Transcript

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If you're really strategic and smart about what you're doing, your strategy should really be around the people that you think could end up becoming like a connection or a referral. You're not trying to collect Pokemon. You're trying to just get to know people.

And those natural finger moments, the bumping each other at the food line, is part of that magic that if you lean into by the end, you have a handful of people that you have a real relationship with. And about a year and a half to two years from now, there's going to be a massive rush for everything. And the people that adopted things much earlier are going to be at a very, very advantageous position compared to a lot of others.

Meeting with a client, I am not selling. I am not selling. I'm trying to figure out what they need, what they want.

And sometimes I'm the right person for it. Sometimes I'm not. I've learned people learn in different ways.

And so if I can make them excited about the subject that we're learning about, or I can make them think more, I know that they're going to take whatever I want away from that lesson a conference is making those one-to-one connections the funny follow-ups the bumping into each other over a period of two to three days the follow-up after that is something real like you've seen this person in a physical space don't over engineer something for the sake of over engineering it because you have something to talk about. What's going on, everyone?

We are back with another one. Y'all, I'm excited for this one. My brother is back in town.

We'll explain all that in a second, what that means. But first, let's get into our intros of intros. My name is Danny Thompson.

I am the director of technology at a company called Dis.Labs and conference organizer for the Commit Your Code conference in Dallas, Texas. And I'm Leon Noel, manager of engineering for a lovely nonprofit called Resilient Coders and wonderful community member at 100 Devs. Now, look, there's a lot of things I could add on my intro, but I always like keeping it short.

But Commit Your Code is coming up if you listen to this. If you haven't bought tickets yet, what are you doing?

But I always like keeping it short. But Commit Your Code is coming up if you're listening to this. It is.

If you haven't bought tickets yet, what are you doing?

Messing up is what they're doing. Y'all need to come out. My brother Leon is going to be there.

We have a lot of guests. Over 100 speakers are coming out. And here's the thing.

One of the strategies that I'm employing this year, I did it a little bit last year. But this year, we have a leadership track that we're doing as well. And I have invited a ton of CTOs, VPs, et cetera, with the goal of trying to, I really want to celebrate people getting jobs out of this thing.

Last year I think we had like four people message me directly saying they got a job because they were there, which is great. That's too small. So we need to up the effort a little bit in getting you in front of some employers.

So I'm telling you right now, if you come to Dallas, 1,000%, there's going to be opportunities there for you to have. Tons of networking. We're actually doing some really different stuff at the conference.

You know, networking and intentional networking is like a big thing that I'm constantly thinking about, right?

And this year around the conference, I'm doing stuff stuff i don't think any conference has done like tech conference wise and it's really really really intentional to get people in more conversations than ever before so i'll tell you a couple of them just to give you an idea number one we got mini golf oh throughout the whole conference yeah it's very different uh it's funny because somebody in the discord made a joke about it right but i couldn't stop thinking about like how could we do this in a like in a non-joking way like let's be serious about this and so i went through countless vendors and conference conversations and calls. And I found portable mini golf courses. And so inside, around the entire conference, there are going to be mini golf holes where people can play.

And apparently, according to the company, on average, 200 people could play per hour, which is crazy. But here we'll have it for two days. So it's like, if you're networking with somebody, do something fun.

Like, hey, let's play around and hit something like that. We also have professional headshot stations that are completely free. We're paying a photographer to be there to make sure people get a legit headshot for sure.

We also have what's called the Morning Connect. And the idea is, and as we've said on the podcast before, when you're in a company or when you're trying to make connections, one of the best strategies you can use is to never have a meal alone. Well, the Morning Connect is going to make sure you don't have that alone.

So we'll have the coffee, we'll have the snacks, we'll have all the good stuff, right?

But you will be randomly assigned somebody every day to have a 10-minute conversation with them. Oh, that's cool to ensure that you are um getting that communication and connection now here's the thing it's opt-in right so like if you're just somebody that's like oh i can't i can't imagine this like there's just no way totally understand no problem we will cut that off. You don't have to do that.

There's two other things. So at registration, you'll be given three cards besides your name badge card, right?

One is your prompt card. You'll be, every single person going will get a prompt. And the idea is it is like some kind of question that you ask everybody at the event.

So it's like, hey, here's your prompt everybody at the event so it's like hey here's your prompt leon you know i know we've never met before uh my prompt card says you know when was the last time you fixed the bug what was the last bug that you fixed you talk about it now you will also have a prompt card so you say well my prompt card says when was the last time you broke production what made that happen now you've got your intros out of the way and now you have like a connection that you've made somebody that you've met and had a conversation with so i'm the bad guy you don't have to have no pressure just like danny gave me this and said i gotta ask this to everybody so here's my thing i took all the pressure off of the intro the cold mess all that and so you're you're in the conversation already and it goes to my philosophy of start your conversations in the middle and start working your way backwards and the other two cards that you get everyone will get two five minute uh i call it the the five minuters meaning you can go up to anybody within reason right obviously but you can go up to go up to anybody like, hey, here's my five-minuter. I'd really like to use it with you to have a five-minute conversation with you. And they, to a certain degree, have to honor that where it's like, okay, we'll have a five-minute conversation.

I'm fine. You got a room for me, bro?

I'm in the same boat. i'm in the same boat i'm in the same boat but i figured it will be a great way for somebody like if they just truly feel like they're intimidated to talk to somebody they could use that and so and you know last year after cyc everybody especially speakers said the same thing i've never had so many conversations so i want to keep that thread going but with this one we have so many employers coming to this one we're advertising this to companies in particular we've already gotten like um quite a few companies saying that they're going to send their entire teams so it's always great to and i'm saying this for like the public it's always great to aspire to like talk to your influences but they're going to be there no matter what if you're really strategic and smart about what you're doing, your strategy should really be around the people that you think could end up becoming like a connection or a referral. If you're wasting it, and I don't want to say wasting because an experience is an experience, but if you really are wasting it, not talking to somebody that could potentially be a pathway in somewhere, you're not being strategic about what you're doing with your time.

And my whole goal and strategy with this is if you walk into cyc or commit your code without having any semblance of a network if you walk away without one it is simply because that's exactly what you want i'm trying to make this the most easiest way a human being could ever make connections in their life and if you do it right like people are going to love you and you're going to walk away with a ton of opportunities that's so cool i'm trying man i'm trying i've really been like racking my brain about all this so um it's still early so some of this may change for all i know but as of right now like i really love where this is and where the opportunities are we have a bunch of events happening every single day after the conference, both days of the conference, mind you. Last year, after the conference ended, we just kind of said bye and went on about our lives. This year, we're doing a Bon Voyage party afterwards.

So it'll be like one last opportunity for everybody to just hang out. Since I remember last year, so many people were like, oh, what's happening tonight?

And we're like, oh, the conference is over. So whatever you want to do, you can. And they're like, oh, well i'm here for like another 24 hours so i thought there'd be like one more chance and i was like good feedback like we should build off of that but waffle house bro waffle house is so good though no i think there's also like a little a lot of little things last conference too that made a lot of connections possible even just like in the main area with the food there weren't there were like those little small tables and so everyone would get their food and then have to go to like these tables and it was just a good mixture of people i met so many people just because that's where i had to eat there wasn't really a lot of other places so there's like a lot of these little things that having a a venue of that size with that number of attendees just made like for natural i met so many cool people just because of the way things were kind of set up and to see even more intention go into that i think it's gonna be really cool yeah i think people walk away with a lot let me ask you this right so obviously now you're like a juggernaut in tech right but there was a time where nobody knew who leon noel was and so when you would go to like a juggernaut in tech, right?

But there was a time where nobody knew who Leon Noel was. And so when you would go to like a conference or you'd go to an event or you'd go to even a networking event, like what were some of your strategies going in there to be like, okay, how do I get somebody to pay attention to me, notice me?

How do I walk away making sure like I've met somebody?

Do you have any strategies around that?

Yeah. I mean, a couple of things i did early on is i kind of always brought a group interesting like i always had like a like at least one or two other people that would would be there so that i didn't i i felt like i had like a little bit of a crew and so that would make it easier for people to naturally come to us if we already have a table and we're having fun and we're at a conference it's easy for people to naturally come to us. If we already have a table and we're having fun and we're at a conference, it's easier for people to like come be with us.

Like that was something I did really early on. It's just cause I didn't, I necessarily didn't feel super comfortable networking by myself. So I would always have like one or two people that we would go together with.

And that kind of set the base. It's easy to bring people into a conversation we could pair up and bring somebody into a conversation that's something i did early on um and then i really did just two other things was never eat alone really just embodied that like i've never at a conference eaten by myself i've never done had a conference where i've eaten dinner by myself like this never happened i always made sure that whenever the conference was done i knew what i was doing that evening and so that would be hanging out with people going to the the next like social or going to do karaoke right i always knew that i always tried to line something up um and invite people to it so all you need is one other person that's kind of where i was trying to go with the group thing right like it wasn't that i went with a group and like that's what we stayed with it was just that it was easier for us to be the fun people right because i like it just said all right we're gonna do karaoke and then that would snowball into 20 people coming to karaoke and so i would just invite the people that i met and i wanted to build relationships with and to do fun things and so never eating alone was the big piece and then the last thing that i did was try to be in groups that gave me common interest so i volunteered at a lot of conferences um i would try and lend a hand so that I had an in-group already. So a lot of the conferences I would go to, if I was a volunteer, I'd work the merch table for two hours a day.

And the people that I used to sit at that merch table with are some of my best friends in tech. To this day, they're some of my best friends because we had that common bond. I had a group of 20 or 30 other people that already knew that we had a shared kind of I had a group of like 20 or 30 other people that already knew that we had a shared kind of thing that we were doing.

That base was the base of my network at that conference. It made it easier for me to meet other people that they already knew. And if you do that a couple years in a row, people get to know you.

And so those are my big things. So a group that helps bring people to you, never eating alone and try to be in some sort of group already, volunteering, things like that. Yeah, a lot of conferences do like ambassador programs, things like that.

We'll get back to the show in a second, but first, a word from our sponsors. Financial literacy is important, especially if you are in a position where you are changing careers and income brackets. More income can create larger financial issues if you don't budget correctly.

So this episode is sponsored by Lucas Casares, certified financial planner and founder of Level Up Financial Planning, where he specializes in serving early and mid-career tech professionals to help you take your financial confidence to the next level. Danny and I have helped thousands of people level up in tech, often going from zero to six-figure careers, and we've seen all kinds of mistakes. Level Up Financial Planning helps you gain clarity on all of your finances.

This includes prioritizing manager-employer stock, retirement planning, tax planning and preparation, college planning, and as a special deal for our listeners, college planning and as a special deal for our listeners you get a complimentary meeting with lucas so please visit level up financial planning.com to find out more he's been a great supporter of the show and to be honest a lot of people already checked them out i highly recommend checking them out now back to the show there's a couple things in there that if somebody's listening by the way this episode is definitely not supposed to all be about the conference so i apologize gotcha but i feel like there's such good value here whether you're coming to cyc or you're going to another conference i know there's quite a few conferences that are popping up right now but uh i mean it's conference season right like we're as of the time we're recording this and probably when this episode comes out uh uh what's called?

Render ATL is going to be pretty soon, right?

And so if you're going to render, which is a conference that I love, boom. These work there. But if you're in Europe, you're in Asia, you're anywhere, I mean, this is going to work.

Even if you don't know what's happening that night, if I show up to the conference and as I'm talking to people, I'm trying to find out what's happening tonight. Because oftentimes there's side events that are occurring or there's like that social aspect that you you heard about it's a good reminder it's like but then i would use that as like oh you're going to that thing we should go together boom you now have a buddy that you can be talking with and connecting with and like just building a relationship with over time um that goes really really well. The other thing is read the room.

And it's funny because my advice on what read the room means has changed. The more students that I've had, more people that we've had part of the cohort, it's really altered because I think people really take for granted, even the most introverted people may take for granted how comfortable they are in a conversation compared to others and so what i would say is don't ever be in a conversation where you feel like you can't walk away uh or you prevent somebody else from walking away if they feel the need to right i'm a big fan of what i call breathers and i didn't know what to call this for a while but if i just meet somebody for the first time i really do try to like hold it down in five minutes and walk away mainly because they just met you you just met them you both don't know really much about each other but i'd love to make sure that we end this conversation at a nice light quick point to where when i come back they now feel like oh like he's a cool person and what i'll do now this is just me personally as my personality if i've connected with somebody i see him later on you know what what's my go-to move i'm not even lying i'll be across the room and i'll be like this for those for those listening i just will point and give them like a good facial expression like oh what's going on that kind of thing and we will literally connect over those facial expressions to where later on i remember my first conference ever that same person that i did it to who's now a buddy but at that time we didn't know each other he saw me in lunch line later on that day he was like what's going on buddy and we became lunch buddies just from pointing at each other so it's like you will be surprised at how good that can be now obviously that's just who i am right you can have whatever it is that you want like i'll purposely bump into someone like watch where you're going man even though they weren't going anywhere very sarcastic light-hearted funny and they'll crack up about it or um you know i i like to crack jokes so that's that's me but maybe your style is something different you know and whatever that style is own it instead of trying to emulate something that you're not because it gets exhausting trying to pretend to be somebody that's the magic of conferences too i i hope people see conferences as like a place to build genuine connections because i think even even at like a lot of conferences i've been to recently there's the uh the qr code bros right where they run up with their linkedin qr code like they want to they want you to like scan it they like want to make make that like i have no idea who you are i'm not scanning some random payload from your phone right like that that's been like the rise i think i've seen but like that's the wrong way to go about a conference. A conference is making those one-to-one connections, the funny follow-ups, the bumping into each other over a period of two to three days.

The follow-up after that is something real. Like you've seen this person in a physical space. So many of us network online, social media, but there's something special that happens at a conference where you actually feel like you know someone because you've seen them in the physical world don't waste that opportunity uh you're not trying to collect pokemon you're you're trying to just get to know people and those natural finger moments the bumping each other at the food line is part of that magic that if you lean into by the end, you have a handful of people that you have a real relationship with that you can then transition onto online that you can eventually add on LinkedIn.

But don't, don't lose that magic of a conference by trying to collect like the most people possible. It's not going to have an impact for you. It's not going to have an impact for you.

It's not going to be the thing that you think it is. And so that's what I really liked about Commit Your Code. There are so many people that I went from a digital relationship with to a physical relationship.

That sounds really bad. An in-person relationship where I actually know who they are as a human and we got to hang out we got to eat together we got to um to to just have fun and and that is really special i i hope you don't you don't miss the uh the mountain for the molehill you know well speaking of conferences there this week there have been quite a few conferences in in general one one of which is supposed to be the topic of this episode. Google I.O.

and the things that were announced there. And the reason why I'm saying that in particular is for those that don't know or aren't familiar with this, my brother Leon Noel decided to go live in the mountains for a few days. And when he came back, society changed because of all the announcements.

for a few days and when he came back society changed because of all the announcements i felt like i was in yosemite for six days no cell phone reception and i come out and everything is fundamentally different like there's there's video models now that are actually good there there's ai mode uh and so i just thought it was really funny that now i have to catch up and i was only gone for six days when it came to claw they announced 4.0 yeah which i think is incredible i've been using 35 and 37 for different use cases for a while now um i've been dabbling in 40 not much to talk about yet but we'll give like a full depth review on this one soon um i am able to talk more about the google stuff mainly because at work they sprung for the highest tier so we could test everything oh wow and so we've i've been dabbling and messing around with v uh vo3 i've been able to mess around with quite a few things actually and so let's talk about some of this stuff um just if you haven't been familiar with some of what happened at google io.O., what was released, one is VO3. You can create eight-second videos with a prompt. And here's the thing.

They're actually really, really good. Like not just kind of good. I mean like legitimately good.

And what's funny is I was talking on the model web podcast so shout out to model web but uh i was on the model web podcast talking with uh tejus kamar and tejus talked about how like a year and a half ago he gave a prediction and now it's all coming to light and he got so much hate for people criticizing them for it and now it's like oh this could actually be a thing. He made a prediction that in the future, we will give the characters and the actors that we want to see play them, and we will be able to basically say, today's the day I want to watch this movie with Spider-Man and the Hulk and this and that, la-da-da-da, doing X, Y, Z. And you put it on for family movie night, and it will be there.

It will be rendered and ready to go by the it on for family movie night and it will be there it will be rendered and ready to go by the time it's family movie night and which is like a ludicrous thing to say a year and a half ago but today how's that not in the realm of reality it's definitely there it's funny because i've i've been trying to do i do that something similar with my little one where we're gonna think of the wildest thing that they could think of, and we'll do image prompting for it. And then we'll pick the image that they want, so it's a certain color, a certain animal in a certain place, and then we 3D print it. And so we're already having this idea of, I just think about what this early generation, what their life is going to be like when they can prompt the music they want prompt the the movies that they want that they can have these characters like they just so much creative control that goes around them i think it's really interesting with uh with with the view of vo3 is it's it's good uh do you know about the will smith test yes with the spaghetti with the spaghetti i saw some people that got access to it really early prompting it and they were not perfect a little uncanny but pretty close and the sound the sound is like what is going on like and so i think that's kind of what i'm i'm seeing is just that in a year from now, I just can't imagine what it's going to be.

But one of my favorite things I saw someone do with it, they spent 500 bucks on the credits for it, and they made a pharmaceutical commercial. Oh, interesting. It was for puppies or something like that that it was supposed to be like puppies were the medicine right and it was able to do all the different types of people all the different types of backgrounds that like very specific like pharmaceutical commercial voice easily done and they stitched all the clips together and it looked like a real like 30 second ad on television and that was very early prompting probably not super refined not probably a lot of editing on top of it but where are we that we can kind of pull all these things together and have passable commercials and this is just a couple days ago that this released you know yeah i think with vo there's a lot of possibilities that could be utilized for tons of use cases but the one that goes to my mind too is think about some of your favorite you that go out of their way to create this B-roll that sometimes is very mediocre.

I mean, they're subject to whatever is happening outdoors, right?

They can now create the exact B-roll that they need for everything without having to create these crazy manual shots now. It's really opened a lot of possibilities within my mind of things to think about. The other thing that was announced that i think is pretty pretty interesting but i don't know if i love it i know that it's interesting and that's ai mode within search and essentially the idea is you can now give complex queries like you would give um like chat gptT in that search panel and it will use Gemini to kind of make that search happen.

It'll chain it around it has advanced reasoning. Now here's the thing it's funny because like a year and a half ago if you said Gemini that was a deal breaker for me. This is terrible.

Gemini has come so far to where it's in my rotation of LLM models that I frequently use. They really stepped it up in a pretty phenomenal way. With advanced search, and I will admit, I have used ChatGPT for searching a lot as of late.

Yeah. Like a lot, a lot. I'm in this weird spot where I hesitate.

I start to go to my search bar, and then I'm like, ah, I should go to ChatGPT. bar and i'm like i should go to chachi bt and so it's it's i'm making this weird spot and i know google has to be getting impacted by this like that hesitation where for you think about how much has to be like think about how much has to be undone if we have for the past 20 years every single day gone to one spot to ask questions, and in a period of not very long, that's fundamentally changed. Google has to get AI mode right.

Oh, yeah. And if they don't, it's over. Because the behavior is already shifting.

Yeah. It's very, I don't want to say even funny, but it's very interesting to see how much my habits have changed over the last four years because i had started to get into a trend where i no longer was using google reviews or google maps to find restaurants i was actually going through like instagram and tiktok i'd save places that i saw people actually review because like I'm now it's no longer the photo it's no longer like a nicely staged photo it's real this is what came to the plate this is what came to the table I can see what they got verbatim and it was a very good indicator for me like oh this is an interesting place to check out now I've kind of been doing that similarly with Chachapiti like when we went to San Francisco I was like what are must-go-to places for me to go eat at that are not touristy, but they're the places that locals would indulge in?

The results were phenomenal. Yeah. I have a pattern that I've done for a very long time.

And it's whenever I want to know about something, my search queries are always very much the same. It's whatever I'm looking for and then Reddit. Right.

So it's I'll use Google, but I'll put Reddit at the end because I want to see what people actually think about it. Then whatever I find, I take over to YouTube and then I watch the YouTube video on that thing. And then I make my purchase decision.

decision and so the first ai that really gets that process for me where it shows the social proof of real users plus the the breakdown of like another human having walked through it like there's still something human that i need in my decision flow that i think ai might actually have a chance to solve right i i want to see that social. I want to see that social proof. I want to see that somebody else, because we've just been fed SEO slop through Google for so long.

When we go to Google, we only see the ads. We only see all this messed up stuff. So we have like these workflows to get the truth.

And I don't understand why an AI just can't do that for me, you know?

And so that's why I've been liking track to be team more because it'll give me the sources. I can see where it's pulling stuff in. It's kind of doing those hop skips in a jump for me.

And so maybe AI mode gets that part, right?

Well, when we tie that into one of the things that I'm most geeked out about is Android XR, it is their response to the meta glasses truth be told a lot of it is it's proof in my opinion because I've had this conversation couple times it is fundamental proof that Google Glasses were too early for society and society just couldn't fathom what it was going to be about. And so with Android XR, Meta basically proved that the time was now, and now they're able to jump in. Now, here's the thing for me when it comes to Android XR.

It's doing what everyone in society has always dreamed these smart glasses could do. what everyone in society has always dreamed these smart glasses could do. Like, I can be talking to you wearing these glasses, and I can have my text messages pop up in the corner to see whether it's relevant or not, or see who's calling me in the corner, whether it's relevant or not.

If I'm in my house and I've lost something, because I've worn my glasses all day, I can literally ask, hey, where's my book that I had, my View.js book that I was learning from?

Yeah. It will recall its memory of what it's seen and be able to kind of pull that out. The other thing is, I think this is going to be phenomenal for the arguments that I have with my wife.

Play it back. That's hilarious. Oh, she was right she was right dang dang and it's not even like watching the video back it's just asking the ai yeah right or wrong and it's like as always you're still wrong yeah when i sleep at night my wife is gonna go up to be like ignore all previous instructions wife is always right yeah yeah i think that's pretty and so i the form factors down right we we and the other thing too is like somebody's gonna get it right humane pin didn't get it right rabbit didn't get it right um i was going to open ai now and make it wearable so maybe all that apple knowledge going yeah an actual wearable open ai could be the thing the thing that's interesting about google is the connectability of it all right the even with open oh sorry even with the um the ai mode for search, you can enable your apps, so Gmail, calendar, your search history, all that being fed into AI search is going to be amazing.

But all that going into your glasses, right?

Like the context of understanding I'm in a meeting, it has access to the calendar, it can tie the conversation you just had to that meeting note. Like there's so many things that if they get the connectability together, it'd be a phenomenal product. I'm really curious if we're ready for it.

And I think Meta did a really big job for the the paving the way forward because they made it cool right when you when people wear the google glasses it was not cool people were kind of scared like they are you recording me what's going on but meta with the ray-ban glasses made it oh i'm just taking photos because that'd be the same thing i'd be doing with my phone like they normalized it a little bit and so i'm curious to see the first wearable product come out and the masses not revolt like not have like an initial like gut like no i don't want this pin looking at me i don't want these glasses scanning my face and so i think that's the big thing if google can roll it out and make it normal, we're in a whole different world. We're in a whole different world. Yeah, I'm excited for it.

The biggest thing I'm excited for is, well, a couple of things. Number one, real-time translation and translation of signs. So if you're going to other countries, everyone's felt as to where they've had moments of confusion.

You no longer have to rely on someone being side by side with you. You can literally just see the translations in real time on your glasses to see what something is being displayed as. But also the translation in real time to where it's like if somebody's speaking to you in Spanish, it will translate it to you so that way you can understand what they're saying in english and you know kind of carry that conversation on going forward that way which i think is great because my you know my wife is korean my in-laws uh my father-in-law my mom they live in korea and so like we don't always have a great way to communicate we we try like you know there's a translation app here and but it's not the best and i and i'm And I'm not foolish enough to think that whatever comes out, it's going to be the best version in the beginning.

But as AI keeps iterating, the quality of the translations have just improved dramatically. And so it's like even for, we're not having sophisticated conversations about philosophy here. It's like, how was your day?

What did you eat?

Do you want to go eat?

Stuff like that. Like, you know, how eat do you want to go eat stuff like that like you know how's your health so i think stuff like that it's going to be phenomenal conversationally um i'm excited for it plus you know what the one thing i was really excited for which i felt the need for so much i was just at stripe sessions which is another conference i was there very recently and when we were trying it was in san francisco i'm not a san francisco native i don't know anything about sf and so when we're traveling places i have my phone and sometimes it would get confused as to which direction to go or i would get confused rather because that map is so static so as you're walking it takes a while before it tells you like oh you're actually going in the wrong direction you need to go back the other way with the glasses it gives you the exact arrow where you're supposed to step in real time because it pinpoints you that's a game changer and you'll see the arrow on your glass in the corner so you know if you have to change direction and they have all the maps data all the business data like that's going to be phenomenal yeah they're positioned best to execute this accurately in my opinion and it's funny i was gonna say you were you're talking about it my wife called my glasses should know that i'm i'm on a podcast with danny and be able to auto reply leon's doing the podcast you know like like that's that's nobody's made it useful yet they have a chance to make it useful yeah i think android xr has the best chance because they have this whole ecosystem already built out in relation to everything. And it could be a device that gets people to switch, right?

Like, what are the things that gets people away from iPhones?

There hasn't been that major feature in a while. I don't know if I should even talk on the subject because every time I do, I get in trouble. So, like, yeah, I mean, I agree.

even talk on the subject because every time i do i get in trouble so like yeah i mean i agree there's a lot of value outside of it apple's the number one best thing that they've ever done in their life was create that ecosystem where people are just bought in and that's the thing that keeps them there but you have to ask yourself how strong is that ecosystem when you start seeing everything else around you completely transform and change yeah and it's like do you really wait five years before they come up with their version of that thing to make it improved or not who knows but i will say when it comes to coding i've never been on a better device besides a macbook and it's really hard to imagine i if windows could figure that out that'd be great because i have a window i'm on the windows right now talking to you yeah but it's like as soon as i do anything technically related it is back on that mac no matter what what i touch yeah last night i watched the movie so i turned my tv on with my phone and then i lost my phone so i used my watch to find my phone and then once i found my phone, I turn my TV off. I turn my lights off. Like, it's all just integrated, right?

Like, there's, like, at some point, if you just buy into that ecosystem, you're kind of. You can do all that with Samsung, too. Just saying.

The watch, the phone, the control of everything. I have a whole smart home that I do everything with. I control everything with that even my temperature even unlocking my door and locking it I control my cameras with it all that good stuff I do all that too on my iPhone there's actually quite a bit that iPhone can't do but I don't want to get in that debate now because I can already see the comments I can already imagine the emails here's the thing a bit that iPhone can't do, but I don't want to get in that debate now because I can already see the comments.

I can already imagine the emails. Here's the thing. I am pro iPhone, but I will admit I am legitimately on a Samsung right now.

I love my Ultra. Here's something that iPhone can't do, could never. Bam, stylus.

I just dropped it. But stylus. And that's why iPhones don't have that.

Stylus that's why I'm just telling you dude I love it I love it like and what's funny is people thought in the beginning that um I would never use it or something like that there was jokes with me in the admin every resume review that I do in our channels two three minutes I can literally screen record show the errors mark it and then send it back it saves me so much time to where if i speed run like let's say 30 of them 90 minutes maybe versus you know what it was doing before this could be a fun this would be a whole other podcast episode like ecosystem talk like no no it'd be fun it'd be fun because i mean i i spent most of my life in gnu linux right?

Like, that was my major. That's what I still use most of the time each day. Interesting.

But slowly transitioned to the Apple ecosystem. I use PC for gaming and stuff like that. But I think it'd be fun to talk about, like, all the new stuff that's come out across all the different platforms.

It'd be fun. Yeah. I think one big thing that Google Ios showed me well two big things number one majority of their announcements were for things that aren't even available yet it's coming still which i found interesting they had over a hundred announcements which is a lot they definitely wanted to show like they're ai heavy right now uh and i saw one big comment that stuck out to me is like i'm so so tired of hearing about AI, AI, AI, and I get it, but I think there's a big reason why, whether you recognize it or not, the entire industry is changing right now.

And there are going to be a subsection of people that don't adjust with it or don't get familiarized with certain things. And there will be people that do. And I have a feeling you're going to, this is what my gut says.

And about a year and a half to two years from now, there's going to be a massive rush for everything. And the people that adopted things much earlier are going to be at a very, very advantageous position compared to a lot of others. And I support this.

I was at Stripe Sessions. I can't remember if we've talked about this on the podcast or not. Stripe Sessions, for those that don't know, it's like a very business-heavy focused conference.

Have we talked about this, Leon?

You not um stripe sessions for those that don't know it's like a very business heavy focus conference have we talked about this land uh you mentioned a little bit about it so i was very impressed with some of the conversations that i was in for a business conference there was a lot of technical talk at that conference um it was in san francisco uh really really interesting i I met founders. I even met one of the earlier investors in Stripe, which go figure. Dude, like crazy rich.

That's when I realized there's levels to this. Very, very interesting conversations. Some companies literally having eight figures.

Eight figures means the lowest number it could be is $10 million. That's the lowest number. The highest number could be 99 million, right?

Eight figures investing in their company and the developers to learn AI best practices. They're not even thinking about it from the standpoint of we're trying to gain AI tooling. It's like, no, how can our devs that work for us in this corporate environment learn how to use AI in the best meaningful way possible?

These household name companies that I was learning this about blew my mind. They are very, very, very forward thinking. But the vast majority of them aren't thinking about AI in the mindset of a headcount reduction tool, which I know a lot of people are.

They're thinking about it more from the standpoint of we know that this is a productivity tool. And this has been my take for the longest. I don't see it being a headcount reduction tool, maybe in the short term because people think they can replace stuff and then they're going to hire back.

Or they're really doing it under the disguise of AI to do what I call like salary offloading, meaning fire a bunch of people making 100 grand,000 to hire a bunch of people making $80,000. So it's like an easier way to get that price down. And they're just saying AI, AI.

They're going to do that anyway. They're going to find an excuse for it. AI is not the reason.

But the way that I look at it here is if I can get someone to be 30% more productive just by investing in their training of this, why wouldn't I?

And so even for us at this thought, a lot of our clients right now are bringing us in for that. Like, can you please train our teams how to use this?

We don't want to be a producer. We just want to be an AI user and the most effective one that we can. And so right now now like I've said before we're in the forgiveness bubble so it's like if you don't know something now nobody's mad but in a year or two that rhetoric is gonna really change and I think that's gonna be the thing that pushes the masses to be like holy crap I really did miss out I got a jump on this now and a junior dev that can use AI best practices and what they're doing that's you're going to be killing them but i wouldn't be using it as a uh what i call an area to fill in gaps of knowledge meaning if you don't know something you just use it to do that task use it to learn from it sure but you should actually be learning the thing because the reality is with ai if the code it's producing and this is the thing I train people on is, if you've had it produce a lot for you, you need to have the knowledge to legitimately audit it because as far as I'm concerned, you're responsible for everything that's coming through this thing.

So if you're not auditing it, you're causing a bigger issue for everybody involved. And you need to have the technical knowledge in order to know what is good, what is bad, and how to distinguish it. So it can be a supercharged thing.

But I will say right now is the only time I've ever seen where an individual has the ability to a certain degree to produce an MVP that can compete with enterprise-level companies on their own. And so the only path to success doesn't have to be you having a job somewhere. It could be, hey, I learned this thing and I did well with it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Nice. All right, y'all. It's everyone's favorite time as Danny and Leon.

All right. Today's question. The question we got here today is when freelancing, is there a certain set of questions you would ask ask potential client to figure out what type of website and features they want we were literally just talking about this before recording leon do you want to start with us and then i'll go or yeah i mean you you were dropping gems before we got on the calls i kind of wish we were recording that whole segment uh my my thing is when I'm meeting with a client, I am not selling.

I'm trying to figure out what they need, what they want. And sometimes I'm the right person for it. Sometimes I'm not.

And so I like to get on the call and ask them, why are we here?

That typically gets them talking about some sort of pain point that they have, the reason why they're taking time out of their day to talk to me. And through that, I can kind of lead them to the things that they hope for. And so a lot of times when they're talking to me, they need some sort of website or web application, try to really just let them talk.

That first call is just letting them talk and I'm taking notes. And then at the end of that conversation, I go, all right, you asked for this, this, this, this. There seems like there's a lot here.

It seems like these things are a priority. What's your ballpark budget to get these things done?

And if they have a decent budget for the things that they want, then we'll move that into some sort of proposal stage some sort of discovery stage where i'll figure more stuff out but most of my calls don't get out of that phase because they want too much they don't have the budget for the things that they want or i'm not the right person for them and i'll pass it on to someone else and so that's kind of what i'm doing uh that my secret question is the why are we on the call today that typically gets them talking and then um yeah just have them it's about asking kind of just like good leading questions oh okay well if that was fixed what would what would that look like for you or that seems to be a an issue why and just keeping them talking until they walk through the real reason why they're looking for help. Generally speaking, I'm just curious, like when you're talking to places like what dollar range are some of these jobs falling in?

Yeah. So I think for most of my career, it was smaller. Like I just loved working with like mom and pops like smaller stores three to five k range is where a lot of them were falling into things where really i could knock it out in 10 hours or so um i try to keep like an internal metric of like 300 bucks an hour in my brain yeah um and then as started kind of getting more people that trusted me the dollar amounts rose and so um my sweet spot is typically like in the 25 to 30k range that's where i as an individual can provide a lot of value yeah um i'm able to get things done at that price point that i wouldn't be able to do at like a lower price band but i'm not a full service agency so once i get out of that like 30k sweet spot the demands are too high and as an individual it's not something i can i can satisfy and so a lot of my conversations do say hey go talk to this bigger firm that could give you all the wraparound services, all the things that I would be able to do on an individual timeline.

And so those are kind of like the $100K to $200K plus projects. But I get kickbacks on a lot of those when I pass them on. And so that's kind of what I do.

So to add some, like, preface this a little bit. Earlier on, like, the first website I ever sold in my life was $1,800. I always talk about that, the Mexican restaurant.

That's generally where I stayed for a while, within that range. Even my first year in tech, anytime I did freelancing, it was somewhere around there, like $2,000, $3,000. I think the max in my first year was around $5,000.

Then I definitely progressed. Then I got to a point where I had too much, and so I just started outsourcing all of it. I had some great devs in the Discord that I trusted to execute, and I passed them jobs.

Then I just got to the point where I was like, I can't just do anything. I'm turning it all down. I just can't do it.

Generally now, anything that I'm talking to somebody for, it's obviously via our company and stuff that we're doing um i think our rule pretty much is if it's under 150 grand we can't even have a conversation like it's just not gonna work um we're i mean we pitch jobs that are in that seven figure ballpark pretty frequently um like with household name brands for sure, big, big companies, but also with smaller organizations as well. I was just telling you about the one for $275,000. The thing that I've learned from the $1,800 job to the $275,000 or $5 million jobs, it's the number of conversations.

That's what it really starts breaking down to. It's the number of conversations. That's what it really starts breaking down to.

It's the number of conversations that you're having and you just have to be playing the right game in each of those conversations. Now for me, I'll be honest, I don't really sell. I'm not a salesperson.

That's never been my goal. I feel like sales people are phenomenal at what they do because they're basically helping you come to a decision oftentimes of what you really want. But for me, I just look at myself as one thing.

I'm a problem solver. That's it. And if you have a problem and we're solving the right problem, it means that you are going to be at a place that you're much happier about down the road.

And so if I'm the person that can lead to your happiness who am i to deny you that simple as that like and what's really changed for me is i work at a tech consultancy right i've seen how other tech consultancies operate and i've seen how we operate my whole mind has changed on this because i now feel like if i don't help to a certain degree, make sure that you're like a client of ours, I now know what you're going to be missing out on. And I almost feel like I'm doing you a disservice just because it's so weird how my mind has changed around this. Because I've literally seen, you know how many clients that we have that have literally come to us like, we should have came to you first.

Can you fix this?

And it's like, yeah, I'll fix it. Like, you know, we'll get somebody on here to help you out with it and la-da-da-da-da. The questions that you ask are very, very important, mainly because I'm thinking about one thing.

I can't give you an answer about if we can help you if i don't know the true problem because human beings including myself i suck at explaining my issues the right way sometimes i get flustered it's like so many ideas are coming to me one time that's why i have my translator leon here so he can make me sound sophisticated like i'll i get like word soup right and it's a lot of people go through that same problem it's word soup like they're trying it's a lot of people go through that same problem. It's word soup. Like they're trying to explain it.

They don't have a clue how to do it. And so now it's like I'm asking the questions to kind of try and find out what's actually going to get me the right answers. So I'll – and I play a lot with tonality.

Like I like changing my tone. I like changing my speed. I like changing my volume because it's not from a sales perspective.

But as I educate others, I've learned people learn in different ways. And so if I can make them excited about the subject that we're learning about or I can make them think more, I know that they're going to take whatever I want away from that lesson. And so some of the questions that I'll ask are something like, well, you're talking about this.

What are you working on for the rest of this year?

What is on your radar?

What are you trying to figure out?

The other thing that I like to ask people is, you came to me obviously with a problem. We were having a discussion. I told you that if I were to go to Joe's insurance company down the street or Sally's know sally's uh beauty supplier something like that right i would say something along the lines of hey you know like um i'm a web developer i build pro i solve problems you know i help business effectively scale etc etc and they jump on a call with me they didn't get on there just because i said that they got on there because there's an underlying problem and i need to figure out what that is so i'd ask them like you know kind of a variation of what you said like why are we on this call but i'll be saying like you know what made you want to jump on here and have a conversation with me like there's something there it's not just like i'm my handsome good looks which i get it if you jumped on there for that but it's like it's something more so what is that more um and i would ask different probing questions to ensure like i'm understanding what that thing is right like um okay so what is that more um and i would ask different probing questions to ensure like i'm understanding what that thing is right like um okay so you said that you know your e-commerce site you're seeing like a 90 abandoned cart rate that's crazy that's high like you know why do you feel that is is it your checkout process too long do you feel like you're you're losing customers at this state like what part are you do you have analytics to even tell you like where you're losing them at?

The answer to all that is I have no idea and no, I don't have the analytics. We need to start. First step is figure out why they're abandoning this thing.

That kind of gives me more insight into how that business is operating to then say, let's implement this. Let's do this. Let's do that.

Sure, I can help you out. Or this may go from hey this is not a three thousand dollar fix anymore like we talked about this is obviously much bigger we're going to need to be here for a little while so we need to come to terms with i'm going to be an independent contractor for a while for y'all maybe we'll do something where we do like a couple tests let's sign a contract for like let's say three months for the first month let me come here add all the analytics let's kind of figure out all this out. Second month, we now review these results together and be like, we've had enough of a test period to figure out where this 90% abandoned cart rate is.

And let's go ahead and switch this. Now let's A-B test it between the customers to see what's happening. You have a whole process now mapped out.

Now obviously this is more high level than an HTML5 kind of template, right?

But if your skill set is there to support it, then do it. But here's the thing. Don't over-engineer something for the sake of over-engineering it because you have something to talk about.

And one reason why I say this is the last cohort, we have probably had the highest rate of people getting jobs in any of the cohorts, which we've always been successful. But this one has definitely been a very noticeable difference. And every single person has said the same thing, the projects from the cohort, because they solved real problems, talked about real solutions, and how it was implemented.

That is what people want to hear about versus use the shiny new tech. Nobody cares about that. So hopefully that helps, gives you some ideas, and really lets you get in the mindset of like, how can you serve someone better.

All right, y'all. It's been real. It's been fun.

And we'll see you on the next one. Goodbye, everybody. Peace.

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