The first month of Developer Tea was officially marked yesterday, and in this episode, I'd like to thank you. I also challenge you towards the end of the episode. Thank you so much for listening to the show!
The first month of Developer Tea was officially marked yesterday, and in this episode, I'd like to thank you. I also challenge you towards the end of the episode. Thank you so much for listening to the show!
Hey everyone and welcome to Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cottrell and today I'm not interviewing anyone and I'm not talking about a specific topic. This is actually just a special episode to talk about the last month, the first month of Developer Tea. It has been just an awesome, awesome experience getting this podcast started up and I wanted to talk to you guys about how everything has gone and maybe just talk a little bit about the plans for this podcast. I didn't have a plan for this podcast when I first started out. I just wanted to make a podcast that I talked about in the first episode that fills that need for the short podcast that I can listen to on my tea break. I didn't use the word coffee because there's so many things that already use that word. Quite honestly, I wanted you guys to be able to find me a little bit easier. So there's your marketing hack for the day, but we're going to move on. It's been incredible because there's just been an overwhelming response from all of you people. There have been nearly 90,000. Well, let me look at the numbers. Today, just today, at the time of the recording of this podcast, which is one day after the one month marker, just today, I have seen 7,613 of you listen to this show. That is an incredible number of people. Over 90,000, nearly 100,000 people in this very first month of launching Developer Tea. I can't take credit for that because I'm not the one who is doing those listens. You are. You guys are the ones who are listening to this show. I wanted to make just a dedicated show just to thank you. I know that this is a weird day to deliver it on, but I wanted to go ahead and make this show to thank you. I also wanted to talk a little bit about the plans for the show. I plan on keeping on doing this show. Hopefully, you could have guessed. I'm going to be doing this show for the next couple of weeks. I'm going to be doing this show for the next couple of weeks. I'm going to that part. I think that I've locked in a schedule. If you haven't already noticed, I've been releasing these episodes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You can look forward to Developer Tea being released to your phone, to whatever podcast listening application you use. Developer Tea will be on that podcast listening application on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, unless, of course, like Stitcher recently did. The application backend goes down or something like that, at which point, you can actually go to developertea.com and listen to the episode there just like you would on your podcast application. I wanted to just take a few minutes and thank all of the people who have reached out to me directly. There's been people on Twitter. There's been people to email addresses. There's been people to email addresses. There's been people to email addresses. There's been people to email addresses. There's been people to email addresses. There's been people who signed up on the email list, which, by the way, if you haven't signed up for, you can go to developertea.com and sign up for the email list there. All of you have given me suggestions. You've talked about how my voice is too quiet sometimes. I'm taking that into account. Somebody said they did like the interviews, and somebody else said they didn't like the interviews, so I got to go with my gut on that one. I really enjoy meeting these people. I will probably continue doing interviews, but you know what? The cool thing about this show, and I think the cool thing for you about this show is that if you miss one, it's not a big deal. The show's so short that you can skip one, and just in two days or at most three days, there's going to be another episode that comes out. If you don't want to listen to a particular interview, then just skip it. No big deal. My feelings aren't going to be hurt. Hopefully, yours won't be hurt either. So, all of that to say, this show has just been the biggest surprise to me. When people start out with these kinds of things, and I encourage you, by the way, perhaps this is the important part of this particular episode. If you are considering doing a podcast or creating a blog or starting a screencast channel on YouTube or writing a book, I don't know. If you're considering starting a company, I encourage you to take the first step. Just take the first step. I know that you hear this probably a lot if you listen to other podcasts. Starting is the most important part, and I can attest to that. I created this podcast with no podcasting experience whatsoever. I'm kind of revealing my cards here a little bit, but this is the first podcast I've ever recorded in my entire life. And you know what? You can do the same. You may not have the same equipment that I have. I bought all of this equipment because I used to record music. You may not have all of the same experience that I have, although it wouldn't take you long to gain it. I haven't been in this industry probably much longer than most of you. I have been working with a lot of really smart people, though. So, that is the other part of this. If you're considering starting something, take that first step. Go ahead and start as soon as you can. Even if it's just a small step. And immediately begin to surround yourself with smart people who are doing what you want to do better than you're doing it yourself. That is the quickest way to learn, is to look around you, realize that you are inferior in so many ways, and to just naturally start picking up on ways that you can become better by the people who are better at what you want to do. It's very simple. There's a lot of metaphors to describe this phenomenon, but basically, think about it like this. You're standing on a chair, and it's easier to pull someone down from a chair than it is for someone on the chair to pull someone up. And that has to do with gravity, so there's nothing particularly profound about that. But the metaphor still holds up that if you are the one who is standing on the chair and you're surrounding yourself with people who are below you, and when I say below you, I mean below you. I mean below you. I mean below you. I mean below you. I mean If you aren't surrounding yourself with people who are going to challenge you, they don't have to be smarter than you to challenge you, right? They don't have to be a better human being to challenge you. If you are not surrounding yourself in a situation where you are challenged, let's put it that way, then how are you going to be challenged, right? And maybe you can challenge yourself, but ultimately, you need to be surrounding yourself with people who are going to challenge you. So take that. first step and then immediately begin. I mean, even before you take the first step, you can start surrounding yourself with people who are going to constantly be pushing you forward and challenging you. At Whiteboard, I have some of the most incredible people that I'm working with and they are challenging me every single day to be a better leader, to be a better coder, to be a better human being in general. And that is just essential to growth and becoming a better programmer, especially a better human. So yeah, if you are considering doing something like what I have done and just stepping out and creating some kind of content, especially content creators, if you feel inferior, if you feel like you don't have a voice, if you feel like what you have to say isn't valuable, I can be the very first person to tell you that's not the right thing to do. I can be the very first person to tell you that's not the right thing to do. That is absolutely not true. What you have to say is valuable. And the reason why I know that is because I want to hear what you have to say. Personally, I want to hear what other developers have to say. You have a valuable voice. There is nobody who will tell you otherwise that you should be listening to. Your voice is valuable. It doesn't matter, as I said in a previous episode, it doesn't matter. I guess that episode hasn't aired yet. It doesn't matter what background you come from. It doesn't matter how old you are. It doesn't matter what level of experience you have, although people who are more experienced obviously tend to be right more often. I guess that's actually not true. People who are more experienced tend to know when they're wrong more often. That's probably a concern. None of that stuff matters. What matters is you have something to say, and people want to hear it. The reason people want to hear it is because you're a human being. You don't have to have some massive amount of experience. You don't have to have created a million-dollar startup. You don't have to have 30 years of experience as a programmer. You don't have to have written three books, or even one book, for that matter. Just like me, you don't have to have, had a podcast before. You don't have to have had screencasts before. You can start creating something of value immediately. I'm going to share a few stats with you. One new person is downloading this show every 30 seconds. That's an incredible statistic to me. It kind of challenges me. You all are challenging me to make sure that I'm putting out a fantastic show. Um, there are, uh, people in over 120 countries, 120 countries that are listening to developer team. Now I'm saying all this not to brag. I don't have anything to brag about. I'm saying it to tell you, you can step out yourself. You can step out and produce something that is worth listening to, that is worth reading, uh, that is worth watching. And, uh, and people will listen to you. And I'm saying all this not to brag. I don't have anything to brag about. I'm saying listen, if you care about what you're saying, people will care about what you are saying. Uh, so that's my challenge to you. Step out, start creating, start sharing your knowledge with other people. Um, do the thing that you feel like you are totally not qualified to do. Go ahead and start today or, uh, you know, if, if, if you're about to go to bed, start tomorrow. Uh, thank you so much for listening to this show. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time. Um, and I, I hope that you continue to listen to this show. If by the way, you are enjoying the show. I, I released a way of, uh, supporting developer T. If you go to developer t.com front slash donate, um, there is a way that you can give to me monthly. Now I've, I've set it up to where you can actually give to me at the, at around 99 cents a month. You can give me 399. It doesn't even matter. Um, 99 cents a month. It makes a huge, huge difference for the show. And, uh, and I would sincerely appreciate it. Thank you for listening to the show and, uh, until next time, enjoy your tea.