Aaron Francis

Ian & Aaron discuss the launch of Aaron's new course, a trip to Texas Hill Country, the idea of 'Profit First', and a whole lot more. Sponsored by LaraJobs & Screencasting.com. Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more.

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Transcript

Ian

00:00:01 – 00:00:02

Hello?

Aaron

00:00:03 – 00:00:05

Mister Landsman, how are we doing?

Ian

00:00:05 – 00:00:07

Mister Anderson.

Aaron

00:00:08 – 00:00:08

Oh, great movie.

Ian

00:00:08 – 00:00:09

Great long

Aaron

00:00:09 – 00:00:11

Great movie. Oh, god.

Ian

00:00:11 – 00:00:16

Still wanna do a movie podcast one day. Pretty high on my list of things I'd like to do.

Aaron

00:00:16 – 00:00:33

I might be a good foil for that because, as you know, my my taste in movies is basically is is the movie good? And that's about it. And that's that's as deep as it goes. Did I have fun? So there'd be so we could argue about movies for a long time, I think.

Ian

00:00:34 – 00:00:40

I grew up on Sysco and Ebert, and they were bit, you know, the thumbs up or the thumbs down. Like, it's good or bad. That's it.

Aaron

00:00:40 – 00:00:45

It's a good rating system with the thumbs. Very very understandable. Easy to communicate to the people.

Ian

00:00:46 – 00:00:50

Not 10 stars, and you're in the middle somewhere. It's like good

Aaron

00:00:50 – 00:01:01

at that. They did qualify the thumbs sometimes. They would say 2 thumbs way, way up, and you're like, okay. You're adding extra modifiers to the thumb system.

Ian

00:01:02 – 00:01:12

Yeah. And then actually in Ebert's, like, written articles, I think it was like a 4 star system or something, like, in his written copy reviews. Yeah. Are your system made?

Aaron

00:01:13 – 00:01:21

I I gotta be honest. Couldn't if they walked by me on the street, I wouldn't know who they are. Sorry to this man. Yeah. Sorry, Cisco.

Aaron

00:01:21 – 00:01:21

Sorry.

Ian

00:01:21 – 00:01:23

It's a little bit quiet. He's one of them.

Aaron

00:01:23 – 00:01:26

Right? Isn't one of them, resting in peace?

Ian

00:01:26 – 00:01:27

No. Both of them. I I believe both

Aaron

00:01:27 – 00:01:27

of them.

Ian

00:01:27 – 00:01:28

Both of them. Wow.

Aaron

00:01:28 – 00:01:31

No. Yep. Good good guys.

Ian

00:01:32 – 00:01:33

They were good guys.

Aaron

00:01:33 – 00:01:33

Yeah. All

Ian

00:01:33 – 00:01:38

we had on TV in the eighties. I'd watched Sysco and Ebert. That's what that's what we had.

Aaron

00:01:38 – 00:01:45

Sysco and Ebert. Yeah. With names like that, they had to go together. You can't just be Sysco. No.

Aaron

00:01:45 – 00:01:49

You can't you can't be mister Sysco and hang out a shingle. You gotta be Sysco and Ebert.

Ian

00:01:49 – 00:01:53

The the the name yeah. They just work great together, don't they? Works great together.

Aaron

00:01:55 – 00:02:01

Alright. Well, that's that's a little fun aside trip down memory lanes. What's going on over there?

Ian

00:02:01 – 00:02:05

Nothing. You've had a a trip. Tell us about your trip.

Aaron

00:02:05 – 00:02:27

Had a trip. Had a big trip. Went down to the went down to the hill country, a little bit, it was in a town called Boerne, boerne, which is insane way to spell Boerne. It's like outside of Austin, outside of San Antonio, and it was it was great. Just had the best freaking time.

Aaron

00:02:27 – 00:02:47

So there were, let's see. There were 11 of us, 11 guys. I think we were missing 2 this year. So it's always, like, you know, we're we're very rarely at the full 13 just given schedules and everything. But this year, we got 11, which is awesome.

Aaron

00:02:48 – 00:03:09

And we do this every year. So it's it's guys from that I went to college with, many of whom were my roommates either in college or after or something like that. So, yeah, we go down usually, we go down to the hill country every year. It's called sausage fest, you know, because we cook a lot of a lot of sausages while we're there. Yeah.

Aaron

00:03:09 – 00:03:20

That's why we named it that because of the sausage that we cook. Very creative. Very creative. I don't know who came up with that, but it was like, hey. Since we cook so many sausages, let's call it sausage fest.

Aaron

00:03:22 – 00:03:35

It was great. We sat in the river. You know, that's basically what we do. We basically go down to the hill country, sit in the river, drink beer, and throw rocks at sticks. That's kinda that's kinda the whole thing.

Aaron

00:03:35 – 00:03:49

There you go. Total, like, total dude's rock moment was when, like, we walked into the river and we're like, oh, man. We should build a little dam here. And so we spent, like, 45 minutes or an hour building a little dam. Yeah.

Aaron

00:03:49 – 00:04:01

And then, you know, one guy was like, hey. What if I what if I go set up a stick, like, 30 yards down the river, and we throw rocks at it and try to hit it. Like, yeah. That's awesome. So we spent an hour doing that.

Ian

00:04:01 – 00:04:01

Oh, man.

Aaron

00:04:01 – 00:04:06

You know, typical stuff. Typical guy stuff. So it was fun. Now

Ian

00:04:07 – 00:04:18

so I learned something in this because I was always in the impression. Like, I saw you tweeting about this, whatever, going back and forth with people. Yep. And I always picture hill country. Like I was aware of hill country.

Ian

00:04:18 – 00:04:29

Okay. And I always thought it was right outside Austin and it's like that area outside Austin I think it's what is it? Like, north or something? I'm not I have no idea. But it's outside of Austin.

Ian

00:04:29 – 00:04:30

But this Mhmm.

Aaron

00:04:30 – 00:04:30

But

Ian

00:04:30 – 00:04:33

then when the map, you it was, like, almost closer to San Antonio where

Aaron

00:04:33 – 00:04:33

It was.

Ian

00:04:33 – 00:04:38

Where. So, like, is that whole thing, Hill Country? Like, I'm with computers.

Aaron

00:04:38 – 00:04:54

So it's a little bit it's a little bit of an open question. So, I'm looking at the map now so I can get this right. So, you've got Austin, and then we'll call it down into the left. Perhaps you could say to the southwest, but we'll call it down to the left.

Ian

00:04:54 – 00:04:55

Down left.

Aaron

00:04:55 – 00:05:03

Yeah. You've got San Antonio. If only there were, like, commonly understood terms to talk about this. Down and to the left is San Antonio. I think anywhere.

Aaron

00:05:04 – 00:05:37

So, Hill Country starts I don't know exactly where it starts. But, yeah, like, west of Austin, you've got, like, Marble Falls, definitely Hill Country. Then you go south a little bit, Dripping Springs, definitely Hill Country. Then in Wimberly, you're starting to get in between Austin and San Antonio, but Wimberley is definitely still Hill Country. Boerne might be pushing it considering how far west it is, but even further west than Boerne is Hill Country State Natural Area.

Aaron

00:05:37 – 00:05:46

And so it's like you go. Yeah. I feel like it goes pretty far out. Even Garner State Park, which is way out there, that's Hill Country. So, yeah, it's all kinda west of Austin.

Ian

00:05:47 – 00:05:52

Yeah. See, I was always just thinking when you look at the map of Austin, if we go left and up

Aaron

00:05:52 – 00:05:53

Left and up.

Ian

00:05:54 – 00:05:59

You have that whole the river, the some kind of river over there, lakes and rivers and stuff, and I have

Aaron

00:05:59 – 00:06:00

the falls. Yep.

Ian

00:06:00 – 00:06:04

Hill country, like, way or whatever this is. Well, the

Aaron

00:06:04 – 00:06:09

thing about countries the thing about countries is they can be quite large. So the hill country is is is pretty big.

Ian

00:06:10 – 00:06:12

It's bigger than I thought, but Texas is a big place.

Aaron

00:06:12 – 00:06:15

That makes sense. It's a big place, man.

Ian

00:06:15 – 00:06:15

Big place.

Aaron

00:06:15 – 00:06:27

Such a big place. One time we drove from College Station to California, and half of our journey was spent inside of Texas. Like, literally, we were, like, halfway to California, and we were in, you know, El Paso or something. Yeah.

Ian

00:06:27 – 00:06:31

It's a big place. That feels like you're going nowhere when you have those kind of trips where you don't

Aaron

00:06:31 – 00:06:32

Yes.

Ian

00:06:32 – 00:06:33

Cross any lines. Exactly.

Aaron

00:06:33 – 00:06:34

Going.

Ian

00:06:34 – 00:06:35

No good.

Aaron

00:06:35 – 00:06:40

So good weekend. Whole lot of fun. Fresh. Lot lot of yes. Very refreshing.

Aaron

00:06:40 – 00:06:48

Lot of sitting around. Lot of laughing. Lot of talking. One cheese board, which, you know, I'm sure that you're thrilled about. I'm I'm sure you're thrilled about it.

Ian

00:06:48 – 00:06:50

Need some pickles on there, some some pickled vegetables,

Aaron

00:06:50 – 00:06:51

but Nonsense.

Ian

00:06:51 – 00:06:56

I still like a good cheese board. There was some salami looking stuff and Mhmm. Some cheese.

Aaron

00:06:57 – 00:07:01

Kinds of cheese. There was a cheese that was too funky for me to eat, so I thought you would appreciate that. Yeah.

Ian

00:07:01 – 00:07:06

There you go. I'd say I'm not huge on the ultra funky cheese, but, you know, I like the most It was

Aaron

00:07:06 – 00:07:21

just like blue cheese or something, which is, you know, gross. But, yeah, it was it was really great. Lots of fun. Known these guys since, you know, 2006. So and I think this is our maybe 11th.

Aaron

00:07:21 – 00:07:29

No. This has gotta be our 12th or 13th year of doing this. Feel very refreshed. So Pretty good. It was great.

Ian

00:07:29 – 00:07:32

Very good. Keep up with the college people too much, I have to say.

Aaron

00:07:32 – 00:07:33

You gotta keep

Ian

00:07:33 – 00:07:34

up with the college.

Aaron

00:07:35 – 00:07:46

High school, I'm kinda let high school go. I don't really talk to any high school people. But college people, I see them some of them multiple times a week and all of them at least once a year.

Ian

00:07:47 – 00:08:01

See, yeah. I've never but I both I both never had a roommate and only ever had roommates, which is a little faster here too. Like, because I've only had I've never had a room to myself in my whole life. Okay. I've never had a bedroom to myself.

Ian

00:08:01 – 00:08:10

I shared a room with my brother until I moved out. And then I shared a room with my current wife till till last night and hopefully future nights.

Aaron

00:08:10 – 00:08:12

Hopefully, hopefully more nights to come.

Ian

00:08:12 – 00:08:21

But I've never had just like, hey. It's 3 guys. We share an apartment or whatever or even a college roommate. Like, didn't have any of that. I was a commuter.

Ian

00:08:21 – 00:08:28

No college roommate. Mhmm. So, yeah, I never had any of that stuff. So I don't have those spots. Like, I went to college.

Ian

00:08:28 – 00:08:32

I had a few couple good friends in college, but they were also commuters and everybody lives

Aaron

00:08:32 – 00:08:32

Yep.

Ian

00:08:33 – 00:08:38

Weird spots now. Yeah. Mhmm. So that's nice. Everybody's still mostly in Texas of this crew then?

Ian

00:08:38 – 00:08:38

Aaron

00:08:38 – 00:08:48

Everybody's in Texas except one, one guy's out in California, but he wants to come back. Hell, yeah. He does. He wants to come back. I think he's gonna land in San Antonio.

Aaron

00:08:48 – 00:08:58

So we've got, you know, maybe 6 or 7 in Dallas, 2 or 3 in Austin, Wimberly, and then some others scattered about, but I think he's gonna land in San Antonio.

Ian

00:08:58 – 00:09:07

Oh, it makes it easy then. Yeah. Kinda makes it more convenient for everybody when you're trying to organize. I know we do a thing that you attended this year, and I wasn't there. But, you know, do some stuff with the Laravel crew.

Ian

00:09:08 – 00:09:20

And it is difficult to coordinate because it's just like every single person has to fly and just Right. Orchestrating all that is much more cumbersome. So that way, you could just drive for 2 days away or whatever it's Mhmm. It's nice.

Aaron

00:09:20 – 00:09:31

It was great. We I drove down I drove from Dallas. I drove my car, and I drove with one of my friends who is an attorney, so he was, like, working the whole time. And so we had texted before. It was like, hey, man.

Aaron

00:09:31 – 00:09:40

Are you driving or flying? And I was like, I don't know. Flying, you know, is a waste. It's gonna be the same travel time, but it's just gonna be so much more stressful to fly. So Mhmm.

Aaron

00:09:40 – 00:09:56

I told him, I'm gonna drive, but, you know, I'm looking I'm super looking forward to, like, a 5 hour drive. I just this feels awesome. I can't wait. And he was like, well, how about this? How about we drive together, but I work, and you get to enjoy your quiet time.

Aaron

00:09:56 – 00:10:08

And I was like, that sounds awesome. So, like, 5 hours down there, he is working the whole time. I think he took 1 or 2 calls. I took, like, weirdly 2 or 3 calls just, like I called Daniel Colbourne. I was like, hey, man.

Aaron

00:10:08 – 00:10:13

I'm driving. I'm driving. And he was like, I'm driving. Let's talk. And so I talked to him for a little bit.

Aaron

00:10:13 – 00:10:23

But it was great. It was so fun. I had my headphones in the whole time, just cruising through the Hill Country, looking looking at stuff, just, like, feel the pressure coming down. It was great. Great time.

Ian

00:10:23 – 00:10:27

A nice drive. Do do a little audiobook or podcast or whatever and

Aaron

00:10:28 – 00:10:33

Listen to a couple podcasts, talked to a few friends, just had just had the best time.

Ian

00:10:33 – 00:10:35

Should should we have been lawyers?

Aaron

00:10:36 – 00:10:40

Oh, man. I don't think so. No. I got no. No.

Aaron

00:10:40 – 00:10:49

No. No. So there were 3 no. There were 2 2 of these guys are attorneys and 3 of them 3 or 4 of them are doctors.

Ian

00:10:49 – 00:10:50

Mhmm.

Aaron

00:10:50 – 00:11:04

And, you know, as adorable as it is to be like, hey. I'm the YouTube guy. I kinda like it's it felt a little bit it felt a little bit better. Oh. Like, some of the some of the doctors are still sitting for exams and stuff, and stuff, and we're, like, 35 or 6.

Ian

00:11:04 – 00:11:06

No. No. No. Doctor is not even considered. Okay.

Aaron

00:11:06 – 00:11:08

So doctor's out. Doctor's totally out. What did I

Ian

00:11:08 – 00:11:19

learn doctors were real people? I was like, oh, I don't have any injure like, I know all kind of doctors who are horrible, terrible people. I'm like, nah, when doctors were superheroes, I might have had some interest in doctors. Yeah. Then you meet some doctors.

Ian

00:11:19 – 00:11:27

You're like, no. And then also yes. Like, then you really figure out, like, oh, they're just in school till they're, like, 40, and then they start making money. Like so yeah. Yeah.

Ian

00:11:27 – 00:11:28

No doctor. The lawyer is

Aaron

00:11:28 – 00:11:32

full of On on the record, none of the my friends are bad doctors. They're all

Ian

00:11:32 – 00:11:33

great doctors.

Aaron

00:11:33 – 00:11:33

Great doctors.

Ian

00:11:33 – 00:11:38

I don't mean that that I don't even mean they're bad doctors. It's they're bad people. Not always. You know? They're like any other people.

Aaron

00:11:38 – 00:11:39

Also, on

Ian

00:11:39 – 00:11:40

the record, none of my

Aaron

00:11:40 – 00:11:44

friends are bad people. So whatever you think is bad about doctors who've got these doctors.

Ian

00:11:44 – 00:11:51

Doctors who are not great, you're like, oh, man. Like, the doctor is not great, and all the doctors are probably not great.

Aaron

00:11:51 – 00:11:52

They're all great.

Ian

00:11:52 – 00:11:52

That's good.

Aaron

00:11:52 – 00:12:05

But these attorneys so one Yeah. I will say I will say, one is in house at a company, and one is at a law firm. And that makes a huge difference to you, which is a huge, huge difference being in house.

Ian

00:12:05 – 00:12:08

In house, yeah, like a 9 to 5. You're just 9

Aaron

00:12:08 – 00:12:16

to 5. You can set up an out of office. You can you can piece out. When you're when you're at a firm, it's like, alright. Well, gotta answer my emails.

Aaron

00:12:17 – 00:12:19

Gotta gotta get on the phone.

Ian

00:12:19 – 00:12:20

I do know some lawyers.

Aaron

00:12:20 – 00:12:23

Mark up the documents or whatever they do.

Ian

00:12:23 – 00:12:33

It's like, like, I know a lawyer who's a he basically, like, helps companies restructure when they're going to chapter 11 or whatever thing all that kind of stuff.

Aaron

00:12:33 – 00:12:35

That's what this guy is.

Ian

00:12:35 – 00:12:42

And he's just like, yeah. They're like, you gotta fly over here. And, like, you're working 24 hours a day because, like, there's a deadline and things are happening and

Aaron

00:12:42 – 00:12:42

Yep.

Ian

00:12:42 – 00:12:54

That's just the grind, and then that's it. And so it does seem much more intense. I have some I've known some other lawyers who are, like, more like the real estate type lawyers. I think that's a pretty good angle. Like, those guys were on vacation all the time.

Ian

00:12:54 – 00:13:07

Like I could see that. They were mostly 9 to 5 because there wasn't like this, like, urgency of, like Right. Whatever. It's like house closings only happen in business hours. And so there wasn't like a whole bunch of other stuff going on.

Ian

00:13:07 – 00:13:11

But, yeah, I do think some of these business service type lawyers

Aaron

00:13:11 – 00:13:12

are maybe a little

Ian

00:13:12 – 00:13:12

bit different.

Aaron

00:13:12 – 00:13:21

Guy is funny. Is it specifically a bankruptcy attorney? And so he just my god. He just he just works a lot harder. He just works all the time.

Aaron

00:13:21 – 00:13:23

It's like, I don't wanna do that. So

Ian

00:13:23 – 00:13:26

That that that was good. We are working all the time now to be Yeah.

Aaron

00:13:26 – 00:13:32

I'm working all the time just making less money. So, yeah, that's great. I'm a genius.

Ian

00:13:32 – 00:13:35

There you go. You're the genius on YouTube. There you go.

Aaron

00:13:35 – 00:13:42

Yeah. Exactly. So, no, we should not have been attorneys, and and it's far it's far too late anyway. So we'll just we gotta keep going down this road, unfortunately.

Ian

00:13:43 – 00:13:46

Would've became an attorney actually in, you know, probably late forties or something like that.

Aaron

00:13:46 – 00:13:48

Oh, brutal.

Ian

00:13:48 – 00:13:50

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

Aaron

00:13:51 – 00:13:51

Not for me. She seemed

Ian

00:13:51 – 00:13:57

she seemed to like it, but I don't know. She was in some weird specialty yet. I don't have all the details. It was an acquaintance. But Yeah.

Ian

00:13:58 – 00:14:00

Yeah. I don't wanna go back to school. That's for sure. I

Aaron

00:14:00 – 00:14:00

don't know.

Ian

00:14:00 – 00:14:02

Way. I couldn't I couldn't have.

Aaron

00:14:02 – 00:14:07

I'll read my books for fun, but if somebody makes me read a book, it's like, okay. This sucks.

Ian

00:14:09 – 00:14:11

Alright. So what else is going on?

Aaron

00:14:13 – 00:14:20

Where do you wanna go? We could go launch week. We could go profit first. I don't know if you know anything about profit first.

Ian

00:14:21 – 00:14:25

I haven't read the book, but I'm aware of the concept.

Aaron

00:14:26 – 00:14:28

That's all kinda right there in the name. That'd be great.

Ian

00:14:28 – 00:14:30

Profit First. Yeah.

Aaron

00:14:30 – 00:14:32

I haven't read it either, but it seems pretty simple.

Ian

00:14:32 – 00:14:44

One of the guys I knew who was into it was, like, they never did that well of business. So I don't know. Like, I'm not sure what to take from it, but that's only a single data point. You know, generally, I think I like the idea. You definitely.

Ian

00:14:44 – 00:14:46

Well, what what's your what's your now?

Aaron

00:14:46 – 00:14:49

Let yeah. Let me set it up. Let me set it up. You can knock it down. So Yeah.

Aaron

00:14:49 – 00:15:01

You know, last podcast, I've we probably were talking about something, and I mentioned I haven't taken any money out of TriHard Studios yet. Right. And Jesse Hanley, friend of mine, friend of the pod, friend of the community. Very

Ian

00:15:01 – 00:15:02

good guy.

Aaron

00:15:02 – 00:15:08

Friend's Bento email service. Great email service. Good job, Jesse. He reached out, and he's like, oh, dude. You should take money out.

Aaron

00:15:08 – 00:15:16

I was like, yeah. That sounds awesome. And he said, you need to take you need to read profit first. And I was like, okay. I've heard of this.

Aaron

00:15:16 – 00:15:30

Like, what's the what's the deal? And he said that Steve and I need to figure out, like, alright. How much are we gonna take out? Let's sit down, have the discussion. How much are we going to get paid, And then just start taking it out.

Aaron

00:15:30 – 00:15:49

And, basically, I assume, let the rest figure itself out. That's that's Right. That feels like, you know, without having read the book or even really looked into it that much at all, that's kinda what it feels like. You take your profit out, and then you let the rest of the stuff figure itself out. Because presumably, if you don't, there's no profit left over because it all gets eaten away.

Aaron

00:15:49 – 00:15:58

So that was his suggestion. He was like, just even if it's a a little amount, just decide. We're gonna start pulling money out. It's like, that sounds kinda nice. So that was it.

Aaron

00:15:58 – 00:15:59

That was all I had.

Ian

00:16:00 – 00:16:30

Yeah. I mean, I think that is the crux of it. I think if you, like, don't set to me, it's more, I guess, like, from the tech bootstrapping community, there's always been that sort of baked into that mindset to some degree, more so than maybe if you're just like starting a more normal business out in the world where you're like, I'm getting a bank loan and, like, I'm hiring people. And then, like, before you know it, like, you've used all the money and you have revenue coming in, but you're like, well, I have to hire more people to expand into this and that.

Aaron

00:16:30 – 00:16:30

Right.

Ian

00:16:30 – 00:16:58

Like, there isn't, you know, haven't baked it in so much as it's, like, so ingrained in your life as most bootstrappers, probably unhealthily due to some level. But So, yeah, it's like I'm gonna make sure I have x profit. I'm just not gonna hire that other person if there's not money to hire that person and still keep my margin where I want my margin. Yeah. I, I do think it's tricky and not like there's like obviously a lot of external factors there, right?

Ian

00:16:58 – 00:17:13

Like if you just don't have money coming in or if you have less money than you would like, like, there's just factors there that are outside of your control and you kind of have to decide, are you gonna run the business or not, on some level, but Mhmm.

Aaron

00:17:13 – 00:17:13

You

Ian

00:17:13 – 00:17:15

guys don't have any outside employees yet either. So it's

Aaron

00:17:16 – 00:17:16

Ian

00:17:16 – 00:17:23

little bit more straightforward. It's like, well Mhmm. Money's just sitting there. You don't have many expenses, in terms of, like, servers.

Aaron

00:17:23 – 00:17:25

Well, yeah. Hard to hardly anything.

Ian

00:17:25 – 00:17:30

Yeah. That kind of, like, business expenses. Right? Like, you got new computers, and you're kinda good at that. Record.

Aaron

00:17:31 – 00:17:34

Steve got a new computer. Aaron is just a idiot. Yeah.

Ian

00:17:34 – 00:17:35

You're on your old clunker.

Aaron

00:17:35 – 00:17:36

Yeah. We got new computer. Yeah.

Ian

00:17:36 – 00:17:40

And then alright. So there's a couple things like that. You should get a new computer too. You just

Aaron

00:17:40 – 00:17:40

try the

Ian

00:17:40 – 00:17:42

latest fastest. Like, yeah, that's fine.

Aaron

00:17:42 – 00:17:43

Yeah. That sounds awesome.

Ian

00:17:43 – 00:18:04

But then after that, you don't have a lot of expenses. So, yeah. So I think short term, like, I, I definitely think you've taken money out. Like, it's not like a lot of upside to keeping money in the business beyond, like, your people have different philosophies on this, but, you know, 3 months' worth, 2 months' worth, 4 months' worth, like, some amount of expense money. But then beyond that, yeah, I would I would take it out.

Ian

00:18:04 – 00:18:10

But, yeah, Profit First seems reasonable. So are you gonna have that conversation?

Aaron

00:18:10 – 00:18:13

Way to to know more about Profit First. That's What

Ian

00:18:13 – 00:18:14

what can we do?

Aaron

00:18:14 – 00:18:20

What can we possibly do to learn more? I wonder if they cover these edge cases at all. We'll never know.

Ian

00:18:20 – 00:18:23

We'll never know. We will never know.

Aaron

00:18:23 – 00:18:30

I mean, I don't wanna I don't wanna be crass, but I am definitely in it for the money. So that would be great to to start getting some of the money out. I would love that.

Ian

00:18:30 – 00:18:51

A couple things there too. It's like what, like the profit first stuff, it gets also tricky when you kind of like there's my income varies a pretty fair amount to some degree. And it's like, but I want like continuity in the business. So I could say like, oh, man, we hit the threshold. I'm I'm firing somebody because that's just the rule.

Ian

00:18:51 – 00:19:19

Right? But it's like, or my other choice, right, is to like, well, I'll make less money this year. And like, sometimes I have to choose, make less money because the there's too much downside of just like firing somebody who was important to the business because I hit some fairly artificial threshold. And then now I just have to replace that person next year or in some way. So there's like, you know, I think there are these other factors there, obviously, if you're really tight on the personal income, then you won't have a choice and then you have to do that.

Ian

00:19:19 – 00:19:31

But, but the other thing along what you just said is I just read this, old blog post from John Scalzi. I don't know if you know who that is. He's like a science fiction writer. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Ian

00:19:31 – 00:19:44

Yeah. Yeah. So, and it was basically a blog post to other authors to basically saying like, don't be shy or feel like it's wrong to be in it for the money.

Aaron

00:19:45 – 00:19:46

And hell yeah.

Ian

00:19:46 – 00:19:51

That's why I'm, I'm, I'm a writer and I'm in it to get rich. Like that's my goal. And this is what he was already doing. That's for him.

Aaron

00:19:51 – 00:19:52

At this

Ian

00:19:52 – 00:20:07

point, but he is like, that's why I'm here. I'm here to get rich. And, Yeah, I think that's like a good mindset, right? To some degree. I think obviously in a business scenario, it's just more expected, than whereas, like, people use that against writers.

Aaron

00:20:07 – 00:20:07

It's kind

Ian

00:20:07 – 00:20:11

of his point. Like, you should take a bad contract to get this deal or you should,

Aaron

00:20:11 – 00:20:12

you know, it's all about the art.

Ian

00:20:12 – 00:20:25

These other trade offs. Right. It's all about the art. But yeah, I think that is something I do think there's some something with that too in our world like Especially in like b to b software. I don't know.

Ian

00:20:25 – 00:20:42

Maybe in other areas different. Maybe in your area, it's different but where it's like, you know, you're making a product that's to help other businesses. And, but there's not always like an art aspect. They're not always, like, I'm literally changing the world. I'm redefining technology or, whatever.

Ian

00:20:42 – 00:20:46

Right? Like, it's like, no. Like, it's a good tool. It's a useful tool. People

Aaron

00:20:47 – 00:20:47

like it.

Ian

00:20:47 – 00:20:58

But is there, like, the big goal? Can I invent the big goal around it? Like, it's a little bit harder sometimes with things. And then you see people do it cheesily and badly and Cheesily. Like that.

Ian

00:20:58 – 00:21:06

Right? It's like, I'm gonna pretend that this app is changing the world, and that seems dumb to me. So Very dumb. Yeah. So I've always approached it more than like, hey.

Ian

00:21:06 – 00:21:27

Like, we're gonna have a try to make a good life for myself, a good life for my employees, Yep. Create a tool my customers like and that their lives are improved by it, but it's also not, like, the only tool that does this thing or they they their businesses would go under without my software. Like, I don't know. There is like, it's hard to get to that artificial place for

Aaron

00:21:27 – 00:21:40

me. I could I just I just have no desire to, like, change the industry or change the world. Just absolutely 0%. Oh, it's so much to take their on, and you're like

Ian

00:21:40 – 00:21:41

I don't know.

Aaron

00:21:42 – 00:21:56

You're like, why? This is this comes back to the fight or win thing. Like, you could fight the entire industry to be like, no. Videos need to be done this way and stories need to be told this way. And it's like, I just I don't I don't I don't have energy for that.

Aaron

00:21:56 – 00:22:13

What I do have energy for is hopefully changing my world and my family's world and making the best thing that I can make. That's about it. I don't really I'm not gonna fight an entire industry. I'm not gonna change the world. And that may be depressing to some people, but it's very freeing to me.

Aaron

00:22:13 – 00:22:15

It sounds awesome to me. It does

Ian

00:22:15 – 00:22:39

cut both ways. I think there's definitely been times over 20 years of building HubSpot that I'm like, oh, like if there was some, this other guiding light, like there would be times where maybe that would be motivating. Right. And it's like, oh, that, that you could see the appeal of that at times. But then it's like, then you just come back to like, yeah, but is that even fair to put on the business or yourself or all those type of things?

Ian

00:22:39 – 00:22:54

And, are you really being sincere not that people are always sincere in business, but like, I don't know. I I think I could be that person if I had that kind of thought or idea I was trying to implement, but I can't be the fake version of that person.

Aaron

00:22:54 – 00:22:55

No. No.

Ian

00:22:56 – 00:22:58

No. Alright. So launch week, man. Let's do it.

Aaron

00:22:59 – 00:23:00

Launch Launch week.

Ian

00:23:00 – 00:23:00

Week.

Aaron

00:23:00 – 00:23:04

So just just to wrap up profit first. Sorry we haven't read the book. If we ever if we ever read

Ian

00:23:04 – 00:23:05

it if

Aaron

00:23:05 – 00:23:07

we ever read it, we'll we'll give you an update, but that's about all we got on it.

Ian

00:23:07 – 00:23:13

I think we covered it fully, to be honest with you. Like, I think we covered it.

Aaron

00:23:13 – 00:23:18

Oh, we should do a We should do a segment, book reviews for books we haven't read yet.

Ian

00:23:19 – 00:23:22

I'd love a good segment. We don't have enough segments on

Aaron

00:23:22 – 00:23:25

here, and I would love to see have enough segments.

Ian

00:23:25 – 00:23:31

Alright. Everybody, come comment on Twitter and comment on YouTube comments with books we should review without reading them.

Aaron

00:23:32 – 00:23:38

Yes. Please. We will absolutely review them in good faith, having not read them. Oh, I love this idea.

Ian

00:23:38 – 00:23:39

It's a great idea.

Aaron

00:23:39 – 00:23:45

Alright. Launch week. It's launch week. There you go. There's the big there's the big announcement.

Aaron

00:23:46 – 00:23:51

I can't believe it. I can't believe it, Ian. Tell me why you can't believe it.

Ian

00:23:51 – 00:24:00

I just don't understand how you did that many videos. I don't understand how he's edited that many videos. It all come together very quickly. I know maybe not as quickly as you were hoping, but

Aaron

00:24:01 – 00:24:01

correct.

Ian

00:24:01 – 00:24:11

I'm very impressed with the speed here, to get it done inside June. Yep. Got you. It's amazing. And what what's the actual date you're gonna launch here?

Ian

00:24:11 – 00:24:12

Thursday?

Aaron

00:24:12 – 00:24:21

I think Thursday. I think so if today's 24, that's gotta be, like, again, no way to know these things for sure. 27. 27. Yep.

Aaron

00:24:21 – 00:24:30

So we'll launch Thursday 27th. Okay. So, yeah, it was a lot. I still have I still have a a number of videos to do today.

Ian

00:24:30 – 00:24:31

Okay.

Aaron

00:24:31 – 00:24:41

This looks like maybe 6 or 7 that I'm gonna try to do today and tomorrow. Getting my hairs cut on Tuesday, so it's like, oh, we really gotta wrap some stuff up here. Yeah.

Ian

00:24:41 – 00:24:43

You gotta go for that. Right?

Aaron

00:24:43 – 00:24:48

I know, and I gotta I gotta tell my guy, like, listen. You just take a little bit. Just a little bit.

Ian

00:24:48 – 00:24:48

Yeah. Just go light.

Aaron

00:24:48 – 00:25:01

Clean me up a little bit. Yeah. Okay. So today's Monday all day, and I'm gonna try to finish some of these videos today. Steve has been editing like a madman over the weekend too.

Aaron

00:25:02 – 00:25:08

So I, you know, I left on Thursday, and so the videos stopped flowing. And so he was able to hopefully catch up.

Ian

00:25:08 – 00:25:08

Yeah.

Aaron

00:25:09 – 00:25:39

So I'll try to finish up these videos today, work on the site Tuesday, Wednesday, and then we'll be ready to launch on Thursday. We have 2 modules that will be forthcoming. So we're gonna save JSON and full text search for post launch, which I think will be good because that gives us, you know, more touch points to reach out later, more mini launches, more reasons to email. Exactly. Reason to do actual, like, early access discount instead of just, like, fake early access discount.

Ian

00:25:40 – 00:25:46

And those are those are good ones that people will be interested in and will spread, like, if do a little trailer video or something like this.

Aaron

00:25:46 – 00:25:53

Yeah. See people getting into that. Hopefully, that'll bring some more people back or push some people over the edge.

Ian

00:25:53 – 00:25:53

Right.

Aaron

00:25:53 – 00:26:00

Mailing list. The mailing list, man, it's it's a lot bigger than I expected. I'm I'm gonna be honest. Let's see.

Ian

00:26:00 – 00:26:02

We get to? I don't know if I can share it. But

Aaron

00:26:02 – 00:26:06

Yeah. I don't mind sharing at all. Let me see. So I'm in Bento. Hey, Jesse.

Aaron

00:26:06 – 00:26:19

Good good app, Jesse. Good job, Jesse. Let's see. High performance SQLite has oh, wait for it. Okay.

Aaron

00:26:19 – 00:26:28

How many okay. Here's fun. Here's a fun game. Now don't overshoot it because you'll embarrass me. How many people do you think are on the list, Ian?

Ian

00:26:29 – 00:26:31

I mean, we got an update at one point, didn't we? And I thought it was like

Aaron

00:26:31 – 00:26:33

We we did. I'll give you that number.

Ian

00:26:33 – 00:26:34

Okay. What was that

Aaron

00:26:34 – 00:26:36

number? That number at the time was, like, 16 or 1700.

Ian

00:26:37 – 00:26:40

Okay. And that was after DHH, I think.

Aaron

00:26:40 – 00:26:41

That was yeah.

Ian

00:26:42 – 00:26:53

I'm gonna go with so you haven't been talking about it as much lately. No. Okay. So that hurt the number a little bit. Am I gonna overshoot?

Ian

00:26:53 – 00:27:00

I would go with 35100. 4888. Oh, wow. That's very good.

Aaron

00:27:00 – 00:27:04

That's almost 5,000 people.

Ian

00:27:04 – 00:27:05

So let's see.

Aaron

00:27:05 – 00:27:06

That's pretty good.

Ian

00:27:06 – 00:27:08

We don't know the cost. Right? We don't know the cost yet?

Aaron

00:27:09 – 00:27:10

No. We don't know the cost yet.

Ian

00:27:10 – 00:27:11

That's still secret?

Aaron

00:27:11 – 00:27:16

I don't know if it's secret. I think it's perhaps a bit

Ian

00:27:17 – 00:27:17

undecided. Mhmm.

Aaron

00:27:17 – 00:27:19

So what are you doing? Some conversions over there?

Ian

00:27:19 – 00:27:21

I'm doing yeah. I'm doing some math over here.

Aaron

00:27:21 – 00:27:23

So, like Give me give me your math. Give me your numbeys.

Ian

00:27:23 – 00:27:34

Well, so if we go I mean, because there'll be more than just the people on the list. Right? Like I mean, what's a reasonable number? What's the number you you wanna convert? What's what are you gonna be happy with from the mailing list?

Ian

00:27:34 – 00:27:35

Your conversion rate.

Aaron

00:27:36 – 00:27:41

I will not be happy with any conversion rate. I'm just after absolute dollars.

Ian

00:27:42 – 00:27:42

Yeah.

Aaron

00:27:42 – 00:27:46

So I I I haven't even thought about that intermediate step.

Ian

00:27:46 – 00:27:51

Okay. I assume, like, you want over, like, 6 figures would be the minimum

Aaron

00:27:51 – 00:27:51

you'd be

Ian

00:27:51 – 00:27:52

happy with.

Aaron

00:27:52 – 00:27:53

Minimum. Yes.

Ian

00:27:55 – 00:27:56

So I just

Aaron

00:27:56 – 00:27:59

Give us an equation. What are you doing? Because it's 10%. Alright?

Ian

00:27:59 – 00:28:03

So 500. Let's say 500 people from the 500 people. Per per per

Aaron

00:28:03 – 00:28:04

price in there.

Ian

00:28:04 – 00:28:12

Oh, I know you had some different thoughts on this on if you wanted to go cheaper, more accessible. You wanted to go a little more high end.

Aaron

00:28:12 – 00:28:12

Mhmm.

Ian

00:28:13 – 00:28:19

I mean, I'm kind of thinking for this, I think cheaper accessible probably makes sense.

Aaron

00:28:20 – 00:28:22

That's where I'm leaning. So should do it. So I

Ian

00:28:22 – 00:28:23

would be 199.

Aaron

00:28:23 – 00:28:26

Okay. Alright. That's great. It's a 1000000

Ian

00:28:27 – 00:28:30

for, you know, just if we go take just mailing list, I think that

Aaron

00:28:31 – 00:28:33

we Twitter, podcast or

Ian

00:28:34 – 00:28:48

whatever the Terso people presumably be pushing it into their channels. So, you know, I think there's more opportunity out there than just that, but it seems pretty reasonable. I mean, I don't know if you wanted to go all the way down to 99. I think that

Aaron

00:28:49 – 00:28:50

99 is a bit too low.

Ian

00:28:50 – 00:28:52

Feels too cheap to me.

Aaron

00:28:52 – 00:28:53

Yeah. 99 is a bit too low.

Ian

00:28:53 – 00:28:55

I will probably 49.

Aaron

00:28:56 – 00:29:02

We'll probably do a sticker price sticker price of 199, with because you gotta leave the

Ian

00:29:02 – 00:29:03

room for discount or no?

Aaron

00:29:03 – 00:29:06

For discounts. So sticker price. Discount. 199. Sticker price.

Ian

00:29:06 – 00:29:09

Manufactions adjusted retail is 199. Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron

00:29:09 – 00:29:17

Yeah. MSRP is 199. And then there will be, like, a early access, and then probably a mailing list thing. So

Ian

00:29:17 – 00:29:17

Right.

Aaron

00:29:17 – 00:29:29

Most people will probably come in paying, I would say, closer to 149 or 139, something like that. Mhmm. But, yeah, sticker price is gonna be anchored, I think, at 199.

Ian

00:29:30 – 00:29:42

So that's be 75,000 from the mailing list. If if you get 10%, obviously, if you get more than that, then that's Right. Really good. What about and I think you could get more than that because this is like a list of people who signed up for this course. So, like, it's not Right.

Aaron

00:29:42 – 00:29:49

Again Recently and hopefully the price comes in low. And so then, yeah, the conversion goes up. And so So Yeah.

Ian

00:29:49 – 00:29:58

But I definitely could see yeah. I don't think higher percentages out of the question. Like obviously in other software type industries, it's like, oh, 3% of, like, final conversion rate

Aaron

00:29:58 – 00:29:58

is is

Ian

00:29:58 – 00:30:10

pretty solid. But, like, here, I think you should have high much higher than that. So, I think that feels reasonable. Now what about I feel like you're missing a little something here and that Uh-oh. Are you planning on having a second tier?

Aaron

00:30:11 – 00:30:18

That's a great question. Tier. That's a great question. I don't know yet. I know that that's the right thing to do.

Aaron

00:30:19 – 00:30:34

I don't know what to put in the upper tier. I've had a I've had a hysterical thought where we could just make the exact same content cost more and basically say, my employer is paying. So there's, like, a 199 and a 299. And the

Ian

00:30:34 – 00:30:35

299 is yeah.

Aaron

00:30:35 – 00:30:42

The 299 is, hey. My company is paying. Thanks for all the good work. And I don't know if that I don't know if that's ever

Ian

00:30:42 – 00:30:42

been done.

Aaron

00:30:42 – 00:30:44

It feels a little silly. I have seen

Ian

00:30:44 – 00:31:21

I feel like something more the more sort of, I think a a better way to do that, in my opinion would be to make a team version. Yeah. Where like this course is for 1 person, if you wanna give it to all 5 of your developers, then there's a team, you know, a multi license discount or a 5 user pack or whatever you wanna call it. And then so they can properly license the course for their entire team, and they get some kind of discount. I think that might be more compelling because then people are required to do it.

Ian

00:31:21 – 00:31:33

It's more like, oh yeah, I'm doing this for my business. I'm buying this for my 5 devs. I'm gonna license it properly. Versus just like on our sistering systeming it.

Aaron

00:31:33 – 00:31:40

I think teams will definitely be an option. Yeah. Like, I don't know if that's a tier, though. That feels like a different thing altogether.

Ian

00:31:40 – 00:31:50

That is a different thing altogether. What about the tier? Like yeah. I mean, I guess, like, obviously, you could just hold back. Like, JSON and full text search could be a higher tier Yeah.

Ian

00:31:51 – 00:32:04

As an option. I I don't know if that's a it is tricky. I think this topic's a little weird to maybe break up. I know a lot of times you see people do it the whole thing, but then there's, like, workbooks or other type stuff. I don't know if you wanna get into all that.

Aaron

00:32:04 – 00:32:14

I I really don't. And some people will make, like, the interviews a a different, like, tier tier, but I feel icky about having people donate their time, and then I sell the content. Right.

Ian

00:32:14 – 00:32:17

Yeah. I've got a lot of juice out of that.

Aaron

00:32:17 – 00:32:28

So, like Exactly. I mean, there's obviously things like timing screen. I can throw up a coffee shop tip screen. That's, like, 18 to 25% tip on top. You know?

Ian

00:32:28 – 00:32:39

Compelling, though. I feel like Yeah. Something more Mhmm. I guess you could have, like since you do have this whole layoff thing, you could have, like, a you with a, like, empty coffee cup. Like, you really lean into it.

Aaron

00:32:39 – 00:32:42

Shaking the tin. Yeah. Yeah. I could do that.

Ian

00:32:43 – 00:32:48

We could do it in half an hour with Anne Francis to answer questions.

Aaron

00:32:48 – 00:32:50

Could. Yeah. It's gonna be a bit fine

Ian

00:32:50 – 00:32:51

and commitment.

Aaron

00:32:51 – 00:33:01

Might just be there to anchor because I don't super wanna do that. But, like, if I put that at, you know, $1,000, then 199 sure looks cheap next to it. Doesn't it? Right. Yeah.

Aaron

00:33:01 – 00:33:03

That's interesting. Yeah. I

Ian

00:33:03 – 00:33:08

don't know. Does 799 for an hour with Aaron and Mhmm. Look at your code base for a bit

Aaron

00:33:08 – 00:33:15

or something. I really do want to find a tier, but I haven't I haven't found it yet.

Ian

00:33:16 – 00:33:19

Oh, okay. Here's an outside the box idea for you.

Aaron

00:33:19 – 00:33:20

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ian

00:33:21 – 00:33:28

We're we're gonna talk live about this. I don't know if this is okay. Who? What if you go back to Terso Yeah. And you say Hate it already,

Aaron

00:33:28 – 00:33:29

but yeah.

Ian

00:33:29 – 00:34:00

Something. Give me something to put in here as a second tier. So, like, you buy the higher tier, and you're getting 4 months of Terso for cheap or free or whatever. And it's like but and it's less, you know, they're saving money by buying it through you effectively. And Turso is getting a direct lead, but it's like actually going to convert for sure right away and start using their service and it gives you like a little extra revenue there.

Aaron

00:34:00 – 00:34:03

Okay. I, you know, it's not bad. It's not bad. It's a

Ian

00:34:03 – 00:34:09

little bundling. It's more of a bundling tier. Mhmm. But Mhmm. Something like that.

Ian

00:34:09 – 00:34:25

I could see the I could see the people you're working with in terms of the brands liking a more direct conversion option rather than just their name is on stuff. It's like they would like to probably have, like and then the person instantly signs up when they buy this tier, and they're just in there.

Aaron

00:34:25 – 00:34:39

We're gonna have we're gonna have some of the data be available in Terso. So you can, like, if you wanna follow along with this video, sign up through this link and the data will be in your account and you can Oh, that's cool. Do some queries there. Yeah. So hopefully that's gonna That's

Ian

00:34:39 – 00:34:40

a good idea.

Aaron

00:34:40 – 00:34:57

Hopefully that's gonna bridge the gap between course people and Churso customers. That's the goal. Alright. Yeah. So I'm really I'm really hoping really hoping that our floor is a 100,000.

Aaron

00:34:57 – 00:35:04

That is my hope. Yeah. Because which is, you know, just a massive amount of money, but you also have to remember, Steve and I Too

Ian

00:35:04 – 00:35:04

much money.

Aaron

00:35:05 – 00:35:16

Have been working on this full time for, what, 2 months now? 3? Yeah. And it's like, when you when you do it across a couple months and a couple people, sure gets divvied up pretty quickly.

Ian

00:35:16 – 00:35:27

Yeah. And it's not it's like, what would you guys be making if you went and got jobs? Right? So it's like Yeah. Because I can imagine some people be like, oh, a $100,000 for 2 months isn't bad, but, yeah, it's 2 people.

Ian

00:35:27 – 00:35:46

And if they had their, you know, experienced, well respected people who could make a lot of money in a job. And so it has to be enough. Obviously, this one thing on its own doesn't have to be enough to pay for that same level, but it has to be a good solid step in that direction. Yes. So yeah.

Ian

00:35:46 – 00:35:47

So I would think yeah.

Aaron

00:35:47 – 00:35:48

And this is this

Ian

00:35:48 – 00:35:49

is the

Aaron

00:35:49 – 00:36:16

beginning the like, to to lessen the expectations a little bit on my side, this is the beginning of the empire. Yeah. And so this is not this is not the last time that the SQLite course is going to make money. Like, it'll make most of its money on launch, but, presumably, it's a long term durable asset that we will continue to surround with other long term durable assets. So postgres course, my SQL course.

Aaron

00:36:17 – 00:36:42

And, hopefully, there's some, you know, there's some synergies there when we start, putting all of the things together. When we become database school, hopefully, people will come there and buy 1 or many courses, but we become that destination. So, you know, hopefully, it makes a ton of money on day 1, but I have to remind myself, this is a long term game, and this is the first brick in the wall.

Ian

00:36:42 – 00:37:05

Yeah. And I mean, I think for you guys, figuring that part out seems super critical in terms of whether or not it's like database school and people buy for all these databases. Because a lot of times people are only in one database, but even still, like, keeping that so that there's a pretty constant flow of customers. Like, I feel like that's gonna be super important to make this really work. So definitely I

Aaron

00:37:05 – 00:37:05

think so.

Ian

00:37:05 – 00:37:27

I think a pro yeah. You you don't want it to really be the traditional course launch, and then there's not much money after that. I mean, obviously, there'll be a nice, like, initial injection, but you you really wanna find a way to make it ongoing, I think, and, like, by releasing new stuff. And also it's the perfect content for it because like, it's not not changing that often. It's changing way less than like Laravel changing or whatever.

Ian

00:37:27 – 00:37:35

So it's like, yeah. Okay. When the when SQLite does some big new change, you can, like, do a new module on it and Yep. Remarket it all and all that stuff. Yep.

Ian

00:37:35 – 00:37:56

And for the next year, you could be working deals with who knows who I don't know, different providers or even things, other training sites or whatever, other service providers and like getting this content out there in other ways. Keep talking about it, coming up with, like, a schedule where you're regularly talking about it and doing new

Aaron

00:37:56 – 00:38:00

YouTube videos. I think the the database school podcast will continue. I feel like that has been

Ian

00:38:00 – 00:38:00

Oh, yeah.

Aaron

00:38:00 – 00:38:08

You know, it started as just like, hey. Let's do a little bit of hype for the course. And now I think, oh, this is this is a good marketing channel. I mean Yeah.

Ian

00:38:08 – 00:38:09

I like that.

Aaron

00:38:09 – 00:38:20

The fact that, like I mean, we know we know podcast numbers. I put some of these pod these podcasts on YouTube, and they get 15,000 views. And I'm like, what? What? What's going on?

Aaron

00:38:20 – 00:38:35

Yeah. So I think that's a pretty good long term asset, that will help, you know, market the entire the entire idea. And so when, you know, when Postgres comes along, we slot in some Postgres interviews, and it's like Yep. Everybody it's databases. It's still interesting.

Aaron

00:38:35 – 00:38:55

So Yeah. I think that'll help. But, yeah, turning it from, like, but, yeah, turning it from, like, you know, we we have to do things 1 at a time. The first thing we have to do is launch the course, but then shortly thereafter, we gotta turn it into, like, a business. And there's a huge difference between launching a course and running a business.

Aaron

00:38:55 – 00:39:01

And I think we gotta figure out, alright, how do we run a an education business?

Ian

00:39:02 – 00:39:21

And even like the thing, like the database sort of interviews, it's like, you've been kind of going to, like, real kind of people deep in the architecture part of it and things like that. But you could imagine like, Hey, let me just interview people who are heavy SQLite users and high performance installations or like you Yes. There's a lot of people out there. And every time Correct.

Aaron

00:39:21 – 00:39:21

Those

Ian

00:39:21 – 00:39:34

interview shows are popular for podcasts because it's much easier to bring an audience that way because they're bringing in their people, and, you don't have to generate it all from 0. So I really like that idea of making that a very regular thing.

Aaron

00:39:34 – 00:40:01

This most recent one was Kent c Dodds, who's not a database guy, but has been very public and vocal about moving from Postgres to SQLite, because of some of the things that gets him. And I feel like that's a good like, that changes it up a little bit. That's kinda more in the vein of DHH, honestly, where it's like Right. You're not a you're not a database guy. You're just a good developer who has touched the database a lot versus somebody like, you know, Ben Johnson, who is the Lightstream, Light FS guy who's like, oh, no.

Aaron

00:40:01 – 00:40:03

I'm in the internals. And so

Ian

00:40:03 – 00:40:04

I'm I'm in there.

Aaron

00:40:04 – 00:40:19

Keeping it keeping it approachable, I think, is important, which is part of, I think, one of my my strengths is I'm not a DBA. And so even even when the esoteric stuff hits, I'm still, you know, the voice of the the noob to be like, wait. What are you talking about? So

Ian

00:40:19 – 00:40:28

So what do you think about this then? Because so Here we go. I really like this idea. I think it's a great idea. I think it's like, like a really great marketing channel.

Ian

00:40:30 – 00:40:36

But then I start to get worried about things like the Aaron Francis variety hour you talked about last week. Oh, it's

Aaron

00:40:36 – 00:40:37

a great idea. It's a great idea.

Ian

00:40:37 – 00:40:40

But but you can only have so much Aaron Francis time.

Aaron

00:40:40 – 00:40:41

And Can

Ian

00:40:41 – 00:40:55

you? You kinda know how much of that Aaron Francis time can be dedicated to other this podcast, which is not, you know, totally on point of, like, making money necessarily. It's it's a it's a bound extension of all the things. Yeah. It's way an extension.

Aaron

00:40:55 – 00:41:07

Okay. So it's the concern from, my point of view? Like, I don't I only have so much time, or is the concern from dilution brand dilution point of view?

Ian

00:41:07 – 00:41:27

Not brand dilution so much. I think that part is is fine. But I think, like, in terms of if you're building additional courses, you're doing yeah. Different, you know, multiple podcasts and shows and like just balancing all that in regard to also then building the business part out. Now you have a partner, which is very helpful in that regard.

Ian

00:41:27 – 00:41:35

So it's extremely helpful. Yeah. But, you know, like, the try hard the try hard era as we talked about last week. Can only go so long.

Aaron

00:41:35 – 00:41:42

It's upon us. Okay. So yes. And concern noted. Understood.

Aaron

00:41:42 – 00:42:00

I think part of part of our underlying thesis of the business is, I have people's attention. Yeah. And that is our top of funnel. And so office.

Ian

00:42:00 – 00:42:00

I get it.

Aaron

00:42:01 – 00:42:27

Getting getting myself out there is most most likely a net good for the business, for the bottom line. To the question of time, fully agree. Because right now, I'm just, like, a 100% focused on this course, and I would literally be rather be doing anything else now. Like, I'm just so tired of working on this course. Yeah.

Ian

00:42:27 – 00:42:30

Gotta refresh the creative juices.

Aaron

00:42:30 – 00:43:06

So I think, like we talked about a little bit last week, you know, it's many small bets unless you hate small bets, in which case it's one big bet. Right. But I do kinda like that aspect of it where it's like, some of this stuff has and has a finish line. And so I can work on this course super hard for a while and then put it down and work on something else and then put it down and work on something else. I think the trick for me is going to be continuing to keep the plates spinning even if it's not my main, like, my main focus.

Aaron

00:43:06 – 00:43:18

Yeah. And that I feel like that is gonna be that's gonna be the trick. Like, keeping the super light course selling while I'm doing a super happy, terrific, fun hour on Fridays. You know?

Ian

00:43:18 – 00:43:18

Right.

Aaron

00:43:18 – 00:43:21

Like, I gotta keep I gotta keep the course going.

Ian

00:43:22 – 00:43:22

Yep.

Aaron

00:43:22 – 00:43:49

But there's some, like, there's some shape of the work where it is, like, the work itself has, like, a fat head and a long tail. Right? You gotta do a huge amount of work up front, and then over time you just gotta continue to keep the thing in motion. And so keeping the thing in motion is gonna be pretty important, but I don't know. I think I thrive on being able to do many things.

Aaron

00:43:49 – 00:44:00

I really don't want to just focus on, you know, a single SaaS or a single course for the next 5 years. I just don't wanna do that. So

Ian

00:44:00 – 00:44:19

So that's interesting because I definitely tend to feel that way myself, but then also what business has taught me is, like, you can also just sell the same product for 20 years and, like, it's pretty much the same product it was 20 years ago with the own. That's not, you know, there's been stuff added and whatnot, but, like, and then every time I try to do something different, it's not, like, as good. So I got it

Aaron

00:44:19 – 00:44:19

up. Yeah.

Ian

00:44:19 – 00:44:21

There is that sort of thing.

Aaron

00:44:21 – 00:44:33

This is different because it's more it's more like and this is the one big bet. Yeah. It's the one big bet that is many small bets. Like, when you created, what was the survey one you created? Thermostat.

Aaron

00:44:34 – 00:44:45

Thermostat. That is, like, fundamentally different. It's a fully new SaaS that you created. 1 SaaS is super hard. Just so freaking hard.

Aaron

00:44:45 – 00:44:51

The worst. And then it's not, it's not like totally adjacent. I guess it's somewhat adjacent to some work

Ian

00:44:51 – 00:44:52

that's, but

Aaron

00:44:52 – 00:45:17

it's not totally. Yeah. I feel like what I'm doing is, I feel like my my big bet is, attention slash distribution. Like, I have distribution. And along the way, I can do things to capitalize on that distribution, and it's not starting from scratch.

Aaron

00:45:17 – 00:45:31

Like, it's not starting from 0. I think if I were to start a SaaS right now, that would be that would be more I would be more concerned about Yeah. Pulling myself away from the board. I'm not freaking doing that.

Ian

00:45:31 – 00:45:32

I'm kidding me. Yeah.

Aaron

00:45:32 – 00:45:35

Too much going on to be starting to sass. Only crazy people Yeah.

Ian

00:45:35 – 00:45:42

No. I just figured that. I think the thing more more is just like to make sure you keep selling this course because you put a lot

Aaron

00:45:42 – 00:45:42

of work

Ian

00:45:42 – 00:45:50

into it. It's, I'm sure, going to be very good. Right? And it's like everybody makes this mistake. I feel like I'm like, then they're done with it, and they made the money.

Ian

00:45:50 – 00:45:56

Correct. Now they're moving on. But, like, even, like, forget my stuff. Right? Like LARICAS, right?

Ian

00:45:56 – 00:46:24

Like Jeffrey's selling, he's adding stuff, but like a lot of the value is like, I go in there and there's all kinds of stuff from 2 years ago or 3 years ago. And like, I'm still accessing it. And so that this would be an interesting area to maybe augment yourself with somebody whose job it is to just do that part, because that part is a lot about like Making sure you're correctly monetizing this attention you have. Right. And you don't have to

Aaron

00:46:24 – 00:46:24

be the

Ian

00:46:24 – 00:46:36

one to do that. Like somebody to manage the mailing list and make sure there's new drip campaigns that aren't just lazily done. Because you don't have a lot of time to 3 messages, but they go out whatever it's 2 years and 15 emails. Right. Right.

Ian

00:46:36 – 00:46:52

And, all those things that somebody else could be doing and doesn't need you to do, that's gonna probably pay for themselves fairly quickly, I might imagine. So that might be something to consider once the copper

Aaron

00:46:52 – 00:46:54

is a little bit cooler. You know what I want, Ian?

Ian

00:46:54 – 00:46:55

What do you want?

Aaron

00:46:55 – 00:47:15

I want I want, like, an office manager. You know how in every like, you walk into a title company or a law firm or a dentist office Mhmm. And there's there's a Linda there's, like, a Linda that's sitting there. Because you're not supposed to be there. The office does not operate without Linda.

Ian

00:47:15 – 00:47:15

Right.

Aaron

00:47:15 – 00:47:16

Because Linda knows all. It's a

Ian

00:47:16 – 00:47:17

key point.

Aaron

00:47:17 – 00:47:24

She knows everything. Yeah. She's been doing it for 40 years. Everyone else is an idiot, and they all come to Linda because she knows how to do everything.

Ian

00:47:24 – 00:47:25

That's what

Aaron

00:47:25 – 00:47:39

I want. I just want Yeah. I just want I think that's maybe, like, a chief of staff or a, you know, a I don't think it's personal assistant. That's different. Executive assistant's probably closest, but I want I want that.

Aaron

00:47:39 – 00:48:01

I would just want somebody to basically project manage the whole thing. That's what I want, and it's just very, very difficult to find. I had that at the property tax company. She wasn't an old woman. She was our age, and she was just ruthlessly efficient and didn't get, like, caught up in the emotional, like, oh, what does this what does this work say about me?

Aaron

00:48:01 – 00:48:07

It's just like, okay. I'll do the job. I'm gonna do the job really good and fast and go home. And I was like, yes. I love you.

Ian

00:48:07 – 00:48:22

Yeah. I mean, somebody like that. I could for you guys, I almost feel like you could go with somebody more, just even more direct like, just a pure marketer. Yeah. Just a pure marketer.

Ian

00:48:22 – 00:48:24

Because, like, you guys are ordering the other stuff.

Aaron

00:48:24 – 00:48:27

Not marketing. That should be my job. Right?

Ian

00:48:27 – 00:48:31

No. No. No. Because you are out you're the the tip of the sword. Right?

Ian

00:48:31 – 00:48:42

Like, you are bringing in people onto the lists on to the subscribers. Right. All that stuff. But you, I think, especially with everything you've said, you plan on doing.

Aaron

00:48:42 – 00:48:43

Yeah.

Ian

00:48:43 – 00:48:54

Like, like, just your stuff, but it also, like, the courses and all stuff. Like, you need somebody to follow behind you and do all the stuff that should be done behind that. Like Okay. Okay. Email list.

Ian

00:48:54 – 00:49:12

Like posting social media from the try hard account. Like Okay. Taking quotes and things that people say nice things about you and then doing something with that that you would never going to probably really utilize fully because you're building the next course or you're doing all those things like, you're doing all.

Aaron

00:49:12 – 00:49:12

Yeah.

Ian

00:49:12 – 00:49:34

You are throwing off all kinds of stuff and it's unlikely, I think, that you are gonna be the one who's able to, like, catch all that stuff or people and contacts and whatever, and then optimize those where I feel like that could just be somebody's job to do that. Mhmm. Like, not necessarily even a full time. Like, it could be 20 hours a week to start or whatever, like, not necessarily a full time job. I mean, I think it could be.

Ian

00:49:34 – 00:49:45

But even if it's not realistic because I have a full time person to start, like, I think that that's a thing. I feel like that just will pay for itself instantly. I don't see how it cannot be a profitable or

Aaron

00:49:45 – 00:49:53

never enough somebody thinking about that. I need, like, a marketing executioner. Yeah. Like a marketing Executioner's bad.

Ian

00:49:53 – 00:50:00

Marketing. Yeah. Marketing manager. You know, there's different titles, and they all it's kinda different on different companies. But

Aaron

00:50:00 – 00:50:05

to gather all the digital detritus and put it to good use instead of just letting it float into

Ian

00:50:05 – 00:50:17

the way. Marketing manager is not usually the person who's out there creating the buzz directly. Right. Like, they are whatever is doing that, something is doing that. And then the average you know, in a bigger company, there's an advertising department that's doing that.

Ian

00:50:17 – 00:50:18

Right. Or whatever.

Aaron

00:50:18 – 00:50:18

Right.

Ian

00:50:18 – 00:50:44

And then the marketing managers are gonna take all that inbound leads and however you wanna think about that. And then do something with those, whether it's following up with them, you know, automated for your price point of item, it's probably gonna be more like automated and posting on LinkedIn, which you don't, like, who wants to do that? Like somebody can be posting there and managing the pages on the different sites to make sure everything's up to date and blah, blah, blah. Like this

Aaron

00:50:44 – 00:50:45

is This is interesting.

Ian

00:50:45 – 00:50:48

You have enough stuff there to pull that off.

Aaron

00:50:48 – 00:50:57

Alright. If you are listening and you think I could do that job, just will you just let me know? Will you reach out to me and let me know thing. Yeah. You think you can do that job?

Aaron

00:50:58 – 00:51:00

I would be interested to hear about that.

Ian

00:51:00 – 00:51:05

Yeah. Or even people who've done it. It'd be interesting to get their take on it too.

Aaron

00:51:05 – 00:51:18

Yeah. I think you're right because one thing I super do enjoy is being out there and, you know, creating a spectacle. And I'm I think I'm good I think I'm good You're good at that. I'm good at creating a spectacle. That's where you're providing value.

Aaron

00:51:18 – 00:51:30

Yes. Yes. That is great value. But, yeah, keeping the the maintenance and the, like, blocking and tackling, not at not as good at that. Not at that.

Aaron

00:51:31 – 00:51:31

Fun

Ian

00:51:31 – 00:51:37

part. I've never been very good at that. That's not my fun part. And then it's like Nope. You have these 5,000 names on this list.

Ian

00:51:37 – 00:51:43

Like some percentage of people are gonna be interested in the next course and how are you gonna, are you transitioning them or is it one whole list or

Aaron

00:51:43 – 00:51:43

how are

Ian

00:51:43 – 00:51:56

you managing that? But you should probably tag these people as they came in on the SQLite, blah, blah, blah. And like, yeah, there's just a bunch of stuff you could do there and some emails go to everybody and some emails go to only SQLite and Mhmm. There's a lot of stuff if you're gonna do that all correctly. Stuff.

Ian

00:51:56 – 00:51:56

Yeah.

Aaron

00:51:56 – 00:51:57

There's a lot of stuff.

Ian

00:51:57 – 00:52:04

And somebody else whose job is to think about that stuff means you don't have to think about that stuff and you could be out making a a spectacle, which

Aaron

00:52:04 – 00:52:11

is maybe You know what I love not doing is thinking about stuff. Yeah. I just I hate thinking about stuff. I'm

Ian

00:52:11 – 00:52:12

just like monkey on

Aaron

00:52:12 – 00:52:22

YouTube. Yeah. About stuff. I just wanna I just wanna do stuff. I don't wanna think about stuff because then you get into the, like, the whole get into the whole brain, and you're like, oh, man.

Aaron

00:52:22 – 00:52:26

It's it's weird in here. Don't wanna think about it. I just wanna do it.

Ian

00:52:26 – 00:52:27

Stressful over there.

Aaron

00:52:27 – 00:52:30

It's stressful. I just been thinking of my hands. Yes.

Ian

00:52:30 – 00:52:35

Some of it's boring over there. It's like, there's a bunch of boring stuff to do over here. And then

Aaron

00:52:35 – 00:52:41

you're sure thinking I got 4 kids that gotta go to college. I can't be thinking. What am I thinking for? I can't be in here. It's too scary in here.

Ian

00:52:41 – 00:52:50

I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's like Steve could do that stuff. Like, I I don't know the whole the I don't know if I have the full picture of the whole intricate details of everybody's relationship, but

Aaron

00:52:50 – 00:52:50

Yeah.

Ian

00:52:50 – 00:52:56

And what you've all thought about that. But, I mean, if you're if you're out there churning out a lot of video, presumably, Steve's pretty busy.

Aaron

00:52:57 – 00:52:58

Also busy.

Ian

00:52:58 – 00:52:59

The other side of that.

Aaron

00:52:59 – 00:53:00

Yeah. Steve's very busy.

Ian

00:53:00 – 00:53:08

And especially if you guys get into more, like, you've already done a little bit of with, like, things that are animated or, you know, take it off with the notch and quality. Like, that takes more time on his end.

Aaron

00:53:09 – 00:53:21

Guy. One animation one one video that has animation could take him if he's working on it only, it could take him 3 days to do a video with animation. It's like, good gosh.

Ian

00:53:21 – 00:53:23

Yeah. So that's a lot of work there. So

Aaron

00:53:23 – 00:53:24

so good.

Ian

00:53:24 – 00:53:27

Right. Right. Right. The there's the upside of that. Yeah.

Ian

00:53:28 – 00:53:29

So alright.

Aaron

00:53:30 – 00:53:45

This is interesting. This is interesting. Okay. I will take this under consideration. If you've if you've listened to this and you think I have experience, in managing those people or I have been that person, do let me know.

Aaron

00:53:45 – 00:54:04

Let let me know, Aaron Dufresne is on Twitter. Send me send me an old DM. Yeah. So we'll we will continue to talk about how to turn a course or collection of courses into an empire because that is the goal, And I think we can do it. I think we can do it.

Ian

00:54:05 – 00:54:18

Yeah. I think so. I mean, there's also a lot of, like, prior art out there. You can start to dig into more of, like, what did these other, you know, educational platforms do in early days and so on and so forth. But

Aaron

00:54:18 – 00:54:23

I mean, Kent C. Dodds is hiring people left and right for his education platform.

Ian

00:54:24 – 00:54:27

What's he do? I don't I don't really I've heard the name. But I don't really know what he does.

Aaron

00:54:27 – 00:54:45

Oh, he's a JavaScript guy, but he's one of the good ones. Okay. And he has a a a framework called epic web, but it's like, it's in the JavaScript style. So it's like a collection of packages that he has vetted and decided. Yeah.

Aaron

00:54:45 – 00:55:09

And so, the epic stack maybe is what it's called. The epic stack also has a corresponding, like, epic web training, and he's been in education he's been an educator for forever. Right. But he's got an epic web training, and now he's got other people inside of epic web doing, like, a course on Git and a course on Tailwind. And so he's he's kind of, like, expanding his scope as well.

Aaron

00:55:10 – 00:55:38

And he he that's he's actually a perfect, person to bring up because I feel like in many ways, Kent and I are aligned. And if I could have if I could follow in his footsteps, but in like a different kind of area or genre, I would, that would, I would be pretty happy with that. That would be pretty great. Okay. Because I feel like he's done a good job of, you know, being out there, capitalizing on social media without losing his soul and also having a pretty good empire.

Aaron

00:55:38 – 00:55:41

And I'm like, yeah. I could I could be kept. So that would

Ian

00:55:41 – 00:55:42

be spot.

Aaron

00:55:42 – 00:55:42

Yeah. That's a good spot. Yeah. I don't wanna lose my soul. That's for sure.

Aaron

00:55:42 – 00:55:44

That's bad. That would be bad. That's bad. That's bad. Don't wanna lose my soul.

Aaron

00:55:44 – 00:55:44

That's for sure.

Ian

00:55:44 – 00:55:45

That's not bad. That would

Aaron

00:55:45 – 00:55:45

be bad. That's bad. That's bad. That's bad.

Ian

00:55:45 – 00:55:56

You only get one of those. You can't get it back, man. Oh, man. Alright. Well, so launch week, you'll also you'll let us know next week how launch week

Aaron

00:55:56 – 00:55:56

I will.

Ian

00:55:56 – 00:56:09

Goes. I'm excited to hear the follow-up of how how the the first day or 2 goes in in the weekend. Yep. Alright. Let's do one more.

Ian

00:56:09 – 00:56:13

I'm gonna do one more I have here. Let's go technical. We haven't done technical in so long.

Aaron

00:56:13 – 00:56:14

Oh, wow. Yeah.

Ian

00:56:14 – 00:56:17

Time. We've been barely technical.

Aaron

00:56:17 – 00:56:21

The arc of the podcast is long, and we're not bending towards mostly technical.

Ian

00:56:21 – 00:56:28

I must admit. That's alright. You know, we have a little stuff to prove it. We don't have technical along. So Alright.

Aaron

00:56:28 – 00:56:29

Let's do it.

Ian

00:56:29 – 00:56:30

Alright. So I have a problem.

Aaron

00:56:30 – 00:56:35

This is where Jennifer turns off the podcast, by the way. So thanks for listening. I'll see you at home, babe.

Ian

00:56:35 – 00:56:42

Yeah. Yeah. Same with my wife. She's like, oh, and you guys get technical. Like, we're never when do we get technical?

Ian

00:56:42 – 00:56:46

We haven't been technical in months. Like, we've been interviewing people, doing all the stuff. We

Aaron

00:56:46 – 00:56:47

haven't done technical

Ian

00:56:47 – 00:56:48

in months.

Aaron

00:56:48 – 00:56:57

Mhmm. Speaking of, big topic at Sausage Fest was HVAC and all of all of the bros, all of those very smart genius brothers

Ian

00:56:58 – 00:56:58

Lawyers.

Aaron

00:56:58 – 00:57:02

Totally totally on my side. Totally on my side. And one

Ian

00:57:03 – 00:57:03

nobody believes that.

Aaron

00:57:04 – 00:57:14

One one guy one guy there. Mhmm. I don't know what he does. Sorry, Thomas. He's got, like, a PH literally a PhD in, some sort of, like, thermo mechanical engineering or HVAC.

Aaron

00:57:14 – 00:57:18

Sure. Just call it HVAC. And he was like, yeah. That makes sense to me. So yes.

Ian

00:57:18 – 00:57:20

I feel like I should have invited sausage Fest

Aaron

00:57:20 – 00:57:22

because I don't have time. Killed at Sausage

Ian

00:57:22 – 00:57:23

Fest, Ian.

Aaron

00:57:23 – 00:57:25

You would have killed they would have loved it.

Ian

00:57:26 – 00:57:26

I don't know.

Aaron

00:57:26 – 00:57:33

Unfortunately, no outsiders have ever been invited, but had you married one of our friends, you would have been And I could. You can marry him.

Ian

00:57:33 – 00:57:34

Yeah. I can. You can marry him,

Aaron

00:57:34 – 00:57:41

but I think it's a little late for you. Also, there are no friends left to get married, so it's like, ah. So, anyway, HVAC, great topic.

Ian

00:57:42 – 00:57:52

Definitely gonna I think this is just showing how the, like, the Texas elites and, the Texas elites are detached from reality as

Aaron

00:57:52 – 00:57:55

what I'm taking this. Yeah. All these one YouTuber Get together, and

Ian

00:57:55 – 00:58:03

we're all the elites. Educations, overthinking these simple household to do items.

Aaron

00:58:03 – 00:58:09

For sure. For sure. For sure. So there's our HVAC follow-up. So Chris Morell, we got 4 episodes in a row, 3, whatever it is.

Aaron

00:58:10 – 00:58:13

Alright. Hit us with this last topic, Ian. So cool.

Ian

00:58:13 – 00:58:28

Yeah. I haven't even I've only started thinking about this. So the there's a lot of caveats. I'm gonna skip all of those because they're not fun. But let's just say, I wanna build a, a service that supports help swap.

Ian

00:58:28 – 00:58:50

Okay. Okay. And basically what in my, what it's going to be primarily doing initially is managing the AI connections for AI features in HelpSpot. And so Mhmm. All the HelpSpot installs out there, both, cloud installed, but also on premise.

Aaron

00:58:50 – 00:58:51

Right. Right. Right. They're gonna

Ian

00:58:51 – 00:59:16

be connecting to the service when they have to do something with AI. Sure. And then that service is gonna manage the connections out to AI providers and then get the results and return that back to the help spot that called it. Love it. And I, we could even get into why I would wanna do it this way, but even that is somewhat less interesting to me than like, if you were gonna build a service like this, like it has to be super fast.

Ian

00:59:16 – 00:59:17

Right?

Aaron

00:59:17 – 00:59:17

Got it.

Ian

00:59:17 – 00:59:26

Because it's gonna be a proxy between these other services and the ad services are already a little bit slow sometimes. So I really don't wanna add a bunch of overhead in the middle there.

Aaron

00:59:26 – 00:59:26

Yep.

Ian

00:59:26 – 00:59:33

But it's gotta do some stuff. It's gotta, like, authenticate that this, you know, be some key that this is a valid request from a

Aaron

00:59:33 – 00:59:33

Sure.

Ian

00:59:33 – 00:59:53

Licensed HubSpot. It's gotta, if we have any usage limit, e types of stuff, it's got to take care of that. It's got to, you know, log that this was done and what usage there was if we wanted to charge on different things there. It's gotta then obviously do the HEP connections and all that stuff.

Aaron

00:59:54 – 00:59:54

All right.

Ian

00:59:54 – 01:00:12

So it might also, you know, have some logic. I would like to keep it fairly thin, but I think there's gonna be a. Chunk of logic in there about like, maybe there's gonna be different AI services for different types of requests based on what you're trying to do or different, definitely for sure. Different models, at least in cost structure of, like,

Aaron

01:00:12 – 01:00:12

this is

Ian

01:00:12 – 01:00:25

a simple thing. We're gonna send it to the cheap model. This is this thing's writing something complicated. We're gonna send it to the expensive model or whatever. So where would you start on the infrastructure part of this?

Ian

01:00:25 – 01:00:26

Like, how would you think about that?

Aaron

01:00:27 – 01:00:31

Okay. So I'll give you I'll give you 2 answers.

Ian

01:00:31 – 01:00:32

Mhmm.

Aaron

01:00:33 – 01:00:40

If I wasn't if it wasn't AI so this is the answer that doesn't matter, but it's, I just wanna hear myself talk. Yeah.

Ian

01:00:40 – 01:00:40

Context.

Aaron

01:00:40 – 01:00:50

So if it wasn't AI and I needed this sounds you know, you hate to say the m word, but it sounds kinda like a microservice. It really does. You you hate to say it. You hate to No.

Ian

01:00:50 – 01:00:52

I do I do hate to say it.

Aaron

01:00:52 – 01:01:08

I and I was in I was in your situation where people could have stuff on prem or in cloud. I would probably put it I would probably do a full Laravel application. I wouldn't go I wouldn't reach for some some water down. No. No.

Aaron

01:01:08 – 01:01:09

No. No. No. No. No.

Aaron

01:01:09 – 01:01:09

This is where I

Ian

01:01:09 – 01:01:11

was leaning. Mhmm.

Aaron

01:01:11 – 01:01:32

Nope. I would, go full Laravel application running Octane on fly. Io deployed to 5 or 6 different regions. That's that's what I would do for a service that needed super fast response time Mhmm. And had to be near so I think one of your not a problem.

Aaron

01:01:32 – 01:01:53

One of your realities is these servers could be anywhere because it's on prem. Right? And so you can't necessarily control for the fact that, like, well, everybody's connecting through Virginia anyway, so we can just put it next to Virginia. Like, not true. So I have done I have done this exact thing with, a service that I deployed on Fly.

Aaron

01:01:53 – 01:02:20

Io in, like, 5 or 6 different regions, running Octane, which keeps keeps you know, shaves off Right. Whatever, 50, 100 milliseconds. And importantly, this may actually play a factor. Importantly, when you're running Octane, you can keep, HTTP connections open, not to the client, but to whatever third party services you're calling. So then you can shave off the connection time between you and OpenAI.

Aaron

01:02:21 – 01:02:34

You shave off, like, the renegotiating HTTPS, establishing a connection, all of that stuff. So you could keep that connection open and save another sometimes 50 milliseconds, so you're already saving a bunch of time there. I wonder

Ian

01:02:34 – 01:02:38

how OpenAI and those guys feel about that. Do they care about that?

Aaron

01:02:38 – 01:02:41

I don't know. There's there's technical answers to that. I think they could hang up if they wanted to.

Ian

01:02:41 – 01:02:43

Right. Probably. Yeah.

Aaron

01:02:43 – 01:02:49

Yeah. And if if they do hang up on their side, then Guzzle will renegotiate it on our side, so it's totally fine.

Ian

01:02:49 – 01:02:50

Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron

01:02:50 – 01:02:53

So that's that's one. However however

Ian

01:02:54 – 01:02:57

Yep. Well, let me add one one little point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ian

01:02:58 – 01:03:05

Because most well, no. You're you're you're right. I mean, there's basically 2 cloud locations. We run an EU and a US. Okay.

Ian

01:03:06 – 01:03:07

So 2 data centers.

Aaron

01:03:07 – 01:03:07

Yep.

Ian

01:03:07 – 01:03:12

And then the other on prem could be anywhere. Right. Mostly they're US, and Europe, but

Aaron

01:03:13 – 01:03:13

Mhmm. It could

Ian

01:03:13 – 01:03:34

be anywhere. And there will be some, like when people buy stuff in the store, whatever, like this system's gotta be aware of those sort of changes. So it'll have to be distributed out presumably to something that stores that data local, because we don't wanna have to check back with this one Sure. Server all the time. So Mhmm.

Ian

01:03:34 – 01:03:43

Couple other bits of context over there. Most and 3 quarters of the customers are cloud, so they'll be in, like, 2 data centers. Mhmm. But there are big customers on premise. So

Aaron

01:03:43 – 01:03:46

So now I'm gonna give you option 2.

Ian

01:03:46 – 01:03:47

Alright. Give me option 2.

Aaron

01:03:47 – 01:03:49

And you're gonna like this one a lot better.

Ian

01:03:49 – 01:03:50

Okay. Let's hear it.

Aaron

01:03:50 – 01:03:55

Because I'm gonna I'm gonna talk your book a little bit. Oh. I think I think you gotta go Cloudflare with this.

Ian

01:03:56 – 01:03:58

Oh, okay. I've thought about that a little bit.

Aaron

01:03:58 – 01:04:10

You just I think this is not a Laravel application at all. Right. I think you go Cloudflare. I don't know the full extent of Cloudflare's AI offerings, but I know they they are legion, which is to say they are many. Uh-huh.

Aaron

01:04:10 – 01:04:37

So I think I think this is a Cloudflare Worker. I think this is a Cloudflare Worker that connects to their I think they do some of this, AI model aggregation stuff at their layer, and so you can just swap out a string and be like GPT 4 o or Cloud 35 or whatever. And they're, you know, they're region Earth, so it's like they're gonna be everywhere. The worker's gonna be everywhere. It's gonna be fast.

Aaron

01:04:37 – 01:04:43

Presumably, you're putting a lot of stuff on Cloudflare already. Yep. I think this is a Cloudflare worker.

Ian

01:04:44 – 01:04:49

I have thought that too. I guess my my issue with Cloudflare Worker

Aaron

01:04:49 – 01:04:50

Mhmm.

Ian

01:04:50 – 01:05:06

Is 1, like, we, you know, we don't really have the JavaScript, writing experience in house, so we have to learn it. It's not gonna be crazy complicated app. So it's not end of the world. Most likely I do love the idea of it just being out there in the work. That will be absolutely the fastest way to do it.

Ian

01:05:06 – 01:05:35

Yes. It's just gonna be local to the user and all that stuff. So that will certainly be the fact it's also one of the other considerations I have, which isn't the end of the world, but it's like, there's not too many single points of failure in the way help spot is currently architected. And so even on the cloud side And so having this, like, some big database or not database, some big servers running somewhere that are just doing this AI proxy and stuff, like, kind of becomes that. Obviously, you can, like, have load balancers and auto Right.

Ian

01:05:35 – 01:05:36

Reprovisioning, whatever

Aaron

01:05:36 – 01:05:36

all that stuff.

Ian

01:05:36 – 01:05:45

But, like, there is kind of becomes this another choke point where I was like, yes, the workers are just like infinite and everywhere and whatever. Yes. Who even knows how they do it? But it's all Who knows?

Aaron

01:05:45 – 01:05:47

Magic. Trust them.

Ian

01:05:47 – 01:06:03

Yes. I do think I mean, it certainly can be done in workers. But again, the more we get into, like, actual logic in there, I do have some concerns about it being in the workers, because I do think well, what are your things thoughts about this? I mean, another aspect, I don't know how much AI stuff you've done.

Aaron

01:06:03 – 01:06:04

Very little.

Ian

01:06:04 – 01:06:26

Yeah. But so here's a, here's a one potential issue is like in our work with it so far, there can be a fair amount of distinctions between what you prompt in one model versus another. Yeah. So the prompts are gonna change based on like the model we wanna use. Yeah.

Ian

01:06:26 – 01:06:56

Things like that. And so it's not quite, it's not like a pure writing task, where we might just say like, write this better or whatever. There will be some of that, but it's gonna be more like, Hey, take all this information and tell us what category this belongs in, or give me some other type of answer in that sort of way. And so the prompts are a little more massaged in some, some ways. So I've been thinking, well, maybe it's really that, like, none of that logic is really in the HelpSpot code base.

Ian

01:06:56 – 01:07:08

Like that's in this proxy layer. You basically like call a function that does like a categorization. Right. That the, on the proxy layer service layer. And then that's where, like, the prompt stuff stays.

Ian

01:07:08 – 01:07:17

And so if there are, like, multiple implementations of it from different models, like, that's not then a bunch of stuff that HubSpot needs to be aware of. It's like HubSpot just gets an answer. Right. It just says, hey, this is the

Aaron

01:07:17 – 01:07:17

time. What you want.

Ian

01:07:17 – 01:07:21

Here's what this request says. You told me what category it belongs in.

Aaron

01:07:21 – 01:07:23

Do not look behind the curtain. Yes. I agree.

Ian

01:07:23 – 01:07:26

It's just black box from the help spot code perspective.

Aaron

01:07:26 – 01:07:27

I And then the service

Ian

01:07:27 – 01:07:28

side of those things.

Aaron

01:07:28 – 01:07:28

Mhmm.

Ian

01:07:28 – 01:07:39

Right. So then when we get to that stuff, it starts to get a little more like, well, if we did it in Laravel, like, I know what's going on developers. We have to know what's going on. If it's like a worker, what's the best way to do that? You know, I don't know.

Ian

01:07:39 – 01:07:49

Like, obviously, we could learn it. So I guess that's where my worker story is a little like, I I'm a little scared of that, but I also agree, like, it's probably gonna be the cheapest. It's definitely gonna be the fastest. Fastest.

Aaron

01:07:50 – 01:07:54

Easiest probably to implement because of their AI player. Yeah.

Ian

01:07:54 – 01:08:16

Yeah. They have some cool AI stuff. They do run some of the open source models and then they run this, like, gateway tool where, like, like, get a little cash, for example. Like, if you send it the same exact prompt body, it will just return the last result. And I'm sure there's settings for how long it can cache that, whatever, but like, so costs savings, and things like that there.

Ian

01:08:16 – 01:08:23

So we don't have to build our own caching layer for those type of things. Mhmm. So yeah. Okay. Alright.

Ian

01:08:23 – 01:08:35

So we're on the same page actually on both regards, I have to say. These are these are my 2 paths I've pretty much thought of other than fly fly, which I don't know. I'm a little, like, you know, these, like, these 4 b

Aaron

01:08:35 – 01:08:37

c It's a little shakey. It's a little shakey.

Ian

01:08:37 – 01:08:41

Goes away. I'm a little scared about that. So that part but still the same idea.

Aaron

01:08:42 – 01:08:44

I want them to make it, but I don't know if they will.

Ian

01:08:44 – 01:08:51

Yeah. You never you never totally sure about that. So I've always played ultra safe with, like, AWS. I would feel ultra safe about Cloudflare.

Aaron

01:08:52 – 01:09:14

One thing I would want to explore with the Cloudflare workers thing is you could I don't know what I don't know if this would be useful to you at all, but I think there's something interesting here. You can have a worker talk to their d one database, which is a SQLite database. Mhmm. But then you can also talk to that d one database from your Laravel application. And so that could be like a shared state.

Ian

01:09:14 – 01:09:15

Right.

Aaron

01:09:15 – 01:09:41

So that you could, like let's say that you do change the prompt for 1 model. Maybe you store, like, a model prompt map in SQLite in in their d one database. And then from the Laravel side, you could, you know, update it whenever you decide or whatever. I I don't know what their use case is, but I think there's something interesting about using their d one as some sort of global shared state between a worker and some separate app somewhere. Yeah.

Aaron

01:09:41 – 01:09:52

But I don't know. And it's too slow. Like, d one is too slow to use as your full Laravel database, and so that's not it. Like, that's not the answer.

Ian

01:09:52 – 01:09:52

Yeah.

Aaron

01:09:52 – 01:09:58

But what what is a cool way to do something there? I haven't quite cracked that nut yet.

Ian

01:09:58 – 01:10:11

Yeah. D one is interesting to me. I always find, like, I have, like, sort of interesting use cases for it, but then I'm like, I don't I don't totally know. Still, I guess, new and kind of, and I'm not I don't really build on that stack currently.

Aaron

01:10:11 – 01:10:12

Right. It's a. Yeah. It's a little bit

Ian

01:10:12 – 01:10:14

far away. I don't love that idea.

Aaron

01:10:14 – 01:10:29

It's artificially restricted. Size of the database and because it's over HTTP is quite slow for like real like request response stuff, but background jobs or whatever, I could have I could see it working relatively well.

Ian

01:10:29 – 01:10:48

Yeah. The other thing, this is more of a business thing, but, and this is something I'm very unsure about right now is like how we end up charging for AI services. Like right now we have some AI AI stuff in HubSpot, but it's more on like the agent writing end and translations and things. And it's just like, people can add their own open AI key.

Aaron

01:10:48 – 01:10:48

Yeah.

Ian

01:10:49 – 01:11:01

But I don't think that's really gonna work going forward. It's still like a small chance that we go with that option, but I just think it's, you know, it's complicated for people to go and figure it out and sign up for open AI and all that stuff.

Aaron

01:11:02 – 01:11:06

Yes. Go ahead. My response to that is don't do that. You're right. It's too complicated.

Aaron

01:11:06 – 01:11:07

However, here, I

Ian

01:11:07 – 01:11:08

just had a thought. Yeah.

Aaron

01:11:08 – 01:11:21

Give me I wanted, you know, I wanted to acknowledge your last thought because I was definitely listening. But here's my thought. Yes. Give me give me. You talk about auth and database.

Aaron

01:11:21 – 01:11:44

A shared d one database. So from the Laravel side, you're putting in you're putting in API keys into this d one database that are allowed to do whatever. Then on the worker side, you're checking that d one database, which is gonna be lightning fast because it's a worker to d one, and they're presumably right next to each other. And then you could so you're reading on the worker side, writing on the Laravel side. Yep.

Aaron

01:11:44 – 01:12:00

Then you could do you could also increment hits. So, like, whenever somebody calls the API, the worker could increment the SQLite database to keep track of usage. And then on the Laravel side and, you know, their centralized help scout admin area or whatever

Ian

01:12:00 – 01:12:01

Help spot.

Aaron

01:12:01 – 01:12:02

You could check. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I said.

Aaron

01:12:02 – 01:12:06

Help spot. Help spot. Dave Dave, edit that out. That's embarrassing.

Ian

01:12:06 – 01:12:07

No. That's fine.

Aaron

01:12:07 – 01:12:30

So from from the help spot side, you could check the d one database to gather up usage statistics, billing, that sort of thing. And so that might be that's kind of an interesting use case for it because the write the the reads and writes from the worker would be super fast, which is what you need to check off an increment usage. And then it'll be slow from the Laravel side, but it doesn't matter because it's a back office it's a back office function at that point.

Ian

01:12:30 – 01:12:42

Yeah. Yeah. I I don't know. I haven't looked into too much, like, the d one, like, how much it can handle in terms of like, what if there's a lot of people, right? Like a lot of these AI requests go flying around and like, right.

Ian

01:12:43 – 01:12:51

The right. I mean, I obviously we've been, I think we feel pretty good about the like right speed of sequel light in the modern era.

Aaron

01:12:51 – 01:12:51

We do.

Ian

01:12:52 – 01:13:06

Especially on like a big beefy server, but I don't know if that's true of how they run D one, like what its limitations are. I haven't like looked into that in a while. It's also not the end of the world. I mean, it's sort of interesting. I don't, I've never really had this use case.

Ian

01:13:06 – 01:13:23

Like HubSpot doesn't have a lot of use cases where, like, I don't care if something fails. Right. But this case is more like that, especially in like the logging end. It's like, well, whatever. If we miss that somebody used a little bit of AI resources, like, I don't actually care.

Ian

01:13:23 – 01:13:44

Like, I'm not gonna hold up the request for that if there was like a delayed right or something like that, I'll just abandon it. And if it's like, who cares? Like it's like 0.001¢, whatever. So yeah, like there could be different types of trade offs than I'm normally used to making of like, doesn't necessarily have to be a 100% perfect, which is sort of interesting. I was looking at that.

Ian

01:13:44 – 01:14:04

I think I tweeted about that, that time scale DB, which is like a thing on Postgres, where it kind of was built for this sort of thing of, like, logging a bunch of stuff and then having aggregates of usage Yep. Which is kinda in like, if we were just doing everything at AWS, that would be kinda interesting. So, yeah, I don't know. There's a couple different options there,

Aaron

01:14:04 – 01:14:07

but I don't know. I like it.

Ian

01:14:07 – 01:14:10

Alright. You're on board with you're on board with the

Aaron

01:14:10 – 01:14:22

Hide hide the best details. So all the all the help spot applications send an API request that says, respond, categorize Right. Sentiment, and then that's it. That's all they know. Yeah.

Aaron

01:14:22 – 01:14:37

And then the service does all the messy stuff. And then even beyond the service, the AI does all the black the real black box stuff. Right. Hide hide that implementation detail from the clients such that you can just change it without having to roll out anything new to the client.

Ian

01:14:37 – 01:14:54

Yeah. That's kinda what I'm that's where I'm leaning. I think that's the way to go. And then, because this will, like, it's definitely not gonna be like a pure micro service where it's actually trying to be ultra micro. Because I have mentioned this as being, having some other things potentially down the road in it as well beyond AI.

Ian

01:14:54 – 01:15:11

But, so it does need to be, I don't know that that's kind of thing that leads me more back towards it. So Laravel app and we know how to build and run those. And if it has to do other stuff someday that works together, like, I know how to do that versus, like, it's

Aaron

01:15:11 – 01:15:11

Yeah.

Ian

01:15:11 – 01:15:18

In workers. And do I have, like, a separate worker set up and how does that all work? But the workers are so appealing for this sort of

Aaron

01:15:18 – 01:15:19

person. Like,

Ian

01:15:19 – 01:15:27

yeah, they do seem kinda magical. So I might have to play with that a little bit and get a better feel for Yeah. The worker side, I think. But

Aaron

01:15:28 – 01:15:28

It's pretty appealing.

Ian

01:15:29 – 01:15:32

Yeah. Why can't Cloudsplash keep you busy?

Aaron

01:15:32 – 01:15:35

Couple serverless bros just hanging out and talking about serverless, man.

Ian

01:15:35 – 01:15:36

Serverless.

Aaron

01:15:36 – 01:15:39

JavaScript. We love serverless. Serverless. But it's

Ian

01:15:39 – 01:15:48

gotta be really fast. That's why I didn't know if, like, Lambda and all that stuff is, like, is it fast enough? I feel like maybe it's not fast enough. Although people say it's

Aaron

01:15:48 – 01:15:51

very fast. I think it would be fast enough.

Ian

01:15:51 – 01:15:51

You think so?

Aaron

01:15:51 – 01:15:57

I think you'd have enough requests that you'd have enough warm stuff. You'd have to deploy it in multiple regions, which is

Ian

01:15:57 – 01:15:57

Yeah.

Aaron

01:15:57 – 01:15:59

That's the problem with Lambda.

Ian

01:15:59 – 01:16:03

Yes. That's tricky. Right? That's what kind of what I would call about that as well. Yeah.

Ian

01:16:03 – 01:16:11

It is tricky. Mhmm. Yeah. The multiple regions. It's all real real assassin stuff here.

Aaron

01:16:11 – 01:16:14

It is real speed of light stuff going on here.

Ian

01:16:14 – 01:16:17

Yeah. Yeah. So annoying. It's crazy how I can

Aaron

01:16:17 – 01:16:18

get there. One day. We'll get there.

Ian

01:16:19 – 01:16:24

I know. The quantum computers. I I don't have to send anything anywhere. They can just figure it out before it gets sent. I know.

Ian

01:16:24 – 01:16:24

Answer.

Aaron

01:16:24 – 01:16:29

Who knows what a qubit is, but that is gonna that's gonna be the future.

Ian

01:16:29 – 01:16:30

It's out there.

Aaron

01:16:30 – 01:16:34

That stuff Quibbetting. That stuff blows my mind.

Ian

01:16:34 – 01:16:35

Yeah. With some weird stuff.

Aaron

01:16:35 – 01:16:36

The quantum entanglement?

Ian

01:16:37 – 01:16:38

Yeah. I don't know if

Aaron

01:16:38 – 01:16:42

I buy it. Dude, I don't know if I buy it. Don't know if I buy it. It's crazy.

Ian

01:16:43 – 01:16:47

Crazy. That they tested it, but, like, they didn't actually test this. I don't know. I'm not sure.

Aaron

01:16:47 – 01:17:00

I can't even come up with a test that would that would verify that. Like, how do you you turn you turn a little no. Yeah. We turn a little freaking thing in one side of the country, and you still are like, oh, yeah. It turned at the same time on the other side of the country.

Aaron

01:17:00 – 01:17:01

But how do you know?

Ian

01:17:01 – 01:17:02

But you can't

Aaron

01:17:02 – 01:17:03

measure it and

Ian

01:17:03 – 01:17:03

all that stuff.

Aaron

01:17:04 – 01:17:08

On the phone. You're like, well, the phone goes through speed of light. How do you know? You don't know.

Ian

01:17:08 – 01:17:20

Well, that's like the thing that always blows my mind, even though it's not quite as crazy as quantum I mean, I guess it's somewhat related, but it's, like, you know, the, the test of light where it's like it could be a wave or it could be a particle just depending on how you measure it.

Aaron

01:17:20 – 01:17:22

It's like Freaking guys don't know anything. So weird.

Ian

01:17:22 – 01:17:24

Yeah. How does that work?

Aaron

01:17:24 – 01:17:25

Figure it out.

Ian

01:17:25 – 01:17:26

How do we not know?

Aaron

01:17:26 – 01:17:31

Wave or particle. Give me a break. Yeah. Well, good thing that

Ian

01:17:31 – 01:17:35

We're simulations simulations breaking down. It's like we're getting too advanced.

Aaron

01:17:35 – 01:17:43

Talk about simulation theory at some point, today, but we we it's a great theory. What a great theory. Crazy. Ridiculous, but a great theory. I love that theory.

Ian

01:17:44 – 01:17:45

Alright, man. Alright.

Aaron

01:17:45 – 01:17:45

I think

Ian

01:17:45 – 01:17:54

we'll leave it there. We'll be back next week for the update. I'm very excited for the update. And, yeah. So thanks for everybody for listening.

Ian

01:17:55 – 01:18:05

Check us out at mostlytechnical.com, mostly tech pod on Twitter, and mostly technical podcast atgmail.com. If you have any feedback and we'll, see you next week. Thanks. Alright.

Aaron

01:18:05 – 01:18:06

See you.

Ian

01:18:06 – 01:18:07

Bye.

Beginning of the Empire

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