More Money Podcast - 078 How to Jump into Entrepreneurship Head On - Heather Payne, Founder of Ladies Learning Code

Episode Date: November 30, 2016

Heather Payne, founder of Ladies Learning Code and HackerYou, proves you really can do whatever you want when you grow up, as long as you aren't afraid to take risks, do something completely new and really put your heart and soul into it. Long description:  I learned about Heather Payne after I took one of her Ladies Learning Code classes, and man is she one inspirational lady! She's one of the youngest female entrepreneurs I know, having founded both Ladies Learning Code and HackerYou in her 20s. If that's not impressive enough, she's also an angel investor and was named one of Canada's 100 Most Powerful Women. The fact that she's so down to Earth is pretty baffling, but she is. She's pretty much the whole package! For this episode, we chat about how Heather took her idea of maybe one day being her own boss to full on turning her side hustle into her full-time hustle. I think this is something a lot of us can relate to, so it's very cool to hear from someone who has successfully made the jump from 9-5 with a second job on the side to successful entrepreneur in only a matter of a few years. It just goes to show the power of actually taking action. I'm sure we all have ideas we'd love to realize, but most of us never do anything about them do we? We shouldn't be afraid to try new things and take risks, and I have a feeling I'm going to be taking a page out of Heather's guidebook very soon. What Is Ladies Learning Code? I seriously upgraded my coding skills by doing the Ladies Learning Code night classes, and it's a big reason I wanted to chat with Heather for this podcast. Coding was literally a foreign language to me, and the thought of being taught about it with a bunch of advanced coders terrified me. But Ladies Learning Code is a super non-threatening program that really breaks it down into something digestible. Honestly, without learning the basic HTML and CSS skills I learned in the program, there is no way I could have make rebranded my website into what it is today. So check it out, there are courses throughout Canada! Follow Heather on Social Follow Heather on Twitter Connect with Heather on LinkedIn For more podcast episodes, check out the Podcast page. Shownotes: jessicamoorhouse.com/78 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to episode 78 of the Momany podcast. I'm Jess Morehouse, your lovely host of this podcast. I'm so excited to talk to one badass girl boss. I'm talking about Heather Payne, who is the founder of HackerU and Ladies Learning Code. She is also an angel investor and also, if that weren't cool enough, one of Canada's top 100 powerful women. That's freaking crazy. And I'm pretty sure she's my age. So I absolutely want to talk to her. Actually, I took a course through Ladies Learning Code. It's all about teaching women. But I think men are also totally allowed to come about learning HTML code and other coding things. I'm mainly just an HTML person. That's kind of as much as I can do

Java. Don't know what that's all about. But I took that class just to kind of improve my web skills. And it was awesome. It literally kind of changed the game for me. And so I, you know, did some research and found out this girl is amazing that founded HackerU and Ladies Learning Coats. So I wanted to chat with her about money, entrepreneurship, and just being an awesome girl boss. And so I'm super excited to chat with her. But before we get to that interview, I wanted to say a big thank you to Well Simple for sponsoring this episode of the Mo Money podcast. Wellsimple is the fastest growing automated investing service in Canada. Wellsimple uses smart technology to help you create and

manage a diversified investment portfolio, saving you time and money. And of course, because you are a Mo Money podcast listener, you will get a $50 bonus when you sign up at Wellsimple.com slash Jessica Morehouse. And of course, I will include that information in the show notes at jessicamorehouse.com slash 78. So let's get to the interview, shall we? Thanks, Heather, for joining me on the Mo Money podcast. I appreciate you chatting with me. I'm very excited. Cool. Thanks for having me here today. No problem. So the reason I, one of the reasons I really wanted to chat with you is because I actually took a course in your ladies learning code and I didn't know, I knew a tiny bit of HTML, but that course really, really helped me. Like you wouldn't believe, like, honestly, like it really, really helped me. And every time I talk to someone that's like, I really want to learn coding. I always tell them about ladies learning code. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah,

yeah. No, it's an awesome thing that you did. I can't believe, like when I kind of found out, I'm like, oh, I wonder who started Ladies Learning Code and then hacker you. I couldn't believe it was you who's 27 and you've accomplished so much in such a short amount of time. I'm 29 now. 29. Okay. My birthday must be out of date somewhere. Still, that's very impressive. Very, very impressive. So I want to kind of get to know you a little bit more. Um, cause I find you as a female millennial entrepreneur, you're very inspiring. I feel like, um, it's, you're a great role model showing that you can make your own business. You can make your own money and you can find different avenues to make money instead of kind of a traditional route with a nine to five job. So were you always kind of interested in the entrepreneurial side of things?

Is that kind of where you saw yourself when you're growing up and then going to university? No, not at all, actually. Yeah, my my parents, usually entrepreneurs, they have parents who are entrepreneurs. I think that's been like a thing that's been proven. But my parents are not entrepreneurs at all. They're actually kind of like lifetime, same company kind of folks. And I didn't really have any entrepreneurial influences growing up. I decided to study business at university university purely based on my experience in high school. I worked at McDonald's and was promoted to being like a manager there when I was

16. And I really liked that. And so I thought, well, of all the things to pick, I mean, I like running this business for the eight hours that I run it, you know, a couple of times a week. So that's what made me choose business at university. And even then all throughout my four years, my plan was really to graduate and then join like a fortune 500 company and work my way to the top. That was kind of what I had imagined for myself, for my career and for my future. And so I even interned, like my third year internship was working at Kraft. And that was totally for me, like the first step on that journey toward, you know, running a Fortune 500 company or something like that. And it really wasn't until I graduated and got a job in like a

larger organization and realized probably that I'm a better fit for a small company. And then it really wasn't even until after I had worked at a startup that I realized like, oh, maybe I can just do this myself rather than working for somebody else. So it really came like a bit later. Although I mean, I was only probably 22 or 23 when I had that realization. So relatively young still. And do you think it's partly just because, at least for me in my experience, I didn't even know entrepreneurship or working for a startup was an option. It always just seemed like, no, you go to school and then you get a nine to five job. That's kind of, you know, if your parents did that, that's kind of the way you see it. And I didn't know anyone that was, that had their own

company. So I didn't even know that was something that I could do. Is that kind of your experience too? Yeah, I mean, I think it was a couple things. One is that I graduated in 2009, which was a bit of a rough time to graduate, the economy had just collapsed the previous fall. And there just weren't the same opportunities for recent business school grads to get jobs as there was even probably a year prior. So the jobs, you know, were not great. The salaries had gone down. And then when you look at, okay, I could take this job making 35K working for someone else, or like, maybe I can just find a way to make 35K myself. You know, it doesn't seem like as much of a leap versus turning down an offer to make 60K fresh out of school. Like that's like, how could you ever turn that down?

That is like exactly where you end up. And then of course you end up on the path, you know, making more and more money and then kind of being at working at a company for maybe the rest of your career. So I think that was one thing. And then I think the other thing that really brought me to entrepreneurship was that I never took a giant leap. I always just took tiny little steps and it really allowed me to build up a risk tolerance.

So at the beginning, my first venture in quotes is Ladies Learning Code, which is a nonprofit. And we just started with one workshop. I did it on the side and it wasn't a huge deal and people really liked it and it made some money so you know, buy a projector and that kind of stuff. And then we just started doing more and more and more. And eventually it made sense for us to get our own space. And it made sense for me to quit my job and work for ladies learning code halftime. And then I would sort of like make up the other half salary and other types of things.

I find it really interesting. Like one of the reasons I believe we don't have as many female entrepreneurs as we have male entrepreneurs is like the idea of risk training. And I think we shield young girls from risk a lot, whether that's like climbing a tree or just in the way that we socialize them. And I think it's really important for parents. And I think my parents did a great job of this, to like encourage young girls to take small risks so that by the time you're 20, it doesn't seem as scary to do something like negotiate a salary, or even like start a side project that you have to put $1,000 into to get started. You know, yeah, and I see that in my own

life, like the risks that I take now are crazy, compared to what I, you know, And I see that in my own life. Like the risks that I take now are crazy compared to what I, you know, would have been comfortable with at 21. But it's because I've made all these little tiny, like risky decisions along the way that have like mostly worked out and you just kind of build up a tolerance for that. No, I, I absolutely agree. You kind of hit the nail on the head there. Cause that's something that I realized in my own kind of experience. It's not until now, and I'm 30 now, that I'm more comfortable doing things that are, quote unquote, risky. Whereas in my early 20s and just starting out my career, there was no way. I'm like, no, I want to do something secure and safe because I was always afraid of what could happen because I was always kind of warned against that from my parents. Like, you know,

you want a secure job. You want to, to you know don't take too many sick days otherwise they'll think that you're playing hooky like all these things whereas it's almost silly it's like why didn't I kind of take more risk when I was younger when you almost have less to lose because you are younger yeah totally yeah absolutely so uh I read on your uh bio on your website that after university did you also did kind of a stint in China, which seemed pretty interesting. Yeah, so that was an interesting time. So I went on exchange for my last semester of university, which I definitely recommend for people who can make that happen. I had a lot of jobs throughout high school and university to try and make that stuff possible. I mostly paid for school myself. Oh, wow. That's awesome. So that was

something that was really important to me was to be able to have those kinds of opportunities and also graduate without debt. That was something that was really, really important to me, which also is probably one of the reasons I was able to become an entrepreneur because I had some savings and that's important. But yeah, so I went away on exchange for my last semester of university and I just liked it so much over there. I kind of felt like I wasn't ready to come back home and I had gotten an offer to join craft full time at that point. And I just sort of felt like that was really not the right thing for me and that I had

something else in my future. And so I searched around for like an excuse to stay abroad basically. And I found this awesome scholarship program offered by the Chinese government in like the depths of Google. I have no idea how it happens. And basically they were bringing foreigners in to study and do master's degrees in their various universities. And they would pay for like room and board and they pay for your tuition and they give you a living stipend and everything. And so I applied to that program and got in and I started a master's in international relations at Shaman University in Fujian province in China. So I was in Hong Kong on exchange. I then did like two months backpacking around Europe and then I basically moved straight to China. So when I was in Europe, I was in Hong Kong on exchange. I then did like two months backpacking around Europe. And then I basically moved straight to China. And I was supposed to

stay there for two years, I ended up sort of getting what I needed out of the experience after about 10 months, which was sort of reflection. Yeah, thinking, having a new experience. And also, that's actually when I started learning how to code. And that sort of made me excited to come back to Toronto. And at that point, I was sort of ready to start my life, my real life, basically. So how did you how did coding kind of come about? I'm so curious about that. Yeah, I mean, I while I was over there, I was obviously still thinking about, you know, my eventual return to Canada and to Toronto and trying to figure out what I was obviously still thinking about, you know, my eventual return to Canada and to Toronto and trying to figure out what I was going to do with myself because I knew that things hadn't changed that much and that opportunities for young people were kind of sparse.

And I think at some point I just stumbled upon the idea of having a blog. And I actually had in university worked as a fitness instructor. So I decided like the safest and easiest thing to do would be to go back to Toronto and start working as a fitness instructor. And I could then have a little bit of money and then I can, um, figure out my next steps from there, I guess.

Um, it all sounds so crazy now because my, everything has like gone in very different direction. Um, but yeah, I started this blog called fit in to.ca and, uh, and then as I was blogging, I was obviously,

as this is where so many people get started, was learning how to code so that I could customize it and make changes to it. So that was really the impetus for starting to learn. And then once I started to learn, that became a much more interesting thing to me than blogging. So I never really did a lot of blogging, but I did a lot of like WordPress, like theme customizations and like different WordPress hacks and stuff like that. Nice. That's cool. And it's kind of funny that you're, you know, just kind of

fell into that because now it seems like, like depending on what kind of job you want, it seems like that's almost a requirement for most jobs. You need to know how to code. Yeah. I mean, things have changed a lot. That was in 2009. So we're talking like seven years ago now, basically. And even when, so I was learning, I was just using Google and using resources and realizing how hard it was. Like I was not a genius at this at all. It was really a struggle. So I have a lot of empathy for people who are wanting to learn. But even in 2011, when I only started ladies learning code, it was still a little bit early to be talking about how everyone needs to have coding skills. And I think that's one of the reasons ladies learning code was so successful

was like this trend just happened. And we were like, right, like riding that tidal wave of this, like learn to code excitement. So part of it was just luck in terms of timing. Absolutely. So why did you, so you came back when, at what point did you start your nonprofit ladies learning code? So I was back for about a year first. I got back to Canada to Toronto May of 2010 and actually ended up finding a job pretty quickly after that. I think a couple weeks, like just an entry level, basically executive assistant type job. You know, you got to start

somewhere. Yeah. And I did that for about six months, and then moved into the marketing department at that company and did that for six months. And it was around the time I moved into the marketing company that I started thinking about Ladies Learning Code. I had had a great experience while in Los Angeles attending like a coding workshop for women. So that was really the inspiration for Ladies Learning Code. I think that happened in May of 2011. And I just thought, wow, like this needs to be in Toronto for sure. And while I was working in that marketing role, I started working on the idea for ladies earning code on the side. That's awesome. Why did

you want to do specifically for women coding? Is it just because you have a passion for educating women? Yeah, I don't know. People ask me that a lot. And I don't actually remember making that decision. So I don't know what happened there. I think I've always been really involved in feminist organizations. I was a girl guide my whole life. And in university, I was in a sorority. So I had benefited a lot from environments that are like explicitly for females and i i think i knew about the tech industry being male dominated i think i did like i think i was aware of that um and probably largely it was support it was um influenced by the fact that this coding workshop that i'd attended in los angeles it was by a group called the pie ladies and it was like all about women and i

just loved that environment and i thought it was awesome and it was non-intimidating, and everyone was really cool. So it probably was also trying to replicate that sort of experience here in Toronto. Absolutely. Well, I've got to say, as someone who went to one of the classes at Ladies Learn Cone, I actually really liked that it was just women, because it was kind of a little less intimidating. We were all kind of in the same boat. We were all wanting to kind of, you know, learn HTML and we really didn't know where to start. And it was, I don't know, I really liked how it was just specifically for women. And that's kind of why I tell everyone about it because it's just such a great program. Yeah, totally. And we've actually like, it's not even explicitly for women. I mean, the title

says, okay, obviously women are welcome and encouraged to come to this thing. But men have always been welcome. And like, there's usually like a few or like a handful of men at every workshop. And I think that's awesome. Like, I think it's cool to create an environment that's friendly to women that clearly speaks to women and says, this is the place you belong. You don't need to be worried about coming here. But then at the end of the day, welcomes everyone who wants to come to that. I think that's beautiful. Absolutely. I love that. So at what point did you also start HackerU, which is kind of the next step after Ladies Learning Code? Yeah. So I had the idea for HackerU in February of 2012. So Ladies Learning Code's first workshop was August 2011.

I actually quit the job that I had, I think, in September 2011 to basically become a full-time volunteer working on Ladies Learning Code, living off my savings. I kind of saw that it was headed somewhere, so I was okay with, you know, making that short-term trade-off. And then in January, I started working half-time for Ladies Learning Code. So I was able to make like a meager half-time salary. And then I got a contract with Mozilla for the other sort of half of my time doing this kind of work, but for kids. So it just worked out amazingly. And then by February of 2012, I started thinking, you know, A, people were coming to us and saying, cool, I love this one day workshop, but what do I do if I want to keep learning or if I want to really

build a skill? So we were hearing it on like the participant side. And then at the same time, I was like watching the industry in general and starting to see these like bootcamp style coding programs popping up in the States. There, there were just a couple at the time and I was like, wow, like somebody's going to do that in Toronto. And if it's not me, I've really messed up. Um, so February I had the idea, started working on it. And then by June we launched with, you know, website and, um, some curriculum and that kind of thing. I started filling, um, our first course, which was like an intro to HTML CSS course, it was going to be basically like three months long part time. And it sold out

pretty quickly, mostly with people who had come to ladies learning code first. So it was the same sort of group of people. And that started in September and ran until I think November or December. And that was the start of HackerU. That's awesome. Yeah, I definitely feel like you found like a really great niche. And I don't know, like, honestly, I couldn't think when I was, I was, the reason I went to Lady Exploring Code was I needed to kind of up my skills for my job. And so when I was looking online, I couldn't find anything like what you've got. So you definitely kind of found a great place for you and a great situation to help people. Yeah, it just has been like the best.

It's been so much fun and so rewarding and such a fun way to learn. I mean, Ladies Learning Code was such good training wheels as well for how to run a business. And I brought a lot of that knowledge over to HackerU. And, you know, even HackerU is probably training wheels for something else that I'll do later on. So, you know, it's just all, it's all really exciting to be able to do something that you love, that really helps people. That also like allows you to make a living. Like that's kind of the trifecta. Yeah, exactly. So I read that you're also an angel investor. How did you get into that? And what does that exactly mean? Yeah, so that also is accidental, like most, most of my career, really. So, well, the original

reason I got into it, I made a really great group of girlfriends who were all entrepreneurs in and around when Ladies Learning Code started. So maybe back in 2011, we started connecting through Twitter at meetups and then we would go for coffee and eventually we all became really good friends. And we're still friends today. We just hung out last week, a whole bunch of us. And everyone's businesses now are like five years old instead of true startups, which is pretty cool. And one of the friends that I met was Catherine Haig, who at the time was working in marketing as well. So we're both working in marketing. We coincidentally quit our jobs on the same day in October or so, September, October of 2011, without talking about it first. And then I decided to work on Ladies Learning Code and she decided to start a tech company.

And we were just like hanging out one day talking about it. And she mentioned her next steps and what she was going to do. And, um, I was like, I'm going to, I'm going to invest in your business. She was like,

what? And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you $10,000 to like build the prototype that you need to build. Um,

and at the time I probably had like 20 or $25,000 in the bank. And I wasn't working like this was like, yeah, when I was volunteering for ladies earning code full time. So like, what a crazy decision. I don't know. It just felt right. Yeah. But I mean, I don't recommend that people do this kind of thing this way. Exactly. You have to have like a good risk tolerance, like you said. Yeah, I guess. I kind of considered it like a personal branding expense. I kind of wanted to be a female angel investor and be a young angel investor and show people that you don't have to wait until you're 50 and you have gray hair to be able to do this. So we decided like, okay, well, this sounds crazy.

Let's reconnect tomorrow. And if we still think this is a good idea, then we'll move forward. And the next day, I still thought it was a good idea. So I ended up giving her $10,000 for a business. I bought some percentage of the company with that and some small percentage. And, um, yeah, two, two and a bit years later, the company was acquired. Um, and I, I mean, I think she's published the, the amount that I got, but I basically got a 9x return on my $10,000 investment, which was really cool. The timing was amazing because I was just about to get married, so I used a bunch of it to pay for my half of the wedding, which felt really good. That was a start. Then I've used some of the proceeds of that to do some more investments since then.

There's four, I think four more that I've done, just like little ones, like 10 grand, 12 grand, whatever. And do you just find out about these through like just people, you know, or how does what, like, I always kind of wonder, like, how does one become an angel investor? Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I think people do know that I invested in Catherine's business and that I've done a little bit more since then. And also there's a big effort now to diversify in general. Companies want to have diverse employees and startups also want to have diverse investors so that their investors are bringing different perspectives to the table. So I've been sought out a little bit because of that, like for being a young woman who does this kind of thing. So that's where a couple of them have come from. But I really like to invest in my friends. Probably that's not generally people's

advice. But I just I, if I know someone, and I know like their character and what they're about, and I believe in what they're doing, like I want to get behind that for sure. Yeah, you've got that trust there, which I think is important. Yeah. So that's been the driver of three of mine for sure has just been like, I totally believe in this person and like, I want to support them with what they're doing. That's awesome. That's exciting. So you're still so young and you've done way more than most people, including myself. I'm really curious what you kind of plan or foresee for yourself in like the next five or 10 years. Do you kind of, do you do kind of a five, 10 year plan or do you just kind of do it year by year? I honestly have always winged it. Um, but I always kind of

try and have like a big vision of where maybe I'm headed or something like that. So that, I don't know, I think one of the differences between people who are entrepreneurs and people who are like CEOs running established organizations, for example, is that entrepreneurs are really good at scanning a landscape and then figuring out from there like what opportunities exist and I think that's one of my biggest strengths like for example in the past year and a bit I bought two investment properties in Hamilton and that has like that wasn't really something that I planned on doing but then I kind of heard about it and I knew someone who was a real estate agent there who was, you know, doing it. And, um, and it's been awesome.

And I didn't, I wasn't like, oh, in three years I must own a rental property. Um, you know, but it just kind of came up and it made sense. Um, my husband and I own them together obviously, but I was definitely the driver in making that happen. He's just like, what are we doing now? So that's pretty funny. But yeah, in the next five years, I mean, I love HackerU so much. It is kind of my dream business in that it is such a community. Like our grads are so passionate about what we do. I've helped so many

people get their first real job or move out of their parents' house for the first time, finally get into a career that they actually like. And that is just the coolest. I love it. It also makes me want to stay a little bit on the smaller side because I actually have the ability right now to work with each grad of our boot camp program, for example. And if you become too big or you, for example. And, you know, if you become too big or you become like multi-location, you'll kind of lose that. So I think it's important, you know, for everyone to know what are your goals and what are the things you like about your business. Nobody wants to grow their business to the point where they don't like it anymore. Like that's when you end up selling it and you know, whatever. So yeah, I think,

I mean, I'll be definitely spending the next five five ten years building HackerU and making it better and um expanding our influence for sure um I think we'll just stay in Toronto because I also am realistic that like I don't really want to get on an airplane all the time um you know I like my life I live love about a 35-minute walk from where HackerU's office is. And I love that. It's awesome. And I think I'll keep doing some real estate stuff, some startup stuff. Just keep it interesting by having different kind of fun side projects going on. I'm working on a new website right now for myself because the one that I have is from 2010. So I've got some designers working on a new website.

And I definitely want to get more into like blogging. And I started doing more public speaking this year. Yeah, I saw that. That's cool. Yeah. And I want to do more of that. So, yeah, I don't know. As I have more to share about like business and life and that kind of stuff, I want to, you know, buy a rental property or like whatever things I can kind of tell people that you're never too young to do this kind of thing. No, absolutely. That's, that's exciting. I'm excited to see, kind of just follow along with your journey in the next few years. Cause I think there'll be

some great stuff, especially with the public speaking and you just, you know, sharing your story more. Cause I think it's a story that I think we need to hear more of. I'm always super inspired to continue kind of doing new things when I hear about someone who's my age, who's a woman who's been able to do it or is trying to do it as well. So I think that's really, really inspiring. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I love that too. Like hearing from someone who's my age or just a bit older than me and just being like, Oh my God, I can get there too. I can do this. Exactly. Exactly. So one last question before I let you go, what would your, you know, if, if someone is in university or just starting out in their career and they're thinking,

should I go the kind of regular traditional route at the nine to five or kind of, you know, try my luck at entrepreneurship, what would your kind of tips or some of the things that you learned along the way at the beginning, what would you kind of, uh, let them know what to expect and things to look out for? Yeah. Um, that's a good question. So, I mean, I think, I think most people are better off owning their own business if they have the stomach for it. So it's important to know yourself. I think there also are some super amazing companies out there and great bosses to work for. And I try and be one of those to my team, obviously.

So there can be great situations on both sides. But I think if you have the stomach for entrepreneurship or the desire to do it, and you're willing to put in the few years of slogging it out that it takes, it's a pretty cool way to live your life. I think the biggest thing is read Lean Startup, I think it's called, um, that really helped me in the beginning around testing your idea and making sure that you're not just like building something that you think is cool, but you're actually building something that people will like. And that's sort of been my, my whole strategy. You know, first we did ladies learning code and it was just an experiment, but then we realized that, okay, and now there's certain people who come to ladies

learning code who actually want to take a three month long part-time course. And then we realized that, okay, and now there's certain people who come to Ladies Learning Code who actually want to take a three-month-long part-time course. And then we made something for them. And then eventually there was enough people who did a three-month-long part-time course on HTML, CSS who wanted to learn JavaScript. And then, you know, so the whole time we've just been, like, identifying needs of the community that's around us and creating things for that group. So that's something that's really important, I think. And also always keeping your destination in mind and never settling.

I started my career as an executive assistant. I worked at a startup in sales and was going to be fired if I didn't quit. And I just always kept in my mind that like, I'm not like being an executive assistant isn't the thing that I'm doing with my life. It's what I'm doing for now. It's what's allowing me to save money and live downtown and have, you know, other exciting opportunities. But have a plan for, you know, being in a role like that for a year. And then and then knowing how you're going to get out of it.

And usually what it takes is doing a lot of stuff on the side, going to events, going to startup weekend, blogging, social media, like personal branding type stuff. Like it's going to take some effort. Nobody's just going to hand it to you. So I think keeping that in mind and having a plan for getting yourself out of a role that you're not into, whether that's into working for yourself or whether that's into just working somewhere where you're going to be happier that's more aligned with what you're looking for, I think is a really good plan. And I see a lot of people, you know,

being at a place you don't like for two years or three years, four years, like it becomes harder to get out of that point. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, those are great bits of advice. And thank you so much for chatting with me. I really appreciate it. I know I got a lot out of it and I'm sure listeners will as well. Yeah, no problem. Thank you so much for having me. And that was episode 78 of the Mo Money podcast with Heather Payne, the founder of HackerU and Ladies Learning Code. And of course, if you want to upgrade your coding skills, I find it invaluable now. I can't believe I didn't

know how to use HTML properly. Make sure to check them out at ladieslearningcode.com. And they have classes throughout lots of different cities in Canada. Or if you want to do something a little bit more intensive, a little bit more for the advanced coder, check out hackeru.com. And those are based all in Toronto. And of course, to find out more about Heather herself, she has her own website, heatherpain.ca. I'll of course link to all of this in the show notes, jessicamorris.com slash 78. That is a lot of websites. I just said one after the other. I hope you all got all that. Maybe just check out the show notes. All of that's in there. And again, a big thank you to WellSimple for sponsoring this episode of the Mo Money podcast. If you don't know who WellSimple

is, well, I'm going to tell you right now. They are the fastest growing automated investing service in Canada. They use smart technology to help you create and manage a diversified investment portfolio, save you time and money. And if you sign up with them at Wealthsimple.com slash Jessica Morehouse, you'll get a $50 bonus. So get your investments right. Go to Wealthsimple.com slash Jessica Morehouse and just do it. And so I will not have a Lister Series episode for you tomorrow, but I will have a fresh new episode for you next Wednesday. So on that note, I'll see you next Wednesday. Bye, guys. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network.

Find out more at womeninmedia.network.