Aaron Francis

Ian & Aaron discuss Aaron's DHH interview, Ian's phishing fiasco, and are joined by special guest Sam Rose to talk about high effort content & a lot more.

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Transcript

Ian

00:00:00 – 00:00:00

Morning.

Aaron

00:00:01 – 00:00:03

Good morning, Ian. What's a good word?

Ian

00:00:04 – 00:00:05

You caught me off guard now.

Aaron

00:00:05 – 00:00:07

I'm frozen. Woo.

Ian

00:00:09 – 00:00:11

I don't know. I had a rough morning. I had a rough morning.

Aaron

00:00:11 – 00:00:12

Okay. Tell me.

Ian

00:00:13 – 00:00:23

It's Memorial Day. Mhmm. Amoliant to do the pod, and I'm leaving. So my brain's not fully on. And I fell for the phishing email this morning.

Ian

00:00:23 – 00:00:26

You did. Phishing email. Yes.

Aaron

00:00:26 – 00:00:32

How far did you fall? And it wasn't me. Just for the record, I did not create this phishing email. This is not on me.

Ian

00:00:32 – 00:00:32

Ian

00:00:32 – 00:00:55

I pretty excited about the phishing email because one of the things I've always dreamt about is, like, all these phishing emails are so bad. I'm like, I feel like, why am I wasting my time doing good stuff when I can be making amazing phishing emails and tricking people so easily? Right? Because there if you just put any effort in at all, it's just incredibly easy. So somebody put some effort in, and I was very excited.

Ian

00:00:55 – 00:01:14

It was like Mailgun, who's our email provider Mhmm. Only for, for LaraJobs. So it's not, like, crazy critical, but still, yeah, this really good, nicely formatted email. They obviously just stole from Mailgun and just swapped out the, like, link. They did a great job with the link.

Ian

00:01:14 – 00:01:21

Like mailgun.com is the real mail gun. Mailgun.app is the phishing site. And they just

Aaron

00:01:21 – 00:01:23

They got mail gun.app?

Ian

00:01:23 – 00:01:30

Yes. And they Oh. And they just fully copied all the HTML, CSS, JavaScript

Aaron

00:01:30 – 00:01:31

That's pretty good.

Ian

00:01:31 – 00:01:32

Dot app. It's perfect.

Aaron

00:01:33 – 00:01:35

This is right out of the Aaron Francis School of Fishing, by

Ian

00:01:35 – 00:01:36

the way.

Aaron

00:01:36 – 00:01:37

This is this is very good.

Ian

00:01:37 – 00:01:42

Yes. Yes. That's right. We've talked about this before in your your heists. So, like exactly.

Ian

00:01:44 – 00:01:59

So I, I never click emails notifications like this, but you know, it's Memorial day. I'm not, my brain's not in at work mode and I clicked it and I signed in and the login didn't really work. And I was like, you know, that 2 factor. I took my 2 factor. I think they've shown

Aaron

00:01:59 – 00:01:59

me anything.

Ian

00:02:00 – 00:02:05

If they had just shown anything. Right? Like, oh, login. Oh, didn't work or whatever. They could have shown anything.

Ian

00:02:05 – 00:02:13

System's down. And I probably wouldn't have even thought about it, but it's just hanging. And I was like, it doesn't feel right. I was like, mail gun dot app. Is that right?

Ian

00:02:13 – 00:02:19

So I go to mail gun dot app again. It looks right. Then I searched Google for mail gun. It's mail gun dot com. And I was like, okay.

Ian

00:02:19 – 00:02:29

That's wrong. Something's off here. So I go in, log in to mailgun.com, and change my password, and reset log everybody out and whatever. Do all the stuff. So I did it instantly.

Ian

00:02:29 – 00:02:40

It seems fine. Not too worried about it, but and, obviously, I use one password and whatever. So this password is not unlike all my accounts or anything. So it's not too big a deal. It's fine.

Ian

00:02:40 – 00:02:44

It's fine. But, yeah, it's crazy. It's just like

Ian

00:02:44 – 00:02:44

That's a

Aaron

00:02:44 – 00:02:48

pretty that's a pretty good if they took your 2 factor, that's a pretty thorough

Ian

00:02:48 – 00:02:49

Yes.

Aaron

00:02:49 – 00:02:50

Fishing job.

Ian

00:02:50 – 00:03:00

Yes. And that's like something that can't, you know, I don't know. I who knows what they're doing with it? Like, if they were really on it, they could presumably replay it immediately. Yeah.

Ian

00:03:00 – 00:03:08

Play it. Yeah. And get in. But it seemed like it was maybe not fun. Like, I think I, I noticed a bunch of people on Twitter seem to have gotten this email.

Ian

00:03:08 – 00:03:26

Mhmm. So it might have been very effective and, overwhelm their little droplet or whatever they were using. Again, now they've gotten the 1st step right of make a very believable email and a very believable website. I'd like to see them go to the next step of making sure the server's big enough to handle it if you have a lot of success with your phishing. That's where Yeah.

Aaron

00:03:26 – 00:03:37

Listen. If you're if you're a criminal and you need some advice, come on this show. Like, we've got we we've got a lot of ideas. We've got opinions. Like, it's fine.

Aaron

00:03:37 – 00:03:41

Nobody will know. Nobody listens. We just need to talk to you.

Ian

00:03:41 – 00:03:48

Dude, we could do it, like, you know, like, a nineties news show where it's, like, their blackout silhouette. We could change their voice.

Aaron

00:03:48 – 00:03:50

60 minutes or 2020. Yeah.

Ian

00:03:50 – 00:03:52

Come on. Come on. Let's go.

Aaron

00:03:52 – 00:03:54

100% have a criminal a

Ian

00:03:54 – 00:03:55

a Great.

Aaron

00:03:55 – 00:03:57

White collar criminal on

Ian

00:03:57 – 00:03:57

the show.

Ian

00:03:57 – 00:03:58

White collar. White collar.

Aaron

00:03:58 – 00:04:02

Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. That would be awesome. So here's my question.

Ian

00:04:02 – 00:04:02

Mhmm.

Aaron

00:04:02 – 00:04:05

What do you think they were after? API keys?

Ian

00:04:05 – 00:04:07

I assume. Yeah. What I mean, they can't log in money.

Aaron

00:04:07 – 00:04:10

Have you checked have you checked your logs to see if

Ian

00:04:10 – 00:04:26

they got your keys? Does so they don't have an obvious audit log to see, like, what's going on recently that I could find when I was in there. But there's no additional emails have been sent. I am gonna rotate the key. I'll be able to have a bunch of IP restrictions and stuff, but whatever.

Ian

00:04:26 – 00:04:26

I'm gonna

Aaron

00:04:26 – 00:04:27

Oh, okay. That's helpful.

Ian

00:04:27 – 00:04:34

Gotten to that yet. So they probably can't actually send anything, because they definitely didn't change any of that stuff. I looked at that.

Ian

00:04:34 – 00:04:35

Mhmm.

Ian

00:04:35 – 00:04:43

So I'd so I'm not super worried. I didn't, like, postpone podcasts, like, whatever. It'll be fine. And then at the end of the day, just sending stupid emails. So I guess they sent stupid email.

Ian

00:04:43 – 00:04:49

Fine. But, but now I don't think they got into I don't think they got in at all, but whatever. Going to do that final step.

Aaron

00:04:49 – 00:04:54

And I guess Mailgun might have one of those dashboards where you never get to see the key again. Like you.

Ian

00:04:54 – 00:05:04

I believe that's true. Yes. Yeah. That was the that was the other thing where, yeah, that was the other thing you're right. Is because that's a key from like whatever last year sometime.

Ian

00:05:04 – 00:05:14

Cause it's got like the date and. You know, it wasn't it wasn't a new key they just fill or anything like that. They did just register mail gun dot app 3 days ago, which, I

Aaron

00:05:14 – 00:05:17

cannot believe that was available. I should have registered that.

Ian

00:05:17 – 00:05:18

I know. This is why you

Ian

00:05:18 – 00:05:19

gotta go

Ian

00:05:19 – 00:05:35

out there. People, you gotta own every variation of your product name. Like, not all the way out to all 500 domains, but the ones that are obvious, like, that people are just gonna believe, like, yeah, app, AI, net, org, whatever, all those things. You just gotta own them. It's like $200 a year to own all of them.

Ian

00:05:35 – 00:05:35

It's fun.

Aaron

00:05:35 – 00:05:42

You know, my dad bought aaronfrancis.com.netand.org for me in day? The year 2000. Yeah.

Ian

00:05:42 – 00:05:43

Yep.

Aaron

00:05:43 – 00:05:43

So I have

Ian

00:05:43 – 00:05:43

them all.

Aaron

00:05:43 – 00:05:45

I got them all still.

Ian

00:05:45 – 00:05:51

Did the same with my kids. Got them when they were born. Got the domains. Yeah. So you gotta own that stuff.

Ian

00:05:51 – 00:06:13

But, but then yeah. So I got in there super quick before I think Mailgun even knew what was going on. And, so I was able to, like, reset my password, do a lot of stuff. But, then I tried to go back in to just mess with the key and look at other stuff, and it was, they've actually they closed off logins and they're kind of, I imagine in semi panic mode. So I do feel bad for

Aaron

00:06:13 – 00:06:14

them probably

Ian

00:06:14 – 00:06:28

their status page is like, just like 7 times in a row, like, we're working on the issue or something like, you know, that kind of, like, panic message. Mhmm. Which I don't know. Yeah. This is a tricky one, I guess, to reset everybody's passwords, then you gotta, like, dig through.

Ian

00:06:28 – 00:06:51

The other thing is it seems like they probably got hacked in some way is my guess because all the people I've interacted with on Twitter over this, this morning seem to be active customers or past customers. So that's Mhmm. Pretty well targeted to not have the emails, but, maybe maybe not. I don't definitely don't know that for sure. But, obviously,

Aaron

00:06:51 – 00:07:02

yeah, that's an interesting vector because, obviously, MX records and DKIM records are public. But how do you go from domain to good email? I guess that's probably a solved solved problem for

Ian

00:07:02 – 00:07:03

bad guys. Right?

Ian

00:07:03 – 00:07:13

Like, I don't know. It's like, can you I'll be curious if, like, the other userscape employees got it. That's something I'm kinda curious about. Mhmm. Like, because it's on the account's under me.

Ian

00:07:13 – 00:07:25

So, yeah, if it's just like if everybody at Userscape got this, then okay. They just, yeah, might have pulled it from one of those services that let you look up people and whatever. And but, if not, I don't know.

Aaron

00:07:26 – 00:07:29

That's a heck of a heck of a way to start a holiday morning.

Ian

00:07:29 – 00:07:35

I know. That's not how I wanna start my morning. It's like No. I Like, oh, I got an hour. Nothing to do before the podcast.

Ian

00:07:35 – 00:07:36

I'm in the office. I'll just, like, kinda

Aaron

00:07:37 – 00:07:42

holiday. Gotta make a beer mosa. Get ready to do some grilling. Crazy.

Ian

00:07:42 – 00:07:47

Working on the Internet, man. This stuff doesn't happen when you own a bodega. You know? It's there's nobody hacking

Aaron

00:07:47 – 00:07:48

or getting nobody

Ian

00:07:48 – 00:07:48

on it.

Aaron

00:07:48 – 00:07:50

Bodega is so much easier.

Ian

00:07:50 – 00:07:51

That is a good point. Yeah.

Aaron

00:07:51 – 00:07:52

Stress. Way more profitable too.

Ian

00:07:52 – 00:07:57

Way more profitable. Nobody ever comes in and robs you or anything like that. It's so much less stressful.

Aaron

00:07:58 – 00:08:01

Mhmm. Alright. Well Good. Good start.

Ian

00:08:02 – 00:08:03

There we go. What's going on with you?

Aaron

00:08:03 – 00:08:08

I'm sorry I sorry I hit you with what's the good word after all of that. No wonder you froze like a deer.

Ian

00:08:09 – 00:08:13

The good word is, seems to be not everything's good. It's all good. That's that's

Aaron

00:08:13 – 00:08:14

the good

Ian

00:08:14 – 00:08:15

word, hopefully.

Aaron

00:08:15 – 00:08:21

Oh, I'll tell you what the good word is over here, Ian, is it's crunch time, man. We move tomorrow.

Ian

00:08:22 – 00:08:23

Oh, boy. I'm moving

Ian

00:08:23 – 00:08:24

in the middle of

Ian

00:08:24 – 00:08:25

everything else. A move in the middle

Aaron

00:08:25 – 00:08:36

of everything else. Got a course to record. We're moving tomorrow. It's just, you know, when it rains, it pours, which is an old, salt slogan. But, yeah, when it rains,

Ian

00:08:36 – 00:08:56

it pours. I I it's very good for you that this worked out with the, Aaron Francis studio sound and lights and all that because at least you don't have to move all that and reset your setup and blah blah blah. Like, you could just obviously, you'll have a day or 2 of just moving chaos, but then, like, you could just jump right back in without a bunch of extra reset up work and all that stuff.

Aaron

00:08:56 – 00:09:04

So I'm just The the added benefit of not having to reset up this space, but also not have to move everything

Ian

00:09:05 – 00:09:05

Yeah.

Aaron

00:09:05 – 00:09:18

That's in this space. That that decreases the pain just a little bit. Because, like, you know, several months ago, we moved everything that's in here. I had to, like, do a moving day just to get it all out of the rent house into here. And so

Ian

00:09:18 – 00:09:18

Yep.

Aaron

00:09:18 – 00:09:33

That is hopefully, you know, hopefully will decrease stress a little bit and also knowing that I can just, like, leave and come back up here and get to work is is hugely helpful. But, yeah, moving sucks. It's a freaking it's a pain. I hate it. Hate the move.

Ian

00:09:33 – 00:09:34

Is the house done?

Aaron

00:09:35 – 00:09:36

No. The house is done.

Ian

00:09:36 – 00:09:38

I do I do I do it. No. The house is done.

Aaron

00:09:38 – 00:09:40

There's no way the house is done.

Ian

00:09:40 – 00:09:41

No. I do it.

Aaron

00:09:41 – 00:09:47

Told me this contractor told me it would be done in January. It is May 27th.

Ian

00:09:48 – 00:09:49

Yep. We were

Aaron

00:09:49 – 00:10:00

supposed to move in April 30th, and we had to extend our lease by a month because he was like, oh, it's almost done. Now it's been a month, and he's not done. Dude, what are you doing?

Ian

00:10:00 – 00:10:02

Oh, they're never done.

Ian

00:10:02 – 00:10:02

It's just

Aaron

00:10:02 – 00:10:23

it's just the most frustrating thing in the world. It'll be move in like, we can move in, but there's still, like, you know, 15 things on the punch list he's gotta come back and fix and finish. And I'm like, dude, you had you had, like, more than 6 months to do this, and you kept telling me, oh, this will only take 4 weeks to do. I'm like, dude, I don't believe you. I'm gonna give you 8.

Aaron

00:10:23 – 00:10:27

And then it turned around and took a 100 weeks. So, yeah, super frustrating. Overtime.

Ian

00:10:27 – 00:10:29

Yeah. Exactly. Oh, man. Yeah. That's how these things

Aaron

00:10:31 – 00:10:49

go. I don't get it. I don't get I know everyone on everyone on the Internet gets mildly frustrated with a a blue collar worker, and they're like, why don't you just do things on time and answer the phone? I'm gonna start my own business doing it. It's like, surely, it's not that easy, but come on.

Aaron

00:10:49 – 00:10:52

Hey. Can't be that hard. Right?

Ian

00:10:52 – 00:10:57

I know. It's crazy. I don't know. Well, you were really God. I don't know how in the loop you were.

Ian

00:10:57 – 00:11:02

It seems like you were maybe a little hands off ish and just kinda dealing with the general contractor. I don't know

Aaron

00:11:02 – 00:11:02

if it's

Ian

00:11:02 – 00:11:20

accurate, but yeah. So we were, we built our house. We were not hands off at all. We were like my wife would like literally have a folding chair and just like sit there and, like, be watching what's going on essentially. And we were I was there all twice a day, but it's crazy because, like, one guy didn't show up and then the other thing can't happen because that guy didn't show up.

Ian

00:11:20 – 00:11:29

And then it's just the and then now that's what everything's delayed today. The Mhmm. The guy didn't show up again tomorrow and everything's delayed 2 days. Now people have another job to go to and blah blah. Yep.

Ian

00:11:29 – 00:11:44

So it just, yeah, it just goes on forever. It's unbelievable. How long it takes to do anything we we added a bedroom night out of the bedroom we like had We when we built the house we had 2 offices in the house right next to each other in the move. Side wing. Yeah.

Ian

00:11:44 – 00:11:59

It was power move. But then we didn't I I got a office out of the house and whatever, so we didn't need that. And our sons were sharing a room. So the, we were turning the office into another bedroom and we're like, alright. It's like turning an existing thing into another, Not taking down a wall.

Ian

00:11:59 – 00:12:14

Not doing anything really. Like, adding this little bathroom and just, like, basically painting. And it literally took, like, 7 months. It was just like and, obviously, this isn't anybody's hot top priority, man, because it's like this little thing. Right?

Ian

00:12:14 – 00:12:33

That's And so they're, like, pushing us off and then we gotta get the plumber and electrician, and so they are delayed and they take forever. But it's like, yeah. You think you're gonna, like, okay, we gotta put it in a toilet and a little tiny shower and a sink and like paint and do this one wall and for the bath to like make a bathroom. And yeah, it took, like, 7 months. It was crazy.

Aaron

00:12:33 – 00:12:41

Infuriating. I I will say moving sucks. I am ready to not be paying rent and mortgage. That'll be fine. Worse.

Aaron

00:12:41 – 00:12:47

Yeah. I will I will take any amount of pain to get rid of this this rent situation. So That'll

Ian

00:12:47 – 00:12:49

be nice freeing up a few bucks there.

Aaron

00:12:49 – 00:13:09

Oh, the try try hard studios is taking over the studio of light and sound. The rental house is going back to the earth from whence it came, and so I'll just have the one property that I'm having to pay for on the zero salaries. And so that's getting closer. We're getting closer to an equilibrium. Not quite, but we're getting closer.

Ian

00:13:09 – 00:13:12

That's enough. That's enough. Yeah. 11 is enough. Because it's always that.

Aaron

00:13:12 – 00:13:13

1 is enough.

Ian

00:13:13 – 00:13:22

Our house has had, I mean, like our fridge is leaking water. It doesn't have water piped into it. So it's probably the seal or something. The ovens are acting where it's just like there's always something. Even with just one house,

Aaron

00:13:22 – 00:13:24

always something something. So Always something.

Ian

00:13:25 – 00:13:31

More than enough. Alright. So you're moving. But you had a big week.

Aaron

00:13:31 – 00:13:35

Had a big week. Had a big week. Man, you had

Ian

00:13:35 – 00:13:35

a lot of stuff.

Ian

00:13:35 – 00:13:38

Just look at our notes. You have, like, several huge things. So we're gonna have

Aaron

00:13:38 – 00:13:40

I know. I know.

Ian

00:13:40 – 00:13:43

I don't know. Let's start with whichever you you think here.

Aaron

00:13:43 – 00:13:44

Let's start with DHH.

Ian

00:13:45 – 00:13:46

Let's start with

Ian

00:13:46 – 00:13:46

the course

Ian

00:13:46 – 00:13:46

of that.

Ian

00:13:46 – 00:13:48

Man. Jump right in.

Aaron

00:13:48 – 00:13:53

So I'm doing this course. Right? Doing this SQLite course. Great course. Go sign up.

Aaron

00:13:53 – 00:13:53

Doing this course.

Ian

00:13:53 – 00:13:54

And I

Aaron

00:13:54 – 00:14:14

have this I have this Trello board full of, like, people that I would like to interview about SQLite. And on the, you know, on the cards, like, Nunu's on there because he's using SQLite and the new thing. Bunch bunch of people we know. And then on there is DHH with, like, 3 question marks because I'm like, oh, man. That's a reach.

Aaron

00:14:14 – 00:14:16

I don't know if I can get him.

Ian

00:14:16 – 00:14:17

Stretch goal.

Aaron

00:14:18 – 00:14:25

Stretch goal for sure. And so I'm on Twitter. You know, it just just happened to open the app. Like, I've never

Ian

00:14:25 – 00:14:26

done that before.

Ian

00:14:26 – 00:14:26

So I'm

Aaron

00:14:26 – 00:14:38

on Twitter and I'm scrolling. Yeah. And I see Daniel Vasalo tweet something about, they're using the new Campfire in their small bets community of which I am a part of. It's early, early. I took it a long time ago.

Aaron

00:14:39 – 00:15:00

And so I see, Dino Vassallo tweeting about Campfire, and his screenshot is, it's like the SQLite command line shell. So it just says SQLite 3, and then he's like, select count star from users. He's just counting the users up. And I thought, okay. This is a good this is a good opportunity because Daniel Vassallo and I know each other.

Aaron

00:15:00 – 00:15:17

We're friends. Screenshot, like, shows sequel light, shows campfire. And I think I'm gonna come in the replies and just hit a hit him with a at dhh. Would love to talk to you about this. And he respond DHH responds within, like, 3 minutes, 2 minutes.

Aaron

00:15:18 – 00:15:27

He responds to my tweet and says, sure. Like, send me an email, david@hey.com. I'm, like, okay. Freaking out, man. So I hop over to email.

Aaron

00:15:28 – 00:15:32

Gotta play it cool. Right? You don't wanna come off as, like, an adoring fan. You gotta play it cool.

Ian

00:15:32 – 00:15:33

Very cool.

Aaron

00:15:33 – 00:15:44

So I sent him I sent him an email. I was like, hey. Thanks. This is Erin following up from Twitter, working on this educational series. Would love to talk to you about how y'all use it in Campfire and Rails.

Aaron

00:15:44 – 00:15:59

I can make myself available at any time except next Tuesday because I'm moving. So just tell me when works for you. And he responds immediately and says, how about in an hour? Like, what? This is crazy.

Aaron

00:15:59 – 00:16:06

I went from I went from shooting my shot on Twitter to on a call with DHH in, like, an hour and 15 minutes.

Ian

00:16:06 – 00:16:07

That's crazy.

Ian

00:16:07 – 00:16:07

Crazy.

Aaron

00:16:07 – 00:16:08

Crazy.

Ian

00:16:08 – 00:16:11

Were you already at the office, or did you have to go to the office?

Aaron

00:16:11 – 00:16:24

Fortunately. Fortunately, I was already here, and I was already in, you know, hair and makeup as as they say in the business, and was ready to go. And so I was just like, sure. Let's do it. Wow.

Aaron

00:16:24 – 00:16:36

You have to then then we hopped on we hopped on the call, and he talked for, like, 45, 50 minutes, and it was awesome. It was so fun. Yeah. And that was it. We were done.

Aaron

00:16:36 – 00:16:49

And so then I published it, I think. So I think that was a Thursday, and I published it on Friday, which we can talk about the strategy there. But, yeah, that was a pretty pretty wild ride from tweet to podcast.

Ian

00:16:50 – 00:17:01

I was it was so awesome. Yeah. There's a bunch of interesting little strategy things, I think, in this. But just I'll say right at the top, this is literally the best DHH interview I've seen.

Aaron

00:17:01 – 00:17:01

Yes.

Ian

00:17:01 – 00:17:09

Maybe ever. Definitely since like the old days where he was a little more that's like, since Oh, that's

Aaron

00:17:09 – 00:17:10

my friend you're talking about.

Ian

00:17:10 – 00:17:15

Yeah. Exactly. Ian. So, yeah, it was great. He was, like, sincere, sincere, which doesn't always happen.

Ian

00:17:15 – 00:17:18

I felt like he was, you know, he was talkative, but that's kinda how

Ian

00:17:18 – 00:17:18

he was,

Ian

00:17:18 – 00:17:25

which is fine. He was like great. Yeah. Which is great. And he had a lot of good interesting insights, I thought.

Ian

00:17:26 – 00:18:17

I we can get into some of the details even on the Internet, but, I mean SQLite stuff to me is was all like, I think, great stuff that like the people interested in the course are gonna be really into I thought you had some cool insights with just even how maybe it's not set up by default Mhmm. As you might expect, which would be obviously cool stuff for you to cover. And I even thought some of the stuff that resonated with me from a little bit different angle was him talking about, like, like, simplicity in the with the idea of, like, with that he himself can still build things. And even though, obviously, he had to create a ridiculous scenario of, like, base camp goes out of business and he runs out of money, which is, like, impossible. But even so, just the idea that you want to be able to build stuff without a huge team because even if you are rich and you want it, you just want to build something and you don't want to have to hire poor people to do it.

Ian

00:18:17 – 00:18:36

You wanna be able to do it with your own hands. And so that part really resonated with me. That's kinda my I've been kind of a little bit on that kick the last year or 2 of, like, just poking around and seeing how to even build stuff anymore and what what is the cool kids doing with the new stuff and then deciding I don't like that stuff mostly for a lot of the same reasons. He doesn't like that stuff. Mhmm.

Ian

00:18:36 – 00:19:00

So there's a connection point with me and DJ of, like, all that complexity and what are you actually getting for and all that. So, yeah, that was all really interesting. I'm sure you have some other things on that too, but also the other thing that really stood out to me was just I loved using it. I feel like interviews and courses are often like a thing you add into the course as like, oh, and we have interviews with these people. Mhmm.

Ian

00:19:00 – 00:19:13

But having the interviews in the beginning is it makes so much more sense. Like do the interviews before you launch and then they are the lead gen, as opposed to just being a bonus for you to buy. It's like, no. Forget having it be a bonus to buy. Just use it as lead gen to begin with.

Ian

00:19:13 – 00:19:21

So I thought that was really great that you just, like, did it and got it out. I was wondering if you're gonna do that with the other ones or balance it or what you're thinking there.

Aaron

00:19:21 – 00:19:42

Yeah. That's a great that's a great strategy point I wanna talk about because that was very purposeful. Before that, the strategy on the interview, I am happy to hear you say the other stuff resonated because I wanted to talk to him about SQLite, and we did. But I also know it's DHH, and people wanna listen people wanna listen to him talk. Yeah.

Aaron

00:19:42 – 00:20:12

And so, like, my part of my thought was like, alright. Let's talk about SQLite. Let's, you know, hype that up a little bit, but then also talk about other stuff that would maybe make the interview shareable beyond just, like, if you're interested in SQLite. Like, if you're interested in DHH, he's gonna talk about, you know, his own 2 hands and stoicism, and, like, you're gonna get the good stuff. So come come for the come for that sequel light, and also get the good d h h stuff.

Aaron

00:20:12 – 00:20:25

So that was kind of the strategy with the content there. Yeah. After after I published it, some people were like, oh, dude. I thought you were gonna make this a paid part of the course. And that was that was never the goal.

Aaron

00:20:25 – 00:20:40

One is it makes me feel better to go to these people like DHH and say, hey, I just wanna interview you. It's gonna be free. It's not gonna be behind a paywall. Right. Because I feel a little bit weird, and I don't know if anyone else does.

Aaron

00:20:40 – 00:20:52

I know that people do this for courses, but I feel a little bit weird going to DHH or hopefully the creator of SQLite and being like, hey. Can I interview you? It's gonna be behind a paywall when I'm done. It's like, Yeah. No.

Aaron

00:20:52 – 00:20:53

Like, I'm not gonna

Ian

00:20:53 – 00:20:54

be your bonus material. I'm literally selling you directly to the app.

Aaron

00:20:54 – 00:20:55

Exactly. Weird.

Ian

00:20:55 – 00:20:57

But, also, I

Aaron

00:21:02 – 00:21:18

I think it being free and open gives it a better, like what's the like, a viral coefficient. Right? So if it's free and open, people can watch it and share it, and they don't feel guilty of like, hey. You should watch this DHH thing, but you gotta pay, oh, as part of course.

Ian

00:21:18 – 00:21:19

Right.

Aaron

00:21:19 – 00:21:31

And so I'm hoping that that will increase our reach. And so far, it seems to be working great. So, yeah, that's the strategy That's the strategy for DHH and for all future interviews like that.

Ian

00:21:32 – 00:21:43

Yeah. I think DHH is especially good. I don't know how many more you'll be able to pull off, like this. Exactly. Because the thing, at least for me is like, DH, you know, has owned a business a long time.

Ian

00:21:43 – 00:21:43

He's deep

Ian

00:21:43 – 00:22:09

on like the business end. In addition to, of course the technology where like the creative SQLite is probably gonna be an interview that's like down in the weeds of like the tech of SQLite and ugly Right. Technical stories of how it was built and what you know, all that kind of stuff, which is interesting also. But I think DHH, you get to cover, like, yeah, just so much ground and and just Yep. The idea of it from a different perspective and a very Laravel perspective to me.

Ian

00:22:09 – 00:22:23

Right? Because, like, the Laravel community overall is very entrepreneurial. So it's, like, not just using SQLite because it's cool or it's fast or whatever. Here's the technical whiz bang y thing it does. It's like, here is why we use it from a business perspective the more it makes sense.

Ian

00:22:23 – 00:22:24

Because you

Aaron

00:22:24 – 00:22:28

want to be a one person Right. Business builder like rails people do.

Ian

00:22:28 – 00:22:43

Right. Yeah. Exactly. So that was, I think, spot on with, the crossover to your more inherent audience of the Laravel crew, where it speaks speaks a lot to those of us there too. So, yeah, I thought it was great.

Ian

00:22:45 – 00:22:50

Yeah. I wish every DHH interview or tweet or post was like like this interview. It was it was awesome.

Aaron

00:22:51 – 00:22:53

Well, I'll see if I can start a new podcast with him so you can get more.

Ian

00:22:53 – 00:22:54

There he goes.

Aaron

00:22:54 – 00:22:55

That's alright. If you guys

Ian

00:22:55 – 00:23:02

demote me for DHH, that's fine. That's fine. Oh, no. What else about that? What else about the interview?

Ian

00:23:02 – 00:23:03

I mean, you have it so quick. It was like crazy.

Aaron

00:23:03 – 00:23:04

I mean, like,

Ian

00:23:04 – 00:23:11

I'm doing I'm seeing you on Twitter that you're like, oh, I'm recording now. And then it's done. So now it's been out there. So, oh, yeah. So what about the the release day?

Ian

00:23:11 – 00:23:14

So you took a day. Today, Steve.

Aaron

00:23:15 – 00:23:32

Steve got it edited up and we put together, you know, a short a short trailer. It's just like a couple of clips to get people excited. Put it on Twitter, tweeted. So, you know, the the, like, if you tweet links, you'll get demoted. I don't really

Ian

00:23:32 – 00:23:32

it.

Aaron

00:23:32 – 00:23:46

I I don't really care about that too much, to be honest. But when I have a video, that I wanna tweet, there is a way to tweet the video through the Twitter ad center. This is insane. It's just total product. It doesn't

Ian

00:23:46 – 00:23:48

it doesn't work very well. No.

Aaron

00:23:48 – 00:24:07

It it's, like, not what it's supposed to be used for. It's impossible to find. It barely works, but there's a way to tweet from the ad center. Yeah. And if you do that, you get this nice, like, card experience that shows video title, video description, and a call to action.

Aaron

00:24:08 – 00:24:19

Like, when you click on the video, it'll take you somewhere else. Right. And then you get to still write, you know, all the stuff that you want in the body of the tweet. So I tweeted it that way. You know, DHH retweeted.

Aaron

00:24:19 – 00:24:40

A bunch of people retweeted it. So it's got, like, a 150,000 views on Twitter right now, which is great. And then, I don't know how many views it had. I'd have to log in to Vimeo because, interestingly, and I'd be curious your opinion on this, we put the video on the high performance SQLite domain

Ian

00:24:40 – 00:24:41

Right.

Aaron

00:24:41 – 00:24:50

Not on YouTube. And there's Yeah. There's a that's kind of a test, and there's there's a thought behind it, but I'm curious what you think of that, that strategy.

Ian

00:24:50 – 00:24:55

Yeah. No. I thought it was great. I was like, oh, this is so much better. Like, that's why yeah.

Ian

00:24:55 – 00:25:04

Because this is very everything. If you were doing, like, just a generic DHT interview, like, hey. Come on. Let's shoot the shit. That maybe being on your YouTube makes a lot of sense.

Ian

00:25:04 – 00:25:20

But I feel like for this, it's like you're it has a specific purpose. And even though you didn't cover some other topics that weren't just SQLite, it's like the point of it was SQLite, and that was definitely the thrust of the majority of the conversation. And so that's why he was coming on to begin with, then, yeah, that was great. I mean, I don't know. I see.

Ian

00:25:20 – 00:25:25

And it was nice clean page. You had the little sign up thing, which I assume did okay.

Aaron

00:25:25 – 00:25:26

It did. Yeah.

Ian

00:25:26 – 00:25:47

And so, yeah, I thought that was that was great. I mean, it's always weird when you have, like, stuff that starts to get all over, and it's like, you can't just go to you your YouTube channel and see all of your stuff. Yeah. But you could probably cross post it over there at some point. I mean, I think you might want to, to get the Algo love as well maybe after a couple weeks or whatever time frame is appropriate.

Ian

00:25:47 – 00:25:47

But,

Aaron

00:25:48 – 00:25:53

nailed it. Yeah. Yep. That's exactly that is exactly what we're gonna do. So, yeah, the thought, you you got it, man.

Aaron

00:25:53 – 00:25:53

I don't you don't even need to

Ian

00:25:53 – 00:25:58

be dialed in. I've been having to do this for 9 months. Now I know how you think. Yeah.

Aaron

00:25:58 – 00:26:21

So the thought is, like, we need people to sign up for the list. That's the whole point of this thing. And the question, like, if you look at it, as a funnel, like, how many people are gonna sign up from highperformancesequelite.com if the video is embedded there? Probably a lot more than would leave YouTube to go sign up. Right?

Ian

00:26:21 – 00:26:21

Yep.

Aaron

00:26:21 – 00:26:43

But then, of course, the numbers are inversed when you get one step higher in the funnel. How many people are gonna stumble across it on YouTube a huge amount more than are gonna stumble across it on high performance sepalight. Com. So Yep. The game is, like, if you multiply those two numbers, like, the top of the funnel and the conversion rate, what's the biggest number at the bottom?

Aaron

00:26:43 – 00:26:55

And so for this one, we went with, let's put it on our domain. This is probably one of the best ones, if not the best one or, like, the most, like, highly anticipated, you know, interview.

Ian

00:26:55 – 00:26:55

Yeah.

Aaron

00:26:56 – 00:27:24

And so put it on our domain so that people, 1, know that, like, this thing exists, and 2, will sign up for it. And then we are gonna we are gonna put it on YouTube maybe this week at some point, but we're gonna put it on YouTube as But we wanted to capture that first initial wave of people saying, oh, there's a new DHH interview. Go here and watch it. Some people, like, I sent it I sent it the email an email out to the list that was like, hey. I did a DHH interview, and somebody responded.

Aaron

00:27:24 – 00:27:43

I was like, why why don't you just, like, put this in an RSS feed and turn it into a podcast? I'm like, well, maybe I will, but kind of the whole point the whole point is not for it to just, like, anonymously download in your pod catcher. It's for you to go to the website and sign up. That's kinda the deal. So

Ian

00:27:43 – 00:27:53

Plus having, yeah, another thing that I guess, like, meaning, like, a temporary podcast for the SQLite course or something. I don't know. It just becomes, like, another thing to get people to do. And it's like, yeah.

Aaron

00:27:53 – 00:27:59

I can't I can't spend all my time marketing my marketing assets. I need to market the asset that I'm going to sell. Yeah. Right.

Ian

00:27:59 – 00:28:10

And you have a you have your YouTube channel. You have, you know, the the course website, the email list. Like, yeah, it starts to get to be just impossible to manage too many things like that. Yeah. So, yeah, having

Aaron

00:28:11 – 00:28:24

a a limited run podcast is interesting, but it's literally gonna be, like, you know, 10 interviews over the course of 1 month, and then it's over. Like, if we're gonna do that, we might as well just put all the videos on YouTube

Ian

00:28:24 – 00:28:33

instead. Well, that's I I think that's the podcast gonna be the least useful of all the channels anyway. Like, not the podcast is super discoverable or anything. Yeah. Yeah, I think that makes sense.

Ian

00:28:33 – 00:28:35

Like, it's like we've talked about it here before, but like the, you, the

Aaron

00:28:35 – 00:28:36

podcast is for

Ian

00:28:36 – 00:28:56

like your closer knit crew, like, you have on here. And we, you know, are interacting with the people every week, and they're listening to this every week. And that's the thing. But, yeah, the limited run or even if you had some kind of ongoing SQL light pie I mean, how many listings does that ever get? Like, yeah, nobody wants that.

Ian

00:28:56 – 00:28:57

Gonna be a thing. So

Aaron

00:28:58 – 00:29:12

Yeah. Podcasts are great for, like, deepening relationships over the long term. They're I've I'm assuming, and I think they're terrible for, like, let's make a marketing splash. Like, have you ever tried to make a splash with a podcast? Boy, is it hard.

Ian

00:29:12 – 00:29:25

Yeah. I mean, I can't even think. I mean, there's that one that was, like, the catch a killer or whatever. Like, there's a couple that a bit like that, but it's, like, you know, literally the handful out of movies in the podcast. So, yeah, it's not like a good good strategy probably.

Ian

00:29:25 – 00:29:29

So, yeah, so that was huge.

Aaron

00:29:29 – 00:29:39

That was huge. Last on that, the list is up to 24100 Wow. 2450 is what we're sitting at right now, the prelaunch list for the course.

Ian

00:29:39 – 00:29:46

Okay. So how do you feel about that? How does that compare with now before you went to PlanetScale, you had a list for the MySQL course. Right?

Aaron

00:29:46 – 00:29:53

I did. Or no. And it was like before I went to PlanetScale, the list was, like, 900 or a 1,000.

Ian

00:29:54 – 00:29:56

Oh, okay. So we're well ahead of that. Alright.

Aaron

00:29:56 – 00:30:05

We're well ahead of that, way ahead of the screencasting.com list. I think I had, like, 6 or 700 on that list. Wow. Okay. Alright.

Aaron

00:30:05 – 00:30:10

So, yeah, depending on, you know, conversion rate and pricing, this looks like it's gonna work.

Ian

00:30:11 – 00:30:12

I like

Aaron

00:30:12 – 00:30:28

it. There's a good chance, and I really, really, really hope that this comes to fruition. There's a good chance that after the course launches, try hard studios might have more money in the bank than 1 year of planet scale salary. That would be

Ian

00:30:28 – 00:30:29

Wow. That would be

Aaron

00:30:29 – 00:30:35

That would be awesome. I would love that so much. And it's totally within reach. Like, it it's possible.

Ian

00:30:36 – 00:30:45

So what what what are you gonna do for pricing? I don't know. I'm sure you don't wanna say the exact numbers yet, but are you thinking on the higher end, the lower end?

Aaron

00:30:45 – 00:30:46

The lower end.

Ian

00:30:46 – 00:30:47

The lower end. Okay.

Aaron

00:30:47 – 00:30:58

Thinking on the lower end. Steve is trying to push me up to the higher end, which is good. It's good to have a Steve. We all need a Steve. So a couple of thoughts on it.

Aaron

00:30:58 – 00:31:09

One is I feel like SQLite in its current incarnation amongst web developers is like a prosumer, like, I wanna explore kinda thing.

Ian

00:31:09 – 00:31:10

Right.

Aaron

00:31:10 – 00:31:31

And so I I do feel like it's a little bit of a fundamental difference between a Postgres or a MySQL where people may be like, no. I use this at work already, and I'm behind. And SQLite feels more like, oh, I could use this for my stuff. Let me learn about it. And so there's a little bit of a difference there that pushes me towards the lower side.

Aaron

00:31:31 – 00:31:59

Mhmm. But then the amount of material and the depth and the quality, I do feel like pushes it up to the high side. And then there's also the fact that has sponsored us to, like, go in and build this, and so we don't need to extract every last dollar out of it. And maybe we do lower it and go for, you know, breadth over, you know, most maximizing outcomes. So I don't really know.

Aaron

00:32:00 – 00:32:02

It's gonna be under $200 for sure.

Ian

00:32:02 – 00:32:04

Oh, woah. Okay. Alright.

Aaron

00:32:04 – 00:32:07

Yeah. So somewhere somewhere there

Ian

00:32:07 – 00:32:14

for Terso to help you if it's a lower you know, like, their channels. So, like, if you're trying to sell something that's 9.99, like, it's

Aaron

00:32:14 – 00:32:15

No. Yeah.

Ian

00:32:15 – 00:32:16

They're not gonna be that useful.

Aaron

00:32:16 – 00:32:22

Weird being like, yeah. You can get a database get a pay database for free. Go take this course for $1,000.

Ian

00:32:24 – 00:32:38

Have you are you gonna do anything like tiers, though? Like, it's 199, but then you get it's 3.99 or 275 or whatever. There's, like, certain modules become available or certain extras become available or anything like that.

Aaron

00:32:38 – 00:32:53

I don't know. Part of part of me is just liking the simplicity of single price get it all. Mhmm. I know that that is historically suboptimal. You know, I think Adam would say Yeah.

Aaron

00:32:53 – 00:32:57

No. He'd have Nathan Barry. Nathan Barry would say no. Don't do that.

Ian

00:32:57 – 00:33:02

Because people just buy the best one. I always buy the best one, and then I never really read the book. Best one. Yeah.

Aaron

00:33:02 – 00:33:07

Yeah. Exactly. So I don't know. We'll definitely do, like, a team thing that can push up,

Ian

00:33:07 – 00:33:07

you

Aaron

00:33:07 – 00:33:33

know, the average customer value. We can push that up a little bit. We already I already think interviews are not gonna be bonus, and so I've already kind of, like, precluded that from being a tier. There's a possibility that we, like, carve out, you know, advanced JSON and advanced full text search, carve that out into, like, a higher module or a higher tier that includes other modules. But I I don't know.

Ian

00:33:33 – 00:33:47

I was thinking the, like, stubbing the stuff to me that might even, like, the JSON people, that seems like something that you might wanna use, even if you're just for yourself. But even if you go more, it's like actually like enterprise stuff, like

Aaron

00:33:47 – 00:33:48

Mhmm.

Ian

00:33:48 – 00:34:08

The, if you're gonna use LightStream, how do you use LightStream with SQLite to like have production scalable backup, right? Right. Blah, blah, blah, blah, or, like, the if you get deep into the right ahead file or whatever, like, maybe some of that kind of stuff. That's like, this is not stuff. You're just doing your side stuff.

Ian

00:34:08 – 00:34:22

Like, you don't really need to know about the deep parts of this. But if you're gonna actually try to do this at work, then you do. Or if you just wanna know about it, then it's more money. But Yeah. Some enterprise y parts of it.

Ian

00:34:22 – 00:34:32

Yeah. The full text search perhaps or or at least, like, the advanced more advanced stuff than anything advanced there or managing it or I don't know. If you get into the actual file or

Aaron

00:34:32 – 00:34:58

I feel a little torn on, like, the managing it stuff because more so more so than, Postgres and MySQL, I feel like you are gonna be managing it because Mhmm. It is just a file, like, on on your computer. And so I think the default for Postgres and MySQL is let somebody else manage it. Like, just go to RDS or, you know, he who shall not be named. Go somewhere else.

Ian

00:34:59 – 00:34:59

But I

Aaron

00:34:59 – 00:35:12

feel like the default with SQLite is, yeah, I'm just gonna do it myself. And so to carve out, like, ops and management into a higher tier feels a little bit, you know, like Yeah. Maybe maybe for my SQL, but not for this.

Ian

00:35:12 – 00:35:16

Yeah. Yeah. It makes sense. Well, that's off to a great start. Wow.

Ian

00:35:16 – 00:35:18

20 more on our sign ups. So 20 more

Aaron

00:35:18 – 00:35:19

on our sign ups.

Ian

00:35:19 – 00:35:25

Few more interviews. When it gets closer, people are just generally gonna be more excited about it even than now.

Aaron

00:35:25 – 00:35:55

So And we have YouTube videos that are, like, specifically secret light with, you know, the hopes of getting people to go sign up for the course and yeah. And so I've been sending I've I've sent 2 emails to the list, and this is, you know, a little strategy inside baseball here. One one reason is I got you know, wanna keep the list warm, of course. The other reason is I want launch day emails to land in a good spot, which hopefully is inbox, if not updates, but definitely not spam.

Ian

00:35:56 – 00:35:56

Right.

Aaron

00:35:56 – 00:36:18

And so getting both the domain and the list warmed up before time Yeah. Will hopefully hopefully make Google look at it and say, oh, yeah. Citizen in in good standing launch day emails, you're good to go versus, like, ah, I'm just emailing, you know, 5,000 people for the first time ever on a brand new domain. So yeah. And it's working great.

Aaron

00:36:18 – 00:36:23

People are replying, which helps, of course, send that reputation way up. Yeah.

Ian

00:36:23 – 00:36:27

Yeah. That's due to that's a whole thing. Email.

Aaron

00:36:27 – 00:36:31

Yeah. Yeah. It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing.

Ian

00:36:31 – 00:36:37

Alright. You also had your Laravel react video. I don't think we Yeah. But alright. That was me too.

Ian

00:36:37 – 00:36:38

So Yeah.

Aaron

00:36:38 – 00:36:57

So I did Laravel versus react video, which is a little a little cheeky because the hook is Laravel versus React makes no sense. You guys are being silly. And it's done great. It's, like, my number one video out of the last 10, and it's got, I think, 35,000 views right now, which is good. It's so good for me.

Ian

00:36:57 – 00:36:58

That's so good.

Aaron

00:36:58 – 00:37:17

And yeah. So the whole shtick is, like, you should use React or Vue with Laravel and not use basically, without saying it, I tried to say, like, don't use Next JS. Like, that makes no sense. Don't do that. But, yeah, it was fun, and and Steve really came through on the graphics and made it Yeah.

Ian

00:37:17 – 00:37:26

The graphics really good. Yeah. Yeah. So how did he just built the graphics in some tool or something like that, or who who knows? Who knows who knows

Ian

00:37:26 – 00:37:26

who knows?

Aaron

00:37:26 – 00:37:28

Knows what he does. It's crazy.

Ian

00:37:28 – 00:37:29

Yeah. The graphics are really good.

Aaron

00:37:30 – 00:37:37

Build the graphics in some tool. I think it's probably after effects. Mhmm. I think that's what he uses. But, yeah, it looks so good.

Ian

00:37:37 – 00:37:52

Yeah. I thought that visualization, which, you know, we're gonna have a little special guest here in a little bit, which is directly tied to this, but, the visualization of those concepts, I definitely think was super useful, especially for, the JavaScript crowd who

Aaron

00:37:52 – 00:37:53

Yep.

Ian

00:37:53 – 00:38:21

Aren't really aware of where things start and end necessarily, or at least not from the viewpoint that a Laravel developer would have. And so I think having the if you haven't seen the video, there's just a really nice graphics about here's Laravel, and here's the, you know, here here's the back end. Here's the network. Here's the front end and where all the different tools line up, whether it's Laravel or Rails and, your inertia JSs or LiveWire. And then obviously React and Vue and all that stuff.

Ian

00:38:22 – 00:38:51

Yeah. There's just, like, super nice visuals that made it clear. It's amazing how much better visuals make things I kind of hope like I know I guess you know, it's like all this promise ai but like that's the thing I would love to be able to do with ai like I just wanna, like, create a visual for something, and I don't have a Steve. I guess I could go hire a Steve like person, but that adds, like, all these layers of complexity that I have to deal with. And, like, I just wanna go to the AI and be like, here, here's, like, a little thing I drew, turn it into something that looks nice and have it Mhmm.

Ian

00:38:51 – 00:39:02

Be something I can use in a blog post or on Twitter Totally. Whatever. And, like so maybe we'll get there. I still think it whenever I've tried something like that, it doesn't quite work out the way I would like it to. Yeah.

Ian

00:39:03 – 00:39:13

But we'll probably get there with static things like that anyway. So yeah. Alright. Do we wanna do do the one

Aaron

00:39:13 – 00:39:25

last thing? More. So we're gonna we're gonna bring on a special guest here in a few minutes. Let's do one more. Let's do the new once product, and then after our guest, we can finish with this this final card that's on here.

Aaron

00:39:25 – 00:39:31

We can complain a little bit. So new Once product, my friend my personal friend, DHH,

Ian

00:39:32 – 00:39:33

Yes.

Aaron

00:39:33 – 00:39:51

They announced what their next once.com style product is, and it's, like, first of all, free. Totally free. And it's like a book authoring tool that is based on markdown, but is a web app. And so I forget shoot. What do they call it?

Aaron

00:39:51 – 00:39:53

I even forget what they call it. They call it something

Ian

00:39:53 – 00:39:54

like WriteBoard or something?

Aaron

00:39:54 – 00:39:58

Yeah. Maybe WriteBoard. So they announced it. It's not out yet. Gonna be free.

Aaron

00:39:59 – 00:40:03

And Ian I you know, I went immediately to Ian. Went immediately to Ian. It was, like, a Didn't

Ian

00:40:03 – 00:40:05

even say my pod. Look.

Aaron

00:40:05 – 00:40:09

And he said Ian said, I like it. So I

Ian

00:40:09 – 00:40:09

like it.

Aaron

00:40:09 – 00:40:11

Big surprise from Ian.

Ian

00:40:11 – 00:40:12

No. No. Why do you

Aaron

00:40:12 – 00:40:13

like it? Why do you like it?

Ian

00:40:14 – 00:40:34

For newer listeners, we have talked about one's products before. If you go back into the history, there's a whole episode on it, whatever. But in summary, I think the ones.com homepage is you know, it's not good. Let's just leave it there. It's not good It's very out of touch with the reality of how things work in it IT and in the real world.

Ian

00:40:34 – 00:40:34

Yeah. Yeah.

Ian

00:40:34 – 00:40:56

Yeah. That said, it seems like they're learning and adjusting, and everything about this makes so much more sense to me than Campfire did. Okay. Or if Campfire Fire had been free, that would even make more sense to me. But, like, to pretend that everybody's gonna wanna use on premise software and that that's a real thing is silly, but this makes so much more sense.

Ian

00:40:56 – 00:41:04

It's like we have a need. We're bored. We wanna do something different. Let's make some free stuff. It'll scratch our own itch.

Ian

00:41:04 – 00:41:19

That's even a better way. If you really believe in the, like, everybody's gonna move everything on premise. Mhmm. Then that's even a better way to evangelize that, I think, than with this product that claims it has only bad support and stuff like that. Like, this is just not a good thing.

Ian

00:41:19 – 00:41:29

So just say it's free. It's free. Use it, enjoy it. And it's a nice little tight problem. I think it's a a much more realistic pro it's like an actual problem.

Ian

00:41:31 – 00:41:54

Publishing things in, like, a book style format is not actually that easy. Whereas, like, chat has a whole different dynamic that this tool doesn't solve really, in my opinion. So but but, yeah, I thought it was great. I thought it made so much sense from who they are, from where what they're trying to do. It makes sense as, like, a free thing that people will probably like.

Ian

00:41:54 – 00:42:03

Aussie for an even niche audience, but that's probably good as well. And so, yeah, I thought it was great. I was like, this makes so much sense. I love it. I love it.

Aaron

00:42:03 – 00:42:06

Got the I got the DHH no man to say yes.

Ian

00:42:06 – 00:42:15

Maybe I'll download it and try it. Who knows? Maybe I'll just so. I'll at least look at the code on this one since I can just download it and check it out without, well, having to buy it. So

Aaron

00:42:16 – 00:42:30

Alright. So philosophically fill philosophically, how do you feel how do you feel about, running the same business for 20 years, which you know a lot about, and wanting to make new products. That's gotta feel right to you. Right?

Ian

00:42:31 – 00:42:39

This is alright. So we we're gonna we're gonna have the little conversation then since we're going through this. I was gonna actually put this on the Trello board, but I didn't. Now that we're talking about it, it's

Aaron

00:42:39 – 00:42:42

like done it for so long. I can tell you. I got it. I got it.

Ian

00:42:43 – 00:43:09

So, absolutely, Of course. When you're doing something for this long, and I've been doing it almost as long as they have, and it's like all the time you get bored, or burned out or whatever. And I think all of us make this mistake. I feel like this is campfire once is the same mistake I'm about to describe, which is you get bored, you get burned out, but you got into it because you love programming. Right?

Ian

00:43:09 – 00:43:20

And you're also now a business person and you just go and you make the mistake that we all make, which is, like, to relax, I'm gonna start another software product. Hell yeah.

Aaron

00:43:20 – 00:43:20

Or Of course.

Ian

00:43:21 – 00:43:38

I'm going to rebuild my existing software product and all the new hotness. Right? Like, I'm going to take on that kind of project because that's going to rejuvenate my juices and all those things. And it's, like, always the wrong move. Like, I mean, who can you even name anybody's, like, second product that they built on the side that end up being better?

Ian

00:43:38 – 00:43:58

You know, it's very rare that like that's ever worth doing. It's always ends up being 90% of the time. It just doesn't get done the other, you know, 9% of the time. It's not worth doing and fine. 1% of the time, somebody makes something that makes a lot of money, but it's it's always worse than your original idea that got you to where you were.

Ian

00:43:58 – 00:44:24

And so, yeah, I think that's the same thing with Campfire. It's like, oh, we're gonna we're gonna start a whole new strategy. We're gonna revolutionize software and all this stuff because the board of doing base camp, which I totally get, and they needed that year or 2 to, like, reset and do something else. And so but your mind just goes to that instead of going to things that would actually help you from being burned out or, things of that nature. So that's I've actually been thinking about that a lot.

Ian

00:44:24 – 00:44:33

I actually started writing up, like, a big Twitter, one of those post things, but that was like, god. I know. But I was like, I'll save it for the podcast. But, Yeah. I don't know.

Ian

00:44:33 – 00:44:40

That's I just think so the product so I've made this mistake many times, like at least 5 times over 20 years, I've made this exact

Aaron

00:44:40 – 00:44:41

mistake, including

Ian

00:44:41 – 00:45:13

very recently. And, so I'm still been, so I have been thinking a lot about this very specifically and what to do different and like, how do you go do other things? So even if you wanna do something software, because like, that's like what you do as a side thing, it's like this right board or whatever it's called is like a much better idea. It's like, ah, I'm just gonna build this, and it's gonna be free. I'm not putting all the pressure of starting a company or having support or guarantees, people mad, like, all that stuff.

Ian

00:45:13 – 00:45:44

Nope. None of that. Like, don't go build an open source thing probably either really because again, you get a lot of those same stresses of, like, people are yelling at you to do stuff and whatever. Like, that's all stuff that's just gonna add more stress to your life, which is the problem you had to begin with, which is your main thing is stressful, and you're trying to escape that stress a little bit. So, you know, obviously, the obvious answers people always give is, like, doing stuff outside of work or other hobbies and blah blah, which is fine, and I definitely try to do that.

Ian

00:45:44 – 00:45:54

Whatever. Disconnecting from the computer, I think, is something I've been doing a lot more of. But there is the d h like DHH said on your your interview. Right? Like, he wants to build stuff with his hands.

Ian

00:45:54 – 00:45:54

He wants to

Aaron

00:45:54 – 00:45:56

build stuff with these 2 hands.

Ian

00:45:56 – 00:46:29

Doesn't matter how much money you have. My bones. Infinite money, and he says, I wanna build stuff. Right? So it's like, how do you do that in a way that doesn't add to your stress, and and also hurt your main product because it becomes something that is now taking actual time, down the road a little bit because you have a handful of customers and they have desires and they have bugs and all that stuff, but it's making $1,000 a month and now you're super annoyed, but also you can't like totally dump it.

Ian

00:46:29 – 00:46:39

And so now you're distracted from the actual thing that you probably only are ever gonna have the one good idea. You had the good idea it's working and you're distracting

Ian

00:46:39 – 00:46:39

yourself from it. You know,

Ian

00:46:39 – 00:46:46

for not a good you know, for not a good reason. So so yeah. So that's kind of my

Aaron

00:46:46 – 00:46:47

I'm glad I asked.

Ian

00:46:47 – 00:46:51

Yeah. Yeah. It's sorta weird problem. Right? Because, like, not everybody has it.

Ian

00:46:51 – 00:47:06

You have to get to a point where you have had something successful for 5 years or 7 years or whatever. So you kinda get to that point where it's like, like, we're working on this thing still and all that kind of stuff. But, but, yeah, it does it does happen. Yeah. I don't know.

Ian

00:47:06 – 00:47:15

I'm still figuring it out myself, so I don't I don't I definitely don't have it figured out. It's double it's so easy online. Right? And with building software nowadays to like fall into like, I'll just start a new thing and

Aaron

00:47:15 – 00:47:16

Yes.

Ian

00:47:16 – 00:47:18

Look at Laravel makes it so easy in, like

Aaron

00:47:18 – 00:47:18

I know.

Ian

00:47:18 – 00:47:30

10 seconds. I have full authorization and Stripe and a front end and a back end and it all works. And I'm halfway done is what you Mhmm. Tell yourself, but you're you're not halfway done. You're no none of the way done.

Ian

00:47:30 – 00:48:06

There's all the real work to do. So yeah. So, I'm sure I'll have more on this because this is, like, a place I've been deeply thinking about, but that's kinda where I'm at currently is to try to always be reminding myself to not get too far down these other paths. I feel like you see this a lot even with we've talked about this a little bit before, but people doing this, like, you know, I'm doing 10 startups at once or like every month I'm launching a new thing or I have even if you have 3 or 4 things, it's like, they're again, 99% of the time, it's like, this one makes $50,000 a month, and the other 7 combined make 3,000 a month. It's like, no.

Ian

00:48:06 – 00:48:12

Just get rid of all those. Like, you you had the one good idea. You got lucky. You had a good idea that worked. You should just do that.

Ian

00:48:12 – 00:48:23

Like, don't pretend you're gonna be levels and have 5 products that each make 50,000 a month. Like that's not real. Nobody does that. That's not a real thing. You know, again, it's it's very unlikely.

Ian

00:48:23 – 00:48:39

You're gonna be able to pull that off. You got one thing that made 50,000 a month. That means if you worked harder at it, and were smart and didn't get distracted and all these other things, it can make 150,000 a month. Like you could definitely make 150,000 a month if you're at 50,000 a month. So that's where

Aaron

00:48:39 – 00:48:40

you have

Ian

00:48:40 – 00:48:57

to like kind of, yeah, Stay focused. Or, and when you wanna be not focused, like go be not focused and reset and then come back and be focused on the only idea you've ever had that works and do that thing. So That's the thing. How many people have you ever had 2 good ideas? Like not a lot.

Ian

00:48:57 – 00:49:04

There's not a lot of software founders that have had 2 good ideas. It's a very small number. Very small number. Software is hard. We think it's easy.

Aaron

00:49:04 – 00:49:04

Software is hard.

Ian

00:49:04 – 00:49:07

It's very hard. Software is so hard.

Aaron

00:49:07 – 00:49:08

Yeah. Hard

Ian

00:49:08 – 00:49:10

to get people to take that credit card out.

Aaron

00:49:10 – 00:49:15

Yeah. It sure is. Con content's a lot easier. I'm not gonna lie. Yeah.

Aaron

00:49:15 – 00:49:19

Yes. Alright. Speaking of content, let's get our special guest on

Ian

00:49:19 – 00:49:20

here. Alright.

Aaron

00:49:21 – 00:49:40

Alright. So I'm gonna send I'm gonna send him the link, and he's gonna pop in, And I guess I'll wait till he pops in to intro him so he knows what I've said. So listeners wait with anticipation to see who is about to show up.

Ian

00:49:40 – 00:49:43

We did run a little long, so hopefully, he's still there.

Aaron

00:49:43 – 00:49:44

Hopefully, he's still around.

Ian

00:49:45 – 00:49:47

Oh, there he is. Perfect.

Aaron

00:49:47 – 00:49:57

Here we go. Okay. Alright. Well, I haven't intro ed you yet. So welcome welcome to an in progress recording of the Mostly Technical podcast.

Aaron

00:49:57 – 00:50:24

And for the dear listener, the person who just showed up is Sam Rose. Sam is a Twitter friend of mine, and he recently put out the most killer blog post slash visualization of queuing, etcetera. And it's a delight and so fun to use. And so wanted to have him on the podcast to talk about that post and high effort content and what what the strategy is. So, Sam, welcome to the show.

Aaron

00:50:25 – 00:50:25

Yeah.

Ian

00:50:25 – 00:50:27

Thank you very much for having me.

Aaron

00:50:28 – 00:50:32

Ian, have you met Sam before? Have you seen his stuff or just this one post?

Ian

00:50:32 – 00:50:45

No. I hadn't seen him or his stuff until, I guess, you highlighted the post, I think. Mhmm. And, yeah, I was blown away. I did have a little behind the scenes DM quick with Sam.

Ian

00:50:45 – 00:51:25

And, like I told him, like, I actually started my software career in elearning, and we were building, what product was called active books, and it was basically, like, doing this, but for textbooks that we were part of Prentice hall, we got acquired by Prentice hall. I didn't make any money when we got acquired, but I was working there in Prentice hall and, Yeah, I'd never, I don't know. It's it didn't work out then. And I feel like it still hasn't worked out in e learning in general to have like this sort of like highly interactive content, still pretty rare out there. And just looking at Sam, Sam posts GitHub repo of this course and like when you go in there like, oh, that's there's a lot of work.

Ian

00:51:25 – 00:51:26

That's why it hasn't happened yet.

Ian

00:51:26 – 00:51:27

That's why it

Ian

00:51:27 – 00:51:37

didn't work. You can't just widget stamp these things out. Like, they're all it's very it's like a full product to build this article. So but, yeah, very fascinating. But maybe I don't know.

Ian

00:51:37 – 00:51:51

Do maybe, Sam, you could describe the article a bit just in case people haven't seen it. And we'll obviously link it in the show notes, but you should definitely definitely check this out. But, maybe Sam give us a quick rundown of what you do and this post in particular, but your other posts are similar as well.

Ian

00:51:51 – 00:52:04

Yeah. For sure. Thank you. So this post and most of my posts really are kind of intros to what people would consider kind of computer sciency topics. So I've done load balancing and hashing and memory allocation.

Ian

00:52:04 – 00:52:27

This most recent one was queuing. Kind of, like, fundamentals of things that, in my head, I pick things that are trying to be relevant for a very long time. So I'm hoping that 10 years from now, most of what I have written is still very, very relevant even if the state of the art has moved forward. So you kind of begin at the very beginning, and then most of my stuff tries to do that where it's like, okay, let's start with no queue. Like, what happens with no queue?

Ian

00:52:27 – 00:53:00

And you send a request and the server receives it, and then you send, like, 2 requests very quickly, and you see that the server can't accept the second one. And then building up from there, kind of, try to take the reader on a journey through, okay, let's think of the simplest way of solving that problem, and you do that, and then you highlight, okay, that works great here, but there are more problems. And eventually hoping to end up somewhere, like, not at the full state of the art, but towards nontrivial, actually usable ideas in production.

Aaron

00:53:00 – 00:53:18

So who who are you writing these for? Because these I think you said this one took, like, 3 months to do. And so what is, and and it shows, like, it it's not like, wow, this thing took 3 months. You're like, wow, this only took 3 months. So you look at it and it looks incredible.

Aaron

00:53:18 – 00:53:24

What is your goal? Like, why are you writing these things beyond the goodness of your heart?

Ian

00:53:25 – 00:53:50

There's, like, several competing motivations behind these. One of them, I wish I had this content, you know. I I I find that I learn best if I can see what's happening and and having a this whole thing is like process visualization. It's like visualizing processes and and emergent behaviors and things like that. I wish I had more of this when I was learning.

Ian

00:53:50 – 00:54:23

Like, I learned primarily from textbooks and lectures and, you know, occasionally some good some good video content, although it was a little bit less common back then, aging themselves slightly. So partly for that. Partly, there is a little bit of a financial motivation. Like, I have run written some blog posts for people that have paid me to do it, And it it is nice to kind of make some side money from this thing and maybe, I don't know, like, if I keep doing it and keep getting better at it, maybe I get more customers and I can start to do this as more of a serious thing, although very much far away from that at the moment. And then

Aaron

00:54:24 – 00:54:26

Interesting. Feeling I'm being We need to come back

Ian

00:54:26 – 00:54:26

to that

Aaron

00:54:26 – 00:54:28

one. Keep going. We'll come back to that one.

Ian

00:54:28 – 00:54:52

Yeah. Like, one of the last motivations, just it's it's fun to it's fun to do, and it's fun to get better at. Like, I feel like this style of content, like you mentioned, is still relatively rare. There's there's people in the space, but there's very few offers. And part of that is because it is so challenging, but part of that as well, I think, is you're stitching together a very large number of skills and a lot of those skills that I'm not yet, I think, very good at.

Ian

00:54:52 – 00:55:12

Like, it's all very new to me, like, the design and user experience. I've spent most of my career as a back end engineer or, like, an infrastructure engineer. Having good design sense, it takes, like, forever to to develop that skill. So, like, learning that as a an extra kind of arrow in my quiver is part of the motivation.

Aaron

00:55:13 – 00:55:25

I do feel like there are very few people that do this. I feel like you, Josh w, Komal, Kai Sosnowski, and that's all I can think of right now.

Ian

00:55:25 – 00:55:25

So it's a

Aaron

00:55:25 – 00:55:28

it's like a it's a wide open field, it seems like.

Ian

00:55:28 – 00:55:45

I was talking to Kai about this recently, how, I almost feel like we have a bit of an anti moat. No business is ever gonna make content like this. It's way too expensive. So we're kind of protected from people swooping in and taking over. There are some there are some other people in the space.

Ian

00:55:45 – 00:56:11

Like, you could you could say, like, Julia Evans to to an extent to That's true. Upgrades in the space, and then you've also got Nanda, Nanda, FYI on Twitter, who makes animated SVG content. He's written a course about that, which is fantastic. And then it's, there's a few people one of the nice things about doing this and becoming more and more recognized for it, people email me. Like, I've written something very inspired by your work, which really is really touching.

Ian

00:56:11 – 00:56:29

I really like the people write to me about that. But there was one recently about rate limiting, which was fantastic. And it was it was well timed because rate limiting was not next in my queue, but the one after that and the post this guy had written, his name Sebastian, basically the post I was planning to write. So I said, okay. Well, I don't have to do that anymore.

Ian

00:56:30 – 00:57:13

Well, I think there's something when I thought of when I saw this, being it being new to me, is was like when you get to this on video, which obviously on youtube like I try to find a 100 videos that explain this concept, right? But it's like there's just such a difference between seeing it. Oh, like the last in first out, and here's what happens versus, like, oh, I'm clicking this button and I'm watching things queue up and I'm watching things not make it into the queue, and I'm watching it go last to first or first to last and just, like, just really sticks in your head a lot better when you are taking part in it versus, just statically watching it for this kind of thing, especially. So, yeah, it's kinda interesting. Do you feel limited, I guess, in what topics you can cover?

Ian

00:57:13 – 00:57:21

Because you have to find ones that are highly interactive essentially versus ones that maybe, you know, you can show somebody how it works or things like that.

Ian

00:57:22 – 00:57:30

I haven't felt limited so far. I have a list of things I want to cover, and the the list grows rather than shrinks in part because it takes a

Ian

00:57:30 – 00:57:31

long time to make each one

Ian

00:57:31 – 00:57:54

of them, but in part, I think there is that computer science is an incredibly broad subject area, and there's so many things to write about. Like, I also have, like, a few pet ideas. So I I wrote a post on bloom filters, for example, and bloom filters are not, like, super niche, but they're fairly niche as far as data structures go. And it was a bit of a pet project because I've loved bloom filters for a long time. I think they're incredibly clever application of hash functions.

Ian

00:57:55 – 00:58:05

So, the next pet thing I'd love to write about is a thing called reservoir sampling, which nobody has ever heard of, and it's incredibly hard to find out. To me. I have no idea.

Ian

00:58:05 – 00:58:07

That sounds like some real programming stuff there.

Ian

00:58:07 – 00:58:10

Yeah. No. But this is part of it, though. It really isn't. It's not that hard.

Ian

00:58:10 – 00:58:11

Yeah.

Ian

00:58:11 – 00:58:44

Reservoir sampling is is taking a finite sample from an infinite stream. So you might imagine, like, you're getting messages and you don't know how many you'll get and you wanna take a random sample of those. It's an algorithm that lets you do that. It's very, very simple in practice, and I I part of the motivation behind starting these things is I think a lot of topics, are considered way scarier than they actually are. And as soon as you can, like, begin at the beginning and show people how the topic develops, like, memory allocation was a good example of this where I think the like, 99% of the complexity of memory allocation is optimization.

Ian

00:58:44 – 00:58:54

If you peel back decades of optimization work, memory allocation is very simple. It's just it has decades of layered complexity on top of it, and I think a lot of topics fit into that bucket.

Aaron

00:58:55 – 00:59:03

So I wanna hear about I kinda wanna hear about the the the business angle. You kinda are like, yeah. I like helping people. Maybe I'll make it a business. Also, I like helping people.

Aaron

00:59:03 – 00:59:04

Woah.

Ian

00:59:04 – 00:59:04

Hang on

Aaron

00:59:04 – 00:59:06

a second. What's going on in the middle there?

Ian

00:59:06 – 00:59:07

So get into the juice.

Aaron

00:59:07 – 00:59:14

What do you do what do you do for full time work, and what is the goal of this high effort content?

Ian

00:59:16 – 00:59:38

So, I'm currently working at a company called Buddybase, and we build a low code, app building product. It's open source. You can go and see you you can go and see my day job if you really wanted to. Cool. But the the kind of financial motivation here is, like, I think it would be an incredibly fun career to have writing posts like this.

Ian

00:59:38 – 01:00:08

Like, if that was my entire career, I'd have a blast. The problem is finding enough paying customers and finding enough paying customers that will pay high enough for it, considering how long it takes. Like, you know, I am very far away from making this a full time thing. Like, I think there is some level of possibility to go down to maybe, like, a 4 day week and spend a day a week working on this stuff. And I I wouldn't fully supplement the salary I would lose by doing that, but I think it would be enough that it would be doable.

Ian

01:00:09 – 01:00:15

Just the the main thing is, like, this I find this incredibly fun, and the more I can do off it, the happier I'll be.

Ian

01:00:15 – 01:00:21

Now this was on the Encore site. Was this something you did for them, or do you work there? This was

Ian

01:00:21 – 01:00:35

No. No. Encore is fun. Encore is a very, very small company doing really cool stuff with static analysis and infra. They I actually applied to work there a long time ago, because it's a bunch of people who used to work for a company I worked at.

Ian

01:00:35 – 01:00:45

And it didn't quite work out, but we kind of kept in touch and they reached out saying, you know, really enjoy your blog post. Would you be interested in writing on the Encore blog? And I was like, yeah. Absolutely. Like, I love what you're doing.

Ian

01:00:45 – 01:01:11

I'm very happy to have my name attached to it. That was the post I did on retries, and we picked that one specifically because the product they're building is, like, a SaaS product to help you build microservice architectures. So retry is very, very relevant to that. And then that post did very, very well for them, and they got in touch again asking you, I'd like to write another one. That was the queuing post that was just released a couple of weeks ago.

Ian

01:01:11 – 01:01:32

But, like, they, like, they pay pretty well for considering, so I I've, in the past, like, have been reached out to by LogRocket and things like that, and the the money that I got for the encore post is way more than they are paying purely because they they understood that these take a long time. Mhmm. But the yeah. It's still very, very far away from being a full time thing.

Aaron

01:01:32 – 01:01:42

Yeah. I would imagine the number of companies that want this is somewhat small, and then the number of companies that are willing to pay enough for it is vanishingly small.

Ian

01:01:43 – 01:01:59

Yeah. I I I have had companies reaching out to me, and I do have some calls coming up with them. But I I I would be I wouldn't know how to keep a very steady stream of that kind of business coming in. It's all very new to me, and I I think it would eventually dry up.

Aaron

01:01:59 – 01:02:01

Is there money in go ahead, Ian.

Ian

01:02:01 – 01:02:03

No. You go ahead. I have a

Aaron

01:02:03 – 01:02:07

Is there is there money in teaching other developers how to do this kind of stuff?

Ian

01:02:08 – 01:02:26

Possibly. I know the I know the courses space in general is currently pretty hot, and people are making a lot of money off courses. I wouldn't be surprised if I made a course on how to do this, that it would do okay. I don't know to what extent it would be like a smash hit that would make me lots of money. Mhmm.

Aaron

01:02:27 – 01:02:46

But I last follow-up on this and then, Ian, you go. I think I would love to learn it. But also you've got all these great, like, top of funnel articles out there that just totally crush it. And then if in the middle or the bottom or top, you would say, like, hey. You wanna do learn how to do this?

Aaron

01:02:46 – 01:02:56

I'll teach you. That feels that feels like a really nice built in marketing strategy that's like, hey. Listen. You're on this page because this strategy works. Why don't you learn how to do it as well?

Aaron

01:02:56 – 01:02:57

Ian

01:02:57 – 01:03:09

Yeah. Yeah. A 100% agree with you. And and to an extent, like, I have my little newsletter widget at the bottom of it, and that gives me a bit of a bit of a kind of feel on how well that does, and that's been doing quite well. So that that would be something there for sure.

Ian

01:03:09 – 01:03:27

And the topics themselves, I think, are topics that, like, every year or 2 could come around again. Like, somebody rediscovers this, post it to 8 channel, whatever. It does well again. Like, I think that they don't age very quickly because they're covering, I think, fairly fundamental stuff that isn't gonna change.

Ian

01:03:28 – 01:03:53

Yeah. To me, just to dig into the businessy end of it, I feel like that to me is like the biggest area of, like, maybe improvement, I guess I would say, because like your articles are not all on your domain. Like if I was you, my 2¢ of advice is like, I wouldn't do anything for these other companies and I would just do it all for yourself. And then that widget at the bottom, I was like, I can't believe I'm looking at your articles. I can't believe he doesn't have a newsletter sign up.

Ian

01:03:53 – 01:04:07

But like it, then I saw it's like at the very bottom there. But I mean, I think I would be very aggressive about getting people to sign up for your future articles. Because I think it's the kind of thing where like, oh my God, this was so interactive and cool. Yes. I'm happy to give you my email, which is so rare nowadays.

Ian

01:04:07 – 01:04:25

Like who wants to give anybody their email? Right. But it's like, this was so cool and I know you're not releasing it every day. Right. And so it's like, I just wanna know 4 months from now when you release another one, like, let me know, but like be aggressive in collecting those email addresses, and then figure out what you'll do with it later.

Ian

01:04:25 – 01:04:34

Like it doesn't even matter. You don't have to have a plan now for that. But it's way too subtle on there now, in my opinion. Yeah. It should be like, boom, it's at the top.

Ian

01:04:34 – 01:04:42

I make these awesome things. Don't miss it. Boom. Halfway through the post again, I would have it, like, embedded in there and be like, oh, this is cool. Right?

Ian

01:04:42 – 01:04:51

Don't miss my next one coming up and get that list going. And then who knows what you're gonna do with it? You're gonna figure out what you're gonna do with it later. But, but, yeah, I don't know.

Ian

01:04:51 – 01:04:52

That was

Ian

01:04:52 – 01:04:53

that was my thinking.

Ian

01:04:53 – 01:05:12

This may not have come across yet. I am crushingly British. And it's it actually it it took a huge amount of emotional, like, resilience to just reach out to Aran and ask to be here in his place. Like, it's very, very hard to to be aggressive about these things. British.

Aaron

01:05:12 – 01:05:15

Yeah. Gotta be aggressive. Hashtag.

Ian

01:05:15 – 01:05:15

Hey. If you

Ian

01:05:15 – 01:05:23

can come back here, that's it's like, once you get the newsletter sign in form widget built, you're done. You don't even have think about it yourself anymore. It just keeps just keeps collecting, and

Aaron

01:05:23 – 01:05:30

you're not even looking at it. Business dad, Ian, to say, you gotta do you gotta do more. You gotta be more aggressive. Yeah. I agree.

Aaron

01:05:30 – 01:05:46

I agree with Ian on everything that he just said. Not on everything ever, obviously. But on everything he just said, I fully agree. Get all those people on your list, and then you figure out later what you're gonna do with it. That I mean, having the list is is huge, I think.

Ian

01:05:46 – 01:05:47

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. Sure.

Ian

01:05:47 – 01:05:49

And sorry, angle.

Ian

01:05:49 – 01:06:12

I was just gonna say in terms of selling things for, like, the kind of making money now, which is always nice as well. It's like my inclination would be to keep the stuff that's about computer science for yourself, I think. But but this can apply to all kinds of stuff. Like I can imagine a help spot version of this. That's like customer service agent concepts and how you, train a customer service manager or whatever.

Ian

01:06:12 – 01:06:40

Like you could apply this same style to business problems. And that's the thing I would be trying to make money on, I think, is you like this cool style? Like, imagine this in your business process flow for your internal training or whatever, like, or as your marketing I mean, I could see it on the marketing site for HubSpot or something else where it's like, this is how this works. Look at it. The emails come in, and then they go routed here, and they go routed there.

Ian

01:06:40 – 01:07:00

And then it gets creates a report, and it's like a nice cool little interactive animation thing. Like, so there's probably other ways to have things that don't aren't connected to what you wanna do marketing wise for yourself that you could still make money on as on a consulting basis. And then those worlds would be kinda separate, which I think would be kinda kinda cool.

Ian

01:07:00 – 01:07:14

Yeah. So I'm not the first person to give that advice. I've I've been people have actually, like, cautioned me about you don't need don't do too many of these things. Like, you're kind of diluting yourself a little bit, and, I think I'm coming around to it. Like, I think I'm coming around to the idea that

Ian

01:07:14 – 01:07:28

Yeah. I don't know about diluting yourself. I just think you should do them for yourself. Like, I think it would be better to do more of them, but for yourself on your site, is where I would want like, if you could do 1 a month, it should be on your site. And then, you know, that's how I would probably approach it.

Ian

01:07:28 – 01:07:43

That's what it feels like to me. Because once they're all over the place, it's kind of like, like, I don't even know if you have the rights to use this one. If you wanted to package these up someday and sell it in some way or build a course based on it or whatever, like, you know, so it'd be nice to own, own it all, I think.

Aaron

01:07:44 – 01:07:47

If if Sam is crushingly British, we're aggressively American. I

Ian

01:07:47 – 01:07:48

love it.

Ian

01:07:48 – 01:07:54

We should have, like, a flag with a eagle. Like, Like, I gotta get that at the backdrop, though.

Aaron

01:07:54 – 01:08:05

Man. Okay. Sam. There's there's your, there's your very pro capitalist take on it. I wanna hear, you wrote all this, you did all this work, then you published it.

Aaron

01:08:05 – 01:08:08

What what happened when you published it? How did it go?

Ian

01:08:09 – 01:08:28

So queuing did well. So nothing has ever reached the heights that load balancing did. The first one I ever did, I still get tons of, like, newsletter sign ups. I got people emailing me, thanking me for writing it. It has kind of done the rounds a couple of times now, and nothing has ever come close.

Ian

01:08:28 – 01:08:39

Like, like, the the after I published it, I'm sure he wouldn't mind me saying this, but the CEO of Vassell DM'd me, like, this is an amazing post. Like, well done. I was just like, how do I I don't

Aaron

01:08:39 – 01:08:41

anyway, amazing.

Ian

01:08:41 – 01:08:51

The queuing did good. It got good numbers. I got a lot of really nice feedback from people. I got some constructive feedback from people as well. I do the the nice feedback is nice.

Ian

01:08:51 – 01:09:08

Like, I I'm very thin skinned, and I like validation. Like, I am not fooling myself here. Like, the numbers are validating and nice. But the constructive stuff really helps, and I'm very sincere when I say to people I'm very much trying to get better at this with every post. I'm trying to learn how to do some new things.

Ian

01:09:08 – 01:09:41

I try very hard with accessibility, although I, so I had a I've been having tendinitis recently, so, like, my hands are quite painful, partly as a result of of trying to finish this post off and get it published. So I've been slowing down and, learning how to use, like, voice control on my computer and do voice control coding Cool. Things like that and realized that my post is fundamentally inaccessible to voice control when I was like, oh, no. You failed. So I'm trying to do something every single post that improves accessibility, improves design, iterate on that kind of thing.

Ian

01:09:42 – 01:09:44

I completely forgot what the original question was here. Sorry.

Aaron

01:09:45 – 01:09:49

Just, like, what the the results were and how you feel about the feedback.

Ian

01:09:50 – 01:10:05

I feel good. I feel very good. I it's always you you always feel, like, you know, it would have been good if it was better, but I I I'm very, very happy with the way it went. And, overall, nothing I have written is not a flex, but, like, nothing I have written is, like, flopped. I'm very, very proud of that.

Ian

01:10:05 – 01:10:20

I'm I think it's almost a bit of a cheat code to put enormous amounts of effort in. I find, if you if you think of content as a, like, a punnet square, like, high high frequency, low frequency, high effort, low effort, I find

Ian

01:10:20 – 01:10:20

Ian

01:10:20 – 01:10:40

am surrounded by algorithms that reward the frequency axis, like, way too much in my opinion. Like, posting every day is rewarded very heavily, but and and I guess it'd be very, very difficult to reward quality because it's hard to determine what quality is. But spending a long time building something very, very high quality, you're almost always gonna do well, I think.

Aaron

01:10:40 – 01:10:46

Yes. Yes. I agree. And I think oh goodness. I have a lot of thoughts.

Aaron

01:10:46 – 01:11:18

I think one is, like, being on Twitter is so ephemeral that, like, the the game there is just, like, post whatever's on your mind. Kind of low effort, like, high frequency, low effort, put it out there, see what works, keep moving. But the stuff that gets Vercel CEO to DMU, the stuff that gets on Hacker News once every 3 months, the stuff that, like, gets you on podcasts, that's not the low effort, high frequency. That's just high effort. And I think, fundamentally, high effort has to be low frequency, otherwise, you'll die.

Aaron

01:11:18 – 01:11:35

So I think that I am, of course, a big fan of the high effort. Do more than anyone else would deem reasonable, and you're pretty much guaranteed to get some good outcome, Whether that's a job or a bunch of newsletter sign ups or Guillermo DM ing you, something interesting is gonna happen.

Ian

01:11:35 – 01:11:37

Yeah. Completely agree.

Aaron

01:11:38 – 01:11:39

Yeah. So what's next?

Ian

01:11:39 – 01:11:40

Yeah.

Ian

01:11:42 – 01:12:03

Resting for a while Good. While my hands recover. I have I do have some conversations with other companies coming up, but, I know the next topic I wanna write about for me on my domain, but I tend to be very secretive about them, so I'm not gonna say, but it's gonna be really, really cool. It is possibly the most fundamental of computer science topics. That that's my hint.

Ian

01:12:03 – 01:12:03

Oh,

Ian

01:12:05 – 01:12:07

man. Binary data.

Aaron

01:12:07 – 01:12:10

Yeah. I do. I don't know enough to even have a forecast.

Ian

01:12:12 – 01:12:14

Wow. Oh, gosh.

Aaron

01:12:15 – 01:12:23

Ian, any other questions or anything before Sam, we're gonna let you go. We have one thing to complain about. But, Ian, do you have any questions or follow ups?

Ian

01:12:24 – 01:12:38

No. I just say it was awesome. I think in the age of, like, kind of the depth of the blog post in a lot of ways. Right? That, like, having a blog post that's just so engaging, was really nice and refreshing.

Ian

01:12:38 – 01:12:51

I think that is kind of like a lesson for people. Like, sometimes you can go back to these other formats or whatever. Like, you could take a new spin at something, in a new way and it still is still works. So, yeah, that was that was awesome.

Aaron

01:12:52 – 01:13:00

Sam, any anything, we'll put links we'll put links to everything in the show notes, but anything else that you wanna cover before we tell people where to find

Ian

01:13:01 – 01:13:03

you? No. I'm all good. Just thank you very much again for having me on.

Aaron

01:13:04 – 01:13:14

Well, you're welcome. Thanks for writing high effort, high quality blog posts and then reaching out and being like, hey. I wanna talk about it. That's how this stuff works. That's great.

Aaron

01:13:14 – 01:13:21

I love it so much. So thanks for coming on. Why don't you tell people? We'll put it in the notes, but tell people where they can find you as well. Go ahead.

Ian

01:13:21 – 01:13:30

For sure. Yeah. So, my personal website is samhu.dev. That's samwhodotdev, and my home page has links to essentially everything that I've done.

Aaron

01:13:31 – 01:13:41

Okay. Perfect. Well, thanks for coming in for this, middle of the live show segment, and, y'all go check out his blog post, and we'll be talking to you soon.

Ian

01:13:42 – 01:13:43

Great. Thank you very much.

Aaron

01:13:43 – 01:13:44

Alright. Thanks, Tim.

Ian

01:13:44 – 01:13:45

Bye.

Aaron

01:13:45 – 01:13:49

Alright. I like the I like the guest pop in in the middle and keep the party going.

Ian

01:13:49 – 01:13:51

That's fun. Segment.

Aaron

01:13:51 – 01:13:52

Whoo. That's crazy.

Ian

01:13:52 – 01:13:52

Oh, that's crazy. That was crazy.

Aaron

01:13:53 – 01:14:03

Like a real show. Also hysterical the way he said crushingly British. Delightful. Yeah. That was great.

Ian

01:14:04 – 01:14:05

Alright. Got a

Ian

01:14:05 – 01:14:07

big dose of radiation from us, though. You know? It's like

Aaron

01:14:08 – 01:14:17

Yeah. I know. I know. We're, like, telling him how to turn this, like, this niche little love of his into a big old business where he can work forever.

Ian

01:14:18 – 01:14:22

Yeah. Exactly. Oh, you like doing that? That's great. How are you gonna make tons of money and conquer

Aaron

01:14:22 – 01:14:29

the universe with it? Like You like it? Why don't you do it more, buddy? Sorry, Sam. Alright.

Aaron

01:14:29 – 01:14:34

We got a complaint about I assume this is a complaint. So what what do you have on the card here?

Ian

01:14:34 – 01:14:38

Oh, wait. Oh, no. The final item, that was for Sam.

Aaron

01:14:39 – 01:14:40

Oh, that was for Sam.

Ian

01:14:41 – 01:14:42

For Sam.

Aaron

01:14:42 – 01:14:44

I thought it was the other Sam.

Ian

01:14:45 – 01:14:47

No. Who's this Sam?

Aaron

01:14:48 – 01:14:49

Sam.

Ian

01:14:49 – 01:14:50

We're gonna talk

Ian

01:14:50 – 01:14:50

about it

Ian

01:14:50 – 01:14:52

without him. We're gonna talk about it without him.

Aaron

01:14:53 – 01:14:55

I goofed. I'm sorry, Sam Hoop.

Ian

01:14:55 – 01:14:57

I I forgot it.

Aaron

01:14:57 – 01:15:08

We just patted ourselves on the back for 45 seconds about being a real show and doing segments, and this said Sam, and I thought it was Sam Selikhov. Dang it.

Ian

01:15:08 – 01:15:23

Nope. Sam Rose. I had a little note I added. Well, I just wanted to on his website, like, right at the top of his home page is a little thing about who he is. One of the things that he likes is whiskey with ice, and I just wanted to have a little discussion about that because I'm a neat man myself.

Ian

01:15:23 – 01:15:26

And, we got a little banter. But That

Aaron

01:15:26 – 01:15:29

would have been an No banter. That would have been very neat.

Ian

01:15:29 – 01:15:34

So now I'll ask you. Are are you are you on the air?

Aaron

01:15:34 – 01:15:36

I'm gonna go show. Hello.

Ian

01:15:37 – 01:15:39

Wait. Maybe you scrap the whole thing.

Aaron

01:15:39 – 01:15:54

I've never record. I've never bugled anything so badly than letting the guest go before the card that says Sam, colon, ice and his whiskey. Shoot. Oh. Golly.

Aaron

01:15:54 – 01:15:55

We're we're

Ian

01:15:55 – 01:15:56

not used to this pop in segment.

Aaron

01:15:56 – 01:16:06

No. That's on us. Okay. So let's talk about Sam putting ice on his whiskey now that he's gone. Wow.

Aaron

01:16:06 – 01:16:10

What a what a disaster. I don't know, man. I don't drink whiskey. I drink

Ian

01:16:10 – 01:16:11

No whiskey?

Aaron

01:16:11 – 01:16:16

So, yeah, it's not even a segment. What am I gonna do? I can't even do the segment. Gosh.

Ian

01:16:17 – 01:16:18

Can't even do

Aaron

01:16:18 – 01:16:20

That's on me.

Ian

01:16:20 – 01:16:25

I thought see, because it's funny because we have some a follow-up item. I thought you were gonna want to cover this follow-up item

Aaron

01:16:25 – 01:16:26

about the iPhone

Ian

01:16:26 – 01:16:29

tracking stuff, so I thought that was your final segment.

Aaron

01:16:29 – 01:16:30

We let's move on now.

Ian

01:16:30 – 01:16:36

Disconnected. Let's give the people one final segment of something. We promised

Aaron

01:16:36 – 01:16:39

the final segment. Nightmare. That's such a Alright.

Ian

01:16:39 – 01:16:40

So Downer.

Aaron

01:16:41 – 01:16:59

Yeah. Now and we're back. Okay. Let's talk about this final segment. I asked a bunch of young people about this iPhone tracking debacle, and you, Ian, will be so shocked when I tell you they all track each other.

Ian

01:16:59 – 01:17:00

Are these children?

Aaron

01:17:00 – 01:17:02

Like, as friends. No. Like,

Ian

01:17:02 – 01:17:03

mid 6?

Aaron

01:17:03 – 01:17:12

Mid twenties. 25, 25 and beyond. They're like, yeah. I probably have oh, I don't know. I probably have 20 or 30 people that I share my location with.

Ian

01:17:12 – 01:17:13

What are these people?

Aaron

01:17:13 – 01:17:21

It's fun. Every now and then, I'll get a text, and I'm they're like, what are you doing at Trader Joe's? And I'm like, y'all are crazy. This is

Ian

01:17:21 – 01:17:22

beyond Exactly.

Aaron

01:17:22 – 01:17:25

This is way beyond anything I would ever do. But they're all like, yeah.

Ian

01:17:25 – 01:17:26

It's just

Aaron

01:17:26 – 01:17:29

you know, I like to see what my friends are up to. Crazy.

Ian

01:17:30 – 01:17:32

This is the problem with the youth. The youth.

Aaron

01:17:32 – 01:17:39

No. This is this is the youth have a lot of problems. This is not their problem, but, yeah, the youth have problems. But this is this is crazy.

Ian

01:17:40 – 01:17:46

No. I tell you, man. I see now where when you're young, you think the old people are crazy. Why the old people think the youth are all messed up. I'm starting to get it.

Ian

01:17:46 – 01:17:53

I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I'm like, oh, these youth with the screens and the iPhones and the tracking.

Aaron

01:17:54 – 01:17:54

Frameworks and

Ian

01:17:54 – 01:18:03

JavaScript, TypeScript, BS, all of it. It's all bad. All bad. You don't need anybody tracking you. Don't let people track you.

Aaron

01:18:03 – 01:18:07

I I happen to agree that you don't need your friends tracking you. That that that

Ian

01:18:07 – 01:18:09

Alright. Common ground. Within within the

Aaron

01:18:09 – 01:18:18

covenant of marriage, I'm like, great. You should you can know where I am all the time. I don't super care. Right. But, like, I don't need I don't need my idiot friends to know what I'm doing all

Ian

01:18:18 – 01:18:21

the time. No. Who knows who they're letting their phone with? Who the whole thing?

Ian

01:18:21 – 01:18:22

You know what I mean?

Aaron

01:18:22 – 01:18:25

They're probably they're probably broadcasting my location live.

Ian

01:18:25 – 01:18:26

It could be.

Aaron

01:18:26 – 01:18:27

It's a vector. It's an attack vector.

Ian

01:18:27 – 01:18:31

It's another vector. It's unnecessary. Oh, man. Wow.

Aaron

01:18:31 – 01:18:35

Do it. Really saved it. We really salvaged that that last segment there.

Ian

01:18:35 – 01:18:37

That was much better than talking to Sam about how he likes

Aaron

01:18:37 – 01:18:38

to be.

Ian

01:18:38 – 01:18:40

Better than Sure. That was much better.

Aaron

01:18:40 – 01:18:45

The card that was on the board for the guest that I then said, you can go now so

Ian

01:18:45 – 01:18:51

we can talk. We always gotta use last names on the cards from now on. We can't Yeah. We can't risk it. Okay.

Aaron

01:18:51 – 01:18:56

Well, if, you wanna be a segment on a on the show, just let us know, and we'll try

Ian

01:18:56 – 01:18:56

not to

Aaron

01:18:56 – 01:18:57

fumble it next time.

Ian

01:18:57 – 01:19:02

Maybe. We do have a guest next week. A big one. A big guest.

Aaron

01:19:02 – 01:19:04

So Alright. Are we announcing?

Ian

01:19:04 – 01:19:06

We'll see. No. It's not. I don't know. We can't even know.

Ian

01:19:06 – 01:19:14

Stuff happens, and then it doesn't it doesn't work out. And then That's crazy. Yeah. So we'll just gonna let it happen, but we're gonna try not to bungle that one. Oh, man.

Ian

01:19:14 – 01:19:15

Promise.

Aaron

01:19:15 – 01:19:16

Try not to. Can't bungle

Ian

01:19:16 – 01:19:17

that one.

Ian

01:19:17 – 01:19:22

We can't promise. Alright. Let's wrap it now. I'm I'm deflated. I've been hacked this morning.

Ian

01:19:23 – 01:19:25

I messed up the card. Whatever. It'll be alright.

Aaron

01:19:26 – 01:19:28

You're gonna go have a beer mosa. Do you know what a beer mosa is?

Ian

01:19:28 – 01:19:29

No. I don't actually know what a beer

Aaron

01:19:29 – 01:19:36

mosa is. Name, actually. It's it's yeah. It's, a little bit champagne, but, like, beer and orange juice.

Ian

01:19:37 – 01:19:38

Beer and orange juice.

Aaron

01:19:38 – 01:19:39

Beer and orange juice. It's good.

Ian

01:19:39 – 01:19:42

I've had, like that Belgian beer with, like, orange

Ian

01:19:42 – 01:19:42

Yeah. Yeah.

Ian

01:19:43 – 01:19:44

Places and stuff, but I don't

Aaron

01:19:44 – 01:19:46

think that's a good one for your emotions.

Ian

01:19:46 – 01:19:48

Yeah. That's very Texas. I like that. We can

Ian

01:19:48 – 01:19:49

have that

Aaron

01:19:49 – 01:19:55

Great way to start that fresh holiday weekend or the guys weekend, or you just start out with some beer moses.

Ian

01:19:55 – 01:19:55

Ian

01:19:55 – 01:19:58

I've been kind of off with the drinking, but I I did,

Aaron

01:19:58 – 01:20:01

Man, we don't have time. This is crazy, man.

Ian

01:20:02 – 01:20:11

I should get back into the drinking. I'm not, like, officially off it, but, like, I'm not I'm not, like, not drinking, but I'm just having been drinking. I haven't had a drink in, like, 3 or 4 months probably or something

Aaron

01:20:11 – 01:20:25

like that. So Well, Mary Perry will be glad to hear that I never actually started nicotine, so she she influenced me. I was gonna start the zen. I was gonna start the zen and unlock, like, limitless powers, and Mary Berry texted me and was like, please don't do that. It's like, ah, she Oh,

Ian

01:20:25 – 01:20:26

did she?

Aaron

01:20:26 – 01:20:27

Yeah. She did. She really did.

Ian

01:20:27 – 01:20:29

Concerned about you.

Aaron

01:20:29 – 01:20:33

People are concerned. I'm like, nicotine's good. Right? And I get a bunch of DMs. So I

Ian

01:20:33 – 01:20:33

just love their marketing, though, because it's, like, just like zin.

Ian

01:20:33 – 01:20:35

It's just, like, white. Like, there's just, like, zen. It's just, like, white.

Ian

01:20:35 – 01:20:35

Like, there's just, like, no money spent on it or maybe tons of money spent on it.

Ian

01:20:35 – 01:20:46

Right? Who knows? Like, maybe they have some brand managers and the whole thing, and it's got 20,000,000 into the brand.

Ian

01:20:46 – 01:20:46

But whatever it is

Aaron

01:20:47 – 01:20:53

It's the whole I woke up like this, trying hard to look like you didn't try hard. And they're they're pulling it off. Yeah.

Ian

01:20:53 – 01:20:59

Yeah. They are pulling it off, though. Alright. Thanks everybody. Follow us.

Ian

01:20:59 – 01:21:13

Mostly technical.com at mostly tech pod on Twitter x, whatever. Mostlytechnicalpodcast@gmail.com, and we'll probably check those emails soon. And we will, see you next week with hopefully a very special guest.

Ian

01:21:13 – 01:21:14

Talk to

Ian

01:21:14 – 01:21:14

you later.

Aaron

01:21:15 – 01:21:15

See you.

Business Dad

Transcript

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