I've had a great time with Iris producing Get Up and CODE, but Iris is going to be leaving the show.
In this episode, Iris and I talk about her decision to move on and about now it is important to be able to make decisions in your life that might let some people down when you know it is the right decision for you.
But, don't worry, the show will go on. I plan to keep this show alive and going strong. We've been growing pretty quickly since almost a year ago when we started the podcast.
I'll definitely miss Iris, as I'm sure you will as well. But, don't be surprised if she pops on for some future shows as a guest host.
Listen below or visit us at http://getupandcode.com
Full transcript below
Iris: Hi and welcome to Get Up and Code podcast. This is Iris Classon and I'm here with John Sonmez, my co-host for this podcast. Today, we have a little bit of a surprise for you. It might be a good surprise to some people or a really bad surprise for some other people. But before we tell you what the surprise is, let’s not forget to thank our beautiful sponsor, SignalLeaf, who are hosting our podcast, and we are very, very thankful for that.
John: That’s right.
Iris: Now, John, we have a surprise and this is a good or bad one, or what do you think?
John: I think most people would agree this is a bad one, unfortunately. I’ll let you reveal it.
Iris: Some people might be tired of my Swedish English, my accent, my rambling, my talking, but I am actually leaving the podcast. I'm leaving the show. John, I left you for another woman.
John: Wait a minute, for another woman?
Iris: This might be the first and only time in your life that a woman leaves you for another woman.
John: Okay, oh yeah.
Iris: Well, okay. I am actually doing a podcast together with Michele Leroux Bustamante, but it’s not why I'm leaving the show. I just thought that would be a funny thing to say.
John: Well, thank you. Yeah.
Iris: Oh, my pleasure.
John: As you can see, we’re not leaving on bad terms. We’re not fighting or arguing about … we’ve actually been working pretty good together, I think.
Iris: Yeah, absolutely. It’s been really fun. It’s been almost a year, hasn’t it?
John: Yeah. I think when this episode comes out it should be like Episode 42, I believe. It’s been pretty close to a year or so. It’s been fun. It’s been a lot of fun doing the podcast with you and learning from you and your experiences. It’s going to be hard not having your perspective, but somehow I’ll manage to go on. I think maybe talk a little bit about why you’re leaving. I'm sure people are going to be curious and they’re going to e-mail you.
Iris: Well, I don’t know. Please don’t e-mail me. I hate e-mails. E-mail John, he loves them. Well, I was hoping I would make it for one year because that’s a nice place to end things. It just felt like time for me. I’ve always had the personality that I work on something until I feel it doesn’t give me any further … where I don’t grow anymore, when I feel like I’ve peaked. I don’t have the same interest for evolving the project further or I can’t myself growing with the project further. For me, I was quite clear very early on that I was leaving fitness and nutrition, not personally. I still enjoy helping other people, but at some point I just felt like I just didn’t have enough time to stay as up to date as I would have to stay up to date to give advice on this podcast.
I think I’ve managed fine up until this point, but the podcast is getting bigger. We’re getting a bigger crowd and it’s becoming more than just a podcast, and that it’s very important. I feel like the people involved have the time and the dedication that it will require. To be honest, I don’t as much as I’ve enjoyed it, my main focus has always been and always is going to be technology and for the most programming.
That’s why I decided to leave when we were still going good. You’ve also noticed I’ve had a hard time making the time for the podcast, and the editing and everything. Something had to give. For me, that would be what wasn’t technology related because we still have our friendship. It’s not like we’re putting an end to that. It’s mostly I can’t stay up to date on this topic enough to give advice.
John: Yeah. No, that makes sense. Yeah, I wasn’t actually shocked when you told me that you’re leaving the show a couple of weeks ago because I was always thinking like how are you doing all this stuff? With all the stuff that I'm doing, I don’t have a full time job. I work for myself now and I have a hard time managing it. It almost seems like you’re doing more stuff than I'm doing, and you have a full time job. Sometimes you have two jobs, you have three jobs. It wasn’t a shock to me. It’s a disappointment, of course, because I like doing the podcast with you. I think a lot of people benefit from having both our perspectives. Iris does a lot of stuff.
Iris: I actually currently have three jobs. I work full time as a software developer for a large enterprise company called Evry. I'm a consultant then I do courses for Pluralsight, and I am now working on Pluralsight’s Window store application, implementing some new features and fixing a couple of stuff. They hired me as contractor.
I'm currently doing three jobs. Last year, I did 37 conferences and user group sessions. I don’t know how many times I travelled abroad. I never unpack my suitcase. I lived out of my suitcase. It was fun but it was draining, and I just hit the limit for what I can do in terms of finding the time for everything. It’s something I have to give. I’ll be doing less conference sessions and rather do more user group sessions and conference sessions because I do like user groups a lot. Well, I won’t be doing this podcast anymore.
John: I think for everyone out there too that it’s a little bit—I'm not going to say it’s like incredibly difficult to do a podcast, but there is work involved. You have to schedule time. Sometimes you lose an episode. We’ve done that before. We’ve had to rerecord it and then all the editing that has to be done. You got a website that’s going to be put up. There are a lot of steps, a lot of work, involved in doing a podcast. It’s not something that is …
Iris: Yeah. There’s a lot of responsibility as well. I think the more of a following you get on a podcast or on a website, or as a person, the more following you get, the more responsibility you get to be accurate with the information that you give, and the image you portray of yourself and the things you say. You have to care more because there are more people caring and more people really taking to heart the things you’re saying. That is what I found was taking the most time preparing for the podcast and make sure I kept communicating with people about it, and so on.
John: Yeah, yeah. That’s very true. That’s true.
Iris: In case some people have some questions about the other podcast which I'm starting now. The female side of the tech industry has always been really strong, and I’ve done a lot of conferences and user groups just for women because I’d love to see more women in this industry. Actually, I’d like to see more of all the minorities. The reason we’re starting out the podcast is just a continuation of some work we’ve already been doing. We’re just making sure we’ll be able to reutilize the effort we’ve been putting into it. It’s not a lot of extra efforts as much aside from the actual recording. The editing, we’re actually outsourcing and so on as well. It’s just a continuation of something we both had already been doing, but we’re doing it together now.
John: Yeah. I’ll definitely be able to —
Iris: I'm not actually leaving for another woman. That was merely a joke. I'm all out of gorilla jokes.
John: Yeah. Well, I guess I’d rather be left for another woman than another man any day, right?
Iris: Yeah.
John: Setting priorities and stuff, I mean it’s healthy for a person to set the priorities in their life, like you’re focused more on the programming. This is not so much on the coding side. We’re on the fitness even though our audience is programmers. I think a lot of people tend to have priorities messed up or they’re hanging on to things because someone else—they feel obligated. They’re afraid to leave something that is familiar. I think that is something that even in the fitness, in diet and nutrition, that can hold someone back really too is not having their priorities set right.
Like I said, I'm sad to see you leaving the podcast but I'm happy to see that you have figured out what your priorities are, and that you’re not afraid to tell people, “Hey, these are my priorities. I have to do what is right for me. I'm not just going to do things because I feel obligated to do them or because I'm afraid of letting people down,” and I think it’s a really healthy place to be.
Iris: I think that goes for career advice as well. I’ve changed workplace a couple of times the last few years as well. You have to know when it’s time to move on and you have to know when it’s not working for you anymore. You only have this and I keep saying this and I know it’s a cliché for a lot of people but just it can’t be said enough, you only have this one life.
If we had more, it doesn’t really matter because there’s only like a couple of cuckoo people that seem to remember their second life. Even if we have several lives, if we don’t remember them they’re not there. We only have this one life regardless of your belief. It’s not a rehearsal. You can’t treat it as a rehearsal and you can’t base your life of obligations that you feel you have towards other people. It’s got to work out for you as well and I think people who are genuinely interested in you being happy they’ll be happy that you make the choices that makes you happy as well. The other people, they can go somewhere.
John: Yeah. It’s very true. I always have to catch myself too because, I think, a lot of people are waiting to live their life. They’re like, “Well, when this happens then I will really be happy or I’ll really enjoy my life, or I’ll really get in shape or I’ll really do whatever it is when this happens.” It’s so important to realize that, no, you’re living your life now. The time is ticking. There’s an hour glass and sand is falling out of it every single second, every single day.
This is your life. This isn't the rehearsal. This is the thing. If you’re going to be happy later, you might as well make the choice to be happy now. If you’re going to be fit later, you might as well make the choice to get on your diet and nutrition and work out now instead of later because, hey, you’re only going to lose time. You’ll be waiting forever. It’s so sad when someone gets to … they make it so far in their life, they’re older and they haven't even begun living their life because they were waiting for something.
Iris: Yep, it makes complete sense. I remember I was once at a job interview and I was asked the question like, “I can see that you changed jobs a couple of times.” I was like, “Yeah. I couldn’t really see the big deal.” I was asked, “Well, that’s a bit too often, don’t you think?” I was like, “No. It was exactly the right time for me.” I think that companies would agree as well if you look at my progression to the person that had been working for the same company for about 10 years.
I met this person at the bar a few months later and we get into conversation. He told me that the reason he had asked me this question is he’d be wanting to leave his job like five years, because he had this dream of moving to another country and do all these things, and he had so many excuses. Everything was just an excuse. Unfortunately, I don’t think he’s ever going to change. I don’t think anything is going to change and he’s in a really unhappy situation. I think people do that with work. They do it with their health and they do it with relationship, with friends.
We all have friends we’ve had since childhood that you probably shouldn’t be friends with anymore because they’re just draining your energy. There’s nothing wrong in letting go. You’re just making room for other people and make room for yourself to grow.
John: Yeah. Oh, I totally agree, yeah. I was just talking about this week about burning the boats because like sometimes you just have to say, “Hey, I'm going to make it so that I can’t go back. I can’t regress down the path that I was. I'm going to go forward.” Sometimes it’s hard to do. Sometimes it’s like doing something extreme that’s going to wake you up and make it so that you can’t go backwards, like there is no coming back from this thing. Sometimes it’s important because, otherwise, you’ll …
Iris: When you decide to go full time as the Pluralsight offer that must have been a rather big decision for you because you’re the income earner of the family, right?
John: Yeah. I'm the only income earner. I’ve got my wife and almost 3-year-old daughter. Yeah, I was at a job where I was making good money. I was making really good money working from home with a great work environment. I love my co-workers. I love my boss and I was doing work that was rewarding to me with great benefits, full medical and dental benefits, and everything. I just had to decide like, “Am I going to do this?” This opportunity is better for me.
Once I made that decision, there was no going back like that boat was burned. It was a little bit scary, but I decided in my mind like, “If I draw the road 2 or 3 years ahead of time, where will I be more happy 2 or 3 years from now? Will I be more happy if I'm in a secure place that’s comfortable to me that’s a great cushion job that I already like, or will I be more happy if go down this scary road but is more in line with my passion of teaching people, and it’s something that I know what I need to do for myself?”
I always feel like I need to be out on my own, making my own way that’s just me. I realized that, yeah, I have to choose that path. I have to send in that shocking resignation letter saying, “I'm leaving for no other reason than I have to choose this path.” It was scary but, yeah. It worked out. At least I think it did.
Iris: It wasn’t just a foolish like, “Oh, I’ve argued with my boss. I’ve had enough. I'm leaving. I'm sure I’ll be fine. I’ll just go.” You had a fairly clear plan or you knew what you wanted. Maybe this is how I feel like I feel like I have to be in motion. I can’t stand still. I literally stop breathing if I stand still. I can stand still. I have to continuously move, explore, see things, do things. Sometimes even awesome companies I worked for, it’s not the pace, I need to keep breathing and moving.
John: Yeah, yeah. I think there’s an important distinction there like what you’re talking about between, like you said, I like how you said it. It’s not like you just had an argument with your boss. It’s the same thing as like our podcast here, right? It’s not like we had an argument and you’re like, “Okay, I'm leaving the podcast.” It’s not like that. We had an argument earlier on and we both stuck through it and said, “No. We’re going to figure this out. We’re going to work through this and do this.” Hey, we made it to like 40 something episodes.
It’s not like we did six episodes and said, “Whatever. Now, we’re going to move on. Oh, look at that shiny thing over there.” It’s more like, hey, sometimes you make a calculated decision to quit something. Because when you make those split second decisions when you’re like pissed off and you make a decision to quit, that’s almost always wrong. The thing is like in both of our lives we’re not the ones that just make this split second decision. It’s something you thought about and then you decided, “No, I'm consciously changing my path.”
I think that’s the key thing that I think a lot of people fail on their fitness schools and diet too is because they quit on the drop of a hat. They’re like, “Oh, no. I'm just going to quit to diet or I'm just not going to do this, or this isn't for me,” instead of thinking like, “Okay, in two weeks I'm going to quit if I still feel like this is the wrong path.”
Iris: They feel obligated to continue with something because they said they started on it. There are all these negative emotions around. It’s funny how some people, if we know talk about jobs, people assume that something bad happened because you left. It’s the same thing as with relationships. Well, people say, “Oh, I'm sorry.” Why? We’re not. You see that situation everywhere. It’s like if you ever decide on moving from one thing to another, it’s like because we, humans, have a tendency to automatically think that it’s because of something negative that we do that, because, otherwise, why would we do that? Because we’re people of comfort, I mean we like to be safe and nobody wants to step outside their comfort zones, do they?
I digress. I actually think that we have more fulfilling lives when we move outside of our comfort zones. I think that goes for the majority of people and we’re tricked into thinking that we should stay.
John: Exactly, yep. You don’t grow until you move out of your comfort zone. I'm sure both of us could relate a lot of experiences in life because we both are people who move out of our comforts. I never thought I would be taught like talking on a podcast or doing a YouTube video, or anything like that. I was a shy kid growing up, but I just had to move out of my comfort zone. Then you grow. I don’t know if your experience is—I always see you doing new things. I can’t imagine they’re all comfortable for you.
Iris: I’ve always done a lot of things. I try to find things that I find uncomfortable to do that are obviously not hurting anybody or hurting me. I try to do it on purpose. It might be small things such as talking to people in an elevator, which I seriously find really uncomfortable. I just hate it when we go to the top floor with the same person and you just don’t know what to say.
It might be small things like that. It might be bigger things such as I nearly drowned when I was a kid and I was terrified of water. I didn’t learn swimming until I was like around 10, 12, or something. For me, it was out of the question to ever go scuba diving. I'm a deep diver and I’m a wreck diver and a rescue diver. I want to become a dive master.
For me, that was one of those things. I have a lot of stories like that. I just try to keep challenging myself. If I ever find out there is something I can’t do, then it just feels like my whole life is going to fall apart. Because my theory is that there can’t be something I can’t do. Life is not supposed to be like that. I don’t know. It’s some childish reluctance to see limitations, I guess. I see boundaries and want to break it.
John: Yeah. No. That’s a good philosophy to have. I always have the motto: “Everyday do one thing that you hate.”
Iris: What did you do today then?
John: What I did today that I hated? I don’t know. I don’t think I have done it yet. I'm going to have to figure out what to do today. Oh, no. I did.
Iris: I did one thing.
John: I started writing. I did some work today on my course. I'm doing a resume portion of it and I did not want to do that today.
Iris: I guess some people might understand me on this one. I went out with recycling. I hate going out with recycling. I did it before it started to smell. I actually went out with recycling before it started to smell. I hate going with recycling. I don’t know. I don’t mind walking the stairs and it’s been next to my front door for like a couple of days. Today, I was like, “No. I am just going to go downstairs with it.”
John: It’s important. A lot of people will say like do one thing that scares you. I just think of it as one level higher. It not only scares you but you hate it because that’s how you get out of your comfort zone, and that’s how you grow the most. One thing I wanted to do before we wrapped up the show is just talk about—well, I wanted to ask you what you plan or like what your vision for this show was and what it is like where you would like to see this show go, even though you won’t be on this show. Of course I’ll invite you back and we’ll have you on some episodes in the future if you’d like to. I think that would be cool to hear like what you had envisioned for it and where it should still go. Then I‘ll talk a little bit about where I see it going and then we can wrap things up.
Iris: My vision with the podcast and what I had hoped people would get out of it is I wanted them to hear from people who are genuinely interested in inspiring people to make one of the most important changes you can do in your life, if you’re going from a non-healthy lifestyle to a slightly healthier lifestyle, because it would enable you to do so much more. It’s not just about health. It’s a step up the ladder towards so many other things, everything from living longer with your family hopefully or at least increasing that percentage to may be landing a better job, because a lot of jobs do even health checks or having to pay less insurance. Just so many other things, but I just wanted people to hear it through genuine voices out there that didn’t have any interest in making money of your desperation or leave it to your lack of information, or just your desire to—just wanting to get healthier.
We needed something that would just cut through the bullshit and just offer two friends that you could listen to ramble about things and get that weekly inspiration, that friendly poke that today maybe is the day, right? That’s what I wanted and that’s why I hope it will continue to be. I still hope people will reach out to me if they need some help from a friend.
John: Yeah, good, good. That’s awesome. That’s very similar to how I’d envisioned the podcast when we were first talking about it, just the idea that there’s so much crap out there. There are so many people talking about stuff and trying to sell you the new ab machine or whatever their sponsorship for some kind of supplement or something. The supplement industry is so big and I just want to cut through it and just say, “Hey, look. Here is the real stuff, the real truth, and then also here are the real stories of people, like it’s not like you just lose weight. Like you do this perfect diet and then you never fail, and you just get there and then you’re done. We’re always struggling.”
I think every successful person that we’ve talked to on this show there’s been a big percentage of failure in there too. I'm going forward with the show. I’d like to even make that message even more clear. My goal, I think, I still plan to go forward with the show is to highlight and say, “Look, this is what reality is. Reality is we’re all out here. No one ever makes it. No one has ever done. No one ever arrives. We all struggle. We all have this fight. The most successful people that you see, internally, they feel bad about themselves from day to day. They miss their goal. They miss their run. They eat bad, whatever. But the thing when you see a successful person is you see them, they’d get back up and they keep going.”
If you get that wrong message of like you’re just going to make it like these people are better than you or they can do it then when you fail you give up. I guess the thing that I want to encourage people with the show is that, “Hey, we’re all in this together. We’re all failing. We all screw up from time to time, but we got to just keep on going. It doesn’t matter how far we go down the wrong path. We got to turn back and just keep on getting on the horse.”
Iris: Yep, absolutely. I agree.
John: All right. Well, with that, I think we should wrap up the show. Any parting words?
Iris: No. It’s not like I'm dying. Well, actually, I am, but we all are. That was such a horrible joke—it’s not a joke, we are. We just don’t know when.
John: Your telomeres are shortening as we speak.
Iris: They indeed are, but we are doing research on it. Well, it’s not the end per se. It’s me moving on. I'm still in the book. I am just moving on to a different chapter.
John: Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you for being on the show. Thank you for being a part of this and for doing this with me. Our friendship will continue but it’s been great to make friends with you through this podcast. I wish you well.
Iris: Yeah, same.
John: Yeah, all right. Well, thanks everyone for watching the show. Again, Iris would appreciate your tweets, right? That’s okay, right. No e-mails. Send her some tweets. Let her know you love her.
Iris: Send me tweets. Send me tweets. It’s the new messaging system, right?
John: Yeah. The show will go on. I will have another show for you guys next week. I'm not sure exactly what we’ll do format wise, but take care and talk to you next time.
Iris: Take care. Bye!