Year in review: 2024

December 31, 2024

2024 is almost over, and for that I am grateful. The year was harder than I could have ever anticipated. Physically, emotionally, and professionally. But it also led to some of my greatest achievements and happiest memories.

From new twins to the onset of debilitating rheumatoid arthritis, from getting laid off to founding a successful company that doubled my salary, this was a year of pain and growth.

Here's a TL;DR list of some of the big things that happened this year:

Professionally

Content production

Personal life

A lot got done! Yet I still feel like I could (or should) have done twice as much!

Laid off while on paternity leave

The year started off pretty rough. At the end of last year, we had our second set of twins, which was a better surprise than I could've hoped for. But it also means we rolled into January with two newborns and two two-year-olds! Four kids under three years old. Having one newborn or one two-year-old is taxing, having two of each is something else altogether. It's pretty physically exhausting. It does produce some funny nap pictures though.

On top of all of that, I developed rheumatoid arthritis and spent many days in bed in pain before we found a mix of drugs that helped. There were days where I couldn't get up off the ground, couldn't lift a baby, couldn't buckle a seatbelt. It was pretty devastating, but I kept going. You have to keep going.

Aaron Francis

@aarondfrancis

The past two months, since the new twins were born, have been the most physically exhausting of my life.

Sleep deprivation, excruciating joint pain, and two other kids. Yesterday I spent all day in bed with a fever and stomach bug.

The only way out is through, but it's tough.
January 25th, 2024

Around March or April we found the right medicine to help. I've also since changed my diet a little bit, with hopes to get off the medicine at some point.

While all of this was happening, I got laid off.

I was still on paternity leave, set to return on a Friday before getting laid off on a Wednesday. (You can listen to a full podcast episode about the layoff if you're interested.) I can't fault a business for making a business decision. I certainly have notes about how it was handled, but they're not important anymore.

Regardless, the best thing you can do when you get laid off is to

  1. fight to get every penny of severance, COBRA, equipment, stock options, etc.
  2. move on

So that's what I did!

I have four little kids, a wife that works at home, and no income. Gotta keep going.

I was in the middle of building out an apartment studio that I was now on the hook for. Oh well. Gotta keep going.

I have Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and now health insurance was going away. That sucks. Gotta keep going.

You gotta keep going because the only other option is to give up and, frankly, that's not an option.

Founding Try Hard Studios

After getting laid off, I took several interviews trying to figure out what I was going to do next. During that process I was talking to Steve about what he was going to do. Steve and I worked pretty closely at the old company, he was my video producer / editor for all the video work we did there. We worked super great together and started kicking around the idea of going out on our own. Within a week of being laid off, we decided to give it a shot and founded our company: Try Hard Studios.

Looking back, I'm so proud of us for taking the leap. It came at a tough time, but it was so clearly the right decision.

Steve flew down to Dallas and we made a killer launch video to capitalize on the momentum.

Our original idea for the company was that we were going to do a mix of video specific DevRel consulting alongside our own education courses. It quickly became clear that that wasn't going to work out as we had hoped. Lots of companies wanted to work with us, but they all wanted me to do the video work. We were hoping that we could level-up existing teams, not become outsourced video creators.

Steve and I talked about it a lot during that time and decided to pivot into solely focusing on our own material. One of the weird things about starting a business is that you start with an idea of what you want to do and then the market tells you if that's going to work or not.

Database courses

Having changed our focus to be on content that we create and sell, we started working in earnest on our first database course.

In July we released that course, High Performance SQLite, in partnership with Turso. We quickly followed that up by releasing our second course Mastering Postgres in partnership with Xata in October.

Getting these two courses out was a monumental amount of work. Between the two of them, it's more than 200 highly produced, technical videos. Each video is many hours of work when you include research. I spend a lot (a lot, a lot) of time researching the material before I teach it. I'm not a classically educated software developer, so everything I've learned has been through experience and self-study. I like studying. I find it enjoyable.

I'm so proud of these two courses. I think they are some of my best work to date. It's very satisfying to look back on a huge amount of completed work. I encourage you to take on big projects, work really hard, and ship them.

On top of researching, recording, and editing the courses, we also had to build out a full course platform! We did it in record time, thanks to Laravel. I handled the backend and Steve handled the frontend. We also shipped light and dark mode videos, which I'm not sure anyone else has ever done.

The company is called Try Hard Studios, after all. Not Try A Little Bit Studios.

Running the business

Starting a business from scratch is tough. You've gotta figure what the business does, how to accept payments, keep the books, pay taxes, pay yourself, set up email, set up a help desk, set up websites, and so on. It's seemingly never-ending!

In the nine months since Steve and I started Try Hard, not only have we figured all of that out, we've also made more than double our old salaries in revenue. In nine months! From a cold start!

I'm very proud of us.

There was no guarantee this was going to work. We didn't make any money for the first several months. We didn't take any money out of the business for the first 8 months. It was monumentally stressful. To get all of that work done and have no income.

There were days where I was so overwhelmed that I sat and cried. I think each individual thing would have been manageable on its own, but when you stack new twins, new business, new house, new health issues on top of each other, it becomes a lot to bear.

Things worth doing are hard to do. There are no shortcuts. You just have to do the work. This year was a lot of work. I'm grateful it's behind us. If I could have picked a different time to start a business, I would have. I merely have to play the hand I'm dealt and I think I did the best job I could have done.

Building the team

At some point in the middle of the year, we hired an operations wizard named Kelsey. I had talked on our podcast about wanting to hire a "Linda" to help run our business. Every company in the world is actually run by an office manager that's been there for 30 years and knows how to do everything. And often times they're named Linda.

Kelsey heard the podcast and sent me the perfect cold DM on Twitter pitching herself as the person for the role. We hired her almost immediately and she's fundamentally changed the business.

Here's the whole team at an offsite in Boise:

Having someone talented handle front line support, draft articles and emails, schedule things, etc. has taken so much work and stress off of my plate. Kelsey and I have a twice-weekly call where she just helps me go through emails and other things that I don't want to do, like signing up for dental insurance. It's the best thing ever.

I think our little team really punches above our collective weight. Steve is a multi-talented designer, cinematographer, video producer, software developer, and businessman. Above all, he has good taste. There are a million things that need to be done when starting a business, and it's helpful to have a partner that can do almost any of them:

  • Design a website
  • Build a website
  • Edit video
  • Do motion graphics
  • Set up payroll
  • Negotiate deals

He's also good at doing things that I'm bad at, like cold outbound sales or negotiations. He handles all of the business side of things like getting Gusto set up and registering for tax stuff in the various states. I probably spend close to 8 hours a week on the phone with Steve, so it's a good thing I like him.

We also contracted with JD Lien to write some in-depth articles on SQLite and Postgres. It's nice having someone on the team who understands databases and is actually a good writer. We could churn out AI-generated slop, but that's morally repugnant to me.

All of this frees me up to do what only I can do: produce content. I can make courses, YouTube videos, write non-technical articles, Laravel articles, etc. Prior to this year, I don't think I fully appreciated what a struggle it is to consistently produce content. It's more of an art than science, and it comes with a lot of resistance. There were days where I would try to record course videos, but not actually be able to start until 1 or 2 pm. I'd just sit there in the morning and do anything except record videos. Not great! Eliminating all the drudgery has certainly helped. In 2025, I want to be better about overcoming that resistance.

Mistakes

This year was a great year for the business. To be able to start from scratch and earn 2x our old salaries in 9 months is a wild accomplishment by any standard, so I'm loathe to worry too much about the mistakes. That being said, there were some mistakes!

A lot of my energy this year was frenetic instead of focused. Some of that is to be expected when you're trying to figure out what the business even does! We started with a plan that the market quickly informed us was bad. So we refocused. That same pattern played out in a dozen different, smaller ways. Have a good idea, try it, realize it doesn't work or just works ok, try something else.

One trap I'm prone to fall into over and over again is taking on too much at once and then getting behind or feeling overwhelmed by it all. There's a natural expand-and-contract rhythm with my work. The expand phase is me saying yes to everything because it's hard to pass up an opportunity. The contract phase is me trying to get stuff off my plate because I've said yes to too much. It's something I'm aware of and actively trying to curtail. Steve has been very helpful in this regard. He's way better at saying no than I am.

The biggest pain point from this year was the course production schedule. We set very aggressive timelines for the courses. I'm not sure we had another choice here, because we needed the revenue! The problem with setting such aggressive timelines was that I killed myself trying to hit them, often working late into the night or on weekend nights after the kids went to bed. Then once the courses were released, I needed a lot of time to recover by doing absolutely nothing, which put me behind on the next deadline. Now that we have a stable base of revenue, I'm hoping to smooth out that boom-and-bust work cycle. I'd much prefer to work at a more leisurely pace, for longer, instead of pulling off feats of heroic effort and then crashing.

Still, it's better to make mistakes of ambition than mistakes of sloth.

Family life

This year I fully experienced, for the first time, how difficult it is to be a dad, the sole breadwinner, and the person that everyone is counting on. It's incredible pressure. Your kids think you're Superman, your wife has placed a huge amount of trust in you, and you're not sure if you can pull it off. But you have to try! That's your job. More than your job, it's your duty! What could be more noble than wearing yourself out in the pursuit of something honorable? What can be better than sacrificing yourself for the sake of your wife and kids? Nothing I know of.

Having so many kids so young is wonderful. They're all so close in age, they're all best buds (most of the time), and they keep each other entertained! And it's only going to get better as they get older.

It's also very difficult. Having 4 in diapers, 4 that can't buckle themselves in, 4 that need help brushing teeth, 4 that need help getting dressed, 4 that have big feelings.

No matter how many kids you have or how hectic life feels, there's always a moment where you think: "I just can't juggle it all." But you push through for those you love.

On a typical weekday, I'm up around 7 to see everyone before heading to the office. (We have an au pair that helps during the days on weekdays, we'd be lost without her.) I work from 7:45am - 6/6:30pm and then I'm home to play with the kids and put the big kids to bed. Then it's clean up, dinner, shower, and bedtime. On the weekends I'm 100% on parent duty from 7am - 7pm. By the end of the day I'm completely worn out. There have been many nights where I've left the big kids' room after putting them to bed and I sit at the top of the stairs and cry. Not because anything is particularly bad per se, but because it's just never ending. I end the week worn out from work and end the weekend worn out from parenting. There aren't a lot of breaks at this stage of life.

It's a tough stage! But it's just that: a stage. A phase. A season. It won't always be this way. I don't want to wish any time away, but I do look forward to a less stressful period.

You've gotta be careful looking forward though, you can spend your whole life looking forward and then look back and wonder where it went. When I get home from work, two three-year-olds scream "daddy!" and run to the door for hugs. Two one-year-olds say "dadadada." I'm not wishing that away.

During all of this, I did some of my best writing. It turns out the real secret behind all of it is that I was just writing to myself.

One of the questions I get is how I "do it all," usually meaning being present for family, creating content, writing code, etc. It's hard! I hope that much is clear!

I don't have any hobbies, I don't watch much TV, I don't watch sports, I don't play video games. I sometimes get super overwhelmed. But is it worth it? Without question, yes. I'm ok with things being hard. Worthwhile things are hard. There is going to come a day when the kids are older and the business is running smoothly and I'll be able to take my foot off the gas. Until then, I am beyond willing to sacrifice things that don't matter in order to do things that do matter. I think being present for my family matters. I think providing for my family matters. I think doing good work matters.

I'm willing to sacrifice a lot to make that happen.

I'm not willing, however, to sacrifice my kids' childhood for my dreams. So that means I end up sacrificing things I want, because it's not fair to sacrifice things they need.

It's a team sport though, and I couldn't ask for a better teammate than my wife, Jennifer. This year marks ten years of marriage for us and I couldn't do any of this without her.

She's the most supportive, encouraging, and strong woman in the world. (And of course gorgeous and funny. She's got it all.) Throughout our ten years of marriage the burden of life has shifted around quite a bit. Sometimes I'm down, sometimes she's down. Having someone that you can lean on, someone who's committed to being by your side for better or worse, in sickness and in health, is the greatest gift.

2025

2025 is going to be good. 2025 is going to be different!

We're going to teach more people, create more courses, and continue building a business that gives us freedom to focus on what matters most—our families and our craft.

We've got plans for several different courses next year. We're gonna try a few experiments too. Most of our courses so far have been aimed at intermediates, as that's what I prefer to teach. Teaching intermediate material is a lot harder than teaching intro material though, and to a smaller market! We'll at least do an Intro to SQL course aimed at beginners. We'll probably do a few Laravel courses, and then we may round it out with a big MySQL course.

The very first thing we're gonna tackle in the new year is a Screencasting.com revamp. Steve is going to teach multiple courses on all of the popular editors, and I'll redo the flagship course. We're planning on this being the second leg of our business.

My goal is to work at a more consistent pace and put out a lot more content. There's absolutely no reason not to put out 50-100 YouTube videos next year, along with all the courses.

2025 will also be a year of writing. I will write much more, with the goal of finishing a book. I enjoy writing, I find it therapeutic. And I have a lot to say!

Getting everything done is going to require discipline. This year I kind of just brute-forced it through sheer effort. I'd like this next year to be more of an exercise in discipline and focus instead of just pure effort.

But if it requires pure effort... I'm willing to do whatever it takes.

If there's one thing 2024 taught me, it's that we can handle more than we think. And if there's one thing I want for 2025, it's to apply that strength steadily, with purpose, to build a life and business that I can truly be proud of. I hope you'll do the same.

Me

Thanks for reading! My name is Aaron and I write, make videos , and generally try really hard .

If you ever have any questions or want to chat, I'm always on Twitter.

If you want to give me money (please do), you can buy my course on SQLite at HighPerformanceSQLite.com or my course on screencasting at Screencasting.com . On the off chance you're a sophomore at Texas A&M University, you can buy my accounting course at acct229.com .

You can find me on YouTube on my personal channel . If you love podcasts, I got you covered. You can listen to me on Mostly Technical .