What do my follicles look like? Right, I'm looking at your follicles right now. Buenas tardes. Hasta pronto. Hola a otro video. Aquí mi nombre es Kyra. Hey y'all, welcome back to another video. If you're new here, my name is Kyra. Do not forget to like, comment, and subscribe. And y'all, I'm just in here enjoying my clean juice. I just got done working out. And sometimes y'all, I just be sitting in the car just chilling. And I've been wanting to re-up my bilingual, my Spanish. Because every time I go out the country, I try to communicate as best as I can. Because I was, I don't know if I ever told y'all, but like elementary school through high school, I was always in bilingual classes. I took up to Spanish 4. And I was in advanced class. I loved my finished classes. And I just recently been wanting to refresh my memory, especially like when I go on vacations and things like that. I just really want to be able to communicate. And I've been using the app called Babble. They are sponsoring this video. And there's so many languages you can learn on here. I reached my goal activities for today. But I like Babble because it teaches real world practical conversations. So for instance, if I'm doing a lesson, they'll go ahead and give me the word in an actual conversation. And there's short active lessons straight to the point. Scientifically proven to get you speaking in three weeks. So you'll be able to download the Babble app as well.  So make sure y'all sign up and download the app. Really want to get Spanish down pack. I think that would be so nice for me to just be able to talk and engage with people that speak a foreign language. So yeah, I'm super excited. So make sure y'all download the Babble app and thank you so much Babble for sponsoring this video. So I am going to be back on my way home after I finish this lesson. I'm still chilling right now. And then I just have a long day y'all. I'm going to the Atlanta hair doctor today. I'm super excited. I'm going to get a hair treatment and stuff like that. But my camera is dying. So I'm just going to finish up this lesson and then get ready for the day. I also scheduled my hair appointment as well. She want to get her nails done. So it's going to be like a cute little day for both of us. So I'm just going to be catering, treating her today. So happy Friday. Let's get into it. Yeah. Y'all. So we just put up to the hair doctor's suite. Are you excited? I'm going to let you go first. So the hair doctor, she just specializes in stimulating follicles. And just other hair treatments. So we're going to see what I do. Yes, my verse. And yeah, I'm going to plug everything. So nice day. Cute post-workout. Yeah, we've been a walk up in here. So we're going to see. She only worked 2.35. She only worked on Friday. So what do my follicles look like? Right. I'm looking at your follicles. Oh, I know we should do it. Okay, let's do it. What would you say to me? I'm going to say this on your lap. Her hair is supposed to be longer than this. What she didn't do. I didn't say it. But she just cut it. You just cut it.  Did you clip her in? Okay. All the time. I feel like your glasses are important. Are you okay? That's fine. Okay. I'm sorry. That mist is like so misty. All right. So we're going to look under here in the UV area to see what your follicles look like. Girl. Oh my God. That's crazy. Do your scalp be really itchy? Only in that area. That's it. So you see the inflammation? Let me show you right here. I can see it. But I want you to be able to see it. Okay. And then also that hair dye was just in a while ago. So I had to take that out. Is that dandruff? Yeah. Your scalp has a build-up to it. Oh, I need a scalp detox thing. Yep. So it just looks like your follicles are in this spot. So we're going to declutter. How do you know that? Look at it sometimes. She can look into it. She see what I'm saying. It's a whole full... I don't see it. That's why. Maybe you can show me on the film. Yeah. I'll show you. But you can... It's like definitely like 3D clear. You know when I was researching the hair loss? Why you got so much grease in your hair too? Because I mean because I have... I was just oiling my scalp. Well remember what gives her decondition. It gives her moisture deconditioning. Okay. So you can look... It's got done with our appointment. Like I say it was... Look at my hair compared. I like the alien hair doctor. She's cool. So we just got both our protein treatments and the aloe vera, the oranges. And the oranges for vitamin C on your hair if y'all don't know. Oranges are very rich in vitamin C. That's why when y'all see those vitamin C serums, they're orange. So anyways... Huh? They are orange. I know but... I don't know. People probably didn't know that but... They don't know oranges are orange. So I'm gonna start doing protein treatments once a month. You gonna start... You been started. You stopped and now you're gonna resume. Don't act like I didn't take care of your hair now. Yeah we're gonna resume. My mom was like... No baby. But yeah it was cool. So um yeah I was like I'm gonna just let my hair do what it do.  But um yeah so we're gonna be on our way to... This a whole nother vlog bro. Yeah so I'll check on with y'all once we get into the house. How did you like it? How did your scalp feel? I like your hair curl. You should... They um the hair doctor told her she needs to stop wearing it. Y'all know my mom I like to wear these low buns. She was like you need to stop doing that. You need to get a claw clip. Claw clips for the summer. Hot girl summer. Must have. Heck the link. So I'm gonna order. We're gonna order some claw clips. But anyways yeah like I said I'm gonna talk to y'all once we get home. It's different in here. This is cute. Mark Jacobs. I don't have a Mark Jacobs book. Thank you. That's cute. I need to take a picture in here. Oh my god I want one of these. I want one of these books. I see these all the time. Huh? Hold on. No this one. But I know I bought this one. I don't want that one. You want this one? Yeah I want like pink. This is cute. Not retina boho.  So I should get this one.  Okay I guess so long. This is going under that YSL book with the booty. With the booty. Yeah. So. Okay this cute. Oh my god look at my hair. Let me put this out. It's good. Y'all so we was just in that store. And I was trying to find a circle mirror for a loan. But they just asked for $200 for a mini mirror. Like go to help. I haven't seen y'all since me and my mom are here done I believe. But I'm about to go out tonight y'all. I need to get out the house.   Y'all I tried so hard y'all know I just redid my room. So I wanted to pick up my makeup as I go. And it's hard to do when you're getting ready sometimes. But I'm gonna show y'all my outfit. But the scent of the night I'm gonna do jazz club. And mixing with gentle fluidity. It really smells good together. Like one of the best combinations you can try. I'm gonna put some oil on. But yeah I'm just gonna be making my way out. And I'm gonna show y'all my outfit. I probably not gonna vlog. I'll probably vlog a little bit on my phone or something. But nothing major. Cause this is the wrong people that I normally don't hang around. So and I don't really like to vlog when I'm around people. That I really don't talk to like that. So yeah let me show y'all what I got on for tonight. Okay y'all so this is my outfit for tonight. I have on this Woodford body suit. These gallery pants. I definitely lost weight y'all because these used to fit so good. Now they're super loose on me. Now I need to go get them taken in. But anyways and then I have this Louis bag. This black and white one. And then I just have these fendi black and white pumps. Cause I really didn't want to wear shoes that didn't. Wasn't comfortable. But yeah so I'm gonna be making my way out. So I'll probably talk to y'all later. If I vlog it'll be on my phone but yeah. So Lucifer is cute. Nice and simple. Not going too much. Okay. Alright. That's fine. Okay. I'm feeling too sexy to accept requitment. And I'm way too sexy to go unprotected. And she part of Tesla now she gonna let you. Okay. Alright. That's fine. Too sexy for your girl.  Too sexy for the night.  Yeah yeah. Too sexy for this chain. For your girl.  Too sexy for the night.  Yeah yeah. Too sexy for this chain. Too sexy for your game. Too sexy for this fame. Yeah yeah.  How cute is this it? Like what? Are you kidding me?  This is so cute. Oh my god. This looks so cute.  It was a good time. Y'all know I have social anxiety. And everybody was like oh my god. It was just so nice to you know come somewhere. And then just be welcome with open arms. Everybody was so friendly and nice. But I've been around some of them before which is they're always so nice. But some of the people that were was newly introduced to. They were so nice. And it was just a good time celebrating for Jada because she just had a pop up shop for her. Wait a minute merch which is so cute. So congrats to her. Y'all know Jada is a boss. Yeah very much so. So gotta give the girl the flowers. Gotta give the girls the flowers while they're here. Okay. But yeah so I'm just up and I'm ready to get to it. I have a laser appointment at 12 o'clock. Like 12 20 something. But I gotta get my work done first. So that's what I'm about to do. Really quick and then I'm probably gonna stop at some stores because I'm gonna get new bath mats because I don't have any.  And I need to get it together. So I need to do that today. And then y'all surprisingly I haven't even been on social media this morning. Literally. I just woke up and was like oh my god it's 10 o'clock I need to get up. This new body moisturizer that I'm using is called Lancer. It's so good y'all. Y'all need to try it out. It has my body feeling so nice. It's Lancer. It's the Method Body Nourish and it has glycolic acid in it. And yeah I really like this. So I really don't care. It has like a hint of like this fruity peach scent. Like it wants to smell like a peach or a layer type of thing. I don't know. But it's very faint. It's not strong or anything. So you can definitely layer it with like a scented lotion if you wanted to. But anyway. So yeah I'm about to go over what I need to do really quick. And yeah I'll probably check on with y'all once I get to my laser maybe. I don't know but y'all see me get laser so many times. It's so cute that I said. It's so cute. And y'all I'm losing weight. So I'm just happy. I just want to stay very consistent because I'm using this app that's helping me track my nutrition. It's called Noom. And it's helping me stay on track when it comes to like my nutrition and becoming my best self. So yeah. I just want to keep it up. I don't know why I'm just talking right now. I'm really just rambling. But I just got to tell y'all I had the best face wash this morning. Oh my god.  So this morning so when I was taking my makeup off I was like oh my god. I like not having lashes just because I can just really take off everything. But anyways I will check with y'all later. And yeah. Let's get this Monday started. Hey girl. Good morning. I haven't blogged in like two days because I've been so busy with work y'all.  But anyways I need a motherfucking vacation. I need a vacation. After all of my work this month July I have to be somewhere. I can't. Good morning. Thank you. Can I have a straw please? Thank you. I'm on my way to go get my lashes done because yesterday I had Faye on the girl and I put a strip on it so they look fine or whatever but in me to deliver quality content for y'all and make sure I'm at my best I have to refill me. It's no way. Y'all know when y'all put y'all lashes on well they were all lashes for one. I gotta go. I just feel so free. I just really need to focus on my damn self and how I want like everybody shows their hands y'all. Everybody shows their hands. God will make sure he reveals who's supposed to be in your life. You know what I'm saying? So I'm just like over everything.  Ugh I need to move. I want to move so bad. I don't know why I want to move to Miami or something or somewhere with some water. No beach, no nothing. I don't know. I just be feeling like I'm missing something. Like I'm like I don't have that feeling of the comfort of being like yes I'm home.  I hate it. But I don't know how to explain it. I just really need to it's probably not even where I'm supposed to be where I'm supposed to move or whatever. It's probably not even a place. As far as like location I just really need to get into it myself instead of focusing on other people that's really in my way and holding me back from being my best self you know. But like I said everybody reveals their hands and God will definitely reveal who's supposed to be there and who's not. So it is what it is. But anywho I'm on my way to my last appointment. I just think to be me and make up some Starbucks and then I have to go home and do my work. So that's what's happening. So I really like my natural face though. Like I really like it my natural face. I don't know if I want to get volume lashes or hybrids. I used to get hybrids. Honestly I used to get hybrids. But I just like the thickness of freaking maybe I should try hybrids I don't know. I'm just scared. But I always put a lash on. Y'all so I just came out of my last appointment and yeah these are go. These are way shorter. We did a cat eye 11 to 16 I believe I get so many questions on my lashes all the time. The longest I ever went was a 18. 18 to 12 cat eye. So I know I get a lot of questions on that and I get double D. But anyways I'm on my way to home and I have a lot of work to do.    We getting fokies like no. So yeah. And I'm trying to be going in July. So yeah today is a new day. We getting to it so I'll probably check my child later on a lunch break or something I don't know. But it's time to get to it.  I'm so happy they gave you a mirror. I thought you were just gonna do this. I'm like Hey girl I love it. It's the next day. I just got done working out with the clean juice. Y'all I didn't really vlog yesterday. I think the last clip I vlogged was watching Leah at the beauty festival for YouTube. She was Lancome's ambassador. I'm so proud of her. Like she is really that girl. So yeah so I just wanted to tune in for that because she did so good. But yeah I'm pretty sure y'all tuned in. But anyway I'm on my way to target today's Friday. I'm on my way to target because I have to read up on my body conditioner and some more stuff because I want to film a body care routine. I've been really into my body care y'all obviously because of summertime and I just want to show y'all like my routine and then I want to include the Lancer moisturizer I've been using. I love that stuff. Y'all I, this is probably too much TMI. But okay so obviously I used the Lancer moisturizer and I know when my body is dry it gets so itchy and just ugh.  So for me to not feel that way. Well one day girl I didn't take a shower. I didn't take a shower but my body is still moisturized.  So I want to put the girls on. I want to just you know and I got to exfoliate and shave and stuff anyways. So might as well do a whole video on it.  It just happens okay um I'm going to go to Target. I'm gonna bring out Ann Whitney um cause yeah and Target been having the pieces. I'll probably talk to y'all once I get there. So y'all Happy Friday. Hitting Joy Live. This is just too cute. The girl came and wiped it but when? Since we just missed it.   No I'm too. I'm on my way to go get a facial. Y'all know I like to keep up with skin maintenance, facial, micro needle and something. Every single month just to keep up with my skin maintenance. My skin is very like glowy right now but I want my skin to be at its best especially with the months coming up. So yeah girl I'm about to go get a Morpheus 8 treatment I had seen Aliyah go get one and we were talking about it and the day she told me she was gonna go get one I had looked up the results or whatever. And baby the snatch the snatch face the wrinkles disappeared. So baby we gotta start early so I'm on my way to go get a treatment with Porstar um at his facility. I haven't been here in a minute. He has a new machine we're gonna see what it do. I was like have you done somebody go for it? He's like yeah. Gonna go try his machine out for the girls. We're gonna see what it do. Um but yeah I'm on my way there. Now I got my matcha. I finished some work before I left the house. And y'all remember that green outfit I just showed y'all from Target. Y'all it's so cute on it's so cute but the security tag is on it. And my legs aren't shaped yet because I'm saving it to exfoliate in shape and stuff for when I do my body care routine so I'm not even wearing my legs out right now. Girl I'm almost there so I'll probably check them with y'all once I get there. But yeah I just feel so good today and I don't know I just feel like really good. I'm in a really good mood. The place. Cosmetics. And it took me back right away so I'm just waiting on 4star to get in here. And it's so cute and nice. I haven't seen you in forever. I lost a little weight. Period. And I did this surgery and I may look like it. I'm gonna explain to the people what we're doing today. I told them y'all. Y'all already know I like to get skin maintenance like once a month. At least like micro needle in but this is the new Morpheus A. I haven't had this yet. So what are the benefits. But I told them because I looked up the before and after results. And it really like snatches your face get rid of like get rid of.  So usually what you do is micro needling right. Yes. So this is like a step above. This is like micro needling on steroids. So this has uses radio frequency and the needles and that goes into the skin and it adds the benefit of skin tightening. So the energy goes into the skin. It's like heat and what it does is it tightens up the skin. It contracts the skin so it tightens up. Almost like you know if you heat up shrink wrap or plastic. It kind of like shrinks and tightens and triples. That's what we're doing. So we're getting all the benefits of regular micro needling with the needles going into the skin making those pinpoint wounds. And of course you know that's gonna help with fine lines and wrinkles, texture, tone, pore size, acne scarring, body scarring. But the radio frequency that's going into the needles is taking it to like the next next next level. It's making it a lot more stronger. You're gonna get a lot more dramatic results. It's way more anti-aging as well. So it's just like, like I said, it's like regular micro needling but on steroids. Yeah. So yeah y'all that's why I really like to do this like every single month. I really like to take care of my skin when it comes to you know doing like esthetician stuff every single month. So we are here. I'm super excited to see the results. So, yay. And I'll tell you, you know a lot of people ask this question, oh I'm 20 I don't need to do anything. I don't need a treatment. It's never, yeah. You want to start as early as possible because we're trying to prevent looking old. You don't want to wait until you look old and crusty to start worrying about it. It's gonna be hard to do. Preserve yourself. You know it's just like you get a brand new car or you know you gotta change the oil in it every 5,000 miles to preserve that engine so it lasts you a long time. You're not going to wait until you get that car and your engine explodes because you weren't maintaining it doing the maintenance on it to then worry about it because that engine's done right. So you want to do things routinely. You know there's some people that they're really passionate about their skin. They want to come every month. There's some people that want to come every two months. Everyone's different. But you want to be doing something to maintain your skin. You want to do it as early age as possible. So I'm super excited to be here. I haven't been here in a minute. It's so clean and nice and cozy. So yeah, we're gonna get started. Should I just go over there? Yes, what we're gonna do is we're gonna get on the bed over here and I'm gonna numb you. So with this treatment, we're gonna put on a topical lidocaine numbing cream and that's gonna sit on her skin for about 30 to 45 minutes. I'm gonna do more of an aggressive treatment on her because I know she likes to go hard on her treatment. So I'll probably let her numb a little bit longer so that way she's comfortable throughout the treatment. So yeah, just go ahead and we're gonna get her to lay down. We're gonna apply it and then we're gonna let her chill for a little bit. She's got a restroom here. She needs to go. She's got TV, radio, and let her relax.  And this is actually the machine that we'll be using. This is the handgun. This is actually it. Which I'll show you more when we do the treatment. But yeah. I just want to take this one. So what's new? What's been going on? Was he working? Me too, girl. That's all I do. I see what you're pushing.  Literally.  Kylie Cosmetics KK No longer W Wait, what is it? I love this office. It's giving me very much Beverly Hills clean. We are the Beverly Hills of Atlanta. We've come a long way. There's been a lot of challenges. A lot of roadblocks. But we busted right through them. And here we are. And this is the number three. Yes. So I'm massaging this and working this into your skin. Because, like I said, we're going to do an aggressive treatment. And we want to make sure that you're very comfortable throughout the treatment because that's important. I'm excited for you to try this. You're going to literally be obsessed. You're going to want to come every month to get this. Yeah, I can't wait.  She loves my friend Elaine. And she doesn't play about her skin at all. And she's so sweet and I love her. So my numbing cream is very very strong. It's like the strongest you can get.  So don't be worried, okay? I'm feeling like a little sensation. That is to be expected. You know what's crazy? With this machine what we just got, we actually are doing vaginal rejuvenation. Have you ever even heard of vaginal rejuvenation? No. What is that? Well, you know, the girls need it for the kuchi. It tightens it? Tightens, tones. Yeah, so it uses radio frequency to tighten the internally and externally. And there's another hand piece. I don't do the treatment so I won't be eliminating any vaginas. But the lovely other girls here will be happy to tighten you right up. But there's this other one that goes in there and actually uses the EMS, like the muscles. It tightens your muscles. So like the pelvic muscles, it tightens that up. So you're tightening the skin and you're tightening the muscles because I mean just like anything else, we all age and that ages too. So you want to keep it tight and right. And then there are some girls who a little bit more promiscuous than others and but it's okay. We got something for you. Exactly. So super excited about that because that's something that a lot of people are interested in. And another thing which we just we haven't just started doing it but we've been doing it for a while but we're just about to announce it and it's going to be, everyone's going to think it's so crazy. But Helen, our injector, she's about to start we're announcing that we're doing penis filler. Oh wow. So you can. Yeah, they offer a little bit of everything. A little bit of everything.  If you didn't know that's a thing. I didn't know that. Does that hurt? Like how do you numb it? We numb it. But the thing is, it's like some girls who want like a little bit like I don't know, maybe if they're aging or something. Oh, it's saggy. Yeah, like they want a little pout or they want a little plump down there. You can do a filler down there. Yeah, I think you guys have like the instant BBL now. It's while people are lining up. But yeah, I'm super excited for this treatment. It's been a minute since I did micro needling or anything like that. So I'm excited. All right, babe. So I'm going to let you numb for about 30, 45, and then we'll get started. Okay, I'm going to check him back with y'all once this starts to sink in. Setting still. I won't. So yeah, we're about to get started. I'm pretty numb. It's been about 35, 40 minutes.  He heard from other people, but I would say painful, but you're going to feel something because we are going to read aggressive. But I feel, I feel stuff when I do micro needling anyways, but on my forehead and mainly. So, so yeah, I have a high pain tolerance too. So hi. Hi, how are you? Good and you? Good, I'm just going to be watching. The hair. Baby, baby, that is I just got tweeze. Babe, you laser hair removal.  Look, babe, you have your camera. Let me see. It's an inch long black hair. Yeah. I swear, look at that. You don't see that. I literally just got my face. Oh my God. We'll get it tonight. Do you know how to tweezers? At this point, I'm going to grab some tweezers because is this your first time watching this treatment? Yeah, so I'm excited to see. This is your first time doing more to using? Well, not a needle, but she's alarming. Yeah, I do micro needling like all the time. Oh, yeah, this way. I was like sweating. Ours is the best laser. It's insane. What's going on? Yeah, let me get a couple licks in first because this part always hurts the worst and that's where we're starting. Ready? No. We just got done. That she was a 8 out of 10. Not 8 out of 10. The forehead was the worst part, but like I said, the jaw on the bone was like the worst. But we did very aggressive. Yeah, we did very aggressive, which is what she wanted, which this is a normal response. So she's having some erythema and edema, which is redness and swelling. So this is normal. You see a little bit of blood pinpoint bleeding, which is all normal. She'll the swelling and redness will go away over the next 24 hours, even in the next six hours will go down. I'm about to put one of our blueberry mask on to cool her down. It's cold. We keep them pretty. We keep them in the refrigerator so they're cold. It's going to help cool her skin down and help with some of that swelling and redness. Can I have something? This is the anti-oxidant. So it's just going to help with the healing and the swelling and the redness. Let this sit on for about 10 minutes. Okay, babe? Okay. When you get home, don't do nothing to your face. Okay, okay. And before you go to bed tonight, just rinse with water. You're not going to apply anything tonight. And then we have instructions for you to use after what you're going to do starting tomorrow in the morning. We have it labeled. You're going to use the gentle cleanser, the brightening cream, and the healing cream in the morning. And then at night you're going to use the gentle cleanser and the brightening cream. And that's for days 1 through 3. That's your morning and night regimen. It's written down. Then you have instructions days 4 through 14. In the morning, starting days 4 through 14, you're going to do gentle cleanser, brightening cream and healing cream. There's SPF in the healing cream so that's sun-protected. So don't put another sunscreen on. You got to use this one specifically. Okay. And then at night, you're going to use the gentle cleanser. You're going to use the retinol and the brightening cream. Okay. Now the healing cream, like I said, has the sun-protection in it. It is a little thicker. It's made for post-procedure so it may look a little, you may say a little white cast. A little bit. But this is a sunscreen you need to use after these treatments because it's not going to irritate your skin. Some other chemical sunscreens could irritate your skin. This is not a chemical. This is a physical mineral and it has a lot of other ingredients that soothe and nourish the skin. So that's why you need to wear this one and just kind of get over the white cast. It's not too bad, but like I said we got to make sure that we heal you properly. Okay. So we're going to put this all in the bag and then I'm going to see you in a month. Okay. Cool. Thank you. Alright babe. It's good to see you. I can take this off. Yes. Do you love that? Yes. It's all bloody. My appointment and I'm not as red as I thought I was going to be. I think it's because of that cooling mask he put on my face from his cosmetic line.  Honestly, with micro needling it's a little different because it's a little faster. But that I feel like you're just going to every piece of skin.  But that's just what I like to do every month even with the needle. So if the results are good and if it's worth it, I'm definitely going to keep getting the treatment. But yeah, I'm super excited. But yeah, my skin doesn't look, my skin already looks flowy. I think it's just because of that mask. But yeah, I'm super excited. But right now, I don't feel anything. It's not hurting or anything like that. Yeah, and I like Porstar I love it.  So make sure y'all hit him up. I know a lot of people go to him for the melanics. My mom actually, well my mama my mom actually got the melanics before and she loved it. I'm going to get her one of them before she leaves back home like for real for real.   So, but yeah, I love his staff so nice. I got in and out. But yeah, I'm about to be on my way home.  So I'm probably going to give me something to eat real quick because I have anxiety right now because all I had today was a matcha with espresso. Y'all know I put espresso in my thing, so and that clean juice earlier, but yeah, and that's about it. So I guess I'll talk to y'all once. Well, I'm going to keep y'all updated on my. Good morning y'all today. My skin healed up really nice. But I have this dry patch right here. I didn't wash my face or anything but I'm about to. So, it's early in the morning. Y'all last night I would over to Shayna's house and because she had caught me and then we were just talking and then she was like going through stuff. So my girl I'm gonna just come bring you a bottle of wine because I have wine in my fridge and I don't even drink it obviously. And so that I have it over here because I have wine in my refrigerator that I haven't drank. So I was like let's just put this to you. So I wanted to over to her house and we was just up in wine talking, catching up and then she ordered pizza. It was like a cute little fun, random girl's night I was bored.  Cause it seems like you've gone through it. So anyways but today is the next day and I'm about to take a bath this morning and then me and my ma have paid. I'm going to this warehouse but right now it's currently 8am so I'm about to get in a tub and soak. And then later on today I have to do some work and then yeah but my skin is healing fine. My skin is not red or anything so that's good. But he gave me some aftercare products that I have to use for the next three days so I'm gonna use that to follow up and wash my face and stuff and then I'm about to wash my hair do a little hair mask in the shower with the bath or whatever and I'm probably gonna ice roll my face um yesterday too I love my ice roller I think I have it on my house for a couple of months some days but last night I used this ice roller I really like this one and I left it out cause I was tired I did it when I was like fall asleep but I have another one as well too that's what I'm trying to do this one while I'm in a tub so yeah but that's pretty much it for this morning let's look it up but yeah I'm just gonna use this aftercare instructions so I'm gonna use this after I get out the tub the gentle I'm gonna use this gentle cleanser healing cream and then the brightening cream so these three products when I get out the tub and then yeah for the next couple days so yeah y'all so it's been a little bit later and I forgot y'all today I'm so sorry I apologize but um we're about to eat our lunch and we just got back from I gotta take this phone call hello should I get cream chairs but anyways y'all y'all miss my well we've seen a couple options we went to this warehouse sale what was it called? trifecta trifecta oh do you wanna show these no why but I don't have it I will send it to you okay I'm gonna put it like on a sidebar on screen she don't wanna talk she making my meal so it's all good you can act funny like that make sure you make my sandwich right though okay hello I'm hungry anyways so I got a little package y'all I don't know what it is my essence they don't like to pay for customs like I pay too much money already so why you can't pay for customs but anyways I went to Sephora stopped at my favorite place the Avalon we had to go pick up a little iPad or whatever and I'm trying to get a new laptop y'all cause my laptop my Mac is like a 2019 it needs to go it's so slow it gets on my nerves but the newer ones are made for like content creators it's a lot faster so they only have one I didn't start at the Apple store cause I had to pick up the iPad but yeah I wasn't given the GPC that I needed so I want like a higher GPC so I'm probably just gonna order it and just wait for it to come honestly cause yeah tired of waiting but anyways so from Sephora I got the glowgasm goldgasm beauty wand stick I really like these glitteries like girl she knows what she's doing so I had like a new got a new travel one to put on my purse cause it's giving very much hot, heater, sauna out here in these streets in Atlanta and I need to touch up my makeup when I go out so I needed a new one of those then I'm gonna be trying out this Summer Fridays lip butter bomb vanilla beige we're gonna see what this does for my lips can't wait to try that out got a new Cosas concealer Cosas concealer is very hydrating and I really like it so I got a lighter color this is the 0.5 I'm gonna just mix it with the one that I have now but if you haven't tried out Cosas concealer try it out and then I got a new fancy sweet mouth and then I was on the Sephora side I used to use these Sephora pressed powders cause I think Arnael was using them a long time ago and I picked it up and I really like how I made my skin look so I really just wanna incorporate this in my makeup makeup looks so this is the micro smooth powder in the color bronze so I'm gonna see how this makes my makeup look and then I just got a lip gloss in a color 32 cause it looks really cute but it's a new and then I got some more setting spray like a milk makeup grip spray I really like this and then also a new product that I'm gonna be trying out is this mason louise marie ok y'all so a lot of people been posting this well on tic-tac the girls and I'm like let me just smell and somebody was like oh it smells like the one hotel and I'm like how because Le Labo sometimes 26 is they're saying so it's giving very much a dupe for that like it literally smells the same it's in the I forgot which one it was but they only have 3 perfumes at the store I know it's like this B one but anywho I'm trying out some perfume oils so I was just like let me just get the starter kit so it just came with all the scents that they have wait the colors I really don't care for this same I don't know maybe it will smell different as an oil but I sprayed in a store I didn't like it it wasn't giving but let me see which one it's giving out lady it's giving very much Chantel Chanel number 5 ok this is the one this is the one that smells like sounds out 26 right here so I'm definitely gonna be using this when I get out the shower and stuff this one is giving out like oh my god this one I said I didn't care for but what does this one smell like this smells like something that I already have oh this smells like this smells like the bias the bias the bias candle my smell this let me see how I do my comparisons I know myself spot on so spell this and then smell this it's giving the same no smell it again I think you got all started already smell it again no I can only smell ok turkey bacon smell this swear smell it they smell like this yeah I know sweet so I like this thing it's like a fresh thing I really like it I only have the house thing honestly but yeah this smells just like it the bias candle so if you like that this smells just like it yeah so but this one is the let I go down 26 for sure smells just like I don't even heard of but yeah I'm going to have that my working date but yeah that's all what I got from Sephora and then I don't know if I'm going to show you all my orders from Essence because I want to do a summer collective haul Outler Outler Langer we got some I got a couple sale pieces for the name we don't know so when we're the out of comes when we're coming soon yeah that's it for now but yeah I'm just about to put my stuff up and chill and this is the mayonnaise my mom likes to use if y'all are looking for alternatives the mayo avocado oil tastes really good that's what I'm giving lunch break I mean dinner break it's five o'clock


We're going to talk about my journey with leadership. So we're going to see some photos here, some of which might be a little cute. Some of you have probably never seen any of them see these photos of me, because if anyone else has my house, it's going to be cute. So I want to tell you where it starts. And it starts with me as a baby. Apparently, I had plans. And they may be more good plans, but I was going to ask you on them. I was fearless. I was interested and curious. And it started early. My dad told the story when I was five. My sister was two. We were in San Antonio at Marriott. I think my dad was at a dental convention. And somehow, I took my mom and took my sister and left to learn the hotel. And hours later, we were discovered by housekeeping in the basement. I apparently got in a service elevator and got all the way down there. So I'm sure my mom was freaking out. But anyway, that's how it began. And I believe I never really slowed down in terms of having that drive and wanting to take risks and do interesting things to me. My next chapter is in the Boy Scouts. And I'm the one here in the middle holding a film on sign. This is not your 12th year, so pre-Teen Marty.  They run their patrols and their troops. So 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds are put in charge of running these outings and all these activities. And so at this young age, I was trained, at least in several levels, to be a leader. I don't know how good of a leader I really was. I don't have that good memory of that, but I was put in charge of things. And so it went on. The next chapter was me after high school in the Army. And I must have super-graded my parents and some of my friends. I decided not to go to college and joined the Army instead. I was not a leader in the Army, though. I was a supply manager, followed up orders, and was part of a large team. And so it was a very good experience. I didn't always agree with the orders I was given, but I recognized the value of the team and the value of that structure and strong leadership. And all those experiences started to build my sort of understanding and beliefs around leadership and how that can help things go forward. The next chapter is sort of the not unexpected chapter. And that was being a parent. I would learn more about leadership and about meeting folks and dealing with adversity and challenges and surprises as a parent. And with my current sort of roles various leadership positions that Jeff is alluding to, I've drawn more on what I've done to be a good dad to be effective there. So we already have a little bit of my introduction, Jeff, I did all these things. These are the things that I do now. I think I'll have some form of, I'm in the formal role of running, how I could work to mention, have been running that for 13 years as a business owner. And so many challenges, running a small business. As a software consultancy. So not only am I working with entrepreneurs and businesses to rescue their software, build software in any way, ship their products. I'm also dealing with the internal struggles of teams and communication and just solving business problems internally. Like how, I've been doing mistakes for five years over the years and I learned, I adopted. And so many lessons came from that. We had Boulder Ruby, which actually originally was the Boulder Denver Ruby group, which I felt bad that Denver didn't have any group. So I tried to split and I realized that wasn't gonna work so well. And then I picked Boulder only. Luckily, DeRail started shortly after Boulder Ruby started. So that was nice for non of those guys who were able to run DeRail for so many years. But that's against small organization of a media, which I still run, so it's been 13 years actually. Boulder Ruby's been going on. And at Ruby Central, it's a big nonprofit where we're running Rails company, Ruby company. There's different leadership challenges that are involved there. And finally, Boy Scouts. I am an adult volunteer with my sevens troupe in Boy Scouts Nationalist Weekend on Sunday. I did their leadership training for the boys next round at Boy's Day for leadership. So I think a lot about leadership and I think about it in a lot of different ways. So the question is, what is a leader? And we can look at the dictionary here, if it works. And this is fine, but isn't really a very useful definition. It's a little too broad for my taste. We can certainly look at some iconic leaders and you can see that they come from all different kinds of backgrounds. Some of them aren't very formal positions like they're political leaders or they're military leaders. But some of them aren't just they start the movement and they're gonna make it happen. No one put them in charge. They just took lead and made it happen. And so leadership can happen really anywhere. We have some other examples that perhaps I'm trying, but maybe you're not the ones that want to make it. Maybe, it's like we all are, you're not really a leader because these are many leaders that we are forced to follow or at least deal with, avoid or whatnot. And so it does really bring up the point that just because someone's been hired as managers because they've been put in charge of them or people doesn't really make them a leader. So what is leadership? And here's a definition or explanation that I found recently that I really like that we're gonna come explore briefly. So the first part that I like to highlight is that it's a process of social influence. But this process isn't really defined, it's not limited. So it could be like they're given authority or given a role and you've got to give folks orders or whatnot, that's true. But it could be in sort of influence. It could come from like you're just leading from behind or you're helping out your group in various ways. And these are all forms of process or social influence. The next piece here is that it maximizes the efforts of others. So by introducing the efforts of others, we're talking about a team, a regular group. And after your point of your leadership is that you're maximizing. You're trying to make your group stronger, make it better, make it produce more, whatever is important to that group, you're maximizing whatever it's doing. And there are lots of ways you can accomplish this. Finally, there is a goal we're working towards something. Leadership has some direction. And this is important that we not only sort of acknowledge this goal but we keep in mind as we decide what we're going to do. So as we sort of kind of come to this conclusion, to be a leader you have to hurt it. It's not something that should be given to you. You're not really a leader at that point. And we're gonna talk a little bit today about what that means. There are many paths to leadership. Certainly my path was that I had this great drive and curiosity of the world and I was just going to make it happen. Whether that was a good idea or a bad idea didn't really matter or I was gonna make it happen. And that's been true for most of my life. Luckily, as my experiences grew over the years I got a little wiser and smarter about some of the things that I did. I can tell you that looking back at different points in my life, I shook my head like really, I did that. What was I thinking? And so for each of you, your path to leadership might look completely different. It doesn't need to look like anybody else's. It doesn't have to have that formal route. It doesn't have to have this, I was born to be a leader kind of thing. It can come to it in different ways. So what I'm curious to explore is what is this like in software? Let's be a little more concrete, a little more specific. This is a quick list I put together. This is not meant to be said if there could be some other things to be here. But when I think about a technical leader these are some of the things that I think they're going to be doing. The first piece is kind of probably the obvious one that we would think about is the fact that you know how to build software. And I can be actual writing code, that's how you make sort of like high-level architecture design, how you go about communicating with your team and the process of which you go through to build your software and ship it, maintain it and all that. So there is this knowledge piece that we know what we're doing actually in the software. Second piece is they make technical decisions. So yep, yep, we expect a leader to do that. They don't have to always be the one to make a piece sort of driven by a group process but ultimately they're responsible for the technical decisions happening. There's this communication piece here, communications is pretty important for teams and we're talking internally so how does the team work together but also outside the team. So like how do we work with users, how do we work with business interests, how do we work with external providers and services that we need. All of these things are important especially if you're doing anything complex where there's lots of coordination that communication becomes either more important and thus the technical leader needs to own this piece. Mentoring others, I think this is a one thing certainly this community has embraced and now when I look out there at the greater software community, mentoring is a very common term that we hear. Certainly when I got started with doing this in the 90s I don't think I ever heard mentoring ever mentioned when I was doing software. I mean it happened in a way but it wasn't spoken, it wasn't something that we actively did. And then finally that's a good example and I think this is all true. So what's interesting though about this slide that you really look at all those five points what if this wasn't a leader? What if this is just a teammate of yours? Wouldn't you want that person in your team? The answer is yes, at least I would say yes. These are fantastic and so the thing is you can have leaders at all different levels in your software groups, new teams and they don't have to actually be in a formal position. So one question that I get fairly often is part of the difference between a senior and a middle-level developer. And not that I contend for this slide to be definitive either, so that's a very sort of complex nuance in a lengthy discussion. It could be an easily talk on itself, probably make a conference on it if we wanted to. And, but these are some of the things to stand out for. So one of the things is I don't have to tell a senior what to do.  There is some sort of like here's your mission. But I'm not going to go in and tell them how to go about doing it. I know they know how to do it. I trust them to do it and do it right. I don't have to babysit them, that's great. I know how to work effectively as a team. They have that experience and they can do that. And that definition comes up and they always do. But they'll be on the handle. This, to me, is some of the biggest separation that I see between a senior developer and a middle-level developer. And so when I look at these different points, I see them as examples of leadership or life leadership. So a senior developer, at some level, has developed these leadership capacity that they now use to do their job. So, we're now going to transition to talking about how you, as an individual contributor, as a junior programmer, wherever you are in the journey, how you can do some of these things, the things that you can use to cultivate those skills and become more of a leader before you're given that position, before you're ever put in that place. The first piece is you lead by understanding. We are knowledge workers. What we know or know how is so crucial to what we do in our job. So understanding and knowing what we're going to be doing to keep. So the first piece here is knowing the purpose. What is the goal of your team? Your product, your business, sort of what is your, what are the goals that users might have when they want your software? Do you know these things? If you don't, you need to find out. You should ask. And then once you have that, it's going to guide you to work. So many times, day-to-day, we make tiny decisions about how to implement something, how to design something, what's your approaching take on the software you're building. If you don't have answers to these things, if you don't have that bigger picture, you're going to be working in a vacuum. You're not going to know whether you should go this way or that way. And so many times when I've seen over the years where you might be given a task, you know, a business owner has asked for a specific feature a certain way. And maybe they didn't think about it. And a senior or myself or someone will catch it and say, wait a minute, this doesn't make a lot of sense. Like, I thought the purpose or the goal of what we're trying to accomplish is this. This seems to cross purposes with that goal. And so that sometimes will be asked to these things. If you don't have this big picture, you can't be effective there. Know yourself. We've already touched on this today. I left the feedback piece earlier if you can read any questions. And this is, this is pretty important. We do a lot of relationship stuff with PotcoWorks and I've done a lot of mentoring over the years. And one piece I've noticed is that often times these juniors come in and they really don't have a good sense of where they are. They might think they're more, they're further along than where they are or they might actually be very down on their own abilities and doubt them. And so really getting a good bearing of where you are is super important. So here are some things that you can do to sort of build this self-awareness that you can now have a better sense of yourself because you're gonna be meeting this. You have to be honest with yourself also. You know, it's okay. Like I'm not gonna put my life where I'm old enough to like I am who I am and I accept that I have faults we all do and I don't have that bluster that I had in the 20s where I thought it was just hot shit and it was amazing. And then reality around and I realized, oh okay, yeah maybe not so much but you need to use this place where you're okay with this. You need to have that time for self-reflection. You know, go and learn about kind of bias. There's all these ways that we maybe put on sort of blinders who are not aware of what's around us and how we're interacting with the world. And this is very important to how you can grow and become a better person and a better developer and leader.  We're all different. We all have different values, how we're gonna work, communicate, how we learn. If you don't know how to interact or relate to your fellow teammates, you're not gonna be very effective in an interaction. So start paying attention to this sort of thing. I'm not just suggesting that you like make dossiers on folks but like you can certainly get to where like, oh I know, like Andy loves to learn this way, right? When I'm talking to me, this is how we're gonna sort of work through a problem and I know she'll get that because that's how she likes to sort of communicate. And so sort of build up this awareness. I almost didn't put this in. I feel it's almost in the obvious category but I do wanna stress this that our industry moves so fast. How we built 5, 10 years ago, 20 years ago is many ways so radically different from how we work today. So you have to be continuously learning. Now I know for those of you there in the touring crowd, you have this sort of like, life-type learner model and that's fantastic, that's exactly what we're kind of going at here. But here's some of the things that you really need to stay on top of. You need to understand the trade-offs of all the technologies, tools and processes you use because there are trade-offs, there's nothing, there's no silver bullets, there's nothing like, yep, we're always using Ruby or we're always using whatever like, you just haven't seen enough to know better. But there are trade-offs and you have to understand what the trade-offs are. You also need to write your knowledge so that when you take all these tools or new methodologies or wherever they are so you can evaluate them as well. You can have intelligent conversations with your team with, you know, manager or whatever about why we should go in this direction, why we should sort of advocate for use of this new technology or not. If you don't have this, then you can't be part of that conversation. So the ability for us to make decisions is as much as what we know. It's very important. So these are all different ways you can go about that.  And sort of as sort of a wise lesson I got from 80s Saturday morning cartoons knowing it's half the battle. Lead by example, right? So this is probably something that you've heard countless times. Of course, leaders lead by example. And it's true, it's actually very important that this is indeed how we are. And we're going to start off with talking about how actions matter. And you need to model, behave and the value you expect for your group. And you can do this when you're just beginning on a team, when you're just new to a team or like you've been there maybe a year, you'll have to be a senior to do this. You can identify what is the behavior, the values and the way of working that's important to this team or to me personally, any model. You make sure that you're accountable for how you are here. Because it's going to be the basis of which you're going to set an example. And influence your team. Acting with integrity, this kind of falls up with that. You can't really fool people on your team. You know, if you're not, if you can't really walk the walk, if you want to go really, if you are authentic, they're going to totally tell. And what's worse is they're not going to trust you. They're not going to respect you. They won't want to work with you as much. And that's not a good place to be, especially if you want to be a positive influence on your team. So acting with integrity. I would say that most of us have this drive to deliver quality, but you might not have the first full way about doing about it. And I think that if you want to sort of step up to the next level, be that example, sort of lift up your team, you need to definitely deliver quality to be to have these high standards and you need to strive for excellence. Now this is like, how would you go about doing this? Well, one of the concepts that I love, we haven't heard about it, is called kaizen. It is a Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement. It comes from the Toyota Protection Systems of the 50s, so we manufacturing deferred that term. And kaizen is this idea, it's got a few parts, but one is the philosophical part, what's sort of the action part. The philosophical part is that you have this culture, where you're actively engaged, you're looking for ways to constantly improve and make suggestions and make everything better around the way you work, to all the way to where this becomes your way of thinking. And I myself personally, this is just how I've been a long time, so when I finally came around to seeing kaizen, I was like, this is awesome, it's exactly what I love. And sort of if you ever want to become a better person, you have this personal growth, you wanna go through, this is, you're gonna be doing kaizen for yourself. So what does that look like in action? This is what they call, it's pretty straightforward, it's sort of a very scientific method, you will. They call it the kaizen event, but it has really kind of four basic steps, when you check and act. So the idea here is of course you're playing out, what are you trying to prove, like what's your approach to that? Great, okay, cool. Now if you do the thing, it's not quite like drawing the album, it's similar. And then didn't check, so you have to measure, like did it actually move the needle, did it actually get improvement? You have to evaluate this very data-centric, let's see results. And then finally, you adjust and repeat as necessary. And lean start-up is what is that? Also has a similar kind of feedback where they're constantly using this build learning loop where they're iterating very quickly over, over their software or their process to make it better. So all this kind of comes from the same source. So the thing I would say here is that don't underestimate how important setting this example of how it will be, and that you're growing, you're getting better, it's gonna be on your team. And the other piece to kind of say here is that people are gonna notice, they're gonna say, wow, so-and-so is really just kicking ass, this is great. Like they're gonna see this, and it's gonna start to snowball on you where you're gonna get better and better, and you're gonna just all of a sudden, it's commotion, it's gonna be awesome. So I do wanna stress this, it's really important part of becoming the process of these leadership skills. This next piece is, falls into sort of the intangible category of wills. It's kind of the, I hear like, go near for a while, kind of sort of phrases and whatnot. This is kind of this area. And I group this first one as sort of nothing gets missed. And this is the idea that, especially if you're doing a sort of fint or sort of complex process of what's going on, it's very easy for those that are planning to miss something, to not realize that this step hadn't been done or hadn't been assigned to someone. And this is the idea that you're looking out for those sort of things. And you're being proactive, you're not waiting for someone to assign to you, to tell you to do this.  So hey, look folks, this week, are we gonna do this or are we skipping it? Or I'm just gonna knock this out. This is that idea. This is not the, not my job thing. Like, oh, that can't be that, so I'm not proved to do that. So I'm sorry, pass the buck, use someone else's gun to do that for you. Again, just drive some bonkers if you get that over and over again. So this is not that. And also here, I put this, no job is beneath you. Like, if you see the floor needs to be swept, you know what, I'll just grab a broom and I'll do it. Like, I don't mind all of my sleeves. I don't care if I'm the boss. I will do whatever job it takes to get done because that's what leaders do. And that helps the group succeed, is that we make sure we don't miss something. Being autonomous, this is, might be a little obvious, but this is something that I want you to work towards if you're not there yet. This is sort of kind of like, now I know I'm a senior almost, but this is the idea, that you don't need someone else to direct you. That once you can give it enough like, here's your task type information, that you can be self-reliant, that you can now go through and get whatever you've been assigned done. And I say here, or your reputation with a team knows you're delivered. Well, if you assign it so and so, that's gonna happen. I know it'll happen and it'll be done well. That's where you wanna get to. So, this isn't a lone wolf mindset. This doesn't mean that you're like, yep, I got this. Nobody knows how I'm not gonna talk to anyone. I'm gonna go off my own and knock it out. It's not that.  So, still find the ask for help, and I'm just suggesting that's us to take, that you wanna get to where you are self-reliant. Oftentimes when I am sort of talking with other leaders and other people of managers, these are all the kinds of things that they look for. And I've noticed in the years that they're really good employees. The ones that I feel comfortable putting more tasks on are the ones that do these sort of intangible pieces. So you wanna be a lead by lifting others. So this is the idea that you can maximize your team. You can help your team by helping them out. So, here is this look to help concept. This is that you're keeping your eyes out for ways that you can help someone struggling. I've got some examples here. Maybe you share some tip or approach, some script you've adopted. This really makes a difference, making more productive. This is the share of talent. So that you're trying to, anything good that you've sort of come across that helps you do better at your job, you're building that out to your teammates. They're going to run back. They got obstacles in the way that you can help out with. These are all ways you can help. And that helps your team. The next piece is mentoring. Teaching is fantastic. I think we've kind of already established this. It's a problem that already you've heard a lot about mentoring. But it's super important that this is something that you can do. And you can do it even when you're starting off. You don't have to be a senior to give back and mentor in some ways. And actually with my apprenticeship and things that hot code works, some of the best mentoring interactions that I saw was when sort of an early mid, our advanced junior was working with another junior. It's fantastic. So I encourage you all to look for any opportunities where you should mentor. But that is a hardware practice. So even though you might not be a leadership role, you might have your job certainly helping out and mentoring is something you can do. So we've talked a little bit about communication and how important is the team. And this is something that I see as a real difference maker for folks getting started. Because in our work, understanding what we're building, understanding what people are doing is really important and communication is how you arrive at that understanding. So it's a course of effective teams. I do want to stress here this idea that you practice with me through your communication. And we'll get to feedback just a bit. But like this idea that you are aware of how you're talking, the words you're using, how you're relating to your teammates or where you're working with and are you being empathetic in terms of that? There's a lot to go into there. I won't get into any specifics, but this is something that you want to think about when you're communicating, how empathetic are you being? Listening to learn is a great way of thinking about when you're taking information. And I think you have this Katrina that was mentioning this with TV, the International TV, the PR, like last curious. It said like, I can't believe she said I did that wrong. I'm like, that's interesting, why? I don't know why I would do that. Or why do I do that one piece? Or why do I write a quote that way? And this is the same idea here is that you're hearing something, you're taking information, and maybe it doesn't make sense, but you should be sort of like a detective and find out what is that? Why? Why are they different? Why are you reacting? What kind of learn from this? Our communication piece is something that we do quite a bit of hot coders, we're a distributed team, so we're not physically together anywhere. And so we stress this over communication piece where we're always communicating, we're using different methods for communicating, and that everything is available up there, so if someone is not around, when a conversation happened, they can get to a lot of that information.  Are things being siloed or being, only discussed for water cooler, or are they only happening in certain meetings and the rest of the group isn't aware of it? So you as an individual contributor can make sure that you're really communicating. Everyone's clear about what you're doing and you're understanding what they're doing and what's happening. So we'll talk about feedback. It is a gift. It is a really important way to teams improve. And I was just tickled when Jeff went, the feedback round on the questions. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that now. So here's a thing. If feedback, both in how it's given and received, is done right, it can be very, very powerful. It can be very inspiring and motivating for your team. If it's not done well, you can imagine that can be destructive to relationships. You can kill morale, you can create distrust. And so it's important that you think about how you give feedback. Creators doesn't thrive it. It's what that in there, you should never be criticizing publicly because it's just shaming and that's not gonna be conducive to what you want. So getting feedback. Here's a little acronym that I like to recommend that sort of, this little framework for how you can give feedback effectively. And it's called ASC. The first piece here is as actionable. You should have an outcome in mind. What exactly are you trying to accomplish by doing this feedback? What do you expect is gonna happen with this feedback? Specific. It should be concrete and detailed. If you get into a generalized, I'm just, you know, you always do this or whatever like that, exaggeration, probably not true. Also, that's a lot more of a tacky, sort of a tactic that you're using there. You can definitely hear when someone says something like that, that there's sort of a wounding or some sort of issue frustration that they have internally and they're now letting that come out. So it means specific. It's pretty hard to argue when you get all specifics about this happening. On this day, these things happened and this was the outcome of that. And so let's talk about what we can do to make that better. And if I'm kind, there's lots of ways you can get this feedback. You can be tactful. You can still give them the feedback. You can still say like, this wasn't good. This was bad. This was, this was harmful. Or whatever it might be, you can say that in a way where they know that you care and that you are being kind and how you deliver it. That makes it a little bit easier for that feedback to be received. So on the other side, we have receiving feedback. So the first piece here is self-awareness. You have to be ready. If someone's giving you feedback and we're gonna assume this feedback is probably critical. If they're getting positive feedback, that's gonna be like, oh my God, I don't know if I can take this good feedback. We're talking probably about critical stuff. And you wanna hear this though. You have to get to a place where you're okay with this. And here's the thing about a lot of this is that it's not necessarily about you. Almost all of this stuff is about your actions. It's about the things that you've done. And that doesn't mean that intrinsically you can't do better. That you can't be different because you can. That's one of the most amazing things about us is that we're so adaptable, we can grow. The way that I was, when I was with my children, we're so different from where I am now. And I see them, my kids, I see there's so many people. So as long as they're willing to do the work, it's right, they can get to where they can make it better. So if someone tells you something's not good or you're messed up, you wanna hear that. Because if you don't hear it, guess what, you're gonna keep doing it.  He always does this and he always does this and you know, likes, whatever. I'm gonna give up on that personally because I don't think that they'll ever change. Well, you have to receive that feedback because that'd be possible. So again, we have nice and accurate and active. First piece is accept. And there's a lot to this. I'm reaching fairly brief, but there's body language. You can tell it's like, look, I'm ready to receive feedback from you. Like I'm interested, I wanna hear what you have to say. It might be painful, but I'm open to that. And so you wanna show it in body language and your demeanor and everything you can. You have to take it, that's fine. But like, do your best. Clarify. I'm gonna plug active listening. Oh, that's a, you look this up on your own time kind of thing. I don't have the time to go into active listening. But active listening is a technique you can use when you're taking the feedback that allows you to really fully understand and be able to take that in and put to action. And I think the thing that you guys touched on earlier was that if someone is going to be effort to give you this, no, they're saying they're not an asshole and they're supposed to be, but if they're doing this in a trying to help you out really way, they're not persistent or whatever, then there's some truth to what they're saying. So in their reality, their perception, their viewpoint is valid. And so you need to take it, it may not be your viewpoint, it may not be true all the time, but it is at least true in this one instance. And that you should think about that and think is this, maybe that's more true for more folks. Take it in. And finally, you might know from providing valuable feedback. Now what you do with this feedback is it's only a different matter and you don't necessarily always have to act on it, but it's good to take it in and reflect on it. I like to plug a book called Rattler Panda. And I love this graph, I love the quadrants here. And what we're talking about with this given feedback really kind of falls in the Rattler Panda category where you care personally, but you're willing to challenge directly, you're willing to give them that tough feedback and say this is how you didn't do so well or whatever it is. Something is probably uncomfortable. This is not gonna be an awesome conversation, but it's the one that needs to happen if we're gonna grow and things are gonna get better. And so that's this quadrant up there, Rattler Panda. The one I like here, the other one is rudeness and defeat. And this is where you care personally about someone but you're not willing to challenge directly, you're not willing to house our conversations. And so that's kind of like letting them walk around like muster their shirt, they don't know, you know, embarrassing like, I've never heard their feelings.  So rudeness is actually the worst at all before. So I think we'll say here that kind of right when I'm pointing out here of the talk is that this isn't easy.   It's not gonna be that at all. It's gonna take time and effort. I mean, I personally, I'm not sure how long it took me to do a lot of work, but it's been many years. You do need to be intentional. You need to set out a plan and start working on this. And I would just say to get accepted at a time. Don't try to do this all at once. Think some area and start working on that. Good to practice. Make sure you get it down and move on. So like if you can hop into a DeLorean and like fly your way back to like the 80s and see like T.H. Marty or everybody you can see Marty back in the 90s or not, you know, it would have been rough. I've grown so much of those years and it's something that we all have this journey where we're at this point in our journey and we want to go there. We're gonna have to put the hard work to get there and be easy on yourself. You know, give yourself space to grow and get better. But you can do it. And the thing that I, when I was kind of thinking about all of this talk, I realized, you know what, like being a good leader is actually just being good. Like whether you're in a leadership position or not, if you do all those things, it's awesome.  There's so many positive things about doing all this work. It may be really hard, but it is totally worth it. So, in closing, I just wanna say you don't need a title. You don't need to be in an advance position. You can do this and you can be a leader now. Question in the cigarette, Marty. There's a saying or like rules known kind of in startup world, small company world that the company takes on the characteristics of the founding team, right? The, that tends to be their strengths and weaknesses. Do you think that plays out in teams within the larger company? Like, does the team of eight developers led by one person as a team doesn't tend to work like that leader? Yes, absolutely. I've seen this to be true. I think that certainly my own teams, they're probably, there's a, they're pulled a little more towards them, more direction in how they interact. And for a better or worse, that's true. I've worked with a lot of different teams, organizations over the years, where those that were in charge clearly set the pattern. They set like a sort of irrigate with like, this is like what we expect. These are their values. This is how we're gonna work. And so people just sort of like pick it up and they just kind of, they fall, either they fight it and they leave.  Or they adapt, you know, like, okay, I was online and I'll be like, I'm supposed to be here. So I think it's definitely true. Related, there's an idea that you think about and like the growth of teams, where again, like I think that it's kind of set or plays out frequently or whatever, that if you have a top level leader, CEO, head of the company, whatever, then there's second tier right under them that most often the successor CEO does not come from the second tier, it comes from the third tier because the second tier is set up to like compensate for the weaknesses essentially of the leader and the third tier is really where there's like the same kind of entrepreneurial spirit or like leadership characteristics and so forth. Like I'm curious, have you seen that play out and particularly in your work with kind of parachuting into other companies in their growth cycle, when you jump in, like what are the things you observe in these small, like high growth companies? Yeah, so I think certainly there is sort of following the patterns that the individual set up, sort of there is how we communicate. These are the current tendencies that we create about how we work together and how we're successful together. And so back in Korea, I think it was like sort of like a people coupling that they get comfortable with. And so if there's a lot of change, you have to break that up or it won't work, like they won't change, it won't adapt well because this is how we work, this is work for us. We don't really want to change, we don't live and that's tough. And I think certainly I temper how aggressive I am when I have a client comes in and they've got to make mess in their hands and a lot of times in this rescue it's not technical in nature, right? I mean, yeah, they might put some shitty code, they might be some bad design, you might have hired some folks that really were in over their heads, that's all true, generally can be true in a lot of cases. But it's really how they communicate, how the process they use, how they think about software, what they value. Those are all not in alignment with really what they want. They'll say, I want these things, but in reality, that's not happening on the ground.  You know, sometimes they're not and it's like, it's literally the bad news, you know? I agree both about that. The friend from the software world would always say, I've never seen a project fail for technical reasons. There it is, you know? And it's just, you see it play out over and over, even when the technical reasons get the blame, right? Yeah. It's like, yeah, no. Like, and I wonder if it's just like the technical problems can typically be solved. The human problems are at least harder. And so it's like easier to play, oh, if we had chosen this different language or framework or whatever. Do you see like when you're jumping in and talking to companies like, do they understand that? Are they blaming the technology and the choices or do they understand it's like. I've seen a mix, I've seen a mix for sure. You know, it's, sometimes it's, it's lots of little poor decisions stacked one after another that kind of adds up. And there's definitely like, well, I guess we're here now. This is sort of, how we build software. This is the quality we're willing to earn or we're not getting the time to do what I want to do. And you know, they make it sort of like a, just they just accept this is reality and they kind of give up and it's kind of sad.  I've been told this is how you build software and I went this and they're like, no. Just like that. I was talking with a friend who joking, like you know when somebody says something that they frame it like a joke but you can tell they're not joking.  I was like, okay, say more. Where now we have all these people with a year, two years, three years experience and they think they know all these things and really they don't know anything. It seems that there are more companies now who either choose to or have to like make use of people early in their career. Where 10 years ago, like if you went to just a, you just picked a random team, it didn't necessarily have folks who were a year in or two years in or whatever. Then the idea of like a junior developer is almost new within the last like five, eight years. Like there were always people, obviously, some people had to enter somewhere but even at that point they were, they had done degrees, they had been programming on their own for 10 years, they had their own little projects and all those things. Like is the path we're on sustainable to develop these junior people into mid-level people and level people into senior-level people? That's a good question. And I think the answer is no, we're not quite there yet, but it's changing. I mean, I think probably a lot of you have seen this really hard to get that first job.  A lot of these companies really aren't set up to take in juniors and help them get there. And I've seen, you know, I've hired a few sort of trained grads on their second job and I think two of them had really bad experiences. And I don't, I think it's okay to have a bad experience.  Yeah, that's a great question. Two bad comments.  I don't want to team like that. Now I know a question to ask my next interview. So I think that that's all fine. You still want to stay too long. But the problem is that if you stay too long in a place that's doing it wrong, we'll say, and you know, it's probably a little harsh, but like it's setting up a lot of bad patterns where like we'll have these people come in out there and we're gonna learn a whole bunch of things about how to build software. Because the things you've seen model for you was not good. And that's not, like I can give you examples of how this way of building software is gonna be better. You now see how, if we follow this process of this, how we work together, that's actually gonna be better for you and the team and everybody. And so I think that there are a lot more companies now aware of this and more cautious and they're thinking about how can they learn more people with little experience. And I think that that's true. I do think back to your point here is that certainly when I got started and back in the 90s, there was always people coming in and they were not expected to do too much. I think now there's so much demand and there's companies so desperate to try to build off their team that they're like, let's just get this junior, put him in there, and then they're putting them into a position that they're not really set up to succeed. They're putting too much pressure on them and not up to any kind of guidance and that makes it worse. So I think that definitely the last 10 years we're seeing that now that there's so many new people in the workforce. I mean, you guys have got a lot of good things going for you. You've got a really good example set. But these places don't, there's a lot of companies that just build software internal, so bad. So, this is my last question. It's on clients, I guess. I'm back here for a question. But my last question is like, do you think a person can be underserved by only seeing the good examples? Like is it dangerous in a way for someone to go into a job where things are done well and then not understanding the pressures, the pitfalls, the problems of what happens when it doesn't go well? I think there's some truth to that. There certainly is the idea that if you never see it done in a different way, one, it might not, there might be, because first of all, there's lots of different ways of doing things that can work. So this because we have this one model that works really well, doesn't mean it's not a model that's really close. And so, if you've never seen any other different ways of working, then one, you're not, you probably would have a good way of recognizing how we get from this terrible place and process and an approach to this good place, like it's just too big to divide. And I think there is value in having those experiences and certainly consulting, by the way, gives you just sort of a hyper speed in terms of exposure to things, especially if you're put into rescue legacy tech projects of others that deal with your duty. And I think that that gives you more of that knowledge about sort of what works and what doesn't work. You'll see it like, wow, yeah, we modeled the way of uploading images this way and that really sucked. That was painful in this way. And now I know. It's not just because I saw blog posts that says this is the one true way. It's like, I saw it in a different way and I felt pain. I'm like, dude, I don't like that anymore. I like this. I see why it's so much better than I tell you why. Building software for over 21 years, I've seen it evolve from back in the day.  That's my name. Where are all my tools? Yeah, I don't have tools.   And now it's like, oh, this thing is good. Do a few things and push and boom, there's your app. It's like, it's nice. I mean, it makes you go faster, but you also don't appreciate all the little things that are kind of building up this ease of your development process.  I'm arokuing all my stuff. And I will turn to them and say, you will never speak a ill word about aroku. You don't know what it was like in my day. When the times, when you use the buy a server and mail it around and then send it to a data center, like, no, I reject your disparagement of these tools and technologies.   Anyway, we'll not say I want to highlight out of your talk was the idea of trade-offs. You know, I think Katrina was talking about feedback, meaning in context, trade-offs and like the software choices happen in a context. I think that's one of the hardest things to understand in any time you are, whether you're new to a field or you feel like you're still early in your growth curve, if these things have right answers, we would just pick them, right? But these solutions that you use for one client, for one company, for one scenario are going to often be the wrong choice in the next one, right? And so it's frustrating and also empowering a way that as you say, like after 20 years, 21 years, like you can still be learning new things because the context is constantly shifting. And it's not just a matter of like piling up all the right things I got before, but it's can I apply some of those right things in this new context, figure out what things used to be wrong are now right and what used to be right is not wrong. Hi, my name is Cody. You're talking about people processes that are harder to fix than technical processes and projects don't fail for technical reasons and so on and so forth, right? What would you say the best recourse is for an individual contributor, somebody who doesn't really have power over people processes in a situation where you can kind of tell those are failings or processes, they're using wrong communication channels, whatever, but somebody who doesn't really have a way to effect change. So the first thing is, are you having one-on-ones with your team lead? You are. So one-on-ones are a great place to have these conversations. I recommend that you take more of the sort of data analytical approach to it, like here, if we did this, it would improve these things. It would allow us to do these things. So a very large, rational approach to this is opposed to a very emotional one. And I would just build that up, like build your case. Here's why we should do that and put it forward and see what happens. You could also lobby your fellow teammates and say, hey, let's talk to them and our one-on-ones about this and all this kind of thing together and eventually they're like, wow, what was I talking about? We should do this one process and we should change that. And so it kind of depends. I mean, I will tell you when, in my first job, I actually went to the CEO and opened up a policy. And I thought that meant that you could go into the CEO and talk to him about things. He was very polite and listened to me and nodded and nothing happened from anything that I told him. And I thought I had good reasons, but I was also pretty young. And I would say that just sort of timber your expectations about how fast any organization is gonna make changes. But that's how you start it. And I would also say that, see if you can suggest a little trial period or have this group give this a go and see how that goes and measure it and sort of track the results. Because then at that point, it's hard to argue with data. You have data on your side and they can say, okay, cool. Yeah, but that actually makes it a proof. It's a huge issue. They're like, I really like the suggestion and the process. And don't try to make it too big either. Because make it too big and there's too many things that go wrong. And there's too many, the bigger the scarier it is the more resistance the organizations get pushed back on that. And for good reason because we try to change everything. A lot of stuff can go wrong. So I would say that's what I would recommend is think about a small, incremental, very rational thing you could shift and see if they, see if they bite the lip of one of them. To highlight a piece you said earlier, I think there's always a powerful role for this like peer review issue, right? And when the team lead or when the director says, hey, this is how we're gonna do things. We're gonna do a code review on pull requests.  Can't believe they told us to do this, right? But when it comes from the peer and you say like, hey, I'm up to do more code review on pull requests. We'll be like, yeah, I'm in for that, that'll be great. It's about time. We looked at each other's stuff, right? And often it's the case that whatever you are feeling and on the verge of saying, other people are feeling and they're afraid of saying. So it is, I think a metric of leadership or like perceiving the leadership that you're getting is how receptive are they to that advocacy? And are they willing to listen? It's maybe a small step and then they go, okay, great, thanks for your thoughts to see it. But second, if you're willing to put yourself out and I think it's important that you title it like taking lead, not like getting lead, receiving lead, being a pointed lead, right? But to say, I'm gonna be willing to step out of it and try and make the place I wanna be a part of or try and make the process I wanna be a part of or make the team I wanna be a part of. I think any good leader is not gonna feel threatened by that. They're gonna try and amplify what you're doing. And it's a sign of bad leadership we're gonna like. Hey, Marty. Hi, DJ. You, we have the Marty B. Fly reference. So I'm wondering what point in your past would you now hire yourself? Yeah, I don't know, that's an excellent question. It depends on what I was expecting. So actually I really love hiring people on potential.  So, I mean, I think I did pretty well when I started programming. I got to program a little bit later in my career. So I was in the Army and then I didn't tell you all this. I was a professional musician for a number of years. Did I do it? What was your Army job? I don't know, a mother's hotel, an anti-tank industry. The anti-tank industry. So I just, I had two till missiles at Tanks.   I was trained to kill, so. I actually was a SOC winner. So I had, actually, I almost, this is another side of Marty. So you're seeing a SOC or, but I almost had special forces. But the problem was I had to re-enlist for five years and I decided that Marty had a lot more potential outside of the military than inside the military. And as much as I enjoyed certain projects, I wanted to, so wait, wait, yes, I can learn about the SOC and clean the SOC cause we all kinds of crazy things I didn't do already. But, so. How did you hire that guy? Army Marty was pretty raw. Pretty, I think, Army Marty, we need to have some softening before. I almost probably went, Army Marty, that guy on the team were like, I mean, I had a good heart, right? I mean, I was a good person inside.  Like, that was, that was really wrong. It's, it's very cringy. I think that people are like, we didn't really think very highly of you. So you're making progress. I'm definitely making progress. So I think by the time I got to programming, I had to make different life experiences that I was pretty hungry. I wanted to work in a team. I wanted to learn and grow. And so I quickly got, I took speed back in pretty quickly and I learned pretty fast. But, so I think I probably would have, for a junior role, of course. I think about since your year. 19. That one? 97. 97. So I think by about, this is interesting for me about year seven is when it's sort of switched where like I had this confidence. Like, I think I could probably go with that. Before that I was like, I don't know enough about computer programming and computer science to actually do some of these things. But I think at that point, I recognized I had this experience and perspective because I had like this non-technical look in the business side of what probably was solving that was different from a lot of the programmers. And I was able to then use that to more effectively come to solutions. And I loved discovering solutions. I worked with people to find that. I didn't have any ego about like, I'm gonna be the one that writes on the phone, whatever, like I didn't care. I was like, what can we accomplish? What's your solution? Can we build together? And so I was, you know, that's what I need seven years in. I was at that point. And at that point, that was like, yeah, I mean, I would have been a good, like put him on a project and he'll work well with the team. But before that, thank you, Mark. Yeah, thank you.