Hey, everyone, and welcome to Developer Team. My name is Jonathan Cottrell, and today is the second part of my interview with Travis Nielsen. Travis creates the very popular YouTube channel for dev tips. That's Dev Tips for Designers. That will be in the show notes. Go check it out. The first part of my interview with Travis, make sure you listen to it before you listen to this part of the interview. We talk about a lot of different things, but I'm going to go ahead and jump straight to the interview. Travis, thank you so much for being on the show once again. This is the second part of the interview with Travis. And in the first part, Travis and I talked about a lot of stuff, including the difference between YouTube and podcasts. What else did we talk about, Travis? We talked about generating content that's... Evergreen versus recent or tentpole is what they call it. It basically has a timestamp on it. We talked about generating content for audiences of different demographics in terms of their ages and what interests they are in. Maybe you have somebody who's early on in their career versus an established professional. And how do you engage them both? And on what level do you address them? We also talked about just being honest. And being yourself in front of people and the vulnerability that it requires and the benefits and kind of like the support that people can give you if they see that you're a real entity. If they can kind of sense that you are a real personality who has genuine concerns for their welfare in terms of you want them to learn, you want them to be better, they can really respond in great ways. Yeah. Yeah. So in some ways, I'm seeing YouTube kind of emerging as like... Like this high risk but also high reward platform where you have to put quite a bit of energy into it, perhaps more than other media formats. But the reward is greater because you get all this really rich data that YouTube and Google provides based on some crazy number of analytic structures that they've created to determine what pieces of this content are people actually engaging with. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. leaves you, like you said, very vulnerable. And I would imagine that the audiences on YouTube can be pretty vicious sometimes. I've witnessed it, but not on my channel. I think that it's because I have the policy of engaging with every single comment. So if anybody even says, good job, I'm replying with a thank you. It's something as simple as that. If somebody says, I have a detailed question, I do my best. And I'll have an engagement. I've had back and forth strings up to 20 replies long because I'm trying to help these people accomplish their goals. And I think when people see that type of engagement, and sometimes it's kind of fun that when people are new to my channel and they leave a comment and they see that I respond within 24 hours, it's kind of shocking to them. They don't see that very often from other YouTubers. And when I do that, what that's done is cultivated a culture of engagement. Around the channel and in the comments that people have a posture of being helpful instead of critical. And that's made all the difference, I think, in the kind of culture and atmosphere of my channel. And I think it carries over into other places. Sure, man. And so many things that you just said, I want to dive into in this part of the interview, because I listened to an episode that, you did on your podcast and it's called Travenlos. Is it Late Nights with Travenlos? Late, you have to say it like this. Late Nights with Travenlos. There's no way I'm going to be able to do it like you just did. Yeah, it's Late Nights with Travenlos. So I have a co-host, his name is Los Montoya, and he is one of the prettiest people I've ever met. And he's also very smart and intelligent. And he's a great, great speaker, great, great co-host. And the, the concept of our podcast is that each one of us will present an idea to the other, every other episode. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's a, it's a lot of fun. So in, in a way, the person who is being presented to is a proxy for the audience listening and they can ask the questions. Oh, I don't, I don't understand what you mean by that. Can you explain that more or something like that? Or, you know, I disagree, prove it, you know, or whatever, what have you. And so it's a lot of fun. We have a lot of, it's very casual and, and the Late Nights comes in the fact that we do, we record it like, you know, usually after 11 o'clock midnight. And I go over to his house and we huddle in his, in his basement and we talk to each other. And we have these very real conversations and we invite people into them. And you can share an evening with Late Night, you can share a Late Night evening with Traven Lowe's. And we talk about a lot of the, the, a lot of the soft skills that you and I were talking about in the, in the first episode. And we do talk about some hard skills, like how do you present a, present a design or how do you, how do you find a, how do you find a, how do you find a, how do you find a, how do you find a, how do you find a mentor? Those are pretty, you know, hard skills. But then we also talk about soft skills. Like how do you be a better person? How do you let the design process become a part of your everyday living and relationships with people and stuff like that. So it's really good. Yeah. Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. I really enjoyed the episode about, about success and being afraid of success or being afraid of certain aspects of success at least. Yeah. Yeah. You talked about, you know, what if, what if I start doing something that becomes successful and then I don't want to do it anymore, but now I have like this baggage of people that I have to support that I no longer really want to support anymore. That's an interesting, that's an interesting quandary. And I am not in that place to clarify. I'm really enjoying doing a developer tee, but anybody who starts something that becomes successful, you quickly, have this realization that, uh, that success brings along with it responsibility and responsibility brings along with it, some stress, some things that you otherwise, like, for example, uh, I'm going out of town. And so I'm recording a bunch of episodes of developer tee upfront. Um, so I can schedule them out and release them and still, uh, publish content for all of you listeners, but, uh, I'm doing it all. Like before I leave and I stayed up till midnight last night doing podcast work, you know, and it's a lot of work and, uh, and to say that it's easy would be a complete disservice, uh, to, to those who are also doing this work, uh, alongside me, but it would also be a disservice to the people listening to the show. Uh, making this podcast is not easy. It certainly is not just me standing in front of a microphone. That's right. And, and the same is true for your show. I'm certain. Yeah. Um, uh, the interesting thing about success and, and success is, is really one of those things like how do you, how do you define it? Right. I mean, there's so many different levels and facets to the word success, but really when you're talking about this level of success, wherein now your time is, is, um, invested in by others, you're, you have this kind of, uh, requirement that you need to show up. You know, it's, it's basically like getting a job, right? You, other people have invested in your time. You have a boss who thinks that you're employable and there has therefore hired you. Now it becomes you to show up and similar to your audience here on this podcast, you've done something that we find valuable. And we, we invest our subscription into you. We, we, um, invest our emotion into you. Uh, we invest our time. We, we, we tell people about you. So we actually invest our reputation in you and now we expect you to show up. And so that's a big responsibility because not only do you have to show up, but you have to show up and do a good job. And this is an interesting thing because, you know, we're talking in the context, of people building audiences, being publishers, and that may or may not be for everyone. Um, the breakdown says that it's not for everyone and that's okay. But, but the, but the act of publishing is for everyone, no matter what. And if you're publishing to your boss, if you're giving him, you know, a, a TPS report, that's a pub that's publishing. And that is for everybody that everybody must be a publisher in their own way. And so that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's in their, in their own, um, sphere of influence. And, uh, I've, I've learned this interesting truth because I do some mentoring. I have these, uh, phone calls that I do with people. A lot of people have, um, a mental block. They are afraid of what will happen when they become required to publish. In other words, when they become successful, whether that's finding a job or whether that's writing a successful blog consistently. And, um, and, and it's interesting. I realized that people can be filled with anxiety and not even know it. Hmm. And it's not until somebody can say, you know what, you know, what's happening right now, you're afraid of your success. And that's why you haven't worked. You know, like if your goal is to make yourself employable, you're afraid of your success. And that's why you haven't worked. You can't do it. You can't do it. You can't do it. You can't do it. You can't do it. You can't do it. And so I'm trying to level up my development skills. And that's why I'm listening to Dev T. If I do all my, if I spend my whole day only listening to Dev T, which you should, it's good. No, I'm just kidding. But you know, like, but, and I never actually break open my code editor and try to put into place what I'm learning from Jonathan, then it's not, it's going to be to no avail, right? I'm just wasting my time. And, and I find that this will actually happen more than you might suspect that people are, are kind of afraid of the success of putting into practice what they're learning, that they'll spend a lot of time on YouTube, on podcasts, on blogs, looking at stuff on inspiration sites like Dribbble and CodePen. And they'll be like churning the wheels for a very long time before they actually produce anything, if ever. And if there's one thing that I would like to kind of focus on, this year, or at least, you know, in the next kind of whatever, I want to, I want to help people to get into the habit and into the spirit of publishing. And when you publish, you can become a publisher. That sounds so trite, but here's what I'm trying to say. There is a difference between a publisher and a, and a consumer. And the difference is, is that a publisher has due dates, a publisher has a expectation of quality, and a publisher has a audience, right? Now those can be big or small. And I'm trying to reiterate it, although I've already said it, it could be a podcast, like what we're talking about right now, or it could be as simple as you're, you're a, a part of a development team in a company, right? And if you don't own the fact that these things are required of you, then you can get lost in spinning your wheels. And then it becomes this anxiety that builds and builds and builds. And you get crushed by the weight of not having published recently, because I haven't set up myself for that type of success. And this is kind of, yeah, okay. So it's kind of similar to what we were talking about in the way that success can be, you know, give you, give you that, did we call it anxiety? Just that weight? Yeah, it was, disabling essentially. Yeah. And that can happen whether you're doing something publicly like you're doing, or whether you're doing something within the confines of a small group, your family, even, you know, your employment, whatever. Yeah, that is, that is super interesting. I'm going to take a quick sponsor break for this episode. And then we're going to come back and talk about publishing and specifically how anonymity actually affects publishing. And, and I want to go back to something you said earlier. But first, we'll take that quick sponsor break. Great. Today's episode is sponsored by CodeSchool. CodeSchool is an online learning destination for existing and aspiring developers that teaches through entertaining content. By pairing immersive video lessons with in-browser challenges, CodeSchool has become the best place to learn new technologies from the comfort of your browser. Whether you've been programming for decades or have only just begun, CodeSchool offers something for everyone. If you're interested in learning more about the web-based web-based web-based web-based web-based web-based web-based web-based web-based web-based web-based Whether you've been programming for decades or have only just begun, CodeSchool offers something for everyone. Choose your learning experience from CodeSchool's five main paths. Those are JavaScript, HTML and CSS, Ruby, Git, or iOS. Or take advantage of CodeSchool's growing number of elective courses on topics like Try R and Chrome DevTools. More than a million people around the world use CodeSchool to improve their development skills and learn by doing. Visit www.codeschool.com for more information and to start playing courses today. Travis, earlier in this show, you mentioned that you engage with every comment on any given video. To help me so generously, once again, these DevTippers, to edit my videos. And I was like, yes, that's a great idea. That way I can produce more. And you know what? I couldn't do it. I could not hand over raw footage to be edited because there's so much of the story that I wanted to tell. And I wanted to tell through editing that I was so scared. And it was mostly fear. Mostly fear. Not distrust of this person, but just fear of my own losing control. Yeah, so I think... What was our point, Jonathan? Well, well... We were talking about... Oh. Go ahead. Yeah, scaling comments and scaling engagement. So yeah, so that's a thing that you have to be kind of cognizant of. You know, the larger your audience becomes, you're still one person. And you can only do what one person can do. And if that means they're responding to every comment, that's okay. You can do that, but at what cost? Right. And currently, I'm... I'm still making that purchase. I'm still paying that price. Sure. Not to sound like a martyr, but the point is that it does have effects on the content that I produce because I have less time afforded to it now. Mm-hmm. And... But also, you know, as I mentioned before, there's another side to every coin. And these people in the comments are providing me with great content ideas and suggestions. They're anth... They're asking for clarification where I'm like, hey, that could be a great video right there. Mm-hmm. So there's value abundant. It kind of feeds back into your content production time. It certainly does. You know, I work at a place where we talk a lot about engagement. We talk a lot about viewership and audiences. And if you think about the history of publication, just in recent times, we're talking about media. We're talking about television, new media, blogs. Videos and things like this. There's like a... The way that advertisers look at content and the way that they think about their... The value that they get from advertising with, you know, your content. For a long time, we had television where advertisers could only kind of get an idea of how many views we're seeing their ad. And that's kind of what the measurement was, right? That was the litmus. Is my advertisement a success or a failure based on how many views saw it? That's why you pay so much more for a Super Bowl ad than you do on a Thursday afternoon. Sure. Trusting statistics, right? Right. But the point of contact, the point of engagement was a view. Mm-hmm. As fleeting as that, you're not even sure if they're in the room. They could be off making a sandwich because the commercials are on. You know? And you're still counting it. And then we came to the internet. And now we have clicks. Okay. So we can measure clicks. But still, what is that even... What is that? That doesn't mean you've won their heart. That doesn't mean you've touched their soul. Mm-hmm. And then we have this new media where people can leave you a comment. People can write you an email. You make yourself available to you. You can have a lengthy comment string with them. Mm-hmm. And we have this unit of measurement called an engagement. And... And this is so far more telling and valuable to... In the context of advertisers, you could say, okay, advertiser, do they like your content? What is the... What is the... You know, are they happy or upset about your content? For publishers, you know, what do they want more? What different types of content do they want? Do they appreciate what you're doing? Do you need to make changes? So this unit of engagement, of measurement is so much more valuable than what we've had in the past. Absolutely. And the more engaging the platform, so speaking of, for example, a blog versus a tweet versus a post on Medium versus a podcast versus a post on YouTube, the more engaging it is native to that platform, the more understanding you can have, the more you can have and empathy for your audience. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And make content that actually fulfills needs in their lives. Sure. So you've decided to take your relationship with your audience, which on many occasions, both on the recording and off, you've mentioned how much you enjoy just interacting with your audience. You're taking that a deeper level rather than just trying to get... Yeah. ...a higher number count of audience members. You're also doing a deeper engagement with them with the secondary community through Patreon. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about that and also kind of help people who are listening to this show who that might be a great route for them. I'd love for you to kind of explain what it is and then tell us how we might go about becoming a patron on Patreon. Okay. Yeah. So Patreon is an interesting platform. It's basically, you can think of it as like a Kickstarter, but for people who make serial content. So I'm going to make one video a week until, you know, in the foreseeable future. And somebody who is my patron, they go to patreon.com slash devtips and they can pledge whatever they like, $1, $0.50. Up to, you know, hundreds of dollars if you like. Wink. And every time I make a video, you can have that pledge go to the production of other videos or more videos and the support of, you know, all of this that we're talking about. And it's an interesting platform. It's done a few things, I think. It's really kind of more than helping me. It's helped the people who... who are a member of the Patreon community. So there's a few things that like... And similar to Kickstarter, there's like benefits, right? Like different levels and stuff. So we have a community of patrons and anybody who's a patron can come in here and engage with this whole community. And it's interesting because these community members are self-selecting. They are extremely engaged. We have a... I have a Slack channel, a chat group with just the patrons. And they are active 24 hours a day. And it is such a value to these people who... They have a question, they pop in and they can ask, you know. And there are people there who just want to help. That's their whole... They love it so much. That's their whole jam. They're just like, oh, that's interesting. Have you thought about this? And... And... And we talk about, you know, the new Star Wars trailers. We talk about everything. You know, just... That's awesome. It's not just a... We're not just talking about nerd stuff. We're talking about awesome stuff. And it's really great for me to kind of really get to know these people. When people... The first patrons that joined in, kind of like a pre... What is that? Pre-order, you know? Like something like that. Before I launched it publicly, I sent out a few emails. And I called on the phone every one of them and had a 15-minute conversation with all of them. And it's interesting because most of them were just interested in helping me help other people. Oh, wow. Yeah. I was floored by this. I mean, the various responses that I got were... I could never have predicted the reasoning people would have to be a patron. But a lot of them wanted... I wanted to be a patron so that they could support me in doing something that they believed in, which was helping other people take control of their lives and become, you know, break out of their limited circumstance. That's really awesome. Yeah. I mean, just a short biographical element. For me, I come from a place where it was not expected that I'd do anything important with my life, you know? I didn't have those expectations or goals set upon me when I was young. And I didn't have the means... to educate myself, you know, like going to college and things like that. And so being able to provide people like me who are unable to... I don't want to be like... I don't want to separate people here, but, you know, like who don't have the means to afford a higher level education or don't have the time even or whatever it is, being able to provide them a means so that they can have the advantages that people who can't afford those things do is wonderful. And now these patrons are so generous, not only with their dollars, because mind you, they're in those chat rooms. They're on the... We have, you know, boards and everything. And they're, you know, helping each other and contributing not only just money, but time and energy and ideas. And I think that's a really good thing. I think that's a really good thing. And everything. It's really, really astounding to me. Yeah. So, yeah. And I have a small patron podcast as well that I do. And it's very, very DevT inspired. I must admit. I must admit. Well, that's awesome. I love that. Yeah, it's these five minute, you know, like little punch in the face of inspiration and go about your day. And I hope that I can... That's exactly what I want this podcast to do is inspire other people to think and create things that they care about. Things that are kind of deep coming out of their soul. Stuff that's really difficult to create. I want to encourage you to do those difficult things. And that's really cool to hear that story. Yeah, man. It's astonishing. It really is. Awesome. Well, Travis, this has been such a good interview. I really appreciate you coming on the show. And of course, I sincerely appreciate you having me on your show as well. And we can definitely put the Patreon link in the show notes if you're listening to this and you'd like to be a patron of Travis. Go ahead. Is that how you say that? One of Travis's patrons, I guess? Yeah. You can put the link in. But that's not my goal. My goal in coming on here is to just appreciate what Jonathan is doing publicly. And also to... I guess just celebrate this idea that any one of us can do something that they love and that it can impact directly the lives of those around them. I just think what you're doing, Jonathan, is fantastic. I think if people want to become a patron, don't worry about it. Just come to the YouTube channel and join in there. And if that becomes insufficient for you, if you need more, then there's always more. But my goal is to... I just want to say thank you, Jonathan, and encourage others to do what you're doing. Well, thank you so much, Travis. I encourage others to follow Travis as well. He is doing such an incredible thing. And just continuing to spread this message of caring about what you do and caring about helping others do the same. Thanks so much for being on the show, Travis. It's been delightful, man. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for listening to Developer Tea today. I know you could be doing just about anything else, but you chose to listen to a few minutes of my interview with Travis. Make sure you go and subscribe to Travis's YouTube and also check out what he is offering on Patreon. Travis is an incredibly smart guy. I've really enjoyed talking to him and just building a friendship with him. And I think you will enjoy doing the same. As you heard in the interview, he is very active with the people that follow him. And so if you start talking to Travis, he will talk back. Make sure you go and check that stuff out. You can always find show notes at developertea.com. And there's also previous episodes of Developer Tea on developertea.com. If you have a chance, please leave a review in iTunes for the show. It is a huge help. And until next time, enjoy your tea. Thank you.