Detailed Notes
Strong software, effective teams, and sustainable businesses all rely on the same thing: solid foundations.
In this episode, we wrap up the Building Better Foundations series by stepping back and reinforcing the fundamentals that often get overlooked. From understanding your “why” to focusing on process before tools, this conversation centers on what actually drives long-term progress for developers, tech leads, and engineering managers.
We explore how distraction, poor processes, and reactive work slowly erode quality—and how intentional habits help restore focus. We also discuss where AI and automation fit into the picture, and why they should support strong foundations rather than replace them.
If you’ve felt busy but not effective, stretched thin, or pulled in too many directions, this episode offers a practical reset. Building better foundations isn’t flashy, but it’s what keeps everything else standing.
🎧 Watch, reflect, and reset your foundations for the year ahead.
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Key Takeaways • Strong foundations matter more than new tools • Clear purpose improves focus and decision-making • Process should come before automation • AI works best when foundations are solid • Consistent habits enable long-term growth
Follow-us on • [email protected] • https://develpreneur.com/ • https://www.youtube.com/@develpreneur • https://facebook.com/Develpreneur • https://x.com/develpreneur • https://www.linkedin.com/company/develpreneur/
Transcript Text
[music] [music] [music] [music] You're muted. >> Nope. There we go. Let's try that. >> Something popped up behind you. It looked like someone was behind you there for a minute. >> Oh, I don't know what that was. >> It's a mirror. That's just me on the mirror. Oh, it's a mirror. Okay, so that might have been Natalie. [laughter] >> It could have been Natalie moving around. >> All right. >> It was kind of funny. You had like a ghost head pop up behind you. So, I didn't know if you were in a restaurant. >> There you go. >> Yeah, that was Natalie. [laughter] >> There you can see her face. >> Zoom like breaks it just enough we see a little bitty face right by my arm. [laughter] So if I do this Yeah. There your face is like [laughter] Can you see it? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I just have to do that. There we go. [laughter] >> Ah, fun with mirrors. >> All right. Good times. All right. Um. >> All right. So, we're going to complete season 25, >> 26 or hang on. I believe it's completing and what are we starting? We're starting 26 and we're ending 25, right? >> No, we're ending 26 and starting 27. >> Oh my gosh. Wow. That's a lot of seasons. There's podcasts that don't make that many episodes, much less seasons. [laughter] And we've had seasons that have like a hundred episodes. >> Yeah. Like you talked to that lady. [laughter] >> Oh, yeah. She was immediately amazed. >> Yes. >> She was all sorts of like [snorts] >> Yeah. She's like, "And you're not making money?" I'm like, "Yeah, we're not making money. We're just doing it because we're freaking awesome." >> Hey, tomato tomato. [laughter] >> I mean, initially we started this off just wanting to help people, not necessarily about making money. And then we tried to monetize it and then we just haven't. >> Honestly, I get frustrated that we haven't monetized it. There are a lot of f podcasts that have put not nowhere near what we've put out there and are making like that's all they're doing. [clears throat] Like I should be able to retire this this is just we're investing and we're going to be able to retire into being podcasters >> now. We just got to figure out how to do it. All right. Um I'm taking notes here real quick. All right. So we're ending Hey, we're screen saver. But the There we go. We're ending building better foundations, >> right? >> All right. >> And we're starting incremental >> uh we're starting uh focus uh forward motion getting started on your goals. Momentum focus. [snorts] >> Okay. Yeah, I was working on something um because, you know, I was in interview mode and just trying to re get ready for the next gig or whatever. Uh after the layoffs, well, [clears throat] some of my team members are junior mid-level people and they're like, "Well, where do we begin? You know, what do we do?" One of the guys, I guess this was his first job. So that explains why he's so anti- capitalism that anti-corporation. He just hates uh corpor corporate America. And it's like, dude, this is how it works. Yes, you may hate it, but you know, you want a paycheck, right? You're you have a kid coming. You you got to pay for bills. I mean, you can't be that immature. Uh, so I've started putting together a Spring Boot 4 uh kind of mini master series to uh because Spring Boot 4 just came out in December >> and it's got some pretty slick changes to it which really I mean not counting AI but it's at least a 20% if not more improvement in coding time >> um and and things. It eliminated a lot of added a whole bunch of stuff. So like uh a lot of the dependencies you had to bring in, you don't have to now. They're part of the core. And it looked cool. I was like, "Hey, uh, I watched the series that the, uh, lead developer put out from, uh, Spring and I'm like, okay, this would actually make like maybe a good 10 20 short episode series on just let's build a web application with Spring Boot from the beginning with Spring Boot for like highlight, hey, this is for this is how like kind of before and after kind of things." and I've started doing it. Um, [clears throat] I've gotten through like maybe two, three episodes. I didn't like where I started, so I'm resetting, but I I think I've got a flow now. So, hopefully by February, I might start dropping those out. Um, but then I was thinking this morning, it's like, well, with AI, should I I mean, are people really still going to be learning this? Are they going to be used? I got into kind of like a philosophical debate with myself about that this morning. It's just was like uh >> it wouldn't be a bad one. It's actually >> it's one I I um I did that I converted I did a I've got somewhere in there. I don't think I totally finished it out, but I was basically converting an old um just a Java I don't even remember what it was. I think it was just a Java Spring app. It was like an older one that started gosh seven or eight years ago and I was converting it to Spring Boot and uh and Time Leaf um because I was using I think JSPs or something. I can't it was like way back >> and converted that one. Yeah. >> And converting it up and it turned out it was a pretty good um I probably had I don't know 15 20 episodes or something like that of just basic and it was really fun from a conversion because it's like okay here's Java, here's what it looks like in here's how easy it is to convert it over. Here's what it looks like in Spring Boot. this is how you run it and it was going through the whole like you know basically building a a Spring Boot application from scratch except for it was based off another application. And so I was able to very quickly say like, "Okay, here's the database. Let's connect to it. Here's here's how we connect to the database. Here's a you know, here's our homepage. Okay, cool. We're like displaying a page and stuff like that." And then walked through the application and was able to do a lot of different um like areas of Spring Boot and just Java in general um using like JDBC template or whatever I use to connect to the database, you know, things like that. So it was a cool little tutorial. So something like that's not a bad thing to throw out there and do in good, you know, it was not too hard to do it in like 15 15 minute chunks, something like that. >> Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Um, some of the initial ones that that's where I got kind of hung up. It's like I did three and I they were taking too long or I felt they were too long and I didn't do them cleanly enough to where I could just cut it. Like I I tried to cut it and it just wasn't clean. So, now I'm going to um I've kind of got like a little post-it note thing that's like, "Okay, here's what I want to do for the first part. Stop. Here's what I want to do for the second part. Stop." Um, still do it in one recording, but it's telling me, "Hey, take a pause here so that you can cut it because I just didn't have a clean cut like where I should be able to cut it." I was talking through it and it's like crap. I I I kind of like when you do the intro sometimes you go like and you jump right into it like okay where do I cut like sometimes it carries and you got to cut just right to get what you want and not the bleed over and I just couldn't do it right so I was like screw it I'll just it it's I enjoy doing kitchen sink apps like that and it is still spring boot 4 so there's still new stuff with it so it's like okay I'm comfortable with it yet. So, I will be by the time I'm done with it. >> Yeah, that helped me a lot when I was going through it. And the same thing, I did a lot of I did a lot of editing on that because I would sit there and do a fif sit down for a 15-minute session and it' take me an hour and a half because I'd be tracing through something cuz I was walking through like debugging and all kinds of stuff and so I was finding ways to like cut and slice and turn it back down to something small. So, it was a it was it was challenging but it was when I had some time to do it and it was where I was like, "Okay, this is something I wanted to to knock out." But welcome to everybody. At some point we've hit record. I'm not exactly sure when, but somewhere back there we hit record and we are wrapping up season 26. It is just like I had to ask him several times. Really 26 is we really it's really 26 and we're about to start 27. So uh we're going to jump into the podcast and uh we'll just do like a little bit of an overview or like thoughts on season 26 and some of the things we've got out of this on uh building better foundations. And so we are going to just right into it. Well, hello and welcome back. We are wrapping up season 26, building better foundations. We are the building better developers podcast, the developure podcast. I am Rob Broadhead, one of the founders of developing. We're also the founder of RB Consulting where we help you leverage technology to do techni to do business better to help your pro your problems just go away. Get that kitchen sink app of technology and get it cleaned up so it's nice and sparkly for uh you and your year ahead as it may be. Good thing, bad thing. Uh good thing is I am sitting in Portugal. I am like now a officially a digital nomad after a long and torturous journey that you could see more about it on roamingwithrablely.com. Um we have sort of thrown some of our stories together. It is in some ways it is way better than I thought it was going to be, but getting here was way harder than I thought it was going to be. Uh so the good thing is I'm here. Uh the bad thing is it's like it is a little bit of a challenge sometimes to do [clears throat] these kinds of uh this like my studio is now not what my studio was. I spent years perfecting and honing the studio for my podcast and now I have to sort of wing it a little bit and figure it out each uh each time I do it. So things like where I had very set, you know, cameras and mics and stuff like that. No longer I have to like do it on the fly, which may make things a little more interesting as we go into 26, but the uh the cornerstone of the podcast is still there and Michael will introduce himself now. >> Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malash. I'm one of the co-founders of Building Better Developers, also known as Developer. I'm also the founder of Envision QA where we build and test reliable custom systems so you can focus on your growth of your business. Uh good thing bad thing uh not really any bad this week. We're into a new year. Things last year was the bad thing I guess. Uh just getting to the end of the year. There was a lot going on, a lot of uh pivots, a lot of things going on. But this year off to a good start. Uh starting to build some new courses and building the business. And so let's talk about season 26. It was building better foundations. We did almost everything was an interview. Uh we had a lot. Why is my camera There go. I hate it when the camera decides to be smart and adjust stuff to you. Those of you guys that are listening have no idea what I'm talking about. Those of guys that are walk watching, sorry. That was the camera deciding to auto adjust some stuff. Uh but so we had almost the entire season was was interviews. We did have a couple of uh of just us talking. Of course, it was split by the holiday episodes, but I think we'll just dive right into the concept, the building better foundations piece. Uh I want to go back and re like revisit that a little bit. And really what it is, what our goal was when we got into this was to focus on the things that matter and they always matter and making sure that we continue to keep that focus on them. maybe not I guess 100% but not let them drift away or not let them just sort of fall into the background. And those are things that we talk about all the time that we get frustrated as developers that people don't do it. people being usually our boss or the customers or whoever it is, the they that we like to complain about where we, you know, it's maybe we're not getting the testing in or the comments in or the time to design stuff that we want to or it's not as pretty as we would like it to be or whatever it is. Um, all these things come back to some foundational stuff and it is things like when you're writing code, you need to design first. You need to think about what you're doing. You need to comment it. you need to actually commit it to a repository with useful comments, not I wrote some more code on this. Um those kinds of things, those foundational things. And then with a business, the foundational things of like you do have to always work on the business and not just in the business. If you're just if you can write bill every hour, then bully for you, but at some point your business is not going to grow. You've got to find a way to actually be doing the we'll call it, you know, the non-billable work for your business for it to grow. You are investing in your future at that point. And I think we have had a we've had a broad range of discussions through this uh this season and touched in a lot of those areas. And I guess I'll put you on the hot seat first and say like what is what's maybe one or two things that really has stuck out to you in uh the season that we've just gone through. So, a lot of the things like building foundations, um, like you touched on, you know, you have to work in the business, work on your business to grow the business because if you're always working in your business, you're not out there growing the business. You're not finding new customers. So, at some point, your funnel dries up and you're just you have no choice but to go find work. But, at that point, you could be in a situation where you have no money coming in. So, now what do you do? you kind of you can't pay the bills, things are a little more stressful than they needed to be. We actually had some very good interviews and conversations around branding and marketing and the sales and funnels, which I thought was very interesting cuz we've talked about that and I know personally I'm not the greatest at going out and doing those sales in the funnels. You know, talking to people, looking for customers is one thing, but to kind of do the whole social media digital marketing thing, I don't have time for that. So, I've had to kind of offshore that a little bit and hire people to help me do that. But, you can't forget about doing that because if you don't do that, you kind of lose that digital footprint. People don't see you. You know, you're that uh solo person standing in a crowded room shouting at the top of your lungs. No one's hearing you because you aren't you don't stand out. So, those were some of the things that keep coming back to my mind. It's like, yes, I got to keep working on that. I got to remember that. I got to focus on that. uh and then some of the other things that were uh that came out of it uh not necessarily foundational but some of the conversations we had about where AI was changing things and as you continue to grow your business and working on the foundations we you do need to start considering AI AI as a tool not necessarily replacement but as a way to start improving and growing your business and looking for inefficiencies so that you can perform better, so you can get rid of the stupid tasks that take you too long. Find a way to automate it. If you can't think about or figure out how to automate, throw it in AI, ask, "Hey, how can I streamline this? How can I make it better?" And those were some of the things that came out of some of the discussions that was like, "Oh, hey, that's an idea." Went and tried it and it's like, "Oh, hey, already I've improved like even if you improve 1% or automate a few things, you got time back. So now you can work on the business or you can bu have more billable hours. What about you? >> Yeah, I think that's it's funny. I was just in a a conversation yesterday with a a group um [sighs and gasps] think of it like a mastermind group kind of thing and we were talking about like how do you it was really focused on starting in the next year and what is it that you're what is it you're spending a lot of your time on and where do you where can you find efficiencies in your schedule and then it ended up sort of pointing to so what can you do with AI and the funny thing is by the time I got to the what can you do with AI I'd actually already done that because I started looking uh I think this is one of the best things I've done for my business and this came out of a lot of the conversations we had here and some of the conversations I had in on other podcast because AI is everywhere. People are talking about it all the time is there's so many things that you can do that are very redundant that are very just time consuming and very easy to automate. We talked about this a couple seasons ago when we talked about just having like we did the challenges. One of them was every week automate something. And I think now you could take that same challenge and every week pick something and automate it. And if you don't know how to talk to AI about it, have a run it through AI and see what you can do because between sometimes just between some scripts or something like that or just throwing it in AI and allowing it to do most of the work or building an agent or building an app or something like that. I've built tons of apps now to just automate in scripts and all these things to just automate stuff all over the place. Every time I do something now, I'm getting more and more in that focus of like how do I automate it? When I talk to any business owner, I'm looking at what they do. What are their processes? How can we automate it? How can we simplify it? And it's just it's always been part of my makeup and part of my motives operandi as it would be. But also now with AI, it's like the time consumption of it becomes like minimal. Like virtual assistants, I think, are going to just disappear. I think I've said that before because AI is now a perfectly good, perfectly serviceable virtual assistant. the stuff that I always was hesitant to do by spending the money and training up a VA. Now I don't have to worry about it because I've been able to train an AI to do that for me. And if I don't like that AI, I can fire it and I can go check another AI engine and go run it through that and see how it does. And I've and for what I need, it has kicked butt across the board. And I think that's the foundations that we uh where we got into that on a couple of situations is the the foundations of things like marketing and branding and being able to do um the testing of that is now so much easier because you can spin up AB comparisons of your your pages and your funnels and images even and things like that so quickly that it's almost like it's it's almost like a a no-brainer to just like go do it, run it for a a while or run it side by side for a while and see which one works better and then pick it and move on. And I think that's one of the foundational things that we're we're seeing was a change that coincided during the season is that uh there's a lot of there's a lot of things where AI is starting to drop some of those barriers. And I think for you guys in the audience, that's something to think about. It's like the years it took to learn, to develop, and to do things. Uh there's a lot of value in that, but you're going to now have to be able to know how to differentiate that from somebody that can say, "Well, I just built an app yesterday because I just vibecoded my way into this thing." And you're going to have to be able to understand what does that mean? What is the difference between somebody actually designing and thinking through and building real software versus somebody that told an agent to go out and just build it and it said, "Here, here's a bunch of code. Go run it." And it may look good, but there's going to be issues. And you've got to be able to identify those and be able to say no that's that is not ready for prime time and think people are seeing it but um I digress a little bit from the foundational side of this. Um I do want to go back swing back into this season. It was as always it was really interesting to see how we took people from very different situations uh you know different areas of of ownership of where they were in their organization younger people older people technologists not so technologists and there was a lot of themes that that kept coming back um my favorite foundation that I use all the time is why is like know your why understand why it is that you're doing this which is very closely like right in line with know your customer. Who is your ideal customer? I think that is like that's gold to you. If you understand your why and can talk about that in a sentence or two, your elevator pitch and then you can understand and you know your avatar to the point that you can be like I can draw a picture of what this person looks like even if they don't exist but as far as I'm concerned in my head they do. and then be able to share that with your team. I think those are a couple great cornerstone ideas that came out of this season, a lot of our conversations. Thoughts? >> Yeah, to kind of piggyback off that, some of the other themes that I was taking a lot of through all these different conversations is process before tools. You know, Michael uh Tiguchi mentioned this, but we heard this kind of throughout. It's like you need to make sure that you understand your why like you said, but you also need to understand what you're doing. Are you on task? Are you doing what is important or are you going down many rabbit holes? Because if you have bad processes, using AI or automation to automate those bad processes is not going to make you more efficient. It's just going to make you basically you're going to end up with more spaghetti and less single line focus. So if you want to get to your goal, you need to, you know, redefine your why, redefine what it is that you need to do and stay on task and avoid the noise. You know, Mr. Productivity, we were talking to him about um, you know, staying on task, you know, not getting distracted, not just with his conversation, but with many other conversations. It's that same thing. You need to stay focused on your task, but what is your task? You know, you have to clearly define that. And it's not just the why, what it is you're doing, but is why. What am I doing right now? What am I supposed to be getting done? Um, or ask yourself, is what I'm doing the most value use of my time? You know, am I working on something that I should be doing later and working on something that is more high focus, high intensity? Get that done, get it out of the way, and then if I have time, come back to that menial task later. Uh, I asked myself uh after those quite a bit um at least once a day, am I working on what I need to be working on or have I scope creep? Have I task creeped? Am I off on doing something I shouldn't be doing? Um, especially with AI because AI just like Google, you know, you go Google something, it's like uh trying to solve a problem and it's like, okay, here's like a keyword or something. Okay, here's a better way to ask a question. But if you ask the wrong question, you end up down those rabbit holes where you don't need to be. So, you need to start focusing on how to reel that back, get back on task, and stay focused. Yeah, I think that's also a uh something we've we've hit on maybe not specifically but definitely hinted around it is understanding what questions to ask when you're you're sitting there trying to figure out how to do things better and how to it is like defining your processes, but how do you you know how do you question and test the the processes that you have and it is things like well is this really moving the ball towards the goal line for what my business needs to do? Uh this is something I had in a conversation yesterday as well where it was like yes there was a one of the things that I went through in fourth quarter last year was that I was able to get a lot of stuff out of my head and create concrete things. But there were a lot of those things that didn't necessarily need to be created or moved forward. It's like okay cool. I've got it out of my head. I'm going to go set aside cuz that's not really where I need to go. And that was you know it does take you away from it. And it is. It's just like anything else. If you don't watch out, you can end up on a rabbit trail that you really don't need to be on. So, you need to keep yourself focused, which goes back to uh one of my all-time favorites is like use like pomodoro or something like that and make sure that you're like keeping yourself especially I found that this the shorter pomodoro cycles, the 25 minutes, 30 minutes, maybe 40 minutes, um really help me like have that like almost that kicking in my head where I'm like, I need to be focused on this. I will put this thing aside. Especially when you're waiting for AI. This is like it's it has reintroduced something that I got in the past where you would in the past you would go compile your code and it would take you know 5 minutes, 10 minutes, an hour, whatever it is. So while you're waiting for the machine to do its work, you can go do something else. You can write an email, you check email, you can do whatever. It's very easy right now when you're waiting for AI to kick a response back to go like jump on your phone for a second or something like that. And the next thing you know, a few seconds has now become a few minutes and now you're wasting time and you've lost time getting distracted. Those distractions have have picked up and uh taken you off of your course. So uh those are some things to keep looking for and it gets back to like I say it always goes back to the foundations that is your why. Why am I why am I doing this work today? What is it that is my goal? What am I supposed to be doing? What do I want to have done at the end of the day? and periodically do a little, you know, selfch check of like, is this moving me in the direction I needed to or am I wasting time or at least if not wasting time, at least not spending time on the things that need to be my focus for the day. Closing thought. >> Yeah. The final thing I would like to say about building uh better foundations is like you said, what is your why? What is it that you're trying to accomplish? Write down some tasks or some bullet points for what it is that you want your business to be. What's your why? How you want it to grow? And then finally, put together a road map or a plan. And I challenge you to stick to it. You know, I know we're already into 2026, but you know, this is a great way to kick off a new year is to kind of reset your your foundation, reset what it is that you want your business to be or what your side hustle needs to be, and then go for it. Start working it, start building it, and try to keep to that foundation and let your business grow. >> Uh, yeah, that's I think that's a great idea. Um, I actually built a little to-do app that is uh to allow myself to focus on those kinds of things that I'm I sort of keep an audit trail of what have I done? Am I focusing in am I in the business on the business? Is this overhead? What is it? I highly recommend doing something like that if you want to scratch your own itch. Basically, if you want to just you're looking for an excuse to build an app in whatever technology, build something like that cuz to-do apps are super simple. you can, you know, keep it to probably just a couple of tables in a database or maybe even a couple files if you just don't even want to bother with the database. Give it a simple user interface and it gives you a tool that you can use and an excuse to build a tool or an app and uh just something like that. What however it is, I think that's a great way stepping into 26 is to get yourself into the habit of focusing on what you need to focus on. We are going to focus on the next season. Uh and it is literally there's no break. We're coming right back around and we're going to dive right in. Next episode, kicking off season 27. I'm not going to tell you what it is though yet because we might as well not. We're going to give you a little bit of uh cliffhanger as we go from this season into the next one. As always, thank you so much. I appreciate your time and hanging out with us for the yet another season. Uh it is uh it is always just incredibly amazing to me the numbers that we have racked up in in episodes and blog posts and stuff out on YouTube and all those kinds of things. U definitely appreciate all you guys and the times that you have spend with us that you've invested with us over the years now almost a decade of this. And uh feel free as always, we don't ask you enough, I guess, but like share us with your friends. Go out there, tell people about us, like you know, go out and and yell out in the street that like, "Hey, there's developing more people and this this is a great podcast." Even if you think it's like an okay podcast, lie a little bit. Give us some more give us some more people out here to just come and be entertained. That being said, thank you so much. Have a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. And I'm not going to bother with I don't know. We do we need any bonus material to wrap this one? I don't think so. >> No, we don't really do bonus on the uh uh season enders. Um just usually end in Yeah. >> So, we're going to wrap [clears throat] this one up for you guys. Uh thank you also for hanging out on the YouTubes, the YouTubers here for this season at least or maybe at least this episode. And uh if you know, we love feedback. give it to us however you can. Whether it's comments here, whether you want to shoot us an email at info developer, all that kind of stuff. You hear it uh all the time. We try to like, you know, keep beating that drum because we love to hear from you so we can just do a better job for you, the audience. Thank you and we will see you next time. [music]
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You're muted.
>> Nope. There we go. Let's try that.
>> Something popped up behind you. It
looked like someone was behind you there
for a minute.
>> Oh, I don't know what that was.
>> It's a mirror. That's just me on the
mirror. Oh, it's a mirror. Okay, so that
might have been Natalie. [laughter]
>> It could have been Natalie moving
around.
>> All right.
>> It was kind of funny. You had like a
ghost head pop up behind you. So, I
didn't know if you were in a restaurant.
>> There you go.
>> Yeah, that was Natalie. [laughter]
>> There you can see her face.
>> Zoom like breaks it just enough we see a
little bitty face right by my arm.
[laughter]
So if I do this Yeah.
There your face is like [laughter] Can
you see it?
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. I just have to do that. There we
go. [laughter]
>> Ah, fun with mirrors.
>> All right. Good times.
All right. Um.
>> All right. So, we're going to complete
season 25,
>> 26 or hang on.
I believe it's completing and what are
we starting? We're starting 26 and we're
ending 25, right?
>> No, we're ending 26 and starting 27.
>> Oh my gosh.
Wow. That's a lot of seasons. There's
podcasts that don't make that many
episodes, much less seasons. [laughter]
And we've had seasons that have like a
hundred episodes.
>> Yeah. Like you talked to that lady.
[laughter]
>> Oh, yeah. She was immediately amazed.
>> Yes.
>> She was all sorts of like [snorts]
>> Yeah. She's like, "And you're not making
money?" I'm like, "Yeah, we're not
making money. We're just doing it
because we're freaking awesome."
>> Hey,
tomato tomato. [laughter]
>> I mean, initially we started this off
just wanting to help people, not
necessarily about making money. And then
we tried to monetize it and then we just
haven't.
>> Honestly, I get frustrated that we
haven't monetized it. There are a lot of
f podcasts that have put not nowhere
near what we've put out there and are
making like that's all they're doing.
[clears throat] Like I should be able to
retire this this is just we're investing
and we're going to be able to retire
into being podcasters
>> now. We just got to figure out how to do
it. All right. Um I'm taking notes here
real quick. All right. So we're ending
Hey, we're
screen saver.
But the There we go. We're ending
building better foundations,
>> right?
>> All right.
>> And we're starting incremental
>> uh we're starting uh focus uh forward
motion getting started on your goals.
Momentum
focus.
[snorts]
>> Okay.
Yeah, I was working on something um
because,
you know, I was in interview mode and
just trying to re get ready for the next
gig or whatever. Uh after the layoffs,
well, [clears throat]
some of my team members are junior
mid-level people and they're like,
"Well, where do we begin? You know, what
do we do?" One of the guys, I guess this
was his first job. So that explains why
he's so anti- capitalism that
anti-corporation. He just hates
uh corpor corporate America. And it's
like, dude, this is how it works. Yes,
you may hate it, but you know, you want
a paycheck, right? You're you have a kid
coming. You you got to pay for bills. I
mean, you can't be that immature. Uh, so
I've started putting together a Spring
Boot 4
uh kind of mini master series to uh
because Spring Boot 4 just came out in
December
>> and it's got some pretty slick changes
to it which really
I mean not counting AI but it's at least
a 20% if not more improvement in coding
time
>> um and and things. It eliminated a lot
of added a whole bunch of
stuff. So like uh a lot of the
dependencies you had to bring in, you
don't have to now. They're part of the
core. And it looked cool. I was like,
"Hey, uh, I watched the series that the,
uh, lead developer put out from, uh,
Spring and
I'm like, okay, this would actually make
like maybe a good 10 20 short episode
series on just let's build a web
application with Spring Boot from the
beginning with Spring Boot for like
highlight, hey, this is for this is how
like kind of before and after kind of
things." and I've started doing it. Um,
[clears throat]
I've gotten through like maybe two,
three episodes. I didn't like where I
started, so I'm resetting, but I I think
I've got a flow now. So, hopefully
by February, I might start dropping
those out. Um, but then I was thinking
this morning, it's like, well, with AI,
should I I mean, are people really still
going to be learning this? Are they
going to be used? I got into kind of
like a philosophical debate with myself
about that this morning. It's just was
like uh
>> it wouldn't be a bad one. It's actually
>> it's one I I um I did that I converted
I did a I've got somewhere in there. I
don't think I totally finished it out,
but I was basically converting an old um
just a Java I don't even remember what
it was. I think it was just a Java
Spring app. It was like an older one
that started gosh seven or eight years
ago and I was converting it to Spring
Boot and uh and Time Leaf um because I
was using I think JSPs or something. I
can't it was like way back
>> and converted that one. Yeah.
>> And converting it up and it turned out
it was a pretty good um I probably had I
don't know 15 20 episodes or something
like that of just basic and it was
really fun from a conversion because
it's like okay here's Java, here's what
it looks like in here's how easy it is
to convert it over. Here's what it looks
like in Spring Boot. this is how you run
it and it was going through the whole
like you know basically building a a
Spring Boot application from scratch
except for it was based off another
application. And so I was able to very
quickly say like, "Okay, here's the
database. Let's connect to it. Here's
here's how we connect to the database.
Here's a you know, here's our homepage.
Okay, cool. We're like displaying a page
and stuff like that." And then walked
through the application and was able to
do a lot of different um like areas of
Spring Boot and just Java in general um
using like JDBC template or whatever I
use to connect to the database, you
know, things like that. So it was a cool
little tutorial. So something like
that's not a bad thing to throw out
there and do in good, you know, it was
not too hard to do it in like 15 15
minute chunks, something like that.
>> Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Um,
some of the initial ones that that's
where I got kind of hung up. It's like I
did three and I they were taking too
long or I felt they were too long and I
didn't do them cleanly enough to where I
could just cut it. Like I I tried to cut
it and it just wasn't clean. So, now I'm
going to um I've kind of got like a
little post-it note thing that's like,
"Okay, here's what I want to do for the
first part. Stop. Here's what I want to
do for the second part. Stop." Um, still
do it in one recording, but it's telling
me, "Hey, take a pause here so that you
can cut it because I just didn't have a
clean cut like where I should be able to
cut it." I was talking through it and
it's like crap. I I I kind of like when
you do the intro sometimes you go like
and you jump right into it like okay
where do I cut like sometimes it carries
and you got to cut just right to get
what you want and not the bleed over and
I just couldn't do it right so I was
like screw it I'll just
it it's I enjoy doing kitchen sink apps
like that and it is still spring boot 4
so there's still new stuff with it so
it's like okay I'm comfortable with it
yet. So, I will be by the time I'm done
with it.
>> Yeah, that helped me a lot when I was
going through it. And the same thing, I
did a lot of I did a lot of editing on
that because I would sit there and do a
fif sit down for a 15-minute session and
it' take me an hour and a half because
I'd be tracing through something cuz I
was walking through like debugging and
all kinds of stuff and so I was finding
ways to like cut and slice and turn it
back down to something small. So, it was
a it was it was challenging but it was
when I had some time to do it and it was
where I was like, "Okay, this is
something I wanted to to knock out." But
welcome to everybody. At some point
we've hit record. I'm not exactly sure
when, but somewhere back there we hit
record and we are wrapping up season 26.
It is just like I had to ask him several
times. Really 26 is we really it's
really 26 and we're about to start 27.
So uh we're going to jump into the
podcast and uh we'll just do like a
little bit of an overview or like
thoughts on season 26 and some of the
things we've got out of this on uh
building better foundations.
And so we are going to just right into
it. Well, hello and welcome back. We are
wrapping up season 26, building better
foundations. We are the building better
developers podcast, the developure
podcast. I am Rob Broadhead, one of the
founders of developing. We're also the
founder of RB Consulting where we help
you leverage technology to do techni to
do business better to help your pro your
problems just go away. Get that kitchen
sink app of technology and get it
cleaned up so it's nice and sparkly for
uh you and your year ahead as it may be.
Good thing, bad thing. Uh good thing is
I am sitting in Portugal. I am like now
a officially a digital nomad after a
long and torturous journey that you
could see more about it on
roamingwithrablely.com.
Um we have sort of thrown some of our
stories together. It is in some ways it
is way better than I thought it was
going to be, but getting here was way
harder than I thought it was going to
be. Uh so the good thing is I'm here. Uh
the bad thing is
it's like it is a little bit of a
challenge sometimes to do
[clears throat]
these kinds of uh this like my studio is
now not what my studio was. I spent
years perfecting and honing the studio
for my podcast and now I have to sort of
wing it a little bit and figure it out
each uh each time I do it. So things
like where I had very set, you know,
cameras and mics and stuff like that. No
longer I have to like do it on the fly,
which may make things a little more
interesting as we go into 26, but the uh
the cornerstone of the podcast is still
there and Michael will introduce himself
now.
>> Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malash.
I'm one of the co-founders of Building
Better Developers, also known as
Developer. I'm also the founder of
Envision QA where we build and test
reliable custom systems so you can focus
on your growth of your business. Uh good
thing bad thing uh not really any bad
this week. We're into a new year. Things
last year was the bad thing I guess. Uh
just getting to the end of the year.
There was a lot going on, a lot of uh
pivots, a lot of things going on. But
this year off to a good start. Uh
starting to build some new courses and
building the business.
And so let's talk about season 26. It
was building better foundations. We did
almost everything was an interview. Uh
we had a lot. Why is my camera There go.
I hate it when the camera decides to be
smart and adjust stuff to you. Those of
you guys that are listening have no idea
what I'm talking about. Those of guys
that are walk watching, sorry. That was
the camera deciding to auto adjust some
stuff. Uh but so we had almost the
entire season was was interviews. We did
have a couple of uh of just us talking.
Of course, it was split by the holiday
episodes, but I think we'll just dive
right into
the concept, the building better
foundations piece. Uh I want to go back
and re like revisit that a little bit.
And really what it is, what our goal was
when we got into this was to focus on
the things that matter and they always
matter and making sure that we continue
to keep that focus on them. maybe not I
guess 100% but not let them drift away
or not let them just sort of fall into
the background. And those are things
that we talk about all the time that we
get frustrated as developers that people
don't do it. people being usually our
boss or the customers or whoever it is,
the they that we like to complain about
where we, you know, it's maybe we're not
getting the testing in or the comments
in or the time to design stuff that we
want to or it's not as pretty as we
would like it to be or whatever it is.
Um, all these things come back to some
foundational stuff and it is things like
when you're writing code, you need to
design first. You need to think about
what you're doing. You need to comment
it. you need to actually commit it to a
repository with useful comments, not I
wrote some more code on this. Um those
kinds of things, those foundational
things. And then with a business, the
foundational things of like you do have
to always work on the business and not
just in the business. If you're just if
you can write bill every hour, then
bully for you, but at some point your
business is not going to grow. You've
got to find a way to actually be doing
the we'll call it, you know, the
non-billable work for your business for
it to grow. You are investing in your
future at that point. And I think we
have had a we've had a broad range of
discussions through this uh this season
and touched in a lot of those areas. And
I guess I'll put you on the hot seat
first and say like what is what's maybe
one or two things that really has stuck
out to you in uh the season that we've
just gone through.
So, a lot of the things like building
foundations, um, like you touched on,
you know, you have to work in the
business, work on your business to grow
the business because if you're always
working in your business, you're not out
there growing the business. You're not
finding new customers. So, at some
point, your funnel dries up and you're
just you have no choice but to go find
work. But, at that point, you could be
in a situation where you have no money
coming in. So, now what do you do? you
kind of you can't pay the bills, things
are a little more stressful than they
needed to be. We actually had some very
good interviews and conversations around
branding and marketing and the sales and
funnels, which I thought was very
interesting cuz we've talked about that
and I know personally I'm not the
greatest at going out and doing those
sales in the funnels. You know, talking
to people, looking for customers is one
thing, but to kind of do the whole
social media digital marketing thing, I
don't have time for that. So, I've had
to kind of offshore that a little bit
and hire people to help me do that. But,
you can't forget about doing that
because if you don't do that, you kind
of lose that digital footprint. People
don't see you. You know, you're that uh
solo person standing in a crowded room
shouting at the top of your lungs. No
one's hearing you because you aren't you
don't stand out. So, those were some of
the things that keep coming back to my
mind. It's like, yes, I got to keep
working on that. I got to remember that.
I got to focus on that. uh and then some
of the other things that were uh that
came out of it uh not necessarily
foundational but some of the
conversations we had about where AI was
changing things and
as you continue to grow your business
and working on the foundations
we you do need to start considering AI
AI as a tool not necessarily replacement
but as a way to start improving and
growing your business and looking for
inefficiencies so that you can perform
better, so you can get rid of the stupid
tasks that take you too long. Find a way
to automate it. If you can't think about
or figure out how to automate, throw it
in AI, ask, "Hey, how can I streamline
this? How can I make it better?" And
those were some of the things that came
out of some of the discussions that was
like, "Oh, hey, that's an idea." Went
and tried it and it's like, "Oh, hey,
already I've improved like even if you
improve 1% or automate a few things, you
got time back. So now you can work on
the business or you can bu have more
billable hours. What about you?
>> Yeah, I think that's it's funny. I was
just in a a conversation yesterday with
a a group
um [sighs and gasps] think of it like a
mastermind group kind of thing and we
were talking about like how do you it
was really focused on starting in the
next year and what is it that you're
what is it you're spending a lot of your
time on and where do you where can you
find efficiencies in your schedule and
then it ended up sort of pointing to so
what can you do with AI and the funny
thing is by the time I got to the what
can you do with AI I'd actually already
done that because I started looking uh I
think this is one of the best things
I've done for my business and this came
out of a lot of the conversations we had
here and some of the conversations I had
in on other podcast because AI is
everywhere. People are talking about it
all the time is there's so many things
that you can do that are very redundant
that are very just time consuming and
very easy to automate. We talked about
this a couple seasons ago when we talked
about just having like we did the
challenges. One of them was every week
automate something. And I think now you
could take that same challenge and every
week pick something and automate it. And
if you don't know how to talk to AI
about it, have a run it through AI and
see what you can do because between
sometimes just between some scripts or
something like that or just throwing it
in AI and allowing it to do most of the
work or building an agent or building an
app or something like that. I've built
tons of apps now to just automate in
scripts and all these things to just
automate stuff all over the place. Every
time I do something now, I'm getting
more and more in that focus of like how
do I automate it? When I talk to any
business owner, I'm looking at what they
do. What are their processes? How can we
automate it? How can we simplify it? And
it's just it's always been part of my
makeup and part of my motives operandi
as it would be. But also now with AI,
it's like the time consumption of it
becomes like minimal. Like virtual
assistants, I think, are going to just
disappear. I think I've said that before
because AI is now a perfectly good,
perfectly serviceable virtual assistant.
the stuff that I always was hesitant to
do by spending the money and training up
a VA. Now I don't have to worry about it
because I've been able to train an AI to
do that for me. And if I don't like that
AI, I can fire it and I can go check
another AI engine and go run it through
that and see how it does. And I've and
for what I need, it has kicked butt
across the board. And I think that's the
foundations that we uh where we got into
that on a couple of situations is the
the foundations of things like marketing
and branding and being able to do um the
testing of that is now so much easier
because you can spin up AB comparisons
of your your pages and your funnels and
images even and things like that so
quickly that it's almost like it's it's
almost like a a no-brainer to just like
go do it, run it for a a while or run it
side by side for a while and see which
one works better and then pick it and
move on. And I think that's one of the
foundational things that we're we're
seeing was a change that coincided
during the season is that uh there's a
lot of there's a lot of things where AI
is starting to drop some of those
barriers. And I think for you guys in
the audience, that's something to think
about. It's like
the years it took to learn, to develop,
and to do things. Uh there's a lot of
value in that, but you're going to now
have to be able to know how to
differentiate that from somebody that
can say, "Well, I just built an app
yesterday because I just vibecoded my
way into this thing." And you're going
to have to be able to understand what
does that mean? What is the difference
between somebody actually designing and
thinking through and building real
software versus somebody that told an
agent to go out and just build it and it
said, "Here, here's a bunch of code. Go
run it." And it may look good, but
there's going to be issues. And you've
got to be able to identify those and be
able to say no that's that is not ready
for prime time and think people are
seeing it but um I digress a little bit
from the foundational side of this. Um I
do want to go back swing back into this
season. It was as always it was really
interesting to see how we took people
from very different situations uh you
know different areas of of ownership of
where they were in their organization
younger people older people
technologists not so technologists
and there was a lot of themes that that
kept coming back um my favorite
foundation that I use all the time is
why is like know your why understand why
it is that you're doing this which is
very closely like right in line with
know your customer. Who is your ideal
customer? I think that is like that's
gold to you. If you understand your why
and can talk about that in a sentence or
two, your elevator pitch and then you
can understand and you know your avatar
to the point that you can be like I can
draw a picture of what this person looks
like even if they don't exist but as far
as I'm concerned in my head they do. and
then be able to share that with your
team. I think those are a couple great
cornerstone ideas that came out of this
season, a lot of our conversations.
Thoughts?
>> Yeah, to kind of piggyback off that,
some of the other themes that I was
taking a lot of through all these
different conversations is process
before tools. You know, Michael uh
Tiguchi mentioned this, but we heard
this kind of throughout. It's like you
need to make sure that you understand
your why like you said, but you also
need to understand what you're doing.
Are you on task? Are you doing what is
important or are you going down many
rabbit holes? Because if you have bad
processes, using AI or automation to
automate those bad processes is not
going to make you more efficient. It's
just going to make you basically you're
going to end up with more spaghetti and
less single line focus. So if you want
to get to your goal, you need to, you
know,
redefine your why, redefine what it is
that you need to do and stay on task and
avoid the noise. You know, Mr.
Productivity, we were talking to him
about um, you know, staying on task, you
know, not getting distracted,
not just with his conversation, but with
many other conversations. It's that same
thing. You need to stay focused on your
task, but what is your task? You know,
you have to clearly define that. And
it's not just the why, what it is you're
doing, but is why. What am I doing right
now? What am I supposed to be getting
done? Um, or ask yourself, is what I'm
doing the most value use of my time? You
know, am I working on something that
I should be doing later and working on
something that is more high focus, high
intensity? Get that done, get it out of
the way, and then if I have time, come
back to that menial task later. Uh, I
asked myself uh after those quite a bit
um at least once a day, am I working on
what I need to be working on or have I
scope creep? Have I task creeped? Am I
off on doing something I shouldn't be
doing? Um, especially with AI because AI
just like Google, you know, you go
Google something, it's like uh trying to
solve a problem and it's like, okay,
here's like a keyword or something.
Okay, here's a better way to ask a
question. But if you ask the wrong
question, you end up down those rabbit
holes where you don't need to be. So,
you need to start focusing on how to
reel that back, get back on task, and
stay focused.
Yeah, I think that's also a uh something
we've we've hit on maybe not
specifically but definitely hinted
around it is understanding
what questions to ask when you're you're
sitting there trying to figure out how
to do things better and how to it is
like defining your processes, but how do
you you know how do you question and
test the the processes that you have and
it is things like well is this really
moving the ball towards the goal line
for what my business needs to do? Uh
this is something I had in a
conversation yesterday as well where it
was like yes there was a one of the
things that I went through in fourth
quarter last year was that I was able to
get a lot of stuff out of my head and
create concrete things. But there were a
lot of those things that didn't
necessarily need to be created or moved
forward. It's like okay cool. I've got
it out of my head. I'm going to go set
aside cuz that's not really where I need
to go. And that was you know it does
take you away from it. And it is. It's
just like anything else. If you don't
watch out, you can end up on a rabbit
trail that you really don't need to be
on. So, you need to keep yourself
focused, which goes back to uh one of my
all-time favorites is like use like
pomodoro or something like that and make
sure that you're like keeping yourself
especially I found that this the shorter
pomodoro cycles, the 25 minutes, 30
minutes, maybe 40 minutes, um really
help me like have that like almost that
kicking in my head where I'm like, I
need to be focused on this. I will put
this thing aside. Especially when you're
waiting for AI. This is like it's it has
reintroduced something that I got in the
past where you would in the past you
would go compile your code and it would
take you know 5 minutes, 10 minutes, an
hour, whatever it is. So while you're
waiting for the machine to do its work,
you can go do something else. You can
write an email, you check email, you can
do whatever. It's very easy right now
when you're waiting for AI to kick a
response back to go like jump on your
phone for a second or something like
that. And the next thing you know, a few
seconds has now become a few minutes and
now you're wasting time and you've lost
time getting distracted. Those
distractions have have picked up and uh
taken you off of your course. So uh
those are some things to keep looking
for and it gets back to like I say it
always goes back to the foundations that
is your why. Why am I why am I doing
this work today? What is it that is my
goal? What am I supposed to be doing?
What do I want to have done at the end
of the day? and periodically do a
little, you know, selfch check of like,
is this moving me in the direction I
needed to or am I wasting time or at
least if not wasting time, at least not
spending time on the things that need to
be my focus for the day. Closing
thought.
>> Yeah. The final thing I would like to
say about building uh better foundations
is like you said, what is your why? What
is it that you're trying to accomplish?
Write down some tasks or some bullet
points for what it is that you want your
business to be. What's your why? How you
want it to grow? And then finally, put
together a road map or a plan. And I
challenge you to stick to it. You know,
I know we're already into 2026, but you
know, this is a great way to kick off a
new year is to kind of reset your your
foundation, reset what it is that you
want your business to be or what your
side hustle needs to be, and then go for
it. Start working it, start building it,
and try to keep to that foundation and
let your business grow.
>> Uh, yeah, that's I think that's a great
idea. Um, I actually built a little
to-do app that is uh to allow myself to
focus on those kinds of things that I'm
I sort of keep an audit trail of what
have I done? Am I focusing in am I in
the business on the business? Is this
overhead? What is it? I highly recommend
doing something like that if you want to
scratch your own itch. Basically, if you
want to just you're looking for an
excuse to build an app in whatever
technology, build something like that
cuz to-do apps are super simple. you
can, you know, keep it to probably just
a couple of tables in a database or
maybe even a couple files if you just
don't even want to bother with the
database. Give it a simple user
interface and it gives you a tool that
you can use and an excuse to build a
tool or an app and uh just something
like that. What however it is, I think
that's a great way stepping into 26 is
to get yourself into the habit of
focusing on what you need to focus on.
We are going to focus on the next
season. Uh and it is literally there's
no break. We're coming right back around
and we're going to dive right in. Next
episode, kicking off season 27. I'm not
going to tell you what it is though yet
because we might as well not. We're
going to give you a little bit of uh
cliffhanger as we go from this season
into the next one. As always, thank you
so much. I appreciate your time and
hanging out with us for the yet another
season. Uh it is uh it is always just
incredibly amazing to me the numbers
that we have racked up in in episodes
and blog posts and stuff out on YouTube
and all those kinds of things. U
definitely appreciate all you guys and
the times that you have spend with us
that you've invested with us over the
years now almost a decade of this. And
uh feel free as always, we don't ask you
enough, I guess, but like share us with
your friends. Go out there, tell people
about us, like you know, go out and and
yell out in the street that like, "Hey,
there's developing more people and this
this is a great podcast." Even if you
think it's like an okay podcast, lie a
little bit. Give us some more give us
some more people out here to just come
and be entertained. That being said,
thank you so much. Have a great day, a
great week, and we will talk to you next
time.
And I'm not going to bother with I don't
know. We do we need any bonus material
to wrap this one? I don't think so.
>> No, we don't really do bonus on the uh
uh season enders. Um just usually end in
Yeah.
>> So, we're going to wrap [clears throat]
this one up for you guys. Uh thank you
also for hanging out on the YouTubes,
the YouTubers here for this season at
least or maybe at least this episode.
And uh if you know, we love feedback.
give it to us however you can. Whether
it's comments here, whether you want to
shoot us an email at info developer, all
that kind of stuff. You hear it uh all
the time. We try to like, you know, keep
beating that drum because we love to
hear from you so we can just do a better
job for you, the audience. Thank you and
we will see you next time.
[music]