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Hello and welcome to another software should be free with myself team Able and our

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special guest Neil Millard who has recently released a new book called Confident Contractor

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which fits nicely with what I get out to these days.

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Neil is DevOps Professional of the Year 2024 which is very impressive.

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Currently at HMRC I believe, correct me if I'm wrong.

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That's right.

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Cool, with a specialism in cloud deployment, Terraform, AWS, lander Python, ECS, Atmesh,

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automation, scaling, security and from what I see of the biography, quite a long history

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and all sorts of other things as well.

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And also the author of Who Moved My Servers which I'm starting to be able to make.

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But mainly we're going to talk about contracting because the new book is Confident Contractor

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so hello Neil and welcome to the show.

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Hello Tim.

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Cool.

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Yeah.

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All right, let's get right into it.

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So I think I want to start with a bit about who is Neil.

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So obviously contracting is a thing for Neil.

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But I've read a bit but I'd like to hear from you.

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What was your journey to the current contracting and authoring?

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What would be a...

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As far back as you want to go?

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Wow, that's a long way back.

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Let's not quite go all the way to my birth, that would be too far wouldn't it?

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And I guess I entered the IT industry as a professional in about 95 which is quite a long

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time ago now.

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And I found that whilst I was in like what you would call a traditional job, things situations

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happened like I was made redundant after two years and then I went for another job, found

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one pretty easy.

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Two years after that I then got made redundant again which someone would say is I'm

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lucky but I would say hang on this is thing called two years maybe that's a sign that I could

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get a two year contract.

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And maybe you had two two year permanent jobs from the start of your career.

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Just paying a picture for me because that predates me about in terms of my career sort of started

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around 2000 just around the dot com crash.

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So okay.

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What did the tech industry look like from your perspective then in terms of technology and

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business and kind of let's just how it felt and how well known contracting was as I

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saying from what you saw?

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So 95 is kind of the birth of the internet in order to give a good anchor for when that

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was.

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And we're talking Intel 486's which is not a very fast chip by today standards.

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And whilst I'd been programming as a hobbyist on stuff like speckies and BBC microse.

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I entered the industry as a trainee and that meant working on shop equipment like tills

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and printers and things like that.

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And so it was like not the desirable way to get into it I guess but it was a way in and

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I was very green in terms of working because I hadn't been in the workforce for that long

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either.

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It's been a trainee.

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And so there was a few consultancies so I worked as a third party consultancy originally

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part of thorny MI.

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So they were if you like the support arm of thorny MI's hardware kit.

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So if you were a shop like like a wasis.

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I don't know if I don't think I'm still around anymore but they used to sell clothes as a

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clothes shop.

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You know you'd walk in lots of hangers and stuff and there'd be a little till in the corner

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that would take you.

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You mean the shop not the brand?

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Not the band.

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Not the band now.

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Right.

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No the shop, the clothes shop.

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And you could as a shop you would buy semi-pause equipment, electronic putter sale and

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then you'd have a support contract for somebody to come in and look after that.

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And so I was working for one of those companies that looked after the tills after it went

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in and that was great fun because I learned lots and lots about hardware because previous

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to that I hadn't really dabbed in hardware at all.

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It was all software side things.

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And doing lots of miles in a drive in between being queues and all sorts and things like

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that.

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And the reason why I was made redundant from that job is at the end of two years I got

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promoted to being a real engineer.

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You know how to do in the two years of training.

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Got put on a contract with one of the water companies who then decided they were going

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to insource everything.

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So they sacked the third party provider and hired their own people internally in order

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to look after their stuff.

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Yeah a common story at the moment.

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Yeah so there s always that cycle everything goes in cycles.

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Insourcing and outsourcing, outsourcing which ones better.

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Well if you ve got eight quid by ten pounds worth of bananas it needs is better.

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You can end up short every time.

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So yeah that s how the first one came to an end.

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So then I got another job and then this one s a little bit more convoluted but ultimately

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they outsourced which is kind of crazy.

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So I was working for an internal IT department because I thought oh everyone s insourcing

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therefore I ll be safe on an internal department right.

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No they then decided to go the other way and outsourced to one of the big, one of the

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big IT companies who were based out of Bristol and then they made me and several others redundant

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as a result of cost savings I guess you would call them.

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So then I figured well this permanent job stuff isn t that permanent is it?

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So I m not as well go contracting and at least I know in theory when it s going to come to

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an end and apparently contractors get paid more which at that time there was quite differential

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between what you would get paid as a permanent employee and what you could earn as a contractor.

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So how much was that tax and how much was that just difference in day rate, equivalent

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day rate?

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Roughly, I know, not too difficult.

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A bit, both really.

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So as a per me I think we re talking a few years ago now we re talking something like 27

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grand a year as a per me and as a day rate if you translated that directly I think that

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something like 130 pound a day.

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I don t know if I m into the rest of the ship might be a bit off there but in that charity

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the day rates were nearer 250 so nearly double what you could get as a per me and it is not

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quite that good now unfortunately but that s where it goes you know these market forces tend

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to balance out but yeah back then it was quite, see there s very, very high risk to be an

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IT contractor because it was mainly based around project work.

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So you get a load of people.

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Now I was in the industry when we had the Y2K bug and so there s a lot of people that are

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hired in order to fix this bug in software and stuff because it couldn t count more than

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10 and then as soon as it rolled over to sort of 8,000 to 2000 you just had a big supply

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of IT contractors on the market because not because there was any big layoff so in Hank

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to do the economy and thing but there was just no project work anymore and so that had an

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effect on day rates I did expect but again nowhere near as bad as it has been during COVID

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you know we do have to talk in completely different reasons and stuff.

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Yeah it was kind of old for me because I joined the workforce at that point I joined so I

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finished uni in 2000 so I would have been after exams and I was like April May so pretty much

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co-incident with that.

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I joined the market but I had no expectations.

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I was like oh someone s going to pay me for to do something cool.

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I didn t really have any credentials like I d like to program at uni so for me it was like

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start of the bottom and work up so I didn t kind of affect me personally so it s really

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interesting to hear the perspective from like before that and then coming through it.

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So contracting was a known thing originally.

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Like how well, like within, because it was a much smaller IT community at the time wasn t

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it like it s enormous now.

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Yeah, yeah because you kind of had a bunch of communities and really you had London

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and what they called the, well did they call it anything?

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They might call it a Silicon corridor or something but basically it s talking to them

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for which is Reading, Braxton or Swindon.

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That s kind of where all the companies were you had Microsoft and Oracle, Siemens, that

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kind of HP, you know, all that kind of mix.

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Yeah, and Microsoft and Oracle are still there at the time, sorry, but yeah indeed.

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And you know, contrast that with now in GA you s still got a big London following but

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you ve got stuff popping up most notably in Manchester and quite a lot in Bristol and if

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we spread our wings a little bit further than that it took in sort of leads, Cardiff a little

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bit, I d an edit, as I ve seen a few in Edinburgh as well, which is interesting.

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Yeah, it seemed to be IT pretty much everywhere though.

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Yeah, it s definitely true.

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And obviously the post COVID spread, like that drawer of London has diminished a bit and

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people have gone to the home counties and the coasts and the things.

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Still servicing London clients.

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Sure, yeah, the geography has changed completely.

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It s not really what it was anymore, you know, I don t think we ve even got capacity and

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offices to get everyone in at the same time.

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Yeah, I don t know, there s certainly not the right shaped offices from what I ve been

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hearing.

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And some slightly odd, just to go off on that dandruff it, and slightly odd practices like

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I m hearing all of these things were like, they ve decided that we re going to be like

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two days a week in the office but we re not going to say what two days a week in the

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office, everyone has to go in the office for two days and sit on headsets to all the people

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that aren t.

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Yeah, make a sense at all, it s completely ridiculous.

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And on the flip side, like if they do like go, oh, well, you know, Thursday s day s day so

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we can all see each other, then there s not enough room, there s not enough meeting space.

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They ve got the wrong kind of setup, my view.

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So yeah, it s definitely growing pains on that, hopefully common sense will prevail and

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they ll provide the right shape offices and the right sort of schedules.

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We shall see.

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What about the IR-35 thing that is a current pain point?

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Was that, because that was introduced originally in the late 90s, wasn t it?

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What was your original awareness of that as a, as a thing?

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I don t really remember it being a thing until sort of 2016, or something like that.

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I think that was when they changed it to be more rigorous, wasn t it?

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That I think it existed in some form?

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Yeah.

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But I wasn t worried about it.

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I mean, it kind of all appears because somebody says, if you re doing the same job, you

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should be paying the same amount of tax.

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Yeah.

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And is that okay?

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But that completely ignores all of the other factors, like contracts are short lived,

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potentially.

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And you ve got to pay for your own training.

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You don t get holiday pay, you don t get sick pay and all of these things.

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So it s not really comparing apples and apples at all.

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Yeah.

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There s so much risk.

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I literally was working on a client and their stuff was slow, so I bought a much faster

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machine so I could actually get anything done.

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That s a significant outlaw.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, you used your own equipment.

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And you have to pay for everything as a contractor.

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So yeah, it s an odd situation, but yeah, about 2016 when I was aware of it.

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And I think that s when they made it more rigorous for the public sector.

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Right.

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Yeah, they tested it out there, didn t they?

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Yeah, which is kind of funny, because I and a bunch of colleagues were working at H.

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Marcy at the time.

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Right.

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And they sent out quite a few letters saying you re exempt from my 35.

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Huh.

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Yeah, how does that work?

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Can it listen to sound fair?

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Interesting.

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So they can go after the other government departments, of course.

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But they won t have to the BBC hard and they won.

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Yeah, that was a big one.

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Yeah.

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And I think that s the government department is a different question.

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Yes, very fluffy line there.

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Yeah, let s not go to that one.

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What about the limited company structure?

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Because when I arrived in contracting in 2012, like that was just a given.

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Like, if you want to go contracting, you set up a limited company.

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Has that always been the case for your knowledge?

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Or is that a, because I mean, there are options, the sole trader and partnership and

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what have you, but I don t think anyone would take a contractor on without a limited company

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currently?

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No.

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And I think that s primarily around insurance.

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So as a contractor, you are again, it s a big difference between being a paid job and

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being a contractor.

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If something goes wrong, you're personally liable for it.

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Yeah, if you write some software and it inadvertently kills somebody, then you get the

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liability for that because you wrote the software.

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Yeah.

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No, more realistically loses the company millions of pounds or has a day to breach or something.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, that s a less extreme example.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, well, there s a monetary loss.

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Oh my god, you introduced a bug.

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You pushed out to live and our systems aren t live for two days.

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Yeah.

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We got to have that.

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We have some short-term.

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We have a short-term.

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We have a short-term.

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We have a short-term.

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Yeah.

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And so put in the contract within limited company, limits your liability.

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Yep.

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I mean, that s the whole point of having a limited company is so that it limits how much you're

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on the line for in terms of monthly value, whether you're looking to protect any asset.

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You know, if you're investing in property, you can put that in a limited company because

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00:17:17,280 --> 00:17:24,040
then if that property then goes, you know, goes south or one key or whatever, they can only

238
00:17:24,040 --> 00:17:28,800
sue the company for the assets that it has got and it doesn t affect anything outside

239
00:17:28,800 --> 00:17:30,800
the company.

240
00:17:30,800 --> 00:17:37,180
So as a contractor, you wouldn t want to be a sole trader because that gives you an unlimited

241
00:17:37,180 --> 00:17:39,680
liability.

242
00:17:39,680 --> 00:17:41,680
Yeah.

243
00:17:41,680 --> 00:17:42,680
Same for partnership.

244
00:17:42,680 --> 00:17:48,920
Doesn t give you any protection, but you can have a limited liability partnership, which

245
00:17:48,920 --> 00:17:49,920
is another structure.

246
00:17:49,920 --> 00:18:00,280
But as soon as you mention partnerships, you're then talking about more than one person.

247
00:18:00,280 --> 00:18:07,280
And then you're into the MSP rules and I'm trying to see what is in this piece and for

248
00:18:07,280 --> 00:18:09,120
managed service provider, I think.

249
00:18:09,120 --> 00:18:10,800
Something like that, yeah.

250
00:18:10,800 --> 00:18:14,920
So there's also a bunch of other legislation around managed service providers that limits

251
00:18:14,920 --> 00:18:16,440
what they can do.

252
00:18:16,440 --> 00:18:22,640
And so if you're seen as, you know, you fall into those brackets, then yeah, there's the

253
00:18:22,640 --> 00:18:26,200
whole other raft of legislation that you have to look out for.

254
00:18:26,200 --> 00:18:28,840
So that's why you don't see that very much?

255
00:18:28,840 --> 00:18:37,720
So the limited company pretty much is the anyway, if you're outside of I/O35 and if you're inside

256
00:18:37,720 --> 00:18:47,640
I/O35, then you tend to sit under an umbrella because then they tax you correctly in the

257
00:18:47,640 --> 00:18:48,640
very corners.

258
00:18:48,640 --> 00:18:55,000
Yeah, that's quite a modern thing, isn t after they finally tighten some of the last screws

259
00:18:55,000 --> 00:18:57,920
on that particular legislation?

260
00:18:57,920 --> 00:18:58,920
Sure.

261
00:18:58,920 --> 00:19:03,960
But when I first entered contracting, I did go through an umbrella route, an umbrella's

262
00:19:03,960 --> 00:19:04,960
existed way back then.

263
00:19:04,960 --> 00:19:06,760
So that was always available?

264
00:19:06,760 --> 00:19:19,400
Yeah, that was always available because, you know, as somebody entering a new thing, let's

265
00:19:19,400 --> 00:19:21,320
call it a thing, shall we?

266
00:19:21,320 --> 00:19:24,440
You're into a new thing, which your happens to be contracting.

267
00:19:24,440 --> 00:19:27,040
There's lots of variables that you don't know about.

268
00:19:27,040 --> 00:19:32,000
There's loads of mistakes you could make like, how do you run an open limited company?

269
00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:33,360
How do you create one?

270
00:19:33,360 --> 00:19:36,720
You know, what are the rules and stuff about running one?

271
00:19:36,720 --> 00:19:37,800
Who do you need for a port to?

272
00:19:37,800 --> 00:19:41,600
All this sort of stuff.

273
00:19:41,600 --> 00:19:49,640
And you just want to focus on doing your best for the contract you've just signed.

274
00:19:49,640 --> 00:19:54,880
You might not want all of that distraction to learn more about.

275
00:19:54,880 --> 00:20:02,280
And so, using an umbrella company enables you just to focus on the work and not focus

276
00:20:02,280 --> 00:20:04,360
on the admin.

277
00:20:04,360 --> 00:20:12,960
And so, you know, that's the way I went in because it allowed me to explore the other stuff

278
00:20:12,960 --> 00:20:19,160
that I needed to know about being a contractor without having to know everything all at once.

279
00:20:19,160 --> 00:20:23,960
Yeah, that exactly matches my approach and experience.

280
00:20:23,960 --> 00:20:34,680
Having quit a permanent job in 2012 to go contracting, as it were, I did exactly the same.

281
00:20:34,680 --> 00:20:39,480
I took a contract through an umbrella company on a low-ish rate.

282
00:20:39,480 --> 00:20:43,560
And I didn't have the mental capacity to go and figure out how to run a limited company

283
00:20:43,560 --> 00:20:44,560
at the time.

284
00:20:44,560 --> 00:20:48,920
The contracting was very new, bit scary, bit daunting.

285
00:20:48,920 --> 00:20:53,920
And then I knew it was less tax-efficient.

286
00:20:53,920 --> 00:20:57,240
But I just didn't want to take all of that on at once.

287
00:20:57,240 --> 00:21:02,000
And it was considerably simpler, like signed up with this company that sorted the payroll

288
00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:05,200
and sorted out all the taxes and made sure that was all straight.

289
00:21:05,200 --> 00:21:12,200
You know, I don't know, I can't remember how the invoicing worked, but did some work.

290
00:21:12,200 --> 00:21:13,200
Money went in there.

291
00:21:13,200 --> 00:21:14,200
Money came into my bank account.

292
00:21:14,200 --> 00:21:17,000
All taxes paid, all sorted, all through the right routes.

293
00:21:17,000 --> 00:21:20,240
And I think I did, I don't know, a few months doing that.

294
00:21:20,240 --> 00:21:22,240
And then conveniently that contract ended.

295
00:21:22,240 --> 00:21:27,640
I was like, okay, cool, yes, I'm definitely cool with this kind of risk profile than doing

296
00:21:27,640 --> 00:21:28,640
contracting.

297
00:21:28,640 --> 00:21:29,640
I like this as a thing.

298
00:21:29,640 --> 00:21:36,800
I like the kind of show up, show you value, get rewarded for it, take on a project as

299
00:21:36,800 --> 00:21:39,640
a specific fixed term thing.

300
00:21:39,640 --> 00:21:42,360
I'm going to keep doing this and then set up the limited company.

301
00:21:42,360 --> 00:21:43,960
And again, I didn't really want to do the whole thing.

302
00:21:43,960 --> 00:21:47,520
So some of the accounts and see firms will manage all that.

303
00:21:47,520 --> 00:21:53,680
I mean, just got easier now with companies out of some, what have you automating a lot

304
00:21:53,680 --> 00:21:57,240
of their systems and having better online systems.

305
00:21:57,240 --> 00:22:01,920
But yeah, the accountants just for a not particularly big fee did all of the paperwork and

306
00:22:01,920 --> 00:22:04,480
made sure that that was all correctly set up.

307
00:22:04,480 --> 00:22:07,720
So again, I still didn't entirely have to worry about it.

308
00:22:07,720 --> 00:22:12,160
And we won't talk about my history of being with actually managing to get my account

309
00:22:12,160 --> 00:22:16,120
sorted at the right time because I've still been focusing emotionally on like satisfying

310
00:22:16,120 --> 00:22:18,360
my clients and keeping them happy.

311
00:22:18,360 --> 00:22:23,000
So I have a count on us to keep me honest, still.

312
00:22:23,000 --> 00:22:24,000
Yeah.

313
00:22:24,000 --> 00:22:30,280
And I don't know if we want to go in this direction, but there's certainly a lot of horror stories

314
00:22:30,280 --> 00:22:35,160
about accountants that, well, you're running the company.

315
00:22:35,160 --> 00:22:36,160
You know what you're doing.

316
00:22:36,160 --> 00:22:38,160
You know how to run a company, don't you?

317
00:22:38,160 --> 00:22:43,840
And a lot of people that run companies don't know what they're expecting because you don't

318
00:22:43,840 --> 00:22:45,800
know what you don't know.

319
00:22:45,800 --> 00:22:52,120
But there are some good accountants out there who will say, here's a bunch of stuff you need

320
00:22:52,120 --> 00:22:54,120
to know.

321
00:22:54,120 --> 00:22:57,240
Here's a letter telling you everything.

322
00:22:57,240 --> 00:23:00,920
And then you receive the letter, I don't know, might be in January.

323
00:23:00,920 --> 00:23:07,440
And that's the last you hear from them until they go, oh, well, we haven't got this information

324
00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:09,440
for you, so we didn't do anything.

325
00:23:09,440 --> 00:23:10,440
That's not very useful.

326
00:23:10,440 --> 00:23:11,440
Come on, likes.

327
00:23:11,440 --> 00:23:21,120
So, yeah, your mileage may vary, just way, yeah, good accountants are really good and bad

328
00:23:21,120 --> 00:23:22,920
accountants are numerous.

329
00:23:22,920 --> 00:23:30,920
Yeah, I've been let down previously and it just proves the point that you are responsible

330
00:23:30,920 --> 00:23:35,360
for your own accounts being correct and your own legal filing has been correct.

331
00:23:35,360 --> 00:23:38,600
You can't take your after-all because you can delegate it and that's fine, you can get

332
00:23:38,600 --> 00:23:39,600
the hard work done.

333
00:23:39,600 --> 00:23:40,600
That's fine.

334
00:23:40,600 --> 00:23:46,440
But they might lay you down and I did get that down and I got fined because I was a year

335
00:23:46,440 --> 00:23:47,680
late with something.

336
00:23:47,680 --> 00:23:51,200
And fortunately, fair play to them, I won't mention their name, but fair play to them, they

337
00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:54,600
did pay the fine for me, so I didn't end up out of cock pocket, but I could have done

338
00:23:54,600 --> 00:23:56,640
without it, frankly.

339
00:23:56,640 --> 00:24:02,720
And I will give a shout to Gorilla who have been very good since I did my research on reviews

340
00:24:02,720 --> 00:24:04,720
and I've not been disappointed with them.

341
00:24:04,720 --> 00:24:08,320
But still, it's important that I keep on top of it.

342
00:24:08,320 --> 00:24:09,320
Yeah.

343
00:24:09,320 --> 00:24:12,240
You are the director of the company in the book, Stops with You.

344
00:24:12,240 --> 00:24:13,240
That's right.

345
00:24:13,240 --> 00:24:17,560
Yeah, the R-35 doesn't reflect that as a thing either.

346
00:24:17,560 --> 00:24:21,320
Yeah, it's just a little bit of a late spinning.

347
00:24:21,320 --> 00:24:22,320
Cool.

348
00:24:22,320 --> 00:24:25,560
Well, just take a different direction.

349
00:24:25,560 --> 00:24:31,440
We talked about how you got into contracting, which is fascinating for me as someone

350
00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:36,440
who came in at a different time to learn a bit about what that looked like.

351
00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:38,520
What about the tech itself?

352
00:24:38,520 --> 00:24:43,440
What drew you into this as a world and has obviously kept you here?

353
00:24:43,440 --> 00:24:49,600
Yeah, I mean, I didn't imagine.

354
00:24:49,600 --> 00:24:58,320
You could have spoken to a 16-year-old me and I wasn't expecting to be in computers.

355
00:24:58,320 --> 00:25:06,640
And my first love, if anything, would be in a pilot flying things.

356
00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:11,840
But my eyesight was not good enough for the Navy, so that never happened.

357
00:25:11,840 --> 00:25:15,080
That dream got to spell quite quickly.

358
00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:22,280
And so I thought, okay, the next best thing would be to be an engineer, fixing the things

359
00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:23,280
instead.

360
00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:27,920
Maybe I'll get a chance to fly them or fly in them at some point.

361
00:25:27,920 --> 00:25:45,760
But all the while, I still was quite an introvert and saved up loads of money from doing paper

362
00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:52,800
round and bought a specky, second hand as an expectation, and quite enjoyed programming

363
00:25:52,800 --> 00:25:53,800
on that.

364
00:25:53,800 --> 00:25:57,720
And so I did computer studies at school as well.

365
00:25:57,720 --> 00:26:06,120
And so it was always like a good passion, but not quite as strong as wanting to fly helicopters,

366
00:26:06,120 --> 00:26:12,720
but kind of that then disappeared entirely.

367
00:26:12,720 --> 00:26:16,560
I didn't go to university at all.

368
00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:27,840
And I sort of half flunked out at A levels because I started year one, I was in one college,

369
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:36,640
and then we moved to another college and the syllabus didn't line up.

370
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:43,080
So I essentially did A Level Maths twice, but only one year of it.

371
00:26:43,080 --> 00:26:46,920
And they didn't do computer science at all, so I couldn't do that in the second year.

372
00:26:46,920 --> 00:26:51,400
And so yeah, it was quite a mess.

373
00:26:51,400 --> 00:26:58,920
Just proves that you don't necessarily need educational bits of paper if you can get

374
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:03,480
the experience some other way.

375
00:27:03,480 --> 00:27:10,920
And so my dreams have been an engineer in terms of mechanical engineering.

376
00:27:10,920 --> 00:27:15,200
The entry or cramps are pretty much yes, you need a degree to do that.

377
00:27:15,200 --> 00:27:21,680
So not going to university killed that one off, but I did quite like programming and so

378
00:27:21,680 --> 00:27:27,040
I did lots of programming and stuff and I was just waiting for the door to open to get

379
00:27:27,040 --> 00:27:28,640
in there.

380
00:27:28,640 --> 00:27:34,560
And so I knew a guy that already worked at the company and I think they probably got a referral

381
00:27:34,560 --> 00:27:38,480
fee for introducing me.

382
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:45,480
And we're delighted when I got the job because they got a 50 quid referral fee or whatever.

383
00:27:45,480 --> 00:27:48,480
Right.

384
00:27:48,480 --> 00:27:56,440
Yeah, on the education thing, did you then need or choose to follow up with technical

385
00:27:56,440 --> 00:27:57,440
qualifications?

386
00:27:57,440 --> 00:28:04,400
I mean, I did a couple of things, but it was useful at the start of contracting, but beyond

387
00:28:04,400 --> 00:28:07,120
that, I haven't really bothered.

388
00:28:07,120 --> 00:28:13,440
No, I guess my love of certificates is strong.

389
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:16,200
You know, I love getting a gold star and pat on the head.

390
00:28:16,200 --> 00:28:18,120
That's really, that feels nice.

391
00:28:18,120 --> 00:28:25,040
But in terms of practical use, getting started is quite nice.

392
00:28:25,040 --> 00:28:29,880
But as I mentioned, my first foray into IT was being a trainee.

393
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:35,720
So it was a two year program where they gave me a lot of training, you know, how to fix

394
00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:42,600
a printer and they were talking laser printers and it completely disassembling and putting

395
00:28:42,600 --> 00:28:44,600
them back together again.

396
00:28:44,600 --> 00:28:50,680
Obviously with screws left over, but ask for learning, right?

397
00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:53,480
I'm sure they were added by the instructor.

398
00:28:53,480 --> 00:28:59,280
They weren't honestly left out from somewhere else important.

399
00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:02,040
And so then they did a couple of training courses.

400
00:29:02,040 --> 00:29:08,360
So compact was a big company at the time, it's been bought by HP since and so it's like,

401
00:29:08,360 --> 00:29:13,520
you know, here's just how you fix a compact server and you get a certificate for it.

402
00:29:13,520 --> 00:29:19,320
So at the end of that two years, I did have quite a few certificates, but ultimately it was

403
00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:26,320
my two years experience that got me into the next job, not the certificates from my perspective

404
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:27,320
anyway.

405
00:29:27,320 --> 00:29:29,760
Yeah, you never quite know, do you?

406
00:29:29,760 --> 00:29:31,520
No.

407
00:29:31,520 --> 00:29:39,600
And then I guess as I progressed onto the more server side of things, I was slightly

408
00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:48,520
lured by, should I do a Cisco examination or CCNA or should I do a Microsoft examination,

409
00:29:48,520 --> 00:29:51,440
the MSC or MSSA.

410
00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:57,760
And whilst I kind of dabbled in, did a couple of the exams, I just didn't really feel that

411
00:29:57,760 --> 00:30:03,920
it was required of me to do that and therefore the motivation just wasn't the same.

412
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:07,440
And I don't think it's done me any harm by not having them.

413
00:30:07,440 --> 00:30:11,200
Yeah, that seems to be a common story in the industry.

414
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:15,600
Like, as a contractor, I meet all sorts of people and I've had a fair few permanent jobs

415
00:30:15,600 --> 00:30:16,600
as well.

416
00:30:16,600 --> 00:30:20,440
And that's one thing I really noticed is the store, I love asking people like how did you

417
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:21,440
get into it.

418
00:30:21,440 --> 00:30:24,960
And the stories are just all so different.

419
00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:30,680
I just took, I wouldn't name them in the case, they don't particularly want to shed, but

420
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:36,600
someone I met along the way who I enjoyed working with immensely.

421
00:30:36,600 --> 00:30:39,760
They were working for a finance company and they were doing the spreadsheets and then they

422
00:30:39,760 --> 00:30:42,680
liked doing the macro programming and then they were like, this is interesting.

423
00:30:42,680 --> 00:30:46,920
And then they went off and did a geography degree and then they ended up doing the GIS systems

424
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:52,040
and we ended up working on a thing together around that.

425
00:30:52,040 --> 00:31:01,120
And that was kind of like, I'd say mid-career coming into that, like a few years on me.

426
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:07,040
And then they sort of arrived with a bit of paranoia that they'd missed something because

427
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:08,640
they didn't do the computer science route.

428
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:12,040
Like there was something that the computer science people knew that they didn't and there

429
00:31:12,040 --> 00:31:14,320
was this golden inside us, E-curates.

430
00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:20,080
And eventually they realised this and they were like, there's a few series that you

431
00:31:20,080 --> 00:31:27,680
probably need to learn and there's some theoretical programming stuff, like the proof stuff that

432
00:31:27,680 --> 00:31:32,080
maybe you become aware of but don't ever need, it's more of an academic interest.

433
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:38,920
And eventually they probably outstripped me in a lot of ways, frankly, in their depths of

434
00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:39,920
knowledge.

435
00:31:39,920 --> 00:31:43,520
It was good fun when we got to the point of like, he was challenging me on things, instead

436
00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:45,360
of the other way around.

437
00:31:45,360 --> 00:31:49,480
Because initially he thought I was going to have it a go when I pulled him up on all

438
00:31:49,480 --> 00:31:52,600
the things that I knew, goodness knows what that looks like for a hindsight.

439
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:56,920
Because I've learnt a lot since then.

440
00:31:56,920 --> 00:32:04,720
Yeah, quite often it's just putting labels on things that you've discovered, that's actually

441
00:32:04,720 --> 00:32:05,880
called that, right?

442
00:32:05,880 --> 00:32:06,880
Okay.

443
00:32:06,880 --> 00:32:11,120
So you both know it but you've arrived at it for a very different route.

444
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:19,440
Yeah, that's what I found when I discovered programming patterns, which I lived a relative

445
00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:25,000
to each other, programming life for probably 10 years in relatively small groups.

446
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:29,080
The internet was not quite such a good way of learning about all of the things going on

447
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:30,080
out there.

448
00:32:30,080 --> 00:32:31,840
I hadn't discovered conferences and things.

449
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:35,400
I don't know, I assume that they were happening.

450
00:32:35,400 --> 00:32:42,880
So then I felt my way through design and then I found out about patterns and started reading

451
00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:46,320
all of those and was like, oh yeah, I did a thing that was a bit like that, I didn't

452
00:32:46,320 --> 00:32:47,720
know I had a name.

453
00:32:47,720 --> 00:32:50,440
Yeah, all these things.

454
00:32:50,440 --> 00:32:54,560
Yeah, cool.

455
00:32:54,560 --> 00:33:04,760
So the subject of the book to like move on to kind of the next thing is, well, the title

456
00:33:04,760 --> 00:33:10,600
is Confident Contractor which I think is a wonderful title.

457
00:33:10,600 --> 00:33:17,480
So I think what would be cool would be to talk a bit about contracting specifically, partly

458
00:33:17,480 --> 00:33:27,640
from general interest, partly selfishly.

459
00:33:27,640 --> 00:33:32,800
I have my own challenges, I'm definitely keen to see what I can learn along the way in this

460
00:33:32,800 --> 00:33:33,880
conversation.

461
00:33:33,880 --> 00:33:40,480
So this might be a bit random because I've got kind of just a selection of thoughts that

462
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:44,960
I will fire off at you at random.

463
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:53,280
So just to kick off, so probably one of the most topical things in contracting is I-35

464
00:33:53,280 --> 00:33:58,800
which we've mentioned already.

465
00:33:58,800 --> 00:34:01,920
I've been kind of okay.

466
00:34:01,920 --> 00:34:06,360
It's definitely been a bit more gappy for me, like more breaks between things.

467
00:34:06,360 --> 00:34:09,960
I've not taken anything inside I-35, it doesn't really fit with the way I want to work.

468
00:34:09,960 --> 00:34:11,880
I like, I want to do a project.

469
00:34:11,880 --> 00:34:17,240
If it's inside I-35 that tells me that you're looking for an employee to move around, or

470
00:34:17,240 --> 00:34:22,120
that you haven't bothered to do the work, to figure out what it is you're even hiring.

471
00:34:22,120 --> 00:34:26,080
I'm more interested in kind of like building a proper business to be honest and that would

472
00:34:26,080 --> 00:34:32,680
be very much products and that kind of offering, you know, products and projects.

473
00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:38,480
And obviously there's the other context of like the still consequences of the whole COVID

474
00:34:38,480 --> 00:34:45,400
thing that was a bit scary and people had various experiences of that.

475
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:49,720
But it's obviously still affected the market in some ways.

476
00:34:49,720 --> 00:34:55,400
The interest rates have gone up because of the general global macroeconomics that I won't

477
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:59,160
go into because that's a whole different show.

478
00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:05,040
But it is what it is and the result of that is the investment money has largely, I wouldn't

479
00:35:05,040 --> 00:35:08,440
say dried up, but it's not in such easy supply as it used to.

480
00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:15,400
Because investments now have to work much harder in order to get the return on investment

481
00:35:15,400 --> 00:35:18,560
when you can put it in a bond and get 4-5%.

482
00:35:18,560 --> 00:35:24,200
So now you have to, the big investments are thinking more carefully and they're not necessarily

483
00:35:24,200 --> 00:35:25,200
pouring it all into tech.

484
00:35:25,200 --> 00:35:30,520
So we've seen off the back of that, we've seen layoffs, which is obviously being fairly

485
00:35:30,520 --> 00:35:31,520
big news.

486
00:35:31,520 --> 00:35:36,480
You know, the fact a lot have been offloading decent numbers of people like I have no idea

487
00:35:36,480 --> 00:35:45,480
whether the ratio of important jobs, useless jobs, great people, terrible people, even tech

488
00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:49,560
and non-tech, that's not really clear from what I've seen.

489
00:35:49,560 --> 00:35:54,920
You can't really, if me as an individual have got this specialist skill, there's quite

490
00:35:54,920 --> 00:35:56,440
a deep, technical skill.

491
00:35:56,440 --> 00:36:01,360
And I see like, oh so and so, layed off 10,000 people, well, is that they layed off 10,000

492
00:36:01,360 --> 00:36:06,360
highly skilled specialist consultants that are going to be competing with me?

493
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:11,880
Or is it like some support people and things who could just never do what I do?

494
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:17,600
We don't really, I'd, maybe you have any info, but I've not really seen anything on kind

495
00:36:17,600 --> 00:36:22,680
of what that breaks down like, but the point is, there's a bit of a doom and gloom environment,

496
00:36:22,680 --> 00:36:26,920
I don't want to call it a doom and gloom environment, but this is why here.

497
00:36:26,920 --> 00:36:31,480
And it's contracted to some extent, the supply and demand has flipped a bit.

498
00:36:31,480 --> 00:36:35,600
So with that, and the I-35, the effect that's had.

499
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:43,000
So my sort of fairly blunt question is, like, do you think contracting is still worth

500
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:50,240
doing in this environment where it's become a lot more difficult?

501
00:36:50,240 --> 00:36:54,080
Well, the short answer is yes.

502
00:36:54,080 --> 00:36:59,400
And the longer answer is, yeah, everything is in cycles.

503
00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:11,720
So the reason why there's a little bit more, I don't know, more supply of techies and less

504
00:37:11,720 --> 00:37:19,520
demand of techies is because there was a lot of overhiring going on during COVID.

505
00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:23,720
Now, all of a sudden, everything had to go online.

506
00:37:23,720 --> 00:37:29,360
And it was kind of like I mentioned this earlier, you know, the way to K-Bug almost created

507
00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:35,760
the same situation where we need a lot of developers, all of a sudden, to fix some code and then

508
00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:44,360
once that had passed, and in this case, COVID has passed, we don't need those skills anymore.

509
00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:54,080
And so some of them will be there because it was easy to get a job in those people who

510
00:37:54,080 --> 00:38:00,400
just, if you've got a pulse, great, you're hired sort of thing.

511
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:07,400
And so, you know, the fact that they will then get let go and they'll just find something

512
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:16,960
else, whatever the next thing is, you know, be it midnight shelf stacking or some more glamorous.

513
00:38:16,960 --> 00:38:25,760
So yeah, whilst there's a huge overhiring and now there's an underhiring, but I feel that

514
00:38:25,760 --> 00:38:29,760
if you know what you're doing, then there's a market for you.

515
00:38:29,760 --> 00:38:36,600
I mean, I was looking at LinkedIn this morning or this thing, it was just a 183 jobs were

516
00:38:36,600 --> 00:38:44,280
listed, a contracted jobs specifically on LinkedIn for, you know, all sorts of gubins,

517
00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:52,360
but IT contracted jobs as well as searched for, which tells me that the market is coming back

518
00:38:52,360 --> 00:38:58,740
from where it was, you know, because there's always an overreaction, you know, whenever you

519
00:38:58,740 --> 00:39:06,080
talk about markets, they cut deep and then, you know, try and fill in the gaps afterwards.

520
00:39:06,080 --> 00:39:11,880
But I think the main thing around contracting and this kind of plays into some of the risk

521
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:21,240
around it is because it is more project-based, it is more skills-based and it's not putting

522
00:39:21,240 --> 00:39:27,120
a bum on a seat because we want some resource, but we're not quite sure you're doing.

523
00:39:27,120 --> 00:39:33,120
We actually want you to deliver this deliverable, you know, it's this product, it must do this

524
00:39:33,120 --> 00:39:38,280
that, you know, the, they might not know exactly what that looks like, but they've got a vague

525
00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:45,120
idea of what it should look like. And so for that, I think contractors will always be in

526
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:51,600
demand because you're going into a little bit of financial theory, you've got capex and

527
00:39:51,600 --> 00:40:00,720
opX. Capital expenditure is where you're spending lumps of money, whereas operational expenditure

528
00:40:00,720 --> 00:40:12,080
is where you're devoting some endless sort of budget to it. It's a bit like where you

529
00:40:12,080 --> 00:40:21,240
can buy a car or you can rent a car. It's kind of that kind of mindset of, yeah, if you buy

530
00:40:21,240 --> 00:40:28,120
it straight out, that's your capex and it's a big number, but it's done and it's got a definitive

531
00:40:28,120 --> 00:40:34,800
end date and all that sort of stuff. Maybe a car is not a great example for that, but if you

532
00:40:34,800 --> 00:40:39,200
think of some unsubscription and it's ongoing, then you don't know how long that's going

533
00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:46,240
to last for and it's a reoccurring expense and some businesses when they're setting up a

534
00:40:46,240 --> 00:40:53,680
new project, they don't like that open-endness of it. So they don't want somebody in a job

535
00:40:53,680 --> 00:40:59,080
that they're going to have to fire, they would rather say, hey, you come in, do this for 12

536
00:40:59,080 --> 00:41:04,440
months and at the end of the 12 months, you say goodbye and there's no hard feelings.

537
00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:12,240
Yeah, so salaries go under, opX, don't they? Yeah, completely different budgeting. So my

538
00:41:12,240 --> 00:41:17,640
understanding is the CFO will look at the total opX and look at the total capex for the

539
00:41:17,640 --> 00:41:24,360
year and they're really twitchy about opX going up because that will affect the profitability

540
00:41:24,360 --> 00:41:30,400
of the company forever without further control and whereas capex is like, we're going to

541
00:41:30,400 --> 00:41:36,920
make this investment to build this thing, to bring us more income or save us this cost.

542
00:41:36,920 --> 00:41:44,520
So reduce our opX. So that will not just include contractors, it includes like everything

543
00:41:44,520 --> 00:41:49,400
that they have to spend, spin it up soon, it could even be like, build a whole new office,

544
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:53,680
like build this gigantic software system and the people, the contractors that go in there

545
00:41:53,680 --> 00:42:03,280
are just like another line item on that as I understand it. Indeed, yeah, so it just fits

546
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:08,120
a different need. Yeah, I think that's an important point. I think a lot of contractors

547
00:42:08,120 --> 00:42:12,120
like I'm often certain come across and certainly permise, like don't really know about

548
00:42:12,120 --> 00:42:18,280
the capex, opX thing and I think sometimes they wonder like, why are we being told it's

549
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:25,480
so hard to give pay rises and yet you not are coming on with it, coming in with your fancy

550
00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:30,320
cars and your like high day rates that they may or may not know about, like how's that

551
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:34,120
okay? And the answer is that it just comes from a completely different budget, like it's

552
00:42:34,120 --> 00:42:39,600
a project budget, it's a capital expenditure budget. And again, like you say, we're expendable

553
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:45,080
in the sense of come in, build the thing, deliver the value and go away again and no more

554
00:42:45,080 --> 00:42:50,440
invoices. Yeah, and to touch on what you said earlier, it's usually funded quite differently

555
00:42:50,440 --> 00:42:57,480
as well. And if you've got a capital project, then because it's got a defined cost to it,

556
00:42:57,480 --> 00:43:04,320
the business might actually borrow money in order to fund that particular project, whereas

557
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:09,120
if you've got somebody on an ongoing salary type basis, then that needs to come out of

558
00:43:09,120 --> 00:43:16,680
the profit or the operating margin or whatever you want to call it. So you don't have the

559
00:43:16,680 --> 00:43:23,520
same flexibility in that budget at all. And speed of return matters as well, I've become

560
00:43:23,520 --> 00:43:27,080
more aware of this recently because I've been reading a bit about investment, so like

561
00:43:27,080 --> 00:43:32,480
looking at it from the other side of the investor and like an investment that makes sense

562
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:37,840
in six months to get your return, perhaps doesn't make sense if it takes two years. And

563
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:42,600
that really relates to what we do in terms of like if we can't deliver the results quick enough

564
00:43:42,600 --> 00:43:49,240
to make their investment worthwhile, then they maybe don't get the value out of it. Yeah.

565
00:43:49,240 --> 00:43:58,080
And because of the potential to borrow the money, it also has a relation on the interest

566
00:43:58,080 --> 00:44:06,480
rates. They could afford to borrow the money for basically free. Free in terms of the

567
00:44:06,480 --> 00:44:11,440
obviously have to pay the money back, but no additional charge on top of that. And so that

568
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:19,320
gives them a lot of opportunity to build new stuff, whereas with a higher rate, it's more

569
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:25,880
expensive to borrow money. So therefore those projects might not be so attractive anymore.

570
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:32,040
So how much do you think that awareness of this whole capital, and the kind of like financial

571
00:44:32,040 --> 00:44:38,880
side of the way businesses operate? How much do you think that's useful for a newer existing

572
00:44:38,880 --> 00:44:45,560
contractor to know about and understand when it comes to like winning and executing on

573
00:44:45,560 --> 00:44:55,440
contracts for a client? I think it's useful when negotiating, because we all like to be

574
00:44:55,440 --> 00:45:02,000
negotiating, we're selling, we're negotiating, and often the customer, you need to understand

575
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:14,200
why they are investing the money. And particularly in my main focus, which is DevOps, I don't really

576
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:22,520
create anything. My benefit, you know, why are you going to hire me is because I'm going

577
00:45:22,520 --> 00:45:27,920
to save you money, I'm going to save you time. You know, you've got three developers working

578
00:45:27,920 --> 00:45:34,200
flat out, but they're doing all of this manual stuff. You hire me for three months, I put

579
00:45:34,200 --> 00:45:39,600
some systems in place, and now those three developers can do more time developing and

580
00:45:39,600 --> 00:45:45,800
less time flapping about with servers and employees and all that other stuff. And so it gives

581
00:45:45,800 --> 00:45:52,320
the business a better return on their on their uphicks, their staff that they're paying for

582
00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:57,280
their on day, it makes them more efficient by giving me the project and the opportunity

583
00:45:57,280 --> 00:46:03,720
to make their processes a little bit slicker. And so having that understanding between

584
00:46:03,720 --> 00:46:13,200
the two does help you, you know, express the benefits to the customer and perhaps the

585
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:26,120
language that they would understand. And do you, to what extent do you think the customers

586
00:46:26,120 --> 00:46:32,160
come in? So when they've decided to hire a contractor, assuming that you're not just

587
00:46:32,160 --> 00:46:36,160
kind of cold selling them into hiring someone, they won't go into it. Okay, we want a contractor

588
00:46:36,160 --> 00:46:45,560
to do some DevOps or whatever. Like, how much is that kind of top of mind for them in terms

589
00:46:45,560 --> 00:46:51,880
of like that, that becomes an important part of that conversation? Like, do you think that

590
00:46:51,880 --> 00:46:56,560
you need to be kind of leaning into that and selling that to them or is it like, they

591
00:46:56,560 --> 00:47:04,520
know that and they're just happy that you maybe get it? Yeah, I mean, in classic contract

592
00:47:04,520 --> 00:47:16,880
to speak, it depends, along with some expensive or made a mess there. Exactly. Cause some, some

593
00:47:16,880 --> 00:47:23,600
customers know that they want something achieved, you know, whatever that happens to be and they'll

594
00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:32,800
go to a recruitment agent who specialise in contracts. We want to see ICD pipelines. Yeah,

595
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:39,120
and so the recruit will say, well, if you want somebody with those skills to deliver that,

596
00:47:39,120 --> 00:47:46,720
then the market rate is currently this. What's your budget? Whereas sometimes they have no

597
00:47:46,720 --> 00:47:53,560
idea what their budget is and they need that sort of third party guidance to say, well, if you

598
00:47:53,560 --> 00:47:58,320
want somebody who's actually going to deliver that for you, it's going to cost you this.

599
00:47:58,320 --> 00:48:04,360
If your budget is less than that, you might get what you want, but might take longer, which

600
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:11,520
is actually cost you more. And if your budget is more than that, then great, have two of them

601
00:48:11,520 --> 00:48:15,960
instead. You know, maybe they can do it half the speed because, you know, the mythical

602
00:48:15,960 --> 00:48:28,280
man months and all of that sort of stuff. So it depends on how knowledgeable the customer

603
00:48:28,280 --> 00:48:34,840
is and whether you've got a middle man to work with in there as well. And if you just start

604
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:41,400
in out in contracting, then chances are you're going to speaking to recruiters and they will

605
00:48:41,400 --> 00:48:50,920
be dealing with a lot of that negotiation for you. And so it's not so important. Whereas

606
00:48:50,920 --> 00:48:58,040
as your business matures and you're talking to customers directly, it's a lot more valuable

607
00:48:58,040 --> 00:49:02,080
to them and to you for you to be able to speak the same language.

608
00:49:02,080 --> 00:49:06,800
Right. So early in your contracting career, like a bit like the umbrella thing, you can

609
00:49:06,800 --> 00:49:11,600
be like, okay, a recruiters sorted out the value proposition. I'll just show up and do

610
00:49:11,600 --> 00:49:16,440
some work and then maybe later on if you want to like have a bit more control and understand

611
00:49:16,440 --> 00:49:20,640
your projects and you want to increase your value and rate, then you might want to talk

612
00:49:20,640 --> 00:49:26,320
to a CTO or something and say like, yeah, this is what it's going to get you.

613
00:49:26,320 --> 00:49:32,720
Indeed, yeah. Yeah, there's still a progression to be had, you know, even if you're experienced

614
00:49:32,720 --> 00:49:37,840
and then you're going to contracting this the whole other raft of skills that you will

615
00:49:37,840 --> 00:49:44,880
pick up as time goes along. Oh, tell me about it. It's been a learning journey, I'll tell

616
00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:51,120
you. Yeah, I mean, I went into it with an open mind, but even just learning what a limited

617
00:49:51,120 --> 00:49:56,940
company isn't how to operate it has been a learning thing and then, you know, the wins and

618
00:49:56,940 --> 00:50:01,600
losses along the way with various clients and effectively sales, people don't really

619
00:50:01,600 --> 00:50:07,440
like to call themselves, but it is sales. Even if you're selling to a recruiter who already

620
00:50:07,440 --> 00:50:12,880
has a place, you know, it's still sales. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you're not going to be any

621
00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:20,600
person that who it's talking to. So you still need to have some element of selling

622
00:50:20,600 --> 00:50:26,920
this is cool, it's selling. Yeah, you know, I have to be able to see be a good or whatever.

623
00:50:26,920 --> 00:50:33,000
Yeah, yeah, I mean, especially in the current market, like from what I've heard, the recruiters

624
00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:39,880
drown in like a couple of hundred CVs for everything they post, but the quality is, there's

625
00:50:39,880 --> 00:50:46,160
a lot of low quality things. Yeah, CVs landing. So they like immediately filter out 190.

626
00:50:46,160 --> 00:50:55,720
So yeah, yeah, but even the good people are like, there's competent right now, I'm hearing

627
00:50:55,720 --> 00:51:01,720
like, yeah, we've got three or four really good options showing up at the moment, which is,

628
00:51:01,720 --> 00:51:07,280
you know, good for the clients comes and goes, let you say, Benjamin's. Yeah.

629
00:51:07,280 --> 00:51:18,840
So many, so many aspects of the whole contracting thing, there's all sorts of interesting directions

630
00:51:18,840 --> 00:51:27,880
to go in. I think I want to go back to the book a bit. So, because there's a thing that we

631
00:51:27,880 --> 00:51:33,320
haven't talked about, which I think is important, which is like the why of the book. So that I've

632
00:51:33,320 --> 00:51:39,320
read your confident contractor, but I think it's an excellent coverage of like the whole

633
00:51:39,320 --> 00:51:44,480
picture of contracting. Like there are things in there for someone like me, like rounding

634
00:51:44,480 --> 00:51:48,680
out my knowledge, even having done it for that long, like some thought about like how you

635
00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:53,920
progress forward from where you've got to. That's really useful. And you know, occasionally

636
00:51:53,920 --> 00:51:57,760
get, you know, permanent people that I work with. I'm quite often rubbing shoulders with

637
00:51:57,760 --> 00:52:03,120
maybe junior engineers who are thinking about their career and they're, you know, curious.

638
00:52:03,120 --> 00:52:06,680
About the contracting thing, they maybe don't know it's what's involved. They don't, you know,

639
00:52:06,680 --> 00:52:11,880
they see us as these mysterious people that pop up and disappear again. And yeah, this

640
00:52:11,880 --> 00:52:18,440
would be a fantastic guide from in not not too long a form. So to give someone a like, this

641
00:52:18,440 --> 00:52:24,360
is the whole of contracting. Like I think you've done a great job of without kind of focusing

642
00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:30,160
in on like DevOps or programming or something like for an IT contractor generally. Like this

643
00:52:30,160 --> 00:52:35,080
is what that life looks like. This is the kind of things that you need to make sure you

644
00:52:35,080 --> 00:52:46,320
don't worry about. So you're, you know, you've got into tech then from there, you've come to

645
00:52:46,320 --> 00:52:52,040
the same conclusion as a lot of us have like, Oh, these permanent jobs are not very permanent.

646
00:52:52,040 --> 00:52:58,600
Are they? And as my mate said to me, you know, a year's money in the bank is better job

647
00:52:58,600 --> 00:53:05,280
security than you'll get out of any, any employer for sure. Yeah. Did you have a family and

648
00:53:05,280 --> 00:53:14,280
then good luck. But that's I'd so you've got this career path and, you know, you're currently

649
00:53:14,280 --> 00:53:21,320
gainfully employed on a contract with HMRC helping them do their DevOps things. What's motivated

650
00:53:21,320 --> 00:53:26,880
you to like help the broader contractor community because this is, this book is obviously a great

651
00:53:26,880 --> 00:53:34,800
service to the contractor and, and hopeful contractor people out there.

652
00:53:34,800 --> 00:53:47,920
I think it's because I'm getting older and I want to help, you know, I want to be that guide

653
00:53:47,920 --> 00:53:57,040
that I never had when I wanted to get into contracting. So I think it's purely altruistic.

654
00:53:57,040 --> 00:54:04,520
I just want to help people with it. Not. And I think that just comes with age, you know,

655
00:54:04,520 --> 00:54:16,560
you, you have a few sort of epiphany moments of, you know, what can I, what can I do? How

656
00:54:16,560 --> 00:54:28,840
can I help? How can I leave a positive mark? Yeah. I mean, I was lucky. I, when, when I was thinking

657
00:54:28,840 --> 00:54:35,920
about contracting, I had a friend who was already contracting. So I, like, they encouraged me,

658
00:54:35,920 --> 00:54:40,880
they, well, pushed me a bit, they gave me a bit of a picture of what that might look like,

659
00:54:40,880 --> 00:54:44,680
you know, I, I heard of it as a thing. But I think if I, if I hadn't had that and a lot

660
00:54:44,680 --> 00:54:52,560
of people don't, then being able to, assuming Google will lead them to it or a podcast,

661
00:54:52,560 --> 00:55:01,360
who knows, you know, will really appreciate like that, that guide in, in such detail. Yeah,

662
00:55:01,360 --> 00:55:08,080
it's, that's, that's great. It does seem to be a, a, a stages of lighting, doesn't it?

663
00:55:08,080 --> 00:55:15,640
Like, it's, this is the first era of career is like, oh, I can earn and I can like provide

664
00:55:15,640 --> 00:55:20,080
some value. This is cool. And go back to socializing outside of that or whatever is your, is

665
00:55:20,080 --> 00:55:24,760
your saying? And then I'm personally in the stage of like, oh, blind me, family is expensive.

666
00:55:24,760 --> 00:55:31,000
Yeah, suddenly, suddenly get a bit more motivated to like push a bit harder, which is, which is

667
00:55:31,000 --> 00:55:37,960
cool, you know, and in terms of kind of how that's aligned. So the first, first, 12 years,

668
00:55:37,960 --> 00:55:42,200
was per me things of basically coasting along and enjoying myself and, you know, pushing

669
00:55:42,200 --> 00:55:47,080
myself a bit in terms of moving companies when I stagnated and things. And then contracting

670
00:55:47,080 --> 00:55:52,200
was the next like, all right. Well, I, I tell you what mainly pushed me into contracting

671
00:55:52,200 --> 00:56:02,480
was, I never quite knew when others per me whether they just couldn't bother to get rid of

672
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:06,000
me or whether I was really providing value. Because you know, it's not, it's not that

673
00:56:06,000 --> 00:56:11,120
easy to hire a per me. It's a bit of a hassle. It's like personally stressful, especially

674
00:56:11,120 --> 00:56:14,440
when you're working for small companies. And there's always a bit of me like, is it just

675
00:56:14,440 --> 00:56:21,680
easier to pay me my salary and put up with me than it is to like, turn me out like, there's

676
00:56:21,680 --> 00:56:29,320
a disconnect here between the value I'm providing and that's provable and like the set up, the

677
00:56:29,320 --> 00:56:33,160
legal set up, the employment set up. And with contracting, you're just so much closer,

678
00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:40,000
like, you sign a contract, but the week notice, like basically it's, and I've seen it, sometimes

679
00:56:40,000 --> 00:56:44,240
it, it does, it happens less than I perhaps expected. Like, I've seen people keep on really,

680
00:56:44,240 --> 00:56:48,200
really terrible people for God knows what reason, even though like the contract says we can

681
00:56:48,200 --> 00:56:54,080
get rid of you tomorrow. It's quite odd. But on the flip side, I've also seen the same

682
00:56:54,080 --> 00:56:59,760
of like, yep, we're not getting value. You got four days by. Oh, and if we're happy,

683
00:56:59,760 --> 00:57:03,520
we'll go tomorrow. Cool. Yeah. All right. That's the end of that. And, you know, we'll pay

684
00:57:03,520 --> 00:57:08,920
you a dues and that's the end of the, so, and I really like that. And it's really met my

685
00:57:08,920 --> 00:57:17,520
expectations, mostly of, I know that every week that I show up, I put a time sheet in, I

686
00:57:17,520 --> 00:57:23,560
raise an invoice. Like, there's a much higher chance that they still think they're getting

687
00:57:23,560 --> 00:57:29,480
value. And especially being more expensive than the permise, like that if they're not getting

688
00:57:29,480 --> 00:57:36,160
value, they're going to go like, nope, next or not doing that. Like, for example, one of

689
00:57:36,160 --> 00:57:42,400
the projects I was on, I was supposed to be three months and after two months, it turned

690
00:57:42,400 --> 00:57:45,240
out the project was bigger than they thought it was going to be. And this gets a bit into

691
00:57:45,240 --> 00:57:51,480
the CapExOpex thing. They basically had a fixed budget to get this thing done. They were,

692
00:57:51,480 --> 00:57:58,400
they were very tight margin company. And it like, because it turned out to be more complicated,

693
00:57:58,400 --> 00:58:04,600
the maths basically went, we can keep you at this higher rate until the end of the months,

694
00:58:04,600 --> 00:58:08,240
but you're not going to finish because this has turned out to be bigger. We can't afford

695
00:58:08,240 --> 00:58:12,560
to keep you on for another month because that's more than our budget. But we have this per

696
00:58:12,560 --> 00:58:18,720
me who's not nearly as good as you. He might take three months, but that one adds up. So,

697
00:58:18,720 --> 00:58:28,000
bye-bye. So yeah, it can be very, very real from that point of view. And then,

698
00:58:28,000 --> 00:58:36,360
beyond the kind of like, all right, motivation, let's build value, let's build business or

699
00:58:36,360 --> 00:58:41,560
however you want to see it. Then I listened to a lot of entrepreneur podcasts and like, I've

700
00:58:41,560 --> 00:58:44,800
heard a lot of origin stories of people who've been through the whole journey, they've built

701
00:58:44,800 --> 00:58:51,480
and sold successful businesses and my view. And it's a really common theme of like starting

702
00:58:51,480 --> 00:58:55,960
to think more, you know, the kids are growing up, starting to think more about legacy, starting

703
00:58:55,960 --> 00:59:03,680
to think more about impact and, yeah, I can definitely see that as an excellent motivation.

704
00:59:03,680 --> 00:59:10,240
I'm very glad you've had that motivation because I think you've produced a great thing.

705
00:59:10,240 --> 00:59:17,680
Thanks. Yeah. I suppose the realization was having a conversation with my daughter, we

706
00:59:17,680 --> 00:59:23,800
were doing what they call it discovery days at university or something like that. Is that

707
00:59:23,800 --> 00:59:28,600
what you're thinking about going to uni? Yeah, when you're thinking about you going to

708
00:59:28,600 --> 00:59:35,880
uni or which uni you're going to pick. Right. Yeah. And she just gave me the perspective

709
00:59:35,880 --> 00:59:40,720
and she says, you know, what course would you do? And I said, well, I think I could teach

710
00:59:40,720 --> 00:59:47,120
that one. And it's like, as she was expecting me to say, you know, the opposite, which one would

711
00:59:47,120 --> 00:59:53,400
I sit here and learn about and not actually stand at the front and teach it? And, you know,

712
00:59:53,400 --> 01:00:01,200
that was for me the epiphany moment of, yeah, I'm ready to share my knowledge with everyone

713
01:00:01,200 --> 01:00:06,880
now and, yeah, who can I help? Right. Was she asking the question of like, which one

714
01:00:06,880 --> 01:00:11,960
would you be a student at? I think that's what she was asking because that would have been

715
01:00:11,960 --> 01:00:16,280
her point of view at the time. Yeah. And you just read that as like, which one do you think

716
01:00:16,280 --> 01:00:26,400
you would be electroreval? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's brilliant. What a moment. Yeah. So, yeah,

717
01:00:26,400 --> 01:00:33,400
like I've started to feel like in terms of like the value I provide to the world, you know,

718
01:00:33,400 --> 01:00:39,200
like building a project and what have you? Solar engineer, it has a fairly limited upside

719
01:00:39,200 --> 01:00:45,960
like, and then like lead dev has a slightly bigger upside. But teaching can have a really

720
01:00:45,960 --> 01:00:53,240
huge upside because of the leverage, like the multiplication impact of what you do. Yeah.

721
01:00:53,240 --> 01:01:00,520
Yeah. But at that point, it's not, you know, the family has moved out, you know, they're

722
01:01:00,520 --> 01:01:07,800
not as much a demand on your resources anymore. You mortgage is paid off, you know, your costs

723
01:01:07,800 --> 01:01:15,520
are reduced. So it's not really a monetary motivation anymore. You've got enough to survive

724
01:01:15,520 --> 01:01:21,360
and live on and maybe go on some nice holidays as well when it's not a big strain on anything.

725
01:01:21,360 --> 01:01:28,320
And so this, it's, there is a lot of upside to it, like you say, but at the same time, that's

726
01:01:28,320 --> 01:01:38,440
not the primary motivation. What do you think might be beyond this for you? Like, you've got

727
01:01:38,440 --> 01:01:43,560
your existing, are you going to carry on contracting for the foreseeable? Because you mentioned

728
01:01:43,560 --> 01:01:47,600
in the book, kind of like the path beyond contracting or the path for growing, you're

729
01:01:47,600 --> 01:01:52,160
contracting. Have you got any direction you've considered for like where you might go from

730
01:01:52,160 --> 01:02:02,200
here? Well, in the immediate future, I've signed another 12-month contract, go on another

731
01:02:02,200 --> 01:02:10,600
project. And that's delivery kind of things? Yeah, it's in a DevOps area, it's providing

732
01:02:10,600 --> 01:02:20,120
deployment pipelines for some other software that I've never dealt with before. You know,

733
01:02:20,120 --> 01:02:26,120
the customer is experiencing the problem where they've got a number of developers, developers

734
01:02:26,120 --> 01:02:33,280
are very excited about getting their software from the dev environments through to production,

735
01:02:33,280 --> 01:02:38,800
to the point where by the time it gets to production, one of the developers is very happy

736
01:02:38,800 --> 01:02:43,400
because their stuff's in there, and the other developers are, well, where's my code gone?

737
01:02:43,400 --> 01:02:49,880
It gets overwritten on the way, which is obviously not going to create a lovely environment

738
01:02:49,880 --> 01:02:56,000
for everybody at all. So they want somebody to come in and create a bit of order and sort

739
01:02:56,000 --> 01:03:05,520
their processes out. Right. So that's my immediate future. Beyond that. Oh, before you move

740
01:03:05,520 --> 01:03:12,120
on, what level do you and do you like to operate? Because obviously there's the like solo building,

741
01:03:12,120 --> 01:03:18,160
DevOps, and things, and then there's the like advice, leading teams, like where do you

742
01:03:18,160 --> 01:03:29,080
and can you sit on that spectrum? I'd like to pair, pair programming is been a thing

743
01:03:29,080 --> 01:03:35,280
for ages, and in those previous projects I've been on has given me the opportunity to

744
01:03:35,280 --> 01:03:41,440
learn new stuff, which is always good, you know, stuff never stops in our industry, but at

745
01:03:41,440 --> 01:03:45,920
the same time, you know, getting back to this teaching thing, you know, pairing with junior

746
01:03:45,920 --> 01:03:54,920
developers allows me to pass my knowledge on and help them out. So, I mean, don't get

747
01:03:54,920 --> 01:03:59,320
me wrong, I love sitting, I can sit in my laptop and program for a couple of hours and then

748
01:03:59,320 --> 01:04:05,200
think, oh, I should probably eat something or drink. So, you know, those moments still occur

749
01:04:05,200 --> 01:04:12,840
because it's still a passion for me. But again, sharing the knowledge is always, always

750
01:04:12,840 --> 01:04:17,720
feels that gap as well. So would that look like pairing with one of the permanent employees

751
01:04:17,720 --> 01:04:24,600
of the client? Or would that be another contractor or you bring your own person along?

752
01:04:24,600 --> 01:04:31,200
It's usually with the one of the employees because the customer is like that. I'm training

753
01:04:31,200 --> 01:04:36,600
up one of the employees, which is nice. And I'm also passing my knowledge, you know, knowledge

754
01:04:36,600 --> 01:04:42,960
transfer over because projects come to an end, like you just given your example, you know,

755
01:04:42,960 --> 01:04:47,440
there's going to be a per me that's not quite as good, but they'll be able to soldier on

756
01:04:47,440 --> 01:04:53,040
without you. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely like that. I do, pairing

757
01:04:53,040 --> 01:05:01,440
with someone who's, I did that on the civil service, that one of the, the first civil service

758
01:05:01,440 --> 01:05:06,520
software engineers to come through the, like, their internal training in the department

759
01:05:06,520 --> 01:05:11,680
for education. They, and I ended up pairing with them because I'm a fairly sociable chap

760
01:05:11,680 --> 01:05:15,280
and always, always trying to help people, like, there's what I know whether they want it or

761
01:05:15,280 --> 01:05:22,440
not. And yeah, I really, really enjoyed that. And yeah, you're right. One of the,

762
01:05:22,440 --> 01:05:31,680
um, CTOs, I was helping out not that long ago. I was just sort of getting a sense check

763
01:05:31,680 --> 01:05:37,280
of like, are we, are we aligned or we on track? And I was like, you know, what do you want

764
01:05:37,280 --> 01:05:42,160
to see out of this? Like, you know, we're a little way into this. And the one liner I got

765
01:05:42,160 --> 01:05:48,200
back was, I want, I want my people to be better after you left. Which is really interesting

766
01:05:48,200 --> 01:05:51,760
because that, that, it's kind of not the premise of what I got hired for in a way, the premise

767
01:05:51,760 --> 01:05:54,800
of what I got hired for was a bit, I mean, there was a kind of like, oh, well, we want to

768
01:05:54,800 --> 01:05:59,360
improve, but it was also like, we've got some stuff to build. We haven't got enough capacity.

769
01:05:59,360 --> 01:06:05,360
Um, so it definitely is a thing that's valued. I've like, I think contractors are quite often

770
01:06:05,360 --> 01:06:09,800
seen as like, world experience, which is definitely true, isn't it? Because, you know, we get

771
01:06:09,800 --> 01:06:14,560
to see so many more things than someone who works at the same place for 10 years. Um, and

772
01:06:14,560 --> 01:06:19,080
you know, there's one thing I like about contracting is like, he said next to someone new, you

773
01:06:19,080 --> 01:06:23,320
learn what you can from them. And, you know, a little bit later you're on and you don't

774
01:06:23,320 --> 01:06:27,880
it again. And, you know, that was, that's my longest permanent job of six years. And after

775
01:06:27,880 --> 01:06:30,840
four years, I'd done everything I could and I'd learned everything I could and I knew everyone

776
01:06:30,840 --> 01:06:36,480
inside out. And then the next two years were like fairly stagnant for me. It was a bit

777
01:06:36,480 --> 01:06:43,760
hard to jump because it was really comfy. And I liked it and it suited me. Um, so yeah,

778
01:06:43,760 --> 01:06:54,640
I'd be on in the further future. Uh, I don't know. I don't think that far ahead to be

779
01:06:54,640 --> 01:07:01,040
honestly. That was a perfectly valid answer. Um, yeah. You know, some people just have a plan,

780
01:07:01,040 --> 01:07:04,840
don't they? And they just like ruthlessly execute. And some of us, you know, we're a bit

781
01:07:04,840 --> 01:07:10,320
more meandering in that school. Yeah. I had one those when I was 18 and it didn't work

782
01:07:10,320 --> 01:07:19,360
out well. Well, it worked out, but not in the way that the plan was. Yeah. And so after setting

783
01:07:19,360 --> 01:07:26,200
up a few plans and failing the targets a few times, I figured, yeah, let's just make the

784
01:07:26,200 --> 01:07:32,840
most of whatever is presented at any time and have a much more care for attitude to it.

785
01:07:32,840 --> 01:07:38,760
But that took a lot of painful learning to get to that realization. Yeah. I mean, in the

786
01:07:38,760 --> 01:07:46,000
modern culture of like mental health, mindfulness, like trying to try to unload some of the like

787
01:07:46,000 --> 01:07:49,720
never-ending stress, particularly in some of the more stressful times, that's a good attitude

788
01:07:49,720 --> 01:07:58,400
to have if you can take that kind of more of an approach. Yeah. Yeah. It took a lot of work.

789
01:07:58,400 --> 01:08:04,600
I can tell you. And a new way for out. No, Blimey. Yeah. That's a pretty extreme measure.

790
01:08:04,600 --> 01:08:10,680
I won't tell my wife you suggested that. Yeah, probably best night, too. So, all right,

791
01:08:10,680 --> 01:08:15,680
she won't get this far through the podcast. Unless you're pretty zen, then I'll do you

792
01:08:15,680 --> 01:08:22,440
then you're okay. Me, Zen. I think she said, what happened to you? I used to be fairly

793
01:08:22,440 --> 01:08:28,960
zen before I had like pressure and responsibilities in the moment. I'm a little bit neurotic because

794
01:08:28,960 --> 01:08:33,320
I'm trying to juggle family and contracting and is all changed. And like I say, there's been

795
01:08:33,320 --> 01:08:40,240
some gaps and I've taken the opportunity to be like, okay, cool, things have got different

796
01:08:40,240 --> 01:08:46,360
what am I going to do? Well, the kids are going to grow up, you know, they're there.

797
01:08:46,360 --> 01:08:56,600
Six and eight. So they're okay. The hardest years are behind us. And now it's going to get

798
01:08:56,600 --> 01:09:02,080
easier in some ways, you know, and in five years or ten years, you know, I'm going to be

799
01:09:02,080 --> 01:09:06,960
a bit more like you looking for something meaningful rather than like, oh God, how do I make everything

800
01:09:06,960 --> 01:09:13,960
work? Yeah. So my, my beyond contracting as like at the moment, at least, like, I'd quite

801
01:09:13,960 --> 01:09:18,040
like to build a product business, but because I've got no time, that's incredibly difficult.

802
01:09:18,040 --> 01:09:24,120
And I've got no leverage. So I'm going to instead build an agency and, and rust, this new

803
01:09:24,120 --> 01:09:27,840
interesting programming language. And I'm just going to basically scale up programming

804
01:09:27,840 --> 01:09:32,800
because I like working with teams and like, we're talking about mentoring things. So yeah,

805
01:09:32,800 --> 01:09:39,240
that's my beyond. Cool. But anyway, it's not about me on this one.

806
01:09:39,240 --> 01:09:47,680
What are they? Like to grow these things. So back to the book. And am I right that that's

807
01:09:47,680 --> 01:09:54,400
a self-published on this one? Yeah, something is. Yeah. Cool. What was your, what was your

808
01:09:54,400 --> 01:10:01,880
thinking about that and like, how's that been? Well, I published the first book. He moved

809
01:10:01,880 --> 01:10:10,080
my servers through the same route. Where did you? Yes, that's self-published as well. And

810
01:10:10,080 --> 01:10:18,400
it's not that traumatic, really. I mean, I don't expect to be a millionaire from selling books.

811
01:10:18,400 --> 01:10:25,840
I'm not an author, you know, I'm quite good at programming, I think. But writing books

812
01:10:25,840 --> 01:10:31,320
is a different skill and it's quite tricky. So the publishers never going to pick up my

813
01:10:31,320 --> 01:10:41,040
work and go, oh, Neil, can you write us a world best-selling book for us, please? And so

814
01:10:41,040 --> 01:10:49,120
it's kind of my get-go attitude of, well, let's just get on and do it and find somebody

815
01:10:49,120 --> 01:10:56,920
to publish it. And, you know, they're really supportive. They've got, they've got a book

816
01:10:56,920 --> 01:11:03,800
funnily enough that tells you how to write a book. They sort of a process that you couldn't

817
01:11:03,800 --> 01:11:13,000
follow along and, you know, it gets you through some of the hurdles, round some of the issues

818
01:11:13,000 --> 01:11:20,400
and then once you've finished your manuscript, they'll sort of help do the final proofreading

819
01:11:20,400 --> 01:11:27,720
and type setting and get it available on Amazon for you. Ryan, and even design the cover,

820
01:11:27,720 --> 01:11:36,720
it's always handy. Nice. Do you remember the name of that book? Are we think press?

821
01:11:36,720 --> 01:11:44,240
All right, all right, I see. Okay, cool. I shall try and get a link into the show notes

822
01:11:44,240 --> 01:11:48,480
for that, because I'm sure lots of people are interested in that sort of thing, particularly

823
01:11:48,480 --> 01:11:55,800
people who are a bit later on in their contracting careers. So in terms of, I mean, you say,

824
01:11:55,800 --> 01:12:01,680
you know, not also, I think your book begs to differ. I think that's a quality piece of writing

825
01:12:01,680 --> 01:12:05,520
and then I think that's a quality book. So I think you can definitely say you are an author

826
01:12:05,520 --> 01:12:11,400
like you don't have to be sniffed out by a publisher like the world is changing. You

827
01:12:11,400 --> 01:12:16,000
never know. They might come chasing you for the next one. Was that with an upfront? Who

828
01:12:16,000 --> 01:12:24,840
knows? But yeah, in terms of like that proofread, because I've heard that people, like if

829
01:12:24,840 --> 01:12:29,320
you go to like mining or something, I was listening to an interview with someone who'd done

830
01:12:29,320 --> 01:12:35,080
that and you know, they had a professional editor that went through it with them. Like,

831
01:12:35,080 --> 01:12:43,240
what did they have anyone that called themselves an editor? Yeah, that's part of the package.

832
01:12:43,240 --> 01:12:50,040
Tell me about that as an experience. Like what you put in versus how it gets changed

833
01:12:50,040 --> 01:13:01,520
and what you get out and how you feel about it. Yeah. So sometimes it feels quite critical

834
01:13:01,520 --> 01:13:09,240
as you might expect. As they're telling you you're wrong or you're rubbish or it's bad or

835
01:13:09,240 --> 01:13:15,480
I don't think it's got quite as bad as that. I mean, when I wrote the first book, obviously

836
01:13:15,480 --> 01:13:19,960
there's a bit greener around it is and I delivered them a manuscript and they said, right,

837
01:13:19,960 --> 01:13:28,160
there's two books here, which one did you want published? Oh, okay. Obviously the message

838
01:13:28,160 --> 01:13:33,840
wasn't strong enough in any particular direction and it was lacking structure or whatever. So,

839
01:13:33,840 --> 01:13:38,280
you know, I got to the end of the draft. I thought, who are written a book and then they're

840
01:13:38,280 --> 01:13:44,320
like, actually, no, so it's completely rubbish. Just do it again. So I kind of learnt from

841
01:13:44,320 --> 01:13:49,040
that and so this time round, when I wrote this one, I put all the structure in place and

842
01:13:49,040 --> 01:13:55,080
I had quite a clear idea. You know, the first thing I wrote was the chapter pages. So I

843
01:13:55,080 --> 01:14:03,960
think the chapter pages you've got there now are 80% of what I wrote on day one. And there's

844
01:14:03,960 --> 01:14:09,520
been a few additions, a few subtractions and a little bit of jiggly and about of order,

845
01:14:09,520 --> 01:14:15,960
but other than that, you know, the structure is pretty much already there. And so then when

846
01:14:15,960 --> 01:14:27,160
I gave them the final draft, they then asked questions and stuff. So it's not just me on my

847
01:14:27,160 --> 01:14:38,840
end. Is that like by email, do I call you? Video call? No, it's over email. So they use the

848
01:14:38,840 --> 01:14:45,360
markup functionality in word. So they're just highlight a load of text and then they'll

849
01:14:45,360 --> 01:14:51,160
put a comment next to it that says, you know, we don't quite understand what you mean here.

850
01:14:51,160 --> 01:14:58,960
Can you rewrite it or sometimes they're quite helpful in that they'll highlight this bit

851
01:14:58,960 --> 01:15:04,400
and they say, we think you mean this. So we've changed the text to say that is that okay.

852
01:15:04,400 --> 01:15:13,520
And so you can get documents and comments nice. Yeah, indeed. Yeah, I think it's markup

853
01:15:13,520 --> 01:15:17,680
mode or something they call it in word, isn't it? Yeah, it's on a lot of that. Some like

854
01:15:17,680 --> 01:15:30,520
that. So yeah, it's a collaboration at that point if anything. Nice. And I've heard

855
01:15:30,520 --> 01:15:35,600
people like quite it's quite common to hear people have written a book on podcasts. It's

856
01:15:35,600 --> 01:15:44,480
a pretty standard like writer book and then talk about it. And quite a lot of them say that

857
01:15:44,480 --> 01:15:49,360
was incredibly grueling. And some of them say, I'm never doing that again. And some of them

858
01:15:49,360 --> 01:15:57,680
say, I will do it again. Like how how was for both of them like how what was the emotional

859
01:15:57,680 --> 01:16:06,160
journey like for for writing the two books and would you do it again? I probably do it again

860
01:16:06,160 --> 01:16:10,760
because I found it easier to second time mountain. I can imagine like in thing you practice.

861
01:16:10,760 --> 01:16:22,640
It gets easier. But it is it is quite tricky because you know, got full time job. I'm doing

862
01:16:22,640 --> 01:16:30,800
contract. And so then it's you've had to you've got a full belly and then your buzzer goes

863
01:16:30,800 --> 01:16:36,640
off because you have to have a reminder that says go write something. You know, I don't feel

864
01:16:36,640 --> 01:16:42,640
like writing in this like, well, that doesn't matter. You just got to sit there and okay,

865
01:16:42,640 --> 01:16:49,000
I had to structure this time. So I've got at least a subject heading to work on. And then

866
01:16:49,000 --> 01:16:55,720
you start typing and then three hours later you think, well, I better eat something now or drink

867
01:16:55,720 --> 01:17:03,960
something. So it's it's more the the foreboding feeling of doing it. But then once you get into

868
01:17:03,960 --> 01:17:09,800
that process, you're just kind of writing for a while. That doesn't happen all the time.

869
01:17:09,800 --> 01:17:13,600
Of course, sometimes you'll just sit there and I've written two sentences and half an hour

870
01:17:13,600 --> 01:17:20,840
like it's just not really working today. But the reason for having the structure there is

871
01:17:20,840 --> 01:17:27,360
I can go cut a bit earlier than that. So if I'm sitting there at a heading and I've only

872
01:17:27,360 --> 01:17:32,880
looked it for five minutes and written two sentences and like I said, well, maybe let's

873
01:17:32,880 --> 01:17:37,320
look at another heading. Maybe I'm more inspired to write about a slightly different subject

874
01:17:37,320 --> 01:17:42,840
that's in the book. And so that gives you a little bit of choice about how you can attack

875
01:17:42,840 --> 01:17:49,600
it. You don't have to write it in order. And sometimes you don't you don't keep everything

876
01:17:49,600 --> 01:17:53,440
that you've written. You know, you might write three pages of stuff and actually only edit

877
01:17:53,440 --> 01:18:00,280
it down to one page because you're going a bit crazy or what you've written is so good.

878
01:18:00,280 --> 01:18:03,440
Actually, I'm going to steal all of that and create another chapter which might have

879
01:18:03,440 --> 01:18:10,400
happened. You know, that sounds like a great approach. Yeah, I've not not got as far as writing

880
01:18:10,400 --> 01:18:15,680
a book yet. I don't know what I'd write about. I do my blogging and I quite enjoy that. But

881
01:18:15,680 --> 01:18:23,720
it's all over the place. I haven't kind of got a big idea yet. Yeah, because actually

882
01:18:23,720 --> 01:18:28,560
some people that have turned a blog into a book which I guess is okay if it's got quite

883
01:18:28,560 --> 01:18:34,720
good theme to it. Yeah, yeah, something very good. I'm actually in the middle of like occasional

884
01:18:34,720 --> 01:18:40,400
reading through Richard Stallman's collected essays which is really, I mean that's obviously

885
01:18:40,400 --> 01:18:46,360
got some history to it. And yeah, I mean, like as long as you kind of know like, okay, this

886
01:18:46,360 --> 01:18:50,120
is a collection of writings over the years and like you say it, it does have a theme to

887
01:18:50,120 --> 01:18:55,680
it and some stands the test of time and some don't. That's kind of cool. It's not the first

888
01:18:55,680 --> 01:19:01,200
kind of blogging to a book that I've read. Yeah, it's not my favourite book, so which is

889
01:19:01,200 --> 01:19:08,200
my name Babylon is what, 20 little stories or two other. And it's not a very big book either.

890
01:19:08,200 --> 01:19:20,560
Yeah, I'm not right that one. I hear people mention it. So in terms of, let's dig in a bit

891
01:19:20,560 --> 01:19:28,200
to the content of the book. I have some things that kind of caught my interest and that's

892
01:19:28,200 --> 01:19:35,200
what would be worth having a bit of a chat about if you're cool to continue. Yeah, yeah,

893
01:19:35,200 --> 01:19:47,560
I'm still good for juice. Can I open question? I don't know if anything

894
01:19:47,560 --> 01:19:56,840
jumps to mind is fine if not. But do you have any kind of particular suggestions that perhaps

895
01:19:56,840 --> 01:20:00,320
stuff that's not necessarily covered in the book per se, but something that you would think

896
01:20:00,320 --> 01:20:11,320
would be a useful tip or like thing to consider for both new and old contractors. It's interesting

897
01:20:11,320 --> 01:20:17,920
that, yeah, that's a very open question. Yeah, I mean, I will dig into some of the other

898
01:20:17,920 --> 01:20:21,640
more detailed bit as well. I was just wondering if there's like a top of mind like, you know,

899
01:20:21,640 --> 01:20:28,640
someone that comes up a lot, or some different way of thinking about things. Yeah, I suppose

900
01:20:28,640 --> 01:20:35,200
it imposter syndrome popped up quite a lot. And I think we both dance around the subject

901
01:20:35,200 --> 01:20:46,760
already on this chat. You know, what's stopping you from getting the sack? Is it the drag

902
01:20:46,760 --> 01:20:58,200
of having to replace you? Or is it, you're actually quite good in doing OK. And, you know,

903
01:20:58,200 --> 01:21:05,320
that trust in yourself, you know, the reason why it's called confident contractor is because,

904
01:21:05,320 --> 01:21:11,040
well, you don't have to be confident to be a contractor. It really does help because you've

905
01:21:11,040 --> 01:21:21,440
got a lot of other situations that could happen that will test you from not only a technical

906
01:21:21,440 --> 01:21:31,840
perspective, but also from if you've been in it a while. There are skills and developments

907
01:21:31,840 --> 01:21:36,240
that you can have as a contractor. You know, you start out as a contractor. You don't know

908
01:21:36,240 --> 01:21:42,200
much about limited company. You know, six or seven years down the line of being a contractor,

909
01:21:42,200 --> 01:21:48,280
you might think, hey, now it's time for me to do some more presenting public speaking,

910
01:21:48,280 --> 01:21:55,880
go into conferences as a as a creator of content for others to see rather than as a participant

911
01:21:55,880 --> 01:22:05,040
and that kind of thing. And sometimes being a contractor can feel quite lonely. And,

912
01:22:05,040 --> 01:22:11,440
and so certainly getting out to meets before COVID, easy. There's loads of meets you could go bump

913
01:22:11,440 --> 01:22:17,520
into people and see people talking and that and that's not really come back in the same way that I've

914
01:22:17,520 --> 01:22:26,960
seen yet. I think mainly because people aren't working in offices, there's no nucleus of people

915
01:22:26,960 --> 01:22:33,920
anymore to go to a physical meetup in order to enjoy pizza beer and somebody talking about

916
01:22:33,920 --> 01:22:41,440
whatever they're passionate about. But there's the online thing, but it's not quite the same when

917
01:22:41,440 --> 01:22:47,200
you have to pay for your beer and pizza. No. Yeah, I mean, I've started to see it pick up a bit,

918
01:22:47,200 --> 01:22:55,200
which is good. As I mentioned, I'm part of the rust community now and they've they've had their

919
01:22:55,200 --> 01:23:00,160
second conference and an intermittent London meetup. And I've actually started a redding meetup

920
01:23:00,160 --> 01:23:07,040
because I can do that every month, quite easily. Okay, which is cool. And like the dotnet one,

921
01:23:07,040 --> 01:23:14,480
one of the other agencies runs, which is being quite good, they've started that up again. So there's

922
01:23:14,480 --> 01:23:18,720
definitely a bit more happening, which is really encouraging. And yeah, like I did two contracts

923
01:23:18,720 --> 01:23:24,800
fully remote and it is, it is very isolating. Like your friend's a little squares on the screen.

924
01:23:26,960 --> 01:23:34,480
For a long time, on the imposter syndrome, you're right that like the moving to contracting has not

925
01:23:34,480 --> 01:23:41,520
entirely eliminated the, I'm not quite sure whether I'm valued enough and earning my wage.

926
01:23:41,520 --> 01:23:46,320
Like communication, because sometimes can be very minimal. Like go to a saying, like particularly if

927
01:23:46,320 --> 01:23:49,920
you've got some people in the middle like recruiters or consultant season, have you or

928
01:23:51,520 --> 01:24:00,320
you know, if the even if the team that you're in is quite like, what's the word? Like they communicate

929
01:24:00,320 --> 01:24:03,120
that, you know, they go, good, they stand up. So they've got a really good communication. They do

930
01:24:03,120 --> 01:24:07,840
lots of pairing, but like the team is not necessarily the customer per say, like the person,

931
01:24:07,840 --> 01:24:12,240
there's the person that you spoke to that got you hired and maybe there's some other people in

932
01:24:12,240 --> 01:24:18,400
the shadows that could kick you out on moments notice. And so on the one hand, like I do find myself,

933
01:24:18,400 --> 01:24:24,160
like I've started to notice, I think it's left me a little bit more anxious having done it for like

934
01:24:24,160 --> 01:24:32,800
so many years. And on the flip side, in terms of like knowing that you're providing value, otherwise

935
01:24:32,800 --> 01:24:39,760
you wouldn't be here. Like the number of completely hopeless people that I've come across and

936
01:24:39,760 --> 01:24:45,680
like people that have been decided at hopeless, but they just haven't got around to getting rid of them,

937
01:24:45,680 --> 01:24:51,280
makes me realize that, you know, I'm not going to rest on my laurels. I'm going to deliver all the value

938
01:24:51,280 --> 01:24:57,200
I can. I'm going to keep improving my skills. But there are people who are pulling really serious

939
01:24:57,200 --> 01:25:06,160
day rates day in, day out. And they're like, why are they paying these people? A couple of choice quotes

940
01:25:06,160 --> 01:25:12,960
from someone I wrote with for an outgoing contractor who they took agents to fire was like,

941
01:25:13,840 --> 01:25:17,040
yeah, they would be much more useful if they were counting the gravel than the car park.

942
01:25:17,040 --> 01:25:21,440
Oh, do you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that may have been

943
01:25:21,440 --> 01:25:26,880
100% accurate, unfortunately. Never mind the the share chaos that someone can great use, like

944
01:25:26,880 --> 01:25:31,520
actively bad, like someone can cause far more problems than somebody who does nothing.

945
01:25:31,520 --> 01:25:38,320
I seem to find yeah, they tend to get rid of it. Yeah, I think you're not a little quicker.

946
01:25:38,320 --> 01:25:46,480
Like sorry. Yeah, yeah, but when people are actively causing chaos, they tend to get shunted out a

947
01:25:46,480 --> 01:25:54,480
lot quicker. Whereas if we're just quiet, yeah, they know it's difficult, but yeah, the imposter syndrome

948
01:25:54,480 --> 01:26:04,080
never quiet, never. Yeah. Have you got any kind of strategies or tips for kind of like

949
01:26:04,640 --> 01:26:18,400
soothing that part of the brain? I think it's useful to be wary of what you talk to yourself with.

950
01:26:18,400 --> 01:26:26,560
I'm going to put that in English. Yeah, as in that internal monologue, but the the internal voice

951
01:26:26,560 --> 01:26:33,760
is sometimes to be conscious of it, but just disregard it. Yeah.

952
01:26:34,480 --> 01:26:38,320
And it's like, yeah, that's the point of view, not one you have to agree with.

953
01:26:38,320 --> 01:26:43,200
Yeah. And where that internal monologue comes from, who knows? It's always there.

954
01:26:43,200 --> 01:26:51,920
But most of the time, it's job is to not get you killed, which is quite a nice job in our

955
01:26:51,920 --> 01:27:01,120
our glorious environment that we live in now. Yeah. So it's not very useful to you as a person. And

956
01:27:02,960 --> 01:27:09,280
I guess when I was younger, I would seek out validation, you know, I mentioned certificates and

957
01:27:09,280 --> 01:27:17,760
shiny stars and the pads on the head. But that can appear quite an idea if it's too far. Yeah.

958
01:27:17,760 --> 01:27:28,640
So yeah, my best advice would be to to notice that internal monologue and then swiftly ignore it.

959
01:27:30,800 --> 01:27:35,840
Yeah, you alluded to having been on journey and by all means back out of this conversation,

960
01:27:35,840 --> 01:27:41,600
job as if you wish to, but I'm curious. Like what has been that journey? If you like,

961
01:27:41,600 --> 01:27:49,360
what was the point of which you realised that you needed to adjust your thinking and how it affected

962
01:27:49,360 --> 01:27:55,680
you and like, what's that journey been for you? Like, what have you done and what resources have you used to

963
01:27:56,960 --> 01:28:07,200
get you to a better place? You certainly seem pretty chill now, which is cool. Yeah. Yeah, there was a few years

964
01:28:07,200 --> 01:28:24,240
ago when I was quite stressed. And that's before the, the hair turn colour. I recognise

965
01:28:24,240 --> 01:28:29,120
any other stresses and that difficult, but what to do about it?

966
01:28:29,120 --> 01:28:38,560
I think the thing that did it for me, so as an interviewer, I didn't use to like talking to people,

967
01:28:38,560 --> 01:28:44,800
you know, the computer was my friend. As you said, the squares on the screen are off-frains.

968
01:28:44,800 --> 01:28:50,080
And they just do exactly what they are supposed to do, sometimes not.

969
01:28:52,400 --> 01:29:02,320
But talking to other people and hearing their experiences makes you realise you're not that special

970
01:29:02,320 --> 01:29:10,160
in terms of being a human. You know, there's quite a lot of humans on the planet and

971
01:29:10,160 --> 01:29:19,600
we're wired up quite similar in that, you know, we worry about the similar stuff.

972
01:29:21,360 --> 01:29:31,520
We panic about similar stuff. We've had experiences about similar stuff. And hearing other people's stories

973
01:29:31,520 --> 01:29:40,080
and sharing your own story with them makes you realise that actually you're not that different

974
01:29:40,080 --> 01:29:47,600
from everyone else and you're probably okay. So when you say you're not not that different, you mean

975
01:29:48,240 --> 01:29:52,160
as in, so before you realise that, what are you thinking?

976
01:29:52,160 --> 01:30:02,880
Before I realise that, it's very much a case of, this is my problem, I've done something stupid,

977
01:30:02,880 --> 01:30:12,880
this is only affecting me, which couldn't be further from the truth, because everyone else out there

978
01:30:12,880 --> 01:30:19,120
they're just putting on a brave face. And if you get behind the mask that everyone else puts up,

979
01:30:19,120 --> 01:30:25,120
you've got all the same shit and crap and worries and things going on in their mind.

980
01:30:25,120 --> 01:30:31,680
But they don't think you can see it, and you don't think they can see it and you're just all lying

981
01:30:31,680 --> 01:30:34,960
to each other, it's really quite bonkers when you break that wall down.

982
01:30:34,960 --> 01:30:42,400
Yeah, yeah, definitely, I mean, for the sake of openness, I spend about 90% of my time stressed at the moment.

983
01:30:43,360 --> 01:30:45,360
Which is probably not very healthy.

984
01:30:45,360 --> 01:30:54,800
As long as you realise that somebody else out there would feel the same as you in the same situation,

985
01:30:54,800 --> 01:30:58,640
I think that's what I'm trying to get at is what that different.

986
01:30:58,640 --> 01:31:03,760
I'm not broken, it's just how everyone would react in their circumstances.

987
01:31:03,760 --> 01:31:09,440
Exactly, yeah. And then if you can find somebody that is in the similar situation to you,

988
01:31:10,160 --> 01:31:13,840
or even better, somebody that's just one step ahead of you,

989
01:31:13,840 --> 01:31:19,680
they can engage you through that and help through that situation.

990
01:31:19,680 --> 01:31:27,760
And you mentioned listening to other people's stories, like where did you find those stories?

991
01:31:27,760 --> 01:31:38,240
That was facilitated by a lovely couple.

992
01:31:39,200 --> 01:31:43,520
A couple of life coaches you might call them.

993
01:31:43,520 --> 01:31:50,240
And they had Richard, the main guy.

994
01:31:50,240 --> 01:31:55,920
He had his realisation quite early on because he built up a property company

995
01:31:55,920 --> 01:31:59,440
and then was made bankrupt and lost all of it.

996
01:31:59,440 --> 01:32:02,560
Who? Which is quite a life reset.

997
01:32:02,560 --> 01:32:05,760
And he was fine afterwards.

998
01:32:06,240 --> 01:32:08,880
And it's kind of like, well, that's the worst that can happen.

999
01:32:08,880 --> 01:32:12,480
Everything else should be easy from here.

1000
01:32:12,480 --> 01:32:22,560
And so then he met this other lady called Liz and then together they got a business that

1001
01:32:22,560 --> 01:32:27,920
sort of brings people together to then share their stories.

1002
01:32:27,920 --> 01:32:34,720
You get that experience of what actually everyone's got shit going on.

1003
01:32:35,840 --> 01:32:41,520
And if we just talk to each other, we can learn from each other's experiences.

1004
01:32:41,520 --> 01:32:45,120
Gosh, that was amazing.

1005
01:32:45,120 --> 01:32:49,440
Yeah, that's what that nearly turned into.

1006
01:32:49,440 --> 01:32:52,320
That's why I went and gave that to the publisher.

1007
01:32:52,320 --> 01:32:54,000
They said, "Oh, you've nearly got two books here."

1008
01:32:54,000 --> 01:32:58,320
For the first one because it had a lot of that journey stuff in it,

1009
01:32:58,320 --> 01:33:01,200
but I'll be taken out and I've just got left with a techie book.

1010
01:33:01,200 --> 01:33:02,320
I see.

1011
01:33:03,440 --> 01:33:08,400
We would be fine this lovely couple if we wanted to hunt them down and join in.

1012
01:33:08,400 --> 01:33:13,600
All the video show notes, if you don't know of the top of your head.

1013
01:33:13,600 --> 01:33:18,320
Just fine, I'll make a note to quiz you about.

1014
01:33:18,320 --> 01:33:18,960
Sure.

1015
01:33:18,960 --> 01:33:19,760
Find a link.

1016
01:33:19,760 --> 01:33:22,880
Yeah, I'll make sure it's in the show notes if we can dig that one out.

1017
01:33:22,880 --> 01:33:26,400
That's a great service.

1018
01:33:26,400 --> 01:33:32,240
Cool, I will come back to you on that one.

1019
01:33:32,240 --> 01:33:35,360
We'll go that in the show notes because that's a useful thing.

1020
01:33:35,360 --> 01:33:37,680
I didn't even know that it existed as a thing.

1021
01:33:37,680 --> 01:33:38,880
That's a useful thing.

1022
01:33:38,880 --> 01:33:46,880
So what kind of links of time was that period for you of like going to these sessions and hearing?

1023
01:33:46,880 --> 01:33:47,760
Was that in person?

1024
01:33:47,760 --> 01:33:48,880
Or was this like online?

1025
01:33:48,880 --> 01:33:52,000
Yeah, that was in person, back in the day.

1026
01:33:52,000 --> 01:33:59,040
We all went to a bar in a field.

1027
01:34:00,080 --> 01:34:11,120
There was six of us, plus Richard and Liz in Northamptonshire for five days.

1028
01:34:11,120 --> 01:34:16,320
Is there a kind of retreat as they would call it?

1029
01:34:16,320 --> 01:34:17,840
Kind of like retreat, yeah.

1030
01:34:17,840 --> 01:34:26,880
And so I got to know the other five people quite well through that shared experience.

1031
01:34:28,720 --> 01:34:33,840
How did they, because obviously if you just sat on your phones and ignored each other,

1032
01:34:33,840 --> 01:34:34,720
you wouldn't go live it?

1033
01:34:34,720 --> 01:34:38,800
So how did they facilitate that into something that turned into something meaningful?

1034
01:34:38,800 --> 01:34:48,320
So the, I guess the first day is kind of introductions.

1035
01:34:48,320 --> 01:34:53,680
And it's right, we want each of you to share a story when something was really good,

1036
01:34:53,680 --> 01:34:55,520
make it happening in your life.

1037
01:34:57,520 --> 01:35:02,720
Those that are thinking ahead of going, oh no, because then tomorrow we're going to talk about

1038
01:35:02,720 --> 01:35:05,040
the really shitiest thing that happened in your life.

1039
01:35:05,040 --> 01:35:14,640
And then so day three was then how you can balance the two,

1040
01:35:14,640 --> 01:35:24,400
because going through life is a moment of shared joy and happiness and terror and despair.

1041
01:35:25,600 --> 01:35:30,480
And you know, you can bounce between the two and I think the medical profession, they call that

1042
01:35:30,480 --> 01:35:40,160
bipolar, whereas if you can somehow balance it, don't go solo and don't go so high, then you

1043
01:35:40,160 --> 01:35:46,560
you can sort of gradually get a curve where you're generally happier.

1044
01:35:48,160 --> 01:35:56,880
And by understanding that the shit is not yours, it is given to you by somebody else.

1045
01:35:56,880 --> 01:36:07,200
What I mean by that is, your parents teach you everything you know until about age of seven.

1046
01:36:07,200 --> 01:36:11,280
Some of that stuff useful and some of it's not so useful.

1047
01:36:12,800 --> 01:36:20,240
It just stops my kids. I'm sorry, they're still time.

1048
01:36:20,240 --> 01:36:34,240
And so if once you realize that perhaps the internal voice actually sounds a little bit like

1049
01:36:34,240 --> 01:36:41,920
your parents at times, because it is and if it's saying something rubbish, that's history is gone,

1050
01:36:41,920 --> 01:36:49,120
it's passed, it's not relevant anymore. And so once you've made that connection, you can start to

1051
01:36:49,120 --> 01:36:57,280
filter that out. And so you then don't start, you don't feel so bad because it gradually disappears,

1052
01:36:57,280 --> 01:37:03,520
the more you filter it out, the more it disappears. Yeah, I mean, but like you were saying earlier,

1053
01:37:03,520 --> 01:37:08,320
my understanding is it's not, because I've come quite a long way on that particular journey myself,

1054
01:37:08,320 --> 01:37:16,080
and my internal monologue has mostly gone away, frankly, but there used to be particularly negative,

1055
01:37:16,080 --> 01:37:22,320
like very self-critical. Yeah, and yeah, my understanding is it's not so much that you filter it out,

1056
01:37:22,320 --> 01:37:30,800
like that doesn't work exactly. It's more like you acknowledge it, I move on, you hear what it's saying,

1057
01:37:30,800 --> 01:37:36,400
I've heard one of the tips which I thought was kind of cool was you give it a name,

1058
01:37:36,960 --> 01:37:43,760
oh that's you Bob again, like yeah, okay, thanks Bob, thanks for your input, okay, I'm going to carry on with my life now.

1059
01:37:43,760 --> 01:37:52,480
And it's really not dwelling on it and not turning it into something else that allows you to,

1060
01:37:52,480 --> 01:37:57,040
and like you say that voice gets just like, each time you like, aha, there's that voice again,

1061
01:37:57,040 --> 01:38:01,200
all right, I'm going to go back to whatever's going on right now in the moment,

1062
01:38:02,320 --> 01:38:11,040
and it just diminishes over time. My kids have taught me a lot about this, like, they are able to go from

1063
01:38:11,040 --> 01:38:17,040
floods of tears, angry, the worst thing in the world, and then like something will catch their

1064
01:38:17,040 --> 01:38:23,920
attention, and it's like it never happened. And to start with, I would be all stressed and upset,

1065
01:38:23,920 --> 01:38:29,760
because like they were being really difficult, and then like I'd miss the good bit, because I was

1066
01:38:29,760 --> 01:38:35,760
still in a funk about it, and I realized, I'm just missing out here, so I have to be able to move

1067
01:38:35,760 --> 01:38:42,320
quicker, and it's really helped me like, oh, okay, are we having a good time again, cool, right, drop

1068
01:38:42,320 --> 01:38:49,520
all that, so I'm much more able to move with it, I mean having kids is a pretty extreme way of fixing

1069
01:38:49,520 --> 01:38:56,960
that, but yeah, yeah, not for everybody, but kids can teach us a lot, they're really thinking,

1070
01:38:56,960 --> 01:39:02,720
did it sales? They are good sales, yes, especially good at sales.

1071
01:39:02,720 --> 01:39:12,400
So, about this retreat and that journey, because I don't want to drop that

1072
01:39:12,400 --> 01:39:22,560
prematurely, because I think this is super valuable for people who are anywhere in this journey,

1073
01:39:22,560 --> 01:39:31,920
frankly, and so we're at the retreat, so you came into the retreat with this kind of,

1074
01:39:31,920 --> 01:39:38,640
it's me and I'm broken, and like it's all going, no one else has this, I see the Instagram effect

1075
01:39:38,640 --> 01:39:42,000
of everybody else, and everyone else seems to be fine and coping and holding it together,

1076
01:39:42,000 --> 01:39:46,080
must be something wrong with me, so then you have this retreat and you hear these stories, so

1077
01:39:47,680 --> 01:39:53,840
take me through as much as you want within the retreat, but then like beyond that towards your,

1078
01:39:53,840 --> 01:40:01,520
much more then much more balanced self. Yeah, I mean whilst that's the start of the Zen

1079
01:40:01,520 --> 01:40:08,480
journey, it then takes, because that's really just the moment when you realise that that negative

1080
01:40:08,480 --> 01:40:15,360
voice needs to be listened to, like you said, it needs to be listened to, but then just ignore after

1081
01:40:15,360 --> 01:40:21,840
it's, so I don't mean to ignore it straight out of hand, I mean give it the exercise, but then

1082
01:40:21,840 --> 01:40:30,400
know that it's just talking complete rubbish and forget about it, and so knowing about that, then

1083
01:40:30,400 --> 01:40:40,560
then start your journey of not getting rid of it, because you can't get rid of it,

1084
01:40:41,680 --> 01:40:48,480
but at least minimising its effect on you, stopping feeding it is what I guess.

1085
01:40:48,480 --> 01:40:59,120
Yeah, you're just letting it exercise and run around, letting it be heard, and it feels better

1086
01:40:59,120 --> 01:41:08,960
and goes away, you've heard me okay great, and then it goes away, and then, until the point where it

1087
01:41:08,960 --> 01:41:19,680
doesn't have as much impact anymore. So yeah, those first two days are really quite hard, but they're

1088
01:41:19,680 --> 01:41:27,840
really insightful because you then realise that you're not broken, you all have this shared

1089
01:41:27,840 --> 01:41:35,280
experience called life, which gives you good bits and bad bits, and you're all born into an area

1090
01:41:35,280 --> 01:41:42,320
where you have some carers who are doing their best to care for you, but not all of their advice

1091
01:41:42,320 --> 01:41:55,760
is valid all the time. And so then, I guess one of the exercises is a sausage machine day,

1092
01:41:55,760 --> 01:42:03,760
which everyone gets excited about, and it's a metaphor that says, if you're thinking today's

1093
01:42:03,760 --> 01:42:11,120
going to be shit, and you put that into your sausage machine, then what's your sausage that's

1094
01:42:11,120 --> 01:42:20,080
going to come out like, it's going to be a shit sausage. So it kind of delves into perhaps a

1095
01:42:20,080 --> 01:42:29,520
little bit of positive affirmations in order to try and reset the balance here, so look on life

1096
01:42:29,520 --> 01:42:38,880
more positive, but it's not necessarily just, oh, everything's going to win, you know, I'm going to

1097
01:42:38,880 --> 01:42:42,720
win the lottery, it's going to be sunshineing and all that sort of stuff because that's not realistic

1098
01:42:42,720 --> 01:42:49,920
in your brain, won't buy it. It's more along the lines of whatever happens today, I know that I

1099
01:42:49,920 --> 01:42:57,520
can cope with it. It's more of that kind of level. So yeah, I expect some shit might happen today,

1100
01:42:57,520 --> 01:43:04,320
but that doesn't matter because I'm ready for it, you know, bring it on, and that kind of positive

1101
01:43:04,320 --> 01:43:13,200
energy, I suppose, some might say. And so yeah, sausage machine is all about, you know, if you

1102
01:43:13,200 --> 01:43:19,200
want to do really rubbish sausage based on your experience, what would you put in it? And

1103
01:43:19,200 --> 01:43:25,840
then that's the worst thing it could be, and imagine the best day ever, what's all the things

1104
01:43:25,840 --> 01:43:31,360
that's going into the sausage machine for the best day ever, and that's the other side of it.

1105
01:43:31,360 --> 01:43:36,160
And then again, it's those two extremes and trying to balance them out.

1106
01:43:36,160 --> 01:43:46,400
So with the opposite of that, the, like, I'm kind of middling, okay, and then one bad thing

1107
01:43:46,400 --> 01:43:51,600
happens, and it's like, see, it's all terrible, I knew it was going to be terrible, days ruined.

1108
01:43:52,800 --> 01:43:57,360
Yeah, it's the kind of stop you from falling into that trap.

1109
01:43:57,360 --> 01:44:06,240
So if you go into it going, there will be bad things, but I can cope, then

1110
01:44:06,240 --> 01:44:12,640
you start the day kind of okay, a bad thing happens, and you're like, ah, a bad thing happened,

1111
01:44:12,640 --> 01:44:20,880
I coped, and it helps you reset. Yeah, exactly, nice. You've done this before,

1112
01:44:22,240 --> 01:44:30,400
some of it, I had a business coach because I was trying to do something, and I got stuck,

1113
01:44:30,400 --> 01:44:35,760
and I couldn't work out why, and yeah, they helped me a bit with their stuff, because, like,

1114
01:44:35,760 --> 01:44:38,880
literally, they called the intro, they're like, "Oh, you're stressed."

1115
01:44:38,880 --> 01:44:41,360
It's like, "Oh, no, I'm telling you."

1116
01:44:41,360 --> 01:44:51,120
They introduced me to, there's a methodology called ACT, acceptance and commitment therapy.

1117
01:44:52,080 --> 01:44:58,160
Okay, because they nailed my personality, they're like, "Here's the research and practice guide book,

1118
01:44:58,160 --> 01:44:59,280
which is about this thick."

1119
01:44:59,280 --> 01:45:02,160
They had me.

1120
01:45:02,160 --> 01:45:06,640
Cool, right? I shall read all of that and enjoy it thoroughly, and it had all of like,

1121
01:45:06,640 --> 01:45:12,400
here's the research, and this is why this works. And it's basically, you've got CBT,

1122
01:45:12,400 --> 01:45:16,000
which cognitive behavioral therapy that everybody already knows about,

1123
01:45:17,120 --> 01:45:24,240
and this ACT thing is showing better results than the CBT. And a lot of it is,

1124
01:45:24,240 --> 01:45:31,280
I mean, the title kind of says it, acceptance and commitment, like, you accept the things

1125
01:45:31,280 --> 01:45:34,800
that are going on, I think, "Oh, I don't even know who got to meet you just to accept them."

1126
01:45:34,800 --> 01:45:38,640
I thought I had to get all worked up about them.

1127
01:45:38,640 --> 01:45:45,360
Oh, okay, fine. But, yeah, it's an interesting thing. So, yeah, they've done some of the journey,

1128
01:45:45,360 --> 01:45:52,960
to be sure. Yeah, because I've heard similar, like, circle of influence.

1129
01:45:52,960 --> 01:46:01,360
There's certain stuff that you have influence over, or you can actually do something about,

1130
01:46:01,360 --> 01:46:06,080
and then there's stuff outside of that, which might influence you, but you can't do anything about.

1131
01:46:06,080 --> 01:46:09,680
And so, there's no point stressing over that sort of stuff, because

1132
01:46:10,640 --> 01:46:14,800
stressing isn't going to fix it, it's not going to help it, it's just going to make you feel worse. So,

1133
01:46:14,800 --> 01:46:21,600
you know, recognize that is out of your control in carry on.

1134
01:46:21,600 --> 01:46:24,560
Yeah, that's best you can.

1135
01:46:24,560 --> 01:46:30,960
Yeah, I've heard that your circle of, like, carrying should be slightly larger than your circle of influence.

1136
01:46:30,960 --> 01:46:33,920
Like, you should care a little bit about the things that you can't control,

1137
01:46:33,920 --> 01:46:37,200
but you shouldn't observe about it. Yeah, yeah, they were.

1138
01:46:37,760 --> 01:46:45,520
They were different concentric rings of things. Yeah. But, yeah, not stressing out about the things

1139
01:46:45,520 --> 01:46:56,720
that you can't control is huge. Yeah. So, beyond this, on this ongoing journey, from,

1140
01:46:56,720 --> 01:47:05,760
so we've left the barn, and kind of got that, oh, okay, it's not just me. So, what is the journey

1141
01:47:06,400 --> 01:47:15,040
on edge from there to now that, like, how's that been? Yeah, really slow after that.

1142
01:47:15,040 --> 01:47:26,080
Yeah, I mean, it is one of those moments where you go, I'm not broken. I want to tell everybody

1143
01:47:26,080 --> 01:47:34,000
that I'm not broken at the same realization that they think they are broken, and you don't really have,

1144
01:47:35,520 --> 01:47:43,120
you don't really have the skills to show them that they're not broken because it's a really difficult

1145
01:47:43,120 --> 01:47:52,800
thing to do one-to-one. Especially if, you know, as family members that you can see

1146
01:47:52,800 --> 01:48:02,240
are in pain, you always want to help them. But, unfortunately, you're too close to them,

1147
01:48:03,200 --> 01:48:13,440
and you can't. It's when there's horrible things, really. So, once you then get over that of trying to

1148
01:48:13,440 --> 01:48:17,120
fix everybody else, you think, "Oh, actually, you know, it's about me, you have to be selfish again."

1149
01:48:17,120 --> 01:48:30,640
And, yeah, then you might rebound or you might bounce low or whatever, and

1150
01:48:32,000 --> 01:48:40,320
it's then keeping some reminders around, I think, of what you learn that week because it's easy

1151
01:48:40,320 --> 01:48:46,560
then to slip into the status quo and go back to where you were. Once that initial, you know,

1152
01:48:46,560 --> 01:48:56,000
much the initial excitement has worn off. So, how have you done that? Like, what's been your thing for

1153
01:48:56,800 --> 01:49:06,000
kind of keeping that front of mind? Well, as I alluded to, changing why has really helped.

1154
01:49:06,000 --> 01:49:15,440
Yes, you know, when it was a sad fact that one of the forms of a lot of my stress was the person

1155
01:49:15,440 --> 01:49:27,600
that was attached to, I say one of, there's a couple of others, but once I took the decision to get

1156
01:49:27,600 --> 01:49:37,040
out of that relationship, making a decision was really hard, but once it was made, everything was then

1157
01:49:37,040 --> 01:49:48,160
quite tranquil by comparison. And then I was fortunate enough to find another lady who was

1158
01:49:48,160 --> 01:49:57,840
more zen than I was at the time, which probably wasn't that difficult. And by her, then keeping me grounded,

1159
01:49:57,840 --> 01:50:02,240
then helped me become more zen.

1160
01:50:03,840 --> 01:50:07,440
Yeah, there's been very much of a bigger impact than the person who's been doing your life with.

1161
01:50:07,440 --> 01:50:14,080
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, my wife and my best friend, we spend a lot of time together, and

1162
01:50:14,080 --> 01:50:18,800
yeah, we obviously have a big impact on each other.

1163
01:50:18,800 --> 01:50:27,680
That's not a big deal. So, speaking of spending a lot of time together,

1164
01:50:27,680 --> 01:50:32,400
and at risk of taking it back to the contracting, that leads me nicely into like work-life

1165
01:50:32,400 --> 01:50:37,360
balance, or integration, as some people like to call it, which I'd rather like.

1166
01:50:37,360 --> 01:50:49,200
So, with all that in mind, keeping that more balanced mindset, and the life that you want to

1167
01:50:49,200 --> 01:51:00,560
enjoy, what do you personally do to make sure that you have balance and work doesn't ruin the rest

1168
01:51:00,560 --> 01:51:11,120
of life? Well, one of the benefits I would sell as a contractor is that you get a really clear

1169
01:51:11,120 --> 01:51:22,800
demarcation between what you're doing for the project in terms of time. In my current project,

1170
01:51:23,280 --> 01:51:35,280
I'm building a day rate, that day rate in the contract says, 9 to 5, and it means that at 5 o'clock,

1171
01:51:35,280 --> 01:51:44,160
I don't feel obliged to that customer. Now, there's a little bit of flexibility in this,

1172
01:51:44,160 --> 01:51:49,520
I think it has to be. I mean, life events happen, so they're going to give you wiggle room,

1173
01:51:50,080 --> 01:51:54,160
and production events happen, so you need to give them a little bit of wiggle room.

1174
01:51:54,160 --> 01:52:02,720
But on the whole, I feel I've got a better work-life balance as a contractor, because I can remain

1175
01:52:02,720 --> 01:52:11,520
detached from the organisation, whereas when you're a member of a permanent job, per me, you feel

1176
01:52:11,520 --> 01:52:22,000
much more, you feel like there's much more at risk, and I've seen permise almost burn out,

1177
01:52:22,000 --> 01:52:29,760
because they're doing stuff, and my advice to them is, they could sack you next month.

1178
01:52:29,760 --> 01:52:40,960
Don't be that invested in it. Like an unequal loyalty? Yeah, it's not a fair exchange at all.

1179
01:52:41,440 --> 01:52:48,560
And so, yeah, being a contractor helps you really have that objectivity about it.

1180
01:52:48,560 --> 01:52:58,240
But it's interesting, because I'm journaled, everyone would necessarily jump to that.

1181
01:52:58,240 --> 01:53:04,800
I have come across people working longer hours,

1182
01:53:07,120 --> 01:53:13,520
for out of perhaps, on such a duty or fear, sometimes that bored him.

1183
01:53:13,520 --> 01:53:21,120
I think I probably approach it a bit like you, like, this flexibility, but at the end of the day,

1184
01:53:21,120 --> 01:53:26,480
they're buying my time, and it makes me uneasy when something takes longer, because it

1185
01:53:26,480 --> 01:53:32,080
does have to be harder, or something is in the way. I don't like that, but nonetheless, if I

1186
01:53:34,240 --> 01:53:38,960
know in my true self that I have put the effort in and I've put the time in, then I can rest easy,

1187
01:53:38,960 --> 01:53:48,080
in terms of the actual project delivery. I mean, what would you say to other people who are

1188
01:53:48,080 --> 01:53:59,200
contracting or thinking about contracting? And wondering how blood those boundaries should be,

1189
01:53:59,200 --> 01:54:07,520
or do you have to excel beyond all the other contractors, or can you kick back and run two

1190
01:54:07,520 --> 01:54:12,560
contracts at once? There's obviously the two extremes. Yeah.

1191
01:54:12,560 --> 01:54:27,440
There are, I think, as long as you're delivering value for while there,

1192
01:54:27,680 --> 01:54:36,080
and your customer is reasonable, then if okay,

1193
01:54:36,080 --> 01:54:41,360
which they are not all reasonable, then not all customers are reasonable,

1194
01:54:41,360 --> 01:54:49,920
which I think is what you're alluding to is some customers will expect you to work harder

1195
01:54:50,960 --> 01:55:02,640
because you'll be in paid more, but at the same time, it's not really about working harder,

1196
01:55:02,640 --> 01:55:13,280
it's about the value that you're delivering. On any given day, I could write a piece of code,

1197
01:55:16,080 --> 01:55:22,880
like today maybe, I've written a piece of code, it's two lines long, it took me 15 minutes to write

1198
01:55:22,880 --> 01:55:29,600
it and test it and deploy it, because of all the other groundwork, and with that piece of code in

1199
01:55:29,600 --> 01:55:37,760
there, that'll make everything else run easier. I could argue that I've delivered a ton of value

1200
01:55:38,800 --> 01:55:48,320
in 15 minutes, and not because of a desk for eight hours,

1201
01:55:48,320 --> 01:55:55,280
and that's partly because we are in a creative industry, and not many people get that.

1202
01:55:55,280 --> 01:56:03,920
You know, by the same token, there was another piece of code that I was writing,

1203
01:56:04,800 --> 01:56:12,400
and I was in the moment, and we all know about context switching,

1204
01:56:12,400 --> 01:56:18,480
if you once you've got some built up in your head and you're working on it, it's quite easy,

1205
01:56:18,480 --> 01:56:24,000
but if you have to drop it to pick it up again, there's some inertia in order to get back into that same spot.

1206
01:56:24,000 --> 01:56:31,440
And so it's five minutes to five, and I'm thinking, do I really want to do this now? And I said,

1207
01:56:31,440 --> 01:56:36,720
well yeah, I've got all the context now, I might as well see it through, and so you get to 20 past five,

1208
01:56:36,720 --> 01:56:41,520
and I've done the testing and all of that. I'm not going to ship it into production at time

1209
01:56:41,520 --> 01:56:49,360
at night, don't be silly. My value is the on-call people too much, but I've completed it to the point

1210
01:56:49,360 --> 01:56:56,960
where I don't need much context to pick it up again in the morning, and then to take it to extremes,

1211
01:56:56,960 --> 01:57:02,720
there's sometimes when you're working on a problem, and you're sitting on the sofa trying to have

1212
01:57:02,720 --> 01:57:09,440
some chill out time, and maybe speaking with your friend or watching Netflix or other streaming

1213
01:57:09,440 --> 01:57:18,000
services are available, but this problem is just boring a hole in your head trying to come up with it,

1214
01:57:18,000 --> 01:57:22,880
and again, we're in creative industry, we can't really escape that, so

1215
01:57:26,240 --> 01:57:33,920
sometimes it's difficult to get a work with balance, but other times it's quite easy to use the clock

1216
01:57:33,920 --> 01:57:41,680
against the customer, if you will. Yeah, I'm definitely related, I'm on the flip side,

1217
01:57:41,680 --> 01:57:46,960
like you might be staring at a problem in the middle of the afternoon, and just getting nowhere,

1218
01:57:46,960 --> 01:57:53,040
and getting out and going for a walk might actually get that sorted and give you a bit of fresh air.

1219
01:57:54,240 --> 01:58:00,720
Yeah, taking a rest is sometimes the best thing you can do, for sure.

1220
01:58:00,720 --> 01:58:11,360
One of the things about contracting is you are, as they say, chief cook and bottle washer,

1221
01:58:11,360 --> 01:58:20,480
and if you're solo contracting, you have to write the same tune, sing the same tune, no wait,

1222
01:58:20,480 --> 01:58:30,560
you have to put your profile out there, you have to brush up your skills, you have to find work somehow,

1223
01:58:30,560 --> 01:58:35,440
and then you have to deliver on it, and certainly in my experience, it's been like time for money

1224
01:58:35,440 --> 01:58:43,440
40 hours a week, and that's particularly in programming, it's just such a focused thing,

1225
01:58:43,440 --> 01:58:49,600
it's very hard to do anything else, it makes sense, but if you really want to kill it,

1226
01:58:49,600 --> 01:58:58,000
and then, I think we'll talk about promotion at some point, but if you then do podcasts and conferences,

1227
01:58:58,000 --> 01:59:03,760
meetups and goodness knows what else, some plural site courses and some certifications,

1228
01:59:03,760 --> 01:59:09,200
you're basically running three full-time jobs if you're not careful, and that could very easily

1229
01:59:09,200 --> 01:59:15,840
get out of hand. Personally, I've taken the approach previously when times were a bit more normal,

1230
01:59:16,960 --> 01:59:21,680
where I would finish contract, and then I would do a bunch of that, and then I'd worry about the next thing,

1231
01:59:21,680 --> 01:59:25,280
and that was going to find, because there was always stuff around, now it's not quite so clear, because

1232
01:59:25,280 --> 01:59:30,480
you know, if I go, all right, I'll have a break, and then I go, okay, I'm ready to do something,

1233
01:59:30,480 --> 01:59:35,440
in my tiny ages, to find something, and now I've had twice the break, actually, actually wanted,

1234
01:59:35,440 --> 01:59:43,280
so what's your thinking around, like, making the business of contracting work, but also

1235
01:59:45,280 --> 01:59:51,040
not burning out, and overdoing it, and falling apart, mentally?

1236
01:59:51,040 --> 02:00:01,200
Yeah, so in the same way that I would treat the company time for my customer, quite rigid,

1237
02:00:01,200 --> 02:00:05,440
in a nine to five, I would do the same about your personal time,

1238
02:00:08,240 --> 02:00:16,640
you know, have a lunch break that is sacred, and try not to do anything in the middle of that lunch break.

1239
02:00:16,640 --> 02:00:23,040
Now, I'm pretty good at this most of the time, but occasionally someone will say, "Hey,

1240
02:00:23,040 --> 02:00:26,640
we want to give you some more money for doing something for lunchtime," and I'm like, "Okay,

1241
02:00:26,640 --> 02:00:36,080
I think, I think I might do that." And it's very tempting to do that,

1242
02:00:36,720 --> 02:00:43,120
as long as you know that you're going to pay for that later on,

1243
02:00:43,120 --> 02:00:54,000
in terms of energy, or motivation, or whatever, so I guess it comes back to the work, life balance,

1244
02:00:54,000 --> 02:01:00,720
really. I mean, one approach that I did have to it, so when I wrote the first book,

1245
02:01:02,160 --> 02:01:09,200
I negotiated my customer, I happened to negotiate quite a rate rise on one of the renews,

1246
02:01:09,200 --> 02:01:13,760
and then at the same time I negotiated a four-day work week,

1247
02:01:13,760 --> 02:01:18,800
which looking back on it is like, "How the heck do I do that?"

1248
02:01:18,800 --> 02:01:25,280
So I managed to get a high day rate, lower hours, which gave me a day back,

1249
02:01:27,360 --> 02:01:33,760
and all in all balanced out, the honestly invoice was nearly the same as a result.

1250
02:01:33,760 --> 02:01:40,560
But presumably, they were happy that they were getting value for money, so it's actually, yeah,

1251
02:01:40,560 --> 02:01:46,960
yeah, I'd already proven my value, this is my thesis of contract renew, I'd already been there

1252
02:01:46,960 --> 02:01:52,560
for a while and proven how much value I was given to them, so they were happy to pay more,

1253
02:01:52,560 --> 02:02:00,320
because of the perceived value, and yeah, without me for a day a week then gave me time to do some other

1254
02:02:00,320 --> 02:02:06,640
stuff in this case, right, book. So that's one way of managing it, like if you've got some

1255
02:02:06,640 --> 02:02:12,800
additional thing that you want to do for your business, then bring the contracting in a bit,

1256
02:02:12,800 --> 02:02:17,040
try and get a four-day a week contract, or something like that, yeah, okay. It's not something I've

1257
02:02:17,040 --> 02:02:21,520
ever tried, I know someone else who's got a four-day a week permanent job on the same basis, they have

1258
02:02:21,520 --> 02:02:27,520
other pursuits, and that works for them. Yeah, yeah, a couple of guys that are doing that,

1259
02:02:27,520 --> 02:02:34,320
different reasons. I mean, one of them's got, they're at the start of their family,

1260
02:02:34,320 --> 02:02:42,080
and so they've decided that they're going to do a four-day week, so that they can spend more time

1261
02:02:42,080 --> 02:02:49,120
with their son. Yeah, that's definitely got to be. Time you can't buy back. Exactly.

1262
02:02:51,120 --> 02:02:56,720
So, yeah, as long as you're aware of it and just make sure, I mean, I think scheduling,

1263
02:02:56,720 --> 02:03:05,120
as boring as that sounds, scheduling these blocks in for when you need to do stuff is the best way

1264
02:03:05,120 --> 02:03:12,560
to handle it, to make sure that you don't put too much in. Scheduling downtime is as important as

1265
02:03:12,560 --> 02:03:19,360
scheduling work time. Have you ever, like, come close to burnout yourself? Like,

1266
02:03:20,880 --> 02:03:30,320
yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, internally, I call it overwhelm. I just get to a point where I can't focus on

1267
02:03:30,320 --> 02:03:38,160
anything because I've got too many plates spinning at the same time. And so, the only way out then is

1268
02:03:38,160 --> 02:03:43,440
to pick one of the plates and put it down before it crashes, so that's the way out. Like,

1269
02:03:43,440 --> 02:03:48,080
don't push yourself, so ridiculously hard. Yeah.

1270
02:03:48,720 --> 02:03:55,760
Hmm. How do you, like, get the confidence to put one of the plates down? Like, because there could be

1271
02:03:55,760 --> 02:03:59,360
like some fear that, like, if you put one of the plates down, it's all going to come crashing down

1272
02:03:59,360 --> 02:04:08,400
and everything's going to stop working. There is that, but also from experience, I know that,

1273
02:04:08,400 --> 02:04:14,080
if I don't put one of the plates down, everything will crash. Then you put all of the plates down.

1274
02:04:15,280 --> 02:04:21,440
And that's a far worse position to be in. Yeah. So just pick the thing that's least important

1275
02:04:21,440 --> 02:04:23,200
and put it down. It'll wait.

1276
02:04:23,200 --> 02:04:38,800
All right, so I'm going to move subjects a bit. I've got a few other things I want to cover.

1277
02:04:38,800 --> 02:04:44,560
I shall try not to. This has been superb. We're running.

1278
02:04:45,360 --> 02:04:50,080
A good length, which I love the fact that we can do this at podcast. Like, the conversation is good,

1279
02:04:50,080 --> 02:05:00,800
let's just keep talking, which is cool. Maybe rattle through some of the more like tactical stuff in

1280
02:05:00,800 --> 02:05:09,040
the book and see if you've got anything like to add, maybe I'll pick a few things in quick succession.

1281
02:05:09,040 --> 02:05:12,800
You mentioned Ipsy membership, which has been on my kind of to-do list.

1282
02:05:14,480 --> 02:05:21,280
What do you know about that in brief as I think, and how important that is for contractors?

1283
02:05:21,280 --> 02:05:33,200
I guess my motivation for joining up to Ipsy, and they were called some else before that,

1284
02:05:33,200 --> 02:05:38,400
is mainly around the IR-35 thing.

1285
02:05:40,160 --> 02:05:49,520
So you can get insurance for just about anything, but what you can't get is sort of a voice and

1286
02:05:49,520 --> 02:05:56,960
representation and stuff. You know, you can badge a UMP, which might help, but Ipsy as an organization

1287
02:05:56,960 --> 02:06:03,920
deal with a lot of contractors, whether you're a window fitter or an IT person,

1288
02:06:05,600 --> 02:06:13,920
whatever, you know, independent dentist, I don't know, there's all sorts of jobs out there for everybody.

1289
02:06:13,920 --> 02:06:28,000
And so they represent all of that, and you know, really provide some support around IR-35.

1290
02:06:30,320 --> 02:06:38,000
So that's the main reason why, but they also offer other services that might be helpful to contractors as

1291
02:06:38,000 --> 02:06:46,800
well in terms of free templates and things, like legal paperwork and things like that, it was also available.

1292
02:06:46,800 --> 02:06:48,800
Is that right, that's useful to know?

1293
02:06:48,800 --> 02:06:57,200
Yeah, and it's one of those things, they don't really push any of that stuff, you have to go look for it.

1294
02:06:59,280 --> 02:07:06,080
Cool, CV review service, all these kind of things, but yeah, they're not very good at promoting

1295
02:07:06,080 --> 02:07:11,280
themselves, so you really do have to dig into them. If you're going to sign up for that membership,

1296
02:07:11,280 --> 02:07:14,320
get in there and see what is available.

1297
02:07:14,320 --> 02:07:19,520
Right, cool, yeah, that's good to know. I was aware that they were quite active on being a voice

1298
02:07:19,520 --> 02:07:25,520
to government on the issues with IR-35, which is important, they're kind of aggregating the

1299
02:07:27,360 --> 02:07:30,960
the number of people that that's affecting, because we don't have, like you say, we don't have a lot of voice

1300
02:07:30,960 --> 02:07:41,040
individually. Yeah. What about, sort of, on the skills thing, you mentioned like rats and daps,

1301
02:07:41,040 --> 02:07:46,320
but in terms of, you know, it's never a really an ending question intact, because it changes so

1302
02:07:46,320 --> 02:07:52,480
down fast, and you've chosen the DevOps route, I've chosen the like programming and lead dev kind of

1303
02:07:52,480 --> 02:08:00,960
route for the time being, currently, on that, maybe Rust, which you'll see. In like, choosing the kind

1304
02:08:00,960 --> 02:08:06,240
of niche versus flexibility, like where do you kind of feel like optimal is in terms of

1305
02:08:06,240 --> 02:08:10,640
being a successful tech contractor?

1306
02:08:10,640 --> 02:08:20,800
How are you supposed to answer that? Well, the official answer is t-shaped.

1307
02:08:21,280 --> 02:08:30,960
(laughs) Yeah, the official answer is t-shaped, because as a contractor, you're expected to hit

1308
02:08:30,960 --> 02:08:38,720
the ground running. But you can also have some influence over what contracts you accept.

1309
02:08:38,720 --> 02:08:48,080
And then in terms of what that t should look like, it's what you find your most drawn to,

1310
02:08:49,040 --> 02:08:55,760
because you all be most passionate about learning it and doing it, and you can be an expert in that area,

1311
02:08:55,760 --> 02:09:05,440
for sure. Although, yeah, I mean DevOps, that doesn't sound very specialist, does it as it goes, but

1312
02:09:05,440 --> 02:09:12,880
it used to be, I think, like, all of these things, because the technology landscape is getting

1313
02:09:12,880 --> 02:09:17,040
broader and deeper and broader and deeper, like, like, they didn't used to be such a thing as a

1314
02:09:17,040 --> 02:09:25,120
front end web specialist, and now that's the thing. And yeah? Yeah, well, to have the script,

1315
02:09:25,120 --> 02:09:27,680
isn't it? (laughs)

1316
02:09:27,680 --> 02:09:35,360
And as you're talking about UI, UI is also split off into its own thing.

1317
02:09:35,360 --> 02:09:43,760
In my experience, like, the little companies, they need someone who can do everything,

1318
02:09:43,760 --> 02:09:50,560
and the bigger they are, the more they want, like, the, I don't know, Kubernetes backplane specialist,

1319
02:09:50,560 --> 02:09:54,000
or something. He said, "It's not really never, it's talking about..."

1320
02:09:54,000 --> 02:10:00,960
No, I don't know what you're embedded in. You said Kubernetes, yay, money, no.

1321
02:10:00,960 --> 02:10:11,040
That's so last year, it's all AI this year. Yeah, so just, yeah, big data that's coming back, isn't it?

1322
02:10:11,600 --> 02:10:22,240
That's the same thing. Yeah, I'm a niche, niche or, like, broad. I mean, like, how have you

1323
02:10:22,240 --> 02:10:28,880
thought about it in your particular journey? Because it's easier to be niche than it is to be broad.

1324
02:10:28,880 --> 02:10:36,240
And I don't know if that's a flippant statement, but that's, you know, it's really, it's really easy to

1325
02:10:36,240 --> 02:10:46,160
stand out if you've got a specialist skill set versus trying to be a, what do they call it?

1326
02:10:46,160 --> 02:10:51,360
All things to all people? Yeah, that's what my put in it. I was going for the technical,

1327
02:10:51,360 --> 02:10:58,320
full stack developer. All right. Yeah, that's increasingly receding into the review mirror,

1328
02:10:58,320 --> 02:11:04,400
full stack developer. Yeah, thankfully, because, you know, what does it mean? I mean, I have to do

1329
02:11:04,400 --> 02:11:13,040
JavaScript. Yeah, yeah. For an end developer. Yeah, I can be a backend developer now, and that's fine.

1330
02:11:13,040 --> 02:11:23,760
Enough to do. So, do you, I mean, you're doing DevOps for HTML, so like, do you pitch, like,

1331
02:11:23,760 --> 02:11:26,960
something within the DevOps space? Because as you say, that's grown, as I say.

1332
02:11:29,040 --> 02:11:38,320
Yeah, so I do pitch more around automating processes, right? So not so much the technology,

1333
02:11:38,320 --> 02:11:42,320
saying more of a, like, the pictures about automation of manual things.

1334
02:11:42,320 --> 02:11:50,160
Yeah, I mean, I don't care what program I'm in language use, you know, I'll go across any language,

1335
02:11:50,160 --> 02:11:57,520
whether it's golang or JavaScript or, no, I've not touched pull phrases. Pull, what the heck is that?

1336
02:11:58,960 --> 02:12:06,240
Python for everything, right? It's just about understanding what the process is at the moment,

1337
02:12:06,240 --> 02:12:11,520
and then making sure that that can be automated. And I've done this new move time. So,

1338
02:12:11,520 --> 02:12:19,280
money supermarket, they wanted to be able to upgrade a database software,

1339
02:12:19,280 --> 02:12:27,040
including schema changes with minimal downtime. And so it's like, okay, what does that process look

1340
02:12:27,040 --> 02:12:34,000
like end to end? What all the bits we need? And then building it out, it took about 18 months to

1341
02:12:34,000 --> 02:12:43,360
pull that together. Whereas at HTML C, where I'm currently, it's more about, we've got some

1342
02:12:43,360 --> 02:12:49,040
developers, they've got some code. What's the quickest path that they can get that built and

1343
02:12:49,040 --> 02:12:59,120
deployed onto a Docker, whatever infrastructure? So, yeah, I guess my focus is more around

1344
02:12:59,120 --> 02:13:08,080
defining a process and then getting all the steps done in between, rather than building servers or

1345
02:13:08,080 --> 02:13:14,800
building Jenkins jobs or whatever. Yeah, I was specialising specifically in, like,

1346
02:13:16,480 --> 02:13:23,680
get a hard pipeline. What's a member of that? For example, yeah. I tell you what catches my ear on that,

1347
02:13:23,680 --> 02:13:32,000
it seems to me that your pitch is closer to the value that the customer is after than the technology

1348
02:13:32,000 --> 02:13:40,080
per se. Like, they don't want Kubernetes, they want productive developers, and they get productive

1349
02:13:40,080 --> 02:13:45,040
developers by automating the things that developed them annually. Was that conscious, kind of,

1350
02:13:45,040 --> 02:13:53,600
messaging, choice, or is that something to you? Now, I'd say that's probably conscious,

1351
02:13:53,600 --> 02:14:03,200
with my selling hat on, to make, you know, nobody wants drill, you don't go to being

1352
02:14:03,200 --> 02:14:08,720
queued or buy a drill because you want a drill, or actually some people might like that. But most of

1353
02:14:08,720 --> 02:14:14,720
the time you just want a hole in the wall. Yeah. If you could rent a drill and discover,

1354
02:14:14,720 --> 02:14:18,880
and then give the drill back, people would be happy, you know, to go, "Oh, I know what, that's what I wanted."

1355
02:14:18,880 --> 02:14:26,720
And so, from the customer perspective, yeah, they want to know what, how you can help their

1356
02:14:26,720 --> 02:14:30,960
individual problem. What's the problem? They're dealing with how can you fix that problem,

1357
02:14:30,960 --> 02:14:37,040
rather than, you know, what make of software you're going to use to fix it?

1358
02:14:37,040 --> 02:14:44,480
Does that change who you talk to about value, because if you're kind of thinking,

1359
02:14:44,480 --> 02:14:48,720
deep technical, like, "Let's say, are they incorrect?" You end up just talking to a recruiter who already

1360
02:14:48,720 --> 02:14:54,320
knows that they need a drill, or a, "Donut programmer," or whatever. Does that change the conversations

1361
02:14:54,320 --> 02:15:06,080
you can have, and who you have some with? And it, I don't think so, really. I mean, I suppose the

1362
02:15:06,080 --> 02:15:14,800
thing is when you're talking to recruiters, they will, they tend to put down skills, because they're

1363
02:15:14,800 --> 02:15:23,360
trying to weed out CVs and stuff. So rather than just putting down Kubernetes, they might, they might

1364
02:15:23,360 --> 02:15:29,040
put down, you know, have you used Docker containers? Or they might just list all of them, they might go

1365
02:15:29,040 --> 02:15:37,200
crazy in Kubernetes and rancher, and at ECS and Google Apps, and, you know, just go crazy and list

1366
02:15:37,200 --> 02:15:41,120
everything, and to the sign in your reading, that thinking, there's not a customer wants all of

1367
02:15:41,120 --> 02:15:46,080
that, surely. They just want somebody that knows what they're doing with Docker containers.

1368
02:15:46,080 --> 02:15:54,960
But when you're talking to recruiters, it's not that clear cut what the customer wants, because

1369
02:15:54,960 --> 02:16:00,240
they don't want to tell you who the customer is. They don't tell you, they don't even want to tell

1370
02:16:00,240 --> 02:16:07,520
you what the customer wants. They've already whittled down to the skills that they think the customer wants.

1371
02:16:07,520 --> 02:16:19,440
So it can make talking to recruiters difficult, but it can make talking to the customers directly,

1372
02:16:19,440 --> 02:16:26,560
easier. When you say the customer is directly, well, kind of like I'm guessing like a CTO or maybe

1373
02:16:26,560 --> 02:16:33,680
a CEO for a smaller company, like, yeah, it would be, yeah, it would be the technical level, like say CTO.

1374
02:16:33,680 --> 02:16:38,400
And normally they're quite well protected. So like,

1375
02:16:38,400 --> 02:16:47,120
like the kind of drifting into the, the conversation about like how you sell yourself as a

1376
02:16:47,120 --> 02:16:51,280
contractor and like what you'll reach to market are, like you mentioned a couple of things in the book,

1377
02:16:51,280 --> 02:17:04,240
like you mentioned networking. And we, you know, we talked about like towards the end of a contract

1378
02:17:04,240 --> 02:17:14,960
and thinking about looking for the next thing. There's sort of related things, like, you know,

1379
02:17:14,960 --> 02:17:21,280
consultancies have been quite a good market for me. recruiters have been a good source of business for me.

1380
02:17:21,280 --> 02:17:31,200
I've had a lot less direct contact with CTO types, which I just assume are kind of the main

1381
02:17:31,200 --> 02:17:37,200
buyer, unless it's really big in which case maybe a level down. And you mentioned networking and

1382
02:17:38,080 --> 02:17:47,440
like you mentioned meetups and events and whatever you say in terms of the way you talk about the value

1383
02:17:47,440 --> 02:17:54,160
that you bring instead of like, oh, I do this tack, which is going to lead you more into the world

1384
02:17:54,160 --> 02:18:00,160
of recruiters, which is what I've generally done. And leading more with that kind of higher

1385
02:18:00,160 --> 02:18:07,200
up the value chain of like, I automate things to a manual. I don't know what I would say for why I do.

1386
02:18:07,600 --> 02:18:14,320
Probably I'd deliver successful software projects without any of the nonsense would be more

1387
02:18:14,320 --> 02:18:21,840
the thing. But even if I can say that, if I'm still talking to recruiters like you say, they're like,

1388
02:18:21,840 --> 02:18:30,080
don't care, do you take my CV skills boxes? And, you know, when I'm getting repeat business with

1389
02:18:30,080 --> 02:18:34,000
people, like, they've had a much longer exposure than they kind of know what I bring. And I don't

1390
02:18:34,000 --> 02:18:41,280
even have to tell them, they're just like, you know, soft side problems, reliable, etc, communicator.

1391
02:18:41,280 --> 02:18:48,160
And of these kinds of things that you can't put on a CV as check boxes. So, how,

1392
02:18:48,160 --> 02:18:58,480
personally and selfishly interested in like how to get to those kind of, those direct conversations.

1393
02:18:58,480 --> 02:19:03,920
I don't have as much against recruiters as a lot of people in the tech world do just to be clear.

1394
02:19:04,080 --> 02:19:10,000
But in terms of like, growing the business myself, like, I personally have an ambition to build a

1395
02:19:10,000 --> 02:19:14,320
multi-person business, like a multi-person agency. And I can't do that through a recruit,

1396
02:19:14,320 --> 02:19:17,280
just that's a non-starter. But you say they want to own the relationship.

1397
02:19:17,280 --> 02:19:24,880
So, indeed, yeah. What would be your advice on, on like that, that, getting that direct

1398
02:19:24,880 --> 02:19:30,800
access, or all of these things I could do, what would be effective in your mind?

1399
02:19:30,800 --> 02:19:39,760
So, two things immediately come to mind, you know, networking is by far the best way of doing that.

1400
02:19:39,760 --> 02:19:51,600
And growing that network can be easier, hard based on what other assets for better word you already

1401
02:19:51,600 --> 02:19:56,800
have. So, when you're starting out, the only asset you've got is your CV.

1402
02:19:56,800 --> 02:20:05,920
You can bolster your CV by saying, "I delivered this product, like a case study, if you like."

1403
02:20:05,920 --> 02:20:13,040
And that can bolster your CV out. If you've got a blog, you can then start talking about what you've

1404
02:20:13,040 --> 02:20:23,360
delivered, as well as the case studies. And then maybe somebody will see that and contact you.

1405
02:20:23,360 --> 02:20:30,880
But that's quite farfetched, you know. There's billions of websites available, the

1406
02:20:30,880 --> 02:20:36,400
tax of them, seeing yours is very slim, which is when it comes back to networking again.

1407
02:20:36,400 --> 02:20:41,280
So, it's ashamed that the networking events have gone away. But then it depends on the type of

1408
02:20:41,280 --> 02:20:46,240
event that you go to. If you go to a techie event, then there's going to be lots of techies there.

1409
02:20:46,240 --> 02:20:52,320
There's probably not going to be C3 in decision makers. But they might know somebody, you know,

1410
02:20:52,320 --> 02:20:58,320
if you are talking at an event that not elevates you to the next level straight away,

1411
02:20:58,320 --> 02:21:04,720
you might have some people in the audience that are just techies, but then they can take that

1412
02:21:04,720 --> 02:21:11,440
information back to their boxes. And they can say, "I've learnt about this thing." And I'll say,

1413
02:21:11,440 --> 02:21:16,320
"Well, who told you that?" Well, this dude was speaking about it at this thing. "Oh, what's his name?"

1414
02:21:16,320 --> 02:21:23,520
And then if you're easy to find through that route, and it would like having a good LinkedIn profile,

1415
02:21:23,520 --> 02:21:30,640
then you might get the link through there. Or link with the techies personally, the techies

1416
02:21:30,640 --> 02:21:39,440
themselves are linked internally to the CTO, which gives you another route in. And so it's just

1417
02:21:39,440 --> 02:21:49,200
basically about having those personal connections who are talking to you because you're making

1418
02:21:49,200 --> 02:21:55,920
the right noises through articles and blogs and talks and presentations and whatnot.

1419
02:21:58,400 --> 02:22:07,840
Did you? If they say, "Get up on stage and say, I'll teach you a cool thing that's kind of related to

1420
02:22:07,840 --> 02:22:16,480
what I do." And I've been learning a bit about how proper sales, people do proper sales.

1421
02:22:16,480 --> 02:22:26,800
I've even got myself a HubSpot account and I think in sales navigator, just to see if I can do it,

1422
02:22:26,800 --> 02:22:30,800
I guess. I mean, my mate said, "Well, why would you do this yourself?" Just hire a salesman,

1423
02:22:30,800 --> 02:22:37,360
but that aside, I'm kind of interested in that. But what it's kind of exposed me to is,

1424
02:22:37,360 --> 02:22:46,400
there is so much in there of like, it's able to cater for a full-on sales organization,

1425
02:22:46,400 --> 02:22:51,920
like 100 salespeople of all of the various levels building a full-on funnel. And I'm like,

1426
02:22:52,720 --> 02:22:59,760
cool, right? In my typical, always fascinated by a tool kind of approach to life,

1427
02:22:59,760 --> 02:23:04,080
I want to do some sales, watch what I did, let me go and find the sales tools and see what they do.

1428
02:23:04,080 --> 02:23:13,680
But what it showed me is, you can do an absolute ton to drive sales, but in terms of,

1429
02:23:13,680 --> 02:23:20,160
a solo contractor or a small consultancy, maybe later in life as a contractor,

1430
02:23:20,160 --> 02:23:24,480
or just having more business than you can cope with, which is never a bad thing, even if you're solo.

1431
02:23:24,480 --> 02:23:32,880
To what extent? Let's say the minimum bar is, you show up at a few events a year,

1432
02:23:32,880 --> 02:23:40,240
maybe a small meetup with 20 to 30 people attending, and you say something useful to people. So,

1433
02:23:40,240 --> 02:23:43,760
that's where we start. That's not too hard for people to do, once they go over,

1434
02:23:43,760 --> 02:23:48,800
they're kind of like, "Oh, God, that's terrifying." Once you've done it a few times, it's not too bad,

1435
02:23:48,800 --> 02:23:52,960
I've done a few, and I really enjoy it, I can definitely do more of that.

1436
02:23:52,960 --> 02:24:00,800
So, this is where I just haven't seen beyond this past. I've heard from lots of people,

1437
02:24:00,800 --> 02:24:04,960
"Oh, people will come to you, you will get referrals to the CTO, they will check you out,

1438
02:24:04,960 --> 02:24:11,280
or whatever." How hard do you think that you, if your pitch is reasonable,

1439
02:24:11,280 --> 02:24:15,040
if the service you're offering has some value, that's obviously a basic,

1440
02:24:16,720 --> 02:24:22,560
how hard do you think that you have to work to draw those out? Do you have to go stalking the

1441
02:24:22,560 --> 02:24:29,760
Mon LinkedIn and get emails of attendees and harass them regularly, or like everything they post

1442
02:24:29,760 --> 02:24:34,320
on LinkedIn and try and get introduced, or like, "Does they just land on your doorstep?" I'm like,

1443
02:24:34,320 --> 02:24:35,920
"Oh, hey, I heard you can do a thing."

1444
02:24:40,160 --> 02:24:50,480
A mixture of both really, so I've had, it wasn't even a CTO, it was a CTO attached to contact me directly,

1445
02:24:50,480 --> 02:25:00,240
to say, "You can do dev-op stuff, my tech team are telling me they need a dev-ops person,

1446
02:25:00,240 --> 02:25:05,680
can you help us? Can you come in to the office for a meeting?" Because management

1447
02:25:05,680 --> 02:25:12,640
he always wanted to see face to face, right? Yep. And so that's happened? How did they find you?

1448
02:25:12,640 --> 02:25:18,720
They found me through LinkedIn. Oh, right, literally, they hadn't heard about you through a talk,

1449
02:25:18,720 --> 02:25:22,400
or a conference or anything, like... There was a lot of people, you know? Someone says we need a dev-ops

1450
02:25:22,400 --> 02:25:30,320
person, who's in my network that does dev-ops? So that's kind of like, "SEO for LinkedIn, isn't it?"

1451
02:25:31,360 --> 02:25:39,200
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, so having that LinkedIn profile helps them find you that way if they're looking.

1452
02:25:39,200 --> 02:25:44,880
Yeah, so sadly, that wasn't through my network, that wasn't through anything else,

1453
02:25:44,880 --> 02:25:50,400
they found me on LinkedIn because I'd already done a groundwork to have that profile on there.

1454
02:25:50,400 --> 02:25:56,640
They probably clicked through on a few things just to get a fuzzy feeling about me as well.

1455
02:25:59,440 --> 02:26:04,320
You know, because nobody wants to do a Google of you and find out that you're a serial killer,

1456
02:26:04,320 --> 02:26:13,200
but you've served your time now and it's okay. So there is a fair bit of what I call profile work,

1457
02:26:13,200 --> 02:26:17,200
which is just making sure that if somebody looks for you, they can at least find you.

1458
02:26:17,200 --> 02:26:24,880
And then it just comes back to the network, you know? It's talking to people that you've worked with

1459
02:26:24,880 --> 02:26:31,520
previously, speaking with other people that you'd like to work with, you know, aspirational, but

1460
02:26:31,520 --> 02:26:37,760
you know, if you want to work for Lego, find somebody that's in your network that knows somebody who

1461
02:26:37,760 --> 02:26:43,520
works for Lego, right? Not going to get to the CTO straightaway. It's a very long burn process.

1462
02:26:43,520 --> 02:26:49,840
And I think you've alluded to it already when you looked at the HubSpot software, you know, it can be

1463
02:26:50,960 --> 02:27:00,640
like a 20 stage process from an initial outreach to a signed contract. And there's a heck of a lot

1464
02:27:00,640 --> 02:27:06,800
of touch points in the middle that could be there. And that's what sales people are really good at.

1465
02:27:06,800 --> 02:27:13,600
They understand what those touch points are. So having the profile means that somebody can see you,

1466
02:27:13,600 --> 02:27:20,080
that's like marketing. Okay, they're putting their offer out. They can help me with my problem.

1467
02:27:20,880 --> 02:27:26,320
And then the flip side of that is the sales guy who will then say, okay, now we've got this lead,

1468
02:27:26,320 --> 02:27:34,240
this person that's interested, digging into the detail of what is your problem, what is your budget,

1469
02:27:34,240 --> 02:27:40,960
and then providing them with the assets that says this is how we can help you when you want us to start.

1470
02:27:40,960 --> 02:27:48,640
Have you ever had to do like an investigation, like a little like a week of investigation before you

1471
02:27:48,640 --> 02:27:53,520
get the the meaty delivery project? Because I know, gather that's a bit of a thing sometimes.

1472
02:27:53,520 --> 02:28:01,840
It is, yeah. This particular one didn't go anywhere, but that's the nature of it.

1473
02:28:01,840 --> 02:28:07,520
I did charge for the discovery. Yep, that's important.

1474
02:28:07,520 --> 02:28:12,240
Yeah, so we call it the discovery phase. I was on site for four weeks.

1475
02:28:12,240 --> 02:28:13,920
Oh, I think so.

1476
02:28:14,720 --> 02:28:20,480
Yeah, I put a couple of demos together for them over the course of the discovery phase.

1477
02:28:20,480 --> 02:28:27,920
And then they said, that looks lovely. We'd love to work with you, but

1478
02:28:27,920 --> 02:28:36,400
then it all fell over. Yeah, I mean, I did run of those, mostly as a favor, for someone who reached out

1479
02:28:36,400 --> 02:28:42,480
and like they clearly couldn't afford to kind of level what I normally do implementation at.

1480
02:28:43,520 --> 02:28:48,320
Yeah. And then one thing I realized is the little businesses have a lot of the same problem as the

1481
02:28:48,320 --> 02:28:53,680
business big businesses. They just can't afford a gang of contractors to come and sort them out.

1482
02:28:53,680 --> 02:28:57,360
Like they just have to make do. Yeah, it's not my market, I'm a fraud.

1483
02:28:57,360 --> 02:29:02,480
And so that's why most of my customers are bigger business.

1484
02:29:02,480 --> 02:29:09,280
Not to start up and what about the dreaded cold outreach of like

1485
02:29:09,280 --> 02:29:12,480
phoning and not winning someone up?

1486
02:29:13,440 --> 02:29:17,760
Not my thing. That's when salespeople come into the room.

1487
02:29:17,760 --> 02:29:25,040
If you've ever been up a high street and you've been charity mugged by a chugger,

1488
02:29:25,040 --> 02:29:31,120
they're there to talk to anybody who's going to speak to them in order to get some money for the

1489
02:29:31,120 --> 02:29:35,680
charity. Yeah, you can just say, well, how much you get paid? Do you want to do some outreach

1490
02:29:35,680 --> 02:29:39,520
calls for me? Yeah, they're doing things for money. It's great.

1491
02:29:40,640 --> 02:29:45,200
Have you ever engaged the salesperson? I have engaged a salesperson.

1492
02:29:45,200 --> 02:29:52,400
Yeah. Give me some insight into because one of the, as well as being allergic to recruiters,

1493
02:29:52,400 --> 02:29:57,600
a lot of technical people are completely allergic to sales and mildly allergic to marketing,

1494
02:29:57,600 --> 02:30:03,120
which is a bit of a mental block if you're going to run a limited company that needs to do sales

1495
02:30:03,120 --> 02:30:09,200
and marketing. So yeah, Paul Buckley, kind of a bit like what was your experience of that?

1496
02:30:09,280 --> 02:30:18,800
I have to say that I wasn't very good at leading them properly.

1497
02:30:18,800 --> 02:30:25,200
There's several things that a good salesperson will want to know, one is,

1498
02:30:25,200 --> 02:30:32,400
what is the biggest problem you're going to solve? And the second one is, who are you solving that for?

1499
02:30:33,280 --> 02:30:42,240
So if you can articulate those two items over to a salesperson and then let them do what they do best,

1500
02:30:42,240 --> 02:30:45,920
find that target market and describe that problem to them.

1501
02:30:45,920 --> 02:30:50,640
Right. Yeah, and those are often the hardest questions if you're

1502
02:30:50,640 --> 02:30:57,040
like not quite so far in your journey, I guess. But I suppose it's like you said before,

1503
02:30:57,040 --> 02:31:00,160
is it's a journey of evolution and contracting? We sort of say,

1504
02:31:00,800 --> 02:31:06,080
per me contracting, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that does it? It can be actually like per me.

1505
02:31:06,080 --> 02:31:12,160
Okay, I've got a number other, I've got a limited company and then I get some contractory recruiters,

1506
02:31:12,160 --> 02:31:19,440
but like professional growth for a contractor within that period of contracting could look like,

1507
02:31:19,440 --> 02:31:25,760
you know, start with recruiters, then start with some more direct contact through the message

1508
02:31:25,760 --> 02:31:34,240
that we talked about and then have too much work hire someone, put your rates up, depending on what suits your

1509
02:31:34,240 --> 02:31:41,520
own life. But you know, if you're trying to run an expensive family, you might like scale up and have

1510
02:31:41,520 --> 02:31:47,360
more people and like build the bottom line. If you're like more of like what, what life balance you might,

1511
02:31:48,560 --> 02:31:57,440
be like, I'll just put my rates up and then yeah, I'm still, the money. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean,

1512
02:31:57,440 --> 02:32:03,040
initially extremely gifted, you're not going to go per me and then bang when a consultancy,

1513
02:32:03,040 --> 02:32:08,800
unless you're already a per me from a consultancy at a management level, in which case, yeah,

1514
02:32:08,800 --> 02:32:16,320
that's transferable skills, right? But yeah, as a, as a, as a dipped return water, like the path you

1515
02:32:16,320 --> 02:32:21,040
described is a journey through building skills, both technical and the soft skills?

1516
02:32:21,040 --> 02:32:30,160
So where, where would it like, regard it kind of regardless of how well it went for you specifically,

1517
02:32:30,160 --> 02:32:36,240
that based on your understanding of the world and sales, like where would like, engaging a salesperson

1518
02:32:36,240 --> 02:32:42,720
fit in the ideal world for you and like in hindsight, how would you manage it? How would you

1519
02:32:42,720 --> 02:32:52,320
compensate them? How would you kind of get what you want out of it really? Sure. So I wouldn't

1520
02:32:52,320 --> 02:32:58,640
hire them until I had a clear product. You need to know what you're selling. But in order to have

1521
02:32:58,640 --> 02:33:04,080
a clear product, you need to have a clear understanding of the two questions I said earlier, which is

1522
02:33:04,080 --> 02:33:12,640
the problem you want to solve and who you're going to solve it for. And then the third answer

1523
02:33:12,640 --> 02:33:17,280
within that little trilogy is, have they got the budget, which we've also touched on?

1524
02:33:17,280 --> 02:33:22,640
Right, because it's all very well finding people that are in your target market that've got the problem,

1525
02:33:22,640 --> 02:33:28,160
but they've got the budget, they're not going to be a high, yep. So you need all of those three things in

1526
02:33:28,160 --> 02:33:35,840
the pot. And so once you've got those three things, plus the assets like the case studies, because

1527
02:33:35,840 --> 02:33:44,960
you've done it before, then your salesperson will find you attractive enough to want to work for you.

1528
02:33:44,960 --> 02:33:51,360
And if they can see that, yes, that's what the market looks like. And yes, they do have that problem.

1529
02:33:51,360 --> 02:33:56,240
And yes, they do have the budget. They'll be able to see the money. They'll be able to smell it

1530
02:33:56,240 --> 02:34:05,520
to say, yeah, I can sell you all day long because of those three parameters. And if it's like that,

1531
02:34:06,320 --> 02:34:10,880
then you know, you can give them a commission. And I was like, how much do I want to sell?

1532
02:34:10,880 --> 02:34:18,640
Off they go. I mean, like a rocket. If you haven't got those things defined, then you're going to have

1533
02:34:18,640 --> 02:34:24,160
to offer the salesperson incentive, which normally means like base salary or something,

1534
02:34:24,160 --> 02:34:30,640
right, with a commission structure on top of that. So if you have to do that, it means you don't have

1535
02:34:30,640 --> 02:34:35,200
those assets like that may be fooling them yet. Okay. So that's a good signal, then, so in right,

1536
02:34:35,200 --> 02:34:40,560
if you can't attract any salespeople on pure commission, then perhaps your offering isn't quite right

1537
02:34:40,560 --> 02:34:49,440
yet for that kind of acceleration. Exactly. Cool. Well, I ask a lot of those questions very selfishly,

1538
02:34:49,440 --> 02:34:54,480
because it's so, someone suggested to me recently for this kind of rust consultancy thing, I've been

1539
02:34:54,480 --> 02:34:59,920
chipping away at that I should just get a salesperson on commission. I didn't even occur to me

1540
02:34:59,920 --> 02:35:04,720
that you could do that. But would you think that would ever be value for a solo contractor, or is

1541
02:35:04,720 --> 02:35:12,480
that only if you're like trying to scale up beyond that? Yeah, I think it wouldn't be attractive enough

1542
02:35:12,480 --> 02:35:19,040
to the salesperson. They wouldn't be able to earn enough commission to support themselves if it's

1543
02:35:19,040 --> 02:35:26,800
just so low. So looking. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I get one of the things that I thought of before

1544
02:35:26,800 --> 02:35:32,800
and I've heard other people mention is the idea of like getting a recruiter to work for you instead

1545
02:35:32,800 --> 02:35:38,160
of the other way around. And I don't believe that works. Like they always work for the people with

1546
02:35:38,160 --> 02:35:43,920
the money and find you and take the cut on that end. Like, I'm not aware that it can work the other

1547
02:35:43,920 --> 02:35:50,080
way around. They sell you. No, if the anyway they're going to sell you is if you give them the money,

1548
02:35:50,080 --> 02:35:58,080
which you're before being up getting to do, I mean, you could, I suppose. Yeah, because

1549
02:35:58,080 --> 02:36:03,520
they're sales people. They chase the money. So if you're giving, if you're the customer, that means

1550
02:36:03,520 --> 02:36:11,680
you're paying them the money, they go find me a contract. Yeah. But now I don't think that's really a thing.

1551
02:36:17,120 --> 02:36:28,480
And once you've got a stream of work to do, in terms of actually like delivering on a contract,

1552
02:36:28,480 --> 02:36:41,040
I look a couple of questions around that. Something that's come up for me a couple of times is the idea

1553
02:36:41,040 --> 02:36:47,920
of like a regular reporting, sort of leads into the communication with your client and the various people

1554
02:36:47,920 --> 02:36:51,520
in the client. So like I've mentioned before, like sometimes I'm embedded in a team and I'm doing

1555
02:36:51,520 --> 02:36:55,840
daily stand-ups and the team itself is a very tight communication, but there might be some other

1556
02:36:55,840 --> 02:37:00,960
important stakeholders that are a bit less connected, like the CTO if you're dealing with end

1557
02:37:00,960 --> 02:37:06,400
directly or a consultancy is quite common for me. And they don't necessarily know what's going on.

1558
02:37:06,400 --> 02:37:10,000
And one of the consultancies I work for was like, can we have a monthly report? Like just a written

1559
02:37:10,960 --> 02:37:17,040
good, bad, ugly, indifferent out of the box kind of things. What's been you're thinking around

1560
02:37:17,040 --> 02:37:24,880
sort of out of band communication with clients to make sure that that relationship stays

1561
02:37:24,880 --> 02:37:35,440
tip top? Yeah. Sometimes it's not appropriate,

1562
02:37:38,080 --> 02:37:47,360
just to guard about, you know, out of band communication as you say, some people get really

1563
02:37:47,360 --> 02:37:56,640
edgy around the reporting hierarchy. So what you might have to do is you can still create the

1564
02:37:56,640 --> 02:38:01,760
report, but you just have to send it up the right way, send it through the right chain,

1565
02:38:03,520 --> 02:38:10,480
which I find works quite well because then the your direct contact, if you like,

1566
02:38:10,480 --> 02:38:14,160
then feels happy that they're in control, even though you've written a document.

1567
02:38:14,160 --> 02:38:21,280
Sure, they might doctor it on the way up, who knows? So if you've got, like, you're in a team,

1568
02:38:21,280 --> 02:38:26,080
there's a lead dev, maybe a middle manager, or a CTO, but you're kind of engaged by the CTO,

1569
02:38:26,080 --> 02:38:30,160
rather than kind of skipping all of those levels and giving them a direct,

1570
02:38:31,600 --> 02:38:38,320
you might write your report and then let them surface it up, but maybe check in the CTOs actually

1571
02:38:38,320 --> 02:38:46,080
seeing something I suppose? Yeah, if you've got the relationship with the CTO, then check in certainly

1572
02:38:46,080 --> 02:38:52,160
that, did you get the report? They might say yes or no, you know, you can follow up like that.

1573
02:38:52,160 --> 02:38:58,880
But if you're sending the report through that chain of command, if you want to call it that,

1574
02:38:58,880 --> 02:39:06,960
then everyone feels involved and at least part of the process, it's just the way of

1575
02:39:06,960 --> 02:39:13,040
growing in network is being nice. On the other hand, if you've got a direct relationship with

1576
02:39:13,040 --> 02:39:16,800
the CTO and they ask you directly, can you give me a report and give them that report?

1577
02:39:16,800 --> 02:39:25,120
Yeah, I guess. Have you ever felt the need to push beyond what they've asked for in terms of

1578
02:39:25,120 --> 02:39:31,360
reporting and communication like, "Oh, be proactive around it." Do you think that's a good,

1579
02:39:31,360 --> 02:39:39,440
a good, good or bad idea? I think some would see that as a bonus,

1580
02:39:39,440 --> 02:39:46,720
talk about assets and being able to sell yourself and if you can say that we will do a weekly report

1581
02:39:46,720 --> 02:39:52,240
about what's been done and what benefits this is to the business because they'll always have to

1582
02:39:52,240 --> 02:39:59,760
the benefit to the business, then, yeah, that puts you in a happier place in their eyes.

1583
02:39:59,760 --> 02:40:06,160
Cool. Yeah, I kind of wondered about that when it's not necessarily been asked for because I can

1584
02:40:06,160 --> 02:40:13,760
see that as a plus, like, but in a way enough, that's the people. Indeed, as long as you can, once you've

1585
02:40:13,760 --> 02:40:19,840
set that expectation, as long as you can keep fulfilling it, yes, because what you don't want to do

1586
02:40:19,840 --> 02:40:24,400
is set an expectation and then fail miserably a month later when you haven't done it and they're

1587
02:40:24,400 --> 02:40:30,160
expecting the same again. Yeah, I should share one cautionary tale. I had one go bad.

1588
02:40:30,160 --> 02:40:35,840
No, it had to be stiffer, like, it wasn't the end of the contract, but it was still a bit like,

1589
02:40:35,840 --> 02:40:43,440
"Oh, goodness, in that I sent a pretty blunt report, like, through the consultancy to the

1590
02:40:43,440 --> 02:40:47,440
senior folk and they just immediately sent it onto the whole team." I think, "Oh, God,

1591
02:40:48,320 --> 02:40:51,200
what did I say about so and so?" Not being very good.

1592
02:40:51,200 --> 02:40:59,680
So, yeah, like you say, you don't, doctoring or like being distributed beyond perhaps where you

1593
02:40:59,680 --> 02:41:04,160
thought it was going to go to, I think it's, it's just, you have to kind of assume that these things

1594
02:41:04,160 --> 02:41:09,680
might get shared to the whole company at some point. Absolutely, if you've shared it to one person,

1595
02:41:09,680 --> 02:41:14,960
you've shared it to the entire planet, same goes for uploading stuff on internet, right? Yeah, it is

1596
02:41:14,960 --> 02:41:27,440
a bit. Yes, there are no private forums. Also, in terms of like servicing clients, so if your

1597
02:41:27,440 --> 02:41:35,120
if your sales is going well, I've never been able to run more than one client at once, and I'm not

1598
02:41:35,120 --> 02:41:42,560
talking about the morally dubious, like, pretending to work hard and not and doubling up an out,

1599
02:41:42,560 --> 02:41:47,600
because that's obviously completely unethical. I'm talking about like legitimately in the open,

1600
02:41:47,600 --> 02:41:53,280
like maybe a split week or something, you know, two days for this client, two days for that client.

1601
02:41:53,280 --> 02:42:00,480
For me, for me, in certainly in call face delivery of programming, I've never done it. I would imagine

1602
02:42:00,480 --> 02:42:05,920
I'd find that incredibly difficult with the context, which, like you've mentioned, is that

1603
02:42:05,920 --> 02:42:11,040
something you've had in the experience where they're all seen done? Yeah.

1604
02:42:11,040 --> 02:42:21,520
I have, and yeah, there is a certain level of context switching that is required. So,

1605
02:42:21,520 --> 02:42:31,440
in that case, I would make it quite clear on which times you'll work on, which client

1606
02:42:31,440 --> 02:42:40,160
preferably broken up by day, you know, so if you've got the situation where you can do a split week,

1607
02:42:40,160 --> 02:42:45,040
where it is two, you know, Monday and Tuesdays for one client, and Wednesday, Thursday for the other one,

1608
02:42:45,040 --> 02:42:52,240
then that makes your brain much easier to cope with, you know, in terms of, you know,

1609
02:42:52,240 --> 02:42:59,040
I'm dealing with a whole block of that. Now, some customers might not like that, so, you know,

1610
02:42:59,040 --> 02:43:02,800
this is where it pays to be more in demand of any completely customers.

1611
02:43:05,600 --> 02:43:14,240
Otherwise, yeah, you're not delivering your best if you try and, you know, deliver for two customers

1612
02:43:14,240 --> 02:43:24,320
on the same day, you know, you might start mixing up IP and design and things, and yeah, it really

1613
02:43:24,320 --> 02:43:30,880
makes it quite stressful to try and keep that demarcation. So, you know, keep those barriers as solid

1614
02:43:30,880 --> 02:43:36,400
as you can. So, like a single day is like a minimum for easy switching or easier switching.

1615
02:43:36,400 --> 02:43:44,320
Easier switching, yeah. I mean, I've done like a morning and an afternoon, this is kind of a minimum,

1616
02:43:44,320 --> 02:43:50,480
your morning for one customer and afternoon for another, you know, you've got that lunch break

1617
02:43:50,480 --> 02:43:55,200
just to clear mind, which, yeah, but nothing, certainly nothing less than that.

1618
02:43:56,320 --> 02:44:03,760
Is there any advantage to like, juggling multiple clients? I mean, I'm kind of guessing that

1619
02:44:03,760 --> 02:44:09,840
in terms of not having a cliff at the end of one of them finishing is obviously a thing,

1620
02:44:09,840 --> 02:44:14,560
which I suffer was in my own business, like a contract finishes for better or worse,

1621
02:44:14,560 --> 02:44:18,160
and it's back to the scramble.

1622
02:44:20,560 --> 02:44:27,680
Yeah, I mean, for me, they're on different rates, which can help.

1623
02:44:27,680 --> 02:44:32,400
You know, all customers pay the same day rate.

1624
02:44:32,400 --> 02:44:40,480
So it creates sort of a different level of balance, like you said, it's not getting that cliff

1625
02:44:40,480 --> 02:44:49,920
edge when the contract finishes, but it also seeds, you know, the groundwork I suppose for being

1626
02:44:49,920 --> 02:44:58,160
a multi-person agency, right? Because when, when you get two clients on board, then, you know,

1627
02:44:58,160 --> 02:45:04,640
maybe you can get three clients on board, and then at some point you're going to have enough

1628
02:45:04,640 --> 02:45:08,720
overhead to make it worthwhile to hire another person to come in to help you.

1629
02:45:08,720 --> 02:45:14,720
Yeah, that makes sense. And then you're, you're off to something that isn't really contracting

1630
02:45:14,720 --> 02:45:23,280
at that point, it's more like running a consultancy. Yeah, yeah, and then we're into the MSP

1631
02:45:23,280 --> 02:45:30,080
territory. Yeah, yeah, and so you touched on this as like towards the end of the book, like,

1632
02:45:30,080 --> 02:45:35,680
what's the off ramp for contracting? Is it, you know, retirement or growing a bigger business

1633
02:45:35,680 --> 02:45:41,440
or entrepreneurship, which is an entrepreneurship vision entire other subject, which fascinates me,

1634
02:45:41,440 --> 02:45:51,600
but it's probably, the underscores of this particular conversation. I'm going to like head towards

1635
02:45:51,600 --> 02:46:00,000
wrapping up because we've got all sorts of wonderful territory. One of things caught my eye

1636
02:46:00,000 --> 02:46:05,680
as well as the book. You mentioned that you have a three C's to become a confident contract, of course.

1637
02:46:06,560 --> 02:46:13,200
Tell me about that because I don't know anything about it. Yes, this is a bit of a deep dive

1638
02:46:13,200 --> 02:46:24,800
beyond the confines of a fairly concise book where you can access to me for a whole day,

1639
02:46:24,800 --> 02:46:31,280
this is one of the formats where we go through all the sections and you know, you can,

1640
02:46:32,000 --> 02:46:37,040
as well as going through the material in the book, there's also the opportunity for you to throw,

1641
02:46:37,040 --> 02:46:41,600
you know, actual questions and concerns directly at me. So if you'll stuck it any bit,

1642
02:46:41,600 --> 02:46:48,880
then it gives you a deeper understanding of the subject matter. And then in addition to that,

1643
02:46:48,880 --> 02:46:56,960
also got a slack community so you can come onto there and again ask questions and continue a

1644
02:46:56,960 --> 02:47:05,520
journey with that support and helping handle. Cool. And what prompted you to offer this as well?

1645
02:47:05,520 --> 02:47:09,920
I mean, certainly just to say, it certainly sounds super useful. It's all very well,

1646
02:47:09,920 --> 02:47:14,160
reading the book, listening to a podcast, but everyone has their own unique things that they're stuck

1647
02:47:14,160 --> 02:47:19,360
on that they want to get with. So that one-to-one is totally valuable. I personally hired a business

1648
02:47:19,360 --> 02:47:24,240
coach for exactly that reason. I'd read a lot and I still didn't know what to do. But yeah, what

1649
02:47:24,960 --> 02:47:31,440
motivated you to open up that in your diary, in your busy diary, put it sound a bit? Yeah. So

1650
02:47:31,440 --> 02:47:37,440
there was a group of lads who were with a consultancy who are thinking about

1651
02:47:37,440 --> 02:47:47,760
doing contracting and they approached me and said, you know, we value you as, you know,

1652
02:47:47,760 --> 02:47:53,840
I've worked with all of them individually before. And we want to know your knowledge, you know,

1653
02:47:53,840 --> 02:48:02,880
can you set aside some time and come workshop with us for a day? And I said, yeah, sure, we can

1654
02:48:02,880 --> 02:48:14,000
put something together. And rather than it being in person, we delivered it over a spirit of two,

1655
02:48:14,000 --> 02:48:22,160
four days, but only like an hour a day or something like that, just to give them time to digest

1656
02:48:22,160 --> 02:48:31,040
an auto to fit it around my busy diary at that time. And so they found that immensely useful and

1657
02:48:31,040 --> 02:48:38,320
so I thought, okay, this is probably valuable, so let's offer that out. Gosh. I mean, they will go far,

1658
02:48:38,320 --> 02:48:44,560
if they are motivated and intelligent enough to be like, oh, here's someone who knows it,

1659
02:48:44,560 --> 02:48:51,520
let's get them to tell us that. That's amazing. Indeed, yeah. Yeah, that's, yeah, going contracting is

1660
02:48:51,520 --> 02:48:56,400
going to be the least of their problems, I think, like they will fly through that with your, with your

1661
02:48:56,400 --> 02:49:11,600
resistance. And in terms of them, like, I'm interested to know what you see, like in the broader

1662
02:49:11,600 --> 02:49:16,400
horizons, like you, you know, obviously talked to a variety of people, they're in a variety of positions

1663
02:49:16,400 --> 02:49:23,520
in what you've been doing, like, AI aside, does that make sense? Because that's the current peak

1664
02:49:23,520 --> 02:49:29,120
as the hype cycle. So perhaps we'll forget about that one and this is something with substance going

1665
02:49:29,120 --> 02:49:37,040
on there. But like, what do your kind of like early whisperings on the vine from like the sea sweet

1666
02:49:37,040 --> 02:49:42,080
and the people in the ground that you're kind of seeing the future direction that I guess the

1667
02:49:42,080 --> 02:49:47,680
relevance is going to be like if someone's deciding which of these various niches to dive into, like,

1668
02:49:47,680 --> 02:49:52,640
I think you did very well to get into DevOps. Like, I saw that one as a good opportunity. I personally

1669
02:49:52,640 --> 02:49:55,760
avoided it because I don't like doing with other people's software, I like writing my own.

1670
02:49:55,760 --> 02:50:03,920
So yeah, what's the current outlook that you see from what, what are people are talking about that's

1671
02:50:03,920 --> 02:50:16,480
kind of the next thing? So I think people are still talking about deploying software easier.

1672
02:50:16,480 --> 02:50:26,800
Yeah, still a fath. Related to that. Yeah, it's still, you know, put it in a Docker container.

1673
02:50:26,800 --> 02:50:34,080
Okay, I've done that. It's still a fath. Yeah, it's still very tricky. Not not too much, you know, to

1674
02:50:34,080 --> 02:50:40,160
get it all on one machine in the front. It's great, you know, you've done it, array, Docker compose,

1675
02:50:40,160 --> 02:50:46,960
sorted. But if you then need to scale that up in any way, that's where all the pain comes in.

1676
02:50:49,760 --> 02:51:01,680
And I don't think there's a really neat public way of doing that. I mean, I know a couple of platforms

1677
02:51:01,680 --> 02:51:07,840
that will do that in a Heroku music, it comes to mind. Yeah, and if it fits your needs,

1678
02:51:07,840 --> 02:51:14,400
then you don't mind the price. Yeah. And that works for simple type developments.

1679
02:51:15,760 --> 02:51:22,240
It feels like proof of concept startups. Indeed, yeah. Yeah, it's very good for sticking

1680
02:51:22,240 --> 02:51:27,840
this stuff on there initially, but you're soon going to hit that. Hopefully, if your product is

1681
02:51:27,840 --> 02:51:34,480
really awesome, you're going to hit that scale up space. And that's still really a not a solved

1682
02:51:34,480 --> 02:51:40,640
problem, I don't think at this point. Interesting. So maybe some opportunities there for like helping

1683
02:51:40,640 --> 02:51:45,680
companies with what's out there now, and maybe even innovating on some of the products around it.

1684
02:51:45,680 --> 02:51:52,240
The platform. Yeah, I don't think Kubernetes is the answer, that's just too damn complicated.

1685
02:51:52,240 --> 02:51:56,000
It's very complicated. Yeah. And like on the other side of it, like the

1686
02:51:56,000 --> 02:52:00,560
pipeline, some might have you, like, having been in a few places that have pushed that really

1687
02:52:00,560 --> 02:52:09,360
quite hard and done quite a lot with it, like it does, does a gap there. Like for all that is come

1688
02:52:09,360 --> 02:52:16,800
along way, like once it gets complicated, you've got a lot of, yeah, I don't know, a lot of yaml.

1689
02:52:16,800 --> 02:52:23,520
A lot of yaml. Yeah, yaml is definitely the answer. Yeah, that's interesting. And there's a lot,

1690
02:52:23,520 --> 02:52:30,880
there's interesting stuff happening that's kind of related in terms of the reducing the overhead

1691
02:52:30,880 --> 02:52:38,960
of what's deployed. I think really interesting things that's coming down the line is the

1692
02:52:39,920 --> 02:52:47,360
what's that technically, but in browsers. Web assembly, that's the one I was looking at. So you've got

1693
02:52:47,360 --> 02:52:52,000
Web assembly in the browser and you've got wazzy Web assembly, common interface or something,

1694
02:52:52,000 --> 02:52:56,640
which allows it to interface with desk and network and what have you.

1695
02:52:56,640 --> 02:53:04,080
A hosting model like serverless kind of hosting model where that's the container for your

1696
02:53:04,960 --> 02:53:13,600
business logic code instead of Docker or some kind of, um, heroic who kind of thing, that that's

1697
02:53:13,600 --> 02:53:22,640
got definitely huge potential to be like Docker on steroids in terms of, um, reducing the overhead

1698
02:53:22,640 --> 02:53:27,760
of the infrastructure down to just such a ridiculously low level, especially if you put

1699
02:53:27,760 --> 02:53:32,960
something like rust in it, which has got also ridiculously low overhead, like the amount of scale for

1700
02:53:32,960 --> 02:53:39,520
the amount of money you spend is going to be insane. Um, and I think when AWS or Azure or whatever,

1701
02:53:39,520 --> 02:53:44,320
pick that up and that becomes the new deployment thing, I think that was going to change things quite

1702
02:53:44,320 --> 02:53:49,120
a bit, but you're still, you're still going to have that like, well, okay, cool. How do I get my code out

1703
02:53:49,120 --> 02:53:55,040
get hard, or bit bucket or whatever into that thing? How do I do all my networking? How do I do all my

1704
02:53:55,040 --> 02:54:05,920
I.e. C. That's still all could definitely be easier for sure. Yeah, I say there's a lot of fat

1705
02:54:05,920 --> 02:54:12,960
fall around it, whereas it sounds like it should be really simple. Yeah, for sure. And at the small

1706
02:54:12,960 --> 02:54:18,960
level, it is more work for the contractors and I don't see the AI doing it yet. Like I've played,

1707
02:54:18,960 --> 02:54:22,720
played a bit with the AI and like it's really good for getting you off the ground.

1708
02:54:23,680 --> 02:54:28,640
Like, oh, right, me a guy, I'm piling for this and like it will get it like 80% right.

1709
02:54:28,640 --> 02:54:31,920
And that's cool. And I'm sure it's going to get better, but in terms of like

1710
02:54:31,920 --> 02:54:36,240
replacing the consultants, no, John's not, not all this point.

1711
02:54:36,240 --> 02:54:44,080
Now, I mean, it still misses that depth of context. Yeah. Well, I think that's the thing.

1712
02:54:44,080 --> 02:54:45,520
The ability to trust it as well.

1713
02:54:47,120 --> 02:54:55,280
Divis that. Oh, look, it took this massive shortcut. Yeah. It went one, two, five, you know,

1714
02:54:55,280 --> 02:54:59,360
all the way up to three and four. Yeah. Okay. It was just easier to open up all the

1715
02:54:59,360 --> 02:55:08,480
fireballs. So I did that. Yeah. Yeah. I hallucinated your fireball. What fireball?

1716
02:55:08,480 --> 02:55:14,800
Cool. Okay. We've covered so much. As I was going to think as you want to mention before I

1717
02:55:14,800 --> 02:55:19,360
before I wrap up, I mean, I will, I will ask you about your book and where to find you, but

1718
02:55:19,360 --> 02:55:26,560
on that kind of wondering journey that we've covered is the something else we should dodge on.

1719
02:55:26,560 --> 02:55:31,840
No, I mean, I think big data, stir thing. Right. Yeah, that's definitely, there's still good

1720
02:55:31,840 --> 02:55:38,160
money for data scientists in, in tech for sure. Yeah. Lots of unstructured data that needs wrangling.

1721
02:55:38,960 --> 02:55:46,640
More data lakes. I hear as a hot topic still. Yeah, indeed. We do not to do with it, but we've

1722
02:55:46,640 --> 02:55:58,800
got it. Right. Yeah. Data suspect. Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, I can't go without saying thank you.

1723
02:55:58,800 --> 02:56:04,080
It's been amazing. I've really enjoyed this. Thank you for letting me poke into all of the corners

1724
02:56:04,080 --> 02:56:11,200
of your life, and not just the the tech and the book. It's been really good. And where can people

1725
02:56:11,200 --> 02:56:19,440
find the book? Where can people find out more about you? So you can find out more about the book at

1726
02:56:19,440 --> 02:56:29,360
Confident-Huyphon-Contracted.co.uk. It is available on Amazon the 24th of July.

1727
02:56:32,000 --> 02:56:37,840
In Kindle and Poverlack editions available on pre-order, so don't wait till the 24th.

1728
02:56:37,840 --> 02:56:47,680
Get the pre-order. And you can find out more about me on Neil Millard.com. Lots of other stuff

1729
02:56:47,680 --> 02:56:53,760
on there too. Cool. Awesome. Thank you very much for that, Neil. I've really enjoyed that. And

1730
02:56:53,760 --> 02:56:58,240
hopefully there's some listeners hanging on because this has been good, but this is what I love about

1731
02:56:58,240 --> 02:57:02,960
podcasting. Like, there was a lot to talk about, and we talked about it, but I'm really happy.

1732
02:57:02,960 --> 02:57:09,280
Cool. So with that, thank you very much. And that's been another episode of Software Should Be

1733
02:57:09,280 --> 02:57:16,320
Free, where is Neil Millard and myself Tim Abel. Subscribe, like, yadde yadde yadde yadde. All of the

1734
02:57:16,320 --> 02:57:23,520
end of the show things. And do check out Neil Make Contact, follow him on LinkedIn or read the book.

1735
02:57:24,320 --> 02:57:36,080
I hope to see you on the next episode. Thanks for watching. Bye-bye.

1736
02:57:36,560 --> 02:57:44,560
[Music]