Develomentor

Hard to believe, but we published our 100th episode today and added a new show format into the mix. In addition to our twice a week interview series, we now are featuring a once a month panel on topics related to working in technology. https://develomentor.com/2020/10/13/develomentor-panel-compensation-in-tech/

Leveraging Podcorn, pitched and landed my first paying sponsor: Cloud Academy, running as a pre-roll ad in the Taylor Poindexter episode: https://develomentor.com/2020/09/24/taylor-poindexter-sr-back-end-engineer-cofounder-of-black-code-collective-94/

I was never quite satisfied with the quality of our earlier recordings, but didn't have the revenue to pay for the higher end editing needed to clean up the content. After looking at our numbers, our feedback and where I thought the show could go, I decided to bite the bullet and invest in cleaning up the content itself via an editor I found on Fiverr. We also added in a voice over intro, better segues and other production changes to make the show sound better and streamline our production while saving money.

Starting in January of 2020, we switched to a twice a week format, streamlined our production operations and relaunched our website with a cleaner, easier to navigate look and feel.

Not only did we double our content output, but we more than doubled our downloads.

Develomentor saw it's first real traction with the publication of Kelsey Hightower's interview (https://develomentor.com/2019/12/02/ep-15-kelsey-hightower-tech-support-to-dev-advocate-to-keynote-speaker/) that shared his career path from skipping college, to learning to code on his own to keynote speaker and evangelist for Kubernetes. To this date, it remains the most popular episode on the show.

Finally launched on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/develomentor/id1480732807) with 5 episodes, including Camille Fournier (https://develomentor.com/2019/09/15/ep-4-goldman-sachs-saved-my-career-in-tech-with-camille-fournier/) who was kind enough to take a chance on a new, unlaunched podcast and share her story.

For most of the spring and summer of 2019 I continued to record episodes, but had to put launching on hold as I was in the middle of changing day jobs and moving. Early feedback from guests was all positive, so I felt like I was on to something, but was extremely frustrated by not having the time to work on it.

Wrangled some friends and colleagues to start recording with me (thanks Drew for being the first: https://develomentor.com/2019/09/16/ep-5-how-design-thinking-contributes-to-personal-growth-with-drew-farris/) and started to figure out the basics of podcasting. Those early episodes weren't great quality, but I had social proof that someone would sit on the other side of the microphone and talk with me about their career.

Took the first real step to making this happen by registering as an LLC, buying the domain, starting to work on the website and the format for the show as well as longer term plans for the idea.

Going in, I figured it would take at least a year of steady publishing of content to gain traction and get noticed.

Inspired to action after listening to one too many episodes of Side Hustle School while mowing the lawn and while helping my son, William, prepare for college (still hard to believe), I created Develomentor for two reasons:

• To create content showcasing the variety of career paths in technology, including, but not limited to programming and software engineering.
• To help people navigate technology by providing advice and services on: interviewing, hiring, managing engineers, software best practices, and code reviews.

From a life perspective, I want this side hustle to take up less than 5 hours a week of my time, so I outsource generously all the things I don't like to do.

I bootstrapped the first year by doing some consulting with a local non-technical startup founder who needed to get the tech side of his business in order.