Transcript
Speaker: Hey, I'm Drew and you're listening to the Citizen Coder Podcast.
Speaker: In this episode, I talk to John Valdivia, a musician and programmer from Spain.
Speaker: In part one of this series, we talk about learning to code, building projects, wearing blinders, staying focused, and so much more.
Speaker: Let's dive in.
Speaker: John, great to have you on the podcast.
Speaker: How are you doing today?
Speaker: Talk to me.
Speaker: I'm doing fine.
Speaker: I just woke up from a bit of an after lunch nap here in Spain.
Speaker: And I don't know what I'm doing in your podcast.
Speaker: Please tell me, what am I doing here?
Speaker: You are here to entertain.
Speaker: Oh, brilliant.
Speaker: Brilliant.
Speaker: Where should we start?
Speaker: I've heard you're good at that.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Who did you hear that from?
Speaker: Like now you set up a standard, like an expectation.
Speaker: I don't know if I'm entertaining at all.
Speaker: There's always expectations.
Speaker: There's always expectations.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: Conscious or unconscious, there's always something there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Actually, tell me a little bit about how you got started programming and that sort of thing.
Speaker: Because I know, I think you told me you had done a programming class like 50 years ago or
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: 75 years ago.
Speaker: I actually invented programming.
Speaker: So... You were there at the start.
Speaker: I was there at the start, you know.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: The longish story is that I am that type of person that could never decide what to do with his life.
Speaker: I know there's a breed of us that for whatever reason, we cannot, you as well.
Speaker: So for whatever reason, maybe lack of focus or maybe too many curiosities, for whatever reason,
Speaker: I couldn't decide what to do.
Speaker: But one thing that I had done during my childhood, there was always a computer at home.
Speaker: I was always with a computer.
Speaker: I was quite good with a computer.
Speaker: And I had, it was kind of almost a given that my life was going to go in that direction, that I was going to study computer science.
Speaker: Because that's what I did.
Speaker: I read and I was all day, you know,
Speaker: breaking down that computer you know ms does and the whole lot and then learning how to fix it there was no internet you had to just go on the manual and experiment so i i developed a good fluency with the technology but what happened when i hit puberty is that all of my interests changed um i got very interested in music um
Speaker: And that started a whole another, it opened up a new path for me.
Speaker: But when I left high school, I didn't know what to do.
Speaker: So I tried one year of trying to become a music teacher, but I realized that I liked music, but I didn't like teaching.
Speaker: So I dropped out.
Speaker: And there was this professional course, this kind of diploma two year course in coding, in programming.
Speaker: So I had to do something, so I kind of signed up.
Speaker: And not because I really wanted a job in programming, just because I had to do something.
Speaker: There was the thing, you know, I need to do something.
Speaker: So I kind of like, I flew through the course.
Speaker: It became very easy for me, I guess, because I had this inbuilt fluency with computers.
Speaker: And then when the course ended, I got offered a job and actually turned it down because I had no interest in it.
Speaker: But I did have that foundation.
Speaker: And then fast forward 20 years, more or less, give or take.
Speaker: Last summer, I met this guy called Angel.
Speaker: He owns...
Speaker: a company, a software development company that basically develops everything with Elixir.
Speaker: And I hadn't heard of Elixir at all.
Speaker: And I found myself in a post-COVID sort of place in which...
Speaker: what I was doing before wasn't really working and I found myself out of a job and looking for new opportunities, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: And then I met this guy and he told me about Elixir and he told me about Doggyar Academy and about Brooklyn.
Speaker: And I thought, well, let me try and give it a go.
Speaker: Let's give it a go.
Speaker: And that's how I met you and how I met Brooklyn and how I went through the Doggyar Academy curriculum and
Speaker: And yeah, there is this history.
Speaker: So have you done anything with Elixir since?
Speaker: Well, we finished the Docker Academy beta and then you went to... Yeah, I went and did the first code.
Speaker: I did it again.
Speaker: And I spent three months of coding in and out and taking mentorship from other people in the academy.
Speaker: And I joined a couple of open source projects and I was kind of, you know, trying to get an honest assessment
Speaker: with myself like do i like this or am i doing this just because i need a job and i'm trying things out and and it has been a bit of a tough pill to swallow to realize that that i've given it my all i've met amazing people and teachers and mentors but
Speaker: The John that existed 20 years ago that turned down a coding job and didn't pursue that line of work is pretty much still active.
Speaker: I am fluent with the technology, but it doesn't spark, like the development line of work doesn't spark a genuine interest.
Speaker: And if anything,
Speaker: Coding has become way more intensive now than 20 years ago.
Speaker: Like I remember when I studied, you know, the teachers that taught me, they were not very much up to date, but they didn't need to because most of the basics of coding were fairly static.
Speaker: Like you had, yeah, you had object oriented programming or you had COBOL, which I studied, or you had your SQL for databases.
Speaker: Yeah, there may be an update here and there, but for the most part, you got the book and you learn how to develop in something and you make an update a year and that's it.
Speaker: But now, if you are not following 32 Twitter accounts and watching 20 webinars a week, you're outdated in five hours.
Speaker: I'm just exaggerating a bit, but that's how it is.
Speaker: That's definitely the feeling, yeah.
Speaker: So you have to love it.
Speaker: I mean, that's my point.
Speaker: The point I'm building towards is like, it is not just a craft that you can just do for money.
Speaker: You have to be in it.
Speaker: You have to want to be in it.
Speaker: You need to be genuinely fascinated by the craft just to keep up with what's going on.
Speaker: And I think that's something that if you don't have it, it's very complicated to get a real progression in this craft.
Speaker: I'm going to confess something here.
Speaker: Go for it.
Speaker: I am not that fascinated with all the new shit.
Speaker: You know, like AI doesn't fascinate me.
Speaker: You know, Internet of Things doesn't fascinate me.
Speaker: Not that there aren't interesting facets of those things.
Speaker: And, you know, I just, you, you're fascinated by game development and games.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: But I mean, that's, you know, that's kind of just been there since, uh, I started playing games.
Speaker: Um, I'm actually not doing any game development at the moment.
Speaker: Um, not that I, I won't at some point, but, uh,
Speaker: But I'm just not really – I'm not drawn in by the – by all of these little tidbits of things happening in tech.
Speaker: Like there's so much.
Speaker: I mean you'd get lost in tech if you –
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Really wanted to.
Speaker: And it's a great place for ADD people because there's so much shit around you.
Speaker: I say great.
Speaker: And by great, I mean bad.
Speaker: It's strange.
Speaker: You know, when we were going through the academy, I am by and large a person that sleeps very well.
Speaker: It's very easy for me to fall asleep.
Speaker: While we were going through the whole academy, it has been the first time in my life that I had to resort to sleeping pills.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: the amount of intensity and info.
Speaker: And as you mentioned, you know, like it's great for ADD or maybe not.
Speaker: Like one of the things that we discussed with Brooklyn is that you develop a new skill, which is learning what to ignore and mastering yourself.
Speaker: And like that over there,
Speaker: It's fascinating, but I am not going to go down there because there's only so much time that you have and then you have to learn to ignore like 90% or 80% to focus on the 20, whatever, whatever.
Speaker: Yeah, the 20 that is going to allow you to learn whatever you need to learn.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And just being able to decide that if you're a new developer, like I remember with one of our mentors, Q, and with Brooke as well, he said, okay, where do you want to go with development?
Speaker: He's like, I have no idea.
Speaker: He's like, the territory is massive.
Speaker: Is it AI?
Speaker: Is it distributed development?
Speaker: Just to decide what you like or what you're interested in.
Speaker: The territory is huge.
Speaker: It's huge.
Speaker: And it's filled with brilliant people and technologies.
Speaker: It's just amazing.
Speaker: It's tough.
Speaker: It's definitely tough to pick.
Speaker: If you have to pick something, it's tough to decide what you want to do.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I think I may have mentioned to you that I recently started a business.
Speaker: I'll call it a startup.
Speaker: I don't know what else to call it.
Speaker: Sometimes I call it a group.
Speaker: Sometimes I call it a startup.
Speaker: Oh, you told me that you're developing an app.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You didn't mention the word business.
Speaker: I'm sorry, it's ballooned.
Speaker: It's ballooned.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It's ballooned.
Speaker: So, you know, I exited the first cohort and I already knew that I wanted to build stuff and I didn't want to just like focus on open source.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or that's not that that's not a great way to learn and do stuff.
Speaker: And it is, and I'm not knocking it, but it's not.
Speaker: my path.
Speaker: It's not what I want to do.
Speaker: I got a family and I'm trying to support my family.
Speaker: I'm not trying to like, you know, work on things that aren't really furthering that in a very active manner.
Speaker: So I, you know, I, I approached people in my cohort and I said, Hey, you know, um, we should work on a project, you know, maybe it could be a small SAS project that we could actually try to make some,
Speaker: some money on and, um, you know, I'm like, let's throw in some ideas.
Speaker: Here's mine.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, the only person from my cohort that was, that seemed remotely interested was, uh, was John and, but you know, he's got his own big SAS project happening.
Speaker: So, um, you know, we've, we've kind of helped each other out a little bit.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And so when I didn't get much response there, I went to the beta.
Speaker: I'm two of the most amazing people.
Speaker: Well, you know, and I just, you know, I just had worked with Jeff and Ithia both.
Speaker: And, you know, I really wanted to throw it out to other people too.
Speaker: But, you know, everybody seemed kind of like in their own little thing.
Speaker: um you know but i mentioned it um in passing you know um i was on a voice chat with um ithia and some other people and um and she just was like oh i want to do that wow like okay and jeff was pretty much the same way like
Speaker: Um, he already kind of was like, yeah, let's, you know, and Jeff's very, uh, very pragmatic, very, very business minded, um, very much, uh, um,
Speaker: He's kind of a business guy.
Speaker: Like he's got a lot of, you know, sense for business.
Speaker: Plus, you know, he's, he does some sort of directing on his main job.
Speaker: Jeff, I apologize if I'm completely butchering what you do.
Speaker: Cause I don't, I don't know for sure what you do.
Speaker: It's kind of a mystery and I like it that way.
Speaker: It's like Jeff's a mystery man on the, on the job.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know he handles teams, but I don't know what teams.
Speaker: I think when I think of the team, Jeff, Ethia and you, I can see how those pieces fit together very, very nicely because Ethia is a genius player.
Speaker: programming and yeah you're not wrong yeah um she's just awesome and humble as well she would go like no i'm not it's like yeah whatever yeah nobody believes you nobody believes you yeah yeah that's true she's absolutely awesome and then you have as you pointed out jeff who
Speaker: has brings a lot of experience like pragmatic yeah has on experience and then you're the man with the vision that can keep you know like i imagine that you can keep like the the ship keep the ship pointing yeah pointing in the general direction of north or south or whichever way brilliant it's a good team i'm happy yeah it's it's fun man it's it's it's been a an absolute blast um
Speaker: I look forward to getting up and working every day.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Not, you know, working, going to my job, but, but yeah, you know, getting up and working on the project, which is coming along fantastically, by the way.
Speaker: We've made a lot of progress.
Speaker: Super.
Speaker: It's super.
Speaker: You know, I don't want to like say, oh yeah, we're going to launch on this day, but you know, I'm kind of hoping in the next, say a couple months, we should be ready to launch MVP.
Speaker: We've, yeah, making, we're learning a bunch too, so.
Speaker: having to learn how to use Git to manage.
Speaker: We're using CI to run tests and things on GitHub.
Speaker: And we're building everything with Elixir and Phoenix.
Speaker: So what I was going to say about when you were talking about having to keep up,
Speaker: So I think every new programmer feels that way.
Speaker: Like you got to keep up.
Speaker: But one thing I've realized in six or seven years of trying to learn how to program is that you're never going to keep up.
Speaker: pick a technology that you want to work with and just focus on that.
Speaker: Don't worry about all the shit that's happening around you.
Speaker: You can't control it.
Speaker: You know, you just, you just pick a lane and stay in that lane, you know, while you learn.
Speaker: And then, um, you know, if you decide to build stuff, you can use that.
Speaker: You don't have to hop to around to 50 different technologies to build your shit.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: you can use just, I mean, you really could just use JavaScript, HTML, and CSS if you really want.
Speaker: Yeah, many people do.
Speaker: Those things have not changed.
Speaker: In fact, I've been following this guy on Twitter.
Speaker: He builds SaaS projects.
Speaker: He makes money doing it.
Speaker: He uses PHP and like vanilla PHP and a backend or a database.
Speaker: And he's made this... I don't know if it's AI driven, but it's some sort of like photo thing.
Speaker: I'll have to... I'll put a link in the show notes for his Twitter handle and project.
Speaker: But he's making like...
Speaker: a buttload of money per month.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just off, just off an app that he's gotten a lot of flack for, for his code, but users don't give a shit about what's behind, you know, if, if it works and it does what, what they want, they don't care.
Speaker: Yeah, totally, totally.
Speaker: And that's, it was fun in one of the open source projects that I contributed a bit.
Speaker: You know, we were in the Discord server and we're talking about, you know, coding or whatever.
Speaker: And I don't know how we came to this, but I mentioned that I know Elixir, but sorry, guys, I know nothing of JavaScript, nothing of Python, nothing of, you know.
Speaker: Elixir is awesome.
Speaker: And then they told me, well, that's the weirdest stack ever.
Speaker: It was like, you know Elixir, but you don't know Python and JavaScript.
Speaker: That's a weird way to get into coding.
Speaker: And I guess it is.
Speaker: That's...
Speaker: I think my point was that when I studied development back in the day, it felt like the entry point was clearer.
Speaker: It's like, okay, you learn A, B, C, now you're a developer.
Speaker: And then obviously once you're into something, then it's kind of easier to branch it out.
Speaker: Like one of my first jobs when I went to work in England,
Speaker: I landed a tech support gig with a company that doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker: So it was called Sybase and they developed what ended up being SQL server for Microsoft, like Microsoft bought the database from Sybase, but they also had something called Power Builder, which was kind of the Sybase version of Visual Basic.
Speaker: So it took me like, I don't know, a day to get quite competent with Power Builder because I already knew Visual Basics.
Speaker: So things were very transferable.
Speaker: Like once you had your basics, things were very transferable.
Speaker: And I guess that people, that would be the, I imagine that if you know Python these days, it's kind of that.
Speaker: If you know JavaScript and Python and you have your basics, I've seen...
Speaker: people kind of being able to move through the development landscape with relative ease if they have like two or three competencies.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And I mean, Elixir is kind of a, it's kind of an oddball.
Speaker: I mean, it's out on the fringe at the moment, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, it's got a really good framework that you can work with.
Speaker: And it's really new.
Speaker: So there's a lot of noise going on, you know, with everybody getting into AI or trying to make it ready for this or trying to make it ready for that.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: I get it.
Speaker: It's like the Wild West.
Speaker: I was going to say, yeah, it's the Wild West.
Speaker: People rushing to the West for gold.
Speaker: That's kind of where Elixir's at, like.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's very much people are just, you know, trying to make it work with everything, which is okay.
Speaker: That's, I think that's kind of normal for most programming languages is you get people excited about stuff and then they just want to, they just want to use it in everything, you know, totally get it.
Speaker: Like, I don't know.
Speaker: It's your tool.
Speaker: It's your tool of choice.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You want to, you want to push it to the,
Speaker: It's like, yeah, when I do my sound editing, I use one or two pieces of software and I use them for everything.
Speaker: And maybe there will be better pieces of software for whatever task I'm doing at the moment.
Speaker: I have my toolbox.
Speaker: I'll use my toolbox for whatever I need to do because I love the tools and I invested in them.
Speaker: Well, think of, I mean, on that same kind of vein, think of a mechanic, right?
Speaker: So, you know, they go and they invest in tools and, okay, they need a tool that does this thing.
Speaker: So they go buy that and they add that to their toolbox.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's very similar, except that as a new programmer, you don't know which tools to put in the toolbox.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: You're shopping for tools and you've got like a bajillion of them.
Speaker: And you're like, ooh, this tool is pretty.
Speaker: I have no idea what it does, but I want it in my box.
Speaker: But it's shiny, but it's shiny.
Speaker: It's shiny.
Speaker: That was the Discord server in Tokyo Academy.
Speaker: And because I'm in Spain and most of you guys are in America, I would wake up in the morning and open.
Speaker: It would have blown up.
Speaker: Yeah, and I would look at Discord and there would be a gazillion messages that I hadn't read.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: And I would be there with my morning coffee going like, there's no way to keep up.
Speaker: Like there was this chat like, and look at this library and look at this tool and look at this other thing and look at this editor and look at this, it's just like, no, no, no, no.
Speaker: And as you say, it's like, how do you know which ones are tools that you want in your toolbox?
Speaker: Like for my mind, the difficult equation was to know if it was worth
Speaker: the effort to study a particular tool if it was going to be if the payoff was was going to be worth and that got resolved in like a month he was like no stick to the to the curriculum of right document academy yeah everything that you need is there and then stage two would be once you're out of the academy then you can you can look into the shiny object syndrome and look at other libraries and things like that yeah
Speaker: Yeah, and a lot of it depends, too, on what companies are using.
Speaker: So, for instance, right now, on our first Fledgling SAS project, we're using Elixir, Phoenix, Tailwind, and...
Speaker: You know, CSS, HTML, that's it.
Speaker: Nothing else.
Speaker: No bells and whistles.
Speaker: We haven't dived into Alpine JS yet, although I think that's coming because we got some front-end-y stuff to do.
Speaker: But, you know, that should handle most of our JavaScript needs, and we can avoid...
Speaker: most of the garbage, I mean, stuff that... Just kidding, JavaScript friends.
Speaker: We love you all.
Speaker: But yeah, that's it.
Speaker: And so going forward, unless we absolutely need a tool, there's no point in putting another tool in your toolbox.
Speaker: I'm not...
Speaker: I personally am not out there going, oh, a new shiny tool.
Speaker: Let me try this.
Speaker: Oh, let me try that.
Speaker: Like if my tools are working, I'm just going to use those tools until they quit working.
Speaker: And then maybe I'll consider buying a new tool.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's just there's too much to focus on.
Speaker: You just can't do it.
Speaker: There's a lot.
Speaker: And once you're in the community,
Speaker: Everybody sends you links.
Speaker: It's like, look at this conference by this guy in this other conference.
Speaker: And it's like, wow, wow.
Speaker: It's like, I have like 10 new videos every day.
Speaker: And, you know, this friend who has this development software company, he enjoys that.
Speaker: Like, he really likes to have like those 200 links to follow up on.
Speaker: And it's no problem to him because he has his own interests and his own priorities are already so well established that for him it's like swimming in the ocean.
Speaker: He likes it.
Speaker: He may go left and go right and look at this and pick that up and join this Discord server and try this with this library.
Speaker: And when I see him operating, it's like, okay, it's great because I see a man that is in his element and he knows what to pick and he enjoys it and he knows it.
Speaker: And it's brilliant.
Speaker: Okay, he's a developer and he's...
Speaker: yeah again a bit of a pioneer because as you mentioned some of the fringes he would be using this library that another three people and a half are using and he's in contact with the developers going like are you going to go this direction i can help you with this and that um and a very special guy really special guy and he loves what he does and
Speaker: And he's developing a few different projects, all of them with Elixir and different libraries.
Speaker: And man, we need people like that to push the boundary.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I think the main thing, the main point I'm getting at is not that it's bad that there's all these tools or that, you know, it's just that there are two ways.
Speaker: Maybe there might be more.
Speaker: But you have, you know, you have people that are super excited about all the new stuff and they just try it and use it and, you know, and that's great.
Speaker: And, you know, whatever works for them.
Speaker: But I also think there is a another path that is probably going.
Speaker: I don't know if it's less taken, but it's definitely one that is calmer.
Speaker: You know, you're not paying attention to all the other tools and all the craziness out there.
Speaker: And you just put your earmuffs on and you just ignore the noise and you just build stuff.
Speaker: And, you know, you might use the same tools for everything or you might add, you know, a tool here and there.
Speaker: As you go, if you know, you're like, okay, I'm trying to accomplish this thing.
Speaker: What do I need?
Speaker: You know, like for instance, we're using Twilio and SendGrid for texting and emails.
Speaker: Not something we've worked with before, but it's something that we're learning to use.
Speaker: You know, so it's, it's kind of like a use case thing.
Speaker: So rather than getting drowned in the,
Speaker: Ocean of of tools and frameworks and crazy stuff going on out there.
Speaker: You know, it's OK to just take the quiet route.
Speaker: Pick three or four things that you need to use to build whatever you're building and then.
Speaker: not pay any more attention for a while, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The noise is always going to be there.
Speaker: You know, you don't have to, you don't have to stay on the cutting edge.
Speaker: I, um, I think that you can, you can get through life building cool shit and not have to, um, pay attention to all the craziness going on.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I guess also it has a lot to do with individual situations.
Speaker: Like if you are employed or if you have a company, like in your case, you have started a business, you have a very specific project.
Speaker: Therefore, your radar and your selection mechanism is quite established.
Speaker: Like if this serves the project, it goes in, I have an interest because it serves the project.
Speaker: That's how most businesses work.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Like if I had gotten a job right after the academy, I may not have felt this overwhelm of possibilities because my seniors would have told me, now we have a month to build this.
Speaker: You need to learn about this and this library and that's it.
Speaker: Selection done.
Speaker: Or if I had a project that I would really like to build, I would go like, okay, I can do it with this and this and it goes into that.
Speaker: So I think...
Speaker: you're completely right.
Speaker: Like having a project or a job does that filtering for you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that, and it's necessary.
Speaker: And I think it doesn't, there's no, there's no ways about it.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think it, it keeps, it keeps,
Speaker: I think it keeps me sane in some ways, you know?
Speaker: Because during the beta and some during cohort, you know, I kept finding myself at... I don't know if the right word is at odds, but I kept finding myself, like, irritated by...
Speaker: I was, I was irritated by all the noise, by all the, you know, all the talk of this and all the talk of that.
Speaker: And then, oh, AI is going to steal all the jobs.
Speaker: That was right around that time when AI just like, well, not AI, it's, you know, text generation, whatever, kind of exploded.
Speaker: And everybody was like, oh, it's going to steal all the jobs.
Speaker: It's going to, you know, and I'm just like, am I not going to be able to find work?
Speaker: You know, like that was, you know, but then it turns out, you know, that it's it's harder now because all these big companies have laid off, you know, half their tech workforce.
Speaker: And now all those people are looking for jobs.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's a very strange time.
Speaker: It's a strange time.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And, you know, I've always felt really comfortable kind of being a self-starter.
Speaker: That's always kind of been my wheelhouse.
Speaker: I've run a couple other small companies, computer repair mostly.
Speaker: And this is different, but it's not that different.
Speaker: I mean, I'm not going out to customers' houses and fixing their machines or going to a call center and fixing a network issue, but I'm still wearing lots of hats.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, as far as like the whole like ADD aspect, if you really want to scratch your ADD itches, start a business.
Speaker: Because you will wear so many fucking hats that you will... Yeah, your itch will always be scratched, I think.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I heard somebody say that if you want to develop spiritually, you need to do three things.
Speaker: You need to get married, have kids, and start a business.
Speaker: You know, because those... And it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: If you're not going to go down the route of becoming a monk or something like that.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Because in the world, I don't think there would be...
Speaker: anything that would stretch you to your very limits as a committed relationship partnership and and uh running a a business so yeah totally yeah you have to wear all the hats and and keep saying and bring things into into you know fruition so
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Speaking of which, so what are you doing now?
Speaker: Are you doing anything?
Speaker: You got shit going on?
Speaker: Well, it's, yeah.
Speaker: Do you like marketing?
Speaker: Do I like marketing?
Speaker: Well, what am I doing?
Speaker: So I'm doing several things.
Speaker: Professionally, I'm still in this sort of 40 days in the desert type of situation, a bit of a limbo.
Speaker: I have a few freelancing things that I'm doing at the moment.
Speaker: You know that I have a little studio, like a sound consultancy edition thing.
Speaker: I help people with their sound projects, audio projects, production.
Speaker: So there's a bit of activity happening there.
Speaker: Not a lot, but that keeps me busy.
Speaker: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: And I love it.
Speaker: You know, I really love when somebody needs to record themselves to be able to assist them, teach them how to record and then post-produce and do all of that.
Speaker: It's very human, that creative process and that working with somebody.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: So there's a bit of that happening now.
Speaker: I'm going to take a bit of a holiday.
Speaker: Like I'm going to physically leave the house and go to the mountains in a couple of weeks.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: That sounds like.
Speaker: That's really cool.
Speaker: It's really cool.
Speaker: Are you camping or what are you doing?
Speaker: I'll be camping.
Speaker: I'll be camping and doing a digital detox, like switching over the mobile phone for a couple of weeks.
Speaker: Oh, digital detox.
Speaker: That's a new term I haven't heard.
Speaker: Did you invent that?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I mean, it kind of makes sense.
Speaker: You know, it's like I did it last year for a good portion of my summer.
Speaker: Like I would tell family and friends, like, do not expect me to reply.
Speaker: I'm just going to switch off the mobile phone.
Speaker: And I was in the mountains.
Speaker: And then these sanity things come back because you're back with the rhythms of nature.
Speaker: You're not living your life through a screen or paying attention at 20 tabs simultaneously and notifications and things.
Speaker: And after a while, it's almost like your body and your brain
Speaker: sync with the rhythms of nature and everything is as it's supposed to be.
Speaker: And, you know, it would be ideal if we could live like that most of our time, like everybody has done for like hundreds of thousands of years up until three minutes ago.
Speaker: But are you going to hunt for your food?
Speaker: No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker: I'll cook, I'll cook, but I'm not going to be hunting.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But, you know, but I'll be in an environment where, you know, somebody has, how do you call it?
Speaker: When they harvest their own lettuces or tomatoes and there's trading down.
Speaker: So everything is very much close to the earth.
Speaker: Oh, cool.
Speaker: Yeah, it brings a layer of sanity and connection with the proper rhythms of nature and the social aspect of it.
Speaker: So if I can do that like two weeks a year, I consider myself very, very lucky.
Speaker: That's something that you cannot pay for.
Speaker: There's no website where you can go and take, let's say, luxurious holidays where everything is basic and raw and the people that you're with are doing things in a very basic way.
Speaker: But I'm lucky enough to know
Speaker: a few communities around Spain where they try to operate like that.
Speaker: So I'm excited.
Speaker: I'm excited about that.
Speaker: And then I may have the prospect of a job in communications and marketing.
Speaker: So I will know that in August.
Speaker: But a man that I know, he's a hip hop producer, like multi-platinum, like really kind of successful business guy and musician.
Speaker: And he just started an online music academy and he needed somebody to help him with communications and social media.
Speaker: And we were talking and...
Speaker: Initially, it seems that we're going to strike up a collaboration together at the other end of summer.
Speaker: It's not yet happening, but it looks like it may be my main gig in a few weeks.
Speaker: And aside from that, I'm doing a few creative projects.
Speaker: Like I'm still working on my EP.
Speaker: I have four songs that I'm producing.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And I have this podcast with Terry Oldfield that we have been working on for like a year and a half, which is coming to an end.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: How did you call it?
Speaker: Like ADD or HDAD?
Speaker: Yeah, ADD.
Speaker: So yeah, I have a few things.
Speaker: I'm spinning a few plates.
Speaker: And that's cool.
Speaker: Spinning plates.
Speaker: Is that like pizza spinning?
Speaker: Spinning plates, yeah.
Speaker: Or is that?
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: Well, if you get bored, I could probably use some help on the marketing side because...
Speaker: I'm not too strong with marketing.
Speaker: I do Twitter and things like that, but I'm not very well versed in marketing.
Speaker: What's your budget for the marketing side of the business?
Speaker: What's the what?
Speaker: My budget?
Speaker: What's a budget?
Speaker: Oh, you just offer me a job for free.
Speaker: I give you a cut of the profits like everybody else.
Speaker: Brilliant, brilliant.
Speaker: And stake in the company.
Speaker: yeah okay man happy happy to happy to talk uh about the marketing side of things when when you're ready uh i mean if i have i have a few people around me um because you know for your listeners i have like a decade of background in digital marketing i i worked for a couple of big advertisement agencies when i was social media manager of big
Speaker: brands like Johnson & Johnson and Nestle and things like that.
Speaker: And I also work for a few startups.
Speaker: So not that I'm a genius at it, but I developed a bit of a craft and like 10 years of experience.
Speaker: And yeah, there's a few people that have approached me to help them with their
Speaker: projects but as i mentioned i i'm in this strange phase in which i'm waiting for this thing with the music academy to land and these other three or four projects that are kind of floating yeah um but balancing place is hard it is it is hard and
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love to have many things, but it's kind of a similar situation with the information overflow with the shiny object syndrome that we were talking about.
Speaker: If you can take all of those different activities and projects and you can organize them properly and know where the north is, it's a very interesting life because you're helping different people in different projects, you're learning plenty.
Speaker: But if for whatever reason that gets unstructured and you cannot give your full mind and heart to whatever line of work you're doing, my experience with it is I get fragmented and then I don't enjoy any of the projects.
Speaker: And that's something I'm still learning, how to balance the variety with the consistency.
Speaker: Because I think there's a sweet spot there where you're able to go deep in projects and give your all and grow and help while you keep two, three, four projects that you're doing properly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's something I'm still...
Speaker: Still learning to master.
Speaker: Still learning the balancing environment.
Speaker: I think things are way different.
Speaker: And that's one of the things that I think about with this endeavor that I'm doing is keeping it
Speaker: not corporate or at the very least like super less corporate.
Speaker: Like, I don't, I don't know if you listened to the last podcast with, with Jeff and if, um, but I started doing this introduction and Jeff is like, he just starts snoring.
Speaker: And then, uh, yeah, it was, it was funny, but you know, he's like, dude, I thought you didn't want a corporate podcast.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was funny.
Speaker: It was a good time.
Speaker: He's a bold bastard, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it was great.
Speaker: But yeah, keeping it very, very loose and not getting into the corporate weeds.
Speaker: You know, we still have to have like, we still have to have processes and things like that so that we have some sort of standard so that like when he's working on something, he knows that,
Speaker: we're going to do it this way and, and vice versa, you know?
Speaker: But, but we're not going like super corporatized.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I think those words are sometimes loaded and misunderstood.
Speaker: Like I've worked in both ends of the spectrum.
Speaker: I've worked in very corporate environments and I work in very sort of loose, hippie, go with the flow environments.
Speaker: And man, there's always something to learn.
Speaker: One of my last regular positions was in a very loose type of environment.
Speaker: It was a very hippie sort of position and you would wear many hats and there was absolutely no structure.
Speaker: It was very much whatever we need today we do.
Speaker: And coming from a corporate environment, it's like the piece that it gives you to know who's responsible for what, what is the project timeline, who's doing what and by when, and what are the protocols of communication, what's the platform.
Speaker: It provides a very healthy framework for many, many, many things.
Speaker: And then, you know, you can...
Speaker: You can be in that environment and go like, no, I don't want corporate and I want things to be loose and free.
Speaker: Well, yeah, then you go and you work in an environment that is loose and free and you don't know where it's up and where it's down and who's doing what and who do you contact for this thing and nobody knows anything.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And it's like it's not good either.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's not good.
Speaker: That's the downside.
Speaker: So you got to kind of walk a line where you have standards and you have some processes that
Speaker: But people are still kind of empowered to make decisions and things like that.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: Well, look, I got to cut this off.
Speaker: I got to take my kid to camp.
Speaker: Do you want to pick this up again and do another session?
Speaker: And that way I can make a longer episode.
Speaker: Because you are the boss.
Speaker: You are the boss.
Speaker: My episodes are never 46 minutes.
Speaker: They're like an hour and a half.
Speaker: And I'd feel bad if I launched...
Speaker: a short podcast and people were like, where's my hour and a half of, of easy list of entertainment.
Speaker: I was promised that I had the chance to entertain and I only had, I was only warming up.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I mean, do you want to pick up later on during the day or we could totally do that.
Speaker: I just gotta, I mean, we could do it today.
Speaker: I need to run my kid to camp.
Speaker: It'll take about 30 minutes or so if you want it.
Speaker: yeah yeah sure no it's brilliant i'm gonna be here uh you know i'm a cool unemployed loser i'm nothing else to do what time is it there man it is uh 10 to 5 p.m 10 to 5 oh i have another i have another four hours yeah you're good okay all right i'm gonna run my kid to camp and then i'll be back in a while and i'll i'll uh i'll ping you brilliant beautiful all right buddy see you see you
Speaker: This has been an episode of the Citizen Coder Podcast.
Speaker: If you'd like to get in touch with my guests, you can find their links in the show notes.
Speaker: If you like what I'm doing and want to sponsor the show, you can reach out to me at info at citizencodercast.com or find me on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Speaker: Thanks for listening.
Speaker: And as always, I'll see you next time.
