are you tired of grinding? w/reid evans, founder/consultant

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Reid let's get the people what they want man. Who are you? What do you do and we'll go from there? Sure sure sure sure hey, my name is Reid Evans. I am in the a notch in Tennessee I'll say area Taylor and I were chatting a bit ago We're kind of like not really in the Knoxville area, but I'm in the West Knoxville area anyway Let's see been doing software since the early thousands Early thousands the early thousands the early aughts. I don't know what you're supposed to call it. Yeah, the zero zeros Let's see, I did that. The backstory is I was trying to make the guitar thing work and where music wanted to be a music professor or teach composition and theory and that kind of stuff related to music.

Found out there was a pretty obvious tie into that and then learning how to code. So I was doing software development throughout that whole time and finally realized, man, you can make the software development industry, make ITB, whatever it is that you want. Correct. It's what I teach in IT a lot of times, right? So it's, you know, you kind of choose your own adventure a little bit. I guess, I guess the big thing is when out solo, I've been doing my own thing. When everyone is getting laid off, I quit my choice. So probably lots of stuff to chat about. Yeah, that's a lot.

But yeah, so that's really my story. Been doing software development for a long time. of that of three husband to a wife who is way better than I deserve. And yeah, that's me. I love it. I love it. All right. So a lot of places to begin here. Let's kind of start super high level right now. And that's just well, let's let's let's talk about the title, right? Are you tired of grinding, right? And you know, you're not talking about this backstage, I've been having a lot more conversations about this topic with a lot of people right now. Thomas, it's good to see you buddy.

Talk to me about kind of, you know, you're not chatting backstage about this. What are your thoughts on this? What are your experiences with grinding? And then we just go from there. Sure, I mean, so here's the thing. I, there were several reasons that I quit. One, there's a whole idea of this mentality that you've got to grind, you've got to do all of these things. And I mean, part of it is we talk about it in a certain, way but the words that we use sometimes can really have an effect on how we feel about things. If you, let's say you hop in your car and you hear that it's grinding, you don't just keep hitting the gas, right?

Like we, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. There's a difference in, I believe, there's a difference in grinding and doing a whole lot and being busy and working and doing something that you enjoy. There's a difference between a flow state and, oh my goodness, it's Saturday and I'm going to have to go to work in two days. I got a grind. I got to do whatever I got to be always on. And then you look up five years later and all of a sudden you don't recognize who your kids are or you're like, what's it all for? When is enough enough? And I think that the grind mentality is almost antithetical to the idea of allowing yourself to get bored and figure out what it is that you actually want to do or you're passionate about it.

that you actually want to do. All right, so you say, and then Ian, it's good to see you, buddy. It's good to see you. What? Talk about being bored, right? So I've actually thought I've had a lot. It's so funny that we're talking about this because, and again, all of this is unprompted because I don't have any questions preset. I've thought a lot about trying to become more bored. And it's very difficult. But talk about, I think, the art of being bored, I'll follow a lot of self-help, Tikki-Tokies and Instagrams. I don't read. I just follow social media. And like there's kind of in this trend about like trying to get bored, trying to calm down.

I follow a lot of creators who like are like really good at just like getting outside and not posting work content. Can you talk about the power being bored maybe, especially obviously in your career? Sure. So I didn't even realize that how much I had missed it or how you can stick, you can keep yourself busy and never have to deal with the discomfort that comes from being bored. That's very easy. There's a billion things that you could go do right now. A billion hobbies you could pick up. You're never gonna watch all of Netflix. You're never gonna watch, you know, like there's always something you could do to keep yourself from getting bored.

Right. But like it wasn't until I got very bored and realized that to sit back and think, What is it that I can do? What is it, you know, you've got the Venn diagrams, right? What is it that I enjoy doing? What is it that provides value to people? What can I get paid to do? I mean, because, you know, we all, I don't wanna say we all, most of us probably are still looking to get compensated financially for the work that we're doing. Sure. But keep in mind that there's a balance between all of those things, you know? And so by getting bored, what it allowed me to do is to say, okay, now I'm bored.

like actually proper board. And I don't mean like board for five minutes, you know, while you're waiting on a plane or whatever, but like board for like a week. And then start thinking. I don't think I could do that. It seems really, you know, everyone's like, oh well, you know what, yeah, you're just lazy. You don't have a job or whatever. It's like, I mean, I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here with the people who are potentially joining in today, But it being bored is not fun. You know, it's uncomfortable, right? And like, so I use a primary sample. So I actually got, I bought this camera.

I've been tweeting about it, right? This DJI pocket three. And you have it. It's having, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got Colin, I need to get you your intention of Colin. Colin's my boy's engineering manager up here. He goes, please take a picture. Cause this has been a dude I lost three days in. I lost this, but so the reason why I got this, And most people, yeah, to make my vlogs look better, right? But to actually get off my phone. So my wife and I, again, my wife speaks truth and I appreciate that. Sometimes I don't, but I do. And she goes, you're on your phone all the time.

And I was like, yeah, but it's my job. She goes, get off your phone. I was like, yeah, yeah, but I need to. Like I need it, I need it, right? So, yeah, so Mother's Day, we went to a restaurant, I documented, of course, that's what I do. I had my phone in my fanny pack for the first time ever because I had this. And I sat the whole lunch, not on my phone. And there were moments of boredom and I got crazy uncomfortable. I couldn't turn my phone, oh, I didn't go for my phone. I just kind of sat and looked at my wife.

That was awkward. But it was also nice because I got done with lunch and I checked my phone and I had this text messages and all that. But it was almost refreshing. Like I'm starting to try to get out of this, like being on my phone so much and get bored, like go for a walk without my phone. And you know what, it's not a coincidence. I'm starting to have better ideas about things. I think it's interesting. So I won't speak for you, but I'm curious your thoughts. You can speak for me. You can speak for me. You can speak for me. What I found is when I started doing it, it was very, very uncomfortable at first.

And then I got better at it, just like everything, right? I mean, like you preach all the time talking about networking and doing all of this other stuff. The first time you try to network with someone where you're like, hi, I do work. Do you like people who do work? You know, it's, yeah, exactly. But you get better at it. And you start learning how to do it where you don't come across sleazy, don't come across whatever. You just come across trying to have a conversation with somebody. I find that on days when I take time to be bored or to like you're talking about, to go take a walk, walking is like, that's my thing, right?

Go for a walk, go for a hike. I think if it can be in a bunch of trees, that's even better, but if not, you know, it's the sub-divisional work. Yeah. On days that I do that with no ulterior motives and my no goals, no any of that stuff, just clear my head, listen to some birds, you know, whatever, the conversations that I have after that, all right, ton better. Like I'm genuinely interested on just seeing where that they can take me. Yeah. And that, oh man, it's been remarkable the change in how I felt and the amazing conversations I've been able to have because of that.

100%. We got a few comments here. Ian comes in here. I'm the worst version of myself when I don't have a lot of things going on. I find I let myself get complacent when I don't have enough tasks to get through there. We get a time, I almost need a distress of tasks. So I take the time to play not my time. So my wife's like this, my wife's like this. My wife goes, like there's, she doesn't do well in idle, but I would say this, like Ian, like I get this for sure, but like, you know, I mean, this is called guidance counselor 2.0, so I could counsel, but like my, my experience Ian, like I think like if you can get really good at being structured in the downtime, your go time is gonna be more productive.

Let's see. How far into the week is I going? This is subbed unfair, Ian is Ian's one of the best. Like you know Ian so I even told him about besties. So what here's what I could say is that if you feel this wedding you might also Be worried about getting complacent when that's not in your DNA It's not going to happen if you're worried about getting to complacent. It's probably not going to happen So it's interesting that you say that I've been in counseling and in trying to what I've realized my counselor is I'm I'm either all or nothing, right? And I think a lot of people like that, but especially like highly driven people, it's like I'm gonna go a thousand percent or nothing, right?

And what I'm trying to, I told my counselor, I said I feel like the last 12 years of my career, I've had my foot is cemented to the gas pedal. And I can't pull off the gas. And so one thing I've been working on is being okay. like I talked about this yesterday in a Twitter space I said, with this tech commute series, I said, I'm trying to get better about being okay about having things not completed at the end of the day. And just walk away. Like you're, I'm always gonna have open ended stuff that I gotta do. And so trying to be more comfortable and trying to pull my foot off the gas a little bit.

I think that makes a ton of sense. And I'm wondering if we think about it too, a lot of what we focus on is the day at a time, right? Any decision, if you use time box a decision to one day, one week, one whatever, the time frame is arbitrary, except that my next argument is going to be that if you stretch that timeline longer, the importance on one individual day or getting something done within a specific time or judging success based on one individual small segment may not be valid at all. Let's take an example from what you were talking about with your game last night.

So you win the game, everything's good. But there wasn't zero of some. The team that lost, the team that didn't win the league learned a lot too. Now, did they get the result that they wanted? No, but maybe they learned something else about themselves and they come back next year and absolutely trounced everybody. So there's always something that you can look at. you put arbitrary timelines on when something was a success and when something wasn't. Like there were times that Amazon was filing for bankruptcy, right? There were times where they weren't trading as well. But if you take this out and look at it realistically over a long enough timeline, things look different.

I would also say that if you're currently busy and you have to stay and you are staying busy doing certain things, it's gonna be very difficult to sprint when there's something else that you really, really wanna do. Love that. just because you're staying busy doing something doesn't mean that doesn't mean that you're not keeping something else from coming in and being open to a suggestion or an idea that you hadn't even thought about because you've got your blinders on you're saying I gotta get this tasks done. Yeah, I need you to date. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. A few more comments coming in again. Keep commenting. Love this.

Any questions please let us know. Do you mean being so good at what you do to the point where you're like anticipating everything that comes up in your career. Bro, I feel this. I think it's- Reed, I'm sure you're the same way. I mean, you're saying- Man, wow. Goodness. I'm so- I'm never going to be anyone that says I'm so good at my career. Like that's just so not anything near that I would say. A younger me, my younger dumber me. No, Thomas, he's definitely being facetious here. Yeah. I would say, there's one thing to predict try to plan on what you really want to do.

And then there's another thing to sort of being open to see how things are going to flow. Because most things you can't control. So why not be open possibilities and stuff. I feel like I'm coming across like the dude from the Dovowski here a little bit. But like kind of not that, right? Like the open ideas, the open to new concepts and enjoy like the chat with the person that checks you out at the grocery store. like so one of my favorite creators right now and he just left his full-time spot he just announced is Tim Chusano. So Tim, Tim Chusano's in New York City does the daily vlog a lot of inspiration comes from him but he's on another level like he's insane his storytelling ability and and basically he talks about being addicted to gratitude and he's coming out with a book I'm probably going to buy it.

But just being addicted to gratitude from the small things, right? And he's done some podcasts where he like, he's like, he goes the subway from Brooklyn into Manhattan. You know, this isn't exactly. So basically it was like, if it breaks down, I at least can find another mode of transportation. I have the opportunity to get to, you know, to work and I don't have to drive, right? Finding the small things and being addicted to that and being addicted to gratitude is what he talks about a lot. And this is something I try to do too, where it's like trying to really focus on the joy of the mundane.

Right? And so again, Thomas, like I get this, like I listen, I've tried to anticipate everything and X is a nose up. But boy, I tell you what, if you told me 10 years ago where I'd be now, I would be like, what? So just enjoy the small things for sure. Jordan comes in here. I've I've been having to confront my addiction to business recently, interesting. Yeah, same, not fun, but already noticing the difference in myself. Yeah, I'm addicted to working. I love it, I love it. And that's something I'm having to kind of pull away from. Read thoughts on this? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think it's all a balancing act.

And I think everyone, the way that everyone balances it is gonna be completely different. What works for me may be terrible for you, Taylor, may be terrible for Jordan. You know, I don't know Jordan, although probably gonna reach out to him here because he's got some, I want to have some conversations with him, which is again, a lot of what this is all about here. Right. Yeah, I mean, I think you can be addicted to business. You know, as we were talking, you can be addicted to your phone. You can be addicted to anything, right? Like, if you want to get addicted to something, you can be addicted to it.

And I think it's all about finding what that balance is for you. Yep. It's very easy to get caught up in doing all of this stuff for the business, doing things to get your finances right, get everything else. people, you know, talk about getting out of debt and doing all this other stuff, but like, there's debt that's not financial debt, right? There's emotional debt that's like, hey, my debt is now falling apart and I gotta go fix it because I didn't do maintenance on it. There's like, there's all sorts of different kinds of concepts of things you can do that are beneficial that are not work.

Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, all right, let's talk about kind of transition a little bit going on on your own, right? I want to talk to you about that you made the jump. Honestly, I didn't even know you made the jump until recently when I messaged you to come on the show. I feel like, you know, I like not having an agenda for this pod because I'm able to kind of sense where things are heading with other IT individuals. And a lot of my conversations over the last few weeks have been about leaving corporate America for the nine to five starting your own thing. Man, talk about how to get there.

How did you get there, your thoughts, when did you, I mean, obviously this is a very deep topic, but let's just kick it off high level. What made you decide to go out on your own? So I think the big thing was realizing that I had been very, very busy. I had been staying busy for a very, very long time and had sort of been grinding, right? It's a little bit tired of grinding. I had been doing that a lot. I had been doing a lot of things to set myself financially up for, you know, this fire movement or whatever. And what I realized was sort of, hey, you know, I'm getting to the point of where I don't have to have a nine to five job, you know, I, again, kudos to my wife and as a family, we just, we're just sort of frugal people like.

And so because of that and kind of don't like waste. And so because of that, with the software developer salaries, I mean, to be perfectly honest with you, Taylor, the salaries you've been posting for years are far above what I've ever made, right? Until going out on my own here. Far above what I've ever made, my wife does not have employment outside of the house. I'll live in a phenomenal place. It's not a bragging. This is to prove a point here, right? And we save almost half our money. We have for years, right? Now I've got old vehicles and whatever, but I only spend the money on things that I care about.

What I realized with all of that is now why am I working 40, 50, 60 hours a week to make money for someone else? Cause my, why I'm doing it is to try to help out other people. I can help out other people without making someone else a whole bunch of money. I can help out other people without needing to try to get them to spend a whole bunch of money on me. I don't need someone to give me full-time employment or all the benefits and all the other stuff that goes with it. So what I realized was I had set myself up to a point to where I really only needed to work a couple of days a week.

Why would I not do that so that I can spend time with the family? Which was where I felt like I needed to be. Yeah, 100%. And so, you know, I think a lot of people are like, all right, well, that sounds great. You know, maybe they listen into this podcast now in the future. And they're like, I want to run through brick wall. I'm going to leave my job today. Talk about some things that you kind of have to be mentally prepared for, build up to. I mean, like obviously you've developed a great network. You've developed, you know, a name for yourself, especially the Knoxville area in the southeast, like, kind of talk about some things to keep in mind before you go out on your own.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think you should probably just like rage quit. I've done that before. It doesn't really end well most of the time. That's sort of like playing the lottery. Occasionally, it works great. But I would say, yeah, so for those who don't know, but pre-COVID, when there were all of the community-run conferences and that sort of thing, I spoke to a lot of them. I ran a meetup up here in Knoxville with the buddy of mine, Cameron Presley, who I don't know if he's been on the show. He's not being someone for it. He asked me to come on, I'm DM'd him.

He's never gone back to me. So Cameron, if you watch the show, come on the show. Like, what are you even doing, man? He's killing it's what he's doing. Cameron's awesome. He's got a bunch of different things like that. So over the course of that time, what you realize is you end up with this network, whether you mean to or not. It's part of what comes through there. So I had that going for me. Like I say, I also had the runway, right? Because we didn't spend, because we lived beneath our means for whatever that means for so long, we had plenty of runway to where it's like, if I don't get a salary tomorrow, it's not a big deal.

Which is not to say that I could go to the rest of my life with that one. I'm sure, I should have noticed, but it's not at that point, but it is at a point where there's some options there. I don't know that any of those things are necessary, but I will say they're really, really good safety nets for me in my position that I'm in. Yeah, right. Because it keeps me from having to make some decision that I don't wanna make, some knee jerk decision that I don't wanna have to make. You know? I don't have to just go pick up the next thing because it so happens to pay.

I'm lucky to work with some amazing people and I value every single minute that I end up working with them because we've got this understanding that I'm choosing to work with you. I want to work with you. I'm not working with some other people by choice because I don't want, for pros and cons, for whatever it is, it's not necessarily people, it's just situations, you know? So being happy to be in that situation. Talk about networking, man. I mean, obviously, I think the biggest thing people need to realize, if you wanna go on your own, you either A, need to love networking, or B, have already built a network?

Yeah, man, I'm not saying that you can't do it without it, but it is incredible what a little bit of networking can do. And what I found was that by going on my own, the networking gets easier because you can choose to do it for your own reasons, rather than potentially doing it for a reason that your employer or someone else might want you to do it. Yeah, for me, it's far easier to be genuine about it, which doesn't mean better at it, but it does mean genuine, so I know that I'm coming across genuine on it, but it's like anything else. I wouldn't say that I'm good at it.

I'm like, I'm never gonna say that I'm, you know, I'm like, that was a really awkward message I just said to that person, and I feel, you know, like. Oh, I do the same thing. I do the same thing. I mean, yeah, like you're always going to be embraced awkwardness, embrace the awkwardness. I would say embrace the awkwardness. I would also say that not everyone's going to be your customer, not everyone's going to you don't want to work with absolutely everyone, not everyone's your customer, not everyone's your competition. Yeah. That's just not the way that it is. The people who enjoy you for all your quirks and flaws are the ones that you probably want to be with.

100. Oh, so true, so true. I got a comment from a TikTok real quick. Do you recruit from everywhere? I recruit from everywhere, but I recruit software engineers. So TikTok user just let you know that. Ian comes in here and goes, a quote my dad told me when I started out my career was thinking of making my first switch. You should want to run to a job, not from one. Love that, love that. That's also an incredible dude. Go check out Rory. Rory's my guy. Yeah, I love it. I love it. So as we wrap up here, I wanna talk about niching down, if that's the word, because you talked about it before we went on stage.

I feel like in today's market, I feel like companies need a specific developer to solve a specific problem right now. It's not the generalist at the moment. It's the specific. So talk about what you've seen in your career about Niecing Dam because I feel like what you do, like we talked backstage, like probably isn't like the most sexy thing, but it serves a purpose. So can you talk about that? Oh yeah, there's nothing sexy about what it is that I do from a tech perspective. That's not to say that, oh, let me rephrase this. From a professional services perspective, what I do is not sexy.

It's writing some sequel to query data out of some ERP systems that probably no one in this chat really cares about or knows about, right? I also am building a product where I get to do all of the fun, cool, sexy, building a specific domain specific language to be able to encapsulate stuff. like I am a nerd. We can check tape on my nerd cred. I am still a nerd, but I don't necessarily look at what, I don't force my clients who are paying me to solve a problem for them, to have to also scratch my need to do something impressive from a perspective. And so because of that, what I'm able to do in that space is to say, okay, what do I know pretty well?

I know ERP systems really well. That's where I got my start. My dad has had a software development company that built an ERP system. So that's where I started accounting ERP systems, running a business. I got pretty good at that, reporting I got pretty good at that because I did a bunch of that stuff. I was absolutely a generalist. And then when you start looking over the course of different things and where people actually need help, where is that thing that you can be the person who is the best suited for that? and sometimes you gotta get down to a really small, like we're talking really small, like, here's how small it is.

I'll give you an example. I'll use the software and the space that I am optimized to. I have focused down into a point where there's maybe 300 companies on the planet that do it. That's how narrow I had to get. Now, a lot of the people in the audience are probably way better at doing this stuff than I am, and they can expand it wider than that, right? Because they can be the best at something better than that. I'm not that person. Yeah, this is where I can get to. This is what I can do. I'm solving business needs for people every day. Do I get to you?

Do I sometimes just spend all day in Excel? Sure. But am I solving a problem for someone? And is that where I derive value? Yes. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's incredibly important right now. Like I'll never forget, back when I was recruiting my last company. Like listen, whenever we got a hard to kind of an odd role in a skill set that I've recruited before, I would always call that one guy, that one gal, right? I always think of Adobe's AEM, right? I think it's like their CRM or whatever it is, right? AEM. There wasn't a lot of Adobe AEM folks walking around.

I think that's what you call it. So like- So you need to manager or something like that? I don't know. That doesn't sound quite right. But like, let's just go for it. AEM, it's like an ERP or whatever for them. And like essentially, whenever I got that role, there was like six guys I'd call. But they'd always get a call, right? I feel like right now, and I think we're gonna start seeing this, you know, I've made a post, I'm making a post on LinkedIn today about people need to niche down and backend engineering right now. There's a huge swing with front end over the last few years, you know, company, if you could spell react, companies would pay you money.

So now there's, there's not enough backend engineers, right? So like, again, niche him down. Like if you tell me like, hey, I am really good using Kafka and Java. That's it. I will tell you that will probably get you more jobs than being a generalist back and engineer because right now companies need to know what you can do, how you can solve the problem immediately because there's so much noise out there right now. I think that's right. And look, I'm not suggesting that you don't also do a bunch of other things. Sure. What I'm saying is that, and this is not my idea. This is Corey house beat this into my skull for years.

And I was like, I think you're wrong. And he was like, man, we'll see. And he was right as he usually is. Being specific in something is a way to get your foot in the door. Yes. Once you're put is in the door, see you in every bit that you are, because if you're not, you can be replaced by someone else who happens to be that specific little peg that fits in a slot. Right. Yeah. Don't be that person that that that amount that terrifies me is being that person always has, which I think has been part of, you know, pushing to do to be different a little bit.

You know? Yep, absolutely. All right. Time flies when you're having fun. I could talk to you for like six hours. Um, so as you're up here for last questions, um, I always tell guys and gals who are the show that has a family. Don't say family. We know you love your family. Give me something different. Number one, what do you like to do outside of work for fun? Uh, walk. Hi. Uh, you were in a great city for that. then. Party. Oh, I'm like 15 minutes from trails. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Second thing, if you couldn't, if you woke up tomorrow and like forgot all the how to code and you had to do a new career and money was the same, if not, but money's not the issue, what would you do outside of tech?

I'm gonna, so two things, real quick, I know we're lightning round. I would say that the quick What I can do is teach of some sort. Okay. Well, long story answer is I don't really do a lot of what I do. Can I code? Do I code most days? Yes. But my value is not that I can code. I mean, any of the code that I write, someone sufficiently good enough in prompting an AI to do it could do a lot of it, right? Where I'm providing value is solving the right problem, not solving this, not solving a specific task. It's figuring out what problem do we actually need to solve?

that transcends tech, that transcends anything. I could go work in order, in fact, most of the companies I work for, I don't come in at the IT, in the tech portion of the organization at all. Oh, for real. Yeah. There you go. Now, I end up doing, you know, coding things once I'm in there. But, so I would say it's harder for me to answer that maybe than some of the other guests. So in that sense, I would call back to teacher. But I have a feeling there's a bunch of stuff there that I wouldn't want to put up with. So yeah. Third question, any tech trends, frameworks that you're tinkering with, that you like, that's fun right now or anything you've read or we can get even non-technical, anything you've watched on Netflix that you like.

It can be kind of just content in general. Yeah. Well, so I've got much, actually, most of my Netflix recommendations have been coming from your channel recently. I'm accomplishing that. I did, so watch the Beckham thing, that was good. I would say as far as some life changing stuff that I've done recently, or read recently, the Almond Act of Naval Revicant, it's free, just go read it. Phenomenal. The first half of it's on how to make money, right? How to support yourself, how to support a family, all of that kind of stuff. The whole second half of it is, okay, great. Now you made a whole lot of money, you're probably still not happy, are you?

Let's fix that now with the second half of the book. It's phenomenal. The, and the other one was a book referred to me by Paul Gower, actually super. Oh, nice. I love Paul. Paul's amazing. Yeah, you should chat with Paul. Like, he's great. All of you. You should chat with a great guy to chat with. And then he'll take you up on it too if you just said it. Oh, for sure he will. Yeah, because it's, yeah. But super communicators, the newest book by Charles Duhig is changing my perspective on stuff. Okay. Which is kind of the whole point in how you can have cool conversations with people is to to change your perspective.

And anyway, those are the two ones that I'm really geeking at about right now. I love that, I love that. Last question that we'll wrap it up again. Thank you all for everybody tuning in, all the comments, we love you, I appreciate it. This show's called Guidance Cuts for 2.0 because we had Guidance Cuts for the Middle School, High School and Cauls, but now it's adults. We don't have one necessarily. What would be your biggest piece of career advice if you could go back in time and tell young Reed some advice? me in. Let's see, I would say just have a longer mindset on things.

In the short term, there's a lot of things that, you know, it's far easier to be upset with someone or to feel like you disagree with someone because everything tends to be framed as a false dichotomy and just like to be more open with it and try to get more understanding with people because it leads to better conversations. It's not a zero sum game. Most conversations are not zero sum, not one side wins and the other side loses. And so if you can focus them, focus things on not being a zero sum game than like everyone wins. And by being nice, even if that's not reciprocated, you still feel better about yourself anyway.

Yeah. The late. I don't know. It's like all building, everything building up, everything positive, everything building up. And a younger me was looking for a false dichotomy that big a fight about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not really, but yeah, yeah, that's, yeah. I love it, I love it. Sweet, all right, by the way, I did look up Adobe AEM. I was correct. It's Adobe Experience Manager. It is their web content management system. So I still remember some things. I still remember that from a little bit of agency days, I think some of the problems clients had had it. Yeah, yeah. All right, y'all. Well, thank you again.

Read if people want to connect with you, what's the best way for folks to reach out you can get a response. Okay, I would say LinkedIn is probably your best bet. Don't just send me a random connect. Let me know if it's from here. Say, Hey, we're both in the guides counselor 2.0, whatever, give me some context so that I know who you are because to be perfectly honest, I get a bunch of crap that I don't know who you are. If I don't know who you are, I'm not going to answer it. Probably. I love it. I love it. All right, y'all. You must have checked.

Yes. We always down hit up, read up Paul Gower. They're my boys for sure. Well, y'all, thank you again for hanging out with us today. So tomorrow morning, 930 am essential. I have a guy named Tom Redmond. I don't know Tom. Tom legitimately just commented on one of my shows about how he found a job when he did it the right way. So I just slid into his DMS ago. Do you want to come on the show and talk about it? So Tom and I are hanging out tomorrow. He's a I think like a senior developer advocate somewhere. So we're going to talk about landing your dream job or how to get attention from the right people.

He's never done this role before. I like this. He actually prepared for this. And we're also, he's a dad, two-way six-year-old girl, so another girl dad. So we're gonna talk about it tomorrow with Tom. And then Thursday on Unicorn Finders, pretty cool company. We met them at South by Southwest. It's a company called Benny, two female founders. We have one of the females coming on. And it basically allows, if your wives love designer shopping, either share this episode or not, I'm gonna leave that there. But basically it is a web plugin that basically scrapes the web. If you find an item that you like on like Louis Vuitton, it basically like scrapes the web and finds like either similar or like the same thing cheaper.

So really cool company, doing some cool stuff. And then Friday we'll be live on the Gun I.O. page talking about our Discover Talent, which we've turned our entire database of thousands of engineers basically into an open ATS for clients to use to hire. We're also going to start teasing Gun AI. Gun AI, we're doing some cool stuff. I don't even know exactly what we're doing, but talk with our engine or VP of technology. We're doing some cool stuff from the AI space. Um, and then we're going to talk about job posting. So if you're an engineer, we've opened up our job posting now so everybody can submit.

So we, so gun IO is now a job board. You sign up, complete your profile, submit your information. So read if you ever need more work, obviously, you know, check that out. But again, that comes on Friday. So, enough of my mouth. Three. Thank you, my friend. You're the best. I appreciate your pleasure. Love you. Stay on backstage. so I can say bye to you. But y'all have a good one. We'll see you on tomorrow at 930 with Tom. Peace. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode, and I am very grateful, because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there.

There's a lot of episodes, and I myself rarely finish 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.