P2P Podcast Series: Lennart Quecke - Surfer Guy with a Nerdy Side
What's crazy is that he writes code almost every week, but has never worked as a professional software developer. Today, Lennart Quecke (LinkedIn) owns and operates two businesses:
- Secret Wave - an upscale surf bed and breakfast for adults in southwest France
- SportyJob - a European job board for the sports industry
He is German and grew up in France. He always did a lot of sports, and in university, it was natural to get his degree in sports management. His career started with desk jobs in Germany, but his heart already belonged to the ocean.
As a customer learning to surf at his camp, I found out about his hidden habit of writing PHP in the evenings. Without ever wanting to make a career out of it, the urge to tinker with tech had made him the website guy in school and the office.
In our chat, we talk about following dreams, owning a business, and learning to code without a team.
This episode is packed with insights about:
- (00:04:44) Start with your passions: Surfing
- (00:09:29) Generalists (and entrepreneurs) volunteer for everything
- (00:16:01) Helping people break copy protection was a great start
- (00:30:32) Every company needs Website Guy
- (00:35:23) Website guy recommends Joomla for a calm website
- (00:48:43) Outsourcing is a test of nerves and patience
- (00:54:31) Living in the seasons
- (01:03:20) Know what you love and pursue it
- (01:10:51) Bedtime thoughts are guidance
Mentions:
Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, or your favorite platform.
Zeke Arany-Lucas is a principal engineer, consultant, and coach living and working in Berlin since 2014. He was previously a leader at Amazon and Microsoft, where he started his career building Internet Explorer. You can also follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.
Artwork by Emre Aydogan & Laura Diezler — ©️2022 Zeke Arany-Lucas
Read Transcript
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Hi, this is, uh, Zeke Arany-Lucas, and we're recording an episode of The Introspective Developer with Lennart Quecke today. Um,
Lennart Quecke: Quecke-E
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Quecke, is it really
Lennart Quecke: Quecke, Quecke,
here
Zeke Arany-Lucas: man, look at this. I I blow it right in the first, uh, 15 seconds of the, the podcast
Lennart Quecke: No worries.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Lennart Quecke. That's funny cuz I guess I've never heard you say it out loud.
Lennart Quecke: I dunno why, but probably because of the work environment I'm in, sort of. Or in the one we met mostly. Uh, last name is not that important, I think. It's more about, yeah, the first name and that's it.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: That's very true. Actually. I, I wanna start there. I wanna start there. I wanna tell you a little story in case you don't remember it or have never even heard it. But the way that I met you, is, it's actually pretty important and kind of magical. Um, so yeah, I know. I'm gonna start a story. I'm gonna start the interview by telling you a story,
So what happened was, uh, Saskia and I started dating at a time where she had just, just had her first experience with surfing. And so, um, this was really important to her. And so when we got married, we decided to do our honeymoon by going on a surf trip. And we went to the place that she had been surfing, which was Fuerte Ventura.
Before we went, we decided to buy our own surf suits, and we went to a store here in Berlin to shop for surf suits, which actually made us feel pretty cool cuz surf suits make you look like a superhero and, and yeah, right? And why? Yeah, cuz you're a little like, you know, streamlined and stuff like that, right?
So we're trying on these surf.
Lennart Quecke: Yeah.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Right. It's a, uh, what does Saskia say today? She said it's like a all, all day compression socks, you know, like you get to full body compression sock.
Um, anyway, and this lady just kind of comes up to us and was helping us with the suits and I don't know if she was really working there or just kind of hanging out there or what. But she tells us like, Oh, you know what, If you really want, you know, a cool romantic surf experience, you should go to this camp called the Secret Wave.
She says, you know, it's a Geheimtipp. Her and speaking in German. It's a Geheimtipp, there's this secret place and it's a romantic couples, uh, surf. And we'd already bought our tickets, so you, we were like, Okay, maybe next time. And in fact, the following year we decided after going to this Fuerte Ventura trip, where you were like, well, wasn't ideal, so we'll try some other places.
And we decided to try the Secret Wave. So we did a trip that was half San Sebastian and half a Secret Wave. And um, and the first half was San Sebastian and Saskia. It was really cool, but it, it was, I don't know, there was various things going on there, but when we got to the Secret Wave, I mean, it was, was almost an immediate connection with the kind of environment and the kind of like the, the land and stuff like that.
And even the, the secretness of the little sign out in front, right. do you remember this? Do you remember when we first came? I think this was 2017.
Lennart Quecke: I remember when you, you spend your first trip at our place, and I, I, I think while you were surfing at that time, or at least you, you were
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Yeah. Yeah. I, I was,
Lennart Quecke: with us and whether it was I think not that great during that week. Was quite stormy and big. If I remember. So I was pretty impressed that anybody of you wanted to jump into the ocean. And, uh, Yeah, well, it's funny story because you never told me that somebody in Berlin who apparently knew me or Chris or, or the surf camp told you to come to our place.
So that's a new one for me, so,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: yeah,
Lennart Quecke: glad that worked out. So, uh, we had the chance to meet. Otherwise, I think, who knows, maybe our path never crossed in one way or other,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: I don't know, somewhere in that first week I asked you and Chris, cuz I was, you know, fascinated by just how the, you were a couple and you had this, this setup for yourselves and it was so intimate.
Um, and so I asked you like, you know, like, how did you decide on this business? And you told me two words, "Erwachsene Surfen". Tell me a little bit about how you got there.
[00:04:44] Start with your passions: Surfing
Lennart Quecke: uh, wow. Uh, basically it's a long way, but I think one part of my life that always has been there is, is sports, and especially sports and water. Surfing, wind surfing, sailing, and yeah, also going to the mountains. And, uh, if, if you like being outdoors and, uh, you work a lot in an office, you're starting asking yourself questions about what is it life about and what you want to do.
And, uh, so sometimes it's about passion and, uh, what you love to do. So one part.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Did, did you work in an office?
Lennart Quecke: I worked in an office. Sure. I did.
working in, in, in an office in, uh, New Zealand, Auckland. Been working in an office in, in Germany, Heidelberg. Uh, been in an office in Munich, uh, Hoking to be, uh, to, to name a few. So yeah, I, I've been in an office and different stuff, definitely. But yeah, it's at one point, um, from my job before, um, starting the surf camp, it, uh, yeah, it was about like, Hmm, the job is not what, Well, how you say it, um, wasn't the thing I wanted to do with my whole life. Was to stressful to too much.
Yeah. Working 80 hours, uh, a week wasn't for me. I was too young. So we, Chris and I, we were sitting down like, wow, we need to change our lives.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Wait, I have to go, How old? How old were you?
Lennart Quecke: well, when, when did we take the decisions? It was like 2012, 2011. So been 30, something like that.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Mm-hmm.
Lennart Quecke: Yeah. Yeah. It must be 30 end of end, end of the twenties. Uh, we took the, well, I took the decision, Chris was a little bit older than me, but, uh, definitely, um, the, the point was, okay, we can't go on with what we do now.
And wasn't, wouldn't, well it's not all about money and about, um, You want to feel pleasure when in what we do. And uh, yeah, that's how we come sort of. I, Well, yeah, now it's get difficult way, way
Zeke Arany-Lucas: No.
Lennart Quecke: There was, there was some, some, some help also in the way to going on the surf camp because you don't come up just with idea, Oh, come on, let's open the surf cam and do something completely else and you usually do and own the sink. And, and this idea is I love surfing and I wanna be on the ocean.
So definitely that helps to say, Okay, I want to try something like that. But, um, in the start I was partnering up with, uh, friend in, in the Canary Island in Fuerte Ventura, where you have been actually. And, um, he was running a surf camp.
So I invested already earlier so that I think the investment was already in 2006 or something. Uh, but um, so I called them up and say, Hey, um, we work, we have this idea, we want to set up a surf camp, but different from what you have around the world right now. It's like you wanna focus on adults only and, uh, to surround ourselves when we do that with people who might be interesting.
We have great stories and who can teach us stuff about their lives and share them with us. And, uh, so I called them up and um, basically ask him, Hey, how about Chris and I coming over for half a year and working there at that place? You know, I, I'm, I'm shareholder of the company, so what would be cool if I can do that?
I say, Yeah, okay, no worries. So we spent six months over. Teaching, giving classes and figure it out. Hey, it's something great. It's just being around people, sharing good moments and not sitting always in front of a computer. And, um, yeah, doing mostly, sometimes always the same stuff. It's just, we still do same stuff every day, sort of when you run a surf game, but every time you have other people, the weather is different, the mentality, everything's every, every week is different from another one.
So it's, yeah, it's always something new in there. Yeah. So, um, that's little bit in a short, condensed version, like from from the office to a surf camp.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Well, let's see. First, what were you doing in the office?
[00:09:29] Generalists (and entrepreneurs) volunteer for everything
Lennart Quecke: Um, well actually I've never been, programmer or developer in, in the office? Uh, well sort of sometimes a bit. Most of the time was more project product management. So in, in one, one company I've been, what was junior or just after university? I started, they were in HR and actually this is a link to my current sort of nerdiness, uh, Sporty Job, um, company.
And, um, this company was an HR and we had an idea to create a platform for new talents. So I said, Hey guys, I sort of know how to set up a website. And they say, Okay, keep on going. Create a platform we could use to, for young students to register themselves, put up your CV and do that stuff kind of stuff.
So, so, I sort of did some development there from my side. But yeah, the main goal was a bit more hr, so like recruiting people, giving calls and setting that up. So that was one part, part where I met my current partner in Sporty Job. The other company I run currently.
Uh, after that I went into this, um, company in Heidelberg called O Signs.
And um, this was about sport electronics. So to develop sport electronics, you need developers, uh, and your company who write the code. So I was more running the projects. But in the end, I was always in touch with the people who were writing the codes and definitely it wasn't code I could write because it's different, different to have like machine code and stuff like that and, uh, than PHP or JS or whatever.
So it wasn't my world. But yeah, being in touch with these guys was cool because you see they have a different way of thinking. And I was always like sitting in between those guys who had the great ideas, we need to do this marketing, marketing, whatever. And then you understand also the other guy sitting on the other side doing development because you've been doing some of yourself.
And, uh, so it's about, yeah, speaking several languages, like, uh, being the, sticking these people together so that it works out. Because sometimes, yeah, you have developers say they can't really understand what this product manager wants or the CEO or whatever, and the other way around. And so you always need somebody in between these seats.
And I think my whole life was a little bit about that. I've ne never been a real developer. I would call myself, maybe you see differently, but, and I would never call me the marketing guy or the product manager guy or the CEO of the company. I've always seen me, like if there's more people, the binding person in between to make everything work, like more problem solver, maybe that's, I would say it's just
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Problem solver. I
Lennart Quecke: There is a problem and uh, yeah, you need to sort of solve it. It can be a problem with some software and if you don't have a developer around you just sit there and figure out how you could solve it. Or if you have a developer around and maybe you try to solve it with him and, uh, yeah, that's it.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: All right. You had said something about JS and php, so it you, I actually know this for a fact. You are writing code pretty regularly right now. What, what, What's the platform you're writing on? What is the code that you write?
Lennart Quecke: Well, I, I basically developed for WordPress platforms. Um, I haven't, was my partner in hr. We started a platform in, uh, in the recruitment business. So it was, um, job platform called similar to Indeed, StepStone, Monsters. It's called Sporty Job. It's about, um, yeah, jobs in the sports industry, uh, across whole Europe.
And so if you run a platform like that, you need. Yeah, somebody to, to be able to fix issues and uh, create new forms or whatever makes, makes the system better and improve it. And as currently, sometimes we have some developers. Currently we don't have, we have pretty small team. Sales, marketing, me doing everything else.
So, uh, yeah, I just sit down and then if say something to code, I try to, to, to solve issues, to write new code, um, Google Stack Overflow and everybody else are my best friends. And, uh,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: e Every developer is best friends. Let's be honest here.
Lennart Quecke: I, I guess, yeah, that's definitely
Zeke Arany-Lucas: it's for sure true. Stack overflow is probably the most important thing to happen to developers in the last 30 years.
Lennart Quecke: But, but then how did you manage it and the times there wasn't Stake Overflow at that time.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Yeah. That's weird, huh? To, to think of like,
Lennart Quecke: Did you solve the problems at that time?
Zeke Arany-Lucas: You just bang your head against the, the computer until the, the solution falls.
Lennart Quecke: Did You have a network you could call like, Hey guys, how's it, I have this issue. Have you an idea? Or how would you approach that?
Zeke Arany-Lucas: I mean, I worked at Microsoft when I was really learning how to code, like the real learning that I did was actually after I was already there. And so I was surrounded by other people who wrote the operating system. You know, it's like, you know, that that's why my network was just people I had to work with.
Lennart Quecke: Okay.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: But it, but I honestly, more, a lot of time was spent just banging in my head or looking at other source code and stuff like that. I was not,
Lennart Quecke: But, but you can still do it. Even if you have Stack Overflow and everything around, you could still spend some hours banging your head against the computer screen trying to figure out why is it not working.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: I, Yeah, But it's, uh, I would say it's not as rewarding as just, you know, uh, being able to ask the right question and get a good answer.
[00:16:01] Helping people break copy protection was a great start
Lennart Quecke: Definitely, definitely. But I, I think, yeah, so there's a, For me, it's always like to, it's the first time when you figure out that your code starts to work like you expected to, to work and, and you figured out all by yourself. Even it took an hour or two more than you wanted. That's, it's, yeah, it's great.
It's just essence of, of yeah, having fun doing, doing coding. It's just, yeah.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: When, when was the first time you experienced that?
Lennart Quecke: Uh, wow.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: What was your seminal, seminal coding experience? What was that first one?
Lennart Quecke: My first coding experience, well, I, I was, I was pretty young then. Uh, I don't know if you would call it coding at that time, but, uh, I was setting up a small little website, um, at the time was, I think Dream Weaver or something like they had a tools for helping you out with some templates or whatever. It was a website helping people to understand the file sharing environments, like what tools were available.
So more like, not like a week, well, small Wiki maybe about Yeah, fire sharings in Germany explaining Kaza at that time. So yeah, setting up the website at that time and then,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: when, when was that?
Lennart Quecke: Wow. I was still in tune. Wow. Now that, now you are kidding me. . I wasn't out of school at that time. I probably was 18, so, Or 17, So it must be 99, 2000, something like that.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Okay. So that's where you started building websites
Lennart Quecke: When was, when was the big time of um, uh, Napster Co. Was it 2000?
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Yeah. Somewhere around 1999 or something like that.
Lennart Quecke: Okay. Yeah. So it must be around that time. Um, because I was always into computer. I think, uh, Windows 3.1 or something was my first one. And, uh, was, yeah, a bit of gaming and stuff like that. At that time, when you're young, it's more about gaming. And,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Hmm
Lennart Quecke: Then when AOL came around, surfing of its internet and yeah, once I got a little bit into file sharing the interest into it, at that time was with Napster and I set up then yeah, suddenly I, I, I came across a, a on web forum, like where people were discussing it.
They're always discussing the same issues, always the same, the same. So it's like, okay, why is nobody setting up a website about that and FAQ like explaining what's happening. And that's where the first time I set up a website. So they are having a website online that works and having the logo at the right spot and yeah, that was crazy for great
Zeke Arany-Lucas: It's like why people are asking the same questions over and over. Why don't we just put the answers someplace?
Lennart Quecke: Yeah. Yeah. Well, in this case it was more faq, so it wasn't much about discussion than anymore. It's just picking all the available information from that forum and, and put it into a website, which probably at that time I didn't care about seo, whatever. I didn't even know anything about it. But, uh, yeah, I got quite a lot of hits on that thing.
And, uh,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: How is it hosted?
Lennart Quecke: At that time you call the people, Hey, I want a webspace. And then they set it up and they say, Okay, you have to fill in this form. You have to send it by post. And then you have to send a check with, with the money. And uh, and then they set this thing up and send you an email with the, uh, access. And, uh, that's how, how it started my first website,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: okay, so you built this, this website and, um, and it was popular. You got a lot of hits. Did it go anywhere? Did it,
Lennart Quecke: Um,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: it?
Lennart Quecke: Well, I think what happened. Um, so I, I was running it till I started studying and, uh, when I started studying, I had the great idea because I was earning some money with it. Uh, not crazy much for, it was cool for a student. And, uh, I thought like, ah, damn, I could earn much more money if I create my own, uh, advertising network.
So basically what I did, um, I, you could buy PHP code for advertising networks. So instead of using like Double Click or whatever, I, I, I thought like, wow, I do it myself. I speak French, German, English, some Spanish. Let's set up the international advertising network. I was thinking big at that time. I was like, Yeah, easy going.
I'll do that. . So basically all the money I got in from the advertising before I, I rented service and put the code on, everything started running, but I forgot that you basically need to get clients on board that pay you. And so you can use these ads to display them on your website.
So basic management mistakes.
Um, but yeah, I was out of school and studying, studying, so I wasn't that smart maybe at that time. But yeah, I tried that and, and with that I, I thought like, ah, come on, I, I rebuild the whole. So I don't know why I did it, but at that time, when I was rebuilding the website, I started like, okay, I take the website off and just keep, I had a forum running also.
Uh, it was called Fast Track Help at that time. Uh, maybe that domain still exists, I don't know. And uh, so I had a forum where the people could discuss, but people got to that forum through my website mainly. So was living of the traffic, sort of. And at that time I was like, I rebuild, the website knew from scratch.
And so I took it offline, the website. So the content was gone, but the forum was still there. So the people would just go to the forum, but sort of stupid, I don't know why. And, uh, I never managed to find the time cause studying was doing something else. And I was too much into sports, so I never built the website again.
So there was just a firm, and then at a certain point I couldn't take care of it anymore. And then, I gave it away to some guy from the forum. It's like, Okay, here you have it. I gave him the domain and everything,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: You know, you know, it's,
Lennart Quecke: I gave it away. The whole whole thing. I, yeah.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: That's awesome. I, I gave away, I have, I bought a bunch of early domains, you know, back in the nineties and I gave them away too. I mean, cuz I
Lennart Quecke: but I, I, I think today I would, I, this website got a lot of traffic. I don't know how many hits, I think I had million hits, uh,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Oh my goodness. Yeah. And then that's a huge asset.
Lennart Quecke: There was just with advertising, sometimes that month I had 1,500 euros of clicks of money, you know? So like, so you're like, in the end now today, I don't care about it, but that, so I was thinking, why, why did, Take the content off the website first and just kept the forum.
Because I could like just develop the new website, like Yeah, locally and then push it one day when it was time to do it and just keep it running. And, uh, yeah. And then why did I give it away at a certain time? It's just, I, I probably, I didn't wanna take care of it anymore, so it's just, yeah,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: I am gonna comment that you did. You just gave two examples that are pretty classic software engineer behaviors. One is to build a technology without thinking about how you're gonna sell it. You know, you were talking about your ad network. That's, that's classic thing. It's like, Oh, I, I know how to build this system and you're attracted to building the system and you just kind of skip over the whole, like, you know, it needs customers in order to be important.
There's lots of examples of this. The other one is that software developers, we all have a kind of a built in habit of wanting to rewrite things. To say, Oh, you know what? This works great, but would even be better if I rewrote it from scratch.
Lennart Quecke: Yeah, but I think today you're smart enough to to wait before you kill everything
Zeke Arany-Lucas: You hope so, Right? You hope you learn this
Lennart Quecke: like, but I think at that time I was, yeah, not even around my twenties or beginning, I was, I wasn't really thinking about it. It's just like, and I think also, which came into play because with my, uh, own, uh, advertising network was trying to create, I, I took away my, my, my financial flow into the website because I said like, Okay, I need to advertise my service.
I was advertising my own service, so I didn't have any revenue anymore through the Double Click and whatever advertising networks I was like working with before. So actually, yeah, I, with my idea of creating an advertising network all by myself, Basically nothing. Uh, and just using my own platform to say, Hey, um, I'm selling just advertising for my own platform so I can get way more.
Yeah, that was the beginning of the end. I would, I would say basically the idea was, um, I got like five or 7 cents euro cents per click at that time, and the guy, or I knew that the guy who was selling me or who I was working with or had clicks, they get like 40 cents or 50 cents per click, you know? So I was like, Damn, I lose a lot of money there.
I should. Just do my own advertising network so I could double, triple, quadruple my, my income on that. So basically I think that was a bit the greed in, in myself to say, I want, I need to earn more money. And then once I started and figure out, Wow, building an advertising network is something different. You need people selling this stuff and yeah, something I can't do, uh, while studying.
So I stepped out of it and gave everything away at the end.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: So what were you studying?
Lennart Quecke: Um, yeah, completely something else. I was studying sports management in, uh, in the south of Germany. And, uh, so. Basically doing my studies, I wasn't in contact any, not really with coding. The only thing I did was running the website from the uh, um, yeah, from the university. There was like, uh, I dunno how you call an Fachschaft.
This is a, uh, groupment of, of the students. So, um, you have a few students and then you organized stuff. And so we had our own website, designed some logos for the t-shirts, whatever. So that, that was the only thing I did, uh, which was, has to do something with, was coding or, or web designer or whatever, otherwise was just about, uh, running and swimming and, uh, Doing some try it long.
That's it. So nothing really nerdiness, uh, about myself at that time. I was probably more, now if you take these, um, uh, how you call these, these, uh, these movies, American Pie or whatever, uh, I don't know. You have always these, these sportive guys, so not really smart. And then you have the nerds and, and all that.
So that was my sportive, sportive part of my life. Probably , so
Zeke Arany-Lucas: You know, it's funny cuz I think I was, uh, a closet closet, uh, athletic guy and you were like a closet nerdy guy.
Lennart Quecke: Yeah, probably.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Well, I mean, I, I, I didn't think of myself as being particularly sporty, but it turns out when I look back at my childhood, I was quite athletic. I skated like all the time and was outside a lot of the time.
But because I didn't like doing any kind of sports, like all the sport, but I tried different sports out, but I didn't, especially team sports, I just didn't really click.
Lennart Quecke: Okay.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: people just assume that you're, you know, not, athletic. But it turns out, you know, I started skating when I was five. I just kept on skating and skating and skating and skating.
By the time I was like 16, I mean, I could skate like 20 miles an hour, which is, I don't know,
Lennart Quecke: Crazy.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: which is pretty fast, right? I could outs skate bicycles most of the time, right? , you know, like there, I used to get challenged by people on skateboards. It's like, you know, roller skates are dumb cuz they weren't hip.
At the point where I was on roller skates, they weren't very cool. So skateboarders would challenge me. I'm all like, there's no way you can keep up with me. Um, but I never thought of myself as being kind of athletic. I always just thought of myself as a bookworm.
Lennart Quecke: But, but was it like, maybe also because of the environment I, I, I think there's always in which environment you currently are. So if you surrounded by developers, You probably feel more like being a developer and then you'd probably also spend more time on coding and doing these things
Zeke Arany-Lucas: I, I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't actually around software developers until I joined Microsoft,
Lennart Quecke: Okay?
Zeke Arany-Lucas: I, I was just kind of a bookworm. I just read all the time.
Lennart Quecke: Okay. Oh,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: But, um, yeah, I'm like, you, you know, as a teenager I played video games, um, but I didn't, I didn't learn anything about coding until much later.
Lennart Quecke: okay.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: like 23 or something when I first started trying to learn how to code. Yeah. 23, 19 94, I was trying to teach myself how to, uh, started learn teaching myself c.
Lennart Quecke: Okay, so, so yeah. Well, if you take the age I started before you then
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Yeah. Right. And you kept your hands in it, right? So you were, you, you know, dabbled in it, and then you go off to do sports management, and then you said your first, huh?
[00:30:32] Someone is always the website guy
Lennart Quecke: Yeah. I, I think, um, being able to, to code as a service Yeah. Even if it's just basic or to understand like the basics of it and to be able to use it and if it's only to set up a website is, is just the skill today, which is, extremely helpful, if you have ideas in your life you wanna, uh, put out there.
Because, um, if you have no money and you have an idea and you wanna sell it, and then you have to go to an agency to set up for you a website, and they say, Hey, come, yeah, we can do that. 5,000 euros, or I don't know what you're like, Wow. Um, that won't work.
Um, but if you can do that by yourself, you just take a domain. Whatever it costs you today costs nothing to, to run a website basically. And, uh, so all all companies I've been working after my studies, they sort of. Yeah, were happy to have me around because there was startups or companies who Yeah, just were presenting their services and they didn't have anybody to take care of their website.
So basically every company I was running, I was also taking care of the websites or even with, would be just running as a server and taking care that everything's up to date and whatever. Or adding new stuff because sometimes the website was already set up and, and needed changes. So, um, even though I wasn't like employed as a developer, I ended always sort of running this technical part of the companies.
It's just, yeah, was always part of, of my life.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Oh, that's, that's super interesting. I, I'm curious, how many stacks did you get to do this way? Right. So it's like every company probably had a different, uh, stack for deploying the website. Right.
Lennart Quecke: well, there, there was. Ah, wow. Everything it was like from WordPress, TYPO3, Joomla was on the way, because well most yeah, use CMS systems. I remember one night when we were in, I was living in New Zealand, uh, for a year helping out. A friend told me, Come over Lennart. Um, Uh, it's the best time. I, he was running a export company over there and he said, Come over, um, take six months off work with me and let's try to set up business for equip sport equipment, uh, export.
I said, Okay, great. Let's do it. So I came over there and then same thing. First thing we need to do is like, okay, let's find a name and then just create a website. So there was, again, just doing a website. I think it was very basic one, just a, um, a CMS. I wrote myself, PHP base was text files behind it. So nothing crazy, no WordPress or whatever, but functional.
So, uh, all, all my life, every company I came in, uh, first task was like, have a look at the. Work on it and, and fix it. Probably also because I picked this, this, this, this task for myself. So I came in, I was like, Oh my gosh, uh, look at the website. We need to do something about that. We can't sell our products that way.
So, um, yeah, so probably I'm the website guys, some sort of
Zeke Arany-Lucas: All right. You, you're the website guy. If you, if you were to start a website today, what would you start it on?
Lennart Quecke: Um, I think we little bit had this discussion because, uh, using different types. So definitely probably not TYPO3 because if you have somebody else who needs to work on it and has really has no clue about anything, like just, yeah. It seems still a bit complicated. Well, I have to say I have, last time I worked on TYPO3 was in two
Zeke Arany-Lucas: is TYPO3.
Lennart Quecke: TYPO3
Zeke Arany-Lucas: I don't even know what that is.
Lennart Quecke: Don't kill me.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: did you say TYPO3,
Lennart Quecke: TYPO3. You don't know that it's, it's, it's an open source cms. It's, yeah, it's like WordPress. Like
Zeke Arany-Lucas: huh?
Lennart Quecke: heard of it.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: I, I've, Well, you know what? I've never been the website guy
Lennart Quecke: Yeah, probably. That's, that's,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Yeah, I mean when, when we first started talking about this sort of thing, I remember, you know, like I was fascinated because, you know, I built, you know, web browsers, but I didn't know anything about cms kind of website builder stuff. So you were telling me like about Joomla and I don't, there's a couple of them that you had listed off and you were like, Did you talk about Drupal or something?
[00:35:23] Website guy recommends Joomla for a calm website
Lennart Quecke: Yeah. Drupal also TYPO3. Drupal, Joomla, WordPress. Well, that's the main ones. And uh, Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, because your question, what would I start on if, Well, actually today, setting up a website always would take a CMS system because especially if it's for the customer or anybody he wants to, she should be able to change his content easily.
So, uh, unless you're a mean company and uh, want to control everything, then you come up with your own CMS system that your customer can't handle at all, and then you bill him every hour just to change two or three words in the title or whatever. Uh, maybe it's a good business model, but probably it's not long lasting.
So, um, yeah, most people go on WordPress definitely because. Quite easy to go for. But my preferred one actually is Joomla.
Because, um, I never really run into issues with Joomla. It's probably not that fancy and doesn't have that many plugins or whatever, but if you want to run a website and you don't want to really touch that much, uh, to this website, uh, usually when you do updates and whatever, it doesn't really break.
While WordPress with that many plugins and options you have, it's always a hassle when you update, you might run into issues and it's not working anymore. So, uh, yeah. So my favorites at the moment is definitely Joomla.
TYPO3 and Drupal I haven't touched in a long time. I'm not sure if they really change interface and if it got easier, but I think, yeah, WebPress, interface wise is probably the easiest for the customers to run it.
And then after that you have Joomla, but Joomla is, it's still super accessible, uh, but has quite some benefits, uh, on being, in my eyes, way more stable than WordPress.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Yeah. WordPress is, uh, I mean obviously it's the juggernaut of CMS systems. It's like something like 70% of the content based websites, I think, are on some form of WordPress. And the plugin system is like, I don't know it's own, I mean, it's super intense when I was like, just kind of digging into it.
Actually, after one of our conversations, I went and started, you know, digging into what, what is it like to do WordPress, right? And I was just like, kind of blown away by how deep the ecosystem is. But like you said, all, most of what I heard was kind of these nightmare scenarios of the plugins. There are so many plugins, and every WordPress site has so many plugins that every time there's an upgrade of any of them, they all basically kind of mess around with each other.
So it's this very fragile, um, you know, dependency, um, nightmare it sounded like to me. So I was like, eh, I, I chose Ghost
Lennart Quecke: Okay. You see, And that's one I don't never heard before. So I think there's, there's plenty, plenty of options out there. And I think it's use case also what you're looking for. Uh, coming back to Joomla, my website for my surf canvas based on Joomla and we set the website. I think, uh, I set it up around 2010 way before we opened because we had this idea of this concept we wanna do.
So I set up the website. At that time I was already thinking a bit more into SEO and whatever selling services, it's important. So before we even found the house and everything to run the surf camp, we had the website up for probably nearly two years, something like that. And this website, which is currently online, is still the same design and the same CMS Joomla behind it.
So in, yeah, more than 10 years, it never failed when I hit the update button for security patches or whatever. And it's still modern, uh, in this type. So, uh, yeah, I think that's crazy. If you have a CMS system that you can update for 10, 12 years and it doesn't break, your page design doesn't break anything, that's crazy good.
So if you're not into redesigning everything and you want just keep the same design and just update the content from time to time or add a new blog or whatever, It's, it's amazing. So yeah, that's, that's my experience. And um, if somebody doesn't look for something super fancy, that would be my pick.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: That's a good recommendation. I mean, the reason behind it is a fundamentally a good recommendation, which is updates that you don't control don't break you. That's cause that's the worst, right? It's like they're updates you have to take, but you don't control them and they're unreliable. Uh,
Lennart Quecke: That's a nightmare.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: And I would say, I would actually say that this is the, the, the biggest kind of, I mean, ticking bomb in most people's websites. Modern websites have really deep, complex dependencies. And so many teams, many products are kind of nervous about updating the dependencies because their, their particular combination is usually not tested anywhere except for their website.
Lennart Quecke: I, I think that's also an issue that many companies, they don't update anymore because they do it once they figure out the website breaks, uh, luckily they have a backup, so they put that back in place. Well, sometimes even that doesn't happen. that's the biggest nightmare. And then they're like, Okay, uh, if you update, the website is broken, so let's keep on going on that.
And yeah. And then five months later or a year later, their website has weird ads showing up
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Right.
Lennart Quecke: and they get hacked. Uh, so I think that's it's fundamental to have a system you can rely on, and especially if, if you're earning money with your company. Uh, and you don't have the resources, um, to update your website or having a team behind it to do it in a safe environment to double check and test everything.
Then you need the system you could Yeah. Easily rely on and, and, which is not too, Yeah. Too, um, sophisticated, I would say. Yeah. More simple. Um,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Hmm. So I, you know, like you chose Joomla for your serve website, but then for the sporty jobs when you chose something else.
Lennart Quecke: Yeah. That, that, that's the weird thing actually. Uh, the Sporty Job was, I started with Joomla too, uh, and definitely a work grade for quite a long time. Uh, why did I, Well, I picked journal because of the experience. Definitely I had. And, um, at that time there was also a job board, um, plugin or competent you could use.
So, um, I went, bought that and integrated it. So it was a good base for, for everything we wanted to do with it because I couldn't develop a plugin that size on my own. And that worked out pretty well. And there also was a MultiLing world system. Everything was quite okay, but then that's always when you run into issues.
I think there's also a little bit, we, when we talked about noco, but we can get into that later, um, is at a certain points of developer stop developing it. So, uh, yeah, well it was a plugin for the, for the job board, so, Joomla usually holds, has also like major updates from time to time. But it takes years competitive WordPress to have major updates.
So major changes. And in this case there was a major change. I, I can't remember if it was Joomla two from version two to version three or whatever, but yeah, it wasn't compatible with a new version and the developer stopped it. So I, I, I had nothing to go so I could have keep using the version two with all the security patches.
Patches which exist. And probably, and we also did it for quite a time, so keeping it running, but a certain time, um, yeah, you have to switch because you don't get any security purchase anything. So there I was like, okay, if I, what, what should I do? I wanna run a, a, a website with job advertise a job ads on it, and I need a platform to, to do that.
So, um, Joomla at that point, didn't have any solution for me available to run on. So then I was looking at typo read, then I was dal so I was thinking like, ah, damn, damn, there were some solutions. But then if you look at the overall market for TYPO3 or Drupal for develop developers, uh, the rates for, um, Drupal and TYPO3 developer is way higher than for WordPress developer, for example.
So, on on with that in mind and seeing that there was also a good solution from, from the team behind WordPress for called VP Job Manager. To develop the plugin for running job boards. So I sort like, okay, well these guys behind WordPress, they created this, uh, job board solutions, so well, it could, could be quite okay.
So, uh, yeah, I, uh, I, I don't know how you say it in English and "in den sauren Apfel beißen". Have you ever heard that?
Zeke Arany-Lucas: No, you're Matt.
Lennart Quecke: to have a apple, which is sour or something? Well, I, I had to pick a solution I wasn't really keen on, but yeah, we went to WordPress with a drop manager plugin, and we're still work with that as a base, but definitely we had to do a lot of works around for Yeah, having a multiple languages, et cetera.
And as you said, if you have many plug-ins, it starts to be a castle and you need to know every corner of it, and you need a lot of modifications. So, uh, yeah.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: So the decision itself was, you know, you had to choose something and you chose something because of the ecosystem. And it sounds like in particular, you were thinking you're gonna hire. Uh, some developers to outsource the development cuz you know, you're kind of focused on your other business, which is your surf camp, um, which has a website you don't need to tweak.
But this job board thing, you still need to tweak, but you don't wanna work on it full time. And how did that work out? Did you end up finding good people to.
Lennart Quecke: Um, well, actually, yeah, finding WordPress developers. Is a bit easier. So, um, at, right at the start, I think the first version of the website did everything myself, setting it up and, and doing some customization and everything. So yeah, having a running base and then writing some code to trans transfer all customer data from the Joomla platform to WordPress was also pain in the As, but somehow in the end, I, I, I managed it.
Um, don't know why, how, but it worked
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Data migration is always wonderful.
Lennart Quecke: Uh, yeah, I loved it. And, uh, and then I don't know how that happened, but, um, we, uh, we, we had the chance to, um, employ, uh, with my partner, a developer, a young one who was really keen and he was now a company. I think two years and he was taking care of, of all the development adjustment and everything we needed.
So that was a pretty cool time because uh, I had the chance really to work with somebody who knew his stuff and, uh, learned a lot from him. And he could rely also on me because he knew that I could read code and understand and we could exchange and, uh, yeah, develop, have great exchange of ideas. Uh, but at a certain point he was like, Ah, I just want to do something greater.
So, um, we had, unfortunately we had to let, to let him go. And he went to a company who's doing analyzing of genetics and stuff like that. So he was, he was looking to be more into artificial intelligence and whatever. So I said like, Yeah, I completely get you. I can't offer you that we are just a job board.
It's about forms, it's about data and
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Mm.
[00:48:43] Outsourcing is a test of nerves and patience
Lennart Quecke: no worries. It's all okay. So when he left, I was there again by myself. I was like, Okay, I can handle that. all cool. Uh, but yeah, sometimes you have like projects coming up with partnerships where you wanna like connect. Websites and whatever, and yes, and I had my first experience with outsourcing, uh, development and sometimes was quite funny.
And one, one time I, I tried, I thought like, okay, let's try India. And, uh, India is, um, pretty interesting because usually as a developer himself, you're not in contact because probably he doesn't speak English, I'm not sure. So you always have this salesman around who, who's um, Yeah. Um, with whom you exchanging about the project.
So you tell them what you wanna do and how that should be handled or where the buck is. And, and then they, they try to fix it. Uh, hourly. The rate you pay them is, it's not very expensive that in the end you're like, Okay. It's, it's a, you can try it, but I think you pay with your nerves and your time.
Because most of the time the project manager who's in between you and the developer, he doesn't really understand sometimes the project. And I think there's a language barrier on top because for the Indian guy, it's, it's his, not his, well it's not his language anyway, Uh, or his second language. Uh, even though I think, I don't know, probably I do saying something wrong because I think English is quite popular in India too.
So, but anyway, um, so yeah, you lose your nurse and then you get code, you test, it doesn't work, and you look at the code there, right? You're like, Oh my God, okay, give it another try. So that you have to keep, uh, that that's the only good thing they try and try. Until it works usually, and they won't bill you much more.
So if you set up a project and say, Okay, this is the mountain, and you say, Okay, that we do at that money, it's okay. Usually they keep on going and going and going, but the thing is always if you want something quick, uh, you don't want to keep on going and going and going. You wanna have solve that. So, uh, yeah, if one day you have, you wanna move, outsource your, uh, development to India, uh, or probably also other countries in Asia, be prepared that yeah.
Can be quite tough on yourself, uh, than, and sometimes you probably say, Okay, I better spend the money in Europe. Or, uh, where yeah, quality is a bit different, but sure you pay different price, but things get done quite way, uh, quicker,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: I think, you know, one of the things you, you brought up very early on was like, um, you know, the marketing guys wanting to be able to talk to the developers and how do you translate requirements.
I mean, a common theme. In every organization I've ever worked with is this translation layer. Now you're talking about it again.
It's like, you know, you have, as a business owner, you're like, I would like to see this feature. I wanna build a, you know, I have something I wanna roll out. Um, and you're trying to figure out how do you communicate that to, uh, an outsourcing company and, and this communication pattern, these community education skills, I think are almost always something that you have to discover, what parts you can assume and what parts you can't, and what expectations mean and stuff like that.
I mean, certainly, I mean, this, this has been proven very challenging, even inside big companies that I worked at. You know, you're working with a partner team and you say, Hey, can you fix this for me? And they'll be like, Yeah, totally, no problem. And you're, you think, Oh, it's gonna get fixed now. Six months go by, and you're like, I thought this was gonna get fixed.
And you're like, Oh yeah, it's gonna get fixed. When? It's like, Oh, it's in our backlog. Eventually it'll get fixed, you know? But that's not actually useful to you. You, you have to figure out how to like, No, I wanna find a date like this is gonna be fixed.
Lennart Quecke: Yeah. Yeah. So, so in the end, this is okay, you have your timelines and, uh, Yeah. Pushing around. So I think especially if for pro project manager, it's not always easy to, to yeah. To get all sides together. But I think which is very important is that the one who's running the project understands what, what needs to be done and how, so that he can give guidelines to his develop developers, because I think that's also.
For example, the Indian guy, uh, I told him what to do and what they should do, but he couldn't transfer it and he couldn't translate it and for his developers. So that was the tough part. So I, I think it's always important. That's the one who is running the project. He has the logics and, and the right thinking to, or similar thinking than the developers.
The, the project manager or whatever, he probably doesn't need to know exactly how to, to write the code, but he, he probably needs to know how to structure the code and how it should be built up and how the structure of the database should look like and the logics behind it. And, uh, if that happens, I think yeah, you, you're pretty cool team. You, that should be working out quite, quite nicely.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Mm.
So I wanna, um, Kind of jump forward into how do you spend your time? So what is it that, the balance of your time, like your work time, your professional time, so how much time you spend coding, how much time do you spend doing other stuff and things like that.
[00:54:31] Living in the seasons
Lennart Quecke: Well, I think it depends always on the season. I, I live, I'm living, uh, in seasons. My whole year is around build around seasons. I would say. I have my, my summer season where I mainly work on my surf camp, definitely being on the beach, giving, uh, surf coaching, explaining people how to, to surf, improve their surfing.
Uh, uh, yeah, having good time with my guests, uh, around that time, which is, yeah, probably, yeah, 20 weeks a year. Um, at the beginning when I'm still full of power, I can easily spend even then night still four or five hours in front of my computer and working on my websites. Probably not always coding, but yeah, writing this and uh, writing invoices and stuff like that.
But the longest, the season gets, probably the time is going less and less. So usually it's in the end of the season. I spend one hour a day on, on my pro, my other project. Uh, and I only do the things that need to be done, uh, because yeah, it's, it's energy is a bit missing. Um, you asked me about this interview, uh, and I think already a few weeks ago, or even a month ago, or even last year, I know it's been, it's been in the pipeline quite, quite for quite some time.
And I always said I had no time, no time, time. So since yesterday, you left here yesterday and, uh, so now it's my off season time, so I've much more time. And I, I told you, uh, let's do it immediately,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Get it.
Lennart Quecke: We, we don't, we won't forget that. And in my off season time, it's a bit different. So I have a lot of time and usually last winter, for example, I started developing new, uh, new version of sporty job.
I started last winter or something in December, and then till to April, May before the season started. And I went back into my surf camp, uh, mode. And uh, now I'm going back to it and, uh, hopefully I will launch the new website in the next 2, 3, 4, 5 weeks, or, I don't know, I'm not in a hurry, but.
So, uh, now I have much more time and then can be 10 hours, 12 hours, I'm sitting in front of my zx computer and, uh, uh, looking at code lines and getting new ideas and, uh, let's try that and that and that and, and then starting to optimize everything and break everything again you've rode before, just to make it perfect
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Hmm.
Lennart Quecke: And, uh, yeah, so that's, um, but yeah, in general, um, in my off season time, I always do the things. Yeah. As long as I'm motivated and I, I like to do it, so I have a lot of freedom on that. So I'm, I'm pretty lucky in that I, I'm not forced to code because to make my living, I'm, I'm doing it because I enjoy it. Well, well, if you want call it coding, you said it's coding. I
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Well, we, we, we can, we can, we can kind of jump sideways into problem solving, right? So you're building a product for customers using technology and all of the technical problems are yours to solve. I mean, a lot of, you know, solving, you know, software development these days is about kind of understanding the glue and the pieces well enough that you can reliably build things that people will use, right?
So, I mean, I, I mean maybe, you know, you could say product developer maybe. Maybe it's, uh,
Lennart Quecke: Yeah, maybe. Yeah.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: you're very product oriented, right? Like, you're like, I have a thing that I need customers to be able to use. Right. So,
Lennart Quecke: Yeah. I, I think, yeah, probably it's, I, I, I, on the product development, uh, if I need to code, uh, I'll definitely do it. Uh, we've been talking about games last days and, uh, probably if you say, Okay, let's do a game, and I'm like, Okay, how do we do a game? I would sit down, look it up, and then try to do it.
It's just, yeah, figuring it out. And then if I need to learn something to do it, I'll do it.
But probably that's the difference between different people. Some people will say, Okay, hey, before I start, uh, programming a game or something, I need to learn the programming language. So they sit down for months and learn the language till they say, Okay, now I know this language. And now I start doing the game.
I'm the other guy, I'm just sit there and then like, Okay, how do you make a game? I just start and I don't care about which programming language is this or whatever. I just pick all stuff I can find and okay, wow, there's a library that we can take, that we can take, try to pluck it together and see what happens.
And then once I figure out, Okay, shit, now I need to understand a little bit more of that, then probably I would look a bit more deeper and, and try to, to do these things. So, um,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: I think this is a balancing act. Um, good teams usually have a, a mixture of people like this, right? So kind of people who are willing to just dive right in and break things is really valuable for making sure that teams don't get.
Lennart Quecke: Hmm.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: And then people who are more pensive and, you know, thinking about the long term kind of impact or risk reward kind of stuff, they're good for making sure that you don't end up, you know, shooting yourself in the foot too often.
Right. And then this is, and, but you know, you have to play kind of all, wear all the hats, right? You get to wear all the hats. And I think especially if you're in a case where you know, like the business is kind of immediate, then it's more important that you don't get stuck. Then it is that you build the perfect thing.
Lennart Quecke: Yeah, I think, I've never been around in a company where I said, Okay, I'm, I'm a developer. So like, Okay, here's your task and now write this perfect code or make us, uh, the solution for this WordPress plugin, or write us a WordPress plugin. Uh, I've been always like, Okay, this is my problem and now I'm sitting down and, and trying to solve it either by writing my own plugin or by adjusting stuff or, or whatever.
So, uh, for me it might be quite interesting one day to be in the, even though probably I will never happen because I'm, I'm not the employment guy or the, I'm, I'm more like I dunno how
Zeke Arany-Lucas: I said, it was really hard for me to imagine you in an office. Like I just like, it's like conceptually the guy who's like surfing all the time and all of your stories are about surfing, right? It's like, like even when you're telling me a story about being a kid, you're like, da, da da. And I was out on a boat, you know?
And I'm like, Okay, yeah, that's not an
Lennart Quecke: Yeah, I, I probably for you it's difficult to see that, but yeah, in the wintertime, sort of, I'm sitting in my office, even if it's on the island somewhere in front of my computer, it's still my office. Uh, definitely. But yeah, for me it would be quite interesting. Probably would never happen. But being a team and on a, on a project, uh, I think it would, I would love it.
Uh, definitely, uh, just sitting there as a programmer. Um,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Uh, well the thing, the thing that I noticed that most developers, where they really blossom is when they find their first good team fit. Like that's where they are transformed from being, you know, kind of, I'll just say developer kind of wishful to being full developer. Cuz like engineering is really a, is is a team sport.
I, I think at the end of the day there are super developers who don't work in teams, but I actually think that either they're missing an experience or the, um, yeah, they're missing an experience by only developing on their own. I think you're, you're right that you would see kind of a different dimensionality to your own growth
Lennart Quecke: Well, when I had my employee, uh, I was always super proud and he didn't have that much time to do work on certain things. I say, Okay, I take care of that and then I fix it myself and I send him the code and I Can you have a look over it if you're happy with it? He said, Oh, yeah, cool. So, I don't know, maybe he lied to me because I was his boss.
Uh, you never know. But I was pretty proud. Like, wow. I did all myself and my employee could do something else. So, um, yeah.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Is it all
[01:03:20] Know what you love and pursue it
Lennart Quecke: Definitely part of my life. Coding. I had always fun doing websites and stuff like that. So it is, uh, but probably I, and also most other people, I, I think you need a certain balance. If you just do it every day, like for years, I can completely understand that.
You get like tired of it and you wanna do something else. Well, I, well me, my case, it definitely is, definitely is the case. But, um, if you can mix it up and you have, yeah, you do a project two months, uh, in developing and then you have a bit of time off or do other things, uh, yeah, it gives a bit more to life.
I would say
Zeke Arany-Lucas: That's, I think that's, uh, I mean in the developer community, they're often talking about work life balance, but you actually kind of put your, you know, like the in real life balance at a priority, right? Like you kind of have this other view of your life and that this is like a side project
Lennart Quecke: I, I, I, I think it's hard for many people to, to put their own life, uh, first sort of, because especially as an employee, you probably can't, uh, most of the times. Uh, but if, if she has a chance, uh, to be your own boss and to, yeah, start your own business, definitely doesn't mean that you probably have way more time, especially not at the beginning because you have to, to create your business and everything else.
But in the end, it gives you freedom also. It's like, Okay, um, tomorrow I don't wanna work. Well, you might be able not to work on that day. And, uh, and yeah, going different directions, so, For myself, my business partner, they're way older than I am, but, and they're working also. They have also several projects.
I dunno, I'm surrounded with people with who run several projects in their lives. Sometimes stupid because, uh, you take away time of your freedom to do surfing or whatever, or going cycling or enjoying, uh, an often in the park. But in the end, what they, all my partners have, we have in common sort of, uh, we do the things because we love them.
It's not like I do it because I need to, well, at certain point you need to earn some money. Definitely. It's, it's out of question. But, uh,
Everything I touch is something else, what I like to do. So, uh, even though, for example, developing and being a surf coach is completely two different worlds. Um, For me, it's perfect because I love the one thing and I love the other thing.
And, uh, like that I can balance between the two because if you do always the same thing, you may might forget that you loved it at a certain point and you, you just see it as, Okay, I need to do it to make my living. And, uh, uh, yeah. So I think people should look for something they love to do and uh, do it as long as they love it.
And the day they wake up and figure out, Wow, uh, I don't like it anymore.
Maybe you go for looking for something new that can enrich their lives. And, uh, yeah, and sometimes difficult decisions because you, you have to give up your, or your, uh, security in your life because of salary or company you're in, uh, to give it all up. It's, it's not a easy task. It's, uh, it's difficult.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Well, I, I want to just tell you that, um, in the five, you know, these five years that I've known you, I've found you inspirational. For just exactly that message that, you know, to know what you love and pursue it. Um, I know that personally I, I've been, you know, successful and I've definitely done things that are important that I love, but it, I don't think that I prioritized that in the way that you had, like, consciously deliberately said, Hey, this is the kind of life that I wanna live and it looks like this and I make that happen.
And, and I've been, you know, gradually, I, I mean, I'm still in this process actually, you know, learning from you and that's why I appreciate you taking time with me today and sharing, you know, more about what's going on. Cuz it's because it's not about, it's not about the score or the title or exactly the money.
Like, kind of like I've, you know, reached this appreciation that like, I don't need a different title. Right now, even though some part of me is worried that I do need a new title, Right. And, and I, and the fact that you're like, you're like, I'm a surf coach, but you're really, you're an entrepreneur that, you know, pursues your, your passions and makes sure that you're, you know, still taking care of yourself.
That's, that's an amazing place to be.
Lennart Quecke: Yeah, In the hand. On the other hand, sometimes, like also for people I, I work with, well, the, with the surf cam, it's not too weird because, well, if the guests come around and they want to hear my story, uh, certainly I'm not hiding it from them. That I also have a company and, and, and the IT or web, uh, with a website.
So most people are like, wow, you can do that on your side. On the side. And wow. How do you manage with your. Uh, so yeah, that, that's cool.
On the other side, if I have, with my discussions with my business partners, uh, on Sport Job, um, uh, we work together with Ispo Munich, uh, for example. Uh, and, um, yeah, for them sometimes it, it's weird to see like, well, our partner, he's not full time involved in this business.
We partnering up. He's, he's just doing it when he wants to do it, sort of. So, uh, it's sort like, yeah, depending with whom you're talking, uh, probably wouldn't tell them the full story of your rest of your life, what you're doing. Also beside that, uh, because some, sometimes they wouldn't understand because it doesn't fit in their, in their views.
So, uh, if tomorrow I get like, a request for developing a website maybe was my, my company. And, uh, probably it's not the first thing that I tell them, Oh, by the way, I, I have also surf camp , probably they will run away. It's like, no, he can't be the right guy to make our, our, our, our solution or set up our service or whatever.
So, uh, yeah, it depends from which size, uh, you approach it. But for me, I manage to, to keep both in my life. And I, I'm pretty happy to have both, both things. And uh, also in the future, if one day we won't do any surf coaching maybe anymore, I probably still be some doing some development. Some, yeah, some stuff.
Why I start building tables or renovating homes, I don't know. Everything. There's many things you can do and, uh, which are super fun out there. It's like, yep.
[01:10:51] Use bedtime thoughts as a heuristic
Zeke Arany-Lucas: So, um, I wanna kind of wind it up here cuz we're, you know, over an hour in, but I wanna know. Uh, is there something that you can kind of share with other people that, like guidance that you repeat to yourself to keep you on track? Like what is it that you kind of are like, Oh, this is, this is the thing that helped me?
Cuz obviously you've been doing it for a while.
Lennart Quecke: Yeah, what, what keeps me on track? What, where do I get my motivation for the different project to keep going and not to throw them away? Like my, my, my website when I was 20.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: Yeah, a little bit. But also to keep that balance that you're talking about. You know, like how do you remind yourself that, that, that this is what you're, you're doing what you love and stuff like that.
Lennart Quecke: I, I don't know. I don't need to remind. I, I, I would say, I don't know, uh, probably there are many people writing books about it, like, how to find your inner self or whatever.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: You could write a book about it. You could write a book.
Lennart Quecke: I don't think I'm out. I'm here in, in like saying people, you have to do that and that to get to a certain point in your life or change your life, I think it has, you need an inner motivation to, to do changes.
I don't know what they could be, but for me, where, where, where do I know that I, what I wake up and if I'm like, No, no, not when I wake up the evening when I go to bed, for example, and I start thinking about how could I solve that? Then I know I'm, I'm still in there and I. You know, you, you still involved in your, in what you do.
If you go to bed and you like thinking like, Oh shit, tomorrow I have to do that, Uh, then probably that's the, the day where you say, Okay, if that happens every night, like, oh shit again, oh shit again, then you probably think should think about something new. But for me, I, I know it, it's like I open my computer and I'm like, Wow.
Yeah. Now I, I finally have time. I don't need to answer any business emails. I can open visual code in. Yeah, let's go for it. And then I have my list and then like, Okay, what do I do today? It's like, ah, okay, I wanna fix the registration form. I wanna add some employer data. Uh, I want to get on the people register on my website or whatever.
So yeah, so I, I'm like, Oh, go for it. Or I wake up and then like, if it's not six in the morning to give surf lessons, you know, you know, I'm, I hate getting up early, but like midday and sunny day, I'm like, Yeah, let's go to the beach. Let's go surfing. Um, have these smiley smiling faces in front of me. And yeah,
Zeke Arany-Lucas: but I actually like that as a heuristic. That's, that's a really good heuristic. If you're going to bed and you're thinking about something in a positive way. then, you know, you're kind of on the right track with that thing. And if, like, you want to be thinking about it, but if you're dreading it, then you're, you're kinda like, I'd be like taxes.
Like you, they're thinking like, I have to do taxes tomorrow. You're, Oh fuck man, taxes, fucking hate doing taxes. But you know, like, Oh, I'm gonna work on that, uh, that Swift UI project tomorrow. Oh, pretty excited about that. I'm gonna go research about, uh, you know, you know, DSLs and stuff like that.
Lennart Quecke: Yeah. This is sometime I go to bed. I'm so excited. I'm, I'm nearly ready to jump out of it again to write code because, um, I couldn't sleep. Then sometimes it's like, ah, that, that, that, and then finally you go grab your phone and you'd look up some stuff and say, Ah, damnit, this is a good idea. Now I've, maybe I've found a solution to my problem, and you're super excited.
Like you look on your watch and say, Oh, it's already two o'clock in the morning. I can't get up an hour and start coding because tomorrow at eight o'clock I have to be at breakfast with my, with my first students. And, uh, so, but yeah, when you still feel that excitement for what you do, I don't know, then, then you're on the right track.
I don't, there's no question on it. Uh, but yeah, there's so many ways to approach life and whatever. So I think for everybody's different. And, uh, but yeah, you saw my, my way of going. I love sports. I love coding or developing or solving problems that's saved like that because I'm not a great coder probably. I, I managed to keep everything in my life with interest and, uh, some, I earn money from some others I don't earn much money from. But yeah, it's, it's all nice. And I would say 80% of the time, You will never reach a hundred percent of fun. Definitely not. It's then something's weird, I would say. So there's always some tough situation and sometimes you have to start with 30% fun to get to 50 and then to 80.
It's not always the easy way, but uh, once you at 80 you are like, Okay, let's keep it like that for a few years. Maybe if you can
Zeke Arany-Lucas: All right, well, uh, thank you so much for sharing all this stuff, Lennart.
Lennart Quecke: I hope it turns out not too bad.
Zeke Arany-Lucas: oh no, I, I'm, I'm looking forward to it. I think it's gonna be, uh, super interesting.
Um, okay. Uh, yeah, I guess, let me, I'm gonna stop it here.
Lennart Quecke: Okay. Try to.
