Detailed Notes
Building forward momentum is what separates developers who stay stuck from those who grow into entrepreneurs.
In this episode of the Building Better Developers podcast (Season 27: Forward Motion), Andrew Stevens shares how building forward momentum shaped his journey from software engineer to founder, CTO, and multi-business operator.
We discuss:
• Transitioning from engineer to entrepreneur • Avoiding the “working in vs. on the business” trap • Using AI as a tool for rapid prototyping and leverage • Structuring life and business in sprints • Protecting personal development time • Building sustainably without burnout
Andrew explains why forward progress isn’t about speed — it’s about structured execution, smart leverage, and consistent adjustment.
If you’re a developer building something bigger — a product, a company, or your own skill set — this episode is for you.
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đź“Ś CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction 02:15 Andrew’s Early ISP Story 06:40 Collaboration vs. Solo Founding 12:10 The Engineer-to-Entrepreneur Shift 18:25 Using AI as a Tool vs. Channel 25:40 Debugging and Rapid Prototyping with AI 31:00 Running Life in Sprints 36:15 Sustainable Momentum 42:00 Final Takeaways
Transcript Text
Rob, how you doing? I'm doing good. How you doing, Andrew? >> Good, good, good. I have got uh Michael is my co-host and he should be joining us soon. Apologies, I'm just getting my self situated here in a little bit. Um while we're waiting on him, um I'll let you know. So, this will be recorded, uh audio and video. The way we do it is from uh video. It's a YouTube and we do it as a um there'll be sort of like a call like a green room or a pre-show. We'll have a little bit there and then we have afterwards we have like a bonus content uh afterwards that are uh video that are after the audio completes. Um we do it we'll do it in one sitting as far as recording. So take us about an hour. I tend to split it into two parts though of I don't know 20 25 minute some episodes something along those lines and we just do it based on how the the discussion flows basically. So we don't come to a hard stop or anything. We just go and then we figure it out in editing uh and then figure it out from there as far as splitting it up. Um any questions or comments or anything? >> Not really. I I guess um uh you know are there any themes you're trying to hit that you find your audience looking for? for um you know just those sorts of things that we try and cover stuff that you feel are relevant for your audience today. >> Uh yeah, good point. That that reminds me. Um yeah, so we'll start with just a an introduction. I'll introduce myself, Michael will introduce himself and then we'll toss it over to you to introduce yourself and just let you because that's typically the best way to go and we'll actually just sort of launch the conversation from there. Uh the audience is typically uh 20 to 30 year old kinds uh new getting into mid-level maybe some senior level technology people usually uh with an entrepreneurial bet. So doing some sort of a a side hustle or something like that as well which is why we sort of combine the two. So we talk business we also tech tech talk technology. U so we talk the founders but also to implementers and doers. Um the our current episode, our current season is uh focusing on essentially getting unstuck, moving forward, forward momentum, how to just sort of make sure you're keeping things, you know, keeping the plate spinning. >> And that's really I know it's a very it's a general kind of topic, but we tend to do that a little bit to talk about just like, hey, if you're if you're trying to get over this hump or past this obstacle, here's a potential way to do so. Uh any other questions, comments, anything like that? >> Not really. Look, I haven't um you know, I can certainly talk about um you know, my history and um being entrepreneurial and coming out of engineering and building businesses and selling them and all those kind of things. So, um more than happy to come up and just tell a story, I guess, and let you guys direct it, I guess. Um >> and go from there. So, >> yeah, we there's never a bad story out. So maybe that's just me, but it's like I've never had a bad story. So if we can get somebody talking about their story and their background, then there's almost always a way we can land that plane and and talk about whatever our our topic is of the day, we can find a way to tweak it a little bit. And >> if it's a little off topic, that doesn't bother at least doesn't bother me too much anyways because it's like, you know what, these it's it tends to still be >> something interesting to the uh to the typical um typical audience and such. >> Um I am recording, so I'm just going to go ahead and visually Where is my camera? Hit the record button. Uh this is Michael that just joined us. Michael, there's Andrew. So, >> Andrew, how are you? >> Good, man. Good. Michael, lovely to meet you. >> Nice to meet you. How's my sound? >> Uh, good. >> How's mine? >> Uh, sounds good. >> Okay. And Andrew's about the same. >> Yeah, hopefully you can hear me. >> Yeah, you're good. >> Okay, cool. Yeah, Michael tends to be besides a co-host is he he's our audio technician at this point. That was part of the that was part of the cost of him coming on. I was like, "Okay, you get to do all the the fun stuff of the techn the editing and all that kind of stuff." So, uh, we'll make sure we make his life as as easy as possible. So, um, that being said, we're just gonna dive right on into it unless anything you need, Michael. All right, we're going to go right in. Those uno. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season where we are not just building better developers and the developer podcast which we always are. We are talking about core momentum. We're talking about getting unstuck. We're talking about how do you you know potentially as this is the start of the year. How do you actually like kickstart your year? My name is Rob Rodham. I am one of the founders of developer and also the founder of RB Consulting where we help you assess where you're at and build a road map for success. that technology checkup that everybody needs periodically. Good thing and bad thing. Wow, I've had quite an interesting one this weekend. The good thing is I'm not sitting in middle Tennessee where there is ice and all kinds of nasty stuff that's going on there and people losing electricity. However, I am sitting in Portugal where there are winds and and big ls of water and uh trees down and also the train system down. So, a nice weekend that we were going to have that was going to be on the trains and a very comfortable ride has turned out to be planes, trains, and automobiles where we took a bus and then took a train and then didn't like the bus coming back cuz we're going to make it. So, now we like to spend an extra night. We're going to fly. It's a pain. Uh but the good thing is it could be worse. The bad thing is um it could be better, but what is never better is having my co-host, Michael, go ahead and introduce yourself. >> Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malash. one of the co-founders of developer. I'm also the founder of Envision QA where we create reliable, tailored software that helps you work smarter, scale faster, and stay in control. Uh, good things, bad things. Well, said storm Rob's mentioning, uh, I live in Tennessee, and thankfully we had power. Uh, unfortunately, we have been iced in for a total of about 10 days. uh have not been able to leave the driveway, the house, uh and the animals have been screwing across the ice in the yard uh for quite some time. Uh hopefully today. The good news is looks like we're finally going to be above freezing this week and hopefully all this uh ice will go away. Uh I guess the other bad thing is we're supposed to get rain behind this. So if the rain comes before this ice melts, we're going to have some nice little uh mudslides, water slides, and flooding going on for another few days. But yeah, that's it for me. >> Nothing says fun like weather just in general. But somebody that does say fun, at least we're going to find out, is Andrew. Uh, if you want to go ahead, he's our guest today. Would you like to go ahead and introduce yourself? >> Sure. Sure. My name is Andrew. Um, my background is software engineering and I've built and sold a number of businesses over the years. Um, I've done that as a solo entrepreneur and also as a co-founder and, uh, I've I've got a long story going back to the '90s. Uh, so I've got plenty to talk about, but weatherwise, I normally live upstate New York, so I'm just near Coopertown, uh, normally, and that is a place that is not, um, afraid of snow and ice for sure. But, uh, like Rob, I'm currently in Europe, so I've been able to avoid that. I've got a lovely dusting of an inch or two of snow and it's it's been very pleasant. No, no black ice, nothing. So, it's been good for me. Um yeah, so my background, look, I've come out of software engineering. I I started off my life in university, um academia, uh working at universities. I progressed through building some businesses and nowadays, you know, I'm CTO for a gaming company. Uh I've uh I'm on board of an investment uh rollup in uh Europe. So, you know, we've raised um some funding and we're currently trying to grow that and and um identify great businesses that we can roll up and and do something great together. And um I'm CTO uh of a um software development company as well. So, I a bit of fractional CTO stuff. And this month um one of my fractional jobs wound down a little bit. So, uh, you know, I've kicked off yet another, uh, little company for myself cuz there's never enough never enough time. I wish I could do more. I wish I could learn everything, but, uh, I just have to choose. And sometimes I make good choices, sometimes I make bad choices. And no matter what happens, I I enjoy every choice I make. So, it's good. >> So, for those of you that are wondering, yes, uh, Andrew is like what uh, every developer listener wants to be when they grow up. I think that's what all of us are is. We love doing like just love building stuff. love doing things. Uh I think all of us like the idea of both being the the soloreneur but also the you know the entrepreneur side of it of like not just doing it ourselves but actually building a business and having something that goes on that lives beyond us. So, expecting a really fun conversation here. And let's start with the uh let's go back a little bit into the the early years of let's just talk about like your first solo um business and how you stepped into it because I'm I'm wondering particularly if you just sort of like dove into it. Was this one of these that you side hustles your way and it eventually said and eventually said I have to do it or how was that? Let's start with that story. Your your origin story as it were. origin was actually um um more of a collaboration. So um that actually gave me the confidence by working with some great people that gave me confidence to step out and eventually try things by by myself. Um so for me my very first one um you know I was working at a university uh writing software you know I used to do things that back then I called math but nowadays everyone calls AI. um you know I was predicting uh koala populations in sheep grazing um uh fields and I was uh predicting tree girth based upon environmental factors and things like that but nowadays you know an LLM can probably do it well try and do it but we'll probably get it wrong but um you know that that's the kind of stuff I was doing and I kind of identified this guy called Tim Berners Lee popped up and said yeah hey hey use this web stuff this looks really cool and I thought wow awesome so um you know I was sitting around with my team leader at at a company that I was working with and um uh he was working on an invoicing system for a muffler shop. So, he was just doing the billing uh really really boring point of sale stuff. Uh apologies to any muffler sales guys out there, but um uh boring um boring um point of sale stuff and um you know, we we decided that um this dialup internet thing looked pretty cool and uh like how do we do that? I wanted to learn Linux. Um I wanted to learn web stuff and I saw this as becoming a really big thing. Anyway, so I got together with two mates. Um my team lead, my engineering team lead at the time who eventually became my best man at my at my uh wedding and um uh also uh the guy that owned the muffler shop. And we put together an ISP, a dialup ISP. We had stallion boards. We had um at one stage we gave away a no no engage signal guarantee to our subscribers because we had more modems than people um dialing in. So that was an easy thing for us to easily give away. Yeah, it's a terrible story from so long ago, but it was something that really taught me a lot. You know, I I learned the power of um working with people that had great skills. So I was able to identify that um you know the guy that owned muffler shop he was commercially uh really viable. He knew his stuff. He knew how to commercialize stuff. He knew how to sell stuff. Me I was a great software engineer. I I knew how to write code. And my team lead um he was an infrastructure guy. So he taught me a lot about modems and and things like that. So we kind of formed together a little um jigsaw puzzle that I guess that fit really well from our skill set. And that really gave me the confidence to step beyond that and into bigger and better things. So, uh, you know, I was lucky to have good friends and step up based upon that. The solo stuff, I might talk about my my latest thing I'm doing. Um, for me again, January this year, um, or two days ago, no, January started I guess, but um, sorry, January ended. Uh, you know, I've got into cyber security as security's always been a thing. So, at the moment, I'm really really focused on how to simplify cyber security for small and medium enterprises. And I'm not talking about how to make your laptop secure. I'm talking about inbound um uh security researcher uh queries. So people when they report an issue with your product or something, I'm looking at workflows through that, how to identify it, how to uh actually vet them, how to respond to a policy for uh you know, bug bounty programs, how to make that simpler for people. So you know there are platforms out there like hacker one and that that do these sorts of things, but mine is a little bit differently focused. just a little bit more um uh software or more more entrepreneur friendly I guess more small and medium enterprise. So it's certainly um uh very interesting from that perspective. I just realized my alerts just came through so hopefully that didn't pop up on over the sound but um >> n Oh, good. Okay. Um I've just turned off the software in the background so I get no more. All right. So that that's kind of where it is. Like um would I do what I did today and what have I what have I learned over the time? Uh one I've identified for myself that being a solo developer is great. You know, it gives me a lot of time to focus on my code and getting things right. But the more I focus on my code, the less I can focus on maybe sales or or maybe marketing or or or how to connect my audience. So those are all sorts of things that um uh and I've tried to work out of time. It's been great with the the hat of all different sorts of trades and things like that. So it's um uh from that experience, sorry again of I'm getting notifications, so apologies. I should have shut this all down prior. Um, just trying to go into do not disturb mode. There we go. Apologies. Apologies. >> That's okay. Rob had instances of that in the past as well. >> Yeah, it's just so annoying. Um, hopefully you can discuss that. Apologies. All right. Um, >> he'll edit that out. >> Yeah, there you go. >> Perfect. All right. So um you know what I've learned over time being the solo guy uh wearing all the different hats to say marketing and things like that. U it's it's difficult and quite a balance to you know not only identify what you want to do but go out there and hunt it drag kill it drag it back cover it up and eat it and and while you're too busy eating it you know you're losing the business that's getting away. So that's always something that I found quite tricky. I think in the time of um AI now, you know, LLMs are great for me to plan my solo marketing campaigns. Like I I get them easily to help me write up um uh my social media posts for the week or or things like that or at least give me not write them, but at least give me a plan. Uh so, you know, I'll often come up with what I want to do. I'll use one LLM to help me plan what I want to do, and I use another LLM. They'll compare my plan versus the plan that it generated and and market like a teacher. So um you know I I'll use two tools to help me um uh deliver quicker, deliver better. Um I also find that um looking at various uh LLMs also helps with my code quality. Like I don't write production code uh with AI. But I'll certainly get it to do a static analysis of my code. I'll certainly get it to look at um uh my plan of code like what have I missed? I'll get it to make me um write better test cases, things like that. So, uh very very interesting from that perspective. Uh debugging is great. Uh you know, cy and pasting in an error message is fantastic uh to to help me research. You know, I do treat a lot of AI as um a shortcut of Google. You know, gone of the days where you stick it in and go 25 pages of Google deep to find the specific Stack Overflow um issue. uh but you know you can get something maybe close sooner. So for from that productivity perspective I I still use AI for a lot of tools. Um AI of course is a mark or or a channel to market as well. We could talk about that perhaps but um yeah I guess that's where I started. I started as um something identified with friends. We became better from there. I moved on to other things where I another time I was sitting with guys at a pub and we saw what was going on. we thought we could do something better and we wrote that uh again and that's one of my most successful um projects and they weren't friends but they became friends after many many years and many many um scars and battle battle battles we had together to to get things going uh all the way through to solo stuff um and um for others as well. I ended up I um marrying my my best partner. So um my my wife and I have been working on businesses now for almost 20 years. So um you know it's it's been a very very uh good good experience as well to be able to bring that in house and not be so lonely I guess because that's often something that um we don't necessarily talk about as entrepreneurs enough. It's difficult that you know your work drags you away from your family, but it's great to have um you know a life partner there as well. >> Wow, there's a lot there. Um yeah, I guess to start with it is it is amusing to me because I've sort of it's been a while, you know, it's been 30 almost 40 years now since the dialup days, early dialup days. And it's it's amazing to me how many people I talk to that are in consulting and software companies that they can trace it back to. Well, initially we did some ISP work, you know, back in the 90s because that was what everybody did. It was just it seemed like it was the easy thing to do. It was sort of like the obvious choice to just everybody needed it. Everybody needed a local one. They didn't want to use, you know, or Copy Serve or America Online or one of those kinds of things. And the little ones, the little local ones, you know, tended to be a lot better. And so, uh, it's amazing how many people start with that and then somewhere along the way they found a product or they had a customer and then the next thing they know they're building, you know, like you said, like the web was starting to become a thing and so now they're starting to build websites and it just it grew from there. So that is that is a that is in the background of so many stories that I've I've heard. It's it's really interesting. Before I go on, like I do want to mention like I've never really talked about that either, but I think if you there are there are downsides to working with family, whether it's, you know, your your kids or your spouse or something like your cousins or anything like that. But I think there's also a lot of of benefits to that as well. And I would say particularly spouse, my wife has worked with me as well and it's it makes the the conversations much more interesting because now you actually have somebody that you can talk to especially if you're like I'm sure you're like us where you end up you're thinking about your job and business all the time. It's just always like an idea will come up. you'll be out, you know, sitting on the lake fishing and some like, "Hey, I've got this idea." And it's really great to be able to like just bounce that off of somebody, have that sounding board and and not just have that conversation run in your head. Um, before I like I guess one thing before and this may take us off in another past anyways, is how do you you mention you laid out a lot of areas that you use AI? I I refer to it as using it sort of like a virtual assistant because it's just like it can do all these little things. I love passing it back and forth between LLMs and just sort of say, "What do you think? What do you think?" Especially when I'll say like, "Write this so it doesn't sound like AI wrote it." And then I'll pass it back and forth a couple times. It like clean some stuff up and then get it to a point where it's like, "Oh, okay. Yeah, now this this makes sense." And gosh, debugging, if you're not using anybody out there, if you're not using AI for debugging, that is, I think, the quickest, easiest way to get a a big return on investment. uh particularly like particularly I found configuration type issues and um you typo kinds of issues that end up in code. You can throw something there and very quickly have it tell you like this is exactly where it is or oh you forgot this the stuff that you need that second set of eyes. It is a great second set of eyes in in that case. But now have you but with that have you felt like it has has freed you maybe to like to pursue more of those ideas? You said you know you started out by saying there's not enough hours in the day. Do you feel like this is something that sort of has given you a little bit of that freedom to be like oh now I can actually pursue a couple more of these things and product ideas that I had? >> Absolutely. Um there's a few things in there. One, I'll use AI to help me scaffold an idea quickly. So, I'll do a proof of concept or something and I'll I'll get it to show me I'll get it to help me show um a core bit of functionality or or a new idea so I can demo it quickly. Again, I don't use any of this code in production ever. Um it's my suggestion never to do that. Uh I'll also even use AI and ask it to take on personas. So, I'll try and identify who my users are and I'll get the um AI to to be that user uh and give me feedback as that user. You know, if I'm writing um an architecture document for a customer, I'll, you know, I'll brief it that it's, you know, a certified cloud architect or something and to say, "Hey, you know, find the files with this um and things like that." So, I'll I'll I'll work with that. Um does it allow me to deliver faster? It allows me to do rapid prototyping exceptionally fast. It allows me to demonstrate value or or ideas really really quickly. So, um yeah, I one thing I don't like about LLMs is it's too supportive. You you know things like chatbt are famous for always saying yes, what a wonderful idea. Um and you know, we all know that's crap. Um for the language, but you know, I've I've had over my time uh I've had failures of people. I've had failures of processes. I've had, you know, um one of my first real businesses, I had one of my accountants um make a mistake in my early year that cost me a lot uh with the tax authorities. So, you know, there's things you've got to keep your eyes on over the years um and things you got to fix and you can't drop the ball on those things. And, you know, I'd love to see a lot more use of um an assistant and I I like to call them tooling. uh for me AI I I see AI as either a tool so helping me become faster and better at what I do or as a a channel to or a channel right so that's trying to identify uh you know if I'm an e-commerce person rather than SEO I should be thinking about AI optimization where um when you ask about a product or service in JBT um you know my product or service pops up as recommendation rather than you know maybe my competitors so making sure that um my products and services are discoverable indexed and um referenced by AI as well is is essential. So to me that's a channel. So you know people go and ask I don't know what's the best product for X purpose and um my my product service pops up when it comes in from there. Obviously that requires seeding of Reddit and all those sorts of other techniques that are a bit shady perhaps but um you know if you build a community as well that will certainly help in that space. So, I like to do in there. U So, yeah, AI tooling, AI um optimization for workflow is critical and something I I use a lot. >> Yeah, it's uh that was actually a conversation I had actually with my wife the other day. We're talking about that as we were talking about AI. We're like and how infamously positive it is about like, oh, that's a great idea that and we've we've chastised it on a regular basis and said, no, don't tell us this. Don't tell it like you know give us the give us the poke the holes in the theories and we were actually postulating and this is something for everybody to try out this next time you're on an ele you know any of them is say you know hey always take the negative approach or something like that it's like turn it into just something that's always trying to pick apart your ideas and it might turn it into some sort of sociopath but it also may get you some really good like really do a good job of picking holes in your ideas. >> Absolutely. I'm also leaning towards um a lot of open source that I run locally as well self-hosted. U you know there's clawbot that was recently released in the last few days uh and you know people were downloading the wrong or or counterfeit versions of clawbot. People were installing plugins that um were were not safe or secure. So I I tend to avoid the consumer models. I I use the um enterprise models. um the the top end paid for public models or I'll use my own um open source ones that I I run locally. So, it's a little bit more safe and secure for me. >> Interesting. Yeah, I've used uh AI quite a bit for testing software and things of that nature. And you can actually work on your chatbot a little bit um the prompts and that to get it to be a little less positive, a little more critical. But it I I think it's the nature of the beast. They're trying not to make people think that AI is coming after them like the Terminator. But it it's almost like that feel like they're trying to make it comfortable for everyone to use versus uh make it more realistic, more like a person because then people will start to maybe judge it or be a little more afraid of it. Uh I want to circle back around for a minute though. Um, kind of back to your beginning conversation about all the ventures you're kind of involved in and all the things you do. How do you keep it straight? Cuz I know I run into the same problem where you you get stuff working in your business, you're not working up on your business with marketing and things of that nature. It sounds like you have so many different things going on. How do you stay focused to make sure that your companies are moving forward, that things are getting done, uh, and that you're you don't get stuck going down too many rabbit holes and the next thing you know, nothing gets done? >> Yeah, that's um often something I've I've fallen victim to myself. Like at the moment, I've I've written a book that's currently with editors. I've got 149 edits I've got to change. They gave that to me in November. It's now February and I haven't touched it. So, you know, um I've got to work on something's better. Um for me, it's all about time management. You know, my my sleep patterns are are terrible. You know, I'm certainly not getting enough sleep. Um this is actually a face of a 20-year-old. Not not not much more mature. Um so, uh you know, I'm not sleep. I I I exist on a lot less sleep because I can't because there's always something to do. Uh for me, it's curiosity. um you know I I I look for myself and even with people I work for you know I look I like curiosity I like collaboration I like autonomy as well so you know I'll discover something um cuz I'm interested in it uh at the moment I've been looking Meshtastic and a few other alternative um communications methods uh and I go out and research that I can even ask my LLM again hate to be on about AI but you know it'll give me a market overview fairly quickly so I can get up to speed on a concept really quickly and then if it's something of interest, I'll delve deeper on my own. I miss my research librarians back in my university days. Um so that that aside um how do I keep things going? Well, I've got to eat first. I always prioritize my um customers that expect uh you know certain hours, certain contact times. You know, they always remain top priority. So, uh, you know, they they contracted hours or whatever, and that's what they get. Um, but as I said, it's fractional. So, you know, I'm not full-time, uh, with them at all. So, uh, you know, I'll do the exact hours that they want. I always do extra as well because, um, you know, they expected, I expected, and it's the nature of doing a good job. But, um, uh, I I tend to manage myself in sprints, I guess. So, you know, I'll I'll have a clear picture of what I want to achieve and I'll want to have a a a date for that. So, I'll say I need to do that in January or I need to do that this week. So, I tend to talk in in um round numbers of uh today, this week, this month for my timing. And I'll say, okay, this month I want to release this feature on that product or uh you know, I want to finally do those edits um on that book um and things like that. So I I'll have a goal for the month and I'll break that down as I go and I prioritize um based upon that. So I I do run myself on sprints and I do have a a plan for 2026 that I know I want to achieve these certain things. Uh but I never pack that full you know one of the things I learned managing large teams in software organ organizations a lot of project managers even a lot of engineering managers they'll look at their staff and time that 100% availability. We all know that's not true. Uh you know, you got sick leave, annual leave, you've got meetings, all those sorts of things. So I I'll cut it down to 80% or 60% based upon the culture of the company. And even my own time, I'll I'll cut down and then I'll try and leave that innovation time as well. Uh I remember once upon a time Google used to have their 20% time. I don't think it exists anymore, but um maybe it does. Somebody from Google correct me. But um you know, there's that innovation time you need to be able to sit back and look at the industry. And quite frankly, one thing I've tried never to lose between my sea level roles and my board roles down to and today I still write code is that if I don't put aside time to write code, to engage with engineers, to uh read that technical white paper to to see the latest release from Amazon or or Google, I'm going to be out of touch so quickly. So I try and make sure that I have personal development time because me being a good professional requires my constant personal development. Uh and that also helps my customers. It helps my products and it helps me and my my own curiosity change engineer things better. So um I guess that's a longwinded answer. I'm sort of longwinded answers today. But um you know I I do break it down to sprints and I I do cate categorize everything. So what am I going to achieve today? What am I going to achieve this week? what I'm going to achieve this month are definitely my my my big things. And then I've got future things, you know, what I'd love to be doing. And those are things that uh you know, right now there's a new musical instrument I want to learn and I haven't gotten to it yet. So, I'm very very disappointed I haven't got there, but I'll get there. That's a 2026 plan. >> It's interesting because uh a lot of the things you mentioned and discussed I've kind of gone through over the years and have been through many different cycles. Sleep has always been one that I sacrificed the most. Uh although this past year, I've tried to get back more into a semi more routine sleep cycle. Especially with all this ice and snow, it's made it easy. Just hibernate. Just you can't go anywhere. And that is where we're going to pause this episode. But do not be afraid. Have no fear. Uh cuz there's nothing to fear but fear itself. Uh but we will be back. uh we're going to continue our conversation and it continues to be a really good one. This was one of those that it was just it was really fun asking a question and just letting him go and there was just like mentally I was trying to unpack things as we go. I was trying to just like take notes and do all the things that I could because there's a lot of great uh information there. This is one of those I'm going to I think I'm going to go back and listen to it probably a couple of times again just because there are a lot of little things I was like, "Oh yeah, there's an idea. There's an idea. Here's something I should do. There's something I should do. here's something I should think about and uh a lot of those. So hopefully you guys weren't overwhelmed. And if you are, get a bigger notebook because we do have a part two coming around next time. Thanks for hanging out with us though. Uh like I said, we will continue. We will get part two in our next episode. And we are not done with our season. We have got plenty more ways for you to get that forward momentum as we get into our new year. As always, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time.
Transcript Segments
Rob, how you doing?
I'm doing good. How you doing, Andrew?
>> Good, good, good.
I have got uh Michael is my co-host and
he should be joining us soon. Apologies,
I'm just getting my
self situated here in a little bit.
Um while we're waiting on him, um I'll
let you know. So, this will be recorded,
uh audio and video. The way we do it is
from uh video. It's a YouTube and we do
it as a um there'll be sort of like a
call like a green room or a pre-show.
We'll have a little bit there and then
we have afterwards we have like a bonus
content uh afterwards that are uh video
that are after the audio completes. Um
we do it we'll do it in one sitting as
far as recording. So take us about an
hour. I tend to split it into two parts
though of I don't know 20 25 minute some
episodes something along those lines and
we just do it based on how the the
discussion flows basically. So we don't
come to a hard stop or anything. We just
go and then we figure it out in editing
uh and then figure it out from there as
far as splitting it up. Um
any questions or comments or anything?
>> Not really. I I guess um uh you know are
there any themes you're trying to hit
that you find your audience looking for?
for um you know just those sorts of
things that we try and cover stuff that
you feel are relevant for your audience
today.
>> Uh yeah, good point. That that reminds
me. Um yeah, so we'll start with just a
an introduction. I'll introduce myself,
Michael will introduce himself and then
we'll toss it over to you to introduce
yourself and just let you because that's
typically the best way to go and we'll
actually just sort of launch the
conversation from there. Uh the audience
is typically uh 20 to 30 year old kinds
uh new getting into mid-level maybe some
senior level technology people usually
uh with an entrepreneurial bet. So doing
some sort of a a side hustle or
something like that as well which is why
we sort of combine the two. So we talk
business we also tech tech talk
technology. U so we talk the founders
but also to implementers and doers.
Um the our current episode, our current
season is uh focusing on essentially
getting unstuck, moving forward, forward
momentum, how to just sort of make sure
you're keeping things, you know, keeping
the plate spinning.
>> And that's really I know it's a very
it's a general kind of topic, but we
tend to do that a little bit to talk
about just like, hey, if you're if
you're trying to get over this hump or
past this obstacle, here's a potential
way to do so.
Uh any other questions, comments,
anything like that?
>> Not really. Look, I haven't um you know,
I can certainly talk about um you know,
my history and um being entrepreneurial
and coming out of engineering and
building businesses and selling them and
all those kind of things. So, um more
than happy to come up and just tell a
story, I guess, and let you guys direct
it, I guess. Um
>> and go from there. So,
>> yeah, we there's never a bad story out.
So maybe that's just me, but it's like
I've never had a bad story. So if we can
get somebody talking about their story
and their background, then there's
almost always a way we can land that
plane and and talk about whatever our
our topic is of the day, we can find a
way to tweak it a little bit. And
>> if it's a little off topic, that doesn't
bother at least doesn't bother me too
much anyways because it's like, you know
what, these it's it tends to still be
>> something interesting to the uh to the
typical
um typical audience and such.
>> Um I am recording, so I'm just going to
go ahead and visually Where is my
camera? Hit the record button. Uh this
is Michael that just joined us. Michael,
there's Andrew. So,
>> Andrew, how are you?
>> Good, man. Good. Michael, lovely to meet
you.
>> Nice to meet you. How's my sound?
>> Uh, good.
>> How's mine?
>> Uh, sounds good.
>> Okay. And Andrew's about the same.
>> Yeah, hopefully you can hear me.
>> Yeah, you're good.
>> Okay, cool. Yeah, Michael tends to be
besides a co-host is he he's our audio
technician at this point. That was part
of the that was part of the cost of him
coming on. I was like, "Okay, you get to
do all the the fun stuff of the techn
the editing and all that kind of stuff."
So, uh, we'll make sure we make his life
as as easy as possible. So, um, that
being said, we're just gonna dive right
on into it unless anything you need,
Michael.
All right, we're going to go right in.
Those uno. Well, hello and welcome back.
We are continuing our season where we
are not just building better developers
and the developer podcast which we
always are. We are talking about core
momentum. We're talking about getting
unstuck. We're talking about how do you
you know potentially as this is the
start of the year. How do you actually
like kickstart your year? My name is Rob
Rodham. I am one of the founders of
developer and also the founder of RB
Consulting where we help you assess
where you're at and build a road map for
success. that technology checkup that
everybody needs periodically.
Good thing and bad thing. Wow, I've had
quite an interesting one this weekend.
The good thing is I'm not sitting in
middle Tennessee where there is ice and
all kinds of nasty stuff that's going on
there and people losing electricity.
However, I am sitting in Portugal where
there are winds and and big ls of water
and uh trees down and also the train
system down. So, a nice weekend that we
were going to have that was going to be
on the trains and a very comfortable
ride has turned out to be planes,
trains, and automobiles where we took a
bus and then took a train and then
didn't like the bus coming back cuz
we're going to make it. So, now we like
to spend an extra night. We're going to
fly. It's a pain. Uh but the good thing
is it could be worse. The bad thing is
um it could be better, but what is never
better is having my co-host, Michael, go
ahead and introduce yourself.
>> Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malash.
one of the co-founders of developer. I'm
also the founder of Envision QA where we
create reliable, tailored software that
helps you work smarter, scale faster,
and stay in control. Uh, good things,
bad things. Well, said storm Rob's
mentioning, uh, I live in Tennessee, and
thankfully we had power. Uh,
unfortunately, we have been iced in for
a total of about 10 days. uh have not
been able to leave the driveway, the
house, uh and the animals have been
screwing across the ice in the yard uh
for quite some time. Uh hopefully today.
The good news is looks like we're
finally going to be above freezing this
week and hopefully all this uh ice will
go away. Uh I guess the other bad thing
is we're supposed to get rain behind
this. So if the rain comes before this
ice melts, we're going to have some nice
little uh mudslides, water slides, and
flooding going on for another few days.
But yeah, that's it for me.
>> Nothing says fun like weather just in
general. But somebody that does say fun,
at least we're going to find out, is
Andrew. Uh, if you want to go ahead,
he's our guest today. Would you like to
go ahead and introduce yourself?
>> Sure. Sure. My name is Andrew. Um, my
background is software engineering and
I've built and sold a number of
businesses over the years. Um, I've done
that as a solo entrepreneur and also as
a co-founder and, uh, I've I've got a
long story going back to the '90s. Uh,
so I've got plenty to talk about, but
weatherwise, I normally live upstate New
York, so I'm just near Coopertown, uh,
normally, and that is a place that is
not, um, afraid of snow and ice for
sure. But, uh, like Rob, I'm currently
in Europe, so I've been able to avoid
that. I've got a lovely dusting of an
inch or two of snow and it's it's been
very pleasant. No, no black ice,
nothing. So, it's been good for me. Um
yeah, so my background, look, I've come
out of software engineering. I I started
off my life in university, um academia,
uh working at universities. I progressed
through building some businesses and
nowadays, you know, I'm CTO for a gaming
company. Uh I've uh I'm on board of an
investment uh rollup in uh Europe. So,
you know, we've raised um some funding
and we're currently trying to grow that
and and um identify great businesses
that we can roll up and and do something
great together. And um I'm CTO uh of a
um software development company as well.
So, I a bit of fractional CTO stuff. And
this month um one of my fractional jobs
wound down a little bit. So, uh, you
know, I've kicked off yet another, uh,
little company for myself cuz there's
never enough never enough time. I wish I
could do more. I wish I could learn
everything, but, uh, I just have to
choose. And sometimes I make good
choices, sometimes I make bad choices.
And no matter what happens, I I enjoy
every choice I make. So, it's good.
>> So, for those of you that are wondering,
yes, uh, Andrew is like what uh, every
developer listener wants to be when they
grow up. I think that's what all of us
are is. We love doing like just love
building stuff. love doing things. Uh I
think all of us like the idea of both
being the the soloreneur but also the
you know the entrepreneur side of it of
like not just doing it ourselves but
actually building a business and having
something that goes on that lives beyond
us. So, expecting a really fun
conversation here. And let's start with
the uh let's go back a little bit into
the the early years of let's just talk
about like your first solo
um business and how you stepped into it
because I'm I'm wondering particularly
if you just sort of like dove into it.
Was this one of these that you side
hustles your way and it eventually said
and eventually said I have to do it or
how was that? Let's start with that
story. Your your origin story as it
were. origin was actually um um more of
a collaboration. So um that actually
gave me the confidence by working with
some great people that gave me
confidence to step out and eventually
try things by by myself. Um so for me my
very first one um you know I was working
at a university uh writing software you
know I used to do things that back then
I called math but nowadays everyone
calls AI. um you know I was predicting
uh koala populations in sheep grazing um
uh fields and I was uh predicting tree
girth based upon environmental factors
and things like that but nowadays you
know an LLM can probably do it well try
and do it but we'll probably get it
wrong but um you know that that's the
kind of stuff I was doing and I kind of
identified this guy called Tim Berners
Lee popped up and said yeah hey hey use
this web stuff this looks really cool
and I thought wow awesome so um you know
I was sitting around with my team leader
at at a company that I was working with
and um uh he was working on an invoicing
system for a muffler shop. So, he was
just doing the billing uh really really
boring point of sale stuff. Uh apologies
to any muffler sales guys out there, but
um
uh boring um boring um point of sale
stuff and um you know, we we decided
that um this dialup internet thing
looked pretty cool and uh like how do we
do that? I wanted to learn Linux. Um I
wanted to learn web stuff and I saw this
as becoming a really big thing. Anyway,
so I got together with two mates. Um my
team lead, my engineering team lead at
the time who eventually became my best
man at my at my uh wedding and um uh
also uh the guy that owned the muffler
shop. And we put together an ISP, a
dialup ISP. We had stallion boards. We
had um at one stage we gave away a no no
engage signal guarantee to our
subscribers because we had more modems
than people um dialing in. So that was
an easy thing for us to easily give
away. Yeah, it's a terrible story from
so long ago, but it was something that
really taught me a lot. You know, I I
learned the power of um working with
people that had great skills. So I was
able to identify that um you know the
guy that owned muffler shop he was
commercially uh really viable. He knew
his stuff. He knew how to commercialize
stuff. He knew how to sell stuff. Me I
was a great software engineer. I I knew
how to write code. And my team lead um
he was an infrastructure guy. So he
taught me a lot about modems and and
things like that. So we kind of formed
together a little um jigsaw puzzle that
I guess that fit really well from our
skill set. And that really gave me the
confidence to step beyond that and into
bigger and better things. So, uh, you
know, I was lucky to have good friends
and step up based upon that. The solo
stuff, I might talk about my my latest
thing I'm doing. Um, for me again,
January this year, um, or two days ago,
no, January started I guess, but um,
sorry, January ended. Uh, you know, I've
got into cyber security as security's
always been a thing. So, at the moment,
I'm really really focused on how to
simplify cyber security for small and
medium enterprises. And I'm not talking
about how to make your laptop secure.
I'm talking about inbound um uh security
researcher uh queries. So people when
they report an issue with your product
or something, I'm looking at workflows
through that, how to identify it, how to
uh actually vet them, how to respond to
a policy for uh you know, bug bounty
programs, how to make that simpler for
people. So you know there are platforms
out there like hacker one and that that
do these sorts of things, but mine is a
little bit differently focused. just a
little bit more um uh software or more
more entrepreneur friendly I guess more
small and medium enterprise. So it's
certainly um uh very interesting from
that perspective. I just realized my
alerts just came through so hopefully
that didn't pop up on over the sound but
um
>> n Oh, good. Okay. Um I've just turned
off the software in the background so I
get no more. All right. So that that's
kind of where it is. Like um would I do
what I did today and what have I what
have I learned over the time? Uh one
I've identified for myself that being a
solo developer is great. You know, it
gives me a lot of time to focus on my
code and getting things right. But the
more I focus on my code, the less I can
focus on maybe sales or or maybe
marketing or or or how to connect my
audience. So those are all sorts of
things that um uh and I've tried to work
out of time. It's been great with the
the hat of all different sorts of trades
and things like that. So it's um uh from
that experience, sorry again of I'm
getting notifications, so apologies. I
should have shut this all down prior.
Um,
just trying to go into do not disturb
mode. There we go. Apologies. Apologies.
>> That's okay. Rob had instances of that
in the past as well.
>> Yeah, it's just so annoying. Um,
hopefully you can discuss that.
Apologies. All right. Um,
>> he'll edit that out.
>> Yeah,
there you go.
>> Perfect. All right. So um you know what
I've learned over time being the solo
guy uh wearing all the different hats to
say marketing and things like that. U
it's it's difficult and quite a balance
to you know not only identify what you
want to do but go out there and hunt it
drag kill it drag it back cover it up
and eat it and and while you're too busy
eating it you know you're losing the
business that's getting away. So that's
always something that I found quite
tricky. I think in the time of um AI
now, you know, LLMs are great for me to
plan my solo marketing campaigns. Like I
I get them easily to help me write up um
uh my social media posts for the week or
or things like that or at least give me
not write them, but at least give me a
plan. Uh so, you know, I'll often come
up with what I want to do. I'll use one
LLM to help me plan what I want to do,
and I use another LLM. They'll compare
my plan versus the plan that it
generated and and market like a teacher.
So um you know I I'll use two tools to
help me um uh deliver quicker, deliver
better. Um I also find that um looking
at various uh LLMs also helps with my
code quality. Like I don't write
production code uh with AI. But I'll
certainly get it to do a static analysis
of my code. I'll certainly get it to
look at um uh my plan of code like what
have I missed? I'll get it to make me um
write better test cases, things like
that. So, uh very very interesting from
that perspective. Uh debugging is great.
Uh you know, cy and pasting in an error
message is fantastic uh to to help me
research. You know, I do treat a lot of
AI as um a shortcut of Google. You know,
gone of the days where you stick it in
and go 25 pages of Google deep to find
the specific Stack Overflow um issue.
uh but you know you can get something
maybe close sooner. So for from that
productivity perspective I I still use
AI for a lot of tools. Um AI of course
is a mark or or a channel to market as
well. We could talk about that perhaps
but um yeah I guess that's where I
started. I started as um something
identified with friends. We became
better from there. I moved on to other
things where I another time I was
sitting with guys at a pub and we saw
what was going on. we thought we could
do something better and we wrote that uh
again and that's one of my most
successful um projects and they weren't
friends but they became friends after
many many years and many many
um scars and battle battle battles we
had together to to get things going uh
all the way through to solo stuff um and
um for others as well. I ended up I um
marrying my my best partner. So um my my
wife and I have been working on
businesses now for almost 20 years. So
um you know it's it's been a very very
uh
good good experience as well to be able
to bring that in house and not be so
lonely I guess because that's often
something that um we don't necessarily
talk about as entrepreneurs enough. It's
difficult that you know your work drags
you away from your family, but it's
great to have um you know a life partner
there as well.
>> Wow, there's a lot there. Um yeah, I
guess to start with it is it is amusing
to me because I've sort of it's been a
while, you know, it's been 30 almost 40
years now since the dialup days, early
dialup days. And it's it's amazing to me
how many people I talk to that are in
consulting and software companies that
they can trace it back to. Well,
initially we did some ISP work, you
know, back in the 90s because that was
what everybody did. It was just it
seemed like it was the easy thing to do.
It was sort of like the obvious choice
to just everybody needed it. Everybody
needed a local one. They didn't want to
use, you know, or Copy Serve or America
Online or one of those kinds of things.
And the little ones, the little local
ones, you know, tended to be a lot
better. And so, uh, it's amazing how
many people start with that and then
somewhere along the way they found a
product or they had a customer and then
the next thing they know they're
building, you know, like you said, like
the web was starting to become a thing
and so now they're starting to build
websites and it just it grew from there.
So that is that is a that is in the
background of so many stories that I've
I've heard. It's it's really
interesting. Before I go on, like I do
want to mention like I've never really
talked about that either, but I think if
you there are there are downsides to
working with family, whether it's, you
know, your your kids or your spouse or
something like your cousins or anything
like that. But I think there's also a
lot of of benefits to that as well. And
I would say particularly spouse, my wife
has worked with me as well and it's it
makes the the conversations much more
interesting because now you actually
have somebody that you can talk to
especially if you're like I'm sure
you're like us where you end up you're
thinking about your job and business all
the time. It's just always like an idea
will come up. you'll be out, you know,
sitting on the lake fishing and some
like, "Hey, I've got this idea." And
it's really great to be able to like
just bounce that off of somebody, have
that sounding board and and not just
have that conversation run in your head.
Um, before I like I guess one thing
before and this may take us off in
another past anyways, is how do you you
mention you laid out a lot of areas that
you use AI? I I refer to it as using it
sort of like a virtual assistant because
it's just like it can do all these
little things. I love passing it back
and forth between LLMs and just sort of
say, "What do you think? What do you
think?" Especially when I'll say like,
"Write this so it doesn't sound like AI
wrote it." And then I'll pass it back
and forth a couple times. It like clean
some stuff up and then get it to a point
where it's like, "Oh, okay. Yeah, now
this this makes sense." And gosh,
debugging, if you're not using anybody
out there, if you're not using AI for
debugging, that is, I think, the
quickest, easiest way to get a a big
return on investment. uh particularly
like particularly I found configuration
type issues and um you typo kinds of
issues that end up in code. You can
throw something there and very quickly
have it tell you like this is exactly
where it is or oh you forgot this the
stuff that you need that second set of
eyes. It is a great second set of eyes
in in that case. But now have you but
with that have you felt like it has has
freed you maybe to like to pursue more
of those ideas? You said you know you
started out by saying there's not enough
hours in the day. Do you feel like this
is something that sort of has given you
a little bit of that freedom to be like
oh now I can actually pursue a couple
more of these things and product ideas
that I had?
>> Absolutely. Um there's a few things in
there. One, I'll use AI to help me
scaffold an idea quickly. So, I'll do a
proof of concept or something and I'll
I'll get it to show me I'll get it to
help me show um a core bit of
functionality or or a new idea so I can
demo it quickly. Again, I don't use any
of this code in production ever. Um it's
my suggestion never to do that. Uh I'll
also even use AI and ask it to take on
personas. So, I'll try and identify who
my users are and I'll get the um AI to
to be that user uh and give me feedback
as that user. You know, if I'm writing
um an architecture document for a
customer, I'll, you know, I'll brief it
that it's, you know, a certified cloud
architect or something and to say, "Hey,
you know, find the files with this um
and things like that." So, I'll I'll
I'll work with that. Um does it allow me
to deliver faster? It allows me to do
rapid prototyping exceptionally fast. It
allows me to demonstrate value or or
ideas really really quickly. So, um
yeah, I one thing I don't like about
LLMs is it's too supportive. You you
know things like chatbt are famous for
always saying yes, what a wonderful
idea. Um and you know, we all know
that's crap. Um for the language, but
you know, I've I've had over my time uh
I've had failures of people. I've had
failures of processes. I've had, you
know, um one of my first real
businesses, I had one of my accountants
um make a mistake in my early year that
cost me a lot uh with the tax
authorities. So, you know, there's
things you've got to keep your eyes on
over the years um and things you got to
fix and you can't drop the ball on those
things. And, you know, I'd love to see a
lot more use of um an assistant and I I
like to call them tooling. uh for me AI
I I see AI as either a tool so helping
me become faster and better at what I do
or as a a channel to or a channel right
so that's trying to identify uh you know
if I'm an e-commerce person rather than
SEO I should be thinking about AI
optimization where um when you ask about
a product or service in JBT um you know
my product or service pops up as
recommendation rather than you know
maybe my competitors so making sure that
um my products and services are
discoverable
indexed and um referenced by AI as well
is is essential. So to me that's a
channel. So you know people go and ask I
don't know what's
the best product for X purpose and um my
my product service pops up when it comes
in from there. Obviously that requires
seeding of Reddit and all those sorts of
other techniques that are a bit shady
perhaps but um you know if you build a
community as well that will certainly
help in that space. So, I like to do in
there. U So, yeah, AI tooling, AI um
optimization for workflow is critical
and something I I use a lot.
>> Yeah, it's uh that was actually a
conversation I had actually with my wife
the other day. We're talking about that
as we were talking about AI. We're like
and how infamously positive it is about
like, oh, that's a great idea that and
we've we've chastised it on a regular
basis and said, no, don't tell us this.
Don't tell it like you know give us the
give us the poke the holes in the
theories and we were actually
postulating and this is something for
everybody to try out this next time
you're on an ele you know any of them is
say you know hey always take the
negative approach or something like that
it's like turn it into just something
that's always trying to pick apart your
ideas and it might turn it into some
sort of sociopath but it also may get
you some really good like really do a
good job of picking holes in your ideas.
>> Absolutely. I'm also leaning towards um
a lot of open source that I run locally
as well self-hosted. U you know there's
clawbot that was recently released in
the last few days uh and you know people
were downloading the wrong or or
counterfeit versions of clawbot. People
were installing plugins that um were
were
not safe or secure. So I I tend to avoid
the consumer models. I I use the um
enterprise models.
um the the top end paid for public
models or I'll use my own um open source
ones that I I run locally. So, it's a
little bit more safe and secure for me.
>> Interesting. Yeah, I've used uh AI quite
a bit for testing software and things of
that nature. And
you can actually work on your chatbot a
little bit um the prompts and that to
get it to be a little less positive, a
little more critical. But it I I think
it's the nature of the beast. They're
trying not to make people think that AI
is coming after them like the
Terminator. But it it's almost like that
feel like they're trying to make it
comfortable for everyone to use versus
uh make it more realistic, more like a
person because then people will start to
maybe judge it or be a little more
afraid of it. Uh I want to circle back
around for a minute though. Um, kind of
back to your beginning conversation
about all the ventures you're kind of
involved in and all the things you do.
How do you keep it straight? Cuz I know
I run into the same problem where you
you get stuff working in your business,
you're not working up on your business
with marketing and things of that
nature. It sounds like you have so many
different things going on. How do you
stay focused to make sure that your
companies are moving forward, that
things are getting done, uh, and that
you're you don't get stuck going down
too many rabbit holes and the next thing
you know, nothing gets done?
>> Yeah, that's um often something I've
I've fallen victim to myself. Like at
the moment, I've I've written a book
that's currently with editors. I've got
149 edits I've got to change. They gave
that to me in November. It's now
February and I haven't touched it. So,
you know, um I've got to work on
something's better. Um for me, it's all
about time management. You know, my my
sleep patterns are are terrible. You
know, I'm certainly not getting enough
sleep. Um this is actually a face of a
20-year-old. Not not not much more
mature. Um so, uh you know, I'm not
sleep. I I I exist on a lot less sleep
because I can't because there's always
something to do. Uh for me, it's
curiosity. um you know I I I look for
myself and even with people I work for
you know I look I like curiosity I like
collaboration I like autonomy as well so
you know I'll discover something um cuz
I'm interested in it uh at the moment
I've been looking Meshtastic and a few
other alternative um communications
methods uh and I go out and research
that I can even ask my LLM again hate to
be on about AI but you know it'll give
me a market overview fairly quickly so I
can get up to speed on a concept really
quickly and then if it's something of
interest, I'll delve deeper on my own. I
miss my research librarians back in my
university days. Um so that that aside
um how do I keep things going? Well,
I've got to eat first. I always
prioritize my um customers that expect
uh you know certain hours, certain
contact times. You know, they always
remain top priority. So, uh, you know,
they they contracted hours or whatever,
and that's what they get. Um, but as I
said, it's fractional. So, you know, I'm
not full-time, uh, with them at all. So,
uh, you know, I'll do the exact hours
that they want. I always do extra as
well because, um, you know, they
expected, I expected, and it's the
nature of doing a good job. But, um, uh,
I I tend to manage myself in sprints, I
guess. So, you know, I'll I'll have a
clear picture of what I want to achieve
and I'll want to have a a a date for
that. So, I'll say I need to do that in
January or I need to do that this week.
So, I tend to talk in in um round
numbers of uh today, this week, this
month for my timing. And I'll say, okay,
this month I want to release this
feature on that product or uh you know,
I want to finally do those edits um on
that book um and things like that. So I
I'll have a goal for the month and I'll
break that down as I go and I prioritize
um based upon that. So I I do run myself
on sprints and I do have a a plan for
2026 that I know I want to achieve these
certain things. Uh but I never pack that
full you know one of the things I
learned managing large teams in software
organ organizations a lot of project
managers even a lot of engineering
managers they'll look at their staff and
time that 100% availability.
We all know that's not true. Uh you
know, you got sick leave, annual leave,
you've got meetings, all those sorts of
things. So I I'll cut it down to 80% or
60% based upon the culture of the
company. And even my own time, I'll I'll
cut down and then I'll try and leave
that innovation time as well. Uh I
remember once upon a time Google used to
have their 20% time. I don't think it
exists anymore, but um maybe it does.
Somebody from Google correct me. But um
you know, there's that innovation time
you need to be able to sit back and look
at the industry. And quite frankly,
one thing I've tried never to lose
between my sea level roles and my board
roles down to and today I still write
code is that if I don't put aside time
to write code, to engage with engineers,
to uh read that technical white paper to
to see the latest release from Amazon or
or Google, I'm going to be out of touch
so quickly. So I try and make sure that
I have personal development time because
me being a good professional requires my
constant personal development. Uh and
that also helps my customers. It helps
my products and it helps me and my my
own curiosity change engineer things
better. So um I guess that's a
longwinded answer. I'm sort of
longwinded answers today. But um you
know I I do break it down to sprints and
I I do cate categorize everything. So
what am I going to achieve today? What
am I going to achieve this week? what
I'm going to achieve this month are
definitely my my my big things. And then
I've got future things, you know, what
I'd love to be doing. And those are
things that uh you know, right now
there's a new musical instrument I want
to learn and I haven't gotten to it yet.
So, I'm very very disappointed I haven't
got there, but I'll get there. That's a
2026 plan.
>> It's interesting because uh a lot of the
things you mentioned and discussed I've
kind of gone through over the years and
have been through many different cycles.
Sleep has always been one that I
sacrificed the most. Uh although this
past year, I've tried to get back more
into a semi more routine sleep cycle.
Especially with all this ice and snow,
it's made it easy. Just hibernate. Just
you can't go anywhere. And that is where
we're going to pause this episode. But
do not be afraid. Have no fear. Uh cuz
there's nothing to fear but fear itself.
Uh but we will be back. uh we're going
to continue our conversation and it
continues to be a really good one. This
was one of those that it was just it was
really fun asking a question and just
letting him go and there was just like
mentally I was trying to unpack things
as we go. I was trying to just like take
notes and do all the things that I could
because there's a lot of great uh
information there. This is one of those
I'm going to I think I'm going to go
back and listen to it probably a couple
of times again just because there are a
lot of little things I was like, "Oh
yeah, there's an idea. There's an idea.
Here's something I should do. There's
something I should do. here's something
I should think about and uh a lot of
those. So hopefully you guys weren't
overwhelmed. And if you are, get a
bigger notebook because we do have a
part two coming around next time. Thanks
for hanging out with us though. Uh like
I said, we will continue. We will get
part two in our next episode. And we are
not done with our season. We have got
plenty more ways for you to get that
forward momentum as we get into our new
year. As always, go out there and have
yourself a great day, a great week, and
we will talk to you next time.