Aaron Francis

Aaron is joined this week by Adam Wathan to talk about everything from Disney Cruises to what he wants to do on YouTube and a whole lot more. Sponsored by: Bento - https://bentonow.com/ WorkOS - https://workos.com/ Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more. 00:00 The Disney Debate 03:08 Zero MRR 04:55 YouTube Stuff 13:18 Course Talk 23:13 Competitive Advantage 42:28 Building A Course Platform 52:38 Tailwind's YouTube Strategy 01:23:11 Nanny Talk

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Transcript

Aaron

00:00:00 – 00:00:10

Alright. Welcome back to the show, mister Wavin. We have no Ian today. I'm sure he's he's sick again probably from Disney. So I got I got a Adam Wavin.

Adam Wathan

00:00:10 – 00:00:12

Disney will do it to you. Disney will do it to you.

Aaron

00:00:12 – 00:00:14

Are you on my team for the Disney debate?

Adam Wathan

00:00:15 – 00:00:25

The Disney thing is kinda interesting, actually. I I'm not a Disney adult. I'll say that. You know? I'm not I'm not secretly someone who's in love with Disney.

Adam Wathan

00:00:25 – 00:00:34

Mhmm. I will say it is fun to take the kids there. The kids have a good time. It's nice to see the kids have a good time. It's nice to see the kids be excited.

Adam Wathan

00:00:34 – 00:00:43

You know? So that's good. Personally, not a lot there for me. The rise kind of are weak. You know?

Adam Wathan

00:00:43 – 00:01:00

Yeah. But I will say what is actually truly epic is the Disney cruise. Oh, okay. We've done two Disney cruises, and those have been by far my most enjoyed family vacations we've ever done. Really?

Adam Wathan

00:01:00 – 00:01:00

Yeah.

Aaron

00:01:01 – 00:01:16

I've only done one cruise ever, and it was no kids, and it was Alaska. And it was awesome. It was really great. I and I have friends who are like, you, how could you like a cruise that's the most peasant thing in the world? And I'm like, man, it was cruises

Adam Wathan

00:01:16 – 00:01:31

are great. Dude, I never thought I would ever like a cruise. Like, the idea of being on a big giant metal thing that has no business floating Mhmm. In the middle of open water sounded like it would be sort of terrifying. Traps with

Aaron

00:01:31 – 00:01:32

a bunch of people.

Adam Wathan

00:01:32 – 00:01:48

Extremely serene, you know, actually, to be out on the deck and not be able to see anything except water. And then the Disneyification of it for the kids is just, like, ideal. I don't know. Normally, you go on trips with the kids, and it's like you're jamming everyone into the car. You gotta put everyone in their car seats.

Adam Wathan

00:01:48 – 00:01:59

You're doing a little day trip somewhere. You gotta bring all your goddamn stuff and hope you don't forget anything. And do we got the wipes? Do we got the diapers? Do we got the change of clothes in case the kid shits their pants?

Adam Wathan

00:01:59 – 00:02:18

You know, all that stuff. And, but on the Disney cruise, man, it's just like all the entertainment is in the vessel that you're on. It's just put them in a stroller, walk them to the Minnie Mouse meet and greet, go to the Mickey Mouse dance party, kid shits the pants, you just take them back to the room. It's no problem. You know?

Adam Wathan

00:02:19 – 00:02:27

So, it's it was just it's real low key, low stress. There's a million things to do. The kids have a great time. Yeah. I don't know.

Adam Wathan

00:02:27 – 00:02:31

Is is vacation on easy mode in my opinion? And,

Aaron

00:02:31 – 00:02:41

I do love really good. I do love the no schlepping. That's the part I hate about about the trips with kids is the schlepping. Dude, there's so much stuff.

Adam Wathan

00:02:41 – 00:02:48

If there's if if if you have any reason to need to bring a wagon with you, you've already lost. You know? Yeah. So

Aaron

00:02:49 – 00:03:01

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Oh, well, we hope Ian gets better. I actually have no idea why he's sick, but, keep your gallbladder, folks, because ever since, you know, ever since he lost it, he's been getting sick.

Aaron

00:03:01 – 00:03:03

So there's gallbladder does something. We don't know what,

Adam Wathan

00:03:03 – 00:03:06

but we don't know why. That. There's yeah.

Aaron

00:03:07 – 00:03:10

Alright. So we got a couple of things we wanna talk about. First

Adam Wathan

00:03:10 – 00:03:13

Do you have any topics today? I got a couple things. But I

Aaron

00:03:13 – 00:03:29

have I have a few. First is one that I found hysterical. You tweeted a few days ago, seven years into this and still at zero MRR, and the comments were all condolences for Adam. Yeah. So I don't I don't think people quite got it.

Adam Wathan

00:03:29 – 00:03:59

Well, I'll tell you what the motivation for that tweet was. A friend of mine I I don't know if you've have you've noticed this too, but in a sort of, like, a sort of online indie hacking, quote, unquote, community I wouldn't really say it's a community. It's just a lot of self identified indie hackers. Peter sent me, like, a screenshot of something where someone was on Twitter saying, I just reached, like, three k and MRR, and then Peter went to their website and took a screenshot of their pricing, and and the pricing was one time. And it's just like, you're at $0 in MRR, actually.

Adam Wathan

00:03:59 – 00:04:03

Yep. Yep. You know what I mean? Exactly. There's definitely a bit of a contagion on the Internet of people.

Adam Wathan

00:04:03 – 00:04:28

Anytime they make a dollar, they classify it as recurring revenue. And I would argue that if if someone until someone pays you for that second time, it's hard to really classify it as, like, recurring in the first place. So I just thought I would take a little jab at that, and I posted, the tweet about being at $0 recurring revenue. Even though it's, like, we do make millions of dollars a year,

Aaron

00:04:28 – 00:04:35

we're doing just fine. So It was very funny. There were some very earnest, well meaning people like, hey. Do you take sponsorships? I would love to support.

Aaron

00:04:35 – 00:04:39

And it's like Yeah. That's nice, but I think you missed the joke.

Adam Wathan

00:04:39 – 00:04:41

Yeah. I mean, I'll still take it. But,

Aaron

00:04:41 – 00:04:42

But yeah.

Adam Wathan

00:04:42 – 00:04:47

I I liked Daniel Vasalo's reply, which, was just like, you know, r is enough.

Aaron

00:04:47 – 00:04:52

R is enough. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. He's been on about that for a while.

Aaron

00:04:52 – 00:04:59

Yeah. Alright. So that's just a little one. So I have some topics, but you wanna talk YouTube. I I don't know.

Aaron

00:04:59 – 00:05:02

Where do you where do you wanna go? Do you wanna start with YouTube? Because that might take

Adam Wathan

00:05:02 – 00:05:26

a lot. I mean, I got I got a bunch of a bunch of stuff all related to that. I mean, it all kinda started for me as we did this, we did that little mini course thing that you might have seen, that email course. Had this idea to do that as sort of a marketing project, build up a list, you know, deliver some free value, have the opportunity to mention a paid thing, see if Mhmm. You know, some percentage of people jump on that, thought that would be good for business.

Adam Wathan

00:05:26 – 00:05:42

Side note didn't really work. That's fine. But instead, kind of the fun outcome from that for me was, the when we wanted to get all the recording and everything going, getting everything started, Steve came by to work with me for the day. My Steve, not your Steve. Mhmm.

Adam Wathan

00:05:42 – 00:05:59

My Steve came by, to my place just to sort of help me kinda get the space ready to record. So much easier to, like, position lights and the camera and all that stuff when someone can sit in the chair and someone else could sort of move everything around. Mhmm. And we put up a bunch of acoustic panels or arranged a bunch of stuff, whatever.

Aaron

00:05:59 – 00:06:01

Space looks awesome, by the way.

Adam Wathan

00:06:01 – 00:06:11

Thanks, man. Yeah. So kinda just got all that stuff figured out. And at the end of that day, I was just it was just kinda like, man, that was a fun day. You know?

Adam Wathan

00:06:11 – 00:06:39

Like, it's been a I can't it's probably I've been working from home for, like, ten years. That's, like, the most fun I've ever had, like, working from home is, like, hanging out with somebody else doing stuff where we're moving around a little bit or whatever. And it just kinda made me start thinking, like, am I not am I sort of undervaluing or I don't know what the right word is, but just not really recognizing how much better my life would be if I was, like, working with friends in person. You know?

Aaron

00:06:39 – 00:06:40

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Adam Wathan

00:06:40 – 00:07:10

So it kinda got me on a little bit of a kick thinking, like, Steve, maybe we should try that out. Like, maybe we should rent an office. And, Steve's been really wanting to get back into doing the refactoring UI videos that he used to do, videos, like the before and after videos. We've been talking about kinda doing a second edition of the Refactoring UI book and making it a bit more of a web based thing where we can add video content and stuff. And I used to do so much more video content and streaming and stuff like that.

Adam Wathan

00:07:10 – 00:07:36

And anytime I kinda, like, force myself to do it, I actually realize I actually really enjoy doing that stuff, and I think it would be good for business. And then on top of that, I sort of have been desperate for a bit of a new challenge, but I haven't really been able to figure out what that is. And it's also kinda hard to just do something that feels, like, completely different.

Aaron

00:07:36 – 00:07:37

Sure.

Adam Wathan

00:07:38 – 00:08:05

But, yeah, that kind of experience got me thinking, man, maybe it would be fun to try going, like, really hard into video and YouTube and sort of trying to figure that out and master that and working on it in person and setting up a studio with, like Mhmm. Multiple sets and Mhmm. You know, that just sounds kind of like a a new era. You know? And I kinda feel like I need the next era at this point because I've been doing things sort of the same way for a long time.

Adam Wathan

00:08:06 – 00:08:43

And, obviously, we'd still be building Tailwind and maintaining Tailwind and all the stuff that we're doing, but I just I got really excited about this idea of, like, let's, like, draw a line in the timeline here, you know, where there's, like, a very clear, this is new, versus how we were doing things before. So I got excited about that. We went and looked at some spaces last week. Didn't really find exactly what we were looking for. We're supposed to look at some spaces this week, but me and Steve ultimately kinda decided, why don't we just try setting up some space in my house, because we can do that right away.

Adam Wathan

00:08:43 – 00:09:15

And I just put all this effort into setting up my office for recording stuff, and we have another room that we can use to sort of work out of. And just try that out and go all in on it, and if four months in, we're like, this is sick, we need to get an office, then we'll get an office. If it just doesn't come to fruition and Steve ends up only coming, like, once a week and just kind of, like, flames out, well, now we're not stuck with, like, a five year lease on some, like, building or something. Yeah. So, yeah, that's kinda, like, what I'm excited about right now.

Adam Wathan

00:09:15 – 00:09:44

And I've been thinking a lot about what does it mean for us to get into into YouTube stuff, what's the strategy, what is the business model, you know, whatever. And I thought it'd be fun to talk to you about some of that stuff because, obviously, it's something that you think a lot about too. And I also think it's way easier for you to give me advice than it is for me to give my self advice. The same way it's easier for me to give you advice than it is for me to take my own advice. You know?

Aaron

00:09:44 – 00:09:50

Correct. A %. Yeah. Okay. So let's let's back all the way up to Steve came over.

Aaron

00:09:50 – 00:09:54

Steve lives nearby. Right? Steve lives, like, twenty minutes away.

Adam Wathan

00:09:54 – 00:09:55

He's about twenty minutes away.

Aaron

00:09:55 – 00:10:02

K. So y'all live in the same same town. You just got a new house. You have a new space where you can record. So that's kind of the physical setup.

Aaron

00:10:03 – 00:10:23

So in terms of, like let's see. In terms of YouTube for Tailwind and YouTube for Adam, it does sound like and I think I think you've known this for a while, and I think I have known this for a while. You need a new challenge. You said that. And I think that's been true for more people.

Adam Wathan

00:10:24 – 00:10:25

Yeah. Yeah. Number of years.

Aaron

00:10:25 – 00:10:48

So you need you need something new to, like, to put all that Adam Wadden energy into. Yeah. Because it feels like you've been pushing that tailwind boulder up the hill for a long time successfully and and well, but it does feel like you like to build stuff. We gotta get you building something. So I totally vibe with that, and I I agree that that is pretty important for you.

Aaron

00:10:48 – 00:10:50

You were taking a breath. What do you wanna say?

Adam Wathan

00:10:50 – 00:10:53

No. I just I gotta breathe sometimes. I am Okay.

Aaron

00:10:53 – 00:10:56

That's fair. Being. I Okay. Well, when I'm talking, try not to breathe. Okay.

Aaron

00:10:56 – 00:11:18

So you gotta you gotta have a new challenge. I guess my question is, for the YouTube stuff, are you thinking of this as are you thinking of this as, like, potentially the next thing, or this will help you find the next thing that is not next, like, moving on from tailwind, but tailwind adjacent outlet? Does that make sense?

Adam Wathan

00:11:18 – 00:11:39

Yeah. I'm not sure. I think it's a little bit of both. Like, there's some obvious moves, I think, and then there's some just sort of hoping that doing something different means I'm gonna bump into different problems, and I'm gonna Mhmm. Like, I think there's gonna be that thing where I'm like, how are people building or how are people doing YouTube channels solving this problem?

Adam Wathan

00:11:39 – 00:11:56

And it turns out no one's solving it, and everyone's just quietly grumpy about it, but no one's done anything about it, and then you get excited to solve that that you know? That seems to happen to me a lot. So I I doubt. I don't know what that could be, but I expect that that'll happen. It's it's I think of it almost like a luck surface area thing, but it's not luck.

Adam Wathan

00:11:56 – 00:12:04

It's just like a problem exposure surface area that Mhmm. You kinda just need to do stuff to find out what to do. You know?

Aaron

00:12:04 – 00:12:14

Yes. So your hope is that the YouTube channel puts you in motion and on a good path for bumping into opportunities, but also having a lot of fun along the way.

Adam Wathan

00:12:14 – 00:12:47

Fun on its own. Like, there's plenty of stuff for us to just do that we need to do already that will be more fun if we're making content out of it too. And it's just a good excuse to hang out in person and Mhmm. And work on stuff together. And, you know, like, we've been ramping up to do, like, a paid Tailwind course or UI course or something just because the whole business model is just, like, one time purchase Tailwind Plus thing, which is works great for us, but also means, like, those people can't pay us for Right.

Adam Wathan

00:12:47 – 00:13:10

Anything else ever again. It'd be nice to come up with something that feels different enough from that that some percentage of those people would be interested in. And in general, it'd just be nice to have more than one thing on the website to sell because Tailwind Success just gets so much traffic. It's just kinda silly if there's only one thing that we sell on that website. It just seems like the most high leverage thing that we could do.

Adam Wathan

00:13:10 – 00:13:16

Although, it could be totally wrong about that. I feel like I'm wrong about a lot of things that seem obvious to me lately. So we'll see.

Aaron

00:13:16 – 00:13:28

To be right about a few, so that's fine. What happens with tell me explain to me this email course that you did. So it was like a six, seven video thing, and how did how did that go down? Because you said not great, but let's let's talk

Adam Wathan

00:13:28 – 00:13:34

about that. I just did a podcast with Justin and Jackson and Brian that went deeper into it, but I'll recap here. Basically, we did this

Aaron

00:13:34 – 00:13:37

isn't out yet, so we're gonna scoop them. So this is perfect for me.

Adam Wathan

00:13:38 – 00:13:54

So, basically, we did this thing. I I I the inspiration was I was talking to somebody else about their product and talking about, like, we got into this conversation of, how to sort of make something work beyond the launch. You know? Mhmm. Mhmm.

Adam Wathan

00:13:54 – 00:14:28

And you need, like, some way of finding new people and being able to, like, convince those people to buy. Because a lot of stuff that I've done, a lot of stuff people who do similar things to me have done, you get this big spike at the beginning, and then it sort of dies off, other than people just randomly stumbling across the website. So Mhmm. I suggested this idea of, like, an email sequence that has some value on its own because that becomes this sort of, like, mini evergreen launch machine because you get people in this sequence of however many emails, and they're getting sort of warmed up for, a pitch eventually. Right?

Adam Wathan

00:14:28 – 00:15:05

It's like a pretty standard sort of marketing playbook, works pretty well. And, I thought, you know, that's kind of kinda silly that I'm giving this advice to somebody else, and we're not doing anything like that. So So I just started thinking, what could we do that could get people to give us their email address, give them some value, hopefully earn their sort of trust and make them think that we're good at what we're due and and then let them know about something that we have for sale, and they can decide if if they wanna buy it or not. And with any luck, they'll be more inclined to buy it after us sort of demonstrating our expertise than they would be just kind of browsing the website cold. You know?

Adam Wathan

00:15:05 – 00:15:48

So we did this email course called build UIs that don't suck, where kind of the structure of it is I basically take some UI pattern or demo or something that's based on something in Tailwind UI, now Tailwind Plus, and I basically show you the broken way to build it that a lot a lot of people would do and then iteratively improve it and eventually get to a solution that I think a lot of people wouldn't be familiar with and sort of think, man, that's clever. This is really cool. I'm excited to do this in my own projects. So and then in the course, it kind of, like, pitches you on Tailwind Plus a couple times. I think, like, the third email and the fifth email.

Adam Wathan

00:15:48 – 00:15:56

So we put that out there. It's still averaging, like, four to 500 sign ups per day right now, which is pretty insane.

Aaron

00:15:57 – 00:15:58

Right? That's amazing.

Adam Wathan

00:15:58 – 00:16:00

It is amazing in terms of sign ups.

Aaron

00:16:00 – 00:16:01

In terms of sign ups?

Adam Wathan

00:16:01 – 00:16:25

Only had 25 sales from, like, 16 or 17,000 sign ups. K. Which was sort of soul crushing because I was sort of thinking, if we're getting 500 people signing up, you know, even 1% of that would be five extra sales per day, which would be, like, very significant for the business. You know? And instead, it's like a sale every couple days, which is Yeah.

Adam Wathan

00:16:25 – 00:16:28

Brutal. Over the course of the year, it's not nothing. It's probably a couple hundred grand. You know?

Aaron

00:16:28 – 00:16:32

It was a good it was a good return for a week's worth of effort, but not really

Adam Wathan

00:16:32 – 00:16:47

worth it. Return on it, but I I was a little disappointed that it wasn't when we were working on it, we're like, man, we're so stupid for not doing this before. Like, this is gonna be really big for us, and it just didn't really play out that way. Yeah. But people really like the videos.

Adam Wathan

00:16:47 – 00:17:25

I got lots of positive comments on that. Really enjoyed doing the videos. And my next hypothesis, which could be wrong, but the next thing to test is maybe a free video course is a works better as a funnel for a paid video course than it does for, like, a collection of UI components and templates and stuff like that. You know? So that's where we were gonna get into doing this, like, paid course as the as the next kind of commercial thing anyways, and maybe we'll pivot this free email course to end up being more of a pitch for that instead of a pitch for, Tailwind Plus, maybe a bit of both, maybe a bundle.

Adam Wathan

00:17:25 – 00:17:30

Who knows? Mhmm. But I don't remember why we're talking about this, but that that's the state of things.

Aaron

00:17:30 – 00:17:42

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I was just asking because you mentioned briefly that you were not happy with it, so I was wondering kinda how it all went down. That's a lot of emails to be getting a day, so that's great news.

Aaron

00:17:42 – 00:17:51

Maybe the offer was not right for the audience, but like you said, you can find the one that works. But that's incredible, the amount of emails you're getting per day.

Adam Wathan

00:17:51 – 00:17:57

Yeah. Yeah. So we should there's gotta be something we can do with that. You know? Yeah.

Aaron

00:17:57 – 00:18:11

And if if the promise of the email list is, like, Adam will teach you stuff by video, it seem that seems like a pretty good sign to me that people would pay for stuff where you teach them on video. So that's I think I like that hypothesis.

Adam Wathan

00:18:11 – 00:18:16

Yeah. Yeah. It seems like there's a good chance it'll be better. How much better? Not sure.

Adam Wathan

00:18:17 – 00:18:20

But does seem like the right next thing to try for sure.

Aaron

00:18:20 – 00:18:32

Yeah. So this video course, what is is it more of that? Is it more practical build UIs that don't suck? Is it Tailwinds documentation? TBD.

Adam Wathan

00:18:33 – 00:18:42

I have been thinking about it a bunch. I have a bunch of different ideas for it. I'm not totally sure yet. Okay. Okay.

Adam Wathan

00:18:42 – 00:19:03

My gut is not to do, like, the Tailwind documentation Mhmm. Thing. I think if you're gonna do anything like that, I kinda like the idea the idea I have in my head is, like, Tailwind CSS by example. So instead of Tailwind CSS by API reference Right. It's more just, like, learn Tailwind by building things instead of learn Tailwind by reading through a list of the features and what the features do.

Adam Wathan

00:19:03 – 00:19:25

So it's sort of like rotating the educational path 90 degrees and teaching that to you in video form. I think I think that could be good. Sometimes I'm second guessing if it should even really be, like, tailwind on the tin or if it just should just be more about building high quality user interfaces. And, of course, we use tailwind because what else are you gonna use? So that's TBD.

Adam Wathan

00:19:25 – 00:19:45

That is something that I'm, trying to figure out. I'd be curious what your instincts are, though, because I know you've been talking a lot about lately about getting more into beginner focused stuff Mhmm. And less on the intermediate advanced stuff. And my instincts are very much still to target the intermediate advanced stuff personally.

Aaron

00:19:45 – 00:20:09

It's a lot more fun, and it's a lot more personally edifying for me to teach the intermediate to advanced stuff. It's just way more interesting for me, and I feel like, I feel like there is a lot of beginner level stuff out there, not just in, like, the SQL world, but just in the world. It's everybody has a beginner intro course. And so I like the, hey. You're a four five six on the expert level.

Aaron

00:20:09 – 00:20:25

Let's get you up to seven eight nine. That's super fun for me. It's we have a lot of we have a lot of people that just, like, need the basics. You know, I log on every day, and somebody on Twitter's like, oh, I just, you know, added an index to my database. And did y'all know it makes it faster?

Aaron

00:20:25 – 00:20:27

And I'm like, guys. I got it.

Adam Wathan

00:20:27 – 00:20:30

People that are in your audience already, though?

Aaron

00:20:30 – 00:20:33

Do you have Many of them. Yeah. Yeah. So I think That's

Adam Wathan

00:20:33 – 00:20:49

that's what I've always wondered. I kinda I've always kind of assumed, like, if someone knows about you because of database stuff, they must have some existing knowledge. Because otherwise, you're competing with, like, people searching for MySQL free tutorial. You know?

Aaron

00:20:49 – 00:20:50

And they

Adam Wathan

00:20:50 – 00:20:54

have no idea where they're looking. They they don't know any names in the space.

Aaron

00:20:55 – 00:20:59

Or they're just going to Udemy, and they go to Udemy and see a $9 course, and then they come to

Adam Wathan

00:20:59 – 00:20:59

Yeah.

Aaron

00:20:59 – 00:21:03

You know, whatever mine is and see see a $99 course, and, like, I'm not doing this.

Adam Wathan

00:21:04 – 00:21:15

So it kinda feels to me like building stuff for that audience is not as simple as just building stuff for that audience. It also means, like, developing a very different distribution strategy.

Aaron

00:21:15 – 00:21:45

Yeah. It might be, it might be a very different distribution strategy. I think we have so Steve and I talk a lot about we've done the hard part first, which is, I think when when the hearts and minds of the intermediates and the advanced people. And so part of my hope is that by offering an introductory outlet, that kind of excuse me. That reputation kinda, like, trickles down.

Aaron

00:21:45 – 00:22:07

And, so we we actually sell a lot inside of companies. And so my hope is that inside of a company, if somebody is just starting, they can be either directed to mastering Postgres gres or just enough Postgres. And people inside the company will say, like, hey. This is this is a trusted instructor. Or if they go and land on mastering Postgres, I'm like, woah.

Aaron

00:22:07 – 00:22:27

This is awesome and intense. This is above me. They have downsells to just enough Postgres by the same instructor. And so we will still totally play on personal brand, but we're also hoping that, like, the brand or, like, the gravitas of the courses themselves will lend to some downselling on on trust, if that makes sense.

Adam Wathan

00:22:27 – 00:22:28

Yeah. Makes sense.

Aaron

00:22:28 – 00:22:48

I think I think some I I feel probably the same or similar about your audience. I mean, yours is so much bigger, so it's gonna be naturally more dispersed. But I feel like there are, you know, maybe 50 people in your audience that know CSS like you do. Right? And they're, like, half of them work at Vercel.

Aaron

00:22:48 – 00:22:59

And so I feel like those are the people that you kinda, like, rub elbows with and you're, like, chatting with on Twitter. Like, hey. Can you tell the Chrome internal team to fix this OKCLH bug? And they're

Adam Wathan

00:22:59 – 00:22:59

like, sure.

Aaron

00:22:59 – 00:23:24

Let me go talk to my friend. I was like, this is way up here. This is way up here. So I think if you take that Adam Wadden brand and come down and, you know, yuck it up with the normies, I feel like that's gonna go pretty well for you. I think one question I have, and I have my answer for you, but one question I have for you is what do you think your like, you and Steve, what do you think your competitive advantage is?

Adam Wathan

00:23:24 – 00:23:27

Two things. Distribution is a huge one because Yep.

Aaron

00:23:27 – 00:23:27

That was one of them.

Adam Wathan

00:23:28 – 00:23:31

Gets insane amount of traffic. Uh-huh. And then I think design is the other one.

Aaron

00:23:31 – 00:23:47

That was my other one. Mine were I was gonna say for you, distribution and taste. That was gonna be the two. Yeah. And so my question then to follow on to that is, like, what things most flex those two unfair advantages?

Aaron

00:23:48 – 00:23:56

Like, what things most take advantage of distribution and taste? And video courses probably, you know, top five. Is there anything else?

Adam Wathan

00:23:57 – 00:24:23

Just yeah. What else? I mean, the only other idea that even comes to mind for me if we want to, like, take a big swing with the business is some sort of AI, UI, ideation thing that using, knowledge and technology and skills I don't have is, like, trained on our taste somehow. You know? Yeah.

Adam Wathan

00:24:23 – 00:24:55

Not the first clue about how you even do anything like that, but something like that would be cool, I think. Other than that, I really don't know. Like, you know, we did the catalyst UI kit thing, which was another thing that I sort of had high hopes for and didn't really make a noticeable difference Mhmm. For us. And that was a bit of a bet on taste in terms of design, but also API design.

Aaron

00:24:55 – 00:24:57

Yep. Which is another thing you're quite good at.

Adam Wathan

00:24:57 – 00:25:20

It's a struggle though because it's like the market is flooded with free alternatives to that. There's some percentage of people that want to pay for the premium thing, and I could be convinced to just only build something for that segment Yeah. Too, or to do, like, a free thing kinda like Caleb did with, like, Flux two where there's, like, a catalyst essentials or something. Mhmm. You know?

Adam Wathan

00:25:20 – 00:25:24

And then there's, like, the premium thing with some extra stuff. Could do something happy

Aaron

00:25:24 – 00:25:27

at all, catalyst, thinking about doing that in the future?

Adam Wathan

00:25:27 – 00:25:30

Not at the moment because it was Yeah. A grind. It was Kind

Aaron

00:25:30 – 00:25:31

of a gut punch.

Adam Wathan

00:25:31 – 00:26:08

Some of the hardest work I've ever done just just paralyzing decision making for, like, nine months is, like, you know, it'd be nice to just do something that was execution. I think outside of that, like, I don't have any ideas that feel like they take advantage of that stuff in an incredibly great way. Like, we could build something totally different and just hope to take advantage of audience distribution and taste. Like, you know, I've always thought it'd be fun to just do, like, a better version of another thing. Like, example I've talked about in the past is something Ian talked about too is, like, the, what do you call it?

Adam Wathan

00:26:08 – 00:26:19

Like, the applicant tracking app, like Yeah. Like a workable competitor or something. Because when we were hiring, we were using that app. I wanted to blow my brains out. It just felt like sexy workable feels like a great thing Yep.

Adam Wathan

00:26:19 – 00:26:24

To build. I feel like linear as a business is just sexy Jira. You know? Yep. Mhmm.

Adam Wathan

00:26:24 – 00:26:42

There is it's something you can compete on, for sure. But how uniquely positioned are we to compete on that? Like, if I put an ad on the Tailwind CSS docs for, like, a project management tool that we build, Some percentage of people may be curious about it. It's not exactly the perfect fit for

Aaron

00:26:43 – 00:26:43

Right.

Adam Wathan

00:26:43 – 00:26:52

That audience necessarily. Is it better than trying to build a SaaS with no audience? And absolutely You better believe it. Of course, it is. You know?

Adam Wathan

00:26:52 – 00:27:14

Yeah. So and and maybe it's better enough to be, like, the right platform to kick off from. And I haven't sort of, like, closed my mind to that idea either. Right. I I've kinda got into my head that something I wanna, like, do more of going forward is overinvest in custom solutions for little problems for ourselves that have basically no ROI Mhmm.

Adam Wathan

00:27:14 – 00:27:24

No direct ROI in hopes that maybe kind of like Tailwind in the first place. Yeah. The market tells me they're more interested in it than I think. You know? Mhmm.

Adam Wathan

00:27:25 – 00:27:43

We did, like, an event in Miami when we had our team retreat there, and we were looking around for, like, tools, like Eventbrite type tools Yeah. Just to put together a page to collect RSVPs for an event. Didn't really like anything out there. Is it worth us building a whole SaaS for that event? No.

Adam Wathan

00:27:43 – 00:28:12

But I'm kinda changing my mind on that now that not worth it from a business perspective. Is it worth it? Is it still a good use of my time? Not from a financial perspective, but from a I'm gonna have a lot of fun perspective, and maybe something will come from it. And if we're doing YouTube stuff, then building real stuff and sharing it along the way on YouTube, potentially building a new audience there that funnels into courses, stuff like that, it all kind of feels like it can work.

Adam Wathan

00:28:12 – 00:28:31

You know what I mean? And maybe something comes out of one of those ideas. Even though the point of building them isn't for them to make money, the point of building them is to run into interesting problems and have cool things to talk about that lend points to courses or leads people to tail end plus or who knows what. You know?

Aaron

00:28:31 – 00:28:42

So your I forgot to say, your third great strength is that you have, you have a low tolerance for pain, and you don't like most things. So you can see the problems with

Adam Wathan

00:28:42 – 00:28:44

everything. Taste related, but

Aaron

00:28:44 – 00:28:49

yeah. It is taste. Yeah. Okay. So here's a question for you.

Aaron

00:28:49 – 00:29:01

You have massive distribution. That's the statement. Here's the question. You have massive distribution. Would going on YouTube get you more distribution, and is that necessary?

Aaron

00:29:01 – 00:29:24

Or would something like, you might remember back in the day, Ruby Tapas, something like that. So less of, like, a layer casts where you're doing, like, a in house learning thing and more of like a, hey. I'm Adam every you know, once a week, I put out a video about building practical UI or whatever. You pay me monthly, which I don't know if MRR is a goal, but it's something you

Adam Wathan

00:29:24 – 00:29:29

can sure if it is either. I have a yeah. But continue.

Aaron

00:29:29 – 00:29:55

But do you like, the the question, I guess, is you've got this massive distribution engine. Do you take that and funnel it to another distribution play, which is YouTube? And then as you're doing that, you're bumping into things that then could be the back end of, like, this long chain of distribution? Or do you take the YouTube and set it aside and say, like, no. This is the back end for this distribution engine, and it's, you know, Adam Weekly or whatever you call it.

Aaron

00:29:55 – 00:30:07

Right? You don't have to use that name, but if you do, that's fine. 10% is good. So, like, does that make sense? Like, where do you draw the the line for this is back end money making versus let's just keep building distribution?

Adam Wathan

00:30:07 – 00:30:14

Yeah. You mean as in, like, try to turn the YouTube stuff into its own sort of new source of business with maybe, like, some other

Aaron

00:30:15 – 00:30:23

Instead of focusing on YouTube, focus on putting all of that video energy into Something that

Adam Wathan

00:30:23 – 00:30:37

we distribute using the existing distribution. Mhmm. Yep. I think that is definitely something to consider. I'll say if, business dad was here, he would say more traffic is always good.

Adam Wathan

00:30:37 – 00:30:48

The advice he's always given me anytime I've talked to him about the Tailwind stuff is you just need more traffic, more traffic. You got 10,000,000 people visiting the site every month right now. If you get that to 20,000,000, you'll make more money. You know?

Aaron

00:30:48 – 00:30:50

He would absolutely say that.

Adam Wathan

00:30:50 – 00:31:11

Yep. That's what he would say. So I do think there's an element of that. Like, something I I was thinking about with the, the free email course that we did is even though most of the people who signed up, like, 80 plus percent were not people who have already purchased Tailwind Plus. The distribution for the email course is the Tailwind website, which also happens to be the same distribution channel for Tailwind Plus.

Adam Wathan

00:31:11 – 00:31:41

It's sort of hard to find out about the course without already knowing about Tailwind Plus. Potentially, have already just made up your mind about whether you're gonna buy it or not. And this email course is unlikely to do too much to persuade you. So we'd even talked about, like, it'd be as an experiment, if we push to this email course with Instagram ads or something and try to get it in front of people who haven't seen Tailwind Plus, maybe it would convert better there. So it sort of becomes the same sort of thing.

Adam Wathan

00:31:41 – 00:31:51

Maybe YouTube will help us find people who, I don't know. It's hard to say. Have they never heard of Tailwind? Have they never been to the Tailwind docs? Seems Seems unlikely.

Aaron

00:31:51 – 00:31:53

Unlikely at this point.

Adam Wathan

00:31:53 – 00:32:20

But I'll say the other thing that I learned from doing this email course is there's I I was wondering when this moment would come, and it was never clear to me when it had happened, but it appears that it has happened. I am not associated with Tailwind just broadly to the average Tailwind user. Wow. So many people use Tailwind who have no clue that I exist or who I am. That's what I kinda learned from this course.

Adam Wathan

00:32:20 – 00:32:29

There was so much feedback on it from, like, YouTube comments and Mhmm. Email responses and stuff that was like, holy crap. This you're the guy who made Tailwind? This is awesome. You know?

Adam Wathan

00:32:29 – 00:32:32

And it's like, That's kinda interesting.

Aaron

00:32:32 – 00:32:33

That is interesting.

Adam Wathan

00:32:34 – 00:33:04

Because, yeah, maybe maybe there's that sort of building educational stuff by the creator of Tailwind that hasn't really been milked, you know, properly yet. Yeah. So maybe there is something with some brand building there that wouldn't necessarily lead to more Tailwind plus sales or whatever, but can lean on that, authority that we have from building Tailwind itself Mhmm. And turn that into into something else. Yeah.

Adam Wathan

00:33:04 – 00:33:09

I think the other thing with the YouTube stuff is, like, it kind of is just fun to build stuff

Aaron

00:33:09 – 00:33:10

Of course.

Adam Wathan

00:33:10 – 00:33:11

For YouTube.

Aaron

00:33:13 – 00:33:30

I guess so take take that Go ahead. Take take that. It's kinda just fun to build stuff for YouTube, and then, play out this scenario for me. So it's kinda just fun to build stuff for YouTube. What if you had all that fun building all these practical things, doing the fun lighting setup?

Aaron

00:33:30 – 00:33:41

Steve's there. Y'all are both doing stuff. And then as a thought experiment, instead of putting it on YouTube, you put it on, you know, the Tailwind members only platform. Right? Yeah.

Aaron

00:33:41 – 00:34:04

So now you're, like, you're kind of on the hook, which I think is something to consider, but you're on the hook for, let's say, one video a week. Yeah. And, you know, you you price it accordingly. And so I guess my my thing that I want you to spit out is, like, does that still have all the fun of doing YouTube? It's, like, you can build kinda wacky stuff and give it to a bunch of people that now they're paying you for it?

Adam Wathan

00:34:04 – 00:34:22

I think it has some of it. I think there's some things that would be fun to do that almost feel more suited for YouTube than they do for a paid thing. Me and Steve were sort of talking about I kind of believe that, like, YouTube is an entertainment platform more than it is an education platform.

Aaron

00:34:22 – 00:34:23

Adam Wathan

00:34:25 – 00:34:31

So there's this channel that I really love called Drumeo. I don't know if you've ever seen this. If you're I don't think you're much of a music guy.

Aaron

00:34:31 – 00:34:32

No. I'm not.

Adam Wathan

00:34:32 – 00:34:47

But it's basically they bring in, like, famous drummers, and they do different things for them. So one of the ones that they do, for example, is they might bring in, like, the drummer from Fall Out Boy or something, and they'll find a song he's never heard before.

Aaron

00:34:47 – 00:34:50

I think you've tweeted one of these, and I watched one. Yeah. They're super cool.

Adam Wathan

00:34:50 – 00:35:09

And they they'll he'll have to listen to it without the drums, and he has to, like, make up his own drum part and try and play along with it. And then when he's done, they show him the original, and it's like, man, I played this halftime the whole time, and it was supposed it's just, like, super entertaining. Right? Yeah. So me and Steve were trying to think, what's, like, the Drumeo of, like, UI in terms of, like, a YouTube channel.

Adam Wathan

00:35:09 – 00:35:26

Cool. Maybe it's, like, Steve gives me a design, and I have to, like, build the whole thing in code without ever checking it in the browser and see, like, how close I got at the end. And then maybe I I fix it up and clean it up or or whatever. But, like, what are just, like, fun Mhmm. Entertaining things like that?

Adam Wathan

00:35:26 – 00:35:37

Or Steve gets to, like we, find some new website that came out that's really cool, and Steve has, like, five minutes to, like, look at it and try to, like, memorize the details and then, like, recreate it in Figma from memory.

Aaron

00:35:37 – 00:35:38

Great content.

Adam Wathan

00:35:38 – 00:35:38

It's not educational.

Aaron

00:35:39 – 00:35:39

No. It's not.

Adam Wathan

00:35:39 – 00:35:57

Entertaining. But maybe it's a funnel for something educational. You know? Stuff like that, I don't know is the right thing for people to pay for, but I think we would have a lot of fun a lot of fun doing it. But I think there could also be, like, like, a lot of people's YouTube business model is kind of YouTube is the distribution for, like Yes.

Aaron

00:35:57 – 00:35:58

YouTube plus back end.

Adam Wathan

00:35:58 – 00:36:15

You know? Where there's, like, you get longer videos that have a little bit more like, if there's a weekly q and a video, maybe the member's only one answers 15 questions instead of 10. Right. Or, there's a a mem maybe you can only contribute to the q and a if you're, whatever. You know?

Adam Wathan

00:36:15 – 00:36:35

I was thinking I really liked doing, like, live streams. So I used to do a lot more live streaming. Maybe there is, like, a subscribe to our premium version of, like, the YouTube channel where you get, like, the back catalog of streams, but no one can you can only watch the streams live or, Pay to watch the old ones. To watch the old ones. You know?

Adam Wathan

00:36:35 – 00:36:48

Yeah. I like that. Yeah. Or another thing was if I'm building a design that Steve gives me and I'm, like, making a YouTube video where I build it, if you want the code and the Figma file Mhmm. That's only for subscribers or whatever.

Adam Wathan

00:36:49 – 00:37:10

You know? Mhmm. So you can watch the content for free. But if you want the Figma file yourself so you can kinda look at how Steve posted together or you wanna look at the code and play with it after, that's only available to subscribers. Like, I'd I put a lot of effort into sort of studying how people do things outside of sort of the programming world and try to take inspiration from that.

Adam Wathan

00:37:11 – 00:37:39

Mhmm. And this music, especially, is, like, a big inspiration for me, and this is how a lot of, like a lot of people trying to make a living as, like, a guitar player, they'll just they'll learn songs by ear and record a video of them playing along to it, and it's like, if you want the transcribed version of this, like, you have to subscribe to my Patreon or whatever. Mhmm. And I'll send you the the music that you can play along to or whatever, stuff like that. You know, so I'm always looking for, like, corollaries like that that we can sort of apply.

Adam Wathan

00:37:39 – 00:38:05

But to get back to your point, this is something I've been trying to think about is what is the back end for this? Is the idea to use this as distribution for the existing stuff? Right. Is the idea to find new stuff to do with it? Or is the idea to just do it with the existing stuff as the back end and expect that good ideas will come, you know, which I think is likely the case also.

Adam Wathan

00:38:05 – 00:38:09

So I'm kinda open to all of it, I guess, is the I guess is the point.

Aaron

00:38:10 – 00:38:32

So I I feel like two two things are coalescing or, maybe opposite of that, diverging here. One would be YouTube becomes top of funnel for stuff you're already doing. Yeah. Or maybe and or goodness. Or YouTube becomes, a fun mechanism by which you discover a way to do something new.

Aaron

00:38:32 – 00:39:03

And I guess those aren't entirely discreet because in the meantime, it could be the top of funnel for the back end you already have, which is Tailwind plus. I'm I agree with you that that type of, like, super fun kind of, in, educational, but more, like, entertaining stuff, that belongs on YouTube. That's gonna go far and wide. If you're if somebody's paying for education from Adam Wyler, then they're not gonna wanna see funny stuff. They're gonna wanna see, like, hey.

Aaron

00:39:03 – 00:39:14

Watch me build this thing and these tricks. Yeah. So that definitely, I think, should go on YouTube. Do you want MRR? Does that something that, like, you're pining for?

Adam Wathan

00:39:14 – 00:39:21

I want MRR. I don't want monthly re I want monthly recurring revenue. Don't really want monthly recurring responsibility.

Aaron

00:39:22 – 00:39:22

Yeah.

Adam Wathan

00:39:22 – 00:39:23

You know? I knew I

Aaron

00:39:23 – 00:39:34

knew you were gonna get there somehow. That's amazing. So the content treadmill seems, maybe spiritually unaligned then.

Adam Wathan

00:39:34 – 00:39:36

The paid content treadmill.

Aaron

00:39:36 – 00:39:36

Yeah.

Adam Wathan

00:39:36 – 00:39:38

The free content treadmill doesn't You don't

Aaron

00:39:38 – 00:39:40

call anybody anything at that point.

Adam Wathan

00:39:40 – 00:39:42

Yeah. I could just stop. You know?

Aaron

00:39:42 – 00:39:42

You can.

Adam Wathan

00:39:44 – 00:40:02

But, yeah, I mean, I like the idea of MRR. Who doesn't like the idea of MRR? And I do like the idea of building a software product that has MRR. But if I really think hard about it, I have a hard time convincing myself I like the idea of running that business. I like the idea of building that product.

Adam Wathan

00:40:02 – 00:40:29

I don't like the idea of feeling like I'm gonna need to, like, hire and manage a bunch of support people, that I'm gonna have to stress about losing someone's data and some technical issue where Mhmm. Like, if the Tailwind UI database got nuked, doesn't matter at all, basically. You know what I mean? If we can reconstruct it from a CSV from Paddle, you know, no big deal. Everyone has access to the same stuff.

Adam Wathan

00:40:29 – 00:40:40

No one has data in there. It's all fine. But if you're building accounting software or project management software or I don't know. It's just like, I got a good life. Our business does well.

Adam Wathan

00:40:40 – 00:41:07

Is that something I really wanna sign up for just because I like the idea of building tools and creating user experiences and stuff, which I I really enjoy that? Or is the better path there, what I was talking about before, where it's like Adam needs a Meetup app, Adam builds a Meetup app. You know? And maybe, like, the the mechanism for releasing that is not ever as a SaaS. It's and this is something that we're kinda working on right now.

Adam Wathan

00:41:07 – 00:41:23

It's we strip it down and throw it into Tailwind Plus as a template or a kit or something. Like, for this paid course, the first thing that I'm doing, which is not the smart thing to do, but I've passed the point in my life where I need to do the smart thing first.

Aaron

00:41:23 – 00:41:26

A true luxury to be able to do the fun thing first.

Adam Wathan

00:41:26 – 00:41:31

To do the fun thing first is building, like, a course platform. Right? You know as much as anybody.

Aaron

00:41:31 – 00:41:31

There's no

Adam Wathan

00:41:31 – 00:41:34

such thing as an existing course platform that is used for anyone. They're

Aaron

00:41:34 – 00:41:35

all terrible.

Adam Wathan

00:41:35 – 00:41:35

It must

Aaron

00:41:35 – 00:41:36

be custom.

Adam Wathan

00:41:36 – 00:42:02

It must be custom. So we're building that, and our goal for the April, is to release that as, like, a course platform starter kit on tablet plus because whatever, it's sawdust from the thing that we're already doing. You know? And I get all the satisfaction out of, like, sweating over all the details and making it nice and stuff like that with none of the responsibility of making sure that, it works. Yep.

Adam Wathan

00:42:02 – 00:42:13

You know? Yep. But it also it also kinda feels like a cop out sometimes too, and it kind of, like, gives me a bit of imposter syndrome to feel like I'm never gonna build, like, a real software business. You know? Mhmm.

Adam Wathan

00:42:13 – 00:42:28

I mean, to feel like, am I doing that by choice, or am I doing it because or am I not doing it by choice, or am I not doing it because I can't? You know? Mhmm. So I don't know. It's, it's something I think about a lot for sure.

Aaron

00:42:28 – 00:42:52

So let me ask about this course platform and the process there. But before I do that, let me tell you about this week's sponsors. It's pretty good. This week, the show is sponsored by Bento. Bento is the transactional and marketing email service provider that we use at TryHard Studios run by our friend, Jesse Hanley.

Aaron

00:42:52 – 00:43:21

You can find more at bentonow.com. This week is also sponsored by Work OS auth kit. Laravel twelve's new starter kits includes Work OS auth kit, future proof your authentication stack with the identity layer trusted by OpenAI, Cursor, Perplexity, and Vercel. You can find more about that at workOS.com. So thank you to Bento and Work OS for sponsoring the show.

Adam Wathan

00:43:21 – 00:43:34

Side note. Okay. Even if it's kinda related to the WorkOS sponsor thing because it is kinda related to what we were talking about. I would just like to pitch to contribute to the conversation of the WorkOS, starter kit drama as the We love

Aaron

00:43:34 – 00:43:36

we love a conversation, especially as an outlet.

Adam Wathan

00:43:36 – 00:43:38

Insider, an outsider with insider information.

Aaron

00:43:39 – 00:43:39

Adam Wathan

00:43:39 – 00:43:44

Literally, you know, a lot of people sort of speculated that because, like, Excel is an investor in Laravel, they're also

Aaron

00:43:44 – 00:43:46

an investor in dark money, obviously.

Adam Wathan

00:43:47 – 00:44:02

Oh, there's, like, some partnership shit going on there. I was literally, like, me and Taylor I would say Taylor Orwell is my best friend. Okay? And he just messaged me on Telegram one day, and he was like, dude, I've been playing with this, like, WorkOS auth thing. I think this is pretty cool.

Adam Wathan

00:44:02 – 00:44:20

I think I might put it in a starter kit. Like, I could screenshot this history for you. No communication had ever happened with anyone at WorkOS about any sort of dark deal partnership. It was literally Taylor just playing with it and thinking, I think I would wanna use this. And I was asking him, like, well, why would you use it if, like, you're just if if all this stuff is, like, built into Laravel already?

Adam Wathan

00:44:20 – 00:44:36

And he's like, well, it actually isn't built into Laravel already. There's a lot of stuff here. Like like, if you have an account and you log in from America and then ten minutes later, someone logs in with your username and password from The Philippines, it blocks it. You know? Laravel does doesn't do that for you.

Adam Wathan

00:44:36 – 00:44:52

There's, like, all this stuff, like, everything. And, yeah. I don't know. Taylor thought it was cool. So any conversations that happened about doing about turning into a marketing strategic thing, a % happened after Taylor had already built it because he liked it for himself.

Adam Wathan

00:44:52 – 00:45:34

So anyways but also, I played with it for this course thing because I was trying to figure out, you know, should we, should I build something myself, or should I use something like the WorkOS thing? And it's actually, like, really slick, and I actually really like their business model for it too. It's like the amount of users and stuff that you get for free is is not prohibitive at all. Like, it's basically good enough for anyone, but they just charge you, like, a hundred bucks a month if you want, like, the password reset emails and stuff to come from your domain, which I think is, like, such a smart thing to bill for because it's just, like, anyone building, like, a side project, that is a % a compromise that they just don't care about. It's like, I can use this for free and, like, the emails come from workos.com.

Adam Wathan

00:45:34 – 00:45:44

What do you fucking do? Like, that's Yep. That's fine. Every single real business on Earth, however, a % wants it to come from their own domain. So it's like they immediately pay, you know.

Adam Wathan

00:45:44 – 00:45:58

And also That's pretty smart. The call like that. Doesn't really scale within number of users. It's just, like, a hundred bucks a month. So it's not one of those things where it's, like, this is, like, shoot, getting into our bottom line, like, we gotta get off this thing or whatever.

Adam Wathan

00:45:58 – 00:46:18

So I don't know. I thought it was I thought it was a pretty smart segmentation there and a pretty pretty fair thing. I I always notice interesting ways that people where how do people slice things, you know? And I thought that was a clever one because everyone else is just like, some user limits or features or whatever. That one just was, like, I thought that was really clever.

Adam Wathan

00:46:18 – 00:46:27

So however, for the Chorus platform thing, we are gonna build our own auth, again, because it will be hard and fun. And Okay.

Aaron

00:46:28 – 00:46:35

That's So the only reason. Let's do that. Where are the live streams of you building this course platform?

Adam Wathan

00:46:35 – 00:46:41

I basically haven't started it yet. I Tell me. Have, Steve has been designing it.

Aaron

00:46:41 – 00:46:44

Oh, you haven't started the platform yet. Got it.

Adam Wathan

00:46:44 – 00:47:06

You haven't started your part of the work. I see. I haven't built any UI. The only thing I did was I, spent, like, a morning with Philip on our team just trying to build, like, a proof of concept for, like, a one time password authentication system just to just to tickle my brain because I was trying to think, like, how should that even work. And it's kind of I've kind of really been, what is it?

Adam Wathan

00:47:06 – 00:47:11

Is it black pilled? What's the one that means I like it?

Aaron

00:47:11 – 00:47:16

I think that's the one that means, like, you have finally realized how good it is or something like that.

Adam Wathan

00:47:16 – 00:47:35

One time passwords that are sent to you via email, like, MagicLinks, those are cool. One time passwords sent to you via email, extremely cool though. And the reason is k. So this is why. In our Tesla, there's a screen in the back where the kids can watch Netflix or Disney plus or whatever.

Adam Wathan

00:47:35 – 00:47:56

Right? Those apps both aggressively log me out all the time in the car. Typing in my email and full crazy, obscure password on that screen, total nightmare. Right? Magic link, though, also sucks because if I get a magic link sent to me from the Tesla and I click the magic link from my phone, it logs me in on the phone, not

Aaron

00:47:56 – 00:47:58

on the car. Okay. Alright.

Adam Wathan

00:47:58 – 00:48:10

Six digit one time password, all I have to type is, like, my email address in the screen, which is Mhmm. Quite easy. And then I just o 61242, and I'm logged in. Right? And that's super easy to do in the car.

Adam Wathan

00:48:10 – 00:48:12

So Yeah. It's pretty good. Pretty good use

Aaron

00:48:12 – 00:48:14

case. Pretty good use case.

Adam Wathan

00:48:14 – 00:48:32

And I guess as a technical challenge, though, it's kinda fun to think about, like, how do you do that in a secure way? Because the naive approach is thinking, okay. Well, you request a one time password. We put a one time password in the one time passwords database, and now there's a screen for redeeming a one time password. You type in the six digit code.

Adam Wathan

00:48:32 – 00:48:50

We look up where's the thing that has that code, and we log you in as that person. You think about that for about five seconds, and you realize that's, like, terrible because how hard is it to, like, brute force a six digit numeric thing? If you can just go to a screen and type in six digits, over and over again and eventually be logged in as someone Someone.

Aaron

00:48:50 – 00:48:51

Yeah.

Adam Wathan

00:48:51 – 00:48:53

You know, that's kinda dark. Right?

Aaron

00:48:53 – 00:48:56

Yeah. That's, like, the birthday problem. It doesn't take very many one

Adam Wathan

00:48:56 – 00:48:57

No. No. As much to be

Aaron

00:48:57 – 00:48:59

in the database to hit one. Yeah.

Adam Wathan

00:48:59 – 00:49:12

So it was just, like, an interesting thing to think about. Like, okay, well, maybe and then I started thinking about, okay, well, do you rate limit it? Well, maybe that's one piece of it. Is there any way to do it that's, like, stateless? And I don't know.

Adam Wathan

00:49:12 – 00:49:34

It's a really interesting thing to sort of think about the right way to do it. And I don't know what the accepted best practice is. But thinking about it from first principles, I started thinking, okay. Well, I typed my email address in. Maybe when you type in the one time password, there should be, like, a hidden field on the page that has your email address pre filled so that when you're submitting the one time password, you're actually submitting the email address it's for at the same time.

Adam Wathan

00:49:34 – 00:49:53

Yeah. Mhmm. Because now you can't just, like, randomly guess any password. So that's gonna give you, like, a little bit of an extra layer of protection. And then the other thing I got to thinking, well, was you could also put, like, a session key in, like, the one time in in the hidden input or something and put that in the database too.

Adam Wathan

00:49:53 – 00:50:04

So now, literally, to log in with this one time password, it'll literally only work from the device that requested it. There You know? Yeah. And now that's, like, a lot more, secure. That seems great.

Adam Wathan

00:50:04 – 00:50:23

Yep. There's probably more stuff to think about. But you and and I also got to thinking, well, if your session is encrypted in your cookie, maybe you don't even need to put the one time password in the database at all. Maybe you just generate it and store it encrypted in the cookie that you send back to the user, and now it's like a totally stateless thing. It sounds a little scarier because potentially someone could decrypt the cookie.

Adam Wathan

00:50:23 – 00:50:26

But if people can decrypt cookies in your app, like, you're

Aaron

00:50:26 – 00:50:28

Kinda hosed. In trouble. Yeah.

Adam Wathan

00:50:28 – 00:50:45

So don't know. It was a super interesting, thing to just think about from from first principles. Again, could have just used WorkOS, could have had all those problems solved for me was really tempting to, but I just was saying to myself, like, if I always do the easy thing, like, I'm just not gonna have a satisfying life. You know? Mhmm.

Adam Wathan

00:50:46 – 00:50:56

So that's kind of a sidebar side quest there, but it was fun, fun getting into some of that stuff. Kind of a kind of a fun problem. Would be a fun thing to do a livestream on on too.

Aaron

00:50:56 – 00:51:04

Would be a great thing to do a livestream on, but when it's your turn so when Steve's done and it's your turn, I think you gotta fire up the livestreams. I think

Adam Wathan

00:51:04 – 00:51:11

A %. I gotta get back into it. Yeah. I'm excited. Like, we're setting up my house now where, like, this room that we're in, this is going to be the studio.

Adam Wathan

00:51:11 – 00:51:26

There will be no work that happens here except recording. I ordered two studio displays this morning. I'm gonna order a Mac Studio or a Mac Mini. It's gonna just be a workstation that's purely set up for recording. Me and Steve are gonna be working over in the other room.

Adam Wathan

00:51:27 – 00:51:30

It's gonna be great. It's gonna be fun.

Aaron

00:51:30 – 00:51:46

So it sounds like you have something coming up where you kinda get to execute, at least the first part of both strategies, which is just, like, go on YouTube. Right? So you're gonna be building out this course platform. So you get to go on YouTube, which makes you happy. It also builds distribution.

Aaron

00:51:47 – 00:52:14

And if you're building out this course platform, that leads me to believe the course is coming, is going to happen, and that is a new, you know, back end. That's a new way to monetize the distribution. Totally. So you're not you're not yet signing up for monthly recurring responsibilities because you'll livestream and do videos whenever you want. And a course is a discrete unit of work that is finishable, which is the best part about courses.

Adam Wathan

00:52:14 – 00:52:23

If the course is a hun couple hundred bucks on a website and the website gets 10,000,000 visits a month, don't really need monthly recurring revenue. Correct. It will it will make plenty of money. So

Aaron

00:52:23 – 00:52:35

And so along the way, you might bump into something that is a half step outside of Tailwind slash pure content play Yeah. And you could go down that rabbit hole.

Adam Wathan

00:52:35 – 00:52:56

It's just exposing your senses to the world. You know? I will say the thing I'm still paralyzed on in terms of strategy is what to do what is the channel? Because Steve has a YouTube channel. He's got, like, 40,000 subscribers from just doing five videos years ago.

Adam Wathan

00:52:56 – 00:52:56

Okay?

Aaron

00:52:56 – 00:52:59

You know, one of those videos was the company it was me.

Adam Wathan

00:52:59 – 00:53:05

It was you. You were, like, one of the first ones. Uh-huh. It's, you're everywhere, man. You're everywhere.

Adam Wathan

00:53:05 – 00:53:06

You've been around.

Aaron

00:53:06 – 00:53:08

Steve Schoeder. Okay. So Steve Schoeder

Adam Wathan

00:53:08 – 00:53:08

He's got,

Aaron

00:53:08 – 00:53:09

like, 42.6.

Adam Wathan

00:53:09 – 00:53:18

Five or six videos. Right? Uh-huh. And people loved them. And they're totally terrible by modern YouTube standards, I think.

Adam Wathan

00:53:18 – 00:53:22

Like, all the thumbnails are just, like, the exact same template or whatever. And And

Aaron

00:53:22 – 00:53:26

they're, like, super thoughtful and not, like, hype. And Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Wathan

00:53:26 – 00:53:41

Yeah. And he wants to get back into doing those, but I wanna get back into doing my stuff. I have a YouTube channel where I did all my live streams and a bunch of stuff like that that's got a similar number of subscribers to Steve's. But the Tailwind Labs YouTube channel has, like, a hundred thousand subscribers.

Aaron

00:53:42 – 00:53:51

Okay. So I got some I got some numbies here. Steve Shoger, forty two thousand. You're right. He's got very few videos, and they're all the latest one is from five years ago.

Adam Wathan

00:53:52 – 00:53:52

Yeah.

Aaron

00:53:52 – 00:54:06

So then we've got Adam Wavin, thirty eight thousand. Let's see the latest video. Latest video was with Sam Selikhoff four months ago, but before that was five years ago. And then till till till no. We're just reading straight numbers.

Aaron

00:54:06 – 00:54:06

My live

Adam Wathan

00:54:06 – 00:54:09

streams are more frequent more recent than that, but yes.

Aaron

00:54:10 – 00:54:23

Labs is the handle for this one. It is a 1,000. Congrats on the silver plaque. I see it over your shoulder there. And then latest video, three weeks ago, one year ago, two years ago, three years ago.

Aaron

00:54:23 – 00:54:27

So they're all kind of in the similar state of, similar state

Adam Wathan

00:54:27 – 00:54:28

Fairly maintained.

Aaron

00:54:28 – 00:54:37

Disrepair. Yeah. Huge, like, huge numbers. So we have three properties at our disposal. Talk me through the calculus.

Aaron

00:54:37 – 00:54:38

What are you thinking?

Adam Wathan

00:54:39 – 00:54:40

Yeah. So this is

Aaron

00:54:40 – 00:54:41

How how have you thought about this?

Adam Wathan

00:54:41 – 00:55:00

The ways I've thought about it. Number one, what makes more sense, growing two channels or growing one channel? I feel like I can make arguments for both. If you can grow two channels, well, that's two entry points into your world, you know? And maybe they can be different styles and sort of have different focuses.

Adam Wathan

00:55:01 – 00:55:32

Struggle with and and those two channels in my mind would be Adam's channel and Steve's channel because I do think the personal brand stuff is important. And that's, I think, the advice that I gave you too when you were trying to decide what you and Steve should do. Very good advice. But the the downside is what about the inevitable, ambiguous content where we can't decide where it should go? Upside, the Adam Wathan channel feels like it can be about basically anything that I'm interested in.

Adam Wathan

00:55:32 – 00:55:36

I could literally do a video that's like a fitness video if I wanted to.

Aaron

00:55:36 – 00:55:38

You could do a jumping video.

Adam Wathan

00:55:38 – 00:55:56

You know? Yeah. I could do all sorts of weird stuff, and I think if people are interested in me as a person, like, yes, it'll be 99% UI front end programming stuff, but then, like, a little bit of, like, here's my desk setup or whatever. You know? People love learning what about that type of stuff.

Adam Wathan

00:55:56 – 00:56:11

Whatever. Right? But, yeah, the ambiguous video content thing is kind of unfortunate. Also kind of unfortunate that the Tailwind Labs channel has the biggest head start, and we wouldn't be using it. Other option is go all in on one channel together.

Adam Wathan

00:56:11 – 00:56:28

Logical thing to do would be to use the Tailwind channel that already has the existing audience. Downsides, number one, I really hate it branded as Tailwind Labs. That's like following Microsoft. It's kinda shitty. And I thought about this really hard for a while because I really like the personal brand thing.

Adam Wathan

00:56:28 – 00:56:36

How do you do a personal brand that's two people? We me and Steve even talked about it. Do we call the channel Adam and Steve? You know? Maybe.

Adam Wathan

00:56:36 – 00:56:50

But the more I thought about it and the more examples I looked at, I think I found how to make it work, which is channels that are named after companies suck. Channels that are named like a show, good. You know?

Aaron

00:56:50 – 00:56:51

We love a show.

Adam Wathan

00:56:51 – 00:57:09

So, I I don't even know, like, what some good examples of that are, but there's definitely a bunch of, like, you know, like, Hot Ones on YouTube? You know? No one has to know the name of the guy who does it, but it still feels like a Right. Thing you'd follow. It's not like where I'm just gonna get, like, corporate commercials like the Apple YouTube channel or something like that.

Adam Wathan

00:57:09 – 00:57:27

It feels like a show. It doesn't feel like a company. So maybe we can turn Tailwind Labs into a show. And I think to do that, it has to not be called Tailwind anything. And I kinda like the idea of calling the channel Build You Eyes That Don't Suck, which is, like, the name of the course that we did.

Adam Wathan

00:57:27 – 00:57:46

It's Mhmm. Kind of the word suck kind of, like, brings it into, like Mhmm. Normal human language territory and not, like, corporate speak. I think we could still do videos on, like, what's new in Tailwind 4.1 on, like, the build like, Tailwind could become to be known as, like, that's buy the build UIs that don't suck guys or whatever. Mhmm.

Adam Wathan

00:57:47 – 00:58:01

And we could put both things on there. Steve could use Refractory UI videos there. I could do my stuff there. We probably still could do videos, like, time lapse of us, like, setting up the new, like, Tailwind Studio, you know, where we, like, record everything. Could still be fun.

Adam Wathan

00:58:01 – 00:58:22

It does, though, still feel like a bit of an uphill battle compared to just my name, or Steve's name. But it also feels like not that I actually have any interest in doing this, but it is a bit more sellable. You know? It's a brand, and it still feels like a pretty personal brand. So I think it could be done, I guess, put it that way.

Adam Wathan

00:58:22 – 00:58:44

It just becomes a question of, like, weighing it out and figuring out is the are the benefits of going all in on one channel or trying to come up with the right brand for it and putting everything in one place, do those are they worth it versus the obstacles? And yeah. So I don't know. I'm curious what your eyes are. Are you ready for thoughts?

Adam Wathan

00:58:44 – 00:58:46

I'm ready for thoughts. Here are thoughts.

Aaron

00:58:47 – 00:59:02

Build you eyes that don't suck. This to me feels similar, to when you were advising us not to go in on, like, TryHard Studios is the brand or Database School is the second brand because you have built

Adam Wathan

00:59:02 – 00:59:05

like company names, though. They don't sound like shows.

Aaron

00:59:05 – 00:59:12

Okay. Fair. Pressing on. You have built one of the best, biggest brands on the Internet. Like Yeah.

Aaron

00:59:12 – 00:59:35

Literally, that's one of the most well known brands amongst your target audience. And to go and build a second brand and have someone say, like, oh, yeah. Tailwind is by the build you guys don't suck, guys. I don't know that that is ever gonna happen. I think it's always and forever going to be well, the Tailwind team does this other thing.

Aaron

00:59:35 – 00:59:38

It's called build UIs that don't suck. Like, you have to search for that.

Adam Wathan

00:59:38 – 00:59:44

I think that I think that's probably probably true. I'd still think Tailwind Labs is a channel name sucks, though.

Aaron

00:59:44 – 00:59:54

That's fine. I will I will agree. I will cede that territory. I do think Tailwind Labs is not a great, growable YouTube name. Many things many things are true.

Aaron

00:59:54 – 01:00:24

I think building a completely separate brand isolated from Tailwind strikes me as, difficult and unnecessary. Having Tailwind Labs as the channel strikes me as corporate and a little stale. So is there a, you know, Tailwind team, do you Tailwind weekly, the Tailwind guys, something like that where it uses the word Tailwind in the middle? Glowing endorsement from Adam. Not the worst

Adam Wathan

01:00:24 – 01:00:37

thing. Well, the other name that came off the top of my head, like, when me and Steve were talking about it originally, when I was just, like, throwing out, like, how do you make it sound personal? Now I said, like, a channel like The UI Guys would be better than Tailwind Labs. But yeah.

Aaron

01:00:37 – 01:01:15

Okay. So keeping on keeping on options, I so I think I like the idea of personalizing the Tailwind Labs channel. I don't, in fact, like the idea of Adam and Steve going all in on the Tailwinds, what will become the new Tailwind Labs channel. So I think one thing I think I know about you is you need a creative outlet. And if you feel constrained by a channel that has to be at least somewhat corporate, that's gonna bum you out.

Aaron

01:01:15 – 01:01:15

And so I

Adam Wathan

01:01:16 – 01:01:21

why would it have to be corporate just because we're putting the word Tailwind in it in this hypothetical scenario?

Aaron

01:01:21 – 01:01:39

Yeah. I think because once you and Steve go in on that channel together and keep the name Tailwind, which I think is pretty important in my opinion, then that becomes a corporate asset. Like, that becomes, like, you and Steve are working together on behalf of the company Tailwind, which is bigger

Adam Wathan

01:01:39 – 01:01:39

than Adam.

Aaron

01:01:39 – 01:02:04

And so then you wanna do, like, hey. I just wrote this script to, you know, play my electric drums when whatever whatever. And it's like, that should go on the Adam Wylman channel, but, like, we abandoned that channel. And so Yeah. My thought process is there is, there's really good content that you and Steve can do together on the, formerly known as Tailwind Labs channel.

Aaron

01:02:04 – 01:02:21

That also means you could pull in I mean, you could pull in Robin if he wants to do a video and talk about some of the bizarre stuff that he's doing on the engine. Right? And Tailwind Tailwind Labs is a good channel for that because it's the Tailwind the Tailwind guys. Right? And so that seems great.

Aaron

01:02:21 – 01:02:46

But then I honestly think you and Steve keep your own channels, and you just pump out basically whatever you want, and it matters way less, but it gives you a lot more enjoyment. And I think observing from the outside, one thing that you super need is momentum and enjoyment because you get stuck in this loop of, like, oh, I'm just working this, you know, Tailwind, like, channel job. I don't wanna do it. It's like, what what do you wanna do? You wanna do something crazy?

Aaron

01:02:46 – 01:02:49

Go do something crazy. That's the Adam we need.

Adam Wathan

01:02:49 – 01:02:54

So do you think Steve doing a Refactor UI video goes on the Tailwind channel or the Steve channel?

Aaron

01:02:54 – 01:02:59

See, that's an interesting question. Because does Steve have other content that is not appropriate for Tailwind guys?

Adam Wathan

01:02:59 – 01:03:07

Kinda all he wants to do. Yeah. I mean, there's other stuff that we'll probably do together, but, like, that's the thing that he's pumped to get back into doing is Let

Aaron

01:03:07 – 01:03:14

me let me ask you a question back. Does Steve feel like it's important for him to have a Steve channel?

Adam Wathan

01:03:14 – 01:03:29

I don't think he's that fussed about it either way. He's excited about doing that specific type of video. Yeah. Maybe in the future, he'll get excited about, like, watch me, watch me draw Bluey on with sidewalk chalk on my driveway. Yeah.

Adam Wathan

01:03:29 – 01:03:29

He's

Aaron

01:03:29 – 01:03:53

very good at yeah. But, in that in that case, I say no. He's puts refactoring refactoring UI stuff on the the new Tailwind channel. So my Steve has no desire to, like, build a personal brand or, like, be out front or anything, which has made it very easy for us to just stay under the Aaron Francis umbrella. If he did have that big desire, I would be way more sensitive to, like, alright.

Aaron

01:03:53 – 01:04:09

How do we, like, get us both out in front? So if your Steve is like, hey. I just wanna make the content, man. Well, let's put it on the channel that is super aligned with the content and has a hundred thousand subscribers and is optimized to funnel them all to the money making back end.

Adam Wathan

01:04:09 – 01:04:23

Is there a world in your mind where we take that approach, like, psychologically? You know? Mhmm. But instead of me be even bothering with a personal channel, that's just the stuff I put on Twitter. You know?

Aaron

01:04:24 – 01:04:28

You want to be on YouTube. You've said this many, many, many times.

Adam Wathan

01:04:29 – 01:04:37

Yes. But I'm gonna have a really hard time knowing what to put on Adam Waddell and what to put on Tailwind, I think.

Aaron

01:04:37 – 01:04:51

Okay. Is there a heuristic is there a way that we can just say, everything goes on one or the other unless it's completely obvious that it should go on the other. Right? Can you just have, like, a default channel and then a side, like, a outlet channel?

Adam Wathan

01:04:51 – 01:04:51

Yeah.

Aaron

01:04:51 – 01:04:52

So maybe I

Adam Wathan

01:04:52 – 01:05:12

I guess, like, the other thing is, like, I want the the company channel. I wanna aggressively push it back into the world of being personal and personality driven. And if I have this other outlet for things that are I feel like that's gonna be a magnet for the more personal content, and then it's gonna stiffen up the company stuff.

Aaron

01:05:12 – 01:05:29

Alright. So let's steal let's steal man the other side. You and Steve, leave your personal channels as is. No need to destroy them, but just leave them as is. And you decide we're gonna go all in on, the Tailwind's corporate channel, which will now be a personal outlet.

Aaron

01:05:29 – 01:05:42

Does that give you the freedom and flexibility to find, joy in that channel? Like, if you do wanna do a desk tour channel, are you gonna feel hamstrung that you can't put that on the Tailwind Labs channel or

Adam Wathan

01:05:42 – 01:05:42

use it

Aaron

01:05:42 – 01:05:43

as a

Adam Wathan

01:05:43 – 01:05:49

Like, I that's why I wanna I wanna turn it into something where I do feel like I can do that, if that makes sense.

Aaron

01:05:49 – 01:05:49

Mhmm.

Adam Wathan

01:05:49 – 01:06:08

You know? Where you can have, like, behind the scenes stuff. Dude, if I could wave a magic wand, perfect world, YouTube rejigs their data model so that a channel is a place that has videos, and videos are made by people, not by the channel.

Aaron

01:06:08 – 01:06:09

%. Yes.

Adam Wathan

01:06:09 – 01:06:16

Wouldn't that be, like, life changing if Steve would post a video on the channel and I could post a video on the channel? It would just be, like, everything solved.

Aaron

01:06:16 – 01:06:18

And you could subscribe to Steve.

Adam Wathan

01:06:18 – 01:06:20

Follow me or follow the channel. You know?

Aaron

01:06:20 – 01:06:24

Yes. I know. I agree. Be awesome. We should do it.

Adam Wathan

01:06:24 – 01:06:25

Are we doing this?

Aaron

01:06:25 – 01:06:30

Let's do it. Now I think that's YouTube? I think that's a great yeah. That would be amazing. Two.

Aaron

01:06:30 – 01:06:36

That's a great name. That's just right in line with with the naming strategy you recommend. Yeah.

Adam Wathan

01:06:36 – 01:06:36

It is. That's a

Aaron

01:06:36 – 01:06:53

fun idea. YouTube too. Okay. So here's so swinging, on my opinion, swinging back the other way to we go all in on Tailwind Labs. That might be so I think one thing you lose there is the personal brand.

Aaron

01:06:53 – 01:07:11

And if you sell Tailwind, you sell the channel, but you you'll be fine. Doesn't matter. You could build up from scratch. No problem. You have the fun opportunity that you and Steve will be in person, and so some of, like, the channel cohesion stays the same because it's like, hey.

Aaron

01:07:11 – 01:07:28

We're in the same, like, same set, same background. Sometimes we're in the video sitting side by side. That makes it feel very like the Tailwind guys versus, hey. We've got, you know, four different contributors who are, you know, recording in their home studios, and we just throw stuff on the channel. So I like that.

Aaron

01:07:28 – 01:07:45

And if you feel comfortable that you'll still have your creative and motivational outlets in that container, I don't think I see any problems with it. My big fear for you is that you do this thing, and you end up hating it, and you feel trapped by it.

Adam Wathan

01:07:45 – 01:08:03

Yeah. It's possible. I mean, I think the other possible structure is just, like, Steve just wants to do repracting UI videos. He can just keep doing repracting UI videos on his channel, and we literally abandon the Tailwind channel, and I just grow my channel under my name. And it's just me.

Adam Wathan

01:08:03 – 01:08:29

And if I wanna say what's new in Tailwind four dot one, it comes from Adam Wadden, the creator of Tailwind, not from the Tailwind guy's channel. You know? Mhmm. And it just really doubled down on the personal brand of everything, And that could also work, I think I think in reality, what that would end up becoming is my channel would very much be, like, the primary content outlet for the Yeah. The company.

Adam Wathan

01:08:29 – 01:08:53

And Steve would just have this design stuff on a separate channel. And now we have two entry points, and we can do some crossover stuff, you know, whatever. Yeah. And maybe maybe that's honestly totally fine. And, you know, growing my channel up to, like, a hundred thousand people, I I I don't really feel too bummed about, like, we hit a hundred k on one, and now I gotta, like, start from scratch.

Adam Wathan

01:08:53 – 01:09:07

Like, it doesn't sound like a hard thing to me. Yeah. So I don't know if that there's that world for sure too, and then maybe build you eyes don't suck is still just a cool brand we save for. Like, that could be the paid course. You know what I mean?

Aaron

01:09:07 – 01:09:09

Could be a paid course. Could be a series You

Adam Wathan

01:09:09 – 01:09:10

you know

Aaron

01:09:10 – 01:09:11

of YouTube videos

Adam Wathan

01:09:11 – 01:09:11

Yeah.

Aaron

01:09:11 – 01:09:28

On one of the channels that is branded with something more recognizable. Uh-huh. I think one of the the inversions between you and I is that your company brand is the most recognizable thing in the world, and my personal brand is more recognizable than our company brand. Right?

Adam Wathan

01:09:28 – 01:09:29

Yeah.

Aaron

01:09:29 – 01:09:38

And so, like, you're operating over in a space where it's like, you throw Tailwind on any channel name and only, you know, presumably only y'all can do it.

Adam Wathan

01:09:38 – 01:09:46

Maybe I underestimate that or undervalue it as, like, someone who's just directly involved, and it just doesn't seem as big of a deal to me. But I think that's obvious.

Aaron

01:09:47 – 01:09:58

Big yeah. You could yeah. That's gonna be the easiest. And this may not be what you're optimizing for, but that's gonna be the easiest banner to run under because the entire Internet is familiar with it.

Adam Wathan

01:09:58 – 01:10:05

Yeah. I guess my only fear there is, like, wanting to outgrow that brand in some way. You know?

Aaron

01:10:05 – 01:10:07

That is a viable

Adam Wathan

01:10:07 – 01:10:27

enough because even, like, refactoring UI, like, the book, it doesn't really fit in the Tailwind brand at the moment. Mhmm. You know? Like, it was made before Tailwind existed, which kind of just, like, excludes it from being, like, a Tailwind thing, even though it still is. But, it's not like the Tailwind guide to UI design or something.

Adam Wathan

01:10:27 – 01:10:28

You know?

Aaron

01:10:28 – 01:10:28

It's like

Adam Wathan

01:10:28 – 01:10:29

a whole separate

Aaron

01:10:29 – 01:10:32

rename it. Rename it and make the make it that. I mean, why not?

Adam Wathan

01:10:32 – 01:10:46

That I that's lame, dude. You know what? This is something I've been talking about a lot too is, like, when I was listening to you and Ian talking about goals, and Ian was sort of drilling you on, like, come up with a goal that isn't just, like, another way of saying have a lot of money. You know? Yeah.

Adam Wathan

01:10:46 – 01:10:46

Yeah.

Aaron

01:10:46 – 01:10:47

It's tricky.

Adam Wathan

01:10:48 – 01:10:50

And I wanna build a pool.

Aaron

01:10:50 – 01:10:50

Damn it.

Adam Wathan

01:10:50 – 01:10:50

That's the

Aaron

01:10:50 – 01:10:52

same thing. Yeah. Shit.

Adam Wathan

01:10:56 – 01:11:10

But it got me thinking about that too because, it started getting me to think about I started framing it in my head, like, what are things I'm gonna, like, be mad at myself that I didn't do, like, later on in life? You know?

Aaron

01:11:10 – 01:11:11

It was a big questions.

Adam Wathan

01:11:11 – 01:11:22

One of those things for me is, like, doing a physical version of Refactoring UI and finding a publisher and putting it in real bookstores with a barcode on it. Is it the best thing to do for business? We probably make

Aaron

01:11:22 – 01:11:22

Doesn't matter.

Adam Wathan

01:11:23 – 01:11:31

Money on it, but I just wanna have that experience of taking my kids to the bookstore and having them find the book that I wrote. That's, like, a precious moment to me. You know?

Aaron

01:11:31 – 01:11:33

Reprint minimization is a good framework.

Adam Wathan

01:11:33 – 01:11:57

And, same with, like, the same with working from the office. That's actually, like, another place where that came from. Like, if ten years from now, when if this stuff has petered out or whatever, I'm probably I'm gonna look back and kick myself from just, like, working from home the whole time instead of, like, living out that fantasy of having the cool space where you go with your friends, where you laugh and make cool stuff, and I'm gonna be too old to do it. Like, that's gonna that

Aaron

01:11:57 – 01:12:00

would Devastating. You know? Devastating. Yeah.

Adam Wathan

01:12:00 – 01:12:08

Not a money thing. It's just like a take action thing. You know? Mhmm. So how is that related?

Adam Wathan

01:12:08 – 01:12:24

Because we said the words were factoring Eli. I don't know. But, yeah, strategically, I'm start you're starting to convince me that maybe the well, this isn't what you're trying to convince me to do, but I'm starting to become convinced. I feel bad

Aaron

01:12:25 – 01:12:25

sense. So whatever.

Adam Wathan

01:12:25 – 01:12:35

On the Adam Wadden channel, honestly. And it's almost like an effort to sort of migrate my audience from Twitter to YouTube in a way Which

Aaron

01:12:35 – 01:12:38

you have talked about a bunch, and I think that

Adam Wathan

01:12:38 – 01:12:39

is something that's been on your

Aaron

01:12:39 – 01:12:40

mind for a long time.

Adam Wathan

01:12:40 – 01:12:53

I don't I still love Twitter, but I do kinda feel like if if I was starting from scratch, that's where I would be. That would be, like, my social platform for sure, because you can, delete because you can, delete comments. Mhmm.

Aaron

01:12:54 – 01:12:55

Sounds nice. Yeah.

Adam Wathan

01:12:55 – 01:12:57

But, yeah. So How do you

Aaron

01:12:58 – 01:13:06

how do you think about my characterization of you needing some sort of outlet where you can just kinda do whatever you want? Does that seem at least directionally correct?

Adam Wathan

01:13:06 – 01:13:20

Yeah. I think that's true. I think I I feel that freedom with Twitter. You know, I can just post whatever I want to Twitter, and it doesn't have to be sort of, like, approved by the PR people at the Your brain, which is real.

Aaron

01:13:20 – 01:13:21

Yeah.

Adam Wathan

01:13:22 – 01:13:57

Where and putting things like, I already struggle with that on the Tailwind channel. That's why when I live stream building something with Tailwind, it still goes on my channel, not, like, the the Tailwind channel. I want to believe that we can design it in a way where we give ourselves that freedom and flexibility, but I I do think there is potential for conflict there. Like, if Steve just doesn't really think something I'm doing should go there or vice versa, you know, might not it could suck to run into situations like that. Yep.

Adam Wathan

01:13:57 – 01:13:57

But,

Aaron

01:13:58 – 01:14:26

So well, let's leave it let's leave the strategic discussion with this. What is the thing we're trying to figure out what to do, but backing up from that, what is the thing that you're optimizing for? Because if you're optimizing for, selling more Tailwind plus, it makes sense to go in all into a Tailwind channel. If you're optimizing for life happiness, I do whatever I want, it makes sense to go in on an Adam channel, which does not necessarily mean Steve has to go in on a Steve channel. Yeah.

Aaron

01:14:26 – 01:14:26

Just for

Adam Wathan

01:14:26 – 01:14:37

the We're more optimizing for that, I think. Yeah. There's just, like, a lot of factors. You know? Like, working in person, doing the YouTube thing, not a % connected in my mind.

Adam Wathan

01:14:37 – 01:14:53

Yeah. I would rather still work in person with Steve even even if we don't, do any video content. That said, when I've gotten into the video stuff, it's it's a rabbit hole that I've, like, had a fun time getting into. It's a fun thing to learn about. It's a fun thing to to do, and I enjoy

Aaron

01:14:54 – 01:14:57

Buy gear, set up gear, tweak settings. Like, it's a blast.

Adam Wathan

01:14:57 – 01:15:11

Dude, I just I bought two studio displays today to put in the the new office. I think they're sitting at the door. I'm gonna spend probably $5 on desks and another 2,500 on chairs today. It's gonna be just spend money everywhere. I love spending money.

Aaron

01:15:11 – 01:15:12

Great. So much fun.

Adam Wathan

01:15:13 – 01:15:17

Especially business money, man. Yeah. It's great. Super free.

Aaron

01:15:17 – 01:15:18

35% off. Yeah.

Adam Wathan

01:15:18 – 01:15:35

Yeah. But, yeah, I think, like, we're gonna be more productive working in person because you just you focus more, you know, or you talk around the same stuff. It's just, it's just gonna be better. But Steve's excited about doing the video stuff. I'm excited about doing the video stuff with Steve.

Adam Wathan

01:15:35 – 01:15:52

I've always had a lot of ideas for doing video stuff. Again, a lot of it comes down to don't really know where it's going to go, but Sure. I have faith that it will go somewhere cool. Mhmm. But, yeah, it is a bit of a paralyzing decision when, like, okay.

Adam Wathan

01:15:52 – 01:15:57

You're ready to do this, but you just gotta pick up a place Right. To do it. You know? Yeah.

Aaron

01:15:58 – 01:16:19

Yeah. I think a lot of people will have a lot of advice on the best way to, like, structure YouTube channels, but you just have to figure out, I think, what do you want out of your life because then that advice may not apply at all. I think the normal like, the easy advice is, like, obviously, go in on a Tailwind channel because it's Tailwind brand. You can sell more Tailwind stuff. Duh.

Aaron

01:16:20 – 01:16:23

But it's like, is that what you wanna do with your life? Some of it's kind of an important question.

Adam Wathan

01:16:23 – 01:16:36

Resonate that hard for me. Which is totally fine. Like, that yeah. Perfect world, it would just be Adam Wadden. But because Steve wants to do stuff too, it becomes a challenge, and it feels like we should do stuff together.

Adam Wathan

01:16:36 – 01:16:39

So it feels like we should have one place to put that stuff.

Aaron

01:16:40 – 01:17:00

And Challenge that a little bit. I think Yeah. I think if I think it would be a totally fine eventuality if Steve makes a bunch of refactoring UI content that goes on the Tailwind channel. You do a bunch of whatever that goes on the Adam channel, and then you do what's new in Tailwind, and you put that on the Tailwind's channel. I think that is totally fine.

Aaron

01:17:00 – 01:17:19

So I don't think like I said, I don't think it's like, do we do discrete channels, or do we do, a Tailwind channel? You can do a discrete channel, and Steve can run the Tailwind channel, and you can hop in whenever you want. But it that goes back to, like, what content goes where. I think you just default to everything goes on Adam unless it's like Yeah. Well, this is specifically about a new Tailwind feature.

Aaron

01:17:19 – 01:17:21

Let me just put that on the Tailwind channel.

Adam Wathan

01:17:21 – 01:17:29

It also might just not matter at all. You know? The Tailwind Labs channel has a big following. It doesn't matter that it's called Tailwind Labs currently. You know?

Adam Wathan

01:17:29 – 01:17:30

Right. I

Aaron

01:17:30 – 01:17:40

do think the algorithm is better than just, like, you follow a channel, you get the channel. Like, we know that that's not true. So it's probably it's probably gonna all wash out, honestly.

Adam Wathan

01:17:40 – 01:17:47

Yeah. Yeah. But I do think the best YouTube channels are generally people. You know? I feel like.

Adam Wathan

01:17:47 – 01:17:48

Yeah. So

Aaron

01:17:49 – 01:17:52

Be a person. Whichever you do, just be a person or a

Adam Wathan

01:17:52 – 01:18:06

You gotta be a person either way. So Yeah. No matter what, even if we go into a combined channel, I want people to know who we are. And yeah. I don't know how many good examples there are of that, though, to be fair.

Aaron

01:18:06 – 01:18:07

Of combined channels?

Adam Wathan

01:18:07 – 01:18:13

Combined channels where the personalities are still very well Right.

Aaron

01:18:13 – 01:18:14

Known. That's hard.

Adam Wathan

01:18:14 – 01:18:21

You know? Yeah. There's, like, the Drumeo channel, and it's mostly one guy hosting that. And I know his name. I don't know Yeah.

Adam Wathan

01:18:21 – 01:18:26

If everyone knows his name, though, because he's not really a star of the channel. Yeah. He's kind of the facilitator

Aaron

01:18:27 – 01:18:37

of the content. There are lots of, like, host and guest channels, but very few, like, small cohort channels or, like, collections or indie creative collectives, whatever.

Adam Wathan

01:18:38 – 01:18:43

There's, like, stuff like Dude Perfect, you know, which is, like, a brand, and there's a few dudes doing it.

Aaron

01:18:43 – 01:18:44

To college with all those guys.

Adam Wathan

01:18:45 – 01:18:45

Oh, nice.

Aaron

01:18:45 – 01:18:50

I know. I missed it. What the hell was I doing? I should have been hanging out with them instead of taking accounting classes.

Adam Wathan

01:18:51 – 01:18:51

Close.

Aaron

01:18:51 – 01:19:04

I know. But, yeah, you know all of those guys, and they show up in all of, you know, 90% of their videos together. Yeah. So they're not doing, like, hey. I'm dude, and I'm perfect, and we're gonna do discreet videos on the same channel.

Aaron

01:19:04 – 01:19:05

You know?

Adam Wathan

01:19:05 – 01:19:06

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Wathan

01:19:06 – 01:19:25

So Yeah. That's true. That's true. If it's, like, if it's mostly me making a video or Steve making a video, then maybe it kinda is weird that they're even they even are on the same channel. But, like, other ideas for content that I've had, like, I want us to have, like, a monthly budget for, like, flying someone in to do cool stuff with that person.

Adam Wathan

01:19:25 – 01:19:48

So I've always really wanted to do, like, find experts to teach me things and teach me in person so that I can ask them questions. And I think anyone watching that is gonna learn so much more than they would from just that person trying to create a a video on their own teaching stuff because I'm like a proxy for the viewer, you know Mhmm. Yep. Which I think is really fun. I think that would be cool.

Adam Wathan

01:19:48 – 01:20:04

We bring someone in for two days, and maybe we have, like, four types of videos, and we bang up four. We do the Drumeo thing where there's Drumeo guests, man, that there's still new videos coming out with them, and I know they were it's been six months since they were, like, at the studio. They they're

Aaron

01:20:04 – 01:20:06

That's how real pros do it.

Adam Wathan

01:20:06 – 01:20:19

Yes, dude. They're they're, just discipline to be able to to record these things and then drip them out is, untouched. I don't know. I think the tech world moves a little too fast to hold things for that long.

Aaron

01:20:19 – 01:20:20

Yeah.

Adam Wathan

01:20:20 – 01:20:32

But, you know, stuff like that would be fun. I don't know, like, what other stuff we would wanna wanna do. But I don't know if that belongs on, like, a Tailwind channel. Like, Adam learns something with someone. Right.

Adam Wathan

01:20:32 – 01:20:47

You know? Or, yeah. I don't know. It all kinda feels like it would be totally fine to be branded under me except for the stuff that Steve wants to do, but also the stuff Steve wants to do can just be on his, and that can also be fine. It's the the same way we're separate people on Twitter.

Adam Wathan

01:20:47 – 01:20:55

There's no reason we can't just be separate people on, YouTube. But they should fucking let you just post videos to one channel from two separate accounts.

Aaron

01:20:55 – 01:20:55

They should.

Adam Wathan

01:20:55 – 01:20:56

They should they should have

Aaron

01:20:56 – 01:20:58

the everything. Collective.

Adam Wathan

01:20:58 – 01:20:59

Yeah. So

Aaron

01:20:59 – 01:21:03

it sounds like you're trying to convince me you should have an Adam Wyland channel, and I I don't know.

Adam Wathan

01:21:03 – 01:21:08

I'm just talking it out in my head. Support you. You know? Feels like that's I do think

Aaron

01:21:08 – 01:21:08

people want

Adam Wathan

01:21:09 – 01:21:19

is going. I think I guess I just believe people wanna follow people, not brands even if the brand is big. Like, yes. Microsoft is one of the most well known brands in the world or I don't know. What's, like, a better example?

Adam Wathan

01:21:19 – 01:21:22

Because no one gives a shit about anyone who works at Microsoft anymore.

Aaron

01:21:22 – 01:21:24

I don't know. What's something cool?

Adam Wathan

01:21:24 – 01:21:29

I'd rather follow DHH than 37 signals. You know? I'd rather follow Nathan Barry than Kit.

Aaron

01:21:29 – 01:21:33

That's a good one. That's a good one. Yeah. I'd rather follow Nathan Barry than Kit.

Adam Wathan

01:21:33 – 01:21:35

Yeah. Convert and braces Kit.

Aaron

01:21:36 – 01:21:38

Right. Formerly ConvertKit. Yeah.

Adam Wathan

01:21:38 – 01:21:43

Yeah. Or I don't know. There's probably a bunch of other ones other ones like that too. But But

Aaron

01:21:43 – 01:21:47

then there's stuff like teenage engineering where I don't know a single person who works there.

Adam Wathan

01:21:48 – 01:22:00

And I think no one there has really cultivated a personal brand either or even maybe even cares to. Yeah. But I don't know, like, what would their content be? It would probably mostly be it must be weird commercials, I think.

Aaron

01:22:00 – 01:22:05

It would be. Probably. God, their stuff is so cool. Yeah. That's a good point.

Aaron

01:22:05 – 01:22:23

I don't know a single person that works there. So whatever happens, I like the idea of you following the muse. You getting getting back into doing some wild stuff, some, you know, right down the middle, but, like, just doing whatever Adam wants to do, but publicly

Adam Wathan

01:22:23 – 01:22:23

I'll say, like

Aaron

01:22:24 – 01:22:25

feels good to me.

Adam Wathan

01:22:25 – 01:22:48

Meta conversation, I really wanna guide my life back to being more me doing things with the support of a team than me running a company. You know? Whatever that means in terms of the YouTube strategy, I don't totally know, but it's I guess it's another thing that pushes me in the direction of wanting it to be more perfect.

Aaron

01:22:48 – 01:22:52

Is a good guiding principle that makes answering all these questions easier.

Adam Wathan

01:22:52 – 01:22:52

Yeah.

Aaron

01:22:52 – 01:23:10

That makes, as you've already found out, office and work in person decisions easier. That makes YouTube decisions easier. That makes the future of, like, what is Tailwind gonna look like easier. And so finding out how you can bend all of those decisions towards that guiding principle seems pretty important to me.

Adam Wathan

01:23:10 – 01:23:15

Yeah. Well, Aaron, we're, an hour and thirty five minutes into this. Is there anything you want to talk about?

Aaron

01:23:16 – 01:23:23

No. We solved it. That's great. Oh, it's amazing. The only thing I wanna do is I wanna I wanna ask the audience.

Aaron

01:23:23 – 01:23:35

I I need help because we have now tried to hire two nannies. In fact, we have hired two nannies, and they've both backed out. One backed out three or four weeks before she was supposed to start and said she found a family.

Adam Wathan

01:23:35 – 01:23:37

Place your au pair Our au pair

Aaron

01:23:37 – 01:23:39

is going back to Germany. Visa's over.

Adam Wathan

01:23:39 – 01:23:40

That's brutal.

Aaron

01:23:40 – 01:23:48

Brutal. So the first one backed out because she said she found a family that was a better fit, which what the hell? Come on. Breed. The second one

Adam Wathan

01:23:48 – 01:23:50

That's a kick in the balls. Yeah.

Aaron

01:23:50 – 01:24:02

Yeah. The second one backed out, like, a week before she was supposed to start, which she was supposed to start this week. Our au pair leaves on Wednesday. And she backed out au pair? We could.

Aaron

01:24:02 – 01:24:13

Ours was so good that it feels like there's no chance we'll get someone that good. And, also, I think even as good as she was, which she was amazing, I don't wanna have a roommate anymore.

Adam Wathan

01:24:13 – 01:24:15

But at least they're locked in. You know?

Aaron

01:24:15 – 01:24:19

Eve I know. Yeah. They you either work for us or you have to go back to Germany.

Adam Wathan

01:24:19 – 01:24:22

Don't oh, no. Get the fuck back on the plate. I don't know.

Aaron

01:24:22 – 01:24:27

As much as we as much as we adore her, imagine having a grown up roommate.

Adam Wathan

01:24:27 – 01:24:29

Like, how, you know, a grown niece or

Aaron

01:24:29 – 01:24:30

nephew live with you. It's like

Adam Wathan

01:24:30 – 01:24:31

But they can't back out.

Aaron

01:24:31 – 01:24:33

Is just different. They can't back out.

Adam Wathan

01:24:33 – 01:24:38

So At least it it gives you that, confidence or, you know, just that

Aaron

01:24:38 – 01:24:38

Yes.

Adam Wathan

01:24:38 – 01:24:40

Security. You know? They're moving

Aaron

01:24:40 – 01:24:58

to this country. It's very little chance they're gonna say, ah, you know what? I changed my mind. So Yeah. If you know of someone in Dallas, Texas that wants to work with the best family in the world and wants to work twenty five, thirty five hours a week as a nanny, you'll never be responsible for all four kids at once, only two at a time.

Aaron

01:24:58 – 01:25:01

Please let me know because we are desperate. That's Help.

Adam Wathan

01:25:01 – 01:25:03

That is hard. That sucks. Yeah.

Aaron

01:25:03 – 01:25:05

That's the only thing I really wanna talk about.

Adam Wathan

01:25:05 – 01:25:18

Nannying, dude. We have had a couple nannies, and it's a huge help. I don't know how people raise families without at least three adults involved.

Aaron

01:25:18 – 01:25:33

Yeah. I don't I don't I don't either. I mean, our kids, like, we have so many so young that, like, it's just logistically impossible for one person, I e my wife who's a stay at home mom, to do any of that.

Adam Wathan

01:25:33 – 01:25:35

No. It's impossible. Impossible. Impossible.

Aaron

01:25:35 – 01:25:42

Totally impossible. We're we're living in the worst timeline where, like, you we should have grandparents everywhere and little aunts and uncles everywhere.

Adam Wathan

01:25:42 – 01:25:44

Ones, like, in daycare during the week at all.

Aaron

01:25:44 – 01:25:47

Four days a week, they're in a nine to 02:30

Adam Wathan

01:25:48 – 01:25:50

Yeah. Yeah. At the Mother's Day. Something to do. You know?

Adam Wathan

01:25:50 – 01:25:51

We gotta

Aaron

01:25:52 – 01:25:58

Yeah. Yeah. And next year, they'll be in, I think, five days a week. Yeah. Like, a pre kindergarten type thing.

Aaron

01:26:00 – 01:26:06

But yeah. So please, dear listener, find me someone that can do this because we're dying.

Adam Wathan

01:26:07 – 01:26:12

People without kids, man, they are, they just don't know what they got. They don't know.

Aaron

01:26:12 – 01:26:13

They don't know what they got. And they

Adam Wathan

01:26:13 – 01:26:15

can't know. They can't tell.

Aaron

01:26:15 – 01:26:16

They can't know.

Adam Wathan

01:26:16 – 01:26:20

It's Schrodinger's opportunity. Do you know?

Aaron

01:26:20 – 01:26:21

It's I do know.

Adam Wathan

01:26:21 – 01:26:26

Cannot you cannot realize your potential until it's no longer available to you.

Aaron

01:26:27 – 01:26:29

Brutal. Which point you often can't

Adam Wathan

01:26:29 – 01:26:34

realize your potential. That's fun, though. They're cute. You know? So

Aaron

01:26:35 – 01:26:43

They're cute. They're great. I love them I love them to death, but that does not lessen just the amount of of work it is. It's just a lot of work.

Adam Wathan

01:26:43 – 01:26:45

It just many tasks need to be performed.

Aaron

01:26:45 – 01:26:49

Many tasks need to be performed. Like, this just Yeah. There's no way around.

Adam Wathan

01:26:49 – 01:26:50

Tasks. Yep.

Aaron

01:26:51 – 01:26:52

So yeah.

Adam Wathan

01:26:53 – 01:26:55

That's all. Well, good luck. I hope you

Aaron

01:26:55 – 01:27:03

find somebody. I appreciate that. I hope somebody listening knows somebody in Dallas that would want a job like that. So we shall see. Alright.

Aaron

01:27:03 – 01:27:05

Anything else before I read us out?

Adam Wathan

01:27:05 – 01:27:07

No. That's it. Well, I don't know if

Aaron

01:27:07 – 01:27:09

we solved anything, but it sure was fine.

Adam Wathan

01:27:09 – 01:27:12

I feel I feel I feel pretty good. I, I think we're getting somewhere.

Aaron

01:27:12 – 01:27:31

Okay. Well, I look forward to to seeing what the final answer is going to be, but either way, I will be watching. You can find all show notes and everything at Mistleytechnical.com. Thank you to, Bento and WorkOS for sponsoring the show, and thanks to Adam for filling in for Ian. We will see you next time.

Adam Wathan

01:27:31 – 01:27:32

See you.

Distribution & Taste w/ Adam Wathan

Transcript

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