0:02

Welcome to another episode

0:03

of Complete Developer Podcast. The

0:07

podcast by coders, for coders,

0:31

Episode 418, I'm

0:33

a little teapot. No,

0:35

I'm just kidding. This is our

0:37

farewell to podcasting. I

0:40

have a couple of different song lyrics up here

0:42

because that's the way my brain works.

0:44

My first one, see if you guys can guess

0:46

this. This is the end.

0:49

My only friend, the end. Now

0:52

for one that's a little bit more obscure. The

0:55

end is the beginning is the end. I'll

0:58

give you a hint. It was on

1:00

a superhero movie from the 80s or

1:03

early 90s. I can't remember

1:06

which. It was a sequel to one, but yeah,

1:08

it was on the soundtrack to that. Please

1:10

tell me it wasn't the terrible second Highlander

1:12

movie. No, no, no.

1:17

I said superhero, not so much on the super

1:19

more just the hero

1:21

aspect of it. I couldn't tell you what

1:23

movie that was from. Not the hero

1:25

that we need, but the one that we deserve. Not

1:28

that movie, but there's another

1:30

hint. We'll still like draw on a

1:32

blank. Yeah. Do you want me to

1:34

say it on here? Yeah, you might as well. That's a

1:36

song by Smashing Pumpkins from the

1:39

soundtrack to Batman Forever. Yes.

1:42

So guys, in this episode,

1:45

we're going to discuss our journey through podcasting.

1:48

Where it all started, where

1:50

it led us, and why

1:52

we're stepping away from it. But

1:54

before we get started, Will, what's

1:57

been going on with you this week? I have

1:59

been converting. a set

2:02

of Visual Basic 6 applications

2:04

to run in .NET. There

2:06

is a free tool that does some of the

2:08

work, there's a lot of lifting. That free

2:10

tool, the latest version of Visual Studio

2:13

that it ran in was Visual Studio 2008. Wow.

2:18

But because I'm a complete digital

2:20

hoarder, I still had all

2:22

the disks I needed and I was able to spin

2:24

up a Windows XP VM

2:28

and

2:28

put that sucker on there. I've managed

2:31

to work my way through most of the

2:33

actual conversion work. I could

2:35

not patch XP because of the HTTPS

2:38

issues manually, so I had to go out and

2:40

find stuff on the Internet Archive. It's not on

2:42

Microsoft site anymore. Of course

2:45

not. Yeah. It's

2:47

pretty gnarly getting everything, but I

2:49

did get it all running. It

2:53

was weird hearing the XP sounds again.

2:55

Oh, yeah. But it's like if

2:57

you had a first car that was a junker,

3:00

and it shook and made noise.

3:02

We call it mine squealer. Yeah. Well,

3:05

it would be like getting in that car today, where

3:07

you're like, yeah, I miss the memories, but

3:09

now I remember why they're memories. Yeah.

3:14

That's what I've been dealing with this week for

3:16

the most part. I

3:20

got to do a bit of sequel today.

3:22

That was fun, creating a view. I

3:24

like getting to do the lower level

3:26

stuff like that. Sunday, I got

3:28

to play a brand new song that I've never played

3:31

before on stage. Normally,

3:33

we have new stuff in practice

3:36

before you actually play it in front of people.

3:39

But our worship director changed

3:41

the set because of one of the

3:43

singers and forgot that she had

3:45

scheduled me and I hadn't played that song. When

3:49

I messaged her earlier in the week asking

3:51

some questions about it, she was like, I

3:54

completely forgot that I scheduled

3:56

you. If it's too

3:58

much, it's okay. just let me know. I was like,

4:00

no, I'm gonna learn this song. I will have it down

4:02

by Sunday. Don't worry. And I did.

4:04

I won't say that I was absolutely perfect

4:07

with it. I did make a few mistakes here and there,

4:10

but I kind of rocked it my

4:12

own little way. I was like really excited about

4:14

that. It was a it's kind of a really upbeat,

4:17

fun song. And so just

4:19

looking out at people like dancing

4:21

in the aisles and stuff to that song was so

4:23

amazing. Yeah, that

4:26

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5:52

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5:56

Podcasting has definitely been

5:58

a journey for both of us. When

6:00

we started, I wasn't even a developer and

6:02

Will was working for himself. We've

6:05

been through a lot. I got my first job

6:08

and talked about it on this podcast. Will

6:10

moved into a full-time

6:12

position and even

6:14

did some software architecture. He had

6:17

that in the intro at one point in time, as that's

6:19

what he was wanting to do. Now,

6:21

eight years later, I'm leading a

6:23

team of developers and Will is, well,

6:26

back to working for himself. Yeah, I'm back

6:28

to working for myself, but I'm wiser than

6:31

I was before. Cause like my pipeline for getting

6:33

work

6:34

back then just was horrific.

6:36

And I've fixed that. Yeah.

6:39

Cause it has been an amazing journey

6:41

with you all these years. This

6:44

is like I said, eight years that we've been doing

6:46

this. We've both learned a

6:48

lot about ourselves, about programming,

6:51

leadership and audio engineering.

6:53

Well,

6:54

I've learned about audio engineering.

6:56

I'm better at editing audio than I used to be.

6:59

That's mainly as a consequence of a Russian

7:01

class though, more than anything else. True

7:03

that. Yeah. But yeah. And I think the

7:05

other thing too, is just like that content production

7:08

and thinking through and systematizing that

7:10

that's, yeah, we had to learn that

7:13

we did. So it's been an interesting

7:15

journey, but like

7:18

all things, it can't last forever.

7:20

Sometimes you just hit a point where you realize that

7:22

you are capable of going on, but

7:25

your heart isn't in it or you actually

7:27

want to do something else.

7:29

And that's kind of where we both are over

7:31

the last year. We, I think we've both been fighting

7:33

that valiantly and

7:36

we've enjoyed our time podcasting and it's

7:38

been like we said, a very memorable eight

7:41

years. And honestly,

7:43

what has happened is the podcast has

7:45

forced us both to change repeatedly.

7:48

We've had to grow up. We've had to get more

7:50

focused. We've had to just, I mean,

7:52

really push ourselves a lot. The

7:55

person I was when I started this, like

7:57

I'd smack him upside the head today. I'd have

7:59

a heart.

7:59

hard time

8:01

being patient with who I was.

8:03

And I thought I was doing pretty well. It's a huge

8:05

change. And that change is really the

8:07

reason that we're stepping away from it. Now we've

8:10

gained a lot of skills. We have

8:12

much larger goals

8:14

than we had

8:15

before. Like, I mean, crap,

8:18

when I, we started podcasting, you know, one of the

8:20

things that that has struck me is I

8:23

planned my day,

8:25

right? I would figure out here's the stuff I've got to do

8:27

today. Right.

8:29

And now I'm looking at, you know, one year

8:31

long plans on average.

8:34

And I have that much structure and

8:36

that much

8:37

ability to control chaos in my life,

8:40

where I can actually do that. Reasonably.

8:43

And that's a huge thing.

8:44

And, you know, the deal is, is we both have gotten

8:47

comfortable with more difficult things, sometimes

8:50

with things that we didn't think we'd ever do.

8:52

And some of that was the confidence coming off the podcast.

8:54

Like I used to be painfully shy to

8:57

the point where I would have a panic

8:59

attack

9:00

and beach remembers this. Everybody else,

9:03

my wife remembers it too. And some other friends of ours

9:05

do, but like most people I go, I used to

9:07

be really painfully shy and would literally

9:09

have a panic attack if I was in a crowded

9:12

room or, you know, God forbid asked to speak

9:15

and people think I'm lying when I say that

9:17

now. I mean, the podcast has been

9:19

a large part of that. I didn't think I would write

9:21

two books. I didn't think I

9:23

sure didn't think I'd be podcasting for eight years.

9:26

I

9:26

didn't think I'd be doing all the public speaking and stuff I've

9:28

done.

9:29

I didn't think I could learn a foreign language

9:31

effectively beach.

9:33

Probably it was in the same boat and especially like

9:35

the musical instruments and stuff.

9:37

Oh yeah. Absolutely. I mean,

9:39

there's a lot of stuff that

9:41

I have

9:44

tried and found out I actually had some

9:46

talent or skill at

9:48

that I never would have had we not gotten into podcasting.

9:51

Yeah. And I mean, I think the foreign language learning

9:53

too, I mean, we both took other

9:56

languages,

9:56

right? And we never were able to really stick

9:59

the land.

9:59

like we wanted,

10:01

but we both have the discipline now and we know

10:04

how to structure things for ourselves. The

10:07

podcasting experience has done that. Most

10:09

people do not see behind the scenes. They don't realize

10:11

just how much stuff really goes into an

10:14

episode. You and I were talking,

10:16

we think that it's probably what, 10

10:17

or 12 hours? Yeah, every week.

10:20

Yeah. That's a chunk. That

10:23

is no joke. That's a lot of work, but

10:25

getting it down to that level was

10:28

a big deal. I remember early

10:30

on when we first started, it would take me about 10

10:32

to 12 hours to edit an episode.

10:34

Yeah.

10:35

And we messed up in the audio.

10:38

We said, um, and ahs all the time, I

10:40

would drink

10:41

a lot of beer

10:43

and so would you. Yeah, I know. Because

10:45

we drink like dragons milk. So you get like

10:47

the high gravity stout. And because

10:50

I would get to a point in the episode, eight

10:52

or 10 minutes in usually where I'm

10:54

like, holy crap. I'm talking in front of 50 people

10:57

right now.

10:57

Yes. And he would freeze up and I would have to

11:00

carry the conversation for the next five

11:02

or six minutes. Yeah. Just because

11:04

I was not

11:05

able to handle that. And now it's

11:07

like, well, there's probably four or 5,000 people

11:10

that will hear this

11:11

and that doesn't bother me at all.

11:13

Yeah. I mean, you've spoken in front of

11:16

hundreds and hundreds. Yeah. Probably

11:18

three or 400, I think

11:20

it doesn't bug me in the least. So,

11:22

you know, with all that said, the end of

11:24

the podcast

11:26

is a result

11:28

of the growth that we have undergone making

11:31

the podcast.

11:32

And so we kind of wanted to discuss the journey that

11:34

we had and you know, why we did the things we did

11:36

and just kind of put a capstone on stuff.

11:39

Guys, when this is over, we're still out here.

11:41

You can, you should be able to still reach us.

11:43

I

11:43

mean, our first episode was hello world. Yeah.

11:46

Episode zero. Yeah. Episode zero.

11:48

Hello world, where we discussed, like

11:51

we kind of interviewed each other and

11:53

talked about like where

11:55

we were coming from. And so

11:58

now this final episode. episode 418

12:03

is going to be

12:05

pretty much us talking about

12:07

where we've been and this journey. Yeah,

12:10

I'm just looking at the episode zero

12:13

show notes, which that's

12:16

the other thing we learned. Yeah, we got to do a little better on

12:18

that. Oh, yes. Yeah. Because

12:21

there just wasn't much there. And we called

12:23

that a preview episode. That's right.

12:27

Yeah. And the first real episode was talking

12:29

tech to non-developers.

12:30

Yeah.

12:32

And by the way, this is not

12:34

to say that neither of us will do

12:36

podcasting ever again. It just may be

12:38

a different subject or a different audience.

12:41

Yeah. So anyway, let's... Let's

12:43

go ahead and get into it. Yeah.

12:46

So first off, why we got into podcasting

12:48

in the first place. One of the big things for me

12:50

was I was breaking into software development

12:53

and I needed to establish myself.

12:56

And from my perspective,

12:58

Beech had a bit of a rough time. The

13:01

early 2010s, not

13:04

necessarily his friends. No,

13:06

no, definitely not. He was in pretty

13:09

bad spot coming out of med school and

13:12

we knew that he was interested in software

13:14

dev and had some natural aptitude,

13:16

frankly, in that direction. And

13:18

we're like, well, if you're used to

13:20

working an insane number of hours a day anyway

13:23

and obsessing over things, why

13:25

not obsess over this? Because it seems to be a pretty

13:27

good Skinner box for you.

13:29

Those discussions, I think happened in 2014,

13:32

I want to say like the spring

13:34

maybe. And you kind of got

13:36

him going on the software dev.

13:39

He came and now the whiteboard that's right behind

13:41

me that you can't see, because it's an audio only podcast.

13:46

That was where we kind of went over different

13:49

concepts as he was learning.

13:50

And it was to help him

13:52

kind of get into it when he first suggested

13:55

the idea, I didn't overly love the idea

13:56

because again, there's all that fear of

13:59

like, I don't want to get over it.

13:59

out in front of a bunch of people like, what if they don't like me? It's

14:02

like, if they don't like you, they're not going to listen to you. You don't have to worry about

14:04

it. Oh yeah. That's, that's

14:06

your attitude now. What was funny is you

14:08

were kind of against it at first and

14:11

then we went to,

14:14

it was that Microsoft, it was like a

14:16

little one day conference at Microsoft. I

14:18

took a day off work. That's yeah.

14:20

And I got downsized that day. You did. You

14:23

did. I remember cause we were in my truck and I had to drive you back

14:25

and help you like unload, like carry your stuff

14:27

from your desk out. And I made a phone

14:29

call, you know, leaving there

14:31

and had contract

14:33

work by the time I got home that was paying more.

14:36

Yeah. Just a hundred percent remote, but yeah. So

14:39

at that, at lunchtime we were sitting around a table

14:41

and we're just, we have natural banter cause we've

14:43

been friends

14:44

for a long time, but also

14:47

people

14:48

sitting around us stopped their conversations

14:50

to sit and listen to like

14:53

us back and forth. Yeah. And

14:56

even told us like some of his coworkers and friends

14:58

were like, you guys should start a podcast and

15:01

like I saw it in your eyes, you're like,

15:03

Hmm.

15:05

Because we'd already talked about it and you've been like, no, I don't want

15:07

to do that. And then like, that was the moment

15:09

that it started to like really sink in. Hey,

15:11

this would be a good idea. Cause I saw that in your

15:13

face. And then there's another person that we

15:15

know that

15:16

I ran the idea by him and

15:18

he

15:19

tried to discourage me from doing it

15:21

big time.

15:22

And that's when I really decided to do it. Out

15:26

of just spite. And you know how that

15:28

is. Yeah.

15:30

Yeah. But yeah, that's what got us into

15:32

it. Now when it started, I thought, okay, we're

15:34

going to do this for a couple of months, he's going to get a job

15:36

and he's going to get too busy.

15:38

Right. Cause you know, he's newly single,

15:41

you know, new career, getting back into

15:43

a new city, like he's just not going to have time.

15:46

I'll do it a couple of months. I got, okay. Worst

15:48

case, I got a crappy blue Yeti microphone.

15:51

Fine. Yeah. I

15:54

thought it would go for eight episodes. It went literally 52

15:57

times as long or almost 52.

15:59

Yeah.

16:00

Yeah, like everyone we started you're like, you're

16:02

saying, you know,

16:03

we're probably only going to get about four or five downloads.

16:06

They'll just be our family and stuff. We

16:08

got what, like 50 downloads, 25, 50 downloads

16:10

our first episode. Yeah.

16:13

And you're like, whoa, that's a lot more than

16:15

I expected. Yeah, it was really

16:17

surreal, especially because we did a

16:19

crab job of promoting it. Like I would never

16:21

do things that way now. A

16:24

crab job of promoting, we didn't promote it at all.

16:26

We just put it out. Yeah. We're

16:29

not really sure how those people even found us.

16:31

Well in our defense, eight

16:33

years ago, there weren't as many software

16:35

development podcasts out there.

16:38

Yeah.

16:39

And then it kind of took off when

16:41

we were on. Dotnet

16:43

rocks. Dotnet rocks. That's where we

16:45

really got a big like boost is

16:47

from that. And that was amusing too, because

16:49

like I sent them an email, you know,

16:51

like with a proposal, you

16:53

know, for an episode and I thought, okay,

16:56

there's no way we'll get on there. But I was

16:58

like, this will teach. I can learn from how to,

17:00

from doing this, how to do it better and eventually

17:03

maybe be able to get on there. And then they

17:05

accepted

17:06

and I got the email 30 seconds

17:08

before we went live or not live recording,

17:10

but we actually started recording. And so I

17:13

did not want to tell beach about that. It like mess with

17:15

his mojo before recording. Because

17:17

I was counting on him to bail me out when I froze

17:20

up. And so I like had to just

17:22

sit on that until we got done recording. I'm like, Hey,

17:25

I did a thing.

17:26

Yeah, he was all apologetic

17:29

about it, too. He's like, I'm sorry, I did this without telling

17:31

you. And I'm like, nah, dude, that's cool.

17:33

Yeah, there was a whole lot of like feeling

17:36

like a dog that finally caught the car. It's

17:38

like, what now? That

17:40

actually worked. Oh, my goodness. A

17:43

big thing with with me too,

17:46

is this

17:46

gave me a focus for learning. Yeah.

17:49

And it did the same for me too. Like there's so much stuff

17:52

that I wouldn't have gotten into as deeply

17:54

without this, even with a full time

17:56

job. Teaching something you have

17:58

to know it better. than just

18:01

learning it. And so

18:03

with the podcast, we've always looked at it as

18:05

an educational podcast. So

18:08

we kind of have seen ourselves as sort

18:10

of teachers, mentors on here.

18:13

And so because of that,

18:16

we have put a lot of effort into

18:19

learning this stuff so that we know what we're

18:21

saying is accurate because we

18:24

are our target audience. We're the pedantic guys

18:26

that will call you out if

18:28

you get something wrong. I mean,

18:30

just

18:31

earlier today, I

18:33

was reading, I think it was a Ranker

18:35

article. And I don't

18:38

know how they got

18:41

the difference between accept and

18:43

accept wrong.

18:45

Like accept with an A

18:47

and accept with an E. They

18:50

got those wrong. Yeah.

18:53

Like, do you not have copy editors at

18:55

all? Probably not. Not

18:59

like anything. I've seen some stuff. Yeah.

19:02

I'm just like, I can't read this. It's giving

19:04

me a headache just looking at it. So yeah.

19:07

Anyway, not to call them out, but to call them out.

19:09

Yeah. You know, we have kept going

19:12

on the podcast

19:13

and yeah, it's

19:15

largely been good.

19:17

There have been plenty of times it's been difficult. Yeah.

19:19

One thing that I have learned

19:21

on this podcast, probably

19:23

better than anything else we've,

19:25

like either one of us has learned

19:27

is conflict resolution. Oh

19:29

yeah. Because we've had some serious.

19:32

Yeah. We have. And we're

19:34

both very passionate

19:36

about the stuff we do. And we've both been

19:38

very passionate about the podcast and

19:41

sometimes very opinionated. And sometimes those opinions

19:43

weren't the same.

19:45

Yeah. And we even did an episode

19:47

on that when we, we really

19:49

like butted heads. Yeah. I remember that.

19:52

Like we were halfway through recording an episode and

19:54

we were just both getting angry. We stopped.

19:57

And

19:58

I forget which one of us said it'd be like, I'm getting.

19:59

really upset right now.

20:01

I think it was you that said that. Yeah.

20:04

And then you were like, yeah, me too. I was like, let's stop

20:07

and talk about it. And we did.

20:09

And we ended up writing a very

20:11

popular

20:12

conflict resolution episode

20:15

and recording that that night.

20:17

Yeah. So I guess let's talk about what we learned

20:19

from podcasting. Obviously that the

20:22

conflict resolution is a big part. I

20:24

think one of the other things is the power

20:26

of habit. Like if you have a routine

20:28

and you go, okay, Wednesday nights, I record

20:31

like all the people around me.

20:33

No, I'm not available. Wednesday night. I

20:35

can't do anything. Like right now, my wife

20:38

is at a house party that,

20:40

you know, some childhood friends of hers are having

20:43

and I'm not going to be there

20:45

because they like, well, for one thing we found out

20:47

like two days ago, it's like, Hey,

20:49

Wednesday night, I can't.

20:50

And just, and having a routine and having a structure.

20:54

And every time you run into a bump, try to figure

20:56

out how to make that bump not happen.

20:58

Or how you can use that bump to like

21:00

turn it to a good thing. Like

21:03

rather than being overwhelmed by, Oh my goodness,

21:05

this is horrible. Like one of the things

21:07

that we've had to learn to do is to

21:09

take setbacks and go, all right, what

21:11

can we learn from this and how can we turn this around?

21:14

Yeah.

21:15

And you know, the way we outlined episodes changed

21:17

over the years

21:18

because

21:19

we initially were fairly loose with

21:22

the outlines. We

21:24

started kind of trying to deal with how we

21:26

both go off topic by fixing

21:29

the outlines. And that worked for a while,

21:31

but then it's like, Hey,

21:33

you've got two people who spend

21:35

a lot of time writing. You got, you

21:37

know, one dude, he's a former med student.

21:40

When you turn those kinds of people loose on making

21:42

outlines, you get outlines, you

21:45

really, really get outlines. And

21:47

so we had a problem in the other direction

21:49

and we've had to adjust that. So you're

21:51

going to continually recalibrate as you learn new things

21:54

as you change going through, because

21:56

it's, you know, it's a dynamic between people and

21:58

you're also in a dynamic. make with yourself. That's

22:01

a big thing we learned.

22:03

I'd also say the power of consistency, like

22:06

really trying

22:07

to make sure that we always delivered an

22:09

episode every Thursday. We missed, I

22:11

think there's one time that

22:13

it was late,

22:14

maybe twice.

22:16

There was one time, we used

22:18

to have a friend

22:19

who passed away. We did an episode about that.

22:23

At midnight,

22:24

or 1am, when they came out, he

22:27

was up to hear the episode

22:29

to make sure that

22:30

we didn't miss anything or

22:32

something like that. He

22:35

would let us know if it didn't publish. There was one

22:37

time, it was the next

22:39

morning, it was after he passed, it was the next morning that

22:42

we found out it hadn't been published because

22:44

there was a website error. There's

22:47

a couple of times

22:49

that it was published late. There was one time,

22:51

only one week that we missed in all eight

22:53

years. It was a few weeks ago. Yeah,

22:56

it was a few weeks ago. I was in Europe and I

22:58

was dealing with job crap going on

23:00

at the previous gig. It was the

23:02

week I came back, or the week I

23:04

was coming back.

23:05

I found out after I got back on

23:08

Wednesday and I'm like, well, what happened

23:10

there is the episode was

23:12

in the

23:15

queue as a draft and not

23:17

as a scheduled to be published. I

23:19

don't think I could have

23:21

done anything about it

23:23

because I didn't have a laptop with me. I might have

23:25

been able to get on on my phone. I'm not even sure I could

23:27

have done that. If you had noticed it and

23:29

it pinged me about it, I would have gotten

23:31

in there and figured it out if

23:33

I had to just force it. I

23:35

can open a MySQL connection. I will make it happen.

23:40

You may not like how it comes out. It

23:42

will be there. That's true. That's

23:45

true. That is one thing that when we

23:47

first started this, we both committed to

23:49

do was, hey, if we're going to do this,

23:51

we're going to ensure that

23:54

we are consistent.

23:56

Because it makes you part of people's routine.

23:59

how you grow and how they grow.

24:02

Like that's how they get the value out of it.

24:04

And so that's what we did. And we

24:06

put that effort into

24:08

being consistent every week. And

24:11

one thing that we did was plan ahead

24:13

by

24:14

recording. We tried to stay a month

24:16

ahead, four weeks

24:18

ahead of

24:19

where we actually were.

24:21

The nice thing about that is we had a couple

24:23

of times where one of us was sick. So

24:25

he missed a week and then the next very next week,

24:28

the other one was sick.

24:29

Yeah. So, but

24:31

we still had enough buffer to where we could

24:33

make it up. I think the closest we ever got

24:36

to the wire was there

24:38

was one or two weeks where we recorded

24:40

on Monday and published on Thursday.

24:42

Yeah. That's when I was editing and that Wednesday

24:45

night was

24:45

a rough Wednesday night. Yeah,

24:48

I remember those. That didn't happen

24:50

very often. But yeah.

24:52

Well, and I think that brings up another point that

24:54

we learned was it is very valuable

24:56

to do the things you're good at.

24:58

And then outsource the rest as soon as

25:00

you can. And I'm not saying Beach

25:03

did bad work on the editing. I'm saying it's not a

25:05

good use of his time. Like if

25:07

he's spending that much time on the podcast, like

25:10

spend it on the podcast, not on the editing. Plus

25:13

your life kind of started recovering too. And

25:15

it was the point where it was like, Hey,

25:18

you really don't need to be spending 15, 20 hours a week on the podcast.

25:21

It's a bit much. I

25:23

mean, I remember there was a camera name. I

25:26

can't remember her name. Just girl that I started

25:28

talking to.

25:29

We almost dated

25:30

and she got very upset that I

25:33

couldn't talk to her

25:35

because I was editing the podcast.

25:37

Yeah. That is another

25:39

thing that I learned is

25:43

to look at those kinds of relationships, not

25:45

just dating relationships, but friendships

25:47

too. Of

25:48

Hey, are you pulling me away from this

25:51

goal that I have? And

25:54

I'm not saying be like heartless and

25:56

goal oriented because that's definitely not

25:58

who I am.

25:59

that whole painful series. I

26:02

enjoyed the conversations, but oh my goodness,

26:04

y'all, those Enneagram episodes, those

26:08

were some of the most in-depth

26:10

episodes we wrote.

26:12

So, you know, you talk about like the people that oppose

26:14

your goals. That is another thing that

26:17

I really feel like I learned. I

26:20

kind of knew this was there before,

26:22

but like you don't realize how

26:24

many people are just energized by hating

26:26

you

26:27

that are in your social circle. And

26:29

Bij and I both probably have a few

26:31

people in mind

26:33

that we know have like,

26:35

they've been encouraging to our face and then they've

26:37

talked trash about us behind our backs

26:40

about this.

26:41

And that happened for a while and we've cut

26:43

most of those people out,

26:45

or all of them out, I guess, technically.

26:48

We're still cordial, but we're just like, all

26:50

right, you stay over there.

26:53

That was interesting learning that. The other thing you

26:55

learn is you got some people that'll come out

26:57

of nowhere and they are on your

26:59

team jumping in, helping you.

27:01

A great example is Jason Belcher,

27:04

who did some of the music for the podcast. He

27:06

also taught beach, the audio editing stuff.

27:09

I mean, just really stepped up.

27:11

That's true. He really, early

27:13

on, he just like came

27:16

on and really rocked it.

27:18

This thing would not have lasted as long as it did

27:20

without him specifically, because man,

27:22

he jumped in and really took a lot of

27:24

the pain out.

27:26

Now that we've talked about kind of what we've learned

27:29

from podcasting, and there's been a lot more lessons,

27:31

guys.

27:32

These are the big ones that have

27:34

been over and over again. And like

27:36

we said earlier, Will would

27:39

not have gotten into learning a foreign

27:41

language or even thought he could

27:43

without

27:44

what he learned here. I would never have thought

27:46

that I could get into music

27:48

without what I learned here

27:50

and the process of seeing people who,

27:54

working with people with like the developer launchpad

27:56

group we had

27:57

and seeing people who didn't have a natural talent.

28:00

at software development,

28:02

put in the work and effort

28:04

and be good developers. Yeah.

28:07

And better than a lot of people that we knew that had the

28:09

talent and didn't do anything with it.

28:11

Right. Right. And to

28:13

me, I saw that and I was like, well,

28:15

you know, I don't feel talented with

28:17

music, but I

28:20

can put in the effort and

28:22

get the skill. Yeah. And

28:25

I mean, maybe that's another thing we could say we learned is

28:27

like actually trusting the process.

28:30

Like if you're doing the right stuff and you're just, you

28:32

just put your nose to the grindstone, you can get somewhere.

28:34

You can get a podcast with million downloads. I

28:37

don't even know where we are now. I've stopped looking at

28:39

the numbers. 1.5 million. Okay.

28:42

Yeah. Because it was a big deal until we hit a million

28:45

and then it's like,

28:46

do I actually care to look now? I don't. It

28:48

was a great goal, but once I got it, it was just kind of, okay,

28:51

next. Yeah.

28:54

We did kind of, we have sort of stopped looking

28:56

at the numbers as much. Another

28:58

thing I learned is get the money upfront. For

29:03

real. I won't name

29:06

names, but there have been some advertisers

29:08

that we've had that still haven't paid us for the

29:11

ads that we have run.

29:12

One that has always been very consistent

29:15

and a great guy has been Lucas. We've

29:17

had a solid relationship with him for

29:19

years

29:20

and he

29:23

almost always pays early, to be honest with

29:25

you guys for the ad spot. He's

29:27

good people. And that says

29:30

a lot just there too, as far as

29:33

the quality that you're going to get is

29:35

that he does that. Yeah.

29:37

Now that we've, I guess, discussed what we've

29:39

learned, let's go into

29:42

what you guys are probably all really curious about.

29:44

I've

29:45

kind of hinted at it a little bit, but why we are

29:47

leaving podcasting and stepping away if it's

29:49

such a great thing that we've gained a lot from. It's

29:51

because there are other great things.

29:54

That's really the deal.

29:56

One thing as we have gone through this

29:58

process is we've gotten better at.

29:59

identifying opportunities.

30:02

And we see like we're

30:04

swimming in them. Yeah.

30:07

And you're not

30:08

really aware of that until you do something like this,

30:10

where you have to

30:12

build an awareness. But

30:14

once you do, you're like, holy crap. Why did I ever

30:16

think there was a shortage of options? Do

30:19

you remember when we first started coming up with episode

30:21

ideas? Yeah. And how long that took.

30:24

Oh, it was so painful. It's like two pictures

30:26

of Margarita and like a four

30:28

hour period. And we came up with like four

30:31

episode ideas or something.

30:33

Yeah. I mean, it was just absolute trash.

30:35

And now like we could sit through

30:37

a staff meeting and come up with like five

30:40

and they're better ideas than what

30:42

we had then.

30:43

Absolutely. And I kind

30:45

of remember when it clicked, it just

30:47

kind of clicked over and we both were like, Oh,

30:51

we just started seeing the world differently.

30:53

And that was from that effort that

30:55

we put in. And it's because we've

30:58

started seeing the world differently that we are seeing

31:00

these other opportunities and we have other things

31:02

that,

31:03

that we want to do. I mean, this is

31:05

taking up.

31:06

And I think the other thing too, is we both have learned

31:08

that when you want to change what you're doing,

31:10

you actually figure out how

31:13

you need to see the world differently and make that happen.

31:15

And the rest of it

31:17

lines up. Yeah, I would agree

31:19

with that. And I'm going to use an example from my

31:21

personal life here for that, from dating.

31:23

Because I mean, straight up y'all know I'm out

31:26

there in the dating world and Will has given me a funny

31:28

look because, you know, it's been, it's

31:30

been a subject here and there, well,

31:32

it's been a while since he's been in the dating world. So,

31:35

you know, yeah,

31:36

we used to sit each other cuneiform

31:38

tablets,

31:39

complain about copper merchants

31:41

to each other, you know, that kind of stuff long time ago. Long,

31:44

long time ago, back in the, the ancient times,

31:46

the before times. For

31:49

the plague years, at least.

31:50

Well, before the plague

31:52

years. But anyway, so

31:55

one thing that I have realized is

31:58

who I. I am and

32:01

the way I present myself,

32:03

it affects the type of women

32:05

that are attracted to me. Right. And

32:08

it runs off the ones that you don't want if you're doing it

32:10

right. That's the other thing too. What

32:12

I have learned is,

32:15

and in part from the podcast here is, if

32:19

I want to attract some,

32:22

if I'm not attracting the type of women that I want,

32:25

then I need to change me.

32:27

I've talked to so many guys and I'm

32:29

in,

32:29

a couple of dating groups. I'm in one called

32:32

Dating for Christian Nerds.

32:34

Big surprise. And I've talked to some

32:36

guys from there and from my church and

32:38

from other places. And they just have this idea

32:40

that's like, what's wrong with them and stuff. I'm like, it's

32:43

not. You need to look at you and

32:45

go, hey, what am I doing or not

32:47

doing that is causing

32:49

me to either be attractive to someone

32:52

I'm not interested in or that is

32:54

not attracting or unattractive to

32:57

the type of person that I am interested in. And

33:01

I got that from what Will was

33:03

saying. Like

33:05

I didn't have that mentality back before we

33:07

started doing the podcast.

33:09

And it was like doing this podcast, I realized

33:11

that.

33:12

And because of that,

33:14

I have been looking at not

33:17

just my dating life, but other

33:19

aspects of my life and going, all right,

33:22

where do I want to go? Where

33:24

do I want to be in, we're

33:27

huge on here about your goals

33:30

and where you want to be in five to 10 years

33:32

and making sure that what you're doing now aligns

33:34

with that and is working toward that. And

33:38

that changes.

33:39

Well, you had to become the person

33:41

that can do that goal.

33:43

Yeah, and that's what the podcast got

33:45

me. Like the stuff required

33:47

to do the podcast got me to here. But

33:49

now I look at where my goals are and

33:53

the podcast, this is not

33:56

the journey to get there. It's like, I've

33:59

driven. I'm trying to go from

34:01

Iowa to England and

34:04

I've driven to New York.

34:06

I can't keep driving across the Atlantic.

34:09

Well, you can, you're just going to drown. Yeah,

34:11

yeah. Like I could take a boat or a plane, but

34:13

what got me to that point isn't

34:16

going to keep getting me there.

34:18

And that's a thing that I've

34:21

been noticing for a while and so has Will. And

34:23

we finally had a conversation last week

34:25

about it. Well, yeah, because like we've both been noticing it

34:27

on our own, but you don't want to bring something like that up.

34:30

Just because it sort of makes it real.

34:33

Once you do that. And then after a while you start going, well,

34:35

I really should say something. Yeah.

34:37

That's part of it. The time commitment

34:39

is also a pretty big deal. So

34:43

like I typically write podcast

34:46

episodes on Sunday morning.

34:48

Uh, and it's three or four hours to

34:50

write an outline

34:52

that we record on Wednesday nights, it's at

34:54

least an hour and a half.

34:56

What it really effectively does though, because

34:58

I get up at five in the morning and I'm done with work at

35:01

five in the evening.

35:02

Although now that I'm self-employed, I can actually like

35:05

not do that that way. Now that occurs to

35:07

me, but if you've got an hour and a half after that,

35:09

it's six 30 and I've been going to bed at eight because

35:12

I have to get up at five in the morning to get my

35:14

daughter to the bus stop on time, you know, during the school year.

35:17

And so it effectively means there's one night a week that I can't

35:19

really do anything. And I have to be really

35:21

conscientious on the weekends to not

35:24

burn the time that I need to write an outline

35:26

because when I have to write it on Monday, it's rough.

35:29

I have three hours before I start working, but you know, and

35:31

I can do it and I could write after I get done

35:33

working too, but, and I could write

35:36

Tuesday technically after I got done working too, but I

35:38

don't like doing it that close. So there's

35:40

a big time commitment. The other thing is the

35:43

podcast website, because it is

35:45

hosted on WordPress

35:47

or it's not hosting or it's a WordPress site.

35:49

So it's a fluid hosting.com.

35:53

It comes under attack in

35:55

spikes. And so I have

35:58

fairly frequently.

35:59

I had to drop everything I'm doing and

36:02

go try to deal with stuff like

36:05

mostly by changing the

36:07

Apache config so that you just can't get to the

36:09

login page for a little

36:11

while until the attack goes away. And it's like, okay, now just

36:13

flip it back. But we've also been hacked

36:16

and I've had to deal with that.

36:17

And so that's fairly interruptive. Another

36:19

thing that

36:20

gets us a lot too is if one of us or the other

36:22

of us can't record, then we've got to

36:24

double up. And that makes that

36:27

week much harder. Yeah, because

36:29

usually what that means is we're both

36:32

writing an episode that week. So rather

36:34

than having a week off,

36:36

each of us have two weeks of writing

36:39

in a row.

36:40

And so it's, I don't do mine on

36:42

Sunday mornings because I've

36:44

got church a little later in the morning and

36:46

I like to get up and I'm

36:48

not a morning person. I get up at five

36:51

so that I can be functional by seven

36:53

or eight. Whereas I get up at five so I

36:55

can be functional by five, 15. Yeah.

37:00

Because the coffee pot takes 12 minutes.

37:03

But yeah, that's me. It takes me a while to kind

37:05

of ramp up to the morning. So I get up early so that

37:07

I can be good to go at an

37:10

earlier hour. I usually

37:12

do my writing in the evenings because that's where I've

37:14

got my most creativity. And

37:17

so

37:17

when we're recording on Tuesdays, I

37:20

was doing it on a lot of times on Monday

37:22

nights.

37:23

And then we moved,

37:25

then I started

37:27

doing

37:28

piano lessons with my friends every

37:30

other Monday when it wasn't my turn

37:32

on sometimes

37:34

we'd have like a double or something and

37:36

I would

37:36

go do my piano lesson, come home and write.

37:39

Those were stressful,

37:40

but they weren't terrible. Well,

37:42

on Tuesdays, we were recording on Tuesdays,

37:44

it was brutal for me because I have Russian

37:46

class on Tuesday and Friday mornings. And

37:49

so it was, you start a foreign

37:51

language class at six o'clock in the morning. If

37:53

you're recording two podcast episodes at night,

37:55

you're done at eight at night.

37:57

And you didn't do anything else all day except

37:59

work.

37:59

and be in class and be recording. Yeah,

38:03

yeah. I don't want it to sound like we're just

38:05

complaining about the podcast, because we,

38:07

especially earlier on, we loved it.

38:10

And

38:10

when I was living up there and

38:13

coming over to Wills and we recorded in person,

38:16

for me as an extrovert, that was great

38:18

because we got to actually hang out. And

38:20

I

38:21

used to tell people, we

38:23

have a podcast and basically it's

38:25

an excuse for me and my best friend to

38:27

get together, drink beer and geek out.

38:29

They're neither one of us drinks anymore.

38:32

That's another thing that I don't think the podcast

38:34

is the reason for, but it definitely had an influence

38:37

on.

38:38

Yeah, well, just having that much stuff crammed in the

38:40

schedule

38:41

for me is actually what stopped me

38:43

as far as drinking alcohol. It wasn't like

38:45

I had a problem or anything else, although you probably

38:47

did hear me slur once or twice or

38:50

some of the early episodes, especially when

38:53

we were doing like, there was one time we recorded

38:55

three or four in a row and we were drinking the

38:57

whole time. So that by that last one, yeah,

39:00

it was pretty bad. I'm not sure

39:02

how obvious it was, but

39:04

my thing was that I started looking at like, how

39:06

much of my time is taken up either

39:09

being buzzed and not being at my

39:11

best or

39:13

being

39:14

mildly hung over. Cause like I

39:16

get hung over if I have anything and

39:18

how bad is that hurting me as far as my time?

39:21

And it was a chunk of time. Man, once I stopped,

39:23

I had so much more time to do stuff. That's

39:25

kind of the deal here too. It's not, hey, we don't like

39:28

doing this. It's

39:29

we have other things that we need to be doing

39:31

to go where we're trying to get

39:33

individually. And by the way, that is not

39:36

the same direction anymore. Yeah.

39:38

That's another thing that

39:40

Will and I are both going in a

39:43

little bit of different direction,

39:44

not complete opposite directions or anything like

39:46

that, but our lives are kind of taking us in different

39:49

directions now and we've got different focuses.

39:52

Yeah. And we don't fight that anymore.

39:54

That's the other thing that I think that we had to learn here too

39:56

is you, when you're doing creative

39:59

stuff, like.

40:00

Like you're not in charge really.

40:03

It's in charge.

40:05

We've talked the negative, let's talk the positive. Let's talk about

40:07

where we're going now, what we're going to do

40:09

next. And since we

40:11

are going in slightly different directions, where

40:13

our goals are and where we're headed

40:16

and what we want to do, because that has been

40:18

the biggest influence. When we were talking about it, we

40:20

were talking about

40:21

not how much we

40:23

struggled and stuff like that. Because

40:25

when you're passionate about something, the time

40:27

doesn't matter. The effort doesn't matter.

40:29

What's happened is our passions have changed. That

40:32

was our conversation. We talked about

40:35

what we wanted to do and it was

40:37

not in line with having a podcast. So

40:40

here we are. That's what led to this

40:42

decision. It was not one of us

40:44

saying, I want out. It was both of us going,

40:46

hey,

40:47

it's time. So

40:50

as far as where we're going next, obviously I

40:53

am self-employed again and I

40:55

am getting contract work. I've done better

40:57

with my pipeline. So that's

41:00

probably going to be the focus for the very

41:02

near term is just getting all that stuff

41:04

working

41:05

and get everything stable and

41:09

like I need it to be. And frankly, just

41:11

having some downtime.

41:12

I've been very limited on the amount of that that

41:15

I've had for

41:16

some time. I need to ease up a little

41:18

bit so that I'm not burnout, especially

41:21

with the additional stress.

41:23

For the longer term, I've got a

41:25

variety of different ideas.

41:27

As far as businesses to try, there's

41:30

a pretty good chance that I will start a YouTube channel,

41:33

which I would have never, ever

41:35

thought of doing before this. That

41:38

is just diametrically opposed.

41:41

He bought a green screen.

41:43

Yeah. I helped him set it up

41:46

and then tear it down. But yeah, and I

41:48

set it up the other day. I still got to figure out

41:50

some

41:52

things I don't love about it. But anyway,

41:54

there's going to be some stuff around

41:57

that. Obviously, I will be doing

41:59

the.

41:59

the consulting stuff.

42:02

Yeah. And who knows? I may kick out a course.

42:05

There's plenty of options. Like I've got a, you know, I've got a

42:07

notebook full of options. So

42:10

that's kind of where I'm going. The other thing

42:12

I'm going to be doing is really, really doubling

42:14

down

42:15

on my Russian language learning

42:18

so that I can hire people

42:21

overseas to do some work.

42:23

Because any meeting I have with them is going to have to be after

42:25

hours. I can't do that on top of a consulting

42:27

workload. So there

42:30

are large populations who speak

42:32

that language in 11 time zones. It's

42:34

not great right now.

42:37

But you know, these times end eventually.

42:39

So that's kind of what I'm counting on.

42:42

So with me, my life

42:44

is moving more towards the creative.

42:47

I have kind of started a creative

42:49

business with my photography,

42:51

but also doing some web development and design

42:54

for small businesses. And

42:56

I really want to build that up.

42:58

Build up a clientele with that. And

43:00

focus on

43:02

my photography. That's one thing that I have not. I

43:05

got to the skill level where now I'm

43:08

leading the team at church.

43:10

But I still feel pretty

43:13

much like a basic photographer. I can

43:15

do the stuff I can do, but I haven't

43:17

really grown any in the last

43:19

few years. Basically, since I took over leading

43:22

and my mentor in photography got

43:25

married and moved away, I haven't grown

43:27

as much in that. That's on me because

43:29

I haven't pushed myself to grow

43:31

in that area. And

43:34

part of the reason I haven't done that is because hey, I've

43:36

got a skill that I can do.

43:38

And I'm good at.

43:40

But I've got all these other things going on

43:43

that are taking up my time. So I haven't put the effort

43:45

into that.

43:46

The other thing I really want to do is focus on my music

43:48

and

43:50

not to make any money, which is a really weird

43:52

thing for me to say because historically,

43:56

I've only stuck with something if I thought I could make money

43:59

with it.

44:00

I played Pogs because I could

44:02

sell the ones that I won when I

44:04

was younger. If y'all remember Pogs. I

44:07

had little businesses going on. I collected trading

44:10

cards when I was younger so that I could collect

44:12

and sell them and make money off of them. Same

44:14

with comic books. Everything I've done

44:17

has been with that business

44:20

entrepreneurial mindset. And

44:23

so having an actual hobby like

44:25

music or painting, that's

44:28

something I love to do, but I haven't done in

44:31

months, almost a year because

44:34

I've been so busy with other stuff. And

44:37

so I really want to focus on my

44:40

non-profitable hobbies. The

44:42

things that I enjoy doing just

44:44

because I enjoy doing them, not because they're

44:46

going to bring me a profit

44:48

and also be profitable with

44:51

my creative business. So

44:53

that's the direction I am headed right now.

44:56

So I'm just going to be honest. I

44:59

fully expect that at some point

45:01

in the future, I'm going to move to Albania.

45:04

And so a big part

45:07

of

45:07

moving there is knowing the language and I'm getting

45:09

better and better at it, but I want to be able to focus

45:12

even more on that. So

45:14

my short-term focus is fluency

45:17

in Albanian and

45:20

my piano stuff.

45:22

Two of those were big goals for me this year

45:24

anyway. If you guys remember our resolutions

45:27

episode at

45:28

the end of last year. But yeah, those

45:30

are two of the big things that are going on with me right now.

45:33

That's where I want to put my focus. That's the direction

45:35

my life is going.

45:37

And if I had

45:39

the time

45:41

to put the effort in there, then

45:43

I really could grow a photography business, a creative

45:45

business where I'm not just doing photography, but

45:47

I'm doing other things too.

45:49

And I'd have that freedom

45:50

to do that. I need to build a website

45:53

for myself. And I haven't had the time to do that because

45:55

I've been... Well, I did pick up a pretty big project,

45:57

paid project, which is really nice.

46:00

I'm still a little bit behind on that because

46:02

just so much stuff going on. And

46:05

I really want to be able to wrap that

46:07

up, move on to the next one and

46:09

start building up that clientele because at some point

46:12

in the future, as much as I love

46:14

my job, I

46:15

do want to break out

46:17

and do stuff on my own and start my own company.

46:21

And

46:21

I don't know that Will ever wants to hire anyone

46:24

to work

46:25

for him, but I would actually like to have

46:27

a company where I have people working for me. I'll

46:29

have contractors. I don't want to have employees because

46:33

that comes with a lot of other stuff

46:35

and it's a different mindset too.

46:38

Because what I would need is probably not

46:40

employees. Yeah, I

46:42

see that. And that's the thing.

46:45

Just because we're going slightly different directions now,

46:48

we're still... We've been friends

46:51

for 20 something years. 22, yeah,

46:55

about 22 years. I don't

46:57

think our friendship is going anywhere and

47:00

there's a good chance that we'll do something. We've already

47:02

talked about some ideas of things that we could

47:04

do in the future

47:06

together.

47:07

So it may not be a podcast.

47:09

It may be a podcast. Who knows? We

47:11

may start a small business podcast sometime in the future.

47:13

We don't know.

47:14

Those are things we're not sure about. I can only

47:17

tell you where I

47:18

plan on focusing my time and that is

47:20

my music and creativity.

47:22

My music and photography especially,

47:24

but also with the building

47:27

up a clientele for that creative business.

47:29

Yeah, and you mentioned the creativity. I

47:32

want to do more writing,

47:34

but not

47:36

nonfiction.

47:37

But it's going to be a hot minute before I can do that.

47:40

I'd love to get back into seriously writing

47:42

poetry, not just

47:44

here and there like

47:46

I used to. But that takes a lot

47:48

of focus and a level of focus I haven't had.

47:50

And it takes head space. You

47:53

have to be in the mindset of doing that. And when you're doing this,

47:56

you're not.

47:57

It's just not the same thing.

47:59

It's not like this takes up a lot of creativity

48:02

and I don't want to say it's a

48:04

zero-sum game, but there's

48:07

a finite amount of time

48:09

and there's a finite amount of capacity

48:12

that I have for creativity for anything.

48:14

And

48:16

releasing this,

48:18

that's what I feel like we're doing. I feel like we are releasing

48:20

this, that it's been with us

48:22

for a long time and we are now turning

48:25

it loose and going, hey, this was a great thing

48:27

that we had. There

48:28

are other people, when we first started, there were

48:30

not nearly as many software development podcasts

48:33

out there. Now there are so many and people doing

48:36

so much of a better job than us than

48:39

we've ever done in this.

48:42

Well, and I think that's the other thing too is we

48:45

have learned to pivot away from stuff where

48:47

other people have come in

48:48

and done something similar or something

48:51

better.

48:51

So our developer Launchpad Meetup

48:54

was a great example of that. Getting people

48:56

trained to be able to handle developer

48:59

interviews.

49:00

Early on,

49:01

there wasn't really much doing that. I

49:03

can't

49:04

remember the group now that was

49:06

doing it and then they stopped. But

49:09

now that stuff has gotten in. Like Nashville

49:12

Software School, they include a lot of the stuff

49:14

that's what we were teaching.

49:16

And we're not mad about that because

49:18

our goal was to make it easier for people to get the jobs.

49:21

There was no money in it.

49:23

It wasn't even a self glorification thing. It was

49:26

literally we were trying to help people. And if there's

49:28

someone doing a better job at it than us, then I'm

49:30

going to point you to them. And get out

49:32

of the way and go do something else.

49:34

Because that's one of the things that you and I are very

49:36

good at is we're good at

49:39

blazing the trail.

49:40

We're good at being the risk takers that try something

49:42

new.

49:43

And then someone comes along behind us and goes,

49:45

hey, that was a great idea, but I can do it better. And

49:49

they usually can. And we're good at getting out

49:51

of the way then. And it's completely fine.

49:54

Because there's always something new for us to

49:56

do. And that's where we are right now.

50:00

Before we close out the episode, we

50:02

just want to say some goodbyes to

50:04

certain people and some thank yous. I know

50:06

Will's already mentioned a few people. So we'll

50:09

start with Jason Belcher.

50:12

Man, dude, thank you

50:14

so much for all the help

50:17

you gave us for your friendship over

50:19

the years, man. It's been great. And

50:21

hopefully we can continue that friendship

50:24

even without the podcast. But

50:26

we wouldn't be here

50:28

now. We would not have continued this podcast

50:30

if it hadn't been for Jason's help. Yeah,

50:33

from the early days. There's also

50:35

Aaron, Dave. Let's

50:38

see who else was on some of the early ones.

50:40

Cody came on a few. Yeah.

50:42

John Sonmez helped

50:45

a bunch. And

50:46

John has been on I think twice.

50:49

But he has helped in the background too, because I'll

50:51

periodically ping him with stuff and go, hey, here's

50:53

what's going on.

50:55

He has been a very good advisor in

50:58

a lot of respects. He also published my second book.

51:00

Yeah. So yeah, heck

51:03

of a good dude. I

51:05

want to say a shout out to a good friend

51:07

of mine, my friend Whitney, who has also

51:09

been a podcaster as well. But she's given

51:11

me some great advice

51:13

over the years with the more

51:15

recent

51:16

years with podcasting and

51:19

stuff.

51:20

So shout out to her

51:22

on that.

51:23

Yeah, I give a shout out to my wife, Kathleen,

51:26

and my daughter Maggie. When

51:27

we started this thing, let's see, eight years ago,

51:29

I'm just thinking, let's see,

51:31

Maggie was six. Is that right?

51:34

I think so. Yeah. That's quite a bit.

51:36

It's hard having dad go downstairs

51:39

and lock the door, you

51:40

know, one night a week and not be

51:43

able to interact. And my wife, Kathleen,

51:45

has been one of our biggest fans

51:47

from the beginning.

51:49

Yeah. Listening to the podcast, you know, on

51:51

her commute every day.

51:53

So yeah.

51:55

So thank you guys.

51:57

One shout out that.

51:59

He won't hear it, but I still want to shout it out

52:02

to him. Jason. Jason Bitten.

52:04

He was our first

52:07

fan. He was our first

52:10

Patreon donor

52:12

and just always

52:14

supported it. From the moment we told him we were going

52:16

to do this,

52:18

he was behind it 100%. He was

52:20

behind it better than we were quite a few times.

52:24

We talk about the guy that would stay up and

52:26

listen to it when it first came out. That was Jason.

52:30

He would double check everything for us. He

52:32

really,

52:33

really supported this from the

52:35

very beginning

52:37

up until the day he passed away. He

52:39

was our biggest fan

52:40

and also

52:42

one of our closest friends.

52:47

Miss him all the time.

52:51

Big shout out to him because he was

52:53

always there for us. I'm

52:56

trying to think. There have been other people that have been

52:58

on.

52:59

Yeah. Let's see. Oh, shout

53:02

out to the guys from Coding Box. Yeah,

53:04

for real. Because we've done some...

53:06

I don't think we've really

53:09

crossed

53:10

anything with each other on the shows,

53:12

but

53:14

we've had several calls with them and developed

53:16

a bit of a friendship with them. And

53:20

then there is also a shout

53:23

out to Jamie Taylor. Yeah.

53:26

He's got a podcast too, but he's

53:29

on our Slack and has done stuff with us.

53:32

Speaking of that,

53:34

shout out to everyone on Patreon.

53:35

Yeah, for real. This thing would have fallen

53:38

apart much quicker. And

53:40

it didn't really fall apart. It just got finished. It's

53:43

the completed Complete Developer Podcast,

53:45

as it were.

53:46

Yeah. Because it was literally

53:49

because of you that were able to keep this going. It

53:51

was because of you guys that we were able to hire an

53:54

editor and free up my time because...

53:59

because if we had been able to do that, I don't know that

54:02

we would have kept doing this as I

54:04

got busier.

54:05

Yeah.

54:06

And the financial aspect was, you know, there

54:08

was a time there, you know, when I changed jobs

54:10

and I took a pay cut. Yeah. And

54:13

that would have been

54:13

pretty hard to justify too. So. Right.

54:17

And a special shout out to

54:18

the crew that's been on the aftercast with us.

54:21

You guys have been amazing.

54:23

I think some of them came on one of the episodes

54:26

probably, that was the April 1st episode, I believe. I

54:28

think that's right.

54:29

It's so weird for us because like we're not on

54:31

the same calendar as people listening. Yeah.

54:35

Yeah. But yeah, just shout out to you guys.

54:38

Now we've had a lot of people come through

54:40

there, but it's been great. Mike

54:42

and Chris have pretty much been there for the whole time.

54:44

And then we had

54:46

Brandon and Jasmine and

54:48

am I missing anybody? Is that everybody that's been

54:50

on there? I think that's everybody that's been

54:53

on the actual

54:54

aftercast.

54:55

Yeah. Yeah. So. That

54:58

brings up another thing too. At

55:00

some point we will be taking the podcast website down,

55:03

but what we're probably going to do is

55:05

have stuff hosted elsewhere.

55:07

Like it's not going to disappear off the internet. We just got to figure

55:10

out what that looks like. So in case anybody,

55:12

you know. We'll

55:14

leave the Slack channel up too. And

55:17

we'll be available there to answer the questions that you guys

55:19

have. Also, we

55:21

will let everyone know

55:24

probably through Slack and maybe on the website

55:26

before we take it down.

55:28

So I'm trying to think if there's anyone else to

55:30

say anything. My boss at our Sunday

55:33

visitor, Zach Bonstead, really

55:35

gave a lot of encouragement, listened to the podcast,

55:37

apparently binge listened. Like,

55:40

which I cannot imagine having to

55:42

listen to my voice

55:44

any more than I already do. But

55:46

yeah, you know, you listened quite a bit.

55:49

And so yeah, just a lot of encouragement,

55:51

you know, especially during the COVID years. Yeah.

55:55

And just a few final things. Shout out

55:57

to our editor, Julian

55:59

and his. team.

56:01

Julian, it was great meeting you

56:03

when I was in Paris

56:05

a few weeks ago. A lot of fun. Took

56:07

me out to a really cool restaurant. Hopefully,

56:10

we'll be back in

56:12

the fall of next year and

56:15

we can do it again.

56:16

So you got my contact information.

56:19

I know I left your message at the beginning of the episode

56:21

before we started, but

56:23

you got my contact info, so keep in touch.

56:26

Also, big shout out to Lucas

56:29

with Level Up because it's

56:34

been a constant battle with a

56:36

few of the advertisers that we've had on the

56:38

podcast. Some of them have been good, and I don't want to call

56:41

anybody out, but we've had a few that just it was...

56:43

It was like pulling teeth to get them to pay

56:45

or there

56:46

were issues. Yeah. Get the copy

56:48

from them, find out what they wanted us to even say,

56:51

stuff like that.

56:52

Not with Lucas.

56:53

Lucas has been upfront, straightforward,

56:56

and just

56:57

generally

56:58

easy and pleasant to work with. And so

57:00

Lucas, we just want to give you another shout

57:03

out and thank you. And just

57:04

one last time, tell everybody

57:08

to check out his services. LevelUpFinancialPlanning.com.

57:11

Just go there. It's

57:13

great. He has a lot of really good stuff and

57:16

he really does work with you.

57:18

Yeah. And I think if you're listening to what we're saying

57:21

in this episode about the fact that we

57:24

grew personally, and that's why we're

57:26

stepping away from this,

57:28

we're stepping into something else, not stepping

57:30

away from something as it were. If

57:32

you want to be able to do that, your finances are a

57:34

big part of that

57:36

and he can help you get there. So

57:39

also feel free if you guys, any of

57:41

y'all are starting a podcast,

57:44

those kinds of things, you want to reach out,

57:46

we're normal people. Okay.

57:49

We've both had the experience of people

57:52

acting like we're super cool because we

57:54

do a podcast.

57:55

It's literally two rednecks in a basement.

57:57

Always has been.

57:58

So yeah. We're totally willing to

58:01

help. You know, we want to see other people be

58:03

successful as well. We've learned a lot.

58:06

We can help you.

58:07

So definitely reach out to us. Uh,

58:09

if there's anything you need on that.

58:11

Also, if you know, you need software development work, we're

58:14

both pretty decent developers. I'd say there's

58:16

days I wonder about some of my code, but yeah. All

58:19

right. All right. Same here. Same here.

58:21

I've seen some stuff this week that I wrote

58:24

in like 2004. Oh,

58:27

man. Still running. Then I recognize

58:29

it and I'm like, huh.

58:31

All right. And the, the last

58:33

group of people that we want to thank and

58:36

give a shout out to is our listeners.

58:38

You guys. Cause literally we

58:41

would not have done this without you could not

58:43

because we're literally doing this like

58:46

for you guys. Like we talked about how much we,

58:48

we got out of it. One of the big things that we've

58:50

gotten out of this is the friendships,

58:54

the people who come up to us at conferences and

58:56

say hi, and like, it

58:58

means so much when someone sends us a message

59:00

and says, Hey, that episode really helped me out.

59:02

Or you guys put me on a different path or several

59:05

people have said, Hey, I started listening to you guys when we started,

59:08

when I started school or when I

59:10

was thinking about getting into software development

59:12

and because of this episode, because you

59:15

said that like it really helped

59:17

me with this process and stuff, and that's

59:19

why we have continued to do this all

59:22

these years. And, and some of those people

59:24

are managers now. Yeah. Like just

59:26

popped right on out the top. Oh yeah. And

59:29

it's not like Will said, this

59:32

is not walking away from something. It's walking towards

59:34

something else because we both have

59:36

these goals that we want to do and

59:39

so we're going for them. And

59:42

we want you guys to do the same. When

59:44

you have something that is on your heart,

59:46

a passion, go after it, pursue

59:48

it. Even if you're terrible at it, like we

59:51

were when we first started.

59:53

Go after it and pursue it. Cause you'll get better. That's

59:55

kind of the whole point of being a complete developer,

59:57

right? Like you may find that you're developing.

59:59

yourself. And the code

1:00:02

is part of it, but it's not the whole thing.

1:00:04

All right, guys, that's pretty much

1:00:06

all we got. Yep. Standby

1:00:09

for Titanfall. If you have a question or

1:00:11

comment, please email us at neckbeards at

1:00:14

completedeveloperpodcast.com. Our

1:00:16

theme music is an excerpt from Standby for Titanfall

1:00:18

by Pure Bells, available on SoundCloud and

1:00:21

Licens through Creative Commons. For references,

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show notes, and extra tips and insights,

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be sure to check out the website at completedeveloperpodcast.com.

1:00:30

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Thanks for listening. See you next time.