Brothers reunited past, present, and future with David Hoang

Nineteen80 is a management consultancy and creative agency focused on transitions. As a Xennial, I was born in an analog world, and came of age in a digital world. As the world transitions from command and control to distributed teams, analog to digital, concentrated power and wealth to distributed knowledge of the crowd, Nineteen80 seeks to bring the best of both worlds together to create something better.

My brother is also a Xennial, and we talk about what it was like growing up in a world where technology didn't always work.

Bio About The Guest

David Hoang is a design leader with a passion for creative, product, and technology. Previously he led Product Design and Research at One Medical, a health tech company focused on changing primary care. David co-founded Xhatch Interactive, a digital product company, and was Director of Design at Black Pixel.

Episode Summary

In this episode, David and I spoke about...

• Growing up together as Xennials
• A career that meets the intersectionality of art, creativity, design, and technology
• David’s career and having a part in no code innovation at Webflow
• How David approaches strategic planning and design 

Resources

Webflow - https://www.webflow.com

Connect With David Hoang
Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/davidhoang
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhoang2
Website - https://www.davidhoang.com
Newsletter - https://davidhoang.substack.com

Connect With Daniel Hoang
My website - http://www.danielhoang.com
My company - http://www.nineteen80.co
Follow me on Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/danielhoang
Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/danielhoang
Join The Nineteen80 Membership - https://www.nineteen80.io/signup

Date recorded August 13th, 2020
Music from https://artlist.io/
This podcast was edited by Naya Moss and Namos Studio
Support the show - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danielhoang

Transcript

Daniel Hoang: [00:00:00] So episode three is really important to me because my guest is my very own brother. Now it's really weird to be doing a podcast with your brother in a professional environment, because I'm remember seeing him in his diapers. I held him when he was a little baby and we fought, we wrestled, we played. And it's really interesting to be able to then now talk to him, you know, this is a pretty huge guest for anyone else.

For me, I was talking to him like a brother. We were reminiscing about the past and our history together, but also just remembering. Yeah, this guy is leading design at Webflow. Really awesome. I got the episode. Let me know what you think and let's get to it.

Hey, welcome to the Nineteen80 podcast in this podcast. I am now meeting and talking with my very own brother. He and I are actually  people that were born in 1977, between 97 and 83 77 and 83. And Hey David, welcome to the show. 

David Hoang: [00:01:11] Hey, thanks for having me. 

Daniel Hoang: [00:01:12] It's really excited to kind of weird that I am up inviting my brother, but you and I had a very different childhood and we kind of grew up in different paths, but we're actually kind of very similar at this point in our life, in, in what we're doing.

So let's go a little bit nostalgic. Tell me a little bit about your childhood growing up and let's talk nostalgia because I, in one of my previous episodes, we talked about a world before the internet and I think, do you remember what life was like before the internet? 

David Hoang: [00:01:39] I definitely remember. It was like before the internet, I think before I start, I think one thing that really surprised me was for a while, I thought it was a millennial.

So I didn't realize I was in this Zinio bucket because, you know, I was 83 as you know, very last day of the year, new year's Eve. I think one thing that really, 

Daniel Hoang: [00:02:01] Oh, go ahead. You're probably the oldest millennial. If you were to classify the millennial, you're the first million and you know, and, and it's questionable.

Right? So even this Zinio thing is a whole bunch of BS. It's kind of made up kind of custom generations, but the reality is like it's it's mindset, right? It's it's is it a, are you an old school mindset or are you a very forward facing mindset? And I think what's unique with Zen yells and potentially you where I see it as, as you're both.

Cause the stuff I see you, you sketch a lot on paper. You do do a lot of analog things as opposed to a hundred percent digital. And I think that's where it's unique. And that's why I asked you, like, if you remember the world before the internet. 

David Hoang: [00:02:36] Yeah. And I think that's, what's interesting about like the people born my year.

Right. That's kind of unique. Cause it's kind of in that conversion point of, you know, old school and new school and. I think, remember growing up, you know, my childhood is like, I hung out with you, right. I hung out with your friends, like people who are older than me. So a lot of my upbringing was it was biased towards older people and kind of that older mental model.

And I think that's what I kind of bring into that millennial generation. Right. Is that because I'm this like, Prototype millennial. I carry a lot of these attributes from the, like the old air before. So to, to kind of touch on what you asked is like, yeah, I definitely remember, you know, pre-web growing up, everything was analog.

We spent most of our time outside. Yeah. 

Daniel Hoang: [00:03:32] And, and I remember we, we were, we were not rich and we were not completely in poverty, but we were on the lower end, I think. But we were cutting edge when it came to computers, because I think we had an uncle that was really into computers. He was computer science.

And our dad was really into Ford facing and got us, you know, really expense. I remember getting the gateway computer, it had the locale box and that computer was, we price it out. We scoped it out. It was like $3,500 and this was in the eighties. And so that's probably the equivalent of getting a $10,000 computer today.

So super, super expensive. It had an old, maybe like two megabytes of Ram or something ridiculously small. Ad floppy drives superstar 

David Hoang: [00:04:14] a hundred, a hundred megabytes of memory. 

Daniel Hoang: [00:04:16] Right. Which is like that. Yeah. 

David Hoang: [00:04:17] Yeah, which is one Jaz drive. If you test drive, sir, 

Daniel Hoang: [00:04:23] special gift between David and myself. If anyone can respond to this and let us know that, you know what a jazz drive is, we're going to find a gift and get it to you.

I remembered going to the internet service provider. So back then they called ISP internet service providers. Teleport. Do you remember telework? 

David Hoang: [00:04:40] I remember teleport. 

Daniel Hoang: [00:04:41] Yeah. I actually still remember our password and I won't share it over the air, but I still use that password on some accounts and password on some accounts, because I just has a lot of nostalgia, Tim for me now, I remember very clearly seeing email for the first time.

And I can't remember if you were there with me when dad took us there. 

David Hoang: [00:05:03] I don't remember it, but I have a elementary school story to tell you that I don't know if I ever told you, but I'll hold that thought. 

Daniel Hoang: [00:05:10] I thought in an email, I remember that you were probably there, you were probably too young, but I remember being there and just barely grasping what the idea was all about.

And this guy was giving a demonstration and he sent an email to someone in Berkeley. And, uh, first of all, like, which is like, whereas email, it just like, this is for the first time we had no idea what this is all about. He sent the message and then a few minutes later, a message came back and that was my Oh, shit moment.

I think there hasn't been such a revolutionary jump in such a long time that you went, we went from. Nothing. Right. We went from just physical mail fax at best to a digital world that was kind of the first step into a digital world where we sent a message and it came back pretty instantaneously. And I think that was incredible.

So I want to hear about your Amman elementary story. Yeah. So my 

David Hoang: [00:05:55] mine isn't as exciting as your, your Oh shit moment. Cause I think for me that came later and I'll, I'll tell you what it was and I think you'll remember it. So in, I think I was in second grade. We had show and tell for those who don't remember show and tell it's when, like you can go up and present something that you know, that you really liked the best show and tell pro ones are when someone brought their pet in.

You know, and I, I think we've brought our rabbit in at one point, like in school, I don't know if you did or I did, but I remember one of my classmates, he brought a printed piece of paper and it was an email he got back from president, bill Clinton. Oh, my 

Daniel Hoang: [00:06:36] gosh. And 

David Hoang: [00:06:37] I was so confused because I was just like, what do you mean?

You got mail over the computer. And that was kind of my recollection, but the thing I wanted to kind of talk about was that the aha moment for me, it probably came later and you probably remember this is you remember ICQ. 

Daniel Hoang: [00:06:56] Yes. 

David Hoang: [00:06:58] That was the aha moment for me where, whereas was like, you could communicate with people directly.

And like, I remember. Going way back. Yeah. I won't go into details, but as playing quake, you know, the first person shooter, there was the team fortress mud, and I w it was games by we were using that too chat and he sent me his ICQ ID, and then I downloaded it and it was someone I was friends with and ended up like becoming friends for a long time, because like this whole notion of.

A friend you met from the internet. It was completely bizarre, but 

Daniel Hoang: [00:07:38] you didn't know him? I didn't 

David Hoang: [00:07:40] know. He was the medic from team fortress. That's how I knew him. 

Daniel Hoang: [00:07:43] And how, how was the chat? How did the chat work? 

David Hoang: [00:07:47] In games, why it was just like in console chat, but then like, I think there was a private chat, or maybe it was public.

He said, here's my ICQ. So I downloaded it. Then all of our friends from school had ICQ. 

Daniel Hoang: [00:07:59] And so for my listeners, I see Q or I seek you or, and the acronym is ICQ is. Was one of the first chat applications out there and paper, people had kind an, an ID, and that was your way to kind of connect with other people.

If you had this ID, then they can connect with you. And, and there was the first form of instant messenger in the sense that you can just send, you can chat back and forth via text. Do you remember the sound? 

David Hoang: [00:08:23] It was like that. 

Daniel Hoang: [00:08:24] Oh, Oh yes, yes. Oh yeah. And, and so I guess the whole reason we're being nostalgic about this in general is because I think.

Back then nothing works, right? Like just today. Like I think my or my, my, we were talking and playing around with your nephew and my son, you know, for him, like everything is voice-driven. He talks to Google. He pokes on a screen back then, like you really had to troubleshoot things. You had a guy tink around and hack everything to make it work.

And so one of the mindsets that you and I grew up in was just troubleshooting. Hacking things, remixing things, making something work when it just the way for it to work, it didn't exist yet. So we were always creating and you hit, you had to, whereas today I think there's a proliferation of content. So Oliver's grown up in a world where there's millions of apps and websites and just stuff's already been created.

There's just so much already. But back then, I think the reason you got an email back from, or your classmate got an email back from bill Clinton is. He probably only received like 50 emails, right. Like not in the military mouth. And so he actually was able to respond, which is ridiculous. 

David Hoang: [00:09:28] The other thing too, I would say is like, I think for our generation technology and the internet, it was like, it felt like a limited commodity.

Right. Whereas now there's so much infinite. Like it almost feels like infinite storage, right? Like my iCloud is one terabyte. Yep, which is I don't, I can't do the math on how many Jaz drives set is, but that's like, unheard of. Right. So I think for us, like you said, like dialing into our internet service provider, I think our first modem was a 14, four modem, and things just felt like there was a limit limit of what you can use it.

Right. So it was almost like a source of field that ran out pretty quick. So I think what happened with us and, you know, maybe it's bias kind of looking back. Like, you know, like 20 years ago, but I think it was like you made the most of the time you had with that bandwidth, as opposed to it being seen as something that's infinite now.

Daniel Hoang: [00:10:26] So, so I have to Google this because I think technically like the first model we got was a 2,400 baud modem, 14, four. I'm trying to look up what this actually is. I think that's probably 14 kilobytes per second, or even less or something. And so we're talking about kilobytes today. We measure everything in gigabytes and terabytes.

And so this is an incredibly small amount of data. Um, I remember you and I downloading doom and it would take days, right? Like we had to leave the phone line hooked up for days in order to get it to download you're right. I mean, there was so much limitation back then. And as we transition this conversation into what the future looks like, the future is different because the limitations of the past where you and I grew up, those limitations don't exist today, right?

Like at home in Seattle today, I have gigabit internet. So basically the speed is more than I could ever use storage. I had this little flashlight I was sitting at my desk right now is a terabyte in it's the size of a credit card. And. And, you know, just those constraints just don't exist in this feature world.

So David, like for our listeners, what's your professional background? What do you do 

David Hoang: [00:11:33] before I jump into it? I had to do the math. So it's terabytes 10,000 gesture drives or zip this I can't remember. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I just had, 

Daniel Hoang: [00:11:45] so 

David Hoang: [00:11:46] yeah, what I do right now, I. Get two lead designers. I'm working in a company called web flow.

I've been there for about 10 months. And prior to that, I was at a health tech startup called one medical. A lot of my career has been through serendipitous moments, but I think, you know, the thing that has always been consistent in everything I do is like, Taking creative and applying it into a way that impacts a business.

So I think that's something that I didn't know resonated, but it was like really important is just like, how do you, how do you make a business impact and do it in a creative way? 

Daniel Hoang: [00:12:29] And so you, you were, you were an art major in college, and so you kind of, you took a more, much more creative path than I did.

And I went straight down the very boring business route. I did public policy and I went to business consulting for the majority of my career. And it wasn't until many years into my career that I had discovered creative. And so I, now I'd say I'm more business first and then creative second. And I think you kind of took this creative route and then you kind of gained a lot of business acumen over the years, right?

David Hoang: [00:12:55] Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's interesting. You mentioned that. Cause I feel like, I don't know if it was mom and dad's just wanting to keep us out of trouble, but remember we would go to TaeKwonDo to then art class and just kind of stayed busy. And I think, you know, we both had upbringings that were around creative and I think, you know, we kind of basically.

So the, you know, like the opposite end of the spectrum in our careers. So for me, I didn't know what I wanted to do after graduating high school. I just took a lot of art classes and knew I wanted to do that. So that's why I studied art and it wasn't until I graduated that I realized that, Oh, there's actually like this practical side.

To art in design and kind of stumbled upon that. And then over the years and years of experience then explored like business and focused in that world. So yeah, it was kind of taking. A skill I had in creative and then like almost finding a need for it in the business. 

Daniel Hoang: [00:14:01] So, so the whole premise of Nineteen80 is around just as both an model.

Right? So like Nineteen80s, Zen, you and I analog digital, right? It's the combination of both so creative and business. And I think you can't, there's, there's people, of course, there's people that specialize in one thing I'm very good at this one creative space. And that's my one thing. But in my opinion, I think.

It's the word, those intersections lie is where innovation happens, where change truly moves intersection of business and creative intersection of technology and creative. You know, like you pick two things and you find that intersection point and ideally the more intersections you find is where you start finding innovations and you really start moving the needle in how the world changes.

And I think I really take a business creative and, and now I'm adding technology. Cause I just, I guess I've always had a passion for technology. And I think at the intersection of all these things, It's just where some really cool stuff hap is happening. And so let's talk about some innovation, cause I mean, you're doing some cool stuff.

I'm doing some cool stuff I'd like to hear kind of what you're working on. 

David Hoang: [00:15:02] Yeah. I think there's a lot of things I'm doing. The thing that comes to mind is, you know, for those who aren't familiar with web flow, it's a product that really empowers people who don't know. How to code, like, as in the traditional sense as writing front end code and being able to ship things, to have it in a more visual way.

So I think there's a lot of innovation that we've really tried to explore in terms of. Yeah. How do you bring more access to a certain capability that people ordinarily would not have access to? Right. So people who didn't get the privilege to go to school, like steady CS, how do you equip them with the same stuff 

Daniel Hoang: [00:15:49] that 

David Hoang: [00:15:51] you know, those people have?

And I think that's right. Probably the biggest innovation that I get to work on. So interestingly enough, I think, you know, for us, I really believe that like our customers are the greatest innovators. So like a lot of what I do is really just, you know, from a product perspective, build out these capabilities for people who are the biggest innovators and really kind of dream big and have these ideas and just see what they do with them.

I think, you know, and I think a lot of that is a community building. So I think with innovation, you need community to go with 

Daniel Hoang: [00:16:31] it too. Cause then both of my Nineteen80 sites, uh, since he joined Nile, supported them over time with Webflow, they were previously built in WordPress. But before that, I think you and I grew up in a world where we actually wrote HTML in notepad.

You open up no patent and Dakota did, you're near your HTML. And I call it coding, but it's really just a bunch of tags back then. It's gotten much more complex with CSS and other or the other JavaScript and other front end coding. But fundamentally it's HTML. It's a markup language. Thank you. And I grew up using Dreamweaver Macromedia.

Did we ever not Adobe Dreamweaver or it might be, there'll be product. I'm not sure if it's still around, but what flow reminds me of that, it's just like, you can move things around without ever writing code underlying. All of it is a, it's a bunch of code, right? You guys are just generating or exploiting that code in the backend, but in the front end, the user never actually has to interact with it.

And, and so I find incredibly powerful tool, a mineral mock up and prototype and produce something really quick. But behind the scenes, it's really, really clean, functioning, fast functioning code. And someone actually told me, my site was like, how did you get your site to be so fast? And I guess just out of curiosity, do you have any that kind of back in knowledge on why everything is rendering so fast with Webflow versus another platform?

David Hoang: [00:17:46] I can't speak for other platforms, but I can think like what I see with web flow, like getting the work with it every day is that like people who've created web flow, you know, the cofounders. And now, then that really team, I think what they really cared about was clean code, you know, flat. Our CEO is a, Oh, he's a designer too.

But I think by trait, he's an engineer. So he really cared a lot about. Code standards and really thinking about how to create things the right way. And I think that's what a lot of people are getting. A lot of value from web flow is, you know, with other tools, it's kind of, it's not really clean code and it's stuff that may not be scalable.

But I think, you know, as we kind of think about. How codes created because you know, what we want to do is give people the best production code possible without them having to create it 

Daniel Hoang: [00:18:36] themselves 

David Hoang: [00:18:38] is to make sure that we're, you know, about that by modern standards. So that's probably why it feels. So high performance and slick, you know, like compared to other platforms, it's actually like, you know, it was creating a lot of junk and for us it's really like, you know, how do we keep it simple?

So I think that's, that's the thing that really stands 

Daniel Hoang: [00:18:58] out. So I were at a port this back at him, the days when I was working in Dreamweaver, a lot of us or Microsoft word, I remember word in at the time, had some SAR plugin where you could just basically type a word document together and it. And it takes the formatting exports in HTML, but the problem was it exported such crappy junk that came with Microsoft word.

And so your site was just completely crap. And I would, you know what I appreciate with Webflow so far as it seems like, and I poked around a little bit in the backend is the code comes out incredibly clean and it's something that we don't always see, like the majority, especially if you're doing no code you're visual designing, you never actually poke into the backend.

But it is from a technology perspective. When you are working with clean code, you're able to produce a site that loads a lot faster. It's slicker. You can maintain it. There's, you know, there's just so many reasons why you want to kind of go to this high end route, as opposed to just doing kind of junky tools are that are out there.

And there's plenty of them out there, but I definitely appreciate that side of it. So David, you do, you're a UX designer. You teach UX classes. What's your process. I mean, for our listeners here, I think, and for context, I'm going to be interviewing Mike Rody, who did the sketch note, I'm interviewing Sonny Brown, who's doing doodling.

I want to understand your process. And part of this season, two that I'm doing with this podcast is understanding in how do we start equipping ourselves with the tools. To create change and get to this future world. And, um, help me clarify what your, what your process looks like. 

David Hoang: [00:20:29] Yeah. I try to keep process as lean as possible, just as much as you need and you can kind of tweak as you go along.

So I'm not very, not very dogmatic about process. I think it's important to have and it's you gotta figure out what works. So my process is really simple. I like to use the analogy of a magic move and keynote. So for the audience who doesn't know what a magic move is, is basically you set the start point and the end point, and what keynote does is create kind of the animation to kind of fill it in, in between.

And I think that's really how you should look at a process or a strategy, really look at the current state of things like where you're at, where some of the problems and gaps. And then where do you want to be? And it's, it's as simple as just kind of going from point a to point B and you're going to have to iterate on the way, but I think too, like there's a sense of analysis paralysis 

Daniel Hoang: [00:21:29] too, 

David Hoang: [00:21:30] because I can't remember who said it, but I think it kind of goes like the, the purpose of the strategy is to enable you to act and that's really all it is.

Right. And I think you're going to continue to refine and refine. And I think sometimes we try to get strategy. Just perfect. When, as the moment you make a move or make an, or you're going to have to revisit it. So that's kind of how I approach process no matter, you know, whether it's strategic planning for the quarter, or just kind of planning out my day, just really looking at where am I now?

Where do I want to be? And then what are the steps that it takes them between that I know that sounds ridiculously simple, but that's kind of the intention of it. 

Daniel Hoang: [00:22:09] That's the basic formula for everything. And so let's talk about the point B and ironically, I did work for a company called point B, but it's on the point B side of it.

Do you, how do you, how much time do you spend envisioning what the future looks like? Like how, how much fidelity is there in that, that kind of finding out what that final thing should be versus how much of it's just exploration to get to that point? 

David Hoang: [00:22:32] I think you need a, to be able to point your direction where you need to go.

Right. And I think that the reason the future state's important is if you don't have that North star, as people like to call it, you then like, could encounter thrash and not know where you're going. Right. So that's the thing is you have to be very intentional about where you go, but the thing is like in every frequent basis, In every iteration you should really think about how do you adjust that?

And that's the way that keeps a strategy or any sort of process dynamic. If you don't do that. And you just simply commit to kind of that point a to point Z without any adjustments, then you could be going way off in the wrong trajectory because the market need might change. The requirements might change.

So I think that's where, you know, we use this at one medical a lot where it's called active daily management. It's just. Monitoring things and just seeing what things you need to tweak and adjust a lot of strategy and doing it well is observing and tweaking. Right? They're not necessarily. Like drastic changes.

Like if I'm not, not a cool expert, but I'll just use this as an analogy. Like, you know, if you're navigating a ship, you don't take these jarring turns. Right. You slowly kind of course. Correct. As you're moving. And that's really what a star like your process should, should feel like. 

Daniel Hoang: [00:23:58] Got it. I, um, I liken it to on the business world.

Like I do a lot of projects back then in a waterfall form, right? Like we, we do a lot of planning, planning, planning, design, and build and test. And in today everything's built in agile, right? Liquid it's iterative in nature. But I think even if it's iterative, iterative nature, what I like about what you're talking about is you always kind of have a master plan in your mind and you and I love watching movies.

We love watching comics. Uh, I want to talk about the Avengers, right. And I think what is amazing and, and I, I preached us with communications is each should always have a master plan, right? The master narrative, the master arc, and what the Avengers like, like they had. An overall arc on how the story is going to fold out over how many movies actually created like 20 some, some crazy amount of movies.

But all the little steps in between, they didn't have actually, they didn't have all the funding, right? It's not like the winter unfunded, all 20 movies. They raise funds for each one, but the architect behind the scenes, like had an idea and what this narrative was going to look like and how these pieces fit together.

And as they were releasing one movie at a time, like there were connection points, some going back, several movies, I'm going back forward into the future little hidden Easter eggs here and there. But I think what's amazing is to the audience, like all this should just magically happen. It's just magic.

But the reality is there's a lot of engineering, a lot of thought that goes into kind of designing and architecting this arc. And I am a complete believer that if you don't really have that master arch plan in mind, then you're going to produce justice league. Right? Like it's just going to be a mishmash of stuff as opposed to something that just cohesively flows together.

Well, 

David Hoang: [00:25:43] I think, I think that's the thing, right? The Marvel studios was the ultimate startup because I think when did Ironman come 2008? 

Daniel Hoang: [00:25:50] Oh my gosh. Yes, 

David Hoang: [00:25:52] there was not this grand like MCU, like it was a one off movie. This was before the Disney acquisition. They added that Nick fury scene at the end spoilers like you should, I should not.

You should have seen it by now. You know, it's been like 12 years, but like they were experimenting, right? They were scrappy about things. You look at the first Ironman movie is completely different from the themes that they continue to develop. And it was through experimentation and development that they were able to create.

This framework to then develop the roadmap. And they constantly adjusted the roadmap because when they had the opportunity, was it captain America, civil war win. They got the rights to Spiderman. Right? Did they? They didn't, they, they made adjustments. Right. They didn't stay the course. And what they're looking to do, they're like, let's figure out how to incorporate Spiderman's to this, because this is now like a new capability or like a new offering that.

They had that they didn't even know existed. So I think that's like a great way of approaching roadmapping. Right? So you plan and continue to replan, but you need to have that, that clear arc and that clear like intention. And then you kind of adjust based on like how things play 

Daniel Hoang: [00:27:10] and then so in the world we're living today, COVID is a good example, right?

No one planned that a global pandemic was going to hit in 2020. And so we were on a certain path. We all had our arc in place. We had all goals and strategic plans in place. And all of a sudden in this little tiny invisible virus kind of throws complete wrench and uplift lifts the entire world around and yet.

So there are, you know, there are many people out there that are floundering right now and. And, and people are struggling, but there's also just a lot of innovation happening right now. And I think what I love is I think Webflow is part of that. And a lot of other platforms out there enabling creators like you and myself, to be able to create things.

I like the fact that I can create a podcast. And do it virtually remotely and publish it and, and, and get it up on the internet, um, is just a miracle. It gets incredibly, incredibly awesome, but it wasn't part of my initial plan. And I think as, as these opportunities, Kane lacrosse, there was an opportunity to get a jump across.

And then use this platform to build something for me to build this business. That wasn't part of my plans to do a podcast initially. But now that I have this equipment and I'm sitting at home, it's a chance to kind of jump on it. And so I encourage all of our listeners to, don't be limited by what tool sets, you know, in the past, but be able to get up there, jump and grab whatever new stuff that's going to be coming and all the new stuff that we don't even know that's yet to come.

David Hoang: [00:28:36] Yeah, I think. That's some, I've been talking a lot to people and, and, you know, I've been spending a lot of time, like advising people and mentoring people and, you know, and being mentored myself. And I think the thing that I think we have to recognize is things are never going to be the same. And I think there's a sense of people who hoping things will.

Go back to normal or go back to the way it was and you know, to be candid, it's like, that's, that's not how life works. Right? Life is always, it's always on play. You can't really pause. And that doesn't mean you have to like grind it out or it can't take a pause in your life. It's important to do that, but I think what's important to recognize is.

Even if things do go back to what we perceived normal, it's a brand new timeline. Right. And it's just continuing forward. And I think that's the important thing. I think, you know, in addition to resilience, I think adaptability is the important thing right now. So I I'm trying to have that mindset. Well, I want things to kind of go back to what I'm used to.

I don't know when that's going to happen, but I mean, it's fine ways to create innovate. Build community and do that. And it's not easy. Right. But it is something. Yeah. I think in order, I think for you, it's similar to me where having that sort of. Creative output. And that impact is, is crucial for us in our day to day.

So we're trying to find, we're trying to bootstrap that new way of doing things. 

Daniel Hoang: [00:30:21] And that, that is part of this transition message I'm sharing with everyone is, you know, like the, the, the old normal to the way things used to be like, it doesn't exist because. Innovation things are always changing rapidly and faster and faster, more than ever before when you and I were younger and growing up, um, the pace of change was slow.

And so now that we're in this new world, like this change is happening so quickly. And so if you kind of hold on and I think back then you can specialize in one tool set and be good for forever. But today, like it, like, for example, even Weblo like, even if I were to dedicate a hundred percent of my entire career and everything into mastering, this one tool.

Another, one's going to pop out. Something's gonna change or some game changers going to pop out there. And so you are going to be stuck there and you're going to be just at a loss. Like if you put all your eggs into one basket, so in this whole new world, the message is, I love what you said is adaptability, like just constantly being adapting.

And I, I love using this hashtag, but it's like hashtag learn to learn. Right? Learn how, learn new stuff all the time. Well, David, Hey, I think we go ahead. 

David Hoang: [00:31:28] Oh, I was going to say, yeah. And I think that's the thing that's super important is that like, you know, as we, especially working in tech where everything's so dynamic is you got to focus on.

Figuring out how to learn the next thing. So I love that learning learn mentality because that's what I tell anyone kind of gained a tech is the only thing I can tell you is the technology and the tools you use is going to change. And what you want to do is focus on problem solving. How do you collaborate with people, right?

Those are the things that are going to make you successful in tech is like, how do you work together with people to solve a problem? It just happens to be technology tools that are kind of like the means to the end.

Daniel Hoang: [00:32:13] Very very wide wise words of wisdom from my brother here. David, thank you for joining me on my podcast today.

I'm really excited to have you join and kind of share some of your thoughts. I'd love reminiscing by some of the past, for those that want to discover you a little bit more, how can they find you best 

David Hoang: [00:32:30] on my website, David hong.com or on Twitter as just my full name, David Hahn. 

Daniel Hoang: [00:32:36] Awesome. And definitely engaged there.

You will have a big following in Twitter and let's make it even bigger. 

David Hoang: [00:32:42] All right. Thank you so much. Good catching up. 

Daniel Hoang: [00:32:45] All right. I hope you enjoyed that. I had fun just talking to my brother. One fun fact, if you didn't know, I encouraged my brother to get a Roadmaster pro just like I did. And just before we recorded this episode, we did a little technical task.

We set up the mics, make sure we had good quality audio and I hope the quality came through. I hope I'm increasing the production value on both of our sides. That makes it different. And really, I just enjoy catching up my own brother. We don't get a chance to stay in touch as much. Life is always busy.

He's always traveling. And in fact, at one point in my life, I remember the only way I actually saw him was when I went to France to visit the country. Like we ended up meeting. Yup. And it was like, Oh my gosh, I have to travel halfway around the world to actually see you. Cause otherwise when we're local and we're close by, we just never get a chance to see each other.

And so I was really excited to see him. And have you enjoyed this episode, please? Definitely subscribe in what our application you have shared with a friend. Give me a review in like, and it definitely helps a lot. I appreciate you.