Empanelling Aaron Francis

September 15, 2023

I joined John Drexler of Thunk.dev to talk about social media and positioning.
Watch on YouTube →

Transcript

John
00:00:08 – 00:00:16
Well, hello and welcome to Talking Businessly. We don't have our normal intro of Daniel talking because we don't have Daniel with us.
Aaron
00:00:17 – 00:00:23
Yeah. I'm not Daniel Colbourne, and this is that call. Dumb, dumb. That was pretty close, right?
John
00:00:23 – 00:00:32
Yeah. It's pretty good. Really good. I this was frantic. I'm, like, learning how to use Zencastr in real time because Daniel's usually the one who sets it up.
John
00:00:32 – 00:00:37
So slightly confused by the UI, but we made it, and we're recording.
Aaron
00:00:38 – 00:00:45
I see waveforms at the bottom, so I think we're good. I heard the intro music, which is awesome, so I think we're off to the races. Beautiful.
John
00:00:45 – 00:00:47
I love it. Aaron, how are you?
Aaron
00:00:48 – 00:00:50
I'm doing well. How are you, John Rudolph Drexler?
John
00:00:52 – 00:01:02
I think I'm good. It's a slightly frantic week. I've, I've made this a whole set behind me to just really emphasize how dramatic things are
Aaron
00:01:02 – 00:01:09
over here. What are you hiding back there? Are you cooking something up? Because it it is very prominent that you have boxes behind your head.
John
00:01:09 – 00:01:12
Talking business leap brought to you by Home Depot.
Aaron
00:01:12 – 00:01:15
Apparently, I hope you're getting paid for this.
John
00:01:16 – 00:01:20
I am, I started my move this morning.
Aaron
00:01:21 – 00:01:21
Okay.
John
00:01:21 – 00:01:26
And I am doing the main part of my move tomorrow. So moving to a new apartment. Are we
Aaron
00:01:26 – 00:01:28
in new space or old space right now?
John
00:01:28 – 00:01:37
This is a new space. Yeah. Okay. So this is, like, now a barren shell of an apartment, you know, with, like, no life in it. It's everything in boxes.
John
00:01:37 – 00:01:51
So I went over to the new place. It's great. I'm very, very excited about it. I think it's a lot more conducive to working at home, so I'm super excited. But also for the next, like, 48 hours, life is a little crazy.
John
00:01:52 – 00:01:53
But Yeah. That's alright.
Aaron
00:01:54 – 00:01:59
I mean, if you can get an entire move done in 48 hours and have life back to normal, you're a machine. So
John
00:02:00 – 00:02:08
It's great. That's the hope. I had some real opportunities for some Marie Kondo. You know? Been I purged a lot.
John
00:02:08 – 00:02:30
I had a funny moment where, like, when I once I signed the new lease, I was like, I'm gonna start packing now, and anything I don't need in the next month, I will pack. And it, like, immediately raised an interesting question, which is like, if I don't need this thing for an entire month, do I need this thing? Yep. So I got rid of quite a lot. It was great.
Aaron
00:02:31 – 00:02:44
Good. Yeah. That's that's the move is to, like, throw everything away before you move it because the temptation is to just, I'll figure this out later and pack it all up and then move it, and you're like, I don't even want any of this stuff.
John
00:02:45 – 00:02:50
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, things have been good. Things have did.
John
00:02:50 – 00:03:18
This is a week where, Daniel is, the reason he's not here is because he is, in an Airbnb, with friend of the show, Chris Morrill, and they are making a very cool event sourcing package. We'll talk a lot more about that on future episodes. But Daniel was basically like, I need to take a week where I am not, like, thinking about any company problems, and I can just make this thing. And I was like, you got it. And it's been pretty smooth without him.
John
00:03:19 – 00:03:36
I've been working on some, like, some hard programming problems without him, and, like, not having the easy, like, just to pull Daniel, you know, is has been good because it's made me, like, fight some demons by myself. But I think overall pretty good. How are you doing?
Aaron
00:03:36 – 00:03:47
This is a good this is a good stress test of y'all's Exactly. OKR of, like, I I need to randomly be able to take 6 weeks off and nobody worries about it. Like, woah. Hang on there, friendo.
John
00:03:48 – 00:04:10
We had a whole dust up about it because Daniel really believed I didn't understand what he was saying, and I was being like, I was trying to, like, gently nudge him towards, like, this is not the stress test we need right now. It's like, I agree a stress test is in order. Also, like, this is the first, like, month of this company's existence.
Aaron
00:04:10 – 00:04:16
This business 8 minutes ago. I don't think we need to take a stress test right now. Yeah. Everything is a stress test.
John
00:04:16 – 00:04:32
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So it's good. I mean, him taking he he the one of the problems we've had it's not a problem, but just, like, one of the things that we need to reckon with is that he is a potential blocker on everything because he's, like, the lead developer.
John
00:04:32 – 00:04:42
He has the relationship with our existing clients. And so for him to take a week off and for things to go fine is a pretty good omen so far. So
Aaron
00:04:42 – 00:04:47
yeah. Good. Well, do you wanna do do you wanna do the format? What's what's the format? How am I how are you feedback?
Aaron
00:04:47 – 00:04:48
Do you feedback Yeah.
John
00:04:48 – 00:04:50
You asked me how I was doing, and I
Aaron
00:04:50 – 00:04:50
that was Oh, okay. That was my answer. Oh, shoot. I thought I thought
John
00:04:50 – 00:04:50
you were doing niceties there
Aaron
00:04:50 – 00:04:50
at
John
00:04:50 – 00:04:51
the beginning. I thought you're like, hey.
Aaron
00:04:51 – 00:04:58
How are you? How's father? So that was the format. Man. Okay.
Aaron
00:04:58 – 00:04:59
I missed it.
John
00:04:59 – 00:05:05
But now you're gonna you're gonna get your second chance because you only gave me, pretty good. Okay. So you could you could tell me how you're doing for real now.
Aaron
00:05:05 – 00:05:11
Okay. Cool. This is my first time doing the format. How am I doing for real now? For real now?
Aaron
00:05:11 – 00:05:36
Good. I feel very busy right now. Work at PlanetScale, where I work, is good. We are ramping up video production at PlanetScale, and a lot of that comes down to me producing videos, which I enjoy doing, but is, of course, a lot of work. We're hiring a video editor and so that will become less work in the future.
Aaron
00:05:36 – 00:05:56
So I feel good about that. I feel stressed about the launch of screencasting.com, which is gonna happen on Wednesday, 20th. So whenever you're listening, it has either already happened or about to happen. So I feel stressed about that. How else am I?
Aaron
00:05:56 – 00:06:07
Also, I am in physical pain. I've got like, like carpal tunnel y Oh, no. Going on. So I think that rounds out the the how are you section.
John
00:06:07 – 00:06:10
Shoot. Has that been going on for a while?
Aaron
00:06:12 – 00:06:31
Yeah. It's been going on for a couple weeks now. There was a time many years ago, a few years ago, where I got just like really bad arthritis pains everywhere, and it lasted for about 2 months and then just totally went away. Like, I went and saw a dermatologist and they're like, yeah, everything seems fine. And it just went away completely.
Aaron
00:06:31 – 00:06:47
Interesting. They suggested it could be some sort of viral thing. And around that same time, my 2 children had hand, foot, and mouth. And so it was like, maybe there was a viral Interesting. And my my presentation of it was arthritis.
Aaron
00:06:47 – 00:07:02
And so I'm wondering if that's the same because, like, my fingers hurt, like, my knees hurt, my wrists hurt, and so I'm hoping it's one of those things where it's like, you're the parent of small children who are sick, and for some reason, you get arthritis when they get sick. But Yeah. Yeah. Not super fun.
John
00:07:02 – 00:07:11
Yeah. That's tough, man. Well, you have a lot, a lot going on. I'm I've been curious about, like, does Aaron Francis sleep?
Aaron
00:07:12 – 00:07:40
Yeah. Not very much. So these days, I'm I was on a get up early, you know, streak for a while, and that has now worked all its way all the way back around to stay up late. And so these days I I finish work around 5:30 or 6 and then go do family dinner, kids' bedtime, that sort of stuff. And then from about 7:30 to midnight, I do other work.
John
00:07:40 – 00:07:42
Like non planet scale work?
Aaron
00:07:42 – 00:07:42
Mhmm. Yep.
John
00:07:42 – 00:07:44
That's where you're streaming and video.
Aaron
00:07:44 – 00:07:51
Yeah. That's where I'm recording my own videos or working on screencasting.com or, you know, any of the other things.
John
00:07:51 – 00:07:52
That's a lot.
Aaron
00:07:52 – 00:07:56
Boy, isn't it? Sure is. Effort. Maximum effort. Yeah.
Aaron
00:07:56 – 00:07:57
Exactly.
John
00:07:57 – 00:08:05
Have you hit, any walls? Like, any, like, I can't get out of bed, like, I hit this for 12 hours?
Aaron
00:08:05 – 00:08:19
Yeah. Big time. Yeah. I hit I hit mini walls, m I n I, not, numerous, but rather small. I hit small walls, and I just, I just kinda pull back when that happens.
Aaron
00:08:19 – 00:08:53
And I will, you know, I will, sounds crazy, take a night off or take 2 nights off or whatever and just not do anything at all. And there have been projects that I've just kind of fully put on the back burner or dropped altogether. And so I feel like I work very much in ebbs and flows, and sometimes like right now, I've got a ton of energy. Like, I don't mind staying up late because all the stuff I'm working on, I feel energetic for, but there have been times where it's been like, I can't do a freaking thing besides Yeah. Planet scale work.
Aaron
00:08:54 – 00:08:57
And I just have to, like, wait a little bit for it to come back.
John
00:08:57 – 00:09:03
Sure. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. There's something else.
John
00:09:03 – 00:09:17
Yeah. The hand thing, I thought about that recently, like, how precious my hands are. I was having the thought because I was like, obviously, all of my work is I don't work with my hands like a coal miner, but, like, I do work with my hands.
Aaron
00:09:17 – 00:09:20
In a very delicate and precious way, yes. We work with our hands.
John
00:09:21 – 00:09:47
And then, like, you know, my my my main hobby outside of work is that I do Brazilian jiu jitsu, which would be there is a guy at jiu jitsu who he's like a high schooler who who only has one hand, and he you know, more power to him. It's an incredible thing to to do. Extremely difficult. You know? Thinking about, like, even writing or, playing a video game or whatever.
John
00:09:47 – 00:09:52
It's like Yeah. Boy, hands are scary. Hands are scary.
Aaron
00:09:52 – 00:10:03
Yeah. So I've got the one wrist guard here, and I've got the other wrist guard here for my mousing hand, trying to trying to put some support in place until it goes away.
John
00:10:03 – 00:10:05
Good. Take care of yourself.
Aaron
00:10:06 – 00:10:09
So what's the next question? Any feedback for you? I guess these are gonna be harder since
John
00:10:09 – 00:10:11
we Yeah. Do you have any feedback for me?
Aaron
00:10:11 – 00:10:12
This is our second time speaking.
John
00:10:12 – 00:10:21
I'll I'll I'll ask you for more directed feedback later on in the episode so you could, you could punt a little bit if you want. Okay. But,
Aaron
00:10:22 – 00:10:28
Do you have any feedback for Daniel, I guess, is the real question since he's not here, and he'll never hear this.
John
00:10:28 – 00:10:58
Do I have any feedback for Daniel? I don't have a ton right now. I appreciate, like, we're the I'll I can tell you the hard problem that we have right now, which is it will probably be just, like, the next episode with him is, like, we, we're really dedicated to I mean, especially just as an early company, but also just who we are. Like, we're not gonna we're not gonna turn in things that are halfway finished for people. Right.
John
00:10:58 – 00:11:24
Like, we wanna deliver. That's like, we're not screwing around on that. And one of our first big clients, we kinda got towards the end of the agreement, and we we bit off kind of like an extra portion, that turned out to be pretty hard. And so, like, now and we're not gonna, like, we're not gonna give it back to them half finished. So, like, it was kind of our it was our problem.
John
00:11:24 – 00:11:44
It wasn't the client's problem. Right? But it led to this situation where this slightly kind of perfect storm where, like, I I am now, like, hacking away at it, and these are, like, not profitable hours anymore. Yep. And Daniel's not here to help.
John
00:11:44 – 00:11:56
And so, like, my week has been a little bit like, oh, this can happen Yeah. If you're not really smart about this. So it wasn't, like, some terrible mistake. We're not, like, losing money on it. The client's gonna get what they want.
John
00:11:56 – 00:12:15
Every everything's gonna be fine, but it was sort of like my first reality check of, like, oh, okay. So, like, this is what happens if you don't plan super carefully. And I'm sure it'll happen even if you do plan super carefully. So, I'm kind of, like, reckoning with that right now. That's what's that's what's hottest on my mind right now.
Aaron
00:12:15 – 00:12:33
So what is alright. This is not a world that I am in. So listening to y'all's call is always really interesting for me, and and now I get to ask questions back, so it's even better. So what is, like, the situation where you the client comes back and, like, let's call it an addendum. You know, scope creep might be another way to say it, but they have this addendum.
Aaron
00:12:33 – 00:12:42
What do y'all I guess, what did you do and what will you do in the future to decide, like, oh, okay. We can add this to the project or we we can't.
John
00:12:42 – 00:13:14
It's a good question. So part of this inevitably comes back to this conversation that Daniel and I have had a lot off the podcast. I think we're gonna eventually have on the podcast is, like, there's there's a lot of ways to price things, but, like, the 2 most obvious paths, are, like, you hire us hourly, and you get what you get. And so if somebody says, we want you to do an extra do an extra thing, we say, okay. That we think that might take an extra 4 or 6 weeks.
John
00:13:14 – 00:13:23
Just keep us on. You know? Pay us for pay us for more hours. It's pretty straightforward. The other path is pricing out just the value of a project.
Aaron
00:13:24 – 00:13:24
Right.
John
00:13:25 – 00:13:33
And that the thing that everyone in the agency world says is that the latter of those 2 is where you really can get margin.
Aaron
00:13:34 – 00:13:34
Mhmm.
John
00:13:34 – 00:13:57
Because if you work really fast, then you can say, here's what this project is worth to you, the client. We believe that we can get that done in a reasonable number of hours, which means that there's a lot of profit to be made here. And so in each of those cases, I think if and the first one is, like, if somebody said we want you to do an extra thing, we'll just say it'll take longer, so you're gonna pay us for more hours.
Aaron
00:13:57 – 00:13:57
Mhmm.
John
00:13:57 – 00:14:26
And the latter, we should really kinda say this should be priced as a separate project. In some ways, we're, like, we might need to revisit the original contract, to account for scope creep here. In this case, it was like we they had hired us for a fixed number of hours, and we basically, 2 months ago, thought, okay. We're we're kinda done with the main thing. What's the next thing we can do because we have more hours to spend here?
John
00:14:26 – 00:14:36
And we bit off a thing that was a little bit too big. I see. And so then we, like, did it. We finished our hours, and we're like, this thing is not done. We're gonna finish it.
John
00:14:36 – 00:14:53
Bummer. Yeah. So that's basically the risk is, like, pricing out projects is, like, if you successfully move fast, there's good profit, and the problem is projects are very difficult to estimate. And so yeah.
Aaron
00:14:53 – 00:15:00
Yeah. It seems like the value based pricing or whatever is great if you get it right, but you can do it pretty upside down pretty quickly if you get it wrong.
John
00:15:00 – 00:15:14
If we're discharging hourly, it's like, it is what it is. We'll, you know, we'll we'll keep going until it's done, and we get paid either way. So it's kind of like lower margin, less risk for hourly, higher margin, higher risk for value based.
Aaron
00:15:14 – 00:15:18
Right. Yeah. Oof. That does not that does not sound easy. So Yeah.
Aaron
00:15:18 – 00:15:20
Good good luck to you on
John
00:15:20 – 00:15:37
It's a you know, it's I I'm enjoying just the, like, experimentation of it and, like, just learning as we go. And there's a lot of wise people, especially in the Laravel world. Like, there's great agencies, and we're friendly with them. And, like, I'm interested to hear how other people do this. Some people say, like, oh, only ever do value based.
John
00:15:37 – 00:16:03
Oh, only Mhmm. So it's interesting. I've heard I've heard other people not in the, web development as much, but I've heard other people, who run agencies in, like, marketing and branding and things like that. They're basically like they charge a pretty, like, low margin hourly thing. That's basically like we're passing the cost of labor onto you, but then there's, like, a 20,000 fee that's just, like, for working with us.
John
00:16:03 – 00:16:16
Like, basically, like, if you're gonna have our attention for the next 4 months, that's gonna cost you $20,000. Now all of the labor that goes into it, we'll just we'll just charge you basically what it costs us. Interesting.
Aaron
00:16:16 – 00:16:16
Yeah.
John
00:16:16 – 00:16:24
It's like there's a lot of interesting ways of approaching it, but, we gotta keep on tinkering with it. So
Aaron
00:16:24 – 00:16:27
Interesting. Okay. Cool. I like that. Well, good feedback for Daniel.
Aaron
00:16:27 – 00:16:30
Daniel Yeah. Listen up. We'll talk about that next episode.
John
00:16:30 – 00:16:57
My feedback for you, Aaron, is that, you, we're all very impressed with you, and we really appreciate that. We'll get into more of this in a minute of, like, what you the the presence that you've established online is, like, very good and positive. And in my, like, personal dealings with you, I'm, like, very happy that it's, like, it's not a front. You know what I mean? Yeah.
John
00:16:57 – 00:17:18
Like Yeah. We had some, like, really specific questions for you about, like, hey. How do we do better at Twitter and, like, get our stuff out there? And you were like jumped into our Slack and were just, like, super helpful and constructive and detailed and specific, and I was like, okay, Like, he is he is doing what he says that he does, and I really appreciate that.
Aaron
00:17:18 – 00:17:33
That is encouraging, to hear, so thank you. Thank you for saying that. I am glad I am glad that that is, your read on it because it would be it would be a disaster if I had this public private privately. I was some something else.
John
00:17:33 – 00:17:33
I
Aaron
00:17:33 – 00:17:44
one, I don't think I would be able to pull it off because I am, like, pretty transparent and pretty emotionally vulnerable, and I would feel like this is all gonna crash, and I'm gonna be in shambles.
John
00:17:44 – 00:17:45
But Yeah.
Aaron
00:17:45 – 00:17:48
Yeah. That is that is good to hear that that is your perception as well.
John
00:17:48 – 00:17:56
Yeah. Do you have any feedback for me or Thunk or anything else before I ask you for some more, like, specific feedback on things?
Aaron
00:17:56 – 00:18:05
First piece of feedback is I like your new camera angle. You're looking you're looking I know that you're moving out of this, like, today, but you're looking right at me.
John
00:18:05 – 00:18:06
That's great.
Aaron
00:18:06 – 00:18:06
Love that.
John
00:18:07 – 00:18:09
Noted for my next setup.
Aaron
00:18:09 – 00:18:18
Yeah. No. I I don't think so. I've noticed, and we've talked about some of the different things you're trying on Twitter, and I'm I'm here for it. I'm here for the experimentation.
Aaron
00:18:20 – 00:18:36
I think iterating until you find what works for the people you're trying to reach and also what works for the ever changing, Twitter algorithm is is good. And you've been you've been quick to try new things, which I think means you'll find it. Cool.
John
00:18:37 – 00:18:48
Great. Yeah. It gets into, like, one of the things I was gonna ask about. So last we or last time we did the podcast, we were talking about mentors and empaneling people.
Aaron
00:18:48 – 00:18:49
Empaneling people.
John
00:18:49 – 00:19:17
You were the first person we were like, we want Aaron on the panel. And so, we're very excited to have you helping with this because this is something that Daniel and I are just, like, not particularly good at. Mhmm. And we've realized, like, I think part of our goal or part of our strategy is to be just, like, super transparent about what we're doing. I think when people do, I don't know, content marketing and stuff and it's, like, not it's if they're trying to pretend it's one thing when it's another, it feels a little gross and weird.
John
00:19:17 – 00:19:32
So we've tried to be really just like look. Like, we're trying to put out really helpful content to people because we want them to come to us. Ultimately, we want to get clients out of that. Many of the people who see our content will not become clients, and that's great. That's no problem at all.
John
00:19:32 – 00:19:44
But, like, we're trying to put a lot of really helpful stuff out there because trying to express that that's what kind of the brand of the company is, and we eventually want to, you know, generate clients out of that.
Aaron
00:19:46 – 00:19:46
And
John
00:19:46 – 00:19:54
so that's we've tried to just be, like, really upfront about that and joke on here about, you know, like, if you're listening to the podcast, you're in the sales funnel.
Aaron
00:19:54 – 00:19:56
Right. Which is a great bit. Yeah.
John
00:19:56 – 00:20:21
Yeah. Because it's just like it feels like the only way for us to do this that doesn't feel backhanded or something. Yeah. So seems like so far that that's just, like, going well. But in terms of, like, format, we're still we need a lot of help with we're trying to put that content out on Twitter and out on the podcast, and, you know, that's where we've come to you for really tactical questions about, like Yeah.
John
00:20:21 – 00:20:54
Do we put links in Twitter, and do we, what should our images look like and things like that. So, it's we very much appreciate having, having someone who's who's done it really well. I guess, like, the I'm interested to hear you talk a little bit about, like so in the spirit of that transparency, we like, Daniel and I had a conversation. It was actually the first time we did the actual, like, talking business meeting before recording it. We realized we should record this.
John
00:20:55 – 00:21:16
With the thing that I was, like, really interested in was, like, you know, Daniel is a really excellent programmer, and it can just, like, put tips out there, can, like, make packages, can do stuff out there that, like, basically tells the world, like, hey. I'm here. I'm being useful. I'm being helpful. I'm really good at this thing.
John
00:21:17 – 00:22:03
Mhmm. And that's, like, super powerful. I am not at that level of programming, and so we had this conversation about I was like, you know, I walked into Laracon and was, like, met all these wonderful people who were very kind to me, and I was, like, what it like, I was I felt a little bit of, like, what is my angle here? Because, like, all of them are, like, way better programmers than me, and I have, like, nothing to offer them there, you know? And so Daniel was like he's like, honestly, like, you should, like, you should get good at putting out product content because that is, like, one of the things that's not super present in this kind of little ecosystem yet.
John
00:22:04 – 00:22:38
And that's what we we've learned that, like, with our clients that having a product angle on what we're kinda selling them is, like, really powerful. Mhmm. Partly because we will go to especially smaller clients, and we're like, we can help with engineering. Obviously, Daniel is can help with architecture consulting, but we also have a product manager here, and that can help to clarify a lot of what we're doing. So that's been kind of, like, the hypothesis, is, like, he was Daniel was basically, like, he had watched, like, what you did over the last couple years.
John
00:22:38 – 00:23:28
It was like he was like, there's a way to, like, do this to like you know like put really helpful stuff out there and become what he calls a pillar of the community you know And in some ways, like, that was that was what what we wanted to do with a lot of this content. So I'm interested partly to, like, get your feedback on the specific content that we've put out so far, but then also, like, can you challenge or, like, refine that hypothesis at all to say, like, well, no. Actually, people don't need product help or, like, you're you need to reframe this or whatever. Like, I'm very open to, like, anything you might have there, but, that's my long preamble into like, I'd love to hear what you think about what we're doing so far in terms of content. Yes.
John
00:23:28 – 00:23:29
Lots of thoughts.
Aaron
00:23:30 – 00:23:42
Okay. So I think the first thing is having an angle is great. You gotta have you gotta have a shtick. You gotta have an angle. You gotta have a point of view.
Aaron
00:23:43 – 00:24:26
And so I think from, like, from my perspective, like, my my shtick, my angles, my point of views are all, you know, pretty clear, consistent. Like, everything, every single thing that I say online is true, but I don't say every single thing that I think. Right? And that's part of, like, the there are times where I am really frustrated with customer service, and I just wanna go on Twitter and moan about it. And, like, that would be true to my personality, but it's, like, I that's not really what I want to put out into the world, and so I would never say anything that is untrue, but also some things are true that I think, and I'm just like that's really not worth sharing with people.
Aaron
00:24:26 – 00:24:56
Honestly, it's not worth thinking, and so I'm gonna stop myself there. So I think having like, a a point of view, a persona, or something that like people know you for or as is really, really helpful because then people start to associate you with that thing and every time you reinforce it, they're like, yeah, that's the guy that knows product. Right? So angle is good. You said when you walked into Lyricon, you're like, I don't have anything, you know, to offer these people.
Aaron
00:24:56 – 00:25:21
I thought that was interesting because you're looking at it on one vector, which is, like, I don't have anything to offer these people in terms of how to write cleaner code or whatever. But I think maybe Daniel picked up on this. You're you weren't looking at it on enough vectors where it's like, hey, I know I know enough about coding to talk to these people.
John
00:25:21 – 00:25:21
Like Yes.
Aaron
00:25:22 – 00:25:37
I'm a developer. I can talk to these people. However, I also know about product. And I think your read is correct in that most of the people in that room at Laracon and in the Laravel community in general are not product people. They're developers.
Aaron
00:25:38 – 00:26:09
And so I think you have you have an opportunity, and this is the best part, honestly, because you're in the world, but you're not of the world, little Bible reference there, you're in the world, but you're not like, like you have a foot outside of the world, so where you can bring in this product and speak developer y, but with product content or speak product content to developers. And I've found great success in that, with regards to speaking database to developers.
John
00:26:09 – 00:26:10
Yeah.
Aaron
00:26:10 – 00:26:29
Right? So I am a developer and I am not I'm not the best DBA, the best database admin in the world. I'm not even a DBA at all. So you got one up on me, you're actually a product guy. But I know enough about databases, and I know more about databases than many developers.
Aaron
00:26:29 – 00:26:50
And so when I walk into a room of developers and talk about databases, everybody thinks I'm a genius. Spoiler alert, I'm not. Like put me in a different room, and I'm an idiot. I feel that way at PlanetScale all the time. Everyone at PlanetScale knows 5 times as much about databases as I do, and so I feel like I feel like a 6th grader sitting at the, you know, the big kids table.
Aaron
00:26:50 – 00:27:12
But then I walk over to the developers' table, and I'm like, hey. I have a 6th grade knowledge of databases, and they're like, oh, you're our king. This is so weird. Right? But that's that's true in all I feel like that's true in all crossover hits is you know enough about the other world that you can translate it to the world that doesn't really know about it.
Aaron
00:27:12 – 00:27:26
Yeah. And so I think the angle is correct. You also have another angle which is business owner, and I think you could play that up somehow. You could bring that in somehow. And so to the actual content, here's here's my here's my kind of thought and read on that.
Aaron
00:27:27 – 00:27:45
One thing that I think you have to be really careful of is not, is is not translating. So you can walk into a developer room and speak product and then may go over every single person's head. Mhmm. Right? Because you may come in and talk as if you're talking to a bunch of other product managers Right.
Aaron
00:27:46 – 00:28:01
And using terms and, inside baseball references and parlance that, like, your crew of product people totally gets, super understands it, and you walk into a room full of developers and they're like, oh, this is simply a product guy and I don't understand what he's saying.
John
00:28:01 – 00:28:02
Right.
Aaron
00:28:02 – 00:28:26
And so I think a big risk for you is not translating enough. I think your superpower is going to be taking everything you know and repackaging it for an audience that doesn't know it. And the scary part about that is it looks, it looks juvenile to the product people from whence you came.
John
00:28:26 – 00:28:27
Right. Right.
Aaron
00:28:27 – 00:28:40
But it looks advanced to the developers to whom you're speaking. Right? So if a DBA, like, if a proper DBA were to take my database course, they would look at me and be like, this guy is talking elementary. Like
John
00:28:40 – 00:28:40
Right. Right.
Aaron
00:28:40 – 00:29:12
And that's a little bit scary for me to like be embarrassed and have these people think he's parading, he's masquerading as a database guy, but this stuff that he's talking about, we learned in semester 1 of databases. Yeah. But then the developers are like, man, I never have ever ever in my life thought about this or learned it or anything. Thank you for such advanced content. And that's that tension between do I want to look like a smart person or do I want to speak to this audience that I'm really trying to connect to?
Aaron
00:29:12 – 00:29:36
Yeah. And so that would be I think that would be my my challenge to you is what is a way that you can take maybe 101 level stuff from the product management world and bring it over to pure developer, pure back end almost, and have us start understanding what you already know. Is any of that resonating?
John
00:29:36 – 00:30:03
It totally does. That sparks, like, a bunch of thoughts for me. Because, yeah, like, on the one hand, it's actually yeah. The the refinement on the angle that I have that I think is, like, is really useful is that I'm not just writing product content because, like, that's been written 10000 times over. And it's not like, how do you or even the the path of, like, oh, how does an engineer become a PM, which is a common path.
John
00:30:03 – 00:30:17
It's like, I'm not writing that either. That's been worked a 1,000 times. What I'm saying is, like, hey, developer. Your one thing good developers are good at is, like, finding a new tool and putting it into their tool belt. They do it all the time.
John
00:30:17 – 00:30:36
They have to do it a 1000 times over the course of their career. So my suggestion is this is one more tool. It's a really good one, actually. It doesn't require a lot of technical knowledge, but it does require, like, discipline and asking hard questions. And if you put this tool on your tool belt, it's gonna be really stinking useful.
John
00:30:36 – 00:31:00
Mhmm. And so that's a that's, like, kind of the refinement is, like, I I want the audience to really specific. I'm trying to write every post with, like, a really specific like, I'm talking to a developer who has never had a PM to to help them understand this. I think the other thing that's really interesting about it is, I love the meme of, like, the belt belt graph with my
Aaron
00:31:00 – 00:31:01
bit. Yeah.
John
00:31:01 – 00:31:20
The the Jedi on the one side. One thing that it's been I've loved writing these. I've, like I'm, like I have written, like, a lot of posts now that are not released and not finished yet. But writing out, like, essentially, like, here's everything I know about product for a developer Mhmm. Has really clarified a lot of things in my head.
John
00:31:20 – 00:31:48
And at the end of almost every post, I arrive at, like, the Jedi at the end of the thing where I'm like, actually, the simplest, dumbest thing is the way to do it. Like, I'm really interested in this idea. So, like, it's interesting that you I was thinking about this when you were mentioning, like, oh, if a PM read this, they might think it's, like, really simplistic. And it's like, I think that's true, but I also think that that it's right. That it's like the there's there's a a lot of ways to overengineer your code.
John
00:31:48 – 00:32:07
There's a lot of other ways to over engineer product processes to do, like, this crazy agile stuff to, you know, when you're doing metrics to measure a 100 complex things. And it's like, nah. Like Yeah. You should know how much money you're making. You should know how much growth is happening.
John
00:32:07 – 00:32:24
If you launch a new feature, you should know whether or not people are using it. But, like, if you measure a 100 things, you're gonna lose track of that really important stuff. Like, do things in a lightweight way. Don't overengineer it. Don't introduce much of burdensome processes.
John
00:32:24 – 00:32:42
Like, so it's interesting because, like, the deeper I go into, like, what do I really think about this product topic? I'm like, actually, the simplest, dumbest version that takes an an hour is far superior to the, like, sophisticated one that you need to hire someone for $200,000 a year to go do.
Aaron
00:32:43 – 00:33:31
Yes. And I think even that, like, even that further refining there is maybe the best angle I've heard yet, which is like it's almost like, product for the rest of us or, you know, 80, 20 product, the product oh, the only parts of product you actually need. And I think what would be interesting is is like, almost framing it without using the word product. Because is there a way to say is there a way to teach these concepts without using that word that may potentially have baggage or meaning or something? But, like, what do what do developers want to know, depends on who they are.
Aaron
00:33:31 – 00:33:49
If they are, you know, if they're the hacker builder maker wanna do my own thing, well, they wanna know how do I build something that people want to buy. Right? And do you have do you, John, have anything to say on how to figure out how to build something that people want to buy?
John
00:33:49 – 00:33:51
What do I? Yeah. Exactly.
Aaron
00:33:51 – 00:34:13
And so, like, they may would they see, would they see, like, a post about, you know, how to do product management and click on it? I don't know. Would they see a post that's like, how to discover, you know, what people wanna buy as a back end developer? It's like, wait. That is me.
Aaron
00:34:13 – 00:34:27
Like, I would love to sell stuff. I'm a back end developer. So I wonder if even putting it in the frame of product management is like, oh, okay. This is like a big company thing. This is not something I have to worry about.
Aaron
00:34:27 – 00:34:54
And maybe that maybe that's the angle. It's like product management for solos or for small teams or product management for people that don't have product managers. Yeah. But, like, taking your big I just I view product management, maybe this is a fallacy, I view product management as, like, oh, we've got a lot of people, we've got a lot of engineers, we need to start introducing like some guidance and some direction and that sort of thing. Maybe that's wrong, but that's my point of view.
Aaron
00:34:54 – 00:35:09
It'd be interesting to see if that's other people's point of view. But taking that and being like, hey, you don't have a lot of engineers, you're under 10 people, you're under 20 people, You don't need a product manager, but you need to think like 1, and here's how here's how you do it.
John
00:35:09 – 00:35:26
I love that. And I think that's right. It's, like, the way I always say it is, like, if everyone in the company if if all of the individual contributors were really, really good at communication, no one would need product managers. The problem is that communication, it turns out, is pretty hard. Mhmm.
John
00:35:26 – 00:35:33
And and so, like, especially if you get up to, like, you know, hundreds of people, it's like, yeah, you're probably gonna need some product managers.
Aaron
00:35:33 – 00:35:33
Yeah.
John
00:35:33 – 00:35:58
If you have less than that, if you have fewer than that, you can you can totally not have one. It's completely fine to not have one. The trick is, like, everyone needs to get really serious about communication, and everyone needs to start asking harder questions. And it's not sophisticated, I don't think. Like, it's not there's a great old Steve Jobs quote where someone is, like, asking him about, like, business.
John
00:35:58 – 00:36:15
Like, how is why is business so hard? And he's like, he just, like, scoffs at it. He's like, business isn't hard. Like, it's like everyone can, like, do business. Like, understanding the concepts of, like, profit and, like, getting stuff in front of people, like he's like, this doesn't take a genius.
John
00:36:15 – 00:36:33
He's like, it's difficult. Like, it's you you like, the the being disciplined and executing is really very difficult, but, like, it's not intellectually complex. Like Yeah. Everyone could understand what my job is and what I do day to day as a product manager. It's just like communication is hard.
John
00:36:33 – 00:36:35
Staying disciplined is hard. You know?
Aaron
00:36:36 – 00:37:09
Okay. So let's let's let's bebop on that for a second. Is there something that you believe this is always where you have to start, you can't you can't write something. I feel like clickbait is when you're writing something that you don't actually believe just to make people mad, and I am morally and ethically and strategically opposed to that. But an interesting question is, is there something that you believe or that you could say that is, attention grabbing, like you don't need product management.
Aaron
00:37:09 – 00:37:45
Like, is that a headline that you could put your heart behind in terms of the content of the article? And maybe the content of the article is you don't need product management if you're really serious about communication, and you're very disciplined, and you ask harder questions. Otherwise, product management can serve a pretty good role. Yeah. But, like, framing it starting with the headline of you don't need product management is pretty is is, not incendiary, but it's like it takes a point of view and it takes a stance and people are going to click on it because they super agree with it or click on it because they super disagree with it.
John
00:37:45 – 00:37:45
Yeah.
Aaron
00:37:45 – 00:37:52
Right. And then you can flesh out, like, hey. I'm I'm backing up the headline. You don't need it if you can do these things.
John
00:37:52 – 00:37:53
Right. Right.
Aaron
00:37:53 – 00:38:02
But if you can't, so you get to offer the nuance that I think is always important, but the headline is great. And like Yeah. So if you could do something like that, well, maybe that works.
John
00:38:03 – 00:38:22
Yeah. I like that because the first one that I wrote originally, the headline the, like, the the way that I, like, framed it up in my head was basically, like, it's not that you don't need it. It's that you're already doing it. And if you don't think you're doing it, you're probably doing it badly. Mhmm.
John
00:38:22 – 00:38:23
And I wrote, like,
Aaron
00:38:23 – 00:38:24
an article.
John
00:38:24 – 00:38:41
I wrote one along those lines. It's basically, like, if you have a product, you're doing product you're you're prioritizing. You have decided on who you're building for. You are, like, you are deciding which tickets go in front of other tickets. You've like which means that you're and you're selling to a particular segment.
John
00:38:41 – 00:39:07
So, like, you've made all the product decisions implicitly. But if you if you haven't made them explicitly, I don't know how, like, rigorous or good of a job you did making those decisions. And so that's kind of the but when I first wrote that, Daniel was like, this sounds pretty negative. And so I I ended up writing something pretty different, but, like, that's what I think is the real truth is that it's not that you don't need it. You might not need a product manager.
John
00:39:07 – 00:39:19
You might not need, like, an expensive person to do it, but, like, everyone's doing it. It's just a question of, like, whether you're doing it with intentionality and discipline or you're just kinda, like, winging it.
Aaron
00:39:20 – 00:39:30
Yeah. That's interesting. That's an interesting that's an interesting point of view. I guess one fundamental question is who are you trying to reach Yeah. With this content?
John
00:39:31 – 00:39:57
The angle that I think is the best is, like, what you talked about, like, solos, partners, bootstrapped companies. Basically, all of our clients, their development teams are, like, a a handful of talented engineers who don't have a product manager. Okay. And that I could imagine it's easy for me to imagine that for, like, a long time, that's most of our clients. Mhmm.
John
00:39:57 – 00:40:25
We can do work for, you know, a big company. It's no problem. We can do work for whomever. But, like, that's where we've seen the most value, I think, is, like, like, basically, like, we come in as this almost like CTO and product manager pair. And so in terms of, like, from a marketing perspective, that I think is, like, pretty squarely in our we're also working right now with a with a solo founder.
John
00:40:27 – 00:40:43
So that's, I think, who Thunk works best with. And so that's basically who I when I am writing my like, the voice of my blogs is very much I'm thinking about individuals who I know who are in that situation.
Aaron
00:40:43 – 00:40:50
Okay. So let me let me zoom in on that for a second. I refuse to say double click. People started have started saying, let's double click on that. I will I will not say this.
Aaron
00:40:50 – 00:41:17
Let me zoom in on that. So that makes sense in terms of, like, who your ideal customer is. Even in that ideal customer profile, there are 2 parties. Right? There are the 3, 4, 5 handful of very talented engineers, and there is the business owner potentially who is who is guiding or maybe not guiding, but who is, like, the other side.
Aaron
00:41:17 – 00:41:28
Right? So you have the engineers and you have the business owner. Who are you trying to reach? I feel like Daniel is trying to reach the engineers from, like, a bottom up perspective. Who are you trying to talk to?
John
00:41:29 – 00:41:49
That's interesting, and that's a very good question because I think I have waffled between those 2. And some of my some of my stuff is implicitly or explicitly to the developer, and some of it is to like an executive at a small company.
Aaron
00:41:50 – 00:41:50
K.
John
00:41:50 – 00:41:51
So, yeah, that's interesting.
Aaron
00:41:51 – 00:41:53
Interesting to think about, I think.
John
00:41:53 – 00:41:54
Yeah. Pick a lane Because if,
Aaron
00:41:55 – 00:42:29
yeah, if you decide that you're going to speak to the engineers, I think one of the benefits there is you have more of a unified voice as thunk because you and Daniel are talking to the same people. And so you're growing you're kind of growing your audiences together as one audience, but individually on your own Twitter, LinkedIn, whatever. If you decide you're going to speak to the business owner, I feel like that is also very interesting. You probably have great success doing that on LinkedIn, truly, not a bit, truly. You could actually do that on LinkedIn.
Aaron
00:42:30 – 00:43:11
Your content would have to be a little bit different, right? So you would have to pivot a little bit to talk about not like how does an engineer think about product management, but, like, how does a nontechnical or semi technical leader lead a small team of highly talented engineers, like that sort of stuff. And maybe not lead in terms of, like, you know, personal development, but lead in terms of decide what they're gonna do or work with work with engineers when you're the one making all the product decisions. Like, you had an idea, you business owner, had an idea, and now you've got 3 or 4 or 5 engineers. What do you do now?
Aaron
00:43:11 – 00:43:27
Like, your business is working, but suddenly you've found yourself managing a software development team, and you're not a software developer. Yeah. So It turns out it's kinda hard. Turns out it's very hard. So I don't know which one, like, I have no idea which one is better.
Aaron
00:43:27 – 00:43:49
They are different, though. I think that's something you have to think about. Yeah. And, you know, I don't think you have to, like, I don't know if you have to decide for sure. Maybe the content you put on LinkedIn is for the bosses and the content you put on Twitter is for the, you know, the developers, but it's at least worth considering if it would be valuable to, like, hone in on one of them.
John
00:43:49 – 00:44:11
I think that that makes a ton of sense. I think if I were just instinctively to choose, it would be the developer Mhmm. Because I think it's more interesting. Because the thing is, like, the CEO at a bootstrapped company kind of just, like, is a product manager in some ways. And so, like, they should maybe just be reading product management content.
John
00:44:11 – 00:44:50
Like Mhmm. So that's interesting. The other thing that you said that really stood out to me because it was like a sort of, like, dope sort of moment was that so, like, my greatest strength as a PM was doing customer interviews. I did them, like, constantly, and I had good rapport with, like, a bunch of customers and would just, like I had them just on the phone all the time. And so I just sort of, like, picked stuff up like a sponge and then would, like, you know, someone would ask a question, and I'm like, I now have an intuition about what our, you know, what they want and what what the answer to this question is.
John
00:44:50 – 00:45:19
And so I'm a huge proponent of just, like, go talk to people all the time. And when you you said something, like, 15 minutes ago about, like, what like, if you're just, like, a back end engineer who doesn't confront these kinds of questions often. Like, what sorts of things do you care about? And I was like, oh, duh. I need to go interview a bunch of these people.
Aaron
00:45:20 – 00:45:20
It's like,
John
00:45:20 – 00:45:25
I have, like, some intuition about it, which is how I've gotten to the post that I have. But, like,
Aaron
00:45:27 – 00:45:27
I
John
00:45:27 – 00:45:44
was like, I need to I need to just, like, sit down for 20 minutes with, like, 25, 30 different people who I don't know yet and just be like, what do you not know? You know? And, like, how do you prioritize stuff? Why do you prioritize? And and I think I will pick up a bunch of ideas from that.
Aaron
00:45:44 – 00:45:52
Yeah. I think that's a great idea. That sounds like an infinite content glitch right there. So you just now have you can now write forever and ever and ever.
John
00:45:52 – 00:45:54
It's great. I love
Aaron
00:45:55 – 00:46:14
that. Yeah. I think you have I think you have I think you're in a I think you're well positioned. You're coming into a community that you you feel comfortable in and you can speak to, but with sacred knowledge from the other world, you know? Yeah.
Aaron
00:46:14 – 00:46:32
Yeah. And it's just it's simply a matter of framing and packaging at this point, which you will find. You'll you'll iterate on, you'll talk to people, and you'll find it. But to be so well positioned is is enviable. It's like coming into coming into, a law firm as an accountant.
Aaron
00:46:32 – 00:46:51
And, like, lawyers are hysterically bad at spreadsheets. You ask them to open a spreadsheet and they're like, I don't know how. And if you come in as an accountant who is also an attorney, you're like, you're gonna rule. Yeah. And I think you're in kind of a similar position where you're you're a part of this world, but you have all this sacred knowledge that we don't know anything about.
John
00:46:51 – 00:47:06
Fun. Yeah. If I if I get enough out there, I'll try to formulate it into a talk or something. I think that that could be fun too because I have there's some, like, core in here that I'm like Mhmm. This could this could be a good 20 minute talk.
Aaron
00:47:06 – 00:47:33
Yes. I think for you and for for anyone listening, keep an eye out for any pieces of content that is, that is, like, thing x for audience y. And so you'll see this pattern a whole lot. So, like, databases for developers, or honestly, like, accounting for attorneys. Like, you'll see Excel for people that hate Excel.
Aaron
00:47:33 – 00:47:53
You'll see that that, like, headline and that pattern everywhere. You'll see, like, JavaScript for back end engineers or learn React for Ruby devs. And it's that kind of crossover hit that I think is really powerful because then you immediately hone in on, yes, I am a Ruby developer. Yes. I'm looking to learn React.
Aaron
00:47:53 – 00:48:14
This is the content for me. I am self selecting into this content. Yeah. And I think once you start seeing that pattern, you see it everywhere, and then you start to think about, how can I how can I take 2 things or one thing I know and one group I'm a part of and put that together to be a unique combination that really no one else has?
John
00:48:15 – 00:48:19
I love that. Did you reference that in your Lyricon talk? I'm trying to remember.
Aaron
00:48:20 – 00:48:43
Yeah. I I think I referenced that in I think I referenced that in the Laracon talk about it's either that or one of the upcoming screencasting videos. Basically talking about how, like, you have a unique viewpoint and you have a unique set of skills and there are people who, like, need your viewpoint and it's gonna click for them in a way that everything else hasn't before.
John
00:48:44 – 00:48:50
Yeah. I love that. I was very we talked about it a bunch in the thunk, Slack. We were all very inspired by your letter of conduct.
Aaron
00:48:50 – 00:48:51
Oh, thanks.
John
00:48:52 – 00:49:14
And I I heard it before I knew you. And, yeah, that was very that was a very fun time. The last, I guess, like, quick question is, like, I I mentioned this as, like, an idea. So I've been, like, pretty happy actually with the, readership we've had on the blog so far. Like, it's, like, more than it's had a good response, and, like, people have been pretty positive.
John
00:49:14 – 00:49:38
I I'm I wanna make it, like I'm trying to think of ways to make it more accessible. And so one of the ideas we had initially was, like, what if I made, like, a a one minute Redux version as a video in Twitter? Mhmm. And it the first one that we put out, like, it was not that great, but, like, it was interesting because it actually did worse than my other posts. Mhmm.
John
00:49:38 – 00:50:05
And I had I mean, so if you have any thoughts on how to do that better, that's interesting. But then also the other question I had was, like, I had this idea, and I can't tell if it's a stupid idea or not, which is, like, I like listening more than I like reading. Mhmm. And I thought of, like, what if there was a podcast feed with, like, 3 minute episodes, and it's literally just I'd read the blog post. And, Love it.
John
00:50:05 – 00:50:07
It's like, that's it. That's the whole podcast.
Aaron
00:50:07 – 00:50:19
Love it. I think, I think that's a fantastic idea. I'm always super on board for taking stuff you've already done and trying to get more mileage out of it. So the hard part's done. Right?
Aaron
00:50:19 – 00:50:36
You wrote the thing. Writing the thing is the hard part. Reading it out loud takes as long as it takes to read out loud. Yeah. I think, let's see, I think short, sweet stuff like that could potentially do very well.
Aaron
00:50:37 – 00:50:49
I think if you're going if you're going to do that, packaging it in a way that's like what what do you I guess y'all call it the thunk blog. Right? That's not gonna work for a podcast.
John
00:50:49 – 00:50:54
Yeah. No. That's even an opportunity to brand it as whatever product for developers.
Aaron
00:50:54 – 00:51:18
Yeah. Exactly. Like, and I would say something like bites or quick hits or shorts or something like that just to say, like, hey, this is a very this is a very short semi weekly, biweekly, whatever those words mean. Occasional, you know, podcast about whatever, product for developers or product for the rest of us, something like that. Yeah.
Aaron
00:51:18 – 00:51:44
I think that could I think that could absolutely work. And in in terms of, like, the video on Twitter, I could see you know, I was the one that said, you should do as much video as you can, and I still stand by that, but I could see I could see there's not a lot to there's not a lot to to look at in these videos. Right? And so talking head only, I could see being like people watch it and then are like, oh, this is just a talking head. I'm gonna stop.
Aaron
00:51:44 – 00:52:00
And I could see that being like negative signs. Yeah. So perhaps perhaps quick hit audio is, you know, is the best thing for you, and it's definitely worth a try, especially if the cost in terms of, like, your personal investment is so
John
00:52:00 – 00:52:08
low. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be very easy to pump out, pay someone $100 for cool art and then Mhmm. Put it out.
John
00:52:08 – 00:52:15
Yeah. I think that's that sounds great. Yeah. It was funny, like, we were chatting about it. Daniel was like, oh, man.
John
00:52:15 – 00:52:38
I'm so bummed the video idea didn't work. And I had this, like, funny, weird confidence that I don't always have about stuff I'm working on where I was like, it's fine. Like, I am so confident that this content is useful and valuable that, like, if this this one was a swing and a miss, like, I don't care. Like, it this will find somebody sometime. I'm so confident that it's, like, good advice.
Aaron
00:52:39 – 00:52:55
Yep. Yep. And I think that gives you a lot of freedom and a lot of, like, personal empowerment to try different frames. Right? So at some point, you're gonna find a frame for the content that everyone finally, like, latches onto, and you just gotta iterate until you do.
Aaron
00:52:55 – 00:53:17
And I have tried so many different, like, styles of video and threads and links on the top and links on the bottom, and you just keep going, and eventually, eventually you'll find it. And the thing I'm on right now, which is very interesting is like when making YouTube videos, you know how there's, like, real psychology and then there's pop psychology, there's, like, Malcolm Gladwell
John
00:53:17 – 00:53:18
and all the fun stuff.
Aaron
00:53:18 – 00:53:32
Yeah. I I look at, like, creating courses as real education. Like, we're gonna sit and we're gonna talk and we're gonna talk about nuance and depth. And then I look at YouTube as pop education. It's like, hey, this is gonna be fun.
Aaron
00:53:32 – 00:53:54
We're gonna skate over the surface of a bunch of stuff. We're gonna leave a bunch of stuff unsaid, but the point here is like, you know, 50% entertainment, 50% education. And that's a different frame for knowledge that I'm used to because I'm used to, let's sit down and talk for 3 hours about this course, and now it's like, you've got 12 minutes and it better be fun or people aren't gonna click.
John
00:53:54 – 00:53:55
Yeah.
Aaron
00:53:55 – 00:54:04
And so just iterating until you find the right frame I think is a fun process, and then once you do, it's even better because now you're, like, now you're just running the system.
John
00:54:05 – 00:54:14
Yeah. I love that. And that's how you make something that is clickable enough to get onto the primogen Exactly. Feed.
Aaron
00:54:14 – 00:54:25
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like, make it, you know, saying PHP doesn't suck anymore, like, yeah, it riles up a lot of people. Like, people were mad that I suggested it ever sucks.
Aaron
00:54:25 – 00:54:40
People were mad that I suggested that it doesn't suck anymore. Meanwhile, I'm just like, hey. I'm gonna show you all the cool things that have changed, but, yeah, finding that that right, like, frame to draw people in to actually get them to consume the thing is is no easy task.
John
00:54:41 – 00:54:49
Did you did you fully appreciate, as you wrote that video, what a, like, mic drop it would be to tell everyone that they don't have very many users?
Aaron
00:54:49 – 00:55:06
Yeah. I actually, that was one of the things that it came out in post much better than I imagined it in my head. That's funny. Recording that, and I said it, and then I made the little face with the eyebrow raise, and then I watched it back later, and I was like, oh, dang. That's really funny.
Aaron
00:55:06 – 00:55:08
That was really that was
John
00:55:08 – 00:55:09
really good. Yeah. Exactly.
Aaron
00:55:09 – 00:55:13
So I was really happy with how that turned out. I thought that was super funny.
John
00:55:13 – 00:55:25
That's cool. Man, that's really fun. Yeah. It was great to see you get a, a shout out on there because I I love his channel too, and, it was it was great to see worlds colliding there.
Aaron
00:55:25 – 00:55:50
Yeah. He's another one who's mastered whatever his, you know, frame is because he is potentially the smartest developer that, like, I've been close, like, in proximity to. But his frame is not, like, neck beard. Let's talk for 1 hour about the internals. His frame is very pop education, but sometimes it shows through, like, how much of a genius he is, which makes it a really angle.
Aaron
00:55:51 – 00:56:04
Yeah. Right? So even in, like, the PHP video, he's comparing it to these 10 other languages that I've never touched in my freaking life. And Right. So, yeah, that's another one that's mastered, and some people hate it, by the way, the frame that he puts on his content.
Aaron
00:56:04 – 00:56:07
But he he's mastered it for his audience.
John
00:56:07 – 00:56:28
It's so great because, like, I again, like, I'm I'm not a genius and I'm not a I have not been programming for 10 years, and, like, I find his stuff very approachable. Sometimes he's talking about things that I'm like, I need to search these terms a little bit. But, like Yeah. For the most part, I'm like, I hear what he's saying. He's he he seems very, like, open minded and reasonable.
John
00:56:28 – 00:57:02
So it's in in my experience, really, really smart people can speak in terms that everyone gets. Like, people who like this I don't know. Like, this this, this actually comes back a little bit to, like, the Jedi bell curve. It's just like, I've met some, like, in like the the first co founder at this, like, the first startup that I worked with was, like this, like, top of this class PhD computer science guy from Stanford, and he was just, like, the gentlest, like
Aaron
00:57:03 – 00:57:03
Mhmm.
John
00:57:03 – 00:57:30
You know, like, he I I was, like, sorry. I don't quite understand this, like, thing about parallelization, and he just, like, sit down really, like, and not condescending at all. Break it down for me in terms that I'd understand. And I was like, yeah. People who obfuscate, people who you intentionally, like, alienate, I feel like it's like that's a defense mechanism for being, like, pretty smart, but, like, the really smart smart people can kind of break right through that.
John
00:57:30 – 00:57:31
It's that's amazing.
Aaron
00:57:31 – 00:57:45
Yeah. I think I think a a slight a slight disagreement there is there are really, really smart people who can do that. Yeah. That's true. There are really, really smart people who can't do that.
John
00:57:45 – 00:57:45
That's true.
Aaron
00:57:45 – 00:58:36
And one one, like, I'm still trying to formulate it into a pithy saying is, like, the the there are sets of rules in the world that you really just you should, either live by and, like, understand what the rules are and exploit them to your own benefit, or you can rage against the machine and just be mad at the rules all the time. And so what I think happens is some some really, really smart people, like, look at, let's say, the primogen or somebody who doesn't understand, and they just rage and say, everyone should understand this. You're stupid if you don't understand this. And then there are some really, really smart people that look at the rules and the rules are like not everyone understands everything that you do. That is the system that you're living in.
Aaron
00:58:36 – 00:58:57
And some of those smart people say, okay. I recognize that that system is true. I wish it were different. However, because that is true, I am going to use persuasion and teaching to make like, to operate within that rule set, but still get the outcome that I want. And some people rage against the machine and they're like, this shouldn't be this way.
Aaron
00:58:57 – 00:59:02
And you're like, I'm sorry, man. It is this way. Yeah. Well, what do you want me to do? Yeah.
Aaron
00:59:02 – 00:59:24
And so I feel like there are some smart people that only ever are frustrated with reality, and there are some smart people that are smart enough to step outside and observe reality as it is and say, okay, because it is because that is reality, what do I do in response to that? So something I'm trying to something I'm trying to formulate and turn into an article, but I think there are rules
John
00:59:25 – 00:59:25
That's interesting.
Aaron
00:59:25 – 00:59:33
There are rules that exist that you can explore and exploit to your own benefit, or you can just be frustrated all the time that the rules exist.
John
00:59:33 – 00:59:46
Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. I think the other funny thing that I have to catch myself on that with is, like, I'm, like, setting the standard for, like, well, if you're really, really smart, you can explain things in terms that I can understand, like, framing it all in terms of what I can understand. It's like Mhmm.
John
00:59:46 – 00:59:56
Well, yeah, if there was a super genius and you said something that I didn't understand, I'd be like, well, therefore, he was not a super genius. It's like, well, that's pretty short sighted.
Aaron
00:59:56 – 01:00:00
To me looking very good. I do love yeah.
John
01:00:00 – 01:00:07
Yeah. That's a I I smell a little bit of bullshit there. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna keep on search again internally on that one.
Aaron
01:00:08 – 01:00:09
That's a good one. Cool.
John
01:00:09 – 01:00:20
Alright. Well, thanks so much, Aaron. I know we're at time, but, this is awesome, and I'm sure we'll we'll have you again at some point when when Daniel's here. Alright.
Aaron
01:00:20 – 01:00:22
I love to be empaneled. Thanks for having me.
John
01:00:22 – 01:00:25
Of course, and keep on reaching out with feedback.
Aaron
01:00:26 – 01:00:27
I will. See you.
John
01:00:28 – 01:00:40
Talk soon. Do we just have to wait until the music runs out? This is what happened last time. I thought the show was over, and I kept on talking, and then, okay. That's it.
Me

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

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

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

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