#154 - Mindset Lessons From Building Pybites and Its Future Vision

In this episode coach Hugh sits down with Julian, co-founder of Pybites, to delve into the heart of what makes Pybites more than just about Python.

Julian shares the triumphs and trials of building Pybites, highlighting the significant milestones from the first subscriber to facing the tech industry's fast-paced and evolving landscape. 💡

More than coding, Julian emphasizes the critical role of mindset in overcoming obstacles and achieving growth, not only within Python but in personal and professional realms.  📈

With insights into Pybites' vision for the future, innovative initiatives for veterans, and efforts to introduce coding to school-aged children, this episode illuminates how Pybites champions a comprehensive approach to learning and development, rooted in perseverance, community, and adopting a growth mindset. 😍 

Links:

- Pybites platform
- Podcast Episode Featuring Isaac Smith
- PDM program
- Book tip: Quiet by Susan Cain
- Join our Python developer community here

Transcript

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These are all things that just hammer away at your confidence in tiny, tiny little chips, right? And if you don't have the mindset to be able to push through that and say, this is just part of the learning process, I learned from my mistakes, blah, blah, blah, then you're going to burn out and you're going to say, oh, this isn't for me. And then you potentially lose out on this amazing world of python and all the crazy things you can do with it and the opportunities that open up for it. Hello, and welcome to the Py Bytes podcast, where we talk about Python career and mindset. We're your hosts. I'm Julian Sequeira. And I am Bob Baldebos. If you're looking to improve your python, your career, and learn the mindset for success, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Pibytes podcast. My name is Hugh. I am a coach with the Pibytes PDM program, and I'm very happy today to be interviewing one of the founders of Pibytes. In a prior episode, I had interviewed Bob baldebos about his ability to be so productive and what are good productivity tips. Today, I'll be welcoming Julian Sequeira to his own podcast to talk about mindset. So, hello, Julian. Hello, Hugh. How are you doing? It is good to see you. It's good to see you, too. This is weird and very exciting being introduced to my own podcast. So, yes, everyone, we're here. We're doing this reverse interview thing. Yeah, it's actually fun. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, it'll be weird if you and Bob interviewed each other. I mean, you're like friends, and it would just turn into just one long, rambling conversation between the two. That's true. That's true. No, no, I appreciate this, and I know this is exciting for you and pushes you outside of some comfort zones as well, so I love seeing you take this on. So I don't know exactly what you're going to ask me today. So, everyone, for context, Hugh has said, I'm going to quiz you a bit on the mindset and things like that and where pie bytes is going, but there's some other things I know you've thrown in as curveballs, I imagine, because he likes to give me grief. Oh, absolutely. Any chance I can get. We'll be talking about TCP IP protocols later. What's that? Connection issues. Okay. Connection issues. Yes. Yes. What are the packets used in a trace? Yes. No, I've been doing a lot of interviewing of candidates these days, so I've been a little busy with that. That's still in the mind. All right, Fred, let's get started. Okay, so let's. Since you are one of the founders of pibytes, I'd like to ask you a little bit about what are some of the kind of more significant challenges and milestones for pibytes over the years? Over the years. Okay. So not so much current, but. Well, it could be current either way. I mean, the curveball is you thinking back two years. You know, my memory doesn't go back that far. It's just too much stuff coming in at the moment, so. All right, some of the most significant challenges and milestones I. Look, the easy milestone, I'll say, is when you make your first sale. That was. I think we, Bob and I still have the email, uh, from our coding platform when someone first subscribed to that years and years ago. And, uh, our. Our email thread on that email of us going, oh, my God, someone bought from us, uh, is. So it's. It's always fun to go back to that. So that was one of the significant milestones. That's. That's an easy one, but. Okay, so challenges, though, I'll say. It's all mindset, and I think everyone was expecting that answer from me. Um, but, yeah, the. The challenge is always mindset, because, uh, I think the most significant challenge has got to be, uh, on our personal note of this desire to run, to build pibytes and have it be successful as a company, as a place for people like you to come and support, uh, for our, the community that supports us and gets involved in everything, we want it to be successful for everyone, for it to be a nice place. Yeah. Takes a lot of work. Takes a lot of time. It sure does. Yeah. And on Bob's. Bob's side, he has two kids, I've got three kids. We're both married. We have our own interests that we want to pursue as well. And that's probably one of the greatest challenges that actually does become a challenge for the company, because back at the start, when you're building from nothing, the amount of time you put into this business and growing it is proportional to the success it has. And if you don't give it the time and you don't make those sacrifices on time, the business suffers. So I'd say that's probably been the most significant challenge that has lasted until today. The other one. Do I have time for another one? Sure. Yeah. Okay. The other one. I'll mention that is moving into the current climate is the tech sector. That's probably been one of the most significant challenges we face, because with all the job layoffs and all the downsizing that's happening in these companies, it's really taken a toll on people's confidence and the fear that people are going to have. So people go back into that hierarchy of needs instead of focusing on growth, which is what we're about, growth, and improving your python skill and your confidence as a developer and everything like that. When people are afraid of losing their job or where the next paycheck is going to come from and when it's going to come in, they're no longer thinking, I need to invest in my professional development and my skills and things. They're thinking, I got to cut all costs and I got to put food on the table for my family, and rightfully so, you know? But there is, there's too much fear, right? Because there are plenty of roles that are still quite stable. There's. And this isn't on individuals, this is on the industry as a whole and the media and the fear mongering that you see in a lot of these posts and things like that. AI is here. It's here to stay, it's growing. Jobs to do with AI are paying exorbitant amounts of money that I couldn't have even dreamed of in this sector. So there is lots of growth around python that is there, but it's being overshadowed by the fear. So that's a challenge that we have at the moment that I'm facing, but we're pushing through as always. Well, you always do. Having faced challenges and gotten past a lot of them and seeing the results of this hard work and the sacrifice, what has surprised you the most about the outcomes you've gotten from pibytes? And talk a little bit about the impact on the participants in Pibytes and PDM. Okay. All right. So I think the thing that surprised me is an outcome for pibytes. First, I'll do. The first half of the question has been that with the perseverance and that persistence, that it doesn't matter what the world has thrown at us and society, we've been able to push through it with just, honestly, persistence and determination. There are points when we want to sit there and just lament and be like, oh, this is so hard, you know, and sometimes we do because we're human and it'll take, you know, we'll spend 20 minutes doing that, but then we get back into it and push and just go, what can we do? What's next? What's next? You know? And so the thing that surprised me, in a way, is that it has worked. I mean, you always hope that your positive mindset and that your persistence and things will reap the rewards, and there's always that trust in yourself and in that sort of process that things will come, come good in the end. But seeing it happen does surprise you inevitably. It's not like you get to the end and go, yeah, I knew it was going to work out. Of course, you know, that's just garbage. It's a journey still. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's been one of the surprising things about pie bytes for all of us, is that we push through and continue to grow, no matter what the world is throwing at us. You know, the team speak now, and we're all relatively happy. Everyone but you. I'm joking. Hi. No, we all get along. The team's grown. These are all things that we couldn't have imagined that have definitely surprised us, but more importantly, the impact upon. So you said the participants, right? Like, the people have gone through PDM. Yeah, yeah. So I think the most significant impact and surprise about the impact has been the confidence. You know, when Bob and I first created this program, we thought, oh, yeah, yeah, it's gonna be pretty, you know, binary. It's gonna. It's gonna be off and on. People come in, they learn python come out, they know the python. But, man, at the end of this, after all these years, four years now of doing it, seeing people go, it's not even about the python skill. It's about my confidence in myself and my ability to be faced with a problem and just know how I'm going to solve it, or know that I can solve it with following these steps. By following these steps, you know, and I've solved problems similar before, so now I can keep going and keep pushing. So I think that's one of the most surprising, and now that's one of the things we push, right. When we talk about the program, we're like, what you're going to get out of this is not really measurable, it's your confidence. So how do you measure that? With metrics? But I think that's the most surprising thing for me personally. The other thing, I'll say, the other impact is that, and not so surprising, but just very rewarding to see has been, uh, the impact on people and their personal lives. So it's one thing to learn the python and get the confidence and. And just become a more competent and capable developer. But, uh, the next piece is, what do they do with that? And seeing how people have just carved out improvements to their lives from this, like, people going from being. I still. One of my favorite stories is one of the clients who went from being a teacher to being a data scientist. You know, people who've left miserable jobs and gotten into jobs that they absolutely love, people who've skipped coding interviews to do that because of their competency and their ability to prove their skills through having a GitHub repository, things like that. People. One of the people who I'm hopefully going to have on the podcast soon went from a very, um, labor intensive job. I won't ruin the surprise, but physically labor intensive. So think, um, working on the land type stuff, um, completely non tech, right? And he's now in a technical role, um, after going through the program, you know, and so those things, those impacts where it's not as obvious as, like, I learned Python and now I am a senior on my team or I got a promotion or whatever, it's the people who've made like, really big lifelong changes that and impactful changes that is surprising to me, but super rewarding. I know it is for me when I've seen some of my former mentees go off to do some amazing projects. One student of mine had to give a big presentation about the project he worked on as, as part of PDM to directors in his company, and they were very happy with it. So nothing better than that. How did. When he told you that, I remember when he gave you that feedback, how did, how did that make you feel? It was surreal. It was not realizing the impact I myself had upon an individual's career path and how the work we did together. I mean, he worked hard. He worked hard. Let's, let's just put that out there. But to know that I was able to help influence, that was a big deal for me. It gave me confidence, for sure. It really. This is one of the things, actually. This, I'll say, is a surprising outcome of piebytes as a whole. It's really shown me the impact you can have on people. And how often do you get that chance to do that, to really change someone's life and make a long lasting impact on their lives? I think that's probably the greatest thing about this. I agree. Those chances don't come along often, especially with things being tough in the industry these days. It's nice to be able to do it. Let's get into more about mindset. There's a phrase in pibytes that came up, come for the python and stay for the mindset. So how did that phrase come about, and what does it signify for the program? Oh, God, I don't know where that came from. I don't either. I don't remember. We say it all the time. We say it all the time. I think someone in the community said it at some point. I think someone. Was it AJ, one of the. One of the. One of the lifers, one of the people who's been around with pywhites for forever in our community, who we value. Who we value. Someone like that said it. Oh, yeah, piwights is great. You come for the python, stay for the mindset. And I think it was a spin on the whole python industry how people say, come for the python, stay for the community, or something like that, because everyone feels that way when they join the python community as a whole. So I think it's. Maybe it comes from that, but by the way, we loved it, so we've kept it, and that's what we. We love to say as we. We talk about it. But no one ever comes for the mindset because they don't realize it's such a big piece, and that's. That's why it's such a big piece of our program. It's one thing to learn Python, you know, it's one thing to sit there and take a course or even be coached. Right? It's one thing to do it from a technical perspective, but to be successful, you really have to have a solid mindset. You have to have that mental fortitude. You have to be able to push through when things are tough. And so a lot of our clients, the people who've come through our programs, the people in our community who've really gotten involved and sort of subscribed to the things that we do and the things that we teach and coach on. They always say, yeah, it's one thing to come here and learn about python, but, whoa, this whole mindset push that you guys do, the whole teaching, how to be resilient, how to be thoughtful, how to really be, how you can change your frame of mind when it comes to things like feedback and fear. They stayed for that. They said, this is amazing. This is the stuff I needed. This is the stuff that I need to surround the python to really make me a solid dev. So I think that's what it's become, and that's how it gets all wrapped up in our programs and stuff. So talk a little bit more specifically about the importance of mindset, especially growth mindset, in learning python or any other programming language. I like how you're interviewing me. You're somehow walking me down the path that you've probably predefined in your head. Very smooth. Well, it's. I did think about what I wanted to ask you before. So Hugh has clearly prepared way more than Bob and I prepare. That's fine. That's just me. That's why we hire people who are better than us to work with us. That was a compliment. I'll take it as a compliment. I'll take it as a compliment. Thank you. All right. I mean, part of my line of questioning is the path I took through PDM and pibytes. So I'm kind of following my own journey in what I'm asking you about, because many of us had the same sort of journey of really understanding what mindset is and why it's important. But I want to. I want to hear it from your perspective, because you're the guy who kind of built this part of the program. You're a chief mindset officer. That's true. We came up with that title. I love it. This is for shitsy giggles. That was a funny title. Like, how do we. How do we do this? Yeah, look, it's. That's. That's a good point. Every single person who has come through our coaching has realized just how important mindset is. And we realized that at the very start when we were trying to create the program to begin with, because when we were learning Python, that's the only thing that got us through it. When we. When we sucked and we got stuck and we were frustrated and everything like that, you know? So that's why it's a core piece of everything we do now. So it is so important, and to give you some very tangible examples here, it's so important to have a strong and healthy mindset when it comes to learning anything in general. But obviously, Python here specifically. Number one, how many times you get stuck coding something you run? It doesn't run. You get lots of errors. And whatever you try and run tests against your code, they always fail. How many times do you leave out punctuation here and there or your indentations wrong and you're like, oh, my God. These are all things that just hammer away at your confidence in tiny, tiny little chips. If you don't have the mindset to be able to push through that and say, this is just part of the learning process, I learned from my mistakes, blah, blah, blah. Then you're going to burn out and you're going to say, oh, this isn't for me. And then you potentially lose out on this amazing world of python and all the crazy things you can do with it and the opportunities that open up for it. So having that mindset to push through, focusing on the goal, understanding again, this is why you're pushing through it. That's all part of mindset to give you that reason to push through it. But then as you get into these python specific roles, anywhere with code, you require that mindset to be able to deal with your code being out there in the open. So when you're pushing code to a GitHub repository, when you're working professionally, in a company, working with a team, people are looking at your code all the time, people are critiquing your code. Even just knowing that someone's going to look at it is a huge mindset hit. There's a huge fear factor of opening up your repo and making it going from private to public. I still have that fear every time I do it, you know, because you think, oh, God, someone's going to look at this and they're going to think I'm an idiot. So you have that, or they're going to pick on it. I'm not in the mood to be picked on. People can be so toxic, you know, you worry about these things and then more often than not, that's actually not a problem. People come at it from growth perspective, you know, but then when you talk professionally and you're working in a team, you, people aren't always. People are pretty busy and you get a code review done in a professional python role, people aren't always going to be as polite and light. Nice way of putting it. Yeah. As soft spoken as they might be in person. Right. That's a whole different topic, communication. But you have to be able to pick through the fluff, the garbage that might come along with the gold, and pick it and take from it what you need to improve and grow and realize feedback's feedback, and you have to welcome any kind of feedback, but that stuff comes with mindset, so that that's. It's so important. There's so many different, you know, offshoots and tangents that you can go on with the mindset, but it's such an important piece. You never, ever code in a silo where it's just you, as soon as you start to do anything significant with this other than your own little scripts and hacky things on your computer, at home, you're going to need some mindset sprinkled on top to be able to get through it in just twelve weeks. Pivots elevates you from Python coder to confident developer, build real world applications, enhance your portfolio, earn a professional certification showcasing tangible skills, and unlock career opportunities you might not even imagine right now. Apply now at Pibit es PDM. Like me, it seems like you also had a personal journey in taking this sort of mindset centric approach. Oh yeah, for sure. Did, um, but did what I say, did that sort of resonate with your experience through program and currently now, yeah, it's, it takes me back to, um, challenges I've had with um, the, the fear of the critique and, and, and the mindset of, of the, the growth mindset of taking critique as a way of getting better regardless of how someone may deliver it. Try to look at the substance of what they said and take it as a way to improve. Yeah, okay. Yeah. So I think we've both had that same sort of journey. So let me shift away from mindset for a little bit to talk a bit more about Pibyte's vision for the future. So tell me, I know that you've got a lot of ideas, a lot of different programs going on, but where do you see Pibyte's heading in the coming years? Just sort of overall, we've done this conversation, Bob, and I. Personally, I don't think we've talked about it too much in the podcast, but I'll do it now. I'll do it now. Forgive me, Bob. No, honestly, vision wise. And vision allows you to be, to really big here. Think big and thick, large scale. So for me, I would like to see the way I see it. I see pibytes being the place to go. This is a big vision, but it's the place to go if you want a quality python educational experience. And I don't mean the other things out there are not quality, you know what I mean? But I mean premium. This is not an online course, this is not $50. You know, our coaching, um, geez, you can tell I live in Australia, something just fell out of my roof and I don't know what it is and I'm kind of afraid it fell out of your roof. What does that have to do with you living in Australia? Because it's, I think it's a creature of some sort that may have crawling capacity. Oh, I see. So we're going to cut this podcast short due to technical difficulties? No, we'll hope not. This is the perseverance I'm going to push through. So I think I see pywites becoming the place for the premium python experience. If you're tired of just floundering, trying to do things yourself. And this comes down to changing the perception of coaching. People look at coaching and they go, this is for gyms, this is for learning a music instrument, this is for learning a sport like running or whatever. You get a coach for that. No one sits there and says, I'm going to get a coach for Python because that's what we do. And I want to change that. I want to change the industry, I want to change people's perceptions of it. So when people go, oh, yeah, I need to learn Python because I'm going for this job, I need to be better at it, I'm going to get a coach. Whereas people don't even think that. They don't even think coaching is an option for something like this. And that's something I want to change, because the vision is for pilots to be the place for that. No one else holds a candle to what we do, how we do it, the mindset and mentality that we bring to it. And I see that becoming our selling point and the reason people flock to us to be like, I need to go through that because then I want employers and other people on the other end to go, oh, they came through. Bye bye. Oh, man, we better pay him three times as much as wed pay anyone else. That would be great. So I see us really building up to that level of reputation and its getting there, which is really exciting. So you want pipe? It's to be thought of as the go to place. This is the place if you want a premium experience, and not everyone can afford that. I completely understand that. It's just where we're at at the moment. That's what I see. And obviously, as things grow, then we'll have opportunity to support regions and different segments and groups that may not be able to traditionally afford this level of coaching, but we have to grow to get there. Yeah, well, so I think that's great. I think that's a wonderful vision to think of your organization as a go to place, almost like a household name in the tech industry for where to go for python training. And anyway, I can help you get there. I'm happy to do so. Sorry, just a little plug for. Anyway. So things been like a plug. It's great. I love it. It's a great plug. So I know that there are some initiatives that Pibytes is working on. There's one in particular on focusing on veterans, so talk a little bit about that. Oh, cool. Thanks for asking about this one. So this is something I'm working on at the moment with a gentleman. It's the only time I'll call him a gentleman by the name of. I hope he's watching. He will be named Isaac Smith. And Isaac is a friend of mine and he's also a veteran. He was on the podcast. If anyone remembers or has seen the episode, listened to the episode, but we'll link it in the show notes. Oh, yeah, we have to remember to do that. Good idea. So Isaac is a veteran of 20 years. He was a Navy Sweex operator. SWCCs. I think the s is a plural. Anyway, he'd kill me for not remembering what that acronym is. Special warfare, craft, combatant, something like that. He's this amazing individual, incredible mindset. And we together have really fleshed out the challenges that veterans face transitioning from the military into the corporate world or civilian life. So that's one piece, right? But what we're doing now with Piebytes is we've kicked off this program, which is coaching for veterans. It's called PDI for veterans. So it's our PDI program, but we have a veteran spin on it. And the idea is that we take veterans who are transitioning out or have already transitioned. It's fine, doesn't matter out of the military, and we coach them on the corporate skills that they will need to enter the corporate workforce. Because there are plenty of, as Isaac and I talk about on that episode, there are plenty of nuances that they don't know coming into the corporate world. They're actually allowed to do now that they're not in the military, getting orders backed them, and not allowed to argue at things. You can actually argue with your boss in the corporate world, you know. You know what I mean by argue, but you can question things. Right? Excuse me. Then on the flip side, the corporate world has a lot to learn about veterans. Veterans come in with all sorts of previous experience that can be tailored to the corporate experience. It may not be as obvious as saying, I was a programmer in the military, so I can be a programmer in the corporate world. It might be I was a, you know, I don't know, radar technician or something, but the skill set that they use for that, they do have some coding skills. They do have troubleshooting skills, so they can use that to build a career in tech, you know, or something like that. So the corporate world has a lot to learn about that. So we coach the veteran candidates on that side of it, and also understanding that veterans come with invisible disabilities, things that you can't see, things that have PTSD type syndromes and issues and mental health concerns that, excuse me, again, that we just don't see. And as a result, they just get left by the wayside. The corporate world is not designed for that, and they just assume that these people are slacking off or just not listening or whatever it might be. And so we, as part of this program, coach the veteran on what they can do for these concerns. Now, that's just the corporate transition side. The other thing we do is the Python side. So we've talked about PDI on this podcast before, which is the Py Bytes developer initialization program. That's where we coach people on Python from zero. So you're assuming you know nothing, don't even know the command line. You start sweating when someone asks you to code something. You know, people have zero skill, right? Zero knowledge. We take them and teach them python and the technology around it to help them build a level of competency. And so we've wrapped, we've combined both of those pieces, the Python and tech, with the career transition stuff, and that's our PDI for veterans program. That's what we're doing. That's terrific. I think it's so important to help these individuals who are hardworking people, to do a shift into a different environment. The corporate versus military environments are so disparate. So I admire what you're doing. When you first told me about it, I was really stoked. Yeah, thanks, man. Appreciate it. It's very rewarding. It's very rewarding. And we've got some cool things coming up with that to try and alleviate the financial pressure on veterans so they don't have to pay directly. So that would be a nice. If we can get that sorted, then it'll be really nice to be able to support them through it without them having to worry about the financial burden of investing in something like this. So, yeah, anyway, it is very exciting, and building this out with someone who's gone through it is the key piece to my confidence in its ability, because having Isaac gone through these experiences, he's going through themself personally. Yeah. The curriculum and everything we've put together is just awesome. I'm just really proud of it. Yeah, no, it's great that you brought in somebody who can actually understand that world and help bridge the gap with the program. I know that Pibytes is also looking to work with school aged children. Oh, yeah. Talk to me a little bit about that. This is tough. The kids stuff is a challenge because you have to word it in such a way that kids can actually read it and engage with it and understand it anyway. So, yeah, that's something that just came out of nowhere, as some people might know. We have these newbie exercises on our coding platform, which we've just. They're currently 25 on there, and we've just expanded it to 50. That hasn't launched yet, but we have the next 25 written ready to go. And what was an unknown, I guess, win from this is that students of, like, grades seven 8910 have really engaged with it. And we've had Russell Helmsteader on the podcast before talking about how he uses it in his classroom. So I won't belabor the point, but what we're hoping to see more of is hoping to see students using our coding platform to learn python and then practice it with meaningful exercises. You know, what makes. What makes this special to me, and also a difficult sell. Right. Also a difficult sell for students and teachers in general, is that I feel like schools have started really adopting a gamification mindset when it comes to teaching kids code, and everything has to be colors with dragons, and they're trying to convince kids to do it or get them addicted to it through the game side of it. And when you do that, I feel like you lose a lot of the technical nuance to these issues. Kids are just, they get into a realm of just copying and pasting or not really solving a problem, just sort of going with the flow of this game, you know, to get there. And it becomes like their motivation is to slay the dragon at the end as, or build the house or whatever, as opposed to actually developing code, you know? So for me, I'm just really excited when I see schools take up this platform. So where. So what schools can do is they can actually subscribe to the platform as a school, enroll their students in it, a classroom, that sort of thing, and then teachers can manage their students through the platform. But what I'm excited is when kids, when students, schools come in and the teachers say to us, oh, thank goodness. We've tried these other platforms that are all gamified and all colors and pictures and stuff, and it's actually refreshing to see one that is about the code and doesn't treat kids like idiots. I think that's the key point. You don't treat your students like they're morons and that they need to be playing a video game to understand this stuff and to engage with it. Kids will engage with a challenge if they see a point. And unbeknownst to us when we created it, those, those newbie bites gave them a significant challenge while also being engaging enough. Because I wrote those in very human friendly language and through and pop culture in there, like transformative, just stuff I care about, obviously, but kids like that and they're enjoying it. So to me, that's another pride point of what we do. But, yeah, that's what we're trying to do. We want these students to learn code using actual challenges, not just gamified, flashy stuff on a screen. And you get them started off with the positive growth mindset from the beginning and hopefully something that they can carry with them. And not that this is a bit of a reflection on the schooling system, but not everyone has to be a crack programmer. I would be just as happy if a student went through our platform and said, you know what? I hate python. Fine, that's cool. But at least now you've given it a concerted effort. And, you know, yep, this is from me. I much prefer to, I don't know, play a musical instrument or something. I want my kids to be the same, find what they love, don't get forced to the stuff they hate doing, or you end up doing jobs for the rest of your life that you hate doing because you think that's what we have to do. So, yeah, that's important to show them, you know, give it a try to see if it's something that you like, not force it. And, you know, and maybe every once in a while we'll get the student who came in, not sure if they could do it, not sure they would like it, and it turns out that they love it and it changes everything for them. Yep. And then the ones who. Yeah, those ones who really love it, they then double down and go, great guns on it. You know, they love it. So. All right, well, I'm going to skip my whole section of questions about TCP IP headers. Thank God. Yeah, it's been a while and. Absolutely. And I want to be mindful of your time. I'd like to ask you one more question, just back to mindset in general and a good way, I think, to end our podcast today. Share some of your thoughts on maintaining the mindset and the motivation for software developers and maybe how you might talk about that in pibytes. All right, I know. Super, super specific question, right? She's sweating over here. I thought you're going to ask me about Pokemon or something. I thought it was going to be like one of the softball questions to end

the news at 06: 39:25

00 p.m.. News. No. Well, come on, man, you know me. All right, all right. So, so let me, let me, let me repeat that back to you. So you're asking how would people maintain that mindset and keep it up and everything? Yeah. Piece of, piece of advice that maybe has come out of PDM or some of the mindset calls that you could share just sort of, sort of to wrap up the call. How do you maintain the mindset or the motivation? Okay, I'll give you two tips. One is find community. Programming can be lonely because for me personally, no one in my family knows how to code. My, forget my immediate household, I'm talking parents. My brother's only just starting to dabble, but my siblings, my cousins, no one's a coda, so it can be. And even my friends, my closest friends that I hang out with, I try and talk about pie bytes and code and right over the top of their head. So find community. You have to find people that you can talk with about this because when you do, you'll find that they all have the same problems as you. They struggle the same way, they have the same self doubts, they fall off the wagon the same way you do with like, say, if you're trying to code every day, like that code challenge thing, the hundred days of code, you know, people would fall off at day 30, you know, but then finding out that everyone else does too, or most people do as well, is actually reassuring. You go, oh yeah, I'll get back up too. You do it as well. Let's, let's get, keep going together, you know, so find community and that will help you strengthen your mindset around your challenges and the things that you struggle with. And this isn't a plug for our pie bytes community, which is fantastic and totally a plug now. It is actually. Yes, I'll plug it to no end. It's a great, it's a great community. Yeah. But that's how and why the community formed, because people joined us and said this is, they formed a community. We didn't even intentionally do it. As they engage with our stuff, they wanted to talk with us about our stuff, our blogging and our challenges and everything. So we had to create this community. So there was a space for people to talk and it just blew up from there, you know, 4000 plus people. And yeah, it's just amazing. So, yeah, anyway, so that's one piece. The second thing, which is more about you as an individual, this is something I will hammer into every single person that comes my way, whether they're a client, whether they're a friend asking. So I had a friend ask me this question on Discord last, the other night, I think Sunday night, while we were playing power world on Steam, he was asking me, how do you do it? How do you carve out the time for this and for work and for kids and just all those sorts of things. Right. Um, and this plays into the mindset piece. Uh, habit becomes a big piece of the puzzle. Um, you don't have to have the mindset to find motivation to do things when you make them a habit, when you make them muscle memory, when you make it something that you just do and you say, just like, uh, James clear from, uh, was it atomic habits? No, yeah. Atomic, yeah, yeah. Atomic habits. Yeah, yeah. When he says, don't focus on the goal at the start or the outcome, focus on who you want to be. Right. So I want to be, and this is mindset. This is habit building. I want to be the person that works on my code every single day of the week, Monday to Friday, without fail. And you can even get specific, say, works on it for 15 minutes at least. You start by saying who you want to be, then you go work backwards from there and go, okay, well, to do that, I need to implement these systems. And what are those systems you want to implement? It might be I sit down and code after the kids go to bed for 15 minutes before I do anything else. Or it might be I get up half an hour earlier every day to code. That's my learning time. And then the goal comes into it. By having the systems in place, you inevitably reach that goal and beyond. So its not just about hitting the goal of building an app, but because you built that habit, once the apps done, the habit doesnt finish. You just keep going. You finish the goal, you finish whatever tasks youre trying to build, and then you move on to the next one and the next one and the next one. So I love that sort of habit building mentality. And I think thats a strong piece to end this on. And a strong thing for everyone to take away is like, here is how I get to my python goal. First, I focus on who I want to be. I want to be the person who lives and breathes python every day by consuming some sort of python content or coding every day for half an hour without fail, and then the secondary habit. You know this from the book as well. Hugh, I want to be the person who doesn't miss two days in a row. Yeah, I'll miss one day, but the rule is I'm not going to miss two days. So know. Yeah, you got to do these things. That's my advice. I think that's fantastic advice. I think this is a great way to cap off this episode. So you want to talk about what books you're reading? Oh, no. Okay. I didn't even think about that. Let me think. Last week or the other week when I spoke with Bobby, I talked about doctor space junk versus the universe as the book I was reading. It's there. I'll show you the link later. We talked about it before, but another book I'm reading for fun on the side. I don't know if I mentioned it on the podcast, but it's called modern manners. And your typical manners look someone in the eye when you shake their hand. All the old school stuff. But it's a modern spin. And it's a modern spin on how we behave in modern society with manners. And it's very humorous. It's humorous, it's light, it's an easy read. But I picked that up, I just saw it on the shelf, and I'm going to buy this and it was great. Probably my favorite tip so far has been be a pleasant host when you have guests, by hosting guests the way that allows you to be pleasant. And so there's, you know, with me and my background and my cultural background and everything, the way I was raised, when you have guests over you as the host, you're running around getting drinks and cooking food and you got to cook a ten star meal for your guests and you got a plate up and all that stuff, right? It's just a, you cook for your guests and I find that incredibly stressful. And I don't get to enjoy the time with my guests. I don't get to sit, just have a chat, take a load off while the kids are all playing together, because then I'm constantly helping in the kitchen and doing things like that, right? And then stress on both my wife and I becomes a problem. So what was really cool from this book is that it says, just order in, it's not going to hurt anyone. Modern manus is that you're present and that you're a pleasant host so that people want to come back and spend time with you. But if you're in the kitchen the whole time cooking and not spending time with your guests, what's the damn point in having them over. So for me, I'm like, yes. So that, just, to me, that's that justification. Because that's what I started doing. When we have guests, I'm like, let's order in some pizza. I'd rather sit here and hang out, have a beer and have a chat, you know? I think that's great. So anyway, I didn't mean to go down that rant, but that's. No, that's. That's quite all right. I sold part of mindset, you know, being part of. When you want to socialize with people, when you want to be part of people's lives, it's. It's about being fully present in it. Yeah, exactly. And that's what I want to do as well. Yeah, I'll find it for. I think it was only, like $10 or something. So if it's on Kindle, it might even be a couple of bucks. So we'll see. What about you, man? What are you reading? If you're reading anything? Yeah, I just finished up a book called quiet by Susan Cain. It talks about people, people who are a little bit more introverted in life and people who aren't kind of the out there, constant content creator, the ones, the life of the party type people and understanding, people who are a little bit more reserved, more quiet, more introverted, their value in life and in work. And there was one phrase in the book that I remember that modern society, in many respects, has become a culture of personality as opposed to a culture of character. And you think of the days, I think she used an example of the american president, Abraham Lincoln, and the speeches he used to write and give, and they weren't very flashy. In fact, in many cases, he was kind of boring, but he was a brilliant orator and how things have switched over to being a little bit more flashy. And what do you do if that's not you? How do you handle that situation? And how do you be okay with who you are and who others are if you're the more extroverted person? It was a great book. It was really well researched. So I like that. Yeah, that's really insightful and a really great. I'd love to sit there at a pub and have a chat about this with you, because you're not wrong. You know, you think about this and not to go down this path, but you think about the state of politics. It's who can make the flashiest, most broadest, ridiculous statements that somehow gets the. There's no depth, you know? And, yeah, it's people who are loud and flashy and, you know, are clever are the ones who get the attention, whether it's in politics or business or elsewhere, you know, especially when you're in a work environment where the people who are kind of loud and flashy and extroverted tend to get the promotions and they get the positions as opposed to those. We're sitting there, sitting there working, and it's not to say, you know, talking about people sitting in a corner siloing themselves and not sharing. It's. I'm talking more about people who just don't do the. A lot of the flashy stuff, you know? And the flashy stuff has its place as well. You know, it's important to. To talk about what it is that you do. Companies need to advertise, and there's a lot of competition, and we have so many mechanisms with which to communicate these days that you have to find a way to make your voice heard. Yeah, that sounds like you did tell me about that book. I didn't know this depth of it, so I'm going to move that towards the top of my list. I also like the idea that by making people aware of this as well, people who are on the other side of the fence, who might be more towards the louder, outspoken side, who tend to get the promotions because they are outspoken and are more open to sharing what they do and pushing it out there, hopefully, it encourages people to advocate for the people who aren't doing it, or it doesn't naturally come for them and say, hey, let's lift them up, say, come to the table, you know? Yeah, I'll have you back. That sort of thing. Yeah. I think that's why extroverts need to read this book, so that they understand. And it's because there's a balance. Right. It's a matter of finding the balance of personality types. It's the art of team dynamics. People are good at some things, and other people are good at others. So this helps with an understanding of that. Yeah. So this is going to be podcast episode number two with us. I think maybe we'll see. Let's flesh it out a bit, and then we'll come back and talk about it another episode. I think that's a good idea. Yeah, perhaps so. And I'm actually honored for the opportunity to interview you today and talk to you on the podcast. It's really very exciting for me, and I'm a big proponent and advocate of pibytes and what the community represents, because I don't like everything, but I like pipe ites. That's our new. That replacement. That's the new motto. I don't like everything, but I like pie bites. Get rid of. Come for the python, stay for the mindset. And we'll put. Well, we'll make mine the byline, the subtitle. Yeah, that's to have your little avatar face next to it with a thumbs up and winking face. Yeah, let's not, let's not. Well, thank you, Hugh. Thank you for interviewing me. Definitely been an experience being interviewed on my own podcast, but I enjoyed it. This was great. You should just take it over, do some more of these interviews, I reckon. Take over and do more. I may adjust. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it was a great experience for me. And people should check out the show notes for the links to the other podcasts and for the books that we mentioned as well. Beautiful. Thanks, man. Thank you, buddy. Thanks everyone for listening. We'll be back with our normal lineup and flipping this on its head next week. Thanks you. See ya. Thank you. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pibyte friends, that is Pibit es friends, and receive a free gift, gift just for being a friend of the show and to join our thriving community of Python programmers, go to Pybytes community, that's pibit es community. We hope to see you there and catch you in the next episode.