building vs. building with ceo/cofounder todd werth of infinite red

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

what's going on y'all good morning happy Tuesday the sun is shining in Nashville which is great it's usually raining here um part of one of the reasons why um uh part of the reasons why um I probably bake is probably pretty nice probably doesn't rain here as much as it does uh rain you mean that free water from the sky no exactly exactly um so uh well y'all thank you again for tuning in so first off comment say hey would love to hear from you the reason why I say that is because this is this is a networking of a really event um I was

telling Todd backstage kind of how this thing has progressed and one of the things I've realized especially going to conferences now and and speaking and being engaged in the community in the in the Tech Community um what I realized is that people kind of need like a low barrier of Entry to kind of network with people um and this is it so the reason why I tell people say hey is because I've had people in the DMS of other people where they have found Mentor mentees they found jobs they found internships so um and I usually tell people if if you um are are even

watching in the future I would highly recommend um saying hey um oh my gosh the cat tail is uh it's fantastic that's our product manager so I love it I love it so um so please say Hey listen we tune in from second off uh this is a live show so ask questions so you know it's really hard to find Founders and CEOs of companies where they don't bill you an arm and a leg and Todd is doing this out of the kindness of his own heart so I'm very thankful for that I was like wait a minute you said you invoice me later so

um so again ask questions being engaged um secondly I want to give a shot to uh that conference that conference is the official coffee sponsor of the show so also my boy Clark cell um he he also Brews his own beans as well which is great uh so highly recommend buying them but also too I'm very blessed I'll be keynoting that conference in July in Wisconsin um so if you are lo oking to get to a conference and you're in that area um the Upper Midwest the northern Midwest um would definitely love to see you there so go check that out um also to check

out this so David David Roberts I had him on the show I'd say three or four months ago he's a software developer turned recruiter he's over across the pond in London and he created a book and and and I I like his Cadence I like how he talks about things he he gets the both sides of it and it's really hard to get both sides of it in my experience so go check this out he has a book for sale you get 10 off um if you use this code um so go check it out it's great um and then finally of course as always

vaco so I'm a recruiter if you need Staffing help let me know we do everything from accounting Finance I.T marketing Ops You Name It We can help you so that's my little plug so we're gonna get to the more important things of the show um also I think uh LinkedIn is not showing um comments on stream yard today it sometimes Has a Glitch because I'm seeing notifications on LinkedIn people saying hey but it's not coming in in the comments so I'm going to try to multitask here um so while I do that Todd uh give give a quick background about who you are what you

do uh and we'll go from there sure on the CEO and founder one of the founders of infinite red we are a software agency we specialize in react native we're probably the only company in the world that specializes only in react native but we're definitely the best react native only and the best well no I mean there's plenty of companies you know and we know most of them that do what we do but they also do other things um yeah so yeah and as far as my background with software I'm a software engineer for a very long time and uh started three three companies this

one is my last company knock on cheap Ikea wood um so yeah I don't know I live in Las Vegas I love it uh you got chain react coming up too right you want to talk about that real quick yeah our co nference chain react which was the original react native conference is back after the pandemic not having it for a few years so we're back uh starting next week on Wednesday is our workshops and then Thursdays on is the actual conference and it's in Portland Oregon that's exciting that's awesome so Todd you know one of the things that we talked about you know backstage

and and the title is called building versus building right um and and I want to talk about just the mindset and kind of your career right you started you know you and I were saying you started as a developer and then you made the bit you you were building things as a developer and now you're building things as an owner and operator and and you know founder CEO I I'd love to hear your story man I mean obviously um what what made you make the jump uh advice for those who are wanting to make the jump because because I you know I've talked to a

lot of Engineers you know every day and they're like what do you think about me going on my own or building something building a company and I'm always like man I got a bunch of people you should talk to um so I'm definitely interested to hear your thoughts on that cool well I won't bore you with like my whole back story um but back when I was born I grew up in Nevada and then uh when I was 24 25 I went to San Francisco and that was in um so I'm old but um I basically developed my career during the.com boom which was fun

and I worked for develop as a bell for 22 years and I really like development it suited me well I used to do it for a hobby before people paid me to do it which I mean how many lawyers do that well I guess I guess there's a lot of hobbyist lawyers on Reddit but um other than that thank you Taylor the joke's not the jokes don't get better trust me me neither so word is two peas in a pot here man my wife told me I started a company so I can force 30 people to hear my bad jokes every day and that's that's

honestly the only reason why I'm in leadership to be totally Frank with you yeah I I say and I I honestly believe this is the only stand-up comedian job I let me kill my notifications here sorry about that yeah you're good I was making some noise so anyways yeah so over time I mean I spent I spent my time in the gray cubicle of death imagining how I would run a company for hours on end um and I started three companies started the first one in 1999 when I was 28.

and that one lasted for about nine years but it's really small and then I had a second company which is a I was not the main person but it was one of the one of the founders and that one was a venture capital backed company typical Silicon Valley type company it lasted for about a year and a half before we admitted that not making any money was not a good thing um and when uh Ken Miller and I started infinite red because what happened was we started infinite red uh and we ran it for a few years and James and Holmgren which you've had on

before he had a company called clear site which he was I think was like 10 years he was a lot longer and uh in 2015 we merged the two companies oh that's awesome that's awesome so that's why Jamin and I are founders um because of the merge Ken is was also a Founder but he's um he's no longer here yeah so this I Ken and I when we were talking about this we're just done with startups we had it all all of us have worked in startups for a long time and been through all that stuff and and having just done the kind of most

annoying version of startups which is a venge Capital backed one they're great they're great I mean and if you need to grow fast and you need lots of capital it's a it's a great way to go sure um but we are really interested in doing a lifestyle business which is derogatory for real business um and um and so we just want to do that and I was telling can I go I want this to be my last company I want my exit strategy to be death uh hopefully and something exciting on YouTube um like my car on fire going off a cliff into a bus

of nuns and orphans that would be cool but I'm told that's illegal to make happen so we'll just have to you know whole time I'm dying but uh but anyway so do a real quick fast forward um I had led my first company but it was really small and it was all very senior people and I thought I had leadership experience I did not that's fine all the musings I did in the chemical have been the cubicle about what I wanted to do in a company most of them didn't work out in reality and that's fine um so with infinite red because we are 30

people and we're all seniors now but for a wiile that was not true so I learned a bunch of new skills managing people and that was a much worse not managing sorry leading a bunch of people and I was much worse at it than I I had a mansion that I was but but that was good so this has the last seven years I've been working on that and uh I treat it as a new skill that I assume I have no knowledge of which turned out to be true so uh I you know I work at it every day and um just like if

I was learning a new programming language or some sort of new technology on it I assume I don't know it and I assume the skills so yeah I love that I love that so I mean what what what's what are your tips for for folks who maybe want to start their own thing or build I mean what what are some key things maybe keep in mind before making that jump well first if you have too many friends you should go into business with a few of them and that will solve that problem um if you have too much money you should start a business problem

solved I think uh Richard Branson said if you want to make a million dollars start an airline with a billion and then you'll make your million um so which is kind of true so uh if I were it depends on your risk aversion if you're younger in your risk averse and you want to play with other people's money it's it's fun it's uh it's kind of like a very short MBA on the streets kind of yeah I actually do recommend that but if you're at the stage where you actually want to need to make an income and want to make money and stuff he goes

I need to make an income and make money don't do it well I mean yeah kind of thankfully my wife supported me through that second company for a year and a half um without making much money uh bless her heart um uh actually that's negative and you all's talk correct I shouldn't say that correct yeah yeah I meant that to be positive sorry in the west the West we don't say that but um uh I have no idea I was talking about so no we're talking about just tips for folks getting into obviously their own business and running it oh yeah yeah so assuming you

want to you know a traditional business I recommend B2B it's way better business business than it is to Consumer consumers what everyone tries but you need massive amounts of consumers typically unless you're selling water out where people run which is a good business to start um but uh assuming you want that business to business is really good and a lot of times you can get customers all the things all the things I would not recommend no one's actually going to do I didn't go ahead because because just because it's right doesn't mean anyone's going to do it seriously you can get customers before you start

your business sure uh even if you're building a product because you can if hopefully you have some sort of knowledge of some sort of Industry you can go to the industry people and they want stuff done like especially non-sexy Industries there's tons of stuff that hasn't been done yeah whether in my case it's software but it could be whatever um and you go to those people you say hey I'm gonna produce this and hopefully they like it and if you want you can help me out and I can give you like a very good discount for the rest of your existence or whatever kind of

deal you do but basically you have them fund it um with you and maybe a couple people you can do that kind of stuff um that's I think is easier than the what a lot of people do which is they do it on the side um the people who can do it on the side are awesome I cannot uh yeah it's very hard so but I know I know we used to work with a lot of startups at infinite red um we do more bigger we do more bigger more bigger that's some Nevada English right there um we do more bigger companies now don't hire

us for our grammar hire us for our react native there you go that's that's that that's y'all's tagline well jamin's grammar is exceptional it is it really is yes so uh ignore me yeah no one knows who I am everyone knows Jamin and Gantt and they're kind of the outward face which is totally finds me I like I like running things um the operations and all that stuff yeah but yeah anyways um long story long um yeah I would focus on your customers first before anything else I wouldn't spend any money until someone has committed to spend money on your product if you do have

something that requires massive growth a massive amount of money then yeah sure venture capital is the way to go because that's what they want um but I've worked at startups where 15 growth a month was not enough and they got shut down by their investors which is insane in any other company but uh yeah so that it's just you know focus on that stuff don't focus on I mean to be honest like say you're a developer and you're probably not gonna like the business stuff let's assume yeah if it seems entirely distasteful for you to go to Costco by a case of water and go

sell it on the side of the corner of a street if that's like you want to blow your brains out uh I guess I shouldn't say that but if that's the first thought and I don't know why you think that Taylor I think it's disgusting that you came up with that but um assuming you thought that yeah you know then maybe it's not for you because that would be that would be hugely easier than the stuff you're gonna have I think that's actually I think that's fascinating I think that's a great very simple way to sa y it if you are comfortable enough pitch in

a lemonade stand or selling water on the side of the road and you're okay with that then maybe starting a business for you but if you are not maybe you shouldn't I actually I love that yeah I mean because like a lot of the things people say oh they say my product managers back could you please purr somewhere else thank you um I get it like as a developer when I'm a romance you know earlier in my career the boss will say you know we're not just Developers for sales people and I'm like you know I don't just work here I work at the next

place I just applied to you know um because I had absolutely no interest in that and that's fine there's nothing wrong with that but like people say get a good account and get a good lawyer of course you're gonna ignore that that sounds boring uh no one likes that you know you're gonna have to do sales that sounds horrible I'm not gonna do that I get it but you're not going to do well the truth is and most Engineers do I do not want to hear this and in case this is cut up and on the internet I'm an engineer but um the truth is

a good salesperson who's crappy at executing business is going to do better than a person really graded execution and Port sales I hate that that's true yeah I used to fight it that's true but it's true it really is it really is I mean we're seeing that too I mean not to not to get totally off topic well it's not but it's still in sales just not it's more recruiting that's something I'm seeing on my ends right I think there's a lot of there there's a lot in the recruiting world there's a lot of people peacocking as like sales bit sales people but they can't

sell their way out of a paper bag and and and and I think what we're seeing in our Market is you you got to sell but it's a hard skill and not everybody has it that's okay but you just got to have the awareness it's a total skill um and I don't I don't let me know if I'm rambling on too much because rambling is this i s this is your show you you and I can just say each other at each other in our eyes for 30 minutes and not say a word if you wanted to I need to talk to whoever booked you

Taylor because from my show this is this is pretty low low end but um I'm just kidding I don't know Taylor but I now I know him now for about 20 minutes and he's new my new best friend um yeah so sales this is what I recommend because well a piece of advice I got was from a sales person at a company worked at and he was a cool guy and we would chat and stuff and he told me something that really gave me permission he's all you know I know a really good salesperson and for the last five years he says exactly the same

thing when he meets someone every single time and he told me that because he wanted to point out that even though this person is a good salesperson was probably naturally charismatic but even he practiced over and over and over and over and the same exact thing and for people like me who weren't gifted at cells I thought well I just wasn't born that way so um but the truth is most people aren't and it's a skill you have to practice um so that's number one is like give yourself permission to know nothing have zero skill like anything else and you have to you have to

look practice practice practice yeah by the way the thing he said for to every person he met for five years was he would say oh you know nice to meet you what do you do for a living and they'd be like Oh I'm an accountant and even say oh I bet that's changed the last five years that's it that was his that was his intro um and then you just practice that the the other thing I would say about cells is Jamin and I um we're both engineers and we're not sales people so when we merge the companies we want to get a lot better

at sales and him and I into the sales and so we're like let's not do it like other people let's not do it like sales people because we're not sales people and we're not skilled in that we're not don't particula rly have that personality and we said let's engineer it so we would have a sales call we'd immediately afterwards we'd have a retrospective I love that it's the only way to really get better yeah and he would point out things that he thinks I can improve on and things yeah I did well and I could point out how he was wrong and then tell him

all the bad things he did um I'm just kidding that was for Jamie I love it and Jamie James popped in Jamin popped in chat I'm not paying attention no um so anyways we we engineered it and we said and we found a place that we're not only comfortable with that our Personnel is excelled at um and that's a big thing too a lot of us pretend like we see other people or we see people on TV and we're like we got to be that person so we either give up because we're not that person because nobody is um really or uh you're just so

uncomfortable with it that it's like you know oh my gosh there's a sales call today I I I you know I think I'm gonna go walk in the pool for about four minutes on water um but I don't know what's with you Taylor and all this death it's disturbing it's okay I mean hey we're getting people really really going this Tuesday morning okay I want to get to it I want to get two comments real quick so Michelle I just want to say people people have kind of trickled in now um it's good to see Michelle Elliott um Becky yeah I would save up I

would definitely go to to um chain react it's a great one um Chris Wendy it's great to see you Graham Salvatore curly coder it's great to see you obviously jamen's here Michael it's great to see you as well Mason it's great to see you from Durham awesome I love it I love Durham too Durham's fantastic I'm a great boss that guy's gonna raise yeah the guy's getting a raise after this call uh Todd James and Gant in the room yeah I would I would pay I would pay to see that AKA just go to chain react but I couldn't make it out there this year

yeah well chain react is not as fun I'm actually a ph otographer I I go around for although I have I'm gonna have help this year but I go around the reason I like photographer is I get to talk to everybody no one knows who I am which is awesome how's this conversation that sucks I want to speak to the manager like great sounds good I'll go find him right Damon where you at and then we run up and I'm like ah let's get up and then remember it's me and I'm like no that makes no sense um yeah uh Jason it's good to see

you um Alex as well Chris um I definitely have uh Elliot comes in here did you guys sell infinite red no you guys are still holding on to it right yes oh yeah we're not yeah we we will never sell it unless it's really a lot of money then of course right a lot a lot of money um then I'd have to work at some other company in four years and it'd have to be a lot you have to be a bus driver or something with the nuns um talk talk about uh talk about chain react man I mean why why did you guys create

it I mean you know I'm really big on community I think it's smart honestly I think if any com if every I think if if a company can pull it off I think almost every company should have their own conference within that industry I think it's such a great way to to Brand Build and stuff like that but what what was the motive behind starting chain react well we had Heroes and we were stupid um and so of course we said let's do this uh just like everything else in Everyone likes when you make fun of the CEO so I do it all the time

um what's funny is I'll make fun of other CEOs to their face because my team loves it but then I realize what kind of company they have because if I make fun of their CEO and everyone in the room looks very uncomfortable like they're about to you know like a prison guard or a prison situation that I know how their company is like um anyways that that's that's an aside um you're asking about chain react so we're sitting in a meeting and we're like oh what sounds we should send some people to a chai n react conference because or not chairman uh react native conference

yeah right right we were doing a lot of react native we hadn't fully decided to do exclusively at the time but we were doing a lot of it and so we just literally Googled uh react native conferences and we didn't find any in the world at all and so someone says well we could throw it and we're like yeah we could do that because it's that easy so but I'm very proud like in eight months we went from you know Googling what is a conference right yeah to throwing a conference I got pretty good reviews um uh James now punching himself in the face because

he's like don't underplay it we got awesome okay Jamin we got awesome reviews I'm not a braggard but fake James so I'll let him do it um so we we Johnny Danner who worked for us the time she took on organizing in and in about eight months and we just kind of we've all been to many conferences and we just kind of came up with like what would we like to do and there was a bunch of stuff and then we did that and it did take a lot of time and I'm sure we lost money on it um uh it's hard to track but

I'm my guess is we did and um and yeah it was a great experience and it we did have some stuff in the react native world where we were known uh specifically some open source projects that were popular but this did open up a lot of stuff for example the first Year's Facebook or meta who of course created react native of course believe it or not if you're listening I don't know that you're well what are you doing with your life but um believe it or not I knew that as a recruiter Todd wow that's great uh it's because I have friends like Gantt yeah

uh dance awesome but so it what it did is that we had the first conference but we also did it well so like meta started doing their announcements at our conferences and that's cool a bunch of other you know Amazon Microsoft and all there's a lot of big companies that use reactive they all you know it's kind of was the plac e to go now later that year actually um there was one started in EU which were friends uh we were friends of that company and it's not like we're not friends anymore but the ownership of that company has changed recently the same we don't

know the new people yet but um it's called stack in Poland but um but yeah so they started up and so we had two but but we you know we they came to ours and we went to theirs and that kind of stuff so nice and and you made a comment that I want to dig in on as we kind of wrap up here again time flies when you're having fun with friends um we're getting close yeah it's crazy right um uh what so you made a comment about losing money but you think it's obviously still very valid from a business perspective I think a

lot of companies struggle with that right now I think they struggle with you know why should we send people to conferences it's a sunk cost do we get any Roi immediately you know you guys are throwing a conference and you know you're not really making any money off of it so a lot of business would be like why the hell are you even doing it I mean can you just talk about as as a somebody who runs the business why it's important to still do things like this even it may not be an Roi tomorrow well I think uh requiring our Roi short-term is why

a lot of companies fail um the truth is if you can do this right there if you can do something short term then so can everyone else so what makes you special your mom thinks you're awesome the rest of us think you're a big jerk but um I'm not talking about anyone particularly uh you know who you're you know who I am talking about Matthew you know what I'm talking about Matthew pay me my money so math you guys at home going I'm sorry I don't know Matthew who cares um so long term is much I mean if you can do something that only can

be done long term it sets you at a great Advantage because most people won't do it um but it requires that requires a lot of buy-in from everyone involved fro m your customers to your Executives in your company if you have investors to them and stuff and it requires it's actually harder to do so although we lost I'm sure we lost actual cash on the first chain react we set up we really solidified our brand in that industry and um it paid off over the years for sure we have things now that and get a lot of attention like our podcast react native radio but

at that time chain react was one of the most important things now it's less so but yeah it's it's good to do if you do it well and you can get good Buzz um and the secret is treat your speakers well there I told you um that's the secret you got it yeah and but I think it's it's we we saw it as a marketing any expense anything that anywhere where we lost money lost money we considered marketing expense so yeah yeah um I want to get to Elliot actually has two questions so he he recorrected not do you guys even sell it's do you

guys even pitch infinite red Services I think you guys have sold the company's Consulting Services organically through word of mouth and Community presence is that um is that kind of your main focus yeah we don't we don't do outward cells we don't yeah that's what I throw out to anyone what we do is we spend a lot of money and time on creating popular open search projects we do like chaining act we have Community stuff we write about react native We Do videos about we go to conferences and not me personally but again especially and Jamin will go give talks and stuff we do the

long thing so that when you're in company y um and your boss goes you know we're thinking about switching react native and we used to do Native Native uh so what's you know can does anyone have any does anyone know anyone or we need to do a search and then an engineer who uses ignite or one of our open source projects or listens to our content they say well this is one place react or infinite red that's supposed to be the best and that's that's how we get stuff but the problem is that's a whole bunch of money like we we you spend uh you

know I don't know I'm making this number up but it's not a reasonable will you spend a hundred thousand dollars on your open star project uh no well then I guess you're gonna buy Google ads or whatever yeah well yeah I mean yeah yeah I I'm a big fan I'm a big fan of what y'all doing and it shows too um uh one uh yeah Elliot has a great question Jamin also too goes a long-term Viewpoint is one of our core foundational principles um so I love that um last question here for Todd um and then we can wrap it up here I've seen you

know people get pushed back recently by going to conferences some leaders saying that conference attendees conference test is useless and they're on the job training is much more important what should that Dev do to go to sell a conference to managers and execs that's a good question well I mean the reason you go to conference now of course you know a lot of like we have a lot of great speakers and they they have interesting things to say and you can talk to a matchbox and that stuff's great and you can meet all of us and one thing about our Commerce is entirely manned by

senior software engineers uh which is really expensive but most conferences the people you interact with in Commerce know nothing about the subject matter wiereas we we all do so any one of the people who are like the staff I guess someone you could talk to about stuff um but that kind of stuff talking to people but the people you meet our conference very specifically is in the armory in Portland in the Pearl District of downtown Portland and the Armory is set up where it's basically just an Atrium it's multiple level Atrium we can do up to 500 people there and then it has a large

theater but the atrium no matter where you are you're within two minutes of everyone else and you constantly see people I Remember Loving conferences when they were small but when they got big you would be at some Conference Center it'd take 20 that's a whole bunch of money like we we you spend uh you know I don't know I'm making this number up but it's not a reasonable will you spend a hundred thousand dollars on your open star project uh no well then I guess you're gonna buy Google ads or whatever yeah well yeah I mean yeah yeah I I'm a big fan I'm a

big fan of what y'all doing and it shows too um uh one uh yeah Elliot has a great question Jamin also too goes a long-term Viewpoint is one of our core foundational principles um so I love that um last question here for Todd um and then we can wrap it up here I've seen you know people get pushed back recently by going to conferences some leaders saying that conference attendees conference test is useless and they're on the job training is much more important what should that Dev do to go to sell a conference to managers and execs that's a good question well I mean the

reason you go to conference now of course you know a lot of like we have a lot of great speakers and they they have interesting things to say and you can talk to a matchbox and that stuff's great and you can meet all of us and one thing about our Commerce is entirely manned by senior software engineers uh which is really expensive but most conferences the people you interact with in Commerce know nothing about the subject matter whereas we we all do so any one of the people who are like the staff I guess someone you could talk to about stuff um but that kind

of stuff talking to people but the people you meet our conference very specifically is in the armory in Portland in the Pearl District of downtown Portland and the Armory is set up where it's basically just an Atrium it's multiple level Atrium we can do up to 500 people there and then it has a large theater but the atrium no matter where you are you're within two minutes of everyone else and you constantly see people I Remember Loving conferences when they were small but when they got big you would be at some Conference Center it'd take 20 minutes to walk across the center you might see

one person in the hall maybe twice maybe and so because you're just like for two full days and three days if you're in the workshops um you're just constantly seeing people even the most um you know the most shy person is gonna have much more of an opportunity to make a connection and we actively one of the things I wanted to do is I like said look one of the reasons I didn't like to go to the conference I was never one of the cool kids jamon's a cool kid dance really cool kid I'm not a cool kid um and so I would spend my

time inspecting a potted plant um and so one of the things we did is all of our Engineers looked for people expecting a pod plant and we would go up and we would worst case scenario we would just talk to them ourselves best case scenario where you would connect them up with someone else because once they made that connection they had a great time yeah well we did not want to be like it's a cool kid conference that everyone else to watch yeah um I I very much did not like that and um it's funny even the smallest industries that don't really matter you'll have

the cool kids and they think they're great it's like okay yeah um uh no and and yeah I think I think small conferences I think small conferences are great you know speakers like big conferences because we like speaking from a lot of people but I think really where the magic happens is in a small conferences right um and and um I'll tell you this Elliot too I would tell your manager so I've never talked I've never not talked to somebody after conference and they have not been energized about their work after they go to accomplishment I've had not one person go nah that sucked I

hate I I don't want to go back to work I've never heard that it's holy that was awesome I can't wait to get back to work and part of it's a vacation from your cubicle if you're unfortunate 100 100 yeah um all right last question Todd as we wrap up here I end this question wi th everybody um so we had this the show's called guidance counselor 2.0 because we had guidance counselors in middle school high school and college but now as adults we don't really have them per se um what would be your biggest piece of career advice to your younger self biggest piece

of career advice well I'll I'll talk about what I did when I was younger as opposed to what I did because I'm not gonna I'm 51 I'm not gonna go back to 25 and do what I did 51 and it's gonna work um that's just that was a different person um I was an annoying little person but um you know what I always did was real simple I would just always show up with more done than everyone else I was at this one job and uh some of the people listening me know the story but um it was one job and I was just doing

a proof of concept another person was kind of I was at that time was a front-end engineer uh web and I was doing a proof of concept so I could have just done the perfect Concept in the console or whatever but I made a nice little GUI for it and uh the boss at the time said they started calling it he's all he said well let's see what you know can you add that Todd's little app that's what he called my little GUI so this was not the product this was just a GUI I was testing a full text search I was testing out various

full text search engine at that time and I made a nice GUI for it was somewhat designed and that kind of stuff and then it just became like well you know Todd's little app already does a lot of this can't we just start adding to Todd's little app and then Todd's little app became the actual website and I was um yeah because the the one we were building didn't exist and top level app did and so existing beats not existing I've heard yeah um so and that's just a case of me just you know especially things that people can see and touch because it's a

lot of back-end engineers and front Engineers but more so backenders we'll you know say all that stuff doesn't matter like here's the unfortunate truth I'm sorry to say but people expect everything to actually work the way it's supposed to what they notice is what things they touch and see uh and and they just expect the email to go through now I I've been a back engineer and I know how hard that is sure um but people don't care about stuff so you put a little you put a little something in front of them that they can touch and see and typically anything is more than

most people do which is nothing yeah and yeah I just kept on kept I just kept on keeping on to be honest so that I'm not I'm I'm not kidding you Todd that is literally my post on LinkedIn that's gonna go out in 30 minutes today my post today is literally just about showing up it's just showing up and what does that look like just being present being engaged and giving a little bit more than you did the day before that's it yeah well just in here like when I interview I interview I do the first interview for everyone who applies for company and um

you know I don't want people who interview well and so one of the things I do is I talk to him and I say hey look interviewing sucks it sucks for you it sucks for me I don't want to do it I mean no one wants to do it and my job is to make this as as low anxiety inducing as possible and also to give you so much give you the opportunity to be the best you are so what I do is if they do make a pass me and my my interview is more uh culture fit and then we send them on to

people who because I like why test them technically if they're not someone who would even match your culture right um but I I assume they get past me and um and I send them on again which is the next in the chain I say I'm going to be your Advocate during this process so I want you to ask me questions and I'm going to give you suggestions like when you talk to you and who's doing a technical test you should do x y and z um let me know if you're struggling or whatever let me know if you have any particular anxieties I'll tell lik

e hey Julian you know try not to do this because well and so they have this Advocate me throughout the process and I'm my position is now good cop uh as I were but uh the reason you do that is because you want them to form at their very best you're like wow it seems like you're just artificially helping them of course I'm artificially helping them that's how what you do in work like we we have a motto don't do hard things alone um and we're serious about it and that's why Jamie and I did sales calls today together if we I had to do

it by myself you wouldn't be interviewing me right now um I'd be watching you on LinkedIn wishing I had a good job um so so yeah that's uh my point I don't know what my point is I don't know what your question was um if career advice to your younger self you should we were talking about the show oh yeah just just oh yeah so when I give these interviews and stuff it's you know just show up and um just try to it's hard especially hard for developers a lot of us are on the autistic Spectrum which is totally cool um and a lot of

us are shy or have anxiety I have two anxiety disorders which I'm treated for so I I totally get it but just try to just try to do something other than just sit there like a robot um because for us we do take the time to try to get to know people yeah like most companies don't and and we always compare ourselves like we always say okay I went to an interview or I did doesn't matter what you do and then you compare yourself to kind of like what you deserve like I did a good job I deserved against the job and you may be

absolutely correct but you have to reverse yourself think about the person this person's interviewing 10 people yeah you may be great and you may deserve the job but there may be three people that were awesome and so of course they're going to go with them um so the problem for the the person applying is they don't know you know what their competition is but but it's it is it is something where for if yo u're playing at us be yourself I tell people this I go I can't tell I think period be yourself yeah well even though it's harder the teacher said it's very hard

to do yeah sure we're social creatures and we like to project uh an image of ourselves but you're right yeah if people are themselves and they listen when I describe how we are they can self we've had people say this probably isn't a good fit for me um which is a nice way of saying I couldn't stand Todd when I interviewed with them but uh but you know if I'm really honest with them and I kind of describe the company um I tell them like look just if it's not the right fit please don't continue on because if it's not right they fit you're just

gonna get fired yeah three months so save yourself time and I don't it's hard for me to tell if you're lying so I'm just gonna tell you the truth and let you self evaluate I like that I like that awesome well Todd thanks for hanging out man stay on real quick backstage so I can say bye to you but um for everybody who tuned in today thank you so much it's great to see you all uh tomorrow uh 9 30 a.m Central I have my guy Emmett so Emmett um he's a great dude has his third job in a year and a half due to

the economy um he was out of work for junior Dev was out of work for nine to 12 months um and he almost left Tech altogether um and to go back to health care um and working in the hospitals and he found a job because of Twitter and because of his networking so we're going to talk about it tomorrow with him at 9 30 a.m Central um but again Todd thanks for joining me man I appreciate it so nice to meet you please don't cancel me you say what that's how you know every interview please don't cancel me please don't cancel me yeah um but

y'all y'all have y'all a great one go connect with Todd go connect with infinite red check out chain react conference um and now uh I feel like infinite red now is I feel like guidance counselor 2.0 is an infinite red podcast now that I've had t he the big three on the show so you all have a good one we'll see you