About me

Hello, my name is Aaron Francis.

I'm a software developer, content creator, and co-founder of Try Hard Studios. I'm on Twitter all the time, and I make videos on YouTube.

I'm a CPA and used to be a tax accountant at a Big 4, but I've gladly left that life far behind me.

I love making things and having lots of projects going. I live in Dallas with my beautiful and perfect wife Jennifer, our two-year-old twins, and our four-month-old twins.

I'm very online, you can find me:

Me and the Boss

Me and the Boss

First set of twins

First set of twins

Second set (!!) of twins

Second set (!!) of twins

Course research

Course research

Laracon EU

Laracon EU

GitHub Universe

GitHub Universe

Projects

Digital bits

Mastering Postgres
An upcoming course on the database PostgreSQL.
High Performance SQLite
87 videos teaching you everything you need to know about running SQLite in production.
screencasting.com
A 4.5-hour, on-demand video course that teaches you how to produce high-quality screencasts faster than ever.
Personal YouTube channel
My personal channel where I talk about Laravel, PHP, and general web development.
Try Hard Studios YouTube channel
Our studio channel where we share behind the scenes looks at building a business
Mostly Technical podcast
Discussions on Laravel, life, business, and an eclectic mix of related topics. Recorded and released every week.
Torchlight.dev
A service for perfect syntax highlighting.
Open source
My open source code, mostly Laravel packages.
acct229.com
Accounting tutoring for students at Texas A&M.
The Music Makers podcast
Inactive
A solo podcast I used to do, where I read articles that changed my life.
The Framework Friends podcast
Inactive
A podcast with my friend Andrew Culver, where we talked about web frameworks and development.
PlanetScale YouTube channel
Inactive
My old work channel where I talk about MySQL, PlanetScale, and databases. I no longer work at PlanetScale

Projects

Physical things

The Aaron Francis Studio of Light and Sound™
Turning an apartment into a YouTube Studio (ongoing!)
Shedquarters
I turned a 10x20 shed into an office.
Handwriting robots
Creating four, giant handwriting robots to write marketing mail.
Walking treadmill conversion
Taking an old treadmill and turning it into a walking treadmill for under my desk.

Content

Things I've published

2025

From Layoff to Leap of Faith: The Try Hard Studios Story

DevSprout

The Big Announcement w/ Taylor Otwell

Mostly Technical

Developing your personal API | Aaron Francis

Sanity

Super Ultra Tilted

Mostly Technical

The Haters Were Right

Mostly Technical

Eye on the Future

Mostly Technical

Distribution & Taste w/ Adam Wathan

Mostly Technical

The Power of Putting Yourself Out There w/ Aaron Francis

Guidance Counselor 2.0

Getting Laid Off On Paternity Leave With Twins

Startup Dad Podcast

Mob Mentality

Mostly Technical

Why Most Developers Overcomplicate Everything w/ Aaron Francis

Whiskey Web and Whatnot: Web Development, Neat

The Hourglass w/ Jordan Gal

Mostly Technical

Aaron Francis: Building and Teaching Cool Things

Josh and Austin Figure It Out

Explore vs. Exploit

Mostly Technical

Aaron Francis is putting PHP in Your JS Files

Syntax.fm

The Big Tweet

Mostly Technical

Laravel's Big Day

Mostly Technical

Balancing Your Use of AI with Aaron Francis

Rogue Startups

Robber Baron Mentality

Mostly Technical

Fusion: Write PHP inside your Vue and React components

Laravel News

Navigating Fatherhood, Business, & Hardships

codeFellowship

#33 - Aaron Francis on Fusion, TUIs and Content Creation

The Navbar Podcast

Don't Be A Dummy

Mostly Technical

Epic Bets: Practical Tips for Betting on Yourself with Aaron Francis

Kent C. Dodds

The Big Reveal

Mostly Technical

Zombification

Mostly Technical

99 Dev Problems with Aaron Francis

Built for Devs

The Existential Threat

Mostly Technical
2024

Side Project Podcast: Aaron Francis

Side Project Podcast

Yes Man

Mostly Technical

Aaron Francis: Laravel Solo, Courses, Screen casting

The Laravel News Podcast

Unreliable Narrator

Mostly Technical

Doing Too Much

Mostly Technical

Chasing Vanity

Mostly Technical

The To-Done List

Mostly Technical

Special Guest Aaron Francis

Full Stack Chat

Definitely For Profit

Mostly Technical

Tier Maker

Mostly Technical

Try Hard Empire

Mostly Technical

Create A Spectacle

Mostly Technical

Talking About Liquid

Mostly Technical

Launching Flux (Live) with Caleb Porzio

Mostly Technical

Paid In Respect

Mostly Technical

How to Make $2,000,000 From Courses and Quit Your 9-To-5

The Nathan Barry Show

Stay Lean, Stay Clean with Caleb Porzio

Mostly Technical

Paige Against the Machine – Starting a Robopocalypse with Aaron Francis

I Don't Know Anything with Paige Harriman

Zero to $125,000 in 30 Days: My Exact Course Launch Strategy

Billion Dollar Creator

Teaching Databases, Writing PHP, and Independent Work with Aaron Francis

Software Huddle

Mostly NPTM with Caleb Porzio & Daniel Coulbourne

Mostly Technical

The Milk of Texas

Cheese and Weather

How to Be Better than 96.487% of Developers

Backend Banter

Jank Free With Caleb Porzio

Mostly Technical

Interview with Aaron Francis

The Tech Commute

Developer to Business Owner

Coding Coders

Aaron and Caleb Porzio talk wrappers

Notes On Work - by Caleb Porzio

The Contest

Mostly Technical

Luck Surface Area | Multithreaded Income Episode 43 with Aaron Francis

Multithreaded Income

Idea About Ideas

Mostly Technical

Just Do Stuff

Mostly Technical

Push The Button

Mostly Technical

Aaron Francis on being a Christian in tech

The Save File

Beginning of the Empire

Mostly Technical

How Aaron Francis Turned a Layoff Into a Thriving Educational Empire

The Business of Laravel Podcast

One Big Bet

Mostly Technical

Mostly HVAC with Dan Myers, CEO of Flair

Mostly Technical

Morning Person

Mostly Technical

Elevate Your Video Developer Brand: Featuring Aaron Francis

Kevin Blanco's Podcast

S-Tier Software with Taylor Otwell

Mostly Technical

Making videos developers actually want to watch

Scaling DevTools

Business Dad

Mostly Technical

Laravel vs. JavaScript with Dax & Adam Elmore

Mostly Technical

It's All Vibes

Mostly Technical

The Secret

Mostly Technical

DevRel, Content, Going out on Your Own w/Aaron Francis

Guidance Counselor 2.0

AI Therapy Connoisseur

Mostly Technical

Fight or Win

Mostly Technical

We're Gonna Make It

Mostly Technical

Building side projects as layoff insurance

Lemon Squeezy

YouTube Growth Secrets

Rogue Startups

Ben steps away from Tuple

Hackers Incorporated

Ben steps away from Tuple

Hackers Incorporated

It Gets Harder

Chantastic

Super Epic Crazy with Adam Wathan

Mostly Technical

Try Hard Studios

Mostly Technical

The Layoff

Mostly Technical

Indie Tycoon

Mostly Technical

Careful, Careful!

Mostly Technical

What's The Good Word?

Mostly Technical

YouTube as a Business with Aaron Francis

Full Stack Founder

Real Dad Stuff

Mostly Technical

My Mind Vise

Mostly Technical

Your Glove Situation

Mostly Technical

A Man of Culture

Mostly Technical

It's Content, Baby!

Mostly Technical

Products vs. Creator Businesses

Full Stack Founder
2023

You Need Tinker Time with Adam Wathan

Mostly Technical

Static site generators & personal websites

Over Engineered

Ecosystem of Cards

Mostly Technical

Programming Books w/ Aaron Francis

YAGNI

We Didn't Have JSON In My Day

Mostly Technical

Write Laravel, not PHP (feat. Aaron Francis)

Backend Banter

Launching Screencasting.com while having a job and a young family

Lemon Squeezy

Ep 004: Goblin Mode Revisited

This Week, Next Week

Farming, Threadbois, & Meme Lords with Jeffrey Way

Mostly Technical

Ep 003: Goblin Mode

This Week, Next Week

Nobody Uses Trucks For That

Mostly Technical

The SQL Injection Slide with Sam Selikoff

Mostly Technical

How To Level Up Your Video Content with Aaron Francis

Level Up Creators

All Things Livewire with Caleb Porzio

Mostly Technical

Ep 002: This week, next week (with Aaron Francis)

This Week, Next Week

Your Computer Is Your Sanctuary

Mostly Technical

Ep 001: This week, next week (with Aaron Francis)

This Week, Next Week

Late Night Bite

Mostly Technical

The Power of Sharing Expertise

The Bootstrapped Founder

Just Enough Laracons

Mostly Technical

Growing an audience, making difficult decisions, launching screencasting.com

Indie Bites

Galaxy Quadrant Theory

Mostly Technical

The End

Hammerstone

Forward Only!

Mostly Technical

The Week of Aaron

Mostly Technical

Empanelling Aaron Francis

thunk.dev

PHP doesnt suck (anymore)

Log Rocket

He Likes a Manifesto

Mostly Technical

The Year of Livewire

Mostly Technical

The Secret Is to Get a Truck

Mostly Technical

It's React in PHP

Mostly Technical

Colleen is having all the fun

Hammerstone

The Pilot

Mostly Technical

On the precipice of something great

Hammerstone

Good tweets are good

Hammerstone

Colleen is pumped

Hammerstone

We're HelloQuery now 👀

Hammerstone

Benchmarking, Type Systems, and Good Hustle

How about tomorrow

Should a parent with young kids try to bootstrap a new startup?

Build Your SaaS

We didn't break up!

Hammerstone

MicroConf Recap

Hammerstone

Customer interviews lead to a new hypothesis

Hammerstone

MySQL for Developers with Aaron Francis

Rooftop Ruby Podcast

Two Separate Businesses

Hammerstone

Plans for March (Subject to change)

Hammerstone

Video

Framework Friends

Hi Sinclair! (and recapping Laracon EU)

Hammerstone

The Nova launch and a (small) pivot

Hammerstone

Testing

Framework Friends

New year, new energy

Hammerstone
2022

Looking back, looking forward

Hammerstone

APIs

Framework Friends

Conferences

Framework Friends

We're back baby!

Hammerstone

Live Streaming Tools and Toys

Rubber Duck Dev Show

Deploying Torchlight

Pushing to Production Podcast

Build your own luck

The GitHub ReadME Podcast

Being a developer, content creator, and entrepreneur with Aaron Francis

Product Journey

Aaron Francis on Torchlight

Twenty Percent Time

Use Cases

Hammerstone

Half a Job You Love

Art of Product

Back from Vacation

Hammerstone

Aaron & Colleen from Hammerstone

Remote Ruby

The RailsConf At Home 2022 Ruby Podcast Panel

Ruby on Rails Podcast

Remix with Kent C. Dodds

Framework Friends

(Extra) RailsConf Podcast Panel

Framework Friends

Email Outreach, GitHub Actions, and a Demo Site

Hammerstone

The Rails SaaS Conference

Framework Friends

The Calls are Happening

Hammerstone

Glimmers of Hope

Hammerstone

We Sent the Email! And Made No Sales!

Hammerstone

Phoenix and LiveView with Chris McCord

Framework Friends

Chris Quit (ft. Aaron Francis)

Pushing Boulders

Laravel Nova 4.0

Framework Friends

It's Time to Business

Hammerstone

Hammerstone changes, Refine, and finalized Chipper pricing

Pushing Boulders

The Landing Page Lives!

Hammerstone

Some Big Changes

Hammerstone

Bullet Train Goes Open-Source

Framework Friends

Aaron's New Job, Balancing Client vs Product Work

Hammerstone

Origin Stories

Framework Friends

Refine, Sidecar, Laravel, and Serverless

Pushing Boulders

Is Rails Over? Aaron Goes Full Hipster

Hammerstone

Conferences and First Revenue 💸

Hammerstone

Bonus: Talking Twitter with Matt Swanson

Hammerstone

Laracon is Tomorrow 😬

Hammerstone

How to use Twitter like an actual human being

Startup to Something

First Nova Install 🎉 and Prepping for Laracon

Hammerstone

All the Frontends, Onboarding Nova, and MySQL Stuff

Hammerstone

Balancing indie life with twins, marketing to developers, and growing your Twitter audience

The Indie Dads Podcast

Sean Has Known All Along

Hammerstone

Back in the Saddle

Hammerstone
2021

Work and Family, with Matt Wensing

Hammerstone

Optimizing Time-to-UI and Next Steps for Livewire

Hammerstone

(Finally) Exiting the Trough of Despair

Hammerstone

React, Vue, Laravel, Rails, and Hotwire. Oh my!

Hammerstone

Launch Day is in Sight

Hammerstone

Coffee, Renderless Components, and Confidence

Hammerstone

Colleen Reaches Enlightenment

Hammerstone

Back in the Saddle

Hammerstone

Pheasants, Live Coding, Filters-in-a-filter

Hammerstone

Who _Are_ You?

Hammerstone

Hammerstone, a History

Hammerstone

2 Jobs, Stabilizers, and Torchlight Clients

Hammerstone

Foreign Keys and Calvin & Hobbes

Hammerstone

Bonus Episode: A Deep Dive into Sidecar with Greg Skerman

Hammerstone

Colleen's First Week, Refine Pricing, and Acquiring a Product

Hammerstone

Riding Sidecar with Aaron Francis

North Meets South Web Podcast

Billions with a "B"

Hammerstone

Hammerstone is Growing 👀

Hammerstone

Railsifying Refine, Torchlight, and the Myth of the MVP

Hammerstone

Updates, Updates, Updates

Hammerstone

YNAB For Business? Progress in Rails, Demand for Laravel.

Hammerstone

Sales Safari for Torchlight.dev & Wanting to Give Up

Hammerstone

Rough Week, Good Friday

Hammerstone

Healing Back Pain, Twitter Coincidences, and Torchlight.dev

Hammerstone

Rails Integration and Laravel Admin Panels

Hammerstone

Shedquarters, Refine Refinements, and Laravel Airdrop

Hammerstone

Texas Weather, Hotwire Success, and Refinements

Hammerstone

Sean's Birthday, Mental Health, and Hotwire

Hammerstone

Andrew from Bullet Train Stops By

Hammerstone

What's Your Name?

Hammerstone
2016

Breaking the Chain

Music Makers

What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

Music Makers

Prove It

Music Makers

Just

Music Makers

Winging It

Music Makers
2015

The Top 5 Regrets of Dying People

Music Makers

Living the Quiet Life

Music Makers

Be Kind

Music Makers

Subconscious Information Processing

Music Makers

How Did It Become OK For People To Be Late For Everything?

Music Makers

No Time For Something Important? Try Waking Up Earlier.

Music Makers

I Never Finish Anyth

Music Makers

The One With No Article

Music Makers

We Are Just Not Here Anymore

Music Makers

Stuff

Music Makers

Twenty Six, Unmarried, and Childless.

Music Makers

The Finite, Irreplaceable Hours of Your Life

Music Makers

A Little Bit of Slope Makes Up For a Lot of Y-Intercept

Music Makers

You Can Be Busy Or Remarkable, But Not Both

Music Makers

Move Your Feet

Music Makers

Find The Time

Music Makers

Stop Taking Yourself So Seriously

Music Makers

Cool Is Overrated

Music Makers

Work vs Life

Music Makers

There Is No Speed Limit

Music Makers

How To Blog and Give Zero F***s.

Music Makers

But You Did Not Persuade Me

Music Makers

The Power Of Sponge Learning

Music Makers

Confessions of a Recovering Lifehacker

Music Makers

Tomorrow Is Not A Suitable Day For Doing Things

Music Makers

Career Advice: Don't Try To Be The Best

Music Makers

Dads: Be Doers

Music Makers

Most People Won't

Music Makers

Don't Follow Your Passion

Music Makers

Entreporn: The Fallacy That Wastes Your Life

Music Makers

Hang Around With People Who Get Sh*t Done

Music Makers

Create Time For What Is Necessary

Music Makers

Why I'd Rather Be Crazy Than Boring

Music Makers

Do The Work.

Music Makers

Luck Surface Area, or How To Create Luck.

Music Makers

What have you tried?

Music Makers

Do Things, Tell People

Music Makers