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

Podcast Awesome

🎧 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

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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.
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