Adam Bertram, Author of Teach Me: How to Write How-to Technical Articles that Make Money

Len: Hi, I'm Len Epp from Leanpub, and in this Frontmatter podcast, I'll be interviewing Adam Bertram.

Based in Evansville, Indiana, Adam is a blogger and trainer and writer and entrepreneur, with over 20 years of IT experience in various areas. He's also founder of TechSnips, an IT career development platform.

You can follow him on Twitter @adbertram, and check out his website at adamtheautomator.com, as well as the Twitter account for TechSnips @techsnips_io.

Adam is the author of two Leanpub books, The Pester Book: Learn All About Pester, the Testing Framework for PowerShell and Teach Me: How to Write How-to Technical Articles that Make Money

In this interview, we're going to talk about Adam's background and career, professional interests, his books, and at the end we'll talk a little bit about his experience as a writer, and particularly using Leanpub to self-publish a couple of books.

So, thank you Adam for taking the time to be on the Frontmatter Podcast.

Adam: No problem at all, thanks for having me.

Len: I always like to start these interviews by asking people for their origin story. So, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about where you grew up and how you first became interested in computers and technology?

Adam: Sure. I've grown up in Southern Indiana in the US for - what am I? I'm almost 40 now. So it's been a long time. I started out in computers, really - I mean, ever since I could essentially sit upright. My mom has pictures of me at six years old, playing on the computer. By the time I was eight or nine years old, I was writing Windows batch files.

So I've been a geek for my entire life, and fortunately it's something that I've known that I wanted to get into for, ever since I was a little kid. Luckily I have grown up with computers since, and I've been in IT for 21 years now. Something like that.

Ever since then, it's just been a wild ride. I've had lots of jobs, lots of opportunities here and there - and just taking advantage of every minute of it.

Len: One thing I noted from your LinkedIn profile when I was researching for this interview, is that you studied Computer Science at university. And one of the questions that often comes up on this podcast, so many of our guests are people in software - is, if you were starting out a career now, as opposed to 20 years ago, would you spend four years studying formally Computer Science at university? Or would you choose a different path into a career in IT?

Adam: Looking back, I think that the piece of paper is probably important. It depends on what kind of personality you have. I think that somebody that has the kind of personality, the more risk adverse - who just wants to get the full time job, wants to get a good job, just kind of wants to take the - I don't want to say the easy path, but the, I don't know? The less risky path. And there's nothing wrong with that at all.

But you're that kind of person, I think a four year degree is definitely doable. I think it's a good idea, because you have that piece of paper, you can get a lot of jobs.

But if you're more the hustler, entrepreneur type and you just want to - you're more apt to risk, you're okay with kind of going your own freelancing - participating in the gig economy - I think you're going to be a little bit more scrappy. You're going to figure out how to get things done, not necessarily the conventional way. I think in that instance, college may still be a good idea. But I mean honestly - I've pretty much just wasted my time in college, and nowadays I'm not using anything that I learned in college. If you ask me, everything that I've learned is through the school of hard knocks.

Len: And somewhat on that note, you've got TechSnips, which you founded. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that?

Adam: So as of, I'd say, two years ago or something - I decided to go self-employed, go on my own. I'd quit a nice job. I lived in southern Indiana and I had a very high-paying job. I quit that high-paying job, and decided to go out on my own, because I had a nice nest egg saved up.

So I started TechSnips - actually TechSnips is a small startup that brings in people from the community - IT professionals, software developers. Anybody that traditionally has - in your nine-to-five job, that knows a lot, that has a lot of knowledge in their head. But they just haven't been able to share that knowledge, either through writing or videos or anything like that. So I just started to build a platform, a video platform for these kind of people. To bring them in - kind of hone their skills, train them. Train them in, not necessarily, just - get themselves out there.

There's a lot of them that had impostor syndrome. Just giving them the courage to really get involved, and show how to transfer the knowledge in their head to something that's - to communicate with others and the masses.

I've been preaching this for a long time, and my position in the community is that I really think that a lot of people like myself - IT professionals, software developers - we are always kind of stuck in our own little world, and it's really easy to get stuck in that world and just stay in there, without getting out and writing, and doing videos and how-to things and books and ebooks, that sort of thing. That's pretty much what TechSnips is about, just in video form.

Len: I have some questions to ask you about impostor syndrome and sort of getting over your own humility, which is a strange kind of paradox - later on, when we talk about your "teach me how to write how-to articles" book. But before we get into there, how did you get into writing yourself - were you always writing, or was that something that came late?

Adam: Before I started in this part of my life, I guess you can say - this part of my life is where I started blogging about technology things. PowerShell, the scripting language, cloud, Azure, AWS. Just kind of getting in this technology space.

Before then, I started a blog on - ironically, just selling used books online. I had a business selling used books. And at that time - for some reason I've always had that desire to - whenever I do something, I immediately write about it or share something about what I'm learning.

And I started writing, blogging back then. That was probably 10, 12 years ago - something like that.

So I had a blog about how to sell used books on Amazon, on eBay. How to build a business, how to find books - and that's how I started the blog. At that time, I had written some ebooks, and I've candidly brought that knowledge, and things that I've learned from there - over to now the technology space, where I'm writing about what I'm doing now. The cloud space, IT things, tech things. So that's where I started.

From there, I started blogging at adamtheautomator.com. Since then, there has been a lot of times where people have asked me, "Well, can you go into more depth on this topic? Can you go into more depth on this one?" And a blog really isn't a great platform for that. So that's when I started writing ebooks on Leanpub. That's where the first two came from, that I have now. And I typically now, just whenever I see that there's an interest - and if I have the interest to do it, and I see other people have the interest to do it, that needs more longer-form content - I will typically try to start an ebook, and hopefully finish an ebook.

Len: And so you got started in blogging, before you started writing ebooks?

Adam: Yes.

Len: Okay. I was actually quite curious when I realized that you'd written a blog about having to sell used books online. Where I'm based, in Victoria, British Columbia, is actually the same place where Abebooks is based. So it's just this kind of curious coincidence.

Adam: Oh yeah, I'm well aware of Abebooks.

Len: And so, in addition to the blogging and the ebook, you're also a Pluralsight course creator. I've interviewed a couple of people who are Pluralsight course creators before for this podcast, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your experience with that? For a lot of people on the outside, they might one day want to be a well-known blogger and they might want to be writing "how-to" books and building an audience. And then they might want to someday be approached by a company like Pluralsight to create content for them. Did Pluralsight approach you, or did - one of the things I like to do in this podcast is actually get into the details of like how it happened. Because a lot of times it can seem like - the old joke with Quentin Tarantino is, "I'm working in the video store, and now I'm a famous director." What exactly happened?

Adam: I approached Pluralsight from the referral from another Pluralsight author. I authored my first course five years ago, something like that. At the time, I had known - I had been blogging for a while and been on Twitter and an active within the community, and I noticed that a lot of people that I looked up to were Pluralsight authors. They had done these training courses. And I had never done a course before, a Pluralsight course. I had done a Udemy one.

So I got my training wheels, I guess, in Udemy. I did a bunch of recording in my closet just to - because that was the only place that could actually have decent sound. So I did that well on my own, I learned a lot, ust kind of practising in Udemy, and getting a PowerShell course out from Udemy. Since then, I noticed there was a lot of people on Pluralsight.

So I reached out to a mentor of mine, and he had already done a few Pluralsight courses. And I asked, "What is it like to do a Pluralsight course?" And he said, "Well it's a lot of work. It's very rewarding. Man, it pays pretty good." So I'm like, "Sure, I'll try it." So I signed up and I applied, and they went through a fairly rigorous review process, to where I had to send in a couple of revisions of auditions.

So with Pluralsight, when you audition - they make you kind of do a little mini course, five or ten minutes of breaking down a specific problem, and trying to teach you, "Okay, this is how we approach things at Pluralsight." So I applied for them, did a few different audition revisions. And since then, I've done - I just finished my sixth or seventh course, I think.

Len: Once you've passed the audition, do they commission you to do something that they've kind of done research o,n and they know there's an audience out there for that? Or do they ply you for ideas?

Adam: A little bit of both. In the old days, they've gotten fairly - I mean, very big nowadays since going public. So when I started, they were a fairly small company, and it was more of a, "Well, what do you want to do?" And I would pitch something, and they'd go, "Oh sure." That was how it was five or six years ago. But now it's kind of a combination of both. They have a fairly, really lengthy course curriculum agenda that they wanted to fulfil.

And they'll occasionally reach out to me, knowing that I have specific expertise and specific areas that I like to do Pluralsight courses in. They'll reach out to me - and if I'd like to do one, I can start one. Or I can just pitch them an idea or a topic that I would like at any time, and they'll say, "Well, no we're not looking for that." Or, "We're looking for that." They'll kind of negotiate work with me there.

Len: And you've mentioned already that - just getting more into your own story - a couple of years ago, you sort of went off on your own. What led you to make that decision?

Adam: Well, I've always been an entrepreneur at heart. I have always been a very independent, I've always had a side hustle. I don't think - it's been a very, very long time since I've actually just had a full-time job. My brain is going 100 miles an hour all the time, and I always thirst for more knowledge. Learning more, doing more. And honestly, 40 hours a week just doesn't do it for me. So I've always kind of had to get my fix on other things. So I had a side hustle for, I don't know - maybe 15 years or something like that?

I've always kind of had that entrepreneurial streak, but I never really had the courage to actually go out on my own. Until a couple of years ago, when I was able to save up a sizeable nest egg for myself and my family, and my wife - thankfully, decided to say, "Okay, well I don't like it - but okay, let's just give it a shot." So I gave it a shot. That was two years ago - and ever since then I've kind of been on my own doing more Pluralsight courses, doing some freelance writing, blogging, writing ebooks on Leanpub. And essentially just doing my freelance thing, and just getting by that way.

Len: And I understand from your Twitter feed and from your blog, that you're currently looking for a remote work position, for the next stage of what you're doing. It was actually really interesting reviewing your - I mean, I say this sort of cavalierly from my perspective - but like, you've had this really curious experience, where you're looking for remote work, something that is more and more popular and something that companies - I mean, I think I'm in agreement with you - companies ought to find attractive as a way of recruiting talented people. But often it's not clear when you're applying, and applications for jobs can be rigorous and time consuming - it's not clear when you're applying whether there's a remote position involved. Often people will say things like, "Oh well, you can go remote eventually, but you can't for the first couple of years." I was just wondering if you could share some of your thoughts about that experience?

Adam: Yeah, so there are a few topics that, for whatever reason, I get really passionate about. The whole - you mentioned the impostor syndrome, having the confidence - that's one. The PowerShell scripting language is another. And for some reason, I have just gotten really passionate and interested about the concept of remote work, or working from home. I've been writing about that here and there for a long time, and really getting more - doing a lot of career-focused advice and writing, and that sort of thing. And this is the first time I've decided that I want to be- I would like to be part of a team, and I would like to - it feels a little lonely on your own. Being a freelancer, you don't really get the opportunity to work with a lot of people.

And so I decided to go look for a full-time remote job. And I found through that, it's probably been three or four weeks now of just reaching out to my network on Twitter, saying, "I'm looking for a job." Trying to find any leads that I can, and also going through the job application process. And it just always really, really frustrates me to know that there was, for example - there was one job I tweeted about a few days ago, I believe, and it was the perfect job. I mean, exactly what I wanted to do, it sounded like a great company - it sounded perfect. And I, me being - my skill is around PowerShell and automation. I'm like, "This is me. I can do this with my eyes closed. And its sounds like a great opportunity."

So I reached out. It didn't say anything about remote. That's one that - like you said, a lot of companies do. They will offer a position, but it will say nothing about remote. Sometimes your reach out, and for the right candidate, they will say, "Well, okay I guess we'll let you." But the majority of the time, will just say, "No, it's not remote, you have to be on site. You have to have your butt in the seat so we can see you."

So I hate that, but that's kind of how this one was. And it really frustrated me. Because, I mean - I personally thought that, "I have 10, 15 years of experience. You are - this is exactly the kind of position I can do, and I can bring a lot of value to the company. And just for the sheer fact of I'm remote, even though I was remote for - I've been working remotely for eight years now. Something like that. So plenty of experience. I know exactly what I'm getting into."

But that company and the huge majority of the other companies - I'm talking people at Amazon and Microsoft and big tech companies, they're just like, "No, not even going to consider remote." It frustrates me to no end. To know that the talent, it's - I know that it's not relegated to just me. I know that if I'm having this problem being public and in the community, and even my work is public - I mean, I can't even imagine all the other people that are looking for jobs out there, that send in their resume, that may be perfect for the job - but they don't get the opportunity to prove themselves, simply because they have to be in a physical location.

Len: Thank you for sharing that. I have a passion for this subject as well. I also personally hate being subjected to the butts-in-seats model. But it's an interesting - I'm saying "interesting" again - it's interesting in a lot of different ways. Partly because - I would say - most people just take it for granted that being seen and managed that wa,y and like going to work at nine and leaving at five or six or whatever it is, is just the way work works. What is it that you hate about that?

Adam: It's a different - I agree, it's a different paradigm. I was talking - somebody had disagreed with me on Twitter via DM.

Len: Wait, someone disagreed with you on Twitter?

Adam: Someone disagreed with me, yeah - believe it or not. Thankfully he was very nice about it. I don't try to get too political and too controversial. But there's sometimes - whenever I really believe in something, I have a passion about - you always get people that will disagree. I mean he was very cordial. And basically what he was saying was - he kind of had a different mindset, and a kind of different mentality. He's like, "Well this is how work works. This is how it's always been done."

When somebody tells me "This is how it's always been done," that's like nails on a chalk board for me. I really subscribe to the new school mentality of - you leverage, especially with technology we have now. I'm talking to you on Skype, I can see you in the video. And it's all about - I really have a strong passion for trying to evangelize not only remote work. I think remote work is a symptom of my desire to really get out and tell people, tell companies and tell employers and other people, "Don't just do something, just because you do it. Question everything all the time."

Just like the whole Apple thing. "Think different." I really like that commercial. The crazy ones for Apple that Steve Jobs did. Because I really think that, if us in technology can come together and realize and bring all these old stodgy companies out of - okay, that's how it's been done for a long time. We have that culture because we never had the technology to really leverage that. People say that, "Well, it's good that we can be together." Well, I mean - I'm talking to you, I can see you - just like I can see you in real life. I can see your facial gestures, your body language. I can talk with you just fine. I think it's just more of a - companies are very uncomfortable with that.

And that's one thing that I don't believe in, because, when somebody says, "Well, I'm not comfortable doing that," I will always question, "Why are you uncomfortable doing that?" And if you give me a good reason, sure, I'll go along with it. "Okay, yeah - that's legit." But if you tell me, "I just don't want to do that, because it's always been done this way." Or, "Oh, that makes me uncomfortable. I don't want to do that. I don't want to have to go through figuring out a new way to do things." I think that's - the remote work thing, I think is a symptom of my mentality of like, we need to come to the 21st century now. We can, we have the technology, let's use it. Instead of just doing it the old way we're used to.

Len: Thanks for that really great answer. It is really interesting how people can be operating at a high level of responsibility, with a lot at stake, and yet rely on crutches like, "That's the way it's always been," or, "We just can't rethink this really major part of how we do things." And how - when you've been on the other side of it, say working remotely for a few years - you realize how you can just do it.

Adam: Yeah. I think the remote work thing, or the air-quoted "working from home" thing of, wink-wink, I think it's got a bad connotation of some degree. Because if you take someone that doesn't like their job, they're going to wink-wink, "work from home." When everybody says, "Wel,l they're just going to do errands or laundry or something." They're essentially just taking a day off when they say, "We're working from home."

I think that there's a lot of challenges that we need to overcome from a culture perspective. Because traditionally, it just depends on the type of employee. I think a lot of employers think, "Well, you're working from home. I can't see you, so I don't trust you." A lot of employers don't trust their employees to do it. But I think that that's a part of a screening problem. Where, if you have people that are allowed to come in, not really care what they do, not really are passionate and really want to be there and solve whatever problems they have to solve - if they worked from home, sure they're probably not going to do anything. But I think that's just a matter of setting the appropriate goals, doing some better screening for new employees. And I think it's just a kind of a different mentality. It's a major shift in the way companies operate.

Len: It's funny to frame it that way. Because I see a sort of like, in square quotes, "Working from the office," with the same kind of skepticism.

Adam: Yeah.

Len: It's like, some people will waste three hours a day commuting both ways, with all the stress about being on time and making your connection and being late. So there's three hours of your day gone, just in transit. And then, I mean - a lot of offices, people roll in on time. But the first half hour is like coffee, and then the next half hour is chatting, and then the next half hour is maybe some email. And then it's a little bit of a break, then it's time for lunch. And by the way - meetings, meetings, meetings.

And I think you've actually written about how - I mean, it's sort of a joke, but it's sort of true - that being busy is actually a way of being lazy. Just having lots of tasks to do and meetings to go to, and things that are arranged for you - is actually a way of not working in many cases. And I think this is like, I'm fully on the remote work sort of version of that. Where it's like, by the time you've spent an hour and a half on the train to your office - I've done an hour and a half's worth of work, from home. Who cares where the work gets done? Why build this huge apparatus around just getting your work done?

Adam: Yes, it's expensive for the employers too. I mean they have to bring up - they have to have an office, they have to have facilities. I mean, the expenses are exorbitant, when they don't really need to be.

Len: Speaking of working - one thing you write a lot about, recently about your job search and about remote work and things that you're passionate about - you've also written about something else that's very personal, which is ADHD. And you had a blog post from not too long ago, from June, called, ADHD: What it's like having it and what to do about it. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind taking the opportunity to talk a little bit about what ADHD is. I'm sure everyone's heard about it - but talking a little bit about what it is, and what it's like having it, and what to do about it.

Adam: I was diagnosed fairly late in life. I was diagnosed when I was 21, something like that, when I was in college. Because I had kind of struggled through elementary school and middle school and high school. But I just kind of got along with it. My parents were rural parents, we lived in a rural neighborhood. And it's normally, "Oh just pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Just work harder. You're being lazy. Just get over it and do it." So I kind of believed them for a very long time.

When I finally had the courage to go to the doctor and say, "I've lived with this for my entire life. I can't sit still, I can't pay attention." Right now my meds are wearing off - and I can see my foot just naturally shakes, just because my mind is going 100 miles an hour all the time. I think that's probably one of the reasons why I've had [?], because I'm so on, and I constantly want to do more. So yeah - probably 20 years ago, I was diagnosed.

And I've been through a few different CBT therapies, cognitive behavioral therapies. To where the therapist would sit you down and tell you, "Have you noticed the triggers and tried to focus your mind more?" That helped, and I've learned a lot on my own over the years - of how to control it, and how to kind of force my brain back to where it needs to be.

But I've been on medication for - well yeah, about the whole time, as well. I've been on many different medications, both stimulant and non-stimulant. And essentially it's something that's helped me tremendously throughout the years, just to really get work done. And I honestly think that - this isn't a promotion for Vyvanse by any means, but that medication alone - again, have to give the disclaimer, "Always see your doctor." But yeah - medication, I think is almost - it was almost a lifesaver for me. Because I knew what I was like beforehand, and I know what I'm like now. And I would never be in the position that I am now with the help that I received and the medication that I have been on for so long.

Len: I wanted to say, thank you for being so open for talking about it on this podcast and on your blog and elsewhere generally. A lot of people don't do that.

Adam: Oh yeah, mental health.

Len: Even though we, many people live with it.

Adam: Yeah, mental health is very important. I'm very open about ADHD and my anxiety and depression that I go through. I think more people need to have the courage to speak openly about it. I mean, I think there's nothing wrong with mental health. Mental health should be defined the same way as physical health. But unfortunately in our society, it's kind of like my parents were, "Well, I don't see anything wrong with you, so - oh, just stop doing that. Just stop thinking that way." Anybody with a mental health issue knows that well you can't just - you can't stop. So yeah, that's another thing that I've written occasionally about. Is mental health, panic disorder, depression and that sort of thing.

Len: You had a great line or two in a post called Living with Adult ADHD (And Kicking Ass), where you said something that - I mean, I haven't been diagnosed with ADHD or anything like that. But you write some things that really resonated with me. Like, quote, "There are days when you feel no pleasure whatsoever after a long day. You feel guilty because you can't feel a sense of accomplishment. You look back on a day’s work and realize you didn't check a thing off your to-do list." I think that's something that people very rarely write about so straightforwardly. But to just write about it that way is just really nice to see.

Ehen you write about it, you don't build up a huge edifice around it. You're just articulating the things that actually all of us feel from time to time, or more often than that even. And I would say one thing is that in particular, working from home - and we've sort of touched on this a little bit - but working from home/remote work, really strips away a lot of the excuses you can have from pretending that you've had a productive day when you haven't. You're just there with yourself. And you - for example, because I was mentioning, terrible commutes can actually feel like, "Oh, I'm a really hard working person." And it's like, "Well, you sure did commute." It genuinely feels that way, and that took a lot of effort and time and expense.

Adam: Yeah.

Len: But was it work though?

Adam: Yeah, it's all about the output. It's not how much you put in, it's not how much you put out. It goes back. That reminds me of that one saying, that story where the repair guy came in - looked around at some kind of, I can't remember what it was - and got out a hammer and hit one spot on it. And a few days later the person that was wanting it fixed, got a bill for $10,000. And it's like, "Why are you paying me $10,000?" "Well, I didn't want $10,000 for the time. I wanted $10,000 for the 10 years or something that I spent to know exactly what point to hit on there."

So it's all about the output, the value that you provide - not the time that you put in. That's why I don't like getting paid by the hour. I normally try to get paid by the project. Because if I can provide you with this much value, that should be all you care about. "How much is this outcome worth to you?" Not if I put in - "I will put in five minutes, or I'll put in 40 hours or whatever it takes - I can deliver this package to you. And ultimately, that's all they should actually care about. Just the output, not the constant - the commuting or the checking the email constantly.

Like the rabbit in the cage, like constantly hitting the button - send, receive, send receive emails. It's not about exactly what you're doing. I think you're being lazy, because it's a lot easier to get that dopamine hit than, "Oh, I've got a new email." Oh, ding, ding. Twitter's coming up, or Facebook. It's nice to get that quick dopamine hit, but it takes discipline and a lot more cognitive thought actually to just figure it out, "Let's not do this now, let's go try to do more Cal Newport-style deep work and really get things done." That way you can have output at the end, rather than just feeling like you haven't done anything.

Len: I've actually got some specific questions about that kind of piecework which you've done, where you're delivering pieces of writing, and you're not getting paid by the hour for that, you're getting paid for the piece. And we'll talk about that when we talk about your second Leanpub book.

But just sort of moving more in that direction now - so you write at adamtheautomator.com, on your site. And you have a company by that name as well. And I was wondering, so - this is kind of a funny way into it, but a lot of people - when they hear about automation, they're thinking about like robots taking over our jobs. What's the kind of automating that you engage in?

Adam: So, there's two types of automation: hardware automation and software automation. I am in the software automation place. Because I have never - I firmly believe in automation in general, but yeah, I would say the majority of society thinks of robot automations in factories and taking people's jobs. I'm more software automation, where that means writing software, writing scripts to just make processes more efficient. Figure out, discover patterns and various software workflows, software deployments.

Really anything in the IT and technology space that software can do, can make things better. And essentially it's automation, essentially if you want to boil it down - discovering patterns that are repeated over and over and over again. And then writing software or a script or some kind of routine or workflow, to then make that process more efficient. Error free - take humans out of the mix, so it's error free. Computers don't lie to you, they don't change their behavior. So it's standardized, error free - and also much faster, because the computer can do things much faster than any of us humans can.

Len: And just to sort zero in on the kind of thing we're talking about, can you explain a little bit about what PowerShell is, and then what Pester is within it? Just going in onto the next part of the interview where we talk about your first Leanpub book.

Adam: Sure. PowerShell is a scripting language, and if the audience is not familiar with a scripting language - it's essentially like - some code, it's software code that's executed. It doesn't have to be compiled. So let's say that you want to - when a file goes into a folder, you want to trigger something else. Or when a service gets stopped. Or when you stick in a thumb drive or something. There's a trigger, and then there's multiple actions that follow that trigger.

PowerShell is a scripting language that allows you to define the trigger. Either your trigger's going to be manual - so when you execute a script, it's going to do whatever you need it to do. Or you can define triggers that way with PowerShell. And PowerShell essentially is a scripting language that was built by Microsoft, that's now cross-platform. So it's available on Windows, Linux, Mac OS - all the operating systems out there. And essentially it allows you to automate.

It's kind of a hybrid between a system, a sysadmin, automation language, console - and a shell console, and a development language. It depends on who you ask, how it would be defined. But I think the general consensus is, it's essentially a automation language. It allows you to write scripts and write code to automate all the things.

Oh, and Pester. You want me to talk about Pester. So Pester, like any good language out there - PowerShell has a testing framework and the testing framework that the community and Microsoft has adopted is called "Pester." So you're seeing software developers listen to this - they probably know about unit testing, integration testing, acceptance testing - that sort of thing. And Pester is exactly what that is, in the PowerShell world. Pester was actually written in PowerShell, and it is a group of modules and different functions and commands built for unit testing purposes.

So essentially the Pester framework was built on PowerShell to do PowerShell unit testing. And since then, it's been - since it is just PowerShell, and PowerShell is known to be a very flexible language - it's been used to do more integration testing, and acceptance and even infrastructure testing.

So whenever we talk about the concept of infrastructure as code, to where we check in a piece of code in Git, and then it goes up to GitHub, and then a webhook sends it off, and it runs some kind of script to build some kind of test environment, or whatever infrastructure that the developer needs.

Pester is a way to verify that not only the code is written right, but what the code actually did against the infrastructure was correct through - it's informally called "infrastructure testing." I don't know if there's actually a good term for it. So Pester's kind of the framework around the PowerShell language, to do a lot of unit testing and also the infrastructure testing as well.

Len: If I understand this correctly, the way it works is that there's this concept of unit testing. So, I've got like a kind of chunk of code - that's a unit that I can test. And then eventually that unit is going to be integrated into some existing piece of infrastructure. And so Pester helps you do that, testing how it would work if it were actually deployed into that infrastructure?

Adam: Yeah, actually - because PowerShell's not necessarily a development language - normally whenever a software developer talks about testing, it's always probably going to be unit testing. Because they write code, they just test what the code does - not the actual application. When you're talking about more of the devops world, in the sysadmin infrastructure side of things - that's when Pester comes in - where it will not only unit test the code, which doesn't change anything in the infrastructure - it doesn't even run on the infrastructure. But it's also able to check - when the code runs, Pester can actually run the PowerShell code, check the code, make sure it looks good. If it does, or if it doesn't - then execute that script, that code - which then will go out and build a virtual machine, set up a container, or do whatever it needs to do. And then after it does that, it will wait, and then test again. Did it actually create that file, did it create the server with the right name? Did it provision this and this and this? Did it actually do all those things? And depending on how crazy you want to get with automation, there's many different ways out there that will not only bring up all the infrastructure, do the test, and then tear it all down. That's when you kind of get into the continuous integration, continuous deployment pipeline paradigm thing.

Len: And am I right, that you became a convert to Test-Driven Development at a certain point, after not really necessarily believing it to begin with?

Adam: Mmm hmm.

Len: Okay. Can you explain a little bit about your journey towards that, and what Test-Driven Development is? I've interviewed a couple of people about that, and people get very worked up.

Adam: I wouldn't say that I'm necessarily a convert. Whenever I started with Pester, in just testing in general, I was - I kind of did cowboy coding. Where it was essentially - you just, we would write whatever you needed to write, let it go. If it doesn't throw an error, or if anything doesn't blow up - it's fine, just keep going - because we needed to go fast.

It wasn't until I was able to start writing Pester tests, with my infrastructure code, that I started to truly trust the code more. So, whenever you're working at the previous job I had, we were working with - I don't know? It was almost 100,000 lines of just PowerShell code that did anything infrastructure automation-wise. And what would happen is - just like with any piece of software, we would make one tweak. And then, we would test that individual piece, that individual function. Didn't throw an error.

Okay, it looked fine. But what we didn't realize was - well, we didn't actually run all the other pieces that were dependent on it - that we had forgotten that we had written a year ago. So with Pester, we were able to really trust the code more, develop much more dependable code. Because every time we would check in the change, the Pester test would run - and we would just make sure, "Is everything green? No/Yes." And we made decisions based off of that. We were able to more freely make changes without worrying about if we were breaking something or not.

So I was a convert, not necessarily to TDD - because I tried the pure TDD approach, and I think it's - I can't say this for sure, but I think it's going to be a lot easier for a peer software developer to do TDD, because when you're doing infrastructure automation, you can't have that infrastructure beforehand. You have to have something to run it against, to be able to actually know what the code is doing. You can run code all day, but if you're automating infrastructure, you need some kind of environment set up.

So I kind of did a hybrid approach, where I would write the rough components of whatever script or code that I was doing, and run the Pester test against it. And then if everything is good, I would just keep adding on additional functionality. That's not truly TDD - but it was definitely much, much better than what we were doing at the time.

Len: Moving onto your second book, Teach Me: How to Write How-to Technical Articles that Make Money. One thing I kind of glossed over in the intro to this podcast, was that you're not just a writer - you're actually a very prolific writer, with over 1,000 articles for clients in your blog. And so you know what you're talking about when you're talking about this kind of stuff.

And one thing I wanted to quote you back at yourself, is - you wrote, "Writing for large software vendors is by far the biggest money maker. Because they know if a decision maker in a large enterprise stumbles across an article you wrote, and they end up buying a million dollar product - that a few grand they gave you to write the article is peanuts." End quote. And so for anyone listening to this who gets excited about making money writing articles like this, how do you find your way into a contract with a large software vendor to write an article for them? I know it can be quite a journey.

Adam: Yeah, so I started doing freelance writing for content marketing purposes five years - no, it's probably three or four years ago. And I started simply by blogging. I built up a portfolio through my blog, just writing for myself. Not getting paid anything at all. Just trying my best to put some words on the screen, so that people could see - hey, when I do ask a software vendor or a media publication or a magazine -

And you're, at the time, you're really not known. You're just a Joe coming off the street. I'd say, "Look, here's all these articles that I've written. What do you think of my writing style?" And nine times out of ten - it's been my experience at least, they'd be like, "Okay yes, we want technical how-to articles. Because those are great for content marketing purposes." And I got my start by slowly building up a client base. So I got one, got another. That led to another.

And eventually, what happens - inadvertently, what happened was that I was writing for so many places, and my name kind of got out in so many different areas - that I spread myself out so much that people started hearing, "Hey, I hear you write-- I saw this article you wrote on CIO," or, "I saw this piece that you wrote on, in this magazine," or something like that. And it just kind of snowballed itself. Not necessarily purposely.

But if you just constantly add different sites, that's one thing I talk about a lot in the book, is really trying to spread yourself out as much as possible. Because you're not only getting more work and getting paid for it, but you're also getting lots more exposure. That way you don't have to constantly start grabbing your own work all over again. You just - eventually you start kind of having people that, "Yeah, I heard about you." And they email you, "Hey, can you write this piece?" And it just kind of snowballs from there.

Len: And you've got some really detailed experiences that you go into in the book about negotiating - for example, and what the limits are of negotiation. So when someone approaches you, "We'd like you to write an article," they might say, "How much?" Or, they might give you a price, or you might get to say how much you want. What's your experience with negotiating? Do people have a kind of upper limit when they approach you asking you for an article?

Adam: What normally happens in the negotiating phase is - that's one of the reasons why I wanted to get detailed in the book. Because whenever I first started, I had no idea what you would get paid. You go on Reddit and see all these freelance writing sites that, "I'm getting paid 5 cents a word," or "I'm getting paid a quarter a word," or something like that. And what a lot of these places - I've learned that what they really don't tell you is, the deep technical articles about IT, software development, if you're an expert in some kind of technical field - that's very, very valuable to these companies. Because you can talk directly to their customers.

So there's a few different types of clients that I had, but just referring to just software vendors - they have content marketing teams out there and are constantly looking for quote unquote "influencers," or freelance writers that can write content that can speak directly to their audience.

And what I find is - a lot of people don't even realize how much knowledge they have, and how valuable that is in their head to a software vendor. If you can write - it takes a little bit of work to get up to write a really nice, comprehensive, quality article. But if you can get to the point to where you can do that - that's one thing that I really wanted to point out, was the prices. Because whene I first started, I didn't know. And luckily I knew somebody that was a mentor of mine, who was doing a lot of writing.

And I said, "Well, how much do you get paid for that?" And he would actually tell me. "Well, I got paid $500." Or, "I got paid $1,000 for this." I'm like, "You got paid for a white paper? You got paid $2,000 or something?" It's like, "Yeah, I got - it was $2,000," or whatever it was. It was way, way higher than what I had read. Because what I was reading was just general freelance writing. I didn't understand that the technical details - if you can take that technical knowledge in your head and communicate that with an audience, that is hugely valuable.

Len: You've got some advice about that as well. One piece of which is, "Don't write lists or just sets of instructions." You need to give a framework to a technical article when you're writing it.

Adam: Yeah, a lot of people, a lot of new writers - they will try to just write documentation. They don't know the difference between documentation and a great web article. Way different format. That's one thing that I - on Adam The Automator, I don't know if you've seen that I've recently brought on guest authors. They can apply, and they go through the publishing process, I do the editing - and you see a lot of different guest authors on there.

And that's one thing that I have done, is I've kind of been the coach around that. I've coached them on how to - provide them lots of feedback on how to write better, don't just say, "Step 1, do this, Step 2, do this Step 3, do this." That's boring. The reader wants to not only learn something, they want to come away with it. But they want to be entertained, they want to be engaged. They don't want to be bored to tears. And that's one thing that I really, really try to teach people in that book - and also the guest authors on my blog - s that you have to tell a story. You have to fill in the gaps. You can't be black and white, binary - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You have to put in pictures, graphics, images, infographics, tables. Spice it up, get some variety in there. And really - just make it entertaining for the reader, and also bring them away - have them come away with something that they learned, and entertain them in the process.

Len: I just looked this up. For anyone interested in writing for Adam's site, if you go to adamtheautomator.com/friends, you'll find all the information you need there.

The last question I have about that actually is - this has come up once or twice already in this interview, but impostor syndrome and the problem - I mean we all commonly have, where we sort of underestimate the value of the knowledge that we have. And often we forget that like everything you know, you had to learn at some point - and there's someone else out there who doesn't know it yet. And so, with everything you know, you actually have something to offer somebody.

Adam: Yeah.

Len: What advice do you have for people to get over something like impostor syndrome? Is it just like, get your voice out there and you'll start realizing - people will point out the value to you of what you've written?

Adam: I think that you have to have somewhat - it depends on what the audience is, but you have to have somewhat of a tough skin at that initial - it's that first hurdle that's always the hardest. This is something that I've tried to teach contributors with TechSnips through video, and now on Adam The Automator, through articles. A lot of people don't even start. They don't even take that very first step. Because they think, "Well, somebody's already done it." Or, "Oh, people know more than I do."

And I try to get through to them that, "Sure, there's always going to be somebody that knows more than you, that does something better than you. But there's going to be a whole lot of people that you are letting down, because they don't know what you know. You're being selfish with your knowledge to some degree, because you just think, 'Well, I'm not going to do it, because somebody's already done it before.'" And I try to come back with an almost guilt trip and think, "Well, that's kind of being selfish with your knowledge. Because look at all those junior guys, look where you were five, ten, twenty years ago or something. Those people want to know what you know. And even if people have done this before, it's about how you package the content."

"I have written over 1,000 or something, on just about every topic known to man in the PowerShell and automation world. I know that I'm not the smartest person, and I know that I have hit on topics multiple times. But I've hit on those same topics and packaged them a little bit differently. I kind of wrap a different story around them, and make them my own. Because you are not - you can only tell your story in the way that you explain it. Even though Joe Schmoe over here may be this technical expert that knows everything. And when he writes about it, he writes it in 1, 2, 3, 4 - right?"

"And it's just so boring as hell, that you will never even - you'll just fall asleep. But if you can convey the same knowledge over here, and write a very convincing, engaging and entertaining article - sure you're talking about the same topic, but you're going to have more audience than him. Because you are showing - people like to hear your unique and personal perspective, and get some kind of entertainment out of whatever knowledge that you are trying to convey."

Len: Thanks very much for sharing that, and I hope anyone listening who's been thinking about taking the leap to writing, takes that to heart. You do know something, and you do know enough. And, yeah - just try and make it interesting. And you'll get better over time as well, is another important lesson.

Adam: Yeah, just start typing, that's all there is to it. I mean, I looked back at some of blog articles I did, they are horrendous. But it's where I got my start. You become just more comfortable, just start typing about anything that interests you.

Len: Moving onto the last part of the interview, about your books. Before we actually talk about Leanpub, I believe it's a good opportunity to do some, I think they call it "log rolling" in some circles. But you've got a book coming out from No Starch Press, called PowerShell For Sysadmins and if you just want to give that a little bit of a plug -

Adam: Yeah, so that was my - I started out doing ebooks, and now I decided to do my first published print book through No Starch Press. Like I said, it's called PowerShell for Sysadmins, and it's essentially a guide for IT professional system administrators, that may not be familiar enough with PowerShell and automation and how to do all the cool things around that area. And also for people that may have been using PowerShell, that may not realize all the power that it can do - to give them some more ideas on how to better automate some things in their environment.

Len: And so it's coming out in print soon?

Adam: Yes. My publisher said it should go to the printer next month. I don't know how soon it's going to be until it's actually out at bookstores.

Len: Okay, we'll make sure to have a link to it in the transcription for this podcast.

And so you've written a couple of books on Leanpub. I'm curious, I feel a bit bad about not knowing this for sure, but did you publish one or both of them in progress?

Adam: Yes - that is a big, that's a big reason why I chose Leanpub. Because I'm the type of person where - if I have an idea, I have to start it. I want to start immediately, or I'll just - I'll lose interest, and I won't even start. And I found that if I start and offer it - get a few chapters done, I can get a few chapters done in a few days. And then tweet that out with my followers and say, "This book is coming out," and make it available, and they pay for it - then I'm on the hook to actually get it done.

So I use that to my advantage. That forces me to do more - instead of just going off my ADHD self, and going off to another project. So that really makes me accountable when I make it available, and I have some great people that will buy it before it's actually done. That way it forces me to see it to completion.

Len: And you're very straightforward in your books. You have sections at the beginning where you ask for feedback from your readers. I think specifically, you direct them to the "Email the Author" link that we provide to people on their landing page for their Leanpub books. Did you get feedback that way?

Adam: Yeah. I've gotten some feedback that way. I think the majority of the people that buy the book know me on Twitter, because I'm pretty prevalent on Twitter. So I put in there, they can reach me on Twitter too. So there's been a lot of people that went through the "Email the Author" link. But there's probably, there has been more that have actually reached out to me on Twitter and given me feedback that way.

Len: That's really fantastic. This was one of the sort of basic ideas behind creating Leanpub in the first place - that getting things out there actually helps solve one of the biggest problems with completing books, which is motivation.

Adam: Yes.

Len: It's exciting to have an audience, and it's also daunting. But it's different having an audience than it is having an editor badgering you. And like, editors are great, editors badgering you is great. But having actual readers out there waiting, "When's the next chapter coming out? I need to learn this so I can complete my project," or something like that, can really be the best kind of motivation. Because you know as soon as you hit publish and you announce that the new version's out, there's going to be people reading it.

And then the feedback thing, it creates a bit of a feedback loop. Where like, if someone gives you some feedback, and then you update the book with their feedback, then they get excited about that. And they know that if they give you some advice, or - even something as simple as fixing a typo, or like, "You should think about having a chapter on this" - actually it's really exciting to readers, and motivating to readers to be participating that way.

Adam: I've actually taken that a step further. In one of the books that I am writing now, PowerShell Tips To Write By, that's another one you didn't mention, on Leanpub - I actually polled my audience, and said, "Give me tips on how to better, how to write a better PowerShell." What I've been doing is, the tips that I've been getting - I will credit everybody by their Reddit username, their Twitter username. And making a community effort to bring them in to the writing process.

Because I've gotten so many different tips and tricks and things that I have put in there, and I've specifically credited them, and I think that they really liked that. Because they feel like, "Well, it's not just Adam writing the book; I contributed some to that." And it's been a really great project. It's been one of my more recent ones that I'm working on now.

Len: Thanks very much for highlighting that. The last question I always like to ask on this podcast is, if there was one thing we could build for you on Leanpub, or one thing we could fix for you that's been bugging you - what would you ask us to do?

Adam: It would be - even though Leanpub is a great platform, I love the GitHub integration that I've been using and the Markdown and Markua format. What I really wish would happen is - to have some kind of hybrid between personal publishing and professional publishing. Having maybe an available, "You want to have a professional editor? Here you go. We'll hand it over to this team of editors." Or, "You wanted to have a copywriter or anybody that can - or a copy editor that can help you with it," that would be very nice to have - an all-in-one kind of package of having an option where, "If you don't want to just do all this on your own, maybe after you're done with the book, okay, here's an option to ship this off to a professional. We already have editors on staff or contractors or whoever." And then they can actually go through the process and tweak it and hone it, and make it better and update your book for you, or given you feedback on that sort of thing. That's one thing that I've kind of struggled with.

Because I'm actually struggling with that now, because I wrote the Pester book on Leanpub, and now No Starch Press wants to publish it. But I gave it to them knowing that it's not the - in my opinion, and in their opinion too - it's not the best writing, because it was pretty much a stream of consciousness - and the majority of that, while I was in the trenches, doing that. And now I'm having to go back, and I'm going to have to rewrite a ton of stuff - because I just didn't know any better at the time on how to write a quote unquote, "proper book."

Leanpub allowed me to get my ideas out there quickly, write the book. And the book has been very popular, from my standards. But I'm going to have to go back and do a lot of editing and copy editing and all kinds of other restructuring to actually get a publisher to pick it up.

Len: Specifically on that note, and thank you very much for the suggestion - we've had people ask versions of that before, and it's something we have thought about. One thing we do have now, is we have this advertising feature called The Shelf, where you can actually use unpaid royalties to pay for advertising. Would that be something that would be attractive? Would be the ability to use unpaid royalties that you've actually earned from your book publishing it in progress, to then put towards some kind of third party service like editing, or something like that?

Adam: I personally would like an all-in-one thing. I've hired editors on my own, but you have to go through a screening process. And hiring people on UpWork, I've done that. It would be really nice if Leanpub could say, "Here's this group of approved contractors." Give them the Leanpub seal of approval. "Yes, they have worked with our platform. They know how to work in GitHub or Markua. They know how to do things in Leanpub."

That's one thing that Pluralsight actually has just been starting recently, of Pluralsight-approved editors. They're actually doing some of the editing now. So they're kind of taking on the burden of that. And it would be really nice to have that in the Leanpub world, where they know how to use the platform. Rather than me teaching them, "Okay, this is GitHub, this is Markdown, this is Markua. This is not this other Markdown flavor." It would be really nice to have other professionals, editors especially out there, that know the Leanpub way of doing things. Where you can hand it off, say, "Here's this book, please help me make this book better."

Len: Okay, thanks very much for that suggestion. That's really helpful, and it's something that we'll definitely consider doing.

And Adam - thank you very much for taking the time out of your day to do this interview, and thanks for being a Leanpub author.

Adam: No problem. Thanks for the platform.

Len: Thanks very much.

And as always, thanks to all of you for listening to this episode of the Frontmatter Podcast. If you like what you heard, please rate and review it wherever you found it. And if you'd like to try being a Leanpub author yourself, please go to our website at leanpub.com. Thanks.