 Is this thing on? It is. Great. In the year 2000, I got my first web development job, and I was really lucky because it was for a major publishing company, and I got to work with big websites right from the beginning. My first job was to build this form that users could use to send an article or a link to an article to a friend. It was very difficult for me because I barely had any school done before that, and I barely knew how to program. And I also had to learn a new programming language and learn how the web works, basically. So it must have taken like a week, at least, to build that. And probably it was a very bad solution. I don't remember the details, but one of the stupid things I remember it did was that the user could set also the sender's address on the form. So I basically created a nice email spam server there. It didn't matter, though, because it was the year 2000, and I don't think there was much spam then. Maybe there was, but websites weren't exploited in the way that they are nowadays. So I had to learn how forms work, and looking back right now, I think that was a very good place to start because you still need to know the basics like that, like how a form is sent, like how HTTP works, and stuff like that. But you have to excuse me because I'm not feeling very well and I had to go to my notes. Yeah, what I do remember, though, like I took this task very seriously. And I wondered, why did I do so? And only later I figured out that it was because it's kind of aligned with my core motivating factors. I only later realized that one of those, the primary one, is learning. And I really wanted to learn this stuff, and I was lucky because I got to work with people that really knew their craft then. So I was learning very fast because of those other people, but also that because I was motivated in learning. So I realized that it didn't make much sense to go back to school because there I'd spend, I think, one and a half years and learn basically nothing that would help me in my real job. So I basically, it didn't go back to school. I stayed at that. It was a summer job, but I stayed there. And I went back to school after that just for a brief period of time, but just realized it was not for me the way to learn. So I think looking back, taking the learning seriously from the beginning and learning the basics of what I do very, very well was crucial for me, and I think it's useful. Even if you think you are not a learner, which I kind of doubt because a lot of this profession is learning and a lot of people here at least are OK with learning constantly. But anyway, if you are such a person that doesn't like learning too much, I would concentrate my efforts to the very basics of the job because things I learned then, a lot of them are still applicable today. I have a few stories, actually a bunch of stories prepared for this afternoon, but I have a cold, and so I'll be skipping some of them. But lucky for you, I'll skip only the boring parts. And so I'll get to the juicy ones only. So the next one is especially juicy because it's a story of how I failed spectacularly. So, but it's been so long since it happened, so now I can tell that without being embarrassed too much. I was at my second job. It was the 2002 or 2003, right about then. And I was working for another publishing company, and they had their CMS, which was built in Pearl from all the languages. It was built on ASP, Microsoft ASP technology, which even back then allowed multiple languages. But I didn't like Pearl, so I started to rewrite the CMS in VB script because that's the future. The project was doing fine, and then we were ready to deploy, like, tested on one website that we were maintaining, and that happened to be this website that wasn't in any need of special redesign. So we were just about to change the CMS to a new version, basically. There were only some features, but nothing major. And the company was not any small business, but something which I would mention, but a publicly traded company anyway. The migration, I needed to do a migration because the database schema was almost the same, but a bit different, so I created a script that would transfer the content from the production to the new version of the website. And I was stupid enough to work with the live version of the website because who takes copies? It's a waste of time. I was running my script and noticed some errors in the results, and so I cleared the new database and modified my script and run it again, and did this a bunch of times. The idea was that when I was done with the migration, we would present the new website to the client, and then they would approve it, and we would go live. But unfortunately, I never got that far. Somewhere there, I got confused with the databases, and I accidentally cleared the production database. I was stunned. I couldn't breathe, I remember. But of course, my first reaction was that where are the backups? Because it's a live site, it must have backups. So I contacted my boss, and he wasn't aware of any backups, but let's see. We found some, but they were from the previous century, so they were very helpful. So I basically panicked, and I couldn't do anything at that point. But luckily, my boss, he didn't panic. He was an older guy. He had seen a lot. So he assessed the situation, like what do we have here? So how far did you get with your script, like how much of the content is all right on the new version? And I don't remember how much, but it wasn't that far off. The only trouble was that we didn't have any backup, so we didn't have the missing content anywhere. I don't remember who came up with the idea, but the result was that we basically, or I, because I was on the plane, I went through Google's cached pages and copied the content manually from there. It took a few hours just, so it wasn't that bad. Then my boss, he made a rubbish story to the client that we just decided to go ahead with the new version, because it's basically the same. I wasn't at that conversation, and neither would I want it to be there. But so I don't know what happened there, but in the end, everybody was happy, and we had that site running there. Fine. Yeah, I learned a lot, obviously, but obviously about backups, you got to have backups, multiple backups, and you had to make sure you have the backups. You just don't think you have backups, and that's kind of obvious. But I think more importantly, like you need to trust that there are other people that will help you if you are in need. You just need to ask. In this case, it was my boss, who clearly saved the day, but it doesn't have to be your boss. It can be your colleague or a spouse, your friend, anybody. But more in the context of this talk, yeah, lost my point again. Yeah, when you fail, and then if you fail like that, like really bad, but then you survive somehow, you start to learn that even if the worst thing happens, you still get through. You are still alive, you're still breathing. You didn't lose your job. I guess I could have lost my job. I didn't. So you start trusting yourself more. Maybe for you, you need to fail multiple times, but like every time you survive, you get more confidence. And at least for me, that was kind of the moment that I started to not worry too much. But then, obviously, it's a process. It takes a lot of time. We'll skip people because we're fins and challenges. Well, I don't like challenges. Let's talk about money. Well, actually, this isn't about money, but it was a good word to put in there. I'd spent eight years in these two different publishing companies when I decided to join this Microsoft consultancy, so to speak. And I dared to ask for a salary that seemed outrageous to me. I'm never going to get that. But they said, yes. There was no debate, so I felt really happy. I'm going to be so happy in this job. Well, I didn't really think that. But it felt good. It was kind of like a recognition, my salary. I didn't like it. Obviously, the money was good. And for some reason, I got a lot of praise all the time. People thought I was this superstar, but really, I was just a blogger. They confused those things. I got very challenging and interesting tasks and projects to deal with. The people were nice. I still didn't like it. The reason was that I didn't feel like home there. I still don't know why it was that, but I've been thinking about it. And I just probably just did. I didn't fit in culturally. I'm a geek. Most of you are geeks. And that was a very geeky company. But I guess it was too geeky. I don't know. Just didn't feel like home. So I kind of learned there that you need to feel home. At least, I need to belong for me, myself. I don't know if I can give any advice. I was thinking about this, and I thought it makes sense to talk to the people that you are going to work with if you are thinking about starting a new position in some company that you don't know beforehand. Talk to the actual people that you'll be working for, not just the people that will interview you. That might help. Then if you have some information, you can even try to imagine what it is to work with them. How is your day going to be? And whether you feel like it's like it is you. I ended up spending like two and a half years there. And it was fine. In the end, it got better. But I really didn't want to be there. Never been in a job. I guess I was. Anyway, it was one of my shortest. So it was about, yeah, after that, I decided to start a new company. And that was like 2010, I guess. Just before I started the company called H1, a WordPress company that doesn't exist yet anymore, I was talking to the CTO of that Microsoft company that I still work for for a couple of days. And he was also starting a new business. So we got talking. And he asked me, what is the ideal size of a company you would like to run in terms of how many people work there? And I had the answer already, because I already had fantasized about running a company for a long time. And I said, like, 20 people. Something like 20, maybe 30 people. And I had the number, because I thought having 20, 30 people would be small enough that there weren't that much internal politics or stuff like that, people not liking each other. It could still be kind of a family. But it would be large enough to do interesting things, have big clients or big enough clients and projects. But the CTO reacted to my idea, was that he couldn't see me running a company of that size. I don't remember the exact words, but he couldn't see that happening. I don't know why. It was probably just that even in that geeky company, I was not much of a people person. And he thought it would require kind of people skills. It could be something else. It doesn't matter, really. And I could have taken that, and I could be very discouraged about something like that. You can't do that. But instead, I chose to prove this guy, like he was wrong. I can do this. Well, I couldn't, in a sense that we couldn't grow to that size ever. But it didn't really matter, because that wasn't the goal. It was just a vision. And many times when I ran H1, I was thinking about that guy saying that I can't do this. And every time it gave me some strength to continue. Of course, if people keep telling you that you can't do this all the time, it can be good. But sometimes you can choose, like, how do you react to people giving their opinions about what you can or cannot do. And in this particular case, I chose to take it as a challenge. Late 2015, I got divorced. As you probably can imagine, it's hard to do your work when, like, the changes are happening in your life. I think it took about a month, about a month that I was really down, and I could just barely good handle my basic routines. But then it started to get better. Right about then, I kind of created this strange game for myself. Every month I was doing billing. Like, end of the month, I was looking at how many billable hours everybody at H1 had created. And I noticed that that particular month, I was ahead. I was doing most billing, and I was trying to find that enjoyment on little things back then. But then I realized, like, if I do this regularly, like, if I start to track this, because I know myself, I am, like, a goal oriented. If you give me numbers, I try to make them better all the time. So I made this game myself. I want to bill the most every month. And I did that for about four months or so, and then I was feeling so good anyway, like, internally motivated. I didn't need any extra help I stopped doing. Sometimes, if you feel down or even depressed, like, lifting yourself above the actual issues that, when you are down, they might seem impossible or very, very hard to tackle. In a simple way like that, can help. Like, in my case, it made me see, like, a customer problem. Something wasn't working, or I had to build this one thing. It was, instead of being an issue, like, how to solve this, it became just, like, a numbers game. Like, if I spend four hours in this, I will get four points in my tracking list. Yeah, work for me. Doesn't work in every situation. Kind of the basic message here is to know yourself, because the better you know yourself, the better you can come up with ways of thinking. So that you can trick yourself, in a way, to see the issues in a better light, so that they are easier to tackle. I would go so far as to recommend that you would, like, regularly, maybe even weekly, think about yourself, basically. How did you, during that week, like, react to things? What did feel good? What did feel bad? And you can do this in many ways. You're like, you can meditate. You can write a diary. You can talk to a friend. But whatever you do, like, you try to learn about yourself, like, the next day try to apply what you've learned and repeat the cycle, like, test yourself, like, as a test subject. My name is Aki Bjorklund. I'm a lead developer at the Zealand family now, which is now owns the company I mentioned, H1. And we are hiring WordPress developers. Come talk to me. Thank you, Jaron. I hope you feel better soon.