Developers Becoming Influencers And Scammy Course Sellers

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all right it's Wednesday morning this is 3 days in a row to the office um got a topic for today that was submitted I got a bunch actually there's a lot more rolling in so that's great um before I kick things off I had a a funny comment where someone said oof too rambly like my dude this is a channel where you're stuck with me in a car for 30 to 60 minutes while I sit in traffic it's it's going to be rambly if you don't want to hear someone rambling pick a different video um sorry the suggestion he had was watch it at 2x speed I mean yes go ahead and do that that's uh that'll help I'm still going to be rambling though um topic for today is about the question was kind of I don't know if it was backhanded in some

way but it was like the average length of someone's like career as a software engineer which I can't answer I don't and I actually don't think that was part of like the main point because they followed up to say it seems like um they're noticing that every I think it was phrase like every software developer seems like they stick around in a big company for a while and then jumps to uh to making content and stuff um getting on YouTube and all that so I don't I don't think necessarily that they were trying to like be like Nick you're the problem kind of thing but I think they're they're like genuinely meaning that they notice that this is a trend so I'll start off by saying I think there's a extreme minority of people that do this that are in Tech and then jump onto

YouTube or onto content creation platforms um if it seems like there is uh I don't know like something more than an extreme minority of people doing that just remember like there's a bias here you're not going to see all of the people that aren't doing it because they're not doing it you won't see them um so it's definitely an extreme minority of people that are in Tech that go on to make content and stuff like that but I wanted to talk about this because I think it's interesting we'll do a few different angles here um we'll talk about like I'll talk about why I'm doing it some things that I've looked at I see other people doing either what feels like not good to me or what feels like good to me so we'll go through that um but this is going to be definitely

not like pure like software development but kind of bridging between like software development and extracurricular types of things uh that are related to software development so just a heads up that's what you're should be expecting as we go into this um but a reminder for folks uh if you want topics covered please comment below let me know uh and if you wanted to be anonymous feel free to find me on social media anywhere you want uh it will be Dev leader that will be the handle that I use for all my social media uh find me send me a message uh the more context that you can add uh the more detail I can try and provide when things are really General the only thing I can do is give you really General perspective so and with that said I'm obviously just one person with

some opinions so um I never want to come across like I'm pretending there's only one way to do things or my ways the right way these are just my experiences my perspective so with that out of the way um yeah so definitely an underwhelming uh minority underwhelming is that what I want to say there definitely a minority of tech people that are doing content creation um let's talk before I like kind of bore you with like my my stuff um cuz you're obviously here you know I'm making content um let's talk about some patterns I see that I don't really like and I think something I encourage is learning in public I think that there's a lot of value in that not only for other people you like you can create value for other people but like you can get a lot of value by

learning and public but I think that um sometimes people do this and maybe unintentionally they cross a bit of a line because they're kind of conflating a couple things and to me learning in public is about acknowledging like I am not an expert on this but like here's the stuff I'm going through here's what I think I've learned here's like my takeaway from this and ideally like you're kind of putting yourself out there and should be basically open to feedback on on whatever the topic is right like hey I don't not an expert here's what I think I've understood from this and this can be helpful for other people and I don't think a lot of uh folks understand this but um you don't have to be like the ultimate Uber expert in some field to have people listening to you or that want to

listen to you in fact if you're if you're sort of at one step that is like one step ahead of someone else like that can be really really valuable for that other person because they're like I see this person is in their mind like one step ahead of where I am and that's where I want to be heading so like interesting let me see what they're doing sometimes when you have too many steps removed right so to give you an example if I say I'm a principal engineering manager at Microsoft and you're like well I'm just trying to start out some of the stuff that I'm saying might not resonate with you because you're you're thinking like well nck is too disconnected from me therefore it's it might be hard for me to take some of the feedback or perspective like I I should maybe

find someone who who's just gotten into software and then I can talk to them and see how to navigate things so being one step ahead or or two whatever like being a smaller uh set of steps ahead can be very valuable so that's one thing that's positive about it but um when it comes to social media and content like we have all these vanity metrics right and this is where I think things get dicey because if you are someone that is trying to say well I want to put my stuff out there online I don't have sunglasses in this stupid car man um I want to put my stuff out online and now we're looking for vanity metrics like likes follows people commenting and stuff like that if you imagine you're putting content out there and you're like hey I'm not an expert here's a

Thing versus hey like look at me I'm a a like thought leader in this space like the sort of the assumed Authority that comes with the second variation of that is greater and one might expect that as a result they get better engagement on it so it seems like it's backwards to be like I'm going to put content out there and not be an expert um this is insane the entire highway to work is solid red like this has just been a nightmare week man um the the thing you want to do is like as someone who's learning in public is genuinely like put out there that I am not an expert right the the reason that's the case is like sorry I need water CU so people can see through it real easily you might have other people that are that one or two

steps behind where you're at and they don't necessarily know any better so they're they're latching on to whatever you're saying but um you'll have other people that are steps ahead of you going like like what the hell are you talking about um so it becomes very obvious and then what happens is that especially because it's social media you might find that you're in a spot where people are like you better stop like saying stuff like that because it's misinformation and instead they're basically blasting you versus trying to help you because there's a difference if you're putting information out there online saying I'm learning in public someone will say hey by the way like actually you could think about this a different way like here's a different takeaway from that here's a correction like people are trying to help but when you sort of masquerade as

an authority figure on something and you're clearly not people will call you on your and then it's going to feel like they're attacking you so you can talk about the same types of things but how you present it can be very different so what I notice that I don't really like is people misunderstanding this difference and and going well I'm going to you know I'm going to be a content creator and they start talking about things that they don't have a lot of experience in and they're calling it learning in public like that's how they justify it because maybe they are but the presentation of it is not great so I see a lot of that um I'm not a fan of that so I I would just recommend if you're watching this uh if you're like well now I don't know if I'm supposed

to learn in public I I would like I still strongly encourage it but understand that difference right the if you're learning in public the the goal is not well how do I amass followers and and monetize my audience and like no like just post stuff that you're learning about and talk about it as such right get feedback you're using social networks to interact with other people that you can learn from for different perspectives that's the value in it the secondary value is that that other people can see how you're learning if they a step or two behind you and go oh like interesting let me come along for this ride okay so hopefully that helps but that's one of the things I don't really like now um I'll share that I had this experience and it's a little bit outside of of tech specifically but

I had this experience with with content creation itself because there's a lot of stuff on social media and especially when people start trying to monetize audiences and stuff like that I feel like things get really slippery really fast and I remember so I have a newsletter on the side it's growing very slowly um so I I think I'm have 72 issues of the newsletter right now it's a if you want to check it out it's weekly. deev leader.com but if you're like I don't want to pay for anything like that's totally cool you can still subscribe if you're interested in the content everything that you get going forward is free which means you can just keep the emails in your inbox and then you have access to anything that comes after these issues that are out so um I had this experience with my newsletter

where I saw other people that seemed like they were a step or two ahead and of course like I'm like hey I'm curious how are you doing your growth like how is this working for you and some I'm not making this up by the way I'm not going to say anyone's names if the person ever watches this or they know I'm just being totally transparent but um someone was talking about how they had this like rapid growth and they were kind of like it kind of looked like hey I'm learning in public about my newsletter like here's things that are working for me or like see my growth but don't know if it was like to advertise their newsletter I don't know if it was to boast about it I don't like to think that this person is just out there to boast cuz I

think they are trying to be very helpful so I had asked like hey what's what's going on like how are you getting growth like that because my newsletter is not growing like that at all and I don't think it's I always say this like when it comes to content this is something to think about right like if I were to write the best article that's ever been created or to create the best video that's ever been produced it doesn't actually matter if no one ever knows about it right if I uploaded it and it was never served any Impressions you'd never know if I published the best newsletter article and I had zero subscribers and it went out to zero people it doesn't matter how good the writing is or how valuable the information is no one ever saw it so what I'm trying to

figure out is like if you're getting rapid growth how are people hearing about your your thing whether it's videos or in this case newsletters right um now don't get me wrong because I understand that on like a platform say like on YouTube where you're watching this that if people are watching YouTube will go oh like let me serve it to more of a wider audience they control uh where it's being fed out to so I understand this concept in fact this channel in particular is absolutely decimating my main Channel absolutely decimating it with watch time with click-through rate with with everything it's nuts there's 8,500 subscribers on the other channel at the time of writing um there's almost 500 I think like overnight I added like 30 subscribers and like I'm literally just ranting in a car like this right no editing nothing no thumbnails

and it's decimating my other channel and it's just because YouTube is serving it to more people so people are sticking around longer YouTube likes that right they're going to go oh let's put it in front of more people and I bet you if I had really catchy thumbnails and if this channel starts doing well I'm going to start changing my thumbnails I'm going to have the cars and stuff that I well I got to get the TT fixed upu but all you know I'm going to make better thumbnails where people say oh like look at this cool car and then you're stuck with me ranting um that's the the clickbait but see how I ramble a lot so this this individual I reached out to them and I said like hey like I'm curious like would you mind sharing and they literally had been running

their newsletter for 6 months okay and stated they're not trying to hide behind it this is the thing that really got me they're not pretending like oh I've been at this for years I'm an expert they've been running it for six months and they said to me well basically like I can uh I can provide my coaching services to you to tell you how I did it and this is where I was like nope absolutely not like uh again I don't think that this individual is a bad person I think I think they're probably doing very well as a like as a side business kind of person I think they're trying to help people with their content so I don't I'm not here to be like no like screw them like they're terrible but to me that kind of move is not something I morally

agree with I'll give you another example that's a complete parallel to this okay so um I stopped body building at the beginning of this year but I've been in a gym regularly for 20 years and so I've been on a bodybuilding stage I've dieted down I bulked up I'm 5'4 I've been over 200 lb uh not definitely not lean at 200 lb so I've never been a professional okay but I have been on a bodybuilding stage I've been doing it for a long time it's a lifestyle kind of thing and I stopped at the beginning of this year uh to try and you know Focus all on more of my health I'm going to I'm doing cross fit now with all that said over the years I have had people say hey I would love to get more in the gym I'd love to take

it more seriously or diet-wise I would love to eat better can you help and at no point in my entire life of 20 years of being in a gym I'm over 20 I started I guess maybe it was like 21 years now wow um at no point did I say okay but it will cost you now you might be listening and you're saying well you're stupid for not capitalizing on that and maybe but it's sort of against my morals because I feel like I am not I am not an expert on that at least not to a point where I feel like it's fair to take someone's money for that you could argue again that's stupid move Nick you could have made my from doing it but it's not morally how I'm aligned with that kind of stuff so I don't do it so again

when this oh man some crazy stuff over on the other side um so when this person was kind of saying like hey I've been doing this for 6 months I'll coach you on it I'm like nah man like I'd rather eat my thumbs dude like that feels like slime to me and that's kind of the next thing is um I'm not trying to bucket this person into it because again I think that they have a lot of really helpful content they have a huge audience so obviously it's working well for them and you know truly props to them that the whole let me offer you coaching even though I have 6 months of experience like n not for me everything else they're doing that I'm aware of good job proud of you and I mean it seriously I'm not that might sound fous but like

I mean it but there's a lot of people and it's because the accessibility to this type of stuff is so much easier now anyone can go get a Blog setup anyone can get a phone out and record a video and put it on YouTube there's so much accessibility to go put out content that seemingly anyone can go be a Creator and if they're really good at kind of selling their ideas and communicating them now you're Ena anyone that can go sell courses anyone that can sell coaching courses so becomes very interesting because you get this like absolute wave of people hitting social media bu my course by my coaching whatever and there's going to be people that are so good at making valuable courses offering good coaching truly and then there's going to be so many people that are absolutely terrible literally just trying to

make a quick buck and now it's on you the potential consumer of social media to go figure out what's what right so to this person's question like why are so many people in Tech kind of doing this like I think it's just because the accessibility is there um people are seeing it as an opportunity and they're like I can do that I can make a quick buck and they will so um I think that's happening a lot um aside from monetizing stuff uh some people like genuinely they might really enjoy um having eyes on them right and I don't I don't think personally I don't think there's anything wrong with that if that's something that you enjoy like I like having attention like I it might sound like oh they're just being vain but I mean like are they hurting anyone like I don't know

like if that's what makes them happy and then you might say well their values are misaligned yeah sure they're not align with yours um so people like attention I mean whatever they're not hurting anyone great like yeah get on videos and go do stuff and be in front of people like good for you that's making you happy um ironically I'm not that way and you might say well that's that's Nick like you're you're literally filming yourself in a car obviously you want attention um I'll give you some background um I ran a social media account for modifi my modified car and um I I much more enjoy creating something and having people admire the thing I create versus attaching myself to it and I don't know if that makes sense so when I had my TT is the modified car I'm talking about so I

would take that car to car shows and I wouldn't like parade around it like look at me look at me look at my car it would be something like this is something that I've dreamed up and now it's on display I want you to enjoy it if you never know that it's my car that's totally fine like I don't need to be associated with it I just like being able to create create things that people are like wow that's cool or wow that's useful and it's the same thing with my content so I make videos because it's a a delivery format it is one way to create content that people can get value from so then you might say well why don't you you know just make um headless videos and just talk if you don't care and it's because I think that there's a

better delivery mechanism if you see my face I think it would be a way better delivery mechanism if you saw someone else's face that wasn't mine right like it's not like I'm I'm not like Brad Pit and you're like oh look at this guy like no I'm just a dude man so I just think it's better to have a human doing the interaction so that's why I'm using videos it's not because I want to be um the face of it like I need that attention right so um some people do want that and that's totally fine I I genuinely don't know cuz I've never compare to other Industries like Tech might be more prevalent in this way where people are making content and stuff because as people working with technology they're on computers or mobile devices significantly more than people in other roles and as

a result they're like well I'm I'm on these devices I see see this stuff more I don't know I'm just kind of hypothesizing um it could be that they're they're around so many other people that they recognize are having challenges and going I think I can help here and because I have a technical background I understand like how to get videos and stuff recorded how to upload them how to how to start a blog right like I just wonder if it is much more accessible to tech people and they have more uh visibility into people that uh would seemingly be interested in their content so that's a hypothesis I don't I don't have data on that give me one sec so on the core stuff in like monetizing an audience um I have sort of you know vowed that I will try to create as

much free content as I possibly can that's helpful and I'll continue to do it um I I have another yet another Channel um and it's really just a weekly it's almost like a weekly video diary where I'm documenting my entire content journey and I've described in those entries like for monetizing my audience I I've been saying my intention is to take the money that comes from that and to reinvest it right so uh I think I finally on my main Channel make up to up to $3 a day on YouTube $3 it cost me between $500 and $1,000 to have videos edited for the month okay so I lose a lot of money I lose a lot of money and time making YouTube videos so when I sell courses I'm using that money to be able to fund being able to create YouTube videos to

pay for my hosting for my website to like for for doing other stuff it's related to content creation I was paying for social media automation tools so that I could get my content set out uh sent out more places that's why I started building brand ghost so I said hey look like these tools I'm using they obviously have a value I'm paying money for them but I'm hitting limits with them and I can build a better tool so then I started building brand go right so but other like I was paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars every month for uh different automation tools and tools to support content creation so yes I monetize my audience yes I sell courses but like the differ here remember I was saying I've been you know going to the gym for like 21 years now I've been writing code

since I was 14 I know some people started before me right that's okay uh so uh I'm 35 now and so that's 21 years of writing code the difference because that's the same amount of time for both of those things right I have the same amount of time doing like bodybuilding that I have soft development so why don't I look like Mr Olympia well one of these things I do professionally and the other one is a hobby so I feel like I have a lot more professional experience and for me to be able to monetize an audience I don't feel like I'm being a slime ball because I can put a lot of Professional Knowledge and experience into a course whereas for bodybuilding and like so workout plans and nutrition I'm like no like I I've never done that professionally I'm not educated at it

I've never done it professionally I'm just a dude that likes to lift weights and eat the same food over and over again so like like I can tell you what I do but I don't want to charge you for it okay so that's the difference for me um when it comes to content creation and monetization um as I I'm approaching the office here I'm just getting off the highway um something else like I I just I'll share a little bit about like why I make content right so um if you don't know the original story so I started Dev leader which is my my own sort of personal brand I started that in 2013 and that's because when I had been moving into like a an engineering manager role and trying to start taking it more seriously like hey this is a real difference in

in respon responsibilities uh I was trying to do the learn and public thing so I started writing my blog and I started writing about things that I knew and things that I was learning about so that it was like hey here's a resource if you're like me you're in this spot where like you're transitioning from a uh a developer into a management role cuz it's a tough move like here you go come learn with me right like I'm on my journey hopefully this helps you on your journey too um um but I kind of fell into this trap of like I'm putting material out there and like and no one's looking at it so it became very demotivating and I gave up so uh I started in 2013 and I gave up because I was like why am I spending time writing blog posts and

like reading about this stuff if no one's going to read it anyway so it was kind of like I feel like the I looked at the incentive the wrong way because I was like well I'm looking for people to view it and the reality is like if I would have kept just doing it for myself that's 2013 I'd be 11 almost 12 years into into creating content online um and that's kind of why in at the start of uh sorry at the end of 2022 I realized there's these other creators who have done amazing at creating content online and I'm like they've been doing it for like some of them like four years 5 years and I'm like man I would have had another 5 years experience doing this kind of thing on them and look how successful they are at creating content having a

big audience being able to deliver value and I was like this is it's so dumb that I never stuck with it because it takes a long time some people it happens like overnight because they have a viral whatever but like if they're not prepared to continue or if their goal is just being trying to be viral on everything they'd burn out so fast right so anyway when I got back into it I said I want to create content to help people I wonder now if my audience is different because now I have been a manager at that point I've been a manager for 2022 so like 10 years so is it really a let me learn in public experience or can I help other software Engineers because that's what I do at my day job right can I help other software Engineers can I and

this is where I would like to move into can I help other engineering managers because I've been doing this at this point for 12 plus years so you know like I think that these kinds of things evolve but the way I look at it is like I'm always going to be learning right I don't want to hide and like masquerade when I'm learning things and try to be an expert but I'm always going to be learning so my goal was like okay let's kick this off again but if you want to get over that hurdle where you're like no one's even seeing my stuff anyway I said there's no secret to it the secret is just keep doing it and that's what I told myself and I said you're just going to keep putting out videos every week you're going to write a blog article

I think I wanted to aim for one blog article a month and three videos a week and before I started coding brand ghost like sort of full full time outside of work uh I was up to two live streams a week three videos a week six blog articles a week a newsletter a week um three short form videos a day we getting posted uh like just like a Content machine right I'm like it's going out because I system everything I was doing because I knew that if I didn't do that that I would give up again and again that's why I started building brand ghost was because I I see the value in systemizing content production and Publishing that it there is no tool that does what I need at that scale so I'm going to make it so these days why is it that

I make content well number one and you don't have to believe this if you don't want to but number one reason for me is it's actually fulfilling um you get a lot you get a lot of from people online either trolling disagreeing starting arguments about whatever they want that stuff sucks but it only takes one person to send a message or to leave a comment to be like oh man thanks so much that helped just takes one person it doesn't matter what anyone else is saying one person to say thank you you helped me that feels good that's a fulfilling thing okay my job pays me well I'm not doing this because I'm scrambling to try and make extra dollars and like it's nice if I can monetize an audience and it's nice if there's extra money so yes this is point number two great

if I can create some type of business out of this on the side lovely I don't think anyone's going to say no to being able to create extra income so again I would be lying if I said oh like no I don't want any extra dollars everyone wants extra money but it's not the primary motivation because I just told you how much money I spend just on video editing I'm literally losing money on video editing I could I could just stop doing YouTube and I could save myself another 00 to $1,000 a month but I enjoy helping I don't enjoy that this stupid SUV has no backup camera no sensors I could be inside this wall that I just backed up into um the third reason I do it is for personal brand and I never want to find myself this is going to sound

exaggerated but let me let me say it I never want to find myself in a position where I need to be desperately trying to convince others of of my capabilities my backgrounds my skills right I want to be in a position where people go we want that person okay and I'm not saying that I'm there I'm not saying that's an easy thing to do but aspirationally I want to be in a position where I never have to be trying to beg to get a an opportunity that I want I would love to be able to Showcase that I will be the fit that someone's looking for so that could be from a job security perspective that could be from a collaboration perspective I want my personal brand to be the thing that carries that for me so I hope that makes sense um I I

don't think I'm anywhere near done on that so number one helping people because that actually feels good um again that's one of the reasons why sticking in management for me has been really good is that takes a long time but once you start to have like um momentum with people on the team where they're growing and they're thankful and like it's just it feels so good um just to be able to help extra income yes no one's going to say no to extra dollars number three is personal brand so that's why I do this stuff um and I hope that helps so if if you're looking to get into content creation learn in public I think is great if you are maybe you're beyond that and you're like hey I do want to create content I think that I have a lot of valuable advice

to offer uh I'm terrible at selling things brand ghost is literally free for you to cross poost across every single platform so if you don't want to pay for anything you can still use brand ghost and still post across platforms so feel free to check that out I hope you thought this was helpful if you have any questions that you want answered comment below or send me a message if you want it to be anonymous and I'll see you later