52: Balancing Engineering Management, Side Hustles, and Porsches with Kelly Vaughn

Robbie Wagner: [00:09] Hey, everybody. Welcome to another Whiskey Web and Whatnot with myself, Robert William Wagner, and my cohost as always Charles William Carpenter III.

Chuck Carpenter: [00:21] Sponsored by Porsche Motor Cars North America.

Robbie Wagner: [00:26] Yeah. With our guest today, Kelly Vaughn. How's it going?

Kelly Vaughn: [00:30] Kelly, am I supposed to give you my full name as well, or can I just stick with Kelly Vaughn?

Chuck Carpenter: [00:34] If you want.

Robbie Wagner: [00:35] You can. It's very on-brand to do so.

Kelly Vaughn: [00:38] My full name is Kelly Ann Vaughn.

Robbie Wagner: [00:40] Nice.

Kelly Vaughn: [00:42] Really sure, we added three letters, but.

Chuck Carpenter: [00:45] You know, still. It's part of the motif.

Robbie Wagner: [00:47] Yeah.

Kelly Vaughn: [00:47] Right, right. But, hey, I'm doing well.

Robbie Wagner: [00:50] Yeah Preston Sego III was another one. That was fun. But, yeah, most people don't have super long names with tons of IIIs at the end.

Chuck Carpenter: [01:01] It's true.

Kelly Vaughn: [01:01] No, I would tell you my mom's maiden name because it's really long, but then I'd be giving away part of my password, so.

Robbie Wagner: [01:08] Yeah. Then you have to kill us.

Chuck Carpenter: [01:12] Yeah. It's like that name. One, two, three. Very, very secure.

Kelly Vaughn: [01:17] It's Hunter 2. Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [01:20] Nice.

Chuck Carpenter: [01:21] Perfect. Well, Kelly, if you want to tell everybody a little bit about yourself before we get started on the whiskey.

Kelly Vaughn: [01:28] Yeah, absolutely. So I am Kelly Vaughn. I have been a software engineer for most of my life, been an engineering leader for less than most of my life. I'm currently an engineering manager at a video intelligence startup called Spot AI. Prior to this, I ran an agency for four and a half years, and I co-founded a saas company and did that for like nine months and decided to join the quote, unquote, real working world for a minute to see what it's like to get a steady paycheck for the first time in my life. So here we are today. I'm still consulting on the side and recording podcasts and talking about my Porsche and drinking whiskey.

Robbie Wagner: [02:06] Nice.

Chuck Carpenter: [02:06] You should separate those activities usually, but maybe it's the driving of Porsche and the whiskey. Yeah, you could talk about it all the time. So, Robbie, do you want to talk about today's whiskey? I usually steal that thunder from you, but.

Robbie Wagner: [02:20] Sure, we're all thrown off because you're doing it backwards. But yeah. Today we have the Barrel Craft Spirits Gray Label Dovetail 15. And we had tried the Dovetail not Gray Label before and really liked it. So we got this one thinking it could be even better, but we'll see. It is finished in Rum, Port and Dunn Vineyards Cabernet Barrels. Distilled in Indiana, Tennessee, and Canada. And the whiskeys are aged up to 20 years, and it is 131.54 proof. Are they all the same?

Kelly Vaughn: [302:52] Yes.

Robbie Wagner: [02:53] Yeah they are. Okay.

Chuck Carpenter: [02:54] Yeah, they are. Yeah, because I'm sure because it's a blend, they can kind of control the proofing and whatever else across multiple.

Robbie Wagner: [03:01] Weren't they different before, though, with the not gray one or am I remembering wrong?

Chuck Carpenter: [03:05] It might be because it could be, like, different releases or something, too. Because I think you got it, Dovetail 15. I don't know if that has nothing to do with the age statement. So I'm guessing it's, like, our 15th release.

Robbie Wagner: [03:15] I think it's the age statement, actually. I think it's, like, minimum of 15 years old.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:21] So 15 up to 20 years. That's interesting.

Robbie Wagner: [03:23] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:24] It doesn't exactly say.

Robbie Wagner: [03:25] It said that somewhere, I think.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:26] Yeah. Well, it does say it's a limited and rare release. Whatever they want that.

Robbie Wagner: [03:30] It has a fancy cap that I am intimidated by.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:34] Yeah. So I already pre-opened mine.

Kelly Vaughn: [03:37] I should have thought of this beforehand.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:38] Yes. I always pre-open because it could be on air snafus, but there we go.

Kelly Vaughn: [03:45] Beautiful.

Robbie Wagner: [03:46] Nice.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:47] Yeah. This is kind of, like, metal and heavy. Nice.

Kelly Vaughn: [03:51] It is. Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [03:52] I'm impressed. Okay. Although, at this proof, I do kind of wish I had brought a little, like, maybe some drops of water or something.

Kelly Vaughn: [04:02] I was just thinking that did not grab anything to cut it, and I am stuck to my roadcaster now, so.

Chuck Carpenter: [04:10] There it is. That's it. Strap in. Kelly. Let's see here. I'm intrigued, though, because the fact that it's finished in, like, Rum, Port and Cabernet Barrels okay. So it's like a mix there. So I'm thinking that might take a little edge off for us. I don't know. And I feel like I'm influenced, but I smell a little bit of wine.

Robbie Wagner: [04:31] Yeah. Very fruity.

Kelly Vaughn: [04:33] Oh yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [04:33] Some cherries in there, maybe.

Chuck Carpenter: [04:35] Yeah. All right. Got a prime the palate here. Yeah. Cherry. Lots of cherry. And on that one first one, it's got a little burn, but not so bad that I would expect.

Kelly Vaughn: [04:45] It's really not bad.

Robbie Wagner: [04:46] Yeah.

Kelly Vaughn: [04:47] Did you know that Dovetail is also a color of gray from Sherwin Williams?

Robbie Wagner: [04:52] I did not.

Chuck Carpenter: [04:53] I didn't.

Kelly Vaughn: [04:54] It's kind of close to the bottle label, so.

Chuck Carpenter: [04:57] That's interesting. I did not know that.

Kelly Vaughn: [05:00] Kind of in the sense that they're both gray.

Chuck Carpenter: [05:02] So did you recently do some home painting?

Kelly Vaughn: [05:04] No, I was Googling the bottle again and realized that was one of the autocomplete suggestions. I'm like, huh, hey.

Chuck Carpenter: [05:13] Yeah, see, I love fun facts like that. Yeah. I'm getting a little, like, dark chocolate cherry in this for me. Almost like those cherry cordials. I used to love those as a kid.

Robbie Wagner: [05:25] Oh, yeah?

Chuck Carpenter: [05:28] Yeah. But, like, with a dark chocolate. I like it. So I'm not sure if you've listened before, Kelly, but it's tradition around here for us to rate the whiskey based on a tentacle scale. So one through eight, because we're very clever. I know we've started grouping them, as in, like, oh, this is a blended whiskey, or this is bourbon, rye, Scotch, whatever. We've been, like, rating them in contrast to others of the same type. You're certainly not required to do anything of that nature or really anything else. There are no rules. Just one through eight. And then I consider one is like, this is horrible, and never have it again. And eight, as in, like, wow, this is amazing. I should never buy anything else and everything in between. Kind of I guess four is the middle. I think this one's pretty expensive, right? Is it pretty pricey? Yeah. So given that it's pretty rare, you hang on to it to share with special friends or special occasions or something else. Probably drink it a couple of times a year. Given that, I don't know why I have a problem with price points, but.

Robbie Wagner: [06:28] Yeah, why does it matter?

Chuck Carpenter:[06:29] For me.

Robbie Wagner: [06:31] That's true. Do you like it or not?

Chuck Carpenter: [06:32] No, I like it a lot. I'm going to give it a seven. I like it a lot. I don't know that I would never buy anything else again. I think that's probably like prohibitive to an eight, but I'm like very impressed at this proof.

Robbie Wagner: [06:44] Yeah. I think we gave the last one a seven, and I'm not really thinking this is I don't know what an eight would be. Have we done an eight at all? I'm afraid to do eight.

Chuck Carpenter: [06:53] We haven't.

Robbie Wagner: [06:53] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [06:54] I'm afraid.

Robbie Wagner:[06:55] But I'm going to give this a 7.15 just to make it a little higher because it's basically the same. It's a little smoother, I think, from being aged longer, but the flavor profile is relatively the same.

Kelly Vaughn: [07:07] Yeah. I think on the same lines. I'd come in at a strong seven. I don't think I can give an eight because I definitely have not encountered the one that I could set everything else aside to only drink that into perpetuity.

Chuck Carpenter: [07:20] Yeah, right.

Kelly Vaughn: [07:20] I haven't found that one yet. So if anyone's interested in sponsoring this podcast and also providing some more whiskey.

Chuck Carpenter: [07:25] There you go.

Kelly Vaughn: [07:26] I'll come back on.

Robbie Wagner: [07:27] Searching for the eight.

Chuck Carpenter: [07:29] That's kind of you. Yes, we're searching for the eight. If anybody wants to provide the eight, we're happy to review it with our highly intuitive palettes. So there's that.

Kelly Vaughn: [07:38] I have some friends who are really going to enjoy this one.

Robbie Wagner: [07:41] Nice.

Chuck Carpenter:[07:41] Yeah. I had a 136 proof one time, and it was George Stag Junior. And so it was a bourbon, but it was called the hazmat bottle because it was too high proof to go onto an airplane. Like there's a certain, and that one was painful. It was like just very painful. That's one where I actually had to put an ice ball in it because I just yak. A little water wasn't even going to be enough. This is nice. This is like pleasant. I was a little afraid.

Robbie Wagner: [08:12] Yeah, that extra. Like three and a half proof or whatever gets you.

Chuck Carpenter:[08:18] Is that the difference?

Robbie Wagner: [08:19] I don't know. It's not much.

Chuck Carpenter: [08:20] The other one was 120-something.

Robbie Wagner: [08:22] No, I mean for the one you were talking about.

Chuck Carpenter: [08:25] Oh, right. Yeah. I think that and I think that this just gets a little smoother from the finishing because that one was definitely not finished. It was just straight stag. Barrell-proof stag. That's how they say it. The commercials or whatever else for the bottles it's always in an accident like this. It's just Stag Junior.

Kelly Vaughn: [08:42] It's how they all talk.

Chuck Carpenter: [08:43] Yeah. I was in Kentucky recently, so I might be regressing.

Robbie Wagner: [08:47] Yeah, it doesn't come out often.

Kelly Vaughn: [08:49] I mean, I live in Georgia, not that I'm from here, but I hear it enough in the surrounding area.

Chuck Carpenter: [08:55] Right. So it wasn't even like a thing for you at all for me to pull into that you're like, okay, yeah.

Kelly Vaughn: [09:00] No, I thought absolutely nothing of it.

Chuck Carpenter: [09:05] That's fair. Well, before this 131, whatever pulls us into worst gibberish, we should maybe talk a little bit about real stuff, regular things. Webbish items, weblike items.

Kelly Vaughn: [09:20] The web.

Chuck Carpenter: [09:21] Yes.

Robbie Wagner: [09:22] So maybe clarify for us. I'm skipping around the list here, Chuck, but I was looking at your LinkedIn earlier, and you have six things that say they're present. So are all of those actually still going?

Kelly Vaughn: [09:36] So I have one full-time job, and that is at Spot. I have my consultancy, which used to be an agency that is still definitely actively ongoing, but it's just like bits and pieces of me doing things. I'm no longer recording any podcasts, so I don't know if I ended those or not. I think I did, and then most everything else is, oh, I'm an advisor for multiple companies, but that's a very passive thing, technically. Still ongoing. And then the last one is Master School, which I am going to be a master of my own Master School, and that will be starting in January. So I'm going through the prep work, which I started, I think going June or something, to actually kick things off in January. So the answer is yes.

Robbie Wagner: [10:21] Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to make sure before we got into some of the details of some of those, if they were still things or if you just hadn't updated it.

Kelly Vaughn: [10:28] No, I try to keep my LinkedIn updated. I'm one of those people who actually spent the weird amount of time on LinkedIn.

Chuck Carpenter: [10:34] Interesting.

Robbie Wagner: [10:35] Hanging out with all the recruiters.

Kelly Vaughn: [10:36] Yeah. Putting, like, extra line breaks in between my sentences to really get that whole feeling going.

Robbie Wagner: [10:42] Nice.

Chuck Carpenter: [10:43] You want the audience to know there's a slight pause required here before moving on to the next great thing that you've done. Okay, so at Spot AI, you're an engineering manager in charge of, I think now it's twelve people.

Kelly Vaughn: [10:55] That's correct.

Chuck Carpenter: [10:56] Direct reports across. Yes. So all just traditional engineering manager things at that point. No hands-on keyboard necessarily for other purposes. So like career direction and performance and things like that.

Kelly Vaughn: [11:10] Yeah. I have not written production code. I've never written production code for Spot. And most of my production code that I've written has been on the consultancy side of things, just from ongoing clients that I have. Otherwise, I am 100% engineering leadership all day, every day, Monday through Sunday.

Chuck Carpenter: [11:31] So then on the agency side of things, did you sort of scale that down, and then that's just your own brand, and so you're not managing other people there.

Kelly Vaughn: [11:41] That's correct, yes. So I made an attempt to run two companies full-time at the same time and surprise, it didn't work. And I kind of dug myself into a pretty deep hole of debt with the agency because I had too many people on payroll for the number of deals that we were closing. And so, unfortunately, back at the end of March, I had to let everyone go and wind that down to just be me just so I can focus on paying that debt off, which is why I'm still consulting.

Chuck Carpenter: [12:10] Lessons learned. Okay, so then you were at one time also running teams within your agency, right?

Kelly Vaughn: [12:17] Yes. So the agency had at any given time between 20 and 25 people globally.

Chuck Carpenter: [12:22] Nice. So in terms of a management role, how would you say that leading teams in the agency and leading teams within a regular, like, say, saas product or whatever, like more of the company corporate side of things, what are the differences there that you experienced?

Kelly Vaughn: [12:42] I think one of the biggest differences is, I mean, think of the structure of work at an agency. It's service-based, it's usually ad hoc, it's always changing, and you tend to work with the same people at the same time, just like in various projects as you continue on. Depending on how large the agency is, you might have a project manager, hopefully, who is helping you just kind of like steer the ship and be that client communicator. I guess on the saas product side. You're more focused on what it is that you're working on. So at least at Spot that's how we have things structured. So we currently have two individual teams of five and seven engineers, and they focus on their very specific areas that they're working on, but they have the liaison of a product manager who is really communicating with the customers to guide the product direction where you really don't have that at the agency side of things. So that was something I definitely had to learn because the speed at which you work at an agency versus a saas company is vastly different because of the way that you're working in that you're working with multiple clients directly versus having any number of customers that has kind of like gated by-product keeping you from having just like constantly push things out. Does that make sense?

Chuck Carpenter: [13:58] Yeah, it definitely does. I think that your customer in that sense at a very high level, is different in that you have a direct line through a gatekeeper at a saas company to your users and that sort of feedback is in that way. But in the agency side, your connection to that is probably a few levels different, and your actual customer's basically whomever is hiring you to complete a project.

Kelly Vaughn: [14:25] Exactly. And on the management side of things, the prioritization is definitely different in terms of how your prioritizing works for your engineers. I would say on the agency side of things, working in two weeks sprints was a long sprint. It was much easier to work in a one-week sprint in terms of how fast things would move and how many just, like random support requests you'd get along the line like, this is broken, or when the feedback comes in. There's no real schedule to a lot of this. On the saas side, you're able to really structure the way that you're managing your engineers to a much higher degree and really help to look at not only the next two weeks for your sprint, but the next quarter, the next six months, the next twelve months, and plan backwards. You can't do that in an agency space unless you have some very long, ongoing clients that you know exactly what's going to happen. There's a different way that you have to approach planning and prioritization. In the agency space because it's all up in the air. Anything can happen. At least, you know, for the most part, when it comes to a product, you know you're going to continue to be working and supporting that product as you continue on with the company.

Chuck Carpenter: [15:37] Yeah. And I think that predictability also highly affects another facet of, like, software engineering and for teams, in that, I had a rhythm and plans and all these things around how to level up and guide engineers within a corporate structure. But when you're in a more unpredictable structure and also you're not sure exactly the kind of work that one of your engineers could be doing through the year, it's hard to really have any metrics for improvement and career paths and things like that. That's, like, one of the biggest challenges I believe I've had.

Kelly Vaughn: [16:14] Yeah, I would definitely agree with that.

Chuck Carpenter: [16:15] Yeah. Any tips or feedback or anything around that?

Kelly Vaughn: [16:20] I think you can apply KPIs to any role. You can apply metrics to measure success in any role. I think what's important to remember is when you're looking for metrics for growth, you need to look beyond, just the quantitative metrics and really find a way to measure the qualitative metrics as well. So it goes beyond how fast are you shipping things and are you introducing bugs and the quality of code, but also how complex is your work getting? Are you able to support other engineers on your team? How well are you peer programming with others and looking for these kinds of opportunities and putting these opportunities in front of engineers who want to continue to level up is really what helps drive growth at an agency? As you said, it's much easier to provide these opportunities at a product-based company because you know what's coming down the pipeline. Allegedly.

Chuck Carpenter: [17:11] Yeah. That.

Robbie Wagner: [17:12] We have a lot of trouble figuring this out at our own agency of, like, people want to have a road map of, if I hit these things, can I get more money or more titles or whatever. And it's like we just kind of know who's doing well so we know when you can be promoted and stuff. And we don't have that great list of like it's hard. It's hard to nail it all down at an agency.

Kelly Vaughn: [17:32] Yeah, it is. I would say there's definitely career mapping and engineering matrix or matrices that exist in the agency space. So building that out, you can still see what a success looks like at this agency, in particular for a junior engineer, mid-level engineer, senior staff, whatever you have there, and help guide based on those things. But this part of management, in general, is like, sure, you've hit all these things, but that doesn't mean that we now immediately have this opportunity to promote you or there's more to it than just, like, checking some boxes, unfortunately. And as you said, you just know for the most part.

Chuck Carpenter: [18:15] Yeah, and like I said, it's not like we have a war chest of cash sitting on the side and you just need to check the boxes and we'll give you that.

Kelly Vaughn: [18:22] Are you sure those boxes behind you aren't filled with cash?

Chuck Carpenter: [18:25] They are filled with whiskey. Actually. That's a funny story.

Kelly Vaughn: [18:28] I mean, I can be paid in whiskey too. I'm okay with that.

Chuck Carpenter: [18:32] Fair enough. Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [18:33] Well, then we have a sizable budget.

Chuck Carpenter: [18:39] Yeah, basically, we've talked about it. So we got a barrel of whiskey, and it is brand new, and we got custom stickers put on it. So we did a barrel pick. So they send you some samples, you pick which one, get it all boxed up and split into bottles, put a sticker on there. And it's for this podcast, so we can't sell it. But thus far we've been sending it out to clients and friends and whatever. So are you saying you want to be friends?

Kelly Vaughn: [19:08] I would love to be friends.

Chuck Carpenter: [19:10] We could probably make something.

Kelly Vaughn: [19:10] I've never had friends before.

Chuck Carpenter:[19:13] We could probably make something happen.

Robbie Wagner: [19:14] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [19:16] Let's see here. Okay. You ask a question, Robbie. I guess.

Robbie Wagner: [19:20] Oh, where are we at?

Chuck Carpenter: [19:21] Let's see. When you jump around, and we keep drinking, this doesn't work.

Robbie Wagner: [19:26] With the teams that you're managing. I think it said they were globally distributed. How globally is it? Like, do you have a lot of challenges with time zones and keeping in sync with things?

Kelly Vaughn: [19:36] Oh, yes. My team span from California to India. So I'm in Atlanta, so I am GMT-4. So 3 hours back in ten and a half hours ahead. Is it a challenge? Absolutely. When it comes to like scrum, and you're wanting to do daily standups, it's not going to happen. You just have to accept that this is not a structure that's going to work and you need to make do with what you can. So our engineer in India will have to work some late hours, and he was doing this before I joined. So I don't really have a solution to that until we can hire more in Europe and split into two teams so we can have more geographically distributed teams as opposed to engineers and help structure that a little bit more. But yeah, I wake up and my first 3 hours are just like focus time. I can do what I need to do. We do not have very many team members who are actually based on the East Coast and vast majority on the West Coast. So once 11:00 a.m hits, like, I am done being productive in the focus time way until like 6:00 p.m. Because then it's just literally meetings from there on out.

Chuck Carpenter: [20:48] Right. Yeah. Don't over-glamorize management. Okay? Tell people about all the meetings, and they're going to start applying for all these positions. It will be just too much.

Kelly Vaughn: [20:59] You get to talk to people all day long, and then you get to come on and record podcasts and talk for longer.

Chuck Carpenter: [21:06] Yeah, exactly.

Kelly Vaughn: [21:07] Talk to your boss afterwards. It's great. Good conversation.

Chuck Carpenter: [21:12] Yeah, I've had similar experiences and tried a lot of different models, and it's like, yeah, there really is no one size fits all. You'll have some teams where like an asynchronous model works really great and people are just updating, and you can expect like. Oh. We have all the updates by this certain time, and everybody's participating, and they're happy with that, and they're still productive, and you have it like. Oh well, we have a team where there's like a couple of people who just refused to do this thing, and so now we need to maybe shift the model and interesting.

Kelly Vaughn: [21:42] So I mentioned I have two teams reporting to me. The second team is new to me. I recently took over managing this team last week, and the two teams could not be more different in terms of personality. So what I'm doing to manage Team A is not going to be what I need to do to manage Team B. And so finding out those differences and finding out the personality kind of like quirks and working around that is really what I've been focusing on as of late. So I can get caught up to speed and make sure that they get what they need in the structure that they need it, as opposed to just trying to fit my methodology of engineering management into what they need because it's not.

Chuck Carpenter: [22:24] Yeah, that's reasonable. Okay, favorite leadership book.

Kelly Vaughn: [22:28] First 90 Days.

Chuck Carpenter: [22:30] Nice. That's a good one.

Kelly Vaughn: [22:31] Easy. I rave about that book, and the sad thing is I have not finished it yet, and I've gotten so many people to buy that book. I've bought it for other people, and I myself have not finished the book yet, and I just started my third First 90 Days cycle over again last week. So here's my chance to finish it this time.

Chuck Carpenter:[22:50] Exactly.

Kelly Vaughn: [22:50] But yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [22:51] You got to know what to do in the last 30 days. What are you going to do?

Kelly Vaughn: [22:54] Exactly? Right now I'm just kind of flailing. So we'll see how it goes. Most of these books back here, it's the perfect mix of business and romance. So it's a very confusing bookshelf for most people.

Chuck Carpenter: [23:05] That's like Robbie's, too. That's so weird. You guys can talk about favorites.

Robbie Wagner: [23:09] No, I mean, it really is.

Kelly Vaughn: [23:11] We're going to do a podcast on Acotar.

Robbie Wagner: [23:13] My wife has a ton of she does, like, Book of the Month club, and so we have a ton of various romance and thrillers and a whole bunch of stuff. And I have five books total. We have this very full bookshelf. I have a few about parenting that I still haven't read, and then I have like.

Chuck Carpenter: [23:32] Now it doesn't matter.

Robbie Wagner: [23:33] Like a couple of pleasure books and yeah, I haven't read any of them. Really? I just don't have the time.

Kelly Vaughn: [23:38] My husband's bookshelf is all business books, and he's kind of taken most of the business books and put them on his because it looks nice. It's all lined up and then what I call financial thrillers.

Chuck Carpenter: [23:50] Thrillers?

Kelly Vaughn: [23:51] Just like real-life stories of, like, Barbarians at the Gate, like The Fall of Enron and like, so many fascinating stories.

Chuck Carpenter: [23:59] Like The Big Short, that kind of thing.

Kelly Vaughn: [24:01] Michael Lewis. Yeah. All of his books are over there. If they're financial related. Any of the non-financial Michael Lewis books are behind me. Like The Premonition. Really, really good book. I'm a big fan of Michael Lewis.

Chuck Carpenter: [24:12] Well, I remember reading for fun. I barely get to read for business purposes.

Robbie Wagner: [24:18] Yeah. Clients just want things.

Chuck Carpenter: [24:20] Yeah, it was a little of that, too. Overbooking yourself, two kids, all that kind of fun stuff.

Kelly Vaughn: [24:26] I definitely read over 100 books this year.

Chuck Carpenter: [24:28] Wow, I am impressed. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Have you read that? Comes in comic form, too.

Kelly Vaughn: [24:34] No, I'm currently reading the Spanish Love Deception.

Chuck Carpenter: [24:36] Okay.

Kelly Vaughn: [24:38] Same kind of topic, right?

Chuck Carpenter: [24:39] Yeah, basically for all our listeners, that will also help you. So just.

Kelly Vaughn: [24:43] Exactly.

Chuck Carpenter: [24:43] Buy it now.

Kelly Vaughn: [24:45] I'm currently at 118.

Robbie Wagner: [24:46] Wow, that's solid.

Chuck Carpenter: [24:48] I'm currently at two.

Kelly Vaughn: [24:50] Okay. Hey, it's more than one.

Robbie Wagner: [24:52] Yeah, I'm at zero.

Kelly Vaughn: [24:54] Okay. I can't help you.

Chuck Carpenter: [24:56] I at least own the books. They're, like, staring at me, going, Why have you ignored me? Tomorrow? Yeah, I'll get to that tomorrow.

Robbie Wagner: [25:05] Once our website is done, which will be never, I'll start reading.

Kelly Vaughn: [25:10] There's a rule, and the website cannot be done because then what do you do?

Chuck Carpenter: [25:14] Yeah, I don't know. Robbie just keeps trying it in various technologies.

Robbie Wagner: [25:18] Yeah, different frameworks.

Chuck Carpenter: [25:20] So we're like trying to do it in Astro.

Kelly Vaughn: [25:22] Oh, fun.

Robbie Wagner: [25:23] Yeah, it's fun to try to ship no, JavaScript. It's a fun game.

Kelly Vaughn: [25:27] Yeah, I rebuilt. So we took over a year to rebuild our tap room site, which was up for, like, three weeks before I had to wind things down, which anecdotally now I'm like, don't relaunch your own agency site.

Chuck Carpenter: [25:41] Right.

Kelly Vaughn: [25:42] I relaunched it at the end of March, and some people will immediately recognize what I used to build it because I spent approximately five minutes on it, just updating some colors. I haven't even renamed the hello world component from Vue.

Chuck Carpenter: [26:00] Nice. That's funny. Well, you know, hey, it seems to still be working out okay for you.

Kelly Vaughn: [26:06] Yeah, it's going just fine. I'm still getting leads from that.

Chuck Carpenter: [26:09] That's awesome. Is it so just in Vue or is it in Nuxt?

Kelly Vaughn: [26:13] It is Nuxt.

Robbie Wagner: [26:14] Nice.

Chuck Carpenter: [26:14] Yeah, very cool. Our current one is in Nuxt.

Kelly Vaughn: [26:17] I have two pages on it. One is the home page, and one is a very secret project application page. And that is it.

Robbie Wagner: [26:25] So now we all have to go try to find that secret one.

Chuck Carpenter: [26:28] Yeah, exactly. We'll see what Google's found.

Kelly Vaughn: [26:31] It's definitely not like slash new project application or anything like that. That would be far too easy.

Chuck Carpenter: [26:38] Yeah, no, that's funny. That's pretty good. All right, so you are a fan of the Porsche brand?

Kelly Vaughn: [26:47] I am.

Chuck Carpenter: [26:48] We really got to get to this.

Robbie Wagner: [26:49] You're leaving a lot of time for this stuff, but that's fine.

Chuck Carpenter: [26:53] I know. Well, we'll see. Yes. So I'm trying to remember now. You got a Cayman?

Kelly Vaughn: [27:00] Yeah, I have a 2021 Cayman S. Nice.

Chuck Carpenter: [27:03] So you do order a new one, then?

Kelly Vaughn: [27:06] No, I have a Taycan on order. I'm still waiting on the allocation for it. My husband turned me into a car person, and he loves to say that this is one of his biggest achievements in life, is turning his wife into a Porsche girl because he became a Porsche fan by playing the Need for Speed Porsche game when he was a kid, and it's just grown from there. So we did the Porsche subscription app for a little while. So we subscribed to a Boxster, and then we had 911 GTS, which is a lot of fun.

Chuck Carpenter: [27:38] Yeah.

Kelly Vaughn: [27:40] A little beyond my budget. And so I put in the deposit for the Taycan, knowing that currently, it's looking like December, January for delivery date. So not bad.

Chuck Carpenter: [27:50] Okay.

Kelly Vaughn: [27:50] We do a lot of road trips, and we're both working remotely. It's like, let's get a car that we're going to enjoy traveling in. And I don't know if that's a Taycan. It's comfortable, but I don't want to deal with the EV piece of that. So we're like, well, the Cayman would be a good option. So we ended up finding one at our local dealership that was CPO, so we ended up buying that. And my husband still has a 911 on order.

Chuck Carpenter: [28:17] Oh, my.

Kelly Vaughn: [28:17] But it is a two-year wait for that. So we might end up eventually trading in the Cayman for the 911 because he also has oh, my God, what is it called? He's going to yell at me for not remembering what it's called. Lotus Emira on order.

Chuck Carpenter: [28:35] Oh, I see. Okay. Very interesting. Well, there's like he's putting a few options out there.

Kelly Vaughn: [28:40] Yeah. So his daily driver is Miata, so he loves the little guy manual transmission, which it's so hard to find, like a Porsche right now with a manual transmission. So ours is PDK, but PDK drives great anyway.

Chuck Carpenter: [28:56] Yeah, it's technically faster. But.

Kelly Vaughn: [28:59] Yeah. Especially with the speed at which I shift gears faster. But the 911 will be manual, and the Emira will be manual as well. Yeah, that's our current and future car collection for the moment.

Chuck Carpenter: [29:15] Yeah.

Kelly Vaughn: [29:16] We've gotten to the point where we have until December to pour another driveway spot so we can house three vehicles. And not put one.

Chuck Carpenter: [29:24] Very nice.

Kelly Vaughn: [29:25] In the driveway blocking things.

Chuck Carpenter: [29:26] You're speaking to a Taycan Cross, Turismo owner. I got mine delivered.

Kelly Vaughn: [29:32] Oh, nice choice.

Chuck Carpenter: [29:33] Yeah, mine was delivered last November. I can't remember the name of the blue. It's like the.

Kelly Vaughn: [29:40] The really bright one.

Chuck Carpenter: [29:41] Yeah, it's kind of bright, but it depends on what lighting you're in. And then it's like the whole hot hatch kind of style.

Kelly Vaughn: [29:46] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [29:47] So, yeah, I went through about 15 different configurations.

Robbie Wagner: [29:50] No gold rims, though.

Chuck Carpenter: [29:51] Before finally landing on that color. No, no gold rims. I was going to do kind of like the.

Robbie Wagner: [29:55] They tried to do it the.

Chuck Carpenter: [29:56] Cherry metallic with the gold rims.

Kelly Vaughn: [29:58] Oh, nice.

Chuck Carpenter: [29:59] Yeah. But my wife was like. You seem like a fast and nefarious child with this car. I don't think we should do that.

Kelly Vaughn: [30:06] I really like the forest green. Currently, I have a career white metallic on mine just because I got the base model and somehow still ended up with $115,000 in options. Not in options, total. But I'm really drawn towards some of these other colors that I'm just like, you know, I have time.

Chuck Carpenter: [30:27] So tough.

Kelly Vaughn: [30:28] What's the more consulting work? I can just get some more money down.

Chuck Carpenter: [30:31] There you go.

Robbie Wagner: [30:33] Slippery slope.

Kelly Vaughn: [30:35] Oh, it always is slippery slope.

Chuck Carpenter: [30:37] Yeah. This is my 7th Porsche.

Kelly Vaughn: [30:38] Oh, really?

Chuck Carpenter: [30:39] Yeah, but my first one was in, like, 2002 or 2001. It was a pretty long time ago. It was a 68 912, and I had no money, but they were very cheap then, and so I was just like, working on it myself.

Kelly Vaughn: [30:53] Okay.

Chuck Carpenter: [30:54] And fixing that, I had a 74 914, had like a Boxster and a couple of 911s was like went to this electric I don't know, it's pretty fun.

Kelly Vaughn: [31:07] You like it?

Chuck Carpenter: [31:07] I love it. Yeah, just the torque. Once you get that torque and you can do, like, launch mode off the line with the EV versus a regular one, and then you go back to a normal combustion car, and you're like, why won't you go?

Kelly Vaughn: [31:23] Okay.

Chuck Carpenter: [31:24] Yeah. And I drove to LA to go to the Experience Center, and that wasn't bad. There was a decent amount of charging points. Stopped twice, probably added an hour to my overall drive time, but it was good.

Kelly Vaughn: [31:34] I don't know how the LA Experience Center compares to the Atlanta Experience Center, but I did PC ATL last month in Cayman S because I was like, I might as well just match what I currently drive. So much fun.

Chuck Carpenter: [31:49] Yeah. I love it. Does it have the Nurburgring, where it has just the main curve from Nuremberg, where it's like a 30-something-degree angle turn?

Kelly Vaughn: [31:59] No, I don't think so.

Chuck Carpenter: [32:00] There's this massive straight away, and then you go on this crazy angle turn. And that, to me, was like one of the big things for the LA one I know, they have, like, you go into the wet pad, and then it jerks your rear tires one way or the other.

Kelly Vaughn:[32:13] That's so much fun.

Chuck Carpenter: [32:14] Yeah, those are pretty fun. I think most things are the same.

Kelly Vaughn: [32:18] Yeah, I know. At the Atlanta location, they're basically doubling the space. They're actively building it out right now. So perhaps they're bringing in a lot of, like, a lot of historical kind of race pieces, like components into this one. So perhaps they'll be introducing it. And, of course, I was not able to do the offroad one because I was not in a tie-in. And I would not really want to take a little Cayman.

Chuck Carpenter: [32:40] No. Because mine was like a delivery experience. So like.

Kelly Vaughn: [32:46] Oh nice.

Chuck Carpenter: [32:46] I went with a friend and then we each got some drive time. And while my friend was driving, they took me in the Cayenne. Like, I didn't drive it, but they did, like, the crazy huge climbs and then the down and all the weird stuff they do. That car is so highly capable. Actually, I forgot that's one of the cars I had. I had a Cayenne for a little bit. So it was funny because I had a 911. My friend wanted to buy it, and I was like, okay, so that's when I ordered the Taikon. But I had time in between, so I just bought a Cayenne and drove that around until they delivered the other one.

Kelly Vaughn: [33:21] Especially since all you could really get for a little while with a Cayenne or Macan because that was all that was in stock.

Chuck Carpenter: [33:28] Yeah.

Kelly Vaughn: [33:29] So that's fine. I won't do the delivery experience for mine because it apparently adds months to your delivery time.

Chuck Carpenter: [33:35] Good. Yeah.

Kelly Vaughn: [33:36] And that they do two deliveries a day. So I will not get to sign up for it inside. But it's okay. I live in Atlanta.

Chuck Carpenter: [33:44] Yeah.

Kelly Vaughn: [33:45] I want to do the Stuttgart delivery experience personally. But then they have to ship it back over.

Chuck Carpenter: [33:51] Right, right. It's a very interesting setup. And then it goes on a boat. And we know how that can go.

Kelly Vaughn: [33:59] True. Yes. Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [34:01] Take a little risk there. I don't know.

Kelly Vaughn: [34:04] Yeah. No, thank you.

Chuck Carpenter: [34:05] Robbie can't speak to any of this. He drives old trucks.

Robbie Wagner: [34:08] Porsches are fine, but I don't have one.

Kelly Vaughn: [34:11] They're fine.

Robbie Wagner: [34:12] Yeah. We have a Tesla and a 1965 Scout 800. So they even out to be two normal gas cars.

Kelly Vaughn: [34:23] I was going to say yeah. I think you have like a 2012 Camry somewhere in the middle there.

Robbie Wagner: [34:29] Yeah.

Kelly Vaughn: [34:29] Perfect.

Chuck Carpenter: [34:30] That's about where it lands.

Robbie Wagner: [34:32] Perfect.

Chuck Carpenter: [34:33] Modern emissions and 20 miles per gallon.

Robbie Wagner: [34:36] Perfect.

Kelly Vaughn: [34:38] Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [34:38] The Scout just like it doesn't have catalytic converters, so it just shoots gas and stuff out the back. Like it's not environmentally friendly.

Chuck Carpenter: [34:46] Right, right. Which is an interesting thing because they're absolved of emissions. But then there's all these companies coming out trying to convert old cars to EVs, coming out with crate motors and all this stuff.

Robbie Wagner: [34:58] I'm on board.

Chuck Carpenter: [35:00] Yeah. Very interesting stuff.

Kelly Vaughn: [35:01] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [35:01] In the electric space. Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [35:02] It needs to be cheaper.

Chuck Carpenter: [35:04] Isn't that kind of the case across the board? It just needs to be cheaper. Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [35:08] With everything in life.

Chuck Carpenter: [35:11] Yeah. Everything these last couple of years is like doubled in price.

Kelly Vaughn: [35:15] Exactly.

Chuck Carpenter: [35:16] No wonder we didn't leave the house.

Kelly Vaughn: [35:19] Yeah. I am excited for the eventual 911 and 718 E to come out, though, because that will be a very good experience. That's what I originally was going to hold out for. But I am far too impatient. Before I bought the Cayman, I drove a Mazda 3. I had a Mazda 3, and then I switched to a Mazda 3 hatch, which honestly, was a mistake.

Chuck Carpenter: [35:44] It's basically the same.

Kelly Vaughn: [35:45] It was much less fun than the sedan. And the little Mazda 3 is kind of like a little fun, affordable driver's car, the hatch, you lost a lot of the joy. And I was like, okay. I feel like I'm just getting from point A to point B. And now that I have the Cayman again, I'm just like, I enjoy driving again. This is so fun. Especially after doing the Porsche experience with the Cayman. I'm like, I know exactly what this car can handle.

Chuck Carpenter: [36:08] Yeah.

Kelly Vaughn: [36:08] So now I'm just not going to get pulled over.

Chuck Carpenter: [36:10] I was going to say now you can hit up some back roads through Georgia and go on some rallies or something. Are you a member of the PCA?

Kelly Vaughn: [36:17] I am, yes.

Chuck Carpenter: [36:18] Yeah. There you go. Because they do drives and stuff, so that's fun.

Kelly Vaughn: [36:21] They do, yeah. This past weekend was Run Fest, but we joined a little too late to do that. We've done one evening out with them, and then we did a concourse at our local dealership as well. But my husband is considering getting into autocross, which they do regular autocross events as well. And there's a drive to Barbara Motorsports Park and doing a few laps around there, too, because they have a different Porsche experience, I believe. So, plenty of fun events. I've been telling my friends who have Porsches, which is not that many people like, you got to join PCA because, please join us and help us bring down the average age a little bit.

Chuck Carpenter: [37:03] Yes, there it is. That's what I was going to say. I was kind of going to allude to that, is that well, it's funny because I was a member when I lived in DC and it was a very diverse group. And now that I'm in Arizona, most of the members are quite a bit older than me. And I'm not young, so.

Kelly Vaughn: [37:20] Yeah, it highly depends on the type of event as well. There are a lot more younger people who do, like the autocross events or like the drives or the rallies that they do up to. So we have, like the North Georgia Mountains have some really nice driving roads up there. And so they recently did one that goes through some of the nice driving roads and ends at a winery up there. And I was out of town, unfortunately, so I couldn't join. But definite age difference for something like that versus the dinners on Tuesday evening.

Chuck Carpenter: [37:50] Right. And they cruise in.

Kelly Vaughn: [37:52] Yeah. We're also part of our local Mazda club as well, or Miata club in particular. And so that's actually a very diverse age group, which is pretty fun. So we've done a few different drives with them as well. And like some weird poker games that are, like, drive to various events and get a card, and at the end, whoever has the best hand gets prized or something like that. It's pretty funny.

Chuck Carpenter: [38:13] That's an old motorcycle thing, poker run. But you're also supposed to chug a beer at each place, so you go to different ones while you're driving.

Kelly Vaughn: [38:21] Yes, so we don't do that.

Chuck Carpenter: [38:23] Yeah, not a good idea on motorcycles in particular, but that is an old motorcycle thing. It's called a poker run. Fun fact.

Kelly Vaughn: [38:30] Fun.

Chuck Carpenter: [38:30] Now, I wonder, when does your husband trade in the Miata for an Aircooled Porsche? When does he go that direction?

Kelly Vaughn: [38:37] So he is currently trying to figure out if he's going to trade in the Miata for the Emira. That's his big question. Because we don't have room for three cars. We definitely don't have room for four cars.

Chuck Carpenter: [38:49] We've seen those lifts, right? People do in their garages, get the lift, and then.

Kelly Vaughn: [38:54] Yeah, I've seen one of those where an ex my friend dated his dad had to lower his Aston Martin from the lift so we can take it for a drive. And I'm like, yeah, I don't know if I'm going to put a Miata up there.

Chuck Carpenter: [39:07] Right, that's fair.

Kelly Vaughn: [39:09] I feel like I'm not the target audience for this yet.

Chuck Carpenter: [39:11] Yeah, that's fair. You get a Lotus, then you're like, Maybe I put the Lotus up there.

Kelly Vaughn: [39:17] Yes. And honestly, the Lotus is more affordable than the 911.

Chuck Carpenter: [39:20] It's true.

Kelly Vaughn: [39:21] It's smaller body than the Evora, and it's going to be a fun little car to drive as soon as we can eventually see one in person since supply chain issues have caused delays on that side too.

Chuck Carpenter: [39:33] Yeah, I've been on the Rivian list for a couple of years, and it's our intention to get that to replace my wife's SUV. And I basically had to threaten them to let us drive one of the trucks. And the very least, we can't keep waiting forever and keep pushing back my dates. My wife is just going to flip out and buy something else. Can we just drive it?

Kelly Vaughn: [39:54] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [39:54] I'm going to say it was worth it, though.

Kelly Vaughn: [39:56] Okay.

Chuck Carpenter: [39:56] The zero to 60 in that thing is incredible. It seems like some gaudy, kind of like Yukon-size vehicles. You're like, I don't know. And you step up into it, and it's nice on the inside, but then it goes I was like, okay. Yeah, and this feels stable too.

Kelly Vaughn: [40:12] Get it.

Chuck Carpenter: [40:13] Yeah, that'll be interesting.

Kelly Vaughn: [40:15] Yeah. I'm seeing more and more of them on the road now. My former co-founder is out in California and Southern California, and so whenever I go to visit her, I'm seeing them everywhere. I'm like, I don't think they've made that many of them. So it's kind of weird that I'm seeing them every single time I go out. But it's California, so okay. Yeah, but I'm starting to see them more in Atlanta as well. But I think they're building a new production plant here in Georgia.

Chuck Carpenter: [40:40] Oh, I did hear that they were scaling up production size, but I didn't know that means they were going outside of Illinois.

Kelly Vaughn: [40:46] I think, so.

Chuck Carpenter: [40:47] That's cool. Yeah, that might make sense to get distribution a lot easier too, because they have a lot of orders. They're being flipped on, like, auction sites now for almost double the price.

Kelly Vaughn: [40:58] Yes. Here we go. Rivian site. Second manufacturing plant in Georgia.

Chuck Carpenter: [41:03] There you go.

Kelly Vaughn: [41:04] Just east of Atlanta.

Chuck Carpenter: [41:05] I mean, I've always heard that. Welcome to Atlanta, where the players play.

Kelly Vaughn: [41:11] Welcome to Atlanta. We're full.

Chuck Carpenter: [41:13] We're full. Get out. That's funny.

Kelly Vaughn: [41:18] No, it's good. I love living here. My favorite thing is when people from out of state come to visit for the first time, and they leave the airport, and I picked them up, and I drive them into, like, Midtown and they're like, there are so many trees. I thought I was going to see cornfields. I'm like, it's a city.

Chuck Carpenter: [41:34] What?

Kelly Vaughn: [41:34] Yeah, sure. We're not in South Georgia. We're not in farmland. I'm sorry.

Chuck Carpenter: [41:39] Have you heard of Coca-Cola? Have you heard of?

Robbie Wagner: [41:42] No, what is it?

Chuck Carpenter: [41:43] Delta Airlines. Massive corporate entities that have been there for a long time.

Kelly Vaughn: [41:47] So many corporations are headquartered here in Atlanta. Porsche of North American headquarters.

Chuck Carpenter: [41:52] Yes.

Kelly Vaughn:[41:53] Really fun location.

Chuck Carpenter: [41:54] I remember years ago, just because it was like, oh, here I am. In my career. It would be a dream to work for Porsche. That's like a brand I'd love to work for. And I looked into it, and I was like, yeah, I don't know, I'm just getting older, and I don't want to start over anymore. I've done the Phoenix thing. I grew up in, like the Cincinnati area. Did the DC thing and I don't know, I've got a fourth city in me.

Kelly Vaughn: [42:15] It's fair.

Chuck Carpenter: [42:16] But otherwise it would have been awesome.

Kelly Vaughn: [42:17] I will say I don't want to ruin his Porsche sponsorship for this podcast. Never mind.

Robbie Wagner:[42:23] I don't think that would happen, so go ahead.

Chuck Carpenter: [42:27] I think it's safe.

Kelly Vaughn: [42:28] I've heard it's after talking to my coach, who was in the passenger seat with me. Most people do not enjoy working on the corporate side, at least the North American headquarters, based on what I like. Again, I'm on LinkedIn a lot. I saw, like, an engineering manager position at Porsche. I'm like, oh, my God, that would be so cool. I want to do that. And then I look more into it. I'm like, I'm not going to cut my salary in half just to say I work at Porsche, then drive down to the airport every day. Because they don't do remote work.

Chuck Carpenter: [42:56] That's the thing, is a lot of companies, they're not tech companies, they just have tech bolted on. We have clients. We do a lot of enterprise clients. And those staff are within the org and trying to help them with architectural things and beef up speed of velocity, stuff like that. And you see that it's interesting that a company that is making so much money and they're not necessarily willing to increase average salary for top talent in engineering. They don't see the value, they're not finding it, but they are willing to bring in consultants at a decent price in order to fix those problems. So it's just like, what? Yeah, you're missing something here. Right? You could actually probably solve this yourself.

Kelly Vaughn: [43:38] It feels like I have a solution here. Yeah, but don't worry, they will sell you a $78 shirt.

Chuck Carpenter: [43:44] Yeah, well, you know what? Don't worry. I have negotiated in the last three car purchases that I made a free shirt. You buy a Porsche, and I'm like, I know I can't mess with the price, so can I at least have a shirt? And he's like, yeah, we'll get your shirt.

Kelly Vaughn: [43:58] Yeah, I did the same thing. And I was like, look, I know you're giving me a hat and some key chains, and that's awesome, but can I have a shirt?

Chuck Carpenter: [44:04] Yeah, what shirt did you get? Did you get a Cayman shirt?

Kelly Vaughn: [44:07] No, I got the sports shirt, like the sport, like athletic fit shirt, which is awesome for the working out that I don't do outside.

Chuck Carpenter: [44:16] Okay. Fair.

Kelly Vaughn: [44:17] I'm more of an indoor Peloton person.

Chuck Carpenter: [44:19] So yeah, that's fair.

Kelly Vaughn: [44:21] Different apparel.

Chuck Carpenter: [44:21] I think we've all become that in the last couple of years.

Robbie Wagner: [44:24] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [44:25] So outside is hard. So wait a minute, though. Weren't you doing a cycling challenge?

Kelly Vaughn: [44:31] I am, yes.

Chuck Carpenter: [44:33] That's outside, right?

Kelly Vaughn: [44:34] No. It's inside.

Chuck Carpenter: [44:36] Okay, well, here we go.

Kelly Vaughn: [44:38] You can do it inside or outside.

Chuck Carpenter: [44:39] Nice.

Kelly Vaughn: [44:40] So, yeah, it's 300 miles on a bike in the month of September, whether it's outdoors or indoors, and raising money for childhood cancer research. This is my third year doing it. Last year was a total fluke. I'm starting to realize. And now I raised just under $7,000. And I had a notification pop up on Facebook, memories of, like, last year's, and it was like September 5th I've raised $5,000. I'm like cool I've raised $100 this year. Awesome.

Chuck Carpenter: [45:08] Sounds like Movember for me. Yeah, you'll have an opportunity.

Robbie Wagner: [45:12] Well, we can send you a bunch of whiskey instead.

Chuck Carpenter: [45:15] Yes.

Robbie Wagner: [45:15] Can you sell that and then?

Robbie Wagner: [45:18] Then donate it to charity I don't know well we can send you whiskey. First of all second of all, you'll have an opportunity to pitch that out maybe of the million -998,000 people who listen to this give or take who listen to this will help you partake.

Kelly Vaughn: [45:38] Perfect. Yeah. No, I mean, again it's for childhood cancer research it's for a very good cause I'm thankful to have been able to raise as much as I did last year and anything helps. So I'm going to keep crushing it on the Peloton while people send donations.

Chuck Carpenter: [45:55] I will evangelize for you and say, listen, if you donated to Kelly before or you didn't donate to Kelly before, how terrible of a person are you that you don't want to save kids from cancer?

Robbie Wagner: [46:04] Yeah. You don't like children.

Chuck Carpenter: [46:06] Like old people. Who cares?

Robbie Wagner: [46:07] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [46:08] Kids don't deserve cancer. Old people? Who cares. Let's get direct to the more needy source.

Robbie Wagner: [46:14] Old people know what's coming.

Chuck Carpenter: [46:17] You're going one way or the other. It happens to be cancer.

Kelly Vaughn: [46:19] I'm going to drink now.

Robbie Wagner: [46:21] Oh, that took a turn.

Chuck Carpenter: [46:22] See, if you had been drinking this entire time, it gets better.

Kelly Vaughn: [46:27] Yeah.

Robbie Wagner:[46:27] Let's take a turn and talk about football.

Chuck Carpenter: [46:31] Not proper football.

Robbie Wagner: [46:33] Yeah, chuck doesn't know anything about real football. He likes football with a "u".

Chuck Carpenter: [46:38] I like football that they use their feet. No, not egg ball game where they handball. Whatever. I don't know.

Robbie Wagner: [46:44] Yes, it is an odd name. That was probably a bad choice, but yeah, I saw that you went to Georgia and are a Georgia fan.

Kelly Vaughn: [46:53] I am, yes. So my fandom lies in two places. One is Georgia because I have three degrees from UGA and I also gave them a lot of money. So I feel obligated to be a fan. The other one is Michigan because I grew up my grandparents worked for UFM for a very long time and I grew up like my earliest memories were tailgating for Michigan games. So that always been around that. So if you were to ask about last year's playoffs, it's a pretty difficult game on new year's eve when Michigan played Georgia. Apparently, I don't care who wins at this point because my team wins, either way, is a cop-out. And that I have to make a decision.

Robbie Wagner: [47:31] Yeah, I mean, if you don't make a decision, then how do you know you were on the right side?

Kelly Vaughn: [47:36] I'm always on the right side. But yeah, I'm a very big Georgia fan, and I'm excited about our season this year. And we had a lot of people drafted in this year's draft. So I don't want to say I'm not expecting a repeat, but I don't want to wish that upon anybody, but I'm going to enjoy the season nonetheless as long as we can get Ohio State out in some form.

Robbie Wagner: [48:04] Amen.

Kelly Vaughn: [48:04] I'm happy. We can all agree that Ohio State.

Chuck Carpenter: [48:08] I think we can all agree that yeah. I went to the University of Cincinnati. Not that it's like, a major player in the space. My wife's family all went to Michigan State, so I don't know how I feel about your.

Kelly Vaughn: [48:21] It's like Georgia, Georgia Tech. You can say there's a rivalry, but.

Chuck Carpenter: [48:26] It's not that serious.

Kelly Vaughn: [48:27] Yeah, you're going to be paid more than me anyway, so who cares?

Chuck Carpenter: [48:31] Fair enough.

Kelly Vaughn: [48:32] My cousin went to law school at Michigan State, so I think the law school is like a separate part of Michigan State that's not actually considered. I got the whole story of why it's okay before because everyone in my family is a Michigan fan.

Chuck Carpenter: [48:47] Okay. And they rationalized it.

Kelly Vaughn: [48:49] I think Cincinnati plays Kennesaw State, though. I know you don't pay attention at all, but my husband went to Kenneth All-State, and, well, he's not Georgia for his NBA, but Kennesaw State actually has a good football team for being in the division they're in. So that's kind of fun.

Chuck Carpenter: [49:04] Interesting. I usually watched basketball when I went there. Our football team was horrible. Like, beyond horrible.

Robbie Wagner: [49:10] They're good now.

Chuck Carpenter: [49:11] And our basketball team was really good, actually. And then it completely changed in that time. So in that 100 years since I was there, it completely changed.

Kelly Vaughn: [49:20] In 100 years. I tweeted the other day that I saw something about the season tickets for students being handed out and delivered and as always, a bunch of seniors to knock at the season ticket packages when a bunch of freshmen and sophomores did. And I was like, cool. This has not changed in the ten years since I was an undergrad. I was like, shit, I graduated from undergrad ten years ago, and then I fell into my chair, and my back hurt. So we're good.

Chuck Carpenter: [49:53] Yeah.

Robbie Wagner: [49:53] They're still using the same math, not random, to figure out who gets the ticket.

Kelly Vaughn: [49:59] Whose parents gives us the most money?

Robbie Wagner: [50:02] Yeah, that too.

Chuck Carpenter: [50:04] Exactly.

Kelly Vaughn: [50:05] My $250 a quarter probably isn't making much of a difference, but.

Chuck Carpenter: [50:10] keep trying.

Kelly Vaughn: [50:10] Feel a little obligated.

Chuck Carpenter: [50:12] Wait. I find this to be a funny thing about when alumni societies are reaching out to you and be like, help come donate to the university. I did. It's called tuition.

Kelly Vaughn: [50:23] It's called tuition. I went straight from undergraduate grad school, so, like, summer off, and then immediately started grad school. That October, they started calling me for donations. I'm like, do you want me to send you my tuition bill for grad school? Because I'm already giving you plenty of money.

Chuck Carpenter: [50:38] Exactly. It's sort of like, and your sports program is generating a lot of cash. Are you mismanaging it? So I don't think you need it.

Kelly Vaughn: [50:46] And at that time, you are not allowing your football players to be paid either.

Robbie Wagner: [50:50] They still were.

Kelly Vaughn: [50:51] And you're getting money from their likeness.

Chuck Carpenter: [50:53] I mean, they still were. Yeah. That's why the alumni society needed cash, so they could funnel it to their recruitment process.

Kelly Vaughn: [51:01] That's right. Yeah. But now I do give quarterly to the university, but specifically to the scholarship fund because I had to take out a lot in loans just to afford to go to UGA. And if I can help in any small way towards somebody's ability to go to Georgia, then have at it. Yeah, I can work it into my budget at this point in my life.

Chuck Carpenter: [51:26] Well, hopefully, you get a tax benefit on that too.

Kelly Vaughn: [51:28] Oh, absolutely.

Chuck Carpenter: [51:29] Yeah.

Kelly Vaughn: [00:51:30] I've already got my 2022 tax file started with my receipts from Georgia.

Robbie Wagner: [51:36] Nice.

Chuck Carpenter: [51:36] That's perfect. Yeah. Arizona is like that. I don't know if there's any sort of similarity, but it's essentially like you can pay your tax to Arizona, or there's all these approved charitable organizations and schools and all this stuff up to a certain cap that's pretty substantial. So you mostly can divert almost all your state tax right to wherever you want it to go. Yeah.

Kelly Vaughn: [51:57] Interesting. I'm diverting my state tax right into my bank account in terms of my refund, so fun story. When you implode your agency so hard, you get a beautiful tax return.

Chuck Carpenter: [52:11] So there's a plus.

Kelly Vaughn: [52:12] Yeah, it's paying off my line of credit.

Chuck Carpenter: [52:15] We're going to work on our implosion strategy 2022.

Kelly Vaughn: [52:18] There you go. Thankfully, it's going to pay off the line of credit. So that is a plus. I had a feeling I'd get a nice return because I knew how much I paid into estimated taxes with the intention of like, I was doubling revenue year over year over year, and it was a lot plus. I rolled over my 2021 return into 22 as an estimated tax, so I didn't have to make an additional payment. And when I was on the phone with my accountant, and she told me how much my refund is going to be, I literally just started crying. I was like, you have no idea how much I need this right now. And as soon as it hits my bank account, it's going to immediately disappear, of course. But hey, it's a huge weight off my shoulders.

Chuck Carpenter: [53:01] I was going to say the burden removed is very valuable.

Kelly Vaughn: [53:05] Exactly. So all this to say, pay your estimated taxes.

Robbie Wagner: [53:09] I often don't, just in case I put it off until like, the last quarter and then owe a lot of money.

Chuck Carpenter: [53:15] We'll double up and all that stuff. Yeah, well, we'll send you a celebratory bottle of Sagamore Rye sponsored by Whiskey Web and Whatnot.

Robbie Wagner: [53:24] We're sponsoring them.

Chuck Carpenter: [53:27] We did. We paid for it.

Robbie Wagner: [53:29] Well, that's true.

Chuck Carpenter: [53:30] That's true. It turns out they didn't give it to us for free. They tried, and they were like, who are you? Popcast?

Robbie Wagner: [53:39] Yeah, okay.

Chuck Carpenter: [53:40] No, they hadn't heard of us. It was weird. Tentacles? No, we don't take that as a viable form of review.

Kelly Vaughn: [53:50] I do have to comment on the fact that you have Post-it notes on the side of your screen. I currently have Post-it notes.

Chuck Carpenter: [53:56] You can see these?

Kelly Vaughn: [53:57] Yeah.

Chuck Carpenter: [53:57] All I can see is, like, because of the three of us, it's like this window liner or something else.

Robbie Wagner: [54:02] You don't want to comment on my basement with the slop sink behind me.

Kelly Vaughn: [54:07] I'm extremely into that as well. I was going to comment on the Post-it notes because I'm currently working through a reorg exercise for Spot to figure out a better allocation of team or engineers. As soon as we are, we'll be doubling our engineering team before we know it. And so I have Post-it notes of every single person's name currently, just, like, on my closet door.

Chuck Carpenter: [54:27] Nice.

Kelly Vaughn: [54:28] And there's one person who keeps on falling off my closet door, and I'm like, I already replaced the Post-it note, and it's still falling off. And I'm starting to see this as a sign. He said he's a free spirit and doesn't belong on anything.

Chuck Carpenter: [54:42] That's what it means. Yeah. Okay. Interesting.

Kelly Vaughn: [54:47] I accept it.

Chuck Carpenter: [54:48] Yeah. You're like? Okay, fine. You're a floater. Enjoy.

Kelly Vaughn: [54:53] No more direction. It's all good.

Robbie Wagner: [54:56] All right, we're about a time here. Is there anything we missed or stuff you'd like to plug before we end?

Kelly Vaughn: [55:02] I'm out of plugs at this point. It used to be like, listen to my podcast, but.

Chuck Carpenter: [55:07] Listen to archives of your podcast.

Robbie Wagner: [55:09] Yeah, I mean, it exists.

Kelly Vaughn: [55:11] Exactly. Super. Follow me on Twitter, because that super follow is now paying for the continuation of the Ladybug Podcast because it's now being paid for by me now that I wound down that company entity. And now I'm down to two entities. Great time.

Chuck Carpenter: [55:29] Sign up for your class.

Robbie Wagner: [55:30] Yeah, that too.

Chuck Carpenter: [55:31] Coming in January. Sign up?

Kelly Vaughn: [55:33] Sign up for Master School. Exactly. My Twitter is Kvlly. It's the link that's in my Twitter bio. So sign up for Master School. If you want to learn how to code, that would be a lot of fun. People I know personally have signed up for it, which is really fun. Like, people, I know from outside of the tech world space were like, I'm interested in learning how to code, and I'm like, I have the resource for you.

Chuck Carpenter: [55:54] Nice. I love it. I love it.

Robbie Wagner: [55:57] Cool. Well, thanks, everybody, for listening. If you liked it, please subscribe, and we'll catch you next time.

Chuck Carpenter: [56:05] Thanks for listening to Whiskey Web and Whatnot. This podcast is brought to you by Ship Shape and produced by Podcast Royale. If you like this episode, consider sharing it with a friend or two and leave us a rating, maybe a review, as long as it's good.

Robbie Wagner: [56:20] You can subscribe to future episodes on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more info about Ship Shape and this show, check out our website at shipshape.io.