Backlinks signal search engines that a particular website has high-quality, credible information. Hence, they are the essence of off-page search engine optimization (SEO). That’s why top-ranking pages in the SERP have 3.8 times more backlinks. However, not all backlinks weigh equally on Google’s scale.

So let’s see what a quality backlink looks like, and then we’ll discuss eight link-building tactics you can use as a developer or a programmer.

Characteristics of a Quality Backlink

Your backlink profile determines whether Google ranks your developer or programmer website, portfolio, or social profile highly or not. Here are a few properties possessed by a quality backlink:

• Relevance: It needs to come from a relevant website.
• Domain and Page Authority: The higher the domain authority (DA) of the linking website and the page authority (PA) of the linking page, the more the weightage of the backlink coming from it.
• Location: Whether the link’s originating from the blog body, author bio, blog post, homepage, comments, etc., it also impacts the weightage of the backlinks—homepage links hold the most importance; whereas, comment links have the least impact.
• Followed Links: Do-follow links hold more credibility because they transfer link juice more reliably, unlike no-follow or links with other attributes.
• Anchor Text: Though it may sometimes be beyond your control, it’s better if the anchor text is relevant to the topic of the page it’s linking to on your website.
• Link Diversity: A natural backlink profile is diverse. Make sure you’re getting a good mix of links such as do-follow, no-follow, high domain authority, low domain authority, links in bio, links in blog body, etc.

Now that you know what a quality backlink looks like, let’s see how you can get the most credible backlinks for your blog as a developer or a programmer.

Leverage App Integrations for Backlinks

Developers often have to integrate different applications to achieve a task that otherwise couldn’t have been possible with a single app. These integrations are quite common, and many tools mention their integration partners on their websites, often on the homepage or on a dedicated page.

So if you’ve been skeptical about integrating your apps, or if your integration partner hasn’t linked with you yet, you should definitely broach the topic. Some companies also co-market their product, so it can turn into a goldmine of backlinks if such an opportunity presents itself.

You can get backlinks from journos, review sites, and influencers and may even get more opportunities for future collaborations. Integrations are also an excellent way to broaden your reach and get access to your partner’s customer base through newsletter or social media mentions as well as joint events and webinars.

Here’s a HubSpot integrated app; notice the link to the provider.

Create Link-Worthy Link-Bait

Most people create infographics or stick to slideshows as link-bait to attract organic backlinks. But being a developer or a programmer opens up a whole new set of link-bait options for you. Think about plugins, themes, tools, games, apps … The sky’s the limit.

So how do you get links through link-bait? The process is quite simple:

1. Find prospect websites and blogs that are relevant to your link-bait, and often link to such products.
2. Pitch your link-bait to them, and offer to write a blog post or custom intro for your link-bait.
3. The host blog or website features your link-bait and links to you as the source.

Depending on the link-bait you create, you can use various tactics such as creative link bait (as mentioned below), broken link-building (for resource guides), or the skyscraper method (also for resources) to find the prospects for your assets.

Here are a few link-bait examples.

Create Free Tools

And why not? Identify a gap in your niche, and create a lightweight tool to help people out. Make sure your tool is better or has some unique aspects compared to other similar tools in the market. Now launch your tool on your website, and let your audience know. Approach journos and influencers, and create a buzz around your creation. The backlinks will follow suit.

Create a Fun App or a Game

It doesn’t have to be Sugar Rush or Mortal Kombat. Create something as basic as a puzzle or a bubble shooting game, anything exciting to engage people and have them start talking about it. Rafael Caferati has turned his homepage into a game. He dares you to destroy it! Plus, he has some cool snippets in his code laboratory.

Create Free Learning Resources

Developers and programmers are always looking to learn and improve their code. So if you build a resource on your website and make it available for free, it can attract many backlinks on its own. Or you can take up different industry-related topics like Erik Bernhardsson and give your expert opinion about it. He created resources and in-depth guides that position him as an authority in the data space. Another way to attract readers and improve the shareability of your posts is to mix in some humor like Coding Horror, whose unique writing style connects with his audience.

Volunteer To Contribute to Your Company Blog

Tech companies love to have their technical employees contribute to their blog by doing something as simple as being interviewed, writing a piece of content on a technical topic, or answering frequently asked questions (FAQs). It’s a win-win for both: The company gets authentic content for their audience, and you get a backlink to your portfolio or website.

Tech companies usually have good domain ratings and a solid marketing strategy. Naturally, their content ranks higher on Google. As a result, your online presence gets a boost too. So, in this way, getting multiple backlinks to your website from your company’s tech blog is the easiest way to get backlinks from a high authority website.

David Walsh is a well-known influencer, and here’s his interview with Mozilla, where he works as a front-end developer. Notice the backlink to his website in the screen shot below.

Offer Free Themes for Bulk Backlinks

There’s a catch in this easy way to get thousands of backlinks without much effort. Similar to creating link-bait, you can make free themes. However, instead of pitching your free resource for backlinks, you just have to add your link in the footer.

Now, let’s suppose you create a cool theme, and you get 1,000 downloads in the first week. It means you potentially have 1,000 backlinks from new and old websites. Most of them might have very low domain authority, so these are not high-quality links by any means. Also, the number of backlinks depends on the number of people who left the footer in place after downloading your theme.

Many people don’t consider changing the footer for a long time, as they’re more focused on other aspects of website building.

Others are afraid to mess up the code and don’t dive in. Only a few website owners will change the footer as soon as they implement your theme.

You can set up a complete set of free themes to build bulk backlinks. It’s a one-time effort that keeps on bearing fruit with each download, more so as you grow your audience and establish your online presence.

Build Backlinks From Authority Developer Resource Websites

Anyone who has ever written a line of code knows about Stack Overflow and GitHub. There are many resources out there for developers to work on code together and find answers to their questions.

These sites not only have high domain authorities, but they are also immensely reputable, so making a profile and getting a backlink from them is an excellent way to boost your backlink profile. Most of the backlinks from these sites are no-follow until you establish your authority and earn a minimum of reputation points. But remember, as we mentioned earlier, your backlink profile should be diverse, so it doesn’t harm to get a few no-follow links as well!

For example, initially, your profile link on Stack Overflow is no-follow. You can get a do-follow link if you have a reputation of 2000 points, and the link in your About Us section matches precisely to the link in the website section, even to the last backslash.

Similarly, you can make your profiles at GitHub, CodeProject, and GitLab, etc.

Be a Guest on Relevant Podcasts and Conferences

Admittedly, getting links through podcasts and conferences can take some effort. You will either have to speak at a conference or appear in a podcast. However, it’s one of the best ways to establish your authority and win valuable backlinks because of the huge exposure you can get. Podcasts and conferences typically get more media attention too.

So here’s how it works:

1. Sign up to speak at an event, or pitch yourself as a guest on a podcast.
2. If you’re accepted, you will get links from the event website, partner organizations, collaborators posting about it on their blogs, and influencers attending the event and posting about it on their social media.
3. You can also email your website link to the event organizers to pass it on to the attendees for reference.

You can search the internet to find conferences and podcasts in your industry. Choose the ones that have a considerable audience and the potential to generate a buzz.

Rate Your Favorite Software and Connect With Industry Gurus

Do you have a set of software and tools you can’t live without? Why not write reviews or recommendations such that other bloggers may find them helpful and link to your expert recommendations!

Another way to show your appreciation and get a backlink is to approach the creator and offer a testimonial. These testimonials can land on the homepage, in newsletters, or become part of their social media promotion campaigns.

Whether you get a link from their website or social media, it will help diversify your backlink profile just like a natural backlink profile should be.

Another clever way to get backlinks is by leaving meaningful comments to famous blogs with the intention of building relationships. The links in comments aren’t super important in this case. It’s your rapport with the influencer that can open up future link-building and collaboration opportunities. Influencer relationships also boost your online reputation.

Be patient and really focus on building a genuine relationship before building links. As Jeff Ferguson says, “Link building isn’t a trick, it’s public relations. Get to work.”

Guest Post on Industry-Specific Publications

As stated earlier, technical websites are always looking for experts to write for their audience. And guest posting is one of the most common link-building tactics. Since you’re a technical expert, you can guest post on other publications in your niche to generate links for your website.

Moreover, with guest posting, you can also earn significant brand exposure, get organic traffic from different sources, and build relationships with industry influencers.

However, if you want to succeed at guest posting, you will need to come up with unique content relevant to both your website and the target blog. Then write a high-quality, authoritative blog that connects with their audience to the T.

Here’s how you can go about it:

1. Look for developer websites that accept guest posts.
2. Pitch them your ideas.
3. If they accept, write a quality blog with a couple of links to relevant content on your website.
4. Send out your guest post, and wait for its publication.
5. Some websites and blogs also add a backlink to your website in the author bio.

Choose websites with high domain ratings (DR) only. (Domain rating and domain authority are almost the same). First, write a few guest posts for websites with medium domain ratings, and build your backlink profile. Then contact blogs with high domain ratings or influential publications in your niche. Lastly, when you send an email presenting your pitch, add the links to some of your best-performing posts. This will build credibility.

Use Backlinks Wisely and Earn More Traffic to Your Site

Backlinks are the most effective of all the SEO techniques and tactics. It’s an established fact that a website with a strong backlink profile gets a higher ranking in search engines and receives more organic traffic from Google.

No doubt there are many, many legitimate ways to build quality links. However, the eight link building techniques we’ve discussed here take advantage of your particular skill as a developer. These tactics will help you build super-relevant quality links and can give you an edge over your competitors.

So what are you waiting for? Go and build those backlinks!

The post 8 Link-Building Strategies for Developers That Work appeared first on Simple Programmer.

Have you ever wanted to write a guest post for Simple Programmer?

The post Top Mistakes You Are Making When You Are Pitching Articles to Simple Programmer appeared first on Simple Programmer.

A big thank you to everyone who participated.

Thousands of votes were submitted and counted.

And I’m happy to announce that the 3 winners for “Best Overall” Podcasts are…

1st Place: CppCast

2nd Place: Arrested DevOps

3rd Place: .NET Rocks

I want to congratulate them, as well as all the other great podcasts on The Ultimate List Of Developer Podcasts.

If you want to see the complete list of podcasts, including the winners in every category, head on over to The 2016 Software Developer Podcast Awards page.

Don’t forget to check-in next year for your chance to vote again.

The post Winners of The 2016 Software Developer Podcast Awards appeared first on Simple Programmer.

Software Developer Podcasts:

[one_half_first]

• General Interest to Software Developer
• .Net and Microsoft Related
• Mobile Development
• Javascript and Web
• Game Development
• Freelancing
• Entrepreneurial / Bootstrapped
• Python
• PHP

[/one_half_first][one_half_last]

• Ruby
• C++
• Java and JVM Languages
• Miscellaneous Languages
• Data and Machine Learning
• Agile / Scrum
• DevOps
• Cloud
• SQL and Databases

[/one_half_last]

After scouring the internet for a good, updated list of software developer and software engineer podcasts, I have come up empty.  It seems that the best list is an old closed Stack Overflow question which is far out of date.  The second and third results are also pretty old and stale.

So, I’ve decided to create my own list of developer podcasts, which I plan to keep updated. If you want a smaller list with my Top 10 Software Development Podcasts you can check the video below:

Oh yeah, and since this is my list, I get to put links to the episodes of these podcasts I was in.  

And if you are a host of one of these podcasts, or one not mentioned on my list and would like me to be on your software development podcast, just drop me a note.

General Interest

.NET and Microsoft Related

Mobile Development

JavaScript and Web

Game Development

Freelancing

Entrepreneurial

Python

PHP

C++

Java and JVM Languages

Ruby

Miscellaneous Languages

Data and Machine Learning

Agile and Scrum

DevOps

Cloud

SQL and Databases

Oh, and if you are looking for a good podcasting microphone setup, I highly recommend the Rode Podcaster Mic with this shock mount.  Well worth the price.

The post The Ultimate List Of Developer Podcasts appeared first on Simple Programmer.

Well, that day has finally come.

In fact, by the time you are reading this, 4 episodes have already been published!

I’ve wanted to create an official Simple Programmer podcast for a long time, but with all that I’ve been doing, I haven’t had the resources to commit to releasing weekly episodes, and I didn’t want to start up the podcast only to have it die out.

So…

I came up with a plan.

I’ve decided that since I am already creating 3 YouTube videos each week, I might as well take the audio from those YouTube videos and convert them into podcast episodes.

That doesn’t mean the Simple Programmer podcast will only be YouTube videos and never have anything original, but it does mean there will be at least 3 episodes of the Simple Programmer podcast a week.

This also gives another option for you if you wanted to listen to my YouTube videos, but don’t have a chance because they are blocked at work, or perhaps you want to be able to listen to them while commuting or working out.

I’ll also be including any of the interviews I do, which I usually publish on my YouTube channel.

And… and…

I will be doing some episodes with completely original content that will only be available on the Simple Programmer podcast.

So, how do you subscribe to the Simple Programmer podcast?

• You can get it on iTunes it here 
• Or you can get the latest episode (and RSS Feed subscription)  in my podcasts page here

I wasn’t planning on setting up a separate site for the Simple Programmer podcast at this point, but I’ll probably make a section on Simple Programmer to make it easy to go through the episodes and comment on them.

One step at a time.

Anyway, hope you enjoy and I welcome any suggestions.

The post Announcing the Simple Programmer Podcast appeared first on Simple Programmer.

In this episode, I discuss some of the unrealistic expectations we can have after seeing bodybuilders and fitness models who utilize unnatural means to achieve their results.

Full transcript below:

[spoiler]

John:               Hey, welcome back to Get Up and CODE.  I’m John Sonmez and in this episode we’re going to be talking about basically what is a realistic expectation for your fitness goals and for mostly your physique really and this is going to apply whether you’re a man or a woman what kind of things are actually attainable.  I think there’s a lot of confusion around this idea of what is possible, what things are photoshopped and what things are unnaturally achieved.  I’m going to try and address that in this episode and I’m going to give you my take on it.

As you’ll hear about there’s really not a good way to find out exactly the truth on this situation but I’m going to tell you what I think and what my research has found and what I found from just the long time that I’ve been in the fitness industry.  I mean I’ve been lifting since I was about 15 years old.  I’m 34 now.  It’s quite a while.

Before we get into that I did want to talk about another topic that someone had brought up.  I’ve been kind of following this a little bit and I thought this would be something interesting to talk about probably not enough to create a whole episode based on but it’s this thing called Soylent.  If you remember that old movie the Soylent Green, Soylent Green is made of people.  I’m assuming that’s where the name came from.  This has gotten some notoriety I’d say.  Maybe notoriety is not the right word but it’s gotten some hype in the tech industry just because this was created by an engineer and it’s sort of this idea of creating a meal replacement technology, if you will, that would basically replace all your meals.

If you go to Soylent.me that’s S-O-Y-L-E-N-T dot me you can find out about Soylent.  They’re actually shipping this now.  A lot of people are using this.  I’m still a bit on the fence about this.  In some regards it aligns with my philosophy on diet which is basically just ignore it, just make it as mundane as possible.  If we can just eat the same foods and be happy with that it makes things a lot simpler.  We reduce a lot of decisions in our life and we’re less likely to make mistakes.

The idea behind the Soylent is basically that it’s going to give you everything that you need.  It’s basically this powder that you add water to and then you drink it 3 times a day and it’s going to give all your nutrition needs.  When I look at what is composed of I’m not exactly pleased with the balance here on how the carbohydrates to protein to fat ratio.  Looking at the Soylent what it’s made of, I’m assuming this is per serving or maybe it’s per day actually because it’s pretty high numbers here.  I guess it would be per day, like what is your nutrition per day.

It’s got 252 grams of carbs, it’s got 114 grams of protein and then 70 grams of fatty acids which isn’t horribly bad I don’t think.  I’d rather see the protein higher and possibly the fat higher with the carbohydrates lower.  Of course these aren’t the crappy carbohydrates that you would get eating junk food.  These carbohydrates aren’t going to be that bad.  I don’t like the ratio all that much.

It does have 27 grams of fiber and it seems decent.  I wouldn’t be afraid of taking this.  I think you’ll probably do well even if you’re training you’ll probably do fine taking this but I’m not 100% convinced on it.  I think I need to see some results from this and see how this would affect a diet and I do think that drinking the same thing repeatedly, just drinking it maybe you could develop a habit for this and then it wouldn’t be so bad.  Even with my strict diets, eating the same foods over and over it’s not really that easy to do so I can’t imagine going to just a shake which is probably I’m guessing is not the most tasty shake.  I don’t know.  I’ve never tried this stuff.

I’m sort of interested to try it but on the other hand I’m also not interested in really messing up my diet and routine.  I don’t really want to take the risk.  If you’re a listener of this show and you have tried it email me at show@getupandcode.com and let me know.  Maybe we can do something and chart your progress and see how this works out.  Yes, it’s kind of interesting.  I think it’s a step in the right direction.  Maybe we can develop customized Soylents.  I know that the formula is open source so there are like these hacks out there where people are developing different versions of this.  It would be kind of cool to be able to customize it on the website and be able to mess with the proteins and carbs.  If I could do that I would be sold.

If I could control it to some degree to make it exactly the balance ratios that I want to have then I’d definitely be sold on it because that’s what I do with my diet now is I basically balance, I use eggs, whole eggs versus egg whites to get the right ratio of protein to fats.  I have to throw carbs in there, try to find good card sources.  If I could customize myself I’ll be pretty happy with that.  Anyway, pretty cool, check it out.  I don’t know about going full bore on it and I’d like to hear some stories of people that have been able to maintain this for several months at a time but it seems like a good way to lose some weight if you could strictly conform to that.

If you could strictly conform to just drinking this shake you could probably just eat a normal diet or greatly reduce your calories.  I don’t know.  We’ll see what happens in the future here but this is definitely something to watch.

With that said, before we move on here I do want to give a shout out to our sponsor for this podcast SignalLeaf.  They are at signalleaf.com.  If you are looking to create your own podcast you can go to signalleaf.com and check it out.  They sponsor this show by hosting this podcast so we appreciate SignalLeaf.

Last thing before I jump into the topic right now my schedule is pretty hectic.  So far these podcasts are making it out every week but I could use a few interviews.  If you have an interesting story or you know someone that I should interview I need to get some ideas here and make some connections so I can get some of those interviews created otherwise we might have a couple of episode gaps or you’re just going to hear me talking quite a bit about different topics which, if you think that’s all right, then that’s fine.  If you do have some interview suggestions or you have a story or something that you’d like to share or be on the show just email me at show@getupandcode.com and I will be appreciative of that.

Let’s talk about the main topic here which is basically what is realistic in terms of what you can expect.  I’m primarily going to target this about what can you expect as far as what you look like from lifting, from eating right.  It’s interesting because if you follow bodybuilding, if you look at the big time pro bodybuilders, you see fitness magazines and there are 2 things right?  Let’s look at first fitness magazines that have big bodybuilders like Flex Magazine, Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler, if you’ve seen any of my YouTube videos or anything you know I’ve got a signed picture of Jay Cutler when I met him in the background hanging on my wall.

Those kind of guys, that kind of physique I think most of us, if you’re not, well here’s a surprise, most of us are probably aware of the fact that these guys are definitely on steroids.  They’re not natural.  They’re taking a lot of different things.  I’m not one of those people that’s so against steroids and unnatural things that I’m like, “Oh, you might as well put a gun to your head.  It’s going to kill you.”  It’s not really true but I don’t do it and I never have and I’m assuming that I never will just because, I don’t know, there’s something about earning your way, about doing the hard work.  When you get the gain without the work it messes things up because part of the process of achieving a goal is the process of accomplishing it.  That’s part of what you get is the way that it affects you.  It internally changes you from achieving that.  It’s really hard to enjoy something that you got like an ill-gotten gain.

I did a YouTube video on why I wouldn’t want to win the lottery and it’s kind of the same type of philosophy.  I want to earn my way and I think it’s really hard to enjoy something that you got through a get rich quick scheme or some kind of really fast way of achieving results without doing the work that’s required to get there.  I’m not saying that you can’t be smart but that’s my thoughts on that.

Anyway, these big bodybuilders, obviously these guys are on steroids.  You’re not going to get nearly that big without being on something.  There’re a lot of things that they’re on.  I don’t want to just make it seem like it’s not that simple, right?  It’s not just steroids.  There’s cutting agents that some of them are pretty dangerous and I’m not going to go over them here because they’re definitely dangerous enough that I’d rather not talk about some of those.  You can do some research on your own.  There are also things like human growth hormone and you can notice the changes that some of these different things have on the body.

If you notice someone who is on human growth hormone they’ll tend to have—it actually affects your bone structure.  They’ll have bigger brows.  They’ll look more Neanderthal.  They’ll have big hands and it changes the shape of your face.  It changes a lot of your body just the way that it looks.  It’s not just muscle.  That’s the key thing here is that a lot of these pro bodybuilders it’s not just muscular changes it’s also the density of the muscle and how the muscle looks.  It’s also the skin.  There’s a lot of things going on behind the scenes here.

All that to say that if you’re trying to become a professional bodybuilder, if you want to look like a professional bodybuilder you’re going to have to go down that road.  This I think most people understand.  If you didn’t understand that well I’m telling you now I hate to burst your bubble but you’re going to basically have to do something unnatural.  You’re basically going to have to go into that dark area.  That’s just the way it is.  The same thing goes with really—and again, I can’t tell you for 100% sure on this one, I can tell you on the bodybuilders yes, for sure they’re on steroids, but for professional athletics I would seriously doubt that there’s professional athletes, football players and baseball players and whatnot that aren’t on some kind of enhancement.  If I were doing it I certainly would because it makes sense in that case and if your competition is doing it there’s no way you’re going to compete with them naturally.

These substances like steroids greatly, greatly enhance performance and greatly enhance the size and the amount of muscle that you can put on your body so it’s very hard to compete against that.  If you took a natural bodybuilder and you tried to have them compete against a professional bodybuilder who is on steroids there’s no contest.  There’s no way that they could even come close.

Yeah, hopefully I didn’t burst your bubble there but like I said, I think most people are aware of that.  Let’s take this now to the other side, the other part of this.  The other fitness magazines where you see this ripped guy on the cover of the magazine with the 6-pack abs or 8-pack abs all cut and ripped up, very defined muscles, not huge, not huge, right?  This is the one where it’s really interesting because these guys look like they might be able to achieve their physiques naturally.  I’ve worked in the modelling side.  I used to do some modelling a long time ago and never got really deep into the fitness modelling but I can tell you that for certainty that a lot of models in fact—pretty much all successful fitness models that are on the covers of magazines are not there naturally.

Now, can I prove this?  No, I can’t prove it.  If you look at the professional bodybuilders I don’t even need to prove it.  That’s pretty obvious, right?  These ones I can’t prove it so I’m going based on the research I’ve done, what I’ve seen, what I’ve done myself, how far I’ve taken my diet and my exercise to know that there’s a limit to where you can get naturally.  A lot of this has to do with hormones and manipulating those hormones.

You can get ripped but you’re going to lose a huge amount of muscle.  The more fat that you lose it starts to hit this point where it takes a lot of muscle with it.  I can say this pretty confidently because I’ve been as big as 300 lbs and not just a fat 300 lbs.  Before I tore my pec I was a pretty strong 300 lbs bench pressing 405 for reps, not 10 reps but few reps out there.  I definitely had a max that was—I never even did one rep max back then and squatting several plates and all that.  I wasn’t super lean but I was around 300 lbs which is big.  I’m 6’3” so that’s still pretty dang big.  I’ve been as low as 180 lbs, 180 something, right around there and that’s within a 2-year period of time.

I’ve been on both sides of that and I can tell you when I dieted down to 180 or around about that number I wasn’t insanely ripped.  You would think that I would be, right?  At that time to be honest I wasn’t lifting, I wasn’t doing as much in the weight training.  I had gotten fat at some point and then I cut down a bunch of pounds and got down to around that 180 mark.  My point in saying that is that even though I lost all that weight a lot of muscle came with it.  I looked pretty skinny at that point which is weird for me because I’ve always been lifting and been a big guy.

That kind of shows you that just because you lose weight doesn’t mean that you’re going to necessarily lose fat.  There’s a diminishing return.  The whole reason why I’m saying that is because when you look at these cover models, fitness models on magazines and you see them with these extremely ripped physiques there are 2 things going on there.  One which is what I’m getting to here is that they’re probably on some kind of gear.  They’re probably on something.  I’d say 90% chance maybe even more, you can’t really confirm this because no one admits to what they’re doing.  They’re no something.  They’re using something to either burn fat at an extremely rapid pace, usually a combination of a steroid and a fat burner.  Not all steroids necessarily make you big.  Some steroids you can utilize to preserve muscle at the same time as you’re using a fat burning agent to burn fat and that will lean you out.  That’s what a lot of these fitness models are doing.

Obviously there’re a lot of steroids that are sold in the black market and they’re not just being used by professional bodybuilders.  This is where a lot of that is going to.

That same thing applies to females as well.  If you’re a woman out there listening to this podcast or you know someone who is trying to achieve one of those fitness model physiques, for a woman you might be surprised to find that a lot of women that have those kind of physiques are actually on steroids as well or at least some kind of fat burning agent that’s not legal, not necessarily safe usually a combination of the 2.  To be honest with you, the same type of things work for men and women.

The reason why I’m saying that is that it’s totally unrealistic.  You have to have an idea in mind of what is realistic because you have to realize that you’re never going to achieve those levels that you see.  That’s okay because you can still look really good naturally.  You can still look really, really good and you can still have a 6-pack or an 8-pack that’s visible and have some decent muscle with that.  It’s going to be really, really hard to have a lot of muscle and have a 6-pack just because like I said, as you lose more and more of the fat you are going to lose muscle with that.  You can get to that point but you do have to have a realistic expectation of what you can actually achieve naturally otherwise you’re just going to be beating yourself up and not understanding why you can’t achieve those results.

The other part of this is a lot of these fitness models that you see is that they basically are in a state where they have dieted down from maybe 16 or 20 weeks and they’ve been really, really strict for that period of time just to barely peak for a couple of days.  The same thing happens with bodybuilders but most people don’t realize that fitness models do the same type of thing.  Let’s say that they were natural which I’m going to tell you they’re not, but I can understand the debate around that, but let’s say that they’re natural.  They dieted down for a long period like 16 weeks of very, very strict diet, got into the tiptop shape.  They’re manipulating their water and sodium so that their skin is going to be as thin as possible and then they do a photo shoot for a day or 2 because that’s as long as they can really maintain that and then they get soft and mushy again because when you do water depletion you think the skin, you get in a temporary state.  You’re also oiled up.

There’re a lot of things that are going on there not to mention the camera angle and the lighting.  If you want to do a quick experiment and want to look good, go ahead and get in the mirror, flex, but make sure that you have an overhead light source that’s shining down on you.  It’s going to make all the shadows pop out.  Want to look bad?  Put the light source below you so there’re no shadows, or right in front of you and you’re not going to look so good.

Basically what’s happening is there’s kind of a manipulation there of just a couple of days.  These fitness models are not going around looking like this all the time.  Now, here’s the inevitable question that most people would ask, well, I go to my gym and I see a lot of people that look like they could be fitness models.  They look really, really good.  What’s going on with them?  Well, the simple answer is those are the people that are consuming anabolics.  They are using steroids.  Just because you know them or see them at the gym doesn’t mean that they’re not on steroids.  Obviously there’re a lot of people that are using those supplements and there’s definitely a lot of knowledge in the fitness industry about how to do that that gets passed around.  That’s what’s happening there.

Now, I don’t mean to say this to totally discourage you and make you feel like you’re never going to look good.  You can definitely get down to, for men I would say probably about 10% body fat without huge, huge amount of effort.  That’s totally possible natural.  Once you start dropping below that you might be able to creep into the 9, 8, 7%.  It gets exponentially harder as you drop down and at some point you’re just not going to get there.  You’re not going to get down to the bodybuilder level 5% which you probably wouldn’t want to anyway.  It doesn’t look really that good.  But if you can get down to 10% you’re going to look pretty good with your shirt off on the beach, you know what I mean?  9, 8% is going to be pretty extreme.  It’s going to be pretty hard to maintain that in the long term.

With women the big thing is going to be you’re not going to have cut thighs.  It’s just not going to happen.  You can get your abs pretty cut up naturally.  That can definitely happen but for most women the thighs are just going to carry weight and that’s not going to disappear naturally.  I mean you can be skinny as a rail and you’re still going to have meat there.  You’re going to have some fat there.  You’re not going to be cut.  That’s just realistic expectations to have there.

I just wanted to make sure that I cover this topic because I know that it comes up a lot.  This is a podcast.  I don’t really have pictures.  This whole thing about this conversation is that this is my take on it.  I’m pretty sure that I’m right after being involved in fitness for this many years, over 15 years and talking with a lot of people that are in really good shape and talking with a lot of bodybuilders and myself going through.  Like I said, I’ve been a very cut, I’ve been on very strict diets, I’ve been in all kinds of training routines and programs and I’ve never been able to achieve anywhere close to what some fitness models have been able to achieve.  That’s me being totally natural.

Again, this is one of those things that if you do a search on the internet, if you try to find this information you’re not really going to find this because even pro bodybuilders don’t really, I mean it’s very rare that a pro bodybuilder even admits that they use steroids.  We know that they do.  Occasionally it slips or someone admits it, but for the most part they don’t even admit it.

Imagine natural bodybuilders, they have natural bodybuilding competitions, a lot of these guys are juiced up as well.  They don’t admit that for sure because they’ll get thrown out.  That’s a no-no.  You’re supposed to be totally natural.  In fact, you wouldn’t have natural bodybuilding competitions if you didn’t have unnatural ones.

The same thing goes with fitness models.  You’re not going to hear them just coming out and saying, “Yeah, yeah, I’m on steroids and I’m taking a cutting agent that’s illegal, that’s prescription drug.”  You’re just not going to hear that kind of thing.  You can’t really verify it and if you ask someone they’re going to say, “Oh no, it’s natural.  I’m not doing that.”  But you can see the differences when you look.  If you happen to know someone who is a fitness model or who is a bodybuilder then you can assume what they’re doing and what they’re telling you is probably close to what the fold is, what everyone else is doing.  That’s where I get a lot of my knowledge and information on this.

The other thing about this is—I mean it’s going to depend somewhat on genetics.  You’re going to have different results than someone else might and your potential is going to be different than someone else’s.  Also, you never know the truth about the training.  Someone says that they’re following a diet.  Someone says they’re following this training program and they’re actually doing something different.  It’s really hard to—very few people can actually maintain the kind of diet that’s needed so you don’t have a lot of results out there.

The other piece of it is a lot of celebrities obviously if you’re being paid a lot of money to make a movie and you need to be in shape you’re going to do whatever necessary for that to happen.  A lot of the celebrity trainers know this information, know how you actually get in shape like the movie shape that a lot of celebrities are in.  So yeah, so you’re going to see that there as well and that’s a little bit unrealistic.

We haven’t even really covered the idea of the photoshopping.  I’m sure you’ve seen the whole fiasco about photoshopping and how that works as far as models as well.  That’s certainly something that exists.  That’s aside from the point.  The question is what kind of physique can you achieve naturally.  Like I said, it’s not going to be fitness model but it’s going to be good.  I mean you can look good.  It does take a lot of work.  It does take a lot of effort.

I guess it brings us to this question which I guess I’ll answer here.  I wasn’t planning on talking about this but it’s worth having a little bit of the conversation a little bit more about is well if it’s so hard to do this naturally, if it’s so hard to look good naturally, why, why would I do it naturally?  Why not just cheat so to speak?  Why not get on steroids and take an illegal metabolism boosting agent or fat burner, why not do that?

I think everyone has to answer this for themselves.  Like I said, if I were a professional athlete I would probably make the choice to take one of those substances because that is what my job and career is based on.  I have to level the playing field.  I’m not a professional athlete.  I stay fit and stay in shape because I want to look good and also because I like the way it makes me feel to know that I’ve achieved the results that I’ve achieved.  That’s why I stick with just going all natural.

Now, you have to make the choice for yourself.  I’d recommend, I’d encourage you, obviously, I’m going to encourage you on this show to make safe and smart choices.  Why put yourself at risk because there’s definitely a risk when you’re dealing with manipulating your hormones and you’re dealing with manipulating your body?  There’s certainly risk involved.  Not that it can’t be mitigated by smart professionals that know what they’re doing but there is risk involved.  Why take that risk?  Why possibly damage your body for vanity’s sake and you’re not even going to have had the satisfaction of had made it yourself?  You have taken the shortcut.

That’s my thought on it.  I don’t think it’s a good idea.  I can see why a lot of people do it and if that’s something that is so important to you then you’ll have to weigh that out for yourself or if that’s something that’s going to greatly affect your career if you’re in a fitness or you’re in some kind of career that would make sense you’re going to have to make that decision.  But yeah, that’s why I would say it’s worth doing the hard work.  It’s worth going out there and hitting the gym and running and staying in shape naturally is because one, you’re not putting yourself at risk, 2, there’s a satisfaction in doing that and 3, why, why would you do the other?  Is there really a need?  Does it make that much of a difference to you?

Yep, that’s it.  That’s all I’ve got to say on this topic.  If you have any comments on this leave a comment on this podcast or email me at show@getupandcode.com and I’ll read any good comments I have.  If you have some inside information on this I would love to talk to you.  I can even anonymize your name or we can try to do some voice disguising thing, but I would love to hear some real stories so I could have a little bit more evidence based on—I guess a lot of this is just what I have come up with and put together on my own just from my experiences from talking with a lot of people.  Yeah, I would definitely like to hear from you.

Well, that about wraps up this podcast.  I’ve been rambling on for quite a while here.  If you have any guests or any ideas for show definitely email me show@getupandcode.com.  Have a nice week and I will talk to you next time.  Check out the website at getupandcode.com and if you don’t mind leave a review on iTunes if you’re enjoying this podcast so that more people can find it.  All right, take care.

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The post Get Up And Code 057: Realistic Expectations appeared first on Simple Programmer.

Full transcript below

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John:                  Hey everyone, welcome back to Get Up and CODE Podcast.  I’m John Sonmez and in this episode I’m going to be interviewing Eugene Jorov who is the co-founder of a really promising technology called Angel.  If you’ve been following this podcast for a while you know that I’m really into the wearable tech space.  I think that’s really the future so I’m really excited to talk about this technology.  So, welcome to the show Eugene.

Eugene Jorov:   Thank you John.  Good to be here.

John:                  So, why don’t you tell everyone a little bit about yourself?  Like, what’s your background and how did you get started in this area?  Are you a software developer, where you came from?

Eugene Jorov:   I always say that I like building stuff and I’ve been writing code from the age of 12 more or less and when I was doing my military service and everybody has to here in Israel I discovered that electronics and software was my real passion where they come together.  Since then I’ve been mostly doing embedded projects and this whole thing culminated in a company I started a couple of years ago with my friend which is building Angel.  We call it the first open sensor for health and fitness and I would be glad to tell you about it.

John:                  Okay.  Okay.  So that sounds interesting.  So you came from a software development background.  You figured out that kind of that you like the embedded systems and the electronics part of it as well.  But what got you into the fitness space?  Have you been in the fitness space?  What got you going down that road?

Eugene Jorov:   I actually have several interests, several stakes in digital health, fitness of course.  I’ve been doing some body building in my younger years and today I’m just into Cross-Fit and experiments with nutrition and stuff like that.  I also am very much into staying healthy because I’ve got some bad history with that in my family so it’s important to me to stay in touch and to monitor what’s going on with my body.  I have so many reasons to be involved in digital health.  This project combines personal and professional interests for me.

John:                  Okay.  So maybe should probably talk about what the project is.  I’m sure a lot of people are wondering.  If you can describe what Angel is, I know you’ve got some information on your website but maybe if you can give the vision of what Angel will do for someone.

Eugene Jorov:   The not surprising part is that it’s a wristband, right?

John:                  Right.

Eugene Jorov:   What it does is measure heart rate, blood oxygen, temperature and activity.  This is also, I think, it’s the first device designed from the start to be really open.  This wristband is designed for innovation in digital health which means that we are building the best sensor we can and we are leaving it for others to come up with apps and to do their own research and basically complete our product with apps and platforms and systems.

I’d say it’s a radical idea if you compare it to what’s out there, to other devices because first of all most existing trackers today are based on a single sensor on an accelerometer, on a motion tracker that can help you count calories and steps.  You probably understand that health is much more than that.  We’ve got some special sensors as I mentioned but I am really excited about the open model.  I don’t think that anyone else is doing that.

I think the best example is—how many fields of expertise are there in medicine and in health?  There is cardiology and pediatrics and nutrition and fitness and many others.  It’s not possible for a single company to come up with a solution that would address all those areas.  It’s only natural to allow many people and many companies and many universities to participate in this field.  We observed that every company was trying to really take control of the whole chain of both hardware and software and also cloud solutions.  We decided to disrupt that.

John:                  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.  I think that then you’re going to get the best of breed for this on the software side instead of being limited by your user interface, I think.  You can integrate with some of the APIs of some of the wearable technology but the problem is because they already have a dominating app in the app store I’m not going to build an app that integrates with Fitbit or something because people are going to buy the Fitbit app.  I mean, they’re not going to use my thing.  I like that idea that makes a lot of sense especially I think for the developers.  It seems like there is a unique opportunity here for someone.  If I wanted to create my own app using your sensor I could basically create my own and sell my own app that integrated with the sensor.  If I already had an app would I be able to integrate that as well?  I use a running app.  I have a running app myself.  Would I be able to integrate that now with the Angel sensor?

Eugene Jorov:   Absolutely.  We make it a point to use either standard Bluetooth protocols or to open those that we invent.  Well basically we publish everything we develop in open source so that people can read about our APIs, grab bits of our software as examples to jumpstart their development.  The short answer is yes.  It’s designed for developers.

John:                  Okay.

Eugene Jorov:   There is another important thing here, another important issue here.  Who controls the data?  Because when you use Fitbit all data flows to their storage and you don’t really get to say how you want that data to be used.  In our case you can choose any platform you want as long as it works with Angel but Angel gives you the choice of apps and web platforms and where you store your data, what you do with it.  It’s all about freedom to me.

John:                  Okay, that makes a lot of sense.  I know RunKeeper did something like that on the app side because they had their app and they kind of made that, what do they call it? Graph API?  No, not Graph API.  I forgot what the name of the API was but I like to see it now on the wearable side.  That’s a great thing to do.  What about Angel itself?  I’ve got a Fitbit and I like the Fitbit but I stopped wearing it because I know how many steps I take in a day now.  Like you said, it’s just an accelerometer.  The thing that was really interesting about Angel to me was the heart rate, blood oxygen, activity and temperature.  Maybe we could talk about each one of those, how you measure those things and how they’re important.  I guess we could start with heart rate.  How does the device measure heart rate and why is this something important that somebody would want to measure?

Eugene Jorov:   This is actually an emerging technology in wearables.  There are a couple of other companies doing that.  It’s based on optics and there is an optical sensor that monitors blood flow in your wrist by sending rays of light which are reflected from your skin and depending on the amount of blood present in your wrist that absorption differs.  I basically described to you something that is called PPG.  We are also using acoustics and a bunch of other sensors to improve the signal which is quite weak at the wrist.  In fact, your wrist is probably the worst place for a sensor like that to be but it’s one of the most convenient places unfortunately.  We’d rather you had Angel as an earring or something like that.

John:                  Yeah.

Eugene Jorov:   Heart rate is important.  It’s one of the vital signs and it can be useful in a wide array of health apps.  In fact, we had a guiding principle in choosing our sensors.  We talked to doctors and asked them what information, what data would be useful to you today.  We could create brand new sensors that nobody’s heard of but it would take several years for medical experts to research them and to understand how to use them in everyday life.  We wanted to start with sensors that would immediately provide information that could help like I said innovate digital health today not tomorrow.  Heart rate is useful for beyond tracking fitness.  It’s useful for analyzing anomalies and maybe predicting problems and I don’t know, maybe even predicting heart attacks I’d say 5 years before it happens.  We could track emotions.  We could track your sleep combined with the way you move of course when you’re asleep.  There’s a lot of potential for this sensor.

John:                  Right.

Eugene Jorov:   The big deal with wearables is that they are going to allow access to continuous data.  Up till now this was not possible.  No researcher in the world could get access to your heart rate for the last 5 years.  If we run this data, I hope if we run this data through the necessary algorithms we’ll be able to find a whole lot of information hiding there.  One of our goals is to get the data into the hands of people who can do that kind of research.

John:                  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense when you think about it that way because I was thinking of it just as I go for a run I want to check my heart rate and I don’t use a heart rate monitor when I run because there are these big straps that you have to put across your chest.  I just want to go and run but having this on my wrist but I’d never even considered the fact that I could be tracking this for my doctor over years and then we could aggregate this data and we find problems.  Maybe we find some indicator of a health issue from data from hundreds and thousands of people.  That makes a lot sense especially if you’ve got it on all the time which you don’t wear your heart rate monitor the one when you go out running all the time.  So that makes a lot of sense.

Eugene Jorov:   You know why the project is called Angel?

John:                  No.  Why?

Eugene Jorov:   I hope that in say 10 years from now every one of us will have a personal Angel of our own.  It could be an earring like I said, a wrist band or any other electronic device which will just be present.  It will be there and it will maybe whisper in our ear sometimes.  You can just take it easy on your daily jog because maybe your knees are weaker than you think or just grab an extra banana it’s okay for you today or your sleep is perfect or just go do your check-up it’s time for that.  Maybe discover problems.  Something to really take care, I wouldn’t say take care but an extra protection layer for our health.

John:                  Right.  Okay.  So you’ve got a much bigger vision than just this wristband at this point for the company.

Eugene Jorov:   Yup.  I think there are going to be a lot of companies involved in this vision and we want to be one of them.

John:                  Okay.  Let’s see.  So we talked about heart rate which now I’ve got a good grasp on that.  That makes sense.  I’m definitely excited about that.  Like I said, I don’t like having that bulky thing so I would actually use this for heart rate.  Now blood oxygen, I’m imaging that the same sensor probably gets you the blood oxygen.  This is kind of an interesting one because when I go into the hospital they put that thing on my finger and they check my blood oxygen but how could someone use this?  Will this help me working out?  How can I use blood oxygen, that data?

Eugene Jorov:   Blood oxygen saturation is another vital sign which could be used both for sports and for health analysis.  I’d say that for now in sports we just want to differentiate between normal and abnormal blood oxygen levels.  This is just a starting point for researchers, for doctors knowing that under stress your blood oxygen level is below normal or knowing what it looks like when you’re asleep could help them discover problems.  If you combine this information with heart rate and the other sensors you get a pretty detailed picture of your health.

For example, many people suffer from sleep apnea which is basically problems with sleep and most of them are, I don’t want to say most of them I’m not a doctor but a lot of those have to do with problems in breathing, difficulties breathing at night.  This is also something that is reflected in your oxygen level.  This is just another dimension of getting a better understanding of what our health looks like.

John:                  I see.  I was just going to ask about the sleep apnea because that would make sense to me that you could detect that blood oxygen level drop and a lot of people don’t even know they have sleep apnea but if they were wearing this they could find out.  Then the activity I’m assuming you’re using accelerometers for the activity, for that part.

Eugene Jorov:   Yup, that’s correct.  We use a combination of a gyroscope and an accelerometer to produce step count and calorie count and general activity levels.  We’ll probably improve that further and extend our API to support whole detection and many other functions but this is going to be based on actual feedback from our developers and their API requests.

John:                  Okay.  Then on the temperature side, this is an interesting one as well because I know that one of the things that a lot of the sensors today they only track the step count to determine calories, the burn, but at one point I had this really bulky device.  I don’t know if they still make it.  It’s called Bodybugg and it used temperature as well as the motion and it gave me a more accurate calorie count because by the raise in body temperature it could figure out how much my base rate was increasing.  Is that kind of the idea behind the temperature in this or are there more?

Eugene Jorov:   This is absolutely the direction that we’re going to.  We have some challenges to overcome.  For example, the sensor you mentioned is much closer to your core.  You wear it on your arm which is closer to your heart and to the core of your body so the measurement is much closer to the actual core temperature.  On the wrist it’s quite remote from that but still you can deduce trends and where the temperature is going.  If your algorithms are smart enough you could calibrate your measurement to reflect the core temperature closely.  If you do that it opens a door to—just imagine, not having to take the temperature of your kids at night and always knowing what’s going on and getting a text message if your kid runs a fever in kindergarten.  My daughter is 9 months old and I can tell you that I would buy a device like that today.

John:                  Yeah.  Wow, that’s great.  Wow.  This is definitely an awesome device having all of those data points.  Alone each one is valuable but just the combinations of them it seems like you’ve got, with these 4 data points you can really calculate a lot of things.  Probably things we can’t even really think of at this point.  I’m pretty excited about this.  This definitely sounds like a pretty cool technology.  This is wrist and I saw that you said that you can wear it—is it waterproof?   Will I be able to just basically keep this thing on all the time?

Eugene Jorov:   Yeah.  The idea is for you to wear it 24/7.  You’ll have to charge it about once a week but we’re hoping to solve that in the second generation of our device but yes, the idea is continuous measurement.

John:                  Okay.  That sounds really good.  I’m really, really interested in this.  How far along are you in the project now?  When would these be available?  I know you did like an Indiegogo campaign and I think you tripled what you needed, what your goal was?

Eugene Jorov:   Yes.  We were quite successful and now we are beginning manufacturing of our first batch of devices which will go to our Indiegogo backers.  Angel is going to ship late this summer.

John:                  Oh wow.  Okay.  Wow, this is really exciting.  When it ships will there be like a reference app that it ships with that you guys have developed so that someone could start using it or will there still need to be apps created?  How will someone use it right away when they get it?

Eugene Jorov:   There are going to be several possible uses for Angel immediately when it ships.  First we are going to ship it with our own app but it’s an open source app.  It’s quite basic but it will give you the ability to view your data and configure the device so that it’s an alarm clock and tweak its various settings and also that app serves as an example for our developers but we’re not going to compete with all the developers.  Like I said, it’s a basic app.

Then because Angel is using open protocols many existing apps could connect to it and get data.  For example, apps like Strava and MapMyRun and you mentioned RunKeeper.  Those apps could connect to Angel and get heart rate because we use standard protocol to transmit that over Bluetooth.  We are also going to be integrating with existing web platforms from day one and you will be able to upload your data to, I call them aggregators, platforms that collect your sensor data from various devices and present to you and process it the way you want.  And of course we are hoping that we’ll have apps coming from our developers.  You’ll get the single device and you will be able to use it with different apps.  One app in the morning, one app in the evening, something in the afternoon and the next day maybe you’ll find another app for yourself.  I’m actually maybe even more excited than you are to see and to find out what people are going to invent for Angel.

John:                  Right.  Okay.  That sounds good.  I really like that approach and I’m sure a lot of the audience for Get Up and CODE developers would be interested in creating an app for it.  We could probably get someone in the audience to get a Windows phone app because we’ve got a lot of Windows phone developers.  That’s really good.  Do you know what the retail price is going to be at this point?

Eugene Jorov:   Yes.  It’s going to $159 US.

John:                  Okay.  Yeah, that’s perfectly affordable.  I would buy that instantly as soon as it’s available at that price for all the benefit I’d be getting.  I’m kind of interested also to find out what is the technology that you’re using behind it.  What programming languages and technology are you using to develop this?

Eugene Jorov:   We are using microcontrollers without an operating system.  We are actually using a microkernel that we have developed ourselves for our specific purposes.  We are, I can say, among the very few companies to use C++ in 16-bit microcontrollers and I’m quite happy about it because it allows us to abstract our solutions so much better than in C.

John:                  Okay.

Eugene Jorov:   I hope this is a sufficiently detailed answer.

John:                  Yes, that’s very good.  So C++ and you’re directly interacting with the microcontrollers.  You don’t have an embedded OS.  Obviously on a small device like that it would be pretty tough to have an embedded OS on there.  Okay.  What about on the website?  What are you guys doing for the API?  What technology are you using there?

Eugene Jorov:   For the moment we are focused on our app which will integrate with other existing web platforms.  We are not building our platform for now.

John:                  Oh I see.  Okay.  So if someone wants to integrate with your API they’re programming against the C++ APIs that you’ve exposed.  Is that true?

Eugene Jorov:   Actually, there are several layers.  You can either connect to Angel directly over Bluetooth from any device you want.

John:                  Oh okay.

Eugene Jorov:   Or you can use our SDK on iOS or Android.  You can of course develop on Windows or Mac using their Bluetooth libraries and if you want to build a web application you have to make sure that data from Angel goes to one of the existing web platforms and you get it from there using their web APIs.

John:                  I see.

Eugene Jorov:   You either connect directly or use our SDK on mobile devices or use library functions on PCs and net or you integrate with existing web APIs.

John:                  Oh I see.  Okay, that makes sense that the communication would be over the Bluetooth communication.  Okay.  One last thing I was curious about here.  I was reading your blog or the blog list you had on and about you taking the leap.  I have another podcast called Entreprogrammers and so I’m always curious to hear what was your story in making this leap.  It’s a risky thing to go out on your own and try and create this device.  How did that go about and what were you thinking about that?

Eugene Jorov:   I think it all started when I took interest in agile for the first time and I started thinking on not just the results of my work but also on the process, on the methodology.  Improving the way I do things over time was really interesting to me and eventually started managing teams.  It was about 10, 15 years ago and I think I got quite good at that and over time I think the whole thing became clear to me when I ran into The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss.  I am sure all of your listeners are familiar with this book and I think that was the moment when this understanding that I wanted to try doing things my way crystalized in my mind.  It was a long way but the decision was instant.  When I was ready it was very easy for me to make this decision.  It wasn’t that easy to implement it but the decision itself was natural.

John:                  Yeah, I just finish rereading The 4-Hour Work Week.  Just last week I reread that book.  I’m picking up more as I’m now and own my own doing my own entrepreneurial type of thing I’ve picked up a lot more than I did the first time around when I read it and I was still working for someone else.

Eugene Jorov:   Unfortunately we are working 14 hours a day now trying to fulfill our obligation to the guys who put their trust on us on Indiegogo but I do hope to improve that over time.

John:                  Yeah, I think that’s the one part of the equation that a lot of people leave out when they say work smarted not harder.  It’s like you kind of got to work hard and smart for like a 3 to 5 year period and then you can kind of relax a little bit.  A lot of people look back on their success and they forget about the part where they work they’re butt off for a really long time, really hard in order to be able to get to the point where they can now put things on autopilot and step away a little bit.

Eugene Jorov:   I just want to share that even though I work 12 hours a day sometimes and more I don’t really allow our engineers to do that because I think it really hurts their creativity.  I think it wasn’t just once that we had to go into overtime and everybody who did that got a few days off immediately afterwards to refresh their minds.

John:                  Yeah, that makes sense.  There’s only a finite number of amount of focused concentration you can maintain for any period of time.  Alright, I just got to give a quick shout out to our sponsor for this podcast SignalLeaf.  If you are looking to start your own podcast go and checkout signalleaf.com.  SignalLeaf has been the sponsor for this podcast for quite a while now and they make it really easy for you to create your own podcast.  Just go to signalleaf.com and sign up for their services and you can get your podcast up and running pretty quickly.  Well, thanks again for doing this interview.  I’m really excited to get this technology, to get this in my hands.  I didn’t get a chance to get it on the Indiegogo but when it’s available for retail sale I’ll definitely be one of the first people to put down my money and get one of this.  This is definitely something that I would utilize.

Eugene Jorov:   Thank you.

John:                  Alright and don’t forget to checkout Get Up and CODE at getupandcode.com and if you have any suggestions for who you’d like to see on the show, any comments just send an email at show@getupandcode.com and I’ll talk to you next week.  Take care.

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The post Get Up And Code 056: Angel Fitness Sensor With Eugene Jorov appeared first on Simple Programmer.

We’ve gone ahead and made episodes 7 – 12 available, so you can check them out at Entreprogrammers (for video and audio) or on iTunes, or RSS for audio only. (You can find the links on the Entreprogrammers site)

We are just about all caught up with back episodes. Next week, 13 and 14 will go live and then the podcast will revert to a weekly schedule.

The post Entreprogrammers Madness! Episodes 7 – 12 Are Now Live! appeared first on Simple Programmer.

You can check them out here at Entreprogrammers.com.

You can can also find RSS and iTunes links on the page.

Oh, and what do you think about our outro jingle?

Am I the only one who likes it?

The post More Entreprogrammers: Episodes 4, 5, and 6 Released appeared first on Simple Programmer.