 Hey everybody This is this is a cool new little thing that we're trying and I stumbled across Another podcast that I really quite liked and and I got in touch with the guy that runs it and asked him if you wanted to come And have a chat with us on our podcast And he's not based in the UK. So this is a virtual slash remote And Pubcast and we decided to double down on that as well because me and Paul I need them together So I'm in my shed Jordy's in his shed and Paul's in his kitchen. Yeah, and I Am I am even though I'm not a pub. I am gonna have a drink Excellent What I've got in my shed It's a whiskey Well, you're gonna have a cup of coffee or something. Yeah, I've got a coffee on the go Do you got a glass of water or something? I don't unfortunately and I don't have to leave I won't do that to you That's all right. So, okay. Well, I'm drinking a glass of fire and cane from Glenn Fiddish a Scotch whiskey Which is a bit smoky because yeah, I have a little fire in my shed and it's nice Cheers everybody cheers. Cheers Okay, so I've mentioned you the fact that I heard you podcast Jordy the big break podcast Could you just tell us there's a little bit about yourself? Yes, so I have as Jeff kindly mentioned a podcast called the big break software podcast and I have a team of developers about 45 and growing and we are big into scrum and agile methodologies although mostly my developers handle that side and I Was curious about scrum myself So I've been Looking on your site and wanting to learn more about you know agile methodologies And as part of that, I also have my own software as a service to companies. Well, they're not companies. They're services and Obviously we do daily stand-ups and Sprints to get you products or the features published on into the products and We've been finding it hugely important, but also challenges because we're doing this all remote So we don't have the advantage of standing in a boardroom You know Doing face-to-face. So there's some challenges with that. Yeah See and there's there's a good example already of how we don't need to script it because these things just these things just come out so We're remote here. This is yeah This is a big topic in agile Remote distributed teams. Yeah, where people aren't all together. Now, you're as I understand it your your team is Together, but you're not necessarily yes, and that is huge. Yeah, that's huge. So I have the advantage that they all go into the office. So They're based out of India and so I went to meet them and I go and I go and meet them when I can you know India is obviously far from Europe but but So I have what I have two guys that I've deal with on a daily basis that we run it as a sort of small team to make sure the other projects are going well and they are essentially the scrum masters, but I don't know how how Rigidly they're following any, you know protocols for for being You know like real scrum masters. So this is why I'm also curious about You know what you find is the most important elements of being a scrum master who should be and how many should there be all that sort of thing? What what what kind of what kind of products or services are your guys delivering? What what domains and industries are you in? It's all it's all software development. We do Microsoft technologies So most of the most of the projects that were involved in our sort of building MVPs So we usually have between two and maybe five developers working on an MVP at a time and It works well, and so we've been working together for about two years and and as a team we're We're slowly figuring out how the best ways to work with each other So but what have you thought have you found so far what's come up like challenges? Yeah, well and the best ways to work together. What have you found? So definitely the daily stand-ups has been really good and keeping them short because if you make them too long They you know that people dread them. So we're like, okay, so we and we do them at the same time So for me, it's seven in the morning basically the way I open the day And all would be asleep at that time of day. Yeah There's only one seven o'clock in there in every day, and that's the one in the evening. Don't do seven o'clock in the morning That's right Yeah, so that but I'm a morning person. So it's that the seven is like, you know, yeah But it's it's been would your clients be involved in that No, they we have weekly client meetings and with that there's sort of more progress Sort of progress. So and the reason I like that we've tried both ways but I think that Having that weekly meeting sets it sets a sort of deadline like we better have something to show the client So I think I found that has been really helpful So If someone's asleep at the wheel, that's you know, we're like scrambling on Tuesday Like what are we showing the client tomorrow? You know, and and it always works out, you know We're having daily stand-ups and I'm checking on that every every day to make sure that okay What's the you know the status of this? What's the status of this status of this? Yeah, so you kind of you're sort of almost representing the client if you like that Yeah, I am because I'm sort of the sales lead I guess well and it's because I'm it's it's Yeah, I guess I'm the sales lead it's since it's my company, you know, I'm the founder Okay, cool. What kind of tools do you use for the the stand-ups? So we use we use slack Which has been really good and and we can have product we can divide the projects up In slack into the different slack channels, so we can have different teams It's a great tool for that we use we use a Skype as well, so we can have group calls between the different members. Yeah, and And Jira you guys are probably familiar with Jira. Yeah You don't like it really What's more important is do you and your team like it we actually do like it We were using Trello as well and Trello is really hard to manage. It was messy And and it was just messy because it was hard It's I think maybe okay for a smaller project, but Jira we find we find to be it's I Think it's it if you understand it that you can understand a project quickly it's But I mean with any tool really it can get it can get out of control But if it stays if you've got control over it, then it's yeah, be really useful. Tell me what tools do you guys that what tools do you like? For a remote team, I mean what miss will stay in my world We use said the tool that we use in now, so we try and get as much face to face I mean these work we're using zoom now, right? So this and I'm not sure how old zoom is but it seems to me like and One of the newer video conferencing tools that you can use and obviously and record these things as well that you I'm gonna sound me and Jeff came from a telecoms company where this this type of technology in 15 years 20 years ago wasn't wasn't available So you had to we had to work a lot harder to to get online and to get Face-to-face with people so I think there's a lot more face-to-face tools that you can use now That actually like like Skype and like WebEx and like Google Hangouts and all these things that make The virtual nature of team working a lot less virtual a lot more real So I think yeah anything like that that we use is always going to be a benefit because you just get to see people's faces and Yeah, and you can and the speed of the internet and the connection speed these days is much better than it ever has been So you can you can fairly quickly fire these things up and have a conversation On the other side of the world so that's that's the main thing I think yeah I mean in terms of managing the project though, you're not use using zoom like, you know, let's imagine Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no tricky note concept You know moving sticky notes around the things that are there tools that you guys use for that You've mentioned some of the ones that are you so I've just been using I've been the prototoner for my own book project, which I had collaborators on from all around the world Yeah My editor is in one country, my design is in another, my illustrator is in another, my reviewers are in other countries. So we use the Swedish tools to do that. We use Trello and Slack, those two have the integrations there. So, and Dropbox and Google Drive. Those are the four tools that we used to manage the backlog, to manage the progress, to have sort of smaller group conversations and collaborations within the Slack channels. And then Zoom to add that richness to the conversation and to capture what we've done that sprint, if you like, in the sprint reviews. So you feel the video on like this is a crucial element, having the video on and having video call. We're a big fan of being able to see the whites of people's eyes. Yeah, I think just, it's a little bit like having a constant view, even though having a connection open, I mean, in several offices that I used to work in, they'd have just a constant Skype connection open just into the kind of team space so you can see people walking around. You can see there's life in another part of the organization or there's people genuinely milling around an office. I think as much of that as you can have, I think it's always gonna be a good thing to see people moving around. Even if you're not talking to them directly, you could almost tap you and knock the virtual screen and get someone's attention, that type of thing. Yeah, that's interesting. I can't remember the name of the tool, but there was a cool tool I came across a couple of years ago with Lego bricks on the wall. So you had a wall with those big base plates covered, the Lego base plates covered the wall. And each block represented something different. So I think it was the shape of the block represented the size of the work and the color of the block represented the person and so on. And you took a picture through the app and that automatically updated the board in like a web-based client. So you could replicate that online and physically because as well as the face-to-face virtual thing, one of the things that we've found just seems to be a big thing for teams. And it'd be interesting whether your co-located team finds this as well is the tactile nature of being able to move a sticky note or move a Lego brick or rip up a card, not just click close on JIRA. Yeah, or Trello. But you're sort of moving things around in Trello though, aren't you, because you've got the columns. Yeah, yeah, and it's a digital replication of it. It would just, I still like having those. I can't get this on there, but I've got, so I've got a Trello board that I work with today. I've got a list of things that I'm working with today but I've also written those things out on post-it notes on my desk in front of a camera to show you. But I've got one here that says, Geordie Recordings. It's duplication, but I like being able to feel that up and stick it in the fire when I'm done. Yeah, the other thing I think, which is an important psychological aspect in an office environment. And I was just talking about this just yesterday in a class, I just finished yesterday, is you have a physical task board in an office or a team space. People see you stand up and they see you walk over to that board, even maybe subconsciously, but they see you pick up a task and they see you move it. That's demonstrating something's changing, something's making progress, something's done, something's blocked. And that's a, it's a physical commitment that that team member is making to the rest of their team for them to see. People don't see that. I don't think if you open up a screen on your laptop and update your ticket in Jira or Trello, if you move it there, people don't really, people aren't seeing it physically as well as seeing it from an audit point of view. So I think there's a huge commitment level gain that you get by physically picking up a task, putting your avatar on it or whatever it might be physically on the board and moving it into a different column. It's demonstrating I'm doing this work now or I've done this work now. That makes sense. If cost was no issue for you, Jordy, would you have your clients face-to-face with your dev team more often or would you prefer the distance? It's not so cost, it's not cost. I guess it would be cost like in terms of me hiring a team of 40 developers in Switzerland, it would be, you know, you know, I don't know, over a million dollars or something, you know, as well as I could be. It also travel costs, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I think it is cost, if it were not a factor for me to have, you know, like it was, you know, that's a good question because I've always worked remote. So I'm used to it and I'm used to some of the challenges which is obviously not having that face-to-face contact but I'm also looking for ways to improve it because I think it can be done and I'm a big believer in having some face-time. So I'm flying over to see clients next week and it's a massive cost for me but, you know, it's important to go and see clients and have face-to-face because, I mean, nothing can replace that, you know, you have to get to know who's on the other end of the line. But, you know, having this video, I think is a good idea for me. That's, we usually just do it without, I don't even know what the guys look like, you know. And now I'm gonna go a little bit about them. You know, it's a big thing. Just starting this, we're in the middle, so I'm not sure when this is gonna go out but at the moment, maybe the world's come to an end already with the coronavirus but we are in the middle of this thing where people are canceling flights and companies are saying to their people, you need to work from home and don't shake hands and all this kind of stuff, which is probably an overreaction but it does beg the question of, you know, should we, are we in a position where we can cope with what has become a more distributed world and perhaps some of the challenges of not being able to travel? What would make your team, if they could ask for anything that would make them more productive? What do you think they would ask for? We'll see, they have the advantage of being able to work all together. So I think that I know that clients, a big objection that I need to work through when I'm finding projects to work on is are you willing to work with remote developers? You know, and it depends, they have to have had a previous good experience in that way or they're not open to it. And so if they haven't, then it's almost like I can't even, I can't try and convince them that, oh, listen, my team's great and we can overcome challenges that you've had before because they're like, they're not open to it. So I have to, that's a challenge that I need. So if I could deliver my services in Switzerland at the same cost that I could do with my provider, my vendors in India, I'd be the busiest man in the space. So I do have to overcome that challenge. Like, okay, I can't even mention the word India until I know that client is, until I know that he's gonna be okay with it. And so if I'm coming at them, okay, I'm in Switzerland, I can handle this project and they're like, okay, that's great. And then I have to break them into that fact because they might get wary of it. But by that time, I found that they're okay working remotely. So is that your equivalent, because you're effectively your own entrepreneur, right? So you start with this business. And is that your equivalent of your early adopters finding the people who are- I think that's right. Yes, I think that's right until I find the right model. So they're the early adopters. I have some long-term clients and some are just sort of project-contract-based but they may come back. So it is definitely a challenge, but I think my business is really big on referrals. So as long as I really, really treat the clients very well and baby them, and I think that on the back end, the referral business will be what ultimately gets me over that fear of people working with remote teams. Okay. I mentioned that I've heard your podcast. I'm not sure whether Paul's heard a podcast, but one of the people that you interviewed was Seth Godin. And Seth is going to be keynoting the upcoming Scrum Gathering. Oh, really? Okay. So tell Paul why he should listen to your podcast. For that show in particular, I found was very interesting with Seth. But I think for my podcast, I'm just trying to learn from people. So I'm trying to find in my industry, my show is just basically saying, how did you get from the beginning to basically where you're at now? And most of the time I'm looking for people that we would consider successful. They're sort of making, their business is making over 30 or 50,000 a month. And they've sort of passed that hump where they're in the early days where they're not really sure if they're gonna make it. And the show is really just breaking down. How did you get from zero to 30 or whatever? Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Cool. That's the premise of the show, yeah. So it's kind of to inspire people to try something or to tell them. Exactly. It's sort of like, are you thinking about software? Are you a developer and you're working for someone? Do you have an idea? And the whole thing is a journey to help these people get, to sort of break free and be an entrepreneur. And yeah, so that's the thing. That's why it's called the big break. What were the specific factors that contributed to your big break and got you to where you are? That's great. Yeah, I mean, that's, we do use, we, I personally take a lot of inspiration now from outside of my current paradigm of thinking. So in terms of trying to look at alternatives and look at abstractions about how is something, someone else has done something in a different way and had some success with it. I think from a human point of view, people need to hear success. They need to hear positive news and they need to see that there is a people can succeed rather than it's very easy to get bogged down, especially in the work that Jeff and I do. It's very easy to get bogged down in what doesn't work and what you shouldn't do. Yeah, I can imagine. And inevitably all problem solvers and like to see the barriers to the fear and something that's trying to look at the positives. That's a great idea. Yeah. Who should the interview next, Paul? Who do you like to hear about? I don't know. Yeah, yeah. So maybe some from, I don't know how many people you can see from kind of even outside the business space. So kind of maybe from the sports world or from the arts or from literature or from an author. From just from, you know, from kind of screenwriters or there was an interesting story I read about the other day and my kids put me onto this about Cain Monroe. You heard about Cain Monroe? So I think I sent you a link to this, Jeff. Oh, yeah, the kid with his arcade? Yeah, kid. A nine-year-old boy made a cardboard arcade in his dad's garage. So he recreated all these fantastic, you know, kind of lo-fi arcade machines with tickets and he would, this nine-year-old would sit behind, sit inside these boxes and feed through the tickets. But he did it in his summer holidays and he had like no customers and he's on the point of giving up and he kind of despondent this poor nine-year-old kid and until the last day of the holidays when this one guy comes in and plays his arcade, he had one customer in like eight weeks but this one customer was a filmmaker and he made a short, yeah, kind of eight-minute video and said, I'm going to make a video of what you've done. And he created, social media went viral on it and it created this flash mob idea and I think like hundreds of people came and played Cain's arcade and now there's a whole kind of global challenge that's emerged called the Cardboard Challenge where kids from all over the globe are making games and making things out of cardboard and grabbing these inspiring kids and my 10-year-old, they're studying people, what they call influencers at school and the influencers that I think are influential to me are different to what's influencing a 10-year-old kid so like YouTubers and inventors that I've not heard of and this kid came and wrote from the States he's inspiring hundreds and thousands of kids around the globe I had no idea. What's the short? I'm curious. I'll go see it after the show. You put it in the notes but you said head talk, right? I don't think it's Ted. I don't think it's officially Ted. I think if you go to Cain's arcade.com there's a couple of videos on there and it's kind of grown this whole movement. It sounds like it really moved me. It's a school educational movement. Yeah, inspiring kids to create inspiring kids to basically be entrepreneurs at the age of 9-10 that you can make something and it doesn't have to be expensive. You don't need a lot of money to get these things going but the thing that rung true to me from watching the videos was the resilience is this kid's had no customers for eight weeks. No one ever walked past his dad's garage and didn't go and go in but you only need one customer and then that can, if it's the right customer it can transform your product. It can transform your business idea. I've got a question for you, Jordy, based on that. So with all these people that you've been speaking to about their big breaks what's been the keys? I'll say keys because there might have been more than one. Is it genius? Is it creativity? Is it risk taking? Is it resilience? Is it hard work? What are the keys that you've noticed across these people that have had that success? I was just thinking when Paul was talking about the resilience of Kane sitting in his dad's garage and watching people walk by and not getting any customers I would definitely say it's part resilience and hard work. I would say the two biggest factors there was a guy that I just interviewed today actually who had some luck for sure but we say it luck you know there's no such thing as an overnight success it's that sort of thing. He was working a full-time sales job in California or something like that selling medical equipment and he started a side, he was working 60 hours with that and then he started a side hustle doing podcasting, editing services and it was two years of that so he was adding on top of his 60 until he got to the point where he could basically leave that job and then he moved to France and was able to have enough money but I mean that is not uncommon with all of the people that I interviewed it's just that little bit of resilience to get past that to the point where you could leave your full-time job and then luckily he did find he found a business that was for sale he acquired it cheaply and luckily it exploded with some proper programming so there was a little combo of both but that... You've used the word luck quite a lot there and I don't know whether it went on reflection whether you have a similar view to me I think the people that have been successful generally often attribute themselves what's happened down to luck but anybody outside what they've done will see the hard work that went into it the fact that they took that opportunity whereas other people would have let it go That's right, yeah Just the phrase you make your own luck isn't it? It's positioning too right if you're not positioned to end by taking that risk putting yourself out there you wouldn't have come across that luck Exactly, yeah So it's the positioning it's the hard work it's the resilience and I was talking to my daughter last night she came into me she was 17 and she was like I really want a business and she's trying loads of little things at the moment so she's going she designs stickers and things and they get printed on stuff she has all these different little things that she's trying and she's like I want a business I said well it doesn't work that way you know do something and if it works then you've got something you can run with but you do something and you keep going until it works or you just do something you enjoy and if it turns into a business then great not the best advice I've ever given but the idea of do just keep doing just keep doing yeah it's action and if it's not working then try something slightly different or maybe it's just you haven't got the customer yet you need to keep going until you get that customer and that's for me I think the hardest hardest thing there's an element of do I give up and try something else or do I keep going and think that customer's just around the corner that's that's that hard tipping point now isn't it that's right and I feel like I feel like we are in a perfect position being someone that teaches scrum because you're really de-risking the project down by by doing you know sprints and you could pass those that sort of methodology on to her so that she can think of and do small tasks you know first it's stickers and maybe it's on this platform or maybe she pivots to a t-shirts or something like that you know and I feel like there is something there in the resilience of moving a project forward by taking action but also taking small tests and sprinting and that's what I've I've found has worked for me because I've had you know some big failures and it was more from going all out and saying you know like building something without any customer feedback and presenting something as a finished project only to find out that people didn't really want it so having her start out by stickers I mean you can buy stickers for you know 50 pounds and then make some small tests to see what works and then kind of expand the product line to whatever you know ribbons and hair ribbons and t-shirts or whatever Interesting that Paul mentioned that who he considers successful and influential very different to his kids consider influential are there different strategies to get your big break now than there were 10 years ago do you think? That is a good question I think I don't think there is really I think I mean the strategies could be different but it comes down to those main factors you know which is really are you willing to take risk are you willing to put in the work and as I said most of these guys are the ones that were working two jobs at one point you know they have the passion to make that project work and get their big break Paul mentioned influences and when I think of influences I think of these I don't know what you call them apart from influences but the sort of social celebrities who you know have massive Instagram followers and followers and so on and that's their product is them their product is the insight into their life my kids watch Cole and Sav and I mean nothing to me but these people are incredibly successful they get sponsored because of the amount of views they get my initial reaction I think was that's I think it's probably that's not fair if I'm honest but it's probably that it's very different to you know how how I see going about getting success in terms of hard work and taking risks because all they're doing is creating videos and people are following them but if I'm being if I'm trying to take the other view they're being they're taking a massive risk inviting people into their lives yeah they are and inviting the scrutiny and the online trolling that comes with it and the amount of time it takes to make videos to produce them well to publicize them, market them follow them up and things that I think my initial reaction was overly harsh it's like you say it's the same strategy but different tactics maybe yeah well I mean it's also that they they obviously want to do that I have no interest in doing that you know and walking around and filming everything that I'm doing but it is work you know I mean it's like okay you wake up in the morning what am I going to do today I've got to produce some fabulous piece of content right or nobody's going to nobody's going to be interested in it so it is still for work so when they're putting putting together a personal brand they're they're still waking up in the morning they've got to produce some kind of content that is interesting and they also had that period of resilience where they were putting it out and nobody was interested and they are able to not quit and work through that stickability what do you think Paul you you've been looking at people outside of the world that we operate in any common factors I think we've kind of covered a lot of it I think there's an element of charisma maybe with it alongside that you've something unique about personality based creates intrigue it's a bit of a difference that people can see and that makes that attraction and there's another one on the one I think about now on Facebook which is the Aussie man you know Aussie man yeah so basically it's just an Australian guy who commentates on other people's content but his uniqueness his brand is his voice and a little bit about his appearance but you think about where that's taking him now and he's like interviewing Hollywood celebrities on the red carpet at the Oscars and things like that he's a YouTuber then just kind of online content but he's taken it from something which is just not even him in the videos but it was just commentary on like safari videos but it's amusing it's comical and it's very broad Australian accent and it's now exploded into and he's becoming kind of a journalist whatever you kind of you put it into that kind of realm so I think there's probably a charisma a uniqueness to a personality that helps maybe with if you've got an online presence or if you've got an influential social media angle but I think that helps yeah just on this I think for me I said to Freya she don't think that you have to be a genius because very few successful entrepreneurs are actually geniuses we have that kind of hero idea of them that someone invents this but most inventions aren't really inventions they're taking something that was there and making it better and a lot of it is just solving a problem that was just getting in their way so they don't see it as genius invention it was just a way of solving a problem fixing something I think that getting past that mindset of well I'm not the kind of person that can do that I'm not the kind of entrepreneurial I don't have that trait I don't think it's the case no it's definitely not I don't think and there's no I don't think there needs to be any amount of genius at all and for the most part I think that if you are going into a space where somebody is already doing it they've proven out the model so you just need to do it better and niche it out so let's say somebody is selling t-shirts to in your daughter's case someone is selling t-shirts to you know people that like black you know are from 25 to 35 they're selling in that age she can do something just to her age group from a mindset of people that she can understand like a certain thing and just niche it out start by selling to a very small market and then expand from there those are some of the most successful businesses that I've seen or the guys that start with a very small group and expand from there would you say Jordy that in your experience is it better to focus fully 100% on one idea or before you move on to pivot and move on to the next one or would you try and you know keep place multiple bets on multiple products or multiple ideas at the same time to see which ones take off well I like to focus I think that focusing at least initially make sure that you are able to give your full attention and complete it to at least 95% otherwise if you're always thinking about the next thing I think you'll just get distracted and you have a bunch of almost finished projects that never really had a chance because they're not completed so I think that in terms of software which is mostly my world if you get something almost working no one's going to like it because it's buggy so you really do need to get focus but that doesn't mean it needs to be full feature it just need to have a small subset of a core problem that you're trying to solve absolutely I don't know what Seth Godin's going to talk about the Scrum Gathering I genuinely don't know whether there's a topic for his talk or not but one thing that I remember from your interview with him that I think is relevant to the conversation here is that he was talking about the discipline that he gets into about writing and just writing a certain number of words or a certain amount of time every day even if it's rubbish it's a discipline of writing have I remembered that correctly yes that's right yeah I'm going to extrapolate that out and I'm going to say that it's not necessarily hard work because that was my initial thought it's that discipline that you get into a self-discipline is a big key factor in successful big break entrepreneurial he's a very interesting guy and a perfect example of that but I think I don't know if you follow his blog but he every day 365 days a year is posting something and it's usually like some sort of idea and they could be a paragraph or sometimes he'll come out with a full essay you know 12 page essay or something most of the time it's just short little thoughts but mostly meant to inspire but I could see him being he's got an empire now he's written 17 best-selling books or probably more by now and I'm sure he's running his own self-publishing schools and things like that so I'm sure he has a lot to say about Scrum and he's probably a big proponent of it as well yeah cool well our we're pretty much at the end of our time box really our episodes tend to be about 40 minutes 35 40 minutes because that's usually how long it takes for Paul to drink his part aside there that's a good that's a nice long casual sipping yes very slow drinker bad drinker but we really appreciate you joining us and sharing your experience that's great really good fantastic would you would you like to give a bit of a shout out to your podcast and your organization yeah so you can find me at onestopdevshop.io which I'm sure Jeff will put in the show notes and the podcast is the big break software podcast so if you are a developer or have ever had any software product ideas I basically talk to successful founders and found out how they found their the problem that they're trying to solve and we talk all things software cool well we regularly get questions about what are the podcasts out there are there so I came I stumbled across yours liked it and so thank you for joining us and sharing that with us it's been my pleasure yeah thanks Jody well good luck with everything and and we will hopefully cross paths again soon and this next time have a