Episode 56: Mary Job

Hallway Chats: Episode 56 - Mary Job

Introducing Mary Job

Mary Job lives outside Lagos, Nigeria. She is a philosopher by birth. She runs How Do You Tech for work. She loves to travel, take photos, write, meet awesome people, and experience cultures. She loves doing 22 and experimenting with food and listening to great music, and great wine.

Show Notes

Personal Website | Ask Mary Job – Your Personal Tech Consultant
Personal Blog | My Personal Stories
Company Website | How Do You Tech?
Non-Profit Organisation | Uwani Foundation for Girls & Young People
Twitter | @maryojob
WordPress | mariaojob

Doing 22 | See meaning
Community | WordPress Nigeria Communities

Episode Transcript

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions, and our guests share their stories, ideas and perspectives.

Tara: Welcome to Hallway Chats, I’m Tara Claeys.

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Mary Job. Mary lives outside Lagos, Nigeria. She is a philosopher by birth. She runs How Do You Tech for work, she loves to travel, take photos, write, meet awesome people, and experience cultures. She loves doing 22 and experimenting with food and listening to great music, and great wine. Hi, Mary.

Mary: Hi, Liam.

Tara: Hi, Mary, welcome. I’m so glad to have you here. I’d like to ask if you could tell us more about yourself and explain what 22 is?

Mary: Hi, Tara. Nice to meet you again. My name is Mary, you already know that. I live outside Lagos, just an hour drive from Lagos. I work as a tech consultant, in How Do You Tech, a company I founded with a colleague. We teach people how to use digital systems. You asked me what 22 is. It’s a little ritual. It’s interesting. I got it from a colleague. 22 is not yoga, it’s not meditation, it’s you just lay back and relax and then for 22 minutes, you think about nothing. I do it in between work. When I feel pressured, when I’m hitting a stone wall. When I just need to relax my brain, I just put on 22 minutes, I lay down, don’t think about anything at all, and turn my phone on flight mode. That part is very important because the phone is always – I put it on flight mode and then I just go for 22 minutes. Sometimes I sleep, which is good. Other times, I come work with a fresher perspective.

Tara: That’s interesting, I’ve never heard of that. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about meditation in the past year and I haven’t heard of 22. 22 seems like a long time. About all I can meditate is 10 minutes so I would imagine I probably would fall asleep as well. Do you do it lying down, though, you said, yes?

Mary: It’s better lying down. It was started by my co-founder. I started doing it after I had an experience with MRI. I had a brain scan. That moment where I was laying still– you know with the MRI, you don’t move, you have to be still or they have to start all over again. You’re given this perspective that you feel really good after the MRI. He started it, he’s been pushing it. He introduces it to people. I tried it and I really liked it so I stop for it. He has a site for it, https://kb.life/22.

Tara: Is there a reason that it’s 22 minutes?

Mary: According to him, you spend 20 minutes in MRI. I don’t know why it’s just 22 minutes but 22 just works. 22 is 22.

Tara: Yeah. And you really don’t think about anything for that time? I think my mind would be going a million different directions.

Mary: That’s the problem. Because I can’t sleep if I don’t think. I have to be thinking about something and then fall to sleep. But this makes the process a lot faster because I’m not thinking about anything. When I got into this, I used to have migraines a lot – I used to have headaches]. The first time I tried it, the first few minutes of not thinking about anything, my feel so light. Everything is just gone. I don’t feel any pain whatsoever. I’m just free. I’m just in a state that I would love to be forever, but sadly I can’t be in that state forever because I have to work and I have to do other things.

Tara: Interesting.

Liam: This is very intriguing. I want to ask you about this. When I sit and try to maintain that practice of thinking about nothing, what I try to do is not think words in my head. So don’t pronounce any words in my head. And that’s very difficult for me, that’s just a huge challenge because I say, “I’ll be doing this and not say anything. Dang it, I just said something.” I’m not speaking it, it’s all in my head but what is your brain doing? Are you just focusing on breathing so you’re not thinking about work, you’re not thinking about your daily concerns? Because my brain tends to, and I think this is what Tara is getting at, it goes off into this direction and it gets distracted and starts to think about this deadline or making dinner plans for this evening or what we have to do next weekend. Tell us a little bit about how you either avoid that or when those thoughts pop into your head, how do you chase them out and go back to nothingness?

Mary: That happens very often. In fact, when I first started, it was very difficult. I mean like, “No, no, no. I have to think about something, anything.” And he would say, “Well, you’re only allowed to think about one thing.” But I found out that I was much better not thinking about anything. When that thought comes to me, I just tell to myself, “No, you can’t think about anything.” And then it goes off, again. And if I does come again, I tell it to go back to where it’s coming from. “No, I don’t want to think about anything. Just leave me be for 22 minutes and then I’ll come back to you.”

Tara: Yeah, that’s what I’m reading a lot about meditation as well is it’s sort of you just have to keep working at it and don’t be hard on yourself when your mind does wander, because it will, and just kind of bring your attention back. The point is training your brain to focus. That makes a lot of sense to me, but it is very hard to do in reality, it’s easy to say but very hard to do.

Mary: When I have a headache, it is so difficult, because the moment I start to think about something, the pain starts coming back. And then I tell it to go away, “Just leave me be. I don’t want it, I want to feel better.” Afterward, I feel way much better.

Tara: Well, thanks for sharing that technique. I’ll be looking that up. Let’s jump back or forward and talk a little bit about your relationship with WordPress, how you discovered WordPress, What you do with WordPress, and the community of WordPress?

Mary: I discovered WordPress first sometime around 2012-2013. I started blogging as a way to express my feelings. I find it very difficult to tell and express how I’m feeling, I find it easier to write it down. I could write 10 pages of why I feel like it’s nothing. Blogging for me was a way to let out those feelings. I started with webpages, I tried WordPress. First time I tried WordPress, I was like, “Wow, this is so complicated. What am I doing here? I just want to write my blog. I don’t think I have the patience for this.” So I left it. And then in 2015, I went to do my internship at Ghana with the Salecians of Don Bosco, it’s a Catholic organizations that focuses on youths . My cousin is a Salecian Brother so I was more or less among my family. One day we were in the office and he said, “Why are you not blogging on WordPress?” And I’m like, “No, why would I want to blog on WordPress? It’s a complicated platform, I don’t want to use it.” He said, “No, but our website is built on WordPress.” I said, “Wow, let me check that out.” And then I’m like, “Are you serious? I didn’t know you could build a website in WordPress.” Then he gave me videos made by Morten Rand-Hendriksen, who is now a very good friend. It took me two weeks to watch those videos. When I finished watching those videos, I exported my blog from Blogger to WordPress and that was how I started. I mean, when I was on Blogger, I think that most I got was a Like from a friend. [laughter] But within first three months of being on WordPress I made a number of friends, good friends that I interact with up until now. There’s one from Zimbabwe, and a guy in India, he writes beautifully. And then there’s this old man also that lives in the US, and then there’s a good grandma somewhere in the US. I’ve made friends from all over the world. It was so cool. Being able to share and connect and then interact with people from far hubs – way farther from where you reside. It was really interesting. I asked myself one day. I said, “This WordPress is so cool. How can I be a part of WordPress? Is there something I could do?” But before then, in December 2015, there was a lady who approached me. She lives in the UK and she said they want to redesign their website, it was built on WordPress. I didn’t know about WordPress at all. I didn’t know anything about WordPress at all. She was like, “I like the way your blog looks and I want you to work on our website.” And I’m like, “Okay, nice. I will do it.” And then I went to purchase a domain and there’s hosting on WordPress. And then I started reading more about it. The more I did, the more I fell in love with the software, because it’s like this beautiful work of art that inspires you to be a better person. That’s the way I see WordPress.

Liam: Wow, that’s pretty deep stuff. WordPress is a work of art that inspires you to be a better person. That’s an amazing perspective, Mary.

Mary: Yes, it is. I stumbled on make.WordPress.org while trying to look for ways to be a part of WordPress. I’m like, “Okay.” You know when you go to make.WordPress.org you see testing, core. I mean, my first degree was in philosophy, and then mass communication and information management – a master’s degree. It had nothing to do with computer science. I have just been passionate about the internet since 2002. I opened my first computer in 2002.

Liam: Awesome.

Mary: I saw testing, I saw accessibility, I thought — “I don’t know what is this, what am I doing?” And then I saw community and I was like, “Wow, this sounds like a very good place to fit in. I don’t have programming skills so I could very well fit in here.” And then I saw they had a community in Lagos but they weren’t active. In Nigeria – Lagos, Ibadan and one other one or two. And they weren’t active so I said, “Okay, I don’t ever live in Lagos.” I go to Lagos almost every week because it’s like the New York, it’s where everything happens. So I told myself, “Let me apply for one in my state since I don’t live in Lagos.” So I applied to start a community in my state and then Courtney wrote back to me and said, “How would you like to be a part of the Lagos community? They haven’t been active so maybe you can bring the back.” And I’m like, “Okay. It’s not far, it’s just an hour’s drive but three hours drive with traffic.”

Liam: Yeah. Hour on Google.

Tara: Yeah, that’s a commitment.

Mary: The traffic makes it three hours, but if there’s no traffic, it’s just 45 minutes to one hour drive from here. I said, “No problem.” The first meetup I did, I did it at a mall in Lagos and three people showed up.

Liam: Awesome.

Mary: Before we had done five meetups, we had 100 people show.

Liam: How many showed up?

Mary: 100.

Liam: Wow. Three to 100 in five meetups. That is amazing.

Mary: Yeah, we have a folder, we have Google folder where I always upload photos – I always upload photos. And then it went to 150. “That’s 150, Brooke.” When we got to 150 – I like calling him Brooke, his name is Hugh. You know him, right? I just prefer to call him Brooke.

Tara: Oh, Hugh Lashbrooke, yes.

Mary: I prefer to call him Brooke. Brooke sent me a message saying, “Why don’t you organize a WordCamp? 150 is already WordCamp crowd.” And I’m like, “Okay, let’s give it a shot.” But before them, I made WordPress all about me. Everybody around me knows that I’m into WordPress. I put it on my status, put it on Facebook, put it on Twitter. People who would see me are like, “What is this WordPress you’re into?” Even my mom was interested because at that time, I decided to work from home. And imagine telling African parents you want to work from home. Every day, my dad is saying, “Let me call your friends to get you–“, “I’m not looking for a job. I’m working from home.” Then it was like, how can you be in shorts and a t-shirt and say you are working from home? How does that work? So my mom was interested. It is a funny story because I told her about Luminos. A Nigerian working for Automattic. Do you know it turned out that Luminos’ mom and my mom were colleagues? She retired as a nurse.

Liam: Doesn’t he live in Dublin? Does he live in Ireland? I met him at a WordCamp a few years ago.

Mary: Yes, he lives in Ireland. Cool. I asked him when I said, “Oh, we even have a Nigerian working for Automattic.” I was trying to explain WordPress. I told her, “His name is Luminos.” She said, “That sounds familiar. I had a colleague that named her son Luminos while we were still working together. And then I asked Luminos on Slack, “Is your mom by chance a nurse.” He says, “Yes.” I’m like, “Wow, what a small world.” That’s just small world. Because I posted on Facebook a lot, I started getting a lot of requests and people saying, “I want to start a community in my city. I use WordPress also, I would like to do this.” Today we have 14 communities with WordPress presence in Nigeria and they’re still counting.

Liam: Wow, that’s really impressive, to go from one meetup with three people to 150 at one, two, 14 different communities. That’s a pretty amazing growth rate and very successful.

Mary: Yeah. We’re trying to keep it close-knit. We have one Slack group for all the organizers. When you become an organizer we add you to it. Help support each other, attend the meetups, trying to encourage one another. We have a Slack channel for all members in Nigeria. WordPress inspires me to be a better person. My co-founder was telling me one time, when we were asked to build a new site, he said, “I don’t think you’re going to like this. I don’t want to build it on WordPress.” He kept asking, I said, “No. How do you know something is good if you don’t try other platforms?” You’re free to build it on another platform. It doesn’t stop you from loving WordPress. Unless the client says they don’t want WordPress. For me, it’s coming from a background with no computer academic knowledge, and then finding myself in WordPress. For me, I always said that WordPress gave me a place to fit in.

Liam: I like that. Mary, I’m going to change it up on you just a little bit because you were kind enough to share with us about some of the things you’re doing personally, 22 and that was very interesting. You talked about starting the meetup and then how that grew to this amazing community across Nigeria. And you’re getting into talking a little bit about your business and that, and I want to hear more about that. But what I wanted to ask you is what’s your definition of success, be it personal, professional, or a combination? How would you define success?

Mary: Success to me is knowing that there is somebody out there that you have touched with your actions positively. Knowing that somebody somewhere looks at you, is inspired, and wants to be a better person, a good person. To me, that’s what makes me keep doing what I do every day. When somebody walks up to me and say, “Oh, wow. I see the work you do and I also want to do this and I want to be a better person. Maybe because I’m a philosopher. I like it when people do things that are right. Some people tend to say, “because everybody’s doing it so I should do it.” I really don’t like that, I don’t like it at all. For me, I’ve been able to inspire people positively, impact them. When you come to me and leave with something, that alone is what makes me happy and what makes me feel like, “Okay, yes. I am successful today. somebody today. I’m happy.”

Liam: That strikes me as something that is not really ultimately then surprising that you took a community of three and grew it into hundreds, if not thousands, because if your definition of success is to give them yourself in a way that makes a positive impact on people. People have mentioned that you spend a good part of your energy trying to create a positive impact in the world around you.

Mary: Yeah, I enjoy it.

Tara: Other than the WordPress community, can you talk a little bit about what you do towards that goal? What is the most important thing that you do every day or in your life towards that idea of being successful and having a positive impact on other people?

Mary: First, I started as a freelancer, like I said. I kind of roamed the internet for some years. I was roaming the internet, looking for a place to fit in. I did all sorts of freelance jobs, freelance writing, ghostwriting because that’s what I did most. Virtual assistant, I did a lot of that. Towards 2016, 2017, I took up a job at an automobile firm where we sold brand new cars. I had a lot of bad occurrences. I got robbed twice, my boss wasn’t paying me well. I just told myself, “You know what? I don’t want to work for anybody anymore. I want to work for myself. Why can’t I work for myself?” It’s the information age. People are making money working from home doing what they love. I wanted to do that, too. I stopped doing that and I started my own firm, I registered as sole proprietor. I used that for about a year or two and then last year, I founded How Do You Tech which was– you know, like I mentioned at the beginning, I find it difficult expressing my feelings. When I have an idea, I find it so difficult to put it down in words. My co-founder KB, one day we sat down and he was like, “What exactly do you want to do?” Of course, I started explaining and mumbling the words together.” He went to 22.

Liam: [laughs] You sent him into 22?

Mary: Yeah. And then he came back and How Do You Tech was born. I mean, it got the main founding in 22. That, for me, was a turning point. It felt like, “Oh, look at what I have been struggling with all this work and somebody was able to put it on paper for me.” That started How Do You Tech Limited.

Liam: And what does How Do You Tech Limited do? What services do you provide? That would be interesting to hear.

Mary: That’s where I’m going into now. When we started How Do You Tech, the idea was this, we want to be able to offer custom solutions for people in tech: websites, mobile applications. Our focus was not really there because a lot of people do that these days. We love teaching. The easiest way was for us is to teach people what we know. But then we struggled with shortage of people who can afford it or a shortage of people to build them accordingly.. The company is just six, seven months old. We are still shaking and our foundations are not so strong, but basically, what we want to do is be able to build useful digital systems. Useful and functional being the keywords. Anybody can have a website but is it useful? Is it functional? What is it doing? Is it just sitting there on the internet selling services? It’s just there and not doing it. A website is supposed to be useful and it’s supposed to be functional. If it’s not any of those things, it shouldn’t be on the web, I wanted to offer my teaching skills, I wanted to be able to teach people. I have a small space in my village here. I like calling this my village. My mom will tell you it’s not a village!

Liam: We’ll call it your village. It’ll be your village on our podcast. Mary’s Village, you’ll find it on the map.

Mary: Exactly. There’s this place, I wanted to use it as an office space. What started out as an office space is now a hub for young girls and men who stand no chances of being into tech but are curious to teach them. Presently, we have 3 students.

Tara: Wow, it’s a school as well.

Mary: It’s totally free. We start with basic training, skills training, introduce them to the internet, and show them how blogs and WordPress work. I was asking one this morning, “How’s your experience blogging been so far?” She says, “Well, it’s so good to have a friend from here. I’ve met somebody from here.” I said, “Yes. Keep at it and it will help empower you.” So far How Do You Tech is not yet solid but we know where we’re headed. We’re just not there yet.

Liam: That’s important to have a vision, right? Because without a vision, you don’t know where to go. That’s great.

Tara: Yeah, and it’s supporting your idea of success, too, in helping other. I’m going to ask you another question, Mary, and this has to do with advice. It sounds like you’ve found a lot of great things from your technique of 22 and working with your business partner. Can you share with us some helpful advice, the most helpful advice you can think of that you’ve received and how you implement that in your life?

Mary: Okay. I think the most helpful advice was from my uncle. He’s older than me but we are sort of like twins, we go everywhere together. It’s the one I went to meet in Ghana when I did my internship. When I first got to Ghana then, I would ask him how to do something and instead of showing me how to do it, he would tell me, “Just Google it.” And I would be upset like, “Why are you telling me to Google it? Just show it on your system how to do it.”, “No, go and read about it.” I wasn’t the type of person who would always ask, ask, ask. It’s not something that is in our culture I don’t know how to put it but you get what I’m saying. It’s not something you would find on an average person doing. We don’t have that curious mentality where you want to know, know, know, and then you’re seeking knowledge. So that’s stuck with me. Now, when somebody says, “Oh, I want to do this. I want you to show me this.” The first question, “Have you Googled it?” And you say, “Okay, go ahead and Google, then tell me what you found.” You can tell me what you find, we’ll know where to start from. That, for me, is the best advice I got so far. It was the best advice I got so far. You don’t wait for people to tell you how to do things, go find out how to do it. If you’re lost, if you’re confused, come back and then I will guide you the rest of the way.

Tara: Yeah, that advice, something that’s interesting about that advice is that it couldn’t have been given 50 years ago, right, in those words. A few years ago, it would have been, “Go find a book about it or something.” I mean, it’s much easier, it takes a lot less effort to google it than it does to find a library and find a book and all of that so we’re lucky we have that. But I think that’s great advice. Have you ever heard the response on forums and things when someone asks the question that could probably be easily answered that there’s a website called, I think there’s an acronym, Let Me Google That For You, whatever that would be, LMGFY. Yeah, people use that to sort of criticize people who ask questions without looking for the answer on their own.

Liam: Mary, I love the self-empowerment angle of that advice. Google it, figure it out. I wonder how that advice that you’ve embraced and you’ve found so valuable, how does that work into your school? You’re teaching girls about information and computer technology. You’re trying to enable them to learn so it has to have some kind of a structure, right? Entire class can’t be, “Good morning class, google it.” How do you find that balance, how does that all come together?

Mary: I developed a lesson plan. At first, I was looking for a lesson plan. What am I going to teach them? How am I going to start? Where am I going to start from? And at the end of the day, I told myself, “Why are you trying to teach them something that somebody asked somewhere? Why not just teach them what you know and how you know it and how to do it?” That was my model. Teach them what I know. I started developing a lesson plan based on that. The first class, the first week, what we go through is this, I teach them how to create an email. Because you need that email to access a lot of service online. I teach them what usernames are, what domain names are, what a website is, how to make a site that is built on this this, or how to register a domain name, hosting. I taught them all that. One other thing I taught them was how to get accurate information out of web because that is so important. How do you find accurate information? How do you find information that’s actionable and accurate?

Liam: Yeah, that’s increasingly difficult.

Mary: Very difficult but if you know how to go about it, that’s one thing that I’m very, very good at. Google it. I am very good at that. If I want to find anything, I find it, and I find the right one. That’s one of the key things that I taught them, how to get this information. First week, in fact, they were already googling, I told them, I just said, “Go and check how to make drop scones.” Of course, I know they don’t know what drop scones are. Drop scones are pancakes, but they don’t know American pancakes. When I asked them, “How do you approach this question?”, “Well, I think that firstly, we should find out what drop scone is because we don’t even know what drop scone is.” Googling is an act. You don’t just type in your question in. No, you break it down into simple terms and then you search.

Tara: Yeah, googling is an art. That is a good lesson to learn and a good way to wrap up our conversation today because we’re out of time, Mary. But I love that you’re teaching young girls in your village not only to code, but also to use the internet wisely, I think that’s a fabulous lesson and it’s an inspiration. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us and for joining us today. Can you tell us and everyone listening where they can find you online?

Mary: You can find me on Twitter, @maryojob, that’s my username, or just visit my website Askmaryjob.com.

Tara: Great. Okay, thank you.

Liam: Mary, what an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for spending time with us today, really enjoyed getting to know you.

Mary: My pleasure. Thank you so much. I loved my time with you guys.

Liam: And I can confirm for you that you have absolutely been successful in this conversation. You have touched me in a positive way so thank you very much.

Tara: Me as well, thank you. Thanks, Mary.

Liam: Bye.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

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One Comment

  1. Awesome. Took a cursory look before and now in depth, this is nice.
    Thumbs up!!!
    Hehehehe: 22 (I like)

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