Podcasts about so shawn

Michele Hansen  0:00  Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. https://nokotime.com/When you're bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you're spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product have time sinks that just don't pay?Here's one way to find out: Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data, too — you can even log time directly from your Github commit messages. Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan, forever. Visit  Nokotime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.Colleen Schnettler  0:52  Michele, it's so good to talk to you. So I have been following some of the things you've been tweeting about recently, and I saw that you did a Product Hunt launch for the book.Michele Hansen  1:05  Yeah.Colleen Schnettler  1:06  Tell us about that was quite a roller coaster. Yeah, I am fascinated. I want to hear all about it. Michele Hansen  1:14  So um, gosh, I don't even I don't even know where to start. Because it was it was kind of it was kind of a spur of the moment thing. Like I've been planning to do a Product Hunt launch for a long time, but I didn't really know exactly when. And I think it was a we've talked about how my, like, original deadline for the book was before I started Danish language classes, right. I feel like we I don't know. But yeah, okay. So I actually started them last Monday. So you know, even though like, when I finished my MBA, I was like, I am done with school forever, like, never again. And you know, here I am again. Um, so I started Monday of this week. And so the 20th I was like, I saw I was starting, you know, the in a couple of days. And I was like, You know what, I just need to do this. Now I want to get this launch done. Before I'm like thinking about school again, cuz I'm not gonna have as much time. So that's basically like, why I did it on Friday morning. Now, apparently, when you launch on product time, you're supposed to get someone like, well known to basically hunt the product for you and submit it for you. And then I guess it notifies all of that person's followers, and then it helps with your ranking and stuff like that. I did not do that. I just submitted it myself.Colleen Schnettler  2:46  Wait, okay. pause, pause, pause. Okay, so let's back up a little bit. So you were on Friday morning, you woke up and you're like, I should put the book on Product Hunt today? Is that like, what happened? No. No, IMichele Hansen  2:57  needed to send out a newsletter that morning. Because I had I had something I wanted to send out. And I was like, you know, why don't I just throw it up on product time. Like, let's just get that over with and do it and like, so like, I just like wrote up a post, I took a couple of screenshots of like the book and the table of contents. And like, I like put it up, like, apparently people hire like consultants and pay them like 1000s of dollars to try to get a good ranking on on product ton. And they spend all this time recruiting someone to hunt it for them. And like there's this whole, like product launch a Product Hunt launch strategy that I was completely oblivious to. SoColleen Schnettler  3:37  yeah, I've heard that. That's a hole that if you there's like so many articles about how to properly do product on and there's consultants, yes. Okay, so tell us what you did. Yeah,Michele Hansen  3:47  I guess it didn't. I don't know. I it didn't occur to me to research it first. Because I don't know. I just didn't so I just threw it up there. And then I sent it out to the newsletter and was like, hey, like, you know, Product Hunt today. And so it was like going pretty well. Like I sent it out like first thing in the morning European time. And by like lunchtime or so here it had like 30 or 40 upvotes which was like way more than most of the other products on the homepage. And I started being like in the people started being like I can't find your product like I searched for it. It doesn't show up like it's not on the homepage like like she usually like reach out to them or something because something is wrong. And this is somebody on Twitter who jumped in and they're like, Oh, they shadow ban info products, because there's so many of them that they shadow ban them by defaults, if you're submitting it and you're not like a you know a sort of name brand person submitting it.Colleen Schnettler  4:47  What is shadow ban mean?Michele Hansen  4:48  Oh, so shot. Shadow banning is when you post it and it looks normal to you and you can send people the link, but it doesn't show up on the homepage and it doesn't show up in search.Colleen Schnettler  5:00  Oh, wow.Michele Hansen  5:01  So basically you don't know you're banned from the homepage. So, so weird, but I guess there's like so many that I currently the logic is that there's so many info products that like, they basically want to cut down on the number of them going to the front page of product on. So and then I kind of like started tweeting about this and I'm not really sure what happened. But I like reached out to their support on their website and on Twitter. And then I think some other people also backchannel that to community people at Product Hunt. And then yeah, it was on the the front page. Like it just appeared at number four. And it was like, Oh, this is kind of fun. Like, we went from being like, completely invisible and thinking this was a huge waste of time. to like, now it's ranked number four. That's pretty amazing. And I just woke up and did this this morning. Like, this is fun. And that's all and then it kind of just kept going. Wonderful. Yeah. And I was actually I was getting like, last minute, like, you know, sort of, like, play by play advice from Arvid call in my DMS. I'm like, okay, like, here's what you do, like, make sure you reply to everybody, like, you know, all this stuff. And I was like, okay, okay, okay. Like, I was like, such like totally green at this. Um, and, yeah, it was it was wild. And then it ended up going up to number one. And oh, that's exciting day. And I just checked it a 512 up votes.Colleen Schnettler  6:36  That's amazing. Wild.Michele Hansen  6:40  Super wild. I've never really done a, like a Product Hunt launch. Like, we I mean, we didn't launch geocoder one Product Hunt. Like we actually launched before Product Hunt had their show h n launch, which when geocoder launched a show h n launch was like, what a Product Hunt launches now. I guess. Yeah. It was so funny. I remember coming across it in our refers for geocoder to and I was like, What is this product on thing and like, signed up? Um, so yeah, anyway, so that was, that was pretty crazy. Um, that'sColleen Schnettler  7:20  really cool. Yeah, itMichele Hansen  7:21  was it the whole thing about it, like, not showing up and like what was wrong and like, all these people kind of like rallying around it too. And like so many people tweeting out the the posts and commenting and like, I just felt like I was collectively being lifted up by people all over the world simultaneously. And it was, it was lovely. It was pretty, it was pretty surreal. It was it isColleen Schnettler  7:49  as bad. It's awesome. So have you seen the Product Hunt success? increase the number of sales of the book?Michele Hansen  8:00  Yeah, so I actually did get a little bit of a nice little bump out of it. So I learned later that the benefit of being number one on product one is not only are you number one that day, but you're also number one in the newsletter. And so you get another bump after that. Okay, cool. And so if I just pull up the numbers really quick. So the the total have sold 344 individual copies, which excludes a bulk portfolio wide purchase that a fund made. So okay, so it's been 180 on Amazon 160 PDF copies total, including the pre order. And then for audio book only pre sell copy, so 344 total. And so of all of that, so 23 of those PDF copies are from since the Product Hunt, launch, and then 59 print copies since the product launch.Colleen Schnettler  9:11  Wow. Yeah,Michele Hansen  9:12  so it's a pretty good bump.Colleen Schnettler  9:14  Yeah, that's great. Yeah. So how are you feeling about the whole feeling good, likeMichele Hansen  9:18  I'm starting to come across like podcasts of people talking about it or blog post they wrote about it, or people tweeting out like, I'm reading the book, I'm ready to do a practice interview, like who wants to pair up with me like, all that kind of stuff. But just that just gives me warm fuzzies when when I come across that kind of thing, andColleen Schnettler  9:42  I love it.Michele Hansen  9:43  Like for so many years, I you know, I tried to write blog posts, and most of the time they would just like land with a thought like there was a couple that did okay, but most of time I would like I would fuss over them and have friends edit them and like, then they would just go nowhere. And so it's still like kind of bewildering and surreal to have people like, be excited about something that I wrote because I'm so used to just like being nothing. Um, so all of this is just this really delightfully surreal.Colleen Schnettler  10:27  I love that. Do you think it's better, you didn't actually know you were doing Product Hunt wrong, because you would have not launched it, if you had realized how some people do it.Michele Hansen  10:37  I think it might have been sort of intimidating to look at. It's like, oh, like, shoot, like, people hire consultants for this. And like, there's, they're like, producing videos for it. Like they have, like, this whole, like, strategy around it, like, but I think it also goes to show like, you know, I mean, the, the real power of building in public or writing in public, and, you know, like, the people in the community were part of this from the very beginning. And, you know, so No, I did not pay a consultant 20 $500 to get to the top of product and like, the book got there, because everyone's been a part of this process. And contributing to it from the very beginning. It was on the strength of community. It's, there's, it's pretty, it's funny, I've had people like DM me now. Like, oh, like, what's your advice for getting to the top of product? And I'm like to Don't ask me. Like, dude, like, don't do what I did. Like that was apparently wrong.Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's people who have written guides about this, and everything.Colleen Schnettler  12:04  Oh, yeah. They're all over the I like someone recommended Product Hunt to me once. And I was like, Oh, okay. And I don't use Product Hunt. Like, I don't even think I'm on it. And so I googled it. And it was like, Oh, my gosh, there's so much information, how to do a Product Hunt, it needs to be Tuesday at 4pm. Because that is the optimal time. Like, it was a whole thing. And I was like, so this is so wonderful that it's worked out for you. And I also saw you are going to start your private podcast.Michele Hansen  12:30  Oh, yeah. The first chapter already went out.Colleen Schnettler  12:35  Sweet. Yeah,Michele Hansen  12:36  I think I'm gonna roll them up like so I was kind of trying to like couple weeks ago, we're talking like, should we do one chapter a week or like, do like two different drops a week because there's 50 chapters in the book. And so we did that, then it would take a whole year to get that book, which seems very long time, it's very long. So it seems excessive. So this week, I dropped the the title and the chapter one as two separate episodes on the same day. But I think for next week, what I'm going to do is I've rolled up several chapters, and basically all drop, do one like episode a week, that is multiple chapters, with a goal of that episode being 15 to like 25 minutes. So it might be like chapters 234. And then the next one might be chapter five, and six, depending on how long those chapters are, because some of the chapters are pretty short. SoColleen Schnettler  13:37  yeah, that makes sense. And try to make it likeMichele Hansen  13:39  normal. Normal podcast length, but more on like, walk the dog a little bit longer length rather than run three miles. Length if you run at my speed, which is not fast, depending on Yeah, so uh, yeah. So yeah, I think I'm gonna do that. So then it'll go a bit faster. But I don't want I mean, I don't want to like drag the whole thing and I already recorded like 18 chapters, I think. Wow. Yeah. So I'm going to do another recording day in a couple couple weeks. Maybe next week. Maybe I should do another one. I like surrounded my desk and pillows and like put a blanket gonna ask on my Yeah, I totally did a pillow for it. The NPR pillow for it. Yeah. of like, just surrounding my desk and pillows to improve the sound quality. And yeah, putting a blanket over my desk. So I feel like it should, you know, it should it should sound good. I don't want it to sound you know, homegrown and, or Yeah, you know, like I want it to sound Good question like people should pay for it. Yeah. SoColleen Schnettler  15:04  yeah, totally. That makes sense. Yeah, it's well, that's really exciting. Um, you've had a really exciting couple weeks,Michele Hansen  15:10  I've been talking to you a couple of weeks, and you have been doing seriously exciting, as we talked about a couple weeks ago. So you are now my cool kid friend, I moved to California and joined a startup. And totally,Colleen Schnettler  15:21  it was crazy. I can't even tell you like, everything just went crazy. But it is super exciting. And I think something that has not been well communicated is we are basically being funded because we are being paid to me really, to build out this product. And so and we get to keep the IP. So this is really exciting for me. I can't think of what else I would rather do with my life. Besides, you know, normal life stuff with do with my career, then build a business with people I like, like, that's my whole life goal right there.Michele Hansen  15:57  That sounds amazing.Colleen Schnettler  15:59  It is. Yeah. So I'm super pumped. It is a lot of stuff of new stuff. But it's a really cool opportunity. The guys that I'm partnering with are great. I've known them for years. And I finally get co founders, which I'm super happy about because doing it alone is lonely.Michele Hansen  16:17  So I feel like we should back up. Yeah, that's a very basic question. So So a couple of months ago, you took a job? Do you? Do you still have that job?Colleen Schnettler  16:33  I do not. Okay.Michele Hansen  16:35  So this is what we were talking about in decisions dishes and was should you? So you have you have that had that job? And then should you continue doing simple file upload? And how does this whole Hammerstone thing fit into it? And one of those options there we did not talk about was like, quit the full time job and like go whole hog and jump in headfirst on Hammerstone. So let's like,Colleen Schnettler  17:07  yeah, it was, I mean, I just everything went a little bit crazy. I announced that I took that job. And maybe part of this is building in public. or part of this is just the market right now. And I am not kidding you. Within a week I had three other people offering me jobs. Like they're like, Oh, I didn't know you were taking a job. So everything got a little crazy. When I took that job, I had every intention of being with that company for years. It was a great company. I love the people. I love their mission. But this opportunity came up to do really exciting work as part of this startup. And I had to choose because there was no way this startup stuff is full time. I mean, there's no way I could do both. So I unfortunately had to quit the job I had for what a month, maybe two months, and go all in with the startup. So it's very exciting. But it was a lot of stuff.Michele Hansen  18:04  Yeah, I mean, that must have been so much to go through in such a short amount of time. And then you're I mean, you're a very you're he You're a very reliable person who can be taken at their word and sticks to it. And yeah, for you to walk away from something after a month. I imagine that was very difficult for you. And also that shows just how excited you are about Hammerstone.Colleen Schnettler  18:42  Yeah, and I think it was really hard. It was a really hard conversation to have with my boss, who was super amazing and gracious. But it was just an opportunity. I couldn't turn down. It was so I mean, and it's high risk, high reward, right like this could burn out. And I could just be back in regular consulting land. But you know, when you're basically offered to be funded for something, but like, I don't know, that's literally what I want to do. So I couldn't turn it down. Yes, it was really hard, Michelle, because I think especially with what I do, like my business is built on relationships. And my reputation is the most important thing I have in this business as a software developer. And so I absolutely need to be very careful of that and how I handle these kinds of situations. And so that's why it was so hard to make this decision. But ultimately, the opportunities with Hammerstone are just and the problem space is really exciting. From a developer perspective, like the problem space we're working on. It's really cool. It's just really intellectually intriguing. So that coupled with like the equity it was, yeah, I mean, it was hard decision, but I think I made the right one. If I'm crying on the podcast in six months, it means I did it. Just kidding. As a joke. I made a terrible mistake. know if I made a mistake or not. But I got to go all in like, I'm in a position where I can go all in. Because you know, we have health really because we have health coverage through my spouse's job. So, man, it was tough though, because I took the full time job with every plan to stay there for years, and this opportunity came up and it was just like, I cannot This is literally what I want to do is build businesses with my friends, period.Unknown Speaker  20:25  Yeah. SoMichele Hansen  20:27  yeah, so there's two things I want to dive into there. The first is, yeah, like, what's so exciting about it? And what Hammerstone? Like, does and what you're gonna be doing for it? And then the second one, and I think I want to start there is is the funding side just to sort of, sort of distill that a little bit? So if I understand correctly, so there's the Hammerstone team, which is you, Aaron and Shawn, right? Correct. Correct. And then hit Hammerstone has a client that themselves has a client, then that that second level clients is paying your clients for Hammerstone, to build their thing into client number one's app? And then you get to keep the IP from that, is that? Right? That's,Colleen Schnettler  21:38  that's, that's kind of right. Yeah, that's kind of right. So basically, youMichele Hansen  21:43  know, if I dive I follow that fully, but okay.Colleen Schnettler  21:47  So I think, yeah, so basically, we have a client, that's a pretty big client, and then there's a middle layer, and then there's, well, really, there's the client, then there's Hammerstone, then there's me. So we're still we were separated as three layers. And so now I'm joining Hammerstone. So it's actually there's one less layer in there. So it's just, it's just the client to Hammerstone. And so the client has agreed to basically fund the development of this piece of software, the software is a query builder. And that sounds so exciting. Like when I say Query Builder, people are like, what I don't get the big deal. But the nuance and like, the power of what we're doing with this query builder is really cool. It's just, it's such a constant problem, like everyone I have ever worked for basic, smart queries are really tough, you're usually putting scopes on the model, and you're trying to chain those scopes together, oh, here, they want this here, they want this. So we're basically trying to extrapolate all of that away, pull all of that out of your model, and allow you to define these queries in a filter. And we're going to provide both the front end and the back end interface. And it's, I mean, again, we need to work on messaging because no one is excited when I tell them what it is. But once you see it in practice, you're like, Oh, this is amazing. SoMichele Hansen  23:12  that's kind of the product. Can we back up for a hot second? And I want you to assume that I don't know anything about web development. Colleen, okay. Yeah, what's the Query Builder?Colleen Schnettler  23:27  So, Michelle, what is your favorite online shop? store to buy clothes or shoes or whatever you're into?Michele Hansen  23:34  j crew.Colleen Schnettler  23:36  Okay, so if you want to go to the J crew website, and you want a V neck sweater in orange in stock in your size available at your store, tall order, that's a query. Okay, right. I mean, a lot of places kit. That's like a search, which is funny. Yes. Which is funny, because that's how I described it to my husband. I was like, show me the Nike website. And let me show you how we're gonna make Nike better, because that's his favorite shop. Got it. Okay. Um, so, you know, traditional, I don't want to get to it's like a search.Michele Hansen  24:10  So are you like competing with like, like, algolia orColleen Schnettler  24:15  so it's actually no, because we're, it's actually how you build up. So we actually build up the SQL, so you'd still use a like, you could still use like, this client is using Postgres timescale dB. So you could still use a different service for for your database, but we're actually building up this performance sequel in so it's at the model layer, but it extrapolates the the querying the scoping, we call it scoping and rails, I don't know what people call it another languages out of the models, so it like extrapolates all of that away. So it but it builds it The cool thing is like it provides both the front end component and the back end component. So ideally, it will be a drop in piece of software, but you as a developer Like, okay, so I have a client, they do real estate, right. And so they have this huge problem with search because people want this super specific things that they want to search. And this is a constant problem. tuning the searches to be exactly what people want to find. But for example, they don't want you to be able to search based on I don't know, like what on who the agent is, let's say that's just an example. So this query builder is actually a drop in software component that I can put in the app. But I as the developer, when I integrate it can also say, Do not let them search by listing agent only allow them to search by this, this and this. So it gives, it's just really powerful. And where it really shines is like in relationship building, because that is always a problem, right? When you have to reach through all these tables. And then if you have these huge SQL tables, like trying to join these tables is a problem. So we're trying to fix all those problems. It's a really interesting problem space for me, because our client is like big data. And not I haven't worked with like super billions and billions of records. So I haven't worked with that kind of big data before. So it's gonna be really exciting.Michele Hansen  26:06  You're really excited about this.Colleen Schnettler  26:09  I know this is like, honestly, this is what it came down to with, like jabber, jabber about SQL. But I think when it came down to making this decision, which was super hard, because my job was so wonderful. It came down to this is literally what's gonna what's hap what happened. So the Hammerstone guys, were gonna hire someone to take over for me. And then I just couldn't let it go. I was like, Oh, well, can I like I just because the, to me, the problem space is fascinating. They were like, they were going to hire someone. And they're like, Well, you know, you could mentor him or whatever. And I was like, yeah, and then we should redesign it to do this. And we should redesign it to do this, and I just wouldn't let it go. And I think to me, that was a indication that the problem space was so fascinating for me, and I just really, really want to solve the problem. You know, when you get a problem in your head like that, and you're like, this is amazing. I must spend Well, yeah, of course you do you. This is like I'm speaking Michelle. Right.Michele Hansen  27:04  Yeah, I know a little bit about what it is like toColleen Schnettler  27:08  to become obsessed with some Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's a huge change. Who knows if I made the right decision, but I made the decision that that I think is the right decision. I guess that's all that matters. But it's been a it's been a roller coaster of what? A couple three weeks here.Michele Hansen  27:26  So yeah, so what does this mean for a simple file upload?Colleen Schnettler  27:30  So simple, but it's still rockin and rollin? I think. So although i've you know, I'm working full time for these new guys, but it's gonna be kind of the same dear deal, wolf were full time is 32 hours per week. So I should still have that extra day per week to work on simple file upload. And I'll be honest, like now that I'm settled, I feel like a lot of energy for simple file upload. Like I feel I actually wrote a piece of content finally didn't take that long. I know, right. But um, I feel good about it, it's still not going to be super fast. But I feel good about putting energy into it and putting time into it and making it you know, keeping it where it was going to be, which was, you know, eight to 10 hours a week.Michele Hansen  28:16  Do you feel less pressure with simple file upload? No.Colleen Schnettler  28:21  Yeah, I do. I think I mean, if I had not that I would want to pick one to succeed. But I am super pumped to have co founders. I mean, I'm super pumped. The Hammerstone team is so great, because I'm going to do the real stuff. Aaron is like a layer of Bal Laravel. Laravel.Michele Hansen  28:40  Yeah. superstar, right. Yeah, he's like, really light stuff. People are like, super Hammerstone Yeah, okay. Okay. I thought but yeah.Colleen Schnettler  28:51  Okay. Yeah. So he, so he's kind of, you know, doing great things in the Laravel. World, he did torchlight. And he's trying to do some other things just to get our reputation out there as like a company that makes really quality software components. And then we have Shawn, who's our front end guy. And Sean also has a lot more experience from a marketing and success standpoint, if you will, because Shawn, in the past, has had a product that has been his only, you know, has supported his family. And so he's been there so he can actually see past that, which is really an interesting perspective. Aaron, and I is relatively, you know, we both have mildly successful products, but like, we're both kind of new to this. And so we're approaching it in different ways. So Shawn is like Yeah, sure. I think we can get to, you know, 200k or whatever. How do you get past your network? And Aaron and I don't have never gotten to 200k with a product so we can't even conceptualize that. Right. So I think we're gonna be a really good team.Michele Hansen  29:50  You I feel like what I'm hearing is like you sound really fulfilled by this hair. We're stone work. And I think for a long time, simple file upload came out of that desire to be fulfilled where client work was, like paying the bills, but not necessarily super soul nourishing for you. And then you took the job. And it was, you know, it was you had all intentions of staying there. And making that work and, and everything else. But it did not feel like a calling for you. Which, you know, for the vast majority of people, their day job is not their calling, or something that's fulfilling, and that's perfectly fine. Um, but I feel and then it shifted that that simple file upload was then like your source of like, personal fulfillment. But I feel like now I'm hearing you sound super fulfilled by the Hammerstone work. And that kind of takes some of the financial and emotional pressure off of the work that you do with simple file upload.Colleen Schnettler  31:07  Yeah, I think that's an accurate assessment, I think, yeah, simple file upload definitely fulfill that need when I was working clients. Yeah, I think I think you're right, like, it's really exciting to see where this is gonna go.Michele Hansen  31:21  And I'm super pumped you because we don't do side projects just for the money. Right? Like, you know, very often they come out of that, like, it's certainly, you know, I've talked a lot about how do cardio certainly did. But then we've also talked about how, you know, the book for me was like, you know, it was not for money. And it was not because it was a good decision with my time it was because I enjoyed it. And I needed it myself. And I think sometimes that's a really good space for side projects to be in where sometimes you just need an outlet for fun. And, gosh, I guess given this last year, when you're stuck in your house, and you can't really go do a lot of fun outside your house, like, you know, side projects can fill that need, you know, in the same way that we talked about, you know, when you're interviewing someone looking for the, the functional purpose of why they bought something, but then also the emotional and social purposes. And, and I guess I you know, in for me coming off of everything with with Product Hunt, and all of that community support, like I'm really thinking about those social and emotional components of launching things. And I hear you talking about Hammerstone. And I hear that fulfillment, and I think you have said maybe three times in the last half hour, how excited you are to finally have co founders like that loneliness and struggle and having to figure everything out on your own has been a running theme for you with simple fileupload.Colleen Schnettler  33:08  Yes, so I've basically figured out the rest of my life, because I'm now I'm wise. So I'm going to tell you, by my life, I mean your life to Okay, so you're absolutely right. Like, I kind of came to this realization. So this was a hard decision like agonizing, actually. And when it came down to it, when you're financially stable enough that you can make these kinds of decisions. As I think I said earlier, running a business with my friends, literally, if I could do that the rest of my career I'm in. So I think I've mentioned before, that when we started this podcast, I said, Michelle is gonna write a book, and I'm gonna launch a product and you were like, man, it is never gonna happen.Michele Hansen  33:48  Okay, so now you are actually like a clip of that, like, do we have a recording of that somewhere? Or is that I don't like the two of us talking about it. And like, I don't know.Colleen Schnettler  33:57  I know, like, I would love to go back. I've actually started listening to some of our all of our podcasts, which is amazing, by the way, kind of go back and listen to them, but I haven't come across it yet. But so Hammerstone is hopefully going to make me a ton of money. It's gonna be super fun. We'll do it for five years ish. And then you and I are going to start a business where we help people, women specifically start their own businesses. Oh, yeah. So you and I are definitely gonna start a business someday. It's like five to 10 years in the future. And it's gonna be an altruistic business. And we're gonna figure that out. But that is my life plan for us. You're welcome. For my life plan.Unknown Speaker  34:38  You know, I feel like I'm here.Michele Hansen  34:40  I feel like you like it. You like kind of dropped the idea of like software Social Fund, like a couple of months ago, like casually, and yeah, um, you know, something that I'm really intrigued by. So there's this guy Nick ramza in Maine who runs a nonprofit called Tor. labs, where he teaches people in rural Maine, how to have an online business. And it's a nonprofits. And these people are like making real money, real jobs, like, huge impact in their own lives. Actually, I've been meaning to have phone call with him. Hi, Nick. Um, so I mean, that's that's kind of the thing I feel like I think about, I don't think I would limit it to just women. Um, no, like, doesn't have to be evil. Yeah, yeah. But, um, but I love that if like doing an incubator, as a, like, a nonprofit or a, like, some sort of public benefit instead. But, but then of course, then you have to deal with like donor fundraising, and you still have to deal with investors, it's just donors and like, this, this is not happening anytime soon, becauseColleen Schnettler  36:01  they do not think about this. We're not doing theseMichele Hansen  36:06  years. Also, don't tempt us and send us offers to fund it either. Just like just not just know applications and just like, just just forget we, butColleen Schnettler  36:18  okay, I just wanted to get that on record. Because I see that as our future. Like, that's what I are apparently veryMichele Hansen  36:24  good at predicting the future. So like, when you say go buy here stocks and bet on some sports games, and heck, yeah,Colleen Schnettler  36:32  sure, sure.Unknown Speaker  36:35  So, anyway, well, that's fine. We're gonna wrapMichele Hansen  36:38  up today with the conclusion that Colleen is apparently Nostradamus and things are things are. Things are happening in a way that I feel like all of it, you know, they say that there's times when nothing happens, and then there's times when everything happens. And I feel like both of us are in this time where everything happens. Like in the past month, I have launched a book and it is number one on product time and you have actually taken one job and quit it and then taken another job that you are super pumped about everything is happening and who knows what's going to happen in the future.

So Shawn is OBSESSED with the video game Overwatch and he tries to explain the game to me in this podcast. His explanation is great but is he successful at getting me to buy the game? Email us to find out - #overwatch #blizzard Find out more about us at: www.HappyLittleScreams.com Twitter: @ScreamsHappy Instagram: @HappyLittleScreams Facebook: www.facebook.com/happylittlescreams Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/happylittlescreams --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Show Resources Here were the resources we covered in the episode: Here were the resources we covered in the episode: Global State of Sales Report 2021 Sean Callahan LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox NEW LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox Certifications   Contact us at Podcast@B2Linked.com with ideas for what you'd like AJ to cover. Show Transcript:   AJ Wilcox LinkedIn released the state of sales in 2021 report, and I can confirm, it's fire! Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here's your host, AJ Wilcox. AJ Wilcox Hey there, LinkedIn Ads fanatics, I have a confession for you. I am a marketer. I'm a marketer through and through. And I don't consider myself a salesperson. In fact, I consider myself to be the furthest thing from a salesperson. But after years of internal debate, and reconciling the image of the sleazy used car salesman with what I do, I finally come to admit to myself that sales performance is deeply and undeniably connected with my LinkedIn Ads efforts, it's absolutely not uncommon for us to be absolutely slaying it for a client and getting incredible costs and results and low cost per lead. But then just to find out that their sales team doesn't know how to handle the leads, they don't close any, and it makes us look bad. Or the other way around. We can be doing decently, but maybe we haven't quite hit our stride with optimizations yet. And then sales happens to close something. And suddenly, we look like rock stars. No matter which way you slice it. We as marketers live and die by the performance of our sales counterparts. Because of this connection. I'm pleased to have Sean Callahan from LinkedIn as our guest this week. I've gotten to collaborate with him on many projects, I'm lucky to call him a friend. And his team has recently released the state of sales report. And I know you're going to find it fascinating, as well as it will help you become a better marketer. First in the news, in May, LinkedIn released several new features. So let's walk through those. The first is boosting posts, basically, like a really simple version of campaign manager for maybe a social marketer who doesn't do much on the paid side to be able to boost their posts to target audiences. I'm not very excited about this, I kind of think, meh, because I would much rather use campaign manager. But maybe you've got folks on your social team, or maybe even organic team that would be interested to know about this. Next, LinkedIn officially released their event ads. And on the roadmap episodes in the past, we've talked several times about event ads and what they're going to be in my testing, I haven't found them to outperform a single image sponsored content ads when promoting an event. But it's definitely worth testing to see if you can get them to help perform. One thing of note in our testing is that you can't have multiple copies of the event for like individual campaign tracking. So it's kind of like boosting posts, you pretty much create one event, and then share it into multiple campaigns. I don't like that for attribution. So I hope we'll have a little bit more control over attribution for event and in the future. The next one I am really excited about this is we're now able to go live on LinkedIn live without a third party app. So I absolutely love using Restream.io. They're my favorite streaming platform. But every single time I go live on LinkedIn, I always have some sort of a technical hurdle. Because I'm trying to run through, you know, three or four different applications, it runs my laptop so hard, that it's just you know, the fan is screaming. And so now we get to do this by broadcasting directly through something like zoom or a WebEx that you might already be using to go live. It simplifies things. And it's going to give me a lot more confidence when going live. And hopefully, you'll be able to see me go live a little bit more often. We also got some beefed up event analytics. So these are more insights into your LinkedIn events, which is something we're super grateful for. We've really wanted this ever since events came out. Every time LinkedIn releases a new feature, we want to you'll have all kinds of insights into whether or not it's working. And now we actually have that for events. In the same release, LinkedIn also released mobile page insights. So if you've ever wanted to see how your LinkedIn page was performing, but you were on the go, you were just pretty much out of luck. Well, now LinkedIn have released the ability to see your page analytics, right from the LinkedIn mobile app. And this is fantastic. I applaud anytime we get more control and insight in the mobile app. Something else really exciting. I've been asked about this for years and years, LinkedIn just released their official certifications. And not only are they free, but if you get certified within the next 30 days. It's probably like the next 20 days after this podcast goes live. But you'll get one of the like bragging rights of being one of the very first people to be certified. So check the notes down below. In the show notes, you'll see a link right to the certifications. There are two that you can take right now and get them attached to your LinkedIn profile to show off that you rock at LinkedIn Ads. And our last piece of news here something I'm really, really excited. In many of the last episodes, I've kind of hinted and teased about this. But as of this week, the official LinkedIn Ads course update is now live. So to give you an idea, I recorded the last LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads. It's been several years now. And the content was about an hour and five minutes long. And I've been collecting feedback and questions, and you know, all kinds of different insights over the last several years. And I've now gotten to put that into the update. So if you've taken the course in the past, I would highly recommend go and take the updated course, I think it's about an hour and 45 minutes long, and it is chockfull. I couldn't be more proud of the information and the learnings that you'll have within the course. So hit the link in the show notes, go to LinkedIn Learning, and take the course you'll be absolutely pleased you did. Popping into recent reviews, first of all, a huge thank you to the one person who rated this podcast with one star and didn't even leave a review. I don't know what I did to piss you off. But feel free to reach out to me to discuss what I could be doing better on the show or how we can better support you. We had a review from Max in Thailand, and he says, "This is Max. I'm an Italian living in Thailand, I just want to drop a note to say thank you for your work, and really appreciate the level of details in your podcast. I'm not a podcast listener, and I stumbled in your channel by chance. But I have found this to be one of the best free radio sources I have ever seen. Congratulations, and thanks again." Max, thank you so much. It means the world to me that someone who's not into podcasts would become a podcast listener because of this show. So thanks so much. And on behalf of the medium of podcasting, I hope you find lots of other valuable stuff here too. We also had David leave a review who said, "I'm an intern, and our founder has assigned to me with finding the absolute best podcast. So I had to reach out to you because the LinkedIn Ads Show podcast is absolutely amazing. Our company is focused on providing the necessary tools and knowledge to our customers to fill their calendars with demos through cold emails and LinkedIn." David, thanks so much for sharing those experiences. First of all, I'm glad that the show showed up in your searches, as you were out trying to find this for the CEO, and boy, glad to have you as a listener. Okay, with that being said, I want to feature you all of you here in the reviews highlight. So make sure you go to whatever podcast player or hub and leave us a review on the podcast. Of course, I would prefer not leaving one star reviews. Especially not saying why. But certainly, please leave a review. Let us know what you think of the show and we'll shout you out. Okay, I'm so excited to have Sean Callahan. Let's jump right to the interview. All right, Sean Callahan. Welcome to the show. Sean is a Senior Content Manager at LinkedIn. He works out of the Chicago office. Personally, he's the author of several children's books, including the most recent Voting with a Porpoise. He helped create LinkedIn's latest state of sales reports. Sean and I go way back. We met at CES several years back. We've gotten to collaborate on a bunch of different projects and things. And now I'm really excited to get to talk to you about this latest report. So welcome to the show. Sean Callahan 8:25 Hey, thanks for having me on. AJ, it's great to connect again. AJ Wilcox 8:29 Always, always fun pleasure for me. So first of all, tell us about the state of sales report. And why you and your team decided to take it on, how long it's been running, all those goodies. Sean Callahan 8:40 Yeah, well, this is a this is a report. This is the fifth time we've done this state of sales report. It's a survey of what's going on in sales. We're trying to talk to our customers for the LinkedIn Sales Navigator product and the LinkedIn Sales Insights product about where sales is headed. We're just trying to be useful to the marketplace. And this report is pretty extensive. So it's global in nature. We interviewed or we surveyed more than 7500 people in 10 countries, the US and Canada, Netherlands, Germany, France, UK, Brazil, Mexico, Singapore, Australia and India. And I think that's actually 11 because we did have the Netherlands this year. And we asked them a huge battery of questions. It's buyers and sellers were asking, so we're getting both sides of the sales process. And we also use LinkedIn data for this. You know, on our platform, we're able to tell through Sales Navigator analyzing actions by salespeople, what actions work and what don't. We find generally that if you share content on a regular basis, but not overly sharing that you do better, same with sending emails, we've got some data on that. And we also interviewed 30 to 40 sales experts and sales leaders for this version of the report, which was something new. So we brought in different perspectives from the industry, not only in the US and Canada, but around the globe, Latin America, EMEA, and APAC and got their points of views and included those in the reports, there's a global version of the report that's coming out in a month, we have already released a US version, UK version, a version for France just came out this week. We have Brazil and Mexico already out and a version of the Netherlands in English out and the other reports will be coming out over the next several weeks. So it's a pretty extensive project. And and again, we're just trying to be useful for the sales industry and and talk about what's happening, I can go into the seven trends that we found here, I'll just list them we'll talk in more detail, I think as we go along in this conversation. But number one was virtual selling is good for sellers and even better for buyers. Number two is sales organizations and managers must adjust to a remote working world and the just now, sales organizations are preventing sellers from putting buyers first I think this is a really interesting one and I can go into detail on that as we dive in a little deeper. We found six sales behaviors in particular that are killing deals. We found that sales technology provides, especially in this virtual selling world, a key pathway to building trust. Number six was for sales organizations, data is more crucial than ever. And number seven was buyers and sellers are ramping up their use of LinkedIn. AJ Wilcox 11:35 Oh, so first of all super interesting trends. I loved reading all of them. What I really like about this report is it really is an amalgamation of so many important things. Of course, there's the survey. So you're getting data from your customers, but then you brought in experts. And my favorite part is you're actually using LinkedIn data. I can't imagine anyone else who has more insights about what sales folks are doing than LinkedIn. And so I'm so glad that you've gotten to bring that to the table. Sean Callahan 12:03 Yeah, I think it makes our report unique, and gives us a view of the sales world that is almost impossible to replicate. AJ Wilcox 12:12 Oh, yeah. So because our listeners are for the vast majority, LinkedIn Ads professionals, mostly in the marketing job function. I'm really curious, what sort of impact do you think this data and these findings will have on us as marketers? And what insights can we take from it? Sean Callahan 12:30 Yeah, well, I think one of the key things is that marketers should just understand that sales is in a period of change right now. And I think that may help as a marketer myself, and working with a bunch of salespeople. I understand, you know, and throughout my career, that marketing and sales don't always work together, as well as they probably should have, or as well as certainly as well as we want them to. But I think understanding that there's a huge shift happening in sales right now, with virtual selling technology coming on, remote work coming into play, I think it's important for marketers to understand that that's number one. Number two, I think there's some interesting stuff in this report about the power of brand for salespeople. And it can give marketers sort of a leg up in explaining to salespeople the power of marketing for them. You know, I think sometimes it's hard for salespeople to appreciate what marketers can do for them. And this helps, because, for instance, in the six behaviors that are immediate deal killers, and this is all data from the US Canada report. One of the top behaviors that is seen as a deal killer by buyers is that the salesperson is affiliated with a brand that I don't trust. So putting money behind branding is something that is going to help salespeople gain the trust of buyers. I think that's an interesting, you know, thing that I think sometimes it's hard for marketers to communicate that and here we have it. In our survey, we also had buyers rank the factors that are important in influencing the purchase of a product or service. And number one was trust in the brand of product or service, like it had nothing to do with the salesperson, you know that number one thing is about the brand of the product or service. And I think that speaks to how marketers can begin to talk to salespeople about what marketing and investment in marketing brings to the table for salespeople and helping to close deals, meet their quota, etc. AJ Wilcox 14:42 Oh, I like it. Okay, so that leads me to another question here. What can we do to strengthen our sales teams with the findings from this report? Is this as simple as like forward it to the sales team and you try to get them to read it? Like do you have any tips for us as marketers to help our sales teams act on this? Sean Callahan 14:59 Yeah. I think talking about brand is important. And I think salespeople understand it in their gut, you know that if they walk into a customer, or if they're emailing a customer, the brand in the.com, you know, is one that they're confident that the customer, the prospect is going to recognize and has as a good feeling about. I think that's very powerful and seeing it come from not a marketer saying this, but buyers saying this, you know, I think that's very valuable from the marketing point of view. It's kind of a recapitulation of the idea that no one ever got fired for buying IBM. Buyers, like the comfort of a brand that they recognize. And marketers can use this to argue for more investment in brand, which ultimately is not helping the marketer, but helping the salesperson and helping the salesperson close deals. AJ Wilcox 15:54 So true. And we find this time after time, anytime that we're running an account based marketing or an ABM campaign, if our clients are doing active outreach from their sales departments to their buyer, we find that as soon as we start advertising, our advertising gets a lot more efficient. And their success rates get a lot more efficient, just because these people now if heard of you, they know who you are, they assume there's some legitimacy to your brand. And so I definitely second that branding is super valuable to what we do. Sean Callahan 16:25 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm partial to the phrase or the slogan that if they don't get into the top of the funnel, you're not going to get them to the bottom of the funnel. AJ Wilcox 16:34 Oh, yeah. So without spoiling the exciting stuff in the report, can you talk about what went in to finding these trends? And maybe a little bit about what may have surprised you? Sean Callahan 16:44 Yeah, one of the surprising things is this concept of buyer first is interesting to me. And it's interesting that in what we found is 65% of sellers say they always put the buyer first. And only 23% of buyers agree. So it's about 1/3 of buyers, but there's more closeness in there, then you would think so what we found is that it's it's kind of a necessity to put the buyer first, especially in the first days of COVID happening, you didn't even know whether your buyer was, you know, in business anymore. So you really had to think buyer first, you know, some companies were doing very well like say Netflix or Peloton in the first days of the of the pandemic, they were doing well. And so maybe they were going to buy products. But then there were other at the other end of the spectrum, there were companies in the travel industry, let's say where they were probably completely on hold and that and not going to buy buy anything. So So we found that but this buyer first thing is very interesting with sales people sort of wanting to be buyer first. And buyers obviously wanting salespeople to be buyer first. But there's a disconnect in whether it's actually happening. And we found, we identified that we had six behaviors that we said, okay, these behaviors are inarguably buyer first. And some of them, for example, are providing free and easy access to product reviews and other content, that's a buyer first behavior. Staying actively engaged after the sale, to ensure value delivery, being completely transparent about pricing. All those are what we would call buyer first behaviors in the sales process. What we found is that both buyers and sellers totally agreed that these were important in the buying process. So we found that there was total agreement on that, but where we found the disagreement was, you know, buyers saying that sellers practice these behaviors all the time was, you know, around 30%. So similar to the number that said that, you know, sellers are putting buyers first. But we also found that individual sales people are saying like I put the buyer first. But, then they were also saying that we asked them about whether their organization puts the buyer first. And they said kind of they said no. They said I am, but my organization doesn't my organization put the buyer first all of the time. And the you know, for these buyer first behaviors that we were talking about providing free and easy access to product reviews and other content, staying actively engaged etc, was around 40% of the time they said that their organization put these behaviors into practice all the time. And so I think what that speaks to is that there are barriers in the organization to being buyer first and we found some of these barriers are kind of obvious, right like emphasis on short term sales or revenue goals. limited budgets, maybe limited commitment to training or inadequate coaching. Maybe it's just the organizational culture, or the lack of the right skill set among existing sales talent, because we know sales has gotten much more complex, especially in, say, the technology industry or you know, even old smokestack industries like manufacturing, etc, are relying more and more on technology. And so the sales process has become more complicated. But organizations aren't adjusting, and they're making it more difficult than it should be for the average salesperson to place the buyer first. And that's what we found. I think that's like one of the key takeaways from the state of sales report. AJ Wilcox 20:45 It sounds like the sales reps are ready for this change. They're creating the groundswell. And now it's the organization's time to catch up to come and do the right thing. Sean Callahan 20:55 I think largely, that's true. I mean, I think some sales organizations are well ahead of the curve. But yeah, I think sales managers and sales executives, you know, they need to take a look at their organization and kind of assess whether they are enabling their salespeople to do what they need to do to, you know, really, to sell in this current environment. And I don't think this current environment is going to change very much. I think remote work is kind of here to stay and virtual selling is going to continue to remain important. But there probably will be a hybrid as the pandemic begins to recede, where you're doing some in person along with virtual selling, and you're probably going to need to be skilled at both to be successful. AJ Wilcox 21:40 Oh, totally agreed. How do you think COVID has impacted virtual selling? And I know you already said this, but what do you think in the future? Why do you see that this is a change that that is so permanent? What makes you think that the world can't just go back to where we were pre-COVID? Sean Callahan 21:58 Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question. I was listening, we just happen to have a live event, live virtual event today where we were talking about this very thing. And it was a sales expert, Alejandro Cabral, he works in Argentina, for Kimberly Clark Professional. He said that evolution never goes backwards. And he was referring to you adapt these sales technologies, and they become de facto how you how business gets done. So the technologies that enabled salespeople to sell virtually in the pandemic, companies saw that, you know, hey we can close deals without getting in front of customers, we can reduce our travel and entertainment budgets, and still close deals. Buyers told us in this report that 50% of them in the US and even more globally said that buying became easier when they did it virtually. And they were working remotely. And buyers said by huge numbers that they would love to work more than, you know, I think it was something like 60 some percent wanted to work remotely more than 50% of the time. So this this remote work, which kind of requires a virtual selling approach is not going away. Companies see it as valuable, their employees like it, not only from the personal standpoint, but from the business standpoint, in fact that it makes buying easier. So I don't think any of this stuff is going away. I mean, obviously we're going to start to go back to conferences and meeting people as the vaccination levels go up. And the disease begins to recede. But these changes are permanent to a large degree. And it's in some way, because these changes were already happening with sales technology, enabling a lot of this virtual selling and closing deals without ever actually shaking hands with a person in the flesh. AJ Wilcox 24:03 Yeah, I agree with that. It's more like it didn't change the way that we do business. It just accelerated the change that was already in the works. And now we're living the way that Yeah, we probably naturally would have within three or four years, but COVID sure accelerated us towards it Sean Callahan 24:20 Yeah, accelerated is the word. I mean, this was coming. But it made it happen much faster in something that you know, your marketing audience might remember is like, I think 2008, 2009 that downturn really had an impact on the adoption of online advertising. I think online advertising was something that companies were doing, but in that downturn, they understood that it was cheaper, and they could prove immediately whether it was working or not. And in that era where there was such tight money, companies really move towards that much faster than they would have normally. And they moved away from things like print where it was harder to prove the value to online advertising. And that changed, you know, the value of advertising online like almost overnight. AJ Wilcox 25:13 And what a beautiful change that was. Yes, for you. It was a great, great change. True! You said something earlier that made me think of a quote that was actually in the report. I absolutely loved this quote. It's by the CEO of Flockjay, Help me with his last name, it's Shaan Hathiramani, is that close? Enough? Sean Callahan 25:32 Close enough AJ Wilcox 25:33 Okay, cool. He says the digital world is here to stay. The inefficiency of travel of in person business meetings, late night dinner appointments will make face to face meetings less common and not necessary. In many cases, organizations will use more data, more video more telesales? I don't think that we will go back to the world that was Sean Callahan 25:53 Yes. I totally agree with Shaan. I think that's he's absolutely right in everything. And I think we're seeing right, I don't think anything, you could argue with any aspect of that, quote. AJ Wilcox 26:06 Yeah. So it'll be interesting to see. Because there's, there's a lot of this stuff that was in person that was really annoying. And we wish we could do it remotely. And then there was a whole bunch of things like events and conferences, where, you know, we did a lot of that, for fun and for work. And I'm interested to see if that comes back, you know, raging. People have been locked inside for a year and a half or two years. Now, I can't wait to get out and meet people again. Or if people are just gonna say, oh, I found that I really liked being in my house. I don't think I need to do conferences anymore. Do you have any insights into maybe what can happen there with public events? Sean Callahan 26:41 Yeah, I think events will come back. And we talked about this hybrid idea, right? I think it's going to be harder to meet individually, like a buyer at our office, for instance, I think that's going to be hard, especially in the near term. Because I don't think companies want people from the outside coming into the office, it's just, you know, they're not sure it's safe yet. But I think that these conferences, especially the best ones, are going to thrive, because people still in this hybrid model are going to want to get together. And it's going to be maybe even more important than it was in the past. Someone was telling me a long time ago about why they thought that the events business would thrive in B2B, where publications might not. And this is, I think turned out to be true, is that events are the only thing that Google can't do. You know, in person, it's something that the online world doesn't enable us to do. But these events, you get to meet people meet new people, shake hands, go out to dinner, have a drink, whatever, that stuff is going to be more important at these events, because it's kind of going to be at least in the, say, foreseeable future, the only place you can do it. AJ Wilcox 28:00 I totally agree with that. My thought is, you know, so many of us are so burned out by zoom, we've participated in so many virtual events. And really, no matter how you slice it, the type of learning that you do in a virtual event is significantly different than the type of learning that you would do in person. And so I think people will be excited to get back to that level of learning where they're not multitasking. And yeah, thanks during that. Sean Callahan 28:25 Yeah, I mean, I'd love virtual events. And I think virtual events are here to stay. But the one thing that they lack, to the degree that an in person has is, you know, the aisles, the conference hallways where you meet people and talk to you know, that's an important part of a conference. And I think that's something that we're going to crave. AJ Wilcox 28:44 Yeah, good point, someone's gonna find a solution for that. Sean Callahan 28:47 Yes. Well, there are like, you know, there's sort of, you know, you got breakout rooms that virtual events and you have the chat down the side. But they're trying to approximate I think, the conference aisle-ways in hallways, AJ Wilcox 29:02 Yeah, you get some of the serendipity and meeting with those types of things. Boy, it's gonna be hard to replicate the I was just randomly standing behind this person that, you know, at a food truck, or we were both in line to ask a speaker a question and ended up striking the conversation. I hope we get to preserve those kinds of things. Okay, here's the quick sponsor break, and then we'll dive into the rest of the interview. The LinkedIn Ads Show is proudly brought to you by B2Linked.com, the LinkedIn Ads experts. AJ Wilcox 29:34 If the performance of your LinkedIn Ads is important to you B2Linked is the agency you'll want to work with. We've spent over $135 million on LinkedIn Ads, and no one. I mean, no one outperforms us on getting you the lowest cost per lead. We're official LinkedIn partners, and you'll deal only with LinkedIn experts from day one. Fill out the contact form on any page of B2Linked.com to chat about your campaigns. We'd love to work with you. And definitely let us know that the podcast sent you. Alright, let's go ahead and jump right back into the interview. Out of curiosity, we've talked a little bit about how COVID really affected selling. But tell me how you think COVID affected the buying of the buyer side of all this? Sean Callahan 30:17 Yeah, well, I talked a little bit about the the remote work. And I think that's part of what's going on here that buyers 50% of buyers say that working remotely has made the purchasing process easier. That's from our survey data. And we also found that remote job postings, they're not going away, they've increased by more than 5x globally since the start of the pandemic. And that's, that's LinkedIn data, LinkedIn platform data, 64% of buyers in North America are working remotely more than half of the time. Again, that's our survey data and 70% of buyers want to continue working remote they have for more of the time in the future. So that's really transformational, I think. And for selling, it's huge that, you know, how we work in offices is going to change forever. I'm lucky or odd in that I've worked from home on 1, 2, 3, like five straight jobs. I've had a home office job since 1998. I've been working. But I think more and more people are going to be like that. Working from home all the time, we found that it's doable. There are obviously downsides like your resume, fatigue is a real thing. And people want to have connection with people. That's why conferences are going to continue to work. But there has been a definite shift. Like I said before, that that idea that evolution doesn't go backwards is real too. We're not going to be able to walk this back, the genie is out of the bottle. AJ Wilcox 31:49 I love that example you shared about the 2008 downturn and the adoption of online advertising. I hadn't considered that before. And I've been wondering like, ooh, is the world going to go back to the way it was? I think you just cemented in my mind that no, it's not this, this is an evolution. Sean Callahan 32:08 I really think so. Because that we didn't really go back to print advertising, you know, it hasn't really recovered AJ Wilcox 32:16 Oh yeah. Alright, so shifting gears here a little bit? How are sales organizations using data? Sean Callahan 32:21 Well, I do know that sales organizations are using tons of data and more all the time. And one of the key things is their metrics, how they measure success. And that has changed over the past few years. You know, the cliche is that sales organizations measure quota, individual quota and team quota. And what we're finding is that customer satisfaction, and customer retention are two of the top metrics for sales organizations, rather than individual quota and team quota. Those are still important. But they are not what they used to be as far as like far and away, what organizations are measuring organizations are taking a longer term view of the world. That's an important thing to take note of. They're also using a lot of data in how they go about identifying customers. They use it to identify accounts they can go after, industries they can go after, geographies they can go after. And you know, LinkedIn, frankly, is one place where you can find that kind of data. And that stuff is becoming more and more important. And one of the quotes in the state of sales is that you know, data for sales organizations has become table stakes. If you don't have data, you're sort of driving without your headlights. AJ Wilcox 33:56 Oh, beautiful.That was an amazing answer to a question I didn't think through very well before I just read it off. So let me ask you this one, how are sales organizations using the data from this report? Sean Callahan 34:10 Well, I hope they're they're using it to look at where they're headed, where this industry is headed. I think what this report does is there are several key insights about how to become a buyer first sales organization. And I think that's crucial. And I think the report also works to confirm what I think sales leaders understand in their gut, that remote working is here to stay. The virtual selling is a skill that you are going to need to succeed. And those kind of insights, I think this report can help sales organizations to prove to the rest of their company that there are certain changes that need to be made AJ Wilcox 34:59 Wonderful. Because we've talked about this report, it's obviously awesome is the furthest thing from a fluff piece that we've ever seen from from anyone. Where can we go and find this report? Where can our listeners go to, to actually, you know, search through these insights themselves? Sean Callahan 35:13 Yeah, we have a short length. That is, well, it could be shorter. Let's put it that way. But it's lnkd.in/stateofsales2021. So it's lnkd.in/stateofsales2021 AJ Wilcox 35:31 Perfect. And we'll throw that in the show notes as well, for those of you who don't have a pen around or just want to scroll down from your podcast player and hit that link. And, Shawn, and this can be either for you, business life or personal life. What are you most excited about that's coming up? Sean Callahan 35:50 Well, I'll do a business one, I've been talking about state of sales, this whole thing, we've got a little piece of state of sales, that's going to come out a little later in the year. It's what top performers do differently. So in the state of sales survey, we're able to identify sellers who met 125% or more of quota, and compare them to others who took the survey, and were able to identify certain things that these sellers do differently. And I'll give you a couple examples. To whet your appetite for this piece. It's top performers do more research, they actually spend a little bit less time selling than average performers. And they do their research those they're totally prepared when they they have a call. They by about 15 to 20 percentage points, they do more kind of things like look up person's LinkedIn profile, visit the company website, find out who's on the buying committee through Sales Navigator. They do those kinds of things, more than average performers. There's some other material in there, too. That's very interesting. But it's that that research piece and that total preparation piece that top performers have. And I will also tell you that this may be coming out after this, but I have the entire week from July 5 through July 9 off, and I'm looking forward to that. AJ Wilcox 37:12 Oh, very cool. Without divulging too much. Is there anything on vacation that you're really looking forward to? Or you're you're gonna make sure you do. Sean Callahan 37:20 I waste a lot of time in my life playing golf, and I will probably do that over that period of time. AJ Wilcox 37:27 Cool. I love it. Well, I'm super excited for that next report because that sounds exactly what we want to share with all of our clients and their sales teams. Let's get more of those 125% of quota folks out there. So Shawn, if people want to connect with you, what's the best place to do it? Sean Callahan 37:44 Well, you can always look at my LinkedIn profile. Or you can send me an email and my LinkedIn address, which is scallahan@LinkedIn.com. I would love to talk to anybody who wants to talk state of sales. AJ Wilcox 37:57 Love it. All right. Sean, thanks so much for joining us. We'd love to have you back again, sometime here soon. Maybe even talk about the what top performers do differently piece. So anyway, stay in touch. And thanks so much for coming on. Sean Callahan 38:09 Hey, thanks for having me. AJ really enjoyed it. Talk with you soon. AJ Wilcox 38:13 All right. See ya! Sean Callahan 38:14 Alright, I've got the episode resources for you coming right up. So stick around. Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry for more? AJ Wilcox, take it away. AJ Wilcox 38:35 All right, I've got some great resources for you today. First of all, there's a link to the state of sales report down in the show notes. That's lnkd.in/stateofsales2021. It's a little bit long. But yeah, just go click the link. Next is Sean Callahan. He mentioned his email address is scallahan. So that's scallahan@LinkedIn.com.. And there's also going to be a link to his LinkedIn profile, he'd love to connect with you all. I've also got a link to the new LinkedIn Ads certifications. So make sure you level up your own resume and go and get those ASAP. And I've also got a link to the new LinkedIn Ads course that I told you about. I'm super proud of it. Of course, I want you to take it, but certainly if you have anyone in your organization who is trying to level up or learn LinkedIn Ads, point them towards this course. It is by far the best resource out there. If you have any suggestions, any questions about the podcast, anything like that, reach out to us at Podcast@B2Linked.com. Please do look down at whatever podcast player you're listening to right now. And rate us you know, subscribe. And definitely leave us a review as well. We'd love to shout you out. All right, with all of that. We'll see you back here next week, I hope. Cheering you on in your LinkedIn Ads initiatives.

In today's episode, I welcome Natalie Cordone & Shawn Kilgore! This incredibly dynamic duo have amazing stories to share about the show that introduced them to each other, the creation of their own tribute show to Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, and all the adventures in between. (Fun fact: the cover image for this episode is of Natalie & Shawn!)   Get in touch with Cordone & Kilgore: www.cordoneandkilgore.com Support Artfully Told: www.paypal.me/elevateart Artfully Told links: www.facebook.com/artfullytold | www.artfullytold.podbean.com | elevateartskc@gmail.com Get a free audiobook through Audible!  http://www.audibletrial.com/ArtfullyTold Schedule your own interview as a featured guest with Artfully Told! https://calendly.com/artfullytold/podcast-interview   Episode 54 - Natalie Cordone & Shawn Kilgore Lindsey Dinneen: Hello, and welcome to Artfully Told, where we share true stories about meaningful encounters with art. [00:00:06] Krista: I think artists help people have different perspectives on every aspect of life. [00:00:12]Roman:  All I can do is put my part in to the world. [00:00:15] Elizabeth: It doesn't have to be perfect the first time. It doesn't have to be perfect ever really. I mean, as long as you, and you're enjoying doing it and you're trying your best, that can be good enough. [00:00:23] Elna: Art is something that you can experience with your senses and that you just experiences as so beautiful.  [00:00:31] Lindsey Dinneen: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Artfully Told. I'm your host Lindsey, and I am so very excited to have as my guests today, Shawn Kilgore and Natalie Cordone. They are a performing duo that has been producing, writing and touring around the country for almost a decade. And they are currently the hosts of "Live! With Cordona and Kilgore." And I am so excited to chat with them about their artistic journeys and what they're up to now. I know their whole focus on is on positivity and light, and I'm just so excited that they're here. So thank you, Sean and Natalie, so much for being here today. [00:01:14] Shawn Kilgore: Thanks for having us. This is very exciting. I'm excited to be here. [00:01:18] Natalie Cordone: Yeah, we're thrilled to be here. Thanks, Lindsey. [00:01:20] Lindsey Dinneen: Of course. And it sounds like we have some guest artists as well. [00:01:25] Shawn Kilgore: Yes. I apologize for the, for the hounds in the background. [00:01:29] Lindsey Dinneen: It's all good. I have two dogs too. They might make a sound appearance at some point as well. [00:01:36] Natalie Cordone: Yeah. I'm not making any promises on my end, either. The pup is-- he's being good right now, but you just never know. [00:01:41] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. You never know when they'll have to defend the house against the UPS driver. You just never know. [00:01:46] Shawn Kilgore: Exactly. [00:01:47]Lindsey Dinneen: Well, okay. So I would just love if you two wouldn't mind just sharing a little bit about your backgrounds, maybe how you got into art in general, into your specific fields, how you guys met, and maybe a little bit about what you're up to now, which is I know a tall order, but we'll just dive in and I can't wait to hear. [00:02:07] Shawn Kilgore: Absolutely, Natalie, go ahead. [00:02:09] Natalie Cordone: Sure. So my artistic journey actually began in a tutu when I was about three. So I started dancing in tap and ballet lessons like most of us did, and I was a dancer up until I was in college, but along the way, I joined the theater and became an actor and then didn't find my voice as a singer until I was in college, really, which is an odd journey and kind of very different from Shawn's. But then I started singing mostly opera and I sang with the Orlando Opera and got my Master's Degree in Acting, and became a professional actor right away and started dancing and singing in musicals. And along with singing with the opera, and along that journey is when I met Shawn. But let's have him tell you a little bit about him before we talk about how we met. [00:03:00] Shawn Kilgore: For me, I started singing from a very young age, mostly in church, and I was very involved in music all through school. But it wasn't really, until I was in eighth grade, I was about to be a freshman in high school when my mom took me to see my first big musical. And from the second that it started, I knew exactly that that's what I wanted to do. So I immediately got involved in theater, you know, and, and musical theater in, in high school. And that continued that on through my college years. That's what I studied both at a school in Ohio and then later at a school in New York City. And then I moved to Florida, South Florida, worked professionally for many, many years in regional theater throughout the state and then moved to central Florida. And that brings us to where Natalie and I connect. [00:03:43]Natalie Cordone: Oh, it's a good story. So, so the, the real story of how we met begins with Shawn's singing with the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra. He was doing this fantastic version of "Carousel," where he played Billy Bigelow. He was the big man on campus and it was a very coveted role and super exciting, singing with a full orchestra and in the midst of it, I was moving back from New York City. And we both got cast in a show together. So Shawn had been cast in the musical from the beginning and his partner in the show was supposed to be another actress. The show is called "Baby," and in the show, our two characters are desperately trying to get pregnant. I think that's a nice way of putting it. So in that show, we spent most of our time in a bed. That was our set. And so we got to know each other very closely, very quickly... [00:04:39] Shawn Kilgore: Yeah, a lot of intimacy from the day we met. [00:04:41]Natalie Cordone:  And I just thought he was the most wonderful actor. And the only reason why I was cast in the role was that this whole time, the storyline it's really about how this couple cannot get pregnant. And the actress who was supposed to play the role, got pregnant. And so she was going to be five months and showing on stage, which would have made absolutely no sense. She's a wonderful actress and it's the only way she could have possibly lost the role. And so as I was coming back from New York, that theater called me and asked if I would do the show. And so I was thrilled to get a chance to work with Shawn and, and have it be my sort of return to this regional theater that I'd worked at many times. And so we did get onstage and, and get pretty close, pretty fast. And in the midst of that, I was doing a solo show. And Shawn said, you know, "Would you want to do a cabaret show with me?" And I'd done quite a few of them. And I said, "Yes, I'd love to work with you again, but can we do something even bigger and better than a cabaret?" And from there we put a band together and we got charts and we found that we loved the same kind of music. And so we loved singing together. And I couldn't imagine not working with him and having him in my life every day. And so we started creating theatrical concerts. And they got really popular pretty quickly. And so we created, we created well over a dozen shows at this point. And, and we started touring them around the country. So that's how we met. [00:06:10] Shawn Kilgore: And while we were doing that, we also became, because of Natalie, had also done a show with the Orlando Philharmonic. So we had sort of cultivated this relationship with, with that local orchestra here. And so we maintained that relationship and that brought us once they saw that we were what we were doing, they invited us to be guest vocalists. So then we would start to appear with the Orlando Philharmonic on a semi-regular basis for pops concerts and those kinds of things. And, you know, between the shows that we were producing and performing and the shows with the Philharmonic, our audience members would always come up to us and say that we reminded them of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme. [00:06:47] Natalie Cordone: Yes. [00:06:48] Shawn Kilgore: So that led really sort of catapulted us into our next venture, which was creating a tribute show to, to those really incredible artists at the time. You know, we knew who they were, we had heard the names before and not really, you know, very well versed, you know, in their careers though. But now, you know, we have been-- that show, that's our longest running show. We've been touring with that show for almost eight years now. I think that show has played, you know, from everywhere to Las Vegas, to, to Miami. And so, so that show really has sort of been the biggest, the, the biggest thing that we've, that we've been focusing on over the past couple of years, but it's been great. We learned a lot about Steve and Eydie. They were really incredible entertainers and they both had incredible individual careers. And when they came together, for those out there that, that remember them, know that it was just magic and there was nothing like it. So for us to be able to sort of try to recreate that a little bit, we're not, we're not impersonating them. We are, we are simply tribute artists where, you know, we're, we're out there as ourselves singing their music. So that is sort of what we, that's what led us to this point now where we are now. [00:07:55] Natalie Cordone: Yeah. And we're about to do that show again, coming up as we come out of everything that's happened recently, it's super exciting to get to kick off our season with it. And while we were waiting to do that show again, is when we started our live with Cordone and Kilgore show, which is an online show where we are the interviewers. And we bring on a different guest every week because we found that what we really wanted to do during this time was just accentuate the positive as much as possible. One of the things that I love about Shawn so much, and I think what made us click from the beginning, is that we really both like to air on the sunny side of whatever's going on in any situation. And we found that anytime we would jump online and just sing a song or the rare occasions, when we got to sing together, people really were resonating with the fact that we were bringing some kind of light and positivity to the world and we wanted to be able to bring other people in to do the same. [00:08:55] So that's when we started our live interview show where we have it kind of like Regis and Kathy Lee back in the day, if they were to have sung together, which we do on every show, we get a chance to, to sing together, whether that's old footage of the last 10 years of our shows, or if we get to do it live and in person. And we get to bring on great guests, everyone from artists to dog rescues to people who are making drinks and bakeries and anything that makes us, you know, feel good. Yeah, and brings us positivity. [00:09:30] Shawn Kilgore: Yeah, we say, we say our goal is to accentuate the positive. Yeah, like, like she said every week. And so it's a, it's a nice thing to do. We talk about, you know, good news stories. We're talking about good things that have happened to us. We invite our guests to share, you know, stories of what's happened in their weeks that might've been positive or good. Yeah, so we're really enjoying it. So not only so people can join us live for that when we do it live, but it is also available as a podcast currently on Spotify and Stitcher, and hopefully coming soon to all other podcast platforms. [00:10:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Wow. That is so cool. I am so enamored with your stories. Oh my word. And the way that they intersected and I just love what you're bringing to the world. I think this is just so cool. And yes, this whole time I've been smiling because what great stories you guys have to share about, you know, how, how you all got started. And I, I resonate with you, Natalie, about getting started in a little tutu. I started dancing when I was four, but it wasn't for the dancing itself. It was for the costumes. Let's be real. [00:10:32]Shawn Kilgore: That's the one thing you guys have a lot in common. Natalie changes gowns I think maybe eight to 10, maybe 12 times in the show. [00:10:40]Natalie Cordone: I do have, I hope you do too at this point, but I'm so lucky that my work wear is actually two full closets of gowns in my house. 'Cause that's what I get to get dressed up in to go to work. So I'm with you on the sequins and rhinestones front for sure. [00:10:57] Lindsey Dinneen: Oh yeah, yeah, no completely. I, I still get extremely excited to put on a tutu and tiara. Still a wonderful moment. So yes, I resonate and yes, I do have actually in my house because you know, I also have a professional dance company. We have, I think, three closets that are fully devoted to dance costumes. It's ridiculous. But here we are. Yeah. [00:11:22] Shawn Kilgore: That's it, but I've actually worn a tutu one time. [00:11:25] Lindsey Dinneen: What, why? [00:11:27] Shawn Kilgore: It happened once. It was actually in high school, believe it or not. I can't believe I did it. And I can't believe I'm still alive after doing it. It was in a show. It was like, you know, our show choir was doing a Best of Broadway thing and we did the number "You Gotta Get a Gimmick" from "Gypsy." And it was the two women came out to do the first two. And I came out and I was the ballerina butterfly. I was Tessitura. [00:11:50] Natalie Cordone: Okay. So the only time that this gets weird is that Shawn and I have once in our lives played the same role in a musical two different musicals, but we both-- [00:11:59] Shawn Kilgore: Two different productions, yeah. [00:12:00] Natalie Cordone: That's right. In the same musical, in "Nunsense." We both played Sister Mary Amnesia at two different times. He played it. I played it in "Nunsense" and he played it in "Nunsense Amen." so we've actually shared-- the three of us have all shared the experience of a tutu. And two of us have actually experienced being the same role on stage, which as a soprano and a baritone makes absolutely no sense, but we did it. We've done it. [00:12:22] Shawn Kilgore: I'm actually on the national cast recording of "Nunsense Amen," which is also available on Spotify, you know, out there that as Sister Amnesia on the recording. [00:12:30] Lindsey Dinneen: What! That is so cool. Oh, my word. You two. I love it. Okay. So I just, I was really tickled when you were talking about, you know, the first time you met and it was like, "Well, here we are. We're going to get to know each other real fast." Was that ever, and I guess I'm just curious about this in general, you know, not as an actress, I, is that ever just super awkward and difficult when you have to kind of jump into those roles and you're like, "Well, we're going to be up close and personal for awhile." [00:12:59] Shawn Kilgore: It really, it really depends on the other actor. And I think, you know, for me, I feel really lucky. From the moment I met Natalie, I knew that I was going to be friends with her. That was that it was going to go beyond. I had not in my wildest imagination could have dreamt that we would be where we are today. But I knew that we were going to be friends and we were going to be in each other's lives for a while. So you get lucky. So you get lucky with that casting, you know, it's, it's all about the other person in that situation 'cause it could have been a nightmare. You know what I mean? It really could have been a nightmare from day one. But thankfully, you know, we really, we connected and, and, you know, it turns out to be the show itself was a, it was an incredible show and we got to do some really wonderful moments together. We got to play the happiness of, of being a couple into the, the heartache of, you know, thinking you are pregnant and then finding out that you're not, again. You know those scenes were pretty powerful and to get to go through that together every, you know, eight times a week for however many weeks, it was, I think that's something that, that bonded us also, you know, [00:13:57] Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, for sure. [00:13:58] Natalie Cordone: Yeah, for sure.  I was just going to say that chemistry piece of it is one thing that you can't make up, right? It's genuinely liking someone and then getting to fall in love with them over and over again. It's really special and I've, I've been lucky that I've never had a bad experience, but I've definitely had ones where you do sort of walk out and go, "Oh my gosh, I can do this eight times a week with this person. And it will be just a joy every night." It's so easy. And when you meet Shawn, everyone falls in love with Shawn. There's just no person that's ever not immediately been enamored with him. So I was very, very lucky on that front, but I think that it can be super awkward if you don't enjoy the person you're with. So I think that that was one of the things where, because we both had been professional actors for a long time, we both knew that when we met, it was like, "Oh, this is different. Like, this is special. Thank goodness. This is going to be fun." You know? [00:14:54] Lindsey Dinneen: Absolutely. And I can, I can relate to that just on the dancer level of when you're doing partnering, it is so physically close. I mean, you're, you're literally touching each other so that you can be supported in pretty cool ways in these different lifts and all sorts of different things. And I, I relate to the fact that sometimes I've worked with partners where it felt like a lot more work. I mean, I was also always lucky to have people who were awesome to work with, but yeah, when I met the, the guy who is currently my dance partner was like a very similar experience of, "oh, this is easy." And this is a lot of fun versus, you know, like, feeling like it's more of a job. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so your tribute show, I'd, I'd love to delve into that a little bit more. I think that is such a cool thing that you guys have developed and, and obviously you've gotten to tour with it and do all sorts of wonderful things.  How long of a process was that to sort of write the show and, you know, come up with all of the different components. I mean, I, I can only imagine from my production experience, but I feel like this is a whole 'nother level when you're doing something to be a tribute to people who came before you essentially. [00:16:08] Shawn Kilgore: Yeah, absolutely. We sort of live, we sort of lived in their, in their music for a good period of time. Right? Not only like we listened to almost everything and like we went through there, you know, as much as possible. And to really try to, you know, look at every video we could find and read everything we could find.  I mean, we, we fell in love with them, you know? And so then when we get to the point where we're creating the show, it really made us want to do them justice, you know? [00:16:35] Natalie Cordone: Yeah. And knowing that they were such a special couple for those of you guys that don't know Steve and Edyie were, they worked together and they lived together and were married for 55 years. So, and they were on over 90 albums between the two of them both together and separately. And they had hugely successful solo careers, but they also were one of the best known duos at the time. And we're friends with Frank Sinatra and toured with him and on the Carol Burnett Show, people knew them from the Carol Burnett Show. Yeah, it's a legacy. Yeah, all of that music that it was really hard for us to whittle it down to just a 90 minute show. I mean, that was part of the hard part was going in and saying, "But we love all of this stuff." How do we try to make, you know, how do we try to do them justice and tell their story in a way that resonates with ours. And also get to do this incredible music that spans so many decades, but still has a real through line of sophisticated pop music. That's really what they were known for. [00:17:41]And so that was the easy part was being able to sit back and sort of go, "Oh, what's good? Well, everything's good." Now the hard part is how do you pick what to do, what to do? And so, like Shawn said, we really did live in their world for a long time and, and touring with the show, one of the things that's been really great is that we've met a lot of people that were either related to, or were friends with, or worked with Steve and Eydie along the way. Everyone from like roadies, we had a guy who told us that he was, he worked backstage and that Edyie Gormé would sit there at a table Pac-Man that she used to travel with, like back when Gameboys, right, were a thing, or you couldn't put an app on your phone, she used to have one of those full tabletop things that they, she would sit and she'd have her hair in curlers with like a martini in one hand and a cigarette in the other, playing this tabletop. And you can't find that, right, in an interview with Johnny Carson. You can only find that from people who knew them. So that's been really cool too, to sort of live in that space and have people resonate with the show so much that we always try to do, you know, some kind of a talk back with the audience if we can, after the show. And they've taught us just as much as we've entertained them. So that's been a really neat thing to, to add to our repertoire along the way. [00:18:55] Shawn Kilgore: It is. That's one of my favorite things about it is, is getting to meet the audiences afterward and getting, getting to meet the people who did work with them or they, they knew them. And getting those stories like that story that Natalie just told, like she said, not anything you would ever find on the internet. We would never know that if we didn't come across that person. And now that story is in the show, we tell that story in the show. So when people see the show, they're getting to hear, you know, the things that they knew and loved and remember about Steve and Edyie, but also some of these more personal touches that we're weaving into the story that we tell, you know, so it's, that's a really cool thing about it and, you know, see there's, their story really is probably, I would venture to say, even to this day, one of the greatest Hollywood love stories there is. They met on the original Tonight Show, you know, way, way back in the day when they, they were very young, they were cast as singers side by side-by-side with Steve Allen. They met there, you know, they fell in love. They were together for over 55 years and they managed to stay married and work together that closely for that long is, is really a remarkable thing, you know? [00:20:01] Natalie Cordone: Yeah. And what they did so beautifully too, was that onstage, they jabbed at each other, like only a married couple really can. And that's something that I think we're really lucky to be able to bring sort of that wit and humor into the show because it keeps it alive and fresh for us even after all these years, because I think we might have a very similar dynamic to what Steve and Edyie had on interviews and stuff just as people. So that's been fun to recreate too. People, our audiences swear that we're married. I mean, they, you know, they can't believe it when we tell them, we don't really tell them in the show, but if people ask us afterwards, you know? [00:20:38] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, yeah. Oh, that is so fun. I mean, but, okay. So then to be compared to, to such an iconic couple and yeah, what a feat in general, let alone with the pressures of being super famous and having these amazing careers and things like that. So kudos to them, but was it ever incredibly intimidating at all to sort of think like, "Oh my goodness, people are comparing us to them. How do we do this justice?" [00:21:05]Shawn Kilgore: I would say it's not really because we've never tried to impersonate them in any way. We really are going out there. We're singing in our own voices.  We're talking as ourselves. We're not putting on their persona in any way. But we feel very good about the, the way that we're honoring them and their careers and their lives and what we've put together and our audience, you know, based on what the audience is say, you know, it's, it's a good-- we feel, we feel good about where we are with it and how it all just sort of came together. It all full sort of feels like it was meant to be for us.  Maybe some might think a weird thing to say, but you know, the way our stories connected and how similar it is to their story, they met when they were cast on a show together, you know? So did we and we are doing this because people told us, you know, when they saw us perform together, that we reminded them of them. And so it just feels like the universe has told us this is what we're supposed to be doing. [00:21:59] Natalie Cordone: Yeah, the only time I can say I was intimidated was when we were doing our show, we sat down in Vegas for awhile and we found out afterwards that Steve Lawrence's people had sent people to come see the show. And I talked to them on the phone afterwards and they, they loved the show. They thought it was great. I'm glad I didn't know they were in the audience the night they were there. But knowing that they had like sent people to make sure that the show was-- because they'd heard, well, I mean, we had, we had told them we were coming and they had they come to sort of vet the show and it was nice to hear that they, they enjoyed the show-- but that I'm glad I didn't know ahead of time, I would have been a ball of nerves if I had known that they were listening to me saying her iconic songs on stage. [00:22:41] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, that makes complete sense to me. That is, that is so cool. Definitely meant to be, it sounds like. And now, I'm excited to hear that you guys are going to be able to go back to performing again. I know COVID sort of threw a curve ball at many different people, especially performing artists, but tell me a little bit more about your show that you're doing now, these live productions that interview people and things like that sounds like an incredible way to bring, like you said, positivity to the world. I'm just super curious how that came about and how that's going. [00:23:13] Shawn Kilgore: The funny thing is it came about. So after like eight months about of not being together, not singing any of our tunes, we were both feeling good. We got together, we had maybe a bottle, maybe a bottle and a half of wine. And we were like, "Hey, let's play Russian roulette with our songs and see what we remember." And we decided to do it live on Facebook.  [00:23:34] Natalie Cordone: I'm glad that we know each other well enough that we were okay. If things didn't go well, because it was good, it was fun. It wasn't always good. I guess that's a good... [00:23:43] Shawn Kilgore: That's a perfect way of saying it, but even when it, yeah, even when it wasn't, it was still fun, you know, so that's kind of how it all started. We enjoyed it. We had, you know, we got great feedback from that and that's sort of pushed us in the direction of trying to do something on a more regular basis. And, and now we're sort of, have delved into this world of podcasting and podcasting with video, and I'm really excited about the, about the direction, the direction of it. [00:24:08]Natalie Cordone: And Sean and I had both expected along the way that we would be broadcast journalists. It's odd. That was where we kind of had both begun thinking our careers would end up and it's fun to have brought it full circle where that's really sort of what all podcasters and video podcasters are doing now. And it's neat to come back to that sort of love of ours that we had to put aside while we were touring all over the place for the last umpteen years together. [00:24:33] Shawn Kilgore: And we really are about sort of modeling the show after sort of, so it is sort of modeled after that sort of Live with Regis. And I always say Regis, but... [00:24:41] Natalie Cordone: I like the Regis and Kathie Lee and we can stick with that one. We can go old school, Shawn, that's alright. [00:24:46] Shawn Kilgore: Kathy Lee would sing sometimes, but she would not have Regis sing with her. [00:24:50] Natalie Cordone: No, that's for sure. I think she might've pushed him off the stage, but she wouldn't have the bottom line. [00:24:54]Shawn Kilgore: So we sort of modeled after that kind of field. So it has a very fun lighthearted, we wanted it to be very conversational. We didn't want it to be about any one particular topic so that we could have, you know, it seems like, you know, even like how you're doing, you know, you have a variety of people in the arts, which is awesome. But yeah, so we sort of like, we, like Natalie said, we next week are having a, a baker on the show. And then, you know, we were having some other podcasters on the show and we have had musicians and like Natalie said, pet dog rescues. We've had, so open to just anything that would make anyone feel good or lift them up after, you know, a long day. Or a long year... [00:25:31] Natalie Cordone: Yeah, that seems to drag out. [00:25:33]Lindsey Dinneen: Yes, that's fantastic. I'm so glad you guys are doing that. And so, and I'm sure I have more questions, but I'm sure that there are people who are super interested in following your journey and connecting with you and, and, you know, getting to experience these live shows. Is there a way for people to find you and connect with you and, and support you? [00:25:54]Shawn Kilgore: Absolutely. [00:25:55] Natalie Cordone: They sure can! They can find us on Facebook. They can find us on YouTube and they can also find us on our website. And you can always look us up as Cordone and Kilgore. So if you find us on Facebook, it's Cordone and Kilgore, Instagram: Cordone and Kilgore, YouTube: Cordone and  Kilgore, and then on the web it's cordoneandkilgore.com. So super easy. We are very unimaginative when it comes to naming things. So you can just always find us as. [00:26:22]Shawn Kilgore: It's just us. That's what, you know, this is a beautiful thing. It's just us. [00:26:26]Natalie Cordone: All the time everywhere. Our show, as of right now is streaming live at 7:00 PM Eastern time, 4:00 PM Pacific on most Mondays. And you can always find it after the fact on those channels as well. [00:26:40] Shawn Kilgore: Absolutely. And they are also posted to IGTV because we're not able to go live to Instagram, so they are edited and then posted to IGTV. And then again, you know, we take then the audio from it and then do an edit of that for audio podcasts that are currently available on Spotify and Stitcher. And then and again, hopefully we'll be expanding that audience pretty soon as well. [00:27:02] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. Perfect. Well, that's, that's very exciting. I am personally delighted to follow your journey and also to support this live show in particular, because that just sounds fantastic. I can't wait to tune in, but yeah. So I'm, I'm just curious. I'm sure this has happened to you both on multiple occasions, but are there any stories that stand out to you? Where either somebody was experiencing art that you were creating or, you know, a show or something like that, or that you personally got to witness that was really impactful? It was kind of this moment to remember, like, I, I need to file this away because this is really special. [00:27:44]Shawn Kilgore: Yeah. [00:27:45]Natalie Cordone: From my own personal experience and watching someone else create that really moved me in a way that I'll never forget. I've seen so many shows, both my friends and other professionals' work, but the one that hit me, the strongest that I can sit here and put myself right back in the theater was-- I watched Audra McDonald do "110 in the Shade." And there is a song called "Old Maid" towards the end of the first act, I believe. And, and she ripped me to shreds. And I just remember, I'm still, I'm getting chills, just thinking about it as I'm sitting here. And it was the way that she connected to the material that she was singing. And it was that she was, she's a brilliant vocalist, but she was really experiencing that, the moment in a way that I could feel in my own body and my own soul, the way that she was experiencing that moment for that role. And I was sobbing in the audience and the audience was completely full.  [00:28:54] I had gone to theater by myself, which I do often, and I didn't know either of the people sitting next to me and I know they thought I was nuts. I kept getting like those sideways glances of ,why is this? Why are you crying? Now the whole entire audience wasn't sobbing. And it, for me was one of those pinnacle moments of great art that I got to experience and is something that no one will ever get to do again, if you weren't in that theater. And I think that's what I love so much about live performance is that it is temporal. And when it's done, it's done. And any time I get to experience live performance, dance, music, if it's being made in front of you, that's something that no one can take away from you, right? My house could burn to the ground. I could lose everything I have, but no one can take that experience for me. And that's one of the things that I love so much about art and about live performance. [00:29:50] Shawn Kilgore: That's a great answer. I feel like that's why we as artists and why everybody who loves art comes back to it because you're always, I don't know. It's sort of like, when you have a moment like that, you want another one, so you seek it out. And so you're, it's like trying to chase that high. Yeah. I love it. So that, but that was a great answer, I think, but for me, I've had many impactful moments with art. My most recent one though, however, was getting to see a Bette Midler performance of "Hello, Dolly" in New York City for me now that I can tell you why I sobbed, not all the way through, but there were moments where, I mean, I, and not for, because it was, it was just the most amazing-- I don't know. And I'm getting chills thinking, just thinking about it, talking about it. Cause it was, you felt like I don't even know how-- I can't even put it in words. I'm at a loss for words, trying to even explain what it was, how it was, but... [00:30:45] Natalie Cordone: Well, I know that when they came out for "Put on Your Sunday Clothes," and I know we've talked about this, when they did the "Parade of the Costumes," it's what you've wanted every musical to ever be in all the world. And I know, I remember you talking about how she just touched you so much and I, I can feel it listening to you talking about it. [00:31:04] Shawn Kilgore: Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. Yeah. Like, and after that iconic, the iconic "Hello, Dolly" number and just the roar of the, you know, in full Broadway theater. And as everyone like stood up and I, I swear it went on for like five minutes or more the, the standing ovation, like it was, yeah. I just love it. I love, yeah, that was awesome. [00:31:28] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, of course. That is so cool. Well, yeah, you both have incredible stories about art being impactful and really like the, the idea of the art addict. [00:31:38]Natalie Cordone: We might have to make a t-shirt. [00:31:41] Lindsey Dinneen: Thankfully it's the healthiest addiction you can probably have, right? Oh, man. I feel like that needs to be explored further. We might, you know, that's fantastic. [00:31:52] Natalie Cordone: Art might make you poor, but it'll definitely get you high. [00:31:53]Lindsey Dinneen: This is perfect. I love it. Oh my gosh. And I totally resonate with what you were both talking about with live theater. I mean, I'm so grateful that there are so many avenues nowadays to view art virtually whether it's a, you know, it's a musical or something else, but there's nothing that compares to live theater, even as a performer. I feel, you know, if you're taped it's, it's nice. I mean, I'm glad to have that so I can go back in and see it again. But there's nothing like that feeling of just being on stage and looking out into the audience and hopefully it's a super dark theater, so you don't see anyone's face, you know? Oh, that's awesome. That's so exciting. So when's your first live performance back? [00:32:40]Natalie Cordone: We are so lucky that we will be performing at the Grand Oshkosh in Oshkosh, Wisconsin coming on June the 11th. It's a Friday night and there'll be a live broadcast of it as well that's completely free. So if this happens to air before June 11th than anyone wants to watch it, if you go to the, if you Google the Grand Oshkosh or watch any of our shows, we always try to put up a link for it. That night you can watch the free live broadcast of the show along with the 50 or so people that are going to be allowed into the house that are going to be socially distanced in the balcony for the night, but we get to have our three piece band with us. We're going to get to actually tour up there again. [00:33:19]Shawn Kilgore: And it will be a really nice stream too. It's going to be a three camera shoot and that's all thanks to, I believe a sponsor, right, Natalie? Somebody, a corporate sponsor, that's sponsoring these, the stream so that we can share the show with, you know, an even broader audience, which is awesome. [00:33:33] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, that is fantastic. You know, it's so interesting because again, in so many ways artists have had to really switch gears or be a little bit differently innovative, I would say. I think in general artists are very good at adapting, but yeah, I do like the fact that it's kind of opened the world to some of our artistic endeavors that might not necessarily get to see. Like, I wouldn't necessarily get to see that show, but now I can. And that's, that's really exciting, you know, and just to have those opportunities. So yeah. [00:34:06] Shawn Kilgore: Absolutely. There've been some crazy-- I just finished a project where it was eight actors, all in different states, all working with green screens. And it was a sketch comedy show, and that would have never happened, you know, if this didn't happen. So yeah, absolutely. There have been some, some good, some really interesting and cool things to come out of it, for sure. [00:34:27] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, your stories are just so fantastic. And I literally have been sitting here smiling the whole time. So this has been fantastic and wonderful. And I do have three questions that I always like to ask my guests if you two would be up for that. [00:34:44] Shawn Kilgore: Sure. [00:34:45] Natalie Cordone: Oh yeah! [00:34:46] Lindsey Dinneen: Okay. So first of all, how do you personally define art or what is art to you? [00:34:52]Natalie Cordone: Ooh. I feel like we should have studied. All right. So what is art to you? Apparently we answered this earlier and the answer is like a drug. I think art to me is self-expression in a way where you're attempting to communicate something that is incommunicable to another person. [00:35:10] Shawn Kilgore: That's good.  I think for me, it's the opportunity to escape. [00:35:16]Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. And then what do you think is the most important role of an artist? [00:35:23]Shawn Kilgore: To keep it alive, to keep it going. [00:35:26]Natalie Cordone: I think for me, it's to tell the truth, whatever your truth is in that moment, to be vulnerable enough, to be honest, in a way where you are sharing something real, sharing a piece of yourself with people that you might never meet or really get to know. [00:35:46]Lindsey Dinneen:  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And then my final question, and I'll define my terms a little bit, but do you think that art should be inclusive or exclusive? And what I mean by that is inclusive referring to artists who put their work out there and provide some context behind that, whether it's, you know, as simple as a title, or whether it's show notes, whether it's the context behind it, the inspiration sort of that, that prompted it. Versus exclusive referring to artists that put their work out there, but don't provide the context and basically leave it solely up to the viewer to determine what they will. [00:36:22]Shawn Kilgore: I, for me, I think inclusive because it should be also about the educational piece of it and to let young people growing up today know how it all works, you know, and hopefully to be able to inspire.  [00:36:37] Natalie Cordone: Yeah. I think for me it can be, it can be valid in either direction. I think it's really up to the discretion of the artist as to what they want that experience to be for their viewer or their audience. I know for myself, I much prefer to make what would be considered inclusive art. And I think for the most part, I prefer to be the viewer of it as well. But I think that both of them are valid. It just depends on what the project is. I think, I know that wasn't really an answer, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick D, all of the above. [00:37:13] Shawn Kilgore: That's always the best-- if it's an option, I'm going with it. [00:37:17] Lindsey Dinneen: Right, right. No. And, and you're absolutely right. You're both right. I mean, there's value in both. And, and I think it's, it's really interesting to hear the answers to that particular question, because everyone has a different, you know, opinion, just like art is subjective, so is that question. I love it. Well again, thank you guys so very much for being here today. I'm just so thrilled to hear your stories. And I'm, I'm very excited about what you guys are doing. I'm going to mark it in my calendar to catch that live stream, because that's really exciting to me too. And, you know, with your, with your live shows that you're doing weekly, I think-- I just know that what you bring to the world brings so much positivity and light and value. And I just commend you two for doing that. And for choosing to look on the bright side, choosing to highlight the good that's happening, because that is so needed. And I just know that what you're doing is making a tangible difference in people's lives. And so I just want to commend you for that. And thank you for that because you know, it, it does take you time and effort and I appreciate it. So thank you. [00:38:29] Shawn Kilgore: That's very nice, Lindsey. Thank you so much. This was really a lot of fun. [00:38:33] Natalie Cordone: Yeah. Thank you. And we hope that you will be a friend of our show. We would love to have you on as a guest, not to put you on the spot, but we would love to have you. And so hopefully we'll get a chance to collaborate again because your spirit is so open and kind, and the work that you do here to, to gain the following of the people who rely on getting to hear you every week. We just were glad that we were able to share. [00:38:54] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, of course. And, oh my gosh, yes! I would absolutely love to be a guest. That would be a huge honor. [00:39:01]Natalie Cordone: We'll have our people call your people. [00:39:04]Lindsey Dinneen: Oh my gosh. Well, thank you again so much. I'm very much looking forward to that opportunity as well, but also, thank you so much for everyone who has listened to this episode. And, oh my goodness, if you're feeling as inspired as I am right now, I would just love if you would share this episode with a friend or two and we will catch you next time. [00:39:26] If you have a story to share with us, we would love that so much. And I hope your day has been Artfully Told.

I am a mentor for the Notion Advanced track of Tiago Forte's Building a Second Brain, Cohort 12. This is the cleaned up audio of the second of 5 mentorship sessions with Q&A at the end. The first session was last week.Recommended reads PARA: https://fortelabs.co/blog/para/  Blogpost Annealing: https://www.swyx.io/blogpost-annealing/ Twitter as Universal Meta-Commentary Layer: https://www.swyx.io/twitter-metacommentary/ Digital Garden TOS: https://www.swyx.io/digital-garden-tos/ Devon Zuegel on Epistemic Status: https://devonzuegel.com/post/epistemic-statuses-are-lazy-and-that-is-a-good-thing Slides and Video.Timestamps Prelude [00:00:00] Housekeeping [00:01:09] Content Recap [00:02:34]  Q&A: Constancy/Consistency [00:11:17]  Q&A: Maintaining the Second Brain [00:14:34] Q&A: Weaknesses of PARA [00:17:55] Q&A: Broken Links in Notion [00:19:16]  Q&A: Automation with Zapier [00:22:34] SMART Goals [00:23:25] Denormalizing Notes [00:25:01] Open Source Knowledge [00:28:27] Brag Documents [00:29:28] Just Do It [00:30:57] Q&A: How do you share in public? [00:31:45] Q&A: Atomicity/Denormalization [00:34:02] Q&A: Why Notion? [00:37:33] Q&A: Book writing? [00:38:28] First Wrapup [00:40:23]  Q&A: Twitter Links Extension [00:42:30] Q&A: Chrome Extensions [00:43:33] Q&A: How do you balance research and writing? [00:44:39] Q&A: Converting Resources to Projects [00:47:37] Q&A: Video/Audio Capture [00:49:11] Q&A: Speaking [00:50:39] Q&A: Writing My Book [00:52:58] TranscriptPrelude [00:00:00]swyx: [00:00:00] Why PARA? Have you considered why only four letters? I really liked the thought process going into that.  That's actually touched upon in the blog post. I'm not sure that you covered it in the lectures, but I think it's just really great to have something that's barely minimal enough that it covers the span of everything that we organize our information because I think in past attempts, I know I have probably, this is a common experience, you try to organize all the things and then you have like 15 different categories to spot stuff in and you just get overwhelmed because  you're like, I don't know where to put stuff in. So the second week, week two is really about organization. So that's what we're trying to optimize for.And that's what PARA is. Christopher says some of the mentors have modified the acronym shock. What, what modifications have they said?  Some mentors only have PAR or PA. Yeah.  I will say my A and my R are merged, Maria says PTARA for tasks with silent T that's. Cool. Yeah, because you do need tasks as well.  So I'll mention something about your calendar as a to-do list, because that's pretty important. Someone should blog about that because then you scoop Tiago. Alright. Okay. So I'm going to get started and I'm going to try to keep the chat alive. Housekeeping [00:01:09]This is a little bit stressful as always, cause I'm not used to such a big zoom but thanks for everyone for making the time on the weekend. This is the notion advanced group that I lead. It's Sundays at 5:00 PM, as you might know. And it's a very developer focused the meet up because there are a lot of developers in BASB, but we do try to keep it generally accessible. Part and just I'm going to give an agenda that's happening cause last time it didn't. So you know what to expect and you can jump off  if you have other stuff going on. So we're going to do a little bit of content recap. I got very positive feedback from last week about what did we cover this week? From my point of view, and then we'll talk a little bit about projects versus areas. I'll give some extra content around what I think para is. I don't have, I didn't modify the acronym. That's a very smart move. I wasn't smart enough to think about that. And then we'll just have a general Q&A . Last time we went for 90 minutes, this one, we try to keep it to an hour, but.Some housekeeping, the three rules that we have from zero, because we start at zero in this house stupid questions are welcome Second rule Often beats perfect. So don't try to do it right, but I try to do the best, just do it a lot and you'll find that you do more than if you try to do the best and third rule this is a discussion, not a lecture, so I'm not an expert and I don't have the right answer. And I fully welcome people here to answer questions that other people have asked, because I don't know the right answer as well. So it's a discussion that I'm  facilitating. So that's the framing that I want to set for this session. Content Recap [00:02:34] Okay. So now into the content recap I'm just basically going to pick the three best slides that I thought really represented this week. So if you remember nothing else from this week, hopefully you remember these slides.So the primary thing I think that everyone needs to get from this week is that completed creative projects by the oxygen of your second brain. In other words, action. Right. Or what did someone say at the start of the session, christopher said, para is a methodology to organize the action ability, basically like optimize for taking action, nothing else matters.And your system needs to help you get there. And your second brain has helped me get there. I like the metaphor of oxygen because without oxygen, your second brain is going to starve. And I definitely find that very true of myself. We all have stuff, we haven't competed. And then we just reinforced this identity of a person who does not complete projects. So the smaller your ambitions the more you can feed them the more you have reinforces image of someone who completes projects and you get more done. This is PARA in one slide, very ambitious. I basically wanted to summarize, what the main aspects of PARAwe should have for those who might've missed it. I did share the slide deck, so you don't have to screenshot or anything. So I'm going to share that in the chat right now. Well, it's actually P stands for projects, A stands for Area, R stands for resource and archive is basically inactive  items from all three categories. And one of the key insights is that it's arranged in order for more actionable to less actionable.And the other order that you see as well is that there are less projects in there. There should be the most number of archives. So I think if you saw Tiago live session, he showed you his own Evernote where he actually showed like the number of projects was like 5% of the total number of notes that he was taking and yet hundreds of archives.And that's what the rough order that you shouldn't taking it. Things can also move fluidly between categories. So something to start off as a project and then broaden out into an area and eventually make his way to an archive, but he can also make us wait the other way. So that's the purpose of this blue and green circle things that's going on. And then finally, the thing that he wanted to really drive home with the project list was that the project should be connected to a goal. And a goal should be connected to a project and the project without a goal is a hobby. And then go without a project. It's a dream because you don't have plans to accomplish it.So that's para in a slide for me. I that's why I like  asking people to summarize what para is, because I think it's a very personal thing because it's the way you organize your information. But I think trying to have a decent summary of what para is for other people helps you internalize it as well.Partially why I'm doing this mentorship thing. Okay. So I think there's something that people have really tried to struggle with is the difference between projects and areas. That's something that toggle mentioned, in, in David Allen's book, getting things done. He mentioned that the people can surprisingly have a lot of difficulty separating between projects and areas. So project has an outcome to achieve, and it hasn't been like, whereas an area has a standard with no deadline,  but as per the standard quality while we were at 50 people already. Okay. So, I just want to share people. Yes. Someone asked me just like that again, it's down here.But I just want to see in the chat a little bit This week, your homework was to figure out your project list  and sort your stuff into projects that areas. So what are some examples of projects that you have identified for yourself? If you can just share in the chat that'd be really great. I just want to see people's projects and I can give more examples if you want.  Dennis's project is a weekly podcast episode.Very nice, man. He says tax filing for 2020. I hope he got that done. Cause I think the deadline was tomorrow or Friday. I got my, I thought that I thought the tax filing deadline was April 15th. So I got my deadline there. I think everyone should have a extension automatic extension for tech solving.Sam Wong says crypto training and seminar. That's excellent. Excellent. So all of these have defined deadlines except for Dennis. Dennis has a weekly podcast episode. Arguably that's not a project it's not specific enough. It has to be this week's podcast episode. Yani is project. Very good. I was hoping for this on and Karen as well. What would them, once you complete the ASB and have a functional second Brain by June obviously that's something that we all hope to get you to at the end of the day Maria says she wants to work on newsletter volume three. Peter brace has a very specific work within the deal. Close the deal with jet Beck. Good luck, Peter. I hope you close that deal. I'm working on a couple of deals at work as well, and Yeah, well is out of my control sometimes. You just, once you've done all the paperwork, yeah. Okay. Slobodan an interesting one, implement power for kids and powerful family.So this is another level of,  once you really internalize para, you want to do it for work. You want to do it for family. You want to do it for kids. It's super interesting. Just, take it easy.  It's a long game. Okay. And Christopher Horn wants to refactor notes. Is that what Gaston by me, 16th? Yeah, have a deadline. And see a lot of people with desired outcomes, but make sure you have a deadline, make sure it's not too far in the future. And if it's too big you gotta break it down. You go more to something  achievable because of the motivational factor of completing projects.Oh, we do have a question from Sam Wong. I think this is relevant to Dennis. The other person want to do podcasts. So Sam Wong's question is how do you handle monthly tasks, invoicing, for example, it is a project when it repeats.Yeah. So you have an area of responsibility, which is a would you say standard to be maintained and it doesn't have a deadline. It just keeps repeating, but it spins out projects every month. That is one way to think about it. But obviously if it's a task, like if it's, if it can be done in one session then it's less of a project and more like a task that you can probably knock it out in five minutes or something.Then yeah, that's why I think people, when they establish a fifth category apart from PARA probably the other one that makes sense is T the task category. So, we'll talk about that at the end. But essentially I just put it on my calendar as like thing I need to get done. There's no point having a to-do lists because the to-do lists.It very wishy-washy it doesn't actually set aside time. So you might as well use your calendar as a, to do this. That's the I'm giving away the ending there, but that's, that's really the conclusion. Okay. I had some feature quotes from this one this week. I thought this week where it's particularly quote worthy, I like collecting quotes. And in fact, if you notice in the circle community, there is a section just for quotes. And I think quotes can help you really crystallize some of the learnings. And that's why I wanted to focus on some, but please feel free to share also in the chat some course that you liked Or did it stuck in your head?You don't have to get it precisely right. But try to remember some quotes because you're going to have to repeat them for yourself, for other people. So one thing I think people don't focus on enough is the importance of archiving. So this is why I want to feature this quote here. We can not do our best thinking when all the information from the past is cutting our attention.That's why that archive stuff is so crucial. Right? That's actually the first thing that he showed how to do in his live demo. The other thing, and this is very much in line with, well, number one, I think that we had the value. It doesn't come from the tool. It comes to you using it repeated thing. So despite people really identifying themselves by the tool, right? Like, we are the notion group. Then they're getting teams that the wrong group and never the Twain shall meet. It's less about the tool because the tool will come and go and it's more budgets getting more use out of the tool. Same for blogs, by the way, a lot of people resolve to start a blog and then they'll write the blog.And they'll say like, you know how I wrote this blog? The first book was a bit of a world. Of course, second blog would be how I meet this blog. And then third blog posts would be, sorry, it's been a while since I last updated. And that blog will be less updated as a two years ago. So definitely, well, you don't want to have that kind of thing where you're, over-invested picking the tool and then you never use it.Okay. So, and then difference between projects in areas, projects of sprints areas and marathons. So you do want to go for sustainability in areas and then projects juggle says, give it everything you've got. That may be a little bit harsh, but  I do definitely sprint a lot for some something projects, which a lot of should have blogging.Right. But also when I published my book last year I realized I didn't. I didn't introduce that part of myself but for those one year two micro yes. Part of the reason why this is an advanced group for BSB is that I do definitely want to people to ship and even make money from shipping.So if you, if your intent is to publish a video or a book something from as a capstone for this course, this is the right group for you. And I'm definitely open to questions about that. Okay. Finally, a project without a goal is a hobby. You go without a project is a dream. That's not something we covered earlier and completed creative project. So the oxygen of your second brain. So that's that those are the quotes that I pulled out. I do definitely encourage you to save your own quotes. That's probably one of my main research areas or  just like collecting quotes, I do like collecting quotes and questions.Okay. Brief reminder that you can also share your stuff here in, in the project list on, on the circle. And I think it's a very good motivational tool to check out what other people are working on and how to how to see what's what's happening there. Q&A: Constancy/Consistency [00:11:17] Questions and discussion on this week's content in general.Speaker1: [00:11:20] So I raised my hand  on the interface, which I'm doing for the first time from an iPad. So I had to reach for it as well. My question is you were talking about the value of what I characterize as constancy, the repetition, the rigor that's my number one problem. And I don't know that I'm unique in that.There's always, I read somewhere that there's always this point when you're cultivating a new mental model or skillset or whatever, That works. It works, it works. And then all of a sudden, the old way that you used to be rears its head and tries to pull you back in and then you fall off of it. And I guess I'm wondering, based on anybody's feedback here, what is the best practice around achieving or cultivating or keeping that constancy?swyx: [00:12:00] Is there a reason you call it a constancy instead of consistency? Speaker1: [00:12:03] Because I'm weird. Okay. That's cool. I read a lot of, I read a lot of archaic texts and when I say constancy of probably drawing from Thomas Jefferson, which I was just reading this morning. Sorry. I apologize. swyx: [00:12:17] Wonderful. I mean, Hey, he's a good person to learn from. Does anyone have thoughts on constancy? Feel free to speak up?  I can give some thoughts, but I didn't want to take all the air in the room. Joseph I don't know how to pronounce the last name. Sorry. You need to form a habit, which means it takes around 60 days to form. I like that. So a lot of consistency or constancyis about identity.I like this. I like this thing about identity change that James Claire has. So he has this three circle thing. We're effectively doing some kind of behavior change and this is. This is effective for para is effective for capture and the other habits that you're going to learn in the other weeks of the class.So, it's around your identity, right? So check out this, there is a behavior change idea. So they're, three shells to your model, right? Like, so, there's your appearance, there's what you do. And then there's your identity, how you, how you think about yourself. So, you can try to be the person who do, who does like a hundred pushups in a row, or do PARA for 60 days. That's a very forced motivational thing. Like you can publicly commit to it. You can pay a charity and say like, if I don't know, if I don't complete this, I will lose some money.There are a lot of little tricks that really hack at the outward appearance of that. Then there's the performance, like the actual actions you take to ensure that you do that. So, so that can be like actually doing the thing. So instead of saying that you're doing it, you actually do the thing.But the one that really sticks with you is identity change. Once you to say, I am a person who does PARA for me, I am now a BSB mentor. Which means I am someone who just like inherently people can come to me to talk to for BASB advice. That has changed the way I approach BASB, because now it's part of my identity and someone who identifies as someone who's cause forming the habit was capturing this building a second, bring.You don't need some trick. It's just a thing that you do. If you're a religious person, you just go to church, you don't have some counter of like how many times I've been to church in a row. You just go. And if you it's okay to break it every now and then, but then you pick the rabbit up again because that's your identity.To me, that's the most motivational thing I don't need anything else, but joseph just let me have other thoughts as well. Yeah, peter says, I prefer to keep my identity inconsistent so that doesn't work too well for me. You do it, you are allowed to change your identity and that, that is a fluid concept. So yeah. Are there other forms of commitment to me work as well? Okay. Hopefully that was a decent start. Thank you for breaking the ice.Q&A: Maintaining the Second Brain [00:14:34] There was another question here, but I'm going to, I'm going to acknowledge Yanni, who has had her hand.Speaker2: [00:14:37] So I think it's actually probably can be a followup out the previous question that Christopher dresser mentioned. I think first of all, thank you so much for sharing the identity part, because I think that's a big owl consider as a principal that I can follow up.I can think of, but now the question is the implementation of that identity. I think I think about the consistency aspect of the second brain comes out the main tennis aspects. So I'm curious about how you maintain your second brain. I used to just unconsciously associate the main tenants as a reviewing process.It can be, but I'm just curious you, Shawn, as a person who creates a lot of value on a weekly or monthly basis, I'm curious how you're maintaining your second brain. At the implementation level. swyx: [00:15:20] Yeah, I knew I was going to be  asked this and I knew I was going to have a terrible answer for this. So Maria, you might want to do you might want to show your system in case I fail and crashed and burned, but I'm just going to be brutally honest. I don't do much maintenance. I I do rent, so I do have I have show this  in the past preview. So, these are resources. I don't. I started on with para and that was a year ago and things have evolved since then.So part of I've been told that it's actually a good idea to show people how para is used in real life, that it shows you that it's okay not to be perfect because Tiago is  perfect PARA.  So I do have projects. One of them is BASB mentoring, for example, that's what we're on today.And I do have resources that I share. I do have special categories of resources. These are just resources that I have for myself. But for example, when I worked at Amazon, I did have public resources that I shared is it public notion. And I think Sharon dozers, reusable resources are, is very helpful because it's no extra work on your part.Other people might find it very valuable. And I do encourage showing the resources as far as maintenance go, actually. The, so the other part of my system is simple note. I do a lot of review on weekends. So every Saturday I do my newsletter and the newsletter helps me triage things as they come in. And that goes in from right to left . From simple note, which is my quick access thing. That's always fast cause notions slow into notion in the right categories. So that's really it for me, in terms of maintenance maria, I don't know if you want to jump in and you have anything to add for maintenance.Speaker3: [00:16:47] Yeah, I put something in the chat about it just really depends on what I care about. So, my projects are maintained daily and then I have a weekly review where I think about like the areas in my life that are most relevant. So it really depends on like what I care about now. And then I organize as I, as things come up.Yeah, so that's, that's about me. That's depends so much on how I do it in notion, but it's like the mindset around that.swyx: [00:17:16] I think it's a good idea to set like a quarterly or annual reminder to archive all the things. And that's something I haven't done, just quite, quite frankly I haven't done any archiving. I have just a mess of stuff since I took BSD last year. So I really should archive it,  check out this thing where I say, Oh, projects, I didn't really archive anything. So it's a good idea to clear the deck every now and then. And just like Jonah says, don't be afraid about archiving stuff. You can, it's always still in the same system. You can always search it. Christopher says he archives annually. That's something that's good as well over a visual overwhelming is a real thing. All right. Thanks, Danny. Thanks. Good question for that. Q&A: Weaknesses of PARA [00:17:55]Julian says, Julian Alvarez says what weaknesses and drawbacks have you experienced implementing PARA and how can those be addressed? So I think a lot of people  have talked about the weaknesses, which is that it doesn't have any room for tests. Julian. So the way that I think about tasks is that so I do have a work to do list. That's a lot of my stuff. I do have 70, this is like the most overused of simple note. I'm not sure if this is like the right thing. I do a lot of speaking, so here's my speaking calendar. So I make sure I'm on top of my my talks and I'm recording and speaking.My blogging goes here. That's essentially all it all. I need, in order to inform my personal stuff, my worst stuff has a different notion tracker, which I probably should not show and publicly. But then I also have this concept of the calendar is a to-do list. So, you're on Kevin calendar as a, to do list. So, I have written that up here. I'm going to share that in the chat. But I do like basically this idea of time block planning that when you want to get stuff done attach it to a time just thinking it to do this without any notion of priority or amount of time estimated to complete is not enough.So that's that's, what's going on over there. If anyone else had like weaknesses, a para that they've come across, I'll just leave room for one more response. Yes. Nope. Okay, parents. Perfect. I am interested in the other questions, the other formulations of para. Q&A: Broken Links in Notion [00:19:16] I'm going to go to Juliana now who also has her hand raised Hey, hi. Speaker4: [00:19:20] Right. So, it's a question about archiving things. I started setting up my bearer and I already have I already have a task management system, so I have a database with the tasks and I started to another database with the projects and another for the areas and another for the resource.And I, I thought it was a great idea because I could Link all the stuff and make relations like in the database, but  I'm having difficult. I, sorry about my English. I am, I'm having a hard time to archiving these things because when I try to move to another archive database, I lost, I lose the relations.swyx: [00:20:13] Oh, okay. Got it. So I don't Speaker4: [00:20:16] know if somebody has the same problem and could help me. And swyx: [00:20:21] and yeah, I think that's it. Great question. I have no idea how to answer this. Cause I don't have a solution for that as well.   Christopher Horn says I created a page and I'm city and that collects all open tasks into one master page.I put it into a template for my daily planning notes. Joshua says filter status of archive works. Okay. So you add a filter status, Juliana, like basically add a filter. Nope. That could work. Speaker4: [00:20:44] Yeah. I filter the task in dance, but like, the projects in the areas, maybe like putting a filter might be good.swyx: [00:20:54] Yeah. Speaker4: [00:20:55] But then I wouldn't, well, I C I can create  another view of the database and just filter with the archive.swyx: [00:21:04] Okay. Joshua. Yeah ductal Joshua is sharing what what works for him? Yeah, we do use views at work for what it's worth notion is our project management too. I work as well. So yes. Music grief for that. Correct. Yeah.  In terms of breaking relations I don't actually know how to fix that. If you move stuff around, I don't move stuff enough to, to answer that I do like duplication. So I'd rather copy and paste that link. But that's just me. I know that people like to link back and forth when stuff  I think the backlink functionality in notion is pretty good.  So if this is if broken links is something that you care about then having that, this is a new, basically the wrong column of notion  you can establish back things and if you move stuff around, I think this was, this will be always correct, because the identified based on the IP of the document is structured within the note taking system.Yeah. Joshua says I like to avoid databases and just link pages with linking instead. Yeah. Which means he can move it without them breaking. So maybe just don't use linking or use backlinking. That seems to be the answer. Filters are really good for what it's worth Joseph. I don't actually recommend using notion is like a read later app. So I noticed that  Joseph says that he has a reading list in notion. I actually use, you can use instead of paper you can use. So I have up next, this is what I have , I'll just add it to up next and then I'll read it on my iPad. But you can use Instapaper, you can use some sort of meet data. Okay. All right. Joshua has book notes. All right. All right. So Juliana hopefully that was good.  I don't think it was like a perfect answer, but maybe notion wasn't really designed for that. Definitely try to make more robust things that won't break.Q&A: Automation with Zapier [00:22:34]All right. We'll take one more question. Thank you. Take one more question. Cameron has has an interesting one. What kind of workflow automations do you use with if this, then that Zapier? So this is about automations. Kevin says I created a zap so that every time I create a new notebook, it creates a new folder on Dropbox that you drive. That's pretty handy. That's more backup. Yanni says I use, I have TTT for Evernote Instapaper pocket highlight evernotes goes to Evernote.Yep. They are all going under inbox folder for me. Maria says Google calendar to notion database with Zapier. Wow. Okay. Why Google calendar like tweets the notion. Wow. Okay. This is really good.  I think this Lightspeed's emotion thing.  That's a good idea. Cause there's it's not intuitive to search your own. The tweets that you've liked before. So having the automation makes sense. The calendar one makes is unusual. SMART Goals [00:23:25]Alright, I probably missed some questions on the way. So I'm gonna leave those to the end, but I'm gonna go into some of the unique content that I think about we've covered some of these areas.I'm going to go into a little bit about some other thoughts that I've had personally, as part of this BSB journey. There's probably one other. Weakness, maybe at the power content that we talked about this week is that we talk a little bit about goals, but we didn't define goals, right?Like we talked about where is it in here? We said PA already, there's no G here. And jeez are very important for projects this and we didn't really talk that much about what a good goal is. So I think this framework, which I use, you can't go very far into, in productivity canon without coming across smart is a good idea for thinking about your goals.Does is it specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound? Timeline is obviously the deadline thing, but the other elements very helpful as well. I think the measurable ones. Yeah. A lot of goals are binary. So did you do it or not? So in that case, it's a very, it's very simple measurement. And I think the other one is attainable that people really should think about like is if the goal is too big, then it doesn't feel attainable. It's gotta be something that's within reach. So I think a lot of goal setting, a lot of smart goal setting is really just narrowing down the size of your ambitions. If you want to do something perfect, or if you want to do some huge, impressive thing you may not have built up the muscle to do that yet. You might need to break it down into something smaller and just make smaller goals along the way to that big goal. Okay. That was the first thing that I have planned.Denormalizing Notes [00:25:01]The second is for a little bit of the developers in the room, because I like these analogies. There's an idea of normalized schema versus de-normalized schema. Normalize is where you split everything into this most atomic categories where you can think things back and forth without knowing what, how are you going to need them ahead of time?Denormalize is where you put everything in a single object where you know, you're going to need it together. So the, my assertion is that projects are essentially de normalize and areas of resources or not. And so you want to break stuff down into the six areas, whereas projects you often are bringing together content from a few different areas of resources and synthesizing them in a special way.That's the idea about thinking about projects and I do encourage actually just copying and pasting. Like if you have, if you come across something useful, some piece of content, that's some thought that's really useful.You can just paste it in areas and paste it in projects. So I do like the idea that you don't follow this strict idea of like. One thing goes in one place. I do a lot of double pasting of stuff and that's just intentional denormalization and the way that I approach this is what I call MES on plots writing.Like you want to place everything that you're going to write about ahead of time in, in a place that you're going to use them. And this is independent of the areas of resources  where you're collecting them. So that when it comes time to write, you're only right. So all this happens, asynchronously serendipitously as a pre-writing phase.And then when you're writing, you're just sitting down and focusing on converting all of this pre work into the final finished product. That's I think, a sustainable way to essentially reduce the amount of time that you spend researching and ideating and looking at the right references. Oh wait. Okay. I do have a, do you have a response there from Christopher Horn, another interesting feature to add to the ethnicity debate? Do you normalization? Yep. Okay. Yep. Great. So I'm going to drop a link to this doc for people who this is specifically for people who write a blog posts, as well as books, I'm going to show you a little bit about when I say I do this, I really take it to heart. This is the, this is how I wrote my book for my BSB sort of capsule last year. I planned out all the chapters that I was going to write originally, all of these things were white. And then I just slowly converted them into blue links, one by one, but each of these linked to the issue where I just slotted ahead of time.The ideas and the resources that I wanted to talk about. So that when I felt that I had, I was ready to compile all these things. I started from a good base of these are the points I wanted to touch on that I spent, three months thinking about and collecting.But everything was in its place. When I finally wrote the final chapter and this is me writing it. And that's something I encourage people especially people who are planning big books. If you're working on, for me, I was working at 40 chapters simultaneously to really think about just slotting everything in its place and having like a measle class attitude to writing.So obviously this works for a book, but you can also think about it as working for a blog where I'm working on simultaneously. 20 different vocals ideas and you should have some amount of idea of velocity where you're thinking of all of these things at the same time. So yeah. I encourage you to try to denormalize for action, at the end of the day, you want to try to produce output and then you're trying to normalize for resources.When it goes to resources, I'm just loving it. I've been here and you can do it twice. It's fine. There's no perfect system. If you figured out a way to automate it, Great for you. I haven't got there yet because I'm so pretty and so busy and focused on producing. Open Source Knowledge [00:28:27]So let's talk about source knowledge.So this is another developer analogy again if you're not familiar with open source knowledge, just think about. The old school, one encyclopedias versus Wikipedia and how Wikipedia completely destroyed encyclopedias because it was collaborative. The assertion here is that resources should be, open-sourced like everything else in para can be close, can be closed, can be private, but there's no reason why resources themselves should not be shared because as long as someone can benefit from it, then you essentially, when a friend while you're sleeping, if you just share it and if people can contribute and that's the open source nature of it then you really benefit because they help to correct you or they help to ask the question or they actually just give you extra things that you may not have known about.So I really liked that. I do have a talk on this copy open source knowledge doc. I really should have edit the link open source knowledge, right? I I'm just gonna give you the slides.That's my slides for open source knowledge. But yeah, I think when you combine para with learning in public, it becomes extremely powerful for building a brand as well as you are a network facing time.Brag Documents [00:29:28]Something that was briefly, very briefly mentioned in Tiago is lecture, which I think is super underrated, is this idea of a brag document. So let me see where he talks about it. So here doing during this is during one of the lectures that he had, and you can see, this is my own notes. I'm going through the course with you. During one of the lectures he had this idea that this comparison between projects was serious and you talk, and he talks about why you need to connect projects to goals. So there are three reasons why you need to collect the goals. You need to know the extent of the commitments need to connect current work to your long-term goals.But then the last part, you also need to know if you're making progress towards your goal. This is something which I think is understated in terms of para, which is at the end of your project, you should. Not just wipe it off, but actually stick it somewhere in a brag document, in a materialized view of the things that you've done this year.And so that you can actually review it because you're not going to, it's hard for you to remember them sometimes. And and especially at work, it's really helpful for a peer reviews and promotion packets and stuff like that. Even for the psychological pick me up, I think it's very helpful.And personally, in, when I work a stack is actually a stack is actually a really good channel like a prototype channel for bank documents. So it might have a sectional with only me in it. And I just post in that channel whenever I've finished something that I probably know, I want to review in my like three 60 feedback session, if you want to brag about yourself you need to be the best bragger of yourself because the one else is going to do that for you.Okay. Just Do It [00:30:57]Glen, I'm going to get to your question a little bit cause we have one more slide left and that is insert generic motivation. Just I think ship Ira Glass, the gap video is also pretty common. Like this idea that you need to just do it more, right? All this there's all this theory.There's all these Images and advice. You just need to do it more like this parable of the pottery class as well, because something that people say a lot and I've referred to it as well, as far as I can tell it never actually happened. So it's literally a parable or a fable. But anyway just do it right.And that's a recap of the kind of stuff that we covered in the extra content section of this talk. So I'm going to head over to questions and discussion. We have a few I did have someone raised their hands, so now's a good time to raise your hands for some chat.I'm going to answer things in reverse order so that I can keep on top of things. Q&A: How do you share in public? [00:31:45] Glenn G says. Could you show how you share your resources in public? Was it making your notion public and people can contribute to it? Or how does the contributing part work? Okay. So notion is not very conducive to public collaboration because I think it will be a mess if people can randomly rearrange stuff.But yeah, these are my notions and then I'll just share it in public. So you can, you're welcome to see my BWS bullshit. But for collaborative stuff, nothing's better for developers than get help. Right. So here is my launch cheat sheet. So when I launched my book I took my notes as a resource and I just posted it all up. And so you can see,  I didn't have that many contributors, but the people who did actually volunteered information and for, and now whenever I need to launch my next thing, I have this resource available so that people can find it. So, Hey, I need to do it endorsements and testimonials.These are all the notes that I've taken for myself. And it's useful for other people, like so far. 500 people have started on GitHub. So probably more people have seen that. And it's also a nice way to promote my own book. So it's a very useful thing. I do this a lot. If you go to my GitHub profile, you see that the extent to which I have bought into this idea that you should open source your resources.So I have done a launch cheat sheet, a CLI cheat sheet podcasts. This, these are design resources. So here are my design resources. This is the biggest one. 5,000 people that start this. And it's just got things I use. So if you want to reference and typography I can pick my fonts in a way that has been pre-vetted by people I trust because I don't know anything about design, but I can, I can look like I know by stealing from other people I can steal code.So here's a fun loading strategy that some expert has approved. So I'm just going to steal that. It's essentially a swipe file and it's open source. So people contribute. So I had 32 contributors so far, and yeah, it's just a really great way to have your resources open. So the work you're doing anyway helps to benefit you professionally.I like it a lot. There's this concept that comes to mind call it the friend catcher, which isn't my idea, but I didn't, I do have the reigning Google search on it. Think. Yeah, I had number one to Google for that.  So this idea that you should make friends online, what you seek by, by sharing these resources.So para are in Paris, extremely soul, super powerfully. We just keep it up and make it useful. Put a little bit of design on it. It's great. So highly recommend. Okay. Do you want to brag about myself too much? Peter braceQ&A: Atomicity/Denormalization [00:34:02]okay. Christopher Horn, let's go.Speaker1: [00:34:04] Okay, there we go. I'm sorry. Head down mute. My question is going back to that French term that I am not going to try to say that ends in the word place. I think. So we have two concepts that I, in my fevered brainer intention. One is the notion of normalization and de normalization. The other is that French term.And I guess what I struggle with and is if I am pursuing a philosophy of atomicity, which is to say that, where I fall on the normalization versus denormalization the reason that one of the reasons I'm doing it is because there are ideas or concepts in my second brain that are not going to feed just one project, but might feed many projects.And instead of pulling them all into one place and associating them with one activity, I might need to refer to them from two different directions at once. Does that make sense? swyx: [00:34:51] Okay. So what's the question. How do you reconcile that tension? So Speaker1: [00:34:55] it feels like what I understood you to say was you pull all the resources into one place and you dedicate it to one task.And I'm just trying to reconcile that with my notion that there might be multiple tasks that need or projects that need to draw from the same swyx: [00:35:08] artifacts, if you will. Yeah. So that's what I was saying. Like I do the lowest tech. Thing possible, which is I just, I double paste I'll, I'll copy it out into the other place, needs it. But if you are a little bit more sophisticated, you can use the linking, you can use the Rome style of the cake to irrigate. Are you familiar with those? I Speaker1: [00:35:30] am. Yeah. It's just a matter of, are you tolerating redundancy or are you just going to handle it by reference swyx: [00:35:36] only, right? Yeah. Yeah. So people are really like starts.I find them in practice, not that useful because they're just pretty. Anything that's great for ultimately I tell you what's the best thing to link to a public URL that you've blocked, right? Like last week, we talked about the three strikes rule.If you reference an idea for multiple times, don't keep it to yourself, just put it on your blog and then link to that. Fair enough. That's a good, I that's a good note. Yeah. And, just break down that idea that you're your, everything you blog has to be as like big thought leading piece or anything.It used to be a resource. Okay. We had some other questions. Julian had a really interesting one that I want to address. Would you recommend using GitHub for open source knowledge that is not coding related? So get helps really good because it has a really good collaboration model, but it might not be accessible for people who are not technical Google docs.So this guy frameworks, the 0.1. So they have that, oh my God, this guy does such a good job. I'm gonna read this to you because it's so true. I realized that the main reason I don't publish as much content online is that I prefer to Erie my thinking continuously making your part to publish something extraordinarily high we'll work around a shipping, an alpha version of a thought.And then blah, blah, blah. He published his work in progress, thoughts as a Google doc. And of course he never actually published the final document. Like that's how it's helped people are  with their thinking. But a lot of discussion happens. There you go. Okay. Yeah. There's so much discussion here. When you can write your, you can write what you're thinking or researching and you let people comment and that's a really nice way to open-source it as well. Some collaborative thing like that, it can be useful to a lot of people. Cause this one went viral, look at them on a discussion it's still ongoing, and yeah, it's a really great tool and actually you should use this more.It's so simple. Everyone has access to Google docs. So there may be other tools, I think there are there like collaborative notepads that are out there that I've used no pads. I forget the name of them though. Deep note, no bureaucratic, no joy. There are a bunch of these that, that you could try using, but there's, they're just like startups, they're less reliable because they might go away some time. So, yeah, you don't have to use GitHub. Q&A: Why Notion? [00:37:33]Okay. We have a question from Probita. Hey. Speaker3: [00:37:35] Hi, John. Thanks. Fantastic succession. So, just a couple of quick questions, if you don't mind starting with a comment I think you do speak very well.You have clarity of thoughts and a it, it like the sort of the wisdom and the knowledge that you applied comes out very easily. So thank you for that. I think I I might've picked up that you took the course last year. Is that right? Yeah. Right. So were you already using notion at the time, or did you, were you in between a couple of programs and then you decided to work with swyx: [00:38:06] notion?  I was even worse than that.  I was using one note going in and then I switched halfway in the middle because I got frustrated with one notes and then I saw that most people using notion. So I jumped on a notion bandwagon. Speaker3: [00:38:17] Yeah, yeah. Right now I'm using Evernote, but I'm just wondering if, for folks who are more tech oriented or tech savvy, it's easier to establish themselves in notion, but that's something for me to just try that out and figure it out.Q&A: Book writing? [00:38:28]But a related question the book that you have published, which looks great. So I will check it out.  Is that like the writing of it? Did you use notion for that? For most of swyx: [00:38:38] it. I used GitHub, like I just showed you, I showed you the process. I don't know if you were here for that. So this is for version two of that. I'm hoping to publish mix in July. But yeah, I use GitHub to draft. I had reviewers come in and these are my editors that came in and gave me comments. So this guy, I paid him to edit my work and he submitted and get up, Salesforce is great. It's a great experience. But like, drafting, I think you can pull in your ideas wherever I just happened to use GitHub. Like the tool doesn't matter to me, just so much as like the process. Right. I did use typable I forget the name of it. Basically. There's a better markdown drafts app. So the motion does export markdowns. And I do use markdown to publish, but it doesn't have I don't like the way it edit stuff. So I needed a simpler interface and Typora. That's the tools use pepper. This is a free open source tool. That just gives you marked down and is not as complex as notion. It only does marco. So no, no fancy blocks. When you slash it, doesn't try to search your whole database for you.It just doesn't work out and it presents it nicely. So that's a really good writing app. I think anything that distracts you from the act of writing can be a negative sometimes. So I used that poorer, if you want to try and check it out. Speaker3: [00:39:47] Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, it sounds like you're just All these tools that you apply them greatly, or you have applied them in the past and you just have a great wealth of information.So think thanks swyx: [00:39:57] for sharing. This is also by the way you can use GitHub projects for people with developers. Like this is literally my launch plan T 14 T minus 14, all the way to T minus one. He has, I hope ended up, whatever tool you can get pretty creative. And I find that my brain doesn't require one tool to rule them all.So I can segment by like, okay, I'm working on book, totally different set of tools than like regular knowledge ingestion and someone that works with me. If you're okay with that, okay. First Wrapup [00:40:23] Thanks, Maria. I want to acknowledge Maria for swinging by the mentor sessions here have always had like this. Do of support and I just want to acknowledge, thank you so much, Marina for swinging by to help out. Okay. All right. I think we're over time. So that's it, as far as the present, the pre-prepared questions have our concerns. You're welcome to email me@swyxandsix.io. That's my email  if you're not comfortable asking questions here or you think of them later on. Email me here and I'll see you here again next week. And yeah, that's it next week is C O D distill. So we're going to go into distilling and I really like the progressive summarization idea, I don't necessarily do all the steps by I'm a fan. I'm a fan of  Reviewing multiple times so that you really get to the gist of of a piece that you're writing about. I'll give you one example of that. So   this is going to look super overwhelming to you. So please don't feel like you need to do this.  I did have an example of people always think about this quality versus consistency. Trade-off of Hey, I want to produce, but do I produce on a regular schedule and trade-offs and quality, or do I infinite highest quality thing I can do and maybe not be so consistent with what I do. And so I've been, I actually collected three different podcasts clips from audio doll. My audio doll from Tim urban and then from James, Claire over here and I synthesize them into this blog post. And that actually did very well for me. I think the, the post that I had by the way, this is a really cool extension. If you work a lot with Twitter, I do use Twitter as my second Brain sometimes. I think this post did really well, just because of the number of people that picked it up independently. You're doing the work by summarizing and synthesizing and comparing, right? So, I was able to find someone who stood out for consistency and made that case.I was able to find someone that stood up for quality of me, that case. And then I just put together that debate and then offered some solutions to it by synthesizing different resources together. And distilling is a key part of that work. So that's what we're going to cover next week. Speaker3: [00:42:10] Okay. Thanks Shawn.Just if you don't mind, three quick questions sorry. I did miss your introductory session last week. So, Shawn Wang, of course, that makes sense doubly or rather why X, what does that stand for? swyx: [00:42:21] That's my English and Chinese initial sec. SW was English and NYX is Chinese. And I don't bother to tell people what the wax is because they're not going to remember.Yeah. Q&A: Twitter Links Extension [00:42:30]Speaker3: [00:42:30] Okay. And then this Twitter extension that you just mentioned with the design, swyx: [00:42:34] So this is a unpublished Chrome extension, just from a friend who wrote this, essentially, whenever you go to some somebody's site, if you want to see the metal layer discussion around this, here's the blog post that I wrote about that. Let's say that's what you want to find the power of blog posts whenever you're like, okay, I read this, I want to discuss it with people.Who've also read the thing what do you do? Right. You drop it in a Slack, you drop in a discord or something. And then people who have also read it. But what's better is you can actually just say like, okay, I'm going to click this Twitter links thing and just plug into the stream of people who talk about this stuff.So Joel talked about it. So Shawn talks about it and then you can respond directly to them. But you can see like the disagreements or you can post about it. Yeah. I don't know. I think it's, it's very useful for, and this is me talking about it. Yeah. I think it's helpful.  You can also do this on hacker news. I just like plugging into the commentary layer because it opens your mind as to if people strongly disagree, if people like, have extra points that they want to make.I think Twitter is a meta commentary. Raider is a very interesting idea.  Q&A: Chrome Extensions [00:43:33] Speaker3: [00:43:33] okay. So because the topic of extension has come up and I've been meaning to find the right opportunity to ask this to someone A lot of people use the Evernote clipper and similar extensions. And when you try install them, be it on Firefox or Chrome, it does ask for permission. And part of the permission is that it, it can have access to all your websites and whatnot.And I'm not necessarily big on confidentiality or whatever security, but at the same time it does yeah. For data for all websites. So is that something that that's just standard or like, do you have any thoughts on that as a tech person? swyx: [00:44:15] Yeah. Unfortunately it's pretty standard people and, and this may be a slightly alarmist, but at the end of the day, you just do have to trust them. The trust model for Chrome extensions is  just that broken. You just have to trust the publisher. If you don't trust them, then don't install it because they can for example, you can look safe at a time of publishing and then you install it and then they can secretly update it.And they might get you that way. So you just have to trust that the, they won't ever abuse that. Q&A: How do you balance research and writing? [00:44:39]Speaker2: [00:44:39] Awesome. So just question around, I really do appreciate the idea of set your focus, your focus on creation. I think that's what the whole point of the second brain. Now the question comes down is how do you eat? I just curious about your personal experience, last preference.How do you balance research and value creation in terms of time and energy perspective? So I do, for instance, when you were making a blog paused. Yes. There's a creation for sure, but definitely there's some, a lot of research going on. It can be the pre-writing work. I wondering how you balance that activities.swyx: [00:45:15] Oh, okay. That makes sense. Yeah, of course. The research is just always ongoing in the back of my head which is why I have this idea of pre-writing right. This is passive. This is just a background process. It's always happening. And whenever it's something relevant comes up to a top favorite problem or a project that I'm working on, then I'll just slide it right into there.I'll find I'll pause what I'm doing and just go add that piece of information. So research the passive for me. And then when I make time to write, which is often like, probably a Saturday when it, like I have like three, four hours open. I think I'm trying to move to one hour a day before work.I think that'd be a really good model for me, but just quite honestly, I don't do that right now. But you should have everything in place. So David Perellcalls this start from abundance or write from abundance. I don't really like the way you phrase this. Okay. Yeah. Start with abundance. There we go. How to cure it, write it, write this book. There we go. All right. So , you can take his word for it, but essentially you just have the research as a background process. And then when you write, just write you can of course, improvise and research here.But if you do too much of that, then you will not ended up publishing, so I totally get it. Yeah. I do have the same process by the way. When you publish, because it's a digital document digital garden terms of service. So I have this idea of a digital gardens. So it's like when you publish you, can you have the right to be, to update it as you go along.Right? So as long as you as a contract, if you're with your with your readers is very clear, then people won't expect you to be complete and you're not promising to be complete. You can even insert disclaimers. So I've been starting to insert disclaimers as well. So for example, stuff like here, I think I have the disclaimer here.So you can have like this where you can say like, blah, blah, blah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna come back from it. It's not fully formed yet. Devon Zuegel has this idea of epistemic origin. So she'll tell you a friend, the kind of work that she put into the post, is it high? Is it high confidence?Is this a high confidence post or is it just the theory? This episode, you guys, and then the amount of effort that was put into it, is this just a random thought or is this like the result with three years of research? And that  sets the tone for people. So they don't get upset, especially if you have a lot of readers, they're like fuck you.Like you're an expert. And you didn't consider all these concepts and you should be open about that. I just, I don't like the word epistemic, cause it sounds very pretentious. So I just simplified it disclosure. When  I tried to make that a thing.Yeah. Q&A: Converting Resources to Projects [00:47:37]Speaker2: [00:47:37] Thank you. Just one last follow up question. So I'm trying to map that blogging whole process to the para modal. So for instance, that the older passive activity going over research, I can see based on my knowledge, you go, we'll go to the resources. But when that let's say that content for specific blog pause is filled like ready for 80% that I think I can, I can see that I can convert that blog post for that particular topic to a project.Is it how you also organize it? I see. Okay. Sounds good. Speaker3: [00:48:06] Thank you very much.swyx: [00:48:07] Yeah, no worries. I have another thing which I, after you publish this, a really interesting conversation you can have with your readers is you should not think about it as like a one to many thing. It should be like a back and forth.So I call this annealing — I almost included this in my slides, but I didn't. But essentially like when you image three, go. Okay. So when you have the idea for posts, right? You're like researching, researching, researching, like accumulating knowledge stuff like that. And then towards the end, when you're ready to write, you'd just do the sprint of writing.And then you have this draft. Maybe you have a group of friends that are peer reviewing. So you're workshopping this idea and I have a separate post on that. And then you publish, but right after you publish, you have a bunch of public feedback and you can actually have a conversation with them. And your posts continues to have increasing quality because you have a conversation with readers, gives people an incentive to respond to you quickly because there'll be shot at there'll be mentioned.This one, I didn't have it, but people mentioned, I, I shut people out one day when to respond. Yeah, it's just a really good model of of don't think about it as a single game. There's multiple stages that it's okay.All right. Thanks, Danny. Yeah.  I'll take one more question.Q&A: Video/Audio Capture [00:49:11]Sam Wong question for Sam Wong. I do a lot of YouTube on iPad and have taken screen capture.Is there a method to sort them into different projects in areas? Every ? I have no idea. YouTube and iPad and screen captures. Who does, if it is  video, any ones? I don't really, I take, I think a timestamp. So yeah. Does anyone have thoughts on YouTube or iPad screen captures like part of the I'm sure. Toolkit. Yeah. Part of the capture toolkit, one of the six is audio and video transcription. I just haven't had, I haven't cracked it.  Yeah. So  part of your toolkit is audio video transcription. And I only do audio I don't do video, so yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure what this tools are, but you can check out the tools that people are using here.Sonic study, I guess. I don't know. I haven't tried. I haven't tried these notion YouTube. Yeah. I do a lot of timestamps, so these are my podcast notes, I'll do here's the, what I want to feature. And the it's 36 minutes in that's essentially the extent of work that I do.Probably no thinking it's really crappy, but at the same time, I'm going to minimalist in the way that I do this stuff. Yeah, right. Thanks that. Okay. Well,  I think that's it. I don't see any other hands up and we've gone over time, so you're welcome to ask me questions through email again, if I can find it a success six, that IO and if not, we'll meet again next week and talk about distilling. So thanks.Thank you.  hang around say hi to people. We'll say, bye. Thanks Dennis. Thanks for all the questions, everyone. It really helps to make this not a monologue. Q&A: Speaking [00:50:39] Speaker3: [00:50:39] I'll just say all those speaking gigs that you do, it definitely shows in your presentation.So you do quite well swyx: [00:50:47] trying to do more. Yeah, this is so for those  who are speakers, this is what happens when you have this extra speaking schedule and no time to update them. So these are, you said the talks that I do.So these are all my talks, but I haven't updated them since december. And these are all the talks I haven't added yet. God. Yeah, I need to, I need to go make myself, I don't, I know I didn't, I need to update my own documentation, but yeah, if you want to do something well, do it a lot and I don't think I do it very well. I have a little bit I speak at it roughly about 10 times. A minute and that's not very good. I think so. Speaker3: [00:51:28] Yeah. No, I think your sort of weapon is what'd you swyx: [00:51:32] mean collegequantity? Yes, exactly. Speaker3: [00:51:38] I was just going to say while the EMEA, so I think you be at writing or be at speaking. I, I feel like that's how you're going about things and the more you do it, the better you get just your, your you're finding the time to do everything, or that's just the discipline that you've developed over the years, but it's, swyx: [00:51:54] it's pretty good.Cool. It's funny. Cause you can think about it as discipline, but you can also think about it as just. Being less perfectionist, right? Like I'm just lowering the bar on what I do in order to do more of it. And I think he also noticed when you have speakers where you didn't think about speakers well there two things.So one is when you think about the greatest features in the world, the Steve jobs and they have very pre prepared speeches, but then when they speak off the cuff, they have all the ums and AHS, they have the false starts and rambling around random rambles. So you don't have to be the best speaker in the world, but you can, you just have to be functional.You can get a message across, you can think while you talk. So you can plan ahead what you're about to say. And the other point I was going to make is that writing helps you speak better because it helps you rehearse things and be heard as the freezing and think of what structure.  I have this quote  in my writing chapter about, again, I'm not going to look it up right now, but when you write, when you have written down something and then you speak about the leader, whether it's a conference talk or workshop, or like a podcast, or just a regular one-on-one chat you sound smarter because you've written about it.So you should write more and you will magically become a better speaker. That makes Q&A: Writing My Book [00:52:58]Speaker3: [00:52:58] sense. What when did you have the thought of writing a book on the specific topic that you have written on the coding manual or whatever manual it is like, when did that sort of come swyx: [00:53:08] up? I have an exact date sorry. So you can see how often I use Twitter as my second break. So, Daniel was a friend now tweeted this if you're tempted by this. So, so Nevada tweeted this, I, there's never been a better time to launch a digital product. This is April last year, which is like the depth of the recession.Right. And then you were like, and this guy, this advice was like create a small product, something you can finish in two weeks and charge $10 for it. So I decided that I was going to do that. I think I did it here. Hmm. I don't know. I don't know where I actually quoted it, but essentially I have, that's the exact date that I started April 10th, 20, 20, 20. I decided that I was going to launch this, this book and then it just carried on from there. And originally was going to, it was going to try to finish it in two weeks, like you said.And it blossom into two months because I found that I had so much content to share. So, books, I hear that it tends to happen to books because people, especially when they're first time authors want to squeeze everything in. I think for, for second and third books, you tend to try to foc

In today's episode Shawn and Qamar go over a few topics.. Samsung Has announced their “Most powerful Galaxy device” So Shawn and Qamar take a look at it to see how powerful it is. With Apple's New IOS 14.5 update there are new privacy features that Facebook doesn't seem to happy about: Meanwhile the M2 Chip from Apple is already started Mass Production for The 2021 Macs. We also learn that Microsoft seems to be attacking Apple and their MacBooks. Microsoft of all people. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

This Clubhouse-style Q&A was held as part of my support for React Summit 2021 (https://remote.reactsummit.com/). Moderated by Robert Haritonov, CEO of GitNation.Timestamps 2:30 How do you keep up with the changing landscape? 5:00 Balancing Learning Time with a Job 7:15 What are the top technical and soft skills to transition from junior to senior? 12:30 The Importance of Communication and How to Do it Well 17:30 Prioritization, Batching and Pair Programming 19:20 What can Seniors Do to Help Foster Juniors? Apprenticeships, Mentoring, Sponsorship and Allyship 23:15 How to convince older devs to try new tech? Address their concerns, do proofs of concept, know when to fold. 28:45 Nontraditional background. How to convince people to let you through the door? Networking and Personal Content Marketing. 34:00 How do you make technical decisions as a senior and avoid getting stuck? Innovation Tokens, Action Produces Information, Pay for Advice 40:30 Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution 42:00 Can you still be a fullstack engineer? If you enjoyed this chat, you're welcome to check out our career community for 30% off!Mentioned Links Chapter 5 - Junior to Senior (free PDF) Gergely Orosz's Tech Resume Inside Out My Podcast Recommendations Every Public Engineering Career Ladder Sponsorship: https://larahogan.me/blog/what-sponsorship-looks-like/ Allyship: https://www.samanthabretous.com/blog/black-women-equal-pay-day-heres-how-you-can-help/  Diversity Resources (this is a work in progress list, hence not yet published, but i've been sharing these with pple who ask): https://gist.github.com/sw-yx/7aeedbeac1bb81017cd4f9d66b223b63 Ninah Mufleh Airbnb Resume Innovation Tokens If you'd like to see my React Summit talk, check out: https://youtu.be/yLgq-Foc1EE TranscriptRobert Haritonov: [00:00:00] So yeah, I'll let you get to your Shawn just, go ahead as you please? swyx: [00:00:03] Hey everyone. Hey, I'm Shawn,  also known as Swyx on the internet.I'm a React fan and but also a Svelte fan and one of my talks, that I speaking later on in an hour or so is seven Lessons to Outlive React. But this discussion room is a different topic. It's a non-technical topic. It's related to the book I published last year.Basically talking about how people can go from junior to senior, how the non-technical elements of the software engineering job is very relevant for our career progression and something that we don't really talk about enough. And yeah, I'm very interested in sharing my experience, the experiences of the people that I learned from.If you wanna check out the, the amount of research I did you can check out the site at LearnInPublic.org.I'm going to just explain a little bit of what I wrote on the junior and senior chapter. So essentially   part of what I was trying to do here was define what a senior engineer is.And  it's one of those things where everyone has a different opinion and  it's more of a pay scale than it is a well accepted metric. To some people you have to have at least three years at a high growth startup. Others can take up to eight years to become a senior engineer. Or there's, let's just say they don't care about the number of years, right? It's  more about what you can do. And ultimately I think for me is what I really care about is for everyone to have the prerequisite skills enough of the prerequisite skills, and accomplishments that you can make a strong case for a senior developer, but then also market yourself as meeting enough so that people notice you and hire you whether, internal promotion or externally when you do a lateral transfer to another company. And I think a lot of times it involves acting like a senior engineer before you officially become one. So it's a bit of a chicken and egg, right? And I think that's something that we have to recognize more and study more. . Because I don't think we have  enough of a conversation about how to convert juniors to seniors and It's the biggest gap in the industry, everyone wants to hire seniors,  but there are so many juniors trying to try to upskill themselves. 2:30 How do you keep up with the changing landscape?I've just invited avocado Mayo. Are you able to speak hi, can you hear me?  Hey, how's it going? Shawn? The eye. Good. Thank you. I'm a developer based in Canada. I am, I have a question for you a general career advice.So I, I feel that the front end landscape is constantly changing and the web is constantly evolving. A question that I have for you is what are some ways that you kept up with the cutting edge so that your call I'll still the learning and what are some ways that you kept up with the changing landscape in development?Great question. It's something I get a lot, but honestly I don't, I haven't really slowed down to like document a process. I just do whatever comes to mind. So this is a bit off the cuff. So something I care a lot about I think it would not be an exaggeration to say that I do get a lot of my tech news off of Twitter and the things that, so I tend to do this strategy, which I call following the graph, which is like figuring out what the smart people that have effect they have built, the things that you use, like the reacts and the babbles and the WebEx, figuring out what they, how they got where they are and what they're working on today, because they're also excited about other things they didn't stop just because they were done working on, on, on the tool.So I follow the graph, like I follow who they follow, and then I figured out who their influences are and try to understand the historical context of where these technologies fit in. And that's all an attempt to try to figure out like what themes I should focus on for the future. So every now and then I try to step back and go okay what am I interested in?Because I think honestly the reality is that there's too much to keep up on. And I think if you try to keep up on everything, it's a full-time job and you'll never go deep on any particular topic. And that's also really bad. It's not enough to just know the names of every project.You actually have to have tried it out to know the philosophy. You have an opinion when you're, in your company, you're asked for it. So that's why I try to do I tried to have a thesis. I tried to inform it by following people who I think are doing interesting things in the ecosystem. I think attending conferences actually really helps a lot because the people who are excited enough to give a talk about something, it's probably something I should at least be aware of, like what it's about.And I have this four-step framework that I borrow from thought bot I think, or thought works. Where it's it's like assess adopt, avoid. And I forget what the fourth category is, but basically just have an idea of what you are choosing to focus on what you're monitoring and not really getting into right now, but could be, and what you've just decided.Okay. Hey, there's just too much going on. I need to filter something out. And I think that's a very healthy way to stay on top of things.5:00 Balancing Learning Time with a JobThank you so much, Shawn. I have one follow-up question before I I go back to the audience. So as you mentioned, it's I feel like when I, whenever I get on Twitter, there's an overwhelming amount of information. And I find it also really hard with all these emerging technologies to balance. I like the, my actual job and learning these new things.Do you have any advice for how you manage your time for learning new things and actually, getting your job done? Wow. That's a, that's an awesome question. I think it will be it's very nice. A lot of companies have this idea of some learning time.For some companies that's half a day, every week. So I'm going to be just like one day, every two weeks, whatever it is. If your company can budget in some learning time on the side, I think that really is very helpful.  For me, I do a lot of side projects. I will dive into to things outside of company time.That's something that's not necessarily something that everyone can do because they have a life for her family outside of outside of work. But I don't know that there's, you can find ways to. I guess keep tabs. And if something's not working out for you, be okay with letting it go and try something else.So if you're doing X, if you're doing, if you're working out, there's plenty of podcasts, I can recommend to you. Just go on my blog and look for a podcast. I have list of like 250 podcasts. And and you can keep up that way, right? Like you, you could be doing something active and still learning.You could be, just experiment with different forms of learning, in, in different people learn in different ways. So I definitely think that I learned best by, by keeping my focus small on like the number of topics and themes I get excited about and just ignoring the rest and then actually trying stuff out because.You really only go get so much just like looking at tweets and reading, readme's. It's once you actually have tried the thing out, then you have a strong opinion. And you pretty soon find yourself like recommending it at work. And it's pretty cool when like the stuff you learn on the side comes in and actually has a positive impact on something you do at work.And that's where I think people start to really see the value of you learning during work as well. So you can make a case for that.Robert Haritonov: [00:06:56]  So Shawn,  I've been doing some discord management, created the channel. People can ask a question there as well. It's right. The whole discussion around what's called discussion. I'm going from junior to senior. There was one questionnaire, but we also have two people joining here with voice, so Kwan and dome.swyx: [00:07:12] I think Dom raised his hand first. I'll go first. 7:15 What are the top technical and soft skills to transition from junior to senior?Robert Haritonov: [00:07:16] So I have two questions. The first question would be what are like your top evaluation of skills for technical and soft skills for that transition from junior to senior.And second, my question is my second question is regarding how do you know you're in that same like level of senior after, when you start off as a junior without having that swyx: [00:07:39] imposter syndrome? The second one is it's closer to home. The first one, let me try and rephrase the first question. Cause I don't think I really got it.What level of technical skills are required? You said Robert Haritonov: [00:07:48] What do you think differentiates a junior dev on a technical level from a senior dev both texts like technical level swyx: [00:07:56] and soft skills. Yeah. It's it, obviously we're at a front end focus conference, but I try to keep my answers agnostic or front end or back end, and it's going to depend on, whatever team you work on.But here's the bottom line, right? I think that seniors should be able to independently ship something from beginning to end, like the buck stops with you. And for most things I can just give you an assignment and you can basically ship. That feature or that issue or that Epic basically on your own, without much guidance, whereas a junior obviously would be expected to to be given as much resources as possible.So that independence is a very, very key part of the senior definition. The non-technical elements there, there are a lot of other definitions as well. Mentorship is a key one. Once you get to a point where people start coming to you for advice that's a strong sign of a senior developer and being able to be a force multiplier for the rest of your team.So, you're not just concerned with your own performance. You're also concerned about your team's performance and working on. Either processes or even dev tools or infrastructure tools to make them all more productive. These are all qualities that people shout out as as positive aspects of a senior developer.I have this essay called junior engineers, senior engineer, and I have a list of like little quotes that distinguish things between junior and senior, which I could read out (see the PDF linked above). I don't know if that would be helpful. But then I can also talk about, I guess I'll squeeze in one more thing before I, I give I talk about the.The katas which is career letters, right? Study your company's career ladder. If your company doesn't have one, try to get involved in in creating, defining one, because if you get a hand in defining your own career ladder, then you get to, nudge things in a way that you like, which is very nice.But if you need help if a company doesn't have one, there are a lot of public career letters out there. So I have a blog posts. That's literally just Google every engineering career ladder. And it's, I've just compiled like 30 different career letters from the financial times Kickstarter rent, the runway medium all sorts of career letters that is done in public.And you can just study them Circle CI has a really, really good career ladder, by the way. And just study, like what they define to be the qualities of a software engineer, one versus two, versus a senior versus principal versus staff. You get to see the difference. There's more and more industry impact.There's more and more emphasis on communication. In fact, the more senior you go, it's the less technical elements are still a big part of it. But then you're also expected to be able to contribute on non technical elements, which I really. I want people to wake up to essentially even if you look at circle CII, which is one of the most technically rigorous companies out there something like 75% of their promotion criteria are essentially non-technical which people don't really realize.Like it's not something that you learn in bootcamp or in, your CS degree that, Hey, you should be good at communication or understanding how your technology fits into the broader business strategy. But that's something that people put on the career letter. And therefore you are incentivized to learn about that as you want to progress in your junior and senior path. Does that, I want to pause cause I've gone on for a bit does that help it? Yeah. Yeah, Robert Haritonov: [00:10:58] for sure. I'll have to. Search your your resources, swyx: [00:11:01] but I'll definitely check that out. By the way, talking with me is like this I always go I have a blog post of that, and that's a strategy to, you like straight up, like I'm someone making fun of myself, but think about what if you had that at work, right?What if you you had a conversation, but then you had a really well thought through written thing to back it up so you can send it to whoever you're talking to. Like people will just like you, you're not only sound smarter. I don't sound super smart right now because I haven't really been thinking about this topic recently but.You just sound more prepared like you've covered all your bases and like... the bit rate of trends of information transfer right now from me to you is not very high, right? Like it's just whatever I can think of. And I'm not very good on the wall, but while I'm writing, I can structure things, organize things, make links and follow up references and stuff like that.That's just really, really smart. Write things down and I think it's a really good skill of a senior developer. Yeah. Shawn, sorry, I'll Robert Haritonov: [00:11:53] stop you here. We've been swyx: [00:11:54] Hiked out. We have Robert Haritonov: [00:11:55] so many listeners here. There is all the questions and the ex chat as well. People do have some issues when they try to get on stage.So I suggest people also to ask the question in check, swyx: [00:12:07] And Shawn, the kitchen since there all the Robert Haritonov: [00:12:09] questions. Maybe let's live with one swyx: [00:12:11] question for the first time, Robert Haritonov: [00:12:12] Just to try covering water base as, yeah. There's just a swyx: [00:12:15] lot of Devin chatter here. People might have been with Q as first, Robert Haritonov: [00:12:19] like you.And swyx: [00:12:20] then there are questions. Yeah. And feel free to just ask stuff in and I can answer asynchronously on the text chat. 12:30 The Importance of Communication and How to Do it WellQuestioner: [00:12:34] Your previous answer really helps the transition  to this question.As far as I know, something super important to become a senior, our communication skills. Do you agree with this? I guess you do. If you do, what resources do you recommend and what tips do you have? The things that you wished you knew during the transition process, when you might've felt lost.swyx: [00:12:50] Oh, that's an interesting question. So of course I believe that communication skills are very important. In fact, it's probably one of the most common things that are in the career ladder. If you study them  so very important and I will also volunteer that. I don't think I'm very good at it.I'm decent. I, I don't fail my own evaluation, but I've seen people who are way better than me about it. So I think resources wise there's a lot about communication across cultures, which is something I think about a lot. One thing I can point you to is I think the lady bug podcast, I think a lady bug FM or something like that, they did a whole episode on communication skills, which I quite recommend the D they have some tips about just.Understanding how it comes across how you come across. And really having empathy for what the other person is thinking and feeling. A lot of the times we have to understand that we're not just, let's say you're doing a code review you and you're pointing out flaws in somebody's code.It doesn't reach them that you're trying to help. Unless you break down that barrier, that kid and remind them like, Hey, I'm on your side. You have to break, go past like the emotional  barrier of Hey, does this is this person a threat? Are they making fun of me? There's all sorts of things going on the other person's head.And you have to reassure them like, no, I'm really, I'm your partner. I'm here to help. And that's something that is, it is a skill as well. And particularly in some some cultures where. Sometimes the respect for authority is, can be very different. The the expectation of like your, the message that, that has received.If it, if you say something once, do they, is the responsibility on the recipient or on the deliverer to make sure that the message went through. These are all things where communication has led to real disasters before like planes crashing, because People thought that, the message was delivered and it wasn't.So I don't know. I don't like, this is a huge topic. I don't know if I've fully answered your question, but I think when in doubt, just write more whether it's like writing up your decision on, like, why you make a technical choice, they just write it in a comment, I think or just like your PR.One of my most popular interview blog posts when I was at Netlify was how we do feedback ladders.So I think if you do, if you look, if you Google, like Netlify code review or Netlify feedback ladders, you'll get this post where we actually have a system for encoding what we're trying to say, because it's when it, when you're in a, when you're in a cold, medium there's a difference between cold and hot mediums.When you're in a cold, medium, like a GitHub PR review, people can read a lot into, like, where do you put it? A period at the end of your sentence are you being passive aggressive right now or are you just, making a joke or are you, is there a sarcasm? Is there do you think this is a big deal and I should handle it right now? Or is this just a comment? Take it or leave it. There are all these little subtle nuances that you can skip. If you have a clear code that you communicate with your coworkers with. And I think the last point I'll make is for feedback reviews which I really like is preemptively review your own code. So that you save one round trip. So when you make a PR you just think about okay, what is this person going to say? I've worked with them enough. Let's like emulate them in my head and go like, all right, what are the typical comments that they would make and just anticipate them and then write your response.And just by the sheer act of doing that, people would really appreciate it. And they understand that you've addressed their concerns and now they can move on to you with the more important stuff that they sell them, get the chance to get to. So I there's a lot here, communication is a really deep topic.And I'm not the authority on that. Like I just think that people should practice it more and realize that it is as important to them as their coding skills. Questioner: No. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for your answer. Do you have any resources that you're looking at? I don't want it to be like a one way street.  Not me specifically. I'm trying to ask around as well, just to learn as much as possible. It has a communication resources. Just pop it in a discord channel. That's next to this room. That's a crowdsource. This thing. That sounds amazing, actually. Yes. Yes. On the same note you already answered this as well. How do you describe a senior? What should developers aim for mostly, if there's anything else you want to add and regarding the resources, how can we get your senior to junior coach?swyx: [00:16:37]  Oh yeah. So that's a chapter in the book. I can I will look at releasing I'll look at printing it out so that I can just release it for free in the channel. But essentially, yeah I, I wrote this, I wrote the, I wrote my book Linden, public.org. I wrote the whole thing just to address this answer of the principles, strategies, and tactics that I use to get to where I am, and also the behaviors that I observed in the people that I really admire.So I have about 1400 links for people that go down a lot of rabbit holes. Yeah, hopefully that helps. But I can read out, do I don't, do we have a lot of time left? I feel like we're, we might be a bit out of time. Cause we have, we can create, we can do Robert Haritonov: [00:17:18] like a microphone, 34 hours myself, but let's first go through the majority of general questions as an exit face. Yeah. So based on gone, sorry, I'll remove you from the audience so that people can ask questions. Thanks, CRS. Joining us for awhile. CRS, whatnot. And three eight, go ahead and ask your question.17:30 Prioritization, Batching and Pair Programming swyx: [00:17:36]   I guess they think that and answering questions for all your junior developers. How do you go about that? Yeah, it's a fair question. I think the vast majority of senior developers should be writing their own code still. There are more senior positions especially management as well as architects positions, where you might be writing a lot less code.But a lot of times you'll will be balancing between reviewing and mentoring others versus writing your own code and being an individual contributor. And that's a little bit challenging. But I think you should be able to find time like obviously mentoring and working with the team is very important.And then you should be able to figure it out. How to fit in your your individual work separately, on your own something I picked up from my ex boss, Sarah Drasner is that she actually batches her work. So if you look at her blog posts, CSS tricks, prioritization, just Google that she laid down this philosophy of basically batching this work, like individual work goes on Thursdays and maybe a bit of Fridays and then meetings are Mondays and Tuesdays, and she is coming at it from a management point of view.But I really think that it also applies to an individual contributor as senior dev, right? If you have a lot of sort of review work batch those meetings together and also try to upgrade your bandwidth again make it very, it's very easy to pair program. People don't do it. And th the every time you do it, both sides learn something about either the way you work, or learn a new trick in the editor.It's a very high bandwidth communication skill. I would recommend that batching and then pair programming.Robert Haritonov: [00:19:06] So have a role SKUs that I joined and then a super Shawn quick. Now it's there, there's some voice of community that's me as with you. So there's no big on nice push check, push. You brought up because it's constant sound from your diagnostics and they're all discussed definitely to not having to ask your question. 19:20 What can Seniors Do to Help Foster Juniors? Apprenticeships, Mentoring, Sponsorship and AllyshipQuestioner: [00:19:23] Okay. So my question is more coming from the other end. I'm a senior kind of more experienced developer and I'm wondering. Kind of what I can do to help people, or what are things senior does or not doing to help foster junior devs? Cause I don't, I want to know what I can do to make more people more diversity, like the industry, a better place to work in.Wow. Okay. This, so I thought there was this was a question about people already on your team, but you're still saying the industry as a whole. That's great. Questioner: [00:19:53] Yeah. I know. Like I can start with my team, but obviously one good safe, it's going to be a ripple effect.swyx: [00:20:01] So my direct answer is someone who changed.I changed careers at age 30, right? The right answer is more internships and apprenticeships for people with non-traditional backgrounds. We at tech companies have a lot of re entry routes for people for traditional degrees, like CS degrees. But then if you just went a different way and then came in to, to the tech industry later in life, you don't have those opportunities.And I think a lot of people, especially of, diverse backgrounds would benefit from that. So that's my immediate shout out. And my wishlist is if I could wave a wand and have every single company take in, two more. Interns or apprentices. I think that we do a lot better just because the main thing is to get people to experience, and after, six months, a year of apprenticing and interning under someone else, they will have a lot better of a resume to, to go job hunt. And that then they're off, they're they're off to the races.  I think the other thing I think is also opening up opportunities for people.So as someone who's a very plugged in and very capable. People will throw a lot of opportunities to you and you need to be aware of what you don't necessarily you, you could do in your sleep, but you don't necessarily have to do, and it doesn't have to be done right this second that you can actually hold off and just go - Hey and open up this opportunity for someone more junior on your team to let them do it and you can start supervising.So I hope that's not like too, I don't know. It's not like delegation. Yeah. More, so much as like mentoring, right? Because ultimately your success is you make another one of yourself. I always say the best way to be a 10 X developer is to teach everything, to 10 people around you.Rather than the individually 10 X and do everything yourself. So I hope that those are the immediate things that come to mind. Obviously, I think donating actually helps a lot, like your money goes a long way with free code camp. And and also getting your company to sponsor those those diverse organizations and hire make sure make sure you like the hiring pipeline is equally diverse.That I feel like  I feel like I'm saying obvious things, but how does that resonate when you think about your question? Questioner: No, that, that makes sense. Especially yeah, the letting go, the things like I know, as a know, sometimes it is hard to let go something where you're like, this would take me, very quickly this time, but the mentorship which takes, a little bit longer is way more beneficial to everyone in the long run.swyx: Yeah. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I w I would call out, so some I actually forget who came up with this idea, I think was Lara Hogan. She defined a difference between sponsorship and mentorship and, or I think sponsorship in allyship as well. It's I feel like it's so weird for me to tell a woman this cause I'm not the expert on that myself.So I would recommend those resources as well. And I'm going to paste the list of diversity and tech organizations, which I've been really following and has been helping me learn a lot about this as well. Veni Kunche has a newsletter, which I encourage everybody here to sign up because she really has a balanced view, which I love which is okay, like we're not doing well.But she doesn't damn you for it. She just says, gives you a stern look and goes like you can do better in any way. Yeah. Yeah. We know. Vinnie crunchy of diversified tech. She has a great newsletter and if you want to, hire people of diverse backgrounds definitely go sponsor her.Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. 23:15 How to convince older devs to try new tech?Robert Haritonov: [00:23:16] know, let me try it on a museum. Supertramp can you Questioner: [00:23:21] ask your question? Yeah.  Okay, great. Hey Shawn. I had a question where essentially I don't enjoy working where I am right now.Mostly due to the lack of kind of the learning opportunities. Primarily my team, they really enjoy a very old version of PHP and I'm trying to convince them that there is some proof in the success of modern react or JavaScript or modern frameworks. I just wanted to ask if, did you have any tips to convince old PHP data's or old kind of web developers that it's okay to give some jobs could swyx: [00:23:57] Wow. Hmm. Why are they? I T I have to dig into that further. Why are they opposed to adding new frameworks and stuff? What is their stated reason. Questioner: [00:24:07] A lot of our products are very public facing. So they fear that if we make any kind of change that might affect like client facing products, they worry that it might break. So they just say, all right, we see what you're trying to do here. We want to, we understand that you want to improve our code, but it's currently working. So why do we need to fix it? swyx: [00:24:28] I have a lot of sympathy with the don't fix one in Brooklyn thing. I think that's actually something that people get to after a lot of pain.They're not necessarily wrong. But obviously what you're trying to do is also improve the user experience. And that's something that they should be prioritizing as well. Are they optimizing for their own comfort or are they really,  making a technical trade off.Here. So it's not clear to me, obviously I'm not in your situation. And I can't really speak for them. But ultimately I think there's only so much you can do as an engineer. That's probably junior to them. You make your case and you make a S a strong, where you can do is for example, like a proof of concept.I'll give you one example, the a friend of mine, Zach Argyle  he actually worked at Pinterest where he was trying to advocate really strongly for a progressive web app. And everyone at Pinterest was just like, no, like it's a waste of time, whatever. And he was ignored for two years. And the way he got through was he did a hackathon where he just built a basic Pinterest PWA and shown the really high.And, metrics that you can get in performance as a PWA, directly to the CEO and that impressed them so much that they converted themselves to a PWA. So sometimes you have to do a stunt like that to get through to people. But ultimately you cannot convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced.It just doesn't have an open mind. And I was already decided that their answer is right. And in that sense, you got to look out for yourself, right? So there are plenty of other developer companies will love to hire someone like you who's passionate about modern technology and no judgment on them.Right? Like they're B they probably, they think they know what's best. But you should also figure out what's best for you.Questioner: [00:26:05] Thank you. I like I totally. Yeah I'm totally happy to hear that. There are potential solutions for like more and water like solutions for  the problems that I'm facing at my convenience facing. But if he has, like, whenever I try to present them, they Shut me off because of the fact that I'm like more of a junior developerswyx: [00:26:23] You have to earn it, right? There's a given get here. Like they have to make room for you. And if they're not the they're making a mistake but then also you shouldn't come in and just have them listen, like demand that they listen to you have to earn it as well. Maybe also look for small projects, too side projects that that they could split off to let you experiment. That don't matter as much to them. Sometimes you can do a lot of this through internal tooling, right? What do your sales or marketing or product managers need, build that for them and see that, see the benefits internally before rolling it out externally, right? These are all things that I've actually done because people weren't letting me do it. People don't let you through the front door, go to the side, go on the back figure it out. That's cool. Yeah, Questioner: [00:27:02] I'm actually only point of that topic. I did design like a next JS version of a, so what we did here is generate like what forms for people to put their data.And then we we do lead generation based off that data. And I did take that initiative and create a kind of like a front end, like next JS project. But then they looked at it and they thought that this was cool, but then they didn't think it was scalable.And they, I tried to have like more of a conversation with them about that, but then they were well, yeah, we've been doing like HP or he needs it. He's older, like pretty much for a longer time. So it just felt like. At that point in, in the one that I was presenting the project I should also say that they were they're currently sponsoring me.I'm from Canada, I'm trying to like, I'm currently working in the UK. So at that point in time, I was thinking like, this is I think the third or fourth time, they disregarded my kind of my attempt, to improve the, let's just say the initial code base. swyx: [00:28:02] I appreciate your Tufts situation supertramp and happy to chat with you. Async as well on the discord. Yeah, of course. Thank you. Robert Haritonov: [00:28:09] All right. So if anyone else wants to ask a question, raise your hand. We'll set the stage. Meanwhile, Shawn, you can just cram maybe swyx: [00:28:16] through your questions Robert Haritonov: [00:28:17] in the  light. Maybe you get a big swyx: [00:28:21] face on that.If people were trying to hire a super Supertramp andIt's a good idea to, yeah. Honestly, I find a lot of people changing jobs at conferences. It's a really nice thing to see and good for labor mobility, but maybe not so good for employers sending people to conferences. I don't know, but if you're confident in your employer brand, then you should be a net hire from conferences.And if you're not, then it should not be so good for you. 28:45 Nontraditional background. How to convince people to let you through the door? Networking and Personal Content Marketing.questioner: Hey Lucy. Lucia. Yeah, Lucy was here. I don't know. So I'm actually a developer who came from a very non-traditional background. And they did a bootcamp to get into our changed careers about two years ago now. So I did a four-month bootcamp and I managed to secure my first job, which was amazing. When I was transitioning from my first job to my second job, the issue I was encountering was I wasn't even really being given the chance to get through the door for the interview.The few interviews I did get, I found that if I got to that stage, I was able to convince them that I was a good candidate. I got a couple of offers, which was amazing. So my question was like, how do you convince people to let you through the door? Just from your CV, if you're forming a more non-traditional background.Wow. Yeah, that's a challenging one and there are a number of ways, essentially networking is the one that comes to mind, it's my friend Gergely Orosz wrote a... Little, I think it's a free book called the tech resume inside out maybe. I'm not exactly sure. What his book is.I want it, someone, let me look it up. But he actually had this, he had he'd look at the numbers, and a lot of people don't get through the first screen, which is the resume review screen. Cause people take a look at your resume for 30 seconds. And it's a very inefficient  transmission format.Cause you're supposed to serialize your experience and your potential down to a single piece of paper. And you hope that they have the correct deserialization algorithm to, to do that and figure out that Hey, you're someone that they should be talking to. So I really liked the other way of networking within the company and getting a warm introduction so that they not only skip you to like the next step where you actually do a proper interview, a phone screen. They also give you a few hints as to what the company values and what you could be doing there because ultimately you want to have a good answer for like, why are you interested in working with us?And that's something that you really get from like understanding the company really well and talking to people internally within the company. So that's one thing, I it's, I think it's a very common thing to say Hey if I buy your coffee we we let me pick your brain. Don't use those exact words because picking your brain is extremely overrated in 2021, but you could go I'm interested in applying I, and I'd love to learn more about your day to day stuff like that. It's just a very genuine people know what you're trying to do.And we've all been in your shoes. That'd be not all, but we appreciate that. You're trying to get somewhere and I think people really appreciate the effort that you put in to even like a cold email, right? To say Hey, we've never met, but like you work at this company, I really interested in it.Do you have 15 minutes to chat? Most people will say yes. And I think that's a good way to get going. If we're doing this in person, I would actually not recommend coffee. I'd recommend a walk in the park which is something I used to do in New York. Okay. The other thing I really like is the permissionless application, right? You're applying through a CV and, you may have a portfolio if you're a more design and front end oriented person. But you can also do Like a breakdown. So some, a story I really liked was this woman who was very interested in working on marketing for Airbnb and realize that, she was wanting to show some in the middle East.And she realized that the Airbnb didn't really have an middle Eastern presence. So she mocked up a fake site. That just looked like Airbnb and just demonstrated her potential as someone who could do that. She worked in marketing, but you could equally work, do that for engineering, right?Like just do a simple CLO and talk about a specific algorithm that that you could work on. A friend of mine from my bootcamp actually broke down the collaborative filtering algorithm of Spotify and she got an interview there. Because it, it went viral.So like people were Spotify would definitely noticed. But it just shows a level of commitment and interest that most people don't have because you're not praying. It's the industry term is called spraying and praying, like anything that you think that you can do to show that you genuinely have interest, and you're not just like throwing your resume every which way.I think that actually just puts you in front of the line. So that's my quick take. Yeah. Ultimately, so ultimately you won't start this way, but ultimately what you want to get to is you want to be, you want to have your domain and your sort of expertise. So well-marketed that people come to you, right?Whatever you're particularly interested in winter where there's animation or accessibility, or responsive design, whatever it is, you want to be such an authority on that. And people come to you for things that you're interested in. And then the hiring conversation becomes very different.It's more about whether they're a fit for your interests whether as compared to, can you contort yourself to something that they need right now, which is at the end of the day, like if you apply to the company in the end, they're just not hiring. You're not getting in the middle of what so it's really dependent on those things, but hopefully I've given you some ideas here.Yeah. That actually has been really helpful because it actually talks with. My experience in that, one of the offers that I got was specifically because I've been to around them meetup talk and messaged someone who'd been talking and was basically saying saying things like I'm struggling to, to get people to listen to me, but I feel like I'm a really good candidate.Yeah. And then I just struck up a conversation with him online reading 10 and from that I then got an interview which then led to an offer which was awesome. But yeah, I actually hadn't really thought about it in that way, but actually yet it really does make sense. What we're really doing here for those interested is we're doing personal content marketing is the same thing that companies are doing for their brands and their products.And we can do it on a personal level. Cool. Lucy, thanks, sir. That's a great question.  Go ahead and answer your question.Just remember to push book. 34:00 How do you make technical decisions as a senior and avoid getting stuck? Innovation Tokens, Action Produces Information, Pay for AdviceQuestioner: [00:34:07] Hi I'm a big fan of your writing in your blog, Shawn, thank you. What I wanted to ask is related to in a situation where you're given a bit more responsibility as a senior, and you have to start making decisions, especially technical ones regarding the stack regarding specific things you need to accomplish for a client or a project.And how do you maybe are how do you not get stuck in that, in the, over analyzing the specific decision, not just to not make a mistake for your client or for your product, but also not bother your, or add overhead to your teammates as well and your colleagues in. To not to create issues later on, on a project, sometimes you get stuck in the decisions so much that you feel like you can move on. I dunno if there's something that all the time swyx: [00:34:57] Are you familiar with the concept of innovation tokens? And no, actually kind of her. Yeah. I think this camp I'm not sure where this idea came from, but people who'd go Google the source, but essentially the idea is to minimize risks but to allow some innovation, right?The tech stack that you work on work with for a client it should be something that you're mostly familiar with and you're confident that you can ship in time and on budget. But you allow yourself, to innovate or try new things in one or two areas of your tech stack, and that's your sort of innovation credit or innovation budget.And yeah, so to me, that's where you want to get to that may not necessarily be where you are right now. First job is to have a set of technologies, which are. Which the whole team is confident in, right? To me, I call this like a minimum spanning set of technologies that like, you can pretty much string together to accomplish any tasks.They may not be the best tool for the job. They might, wanna be the trendiest tool, but they do the job. And then you allow yourself in every project to try a new piece of technology that you want to include in your tech stack and try it out on a real project.So that's what comes to mind for now, I think obviously where I don't really understand why you're paralyzed. I think that there's something deeper there. Can you tell me more about the analysis paralysis or I forget what you call it, like the stalled decision.Questioner: Yeah, I guess it was not a, it's not just a specific  situation I'm talking about. Maybe,  Maybe does happen when you you were given more responsibility. I do not, you don't know how to approach it. It's not necessarily choosing a JavaScript framework, but making also bigger decision on on different elements of how the team is supposed to work together either technically or not. And sometimes it does happen. I don't have I don't want to go into very specific because there's multiple cases where it does happen. Maybe it's personal to me and just wanted to hear about maybe similar situation and how other people dealt with it. And you were, I mean, perfect example.swyx: [00:36:43] Yeah. If anyone has ideas let's cross source this as well. Cause I, I feel like I don't really it's so broad this question and it can go so many different ways.  To me, it's something that you have to agree on it as a team. If you have a.I guess if you're in the position of leadership, then obviously you're in charge of proposing and helping, having to serve as a tie breaker. If you have a client, sometimes they have a very strong opinion and you can present them, twice HSB and then let them choose. These are all really nice ways to basically offload the decision.Ultimately I think a lot of things are a lot of decisions are reversible, right? If you think about type one and type two decisions which is a Jeff Bezos type of framework, I'm trying to understand if your decision is reversible or not. And if it is then just doesn't matter which one you try it out, just try it, try something out for a few weeks.And then if you don't, if it's not going the way you think it is, then you can go try the other thing. Ultimately the way I approach any sort of analysis paralysis now is this idea which I got from the sun newsletter called common cog. It's called action produces information, right? If you've done any, if you've done all your research, you've asked everyone and you're still stuck between two options or three options.Then no amount of further studying and worrying and hand-wringing is going to help you. You need to take action, whether it is commitment to one thing. And then you realize that no, actually everyone did the other thing. Or it is taking ticket for this step of running a small proof of concept or asking for more mentorship somewhere within your organization or just your, an external mentors.These are all like, you can even go as far as like paying someone for their advice, right? These are, this is a super, highly underrated thing in the company environments. Like people are available for hire, like max Storybird is available for hire. If you want any react to architecture advice, he's not cheap.But he's available. And so what other people so yeah, that's  as much as I get, I can go I don't have much to work with on the question. Robert Haritonov: [00:38:35] That was very, very helpful actually. swyx: [00:38:37] From my perspective. So, thanks. Yeah. Thank you. It's given me something to think about as well, and hopefully I can write a better answer in the future. All right. We have a couple other questions and I have a few more minutes, so let's get this going. Pokey juice from Poland. I'm guessing.  I'm inviting them. I'm going to drop by the way for those still in the room, I'm going to drop the chapter for junior engineer versus CD engineer.And we can have a better discussion there because I feel like I didn't really do enough prep for that. Hey pokey.  Hello. So I would like to address the previous in person or in, at talk question, and because I had a very similar situation that I'm like slowly progressing to higher roles.And it sounds so overly stressful to decide yeah. And good to make the decisions. And the thing that helped me that, which I have recently found out is that unless you are in a company, which has two people and you are the most experienced one in that company, then there's always slept the bigger fish in the company, more experienced.And you can ask them for for help or you can ask older people who maybe are not to give them the seminar. But to have more expertise in certain fields, or they haven't been working with certain technology and you can ask them how we do work for them. Yeah. So I have no question.This one. No. That's great. Thank you for chiming in yeah, it's a challenging position to be in and that's why you've made more money. Hopefully they're paying you for all this stress that you're taking.  Great. All right.  I am, by the way, I'm extracting my junior to senior chapter so we can invite more questions.I see a lot of questions also piling up in the text chat and I will drop my PDF in there so people can talk more stuff.  Okay. All right. So yeah, I've just posted that in the room. What else can I say about this? 40:30 Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the SolutionSomething I really want to emphasize, and I've been really trying to find the best words for this which is essentially that we should. Fall in love with the problem rather than the solution.And I think that's juniors may be defined, maybe falling over themselves to define themselves by the solution, right? Like I'm a react developer. Whereas seniors have probably been through a few of these cycles where like they've had, they've been super into something else before, and then they had to change frameworks and get changed frameworks again.And by the time you get to your second or third framework, you're just like, all right, this is another tool to solve the same problem. And ultimately the thing that lasts longer than the solution itself is the problem, because that will never go away. It will. It w it will just have different solutions that come along and with, and solve it with different trade-offs.So I hope that's a message that I want to get across that seniors. Basically collect patterns and problems and juniors collect solutions. And I want to guide people towards understanding problems deeply. And that's a lot of the way that, that the way that I structured my thinking and learning and speaking as well.So the talk that I'm going to give later in about 30 minutes is focused on what problems does react solve, and what can we learn that will outlast react?  I think that's, that's one way to go from junior to senior. Okay. I don't see any other questions I do have okay. Robert Haritonov: [00:41:55] All right.I just want more,even the act of discussion I'll be full if there's a topic. Thank you so much for everyone. Who's come by. Thanks. Yep. Hey Darren. Hello. 42:00 Can you still be a fullstack engineer?Questioner:  Hey, how are you doing? I just asked the question in the discussion, but I thought maybe you could ask her near him suggested that. So myself, I'm a full stack engineer, but.And the more I look at these big companies. Now you see all the postings are from our backend or our front end and not really CFO's stacks. I was just wondering your opinion on maybe focusing on one of those things that you're more well versed in, or is it still that it's supposed to engineer still an achievable thing to work towards these days?swyx: Wow. Ah, great question. There are definitely people hiring full stack developers. You just got to find them. I don't know where you're getting this impression that people aren't hiring full stack. I feel like they're, it's actually a lot, it's a meme in the U S where they, once someone to do everything.I would say, yeah, I'd say it's definitely achievable. I just think it's not as realistic at some level of scale because ultimately there's, this is meme where it's like this. Horse where either your joint you're during the front end really well. And then the back end is like a really crappy children's drawing or are you drawing the back really well in the front is just like this really  really childish imitation version.There's some trade-off to be made. And ideally there's some level of specialization that you have where you can actually, market your skills in in, in a good way to and it probably involves specialization as well is what I'm trying to say. So full-stack is great for people who want generalists.And if you want to, for example, be a startup founder or an indie hacker yourself that's definitely something to pursue and to be well rounded. But if you want to be a specialist, a consultant an industry authority, you probably should specialize. And those two are not at odds, but you probably want to market yourself in some, in based on what you're trying to tell to your clients and your employers right now.Great. Thank you very much. Yeah, I've heard the thoughts on like specialization versus generalization. There's a separate chapter of mine but essentially the TLDR is that everyone is a generalist in some way. And when in doubt, you should be specializing because that's where you learn how to be an expert and learning to be an expert and crossing that sort of learning gap in itself is a skill.And then also marketing it's way easier to market yourself. So I have a friend who's called, who is Cory house. He's a reacts consultant. He specializes in transitioning big companies mostly from angular to react. But that's not his only interest. He's got a lot of other interests and he actually is a pretty full stack developer just based on a history, but he chooses to market himself as a reactive Oliver.And he, and when he did that, his consulting practice 15  in one year, And in terms of inbound inquiries, you can go look up his his tweet channel he'll he'll back that up.  And that's just because marketing a response to niches, it's like a specialization. If you see any expert in something people believe in more rather than I can do anything.Forget. Thanks very much for that. Yeah. Great questions everyone. I see a lot more in in the chat and I have to go through and answer them. But hopefully this is useful and this is fine. I had no idea what to expect a new media. Thanks all Shawn for drink. Hopefully we'll be able to replace it Robert Haritonov: [00:45:11] again.Yeah, the topic is really, really in demand. You had a really solid conference level audience and just this small room for joining these for all your insights. swyx: [00:45:20] So yeah, Robert Haritonov: [00:45:21] hopefully you'll be able to reply there. Any questions and shout whenever you have time. swyx: [00:45:27] 30 minutes. I'm excited.It's is yeah, I love the sock. All right. Thanks for having me, Robert. And thanks everyone for coming. Bye. See you soon. Robert Haritonov: [00:45:34] Cheers. swyx: [00:45:35] Bye.

Shawn was diagnosed with Asperger's at 42 years old.  After he got that diagnosis, he realized what was up with him, and that allowed him to achieve success in his professional life above and beyond anything he could have imagined. After completely rebuilding several hospital systems as CIO, he became an entrepreneur focusing on entrepreneurial healthcare, technology, around analytics, revenue cycle and clinical informatics. He left corporate America behind hiring nearly 150 employees to create his own neurodiverse workplace culture. He’s been granted multiple patents, created dozens of healthcare analytics platforms, is a well respected speaker and author. In 2019 he sold his company to private equity and is spending the rest of his life, embracing neurodiversity, and the powers in the logic of leadership, personal security, and self-esteem in one's uniqueness. I love that. He's currently CIO of Potentia and CSO/Founder of the Neurodiversity Foundation and that’s what we’re talking about today! Enjoy!   A little more about Shawn:   Shawn Fry became a successful executive and entrepreneur after being diagnosed with Asperger's at age 42. He found success in his professional career only after he was afforded the opportunity as the CIO of several hospital systems to exercise a great deal of autonomy  in his role.  Shawn's propensity for detail, hard questions, and divergent solutions produced millions in both new revenue opportunities and cost savings for his employer. His innovative approach to the complexity of healthcare data laid the foundation for his entrepreneurial healthcare technology firms centered around analytics, revenue cycle, and clinical informatics. Through these ventures, he left corporate America behind, hired nearly 150 employees, and created his own "neurodiverse workplace culture. Shawn found that by cultivating  an environment-dependent upon open, honest dialogue, clear communication, and vulnerability, the workplace culture was more supportive and accommodating to everyone's needs. People were happier, more productive, and turnover rates were 0% after nearly 15 years.  Shawn is a holder of multiple technology patents, which he utilized to create dozens of healthcare analytics platforms. He remains a well-respected speaker and author on critical healthcare issues. Shawn sold his company to private equity in 2019 and has dedicated the rest of his life to embracing neurodiversity and the powers it unlocks through thought leadership, personal security, and self-esteem in one's uniqueness. As CIO of Potentia and The Neurodiversity Foundation founder, Shawn continues to build pathways for others on the spectrum to recognize their ability. He is a firm believer in "Strengths First."  During COVID-19, Shawn created the Potentia Health Registry (PHR), an information management and communications tool used to mitigate risk and provide early detection of COVID-19. He is now bringing this highly customizable solution to school systems and communities looking to reopen successfully.  ***CORONA VIRUS EDITION***   In this episode Peter & Shawn discuss:  :40-  Intro and welcome Shawn Fry  2:26-  So what were you doing up until your diagnosis at 42, and were you happy? 5:13-  On the others’ perception of Neurodiversity  6:36-  Failure by assimilation. Neurodiverse “common sense” versus “we’ve never done anything that way before, are you crazy?” The highway is littered with great ideas that have been run over because managers didn’t bother to act on them for fear of what other people would think. 9:07-  On educating others on how neurodiverse brains work, leveraging strengths and breaking down stereotypes. 11:11-  The need to create an audience/creating the space & grace to allow us to DO what we do. 12:45-  Regardless of market research money is going to move the needle; if you understand how to work that system, everyone benefits. 13:30-  On using “reduction” to help neurotypical people comprehend. Ref: Cataloging research at The Neurodiverse Foundation 14:30-  On growing up neuroatypical  15:11-  On out-gauging IQ tests / the “show your work” mentality of testing 16:27-  You have answers that people probably need to know about! But here’s the thing.. 17:00- On Data Science 18:35- Tell us how people can find you?  Via LinkedIn email: Shawn.fry@potentialworkforce.com  www.NeurodiversityFoundation.org potentiaworkforce.org  and @shawncfry on Twitter  INSTA 21:30-  We’ve gotta have you back. This has been phenomenal. It's so nice to hear what you're doing and I love the fact that you're doing it for all the right reasons.  You guys are listening to Shawn Fry, thanks again, we're going to have you back in the new year. I appreciate you taking the time.  21:44-  Alright guys, Faster Than Normal...as always, we want to hear what you hear. Leave us a review, let us know what's up. Talk to us about what's happening on the street, you name it.   You can always reach me via peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterThanNormal on all of the socials. Drop us a review at any of the sites that you listen to podcasts on and let us know if you have any good guests.  Shawn is phenomenal one, if you have any as good as Shawn, we'd love to hear about them. Have a great week. ADHD and all forms of our diversity is a gift, not a curse.  We will see you next week. Stay healthy, stay safe, wear the mask, talk to you soon. 22:08-  Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits! As always, leave us a comment below and please drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse! Do you know of anyone you think should be on the FTN podcast? Shoot us a note, we’d love to hear!   TRANSCRIPT:  Hey guys, Peter Shankman, this is Faster Than Normal, where ADHD is a gift and not a curse, and we love that you're here. It's been a week since our last podcast.  So it's always nice to see you guys back. We're recording a whole bunch of them the last week of the year, and so,  this is another one. It has been non-stop all day, we've been talking to so many brilliant people and our guest today is no exception. We're talking to Shawn Fry, we're going to entrepreneurship today.  So Shawn was diagnosed with Asperger's at 42 years old.  After he realized that, after he got that diagnosis, he realized what was up with him, and that allowed him to achieve success in his professional life above and beyond anything he could have imagined. The CIO of several hospitals systems... completely rebuilt them, redid them, then he became an entrepreneur, focusing on entrepreneurial healthcare, technology, around analytics, revenue cycle, clinical informatics. He left corporate America behind, hired nearly 150 employees, created his own neuro diverse workplace culture. He got multiple patents under your belt, you've created dozens of healthcare, analytic platforms.  You're a well respected speaker and author on tons of different healthcare issues. You sold your company in 2019 to private equity. Spending the rest of his life, embracing neurodiversity, and the powers in the logics of leadership, personal security, and self-esteem in one's uniqueness. I love that. He's currently CEO of Potentia and the Neurodiversity Foundation.  Let's talk about that, Shawn, welcome to Faster Than Normal man. Thanks Peter, thanks for having me. And now it's great to have you. So what were you doing up until 42. And were you happy? That was a mixed bag, I wasn’t you know, I grew up...I grew up in Philly, you know, and there was no diagnosis back then, right, I was just a kid….very disruptive, uh, didn’t know how to socially integrate, uh, you know, I either had hyper-focus, or no interest whatsoever. I was voted the laziest person in my high school, which is so comical now to look back at it, you know, people have a tendency to cast dispersions on us when they don't understand, and, uh, what's interesting about my diagnosis with Asperger's,I was a CIO of a hospital system. I was meeting the Chief Medical Officer, he was a close personal friend who knew me. We worked together pretty regularly, even though I'm not really good with people, I'm really good with data so I was able to, there's a long story behind the pathway, of how I got there, uh, another person with Asperger's interceded and got me into the hospital where I could, where I could work and shine and show the skills that we have. Uh, but I, I asked him, I said, Hey, John, can I, should I take some medicine for my ADHD? And he goes, he looks at me.. we were sitting over,  lunch together, and goes, “you don't have ADHD.”  I was like, what do you mean? I said, I'm so hyper, I never slow down. He goes, Nope, you're an Aspbe.  I was like, what's that? He goes, you have Asperger's syndrome. I'm like, what's that? I was like, you know any, he said, Sean, you have autism. I'd never heard it before. And I was 42 years old, gone through the school system, gone through college with, and really struggled in life.  He didn't really know that because he only ever saw me more professionally where I could mask, like I think we all do, you know, we're always told to sit down, hold our hands together. not move around too much Of course, we’re wearing different masks for different locations.  Different masks for different locations, right. So I went home and I looked it up. I looked it up on Wikipedia and I tell you what, if you die, if you type into Google right now, what is autism? You will not find one positive thing.  Right?  I was pissed. sorry if that’s… you know. I was upset. I was mad at him. I didn't talk to him for two weeks until I started reading more about it. I, I, what my threshold to accept this about myself was, and then it just all started making sense. Right?  I was like, I refuse to let the standard definition, the clinical definition, the DSM definition of either ADHD or autism define me. I knew I was a good person. I had something to contribute. I had some success at that point, but I was so afraid to put myself out there, because I knew that if people saw me for what I really was, they would diminish you.  And now it was really the changing point in my life.  Well, the second you... the second you, when you, I mean, of course, if all you're reading about is how it's a negative, right. of course, the second that, you know, you publicize it, (indistinguishable) The whole world will think that you're a negative because that's what you’re seeing.   Right?  There's something wrong with me. I have, I have a learning disability, which is, which is, if you look at my history, it's the opposite. I think all of you, if you find one of our hyper fixations, or when (indistinguishable) u know, these are, we are the ones that change the world. I mean, I did it. I started working on problems, my patents were on mathematical formulas and telecommunications. Nobody paid me to do that, nope. I just decided, you know what, this is a problem we're solving.  Right.  And I started working on these uh, calculations and because of my, you know, my neurodiversity, I locked myself in a room for nine months and I would only leave on Wednesdays.  Nine months later, I walked out of there. Uh, had solved some of these groundbreaking telecommunications issues, then submitted those for patents. When they got to the patent office, nobody in the patent office knew how to do the math, because nobody's ever worked on the math this way before. and I was just starting to realize, well, because to me it was common sense, right?  How do we structure things? But I didn't do it because somebody paid me. I did it because it was a problem to solve, and... that's what we do.  I think you struck on something there I'd like to touch on. You know, the premise of, to me, it was common sense, right? You know, I have everything I've ever done in my life, to me, it was common sense, right? But…. but I can't tell you how many times I've suggested something that sounds perfectly normal, and everyone's looked at me like I told them I was a spotted owl, right?  You know, it's that… well, it makes perfect sense, why wouldn't we do it this way? And you know, you get everything from, well, we never do it this way, that's never the way we've done it, we've never done it that way. You know, what's wrong with you? What do they think of us, whatever. But in our heads we're sitting there going, but it works  Right, you are correct.  And I think that that's, that's difficult because that's sort of, sort of like it's failure by assimilation, right.  And the respect that if you're sitting there and you're saying, okay, I know this works, but everyone's going to call me an idiot. I don't want to have to deal with that. I'm just not going to bring it up. The highway is littered with, with, great ideas that have been run over because people didn't bother to act on them because they were afraid of what people would say. Uh-huh That was it, exactly, and again, one of the advantages I have of not being, and I want to talk about how neuro people.. who are neuro-diverse are treated now and to no longer take that stigma. One of the advantages I had of growing up in Philly is you kind of get that little edge to you, right? The people in Philly are tough, the people in New York are tough.  You kind of, you kind of let this stuff bounce off of you, so empowered with that and realizing that I was, you know, these ideas work. After I was diagnosed and realized that I think differently, and recognizing that had value, I started speaking up in meetings. I was afraid to do that before, because you know, first of all, a lot of people thought I was weird.  I don't go to lunches. I don't go to happy hours. I don't do things other people  like to do, but I'm super interested in my work. So I started speaking up about some of the issues both the administration was making in the hospital, and particularly…. what just drove people crazy, I started challenging the doctors… on their,  on the ways they were diagnosing patients, the way the care, the care plans, saying, listen either, there's one of three things, happened here with this patient. You either misdiagnosed them cause they weren't getting better, you provided the medication that can't metabolize, or they're not taking the medication.  Who’s going to follow up with this patient and figure out why this patient’s still sick?  Doctors don't have time for that. As I started analyzing the data, I realized this is a prolific issue. These are things that are still issues in healthcare today, and if you've ever gone to the doctor and he's put you on medication, you're still six, six months later, or things get better.  A lot of times people were put on medications that don't really work. They just get better naturally, these are, these are prolific issues that there's not a field of science  because it is a neuro divergent thought process, that neuro typically, simply don't synthesize. These are the kinds of ways that people like you and I, as you just like you, you're challenging the way people are thinking about, So many, so many issues, and there has to be a form to bring that to the market. And you're doing that and we need to create a louder voice. Our voices, our brains are not compromised. They do, they just run faster and they take more variables into consideration. It's the calculus that we're doing. Everything I do in my world. Everything is a math equation from the total number of times I brush my teeth, and in the weird pattern, which I do it, to how I organize my cereal and my closet, to how I organize my day. We're not just random people, but other people looking at us think we look crazy, but there's nothing wrong with that. It's actually, I, I, I, I'm a strengths first, everything from my foundation to the workforce, we're creating now is about listening. How do we leverage these strengths to people about their deficits? I talk about their strengths. And as they start to believe that, psychologically you start to see effective change.   I think there's also a, um, a premise in there…. that… I remember everything I've ever started, every company I’ve ever built, and you know, people that, Oh my God, it just seems like I didn't even hear about it yesterday and now it's all over the place…. you might, you know, you got so lucky. Well, yeah, it was also 20 years of acting the way I act and doing the things I do and dealing with it on the says, you're ridiculous for doing this, that brought me to this very moment. Right? And so the things that we do, you know, you wake up, every step you take, every cereal you eat... all that stuff, that's who we are. And the benefit is there. But again, a lot of us are, are, are bogged down by the look of it. Oh, what are people going to think, right. But the fact of matter is, not that we're changing anything, it simply works and we embrace it. (indistinguishable) One thing I think you're exactly right, but here's the thing. We have to figure out a way to create an audience for it.  have two children on the spectrum, so at least when they grew up, I had an idea of what kind of, what was going on and that began to manifest itself. So you start to develop and create a more creating space and grace for these people who have it, to see how they flourish.  Uh, the greatest experiment that I had, that I'd never realized it was the thing after I left, after I started speaking up in the hospital, I started realizing these, these data problems that were demonstrating how hospitals didn't click the document effectively didn't do follow up correctly. Sometimes they had poor treatment plans, everything that carried over into the revenue cycle, which is where I really made money.  When I started showing them, nobody listened to me until I showed them that these core client poor care plans cost us money. And I took the data and I showed them exactly how much money. And then all of a sudden people started to listen. It's sad that it got down to that, that being right and being truthful was not actually got me, uh, you know, constigated, a lot of pejoratives, but but showing him where the money was is what eventually, while people to listen. Well, actually it makes a lot of sense because, I mean, I remember even when I was working in the .com boom, right, and then the social media boom, right? We, you know, these, these, these CEOs, they hire these 20 something year old kids to handle their social media, and they convince by how many likes you have, and how many followers have you got?  Okay, great, how does it translate to revenue, and they can’t answer, right, and they’re out on their ass.  It doesn't matter what industry it is. Money's going to move the needle. And so the smart people are figuring out ways to connect the dots. I did some, some work in neuro diversity for a huge, um, uh, uh, uh, fast food restaurant. fast food chain And, you know, they realized that people were coming in and looking at the menu and leaving and they couldn't figure out why. And I spent several days with them going to multiple restaurants. Guys, you have 200 items on the menu. it's,, it's digital display and ads are overlaying it, and I wanted to blow my brains out 30 seconds here. Right? Let's go to this other place down the street. oh look, hamburger, cheeseburger, fries, shake done, you know, and all of a sudden there's a problem that makes sense. There's revenue, right? So the second you apply anything to money. and look, Is that right or wrong? I don't know. But at the end of the day, if you understand how to work that system, everyone benefits. Right. So in that process and the gap between the time I was 42, I'm currently 56, I had to come up with mental processes, mathematical formulas. And one of those is called reduction. I had to take the thoughts that we think in naturally, and you and I have zero problems thinking up, I track everything you're saying, I track what you're thinking behind what you're saying, you know? So... but when we talk to a neurotypical, it's overwhelming.  They, they, they, they, they, it's just so fast and so furious that they can't follow. And a lot of times they don't want to follow it’s too overwhelming. So reduction means taking these complex thoughts and reducing them down to something…. somebody, something somebody can make a decision on. It's typically one, two or three points, that's it.  So reducing that menu down, is a perfect example of, uh, you know, allowing people to make a decision because you have to take, we have to think in the complex ways and everybody listening to this podcast does that, to translate back down to neurotypicals that you almost need a Rosetta Stone uh, breaking it back down to something they can assimilate and synthesize. That's actually a phenomenal, a phenomenal way to put it, exactly. Part of my work at the Neurodiversity Foundation, is cataloging how people think, Uh, I have been a guinea pig since the time I was a child, because as a child, even though I had a really high IQ, I really struggled in school, uh, and they, you know, what's wrong with your kid?  Why isn't he trying? And it got to ...so it  wasn't a problem. I was the first person in my grade...in my school to be able to read. And then, you know, when I was reading, you know, I was reading tech manuals, military tech manuals, and they're run, you know, I'm like, Hey, listen, let me know if you find something interesting. I love it. So, we want, there are people think differently and it's never been cataloged. These IQ tests they gave me, eventually, as they did, as they started giving me these tests, I started realizing as we got to the higher range of the score, I was, I was starting to realize in these patterns how they were trying to gauge my intellect.  And I was like, look, I can break it down for you that way, but I can break it down for you. these seven other ways are equally as valid, but you're trying to compartmentalize my thoughts and… Exactly. I call that... I call that the show your work mentality.  Oh my gosh.  it’s (indistinguishable) You know, I, I don't look at things like their grades or even their IQ. I mean, you have to look at the types of thought they're capable of. IQ tests are not even designed to measure divergent thought. They're designed to measure conversion/linear thought, like everybody else they're automatically prejudiced against us.  Even though we do exceptionally well, we still score higher, but it still doesn't capture our top end. Most of the great revolutions taken on were by neuro divergent individuals for,,, whether there's Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates. These people of course are all they're all just like us. A perfect example was the, you know, the study on valedictorians,  Valedictorians are generalists. They know a little bit about everything and they know a lot about everything, but they don't really have a hyper fixation like we do. So if you're sitting out there and you're listening to this and you said, you know, whole lot about something, I don't care if it's logistics or supply chain or anything, you probably have answers that people need to know about., and that's why entrepreneurship is something that I try to lead people on because... we are the great entrepreneurs, but we need help if I didn't have, if I, you have to learn to surround yourself with people that can make a difference for you. And one thing that I didn't realize was I (indistinguishable) Uh, and we went on and we just, you know, I never took them.  I never borrowed $1. I took zero seed capital. I just started doing the math once the math was right. I knew I didn't need money. I just wanted to start doing the math for other people. I funded the entire company, which went on to be very successful, you know, making $20 million a year, things like that. Uh, literally on, on something I wrote up in a notebook one day and just started applying it into our data  When I presented it to the CEO, he literally cussed at me and threw me out of his office and told me I was crazy, and don't meddle in that department. The chairs that originally hired me overrode it and said, Sean, go do it anyway. I'll deal with you. You can't be fired. I'll go deal with it. After, when they originally filed those claims, we collected $126,000 when they filed my restructured claims, based on the math, we collected that we kept the $126,000. and got $500,000 additional revenue, and I never worked in that department, but the math led me to the truth. Right... data, data changes everything. but there are people out there, they have these degrees in data science, and then you get these certificates and things. There was no data science when we started doing it, why would I need a degree in data science?  This is a field that we created the neuro divergence out there, you know, just like cloud computing, all these buzzwords. We’re  usually doing it 10 years, 15 years before people ever even try, but we don't get credit for our work simply because it's not… categorized and cataloged by.... we are so far ahead of the curve, typically... we are entrepreneurs naturally. So, how do we parlay that into more success for individuals? And I'd love to answer any questions anybody has on how to go down that road.  I love that. I love that. Tell us how people can find you. Uh, the easiest way to find me. I'm on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnfry/  on the Linkedin…. um, my email address, if you want to reach me for work, is Shawn, Shawn.fry@potentialworkforce.com  Uh, where we're leading a program that takes all neuro divergence, whether your autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and things like that. We're creating, we have contracts in place, our first client was Chevron, our second client was (indistinguishable)  so we, when we started telling people that neuro-divergence, this is not a nonprofit.  I do have a non-profit foundation, where we do all the research, but this is a for profit, you know why? Because we make money for people. We don't want sympathy. And there are people out there that were labeled us as abelists,  and things like that. I hate that, I reject that label. I know there are, there are people out there and listen... I work with people all across the spectrum, nonverbal, nonambulatory, I love them, they're all special people. I love them just as much, but we have, we have a resource that's there to harness, and we become exceptional employees.  Real quick… the first program we started... was my company, I had 150 employees, and when I went on to sell the company to private equity, these Wall Street, private equity firms, they look at everything. And one thing they asked me, he's like, Hey Shawn, where's your files? You know, the lawyers come in, where's your files on turnover. I was like, what do you mean? He's like, where are all the people that quit and you fired, and I was like, well, after 15 years, nobody ever quit. They're like what? I've never heard of that, I didn't even know it was a thing.  So what I did though, was I created a company that worked around my proclivities and inclinations and things like that. I built a company that was designed around me... around my neuro-diversity and my sensory issues. In fact, I don't like to be overwhelmed in meetings and I don't want meetings to last more than 30 minutes unless they absolutely have to.  And it turns out that that actually was conducive, not just for the neuro-diverse employees. And I include people in there with, uh, PTSD. There are other things that make you neuro-diverse people, even people with personality disorders, that don't have integrated brains,  still qualify under neurodiversity the way I define it.  I’m creating an environment that's safe for them, psychological safety being the first thing.  And the first thing I tell people, I invert every equation mathematically, and I reward people for telling me what's wrong for complaining or, you know, the faster you told me that you made a mistake, the more praise you get. And people started having psychological safety. What I recognized, is that their productivity multiplied.  Having that ability, because most of us have been told, slow down, shut up, sit still, you know, Shawn, this is a listen-meeting, not a talk meeting. Oh, yeah. I've heard that one too. I heard that one too. Awesome, we gotta have you back. This has been phenomenal. It's so nice to,... to hear what you're doing and I love the fact that you're doing it for all the right reasons.  You guys are listening to Shawn Fry, Shawn. really, thanks again, man. We're going to have you back in the new year. I appreciate you taking the time.  Thanks for having me Peter. All right guys, Faster Than Normal...as always, we want to hear what you hear. Leave us a review, let us know what's up. Talk to us about what's happening on the street, you name it.  Peter Shankman (@petershankman) |Drop us a review at any of the sites that you listen to podcasts on and let us know if you have any good guests.  Sean is a phenomenal one, if you have any as good as Sean, we'd love to hear about them. Have a great week. ADHD and all forms of our diversity is a gift, not a curse.  We will see you next week. Stay healthy, stay safe, wear the mask, talk to you soon. Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at petershankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were performed by Steven Byrom and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week. 

It's episode sixteen of Too Many Shawns! A podcast where Shawn and Shawn watch and recap every episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and get distracted along the way. This week, Shawn continues to be missing and Rijul subs in again. So Shawn and Rijul watched the sixteenth episode of Clone Wars: The Hidden Enemy. In this episode, we flashback to the events that transpired right before the movie... which we still haven't watched. ONE DAY! Follow the Podcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TooManyShawns Email us at: 2manyshawns@gmail.com Follow Shawn on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shawniisnaughty/ Follow Shawn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Shawn_AFK Follow Rijul on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JazzyBlackSanta Follow Rijul's Podcast Rap Your Head Around This on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryhat19 Follow Rijul's Podcast Rap Your Head Around This on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryhat19 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

It's episode fifteen of Too Many Shawns! A podcast where Shawn and Shawn watch and recap every episode of Star Wars: the Clone Wars and get distracted along the way. This week, Shawn went missing and Rijul had to sub in. So Shawn and Rijul watched the fifteenth episode of Clone Wars: Trespass. In this episode, while investigating the disappearance of a clone security force, Anakin and Obi-Wan get caught in the middle of an escalating conflict between the furry territorial inhabitants of a desolate ice world and the greedy representatives of a nearby moon. Follow the Podcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TooManyShawns Email us at: 2manyshawns@gmail.com Follow Shawn on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shawniisnaughty/ Follow Shawn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Shawn_AFK Follow Rijul on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JazzyBlackSanta Follow Rijul's Podcast Rap Your Head Around This on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryhat19 Follow Rijul's Podcast Rap Your Head Around This on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryhat19 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Brandon: "The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers." Ralph Nader. I am Brandon Anderson and I'm a Tri-Cities influencer. Speaker 5: So to be a go-to guy or a go-to girl, you must push through your fear of failure. Introduction: Raising the water level of leadership in the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington, it's the Tri-Cities Influencer podcast. Welcome to the TCI podcast, where local leadership and self-leadership expert, Paul Casey, interviews local CEOs, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit executives, to hear how they lead themselves and their teams so we can all benefit from their wisdom and experience. Introduction: Here's your host, Paul Casey of Growing Forward Services, coaching and equipping individuals and teams to spark breakthrough success. Paul Casey: Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Shawn Sant. He is the Franklin County Prosecutor. And when I asked Shawn for something quirky or funny about himself, he had a fun little story that I'm going to let him tell. Shawn Sant: All right, well you asked about a story and I was just thinking of something recently just because the nicer weather coming out and it's bike riding time and I've always enjoyed riding the bike. And on this particular year, this was just a couple of years back, I got a new bike, new pedals, new bike clips, so still kind of getting used to the idea that I'm attached to the bike in a different way, and going for one of my favorite rides along the river on the Pasco side, it was time to take a break. I think I had to grab my phone out or something like that. So, rather than unclip and everything else, there was a nice little road sign along the path so I figured, "Oh this is great. I'll just grab onto that and lean against it." Shawn Sant: Still hooked in with my pedals and then lo and behold, I'm getting ready to go, I went to kind of push away but pushed a little too much and because I hadn't had forward momentum yet, I kind of tipped right on over and I was looking around to see if anybody saw this embarrassing moment, to see if I was going to be on a YouTube channel or whatnot. But anyway, that was my introduction to bike clips. So I was glad, at least, that I fell on the grass side so it wasn't too bad. Other than damaging my pride, I guess, of thinking I was an avid cyclist, so I guess anybody that saw found out otherwise. But maybe others had a worse- Paul Casey: That's awesome. That's awesome. Shawn Sant: So, I'll take the fall in the grass and learn that way. Paul Casey: That's right. That's right. I like bicycling too, but it's very recreational and I haven't taken the plunge with the clips yet. Shawn Sant: Yeah, it was a new experience for me, so. Paul Casey: Well, we'll dive in after checking in with our Tri-Cities Influencer sponsor. Paul Casey: The C12 Group is a national organization focused on spiritual and professional development of Christian CEOs and business owners. Members participate in professionally facilitated monthly meetings, during which 12 experienced Christian CEOs exchange ideas to solve business issues biblically. Additionally, members receive a 90-minute personal coaching session each month. Information is available from Tom Walther at (715) 459-9611 or online at C12Easternwa.com. Thank you for your support of leadership development in the Tri-Cities. Paul Casey: Well, welcome Shawn. I was privileged to meet you, I think it was at a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce event, but I've seen you in the community of many networking things and with some of my other attorney friends and just great to finally get to spend some time with you today. Shawn Sant: Yeah, glad, thanks for the invite. Paul Casey: So our Tri-Cities Influencers can get to know you, take us through some of your past positions and what led you up to what you're doing now? Shawn Sant: Well, I guess going back, even back in high school, I guess, one has an experience with the law of maybe driving a little too fast, as most a young teenage drivers do. So I guess I'd always been kind of having an interest in law enforcement. My grandfather was a retired police officer from Richland back in '69. He was actually a part of the original Richland police force when they transitioned from the Hanford site into an incorporated city in '59, and so I guess it's kind of been in the blood of having that interest, seeing his badges on the wall and things like that from his days as a Richland officer. So, I guess it started with me going for a ride-along with one of the Richland canine officers. And that really kind of got me hooked on what the profession was all about. Shawn Sant: I've always been a social kind of individual. Loved coming in contact with different people, and obviously in law enforcement it's a little different of the types of contacts we would have with people. But that was always something that I liked. I liked the job where every day was different. And so that kind of just caught my interest and I pursued the Reserve Academy at the recommendation of a couple of the officers that I rode with as a ride-along, and that was kind of it. Shawn Sant: You know, in my Reserve Academy class back in '92 I remember several of our participants, they've gone on to long careers and many are still in law enforcement today as full-time law enforcement officers. So that was kind of my start in that interest. It allowed me time to do that part-time as I went through school, working at UPS to get me through at CBC. Shawn Sant: I don't know why they call it a two-year degree because it seemed like I probably spent four or five years working at it between two different jobs. And of course I was trying to put in as much hours as I could. So there was times when I was putting in 40 hours a week with the officers writing on their shifts and getting my hours so I could eventually be qualified to be out on my own. Because once you have so many hours, you kind of progress from a third- to second- and first-class officer. At least that's how they did it at the time. And then once you had had enough hours, your training officer felt you were capable of going out on your own, you could basically do all the things that regular officers would do. Shawn Sant: And so that was a great start for me. That caught an interest and eventually I decided to pursue full-time law enforcement about three-and-a-half years later, hadn't quite finished up my degree yet and got married in '95 and so now I'm just starting a job as a new police officer out in Prosser now and did that for about two-and-a-half years and just decided that I always had that interest in law. I've always enjoyed the courtroom. I've gone to court a couple of times as a law enforcement officer to testify, and I always thought, you know what, I'd like to be the person in the room and being the one kind of directing the show, so to speak. And so that was kind of my thought and I was looking at opportunities of Do I go off to get a four-year degree somewhere. Shawn Sant: I always had been an admirer of many of my colleagues that had served in the military and I thought, you know what, I'm not too old, definitely not the younger of the guys that would go in right out of high school. So I actually got into the Air Force just before my 28th birthday and that was the cutoff. You'd have to get kind of special permission if you get older than that. So, of course, that was a new challenge for me. Now, I'm kind of referred to as Pop's among my young airman that I was with and as a former police officer. So that was kind of going backwards, contrary, I guess, to a lot of other people's job or career progression. Usually they get two or four years in military service out of the way when they're younger. So here I am almost 28 and joining. Shawn Sant: And so that was a great opportunity for me. We really enjoyed it, the family enjoyed it. We had one child at the time, got an opportunity to be deployed overseas a few different places, and I was able to finish up my degree during that time and looked at the possibility of going either to the JAG or something I had a passion for, which was going back to a prosecutor's office. So that worked out. Shawn Sant: So after the military, returned back to Moscow, Idaho, straight out of the military and began law school there in 2001 and that took me through for three years. And then we came back to Pasco and started as a deputy prosecutor in the Franklin County Prosecutor's Office. And so I got to now be in that position of handling all those cases that I had done previously out in the field of being the officer arresting folks for DUI or domestic violence or other felony crimes, and now I got to do that in district court and juvenile court as a young deputy prosecutor. Shawn Sant: So, anyway, I enjoyed that and I was looking for, you know, even in our office today, we don't have a lot of transition, which I think is a good benefit. People enjoy the work that they do for us in the office. And there wasn't a lot of movement and I knew that I needed to gain some experience handling more challenging cases. So I ended up leaving the Prosecutor's Office after a couple of years and went into private practice, and that gave me a great opportunity to be on kind of the other side of things. And I never thought, many of my law enforcement friends that are like, "What, are you crazy? You're a defense attorney now? What are you doing?" Shawn Sant: And it's like, well if you figure it out, it's like we all have an important role. We have an important role to ensure justice. And whether you're on the defense side or the prosecution side, we each have that important responsibility. And that's something I've really enjoyed. And sometimes it's hard to explain to people because they think that you're kind of aligned somehow with the representation of your client. And as anybody knows, if you're representing a client through the divorce process, of course you've got to zealously represent your client's position. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to agree with them philosophically or otherwise, but you have a duty or responsibility to serve them and make sure that they feel that you're giving them 100% to their cause within, of course, the ethical rules and in everything else. Shawn Sant: So to me it was a great opportunity. I was glad I had that opportunity to be on the other side, to be on the defense side. It has its own different challenges, but I enjoyed it. I thought, "Hey this is something I enjoy." I've always kind of taken a passion of meeting people and sometimes you're meeting people that have made a mistake and obviously they violated the law, but in that moment, you're able to kind of sit down and be almost like a counselor. And that's why oftentimes lawyers are referred to as counselors. Shawn Sant: And so I really enjoyed that part of it and that gave me experience representing people that are accused of homicide all the way down to low level DUI cases that I took. And so that just kind of gave me a good well-rounded experience. And you know, I always had wanted to be the prosecutor, to be the elected prosecutor, and I thought, you know what, I know it's kind of early in my law career, but you know what, I'm going to throw my name in, I think I've had a well-rounded experience up to this point. I had been on the law enforcement side, I've been on the defense side, I was a prior DPA and yeah, certainly never would claim that you know everything because the joy about the job is that you constantly get to learn something new. Shawn Sant: And so I decided to run for the elected prosecutor position in 2010 and I thought, "Hey, even if I don't make it, I'm letting people know that this is where my passion is." And at some point I would want to run again, even if I didn't make it in 2010. I was fortunate and blessed to have made it in 2010 and so I took office in 2011 and have been doing that since that time. Shawn Sant: So yeah, it's kind of been a ride with as far as the different experiences and opportunities. As a prosecutor you handle not just the criminal, those are usually the matters that catch up with the media and kind of what most people will follow, but we're also doing a lot of things behind the scenes. We're navigating employment issues, civil claims against the County. We're trying to defend and represent the County on various civil matters as well. We have the risk manager that's in my office and so I work closely with her and trying to navigate and limit risk to the County, which ultimately will protect the taxpayers both with security but also protect their financial interests as well. Shawn Sant: So that's been kind of a joy of continuing to serve in that capacity. So yeah, it's, it's been a great opportunity and I've enjoyed every kind of, I think everything that I've done over my life, from experiences in high school through being a reserve officer, they all kind of built up and given me a unique perspective on society. And I think that's an important part as a role as a prosecutor is being able to kind of understand the big picture. Paul Casey: Yeah. What a fascinating journey and I'm sure along the way you've been able to use your talents, your strengths. I'm a very big strengths-based leadership, kind of coach myself. What would you say are your key strengths that you've used all along the way and how do you use those to help those around you be successful? Shawn Sant: I think one of the things that I really appreciate with the way we do in our office is many times people might think, "Oh, you're the lead prosecutor, so you're really directing." Now certainly I am involved in all of our big cases, but I can't do that alone. I rely on a good team and I think what has worked best for us is empowering the deputies of my office to kind of have ownership of the course of a case. And so if they're working a case, for good or bad, I want them to have that experience along the way as well because that makes us all better attorneys. When you get a fall on the sword, so to speak, if like, you took it in a direction that maybe didn't play out, well, that's kind of a learning lesson. Shawn Sant: So my job of course is to make sure, one, we're doing everything legally and ethically in line and kind of creating a culture of trying to look at kind of a holistic approach for, what are the best ways we could protect our community? What are some of the best ways we could resolve cases? Because we have limited resources, we continue to grow, our population continues to grow, which means our crime rate is dropping because we have more law abiding citizens moving into our community. Right? Shawn Sant: But at the same time when you have more people, that just means necessarily you're going to have more cases. And so the office is busy and so we've had to kind of adopt a different kind of a strategy. And so we've looked at a program that my predecessor started, the Felony Diversion Program, and we kind of took it to a new level of trying to put a priority for when first time felony offenders as an adult when they come through, if it's a non-violent offense, non-sex offense, we're looking to really question what's the reason why this case should not go to that Felony Diversion Program? Shawn Sant: And I wanted to do a study to kind of evaluate is this an effective program? And so we pulled statistics from 2011 to 2017 to see how effective this program is. And what we found is that 84% of those individuals completing the program, they remained crime-free. So to me, I thought that was a great statistic. As I think what it does is it just like, I try to empower my individual deputies that are handling a case to have that ownership. If you put that kind of ownership on defendants, yeah, they're an adult, they're 18, but we all know, I mean I was 18 when I was still a senior in high school, and I know for certain I was not an adult by the means that you would think of as a mature individual, right? Paul Casey: Brain's not fully developed yet. Shawn Sant: Absolutely. And so I recognize that, there's been a lot of studies, I know a lot of the defense started doing that, but even prosecutors recognize that individuals, especially males probably that are 18 to 25, the males still lead the criminal majority, those committing crimes are males age 15 to 24, so that's still a very large age bracket. You've still got kids and you have kids transitioning to adulthood. Shawn Sant: So what we want to do is we want to be able to catch those individuals that may not have had an opportunity through the juvenile court system that is focused on rehabilitation or counseling and give those individuals an opportunity. If they got a first time felony offense, let's say someone did something stupid, went to Walmart thought it was a good idea to walk out with a big screen TV because it was super bowl weekend and they thought they could get away with it, but they didn't. And so now we got to figure out, well, let's see, what can we do? If we charge them with a felony, maybe they lose their job, maybe if they have a young family, now the person that's working is no longer able to provide for the family. And so what are the kind of the consequential impacts that really harms us as a society? Shawn Sant: So we tried to look at that and figure out that, you know what, that Felony Diversion Program can really fill a void that I think we have in the criminal justice system. So it gives the accountability, that ownership, back on the individual because at that point, if they are entered into the program, they have to pay back restitution in a shortened timeframe. In the traditional model, if someone steals something like $2,000, $3,000, they might only pay $25, $50 a month, if that, depending on the circumstances afterwards. Shawn Sant: But if they want to get the benefit of having this felony charge dropped through our district court in the Felony Diversion Program, they have to fully pay back the victim for restitution. So it's a good win for victims. They're getting their value in a much quicker manner, especially if we're talking about property crimes. It also puts the onus back on the individual, the one that found themselves in the predicament that they are. Because let's face it, it's not easy going through the court system. They're going to have to take time off from work. They're going to have to sacrifice time away from the kids. They're going to have to do a community service hours. They're going to have to give back to the community with their time. And I think that's essential and hopefully it reinforces the message that, "Hey, you screwed this up and only you can have ownership if you want to see this case go away." Shawn Sant: So I think that's been very successful with that 84% number. We continue to see individuals go through that program and so that's something that everybody in our office now has kind of from that culture mindset of, well, can we adjust our workloads, can we take resources out of the superior court and resolve these cases in our Felony Diversion Program. That saves the taxpayer money as well because it's a cheaper process. Still takes this same lawyering time, but it's a cheaper process rather than going through the trial process through superior court. Paul Casey: Yeah. It's so creative. What a creative program to get at the heart of the issue and realize the volume is bigger of people, the community impact taking in all the views of who's affected by these crimes, but keeping the ownership on the person who made the bad choice, and that's good. Shawn Sant: Yeah. We hope they learn that lesson and hopefully that first offense is the last offense as well. Paul Casey: Yeah, they're getting a second chance, which is really awesome and it's cool that many have learned their lesson as a result of that and go crime-free. I love how you also said about how you empower your deputies and you're the upfront guy, but all this work is getting done behind you making you look good, so to speak, up front and to really, you know, you must have a lot of trust in your team. Shawn Sant: And that's one of the things, and I guess that's kind of the challenge for me is because I really like to meet with my deputies. You know, I'll walk down the hall and I'll drop in because each of them has their own unique workload or cases that they're working. And I like just kind of brainstorming, you know, "Hey, how's it going on this case? Do we need to look at something different as we prepare", where we know we have a trial coming up, it's like, "Okay, let's now talk." And it's not just me, it'll be my criminal chief, we'll be doing the same thing. Or sometimes we have a meeting where I'm calling everybody, "Hey, conference room, we need to discuss a brand new case and kind of brainstorm because we have some time sensitive issues." Shawn Sant: So I really like that part and I really like making sure everybody feels that they're contributing, because really they are, it's something that they feel like they're doing, it's actually an active and interactive process. And I enjoy that. You know, we're a small office, there's 26 of us in the office, and you know, just working together like that, it really builds good relationships. And I think that's one of the things that, even when I was there as a deputy, we didn't have a lot of people leaving. I think they enjoy that kind of work. Yes, you could make more money on the side in the civil world. But I think it's the commitment to public service that every individual, including our staff members, that they have a little bit of that pride of making a difference in the community that we live in. And I think that's why it's a great place to work. Paul Casey: Yeah. The purpose is that's their big "why" for coming to work every day. And it's the ultimate in serving your community is awesome. And also, they say the key to engagement is connecting to that big purpose and feeling like you're contributing. And you've got both of those things working with your staff. Paul Casey: Well, hey, before we dive in and find out what some of Shawn's life hacks are to make him a success, let's check in with our Tri-Cities Influencer sponsor. Paul Casey: If you could trade one day each month for targeted application of biblical business practices, purposeful accountability and Godly pure counsel, would you consider it a wise investment? The C12 Group is a national organization focused on spiritual and professional development of Christian CEOs and business owners. Members participate in professionally facilitated monthly meetings where 12 experienced Christian CEOs exchange ideas to solve business issues. Biblically information is available from Tom Walther at (715) 459-9611 or online at C12Easternwa.com. Thank you for your support of leadership development in the Tri-Cities. Paul Casey: So Shawn, what are some of a few of your life hacks that you do on a day-to-day basis to keep you successful? Shawn Sant: Yeah, that's a tough one, because when I think of life hacks, I think of hack on a computer, you know, what's the hack on a computer and how does that relate to a hack in life? But no, I think really what the driving force behind that is, how can we be successful in the workplace, especially in the work environment that we are in? We're dealing with some very stressful and kind of dire situations, especially when you get into crimes involving children. That's extremely stressful on our people. And one of the things that I got to say was a great, you know, just kind of the culture that we have in the office. Shawn Sant: I've always invited people to propose ideas and one of our ideas that was proposed by a staff member, she's our crime victim witness coordinator and she got involved with using the Go Team Therapy dogs. And so that was a great opportunity for me a few years back to kind of become acquainted with that and we eventually were able to get approval to have them be associated essentially with our office where they will come in when we have young children that have been victims of crimes and these dogs are great. They just bring relaxation to a person, especially young people. But honestly, sometimes when they come into the office it's good for the attorneys because they kind of get to relax a little bit as well. It's kind of therapy for my employees. Paul Casey: You've got to post that on social media, the attorney's petting the dogs, that would be awesome. Shawn Sant: I'll tell you that because some of the attorneys have actually said, "Hey, can we have these dogs come into the office?" You know, because they're going through some stressful cases and you know, it does bring a joy and you know what, if it could bring joy to us and kind of release our stress, think about the stresses that are on our young victims especially. So we found some great success. Shawn Sant: There are people that didn't really want to talk about what a tragedy had happened to them as they have to share and almost relive that trauma again as we're preparing for trial. But they've been able to do that with the assistance of a therapy dog. The Go Team dogs are great, they're very calm. I've never seen the variety of different dogs that just had their own personalities, just like we as people have different personalities, but each one of them just is able to bring in some relaxation and comfort to these victims. Shawn Sant: And so again, I think about a life hack, I'm like, you know what, that was a great opportunity because someone proposed that in the office and we wanted to make sure that we made sure we ran through with our risk management and made sure that we're not doing anything to jeopardize the health and safety of our people or the people that would be coming to visit our office. And we got through approval with that. So we're grateful that the commissioners approved them being able to be a part of that program within our office. And it's just been a great opportunity. And to me, I think that's been really a great life hack because, frankly, I can't think of a better way to relieve stress than having the dogs visit the work day. Shawn Sant: You know, during the work day, it's kind of hard because you're going through cases. But as soon as you hear the leash or the collar kind of rattle, you know, everybody likes to get up from their work and come greet the dogs. Paul Casey: So they had the recent, I went to the National Speakers Association Conference last year and they had a pet, the local adoption agency came and brought these dogs that we could just take a pet break. And it was awesome in the middle of a long day of listening to seminars to pet the dogs. I really loved that. That's very cool. Paul Casey: So who influences you? How do you keep growing yourself outside the courtroom? Who do you surround yourself with, whether that's afar, through books or videos or mentors, who influences you? Shawn Sant: You know, I think a lot of people. I mean I like to interact with a lot of different groups. I'm a member of the local Kiwanis Club in Pasco, I am a member of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Pasco Chamber of Commerce, Tri-Cities Chamber of Commerce. You know, going to these different functions, you get to interact with a lot of professionals. People I look up to and I think, you know, I can't put a finger on any one of our local leaders, but I really think and believe that all of us, whether you're a kind of an elected leader or in a prominent position in your work life, I really think it's just the everyday interactions with all of us together. I think everybody has something to offer and I think that gives me a positive outlook every day that I go to my a job. Shawn Sant: You could really think that it could be a very depressing work dealing with some of the things. But I think when you look at it of looking around and seeing young families raising kids and thinking about, hey, what are the challenges that they're going through now compared to when we were raising our young family in the 90s, and you know, our kids didn't grow up with a cell phone in their hand and knowing how to play games on a phone under the age of one years old. You know, they learned that later, but it's just a very different environment. So I think one of the things I've enjoyed doing is I love our local libraries. The Mid-Columbia Library has a great app on there for listening to books. And sometimes I find myself where if I don't have the time to have a book, a physical book in front of me, I could be able to, if I'm traveling for work or other things, I can listen to an audio book. And there's some great audio books out there. Shawn Sant: I like listening to some of the historic stories. I typically like more accounts on the nonfiction side, the history that maybe I didn't know enough about. One of my favorite books was from Adam Makos, A Higher Call, about World War II pilots, a German pilot that encountered a downed B-17 aircraft and just was wondering how can that plane fly because the way it was damaged, it shouldn't fly. And of course, you know, as a private pilot myself, I was interested in anything revolving around aviation. Shawn Sant: But that book just kind of inspired me because what it really showed us is that you think about how horrific World War II was, it talks about the reality that hey, these Germans were fighting for what they believed in or for their country. The Americans were trying to fight to liberate Europe and fighting for their cause. But deep down we were all the same. We all had families, people sacrificed and lost loved ones on both sides. And I think that book just kind of brought that reality of how we could look at life better today of realizing that hey, despite the political differences we may have, can't we all just get along and sit down and discuss like we used to. Shawn Sant: It seems the opportunities where people used to go and have coffee or breakfast at their favorite breakfast spot and being able to sit down and even they could believe different perspectives on politics or whatever, they could talk issues out. And I think those are the circumstances I enjoy. I like meeting with people on different perspectives because I find I walk away from that learning something new or recognizing, you know, I haven't thought about that before but that's really important to consider, thank you. Shawn Sant: Because I think all of that helps build up what my resources are now as in my job it's like, okay, I have that perspective now I realize this is not just a cut and dry, this is one side. Because I've learned from being on both sides of a case representing defendants as well as being on the prosecution side, there's always two sides. Let's make sure that we hear both sides out and maybe we can resolve things by meeting somewhere in that Venn diagram. You know, that little spot in the middle where each side has to give something up, but still walk away with the best interest of all parties. And I always believe in trying to look for that win-win. Paul Casey: Yeah, seeking to understand before being understood. I love this concept of respectful dialogue, for sure. Paul Casey: Well finally, Shawn, what advice would you give to new leaders or anyone that wants to keep growing and gaining more influence? Shawn Sant: I guess just looking at what I think has worked well with our office or from my observations, because that's one of the things I really enjoy. You know, not just interacting with people but kind of observing what are successful businesses doing that really empower people. And I think it's really giving that ownership or giving that responsibility. So, regardless of what kind of position someone does, recognizing that hey, you're part of this team. I mean if you're running a big office building, let's say if it's Amazon in Seattle, you know from the person that's cleaning the building, they're a part of making that organization successful. Shawn Sant: And I think looking at our office too, we don't really have, yes we all have our different responsibilities, but we really are all dependent on each other to really succeed. And I think we have that great relationship and I think that's something always to remember is no matter what position you are in the company, if you're not able to empower people from, I guess your more entry level positions, because I've always looked at it as, if people get opportunities to go to another job, if I could say, "Hey, I hope that I've given them some opportunities or experiences while they were here with us for a short time that it allowed them to succeed elsewhere", to me, I think that's great. Shawn Sant: It's kind of like I think being a teacher. I think teaching has got to be one of the most rewarding professions for that reason because they are doing something to share their knowledge, share their wisdom, and teach and inspire kids, and then they get to see those kids many years later doing whatever. Paul Casey: And to be part of the journey, right? Shawn Sant: Yes, they were part of that. I think as long as we can make sure that regardless of what profession you're in, if you could just make sure that you treat everybody as an equal opportunity to succeed, regardless of that position in the company, I think that'll make that person successful. Paul Casey: Yes. So Tri-Cities influencers add value at whatever stage of the journey you interact with people so that they can be better and you've left just a little imprint on their life. So Shawn, how can our listeners best connect with you? Shawn Sant: Well, I'm on Facebook. That seems to be a great way to connect or LinkedIn, the two primary, it seems like for a business folks, always at my office, I'm pretty transparent. I have my contact information there. If people want to reach out or have a question on a case or kind of an idea that they have for criminal justice reform. I've always been open and I've always met, even with people that have been upset with me at times, but we've been able to walk away in the end and realize I think have an appreciation for each other's viewpoints at the end of the day and that's something that I think, again, is a part of the successful part of being a successful leader is being able to hear those that don't necessarily agree with you and see what you can learn from that. Paul Casey: Well, thanks again for all you do to make the Tri-Cities a great place and keep leading well. Shawn Sant: Thank you very much. Paul Casey: Let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend, and it's my Leader Launcher Program. Leader Launcher is for young professionals and emerging leaders here in the Tri-Cities who really are motivated to take their leadership to the next level. You may not have that leadership position yet or maybe it's a mid-level manager position, but you want to go to that next level. It's a two-hour seminar on leadership once a month and then two weeks later there's a mastermind group with people from other industries to get together and find out how to apply that teaching to your day-to-day job. Paul Casey: Also, you set some goals and keep each other accountable and we're forming a little community here in the Tri-Cities, so you go to leader-launcher.com, leader-launcher.com. We'd love to have you as part of the tribe, and again, we meet on the second and fourth Tuesdays. Paul Casey: Again, this is Paul Casey. I want to thank my guest, Shawn Sant from the Franklin County Prosecutor's Office for being here today on the Tri-Cities Influencer podcast. We also want to thank our TCI sponsors and invite you to support them. We appreciate you making this possible so that we can collaborate and help inspire leaders in our community. Paul Casey: Finally, one more leadership tidbit for the road to help you make a difference in your circle of influence. It's Ralph Marston and he says, "Excellence is not a skill, it's an attitude." Paul Casey: Until next time, KGF, Keep Growing Forward. Introduction: Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to today's show. Paul Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical tools and strategies that reduce stress in their lives and on their teams, so that they can enjoy life and leadership and experience their key desired results. Introduction: If you'd like more help from Paul in your leadership development, connect with him at growingforward@paulcasey.org, for consultation that can help you move past your current challenges and create a strategy for growing your life or your team forward. Introduction: Paul would also like to help you restore sanity to your crazy schedule and get your priorities done every day by offering you his free Control My Calendar Checklist. Go to www.takebackmycalender.com for that productivity tool, or open a text message to 72000 and type the word "growing". Speaker 6: Tri-Cities Influencer podcast was recorded at Fuse SPC by Bill Wagner of Safe Strategies.  

So Shawn has finally bamboozled me into watching a movie he is proud of loving...A Haunted House, a parody of Paranormal Activity. The big 6-0 episode is here. We get into stereotypes, key elements to making a parody film, and much more. Enjoy our latest episode of Movie Geek & Proud. Theme Song - https://www.purple-planet.com/cinematic Doomed Romance Brenda Segment - https://www.purple-planet.com/playful Shenanigans Rate and leave a review on any platform - Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/movie-geek-proud-a-movie-podcast/id1376962157?mt=2 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/movie-geek-proud Google Play: https://player.fm/series/movie-geek-proud-a-movie-podcast Podbean: https://mgppodcast.podbean.com/ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2k4WEPr6a5jI8uwkqGD8 Follow us on these platforms for updates - Twitter: @mgnppodcast Instagram: moviegeekandproud Join the movie geek community on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mgppodcast Becoming a patron you receive bonus and extended content, shout outs on our episodes, participate in polls to shape this show the way you like it, help pick out movies to review in future episodes and more starting as low as $1.00. Check it out.

So Shawn screwed up and planned on reading an AVENGERS WEST COAST that we’ve already covered so that totally threw off our pre-determined podcast mojo.That being said, we figured it would be timely to do a comprehensive review of SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME and give our thoughts on the latest MCU movie. There are spoilers abound here so listen with caution if you have yet to see the film.Also, we talk about our recent trip to Mile High Comics and some of the books/gimmicks we picked up.Continue the conversation with Shawn and Jen on Twitter @angryheroshawn and @JenStansfield and email the show at worstcollectionever@gmail.com

Shawn has listened to most of Paul’s podcasts and heard Paul mention wanting to make a book out of his various writings. So Shawn volunteered to help him do that. Originally, they were just going to mash it all together and do a kickstarter to get it out to the public. But, after working on […]

Host Michelle Fern is joined by Shawn Flynn, author of The Kitty: Who Rescued Me After I Rescued Him. Shawn Flynn and his fiancée are excited to start their new life together. They are planning a wedding and have bought a new home. The last thing the two of them need right now is a new cat. But their recently purchased house seems to come complete with a stray orange feline—a cat with a vibrant personality and a talent for mousing. So Shawn soon finds himself with a regular companion. Little does he realize that this cat will shortly become more important to him than he can possibly imagine. More details on this episode MP3 Podcast - The Kitty: Who Rescued Me After I Rescued Him with Michelle Fern