In today's episode, we talk with Josh Muccio for part two of our interview about The Pitch. Make sure you catch part one!
In today's episode, we talk with Josh Muccio for part two of our interview about The Pitch. Make sure you catch part one!
You're always that, like you're always selling yourself, you know, every feature in. So that's a constant. But that would probably be the, the, the first, my number one recommendation. And if that's all you get out of, out of this, is to think of your product or your thing that you're building from other people's point of view and how it might benefit them. I'd say you'll be good to go. There's of course more to it than that. But. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cutrell. And in today's episode, the final episode for this year, we interview Josh Muccio. This is part two of the interview. Go and check out part one by going to spec.fm. Of course, happy new year to you all. I hope you all stay safe on New Year's Eve. I hope you enjoyed today's episode with Josh. Of course, this is part two. Josh is the founder of the pitch, or I guess the creator, one of the creators of the pitch. It's a podcast that is similar to the Shark Tank. We talked a little bit about it on the last episode. Of course, we're talking about pitching and how important it is to you as a developer in this interview. So check it out. Make sure you listen to part one before you go into this part. You may be a little bit confused if you listen to part two first. You can find that episode at spec.fm. Once again, we don't have a sponsor for today's episode. We will pick back up with our incredible line of sponsors in the new year. Thank you so much for listening to Developer Tea today and this year and enjoy this interview with Josh Muccio. Yeah, I like people asking, you know, technically, why am I not getting hired? I've done all the right things, but obviously, obviously, you know, doing all the right things is not. It's a form response is the problem, right? Yeah. And it's exactly what you're saying. Don't memorize your pitch. No, it's not a formula. Case closed. Yeah, well said. Know your product inside and out. Yeah, but don't memorize it. Absolutely. Very, very different things. That's really good. I mean, and then another tip for that kind of, and it doesn't work in every scenario, but in most, it does. If you can, if there is a formula, if you can somehow incorporate a question into your pitch, especially when you're obviously doing this, you know, assumes you're on one-on-one interviews, doesn't work on a stage necessarily, unless it's a rhetorical question or a joke or something. But on a one-on-one conversation, asking a question that makes the person actually think or get in the context of what you're talking about. And for example, for me, if I'm actually literally talking to somebody in an elevator and they ask, what do I do? The first question I'll ask is, well, have you heard of the show Shark Tank? And of course, everybody says, yes. If not, then I guess I would have a problem. But I have yet to encounter that. And as soon as I know they're on that page, well, I said, well, our show is a lot like that, but it's a podcast. And I kind of then, you know, reiterate it. And then another huge thing, if we're talking formulas here, is say what you have to say, and then shut up. And let silence be your ally. Because a lot of times, everyone in the room is thinking about what you just said. And like, they're probably have a really good next question, or they're pondering your idea or whatever it is. And then you, oh, oh, it was quiet. I better fill that silence. And you start saying something else. Well, whatever train they were on is gone. And it might have been a good one. And so, and just in negotiations in general, I mean, its silence is actually your friend. It's hard for people to learn, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. But I think it works in pitches too. And like if you feel uncomfortable, just smile. Fill the silence with like, you know, some sort of nonverbal, you know, hopefully a good nonverbal. And you'll be better off than talking, I think. I had 100% agree with this. It's actually, it's interesting. You mentioned it. Did you watch lost the show lost? I did. I was. Okay. Yeah. I got sucked in. Yeah. So one of the obviously, one of the most compelling characters in the show was the smoke monster. Right. I'm not going to give anything away for those of you who are way late on this. Don't worry. There's there's not any. No, you should give it away. Maybe they'll get, you know, a good point of life back. Yeah. Here's the thing though. I loved this, this character because it was so mysterious. And the thing that I think was so powerful about this character, the smoke monster that would just, you know, kind of randomly appear. And it was very, it was a very aggressive thing. But it was also very opinionated and all these things. The thing that I loved about it was that you didn't know, like there's so much mystery around what this thing was. And everyone could really kind of fill in the blanks for themselves. Right. And so what you make in your own mind is going to fill in the blanks better than if someone else fills in those blanks for you. And so when they revealed what the smoke monster was on the show, it lost all that mystery and intrigue. And it became this kind of plastic thing. And it really ruined the character for me. And I think that that principle actually applies in a lot of scenarios. And for example, when you're talking about investors, them filling in the blanks of the possibilities of this product, right. That's going to be better than you trying to list all the possibilities of the product. And yeah, in fact, you listing the possibilities of your product is going to be a telltale sign that you don't know what you're building. Right. Yeah. You can be. And then if they suggest all the other things and they think of them, you know, because they might be obvious, they might be obvious to everybody. But in their minds, they start suggesting these things and you're receptive to them. Even to the point of saying, oh, that's a really great idea. Even if you've thought that before, you know, like acknowledge that your specifically works in an investor meeting. But by doing that, you're showing that you're a teachable person that you're open to ideas from others. And you know, these are all traits people are looking for in most any position. So yeah, that's really cool. And you're also giving them a chance in your pitch meeting to collaborate with you when you do that. Yes. That's a really cool, that's a really cool thing. And to feel like you've just added added an idea to the to the bucket and that somebody else validated that idea, that's a visceral like base level human positive response. Yeah. Exactly. And bottom line in any pitch meeting, you're selling yourself in any type of, I mean, like a lot of this stuff could actually probably translate into dating. And now I've never given really a huge advice or dating advice. But I'm sure there's somebody out there who has. So I'm going to actually stay away from that though. Well, I mean, the principle stays the same, right? If you actually believe in the thing that you're selling, in other words, if you actually believe, like this is a confidence thing when you're coming when it's talking about dating, you hear a lot of people, I'm sure have heard this advice that dating is all about self confidence, right? Well, the reality is so much of what you what you do when you sell or when you really when you're trying to get people on your side, right? That's what this is about. It's about having confidence in the thing that you're selling. If you have no confidence in yourself them or let's let's switch back away from dating, if you have no confidence in your product, then why are you selling it? Like I'm going to understand your product through your lens first. And if your lens is already seeing that as a less, a lesser than product like a poor product, then I'm probably going to adopt what you're already saying. So true. And that's actually my fifth point is to get confident in your pitch. But here's the thing with confidence, like you can't manufacture it. Right. It has to be authentic. You just can't because people see through that BS, like they're going to see right through and some of those irritating people you know, you can think of them in your own head, are the people that know it all and are super confident, but they actually aren't. And so that's what's so annoying about it is they think they know everything, they act like they know everything. And it's just, it's not the kind of person you want to be around, right? Well, that, you know, that's that's going to translate in every scenario as well. So I think I think the thing about having genuine confidence is like you don't get genuine, like there's no formula again to genuine confidence other than like doing the time, putting in the time and actually being proficient in the thing or actually having some unique thesis. I mean, a lot of confidence, all you used to use the founder slash entrepreneur scenario, because that's what I'm comfortable with. But a lot of confidence in that comes from talking with customers and like taking their passion and their pains onto yourself. And when you know a customer or a market and like better than anybody else, they people will trust you and you're going to lose confidence in ways you can't even manufacture even if you tried. So yeah, confidence. I mean, if you, if you, let's, let's present the scenario, if you had a, just a pile of money and it was hidden away in a secret room, I'm just presenting a scenario for the sake of illustration, but it's just, it's just in this room, right? And to get in this room, you have to pay $100, but once you walk in the room, you can get anywhere between $500 and $500,000, right? Okay. And there are three people that are standing outside that room and you're trying to convince them that it's worth the $100. This is the ultimate pitch scenario, right? Yeah, you're going to give up $100, but the opportunity is just, it's incredible. And I know what I have, right? That's, that is like the, the golden scenario. Now, the problem is that, the problem is when you say you know what you have, but you don't actually know what you have, like maybe it's a bunch of monopoly money in that room, right? Yeah. That's, that's where the person that's listening to you, they have to judge, does this person really know what they have? Are they, are they presenting something that's fake? Are they lying to me? But, but that's really what selling is about is, is understanding what you have in the room and understanding what somebody has to give up to access. What is in that room? Right? So this is just classic. Everybody does this. And it's, it's the problem with being so deep into what you're doing that you can't see the big broader picture. And this is why it's so helpful to have a coach, to have somebody who's not even like in your, your domain, but like, it could be a family member that doesn't give a crap and like, you know, is the kind of person that like doesn't understand what you do and won't try to understand? Like those people are actually great for this because, let me explain. So what happens is you pitch your product or you pitch your thing that you're doing. And you spend all of your time talking about the features of that product, your app and like how it works and all the different things it does and all the cool little buttons and windows and like cool little tricks it can do. And that is the wrong thing to put in your pitch. If somebody asks you a specific question about what it does or like what the best feature of your product does, then you answer that. But when you sell something like you, you aren't selling a pile of features. You're selling what those features allow that person, customer, whatever to do. And people had just, it's really hard to do this because like what do you get excited about as a, as a developer? It's the things that you can do. It's the features that you're building and like you build things feature by feature, right? Sure. Yeah. And well, not always, but yeah. Often. So, so breaking out of that can be really, really difficult. So that's why it's helpful to have somebody completely disconnected from you to kind of find a way like how do they describe your product? Yeah. And like and describe it that way at first and then let the investor or the person that you're talking to let them pry and ask questions and then you answer those questions directly. Guarantee their ability to actually retain that information will be 10 times better if they ask the question and you respond versus you just feeding them that information up front. And that goes back to something that you said earlier too. If you're surrounding yourself with people who agree with you and you're just kind of looking at each other and saying, yeah, we're pretty good at this. And then you go into a pitch meeting and you're totally shot down, right? And when I say pitch meeting again, we're not just talking about pitching to investors, but just in general anytime when you have your closest group of confidence or in your professional sphere, if you and the developers are all in your corner and you're all stewing and brewing against the designers or against the project managers or against the boss or really against anyone and you're doing it together and you're just feeding each other's anger, frustration or or even your own pride if you're feeding those things, then you're probably not learning, right? And what you said earlier about being willing to learn and that being something that investors typically are looking for is someone who is open to learning. They're open to this experience that's coming from an investor. If you're not willing to learn, if you're only surrounding yourself with people who agree with you, then you're probably not going to get pitching down very well. That's really great advice. I mean, it's so true. I mean, one of the things we do is actually we have coaching as part of our podcast. It's like the one thing that we hawk on the show and I don't like to hawk products on podcasts, but it's enough of our listeners express their interest in that. And so we ended up offering that as a service to people. And so we essentially are that third party for people in startups that need help crafting their pitch. And we partnered with other really smart people who know even more about the stuff than I do. And so we kind of essentially have like a class that people can go through and we just coach them on their on their pitch and like selling it the way that people need to hear it and not the way they think about it in their head. And that's good. It's it's so fun and interesting doing these things because so often like you can tell that the breakthrough when they get it or when you tweak their pitch or come on to something that they didn't think of on their own, all of a sudden like it's not just affecting their pitch to investors. They're thinking about their business differently. They're thinking about their thing and the potential of it differently. Just by changing essentially a few words and changing I mean it's all kind of semantics, but when those when those changes in words just drastic it's I don't even know how to describe it very well, but it happens all the time and it's just really really cool. And I think it hits on there's just something fundamental about pitching and like getting better at it. It's almost like you're just becoming a better communicator. You're better able to yeah express your feelings to other people and that's a big deal. It's bigger than let me let's not get past this very quickly. That is a very big deal. I think that a lot of people underestimate it, underestimate communication more specifically and they take the facts as the only things that matter. I see this for developers all the time. I see developers who are coming out of high school and they're going into their degree program and basically what they are taught or I guess what they believe just naturally or somebody is disseminating the information that your degree program will determine your career. Especially in development a lot of people have this this perspective that you know getting into a big job at Google is most likely you know you need to go to a top a top tier school like MIT or something. And I can tell you definitively that that's not true. Like without a doubt obviously there are benefits to going to good schools. Right? And that's where that comes from. There's benefits to going to places where they're very smart people doing really interesting really challenging things at the forefront of the field. But to think that you know getting yourself to a place or getting yourself into a position at a company or at a school or really anywhere in society even to think that that is a you know logical sum of the parts is totally the wrong thought right. It's much more much more about communication. What Josh is saying I don't want people to miss this. This idea that you communicating your feelings is unimportant as a developer. I can tell you most of your raises are going to happen because of your of your relationships and because you actually perfected this art of communication with the people around you. It's not optional. If you want to be a great developer. If you want to be a great anything. This is not optional. You have to think about communication. You know this is really interesting and and perhaps not directly related. But I have to mention it during one of the episodes of season two which hasn't come out yet. It'll go live January 11th actually the first episode. There's a female founder pitching her idea and she comes into the room with like such confidence such moxie such like I'll walk out the door like I don't care kind of attitude like my businesses is so awesome that like you're either going to investor you're not and it was actually so much that some of the investors actually got a little bit tipped at her the way she delivered that emanated almost. Yeah. You know I don't know for not not intimidated but kind of like weirded out by it. They they said it just kind of gave them like the wrong I guess the wrong but like well one person said like I'll be honest like I hated her in the beginning and he says that he says it like on the podcast he's like I did I came to like her over time and and but it was really interesting because there's a real there's a moment in the recording that essentially divided the whole the whole room of investors and then they ended up talking in post about how like as a woman and we can't talk to this because we're guys but I feel like it's cool to to bring it up anyway but like that's how she kind of almost overcame whatever she felt like might be a sexism bias she felt like if she can overcome that in like confidence in how she delivered stuff that she'd be better off and and essentially that we we find out later like that's what she did like she was purposefully being a little bit more confident and cocky than she normally would be because she felt like she needed to do that and in the end people felt better when they found out she wasn't her personality actually wasn't that but the bottom line not to give too much away but she got the deal and she absolutely crushed it and you know I don't know what the take home message of that is but one of the things that was talked about amongst the investors afterwards as they said if that was a guy that came in here with that kind of attitude the girl says one of the female investors says this you all the other male investors would have not thought anything of it you would have loved him yeah yeah but because it was a girl of course so then we're kind of getting into the sexist conversation but it was so interesting and so I couldn't help but think man like this is like I don't know that it's a good picture yeah yeah it's a really good picture of walking in and it and saying hey I've thought about the communication like so much so that I'm ready to to perform what I have thought about right and not not in a I don't know I wasn't there obviously I'm looking forward to listening to that because that'll be really interesting but you know coming in and saying hey like this isn't I'm not first of all I'm not the stereotypical thing I'm going to get your attention right and maybe maybe she just struck gold or maybe she actually had a really good plan there and you know in the long run she was just kind of genius level yeah in her plan yeah but but the fact that she thought about it is more than most people do right the fact that she thought about how am I going to be received as a person just just by default because because of my gender or whatever and most people don't have the energy or don't take the energy to even go that far yeah it's really true it's really true it's good awesome well this is really good information Josh I want you to tell us a little bit more about the coaching opportunity and then you missed you mentioned it and just so everybody knows this is this is entirely voluntary Josh isn't a sponsor I'm not sponsoring the pitch none of that is happening in the background not anybody knowing about it but I do want to hear about these about these the coaching opportunity because I think a lot of people actually and I'll be interested to know how you would feel about you a developer coming to you and saying hey I'd like to just be coached on career development and if that's a possibility so that's interesting we haven't coached anyone on career development and I don't know that we could necessarily pitch it that way but we could talk to a developer and say like let's let's talk about your delivery how do you deliver yourself how do you how do you pitch yourself not necessarily what does your resume look like but what is the message behind your resume and is it actually reflecting who you are is there you know that kind of synergy between the two because I think and again like it's hard when you look at your product just like a look at yourself it's hard because you know all of your intricacies all of all of your features you know but like seeing the big vision for yourself from from the outside really takes help from somebody else outside yourself you know and so you know even if you don't work with somebody like us and our new program that we're launching coaching for developers I'm just kidding you know like just just finding somebody to talk to you're gonna you're gonna get you're gonna find little pieces about how others see you and it'll it might change how you pitch yourself and it can often you know make you think introspectively about about yourself and who you really are and I think that's always a good exercise whether you're preparing for an interview or not so yeah I actually read this recently speaking of coaching obviously the the most common form of coaching that everyone is familiar with is athletic coaching right and in the athletic world you know getting to a a state where you are a good athlete at like an average good athlete the guy who is a weekend warrior and he's like the top of the team that plays you know at the court in the neighborhood on Saturdays you know that's something that generally you can do on your own you don't really need a specialist to come in and you know coach your former or anything but in general um to get past that level the pro athletes they cannot become pro athletes and they cannot maintain their professional level of athleticism without coaching because they can't it's like a physical limitation you're unable to see your own uh shortcomings yeah right uh there's no amount of self evaluation that can elevate your game um so that that concept applies to so much else but specifically when you're talking about elevating your own pitch like man it is a hundred percent true that somebody outside of you needs to tell you what's wrong it's true and I think I think it fundamentally can also just be an insecurity thing people it's hard to sell yourself right like yeah yeah because you see the worst side of you as well as the best part of you um you know when you go to pitch or when you go into an interview like you you know all that so pitching I keep saying that giving the best version of yourself and like telling your story really really well it's just hard because your mind is clouded by all the things that you're not amazing at um yeah and I think it's also important to know that in any interview um like people aren't expecting perfection you know it it's almost helpful if you can kind of give them some of that imperfection right off the bat so that they aren't concerned about what are you hiding you know whether that's just quirks about kind of your your delivery or like you know who you act like maybe you have an obsession with you know I don't know cats on the internet like I don't know uh or start track like you know all the old like whatever it is maybe you don't incorporate that into your pitch but you you get what I'm saying like um yeah and yeah having those human elements I think um and so a lot of times in in pitches people actually incorporate some humor or something like that that well I think this is why we're seeing like so many people use you know giffy or things like that along with messages is because like that's like like it's just a human kind of way to make you know a very sterile messaging you know text make it very human and quirky and um I don't know I think it I think people can can benefit um in pitching from being a little bit more human and a less uh less composed yeah 100% agree with it this is why I mentioned at the very beginning of of today's episode or I guess at this point we're probably in part two uh definitely um so the last episode I mentioned that that Josh and I had been talking already because you know I say hello at the beginning of the episode mostly for you the listeners benefit but the reality is Josh and I have been talking for five or six minutes um and it's going to be much easier for Josh and I to feel authentic if we are just opening up and being honest like transparent you're going to hear this episode after it's been edited there's stuff that you're going to miss out on uh because the editing process removes it um but but the truth is a lot of what we a lot of what we present uh in our day-to-day lives or in our jobs or you know eventually those people who buy in they're going to see the real you and so if they get a glimpse of the real you if they see something they like when they see the real you like when they see those barriers kind of broken down uh perhaps they're going to be more likely to buy into that yeah because it's all about connection right like yeah I mean we're looking to connect with other people and how much am I going to hate hanging out with this person at a Christmas party like like that's that's you know a strangely applicable concern for some people you know that's right and and and it's and it's you know we we often take that stuff for granted because we think everybody else is is stone cold and just looking at the money and we're the only ones who have feelings yeah we're the only humans in the room yeah exactly but it's it's just not true it's not true it just isn't Jonathan not at all cool all right well we're coming to the end of the interview here I think we've covered uh do you have any anything else that you would like to mention drosh that we haven't covered oh no I mean I think it's uh it's all I've like I've really enjoyed being on the show like this is uh this was uh just it was fun I enjoyed it thank you thank you for coming and thank you for uh for being a part and for making a really cool show um January 11th you said correct January 11th the first episode will drop and I can't wait also I'm a little nervous uh I'm watching uh Josh is on camera by the way and I am not on camera and I've been watching him every time he talks about uh season two he gets super excited I've been watching the the visual cues um so it's apparently it's apparently going to be really really cool so uh make sure you and I assume that it's going to be coming out on the same feed that the current one is is and that season one is out on is that true it definitely is and Jon then we've made a different bet than you we are going over quality for quality over quantity on our show uh so much so that in the not to say your shows aren't quality that's not what I'm saying but you pump out serious here Josh correctly yes um but our show like we were to every other week so you I know you started out like two a week and then you went up to three and the listeners wanted you to kind of back off a little bit because the quality wasn't up to par right um well we started out at two weeks every other week and then we went to once a week and that was a real challenge for us um even getting to that um yeah because I start my first podcast daily hunt which is the one we had Brian loving on um that one actually just never went anywhere we just couldn't get significant traction there and I was doing it it was a daily podcast uh wow and it uh it it made me realize that not always is quantity over better than quality and I felt like online like it normally is you know more blog posts are better than less more stuff uh is normally better and uh I guess I got um so burnout on that that I said well the next thing I'm gonna do it's gonna the focus is gonna be entirely on quality um yeah I guess in season two we're taking that to the extreme to the point where we recorded everything in October and we're spending from October to January you know making these things the best they can be so um you know to be continue and I suppose right well we'll compare numbers here in a year and uh see who's winning wink wink you know what it's what's really awesome about this though is is we have to we have to not in the podcast now um what's really really great about this discussion is that the fact that both sides can be right in this in this argument I hope so and and and well and I believe like many many things have been proved have proven this to be true that there are some very successful like once a month podcasts out there maybe not once a month well I know hardcore history for example is seldomly released but it's is at the very very long episodes yes very long episodes that guys crazy uh and and it's really just it's more about like just a different format like your your show is gonna be significantly different in terms of format right yes people people can skip an episode of Developer Tea. I say this openly uh and and not feel like they miss something or they can they can say you know what I'm not really interested in listening uh to Jonathan Ramble on about pitching so I'm gonna skip I'm gonna skip this one yeah and um and and not really you know miss out on a lot of value whereas if if you were to go and do that with something like serial you know you're you're gonna be lost and it's not gonna really work out for you uh so I I want it to be kind of if we're looking at if we're comparing podcasts to like TV shows um um Developer Tea. is is more like Seinfeld you can just kind of pick up an episode and listen to it aside from a couple of aside from a couple of the like uh developer career map right there's there a little bit connected to each other but in general what I want it to be is is very episodic in nature in that uh it's it's constrained to the episode as much as possible so that if you do want to skip it you can and if you want to pick up an episode in two years from now you can go back and listen to episode number 12 and it's probably still gonna be you know somewhat relevant yep you know as much as I would love to say that our show is the complete opposite of that it's not uh unfortunately uh all of our shows are kind of self-contained um we we haven't created mystery between episodes or uh things like that it I don't see how it actually could work for our format uh but man I I realized here recently that like this is gonna sound weird because I know a lot of people hate fiction podcasts um I'm a real science fiction nut I've just found that out the past couple of years and uh so I you've discovered that about yourself oh great man like I can make me read a business book or or make me read like a dry um self-improvement book and like I'll want to cry myself to sleep like or I will literally just fall secret book and so then I like feel guilty because I'm like Josh you like you need to be reading you need to you know keep learning and stay on top of things um but then like get me into a science fiction book and I'll stay up till like one or two in the morning reading that sucker and then but but it like inspires me to think about the future and then I might actually get some reading down of those those business books but like that's just how I work anyway uh fiction podcasts uh like um limetown is a really interesting one uh life after is one that's going on right now it's the continuation of the message podcast any of these have you listened to I haven't no I well I've heard of limetown and it seems like a bunch of people who listen to cereal ended up kind of crossing over into into that one but I haven't listened to any of them because as I said very early in this podcast uh I just don't have time to listen to many podcasts unfortunately it's a it's a very strange thing to be a podcaster it is and uh and to not take the time I feel like I I owe it to the world to listen to more podcast video I totally I totally I mean the same boat but I mean for me like there's a lot of these fiction podcasts are actually shorter and they're because they're episodic and they uh like they're essentially telling a story over seven episodes they could be told in two or three but they break it up in smaller chunks and then leave you hanging you know a week even though they've got the whole thing produced they wait to release the episodes uh you know usually weekly and uh man like all of these fiction podcasts like I'll either binge listen to all of them like from start to finish because I'm so hooked or or they're the first podcast I listened to in my feed and I realized that I think it was just today because the new episode of life after came out over the weekend so I'm looking through I've got a platter of podcasts I can listen to that I subscribe to and the one I went to was that fiction one not because I don't like the other ones but because I was left on like like cliffhanger you mentioned you know mystery creating mystery and how powerful that is and it's just funny because it's it's not even true like it's a fiction podcast uh but I guess I'm just a sucker for that stuff yeah well I mean uh I am I watch TV I'll admit it I know a lot of people a lot of people it's trendy to to cut the cord and to stop watching TV yeah but but but we still watch a couple of shows and yeah we get invested in the characters you know we we actually watched a couple episodes of of this is us recently and it's it's it's heavy it's really heavy um yeah I heard about it at first at least yeah uh I mean it's not all heavy don't don't get me wrong it's not like a dark show by any means but um it was heavier than we expected it to be especially with uh with my wife Lauren being pregnant right now uh if you've seen the show you can imagine that that the the first episode um for a woman who's pregnant is uh is a pretty emotional roller coaster at the very least but um yeah so it totally makes sense people people buy into stories and that that's the power of story right it's gonna leave you really wanting to be a part of something yeah well if you want to really be a pro at your pitch you'll find out how to incorporate story into your pitch too but you know that's kind of a thing to level up to yeah yeah I'm just story story is one of those uh is is like an underlying um super power it is it can take so many different forms too it's uh not not just the classic um you know protagonist antagonist storyline so uh have you see I do you get any stranger things oh yeah okay yeah we love stranger things yes this is great I can't wait to season two it's coming soon yeah and everybody has uh has there varying opinions of which direction they'll take it but um I what's your mind you know I really don't I'm not sure that I have one yet um I know that they're shooting it in Atlanta which is really cool uh I used I went to Georgia Tech so I used to live in Atlanta so I see everyone so I'll see something that kind of looks you know somewhat familiar it looks at lantern to me yeah and I see uh but I'm not sure I think that they will uh they'll spend some time expanding the underground uh well the upside down spoiler alert but oh yeah hopefully you've seen about I'm but yeah expanding a little bit more on that concept of the upside down and uh and maybe adding more characters there you know what I mean oh yeah that was one big mystery for me is I didn't know how many of them there were but as you can't get that from the cast list yes right like oh sure they could add like five characters and in the upside down and it wouldn't change the cast list at all I'm trying to figure out what I can say without giving away spoilers uh well I mean I feel like we we preface did so if you're if you don't want to be spoiled on stranger things on a developer podcast by the way let's let's be very clear uh then then press pause or fast forward or something but yeah yeah cool all right well now we can wrap it up um this has been a great conversation uh really enjoyed enjoy talking with you Josh I do like to ask two questions to every guest that I have on the show okay my first question is what do you wish more people would ask you about oh this is gonna sound really weird but I wish uh I wish more people would ask about my kids uh most of my professional network is built because of the podcast so people don't actually see me in person and so they don't they don't necessarily know that I have kids and you know I'm not the guy posting tons of stuff about my kids on social media so um but yeah it's it takes up such a big part of my life that it's hard for me uh to feel like I'm really connecting with with people at times because they don't know my kids and we can't talk about my kids and whatever the latest thing is that they're doing so I realize that's a total dad thing to say you know single uh guys and girls out there are probably rolling their eyes but uh it's I can't help it uh I'm a dad three so no I think that makes as as a new as a dad well as a future dad to be soon soon to be dad um that makes sense to me because it's it it does from the moment that you find out that it's gonna happen it starts consuming a pretty significant portion of your thought and your energy yes yeah it oh man and it's only beginning I'm still trying to fathom what's gonna happen when I go from two to three uh I'm having a hard time with it oh that's great uh so so well why don't you tell us uh if you if you want to share a short bit about your children oh put me on the spot here well um so my oldest uh Gia she's four years old she's going to preschool now and uh we're in the Christmas season so she's just saying some Christmas carols uh and it just uh melted my little heart what what can I say that's like very that's it talks about their personality um okay so my youngest uh who's two he he's like your typical boy who right now is like running around making spaceship sounds and like crashing into things all the time and uh annoying his sister and uh my my sister's the older of my uh kids she's four and she is the bossy um bossy sibling always telling uh her younger brother what to do and we're always trying to tell her not to stop um oh man I don't feel like I'm doing my kids justice here I didn't mean to make me feel obligated to ask about my kids uh oh no that I always ask this question so that we can do something that is uh very different unconventional from from the average topic yeah and and everybody has a different and you'd be surprised how many people start out by saying this is gonna be weird but yeah right it's everybody has a different thing that that that they just don't get to talk about as often as as they want to that's really good yeah uh and and so the second question that I always ask my guess is if you could give every developer 30 seconds of advice what would you tell them I would say set a side a portion of your day every day whether you're employed or unemployed right now um to email the people behind the stuff that you're uh admiring you know you're like every day you're probably finding stuff that you think is cool somebody working on um you know a great something awesome on GitHub or whatever and or somebody on um you know they write something awesome that's trending on uh why commentaire news is that what is called hacker news i'm sorry um and like actually email that person and and make a connection because you can use twitter like you can use some of these things i always try to use those as gateway to email as our keg as it may sound because i find that the relationships i have with people over email are are the strongest relationships of the people i meet online and then obviously the even stronger would be if i could actually talk to them on the phone for a little bit and so that's kind of the the level up from there if people will you know if they respond to my email but i don't do it with any specific ask because normally that's what gets people to like they don't have any interest in you if you're asking for something right up front yeah yeah but you never know what those connections will mean later on down the road um and i'm just not really about the linkedin you know connections or the twitter follows or even the facebook friends i just find that when once you connect with somebody over email um it's just it's just a little bit stronger it's closer to human i think than than most other internet communications so if you can set aside you know twenty fifteen minutes of your day um to send two or three emails to people you respect for whatever excuse you have um do it i think it'll if you do it consistently over time and that's a principle i found that really you know works because of a book i read called the slight edge and it just changed my my outlook so i do simple things like that every day that i believe over time will will really reap um my brain starting to go it's i must be tired reap reap rewards as much as i try to say yeah let me add on to that because i think uh this is such a cool idea it's it's things the five minutes the ten minutes that you do or don't spend can make a massive impact you know it only takes a few minutes to send what could be a life-changing email and you don't really know which ones are going to be the life-changing ones right this is actually one of the reasons why we open our phones so often is because uh the messages we get from other people they very well could be the best news we've ever gotten right like it's kind of an amazing thing that uh and and on the flip side it could also be very bad news which is kind of the the more depressing perspective on on the subject but uh on the on the on the same note you know a lot of the opportunities that you get or a lot of the announcements that you receive they're coming to you digitally and it's it's kind of an amazing thing that we don't really recognize when it happens but uh what that means is you can also participate in that you can actually be a part of that cool stream of uh of good awesome emails that are coming to people's inboxes you know it's it's actually a really cool thing to receive an email that says hey i just wanted to tell you that you're doing something awesome even as you know as people who are doing something that's relatively public now that uh enough people have listened to this show that you would think that i'm getting a significant number of emails you'd be surprised how few people actually take the time to sit down and write an email it's so right true it's amazing uh and and and i read every single one that i get yeah i love it what every single one i really do yeah it's i mean and that may sound like lip service it's not like it legitimately is uh is is a touching thing so um i would i would add on what i was going to add on to this first of all a hundred percent agree but secondly um if you are in a services industry if you if you are servicing clients um like if you're in an agency like i am at whiteboard take some time to actually talk to your clients uh when they don't need something um um send an email to a client that is is just doing really good at what they do and instead of them only talking to you when there's an error on their website or when they need you to send an email out or something like that talk to them proactively and build that relationship and say hey you know what i've been thinking about you i think that what you do is really awesome i'm really glad we're in relationship together and really glad that you decided to work with me that kind of stuff builds such good relational and it's not just about building relational equity because that that treats it very coldly it's also about the simple fact that your life is going to be better if you have good relationships with good people it's it's a pretty simple concept right yes it is it's so true that's really good Josh thank you so much for your time i know we're we're uh we've pushed this interview to an hour and a half so uh yeah this is my fault or partially my fault i think we were we were co-conspirators on on the on the pushing yep thank you so much for your time and and thank you for doing really cool podcasts really great idea and for doing it with conviction i can tell that you really believe in the work you do so that's it's really great to encounter the people who believe in what they do uh thanks well it took it took a little while i didn't believe in it in first awesome Josh thank you so much thank you jothin thank you so much for listening to today's episode of developer tv final episode of 2016 i'm looking forward to 2017 of course we are going on two years coming up in january remember january is going to be java script january here on developer tv we aren't going to do every single episode based on java script but there will be quite a few episodes where we discuss something java script related if you have a guest or a question that is specific to java script please let me know you can email me at developer tv gmail.com or you can contact me on the spec slack community by going spec.fm slash slack you can join it's free for you and there's thousands of developers and designers by the way we're hanging out in that slack channel uh or slack community rather and are just talking to each other about what they're doing that day it's really cool go and check out spec.fm slash slack thank you again to Josh Muccio for joining me for today's episode make sure you subscribe to his podcast the pitch by going to the pitch.fm thank you so much for listening in 2016 and until next year enjoy your tea.