Hello, hello. What a lovely morning for me and a lovely morning for my dear friend Joe
as well here. Maybe not morning for all of you, but I'm so excited to catch up with Joe.
He is a dear friend of mine and we do not get the opportunity to hang out as much as
I personally would really like. So Joe, I would love for you to introduce yourself.
Hey, Tessa, glad to be here. My name is Joe Casabona. I am a systems and automations coach.
That's my like super secret power is being able to over engineer automations. And that
is yeah, that is due to my background in software engineering. So I feel like that whole thing
has given me the perspective of what I do today or has helped me in what I do today.
I guess I should say yeah, I love that. Okay, so selfishly, I want to catch up. I want to
hear how life has been. I think that some of the viewers may, you know, just enjoy some
of our personal catch up, but I would love to hear how your Christmas was and how, you
know, just generally holidays have been because we haven't chatted since then.
Yeah, Christmas was really good. I just sent you a picture of something we got our kids
for Christmas that I think you'll appreciate given that you know my predisposition to this
thing. Oh, no. Oh, y'all, I'm looking at the cutest little puppy. Oh, Joe, I'm so proud
of you. This, this is a true dad moment of like your children before yourself. Oh, okay,
tell the listeners why, why this is such a big deal.
Thank you. I, I appreciate that. I like I in the excitement, I unplugged my headphones.
I'm like, oh man, I hope I get these plugged back in before she stops talking. Yeah, so
I appreciate that you recognize this for those for most people watching or listening, they
probably don't know, but I am not an animal person. I'm not a dog person. And we I'm also
allergic to dogs. So we got we got our kids a puppy for Christmas. His name is Bandit
and he's like a Yorkie something mix. He he's a rare puppy, hypoallergenic rescue from the
SPCA. Oh, yeah, so like it's super worked out. He had like a brother. They were strays.
I like, okay, so I'm not a dog person, but I'm also not a monster. And I'm like, how,
how is a two and a half month old puppy like a stray dog in the winter in the Northeast?
Um, but their stray hold was up the day we went to the SPCA. And his brother had went
like already got adopted. So, uh, yeah, so it like super worked out. He's a, you know,
he's fine. My kids love him. My kids let my wife is happy. And so when my family is happy,
I'm happy. But I thought I feel like you, I really thought I know we're on a tangent
right now, but I didn't realize how many people knew I didn't like dogs. I knew you didn't
because we talk about it a lot, but like everybody I've talked to is like, wow, you got a dog.
And I'm like, well, my, my family, it's like grudging acquiescence for me. I want my, but
they've been at like my youngest, Abby is three years old. And when we asked her what
she wanted for Christmas, she said a dog. And we've been like, like when we were in
Cabo, they did like an SPCA like skip shelter, skip day. Yep. And so I'm like, so I'm like,
yeah, wait till I'm out of the country to rent a dog or whatever. So anyway, we, it,
it all worked out and they were, we, we gave him to the kids on Christmas. They were very
happy. So my oldest said, I can't dad, I can't believe you let this happen. So yeah, all
good things. Yeah.
Teresa. Yes. Beautiful comment to come out of her mouth. I love that. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
She's like my clone and I really like that.
I have one of those too. And I really like it. So, okay. So the, my heart, it like feels
like they grinch this like ready to explode not because it's bigger, but because I'm just
so excited because y'all like Joe and I have been such good friends and I absolutely adore
him, like adore him. But the one thing that I was like, Joe, you're just, you're not like
perfect because he doesn't like animals. And I'm like, who doesn't like animals? But you
gave in, you got your family a little wolf, wolf as I call it because I'm in toddler land
right now. I love that so much. Okay. So you said the dog was fine, but is it, are you
enjoying any element of it? Maybe the smiles on your kids' faces or?
Yes. Like it's, I'm happy to see my kids happy. Also, my youngest calls him Bandy. His name
is Bandy. I don't know if I said that, but yeah, you did. Which is like, it's very cute.
But also we're like, you know, he's a puppy and so he needs to be potty trained. And so
I'm just like great. Like it's like for me, great. Another responsibility. So it's, but
it's like, again, my kids are happy. And therefore I am, I am happy.
So not to go on this for too much longer, but I have to tell this little additive story
and then we can move on to how you are awesome in system automation and podcasting and all
the cool things you do. My dad wanted to get my mom a dog because her dog had passed. And
honestly, like she, when her dog had passed, the dog that she had, my dad fought her on
getting it to begin with. Like he was like, you don't need a dog, blah, blah, blah. I
had gone off to college and he got a puppy. And so I came or she got a puppy and I came
back for, you know, whatever summer, mother's day, et cetera, whatever it was and got to
hang out with the puppy. Well, then that dog had passed and my dad, which is not normal
behavior for him. He is a very, he's, he's not a nurturing human. Let's say that decided
to get my mama dog. And I was just absolutely shocked by this. So he's like, Hey, you got
to help me find this dog, blah, blah, blah. So I'm like, Oh, I'm on it. I will happily
find a dog. So I'm looking around looking for the right dog. He ends up sending me this
cute dog and he's like, I want a dog like this. And it was like a cucker spaniel mixed with
like a, like a golden retriever, King Cavalier, Charles kind of thing. Like it's a curly little
dog. And I was like, for a burly man, you want a cute, curly little dog? So I was like,
okay, cool. And this is what he picked. Meanwhile, my mom picked a lab. That was the dog that
she had beforehand. Big dog, right? So anyways, we get this dog, right? And now Toby, who
is the dog, he's like eight or nine years old. He's not even my mom's dog. Like whenever
they are here or hanging out or where they are, the dog is with my dad and my mom made
a comment the other day. Long story short, I have a dog that has anxiety and I was like,
mom, you should take this dog because it loves her. And they were here for Christmas. And
so it was all a joke. And my dad's like, well, technically, she doesn't have a dog because
this dog is technically mine. So anyways, I think it's really fun when people who are
sort of anti animals or anti some of these different things, it kind of, it unveils
a different side of things. And it's maybe not like loving the animal or the idea of
an animal so much as like the joy that it like brings to sort of the environment at
which it's in. So anyways, I'm excited for your dog. And I don't even know, we talked
about it in the pre show about how we needed to talk about Christmas and yes, maybe not
super exciting for others, but I am beyond smitten about bandit and this little dog that
your kids now have. So yay for that. Yes. Well, I'm glad I was like excited that we
were talking to them because I'm like, oh, Tess is going to flip when I talk.
I love it. Okay, so now all I want to talk about is dogs, but the listeners probably
don't want to talk about dogs. Most of the time I get mostly software engineers into
the stream. So let's talk about you and the cool stuff that you are doing. You alluded
into some of your work. Let's actually dive into like your education first and then kind
of come back around. So what is your formal education as it relates to your technical
chops?
Yeah, so I got my bachelor's degree from the University of Scranton in media and information
technology, which was a brand new major my freshman year. And it's like kind of was like
half computer science, half communications. But what it ended up doing for me because
I'm really bad at math, I was able to be a computer science degree without ever having
to take calculus, which was really nice. I love that manipulate.
I like dropped out of my calculus class and I said Dr. Trisola was his name. He was a
Yankee fan too. So like we bonded and when I had him sign the withdrawal paper, I said
I literally said it's not you. It's me. Like, I'm really sorry. This is not a reflection
on your teaching. I just am really bad at math. And then because I got my master's degree
at the University of Scranton as well, I didn't have to take the GREs. And so I just was able
to go into the software engineering program again, sans calculus, which was nice. So
you know, I mean, like it's you know, it's not like I'm building like physics based,
you know, software or whatever. And so yeah, so I have my I got my bachelor's in 07 and
my master's degree in 09 in software engineering.
Very very cool. That's really interesting. Honestly, I feel like have you ever had this
conversation with other developers about math because I don't talk about it a ton, but I
really feel like developers in the sort of trends in my mind, usually like math. So I
feel like that's that's a slight exception. But maybe what I'm thinking is wrong.
I mean, I know I think you're right. Because it with both computer science and computer
information systems, you have a requirement to get to take math, right? It needs to be
part of it, especially because anecdotally, I find at least when I was going through
school, a lot of people got into software engineering or programming because they liked
video games. And if you're building video games, you need to you need to understand
math. Yeah, like you need. And so, you know, I think like one of my strengths was like
I was self taught in web development before college. Sure. And so I knew like I wanted
to continue the programming side of things. But the math was really hard. I did realize
throughout though that like, I had my friend Dave is was very good at he minored in math
with a major in computer science. And so if if someone's able to explain the math to
me, I could write the program that does the math. But like I don't I couldn't do it by
hand on paper, right? So like somebody else would have to also QA because I'm like, I
don't know, it's getting given me a number. Is it the right number? Who knows? Of course,
like in program math, it's like you're drawing pictures or ray tracing or something. And
it's like, well, this is not where that's supposed to be. So obviously I'm wrong. Yeah.
Honestly, like I really felt like you and I kind of have like similar sort of timing
and like projects, I guess that we worked on. So where I'm alluding to here is I feel
like CSS was a lot of math. And like even yet actually now like CSS grade and some of
the other stuff is still a lot of math and it's easier math. But I really felt like I
thought it was interesting how much math actually went into sort of the like pixel perfect side
of website development.
Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. Like, I mean, like that's the math that I grok,
right? Like, you know, it's like it's the calculus and the advanced stuff that that
really, again, like the physics environment style mathematics that you have to do. But
like, you know, like if you're doing equations and you know, I mean, like we both have PHP
experience. So like, yeah, before PHP eight, who knows what what you would get if you had
parentheses, right? Like, I don't know, depends on what the compiler is feeling that day.
So the processor, I guess it's not really a compiler. But you know, so like I do I have
an appreciation for math and my oldest is excelling. I mean, she's in second, but like
she's excelling at the math side of things. And she gets like really excited. She got
really excited when I told her how to add like two seven digit numbers. And she was
just like, yes, give me more of these. And I'm like, this is great. So like that's like
super exciting. Yeah, but there's there's a lot of math and like the CSS side of things
to do. I mean, especially, especially now that you can kind of like draw and animate,
right? Or like working with HTML canvas, like I when I was teaching, I'll tell the whole
reason that I got my master's degree, it feels like was so that I could teach at the college
level. And so I was teaching at the university of Scranton for a while. And in the HTML course,
I like drew cherries by hand, by hand, doing HTML. And that's I think that's still up on
Code Pen. But like you got to you got to understand the Cartesian plane, right? So like there,
you know, if you're doing and like, obviously, there's like probably AI that can generate
that stuff now. But you know, if you want to do nifty things, you can build games with
like HTML like I've seen HTML CSS and JavaScript only like video games. You can you can do
that now. Like I saw a doom capture. Have you seen that? No, I haven't seen you have
to like do kill three bad guys to pass the capture. It's insane. Why could this exist?
That's the capture I want sent to me. The latest one that I had to do was like the puzzle
one where you had to shift them different angles to be like the correct. And I'm just
like, no, way too many clicks, like too much time, way too much time. Yeah. Okay, that
was a side tangent on math. But I personally love math and I couldn't get enough math.
And so when I did go to college, which I'm a college dropout three times over, I tried
criminal justice, tried business management, tried software engineering, all three times,
I'm just not a college person. I can't do it. I'm like, give me the thing and I'll do
it. But math, that was the thing I was like, Hey, if I'm going to be in college, give me
more math. So I like took as much as I possibly could. I don't know. It's just the fun like
the there's a I like things that have a very clear ending and maybe should have been a lawyer.
I've realized because like I like the idea of knowing did I win or did I lose? Was it
right or was it wrong? And I think like in software engineering, right? Yes, there's
an answer. You get to what you need. But there are so many different ways to get to that
answer that it doesn't feel like it's as black and white, you know?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of all, that's the beauty of math. And this is what I haven't
really fully experienced, like common core math yet, in the sense that my daughter, or
like my kids would be graded wrong, even though they got the right outcome, right? I hear
like that's like a part of it. Like the teachers are going to hear from me because I'm going
to be like the whole point of math is that there's only one correct answer. And like
if you got to it a different and correct way, then that's fine. Like I agree. So I don't
know if that's still in vogue, right? So we'll see. My daughter has not been graded wrong
for me telling her to do things the way I know yet. So we'll see.
I have kids from 16 to two, and I've been through some of that stuff already. And I have, I
wouldn't say that I've necessarily been like the quote unquote Karen that the teachers
don't want to deal with. But I have definitely had elements of conversations where I'm like,
I would rather that my child be a critical thinker and be able to get to the answer in
the way that they can think about it and formulate that in their minds. Because to me, that's
problem solving. And then they're understanding different ways to solve the problem instead
of the one way that you're telling them. And it was that conversation was hard for the
teacher to sort of rebuttal back to because at the end of the day, that's exactly what
we want is we want them to be able to solve any problem in any direction. So yeah, good
luck in my school.
Thanks. The scary thing about school, right? Is like school was designed to teach kids
to sit and do mindless work for eight hours in a factory, and it hasn't really changed
much. And like, I'm sending my kids to Catholic school. And like, it's there's like a good
chance that they will continue to go to Catholic school into high school. And I think that's
where the rubber is really going to meet the road of like, Hey, I don't really like monoculture.
And I really want my kids to think critically. And so you need to give me a good reason.
If you give me a good reason, I'll back off. Yeah. But if it's like arbitrary, and that's
just the way it is, that's not going to fly with me and it never has.
Yeah, yep. I fully agree. My kids also were going to a Christian school for a while. And
honestly, like, because it wasn't a public school and it was a private school, they could
do the curriculum in the way that they wanted to. And they very much were that vein of thinking
they sort of were, I want to say against the public school way, but they were very much
about like creativity and allowing them to sort of get to that result, which was really
beautiful. Then we moved and bought our farm and it's too far away. So anyways, I'll digress
on that. Okay, let's talk about your day to day, because I know that you do a bunch of
super cool stuff. And you shared very loosely what you do. But I would love to hear, you
know, the things that you're working on in your day to day, and how that sort of relates
to your your past roles and various things as a professor and otherwise as a developer,
and what you do in your day to day today. Yeah, so I probably like, well, around the
time my oldest was born, I realized that the shine of my monitor is like very distracting.
So let me, there we go. It's like the lighting just changed on my face. When my daughter
was born, I left my last like agency development job, because I felt it was incompatible with
the way that I wanted to show up as a dad, right? Like, one of the last, like the last
straw was basically like, one of the project managers said, like, Hey, if you want to get
paid on time, you need to work this weekend. And I'm like, I said, that's not the contract
that we have, right? If I wanted that to be the case, I would work for myself. Your job
is to pay me on time. My job is to do the best job possible. And if it's not working
out, you can fire me, right? Like that's like, and then I thought like, I'm not so when I
left, right? Like my my friend was the the CTO. And he was like, is there anything we
can do to get you to stay? And I said, I'm not going to miss my kids first steps because
I'm work because I have to work late for you, right? And my wife was super supportive, right?
Like super supportive. And so I still did development after that for a while, but I
started to shift more into podcasting and helping people launch, grow and monetize their
podcasts. And I thought lots of people are doing this. Grow your podcast can almost feel
like snake oily because there's no science to it and it changes every year. And I'm not
I have good friends who are good at that. But to me, it felt snake oily because I because
there's no like formula, right? Yeah, it's just trying stuff.
Do I get that completely in my work? I get it.
Yeah, right? It's like, it's hard and you got to try things obviously, but like I realized
that my unique point of view or my unique offering is helping people improve their systems and
processes through automation. A lot of people I mean, a Cabo press, we talked about this,
but from people who are outside the development space, they're like, how does your brain work
that way? And it's because I've been a programmer for over 20 years. And so like I think like
computers think and I know that content creators and business owners who are outside of the
development space don't think that way. And so that's where I can bring my skills to
podcasters and busy solopreneurs.
I love that so much. So for anyone who's listening, Cabo press is this beautiful event.
That is invite only, but you can apply to join. I think applications are open right now. So
Cabo press.com. It's hosted by Chris Lemma, who is just a really amazing person happens
to also be my executive coach off and on as I've been throughout my business here. And
it is very focused on, I don't want to say solopreneurs because it's not just solopreneurs,
but it's very focused on sort of business leaders in a whole. And so solopreneurs all
the way to sort of agencies, services, products, really a culmination. And it's just, you know,
these great individuals that that lemma brings together. And it's a very powerful event if
you have a business. I think Joe walked away with amazing stuff. I walked away with I think
what is the best offering that I could have ever pulled together, thanks to Cabo press
and the people who are there. So it's a really great event. So just wanted to throw that
shout out out there.
So as you're, they mean to cut you off on your, your advocacy there for Cabo press.
So as you're doing some of that like automation and sort of workflow type of the stuff, right?
I think there's, there's a lot that goes into that. And I think, you know, we see tools
like Zapier and make and now like relay.app, which I'm a huge fan of relay.app. I don't
know if you've checked them out recently, but I'm curious, like, do you tend to use
some of these like no code sort of different tools or are you leveraging API's or like,
tell me about some of the challenges and the technical things that you sort of face and
overcome as you're like helping these different companies do this.
Yeah, this is a great question, right? Because one of the promises I made to myself when
I started doing less development and more helping solopreneurs, creators, podcasters
was everything I did had to be no code because I didn't want to have to wait and then support
code for them. Right?
Oh, yeah.
I basically wanted to teach them how to automate. And so I think like my switching lanes converged
nicely with the no code movement, right? As it was called like a few years ago, right?
So like, yes, Zapier is out there, make is out there. There's like Pabli and I got to
check out relay.app now. But and then there's like automation tools built into things like
Airtable and Notion. And so my one of like my core tenants of helping people is we're
not going to do custom code, right? And even there's like a nonprofit that I'm helping
and they want to improve their system because right now it's basically like a giant Google
sheet. And I'm like, yeah, I could like find the right WordPress tools to do this and build
like some custom post types or whatever, like, or I can build this in Notion. And the good
thing about that, right, is like if I disappear, there's no technical debt, right? Lots of
people know Notion. And so that was really important to me. Like I even when I was doing
web development, I didn't want to build these big giant like requires 24 seven support
systems. Yeah, because that was never the business I wanted to run. Right? I want to
clock out on Friday at five o'clock and not clock back in until Monday at nine. And if
I'm building even e-commerce sites and the server goes down on Saturday, I got to be
there, right? And so like that has always been my predisposition. Even before I had
kids. But now that I'm doing kind of coaching for people who are not as technical as me,
I want to make sure that if something breaks, they're not like, well, Joe needs to read
like patch his code, right? Or like an API breaks, I don't want to go have to go in there
and fix it.
That is such a good point. Because so as you know, well, developer brains, right, like
I love doing the same thing. I love automating everything and creating this beautiful solution
where it's all building and working all in its own, which has honestly been my nemesis
this year in my business, because I feel like as soon as I think I'm right on the cusp
of like, this is it, I'm going to standardize this is how I do things. Then I start to standardize
and I'm like, Oh, nope, this isn't it. And it's just, it's been a giant waste of time.
So tip for anyone, don't automate and standardize until you really, truly are ready to do said
things. But I love that because as you think about that, right, like notion, I mean, notion
has extremely beautiful docs too. And so you're, you're this orchestrator of all this beautifulness
and you get to sort of shed light on like, Hey, dip into my engineering brain, right?
This is how I think, let me show you how I think and how that can come into your day
to day.
Yeah. And I think that's really helped me too. Because like, I mean, like you mentioned,
like some of my automations are like these Rube Goldberg machines. If people are unfamiliar,
I'm sure you all know what a Rube Goldberg machine is, but it's like one of those multi
step kind of something happens, the triggers like dominoes falling and then like a plate
breaks or something. Anyway, um, the Grinch movie showed us best. Oh, yes. Yeah. Exactly.
Right. Um, or like Wallace and Gromit is what I always think. Oh, yeah. Wallace's stuff
was Rube Goldberg machines. But, um, and like if one piece of that breaks, everything breaks,
right? But again, an earring brain, I'm like, okay, well, I can break these into discrete
automations and both Zappier, I think Zappier, make.com definitely allows you to call other
make automations, right? Like the same thing with Apple shortcuts, right? Like I've been
really, I've been sharing a bunch of shortcuts on LinkedIn lately. Um, and instead of having
like this one massive Apple shortcut, I could have a bunch of Apple shortcuts and one that
just kind of brings them all together. That way I'm not breaking things. And when I'm
troubleshooting, I'm like, okay, this shortcut failed. So I know it's here. You're right.
So it's, um, again, that's like something that my engineering brain thinks about because
you always think about, all right, well, how can I generalize this more? How can I make
this code reusable? How can I make these components of my automation reusable? Right. So we have
a question in the chat actually from Twitch, which is crazy because I'd never get people
on Twitch. So I'm like, yay, I'm so excited. Someone's from Twitch. Um, have y'all looked
at Amazon bedrock for doing any of the AI workflow automations? Oh, no, I haven't. No.
Did you say you have? I haven't. No, no, me neither. Uh, this is, this is like, this
was a crazy thing in development too. Right. Like when I worked at the university of Scranton
in the IT department, my coworker every week would be like, yo, you need to check out react.
Yo, you need to check out Ionic. Yo, you know, I'm like, I'm like, let's put a pause on checking
out all the new tools. And when we build something, if the new tool helps us do the thing better,
let's do that. Right. You are, you are the empowered developer and your friend is the
curious developer. You're the one that makes the business decisions and they're just like,
oh my gosh, look at this new shiny thing. Yes. We worked on a mutual project at some
point a million years ago where one of the people on the project was like, yo, we should,
we should do this with headless WordPress. And I was like, what would be the purpose
of that? And he was like, it would be cool. And I'm like, okay, I would need to learn
react. That's a big undertaking. Right. Like, so like, I'm not, this is not what I was
hired to do. And so if you want to go in that direction, I would not be the best person
to stay on this project. And then the project manager was like, yeah, let's just do it the
way we said we were going to. And I'm like, that makes sense. If there was like a good
business decision for it to be headless, great. But like, it would be cool is not that.
Yep. Yep. Yep. You know, what's interesting though, and this kind of gets to sort of like
shed a little light on the stuff that I do. And I said the empowered dev versus a curious
dev because it's, Adam Frankel has a really great book and it's called the developer
facing startup. And that's how he actually frames the personas. And I thought it was
a very enlightening because as you think about it, as developers, we get so excited
about these like shiny new tools and these different things. And even if it's automation,
right, I told you about relay.app because I was like, Oh, I wonder if Joe knows because
I stumbled upon it and it's like way better than Zapier, right. And so there's these curious
developers that are constantly like, Oh my gosh, look at this new tool. And it's just
a very interesting dynamic to sort of think of those two, right, because the empowered
dev seek out these curious devs of like, Oh, what are all these crazy tools you're using,
right, like your past coworker or friend at that place? Go ask them all the crazy tools
and be like, Hey, here's what I'm building, but let someone else go do all that work.
And so that's why I made that comment. So I think it's, it's, it's always fun to play
with those things. But I think for those that are listening on the stream, we have had a
lot of really great conversations about leadership and being a developer and how you can elevate
your skills. And I think this is one area where, you know, Joe is really showcasing
a prime example of like, it's really great to know about these new technologies. It's
great to dive into them. It's great to understand them. But when you're actually working on
true work, right, it's like, it's not the time to go learn react, because you're going
to, that might be the cool new thing to do when you've committed to a project and to
a scope and to a defined amount of time and budget, right?
Yeah, absolutely. I'll tell you, every time I go to set up like a new website for myself
or redesign my website, I think maybe I'll use 2025, right, in WordPress, or maybe I'll
use one of Andrew Andrews Nurend's new themes because he's awesome, right? And then I just
like, I grunt and I'm like, this is themes have changed. And I just end up installing
cadence again, right? Because I'm familiar with that and it's good. And until it becomes
bad, there's no reason for me to switch because I can work most efficiently using the knowledge
I use with cadence and cadence blocks versus having to learn a new framework just for the
sake of learning it, right? I'm not saying don't learn a new tool if it's going to be
very valuable to you. For sure.
But you know, there's technical debt and there's having to move stuff. And last year around
this time, I moved from to do this to things for my task manager because things is pretty
and I liked it. And then the entire year I hit a wall of like, how do I automatically
send things to things? How do I automatically send tasks to things and set the due date?
And you can't because it's an Apple ecosystem only app. So you can like your inbox, but
you can't automatically set due dates. And I'm like, this isn't working for me. So in
November, I moved back to to do this because they have a nice iOS app. It's not as pretty
as things, but every it has fantastic zappier and main integration. And so that was an important
part of my system, right? When I like when someone books a call with me, if it's a discovery
call, I want to set a task and to do is to follow up in two weeks. Or if it's a an interview,
I want to set a task for the day of the interview that reminds me to do the summary of the episode
so that I don't like forget what we talked about later. I guess that last one is less
crucial now that there are AI tools, but I still like to write down the things that
I liked best. Yes, I like and what AI determines is the best is not always the same thing.
Yeah, I definitely agree on that. Oh, wow. I agree with that. So I have like so much
relatability. The things if folks don't know cadence is a WordPress theme. So Joe was talking
about a word WordPress stack in terms of building out a website. I have had the same literally
the same exact things. And I have built my website a number of different times in my
business and I started on ghost, which is great, but you can't have a homepage. Then
I shifted to building a next JS like custom stack. That was an interesting, fun little
game of like cool test is going to learn something she doesn't know. But it pushed me to learn
things I didn't know and had a really cool builder. But then it's like maintenance, right?
Like I don't know the modern JS stack, like all these curious devs do, right? And so it's
been quite a pain to me for me to go back and like I created only a one page and now
I need sub pages and I'm just like, so much, you know, but I have to say and I can't believe
that this is true. And I think that you got the headphones a few years back when they
were sent out. But I just had a call with Amanda Martin from Wix and she actually walked
me through like all the different developer tools inside of Wix and like anyone who's
in WordPress is listening. I'm sorry, but I think I'm going to build my website in Wix
because they like have all these different tools. Like you can write your own code, then
you can actually do headless, then you can actually build like a full fledged app. So
anyone who is listening and kind of like, wait, what, what's happening? There's a live
stream. It's on the YouTube. It's also in the, the dev hub, which you see scrolling very
annoyingly on the bottom of the live stream if you want to go check it out. But it was,
it was actually really liberating because I had that same thing and I wanted to go back
to WordPress. I know WordPress. That's what I've most recently built websites in is the
PHP stack, right? But WordPress is just so much maintenance and so much undertaking unless
you have the right host, the right situation on the right, whatever. So long story short,
why are building websites so hard today? Like, like seriously, it was not this hard years
ago. I don't know what's going on. Yeah, it shouldn't be right. And it's now like, it's
probably because like tools and browsers have evolved and everyone's trying to be everything.
Right. Like, yeah, I got the, I got the Wix headphones famously a very, a well-known WordPress
bully called them a Roche motel after that happened. I know. I thought it was genius.
I thought it was super smart. I was like, it was one of the few like, because they DM'd
me and I was, I was like, what scam is this? But like my yearly theme that year was like
the year of being open minded or something like that. Some, some like, can't be thing.
And I was like, well, I would normally say no to this because I think it's a scam. But
I'll say, I'll see what's going on. And they sent me these great headphones and I was like,
yeah, yearly theme worked out right now. I know what it was interesting too, because
like if I recall correctly, they just reached out and I don't remember what, how the conversation
went, but you didn't have to do anything. It was a very quick conversation. And I just
remember it was like something around, we want to send you something and I'm like, great,
here's my address, cool. Like it wasn't uncommon, especially in like DevRel for me to get swag
sent to me depending on the scenario. Right. And so I didn't think anything of it. But
then when these like beautiful Bose headphones, like the latest came out, I was like, this
is not at all what I expected in this package. So yeah, very interesting. Okay. So coming
back to your day to day, we're nearing sort of the end of the show here, although they
can really go as long as I'd like for them to go. But what are some of the, I guess,
I think there's a, there's a two pronged approach to this kind of question and answer. And what
I'm sort of probing for is like, what is it that you bring together in terms of like,
I think sharing an example of sort of an automation and a workflow. And then my sort of follow
up to that is how have you shifted your automations and your workflows to bring AI into it? That's
like the curious side of it. So yeah, good question. Okay. So, yeah. So I mean, I think
my, my best processes will say, you know, actually, no, I'm going to not use a podcast
example. I think this is a good one. I hate using CRMs. Like I'm just bad at them and
I never want to pay for the good ones. And it's just like, I'm never like, why would
I pay for HubSpot when I'm never going to use it, even though HubSpot's like really
good. So I built a simple one in Notion, right? And I'm in Notion anyway. So it's perfectly
fine, right? The cool thing about the system I built, right, is that the way I don't, I
don't have to input anything into Notion, right? It's just a place where the data goes
for me to look at. So when someone fills out my coaching form, they get added. Or if they
schedule a discovery call with me, they get added and the date they get added, and then
the next follow up date is automatically set, right? And then again, that gets added to my
task manager too, because I don't have like notifications turned on for a lot of things.
But to do this, my task manager does have notifications turned on. And so that has been
the best way for me to keep track of leads and notify people who are interested in my
work when I have a new product without, you know, de facto adding them to my mailing list,
because my friends, I'm going to tell you something here. Just because you have gained
access to someone's email address doesn't mean you get to put them on your mailing list.
They need to opt into that. Hate that. If you've, if you've ever added me to your mailing
list because I went on your podcast, don't like that unsubscribe from that. So I don't
add them to my mailing list, but I do send out personalized emails to them when I'm
like, Hey, I just launched this new thing called the unstuck sessions. You might be
interested, right? Yep. The way that AI has changed that is there are two custom GPT's
that I use now. So when we hop on the discovery call, I will zoom AI companion is fine. It
frustrates me that they don't include the raw transcript. I have it zoom. You have it
because that's what you're giving to the AI. Give me the transcript. Yes. No, you just
want me to trust your tool. So I record the call. I use Mac whisper to transcribe and
then there's a custom GPT. Do you know Alistair McDermott? I don't think so. He was like in
the WordPress space for a while. He's like an AI guy all the way through now. But he's
doing some good work. Yeah, we got every probably quarter or something like that. But he built
a custom GPT that I want to get the name right for called sales call insights. And so he
encourages you to anonymize the transcript. So like remove the names and just write like
your name, I guess, and then like just the client. And you you feed it the transcript
and then he's written like a really robust set of prompts and the instructions to analyze
the sale call, figure out the pain points. And then I usually follow up with like, what
did I promise the client, right? Like what did I promise I would deliver after this call?
And that like executive summary plus deliverables, I copy and paste into Notion. And that is
the main thing that I've been using to put together proposals, which I also put together
in Notion now. Yeah, so like that has been a game changer for me. Because I mean, if
we're being honest, right, like I have a few different offerings, but the proposals are
not going to be that different. But adding the stuff from sales call insights, let's
me say like, hey, here's what I is your problem. And here's the solution I think can fix. So
that's been that game changer. And my proposals have been better. They haven't just been like
emails. I've been including a video like walking through the proposal, which has been like
a good I've gotten a lot of compliments on that. And so, you know, I'll never use AI
to like write full content for me. But like this stuff, man, it's it's definitely made
me a better sales person.
Hmm, that sounds beautiful. Trevor's asking for the prompt in the chat. Do you know where
that can be found? You said sales call insights is it?
Yeah, it's the custom GPT. I think you can find it in in the custom GPT store. I guess
the same. Yeah, I am really fuzzy on this. He sent me. Oh yeah. So in chat GPT, there's
going to be a little button under chat GPT. If you've used custom GPT's that says explore
GPT's like this is dumb. I can do this. Right. Can you see this? Okay. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
It might be it might be.
Asked for for the people watching on the street. I'll move to my browser and open chat GPT
there and hopefully I wasn't saying something stupid.
So so yeah, so you should see a button here explore GPT's click on that and then let's
see sales call insights.
I had no idea this existed.
Yeah, and that's so I don't know if I have access to it, but that should be the first
one that pops up. It's from my friend Alistair McDermott, but it's been like a game changer.
It's been really good.
Are they paid for me? The screen is a little bit smaller than what the viewers are probably
seeing honestly, but actually here. Let's just know not that. Yeah.
So this is this is totally free. You know, there's like a little, oh, copy link. Oh,
dip. Can I just do this?
Yeah, you should be able to throw in the chat. I think Trevor should get it because he's
on Twitch. So it'll send a Twitch and YouTube.
I'm good at computers. I don't know if I can add to the chat.
You should be able to put in a private chat and not offer it in there.
We all the things will get it to you, Trevor. Boom. There it is.
Can you sell prompts on there? Or is it are they all free?
I don't know. I'm going to I'm like willing to bet. I kicked down the brightness on my
monitor so it didn't shine on my face, but I'm like willing to bet that some of these
are probably paid. Right. I feel like that was like a thin
canvas. I'm going to bet that like some of these probably are paid.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's I have like a couple of prompts behind the scenes that I have essentially
started to define and master and I'm trying to figure out like, do I give them away for
free? I feel like I kind of can't because it's pretty, pretty tied to my business and
like how I create results. But I'm like, is there a monetization strategy? So that's
really interesting.
Yeah. Yeah. I yeah. I have a hard time with that too.
Yeah. I know it's like I feel like you build the plug in for yourself, right? And then
you're like, can I sell this?
Yeah. And it's like I want to give it away because I want I always want to help people,
but then I'm like, I give everything away all the time. And so I'm like, okay, I probably
need to find as a business, right? I need to find little, little revenue streams. So
that's it. All right. All of that aside, that is exciting. Love to hear about that. Super
cool that you've brought that in. It sounds like there's some good prompts and stuff to
help with that. Okay. So I have one final question that I like to ask every single guest because
there's just a variety of answers that I get from this. How do you get unstuck?
Oh, I, man, this is a good question because I, my latest project is called, or product
is called the unstuck sessions.
Ooh, I love that. Yeah. It's like, it's asynchronous coaching, right? But it's like, hey, if you're
stuck, drop a question and I'll answer it on like Tuesdays or whatever. So how do I get
unstuck? Well, I talk out loud to myself a lot. I can use this term here because I've
been saying this in like creator and business circles and people are like, what are you
talking about? But like rubber ducking helps me a lot. Are you familiar with that term?
Or is it just something that I invented? No, you're, I'm familiar and I thought everyone
is familiar, but my guest on Monday hadn't been. And so I was like, oh snap, I didn't
realize that it's maybe not as known as I thought.
And like when you explain it, it sounds ridiculous. It's like, well, you talk to a rubber duck.
That's where the term comes from. But yeah, but anyway, so like that helps me a lot.
So just to reiterate for folks, rubber ducking is like re-explaining the problem. And when
you re-explain it, you're like, oh my gosh, hello, I totally missed it. Cause then you're
when you're explaining you, you realize the things you may have missed.
Yeah, it's like you go to like a coworker or a friend and you're like, Hey, I'm having
this problem. And then you explain it and then it triggers, right? Like, oh yes, I've
got it. And so it's called rubber ducking because then people got into the practice
of like putting a rubber duck on their desk and talking to the rubber duck.
Do you have one? Were you reaching for one? Cause your arm was moving.
Oh no, I'm just reaching into the void here. I've got poker chips that I like to shuffle.
Oh, nice. Nice. Okay.
And I assume, you know, well, the dog's not allowed in my office to bring it back to the
beginning. The dog's not allowed in my office because I don't want to have to keep it so
clean. Cause he eats everything. But I suspect if I ever am working like in the dining room,
the dog will become my rubber duck because he just sits, he only like sits at my, you
know, dogs can tell that I don't like them and they're like, just love me.
Yeah. I told you, you're going to be my dad pretty soon with a dog.
Can't wait.
So like, yeah. So talking out loud is maybe the best thing I do to get unstuck. If I'm
really stuck, like, and I just need to walk away, I'll usually go play the drums. I have
two drum sets. And that is enough to like get like, it's like an active thing. It gets
my heart rate up. It gets me not thinking about anything remotely related to work for
a while. And it's just like, it's, it's my favorite active thing to do.
I love that. It definitely gets you away from it. I feel like oftentimes you just have to
sort of step away from the problem that we're in and just like do something completely different
and come back to it. I do the same thing, but I'll like go hang out with my cows or
just go be on the farm or go sit on my patio and, you know, it's just sort of step away.
Yeah. This was like this crystallized for me so like so strongly in college. I was trying
to figure out I was taking like a machine language course. It was the worst. And we
had like a like a fake CPU like assembly language that we were working with. It looked like
easier to like learn the concepts. And I was super stuck. And my friend messaged me and
was just like, Hey, like I'm going to this coffee shop event. It's like a guy with an
acoustic guitar. Like, do you want to come? And I'm like, yeah, I need to like step away.
And like literally, like it was like a scene from the social network. I was sitting there
at a table and I thought of the solution and I wrote it on a napkin. I'm like, I can't
believe this is literally happening right now. So like, I figured that I wrote it on
the napkin, put it in my pocket and then like, like gangbusters worked when I got back to
my door move.
Oh my gosh, that's amazing. We actually just laughed about and I don't remember what session
it was in. It may have been with a live stream guest, but we were sort of like poking fun
at being old. I was poking fun at myself at being old and like writing code on paper.
And so it was sort of a joke of Tesla writing code on paper. So hey, sometimes writing code
on paper is just what you have to do.
It helps. I mean, like, you know, it doesn't have to be syntactically correct, but like
exactly, work it out on paper, get away from a screen.
Yes, yes, yes. Get away from a screen. Touch grass.
Touch grass. Love that. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. This has been lovely. I honestly could talk to you for hours and hours and
hours as you know, but you have shared some really awesome things, very, very awesome
things that people can take action on. I would love to shed light on where they can find
you and follow up with you, maybe hire you for your podcast services. Super awesome.
Joe actually did a really great like workshop sort of coaching session with me early on
in my business to help me plan what my podcast is going to be. Did none of it. Didn't even
end up doing that podcast, doing this instead. And I feel like this is the answer, but his
his knowledge definitely played into how I thought about this. And so really great resource.
Love that. Joe is on it with his beautiful setup. So he has amazing insights into your
video audio setup, amazing insights in your podcast, amazing insights into automation.
He's a super great human. Now he has a dog. So he's even cooler. So Joe, tell the world
where to go and find you and all the awesome stuff that you do.
Yes. So I think we've talked a lot about automations and things that I like to work on. And so
you can go to Casabona.org slash automations to get a database of 40 plus soon to be 50
automation templates that I share for free. They're like Zapier make Apple shortcuts.
So I suspect that I'll probably start adding some prompts in there too. I'm like hesitant
because I don't think there anything to write home about, but like sharing ideas is, is,
is where I'm at. So and yeah, Casabona.org is just the place where you can get in touch
with me too. But Casabona.org slash automations get free access to my automations database.
It will add you to my mailing list, but I, I promise I sound like a big unsubscribe button
early on in case you're like, I just wanted the free stuff.
Yeah, I will tell you, Joe is a very good storyteller and very good with like how he
creates his content. I'm trying to type and talk at the same time. We'll see how this
goes. And so I strongly recommend that you do that. And it's okay that you're on his
mailing list because it's good. It's a great mailing list. So Trevor, I threw that link
for you in the chat and anyone else who might be listening, if you're on Twitter, YouTube,
Casabona.org slash automations is now in the chat. If I spelled it correctly, hopefully.
Thank you, Brad. I did.
It's fairly easy. Yeah. Perfect.
Oh God, I clicked a link. Am I going to leave this chat?
Oh, no, it might. Okay, don't click it yet.
Thank you, Joe so much. I'm so excited to have spent my morning with you. And honestly,
I am beyond smitten to hear that Lil Bandit is in your house and he's sitting at your
feet because I think the next time we'll talk, you'll be like, so maybe just maybe I might
like dogs just a little bit and I can't wait.
We'll see what happens. We'll follow up with the thrilling conclusion.
I love it. I love it. Okay. Thank you. I hope everyone has a fabulous rest of their day
and week. Get yourself a puppy. It brings you joy.