Five Steps to Building a Personal Brand for Elevating Your Influence

Fredrikson: My name is Pablo. I'm going to be talking about building a personal brand. Everyone has a personal brand. You already have a personal brand. Even though maybe you don't have an online presence and people say, "I don't have social media. I don't use LinkedIn, or I don't use Twitter", or something like that. That is a personal brand. Or maybe you have like a generic online presence, like a basic LinkedIn profile, a basic Twitter account, or a basic GitHub account, that's also your personal brand. Or maybe your internal personal brand inside the company, is also really important, the way that you talk, the way that you present yourself with your teammates, it's also your personal brand.

This is an example. I have a YouTube channel. I have this character or this persona online called peladonerd, which means bold and nerd, easy to remember. This is the way I use Slack on my community Slack. This is just my handle, a picture of a cartoon based on Rick and Morty. This is the way I type on that Slack community. This is my work Slack profile. As you can see, it's a different one. It has my real name, a real picture. The way I type is also different. I have different personas or different brands depending on my audience.

First, when you want to build your personal brand, you have to know what's your goal? What's the idea of your brand? What do you want to do? Maybe you are transitioning roles. Maybe you want to build credibility in a new field. Maybe you are moving from management to technical side. Or maybe you are passionate about music and you want to start a band, or something like that. Or maybe you are someone that is still learning how to develop, or maybe how to program, and it's going to be a new field that you're going to be entering. Or maybe you want to be a go-to expert in your field, inside your company, so you want to position yourself as a higher person and a better one. Or maybe you want to just progress in your career. You want to get noticed within your company or even your industry. This is actually really important, in my opinion.

I've seen this many times inside and outside my company, seniors that are too quiet and they don't progress. They are really good technical people. They are perfectly capable, but because they are too quiet or they don't show off what they are doing, they don't get noticed, and sometimes they don't get those promotions, because people don't know what they're doing. They know that they are technical experts, maybe, but they are not showing up and not showing their impact inside the company. Getting noticed is really important.

It's really important as well to learn how to own problems. I remember a few years ago in my previous company, there was a TLS certificate that was going to expire. I remember talking with my manager at the time, and they were asking me, can you fix this problem? I said, let me check with the IT department, because I need to buy a new certificate. That day, the IT department wasn't available. The person wasn't available on the phone, so we couldn't reach him, and we couldn't buy the certificate because we didn't have a card. My manager was also a new person, they didn't have a company card. I didn't because I was just an engineer. I don't know why engineers don't have company cards, but we don't usually. I remember having this problem. I said, we need to buy this certificate. It's only 100 bucks, but we don't have the card. How do we solve this problem? It's going to expire today, and our site is going down.

My boss was freaking out, "We have to solve this problem. This is something that needs to be fixed". There was a lot of chaos at that moment. A lot of other things were breaking. I remember saying something like, "Don't worry. I'll figure it out. Go and check with your other teammates. Go solve other problems. I don't know what managers do. Just go and have meetings, and just have a lot of meetings. I'll solve this problem". If I think about it right now, it's obvious, I just paid the certificate with my card. I just bought the certificate, used my personal card. Solved the problem. Changed the certificate, all good. A few days later, the IT department came back, I said, "I had to buy a certificate with my card. You weren't available". They say, of course, no worries. We are going to refund you.

A few months later, we were having an offsite. That company was InVision, rest in peace. That company was 1000 people, all of them were remote. Every year or every two years, we had an offsite, and we went to the offsite in Phoenix. I remember passing by the CEO of the company, never had a meeting with him, never talked to him before. He saw me and said, "You're Pablo, right?" Yes, I am Pablo. "I heard about your certificate thing. Thank you for that. That was awesome". I said, "What? You know about that?" "Yes, I heard of it. Thank you very much. That was a great way to solve the problem". I took a picture with him to have this proof. I'm going to tell this story someday, I said. I remember thinking about that and saying that was crazy. I just bought a certificate. I got noticed by the CEO of the company.

Then a few months later, they were talking in CEO meetings, whatever, all-hands, and they were saying like, yes, I know that if there is a problem and you have to check that dashboard, you go to Datadog and grab the dashboard that is made by Pablo, because he created a dashboard, and that is great. Thank you, Paulo. I said, what? This is my best friend now, the CEO of the company. Doing something like that, definitely, I got noticed by him, and it definitely helped. From then I got a promotion. I got messages from him saying, "Great work on this one. Maybe we can talk someday to do something else".

Going back to, why do you want to build your brand? Maybe you just want to help others, making your company or industry a better place. This is important, because all the things that we do as staff or principal engineers, I believe is to make your company better and more valuable. You're directly raising the value of the company by doing your job. I have conversations with friends, and they are not in the field, and they ask me, what do you do every day? I say, "I have meetings like managers, and I talk with people". Why? I say, "I try to fix problems". Which problems? "I just bought a certificate the other day. That was awesome". I said, yes, but why?

The thing is that all of those small things, like helping others and making sure that the problems are fixed is adding value to the company. The engineers inside the company are going to be better, and that raises the value of the company. Also, if you are helping others as well outside your company, you are also making the industry a better place.

You need to decide, what do you want to be known for? What's your defining expertise or passion? If the goal is a tech leadership role, maybe you can be a mentor, or you can try to help others by sharing your technology expertise. It is important to find out, what is important for the company. What does the company need that you can help with? What things that you can do that are unique for you are skills that want to be synonymous with your name? If people think about, let's solve a problem. What is the dashboard I'm going to use? I'm going to use Pablo's dashboard, because he knows about this stuff. Just try to get that. Just try to be top of mind for people.

When I was making these slides, I realized that actually these two steps might be interchangeable. You don't need to first define your goal and then decide what you want to be known for. You can do it the other way around. Also, you can be changing all the time. Maybe after some time, you realize that your goal might change. That way, you can also change what you want to be known for. These are interchangeable, in my opinion.

My name is Pablo. I am a principal SRE at Harness. I have 18 years of experience. I'm also a CNCF ambassador. CNCF is the Cloud Native Computing Foundation that basically created and helped develop and support projects like Kubernetes, Prometheus, and all of those great open-source tools. Because of this online persona and my personal brand, I also got invited to be an ambassador for the CNCF. I also have a YouTube channel where I make videos about these kind of technologies, Docker, Kubernetes, and all that, and also try to share what I do every day at work and what I think is the best way to help people, and make them better engineers and better people as well.

You need to definitely know your audience. Who is going to be watching or learning from you? When I started, my YouTube channel was named Pablo Fredrikson, which is my name. Then I changed it to Pelado Nerd. This is funny, because I remember making the first videos and chatting with people. They said, your channel sounds interesting. What's the name of the channel so I can check it out? I said, Pablo Fredrikson. They said, what? How do you spell? Because in Spanish, Fredrikson is not an easy thing to spell or type. People were like, you have to spell that for me. It sucked a little bit. I realized, that's a problem. That's a barrier. People cannot find my channel because they don't know how to type my name. I said, let's find an easier way for people to find me. I said, Pelado, which means bold, and Nerd. It's easy to remember. It's easy to find.

The funny thing is that I was at KubeCon, talking with a Docker person, and I was mentioning my channel. I said, I make channels about Docker. Actually, my Docker video has like a million views, maybe we can work together. They said, that sounds like a good idea. How do I find your channel? Yes, Pelado Nerd. They say, what? How do I type that? You have to spell it out for me. It was funny because the audience definitely makes a difference. I had to change it depending on who is going to be watching my videos. My videos are all in Spanish, so that's why it's my name in Spanish.

Who do you want to influence with your brand? Maybe you want to influence your internal audience, which is your company, your industry. You have to say yes to visible projects. You have to build relationships across departments as well. I remember having an offsite a few years ago. We were talking about how to bring more customers to Split, our company. I was chatting with the marketing department, and they had a Twitter account, a LinkedIn account. I said something like, "I do have a YouTube channel where I make videos. I think I know a little bit about social media. Maybe we can work together. We can help each other".

I had some suggestions of things that we can do in the Twitter account, maybe we can write some tutorials, make some videos, things like that. That was great, because, again, going back to what I do, is, I just try to make the company better, just try to make engineering or just getting customers. The goal of the company at that moment was to get more customers. How can I help to bring more customers? Installing nginx is not going to bring more customers, so I just need to help the company bring more customers. I have some experience with that, so maybe I can help a little bit.

It is really important as well, if you want to build those relationships and you want to be visible, is to join leadership or planning discussions, because you need to know what the company needs. This is something really normal. Usually, engineers don't know what's going on in the company. Engineers just install nginx, because they got that ticket that says, install nginx, so just go and do it. They don't know why. Or maybe they know, but they don't know the actual goal of the company. At that moment, the goal of the company was to get more customers. Why is installing nginx going to help the company get more customers? Maybe it's not. Maybe it is. If you have that information, do you know why you are doing it? Maybe you can change it a little bit.

This is just an example, but maybe instead of nginx, Apache will bring more customers because we can have a partnership with some company, or something like that. Maybe instead of nginx, we can do Apache or web server. It is important to know what is the company needing at the moment. For external audience, let's say that you want to build your personal brand outside the company, maybe for the industry. You are aiming for a broader industry presence. Think about skills that you already know that you can help other people with. Maybe you can write tech blogs, or make videos, speak at meetups or conferences, or maybe just contribute to open-source projects. Just helping people helps. Helping people makes everyone better, and makes the world a better place.

You need to build a presence that reflects you, but also need to be careful. These are a few considerations to have in mind, in my experience. First of all, it's really hard to separate your job and your online persona. When I was being hired, that was a good thing, of course, but it might be a bad thing as well. Because people say, I don't like this YouTube video. The video is about things that I don't like, so we are not going to hire him. In my case, it was a good idea. It's really hard to separate your job. People in your company will find you online. Be careful with that: things that you share, things that you do online. Be careful with maybe things that you post or tweet, people will find it.

Also, try to align your public brand versus your internal brand. If your public brand is about making videos about Docker and Kubernetes, obviously it will be nice to have the same persona inside the company, you are the guy from Docker and Kubernetes. If they don't align, maybe it's time for a change. Maybe it's time for a change either in your online persona or public persona versus the internal one. Maybe you need to get a new job, or maybe you need to change your online persona or the public one. Obviously, talk with your manager and director about your online persona, make sure they're ok with it. Have it in writing. This is important as well, because they can say, yes, that's cool.

Then maybe you get an email from the HR department, or maybe the lawyer of the company saying that it's not cool. You don't have any proof about saying, I got a conversation two years ago with my manager who doesn't work here anymore, and he said it was ok. That's another great idea. You have to have it in writing. If you're looking for a new job, also talk about this during the interviews. Again, make sure that they are ok with it. Have it in writing. This is not bragging, or maybe it is a little bit, but you can use it to your advantage.

For example, if you're having an interview, just say something like, "I built these servers. I built this program inside my company. I also made a video about it in YouTube, if you want to check it out". They will say something like, you have a YouTube channel? "Yes, I made YouTube videos about this". People can like that. Maybe they don't, but because people will find it, it's better to have that conversation beforehand. Also make sure they're ok with it.

What's your passion? What are you going to be sharing? I know that most people have a friend that cannot stop talking about dinosaurs, or cannot stop talking about a topic. You go out, have a meal with them, they say, "This dinosaur is amazing. It has six legs". You need to find the thing that you're passionate about, and you cannot stop talking about it, because every time you go have a meeting with them, they can't stop talking about it. That is something that they want to share. That is something that you can share as well. I remember watching a video, this one is called, "Brown; color is weird". It has 4.7 million views. I was watching this video, fascinated about it. This guy made a 21-minute video about the color brown. It's great. You should check it out.

When I was watching this video, being fascinated about it, I was thinking, this guy really likes the color brown, or really likes being nerd about it, about colors, about things. Before that, 10 or 15 years ago, it was impossible for this guy to have an audience, in my opinion. Who is going to be interested about the color brown? Maybe some people are, I am, and maybe you are, but it's really hard to find the audience. That's what YouTube makes, or the internet makes in general, finds the audience for your niche, for the things that you're passionate about. This guy made a video about the color brown, and it has 4.7 million people actually watching this video. I don't think that that was possible 20 years ago.

Also, be ready to pivot. Because maybe your audience will change, maybe the time changes, maybe your dinosaurs change. Maybe you don't like dinosaurs anymore, you like cars, or you like running. Things like that. I actually started running a couple of years ago. If you saw me two years ago, this guy cannot run. I cannot run that well today. Now I have another YouTube channel where I make videos about running. It's a small one, but yes, try to share what I do. I like doing it. It's free to upload in YouTube. Uploading a video before wasn't possible. It was really hard or really expensive to upload a video and share it with someone. Now you can just put it on YouTube. It's free. Be ready to pivot. Maybe your interests are going to change. Maybe your audience will change. You can change your content as well.

First, you want to define your goal. Then you want to decide what you want to be known for. You can change this and maybe change your goal and change the second one. Understand and engage with your audience. Be careful what you choose or share. Find and share your dinosaurs. You are probably already learning about dinosaurs in your free time, or the passion that you have. I remember having a conversation with someone, and they asked me, how do you find the time to do everything? Because I have a full-time job, and also have two kids. I have my YouTube channel. I try to run and do other things. How do you find the time to do all of that? The secret is not a secret, it's just I am already investigating and learning about the things that I want to make videos about every day at my job.

The other day, I was investigating about a technology called APISIX, which is an Apache API gateway. I had to investigate a little bit, install it on a few servers, and then I had to write a documentation, share it with all the engineering platform team. When I was investigating and writing a documentation, I thought about the video that I was going to make about it. Actually, the documentation that I wrote was actually the script for the video. I just was thinking about how to share this technology with my internal company, with my internal teammates, and also, at the same time, how to share this with the public company or the public audience. I wrote the documentation. It was like a video.

If you read that documentation, it said something like, this is called APISIX. It's an API gateway. What is an API gateway? It's this and that. What can you do about it? You can do something like this. You're still not surprised? Maybe you can do something like this. Not surprised yet? You can do something like this. It was a YouTube video, but I wrote it as a documentation. I sent it over. My teammates liked it. You can use the time that you already are getting paid for, which is your job, to investigate about that. Or maybe if your passion is not something that you have in your job, again dinosaurs. You are already investigating that in your free time. Maybe over the weekend, you read about them. You are doing the research that you need in order to share that. Just be a good person. I think that's my step number six.

If you are a good person, you will help others. If you are a good person, you will care about others, and care about the company, what the company needs, and what the industry needs, and what your teammates need, and what your friends need. If you are a good person, everyone will benefit.

You can start today, actually. Maybe you can write a blog post. Maybe you can share something that you investigated during your work hours and share it online. Again, check with your manager, check with your director, have it in writing. For sure, they will say something like, yes, of course, it's fine. I have a ton of examples of things that we did during our work hours and our director said, write a blog post about it and share it with others, publicly. Of course, they will have to check it out to make sure that no sensitive information is shared, but you can do it. I'm sure they will say yes. Also, ask a colleague from another department, if they need help with a project that you are interested in.

For example, let's say that you are interested in marketing. Maybe you have a tech background, but you are interested in social media, so just chat with the marketing department. Say, how can I help? Or maybe you're passionate about cars. I remember having an interview as well with a guy who I was interviewing. We were talking about documentation. He told me that he loves writing documentation. I don't know how we got to that point, but he loved writing documentation. I said, really? Why? He said, I love writing documentation. Can you show me an example or something like that? He said, yes, can I send you over later? Yes. After I finished the interview, he sent me the documentation. I didn't ask for any details. I didn't say, send me a documentation of how to install whatever. No, I just said, send me whatever.

He sent me a documentation, and said something like, "This is what I did. I created a server. I set it up with Docker Compose. I created a Wikipedia page, hosted it myself. I changed the DNS by doing this and that. Also, I created a domain, pointed it over, and this is the documentation I wrote". He not only wrote the documentation, he also told me how he did it, and also obviously sharing his knowledge about Docker and all of that. The documentation was about how to change the filter of an air conditioning in a Mustang 98, or something like that. I was like, that's fascinating, because he didn't make a documentation on how to install Docker.

He made documentation about what he's passionate about, and it was his car. The documentation was amazing. He had pictures and everything, all the steps. I don't know anything about cars, but sounds legit. Seems like a good tutorial on how to change that. I hired him because of that. Sharing something like that, your passion, will definitely make the world a better place. You can get a job, or you can get good things about it.

Talk to your boss about your passions. Maybe they can give you ideas of things that you can do. You say something like, I like cars. We have a new car department, or maybe we have a new customer, it's a car company. Maybe you can be there and you can just talk to them about cars, whatever. Help someone today. Just go send an email saying something like, do you need help with that? I can give you a hand. I remember a year ago, an application was dying all the time, and it was getting out of memory. Because of Kubernetes, in Kubernetes you can set like a check, and if the pod fails that check, it will kill it and restart it.

Actually, the problem wasn't too bad, because it was fixing itself all the time. The memory was going up, Kubernetes was killing it. All was good. At the same time, it's not a good idea to have a service going down all the time. You are using resources. You're paying for it. It's obviously better to fix it. I remember having this service going down all the time and saying to the team, fix your service. It's going down all the time. They said, "Sure, I'll fix it". Days go by, the service is still dying. Fix it. "Sure, I'll fix it". Few days go over, still the service is going down. I remember saying, let's change this. Instead of asking them to fix the problem, let's try to help them to fix the problem. Maybe they don't know how to do it. I'm not a developer. I don't know anything about languages. How do I fix this problem?

Obviously, I don't have the answer, but maybe I can help them. I just went over to their channel and said, seems like the service died again. Do you want to maybe hop into a Zoom call and we can talk about it and see what happens. Sure. We just went into a call, went to Pablo's dashboard, and checked that, yes, seems like the memory was going up during these times. Seems like it was a specific timeframe. We did some search together. We tried to figure out what was the problem. I gave them information on how to find the problem, and they figured it out an hour later, because they already had the information, but they didn't know how to find it. I just helped them.

The problem was fixed the day after. By helping them, I benefited myself. My team was happier. I didn't get paged anymore. Yes, just helping them, easy. I remember after that, the team was actually using that dashboard all the time because they learned about it. They didn't know about it earlier, and they now know about it. You can check my site, peladonerd.com.

Participant 1: It's interesting to me that all your videos are in Spanish. How does interacting with two different languages, is it a different community? How has that been in general in your YouTube career?

Fredrikson: I don't interact that much in English, at least on my YouTube channel. I do have some videos in English because I make interviews with all people, like Kelsey Hightower, for example. I also have a few interviews with people from Google. I also have an interview with our Docker guys, and those are in English and have subtitles. The way that I interact with them is just, I have subtitles for the English videos. I try to focus on the Spanish speaking people. I definitely can make English videos, obviously takes more time. There are a few tools that you can use to actually adapt, like dub your voice, and now with AI and all of that it's easier.

It takes time, of course, and I don't see that benefit, because I will have to basically dub all of my 400 videos. Currently it's not possible to add an extra audio track to an already published video. I know this is too nerdy for YouTube. If you upload a video on YouTube, you can add different tracks, but you cannot modify an already published video. The only thing that you can do with an old video is add subtitles. I know that English speaking people don't like subtitles that much, so I have a problem there. Maybe someday YouTube will allow you to add a track to a published video. In that case, I might do that.

Participant 2: Sometimes people feel they are very busy, and they assign some of the branding aspect to someone. What's your advice in your career? Maybe advice that you can share, if it is possible or it's advisable, which part of the aspects can you delegate? I know some people, the content writing, they give to some people to write, and then they just review. Then you put it on your handle, because people are busy. What's your take on the balance between trying to create everything by yourself and trying to get people to help you, even if eventually you pay them?

Fredrikson: At first, probably you will be doing everything yourself. It's going to be hard, it's going to be long, and your videos are going to suck at first, for sure. After some time, you will get used to it, and you will find things that you can delegate. It's really hard because it's like your baby. You don't want to give parts of your baby to someone else. Maybe you can get help from someone you trust. I remember watching a conversation with Mr. Beast, which is one really popular YouTuber. He said something like, it is really stupid for you to be spending eight hours on an edit for a video, plus four hours of recording, two hours investigating whatever, and all of that, because you don't need to be doing all of those things yourself.

Also, if you can only dedicate eight hours to an edit, that means that it's limited. The amount of time that you can add to it is limited. If you hire someone else to do the edit, they can maybe invest 24 hours to do the edit, because you don't have that much time. You can delegate, and that will make the video better. I actually did that. I have my brother. He was looking for a job, and he didn't know how to edit. I said, you will learn how to edit, and you will edit my videos. I will pay you for it. It's a person I trust, so I know I can talk with him. Now my videos are better because he edits my videos. He can spend more time on them than the time I was able to spend.

Definitely, at first, you will be doing everything yourself. There are a lot of things that someone else can do. Actually, the only thing that you need to do if you are making a video about yourself is just being in front of the camera, because you cannot hire someone, unless you have a twin brother or something. You have to be there in front of the camera. Everything else can be delegated. You can do something like that.

Participant 3: What goals did you start off with? How did those goals evolve over time?

Fredrikson: At first, I actually made a YouTube channel about vlogging. I watch YouTube all the time. I was following a vlogger called Casey Neistat. It was like really great videos about just going for a run, or having an ice cream. It was fascinating for me. I said, I'm going to do the same thing, just go for a run, get an ice cream, make a video about it, be a millionaire. Didn't work because people didn't know me, and obviously my videos weren't that great either. I said, now that I know that my videos suck if I just go out for an ice cream, maybe I need to get people to know me or like me before they want to see my having an ice cream video. How do I make people find me? I'm going to make a video about Docker, because people will say, "Docker: From Newbie to Pro", whatever it's called. That's actually the name of my video.

People will search for that, find me, hopefully like me. That way they will start seeing my other videos, like passion videos, which are the vlog ones. After some time, I realized that I suck doing those videos, so I just kept doing the Docker ones, because I already had some experience giving talks and all of that. I liked helping people. I liked teaching people about technologies. My YouTube channel changed a little bit to that. Actually, it was a new YouTube channel.

I also have the other channel that I made, about running, which is a mix between the two. Because it's more vloggy. I'm going for a run. I went to the Lombard Street, the other way, the thing that you have to go up. That's really hard. I got an alert in my watch, like, "Too hard, you're doing it today. Your heart rate is really high". It's in the middle, because I make videos about running, and also try to teach a little bit about running.

Obviously, I don't know anything about running. I try to teach the things that I'm learning every day, because I'm a nerd. I like learning. I learn every day. I learn about nutrition. I learn about how to run. I learn about shoes. I learn about all of that. Maybe just share what I'm learning every day. Maybe help some people. I actually got comments on my videos saying something like, "Now that I see that you lost some weight and you are running. I'm also a nerd, I don't run. I prefer computers and games. Now I tried, and I went for a run. It was 10 minutes. Felt bad, but felt great after that. Thank you". Trying to help people by showing what you're doing is always better for everyone. Just be a good person.

Participant 4: How long have you had the YouTube channel? What's the cadence of how frequently you do a new video? What keeps you motivated to keep producing content on the regular, and not getting burned out?

Fredrikson: Five years for this YouTube channel. The previous one was two or three years before. How often do I make videos? At first, I had a lot of time, because my kid was a baby, so he was sleeping all the time, and he didn't require me to be running around. I made three videos a week, sometimes. Because I also had a lot of content. Because I wanted to talk about Docker, so let's talk about Docker, containers, then talk about CPU, memory, then talk about whatever. It was easy for me, because there was a lot of things to talk about.

Then, Kubernetes, let's talk about services, pods, then deployments, then the stateful set. I had a lot of content. Then my kid grew a little older. Now it requires more time. I also got a new kid now, so I don't have time. I try to make one video a week, but I don't record them one a week, because obviously that takes a lot of time. What I do is I try to investigate, batch process all of them. When my kid goes out for soccer practice, and my wife takes my baby with them, that means I have one hour and a half to record videos. I batch, investigate three or four videos. Why I record them when they are not around, because of the screen, the sound, and all of that. I try to record a few, three or four videos in batch, and just send them to my brother. I have a calendar in Notion with a Kanban column like, edit, produce a thumbnail, whatever, and just have the date, so they just move over. He can check on the Kanban and say, what is the schedule, and all of that.

What I do for not getting burnout? It's hard, because it's like a startup. It's like your second job, and if you don't work, you don't get money. For a startup, it's like you have your own company, and you take vacations. It's really expensive. Because you have to pay for the vacations and also pay for the time that you weren't working. It's hard, and you have to find a balance. Try to get breaks. I don't post videos in January, so I take a month every year. The bad thing about it is that I have to record them in December, and have them ready during February. All of that. It's not that easy. Find new technologies all the time.

Again, because I'm already investigating all the time during my work hours, I have topics and ideas. I have ideas from all the talks that we've seen in this amazing conference. I was at KubeCon, got a few ideas as well. I met with people, or just checked the comments of people, what they are looking for. The topics will never end. You have a lot of things to talk about.

Participant 5: I was wondering about the quality and keeping quality of the brand. You said your first video sucked. I believe you. All of our first videos would suck. Do you go back and delete them afterwards, or do you keep them and say, I was really crap back then, but now it's much better?

Fredrikson: In my case, I try not to delete them unless there is something that is wrong, like I say something that is not correct. No, I don't try to delete them. You can go to my channel and see my first video right there. It sucked. It's a normal evolution. We all evolve over time. I'm sure that you all maybe think about yourself, that you're in your best looks maybe. You look at a picture of you five years ago, saying, what was I thinking with that hair or with those clothes? It's normal. You're evolving. Everyone is evolving all the time and learning new things. You are a better engineer now than before, five years ago. Everything hopefully gets better over time. It's a normal evolution. Your videos will suck at the beginning. You will get better about it. You will be more efficient.

At first, I set up my videos every time, like all the cameras and the lighting. I had to turn down everything. Now I have everything in one place. The camera is always fixed. The lighting is always fixed. All the lights are fixed. I just press a button, say something to Alexa, and turn on all my lights, just press record, and every video looks the same. It doesn't take me time to start recording. I removed that variable. Also, the lighting, the sound, everything is in a perfect place. I don't lose time by adjusting things. Everything is perfect or almost perfect. That allows me as well to improve a little by little every video, because, last week I saw that the lighting wasn't great here, so I'm going to adjust it a little bit. Now it's better. Let's go and try to find small things to improve as well. Every time there is small improvements and the videos are getting better, hopefully.

Participant 2: Also, there is this fear. I don't know how you deal with it. I've written many times. When I write, I'm about to push, then I think that, "There must be something better, there must be a better version of this document out there. Don't bother. Just keep it". That slows you down, because you have this feeling. I don't know how you manage that as well.

Fredrikson: It's hard. The quote I always think about when I'm thinking about that is, done is better than perfect. Just put a date on it, finish it, and just think about the same one.

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