How Founder Communities Accelerate the Developer to CEO Transition

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of focusing on getting unstuck, moving forward, momentum. We are the Developer podcast, Building Better Developers, and I am Rob Broadhead, one of the founders of Building Better Developers, also the founder of RB Consulting, where we help you leverage technology, assess where you are and make your business a little bit better, give you a roadmap for success. Good things, bad things I want to share recently. Bad thing is it is raining again. I'm in an area where it is just raining and raining and it's a little bit annoying, but it's not that bad. It's like it's the drizzle kind of thing. The good thing is I am not where I normally am. Nashville is like you get 18 seasons in a day, it feels like, where it goes back and forth between hot and cold and rain and dry and all that good stuff. I'm actually sitting in Portugal where it is pretty darn consistent right now. So it's not bad weather. It's like the high and the low are like really, really close to each other. And especially if you do it in centigrade, it's like really it's like plus or minus two or something like that. So not a bad place to be. More importantly, I have a guest today. Yes, Michael is away for today. It's going to be just me. Apologies for those of you that like his dulcet tones better than mine. But to offset that, we have Miki here today and we're going to talk with her right after she gives us an introduction. So please introduce yourself to our vast and broad crowd out there. Hi, thanks for having me. I'm Miki Huang. I'm a CEO and co-founder of Endeavor. Endeavor is a development agency. So obviously I have a development background and become an entrepreneur pretty much. Well, business owner. I don't know if I still hesitate to call myself an entrepreneur. But anyway, so I mean, we've been around a little bit over 10 years, but I've been doing this similar work, same industry for a while before we even started. So that's a short introduction and then we can probably dive into more details around like how we came about and what not. Well, I think that's exactly where I want to start is. So you've got a give us a little more of your background. Let's dig a little more into that. As you have a you said you have a development background and now you're a CEO. So what let's talk a little bit about that is like what brought you to the CEO role essentially is what what have you always I guess we'll start with the have you always wanted to have your own business and be CEO and the developer was just a stepping stone into it or you're a developer and you realize you wanted to I will say develop into grow into a CEO. I think it's more latter because I always kind of jokingly but it's somewhat true that everything's everything happened by accident and it kind of leading into took the opportunities to take to the next step. And that led me to where I am right now. I feel like I have an engineering background. So I went to engineering school. I majored in engineering school. I went to UVA and this program. I didn't do computer science but I had to take pretty much all the computer science for my degree. So I had a systems and information engineering. I thought I was going to business for so I do the adult like minor and different things just to kind of like get to it. But I didn't really know as you know in college you don't really know what you're going to be. You're just learning as much as you can. But I started with a more corporate bigger company as a consultant. But first it was at Accenture. And when my first role accidentally was one of the development role. So I had to dug into more like actual programming of the build a software. So I was like building some tech software. So more involved than I initially thought. But it actually makes sense because when you're in college computer science it's more theory base. But it clicked when I start working and I was actually building things. So I was enjoying it more. So after a few years there I ended up going to start up just wanting to learn more on actual software development. And then I went into the web development pretty much from the software development. But I was still doing more like a Microsoft very strong type language. So I was in that world Java or those words. And I realized that well actually that was during the time the economy and all this thing. So I got laid off from that company. So the startup. But initially I was traumatized but it actually led me to the next opportunity. I ended up going into a media company Hearst. And I started to get more exposure to open source CMS. And there was kind of different type. It was very different from what I had experienced. But it was also liberating at the same time. So I wanted to learn more about it. So I started in that world and I was in New York City. I was pretty much living in New York City for a while and then that area for a long time. And I went into the media industry. And after that after being in the actual media industry I also wanted to go back to consulting and agency. The cycle because it's faster and you learn a lot and you just kind of experience a bunch of different companies and projects. And it's less I felt like you're not putting yourself into one project for a long time. And I was like I was always really up for learning new things, experimenting new things, learning different culture and learning different languages. Those were my big thing at the time. So I went into like a smaller agency. And it's like you know how agencies are it's fast and you learn a lot. And then there's a lot of smart people. And then like you get into experience a bunch of different companies. And that's where I met my co-founder actually. He was my boss's boss actually. So he left around the time that I already gave notice that I was about thinking about leaving because I wanted to figure out the next thing. And I didn't have anything in mind when I left the company. So I ended up doing some small freelance work with him after he left. And when we're working together, we realized that we really think very similarly, work very similarly. And then our visions were very similar. So with that, we're like why don't we start a company? So we ended up starting a company. And then after 10 plus years later, we're still together working on similar things. But yeah, so like my past is just kind of when it's more like I wanted to learn more. And I was like I wanted to explore more. That led to this. I wasn't really trying to be, oh, I'm going to be a business owner. I'm going to be an entrepreneur. And if I think about it now, I probably were able to do a lot more because they didn't know what I was getting into. But I grew more. I still feel like I'm learning so much as an entrepreneur because like it's always new things that you're learning with different like employees or clients or whatever. So yeah, that's a kind of long description of how I evolved from developer to a business owner. Yeah, it was long, but it's a path that sounds very familiar. I have somewhat similar in the ways that I went through. I actually started, it wasn't Accenture. It was actually Anderson Consulting back when I was with them. It was that far ago. But same kind of thing. Started with a big company, got into a smaller company, a small sort of a boutique consulting. I guess it weren't boutique at the time, but there was a smaller consulting company. And then a lot of, you know, went through some startups and things like that. So I think that leads to one of the things that I feel has really helped me as a business owner, as a leader. I don't use CEO as my title. I don't feel like I'm big enough yet or whatever my company isn't. But essentially that kind of role. I've always thought that the startup experience did a lot to help me more than, you know, like an MBA or things like that. Because you did mention that, you said that it's sort of, you didn't know what you're getting into, but you're always having to learn. Is looking back, how much do you see what you know now, especially in the last 10 years as you've been running a company, how much can you sort of look back to some of those trials and those challenges when you were trying to just sort of scramble and get things done with a small company that have helped you become who you are today? A lot. Yes, it's like, I think almost everything too. I was lucky enough that I have a co-founder who had a lot of experience already because he was a partner of the whole practice. So he knew a lot more and I was learning through some of the things that you don't consider. Even though I was in the management role, it's not like owning a company. You're still within the company and you're under whoever was actually the owners or whatever, co-founders. You don't get into all those details about various things that you have to consider as a business owner. So those, I was lucky enough to have someone who was kind of managing a bigger practice to kind of lean on. And also we were lucky enough that when we just started, we went to one of those like the owner camp, like a mastermind, it's like invitation only, but he has some connections too. So we were invited to that. So we were learning with the people who have been already had business for like, you know, five to 10 years. So we're learning from some of the things that we need to be on the lookout for, something to consider. If I think about it now, like it was so early that I didn't understand a lot of it, but like as I grew into or as we were maturing as a company, a lot of things that we learned or heard from that specific bootcamp or like the mastermind group thing made sense as we go. So that was a great background that we had and I was so fortunate to have that experience and we also try to join more of like an owner camp or owner, like a masterminds and groups so that we can learn from other people's experience. So yeah, and then even though there's a lot of trial and error, but like we're also trying to learn from other people's experience, which was very important. And I think it helped us a lot. That's a, I think that's a lot of people, there's even, you know, the imposter syndrome people sort of run into where they're like, I'm, yeah, I didn't know all of this. I was just sort of figuring out as I went, it was, you know, I had a challenge of the day and I figured it out and I solved it. It seems like that's, that's definitely part for the course. It's like we, we don't know it. We haven't done it before. So the first time we do it, we learn it. And is there, I'm glad you pointed out the mastermind because I'm always wondering like, what are some of the things that, that you can point to say, these are things I did that I'm really glad I did that this really helped me, you know, as I got through those, those growing pains and those, those initial struggles? I think, I think masterminds are one of them because I joined more groups actually lately, we're probably post COVID-ish because I was, I forgot about it because like you're, when you're really deep in business, sometimes you don't have any other time than, you know, focusing on business. But I think during, during COVID was one of those times that like, you've had to look back and like, maybe I should join some of the different groups and learn from other entrepreneurs or business owners. So I started learning, joining, I think the first one I joined was YEC, it was just Young Entrepreneur Council, I think. I forgot the actual name of it. It was very different because energy was just so different because everyone's like younger business owners and they're pretty successful. They have like a threshold to get in. But the one thing I realized that everyone there wanted to grow together. It's like, it wasn't more like a competitive, like, you know, I'm just going to be like, competitor, I don't want to share anything. It's more like share and let's get growing together. Let's make both of our companies grow. It was so much of that energy. So I learned so much from them and some of the different things, like even like a little things like how do you want to manage like your employees or benefits and all those things and you'll share and they'll be very transparent about how they run their business. And they're not all agencies, but they're different types of companies too. So it was very refreshing and very motivating to be around those people. And you get, you absorb those energies and you actually, that's like one of the things that you make you run more, I feel like. So that was a great experience. And once I had that, I was like, I'm trying to make sure that I joined the groups that people are very open to grow together and share their experiences. So that was one of the things like I remember someone asked me about that question. Like if you had to do one thing differently, what would that be? I was like, I'll probably join one of these groups earlier than later. Yeah, I think that there's a level of accountability with that as well. That's like a, it's a positive accountability because you're growing and you want to be able to come to the group. It's just, I guess masterminds have that too, where you want to be able to show that you want to be, you don't want to be the one that's like, I haven't done anything. I haven't progressed since our last meeting. You want to be like, yeah, I implemented these three ideas or I tried these things and now I have new things to ask about or I have new progress and you feel like everybody's sort of like they're like, you know, collapsing and cheering you on. So you don't want to let them down. So I love the idea of that. And you mentioned, how does it, how did that change? Cause you mentioned being a little different as a founder, as a CEO. How did you find that changed as well when you got into owning a company versus being employee as far as the, I guess as we'll talk about like the social aspect of it or being able to relate to coworkers and those that were, you know, that you're sitting next to every day, maybe. I don't know if it changed that much, but I, for myself, I actually feel like there's more responsibility that you always think of. Like, so like, I feel like I get, I feel more responsible for the things that I do. I don't know if it's, it makes sense, but like that grew, I felt like, and I was always a very shy-ish person. I don't tend to talk a lot and I'll be just kind of reserved in the background type of person, but I had to break out of it because you know, if you're a business owner, you have to be. So those kinds of things, like a little things change, like how I behave and how I act around other people changed a little bit. But yeah, I think other than that, I don't know if there's too much changes there, but then I'm sure that if other people look at me, they might think that there are a bunch of other things changed too, but I might just not recognize it. But it's kind of, it's also kind of naturally grew into the role because like, you know, when you're in just like a manager or management role in different company, you still feel like it's not perfectly, like it's not, you're not the only one that's responsible for something. That's when you're a business owner, you feel like I had to make sure this is my responsibility. There's like a little bit of change that that kind of gave you different mindsets, I feel like. Yeah, definitely. I see that a lot as we talk to people that are owners, especially, and this is sort of the next question is, those have switched from, where it's like a side hustle or something like that and then turning it into a real business. Now, is this something that, did you guys start out initially just like, okay, we're going to have a business together or did you have something that you sort of were working on the side as you guys were talking through this and then sort of grew into a business? No, we started it right away because I was more like, because we both quit. So we're thinking about the next things already. But I think, I don't know if he was, I think he, like my co-founder, he probably had it in mind, but I didn't think about starting a business. But since we were partnering, we just started right away and then just kind of started with a S Corp and started as a business. So how did that conversation go down? I'm really curious. So he just sort of say, hey, let's start a business. Or how did that, how did that conversation evolve? That was interesting because it felt incidental, accidental because we were doing the project. It was more like one of the clients that he already had and I was working in that project. And we realized that it was very, we work, I worked with him once before from the previous company, but not, we didn't really overlap that much after. But when I was working with him, I didn't know, I always had a very high respect for him because he's very technical, but he's also very approachable for even for the people who are interns. So I thought always, I always thought that was kind of cool character for the person who was in that level. And I didn't know too much of his technical skill because he was always doing other things. But when I was working on the project, he was very technical, he understands a lot of things. And then my respect for him grew. And the way we think and then like kind of more like a reaction to certain things, like if things happen and how we want to approach our client, the way we want to do it was very similar. So that kind of made it felt like it's probably going to be very easy to work with him. So I was thinking that too. And he's like, we were, and I remember the coffee shop is like, he's like, he was kind of joking me saying like, why don't we just start a company together? And I was like, yeah. I was like, no, I'm serious. So I was like, oh, okay. So, yeah, so that's why I felt like it was kind of like incidental, accidental ish, because like I thought he was joking initially, but he was like, no, like all joking aside, I'm serious. I think we'll be, we'll fit well. So I think that's how we started. Oh, that's awesome. That's a good old story. Now, and this sort of goes into it. So now you guys have been around together, had this thing for 10 years. How has the progression of your company, if you look back, like where, when he said, Hey, let's start a company, the vision you had, or, and especially in those early conversations of what it would be and what it would become, how has that, how is that where you are, or are you in a completely different place and situation than you thought you would have been? I don't know if it's completely different, but it's slightly different. Every time we change, like we do something, there are some, there are decisions that we had, there are experience, like there are directions we took was evolving a little bit depending on how, how the year went and how like the client perceived us and a couple of clients we want. So it evolved a little bit. So we always do like annual meetings and quarterly meetings to evaluate it. So it evolved a little bit to where we are, but I don't think we did any dramatic changes at any point of it. It was like naturally happening with, even with the industry, how the industry was going and also with like how the, the ward was going, like during COVID and all this thing, there are a little bit of shifts here and there to get adjusted to it, but I don't think we made it huge different directions that much, but it was like a little bit of decisions changes or direction changes along the way for the past 10 years. I guess we'll back up a little bit too on the background of it. So what is your, what does your company do? What is maybe your ideal, your niche or your ideal client? So we actually, the direction change, it kind of comes a couple of years though, actually two years ago, last year, mostly beginning of last year, we're predominantly in digital media space. We're always like our clients base our enterprise level of digital media. So like over 10,000 million view per month. Cause it's, and then it pretty much enterprise companies for our main clients. And we do open source a lot more with CMS. We used to do, so there was a direction changes too. So we used to do a lot more CMS, not just open source, but we niche down to open source CMS. So mostly on Drupal, PHE base or React, WordPress or Laravel, those kind of CMSs. And then there's a period of time that we only focused on WordPress because WordPress is like 43% of the web. So like we just wanted to kind of, and then a lot of digital media publishing companies preferred WordPress for their CMS. So we stayed on that for a while. And then recently we wanted to just open up to like, Hey, why do we do, why, why would we kind of lock down on one technology only? So we wanted to open up a little bit. And with the industry wanted to bring our experience as a digital publishing space into outdoor brands. So like they have some e-commerce and whatnot because everyone has their platform to work as their like a marketing platform. So we can probably bring in our experience from dealing with high traffic digital media company, CMS experience into them. So like that's the direction that we changed recently to see if that that will be a good fit for them. And that is where we're going to pause for now. We're going to come back. Don't worry. We are not done with Miki. We're going to come back on episode two and continue this conversation. And there's like, we don't get too deep in the AI this time. Yes, you're welcome. We're not going to spend too much time on that. We do like, you know, brush up against a little bit, but not too much. And there's definitely one of those. If you are just listening and you're not out there watching this, then it will be worth it very much so to hang out and check us out because of the bonus material. She drops a couple of really interesting pieces of information and doubles down on her primary piece of wisdom that she would give to anybody. So I want to thank her so much for hanging out. I want to thank Mike for not making a single mistake like I just did as I was speaking during this episode, but he is still working behind the scenes so you guys can give him an applause as he's editing all this and making it prettier than it needs to be. That being said, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thanks for tuning in to the DevelopmentalWare Podcast where we're all about building better developers and better careers. I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback, so drop a note to info at developmentalware.com. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you listen. And remember, a little bit of effort every day adds up to a great success. Keep learning, keep growing, and we'll see you in the next episode.