Sorry For Helping

5-When to Buy vs Build plus the very first live demo of GoldenSquirrel.io

Welcome to episode 5 of the Sorry For Helping podcast. In this episode, Mike breaks down the buy vs build decision process and asks for advice. Jeff and Mike also press forward on planning a podcast and Jeff does a first demo of the Golden Squirrel platform. 1:40 - Mike talks through if he should “buy” or “build” an automated podcasting system 20:35 - They come up with the name for the podcast, “Sorry For Helping” and come up with an MVP for starting the podcast 27:45 - Travis Ripley shout-out 28:30 - Golden Squirrel MVP live demo walkthrough 33:30 - Jeff offers to manually go out and find a company that matches your preferences while he continues to work on the product. Mentions: Travis Ripley

4-Fixing the hiring process, coming up with an MVP to execute on that mission

Jeff wants to build a product that fixes hiring, however, doesn’t currently have a solid idea of what that product is going to look like or what functionality it should even entail.  He asks Michael what his thoughts on the software developer hiring process should be and what he would appreciate in his own interview process as well as some tools he’s currently using to hire apprentices. Jeff walks through his thought process because of how he can start to attack a few key elements of the process.  He walks through how he may iterate from there while also discusses a few tips on how employers could get the best candidates in the marketplace today by slightly adjusting their process. 1:25 - Thoughts on Michael’s appearance on Fresh Brewed Tech 7:24 - Starting a pet Tik Tok contest 9:08 - planning for a conversation with Kyle Simpson and his thoughts on the hiring process 9:50 - Michael’s thoughts on the hiring process and Jeff walks through his beginning thoughts on how to fix hiring 19:50 - Additional thoughts on the hiring process and how Jeff is thinking about the MVP process Mentions: Quincy Larson Jason Calacanis Kyle Simpson

3 - Fixing the hiring process, clearing out your backlog

Welcome to episode 3 of Sorry For Helping. Michael talks through getting some of his first clients at San Diego Code School.  They review his pitch to companies and how they are taking some of the technical tasks off their plate. Jeff then thinks through what part of the hiring part to attack first and what the ideal hiring process looks like from a senior developer perspective. They then review an MVP of a friend from a few years ago to see how they are doing and what they’ve built over the last few years. (1:40) Michael thinks through getting his first few clients that want to offload some of their technical backlog (8:30) Michael gives his elevator pitch for San Diego Code School (14:01) Why aren’t there any mid-level engineer positions posted on job boards?  All seem like they are Senior or Junior… (19:57) What Michael thinks would be the ideal hiring process with Senior Software Engineers (26:19) Mike and Jeff review a previous startup founder’s project a few years after giving them advice and building their project (29:32) The stock market doesn’t make sense and we don’t understand.

1-Behind the scenes starting a code school

Welcome to the 1st episode of Sorry For Helping. Mike and Jeff worked for several years together in the coding bootcamp space. They share a passion for teaching students a skill set that will quite literally change their lives and their families' lives forever. They are now on a mission to continue to make a dent in education and are working on two different approaches to facilitate junior developers' entrance into the marketplace. They were talking at length every week for the past 18 months on various ways to make a sustainable model that would allow them to successfully place students in their new roles. They decided to start recording these conversations moving forward so others could come along for the journey and share any insights they are missing on how to fix and improve the accessibility and sustainability of tech education. In this first episode, we’ll just get a little background on why they are qualified to solve some of these problems and ways they’ve solved previous problems when they joined forces in a previous coding bootcamp. (1:12) Mike starts his first code school, Starter Academy, and discusses his first learning about the code school industry. (7:15) Mike talks about how Jeff recruited him to work at Origin Code Academy (15:24)  Debating what was the best curriculum to use at Origin Code Academy and the thought process behind that as well as the internal debate within the company. Ultimately, we changed the curriculum from Angular 1 to React, and C# to Node to become full-stack javascript. (20:13) Mike predicted that React would become widely adopted so it was implemented into the curriculum (25:32) Origin closes and Mike transitions to starting San Diego Code School (31:49) Jeff gives his background and how he got into tech because of his relationship with Epic Game developers (34:52) Jeff talks about how painful the hiring process was in going from Code School to Junior Developer (36:44) What does the future of code schools look like during our ‘new normal’? (38:32) Would we advise people to sign up to a code school right now? (41:30) Why Tony Robbins could help you learn how to code better than coding tutorials Mentions: Jeff Ward Kyle Simpson Trey Hunter Todd Bashar Cameron Wilby

2-Tools and courses to learn to code and run a business

Welcome to episode 2 of Sorry For Helping. This episode’s theme is what tools and courses do you use to learn?  Mike and Jeff discuss some of their favorite courses for learning how to code as well as some marketing courses for entrepreneurs and growing your LinkedIn following. They also debate how important content is as a part of a business’ marketing strategy and some of the struggles of getting that content out into the real world. We would love to hear from you about the tools that you use to grow your business! (1:09) Jeff discusses learning ES6 and what tools and courses he was using to learn the syntax Wes Boss Course (8:46) Michael Roberts working on Business Development and shifting to a B2B company vs B2C and marketing tools he trying out (15:35) The top 3 challenges of creating video content (17:44) Gary Vee giving advice to Parchelle via Daily Vee Channel (20:42)  What online courses has Michael bought in the last few months (25:11) How Ryan Kulp got me to buy all his courses and how we originally met. (33:47) What Michael learned from the CEO of WD40 and how he used LinkedIn to facilitate the meeting