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Speaker 1

You're listening to Mostly Technical, which is brought to you by Leirjobs, the official Elvel job board, and Solo, the workspace for your agents and dev stack. And now, Ian and Aaron.

Aaron Francis

Hello.

Speaker 3

Well, we went on a trip and everyone got sick, so tell us about Svix.

Aaron Francis

Our good friends at Svix. In the age where code is cheap, you might be tempted to build webhooks in-house. Svix has solved all the hard problems about scaling webhooks so you can avoid triaging failed deliveries and incremental, incrementally building features. Check them out at Svix/mt.

That's S-V-I-x.com/mt. Uh, check that out today. Thanks so much to Svix for, uh, sponsoring the pre-roll, putting their money where their mouth is, supporting the show. Thanks so much to them. Check them out. Uh, thanks, Svix.

Speaker 3

We do love Svix. We do not love getting sick. You're sick right now.

Aaron Francis

You, you got sick too? I'm sick now.

Speaker 3

No, I didn't get sick. I still have my gallbladder, so it's still fighting things- ... off for me. I'm not a scientist.

Aaron Francis

That's good.

Speaker 3

But we went to, uh, we went to Broken Bow, which is in Oklahoma.

Aaron Francis

What's that? Okay, okay.

Speaker 3

So it's a three and a-

Aaron Francis

I like the sound of this

Speaker 3

... three-and-a-half-hour drive. Um-

Aaron Francis

Yep. Ooh, bad

Speaker 3

... it was the kids... Yeah. It was the kids', kids' fall break, uh, so they had-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 3

... Thursday, Friday off.

Aaron Francis

Gotcha.

Speaker 3

So we took off on Thursday, uh, and Jennifer's whole family went. So it was-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 3

... uh, four couples, total of 13 kids, and then two, two grandparents.

Aaron Francis

Whoa.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Now what's this place? Give me, give me the lay of the land here. What are we looking at?

Speaker 3

So Broken Bow is kind of like, it's kind of like the Dallas offsite now. Um-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 3

... it's, 'cause it's three and a half hours from Dallas.

Aaron Francis

Right. That's a good distance.

Speaker 3

It's, it's, uh, a lot better nature than Dallas, if you can believe it.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

Fewer highways, which is embarrassing-

Aaron Francis

That's unfortunate

Speaker 3

... but a lot better nature.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Um, and there's just this giant, like, it's basically Airbnb village almost.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

So all these investors came to Broken Bow, built these beautiful like not country, but like, uh, kinda like woods houses. So there's lots of, lots of trees. It's in a wooded area.

Aaron Francis

Got it.

Speaker 3

And so for example, the Airbnb that we were staying in basically had, I think it was five or six identical, uh, master bedrooms.

Aaron Francis

Right. Okay. I know, I know, yeah.

Speaker 3

So it's one of those things where it's like-

Aaron Francis

Yes

Speaker 3

... we built this specifically for families to come-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 3

... and get out of Dallas. Um-

Aaron Francis

I'm looking at them now

Speaker 3

... but it's great.

Aaron Francis

Yes.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

It looks cool. They look nice.

Speaker 3

It's, like, yes.

Aaron Francis

Like they look nicer than I expected. They're like very nice looking.

Speaker 3

Oh yeah. They're all, they're all brand new. Like this one had, uh, this five or six master bedrooms and then had one giant bunk room with six bunks in it.

Aaron Francis

Oh, that's cool.

Speaker 3

So you can tell it's clearly built for this- ... specific thing, which is great.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 3

I mean, that's what we, that's what we want.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

We want all the adults to have a room that has a bathroom in it-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 3

... and then a place to shove the kids.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 3

Um, so it was, it was just amazing. It was cooler there because of all the, you know, there's no concrete heat dome- ... uh, there, uh, sadly.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

So it was cooler. There was a fire pit. There was a creek. There's a-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... they had like a, uh, like a playground in the backyard with like swings and slides and stuff. So it was perfect. Just amazing setup. Uh, and then our first-

Aaron Francis

Well, is, is this, uh, is this, was this last weekend? Were you off the whole week? Give, like how long were you at this place?

Speaker 3

This was, we left on Thursday-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 3

... and we were supposed to come back today.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

But we left on Thursday, and we came back on Saturday. Oh, no.

Aaron Francis

Okay. Oh, that's gonna be a fun story there.

Speaker 3

No.

Aaron Francis

Oh, boy.

Speaker 3

So-

Aaron Francis

Okay. All right.

Speaker 3

Um-

Aaron Francis

One of the things, like I said the picture, one more thing. Is there stuff to do, or is it just the houses and nature?

Speaker 3

Um, just the houses and nature.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

You could like go, you could go into Broken Bow and like book an ATV excursion or like a zip lining thing, but for us, it was just-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 3

... there's a fire pit. There's a creek.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 3

There's a playground. Have fun.

Aaron Francis

There's not a little town with like stuff, uh, as part of the... I'm sure there's towns around-

Speaker 3

Not as part

Aaron Francis

... but is it-

Speaker 3

Not as part of it, no

Aaron Francis

... not as part of it. Okay. All right.

Speaker 3

No.

Aaron Francis

All right, so you're out in the woods, fancy nice house.

Speaker 3

We're out in the woods having a great time.

Aaron Francis

You got a bunch of kids.

Speaker 3

Got four kids.

Aaron Francis

A bunch of adults.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

You went shopping. You brought some food.

Speaker 3

Yep.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Our two, our two babies are sleeping in our bedroom.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

And then the two big kids are sleeping in the bunk room with all their cousins, having just a-

Aaron Francis

One

Speaker 3

... blast.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

First sleepover ever, you know.

Aaron Francis

Oh, wow. Okay.

Speaker 3

So they're, they're staying up late talking and laughing and-

Aaron Francis

Oh, that's cool. Yeah

Speaker 3

... just the best time.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

And then, so that's Thursday.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

I think Friday, one of our kids gets a fever, and we're like, "Oh, no." There's also, there's also a brand-new baby there. We're talking like-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... 60 days old.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 3

And so, you know, we talked to, we talked to, uh, Jennifer's sister and brother-in-law, and we're like, "Hey, we can just, like we can leave." Like, "I understand, I understand-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... what's at play here. The baby has their vaccines, but it takes a while to, you know-

Aaron Francis

Sure

Speaker 3

... kick in. Like we can just go."

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

"It's totally fine. I completely understand."

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Um, and they decided they were gonna go because-

Aaron Francis

Oh

Speaker 3

... their s- their son was also sick. So the baby wasn't sick-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... but their five-year-old had a fever too.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

And so nobody knows, you know, nobody knows where it came from.

Aaron Francis

Sure, of course.

Speaker 3

Doesn't matter.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

And they're, they just say, "You know what? If-" If our baby gets sick, we actually want to be in Dallas, not in-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 3

... Rock and Bow.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 3

And our son is sick, and so because our son and, you know, we have the baby, we're just gonna go.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 3

So they, they left, they left Friday night, um, which was really sad, of course.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Because it was like, you know, three of the kids are now gone and two-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... of the aunts and uncles are now gone and so that sucks.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Then Saturday one of our other children vomits.

Aaron Francis

Oh, no.

Speaker 3

No, no. You hate-

Aaron Francis

You can-

Speaker 3

... the vomit.

Aaron Francis

You can push-

Speaker 3

You hate the vomit

Aaron Francis

... you can push through some boogers and stuff, but the vomit, the vomit's a hard one to push people through. Nobody wants you to stay when you got the vomiting kid.

Speaker 3

Nobody wants you to stay.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

So we got one kid with a fever, one kid with a fever and vomit-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 3

... and then the third kid of ours gets the fever. The third one.

Aaron Francis

Nice, here it comes.

Speaker 3

So-

Aaron Francis

They're just dropping like flies

Speaker 3

... we're out. So Saturday afternoon after nap time ended, we packed everybody up and-

Aaron Francis

Oh, no.

Speaker 3

... we drove, we drove home, and the third kid, uh... We stayed home obviously from church yesterday, and the third kid vomited yesterday. So-

Aaron Francis

Ooh

Speaker 3

... it's a good thing we got out of there.

Aaron Francis

Did-

Speaker 3

The fourth kid was fine.

Aaron Francis

All right. Is that a, a baby or a, uh, big kid?

Speaker 3

Fourth kid is a big kid.

Aaron Francis

The one who's okay.

Speaker 3

And he was sick all of last week.

Aaron Francis

Ah, so he-

Speaker 3

Had to stay home from school.

Aaron Francis

So he-

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

There we go. So he's already, he's-

Speaker 3

He's already got it, so.

Aaron Francis

He's gotten it, yeah.

Speaker 3

Whatever he got, they got, and somehow this other cousin, it must have been at school or something, 'cause this other cousin-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 3

... showed up sick as well. Um, so-

Aaron Francis

Did, did, uh, did you avoid the puking on the ride home?

Speaker 3

We did.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

Fortunately.

Aaron Francis

That's key. Yeah, when you have to deal with the puking in the car, it's just a whole nother level there, so.

Speaker 3

But let me tell you, the ride home, brutal.

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 3

'Cause we don't, we don't do iPads, we don't do... There is actually a TV in the Honda Odyssey, but the kids-

Aaron Francis

Mm, okay

Speaker 3

... don't know about it- ... because we've never turned it on. We've never pulled it down-

Aaron Francis

Oh my God

Speaker 3

... and turned it on.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, uh-huh.

Speaker 3

And so the ride home was brutal.

Aaron Francis

I mean-

Speaker 3

Lots of screaming and crying. Lots of-

Aaron Francis

Oh

Speaker 3

... "How, how much longer?" "Well, three hours and 15 minutes longer." "Three hours and 10 minutes longer." It was-

Aaron Francis

Oh

Speaker 3

... it was devastating.

Aaron Francis

We did have, uh, we had the, the Odyssey with that same screen. I don't know if they've updated it, but, like, it was a bear to even get it to work. It's like the, the, the native thing just, like, didn't work really at all, and then, like, I think there was a way to do a HDMI or something. I don't know. It didn't seem like... It seems somewhat il- ill-conceived, I would say. But, um, I don't know.

I think that would be the time to break that sucker out.

Speaker 3

I know.

Aaron Francis

Like, here's some cartoons.

Speaker 3

But then, then you break the seal, and every time-

Aaron Francis

Yeah, true

Speaker 3

... you, like, get, "Oh, we're going to school. Let's watch Peppa Pig." "No, school's- ... three minutes away. We're not watching Peppa Pig."

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Um, but I will say-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... great bonding time, especially-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... with my, uh, older son. My older daughter was, you know, playing house with her cousins-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 3

... um, and having a great time. But with my older son, we, um... So guys are very simple, as you might-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 3

... as you might understand.

Aaron Francis

We're simpletons, yep.

Speaker 3

Uh, I set up a, uh, we had like a s- you know, sparkling water can that was empty.

Aaron Francis

Got it.

Speaker 3

I put some rocks in the can.

Aaron Francis

I know where this is going.

Speaker 3

Put it on-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... put it on a chair kinda far away.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

And at first it was just all the adults. I was like, "Hey guys." I, I turned to my brother-in-law and I said, "If I put this can over there, will you throw rocks at it with me?"

Aaron Francis

I knew you had the rocks.

Speaker 3

And he was like-

Aaron Francis

I knew it

Speaker 3

... he was like, "Oh, 100% I'll throw rocks with you." "Absolutely, I will." So then, you know, me and my brother-in-law, and then my sister-in-law, and then my, you know, my mother-in-law, we're all throwing rocks at this can trying to hit it.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Having a great time.

Aaron Francis

Nice. Yeah.

Speaker 3

Best time ever. And then my son comes down, and I probably spent 30 minutes, an hour throwing rocks at this can-

Aaron Francis

Yeah, that's good stuff, yeah

Speaker 3

... with my son, having the best time.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

Then we walked over to the creek and we threw rocks into the creek to watch them splash. Uh, and it was, it was just really... It was great. We had a great time.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

And you know, everybody got sick, but we had a great time before that happened.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 3

I built a freestanding rock arch. I sent you a picture of that.

Aaron Francis

Oh.

Speaker 3

Yeah. It's in the Telegram.

Aaron Francis

No, you didn't send me a picture.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I... Yes, you did. Yes, you did.

Aaron Francis

You mean just now?

Speaker 3

No. The... When I, when I did it, I, we roasted-

Aaron Francis

You're crazy.

Speaker 3

No, it's in there. I s- I said, "I built this if that impresses anyone." So check, check the, uh, Cabana chat.

Aaron Francis

I-

Speaker 3

It's in there

Aaron Francis

... no, no.

Speaker 3

Roasted mallows.

Aaron Francis

I missed it.

Speaker 3

Roasted mallows-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 3

... with the kids. So get out-

Aaron Francis

I think I missed it

Speaker 3

... get out of the big city.

Aaron Francis

Oh, there it is. Holy shit.

Speaker 3

Look at that.

Aaron Francis

I think it, I, I think it was in the-

Speaker 3

I built that

Aaron Francis

... the city that day. That's why. Okay. Oh, look at that.

Speaker 3

I built that.

Aaron Francis

That's fancy.

Speaker 3

It's a freestanding rock arch. I'm a rock artist.

Aaron Francis

We, uh, we d- we go hiking at this place. We haven't gone in a few years, but, um, there's an area where people do, like, the rock arches and the, uh, you know, just like a zen tower-

Speaker 3

Yep

Aaron Francis

... of rocks, you know, that kinda thing. And there's like-

Speaker 3

Did that too

Aaron Francis

... this whole area out in the woods-

Speaker 3

Rock balancing

Aaron Francis

... with, like, all that stuff.

Speaker 3

Yep.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, rock balancing. So very nicely done. Look at that.

Speaker 3

Pretty good.

Aaron Francis

Right there. I see a fire pit. Yeah, they got the playground.

Speaker 3

Got some s'mores going.

Aaron Francis

Rocks in a stream. Nothing better than rocks in a stream.

Speaker 3

Nothing better-

Aaron Francis

Rocks in a stream

Speaker 3

... than throwing rocks in the stream.

Aaron Francis

Just plunking 'em, just-

Speaker 3

Yep

Aaron Francis

... skipping 'em. Uh, I would say this doesn't sound very Texan of you to be throwing rocks at this can. I feel like there should be, like, a machine gun involved or something like that. No machine guns?

Speaker 3

Yeah. One of the brother-in-laws brought a BB gun.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

But, uh, you know, you can hear the neighbors. Like, it's not, it's-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 3

... we're not way out there. We're in, like, we're in fancy Airbnb village, you know?

Aaron Francis

Yeah. So you got... It was, uh... You were, you were being polite.

Speaker 3

We were being polite.

Aaron Francis

Okay. Well, that place looks great. That's interesting. That's, it's, um... On the East Coast, the version of that is kind of like all the beach towns have that.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Right? It's like, okay, here's like seven master bedrooms and thing, blah, blah. Or Orlando is another place I've experienced that, right? It's like, "Hey, we built a house with a slide inside of it, and, uh, you know-

Speaker 3

Yep

Aaron Francis

... 15 bedrooms," and all that stuff. So- That's cool. We got 48 hours of fun

Speaker 3

Perfect for a big family vacation

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

That's what we needed. Yeah

Aaron Francis

You made it through half of it, a little more than half. You're good. That's enough time anyway, honestly. You're, you got to, got to see everybody. Kids got to play.

Speaker 3

Yep

Aaron Francis

Um, how'd the kids do in the bunk beds? Like, did they actually go to sleep or-

Speaker 3

They did

Aaron Francis

... go to sleep?

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Okay. All right. That's pretty good.

Speaker 3

They, they did. We were, uh, we were relatively strict, uh, as a group of adults, not just, uh, Jennifer and I.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 3

Relatively strict after a certain hour of like, "All right-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 3

... everybody's gotta be quiet now."

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 3

Um-

Aaron Francis

Get to sleeping you little bastards

Speaker 3

... but they, they did great. They had, they had so, they had so much fun. They've never done a sleepover before. I mean, they've slept at their grandparents' house, but they've never done-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 3

... like a big friend sleepover.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

And so they thought it was the silliest thing ever.

Aaron Francis

So are you guys gonna try to do this, uh, annually sort of thing? Or what do you think?

Speaker 3

I think, uh, semi-annually.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

I don't know what the yearly, fortnightly term is, but every other year-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... is kind of how we do it.

Aaron Francis

Yes.

Speaker 3

We've done, we've done the beach in the past. Um, it is... I will say it's very difficult with all the small kids.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Um, for, for the reasons that we're exposed here, you know? Somebody gets sick, everybody gets sick, and then everybody freaks out that everyone else is gonna get sick. And it's like, oh, sh- we got, we gotta get out of this stage where they have-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... no immune systems. Um-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 3

... and then it, then it will get a lot easier. But yeah, it's great. We do, we do it probably every other year. Um, and it's always fun.

Aaron Francis

That's what we've, uh, been doing is with my brother and cousin, um, biannually. I think it'd be biannual, uh, trip. So yeah-

Speaker 3

Maybe

Aaron Francis

... it is good.

Speaker 3

Biannual could mean twice a year, right?

Aaron Francis

I think it means, I think biannual is every other year. A semi-annual would be twice a year, right? Like-

Speaker 3

Semi-annual would be twice a year.

Aaron Francis

I believe so.

Speaker 3

But doesn't bi-weekly mean both things?

Aaron Francis

No, bi-weekly means every other week.

Speaker 3

Bi-weekly has two conflicting definitions according to major dictionaries. Occurring every two weeks-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... fortnightly, or occurring twice a week, semi-weekly.

Aaron Francis

Oh. We're getting it, we're getting it. So we had a whole thing on this on a podcast a long time ago with the-

Speaker 3

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... this week and next week.

Speaker 3

Yes, for sure.

Aaron Francis

And what does that mean? This is a similar situation.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Um, I don't feel strongly about this one, though. I don't really care.

Speaker 3

Nah, I don't either.

Aaron Francis

Um, all right. So good trip. Um, yeah, I like it. It's good. It went pretty well, you know.

Speaker 3

Pretty well.

Aaron Francis

A little sickness, but-

Speaker 3

As well as things can go at this, at this stage in life.

Aaron Francis

I'm sick.

Speaker 3

Always. You're always sick.

Aaron Francis

Probably the same thing everybody else has. And I'm supposed to go, me and Jamie are supposed to go on our first just adults trip in quite some time. We've done it before, but it's been a, been a while. So at the end of this week we're supposed to be going. We're gonna do Philly. We're gonna have dinner with some friends of the show. Uh, and then we're gonna do this fancy resort in New Jersey, which is like a weird combination of words to say, but apparently it's true, and it's gonna be very nice.

But I'm sick now. I'm, I think I'm, I'm on the backside, but then Jamie last night was sick, so we're just trying to hold, rein it in, you know. It doesn't seem like a flu or anything. It seems like just a regular cold, so I'm hoping we can pull it all together by the end of the week. But, um, man, this time of year.

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aaron Francis

It's a problem.

Speaker 3

It's always something with you and your sickness or your voice or something.

Aaron Francis

Well, this way you're, you're like, "Oh, in, in a couple years it won't be like this." No, man. No.

Speaker 3

No, it won't be like this.

Aaron Francis

The kids bring home the illness always all the time. You could, you can navigate it easier 'cause when everybody's 10 you're like, "Yeah, whatever. Bobby's got... is sick, but we're n- we're just persevering. Bobby's gonna have to tough it out." Um, so that part's all right. Uh, yeah, well, the puking's a little different. If somebody's puking, it's a little harder.

Speaker 3

It's not great.

Aaron Francis

But, uh, yeah. But the puking tends to go away sort of. Little kids do puke easier, I think, for the most part. Um, anyway. All right, well, I went on a trip. I went to New York City for one night.

Speaker 3

For Orb time.

Aaron Francis

I was Orbing in person.

Speaker 3

You were Orbing with the Orbs.

Aaron Francis

The Orb people were there, the Amp guys, Thorsten and Quinn and Nico and, like, almost the whole team I think.

Speaker 3

Yeah

Aaron Francis

Most of, most or all the team. And it was great. We were Orbing in person. They gave me a nice T-shirt. Um, yeah, had a nice event there with a b... It was, like, pretty packed. It was like they were surprised how many people came, I think. So it was like-

Speaker 3

Was it like a community meetup or what was... I know they did-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... an offsite, but what, what did, what were you involved in?

Aaron Francis

Yeah. I think it was just like, this was like a 5:00 to 7:00 PM, come have drinks on us. Some, you know, appetizer-y type food, drinks. Um, so that was great. Joe Tenenbaum of the, uh, Laravel Holdings Incorporated was there.

Speaker 3

That's right.

Aaron Francis

So hung out with him. And, uh, yeah, then we went to dinner, which was cool. Joe T. came as well to that, and, you know, got my feature requests in, which is always fun.

Speaker 3

Oh, I'm sure they loved that.

Aaron Francis

You know? They loved it.

Speaker 3

I'm sure they love having drinks and hearing from users.

Aaron Francis

It was like a little live episode of the show, you know? I'm just like, "I got stuff. I got problems."

Speaker 3

Ah, I-

Aaron Francis

"I got issues with them"

Speaker 3

... feel so sorry for Torsten.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Ian comes in hot just complaining about stuff.

Aaron Francis

I came in hot.

Speaker 3

All right. What, what were, what did you complain about?

Aaron Francis

Uh, I don't know. I didn't really have any huge complaints. I mean, I love the Orb, and so overall it's good. I mean, I had some little things, you know. So I think there's some, uh, you know, I had a couple UI things. I got a... I would like them to do more of, like, where you can integrate with GitHub. Obviously it connects to GitHub, but, like, where you could say, okay, a PR comes in, it spins up a new Orb with whatever instructions you have that you want to do new PR, um, you know, check PRs with or y- run them against Daybreak

if you have access to Daybreak or things like that.

Speaker 3

So you want some sort of, like, automation trigger or something?

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Give me, like, a CodeRabity- Uh, like option. Like it's-

Speaker 3

Okay

Aaron Francis

... obviously not gonna do all of what something like that does, but 'cause I still like that part. I don't-- So I love the or- the orbs, like how we develop now. All the employees now are off of the no local development at UserScape anymore. All orbs and-

Speaker 3

Boy, that happened fast.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Gotta get off the local dev. It's so scary. It, it just, there was just the other day, there was another one of these, like, supply chain attacks took over people's machines. I, I can't deal with it. So we're, we're all off of that. And, uh, yeah, but, like, we haven't solved, like, the, the, like, check the PR thing. Now, the Orb'n guys, AMP guys are-

Speaker 3

The Orb'n guys

Aaron Francis

... they don't, they don't believe in that anymore.

Speaker 3

The Orb'n guys.

Aaron Francis

They're Orb'n guys. They, uh, they're not, they're not into the PR, the check the PRs.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

They're just like, "We check it when we build it, and then that's it."

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

So I don't know. I mean, I don't necessarily even hate that, uh, but I do feel like there's an element of, like, just a fresh set of eyes from a fresh, uh, you know, LLM, along with now the opportunity for the more security-oriented models, which you're not gonna have in line, to do these checks. So I don't know.

I also just think it's a thing, like, you know, we're doing the SOC 2 compliance. I feel like somebody who reads the SOC 2 stuff carefully, somebody who cares about that, I think is gonna wanna see that there's, like, an element of that in the code process, that there's, like, a review steps being, taking place. So I don't think I'm ready to go, like, no...

Especially our customer base is a little more old and finicky and things like that. So I think it's good to have the review step. Whatever. It just, it should be automated, and it should be fine. But I don't know. So everything's weird though. Like, Codex has a thing, but it's weird. Claude has a thing, but it's weird. Uh-

Speaker 3

A review thing? Is that what you're saying?

Aaron Francis

Yeah, like a review thing.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

They have, they all have dedicated review things, but they're all weird. Like, like the Codex one, like, I have access to Daybreak, which is the security model, but it, that doesn't seem like that runs in the Codex review thing. The Codex review thing is just a regular model. There's also, like, no settings for any of this stuff. So I don't know. Both in Claude and Codex, it's all very odd.

Like, it's all kinda half-assed. As a-- I feel like we're seeing a lot with... They're throwing-

Speaker 3

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... a lot of shit at the wall, but it's like-

Speaker 3

Yes

Aaron Francis

... not really thought through very well, right? So, like-

Speaker 3

Correct

Aaron Francis

... um, so that's why I was like, "Well, maybe if we have the Orb do it, we have instructions, whatever," but doesn't do that currently. Doesn't sound like they're super interested in doing that. There is, like, some... Again, you can wire up a bunch of weird ways to do it, but, uh, I don't, uh, not interested in that too much either. I just want, like, give me a fricking box that you turn it on, this feature on, it does that thing and whatever.

So, um, so stuff like that. But, uh, yeah, no, I mean, it was just good to get together. It's cool with like, uh, when you're with a, you know, a tool you use, and you can-

Speaker 3

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... hang out and shoot the breeze. So that was fun. Dorston was looking for rats all week. We looked for rats.

Speaker 3

I'm shocked you couldn't find a single rat in all of New York City.

Aaron Francis

Could not find a rat. Nope. See, Aaron, we need to get you there.

Speaker 3

They-

Aaron Francis

No rats.

Speaker 3

What have they done-

Aaron Francis

No rats

Speaker 3

... to the city that I love? It's, it's unbelievable.

Aaron Francis

No rats. It's all cleaned up, so you gotta get your butt out here and come to the city. We'll hang out.

Speaker 3

You know I'm coming to Brooklyn. That's in New York.

Aaron Francis

Oh, yeah. When is that? November?

Speaker 3

November. Soon.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, do something.

Speaker 3

I'm coming for Thesis.

Aaron Francis

What the heck is that again?

Speaker 3

Every-

Aaron Francis

What's Everything?

Speaker 3

It's like Every's one-day conference, yeah.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Hmm. I can go to Brooklyn.

Speaker 3

Brooklyn's cool, I've been told.

Aaron Francis

What is this?

Speaker 3

Um, it is, they announce... It was, it was weird. They like, they did like a, like a portrait slash, you know, sports playing card. It was like, "Aaron Francis attending Thesis Conference."

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

I was like, "Oh, guys, I didn't know you were gonna do that." Um, Thesis is November 5th, 2026. 400 founders, executives, and builders will gather at Pioneer Works to explore what great human work looks like after automation.

Aaron Francis

Are you presenting or just, you're just straight attending?

Speaker 3

Nah, I'm just attending.

Aaron Francis

How, how, how many nights are you in the city?

Speaker 3

Uh, I don't know. As few as possible. I gotta, I gotta get back home. I think I'm doing a-

Aaron Francis

Is this a multi-day conference?

Speaker 3

No, it's a one-day thing.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

I think I'm doing a kindergarten camp out, uh, like the day after, so I gotta get home pretty quick.

Aaron Francis

Well, we'll have to talk about this. I'll have to look at what's going on. Maybe I'll pop in.

Speaker 3

Yeah, talk about it. But, uh-

Aaron Francis

If you're in the city-

Speaker 3

Yeah, they're gonna-

Aaron Francis

... I could actually be there

Speaker 3

... they're gonna get, they've got, uh, founder of Notion. They've got a couple OpenAI staff, couple Anthropic, Anthropic staff. Sahil from Gumroad, who, uh-

Aaron Francis

Oh, good. Great

Speaker 3

... has lots of opinions.

Aaron Francis

Sure.

Speaker 3

Uh, he'll be there.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

So yeah, it'll be fun.

Aaron Francis

Cool. Uh, Brooklyn's not as mu- I don't know as much about Brooklyn. Like, I haven't spent as much time, like, hanging out in Brooklyn, but that is the hot spot. That's where the cool people are.

Speaker 3

That's the hipster doofus capital of the world.

Aaron Francis

Yes, 100%. That is the hipster capital. There is still non-hipstery areas, but the c- I'm sure where this is will be heavily hipsterized and, uh, yeah, that it should be fun. It's, it-

Speaker 3

I cannot wait to get a probably raw milk latte for $19-

Aaron Francis

That's right.

Speaker 3

... in Brooklyn. That's gonna be-

Aaron Francis

Yeah, that's about right

Speaker 3

... that's gonna be amazing.

Aaron Francis

Dude, uh, and how long has it been since you just straight attended a conference?

Speaker 3

Boy, a long time.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. It's gonna be different for you.

Speaker 3

I don't think I, I don't think I've just been an attendee... Oh, that's not true. Laracon EU. Well, we hosted the party.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, we were.

Speaker 3

Uh-

Aaron Francis

That's official. That was official.

Speaker 3

That's official.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

It, I mean, it's been years.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. So this is gonna be different. It might be nice.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

A little change.

Speaker 3

It might be nice.

Aaron Francis

You just float around.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, you have nothing to do.

Speaker 3

Just show up, shake some hands.

Aaron Francis

Yes. You know some people there. You say hi.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Check in.

Speaker 3

I also, also haven't been to a conference in a very long time where I, like, haven't gone with a friend or a group of people-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... or, like, it's not my community.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 3

So i- it'll be, it'll be interesting. I'll just kind of show up as, like, a guy and have to weasel my way into circles- ... and talk to people.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. You're gonna have to be the one who goes out and makes friends and says-

Speaker 3

I know

Aaron Francis

... hi and joins a group.

Speaker 3

I know. I know.

Aaron Francis

You're good at that, though.

Speaker 3

I can do it.

Aaron Francis

I think it will work for you.

Speaker 3

You know where you can go where all of your friends already are. That is Laracon AU.

Aaron Francis

Yay.

Speaker 3

It's headed to Brisbane this December-

Aaron Francis

Woo-hoo

Speaker 3

... with a limited late release of tickets out now. Join the community for workshops and two days of deep practical talks about the realities of building, shipping, and maintaining real software with Laravel. Get your tickets now at Laracon.au. Also, all of your friends are at TypeSense.

So if you don't want to feel lonely- ... use TypeSense. TypeSense is open source, lightning fast, search for your site or app natively integrated with Laravel Scout. You can check them out at Typesense.org. I've used it. It's very good. It's integrated with Laravel Scout, so it's easy-peasy for you.

So thank you to Laracon AU and TypeSense for being our friends and sponsoring-

Aaron Francis

Woo

Speaker 3

... the show.

Aaron Francis

All right. What else is going on?

Speaker 3

Um, I didn't put it on here, but I just remembered-

Aaron Francis

Oh

Speaker 3

... I migrated-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... my first internet business off of Heroku-

Aaron Francis

I saw that, yes

Speaker 3

... to Laravel Cloud. Um-

Aaron Francis

Crazy

Speaker 3

... and off of Laravel 5.5.

Aaron Francis

That's pretty wild.

Speaker 3

And view one point something.

Aaron Francis

Wow.

Speaker 3

So my first internet business, uh, is accounting tutoring. It is, uh, you know, it was my first w- actual money that I've made online. I have made, I ch- I checked the Stripe. This is over many years.

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 3

I've made over $100,000 teaching college students accounting.

Aaron Francis

That's crazy.

Speaker 3

Isn't that insane? That's crazy.

Aaron Francis

Are people still buying it?

Speaker 3

I've had purchases turned off- ... for, like, three or four years.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Maybe you need to turn those suckers on.

Speaker 3

I did. Codex-

Aaron Francis

Oh

Speaker 3

... turned them on for me. So the reason I-

Aaron Francis

Oh

Speaker 3

... turned them off was, um, well, first it was deployed on Heroku, and it was on-

Aaron Francis

Gotcha

Speaker 3

... the, uh, this is for the old heads only, it was on the Cedar stack on Heroku.

Aaron Francis

Okay, sure.

Speaker 3

The Cedar stack has been, uh, end of lifed for more than five years. So I haven't been able to deploy for more than five years.

Aaron Francis

Wow.

Speaker 3

Because if I deployed it-

Aaron Francis

They're, they're still running it, but it's not-

Speaker 3

They were still running it.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

But you could not deploy.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

And I'm sure that on some dashboard somewhere, I'm one of, like, 14 people that still have the Cedar stack running.

Aaron Francis

Some guy is popping some champagne. They're like, "Francis, it's going."

Speaker 3

Yep, we got it.

Aaron Francis

We got it. Yeah.

Speaker 3

They're telling Benny off, "We got another one off." Um-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... so I've been unable to deploy.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

Um, the login, the auth system has always been Facebook auth because it was college students-

Aaron Francis

Got it. Yeah

Speaker 3

... and I wanted to tie it to some identity that they didn't want to share with their friends.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 3

And somewhere along the way I had to, um, I had to, like, redeploy or do something to, uh, adhere to Facebook standards, and I couldn't deploy.

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 3

And so I just made all... I could go into the database and flip some things.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 3

So I just went into the database, and I flipped all the lessons to free, 'cause I couldn't-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... fix the login 'cause I couldn't-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 3

... deploy, and I was just like, "F it. We'll just, like, keep the word of mouth going."

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

And at some point in the future, I will fix all of this.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

That point has arrived. I fixed it all.

Aaron Francis

This is crazy.

Speaker 3

So-

Aaron Francis

I love this

Speaker 3

... I, I pulled it, I pulled it down and-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 3

... gave it to Codex and Claude both and said, "Hey, this is super old. We need to, uh, bring it up to Laravel 13."

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

"We need to switch from view one to latest React, and we need to get it off of Heroku. Um, we need to re-enable payments, and we need to remove Facebook login and just do email login."

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 3

"Yes, sir. Right away, sir." And it was, is done. It's flawless. I pushed it to Laravel Cloud. I switched over 35 domains because- ... I have 35 different, like, university specific domains that point at this.

Aaron Francis

Oh.

Speaker 3

So I've got, like, acct229.com. That is the course identifier-

Aaron Francis

Look at this guy

Speaker 3

... at Texas A&M.

Aaron Francis

With the SEO hacking.

Speaker 3

I've also g- I've also got, like, acct2031.com 'cause that's like, you know, Florida International's course identifier-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 3

... whatever. So now all 35 domains point at Laravel Cloud. I deleted the Heroku app. I deleted the Forge server that held the database 'cause at one point-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 3

... I had to move the database off-

Aaron Francis

Oh, geez

Speaker 3

... you know, many years ago.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

And so it's all cleaned up. Purchases are enabled. Logins work.

Aaron Francis

Wow.

Speaker 3

Everything is back to how it should be, so hopefully I can go back to making 5, $10,000 a semester. It's semester-based. Uh-

Aaron Francis

I mean, that's pretty cool

Speaker 3

... 5, $10,000 a semester off of accounting tutoring. That's the hope. That would be great. I can buy a lot of 3D printers with-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... 5 to $10,000.

Aaron Francis

That's found money. I love found money. It's like, oh-

Speaker 3

Love found money

Aaron Francis

... wasn't expecting this. Here's an extra five grand.

Speaker 3

Yep.

Aaron Francis

How cool is that? Um, wow. Okay. So was, was it able, is the cloud CL- I don't think cloud has MCP, but cloud CLI had enough-

Speaker 3

Cloud CLI-

Aaron Francis

... stuff to do it all?

Speaker 3

... good to go. Yep. Yep.

Aaron Francis

Okay. So you didn't have to go in and do anything by hand or anything?

Speaker 3

Didn't have to, didn't, didn't have to do a thing. Didn't open-

Aaron Francis

Nice

Speaker 3

... didn't open the web interface. Still haven't opened it.

Aaron Francis

I also love moving a project that's, like, kind of meaningless is also just, like, a great feeling. It's like, yeah-

Speaker 3

Oh, it's a great feeling

Aaron Francis

... just go. Go, do it, whatever.

Speaker 3

Great feeling.

Aaron Francis

And then, like, yeah, it just does it. And you're like, "I don't care what really happens." Like, as long as-

Speaker 3

Yep

Aaron Francis

... it works in the end, it's fine. And like-

Speaker 3

For the domain cutover-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... I gave it Wrangler with a, the right token 'cause all the domains-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 3

... are on Cloudflare. But- I got a new token, gave it to Codex or Claude, and was like, "All right, you have access to my Cloudflare. Switch all the DNS."

Aaron Francis

Yeah, that's so crazy.

Speaker 3

Like, "I don't care. Just switch it. Have fun."

Aaron Francis

I love that. But, uh, wow. Okay. And then so this is a video course, I assume, right?

Speaker 3

Video course, yep.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. And I... See, what I want you to do now is you gotta throw in a couple new segments. So it's like 14 year ago you, right?

Speaker 3

No way.

Aaron Francis

It's like they're watching these videos, it's like you, you, you from when you're 24 or whatever, and then boom, 37-year-old Aaron Francis pops in.

Speaker 3

Old Man River comes on screen-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... and scares the hell out of them.

Aaron Francis

How cool would that be?

Speaker 3

It is all, uh, it's all screen recording, no vid- no live video at all. So-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 3

... there's only... It's all basically-

Aaron Francis

Oh, no live video at all? I thought I've seen this of you doing this, and it was you-

Speaker 3

No

Aaron Francis

... on there. No? Okay.

Speaker 3

There's a, there's a picture of me from when I'm 19-

Aaron Francis

Mm. Okay

Speaker 3

... that's like the About, the About Me.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

Um, but the videos themselves are all-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 3

... they were all recorded on a Wacom... I had a Wacom tablet with a-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 3

... with a pen, and I-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 3

... opened a white canvas in Photoshop and screen recorded. That's it.

Aaron Francis

You've been-

Speaker 3

That's-

Aaron Francis

You've been doing this a long time

Speaker 3

... that's the entire... I've been doing this a long time. There's probably 15 hours of content, and it's-

Aaron Francis

Wow

Speaker 3

... all just whiteboard screen record content. And it's great.

Aaron Francis

All right, okay. Here's what I want you to do now, okay? I want you and your little buddies, your LLM friends, right?

Speaker 3

Sure.

Aaron Francis

I want you to add way more courses. Buy all the domains, and I want you to just point every college out there, every major college, whatever their accounting courses that are the equivalent, I want you to buy those domains, point them at this. Let's go. Let's take it all the way. Automate the rest of it.

Speaker 3

You know, I actually own 100 of these domains.

Aaron Francis

Okay. Yes, Francis. Look at this guy.

Speaker 3

And at some, at some point, I went into the database and found all the ones that had between, like, zero and three signups, and I just-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... I culled, I culled them.

Aaron Francis

Oh.

Speaker 3

Um, so I still have 35 that point to it.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

But it's, it's a real power law. It's like Texas A&M makes, like, 80% of the money.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 3

And then, like, UT and Oklahoma make up the other 18, and then the long tail is 2% of-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... you know, across different, different, uh, universities.

Aaron Francis

But now that you can automate it, okay, give it those 100, be like, obviously these 100... Forget these 100, right? And then, 'cause you, you either know they work or they don't. But if you find one more Texas A&M-

Speaker 3

I know

Aaron Francis

... that's huge.

Speaker 3

That's another 5,000, 10,000 bucks.

Aaron Francis

Yes. So you should just do that, and like-

Speaker 3

Better, better than a poke in the eye.

Aaron Francis

Yes. Now, now, some of this content must be wrong at this point, no?

Speaker 3

That is the beauty of accounting-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 3

... my friend. So I recorded this, I recorded this probably in, like, 2018, '17, something like that.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

Was... Maybe 2016 was the original. Um, and you know, I took this course when I was a sophomore, so that was 2008, and I recorded it in 2016, and not a single thing, not a single-

Aaron Francis

Is this just all the double entry bullshit and stuff?

Speaker 3

... shot or tail, yes.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

Nothing had, nothing had changed.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, I guess that stuff's all generic.

Speaker 3

Yeah, so-

Aaron Francis

Like, it's not, it's not, like, tax accounting or something where like-

Speaker 3

No

Aaron Francis

... oh, like, it's all different or something. Yeah.

Speaker 3

It is a sophomore level, uh, required class for business majors-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... and it's Intro to Financial Accounting. It's just-

Aaron Francis

It's just this one course.

Speaker 3

It's just-

Aaron Francis

That's it

Speaker 3

... one course. No managerial, noth-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... It is one course identifier.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

Um, and it's all intro to financial, and so it is, it's literally double entry accounting.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 3

Accounting equation, assets, liabilities. It's-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... it's just... It's great, man.

Aaron Francis

Oh, yeah. None of that stuff's changing.

Speaker 3

Awesome.

Aaron Francis

They're not changing the definition of an asset anytime soon.

Speaker 3

None of that stuff is changing.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

No. So-

Aaron Francis

I love this. This is a great side project here.

Speaker 3

I know. So hopefully, I haven't looked, but hopefully... You know, right now it's late in the semester, so finals will be coming up soon. So hopefully I'll, I'll even get payments this year. We're back on the train, baby.

Aaron Francis

Dude, you gotta send AI out there. Get all the other colleges. What do you care? Every college above, whatever, 5,000 students. Get all the rest of them. Gotta get in there. I love that it's a, it's a business one too. It's not even, like, a re- I was thinking it was for accounting majors, but this is the generic-

Speaker 3

No

Aaron Francis

... business one. So this is great. This has a huge market.

Speaker 3

Yes. Every, every business student at A&M has to take this course.

Aaron Francis

Yes.

Speaker 3

Most people don't like it.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 3

Um, and then there's actually, for business minors, there's a different identifier. Um, at Texas A&M, it's Accounting 209, and I bought Accounting 209.

Aaron Francis

Of course.

Speaker 3

So between 229 and 209, I get all the A&M students.

Aaron Francis

Dude, you gotta do this. It's, it's worth the 500 bucks in domains to go out and try to expand this empire.

Speaker 3

Yeah, you might be right. It's also-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... probably worth... Honestly, it's probably worth having an LLM transcribe every video and just put the text on the page.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

I mean, these-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 3

... domains, these domains are more than 10 years old.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 3

And so I've got great, like, domain age-

Aaron Francis

Yes

Speaker 3

... domain authority. So you're probably right.

Aaron Francis

Although you could get in, you could get in some... You gotta be a little careful if you get a bunch of duplicate content going on all across all the domains.

Speaker 3

That's true.

Aaron Francis

Right now it might be so little content that it's, like, kinda doesn't matter, but if you, like, made a bunch of bigger posts or something.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Although I kinda like the idea of, like, using this content somehow to, like, maybe make some kinda central hub-

Speaker 3

I know

Aaron Francis

... that's, like, its own thing for the content or something. Like, maybe the main, whatever the main domain is, like, put that on there at least, and then you can have your links out to all the other versions for the each course, even though it's obviously the same course.

Speaker 3

I do wonder, I do wonder if I own, like... I think I own introtofinancialaccounting.com.

Aaron Francis

Ooh, that's a pretty good one.

Speaker 3

I think. Let me look. Uh, my, my, uh- My hover account, which is where I have most of my old domains. Um, I think there's like 120 domains in there.

Aaron Francis

I gotta consolidate-

Speaker 3

But it's-

Aaron Francis

... all my domains

Speaker 3

... it's not a, it's not a disease, which is what, you know, people with diseases say. It's not a disease because the bulk of these domains are pointed at accounting.

Aaron Francis

Hey, use them.

Speaker 3

It's not like I've got-

Aaron Francis

These are used

Speaker 3

... I've got... Yeah. So let's see. I've got, uh, well, tutoring vids, which is bad, but that used to be my SSO domain. Um-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 3

... yeah, I've got introtofinancialaccounting.com.

Aaron Francis

There you go.

Speaker 3

There you go.

Aaron Francis

Does that already point at this site or no?

Speaker 3

No. That was registered, uh-

Aaron Francis

That'll be a fresh one

Speaker 3

... that was registered in 2020, and then let's see when ACCT229 was registered, 'cause that was the first one. 2014.

Aaron Francis

Okay. There we go.

Speaker 3

I've owned that domain for 12 years.

Aaron Francis

You're cooking.

Speaker 3

That's crazy.

Aaron Francis

I love this. This is great. This'll be like... This is, this is great podcast content. I wanna hear, we wanna hear every weekly updates about how you doubled this course.

Speaker 3

Okay. I will, I will do it.

Aaron Francis

Took you to 10, 10,000 to 20,000. Put some tokens on that.

Speaker 3

Yeah, let's see, let's see. Just for the listener, I'll, I'll give you, I'll give you the full actual accounting of how much money I've made on this stupid accounting tutoring thing. Let's see. Lifetime.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

Uh, let's see.

Aaron Francis

If you can find it in Stripe.

Speaker 3

Well, look at that.

Aaron Francis

That's possible.

Speaker 3

I've already made a sale. We're back, baby.

Aaron Francis

Oh my God, really?

Speaker 3

We're back.

Aaron Francis

This guy. Two, three days-

Speaker 3

Ah

Aaron Francis

... in or whatever.

Speaker 3

Ah. That's crazy. Cool.

Aaron Francis

This is great. I love this.

Speaker 3

Net, uh, net volume, lifetime. Net volume $116,000.

Aaron Francis

Wow.

Speaker 3

Gross volume, 123.

Aaron Francis

I mean, that's not chump change.

Speaker 3

No.

Aaron Francis

10 grand. You could-

Speaker 3

That's what I'm saying

Aaron Francis

... you could play a nice size poker game with that. We'll get you in Vegas.

Speaker 3

No, I could buy stuff with that.

Aaron Francis

You got enough stuff. More poker, less stuff.

Speaker 3

Whoa. Yesterday, whoa. Yesterday, I made 178 bucks. Today, I made 37. It's working.

Aaron Francis

How much does it co- What's the, what do you sell it for?

Speaker 3

$39 a, a semester.

Aaron Francis

Okay. Wow. You sold like five yesterday.

Speaker 3

This is crazy. Hey, we're back.

Aaron Francis

That's, it's, it's-

Speaker 3

We got lunch money

Aaron Francis

... funny that you, like, left 40 grand on the table by not, like, moving this domain-

Speaker 3

You know

Aaron Francis

... four years ago, which is kind of funny

Speaker 3

... what's done is done. That's a saying-

Aaron Francis

I know

Speaker 3

... that I have.

Aaron Francis

That's the past.

Speaker 3

What's done is done.

Aaron Francis

Interesting.

Speaker 3

I made that saying up. Oh, this is great.

Aaron Francis

We're making money live on air here, people. You can just do things.

Speaker 3

Oh, we are so back.

Aaron Francis

You can just sell things.

Speaker 3

Oh, all this money is gonna go into cabinetry in my new office. That's where this money is gonna go. Hey, cool.

Aaron Francis

Oh, look at that.

Speaker 3

Well-

Aaron Francis

All right

Speaker 3

... it was worth, it was worth, uh, some number, some untold number of tokens that all fell under my subscription that I have no idea how much anything costs, and it was worth it.

Aaron Francis

And, and now that you've hooked it up to Cloudflare, it's like you could just literally fully automate the entire thing. It's gonna be-

Speaker 3

Yes

Aaron Francis

... one prompt, and it's gonna, it's gonna buy domains.

Speaker 3

Yes.

Aaron Francis

Gonna point them at this thing. Gonna be fantastic. I want, I need something like this. My ideas are always so complicated. It's like I'm gonna build a crazy complicated thing. I just wanna make a stupid little video course or some kinda little widget thing that's like-

Speaker 3

I know

Aaron Francis

... it's a widget. It does one thing. That's all it does. It's 10 bucks a month or whatever stupid amount of money, and I just sell it for 15 years. I want one of these things. I'm gonna spend some time thinking about this.

Speaker 3

It, it can be yours, but you know what you have to do?

Aaron Francis

What's that?

Speaker 3

You're gonna hate this.

Aaron Francis

No, I don't like the sound of this already. I'm not shipping, if that's what you mean.

Speaker 3

You're gonna have to ship.

Aaron Francis

No. No, no, no.

Speaker 3

You're gonna have to ship. The, if, if you never ship, they'll never pay.

Aaron Francis

Interesting.

Speaker 3

It's pretty good, right?

Aaron Francis

The, the, the Chinese-

Speaker 3

That is, yeah

Aaron Francis

... Chinese proverb.

Speaker 3

Loose-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... loosely translated.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3

Uh, if you don't wanna ship, I have something just for you.

Aaron Francis

Ooh, okay. What do we got? A present?

Speaker 3

I do have a present. It is not from me.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

It is from one Chase Miller, who is a-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 3

... friend of the community.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

He is the man with the most beautiful blue eyes in the world.

Aaron Francis

Ooh.

Speaker 3

And he sent me a button.

Aaron Francis

Oh, Laravel button.

Speaker 3

A giant-

Aaron Francis

That's cool

Speaker 3

... Laravel button that actually works. You can plug it in.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

It actually works, and it will do Laravel new every time you slam it.

Aaron Francis

Yes. Laravel new, physical.

Speaker 3

And-

Aaron Francis

See, he's got the right idea. He's not, that's not a ship button. That's a start a new project button.

Speaker 3

That's a start over. Yeah, that's a-

Aaron Francis

Yes

Speaker 3

... start and never finish button, and a solo button.

Aaron Francis

Genius. Now, what does that do?

Speaker 3

So I can, I can slam the solo button.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

And it will, uh, it will activate solo, and it will send-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... the hot key that is, uh, open the attention palette, which is, like-

Aaron Francis

Oh, yes

Speaker 3

... what agents are waiting on me. So I can put it on my desk, and when I hear the ding, order up. I can slam on it.

Aaron Francis

Now, how the heck did he do this? That gives some-

Speaker 3

And this-

Aaron Francis

I guess it's got some custom firmware or something on there.

Speaker 3

Yeah. I don't know, I don't know how he did it. Um, but they're giant-

Aaron Francis

Wow

Speaker 3

... buttons-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... that actually actuate, so you can slam on them.

Aaron Francis

I like that.

Speaker 3

And they're USB-Cs, so you can plug them in on the back. And of course you can... He sent me instructions on how to customize it if I want it to change, like, what it does or something. But how good is that action? Are you hearing this?

Aaron Francis

Uh, yeah.

Speaker 3

How good is that action?

Aaron Francis

Chase, V2 Chase, I think there needs to be some kind of sound when you hit it. Like, or some-

Speaker 3

Hmm

Aaron Francis

... something that happens locally.

Speaker 3

That plays from the button itself?

Aaron Francis

Yes. That-

Speaker 3

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... I want some audio from the button And then obviously still the action as well. Um, I don't know, maybe you could have like a, a double click does a different action, right? Like that's possible too.

Speaker 3

I think, I think they light up. Uh, there's a ring of lights-

Aaron Francis

Oh.

Speaker 3

There's a ring of lights in here-

Aaron Francis

Interesting

Speaker 3

... that you can barely see right there.

Aaron Francis

Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 3

Um, so yeah, he came out to the Denver meetup and was like, "Oh dude, I have something for you. I was running out the door and I dropped it and it shattered into a thousand pieces, so I'll have to mail it to you." So he mailed me, he mailed me these two giant buttons.

Aaron Francis

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3

So next time-

Aaron Francis

That's very cool

Speaker 3

... I see you, I'll give you, I'll give you Laravel New. You can have that one.

Aaron Francis

What? No.

Speaker 3

I'm keep, I'm keeping Solo. I'm keeping Solo.

Aaron Francis

Wow. Well, that'll be cool.

Speaker 3

So if you never wanna ship, I've got just the button for you.

Aaron Francis

Dude, you give me that button, I might get nothing done ever again. I'm just gonna be here-

Speaker 3

I know

Aaron Francis

... like, "New, new, new."

Speaker 3

I know.

Aaron Francis

Uh, you're, you're sabotaging me. That's what's going on here.

Speaker 3

I am. It's good content to sabotage you.

Aaron Francis

It is good content. All right. Giant Laravel ship button, uh, uh, Laravel New button brought to you by Bento, the email marketing and CRM platform built for the AI era. Send your product marketing and transactional email with Bento and check out their new transactional email pricing with rates as low as nine cents per thousand emails.

As well as check out their all-new design. If you've tried Bento before and you didn't maybe vibe with the design of the app, it's all redone. They spent twenty billion tokens redoing it. Go check it out, bentonow.com. And Post Shiba. You've heard us talk about Bento for ages, well, Jesse and the team are launching a new product called Post Shiba, the transactional email platform that powers Bento's amazing delivery rates, password resets, login links, receipts, the

emails your users are sitting there refreshing their inbox for. You can even build Bento on Post Shiba if you wanna compete with Jesse. Uh, it's all the raw sending power. I do love a raw sending power kind of app. Uh, Jesse's currently, you know, uh, gathering interest. He's, he's releasing it now to the, uh, people who are signing up, so go ahead and sign up over there on postshiba.com, and he'll get you in so you can check it out and integrate with your app.

It's all also AI-ified, MCP-ified. A bunch of people have already moved over to it just by pointing their agents, uh, at the, uh, MCP setup and moving stuff over. So very easy to do. Postshiba.com. And, uh, thanks to Jesse for sponsoring the show. Okay.

Woo, what do we got? Let's see here. Um...

Speaker 3

You and Jesse got in a little fight again, as you do.

Aaron Francis

Man.

Speaker 3

Do you wanna cover that at all? It's the same, it's the same territory.

Aaron Francis

It's the same play.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

He's try- he's trying to engagement bait us.

Speaker 3

It's the same fight as always.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

He is.

Aaron Francis

Not gonna work.

Speaker 3

And it's working. It is working.

Aaron Francis

Is it? It's sort of working.

Speaker 3

Yes.

Aaron Francis

I don't know if there's more to cover on the show, though. Uh, I kind of even forget what he said. That was a long time ago.

Speaker 3

All right.

Aaron Francis

But basically, but yeah, it's about pricing. It's about like, uh, whatever. I don't know. If you have the tweet handy, we could, we could bring it up. It was a very long tweet.

Speaker 3

I don't have the... It was a very-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... it was a very long tweet. I think his most salient point was Ian has a twenty-year-old stable business and the rest of us don't.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

That was, that was-

Aaron Francis

That was the point

Speaker 3

... that was good framing. That was, that was correct.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I think, I definitely-- Like, my, like r- I think there's an interesting refinement. We'll, we'll take five minutes on this. Um, my, like, raise your prices and this is a good time for raising prices sort of statement is certainly more towards, I mean, I think it's inherently for existing businesses. Like, if you're a new business, then you need to figure out your pricing.

Uh, but that's a little bit different from an existing business, uh, and if they should raise prices right now. So in that regard, I think there's just, it's just a little different there. Um, but yeah, you know, I don't know. The funny thing, the, the, the salient point to me was that he had this whole big diatribe and everybody should go out and, like, sell everything for zero, and he was, like, referencing Jason Cohen.

And then the next day, Jason Cohen has a video where he, like, says the exact opposite of that in very strong Jason Cohen-y direct terms and is like, "You know, you gotta know who your customers are." Uh, the best point from that video, which we'll link in the show notes, is it's a straight-up amazing video. It's like a software masterclass, so you gotta read this or watch this video.

But people who want something for free or extremely cheap or who are going to build it themselves, which is a big thing Jesse's worried about, I think a lot underlying all of this, right, is that AI lets anybody build anything, and so you have to make it so cheap that it's not worth them building it themselves. But the thing is, and Jason points this out, is that those people are literally, technically not customers.

Like, they are not people in the market to buy services. If they are-- want to build it themselves, that's fine. They're not people you should even be talking to, thinking about, worried about, 'cause they are not, literally not customers for this type of product that you're selling. So you need to focus on people who are customers for this type of product. So I think that's, like, the main thing I would take away from all of this, is that's a very salient point I thought was very well articulated by Jason.

Uh, obviously the counterpoint is, well, there will be no customers. Everybody's gonna build everything themselves. And if you believe that, I suppose that's fine. I don't believe that, though, so I disregard that premise, um, because I just don't think that's how things work. We've talked about that many times on here. I just don't think anybody thinks about it that way. If you're selling-- If you're picking the right customers, and meaning people who actually are customers, they're not thinking about this that way, 'cause they're not trying to save $1,000 or $2,000-

Speaker 3

Agreed

Aaron Francis

... or, or anything like that. So those are the kind of customers you want, people who are actually customers and have different goals. They're in a business. They're trying to do a different thing. Not trying to build email software. It's not trying to build a CRM. It's not trying to build a help desk. It's trying to sell widgets And all the other stuff's a distraction, so they're outsourcing the other stuff to you, software company.

Great. They're our customer potentially. So-

Speaker 3

What did you think about, uh-

Aaron Francis

Love that

Speaker 3

... Antoine, who is the founder of Fernand, which is the help desk that I use

Aaron Francis

Yes. Yeah

Speaker 3

Uh, Ant- Antoine said, um, that every day he's getting more and more, "Hey, we, we just built our own," cancellations. He's a-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 3

... I mean, he's an honest to goodness SaaS company.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

I pay him US dollars to host my help desk. He has seen this, he has seen this firsthand.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

So what is, what is your, what's your feedback on that one?

Aaron Francis

Yeah, so we'll cover that. So that's like, uh, that, this was the post, Jesse was pointing to this post as like-

Speaker 3

This was the inciting incident

Aaron Francis

... evidence. Yes.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

And, uh, the short version is we had a little back and forth in the thread, and what, what's the guy's name? I forget his name.

Speaker 3

Antoine.

Aaron Francis

Antoine was like, "Ian's totally right." Like, literally he says, "Ian's totally right." So because here's the thing, that product, its literal headline is "Free help desk software for SaaS founders," or something along those lines. So it's like free and for software developers effectively.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Which is literally, as we talked about now for the last month here, the worst customers you can possibly have.

Speaker 3

The worst thing you could do, yeah.

Aaron Francis

Yes. Software developers, not just software developers, but software developers who don't want to pay for something is the framing of his product. And so that's a bad framing. Um, now the product seems fine. I've never used it. I've never-

Speaker 3

It's a good product

Aaron Francis

... even thought about it, to be honest with you. But, uh, you know, I have eight, there's 8 million help desks out there, so I don't pay attention to any of them. That's fine. I think he should just reframe it. It seems like the product is reasonable. I think he should just have a, change the website, get rid of that as the headline, get rid of that as the focus, and be like, "Hey, help desk software for your team to answer shit better," right? Whatever, and ditch that framing.

He's probably gonna have a lot of churn in the short term because all the devs are like, "Hey, we can get rid of this $25 bill by building our own help desk." Great. There's nothing you're gonna do about that. That part's done. Like, you have ba- a bad set of customers right now. But in the future, you don't have to have bad customers. You could have good customers. So switch the framing, sell to people who wanna buy, and that's what I would do from his perspective.

But, uh, yeah, I mean, I think it was, I'm sure he's, it seems like he's doing o- okay, so I think it'll probably work-

Speaker 3

I think he's doing okay

Aaron Francis

... right? For a while.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. And, uh, but it changed. I mean, I think this is where, like with Help Spot, I've always wa- um, been very happy with like universities and banks and old stodgy companies that are not sexy, but also are not looking for the latest thing. They're not interested in the latest thing. And as I've also talked about here, like I h- have the person I've basically hired to try to convince our customers to use the latest thing, 'cause I don't think they're gonna wanna use the latest thing.

So they're definitely not building their own. I literally have had nobody who's, can... So in, in comparison to, to him, I've had nobody who's left in the past year say, "We built our own."

Speaker 3

Right.

Aaron Francis

Have a handful of them built their own? I'm sure a handful of them have, right? Like, I can't, I don't always get all the information from every single person who churns, but it's definitely not like, oh man, everybody's building their own. Everybody's telling me about how they're building their own. Everybody's asking for the exports 'cause they're building their own. Like, totally different experience. So yeah.

And again, I think the thing that will wipe us out will be Finn or Salesforce or some new thing that everybody event- like changes the dynamic in some way that, okay, everybody's going to that new thing. I could totally buy that. There's no way in hell everybody's gonna build their own, and that'll be like the reason. Oh, spammers. Spammers, Aaron.

Hold on. It's ringing in my ears. All right. Um, yeah.

Speaker 3

You know what I wanna hear?

Aaron Francis

So... Mm-hmm?

Speaker 3

I, I wanna hear as a storyline for the show-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... here's what I want.

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 3

I want Operation, gotta call it an operation 'cause that's just so cool.

Aaron Francis

I love an operation. Yeah.

Speaker 3

We love an operation.

Aaron Francis

We haven't had an operation on here. Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 3

I know. So the operation is-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... Operation Double Help Spot.

Aaron Francis

Great. Ooh.

Speaker 3

That's what, that is, that's the storyline that I want.

Aaron Francis

Interesting.

Speaker 3

I wanna see, I wanna see Ian in growth mode, figure out-

Aaron Francis

Yes. Mm

Speaker 3

... figure out how we double Help Spot.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

'Cause then, so like right now-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... you've got this, you've got this stable business-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 3

... thanks to 20 years of blood, sweat, and tears, right?

Aaron Francis

That's right. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

And so you're happy. You're kinda like-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... Homer sitting on the throne laughing-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... at all his jewels, laughing at all the losers-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... that are doing dev tools, right?

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 3

I wanna see you back on the grind-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... to double Help Spot. I want Operation Double Help Spot.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

That's what I wanna hear. 'Cause I want you in the game.

Aaron Francis

So-

Speaker 3

I want you in the game with all the other losers down here in the mud- ... in the mire.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

I want you fighting it out to grow your revenue.

Aaron Francis

Okay. I'm the, I'm, uh... So here's the thing, right? I mean, it probably won't happen

Speaker 3

If you're gonna retire by 40, you gotta double it, Ian.

Aaron Francis

I don't, dude.

Speaker 3

You gotta double it.

Aaron Francis

Very inspiring. Ah, I should've retired by 40. Um, yeah, I think, I think I'm aligned conceptually with that. I mean, I would say there's like a 10 to m- 15 year period where I like didn't care about growing at all, and it's like, whatever, we're growing a little bit, we're not, who cares? The last year or so, I've been like, oh, maybe we could like get more into it.

This last month or so where I've like rebuilt Help Spot, the whole UI, everything, whatever, which is one of my items, 13 billion tokens I've spent in the last-

Speaker 3

Love that for you

Aaron Francis

... uh, month redoing the whole user interface and not just that, like two big new modules, all kinds of stuff. So I think there's something there. Um, whether or not I wanna make doubling the goal, I don't know. I do think there's an interesting opportunity here where like- Like, kind of in the past, it's like the growth would have to be through just, like, acquiring new customers, um, which is fine, of course, but it's like super competitive.

Speaker 3

Check it out. That's a, yeah, that's a good way to grow.

Aaron Francis

Right.

Speaker 3

Yeah, it makes sense.

Aaron Francis

It's one way to where it grow. But the AI stuff does offer a new opportunity, which is to have my existing customers buy more from me-

Speaker 3

Sure

Aaron Francis

... which I find even more appealing. So that's a big part of what we've done over the past, it's been more than a month, but this, uh, this big release that's coming in the fall here will have a bunch of AI stuff that people can pay for. So I think there'll be some opportunities there to grow revenue, uh, a fair amount. So, uh, I'd say Operation Grow...

I mean, honestly, I'd be like super happy with like 30%. So to me it's like Operation 30%. If we get to double, that'd be fun.

Speaker 3

Gotta raise that ambition-

Aaron Francis

But-

Speaker 3

... Ian. Double.

Aaron Francis

So I have been-

Speaker 3

You know what's better than one money is two money.

Aaron Francis

That's true.

Speaker 3

Double it.

Aaron Francis

I have been, I have been thinking about, um, raising my ambition though, 'cause this like past month or six weeks of redoing-

Speaker 3

There we go

Aaron Francis

... Help Spot, I'm like-

Speaker 3

That's what I'm talking about

Aaron Francis

... man, this is-

Speaker 3

Come on

Aaron Francis

... yeah. So I've been thinking about you and thinking about Jesse Bentley over there.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Um, in terms of raising the ambition, I do think now, especially with like a restructured user interface that's a lot easier and faster to work in and just nicer, there's some opportunities to add some things we haven't done in the past. So like we- we're gonna have the AI, which is there, but maybe there's live chat, maybe there's voice, maybe there's other sorts of things.

So there's like-

Speaker 3

Yes, yes

Aaron Francis

... some new opportu- social is one. We don't really play too much in that game right now 'cause like I said, we're more in the like universities, banks type of world.

Speaker 3

Yes. Let the ambition-

Aaron Francis

But-

Speaker 3

... flow through you, Ian

Aaron Francis

... I am seeing the possibility of like, can we do big new modules in a way that's reasonable? I think there is more opportunity to do that now. So the other thing I wanna send the agents on is marketing, which I haven't done too much of yet, which is really where, uh, I think the other big opportunity lies.

Like the modules are good.

Speaker 3

This, this would be getting new customers, which as you-

Aaron Francis

This would be getting new cu- customers

Speaker 3

... correctly noted, is a good way to grow.

Aaron Francis

It is good.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

I mean, we do get new customers, but it's not been like a top focus. So I think there's some opportunities to use the AI, leverage the AI in some different ways. Now again, I'm not in the kind of industry unfortunately where like nobody knows about the AI. Like Zendesk knows about the AI and Help Scout knows about the AI, right? So like not, I don't really have an edge in AI marketing necessarily, but it still should let me do more and different things and keep tabs on things-

Speaker 3

Let, let me ask you this

Aaron Francis

... more easily than the past.

Speaker 3

Do you have vertical-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... landing pages for banks, hospitals, universities?

Aaron Francis

Yeah, I do have that.

Speaker 3

Okay. How, how do those perform? Do we know?

Aaron Francis

Yeah, they're okay. Again, that's, I don't, I'm not like super totally on top of it, but they're fine. I mean, the SEO, the problem is like the SEO game, this is what I need to adjust, right, is like SEO is how we always made our most growth was SEO. But everybody's on that game. So it used to be like, yes, us and three competitors had banking landing page, but now there's literally 5,000 help desk software banking landing pages, right?

So like, so I need to find some new angles and whether it's like also the AI, what are they calling it? The GEO or whatever the-

Speaker 3

GEO, yeah

Aaron Francis

... whatever it is.

Speaker 3

AO, GEO.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. So, um, so maybe it's that, maybe it's something else. Maybe it's different sorts of market- maybe it's cold email marketing. I don't know. Maybe it's LinkedIn. Maybe it's like all these things I have no interest in actually doing, but if I can automate them and make them good through automation, then that's great. I'd be all about that.

So I haven't decided. Yeah, I haven't given that a ton of thought. That's kinda like after this, uh, my part of this kind of big redesign, redo ships, which is soon, then I'm gonna be more focused on that as my next big what am I gonna spend all these tokens on, is going to be that end of the world. So that's kinda my plan for that.

And we'll see what we can do. Maybe we'll, uh, yeah, get some, get some new customers. That'd be cool. Uh, again-

Speaker 3

Operation-

Aaron Francis

... we do get new customers, but-

Speaker 3

... Double, Operation Double has officially commenced.

Aaron Francis

Ah, double.

Speaker 3

So you have one year. You have one year to double.

Aaron Francis

One year?

Speaker 3

One year to double.

Aaron Francis

I don't know about that.

Speaker 3

You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm. Okay.

Speaker 3

One year.

Aaron Francis

All right.

Speaker 3

Operation Double's in one year. What have you spent 13 billion tokens on so far?

Aaron Francis

Yeah, that was just, uh, UI, Help Spot UI/new modules, um, orbs cranking away round the clock 24 hours a day.

Speaker 3

Cranking the orbs. You lo- you love the orbs.

Aaron Francis

Oh, they're just spinning. They got the little... They're spinning. It's so great. They're moving. Stuff's happening. Um, yeah, that was... I mean, it was interesting 'cause like not just like, like Jesse did a rebuild of his UI-

Speaker 3

Yep

Aaron Francis

... but it was more of a like take this UI, update the UI. Mine is sort of like that, but then there's like, like I said, like for example, a thing Help Spot has as a construct in the current version is a thing called Knowledge Books, which is your, what other tools would call a knowledge base, but it's in like a book format. Which I think in the past was good and our shtick with it was basically the idea that like a knowledge base is just a pile of crap and like usually it's like a search box and it's like a million articles.

You can't find anything. The book is kind of a nicer format because from the customer's perspective, often you don't necessarily know like what something's called.

Speaker 3

Sure.

Aaron Francis

So like you can kind of quickly scan a table of contents. It's in a book format. You're gonna be in a chapter with other related things, right? So like from a usability perspective of the end customer is nice. But in the modern age where like that's kinda going away and it's like, well, the AI's just gonna dig through the pile of shit and give you an answer, right? So like, so now the Knowledge Book's kinda holding us back on the AI front because it's like, well, like when I add some content, I have to like kinda think about it more heavily about like where, where does this

go in this book? And like now I might have a book with 1,000 pages. That's weird. Like, so it just kinda breaks down- So the books got scrapped, and the books are being converted to a knowledge base, a more traditional pile of shit.

Speaker 3

Pile of crap.

Aaron Francis

Right? Pile of crap. But the pile of crap, now the AI looks through the pile of crap and comes out with the right answer, right? So, like, this way it's gonna be easier to, like, automate the creation of the pile of crap. So as things come in to the help desk and you wanna make a knowledge book article out of it, or knowledge base-

Speaker 3

Knowledge base

Aaron Francis

... article out of it, now the AI, right, can, like, mostly do that for you. There's an approval step or whatever, blah, blah, blah. So now you can just be building up your knowledge base. The AI can use that knowledge base in all sorts of different ways, and great. So that had to all be redone and rebuilt. Um, so yeah. So there was a lot of other... And I actually converted the knowledge books first, so that just got done as a conversion.

But then, uh, 'cause I wanted that there just in case, even though I knew I'd probably do knowledge base. Anyway, decided to do knowledge base, scrapped all that knowledge book stuff. Nothing better than scrapping work the AI has done.

Speaker 3

Love-

Aaron Francis

I just love it

Speaker 3

... love scrapping. Love scrapping.

Aaron Francis

How many times did that prevent me from scrapping stuff? I was like, "Well, I spent a month on this, and, like-"

Speaker 3

Yep

Aaron Francis

... "I guess I'll just ship it because I spent a month on it." And now it's like, uh, I don't even know what happened.

Speaker 3

Who cares?

Aaron Francis

The AI did it. Yeah, who cares? I just trash it.

Speaker 3

I just orbed it six hours ago. Who cares?

Aaron Francis

Exactly. Doesn't matter. So trashed all that. Have the base version, blah, blah. Um, and all that. It's, like, so it's all new UI. So again, like, the AI sort of helps you, but still not... There's just a lot of stuff to do to make it work well, in my opinion. So doing all that stuff, um, lots of conversion, lots of testing stuff. Part of this was, like, the front end of HelpSpot didn't have a ton of, like, uh, like, kind of browser tests and things like that, so now every single screen has browser tests for every single thing.

Speaker 3

Yep.

Aaron Francis

So, and that's basically, like, end-to-end tests in a lot of cases. So now everything's super tested, which is really cool. Um, yeah, so that's, like, the, the to- it's amazing how much you can do in six weeks now. So that part is cool. Um-

Speaker 3

When are we gonna merge?

Aaron Francis

I just did the big merge this weekend of, uh, the last really big thing that had to be merged to make this pretty close, which was, uh, Matt, the CTO at Userscape, has been doing all the AI stuff, in terms of, like, AI feature set of, like, auto answering and things like that. And that was in the old version on a branch. So now I've got that fully merged into this V6 branch with all the new UI.

So we're pretty much ready. Now, we still need to go through it all with humans. There's gonna be tons of things broken, 'cause AI just, like, you... I mean, I haven't actually seen much broken, so hopefully it's not too much broken. But HelpSpot has tons of, like, change this setting, and this setting impacts all these things over here. And so as I check all these combinations, I don't know. I'm gonna send it through to check a bunch of combinations, of course, too.

Uh, but still needs human review. But we're, we're very close. When it ships, Octo- probably... I don't know. It's gonna be a slow roll, 'cause, like, for a number of reasons. But if we can get it out there by, like, early November into, like, a beta state. 'Cause we already have some customers on a beta of the AI stuff in the old UI.

So phase one will be to, like, get those people updated into the new UI, and then we'll slow roll from there. There's a bunch of other things I did as part of this, partially so someday we could potentially be on HelpSpot, uh, Laravel Cloud. HelpSpot Cloud could convert to Laravel Cloud at some point. Um, so there's some things we need to do for that. Like, currently you can edit your portal templates, the actual PHP code.

Speaker 3

Yeah, that's no good.

Aaron Francis

Very bad. Yeah, so bad all the way around for many reasons. So rebuilt the portal system, which is also one of the very oldest parts of HelpSpot. So that's all rebuilt. You can't edit the code anymore. Um, but you know, you can customize it, blah, blah, blah. But that's a big change. So, like, some customers are not gonna be able to upgrade right away 'cause they have things they've customized, they don't wanna lose them.

So there's gonna be a lot of hand-holding. Um, part of my goal with, like, having the AI and the new UI all at once is like, "Hey, look at all these great features." So many great features that, like, there's a, becomes a motivation for people-

Speaker 3

Interesting

Aaron Francis

... to bite the bullet on things they maybe didn't want to have to give up before.

Speaker 3

So the only thing, the only thing I think that's holding you up is by July 7th of this year-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... you, you need to get somebody-

Aaron Francis

Outro, right

Speaker 3

... else into Outro.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

So I don't know where we are in the calendar at this point, but just make sure-

Aaron Francis

No

Speaker 3

... that by July 7th you get somebody-

Aaron Francis

No, we have plenty of time

Speaker 3

... into Outro, and then, then you can release-

Aaron Francis

That's, like, eight months away or something

Speaker 3

... this new thing. Yeah, something like that.

Aaron Francis

Nine months away. Yeah, plenty of time.

Speaker 3

You gotta, you gotta-

Aaron Francis

Uh, I do wanna do that too

Speaker 3

... you got, you're spinning the tokens. We gotta deploy.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

That's what we gotta do. We gotta get it out there, man.

Aaron Francis

I still have some little edgy things in Outro I don't love, but I will get somebody else in Outro at some point. That will happen.

Speaker 3

Will you?

Aaron Francis

Eh, I don't know about that.

Speaker 3

You want, you want projec- You want found money. Found money.

Aaron Francis

But see, it's a big complicated app.

Speaker 3

You have a whole, you have a whole product.

Aaron Francis

Can I redo Outro?

Speaker 3

You have a whole product.

Aaron Francis

Can I Laravel new Outro? So you've been using Outro now for four months or five months-

Speaker 3

I have

Aaron Francis

... whatever I've been doing.

Speaker 3

I have.

Aaron Francis

Could I bring it down, Laravel new it into something much simpler?

Speaker 3

You could. Why? What, what i- what is already too complicated?

Aaron Francis

I don't know. I'm just asking.

Speaker 3

You could, yes.

Aaron Francis

There you go. It's got a-

Speaker 3

The answer is yes.

Aaron Francis

Okay. Is it, like, there's a bunch of mo- like, I haven't finished the mail module yet, which we're not even using, although that's the main thing that, the reason I did this whole thing is for the mail module.

Speaker 3

This is literally the main thing, yeah.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, yeah. So I do wanna finish that. Um, that's definitely something that has to finish before it ships. So I don't know. It's, yeah. I'm sort of answering my own question in that I, I don't, uh, I wouldn't be happy with it being lesser, I think. So in that regard, no. But, uh, you know, something weird, Laravel Cloud from Laravel Holdings Incorporated-

Speaker 3

Heard of it

Aaron Francis

... sent me an email this morning-

Speaker 3

Yeah, they did

Aaron Francis

... saying that Outro has, like, 200,000 visitors or something like that. But, like- Oh, 200,000 requests and 10,000 visitors, which seems high 'cause it's like a one-page website. So I think somebody's like doing up something nefarious-

Speaker 3

Mm

Aaron Francis

... or something, I wonder. I gotta look into that because-

Speaker 3

Gotta look into that

Aaron Francis

... there's been some signups-

Speaker 3

Could be bots, I suppose

Aaron Francis

... to the email lists, but it's not like, it's not enough that if I'm getting like that many visitors, I feel like there's something weird going on.

Speaker 3

You, you could literally today, you could point your agents at Outro plus Laravel Cloud plus our new Resend integration-

Aaron Francis

Hmm

Speaker 3

... and you could get inbound email working today.

Aaron Francis

I think I actually have that part set up actually already.

Speaker 3

Oh, then what are we doing?

Aaron Francis

I don't know.

Speaker 3

Yeah, what are we doing?

Aaron Francis

I have to just test it out. I think the agent's already built it. I haven't actually like tried it. 'Cause if you go in Outro right now, if we go over to, uh, mailbag. Yeah, it's got like mostly the technical blah, blah email address, but I have to verify the forwarding. I think this might actually sort of already work. Um-

Speaker 3

You're killing me.

Aaron Francis

I know.

Speaker 3

You're killing me, Lance Man.

Aaron Francis

Here's the thing. Maybe, you know, I had to get this Help Spot stuff done. It's, it's too big, it's too important. So like once that's done, I'm gonna be more a marketing guy/possibly Outro guy. So I might have a little more time to get back to some Outro stuff potentially.

Speaker 3

Here, here's what I have found historically.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

There's always one, uh, or more, but usually one thing emotionally-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... that's keeping me from launching. It is-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... I don't feel good about this or-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... I wish I'd made this decision differently or like-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 3

... this piece of the tech stack needs to be ripped out.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Just orb that emotional hangup away. Whatever it is. I know there's something in there where you're like-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... "I don't feel confident about this part."

Aaron Francis

That's true. Yeah.

Speaker 3

Just orb, orb it all away. Spend another billion. What's another billion tokens-

Aaron Francis

Yeah, I don't care about that

Speaker 3

... amongst friends?

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Orbit, orbit into n-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... into outer space until it's completely gone, and then just launch it. 'Cause you know, I know that you know-

Aaron Francis

It's possible

Speaker 3

... in your head right now, there's one thing where you're like-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... "I would launch it if it wasn't-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 3

... XYZ."

Aaron Francis

That's true.

Speaker 3

Just make XYZ-

Aaron Francis

Probably true

Speaker 3

... go away. Just make it go away.

Aaron Francis

It's possible. I have wanted to, I have wanted to swarm something, so it could be interesting like-

Speaker 3

This is that.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Could be, I could swarm the remaining... There's like a couple little technical things, and then there's a couple like module things, and there's a couple UI things. But I could put those all in a big basket and be like-

Speaker 3

You could

Aaron Francis

... "All right, swarm-

Speaker 3

You should

Aaron Francis

... go forth." And I just saw something today, like Cloud Code is recommending you use like Sonnet and Haiku, Haiku Swarms run by Sonnet with Opus only used as like-

Speaker 3

Who knows?

Aaron Francis

Some other thing

Speaker 3

I can't keep up

Aaron Francis

But I think, I don't know. That's crazy.

Speaker 3

Here's what you do. Swarm it away.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Mm.

Speaker 3

Set the entry price to $99.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

Something obscene.

Aaron Francis

All right.

Speaker 3

And then just turn it on, and then from there it's out there.

Aaron Francis

I want a free version though. I do have to have a free version.

Speaker 3

You can get there. You can get there.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 3

But just de- let people in at $99.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3

Nobody's gonna sign up.

Aaron Francis

Right. But it's out.

Speaker 3

It's $99, but it's out.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

And then you can iterate and think-

Aaron Francis

Exactly

Speaker 3

... "All right, what does it take? Now that it's out there and it's humming along, what does it take-

Aaron Francis

Mm

Speaker 3

... to get down to a $9, a free plan, whatever?"

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Then, then you're in motion. We just gotta, we gotta break the dam. That's what we gotta do.

Aaron Francis

Ah, it's so much work, you know, Aaron. So much work.

Speaker 3

That-

Aaron Francis

A lot of work to do these things

Speaker 3

... what el- what else is there to do besides work?

Aaron Francis

There's nothing else. Uh, yeah, well-

Speaker 3

Every day under the sun I toil, you know?

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

That is, that is life.

Aaron Francis

Um, I'm not totally opposed to this idea, and you know I love throwing away the work that AI does. So-

Speaker 3

I know you do. Throw it all away

Aaron Francis

... uh, now I did have a little issue. I, the other aspect of that was that I was using every token I could get my hands on for the past six weeks doing other stuff. So-

Speaker 3

But now the tokens-

Aaron Francis

But I should have, I should have available tokens

Speaker 3

... flow like water. Tibo either makes us some-

Aaron Francis

Yes

Speaker 3

... lame excuse-

Aaron Francis

Perfect segue

Speaker 3

... to not reset, or he just resets.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 3

I've got, I've got across my four accounts, I think I have nine or 10 full resets. Plus they gave us like 62,000 credits per account-

Aaron Francis

Yeah, I don't know what those are but yeah

Speaker 3

... for some reason. I don't know why. So I'm just like, I'm, this is why Accounting 229 lives on. This is why I'm rewriting some stuff in Rest because it's like, "Hey, we got tokens. They're gonna go away. Might as well make hay while the sun shines."

Aaron Francis

That is true.

Speaker 3

Let's do it.

Aaron Francis

I think I only got one of the bank resets so far, but I did get, uh... Yeah, we had a full reset or two of like back to 100%. Whatever.

Speaker 3

Yeah. I, I used a bank reset, and then he did a full like immediate reset, and I was like, "God dang it, Tibo."

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Who wants it?

Speaker 3

"Just tell us which one it's gonna be."

Aaron Francis

Nobody wants an immediate reset.

Speaker 3

Nobody wants an immediate reset.

Aaron Francis

Like literally nobody.

Speaker 3

Nobody.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. I don't really even get why they care in a certain sense. It's like, just give the bank ones. Like, they're still gonna be random in terms of when people use them.

Speaker 3

The full ones are cheaper. The full ones are cheaper for them.

Aaron Francis

You think so?

Speaker 3

Yeah, 'cause if it was a banked, I could run from-