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Wearing All the Hats as a Founder with Saron Yitbarek of CodeNewbie

Episode #057

Saron Yitbarek (@saronyitbarek) runs three podcasts, gives dozens of talks every year, runs a blog, a weekly Twitter chat, a conference, an online resource for teaching people to code, among other things. In this episode, Saron explains how she parlays her advantages in one arena to move into another, discusses her tips for being inhumanly productive, and discusses the psychological breakthrough that taught her when to say no to adding more work to her plate.

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    I use paper notes to track throughout the day, and then at the end of the week I put it in spreadsheet so I can more easily review the data. I like the paper note because I keep it next to my laptop and it's a constant reminder to make sure I'm on schedule and not letting time slip away!

    • Saron
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    My Main Takeaways:

    • Saron's business "Code Newbie" came from her own frustrations while learning how to code.

    • Your business doesn't NEED to be revolutionary and new to be profitable. Code Newbie is not a big idea.

    • Most successful founders have a vibrant community that helped them, and mentors.

    • Saron used to work as a "fact checker" for a magazine before learning how to code. She was inspired by Steve Jobs to get into tech.

    • Saron always felt that she could do so much more in her job if she knew how to code. She eventually quit her job and spent a few months learning how to code at a coding bootcamp.

    • Saron's strategy for learning in the traditional education system was: A lot of highlighters, flash cards, sticky notes, writing notes repeatedly.

    • Be bold: Saron's strategy for getting her first developer job was by colding emailing.

    • A lot of what people say is "confidence" is just a skill that someone has practiced a lot. So, Saron cold emailing to get a job may seem bold, but cold emailing is all Saron did during her Journalism job, all day long.

    • Saron's job in journalism gave her a lot of valuable experience in reaching out to and getting into contact with hard-to-reach high-profile individuals.

    • In journalism you cannot afford to be wrong, so Saron had a hard time shifting to the startup world mentaly of: "move fast and break things, it doesn't matter if we get things wrong we will just adjust".

    • Do things that don't scale: A Twitter chat is basically a discussion about a topic, typically using a hash tag. Saron hosted Twitter chats to talk about coding related topics. When starting she got the first set of people involved by cold DM'ing everyone she knew telling them to retweet it. She did this cold DM'ing every week for the first few months until it took off by itself.

    • Don't quit your job to start a business, start it on the side first.

    • Believe in yourself - Saron was hesitant to submit a talk to Rails Conf about reading code, but she was encouraged to do it by another woman, and she managed to get accepted. This was the kick-off of her speaking career. She has done that talk many times and even been paid for it. But she still gets very nervous before her talks.

    • Saron does timesheets, and calculates how much time she spends each hour of her week, and tallys where all her hours went at the end of the week. Courtland did this too, but he stopped because it stressed him out.

    • Saron has a career coach (at the time of this interview). She describes a Career coach as: a therapist that helps you achieve your career goals. She pays about $200 a month for one 1-hour sesion each month.

    • Sharon said that you need more than just good grades to get into a good school. You also need sufficient extracurricular activities.

    • Know what you are optimising for. Do your actions align with your goals?

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    Has anyone had trouble joining their slack? I sign up and never get the invite email

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    Hi Courtland! Great episode! It's been mentioned that you both document every hour of your day (time sheets). Do you use any software for this or is it simply actual paper notes?