Farming, Threadbois, & Meme Lords with Jeffrey Way

November 14, 2023

Ian & Aaron are joined by Jeffrey Way to discuss everything from the ethics of retweeting compliments to the pros & cons of hiring people to help you and a *lot* more. Sponsored by LaraJobs & Screencasting.com. Sent questions or feedback to mostlytechnicalpodcast@gmail.com
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Transcript

Ian
00:00:01 – 00:00:09
Right. Hello. Welcome back. We have another special guest this week, Jeffrey Wei, the OG.
Jeffrey
00:00:10 – 00:00:13
OG. Hey, guys. OG. Hey. Thanks for having me.
Aaron
00:00:13 – 00:00:15
Being here. Mhmm.
Jeffrey
00:00:15 – 00:00:18
Yeah. I'm glad we can talk about the important issues of the day.
Aaron
00:00:18 – 00:00:27
Yeah. I was gonna say, like, one of the, like, the pillars of the community, should we talk about Laracast? Should we talk about content business? No. We should talk about Twitter.
Aaron
00:00:27 – 00:00:28
Let's talk about Twitter.
Jeffrey
00:00:28 – 00:00:30
Twitter is all anyone cares about. Of course.
Ian
00:00:30 – 00:00:31
That's actually true.
Jeffrey
00:00:31 – 00:00:40
And I see, clearly, you guys are like me. Like, I can't bring myself to say x. And it's not related to Elon or anything. It's like, I just can't do it.
Aaron
00:00:40 – 00:00:42
And this is it makes me think about it.
Aaron
00:00:42 – 00:00:43
It's Twitter forever. We're going
Ian
00:00:43 – 00:00:44
down with the ship. It's Twitter.
Jeffrey
00:00:44 – 00:00:46
Yes. For sure. For sure.
Aaron
00:00:47 – 00:01:05
We were actually just talking about actually important things, which is ages of kids and how kids reach a certain, like, point where they get actually funny, and they really still wanna hang out with you before they age out into teenagers. And you're it sounds sounds like, Jeffrey, you're in a good spot, and we're all in different spots. That's interesting.
Ian
00:01:05 – 00:01:06
I'm just gonna say that.
Aaron
00:01:06 – 00:01:10
Yeah. Yours are quite a bit older. Jeff's older than mine are mine are super young.
Ian
00:01:11 – 00:01:21
Yeah. So, mine are the oldest is 17 looking at colleges and all that is a senior. And then the middle one is 13 and then the baby is, 10.
Jeffrey
00:01:22 – 00:01:29
Okay. So, Ian, when did they start to hate you? That's what I wanna like, what year is the cutoff point when they stop liking you?
Ian
00:01:29 – 00:01:58
Well, here, there's oh, man. That that we could literally spend a hour on that question because it's so complicated in some ways. Because what's really interesting is as they get older, like, their personalities, all 3 of them have very different personalities, and there's just all these different elements to that. So, like, the oldest is a little more like, yeah, he's a little more kind of his own person and removed the middle. One's more of like the lovey bear kind of guy, the, like, the youngest.
Ian
00:01:58 – 00:02:09
She's kinda like the family historian and stuff. So, like, there's all these things. So far, nobody actually hates us, I'd say, which is good. We haven't had the full, I hate you. You're the worst, sort of thing.
Ian
00:02:09 – 00:02:15
But it is interesting as they get older, they definitely like withdrawing in certain ways and finding their own space and things like that.
Jeffrey
00:02:15 – 00:02:18
But it is Yeah. I would imagine it's more like
Ian
00:02:18 – 00:02:18
You know?
Jeffrey
00:02:19 – 00:02:23
Yeah. I I would imagine it's more, like, slowly, they just spend more and more time in their own room.
Ian
00:02:24 – 00:02:24
Mhmm. It's weird.
Jeffrey
00:02:24 – 00:02:31
Like, my kids never wanna be in their room. It's so weird. Like, my kids have so many toys. I'm like, just go play in your room. Like, give me 30 minutes just
Ian
00:02:31 – 00:02:35
to have some fun. Get anybody to play with toys. Forget that. There's no toys.
Jeffrey
00:02:35 – 00:02:43
I know. It's ridiculous. But I would imagine as they get older, they just kinda wanna be away from you a little bit more every single year. Maybe not.
Ian
00:02:43 – 00:02:46
For sure. To some degree, yes. But, yeah.
Jeffrey
00:02:46 – 00:02:47
Go ahead. No. Go ahead.
Ian
00:02:47 – 00:02:48
Go go for it.
Jeffrey
00:02:48 – 00:02:55
I remember years ago, you talking about doing something where you guys did the traveling 2018,
Ian
00:03:00 – 00:03:26
I'd say, and the oldest was, 2018, I'd say. And the oldest was, in, like, 6th grade, I think, at that time, something like that. And it was awesome. We spent, like, 3 months in Europe and traveled all around Europe. Spent a big chunk of time in Paris, which was really cool to spend, like, 6 weeks, I guess, in just one spot in Europe because it's, like, not just, like, let's go see all the sites and run through.
Ian
00:03:26 – 00:03:44
It's like, no. Like, we went to the grocery store and, you know, we did all these sorts of things like that. Found the little local coffee place we went to every day or whatnot. You know, like, just had all those real life experiences in a different location, which was really cool. I mean, there was just things like I mean, there's just so many things you pick up when you do something like that.
Ian
00:03:45 – 00:03:58
One that really stands out is, like, us being this American family with 5 people, 3 kids, we're in this little region apartment. Right. And we're going to the grocery store, Like the grocery store is there. They don't have carts. They don't have anything.
Ian
00:03:58 – 00:04:08
Like, people are like have 3 things in their hand and they go to the checkout. Right? I'm, like, for one day with my big American boys. Like, I'm, like, we have to bring our own car. It's loaded full of stuff.
Ian
00:04:08 – 00:04:09
It's like like
Jeffrey
00:04:09 – 00:04:12
I know. Like, we're the we're the Costco country. Right?
Aaron
00:04:12 – 00:04:13
Yeah. Exactly.
Aaron
00:04:13 – 00:04:16
And they don't they don't have big refrigerators either. So you get it all
Ian
00:04:17 – 00:04:18
No. You go every day. Right?
Aaron
00:04:18 – 00:04:19
You go every day.
Jeffrey
00:04:19 – 00:04:21
Yeah. Yeah. You get a fun truck.
Ian
00:04:21 – 00:04:33
Day, and I'm, like, you know, with piles of stuff and, like, everybody else has, like, some sliced ham And, like, you know, that's it. And I'm like Some sliced ham. Yeah. It was crazy. So yeah.
Ian
00:04:33 – 00:04:58
So that might work out. And then the 2nd year, we were gonna do a big trip to Joshua Tree and, like, all around the desert in California and whatever. But then, we were leaving the day, like, the, or that week, like COVID started and they were canceling the flights and everything. And we were like, man, if we, like, get to California and then, like, the flights are canceled, then are we driving them across the country and there's this disease going, you know, whatever. We were just like, I I guess, whatever.
Ian
00:04:58 – 00:04:58
We're not gonna
Jeffrey
00:04:59 – 00:05:02
Oh, so so COVID and yeah. That would make sense. COVID and
Ian
00:05:02 – 00:05:13
COVID impacted that, the second wave of big travel. So yeah. But the first one worked out and, yeah, it was great. And the kids were homeschooled for, like, 3 years. So then we, like, kept homeschooling in COVID.
Ian
00:05:13 – 00:05:19
And then now, you know, everybody's back in school, and we're back on the more standard path there. But,
Jeffrey
00:05:20 – 00:05:24
What do you think, Aaron? Are do you homeschool? Are you going to? Have you thought about it?
Aaron
00:05:24 – 00:05:35
So our kids are both we have twins. They're 2a half, and the new ones are not here yet. Yeah. Yeah. So the new ones truly could be here this this week.
Jeffrey
00:05:35 – 00:05:36
Oh, I know.
Ian
00:05:36 – 00:05:38
We're on the clock. Yes.
Aaron
00:05:38 – 00:05:45
We are on the clock. My wife is 36 weeks pregnant with twins. So yeah.
Jeffrey
00:05:45 – 00:05:46
So it would just be you're not here
Ian
00:05:46 – 00:05:46
to tell me.
Jeffrey
00:05:46 – 00:05:50
Possibility that we end this podcast in the next 30 weeks.
Ian
00:05:50 – 00:05:51
We keep going. We keep going.
Aaron
00:05:51 – 00:05:51
There's a non
Ian
00:05:52 – 00:05:54
yeah. He just leaves. Yeah. That's
Aaron
00:05:54 – 00:06:01
that that's the answer. There there's a nonzero chance that I leave, and Ian and you keep talking. Yes. Not zero
Jeffrey
00:06:01 – 00:06:03
or sure. Fair enough. Wow.
Aaron
00:06:03 – 00:06:34
So right now, yeah, right now, they're in, like, a 3 day a week, basically just mother's day out kind of thing. Mhmm. We will probably put them in public schools all the way through high school is our is our goal. And so we just moved we actually just bought a house in a district that has really good public schools through, like, all the way through high school. And our goal is for them to be, like, in the schools, in the neighborhood, in the community, just trying to be a part of the neighborhood that we live in.
Aaron
00:06:34 – 00:06:45
So that's that's our goal. I would love I would love to personally homeschool, but, I think I would do it, and I don't think Jennifer has very much interest in doing it. And so, yeah,
Jeffrey
00:06:45 – 00:06:45
we're not
Aaron
00:06:45 – 00:06:46
gonna do it.
Jeffrey
00:06:46 – 00:06:50
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. We went super on that one.
Ian
00:06:50 – 00:07:05
Yeah. We went super on the homeschool. Like our main thing was kind of about the traveling really, which was then it was kind of a bummer, the half, because like there was COVID and all that stuff, because like, it's like, well, we have this business we could do, you know, I could do it from anywhere. We've never left the town we grew up in. Like we're here.
Ian
00:07:05 – 00:07:23
Like, let's just take a few years and go do something different and live somewhere different, without the full, like we're actually fully moving to Europe or Australia or something. It's like, no. We can just, like, go take 3 months or 4 months or whatever it was and go do that. So, yeah, it was kind of an an interesting middle ground.
Aaron
00:07:24 – 00:07:27
Jennifer and I did that before we had kids. We'd spent 3 months in Paris.
Ian
00:07:27 – 00:07:27
Play.
Jeffrey
00:07:28 – 00:07:29
Wow. 3 months.
Ian
00:07:29 – 00:07:30
I didn't even know that.
Aaron
00:07:30 – 00:07:55
We split it between 2 Airbnbs, so we did, like, the first half in one, you know, neighborhood and the second half in a different neighborhood so we could experience 2 things. And it was amazing. It was totally unlike anything else, any other travel I've ever done because, yeah, we started to, like, know where the grocery store was and have our, you know, our, quote, unquote, friends, which were just the people that served us coffee at the coffee shop. And we'd be like, hey. Hi.
Aaron
00:07:55 – 00:08:11
We know you. And it was it was just so, so fun. So, yeah, I mean, if you can pull it off, 3 months feels feels about right. It's long enough to feel like you're you're there, but it's short enough that you can come home and your friends are like, oh, yeah. You weren't gone that
Ian
00:08:11 – 00:08:12
long. Something.
Aaron
00:08:12 – 00:08:13
Like, well, it was 3 months. Yeah.
Aaron
00:08:14 – 00:08:14
Yeah.
Ian
00:08:14 – 00:08:16
Have you guys done any big traveling, Jeffrey?
Jeffrey
00:08:16 – 00:08:36
My wife and I did a big trip to Europe for about it wasn't 3 months. I wish we had done 3 months. It was, like, a month and a half, something like that, where we we did the whole thing where it's like we went into the UK, and then we took the train, and we traveled down to Rome, and we spent a week and a half there. And it's like we just kinda did that little circle that a lot of people do Mhmm. In that area.
Jeffrey
00:08:36 – 00:08:46
And, yeah, it's it's, like, it's one of the best memories I have. Like, everyone in there, especially as young as possible in your early twenties, you should do that, for sure. It's expensive.
Ian
00:08:46 – 00:08:48
Was that be was that before kids? Or
Aaron
00:08:48 – 00:08:49
Oh, of course.
Jeffrey
00:08:49 – 00:08:50
Of course. Yeah.
Ian
00:08:50 – 00:08:51
Okay. Okay. Before kids.
Jeffrey
00:08:51 – 00:09:10
It opens your eyes to think like, this growing up in the US, you just have your idea of how things are. Like, I'll give you an example. When I worked at this company called Envato, we had a company meetup in Malaysia. And I grew up in Tennessee, so I had my ideas of, like, what Malaysia is. And then you get there, and it wasn't that at all.
Jeffrey
00:09:10 – 00:09:17
You know? Right. Like, the the the nicest mall I've ever been into in my life was in Malaysia. You know? And you just don't yeah.
Jeffrey
00:09:17 – 00:09:20
You just don't think this at all. Right. We were like
Ian
00:09:20 – 00:09:21
exposed to.
Jeffrey
00:09:21 – 00:09:30
It's horrible to say, but we were thinking, like, is it okay? Is it safe for us to go? Like, what what are the safe areas? None of that applied whatsoever. It it was it was an enjoyable experience.
Jeffrey
00:09:31 – 00:09:48
And those are things you can't imagine until you go there. Otherwise, do you just it's just whatever whatever you were brought up to believe is what you think, and you have to go there to see for yourself, what it's actually like. So yeah. We were very ignorant before doing that, I think.
Aaron
00:09:48 – 00:09:57
The ultimate hack, you said it's not cheap. It's not cheap, but it's way cheaper if you book an Airbnb for, like, 6 weeks. It's like Right.
Ian
00:09:57 – 00:09:58
That's what we do.
Aaron
00:09:58 – 00:10:15
They they mark it down by, like, 60% or something. Yeah. So if you go and then you're like you're shopping at the grocery store, so you're not eating out every meal. And so if you wanna if you wanna, like, go to a spot, do it for, you know, as long as you can, and that's a that's a hack to get it a little bit cheaper.
Jeffrey
00:10:15 – 00:10:30
Yeah. I think that's definitely the way to go too. Because otherwise, like, sometimes when you when you go to places for a few days, like, you're just going to different cities. You know? And the cities would be somewhat all or the same, but it's like you have to spend a long time there to really see what the city is about.
Jeffrey
00:10:30 – 00:10:42
Otherwise, it's like, oh, another city with a bunch of buildings, you know, a bunch of streets that I don't know, where I'm I'm gonna miss all of the cool things I should actually do, because I'm only here for 3 days for a conference, you know. Yeah.
Ian
00:10:42 – 00:10:49
Yeah. And you're just in the tourist zone. You know? You're not you don't get a chance to get out to the real parts of the city and all that.
Jeffrey
00:10:49 – 00:10:50
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Ian
00:10:50 – 00:11:09
Exactly. That was one of the things when in Europe, one of the biggest things that hit me kind of along the line of your story, Jeffrey, was like We were trapped. So after we left paris So we're with the 3 kids and we we didn't even think we packed that much for 3 months We're like everybody had a rolly bag and a backpack. Like, that's what we had for 3 months in Europe. Right?
Ian
00:11:09 – 00:11:30
And we were on the train to Italy because that was, like, the second country we went to after France. And when we're on this little train to the little town, we were going to like this, you know, local type train. And we just had our stuff packed in there and we looked in insane. Like, nobody else on the train had anything. Meanwhile, I have this giant, you know, 5 rolly bags,
Aaron
00:11:30 – 00:11:30
like, like,
Jeffrey
00:11:30 – 00:11:31
a half mile.
Ian
00:11:31 – 00:11:41
Family, basically. I was like, this is we are ridiculous. This whole thing is insane. And just like we went to Europe, like, like, a year ago, and we just had a backpack each. That's it.
Ian
00:11:41 – 00:11:49
Well, like, no rollie bags. No nothing. We pack what we have in our backpack. That's it. We'll do laundry, whatever, like but we'll make it work.
Ian
00:11:49 – 00:11:57
And we were only there for, like, 3 weeks that time, but still, it's like, no. This being a crazy American with 10 pieces of luggage, no way. Can't do it.
Jeffrey
00:11:57 – 00:11:57
Not do it.
Aaron
00:11:57 – 00:11:58
Oh, like, we had a
Jeffrey
00:11:58 – 00:12:19
we had a similar story. We were in Italy, and we just didn't know. We thought on Sunday, like, oh, let's just get a get on a train in Italy and go to one of the small towns, and I'm like, I cannot remember what the town name was. I hate that I can't remember it. But, anyways, we get there on Sunday, and it just didn't occur to us that in some of these small towns, like, Sunday, everything shuts down.
Jeffrey
00:12:19 – 00:12:42
It's not like businesses are open on Sunday. The entire thing is shut down. So we get there on a Sunday, and we're walking around, because, of course, we don't have a car. We're just walking. I have, like, the most American hat on, of course, and people are looking at us, but there's nothing for us to do because every single business, every restaurant, every store is shut down because it's Sunday morning, obviously.
Jeffrey
00:12:42 – 00:12:56
And so we were just kinda stuck there for, like, 6 hours until the train came back, and we could go back, to the city. It's just things you don't think about. Yeah. But you know what's weird? It was a fun trip because it's it's one of our Yeah.
Ian
00:12:56 – 00:12:57
Of course.
Jeffrey
00:12:57 – 00:13:03
The funniest memories is us walking around this deserted town trying to figure out what to do. Yeah.
Ian
00:13:03 – 00:13:10
Yeah. Exactly. That's the serendipity of those things. It's like this is you had all this, I'm sure, interesting experiences and great food and whatever, but that's the story you told. Right?
Ian
00:13:10 – 00:13:14
It's like this one where you just walk around randomly on Sunday.
Jeffrey
00:13:15 – 00:13:18
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Shall we do it?
Ian
00:13:18 – 00:13:20
So, yeah, let's go let's jump into the actual topic. Alright.
Aaron
00:13:20 – 00:13:27
I'll set I'll set the scene here, and then I'll let I'll let Jeffrey, uh-oh. Oh, he is stacking his nose.
Ian
00:13:27 – 00:13:28
He's got nose.
Jeffrey
00:13:28 – 00:13:29
This morning. He's got a
Aaron
00:13:29 – 00:13:31
notebook. Okay.
Jeffrey
00:13:31 – 00:13:32
Oh, boy. Alright.
Ian
00:13:32 – 00:13:33
We're in trouble. We're in trouble.
Aaron
00:13:33 – 00:13:42
So here's here's the inciting incident, and then I'll I will allow Jeffrey to make his points, and I will rebut. And, Ian, you can you can interject and moderate.
Jeffrey
00:13:43 – 00:13:43
Sure.
Aaron
00:13:43 – 00:13:49
It would be great, Ian, if you took my side just as like a, you know, just as like a friendly little This is a reminder.
Jeffrey
00:13:49 – 00:13:56
Alright. The inside My my instinct is Ian might take my side on this one. I'm very curious to see how this turns out. I'm gonna hold it close
Ian
00:13:56 – 00:13:57
to the vest right now.
Aaron
00:13:57 – 00:14:03
Ian, remember who's gonna be here next episode. So remember which relationship you want to be forging here.
Ian
00:14:03 – 00:14:04
Well, actually, I'll get
Jeffrey
00:14:04 – 00:14:06
back to Ian next episode. Ian, you're gen x.
Aaron
00:14:06 – 00:14:07
Right?
Jeffrey
00:14:07 – 00:14:08
Okay. You're gen x. Right?
Ian
00:14:08 – 00:14:09
Yes. Gen x. Yeah.
Jeffrey
00:14:09 – 00:14:12
Okay. Well, Aaron, okay. Let's see how this goes.
Aaron
00:14:12 – 00:14:28
Alright. Tough roadshow. Here we go. Jeffrey underscore way on Twitter says, what's the most generous explanation for why most of us at some point retweet compliments? You would emphasis never do this in real life.
Aaron
00:14:29 – 00:14:40
So the question being posed by Jeffrey is why do we retweet nice things about ourselves when that would be insane behavior to do in person. Jeffrey, the floor is yours.
Jeffrey
00:14:41 – 00:14:42
Okay. Alright.
Ian
00:14:44 – 00:14:45
I love that he has notes. This is
Jeffrey
00:14:45 – 00:14:54
like a spiral spiral notebook. Don't take this too, sir. I had coffee this morning. I was like, oh, I should probably think for 5 seconds before I go to this podcast.
Aaron
00:14:54 – 00:14:55
But I
Jeffrey
00:14:55 – 00:15:04
do feel like I'm at the Oxford Union. Thank you everyone for having me. No. Look, I don't care that much about this. You know, this is just some dumb dumb tweet.
Jeffrey
00:15:04 – 00:15:23
And, actually, I I would love it if you guys would convince me I'm wrong on this one, because maybe I'm maybe I'm super overthinking this. But I think there's a little bit of grossness that you feel, when you see these things. And okay. Is there okay. Don't be shy.
Aaron
00:15:23 – 00:15:25
This is not the show to be shy on.
Ian
00:15:25 – 00:15:26
Don't be shy. Lay it out. Lay it out.
Jeffrey
00:15:26 – 00:15:40
Is there etiquette when it comes to Twitter as to what is acceptable behavior and what is not. Okay. For example, we have to distinguish between retweeting a comp like, a personal compliment. We talked about this, Erin. And retweeting a business compliment.
Jeffrey
00:15:41 – 00:15:51
So if I said, like, oh, Erin, I saw you got a haircut. You look really good, and you hit retweet, is that gross at all? Alright. That's my first question. Is is that kind of gross?
Jeffrey
00:15:51 – 00:15:52
Okay. Ian, you
Aaron
00:15:52 – 00:15:58
first Are we doing question response, or are you gonna lay out the questions, and then we'll what you wanna do question response?
Jeffrey
00:15:58 – 00:16:01
I have I don't know. This is your show. I haven't planned anything.
Ian
00:16:01 – 00:16:04
I like this. We can. No. Let's go with that. I like that.
Aaron
00:16:04 – 00:16:08
Is it gross to retweet a personal compliment like that? And what do you think?
Ian
00:16:09 – 00:16:25
So I I do totally agree, at least with this premise of that, there is a distinction of some sort between a personal compliment and, hey. I love this open source thing you're doing. Hey. I love this, your product. Like, I do think that there's something there that's a distinction.
Ian
00:16:25 – 00:16:33
And whether or not it's import it's important or not, I don't know. There is a distinction, though. Right? Like, so I think it's, is it gross or not, man? You know?
Ian
00:16:34 – 00:16:49
Remember your channel, man. Towards I know. You go a little bit towards Jeffrey, I guess, on this one. Like, I don't think it's I guess I'm sort of in the middle of you guys, honestly, a little bit, but, I don't know if I would do the, like, yeah, you have a nice haircut. Am I gonna retweet that?
Ian
00:16:49 – 00:16:52
I'm sure I have. Right? Let's just start there. I'm sure I have. You're on Twitter.
Ian
00:16:52 – 00:16:56
Yes. Like, it's like the the like, I'm just gonna hit the retweet button. Right? Nobody needs to check our
Aaron
00:16:57 – 00:16:57
prior history. Right.
Jeffrey
00:16:57 – 00:16:58
Just take
Aaron
00:16:58 – 00:16:59
take a word of it. Sure.
Ian
00:17:00 – 00:17:03
Should is a different thing. Like, yes. Should I Right.
Jeffrey
00:17:03 – 00:17:03
And that's why
Ian
00:17:03 – 00:17:05
my tweet that.
Jeffrey
00:17:05 – 00:17:24
For sure. And that's why my tweet specifically said, why do we do this? Because I was thinking, like, every I've done all of these things that when I see it sometimes from other people annoy me a little bit. And then there's just the reality, like, the way we receive things. You know, that that phrase, the way you receive things says more about you than it does about the person.
Jeffrey
00:17:24 – 00:17:31
Right? So the things that maybe irk you about what a person posted, it has nothing to do with them. It has to do with your own your own crap.
Aaron
00:17:31 – 00:17:31
Right?
Jeffrey
00:17:31 – 00:17:37
Right. So, like, I try to keep that in perspective. But it doesn't change wait. Go ahead. You go.
Jeffrey
00:17:37 – 00:17:38
You go. You go. The
Ian
00:17:38 – 00:17:39
Yeah. Let's get it.
Aaron
00:17:39 – 00:17:54
Ian says Ian says there's a distinction, but maybe not a difference between personal and business. Maybe a small difference. I think I I draw a distinction with a difference between retweeting a, hey. Your course was good. Your video was good, and, hey.
Aaron
00:17:54 – 00:18:08
You're looking handsome today. I think those are those are very different things. And one feels I don't want to show my cards too early. 1 feels like it serves a purpose, and one feels like vanity. So, yes, first question, I think there's a difference.
Aaron
00:18:08 – 00:18:16
And it does feel weird for me personally to retweet, like, a almost like a personal or vanity compliment.
Ian
00:18:16 – 00:18:22
I think think too there is this element, though. Right? Think about humans in general. Forget Twitter. Like Okay.
Ian
00:18:22 – 00:18:42
Humans. I feel like Twitter unleashes this thing people have always wanted. Like when someone how many times have somebody wanted you want somebody's compliment in front of somebody else like you're in school and you want the validation of someone's compliment in front of the girl you like in front of your friends for whatever. Right? Or whatever your scenario is there.
Ian
00:18:42 – 00:18:46
Like you wish that compliment had happened in front of a certain person.
Aaron
00:18:46 – 00:18:47
Yes. Or people.
Ian
00:18:47 – 00:19:04
Right. And then Twitter lets you unleash that, whether that should be unleashed is a, a, an interesting question, but it lets you be like, oh, I got this compliment over here 2 days ago. Now I can just show it to the girl who likes me and the peer group. I want to know about my coolness in whatever way that is. Right?
Ian
00:19:04 – 00:19:04
Which
Jeffrey
00:19:04 – 00:19:06
Right. But maybe that's why we're all slow. Not
Ian
00:19:08 – 00:19:10
take the Twitter up on that. Right?
Jeffrey
00:19:10 – 00:19:15
Maybe that's why we're all slowly going crazy, though. Right. You know what I mean? Like, don't you ever wonder, like got there. Yeah.
Jeffrey
00:19:15 – 00:19:25
Are we all just slowly being morphed by social media? You know how they say everything goes back to Yes. The invention of the like button? Like, they can trace
Aaron
00:19:25 – 00:19:25
Yes.
Jeffrey
00:19:26 – 00:19:52
Everything going on today to Facebook adding the like button, and then suddenly that tweaks the way you create a post. Because now you're not just saying Like, when I when I first joined Facebook in 2004, it was, what are you doing? And I, you know, I was I was thinking about this the other day. I think, originally, it had your name in the beginning, and then you would fill in the blank. Because I have a lot of posts from 2,004 that start with the word is.
Jeffrey
00:19:52 – 00:19:59
Like, it's currently figuring out blah blah blah is doing this. And all I can imagine is they had your username at the beginning in bold.
Aaron
00:19:59 – 00:20:07
And it was it was status only. There was no wall. So you would just there was no, like, notification feed, I guess. There was a wall, but there was no feed. So you were just right.
Aaron
00:20:07 – 00:20:13
The wall was added later. At the soccer game, and if someone came to your profile to look, they would see that.
Aaron
00:20:13 – 00:20:14
Right.
Jeffrey
00:20:14 – 00:20:26
Right. So when I put I I'm not on Facebook anymore, but when I was, they would do that thing where it's like, here's what you wrote 10 years ago, and then they always started with the word is. And they were that was so cringey. I never wanted to see them. You know?
Jeffrey
00:20:26 – 00:20:37
I was like, oh, god. I was actually writing that stuff. But I the original version of Facebook was just what are you up to, you know? Yep. But Twitter feels like a different thing.
Jeffrey
00:20:37 – 00:20:50
Twitter feels like it's not well, I don't know. I remember explaining Twitter to my family and coworkers, right, when it came out. And I remember saying, oh, it's like the digital water cooler. Right? And this is what this is what everyone said.
Jeffrey
00:20:50 – 00:21:03
It's like, oh, this is especially if you work remotely. It's the water cooler. But then it got to a point where it's like, oh, no. Twitter is kind of both things. It's the water cooler, but it's also, like, the PR branch for your personal brand.
Jeffrey
00:21:04 – 00:21:17
Right? And that's why I and that's where it gets tricky. It's like, is Twitter for you, Aaron, or me? Is it just for you to talk about what you're working on, or is it a vessel for you to sell me products? And the answer is probably both.
Jeffrey
00:21:17 – 00:21:21
Right? Maybe. Yeah. It is for me.
Aaron
00:21:21 – 00:21:23
Is that is that the next question? Because I'm ready.
Jeffrey
00:21:23 – 00:21:26
I don't know. Like, this is junk. Like, whatever you want. Yeah.
Ian
00:21:27 – 00:21:28
Go there, Eren. Go there.
Jeffrey
00:21:28 – 00:21:29
I don't have one to
Aaron
00:21:29 – 00:21:42
do that. I think I think that is the hard part. Right? So that was that was kind of my point of view. Like, we retweet things, we retweet compliments, or I'll speak for myself.
Aaron
00:21:42 – 00:22:27
I retweet nice things when they are related to some other outcome I'm trying to get besides just, like, people knowing that I'm good and nice and smart. Right? So if I'm trying to if I'm trying to sell a course or I'm trying to get people to go watch a PlanetScale video or something, There's some amount of, like, I can say I can say that I've just released the thing and then never talk about it again, and that's just not gonna work, unfortunately. So I think my options are I can say over and over and over that I have a thing or the thing is good, or please remember that I did the thing. And that's like, that feels, almost almost worse to me, honestly.
Aaron
00:22:28 – 00:22:43
Or, you know, when somebody's like, hey. I just watched this PlanetScale video, and it was really good. I learned whatever. I can just retweet that and other people that brings back to mind and and, like, my followers' minds. Oh, yeah.
Aaron
00:22:43 – 00:23:14
Erin did this thing, and this other person, this this third party is saying it's really good. Maybe it is good. Maybe I'll go watch it. And so that's where I think it's, like, yes, I'm definitely trying to use that as social proof and promote stuff, but I also personally like to hang out on Twitter and, like, joke around with friends. And so there's this weird mix of business and personal, which is why I draw a distinction between business and personal retweets, honestly.
Jeffrey
00:23:15 – 00:23:18
Yeah. It's interesting, but it's still the same account. That's the weird thing.
Aaron
00:23:18 – 00:23:26
It is still the same account. Yes. And it is definitely the PR for the personal brand line. Yeah. That is a 100% true.
Jeffrey
00:23:26 – 00:23:42
Yeah. Because if it was a business account and it retweeted compliments, I wouldn't think anything of it. And I do it from the Lyricast account all the time, and I guarantee I do it from my personal account too. But I don't know. There's there's there's a level of shame involved when I do that.
Jeffrey
00:23:42 – 00:23:44
You know what I mean? Yeah. That's why I'm
Aaron
00:23:44 – 00:24:05
saying so what is the shame what is the shame for you that's involved? If somebody so let me give you let me give you an example. Let's see. I just watched the Laravel 10 from scratch series by at jeffreyway, and I'm fully up to speed. What a great course.
Aaron
00:24:05 – 00:24:13
Like and you yes. You're welcome. You retweet that and feel shame. What is where is that like, what are you feeling?
Jeffrey
00:24:15 – 00:24:21
Okay. I like I like that. I'm sitting on the couch here. Let me think about this.
Aaron
00:24:21 – 00:24:24
At mine. You you get to sit in yours? That's awesome. Yeah.
Jeffrey
00:24:24 – 00:24:27
Do people actually lay down in therapy? I always wonder that. I've never laid down.
Aaron
00:24:27 – 00:24:29
I don't think so. I've never laid down. Yeah.
Jeffrey
00:24:29 – 00:24:31
Is that a movie thing? Like, they lay down?
Ian
00:24:31 – 00:24:32
Movie thing.
Aaron
00:24:32 – 00:24:33
I think it is.
Jeffrey
00:24:34 – 00:24:38
Yeah. It's not a shame. It's okay. Alright. I got it.
Jeffrey
00:24:38 – 00:24:43
I got it. I got it. Tell me. I got it. It's manipulative, I think.
Aaron
00:24:44 – 00:24:46
Alright. So here's where that enters the fray.
Jeffrey
00:24:46 – 00:24:57
You know what Twitter should have? I feel like Twitter should have a section for because it is true. It's, like, it's partially your personal account Mhmm. But it's also your personal brand. And you see this on Instagram, especially.
Jeffrey
00:24:57 – 00:25:05
Everyone has a personal brain. People aren't just posting photos anymore. It's like, no. This is my brand and this is all I post on. Okay.
Jeffrey
00:25:06 – 00:25:30
When if there was a way to just say, this is a testimonial that I would like included as part of my account, that would be cool. Just like they added highlights, maybe it's like a testimonials section. But when it's a retweet where you're like, oh, this warms my heart that this person got so much from my course, it's like, it doesn't warm your heart. You're just retweeting it so that you can make more money. You know what I mean?
Jeffrey
00:25:30 – 00:25:34
That's where I feel like it's manipulating. And I'm not going after you, Aaron, because I do this No.
Aaron
00:25:34 – 00:25:36
No. No. No. I don't feel gone after.
Jeffrey
00:25:36 – 00:26:07
But I do it more than you. So just to be crystal clear, this is so this is this is me analyzing myself here. But it feels manipulative because you're you're you're you're representing flattery or modesty, like, oh, thank you so much. But in reality, it's like, I'd like more people to buy this product, and this is a good way to do it, is to act like I'm just so humbled by how my course affected, this person when it's really not that. You just want more people to buy your stuff.
Jeffrey
00:26:07 – 00:26:12
You know what I mean? Okay. So am I am I the crazy one? No. No.
Jeffrey
00:26:12 – 00:26:14
No. No. No. I'm crazy here. We love a stance.
Jeffrey
00:26:14 – 00:26:14
No. No.
Aaron
00:26:14 – 00:26:16
No. We love a stance, Ian.
Ian
00:26:16 – 00:26:39
Well, I wonder I wonder, though. See, there is this whole other side of this, which is like, what do, what does the audience want? And so when I'm following Jeffrey way Wei and Lara Cas and Aaron Francis, right, like, those compliments that you retweet of, like, a course or whatever. Right? Like, I actually find them super useful because it's like, I mean, Larry has produced so much stuff.
Ian
00:26:39 – 00:26:45
I can't possibly keep up on all of the Yes. That you do. Right? And, like, even Aaron's freaking always Yes. Keeping produces.
Ian
00:26:45 – 00:26:54
So, like, when something comes gets put back in front of me, right, I think that's that's useful because it's like, oh, yeah. Jeffrey did that course on whatever. And I
Jeffrey
00:26:54 – 00:26:54
got a
Ian
00:26:54 – 00:27:15
big time to, like, hop over to Lyricas and, like, and look at it. And now obviously you could do the same thing by having, like, structured, you know, just tweets about each course that go out over time and whatever. Right? You could do it that way too. But I actually I mean, I'd rather see what somebody thought about it, because sometimes there's even little interesting nuggets in the bit of text that's in the retweet.
Ian
00:27:15 – 00:27:20
Right? Like, so like you have an extreme example. Like your hair looks nice today. Yes. That's like useless
Aaron
00:27:20 – 00:27:20
for me to know
Ian
00:27:20 – 00:27:57
that somebody said your hair looks nice today. Right. But everything slightly above that and beyond actually often is either entertaining or actually useful. And so I think that that's there is, like, the audience people aren't mass, unfollowing following you when you do these things right now, I guess there is the idea of like, is that manipulation and that ties them to you in a manipulative way. And, like, maybe I've been manipulated to look forward to your retweets about your courses, and, I've been Pavlov dog trained somehow by this, and, like, that's bad that I am, but, I do.
Ian
00:27:57 – 00:28:15
Yeah. I don't know. And it is interesting to like, know somebody who is a brand of themselves. Like, it's more interesting to follow Jeffree way and what's going on a little bit personally plus the business as opposed to just, like, Hertz or Vercel, let's say, or whatever.
Aaron
00:28:15 – 00:28:17
RSS feed from Lyricasts or something.
Ian
00:28:18 – 00:28:19
Right. Yeah. Something generic.
Aaron
00:28:19 – 00:28:21
So That's true. Yeah. Because Twitter is
Ian
00:28:21 – 00:28:32
such a weird amalgamation of these things of entertainment and information. Like, nothing's like Twitter, which is why it's sort of irreplaceable in that way because it is a combination of everything all at once.
Aaron
00:28:33 – 00:28:52
Yeah. Tim Ferris has turned into pure brand and no personality. And if you go look at his Twitter account, he's got, like, you know, 2,000,000 followers or something. And it's basically just an RSS feed, and each post gets, like, 3,000 views or something like that. And it's just because it's like, I don't I don't wanna follow an RSS feed.
Aaron
00:28:52 – 00:29:07
That's just not interesting to me. So I think there is something, like you said, Ian, to be said for, like, I actually do want to follow the personality brand knowing that it's like, some amalgamation of personal and business.
Jeffrey
00:29:08 – 00:29:27
Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, there's a good argument that we're numb to it. You know? Things that maybe, like like I said, you would never whatever the the real life version of a retweet is, you would never do that in real life. But it's, like, yeah, maybe maybe we're sort of numb to that though, where we don't we don't perceive it in the same way.
Jeffrey
00:29:27 – 00:29:36
It's it's funny. I'm always thinking, like, how would my grandfather think about, like, if somebody complimented me and I shared it with all my friends? I feel like my grandfather would be like, what are you doing? Why are
Ian
00:29:36 – 00:29:37
you doing?
Aaron
00:29:37 – 00:29:38
But it's
Jeffrey
00:29:38 – 00:29:44
like yeah. It is true. It's like social media in the same way that Instagram has its own culture and things are
Aaron
00:29:44 – 00:29:44
Mhmm.
Jeffrey
00:29:44 – 00:29:58
Like, posting selfies on Instagram is is far more acceptable than it is on Twitter. Twitter, it's like you can sometimes do it. But if if I was posting a picture of myself multiple times a day, people would start unfollowing because it's kind of against the culture.
Aaron
00:29:58 – 00:29:58
I'll I'll
Jeffrey
00:29:58 – 00:30:07
I'll give you an example. There's this guy. He's the CEO of an educational site. I'm not going to out him. I unfollowed him.
Jeffrey
00:30:07 – 00:30:14
Past.com? Yes. I'm talking about myself, of course. No. If I if I said the name of the company, you would know it.
Jeffrey
00:30:14 – 00:30:26
But Yeah. I quietly unfollowed him because I just couldn't take it anymore. He he would do this thing where he would post screenshots of famous quotes, you know, from, like, Einstein or Abraham Lincoln or whatever.
Ian
00:30:26 – 00:30:27
That was the worst account.
Jeffrey
00:30:28 – 00:30:39
Right. But it got even worse. Next to the quote was a picture of this guy, not not the person responsible for the quote, but a picture of himself. And he would do it, like, 6 times a day. Quote No.
Jeffrey
00:30:39 – 00:30:49
Picture of me. Screenshot. And then 2 hours later, famous quote, picture of me. And it that's the weird thing about social media is it makes you do things that you wouldn't otherwise do. Like, he had it in his head.
Jeffrey
00:30:49 – 00:31:07
That that was probably, like, a way to, I don't know, make it look like you're talking to each other. In the same way that we're talking to each other right now, there's nothing vain about us showing our faces because it just makes for a better experience. But there was just something about that where I was like, I can't do this anymore. I can't.
Ian
00:31:07 – 00:31:07
But I
Jeffrey
00:31:07 – 00:31:18
think it comes back to what I wrote here. The way we receive things says more about us than them. So maybe that's my own, like like, yeah, idiosyncrasies or neurosis or something like that.
Aaron
00:31:18 – 00:31:52
That's just an example of someone playing the game really poorly in my opinion. I don't think I don't think that's an indictment on the medium in any way. I think that's an indictment on a lazy player. So I think that's somebody that was, like either got coaching or saw you know, hired a firm or saw other people doing it and thought, ah, here's a hack where I can have infinite content because I'm supposed to be posting. The platform.
Aaron
00:31:53 – 00:32:16
And it's like, yeah, that that's never gonna look good in my opinion, because you're gonna end up looking kinda like a doofus, which is what which is what that is. And, like, the 3 of us here, I don't think would ever drift into, you know, vapid thought leadership content quotes, that sort of thing. And I think that's a fundamentally different like, that's a fundamentally different, problem is that he's just a bad player of the game.
Jeffrey
00:32:17 – 00:32:27
Yes. Okay. So what is wrong? Like, why do we respond to thought leader style tweets negatively? Like, what is wrong with it?
Jeffrey
00:32:27 – 00:32:30
Even and I do. I agree with you. But what's wrong with it then?
Aaron
00:32:32 – 00:33:14
I don't know what's wrong with it. I know why I respond negatively to it. I think there's a mismatch between, I think there's a mismatch between, like, the medium and the perceived like, the voice that you're using to communicate. So, for example, if you're hanging out at if you're hanging out at a friend's house and you're, like, playing a board game and having drinks and somebody starts, like, going all, megachurch preacher, and you're all sitting at the like, with tone of voice and cadence and volume and that sort of thing, and you're sitting at the table with 6 friends having a drink and playing settlers, and somebody takes on that tone of voice, you're like, this is this is weird. Like, what are you doing?
Aaron
00:33:14 – 00:33:42
It's just us hanging out. And I feel like that's what happens when people go into real thought, like, real, like, aphorism, like, tweet a pithy quote. That's what happens on Twitter when people go into thought leadership mode is, like, we're all just kinda hanging out, and you're you're over here just, like, spouting off little quotes and preaching, like, bro, that feels that feels weird. And so that's what I think. I think it's a a, like, a format that doesn't match the communication means
Jeffrey
00:33:42 – 00:33:44
or, like, what they're trying to be.
Ian
00:33:45 – 00:34:03
It's interesting, though, that it works, right? Like, not with us OG Twitter users. It doesn't work with us. We're like, ew, that's gross. But you obviously, we could all enlist a whole bunch of accounts that have millions of followers that basically all they do is that with the occasional sprinkling of whatever the other thing they're trying to sell is, but, like, it's 90% thought.
Aaron
00:34:03 – 00:34:06
Is this James clear? Is that James Strider now?
Jeffrey
00:34:07 – 00:34:08
Oh, is there anybody there?
Ian
00:34:08 – 00:34:09
I don't know if I follow
Jeffrey
00:34:09 – 00:34:10
atomic chemicals.
Ian
00:34:10 – 00:34:11
Ryan Holiday does it for the stoics, though.
Jeffrey
00:34:11 – 00:34:12
I love his book.
Aaron
00:34:12 – 00:34:14
Ryan Ryan Holiday. Yeah. Yeah. That's another one.
Ian
00:34:14 – 00:34:15
His stuff.
Aaron
00:34:15 – 00:34:19
I'm trying to find somebody that's like adjacent to us that does that, like, after the.
Ian
00:34:19 – 00:34:26
Like the gumroad guy. He's he's like an abuser of the thought leadership. Mhmm. And what's what's the other guy?
Jeffrey
00:34:26 – 00:34:47
But it seems like the biggest abusers are people that you've never really heard of, yet somehow every post they make gets, like, crazy retweets and likes. So it's like, clearly, they figured out the algorithm, and yet at the same time, my response to that is almost like repulsion. Like, I I I feel like it's it's like farming or like fishing or or whatever the time that is for that.
Aaron
00:34:47 – 00:35:18
That's why it's so dangerous to do in my opinion, and that's why I also, like, being a thread boy was dangerous, and that's why also I think being a meme a meme lord on Twitter was dangerous because you get this short term hit of, like, the algorithm shows you to a bunch of people. But you also you also, like you kinda alienate the the people that you wanna be in the room with. Right? And so you end up, like, you end up getting all these followers that are like, the memes. What funny memes.
Aaron
00:35:18 – 00:35:35
And then a bunch of other people mute you because you're always making memes about Rust or whatever. Right? And so I think it is it is like, yeah, we see people having success with it, but at what at what cost? Like, yeah, maybe they've got a ton of followers, but have all of the serious people muted them? Because they're like, god.
Aaron
00:35:35 – 00:35:38
This guy is just memeing all day every day.
Jeffrey
00:35:39 – 00:35:58
And I guess that's maybe where I draw it back to when you said why do you feel shame about, like, retweeting your own stuff, which I do constantly. It it's that same idea. It's like, oh, I thought we were all hanging out here, and then all of a sudden, no. I'm actually using you as a sales funnel. And we thought we were just hanging out, but we're really not.
Jeffrey
00:35:58 – 00:35:59
I'm I'm I'm selling
Aaron
00:35:59 – 00:35:59
to you.
Jeffrey
00:35:59 – 00:36:12
But at the end of the day you know, it's like, you read an article and it's like, oh, fill out your email for this free PDF. And you do it. And it's like, it's not about the free PDF. It's so that 6 months from now, they're gonna sell you their Black Friday thing. You know?
Jeffrey
00:36:12 – 00:36:42
Mhmm. So I feel like whenever you get into that misleading territory, it's almost always a bad way to go. Like, if your metric was what is most generous and, friendly to whoever you're trying to sell to, that's the way to go. So if you're trying to mislead them, I feel the same way about things like, sign up now because in 2 days, the price doubles. So this is your last chance before the price goes like, everything feels a little manipulative.
Jeffrey
00:36:42 – 00:36:47
Like, you're like, you're trying to sell to people instead of be friends with them. You know what I mean?
Aaron
00:36:48 – 00:37:05
So yeah. So here's here's a question. It keeps you keep mentioning, manipulative or misleading. And I think one thing one interesting thing you said earlier about the the retweeting is, like, kinda like, oh, I'm so humbled. This false humility of, oh, this person really loved my thing, and I'm humbled by that.
Aaron
00:37:06 – 00:37:43
I kinda have maybe a hot taker, an opinion on that that a lot of people say humbled when they really just they're they're lying, and I I think I agree with you there. And so whenever like, it's it's happened many times where people have reached out to me privately or publicly and told me about the MySQL for developers course and how, like, important it was to them because I never understood databases. And I never I do not frankly feel humbled by that. What I do feel is honored, and so I will always tell them, like, I feel that's I'm honored that you think that because it is, like, I don't feel less. I feel more.
Aaron
00:37:43 – 00:38:25
Like, I feel, like, elevated to a place of, you know, honor. And so I think there's this thing that maybe you're ascribing, and maybe certain people do this, but you're ascribing generally, which is, like, everyone is pretending to be humbled and moved and, like, low am I, when really they want to sell to you. And I think there's a second there's a second way where it's like, hey. That really meant something that you said that. I'm honored that you think that, and I want to share that with my audience, not under any false pretenses, but to share that as, like, the the testimonial to my audience.
Aaron
00:38:25 – 00:38:37
And I I think, like, trying to say I'm humbled and this means something to me personally, maybe does feel a little bit weird versus
Jeffrey
00:38:38 – 00:38:39
But why does it have
Aaron
00:38:39 – 00:38:40
to be shared? Test
Jeffrey
00:38:41 – 00:38:57
Why does it have to be shared with your own audience? Why can't you just accept the compliment? You know what I mean? Like, at the end of the day, there there is motivation. It is like, well, if I retweet it, just more just by definition, more eyes will see the link to my to my course, delerikast.com.
Jeffrey
00:38:58 – 00:39:29
And the likely all of this is, like, increasing the likelihood. The likelihood that you will see the name of my business and sign up goes up every single time I retweet a compliment or something like that. And maybe, like I was talking to a guy I met, he's the CEO of Code School, and we met up for coffee a couple years ago. And I was we were talking about, running sales, very similar to your conversation with Caleb about a week or 2 ago. And I was talking about, like, doing the Black Friday ads, and that makes me feel a little bit gross.
Jeffrey
00:39:29 – 00:39:55
Very again, Caleb and I had a super similar conversation on Telegram about a year ago about this exact thing, so it's very funny. And he was telling me he will send out, like, the Black Friday announcement ad, but then the one at the very end that says, hey. We're gonna close-up shop in 2 hours in the sales guide. He said, that's the email that makes everyone sign up. And I was like, oh, that's really cool, and still, like, I feel gross every time I send it just like Caleb.
Jeffrey
00:39:55 – 00:40:08
And he responded, like, treating me like I was kind of, like, okay. Like, who cares? Like, you're running a business here. Whether you feel better or not is irrelevant. So whether did it increase sales or did it not?
Jeffrey
00:40:08 – 00:40:20
And I thought, oh, maybe maybe I am overthinking this a little too. It doesn't matter. It's like you're running a business. You know, Target's not thinking about, like, what are the the ethics around promoting Target? Like, they don't care.
Jeffrey
00:40:20 – 00:40:33
You know, it's irrelevant. You know, it's just a numbers game. Do the numbers go up when you do this thing or do they go down? And then everything else is maybe irrelevant. But then again, it's like it's very different when it comes to your personal brand.
Jeffrey
00:40:33 – 00:40:46
It's like it's not it's not your business. It's not HelpSpot. It's Ian Lanceman, the product, or or Aaron, the product. And we're all trying to figure out, like, how do you how do you manage that? Because it's it's a it's a brand new thing.
Jeffrey
00:40:46 – 00:40:48
You know, it's very strange.
Ian
00:40:48 – 00:41:15
It's a very I think also people who come from development background, I think a lot they don't have, like, that natural self promotion instinct instinct quite as much in general. I think some of them do, and if everybody who does, it usually pays off. Right? If you can put that fear aside and be like, no, I'm gonna be okay with, like, feeling uncomfortable sometimes because what I've done is valuable and useful, and I'm gonna be okay talking about it in that way. Right?
Ian
00:41:15 – 00:41:43
But that's still not something natural that maybe a more natural somebody who came up in marketing might feel more naturally or whatever. But if you think about all the great promoters of our time, Steve jobs, right? Or whoever, like they're not worried about the self conscious part as much as getting their story out and what they've done and what the products do. And yeah. I mean, I think that's sort of kind of something that you have to overcome to some degree.
Ian
00:41:43 – 00:42:24
And it's just then finding different people find their different levels with it of how much they're willing how far they're willing to push it. Because I'm sure both of you guys, right, especially I feel like with the b to b app, it's a little different. I feel like the self promotion has never worked quite as strongly as like a content thing does. And maybe I've just done it poorly and I definitely haven't been all in on it at certain points. But, but, yeah, if you have that, like, tie to yourself and how that feeds into the individuals buying your your services and what they feel about you impacts if they buy or not, what they feel about the product, then how you can let them get that information to them about the product impacts that.
Ian
00:42:24 – 00:42:35
And so yeah. I mean, I think there there is at the end of the day. Right? Like, you're not helping anybody if Lara Cas goes out of business. Like, then then you help nobody.
Ian
00:42:35 – 00:42:58
Right? So there is this element. There is some level of, like, where you have to promote it so that people buy it, so that you can keep making more of it, so that you can keep helping people, and have that virtuous cycle go, that you have to be okay with it. And then but there is that this line, of course, of like yeah. And and obviously the original conversation being Twitter and personal versus business and all those things.
Ian
00:42:58 – 00:43:10
But I think on the business side of it anyway, I think the upsides are are bigger than the downsides. Right? Like, that's how that's how you give back to the community. Like, Jay z has a line about this where, like, he got rich and gave back. Like, that's how he did it.
Ian
00:43:10 – 00:43:26
Right? So, like, that's kind of the thing. It's like, you can't give back if Zara cast out of business and you're working at some job somewhere. Right? So, like, there is this cycle of of promotion that's required to do the awesome things for the community and, obviously, same with Aaron and the things that we're doing.
Ian
00:43:26 – 00:43:26
So
Aaron
00:43:28 – 00:43:59
I think it's different for the CEO of, I forget, code school or whatever. The business at some level, the business becomes an entity on its own. And so, like, Target is an entity unto itself. And they'll send millions of Black Friday emails to me specifically, not in general, just to me, to my inbox. They will send me 1,000,000 Black Friday emails, and that's fine for them because they have, you know, fiduciary duties to shareholders.
Aaron
00:43:59 – 00:44:31
And I think it gets really the the difference then is Laracasts is an entity, but it's also you. Right? It is it's it's Jeffree way. And so then there's a big difference between, like, what what is what are Jeffrey weighs what's Jeffrey's brand, and how many emails can Jeffree's brand sustain or how many emails does Jeffree want to send? And I think that's the big difference between, like, Codeschool or Target and Yeah.
Aaron
00:44:31 – 00:44:35
Veracast and, you know, the Aaron Francis Galaxy of Well,
Jeffrey
00:44:35 – 00:44:44
in in my mind, everyone has, like, a a budget. That's how I think of it on social media. They have a budget for what they're willing to take from you. Right? So it's like, oh, I'm following this person.
Jeffrey
00:44:45 – 00:44:53
But if they go too far into this territory, they they use up their budget, and I just hate it anymore. You know? And it it could be anything. Right? It could be, like like, political views.
Jeffrey
00:44:53 – 00:45:05
Like, oh, that's Yep. They've gone too much. I can't do this anymore. It could be promoting their sports. It could be, oh, I'm really interested in your programming content, but you keep talking about movies or something like that.
Jeffrey
00:45:05 – 00:45:26
So now I'm not like, this is all the stuff that we have to think about. And I think the same thing is true for for marketing. And every time I tweet about AIRCAS, it is marketing, and I feel like I'm using up that budget for people so that if I do it too much, they're gonna unfollow me because I would unfollow me. Like, you you don't wanna feel like you're being sold to. Well That's the big problem.
Jeffrey
00:45:26 – 00:45:27
Nobody wants you to feel like
Aaron
00:45:27 – 00:45:27
they're sold
Aaron
00:45:27 – 00:45:30
to. That's the right equation. Yeah. I think that's perfect.
Ian
00:45:30 – 00:45:41
I don't I don't even I actually don't agree with that. Honestly, like, I think there are people who how many times have people looked through, like, in the old days, you looked through a newspaper or whatever. Right? Or you looked through the computer catalog when we were kids.
Aaron
00:45:41 – 00:45:45
That's just no idea what either of those things Ian. What is a computer catalog?
Ian
00:45:46 – 00:45:59
A catalog where you buy the parts of a computer out of. You never looked through one of those old catalogs and, like, that's all advertising. Right? But you enjoyed looking through it or a mag a fashion magazine, and you're looking through it to, like, you're literally there for the ads. Right?
Ian
00:45:59 – 00:46:08
You're there to see what Louis Vuitton has put out. Right? Like, you are you want to be marketed to. So I think that there is I think people do wanna be marketed to.
Aaron
00:46:09 – 00:46:10
Okay. But that's everybody
Ian
00:46:10 – 00:46:11
all the time.
Jeffrey
00:46:11 – 00:46:27
But Hold on. That's where it comes back to the idea of, like, is this the water cooler, or are we all numb to the fact that we're we're friends, but we're really just kinda trying to sell our our junk to each other. Right. Right? Like and maybe we were we're all numb, and we just accept, like, it doesn't affect me.
Jeffrey
00:46:27 – 00:46:38
This in the same way, like I said, with Instagram, when I see a selfie, I'm not I don't think, oh, you're being bad. I just think, oh, that's the that's the culture. That's how it works. Everyone does it, and I like that. You know, there's a there's a funny thing that
Ian
00:46:38 – 00:46:39
Right.
Jeffrey
00:46:39 – 00:46:57
Aaron, you you have definitely I guarantee you have learned with YouTube. Everyone learns it. If your face is in the thumbnail, the likelihood people click on the thumbnail on YouTube goes up, like, significantly. Like so at that point, it's like it's not like, oh, shit. Am I being, narcissistic or anything like that?
Jeffrey
00:46:57 – 00:47:13
It's like, no. People will click on this video if your face is on it. Period. And you don't need the overthinking. And so now everyone is numb to the fact that we're all putting our faces on every single thumbnail we create because that's just the way that way it's the way it works, and nobody's offended by it.
Jeffrey
00:47:13 – 00:47:13
You know?
Aaron
00:47:13 – 00:47:37
And this is a great this is a great example of what is, like, what is okay on the platform? What does the platform require? And what is Aaron comfortable with? Because I refuse to do the pretend shocked face where my mouth is open, and I'm like, I can't believe that, you know, this thing that didn't happen happened. Like, personally, I refuse to do that.
Aaron
00:47:37 – 00:48:00
And so I'm willing to say, like, I know that the click through rate will be higher if I put my face on it. How can I do that in a way that aligns with who I am as a person? And instead of, like, writing off wholesale, I'm not gonna do this because because, you know, the platform wants it. No. I'm gonna do that, but I do have I do have foundry, so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna lie in a thumbnail.
Aaron
00:48:00 – 00:48:05
And so I feel like that's a nice that's a nice corollary that you could bring back to Twitter as well.
Jeffrey
00:48:05 – 00:48:07
Yeah. It's funny how things change. Go ahead, Ian.
Ian
00:48:07 – 00:48:18
I was just gonna say, this make this as we've been talking about this, I've had, I'm wondering if the premise of the original question is not even correct. The idea that you would never do this in real life How big
Aaron
00:48:18 – 00:48:19
are the first principles?
Ian
00:48:20 – 00:48:26
Because, yeah, first principles. Because I was thinking about it. Like, think about again, I'm gonna go old man here. The newspaper.
Aaron
00:48:26 – 00:48:28
When you're on your rotary phone
Ian
00:48:28 – 00:48:38
and you're going round porn. Yes. Exactly. I use a rotary phone. The the newspaper, right, was Twitter in the day.
Ian
00:48:38 – 00:48:47
If you were mentioned in the newspaper, you would cut that out or you would buy that newspaper and you would show people that you were in, you scored a goal
Aaron
00:48:47 – 00:48:47
and you
Ian
00:48:47 – 00:49:06
get a home run. Right? How many businesses do you remember going to where like there was a review of the restaurant, they cut out the review. It's in a frame, it's out on the front window of that restaurant as like, here's our validation that someone important in this community thought that our hamburgers were the best. Right?
Ian
00:49:06 – 00:49:16
So, obviously, Twitter allows us scale and reach that's impossible for your local burger joint, but I think the premise is is very simple.
Aaron
00:49:17 – 00:49:21
Good. Maybe look up what a newspaper is, but that's a pretty good example. Yeah.
Jeffrey
00:49:21 – 00:49:23
You're like, how old are you? Okay, boss. I'm 30 4.
Aaron
00:49:23 – 00:49:26
How old are you, Ryan? Oh, come on. Dude, you're
Jeffrey
00:49:26 – 00:49:27
a little.
Aaron
00:49:27 – 00:49:27
How old
Ian
00:49:27 – 00:49:29
are you? You're, like, 37, Jeff? 38?
Jeffrey
00:49:29 – 00:49:45
I'm 38. I'll be 39 in a few months. So Yeah. I think I think you're right, Ian, but it goes back to business versus personal. So, for example, what if I invited you over to my house, and you came into my house and you saw that I have this wall?
Jeffrey
00:49:45 – 00:49:53
And on the wall, I took screenshots of every time somebody said something nice about myself and I put it on the wall. You'd be like
Ian
00:49:53 – 00:49:54
I think that'd be awesome. Alright.
Aaron
00:49:54 – 00:50:06
That's a little weird. I I I That would be weird. I object to the analogy because it's purely personal. And I think we have we just have to say that Twitter is is personal plus business. There's just no way that it's not.
Aaron
00:50:06 – 00:50:31
There's no way that Twitter is purely personal. You've got 80,000 followers. Like, you are a you are a brand on Twitter. Personal is like hanging out in Telegram with 6 people or, you know, a little Slack with 50 people or whatever. That is personal, and that would be weird if every time someone tweeted something nice, you took it to, you know, Taylor and Adam, and you're like, hey, guys.
Aaron
00:50:31 – 00:50:37
Check this out. It'd be like, bro, that's not the forum for this. Don't do that here. It's it would just be so weird.
Jeffrey
00:50:37 – 00:50:50
I mean, maybe you're right. Maybe Telegram has become the water cooler. Like, nobody's selling each other crap on Telegram. Twitter is different. So maybe maybe the key is just accept Twitter has become its own thing, especially in the programming community.
Jeffrey
00:50:51 – 00:50:54
And if you just want water cooler chat, then Telegram is where it's at.
Aaron
00:50:55 – 00:51:10
And it it may not it may not even be Twitter versus Telegram. It may be a function of where you are on Twitter. Like, if you had if you had 400 followers and they were all your friends, it would be more of a hang space.
Aaron
00:51:11 – 00:51:11
Mhmm.
Aaron
00:51:11 – 00:51:22
You just you just don't you don't have that. And so I think you may be viewing it. You may be viewing it from a lens that other people aren't.
Ian
00:51:23 – 00:51:40
Well, there's also yeah. I think so because there's the idea of, like, we are out there. There is this idea of a scribing what we do to everyone, but the reality is something like 97% of people on Twitter never tweet ever. Like they can only read. Right.
Ian
00:51:40 – 00:52:00
So we are already in this ultra minority of people who put themselves out there for some goal, right? Whether it's just personal gratification, whether it's business. But we are out there in a way that 97% of the other Twitter users are not out there. And so Correct. You know, what are they there for?
Ian
00:52:00 – 00:52:16
Right? They're not there for their businesses. They're not there to maybe some of them would like to be, and that's kinda of what we even talked about on the show quite a bit. Aaron talks about a lot is like being comfortable with putting yourself out there and the the benefits there are to that. But yeah, but most the vast majority are not doing that.
Ian
00:52:16 – 00:52:23
They're just, they're reading. So what are they trying to get out of it? They're following you, whatever. Jeffrey buys a 100000 followers or whatever you have. Right?
Ian
00:52:23 – 00:52:29
Like the vast majority of them never tweet anything at you. Never tweet to anyone. So there's a 100 people.
Jeffrey
00:52:30 – 00:52:31
It's like a 100 people.
Aaron
00:52:31 – 00:52:32
I think about this all the time.
Jeffrey
00:52:32 – 00:52:39
I have 80,000 followers. I think, like, 79,000 of them are inactive. Because it's like it's like a 100 people.
Ian
00:52:39 – 00:52:41
They, or are they just reading? A lot of them
Jeffrey
00:52:41 – 00:52:42
are inactive.
Ian
00:52:42 – 00:52:48
People who've been on there a long time, a big chunk are definitely dead. Right? But, like Yeah. You know, that's, like, physically dead, but they're not they're dead accounts.
Jeffrey
00:52:49 – 00:52:50
But my my instinct
Ian
00:52:50 – 00:52:53
20,000 active accounts of the 80, there has to be.
Jeffrey
00:52:53 – 00:53:01
It doesn't feel like that. I'm telling you, like, if you would if you told me that you have could be. Maybe you're right. But if you had told me, hey. You have 80,000 followers.
Jeffrey
00:53:01 – 00:53:10
What is it like when you tweet? It's it's nothing like I would expect. It's it's the same 50 people. 50 people. Yeah.
Jeffrey
00:53:10 – 00:53:20
And then, yeah, maybe you're right, Yan. It's everyone else is just is reading and scrolling. Like, I'm on Instagram, and it's read only for me on Instagram. I don't post anything, but I'm on it every day.
Ian
00:53:20 – 00:53:23
Right. There you go. You're the So maybe that's how it works.
Jeffrey
00:53:23 – 00:53:23
The other
Aaron
00:53:23 – 00:53:24
side of it there.
Ian
00:53:24 – 00:53:42
Yeah. Yeah. And all these stats came out. When Elon bought Twitter, all this stuff came out, and it was, like, it's something like 90 something percent of people, like, literally never tweet. Now how how but and and, you know, who 97% of the people who log in, you know, whatever their scale was once a month or whatever their scale was, it was some scale like that.
Ian
00:53:42 – 00:53:52
90 something percent of those people never tweet even though they log in and are presumably active. Obviously, some of them are bots and whatever, but, like, yeah, it's a lot a large percentage of people are just reading.
Aaron
00:53:52 – 00:53:54
Why? I I wonder that be interesting
Ian
00:53:54 – 00:53:56
They're there for the ads. They're there for
Aaron
00:53:56 – 00:54:05
the ads. For the ads. Interesting. Like, scale it scale it scale it up one level. Like, who do we follow that we don't interact with that we really enjoy following?
Aaron
00:54:05 – 00:54:16
Like, one for me is is DHH. I don't ever respond to DHH. I don't ever like his tweets. I don't ever retweet him. I'm just there following, and I like I like to see when he tweets and when he talks about real world.
Ian
00:54:16 – 00:54:17
To the ground.
Aaron
00:54:17 – 00:54:17
Aaron, are
Jeffrey
00:54:17 – 00:54:23
you aware that your cohost is not a big fan of DHH? Oh, have you leave you, me? Recovered.
Aaron
00:54:23 – 00:54:23
Has there
Jeffrey
00:54:23 – 00:54:24
been an episode on this?
Aaron
00:54:25 – 00:54:26
There there has there has
Ian
00:54:26 – 00:54:27
been a full episode, but When
Aaron
00:54:27 – 00:54:33
he wrote the manifesto recently, he had made fun of them pretty hard. But, yeah, it's like That manifesto was so bad.
Ian
00:54:34 – 00:54:43
Okay. You go on that tangent. Like, literally, every single thing he said about b two b software was wrong in that thing. It was unbelievable. Like, he tried to make it all
Aaron
00:54:43 – 00:54:46
the way back. Trying to blow past it, and you put a pin in it.
Ian
00:54:47 – 00:54:47
Man.
Jeffrey
00:54:48 – 00:54:49
Look. I'll say if nothing else, if we can
Aaron
00:54:49 – 00:54:51
just completely somebody else.
Jeffrey
00:54:51 – 00:54:57
If we can completely redirect, it has been interesting to watch DHH change over the last 10 years. I'll say
Aaron
00:54:57 – 00:54:57
it has.
Jeffrey
00:54:57 – 00:55:00
It double edged. He has completely morphed. Okay.
Aaron
00:55:00 – 00:55:04
Let's pick somebody less controversial. So, like, Elon Musk, for example.
Jeffrey
00:55:06 – 00:55:07
But there
Ian
00:55:07 – 00:55:10
there are people We gotta get a DHH take. We got No.
Aaron
00:55:10 – 00:55:10
No. No. No. No. No.
Ian
00:55:10 – 00:55:11
No. No. No. No. No.
Ian
00:55:11 – 00:55:13
No. No. No. No. Don't interrupt.
Ian
00:55:13 – 00:55:17
Don't interrupt. I gotta hear this.
Aaron
00:55:18 – 00:55:20
Alright, Jeffrey. Hit us with your DHH take.
Jeffrey
00:55:20 – 00:55:25
I don't have it. I I'm sorry, Ian. We were we were kinda bonding, but I kinda like him.
Aaron
00:55:25 – 00:55:26
You can't
Jeffrey
00:55:26 – 00:55:26
help him.
Ian
00:55:26 – 00:55:27
I know.
Aaron
00:55:27 – 00:55:29
I can't help that, man.
Ian
00:55:29 – 00:55:46
I've I've been misrepresented to some degree. It's not even yourself. DHH is the person yourself. I just think DHH gives tons of horrible advice. That is terrible advice for so many people and like like all his recent stick of like pick all your stuff off the cloud and go buy a bunch of servers.
Ian
00:55:46 – 00:55:48
Horrible advice for nearly
Jeffrey
00:55:48 – 00:55:49
everyone. Right?
Ian
00:55:49 – 00:55:52
But, yes, of course. It's terrible advice. Yeah.
Jeffrey
00:55:52 – 00:55:54
Yeah. That has been their big thing lately.
Ian
00:55:55 – 00:56:07
If you if you haven't run a real server and you try to go run a real server, it's not fun. Like, we were all very excited to get off of running real servers. I was very excited. Everybody who ever did it is like, great. We're done with real servers.
Ian
00:56:07 – 00:56:16
All these huge businesses are getting rid of the real servers. Obviously, they have infinite money. So, yes, if you have infinite money and you can hire 5 people to take care of the real servers, great. Do that. I'm all for it.
Jeffrey
00:56:16 – 00:56:36
It's certainly better. But in This lines up nicely. Okay. So when when DHH post things like that, this is this is a great example. Is this DHH as a person just talking about what he what he thinks, or are all of these things marketing funnels for businesses that he's working on?
Jeffrey
00:56:36 – 00:56:42
You know, like, whenever he does some inflammatory, it's like Come on. Are you being inflammatory here, or are you promoting hey dotcom?
Ian
00:56:42 – 00:56:44
T h is the king of
Jeffrey
00:56:44 – 00:56:47
the inflammatory course. Doing.
Ian
00:56:47 – 00:56:48
Yeah. He wrote
Aaron
00:56:48 – 00:56:50
a chapter. About it. Yes.
Ian
00:56:50 – 00:56:54
It is He is totally all about the But here's here's the
Aaron
00:56:54 – 00:57:14
other thing. Here's the other thing. He truly believes it. Like, you here I I get I get frustrated with I get frustrated with, like, primarily on the JavaScript side, the content creators that manufacture drama out of nowhere just for clicks. Like, DHH is actually pulling all their stuff off the cloud.
Aaron
00:57:14 – 00:57:43
He truly believes it. Whether whether he then takes a true belief and and packages it up well such that it serves as marketing, I think it's an interesting question, but there's no denying that it's a true belief. I mean, he truly thinks Rails is the best way to build applications because he's been on that train for 20 years. And, like, yeah, he's a little inflammatory. He's a little, like he's good at marketing, and he loves to pick a fight for the sake of clicks.
Aaron
00:57:44 – 00:57:47
But I think it's a firmly like, I think it's a closely held belief.
Jeffrey
00:57:47 – 00:57:56
So what do you think? Like, when they when they famously or notoriously fired, what percentage of their company was it? Or they didn't fire it. Like, was it half of the month? Yeah.
Jeffrey
00:57:56 – 00:57:58
Yeah. They let they fired 1 guy,
Ian
00:57:58 – 00:58:00
and the rest, they let leave if they want to leave
Jeffrey
00:58:00 – 00:58:07
or whatever. So what I wonder about that I find that story so interesting. Did they know that was gonna happen?
Aaron
00:58:07 – 00:58:08
That's what
Jeffrey
00:58:08 – 00:58:28
I was like, the fact that half the company was gonna say, hell no. We're leaving. But, like, am I correct that original version of that story was they were like, hey. In the company group chat, we're not doing any politics. And then it just kept getting worse and worse and worse, and then they said, if you wanna leave the company, we'll give you this nice severance table or whatever.
Jeffrey
00:58:28 – 00:58:32
And then half the company left. Did he know that was gonna happen is what I'm curious about.
Ian
00:58:32 – 00:58:52
No. I think that was a an example of one of the few times where they weren't controlling the narrative, where, like, it was outside of their control and that they reacted sort of poorly to the narrative being outside of their control. And then they kind of doubled down on some things that maybe they shouldn't have doubled down on. If they were in a situation where they controlled it, I think they would have acted differently.
Aaron
00:58:53 – 00:58:53
But I
Jeffrey
00:58:53 – 00:58:56
don't know. Maybe they knew. Yeah. Yeah. I think what I'm wondering.
Jeffrey
00:58:56 – 00:58:57
I'm I'm so curious
Ian
00:58:57 – 00:59:09
about that. People were gonna leave at at that point, but the lead up to what happened, I don't think was something they controlled. And I don't think they were like, let's figure out a way to get rid of half the company. I think it was more organic than that.
Aaron
00:59:09 – 00:59:25
I think it was more organic than that, and I think they they found themselves in a position with their company that they didn't wanna be in, and then they changed the rules on the employees and said, we're changing the rules. Sorry about that. If you wanna leave, we'll do our best to, like, give you a bunch of money.
Jeffrey
00:59:25 – 00:59:31
So But, you know, I had conversations about this. Like, alright. How many people can we realistically expect to be?
Aaron
00:59:31 – 00:59:31
I think more I think
Aaron
00:59:31 – 00:59:37
more left. I would guess that more left than they expected. That would be my guess. Yeah. Because that's a Yeah.
Aaron
00:59:37 – 00:59:43
That's a big blow at a small company, and there's no way they thought this is gonna be half.
Jeffrey
00:59:43 – 00:59:57
Yeah. But I think I think he would say he was vindicated, maybe. I don't know. Either way, I I think that is such a great case study just to see how something plays out. Like, that was even being covered on MSNBC.
Jeffrey
00:59:57 – 00:59:58
Fox News. Yeah.
Ian
00:59:58 – 00:59:59
Yeah. Right.
Jeffrey
00:59:59 – 01:00:04
Yeah. Coinbase. Yeah. That's why I wonder if he knew, because he had Coinbase as an example Yeah. Because they did something similar.
Jeffrey
01:00:04 – 01:00:07
Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I
Ian
01:00:07 – 01:00:30
think that that was a more a more complicated scenario, though, than that because that all that stuff happened after like, there was a bad employee that people wanted fired because he was doing bad things, and then there was friction there. And then the, like, when no politics stuff kinda came after that. So I think it's sort of it's a little more complicated than just Coinbase was different. Coinbase was just like, we're just gonna not have politics at work.
Aaron
01:00:30 – 01:00:32
A mission driven company. But that was the
Ian
01:00:32 – 01:00:43
impetus was the CEO's decision to do that. Yeah. This was a little bit different where there was an incident and then following the incident, it's like, Hey, okay. Now that didn't go the way we liked it.
Aaron
01:00:43 – 01:00:43
We're just done with politics at work. Yeah.
Ian
01:00:43 – 01:00:45
Obviously with Coinbase as an example for
Jeffrey
01:00:45 – 01:00:45
them already.
Ian
01:00:45 – 01:00:51
But, so I do, I think it's a little different scenario. But
Jeffrey
01:00:52 – 01:00:52
Yeah. I think Yeah.
Ian
01:00:52 – 01:00:55
I don't think we should go all the way down that road necessarily, but We
Aaron
01:00:55 – 01:00:56
meet all the way down that road.
Jeffrey
01:00:56 – 01:00:57
We we just went all the way down
Aaron
01:00:57 – 01:01:02
that road. We're dead. We're coming back. We're circling back. We gotta back up, man.
Aaron
01:01:04 – 01:01:04
Anyway, I follow
Ian
01:01:04 – 01:01:05
them on Twitter,
Aaron
01:01:05 – 01:01:11
and I don't interact with them. And so maybe people do that too too, Jeffrey. That was the point. Glad we got there.
Aaron
01:01:11 – 01:01:12
Oh, no. I'm sorry.
Jeffrey
01:01:12 – 01:01:15
I I I I I ruined that. I'm sorry, guys. No. You're good. That's catnip.
Aaron
01:01:16 – 01:01:18
That's catnip for Ian. The fans are gonna love
Jeffrey
01:01:18 – 01:01:32
it. I do love watching what Ian becomes obsessed with. Like, I don't know you that well, Ian, but I see on Twitter, like, okay. He he is obsessed with this right now. So what whatever is currently going on at the moment, I can tell by the I do like the frequency of tweets of similar subjects.
Jeffrey
01:01:32 – 01:01:34
I can see, alright, this is what he's thinking about.
Ian
01:01:34 – 01:02:02
This is a very interesting thing. Kind of, I think, gets back to what I said before. Difference between, like, me and you guys a little bit here is that, like, I'm I could treat Twitter a little differently because my business is not nearly as tied to Twitter as I think you guys probably are. I don't know if that's true with Jeffrey as much as Aaron, but, you know, like, I get no business from Twitter. Like, nobody's buying anything on Twitter, at least in terms of HubSpot in terms of Lara jobs is probably a little bit different, but,
Aaron
01:02:02 – 01:02:03
you know, online a
Ian
01:02:03 – 01:02:10
little bit different. Somewhat a minority, you know, a vast, vast minority compared to, like, the other avenues people buying the things I sell.
Jeffrey
01:02:10 – 01:02:16
Because you focus on b to b heavily? I think that's part of it. Right. Promoting more on Twitter?
Ian
01:02:16 – 01:02:27
Right. Well, so this is part of it as I wanna do better about promoting more on Twitter and other places. Part of like this podcast is like, hey, let me actually promote some of the stuff I'm doing here. And like there's an ad that
Aaron
01:02:27 – 01:02:29
runs all over the world. This is marketing, Ian.
Ian
01:02:29 – 01:02:48
So I've never really approached Twitter that way. Agree. But I do think it is partially the B2B aspect because there is this layer of abstraction with B2B. Like this is why you can charge somebody B2B $10,000 and you can't charge $10,000 for a single user of Lara cast, even though it's probably delivering $10,000 of value to that person or to screencast thing.com. Right.
Ian
01:02:48 – 01:03:02
It's because it's not the person's money. It's also why they feel free sending a bunch of emails. Right. It's like, it's not, there's not a personal relationship between the marketing woman and there's a corporate veil customers. There's an indirection there.
Ian
01:03:04 – 01:03:23
And so, yeah, so in b two b, like, people don't buy HubSpot off the cuff. Like, there's, like, they're evaluating 6 different solutions and there's a committee And, you know, the CEO has to approve it. And, like, it's like this whole thing. Not that we have no customers like that. We do have some smaller customers where it's the owner, and they come in and they buy it.
Ian
01:03:23 – 01:03:47
And that's fine. But, you know, the vast majority are not that. And so, yeah, it's less it's less tied to that. And I would have to do one other thing that's important about this is I would have to do stuff I don't wanna do, which is if I wanted to be in the, like, social media of customer support game, that's a whole world that I'm not interested in. I just don't have any interest in participating in it.
Ian
01:03:47 – 01:04:07
I don't want to do the thought leadership of how customer service agents should think and act and all those things. And so I've just decided, I like the developer world. My Twitter is gonna be more developer sphere, and I'm abandoning that even though maybe I could could become some figurehead leader and make a few more bucks if I did that. It's like, I I don't wanna do that. So
Jeffrey
01:04:07 – 01:04:10
Because you feel shame, Ian? Shame?
Ian
01:04:10 – 01:04:15
No. Because you don't have interest in doing it. I that's not a shame one. I don't think
Jeffrey
01:04:15 – 01:04:16
Okay. Although
Ian
01:04:16 – 01:04:26
I maybe I would feel shame if I was doing it. That's interesting. Like, if I force myself to do it and I don't want to be doing it Yeah, then I would feel potentially shameful about
Aaron
01:04:27 – 01:04:27
that
Ian
01:04:27 – 01:04:32
But I don't wanna do it, and so I just choose not to do it in in my case.
Jeffrey
01:04:32 – 01:04:38
Ian, if I can further, derail this conversation, should I be focusing on b to b more for Lyricas?
Ian
01:04:38 – 01:04:40
Oh, oh, I'm sure you should be. I would think.
Jeffrey
01:04:40 – 01:04:42
I mean, I have team accounts. You have
Ian
01:04:42 – 01:04:43
some stuff up there. Right? You have some
Jeffrey
01:04:43 – 01:04:49
team accounts. Be doing more? Like, would that be if I wanted to go to the next level? Is that where I go?
Ian
01:04:49 – 01:05:13
I almost feel like that's where you would have to go for, like, the next level because you have such a, like, saturation in the end developer that you can reach over Twitter sphere. I would think, that that's like fresh ground is like, hey. Because this is actually a thing I wanna do with our jobs more. We're actually working on trying to do some stuff. There's this whole world of Laravel That's like Disney.
Ian
01:05:13 – 01:05:25
Like, Disney posts 20 jobs at a time on vice.com or whatever for Laravel jobs. And they don't post on Laravel job because there's just some corporate cog in the wheel somewhere. That's like hire 20 Laravel devs and the HR person
Jeffrey
01:05:25 – 01:05:26
who we use
Ian
01:05:26 – 01:05:31
hire 20, Right. This is who we use, blah, blah, blah. Oh, it's a tech job. It goes on dice.com, whatever. Fine.
Ian
01:05:31 – 01:05:43
And there's nobody in that loop who can change that. So, like, how do I reach into those companies and be like, hey. You know, we have an actual official job board thing that you should check out. And the same, I think, will be true with Laracast. Like, hey.
Ian
01:05:43 – 01:05:53
There's a 100 Laracast devs somewhere in Disney churning away. Right? Those they're not on Twitter, I don't think. Who knows where they are, what they're doing? But, hey.
Ian
01:05:53 – 01:06:07
You could sell them a Laracast subscription to Disney, for example. That would you could charge a lot more money for than individual devs will pay and, you know, get you a 100 people using it who are on the team, at Disney or whatever. So
Jeffrey
01:06:08 – 01:06:24
Well, actually, on that note, here's here's one thing. This shows you how ignorant I am. I'm I'm seeing if, anyone at Disney we do have 2 2 people from Disney signed up for the podcast. I do wonder, like, what are what are the rules around a company signs up for your for your subscription site? Can you promote them?
Jeffrey
01:06:24 – 01:06:31
That's something I have not done, like, on on on the landing page. Such and such company, Microsoft, blah blah blah. They use this product.
Ian
01:06:31 – 01:06:31
I don't
Jeffrey
01:06:31 – 01:06:32
even know
Ian
01:06:32 – 01:06:35
what the solution is. I'm a I'm a yes. I'm a hard yes on that.
Aaron
01:06:35 – 01:06:37
I I'm a hard head shake no.
Jeffrey
01:06:37 – 01:06:41
Hard yes. Conscientious objector or that's That Like
Aaron
01:06:41 – 01:06:48
that is, and I I I say this as a ruthless capitalist. That's ethically murky to me.
Ian
01:06:48 – 01:06:50
Not this much, sir.
Aaron
01:06:50 – 01:06:54
If you were to pull up table plus and look for good domains in your database and one
Jeffrey
01:06:54 – 01:06:55
of them is Disney,
Aaron
01:06:55 – 01:06:58
and then you you throw you throw Disney on the home page, I feel icky about that.
Ian
01:06:59 – 01:06:59
Now what
Jeffrey
01:06:59 – 01:07:00
if you ask?
Ian
01:07:00 – 01:07:01
Never think about it.
Aaron
01:07:01 – 01:07:05
If you ask that first, great. Do it. Make the make the logo as big as you can.
Ian
01:07:05 – 01:07:10
Yeah. I disagree. Here's one. Interesting. 1st, it should absolutely be in your terms.
Ian
01:07:10 – 01:07:12
It's in our terms of service. If you wanna use
Aaron
01:07:12 – 01:07:13
HubSpot Loophole.
Ian
01:07:13 – 01:07:25
You you give the right to use your logo. You have a way out. If you don't want us to use your logo, there is a process. You can just basically just let us know, and we, of course, won't use it. I mean, I would just do that anyway, but it's official in the terms.
Ian
01:07:25 – 01:07:36
Like, you can request us not to do this, and we won't. We've literally had, like, 2 people ever do that. I think it's totally fair game. Yeah. I think it's fine.
Ian
01:07:36 – 01:07:40
And the problem is you could ask, but they're not even the right people to ask. If you email the person that
Jeffrey
01:07:40 – 01:07:41
did on behalf of this. Yeah.
Ian
01:07:41 – 01:07:42
Get to the right person?
Jeffrey
01:07:42 – 01:07:43
How does
Ian
01:07:43 – 01:07:45
that get possible? They're never going to sign. Terms.
Aaron
01:07:45 – 01:07:47
They can't sign terms on behalf
Ian
01:07:47 – 01:07:49
of this case. They have approval to sign terms.
Aaron
01:07:50 – 01:07:51
Now it sounds like.
Ian
01:07:51 – 01:08:10
They should have run it by their lawyers. Maybe if that's a there's also different levels, right? Like I'll give a story because it's old. The NFL used help spot for quite some time. The NFL read the terms and the NFL was like, no, no, no, no, you can't use our logo because we're the NFL and we control our brand extremely carefully, right?
Ian
01:08:10 – 01:08:16
And so we said fine. Then at one point, they wanna do some custom thing with it. But, but yeah. So I think that that's fine. I mean
Jeffrey
01:08:17 – 01:08:17
That's pretty cool.
Aaron
01:08:17 – 01:08:18
I didn't know that.
Jeffrey
01:08:19 – 01:08:21
Yeah. That's very cool. That's that's a big one.
Aaron
01:08:22 – 01:08:22
Yeah.
Jeffrey
01:08:22 – 01:08:23
I like that. Here here's big names.
Ian
01:08:23 – 01:08:31
Should do. You have to utilize these big names again. Again, if you go out of business, that's bad for the people at Disney who use Lyricas. Right? Like
Jeffrey
01:08:31 – 01:08:33
Okay. So here's here's an idea.
Aaron
01:08:33 – 01:08:34
The logo is the better question.
Jeffrey
01:08:34 – 01:08:35
Okay. Go
Aaron
01:08:35 – 01:08:35
on, Jeffrey. I
Jeffrey
01:08:35 – 01:08:43
have I have technical competitors of Lyricast that have signed up for Lyricast. What if I put their names on my home page
Ian
01:08:43 – 01:08:44
That would be funny.
Jeffrey
01:08:44 – 01:08:46
As a power move.
Aaron
01:08:46 – 01:08:46
That is
Ian
01:08:47 – 01:08:47
I like that.
Aaron
01:08:47 – 01:08:48
That is a power move.
Jeffrey
01:08:49 – 01:08:49
That I would never I
Aaron
01:08:49 – 01:08:50
feel like
Jeffrey
01:08:50 – 01:08:51
I probably not gonna
Ian
01:08:51 – 01:08:54
you would feel bad about that, first of all, but also Shame.
Jeffrey
01:08:54 – 01:08:57
See, it all goes back to shame. What is what is ethical? Right.
Ian
01:08:57 – 01:08:58
That's that might be too far.
Aaron
01:08:59 – 01:09:16
Here here's the real answer about Disney. The logo is not gonna I don't I don't care about the logo. What you need to do is email these at disneydot com laracast users and ask if you can get in touch with their manager because you would love to offer them a discount for their 50 person team.
Ian
01:09:16 – 01:09:22
Definitely do that. Cause that's the easiest way. That's true. That's one of the problems with the Lara jobs angle. We're trying to take it.
Ian
01:09:22 – 01:09:34
That's just like, obviously if they've used Lara jobs, we know their contact, but like, we have a lot of these companies that just haven't used it. And it's like, yeah. How do you find the right person inside Disney to, like because they would probably love to post on Lara jobs. They would be like, yes. This makes sense.
Ian
01:09:34 – 01:09:47
I wanna hire level developers. This is the main place to do it. I would love to post on there. I don't even either know it exists or I haven't been motivated enough to go through the red tape required. So it's like, how can we help them get to that point?
Ian
01:09:47 – 01:09:54
So, yeah, if you have, like, active subscribers at these big companies who you could approach and be like, hey. Because it's also good for them. They're paying
Aaron
01:09:54 – 01:09:55
for it
Aaron
01:09:55 – 01:09:55
out of
Ian
01:09:55 – 01:09:57
their own pocket right now. Right. Or through some budget of their
Aaron
01:09:57 – 01:10:00
own or whatever. Expense report. That's, right.
Aaron
01:10:00 – 01:10:00
It's
Ian
01:10:00 – 01:10:08
like, Hey, just like we could escalate this up. Your whole team could be using it. You find it valuable. They're gonna find it valuable. You don't have to pay for it anymore if you happen
Aaron
01:10:08 – 01:10:10
to have to work with them. Baby.
Jeffrey
01:10:10 – 01:10:21
Wait. It's always hard. It it ends up being an issue of just time. It's like, oh, we should probably like, I don't have time for that anymore, but maybe we could hire somebody for that. But what is the job description for that specific role?
Jeffrey
01:10:21 – 01:10:32
And will I have enough work for them to like like, this is all the junk Yeah. You end up dipping. And then I end up just going to, like, open AI and saying, like, hey. I run I bet everyone does this at some point. Mhmm.
Jeffrey
01:10:32 – 01:10:43
I'm like, hey. I run a business called layercast.com. Here's what we're currently doing. What are your recommendations for how we can, you know like, I guarantee every small business owner has gone through the OpenAI. Tell me what I'm not doing.
Ian
01:10:43 – 01:10:44
Tell me what to do.
Jeffrey
01:10:44 – 01:10:50
Yeah. Tell me what to do, because I'm not I'm not sure what the next step would be. You know? No.
Aaron
01:10:50 – 01:11:00
Well, that one that one feels so discreet to me that you could hire a competent VA and give them a discreet task to do Yeah.
Jeffrey
01:11:00 – 01:11:02
I don't even know what a VA is. Is. What's a VA?
Ian
01:11:02 – 01:11:09
I know. Everybody always says the VA is we're gonna try experimenting with some kind of for this large job stuff, but I'm like, I don't even know what it is. What the hell is a VA? What do they do?
Aaron
01:11:09 – 01:11:30
So so VA for those listening, VA stands for virtual assistant, but it's basically somebody you know, historically, I think it's been somebody overseas, but it can just be somebody remote, that does that does more of the admin tasks, whether that's bookkeeping calendar, booking travel, that sort of stuff.
Jeffrey
01:11:31 – 01:11:31
So it's
Aaron
01:11:31 – 01:11:46
just kinda like an executive assistant, but virtual. So at the place where I used to work, we hired it was a property tax company. We hired through a service called Support Shepherd, which is it like a it's like an agency. No. That's not right.
Aaron
01:11:46 – 01:12:13
Yeah. It's an agency where it would find VAs in the Philippines and do all the vetting and the early first round interviews and then give you candidates. And we probably hired 20 or 30 people through that agency, and it's, like, full time placement. So they ended up working for us full time, and it was, like, it was amazing. They we hired them for customer support, and so they would, like, actually answer the phones and talk to our customers, and it was wonderful.
Aaron
01:12:13 – 01:12:42
They still you know, most of them still work there. But I think I think my, like, my dream state is to get some stay at home parent who used to work some, like, consulting job, and then, you know, the family had kids, and one of the parents was like, I wanna stay at home. And it's like, you're one of the smartest people that I know, and you're not working right now. Can you just run my life? Like, can you be the project manager of my life?
Jeffrey
01:12:42 – 01:12:43
And That would be cool.
Aaron
01:12:43 – 01:12:55
I think I think that is totally possible. You just have to find, like, you just have to find the right person who is highly organized and you can trust, which is, of course I
Jeffrey
01:12:55 – 01:13:01
think that's the hardest part, though. But Ian, you run Lara jobs. Do you do you have trouble finding good people at HubSpot?
Ian
01:13:01 – 01:13:21
Yeah. I mean, we end up just doing it internal. And then for HubSpot, like, Yeah. So, I mean, this is the eternal when you are a bootstrapper, like we all are, this is the biggest downside is every bootstrapper has the same issue, which they only wanna hire people they know and trust already, which is a very small pool of people. Yes.
Ian
01:13:21 – 01:13:41
And so that's very limiting, because, again, it's very tied to you and your it's like this is a very apt conversation for what we've been talking about because it's, like, it's tied to you and who you are. Your business is one with you in large extent. Very different from, like, yes, the manager at Target was, like, I'm gonna go out and hire 20 people and whatever. Let's just turn to them. We'll fire the bad ones.
Ian
01:13:41 – 01:13:46
We don't even care. Right? If after 2 weeks, this person's bad, I'm gonna fire them and literally never think about them ever again.
Jeffrey
01:13:46 – 01:13:47
Yeah.
Ian
01:13:47 – 01:13:55
Whereas, like, if we have to fire somebody, we're gonna be like, oh, I gotta fire somebody. I feel terrible. Like, they quit some other job, and now I have to fire them and, like, get the whole thing from the delay.
Jeffrey
01:13:55 – 01:13:56
Yeah.
Ian
01:13:56 – 01:14:14
And this person's gonna be with me for months even though I don't wanna because I'm you don't wanna fire them. Like, you know, so that's the part that's not ideal, which is a total negative. It hinders our businesses greatly. But, but yeah, I fall into that camp for sure. But with your stuff, Jeff, I feel like you don't even need somebody for this.
Ian
01:14:14 – 01:14:34
You should just go through your database and find the biggest 20 active companies that are like big name companies with probably a lot of developers and you should personally do it. And then you'll know how to do it and see if it works. And if it does, then it becomes easier to like try to find, you would know what kind of person you need. Like, is it the easiest thing in the world? And that would be the question.
Ian
01:14:34 – 01:14:42
Is it a, is it hard and need somebody with a little more, who's gonna be more expensive and talented? Yeah. I don't know if he'll actually do it at all. Right?
Aaron
01:14:42 – 01:14:44
Yeah. Yeah. I'm just taking notes right now.
Jeffrey
01:14:44 – 01:14:46
The limiting creation is not like
Ian
01:14:46 – 01:15:02
It's like you have the lead there, though. It's not even like, oh, I gotta go out and, like, cold email these people who I don't you know, I don't even know if I'm emailing the right person and the whole thing. Like, you have a relationship already with the person that you can go in there and contact. Like, that is that's the gold standard right there. So
Jeffrey
01:15:02 – 01:15:04
Yes. It is. If
Aaron
01:15:04 – 01:15:18
if you can emotionally ascent to doing that, you should just do it yourself. If the if the question is, like, does Jeffrey have, does Jeffrey have time to do it? I think you could do the first ten. You could find
Ian
01:15:18 – 01:15:19
the time to do it.
Aaron
01:15:19 – 01:15:31
Yeah. If if the question is more like, I feel I feel icky or shameful, like, I can't sit down to actually write this email. I feel like I hire somebody to do it. Hire somebody to do it and
Jeffrey
01:15:32 – 01:15:38
Yeah. That's where it comes back to the idea of, like, oh, shut up. You know? Like, just get out of your head. You don't need to feel icky.
Jeffrey
01:15:38 – 01:15:44
This is what every single business does. Stop stop like, it it's it's irrelevant to the conversation.
Aaron
01:15:44 – 01:15:44
Right.
Jeffrey
01:15:44 – 01:15:46
And I think I think that's fair.
Ian
01:15:46 – 01:15:54
Selling. You're not selling something, snake oil. Yeah. Yeah. Or even even, like, a a bag, and you feel bad or whatever.
Ian
01:15:54 – 01:16:08
You're not prime you're providing tremendous humongous value to people's careers and jobs. Right? Like you getting more people to use it is super good for them. Right? So, I think you can feel really good about that.
Ian
01:16:08 – 01:16:16
Right? And it's just about, yeah, getting in that mindset where it's not icky to expose people to it. It's good for them and for you to expose them to it.
Aaron
01:16:17 – 01:16:25
Going back to VAs real quick, there's another agency that I have heard very good things about, that hires military spouses to be VAs.
Ian
01:16:26 – 01:16:27
Heard about them. Yeah.
Aaron
01:16:27 – 01:16:49
Because they are traditionally, traveling or or moving every couple of years. It's, go squared away.com. I think they're they're not inexpensive. I think it's, like, $40 an hour or something, but it's, you know, pretty highly vetted, and it's people who are, like, structurally unemployed. Like, they can't get a job because they just moved to France for a year stint at a base or something.
Aaron
01:16:49 – 01:16:56
And so I think you could probably get good people through there. And they will, like, they will continue to rematch you until you find the person that works
Jeffrey
01:16:57 – 01:17:09
for you. Aaron, do you worry that it will end up doing the opposite where they're supposed to manage your life, but you find it's like, oh, I need to give them stuff to do? Like, you wake up in the in the morning, and you think, oh, I haven't given them anything to do.
Aaron
01:17:10 – 01:17:58
So the only experience I've had with some something like a VA is when I was at Resolute, and I had basically, like, a right hand person. She wasn't she wasn't, like, an assistant. She was kinda more of, like, a manager, operations manager, and she made my life so much easier by just taking things off of my plate and helping me figure out what she should be doing. And so I I think if you can find, like, a competent assistant, they'll make your life a lot easier. I think if you find if you find somebody who's not quite as competent, then you're stuck in, like, the task hamster wheel where it's like, I gotta give them this thing in such great detail that I might as
Jeffrey
01:17:58 – 01:18:00
well just do it myself.
Aaron
01:18:00 – 01:18:01
Right.
Jeffrey
01:18:01 – 01:18:07
Yeah. That's what I think about. Yeah. So as always, I guess, it's just finding the right people. Which is what
Ian
01:18:07 – 01:18:45
I've always tended towards hiring full time people because kind of of that, it's like I can get a full time person. I can spend the time to train them, and then they're here. Like, they are part of the company. And, it just feels more like permanent to me, whereas like, yeah, the VA's or part time you know, it does feel like a riskier in some ways, but then then I've been trying to work myself out of that mindset because it's like, no, for some things I don't have 40 hours a week of stuff for somebody to do. And it would be great, like, even with the side job stuff, like I could have somebody work on that 15 hours a week to like reaching out to like companies that have either used us in the past or that don't know about us.
Ian
01:18:46 – 01:18:58
But I don't necessarily need 40 hours a week of somebody doing that. And it's also a lot easier. Like, if you don't, if that doesn't work out, it's like, well, you were only contract hourly anyways. So now we're gonna part ways. Or if they're super good, then they can become full time and great.
Ian
01:18:59 – 01:19:03
So there's more, like, flexibility and less sort of commitment there.
Aaron
01:19:04 – 01:19:26
Jeff, you're telling you're you're you're telling me there's no stay at home parents that, like, their kids go to school with your kids that you're like, that person is super smart. Their kids are now, you know, 57, like my kids, and so they're not they're not home all day every day. They probably wanna make some money, maybe 10, 20 hours a week. I know that they used to be a whatever,
Jeffrey
01:19:26 – 01:19:27
and now they stay at home.
Aaron
01:19:28 – 01:19:31
Yeah. Right? Those people everywhere.
Jeffrey
01:19:31 – 01:19:49
Like, I know we're getting into stereotype territory, but it's just kinda true. It's like, moms take time off to raise the baby, and then when it's time to go back to work, often they will choose like, I just I'm going to stay a mom for a little bit longer. But they still have this time available and they have the skill set that's through the roof. Yes. Yeah.
Jeffrey
01:19:49 – 01:20:00
I mean, I totally agree with you. I just wonder what I would have them do. Like, what give me example. What would be, like, the top thing, the first thing you would have them do for you to take something off your plate?
Aaron
01:20:01 – 01:20:02
For you or for me?
Jeffrey
01:20:02 – 01:20:03
For you. For you.
Aaron
01:20:03 – 01:20:19
For me, personally. Yeah. Okay. So there is a project that Ian and I have talked about where I figure out the top five to 7 DSLRs that can be used as webcams. And then I watch 10 to 20 YouTube videos on how to set up each one.
Aaron
01:20:20 – 01:20:39
And from those YouTube videos, I take the parts only the parts that are relevant for setting up a good webcam setup. Not the, like, I wanna be a lifestyle vlogger, not I wanna take beautiful pictures. I'm gonna sit on my butt all day on Zoom, and I wanna use this camera to do it. What are the four things that I need to know? I need somebody to just do all of that research.
Aaron
01:20:39 – 01:20:57
Yeah. Figure out what the cameras are, watch all of the videos, distill it down into the parts that matter, and deliver it to me. And then, frankly, go to rent well, I forget what the name of it is, but, like, you can rent, cameras. Go there and rent the camera and tell me when it's gonna show up. Like, I would I would do that today.
Aaron
01:20:57 – 01:20:59
In fact, I'm I'm kinda working
Jeffrey
01:20:59 – 01:21:01
on that, but like, yeah.
Aaron
01:21:01 – 01:21:22
So I think that's something that I would, I would absolutely have them do today. And that's, like, a big that's kind of a meaty project that I don't super care how long it takes. I just want it to be done and done well. And it's not like I that that I could give that brief to the person, and that took me 38 seconds to tell you what the brief is. You know?
Jeffrey
01:21:22 – 01:21:28
I like it. Would you ever do it, Ian, VA? Well Mhmm.
Ian
01:21:28 – 01:21:46
I don't know. I think there is, like there's also the idea of, like, a VA in the true sense of like, they are your personal assistant versus just like hiring a VA to do other stuff, which we are exploring. Now this idea of hiring a VA to do some other stuff For me, the thing about a VA personally that I would want, is I want them to be physically here
Aaron
01:21:46 – 01:21:47
Yeah.
Ian
01:21:47 – 01:21:58
To some degree. Cause I want them to take away a lot of the BS. That's like, go run over and pick up that thing that I don't want to go take that charge my that thing. Go charge my Rivian. Like, whatever this yeah.
Ian
01:21:58 – 01:21:59
It's got a Rivian.
Aaron
01:21:59 – 01:22:00
Oh, well, I need to
Aaron
01:22:00 – 01:22:01
we need to
Jeffrey
01:22:01 – 01:22:04
talk about Rivian. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to get one.
Ian
01:22:04 – 01:22:08
Yeah. It's awesome. Get the truck. Oh, super sold. That's very good.
Jeffrey
01:22:08 – 01:22:09
You got the truck, not the SUV?
Ian
01:22:09 – 01:22:11
Yeah. Get the truck. Nice.
Aaron
01:22:11 – 01:22:11
Get the
Jeffrey
01:22:11 – 01:22:12
truck. Nice.
Ian
01:22:12 – 01:22:20
Truck is so useful. When you have the kids and the junk and the bikes and the things and whatever, it just goes in the back of the truck. It's so good. Truck is the only way to live.
Jeffrey
01:22:20 – 01:22:21
Do you have any complaints?
Ian
01:22:21 – 01:22:22
Garbage.
Jeffrey
01:22:23 – 01:22:24
Anything bad?
Ian
01:22:24 – 01:22:34
So far, no complaints. It's only been maybe 3 weeks or something like that. But, yeah, so far it's been perfect. I really like it. I like it even more than I thought I would have to say.
Ian
01:22:34 – 01:22:36
It's really good. No problem. I'm gonna have
Jeffrey
01:22:36 – 01:22:41
to write this down because I'm sort of in minivan territory, and now I'm oh, yeah, I should be in rivian territory
Ian
01:22:41 – 01:22:54
doing it all around. You get the rivian SUV, but don't don't discount the truck. The truck is so useful a place that calls dirty things So good So good house projects Yeah,
Aaron
01:22:54 – 01:22:54
I like I
Ian
01:22:55 – 01:22:56
Well, I don't know. I would talk to you.
Aaron
01:22:56 – 01:22:59
You need a college kid. Are are where are you? Are you in Buffalo? Yeah.
Ian
01:22:59 – 01:23:04
Or I might I mean, literally, I'm sitting right now across the street from Bassar College, and we have hired them
Aaron
01:23:05 – 01:23:12
How many good students want, like, a hourly thing to just do stuff.
Aaron
01:23:12 – 01:23:12
I know.
Jeffrey
01:23:12 – 01:23:12
You can
Ian
01:23:12 – 01:23:19
do it. Absolutely. Is like, we're busy. We're super busy and it's like, well, to take the time, it doesn't work out. Yeah.
Ian
01:23:19 – 01:23:35
We also, you know, we did the babysitting. We had tons of babysitters. I don't know if you guys have been through this, but the babysitter thing was, is a whole bizarre world with like, like we dropped the kids off at the daycare back in the day. And then you're like, practically like hitting on the people who work there because you're like, so what are you doing? Like, do you wanna babysit?
Ian
01:23:36 – 01:23:44
Like, you know, it's like an authentic. Like yeah. We're like we're just, like, grabbing anybody we can out of desperation. Like, please come, like, watch our children.
Aaron
01:23:44 – 01:23:46
No. No. Not like that. I'm like, now babysit.
Ian
01:23:47 – 01:23:50
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like, this is just a babysitter gig.
Ian
01:23:51 – 01:24:01
So I don't know. I think me and my wife are both, like, semi scarred from that. And we're just, like, sick of, like, dealing with, like, the people who would, like, fill the helpers because then they disappear and you gotta find a new one and, like, the whole thing.
Aaron
01:24:01 – 01:24:05
You need a guy. Everybody needs a guy. You just need a guy. Like, I just need a guy.
Aaron
01:24:05 – 01:24:05
Trust you.
Ian
01:24:05 – 01:24:12
Our life to not need it, but it would still actually be quite useful, but I don't know. So we're kinda warming up to maybe
Jeffrey
01:24:12 – 01:24:13
shake that out. I think
Aaron
01:24:13 – 01:24:15
you should. I know. I I think I find someone.
Jeffrey
01:24:15 – 01:24:32
Are we not for what you need, are we not there already with AI that you could ask AI to to review these top DSLRs and summarize them, rank them. Like, all of that can be done. Can't do it. No. I don't
Aaron
01:24:32 – 01:24:46
think so. Part part of it part of it again is activation energy. Right? Part of it is I know that I would have to go sit down and either learn how to effectively prompt better or just, like, bang my head against the wall telling it, be like, no. No.
Aaron
01:24:46 – 01:24:48
No. Do it better. No. Do it better. No.
Aaron
01:24:48 – 01:25:04
Do it differently. And I'm just like, oh, gosh. That feels like I'm now I'm doing the whole thing just faster. And what I want what I want is I, like, I want somebody to hand the packet of information to me that I can then review and be, like, yeah. This is good.
Aaron
01:25:04 – 01:25:07
I'm gonna do this. And then record the thing. You know?
Jeffrey
01:25:07 – 01:25:17
And then they hand the packet that you didn't think to ask for. Like, that that's the dream for me. It's, like, oh, I want you to do the thing that that I didn't have time or I didn't think to ask you for,
Aaron
01:25:17 – 01:25:17
but
Jeffrey
01:25:17 – 01:25:21
you did it anyways. It turns out that's incredibly difficult to find from my experience.
Aaron
01:25:21 – 01:25:21
Yes.
Ian
01:25:22 – 01:25:43
Yeah. I mean, here's the other thing that's, like, it's not, easy to do what we do. And I think that it's underrated. It's like, people are like, just just hire people to flow in, throw in there and they're gonna be able to do the stuff you do. And it's really not true because you're as an entrepreneur, you're a mix of an odd grouping of things.
Ian
01:25:43 – 01:25:57
And so this is one of the things where I've had some pretty good success, I think, with hiring developers who are entrepreneurial. Like, that's always a thing I look for. Like, do they have side gig? Do they want side gigs? Like, are do they have some experience selling something, anything?
Ian
01:25:57 – 01:26:17
Because those are people who are more like the developers here often are working with customers directly. Like, go figure out their problem. Like something that you other certain other types of developers, right. Would not do. They'd be very unhappy in that job where some percentage of the time they are talking to the end customer and clicking through bugs or server issues or weird issues.
Ian
01:26:17 – 01:26:22
Right? They're like, no, I just wanna be in this code, write in classes. Don't make me go talk to the other humans. Right?
Aaron
01:26:23 – 01:26:23
Right.
Ian
01:26:23 – 01:26:43
So I do think that that some of that is, like, that's one thing that I've found to be successful. Like, if you find people who are entrepreneurial inherently makes them a little more flexible, even though they may not always be as good at any one thing, like I'm not good at anything, but I'm sort of okay at a bunch of different things. And that's No, buddy. Kind of works.
Aaron
01:26:43 – 01:27:03
I'm gonna I'm gonna hit you with a yes and classic improv. Yes. I agree. And there are certain things, Ian, that you're really good at and certain things that don't like, you don't need to do. And so for me, for example, like, I don't need to spend the 20 hours doing all the research.
Aaron
01:27:03 – 01:27:07
I do need to be the one on camera, apparently.
Ian
01:27:07 – 01:27:07
Right.
Aaron
01:27:07 – 01:27:19
And so, like, for Jeffrey, maybe he doesn't need to be the one sending the email to, you know, Bob at disney.com. Oh, that's actually the CEO's name. Lower employee at Disney dot
Ian
01:27:19 – 01:27:20
com. A notch. Yeah.
Jeffrey
01:27:20 – 01:27:23
Bob at Disney. Hold on. Let me write that down. Yeah. Bob added it.
Jeffrey
01:27:23 – 01:27:25
Now I gotta come up.
Ian
01:27:25 – 01:27:28
You should do that. Imagine if you're a coporate would that be?
Jeffrey
01:27:28 – 01:27:32
It's entirely like, like, evil. That's the email. He does. Like, what is
Aaron
01:27:32 – 01:27:39
the thing in Lyricast that Jeffrey probably does need to do is is teach. Right? And so Right. I don't need to
Jeffrey
01:27:39 – 01:27:42
edit the video. Right. Exactly. Right. Yes.
Aaron
01:27:42 – 01:27:56
Yeah. There are things, like, we are unique and really, like, interesting and good as entrepreneurs, but, like, half or more of the job is not the part that people want from us. And so I think that's the part that you can hire out.
Ian
01:27:56 – 01:28:10
Totally. And getting good at that, of the things you should say no to, or the things you should offload because they're not bringing that special something that you have as the person with the whole vision in their head. Right? Like, Yeah. Yeah.
Ian
01:28:10 – 01:28:10
Agree.
Jeffrey
01:28:11 – 01:28:38
But to bring it back to Twitter, I think about this sometimes. Do you guys ever think about how it seems like the word of the day is is manipulation. Do you ever think about how all of our perception is manipulated by the types of people who use Twitter, if Twitter is your main social network? It's like it takes a specific kind of person to, want to sign up for a social network. And then of that group, a specific percentage of people sign up for Twitter.
Jeffrey
01:28:38 – 01:28:57
And of that group, a specific percentage of people, tweet. And then of that group, tweet regularly enough that you actually see it. And then so you get to the point where it's, like, my my idea of what people think probably isn't even remotely close to what the world thinks or the country thinks or any of that stuff. But that's where I get I
Ian
01:28:57 – 01:28:57
think that's
Jeffrey
01:28:58 – 01:29:05
all of my information or my views on tech or programming or politics or news or, you know, all of the above. Yes. 100%.
Aaron
01:29:05 – 01:29:29
A little bit. Even even Yeah. Making the jump over to YouTube has opened my eyes to the entire not the entire, another set of developers that I had not previously been exposed to. Yeah. And, like, YouTube is 1 I spent, you know, a month on Twitch and realized, oh, this is an entirely different community unto itself, and one that I didn't feel very comfortable in, so I eventually left.
Aaron
01:29:29 – 01:29:42
But it was like, oh, yeah. Each thing is a bubble, and they don't necessarily overlap, but they are certainly, like, they're certainly not, representative of the population at large.
Jeffrey
01:29:42 – 01:29:43
Of the whole. Yeah.
Aaron
01:29:43 – 01:30:12
Yeah. What was wrong with Twitch? In my opinion, there's a very, there's, like, a very so there's a culture of, like, man, how do you say it? It's a very, like, gamer heavy culture that is a little it's fumble. I didn't like it.
Aaron
01:30:12 – 01:30:22
Yeah. There is it's super crass. It's super, like, insular. It's very I didn't get any of the jokes, first of all. I didn't get any of the memes.
Aaron
01:30:22 – 01:30:56
I didn't get any of the references. It's very, like, edgy and just, like, almost immature gamer, I think is, like, the easiest the easiest way to say it. And it's not a it's not not a place it's not a chat that I would want to hang out in, and so I had a hard time, like, interacting with the chat that was there, because it was like, guys, can we, like, can we It's like here. Can we not can we not make the same jokes over and over and over? Like, can we do better jokes maybe?
Jeffrey
01:30:56 – 01:31:06
Yes. It's probably just, like, in real life, on average, you're you're a different age group from most of the people watching. And then it's like you just can't you can't connect. It doesn't work. Yeah.
Jeffrey
01:31:06 – 01:31:08
Like, all of us have a social go ahead.
Aaron
01:31:09 – 01:31:09
Go ahead.
Aaron
01:31:09 – 01:31:13
It felt like a almost like a degenerate gamer
Jeffrey
01:31:13 – 01:31:14
hang. Yeah.
Aaron
01:31:14 – 01:31:27
Like, it's a bunch of it's a bunch of young men playing video games who happen to wander into a programming stream, and it's, like, that's just not I don't I I don't really connect with that.
Jeffrey
01:31:28 – 01:31:33
Yeah. I wonder if you're gonna get hate for that. I'm curious. For sure. You think so?
Jeffrey
01:31:33 – 01:31:36
Yeah. Definitely. You guys get hate? I hope it doesn't leak out. I hope it doesn't
Ian
01:31:36 – 01:31:38
leak out. Not too much pure hate.
Aaron
01:31:38 – 01:31:38
No. I
Jeffrey
01:31:38 – 01:31:41
would think you'd get nothing but love. I'm sorry for me. Don't clip
Aaron
01:31:41 – 01:31:43
don't clip this one, Dave.
Ian
01:31:43 – 01:31:48
Yeah. Don't clip that part, Dave. But no, I think, I mean, I think Twitch kinda wears that on its sleeve a little bit.
Jeffrey
01:31:48 – 01:31:49
Like It does.
Ian
01:31:49 – 01:31:58
In terms of it's, like, we're a little edgier and crassier to some degree. I think there's been backlash, My understanding, because like the Amazon overlords have tried to the wings of
Aaron
01:31:58 – 01:31:59
some of
Ian
01:31:59 – 01:31:59
that a little bit.
Aaron
01:31:59 – 01:32:00
They've tried to
Ian
01:32:00 – 01:32:16
clean it up. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's interesting about Twitter too, like that. We all get our information there, but then part of me I'm so torn on this because it's like, that's not really a bunch different than in the old days and you had your local newspaper and that's kind of where you got your information.
Ian
01:32:16 – 01:32:27
A lot of places, there was one newspaper. Maybe if you live in the city, there's a couple, But are you really do subscribe to a couple? You probably only subscribe to 1 or maybe 2. Even the speed like, I was just watching The Godfather with my middle kid. You know?
Ian
01:32:27 – 01:32:29
You're not even sure exactly how bad
Jeffrey
01:32:29 – 01:32:29
it is.
Aaron
01:32:29 – 01:32:30
The Godfather. Yeah.
Aaron
01:32:30 – 01:32:31
I saw that.
Ian
01:32:31 – 01:32:33
One of the early scenes in The Godfather is they find out
Aaron
01:32:33 – 01:32:34
No spoilers.
Ian
01:32:34 – 01:32:50
John's been shot. Oh, spoiler, 50 year old movie. Because they walk past the newsstand, and it's the evening edition of the news, and they see this news about him being shot. So that's like, you know, it's whatever happened 2 hours ago and it's in the newspaper. So it's like almost real time.
Ian
01:32:50 – 01:33:22
Like, it's not as real time as Twitter, but it's in the ballpark. And so I don't I mean, obviously the big difference is that the newspaper was more one direction, right? Like maybe there's an opinion section where you could go write your thing or whatever, but there wasn't you don't get everybody's opinion back like we can get on Twitter. So from the one hand, it's actually not that different, but then on the other hand, yes, that you can then also find every Rando's opinion on any random thing and how do you absorb that and deal with that is definitely a bit tricky.
Jeffrey
01:33:22 – 01:33:33
Find Twitter a little bit scary. Like, Ian, I think I saw you write something many years ago where I loved it. And and maybe it wasn't your quote, but it was something like every day on Twitter, somebody is it, and the goal is to not
Aaron
01:33:33 – 01:33:34
be that
Ian
01:33:34 – 01:33:34
person or whatever.
Jeffrey
01:33:34 – 01:33:38
Or something like that. I love that. That is so true. Yeah.
Aaron
01:33:38 – 01:33:39
That's true.
Jeffrey
01:33:39 – 01:33:43
Yes. Especially back then, there was just a period where it's like, oh, this guy is getting blasted.
Aaron
01:33:44 – 01:33:44
Yeah.
Jeffrey
01:33:44 – 01:33:49
You know? And it is like, goal is don't be that person every day. And, you know,
Aaron
01:33:49 – 01:33:50
it's a little bit scary.
Ian
01:33:50 – 01:34:17
That's kinda I do think that that's sort of interesting as it's a lot of what we're talking about here were, like, whereas Twitter's formalized into this, like, Hey, it's a little more business. It's a little more corporate. Even if corporate is just us as individuals being more refined and slightly careful about what we're doing. I do feel like that's even like changed a little bit. Like there's not so many of those, like every day is the main character, because we're blowing you up because of how you use the div weird or something.
Ian
01:34:17 – 01:34:21
Like it's, it's a little bit less of that, or maybe I've just cut that scene out a little bit.
Aaron
01:34:21 – 01:34:23
I've muted a lot of those people.
Ian
01:34:23 – 01:34:31
Yeah. But it's like Sam was on the other day on the podcast and he was sort of the main character about this, like the sequel inside react there. Right?
Jeffrey
01:34:31 – 01:34:31
But Yeah.
Ian
01:34:31 – 01:34:45
He wasn't, like, upset about it. People weren't even, like, they were kind of harassing the idea, but not like him directly so much. Like, it wasn't so much, like, this guy's an idiot. It was more of at least, like, the Okay. Idea's an idiot, I think, a little bit more.
Jeffrey
01:34:45 – 01:34:47
Let's talk about that. Yeah. That's interesting.
Aaron
01:34:47 – 01:34:52
Yeah. Yo. Here here's a counter. Apparently, some guy yesterday tweeted PHP tooling sucks.
Jeffrey
01:34:53 – 01:34:55
And I just read that 5 minutes ago.
Aaron
01:34:55 – 01:34:57
All we all found it.
Aaron
01:34:57 – 01:34:57
Right.
Aaron
01:34:57 – 01:35:03
And now and now he's he's PHP's main character because Taylor has challenged him to a code battle, which
Ian
01:35:03 – 01:35:04
A code I
Aaron
01:35:04 – 01:35:07
will pay $50 to watch in primetime.
Aaron
01:35:07 – 01:35:07
We are
Ian
01:35:07 – 01:35:09
gonna make so much money if that happens. We're gonna run the book.
Jeffrey
01:35:09 – 01:35:10
Actually did that.
Aaron
01:35:10 – 01:35:26
Cookie. He did, and the the primogen the primogen said he would he would be the, he would be the narrator or the the color commentary, and Theo could be the yeah. And so, like, the main character thing still very much happens. It it definitely still happens.
Jeffrey
01:35:26 – 01:35:27
It does happen.
Ian
01:35:27 – 01:35:28
I do. Don't you feel like it's
Aaron
01:35:28 – 01:35:29
Sam Sam got it good.
Ian
01:35:29 – 01:35:41
That's a little different, though. Even that's a little different. He made a very aggressive statement that people in that community countered. I still think it's different. We used to just find, like, truly randos for over really stupid stuff.
Jeffrey
01:35:41 – 01:35:43
Yeah. Like, I brought chili to my
Aaron
01:35:43 – 01:35:45
neighbors, which was one. Do you remember
Jeffrey
01:35:45 – 01:35:48
that woman? What's wrong with that? What's wrong
Aaron
01:35:48 – 01:36:04
with the window? But she she got she just got excoriated. She brought chili to her neighbors, and then everyone said it was, like, ableist or something. And then there was one that was like, I really enjoy walking in the garden in the morning, drinking my coffee with my husband, and that went, like, mega viral.
Jeffrey
01:36:04 – 01:36:11
And Like, how lucky are you that you can drink this in the morning while people are dying? Exactly. Yeah. But it was like That
Aaron
01:36:11 – 01:36:16
was the heyday of, like, let's drag people for Right. Milk milk toast takes.
Jeffrey
01:36:16 – 01:36:19
Yeah. I think that's gone. Yeah. And that's a good example of, like, I
Ian
01:36:19 – 01:36:20
feel like mostly gone. Yeah.
Jeffrey
01:36:21 – 01:36:30
Didn't everyone kind of agree, like, alright. That's ridiculous. But it didn't feel that way at the time. Yeah. But it's like you would talk to your to your buddies in real life, and everyone would be like, alright.
Jeffrey
01:36:30 – 01:36:35
Alright. Come on. Nobody is offended by this. You know, obviously, big things, but not bad.
Aaron
01:36:35 – 01:36:49
That's where the very online thing comes from. That's where we say, like, oh, those people are very online. Like, they need to log off because they're too online, and that, like, the chili thing was an example of people being too online for sure.
Ian
01:36:49 – 01:37:04
There is this whole, like, human evolution thing that I find quite fascinating where, like, a 1000 of years ago. Right? Like, the only other humans you knew like, you knew your tribe and then you knew, like, whatever butted up against your tribe, the other tribe. Right? That had their own gods or their own deal.
Ian
01:37:04 – 01:37:37
You hated them. They hated you because they were different in whatever way they were different or whatever. And then like whatever the world grew and information moves faster and it's like, well, Now we kind of know more like about, well, there's all these different people with different ideas and whatever. Right. And then, but now it's just like, you are exposed to everybody and all their ideas and all their, so there is like some natural instinct of like the other, the people just across the line for me, but then there's like lizard brain stuff.
Ian
01:37:37 – 01:37:43
That's like, well, all these other people are out there and they're all on the other side of my line from my whatever that means.
Jeffrey
01:37:43 – 01:37:47
And probably hardwired to to think as
Ian
01:37:47 – 01:37:48
such then. Wired. Yeah.
Jeffrey
01:37:48 – 01:37:53
Like but we have no reason to feel that way anymore, but it's still built in here. That it's Yeah.
Ian
01:37:53 – 01:37:54
Exactly. I
Jeffrey
01:37:54 – 01:37:58
I've talked about this before, like, the whole idea that Laravel is a tribe. You know?
Ian
01:37:58 – 01:37:58
So
Aaron
01:37:59 – 01:38:00
it's it's really weird.
Jeffrey
01:38:00 – 01:38:19
So it's it's a coding framework, but it has become a group and a community that needs to be protected from invaders on Twitter. You know, I'm being hyperbolic, but there's a little bit of truth to it. People, like, you and me literally true. Yeah. And then you have people saying, like, Laravel forever, and there's a chance.
Jeffrey
01:38:19 – 01:38:26
There's a battle cry, and we're talking about a coding framework, which is ridiculous. And it still manifests itself.
Ian
01:38:26 – 01:38:28
Around and, like right. Yeah. Mhmm. But it
Jeffrey
01:38:28 – 01:38:31
could For sure. Like, it's Yeah. Yeah.
Ian
01:38:31 – 01:38:38
There is this group. People want these structures. Right? Like Yes. At some fundamental level, people want people
Aaron
01:38:38 – 01:38:38
want to belong to
Ian
01:38:38 – 01:38:57
the part of, and they probably want something to be against. I mean, I kinda feel like we're getting a little bit political here, but I kind of like part of like post cold war. Like this is a big part of problem in the, in our country is like, people hate each other because we used to have the Russians to hate. And it was so nice
Aaron
01:38:57 – 01:38:57
and simple.
Jeffrey
01:38:57 – 01:38:59
Like it was us that shared. Yeah.
Ian
01:38:59 – 01:39:15
We all agree. You might be in the south or the north or the east or the west, and you have different parts of your life you treat differently. And I may not be on you on all kinds of things, but at least you're not Russian. We all are against the Russians and we're on the same page here, people. And we have that in common.
Ian
01:39:15 – 01:39:30
And then since there's no shared enemy of that that at least at that scale, right, where it's like existential us versus them, they are trying to kill us at any moment if we open the door 1 inch. Right? At least that was our perception, and we all agreed that we were against them. And now since we don't have that shared group We don't to all hate. Like, there's we gotta There's no shared ourselves.
Ian
01:39:30 – 01:39:32
There's no shared common good that we all Yeah. Subscribe to. Like, if you're gonna
Jeffrey
01:39:38 – 01:39:48
There's no shared common good that we all subscribe to. Like, it is crazy. We don't agree on anything. That's why it's funny now if anyone was like, oh, Americans think that. It's like, no.
Jeffrey
01:39:48 – 01:39:55
Americans don't agree on Yeah. Anything. Like, you can't pick anything that really cares. Are in agreement on right now.
Ian
01:39:55 – 01:39:57
Right. That's crazy.
Jeffrey
01:39:57 – 01:40:01
Like, western civilization, culture, capitalism. None of it
Ian
01:40:01 – 01:40:02
is that right now.
Jeffrey
01:40:03 – 01:40:03
Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron
01:40:03 – 01:40:16
And instead instead of a instead of a good war, maybe we just need to, like, make the Olympics better or make our soccer team better so we can have world cup, and we can all be like, alright. We can pretend so that everyone else is bad guys
Ian
01:40:16 – 01:40:17
and not actually
Jeffrey
01:40:17 – 01:40:18
fight a war. Yeah.
Ian
01:40:18 – 01:40:20
Right. Every 4 years now, all of us have a
Aaron
01:40:20 – 01:40:24
good soccer team, and then we can pretend to pretend to fight. Yeah. But We
Jeffrey
01:40:24 – 01:40:27
all just experienced sports. People don't even care about the Olympics anymore.
Aaron
01:40:27 – 01:40:28
Oh, no.
Ian
01:40:28 – 01:40:29
I don't care about the Olympics.
Jeffrey
01:40:29 – 01:40:30
That was a
Ian
01:40:30 – 01:40:30
big deal
Jeffrey
01:40:30 – 01:40:32
for me when I was young, though. We watched
Ian
01:40:32 – 01:40:33
the other over
Jeffrey
01:40:33 – 01:40:34
every day. Nobody cares anymore.
Aaron
01:40:34 – 01:40:37
Nobody cares. Nobody cares.
Ian
01:40:37 – 01:40:39
But you do still care about World Cup, but they don't care about the Olympics.
Aaron
01:40:39 – 01:40:40
Yep.
Ian
01:40:40 – 01:40:45
World Cup's the last bastion of World Cup is the last international sort of competition.
Aaron
01:40:46 – 01:40:48
And we suck, so it only lasts so long.
Ian
01:40:49 – 01:41:01
Well, I would that's one of the parts that always bothered me is I always thought America has this huge advantage. I always liked that we didn't allow professionals in the sports because it's like, whatever. Like, putting a professional basketball team out there is ridiculous if they're from America.
Aaron
01:41:01 – 01:41:01
For the Olympics.
Ian
01:41:02 – 01:41:05
To be all yeah. For the Olympics. So I asked them all college. He used to be all college kids. Yeah.
Ian
01:41:05 – 01:41:11
And then they, you know, they switched it and then it was like, I don't know. Let's neither hear that there, but who
Aaron
01:41:11 – 01:41:11
cares about the Olympics? Yeah.
Ian
01:41:11 – 01:41:21
It's like kinda makes it, like, even though now other countries do compete pretty solidly with us in these different sports, it definitely like, I think it's, like, a cold war vestige too. It's, like, lost a lot of juice since there's not, like
Aaron
01:41:21 – 01:41:22
I agree.
Ian
01:41:22 – 01:41:24
Big baddies on the other side of it.
Aaron
01:41:24 – 01:41:28
Yeah. There's no stakes. We're not we're not sticking it. We're not sticking it to an empire. We're just, like Yeah.
Aaron
01:41:28 – 01:41:32
You know, we're gonna win probably at basketball and swimming somehow.
Jeffrey
01:41:32 – 01:41:36
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unless World War 3 happens.
Aaron
01:41:36 – 01:41:36
Do you
Jeffrey
01:41:36 – 01:41:42
guys think about that at all? Oh, wow. Let's go. Let's go in deep, guys.
Aaron
01:41:42 – 01:41:42
There you go.
Jeffrey
01:41:42 – 01:41:44
No. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
Jeffrey
01:41:45 – 01:41:46
But for real.
Ian
01:41:46 – 01:41:47
We already No.
Jeffrey
01:41:47 – 01:41:47
I'm kidding.
Ian
01:41:47 – 01:41:54
Yeah. So I don't know. Do we do we solve this tweet? Are we are we resolute in our beliefs
Aaron
01:41:54 – 01:41:54
here?
Jeffrey
01:41:54 – 01:41:57
Agreed I'm overthinking it. Is that right?
Aaron
01:41:57 – 01:42:09
I think so. I think you're overthinking it. Also, the last the last point is you have you have a different you have a different luxury. Like, I just told you this on Twitter. The scale that Laracast is at, you can just not do it.
Aaron
01:42:09 – 01:42:10
Oh, that's fair.
Jeffrey
01:42:10 – 01:42:18
Yeah. But I was thinking that's not fair. Like, because I would have subscribed to that if Lara Cast was one day old. You know? Yeah.
Jeffrey
01:42:18 – 01:42:23
Like, isn't that a little, like, oh, well, that doesn't apply to you or that doesn't apply to this.
Aaron
01:42:23 – 01:42:28
What I mean is you don't have to do it anymore. And I think it's to some level
Ian
01:42:29 – 01:42:29
I just
Aaron
01:42:29 – 01:42:32
level, other people do have to do it more.
Ian
01:42:33 – 01:42:45
But then again, he could be doing I think about all the awesome stuff Jeffrey's gonna create for the rest of the good of our industry with more resources. Like, I feel like that's just more things he can do. So I think he But
Aaron
01:42:45 – 01:42:49
like you said earlier, he's maybe saturated the Twitter dev space, and so he doesn't
Ian
01:42:49 – 01:42:57
have to do it as much. People are coming for Jeffrey, too, right? I mean, there's a lot of people out there that come in for their cast, right? He's not like, you know, competition.
Aaron
01:42:57 – 01:43:02
You to do it. Yeah. I think you should continue to retweet stuff like that.
Ian
01:43:02 – 01:43:06
He's not gonna go hungry at this point, I think, if he stopped doing it. No. But
Jeffrey
01:43:06 – 01:43:11
No. Some of it, I think, is a reaction to just there's so much content right now. There's so
Aaron
01:43:11 – 01:43:11
much content.
Jeffrey
01:43:12 – 01:43:25
It a little overwhelming. So maybe it is a defense mechanism a little bit, where it's, like, I just don't I don't wanna see more content shoved in my face. Like, do you guys ever do the thing where it's, like, you browse Netflix for 45 minutes, you watch nothing, and then you go to bed? You know? Yeah.
Jeffrey
01:43:25 – 01:43:36
It kind of feels like that with the the educational space, especially. It's just nonstop content. Every single person has a course. Everyone has a a product. Everyone is selling to you, including me.
Jeffrey
01:43:36 – 01:43:40
And it's, like, something's gotta give at some point. You know?
Aaron
01:43:40 – 01:43:41
I don't know if it does.
Aaron
01:43:41 – 01:43:41
I don't
Jeffrey
01:43:41 – 01:43:42
know if it
Aaron
01:43:42 – 01:43:44
has to give I really don't.
Ian
01:43:44 – 01:44:03
I've thought this is partially because software has gotten so complicated. Like, it's so hard to do software. Like a lot of these people wanna be building software, but it's so hard to do it. And then it's like, well, I could try the content space. Like, that's an easier first step, right, than, like, just going right to the software.
Ian
01:44:03 – 01:44:03
Yeah. So
Aaron
01:44:04 – 01:44:05
Me right here.
Ian
01:44:06 – 01:44:40
So much easier to some degree like that. It's not, you can't, it's very hard to get off the ground with software that every there's a 1000000 people in every space. You know, I think partially it's that this people have been sold at this service, right? With like this whole, like heavy JavaScript front end. And while you need these 38 tools in the stack to build something Which is what I love about Laravel Right is like you can just use Laravel and use nothing else in your stack and make a successful product, or very little or you can sprinkle in live wire or whatever, but you don't necessarily have to go with the full modern quote unquote of, you know, 72 layers to serve HTML.
Ian
01:44:42 – 01:44:55
But yeah, I don't know. It does seem like for sure that there's tons of people trying to do it. And there's only so much attention. Even with so much more sort of surface area of attention, ultimately, there's only so much that people have.
Jeffrey
01:44:55 – 01:45:06
Man, guys, when I was getting into it, when I was first learning, I started with dotnet. And I was trying to watch video tutorials about dotnet, and there was, like, one place on the Internet I could go to.
Aaron
01:45:06 – 01:45:06
And it
Jeffrey
01:45:06 – 01:45:18
was on their website. It was this guy named Joe Spackner, and he would record these little 8 minute videos that were, like, I don't know, 800 by 600 resolution, really crappy audio quality, and that was it.
Ian
01:45:18 – 01:45:19
That's awesome.
Jeffrey
01:45:19 – 01:45:34
Like, there was nothing else you could do. And you compare it to now when it's, like, some of the best content in the world is being given away for free. This blows my mind. Like, I'm reading it to guitar. The best guitarists in the world are teaching you for free on YouTube.
Jeffrey
01:45:34 – 01:45:49
It blows my mind. Like, how how nuts that is. And yet you can still have a paid course that does really well too. And that's where it gets very interesting where it's, like, often people will buy your course, not because they need the course, but it's almost like, oh, I've gotten a lot from you for free. Yep.
Jeffrey
01:45:50 – 01:45:58
And now I'm gonna pay you back even though like, the number of people I bet who buy courses and never watch them is through the roof. Mhmm. Because half the time, it's like it's either
Aaron
01:45:58 – 01:45:58
That's me.
Ian
01:45:58 – 01:45:59
That's me.
Jeffrey
01:46:00 – 01:46:18
Me too. It's it's either, like, education addiction. You know? It's like, oh, I wanna learn, but I don't have time, but I wanna buy this. But then a big component, I think, is just people wanting to support you, which is which is a crazy like, we talk so much on the Internet about how, mean spirited people are.
Jeffrey
01:46:18 – 01:46:30
But then there's the flip side where some of the nicest things that have ever been said to me were not said by my family. They were said by strangers on the Internet, which was really cool. So so it's it's kind of a a double edged sword, I guess.
Ian
01:46:30 – 01:46:55
What do you what do you think about this? I don't know if you're up on, like, Netflix and all that stuff, Jeffrey. I kinda think of, you know, Lara cast as our, like, little world version of Netflix and like Netflix and Disney plus, and these things that are going, like they're kind of coming full circle with like, all right, it's paid content, paid content. And now they're really trying to push people into the free or cheaper tiers so that they can run ads so they can have enough content to run ads at scale. Yeah.
Ian
01:46:55 – 01:46:58
That's really interesting. People television. I don't know
Aaron
01:46:58 – 01:46:59
if you're worried about
Ian
01:46:59 – 01:47:01
that stuff and how it impacts you. And
Jeffrey
01:47:02 – 01:47:17
Yeah. I I'm I'm always worried about, like, watering down the, again, I hate to say the word, but the brand. I hate I don't wanna water down the brand. I I think about that with YouTube as well, where it's like, should I be should we do anything on YouTube? And I think the answer is probably yes.
Jeffrey
01:47:17 – 01:47:28
But then I wonder if people see, like, oh, there's Laracast stuff on YouTube. Why do I need to go over to the website? Yeah. And the answer is, like, well, there's way more. But are you are you accomplishing the opposite?
Jeffrey
01:47:28 – 01:47:42
You think you're promoting on YouTube, You being me. You think you're promoting on YouTube, but you're actually losing potential, visitors to AirCast? I don't know. Yeah. But, yeah, other than that, you have thought about doing different tiers.
Jeffrey
01:47:43 – 01:48:04
It's been interesting to watch how Disney Plus has been. Like, they've even done things where, like, they release a show, and then 4 months later, they they remove the show entirely. And I think it's something related to this. Like, they would have to pay licensing fees to keep the show further. And if the show didn't do well enough like, I know, like, they released a Willow show, like like, you know, the old Willow movie.
Jeffrey
01:48:04 – 01:48:11
They released a TV show based on that, and I think it didn't do very well. And then they just told it completely to the point that you can't watch
Ian
01:48:11 – 01:48:12
the shows at all.
Jeffrey
01:48:13 – 01:48:26
Yeah. But it's really strange that there's, like, content and big shows that are impossible to watch right now. So so it's interesting just as an aside to see how they are dealing with things, because my understanding is Disney Plus is losing money.
Ian
01:48:26 – 01:48:30
Right. I don't understand how they lose so much money these services. It's like
Jeffrey
01:48:30 – 01:48:34
I don't get it either. Interesting to me. If you have I'd say, Gmail at Disney and you
Aaron
01:48:34 – 01:48:35
can find out.
Ian
01:48:35 – 01:48:44
Aren't there, like, just so many people would pay for Disney Plus if you just show the Star Wars and old Disney movies? Like, you could do nothing else. Don't make any content. Like, a lot of people are gonna pay for that. I'll be able to pay for it.
Jeffrey
01:48:44 – 01:48:50
Like Absolutely. I have kids. It's like we pay Disney. I don't even I don't even think about it. I'm never like, maybe we should cancel our subscription.
Jeffrey
01:48:50 – 01:48:56
Right? It's like, no. That is just what we have. You know? And they're still losing crazy amounts of money.
Ian
01:48:56 – 01:49:02
Yeah. I don't know. I should be paying us some of this money. That's what we're saying here. Yeah.
Ian
01:49:02 – 01:49:06
Sprinkle it around a little. We're not getting any of the 10,000,000,000 they lose.
Jeffrey
01:49:06 – 01:49:16
Alright. Last thing. Aaron, tell me. Do you think about how to promote Screencasting dotcom? Like, do you have, a pipeline of, like, I'm gonna do this.
Jeffrey
01:49:16 – 01:49:21
I'm gonna release more content. We're gonna have a new chapter. Like, is that something
Aaron
01:49:21 – 01:49:39
you think about? Yeah. That's something I think about a lot, and something that right now is is not, is not moving quickly enough on my side. Yeah. I think about that I think about that a lot because I think it is evergreen, and I think this could be a good durable asset for me.
Aaron
01:49:40 – 01:50:08
And so the plan the plan right now is to create a few more videos. There have been some questions and I think some good extra content that I can do basically just as an excuse to send email and talk about it, some more. But then I think ongoing, there there are a few, like, I'm always looking for, like, veins of content to mind to to mine. Like, like, what is the thing I can tap into and just get content over and over and over out of it? One is
Jeffrey
01:50:09 – 01:50:10
I'm gonna
Aaron
01:50:10 – 01:50:28
do yeah. So I'm I'm and I'm I do that at PlanetScale too. I'm always like, where can I just find more things to, like, feed me content ideas? It's very tough as you know. So one that I think I'm gonna do is the screen caster spotlights where I, you know, just reach out to people.
Aaron
01:50:28 – 01:50:39
Matthias has already recorded one for me where it's like, hey. Show me your setup because I've showed everyone my setup, but I am but one man. Right? So show me your setup. Show me your camera, your tools that you love, that kind of thing.
Jeffrey
01:50:39 – 01:50:40
I have a setup too, Aaron.
Aaron
01:50:41 – 01:50:42
I know. We're saving you.
Jeffrey
01:50:43 – 01:50:46
Send me that email, bro. I can't can't can't reach out
Aaron
01:50:46 – 01:50:49
to Bob at Disney with my first email. You know? So
Ian
01:50:50 – 01:50:52
Yeah. I get the process down. Right?
Aaron
01:50:52 – 01:51:08
Yeah. I'm gonna have some of those so that people can see other setups. And, you know, for example, like, Matthias will hopefully get a boost on his YouTube subscribers. So it's hopefully, like, a mutually beneficial, like, I'm promoting you to this audience, and this audience has something, you know, together.
Jeffrey
01:51:08 – 01:51:16
Like, if I went to screencasting.com and I wasn't ready to pay, is there a way for me to to sign up and get anything for free? Or
Aaron
01:51:16 – 01:51:18
There there are 1st there
Jeffrey
01:51:18 – 01:51:18
couple videos.
Aaron
01:51:19 – 01:51:19
Yeah.
Jeffrey
01:51:19 – 01:51:21
It's You go on a newsletter. You know?
Aaron
01:51:21 – 01:52:01
Graduated. You can watch several for free, and then you can watch several if you give me your email. And so it's, like, free taste, and then you can unlock it with your email, and then after that, it's just totally locked. And so that is the that's, like, the very, very, you know, off the street top of funnel. And I'm hoping to build continue to build out the free stuff, including screen cast spotlights, including, these camera, not even reviews, but, like, setup guides that we talked about earlier and put some of that content on YouTube as well because I think the distribution you're asking about Lyricas.
Aaron
01:52:01 – 01:52:27
I think the distribution potential of YouTube is just fundamentally unmatched by anything else. And I just can't like, Twitter is adorable compared to YouTube. Like, YouTube can decide your video is good, and it's like, here's 250,000 views. Like, I just can't get that on Twitter. And so that's kind of the that's kind of the long term vision is, like, I have a pipeline of these screen capture spotlights.
Aaron
01:52:28 – 01:52:43
I'm doing camera gear kind of stuff reviews with the help of a future VA that I will at one point have, and then just kind of recording 1 or 2 videos as people or as I discover new tools, techniques, or as people ask questions.
Jeffrey
01:52:44 – 01:52:50
Mhmm. Very cool. Yeah. It's cool. It it seems like just in general, though, the course is is pretty evergreen.
Jeffrey
01:52:50 – 01:52:54
Like, I I have to record courses that it's, like, it just it has an expiration date.
Aaron
01:52:55 – 01:52:55
I know.
Jeffrey
01:52:55 – 01:53:05
You know, like like, we were talking about Laravel from scratch. Disheartening. So disheartening. It's, like, a 100 hours worth of work, and it literally has an expiration date of about 18 months from now. You know?
Jeffrey
01:53:06 – 01:53:06
And that's
Aaron
01:53:06 – 01:53:06
just one
Aaron
01:53:06 – 01:53:06
of the Yeah.
Aaron
01:53:06 – 01:53:13
And I I mean and you have to go in and mark them in Laracasts as out of date, which has gotta be just, like
Jeffrey
01:53:13 – 01:53:30
Oh, yeah. I have I have an archive button because it's literally, like, archive basically on Laracasts means hide these 50 videos from this search Yes. And from Google and from the main website. It's like, oh, I spent a 100 hours recording those videos. And but you have to at some point.
Ian
01:53:30 – 01:53:30
Yeah.
Jeffrey
01:53:31 – 01:53:41
So, yeah, I wish I had more content where it's like, this can last for 10 years. And you can do that. You can definitely do that. You can. But more, like, tool based stuff, you really can't.
Jeffrey
01:53:43 – 01:53:43
Like, can you
Aaron
01:53:43 – 01:53:56
people want from you. They want they want the new stuff from you. Yeah. Like, it would be great if you had software fundamentals and stuff like that, but they just wanna know how do I use Folio? How do I use Vault?
Aaron
01:53:56 – 01:53:58
And it's like, well, I have to record that right now.
Jeffrey
01:53:58 – 01:54:20
Yeah. And it and it's tough because you have to be super sensitive to, newcomers and the friction that might be there. So even though it's, like, we have Laravel 8 from scratch, but there's Laravel 10, but it's, like, it's 98% the same. But that 2% where it's, like, oh, wait. The routes file was over here, but now it's over it's like that for a newcomer, that's sometimes a deal breaker.
Aaron
01:54:20 – 01:54:20
You know
Jeffrey
01:54:20 – 01:54:22
what I mean? Yeah. Like, we've all felt that way where you're trying to
Aaron
01:54:23 – 01:54:27
go ahead. They won't even click. It says Laravel 8, and they're, like, oh, I'm not gonna click.
Aaron
01:54:28 – 01:54:28
Yeah.
Aaron
01:54:28 – 01:54:29
It's not Laravel 10.
Jeffrey
01:54:29 – 01:54:35
I know. But do I just say Laravel, and then they're gonna be, like, well, what more like, I don't know how to deal with that.
Ian
01:54:35 – 01:54:50
I always thought this is, like, your secret sauce to me is like this whole stuff right here. Like when you go into a Larkas video, you know, you are getting something that is going to walk you through it, like front to back very carefully and very step by step where it's like,
Aaron
01:54:50 – 01:54:51
I agree. You
Ian
01:54:51 – 01:54:58
can, I, I feel like I never watched a video, series really that is so you can really follow it step by step? There's nothing skipped.
Aaron
01:54:58 – 01:54:59
You can trust it.
Ian
01:54:59 – 01:55:14
There's nothing. You can totally trust it. If you're new to this concept, like you're gonna, you're gonna make mistakes in the video and leave that in and then talk about the mistake you made so I can learn from the mistake you made and whatever. So like, I think that stuff's so good. And since software's never done, it's the worst part about software.
Ian
01:55:14 – 01:55:15
Software's never done.
Aaron
01:55:15 – 01:55:15
Great.
Ian
01:55:15 – 01:55:26
This, I mean, I've been working on the same product for 20 years. Right. And it's like, this product is never done. Like there's always more stuff to do or the tech or AI shows up and people want AI. Right?
Ian
01:55:26 – 01:55:34
Like whatever. There's always something where the the stuff's not done. And I think the videos need to reflect that. Right? Like, Laravel's never done.
Jeffrey
01:55:35 – 01:55:36
Yeah. You just work
Aaron
01:55:36 – 01:55:36
on the top
Jeffrey
01:55:36 – 01:55:37
of the list. Tools are
Ian
01:55:37 – 01:55:45
never done. Yeah. Like all this stuff is evolving and then yeah. So it's gotta be up to date. So that's that's the gig, but that's the value too.
Jeffrey
01:55:46 – 01:55:48
Yeah. Very cool.
Ian
01:55:48 – 01:55:51
Alright. Well, it's great. We'd love to have you on, man.
Aaron
01:55:51 – 01:55:52
Ian. Yeah. This was awesome. Thanks for
Ian
01:55:52 – 01:55:53
doing this.
Aaron
01:55:53 – 01:55:55
Sorry for taking fully 2 hours of your time.
Ian
01:55:55 – 01:55:58
Yeah. I know. It was awesome. Yeah. We were like, I don't know.
Ian
01:55:58 – 01:55:59
Maybe it's, like, half an hour. No.
Aaron
01:55:59 – 01:56:00
We're just out
Ian
01:56:00 – 01:56:01
of it for 2 hours.
Jeffrey
01:56:01 – 01:56:05
I am alone so much every day, so this was really nice. Okay. You're welcome. Yeah. We had
Ian
01:56:05 – 01:56:08
Feel free to come back on if you get lonely. Just hang up.
Jeffrey
01:56:08 – 01:56:10
Yeah. For sure. Theory that
Aaron
01:56:10 – 01:56:16
was like, yeah. We'll come on for 30 minutes and then drop off. We'll do a regular show, and that'll be a fun style. It's like, now we're just gonna keep going.
Ian
01:56:16 – 01:56:19
I'll hold on with it. It's too interesting. We got us to go.
Aaron
01:56:19 – 01:56:23
Too much too much fun. Alright. Alrighty. Tell us where's time we find us.
Ian
01:56:24 – 01:56:40
Alright. Thank you, everybody. I find us on mostlytechnical.com, mostly tech pod on Twitter, and, mostlytechnicalpodcast@gmail.com. And then, obviously, you can reach Jeffrey at Jeffrey way on Twitter and laracast.com. So yeah.
Ian
01:56:40 – 01:56:44
So thanks a lot, Jeff, for coming on, and we will, see you on Twitter.
Jeffrey
01:56:45 – 01:56:46
Awesome. Thank you, guys.
Ian
01:56:46 – 01:56:47
See you. Thanks.
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 .