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

January 18, 2022

Talking about my life and, of course, Twitter.
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Transcript

Malcolm
00:00:07 – 00:00:11
Is the indie dads podcast. I'm Malcolm.
Brian
00:00:11 – 00:00:12
And I'm Brian.
Malcolm
00:00:12 – 00:00:26
And we're a couple of dads sharing our journey about starting out and bootstrapping our indie businesses while still prioritizing our young families. We believe that you can bootstrap a successful SaaS, freelance, or indie business while still enjoying the family life.
Brian
00:00:26 – 00:00:30
Join us as we share our learnings from building our businesses from scratch.
Malcolm
00:00:34 – 00:00:38
Well, good morning. Morning, Brian. Well, actually afternoon. No. We're doing good.
Brian
00:00:38 – 00:00:44
We've got, someone else here too. I see. Hello. 3rd voice. We're excited.
Aaron
00:00:45 – 00:00:46
Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Brian
00:00:46 – 00:00:58
Yeah. Thanks for being here. So, today we've got, we've got Aaron Francis with us. He's, Aaron d Francis on Twitter. He is the father of twins, which sounds exhausting to me.
Brian
00:01:00 – 00:01:06
And I believe, Aaron, you're working full time and building Hammerstone. Is that correct?
Aaron
00:01:06 – 00:01:07
That yep. That's correct.
Brian
00:01:07 – 00:01:16
Okay. So indie parent working full time, building something on the side. From what I can gather, Hammerstone is a collection of Laravel libraries?
Aaron
00:01:18 – 00:01:23
Yeah. Primarily, Laravel and Rails, but primarily Laravel at this point.
Brian
00:01:23 – 00:01:36
Okay. So the tagline, from your website is that, you know, we focus on features everyone needs to have, but nobody wants to build. So that sounds interesting. We'll talk about that. You've also got a your own podcast called the Hammerstone podcast.
Brian
00:01:36 – 00:01:39
You're, like, 40 plus episodes in.
Aaron
00:01:39 – 00:01:44
Yeah. I think we've been doing it for almost a year and obviously missed a few. But, yeah, it's it's a lot of fun.
Malcolm
00:01:44 – 00:01:47
Wow. Cool. How often do you guys release episodes?
Aaron
00:01:49 – 00:02:03
The goal is once a week. So it's me, Sean, and Colleen, and those are my other 2 cofounders. And we basically that's kinda the only time we talk every week. And so every week, we'll get on and record, and then that's it.
Malcolm
00:02:04 – 00:02:09
What do you guys generally talk about in terms of subject matters? Is it just about building hammer steering?
Aaron
00:02:10 – 00:02:24
Yeah. Pretty much. So we will get on and talk about, so Colleen is full time embedded at a client working on one of our components there. And so we'll catch up with her about what's going on over at the client. She's building it out.
Aaron
00:02:24 – 00:02:46
She's building out our component, which I can describe later. She's building it out in rails. And Sean is our front end guy, and we've recently hired 2 contractors. So there's just, like, there's a lot to, you know, catch each other up on. And I'm living in the Laravel world that they're not in and working on a lot of open source stuff, and so I catch them up on that kind of stuff.
Aaron
00:02:46 – 00:02:49
So that's kinda just a status meeting, really.
Brian
00:02:49 – 00:03:04
And you, you sometimes have guests on on your Hammerstone podcast. In fact, a couple weeks ago, you had Matt Wintzing on. I did. Yeah. And you kinda talked to him about some of the same topics that that we like to talk about, which is, you know, doing this as a parent.
Aaron
00:03:04 – 00:04:01
So Sean and Colleen were out that week, and I've had been kind of DM ing with Matt a little bit and something that had been on my mind. You know, I have, like you mentioned, I have twins and they're 8 months old and I'm trying to do this stuff on the side and work a full time job and be a parent. And, you know, Matt, for those I'm sure you all know, but other people, Matt has exited a company before, and he's got, I believe, 4 kids, including, twins. I think he's got 11 year old twins. And so I wanted to talk to him about, like, how do you balance this and how do you know because right now I'm I'm working all the time and the goal the goal is to work all the time now so that when the kids are, you know, 3, 4 or 5, I'm not working all the time, but it only makes sense if it pays off.
Aaron
00:04:01 – 00:04:18
And, like, if it doesn't pay off, I would have been better just, you know, cutting out at 5 o'clock and going inside to dork around. So that's kind of the thing I'm trying to work through right now. And I know y'all's kids, I think, are are older than than mine, so I'd be curious to talk about that as well from y'all's perspective.
Malcolm
00:04:19 – 00:04:35
That was a really good episode, and we'll include it in the show notes. I think it's with, anybody that's listening into indie dads to go over and and give it that a listen. But what was your your main takeaway from that, Aaron? If you could just give it a, like, a summary on on what what you got taking away from from that conversation with Matt.
Aaron
00:04:36 – 00:05:18
Yeah. So one of my main takeaways was, we as as working people, we tend to think that the amount of time spent on something, the amount of input will, you know, equate or affect the amount of output. And Matt was really good about saying, like, if you can spend 1 hour working on something at work, that may be all you need to do for that like period of time. But when it comes to family, like it's not the same way. What they want is time, not effectiveness.
Aaron
00:05:18 – 00:05:34
So, like, if you can be super effective at work, it doesn't really matter how much time you've put in. But if you give, like, your kid 4 solid pushes on the swing, they're not gonna say, wow. That those pushes were really effective. Thanks for doing that, dad. And be like, no.
Aaron
00:05:34 – 00:05:56
Push me some more and let's go dig up worms for 4 hours. And it's like, those two things are totally separate. And it was helpful for me to understand that in work, I can be super effective with short time, and I need to try to do that more. And in family, it's all about time put in. And that's helpful for me while they're so young, so I can frame that going forward.
Malcolm
00:05:57 – 00:06:31
Yeah. And I and I think there's also an an aspect of of quality, because I don't I don't know if you guys found this, but, when I first started out and, you know, being so passionate about the side project and, you know, dreaming of where it's going, You know, I'd be sitting at the dinner table, and I'm spending time with my family, but I'm not there. And my and my wife knows me really well. We've been married for almost 20 years now, and she just takes one look at me and says, Malcolm, you you're not here. So that's that's, like, a big thing that I've had to learn is to be present when I'm spending time with the family because I you know, it used to be just a tick box.
Malcolm
00:06:31 – 00:06:40
Well, I'm not in front of my desk, in front of my computer, so, technically, I'm not working. But there's that mental switch as well, which takes, I guess, some practice.
Aaron
00:06:40 – 00:06:41
How old are yours?
Malcolm
00:06:43 – 00:06:49
Yeah. So my kids are, 10114. And Brian, yours?
Brian
00:06:50 – 00:07:01
Okay. I've gotta go through I've got 5, so I've gotta try to get this right. We've we've got It takes a little more time. Yeah. 17 year old about to graduate from high school, which is really, really weird.
Brian
00:07:01 – 00:07:11
I've got a 15 and a half year old about to start driving, also weird. A 13 year old, a 10 year old, an 8 year old. I guess that's everyone. I thought I missed someone there for a sec. Yeah.
Brian
00:07:11 – 00:08:02
That's 5. I can name them easier than I can give you their ages. Sure. But it's it's pretty crazy. And, you know, they always say that it passes by really quickly, but there's something for some reason, in some of us, it just drives us to to wanna do this.
Brian
00:08:02 – 00:08:17
So so for you, Aaron, like, what what is it? Why aren't you content to just work a full time job? What is it that drives you that makes you wanna do this other than, you know, having a a better life for your family eventually. I think that's what we all want. What is it that that kinda got you started?
Brian
00:08:17 – 00:08:18
How's it going?
Aaron
00:08:19 – 00:08:53
That is the question, isn't it? Because I talked to, you know, obviously my wife and I talk about this a lot and especially over Thanksgiving break, because from my day job, we had the whole week off, which was amazing, but I spent the whole week working on other stuff. And so after that, my wife and I were talking about how to manage this going forward. And I one of the things I said to her was, like, why don't I just work a 9 to 5 like everyone else and just then have, like, freedom outside of work? And she said, I don't think you'd be happy doing that.
Aaron
00:08:53 – 00:09:26
And I think that I think that is the truth. I've always even since I was quite young, I started programming at 13 or something because we just had computers in the house. And so ever since I was quite young, I've always been doing entrepreneurial stuff, doing stuff on the side. And so I think it's kinda just how I'm built. So my desire, like my dream is to, break away from full time employment at some point.
Aaron
00:09:27 – 00:10:15
And then, you you know, be able to go to the park at 2 o'clock and not have anyone, like, not have to put up a status message that's like BRB. I'll I promise I'll be back soon, but I'm just I'm just gone. And so something that I'm really trying to think forward to is when the twins are, you know, 3, probably starting at 3, maybe a little bit earlier, but I'm in my mind, I'm thinking of them as, I kinda call them like the Superman years where dad is Superman and can do no wrong. And the only thing, you know, the only thing that the kids want is to hang out with mom and dad and just show them everything. And I don't wanna miss, like, I don't wanna miss those years.
Aaron
00:10:15 – 00:10:29
And so I feel like I have a clock. Like, it's it's ticking. I gotta figure this out or adjust some other way because I'm not gonna miss those Superman years before they wanna start, you know, hanging out with their friends and never hang out with dad.
Malcolm
00:10:30 – 00:10:43
So practically for you, I mean, you got a full time job during the day. What what does that look like now? How do you, like, practically, how do you split up your time? And Yeah. You said you've had that conversation with your wife.
Malcolm
00:10:43 – 00:10:55
Is there a certain point in time where you've said, well, the next 2 years is gonna look like this, and then it doesn't matter what's happened. It's gonna change, and we'll we'll switch it up and make sure we're spending time with the kids after that.
Aaron
00:10:56 – 00:11:14
Yeah. So we haven't gotten that far out yet. Once we get past, you know, a year or so, it gets pretty vague. But currently, what it looks like like, last night, I was up till, you know, 11:30 working on side stuff. So what it looks like now is I work from home, which is a huge huge benefit.
Aaron
00:11:14 – 00:11:34
So I'm able to go in during the day and, you know, tickle some children. So I work from home, which is amazing. So I wake up in the mornings and I help feed there are 2 of them. So I help feed 1 of them. And so I'm, you know, I'm up with them from about 7 to 9 in the morning.
Aaron
00:11:34 – 00:12:19
And then I walk out here, start working, and then I am able to cut it off pretty good at, like, 5, 5:30, and I'll go inside and help with, another, like, dinner time feed, help get them ready for bed, help clean up, then my wife and I have dinner. And then after that, so, like, 7:30 PM or 8. If we're not if Jennifer and I aren't hanging out together, then I get back to working on stuff, working on side stuff. And I'll also I mean, last year I took I took a couple of days of PTO at certain points during the year just to, like, really push out some some side work. And so fortunately, my job is seasonal.
Aaron
00:12:20 – 00:12:34
And so the, you know, the second half of the year is a lot easier. And then once we reach March, April, it gets to be pretty tough. And so I'm able to kind of flex my side stuff along with that schedule.
Malcolm
00:12:34 – 00:12:39
And then how do the weekends look, though? I mean, you so that's during the week the weekends look the same?
Aaron
00:12:39 – 00:13:12
The weekends are a little bit different. So I will typically get up and help with 1 in the morning, a feed in the morning, hang out, then the kids sleep for, like, you know, 2 hours in the morning. And so typically then, you know, my wife and I will do our own thing. And then when the kids wake up, sometimes we'll go, you know, we can't really go anywhere right now, but, we'll try to, like, go out and spend some time with the kids while they're awake. And then in the afternoon, I'll do some more work again.
Aaron
00:13:12 – 00:13:26
And the same the same kinda goes for Sunday. You know, typically, historically, we've been going to church, but you can't we don't wanna leave the house with twins right now. So we'll watch watch church on TV and then kinda do the same thing as Saturday, basically.
Brian
00:13:27 – 00:13:44
So, you know, we talked about in the beginning how hours don't necessarily like, the number of hours don't necessarily mean quality, but roughly how many hours would you say that you're able to put in with that schedule per week? Is this a does it equate to, like, a part time gig in addition to full time work?
Aaron
00:13:44 – 00:14:06
For sure. Definitely. And it's tough because I don't have to I'm not a freelancer, so I don't have to track it. So it's hard for me to to say exactly, but it's fully 20, 30 hours on, yeah, on the side. And especially right now because we are, at at Hammerstone, we are launching our
Brian
00:14:48 – 00:14:57
as much time with her or the kids or, you know, you it sounds like you do an amazing job of balancing that, but there is always a balance. So how do you prevent burnout for either of you?
Aaron
00:14:59 – 00:15:23
For me, I get burned out. I mean, that's the honest answer. I I don't really know. So I got super burned out in October, November of last year, and just because I had been going super hard for a long time last year. And then October, November rolled around, and I just got I just couldn't do it.
Aaron
00:15:23 – 00:15:34
Like, I couldn't respond to tweets. I couldn't open the editor from my side projects. I just I just couldn't do it. So the answer to how to prevent it, I have no idea. I got super burned out.
Aaron
00:15:36 – 00:16:03
So that was tough. Unfortunately fortunately, my partners at Hammerstone are amazing about work life balance. They have families as well, and they've they've done a little bit more of this than I have, and so they have a little bit more experience. But how do I prevent it for my wife? We I think we've been married 7 years now.
Aaron
00:16:04 – 00:16:39
And I think one of our great strengths is we're really good at communicating. And so she's really good at telling me when she needs help, and I'm really good about asking her what else can I do? And so one of the things that we like, one of the things that we talked about recently was having, like like, actually naming the time. So we call it individual pursuits. And so, like, some nights, some nights we decide, okay, Monday night is an individual pursuit night.
Aaron
00:16:39 – 00:17:06
She's gonna go and probably watch the crown on Netflix, and I'm gonna sit at the table with headphones in and do a bunch of coding. And to have named it, it takes away from us. At least it takes away the pressure or the guilt of are we hanging out? Like if I sit on the couch with my computer, am I ignoring you or are you cool with it? And instead, we've just said, it's an individual pursuit night.
Aaron
00:17:06 – 00:17:32
Do whatever, like, do whatever you want. And that has helped us a whole lot because then on nights that aren't that way, I know. Well, we're spending time together, so I don't feel guilty about leaving my laptop shut because I've already decided tonight is not a side project night. So I don't have to, like, live with 1 foot in both worlds. It's either I'm I'm working or we're hanging out, and that has helped us tremendously.
Brian
00:17:33 – 00:17:54
Being deliberate about that is such great advice. I need to do better at that myself. I think I kinda tend to slink off to, you know, my my office and, work on stuff. And before you know it, it's 11 midnight. And, haven't hardly talked, you know, to anyone besides coming out for dinner or whatever.
Brian
00:17:54 – 00:17:55
So Yeah. Great advice.
Aaron
00:17:56 – 00:18:07
And it's great for her too because she she wants to do like, she wants to do stuff on her own. So it's not like I'm a I'm abandoning her. She's like Mhmm. I wanna watch The Crown and you don't like The Crown. Tonight's a perfect night to do it.
Aaron
00:18:07 – 00:18:08
It's like, oh, okay. Perfect.
Brian
00:18:09 – 00:18:28
So tell us a little bit about, Hammerstone. We've touched on it, but wanted to understand kinda where you're where you're at. Whatever you feel comfortable talking about without, you know, your partners here. But, what it is, what your goals are, where you're at, what you kinda see the next, let's say, year looking like. And then if you had your way 5 years from now, what would that
Aaron
00:18:28 – 00:21:07
look like? Sure. So our thesis, our our operating principle at Hammerstone is we can afford to spend care way more about every edge case than it would be reasonable for any company to care about because it's not a part of their core. Like, it's not what sets them apart, but it is what sets us apart. So we've been working on that for I probably started coding, you know, a couple years ago, honestly.
Aaron
00:21:08 – 00:21:25
And Sean and I were working on the Laravel and Vue version. And then someone came along and said, hey. We would like this in Rails. Can you build it for us in Rails? And that was always part of our vision was to have multiple back ends that interact seamlessly with multiple front ends.
Aaron
00:21:25 – 00:21:51
You pick and choose and you're off to the races. So Sean and I had this conversation of, well, this is a huge opportunity, but it's really gonna throw off our timeline. Like, we're not gonna release the Laravel and Vue version if we spend all our time working on a rails and hot wire version. And we decided to do it. So we took on this client, and we hired Colleen, our 3rd partner.
Aaron
00:21:51 – 00:22:09
We hired her as a contractor. She's since come on as a partner. And we've spent the past year, maybe 14, 16 months working on the rails version. And this client has been paying Colleen her day rate for that long, and we get to keep the IP.
Malcolm
00:22:09 – 00:22:09
Nice.
Aaron
00:22:10 – 00:22:35
And so yeah. And so we're basically kind of being Colleen is being funded to work on this full time to build out our rails version. And so Sean was doing the front end for a long time with Colleen, and I was off doing, you know, audience building in the Laravel world. And so where we're at now is we have 2, people using the Laravel version. So we've onboarded 2 people.
Aaron
00:22:36 – 00:23:04
We have obviously the big client in Rails and another Rails client coming on board. And so we're about to the point we're getting early feedback. It's all good, but there's a lot of stuff that is obvious to other people that wasn't obvious to me. So we're getting a lot of feedback, and I'm fixing stuff, and Sean's fixing stuff. And then at some point in the next couple of months, we'll have a proper, you know, launch and hopefully start to open the the gates a little bit to the Laravel version.
Aaron
00:23:04 – 00:23:25
So the business model is you pay $1,000 a year and you get access to this, this library. And we have front end, back end. So in theory, all you have to do is just install it, and the complex query builder on the front works with the complex query builder on the back, and you're done. So that's kinda where we're at now.
Malcolm
00:23:25 – 00:23:31
So when you say you've onboarded 2 clients, are those paying clients or are those in beta testing?
Aaron
00:23:31 – 00:23:56
Yeah. The deal we have with them was these are 2 people that I know, personally. So people that have DM'd me, and we've been talking about it all along. And so the deal we have with them is we'll let you try it out for a couple of weeks while I, like, handhold you and help you get it integrated into your app. And if you decide that it is right for you, then you will pay the full license amount.
Aaron
00:23:56 – 00:23:58
And they were both like, great. That sounds good.
Malcolm
00:23:58 – 00:23:59
Sweet.
Aaron
00:23:59 – 00:24:28
Because what I didn't wanna do is give it to him for free forever because that would suck. And the other thing I didn't wanna do was make them pay up front because our our marketing documentation at this point really doesn't exist. And so it's hard for me to accurately portray to someone what they would be paying for, because we haven't focused on marketing documentation at all. And so it felt kinda unfair to make them pay upfront for it, if that makes sense.
Brian
00:24:29 – 00:24:41
So what the the model is really interesting because it's a once a year, you're kinda paying for the package, I guess, than than the service because it's all all the data is hosted on their own in their own database. Is that
Aaron
00:24:41 – 00:24:44
Exactly. So it sits on top of their Laravel or their Rails apps.
Brian
00:24:45 – 00:24:53
So, what was the reason for doing it that way as opposed to, let's say, a Heroku add on or something along those lines?
Aaron
00:24:55 – 00:25:23
Yeah. So we talked about a couple of different models. One model that one reason that we really like this model is we're not hosting anything. So there was the option to be like a, a hosted SaaS that somehow sits on top of your database or whatever and, you know, filters everything. We didn't wanna have to worry about one, owning people's data or even being able to look at it.
Aaron
00:25:24 – 00:25:42
And 2, we didn't wanna have to worry about staying up. Like, we're just 3 developers with families and full time jobs. And so having a SaaS that we keep alive and is mission critical. Like, there are SaaS that can go down and no one really cares. It's like, okay.
Aaron
00:25:42 – 00:25:57
Well, that sucks. I'll send my invoice tomorrow. It's fine. But if your end if your end users if your end users aren't able to use your application if we go down, then that sucks pretty bad. So that was that was one reason.
Aaron
00:25:57 – 00:26:26
The other reason is it is it's very, very, very context specific, because only everyone's data is extremely different, of course. Even when you look at let's say they're filtering on a, a yes no column. They're filtering on a Boolean column. Right? Sometimes they wanna show sometimes it's nullable and they wanna show the end user that it's nullable.
Aaron
00:26:26 – 00:26:30
So it's like, is this person allergic? Yes. No. I don't know. There's no data.
Aaron
00:26:31 – 00:26:52
Sometimes they don't wanna show the unknowns. Sometimes they want the unknowns to also be true. So you only show true or false, but true actually means true or null. And so managing all of that in some sort of user interface or something like that sounded like a nightmare. And so our whole thing is everything is code driven.
Aaron
00:26:52 – 00:27:20
Everything is configurable by code. Every single condition, The developer of the application stays in control, not us. So we'll give you as many customizations as would be reasonable for any type of data. And then you as the developer, you get to say, on this one, show unknown, on this one, make unknowns false, and on this one, make unknowns true. And we don't, like, we don't have to worry about that.
Brian
00:27:21 – 00:27:32
So developers are your target market? Yes. Okay. So, you, Sean, and Colleen are all 3 developers, right? You're all technical?
Malcolm
00:27:32 – 00:27:33
Correct.
Brian
00:27:33 – 00:27:43
So what does your marketing look like? Because I think that tends to be the biggest challenge for, you know, developers is is the marketing side of things. What are your thoughts there?
Aaron
00:27:44 – 00:29:21
So we have a couple of things. Sean and Sean and I originally planned on audience building, you know, with big air quotes. And you know, a 1,000 Twitter followers at the beginning of last year to, you know, 4,000 at the end of last year just by talking a lot on Twitter about what I'm building, sharing a bunch of Laravel stuff. And so that has been our if we talk about it in terms of concentric circles, that's our innermost concentric circle. That's the easiest one to reach is people who are active on Twitter know Aaron, follow Aaron, like Aaron.
Aaron
00:29:22 – 00:29:48
That's our inner circle. We will be able to, I think, reap the benefit of that circle for a while. And then the next question is, how do we get beyond this whole audience community building type thing? And that's where that's where, frankly, Sean is gonna be doing a lot of work, because he's done some of this before. He's had an info products business before.
Aaron
00:29:49 – 00:30:30
And I think at this point, a lot of what it's gonna be is we're gonna try to target, agencies to start with because it's helpful, obviously, for someone building an app. It's more helpful for someone building 30 apps a year. So instead of, you know, trying to find 30 people, if we can find one agency that likes it, that's equivalent of 30 people. And so our I think our next concentric circle is how do we find agencies and get in with agencies? And then probably beyond that, we're looking at super broad top of the funnel SEO kind of stuff.
Aaron
00:30:30 – 00:30:42
So I've put a ton of focus into our docs to, you know, write as much as possible to give Google as many opportunities to send people to us as I can. So that's kinda how we're thinking about it at this point.
Brian
00:30:43 – 00:30:55
The interesting and key thing there is you're as you're describing this, I'm just picturing how much time this is all taking, how long it's gonna take. You know, it's the long game. It takes, you know, years.
Malcolm
00:30:55 – 00:30:56
Yeah.
Brian
00:30:56 – 00:31:11
It's it's so, tempting for, you know, technical people like us to go, I'll figure that out later. I'm gonna build this cool thing. It'll be so obviously awesome that, everybody will just tell each other about it because it's so great. But you're deliberately not doing that.
Aaron
00:31:11 – 00:31:39
Yeah. And that's one of the things, that's one of the things frankly that Sean has been very good about is saying, like, it just takes the time that it takes. I've had a tough time working on this for so long without, I feel like it's an asymptote. Like, I'm reaching the finish line, but I'll never get there. And that's been that's been emotionally draining for me, and Sean has been good all along just saying it takes, you know, it takes the time that it takes.
Aaron
00:31:39 – 00:32:23
Nobody's in any hurry. And that's been helpful, because, like, for example, I wrote the docs as early as early as I possibly could, so that Google could have as much time to chew on them as it wanted. And so the docs have been up since, like, day 1. Like, we didn't have a website, because we didn't need one, but I built one and published the docs and submitted them to Google index so that they would be there for as long as possible so that the domain would be aged and not like, what I didn't wanna do is try to launch, register domain, and Google say, this domain's a week old. You're in the penalty box for the next 6 months.
Aaron
00:32:24 – 00:32:39
Like, okay. Well, should have thought of that earlier. So some of this stuff, especially as indies, I feel like you just have to let it, like, you just have to let it percolate. And with the open source stuff, I launched it and nobody seemed to care. And I kept going and people started to care.
Aaron
00:32:39 – 00:33:01
And then a couple of things happened And it was like, oh, Aaron has this thing that would slot in perfectly here. Now let's everybody use that. And so just having, I don't know, it's so frustrating, but just having irons in the fire and kind of biding your time and being prepared to pounce when the time comes, I feel like is really helpful.
Brian
00:33:02 – 00:33:21
You kinda just answered it, but how do you know if these things take a long time and you don't really know if they're gonna work? It seems like everything in marketing is the long game, other than, gimmicks. How do you know that what you're doing is worth your time and that you shouldn't be doing something else instead?
Aaron
00:33:22 – 00:33:39
I don't. I mean, I wish I had you. Now you've asked me 2 really good questions that I have zero answers for. I I don't. And so I'm I'm actually have you heard of, Daniel Visalo, the good parts of AWS?
Aaron
00:33:40 – 00:34:07
He's the guy who used to work at Amazon, quit his job. Now he's an indie maker and, you know, makes a bajillion dollars. One of the things that he talks about all the time is small bets instead of going all in on one thing. And I think that has influenced my thinking a little bit in that we don't know what's gonna work. And so instead of putting all of our eggs in, for example, the SEO basket and just really hoping that it pays off eventually.
Aaron
00:34:08 – 00:35:04
We have SEO, we have open source, we have Twitter community, we have the podcast. And so we're putting you couldn't have known that up front. So you you shouldn't feel bad about trying 4 things if one of them ends up working.
Malcolm
00:35:05 – 00:35:38
But I think what's really helpful, though, right, what's what's helpful for Aaron is that you guys have got clients, existing clients that are using your product, and I think that's where a trap that a lot of us indie makers fall into is we, like I did, I spent 2 years building remote time without actually speaking to any existing freelancers to actually use the product. So, I mean, you already know by speaking to existing clients what is the value proposition here. What is the the thing that you value most of our product? And then it's fairly easy to turn that into some sort of copy or marketing. I whatever form that might that might be that might take.
Malcolm
00:35:38 – 00:35:41
Yeah. So I think that's, I mean, that's that's really helpful from your end.
Aaron
00:35:42 – 00:36:26
It's incredibly helpful because one of the things you see a lot on, let's say, startups for the rest of us or indie hackers or something is developers building in a cave for a long time. And I I personally feel like I've kind of been doing that. I also have, I also have very strong vision about what this should be, but we have pretty solid proof with, you know, this client that's paying us to build this thing with the number of people who DM us and say, can I use this thing? We're getting good input that this is a pain that people are feeling. Now the question is, is the solution I've been building, does it fix that pain?
Aaron
00:36:27 – 00:36:44
But at least we're not operating in a world where people are hearing about all of this stuff and nobody is contacting us. Signal that this is painful and worth pursuing. I signal that this is painful and worth pursuing.
Brian
00:36:45 – 00:37:07
Makes sense. Sounds like the other thing you were saying is, so I mean, it's a little cliche, but there is no silver bullet in marketing. It's more about compound interest. Like the things build on each other more like a flywheel builds on each other, gets better and better over time as you continue to add to it. But you've gotta start early on because, like a flywheel, you know, it's really hard to get going.
Brian
00:37:07 – 00:37:28
You have to push really, really hard just to get any movement. But once it gets going, it's hard to stop. And, that's why you wanna kinda get started early. So that that was super helpful for me as a reminder, you know, to not just build something and hope it takes off or figure it out later, but, you know, be deliberate about at least what you wanna try early on to give it time to bake.
Malcolm
00:37:28 – 00:37:28
Yeah.
Aaron
00:37:28 – 00:37:39
Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's great. Like I said, it's great for us because it's developers developers developers for you, when you're like going for real estate or whatever. It's like the Twitter thing.
Aaron
00:37:39 – 00:38:02
I don't know if that were I mean, real estate Twitter is definitely a thing, but I'm not a probably a prime audience, but it just it's so different for every app and for every person and everyone's appetite for building in public is gonna be different as well. It's just hard to say.
Brian
00:38:03 – 00:38:25
Well, I wanna dig into the Twitter concept a little bit more. You, kinda casually mentioned that you grew 400% in 1 year, your Twitter Twitter following. So what, what types of things are you sharing? Is it, just, like, stuff that's interesting as you go? Are you deliberately timing things or sharing things or or curating things?
Brian
00:38:25 – 00:38:27
Or how does that how does that look for you?
Aaron
00:38:29 – 00:39:01
Yeah. I actually have pretty strong opinions on that. So I decided, in March of of 2021, you know, there there no such thing as time anymore. But in March of 2021, I decided to take Twitter seriously and to, put in an effort to grow my following. And so my the things that I decided to change were 1, tweet a lot more.
Aaron
00:39:02 – 00:39:36
So that's probably been my number one thing is I just I just tweet a lot more. I used to tweet once a week, and now I probably tweet retweets included, maybe a couple times a day. So that was my big one. My second the second thing that I probably focus on and care about is staying on pretty, pretty on message. Now there are people who will, if it's not about Laravel, don't tweet at all.
Aaron
00:39:36 – 00:39:59
That's not quite me. I'm, you know, normal distribution. I'm mostly Laravel, a little bit of other stuff. But what I don't tweet about is if I had a bad experience at the grocery store and I'm frustrated, I don't share that because, like, and please, everyone, this worked for me. I have no idea if it'll work for you and your life is your own.
Aaron
00:39:59 – 00:40:34
But I don't like, when I am following people and they complain that someone at the airline was rude to them, I do not care even 1%. I care I care 0% about somebody's negative customer service interaction. And so I don't tweet about those kind of things. I tweet about, Laravel and things that I think Laravel people would find interesting. So that's the, like, that's the little bit outside the normal distribution is sometimes I tweet about robots.
Aaron
00:40:34 – 00:41:15
Sometimes I tweet about, I guess my my brand on Twitter is when you follow me. And another thing is I don't tweet memes about software development and I don't tweet bait like, oh, is, being a front end coder, are you really a coder? It's like, okay, that works. Like that works. That gets a lot of engagement, but I find it super gimmicky.
Aaron
00:41:15 – 00:41:39
And you end up with people following you that are just there for like hot takes and memes. And that's not helpful for me. Like, I want to have conversations with Laravel developers, and I wanna make friends with Laravel developers. I don't want 50,000 people following me because I tweet funny memes about SaaS. And that is a strategy that people follow, and I assume that it works well for them.
Aaron
00:41:39 – 00:42:11
I've seen the numbers and it works great in terms of numbers. I have no idea what it means in terms of, like, actual engagement. And so for me, I feel like it's less audience building, or it straddles the line between audience building and networking because it's less, I want everyone to follow me and more, I want to be a part of this community and have conversations with these people. And that, I mean, that's worked really well for me. So my three rules are, one, I stay positive.
Aaron
00:42:11 – 00:42:28
I encourage, like, that goes into the customer service thing. But, like, if I see other people doing something awesome in the Laravel community, I'd I'd, like, quote tweeted or I'll, you know, write my own tweet and say, look at this cool thing that they just released. Way to go. That totally rules. I wanna use it.
Aaron
00:42:28 – 00:42:54
The other thing is, I like share what I'm working on. So people like to follow, people that are in motion. And so anytime, anytime I'm working on something and I think, this is kind of interesting. I'll share it because people like to share or like to follow along with people that are in motion. A lot of people want to be doing stuff and because of life, they can't.
Aaron
00:42:54 – 00:43:18
And so when they see other people doing things, they're like, yes, that's awesome. I want to follow along. And so, so I have encourage other people be positive and share what you're working on. So the encourage other people and be positive kind of go together, but I feel like it's important to say not to encourage other people. So I want to bring, like, a spotlight on other people wherever I can.
Aaron
00:43:18 – 00:43:21
So it's not all just about me. So those are kind of my rules.
Malcolm
00:43:21 – 00:43:43
So what I'm hearing you saying is that it's it's a lot more about relationship forming than just for the sake of building audiences that don't really mean anything personally. Right? Yes. And that that kinda brings me to the question around you mentioned it sounds like you've got, fairly good relationships with your with your partners or cofounders or whatever label you wanna put on them.
Aaron
00:43:43 – 00:43:43
Mhmm.
Malcolm
00:43:43 – 00:44:16
What was your thinking going into that? Because I think a lot of us indie makers, we start off in our cave, and we think we're gonna build this thing, and you spend a good couple years. And the whole thing of cofounders is a little bit scary, in terms of risk, you know, because of all the stories that you hear about, that's what most of the time breaks things apart. How how is your thinking going into that's I'm gonna build at the end of the day, what's a business And it's gonna generate revenue, and you're gonna have to share that some way, and there's equity discussions and all those things. Can you share a little bit about, about your process of thinking of that?
Aaron
00:44:16 – 00:44:34
Yeah. For sure. So Sean and I met, I think in 2012 at a conference that Amy Hoy used to put on, called Bacon Biz Conf. It's no longer a thing. But back in 2012, it was like MicroConf, but probably definitely smaller.
Aaron
00:44:34 – 00:44:56
So Sean and I met there, and we've been, Internet friends ever since. And so there's like a small Slack group of people that met at that conference and have met other people at other conferences and, like, know this person from here. And so there's like this little Slack group of us. And we had a retreat in I think it was 2018. So the before times, it might have been 2019.
Aaron
00:44:58 – 00:46:00
We had a retreat in DC, and Colleen was there, because she knew somebody else in the group, and they were local to DC and showed up. And so maintain our friendship than get in a fight over a component. And at that point so at that point, it was different. Right? At that point, it was really low stakes.
Aaron
00:46:00 – 00:46:02
It was, we haven't built anything.
Malcolm
00:46:03 – 00:46:03
Yes.
Aaron
00:46:03 – 00:46:21
There's no money. We're just friends, and we wanna see if this thing works. And so that at that point, it was low stakes. And so I don't wanna get the cart ahead of the horse and, like, lawyer up against my friend for a thing that doesn't exist. This is not legal advice.
Aaron
00:46:21 – 00:46:41
Do whatever you want. So then we decided to bring on Colleen, and it was the same kind of deal. It was like, okay. We've known Colleen 3 or 4 years. We worked with her on the client for about a year before we had the conversation about, do you wanna come in and own the rails part of our business?
Aaron
00:46:42 – 00:47:07
And at that point, it got a little more complicated, because now there are 3 people. Now there is money. There is momentum. There is a product. And so what we've done is and we haven't finished it yet, but we have a you know, we agreed in principle on what we thought, was important and what we were gonna do going forward.
Aaron
00:47:07 – 00:47:39
And now, hopefully, in the next month or 2, we're gonna meet up in person with an attorney and get an operating agreement to take what we agreed on in principle and put it into a binding contract. Because now we're at the point where heaven forbid somebody dies. What happens to that part of the equity? And like, those are real adult conversations that we need to have because this is no longer just a couple of doofuses thinking about an idea. Like this is a proper business with money in the bank and a huge client and more clients.
Aaron
00:47:39 – 00:48:00
And so that was kind of the evolution. A lot of people will say, you know, you don't need anything. You need a handshake as just as many will say you need everything, like put everything into a contract. I don't know. I'm kinda I'm kinda in the middle, and it depends on how well, like, how well you know the people you're working with.
Aaron
00:48:00 – 00:48:43
One thing that we did that I think is extremely interesting is if we reach an impasse, something that the 3 of us, like, are fighting on and can't decide, We have, we've written in our preliminary operating agreement that we will submit it to a panel of our friends. So we'll submit it to a panel of these 3 other people that are in, like, we've known for 10 years. And one of each of us kind of picked one to be like their representative or whatever. And we'll submit it to this panel of our friends that we all know, love and trust, and they'll help us, you know, figure it out. And so instead of, like, we're we're at an impasse, we need to go to arbitration.
Aaron
00:48:43 – 00:48:51
The first step is we'll submit it to this panel. If they can figure it out, we'll go with what they say because we trust them. That's insane. I don't know if that's a good idea.
Malcolm
00:48:52 – 00:48:53
Sounds good to me.
Aaron
00:48:53 – 00:48:56
It seemed it seemed great to us.
Brian
00:48:56 – 00:49:11
Yeah. Smart. Man, there have been so many great topics that we've gone over. I don't even know what we're gonna call this episode, but it it's it's covered everything from, being an indie parent to bootstrapping to partners, everything. It's been awesome.
Aaron
00:49:11 – 00:49:16
Yeah. This has been great. I listen to y'all all the time, and it's fun to, like, be here,
Malcolm
00:49:16 – 00:49:17
talk yeah.
Aaron
00:49:17 – 00:49:27
I love your show. I listened to the whole thing. When I first I think one of you mentioned it on indie hackers. I was like, oh, another show. So I went and started at the, you know, episode 1, and I'm I'm fully caught up.
Aaron
00:49:27 – 00:49:32
So being able to talk back to you now is is a whole lot of fun. So thanks for having me.
Brian
00:49:32 – 00:49:59
It's funny. I was thinking about, you know, the the kind of network of of podcasts out there, and I feel like we're just the the noobs still. But you've got you remember back well, maybe I'm dating myself. Back in the day when, like, GeoCities was a thing, there were at the bottom of of your page, you could put a Webbering that would be like a linked list of, of other cool sites that you you liked. It's like becoming this Webbering of, Geocities Webbering of of podcasts.
Brian
00:49:59 – 00:50:11
We've got you here, and you've got your Hammerstone podcast. You've also got Sean and Colleen. Colleen's on software social. You just talked to Matt, who's on out of beta. You know, it's just like everybody's everybody's connected.
Brian
00:50:11 – 00:50:13
It's such a small world. It's fun to be part of.
Aaron
00:50:13 – 00:50:15
It's so fun. I love it.
Brian
00:50:15 – 00:50:28
Appreciate you coming on. I would love to hear from you in closing. Couple of things. What I love reading. Like, reading's my my drug of choice, I guess, for relaxing.
Brian
00:50:29 – 00:50:38
What is your favorite book, one that you would recommend? And then your favorite podcast, aside from Indie Dads, of course. You know, we're Of course. Maybe your second favorite podcast.
Aaron
00:50:38 – 00:50:39
Okay. Sure.
Brian
00:50:39 – 00:50:45
Thank you. Your and then, your favorite person to follow on Twitter, who you would recommend that we all follow?
Aaron
00:50:46 – 00:50:53
Wow. Okay. Let's see. Favorite book. Favorite book is going to be tough.
Aaron
00:50:53 – 00:51:45
Cause I haven't been reading a lot recently. It has a bit of a new age, veil on it. And if but if you can read through that, I found that to be I found it to be challenging and helpful to take things slower, and by going slower, you can do them better. So that would probably be one of the back catalog favorite books. Other question was podcasts?
Brian
00:51:45 – 00:51:46
Yeah. Favorite podcast.
Aaron
00:51:48 – 00:52:02
So I will say I'm gonna leave out several that everyone else would probably say. Lots of good ones, indie hackers, startups for the rest of us. I'm gonna leave all those out. Makers.dev. Have you heard of this one?
Aaron
00:52:02 – 00:52:23
Makers.dev is great. It is these 2 developers, Chris Chris and Christian, and they just get on and just they they just bebop. They just have so much fun. Christian is unbridled enthusiasm. Chris is, like, getting his PhD in machine learning, and so they balance each other out really well.
Aaron
00:52:23 – 00:52:27
And it's highly, highly recommended makers dot dev.
Brian
00:52:27 – 00:52:28
Awesome.
Aaron
00:52:28 – 00:52:29
And then the last one was what?
Malcolm
00:52:29 – 00:52:30
Oh, who
Aaron
00:52:30 – 00:52:52
to follow on Twitter? Mhmm. If you don't follow Daniel Visalo, I would recommend that. I feel like a lot of people do, and so I will say the other one is, Matt Wenzing, the guy that, does summit has that podcast you mentioned and came and talked to me about being a dad. I really like following Matt on Twitter.
Brian
00:52:52 – 00:53:01
Yeah. That's funny. His enthusiasm is, to me, motivating because it's, you know, he's so excited about everything that he works on and and does. So
Aaron
00:53:01 – 00:53:09
And he's ruthlessly practical. Like, he's ruthlessly practical, and I love that so much. Yeah. So, yeah, I recommend him.
Brian
00:53:09 – 00:53:22
Awesome. Well, the thing that we, since you've listened to the podcast, you know that the thing we always end with is a good dad joke. So let's, why don't you hit us with your best dad joke?
Malcolm
00:53:22 – 00:53:32
Well, hey, Dan check, Brian. There those would debate if whether they're good or not. Okay. I think we'll leave that up to the audience. But, no, I don't I don't wanna put Aaron under any pressure.
Malcolm
00:53:32 – 00:53:36
So, Aaron, you get to go to us, mate. Thanks.
Aaron
00:53:38 – 00:53:54
Okay. So I thank you for warning me that I was gonna be participating in this because I would have felt very nervous otherwise. Alright. So dad joke. Vin Diesel only eats 2 meals a day.
Aaron
00:53:55 – 00:54:01
They are brake fast and break furious. It's pretty bad. Right?
Brian
00:54:01 – 00:54:02
No. It's good.
Malcolm
00:54:03 – 00:54:05
Oh, man. I'm gonna look forward to telling these to my kids.
Brian
00:54:05 – 00:54:18
I'm not I'm not sure if I would, get that one. They have might have to watch the movie first, and then I'll I'll do it in the, the credits at the end. Don't don't you hate it when people answer their own questions? I do.
Malcolm
00:54:18 – 00:54:20
Nice. Well done, Brian.
Aaron
00:54:20 – 00:54:20
So bad.
Brian
00:54:20 – 00:54:22
I slipped mine right in there.
Malcolm
00:54:23 – 00:54:38
Yeah. So I'm it may not look it, but I I love eating food. So I've actually so much so that I've given my stomach a name, and I've called it Buddha Budapest. You know why? Because it's the capital of Hungary.
Brian
00:54:39 – 00:54:40
That one's good.
Aaron
00:54:40 – 00:54:44
I knew the direction you were going. I didn't know where it was gonna land. It was pretty good.
Brian
00:54:45 – 00:55:01
Yeah. That's a good one. There's, I should link to it, but, on Twitter, somebody messaged us. I I apologize for not remembering who this was, but a database of dad jokes that somebody had created on the side is like a passion project. So there's all kinds of good stuff in there.
Brian
00:55:01 – 00:55:10
I'll have to link to it in the show notes because that deserves some some attention. Cool. Well, thanks for being on with us. This has been super fun. Really appreciate it.
Brian
00:55:10 – 00:55:13
You know, our first guest, I'd I'd say,
Me

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

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

You can find me on YouTube on my personal channel or the Try Hard Studios channel.

If you love podcasts, I got you covered. You can listen to me on Mostly Technical.