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

September 19, 2022

Noah and I chatted about my journey educating others and jumping between entrepreneur and full time. I had some hard questions for Noah about how he is able to pull off working on Potion full time financially.
Learn more →

Transcript

Noah
00:00:04 – 00:00:12
I'm Noah and you're listening to Product Journey. So Aaron Francis, welcome to Product Journey.
Aaron
00:00:12 – 00:00:14
Thanks for having me. I'm excited to
Noah
00:00:14 – 00:00:39
be here. I think the first time I found you was on Twitter and you had this thread where you were like basically you built like a little office in your backyard it seemed like with like a shed. And Mhmm. I'm pretty sure that's the first time I saw you, and I was like, wow, this is really cool. Because I actually, I I still have plans to do that someday for myself to build a little, like, shed office kind of thing.
Noah
00:00:39 – 00:00:42
So is that still where you work out of? Is that that shed kinda off?
Aaron
00:00:42 – 00:00:56
Yeah. That's that's where I am right now. That's where I'm recording. Yeah. The, the shedquarters, as I call it, was my first big, like, I guess, Twitter presence or thread or something.
Aaron
00:00:56 – 00:01:13
I'd been on Twitter for, you know, 10 or 15 years, whatever. But then I decided, like, hey. I've been working on this thing that I think is really cool, and I should be sharing it more. And so I just started, like, sharing about this little shed I was turning into an office, and people seemed to be into it. And it's been it's been a blast.
Aaron
00:01:13 – 00:01:17
It's been way too much work, the actual building, but being out here
Noah
00:01:17 – 00:01:30
is very cool. That's pretty cool. That's interesting that that was kind of your first, like, sharing and and getting on Twitter and stuff. It it must have went well enough that you're, like, I'm gonna stick around because that you've been Yeah. Posting and doing stuff since.
Aaron
00:01:30 – 00:01:44
Yeah. That was kind of, like, I I'm glad it went well. But previous to that, I had made a decision to, like, start sharing things more and start being more public with the stuff I'm working on, and that was just one expression of it.
Noah
00:01:46 – 00:02:12
Yeah. Well, so my my plan is to build a shed kinda like that in I don't know, probably still 2 years away. We we have, so we have 2 kids, 1 on the way, but we have 3 bedrooms in our house. And so right now, we have our kids in one room, and we have one guest room, and then I have the 3rd room as my office. And so the plan would be, you know, eventually, you know, I'll have more kids.
Noah
00:02:12 – 00:02:26
Maybe I'll get bumped out of this room, and I need to find somewhere to make a good office. And and it seems like with the shed kinda thing, you can kinda make, like, the perfect office. Yep. Like, the perfect amount of space. You know, it's it's out in the backyard.
Noah
00:02:26 – 00:02:37
It's kind of, its own thing. And so anyways, that's kinda the plan is to maybe maybe I'll have to start on it earlier than if I'm gonna need it in 2 years. Maybe I'll start in a year or something. I don't know. Yeah.
Noah
00:02:37 – 00:02:52
But I I'm really looking forward to it because I'm I'm starting to already think about it and, like, imagine, like, ideas and things I wanna do. So, anyways, with all your experience, any any pointers or anything I should I should watch out for with, making this
Aaron
00:02:53 – 00:03:02
leap? Yeah. Definitely start sooner than you think. It's a it's a lot it's a lot of work. You're in are you in Seattle?
Noah
00:03:02 – 00:03:02
Is that right?
Aaron
00:03:02 – 00:03:13
Yep. Yeah. So I'm in Texas, so, obviously, AC is an absolute must. I'm not familiar with Seattle well enough to know. I would have someone else do the wiring of the shed.
Aaron
00:03:13 – 00:03:26
I didn't do that myself, the electricity. I did OSB walls, like plywood walls because I thought it would look cool, and it was a total failure, and I had somebody plaster over them. So just do drywall. Just hire somebody to do drywall. Yeah.
Aaron
00:03:28 – 00:03:29
And then yeah. Why was
Noah
00:03:29 – 00:03:30
the plywood a failure, though?
Aaron
00:03:32 – 00:03:54
One, it felt really like, the plywood was kinda dark compared to, like, these white walls, and so it felt a little cavey. It had, like, a cool designer y look, but it also smelled like plywood. So I'd come inside every day smelling like a Home Depot, which is fun for, like, day 2 or 3. And then after 3 months, you're like, man, I smell like plywood again. So that was less than ideal.
Aaron
00:03:55 – 00:04:14
The way I did it is I had somebody build the shed itself off-site here in Texas, and then they delivered it to me, fully built. And then I did the finish out on the inside. And so I would do that again. You can get one, like, premade, but they're crazy expensive, to, like, have a have an office delivered. So, yeah.
Aaron
00:04:14 – 00:04:34
Just I mean, you have to enjoy you have to enjoy, like, actually doing the work, because it's a lot of work, but it's also a lot of fun. These cabinets are Ikea. I would highly recommend Ikea cabinets. And like you said, like, it's fun because it can be totally separate from the house. Like, it doesn't really the inside doesn't have to match the style of your house at all.
Aaron
00:04:34 – 00:04:39
It can be just, like, an office exactly as you want it, and that that's kind of amazing.
Noah
00:04:40 – 00:04:48
Yeah. Yeah. I think it'll be fun. I I'm so I'm not like a construction person necessarily. I've done a little bit growing up with my dad or whatever.
Noah
00:04:48 – 00:05:05
But I think that's actually what I'm kinda looking forward to too. It's like kinda my first foray into, like, teaching myself how to do some of those things, build some things, and I think that would be fun. So that's kind of the plan for sure. How do you how do you get Wi Fi out there? Like, good Wi Fi.
Aaron
00:05:05 – 00:05:28
Oh, yeah. That's a good question. I, bought some outdoor rated, Ethernet cable. And then the, I guess our router inside, I plugged in this outdoor rated cable and then ran it through the attic and then over overhead through the yard and then dropped it down into the shed. And I turn it back into wifi out here.
Aaron
00:05:28 – 00:05:50
So I have a wired connection to the house and then a Wi Fi access point out here that's plugged into that wired connection. So I get, like, I get, like, a 100 down and a 100 up out here on Wi Fi. So Nice. You could you could bury it, but that's a huge pain, and you have to get a different type of cable, and you can't bury it alongside the electrical cable, so it's kind of a pain. So I just ran it overhead.
Noah
00:05:52 – 00:05:57
Yeah. Okay. That's cool. Well, yeah. Lots of things to for me to look forward to with that.
Aaron
00:05:57 – 00:06:04
So much. Yeah. When you get started, DM me and and we'll we'll talk more about that. Definitely. There's a lot of stuff there.
Noah
00:06:04 – 00:06:17
Yeah. For sure. Well, so you've been up to a lot. I mean, and recently too. So you're you've been working on Hammerstone, just kind of your entrepreneurial project that you've been working on for a while now, I think.
Noah
00:06:18 – 00:06:25
You were at 2 Pull, but I think recently you're just now at PlanetScale. So congratulations on on PlanetScale. That's really cool.
Aaron
00:06:25 – 00:06:35
Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. I've been, I've been at 2 people for not not very long, and I was there there at the end. I was the past couple of months.
Aaron
00:06:35 – 00:07:05
I was only working there halftime, because I think Ben and I realized, like, the role that I was in was was maybe not what people needed. And so I was down to halftime, just doing some of the, like, developer marketing stuff, and then kinda PlanetScale, which is a database company. Planet scale kinda came out of nowhere. I've I've been friendly with them on Twitter for a long time, and I love what they're doing. Yeah.
Aaron
00:07:05 – 00:07:29
The whole team there is really great. And so I've been friendly with them on Twitter for a long time, and then they came out of nowhere and, like, hey. Do you wanna work for us? And they made me this really great offer come join their developer education team, write a bunch about MySQL, do videos, do streams, and, you know, do it full time. And that was just kind of, like that was the perfect kind of the perfect opportunity for me.
Aaron
00:07:29 – 00:07:35
So, yeah, as of, as as of next week, probably by the time this podcast is released, I'll be a PlanetScale employee.
Noah
00:07:36 – 00:07:38
Nice. That's yeah. That's exciting.
Aaron
00:07:40 – 00:07:41
So, yeah,
Noah
00:07:41 – 00:07:55
you you were at Tupelo for just a little bit there. Mhmm. And so how how was that? Like, you know, a lot of us, you know, probably heard of Tupelo, listened to Ben's podcast. So it's been kinda fun to kinda have it inside, look at that company a little bit.
Noah
00:07:56 – 00:08:03
So, yeah. I'm just curious, like, how was it working on there? You were doing, like, I know you're gonna do, like, some kind of documentary or something like that
Aaron
00:08:03 – 00:08:07
Yeah. Totally. For Tupelo. Yeah. So working there was great.
Aaron
00:08:07 – 00:08:26
I mean, I've been a listener of Ben's podcast for years years before I started working there. And so it was kinda fun. Kinda fun to, like, hear about it from the outside and then go work there and be there on the inside. It's a it's a great company. I mean, the product, obviously, I think everyone knows the product is amazing pair programming tool.
Aaron
00:08:26 – 00:08:40
Everyone there is super warm and friendly. It's not a huge company. It's like, I don't know, 10 people or something. Totally remote. They do you know, when I joined, I went on-site to Boston.
Aaron
00:08:40 – 00:09:00
I think it's outside of Boston. I got to meet a lot of the people in person, which was, you know, that's always fun. But, yeah, as far as, like, my role, I joined kind of to do, like, developer marketing. Like, marketing engineering was kind of my title. And yeah.
Aaron
00:09:00 – 00:09:15
So then Ben had this idea of, like, let's do this documentary. And so we started, you know, working on that. And I it just wasn't, like, totally inside my skill set. It was very, like, pure marketing. Like, I'm not a market I'm not a marketer.
Aaron
00:09:15 – 00:09:23
I am a developer who doesn't mind, you know, giving talks and writing articles. Talking about it. Yeah. Yeah. Talking about the development part.
Aaron
00:09:23 – 00:09:42
But when you take away, like, the development part, I kinda feel like I'm out over my skis a little bit. Like, I'm really good at talking about developing. Right? And the things that I'm working on, I'm good about talking about that. When I'm left with just talking about stuff, I don't feel super confident, and I'm not like a I'm not like a marketer.
Aaron
00:09:42 – 00:09:59
You know, if Corey Hanes were in that role, he would just totally be crushing it, but I wasn't super crushing it. I didn't feel like Ben was always very reassuring. He's like, yeah, you're doing a great job, and the whole team was always super supportive. Mhmm. So, yeah, that's kinda that's kinda the the route it took.
Aaron
00:10:00 – 00:10:31
And then after a little while, we decided, like, yeah, maybe, like, a developer marketer at Tuple is, like maybe that is a little bit weird. So why don't why don't I switch to halftime? And, we cut out some of this other marketing stuff that I was doing. And so that's kinda how the role evolved. And then, like I said, PlanetScale made me this incredible offer that I was, like, could come do the developer marketing on stuff that I'm actually developing and talk about that kind of stuff, and it just seemed like a perfect fit.
Noah
00:10:32 – 00:10:49
Yeah. So it was like even with going to Tuple, kinda with this idea of like a developer marketer, it was already kind of like a not a a normal thing necessarily. It's not like most companies have Yeah. Something like that. So in some ways it was kind of like a test a little bit or a guinea pig, like, let's see how this works.
Noah
00:10:50 – 00:10:57
Try this out. So that makes sense. Are they still doing the Ben and I Go ahead.
Aaron
00:10:57 – 00:11:21
Ben and I were both super upfront at the beginning that, like, he was viewing it as an experiment, and I was, like, willing to go along with it and, like, yeah, it it sounds totally fun to try. And so I don't feel like I don't feel like I got rug pulled or anything. I have nothing but, you know, good feelings towards Tupl and Ben personally. Yeah. It was just a thing where Ben was like, hey.
Aaron
00:11:21 – 00:11:26
You seem cool. You wanna come try to do this here? And I was like, hey. You seem cool. I'll come try to do that there.
Aaron
00:11:26 – 00:11:30
And it was like, I don't know I don't know if that actually worked in the end, but, hey, it
Noah
00:11:30 – 00:11:37
was worth a shot at least. Yeah. For sure. Do you know are they still gonna try to do the documentary kinda thing?
Aaron
00:11:38 – 00:11:59
Yeah. I think so. I think they're gonna I think they're gonna follow through with that. You know, the people we picked some people to go on vacation, documentary, but, yeah, they're you know, we've got a company. We've got a company engaged to do the documentary and already have some footage done.
Aaron
00:11:59 – 00:12:06
So I think they will. I'll I'll be I'll be curious to see how it turns out, you know, from the outside. I'll get to watch
Noah
00:12:06 – 00:12:22
the final product. Yeah. That's pretty that's pretty cool. So you I'm curious, like, so now you're, you know, I think you kinda turned into like a developer as you said that like is talking about it. You go to talks, you do things like that, you kinda share things online.
Noah
00:12:23 – 00:12:35
Was that something that you kind of envisioned, like, in your career that you'd be kind of like a almost like a developer advocate kind of role? And was and I guess how do you get into something like that? Like, how does that happen?
Aaron
00:12:36 – 00:12:46
Yeah. That's a good question. I can only describe what I've done. I don't really know, like, if you're trying to break into developer advocacy. I I don't really know.
Aaron
00:12:47 – 00:13:11
But I'm I can totally describe how it happened for me. I mean, I think I've always been prone to teaching. I actually got my my degree, my college degree in accounting. And so when I was in college, I was an accounting tutor as well, just because I really liked accounting, which this is really nerdy, but I just loved accounting. And so I was an accounting tutor, and I found tutoring to be a whole lot of fun.
Aaron
00:13:12 – 00:13:23
And so I think I've always just really enjoyed learning and teaching. I saw you recently posted that you'd love learning. Like, I I feel the same way. Mhmm. And so I've always enjoyed that.
Aaron
00:13:23 – 00:14:05
I think there there was definitely a switch in terms of my career maybe 18 months ago, 2 years ago, where I decided, like, I'm gonna start I'm gonna start posting on Twitter more. I'm gonna start sharing what I'm doing more. And that kinda has led me to where I am today of basically everything I'm I'm learning or doing, I'm sharing, and that has taken the form of, like, writing articles or doing conference talks or doing a lot of tweeting. And that has just increased my opportunity by, like, order of magnitude just because people are aware of me. Like, I don't think I got any smarter.
Aaron
00:14:05 – 00:14:30
Like, I'm still I'm I'm still at the same I'm still the exact same person, but now people are like, oh, yeah. I have seen him on Twitter. I read an article he wrote. So, I'll reach out to him and see if he wants to do that. And so GitHub recently just did this big article on, their read me project about me, and that kinda tells that whole story about, like, I was basically just scared to put myself out there.
Aaron
00:14:30 – 00:14:43
And then when I decided to put myself out there, kinda everything changed. So that's kinda how I got here. I don't know, like, how do you break into developer advocacy? No idea. I I just stumbled backwards into it, I guess.
Noah
00:14:44 – 00:14:54
No. That makes sense. Yeah. It kinda sounds like you just start talking about about, developer stuff and, sharing it. And now you're kind of like the database guy, I guess.
Noah
00:14:54 – 00:15:08
I mean, you kinda slowly become that, which has been interesting. I've seen some of your, Twitch streams, which has been Yeah. You've been you started doing that. Mhmm. What what made you wanna start doing those streams?
Aaron
00:15:09 – 00:15:28
Yeah. Like I said, I I I enjoy teaching. I find being on video doesn't, you know, doesn't stress me out or scare me too much. You know, always before I start, I kinda have to psych myself up, but once I get going, I feel pretty comfortable with it. And, you know, just like purely rational.
Aaron
00:15:28 – 00:16:01
I looked at, like, the landscape of, like, developers, you know, public facing developers. And if if you put it in a pyramid, like there are a lot of developers who are tweeting and then fewer who are blogging and then fewer who are doing like, YouTube videos, and then maybe even fewer who are doing live live coding videos, like live streaming. Mhmm. And so I thought, well, the competition is probably much lower for live streaming. They're like, they're just especially in the Laravel space, there just aren't really that many people live streaming.
Aaron
00:16:01 – 00:16:11
Like, I could name maybe the other 2 people that do it. And so I thought, I'm I'm good at it. It's fun, and there's nobody else doing it. So why not?
Noah
00:16:12 – 00:16:30
Yeah. No. That's that's fun. I've thought about or I've tried to do it a couple times, and, I've thought that I think it is fun to do. And I I'd like to do it more kinda my problem is my computer seems to like really have issues when I'm like live streaming and like running some code and like everything at once.
Noah
00:16:30 – 00:16:31
So I'm Yeah.
Aaron
00:16:31 – 00:16:32
I'm gonna have to get
Noah
00:16:32 – 00:16:48
a new computer soon anyways, but that's kinda what's holding me back at this moment. But I don't know. I could I could see myself maybe going in a similar direction because I do like, kinda like you're saying, like, I like teaching. I like learning. I like sharing things with other people.
Noah
00:16:49 – 00:16:55
And, you know, I don't think my main thing is gonna be like software development for the rest of my career. Mhmm.
Aaron
00:16:55 – 00:16:55
I don't know.
Noah
00:16:55 – 00:17:26
Like I I just when once I have gray hair and stuff I'm like, am I really gonna wanna like be, like, banging out code most days, you know? So Yeah. There's gotta be some kind of transition like that where it's like either going more into just, like, fully entrepreneurial, just, like, making, like, you know, more like CEO kind of roles, decisions, or Mhmm. Like, more teaching kind of stuff, or managing, obviously. Like, there's there's lots of different directions you can go from just being a a fully software developer.
Noah
00:17:26 – 00:17:47
But, you know, I'm I'm always kinda thinking about that. Not that I wanna I don't like doing what I'm doing right now. I really like what I'm doing right now. I just, you know, once I'm older, I could see, like, transitioning some way to being less of a software developer. So at at your new role well, so actually with PlanetScale, I don't think yeah.
Noah
00:17:47 – 00:17:56
I haven't heard I never heard of PlanetScale, before seeing you kinda jump over there. Is that Oh, nice. Can you tell us a little bit about Plan Scale
Aaron
00:17:56 – 00:18:06
and what they what they do? Yeah. Totally. The pitch won't be super tight because I haven't started there, and I don't know the official company line. But it will be super honest because I'm still an outsider.
Aaron
00:18:06 – 00:18:46
So PlanetScale is I mean, boiled down, it's hosted MySQL databases. On top of on top of that though, they run, an open source project on top of MySQL called Vitesse. And they're actually, like they've adopted the project, and it's fully open source, and they fund a whole bunch of developers to work on it full time. And what Vitesse does is it sits on top of MySQL and, basically gives you sharding. So you can run you can run a whole bunch of MySQL shards without having to muck around with doing it yourself, basically.
Aaron
00:18:46 – 00:19:21
So the I think the probably the shortest pitch is, like, it's like RDS but better. So, like, if you're using AWS RDS and you have a you're running a MySQL instance, it's kinda like that, but it also adds sharding on top of it, and the whole thing is hosted. So it takes all this pain out of, like, as application developers, which I think you and I are not DBAs. As application developers, it makes it so much easier to spin up a scalable MySQL database. And then their billing model is pretty interesting.
Aaron
00:19:21 – 00:19:44
I think it's a it's a serverless billing model. So you pay you pay based on usage. And so you trade you trade some of that complexity for usage based billing, as well. So if you have a, you know, and they have a free tier, of course. And so you basically get, like, kind of the promise of of Lambda, which I think is like infinite scale.
Aaron
00:19:44 – 00:19:54
You just pay for it. You get that with your database. So, you know, your database is not gonna fall over and you're gonna have to have downtime while you scale it up. It's just like, nah. You just it's a serverless billing model.
Aaron
00:19:54 – 00:19:55
You pay for what you use.
Noah
00:19:56 – 00:20:00
Okay. Cool. You're, you're already doing your job even before you
Aaron
00:20:00 – 00:20:03
Oh, man. I I know. I I hope I don't
Noah
00:20:03 – 00:20:04
get to you. Over time.
Aaron
00:20:04 – 00:20:06
People are people are like, no. No. No. No. You did a terrible job.
Aaron
00:20:06 – 00:20:09
So, if I'm wrong, I don't work there yet, but
Noah
00:20:09 – 00:20:13
I think I'm right. So Yeah. Okay. No. That's cool.
Noah
00:20:14 – 00:20:37
So that's that's exciting. You'll start that next week. What kind of because I know you've, you know, you've done some entrepreneurial stuff. You've been working on Hammerstone, which also does some things with, like, queries and databases and stuff like that. So what kind of went into your decision of, like, what you work on, what you wanna work on, you know, working for somebody else?
Noah
00:20:37 – 00:20:54
Like, were were you wanting to kind of do hammer stone, like, grow that to be your your full thing? Or Mhmm. Yeah. What what was some of the decision making between going working for someone else route and the kinda entrepreneur route that you've done some of already?
Aaron
00:20:54 – 00:21:10
That is the ultimate question, isn't it, Noah? So I mean, yeah. So so I've been working on Hammerstone for a little while. We build components for Laravel and Rails applications. The one we we've built a couple open source things that have done pretty well.
Aaron
00:21:10 – 00:21:33
The one commercial one that we're selling, we've sold maybe 10 or $15,000 worth. And it's a it's like a filter builder. So if your Uh-huh. If your applications if you wanna offer the ability to your users to filter data, so you wanna say, like, show me users named Aaron and living in Texas and, you know, hit the button, we'll handle all of that for you. And so that's the thing that we sell.
Aaron
00:21:34 – 00:21:55
So the question is, like, what is the what is the calculus on working on that full time versus working a job? Well, the calculus is I have a stay at home wife who takes care of our 2 children. I mean, that that's the calculus. So we need, one, we need money. We need US dollars so that I can put food on the table.
Aaron
00:21:55 – 00:22:16
And the other is we need, like, we need health care. And those things are, like, those things are super important and hard to work around. And so then so, like, if you hold that constant and say, like, okay. Well, Hammerstone is not viable in terms of full time family support right now. So that's just a constant for me.
Aaron
00:22:16 – 00:22:20
There's no decision there. The next question is like
Noah
00:22:20 – 00:22:27
Were you, working kind of full time on your own entrepreneur stuff, or did you always kinda have a job? I always had
Aaron
00:22:27 – 00:22:39
yeah. Okay. The past at least the past 6 or 7 years, I've had a job. Before I got married, I was doing full time, like, freelance stuff, but that kinda changed, when I got married. So, yeah.
Aaron
00:22:39 – 00:23:09
So then if you hold it constant that, like, the money has to come from somewhere, so it can't just be hammer stone. I guess the next question is, do you wanna do freelance or do you wanna work for a company? And I think for me personally, like, I only have I only have a certain, like, hustle budget. And my hustle budget like, I want I want my hustle budget to go to Hammerstone. And this is something that I I think you and I could talk a lot about.
Aaron
00:23:09 – 00:23:22
Like, how much energy do you have for which projects? Right? And so when it comes to, like, where's the money gonna come from? You know, in 5 years, sure. It would be great if Hammerstone made me and Colleen super rich.
Aaron
00:23:22 – 00:23:59
But right now, money's gotta come from somewhere, and I can't hustle personally. I don't wanna hustle on freelancer consulting and hustle on Hammerstone because my hustle budget will be depleted. So then I'm left with, like, what's a great company that aligns with, like, my interests and my passions and stuff I want to be doing? What's a great company where I could go work and, like, actually enjoy the work I'm doing and, like, not, like, not be looking to escape? I think that's the hard part for, like, indie hackers is a lot of them are trying to escape their jobs, and that puts a lot of pressure on on the side business.
Aaron
00:24:00 – 00:24:16
And I've seen, like, I've seen people leave at, like, you know, a 1,000 MRR, and I'm just like, what? How are you doing this? How are you how are you gonna live? And I think that's a lot of times because they're trying to escape. Like, they're trying to escape a job situation that they hate.
Aaron
00:24:16 – 00:24:26
And I've been fortunate to not be in a job situation I hate. Pretuple, it was a fine job. Tuple was a great job. PlanetScale, I think, is gonna be an amazing job. So Yeah.
Aaron
00:24:26 – 00:24:28
That that's kinda that's kinda one of my thought process.
Noah
00:24:29 – 00:24:46
Yeah. No. That that makes a lot of sense. It's kinda one of those things where like, for indie hackers, I think if you're trying to escape, it kind of makes you not like what you're doing and just have to escape. Like it's it it becomes like the only option eventually once you're trying to do it long enough.
Noah
00:24:46 – 00:25:02
Like I remember for me, I was working a full time job for almost, like, a year while I was doing potion. And in the beginning, it was, like, great. Like, it was kind of like my plan. Like, I'm I'm I can't, you know, I can't go do my own thing until it's, like, more steady and stable. Mhmm.
Noah
00:25:03 – 00:25:26
And so I knew that was the plan. But once I started to think, like, hey, maybe I could go jump over here and just try to do my own thing, it started to make me not enjoy, my own job or my day job as much. And then it kind of kinda bugged me more and kind of pushed me a little more like, I kinda wanna go just do that. So it yeah. It is kind of a funny thing with with indie hackers.
Noah
00:25:27 – 00:26:06
You know, just trying to make the make the business work and but not you know, if you jump out too early, it's like you're just gonna you're just gonna, like, you know, fail because it's, like, putting way too much pressure on this little business that maybe, you know, maybe you can't get it to grow as fast as you need to be able to support your family and all that. And just it just adds a lot of stress. So I'm definitely for kind of, you know, kinda what you're saying. Like, I'm definitely for not making your situation super stressful and just trying to make, you know, a little kind of a business that's, you know, maybe small at the time just like work when it's not ready to kind of work.
Aaron
00:26:06 – 00:26:19
Yeah. And there I mean, I I hear arguments on the other side of, like, you just need to go all in and just, like, just give everything you have to your business. If it doesn't work, it fails. I'm like, sure. That I mean, yeah.
Aaron
00:26:19 – 00:26:37
That would be awesome if and I'm speaking totally for myself and my risk tolerance. That would be awesome if I was 25 and unmarried and had no kids. I wouldn't mind failing. Like, I could move you know, I have a great family. I could move back in with my parents at at 25 if I needed to.
Aaron
00:26:37 – 00:27:02
But at this point, with my risk tolerance and respect to my wife, I don't wanna take that risk of, like, yeah. I'm just gonna go full time on this thing where we have no backstop and it could totally fail. And, like, then she's along for that ride. That just doesn't work for me. And I understand that I'm in a different situation than a lot of people.
Aaron
00:27:02 – 00:27:20
Like, for example, my partner, in Hammerstone, Colleen, her kids are a little bit older. She's worked for longer. Her spouse has worked for longer. Like, her spouse is still working, and I think they get health care through through his, through his job. And so, like, our risk tolerances are different.
Aaron
00:27:21 – 00:27:43
And so we're actively trying to get Colleen to go full time on Hammerstone where I am going to I'm going to not be taking money off the table so that we so that she can take that money off the table. And so even within our 2 person company, our risk tolerances are just super different. And, that's okay. Like, don't read Twitter and feel like everyone's talking to you. Sometimes they're not talking to you.
Aaron
00:27:43 – 00:27:46
They're talking to somebody with a different risk tolerance than you.
Noah
00:27:47 – 00:27:51
Yep. Yeah. For sure. And, I think yeah. That's the other thing.
Noah
00:27:51 – 00:28:22
It's like we're in, like, this little bubble on Twitter of, like, entrepreneurs and any hackers and software developers. And when you're seeing that, it can make you think, like, oh, this, you know, seeing, like, businesses that are doing well or people sharing that they're going well or whatever. It can make you feel like, oh, I I can do that or I should I need to do that. And the the truth is it's like, it's really hard to get something off the ground and get a business to, like, actually make money and stuff. I I just think about that all the time.
Noah
00:28:22 – 00:28:36
Like, I feel I'm I feel very blessed. I've been able to get Potion at to the point where it is now. Not that it's like a huge success success or anything yet, but just even to get to where it's at. Like I'm like, wow. How how did this happen?
Noah
00:28:36 – 00:29:07
I'm I'm kinda it kinda seems like it was just random a little bit in some ways, because it is it's such a hard thing, and it's like, it takes so much time to, like, push something to that point. And so yeah. Like, basically, just not comparing, like, you can get stuck comparing to what other people are doing on Twitter and feel like, you know, that either you should do that when maybe you shouldn't or that it's easier than it really is, because, you know, people like to make things sound like they got things figured out.
Aaron
00:29:07 – 00:29:15
Yeah. And you you have to be careful because if you say anything on Twitter, Daniel Vassalo will come in and say you should be taking more bets, and Jack Ellis will come in and say
Noah
00:29:15 – 00:29:16
you should be focusing more,
Aaron
00:29:16 – 00:29:24
and then Ruben Gama is just eating popcorn watching the whole thing happen. So yeah. So, yeah, I'm I'm curious.
Noah
00:29:24 – 00:29:29
That's basically what they do. That's I see them on Twitter all the time. That's that's their roles.
Aaron
00:29:29 – 00:29:43
I know. It's great. I love it so much. I took I took Daniel Vassalo's small bets course, and it was great. You know, I love Jack and everything they're doing at Fathom, and then Reuben is just the greatest because he's just steady as they go.
Aaron
00:29:43 – 00:30:10
He's like, he he's he's the non flustered the whole time. So I'm I'm curious to turn the tables on you to hear about Potion. I know you took this detour for a little while into the web 3 world, and it seems like that was a lot of fun for you. And now from listening to the podcast, which I do, it sounds like you've come back a little bit to potion. So what's your, like, one, do you does your spouse work outside the house?
Aaron
00:30:10 – 00:30:19
Do you guys have health care? Like, because you're full time indie. So, like, how are you doing that with 2 kids and one on the way, and how are you thinking about all of that?
Noah
00:30:19 – 00:30:28
Yeah. Good question. So, my wife doesn't work outside the house. She's she's a stay at home mom. And so let's see.
Noah
00:30:28 – 00:31:04
How how did we pull it off? We so I've only been full time on potion for beginning of this year, basically. And so kind of up to then, we were kind of building a nest egg a little bit, some savings that would just make it so this whole thing wasn't as risky for me to kinda jump off and do potion. The other thing that I think is allowed to do is we're pretty frugal. My my wife especially, she's like she's like the king or queen of, being able to, like, just get things as cheap as possible basically.
Aaron
00:31:04 – 00:31:06
That's a good skill to have.
Noah
00:31:07 – 00:31:43
Yeah. And so, you know, she's doing that, which really helps us be able to, you know, have a lot cheaper on, like, the expenses and things like that than, we, you know, would otherwise. The other thing that helped was right around when I was leaving, my, my the company I worked at 2 years previous to to going full time, they they went public. And so it it it ended up the actually right around then is when, like, the stock market kind of tanked. It would have been way more money for me, like, the stock options that I had.
Noah
00:31:44 – 00:32:11
It ended up being, I think, around, like, $35,000, something like that. So it's still, like, a nice little amount that allowed just some, like, freedom a little bit to be, like, alright. We have we have some money here, and so we can we can do this. And so with the amount of money that Potion makes right now, we're kind of just, like, breakeven. Like, our expenses are almost exactly, if not a little bit over what I make from Potion every month.
Noah
00:32:11 – 00:32:13
And so So Potion, I
Aaron
00:32:13 – 00:32:17
think, is 4 to 5 k MRR based on your Twitter profile right now?
Noah
00:32:17 – 00:32:24
Yeah. It's grown a little bit the last month or 2. I'm around And 40 almost 48100 now. So getting close
Aaron
00:32:24 – 00:32:47
to that in Seattle in a 3 bedroom house with 2 kids and a stay at home spouse, and your expenses are around 5 k, your wife is a freaking genius because I those are not our expenses. I mean, we live in Dallas, and Dallas is expensive too. And we live in a, you know, a 22. But, man, I don't know how y'all pull that off. That is amazing.
Aaron
00:32:48 – 00:32:57
Okay. That that makes me feel better because I've been watching you be like, yeah. We're having another kid, and I check your Twitter thing, and it's like 4 and a half MRR. And I'm like, Noah, what are you gonna
Noah
00:32:57 – 00:33:01
do? Yeah. What are you gonna do? Yeah. It
Aaron
00:33:01 – 00:33:02
makes me feel better.
Noah
00:33:03 – 00:33:38
Yeah. I mean so, yeah, I'm trying to think the I mean, I guess the with our house, what helped was we pretty we put a pretty good down payment on it, and so that that allow because that's our biggest expense, right, is the the mortgage that we have. And so that that made the mortgage, like, monthly cost be less than what probably a lot of people would pay around here because it is pretty expensive part of the country. We only have one car. So we we bought a car, like, 5 years ago for $5,000 in cash.
Noah
00:33:38 – 00:34:03
So we don't have car payments, and we only we have to share a car, which actually isn't that much of a problem, because I'm, like, at home all the time. Like, I don't really leave much. So, anyways, that that at least gives you a little idea of, like, how how far we've gone with frugality. Like, only having one car. And actually, our plan like, it's it's like a it's like a, you know, 5 seater, like, the smallest car you can get.
Noah
00:34:04 – 00:34:16
And as of now, we're still planning on not, like, getting a minivan once we have our our 3rd kid born. So we'll see how that goes. Yeah. Having, like, 3 3 car seats in the back of our car.
Aaron
00:34:17 – 00:34:20
So are y'all, like, are y'all, like, mister money mustache people?
Noah
00:34:22 – 00:34:26
A little bit. I I I know of him. I haven't read or follow much of his stuff.
Aaron
00:34:26 – 00:34:29
So you're not like a mustachian? You you wouldn't call yourself
Noah
00:34:29 – 00:34:41
a devotee? I wouldn't, but I've probably I probably, you know, we probably try to follow a lot of the things that I think that group tries to do. What whatever. What is it? The retire early The fire.
Noah
00:34:41 – 00:34:48
Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. We we probably, like, follow try to do some of those things same things.
Noah
00:34:50 – 00:35:00
But yeah. I don't know. It's it's just kind of how it worked out, I guess. And and that being said, like so if if Poshin didn't grow, I yeah. I couldn't just do this forever.
Noah
00:35:00 – 00:35:31
And I think it'd just been settling for me to do it forever if it wasn't growing. Like, I wanna see it have have potential and and move forward for me to wanna keep basically not making as much money to to do this. Even even now, like, I'm thinking, like, soon I might try to pick up, like, a 10 hour, like, gig a week or something like that. Just Sure. One, I think that actually be fun, like, to just, like, kind of use my brain, split it on something else a little bit, make some extra money, and just kind of add a little bit more stability.
Noah
00:35:32 – 00:35:39
So I am considering doing that, and, maybe that'll be soon. I don't know. But that, you know, that will add a little bit of room as well for for that.
Aaron
00:35:39 – 00:35:41
So a lot of pressure off, I bet.
Noah
00:35:42 – 00:35:48
Yeah. Yep. So that's kind of how it how it works, I guess. So talk
Aaron
00:35:48 – 00:35:58
to me talk to me about the web 3 detour. I personally am glad to have you back in what seems like web 2. So the web 3 Yeah. You're
Noah
00:36:00 – 00:36:05
you're probably like, oh man, don't have to hear about, crypto stuff anymore.
Aaron
00:36:06 – 00:36:31
I I will admit, and and I apologize ahead of time. You did a few web 3 podcasts, and I I skipped those podcasts. So but I'm I'm still I'm still a subscriber. City clash or whatever. So it seems like you took some time off, did that, launched it, and I think by your, what you said, you weren't super pleased with how the launch went, and now it seems like you're back to potion.
Aaron
00:36:31 – 00:36:33
Did I did I read that correctly?
Noah
00:36:34 – 00:36:48
Yeah. That's pretty correct. Yeah. It was it was a lot of fun detour. And, you know, I I think it's interesting because I know there's a lot of people in tech, I think especially bootstrappers, that are very against crypto and don't like it at all.
Noah
00:36:48 – 00:37:16
And, you know, I see I see things I definitely see a lot there's a lot of problems in crypto, and I see a lot of that. And I think there's a lot of annoyances too. Like, you know, the the stuff that goes up on Twitter, like, kind of like the the NFT stuff and and things like that. Like, there's there's definitely a lot of annoying things with the space and, I get annoyed from it too. Like, you know, kind of the the very like crypto bro kind of things that go on, and I don't know.
Aaron
00:37:16 – 00:37:16
Yeah.
Noah
00:37:16 – 00:37:39
So I I understand why people are annoyed of it and don't wanna hear about it. I I completely get that. But, yeah, as far as CityClash, we were we were originally trying to sell, like, 3,000 NFTs. And then the the kind of the market all went for like a downturn. And so we were kind of in the middle of that.
Noah
00:37:39 – 00:38:06
And kinda seeing that we knew, like, okay, we're probably not gonna be able to sell all 3,000. We had a, a Discord community that we had built up to around 4,000 people. So we had we had something kinda going. We had people interested, but with how things were going, we kinda saw a drop off in, like, engagement and stuff like that, like, almost right away. And, so then we're like, alright, maybe we can just, like, do a 1,000 right now and, like, wait later to do the rest.
Noah
00:38:06 – 00:38:32
So that's what we tried to do, is we tried to mint a 1,000 NFTs. The day that we launched ended up being like the 2nd worst day in crypto for the year. Like I think like before, like the night before, it like, pretty much everything Bitcoin at the end. Everything dropped, like, 10% within, like, in, like, 12 hours. So everyone was super scared the day of that we were, like, minting, like, okay.
Noah
00:38:32 – 00:38:40
What's going on here? So So that was a bad thing. Yeah. Yeah. But anyways, we ended up minting around 300 NFTs.
Noah
00:38:42 – 00:39:11
So it was it was something, but it wasn't enough to be like, alright, we can spend a lot more time on this to keep going on it, which was kind of what we were planning on doing. With 300 NFTs, I'm trying to think, we made somewhere around, like, $30,000 on that. Wow. Which is like something. But with our project, 70% of the money that like NFTs made went to like a pool that was owned by the community.
Noah
00:39:11 – 00:39:13
So it's not like that money is
Aaron
00:39:13 – 00:39:13
for us.
Noah
00:39:13 – 00:39:14
Okay. I I
Aaron
00:39:14 – 00:39:16
thought that 30,000 was for you, but yeah. Okay.
Noah
00:39:17 – 00:39:26
No. No. Yeah. So that's, you know, what's left is, you know, not a ton. So anyways, that's kind of how that shook out.
Noah
00:39:26 – 00:39:47
And and the project's still going. The cool thing about, like, running code on the blockchain and stuff is it just kind of works without us being there. And so City Clash is kind of like this little game that happens every week, and that just automatically goes without us doing anything. There's still some people that are engaged in the community and and trying to play the game. They're not a ton of people.
Noah
00:39:48 – 00:40:38
But the nice thing is, like, at least what we've built works and it just kind of automatic and people can still play it with the community there. And, you know, maybe someday, maybe when the markets come back, who knows, maybe maybe it could make sense to spend a little more time there to see if there's something there or try to revive it in some way. But, yeah, like, right now, it's, like, it's kinda just like a side like, on the side, like, I'll I'll help with it if there's something that comes up, but there hasn't really been anything I've had to do for it. But, yeah, that's kind of where where I'm at with that. And and I think, yeah, I think it was a good experience just, like, learning a ton from, just learning a lot about web 3, learning a lot about, like, the technologies, how to develop stuff on the blockchain, which was a lot of fun, and I think it just helps me understand the space a lot more.
Noah
00:40:39 – 00:40:51
And so, yeah, I think it was it was it was worth doing even though it it in some ways, it was kind of a failure. So, yeah, that's that's kind of, I guess, the the back or the story on that.
Aaron
00:40:51 – 00:40:57
Yeah. And how does it feel, like, coming back to potion? Do you have renewed energy for potion?
Noah
00:40:59 – 00:41:14
Yeah. For sure. And and that's and that's where I think I kind of went down the the web 3 road originally was I was kind of getting burned out on potion. You know, I felt like I was pushing on it, but it wasn't growing like I was expecting. So I was kinda getting burned out.
Noah
00:41:14 – 00:41:47
And in some ways, you know, you could definitely potentially call the the route I went a little bit of distraction. But I don't know what I would have done other like, I mean, I I could have just pushed myself through, I guess, through that time, but it did help, I guess, to have a little bit of a break from just, like, trying to push against potion all the time. So, anyway, that's kind of why that happened. And then the other thing because this has always happens. Like, when we first set out on this NFT project, we're like, oh, this will take, like, you know, a month.
Noah
00:41:47 – 00:42:01
And it'll be like a part time. Like, I'll just do it on the side. And it just kind of, like, kept kept blowing up and blowing up and ended up being something I spent like 5 months on. And then near the end of that, it was more like most of my time was going to it. So Yeah.
Noah
00:42:01 – 00:42:35
It's it's funny how things like that always kinda blow up in scale, and it's always harder than you think it will be to to pull something off. But, yeah, I definitely feel like I'm coming back with, like, a lot of, motivation to to make Potion grow. And I feel like I, like, have like I know the not that it will necessarily work, but I feel like I have a a decent plan of, like, I think this should work. Like, if I push on these different things, work on this stuff, do some different marketing things that, like, it should it should work. It should start growing, hopefully.
Noah
00:42:36 – 00:42:36
Yeah.
Aaron
00:42:37 – 00:42:55
Yeah. I I I hope so. And it does seem from the outside, it does seem like you have a renewed energy for potion, and I totally get the, like, burning out on on a current project. I get that for sure. And, yeah, taking taking a break is sometimes great.
Aaron
00:42:55 – 00:43:24
And part of the part of the benefit and part of the problem of doing that publicly is people will give you their opinions. So yeah. That I think, you know, I I didn't I didn't wanna, like, trash on on your web 3 project because I I just don't really like web 3, but you you were having fun and it looked great. And so, like, I just kinda didn't say anything, but I personally am really excited for the the potion storyline to come back. Because that's that's the storyline that I just I like more.
Aaron
00:43:25 – 00:43:29
So I'm glad I'm glad to hear that. So what's next? Like, what are you gonna do for potion?
Noah
00:43:31 – 00:43:58
Yeah. So I've been kinda starting with the product. You know, I've been sharing some about that on Twitter. So I I basically am done with, like, kind of like the version 2 of Potion, which is kinda like redoing the whole dashboard, adding some new features along the way that I know a lot of people have been asking for for a while, and just kinda cleaning up that a lot. And so I think, you know, the plan is hopefully to to be able to start growing and marketing this new version.
Noah
00:43:58 – 00:44:22
And ideally, you know, this also never happens, but ideally, like, my plan in the next couple months is, like, basically just do fully, like, marketing kind of stuff. Mhmm. I mean, there will be some things, like, I think I need to add a free plan so that there'll be some, you know, software stuff with that. But, yeah, hopefully, like, I'm not gonna spend too much time on the product. I'm sure I'll have some bugs, some things to fix.
Noah
00:44:22 – 00:44:43
But the the plan is the next kind of the next spot is to really start doing a lot of marketing. There's a lot of SEO stuff I can do. So, right now, Potion gets around 6,000 ish visitors, unique visitors a month. And I just know from looking at the competition that I have, they get, you know, just way more than that. Like
Aaron
00:44:43 – 00:44:44
Oh, really? Just just
Noah
00:44:44 – 00:45:08
a huge amount more. And and that was actually one of the things I was looking into some of the data was like, oh, wow. Like if I just like, if I could just like 3, you know, 4 or 5 x my traffic to the site. Like that would be a huge growth, in Potion. And, so it was actually kind of positive, like, nice to see that some of my competitors were getting a lot more traffic because I knew, like, okay.
Noah
00:45:08 – 00:45:31
There's something there. Obviously, I'm competing with them to get it. But, so, yeah, that's that's kind of one of the main plans is going towards the SEO route, trying to, like, grow that. I think there's some things I can do with affiliate plans, affiliate. So there's, you know, in Notion world, there's some creators that are like know, pretty big creators.
Noah
00:45:31 – 00:45:42
Everyone's, like, listening to them that loves Notion and stuff. So if I could just get one of those people to, like, be on board with, like, using, like, using Potion, use it as an affiliate.
Aaron
00:45:42 – 00:45:42
Mhmm.
Noah
00:45:43 – 00:45:55
I think that could grow Potion a ton. So that's that's I've been working on some of those relationships for a while now. And, hopefully, one of those can turn into something, but we'll see. Yeah. That would be interesting.
Noah
00:45:55 – 00:46:06
Other Yeah. That's kinda the other route I've been kinda pushing on. And yeah. So that's yeah. That's kind of like a high level of the the plan.
Noah
00:46:06 – 00:46:07
Have you listened to any
Aaron
00:46:07 – 00:46:17
have you listened to any of, I think it's Nathan Barry talking about early convert kit days. I think affiliates were, like, one of their huge growth channels
Noah
00:46:17 – 00:46:18
Yeah.
Aaron
00:46:18 – 00:46:20
In the beginning. And maybe maybe still today.
Noah
00:46:21 – 00:46:31
Yeah. No. That I remember him talking a little bit about that for sure. Yeah. So that I think that could be a big win.
Noah
00:46:32 – 00:46:59
So, yeah, we'll see how that goes. And, right now, I'm kind of in one of those spaces where I've been working on the the product for a couple weeks. And, I don't know if you've seen this or or felt this doing different entrepreneurial stuff. Whenever you're kind of like working on something like the software side, I think I you can be very motivated because in some ways I'm in my basement right now like pushing on code. Like, you kind of imagine what the future like, oh, man.
Noah
00:46:59 – 00:47:22
People are gonna love this. It's gonna be great. And and sometimes, like, that's when I'm most motivated as an seeing like, launching it and being like, oh, that didn't kinda go how I was expecting. And that's that's the point kind of where, you know, rubber meets the road. Right?
Noah
00:47:22 – 00:47:58
And it's like, I could put this out there and maybe it doesn't do as well as I was expecting. And that's when I think as an entrepreneur, you can get into trouble of, like, getting demotivated or not being excited to work on it. Yep. So it's it's a weird balance for me because, like, I want you know, obviously, you wanna, like, put what you're built out there and get feedback and kind of, kind of work on on that and, like, actually, like, know what what users are doing with your, your features and your product and knowing how it works. But I've you I think software developers do this.
Noah
00:47:58 – 00:48:13
Like, I I like the the not having to worry about that sometimes just getting to build. Yeah. So that's kinda where I'm at right now because so the plan is, next week, my wife and I are actually going to Mexico. So that'll be a fun a fun trip. Nice.
Aaron
00:48:14 – 00:48:14
So
Noah
00:48:14 – 00:48:30
I'm not launching the new version before then. That would be a nightmare Yeah. Because I'm sure there'd be a lot of issues. So the plan is after that, do some testing with some customers for, like, maybe a week and then hopefully launch the new version. And, yeah, we'll see how that goes.
Aaron
00:48:31 – 00:48:34
Cool. That's exciting. That's right around the corner then.
Noah
00:48:34 – 00:48:51
Yeah. Yeah. It should be soon. The last thing I'm kinda working on well, actually, maybe you you might, this might be right up your alley. Kind of the last thing I'm working on is making my, basically making some of my queries for some of the data that, you know, users need.
Noah
00:48:51 – 00:48:51
Query
Aaron
00:48:52 – 00:48:54
database. Interesting. Tell me tell me more.
Noah
00:48:55 – 00:49:33
Is making that faster. Because right now I kinda have this problem. If you have a website that say has, like, 200 pages in it, For me to get all that data takes maybe 10 seconds, and which is way too long. The reason is because I cache all the Notion data on in my database, and it's trying to, like, pull that data. So I have a table of like 40,000 rows and that's like the cache pages but it's like 2 gigabytes of of data.
Noah
00:49:33 – 00:49:43
And so I I'm pretty sure that's the issue is like I'm pulling just way too much data at once, and so I need to figure out how to do that in a better way. But anyways, that's that's kind of my database problem. What That I'm using right
Aaron
00:49:43 – 00:49:51
now. Yeah. We can we can debug this, off the stream. But what database are you using and what what's your tech stack? I think you're a JavaScript guy?
Noah
00:49:52 – 00:49:59
Yeah. JavaScript guy. I'm using MongoDB, for the database and stuff. So Yeah.
Aaron
00:49:59 – 00:50:11
Well, I I know next to nothing about MongoDB, but I know something about databases, so I might might be able to help. But, yeah, I would love to look at that here in a few minutes, because, yeah, 10 seconds is so painful.
Noah
00:50:12 – 00:50:22
Yeah. No. That's that's very painful. How did how did you end up becoming the, like, the database guy, by the way? Was was that something you had a lot of experience in in your day job?
Noah
00:50:22 – 00:50:23
Or
Aaron
00:50:23 – 00:50:52
Yeah. I kinda came by it. Honestly, my dad is a retired database administrator, so he's like he's like full on database guy where I am kind of like web application slash database guy. So from an early, early age, we're talking, like, 12 and 13, I was using MySQL, and he was teaching me how to do joins and stuff like that. And I remember him coming home and talking about his work, and he would show me stuff that he was doing.
Aaron
00:50:52 – 00:51:18
So from an early age, I was, like, into it. But then, I guess, you know, just recently, like, at my old job before Tuple, I was the primary for a long time, I was the only developer. And then for a while after that, I was the primary developer. And we just had, you know, we had millions and millions and millions of rows and, you know, 500 gigabyte database or something because it was
Noah
00:51:18 – 00:51:19
Oh, man.
Aaron
00:51:19 – 00:51:45
It was this, like we we have all the property data for the state of Texas, and we have it for, like, 6 or 7 years. And so the database just kept growing. And so I just had I just had to, like, I just had to get better at it. And so I bought all these books, because I I I had, like, a pretty good working knowledge. But like I said, I went to school for accounting, so nobody ever taught me, like, proper theory or anything like that.
Aaron
00:51:45 – 00:52:36
And so I bought all these I bought all these database books and just kinda read the good parts of them and just learned a ton and then was able to, like, turn around back into the kind of the web development community, specifically the Laravel space, and have a good insight of, like, hey. I'm a web application developer, and I feel like I knew more about databases than most people, and I still didn't know anything about databases. And so I was able to, like, use that kind of unique insight and take the database knowledge and put it kinda like in application developer terms. And so that's kinda where I've settled on my niche being is, like, I'm not a I'm not a proper DBA. There are people there are people that know way more about databases than I do, but most DBAs know way less about applications than I do.
Aaron
00:52:36 – 00:53:03
And so I'm able to kind of sit in the middle and be like, hey. I know a lot about Laravel, and I know a lot about databases. And that makes me kind of unique, which I think is like a Yeah. That's a transferable piece of knowledge, and I think I stole that originally from, Patrick McKenzie, Patio 11. Like, 12 years ago, he said if you can be good at 2 or 3 things, you'll be world class at, like, the intersection, and being world class at one thing is really hard.
Aaron
00:53:03 – 00:53:30
And I think his example was like, I can speak Japanese pretty well, and I'm pretty good at computers. And so I can go I can go to Japan and be the English man who is able to speak Japanese and be pretty good at computers. And that makes him really rare and unique versus just like the rest of the world. So that's kind of that's kind of where I've landed is like my intersection is app developer database, and I can teach it to you.
Noah
00:53:31 – 00:53:48
Yeah. No. That's really cool. That that makes a lot of sense, like, that intersection kind of idea. Because, you know, a lot of us, you know, some of us software developers are really good at one thing, but a lot of us and and maybe they're best at one of the best in that thing, but a lot of us a lot of us can't be.
Noah
00:53:49 – 00:54:03
And so finding, you know, maybe another thing to kinda tie into it, you know, makes a lot of sense. I think that's probably where I'm at. Like, I'm definitely not the best software developer in the world. If I intersect that with something else, hopefully, I can be pretty good at something. But yeah.
Noah
00:54:03 – 00:54:17
So anyways, that that's that's an interesting, concept. Well, cool. I don't wanna take too much more of your time. This has been a lot of fun kinda hearing and learning from you. You've had a lot of cool experience and stuff.
Noah
00:54:17 – 00:54:27
So excited to see kind of what you do next with the next chapter here with, PlanetScale and hopefully see you on on some more, Twitch streams. Are you planning to do more of that stuff?
Aaron
00:54:27 – 00:54:46
Yeah. I'm planning on doing 2 a week. So if you wanna come hang out and stream, talk about Laravel or Lambda or PlanetScale, yeah, find me on Twitch at aaron defrances and also on Twitter at aaron defrances. And thanks for having me on. Like I said, I've listened for a long, long time and, really enjoy it.
Aaron
00:54:46 – 00:54:49
And thanks for letting me turn the tables on you and ask a couple of questions.
Noah
00:54:50 – 00:54:57
Yeah. No. Those were those were good questions. I need I need hard questions. So and and I don't have Ben to ask me a lot of questions anymore.
Noah
00:54:57 – 00:55:03
So, yeah. Thanks for doing that. Alright, everybody. Well, thanks for listening. See you in another episode.
Me

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

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

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

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