110: Start Anything You Believe Deeply with @CauseHacker Jim Carter iii | CEO & Founder | AI Specialist

Yeah, I was getting paid well and it was different and challenging as part of the startup scene, but I really lost that passion for what I was doing.

Welcome to the Happy Engineer Podcast, the place where we help engineers to build your career, balance your life and be happy. My name is Zach White, a former engineer, now turned CEO, lifestyle engineering coach, and your host. I believe that success without fulfillment is failure. Join me each week as we bring you an inspiring leader or message to help you enjoy both. Thanks for investing time with me today.

Now let's do this.

Quit your job and start something that.

You really care about. Hey, start anything that you care deeply about.

Wait, really?

Really?

Is purpose driven work for a cause a social impact or a purpose greater than yourself? Is it really that important? Is that what makes you happy or what actually drives satisfaction and fulfillment in your career and life? Well, in this conversation we tackle that hot topic of purpose driven work versus a job that only pays the bills. And I do that with my good friend Jim Carter. If you have ever questioned your career path and wondered if the mission and the meaning behind your company is truly aligned with your own values and should you make a change, then don't miss this conversation. Jim is a programmer turned passionate founder. He's a public speaker, a Fortune 15 consultant and AI strategist and he's got experience of growing multiple seven figure businesses in tech, in content, in branding and marketing. He specializes in advising these brands and experts around social impact organizations, how to maximize growth using content and technology. And Jim's passion for purpose has him known as the cause hacker instead of.

The traditional growth hacker you might have.

Heard of before focusing on AI, his tech expertise, everything he knows about business scaling and growth. Jim now mentors these entrepreneurs who want to scale up. Through his Fast Foundations mastermind, he's been an empowering entrepreneurs to harness the power of artificial intelligence in their daily lives and businesses. People who don't have the tech background.

You might have in deploying that towards massive value.

Jim is a proud girl dad.

He's a lover of coffee, a dad joke aficionado, and he's gonna help us in in challenging and unblocking the biggest challenges that we face through simple and actionable advice. I believe you're gonna love this conversation and love the heart that Jim brings to it.

Really quick. Before we get to the interview, I wanted to answer a question that's been.

Coming up through emails and online around.

Our lifestyle engineering blueprint. People have asked, hey, I wanna apply but Zach, I'm not sure if the blueprint program am I ready for it. Is it the right thing for me? I definitely want help in my career.

But it's hard to tell if I'm.

A f. Well, I just want you to know that's what we're going to assess with you right at the beginning.

When you book that 15 minute call.

That's why we start with something short, so that we can make sure we're a fit for you and you're a fit for us. So don't hesitate to book that call. That way we don't waste too much time. And if it's a fit, then my team will get you in for a free session where we'll go a lot deeper. So if you're interested in support, don't let wondering if you're a fit or not, or is it the right time or not be a barrier. Let's have that quick conversation so we can support you. Just text the word lifestyle to 55444 if that's something you want to do. Or grab the link in the show notes if you're outside the United States and grab that 15 minutes and we'll then assess how can we help you.

Get to that next level in your career moving forward.

All right, without further ado, let's get.

Started with my buddy, Jim Carter. Jim, what's up, man? Welcome to the Happy Engineer podcast.

Thanks for having me, man.

This is fun. So, after the last eight weeks of spending time with you every week, I can now say I have incredible excitement in anticipation of where your life, your business and everything you're doing is going. But before we get to that, we got to back up to how we first connected for just a moment. And ironically, another person from la, Tony Watley, who we both just hung out with, his episode just dropped today as we're recording this. And so we're in LA with Lewis Howes at his book release and having a great time, and I meet this guy, Jim Carter, who happens to be a lifetime programmer and coder who's now doing some amazing stuff in AI, et cetera. But take us back really quick to the early days of Jim.

What was the first coding language you learned?

Let's back it all the way up to your engineering days. First coding language you learned that would.

Have been DOS or possibly even GW Basic, just because at the time, God, what did I have? I think it was an apple IIe. It was one of our first family computers.

No, I had a 2 CI. That was my first computer.

Oh, you beat me. Yeah, but we were close. It was absolutely an arms race at the time for whoever could convince their parents to actually go buy the thing fast enough. That's, you know, And I. I grew up in a very, very humble middle class. I'm not even gonna say upper or lower middle class, but middle class, you know, in Los Angeles area. Family, only child. My parents saw the opportunity there for what technology could be. So they saved and saved and saved. And then I'll. I still remember going to. I think it was Sears. I think it was Sears with my dad and my mom and buying it. Big old box. You know, we're walking out with it, smile on my dad's face. Has no idea what we're gonna do with this thing. Right. I remember that day. I think that was probably, like, the first pivotal moment. Core memory that now is. Is very on brand, very much part of my story. But at the time, I don't know, you could probably contextualize it to, like, a big moment in your life now where it's. You've got one of these really massive, pivotal changes in the paradigm that you're part of, whether it's. You buy your first car, you buy your first house. Like, for us, it was that first personal computer. I was very young, but at the time, I guess I just saw this. This innate desire to. To create from it, to build from it. I didn't know what I was going to do. So my dad brought it home. He bought a Dos for Dummies book. He couldn't figure it out. He threw it on the table. Kind of frustrated, and he was, do you want to read this? You know, called me Jimmy. I'm Jimmy. To all my family and friends. He was like, jimmy, do you want to just try this? I was like, sure. So I read it, picked it up, started coding. It just. It came natural to me.

What a story.

And I taught my dad kind of the basics of that along the way, and we used that for my Boy Scout troop. I'm an Eagle Scout, the Boy Scouts of America. So we started creating little programs. I started making little games. It was a lot of fun. And then I grew into the other languages, but that was probably where it all started.

That's wild.

I'm curious.

Really quick. What do you think got your parents into that belief that this was worthy of saving up for and doing like. For me, I had an Apple Iici in my bedroom as a kid, before any of my friends had computers, because my dad was a electrical engineer working with computers. And very on the bleeding edge of that when I was young. And so he was bringing home technology just because it was part of his life. What was that trigger point for your family?

They did it for me in Scouting because my dad was a Scout master and, and my mom supported. Right. So when I was in Cub Scout, she was a den leader, if you will. Right. So, yeah, all the scouting lingo for any engineers here who, who are scouts as well. But my, my dad loved doing different things. Like he, he wasn't a traditional creative, he wasn't a visionary in a sense, but he loved tinkering, he loved figuring things out. He was very tactile in his approach. He was very methodical. So when he was trying to think of things that he could do, one, to spend more time with me because I was in the troop, but two, to, I mean, let's be honest, like, I'm a dad now too, so there's always that like, okay, how do I level up these other, you know, dads in the troop and how do I do something different? He saw that as an advantage. He's like, well, if I, if I can lean into this, then there might be some advantage for my son, for the troop, for the greater good of everything. He was already hand making posters and banners and stuff like that. So he's like, well, if, what if we printed it like this is like such a non issue today. It's like you need something, you either can print it at home, you can take it to a local UPS store or something and you can get whatever you need done for pennies. Right? At the time it was, for us, it was apple iie.matrix printer, big old ribbon, you know, box of ribbon paper. And I have fond, horrible memories of trying to fall asleep hearing right, you know, all the noises sound right in my head. It just that the modem, dialing up, all that stuff, it's all classic, but it conditions you.

That's really funny. Well, I think it's interesting that, you know, today, and we'll probably get to this later in our conversation in more depth, but parents like yourself are facing a similar set of questions around what do I bring my kids into with the revolution of technology and AI and things happening right now, and do I.

Encourage and push them into these new.

Things and help them get an edge, or do I kind of hold back and try to keep them in what's been a traditional way of things prior to this? Maybe there's fear for some people, maybe there's excitement for others. But I'm curious really quick, as a dad yourself, how do you view what you experienced As a kid, how does that inform how you view it today as a dad?

Yeah, it absolutely informs it and I think it's a guiding light, right, because I can 100% say that I would not be in this position in technology. I just, I wouldn't have the desire because it didn't get instilled in me early enough and not acknowledged. What's the word I'm looking for? It wouldn't have been, it wouldn't have been challenged, it wouldn't have been celebrated the way that my parents were like, let's see if, if it adds value to our family, to our life. And I see that opportunity for my daughters, right. I have a 12 year old and an 11 year old daughter and I'm excited to give them the unfair advantage every chance I can get. So they learned how to search Google as soon as they could type and now on the weekends and evenings I show them how to use AI tools. We're sitting down and I'm saying don't stop searching Google for what you need. But I'm going to show you how you can have a conversation with chat GPT or how you can create something all brand new out of your imagination with mid journey or a different type of tool. Because there is no scenario in their future where they won't be using these. Yes, none. Especially with the technology focused family and a guy like their dad. But I think, I think it's a bigger picture question, which is okay, but at what extent do they turn to that first and not learn the fundamentals? I, I don't think that helps anybody. You can't pay somebody to swim for you. You, you still have to learn how to swim yourself. You could pay somebody to rescue you, but typically that happens after the fact. In that case, right, you're out the money and somebody else is, is risking their neck for you. So I still want my kids to understand the fundamentals. I still want them to understand the principles of research and putting it together and being creative. I don't want a robot to be creative for my kids. I want them to be the creative director of whatever they want their life to be. But I don't want them to not have the tools.

I love that. I'll also back up to something you said that I think is really important about what your dad and your parents brought into the home with the idea of how could this add value to the way we want to live and to give my kids an unfair advantage and this value add lens and what I've seen my sisters who have big, big families and looking at technology and they see some role modeling of technology being used in a way that's more of a distraction than a value add. You know, just put the iPad in front of the kid and just, you know, it keeps them busy all the time. And they're more afraid to expose their kids to technology because they see that side. And I think that while asking a different question, how does this bring value into the home? And how can we give our next generation, these kids who we love so dearly, an unfair advantage in the world that they are stepping into one way or the other? That's a really powerful lens.

So I've got a great example on that one. If this is helpful is please. So for example, my, my kids are 11 and 12. They both have iPads. They've had tablets for, for a few years now. My, my 12 year old finally has a phone. But that's a whole other conversation for parents. And we'll get there. We have reasons for that. One thing that we did was I made we. We have a family Google calendar that used to just be between Valerie, my wife and I. And I recently installed that calendar on both of their devices because I want to empower them with knowing what's coming up. Like, we're a very calendar driven family, but they've now found efficiency in their lives because they don't have to ask us, hey, what are we doing this weekend? Or you know, can I go play with this friend? Or whatever, if they've got a volleyball game, if we've got practices, if, if grandma's coming over, you know, whatever it is, they at least are aware of it and they've started thinking about how to be better in our family kind of life cycle and what we do because they just have the awareness for it. It's one example. The other one that comes to mind is when I taught my 11 year old prompt engineering for ChatGPT. I sat her down and we gave me some examples. What are you thinking about? They're both in volleyball, right? So the end, my wife made the decision, you've met Val. Now that she wants to coach this next season, so send help, but we're gonna be fine. And, and my daughter, as I was showing her, I was showing her like how we can use ChatGPT to come up with a personalized volleyball practice schedule. And she like opened her eyes and she's like, yeah, I can't use Google for that. Like, it, it clicked for her, you know, within minutes. That was really cool. It was a very Proud dad moment. But the reason I give that example is she went in the house and she started thinking, she was talking about, she ran back out here super excited. I have a garage office space where I'm recording. So when I say in here, out here, just between room to room. So she ran back out. She's like, dad, I just had a great idea. Mommy's going to be coaching my volleyball team. And now, the same way you taught me how we can have a personalized schedule, she can make personalized schedules for the whole team. And then she knows exactly what to do for who and all that, I was like, that's exactly right, baby. Come on over and I'll show you how we can do it. And I said, I want you to lead the conversation. How do you think? If you were the coach, how would you set it up? Was like, well, make up names. So give me a name. She says, sally. Okay, what is Sally good at? What is she bad at? Like, all these things. And I showed her ways. Okay, well, if you ask it that this way, you'll get this kind of answer. So to the same point, ask a stronger question, you get a better answer. It's just a different way of doing it. Is that going to take over her creativity? No, I wanted it to empower it. And that was a very cool moment. And that was the first time that she ever experienced ChatGPT and working with an AI tool and it already opened her up. So that's the kind of empowerment that I want my kids to have. And all it takes is just you being open to trying it and seeing what they come up with. But man, I love seeing the creativity come out of my kids showing them different tech tools. But now more than ever, these AI tools, so fun.

And for me, it inspires my own engagement with the tools as well. I know we're talking about 11 and 12 year olds, but in some ways we're all 11 year olds when it comes to learning these new tools. But let me back up then. And here we've got off on our 2 CI train and ended up on AI already. We got to go back, bring it back.

Tell me about the time of your programming days.

And the one thing in particular that I admire and I know has been a big factor in creating who you are now is the fact that you didn't have the maybe traditional just W2 career path that a lot of engineering leaders experience. If I Look at your LinkedIn profile, the word founder, co founder or technical co founder, CTO is on there like.

7, 8 9, 10 times.

Right. It's a really unique background. So just tell us a little bit.

About how did writing code and your.

Love of technology lead into all of the work you did in founding and co founding companies and that whole journey.

I think I bring up this term of leaning in a lot just because I think that's, that's my mindset is I don't need to be an expert in everything. I never will be. I'm not perfect. I've opened and closed more businesses than I can count and most of them failed. And I'm really proud of that because you win or learn, you don't necessarily win or lose. Right. And there's nothing big and massively like that's not like a Tony Robbins quote. It's just the way that I think you have to show up, especially as an engineer because a function doesn't work correctly only until you get it to work correctly. Like it's, it's all building blocks, you know, if we're really talking about that. So for me, man, when I got out of high school, probably my, my last year of high school, so late 90s, I just had this desire to again leaning into just trying something new. So at the time I was DJing and I remember I was going to a couple deronfar. I told you that?

Yeah, I didn't hear this part. I'm excited.

And I, I used that as my opportunity cause I was already buying music and DJ equipment and stuff like that. And I was like, you know what, all of these music not companies, but these different businesses, like they don't have websites yet or if they do, they suck. And I just, I saw this opportunity so I ended up one of my very first sales as a side hustle of just being a total independent contractor. No business, no business even having a business. But still I did it. Probably late 90s, I sold one of these record stores that also had equipment rentals, building an E commerce site. So at the time it was. God, what was that? It was classic asp. I didn't even know. Yeah, that would have been late 90s. And I remember I still again, core memory at first big sale. I think I charged you like a thousand bucks. I was just like on top of the world, right?

That stopped. For late 90s.

For late 90s you have no clout, no business even selling anything. And I'll never forget I sold him on building an E commerce shopping cart so people could buy stuff from his site.

Yes.

Hung up the phone, went on Google how to build shopping cart. You Know, in classic ksv and I found a script that I set up a server and I installed it. I'm like, great, I got this, you know, and I think that's just the mindset most engineers kind of employ. So at the end of that whole flow, I realized, okay, I've got something here. Like, I can really get into this. But it was, it was a combination of pushing the limits of what I was capable of, trying something new and enjoying what I was doing along the way. I think that that was like the trifecta for me. So I had a lot of fun doing that. I set up a little, you know, side entity, started building websites. I, I had no, no big responsibilities at the time, in the late 90s. So it was fun. My overhead was low and I, I enjoyed trying things and really just learning new technology and, you know, kind of going from that gym of all trades to just like, okay, I found my passion, which is building back end systems. I really adopted PHP at that point. I got really into the mechanics of it. I started working with backend systems, databases, APIs, building big, big classes to do things. Got into microservices and that was just my very niche focus. But I loved being a founder. I just loved that, loved that hustle, that challenge of trying something brand new, bringing an idea to life and fast forward and kind of zoom around on the res. Proverbial resume, if you will. Like, I tried a lot of different companies. I did some of my own partnerships, all that stuff. And I guess what really that led to is that between experimenting in high school, starting my own business, making some money, and then getting married, having kids, going down that path, floating between W2 and a 1099 and pick an IRS form and some kind of tax classification, and then running my own businesses, having LLCs, you name it, I, I strayed away from the things that I loved, which was kind of finding purpose in it and doing things for joy. I was doing it for the money. And it didn't really dawn on me until my kids got to be, I don't know, three, four, five, something like that. I then moved my family up to San Francisco and I had, we bought a home in Oakland. I was going into the city, I was building startups, I was living that life. Yeah, and you know, that's Mecca for an engineer is for sure. Taking the, taking the bar in and, you know, walking on Market street and all, you know, we work life, everything. I had a corner office and my own, like, we work corner. And what I just found was, yeah, I was getting paid well and it was different and challenging. It was part of the startup scene. But I really lost that passion for what I was doing. So I found this opportunity to say, okay, I've been a growth hacker now for a long time and I'm coder still and all this, and I feel like I'm kind of at that peak, but I'm just not sure. And I'll never forget I was in bart. I was in one of the stations and I saw this sign and I wish I took a picture of it now because it was such a pivotal moment for me, but it said, this is the land of startups, so start something. It was, it was that simple. It was just like that quote and it was probably advertising Cisco or you know, just some, something, I don't know. It was, it was some good old fashioned startup lingo just to get you inspired when you're getting off Bart. And it did. It really inspired me and that got me thinking a lot. And at the time, a friend of mine who had helped his startup then get acquired by Yahoo and stuff like that, so he was really close. He connected me with a book that a friend had written. His name was Adam Braun and he founded Pencils of Promise, which is a charity out of New York City and they provide education to children around the world, primarily in Ghana, Laos and Guatemala. And he wrote this book about how he, with $25 and starting a checking account, started an organization and then it now turned into building hundreds of schools and supporting tens of thousands of kids and all this stuff. And this is a Scooter, Braun's brother, Scooter, who owns sure SB projects that, you know, manages Ariana Grande and all these massive names. And at the end of the day, it was a great story about how he didn't use a lot of his celebrity influence or anything to start. It helped him later, but he took a different path. He was set to go down this financial path and like follow all this stuff. And he's just like, no, he's like, my heart's in this. And it really resonated with you. So it was like this confluence of I'm in startup land, I can do anything that I want, I've got this talent, I've got the ability. And now I've kind of found this refocusing on my passion. Like I'm an Eagle Scout in the scouting program and I spent my entire childhood in service, you know, God, country, community, everything. And I, it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Like that night I just I was like, lying wide awake in bed, almost in tears, because I was just like, okay, I don't know what this means yet, but I know I can't look back. And from that point forward, I was like, I just need to show up the way that I want, be willing to be a student of life again, figure it out along the way. And it's not about the money anymore. It's about some kind of a purpose. And I just started showing up differently. And it's the crazy thing. You put that energy out into the world and it reflects right back to you. I kid you not, Zach. Two weeks later, I ran into a guy on Market street that I'd happened to meet at a co working space a couple years prior. And he told me that he was getting into this new startup and he was going to do this thing and everything. Checked all the boxes for him, everything about it. It was the perfect opportunity to join as a co founder. And I gave up everything I was doing. I took the risk. And that was like the first big move of me stepping into that new life. And I've never looked back. Is everything gone perfect? Of course not. Have I closed most all those businesses since? Yes, it did. I just recently redo what I'm doing now. Absolutely. But I can't think about going back any other way. And even if I ever do go Back to a W2 job, I know that I've got the principles and the values, and that's going to be my baseline.

Thank you for sharing. This is awesome. Yeah. And there's a couple things I want to echo. Take it further, if you will. One is the that catalyst moment. And maybe you can even go back there in your mind's eye for us. You see that sign. And I remember my catalyst moment where purpose overtook the path that I was on. You know, and for me, I was building my career. I was in a W2 job and really finding a lot of success after having gone through burnout and depression and divorce. And for those who haven't heard my story, you know, I wanted to be successful, did it all wrong, totally crashed and burned. And then built my career very successfully after that and was on that steep upward trend. Jim, when it hit me over a weekend of. I was taking what I call a time of solitude and silence. I do fasting, you know, water only three days, go out by myself and just take the time to clear and cleanse my mind and my body. And I was doing that. So spring of 2019, and all of my career trajectory was up into the ride, it was going great, but there was a very clear calling in my life that hit me that weekend. I call it. It was a download. God just spoke to me. It was like, you are not called to be an engineer anymore. It's like the coaching side, now's the time. This is what I want you to do. And everything changed from that point and started Oasis of Courage. But it was when purpose, like the idea of helping these other leaders with what I had gone through overtook the priority of making more money or being somebody in my career and willing to fail at whatever, because I'd rather experience rejection than regret. That was a huge moment for me. And so can you take us back to that experience for you in that station? You see the sign? What was that like? Can you just describe the experience of having that awareness or what shifted or what do you remember about that moment?

Yeah, for me it was. I'm trying to think of the words to. To describe it, but I feel like it's a combination of. Of humility and the willingness to not start over, but just some kind of a fresh start with a different perspective, a way of stepping into a different level of me that I. I hadn't decided yet if I needed that for my own ego or if I was trying to prove it to someone or myself. But I just knew that the current path wasn't sustainable. You know, I started down a computer science path and I had done a lot myself, but I'll be really. I. I never finished the computer science degree because I freaking sold a shopping cart. You know, when I was in high school, like I figured it out right now. Was that the best move? Questionably, Maybe, maybe not. There was a point where, because again, I was in the Bay Area, Uber was up and coming. You know, at the time I ended up, I was working next to a few engineers at Rocket Space. Again, for any. I know, this is engineers. So if I talk about all the different, like startup accelerators and all stuff, for sure, I know, I know these guys and girls get it. And I remember working next to them and I went to a. Went to a meetup once, and it was hosted by the growth team at Uber. And I was. This is before I had jumped into that one startup and I was. I was fascinated by it. So I connected with the guy who was leading it and he was like, hey, we're always hiring. So I went ahead and applied. Cause I was like, this is cool. It could be a fun new way of thinking. And at the time it was. We hate these code reviews. Or like, you know, code challenge kind of thing. And you know, I, I started to go through that and I got through some of the phases and stuff. And I remember at the time he had asked me a seemingly simple question, but I was incapable of explaining it at a very low level. And again, in code world, low level is like, okay, we'll explain the Princip principle behind the computer science logic that runs it. And I was just like, dude, I got nothing. I don't, I, I don't, I don't know what that is. I've never written one. Sorry, I just, I don't know. Now today, in 2023, this may be irrelevant, but at the time it was very relevant. It was really important to me. And he just said, you know, we use a lot of these low level technologies at our growth team because we start with these foundations and we build from it. And he was just like, you're a great dude, you got good stuff going on. He's like, but if you just, regardless of degree, he's like, if you just don't know these core concepts, he's like, you just won't cut it on the team. And at the time I was just like, part of me was like, oh man, this guy just called me out. But it was also a very big wake up call, which is, I think that was that catalyst moment because I realized, man, I've gotten this far in life and I'm making good money and I'm proud of what I'm doing and I've loved all these startups and everything, but I wonder if I should have continued, I wonder if I should have gotten the full degree, went further, really gotten into it and those kind of a thing. And then I reflected and I was like, well, married, I got two kids, I need to be employed or I need my own business. And I was just like, do I want to go back and cover all that stuff and feel like I'm catching up or do I want to think differently and do I want to lean into something else? And regardless of what the right or wrong choice was, I chose the something else. And that, I think was the moment where I told myself I need to disconnect from being a coder and I need to take what I know and I need to take my God given talents and my gifts and turn it into something better. And I've had so much fun stepping into that and hiring way smarter engineers than me and pulling in incredible developers and product people to my teams and things like that. And the first time somebody wrote Code in a language that I had nothing, no idea that was going on, and I couldn't make sense of it at first. I was like, oh my God, this is terrifying. Like I don't know how to audit it or whatever. And I was like, wait, I don't need to. I just need to trust the people that are in my corner. And that principle has helped guide me and that opened me up to now thinking about that in a bigger way is more about just trusting the people that are in your corner, that you're working with the right individuals. But it doesn't have to be you. And it can be you, I think is the. Is the right answer. You could be a lifetime coder, student of life, and you're just always on top of it. But for me, I knew that wasn't for me, that was that, that big moment. And sometimes I miss it, but I realize it was just a chapter in my life and I'm on to the next book.

I know so many engineering leaders can relate to just hitting these points where you have to decide, what will I do? Am I going to go back and get another degree? Am I going to lean into something new? And I literally just got off the phone with a really amazing engineer, senior manager level. But I basically described back to him in our coaching session, just doing an onboarding session, and said, look, everything that you've told me exists in this really.

Narrow band around neutral in your life.

There's nothing that's broken or you're burned out or things that are really bad. There's no desperation. But there's nothing that you told me that you want or that you're leaning.

Into or that you're aspiring to become. There's no inspiration either.

Your whole life exists around this narrow band, around boredom. And it's comfortable, it's just what's working. And you know, he's got kids that aren't out of college yet and he wants to keep the safe, secure path and don't change anything until.

And I said, well, until what?

Because today it's until your kids get out of college. But I actually met this gentleman almost two years ago. And then it was until my last kid goes into college. And yeah, we just keep kicking that can down the road. So to hear your story, it's, to me, it's really inspirational to just say, yeah, these moments will come where you, you feel that impulse, that humility of like, huh, is this a trajectory change moment for me? And to have the courage to do it. I just really appreciate you sharing. You've done it over and over again to get to where you're at today. So you go from growth hacker, coder and expert in, in helping companies to scale and grow and taking on that growth hacking mindset to the cause hacker. This purpose driven, it's bigger than pick the business metric. It has a meaning to it. So what are the causes today that you're most excited about? What are the things when you started going in this new direction of letting cause be the primary aim, where did that take you? What are you excited about? Just kind of catch us up to Jim today.

Yeah, the Cossacker is a fun one. I decided that right around the same time I saw that banner and I was like, okay, I need a new, I need a new way of showing up, right? It didn't mean that I had immediately was posting on Instagram all the length of time. We still shared family photos on Instagram probably in those years. But it, it evolved into a mantra and sort of the way that I like to show up, right? For those of you that have heard my name now on here, I'm Jim Carter, if that sounds familiar, closer to one of our past presidents. He kind of takes the credit when you search for my name. So I am the third. So there it is. But I just knew that I needed to show up different. I needed to do it in a way that reflected for me. And now I'm known by that because I put the years into asking to be known by it. And it's fun and it's new and it's fresh and that's guided me. Here's the way I look at it. If you wear a bright yellow hat everywhere you go, you have to expect that somebody at that point during that day is going to ask you about your hat, right? If you're wearing a bright neon coat, real, you know, any, anything like that, like if you're showing up somehow that is different, that's pushing it. You have to be willing to accept when somebody reflects that back to you. But if you walk around in a black hat, in a gray shirt and brown and black sweats, you're gonna blend in. And you can't expect to be treated as different or exceptional. And for some people, that's what they want and that's fine. I don't see those people changing the world. And I don't need to change the world. I just wanna leave the world in a better place than I found it. And when I found that in myself, that I don't have to be the Tony Robbins, I Don't have to be that pillar human that people admire and want to follow. I still can make a difference in my own world, whether it's just for my family or for. It's my community or for engineering in general. People who have seen me do it before them. So when I finally accepted that, and that took a lot of work, a lot of work. And I didn't even focus on doing any self work, inner work until probably 2019. Once I finally realized that I actually am proud of everything that I've accomplished. And it was no longer about ego, it was about no. If I'm not proud about it, then except for my mom, who else is going to be proud of me for it, right? Sure, you, you have to stand in what you're proud of because nobody's going to celebrate you unless you celebrate yourself. And there's a way to do it by removing your ego from it. Once I found that ability, that unlocked me and at the time when I talked about Pencils of Promise, that organization, this was still all very new to me. And here's a really great example of how that changed the way that I showed up when I got that book recommendation from my friend and I read it and I just, I just full body felt the words on those pages and it dawned on me. I'm like, I can take everything that I know in technology and I can give it to nonprofits because nonprofits don't hire technical people like us because we're the most expensive and we're the last thing on their mind. They need to focus on bringing in gifts and donations, not optimizing in systems. And I was like, maybe I can be like the technical coach for nonprofits. That didn't work, right? But it was worthy experiment because why, why would they pay a non doer, you know, at a nonprofit? But I, I digress, right? This is all about experience.

Hey, the learning. Yeah, exactly.

But if I can leave one thing with everybody who's listening and find yourself in the story. At the time, I knew everything there was to know about WordPress. It was Coder and PHP built all these sites. I focused on speed, security, stability, all those things. Go to their website. It's slow, it's broken, the SSL certificate is wrecked, there's PHP code output everywhere. And I'm just like, what a horrible situation. This founder writes this book, pours his heart out on these pages, hits the top of the New York Times bestseller list. All these people across the world are probably reading this book, going to the website and they, they Want to give, they want to learn more. And the website's broken. Like, how would that make you feel? It hit me and I was just like, I texted my buddy and I'm like, dude, can you connect me with the founder? Like, I just want to fix his website. Like, this will take me two hours. Like, I don't. Can I just. Can I please just fix it? Be my give back for just reading a book that had a positive effect in my life. And he was like, absolutely. So he texted the guy, he's like, yes, let me connect him with my team. And they just welcomed me with open arms. And I was like, you guys, I don't want anything for this. I just, I love the book. I kind of know what you do. Like, most of the pages don't work. I'm going to learn about it along the way. Like, I'm just going to fix you up in a matter of days. I got access to it lightning fast, secure again, all that, you know, just simple stuff. Simple to me again. When whoever's listening think about world altering to them, world pivoting, changing everything, and they. We got on like a, A Google hangout or a Zoom or something, they're just like, oh, my God, like, how if we were to have found you, like, how much would it have caught? Like, they didn't even ask those questions, but that's what they were just like, stuck in. And it was that moment of, like, the simplest thing for me to do made such a world of difference for them. But because it's a nonprofit organization, it's not about them, it's about the cause. And like, all of that just came together for me.

Yeah.

So I stayed in contact with them, I helped them out. They ended up inviting me to go to Guatemala, into the fields a couple years later because I stayed really close to them. Never sent them an invoice for a dollar. I was just like, you know, I'm getting paid well right now. I got time. This is fun. It's new to me. And have you ever been on a charity trip? Some. Something like that. Okay, so when I say this to you and anybody who's listening, if you have been, I know that you can agree with me, which is you come back with your body chemistry changed. There's no looking at life before that to after that. The same, like, it's just a different way of showing up. And I was there with hedge fund owners and multi millionaires and people who, you know, their fourth house is probably 10 times the size of mine, and. And you just you feel this big, you know, you're just, you feel so tiny. I'm like, man, yeah. But I got like 10 grand in my name right now. Like, how can I show up next to these people? And I remember sitting in the back of the bus, we were all like playing music, singing, you know, random bus in the middle of Guatemala. And I, I just felt so small. And I was sitting next to one of the, the people at the charity who had become a friend. And I just broke down and I was like, what? I don't belong here? I, I think those are the words that came out. And I'll never forget what she said. She said, no. She's like, out of everybody here, you're the person that belongs here the most. Because if it's not for someone like you, we don't even have a way of cashing their checks. We don't have a way of, of receiving all of the generosity that these people have the abundance to be able to give. And she said it in the most genuine way. It had nothing to do with those individuals. That had everything to do with the situation. And that was probably the other biggest moment for me because I found this, I found this new passion for life that I didn't know I, that that existed inside of me, which is, okay, I don't have to know everything. I don't have to have a CS degree, I don't have to be the best engineer. But I have to give a damn. And if you give a damn enough, you'll get a lot more in return. And that's what's really led me beyond that. And I've been able to do that with different technology plays and leaning into different things and trying stuff. And I've now helped raise over 20 million for various charities and nonprofit organizations, just purpose driven organizations, just in the last 10 years because I just care enough to try. And it always comes back to you tenfold, a hundredfold every single time. But it just takes putting the work in and staying true to what you want.

The world's never been changed by somebody who kind of sort of cares. Ah, Jim, I love this so much and resonates with my, my own heart. And I went on a two week trip to Honduras back in my high school days. The whole experience from start to finish. I like how you said that shifts your biochemistry. It's like your nervous system gets rewired around the experience. And you hear the title of this podcast is the Happy Engineer. And one of the things that I remember that stood out so vividly is meeting these kids, 10, 11, 12 years old who were so happy and they had nothing.

They had nothing, but they were so happy.

It's like, how is that possible? You know? And it's just everything shifted for me in those times. But wow, okay, we're gonna have to do another conversation to just keep pulling these threads. But I really do appreciate, I think everybody can relate to a deep desire, something inside their heart that is led from a place of purpose. And when you're in that vein, everything just flows and moves. I like, it's like it returns a hundredfold. And when you're going against that, everything has friction. Everything is harder than it has to be. Nothing is working. And so, you know, maybe if somebody is wondering why their life feels that way, listen to Jim's story like this. Just find yourself in that where are you and when. When's that catalyst moment where you need to lean into something new but amazing. So Jim, if somebody wants to explore their own pathway towards purpose and a cause they can care about or just learn more about what you're up to today, we barely even talked about the amazing work that you're doing now. There's so much we can explore. We'll just have to do a round two. But how can people get connected to the real Jim Carter? None of this old president nonsense. The Jim Carter iii, the man.

Yeah, he is a little easier to find online for those reasons, but that's okay. He's absolutely earned that right.

So I would say he cared a little and it's just a little. He had a high station.

So we'll give him definitely for me. So I mentioned cause hacker. So that's my handle on all the socials Instagram I, I post daily content now about AI and purpose driven efforts, things like this. So that's where if you want to slide into a DM and say, hey, share a story, tag me on something cool you're doing, by all means, please do. Instagram is my primary. I share a lot about how AI is helping small business owners, engineers, you know, like us doing awesome things that require code, that don't require code and just making a bigger impact. So Instagram, feel free to connect on LinkedIn. I have a YouTube channel where I review AI sites. All those places are great. I would love, love to connect with you and honestly, probably the easiest way to stay in touch and just to hear more of what I have to say. If you like this is I have a newsletter that I share every single week. Three of the biggest things in the AI industry that are coming up and how it relates to how we can make sense of it. In fact, I'm sharing a little bit about kind of that story with my daughter and what chapter GPT and things could be like that in an upcoming one. So I'm trying to find ways to take big concepts, but you don't have to be technical to make sense of what it could be for your life. And if that's interesting, just head over to Jim Carter me forward slash newsletter and feel free to jump in. Totally free. I love growing that and just the conversations that that opens up are wonderful and that that's the kind of stuff that brings me joy.

Awesome. Happy engineer. I want to challenge you, encourage you. Go sign up for the newsletter and pay attention to what Jim is doing. Not only because you'll actually find a tremendous value in it, but thinking about a role model of someone who took a lifetime of technical acumen and expertise and found unique ways to apply it into a purposeful cause that is now making a positive impact in the world in serious ways. It's something that will help you with wherever you're at to ask the same question and get to where you want to go. So go hang out around people like Jim and it will help you to find those catalyst moments in your own journey. Jim, thank you again so much for being generous with your time today. No surprise, a man who leads with value and generosity in everything that you do. But to wrap it up, we talk about great coaching, great engineering, and it came up in this conversation, whether it's from ChatGPT or any other place. Better questions lead to better answers. The question leads, the answer follows. So what would you leave the happy engineer with today? What's the question that we need to ask ourselves as we seek better answers in our life?

Oh, that's a great question in itself. What question would we leave to seek better answers? I think it starts with questioning ourself about are the things that we're doing something that we truly believe that we're built for, or are we built for more? Because that's what did it for me. Once I gut checked myself and I sat with the answer, whether I liked it or I didn't, it just gave me clarity to know what I should do next. So putting the ego aside and being willing to really see if you're built for something more, that's. That's the question I would ask myself.

I like how you framed that. The question is to question myself. That's really powerful.

I may or may not have read that in A Marcus Aurelius book. I couldn't tell you, but here we are.

Well, Marcus, if you're up there and you tuned in, thank you.

Give me a download on what page that was in your memoir so I can go reread my own answer.

Yeah, Jim, thank you. That is so good. And I love that. What an opportunity to turn the mirror back on ourselves and just say, is this what I was built for or was I made for something more? Thank you so much, Jim. Let's do it again. We've got a lot more to talk about, but thank you for your time today, man. It's been awesome.

Appreciate you, brother. Talk soon.

Hey, are you ready to actually be a happy engineer? I mean, do you want to make more money, climb the ladder, find more balance in your life? Or maybe you need to just put the plan back into your career plan? If that's you, then text LIFESTYLE to 55444. Snag a free 15 minute call with our team to get clear on your next steps and don't delay. Okay. If you're ready for more success and if you want to feel happy on Monday morning, then text LIFESTYLE to 55444. Or if you're outside the United States, then just click the link in the show notes and schedule a time today. Happy engineer Zach here. Just you and me. I've seen over and over again that the shift from work that's just about making a paycheck so that you can.

Go live your life to work, that.

Really aligns with your purpose, with a cause that you care about can be a transformational change. But at the same time, I also recognize that a lot of times engineering leaders who I talk to feel a little bit, I don't know, maybe it's some guilt around that or feeling like, well, if I went and did work that was only purposeful or aligned with a cause or a mission that I care about, I wouldn't be able to earn the money I want or take care of my family the way that I want. And Zach, this is a little too rose colored glasses. This is a little too Pollyanna. It's not that simple and I really understand that. So before we end this conversation, I want to share a few ideas of how you can put this into practice right where you're at. Before I do, I want to share too, a story about my friend Mauricio. Mauricio was a software engineering manager at the time that we met. And when he started sharing where he was at, it was one of the worst moments in his Life, things were not going well in personal situations. He was unhappy with his current job. He did not have clarity on a career path for where he would go. And he mentioned to me that he was strongly considering leaving his current job just to run away from the problems he was facing. He had lost connection to his purpose, to any real driving force or meaning behind the work. And that had trickled down and started impacting the rest of his personal life outside the office as well. And Mauricio enrolled in the lifestyle engineering blueprint program and we started working with him on reconnecting to his values, to his purpose. And he had a life changing moment during the call. He, in his own words, said it.

Was one of those like, aha, life.

Altering events where he realized that he wasn't unhappy with the job because of his boss or because of his paycheck or because of the company. He was unhappy because he was living day to day, moment to moment, outside of his core purpose. And when he identified what that was and made courageous decisions to start living inside of his purpose, he experienced what was truly an instantaneous change. A big difference in the quality of his marriage, the quality of his partner and peer relationships at work. He had clarity coming in quickly for where he wanted to go in his career and a sense of confidence in how he was going to get there. And it was remarkable to watch the before and after shift of having done that work. And as I coached him through these actions and through these changes, it was absolutely a pleasure to see that come to life. But here's the thing I want you to hear most. Mauricio did not have to change his company, change his job, or change anything about his external world to experience a completely new and radically more fulfilling life. He changed on the inside. I've gone through that experience in my own life and I want that for you as well. And beginning with what's inside is important because then when you go to that next job, when you do get that promotion, remember, wherever you go, there you are, right? So if you don't make the changes on the inside, then you're gonna bring those problems with you to the next job whenever that honeymoon phase ends. So here's an exercise I wanna give you right now to get yourself connected to purpose and create more meaning, more, you know, call it a connection to a cause that you care about right where you're at. Grab a piece of paper, grab a page in your journal and write down 10 things that are purpose driven, 10 things that are meaningful, 10 things that you find fulfilling or are Connected to a cause that you care about, related to your current job in your current company, right here, right now. Let me give you a couple examples. You might say, you know what, the value that our product brings to our customers makes their life better. And while it may not be, you know, an altruistic or nonprofit type of business, the fact is we add value to people's lives. I remember back at Whirlpool when I was an engineering leader, that was a big thing that helped me feel more connected to my work there. Appliances are very basic in many ways, and especially here in the US we take it for granted that you have a kitchen full of cooking appliances. But when you realize how difficult life becomes when you don't have that oven, when you don't have that washing machine or that clothes dryer, when those products go out, your whole life gets pretty.

Difficult for a little bit there.

We really rely on those things. So the value that your products create for your customers might be something you find meaningful. Write that down. Maybe it's what your company does in creating jobs, jobs for you, jobs for your team. Go deeper with that. Maybe it's what you're able to do with the income that you are receiving from your company and how that makes a difference. Maybe your company has social good causes that it does contribute to and they may not be the ones that are most aligned with your heart, but if you have that spirit of giving and generosity and knowing that your company's contributing, write that down. We don't need these to be the 10 most monumental, perfectly aligned things. What we want to do is go get curious and take our focus towards things that are purpose driven, meaningful, fulfilling and cause related in things that you care about. Maybe it's that you get to keep learning. Maybe it's your opportunity to mentor younger leaders in your organization with the things that you've gone through and you find that purposeful. You find meaning in coaching and helping younger leaders to learn from the mistakes you've made and follow in your successful footsteps. Whatever those things are, I want you to write them down. I don't want to give you too many more examples or you're going to have the whole list from me. I want this to be your list. And if you'll focus on this and start connecting more deeply to the purposeful parts of your current work, that's going to set you on a path for more clarity and more understanding. If you do want to follow someone like Jim Carter's path, that idea of shifting dramatically and starting something that is related to A cause you care about, getting a group of people together to start something deeply connected to you, or joining up with a cause that you really care about. You know, this isn't about what's right or wrong or what you should do right. If you want to pursue big paychecks in big companies, doing really big projects on big technology, awesome. If that's purpose driven for you, awesome. It doesn't have to be, you know, a societal, altruistic cause that we're talking about. At first, maybe you'll find yourself into that path later, maybe not. There's no judgment around that. But what does matter is that you feel connected in your heart, in your soul and in your mind to the work that you're doing. And if you're just showing up, punching the clock to get a paycheck, then you're missing the fulfillment that Jim talked about in our conversation today. And you're missing an opportunity to experience life in a whole new way. Like Mauricio did when he got connected to purpose. If this feels really challenging to you, if it feels a bit foreign, or maybe, honestly, it feels like total nonsense, like Zach, this doesn't matter. You don't understand my situation. I don't think this is going to help at all. Well, I want to tell you.

Try me.

I've helped a lot of engineering leaders to go through this and we would.

Love to help you too.

So if you're not feeling it, if you're not sure how this could help you, then let's talk about that. I'd really be honored to get in a conversation with you, and you can do that by texting the word lifestyle to 55444. You're going to get some instructions on how to apply for our blueprint program. But listen, whether you're a fit or not, we want to get you on a call, help you understand what your next steps are. And if it's a fit, we'll get you on a free coaching session with me and we'll talk deeply about how this could transform your career and your life. So if that's something that interests you, take advantage of it. Text the word lifestyle to 55444. But what I want for you the most is to leave this conversation, taking your focus and energy towards purpose driven, meaningful, fulfilling cause hacker work that you can love. Write those 10 things down and then send them to me. I would love to see your list. Shoot me an email. Zackasisofcurriage.com I always love to connect and see what you're doing. To advance in the career and life of your dreams. And until next time, get out there, crush comfort, create courage and let's do this my friend. That's all we've got for this episode of the Happy Engineer Podcast. Thank you again for investing your time with me today. If you're like me, then maybe you'll take some notes and share this episode with your fellow engineers. Why? Because it will help you learn deeper, remember these insights and take action. So share this episode with two or three friends just like you who are committed to building their career. Lastly, make sure to link up with us@oisisofcurriage.com, grab our free tools for career growth there in the resource hub and schedule a free call with our coaching team today. Please just share, share, share this podcast with anyone who you think might enjoy it. Until next time, remember to crush comfort, create courage and let's.