people and values w/ ben pyle, cto of curantis

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Those of you, for those of you who said, I keep saying that there's a CTO who hired somebody on my on my show. I did. I did. I hired him off the show. So, let's talk about tonight. Here's here. This is like full reference here. Like this is a reference for me, like a testimonial. Talk about this community and talk about like what you see as a manager. Because I want to encourage other people to like comment and engage. Yeah. So for me, I hire almost specifically on attitude and aptitude. Like those are my two things. Are you good, man? Yeah, are you a good human?

Can you work in a team? Do you have good attitude and do you have good attitude? And so I won't mention it in my name unless he joins and says I can. But he hit me up. I don't know, like, two days after we did one of these. It wasn't this, but it was another show you and I did. And I always offer, I do this, I offer anyone's to hit me up on Twitter, LinkedIn. I will give you as much time as I can to help you out because it is hard. Navigating the tech job market, tech life in general. He hit me up.

We spent an hour going through his homemade serverless legend of Zelda, finding farming and weapons and regen. My kids would have loved it. We did. We spent an hour and I asked him at the end of the session. I said, how do you not have a job? Like he was demonstrating these skills that I'm like, there is so much detail thought. Care. Anyway, come to find out like a month and a half, two months later, we had an opening and the very first thing I did was I reached out to him. I said, hey, would you like to talk to my engineering manager? And because he was willing just to say, hey, I just want to reach out.

And that to me, I didn't even interview him when he came formally through. I was like, I already spent an hour with him on a tech budget. I didn't know what he could do. I didn't know what he could do. Don't worry about it. So no, I would encourage anybody that's on here, anybody with hiring authority that you see them, if they don't respond to you through DMs, it's their loss, not yours. So. Well, try again. I mean, I tell people, I doubt about you, but like you got to pretty much DM me like three or four times. And I don't mean that to be mean, but like...

Yeah, it depends. Like it really does. Like some people are really good naturally at staying on top of their inbox, right? Because you've got like, I mean, I got LinkedIn, I got Twitter, I got Instagram, all these inboxes. Other people, not so much, right? So yeah, it depends. I agree with you. Don't be made of these crashes. It's their loss. But at some level, yeah, if you've tried and you've reached out and you've genuinely come with like a, I just want to learn more. I think I can help you. Yeah. I think most people are going to be solid about getting back. I love that.

I love that. Um, Ben, you want to give a quick intro about yourself real quick? Oh real quick. I want to give intro. I want to give intro. I want to give a shout out to my brands. I got to do a partner real quick that conference. I'm going there in two weeks and all. You're coming down. Yeah. Speaking. Yeah. Um, so very excited to be down there. They, they are the official coffee sponsor, but I'm currently on a cleanse. I'm down 10 pounds though, Ben. Down. How are you down 10 pounds? I'm 10, 10 pounds. That's awesome. 10 pounds in eight days. Yeah, yeah, my my body's very happy So I'm not drinking, huh?

Spindra those are good. I'm doing a spin Jeff right now Spindra business sponsors show that'll be lit though But that conference they do have coffee beans check it out But I'll be down there in two weeks if you are in the text area and you can drive highly recommend it's gonna be a good crew there Also for the premier sponsor render ATL listen render ATL is a mix of like South by Southwest Coachella It's in Atlanta June 12th through 14th this year In my opinion, the reason why I am sponsored by that conference in render, if there are two conferences that I would literally try to go to in your year, it's that conference in render, just to be totally frank with you.

So, so again, check out render. It's great. I don't know if we create a code. I got to talk to Justin for render GC 2.0. I think it's you a few bucks off your ticket for render. If that does not work, let me know. And I'll get that fixed. So anyways, all that being said, Ben, over to you, man. Give a quick background about yourself real fast. Apparently, I'm the Rust and Lambda guy. Now, I'm just kidding. I'm a techy guy, so I've been doing tech for 25 years. I remember mainframe. I remember client server. I've been through all the journeys. I'm now really a big AWS Cloud guy.

Currently a CTO at a healthcare startup. And lucky enough to work with about 40, 45, really talented individuals, QA, tech, data engineers, the whole nine yards. And so my passions are around the intersection of people and technology. I just think that technology is really much more of a people business than techy people think it is. And so anything I can do, I love to write. I wanted to be a writer and I was a kid. I wanted to write fantasy fiction. It's funny, I got a bunch of stories in my attics. Now I don't write fantasy fiction. I just write content around AWS and serverless.

Yeah. Okay, so that's what we have to do. Kind of the same thing. I love it. So people like, how do you write so much? And I'm like, it's fun. And it's kind of what we'll talk about today, I think, is like find what you're passionate about and it's easy to do the work. Yeah, absolutely. So our title says people and values, you know, again, Ben kind of came with two really good areas. And so Ben, where do you want to just start it out at people or the values part? You know, I don't know. I kind of go with, I look inward first. I'm always an inward person.

If something's wrong, I'm always looking at me first. I know everybody does that. But when I looked and kind of went through this and just full transparency, I got some help this fall. I hired some executive coaching to help me out through this journey. And so defining it. Did it work? Because I think a lot of people are like, oh, executive coaching, it can be lame. You got to go. Take away the executive part, because I don't think it's just for, I don't look at it as me being executive. The act of coaching, I thought, was really worthwhile. Now what I would tell you is, find the coach you jam with.

The coach that I ended up finding, like super serendipitously, we just jammed. And then it was kind of in the evaluation of, do this person have the same values and the same thought product, can they challenge me to be better? It is a very introspective process. But if you put in the homework, you'll have some radical change. I know I did. And I'd advocate for you to try it if you're interested. Yeah, absolutely. I actually, when I was at my last company, we hired, I was a part of the leadership team in our office. And we were given, which was really cool, like four sessions with an executive coach.

And I absolutely loved mine. Absolutely. It was great. I highly recommend. So, one of the things we talked about backstage, Ben, was, you know, values and you're not kind of gotten this conversation, right? When we were about to go live and I say, let's just continue the conversation about, you kind of get to the point of your life. And I've talked about this where like, there's only so many titles you can chase. Yeah. There's kind of only so much money you can chase. You know, I, you know, obviously reading tech money, big tech money is, is, is, is the, is not the norm. So, you know, but you and I kind of were chatting about, you know what, like we get to a point where it's like, money's gotta be there, but it's not everything anymore.

No, there's a really interesting book written by Dan Pink. It's called Drive. And it talks about what motivates knowledge workers. And it's a really, really interesting psychology study. If anyone wants to go read it, it's been out for years. It's a really good book. I'm not like a big book pusher, so I don't think that I'm gonna throw like 30 more books. I just, when I read this, when I was younger, it really just codified for me that I wasn't crazy because I really believe that people operate from these intrinsic places. And when you find the way that you wanna work and the way that you see the world and it lines up with the work you do and who you work with, like everything just kind of fits like a puzzle piece.

If you're jumping from job to job to job and aren't chasing dollars, you've probably got an incongruence of who you are what you're wanting to do. And I think when you find those things, and I'm not necessarily even talking about like company, right? It's really the work you do that you find meaningful. If you really find meaning in being a quality engineer that goes to the nth degree on making sure that people like me do our job, like you will be a fantastic quality engineer. And if it lines up with your desire to be pragmatic or whether it's to be honest or whether it's whatever it is, you'll find a lot more meaning and happiness than what you're doing versus if you're that type of person, you're trying to be a creative designer, where somebody's always being like loose and it just won't match.

But I feel like if you do that work and a coach can help, because the way I told my coach, when I told her, I said, she said, why are you hiring me? And I said, you know, if I had all the answers and I knew how to do it, I'd already be there. And like you kind of first have to have this moment where it's like I don't have the answers and I feel like there's something more Well, and I want to I want to chime in too because you know I hired this nutritionist who I absolutely love and she is remote. So if you are looking it's like 225 a month she's fantastic and She she asked me she goes why why are you doing this?

She goes, why are you doing this? She goes, because my husband is my worst client. She goes, my husband tried to do the cleanse that you're on killing the last four days and said, fuck it. Right? And she was like, but why are you doing it? I said, she goes, are you doing it? Because Jackie made you do it. I go, no, I go, I'm doing this because I need to do it. Cause one of my challenges in 2024 was spiritual, emotional and mental health first. And, and, and so, and I've been able to stick to it much better this time because it's about me.

And I think for those of you who are going through life and maybe are doing this for other people or doing things for other people or you wanna go in a tech because your parents were in tech and you feel like you need to go in tech but your passion is maybe something else. I wanna encourage you that you really need to chase down the things you really want to do because that will tell you this, resentment is a hell of a drug. Yeah. And that we're building. So again, finding your why against Simon Sinek, where the book about it, I get it, but it just comes back to values, like what really drives you and Ben and I are chatting, like if you want the cars and the boats and the trips to Ibiza, yes, sounds great, you can do that, there's no, but for me, what I realized, that's not me, right?

I wanna be on the farm for the most part, I hate people, it's the ongoing joke, right? I just wanna be on the farm and hang out and have a really good deep community, but I've only realized that really over the last year or two. Well, we were talking before, I think there's this period of time when you're like 35 to 50, and sometimes it's attached to kids, sometimes it's not. When you've built up enough book of life to be able to look backwards and go, man, I tried all these things, but that didn't quite get me where I wanted to get to. Well, how do I do that?

I think first, when we're gonna wanna get to, like what does it feel like when I'm having my best day? Right, what are those things? What are those emotions? How does that touch me? And then kind of working backwards from what kind of roles will I'll be happy in? Because I promise you don't have to make a half a million dollars to be happy in life. Like, I mean, there's countless examples of where that's not out there to where you could have a totally fulfilling and happy life. And I would argue that my dad passed a year ago, like almost to the day, and his life was fulfilled because he loved what he did.

He was a geologist. Ben, I lose you? Ben Ben, did I lose you? Ben come back. Can people see Ben? Hello? Hello? Ben, I'm gonna kick you out here. I'm gonna I'm gonna kick from studio. Well, since Ben since Ben's internet froze, can can you also hear me? Please please comment if y'all can still hear me. He's just taking an app. Yeah, Ben just fell asleep. BIN just fell asleep. uh Alex says deep community makes everything better absolutely. Yeah, but he confers we see Ben Okay. Alright. I kicked him out come back Ben come back I just texted Ben. I just texted Ben to to come back.

Yep. I know Everything frozen my and Bueller. Yes. No, yes. Okay. Well as we're talking about and I'll keep wrapping on this Because he was on a roll. I know I know he was on a roll refresh my page. I can hear you All right, hopefully Ben can come back in. But we were talking about essentially that Ben and I kind of got on this conversation because we realized that at the end of the day, you could only go so far with the things that you want and putting family and community and friends in the forefront can really, really make things go a lot further.

And you'll be able much more content, right? So all right, here he is. All right. So let's see how this works. So I've got a full gig up and down and haven't lost internet connection 13 years I've owned this house maybe once and now I'm tethered to this like archaic iPhone 9. So let's see how this goes. Okay. Is your internet go out? It just did legitimately like it's out. It has not gone out in like 14, 15 years like once or twice. That's crazy. That's crazy. Anyway, so we're not losing you. We're not dropping off. We were basically saying just you were talking your dad dine.

Yeah. Almost to this day. Yeah. No. I mean, the thing for me, I watched him. And again, you kind of, he knew who he was and he knew what fulfilled me. He wanted to be a geologist. He was a geologist for 60 years. And, you know, he loved his family, he loved his church, he loved his neighbors. He was just, he was satisfied, right? Like there was fulfillment in what he did. And And it's kind of like the older we get, we kind of want to look back and go, man, I want that. Personally, I want that, right? I want to get to the end and go, man, I feel like I use my time well because the older you get, the older your children get, the more you realize and times you're, times it, right?

Time is your coin. And it's interesting that you said that because that's kind of my theme of my blog today is finding, join the inconvenience because what I've realized is that for me, this is just some honesty here on a Tuesday morning for you. I love what I do. My goal is for every single developer in the States to know who I am. That's not going to happen tomorrow. It's not going to happen next week. It's not going to happen next year. So my thing is, is that I love the process so much that I want the process to eventually come to an and then very soon.

So I'm always looking to the end of the day or the end of the week or the end of the month. But what I've realized is that really the last year or so of my life has kind of gone by pretty quickly. And I get grumpy. Like I kind of complained to my wife with this cleanse. I was like, you have to drink so much water. I was like, I'm tired of drinking all this water because it takes time for my hands being on the keys. And that's when my wife kind of looked at me, she was like, really? And that sounds kind of ridiculous when I say that loud.

And so like, like just, just enjoying every moment as much as you feasibly can. And that's about working on counseling too, because I think a lot of us are just like, you know, I want that senior developer title or that stator developer title or that CTO title. Yeah, which, you know, I always ask why. And I've written about this a bunch. You know, the why do you want that if you want to influence, if you want to be making your own decisions, if you want autonomy, if you want the ability to get better and grow, You don't need the title to do those things. Now if you want to chase dollars, right?

Absolutely. There's arguments to be made principal. There's nothing wrong with chasing dollars. There is nothing. 100% like... No, no, no. No, 100% nothing. No, absolutely. But if you don't break down why you want that thing, another really interesting thing, I'd have it always say, if you don't enjoy the process or the journey, you're not going to enjoy the destination. Because you're gonna spend more time working to get where you want to get Then the time that you actually spend that you get there and when you get there if you didn't enjoy all it took to get to that thing Because it was on purpose Then you're gonna be empty right and so if you understand why and so when we go back to values I always thought it was mokey.

Like I'm not gonna lie I'm I'm like one of my one of my values is authenticity Like I'm telling you straight up. I thought it was hokey Like I only have one version of Ben like it's the same one my kids outside my window right now my wife shall tell you like he's this all the time and Rakesh and Logan are here too they could tell you I thought the values were hokey and when I got older and I did them and I was like they're not hokey they're powerful and why so if you think about your values is like Your thing that you hold up decisions relationships Interactions up against like I mean I list mine off selflessness authenticity, creativity, empathy, pragmatism, most everybody that knows me would know those resonate.

If I'm in a situation where I'm being asked to be selfish, I'm probably going to feel a little icky about it. Or if I'm in a position where I've got to not be who I am, I'm going to feel icky about it. When you start to feel icky about things, you start to have these incongruences, and these incongruences drive you to make decisions that ultimately I don't think you're going to be be happy about because they don't match your line. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like that's really pretty deep for a Tuesday. But like if you followed me in the fall, this is the work that I put in with this coach who I mean I'm happy to share her out.

She's fantastic. But like it's been eye opening for me and it's something that I would have encouraged my 25 year old self. Like it had been a, I'm not going to take no for an answer. You're going to go do this because this will make your life better if you understand Yes, now versus, you know, with 20 years on your bill. Yeah, absolutely. Joyce comes in here goes, I'm in this situation right now Taylor, finding joy in the inconvenience of learning at New School. Yeah, again, right. So like Joyce, I tell you, like, it sucks learning new skill, right? Like it sucks. And for me, it's like, but find joy in the fact that you have the ability to learn new skill.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, it's just huge. I've been open. Like I've been learning Rust for six months. I feel like an idiot some days. Like everybody's like, you have the rest and land the guy. And I'm happy that I'm sure, because I love the language. It is funny. And I believe in these things, but if you knew how hard I worked, like I forget to say, the first thing I can grab from my right hand, the rest programming language, like it sits right next to my keyboard. It's been a challenge. And I feel like I'm more on some days, but like I love it.

And I know why I'm trying to do it. So I don't mind being, I don't mind feeling like I'm, you know, never going to get there. Yeah. So as a freelance dev, I found out that I love serving people. I get a natural high scene. My clients face into years of joy when I've captured their call to action. Yeah. Great. Why, right? That's your why. I love that. Makes for not so much work when you're doing that. There's just fun. Don't go. Okay. There's been a lot of rust and go chat just in general on the interwebs lately. So I love it. I'm trying to push the narrative.

I think it's worth your time as a developer to learn those skills. I love it. Yeah, just based off what I'm seeing too, I think so as well. So let's talk about values, talk about people, kind of switching our hats a little bit and going to kind of more of a leadership cap. And I can't believe like we're already running out of time. So let's touch on briefly, man. Getting people where they want to go, I think the saying is like the best leaders can basically discover people's abilities and take you there where they never thought they would be able to go. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, so leadership is a skill, right? I mean a lot of people talk about this and I know it means a leadership expert. I haven't written any books, I haven't done any talks on it. I can just tell you from experience. It's a skill, it's something you've got to practice. The trick that I use, this is my leadership hack. I'm going to give you my secret because I don't believe secrets should be secrets. Learn people. the trick is know who you work with and know who's working for you and know who you're responsible for. I'm not saying you need to know that Susie has to take Jimmy to class at two o'clock every Thursday and Billy has to do that.

I'm not saying get in there very personal details. Obviously the more intimate you get with people the more you're gonna get to know them. But start to learn your people and learn the people that are around you. What do they like to do? Where do their eyes light up? What projects make their eyes light up? What assignments make them come back and ask more questions. When somebody doesn't ask me to follow up questions, they either already know it, so they're not growing, or they hate it, and they just don't want to talk to me about it. So, find those things that make people's eyes light up, and when you find those things, what I try to personally do is I try to put people in positions to where they naturally already want to go there.

So, if you take your Y, your values, this is the hard part of it being a leader, which is why being a leader, if you just want to be CTO, get ready for dealing with a lot of like exponential challenges because it gets more complicated because you need to learn the why for all your people that are directly attached to you. And so once you learn their why and what they delight in, you put them in positions where you can follow the S's is the way I like to call it. And following the S's basically means if I want to go from Dallas to Nashville, but my My wife would love to make a stop in Vicksburg, right?

Which is down to I-20, kind of not on the way, but sort of. I'd rather go through Little Rock. You know, but I really want to go to Nashville. Guess what? We're going to Vicksburg. Because she will go to Vicksburg and then I can get her to Nashville. My end goal is Nashville. I don't need Little Rock. I can go to Vicksburg. So when you learn what people really want where they want to get to, you follow their And it's kind of one of those things where the reason it makes leadership hard is if you've got this is why I don't like to have more than five six director for it's because if you've got to be this intimate with 15 people, it's extremely difficult.

And that's my opinion that I've been. Yeah, and I want to give a shout out to gun IO with this especially especially Tasia I mean like my role has already shifted a ton even being there in seven months because Tasia Is like yo you you you need to just go and do And he basically he's basically pulled me out. I'm not I don't report I don't report to anybody that report to everybody don't you love that? So and because Tasia did that because he's like listen you're just such an impact guy. He was like we can't He was like, I'm just, you just do what you got to do.

And he was like, well, you just talked to all the leadership team, you know, in terms of impact drive revenue. And he was like, you just kind of just keep doing what you're doing. And so props to, props to Tasia for just seeing that. And for me, it makes me so much more motivated. It does, doesn't it? Right? Like it makes me like, I will, I would go to war with Tasia. I would go to war with gun IO because they're letting me do what I actually want to do. And then I'm driving revenue back to the business because of that. Well, I just, I get quick example.

There's a guy on this call, another one I'll call out. He has a passion and architecture around saving the organization money. He loves tracking finances of how much we stand really loud. He does. He's really good at it. He's fantastic at it. And like, open that world up to him, we saved 25% last year in our cloud bill by one guy working with two other people. Yeah, and his inertia got them moving and 25% of cloud bill all because he, expressed to me and me as a leader just said, I'm going to take you from here. And now you're going to go over here, right?

Like when you do that, it's unlocking. You try to do that though. Like when you sit with your folks, do you like, what are you passionate about? Like what do you want to ask it that way? Right. But like you try to play like, yep, I try to put like with, I've got like, I've got people that are really, really detailed engineers who like to work on, like to be varying control of what they do and data projects are great for them. I've got other engineers that are less detail oriented, but highly creative, right? Awesome. And like strategic tech roles, our tech kind of games are the possible type stuff, right?

Then you got people that are like, they'll punch a rivet and an airplane and every rivet will be perfectly lined up from here to in. Awesome at QA, awesome at code reviews. You know what I mean? Yeah. You learn, yeah, absolutely do. You're putting your best players in the best position to succeed, which is why I constantly say software as a team sport, because it is. That's one thing that I miss about having direct reports. This is the first time I haven't had direct reports in six, seven years. Sure. Is the exes and o's of it. Now, my beer league ice hockey team gives me that itch a little bit.

Because me and my brother, my brother is a crazy good leader as well. And he's really good with exes and o's. I'm really good with exes and o's. He's an offensive coordinator and I'm the defensive coordinator on our barely ice hockey team And we have like a hell of a team right now And so like like for us like like I think putting people and knowing where people strings are because I did that in my last company Like okay, so and so is not really good at cold-calling clients like that Like that doesn't we don't need to put that in here But they're really good at taking care of Ben Once I bring Ben into the organization and so really putting those pieces in and both from a technical side Like you said and obviously not to the side like a staffing side can make a world of a difference and from a skill set standpoint Here's the encouragement I give you is that you're listening.

It's like you may not be naturally gifted at certain things It's totally fine. Like I'm not everybody wants to get on live whatever a YouTube LinkedIn whatever on Totally fine doesn't mean that I'm a better leader or a worse leader because I want to that the show that you need to do, you've got to cultivate, grow, practice, seek guidance, figure out what those are. And then it's like anything else. You're not good at rest the first time you do it, but after six months, you're better at it, right? After 12 months, 25 years later, you're on a talk show hanging out with Taylor and talking about stuff.

Right, like, I mean, it is, like, but it's a skill, but it's a, if you know why you want to get there, if you have a passion for helping people be their best, leadership is a good path for you. Right? Because that's generally what it's about. But if you have a passion for writing the most performant, tiny piece of software that never bugs and never goes down, it's going to be really tough to also lead people. Because when you're leading, it's tough to be in those weeds. And so there's a balance. It's kind of like that age old thing. You can't be everything. You've kind of got to figure out who you want to be and where you want to go.

Well, and that's, and I've been kind of on that search too. You and you comes in excellent conversation guys. It really works. She's and I've got lots of lots of folks from the home. Yeah, I got four people on today. You're popular. Awesome. This is good stuff. I like it. Any last thoughts before I hit you with my last four rapid fire questions. You know, I would anybody that I mean, I just first off, it's to me, it's invest in yourself. like I know you say that a lot like even when times are lean and times are good it's almost like the market principle of buy stock or buy market every month regardless of whether it's up or down right you invest in yourself constantly you'll never be sad at the investment you made in yourself it will pay off dividends and second of all if you want to be a leader if you're if you aspire to do that based upon who you you think you are and want to get to find a mentor I I mean, I find somebody that can help you find a sounding board.

I've got seven, eight, nine, 10, 12 people in like concentric rings that I can, you know, throw my and I know who again, know your people. I know who I can throw like hairbrained ideas and I know who I can throw like really well vetted ideas and it matters. No, those are my tips and just keep at it. What's your biggest piece of advice for job seekers right now? I do want to do a little tactical real quick as somebody who does a seat. Yeah. Networking and content. And so again, back to attitude and aptitude. I'm not asking anybody to break their neck. I don't need to see 90 hours of commitment.

I'm a big believer in sustainable pace. 40, 45 hours. Like we can't get the work done in 44 hours. We've got too much work. So content and attitude and aptitude. If I can see that you're engaged in what you're doing and you're passionate about what you're doing and you're getting better in public, like the gentleman that I told you about at the very beginning. It was obvious to me that he wanted to be a developer and was going to be a good developer. That makes the hiring process easy. It's not foolproof. You're going to bat like a major baseball player. You're going to hit 250 on a good year.

And it's difficult. Yeah, content, networking, get out in front of people and just keep getting better in public. And then you've doubled down on content too. Can you give a quick testimonial story about what has done for you so far? Yeah, so 18 months ago, or maybe not even, like 14, 15 months ago, I had this epiphany that I wanted to give back and I wanted to get congruent with my values, which I didn't even know my values were at the point. I thought I wanted to get congruent with them. I write an article a week, I'll probably go to twice a month this year, I dropped 100,000 words last year, I'd never been on anything video related.

I've got, I don't know, 100,000 views of my content across platforms, which is not a ton to some. It's a ton to me when I had a hundred viewers my very first month. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I've been on podcasts. I've had opportunities to join the AWS Community Builders program. I've got friends now across the entire globe that I met at re-invent. I'm a part of this other community called Believe in Serverless that I got joined up on. It's changed my perspective on it. So if you have any interest, like video writing, just open source, helping with questions on Stack Overflow, AWS repost, just get out and do it.

It'll help your career. It'll also help you as a human if you really want to be out there and connected. Absolutely. So it's been tremendous. Go for it. No, no, go ahead. Go ahead. Fish up. No, no, I'll say it's been tremendous. I know you preach it all the time, but it's opened up. I'm considering I just started the back nine in my career. I just got a soda and a hot dog getting on the back nine. And so it's opened up these next nine holes for me. And so I'm excited about. That's awesome man. All right, first thing, if money was the same, what would you do outside of tech for your job?

I already know the answer. So I'd be a professional golfer. But if I couldn't go back to doing that, honestly, like my lifestyle, if I had my kids And my life wasn't different just the money. I'd go be a PGA pro and help people go better at golf. I would teach. That's awesome. I'd love to teach. If I didn't have kids at all, I'd go to the floor. Who's that PGA pro that like qualified and killed it recently? Oh my blog. Yeah, my blog. So my kids have lessons, not today, because it's like 10 degrees, but every Tuesday with a coach down the road. And he has the best time with them every week.

And if money wasn't an issue, to be able to kind of teach people about golf, watch them get better, now that'd be where it's at. I love that. This kind of goes hand in hand, but what do you do outside of work that brings you joy? So my why is my family? My family's engagement of choice is golf. All four of us by golf. I have a golf bar, it's part of the lifestyle. I don't invest in cars, like my two cars are collectively 27 years old. I love that. Whatever gone for. I had a golf bar though. Yeah, it's nice. And the four of us go play.

And no, it's my family. That's cool. 100%. What is, what's your favorite Texas barbecue place you've eaten at? The one that comes off my green egg. Really? I like my own stuff. So here's how far is Austin from where you live? three hours. I guess it's time to also I could stop by and say hey I'm not like so here's here's here's kind of the problem I'm anybody everybody from Texas closure ears I like my Tennessee barbecue man I like my pork and I like Martin's Martin's Pat Martin stuff is delicious. Are you really redneck tacos or it's a response yeah I love running but no I you know so Cadillac in Addison has got some pretty good brisket, pecan lodge down in a deep L M has got some good stuff.

Heart eight is fine. I mean, but again, like, I like pork. I love it. I do too. I do too. It's because briskets mainly Texas, right? Yeah, I think maybe Kansas City too. I take real quick. Sorry for relief. So I had a friend when I was in Nashville, we went to Texas barbecue joint, it was down in Franklin. I don't know if it's still there. I forget the name of it, but he ordered the barbecue plate. And they brought out beef rib beef sausage and brisket and they brought it in front of him and he said here's your barbecue plate and he looks at him he says you know I ordered barbecue and the guy's like this is barbecue and he says no no no I ordered barbecue like pork and pulled pork he says no this is Texas barbecue we don't serve pulled pork here he was yeah he's totally embarrassed but it was uh it was like you know what i always have to go to to not Franklin's, Terry Black's when I'm in Austin, always have to go Terry Black's.

And then when I spoke in Kansas City at KCDC, I went to Slaps Barbecue and that was not real. That's good. That was unreal. It was funny, I lived in Noensville for years when I was in Nashville. And one Tuesday night we went to go to the Martins, which in fact the original Martins was right there on Noensville. There's Noensville, yeah, yeah, yeah. We actually played, so our hockey tournament, so our jersey and team picture are hung up in that Martins, by the way. Oh, that's cool. So you got back at the original. That was there recently. They're back at the original or early year ago.

Anyway, so we went and couldn't get in. Triple D was sitting there filming Diner's drive-ins down. Oh, you see. Yeah, it was like back in the early days. And it was kind of ticked. Cause I really wanted barbecue, but then I was happy because he was getting this, getting his props for an amazing job. That's awesome. Last question. This is great. Yeah, big, last question. What's your biggest piece of career advice to young Ben? Young man. Biggest piece is find out who you are first because it'll impact the way that you engage with others. I'm quick. I can sometimes be quick to rush in things.

It's kind of double the same thing. But that's not ultimately who I am. It's just kind of what my default is. And I think know who you are. Because it'll change the relationships you have and changing the relationships will change your course. More than, notice I didn't say learn a skill. I learned as many skills as I want, and I don't regret any of that, but know who you are, because that's the one piece that only you can figure out. Yeah, I love that. Cool. All right, y'all, well, Ben, your phone's about to go puts on you from a connection perspective. So y'all have a good one.

We appreciate y'all. And we'll see you all tomorrow. I'm catching up with Tim Cheetle. He's a VP of engineering at a company called Bendel. So excited to catch up with him tomorrow. Y'all have a great one, Ben. Thank you, my friends. afterwards. I can say bye to you. Happy to have you. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful. Cause you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes and I myself rarely finished an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the app store.

I want this to be discoverable to others. And the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it, please, like right now. Unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again if you need to reach out to me at Tdastin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.