Nerd Show and Tell: Meet Joey Hensen Font Awesome's Controller

🎧 Episode Summary: Finance Wizards & Fitness Quests with Joey Henson

In this episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt sits down with Joey Henson, Controller at Font Awesome and low-key wizard of spreadsheets, startup survival, and Hogwarts-worthy metaphors. Joey opens up about his journey through the high-pressure world of startup finance, what burnout looked like after becoming a parent, and how Font Awesome’s uniquely human work culture has helped him reclaim balance and joy in his career.

We dive into how Font Awesome’s values around work-life balance, empathy, and thoughtful leadership created space for Joey to rediscover what matters: family, fitness, and—yes—fandom. From conjuring Harry Potter analogies to explain how Kits work, to lobbying for a wizarding icon set, Joey brings humor and heart to everything he does. He also talks about his recent health transformation, the joys of counting macros, and his budding love affair with Ruby on Rails.

Whether you're a finance pro, a budding dev, or a wand-wielding D&D nerd, this episode’s got something magical for you.

✨ What We Cover in This Episode

• 💼 Burnout in the startup finance world
• 🧘 Work-life balance at Font Awesome
• 🧙 A Harry Potter metaphor for Kits (Hermione’s bag FTW!)
• 🧮 Learning SQL, Ruby, and Rails for fun
• 🍳 Why Joey counts macros and how it changed his life
• 🧙‍♂️ Dungeons & Dragons meets nutrition tracking

🕒 Timestamps

• 00:03:50 Reflection on the Challenges of Working Long Hours
• 00:05:27 Self-Development and Quality of Life at Font Awesome
• 00:08:43 Tech, Finance, and Harry Potter Icon Pack at Font Awesome
• 00:11:13 Exploring Harry Potter Lore to Explain Kits
• 00:18:34 Dungeons & Dragons and Nutrition Habits
• 00:20:20 Counting Macros for Optimal Health and Fitness

🔗 Links & Resources

• A Beginner's Guide to Counting Macros
• The Font Awesome theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin
• Audio mastering by Chris Enns at Lemon Productions

-----------------------

HIGHLIGHTS

 In a previous Snuggle, we were talking about metaphors or some way to describe how a kit works. And I seem to remember an allusion to Harry Potter lore would maybe be a good way to explain it. I think we discovered that there was confusion among folks between whether a kit is populated like it's a container that's full of something, or if it's empty and you add to it. And what we came around to say was more accurate is that a kit comes fully loaded with everything you might want to use.

Yeah, it is. So Hermione, the beaded bag, it had an undetectable extension charm on it. They used that multiple times in the books and the movies. And it is it's kind of like the DND bag of holding where you can pull out a lot of stuff if you know what's in there. And it comes pre loaded. That works. So, like with Hermiones, the best analogy I could think of was they needed a ton of books and they needed clothes, and when they needed that, Hermione said, oh, let me grab that. Let me just get that out of this bag here. And that's kind of how the kits work, too. You're 100% right. I remember that conversation now where it's, hey, you don't have to worry about it. We've already got it handled for you, and we're going to make it super easy for you to get that out of there.

Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

Transcript

0:00:09

Matt

Welcome to Podcast awesome, where we chat about icons, design, tech business, and nerdery with members of the Font  awesome team.

0:00:22

Joey

Font  awesome. For me, something awesome don't make something awesome.

0:00:30

Matt

I'm your host, Matt Johnson. In this podcast. I catch up with Joey Henson. Font awesome's. Controller we talk about his background in the financial world, how a Harry Potter theme helped explain a bit of Font Awesome's tech, and his newfound interest in the world of nutrition. 

Well, thanks for hanging out on the Nerd Show and Tell Joey. Here we are the two non tech guys at Font Awesome.

0:01:07

Joey

Yeah, thanks for having me together once again. Always fun.

0:01:11

Matt: 

Yeah, always fun. I'm always curious to know about what's your professional background like, where did you go to school? How did you wind up into the tech world? And specifically, how did you make your way to Font awesome?

0:01:23

Joey

Yeah, so I actually went to school at Missouri Southern State University, and Travis Chase, the founder, he is an alumni from there, worked for a small company where we have two of our current software engineers worked and one of them, Ed, he was really good friends with Travis. He worked with him professionally at a different company. So I got to know Travis there over about four years, and I had left there to pursue a different career opportunity in the finance world.

0:01:55

Joey

Went from a private company to a public company. And then Travis said that Font awesome was getting to a point they really needed some financial support because they were doing it by themselves. And having tech people take care of all the finance stuff gets a little bit complicated. Yeah, we chatted and with my background and with knowing enough technology that I can be dangerous, we decided that I'd come on in a financial support role, the first back office besides our actual support team.

0:02:32

Joey

So that's where I came from and made my way over here.

0:02:36

Matt: 

So if I'm not mistaken, the majority of your career you spent supporting folks in the tech industry, like in startup land, is that right?

0:02:46

Joey

Yeah, I spent most of my career in the startup land with two years in the public accounting world, but it was more so just startups. They weren't with an emphasis in tech. We utilized tech and we actually had a team, which is two of our developers here, who built an internal tool that was heavily reliant in automating what we were doing. So from that perspective, yeah, it's been pretty heavy in the tech area.

0:03:23

Matt: 

It's pretty common with folks at Font awesome. A lot of people that sort of make their way to Font awesome have sort of this common thread where folks have maybe not had the greatest experience, like in sort of the corporate world. You're a young guy though, so I don't know if you had the years of getting chewed up out there, but what was it like working in a similar space at different companies as opposed to working at Font awesome.

0:03:50

Joey

So I'm a younger guy, but I've always been someone who has moved up pretty quick and had more responsibility to put on me. And so it gets stressful out there. I mean, there was a lot of times I would be on vacation and putting in 40 hours, weeks still. It's hard. And so when you're someone who just sometimes just does the job and does it well, they put more responsibility and more pressure on you to just do more to pick up for those who aren't doing the work that they need to.

0:04:25

Joey

Kind of been one of the things in the other companies I worked for, where I went from just being a support accountant up to management and senior management, and it's always just, hey, yeah, you're doing this, you're doing everything we asked you for. How about another 15 hours a week? And after six, seven, eight years of that, you just don't want to do it. And that's always when this came up. And I'm never someone who's going to work a straight 40, typically I'm going to put in a little extra because I want to do it.

0:04:59

Joey

But not having to work 60, 70 hours a week, having a small kid, having a wife, you just can't beat it.

0:05:07

Matt: 

The way that people view their work, it's almost like a badge of honor. If you're killing yourself by how much you work, it's almost like the way that we sort of justify our existence almost, is that if we're killing ourselves slogging in 60 plus hours a week, it's insanity. It's like, how can you have any quality of life?

0:05:27

Joey

No, that's exactly it. And I'm a CPA, so anyone who knows CPAs, it is a thing where, especially during tax season, if you're not working 60, 70, 80 hours, weeks, you're not pulling your work, your weight.

0:05:40

Matt: 

Right.

0:05:41

Joey

I don't understand the mindset anymore behind I'll just put more and more into it because most of the time you don't get rewarded anymore. You're just expected to keep doing that. And working for a large public company, a multibillion dollar public company. That was the other issue was they just want more and they're like, hey, we appreciate what you're doing, do this. This person didn't get their work done. How about you take over?

0:06:10

Joey

So I don't like that badge of honor. Right. I'd rather not miss out on when my kid's older, any of his activities. And I know that's one thing Font  awesome is great about is prioritizing the family and the kids.

0:06:31

Matt: 

But as the financial bookkeeping guy at Font  awesome, you've also done some self learning in tech, right? What have you been working on lately?

0:06:40

Joey

Yeah, so I've been learning some about SQL, some Ruby programming, and trying to go through some Ruby on Rails just to get a better understanding of how programming in general works. I'm not a programmer. I had one programming class in college and it was one of the only classes where I just ended up dropping it. That was a testament to the professor and the relationship him and I had where he was teaching one way and I didn't learn that way than the fact that I didn't enjoy programming.

0:07:13

Joey

So that's what I've been mostly using, doing some also basic macros with Excel to kind of automate my job in ways that make sense fundamentally. I know I'm going to do this every month. Let's go ahead and make this as quick and simple as possible. Yeah.

0:07:32

Matt: 

One of the great things too at Font Awesome is that there's such a value to ongoing self development and learning. So we have these basically these sprints, the splits that we do. In six weeks, I have sort of 1ft in, 1ft out. Like, I enter into some of that work as a consultant sometimes, but a lot of my work is sort of outside of those six week cycles and I've been involved in some projects recently.

0:08:01

Matt: k

But all that to say, it's really great because when as work sort of comes and goes, we can set aside time to do self development and learn new things, which is just awesome that there's that kind of support.

0:08:13

Joey

Yeah, I love that. And really being in this area and having an interest in the technology, being able to ask some of these guys when they're not busy, hey, why is this not working the way I think it should is great invaluable. I mean, I'm able to tap into decades of experience and knowledge that at most companies, you stay in your lane, you don't ever venture out, and as soon as you do, you get slapped back down and told, no, this is what you're going to do.

0:08:43

Matt: 

The ongoing curiosity that is encouraged and the culture of learning that Font Awesome is great.

0:08:51

Joey

It is. And I mean, you look at how everyone here learns, everyone's different. So some people want to learn with different resources that they're able to get just based on the fact that, hey, we want to support your growth, we want to support your career development. So I really enjoyed that party.

0:09:16

Matt: 

Is there anything in the world of tech that's piquing your interest these days that you've dove into at all?

0:09:22

Joey

Yeah, a lot of the time I just kind of look over what's going on in the tech world. You know, Twitter, Ftx, all of that kind of area where what's happening there is going to shape what the industry looks like. You look at Twitter, they're wanting people back in the office. You look at Ftx, there was a financial oversight with a huge infrastructure built around just securing users data. And so that's kind of the area I'm nerding out about is where does the tech and finance world overlap? It's something that we get to have a lot of discussions about when we're in the office.

0:10:00

Joey

So I get different perspectives. I get the tech perspective, and the tech guys in the office sometimes, well, a lot of times get to hear the finance perspective too.

0:10:15

Matt: 

Well, we can move into the very important questions at hand, which is what Icon Pack really needs to be in Font  awesome. That needs to be a part of the Font  awesome canon.

0:10:29

Joey

Yeah. So I am a Harry Potter generation nerd, so I think a Harry Potter icon pack nice because that's still a huge area of nerds my age, especially being 30 something year old reader nerd that shaped who I was growing up and will shape how I parent it, will shape a lot of outlooks on life. And so in that you can have all kinds of icons, the wand icons, you can have cauldrons, you can have the Deathly Hollows. I know you can't technically call them the Deathly Hollows.

0:11:13

Joey

There's a huge area around that that I think really needs to make it into the kind of Icon pack with Font  awesome canon.

0:11:21

Matt: 

Yeah, for sure. Well, there's some sort of wizardy ones in there, but they're maybe not as specific as Harry Potter, say, like some of our, shall we say, space trilogy themed icons are a little bit more direct than maybe the Harry Potter one.

0:11:38

Joey

Exactly. I mean, you're not going to have a Death Eater icon. It's just probably not going to happen. You're not going to have the Dark mark, you're not going to have all of the Deathly Hollow symbols, probably. But it could happen. I wouldn't be upset. Who knows, maybe my first website will incorporate those somehow.

0:12:01

Matt: 

There you go. In a previous snuggle, we were talking about metaphors or some way to describe how a kit works. And I seem to remember an allusion to Harry Potter lore would maybe be a good way to explain it. I think we discovered that there was confusion among folks between whether a kit is populated like it's a container that's full of something, or if it's empty and you add to it. And what we came around to say was more accurate is that a kit comes fully loaded with everything you might want to use.

0:12:41

Matt: 

We're always looking for an Easter egg to put into our copy that is going to draw from the FAM nerdom that we're really into. So one of the ways of explaining the kit was maybe Hermione's handbag is sort of like the idea of DND. Well, you've got two nerdy things coming together. You've got DND and Harry Potter, because Hermione's handbag is a little bit like a bag of holding, right?

0:13:04

Joey

Yeah, it is. So Hermione, the beaded bag, it had an undetectable extension charm on it. They used that multiple times in the books and the movies. And it is it's kind of like the DND bag of holding where you can pull out a lot of stuff if you know what's in there. And it comes pre loaded. That works. So, like with Hermiones, the best analogy I could think of was they needed a ton of books and they needed clothes, and when they needed that, Hermione said, oh, let me grab that. Let me just get that out of this bag here. And that's kind of how the kits work, too. You're 100% right. I remember that conversation now where it's, hey, you don't have to worry about it. We've already got it handled for you, and we're going to make it super easy for you to get that out of there.

0:13:48

Matt: 

And it's lightweight and portable. You can take it wherever you want.

0:13:51

Joey

Yeah, you can add to it if you want, potentially with custom icons, custom items you want Harry put in with his he had a moleskin pouch also, which is somewhat the same, but he was able to customize that and add his own items to that.

0:14:11

Matt: 

Nice. Always looking for opportunities for bringing the world of tech and our nerdery together. Perfect example. So do you have a favorite fawn also? Mycon.

0:14:32

Joey

There'S a lot of them, just really any of the Star Wars ones. I really like the finance ones. You have the calculator because it just kind of wraps in what I do. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I was told the correct answer is the Pooh Storm.

0:14:57

Matt: 

Yeah. When I had a little questionnaire set up for you just to sort of jog your get the creative, the juices flowing on the conversation, the right answer is Poo Storm. But Joey, you can choose whatever icon suits your fancy.

0:15:13

Joey

Yeah, and that's such a hard one. We have amazing icon designers, and to pick one excludes so many other ones right. That it makes it hard. I mean, I could probably tell you my favorite style is Sharp. I could tell you that I ask for receipts all the time, so I joke around that the receipt icon or the abacus, because that's where accounting came from. Those are amazing. But there's just so many good icons in our library that it's hard to pick a favorite.

0:15:52

Matt: 

Yeah.

0:15:53

Joey

What are we at now? 17,000 icons between styles and just unique designs. Yeah.

0:16:00

Matt: 

That's even before the icon wizard.

0:16:02

Joey

Before the icon wizard. Yeah, it's expanding so quick that sometimes it's hard to pick a favorite.

0:16:10

Matt: 

Yeah, the favorites a lot of the time are ones that you might not see kind of out in the wild. They're sort of the Zany Whimsical ones that we make just for fun. I'm always curious about how folks might use those. It's like the dumpster fire and the prestorm icons were a big hit, and I'm just waiting for a chance to see those in somebody's design someday.

0:16:35

Joey

I'm sure someone has them somewhere.

0:16:37

Matt: 

Oh, I'm sure they have to. If there's any listeners out there, just send us an email at hello at fawn. Awesome. We want to know we want to know where we can see these.

0:16:48

Joey

Yes.

0:16:53

Matt: 

Beyond the world of tech, or maybe even in the world of tech, what are you really nerding out about these days?

0:16:59

Joey

Yeah, so there's quite a few things that just kind of suck up any time I have outside of spending time with my wife and son. So just learning Ruby on Rails, that takes up quite a bit of time. I do that. Some of my free time roasting coffee.

0:17:13

Matt: 

Nice.

0:17:14

Joey

So we're big on coffee. And also anyone who's followed the kickstarter knows that that was one of the first things we ever had was coffee. We joked about creating our own blend of coffee reading. I read a lot. So, dresden files. Anything by Brandon Sanderson. So he just recently came out with the Lost Medal, the fourth Wax and Wane book to end that series. So spending a lot of time there. DND. I know we talk about that. I mean, we play it every week about three or 4 hours on Tuesday nights.

0:17:50

Matt: 

Did you grow up playing DND or is that kind of new to when you joined? Fun. Awesome.

0:17:55

Joey

I've been playing D and D for about six years now. I actually started with one of the coworkers here, Ed. He's the DM. And then Travis and I both kind of just ended up playing in one of his home games and fell in love with it and started spending a lot of time and money on that in all iterations. So it got me into the tabletop games just in general. So anyone who plays DND knows there's different hobbies playing DND and also collecting the DND dice and books and everything else that they're doing.

0:18:34

Matt: 

Yeah, for sure. I was reintroduced again to DND. I grew up playing when I was younger and then maybe by the time I was, I don't know, twelve or 13, I hadn't played in a really long time. But I'd heard when I joined the team that folks were really into D and D and so you were the first DM of my first game back. So that was pretty fun.

0:18:59

Joey

Yeah, that was a fun one. We just ran a little module that wizards actually put out in the domain of Dread with Curse of Straw and it's a lot of fun. We need to get back to that one at some point.

0:19:10

Matt: 

Yeah, for sure. We should definitely get back to that one. I wonder if Kelsey will try and blow up the remember he was making these calls on what he wanted to do. That was sort of throwing your storyline for a loop a little bit.

0:19:26

Joey

Well, not just that. Anyone who plays a pre built campaign knows while cursive, Straw is extremely open world as far as what you can do except for the beginning and whether you create a story at home, you play a pre built module, you're going to have a little bit of railroading to get you on the right track at the beginning. After that, open it up. Do whatever you want. If you want to do something crazy, let's go. Yeah, totally had fun.

0:19:54

Matt: 

Yeah, that was a fun one. You're also into nutrition and counting macros, and it's always funny seeing you and Dave at the Snuggles kind of weighing out your food and stuff, and I don't know if I really understand that at all. For folks that don't understand, what is that?

0:20:20

Joey

Yeah, I mean, a couple of years ago, I got really into trying to get into shape. I was extremely overweight, and I don't like the word diet, so I wanted to find something that allowed me to not deprive myself, but have a little more structure. So I ended up working out. I work out typically five days a week, sometimes six, sometimes twice a day. But the part that really got me into a healthier spa and helped me lose at this point, close to £80, was I counted my macronutrients.

0:20:50

Joey

So all food is made up of macro and micronutrients. The macro is going to be your protein, your carbs, and your fat. So currently I eat right at 2800 calories a day, and all I do is make sure I'm hitting the right amount of protein, the right amount of carbs, and the right amount of fat. It's carb heavy because I work out a lot, but it really helped me to have a different relationship with food and not feel like I couldn't have things I really enjoyed. I eat ice cream almost every single night, so while I eat healthy, I also work in treats.

0:21:27

Matt: 

So the idea with macros, then, is that you're fueling your body with the right kind of percentage of nutrients, depending on your activity level, and so you get kind of maximum performance out of how you're fueling your body, right?

0:21:42

Joey

Yeah, that's exactly it. So because I do work out so much, I want to make sure that the majority of my diet is made up of carbs and protein while still eating somewhere around, oh, I think it's 700 calories worth of fat every day, but it is it's just making sure that you have the right kind of makeup there.

0:22:03

Matt: 

And it's really just science. You just sort of like you figure out the amount of activity that you do, what your goal is, and it's just straight science. Like, almost anybody could benefit from eating that way is kind of what I get out of it.

0:22:19

Joey

Yeah, it's definitely not easy, but anyone can do it if they want to. Like you said, you're going based on your base metabolic rate to know how many calories you're burning, typically on a day. And if you want to lose weight, you need to make sure you're eating less than what you burn. If you want to gain muscle, you need to eat more than what you're burning. If you want to maintain, you need to stay right within a range.

0:22:43

Joey

So it's very science backed while also being flexible. I like to think of it as flexible eating and not like a diet.

0:22:53

Matt: 

Right. If somebody was curious about learning more about it, how did you get started in that?

0:22:58

Joey

Yeah, I actually use an app. It's called Macro Stacks, where it's fairly affordable. It was web based. Now it has an iPhone and an Android app. But they actually gave me exactly what I needed to eat for. I don't remember what the price was. It's affordable, that's for sure. But it went based on my height, my weight, my goals and my activity. And it said, here's what you need to eat at that point. Lose weight.

0:23:26

Matt: 

Right. That's great, man. That's awesome. You're able to hit your goals and feel like you're in a healthier spot.

0:23:33

Joey

Oh, yeah. It's been nice.

0:23:37

Matt

Thanks for listening in to Podcast Awesome

0:23:39

0:23:40

Matt

A special thank you to Joey for coming on the show. If you like what you've heard, please give us a rating and a review and share this episode with your nerd friends. Ends this episode was produced and edited by yours truly, Matt Johnson. 

0:23:56

Matt: 

Matt

The Font Awesome theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin, and audio mastering was done by Chris Enns at Lemon Productions.