Be Thankful for the People Who Inspire You

Inspire Me to be Better
  1. Blogging for Hippo
  2. Schedule Sales with WooCommerce
  3. The Problem with Focus
  4. Give Thanks
  5. Be Thankful for the People Who Inspire You
  6. Give Yourself Space
  7. Build Resources From Support
  8. How Hard Can Membership Be?
  9. Adding Social Media Icons to WooCommerce Product Pages
  10. How to Export WooCommerce Subscriptions
  11. Upgrade Your Contact Form With Ninja Forms
  12. Why I Write
  13. Blog Comments Policy
  14. Content Marketing Works – Even with Furnace Filters
  15. Making Email from Your Website More Reliable with Email Delivery Tools
  16. A Happiness Podcast?
  17. Podcast Compensation
  18. Wishlists Done Right
  19. Enable Free Shipping on a Per Product Basis
  20. Improve Your Writing with the Hemingway Editor
  21. Tell Users What You're Doing
  22. 2014 Business Review
  23. Mind Your Own Business
  24. Think Different to 10x Your Business
  25. Let Projects Die
  26. Maximize Your Creative Energy
  27. Use Git Bisect to Find Bugs in Your Codebase
  28. My Personal Value of Remote Work
  29. Don't Spam Email Receipts
  30. Make Your Own Luck
  31. Cold Showers and the Power of Challenges

It's the day after Thanksgiving but I haven't quite finished thanking people yet. Yesterday I talked quite a bit about the awesome financial base my parents provided me today I want to focus on the people that inspire me. It took an army of people to get me fired up about life and simply put: without these people I wouldn't be where I am now.

People Who Inspire Me

Paula Ganyard – Paula hired me as a student web developer my junior year of college. I learned how visual the web was and how easy it was to program in HTML, CSS, & JavaScript.

Noah Settersten – During my student web developer job I was metored by Noah. He was incredibly patient with me as I learned the ropes. He was smart and taught me step by step. First HTML, then CSS, then JavaScript, and finally some ASP. I really appreciate this learning style and I picked up the basics of everything in a couple months versus a couple of years with his help.

Eric Lightbody – Eric was the full time developer at my college and he spent an enormous part of his day mentoring me and advising me on which things were the most value to know and the best resources to learn about them. I remember several hour long conversations we had talking about web development and the best practices and all of this was hugely helpful.

Chris Schmitz – After finishing up college I wanted to continue learning and improving my skills so I joined the Web 920 meetup group and met Chris. Both of us were very green and even though we both knew very little we shared what we did know with each other and learned a ton.

Elliot Christienson – Elliot is one of the organizers for the Web 920 meetup group and is so inspiring. He placed a lot of confidence in me and encouraged me to share what I knew at the group. A little nudging from him got me out of my shell.

Getting out of the Gates

These people were the people that got me out of the gates. I met so many inspirational people after that but these five got it all started. I spent the last 9 years in Green Bay Wisconsin, not exactly the most tech friendly place, and with the help from these people accomplished some things I'm really proud of.

If you're just getting into web development find people that can mentor you. People that have already traveled through the course and are willing to lend a helping hand. If you've already been in the industry for a few years you don't even know how much information you have to share. Get out there and help people whenever you can. It could be online, a meetup group, at a WordCamp, or wherever. Just get out there and help someone get started because that's the most difficult part of all.

Photo credit: Giphy

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