Podcast appearances and mentions of chuck they

We're traveling to the past to explore the careers of two game show greats: Ralph “Nobody knows who I am anymore” Edwards and Chuck “They made a movie about me” Barris. Between the two of them, they're responsible for some of the most famous game shows of the 20th century including Truth or Consequences and The Newlywed Game. We'll learn how their creations altered the media landscape of the 20th century and discuss the possibility of game show hosts secretly having double lives as assassins. We also learn about a Victorian party game called "Forfeits" that we all need to put a solid effort into helping make a comeback. It's fantastic.  Keep The Nonsense Bazaar ad-free and continuing to embarrass ourselves in front of The Public by joining our Patreon, where you'll get access to our bonus series The Corkboard Bizarre (this week we're talking about Tulpas!) and you'll get access to our Patron discord server. All for the low, low price of $5 a month.  

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 and John are currently full with work and also training, which has been a nightmare for John, because he needs to get more sleep than usual. Chuck is getting back to training but going at a slow pace.    Things have been going interesting for Chuck, he has been trying some new stuff in the search for focus on his recent shift change work-wise. Definitely prioritizing work and selecting the type of stuff that other people can do, so he can focus on the more important things, it is clear that this is the way to go.    He and John have tried to manage everything themselves many times, and it always ends the same way, falling off the wagon and getting back up.   Thought of the week   Chuck - “They want to be at the higher level, but they don’t know the path to get there”

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: Charles Max Wood Guest: Michael King This week on My Ruby Story, Chuck talks with Michael King who is a developer, an enthusiast for natural languages, developing, and mathematics. Charles and Michael talk about his background, and past/current projects that Michael is working on right now. Other topics of discussion include Ruby, Rails, Audacity, PHP, RubyMotion, and React Native. Check it out! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:00 – Get A Coder Job! 0:58 – Chuck: Say “hi” Michael! Introduce yourself. 1:12 – Michael: I am a big language learner: Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese. I learned through T.V. and music. I decided to build an app that helped with languages. I started doing it. 1:50 – Chuck: You hired a developer and had no idea what the developer what was doing. How do you make that transition? They just go with it – right? How did you decide: no, I have to understand THIS. 2:25 – Guest: It’s either I am really into it or I am NOT into it. I have been always very good with mathematics. The computer broke when I was in school and the only option we had were these...He was writing all these variables and I loved variables. The guest talks about Ruby, Rails, and Audacity! 4:08 – Chuck: You talk about natural languages – I see the correlation sometimes and sometimes I don’t. I learned French in school, and then I became fluent in Italian during my Mormon missionary trips. 4:56 – Guest: I am reading this book right now and you have to understand the technicians’ role in order to help lead him. The guest talks about the differences between coding, natural languages, and mathematics. 5:50 – Chuck: Did you let your developer go? Or did you keep him around? 6:03 – Guest: I let him go actually b/c he was on for a part-time basis. I started coding myself. I got help from friends and I got help from a lot of other people. I would ask them tons of questions and form a friendly relationship with them. From there, it snowed-ball from there! 6:57 – Guest: From that experience, I learned a lot. If I had to REDO what I did originally, then I would have done the following things differently... 7:44 – Chuck: I can identify with that – I was a freelancer for 8-9 years. I would build something and then they say: that’s not what we hired you to build. 8:10 – Guest: They wonder why they are getting this feedback? 8:22- Chuck: Why Ruby on Rails? 8:27 – Guest: I didn’t know the difference between mobile frameworks and web frameworks. 9:01 – Chuck: Yeah I don’t like the word “dumb” either. 9:09 – Guest: Ruby was very smooth and I liked it. I got addicted to the process through the Rails way and the Ruby syntax. 9:46 – Chuck: Same for me. I have done PHP before but when I got into Rails it naturally flowed into the way I wanted to work on stuff. I get it. 10:12 – Chuck: What are you working on now? 10:19 – Guest: This project that I have been working on now for 1.5 years. 11:41 – Chuck: You talked about how you picked up React Native. 11:52 – Guest: Yes, yes. 12:39 – Chuck: How did you settle on React Native? 12:50 – Guest talks about the Spanish and English languages. 13:25 – Chuck: I am curious – why didn’t you go with RubyMotion? 13:34 – Guest: I didn’t know anyone that could help me honestly. Also, I didn’t think it was going to be EASY to learn for me. 14:02 – Chuck: Is Reactive Native your main focus? 14:08 – Guest: No building just designing and putting it in front of people. I want to get a prototype to get more funding. I want to know EXACTLY what we are building. 14:40 – Chuck: For entrepreneurs, any advice for anything to get this rolling? 14:56 – Guest: If I had to do it again I would draw it out on paper and figure out how to get to MVP right away. I would try to get validation right away from not building too much 15:47 – Chuck: I am working on a service to help podcasters. They see that that I run 15 shows through DevChat.TV. If I can solve those three problems then I am golden: monetization and/or production. For scheduling guests it’s a pain point for most podcasters. 17:36 – Chuck: Some of the validation for me is talking to people through conferences and other venues. Main question is: What are you doing for scheduling? It takes a bunch of time. Post to where people will get your content. Have your guests promote it, too! 20:05 – Guest: Inviting people to the show. 20:13 – Chuck: This is the 16th interview this week so far! To give you an idea! 21:16 – Guest: You lost me along the way only b/c I don’t do podcasting. You know the problem b/c you are doing it, and you are within the field. 21:42 – Chuck: The more I talk to people the more I get ideas and such. 22:00 – Guest. 22:06 – Chuck: They are worried that their ideas are going to get stolen. 22:15 – Chuck: It’s interesting to see where it goes. I have 2 more interviews after this. Michael, you see and say: what solutions can I provide? 23:03 – Chuck: Did we get into your mobile app then? 23:14 – Guest: It was really hard for me, but now I love coding. Getting it in front of people and testing it. I am trying to keep my education going. I learn by doing and learning by being thrown in to the fire. I am doing a free code camp now. Any suggestions, Chuck that you could offer? 24:35 – Chuck: Learning how to prioritize. What are you aiming at, and what goal are you trying to achieve? I want to make a video course on HOW to stay current? 25:12 – Chuck: Where can people find you? 25:18 – Guest: Twitter! There really isn’t an easy way to find me online – something I should probably fix. 25:28 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! END – CacheFly Links: Ruby Elixir Rails Rust Python PHP React Native Ruby Motion Sponsors: Get a Coder Job Cache Fly Fresh Books Picks: Chuck Vue.js – frontend framework John Papa – Slots in Google Calendar (saying goodbye to Schedule Once) Michael Michael’s Prototype

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Michael King This week on My Ruby Story, Chuck talks with Michael King who is a developer, an enthusiast for natural languages, developing, and mathematics. Charles and Michael talk about his background, and past/current projects that Michael is working on right now. Other topics of discussion include Ruby, Rails, Audacity, PHP, RubyMotion, and React Native. Check it out! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:00 – Get A Coder Job! 0:58 – Chuck: Say “hi” Michael! Introduce yourself. 1:12 – Michael: I am a big language learner: Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese. I learned through T.V. and music. I decided to build an app that helped with languages. I started doing it. 1:50 – Chuck: You hired a developer and had no idea what the developer what was doing. How do you make that transition? They just go with it – right? How did you decide: no, I have to understand THIS. 2:25 – Guest: It’s either I am really into it or I am NOT into it. I have been always very good with mathematics. The computer broke when I was in school and the only option we had were these...He was writing all these variables and I loved variables. The guest talks about Ruby, Rails, and Audacity! 4:08 – Chuck: You talk about natural languages – I see the correlation sometimes and sometimes I don’t. I learned French in school, and then I became fluent in Italian during my Mormon missionary trips. 4:56 – Guest: I am reading this book right now and you have to understand the technicians’ role in order to help lead him. The guest talks about the differences between coding, natural languages, and mathematics. 5:50 – Chuck: Did you let your developer go? Or did you keep him around? 6:03 – Guest: I let him go actually b/c he was on for a part-time basis. I started coding myself. I got help from friends and I got help from a lot of other people. I would ask them tons of questions and form a friendly relationship with them. From there, it snowed-ball from there! 6:57 – Guest: From that experience, I learned a lot. If I had to REDO what I did originally, then I would have done the following things differently... 7:44 – Chuck: I can identify with that – I was a freelancer for 8-9 years. I would build something and then they say: that’s not what we hired you to build. 8:10 – Guest: They wonder why they are getting this feedback? 8:22- Chuck: Why Ruby on Rails? 8:27 – Guest: I didn’t know the difference between mobile frameworks and web frameworks. 9:01 – Chuck: Yeah I don’t like the word “dumb” either. 9:09 – Guest: Ruby was very smooth and I liked it. I got addicted to the process through the Rails way and the Ruby syntax. 9:46 – Chuck: Same for me. I have done PHP before but when I got into Rails it naturally flowed into the way I wanted to work on stuff. I get it. 10:12 – Chuck: What are you working on now? 10:19 – Guest: This project that I have been working on now for 1.5 years. 11:41 – Chuck: You talked about how you picked up React Native. 11:52 – Guest: Yes, yes. 12:39 – Chuck: How did you settle on React Native? 12:50 – Guest talks about the Spanish and English languages. 13:25 – Chuck: I am curious – why didn’t you go with RubyMotion? 13:34 – Guest: I didn’t know anyone that could help me honestly. Also, I didn’t think it was going to be EASY to learn for me. 14:02 – Chuck: Is Reactive Native your main focus? 14:08 – Guest: No building just designing and putting it in front of people. I want to get a prototype to get more funding. I want to know EXACTLY what we are building. 14:40 – Chuck: For entrepreneurs, any advice for anything to get this rolling? 14:56 – Guest: If I had to do it again I would draw it out on paper and figure out how to get to MVP right away. I would try to get validation right away from not building too much 15:47 – Chuck: I am working on a service to help podcasters. They see that that I run 15 shows through DevChat.TV. If I can solve those three problems then I am golden: monetization and/or production. For scheduling guests it’s a pain point for most podcasters. 17:36 – Chuck: Some of the validation for me is talking to people through conferences and other venues. Main question is: What are you doing for scheduling? It takes a bunch of time. Post to where people will get your content. Have your guests promote it, too! 20:05 – Guest: Inviting people to the show. 20:13 – Chuck: This is the 16th interview this week so far! To give you an idea! 21:16 – Guest: You lost me along the way only b/c I don’t do podcasting. You know the problem b/c you are doing it, and you are within the field. 21:42 – Chuck: The more I talk to people the more I get ideas and such. 22:00 – Guest. 22:06 – Chuck: They are worried that their ideas are going to get stolen. 22:15 – Chuck: It’s interesting to see where it goes. I have 2 more interviews after this. Michael, you see and say: what solutions can I provide? 23:03 – Chuck: Did we get into your mobile app then? 23:14 – Guest: It was really hard for me, but now I love coding. Getting it in front of people and testing it. I am trying to keep my education going. I learn by doing and learning by being thrown in to the fire. I am doing a free code camp now. Any suggestions, Chuck that you could offer? 24:35 – Chuck: Learning how to prioritize. What are you aiming at, and what goal are you trying to achieve? I want to make a video course on HOW to stay current? 25:12 – Chuck: Where can people find you? 25:18 – Guest: Twitter! There really isn’t an easy way to find me online – something I should probably fix. 25:28 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! END – CacheFly Links: Ruby Elixir Rails Rust Python PHP React Native Ruby Motion Sponsors: Get a Coder Job Cache Fly Fresh Books Picks: Chuck Vue.js – frontend framework John Papa – Slots in Google Calendar (saying goodbye to Schedule Once) Michael Michael’s Prototype

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Michael King This week on My Ruby Story, Chuck talks with Michael King who is a developer, an enthusiast for natural languages, developing, and mathematics. Charles and Michael talk about his background, and past/current projects that Michael is working on right now. Other topics of discussion include Ruby, Rails, Audacity, PHP, RubyMotion, and React Native. Check it out! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:00 – Get A Coder Job! 0:58 – Chuck: Say “hi” Michael! Introduce yourself. 1:12 – Michael: I am a big language learner: Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese. I learned through T.V. and music. I decided to build an app that helped with languages. I started doing it. 1:50 – Chuck: You hired a developer and had no idea what the developer what was doing. How do you make that transition? They just go with it – right? How did you decide: no, I have to understand THIS. 2:25 – Guest: It’s either I am really into it or I am NOT into it. I have been always very good with mathematics. The computer broke when I was in school and the only option we had were these...He was writing all these variables and I loved variables. The guest talks about Ruby, Rails, and Audacity! 4:08 – Chuck: You talk about natural languages – I see the correlation sometimes and sometimes I don’t. I learned French in school, and then I became fluent in Italian during my Mormon missionary trips. 4:56 – Guest: I am reading this book right now and you have to understand the technicians’ role in order to help lead him. The guest talks about the differences between coding, natural languages, and mathematics. 5:50 – Chuck: Did you let your developer go? Or did you keep him around? 6:03 – Guest: I let him go actually b/c he was on for a part-time basis. I started coding myself. I got help from friends and I got help from a lot of other people. I would ask them tons of questions and form a friendly relationship with them. From there, it snowed-ball from there! 6:57 – Guest: From that experience, I learned a lot. If I had to REDO what I did originally, then I would have done the following things differently... 7:44 – Chuck: I can identify with that – I was a freelancer for 8-9 years. I would build something and then they say: that’s not what we hired you to build. 8:10 – Guest: They wonder why they are getting this feedback? 8:22- Chuck: Why Ruby on Rails? 8:27 – Guest: I didn’t know the difference between mobile frameworks and web frameworks. 9:01 – Chuck: Yeah I don’t like the word “dumb” either. 9:09 – Guest: Ruby was very smooth and I liked it. I got addicted to the process through the Rails way and the Ruby syntax. 9:46 – Chuck: Same for me. I have done PHP before but when I got into Rails it naturally flowed into the way I wanted to work on stuff. I get it. 10:12 – Chuck: What are you working on now? 10:19 – Guest: This project that I have been working on now for 1.5 years. 11:41 – Chuck: You talked about how you picked up React Native. 11:52 – Guest: Yes, yes. 12:39 – Chuck: How did you settle on React Native? 12:50 – Guest talks about the Spanish and English languages. 13:25 – Chuck: I am curious – why didn’t you go with RubyMotion? 13:34 – Guest: I didn’t know anyone that could help me honestly. Also, I didn’t think it was going to be EASY to learn for me. 14:02 – Chuck: Is Reactive Native your main focus? 14:08 – Guest: No building just designing and putting it in front of people. I want to get a prototype to get more funding. I want to know EXACTLY what we are building. 14:40 – Chuck: For entrepreneurs, any advice for anything to get this rolling? 14:56 – Guest: If I had to do it again I would draw it out on paper and figure out how to get to MVP right away. I would try to get validation right away from not building too much 15:47 – Chuck: I am working on a service to help podcasters. They see that that I run 15 shows through DevChat.TV. If I can solve those three problems then I am golden: monetization and/or production. For scheduling guests it’s a pain point for most podcasters. 17:36 – Chuck: Some of the validation for me is talking to people through conferences and other venues. Main question is: What are you doing for scheduling? It takes a bunch of time. Post to where people will get your content. Have your guests promote it, too! 20:05 – Guest: Inviting people to the show. 20:13 – Chuck: This is the 16th interview this week so far! To give you an idea! 21:16 – Guest: You lost me along the way only b/c I don’t do podcasting. You know the problem b/c you are doing it, and you are within the field. 21:42 – Chuck: The more I talk to people the more I get ideas and such. 22:00 – Guest. 22:06 – Chuck: They are worried that their ideas are going to get stolen. 22:15 – Chuck: It’s interesting to see where it goes. I have 2 more interviews after this. Michael, you see and say: what solutions can I provide? 23:03 – Chuck: Did we get into your mobile app then? 23:14 – Guest: It was really hard for me, but now I love coding. Getting it in front of people and testing it. I am trying to keep my education going. I learn by doing and learning by being thrown in to the fire. I am doing a free code camp now. Any suggestions, Chuck that you could offer? 24:35 – Chuck: Learning how to prioritize. What are you aiming at, and what goal are you trying to achieve? I want to make a video course on HOW to stay current? 25:12 – Chuck: Where can people find you? 25:18 – Guest: Twitter! There really isn’t an easy way to find me online – something I should probably fix. 25:28 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! END – CacheFly Links: Ruby Elixir Rails Rust Python PHP React Native Ruby Motion Sponsors: Get a Coder Job Cache Fly Fresh Books Picks: Chuck Vue.js – frontend framework John Papa – Slots in Google Calendar (saying goodbye to Schedule Once) Michael Michael’s Prototype

Panel: Charles Max Wood John Papa Special Guest: Adrian Faciu In this episode, Chuck talks with Adrian Faciu who is a developer for Visma and is a blogger. The panel talks to Adrian about his blog titled, “NgRx Tips & Tricks.” They ask Adrian in-depth questions about NgRx, among many other topics. Listen to today’s episode for more details! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: AngularBootCamp.Com 0:55 – Chuck: Hi! Our guest is Adrian Faciu. 1:10 – Guest: Hello! I am Adrian and I am a developer who works for a Norwegian company, but I live in Romania! 1:35 – Chuck. 1:36 – Guest. 1:47 – Chuck: The market is so global. I have talked with many different guests from different parts of the world – it’s really neat! It’s this global phenomenon. 2:12 – Guest: It’s a great thing! 2:23 – Chuck: They have an office where you live? 2:31 – Yes. 2:37 – Chuck: How are you guys using Angular over there? 2:47 – Guest: We have several different products. We customize using them with internalized tools. 3:04 – Chuck: Real quick let’s talk about your blog post. I will admit I am not that familiar with NgRx, so I will ask newbie questions. Now do you want to explain what this is? 3:41 – Guest: Sure! The short story of the article is I saw people doing things the hard way. And after I figured out some things, people encouraged me to write about my experience. 4:37 – Chuck: John Papa just signed-in! 4:53 – Guest: Yes NgRx is... 5:02 – Chuck: You used classes for all actions what do you mean by that? 5:05 – Guest answers the question into detail. 6:31 – Chuck: Let’s say we have a class that uses a log error... 6:42 – Guest: For example you have actions that... 7:02 – Chuck: When you use the reducer... 7:10 – Guest: There are other tricks we can use like keeping all of them in the same file... 8:00 – Guest talks about the union type. 8:24 – Chuck: You learned this by doing things wrong – what happens when you do these things wrong? 8:30 – Guest: If you don’t put all of your classes in the right file then you end up with a lot of files. If you don’t create hero types then you’d have to... 10:02 – Chuck: If you import user actions then does it import all of the other types? 10:08 – Guest: Import everything from that file. 10:17 – Chuck: If you have any questions, John, feel free to chime-in! 10:29 – John: Yeah I am scanning through this. The negative I hear a lot of through actions, it’s cause we create constants – the action class creators, it seems to cause an undue amount of stress. How much actual code do you actually have to write – how do you feel about that? 11:12 – Guest: I didn’t want to write all of this code! That’s what I wanted to avoid. 11:44 – John: I wrote them, didn’t like them, I went back to them... It wasn’t just that I created a new action I had to create the constant and other things – also the place you do the union type, I’d forget to do the union type at the end! If you don’t have all of those things then it won’t work. Even on a simple project I’d have 120 lines of code for a simple task. 12:49 – Guest: Yes. Sometimes I would forget this or that. I’d have to figure out what I did wrong. I went back and created classes for a lot of things. I like the benefits. 13:19 – John: I like your ideas and your tips in your blog. How do you feel about the NAMES of those actions? 13:55 – Guest. 14:51 – John: Important part is the naming of the string inside of it – that’s the value... So you can see the actions that are being displayed. 15:25 – Guest: If you didn’t do it right that’s where the problem would be. 15:38 – John: To me it’s a love/hate relationship b/c there is so much code to it. I usually copy and paste which means that I usually forget to change something. I agree, but I don’t’ like creating it. 16:05 – Guest: I’ve been trying to figure out a solution for it eventually I gave up. 16:23 – John: Moving onto effects – inside that happens inside of the Redux cycle – if you want to do something outside of it that’s when you do effects right? 16:40 – Guest. 16:49 – John: Using the effects is good or do it a different way? 17: 20 – Guest: It makes my components cleaner. I have seen projects that DON’T use it and it’s not the best. 17:36 – John: Like getting a list of customers... (I am using my hands and nobody can see me!) It’s weird to me to NOT use the effects! 18:52 – Guest: If you implement some type of caching then it’s everything to put everything in the state. 19:07 – Chuck: I haven’t used it as much as I would like, but I haven’t do much with it. 19:23 – John: I am curious from somebody hasn’t dove into it – does effects make sense to you, Chuck? 19:39 – Chuck: It seems like effects is a side effect? Like calling out an external API... 20:10 – John: Yeah even multiple effects. John asks a question. 20:23 – Guest answers the question. 20:29 – Chuck: I like that you can make constrained assumptions and all of the complicated... 21:10 – Guest: I am using my effects like functions. 21:26 – John’s question. 21:31 – Chuck: Doing everything! You said implement the 2-payload method – that doesn’t make sense? 21:43 – Guest: Not 100% convinced you need it. What people are doing on these actions... 22:43 – Chuck: How much magic you want? 22:50 – Guest. 22:59 – John: I am confused about ERROR HANDLING. What do you advise for people to do? 23:21 – Guest: Basically, when you deal with that effect you deal with the actions, and the actions... If you get an error on it it’s done. I was trying to explain there that...do it on another stream. Try it on another stream and handle it. What happened to me – I did it on the action state and I got an error and then everything will stop. 24:27 – John: That’s not good! 24:32 – Chuck. 24:35 – John: Good tip! 24:40 – Chuck: Angular has gotten better at that. I still find, though... 25:06 – John. 25:16 – John: Hey I appreciate these blog posts that don’t always show the happy path. To show the unhappy path is a good idea. 25:32 – Chuck. 26:00 – Going down your list, Adrian, let’s talk about effects are services. I agree, but not that we have... 26:24 – Guest: I have seen cases where people forget that. They say I want to call a service, how do I do that? They forget... 26:50 – John: You have to provide your services somewhere. The old way was you could go into the... What do you do? 27:28 – Guest: Most of the applications... 28:17 – John. 28:25 – Chuck: I love deleting code! 28:32 – John: You end up in a spaghetti pool, though, if you needed that deleted code. Nooooo!!! 29:00 – Chuck. 29:01 – Guest. 29:10 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 29:49 – John: Let’s talk about reducers – the smallest part of your tip sections. You say, “keep them simple” – how do you keep them simple? 30:07 – Guest: I have received this observation from several people. This is the biggest problem I had. How to keep them simple... 31:08 – John: When someone makes that type of code – where would you want them to put it? 31:23 – Guest: It depends on different types of actions. Maybe I have some sort of matter that I added to the data – an action from my application we can catch it into an effect and... Not all of the actions have to go to the reducer. 32:04 – John: I say, “Hmm...” when I see reducers like this...they are running a synchronized code inside of a reducer. And I see that a lot. 32:24 – Chuck. 32:28 – John: You go call a reaction, and...sometimes they are doing HTP there, but it’s hard to explain. 33:11 – John: What are some of the things that they can do to step-into, when they are using these? 33:16 – Guest: That’s why I only have these things about the reducers. 33:48 – Chuck: I am wondering what is the life cycle look like? What do you call a reducer from an effect from an action or vice versa? 34:09 – Guest answers the question. 34:37 – John: It can be confusing with all of these different terms. Where does it end? Your component you have to say: call this action. Perform this action and then the action says get customers – the NgRx library listens for that and helps connect to the reducer for you. Look into the action and then return that to a stream to whatever... 35:29 – Guest: Yes, it sends it to reducers. Guest goes into more detail. 36:09 – John: You never talk to the reducer directly? 36:17 – Chuck: ...is that something I should have done before – or does it call effects and the effects load the information into the state and the reducer pulls it out for the action? 36:46 – Guest. 36:58 – Chuck. 37:03 – Guest. 37:53 – John: It really depends on what you want to do, Chuck. John will give a hypothetical scenario. 38:58 – Chuck: In your scenario, let’s say... 39:14 – John: Everything is right up until the end there. It’s a little magical, honestly. I just know here is my selector and here is my data! 40:17 – Chuck: Selector is essentially I am interested in THIS state or THIS state change. 40:40 – Guest. 40:50 – Chuck: So when that changes... 40:56 – Guest. 40:59 – John. 41:05 – Chuck: A little piece of the overall store. 41:18 – Guest: My tip there was a bout the selectors... 42:30 – Chuck: So I can hand off my selector to multiple places? 42:36 – Guest: Yep. You don’t need to know anything else. 42:44 – Guest: Combine it as needed. Another benefit here is memorization. It says that each time you select pure functions it wont call the function again. 43:42 – I am seeing a trend in your tips, too. I am seeing easier way to code. You are always saying selector technique. There are a lot of terms in NgRx module. Dispatchers and states and stores...it’s nice to have a way to create the code easier. 44:21 – Guest: It does take a lot of time for someone to grasp. 44:30 – Chuck. 44:35 – John: Don’t use the store all over the place – that’s what Adrian says! 44:54 – Guest: I think it’s more like dumb components. I have a container of all of these dumb components. The container is the one that KNOWS. 46:22 – Chuck: It’s just a button. 46:28 – Guest: You click the button and it triggers. Whenever you want to use that component then you... 46:48 – Chuck: Any types of data that you wouldn’t want to use in your NgRx store? 47:07 – Guest: It depends – I am not holding any logging information there, though. 47:51 – John: I like to ask WHY. Property initialization. You are saying... 48:11 – Guest: It’s less code and it’s reasonable. If I can have less code then I’d love to have it. I think it’s cleaner b/c it’s not that much code. Most people might think blah, blah, blah, but I think it looks okay. 48:46 – John: I can see why it would be less code. 48:57 – Guest. 49:07 – John: I haven’t seen this: looking at your property initializer... Looking at your code here, Adrian... The store object itself is a reference to the NgRx store. That means you have to... To me I don’t want my app to know that NgRx is involved. I started to do this...I was creating an Angular service, which... Have you done this before? 50:33 – Guest:  I have seen this function but I haven’t played with it. It makes sense. This takes it a step further. Like you say it’s perfect b/c nobody knows anything about that store, but it’s a new level. I think you have some benefits with that way of doing it, too. 51:23 – John: The one thing that sticks out is company name is your observable, then your... 52:10 – Guest: Yeah that’s good b/c it might be better! They might not even know what NgRx is, and you have a service so just use them. Yeah it’s just an observable. 52:33 – Chuck: You don’t want to see my garage. 52:44 – Guest: Some services are underrated. Like you suggested we could use them for much more. 53:01 – Guest: It was nice writing these tips. 53:19 – Chuck: What are working on now? 53:23 – Guest: Writing a new blog. 53:41 – Chuck: We will keep an eye out for it. Where do you post? 53:55 – Guest: Usually Medium, and Twitter. Search for my name and you will find me, b/c I have the same handler on all the places. 54:15 – Chuck & John: Let’s go to picks! 54:30 – Chuck is talking about future episodes and potential topics. You can vote stuff up on Trello on NgRx so we can go deeper on this topic. 55:40 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 1:02:00 – Advertisement – Cache Fly! Links: Vue jQuery Angular C# Chuck’s Twitter John Papa’s Twitter Adrian’s Medium Adrian’s Twitter Adrian’s GitHub Adrian’s Blog Post Adrian’s Article: Testing NgRx Effects Sponsors: Angular Boot Camp Fresh Books Get a Coder Job Course Cache Fly Picks: John NgRx Data Conferences  - Don’t feel mofo Charles Discord App Adrain Angular In-depth Doc Wallaby

Panel: Charles Max Wood John Papa Special Guest: Adrian Faciu In this episode, Chuck talks with Adrian Faciu who is a developer for Visma and is a blogger. The panel talks to Adrian about his blog titled, “NgRx Tips & Tricks.” They ask Adrian in-depth questions about NgRx, among many other topics. Listen to today’s episode for more details! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: AngularBootCamp.Com 0:55 – Chuck: Hi! Our guest is Adrian Faciu. 1:10 – Guest: Hello! I am Adrian and I am a developer who works for a Norwegian company, but I live in Romania! 1:35 – Chuck. 1:36 – Guest. 1:47 – Chuck: The market is so global. I have talked with many different guests from different parts of the world – it’s really neat! It’s this global phenomenon. 2:12 – Guest: It’s a great thing! 2:23 – Chuck: They have an office where you live? 2:31 – Yes. 2:37 – Chuck: How are you guys using Angular over there? 2:47 – Guest: We have several different products. We customize using them with internalized tools. 3:04 – Chuck: Real quick let’s talk about your blog post. I will admit I am not that familiar with NgRx, so I will ask newbie questions. Now do you want to explain what this is? 3:41 – Guest: Sure! The short story of the article is I saw people doing things the hard way. And after I figured out some things, people encouraged me to write about my experience. 4:37 – Chuck: John Papa just signed-in! 4:53 – Guest: Yes NgRx is... 5:02 – Chuck: You used classes for all actions what do you mean by that? 5:05 – Guest answers the question into detail. 6:31 – Chuck: Let’s say we have a class that uses a log error... 6:42 – Guest: For example you have actions that... 7:02 – Chuck: When you use the reducer... 7:10 – Guest: There are other tricks we can use like keeping all of them in the same file... 8:00 – Guest talks about the union type. 8:24 – Chuck: You learned this by doing things wrong – what happens when you do these things wrong? 8:30 – Guest: If you don’t put all of your classes in the right file then you end up with a lot of files. If you don’t create hero types then you’d have to... 10:02 – Chuck: If you import user actions then does it import all of the other types? 10:08 – Guest: Import everything from that file. 10:17 – Chuck: If you have any questions, John, feel free to chime-in! 10:29 – John: Yeah I am scanning through this. The negative I hear a lot of through actions, it’s cause we create constants – the action class creators, it seems to cause an undue amount of stress. How much actual code do you actually have to write – how do you feel about that? 11:12 – Guest: I didn’t want to write all of this code! That’s what I wanted to avoid. 11:44 – John: I wrote them, didn’t like them, I went back to them... It wasn’t just that I created a new action I had to create the constant and other things – also the place you do the union type, I’d forget to do the union type at the end! If you don’t have all of those things then it won’t work. Even on a simple project I’d have 120 lines of code for a simple task. 12:49 – Guest: Yes. Sometimes I would forget this or that. I’d have to figure out what I did wrong. I went back and created classes for a lot of things. I like the benefits. 13:19 – John: I like your ideas and your tips in your blog. How do you feel about the NAMES of those actions? 13:55 – Guest. 14:51 – John: Important part is the naming of the string inside of it – that’s the value... So you can see the actions that are being displayed. 15:25 – Guest: If you didn’t do it right that’s where the problem would be. 15:38 – John: To me it’s a love/hate relationship b/c there is so much code to it. I usually copy and paste which means that I usually forget to change something. I agree, but I don’t’ like creating it. 16:05 – Guest: I’ve been trying to figure out a solution for it eventually I gave up. 16:23 – John: Moving onto effects – inside that happens inside of the Redux cycle – if you want to do something outside of it that’s when you do effects right? 16:40 – Guest. 16:49 – John: Using the effects is good or do it a different way? 17: 20 – Guest: It makes my components cleaner. I have seen projects that DON’T use it and it’s not the best. 17:36 – John: Like getting a list of customers... (I am using my hands and nobody can see me!) It’s weird to me to NOT use the effects! 18:52 – Guest: If you implement some type of caching then it’s everything to put everything in the state. 19:07 – Chuck: I haven’t used it as much as I would like, but I haven’t do much with it. 19:23 – John: I am curious from somebody hasn’t dove into it – does effects make sense to you, Chuck? 19:39 – Chuck: It seems like effects is a side effect? Like calling out an external API... 20:10 – John: Yeah even multiple effects. John asks a question. 20:23 – Guest answers the question. 20:29 – Chuck: I like that you can make constrained assumptions and all of the complicated... 21:10 – Guest: I am using my effects like functions. 21:26 – John’s question. 21:31 – Chuck: Doing everything! You said implement the 2-payload method – that doesn’t make sense? 21:43 – Guest: Not 100% convinced you need it. What people are doing on these actions... 22:43 – Chuck: How much magic you want? 22:50 – Guest. 22:59 – John: I am confused about ERROR HANDLING. What do you advise for people to do? 23:21 – Guest: Basically, when you deal with that effect you deal with the actions, and the actions... If you get an error on it it’s done. I was trying to explain there that...do it on another stream. Try it on another stream and handle it. What happened to me – I did it on the action state and I got an error and then everything will stop. 24:27 – John: That’s not good! 24:32 – Chuck. 24:35 – John: Good tip! 24:40 – Chuck: Angular has gotten better at that. I still find, though... 25:06 – John. 25:16 – John: Hey I appreciate these blog posts that don’t always show the happy path. To show the unhappy path is a good idea. 25:32 – Chuck. 26:00 – Going down your list, Adrian, let’s talk about effects are services. I agree, but not that we have... 26:24 – Guest: I have seen cases where people forget that. They say I want to call a service, how do I do that? They forget... 26:50 – John: You have to provide your services somewhere. The old way was you could go into the... What do you do? 27:28 – Guest: Most of the applications... 28:17 – John. 28:25 – Chuck: I love deleting code! 28:32 – John: You end up in a spaghetti pool, though, if you needed that deleted code. Nooooo!!! 29:00 – Chuck. 29:01 – Guest. 29:10 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 29:49 – John: Let’s talk about reducers – the smallest part of your tip sections. You say, “keep them simple” – how do you keep them simple? 30:07 – Guest: I have received this observation from several people. This is the biggest problem I had. How to keep them simple... 31:08 – John: When someone makes that type of code – where would you want them to put it? 31:23 – Guest: It depends on different types of actions. Maybe I have some sort of matter that I added to the data – an action from my application we can catch it into an effect and... Not all of the actions have to go to the reducer. 32:04 – John: I say, “Hmm...” when I see reducers like this...they are running a synchronized code inside of a reducer. And I see that a lot. 32:24 – Chuck. 32:28 – John: You go call a reaction, and...sometimes they are doing HTP there, but it’s hard to explain. 33:11 – John: What are some of the things that they can do to step-into, when they are using these? 33:16 – Guest: That’s why I only have these things about the reducers. 33:48 – Chuck: I am wondering what is the life cycle look like? What do you call a reducer from an effect from an action or vice versa? 34:09 – Guest answers the question. 34:37 – John: It can be confusing with all of these different terms. Where does it end? Your component you have to say: call this action. Perform this action and then the action says get customers – the NgRx library listens for that and helps connect to the reducer for you. Look into the action and then return that to a stream to whatever... 35:29 – Guest: Yes, it sends it to reducers. Guest goes into more detail. 36:09 – John: You never talk to the reducer directly? 36:17 – Chuck: ...is that something I should have done before – or does it call effects and the effects load the information into the state and the reducer pulls it out for the action? 36:46 – Guest. 36:58 – Chuck. 37:03 – Guest. 37:53 – John: It really depends on what you want to do, Chuck. John will give a hypothetical scenario. 38:58 – Chuck: In your scenario, let’s say... 39:14 – John: Everything is right up until the end there. It’s a little magical, honestly. I just know here is my selector and here is my data! 40:17 – Chuck: Selector is essentially I am interested in THIS state or THIS state change. 40:40 – Guest. 40:50 – Chuck: So when that changes... 40:56 – Guest. 40:59 – John. 41:05 – Chuck: A little piece of the overall store. 41:18 – Guest: My tip there was a bout the selectors... 42:30 – Chuck: So I can hand off my selector to multiple places? 42:36 – Guest: Yep. You don’t need to know anything else. 42:44 – Guest: Combine it as needed. Another benefit here is memorization. It says that each time you select pure functions it wont call the function again. 43:42 – I am seeing a trend in your tips, too. I am seeing easier way to code. You are always saying selector technique. There are a lot of terms in NgRx module. Dispatchers and states and stores...it’s nice to have a way to create the code easier. 44:21 – Guest: It does take a lot of time for someone to grasp. 44:30 – Chuck. 44:35 – John: Don’t use the store all over the place – that’s what Adrian says! 44:54 – Guest: I think it’s more like dumb components. I have a container of all of these dumb components. The container is the one that KNOWS. 46:22 – Chuck: It’s just a button. 46:28 – Guest: You click the button and it triggers. Whenever you want to use that component then you... 46:48 – Chuck: Any types of data that you wouldn’t want to use in your NgRx store? 47:07 – Guest: It depends – I am not holding any logging information there, though. 47:51 – John: I like to ask WHY. Property initialization. You are saying... 48:11 – Guest: It’s less code and it’s reasonable. If I can have less code then I’d love to have it. I think it’s cleaner b/c it’s not that much code. Most people might think blah, blah, blah, but I think it looks okay. 48:46 – John: I can see why it would be less code. 48:57 – Guest. 49:07 – John: I haven’t seen this: looking at your property initializer... Looking at your code here, Adrian... The store object itself is a reference to the NgRx store. That means you have to... To me I don’t want my app to know that NgRx is involved. I started to do this...I was creating an Angular service, which... Have you done this before? 50:33 – Guest:  I have seen this function but I haven’t played with it. It makes sense. This takes it a step further. Like you say it’s perfect b/c nobody knows anything about that store, but it’s a new level. I think you have some benefits with that way of doing it, too. 51:23 – John: The one thing that sticks out is company name is your observable, then your... 52:10 – Guest: Yeah that’s good b/c it might be better! They might not even know what NgRx is, and you have a service so just use them. Yeah it’s just an observable. 52:33 – Chuck: You don’t want to see my garage. 52:44 – Guest: Some services are underrated. Like you suggested we could use them for much more. 53:01 – Guest: It was nice writing these tips. 53:19 – Chuck: What are working on now? 53:23 – Guest: Writing a new blog. 53:41 – Chuck: We will keep an eye out for it. Where do you post? 53:55 – Guest: Usually Medium, and Twitter. Search for my name and you will find me, b/c I have the same handler on all the places. 54:15 – Chuck & John: Let’s go to picks! 54:30 – Chuck is talking about future episodes and potential topics. You can vote stuff up on Trello on NgRx so we can go deeper on this topic. 55:40 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 1:02:00 – Advertisement – Cache Fly! Links: Vue jQuery Angular C# Chuck’s Twitter John Papa’s Twitter Adrian’s Medium Adrian’s Twitter Adrian’s GitHub Adrian’s Blog Post Adrian’s Article: Testing NgRx Effects Sponsors: Angular Boot Camp Fresh Books Get a Coder Job Course Cache Fly Picks: John NgRx Data Conferences  - Don’t feel mofo Charles Discord App Adrain Angular In-depth Doc Wallaby

Panel: Charles Max Wood John Papa Special Guest: Adrian Faciu In this episode, Chuck talks with Adrian Faciu who is a developer for Visma and is a blogger. The panel talks to Adrian about his blog titled, “NgRx Tips & Tricks.” They ask Adrian in-depth questions about NgRx, among many other topics. Listen to today’s episode for more details! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: AngularBootCamp.Com 0:55 – Chuck: Hi! Our guest is Adrian Faciu. 1:10 – Guest: Hello! I am Adrian and I am a developer who works for a Norwegian company, but I live in Romania! 1:35 – Chuck. 1:36 – Guest. 1:47 – Chuck: The market is so global. I have talked with many different guests from different parts of the world – it’s really neat! It’s this global phenomenon. 2:12 – Guest: It’s a great thing! 2:23 – Chuck: They have an office where you live? 2:31 – Yes. 2:37 – Chuck: How are you guys using Angular over there? 2:47 – Guest: We have several different products. We customize using them with internalized tools. 3:04 – Chuck: Real quick let’s talk about your blog post. I will admit I am not that familiar with NgRx, so I will ask newbie questions. Now do you want to explain what this is? 3:41 – Guest: Sure! The short story of the article is I saw people doing things the hard way. And after I figured out some things, people encouraged me to write about my experience. 4:37 – Chuck: John Papa just signed-in! 4:53 – Guest: Yes NgRx is... 5:02 – Chuck: You used classes for all actions what do you mean by that? 5:05 – Guest answers the question into detail. 6:31 – Chuck: Let’s say we have a class that uses a log error... 6:42 – Guest: For example you have actions that... 7:02 – Chuck: When you use the reducer... 7:10 – Guest: There are other tricks we can use like keeping all of them in the same file... 8:00 – Guest talks about the union type. 8:24 – Chuck: You learned this by doing things wrong – what happens when you do these things wrong? 8:30 – Guest: If you don’t put all of your classes in the right file then you end up with a lot of files. If you don’t create hero types then you’d have to... 10:02 – Chuck: If you import user actions then does it import all of the other types? 10:08 – Guest: Import everything from that file. 10:17 – Chuck: If you have any questions, John, feel free to chime-in! 10:29 – John: Yeah I am scanning through this. The negative I hear a lot of through actions, it’s cause we create constants – the action class creators, it seems to cause an undue amount of stress. How much actual code do you actually have to write – how do you feel about that? 11:12 – Guest: I didn’t want to write all of this code! That’s what I wanted to avoid. 11:44 – John: I wrote them, didn’t like them, I went back to them... It wasn’t just that I created a new action I had to create the constant and other things – also the place you do the union type, I’d forget to do the union type at the end! If you don’t have all of those things then it won’t work. Even on a simple project I’d have 120 lines of code for a simple task. 12:49 – Guest: Yes. Sometimes I would forget this or that. I’d have to figure out what I did wrong. I went back and created classes for a lot of things. I like the benefits. 13:19 – John: I like your ideas and your tips in your blog. How do you feel about the NAMES of those actions? 13:55 – Guest. 14:51 – John: Important part is the naming of the string inside of it – that’s the value... So you can see the actions that are being displayed. 15:25 – Guest: If you didn’t do it right that’s where the problem would be. 15:38 – John: To me it’s a love/hate relationship b/c there is so much code to it. I usually copy and paste which means that I usually forget to change something. I agree, but I don’t’ like creating it. 16:05 – Guest: I’ve been trying to figure out a solution for it eventually I gave up. 16:23 – John: Moving onto effects – inside that happens inside of the Redux cycle – if you want to do something outside of it that’s when you do effects right? 16:40 – Guest. 16:49 – John: Using the effects is good or do it a different way? 17: 20 – Guest: It makes my components cleaner. I have seen projects that DON’T use it and it’s not the best. 17:36 – John: Like getting a list of customers... (I am using my hands and nobody can see me!) It’s weird to me to NOT use the effects! 18:52 – Guest: If you implement some type of caching then it’s everything to put everything in the state. 19:07 – Chuck: I haven’t used it as much as I would like, but I haven’t do much with it. 19:23 – John: I am curious from somebody hasn’t dove into it – does effects make sense to you, Chuck? 19:39 – Chuck: It seems like effects is a side effect? Like calling out an external API... 20:10 – John: Yeah even multiple effects. John asks a question. 20:23 – Guest answers the question. 20:29 – Chuck: I like that you can make constrained assumptions and all of the complicated... 21:10 – Guest: I am using my effects like functions. 21:26 – John’s question. 21:31 – Chuck: Doing everything! You said implement the 2-payload method – that doesn’t make sense? 21:43 – Guest: Not 100% convinced you need it. What people are doing on these actions... 22:43 – Chuck: How much magic you want? 22:50 – Guest. 22:59 – John: I am confused about ERROR HANDLING. What do you advise for people to do? 23:21 – Guest: Basically, when you deal with that effect you deal with the actions, and the actions... If you get an error on it it’s done. I was trying to explain there that...do it on another stream. Try it on another stream and handle it. What happened to me – I did it on the action state and I got an error and then everything will stop. 24:27 – John: That’s not good! 24:32 – Chuck. 24:35 – John: Good tip! 24:40 – Chuck: Angular has gotten better at that. I still find, though... 25:06 – John. 25:16 – John: Hey I appreciate these blog posts that don’t always show the happy path. To show the unhappy path is a good idea. 25:32 – Chuck. 26:00 – Going down your list, Adrian, let’s talk about effects are services. I agree, but not that we have... 26:24 – Guest: I have seen cases where people forget that. They say I want to call a service, how do I do that? They forget... 26:50 – John: You have to provide your services somewhere. The old way was you could go into the... What do you do? 27:28 – Guest: Most of the applications... 28:17 – John. 28:25 – Chuck: I love deleting code! 28:32 – John: You end up in a spaghetti pool, though, if you needed that deleted code. Nooooo!!! 29:00 – Chuck. 29:01 – Guest. 29:10 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 29:49 – John: Let’s talk about reducers – the smallest part of your tip sections. You say, “keep them simple” – how do you keep them simple? 30:07 – Guest: I have received this observation from several people. This is the biggest problem I had. How to keep them simple... 31:08 – John: When someone makes that type of code – where would you want them to put it? 31:23 – Guest: It depends on different types of actions. Maybe I have some sort of matter that I added to the data – an action from my application we can catch it into an effect and... Not all of the actions have to go to the reducer. 32:04 – John: I say, “Hmm...” when I see reducers like this...they are running a synchronized code inside of a reducer. And I see that a lot. 32:24 – Chuck. 32:28 – John: You go call a reaction, and...sometimes they are doing HTP there, but it’s hard to explain. 33:11 – John: What are some of the things that they can do to step-into, when they are using these? 33:16 – Guest: That’s why I only have these things about the reducers. 33:48 – Chuck: I am wondering what is the life cycle look like? What do you call a reducer from an effect from an action or vice versa? 34:09 – Guest answers the question. 34:37 – John: It can be confusing with all of these different terms. Where does it end? Your component you have to say: call this action. Perform this action and then the action says get customers – the NgRx library listens for that and helps connect to the reducer for you. Look into the action and then return that to a stream to whatever... 35:29 – Guest: Yes, it sends it to reducers. Guest goes into more detail. 36:09 – John: You never talk to the reducer directly? 36:17 – Chuck: ...is that something I should have done before – or does it call effects and the effects load the information into the state and the reducer pulls it out for the action? 36:46 – Guest. 36:58 – Chuck. 37:03 – Guest. 37:53 – John: It really depends on what you want to do, Chuck. John will give a hypothetical scenario. 38:58 – Chuck: In your scenario, let’s say... 39:14 – John: Everything is right up until the end there. It’s a little magical, honestly. I just know here is my selector and here is my data! 40:17 – Chuck: Selector is essentially I am interested in THIS state or THIS state change. 40:40 – Guest. 40:50 – Chuck: So when that changes... 40:56 – Guest. 40:59 – John. 41:05 – Chuck: A little piece of the overall store. 41:18 – Guest: My tip there was a bout the selectors... 42:30 – Chuck: So I can hand off my selector to multiple places? 42:36 – Guest: Yep. You don’t need to know anything else. 42:44 – Guest: Combine it as needed. Another benefit here is memorization. It says that each time you select pure functions it wont call the function again. 43:42 – I am seeing a trend in your tips, too. I am seeing easier way to code. You are always saying selector technique. There are a lot of terms in NgRx module. Dispatchers and states and stores...it’s nice to have a way to create the code easier. 44:21 – Guest: It does take a lot of time for someone to grasp. 44:30 – Chuck. 44:35 – John: Don’t use the store all over the place – that’s what Adrian says! 44:54 – Guest: I think it’s more like dumb components. I have a container of all of these dumb components. The container is the one that KNOWS. 46:22 – Chuck: It’s just a button. 46:28 – Guest: You click the button and it triggers. Whenever you want to use that component then you... 46:48 – Chuck: Any types of data that you wouldn’t want to use in your NgRx store? 47:07 – Guest: It depends – I am not holding any logging information there, though. 47:51 – John: I like to ask WHY. Property initialization. You are saying... 48:11 – Guest: It’s less code and it’s reasonable. If I can have less code then I’d love to have it. I think it’s cleaner b/c it’s not that much code. Most people might think blah, blah, blah, but I think it looks okay. 48:46 – John: I can see why it would be less code. 48:57 – Guest. 49:07 – John: I haven’t seen this: looking at your property initializer... Looking at your code here, Adrian... The store object itself is a reference to the NgRx store. That means you have to... To me I don’t want my app to know that NgRx is involved. I started to do this...I was creating an Angular service, which... Have you done this before? 50:33 – Guest:  I have seen this function but I haven’t played with it. It makes sense. This takes it a step further. Like you say it’s perfect b/c nobody knows anything about that store, but it’s a new level. I think you have some benefits with that way of doing it, too. 51:23 – John: The one thing that sticks out is company name is your observable, then your... 52:10 – Guest: Yeah that’s good b/c it might be better! They might not even know what NgRx is, and you have a service so just use them. Yeah it’s just an observable. 52:33 – Chuck: You don’t want to see my garage. 52:44 – Guest: Some services are underrated. Like you suggested we could use them for much more. 53:01 – Guest: It was nice writing these tips. 53:19 – Chuck: What are working on now? 53:23 – Guest: Writing a new blog. 53:41 – Chuck: We will keep an eye out for it. Where do you post? 53:55 – Guest: Usually Medium, and Twitter. Search for my name and you will find me, b/c I have the same handler on all the places. 54:15 – Chuck & John: Let’s go to picks! 54:30 – Chuck is talking about future episodes and potential topics. You can vote stuff up on Trello on NgRx so we can go deeper on this topic. 55:40 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 1:02:00 – Advertisement – Cache Fly! Links: Vue jQuery Angular C# Chuck’s Twitter John Papa’s Twitter Adrian’s Medium Adrian’s Twitter Adrian’s GitHub Adrian’s Blog Post Adrian’s Article: Testing NgRx Effects Sponsors: Angular Boot Camp Fresh Books Get a Coder Job Course Cache Fly Picks: John NgRx Data Conferences  - Don’t feel mofo Charles Discord App Adrain Angular In-depth Doc Wallaby

Panel: Charles Max Wood Chris Fritz Divya Sasidharan Joe Eames John Papa Special Guest: Mike Hartington and Michael Tintiuc In this episode, the panel talks with Mike and Michael who are developers of Ionic. The panel and the guests talk about the ins-and-outs of the framework and talk about the pros and cons, too. Listen to today’s episode to hear how they discuss how Ionic is compatible with Vue and Angular. Finally, they talk about various topics, such as Cordova and Capacitor. Show Topics: 1:19 – Mike H. gives his background. He uses JavaScript every day. 1:30 – Michael T. gives his background. 1:53 – Chuck: Yes, today we are talking about Ionic. Why are we talking about that on a Vue Podcast? 2:08 – Let’s talk about what Ionic is first? 2:16 – Guest gives us the definition / background of what IONIC is. 2:32 – Guest: We have been tied to Angular (back in the day), which were Ember and jQuery bindings. We have come a far way. (He talks about web components.) Guest: We spent a year diving into web components and interweaving that with Angular. Now we are exploring other framework options. Now we are looking at Ionic with Vue. 3:34 – Chuck: I have played with Ionic, and it’s fairly to use. It’s exciting to see it come this way. I’m curious what does that look like b/c Angular and Vue aren’t the same. 4:10 – Guest explains and answers Chuck’s question. 4:50 – Chuck: Is it like using...under the hood? 4:58 – Guest: No. (He goes into detail.) 5:08 – I didn’t know that Stencil was built by that team. 5:19 – Guest: We built a 2nd project. 5:28 – Guest: There are 24 hours in a day. 5:39 – Panel: How is Ionic different than other options? 5:59 – Guest: It’s comparable to Frameworks 7. The components that you generate are all web0based. The component that you put in is the same for the web or Android. You can have 100% code reuse. 6:35 – Panel: It’s actual CSS? 6:41 – Guest: It’s full-blown CSS. If you wanted to do CSS animations then whatever the browser can support. 6:56 – Panel: Advantages or disadvantages? 7:04 – Guest: It’s easier to maintain. If you are making the next Photo Shop...(super heavy graphics) maybe web and web APIs aren’t the right way to go. 8:23 – You have access to less intense stuff? 8:34 – Guest: Yes. 8:39 – Question. 8:46 – Guest: 2 different approaches to this. 1 approach is CORDOVA and the other is CAPACITOR. 9:42 – Anything that has been built with Ionic? 9:47 – Guest: App called Untapped? Or the fitness app, SWORKIT! MarketWatch is another one. We have a whole showcase page that you can check out. 10:57 – Few apps out there that use Ionic for everything. 11:06 – Panel: I have done work with Ionic in the past. I found a sweet spot for business apps. There are things behind enterprise walls that customers can use but necessarily others. We have decided to go native and found that Ionic wasn’t a good fit. How do you feel? 11:51 – Guest: We do hear that a lot. People want to make a quick app and then... 12:20 – Panel: We chose Ionic in this project b/c we had to get it out in less than 6 weeks and the team knew JavaScript. Nobody knew Ionic besides me. After that, nothing broke and that’s a huge praise. 12:55 – Guest: I will take that good praise. 13:01 – Panel: How is it used with Vue? 13:07 – Guest: The Vue work that we’ve been doing...here are the core components. Recently we have been working with Michael and integration. They have been working on opensource. 13:45 – Michael: It was one of the first apps in Beta and Vue. It all started out as a passionate project for the opensource initiative. We wanted to build something new and use the emerging Vue.js. At the time I had no idea. It sounded cool, though, and at the time I wrote a small CUI program. I decided to make an app out of that. I wanted to meet the clients’ needs and the new tech. I went online and I saw some tutorials and I thought they had figured it out. I thought we were screwed but I guess not. Most of the things are out of the box. But the problem is that the routing was sketchy and it wouldn’t update the URL and it had to be delegated to the framework. The app is called BEEP. I cannot disclose what it means. Joking. I added to the state that everything... I tore through the screen to figure out how it works. Then it clicked. You have to extend the Vue’s official router...and then you’re done. You do a MPM install and then you call a couple of APIs and then you are done. Not even a single line of code. You have Ionic’s out of the box animations, and in our app we have a dancing... You spend a week and you’re done so I won’t use anything else. 17:35 – Panel: That’s an impressive turnaround! 17:42 – Panel: It just goes to show you that the code in Vue is so approachable to anyone. If you know a little bit of JavaScript then you know what is kind of going on. It’s pretty clean. Especially the Vue Router. 18:11 – Panel: Vue Core – some parts that can be hairy. 18:43 – We are component authors. We just need to know here is a component and here are some methods that it needs to know. 19:04 – Oh yeah, totally – I was talking more about... 19:14 – That’s what I thought for those 2 weeks cause I was looking at... 19:24 – Chuck: How do you get the Vue stuff in that and not the Angular? 19:41 – Guest answers the question. 20:20 – Panel: What was the hardest part to integrate? 20:28 – Michael: I wrote my own router. It was too much for me to write. I thought it was going to take me ages. So it took the longest to come to the idea to extending Vue’s router. I thought writing less code is the best. It took me 2 weeks to come to that conclusion. It was related to how... 22:21 – Question. 22:28 – Michael: You can use Vue router like if you used a different package. 22:40 – Panel: It is using the other router history or if you are using Hash API; since it’s all web technology? 23:03 – Guest: People don’t see the URL. 23:10 – We can teach them to pass... 23:25 – Panel: I have been interested in Ionic...when you sprinkle in some native stuff. Local databases. Getting that wasn’t too bad to work. The trick was testing that. 24:04 – Guest: A lot of manual work, unfortunately. It’s a lot of set-up work. You can do test functions but actually have that end-to-end test...can I make sure that is working correctly? A lot of manual testing. There are some cloud base platforms but I haven’t checked them out for an easier way. 25:06 – It was an Ionic issue it was... I think some of the Cloud services to better nowadays. 25:25 – Guest: It was painful to get it setup. Why do I need Clouds? 25:42 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! 26:19 – Let’s talk about native features. How does one do that in Vue? 26:29 – Guest talks about Vue, Capacitor, and Cordova. 27:27 – Guest: Let’s talk back to the Beep app. Lots of this stuff is really easy, as Mike was saying. That’s what I like to do – being a both a developer and a library writer. 28:00 – Panel: Imagine Slash from Guns and Roses. 28:14 – Chuck: They get this idea that it’s Java so I can share. Chuck asks a question. 28:30 – Guest: All of it. You might want to change some of the UIs. If it looks good on mobile then you can adapt that as the main app and swap that out for the traditional designs and something else. 29:03 – Panel: I can’t just drop in the same dibs for my styles on my desktop and magically look like a mobile app. 29:23 – Guest: That’s where you are wrong. Ionic does this really well. We have painstakingly made this be a thing. The guest talks about screen width, layouts, and other topics. 30:10 – Guest: It’s the same code. 30:18 – Panelist gives a hypothetical situation for the guests. 30:36 – Guest answers the question. Guest: You will have to refactor from desktop to mobile. 31:54 – Chuck. 32:10 – Michael: It’s about continuity. 32:39 – Panel: Building a Vue app we can use the Ionic Vue project to reuse that work that you did to get that back button working. 32:59 – Michael: That’s the whole point. So you guys don’t even have to think about it. So you don’t have to fiddle around with bugs. 33:17 – Panelist. 33:22 – Michael. 33:33 – Mike: Eventually we want to do a full fledge Vue project they just install Ionic Vue and it will integrate the package. 33:55 – Michael: You use the UPI and that’s it. 34:03 – Panel: Beyond the hardcore 3D sky room games are there any other reasons why I wouldn’t want to use Ionic? 34:30 – Mike: I can’t think of anything. More important question is what is your team’s experience? I wouldn’t go to a bunch of C+ devs and say: Here ya go! I wouldn’t do that. You have to figure out the team that knows Java and they don’t know native, so they will be able to reuse those skills. 35:25 – Panel: I am wondering if there is anything technically impossible because of the way Ionic works? 36:00 – Guest: If there are, I haven’t seen it, yet. There are 20,000,000 downloads so far, so I don’t think so. 36:28 – Panel: When people report an issue what do they complain about? 36:39 – Guest: Being a couple pixels off (CSS), API signatures, etc. We are seeing fewer issues on the... People are looking at functionality issues. Whenever there are issues we take care of it right away. 37:26 – Panelist asks a question. 37:32 – It’s really done well. 37:46 – Panel: Are people able to drop that into an Ionic app? 38:09 – Guest: I haven’t tried that, yet. 38:20 – Panel: I have another question: How big are Ionic apps compared to other native apps. When you are using C+ or writing in Java or Swift. 39:09 – Guest: Twitter native was a couple 100 MB app. But the apps built with Ionic are 50 MB category. They can be small or full native apps with plugins. 40:00 – Panel: Does that mean that in some cases users will have to be connected to the Internet to use the app? 40:29 – Guest answers. 41:02 – Guest: I have some good news for you all. (Guest goes into detail.) 41:39 – Chuck. 41:44 – Guest: Another comparison is my app I use for my Home Goods store is 80 MB and it’s not doing a whole lot. 42:21 – Chuck: Let’s talk data for a minute. You can get large that way if you are DL files through the app – how do you manage memory? 42:42 – Guest: That is run by the browser run-time. Sometimes too good of a job. When you are doing production cases your... 43:27 – Panel: Do you have access to Sequel Light or do you have to use in-browser storage? 43:27 – Guest: Either one. 44:16 – Sequel Light. 44:20 – Guest. 44:24 – Within Ionic you can use Sequel Light there is a plugin. 44:55 – Panelist comments. 45:23 – Michael: I want to add some clarification. You can write your own propriety files... 45:23 – I like that it sounds like it’s different than other frameworks. Instead of there being a framework way to do it there is a lot of different pieces you can plugin to different parts that is agnostic to Ionic. 46:10 – Guest talks about batteries included. 46:42 – Panel: I really like that b/c it’s the Vue approach, too. 47:21 – The guest talks about transitions. 48:07 – Chuck: If I get stuck what is the community around it? 48:25 – Guest: It’s still early right now. If you went to the code base you wouldn’t see much. We are working on the code getting into the package. The good thing is that the way it’s structure, once their APIs are set then it’s the same through Angular and Vue. Once you have that API set it’s the same thing between those 3 things. 49:13 – Guest: Let me blow your minds guys... There are 7 controllers and 99% you would go to the Ionic site. The rest is identical and that’s the cool part. If you are coming from Angular you can reuse a lot of that knowledge. 50:00 – Panel: If they wanted to build an app right now what would you recommend as their first step? 50:16 – Guest: Ionic and Vue – check out the docs and the components overviews to see what the vanilla components are like. 50:52 – Panel: Is there an example repo? 50:59 – Guest: That would be the BEEP app. 51:08 – Panel: Vue specific docs? 51:18 – Guest: Files that you can drop into your browser. 51:27 – Panel: How soon is soon? 51:31 – Guest: Most likely within the next few months. Final touches that we want to complete. 52:11 – Chuck: What about testing? 52:17 – Guest: Same way you would test a Vue app there is nothing specific for Ionic (at least for the unit tests). If you are doing integration tests that would work the same way in typical Vue setup the only quirks are... 52:56 – Question: Does Ionic offer a collection of mocks for APIs? 53:11 – Guest: Yes, but just for Angular. It’s the only framework to support. This is a good call for community members to contribute. 53:35 – Panel: Would that be a new repo for Vue? 53:44 – Guest: Contribute to the Ionic Teams’ Main Repository and open an issue – and Ping me. 54:02 – Twitter names are given. 54:13 – Panel: How do they reach you? 54:19 – Michael: My whole name slurred together. 54:39 – Panel: Anything else they should know? 54:46 – Guest: Ping us and we will get you working with Ionic. 54:54 – Guest: The cookbook examples are a good starting part. We work very hard with Ionic. 56:01 – Panel: If they have questions where should they post them – chat, or form? 56:20 – Guest: Yes, ask away – any questions. 56:41 – Panel: How do you make money? 57:00 – Guest: If you want to build the Android portion, but you don’t want to take the time, we have a hosted platform that will handle that for you. Help you create your build so you don’t have to create all of the native stuff. 57:29 – Picks! 57:35 – Chuck: I have more stuff to play with – dang it! I am happy to outsource to you, Chris! 58:00 – Sarcasm. 58:26 – Chuck: Thank you for sharing your stories, Michael and Mike! 58:38 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! DEVCHAT code. 30-day trial. Links: Vue React Angular JavaScript DevChat TV Ionic – Vue Ionic Star Track Onsen UI Beep Have I been Pawned? Michael T.’s LinkedIn Mike H.’s Twitter Michael T.’s Twitter Sponsors: Fresh Books Cache Fly Kendo UI Picks: John NMP Library – DoteNV The 12 Factor App Divya Post by Sara S. Headspace – daily meditation Chris Library called CUID Library – MapBox Netflix – The Originals Chuck Friends of Scouting – good cause to give money Michael AIRBNB Lottie Steam Support Mike Blog Post – GitHub Integration Infinity War Joe Movie Peppermint Burn After Reading Goodbye Redux

Panel: Charles Max Wood Chris Fritz Divya Sasidharan Joe Eames John Papa Special Guest: Mike Hartington and Michael Tintiuc In this episode, the panel talks with Mike and Michael who are developers of Ionic. The panel and the guests talk about the ins-and-outs of the framework and talk about the pros and cons, too. Listen to today’s episode to hear how they discuss how Ionic is compatible with Vue and Angular. Finally, they talk about various topics, such as Cordova and Capacitor. Show Topics: 1:19 – Mike H. gives his background. He uses JavaScript every day. 1:30 – Michael T. gives his background. 1:53 – Chuck: Yes, today we are talking about Ionic. Why are we talking about that on a Vue Podcast? 2:08 – Let’s talk about what Ionic is first? 2:16 – Guest gives us the definition / background of what IONIC is. 2:32 – Guest: We have been tied to Angular (back in the day), which were Ember and jQuery bindings. We have come a far way. (He talks about web components.) Guest: We spent a year diving into web components and interweaving that with Angular. Now we are exploring other framework options. Now we are looking at Ionic with Vue. 3:34 – Chuck: I have played with Ionic, and it’s fairly to use. It’s exciting to see it come this way. I’m curious what does that look like b/c Angular and Vue aren’t the same. 4:10 – Guest explains and answers Chuck’s question. 4:50 – Chuck: Is it like using...under the hood? 4:58 – Guest: No. (He goes into detail.) 5:08 – I didn’t know that Stencil was built by that team. 5:19 – Guest: We built a 2nd project. 5:28 – Guest: There are 24 hours in a day. 5:39 – Panel: How is Ionic different than other options? 5:59 – Guest: It’s comparable to Frameworks 7. The components that you generate are all web0based. The component that you put in is the same for the web or Android. You can have 100% code reuse. 6:35 – Panel: It’s actual CSS? 6:41 – Guest: It’s full-blown CSS. If you wanted to do CSS animations then whatever the browser can support. 6:56 – Panel: Advantages or disadvantages? 7:04 – Guest: It’s easier to maintain. If you are making the next Photo Shop...(super heavy graphics) maybe web and web APIs aren’t the right way to go. 8:23 – You have access to less intense stuff? 8:34 – Guest: Yes. 8:39 – Question. 8:46 – Guest: 2 different approaches to this. 1 approach is CORDOVA and the other is CAPACITOR. 9:42 – Anything that has been built with Ionic? 9:47 – Guest: App called Untapped? Or the fitness app, SWORKIT! MarketWatch is another one. We have a whole showcase page that you can check out. 10:57 – Few apps out there that use Ionic for everything. 11:06 – Panel: I have done work with Ionic in the past. I found a sweet spot for business apps. There are things behind enterprise walls that customers can use but necessarily others. We have decided to go native and found that Ionic wasn’t a good fit. How do you feel? 11:51 – Guest: We do hear that a lot. People want to make a quick app and then... 12:20 – Panel: We chose Ionic in this project b/c we had to get it out in less than 6 weeks and the team knew JavaScript. Nobody knew Ionic besides me. After that, nothing broke and that’s a huge praise. 12:55 – Guest: I will take that good praise. 13:01 – Panel: How is it used with Vue? 13:07 – Guest: The Vue work that we’ve been doing...here are the core components. Recently we have been working with Michael and integration. They have been working on opensource. 13:45 – Michael: It was one of the first apps in Beta and Vue. It all started out as a passionate project for the opensource initiative. We wanted to build something new and use the emerging Vue.js. At the time I had no idea. It sounded cool, though, and at the time I wrote a small CUI program. I decided to make an app out of that. I wanted to meet the clients’ needs and the new tech. I went online and I saw some tutorials and I thought they had figured it out. I thought we were screwed but I guess not. Most of the things are out of the box. But the problem is that the routing was sketchy and it wouldn’t update the URL and it had to be delegated to the framework. The app is called BEEP. I cannot disclose what it means. Joking. I added to the state that everything... I tore through the screen to figure out how it works. Then it clicked. You have to extend the Vue’s official router...and then you’re done. You do a MPM install and then you call a couple of APIs and then you are done. Not even a single line of code. You have Ionic’s out of the box animations, and in our app we have a dancing... You spend a week and you’re done so I won’t use anything else. 17:35 – Panel: That’s an impressive turnaround! 17:42 – Panel: It just goes to show you that the code in Vue is so approachable to anyone. If you know a little bit of JavaScript then you know what is kind of going on. It’s pretty clean. Especially the Vue Router. 18:11 – Panel: Vue Core – some parts that can be hairy. 18:43 – We are component authors. We just need to know here is a component and here are some methods that it needs to know. 19:04 – Oh yeah, totally – I was talking more about... 19:14 – That’s what I thought for those 2 weeks cause I was looking at... 19:24 – Chuck: How do you get the Vue stuff in that and not the Angular? 19:41 – Guest answers the question. 20:20 – Panel: What was the hardest part to integrate? 20:28 – Michael: I wrote my own router. It was too much for me to write. I thought it was going to take me ages. So it took the longest to come to the idea to extending Vue’s router. I thought writing less code is the best. It took me 2 weeks to come to that conclusion. It was related to how... 22:21 – Question. 22:28 – Michael: You can use Vue router like if you used a different package. 22:40 – Panel: It is using the other router history or if you are using Hash API; since it’s all web technology? 23:03 – Guest: People don’t see the URL. 23:10 – We can teach them to pass... 23:25 – Panel: I have been interested in Ionic...when you sprinkle in some native stuff. Local databases. Getting that wasn’t too bad to work. The trick was testing that. 24:04 – Guest: A lot of manual work, unfortunately. It’s a lot of set-up work. You can do test functions but actually have that end-to-end test...can I make sure that is working correctly? A lot of manual testing. There are some cloud base platforms but I haven’t checked them out for an easier way. 25:06 – It was an Ionic issue it was... I think some of the Cloud services to better nowadays. 25:25 – Guest: It was painful to get it setup. Why do I need Clouds? 25:42 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! 26:19 – Let’s talk about native features. How does one do that in Vue? 26:29 – Guest talks about Vue, Capacitor, and Cordova. 27:27 – Guest: Let’s talk back to the Beep app. Lots of this stuff is really easy, as Mike was saying. That’s what I like to do – being a both a developer and a library writer. 28:00 – Panel: Imagine Slash from Guns and Roses. 28:14 – Chuck: They get this idea that it’s Java so I can share. Chuck asks a question. 28:30 – Guest: All of it. You might want to change some of the UIs. If it looks good on mobile then you can adapt that as the main app and swap that out for the traditional designs and something else. 29:03 – Panel: I can’t just drop in the same dibs for my styles on my desktop and magically look like a mobile app. 29:23 – Guest: That’s where you are wrong. Ionic does this really well. We have painstakingly made this be a thing. The guest talks about screen width, layouts, and other topics. 30:10 – Guest: It’s the same code. 30:18 – Panelist gives a hypothetical situation for the guests. 30:36 – Guest answers the question. Guest: You will have to refactor from desktop to mobile. 31:54 – Chuck. 32:10 – Michael: It’s about continuity. 32:39 – Panel: Building a Vue app we can use the Ionic Vue project to reuse that work that you did to get that back button working. 32:59 – Michael: That’s the whole point. So you guys don’t even have to think about it. So you don’t have to fiddle around with bugs. 33:17 – Panelist. 33:22 – Michael. 33:33 – Mike: Eventually we want to do a full fledge Vue project they just install Ionic Vue and it will integrate the package. 33:55 – Michael: You use the UPI and that’s it. 34:03 – Panel: Beyond the hardcore 3D sky room games are there any other reasons why I wouldn’t want to use Ionic? 34:30 – Mike: I can’t think of anything. More important question is what is your team’s experience? I wouldn’t go to a bunch of C+ devs and say: Here ya go! I wouldn’t do that. You have to figure out the team that knows Java and they don’t know native, so they will be able to reuse those skills. 35:25 – Panel: I am wondering if there is anything technically impossible because of the way Ionic works? 36:00 – Guest: If there are, I haven’t seen it, yet. There are 20,000,000 downloads so far, so I don’t think so. 36:28 – Panel: When people report an issue what do they complain about? 36:39 – Guest: Being a couple pixels off (CSS), API signatures, etc. We are seeing fewer issues on the... People are looking at functionality issues. Whenever there are issues we take care of it right away. 37:26 – Panelist asks a question. 37:32 – It’s really done well. 37:46 – Panel: Are people able to drop that into an Ionic app? 38:09 – Guest: I haven’t tried that, yet. 38:20 – Panel: I have another question: How big are Ionic apps compared to other native apps. When you are using C+ or writing in Java or Swift. 39:09 – Guest: Twitter native was a couple 100 MB app. But the apps built with Ionic are 50 MB category. They can be small or full native apps with plugins. 40:00 – Panel: Does that mean that in some cases users will have to be connected to the Internet to use the app? 40:29 – Guest answers. 41:02 – Guest: I have some good news for you all. (Guest goes into detail.) 41:39 – Chuck. 41:44 – Guest: Another comparison is my app I use for my Home Goods store is 80 MB and it’s not doing a whole lot. 42:21 – Chuck: Let’s talk data for a minute. You can get large that way if you are DL files through the app – how do you manage memory? 42:42 – Guest: That is run by the browser run-time. Sometimes too good of a job. When you are doing production cases your... 43:27 – Panel: Do you have access to Sequel Light or do you have to use in-browser storage? 43:27 – Guest: Either one. 44:16 – Sequel Light. 44:20 – Guest. 44:24 – Within Ionic you can use Sequel Light there is a plugin. 44:55 – Panelist comments. 45:23 – Michael: I want to add some clarification. You can write your own propriety files... 45:23 – I like that it sounds like it’s different than other frameworks. Instead of there being a framework way to do it there is a lot of different pieces you can plugin to different parts that is agnostic to Ionic. 46:10 – Guest talks about batteries included. 46:42 – Panel: I really like that b/c it’s the Vue approach, too. 47:21 – The guest talks about transitions. 48:07 – Chuck: If I get stuck what is the community around it? 48:25 – Guest: It’s still early right now. If you went to the code base you wouldn’t see much. We are working on the code getting into the package. The good thing is that the way it’s structure, once their APIs are set then it’s the same through Angular and Vue. Once you have that API set it’s the same thing between those 3 things. 49:13 – Guest: Let me blow your minds guys... There are 7 controllers and 99% you would go to the Ionic site. The rest is identical and that’s the cool part. If you are coming from Angular you can reuse a lot of that knowledge. 50:00 – Panel: If they wanted to build an app right now what would you recommend as their first step? 50:16 – Guest: Ionic and Vue – check out the docs and the components overviews to see what the vanilla components are like. 50:52 – Panel: Is there an example repo? 50:59 – Guest: That would be the BEEP app. 51:08 – Panel: Vue specific docs? 51:18 – Guest: Files that you can drop into your browser. 51:27 – Panel: How soon is soon? 51:31 – Guest: Most likely within the next few months. Final touches that we want to complete. 52:11 – Chuck: What about testing? 52:17 – Guest: Same way you would test a Vue app there is nothing specific for Ionic (at least for the unit tests). If you are doing integration tests that would work the same way in typical Vue setup the only quirks are... 52:56 – Question: Does Ionic offer a collection of mocks for APIs? 53:11 – Guest: Yes, but just for Angular. It’s the only framework to support. This is a good call for community members to contribute. 53:35 – Panel: Would that be a new repo for Vue? 53:44 – Guest: Contribute to the Ionic Teams’ Main Repository and open an issue – and Ping me. 54:02 – Twitter names are given. 54:13 – Panel: How do they reach you? 54:19 – Michael: My whole name slurred together. 54:39 – Panel: Anything else they should know? 54:46 – Guest: Ping us and we will get you working with Ionic. 54:54 – Guest: The cookbook examples are a good starting part. We work very hard with Ionic. 56:01 – Panel: If they have questions where should they post them – chat, or form? 56:20 – Guest: Yes, ask away – any questions. 56:41 – Panel: How do you make money? 57:00 – Guest: If you want to build the Android portion, but you don’t want to take the time, we have a hosted platform that will handle that for you. Help you create your build so you don’t have to create all of the native stuff. 57:29 – Picks! 57:35 – Chuck: I have more stuff to play with – dang it! I am happy to outsource to you, Chris! 58:00 – Sarcasm. 58:26 – Chuck: Thank you for sharing your stories, Michael and Mike! 58:38 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! DEVCHAT code. 30-day trial. Links: Vue React Angular JavaScript DevChat TV Ionic – Vue Ionic Star Track Onsen UI Beep Have I been Pawned? Michael T.’s LinkedIn Mike H.’s Twitter Michael T.’s Twitter Sponsors: Fresh Books Cache Fly Kendo UI Picks: John NMP Library – DoteNV The 12 Factor App Divya Post by Sara S. Headspace – daily meditation Chris Library called CUID Library – MapBox Netflix – The Originals Chuck Friends of Scouting – good cause to give money Michael AIRBNB Lottie Steam Support Mike Blog Post – GitHub Integration Infinity War Joe Movie Peppermint Burn After Reading Goodbye Redux

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Nathan Kontny This week on My Ruby Story, the panel talks with Nathan Kontny who has been in the Ruby community since 2005. He once was a chemical engineer, and then got into programming after a broken ankle incident; after that...the rest is history! Today, Nathan and Chuck talk about Ruby, how to begin a startup company, Rockstar Coders, balancing life, and much more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:05 – Chuck: E365 is the past episode you’ve been featured on. 1:14 – Nathan comments. 1:20 – Chuck. 1:56 – Nathan: Been in the community since 2005. I am a developer and entrepreneur. I do a lot of YouTube and videos nowadays. 2:50 – Chuck: How did you get into this field? 2:55 – Guest: It’s weird. I was a chemical engineer in the past. Back in the day 1996 I was learning... My love for it started through an internship. It was kind of a scary place dealing with harmful materials. Make sure you aren’t carrying uranium with you, and wear multiple gas masks at all times. There was an acid leak through someone’s shoulder. I didn’t love it, but something fortunate happened. I broke my ankle in one summer, and when I showed-up they made me go to this trail where I couldn’t be near the chemicals. Well, the director had computer problems and asked him to help with him. I put in code and out came results. In the chemical industry it was/is: “Maybe the chemicals will react to this chemical in this way...?” It was this dopamine rush for me. After that summer, I wanted to do programming. 7:16 – Chuck: Same thing for me. This will manifest and then boom. I had a friend change to computer major – and this led me to the field. 8:45 – Guest: Yeah, I had a different career shown to me and then I had a choice. 9:02 – Chuck: How did you find Ruby? 9:05 – Guest: I got a job but they wouldn’t let me program because I didn’t have enough experience. I had to teach myself. I taught myself Java – 9 CDs back in the day. I stayed up late, and did anything I could to teach myself. I taught myself Java. I got promoted in the business and became a Java developer. After 5 years of that I started doing freelance work. I love Ruby’s language and how simple it was to me. I have flirted with other languages, but I keep coming back to Ruby. 13:00 – Chuck: The same for me, too. Oh, and this makes this so much easier, and it extends so much easier. I have questions about being an entrepreneur. Anyways, you get into Ruby and Rails, you’ve done a bunch of things. What are you proud of and/or interested in with Rails? How do you feel like Rails helps with building things? 14:00 – Guest shares his past projects.  I was proud of just hosting Rails, because there were so many changes back in the day. I have helped with open source contributions back in 2009. There was a security problem and I discovered this. Nothing happened and I just went in and fixed the bug; an infamous contribution. I am proud of my performance work. I made a plug-in for that, etc. Also, work with Highrise. 17:23 – Chuck: Yep, Highrise people will know. I’ve used Highrise in the past. 17:38 – Nathan: Yeah. 17:50 – Chuck and Nathan go back and forth. 17:58 – Chuck: You’ve done all these different things. So for a start-up what advice would you give? People are doing their own thing – what’s your advice on an incubator, or doing it alone or raising capitol? 18:41 – Nathan: I take a middle road approach. You do what makes sense with your business. What works for you? I would do that. It’s hard to pick-on what incubators could be. Ownership is everything – once you don’t own it – you loose that control. Don’t loose your equity. I wanted more control over my box. I would be careful raising money – do that as a last effort. Keep your ownership as far as you can. But if you are up against the wall – then go there. 22:29 – Chuck: Now I have 2 jobs: podcasting and developing this course. I guess my issue is how do you find the balance there between your fulltime job and your new fulltime job? 23:01 – Nathan: Yeah it’s tough. I do, too, now I am building something and trying to balance between that and Rockstar Coders. Clients have meetings and there are fires. There is no magic to it. I thought bunching your days into clusters would help me with focus, but it’s not good for the business. I don’t think the batch thing isn’t working for me. A little bit on, a little bit off. I think MT on Rockstar. Wednesday I take a half-day. Thursday all start-up, etc. It’s just balance. It can’t be lopsided one way or the other. Just living with my girlfriend and now wife was easy, but having a kid in the evening is tricky. I create nice walls that don’t interfere. I don’t know that’s it. 25:55 – Chuck: It sounds like they are completely separate. What I am building affects my people at work. I find the balance hard, too. 26:21 – Nathan: It’s also good to have partners who support you. 27:19 – Chuck: Do you start looking for help with marketing, or...? 27:27 – Nathan: Yeah that’s hard, too. Maybe? Some people aren’t in the US and they might be more affordable. My friend found someone in Europe who is awesome and their fees are cheaper. Their cost of living is cheaper than the U.S. There are talented folks out there. 28:50 – Chuck: Yeah, I had help with a guy from Argentina. I am in Utah and he was an hour ahead. So scheduling was easy. 29:27 – Nathan: I have a hard time giving that up, too. It’s hard to hire someone through startup work. Startup work needs to be done quickly, etc. BUT when things solidify then get help. 30:28 – Chuck: They see it as risky proposition. It seems like the cost is getting better so the risk is there. 30:48 – Nathan: There is tons of stops and goes if I look back into my career. In the moment they feel like failures, but really it was just a stepping-stone. It was just a source for good ideas, and writings, and things to talk at podcasters about, etc. I just feel like short-term they feel risky but in the long-term you can really squeeze out value from it. I am having trouble, right now, finding customers, it could be risky, and there might not be a market for this. But I am learning about x, y, and z. Everything is a stepping-stone for me now. I don’t feel like it’s a failure anymore to me. 32:50 – Chuck: What are you doing now? 32:55 – Guest: Rockstar. 3 / 4 teenagers want to be YouTubers! That’s just crazy and that will keep going. I want to be apart of that. I am making programs so people can make their own videos. That’s what I am fooling around with now. 35:06 – Chuck: Yeah we will have a channel. There is album art. I’m working on it.  I will start recording this week. 35:43 – Nathan: It is hard to get traction there. I don’t know why? Maybe video watchers need quicker transitions to keep interested. 36:12 – Chuck: I could supply some theories but I don’t know. I think with YouTube you actually have to watch it. Podcasts are gaining traction because you can go wherever with it. 36:51 – Nathan: Right now commuting can only be an auditory experience. When we get self-driving cars then videos will take off. 37:14 – Chuck: Picks! 37:19 – Advertisement!  Links: Ruby Elixir Rails Highrise Rockstar Coders Nathan’s Medium Nathan’s Twitter Nathan’s LinkedIn Nathan’s YouTube Past Episode with Nathan – DevChat.TV Sponsors: Code Badges Get a Coder Job Cache Fly Picks: Charles Board Games: Bubble Talk Shadow Hunters Apples to Apples The Resistance Airbnb Zion National Park Nathan Writing is important. Masterclass! Book: Living with a Seal Book: Living with the Monks Sara Blakely – Spanx

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Nathan Kontny This week on My Ruby Story, the panel talks with Nathan Kontny who has been in the Ruby community since 2005. He once was a chemical engineer, and then got into programming after a broken ankle incident; after that...the rest is history! Today, Nathan and Chuck talk about Ruby, how to begin a startup company, Rockstar Coders, balancing life, and much more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:05 – Chuck: E365 is the past episode you’ve been featured on. 1:14 – Nathan comments. 1:20 – Chuck. 1:56 – Nathan: Been in the community since 2005. I am a developer and entrepreneur. I do a lot of YouTube and videos nowadays. 2:50 – Chuck: How did you get into this field? 2:55 – Guest: It’s weird. I was a chemical engineer in the past. Back in the day 1996 I was learning... My love for it started through an internship. It was kind of a scary place dealing with harmful materials. Make sure you aren’t carrying uranium with you, and wear multiple gas masks at all times. There was an acid leak through someone’s shoulder. I didn’t love it, but something fortunate happened. I broke my ankle in one summer, and when I showed-up they made me go to this trail where I couldn’t be near the chemicals. Well, the director had computer problems and asked him to help with him. I put in code and out came results. In the chemical industry it was/is: “Maybe the chemicals will react to this chemical in this way...?” It was this dopamine rush for me. After that summer, I wanted to do programming. 7:16 – Chuck: Same thing for me. This will manifest and then boom. I had a friend change to computer major – and this led me to the field. 8:45 – Guest: Yeah, I had a different career shown to me and then I had a choice. 9:02 – Chuck: How did you find Ruby? 9:05 – Guest: I got a job but they wouldn’t let me program because I didn’t have enough experience. I had to teach myself. I taught myself Java – 9 CDs back in the day. I stayed up late, and did anything I could to teach myself. I taught myself Java. I got promoted in the business and became a Java developer. After 5 years of that I started doing freelance work. I love Ruby’s language and how simple it was to me. I have flirted with other languages, but I keep coming back to Ruby. 13:00 – Chuck: The same for me, too. Oh, and this makes this so much easier, and it extends so much easier. I have questions about being an entrepreneur. Anyways, you get into Ruby and Rails, you’ve done a bunch of things. What are you proud of and/or interested in with Rails? How do you feel like Rails helps with building things? 14:00 – Guest shares his past projects.  I was proud of just hosting Rails, because there were so many changes back in the day. I have helped with open source contributions back in 2009. There was a security problem and I discovered this. Nothing happened and I just went in and fixed the bug; an infamous contribution. I am proud of my performance work. I made a plug-in for that, etc. Also, work with Highrise. 17:23 – Chuck: Yep, Highrise people will know. I’ve used Highrise in the past. 17:38 – Nathan: Yeah. 17:50 – Chuck and Nathan go back and forth. 17:58 – Chuck: You’ve done all these different things. So for a start-up what advice would you give? People are doing their own thing – what’s your advice on an incubator, or doing it alone or raising capitol? 18:41 – Nathan: I take a middle road approach. You do what makes sense with your business. What works for you? I would do that. It’s hard to pick-on what incubators could be. Ownership is everything – once you don’t own it – you loose that control. Don’t loose your equity. I wanted more control over my box. I would be careful raising money – do that as a last effort. Keep your ownership as far as you can. But if you are up against the wall – then go there. 22:29 – Chuck: Now I have 2 jobs: podcasting and developing this course. I guess my issue is how do you find the balance there between your fulltime job and your new fulltime job? 23:01 – Nathan: Yeah it’s tough. I do, too, now I am building something and trying to balance between that and Rockstar Coders. Clients have meetings and there are fires. There is no magic to it. I thought bunching your days into clusters would help me with focus, but it’s not good for the business. I don’t think the batch thing isn’t working for me. A little bit on, a little bit off. I think MT on Rockstar. Wednesday I take a half-day. Thursday all start-up, etc. It’s just balance. It can’t be lopsided one way or the other. Just living with my girlfriend and now wife was easy, but having a kid in the evening is tricky. I create nice walls that don’t interfere. I don’t know that’s it. 25:55 – Chuck: It sounds like they are completely separate. What I am building affects my people at work. I find the balance hard, too. 26:21 – Nathan: It’s also good to have partners who support you. 27:19 – Chuck: Do you start looking for help with marketing, or...? 27:27 – Nathan: Yeah that’s hard, too. Maybe? Some people aren’t in the US and they might be more affordable. My friend found someone in Europe who is awesome and their fees are cheaper. Their cost of living is cheaper than the U.S. There are talented folks out there. 28:50 – Chuck: Yeah, I had help with a guy from Argentina. I am in Utah and he was an hour ahead. So scheduling was easy. 29:27 – Nathan: I have a hard time giving that up, too. It’s hard to hire someone through startup work. Startup work needs to be done quickly, etc. BUT when things solidify then get help. 30:28 – Chuck: They see it as risky proposition. It seems like the cost is getting better so the risk is there. 30:48 – Nathan: There is tons of stops and goes if I look back into my career. In the moment they feel like failures, but really it was just a stepping-stone. It was just a source for good ideas, and writings, and things to talk at podcasters about, etc. I just feel like short-term they feel risky but in the long-term you can really squeeze out value from it. I am having trouble, right now, finding customers, it could be risky, and there might not be a market for this. But I am learning about x, y, and z. Everything is a stepping-stone for me now. I don’t feel like it’s a failure anymore to me. 32:50 – Chuck: What are you doing now? 32:55 – Guest: Rockstar. 3 / 4 teenagers want to be YouTubers! That’s just crazy and that will keep going. I want to be apart of that. I am making programs so people can make their own videos. That’s what I am fooling around with now. 35:06 – Chuck: Yeah we will have a channel. There is album art. I’m working on it.  I will start recording this week. 35:43 – Nathan: It is hard to get traction there. I don’t know why? Maybe video watchers need quicker transitions to keep interested. 36:12 – Chuck: I could supply some theories but I don’t know. I think with YouTube you actually have to watch it. Podcasts are gaining traction because you can go wherever with it. 36:51 – Nathan: Right now commuting can only be an auditory experience. When we get self-driving cars then videos will take off. 37:14 – Chuck: Picks! 37:19 – Advertisement!  Links: Ruby Elixir Rails Highrise Rockstar Coders Nathan’s Medium Nathan’s Twitter Nathan’s LinkedIn Nathan’s YouTube Past Episode with Nathan – DevChat.TV Sponsors: Code Badges Get a Coder Job Cache Fly Picks: Charles Board Games: Bubble Talk Shadow Hunters Apples to Apples The Resistance Airbnb Zion National Park Nathan Writing is important. Masterclass! Book: Living with a Seal Book: Living with the Monks Sara Blakely – Spanx

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Nathan Kontny This week on My Ruby Story, the panel talks with Nathan Kontny who has been in the Ruby community since 2005. He once was a chemical engineer, and then got into programming after a broken ankle incident; after that...the rest is history! Today, Nathan and Chuck talk about Ruby, how to begin a startup company, Rockstar Coders, balancing life, and much more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:05 – Chuck: E365 is the past episode you’ve been featured on. 1:14 – Nathan comments. 1:20 – Chuck. 1:56 – Nathan: Been in the community since 2005. I am a developer and entrepreneur. I do a lot of YouTube and videos nowadays. 2:50 – Chuck: How did you get into this field? 2:55 – Guest: It’s weird. I was a chemical engineer in the past. Back in the day 1996 I was learning... My love for it started through an internship. It was kind of a scary place dealing with harmful materials. Make sure you aren’t carrying uranium with you, and wear multiple gas masks at all times. There was an acid leak through someone’s shoulder. I didn’t love it, but something fortunate happened. I broke my ankle in one summer, and when I showed-up they made me go to this trail where I couldn’t be near the chemicals. Well, the director had computer problems and asked him to help with him. I put in code and out came results. In the chemical industry it was/is: “Maybe the chemicals will react to this chemical in this way...?” It was this dopamine rush for me. After that summer, I wanted to do programming. 7:16 – Chuck: Same thing for me. This will manifest and then boom. I had a friend change to computer major – and this led me to the field. 8:45 – Guest: Yeah, I had a different career shown to me and then I had a choice. 9:02 – Chuck: How did you find Ruby? 9:05 – Guest: I got a job but they wouldn’t let me program because I didn’t have enough experience. I had to teach myself. I taught myself Java – 9 CDs back in the day. I stayed up late, and did anything I could to teach myself. I taught myself Java. I got promoted in the business and became a Java developer. After 5 years of that I started doing freelance work. I love Ruby’s language and how simple it was to me. I have flirted with other languages, but I keep coming back to Ruby. 13:00 – Chuck: The same for me, too. Oh, and this makes this so much easier, and it extends so much easier. I have questions about being an entrepreneur. Anyways, you get into Ruby and Rails, you’ve done a bunch of things. What are you proud of and/or interested in with Rails? How do you feel like Rails helps with building things? 14:00 – Guest shares his past projects.  I was proud of just hosting Rails, because there were so many changes back in the day. I have helped with open source contributions back in 2009. There was a security problem and I discovered this. Nothing happened and I just went in and fixed the bug; an infamous contribution. I am proud of my performance work. I made a plug-in for that, etc. Also, work with Highrise. 17:23 – Chuck: Yep, Highrise people will know. I’ve used Highrise in the past. 17:38 – Nathan: Yeah. 17:50 – Chuck and Nathan go back and forth. 17:58 – Chuck: You’ve done all these different things. So for a start-up what advice would you give? People are doing their own thing – what’s your advice on an incubator, or doing it alone or raising capitol? 18:41 – Nathan: I take a middle road approach. You do what makes sense with your business. What works for you? I would do that. It’s hard to pick-on what incubators could be. Ownership is everything – once you don’t own it – you loose that control. Don’t loose your equity. I wanted more control over my box. I would be careful raising money – do that as a last effort. Keep your ownership as far as you can. But if you are up against the wall – then go there. 22:29 – Chuck: Now I have 2 jobs: podcasting and developing this course. I guess my issue is how do you find the balance there between your fulltime job and your new fulltime job? 23:01 – Nathan: Yeah it’s tough. I do, too, now I am building something and trying to balance between that and Rockstar Coders. Clients have meetings and there are fires. There is no magic to it. I thought bunching your days into clusters would help me with focus, but it’s not good for the business. I don’t think the batch thing isn’t working for me. A little bit on, a little bit off. I think MT on Rockstar. Wednesday I take a half-day. Thursday all start-up, etc. It’s just balance. It can’t be lopsided one way or the other. Just living with my girlfriend and now wife was easy, but having a kid in the evening is tricky. I create nice walls that don’t interfere. I don’t know that’s it. 25:55 – Chuck: It sounds like they are completely separate. What I am building affects my people at work. I find the balance hard, too. 26:21 – Nathan: It’s also good to have partners who support you. 27:19 – Chuck: Do you start looking for help with marketing, or...? 27:27 – Nathan: Yeah that’s hard, too. Maybe? Some people aren’t in the US and they might be more affordable. My friend found someone in Europe who is awesome and their fees are cheaper. Their cost of living is cheaper than the U.S. There are talented folks out there. 28:50 – Chuck: Yeah, I had help with a guy from Argentina. I am in Utah and he was an hour ahead. So scheduling was easy. 29:27 – Nathan: I have a hard time giving that up, too. It’s hard to hire someone through startup work. Startup work needs to be done quickly, etc. BUT when things solidify then get help. 30:28 – Chuck: They see it as risky proposition. It seems like the cost is getting better so the risk is there. 30:48 – Nathan: There is tons of stops and goes if I look back into my career. In the moment they feel like failures, but really it was just a stepping-stone. It was just a source for good ideas, and writings, and things to talk at podcasters about, etc. I just feel like short-term they feel risky but in the long-term you can really squeeze out value from it. I am having trouble, right now, finding customers, it could be risky, and there might not be a market for this. But I am learning about x, y, and z. Everything is a stepping-stone for me now. I don’t feel like it’s a failure anymore to me. 32:50 – Chuck: What are you doing now? 32:55 – Guest: Rockstar. 3 / 4 teenagers want to be YouTubers! That’s just crazy and that will keep going. I want to be apart of that. I am making programs so people can make their own videos. That’s what I am fooling around with now. 35:06 – Chuck: Yeah we will have a channel. There is album art. I’m working on it.  I will start recording this week. 35:43 – Nathan: It is hard to get traction there. I don’t know why? Maybe video watchers need quicker transitions to keep interested. 36:12 – Chuck: I could supply some theories but I don’t know. I think with YouTube you actually have to watch it. Podcasts are gaining traction because you can go wherever with it. 36:51 – Nathan: Right now commuting can only be an auditory experience. When we get self-driving cars then videos will take off. 37:14 – Chuck: Picks! 37:19 – Advertisement!  Links: Ruby Elixir Rails Highrise Rockstar Coders Nathan’s Medium Nathan’s Twitter Nathan’s LinkedIn Nathan’s YouTube Past Episode with Nathan – DevChat.TV Sponsors: Code Badges Get a Coder Job Cache Fly Picks: Charles Board Games: Bubble Talk Shadow Hunters Apples to Apples The Resistance Airbnb Zion National Park Nathan Writing is important. Masterclass! Book: Living with a Seal Book: Living with the Monks Sara Blakely – Spanx

Panel: Charles Max Wood Dave Kimura Eric Berry Special Guests: Saverio Miroddi In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panel talks to Saverio Miroddi who is an engineer among other things. Saverio has written articles, and a link to two of his articles is found below. The panel and Saverio talk about Ruby, Ruby Motion, Shoes, Hackety Hack, and much more! Check out the episode! Show Topics: 2:05 – Chuck asks a question. 2:42 – Chuck: What do you recommend for the listeners? 2:49 – Saverio: At the time I recommended an underdog. Now, making a recommendation is kind of hard. It depends on what they need. It’s fascinating in a way, because web development is not straightforward. Through the choice the subject is so wide. 3:58 – Panelist: Building desktop applications the very last thin I think: I should build this in Ruby. It sounds like I am not the only person. Why would people want to build desktop apps in Ruby versus another program? 4:38 – Chuck: I was thinking the same thing. 4:59 – Saverio: Personally, I like consistency. When Ruby came out it’s meant to be very easy. It should be easy to hack a certain tool. It depends on a case basis. 6:15 – Panelist: How does Ruby shine in this respect? 6:19 – Saverio: It’s hard to say. It is a compromise with everything. That’s the case – if it is meant to be simple, keep it simple. When I wrote my app I was looking for consistency. Ruby is far from ideal and it’s compromising the project. 8:02 – Panelist: Tell us how you use it? Tell us your cases. 8:17 – Saverio dives into this topic. 9:05 – Panelist: I hate web applications online – I want it on my desktop. But it’s funny; I am the opposite when I make it. I really like the idea of Ruby being expanded beyond web application. Panelist continues to talk about what/where/how Ruby is used or not used. 10:30 – Chuck: I like the idea of expanding to other areas, as well. Do you think there is enough momentum to get it to a new place? 11:09 – Saverio answers this question. Saverio: To be honest, this might just be a niche. It’s being developed at a slow pace. I know a few things use Ruby, and they just want to use a few small tools, and a few frameworks. 12:38 – Panelist talks about Ruby and how it can be good for kids and beginners because of the visual component/feedback. 13:49 – Saverio: I agree. 13:59 – Chuck: I asked earlier, what would you recommend to kids to get started? 14:20 – Saverio answers the question. 16:02 – Panelist: I think I have a compromise, what about a web application that loads like a regular web page, but also has offline functionality? If you go offline it can load and sometimes work. Now you have a native application. 16:47 – Chuck adds in a comment. 16:53 – Advertisement 17:31 – Saverio: That would be complex, right? 17:44 – Chuck: They were headed towards desktop but never got there. 17:55 – Panelist: There is Ruby Motion. 18:41 – Chuck: We are going to have a special guest back to talk about doing Ruby Motion on the Nintendo Switch. I think it will take a lot to compile to get to the new system. 19:07 – What is your experience with building Opal? 19:17 – Saverio: I excluded those, actually. 19:50 – Panelist: Let’s talk about data and storing data? 20:04 – Saverio: Definitely. Saverio dives into this topic... 20:28 – Chuck: Do you use Active Record? 20:32 – Saverio: No. 21:00 – Saverio: I like simplistic solutions. 21:19 – Chuck: That sounds like it wouldn’t be completely foreign for people who have done web development. If we are more web active what will throw us off? Just in general. Your visual is different than the web. It’s different between a desktop and a web app. 22:21 – Panelist: If you are building in Ruby it can be locked down to a single thread. 22:37 – Saverio adds his thoughts. 22:59 – Panelist: Any open source projects that are gooey based application? 23:25 – Saverio: I am not aware. There are applications out there that are getting traction, though. 23:50 – Chuck asks Saverio a question. 24:01 – Saverio talks about Ruby 25:12 – Saverio is deciding on whether or not to transition to another language or not. 26:36 – Chuck: Things that are built with Shoes...Hackety Hack? 26:55 – Saverio: It is hard to write in Shoes. It’s fun for the beginner. 27:34 – Chuck: Anything else? 27:41 – Panelist: This has to do with the Gooey, and it’s Native Fire. 29:05 – Chuck chimes in. 29:26 – Panelist continues talking about this topic. 30:48 – Panelist: To make it beyond a toy, there needs to be more community support and more examples. I have been in Ruby for a while, but building applications in React and Electron is not that simple as in Ruby. I hope to see more support in open-source projects, and to take it to the next level. This is a story yet to be told. 31:52 – Panelist: My concern is it always looks like a high school project. 32:15 – Chuck: Yeah, doesn’t look completely polished. 32:19 – Saverio: Yes, when you go to a Ruby talk then... 32:50 – Chuck: Anything else? 33:04 – Saverio: I have nothing else to add. 33:10 – Advertisement 33:47 – Picks! Links: Get a Coder Job Course Ruby Shoes Saverio Miroddi’s GitHub Saverio Miroddi’s article, “Using scripts in any language for...” Saverio Miroddi’s article, “An overview of Desktop Ruby GUI Development in 2018” RhoMobile Ruby Motion Ruby Gems Hackety Hack NPM – Nativefier Sponsors: Sentry Digital Ocean Get a Coder Job Course Picks: Charles Books – I have been devouring stuff on Audible. Personal growth tape – The Queen’s Poisoner by Wheeler A View from the Top by Zig Ziglar Code Badges Dave Command strips – 3M NPM – Nativefier Eric 2 courses, plus a 3rd! How to write an open source How to Contribute to an Open Source Project on GitHub The beginners guide to React Free courses on Egghead Saverio Movie: The Founder

Panel: Charles Max Wood Dave Kimura Eric Berry Special Guests: Saverio Miroddi In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panel talks to Saverio Miroddi who is an engineer among other things. Saverio has written articles, and a link to two of his articles is found below. The panel and Saverio talk about Ruby, Ruby Motion, Shoes, Hackety Hack, and much more! Check out the episode! Show Topics: 2:05 – Chuck asks a question. 2:42 – Chuck: What do you recommend for the listeners? 2:49 – Saverio: At the time I recommended an underdog. Now, making a recommendation is kind of hard. It depends on what they need. It’s fascinating in a way, because web development is not straightforward. Through the choice the subject is so wide. 3:58 – Panelist: Building desktop applications the very last thin I think: I should build this in Ruby. It sounds like I am not the only person. Why would people want to build desktop apps in Ruby versus another program? 4:38 – Chuck: I was thinking the same thing. 4:59 – Saverio: Personally, I like consistency. When Ruby came out it’s meant to be very easy. It should be easy to hack a certain tool. It depends on a case basis. 6:15 – Panelist: How does Ruby shine in this respect? 6:19 – Saverio: It’s hard to say. It is a compromise with everything. That’s the case – if it is meant to be simple, keep it simple. When I wrote my app I was looking for consistency. Ruby is far from ideal and it’s compromising the project. 8:02 – Panelist: Tell us how you use it? Tell us your cases. 8:17 – Saverio dives into this topic. 9:05 – Panelist: I hate web applications online – I want it on my desktop. But it’s funny; I am the opposite when I make it. I really like the idea of Ruby being expanded beyond web application. Panelist continues to talk about what/where/how Ruby is used or not used. 10:30 – Chuck: I like the idea of expanding to other areas, as well. Do you think there is enough momentum to get it to a new place? 11:09 – Saverio answers this question. Saverio: To be honest, this might just be a niche. It’s being developed at a slow pace. I know a few things use Ruby, and they just want to use a few small tools, and a few frameworks. 12:38 – Panelist talks about Ruby and how it can be good for kids and beginners because of the visual component/feedback. 13:49 – Saverio: I agree. 13:59 – Chuck: I asked earlier, what would you recommend to kids to get started? 14:20 – Saverio answers the question. 16:02 – Panelist: I think I have a compromise, what about a web application that loads like a regular web page, but also has offline functionality? If you go offline it can load and sometimes work. Now you have a native application. 16:47 – Chuck adds in a comment. 16:53 – Advertisement 17:31 – Saverio: That would be complex, right? 17:44 – Chuck: They were headed towards desktop but never got there. 17:55 – Panelist: There is Ruby Motion. 18:41 – Chuck: We are going to have a special guest back to talk about doing Ruby Motion on the Nintendo Switch. I think it will take a lot to compile to get to the new system. 19:07 – What is your experience with building Opal? 19:17 – Saverio: I excluded those, actually. 19:50 – Panelist: Let’s talk about data and storing data? 20:04 – Saverio: Definitely. Saverio dives into this topic... 20:28 – Chuck: Do you use Active Record? 20:32 – Saverio: No. 21:00 – Saverio: I like simplistic solutions. 21:19 – Chuck: That sounds like it wouldn’t be completely foreign for people who have done web development. If we are more web active what will throw us off? Just in general. Your visual is different than the web. It’s different between a desktop and a web app. 22:21 – Panelist: If you are building in Ruby it can be locked down to a single thread. 22:37 – Saverio adds his thoughts. 22:59 – Panelist: Any open source projects that are gooey based application? 23:25 – Saverio: I am not aware. There are applications out there that are getting traction, though. 23:50 – Chuck asks Saverio a question. 24:01 – Saverio talks about Ruby 25:12 – Saverio is deciding on whether or not to transition to another language or not. 26:36 – Chuck: Things that are built with Shoes...Hackety Hack? 26:55 – Saverio: It is hard to write in Shoes. It’s fun for the beginner. 27:34 – Chuck: Anything else? 27:41 – Panelist: This has to do with the Gooey, and it’s Native Fire. 29:05 – Chuck chimes in. 29:26 – Panelist continues talking about this topic. 30:48 – Panelist: To make it beyond a toy, there needs to be more community support and more examples. I have been in Ruby for a while, but building applications in React and Electron is not that simple as in Ruby. I hope to see more support in open-source projects, and to take it to the next level. This is a story yet to be told. 31:52 – Panelist: My concern is it always looks like a high school project. 32:15 – Chuck: Yeah, doesn’t look completely polished. 32:19 – Saverio: Yes, when you go to a Ruby talk then... 32:50 – Chuck: Anything else? 33:04 – Saverio: I have nothing else to add. 33:10 – Advertisement 33:47 – Picks! Links: Get a Coder Job Course Ruby Shoes Saverio Miroddi’s GitHub Saverio Miroddi’s article, “Using scripts in any language for...” Saverio Miroddi’s article, “An overview of Desktop Ruby GUI Development in 2018” RhoMobile Ruby Motion Ruby Gems Hackety Hack NPM – Nativefier Sponsors: Sentry Digital Ocean Get a Coder Job Course Picks: Charles Books – I have been devouring stuff on Audible. Personal growth tape – The Queen’s Poisoner by Wheeler A View from the Top by Zig Ziglar Code Badges Dave Command strips – 3M NPM – Nativefier Eric 2 courses, plus a 3rd! How to write an open source How to Contribute to an Open Source Project on GitHub The beginners guide to React Free courses on Egghead Saverio Movie: The Founder

Panel: Charles Max Wood Dave Kimura Eric Berry Special Guests: Saverio Miroddi In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panel talks to Saverio Miroddi who is an engineer among other things. Saverio has written articles, and a link to two of his articles is found below. The panel and Saverio talk about Ruby, Ruby Motion, Shoes, Hackety Hack, and much more! Check out the episode! Show Topics: 2:05 – Chuck asks a question. 2:42 – Chuck: What do you recommend for the listeners? 2:49 – Saverio: At the time I recommended an underdog. Now, making a recommendation is kind of hard. It depends on what they need. It’s fascinating in a way, because web development is not straightforward. Through the choice the subject is so wide. 3:58 – Panelist: Building desktop applications the very last thin I think: I should build this in Ruby. It sounds like I am not the only person. Why would people want to build desktop apps in Ruby versus another program? 4:38 – Chuck: I was thinking the same thing. 4:59 – Saverio: Personally, I like consistency. When Ruby came out it’s meant to be very easy. It should be easy to hack a certain tool. It depends on a case basis. 6:15 – Panelist: How does Ruby shine in this respect? 6:19 – Saverio: It’s hard to say. It is a compromise with everything. That’s the case – if it is meant to be simple, keep it simple. When I wrote my app I was looking for consistency. Ruby is far from ideal and it’s compromising the project. 8:02 – Panelist: Tell us how you use it? Tell us your cases. 8:17 – Saverio dives into this topic. 9:05 – Panelist: I hate web applications online – I want it on my desktop. But it’s funny; I am the opposite when I make it. I really like the idea of Ruby being expanded beyond web application. Panelist continues to talk about what/where/how Ruby is used or not used. 10:30 – Chuck: I like the idea of expanding to other areas, as well. Do you think there is enough momentum to get it to a new place? 11:09 – Saverio answers this question. Saverio: To be honest, this might just be a niche. It’s being developed at a slow pace. I know a few things use Ruby, and they just want to use a few small tools, and a few frameworks. 12:38 – Panelist talks about Ruby and how it can be good for kids and beginners because of the visual component/feedback. 13:49 – Saverio: I agree. 13:59 – Chuck: I asked earlier, what would you recommend to kids to get started? 14:20 – Saverio answers the question. 16:02 – Panelist: I think I have a compromise, what about a web application that loads like a regular web page, but also has offline functionality? If you go offline it can load and sometimes work. Now you have a native application. 16:47 – Chuck adds in a comment. 16:53 – Advertisement 17:31 – Saverio: That would be complex, right? 17:44 – Chuck: They were headed towards desktop but never got there. 17:55 – Panelist: There is Ruby Motion. 18:41 – Chuck: We are going to have a special guest back to talk about doing Ruby Motion on the Nintendo Switch. I think it will take a lot to compile to get to the new system. 19:07 – What is your experience with building Opal? 19:17 – Saverio: I excluded those, actually. 19:50 – Panelist: Let’s talk about data and storing data? 20:04 – Saverio: Definitely. Saverio dives into this topic... 20:28 – Chuck: Do you use Active Record? 20:32 – Saverio: No. 21:00 – Saverio: I like simplistic solutions. 21:19 – Chuck: That sounds like it wouldn’t be completely foreign for people who have done web development. If we are more web active what will throw us off? Just in general. Your visual is different than the web. It’s different between a desktop and a web app. 22:21 – Panelist: If you are building in Ruby it can be locked down to a single thread. 22:37 – Saverio adds his thoughts. 22:59 – Panelist: Any open source projects that are gooey based application? 23:25 – Saverio: I am not aware. There are applications out there that are getting traction, though. 23:50 – Chuck asks Saverio a question. 24:01 – Saverio talks about Ruby 25:12 – Saverio is deciding on whether or not to transition to another language or not. 26:36 – Chuck: Things that are built with Shoes...Hackety Hack? 26:55 – Saverio: It is hard to write in Shoes. It’s fun for the beginner. 27:34 – Chuck: Anything else? 27:41 – Panelist: This has to do with the Gooey, and it’s Native Fire. 29:05 – Chuck chimes in. 29:26 – Panelist continues talking about this topic. 30:48 – Panelist: To make it beyond a toy, there needs to be more community support and more examples. I have been in Ruby for a while, but building applications in React and Electron is not that simple as in Ruby. I hope to see more support in open-source projects, and to take it to the next level. This is a story yet to be told. 31:52 – Panelist: My concern is it always looks like a high school project. 32:15 – Chuck: Yeah, doesn’t look completely polished. 32:19 – Saverio: Yes, when you go to a Ruby talk then... 32:50 – Chuck: Anything else? 33:04 – Saverio: I have nothing else to add. 33:10 – Advertisement 33:47 – Picks! Links: Get a Coder Job Course Ruby Shoes Saverio Miroddi’s GitHub Saverio Miroddi’s article, “Using scripts in any language for...” Saverio Miroddi’s article, “An overview of Desktop Ruby GUI Development in 2018” RhoMobile Ruby Motion Ruby Gems Hackety Hack NPM – Nativefier Sponsors: Sentry Digital Ocean Get a Coder Job Course Picks: Charles Books – I have been devouring stuff on Audible. Personal growth tape – The Queen’s Poisoner by Wheeler A View from the Top by Zig Ziglar Code Badges Dave Command strips – 3M NPM – Nativefier Eric 2 courses, plus a 3rd! How to write an open source How to Contribute to an Open Source Project on GitHub The beginners guide to React Free courses on Egghead Saverio Movie: The Founder

Today we are talking to Chuck Mullins all about due diligence. An internet business veteran who is now a part of the Quiet Light team, Chuck purchased his first internet business while still in college and was more successful at 18 than some of the most seasoned entrepreneurs. For both the buyer and the seller, the due diligence process is one of the most difficult parts of buying and selling an online business. Fortunately, there are a lot of tools that can be used to simplify the process. In this episode, Mark and Chuck look at over 20 different due diligence tools and explain how you can use them in our due diligence processes. Episode Highlights: Chuck guides us through a group of tools that can be fundamental to any well thought out due diligence plan. Any buyer knows that this is the most important thing you can do to make sure that no stone is left unturned when preparing to make that purchase and hit the ground running. Try using a due diligence consultant service. We don't advise leaving it all up to them but they can take some of the work out of your hands. Never just research the business but remember to also research who is selling the business. Google trends is very powerful. Google Trends lets you read the trends that any given business may have experienced. Be sure to be aware if your acquisition is “trendy” or “evergreen.” SEM tools can provide insight into the business potential and the size of any risks. Website crawling tools are used to determine customer and market trends. Social media tools are an additional way to gain insight into connections for that business and also the business owner's niche interactions in their niche. Lessons from Due Diligence: For first time buyers the best advice Chuck offers is that you don't know what you don't know. Due diligence gives you the answers. Know what a tool is good at, put it in your due diligence toolbox, and use it correctly. Surround yourself with the types of people who can help you. Be careful to use your lawyer for law and your accountant for money. Always remember that you as the buyer ultimately make the business decision. Don't be afraid to ask questions! Keep good records of what you have looked at. Work off a checklist and be meticulous about it. A seller is as interested in you in the success of their business. Transcription Mark: Hey Joe, how are you? Joe: Doing good Mark, how about yourself? Mark: I'm doing well, I'd talk to somebody that we both know well and that's one of our own Chuck Mullins. Joe: Mr. Chuck Mullins, good man he is. Mark: He is, yeah. He joins us on the interview on the video part push on the interview wearing his Quit Light shirt which he had embroidered. The only person at Quiet Light that has one. Although, He didn't tell me that he made one for you. And I haven't seen you in it yet. Joe: He did I almost put it on today. It's just, it's a little big so I [inaudible 0:01:16] it. I need to put on some layer, run it through a two cycles of the dryer. Mark: It would have been so appropriate because, you know, he's wearing his shirt in this interview and you've been wearing your shirt in, and he's getting, make one for me though of course. Joe: He should. You're the founder of Quiet Light Brokerage. Mark: Absolutely. Joe: You should have like a logo on the back of your office chair that says Quiet Light Brokerage, what's wrong with you? Mark: I thought about it but. Most of my office is really a mess. If you seeing this on video and we'll talk about this one a bit. My office is usually a mess. It's all about angles, right? My angles a little bit of center today because I don't want to show you the rest of my office. So, yeah. But this actual episode is going to be great for a video. If you're listening in your car, if you're listening on the podcast, you'll still get a lot of value out of it. But I'd recommend at some point checking out the Youtube channel. We are separating our channels, so we will have a new channel, just for the podcast episodes. And this episode will, going to kick that off. So make sure you'll go there and you subscribe. And the reason that is a good one to watch on the Youtube channel is because we're reviewing due diligence tools in this episode. We actually go over 27 different due diligence tools. We bring them up on the screen and you can see, we kind of browse around and fumbling around on somebody's sites. As we talk about how you can use this in your due diligence process. Any buyer out there who is looking to acquire a business in the next few years or so, you know due diligence is probably the most important part of that process for you making sure that you're checking under every rock and every hidden area to see is there anything wrong with this business that I need to be aware of. Well Chuck and I go over 27 tools that he has used personally in his past of buying businesses. So we bring real interest in episode from that stand point. He brings a lot of experience in buying and selling businesses for.. Do you know how long he has been doing it? I can't remember off hand. Joe: In 1997 I think. He was self-employed in college, making more in one month the most people make in a year when he was in college. Mark: Right right and then, He and I have been presenting at Pubcon for 7 years. We go over this video a little bit but we've been presenting for 7 years at Pubcon together and people always come to see Chuck and then hopefully I can pick up a couple of the scraps to come off the table when presents. So it's a great presentation on a how to go about buying online businesses. Joe: And just a point out of the obvious remaining, not so obvious. Technically we represent the sellers in what we do. Well we can't help them and help them while unless we also help as many buyers as possible. So it's, many people would think that what you're about to present with Chuck is in contrast to what we do. But we're always about full disclosure, always making sure that buyers are making good investments and so that both they and the sellers are happy to closing table and it's successful transaction down the road as well. Mark: Yeah, absolutely! Again, we going to do represent the sellers, but if our seller's getting sued, 3 or 4 months later that is a pretty bad job on our part. So it's important that both buyer and seller walk away from a deal, happy and when you know that deal. So that's the goal. We get a transaction wins. And part of that process is due diligence. I say, I hate like throw a due diligence. When I first started Quiet Light and I got like, you know, a monster due diligence, I would kind of [inaudible 0:04:31] and be like, Oh man, this is going to be a pain. Now when I see a well thought out due diligence, it's makes me happy because I know that, that buyer is going to be really happy and that deal is gone go through. Because where they're going to really inspect that business thoroughly. Joe: Yeah, well thought, that was important. Not just a massive list but a well thought, that was specific to the business that's being purchased. I've seen blank at due diligence less come through where somebody clearly copied and paste it. But I'm excited about this episode Chucks a really, really smart guy and successful entrepreneur and I think a lot of people would learn some good stuff here. Mark: That's good, very good. Let's get to it. Mark: Hey Chuck, how are you? Chuck: Doing great. How are you Mark? Mark: I'm good. Thanks for joining me on the call. I see you have your nice Quiet Light shirt on. You're the only one at Quiet Light that has that shirt. Chuck: That's because I took the initiative to have it made. Mark: Right. We'll get them for everybody else eventually. Chuck: Actually, I think I bought Joe one. But he didn't want it. Mark: Oh really, I got to start getting on him so he wears it from the Podcast. Chuck: Yeah Mark: Yeah, anyway for this Podcast, if you guys are listening to this in your car, this would be one of the once that I would recommend over going to Youtube and we've set up a new channel on Youtube just for the interviews. We're going to put all our interviews on that channel. I'd recommend looking at that because we're going to review a bunch of due diligence tools. A little bit of background between Chuck and myself. Chuck and I have been presenting at Pubcon. What? 7 years I think? Chuck: Yeah, I think so. Mark: Yeah, a very long time. Chuck invited me to speak within that Pubcon a while ago. We've been doing it ever since we've had all the people join us occasionally, to talk about buying and selling websites. But he and I have been talking about that night. Typically we talk on the sell side and Chuck was talking on the buy side. And the result was that more people are interested in what Chuck had to say than I was ever had to say. So I figured, it would be good to have you on here. Both, so I think we can get to know you a bit better. I'd also review some of the due diligence that you've use in the past in buying online businesses. So let's just do a quick introduction for you as far as your background. What's your background in buying and selling online businesses? Chuck: So, I started my first website back in 1996. Through the few years, made a bunch of money in college just a kind of doing really well. And made more money than you know, than I was living on. So I start looking at doing various investments. So, start looking at real estate, franchises, I was looking at car washes, and a storage facilities, and a Laundromats. And nothing ever, just kind of, really worked for me or really peaked my interest enough. You know like, I dabbled in real estate. But everything just kept kind drawing me back to the internet business. So then, you know, I made a few websites that were successful. But I started thinking about you know, what if I could acquire somebody's company and then just build upon that and stand on somebody else's shoulders, instead of trying to prove out a model myself. You know, use a model that has been proven by somebody else. And then just take all the knowledge I had, and expertise, and grow that. So I start doing really well, and at a certain point I just fell alive, you know presenting at a conference, and kind of just, giving back, and then that's when I reached out to you and I think my initial presentation I gave was with Jason, Quiet Light, we did it at affiliate summit. I don't even know, 8 or 9 years ago.   Mark: Yeah, I remember that. I was in the audience for that presentation and then, that was January. I remember specifically because it was really cold at that conference in Las Vegas. The fountains were frozen when we got out of the hotel. I was kind of surprised about that. So it's cool! So yeah, you've been doing this presentation for a long time and I know whenever we do the presentation, when we get to the slide on due diligence, whereas all the phones in the rooms go up to take pictures, because people are really interested to know what's our tools they can use to do due diligence. So we're going to review some of these tools here, as well as talk about some of the principles, buyers might want to apply when you're doing your due diligence. As always, we'll just throw out the blanket; cover your tails sort of a disclaimer here. Due diligence is ultimately a buyer's responsibility. Make sure that you're doing it, make sure that you are bringing in professionals. What we're going to do is were going to give some advices to things that we've seen work, but by all means, this is not complete when you're talking about due diligence. Wherein you need to apply a complete process to the business that you are looking at. So I'm going to share my screen here and open this up, and I'm just going to share the full screen, and hopefully on my [inaudible 0:08:56] of so that people don't get those. But can you see that chart does that come up for you? Chuck: Yeah. Mark: Alright. Good, good. So here we go, where going to just get started right away with this list of tools and I'll be browsing to the website as you talk about the individual ones. The first one that we're going to talk about is Centurica and they're full service due diligence firm. They are the only one of that sort that we have on this list. So why don't you talk a little bit about Centurica, what they do and why they made this list. Chuck: Sure, So Chris Yates is the owner of Centurica, they've been around for quite a while and Chris runs a buying and selling website conference called and Rhodium. Rhodium Weekend I think is kind of, the official name. I ran into Chris way back when I started to look at buying and selling businesses. he was the first person.. I'm always looking for knowledge where I look into learn more. So doing some searches and came across his conference and went to it. Kind of on a whim, because there was no information about the conference because that was the first one that they've had. So it was like, trying to figure out and I thought well, for the money, maybe I'll pick up something and if not, it's not a total lost because you know, I'm just come and go to Vegas to hang out. You know Chris is really a smart guy and I ended up I think I was probably the first one we, to get into his master mind group. So I'm going to master mind group with Chris and a bunch of other entrepreneurs and he does this great due diligence product were he just kind of takes it over from you. Will do like a full blown due diligence review on a business that you're going to acquire and I would never say that you should handle fully the [inaudible 0:10:33] somebody else do the due diligence. But you should allow, if you're going to hire somebody, do it in parallel with them. So that way you're just getting, you know, a second, third set of eyes on a due diligence and on the business that you're looking to acquire. So they offer various levels and, so it looks like they've got something from 59 dollars right there and all the way up to, I think a 5,000 dollar package. That's kind of like a suit to nuts version. Mark: Yeah and just look at the website; they have a whole team of people here that are associated with them. A lot of these people, you and I know, we know them through Rhodium Weekend and through that master mind group as well. These are some really smart guys, good guys, to be able to just get on the phone with and get their feedback. In fact, I'm seeing n a few guys here, Mike Nunez, he has been on a Podcast with us before and a super smart guy. Well, these guys are [inaudible 0:11:24] really good contact as well. These are people that you can arrange calls with and bounce my ideas of. The amount of money, 5,000 dollars, some people might [inaudible 0:11:35] sort of price tag, but what do you think? Do you think that's worth spending that much money on due diligence support? Chuck: Yeah I mean, with Quiet Light, we're generally not dealing with the lower end deals, right? We're generally dealing with mid to high six figures, mid to low seven figure deals, so you know, five grand and that's their highest package, right? They got stuff that's cheaper, but how could you go wrong, you know, spending.. If you're on a million dollar deal, what's five grand, is what? Half a percent? I think it's probably money well spent. Mark: Yeah, absolutely I agree. The only assets that you put an end, this is, that whenever you are hiring somebody on the outside to potentially look for problems, understand that, what they're going to do is they're going to find problems because that's what you're hiring them to do, and they should do that. So this is not a criticism or some trick or by any means or attorney that's looking up for liability issues. But as the buyer, understand that you need to take that information, process it, through a business decision that you're making. Any sort of due diligence tool? I knew the ones that we offer here, that's the way that you should be going about using that information, that fits into the larger scheme. Alright, let's move on, Centurica is a good service. If anyone wants an introduction pres, it's either Chuck or I can provide an introduction pres as well. The next two are related obviously, Google.com and Google Trends, everybody knows what Google is, I'm sure most know what Google Trends are. How would you use each of these sites in a due diligence process? Chuck: Sure! So with Google, right? I mean, it's just a matter of Googling things either about the business, about the person, if you're buying the business, Google the terms around the business, and look for red flags, right? Look for if they've got one star review, average one star review, maybe that tells you something about the business. You know, look for complaints, things that are negative about the business, right? It's kind of one of those, you'll catch all due diligence place where you just, kind of sorting through all of the information that you can find on a given business and/or a person. Never just research the business, always research the person who is selling the business as well because, you could find out a lot of stuff and make sure that you're avoiding, potentially avoid some of the pitfalls, if somebody has done some sketchy stuff in the past, and find that out. Mark: Yeah, absolutely. You can learn a lot about their background as well, and all you have to do is search for all of the places that I have written for, come up, but years ago, I was involved in a lawsuit in those couple of pages. And so, anyone that was doing research on me, I would often get those sort of questions, “What happened then?” everything was fine. I didn't mind the questions, but people that were being smart and doing due diligence would ask about that. Chuck: And don't just look at the first page of Google. Look at the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, right? Because anybody can hire a reputation management company that will push some of those negative reviews, you know, to the 2nd or 3rd page. But they'll be there generally, still, just maybe a little lower. Mark: Right, Now if anyone wonders and are looking at the screen, I did not play hockey. Even though I'm from Minnesota I'm not a hockey player. There's a couple of them, that's out there that have gotten their name out there. Google trends, what search term I put in there? Chuck: Yeah so type in Paleo Recipe, or Paleo Diet I mean, because Paleo is a little different. So, if you look at the screen. Mark: You changed the date range? Chuck: Yes I changed the date range. That's, in January, you see that giant spike. Because that's when everybody is getting into a diet mode. Check that out even further. Mark: So we're looking right now. Let's set 2004 to present. So we'll do the entire history in Google Trends. There we go. Chuck: Sure, so you know, if you're looking to buying a business, and you're seeing.. Well use Google Trends to figure out what the trends are. Here you'll see is like a giant up peak that just kind of went up, and then all of a sudden it just kind of, trail off, and you're going to find things like this. Then you'll also notice that there is like ups and downs, like inter year, so that would be like the seasonally of the business, right? So just because you see, like this one giant peak, which correlates with January, and then you know, throughout the rest of the year it drops until December where December is at it's low, around Christmas time then it spikes immediately back up. So you're going to look for not only seasonality but you can look for long term trends. And when you're looking at businesses, think about whether the business is a trendy business first, it's an evergreen business. So, diet in general is a trendy business. If you look almost any diet, you'll see that there's a, it goes up, up , up, up and all of a sudden it tails off, right? There's something made it go up, usually it got unpopular, and then it'll trend off. I personally, one of the businesses that I bought was a Paleo website, and I managed to buy it exactly at the peak market, and then.. Mark: Right about there right? Right around January of 2013, early 2013. Chuck: Yup, definitely it's like, it was going up, up, and up, I'm like, great! Then it went down, down, down, and it was less great. So, luckily, we were able to so a little bit of magic and kind of keep the revenue going by trying to grow the business but it's another story. Mark: Something else that you can do with this, so as many people know, I own CatholicSingles, and the turn chart out for CatholicSingles doesn't look that great, when you look at it. Something I've learned from this chart from a few other places is, if you think that you're buying a website that gets lots of natural search traffic, be careful to make sure that it's not branded search traffic. So what's happening here is, the previous owner was losing out to a competitor who was beating him in a brand search, and so, the site still gets lots of natural search traffic to a keyword that still has a lot of relevance. But he lost a lot of brand relevance as well. So you can, if it's a large enough property you can often pick up on brands trends and what are not, you're going to have to compete on that [inaudible 0:17:34] as well. You can type in competing services and see what their trend is overtime as well. And you can actually compare the two together. So you can see how competition is playing along with. Maybe what you're looking at acquiring. Chuck: And then if you scroll down, you can do it by region as well. So what are the countries that has something popular. So maybe it was a US based company, and you see “Hey look! It's doing well in Canada and South America” or I guess none of that case was in South America, but Australia, and I think it was Mexico maybe. So maybe you expand into some of those other countries. Mark: Right, right. Exactly. Yeah Google Trends has some good date out there, I recommend again putting in your, whatever, competitors you know of, and comparing the traffic and the trends for the competitors and get the sense for, how those are working together. Chuck: And one additional point would be, Google trends is the search volume of a specific keyword, so it's not some magic formula, it's how many people are searching for something. So sometimes, people search, the way they search for things changes overtime, so you just want to, kind of remember that. That just because, you know. People might have been searching for, I don't know, Blue Widgets but now they're calling it, instead of Blue Widgets, they're calling it Blue Fuzzies, right? So it doesn't always mean that the actual market is declining at it. Sometimes it can just be a change in the way people are searching. Mark: Yeah, I think an example, that would be internet marketing has pushed toward in digital marketing. And so you see, the phrase you use to refer to something, is slightly different overtime. So, that's a good point. Now let's move off this chart because it's sort of depressing. State business websites, this is one that I haven't really seeing people a whole lot of, but it's a really good idea to use state business websites. Chuck: Yeah, I mean it's just the basic of going to whatever state the company is in, doing a search for the business, finding out who the owners are, and if there's any kind of red flags that maybe appear on that, just some basic due diligence there. Mark: Yeah, that one's not coming up here, but when you do the search, what will happen is, you'll see the records with the state, whether or not if filed in good standing, any other possible red flags that would come up. It's really just checking their box, making sure that everything is on the up and up with that business search. Maybe we can get back to this, if that comes up again. BuiltWith is a really cool tool and it shows all the technologies that a website was built with, right? Chuck: Yeap! Absolutey! So if you want to look at, like the technologies that go.. Is your internet out? Mark: No, I just typed it in wrong. Chuck: I guess your internet wouldn't be out, considering we're.. Mark: Right, right. So we could take a look to see what Quiet Light Brokerage is built on. And you can see that we have Googled conversion tracking, you can you see the whole technology stack and all the services that are used. When this might be useful as if you're looking at the P&L and you don't see a subscriptions but you would see here Drip. And you know that Drip is a subscription based service maybe that's not their P&L. That would be something to catch and maybe ask them about to find out what's going on there. Maybe they just start using [inaudible 0:20:47]the website. Chuck: Absolutely! And you know, one of the things you want to do as part of getting ready to acquire a site is make sure that you have the people and place to take over any kind of service that you need in advance. Right, so, if you have no idea how to use Drip and you're taking it in purchase in your company, maybe you need to has somebody in place who does know how to use it or request a standard operating procedure so that you can learn how to use it. So I would definitely have a list of like all of the kind of aspects of the business that you're not proficient at. And make sure that you have people in place that can help you with that [inaudible 0:21:26] running when you do take over the business. Mark: You know something that, speaking of Drips, I talked to Rob who sold Drip to Leadpages a few years ago, and he talked to me about how Leadpages was completely ready and able to switch over to a new website surely after they closed. They were making plans and building out technology as they were going through due diligence so that they can hit the ground, running right away. Something that might you want to do as you're going through a website's technology stack is take a look at what services are you using. If you are going to the Quiet Light website you'll notice that we have Hotjar, for example. Now I haven't tracked anything with Hotjar on the website in a while. We use it for surveys once in a while, but this would be a service for, maybe those report that you want to ask for during due diligence. Maybe some heat mapping that would just be useful information for you to be able to see and as you're making plans. Or OptinMonster, asked, have you run these campaigns before? What was the conversion rate like on these campaigns? And you can start getting really prepared as you're doing your due diligence to make that transition. Of course some sellers may not be eager to share some of that information with you, so go about that with some level of sensitivity understanding that they might be ready to open up all the books to you, but knowing what's there can help you request different reports. And Chuck you said something before in one of your presentations, probably multiple presentations and that was ask questions. Ask lots and lots of questions. Chuck: Yup, absolutely. I always say ask, ask, ask, and even ask questions you know the answers to. I feel like that's like some kind of weird tactic that people do. But they ask questions regardless of whether you know the answer because you almost want to get a seller to lie to you, because then you know how trust worthy they are right? If somebody's going to lie to you about something, it's a red flag. So, I've seen a lot of people that will ask the same questions in multiple ways. You don't want to be annoying right? Like, don't ask stupid questions but definitely ask. I shouldn't say, you don't want to ask stupid question because almost no question's stupid right? But we all understand there are all stupid questions that you shouldn't ask, that's just, are irrelevant. But don't feel like, if it's relevant to you then it's not a stupid question. So, ask everything. Because the time to ask is before you buy it. Right? You don't want to have a bunch of questions after you've inked the check. So, ask early and then ask often. Mark: Then the other thing too is you can get more callers on a particular answer. I know when I talk to some sellers and ask them why are you selling? They'll give me an answer one day and had talked to them another day and they give me s slightly different answer. And it's not that they're lying. The reasons are complex. There's more than one reason going on there and you gain caller, you gain more information about what's really going on behind the sale. By asking the same question, and looking at, in different formats, I know when you started to do video interviews or recording interviews of some of our clients and part of the reason for that is because people talk about questions differently then they might write them out. So this could ask a lot of those questions. Chuck: Yeah, absolutely! Archive.org. Mark: This is a great one. So if you're doing some due dilligence there's a whole industry people who just buy expired domains, stir a new content on it and then run with the site. Some of the amazing firm like [inaudible 0:24:38]some of them are buying like big sites, or what used to be a big site and for whatever reason, site's no longer so, this will give you an idea like in 2008. What was the site look like? Was it a brokerage site or not back then, you know. It's not always a bad thing but if it was something spamy back then, It might still have some problems moving forward. So it's also good just to see if you had some ideas of you wanted to try this or try that. And getting an idea for some of the things they've tried in their past or looking at previous screenshots of what the site was like one, two, three, four years ago? Mark: Yeah, I think one of the big challenges that you always have as a buyer and.. Sellers as well have this issue, right. Sellers know their business intimately because they've lived with it for so many years. As a buyer, you're coming in and trying to compress knowledge that they've gain over the course of sometimes 20 years now. And to a decision that you have to make within or week or two. Going back in the scene, what the history of the site was, just kind of, again it adds color, it adds more information into what does this person done in the past for the business. Like you said maybe we can see some things that they tried and you can ask them about that, if you're looking at the Quiet Light site, yeah, you might see that we sold some domains in the past. And if there's someone looking to buy us they could ask a question on that, you know, why don't you sell domains anymore? And we could go into that whole discussion. Chuck: Something else to look for is to look for gaps in the years so you know, you can put something on your website, right? And your like, your a [inaudible 0:26:14]telling a way back machine not to cross your site anymore. So if there's like a three year gap, why is that gap? Most legitimate sites aren't blocking the way back machine. From calling their site, so you know, that might raise a red flag and might be something you want to dive in on a little deeper. Mark: Awesome, alright let's move on at Trademarkia.com. Chuck: Yeah, you know it's a, if you're, if they told you to have a trade mark, search for it, figure it out. If they have told you they don't have a trade mark, search for it. See if somebody else has a trade mark right? Make sure that they're not infringing on somebody else's.. What's the word I'm looking for.. Somebody else's IP. You don't want to buy a business if they're infringing on other people's stuff. Mark: Yeah, and this can also be a very useful in search results if you're advertising on Google and you have competitors that are stepping all over that brand search. If you get that trade mark and you have the ability to get a trade mark you can keep all of those guys off, and brand is usually a very cheap way. But if you have competitors branding against it, that's [inaudible 0:27:16] your IP, so, searching for that trade mark is a useful thing to do. Alright, moving to the next set of tools and these tools here seem to be more of, search competitive intelligence and taking look at a site's search profile and I should just say probably maybe SEM. All [inaudible 0:27:33] right? Because this still include adwords as well? Chuck: Yeap, yeap! So organic and paid, my likes spy for a lot. It's a.. You can look at people's history of what kind of ad campaigns they did. As so, if somebody says “Oh we've only ever run one ads set and haven't done much testing” and then you look back at, and shows you. Well actually they ran a hundred different variations of this ad. Cross, you know 5 years and blah blah. So you will able to see a.. Verify some of the information they said. You can also check and it will show you, like literally shows you, what paid ads they ran. And like detects in them. So if you think, “Oh I wonder if they try this”, so you're going to look back and see what sorts of ads they've run. It's kind of interesting, you can also use this right here, like you see their competitor. So that'll show you overlap, so if you know some of, some competitors, you'll be able to see like what keywords they have overlapping using this venn diagrams. It's some really cool stuff and then you can look for opportunity, for words that they're going after, that your knots. They also have they a tool in here somewhere that will allow you to look at specific keywords over time and then it puts it over a timeline and has the Google updates. So you can see like, ok they had this key word was, you know, rank number 1111, and then drops off to like number 7, and [inaudible 0:28:57] Google get an update right when this happen so you can potentially know why they dropped off, it's because, well, Google did this update. So seeing what people are using like a private blog now, where to get a bunch of links and it's like doing really, really well then everything drops off a cliff. Because of Google did an update and it affect it, or, the reverse is true where they went from having nothing to all off a sudden number 1 rankings, just like overnight. And you can see, okay, well nobody just all send this from zero to number 1 ranking for 20 different keyword terms so then you know, Well, they must have done something to have that spike and then you can dive into what they're using like, blog that works for paid links or whatever. Mark: Yeah, any sort of quick changes in these results are going to be something to watch out for. So that's over all a good tool. And a lot of these tools out here, Moz, Open Site Explorer, Semrush, Magestic, AAtraps, I personaly like AAtraps. These are all really good tools, using in combination. It's going to give you a sense for how the data all adds up. Understand that when you're looking at data, in any of these tools, they have to use third parties to estimate what this is, for example, they're estimating for Quiet Light Brokerage, where estimated adwords budget is 3,000 bucks. Actually not too far off from that, but it's not accurate. Just understand that these are useful for trends, these are useful for getting another point of data, nothing's going to replace first hand tracking, it should be Google and Linux, or whatever tool people are using to analyze something. But you can use all these external tools in combination as well to try complete picture of what a website's doing and how it's ranking. Chuck: It's a bit [inaudible 0:30:45] That was I think only Google adwords, so if not taking your account, pay traffic, whether it's Facebook or other things. Right? Mark: Yep, yep! Absolutely that's right! Let's move on to a.. You like Spy for the best from all of these? Chuck: They are all kind of different. So there's like different reasons to use different ones, right? Some are for keyword research, some have like keyword difficulty tools, so part of due diligence isn't just looking at what the site has done, but where you can go with it. So I like to use a couple of them to do keyword research. See where their gaps are, you know, opportunity for me to grow the business. They're all kind of hit, different things to different things well. So I don't have one favorite. I do like SpyFu, I like Moz in the past, [inaudible 0:31:31], Majestic. And then on that list, we kind of didn't point it which I'm guessing maybe you thought I put in a wrong spot, but the alexa.com won. I haven't actually used this yet, but it's apparently a new tool that they rolled out. It's a competitor to all these other ones, Moz and Majestic. So they're doing a paid tool just like all these other guys. So, I haven't really dove into it yet, but it'll be interesting to maybe see how their data looks. Mark: Yeah, I actually just saw this the other day. And was intrigued by it. I haven't dug into this at all. But you would imagine that Alexa's by Amazon. You would imagine that they have some pretty good access to tools to be able estimate this information, with some level of accuracy. Chuck: And you know they've been around, since when, like early 2000 or earlier. So they've been crawling off these sites. So who knows what kind of information they've stored. I see [inaudible 0:32:34] has really good info going pretty far back. Mark: yeah, I know you're right on that. I think actually Alexa may have been the first competitive intelligence tool. That try to rank websites. Maybe there was somebody else before that. But they were the first one's who really gain attraction. Or that for a long time, everybody I knew had their Alexa bar. Up in their browser and you can see what, aside Alexa ranking was along with its paid rank. Right every marketer back in early 2010 and those two things, up in their tool bars. Chuck: It's fine, so I went to the site yet the other day, just checking it out and looking for their little site ranking. I could find it anywhere, so I'm not sure if they still have it or not. Mark: Yeah, I don't know. I try to look that up recently as well and I wasn't able to find it. I was behind actually this pay wall which is how I came across [inaudible 0:33:24] they are now offering this. Chuck: Yeah, yeah. It didn't, for a long time, like, right Google paid rank and the Alexa ranking have been dead like nobody uses those as a real stat anymore . But I just wanted to check it out. Mark: Yeah, yeah I know it's always interesting stuff. Alright let's move on to page 2 here. We're going to get into 3 tools here. [inaudible 0:33:46], deepcrawl.com and Copyscape. What do these tools do? Chuck: Yeah, The first two are pretty similar to each other. And what they do is you can plug in a domain name that it will crawl the entire site and it will look for all kinds of things. Like errors or not errors. Right, so it can show you just by crawling to the site. It will crawl every single link on the site from every single page. So it shows you like if there's dead links so if there are stuff that's going for like 404 pages, no errors, 500 errors, it will show you the redirects. So what I've used it for in the past is the one finding those dead pages or the 404 errors and then also finding the redirects and sometimes you'll see like stuff gets layered, where it will be redirected to this page, which layer's was then redirected to this page, which layer's then redirected to this page. And ultimately, what should you be doing is just going back and linking from the first page to the last page. And not using all of these bounces because with each bounce you have the a, potentially you're losing some of that authority has being passed through. Mark: Yeah, and there are the futuristic will do an on-site SEO analysis for even, one that I've used in the past that all definitely throw a, [inaudible 0:35:01] to be Orange Fox, Jacob Hagberg, has done some reports from Quiet Light Brokerage. and a lot of these tools do is, what these services work, will do, they just to analyze in a condensed manner. Because they look for opportunities and they also look for potential issue. Like you're saying, if there's tons of redirects in there, that's a problem, you are losing out an authority on those pages. 10 pages , 404, broken images. Images without all tags, accessibility issues. These are all things that you want to be looking for. Not necessarily as like major red flags but you know, a buyer beware, but also as opportunities that if you start to fix and clean these things up, there's going to be a natural lift in rankings on its long tale keywords that maybe you're on page 10 to 20 right now for, maybe that will bump you up to the first 10 results . So wait for you to just grow some opportunity. When you're looking at these 3 tools Chuck.. Chuck: The first two are very similar, right? Screaming Frog, is one that you have on your own computer, and then it use your internet connection to then crawl the site. DeepCrawl, they are running it from their servers, the Screaming Frog is relatively cheap. I forget the amount but it's hundred to 200 bucks a year. The DeepCrawl one is fairly pricey so, I would always recommend this Screaming Frog but the other one is a good service as well. Just cost a bit more. It's a 150 pounds a year. Mark: Right. They do have a free version? I've used the free version to be honest it's worth just upgrading to a paid version. Free version will give you just a flavor of what they can do. But if you really want to dig deep and really figure things out. Yeah, again, here's a 500 URL limit, most websites are going to blow through that 500 URLs because you have all their images, you have everything else connected with an individual page, so you'll go through that 500 pretty quickly. Copyscape is a bit different from these two though. Chuck: Yeah, it's different. I threw it, kind of witness just because it's one of those things, where again, you're looking for problems, so you type in your domain and It'll give you list of you know, places that content made and stolen from. So kind of, similar, but different. Mark: Right. This can be useful to see if you have people that are maybe trying' just scrape your pages entirely or if the page you're looking at for some reason is built on a shakey ground. This was something that was used a lot more probably, I don't know, 5, just 7 years ago. I know Copyscape has a really big issue on a really big useful tool for duplicate content issues. A lot of that is going away now. But I would imagine you would find copies of content that somebody's publishing their blog contents, say, on Medium or LinkedIn. I imagine this would probably pick up on that. Chuck: Yeah. I believe so. And you know when we talk about the duplicate content issue, where talking about like, right for organic search but there's also the duplicate content issue where, “Hey everything on this website was stolen from somewhere else and you're going to get sued because you stole our base content.”, Right so, I would be checking to make sure that people aren't stealing other people's content. You know, so I think that's a good part of due diligence. Mark: Yeah, absolutely! Alright Public WWW. This is a tool I have not heard of. Chuck: Yeah, that's a great tool. It kind of isn't a vain, of like, a Google right? But what's cool about it is instead of like.. If I want to search for something on Google. Google looks at what is this plate on the page meaning. If I search for Chuck it's looking for.. If somebody would look at a web page and see the word Chuck on it, then it might come up, right? But with this website, it's actually looking at the source code. So if somebody had a comment that was Chuck, it would potentially come up there. So, anywhere from the word Chuck, right? It's more for if you want to look a analytics code, or if you want to find somebody's affiliate ID. So if somebody's says, “Hey, I'm just running AdSense on this site, and I don't have it anywhere else.”, So we could took.. Put in the AdSense number, and it will show you all the sites that are using that same AdSense ID on their website, right? So you can look for, maybe they're doing some competing stuff, maybe they just, you know, they're driving more income through the AdSense, but having a multiple sites vs the one. And it's not complete, right? There's, it's only as much as they crawl so they're only going to have as much data of the websites they crawl. But you can definitely find some stuff. You can also use a little tip here, would be.. Let's say you have an affiliate product your promoting, right? And you're making some money off of that, and say, you found a new product you want to promote and it makes 10 times the amount of money for each one you sell and you know that like, “Oh! This product, if I switch it to this one, I'm going to make 10X.” Or you could look for everybody who is promoting this old product, and then you're going to try to acquire those sites, and switch them to the new affiliate product and 10X the revenue. A lot of different things you can do with that. Mark: I've heard some of people ask about that, specifically with affiliate sites. You know, “How do I know that this is all coming from the site that I'm buying.”, and so that would be one tool that you could use. The other thing I could see this being useful for is if you have a tool for it. This would be a pretty rare case, but if you're buying a business as a tool, that's using on outside websites. WordPress plugins site, WordPress themes site, or any other tool like that, you could start to get some ideas as for the installation volume. Using the tool like this. Alright, SpyOnWeb.com. Chuck: So similar right it's a looking for people's AdSense IDs and things like that. It's not as complete, with the other one you could search for a lot more different types of things. But still a useful tool. Mark: Right, it gives you some machine information as for our tools also sharing this IP address, DNS server. So again, not [inaudible 0:40:53] information here, but just acquiring [inaudible 0:40:56] this. We have our [inaudible 0:40:58]. So If you want to find out what the [inaudible 0:41:02] rank is, just go to SpyOnWeb and you could also see the page rank which is saying Quiet Light Brokerage just a like a question mark for page ranks. So that would be an information. That would have scared me about a 6 or 7 years ago. Alright, DomainIQ. Chuck: Yup, so DomainIQ and the other two that were listed. This are for finding out information about a domain name. So when was it registered, how many times has the DNS changed, has the ownership changed recently, what other domains are on the same server, or same IP block or same IP address, so if you know, if you're buying something from somebody, and they say it's the only site they have and then you look start looking up and down the IP range or looking on the server or the same IP and you see there's other domain names that are the same thing and are not disclosing it you, you know, that's potentially going to be an issue. You can look up who is the owner, so if it's like similar registration name or similar email address used to register the domain, it will show you all of the domains they own. That are using that registration information. These are all for the most part paid services. So if you want to get, like the good data, you got to pay for it. But they do give you a basic level of information for free. Mark: Right. I don't think anybody has to use all these tools. You pick 1 or 2 out of each of these categories that you want to use. The only one that I would recommend maybe use in multiples one would be in this search intelligence the SpyFu, Moz, and SEMrush. I think it might be worthwhile having upwards of three maybe four depending on how lights would turns out those services. Because like you said they all do slightly different things. Chuck: It's a matter of like what they've indexed right? So they each have their own crawlers, and none of them are going to crawl exactly the same subset of the internet. So, it's just, you're going to find different things while using different ones. Mark: Right, and they all have different levels of accuracy you could see here DomainIQ is [inaudible 0:43:04] to be higher than the last one. And also, few other bits of information that I would say are incorrect but again you use these points of data… Chuck: That was 5,000 dollars? The appraisal value? Mark: That was [inaudible 0:43:17] it's less than 500 dollars. And we have more than 24 backlinks, but again, all these tools are to be used in combination with each other to put together a large picture. Obviously a tool like Google Analytics or [inaudible 0:43:31] you'll going to want to use that first. And then, these tools are been used to fill in the gaps. Chuck: And also like know what a tool is good at, so like last one, you're not going to use that tool for the appraised value right? Like, that's nonsense. But if you scroll up, scroll up a little bit. If you click on, click on the ownership record in the blue, the blue button is there. Let's see if we'll.. Mark: We got gears turning here.. There we go Chuck: Okay so just search who the owner is, when is the last time you updated, when it expires, the age of it, right. So you've owned it for just about almost 11 years, you're using Cloudflare, here's the “who is” info…. Mark: It's kind of a bad corporation name, I got to update that. Chuck: Well there you go. And go back one more time on it, I'll click on one more thing… Mark: All these tools take too long to load up. Let's move on, because this one's getting a little bit longer. Let's get it on to a Bannedcheck.com. Chuck: Yeah, so this one is a, and it's not 100% right. But you can type in AdSense account and I'll tell you if the AdSense account has been banned. Again, not 100%, but if it's says it's banned, that's probably a good indication. I'm sorry not the AdSense account number but the actual domain name. Right so, if somebody says, “Oh! I switched monetization methods, because I didn't like AdSense and I was making a bunch more money with this.” Well, maybe that's not the case, maybe it's that they got banned. So, this is a good one. They can tell you whether they've been, not a 100% right. But if it's says that they've been band, then they've probably have been, right? Mark: Good news with this, I'm making money with Quiet Light Brokerage because it came back and it says that it's not banned for Google AdSense. Chuck: I wonder how that helps with our value of the 500 dollars. Mark: Hopefully, this is a little bit, so all you buyers that are looking to buy a business, we're going to require that you click on an Adsense ad. Because I think that's completely [inaudible 0:45:16] with our terms of service. Mark: socialmention.com. Chuck: Yeah, so just you know, you type in various things here and it will just tell you where it's being mention as far as social goes. So just a good tool for doing some basic due diligence. Mark: Yeah, let's repeat, useful to do, using combination with a Google trends to be able to see. Google Trends is measuring the data on Google itself. Looking at how the different social media networks are also processing the data. It's going to have a different look than just what Google has. On that note, I would say BuzzSumo, which is not on your list. It's another tool that I would recommend adding and it's a page where they do the free option but you can take a look to see what content has done really well on a particular domain name. As well as what content in that specific niche also does well. So you can really got a sense for how popular [inaudible 0:46:15] and what's getting shared and what's not. Well for then Google but also within the social media. It seems fantastic. Chuck: This one definitely should've been on my list then I'm not sure why it wasn't but I actually like this one a lot better. Mark: Will add this to the list. For people who want to download it. Last one it would be just going direct to the source of Facebook LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., etc. Almost every websites these days has presence on all the social media networks, visit their pages I assume that's kind of a lesson there. Chuck: Yeah and again, with like a LinkedIn, right? Looking at the person's profile looking how many connections they have. Are they in a niche where they should have 500 LinkedIn connections and they've only got 3, Maybe that tells you something, right? Why are they connected with all of these hackers or whatever, right? It's just a matter of again, researching the people and not just the business. So I think it's a good tool for researching people. Mark: Awesome, right. So that's a lot of tools that we just went over. Let's talk just a some couple of lessons, and we're running pretty long on this Podcast. So, we'll talk just a couple lessons about due diligence. I'm going to turn off the screen sharing here and talk about couple lessons about due diligence. What would you say for somebody who's going about due diligence the first time? What couple of lessons would you, or principles, should they really use in their due diligence efforts. Chuck: So I think one of the biggest things, is first in for most you don't know what you don't know. right, so having people to help advice you on what to search for and what to look for can be critical. So don't just think you know everything! Because none of us know everything especially when it comes to different tricks and tactics people can employ to inflate the numbers in what they're doing. What else, do you have any idea you would suggest? Mark: I would, and so on that note, obviously bringing people like an attorney, bringing an accountant, as I said before that be careful when you do so because they are being brought in with their specific purpose in mind, that are being brought in to look for liabilities, for being brought in to look for problems, and you are the business owner trying to make a business decision. Your accountant that's trying to make an account decision. Your lawyers try to make in legal decision. And so, you have to take their advice and put it into a broader framework business . It's a good business choice for you. You use their bits of data as [inaudible 0:48:41]data. And create a whole picture with that. The other thing that you said, where you cover this one's ask, ask, ask. Don't be afraid to ask for questions and then the third thing that I would recommend is keep good records of what you have looked at. And I'm working through the due diligence for the client, if a buyer comes back and ask for the same documents that they may have already received earlier on. Extremely annoying for a seller who doesn't understand why they even needed it in the first place. And a lot of sellers get skeptical buyers. They think this person isn't really serious about it. they're just looking fishing for information and if you end up passing the same documents 3 or 4 times, even twice. It start to grow those seeds of doubt and to bigger than just seeds and it cause a lot of problems really later on. So be organized in your due diligence just as you want your seller to be organized. Even your documentation. So that you'd know what you have and work off a check list, where be the last thing that I would ask. But don't be afraid to add to that check list as you go through. Chuck: Sure and something else I would add, kind of similar, not a little different, is with the seller. They're interested in knowing that you're going to do well with their business and whether they realize it or not, the questions you ask them are important to them. Almost always. So if you're not asking good questions, they're going to think that you're not serious or that you're not going to do well with the business and we often see that buyers, or sellers won't always sell to the person who offers the most money often times they're selling to the person they think who's going to do best with their business or somebody that they like. I see it time and time again. Recently I had a nice 7 figure deal, I was working with and every time I get off a call, you know, I do a wrap up call with the seller, “Okay, what do you think? and he went like, “Well that person didn't ask any good questions like, I don't want to sell my business to them.”, So make sure that you're doing some due diligence upfront, you're looking into these things and you have good questions that you're asking that are relevant to the business. Mark: Yeah, absolutely! Do not research ahead of time, not wasting your seller's time on the conference call is important. A lot of good sellers, when they go to sell a business, within that first week, they're going to do half of dozen to a dozen conference calls and it's exhausting to do. So if they get into a call and somebody asks, ask them question that was covered right up front. There's a good place to ask questions that have never been answered, and there's obviously you haven't done your homework, sort of questions. So do have basic homework ahead of time so that people know about, that you've put in that upfront research. One thing I'll add at that fellows, is if there's something that you're not familiar with, ask them about it and don't be afraid about that. And at the end of the day, as a buyer you want to protect your money, but make sure you're not making a bad investment so, don't be afraid to ask those questions. If you ever have questions about, “Can I discuss this or what do you think?” Use the broker. We're here to advice with the buyer and the seller through that process, we want to see a good deal done for our client. Chuck: Absolutely! Mark: Alright, this has been really long, but I think, good information so, Chuck thanks so much for coming on and maybe down the road, we'll do another one of these. Chuck: Sounds good. I appreciate it! Mark: Cool, thanks! Chuck: Alright, thanks everybody! Links and Resources: Centurica offers a full blown due diligence services. Google Google Trends Builtwith Archive Trademarkia.com SEM tools: Spyfu moz majestic alexa semrush Website crawling tools: screamingfrog deepcrawl orangefox copyscape Publicwww is a source code search engine Spyonweb for looking for peoples adsense tools. DomainIQ provide information for domain pages Bannedcheck.com Social media: Linkedin Buzzsumo fantastic sm network tool.