Why and Having a Plan

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Nord podcast, where we work on getting better step by step, professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are not having an interview today. This episode, we are not going to do an interview. We're going to talk about some of the interviews we've had over the last year plus. We're going to change the format a little bit. This is one of these things where we just want to mix it up. At this point, we've had a long stream of interviews and a lot of great ones. I don't want to disparage anyone because we've had some great interviews, great topics. There's a lot of good information. If you haven't kept up, work your way through those, get back to wherever you fell short and you're going to get a lot of good information out. There's a lot of excellent discussions we've had. But what we're going to do going forward is we're going to switch it to a little different format where what we're going to do is every other episode will be an interview or one of these that's more of a topic, which is what we've done in the past where we either had a season of topics or a season of interviews. What we're going to do is we're going to do probably on say Tuesdays when we release, it'll be a topic, which will basically be what our, more or less will be what a season will be focused on. So we'll keep some topics that'll be more or less the same thing from episode to episode. But then in between those, we're going to have a break. Essentially, every other episode will have an interview. Sometimes those will make sense as far as the topic and sometimes they won't. It'll depend a little bit on who we're talking to and some of the other things that we want to discuss. So we'll see how this goes. We're going to try this out. And then of course we're getting towards the end of the year as I record this. By end of the year, okay, we're almost into the fourth quarter. And one of the things we like to do is we have our holiday specials every year. So those will break stuff up a little bit as well. So just want to let you know we're going to be changing the format a little bit moving forward. Now, focus for this episode. I want to go back and really spend a little time talking about a recurring theme that we've had through numerous conversations and even numerous topics. Things that you think maybe wouldn't be as related like advancing your career versus working for a company versus building a company versus selecting a product versus brand versus marketing and market research and some of those things. One of the things that we have come across time and again, and we've talked about this in the past as well, is essentially having a plan. We call it a why. Why is it you are doing what it is that you're doing? Whether that is building a product, whether that's providing a service, whether that is chasing down, defining a brand, whether it's chasing certain customers. All of these things come back to being intentional about it and saying, okay, before I chase this thing, whatever it happens to be, I need to really think about what does essentially what does victory look like? What does it look like for me to be successful? And you need to get detailed about it. And it's not going to be make a lot of money. It's not going to be general. It's not going to be something like I want to be able to work for myself or I want to be able to work remote all the time or things like that. Those are too general and really are not, those are really more like the results but not the actual things that you're going to get done. Yes, they are like side effects and things like that, but they're not really what you need to do. For example, if your goal is I want to make a lot of money, then what you really need to do is find a way to sell a lot of product or sell a product at a high price or offer a service that generates a lot of revenue. Those things are more concrete. Now even there though, the idea of for example, I want to sell more product or I want to get more people purchasing my service, paying me for my service or even paying a higher price for my service. Those things are again almost like a side effect. Again, like you can go through several of the conversations we've had where these are the things that we get distracted by. These are metrics that yes, we can use them to gauge how we're doing. We can see that we sold one product last month, but now we're selling 10 products or we've had five people sign up for our service in the last year and now all of a sudden this year we're growing and so now we've got double that or a hundred times that, whatever it is. But those are the metrics. It's sort of like keeping score and it's not really what we need to do. We have to understand how are we going to play the game and more importantly within this goes back to what do we consider success? Do we consider it that we sold a lot of product? Whether the customer is happy or not. Do we consider it that we sold a high price product versus maybe a lower price product? Do we look at things like customer satisfaction? Very important in a lot of areas. It's hey, did we sell it to somebody and they're happy enough that they will come back and buy more from us or that they'll tell their friends? That is now we're talking about things are like, hey, how do we make this sustainable? And that's what the why really comes down to because you can't just hit it in a short period of time and say, boom, done. I win. That's it. Because that's usually is or at least usually that's not what we want. It's just like a fad diet. If you're into a diet and you lose, you know, whatever it is, let's say you lose 25 pounds in a week and you're like, great, this is awesome. I lost a lot of weight. So your goal maybe was losing 25 pounds in that week. But what happens the next week? Is it sustainable? And honestly with your why, does it need to be sustainable? Because one of the things that we can do because we are side hustlers, because we have lots of problems maybe that we want to solve, probably have a lot of product ideas that are in varying stages of becoming reality, either in our head or on our hard drive somewhere. Those things are the things that we need to think about is, is what are we doing? Which of these do we want to pursue? And if we do, why? What is it we're going to get out of it? Is it something where we're like, hey, we just want to go help people with this problem. And that's really our goal. Then that changes stuff dramatically from I want to generate enough income to support myself and my family. And it's not that those things have to be separate. They could be the same. And you could have a why that is, it doesn't need to be like laser focused. It's nice if it is. It's very helpful. Your goal is very direct and easy to describe and easy to define and easy to measure because then it's basically, okay, well, you know what you need to do. Go do it. That is how that kind of a goal setting session works. But if your why is something a little more complicated, which it usually is, or more often than that, your why has multiple ways you can get there. And that is where I think that secret sauce is. That's where some of these conversations have taken us because yes, you can go be your own boss. However, you want to be your own boss in a way that you haven't handcuffed yourself to your desk or your job or whatever, either the same or even worse as you were when you were an employee because that can happen. Being your own boss does not necessarily mean you call all the shots. If you've got something where you've got a service or trading hours for money and things like that, and in particular, if you're doing this for customers where there is some sort of like an immediate need or an urgency, sometimes it's in software where it's, hey, we've got to have this done because we need to release for the upcoming holidays or we've got some sort of a financial constraint and we need to get this so that we can comply or we need to beat the competition and we know they're going to have a product out by the end of the year. We need to have something out two months before that. Or we have a website that is down right now and we need people to come in and fix it and upgrade it so that it can work and we can actually have a website in front of our customers. There's all those kinds of things that mix into our products, our services. Those things also can handcuff you if you're an owner where it's like basically your chief cook, bottle washer, all of that stuff. And there's a lot of that out there that's, as we've seen as we've gone through some of these interviews, there are a lot of people that make that mistake where they are bright, they understand the problem, they understand the solution, they go out and they build it and they sell it and everything's awesome until they realize that they don't have anybody else that can support it or not enough people that can support it or build it or maintain it or enhance it or whatever those limitations are. So our why does need to be a little bit of a straw man, we'll say. Put your why together and say, for example, I want to be able to be my own boss. Ask yourself questions about that and say, just like we do with our customers, where they'll say, hey, I need to build eBay. Okay, well, what is it about eBay that you need to build? Why are you doing this? What is it? What are your constraints? Do you have financial constraints? Is there a timeframe? Is there just a certain piece of eBay you want? Those questions that we ask, we need to ask that of ourself when we're putting together our why. Because we want to make sure that we've examined it and really like unwrapped it enough, unpacked it enough that we understand what it means to get there. Because it could be that we look at it initially and we say, our why is this thing, whatever it happens to be. Again, we'll keep picking on the, I want to be my own boss. Well, if that's your why and that's all you look at, then, well, one, there's a lot of ways you can be your own boss. One, you can just quit today. Now, maybe you have to pay bills and stuff like that so that may adjust stuff, but that's something you need to think about. Part of your, in this situation, part of your discussion needs to be, okay, is it worth it to be my own boss if I take a 20% pay cut or a 50% pay cut or a 90% pay cut? And in some cases, yes, there are some people out there that whatever situation they're in, they're like, I would take a 90% pay cut to be my own boss and to have the freedom to own my schedule. Sometimes that's like, the pay is actually not as much the issue as you need that control in your life. And there's all kinds of reasons for it. So we're not going to go into those, but this is an example of where you need to look at your why and examine it and give it some meat, give it some details, give it some constraints. Because if you don't, you could easily end up in a situation where you got a little too focused on, let's say, like a big picture why, and you got there. You cross the line, you won, you get a victory lap, all of that good stuff, and you realize your why is not exactly what you wanted. And when you've already crossed the finish line, it can be very difficult to go back and adjust that race. It's not impossible. That's what several of the people we've talked to, that's their job. Is they come in as coaches or mentors or whatever their role is, consultants in some form or fashion and talk to owners and entrepreneurs and say, hey, you're stuck, but it looks great on paper. Everything's awesome. You're making money, customers are happy, all of that stuff that every business wants. However, you're unhappy because you didn't maybe build your company in a way that allows it to be automated or scaled without your time being sucked into it or other little things like that, that yes, they're little, but they're little early on. As things go on, as you get momentum, as your business grows, those things can become a problem. You need to understand where you're going as part of your why. And so that's part of what you want to ask yourself is like, okay, what does this look like? And it's not just the end result. You need to really think about what does the journey look like? Just like any plan. We do that all the time. We have all kinds of, probably all of us every week has some sort of little project plan of some sort we put together, even if it's just like a to-do list for ourselves. But the exercise of that is that we have a big goal and we've broken it down into smaller things that need to get done for that big goal and then smaller things that need to be done for all those small things and little tasks that have to roll up. So eventually we're tying our, especially if we're productive, if we're getting things done or some of those kinds of productivity tools and processes and thinking approaches to a problem is we're going to say, hey, we've got these tasks to do and then those roll up to this bigger thing and then those roll up to this bigger thing because all of them lead up to let's say our big goal, whatever that happens to be. The problem is, is that if we're not thinking through those things beforehand, then there's one there's things that can be missed. So now we've got to come back and pick them up. But two, that journey getting there, if we think about it beforehand, then we're going to be able to look at some of the tasks or some of the goals or the attributes or the constraints around our why, our ultimate goal, we'll call it. And those things need to be thought through because we need to see, okay, is this something that I want to do? Is this something that I can do? Is this something maybe that is an opportunity for me to automate it or to outsource it? And if you look at things like the four hour work week, that's really the nut of that book about a lot of what Tim Ferriss is whole, we'll call it his schtick or whatever is, is it's around doing things quickly and efficiently, but also in a way that allows you to not be tied to it. So it's looking for ways to get your job done, but actually allows somebody else to get your job done. And now that seems like, you know, it may seem like it's like, well, that's just lazy or something like that, or that's just, you know, shuffling my stuff off to somebody else. But that's not really what it is. The key here with your why is that you want to get to that goal. The first thing you need to think about is getting to that goal does not require just you. You alone are not the one that has to get to the goal. You can get help. Honestly, you should get help. You should have teammates, coworkers, whatever it is, family, you name it. There should be other people that are effectively along for the ride with you because they're going to be helping you out. They're going to be able to help you get over obstacles. You're not going to want to go it alone. Maybe you do. Maybe that's like, I guess, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to force you into something you don't want to, but I'm pretty sure that most people do not as their why want to be in a situation where they're the person. They're the one person that's critical for this thing to get done because those kinds of things get you in a situation where you get a call at 2 a.m. and you got to get it done. Nobody else can. You got to get it done. You don't want to, but you don't have a choice unless you leave people in the lurch and then they're not happy. Sometimes even then, leaving them in the lurch is not cool because it could be things like you're building software that's maybe running rockets that are now flying at night or it's medical equipment that if this stuff is down, people are injured or die. I mean, it's not most of us, but that stuff could occur. There's other things like that. They're not that bad in the grand scheme of things. Let's face it. It's like death is worse than like maybe losing a lot of money, even if that lot of money is millions or billions of dollars. However, if you're in that situation and you've got a customer that's losing money, it's losing sales, it's lost data or all the bad things that can happen with bad software or when something goes down, when a system goes down or is unavailable, those things are pretty crucial and that means they're going to call you. They're going to get ahold of you at sometimes very inopportune times. It may be while you're on vacation. It may be while you're trying to get some sleep. It may be after you just solved a problem for another customer and you've been up for three days straight. Those things can occur and that's what we want to think about as we're putting our why together, as we're building that roadmap to get to whatever our goal is. We have had, as I've mentioned, several people that we've had interviews with over the last year. So, feel free to go search the site for things like consulting and why and product decisions and service decisions and building your business and things along those lines and you're going to see that we've got some several good conversations. If you haven't listened to them, those are great episodes to look at and in particular to get your mind moving in a way that's like analyzing your why. It's really putting yourself in a situation where you say, okay, I need to, in a sense, step out for a second, step back and be able to try to look at this in an unemotional sort of analytical approach because yeah, you like your why. This is a why that you want to get to and it's a positive. It's your candy in the candy store. However, you need to look at how you're going to get there because the journey itself can be one, very difficult, two, you can set yourself up in the journey in such a way that that goal is really not that good. Doesn't give you the positives or the upside that you thought it would. I hate to pick on it, but I'm going to keep on it a little bit is that whole idea of like working for yourself. If working for yourself still means you have to get up early in every morning and you work till late night every night and you're exhausted every day, being your own boss working for yourself doesn't really help unless that's what you want to do. But usually people want to be their own boss because they want to control their schedule. They want to be able to like, you know, feel like they can take time away from stuff in particular and not be, you know, maybe in a situation where your vacation time is dictated to you. We talked way, way, way back. We talked with Chris Miles and we talked to him about how he got started. And I know this is a while back. It's a year ago. One of his challenges was basically that he had a vacation that got canceled. And luckily he had been working his way towards being able to be, you know, essentially financially we'll say independent, which is where he really started with he just needed to earn enough money because he like, he had more bills. So he had to take care of business and he did. And luckily the way he did it, luckily for him, fortunately for him, because the way he did it, it allowed him to get to a point where when his employer said, no, you can't take that vacation, he was able to say, yes, I can because I quit. I have put myself in a situation where I am not beholden to you. I'm not a slave to your desires, you know, that desires being you being the company in this case. And so those are the things we need to watch out for because we don't want to get ourselves in a situation where we've removed ourselves from an employer saying we can't have a vacation. And sometimes we put ourselves in a situation where we tell ourselves we can't have a vacation. And I do speak from experience. There are, this is a mistake that I have made along with many others where you look at your, we'll say dream job and where you want it to be. And it doesn't mean that it's not a dream job, but if you don't situate yourself properly, then that dream job also will have those nightmarish moments where you're trying to go on a family vacation and you're about to leave, get on a plane or something like that where, no, you've got a customer that you have to deal with right now because you can't wait, let's say two weeks from now when you get back from your vacation. Or sometimes you can't wait till tomorrow when you can actually get a hold of a phone and be able to work or whatever it happens to be. If things can go wrong, that whole Murphy's law, if they can go wrong, they typically will. And they will usually go wrong at the absolute worst time. So when you're thinking about your why, try to take your rose colored glasses off. Try to avoid simply looking at it as like, boom, this is it. I get to this life is awesome because it's not always the case. And often if we haven't spent some time really analyzing it, we end up in a worse situation than we were beforehand. A good example of non-work stuff is people that win the lottery. A lot of people are like, man, if I win the lottery, I'm set. And there's an insane amount of people that win the lottery and end up worse off than they were beforehand or commit suicide or something like really bad stuff because they sort of got what they asked for and had no idea what they asked for was going to cost what it did or would be what it became. And business has gotten so many of these little landmines that it's worth it for us to think through these and say, okay, this is where I want to go. Here's some of the things that can go wrong or here's some of the things that I need to think about so that I can make sure that they don't go wrong or that if that would have impacted me, it doesn't because I've planned for that so that I don't have to take care of it at the bad times or at a time when I really would rather be unavailable. The last thing you want to do is have a business that you've poured your heart and soul into, needs your attention right now, and let's say your wife is giving birth to your first child at the same time. It's not something you want to miss, but now you've got a business that maybe you're suddenly going to be, it's like, hey, I get to see my first kid being born. However, I'm now financially broke or something like that. You don't want to be in that. And it's not that, it's not an norm necessarily, but the little things will add up. If you have questions about this and how to think through it and you just need a sounding board, then whether you call us, whether you contact any of the people we've talked to about this over the last many, many episodes, that's highly recommended. It's just go, and even if it's somebody that is not a professional consultant or anything like that, at the very least bounce ideas off of somebody else, whether it's your partner or somebody, you know, your life partner or your family, or better yet, if you have a mentor or a mastermind group or something like that, where you can go talk to somebody that has been through this to some extent, that knows what you're dealing with, that has an idea of what the challenges are, then they're going to help you ask the right questions about your why so that when you come up with it, when you finish it out, when you've polished it off and said, this is my why, you're going to have a deep enough understanding of it and what needs to be done to make sure that that why, the rose color, the pretty, the reason why you want to get there, all the positives are able to be enjoyed and the negatives maybe that come with that, you're able to avoid. So you enjoy the good stuff and avoid the bad stuff because sometimes that's all life boils down to. So that will wrap up this episode. We're going to come back next episode. We'll have a part one of an interview and we'll come back again and we'll have a little chat. Again, the first like this season as we are into actually, unbelievably, the 20th season, this is kicking it off and we're going to be talking about really the conversations we've had in the last year. There are a lot of recurring themes that I want to go back to and particularly some that we talked about a little bit early on and then we had some other people along the way had some of those same kinds of conversations. So we're going to do sort of a retrospective of conversations we've had in the last year and try to call out some very key points that hopefully we've all got, but also if you miss something or miss a couple episodes so you can get something to say, hey, here's a core piece of information that I think maybe will help me. So then you can go back and look at some of the past episodes. I try to get some stuff in the show notes, a couple of good example episodes with each of these. So it's not just a matter of, hey, go search for it, but actually there's going to be some links to maybe a couple of key people. Like for example, in this one, I will go link back to the Chris Miles interview, part one and part two. I think there's even a part three at that point and give you some places to look to sort of not just take it from me, but also listen to the conversations we've had with people that that's like, that's their thing. That is their, you know, it's in their wheelhouse as they say. But that wraps this one up. So I'm going to let you get back to your day, go out there, have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor Podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. Please check out school.developa-noor.com. That is where we are starting to pour a lot of our content. We've taken the lessons, the things that we've learned, all of the things that make you a better developer, and we're putting it there. We have a range of courses from free short courses up to full paid boot camps. All of these include a number of things to help you get better, including templates, quick references, and other things that make us all better developers.