feedback comments. It’s a huge reward and very fulfilling. There was someone in this world you were able to impact. That’s why I like teaching. I watch the sessions on YouTube. I want to have deep conversations with people. You are missing out if you aren’t talking to people at the conference. 23:26 – Panelist: Yeah, I agree. I do a lot of YouTube videos. I write a blog for a few years on Node and such. Then I got into videos, and helping new developers. Videos on Vue.js. Like you, Joe, I try to combine the two. If I can help myself, and OTHERS, that is great. I promote my own courses, my own affiliate links. It’s really fun talking in front of a video camera. Talking through something complex and making it simple. 24:52 – Panelist: Creating videos vs. speaking at a conference. 25:02 – Panelist: My bucket list is to do my conferences. I want to start putting out proposals. Easiest thing for me is to make videos. I used to do 20 takes before I was happy, but now I do one take and that’s it. 256:00 – Sounds like lower effort. You don’t have to ask anyone for permission to do a YouTube video. 26:21 – Panelist: Even if you are a beginner, then you can probably help others, too. At first, you feel like you are talking to yourself. If anything else, you are learning and you are getting experience. The ruby ducky programming. Talking to something that cannot respond to you. 27:11 – Like when I write a... 27:29 – Check out duck punching, and Paul Irish. 28:00 – Digital Ocean 28:42 – The creativity of doing YouTube videos. Is that rewarding to be creative or the organization? What part do you like in the creation process? 29:23 – I think a blog you have text you can be funny you can make the text interesting. With videos it’s a whole new world of teaching. YouTubers teaching certain concepts.  There are other people that have awesome animations. If I wanted to talk about a topic and do something simple or talk outside – there are a ton of different ways 31:10 – Panelist: Some times I just want to go off and be creative; hats-off to you. 31:28 – Panelist: I have tried to do a course with time stamps and certain 32:00 – D: Do you have a process of how you want to create your videos – what is your process? 32:22 – Panelist: I have a list of topics that I want to talk about. Then when I record it then I have a cheat sheet and I just go. Other people do other things, though. Like sketches and story boarding. 33:16 – D: Fun, fun, function. He has poster boards that he holds up and stuff. 33:36 – Panelist: People who listen to this podcast might be interested in podcasting? 33:54 – Panelist: Anyone who runs a podcast, Chuck? 34:16 – Chuck: When I started podcasting – I initially had to edit and publish – but now I pay someone to do it. It is a lot more work than it is. All you have to do is record and have a decent microphone, and put it out there. 35:18 – Panelist: It’s a labor of love. You almost lost your house because at first it wasn’t profitable. 35:45 – Chuck: Yeah for the most part we have it figured it out. Even then, we have 12 shows on the network on DevChat TV. 3 more I want to start and I want to put those on YouTube. Some people want to be on a new show with me. We will see. 36:37 – Chuck: I have a lot of people who asked about Python. We all come together and talk about what we are doing and seeing. It’s the water cooler discussion that people can hear for themselves. The conversation that you wish you could have to talk to experts. 38:03 – Podcasts provide that if you cannot get that at a conference? 38:16 – Conference talks are a little bit more prepared. We can go deeper in a podcast interview, because we can bring them back. You can get as involved as you want. It’s also 38:53 – Chuck: Podcasting is good if there is good content and it’s regular. 39:09 – Panelist: What is GOOD content? 39:20 – Chuck: There are different things people want. Generally they want something like: Staying Current Staying on the Edge When you go into the content it’s the host(s). I identify the way this host says THIS a certain way or that person says something THAT Way. That is all community connection. We do give people an introduction to topics that they might not hear anywhere else. With a Podcast if something new comes up we can interview someone THIS week and publish next week. Always staying current. 41:36 – Chuck: A lot of things go into it and community connection and staying current. 41:52 – Panelist: How to get started in EACH of the things we talked about. How do we try to get paid for some of these things? So we can provide value to communities. Talking about money sometimes is taboo. 43:36 – Panelist: Those are full topics all in by themselves. 43:55 – Chuck: Sustainability – let’s talk about that. I think we can enter into that 44:15 – Panelist: How do you decide what’s for free and what you are charging? How do you decide? 44:55 – Joe: I think one thing to start off is the best way to operate – do it because you feel like it needs to be done. The money follows. The minute you start solving people’s problems, money will follow. It’s good to think about the money, but don’t be obsessed. React conference. The react team didn’t want to do the conference, but it’s got to happen. The money happened afterwards. The money follows. Look for opportunities. Think ahead and be the responsible one. 47:28 – Panelist: If you want to setup a Meetup then go to... 47:45 – Panelist: I bet if you went to a Meet up and said you want to help – they would love that. 47:59 – Panelist: Yes, do something that is valuable. But events you will have a budget. Is it important to have money afterwards or try to break even? 48:38 – Joe: I think having money after the conference is just fine. The #1 thing is that if you are passionate about the project then you will make decisions to get that project out there. I can’t spend 500+ hours on something that it won’t help me pay my mortgage. 51:29 – Panelist: It’s not greedy to want money. 51:46 – Panelist: It’s a very thankless job. Many people don’t know how much effort goes into a conference. It’s a pain. People like Joe will put in 90 hours a week to pull off a conference. It’s a very, very difficult job. 53:42 – Panelist: Question to Divya. 54:00 – Divya: I have only been speaking for about a year now. For me, I feel this need to speak at different events to get my name out there. You wan the visibility, access to community and other benefits. These things trump the speaker’s fee. As I get more experience then I will look for a speaker’s fee. This fee is a baseline to make sure that you are given value for your time and effort. Most conferences do pay for your hotel and transportation. 56:58 – Panelist: How much is worth it to me to go and speak? Even if at the lower level; but someone who is a luminary in the field (John Papa). But for me it’s worth it. I am willing to spend my own dime. 58:14 – Panelist: John? 58:37 – John: You learn the most when you listen. I am impressed on your perspectives. Yes, early on you’ve got to get your brand out there. It’s an honor to speak then I’m honored. Do I have time? Will my family be okay if I am gone 3-4 days? Is this something that will have an impact in some way? Will I make connections? Will I be able to help the community? There is nothing wrong with saying I need to be paid X for that speech. It’s all of the blood, sweat, and tears that go into it. 1:01:30 – Panelist chimes in. I run conferences we cannot even cover their travel costs. Other conferences we can cover their travel costs; and everything in-between. There is nothing wrong with that. 1:02:11 – You have to be financially sound. Many of us do workshops, too. 1:02:59 – How do you get paid for podcasting? 1:03:11 – Chuck: I do get crap for having ads in the podcast. Nobody knows how much editing goes into one episode. It takes money for hosting, and finding guests, and it costs through Zoom. The amount of time it takes to produce these 12 shows is time-consuming. If you want to get something sponsored. Go approach companies and see. Once you get larger 5-10,000 listeners then that’s when you can pay your car payment. It’s a labor of love at first. The moral is that you WANT to do what you are doing. 1:06:11 – Advertisement. Links: The First Vue.js Sprint – Summary Conferences You Shouldn’t Miss The Expanse Handling Authentication in Vue Using Vuex Sponsors: Kendo UI Digital Ocean Code Badge Cache Fly Picks: Chris Vue Mastery Expanse TV Show Divya Disenchantment Handling Authentication in Vue Using VueX Joe Keystone Habits Charles The Traveler’s Gift The Shack Money! John Framework Summit Angular Mix

Panel: Divya Sasidharan Charles Max Wood Joe Eames Chris Fritz Erik Hanchett John Papa Special Guest: No Guest(s) In this episode, the panel talks amongst themselves on the topic: how does one contribute to opensource work? They discuss their various ways that they contribute, such as speaking at conferences, recording videos for YouTube, podcasting, among others. Check-out today’s episode to get some insight and inspiration of how YOU can contribute to YOUR community!  Show Topics: 1:31 – Erik: Contributing to opensource – and being a good resource for the community. Contributing and still making a living. If people want to make this more sustainable and doing work for the community. 2:26 – Chuck: What do you been by “contributing” – because people could think that “code contributions” would be it. 2:50 – Erik: Answering people’s questions in a chat, code contributions, or doing a podcast or doing a blog posts. I think there are a lot of ways to contribute. Really anything to make their lives and work easier. 3:33 – Panelist: Can we go around and ask the panel individually what THEY do? It could be as simple as mentoring someone at your work. I’m curious to see what the panelist members have done. Sometimes you can get paid for those contributions. 4:40 – Panelist: I am super scared to contribute source code. I really love organizing things: Meetups, conferences, etc. That’s my favorite sort of work. It is also terrifying, though, too. Educational content and organizing conferences are my favorite ways to contribute. 6:10 – Panelist: Why is that attractive for you? 6:22 – Panelist: That’s a good question. I’ve already started planning for the 2022 conference. It’s very physical – there are people that are present. Very direct interaction. My second favorite is sometimes I will teach at local boot camp, and the topic is about interviewing. There is interaction there, too. 8:32 – Panelist: Why do you think organizing conferences is useful? 8:46 – Panelist: Top way is that I will hear stories after the fact. “Oh I came to the conference, met this person, and now I have a new job that pays 30% more...thank you!” Stories like that are rewarding. It’s a ripple effect. A conference the main thing you are putting out there are videos (main product) going to YouTube. The people that are there, at the conference, are interacting people and they are making friends and making contacts. It inspires them to do better. John Papa just goes out there to talk into the hallway. You can talk to Chris Fritz in the hall. Make yourself available. You are the celebrities and people want to meet you. 12:20 – Panel talks about how desperate they are to talk to Chris. 12:36 – Panelist: Going to conferences and meeting other people. 13:08 – Panelist: Taking part of conferences in other ways. That’s something that you do Divya Sasidharan? 13:33 – Divya: It depends on your personality. You get to speak as a speaker, because you get visibility fast. I don’t think you don’t have to speak if you don’t want to speak. Anything within your community that is beneficial. Or the one-to-one interactions are great. Having a conversation with another person that cannot respond. It’s nice to give a speech because it’s a one-way conversation. I like the preparation part of it. The delivery is the nerves, afterwards is a high because it’s over with. I really like writing demos. For the demos I put in a lot of time into it. It gives me the space and time constraint to work on those demos. 16:10 – Do you like the preparation or the delivery? 16:20 – Preparation part that I do not like as much because it is nerve-wrecking, and then the anticipation to go up there on stage. 16:55 – Panelist: I am nervous until when it starts. Once I start talking – well that’s it! Can’t go back now. 17:26 – John: I have given a few talks at a conference. 17:39 – Panelist: Doing good and contributing. I knew John Papa when he was in Microsoft in 2000/2001. I read about it. Everyone knew about him. It would be so GREAT to meet John Papa, and now we are friends! We get to talk about personal stuff and I learn from him. 18:42 – Chris: I have had moments like that, too. Act like they are a normal person. 19:01 – Chuck: After I walk off the stage people want to talk to me afterwards. 19:24 – John: For my personal style, I learn about talking at conferences. I spend a lot of times building a demo. I don’t spend a lot of times with decks. I work on the code, the talk separately. I whip that up quickly, so I don’t This is the story I am going to tell – that’s what I tell myself before I do a talk at a conference. Afterwards, people come up to you years later – and they give you these awesome feedback comments. It’s a huge reward and very fulfilling. There was someone in this world you were able to impact. That’s why I like teaching. I watch the sessions on YouTube. I want to have deep conversations with people. You are missing out if you aren’t talking to people at the conference. 23:26 – Panelist: Yeah, I agree. I do a lot of YouTube videos. I write a blog for a few years on Node and such. Then I got into videos, and helping new developers. Videos on Vue.js. Like you, Joe, I try to combine the two. If I can help myself, and OTHERS, that is great. I promote my own courses, my own affiliate links. It’s really fun talking in front of a video camera. Talking through something complex and making it simple. 24:52 – Panelist: Creating videos vs. speaking at a conference. 25:02 – Panelist: My bucket list is to do my conferences. I want to start putting out proposals. Easiest thing for me is to make videos. I used to do 20 takes before I was happy, but now I do one take and that’s it. 256:00 – Sounds like lower effort. You don’t have to ask anyone for permission to do a YouTube video. 26:21 – Panelist: Even if you are a beginner, then you can probably help others, too. At first, you feel like you are talking to yourself. If anything else, you are learning and you are getting experience. The ruby ducky programming. Talking to something that cannot respond to you. 27:11 – Like when I write a... 27:29 – Check out duck punching, and Paul Irish. 28:00 – Digital Ocean 28:42 – The creativity of doing YouTube videos. Is that rewarding to be creative or the organization? What part do you like in the creation process? 29:23 – I think a blog you have text you can be funny you can make the text interesting. With videos it’s a whole new world of teaching. YouTubers teaching certain concepts.  There are other people that have awesome animations. If I wanted to talk about a topic and do something simple or talk outside – there are a ton of different ways 31:10 – Panelist: Some times I just want to go off and be creative; hats-off to you. 31:28 – Panelist: I have tried to do a course with time stamps and certain 32:00 – D: Do you have a process of how you want to create your videos – what is your process? 32:22 – Panelist: I have a list of topics that I want to talk about. Then when I record it then I have a cheat sheet and I just go. Other people do other things, though. Like sketches and story boarding. 33:16 – D: Fun, fun, function. He has poster boards that he holds up and stuff. 33:36 – Panelist: People who listen to this podcast might be interested in podcasting? 33:54 – Panelist: Anyone who runs a podcast, Chuck? 34:16 – Chuck: When I started podcasting – I initially had to edit and publish – but now I pay someone to do it. It is a lot more work than it is. All you have to do is record and have a decent microphone, and put it out there. 35:18 – Panelist: It’s a labor of love. You almost lost your house because at first it wasn’t profitable. 35:45 – Chuck: Yeah for the most part we have it figured it out. Even then, we have 12 shows on the network on DevChat TV. 3 more I want to start and I want to put those on YouTube. Some people want to be on a new show with me. We will see. 36:37 – Chuck: I have a lot of people who asked about Python. We all come together and talk about what we are doing and seeing. It’s the water cooler discussion that people can hear for themselves. The conversation that you wish you could have to talk to experts. 38:03 – Podcasts provide that if you cannot get that at a conference? 38:16 – Conference talks are a little bit more prepared. We can go deeper in a podcast interview, because we can bring them back. You can get as involved as you want. It’s also 38:53 – Chuck: Podcasting is good if there is good content and it’s regular. 39:09 – Panelist: What is GOOD content? 39:20 – Chuck: There are different things people want. Generally they want something like: Staying Current Staying on the Edge When you go into the content it’s the host(s). I identify the way this host says THIS a certain way or that person says something THAT Way. That is all community connection. We do give people an introduction to topics that they might not hear anywhere else. With a Podcast if something new comes up we can interview someone THIS week and publish next week. Always staying current. 41:36 – Chuck: A lot of things go into it and community connection and staying current. 41:52 – Panelist: How to get started in EACH of the things we talked about. How do we try to get paid for some of these things? So we can provide value to communities. Talking about money sometimes is taboo. 43:36 – Panelist: Those are full topics all in by themselves. 43:55 – Chuck: Sustainability – let’s talk about that. I think we can enter into that 44:15 – Panelist: How do you decide what’s for free and what you are charging? How do you decide? 44:55 – Joe: I think one thing to start off is the best way to operate – do it because you feel like it needs to be done. The money follows. The minute you start solving people’s problems, money will follow. It’s good to think about the money, but don’t be obsessed. React conference. The react team didn’t want to do the conference, but it’s got to happen. The money happened afterwards. The money follows. Look for opportunities. Think ahead and be the responsible one. 47:28 – Panelist: If you want to setup a Meetup then go to... 47:45 – Panelist: I bet if you went to a Meet up and said you want to help – they would love that. 47:59 – Panelist: Yes, do something that is valuable. But events you will have a budget. Is it important to have money afterwards or try to break even? 48:38 – Joe: I think having money after the conference is just fine. The #1 thing is that if you are passionate about the project then you will make decisions to get that project out there. I can’t spend 500+ hours on something that it won’t help me pay my mortgage. 51:29 – Panelist: It’s not greedy to want money. 51:46 – Panelist: It’s a very thankless job. Many people don’t know how much effort goes into a conference. It’s a pain. People like Joe will put in 90 hours a week to pull off a conference. It’s a very, very difficult job. 53:42 – Panelist: Question to Divya. 54:00 – Divya: I have only been speaking for about a year now. For me, I feel this need to speak at different events to get my name out there. You wan the visibility, access to community and other benefits. These things trump the speaker’s fee. As I get more experience then I will look for a speaker’s fee. This fee is a baseline to make sure that you are given value for your time and effort. Most conferences do pay for your hotel and transportation. 56:58 – Panelist: How much is worth it to me to go and speak? Even if at the lower level; but someone who is a luminary in the field (John Papa). But for me it’s worth it. I am willing to spend my own dime. 58:14 – Panelist: John? 58:37 – John: You learn the most when you listen. I am impressed on your perspectives. Yes, early on you’ve got to get your brand out there. It’s an honor to speak then I’m honored. Do I have time? Will my family be okay if I am gone 3-4 days? Is this something that will have an impact in some way? Will I make connections? Will I be able to help the community? There is nothing wrong with saying I need to be paid X for that speech. It’s all of the blood, sweat, and tears that go into it. 1:01:30 – Panelist chimes in. I run conferences we cannot even cover their travel costs. Other conferences we can cover their travel costs; and everything in-between. There is nothing wrong with that. 1:02:11 – You have to be financially sound. Many of us do workshops, too. 1:02:59 – How do you get paid for podcasting? 1:03:11 – Chuck: I do get crap for having ads in the podcast. Nobody knows how much editing goes into one episode. It takes money for hosting, and finding guests, and it costs through Zoom. The amount of time it takes to produce these 12 shows is time-consuming. If you want to get something sponsored. Go approach companies and see. Once you get larger 5-10,000 listeners then that’s when you can pay your car payment. It’s a labor of love at first. The moral is that you WANT to do what you are doing. 1:06:11 – Advertisement. Links: The First Vue.js Sprint – Summary Conferences You Shouldn’t Miss The Expanse Handling Authentication in Vue Using Vuex Sponsors: Kendo UI Digital Ocean Code Badge Cache Fly Picks: Chris Vue Mastery Expanse TV Show Divya Disenchantment Handling Authentication in Vue Using VueX Joe Keystone Habits Charles The Traveler’s Gift The Shack Money! John Framework Summit Angular Mix

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Dr. Neil Brown This week on My Ruby Story, Charles talks with Dr. Neil Brown who is a researcher. He helps people teach “how to program” more effectively and efficiently. Check out his social media pages and his research via the web. Chuck and Neil talk about his research among other topics. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:52 – Chuck: We are talking with Neil Brown. 1:05 – Chuck: I’ve always wanted to go to London! Let’s dive in and talk about you and how you got into all of this stuff. 1:40 – Neil: I was in primary/elementary school and sometime there I went to my dad and I asked him how are these games made? He gave me a book. 3:12 – Chuck: What are some things that you are researching? 3:24 – Neil answers the question. 5:24 – Chuck: How do you know what to look into and how do you test your hypotheses? There is some science there. 5:45 – Neil: We have a large data collection. 6:07 – Chuck: You have your own ideas linked to Java? 6:15 – Neil: Yep. 6:20 – Chuck: Do people know that they are test subjects? 6:31 – Neil: Oh yeah. 6:39 – Chuck comments. 6:45 – Chuck: What do programmers see? 6:55 – Neil: It is interesting to see the code that they are writing. You are not sure what they are trying to do. Programming is a very frustrating experience for most people. I want to reach back in time and tell them that the problem is there. You watch people do it and they kind of in the right area, and then they go somewhere else. It’s frustrating for beginners. 8:06 – Chuck: How long have you been doing the research? 8:05 – Neil: Five Years. 8:22 – Chuck: How would I get into something like that? 8:32 – Neil answers the question. 9:35 – Chuck: What are you most proud of? 9:42 – Neil answers the question. 11:34 – How do you communicate that to people in the “real world” in a professional setting? 11:45 – Neil answers the question. Neil: Be careful of your own expectations. 12:32 – Chuck: What are you doing now? 12:35 – Neil answers the question. 12:58 – Neil: Research is focused on the “new.” Making something “new.” We are doing essential work, but work that doesn’t get a lot of recognition. 13:37 – Chuck: That’s interesting. What else should we dive into? I would love to have you back. 13:57 – Chuck: Any advice for someone who wants to get into this area? 14:00 – Neil: Study and get a Ph.D. to help you with research. 14:40 – Chuck: There are a lot of universities who do this type of research? 14:52 – Neil answers the question. 15:35 – Picks! 15:41 – Advertisement Links: Ruby Elixir Dr. Neil Brown – Podcast Dr. Neil Brown – Article Dr. Neil Brown – Twitter Tips for Teaching Programming with Dr. Neil Brown BlueJ Sponsors: Code Badges Get a Coder Job Cache Fly Picks: Charles Audible If you are exhausted / depressed / down...go and take some time for yourself! Having a side project Book: Crucial Conversations Neil Michael Lewis – Flash Boys

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Dr. Neil Brown This week on My Ruby Story, Charles talks with Dr. Neil Brown who is a researcher. He helps people teach “how to program” more effectively and efficiently. Check out his social media pages and his research via the web. Chuck and Neil talk about his research among other topics. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:52 – Chuck: We are talking with Neil Brown. 1:05 – Chuck: I’ve always wanted to go to London! Let’s dive in and talk about you and how you got into all of this stuff. 1:40 – Neil: I was in primary/elementary school and sometime there I went to my dad and I asked him how are these games made? He gave me a book. 3:12 – Chuck: What are some things that you are researching? 3:24 – Neil answers the question. 5:24 – Chuck: How do you know what to look into and how do you test your hypotheses? There is some science there. 5:45 – Neil: We have a large data collection. 6:07 – Chuck: You have your own ideas linked to Java? 6:15 – Neil: Yep. 6:20 – Chuck: Do people know that they are test subjects? 6:31 – Neil: Oh yeah. 6:39 – Chuck comments. 6:45 – Chuck: What do programmers see? 6:55 – Neil: It is interesting to see the code that they are writing. You are not sure what they are trying to do. Programming is a very frustrating experience for most people. I want to reach back in time and tell them that the problem is there. You watch people do it and they kind of in the right area, and then they go somewhere else. It’s frustrating for beginners. 8:06 – Chuck: How long have you been doing the research? 8:05 – Neil: Five Years. 8:22 – Chuck: How would I get into something like that? 8:32 – Neil answers the question. 9:35 – Chuck: What are you most proud of? 9:42 – Neil answers the question. 11:34 – How do you communicate that to people in the “real world” in a professional setting? 11:45 – Neil answers the question. Neil: Be careful of your own expectations. 12:32 – Chuck: What are you doing now? 12:35 – Neil answers the question. 12:58 – Neil: Research is focused on the “new.” Making something “new.” We are doing essential work, but work that doesn’t get a lot of recognition. 13:37 – Chuck: That’s interesting. What else should we dive into? I would love to have you back. 13:57 – Chuck: Any advice for someone who wants to get into this area? 14:00 – Neil: Study and get a Ph.D. to help you with research. 14:40 – Chuck: There are a lot of universities who do this type of research? 14:52 – Neil answers the question. 15:35 – Picks! 15:41 – Advertisement Links: Ruby Elixir Dr. Neil Brown – Podcast Dr. Neil Brown – Article Dr. Neil Brown – Twitter Tips for Teaching Programming with Dr. Neil Brown BlueJ Sponsors: Code Badges Get a Coder Job Cache Fly Picks: Charles Audible If you are exhausted / depressed / down...go and take some time for yourself! Having a side project Book: Crucial Conversations Neil Michael Lewis – Flash Boys

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Dr. Neil Brown This week on My Ruby Story, Charles talks with Dr. Neil Brown who is a researcher. He helps people teach “how to program” more effectively and efficiently. Check out his social media pages and his research via the web. Chuck and Neil talk about his research among other topics. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:52 – Chuck: We are talking with Neil Brown. 1:05 – Chuck: I’ve always wanted to go to London! Let’s dive in and talk about you and how you got into all of this stuff. 1:40 – Neil: I was in primary/elementary school and sometime there I went to my dad and I asked him how are these games made? He gave me a book. 3:12 – Chuck: What are some things that you are researching? 3:24 – Neil answers the question. 5:24 – Chuck: How do you know what to look into and how do you test your hypotheses? There is some science there. 5:45 – Neil: We have a large data collection. 6:07 – Chuck: You have your own ideas linked to Java? 6:15 – Neil: Yep. 6:20 – Chuck: Do people know that they are test subjects? 6:31 – Neil: Oh yeah. 6:39 – Chuck comments. 6:45 – Chuck: What do programmers see? 6:55 – Neil: It is interesting to see the code that they are writing. You are not sure what they are trying to do. Programming is a very frustrating experience for most people. I want to reach back in time and tell them that the problem is there. You watch people do it and they kind of in the right area, and then they go somewhere else. It’s frustrating for beginners. 8:06 – Chuck: How long have you been doing the research? 8:05 – Neil: Five Years. 8:22 – Chuck: How would I get into something like that? 8:32 – Neil answers the question. 9:35 – Chuck: What are you most proud of? 9:42 – Neil answers the question. 11:34 – How do you communicate that to people in the “real world” in a professional setting? 11:45 – Neil answers the question. Neil: Be careful of your own expectations. 12:32 – Chuck: What are you doing now? 12:35 – Neil answers the question. 12:58 – Neil: Research is focused on the “new.” Making something “new.” We are doing essential work, but work that doesn’t get a lot of recognition. 13:37 – Chuck: That’s interesting. What else should we dive into? I would love to have you back. 13:57 – Chuck: Any advice for someone who wants to get into this area? 14:00 – Neil: Study and get a Ph.D. to help you with research. 14:40 – Chuck: There are a lot of universities who do this type of research? 14:52 – Neil answers the question. 15:35 – Picks! 15:41 – Advertisement Links: Ruby Elixir Dr. Neil Brown – Podcast Dr. Neil Brown – Article Dr. Neil Brown – Twitter Tips for Teaching Programming with Dr. Neil Brown BlueJ Sponsors: Code Badges Get a Coder Job Cache Fly Picks: Charles Audible If you are exhausted / depressed / down...go and take some time for yourself! Having a side project Book: Crucial Conversations Neil Michael Lewis – Flash Boys

Panel: Charles Max Wood Lucas Reis Justin Bennett (guest host) Special Guests: Gant Laborde In this episode, the panel talks with Gant who has been programming for twenty years. In the past, he has been an adjunct professor and loves to teach. Finally, he talks at conferences and enjoys sharing his ideas. The panel talks about the React State Museum, among many other topics, such as: React Native, Flux, Redux, Agile, and XState. Show Topics: 1:24 – Chuck: What do you do? 2:02 – Chuck and Gant: We met at React Rally at 2016. 2:17 – Gant: I have my own sticker branding with a friend in Japan who is genius. She draws all these characters. They are my business card now. 2:41 – Chuck: React State Museum- talk about its brief history and what it is? 2:54 – Gant: React is this beautiful thing of passing these functional capsules around and managing them. Once you start creating another component, the question is how do you actually manage all of these components? We are all so happy to be on the cutting edge, but state management systems come up and die so fast. For like Facebook, there are 2 people who understand Flux. What happens is Redux is the one thing that shows up and... 6:34 – Chuck: I want to say...I think we need to change the topic. You said that JavaScript USED to be bad at classes, but it’s still bad at classes! 6:52 – Gant: Yep. 7:21 – Chuck: Typescript gets us close-ish. 7:31 – Chuck: Do you get feedback on the library? 8:12 – Gant: The requests that I’ve got - it’s from people who are better at (that0 than me. I wanted to test the lines of code. But that’s unfair because there are a lot of things to do. It really was a plan but what happens is – components that are used in this example is that in this node module... 9:41 – Panel: This is an interesting topic. When you assess any technology...if you are not a technology expert than you really can’t say. That’s interesting that you are doing this an open-source way. 10:25 – Gant: I am a huge fan of this vs. that. I am okay with say “this” one wins and “that” one looses. I don’t declare a winner cause it’s more like a Rosetta Stone. I had to find pitfalls and I respect that for the different perspectives. At the end of the day I do have opinions. But there is no winner. They are all the same and they are all extremely different. Are you trying to teach someone in one day? I learned Redux in 2 different days. 12:00 – Panel: Is there a library that helps with X, Y, Z, etc. 12:16 – Gant: I love for teaching and giving people a great start. I just set state and live life. I had to show what X is like. 13:59 – Chuck: Like this conversation about frameworks and which framework to use. Everyone was using Redux, because it was more or less what we wanted it to do. But at the time it cleaned up a bunch of code. Now we have all these other options. We are figuring out... How to write JavaScript if web assembly really took off? Do I write React with X or with Y. And how does this affect all of this? We had all of these conversations but we haven’t settled on the absolute best way to do this. 15:50 – Panel: This is great, and I think this is from the community as a whole. 17:20 – Chuck: I need to ask a question. Is this because the requirements on the frontend has changed? Or... I think we are talking about these state management systems, and this is what Lucas is talking about. 17:45 – Gant: I think it’s both. 18:43 – Panel: Websites have gotten bigger. We have always been pushing CSS. Panelist mentions Facebook Blue, among other things. What does your state look like? What does your validation look like? We are on so many different devices, and so on. 20:00 – Gant: I agree to echo everything that you all have said. I think the expectations are tighter now; that we have less drift. People are being more cognoscente and asking what is our brand. And it’s about brand consistency. And we are expecting more out of our technology, too. We keep pushing the envelope. What about these features? We want to be feature rich, and pushing these envelopes – how can we build more faster with less complexity while building it. You have to put that complexity somewhere. It’s interesting to watch. 22:00 – Chuck: How do we use this React State Museum...where are we going next? 22:19 – Gant: It’s a loaded question. Being able to ID new and interesting concepts. If you had a terrible version and Redux comes along, Redux is great for some companies but not all. You won’t see bugs that are crazy, there is a middle-wear, and maybe for your team going into Redux will make things more manageable. 25:25 – Advertisement – Digital Ocean 26:05 – Panel: Understanding your problem is the first thing to do. Talking about evolutionary architecture – to build your software to evolve. What does tha fit really well? So if you have to pick something new you are in a good position. What are my needs? Don’t look too much forward or 27:38 – Chuck: Advice on looking at your problem-sets? 27:52 – Panel: We have gone from planning too much to not planning at all. I don’t need to plan for too much or else it will “hurt” me. 28:42 – Chuck comments and mentions Agile. 29:29 – Panel and Guest chime in. 29:39 – Panel: I worked on a project (3 months) we needed to do a big change. I asked them why didn’t we take that into consideration. And their answer was... 30:30 – Gant: You might get away with... 30:55 – Chuck: What are some of the knobs on this? If I turn this know Redux is looking good, but if I do this... 31:12 – Gant: There are a lot of attractive knobs. Using app sync, not using app sync. 32:33 – Gant: Is your app really effective? That’s your first important question. How much state do I need on the frontend. And vice versa. 34:02 – Gant: How easy will this be to test? Can I teach someone how to do this? If I cannot teach it then it won’t do my team any good. 34:35 – Panel adds in comments. 35:08 – Gant: Looking at tests. 37:25 – Panel: If you have a great backend team then you can move the work across the team. You have a strong team to move that work along that line – normally you can’t cross that sort of thing. 38:03 – Chuck: There are so many options, too. I see Apollo getting reach here. I don’t see it as a statement tool instead I see it as... 38:31 – Panel: Apollo State – seems like they are pushing the envelope. It’s interesting to watch. 38:54 – Chuck. 39:12 – Gant: I am going to go ahead and use this tool – I am not going to worry about it. But now you are being held accountable. 39:29 – Panel: Question for folks: React not having a blessed ecosystem can hold people back in some ways? You have the freedom to use what you want. Here are the tools that you can use. Do you tink it be better if the Facebook team could do... 40:20 – Gant: I find that I don’t like (being told) this is what you will be using. I am a person with idea. We’d all be using Flux and all be very upset. 41:00 –Then there would be 3 people who don’t understand it. 41:17 – Gant: I loved Google Wave. Fool on my once and shame on me twice... Google Video! Google comes out and says here is BLESSED and you don’t have any choice. But it’s any author for themselves. It’s a little bit silly 0 I would like a beacon from Facebook saying: Here is a guide. It seems that they can’t focus. They are running a large company; I would like to keep it open – friendly energy. 42:24 – Chuck: I am mixed feelings about this. It only plays as far as people play into it. IN a React community there are so many voices. They all have opinions on what you should/shouldn’t use. The one thing that I like about a blessed / recommended stack – brand new person – it’s a good place to art. After that if they realize that Flux is hard then they can go and try other options. There are other things out there; there is a good balance there. 43:36 – Panel: That is the Angular way right? 43:38 – Chuck: Yes but Angular is more opinionated. It’s a different feel. 44:38 - Panel + Guest continue this conversation. 45:00 – The book DRIVE is mentioned. 45:21 – Gant: ... we need more recommendations. 45:43 – Chuck: Let’s talk about Repot and how to use this? If you go and get Repot – Google React State Museum it’s really easy. How should people come to this and pick it up? 46:18 – Gant: The table that comes in there – it links to the main Repot. A lot of people showed up and contributed. First of all show up. Gant mentions a sandbox link – and he talks about getting your hands dirty. React Native is mentioned, too. 48:10 – Gant: There are many opportunities for contributors. I could use my links. Typos, documentations, etc. - anything friendly is accepted here. 49:20 – Gant continues this conversation. 50:33 – Chuck: Anything else to dive into? 50:41 – Panel: I think there could be other things you can bubble up 51:26 – Gant: I would love some help with that. I did have some contributors write some tests. I wrote a test – 4 hours later – and it tells me if it passed or not. It has to go into a new directory, and work in Android, etc. It’s insane testing library. Then there are some checks to see if there is a link in the README. Animation if there is anyone who wants to do some cool stuff – like modules. Maybe it’s apple to oranges comparisons there. I would like to identify that for people. We would like some outside feedback out there. The more the merrier to help with the data is out there. Sanity check complete – yes! 53:24 – How to do that? 53:31 – File a ticket to help contribute. So you can say: I will do this. If you do it in a reasonable amount of time, then heck yes. If you do some open source...Do 10 (I think) and you get a free t-shirt? 54:28 – Advertisement. Links: Kendo UI Ruby on Rails Angular Get A Coder Job Redux Agile A Philosophy of Software Design – book XState Book: Spellmonger Did Someone Steal the Declaration of Independence Again? Book: The Culture Code Gant Laborde’s Twitter Lucas Reis’ Email: lucasmreis@gmail.com Charles Max Wood’s Twitter Sponsors: Kendo UI Digital Ocean Get A Coder Job Picks: Charles My journey – it’s been a rough year – with my dad passing. Willing to think it and process it, and it’s a healthy thing. Book: The Traveler’s Gift by Andy Andrews Book: The Shack by William Paul Young Gant Book: Harry Potter - Methods of Rationality Magicians XState is amazing! Culture Code - especially if you work remote. The pains that can happen by working remotely. Helps you identify those issues. Talk in Poland – Secret project. Lose the Declaration of Independence. “Where’s Waldo?” I am going to find Nicholas Cage in the audience and he will have the Declaration of Independence in backpack. Fake government website. Justin XState – Not Reactive specific Spellmonger: Book One of the... by Terry Mancour Book: Building Evolutionary Architectures Lucas Book: A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout

Panel: Charles Max Wood Lucas Reis Justin Bennett (guest host) Special Guests: Gant Laborde In this episode, the panel talks with Gant who has been programming for twenty years. In the past, he has been an adjunct professor and loves to teach. Finally, he talks at conferences and enjoys sharing his ideas. The panel talks about the React State Museum, among many other topics, such as: React Native, Flux, Redux, Agile, and XState. Show Topics: 1:24 – Chuck: What do you do? 2:02 – Chuck and Gant: We met at React Rally at 2016. 2:17 – Gant: I have my own sticker branding with a friend in Japan who is genius. She draws all these characters. They are my business card now. 2:41 – Chuck: React State Museum- talk about its brief history and what it is? 2:54 – Gant: React is this beautiful thing of passing these functional capsules around and managing them. Once you start creating another component, the question is how do you actually manage all of these components? We are all so happy to be on the cutting edge, but state management systems come up and die so fast. For like Facebook, there are 2 people who understand Flux. What happens is Redux is the one thing that shows up and... 6:34 – Chuck: I want to say...I think we need to change the topic. You said that JavaScript USED to be bad at classes, but it’s still bad at classes! 6:52 – Gant: Yep. 7:21 – Chuck: Typescript gets us close-ish. 7:31 – Chuck: Do you get feedback on the library? 8:12 – Gant: The requests that I’ve got - it’s from people who are better at (that0 than me. I wanted to test the lines of code. But that’s unfair because there are a lot of things to do. It really was a plan but what happens is – components that are used in this example is that in this node module... 9:41 – Panel: This is an interesting topic. When you assess any technology...if you are not a technology expert than you really can’t say. That’s interesting that you are doing this an open-source way. 10:25 – Gant: I am a huge fan of this vs. that. I am okay with say “this” one wins and “that” one looses. I don’t declare a winner cause it’s more like a Rosetta Stone. I had to find pitfalls and I respect that for the different perspectives. At the end of the day I do have opinions. But there is no winner. They are all the same and they are all extremely different. Are you trying to teach someone in one day? I learned Redux in 2 different days. 12:00 – Panel: Is there a library that helps with X, Y, Z, etc. 12:16 – Gant: I love for teaching and giving people a great start. I just set state and live life. I had to show what X is like. 13:59 – Chuck: Like this conversation about frameworks and which framework to use. Everyone was using Redux, because it was more or less what we wanted it to do. But at the time it cleaned up a bunch of code. Now we have all these other options. We are figuring out... How to write JavaScript if web assembly really took off? Do I write React with X or with Y. And how does this affect all of this? We had all of these conversations but we haven’t settled on the absolute best way to do this. 15:50 – Panel: This is great, and I think this is from the community as a whole. 17:20 – Chuck: I need to ask a question. Is this because the requirements on the frontend has changed? Or... I think we are talking about these state management systems, and this is what Lucas is talking about. 17:45 – Gant: I think it’s both. 18:43 – Panel: Websites have gotten bigger. We have always been pushing CSS. Panelist mentions Facebook Blue, among other things. What does your state look like? What does your validation look like? We are on so many different devices, and so on. 20:00 – Gant: I agree to echo everything that you all have said. I think the expectations are tighter now; that we have less drift. People are being more cognoscente and asking what is our brand. And it’s about brand consistency. And we are expecting more out of our technology, too. We keep pushing the envelope. What about these features? We want to be feature rich, and pushing these envelopes – how can we build more faster with less complexity while building it. You have to put that complexity somewhere. It’s interesting to watch. 22:00 – Chuck: How do we use this React State Museum...where are we going next? 22:19 – Gant: It’s a loaded question. Being able to ID new and interesting concepts. If you had a terrible version and Redux comes along, Redux is great for some companies but not all. You won’t see bugs that are crazy, there is a middle-wear, and maybe for your team going into Redux will make things more manageable. 25:25 – Advertisement – Digital Ocean 26:05 – Panel: Understanding your problem is the first thing to do. Talking about evolutionary architecture – to build your software to evolve. What does tha fit really well? So if you have to pick something new you are in a good position. What are my needs? Don’t look too much forward or 27:38 – Chuck: Advice on looking at your problem-sets? 27:52 – Panel: We have gone from planning too much to not planning at all. I don’t need to plan for too much or else it will “hurt” me. 28:42 – Chuck comments and mentions Agile. 29:29 – Panel and Guest chime in. 29:39 – Panel: I worked on a project (3 months) we needed to do a big change. I asked them why didn’t we take that into consideration. And their answer was... 30:30 – Gant: You might get away with... 30:55 – Chuck: What are some of the knobs on this? If I turn this know Redux is looking good, but if I do this... 31:12 – Gant: There are a lot of attractive knobs. Using app sync, not using app sync. 32:33 – Gant: Is your app really effective? That’s your first important question. How much state do I need on the frontend. And vice versa. 34:02 – Gant: How easy will this be to test? Can I teach someone how to do this? If I cannot teach it then it won’t do my team any good. 34:35 – Panel adds in comments. 35:08 – Gant: Looking at tests. 37:25 – Panel: If you have a great backend team then you can move the work across the team. You have a strong team to move that work along that line – normally you can’t cross that sort of thing. 38:03 – Chuck: There are so many options, too. I see Apollo getting reach here. I don’t see it as a statement tool instead I see it as... 38:31 – Panel: Apollo State – seems like they are pushing the envelope. It’s interesting to watch. 38:54 – Chuck. 39:12 – Gant: I am going to go ahead and use this tool – I am not going to worry about it. But now you are being held accountable. 39:29 – Panel: Question for folks: React not having a blessed ecosystem can hold people back in some ways? You have the freedom to use what you want. Here are the tools that you can use. Do you tink it be better if the Facebook team could do... 40:20 – Gant: I find that I don’t like (being told) this is what you will be using. I am a person with idea. We’d all be using Flux and all be very upset. 41:00 –Then there would be 3 people who don’t understand it. 41:17 – Gant: I loved Google Wave. Fool on my once and shame on me twice... Google Video! Google comes out and says here is BLESSED and you don’t have any choice. But it’s any author for themselves. It’s a little bit silly 0 I would like a beacon from Facebook saying: Here is a guide. It seems that they can’t focus. They are running a large company; I would like to keep it open – friendly energy. 42:24 – Chuck: I am mixed feelings about this. It only plays as far as people play into it. IN a React community there are so many voices. They all have opinions on what you should/shouldn’t use. The one thing that I like about a blessed / recommended stack – brand new person – it’s a good place to art. After that if they realize that Flux is hard then they can go and try other options. There are other things out there; there is a good balance there. 43:36 – Panel: That is the Angular way right? 43:38 – Chuck: Yes but Angular is more opinionated. It’s a different feel. 44:38 - Panel + Guest continue this conversation. 45:00 – The book DRIVE is mentioned. 45:21 – Gant: ... we need more recommendations. 45:43 – Chuck: Let’s talk about Repot and how to use this? If you go and get Repot – Google React State Museum it’s really easy. How should people come to this and pick it up? 46:18 – Gant: The table that comes in there – it links to the main Repot. A lot of people showed up and contributed. First of all show up. Gant mentions a sandbox link – and he talks about getting your hands dirty. React Native is mentioned, too. 48:10 – Gant: There are many opportunities for contributors. I could use my links. Typos, documentations, etc. - anything friendly is accepted here. 49:20 – Gant continues this conversation. 50:33 – Chuck: Anything else to dive into? 50:41 – Panel: I think there could be other things you can bubble up 51:26 – Gant: I would love some help with that. I did have some contributors write some tests. I wrote a test – 4 hours later – and it tells me if it passed or not. It has to go into a new directory, and work in Android, etc. It’s insane testing library. Then there are some checks to see if there is a link in the README. Animation if there is anyone who wants to do some cool stuff – like modules. Maybe it’s apple to oranges comparisons there. I would like to identify that for people. We would like some outside feedback out there. The more the merrier to help with the data is out there. Sanity check complete – yes! 53:24 – How to do that? 53:31 – File a ticket to help contribute. So you can say: I will do this. If you do it in a reasonable amount of time, then heck yes. If you do some open source...Do 10 (I think) and you get a free t-shirt? 54:28 – Advertisement. Links: Kendo UI Ruby on Rails Angular Get A Coder Job Redux Agile A Philosophy of Software Design – book XState Book: Spellmonger Did Someone Steal the Declaration of Independence Again? Book: The Culture Code Gant Laborde’s Twitter Lucas Reis’ Email: lucasmreis@gmail.com Charles Max Wood’s Twitter Sponsors: Kendo UI Digital Ocean Get A Coder Job Picks: Charles My journey – it’s been a rough year – with my dad passing. Willing to think it and process it, and it’s a healthy thing. Book: The Traveler’s Gift by Andy Andrews Book: The Shack by William Paul Young Gant Book: Harry Potter - Methods of Rationality Magicians XState is amazing! Culture Code - especially if you work remote. The pains that can happen by working remotely. Helps you identify those issues. Talk in Poland – Secret project. Lose the Declaration of Independence. “Where’s Waldo?” I am going to find Nicholas Cage in the audience and he will have the Declaration of Independence in backpack. Fake government website. Justin XState – Not Reactive specific Spellmonger: Book One of the... by Terry Mancour Book: Building Evolutionary Architectures Lucas Book: A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Brooks Forsyth This week on My Angular Story, Charles speaks with Brooks Forsyth who is frontend developer who has been doing this for four years. He works for a large consulting corporation who will remain nameless, and he lives in Harper, Connecticut. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 4:09 – Chuck: I would like to dive in. How did you get into Angular in the first place? 4:20 Guest: I was at a service desk in CT. One of my jobs was to open 75 different emails and make sure that it didn’t send an “error” message. I had to make sure nothing failed. That was boring. I used Auto Hot Key. That was fun, and did a lot of that there, which got me into programming. I had a Bachelor’s in Business. Went to get my Master’s in Computer Science, but took along time. Started doing IT recruiting. Then next thing you know I moved into my parents’ house and did coder camps. And that worked out. Then I got hired by the Charter Internet Company. Now I am in large consulting firm in CT. 6:40 – Chuck asks another question. 6:349 – Guest: When I was picking coding camps I chose the one that was teaching Angular. 7:30 – Chuck: What do you do in your spare time? 7:38 – Guest: I have 2 kids who are 4 years old and 1 years old. I have a really cool fish tank that has coral reef in it. 8:00 – Chuck: Which Angular project was your favorite? 8:09 – Guest: Ionic Project was a lot of fun. The app was already written and I was to convert it. In theory not change the backend. I had a lot of fun making that app. I love working with Ionic. 9:37 – Chuck: Ionic is going into other frameworks. 10:05 – Chuck: I have feelings about the show, The View. 10:37 – Chuck: what is your workflow in Angular? 10:44 – Guest answers question. Brooks mentions jQuery during this timestamp. 11:50 – Chuck: What is your involvement in the community? 12:00 – Guest: I participate in the Slack. Answer questions in there. 12:39 – Chuck: There are a lot of people in the background helping people out in the chat room. There is another person on the other end helping others. 13:06 – Guest: I could be doing CSS but I rather be doing this instead. I don’t mind answering any questions or prodding the person to get more information. “What are the steps to recreate it?” And my answer was... 14:09 – Chuck: I worked through Q/A for a while. And it is interesting. 14:25 – You don’t want to brush them off completely because they are obviously frustrated. 14:43 – Chuck: What are you working on now. 14:50 – Guest answers question. 15:03 – Chuck: Anything you’d like for people to know about you? 15:22 – Guest: I can make something up real quick... 15:30 – Chuck: How you are contributing is awesome, just thought to ask. 15:48 – Guest: I do enjoy helping out in the chat community. Also, talking with the other developers. 16:10 – Picks! Links: Ionic jQuery Brooks Forsyth’s Twitter         Sponsors: Get A Coder Job Code Badges Picks: Charles Get A Coder Job Want to be on the podcast? Brooks Heroku / Worldwide Dev.to

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Brooks Forsyth This week on My Angular Story, Charles speaks with Brooks Forsyth who is frontend developer who has been doing this for four years. He works for a large consulting corporation who will remain nameless, and he lives in Harper, Connecticut. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 4:09 – Chuck: I would like to dive in. How did you get into Angular in the first place? 4:20 Guest: I was at a service desk in CT. One of my jobs was to open 75 different emails and make sure that it didn’t send an “error” message. I had to make sure nothing failed. That was boring. I used Auto Hot Key. That was fun, and did a lot of that there, which got me into programming. I had a Bachelor’s in Business. Went to get my Master’s in Computer Science, but took along time. Started doing IT recruiting. Then next thing you know I moved into my parents’ house and did coder camps. And that worked out. Then I got hired by the Charter Internet Company. Now I am in large consulting firm in CT. 6:40 – Chuck asks another question. 6:349 – Guest: When I was picking coding camps I chose the one that was teaching Angular. 7:30 – Chuck: What do you do in your spare time? 7:38 – Guest: I have 2 kids who are 4 years old and 1 years old. I have a really cool fish tank that has coral reef in it. 8:00 – Chuck: Which Angular project was your favorite? 8:09 – Guest: Ionic Project was a lot of fun. The app was already written and I was to convert it. In theory not change the backend. I had a lot of fun making that app. I love working with Ionic. 9:37 – Chuck: Ionic is going into other frameworks. 10:05 – Chuck: I have feelings about the show, The View. 10:37 – Chuck: what is your workflow in Angular? 10:44 – Guest answers question. Brooks mentions jQuery during this timestamp. 11:50 – Chuck: What is your involvement in the community? 12:00 – Guest: I participate in the Slack. Answer questions in there. 12:39 – Chuck: There are a lot of people in the background helping people out in the chat room. There is another person on the other end helping others. 13:06 – Guest: I could be doing CSS but I rather be doing this instead. I don’t mind answering any questions or prodding the person to get more information. “What are the steps to recreate it?” And my answer was... 14:09 – Chuck: I worked through Q/A for a while. And it is interesting. 14:25 – You don’t want to brush them off completely because they are obviously frustrated. 14:43 – Chuck: What are you working on now. 14:50 – Guest answers question. 15:03 – Chuck: Anything you’d like for people to know about you? 15:22 – Guest: I can make something up real quick... 15:30 – Chuck: How you are contributing is awesome, just thought to ask. 15:48 – Guest: I do enjoy helping out in the chat community. Also, talking with the other developers. 16:10 – Picks! Links: Ionic jQuery Brooks Forsyth’s Twitter         Sponsors: Get A Coder Job Code Badges Picks: Charles Get A Coder Job Want to be on the podcast? Brooks Heroku / Worldwide Dev.to

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Brooks Forsyth This week on My Angular Story, Charles speaks with Brooks Forsyth who is frontend developer who has been doing this for four years. He works for a large consulting corporation who will remain nameless, and he lives in Harper, Connecticut. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 4:09 – Chuck: I would like to dive in. How did you get into Angular in the first place? 4:20 Guest: I was at a service desk in CT. One of my jobs was to open 75 different emails and make sure that it didn’t send an “error” message. I had to make sure nothing failed. That was boring. I used Auto Hot Key. That was fun, and did a lot of that there, which got me into programming. I had a Bachelor’s in Business. Went to get my Master’s in Computer Science, but took along time. Started doing IT recruiting. Then next thing you know I moved into my parents’ house and did coder camps. And that worked out. Then I got hired by the Charter Internet Company. Now I am in large consulting firm in CT. 6:40 – Chuck asks another question. 6:349 – Guest: When I was picking coding camps I chose the one that was teaching Angular. 7:30 – Chuck: What do you do in your spare time? 7:38 – Guest: I have 2 kids who are 4 years old and 1 years old. I have a really cool fish tank that has coral reef in it. 8:00 – Chuck: Which Angular project was your favorite? 8:09 – Guest: Ionic Project was a lot of fun. The app was already written and I was to convert it. In theory not change the backend. I had a lot of fun making that app. I love working with Ionic. 9:37 – Chuck: Ionic is going into other frameworks. 10:05 – Chuck: I have feelings about the show, The View. 10:37 – Chuck: what is your workflow in Angular? 10:44 – Guest answers question. Brooks mentions jQuery during this timestamp. 11:50 – Chuck: What is your involvement in the community? 12:00 – Guest: I participate in the Slack. Answer questions in there. 12:39 – Chuck: There are a lot of people in the background helping people out in the chat room. There is another person on the other end helping others. 13:06 – Guest: I could be doing CSS but I rather be doing this instead. I don’t mind answering any questions or prodding the person to get more information. “What are the steps to recreate it?” And my answer was... 14:09 – Chuck: I worked through Q/A for a while. And it is interesting. 14:25 – You don’t want to brush them off completely because they are obviously frustrated. 14:43 – Chuck: What are you working on now. 14:50 – Guest answers question. 15:03 – Chuck: Anything you’d like for people to know about you? 15:22 – Guest: I can make something up real quick... 15:30 – Chuck: How you are contributing is awesome, just thought to ask. 15:48 – Guest: I do enjoy helping out in the chat community. Also, talking with the other developers. 16:10 – Picks! Links: Ionic jQuery Brooks Forsyth’s Twitter         Sponsors: Get A Coder Job Code Badges Picks: Charles Get A Coder Job Want to be on the podcast? Brooks Heroku / Worldwide Dev.to

Panel: Charles Max Wood Dave Kimura Eric Berry Special Guests: Rahul Mahale In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panel talks to Rahul Mahale. Rahul is a Senior DevOps Engineer at BigBinary in India. He has also worked with SecureDB Inc., Tiny Owl, Winjit Technologies among others. In addition, he attended the University of Pune. The panel and the guest talk about Kubernetes. Show Topics: 1:25 – Swag.com for t-shirts and mugs, etc. for Ruby Rogues / DevChat.tv. 1:49 – Chuck: Why are you famous? 1:57 – Guest’s background. 4:35 – Chuck: Kubernetes – Anyone play with this? 4:49 – Panelist: Yes. Funny situation, I was working with Heroku. Heroku is very costly, but great. The story continues... 6:13 – Panelist: I was so overwhelmed with how difficult it was to launch a simple website. Now, that being said we were using the Amazon EKS, which is the Kubernetes. They don’t have nearly as much good tools, but that’s my experience. 6:48 – Chuck: I haven’t tried Kubernetes. 8:58 – Rahul: I would like to add a few comments. Managing Kubernetes service is not a big deal at the moment, but... 11:19 – Panelist: You wouldn’t recommend people using Kubernetes unless they were well versed? What is that term? 11:40 – Rahul: Not anyone could use the Kubernetes cluster. Let’s offer that complexity to another company that can handle and mange it. 13:02 – The guest continues this conversation. 14:02 – Panelist: I didn’t know that Kubernetes needed different nodes. 14:28 – Rahul continues this topic. 15:05 – What hardware requirements do they need? 15:19 – Rahul: Yes, they do need a good system. Good amount of memory. Good network space. 15:45 – Panelist asks Rahul a question.  16:30 – Rahul: Let’s answer this into two parts. Kubernetes topic is being discussed in detail. 18:41 – Chuck adds comments and asks a question. 18:58 – Rahul talks about companies and programs. Check out this timestamp to hear his thoughts. 20:42 – Another company is mentioned added to this conversation. 21:55 – Additional companies mentioned: Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc. (Rahul) 22:14 – Chuck: It’s interesting how much community plays a role into success stories. Whether or not it’s best technologies it comes down to where there are enough people to help me if I don’t know what to do. 22:43 – Rahul: People, even enterprises, are there. 23:15 – Chuck: At what point (let’s say I docked my app) should they be looking at Kubernetes? Are you waiting on traffic? How do you make that call? 23:56 – Rahul answers the questions. 26:29 – Rahul: If your application is... 27:13 – Announcement – Digital Ocean! 27:51 – Chuck: How does someone get started with Kubernetes? 27:53 – Rahul answers the question. 30:00 – Chuck: It sounds like you have an amateur setup – Dave? 30:21 – Dave: I think the problem is that there is not a Kubernetes for dummies blog post. There has always been some sort of “gottcha!” As much as these documents say that there are solutions here and there, but you will see that there are networking issues. Once you get that up and running, then there are more issues at hand. The other strange thing is that once everything seems to be working okay, and then I started getting connectivity issues. It’s definitely not an afternoon project. It takes researching and googling. At the end, it takes a direction at large that the community is investing into. 32:58 – Chuck makes additional comments. 33:21 – Dave adds more comments. Sorry bad joke – Dave. 33:40 – Topic – Virtualization. 34:32 – Having Swamp is a good idea. 34:44 – Rahul adds his comments. 36:54 – Panelist talks about virtualization and scaling. 37:45 – Rahul adds in comments about the ecosystems. 38:21 – Panelist talks about server-less functions.  39:11 – Rahul: Not every application can... 40:32 – Panelist: I guess the whole downside to... 41:07 – Rahul talks about this. 43:03 – Chuck to Eric: Any problems with Kubernetes for you? 43:05 – Eric: Yes – just spelling it! For me it feels like you are in a jet with all of these different buttons. There are 2 different types of developers. I am of DevOps-minded. That’s why we are getting solutions, and tools like Heroku to help. When I listen to this conversation, I feel quiet only because you guys are talking about spiders and I’m afraid of spiders. 44:44 – Dave to Eric: Having information and knowledge about Kubernetes will help you as a developer. Having some awareness can really help you as a developer. 45:43 – Chuck: There are all these options to know about it – they way he is talking about it sounds like it’s the person on the jet. Don’t touch the red button and don’t’ cut the wrong wire! It feels like with software – it’s a beautiful thing – you erase it and reinstall it! 46:50 – Dave: What? What are all of these crazy words?! What does this exactly mean? The visibility is definitely not there for someone who is just tinkering with it. 47:16 – Rahul: It’s not for someone who is tinkering with it. Definitely. 50:02 – Chuck: We have been talking about benefits of Kubernetes – great. What kinds of processes to setup with Kubernetes to make your life easier? 50:40 Rahul answers the question. 53:54 – Rahul’s Social Media Accounts – check them out under LINKS. 54:29 – Get a Coder Job Course Links: T-Shirts for Ruby Rogues! Get a Coder Job Course Ruby JavaScript Phoenix Heroku Amazon EKS Kubernetes Kubernetes Engine Kubernetes Setup AKS Kubernetes – Creating a single master cluster... Kubernetes GitHub Docker Rancher Learn Kubernetes Using Interactive...by Ben Hall Podcast – All Things Devops Nanobox Cloud 66 Chef Puppet Ansible Salt Stack Orange Computers Rahul Mahale’s Blog Rahul’s Talks and Workshops Rahul Mahale’s LinkedIn Rahul Mahale’s Facebook Rahul Mahale’s Kubernetes Workshop via YouTube Sponsors: Sentry Digital Ocean Get a Coder Job Course Picks: Charles Conference Game – TerraGenesis – Space Colony Book – The One Thing Dave Orange Computers Eric Cloud 66 Nanobox Rahul Podcast – All Things Devops Kubernetes

Panel: Charles Max Wood Dave Kimura Eric Berry Special Guests: Rahul Mahale In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panel talks to Rahul Mahale. Rahul is a Senior DevOps Engineer at BigBinary in India. He has also worked with SecureDB Inc., Tiny Owl, Winjit Technologies among others. In addition, he attended the University of Pune. The panel and the guest talk about Kubernetes. Show Topics: 1:25 – Swag.com for t-shirts and mugs, etc. for Ruby Rogues / DevChat.tv. 1:49 – Chuck: Why are you famous? 1:57 – Guest’s background. 4:35 – Chuck: Kubernetes – Anyone play with this? 4:49 – Panelist: Yes. Funny situation, I was working with Heroku. Heroku is very costly, but great. The story continues... 6:13 – Panelist: I was so overwhelmed with how difficult it was to launch a simple website. Now, that being said we were using the Amazon EKS, which is the Kubernetes. They don’t have nearly as much good tools, but that’s my experience. 6:48 – Chuck: I haven’t tried Kubernetes. 8:58 – Rahul: I would like to add a few comments. Managing Kubernetes service is not a big deal at the moment, but... 11:19 – Panelist: You wouldn’t recommend people using Kubernetes unless they were well versed? What is that term? 11:40 – Rahul: Not anyone could use the Kubernetes cluster. Let’s offer that complexity to another company that can handle and mange it. 13:02 – The guest continues this conversation. 14:02 – Panelist: I didn’t know that Kubernetes needed different nodes. 14:28 – Rahul continues this topic. 15:05 – What hardware requirements do they need? 15:19 – Rahul: Yes, they do need a good system. Good amount of memory. Good network space. 15:45 – Panelist asks Rahul a question.  16:30 – Rahul: Let’s answer this into two parts. Kubernetes topic is being discussed in detail. 18:41 – Chuck adds comments and asks a question. 18:58 – Rahul talks about companies and programs. Check out this timestamp to hear his thoughts. 20:42 – Another company is mentioned added to this conversation. 21:55 – Additional companies mentioned: Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc. (Rahul) 22:14 – Chuck: It’s interesting how much community plays a role into success stories. Whether or not it’s best technologies it comes down to where there are enough people to help me if I don’t know what to do. 22:43 – Rahul: People, even enterprises, are there. 23:15 – Chuck: At what point (let’s say I docked my app) should they be looking at Kubernetes? Are you waiting on traffic? How do you make that call? 23:56 – Rahul answers the questions. 26:29 – Rahul: If your application is... 27:13 – Announcement – Digital Ocean! 27:51 – Chuck: How does someone get started with Kubernetes? 27:53 – Rahul answers the question. 30:00 – Chuck: It sounds like you have an amateur setup – Dave? 30:21 – Dave: I think the problem is that there is not a Kubernetes for dummies blog post. There has always been some sort of “gottcha!” As much as these documents say that there are solutions here and there, but you will see that there are networking issues. Once you get that up and running, then there are more issues at hand. The other strange thing is that once everything seems to be working okay, and then I started getting connectivity issues. It’s definitely not an afternoon project. It takes researching and googling. At the end, it takes a direction at large that the community is investing into. 32:58 – Chuck makes additional comments. 33:21 – Dave adds more comments. Sorry bad joke – Dave. 33:40 – Topic – Virtualization. 34:32 – Having Swamp is a good idea. 34:44 – Rahul adds his comments. 36:54 – Panelist talks about virtualization and scaling. 37:45 – Rahul adds in comments about the ecosystems. 38:21 – Panelist talks about server-less functions.  39:11 – Rahul: Not every application can... 40:32 – Panelist: I guess the whole downside to... 41:07 – Rahul talks about this. 43:03 – Chuck to Eric: Any problems with Kubernetes for you? 43:05 – Eric: Yes – just spelling it! For me it feels like you are in a jet with all of these different buttons. There are 2 different types of developers. I am of DevOps-minded. That’s why we are getting solutions, and tools like Heroku to help. When I listen to this conversation, I feel quiet only because you guys are talking about spiders and I’m afraid of spiders. 44:44 – Dave to Eric: Having information and knowledge about Kubernetes will help you as a developer. Having some awareness can really help you as a developer. 45:43 – Chuck: There are all these options to know about it – they way he is talking about it sounds like it’s the person on the jet. Don’t touch the red button and don’t’ cut the wrong wire! It feels like with software – it’s a beautiful thing – you erase it and reinstall it! 46:50 – Dave: What? What are all of these crazy words?! What does this exactly mean? The visibility is definitely not there for someone who is just tinkering with it. 47:16 – Rahul: It’s not for someone who is tinkering with it. Definitely. 50:02 – Chuck: We have been talking about benefits of Kubernetes – great. What kinds of processes to setup with Kubernetes to make your life easier? 50:40 Rahul answers the question. 53:54 – Rahul’s Social Media Accounts – check them out under LINKS. 54:29 – Get a Coder Job Course Links: T-Shirts for Ruby Rogues! Get a Coder Job Course Ruby JavaScript Phoenix Heroku Amazon EKS Kubernetes Kubernetes Engine Kubernetes Setup AKS Kubernetes – Creating a single master cluster... Kubernetes GitHub Docker Rancher Learn Kubernetes Using Interactive...by Ben Hall Podcast – All Things Devops Nanobox Cloud 66 Chef Puppet Ansible Salt Stack Orange Computers Rahul Mahale’s Blog Rahul’s Talks and Workshops Rahul Mahale’s LinkedIn Rahul Mahale’s Facebook Rahul Mahale’s Kubernetes Workshop via YouTube Sponsors: Sentry Digital Ocean Get a Coder Job Course Picks: Charles Conference Game – TerraGenesis – Space Colony Book – The One Thing Dave Orange Computers Eric Cloud 66 Nanobox Rahul Podcast – All Things Devops Kubernetes

Panel: Charles Max Wood Dave Kimura Eric Berry Special Guests: Rahul Mahale In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panel talks to Rahul Mahale. Rahul is a Senior DevOps Engineer at BigBinary in India. He has also worked with SecureDB Inc., Tiny Owl, Winjit Technologies among others. In addition, he attended the University of Pune. The panel and the guest talk about Kubernetes. Show Topics: 1:25 – Swag.com for t-shirts and mugs, etc. for Ruby Rogues / DevChat.tv. 1:49 – Chuck: Why are you famous? 1:57 – Guest’s background. 4:35 – Chuck: Kubernetes – Anyone play with this? 4:49 – Panelist: Yes. Funny situation, I was working with Heroku. Heroku is very costly, but great. The story continues... 6:13 – Panelist: I was so overwhelmed with how difficult it was to launch a simple website. Now, that being said we were using the Amazon EKS, which is the Kubernetes. They don’t have nearly as much good tools, but that’s my experience. 6:48 – Chuck: I haven’t tried Kubernetes. 8:58 – Rahul: I would like to add a few comments. Managing Kubernetes service is not a big deal at the moment, but... 11:19 – Panelist: You wouldn’t recommend people using Kubernetes unless they were well versed? What is that term? 11:40 – Rahul: Not anyone could use the Kubernetes cluster. Let’s offer that complexity to another company that can handle and mange it. 13:02 – The guest continues this conversation. 14:02 – Panelist: I didn’t know that Kubernetes needed different nodes. 14:28 – Rahul continues this topic. 15:05 – What hardware requirements do they need? 15:19 – Rahul: Yes, they do need a good system. Good amount of memory. Good network space. 15:45 – Panelist asks Rahul a question.  16:30 – Rahul: Let’s answer this into two parts. Kubernetes topic is being discussed in detail. 18:41 – Chuck adds comments and asks a question. 18:58 – Rahul talks about companies and programs. Check out this timestamp to hear his thoughts. 20:42 – Another company is mentioned added to this conversation. 21:55 – Additional companies mentioned: Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc. (Rahul) 22:14 – Chuck: It’s interesting how much community plays a role into success stories. Whether or not it’s best technologies it comes down to where there are enough people to help me if I don’t know what to do. 22:43 – Rahul: People, even enterprises, are there. 23:15 – Chuck: At what point (let’s say I docked my app) should they be looking at Kubernetes? Are you waiting on traffic? How do you make that call? 23:56 – Rahul answers the questions. 26:29 – Rahul: If your application is... 27:13 – Announcement – Digital Ocean! 27:51 – Chuck: How does someone get started with Kubernetes? 27:53 – Rahul answers the question. 30:00 – Chuck: It sounds like you have an amateur setup – Dave? 30:21 – Dave: I think the problem is that there is not a Kubernetes for dummies blog post. There has always been some sort of “gottcha!” As much as these documents say that there are solutions here and there, but you will see that there are networking issues. Once you get that up and running, then there are more issues at hand. The other strange thing is that once everything seems to be working okay, and then I started getting connectivity issues. It’s definitely not an afternoon project. It takes researching and googling. At the end, it takes a direction at large that the community is investing into. 32:58 – Chuck makes additional comments. 33:21 – Dave adds more comments. Sorry bad joke – Dave. 33:40 – Topic – Virtualization. 34:32 – Having Swamp is a good idea. 34:44 – Rahul adds his comments. 36:54 – Panelist talks about virtualization and scaling. 37:45 – Rahul adds in comments about the ecosystems. 38:21 – Panelist talks about server-less functions.  39:11 – Rahul: Not every application can... 40:32 – Panelist: I guess the whole downside to... 41:07 – Rahul talks about this. 43:03 – Chuck to Eric: Any problems with Kubernetes for you? 43:05 – Eric: Yes – just spelling it! For me it feels like you are in a jet with all of these different buttons. There are 2 different types of developers. I am of DevOps-minded. That’s why we are getting solutions, and tools like Heroku to help. When I listen to this conversation, I feel quiet only because you guys are talking about spiders and I’m afraid of spiders. 44:44 – Dave to Eric: Having information and knowledge about Kubernetes will help you as a developer. Having some awareness can really help you as a developer. 45:43 – Chuck: There are all these options to know about it – they way he is talking about it sounds like it’s the person on the jet. Don’t touch the red button and don’t’ cut the wrong wire! It feels like with software – it’s a beautiful thing – you erase it and reinstall it! 46:50 – Dave: What? What are all of these crazy words?! What does this exactly mean? The visibility is definitely not there for someone who is just tinkering with it. 47:16 – Rahul: It’s not for someone who is tinkering with it. Definitely. 50:02 – Chuck: We have been talking about benefits of Kubernetes – great. What kinds of processes to setup with Kubernetes to make your life easier? 50:40 Rahul answers the question. 53:54 – Rahul’s Social Media Accounts – check them out under LINKS. 54:29 – Get a Coder Job Course Links: T-Shirts for Ruby Rogues! Get a Coder Job Course Ruby JavaScript Phoenix Heroku Amazon EKS Kubernetes Kubernetes Engine Kubernetes Setup AKS Kubernetes – Creating a single master cluster... Kubernetes GitHub Docker Rancher Learn Kubernetes Using Interactive...by Ben Hall Podcast – All Things Devops Nanobox Cloud 66 Chef Puppet Ansible Salt Stack Orange Computers Rahul Mahale’s Blog Rahul’s Talks and Workshops Rahul Mahale’s LinkedIn Rahul Mahale’s Facebook Rahul Mahale’s Kubernetes Workshop via YouTube Sponsors: Sentry Digital Ocean Get a Coder Job Course Picks: Charles Conference Game – TerraGenesis – Space Colony Book – The One Thing Dave Orange Computers Eric Cloud 66 Nanobox Rahul Podcast – All Things Devops Kubernetes

Panel Jaim Zuber (twitter Sharp Five Software) Ben Scheirman (twitter github blog NSSreencast) Rod Schmidt (twitter github infiniteNIL) Andrew Madsen (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:10 - Jaim Zuber Introduction 02:15 - Integrating somebody else's code into your project without using Cocoapods Dragging & dropping source files Static Library Approach Frameworks Circumventing 10:38 - Cocoapods Libraries Cocoa Controls 12:37 - Frequently Used Pods AFNetworking RestKit ocmock Kiwi SVProgressHUD BlocksKit 15:29 - Getting a Pod into a Library or Application Versioning Multiple Targets Specifying a Path to a Repository Handling Multiple Platforms 28:07 - RubyMotion and Cocoapods motion-cocoapods 29:29 - Using Cocoapods on Client Work 30:08 - Testing 32:17 - Creating Your Own Pods Hosting Dependencies Picks Objective-C Modules (Andrew) UTAsync (Jaim) CocoaPods Xcode Plugin (Rod) VVDocumenter (Rod) CocoaDocs (Ben) cocoapods-xcode-plugin (Ben) Getting Things Done by David Allen (Chuck) Omnifocus (Chuck) Next Week The Developer Portal Transcript [This show is sponsored by The Pragmatic Studio. The Pragmatic Studio has been teaching iOS development since November of 2008. They have a 4-day hands-on course where you'll learn all the tools, APIs, and techniques to build iOS Apps with confidence and understand how all the pieces work together. They have two courses coming up: the first one is in July, from the 22nd - 25th, in Western Virginia, and you can get early registration up through June 21st; you can also sign up for their August course, and that's August 26th - 29th in Denver, Colorado, and you can get early registration through July 26th. If you want a private course for teams of 5 developers or more, you can also sign up on their website at pragmaticstudio.com.] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 15 of the iPhreaks Show! This week on our panel, we have Ben Scheirman. BEN: Hello from Houston! CHUCK: We have Rod Schmidt. ROD: Hello from Salt Lake! CHUCK: Andrew Madsen. ANDREW: Hello also from Salt Lake! CHUCK: And we have a new guest panelist, that is Jaim Zuber. JAIM: Hello from Minneapolis! CHUCK: Do you want to introduce yourself really quickly since you're new to the show? JAIM: Sure, happy to! Independent consultants, I've been doing iOS stuff for about 2-3 years; before that, I did some kind of .NET stuff. Way before that, I did a lot of C++ and C stuff in kind of the past life. But, yeah, I'm doing iOS right now, mobile stuff, and enjoying it! CHUCK: Sounds good! I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. This week, we're going to talk about "CocoaPods". BEN: Yay! CHUCK: [Laughs] ROD: [Chuckles] JAIM: I'm cuckoo for CocoaPods. CHUCK: There we go. JAIM: [Laughs] BEN: I'm a super fan of CocoaPods. I wonder if we have any haters in the audience, or on the panel. ANDREW: Yeah, I'm the hater. BEN: [Inaudible] ANDREW: Not really. BEN: Okay [laughs]. ANDREW: I just don't use it. BEN: You say you're the dissenting opinion? ANDREW: I can do that, sure. CHUCK: I've had people basically say, "Well, it's just like having bundler - bundlers of utility in Ruby for iOS!" I was like, "Oh! That sounds nice." But that doesn't really tell me necessarily how it works. BEN: So can we start off by maybe describing what it takes to integrate somebody else's code into your project without something like CocoaPods? ROD: [Chuckles] CHUCK: Yes. Yes, let's frame the public. BEN: Anybody want to describe this for like, say, a moderately complex library? ANDREW: It depends on how complicated the library is. But at its simplest, you can just drag source code from their project into yours and add it to your project, and that's it. But I think,

Panel Jaim Zuber (twitter Sharp Five Software) Ben Scheirman (twitter github blog NSSreencast) Rod Schmidt (twitter github infiniteNIL) Andrew Madsen (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:10 - Jaim Zuber Introduction 02:15 - Integrating somebody else’s code into your project without using Cocoapods Dragging & dropping source files Static Library Approach Frameworks Circumventing 10:38 - Cocoapods Libraries Cocoa Controls 12:37 - Frequently Used Pods AFNetworking RestKit ocmock Kiwi SVProgressHUD BlocksKit 15:29 - Getting a Pod into a Library or Application Versioning Multiple Targets Specifying a Path to a Repository Handling Multiple Platforms 28:07 - RubyMotion and Cocoapods motion-cocoapods 29:29 - Using Cocoapods on Client Work 30:08 - Testing 32:17 - Creating Your Own Pods Hosting Dependencies Picks Objective-C Modules (Andrew) UTAsync (Jaim) CocoaPods Xcode Plugin (Rod) VVDocumenter (Rod) CocoaDocs (Ben) cocoapods-xcode-plugin (Ben) Getting Things Done by David Allen (Chuck) Omnifocus (Chuck) Next Week The Developer Portal Transcript [This show is sponsored by The Pragmatic Studio. The Pragmatic Studio has been teaching iOS development since November of 2008. They have a 4-day hands-on course where you'll learn all the tools, APIs, and techniques to build iOS Apps with confidence and understand how all the pieces work together. They have two courses coming up: the first one is in July, from the 22nd - 25th, in Western Virginia, and you can get early registration up through June 21st; you can also sign up for their August course, and that's August 26th - 29th in Denver, Colorado, and you can get early registration through July 26th. If you want a private course for teams of 5 developers or more, you can also sign up on their website at pragmaticstudio.com.] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 15 of the iPhreaks Show! This week on our panel, we have Ben Scheirman. BEN: Hello from Houston! CHUCK: We have Rod Schmidt. ROD: Hello from Salt Lake! CHUCK: Andrew Madsen. ANDREW: Hello also from Salt Lake! CHUCK: And we have a new guest panelist, that is Jaim Zuber. JAIM: Hello from Minneapolis! CHUCK: Do you want to introduce yourself really quickly since you're new to the show? JAIM: Sure, happy to! Independent consultants, I've been doing iOS stuff for about 2-3 years; before that, I did some kind of .NET stuff. Way before that, I did a lot of C++ and C stuff in kind of the past life. But, yeah, I'm doing iOS right now, mobile stuff, and enjoying it! CHUCK: Sounds good! I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. This week, we're going to talk about "CocoaPods". BEN: Yay! CHUCK: [Laughs] ROD: [Chuckles] JAIM: I'm cuckoo for CocoaPods. CHUCK: There we go. JAIM: [Laughs] BEN: I'm a super fan of CocoaPods. I wonder if we have any haters in the audience, or on the panel. ANDREW: Yeah, I'm the hater. BEN: [Inaudible] ANDREW: Not really. BEN: Okay [laughs]. ANDREW: I just don't use it. BEN: You say you're the dissenting opinion? ANDREW: I can do that, sure. CHUCK: I've had people basically say, "Well, it's just like having bundler - bundlers of utility in Ruby for iOS!" I was like, "Oh! That sounds nice." But that doesn't really tell me necessarily how it works. BEN: So can we start off by maybe describing what it takes to integrate somebody else's code into your project without something like CocoaPods? ROD: [Chuckles] CHUCK: Yes. Yes, let's frame the public. BEN: Anybody want to describe this for like, say, a moderately complex library? ANDREW: It depends on how complicated the library is. But at its simplest, you can just drag source code from their project into yours and add it to your project, and that's it. But I think,