Supper Club × Switching into Coding and climbing the Pommade ladder with Kenneth Lyerly

I sure hope you're hungry.

Cool. I'm starving.

Wash those hands, pull up a chair, and secure that feed bag, because it's time to listen to Scott Talinsky and Wes Boss attempt to use human language to converse with and pick the brains of other developers.

I thought there was gonna be food, so buckle up and grab that old handle because this ride is going to get wild.

This is the Syntax supper club.

Welcome to the Syntax supper club. Today, we have a really great one. We're gonna be talking about switching into coding as a career and climbing the pomade ladder with Kenneth Liarly.

We're gonna be talking to Kenneth and seeing how he made a change in his career, and now he is, working full time as a as a dev, for a pomade company, which we'll be talking quite a bit about. My name is Scott Talensky. I'm a developer from Denver, Colorado with me as always is West Boss. How's it going, West?

Oh, not too bad. I every now and then, I have one of these, like, Old lady who smokes too much coughs.

I just get over. Can't get rid of it. Yeah. You know those like.

So excuse those.

Excuse the the cough. Well, welcome, Kenneth. How's it how's it going? Yeah. It's going great. Excited to be here. Thanks for having me guys.

Probably first quick note, gonna be a little bit different.

Doing a lot more than just dev at the pomade company, but I am a full time dev at another company called Resort Pass. Cool. Oh, really?

Is is that new?

New ish. Since January, I actually currently holds 2 full time positions, which is, which is interesting.

Really? Yeah. That's wild. And Are you allowed to do that? Are you allowed?

How do you have 2 full time jobs? Yeah. So I guess the prerequisite to that is you've gotta be a bit of a workaholic. I'm a I'm a bit of a workaholic. I I work really hard, but I think the other part of that is is I really enjoy all of the work that I do. I I don't think that it would be possible if I didn't. Yeah. I can totally get that. Do do they care? Do they know? They do.

Yeah. That's a great question too. Important question. Yeah. It is it is an important question. Yeah. So I've been, very transparent with With, both both employers, and, it's a bit of a doozy on on how it came to be, but Definitely accurate, to the title and to the point. You know? Back in 2019, I was doing part time dev work. I guess It'd be easier to go all the way back to the beginning of the pump of the company. Swabasito.

Yeah. So Let's hear it. Yeah. Sure. So back in 2012, Me and the founder of the pomade company were actually working in aerospace. We were machinists.

And, I knew that I wanted to make A switch back then. You know, I'd been at it for about 8 years. I started, right out of high school.

Good good paying job, Allowed me to get a home at an at a young age. I was 23 when I bought my my condo in Orange, California, which is not an easy thing to do.

And, so I'm I'm getting into this. I'm 8 years into being a machinist, and I'm like, man, this is this is not what I wanna do, You know, until I'm retirement age. This is not what I wanna do until I'm 60, 70 years old, and had always had kind of a love Love for the Internet and web technology. So started getting into, learning a little bit about HTML and CSS just on my own, not really taking any classes, started diving into WordPress a bit.

And while I was doing that, my buddy, Pedro Dame, was, learning how to make water based pomades.

And, as you can imagine, starting a company, you have a need for somebody that knows things about web, knows things about social media. You know, you need websites. You need blogs. You need all those kinds of things. So we ended up linking up, and I came on board. And my my first title was media specialist, and Iran, all of Facebook, both paid and organic back when paid was a brand new thing. Instagram wasn't even really a thing yet. It was just coming up, and started running Instagram for him. Started building blogs, got into, doing ecom stuff. Quickly started learning Shopify.

Fast forward a couple of years, I ended up in a leadership role to where I had Photographers and media specialists working underneath me brought in, you know, another web guy to help with the email stuff and, help with some of the load of, You know, building some of the static pages that I wasn't super interested in building anymore at that point.

And, you know, fast Fast forward years later, I ended up with a full team underneath me of people that were, you know, managing both, Organic social, paid social, engineers working under me, managing ecom, you know, building out email campaigns, building microservices for different integrations that we wanted to do, led a full blown ERP implementation, Towards the end of 2019 and, around that time, I was a little bit light on on help in the engineering department.

So I ended up taking on building a Shopify theme for us from scratch on my own because everybody else was tied up working on other things, doing that while doing a full blown ERP implementation.

And, that's when I actually found you guys' podcast.

So I would wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning, walk my dog, and I started my day by listening to syntax to get my head, like, in the right space.

Yeah. And then I would get into the office by 6 o'clock hours before anybody else did, to start coding. So I'd I'd start my day first 3, 4, or 5 hours, you know, building the Shopify theme, before anybody else could get in and and, tie up all my time with, you know, different, You know, decision making that I had to do or, you know, questions or mentoring or any of that kind of stuff.

And that's when I really, like, really realized Where my passion really was, I I enjoy marketing. I enjoy leadership. I enjoy all that other stuff. But if you put all that stuff in front of me and give me, You know, my choice on what it is that I'm gonna work on, I'm gonna code until I can't code anymore. That's what I'm gonna do.

That's that's great. That's a great way to figure out exactly what you wanna do, especially getting a lot of experience, but also in the fact that you're working with a a full on Ecommerce store a product.

My 1st dev project was a Magento site, so I I can totally get that. You get a store, you get it up and running, And then you you get to get deeper and deeper and deeper. Next thing you know, you're a full time developer.

Yeah. And so so when that happened, you know, I really started doubling down on coding even outside of work just because I I enjoyed it So much, I started taking on side projects. I heard you guys talking about Gatsby and, you know, all this other new cool stuff that I wasn't getting to work with, you know, just doing traditional Shopify Five themes. So I started taking on, like, any side gig that I could for next to nothing just just as a little bit of a Motivation to put in the extra hours outside of my already, you know, 50, 60 hour work week that I was doing at the time.

And, man, when I when I started getting into to Gatsby and working with React in that way, man, I I really realized what I wanted to do. So kinda what I wanted to do with the company at that point, right, is I'm like, man, I really what I really want for us To have here at is is to have, you know, what my team works on be be the product that they care about the most and that being the the ecommerce site, you know, whether we get into native apps, whether we're, you know, making different partner portals, or whatever it is that we're working on. Like, I want my team to iterate on this stuff. I want them to improve it. I want to, you know, very closely work with the marketing team and figure out, like, what landing pages are gonna work best. Do a bunch of AB testing.

Test out different features.

And then, of course, you know, March 2020, COVID, And everything changes. Right? Every everything changes. So March, I'm supposed to launch this this huge ERP, switch over that we did, which, is is a lot of work. It is an insane amount of work.

So we're supposed to launch that in March.

You know, I just launched the Ecom store that I had just built, from the ground up, in November. I had it ready in time for Black Friday.

A bit buggy, but ready.

And then, so March 2020, you know, Everything changes. Sales team's out. You know? Customer service team is out. You know? The the the biggest part of our business was barbershops. All the barbershops are closed.

You know, you can't be doing that close, in person stuff. Even with masks, everything was completely shut down, and it took, You know, it took almost half a year for that to to start opening back up, so I no longer got to do I no longer got to implement the plan that I had been working on and had to very much go back to wearing multiple hats, me and just a few few people keeping the company afloat.

We actually were able to to stay open and stay working because we switched a bunch of our machines over to run hand sanitizer at the time and not, like, Give us the okay to continue to work even during shutdowns. Yeah.

That's wild. So you, at what point did you, start to look at this secondary job that you have? So the towards the end of 2021,

you know, I'm I'm basically building a team up From from the ground up again, you know, we weren't able to to get back some of the same people that, had to go out during, during shutdowns.

Just different different, different things happened. Some people found other opportunities.

We ended up just Restructuring the way that we did things, in general with my team and other parts of the company. So, you know, it wasn't like person for person came back. So So I found myself in a position to where I had to rebuild a team. And so, through so, basically, through all of calendar year 2021, my focus was was building a team up.

And towards the end, I'm just, like, getting burnout. Getting burned out on the leadership thing. I'm getting burned out on management. I'm getting burned out on being on in all these meetings and all this stuff. I just I kinda wanna code, and, I was, I was at dinner with a couple of my friends, and one one of my friends happens to be a technical recruiter, of course. Right? And, you know, I'm telling him about how I'm just, like, I'm getting burnt. Like, I just I wish I had more time to code.

And, he goes, you know, it's interesting that you bring that up, good recruiter that he is. I've got a client right now, that's Got a really interesting, yeah, a really interesting opportunity.

And, you know, they seem like a a super cool company to work for. Why don't you why don't you talk to them? So I ended up talking to him and and, yeah, like, it so that's, resort pass.

So resort pass, we have an app and website, for selling, underutilized amenities at resorts and hotels. So, like, so say you like you you live, yeah, you live in, like, a a major metropolitan area where there's a lot of hotels and resorts, you don't have a pool at home, but you wanna go use a pool for the day, you can get a pass to go and use the pool for the day. You wanna get a cabana, you can get a cabana for the day. There's a bunch of other stuff, work rooms, gym passes, you know, spa passes. There's there's a bunch of stuff that we do, but, What they were looking for was somebody to come on board and work in Next Next. Js, and I found that to be super interesting. And And, they had, you know, a a a nice pitch and, some some good incentives, enough to where I I was willing to make the switch to do that full time at least for a while.

So that happened. And, you know, I went back To, I went back to my friends over at and just kind of, explained to him, like, look. I'm I'm burned out. I think I think I kinda wanna move out of Orange County. It's really expensive here. I wanna do what everybody else is doing. I wanna move somewhere where it's a little bit more affordable, work remote.

Yeah. You know, and just kind of enjoy my life a little bit more.

Kinda getting burned out on this, you know, 12 hour a day, you know, 60 hour workweek grind.

And they totally understood, and and, I offered to basically stay on indefinitely, To train my replacement and to to get the team up to speed.

And they came back with another offer of why don't you just Stay and work the hours that you can.

And, yeah, so, since, January, That's what I've been doing, and, you know, don't necessarily see myself, leaving anytime soon. I help Build this company from the ground up. And Yeah.

And, you know, I love everybody there from, you know, from the owners to the newest employees.

Everybody there is, you know, family or a friend of family, is is to the it's the biggest the company has gotten. It's it's always been that.

And there's a lot of fun stuff to work on. The the guys that own that company, they own a bunch of other companies. They have a brewery in Santa Ana, California. They have, you know, an eyewear company. They have men's clothing stores.

Mhmm. So there's a bunch of work to be done for them, you know, be Between marketing and websites and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So I've been in this I've been in this situation to where for the last year, I haven't had any hands on coding for them, but I've continued to mentor and build up, the the the devs that they have on staff And, help them make high level decisions around, you know, what we should be doing with software, what we should be doing, on marketing, with paid social, and all that kind of stuff.

So my day is pretty interesting.

You know, I'm up, I'm up no later than 5 o'clock in the morning on a daily basis, And, I'm I'm, head down on the keyboard for resort pass starting at 6 o'clock in the morning, you know, until about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, Doing that full time, and then I and then I make the, the context shift over into, helping

for the remainder of the day. Wow. If I started at 5 AM, my head would be literally down on the keyboard because I'd be sleeping.

That's that's too early of a start for me. I already get up pretty early with the kids, but holy cow. Also, it's really good that both both companies are at least onboard or or, you know, they're not feeling like you're, you know, sliding in anyone by by doing this extra work. I had a Yeah. 2 jobs one time. I worked at Pet Supplies Plus and, the ski hill, the local ski hill. And then, actually, I worked at Target too at that same time When I was a 16 year old, and I did not tell any of them, and I, called in sick to a lot of places a lot of times just trying to make it work.

So you you you end up doing about how many hours of of work a week for the pomade Biz, how how much is what is that data amount to at the end of the day? Usually around, 20 to 24 hours. Just depends on what's Going on crazy. That's so cool. We have a employee who does something really similar, and it does it can absolutely work out in the right context. So,

applaud you for doing it. It's a lot of work. Right? Yeah. No. And for sure. And to be fair, like, if it wasn't for the contact Shift in the type of work that I was doing, I don't think that it would be sustainable. Like, I just, like, I can't see myself writing good code for 12 hours a day, like, just going at Like I said, I just don't think it's gonna happen. Totally. So I've got a question. A lot of people are probably listening to this right now, and they say, yeah. Like, I want to do something similar,

because I'm getting burnt out of what I'm wanting. I'm listening to this podcast, and then I'd like to make the the jump at some point.

Like, how I guess you said you're just waking up earlier and and starting to dig into, doing Shopify. Was that, like, your first Intro into coding, like, any and so there's that. And then do you have any tips on how somebody could could do that themselves?

Yeah. So it wasn't my 1st intro to coding. I I had been I had been coding for a few years. I I even did, back in 2017. So the time period you're talking about was around 2019.

Yeah. Back in 2017, I did do, I did do a full stack JavaScript boot camp. And before that, I had I had some experience with HTML, CSS, little bit of PHP, just enough to break my, my WordPress sites And, and some jQuery, that kind of stuff, but had never touched Node. Hadn't really touched React. Hadn't really used any any of the modern frameworks and modern tools that we had. Didn't know anything about, you know, Webpack or any of that kind of stuff yet.

So I did that, and, you know, boot camps are great. And, you know, if it's something that you can afford or you get the opportunity, You know, I I I tell everybody do it because it's it's a great, like, head start.

But, ultimately, like, you're gonna have to put in the work. You're gonna have to put in the hours, and you're gonna have Love it. You're gonna have to love it enough to just wanna grind at it until you get it. At least for me, I don't I don't find myself to be, like, super smart or anything like that, but I I definitely am a Really hard worker. I will go after it. So you would recommend a boot camp for for those who who are willing to put in the time? Yeah. I mean, if you if You have the money or the opportunity. I I would recommend, you know, do the boot camp, but but understand that all it really is is a kick start. You're gonna have to put in a lot more work than that 6 month or year long, whatever thing it is that you're doing. Yeah. I've I've taught, I don't know, 4 boot camps and

Dozens of part time courses, Ron. I tell people the exact same thing. Like, definitely do it. You're you're giving yourself probably A year, year and a half, 2 year head start on this, and especially for people who don't like aren't aren't necessarily good self starters.

It's just a kick in the ass, and you just get up to speed so quickly, but you gotta keep going after that. You can't stop. We certainly see a lot of people who are like, Alright. I did the boot camp. Like, that's enough skills for the rest of my life. Where's my job? It doesn't work that way. You certainly need to Keep it up yourself. And this is it's more of just a initial boost of noss to get you going, and it's up to you to keep pedaling from there on out. It is hard to to get that

across because the the where's my job mentality can be a thing. Right? I mean, you you did The work, the boot camp, I was supposed to get a job now. I'm in line for my job. But it is it can often be a grind. And even now more than ever, I think, With the way, that even hiring has slowed down considerably right now, like, I I think you're gonna have to Grind's pretty hard to to get that that work, nowadays.

Yeah. And, you know, nowadays, especially, like, You're gonna have to do something to be a standout with everything that's going on in this particular time. Right? Like, you've you've gotta be willing to work, I think, particularly hard. And I think that that's I don't think. I know that that's why I've been successful in in all the transitions that I've made over the years From 1 career to another, it's because I was willing to put in the work.

And, you know, I think just about anybody's capable of doing it. You just you have You have to be willing to do it, and my advice would be is double down on yourself.

Just really put in the extra hours, you know, on the weekends, after after work, whatever it is, if you wanna make that transition, and and you you wanna be good at it, Then you're gonna be you're gonna be willing to put in the time. Like, you've you've you've got to be that into it. And if you're not that into it, I just I don't think that you're ever gonna be great at it. I mean, maybe you can do it. I've worked with people over the years that they have this mentality of, like, I'm only gonna get work. I'm only gonna work as hard as I'm paid. Right? And if I feel like I'm not being paid enough, I'm, you know, I'm just gonna slow down. I'm gonna slow down and do less.

And they have this, like, you know, I'm, you know, I I'm deserving or, you know, this is what I should be getting, and and they just slap Stop and slow down and don't invest in themselves and don't invest in their skills.

I've certainly felt like that at times over the years, and, what I did differently is is, again, I doubled down on myself. Like, I worked that much harder. I spent that much more time, on improving, myself as an employee and sharpening my skills and preparing myself for any other opportunities that might come up.

Totally. I I often think about that in in the same breath of thinking, I often think about, man, am I glad I like this Because Oh, yeah. What happens? Or, like, or what happens if you stop not liking? Or you you get you do get burnt out to a point where you're, like, I can't Stomach another freaking tutorial that's showing me how to loop over something like that. Like, have you have you ever been there In coding, we're like, I can't I just can't do this right now. I can't listen to the Syntax podcast. These guys are talking about another JavaScript framework that, it's coming up. I'm so overwhelmed. Have have you hit that with coding yet and any tips there?

You know, I haven't.

I, again, really, really enjoy coding. I learn a little bit differently.

I, I've I've bought your guys' courses. I have a I have a level up, plus subscription, and, description and, I I reference that kind of stuff at times, but I, I'm not a tutorial learner. I'm like, I need something real to to dive into. And not to say that there's, I mean, tutorials are great. I just I'm ADD. I know you guys just, recently had a had an episode on that. I'm I'm ADD. Like, I have to They'll really be into it. Like, I I hit, I hit double shots of espresso, and then I just go after it.

Yeah. I find myself having a hard time, Like like you said, focusing on I mean, given that I do tutorials for careers is kind of ironic, but I have a hard time focusing on it myself. And I usually end up just Grinding into getting my hands dirty and and coding through some stuff to see, you know, what works, what doesn't. Do you do you get your hands dirty quickly, or are you the type, who's gonna, like, explore a little bit? Her what are you doing?

Yeah. Hands dirty quickly sometimes to a fault. Sometimes, I'm like, man, I wish I just spent a little bit of time doing a little bit more research. I spent a little bit more time on the docs. But I'm with you.

I get that. Oh, that that's great. I I like hearing that. And that's not to say, like, people are like, why are they these guys who make tutorials saying this? It's like, There are many different types of learners out there, and, Scott and I have said this many times is that's Scott and I don't watch tutorials. We certainly just dig in and read the docs and sips here and there, and and then we bring it all together into a nice tutorial for the type of people who do. There's For as many crazy people as us, there are other people who are like, no. I just want somebody to distill it down into a Nice clean tutorial for me, and that's the way that I learn best instead of this crazy Tasmanian devil approach that

We seem to take. Yeah. And largely, when you're getting your hands dirty like that, you find a lot of the edge cases or pitfalls or things maybe Even the docs don't don't think to cover or whatever because you're you're going by what feels right. You're going by Vibes Exclusively.

And then

you can run into a situation, but you end up being able to uncover those things that can then provide a lot of value in a tutorial when you're Planning what other people might run into. So, yeah, we know we have some experience in in marketing, and, so I've been posting these Little short form content videos, and I think you notice, hey, like, it's doing well, or you should be putting like spending a bit more time on thumbnails and whatnot.

Do you have any

thoughts on what is working well for marketing right now? It's interesting. I have a I have a, You know, a new a new team that I'm working with, and one of them is somebody that has experience on the, influencer. And and, You know, Meta is trying really hard to compete with TikTok right now. They want that that vertical, you know, short form content to just take off the way that it is on stock and, you know, makes perfect sense. Right? Yeah. So they've got they've got teams out there that are helping, that are helping content creators and influencers, and and giving them all the tips and tricks. Right? Like, there's like, you talk about it sometimes with us, like, gaming the algorithm. Like, it's a thing. You can. You can game the algorithm, and you can get in front of more people.

That way, are they relevant people? Are they the type of people that, you know, are gonna purchase your product if you're a business? Are they the type of people that are gonna be interested in your content. You know? Not sure.

It's a little bit easier when you're talking about I don't know. You're you're you're sending out some some content about reptiles, Let's say, for example, right, there's a lot of people that just love looking at reptiles. So you can put almost anything out, and they're gonna spend a little bit of time watching that reel that that that you put out or that TikTok that you put out, you know, versus something like what you're doing, Wes, where it's it's a lot more focused. It's, As a matter of fact, laser focused. Like, there's a much smaller amount of people out there that are gonna be interested in JavaScript than, say, you know, lizards.

Fair?

Yeah.

And lizards are pretty sweet. Yeah. Game so gaming the algorithm isn't necessarily gonna work for you. Right? Like, maybe you're getting in front of a bunch People that, you know, don't care just because you did little tips and tricks. Like, you frame things right or you threw in, like, a trending sound or you threw in, You know, I don't know. Some shock factor that made it a scroll stopper before they actually started consuming the content that matters. Like, they're gonna drop off. They're not gonna follow. They're not gonna, Like, truly be interested. So what is working is taking into consideration that there there is an algorithm that you can game a little bit, but, understanding that the content that you put out needs needs to be good. There needs to be a certain amount of quality there. Like, the people that it gets in front of need to care about it. Yeah. It's funny how that lesson hasn't changed from

YouTube. Right? A lot of people have been wondering how to grow YouTube, and I I've been doing that for, like, 10 10 years or so. And That was always the initial message was the content always has to be relevant. It has to be useful. It has to be engaging or whatever, but it, You know, there are ways to gain theme the system in in some sort of way, but that doesn't lead to anything other than higher vanity accounts. Right? You get a vanity numbers, like followers, for instance, or any of that stuff that they're don't they're not indicative of of people who are actually there for your product. And and that's Why I never understood buying followers or buying you know, that was, like, a whole trend for a while. People would buy subscribers or followers or whatever And, ultimately, it ended up working against you because the algorithm serves up your video to a percentage of your followers. Those percentage of your followers are not watching because they're fake, And then your content gets,

shut down or gets decreased in the algorithm. You get penalized. Yeah? You you get penalized. People are like, oh, Swipe through it right immediately, and then that that sends a signal to it. I always think of the algorithm as just, like, say the same thing with SEO. Scott says, yeah. It's it's the same as It's YouTube, and it's it's true with everything. Right? And same with SEO is that Yep. Totally. I'm sure you can track the algorithm some way to make it Work a little bit better and and whatnot. But if people are clicking right back immediately because they realize it, then that that's penalizing you. And I I think the the algorithm there, especially with with TikTok, the algorithm is there to surface good stuff to the actual end user. So if you have good stuff that people are interested in, it it is my hope and my idea that the algorithm will

Eventually, surface that type of stuff to to the end user. Yeah. And I think it's important to remember, like, what the algorithm is there for, right, is to provide a better experience For the end user, they want to keep us on there for as as long as we'll spend. Right? The longer we stay on there, the more ads they can serve up to us. That's the bottom line. That's what they're trying to do. So, yeah, game gaming is is is cool. Like, take take it in into into consideration, but, again, Like, quality content. Yeah. Quality content. Maybe

sprinkle in some of the those, I love how you said scroll stopper. That was, like, a Cool term I don't think I've ever heard, but sprinkling it in some scroll stoppers to get people at least,

some initialize on there, whatever, and then keep them with the content. I did one The other day, I, so I've been playing We were just talking about this. Playing with where my video goes. Every single time I edit 1, Like, alright. Where should I put my video now? Just a little circle where I am. And this one, I was like, you know what? Screw it. I'm putting it upside down just to be funny.

And it that one popped. And every all these comments, are you in Australia? Why are you upside down? Lots of people being, like, do you know that your video's upside down? And I was like, oh, like, that was half intention. I didn't intentionally put it in there to be a scroll stopper. I put it in there just to That's I just do silly stuff like that. Right? And it worked, and I was like,

I see what people are doing. I was like, I know what he's doing. He knows what he's doing.

He's just getting people to be like, what's what's going on there?

Yeah. But it it worked. It it it that one got Five times or 3 times more than I would generally get. And I don't know if it's because it was also a good tip as well, but It certainly stopped enough people in their tracks to be like, why is the video upside down, or what's gonna happen? You know? And then they kept Kept watching to to actually see the tip that I posted in there. Yeah. It's it's so hard to tell when you're doing so many different things at once, what exactly is and that's why when you AB test, you you you do

as few differences as possible, and you test the one thing, which is really easy to do on the paid side, not so easy to do on the organic side. Right? You can't post the same thing twice and expect, you know, for it to be apples to apples results. Mhmm. People have already seen it. So Even if you have, like, a different intro or whatever,

it wouldn't it wouldn't work the same. Yeah. That's a really interesting thought. It's like, how do you AB test that type of content? Because, Yeah. Sometimes a video doesn't hit, and you're thinking, oh, is this topic just not as interesting as I thought it was? Or, did I do something here that I didn't do somewhere else? Like, what are those variables and changing 1 or 2 at a time? AB testing, thing for those of you as developers, there's a lot of opportunities for us to AB test. And if you're not doing any kind of AB testing, it can be really eye opening. I know one of the places we do it Mostly is, like, even in email titles and email newsletter stuff where we use Mailchimp, it makes it really easy to just AB test a title or a campaign, then you can compare that side by side or better yet, say, serve up 1 version to 20% of the audience, another version for 20% of the audience. Whichever one performs better, serve that remaining 60% up to the rest of the audience.

Those can be some really powerful tools out there, for making sure you get the right content. So what in in your mind, if you're looking for, Like, engaged, customers off of social media, how would you rank the platforms in terms of where that those are coming from in in your Perspective. Yeah. So I I I think it definitely depends on,

you know, on the brand, on the on the account where your target demographic is at.

But, you know, for us right now, it's it's meta, big time meta.

Big time Instagram is where we're getting Instagram, for sure, is where we're getting the most organic traffic.

I'd I'd have to take a closer look at where the paid traffic is coming from. It's it's definitely split between the 2. We get in front of a lot of people on on Facebook, Whether it's, you know, via Messenger,

or in feed, you know, we definitely have a lot of placements on both. Interesting. And what type of content are you paying to Surface, is it mostly, like, advertisements?

Is that just a straight up? Yeah. So we have we have a mix of some, like, premium, Funny, engaging content that we work with partners on to create, and then, you know, we have a good mix of some UGC style stuff, where it's people actually advocating for the products, that truly believe in the products and know that they work, and then There's some straight up, you know, here's some text. Here's a price. Like, this is this is clearly an ad. And they all have they all have a time and place in the funnel. Right. Yeah. That's that's crazy

stuff. I have never been able to get, paid Advertising working for myself. I've I've been into it a few times. I've had a couple big hot shots Come my way and say, I can make it work for you, and it's it's either they've not been able to make it work or the stuff they're proposing is So cringey, Zach.

Cringey. Yeah. Yeah. Or, like, they're like, oh, you gotta make a poll or something like that, and It just doesn't Oh, okay. Yeah. Doesn't line up with my my brand or how I feel at all. And, like, I'm not I'm not allergic to marketing at all. I understand how it works. I'm I'm totally into it, but some of the stuff that they're suggesting Doesn't work for me. So I've I've sort of given up on that. But every time I see something like this, I'm like, oh, maybe I should should try it again. You know?

Mhmm.

I I've heard you guys talk about how you don't really do that before. You know, you do your email campaigns. You've got your, you know, you've got your core following. You stay active on social, and it's Working really well for you, but, yeah, I'm a little bit surprised that you don't have a little bit of a paid strategy because I I can see it being successful for you. But It's like everything else. Like, you've you can't you can't just start off all in. Like, you've gotta start off slow. You gotta figure out what works. And then, once you've, You identify some some campaigns that are working, then you scale those campaigns. Right? I don't know what you've what you've been proposed before, but I know, you know, so my my title at is CTO. So you can imagine I get just blasted with emails and LinkedIn messages and just All kinds of stuff around marketing and engineering and and everybody, you know, from under the sun trying to sell me something. Oh, I bet. I'm interested. Do you have any good,

Learning resources for paid advertising, or is it a lot of trial and error and learn as you go?

Yeah. So So kind of back to the way that I learned. Right? Unfortunately, I don't I can't think of anything off the top of my head, and navigating around, Meta's docs has It's never been fun for me anyway.

Maybe some people know how to how to navigate around them a little bit better.

But, yeah, it's been a lot of trial and error, and I I again, I started off when it was a lot more simple. They're like, there was a boost button when I started. Right. And now there's a now there's a whole, you know, back end ads platform where you can do some, like, laser focus targeting

with exclusions and all kinds of stuff. That's it it I gotta be able to make it work. If you could sell a $12 thing of pomade on Facebook, Marketplace, I should be able to sell a $90 course, You know? Yeah. 100%. Yeah. But everybody needs pomade. That's true. It's true. I'm I'm a I'm not wearing any right now, but I I need some myself. I was I I was just gonna ask about, like, barbershop culture next, which is wild. Like, at least in Canada, over the last 8 years, barbershop culture has has just exploded.

Has it has it been more popular down in California for longer than that? Yeah. It started Exploding probably 12 to 15 years ago. Okay.

Yeah. So we we came in at at at the right time. Right time, right place, you know, was definitely hitting hard here in Southern California.

You know, it still treats it today.

Like, there are so many barbershops out there. When I was a kid, when I was a teenager, there was, like, a couple of barbershops and then a bunch of salons. There wasn't, like, any, like, traditional, like, go in, get get a nice lineup, a shave. Stuff didn't exist. But even the barbershops that did exist, especially in my Hometown, we're

all like, it's where the older folks would go. The older people were working there, and That's where, you know, your grandpa would go or something. But, like, now, I go in, they're playing rap music. They got big TVs of FIFA, You know, PlayStation there for the waiting room, and it's like a a cool place where everybody hangs out. I I feel like the the culture. So, I don't know. It's a cool place for dudes. You know? There's not a ton of Yeah. Cool places for dudes like that. Yeah. It totally is.

And if you have if you have, like, a good barber that, like, focuses on the experience, right, like, there's I mean, there's barbers that are there's barbers out there focusing on user experience. They're they're like Yeah. Yeah. My my barber, he's always got, you know, a good movie or a good show on.

I go I go weekly. I see my barber weekly, which is Wow. She's a little bit excessive. Right? I think every every other week is probably about normal. I I go weeks back. Can tell.

I can tell from the the just the cleanliness overall. So you get your beard done too? Yeah. Yeah. He turns on beard up for me. He lines it up for me. I I maybe shave, once a week around, if if I got something, I gotta go and do. If not, I try I try and put it off and let him do it, but, it's just it's such a relaxing experience for me. You know, I'm still grinding out those long weeks. So to start my weekend on Saturday morning, sitting in his chair for, He spends about an hour, you know, for me on my hair and and lining everything up, just sitting there, watching some Netflix or or whatever movie he's got on.

Super relaxing. Yeah. I would love to do that. Yeah. It's it's interesting you said that they're in the, like, UX space as well. And my barber literally said that he's for the longest time, he's The cash only.

And and as we got out of out of cash, he was he was still hanging on to cash for so, so long. And, like, And, finally, I think they did it because, they priced the cut so much that you say keep the change, And the the tip is is larger than you normally would just tip on a hit a 15% or 20%.

But finally, he's like he's like, you know what? We're in the customer service Business here. We like and it's annoying that you have to walk to the back, pay $3 to use the ATM on top of it and then go over. So it's I love when a a good barbershop sort of pays attention to your experience

From start to finish, not just the cut. I feel like a lot of people working in our industry would benefit from some sort of, like, hospitality course or something. I had a a boss one time at a cloth it was like when I was in college. I worked at a clothing store, and our boss was a former like, a hospitality expert or something.

And we would sell just endlessly more clothes whenever he was there, just, like, buttering up the guests And, like, making everybody feel good about, like, them being there, and then people are more willing to support you because they are like, oh, man. This guy is, Yeah. Really taking the time.

I I feel like I know we're developers, and we're designing these user experiences.

But is there, like, enough time Being taken to really butter up our guests and our users. That's like an interesting

idea. I love that. Alright. Let's move into the next section, which is our Supper club questions.

We got the first question for you is what computer are you using?

Yeah. I use a 14 inch MacBook Pro with, the M1 Max chip. Cool. Bitty bitty.

What about a Keyboard.

Anything fun with your keyboard? No. I feel like I'm gonna fall into that, stereotype of, boring keyboard Guys, so I use I use the That's good. Yeah. The Apple, Magic Keyboard, but here's a little bit of a twist. I I use the one without the numpad.

I do too. Yeah. I feel like,

The numpad just you between going back and forth between the mouse as much as I do, which I know that there's gonna be some some devs out there that are gonna cringe and say you don't need a mouse. But I do. I do need a mouse, and I feel that the number pad just has my arm slightly too far over to where it, causes some Discomfort in my shoulder? Yeah. I can see it. Did you see,

this is somewhat related, but the Snazzy Labs is a YouTuber.

He chopped open a one of the new, keyboards with touch ID, and he somehow figured out how to just get the just the touch ID extracted from the keyboard so you can have a stand alone touch ID button. I would like that. Yeah. I would like that as well.

I don't know if I'm willing to sacrifice a $200

keyboard for it, but I am very afraid that the keyboard is the keyboard.

I just wish they would make the magic ones with, whatever color you'd want. Like, I wanna go get, like, a purple magic one to match my my business. You know? That'd be fun. That would be sweet.

Wait. So you sound great right now, and you're you're wearing a pair of, like, gaming headphones. What what what are those? Yeah. I think they're, Astro a forties. I I like that a lot because I have forever wanted to get something with the, like, the NFL.

Britney mic. Yeah. The Britney mic that pops in front of you, and it's it's never been been doable. Oh, it's only $130 for the set of these. Sounds good. I don't know if it's, like, recorded quality, but it's it's fantastic

just for It does sound really good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it so it'd be To fully transparent, usually, on on most of my calls, I have a I have a pair of, of Apple, AirPod

Maxes that I use, and I think that they're great. They're a little bit tight on my head, especially with the glasses, but I think they're great. Yeah. Over the head, headphones can do that with glasses. Just, Pinch on the side of your head. Next thing you know, you're rocking a major headache.

Do you what do you use for your, terminal? Anything or or your terminal let's say your terminal and your text editor.

Versus code for the text editor.

And I just use, the regular, Apple terminal, with,

om omiz. S h. Yeah. Gotta love that. Here's a question. How do you stay up to date with what's going on in the web development world? Oh, man. I listen to syntax, of course. Woo.

It's like, I I know you're buttering us up, but, like, that's we tell people that all the time, but, like, that's actually how you hear about new stuff. Yeah. No. I mean,

Truly, I I I listen to you guys for that kind of stuff. I I I enjoy your podcast enough to where I can actually listen to it and get that stuff out of it.

I, I also listened to another one just a little bit more general called tech meme ride home, and I I feel like I feel like I heard about that from your guys' Podcast Yeah. They they sponsored us. Sponsored. Yeah. Years ago. Yep. And so I think that that's why I started listening to them, and, they became in my my daily rotation.

And then and then beyond that, I try and pay attention on on LinkedIn and, and Twitter, and I have a few accounts that I follow on Instagram. Nice.

If if you were having to start over today learning web dev stuff, what would you choose to pick up? Yeah. I feel like I feel like I would I would pick I would pick up React all over again. I I really enjoy React. Cool. And anything you're excited about in the future of web dev? Yeah. I can't I can't think of anything off the top of my head. I know you guys have I have recently talked about some new CSS stuff that's coming that I'm excited about.

There's some new react stuff. I've heard you guys talk about that I'm excited about, but I I can't think of anything off the top of my head. Oh, yeah. Just some new stuff coming down the the pipe. And did you come With a a sick pick prepared for us today? I did. My, my first one kinda failed. I had planned on sick picking something a little bit more affordable and a little bit more, nice for the wider audience, but, ended up breaking on me, so I'm not sick picking that thing.

Yeah.

We could do a 6 slam if you wanna slam them. Yeah. No. I don't I don't wanna slam. So it's a product it's product by, Anker. They usually make pretty decent stuff, but this this one's Not that great.

So, I know you're a a big, green egg guy there, Wes, but I'm a I'm a Traeger guy. I got a Traeger Ironwood eight eight 5.

Oh. And that thing is great. My wife and I just smoked a turkey on it the other day, and it came out just so juicy and so good. Man, I have the The Costco special, the 650.

No. I don't have the 650. Which one do I have? Not the I don't have the 885.

I'm looking on the website right now. Massive.

It is massive. Yeah. Wow.

And I just did some ribs on there this weekend. Same thing. Just just wonderful. I I really, really like it as a product.

I I was checking my watch to see the temperature of everything at any given time, and, yeah, it's That's wild. Yeah. It makes it it makes it totally doable for a busy guy like me. And my favorite thing to do is brisket, and I'll do it for 24 hours. I literally smoke it for 24 hours straight, and it's

you know? And it's And their their app makes it possible. You know? I can be anywhere doing anything. Yeah. You can be anywhere. You could adjust the temperature, set the set any of that stuff. Do you have any, like, good, learning resources for brisket?

I'm I've I've not, ventured into brisket yet. Yeah. I I dove right into the, Traeger app. There's a bunch of recipes on there, and I pulled 1. And I've just tweaked it a little bit each time, and I've been kinda putting my own twist on it. Wicked. Alright.

That's sick pick. Now it's time for shameless plugs. What do you got to plug for us? Yeah. I'm gonna shamelessly plug Suavecito for your, men's grooming needs. If you need some pomades, some some shaving cream, beard oil, beard beard balm, we got all the stuff. It's all good.

We spend a lot of time making sure that it not only works well, but it smells good and and makes makes you feel good too. Feels like this is a good time for that too. I think this will be coming out before The holidays. So if you're out there looking for a a good gift. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And I wanna double dip, and, I wanna shamelessly plug, resort pass as well. If you're looking for a daycation, and you're in an area where there's a lot of resorts, a lot of hotels, definitely check us out. We've got a we've got a nap. We've got a website. It's, resortpass.com.

Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate, all of your insights into learning to code and making the jump and working hard and whatnot. I'm sure people will really enjoy this one. Totally. Cool. Yeah. Thanks, guys. Alright. Thanks again. Peace. Thank you.

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