Detailed Notes
Are you feeling stuck in your tech career? It might be time to pivot.
In this episode of Building Better Developers, Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche dive into when and how to pivot as a developer. You’ll hear: • What pivoting really means (and what it’s not) • Michael’s personal story from pre-med to dev life • Signs it’s time for change • How to avoid burnout and stay energized • Why pivoting leads to growth, not failure
🎯 Whether you’re shifting tech stacks, roles, or focus areas—this episode will help you navigate change with confidence.
👉 Visit https://develpreneur.com/ for more episodes and resources. 🔔 Subscribe for weekly developer growth strategies.
#pivot #developerlife #careerchange #softwaredevelopment #buildbetterhabits
00:00 - Behind the scenes 02:45 - Networking Stories and Side Project Ideas 06:20 - Episode Intro: Pivoting and Embracing Change 08:45 - What Is a Pivot? (And What It’s Not) 11:30 - Real-World Tech Pivots: Java to C#, Dev to Manager 15:00 - Michael’s Career Pivot: From Pre-Med to Dev 19:40 - Exploring Tech Roles to Find Your Fit 23:10 - When to Pivot: Burnout, Market Signals & Growth 28:00 - Practical Pivoting: Small Tests and Career A/B Testing 31:45 - Mental Health and Developer Journaling 35:00 - Business Pivots, Branding, and Repositioning 38:30 - Final Thoughts and Developer Inspiration
Transcript Text
[Music] So, it's raining. My windows are cracked a little bit, but it's still 90s something here. So, it's like, do I go run out and close that little crack or do I just deal with the white car? And I'm just going to deal with a white car. >> It's just >> my air is not working. Not nearly. Like driving here this morning, it was like frigid. My car is like so cold. At lunch when I drove the three miles to get to the chamber for the training thing today, it uh didn't get cold by the time I got there. Nothing. And then I sat there for five minutes with the heat visor up trying to coat up again. Barely keeping up with anything. It's It was cool air but not cold air. So, by the time I got here, I was almost sweating again. >> Yes, that was my uh That is my [Music] No, I'm on my Let me >> I'm talking. Can you hear me? >> There you go. Now I can. >> All right. Um Yeah. Um, that is my that is my curse is that I I can sweat like you wouldn't believe. So, we did a networking thing yesterday and um room. I mean, it's a small room, not a, you know, it's a bar. It's not a huge place, but it's like, I don't know, 75 people, which is probably close to capacity for this thing. And of course, it's hotter than hell outside, so that's not like they can keep it, you know, super cool in there, but they do have like, you know, stuff blasted. There are people in suits and they're just like look cool cool as a cucumber. I'm in I mean I'm in jeans and a you know a button down like a thin really thin shirt but I'm just like sweating bullets. I go in and I'm like I go in the bathroom and grab like paper towels and I'm just like just like sponging off. Natalie was like oh my gosh. Um it's like why don't you try a little bit of that? And it's like said she's like did you ring your shirt out? I was like I should have like that might have helped. Like God but >> I've got one of those tonight. I'm hoping it's going to be pretty good. It's at the brewery here in Jackson. Um it's called 7:31. It's all the local businesses um that are like with the chamber and co and everything. Uh they're throwing a party for them between 6:30 and 8:30 tonight. So, I'm going to go for a little bit. >> Oh, cool. >> Yeah. This one was a uh all across Nashville networking group thing. So, it was a bunch of it was people down in Spring Hill over in like all the way up on the north side of town, east side of town, west side of town. They were all over the place. It was met a lot of interesting people. Met an Imagineer, a guy that was like 28 years with Disney out in uh Anaheim. Wow. And has moved here. And the thing he does is he builds um like studio. He builds stuff for live music events and stuff like that. So he could like do theme parks and all this kind of stuff. >> And I was like I was just like, "Okay, you're a fascinating dating person to talk to." So he was a great guy. So, it's like one of those that I guess like I need to have some of these people on our and just talk to them just because they're cool. We need to change from developing where I guess I need to like the side side podcast of cool people or something like that where we sit down and talk to it because which is what we did for that one season I guess. >> Or I guess we could just do a side season for that or like maybe a side >> Yeah. bonus episodes. Oh, no. Like a special season that we do in parallel, but we only throw like an episode out maybe once a month or every few weeks. >> Yeah, we could do something like that and just because that's what I originally I think you know that's what I originally had it set up is everything gets shoved into season one even though there wasn't actually a season one. So now it's up to probably about 200 episodes are technically or like they're listed as season one but they just like all the special episodes get like packed on there. So >> all right. Uh we're going to pretend I hit record like a while back because we've had some good discussions here. So we're going to talk about I'm sorry guys like you know we've been like we're just like cranking through stuff. So apologies for not welcome you into our abode as it were into the the ambiance that is the development podcast. Thank you very much. Have a seat. People will be around. Tip your servers. Take care of them so we can take care of you. Great title. See, it's it's back to some good stuff here. So, I threw this in here. Pivoting, how to embrace change and fuel your professional growth. It says it's perfect for developers, audience of developers, entrepreneurs, and lifelong learners. Here's a structured podcast episode plan with topic ideas and points. This is a little bonus thing I love. I don't think I'd told it anywhere that these are lifelong learners. I don't think that came up anywhere. We've talked about it before. We've talked about like the book we talk about that's how you become a better developer is you need to be a lifelong learner. But it's interesting that it like picked that up somewhere and like throw that, you know, throws that in. It gives us a little bit of a it gives us some validity of like, oh, maybe you do know what you're talking about. I'm going to take my uh sips there. I am I'm going to go back to Spanish. That was sort of fun doing a little tho. We are back. This is building better developers, a developer to our podcast. And yes, we have added a little Spanish the last couple of times just because. If you're offended by my use of Spanish because I don't speak I speak it like a non-speaker, I apologize profusely. Shoot me an email at infovelopneur.com and I would love to especially if you're a Spanish speaker, just talk to you for a while, listen to it, and hopefully I will get better. But that's not what we're about. We are about better developers. This season and this episode, this season, we are working on building better developers with AI. What we're doing is taking two seasons back, taking all the topics, throwing it into chat GPT, and just letting it regurgitate some stuff, and then we discuss what it sends back. And it's done a really good job of giving us uh a great way to go back to some of these topics and touch on sometimes some topics and things that we didn't cover the first time around. may have covered them elsewhere, but I think we've even had more than a few times where there are things that it throws at us that we're like, "This is important to cover and I don't know when we ever have covered that." This episode might be just such a thing. So, we're going to have have that little hanging out there for you until we get done with our introductions. My introduction, I am Rob Broadhead. I am one of the founders of Developer, Building Better Developers. also founder of RB Consulting where we help you use technology. We help you leverage technology whether you're a small business, a startup, whether you have no idea where you're going and no idea about technology or whether you have been doing this for a long time and you just need to figure out how to do what you do better. We will sit down with you, help you through a technology assessment, and then figure out which way do you need to go. Do you need to simplify? Do you need to integrate? Do you need to automate? Do you need to innovate? We'll help you think outside of the box or we'll help you build a better box whatever needs to be done because it's really about we sitting we sit down with you understand your business use our experience across a lot of industries and a lot of technologies and find the best way to craft a special recipe a custom recipe for you your business and your way forward. Some people will call it a road map and we can either help you execute on that road map or hand one over to you and say, "Here you go. We've talked through this. You know what you're doing. Drive away." If you have an email, if you want any more information, shoot me an email at robb-sns.com. Uh or you can check us out at rb-sns.com. Good thing, bad thing. Wow. There is, like I said, this is the end. We're at the end of July basically and July has been a month. It has just been crazy. So, good thing is that in moving around and doing a bunch of stuff, I stumbled across u an internet provider that I it's been around forever. Didn't realize that they have a really cheap monthly plan that you can just connect to their devices pretty much everywhere. I know there's a couple of providers that do something like this, but this is something there's no contract, no nothing, no limits other than the number of devices that connect and really awesome. They're not paying me, so I'm not going to use their name right now, but I may find a way later to do so. So, that was really cool is that I was like, you know what, I need something. Found it. I went onto their like, you know, tried to connect to their little uh hotspot and they said, here's what you can do. Just pay us a small amount of money and we're off and running. I'm like, cool, done, take my money. And now I'm on the internet. So, I've been on the internet many ways, but now I'm more on the internet when I'm out in the middle of nowhere. Basically, bad thing. I have been out in the middle of nowhere for way too much time in the last two weeks due to actually I guess let's go three weeks basically now almost due to helping a child move and hilarity ensues as my wife says u we have been on the road I think 40 hours or more of drive time in the last three weeks and that's including and that's like driving from long distances that's not including running around town in various towns and stuff like that. If you actually do our full like I have a car that I got the oil change at the beginning of the month and it is already 2,000 miles past or actually it's 1,000 miles past its recommended next oil change. So it's been a week, it's been a month and it's feels like it's been a year but only in the last three or four weeks. But now to make all of us happier, the good thing of all good things, Michael is going to introduce himself. >> Hey everyone, my name is Michael Moash. I'm one of the co-founders of developer, building better developers. I'm also the owner of Envision QA where we help startups and growing companies build better software faster and with fewer problems. Our services cover software development, quality assurance, test automation, and release support. Companies come to us when they have problems. uh they want to avoid delays, reduce bugs, and launch with confidence. Whether you're building your first MVP or scaling a live product, we make sure that your software is reliable, efficient, and ready for growth. You can learn more about us at envisionqa.com. Good thing, bad thing? Uh well, bad thing right now is my windows are cracked. It's pouring, but it is so bloody hot outside and my car is over 100 degrees inside. I am not going out and closing my windows. Good thing I mentioned a while back that I managed to get my hands on a Switch 2 and I wasn't going to be allowed to get it till Christmas. My wife relented on that and gave it to me uh last week. So, it's a quote unquote early birthday gift, which is great, but I still don't have a lot of time to play because I'm super busy with work. >> Ah, the life of a gamer. I was talking to one of my developers the other day. We were talk we're building out our um some of our social media presence and stuff like that. And one of the things that we're talking about like let's get yourself a good bio and include some stuff about you and u you know what was said is like don't just say I'm a gamer you know give something more specific about that and one of them is like ah I haven't been able to do games in a long time I wish I could get back it's like and this is a young guy this is so it's not just us old folk that get just a little too busy now let's dive into because we've gone gone busy enough into other directions let's talk about this episode. So, the original episode was titled pivoting, how to embrace cha, embrace change and fuel your professional growth. Now, Chad GPT comes back and says, now it's like it's wanting to like pat us on the back again. It says, "Great title. It's perfect for developers, audience of developers, entrepreneurs, and lifelong learners. Here's a structured podcast episode plan with topic ideas and talking points. Episode focus. this episode. And this is interesting because we just did one. I'm on like the same conversation thread is giving me a very different uh layout this time around. So, I mean, it's it's still like, you know, topics and bullet points, but it's a little bit different how they've set this up. So, it's pretty interesting that it said, "Okay, we'll try something different." All right. The opening hook. When everything changes, tell a brief story or example of a major pivot. For example, a startup shutting down, a developer switching stacks, or AI disrupting a product. Pose a central question. What do you do when the path you were no longer you were on no longer leads where you want to go? I'm going to go ahead and dive into the second one. That's the opening hook. Uh, and we may come back and tell a story of a example of a major pivot. Uh, what is the pivot and what's not? So define a pivot in the context of business strategy changing product customer se segment or model career shifts for example developer to project manager agency to indie front end to all uh to AI yep front end to AI uh or personal growth changing your mindset work style or goals clarify pivoting is not quitting it's red it's refining direction based on feedback and clarity I think we have not used the word pivot enough in some of our past discussions because I think a perfect example of a pivot that we have used as an example over and over again is actually in technology that you use itself. We have talked many times about um tangential technologies and skills and ancillary skills and things like that. So for example, let's say you are a Java developer. Well, while you're let's say you're building Java web applications and in doing so, you're going to learn obviously you're going to know Java. You're probably going to learn a little bit about databases. You're going to learn a little about HTML and CSS and JavaScript and some things like that. Now, those skills translate to let's say you're you're going to move to uh C. There are language constructs in Java that are almost the same in C. If you're building C# web applications, then you're going to see some of the same. You can use literally some of the same HTML, CSS, JavaScript. Uh for example, I have which I have not completed yet. I do have sitting out on the YouTube channel. I started doing a conversion of an old Java JSP application to a more modern Spring Boot using uh Time Leaf is the is basically the the front-end piece for the the templating. And a lot of that stuff was like really simple like just copy paste and then change a few variable names and then boom it's it's off and running. And we talked about where there's some you know some changes and things like that but they really weren't that bad. Those are pivots. If you are in a in a job on a project and for for example the technology starts to die, you're on something that now people aren't doing anymore. Um, and it may be because it's now moving to a new version or it could be a completely different technology. Then maybe it's time to pivot, you know, like the people did back in the Y2K world where they were like, I don't think Cobalt is going to be around anymore, so I've got to find a way to go from Cobalt to something else. And some people pivoted, some people retired. So pivoting is not that you're just quitting that thing. And particularly in the things that we're going to talk about is it's not necessarily that that just never comes up again. There is a lot of stuff that came out of it. There's skills that were learned. There's knowledge that came. There's experience that you had that does apply to the new place. And that's what a pivot is if you're in a business. And then I'm going to toss it over Michael. I'm going to do this one sort of a little lower is it could be that you pivot from a specific market focus to another one. So, for example, you could be dealing with uh let's say you're dealing with pet stores. Your primary customer is mom and pop pet stores and for pet supplies. And then you realize that basically the pet supplies are the same as I don't know let's say liquor stores or something like that or toy stores or I mean you can think as there's going to be things like that that are they're similar enough and so you can pivot you can take what you learned in this one silo and then you can now apply it to a new one and hopefully give yourself a jump start in that. So taking that I'm going to hopefully that's a good springboard and a jump start for you to talk about maybe your thoughts about pivots. >> Yeah. So I'm going to probably take this in a slightly different direction be but you kind of set up the stage for this. So how to embrace change and you know fuel your professional growth. The best thing I can or I guess to me what really personally resonates is my career path. How I got to where I am today. And just to give you a quick little background, I actually computers was a hobby for me back in the day. It was video games, computers. I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a surgeon so bad I went as far as to be accepted premed to most of my colleges. And then I got into the actual medical classes and found out I could not handle uh the needles and some other things. Like personally once I got to that point it's like crap I have made a bad choice in where I was going and I had to pivot. >> Quick pause. Any of you that if you're depends on how old you are go look for YouTube Quincy q u i n c y uh TV show intro and you're going to see probably exactly the kind of things that Michael was worried about uh as far as needles. And I say that as somebody that is also not a fan of needles. So go ahead. That was just it was an amusing thought I had to throw out there. >> So that was kind of my school journey. That that was kind of my career path when I got into college. And then it's like, well crap, what am I going to do? You know, I'm three years into college thinking I'm going to be a doctor and all of a sudden, whoops, I can't do this. Well, I like video games and I like computers. Well, back then video games was like the Super Nintendo, the Genesis, and a couple other generations after that. But becoming a video game developer wasn't really a huge career opportunity back then. There wasn't really schools you could go to. So, I jumped into my hobby. I went into computers. I'm like, "Okay, well, I like playing around with computers. What can I do with this?" And I got into this. And there's many facets to computers. And like Rob mentioned, even within software, you can uh within Java, you can touch on webpage development, you can do Java development, JavaScript development, you know, databases. Interestingly enough, early on with software, the other areas that are now called DevOps, but you had networking, you had Oracle databases. So back then it was actually split into two segments. You were either going to be an engineer, you were going to be a database developer, you were going to be a network analyst, or you were going to be a software developer. you really only had four flavors to choose from. And I will tell you right off the bat, I tried every single one of them 100% while I can do it. I love networking. I I hate running cables. I hate switches. I I can do it. I just not my cup of tea. But that is where pivoting to me comes in. It's as you learn these things, but you have to expand. You have to try everything to find out what it is that you love to do. If you stick to one thing and you think it's okay, you may not be giving yourself the benefit of the doubt of the right tool or the right language or career path that you're on. Try other things. Keep yourself open and constantly learn. And the other thing I'll throw out in in this case is well books have become more digital. Audio books are great. YouTube videos are fine, but pick a medium and just go listen to something new at least once a week and try to learn and figure out, hey, is this something I want to learn? Pick something outside of your comfort zone and see if it's something that you like. It may bore you to death. That's fine. But stick with it and then pivot and try something new. If you find something that you like better, let us know because, you know, we want to know these success stories. Moving along, that's great. So, I'm not even going to add to it. Uh, when and why you should pivot. Discuss signs it's time for a change. Lack of growth or challenge, burnout or loss of passion, market signals, declining revenue, users, and relevance, new opportunities that align better with your values or skills. quote, "Sometimes the market doesn't reject you, it redirects you." End of quote. I want to go with the market signals. There is u my mentor and I talked, this is now years ago, and it was something we were had a discussion about business cycles basically about technology in general. And this is not going to be very helpful if you're watch if you're on the podcast and not watching, but um I'm going to do like a like think of a bell curve sort of like, you know, you start low and it grows up and then you sort of flatten off. So, not a full bell, more of like a with a a flatter plateau and then things start to fade away. That is typically what you're going to see with technologies is they're going to start off early on. There's, you know, early adoption stuff like that. They're going to grow and this includes a lot of solutions and things like that. They're in modern business world. For example, right now, think of AI. Go back a few years ago, well now several years ago, and think about search engines. Uh, think about and then there's a cyclical thing to it. So you can think about like uh data centers versus now having you know cloud services and software as a service and things like that and this includes uh development languages and things like that is that they're going to start off they're going to grow they're going to have some sort of a plateau and they're probably going to fade away. Well what you want to do is when you're at the sort of at the plateau of one is be that's like a good time to try to find maybe another one that's starting out. So you're you know you're plateauing but now you're trying to find something new. So, as the one comes down, the other's coming up, you can switch those suckers out and hopefully you get like a level playing field of, you know, we'll go level this way for those of you visually, um, as you're going to come through. So, instead of like the ups and downs of roller coaster, what you have is you've got more of a smooth ride because you are essentially starting to get into the new one coming up before the other one has gone down the hill. If you think about a roller coaster, it'd be if you had like roller coasters running next to each other and every time you started to get towards like the bottom, you know, got toward about the midpoint of a fall, you were able to jump on one that was climbing up to the other one and then you're able to jump on another one was coming down and you're just you're just now leveling that thing out. So, I think it's very important to look at the market signals and the things they talk about here are great. things like uh revenue, your users and even the relevance as far as like what are you seeing in the you know in the industry news or the tech rags or on the you know the 5:00 news you know things like that. It's like what is what's hot, what's not. Look at that market sector. Maybe as far as like you can go look at how those stock stocks are doing in the market sector. You can look at all kinds of different places you can look at, but figure out are we on something that's still essentially growing or is it flat or is it starting to decline? And if you're not growing as fast as you used to and you know it's getting close to that flat point, then maybe it's time to go find something else and start that pivot because the best way to pivot is when you haven't like you're not burning the lifeboats where you're pivoting while you're still cruising along on something that you've already done. It's like the old adage I guess it's an old adage. We'll say it is that it is easier to find a job when you have a job than it is when you don't have a job. So those are my thoughts on it. Where do you want to go with this? How do you want to pivot into this topic? >> So, I'm going to take the burnout because I deal with this one more often than I should, but that's just because of life. Typically, like Rob was talking about there with like the belt, the roller coaster idea. We as developers, as people, we have a certain amount of bandwidth that we can actually get things done, that we can actually stay focused on things and stay positive about things. If you feel that your mood or your momentum is going down or you are it's taking you longer to complete a task, you really need to be conscious of where you're at. You need to do a selfch check because burnout is more than just detrimental to your workflow. It can actually be detrimental to your health and to your uh mental state and it it can burn a lot of bridges. So, as you work through these things, understand that it is okay that, hey, I've been stuck on this problem for 15 minutes. Pivot, go for a walk, go do something else. Change your mindset for five minutes, 10 minutes, do the Pomodoro technique, and just change a little bit. You don't want to pivot, pivot, pivot because then you're going to get into that fighter fighting mode, and then you're in a different mindset and a different type of earning. So the the recommendation here is use things like the pomodoro technique. Use create scheduled tasks for yourself to do selfch checks especially if you are on a difficult project or you find yourself that your mental state you're either in a bad mood or you just something's off like you're not being as productive as you normally are. I don't know why this came to mind as an example from the other night is that uh we were dancing and um my partner was I had turned them to the left like three or four times in a row because that was part of what we were walking through at the time and she gets done and she just instead you know we turn a left turn left turn left turn left and she just out of the blue decided to turn to the right and I looked at her with a little little quizzical thing and she's like I just needed to unwind like literally it's like you know you get and that's exactly the pivot is sometimes you get stuck in this and like think about it. If you turn if you sit there and you just turn the left, turn the left, turn the left, you're going to get dizzy and stuff like that. And if as soon as you turn to the right, suddenly you can go to the right, to the right, to the left, to the left, one of those little dance things. So, I think this is a very good general like pulse kind of thing. A little like checking on the pulse of is it feeling redundant? Is it feeling like it's not what it needs to be? This could be like Michael said, it could be that it's more exhausting. it takes more time. Maybe it's just not as fun. I mean, there's a lot of different things that you can run into that are indicators that are check engine lights that say maybe it's time to think about a pivot. I will give you an example that you can go back and look over time. Uh it hopefully we've hidden it but it's still there is look at the developer nor site and look like if you go look way back and I don't know how you I think you can go look at like our blogs you can sort them based on um date and you go back to the earliest posts and then if you start just walking just looking at titles you'll see that we have done some pivots along the way. If you go through all of the podcast episodes, heaven and help you. There's a lot of podcast episodes. But if you do that, you will see that there have been pivots along the way. If you can go look out at I don't know where we've got for like RB consulting, you'd have to go to the internet time machine, but you can go see some very strong pivots there. We talk about the pivots from a business sense that we've done on a regular basis. We've we pivoted and suddenly boom, Michael appeared. That's like that's a pivot. Suddenly going from always one person that you you know that's all you ever hear and suddenly there's two people on the podcast. That's a pivot. We've talked to we talked to so many people in the interview season that they did a pivot like this where they usually the pivot is like a down pivot where they niche down on something. They find a problem and they say this is what I'm really going to focus on and suddenly things explode in the success area for them. So, with that, I think we're going to keep this one a little bit shorter because we go long way too often on these uh these AI things have actually been really good. And you may realize that both of us get a little bit excited about some of these topics. We're like, "Wow, there's like there's entire seasons we could do on some of these suggestions uh that we and we've mentioned that before." And who knows, we may do entire seasons on these in the future. As always, I'm going to ask you for an email. Shoot me an email [email protected]. Let us know what you think. What do you like? What don't you like? Recommendations, all that kind of stuff. Even if the recommendations are like arch your hair differently or, you know, get a haircut kid or shave or whatever, you know, we don't care. We just feedback is what we crave because it helps us become better podcasters. It helps the site become a better site. That being said, we're just going to wrap this one. I'm not going to give you all the other places you can go to developer.com and all that kind of stuff. I'm not going to give you that this time. Either listen to the next episode or the prior episode because we're going to keep it a little simpler for you. Go out there. I mean this sincerely. I appreciate you guys. Appreciate the time you've given us. So go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week and we will talk to you next time. Uh let's see. So this goes to okay. Oh, the next the remaining things for the bonus material, real life developer founder pivot stories sharing examples like a Laravel developer who pivoted from client work to launching a SAS, a bootstrap founder who shut down a failing product and built a tool based on user pain, switching from coding to developer advocacy, teaching and uh or content creation. Uh invite a guest who made a notable pivot and share or share your own pivot story. How to pivot effectively step by step. Give a practical framework. They actually give us one. Listen. What are users, teammates, or mentors telling you? Assess. What's working? What's draining you? Research. What's the market? Where's the market going? What's missing? Plan. Choose a focused, testable direction. Uh, execute small. Build a prototype, change roles, launch an MVP, reflect and adjust. Feedback is your compass. Tools and methods are retrospectives, customer interviews, lean canvas, gut checks. Um, oh, there's a six. mindset, embracing the discomfort of change, letting go of sunk costs and ego, avoiding paralysis by analysis, building resilience and adaptability is core dev traits. Uh, I'm going to jump in first and I'm just going to talk a little bit about like experience about where we're at. So, you can go out to the rb-sns.com site probably right now and you're going to see that we are evolving. We are making some changes. We're doing some pivots. a lot of this kind of stuff. It's really, and this is a pivot based on marketing and like messaging and some things like that, we're not really changing what we do as much as we are making sure that our message and that our site and that all of our brand matches that. If you go back and search for the no brand brand or just brand in general in our past episodes, you will find some great conversations where honestly I talked to the people about this and probably should have done this years ago. I did. I'm still working on it. I'm still trying to figure because I'm not a marketing guy. I'm a developer. I need to I need to like get some of the stuff that that stuff going. Uh within that though there is um this and this is something I say about this with the discussions with customers and and companies and trying to figure out how do you build like building your technology roadmap and things like that. there is a burn-in time basically or baking time that is required for certain things and so it is very useful I think for you to try some things out uh this is the assessment first like what's working and sort of like give yourself a general direction and then I would say with the research where's it you know where's the market going what's missing and they talk about plan so choose a focused testable direction I would say you have that direction but you probably have like AB comparisons or maybe ABC D E FG. It can be you can you can spread yourself too thin, but I think if you can do some small chunks and this yes, this goes back to the 4-hour work week where he talked about doing like a 7-week uh ad campaign or a twoe I mean I'm sorry 7 day or a twoe ad campaign or something like that. We have done some of that in the past. I don't know that it always works in every case. I have not found the success that uh that Tim Ferrris obviously have not found the success that he has in some of those kinds of things, but the general idea is solid. It's like you need to test some stuff out. Dip a toe in. Figure out how to dip more than a toe in so you can be sure enough of it. And this even goes back to Michael's earlier comment. It's like if you're doing something and it you don't like it, that's okay. give it um you know give it a chance because it may be that it sucks but then a little bit further down the road it sucks less and you eventually may like it um or not but like give it a chance and then when it when you're done feel free to say no and write it off and don't say oh I spent a lot of time on that I don't want to give up that time that was time well spent learning that you don't like doing that Michael go for it what is your thought where do you want to give your bonus material >> so similar journey you know I have rebranded consulting. It was I had that company for 20ome years and I rebranded it to Envision QA. I'm going to briefly touch on AB testing. Conference talks about, we've talked about it pivoting. If you're not sure where you're going or if you're not sure something's working, do it one way quickly. Pivot, do it another way. Compare the two. Sometimes it's better to have options than to just stick with something and drive it into the ground and go nowhere. From a developer's perspective, that is one of the best things of test-driven development. You start testing it, you don't like it, pivot, try something else till you find your rhythm, till you find what works for you. And the last little tip there is if you find yourself reaching burnout or having problems with burnout, look at do doing something like a journal so you can keep track of your mood daily. There are mood apps, things like that where you can keep track of kind of a daily, you know, where am I at? Where am I going? If you find yourself struggling with that, use those tools to help you pivot when you're off the rails, when you're burned out, when things aren't going right. I smile thinking about that because I had this conversation with my wife today where she had some stuff and she's like, "This stuff is just wearing me out." And I was basically saying, "Suck it up, buttercup. Come on. Just like just like ignore that and just move on." This is why sometimes you need different voices in your life and not just the ones in your head. Because sometimes you do need to understand it's like it's okay to say no. It's okay to stop. It's okay to pivot. Uh but then sometimes it is like you need to be like you also have to have that where it's like did I give it a fair chance because that's really what you want to do is you want to make sure that when all said and done that you don't come back with regret and say I did that but I didn't really do it enough or the right way. Give yourself and you don't have to like you don't have to do it to death. You don't have to like spend 10 years in this thing and like check every little you know rabbit trail and say okay I really don't like that. You can do even better than the 8020 rule. You can do like a 6040 rule. You if you get 60% of it, you're like, I've done it like sort of how people do it. I've tried it out and it doesn't work for me or I don't like it or it's not fun or whatever. Then cool, move on. Just make sure you give it enough so that you're comfortable when you look back and say, I gave it enough. I'm done with that. For example, I'm still doing podcasts. This has been a lot. This is literally I think I'm myself over a thousand podcasts because we had a prior one that was 120 or 130 episodes something like that. I can't remember how far I went before I was like and then I quickly I quit. I pivoted and I realized I really like doing it and the next thing I know I'm back doing developer and I've been doing this ever since. And even when I was going to quit I was like no I can't quit. I got to like find a way to do this and still keep doing it. So there's stuff like that. It's like try, this is why I so often say try blogging, try doing some sort of YouTube channel, try doing like just do a podcast. Just record a podcast. You don't have to build the whole thing, but go do a podcast episode or 10. Uh write a try writing a book. Try like there's so many things out there in the technology world outside of also like play around with the database, play around with the front end, play around with the back end, look at security analysis, look at DevOps. It just goes on and on and on. We are so blessed with an area that is and we can go all over the place. There's just there's so many things we can do. There's so many places that we can take our skills. Oh, the oh the places you will go that book that old Dr. Seuss thing. Um just take advantage of it. Make sure that you spend the time to do your due diligence and then find your path uh with your business as well. Take a look at what you're doing. I don't know how many times there are businesses that are, you know, struggling and look at the problem solvers cont uh podcast. It is uh I think it entrepreneur magazine I think puts that one out and there's so many times that it's their business is dying and then they pivot and the next thing they know they're happier and they're making more money. So hopefully you will do the same. That being said, it is more than time to wrap this sucker up. So we're going to let you go. We're going to go as well. Have yourself a great one and we will talk to you next time. [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
So, it's raining. My windows are cracked
a little bit,
but it's still 90s something here. So,
it's like, do I go run out and close
that little crack or do I just deal with
the white car? And I'm just going to
deal with a white car.
>> It's just
>> my air is not working. Not nearly. Like
driving here this morning, it was like
frigid. My car is like so cold. At lunch
when I drove the three miles to get to
the chamber for the training thing
today, it uh didn't get cold by the time
I got there. Nothing. And then I sat
there for five minutes with the heat
visor up trying to coat up again. Barely
keeping up with anything. It's It was
cool air but not cold air. So, by the
time I got here, I was almost sweating
again.
>> Yes, that was my uh That is my
[Music]
No, I'm on my Let me
>> I'm talking. Can you hear me?
>> There you go. Now I can.
>> All right.
Um
Yeah. Um, that is my that is my curse is
that I I can sweat like you wouldn't
believe. So, we did a networking thing
yesterday
and um
room. I mean, it's a small room, not a,
you know, it's a bar. It's not a huge
place, but it's like, I don't know, 75
people, which is probably close to
capacity for this thing. And of course,
it's hotter than hell outside, so that's
not like they can keep it, you know,
super cool in there, but they do have
like, you know, stuff blasted. There are
people in suits and they're just like
look cool cool as a cucumber. I'm in I
mean I'm in jeans and a you know a
button down like a thin really thin
shirt but I'm just like sweating
bullets. I go in and I'm like I go in
the bathroom and grab like paper towels
and I'm just like just like sponging
off. Natalie was like oh my gosh. Um
it's like why don't you try a little bit
of that? And it's like said she's like
did you ring your shirt out? I was like
I should have like that might have
helped. Like God but
>> I've got one of those tonight. I'm
hoping it's going to be pretty good.
It's at the brewery here in Jackson. Um
it's called 7:31. It's all the local
businesses
um that are like with the chamber and co
and everything. Uh they're throwing a
party for them between 6:30 and 8:30
tonight. So, I'm going to go for a
little bit.
>> Oh, cool.
>> Yeah. This one was a uh all across
Nashville networking group thing. So, it
was a bunch of it was people down in
Spring Hill over in like all the way up
on the north side of town, east side of
town, west side of town. They were all
over the place. It was met a lot of
interesting people. Met an Imagineer, a
guy that was like 28 years with Disney
out in uh Anaheim. Wow. And has moved
here. And the thing he does is he builds
um like studio. He builds stuff for live
music events and stuff like that. So he
could like do theme parks and all this
kind of stuff.
>> And I was like I was just like, "Okay,
you're a fascinating dating person to
talk to." So he was a great guy. So,
it's like one of those that I guess like
I need to have some of these people on
our and just talk to them just because
they're cool. We need to change from
developing where I guess I need to like
the side side podcast of cool people or
something like that where we sit down
and talk to it because which is what we
did for that one season I guess.
>> Or I guess we could just do a side
season for that or like maybe a side
>> Yeah. bonus episodes. Oh, no. Like a
special season that we do in parallel,
but we only throw like an episode out
maybe once a month or every few weeks.
>> Yeah, we could do something like that
and just because that's what I
originally I think you know that's what
I originally had it set up is everything
gets shoved into season one even though
there wasn't actually a season one. So
now it's up to probably about 200
episodes are technically or like they're
listed as season one but they just like
all the special episodes get like packed
on there. So
>> all right. Uh we're going to pretend I
hit record like a while back because
we've had some good discussions here. So
we're going to talk about I'm sorry guys
like you know we've been like we're just
like cranking through stuff. So
apologies for not welcome you into our
abode as it were into the the ambiance
that is the development podcast. Thank
you very much. Have a seat. People will
be around. Tip your servers.
Take care of them so we can take care of
you. Great title. See, it's it's back to
some good stuff here. So, I threw this
in here. Pivoting, how to embrace change
and fuel your professional growth. It
says it's perfect for developers,
audience of developers, entrepreneurs,
and lifelong learners. Here's a
structured podcast episode plan with
topic ideas and points. This is a little
bonus thing I love. I don't think I'd
told it anywhere that these are lifelong
learners. I don't think that came up
anywhere. We've talked about it before.
We've talked about like the book we talk
about that's how you become a better
developer is you need to be a lifelong
learner. But it's interesting that it
like picked that up somewhere and like
throw that, you know, throws that in. It
gives us a little bit of a it gives us
some validity of like, oh, maybe you do
know what you're talking about.
I'm going to take my uh sips there.
I am I'm going to go back to Spanish.
That was sort of fun doing a little tho.
We are back. This is building better
developers, a developer to our podcast.
And yes, we have added a little Spanish
the last couple of times just because.
If you're offended by my use of Spanish
because I don't speak I speak it like a
non-speaker, I apologize profusely.
Shoot me an email at infovelopneur.com
and I would love to especially if you're
a Spanish speaker, just talk to you for
a while, listen to it, and hopefully I
will get better. But that's not what
we're about. We are about better
developers. This season and this
episode, this season, we are working on
building better developers with AI. What
we're doing is taking two seasons back,
taking all the topics, throwing it into
chat GPT, and just letting it
regurgitate some stuff, and then we
discuss what it sends back. And it's
done a really good job of giving us uh a
great way to go back to some of these
topics and touch on sometimes some
topics and things that we didn't cover
the first time around. may have covered
them elsewhere, but I think we've even
had more than a few times where there
are things that it throws at us that
we're like, "This is important to cover
and I don't know when we ever have
covered that." This episode might be
just such a thing. So, we're going to
have have that little hanging out there
for you until we get done with
our introductions. My introduction, I am
Rob Broadhead. I am one of the founders
of Developer, Building Better
Developers. also founder of RB
Consulting where we help you use
technology. We help you leverage
technology whether you're a small
business, a startup, whether you have no
idea where you're going and no idea
about technology or whether you have
been doing this for a long time and you
just need to figure out how to do what
you do better. We will sit down with
you, help you through a technology
assessment, and then figure out which
way do you need to go. Do you need to
simplify? Do you need to integrate? Do
you need to automate? Do you need to
innovate? We'll help you think outside
of the box or we'll help you build a
better box whatever needs to be done
because it's really about we sitting we
sit down with you understand your
business use our experience across a lot
of industries and a lot of technologies
and find the best way to craft a special
recipe a custom recipe for you your
business and your way forward. Some
people will call it a road map and we
can either help you execute on that road
map or hand one over to you and say,
"Here you go. We've talked through this.
You know what you're doing. Drive away."
If you have an email, if you want any
more information, shoot me an email at
robb-sns.com.
Uh or you can check us out at
rb-sns.com.
Good thing, bad thing. Wow. There is,
like I said, this is the end. We're at
the end of July basically and July has
been a month. It has just been crazy.
So, good thing is that in moving around
and doing a bunch of stuff, I stumbled
across u an internet provider that I
it's been around forever. Didn't realize
that they have a really cheap monthly
plan that you can just connect to their
devices pretty much everywhere. I know
there's a couple of providers that do
something like this, but this is
something there's no contract, no
nothing, no limits other than the number
of devices that connect and really
awesome. They're not paying me, so I'm
not going to use their name right now,
but I may find a way later to do so. So,
that was really cool is that I was like,
you know what, I need something. Found
it. I went onto their like, you know,
tried to connect to their little uh
hotspot and they said, here's what you
can do. Just pay us a small amount of
money and we're off and running. I'm
like, cool, done, take my money. And now
I'm on the internet. So, I've been on
the internet many ways, but now I'm more
on the internet when I'm out in the
middle of nowhere. Basically, bad thing.
I have been out in the middle of nowhere
for way too much time in the last two
weeks due to actually I guess let's go
three weeks basically now almost due to
helping a child move and hilarity ensues
as my wife says u we have been on the
road
I think 40 hours or more of drive time
in the last three weeks and that's
including and that's like driving from
long distances that's not including
running around town in various towns and
stuff like that. If you actually do our
full like I have a car that I got the
oil change at the beginning of the month
and it is already 2,000 miles past or
actually it's 1,000 miles past its
recommended next oil change. So
it's been a week, it's been a month and
it's feels like it's been a year but
only in the last three or four weeks.
But now to make all of us happier, the
good thing of all good things, Michael
is going to introduce himself.
>> Hey everyone, my name is Michael Moash.
I'm one of the co-founders of developer,
building better developers. I'm also the
owner of Envision QA where we help
startups and growing companies build
better software faster and with fewer
problems. Our services cover software
development, quality assurance, test
automation, and release support.
Companies come to us when they have
problems. uh they want to avoid delays,
reduce bugs, and launch with confidence.
Whether you're building your first MVP
or scaling a live product, we make sure
that your software is reliable,
efficient, and ready for growth. You can
learn more about us at envisionqa.com.
Good thing, bad thing? Uh well, bad
thing right now is my windows are
cracked. It's pouring, but it is so
bloody hot outside and my car is over
100 degrees inside. I am not going out
and closing my windows. Good thing I
mentioned a while back that I managed to
get my hands on a Switch 2 and I wasn't
going to be allowed to get it till
Christmas. My wife relented on that and
gave it to me uh last week. So, it's a
quote unquote early birthday gift, which
is great, but I still don't have a lot
of time to play because I'm super busy
with work.
>> Ah, the life of a gamer. I was talking
to one of my developers the other day.
We were talk we're building out our um
some of our social media presence and
stuff like that. And one of the things
that we're talking about like let's get
yourself a good bio and include some
stuff about you and u you know what was
said is like don't just say I'm a gamer
you know give something more specific
about that and one of them is like ah I
haven't been able to do games in a long
time I wish I could get back it's like
and this is a young guy this is so it's
not just us old folk that get just a
little too busy now let's dive into
because we've gone gone busy enough into
other directions let's talk about this
episode. So, the original episode was
titled pivoting, how to embrace cha,
embrace change and fuel your
professional growth. Now, Chad GPT comes
back and says, now it's like it's
wanting to like pat us on the back
again. It says, "Great title. It's
perfect for developers, audience of
developers, entrepreneurs, and lifelong
learners. Here's a structured podcast
episode plan with topic ideas and
talking points.
Episode focus. this episode. And this is
interesting because we just did one. I'm
on like the same conversation thread is
giving me a very different uh layout
this time around. So, I mean, it's it's
still like, you know, topics and bullet
points, but it's a little bit different
how they've set this up. So, it's pretty
interesting that it said, "Okay, we'll
try something different." All right. The
opening hook. When everything changes,
tell a brief story or example of a major
pivot. For example, a startup shutting
down, a developer switching stacks, or
AI disrupting a product. Pose a central
question. What do you do when the path
you were no longer you were on no longer
leads where you want to go?
I'm going to go ahead and dive into the
second one. That's the opening hook. Uh,
and we may come back and tell a story of
a example of a major pivot. Uh, what is
the pivot and what's not? So define a
pivot in the context of business
strategy changing product customer se
segment or model career shifts for
example developer to project manager
agency to indie front end to all uh to
AI
yep front end to AI uh or personal
growth changing your mindset work style
or goals clarify pivoting is not
quitting it's red it's refining
direction based on feedback and clarity
I
think we have not used the word pivot
enough in some of our past discussions
because I think a perfect example of a
pivot that we have used as an example
over and over again is actually in
technology that you use itself. We have
talked many times about um tangential
technologies and skills and ancillary
skills and things like that. So for
example, let's say you are a Java
developer. Well, while you're let's say
you're building Java web applications
and in doing so, you're going to learn
obviously you're going to know Java.
You're probably going to learn a little
bit about databases. You're going to
learn a little about HTML and CSS and
JavaScript and some things like that.
Now, those skills translate to let's say
you're you're going to move to uh C.
There are language constructs in Java
that are almost the same in C. If you're
building C# web applications, then
you're going to see some of the same.
You can use literally some of the same
HTML, CSS, JavaScript. Uh for example, I
have which I have not completed yet. I
do have sitting out on the YouTube
channel. I started doing a conversion of
an old Java JSP application to a more
modern Spring Boot using uh Time Leaf is
the is basically the the front-end piece
for the the templating. And a lot of
that stuff was like really simple like
just copy paste and then change a few
variable names and then boom it's it's
off and running. And we talked about
where there's some you know some changes
and things like that but they really
weren't that bad. Those are pivots. If
you are in a in a job on a project and
for for example the technology starts to
die, you're on something that now people
aren't doing anymore. Um, and it may be
because it's now moving to a new version
or it could be a completely different
technology. Then maybe it's time to
pivot, you know, like the people did
back in the Y2K world where they were
like, I don't think Cobalt is going to
be around anymore, so I've got to find a
way to go from Cobalt to something else.
And some people pivoted, some people
retired. So pivoting is not that you're
just quitting that thing. And
particularly in the things that we're
going to talk about is it's not
necessarily that that just never comes
up again. There is a lot of stuff that
came out of it. There's skills that were
learned. There's knowledge that came.
There's experience that you had that
does apply to the new place. And that's
what a pivot is if you're in a business.
And then I'm going to toss it over
Michael. I'm going to do this one sort
of a little lower is it could be that
you pivot from a specific market focus
to another one. So, for example, you
could be dealing with uh let's say
you're dealing with pet stores. Your
primary customer is mom and pop pet
stores and for pet supplies. And then
you realize that basically the pet
supplies are the same as I don't know
let's say liquor stores or something
like that or toy stores or I mean you
can think as there's going to be things
like that that are they're similar
enough and so you can pivot you can take
what you learned in this one silo and
then you can now apply it to a new one
and hopefully give yourself a jump start
in that. So taking that I'm going to
hopefully that's a good springboard and
a jump start for you to talk about maybe
your thoughts about pivots.
>> Yeah. So I'm going to probably take this
in a slightly different direction be but
you kind of set up the stage for this.
So
how to embrace change and you know fuel
your professional growth. The best thing
I can or I guess to me what really
personally resonates is my career path.
How I got to where I am today. And
just to give you a quick little
background, I actually computers was a
hobby for me back in the day. It was
video games, computers. I wanted to be a
doctor. I wanted to be a surgeon so bad
I went as far as to be accepted premed
to most of my colleges. And then I got
into the actual medical classes and
found out I could not handle uh the
needles and some other things. Like
personally once I got to that point it's
like crap I have made a bad choice in
where I was going and I had to pivot.
>> Quick pause. Any of you that if you're
depends on how old you are go look for
YouTube Quincy q u i n c y uh TV show
intro and you're going to see probably
exactly the kind of things that Michael
was worried about uh as far as needles.
And I say that as somebody that is also
not a fan of needles. So go ahead. That
was just it was an amusing thought I had
to throw out there.
>> So that was kind of my school journey.
That that was kind of my career path
when I got into college. And then it's
like, well crap, what am I going to do?
You know, I'm three years into college
thinking I'm going to be a doctor and
all of a sudden, whoops, I can't do
this. Well, I like video games and I
like computers. Well, back then video
games was like the Super Nintendo, the
Genesis, and a couple other generations
after that. But becoming a video game
developer wasn't really a huge career
opportunity back then. There wasn't
really schools you could go to. So, I
jumped into my hobby. I went into
computers. I'm like, "Okay, well, I like
playing around with computers. What can
I do with this?" And I got into this.
And there's many facets to computers.
And like Rob mentioned, even within
software, you can uh within Java, you
can touch on webpage development, you
can do Java development, JavaScript
development, you know, databases.
Interestingly enough, early on with
software, the other areas that are now
called DevOps, but you had networking,
you had Oracle databases. So back then
it was actually split into two segments.
You were either going to be an engineer,
you were going to be a database
developer, you were going to be a
network analyst, or you were going to be
a software developer. you really only
had four flavors to choose from. And I
will tell you right off the bat, I tried
every single one of them 100% while I
can do it. I love networking. I I hate
running cables. I hate switches. I I can
do it. I just not my cup of tea. But
that is where pivoting to me comes in.
It's as you learn these things, but you
have to expand. You have to try
everything to find out what it is that
you love to do. If you stick to one
thing and you think it's okay, you may
not be giving yourself the benefit of
the doubt of the right tool or the right
language or career path that you're on.
Try other things. Keep yourself open and
constantly learn. And the other thing
I'll throw out in in this case is well
books have become more digital. Audio
books are great. YouTube videos are
fine, but pick a medium and just go
listen to something new at least once a
week and try to learn and figure out,
hey, is this something I want to learn?
Pick something outside of your
comfort zone and see if it's something
that you like. It may bore you to death.
That's fine. But stick with it and then
pivot and try something new. If you find
something that you like better, let us
know because, you know, we want to know
these success stories.
Moving along, that's great. So, I'm not
even going to add to it. Uh, when and
why you should pivot. Discuss signs it's
time for a change. Lack of growth or
challenge, burnout or loss of passion,
market signals, declining revenue,
users, and relevance, new opportunities
that align better with your values or
skills. quote, "Sometimes the market
doesn't reject you, it redirects you."
End of quote. I want to go with the
market signals. There is u my mentor and
I talked, this is now years ago, and it
was something we were had a discussion
about business cycles basically about
technology in general. And this is not
going to be very helpful if you're watch
if you're on the podcast and not
watching, but um I'm going to do like a
like think of a bell curve sort of like,
you know, you start low and it grows up
and then you sort of flatten off. So,
not a full bell, more of like a with a a
flatter plateau and then things start to
fade away. That is typically what you're
going to see with technologies is
they're going to start off early on.
There's, you know, early adoption stuff
like that. They're going to grow and
this includes a lot of solutions and
things like that. They're in modern
business world. For example, right now,
think of AI. Go back a few years ago,
well now several years ago, and think
about search engines. Uh, think about
and then there's a cyclical thing to it.
So you can think about like uh data
centers versus now having you know cloud
services and software as a service and
things like that and this includes uh
development languages and things like
that is that they're going to start off
they're going to grow they're going to
have some sort of a plateau and they're
probably going to fade away. Well what
you want to do is when you're at the
sort of at the plateau of one is be
that's like a good time to try to find
maybe another one that's starting out.
So you're you know you're plateauing but
now you're trying to find something new.
So, as the one comes down, the other's
coming up, you can switch those suckers
out and hopefully you get like a level
playing field of, you know, we'll go
level this way for those of you
visually, um, as you're going to come
through. So, instead of like the ups and
downs of roller coaster, what you have
is you've got more of a smooth ride
because you are essentially starting to
get into the new one coming up before
the other one has gone down the hill. If
you think about a roller coaster, it'd
be if you had like roller coasters
running next to each other and every
time you started to get towards like the
bottom, you know, got toward about the
midpoint of a fall, you were able to
jump on one that was climbing up to the
other one and then you're able to jump
on another one was coming down and
you're just you're just now leveling
that thing out. So, I think it's very
important to look at the market signals
and the things they talk about here are
great. things like uh revenue, your
users and even the relevance as far as
like what are you seeing in the you know
in the industry news or the tech rags or
on the you know the 5:00 news you know
things like that. It's like what is
what's hot, what's not. Look at that
market sector. Maybe as far as like you
can go look at how those stock stocks
are doing in the market sector. You can
look at all kinds of different places
you can look at, but figure out are we
on something that's still essentially
growing or is it flat or is it starting
to decline? And if you're not growing as
fast as you used to and you know it's
getting close to that flat point, then
maybe it's time to go find something
else and start that pivot because the
best way to pivot is when you haven't
like you're not burning the lifeboats
where you're pivoting while you're still
cruising along on something that you've
already done. It's like the old adage I
guess it's an old adage. We'll say it is
that it is easier to find a job when you
have a job than it is when you don't
have a job. So those are my thoughts on
it. Where do you want to go with this?
How do you want to pivot into this
topic?
>> So, I'm going to take the burnout
because I deal with this one more often
than I should, but that's just because
of life.
Typically, like Rob was talking about
there with like the belt, the roller
coaster idea.
We
as developers, as people, we have a
certain amount of bandwidth that we can
actually get things done, that we can
actually stay focused on things and stay
positive about things. If you feel that
your mood or your momentum is going down
or you are it's taking you longer to
complete a task,
you really need to be conscious of where
you're at. You need to do a selfch check
because burnout is more than just
detrimental to your workflow. It can
actually be detrimental to your health
and to your uh mental state and it it
can burn a lot of bridges. So,
as you work through these things,
understand that it is okay that, hey,
I've been stuck on this problem for 15
minutes. Pivot, go for a walk, go do
something else. Change your mindset for
five minutes, 10 minutes, do the
Pomodoro technique, and just change a
little bit. You don't want to pivot,
pivot, pivot because then you're going
to get into that fighter fighting mode,
and then you're in a different mindset
and a different type of earning. So
the the recommendation here is
use things like the pomodoro technique.
Use create scheduled tasks for yourself
to do selfch checks especially if you
are on a difficult project or you find
yourself that your mental state you're
either in a bad mood or you just
something's off like you're not being as
productive as you normally are.
I don't know why this came to mind as an
example from the other night is that uh
we were dancing and um my partner was I
had turned them to the left like three
or four times in a row because that was
part of what we were walking through at
the time and she gets done and she just
instead you know we turn a left turn
left turn left turn left and she just
out of the blue decided to turn to the
right and I looked at her with a little
little quizzical thing and she's like I
just needed to unwind like literally
it's like you know you get and that's
exactly the pivot is sometimes you get
stuck in this and like think about it.
If you turn if you sit there and you
just turn the left, turn the left, turn
the left, you're going to get dizzy and
stuff like that. And if as soon as you
turn to the right, suddenly you can go
to the right, to the right, to the left,
to the left, one of those little dance
things. So,
I think this is a very good
general like pulse kind of thing. A
little like checking on the pulse of is
it feeling redundant? Is it feeling like
it's not what it needs to be? This could
be like Michael said, it could be that
it's more exhausting. it takes more
time. Maybe it's just not as fun. I
mean, there's a lot of different things
that you can run into that are
indicators that are check engine lights
that say maybe it's time to think about
a pivot. I will give you an example that
you can go back and look over time. Uh
it hopefully we've hidden it but it's
still there is look at the developer nor
site and look like if you go look way
back and I don't know how you I think
you can go look at like our blogs you
can sort them based on um date and you
go back to the earliest posts and then
if you start just walking just looking
at titles you'll see that we have done
some pivots along the way. If you go
through all of the podcast episodes,
heaven and help you. There's a lot of
podcast episodes. But if you do that,
you will see that there have been pivots
along the way. If you can go look out at
I don't know where we've got for like RB
consulting, you'd have to go to the
internet time machine, but you can go
see some very strong pivots there. We
talk about the pivots from a business
sense that we've done on a regular
basis. We've we pivoted and suddenly
boom, Michael appeared. That's like
that's a pivot. Suddenly going from
always one person that you you know
that's all you ever hear and suddenly
there's two people on the podcast.
That's a pivot. We've talked to we
talked to so many people in the
interview season that they did a pivot
like this where they usually the pivot
is like a down pivot where they niche
down on something. They find a problem
and they say this is what I'm really
going to focus on and suddenly things
explode in the success area for them.
So, with that, I think we're going to
keep this one a little bit shorter
because we go long way too often on
these uh these AI things have actually
been really good. And you may realize
that both of us get a little bit excited
about some of these topics. We're like,
"Wow, there's like there's entire
seasons we could do on some of these
suggestions uh that we and we've
mentioned that before." And who knows,
we may do entire seasons on these in the
future.
As always, I'm going to ask you for an
email. Shoot me an email
Let us know what you think. What do you
like? What don't you like?
Recommendations, all that kind of stuff.
Even if the recommendations are like
arch your hair differently or, you know,
get a haircut kid or shave or whatever,
you know, we don't care. We just
feedback is what we crave because it
helps us become better podcasters. It
helps the site become a better site.
That being said, we're just going to
wrap this one. I'm not going to give you
all the other places you can go to
developer.com and all that kind of
stuff. I'm not going to give you that
this time. Either listen to the next
episode or the prior episode because
we're going to keep it a little simpler
for you. Go out there. I mean this
sincerely.
I appreciate you guys. Appreciate the
time you've given us. So go out there
and have yourself a great day, a great
week and we will talk to you next time.
Uh let's see. So this goes to okay. Oh,
the next the remaining things for the
bonus material, real life developer
founder pivot stories sharing examples
like a Laravel developer who pivoted
from client work to launching a SAS, a
bootstrap founder who shut down a
failing product and built a tool based
on user pain, switching from coding to
developer advocacy, teaching and uh or
content creation. Uh invite a guest who
made a notable pivot and share or share
your own pivot story. How to pivot
effectively step by step. Give a
practical framework. They actually give
us one. Listen. What are users,
teammates, or mentors telling you?
Assess. What's working? What's draining
you? Research. What's the market?
Where's the market going? What's
missing? Plan. Choose a focused,
testable direction. Uh, execute small.
Build a prototype, change roles, launch
an MVP, reflect and adjust. Feedback is
your compass. Tools and methods are
retrospectives, customer interviews,
lean canvas, gut checks. Um,
oh, there's a six. mindset, embracing
the discomfort of change, letting go of
sunk costs and ego, avoiding paralysis
by analysis, building resilience and
adaptability is core dev traits. Uh, I'm
going to jump in first and I'm just
going to talk a little bit about like
experience about where we're at. So, you
can go out to the rb-sns.com site
probably right now and you're going to
see that we are evolving. We are making
some changes. We're doing some pivots. a
lot of this kind of stuff. It's really,
and this is a pivot based on marketing
and like messaging and some things like
that, we're not really changing what we
do as much as we are making sure that
our message and that our site and that
all of our brand matches that. If you go
back and search for the no brand brand
or just brand in general in our past
episodes, you will find some great
conversations where honestly I talked to
the people about this and probably
should have done this years ago. I did.
I'm still working on it. I'm still
trying to figure because I'm not a
marketing guy. I'm a developer. I need
to I need to like get some of the stuff
that that stuff going.
Uh within that though there is
um this and this is something I say
about this with the discussions with
customers and and companies and trying
to figure out how do you build like
building your technology roadmap and
things like that. there is
a burn-in time basically or baking time
that is required for certain things and
so it is very useful I think for you to
try some things out uh this is the
assessment first like what's working and
sort of like give yourself a general
direction and then I would say with the
research where's it you know where's the
market going what's missing and they
talk about plan so choose a focused
testable direction I would say you have
that direction but you probably have
like AB comparisons or maybe ABC D E FG.
It can be you can you can spread
yourself too thin, but I think if you
can do some small chunks and this yes,
this goes back to the 4-hour work week
where he talked about doing like a
7-week uh ad campaign or a twoe I mean
I'm sorry 7 day or a twoe ad campaign or
something like that. We have done some
of that in the past. I don't know that
it always works in every case. I have
not found the success that uh that Tim
Ferrris obviously have not found the
success that he has in some of those
kinds of things, but the general idea is
solid. It's like you need to test some
stuff out. Dip a toe in. Figure out how
to dip more than a toe in so you can be
sure enough of it. And this even goes
back to Michael's earlier comment. It's
like if you're doing something and it
you don't like it, that's okay. give it
um you know give it a chance because it
may be that it sucks but then a little
bit further down the road it sucks less
and you eventually may like it um or not
but like give it a chance and then when
it when you're done feel free to say no
and write it off and don't say oh I
spent a lot of time on that I don't want
to give up that time that was time well
spent learning that you don't like doing
that Michael go for it what is your
thought where do you want to give your
bonus material
>> so similar journey you know I have
rebranded consulting. It was I had that
company for 20ome years and I rebranded
it to Envision QA.
I'm going to briefly touch on AB
testing. Conference talks about, we've
talked about it pivoting.
If you're not sure where you're going or
if you're not sure something's working,
do it one way quickly. Pivot, do it
another way. Compare the two. Sometimes
it's better to have options than to just
stick with something and drive it into
the ground and go nowhere.
From a developer's perspective, that is
one of the best things of test-driven
development. You start testing it, you
don't like it, pivot, try something else
till you find your rhythm, till you find
what works for you.
And the last little tip there is if you
find yourself reaching burnout or having
problems with burnout, look at do doing
something like a journal so you can keep
track of your mood daily. There are mood
apps, things like that where you can
keep track of kind of a daily, you know,
where am I at? Where am I going?
If you find yourself struggling with
that, use those tools to help you pivot
when you're off the rails, when you're
burned out, when things aren't going
right.
I smile thinking about that because I
had this conversation with my wife today
where she had some stuff and she's like,
"This stuff is just wearing me out." And
I was basically saying, "Suck it up,
buttercup. Come on. Just like just like
ignore that and just move on." This is
why sometimes you need different voices
in your life and not just the ones in
your head. Because sometimes you do need
to understand it's like it's okay to say
no. It's okay to stop. It's okay to
pivot. Uh but then sometimes it is like
you need to be like you also have to
have that where it's like did I give it
a fair chance because that's really what
you want to do is you want to make sure
that when all said and done that you
don't come back with regret and say I
did that but I didn't really do it
enough or the right way. Give yourself
and you don't have to like you don't
have to do it to death. You don't have
to like spend 10 years in this thing and
like check every little you know rabbit
trail and say okay I really don't like
that. You can do even better than the
8020 rule. You can do like a 6040 rule.
You if you get 60% of it, you're like,
I've done it like sort of how people do
it. I've tried it out and it doesn't
work for me or I don't like it or it's
not fun or whatever. Then cool, move on.
Just make sure you give it enough so
that you're comfortable when you look
back and say, I gave it enough. I'm done
with that. For example,
I'm still doing podcasts. This has been
a lot. This is literally I think I'm
myself over a thousand podcasts because
we had a prior one that was 120 or 130
episodes something like that. I can't
remember how far I went before I was
like and then I quickly I quit. I
pivoted and I realized I really like
doing it and the next thing I know I'm
back doing developer and I've been doing
this ever since. And even when I was
going to quit I was like no I can't
quit. I got to like find a way to do
this and still keep doing it. So there's
stuff like that. It's like try, this is
why I so often say try blogging, try
doing some sort of YouTube channel, try
doing like just do a podcast. Just
record a podcast. You don't have to
build the whole thing, but go do a
podcast episode or 10. Uh write a try
writing a book. Try like there's so many
things out there in the technology world
outside of also like play around with
the database, play around with the front
end, play around with the back end, look
at security analysis, look at DevOps. It
just goes on and on and on. We are so
blessed with an area that is
and we can go all over the place.
There's just there's so many things we
can do. There's so many places that we
can take our skills. Oh, the oh the
places you will go that book that old
Dr. Seuss thing. Um just take advantage
of it. Make sure that you spend the time
to do your due diligence and then find
your path uh with your business as well.
Take a look at what you're doing. I
don't know how many times there are
businesses that are, you know,
struggling and look at the problem
solvers cont uh podcast. It is uh I
think it entrepreneur magazine I think
puts that one out and there's so many
times that it's their business is dying
and then they pivot and the next thing
they know they're happier and they're
making more money. So hopefully you will
do the same. That being said, it is more
than time to wrap this sucker up. So
we're going to let you go. We're going
to go as well. Have yourself a great one
and we will talk to you next time.
[Music]