Welcome and thanks for joining us. It's another episode, a part of our nonprofit Power Week thanks to Fundraising Academy cause selling education. So Jack is back with us on a Wednesday or a hop day. Some people might still refer to it as that. We are so thrilled because Jack Alotto is a CFRE and a trainer with Fundraising Academy. So today as we continue this nonprofit Power Week we are talking about mastering nonprofit major gifts. So all week we're dedicated to this topic. Even our Freyé asked and answered, yes I said Freyé for our Fundraising Academy dedicated episode. So again thank you so much to this dedication and to all of our presenting sponsors that keep this organization afloat as well as hopefully many of your organizations as you move the needle towards success in the new year. So thank you to all of our presenting sponsors for your partnership and your belief and commitment to the nonprofit sector at large. We are so grateful to have your investment in the sector. Julia Patrick you're pretty invested in the sector too my friend and you just shared in the Green Room Tratter about your volunteer philanthropic efforts and how you have really been tapped on the shoulder throughout your volunteer time to serve as an asker. I'm gonna call you an asker. I love that. So it takes a special person. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I get to have fun each and every day and serve alongside Julia as her nonprofit nerd and your nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. And again today we have Jack Alotto with us to talk about major gifts and today Jack I think we're diving into the actual solicitation. Am I right? Yes which is that third phase of that traditional major gift cycle. So this is the exciting part. You've done all your work and now you're coming to that solicitation phase. In cause selling we actually break this phase down into three different sections. We talk about presentation. We talk about handling objectives and then I'm sorry hand handling objections and then we talk about actually making that ask. Okay so before we move into this which is is a big deal. Can you just help us reframe how we got to this third phase? So we started with that identification process where you identify potential major donor givers based on your prospecting. Then you qualify them. During that pre-approach is where you try to find out everything you can about this potential donor. What their interest is. What their motivations are. What they value. The second phase of that is the cultivation phase and that's where you actually approach the donors and start your need discovery. This is where you're asking open-ended questions. This is where you're trying to get to know them. What drives them to make gifts. Where they've given to other organizations. Why they've given. What moves them to make a gift to not only your cause but any cause. This is where we discover everything about them. Now the next and third part of that major gift fundraising cycle but later but also included in the cost selling cycle is where we do that solicitation. Okay so we've worked hard through these phases and you mentioned something yesterday to Jared and I which was really interesting to me is that these don't all take the same time. They can move more quickly. They can move more slowly. You have to be judicious about understanding where you are in that relationship. It's kind of like dating.  It's been like 42 years since I've dated but I'm just I'm just figuring this out right. I mean there's a process to the human relationship that we have with our donors. But we get down to this big part and I it almost seems to me Jack that the solicitation is that point with which you do that famous Terry Axelrod statement bless and release. You work forward and you're going to move on with them or you're not right. That is that really where we are at this point. So the first part of that solicitation process is presentation. What we call in cost selling is giving them a presentation. Couple things about presentation. The first thing is face to face. You're dealing with a major donors so we recommend face to face. Now I know what you're going to ask me Julia. They're going to say how are you going to meet face to face with a potential donor during a pandemic. So that's that's your question. Everybody ask that question when we present this part of it. So there are some techniques that are important in a Zoom video and you know it's really funny because before I before we started recording you were giving me some of those techniques. One of the techniques was Jack sit up straight. Jack fix the back of your shirt. Jack lean into the camera. All of those are true and good things for us to remember when we are doing a virtual presentation to a potential donor. There are other things too you know that you you would would look at and those are just some of the really important things. Look into the camera like you're looking into the eyes of the potential donor on the other side of that Zoom video. The second thing you do in presentation which is so important here's where you provide that potential donor with the essentials your work your mission your vision your values how gifts advance your mission and what are the benefits to that potential donor to make a gift to your organization. The other thing to say in presentation is practice. Practice your presentation. It's so important and then finally we say what is your presentation style? Do you memorize your presentation? Do you add limit? Is there from notes that you have whether face to face or virtual? I like to give this example. I worked in a capital campaign during my career. We were going to ask for a million dollars. We did address rehearsal the night before we asked for the million dollars. It's really important to rehearse that presentation no matter what your style is. When we did the rehearsal it was myself a board member and the CEO and each of us had a role to play in that presentation. So it's really important. That is a great insight especially as you make it so relevant to current events and one of the aspects of presentation that I have found challenging in my community. I live in Arizona. There's a lot of individuals that may leave town in in the summer months right. So we're really talking four or five maybe even six months. So I'm curious how you can digitally prepare more or less a resource folder. So let me go back. If I were to meet someone for coffee I would gather additional resources that that I I would intuitively think that this individual might ask. Okay and so I would say well I brought this you know for you to take a look at how do we provide that in this digital space now. I'm curious how you address that. Great question. It's a really important question but I think the techniques of first of all during your needs discovery think back to yesterday during needs discovery this is where Jared you're going to anticipate potential questions based upon your conversations with the donor. One of the questions might be that that they may ask you is will my gift have impact and you could anticipate that based on the conversation you had with them during need discovery. They may ask things you know it's really important for me Jared that when I make a gift to a nonprofit organization I want to make sure that my gift is meaningful and makes has an impact and is it changing something in our community. So anticipate all those questions so that when you're in the virtual environment or in the live environment you already have an idea what this potential donor is going to be asking based upon your needs discovery. And that's active listening right. I feel like active listening. I'm channeling a previous episode with fundraising academy talking about the cause selling education model and and how you know this this moves along. I love that and and literally you know when it comes to that presentation taking a look at how you show up on video and minor adjustments make a major impact. We've seen it here Julia throughout our episodes and so I love that you brought that into the solicitation. You know I do this all the time because I'm on video pretty much every day between my work at the fundraising academy with you guys and other work that I do. So what I do is sometimes I schedule a Zoom meeting for myself and I just go on I record it. I look at you know how do I look am I too orange you know which I think I'm kind of orangey today is my head too shiny you know what's going on with this and then I look at it and I critique myself and then I tweak things change things. Okay let me bump back to what Jared asked because I can see you Jared sitting in a restaurant or someone's home with your resource folder and you have all these data points you have graphs you have stories whatever. I mean is that Jack that you're saying that we should like PDF those and send those in advance or do a share screen or what looks like the mechanic. I wouldn't send it in advance you know I you know I think so I think it's okay to to look at your notes. I think when you're talking with a potential donor and you're you're saying hey I wrote if you explain to them hey Jared I've written some I've written some notes based on our previous conversation some questions to ask you some things that I think are important and meaningful for our discussion that's respectful. Okay. That's say you paid attention to her and what she said to you mattered and you remembered it and now during the presentation you want to address some of those things. Remember remember the whole relationship building model of cause selling. We build relationships by mutually respecting the people who we are about to solicit a gift from. So Jared let me put you in the hot seat given what Jack has said I know you're like okay I'm ready I can do this you can wait for God's sakes you're on with me every day I know you can do this. What do you think about this like what are you seeing with fun development folks reaching out across you know zoom or what is your take on this because we're not moving away from this anytime soon. We're not moving away from it so many more people have become very accustomed to it and so even you know mitigating that travel time sitting in traffic or just going to meet for coffee 30 minutes away or what that might look like so you might still live in the same geographic area but still people are going to say hey I prefer a zoom. It's going to happen and you know I shared a little bit about my own family member my brother who works for a large university and he has not only done this via face to face but via a phone call so I think we as professionals are becoming more and more accustomed and it's really knowing the donor right it's knowing the donor and what he she or they are most comfortable and to ask them right what is your preferred way of presentation perhaps. Yeah absolutely that's very donor centric Jared I asked them what what matters if they say you know one of the things we talk about in cost selling is if they say hey yeah I'll meet with you let's go to a restaurant let's have lunch let's have coffee you know picking the right space and I'll face to face meeting is so important we think oh let's go to Starbucks or let's go here and then you go there let's go to this restaurant and it's so loud it's so noisy or or it's it's too quiet I mean so really understanding the space remember this whole thing you're about to ask someone to make a gift to your organization it has to be in the right setting and we talk quite a bit about that during this this module presentation in cost selling well and let's move into those objective objections because I do feel right so not only do we need to have the listening skills to identify and to be able to prepare for the questions but I feel like we need to prepare for any objections that we might need to start developing a way to overcome that's about that Jack yeah so the first thing we love to say one of the epic fails that fundraisers make is to fail to understand what objections are remember objections are not a no they're not the same as no in fact they're a sign of interest interest in our program when people give us objections they're telling us they want to know more they're interested in what we're doing they're not saying no i'm not going to give you a gift they're saying tell me more remember back to the pre approach and the approach and remember jarrett you mentioned active listening you may be able to anticipate objections you may encounter by actively listening during those previous stages of the cost selling cycle and when they present an objection to you that's great prepare your response get those responses written down based on what you're hearing them say during that need discovery that pre approach the approach etc remember this is so important guys if you donors will continue to object and resist until they get an answer to their objection so don't uh just ignore it address it hit it uh head on some objections you're not going to be able to respond to because they may be so out there but the majority of them 90% of them you are going to be able to anticipate and respond to them that will help get you to that gift okay that it really seems to me when i hear you say that it seems like we're going all the way back to the very first point and that is understanding their value and why they're investing with you yeah that's right that's the beauty of the cost selling cycle it's a cycle that builds and grows and flourishes as you move through that cycle so can you give us some ideas before we move on to the big the ask like what are some objections that that you might encounter that are going to be you know across your story career you've seen these come back any any guidance there so um you know sometimes you'll hear what we call the stall they'll say well we're not ready to make a decision that might be an objection you're here so you know and when i've encountered that in my career i've always said okay when can i circle back to discuss this not where you just leave it and say oh okay bye see you later nice knowing you i'm glad we had coffee you see you you usually have to come up with a response like well when can i circle back with you but it might be where they need to consult with someone else so you might say oh well and if you've done your your approach and your need discover you would have discovered this and you would have invited that other person but maybe you didn't see that maybe it wasn't anticipated so you might say okay well when can the three of us get together you know always what is that next step after you hear the objection that's really key and i'm hearing as you say this make sure it's in your donor database make sure you create a task or a calendar initiative to remind you so you don't let that time go by and that's right all there needs to be you know continuous um you know contact here and to really keep that top of mind yeah how about the objection that you've asked them for way more than they thought they would give to you you know that you know you asked them for i don't know a hundred thousand dollars and they were thinking more fifty thousand what do you do do you is it over is that a no of course not you might say well what what gift level are you more comfortable with you know always anticipating what that objection would be so that you get to yes you close the gift so i think those there are lots of things that we talk about these are just a few of the objections you may encounter and i think that you know some of them are more you'll see them more in your career than others okay so i'm smiling because when you say you know perhaps you ask for a hundred and they come back and say fifty that sounds great and it seems like we're right in line for you to do fifty this year and perhaps you'd consider another fifty next year you know i mean just as a little aside i always say if i asked julia julia give me 1200 dollars and she says no i can't give you 1200 dollars but if i say to her hey julia how about a hundred bucks a month for the next 12 months that may be more palatable love it i love it so i'm a big component if you ask for a big gift and they say oh i can't give you 12 000 dollars i don't have 12 000 dollars but how about a thousand a month or how about you know three thousand over the next three years or you know whatever the math is there so always always always have a response ready right i love it and i also think too that um it's the reality of cash flow and understanding you know how you've navigated to the point where somebody believes in you and wants to invest in your organization and and they're searching for impact it's a manner it's a matter of what is the process of it right you know how how about have you ever heard this objection guys uh julia i can't make that gift right now because my son is just starting stanford university i have a big tuition welcome now so what do you say well when can we revisit this let me come back to you in six months let's talk about where you are then not where you just ended it's over okay have fun at stanford you know but where you say listen this is not over we still want to have this conversation with this prospective donor okay so we've we've really got to get to the ask and this is where i personally love this piece yeah you know one of some things that are different you know one of the things that i love about the cost-selling cycle when we get to the ask what we talk about is have a closing frame of mind to close the gift okay so when you start that pre-approach you are closing from the very beginning of the cost-selling cycle we are starting that process of closing the gift one of the things that i love to say about the beauty of the cost-selling cycle is that when you get to the ask you've done so much of your work in advance that you're going to close the gift it's going to happen so one of the second thing we look at always have that closing frame of mind and sometimes it will be very quick and you close immediately and sometimes it may take a little bit more time some of the things you look for are body language donation signals of body language open open frame with you leaning in all of those things are clues that tell us this prospective donor is getting to the point of saying yes or now's the time to make that gift remember in that in the ask to always summarize the benefits based on what you learned about their interest vision values what motivates them what you learned in discovery okay so always summarize the benefit julia if you make a gift to our homeless shelter we are going to be able to house more people and take and into some permanent housing always the the other thing we always say directly asked for a gift you know right i i i like to say this i get i get this i get this all the time i i see this in students in classes that i've taught they say won't you please support our organization let me tell you something i support a lot of organizations but i don't give them all money now jack following that would you say and identify because we've been talking about major gifts for this week would you say this is a major gift yes i mean you know you actually along that i agree with you support is well yeah everybody can support you yeah will you invest with a major yes and let's really put it out there and that investment asking them to make an investment in your organization by making a cash gift and be specific as to the amount i mean you don't say oh can you uh julia would you make a gift between five thousand and ten thousand you know it's just it's just not done that way and some people do that actually they do that ask directly for a gift you're asking for them to and to join you and your organization in solving some community problem well and i love what you said yesterday jack about you know you are acknowledging this is a major gift and we are we are we have identified x amount of individuals right part of this exclusive investment group yes towards the mission and i think all of that language is very important throughout the entire cycle beginning you know with the prospecting certainly within the presentation you know portion of the solicitation and most definitely to reiterate that in your closing of the task right that's the impact that's we are so grateful for you joining this exclusive supporter group right and you know Jared so many organizations create that exclusivity really well arts organizations they say you want to support our ballet company at this level you're in the golden slipper club yeah oh yeah at this letter you're a choreographer club and you know what people say oh for ten thousand dollars I could be in the choreography group and I wanted in that group because here are the benefits to me of being in that group and this is a way to move people to higher giving levels by the way you know so if I'm in the golden slipper squad and that's five thousand dollar gift and I say oh but for another twenty five hundred I could be in the director circle right that's the exclusivity Jared you're talking about that's right I love it all of this has really been fantastic Julia I'm circling back to if only we had had this cost selling education and this model you know twenty plus years ago we would be so much better for it but you know what we have it now and now we're able to use it implement it execute it so grateful to you Jack for coming on and sharing this valuable insight and expertise with us and of course thank you for all you do in the sector and then also throughout your certified fundraising executive cohorts in the training that you provide professionals thank you you're welcome thank you guys for having me I always love talking to the both of you I learned so much from you guys too I love your questions I love the culture that you guys create on this show good the whole culture thank you that means a lot you know I was thinking Jared what you said about this time and there's this you know this old adage it says when is when is the best time to plant a tree and it's 30 years ago but when is the second best time to plant a tree and it's today so you know you you've got to look at some of these things and no matter how long you've been in the game if you're new maybe you're looking to move forward now's the time get started and really perfect join us back tomorrow where we examine the stewardship of this and all of the things that we've talked about that's going to be really a great discussion because it will pull a lot of this together and make sure that some of these back issues or episodes and you can find in the archive if you want to get a viewing party together maybe with your development team or yourself or you want to refresh this has been really great information because it is a strategy and you'll know that a lot of the cause selling features dovetail to this major gift process but it is a little different and so that's why we really wanted to pull it out on its own and talk about it and then again Friday we're going to be here by be joined with Tony Bell and it'll be amazing here's Jack's information if you are thinking about joining the CFRE ranks Jack might be someone to talk to about it because he's been an active part of it and is a national trainer and so we want to also point that out because it's really I think some excellence in our profession again I'm Julia Patrick I've been joined by my intrepid co-host the non-profit nerd my non-profit nerd your non-profit nerd Jared Ransom CEO of the Group we are so delighted that all of our sponsors are here with us day in and day out joining on this mission that we have Jared we're now in our third year sister we are as you say we are a going Jesse 400 and close to 75 episodes now with over 800 additional not additional 800 total archive video elements still the only national broadcast providing service to the non-profit sector Jack thank you for being a huge part of this and especially your service of this week into fundraising academy and to all of our sponsors that keep this going and growing throughout our nation it's been amazing it's been amazing you know every day we end this our episodes with this mantra and we truly believe it stay well so you can do well thanks so much everybody we'll see you back here tomorrow


Now we're going to look at an example. Let's go with a classic, a pair falling out of a pear tree. So if a 200 gram pair falls out of a 2 meter pear tree, how strong is the gravitational force that acts on the pear? Firstly, we should draw a diagram of the situation. Now the gravitational force, as we know from our previous video, is equal to mass times the acceleration due to gravity. So the gravitational force, Fg, is equal to mg. Now from our last video, we know that this force is pointing downwards, and we'll model the pear as a point object with the force acting at the center of mass. So let's plug in our values. We know the mass is 200 grams. And little g is the acceleration due to gravity, which is 9.8 meters per second squared. So Fg equals 0.2 times 9.8 kilogram meters per second squared, which is equal to 1.96 Newtons. Remember that force is measured in Newtons, which is equal to kilogram meters per second squared. Now you may have noticed that the height of the tree doesn't affect our answer. Near the Earth's surface, we approximate the acceleration due to gravity as 9.8 meters per second squared, regardless of the height of objects above the ground. Force due to gravity also affects objects on the ground. After the pear hits the ground, it is still experiencing the same gravitational force. Though in this case, gravity is cancelled out by the normal force of the Earth's surface that acts to prevent objects sinking into the ground. For our next example, we'll investigate an object on an incline.


So what is GripWalk? GripWalk is a recent development that's trying to bring the consumer all the benefits of the rubber sole of a touring boot So the comfort convenience, the grip and the safety when walking around with the performance of an alpine boot. So you've got the hard platform which gives you a great downhill performance What we have is the Rockered rubber sole as you traditionally finding a touring boot with the hard platform you find on an alpine And it's a really good hybrid mix of the both Many many of the bindings you'll find on the market now are already GripWalk certified and Most boot manufacturers are moving to make their boots compatible with the GripWalk soles In fact, you might actually find your boots already GripWalk compatible. All you have to do is replace the toe in the heel There's numerous features about the GripWalk setup that are beneficial for both alpine skiers and touring skiers as well If you have a GripWalk sole on your touring boot, it gives you a safer setup for the downhill And if you have a GripWalk sole on your alpine boot, it gives you a boot that's easier to walk in much more natural walking motion The other big advantage of this, if you have a GripWalk boot or an alpine boot You can just step into a GripWalk binding with no adjustment necessary If you want to know which products are compatible with GripWalk They will either have the GripWalk logo on them or speak to someone at Ellis Brigham


Hi there, my friend and friends. There's a lot of advice articles and videos out there that give you roadmaps on how to become a web developer. And they just look really far into the future a lot of the time. And often the very beginning steps where you're currently at and where you're trying to learn, those are the ones that are just like brushed over. So this video is for you if you're just starting to get into web development, or maybe you're just interested in it and you want to start learning it. I want to look at the first steps you should be doing when you want to learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and sort of some of the tools that you need and all of that for your very early days and that first like couple of weeks and that's it from there. There's so many different directions you can go in. We're not going to worry about those. Now with that out of the way, what are the different things you need to get started and hopefully one of them that you're currently on right now or currently have is a computer. If you have something that can open the browser and connect to the internet, it's enough but having a keyboard a physical keyboard is a really important thing it's going to make your life so much easier. There are videos out there where people show you how you can get code editors working on your phone or on tablets and there's options for that as well. I don't want to say that you cannot do it. I just want to say that it will be a lot more work if you're going that way and there's sort of like an extra friction that will be taking place. And of course, I know you can get like physical keyboards on tablets now so that could definitely help out as well, especially early on. But if you do have a laptop sitting around or a cheap computer, whatever it is or you know, if you can go and find something that's sort of the one investment that would really help pay off and really help you out in your journey. Now I mentioned a browser obviously if you're getting into web development, you will need a browser to connect on whether it's Chrome, Firefox, Safari, any of them will work Chrome is the most popular one that people usually develop in but I'd recommend getting all of them so you can test across the different the different browsers you're going to be using but don't worry too much about testing it for early days. So just a browser and of course something to write the code in which is an editor. You hear things like ID throwing around don't worry about that you just need something that's we call them text editors basically but they're a bit fancier. And the most popular one is VS code. You might hear of other ones like sublime text notepad plus plus even Adam. If you hear about Adam, it's an older one. There's lots of videos and tutorials that exist from the older days where that was the most popular one but it's dead now and VS code is completely taken over the market. It's by far the most popular. And you will also see mentions of notepad plus plus around. I wouldn't really recommend it. VS code is just it's a the standard you see it used everywhere. It's really easy to customize. There's tons of plugins you can really make it your own. It's very feature rich but it's also really easy to get started with. So you can just get started with it and start going and then add on to it slowly over time to make it more of your own thing. Notepad plus plus is a bit more limited in what it can do. And just for me I don't see the point in starting with that I would just go straight into VS code. You will not be overwhelmed by it at the beginning and it's very easy to learn and get used to now one thing I've never done is actually made a video on getting started with VS code though and if that is something you would be interested in please leave a comment down below and let me know. Now having an editor is great now but obviously we have an editor for a purpose we're going to be writing a few different languages and the three languages that you are going to have to learn and maybe you're in the process of learning those now are HTML CSS and JavaScript. They are each responsible for a different thing. So HTML is hypertext markup language and this is the content that is on the page or adding the content with HTML there's CSS which is our cascading style sheets which is what changes what the content looks like. So this is just like when you go into Word and you select something and then you change the color and the font size and the font family and all of those different things it's just we're doing it with code instead of using a menu to select it and sort of go through the different options that are in Word or whatever your word processor Google docs anything like that we're doing it with code instead and then the third language is JavaScript which is for interactivity and basically it's if you can't do it with HTML and CSS then JavaScript comes in and you can think of like an interactive thing that you see on almost every single website is a hamburger menu so if you're on mobile and you have like the button you can push and often on desktop sites these days you see them too and you push the button in the menu opens and there's a little X and you click that in the menu closes that interactivity is created using JavaScript. Now my recommendation for learning these languages is generally you start with HTML because without the content you have nothing you can't do anything with CSS or JavaScript if you have no HTML. So getting started there and learning the very basics of it is obviously the best place to start but very quickly you're probably going to get into CSS and start changing what things look like because if not your pages are terribly boring looking so you start changing things up and adding some styles with your CSS and then eventually you start adding that interactivity with JavaScript and the one thing I'll say is people always ask me like I've been doing CSS for four months now can I start doing JavaScript yes of course you can you do not need to be an expert at any of these to be able to start learning the next one in fact you will not be a master of any of them in three months or six months or even a year you're always going to be learning and always adding on to your skills of all of these languages and so what I would recommend is start getting comfortable with one and learn the syntax of it because that is one of the complicated things when you get into it is we have three different languages that all are completely different from one another the way we write them is different the way they work is different what they do is different so it can feel like a lot and it definitely is but you know you're not going to learn all of HTML and then go over to CSS there's like a hundred and twenty elements or something like that in HTML and then to learn what all of them do that's never going to happen there's only like twenty elements as far as I'm concerned at the very beginning you really need to know actually if you're curious what those are I've done a video that looks at those as well I'll link to that down at the bottom and remind you at the end of this video about that one though yeah you start off with like okay I'm comfortable I've made like I can put in some paragraphs I can make my list now let's start using some CSS and learn a little bit about that how can I change the colors of these how can I change my fonts how can I do a simple little layout that looks a little bit nicer and then once you've gone through that enough times and you're comfortable getting some CSS on there there's no harm in adding a touch of JavaScript in there at least like poking into a little bit seeing what it's about maybe you go like you know what I'm not ready for this and I want to focus more on this other thing but just having an idea of what it is is really good to have because you're going to be writing a lot of it eventually so don't hold back and feel like you need to be a master of one of them before you can move on to the next because you're just going to be losing time because it really well it's not going to give you like some benefit of being so much more comfortable there because even if you're learning JavaScript you're going to be using CSS at the same time anyway so you're going to be continuing to learn on that side of things so that's why it's comfortable enough understanding the syntax understanding the basics of it and then you're probably okay to start at least sprinkling in a little bit of the new stuff on some other things as well now one mistake that I see beginners making is that they feel like because we're making websites that they're going to be like designing the page as they're learning the code but the problem is designing something and coding something or two very different skill sets so if you're not a designer it can be really hard to design something if you're trying to design what you're learning to code that's just like this whole extra layer of friction because you're splitting your mind into like two different things and if you're learning design and you're learning code it's really hard to do and I wouldn't recommend it I would code up things where you have a design and you're just trying to recreate it because if you get into front-end development you're not going to be the designer someone else is the designer and you're taking those designs and bringing them to life and making them work in the browser now some people are a jack of all trades and they're both the designer and they're the developer and that's fine but most people are one or the other now as far as finding things to actually you know where can you find designs that you can practice your skills on there's two websites that I often recommend there is I code this as well as front-end mentor those are sites where you get designs there's like challenges and stuff like that for like here's like a design you can try and build if you also want to just go you can go to like dribble.com or be hands and find like these are people sharing their designers who are sharing their designs and you can just try and make those a lot of the stuff people share there they're trying to show off so there's more advanced things so if you're further along in your journey that could be good but in the early days you probably want to keep it a little bit simpler so you're not overwhelming yourself so either I code this or front-end mentor I think are nice places to start now another thing that I see beginners doing is feeling like they're not making any progress and sometimes maybe this is from those those videos where it's giving you this long range forecast or road map not a forecast but a long range road map or there's other ones where it's like how I got a job in tech after four months and stuff like that like for most people that's not going to happen and it's a long range thing there's lots of things that you need to be learning might be doing this part time on the side you know there's people changing careers they're just doing it in evenings they're trying to learn development or they're at school and they're doing this but whatever it is like it's not this two or three month thing and all of a sudden you're an expert and sometimes people come and talk to me in there like it's been four months I've been doing this and I feel like I'm still a beginner you've only been doing it for four months of course you're still beginner that's really really normal like how many things could you become an expert at in four months no matter how much time you're putting into it it's not realistic now if you're doing 40 hours a week of practice and studying and all of that stuff maybe after four months you're starting to be able to get really comfortable with what you're doing at a beginner level and maybe you could start looking for junior level jobs different people are going to go with different speeds and I'm not saying it's impossible but even if you've been doing it for four months and you feel like you're a beginner what you should do is actually look at where you started and look at all the different things that you have learned because I guarantee you it's a lot more than you might realize and it's easy to look at your watching videos where people are like coding along perfectly in these tutorials which are all pre-recorded and all the mistakes are edited out I know because I make these all the time it's not realistic people are googling things all the time you're looking for things running into bugs that you can't fix and it takes a long time for to find that typo right everybody makes those mistakes including advanced developers so first of all you might be doing better than you actually think you are and the other thing though is like it is a long game and it's going to take you a long time to get good at something because it takes a long time to get good at anything you have to put in a lot of work to develop a skill and on that note I was talking about practice a little bit you need to practice a lot watching tutorials watching videos on YouTube reading articles that's great that's how you learn about things you you you learn new things by doing that you don't learn how to do those things just like you're not going to learn how to skateboard by watching other people skateboard you might know okay that's how I push and all of those things that's how look I've watched him do and all the a whole bunch of times I sort of understand the different steps of doing that or you're watching YouTube videos where it's showing you all the things in slow motion I know it you go to do it you're not going to be able to do it the first try or the second try or even the hundredth try it like you're eventually maybe you're going to start being able to do your all year whatever so like don't just consume content you need to practice practice practice constantly be building things and if you don't know what to build try those sites that I recommended earlier they're linked down below as well and maybe find a passion project find something that you would find fun to build and maybe you don't even know how to do all the different things but that all even gives you your roadmap on the new the next skills that you need to learn because that's something that everybody's always after is the roadmap what's the next thing I need to learn build things and as you're building them you're going to run into things you don't know and that tells you what you need to learn next because everybody's journey and everybody's path along the way is going to be different once you get past those very beginner stages of I learned the basics of HTML I learned the basics of CSS and I learned the basics of JavaScript and even when you're learning each one will be different for everybody so you know try and build stuff and then to accomplish that you will know exactly what you need to learn next another thing I'm going to give us a suggestion for learning is practicing is the best thing you can ever do but another thing if you are just consuming some content is to reinforce what you've learned by taking notes after your learning session is done nobody does this or not enough people do it this is really a nice way to reinforce everything you just write like a bullet list of the different things you've done but explain it a little bit don't be like I learned about JavaScript loops or I learned what an HTML tag was or whatever like explain it in your notes does not need to be this in-depth article that's thousands of words put down 50 words at the end of the day just to explain each thing that you've learned and this is really just going to help reinforce everything you're doing because you're putting it into your own words it might sound really silly but if you've never tried it please give it a chance for like a week straight and I promise you you're going to see some more progress than you were making before and you're going to start understanding things at a much deeper level than you were before as well and the other thing that I'm going to suggest also here is do not rely just on following YouTube videos like you're watching now or reading articles but you need to develop the skill of asking questions and there's different places you can ask questions there's Google there's memes out there that like a professional developer is just a professional Googler and it's pretty true because we often know that things are possible but we don't know how to do them I'm aware that I can do that now I just have to find like the exact syntax on how that thing works and I'm going to look that up and find out what that is because there's way too much to know as a developer we can't know it all and memorize all of it you're going to build up a lot of muscle memory and you are going to memorize things just by doing them over and over and over again but there's a lot of things that you're just going to be like I know that's possible because I saw that video or read it in an article let me refresh my mind on actually how to do it so getting good at Googling is a really good skill and these days as well you have AI tools that can help out as well AI is not coming to steal the jobs but it's a very nice tool that can help us because if you run into something that you don't understand maybe you watch a video of mine and read an article and there's an explanation in there that you don't understand you can ask the AI to clarify it for you in simple terms and sometimes they do really good jobs you can also ask it to like if you have code that's not working you can give it the code that's not working and ask it to fix it and it can often will find the mistake that's in your code and be able to fix it for you and sometimes give you a note on even what was wrong with it but I will caution on the AI front as well is they're not very good at code especially not right now anyway and they will sometimes give you code that doesn't work or that has mistakes in it and other things so do be careful with that especially with CSS it doesn't understand the contexts enough so if you're getting into CSS and there's things there like if you made a typo or if you got a semicolon somewhere it will find that it might give you some suggestions but do not rely on AI as a code writing tool use it a lot like you would use Google for little snippets and getting like help along the way and getting being able to prompt AI properly is a skill on its own so learning how to use the AI effectively and learning the limitations of it could be useful but maybe early on you don't want to touch it just because you might not recognize when it makes mistakes in the code and a better place might be to actually ask real people that can help you out with things because there's lots of very helpful people it's one of the best things about the front end community and world is how people are willing to share and help each other out and you might be wondering where can I get help and I actually have a Discord community that's all about helping out other front end developers you can go there just to ask questions you can also meet other people there's a whole bunch of different channels and stuff just to chat and there's areas to ask questions on front end and back end development on UI and UX and other stuff like that as well so if you're curious about that or want to join in even if you're just going to lurk around but please do say hi if you do join but the link for that is just in the description as well and so if you are early on in your journey and if you're still watching this video now I'm assuming you are I just want to say don't worry about going really fast I know I mentioned this before but just take your time and what you're learning now you might spend two weeks and feel like it's going really slowly or you're not getting it or whatever it is it will get there for you and I promise you you're going to be making faster progress than you think you actually are and then as a quick reminder there was that video that I mentioned earlier about the 20 essential tags that you should probably know right now if you're just getting started with HTML so if you'd like to watch that video it is right here for your viewing pleasure and with that I would like to thank my enablers of awesome TTLLD Andrew James Enrico, Michael, Simon, Tim and Johnny as well as all my other patrons for their monthly support and of course until next time don't forget to make your corner the internet just a little bit more awesome


Hello, my sniffers. Guess what's gonna happen today? I don't know if you've ever been in this situation before. This happens to me a lot.  I don't know what you do when you find out your mother's in town, but I have been psycho-cleaning for the last couple of hours. But there is something really exciting about to happen here. If you guys follow my channel and I hope you do, don't forget to subscribe by the way to see exactly what I'm talking about and be in the Sniffer Nation loop. Very important. If you haven't been watching the Leo Files, you have got to start now. Leo is my new bird that YouTube bought for me. I love saying that, but really it's my YouTube family and friends that bought me this bird, Leo. And my mom is going to meet him today. Why is this exciting? Well, because mom isn't exactly the biggest bird lover. She loves birds, but she's not like obsessed and sniffing them like we do. And I'm hoping that Leo is gonna be the bird that breaks the mold because she's been talking about him. She's been saying, oh that bird in your videos, you could just see his soul. So I'm just saying I wanna see how she really reacts in real life. And if you remember from one of my episodes in the Leo story, mom actually donated to the campaign of bringing Leo home. Jenna went to pick her up. I don't see her. She has that British Irish thing where she has to have fresh milk for her tea. So they probably stopped at the store. I'm waiting for you, mommy. So let's see what's gonna happen. Leo, guess what's gonna happen today? Oh, look, you're excited. Are you excited? You're gonna meet grandma.  Remember how you acted when my friend Chrissy came over? You have to do that to grandma, okay? Someone just leaves all their stuff in there. Mom's coming. Do you wanna get this stuff out of them and all over the floor? So it looks good? No, I thought that she would appreciate seeing it then. Okay, mom's here. I was like, I saw a dog coming up to our house and I'm like, who's golden retriever is that? It's not a tarry. Yo, I just have smells good. Hulk breath. She comes in, she's carrying the smell. I got it, I got it, I got it, I got it. We're gonna sit here. I want you to meet Leo. Okay, I'm dying to meet Leo. Are you? Yeah. Really? Yeah, really. Okay. That's why I'm here. No, you are not. I couldn't go away for 10 months and not come and see Leo. Okay, you ready? I'm gonna put my bread down. Okay, put your bread down. Where is it? Is anybody right? You didn't bite anyone, Leo. It's okay, baby. Step up. Yeah, go ahead, try to get him to step up. Or do you want me to put him on you? Really, step up. What? You don't like me? Step up, no, he likes it. He's excited, look. Leo. Nope. He does, he does, he does. Oh, baby. He does, he does, he does. You're my friend. Watch, give me this arm.  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do. Yeah. Do you smell him? He smells nice. I love your color. Jenna mom's getting all up into Leo.  Oh my goodness.  I did eat some peanuts, that's for sure. What? Are you cheating? Look how confused he is. He's so cute. He's got such beautiful colors, right? Doesn't he? He's got beautiful eyes. Doesn't he? I think so. How do you sell this? You see, so you're my bird here. You're my bird here. Does he like to eat it? He's very friendly, huh? Leo, if I had seen you first, I would have called you Irish. Yeah, I would have. You would have called him Irish. No, I thought you wanted to call him O'Brien. I would have called you O'Brien. His name's Leo O'Brien. I'm O'Brien. Dublin would have been O'Brien. Dublin? Let's get another bird and name him Dublin. Right. He's so cute. And this is the only bird I've hold here. I didn't hold any of this thing. Why you can hold Picasso? I can hold Picasso, but the others know. Those are your eyelashes? Yeah. No, these are mine. What? Those are my eyelashes. What? I need that. I need that thing. Believe what happened to me at the airport. Those are your eyelashes? These are my eyelashes. No! Yes, pull them. These are mine, but... Unbelievable, right? Yeah, remember you called me like that? I started off with more eyelashes than she did. Don't remember. I need that. Well, I probably don't. Girl, are you kidding? We're trying to keep up with you. Yeah, don't you get yours any longer? Yeah, then I have to like double-dress it. No, but it's makeup. You know how... Yeah, when I take all the makeup off, they actually make them black. Yeah, by that, you got fired today. I'm reporting myself with eyelash serum. Not from the vet place, from another place. And I knew it before I got here. Yeah. I just knew it. I knew, I told her. I said, I knew you got fired today. I knew that you'd come with Harry in the car. And I knew that you would blink to say, I see you. You know, the lights. Where's Harry? Harry! Mother knows everything. Pretty. You're so pretty. So handsome.  No, no, no, it's called, yeah, lash boost. It's very good, isn't it? Come here, I wanna show you something. I didn't, I actually didn't even open it because I wanted to show you. When I went to Idlewild, I got this. Rosie, what's your problem? Jenna's boyfriend is here? Is that a problem for you? Yeah? What are you gonna do to Jenna's boyfriend? That's Joey. Look at Joey, look at Joey. He's like, he knows too. What do you think of Joey? Do you like Joey? Or do you like to bite Joey?  Come here. Little naughty. Is that you? Is that you? In your past life, yes? Oh, put the black jacket on her first, shall we? Yeah, we have to see you in your hoodie. Oh, look at Harry, he's like, she's got an outfit. They see me rollin'. Oh, my God. But it's okay. It fits. Oh my God. Oh yeah, she Eminem. Okay, so let's put it around too. Yeah. Oh my God, I can't even with this hair. She looks so humiliated.  Okay, I wanna show you something. I went to the PO box today. Might be art. So usually, like I open these on my parrot tip Tuesdays, but I've been doing vlogs. So let's open it right here right now. Do you wanna open it?  She's a Scorpio. A letter. It says, hi, Marlene. My boyfriend and I are big fans of your birds. We hope to someday have our own exotic pet. But until then, we'll just have to love our dogs and your birds. But I adore Picasso and his infatuation with Jersey. So here's a painting I've made for your YouTube studio, Picasso Painting, a Picasso-style Jersey. Thank you for sharing, Megan and Sean. Oh, IG, what's her Instagram? Instagram, Shanae Adler, Atelier. Okay, I'm taking this out. Oh my God, it's gorgeous. It's absolutely gorgeous. Oh my God. It is amazing.  Let's pick also a painting and abstract version of Jersey. Look at this paint palette right here. I have to frame this. Am I gonna have to help me? This is actually really nice. You wanna copy of it? You know what? We should actually make. We should make copies of this so everybody can have it. They're called nice. And I love the color. Because it's so real. Isn't that amazing? But like, what in the create? Is that the best thing ever? I'm going to try. And they made him look a little bit taller though, right? So this is going to... They gave him a little bit more height. Wait a minute. Yeah, he needs to be like, you know, catch up to Jersey. So this is actually going to Houston, did you know that? No. I'm telling you he's going to Houston. Why you love it though? What do you love? We'll frame it here, you know. I love the colors over here. I love that. That's like how you like to do abstracts. No, I like it. It's like, this is like the painting how like you would paint and then the painting Picasso painted is how I would paint. Yeah. So Megan, you have got to like, really do something with your art. You didn't know, but it's going to Houston. I love it. I'm going to... This has got to be framed. You've got to help me frame this, mom. This is gorgeous. I will.