Aaron Francis

Ian and Aaron discuss HelpSpot's future. Aaron reveals his next course, how to build courses, the "edge", spouse GPS tracking, and the Doordash tax. Sponsored by Laracasts, Buttondown, LaraJobs, & Screencasting.com. Send questions or feedback to mostlytechnicalpodcast@gmail.com.

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Transcript

Ian

00:00:01 – 00:00:06

Hello? How we doing, Ian? Good. Back on the air.

Aaron

00:00:06 – 00:00:08

It's good to be back as always.

Ian

00:00:09 – 00:00:22

Yeah. I wanna start out the show one more time with our friends over at Laracasts. Just a quick shout out. Let me just share my screen here. I see his beautiful Laracasts website.

Ian

00:00:24 – 00:00:49

Thanks so much to Laracasts, Jeffrey Way for sponsoring the show. The first one to sponsor the show, just means so much to us, have that support from the community. And, obviously, Laracast, just the premier resource to learn about Laravel and web development in general, honestly. So check that out. Thanks so much to Jeffrey for believing in us and sponsoring the show.

Ian

00:00:49 – 00:00:58

Please check out Laracast. Obviously, Aaron and I are big, big fans since way way back day 1 for me, and I'm sure very early for Erin. So,

Aaron

00:00:58 – 00:01:02

Keep talking. I wanna look up when I first subscribe to Lyricas.

Ian

00:01:03 – 00:01:05

Let's see. Back.

Aaron

00:01:05 – 00:01:08

It's gotta be, like, 20 14 or something.

Ian

00:01:09 – 00:01:11

That's pretty close to the beginning then.

Aaron

00:01:11 – 00:01:18

Let's see how far back Gmail goes. Welcome to Laracasts on 7 2 of 2014.

Ian

00:01:19 – 00:01:20

Wow. There you go.

Aaron

00:01:20 – 00:01:21

There you go.

Ian

00:01:21 – 00:01:25

So 2 long timers here. We've been paying ever since. Now we've moved to lifetime, but

Aaron

00:01:25 – 00:01:25

Mhmm.

Ian

00:01:26 – 00:01:29

Get in there, buy that lifetime subscription. Thanks so much to Laracast.

Aaron

00:01:30 – 00:01:37

So Man, my 10 year anniversary of being a Laracast subscriber is coming up. That's That's wild. That is so That's

Ian

00:01:37 – 00:01:41

crazy. Long. And what are you? 34, 36? 35.

Ian

00:01:42 – 00:01:43

35? So,

Aaron

00:01:43 – 00:01:44

like, you know,

Ian

00:01:44 – 00:01:46

it's just under a third of your life. Like

Aaron

00:01:46 – 00:01:58

That is crazy. It's wild. I can tell that I'm looking at this email and I can tell, like, I know the template, like the Laravel email templates that was used back then. That's funny.

Ian

00:01:58 – 00:02:00

Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron

00:02:01 – 00:02:22

Side note about LaraCasts. They're hiring a video editor slash producer. So if you're a video editor slash producer and want a super flexible, super flexible job with good benefits and stuff like that, check out Laracasts, because at the very top of the website right now, there's a banner that says we're hiring. So it's a great place to work.

Ian

00:02:23 – 00:02:35

And Jeffrey tweeted, something we've talked about in the show, which is that, like, 90% of the people are not following the, like, very straightforward rules for applying. So if you have a very good shot, you've just finished it.

Aaron

00:02:35 – 00:02:36

Shot, man.

Ian

00:02:36 – 00:02:36

Read the instructions.

Aaron

00:02:36 – 00:02:47

I think he said, 10 people have applied and 2 have followed the directions. Yeah. Not even to say if they're good or, like, if the applications are good. It's just that they followed the directions.

Ian

00:02:48 – 00:02:56

I mean, right there, you're you're in the top 20% just by following directions. Even if you have, like, no experience, you're already ahead of people with experience. So

Aaron

00:02:57 – 00:03:00

Yeah. So if you want to become a video editor, just follow the directions of, hey. Who knows? We'll see. Crazy.

Aaron

00:03:01 – 00:03:03

Yeah. I have some 2,014 Laravel stuff to talk about too, but

Ian

00:03:03 – 00:03:16

maybe we'll we'll do that in a little bit. Okay. Alright. We have a little follow-up. Is this the year of Linux finally?

Ian

00:03:16 – 00:03:23

That's what Mike Kelly wants to know. The year of Linux. DHH is switching to Linux. Nobody else is switching to Linux.

Aaron

00:03:23 – 00:03:24

Nobody else. Yeah.

Ian

00:03:24 – 00:03:26

Off on his island.

Aaron

00:03:27 – 00:03:31

Yeah. It's the year of Linux and the year the year of onetime payment for software.

Ian

00:03:31 – 00:03:34

He actually had a picture the other day of, like

Aaron

00:03:34 – 00:03:35

I saw that.

Ian

00:03:35 – 00:03:43

Yeah. Where he's, like, trying to find the perfect length laptop, but he's just, like, desperately attempting not to go back to the map. Like, I'm just gonna buy every laptop until I figure

Aaron

00:03:43 – 00:03:58

out one. Yeah. He had a bunch of computers and a bunch of, like, Thunderbolt, adapters or docks. And he's like, I'm just trying to figure out which one will work with, you know, my monitor to give me full resolution. And I'm like, bro, it's not worth it.

Aaron

00:03:58 – 00:04:02

Yeah. It is not worth it. Go drive one of your 50 sports cars

Ian

00:04:02 – 00:04:05

and Gotta be just some better use for those 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars.

Aaron

00:04:05 – 00:04:07

Like, you

Ian

00:04:07 – 00:04:08

can do something with your time there.

Aaron

00:04:09 – 00:04:19

Yeah. I mean, if you wanna go to Linux desktop and you've got a $100,000,000, just pay Linux to come and figure it out for you. Like, come on, man.

Ian

00:04:20 – 00:04:29

Or just maybe you need you need, like, you know, some kind of custom hacked Mac laptop or something, whether they've done some optimizations.

Aaron

00:04:31 – 00:04:31

I just don't

Ian

00:04:31 – 00:04:32

I don't know.

Aaron

00:04:33 – 00:04:40

This is this again this goes back to the, like I think a long time ago, I said something like, my goal is not to be a good developer.

Ian

00:04:41 – 00:04:41

Like, my

Aaron

00:04:41 – 00:04:55

goal is to make money and, you know, live my life and be happy. This is the exact same thing. Like Yeah. There's a 0.0% chance I'm ever going to run Linux on the desktop because Right. My my Mac just works.

Aaron

00:04:55 – 00:05:05

I'm like, I don't care. I got other stuff to do, which is not to fault people who wanna tinker. I'm like, that's their hobby, but that's just not my hobby. Yep. And I'm not gonna do it.

Aaron

00:05:05 – 00:05:06

So more power to them.

Ian

00:05:07 – 00:05:28

This is what we're gonna let's touch on this quick because related to what you just said, like, I've had a little change in my world, which is exactly related to that, which is things that make you money and what you're in business for. And it's like, so as I, you know, I haven't talked a ton on here, but I've kinda hinted that we've been experimenting with, like, a new version of HubSpot that's rebuilt

Aaron

00:05:29 – 00:05:29

Mhmm.

Ian

00:05:29 – 00:05:38

From the ground up and all that stuff. It's off it's it's on hiatus. We're putting that to the side. No more rebuilding. No more rebuilding.

Ian

00:05:38 – 00:05:53

So you're not gonna change post press tweets from me or anything like that for a while because it just it's just like I'm already months months into it. And there's just so it's such a huge project. It's very stressful. Yeah. No customers care about it.

Ian

00:05:53 – 00:06:04

Literally, not a single customer cares about it. And it's like, what am I doing? Like, what? So this is gonna be the 3rd time in 20 years I've tried to do this and unsuccessfully rebuilt. But

Aaron

00:06:04 – 00:06:09

Okay. Well, hang on. We gotta we gotta we gotta dig in. You've been you've been KG about the

Ian

00:06:09 – 00:06:15

I've been KG. I knew there was a chance. I knew I wasn't Yeah. I knew that, like, listen. This is a very hard thing.

Ian

00:06:15 – 00:06:27

There's a reasonable chance it's not gonna happen. So I haven't been, like, all in. We haven't talked to the cuss we're not, like, out to the customer being, like, wait till the new version of the totally rebuilt. Like, so yeah. So if you have questions

Aaron

00:06:27 – 00:06:38

So back up. Back up. Back up. Yeah. What was the what was, I guess, in the past three times, what's the impetus for, doing a full rebuild in the first place?

Aaron

00:06:38 – 00:06:40

And then we'll talk about why it failed.

Ian

00:06:40 – 00:06:52

Yeah. So I think that that's a big reason why it failed, right, is because there's no good reason. Like, I mean, Joel Spolsky laid this out a 1000000 years ago. Like Right. The the reason is because I have a podcast about it.

Ian

00:06:52 – 00:07:11

I'm friends with Taylor Otwell. Like, I know all these great devs doing cool stuff, and it's awesome when you can just, like, drop in, like, some hotness, and it's, like, auto magically works everywhere because you're on Laravel 11 on day 1 Yep. And, like, all that stuff. Right? And it's more fun to some degree to build in that, environment and things like that.

Ian

00:07:12 – 00:07:14

That's, like, the only reason. FOMO, like

Aaron

00:07:14 – 00:07:15

the answer is FOMO.

Ian

00:07:15 – 00:07:19

Yeah. Basically FOMO. It's like basically FOMO. And it's like Great. Every time it's the same thing.

Ian

00:07:19 – 00:07:34

It's like, why am I doing this again? Like, it's gonna be super stressful. Cause the other thing is like, I'm also not really believer if I'm going to rebuild it. Mhmm. Like just to literally do the, like, rebuild it to be exactly the same way it is, is not that interesting to me either.

Ian

00:07:34 – 00:07:43

Cause that's just like the death March of like, literally try to find feature parity of every single thing and just sit there and copy everything. Right? And, like,

Aaron

00:07:43 – 00:07:46

what's the So you were doing you were doing a rebuild plus an expansion?

Ian

00:07:47 – 00:07:54

Yes. Or at least a rethink. So it's like every feature is like a rethink. Like, okay. Well, this is how we do it before.

Ian

00:07:54 – 00:07:58

And so, for example, current help spot, then now continuing help spot,

Aaron

00:07:59 – 00:08:00

only help spot.

Ian

00:08:00 – 00:08:12

Only help spot. Customer information is stored on the ticket. So there's not like a table of customers, the customer relations with a ticket. Yeah. Which, so you think, okay, like that's an easy one.

Ian

00:08:12 – 00:08:29

We're going to break that out. That's like the obvious modern way to do it. How about the table of customers? Blah blah blah. So that's always that's one of the first things I got done, but that actually like ripples through like everything in the whole system, because there's actually like quite a few benefits to being on the ticket, like in in a help desk environment.

Ian

00:08:29 – 00:08:52

Like, just one of them is that the whatever the person's information was when they submitted the ticket it stays that way forever on the ticket. So, like, you have a custom field. Right? Like, so, like, 5 years from now, they email you again, but they're on a different plan or they have a different name because they got married or whatever. And now, like, so if you update the customer record, what do you do with the old thing?

Ian

00:08:52 – 00:09:01

Because now you're gonna change your reports and all this stuff. So do you have, like, a denormalized thing on the ticket? So there's, like, but a different trade offs

Aaron

00:09:01 – 00:09:02

that's in it. Sense.

Ian

00:09:02 – 00:09:21

But there's a lot to think about. Every single thing you touch is a lot to think about. Obviously, this is, like, straight from Swelsey now, but, like, all the millions of little bug fixes slash edge cases slash subtleties that are baked in there now. Right? It's, like, obviously, all those just get abandoned, to some degree.

Ian

00:09:21 – 00:09:42

I mean, you're gonna go back through and try to map them and blah blah blah, but now everything's different. So if you've rethought a feature that little subtleties that might not even apply. So this is kind of all back to, like, my, like, when we started the podcast, I was ejecting things. I'm kind of, yeah, I'm kind of back in that mode a bit of like, this is a lot of stress. This is a lot of headache.

Ian

00:09:42 – 00:10:01

This is literally not gonna make me any money. And to do it for that, I mean, helps what's already on Laravel. It we can continue to, like, swap out components for newer things and factor some stuff. There's definitely some technical debt stuff I wanna, like, clean up. Yeah.

Ian

00:10:01 – 00:10:04

So there's a little a little bomb bomb for you.

Aaron

00:10:04 – 00:10:13

Yeah. That's huge. So Yeah. First of all, I hope Daniel Colbourne isn't listening because it sounds like a perfect use case for event sourcing. And I just you know, I hate to give that.

Ian

00:10:13 – 00:10:15

I hate to give you answer here,

Aaron

00:10:15 – 00:10:18

event sourcing. Layup. You know? Yeah. I hate that for him.

Aaron

00:10:19 – 00:10:27

Yeah. Okay. So now that Daniel's not listening, that is a big move. How does it feel? Do you feel like a huge sense of relief, or is it like Yeah.

Ian

00:10:27 – 00:10:30

I think so. It's definitely do now?

Aaron

00:10:30 – 00:10:31

What are you gonna do with your time?

Ian

00:10:31 – 00:10:53

Because there's so see, that's the other thing. What's sort of there's also been this sort of change in the world, which is coming a weird time where, like, we kinda started talking about this and, like, I started chipping away at it and just I spent a lot of time just, like, poking around. Like, I went down the react angle and I looked at different things. Like, that was just, like, Seeing what's out there because I haven't been out there in a long time, right? So let's see what's out there and whatever.

Ian

00:10:54 – 00:11:21

But then you kind of have the rise of all this AI stuff and that has its own pressures because it's like, well, customers see, customers are asking for that. That's something that customers do want is what can AI do for me? Right? And so it's like, okay, well, if we wait till we're done with this rebuild, then that's like a year from now. And then, yes, maybe, like, we can integrate more deeply some AI stuff, but at the same time, that's not really that true.

Ian

00:11:21 – 00:12:10

Like, ultimately, we can add AI to the help spot. It's not like that's impossible in any way. So so now we're just even pushing out some of those. And help spot does have some AI stuff in already, but we haven't gone to the more kind of sophisticated stuff that, you know, I think would be good, like auto categorization and auto assignment and like, you know, obviously auto replying potentially and things like that. So, you know, that's pushing all that a year out, let's say, or whatever it ends up being, Putting all the cost so so just even on AI, it's like now we can start on that stuff, like, right away, and we can ship something in a month or 2 that's got useful AI features that's that's a huge migration for the current customer too.

Ian

00:12:10 – 00:12:24

So it's like, okay, there's all new system. The data model's gonna be different. How are we gonna even move everybody? A lot of it might not be able to be automated. So we're gonna have to like kind of be handholding 100 and 100 of customers through this process.

Ian

00:12:24 – 00:12:59

So then that also for a small team becomes, you know, all we do for however many months after the new version's out. So it just ends up being like 2 years, 3 years of like, maybe it gets out, but it's gonna be pretty static after that because we're gonna have like, all these customers, who need help moving. Also, when you have customers, when you make them move on that level, you know, they're gonna be rethinking their options. They're gonna be like, Well, if I have to, like, do a bunch of manual labor to move into this new help spot, like, maybe I should look at what else is out there. And then so then you're potentially losing customers who wouldn't have otherwise left.

Ian

00:13:00 – 00:13:18

So there's a lot of stuff like that. Businesses ends up too. But Yeah, so I know with the AI stuff and all that. It's like, you know what? It's gonna be so nice that we can just like start shipping Features people want rather than the underlying architecture stuff that nobody cares about and is, you know, fine.

Ian

00:13:18 – 00:13:26

It's not how I would draw it up today, but it's not horrific by any means. And so Crazy. Yeah. So there we go.

Aaron

00:13:26 – 00:13:30

Okay. Wow. That's too bad. I mean, I guess that's good, but that's too bad.

Ian

00:13:30 – 00:13:32

It's like it's too bad.

Aaron

00:13:32 – 00:13:32

It's good content.

Ian

00:13:33 – 00:13:37

It is good content. Right? That's why I'm pretty busted out here. Yeah. Yeah.

Ian

00:13:37 – 00:13:45

I don't know. It's like one of those things where it's like, is it too bad, or is it just that I was stupid to begin with? You know? It's, like, kind of like every

Aaron

00:13:45 – 00:13:46

No. No. No. No. No.

Aaron

00:13:46 – 00:13:50

No. No. No. You're you're smart then. You're smart now, and it's never our fault.

Aaron

00:13:50 – 00:13:51

That's for sure.

Ian

00:13:51 – 00:14:31

It's so funny because, like, every couple years, basically, it's like when you work on the same product for 20 years almost, it's like I have these little side adventures where, like, I build thermostat, which is MPS tool, or I build some other thing, or like I go off on a new help server version. And it, none of them ever work out. And it's like, it's kind of, this is always an interesting thing to me, because it's like, you don't ever know, you know, you think you have one successful product and people are like, there's an assumption that there's more successful products than you, but it's it's a bad assumption. Like, you might have had one good idea and that's it, and you should just really take care of that idea. If you're out there with the one good idea, don't get distracted by the other ideas.

Ian

00:14:31 – 00:14:33

That's very hard, especially when you work out for a very long time.

Aaron

00:14:33 – 00:14:40

But hard. 20 years. That's Yeah. Twice as long as I've been subscribed to Laracasts. That's a long time.

Ian

00:14:40 – 00:14:57

My longest job before that, I think was like two and a half years or something. Yeah. Like, it was the longest I was ever at a job. So, like, I just thought there was some guys, some tweet going around the other day about, like, some guy, you know, he's got, like, 10 products and, like, one of them is $75,000 a month or whatever it was or a year, whatever whatever it was. But all the

Aaron

00:14:57 – 00:14:59

other was about 1,000. Yeah. Was it

Ian

00:14:59 – 00:15:00

a month ago? Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron

00:15:00 – 00:15:00

Yeah. All the

Ian

00:15:00 – 00:15:06

other ones are a 1,000. And it's like, dude, just get rid of those other ones. Forget the other ones. Like, you've got the one that works. Just.

Aaron

00:15:06 – 00:15:13

All right. Let's go let's go into this. Let's let's do this. So that guy, Mark, I think Yeah. That sounds I think it's a French I didn't

Ian

00:15:13 – 00:15:13

know who he was.

Aaron

00:15:13 – 00:15:28

M a r c, indie hacker fellow. Mhmm. Yeah. So the tweet was making the rounds and everybody's, you know, picking up their picking up their points of view on single projects, multiple projects, which Right. We gotta we gotta have something else to talk about on Twitter, first of all.

Aaron

00:15:28 – 00:15:32

Like, can we can we not can we just move on?

Ian

00:15:32 – 00:15:32

Yeah. Can we just move

Aaron

00:15:32 – 00:15:35

on from that conversation? But we're gonna have that conversation here.

Ian

00:15:35 – 00:15:36

We gotta have

Aaron

00:15:36 – 00:15:46

it here. We're we're gonna have it here that everyone else's takes are tired. Ours are hot. Okay. So his his project portfolio is, you know, he's got these 10 different projects.

Aaron

00:15:46 – 00:16:04

They're all making, like you said, you know, $1,000 a month, except for the one that's making $75 a month. And the one that's making $75 a month is a starter kit on how to start other projects. Yep. And so he's basically selling, you know, Laravel Jetstream, for example, but, you know, different ecosystem.

Ian

00:16:05 – 00:16:05

Mhmm.

Aaron

00:16:05 – 00:16:22

And so it's it's almost like he has to keep starting these other projects to show that his starter kit is really good. And so it's kinda hoisted by his own petard here. He can't he can't just focus on 1 because then he loses the magic of of the one as it is. So it's kinda

Ian

00:16:22 – 00:16:23

true, though? Maybe it's maybe

Aaron

00:16:23 – 00:16:25

it's bad. Maybe it's

Ian

00:16:25 – 00:16:30

bad that it shows that, like, the starter kit doesn't have that much to do with, like, if you're actually gonna be successful. Like, what

Aaron

00:16:30 – 00:16:35

That is the most logical conclusion you could draw from it, and nobody is drawing that conclusion.

Ian

00:16:35 – 00:16:36

Yeah. Nobody's talking about it.

Aaron

00:16:37 – 00:16:45

That conclusion. No. Of course not. They're looking at it That's funny. And thinking, oh, I can start I can start 10 sass is because I'm gonna use the starter kit.

Aaron

00:16:46 – 00:16:54

So, yeah, that was I saw that making the rounds, and I saw I think Rob Walling, quote, tweeted it. I don't know if Jason Cohen got in on it or not. Yeah. I think there are a

Ian

00:16:54 – 00:16:55

lot of

Aaron

00:16:55 – 00:16:57

a lot of the people that, you know, have

Ian

00:16:57 – 00:16:57

the the

Aaron

00:16:57 – 00:17:02

drums beat on multiple versus single projects. So yeah.

Ian

00:17:02 – 00:17:31

Yeah. I think Jason Cohen had had a some kind of tweet about that too, about multiple projects or something, but maybe it was based on that one. But, Yeah, so the multiple products very hard. You probably don't have more than one good idea in you. Let's just be honest out there and, sometimes people do but it's hard hard to have more than one great idea even even Laravel like, you know, forge is a big percentage of the revenue like Bust it all out here, but, like, you know, it's it's the biggest one, and that's the first one.

Ian

00:17:31 – 00:17:33

And so So the first one.

Aaron

00:17:33 – 00:17:33

Mhmm.

Ian

00:17:33 – 00:17:42

Other other things that they do, and they make a lot of money relative. But, yeah, it's hard hard to have a bunch of good ideas that all are successful. Like, just,

Aaron

00:17:43 – 00:17:45

Gosh. It's hard to have one good idea that's successful.

Ian

00:17:46 – 00:17:49

Yeah. Like, if you get one, you gotta be happy with that.

Aaron

00:17:49 – 00:17:50

So Yeah. For real.

Ian

00:17:51 – 00:17:52

So yeah.

Aaron

00:17:53 – 00:17:56

But it is a founder privilege to be able to go on side quests.

Ian

00:17:57 – 00:18:23

It is. And it that it is there is, like, a necessity to that to some degree, I think, because, like, you just need to cleanse your brain a little bit sometimes or you need to see what's going on. Kind of peek in your head up above the water a little bit. But, I do think this is a huge, like software developers, founder faux pas for sure is like, I mean, what I should be poking my head up to do is marketing stuff. Like the website needs updating, like, all whatever.

Ian

00:18:23 – 00:18:44

Like, dig into the analytics on, see what's going on, like And bullet them all ready. Right. Exactly. It's like I'm gonna poke my head up and, like, build something because, like, that's what I wanted to do when I started the business was build stuff. And, but, yeah, it's like at the end of the day, it's just not the best use of your time is the reality of it.

Ian

00:18:44 – 00:19:08

And like, oh, and or the stuff you can be building should be stuff that you're gonna be able to ship more quickly and make your customers more happy versus, making yourself happy, which, you know, is fine. It depends a little bit on yeah. If you're DHH and you wanna, like, pretend self hosted hot software is like the future and, like, you wanna just do it because, like, you have been bored for

Aaron

00:19:08 – 00:19:11

a couple years. Devastating. I love it. And you wanna pretend.

Ian

00:19:12 – 00:19:19

Create a little drama and have a little action. Like, yeah. Great. Like, that's fine. But then if you're like me and you're like, woah.

Ian

00:19:19 – 00:19:31

My, like, oldest kid's going to college. Like, there's 2 more behind him going to college. And, like, do I like money, or do I like playing around with programming? And it's like, I like playing around programming, but I also like money.

Aaron

00:19:31 – 00:19:33

And money do like money.

Ian

00:19:33 – 00:19:50

Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, maybe, like, take a year or more and, like, side questing is not gonna be optimal on the money front. So yeah. So I mean, the the nice thing about our product is that people tend to stay with it.

Ian

00:19:50 – 00:20:11

So it's like, it's afforded me some of that. That's where it is interesting. Like, people pick products, like products that are not easily dismissed out of your, ecosystem or out of your company are nice because it's like, that does afford you, you know, usually lower churn and things like that. Mhmm. I've been seeing this a lot on Twitter too, people going back and forth in this.

Ian

00:20:11 – 00:20:36

But I do think, like, it is very tempting to think, like, well, you can have, like, set it for get a product or a product one time use products and stuff like that. But it's so hard to keep those going where it's, like, something that people use all day, every day while it is harder to make those sales, like, once you make that sale, it's also stays in those companies for a long time. So that is very beneficial, if you're get distracted every couple of years.

Aaron

00:20:37 – 00:20:42

So. But you have, you have successful side quests. You've got Lara jobs and you've got their con online.

Ian

00:20:42 – 00:20:53

That's true. Those are kind of different. And those are still like a very small fraction of Yeah. Successful. I wouldn't say minuscule, but they're they're kind of online.

Ian

00:20:53 – 00:20:54

I didn't mean I

Aaron

00:20:54 – 00:20:55

didn't mean to say minuscule.

Ian

00:20:55 – 00:20:56

Yeah. They're they're

Aaron

00:20:56 – 00:20:57

kind of like

Ian

00:20:58 – 00:21:31

a a passion project. And then, and Lara jobs is is bigger than that, but it's still very small compared to help slots. So but they are successful and, like but that is also a product that's, like even that, like, I feel like I don't do a great job with that because it's like that need that could use more love, more whether it's like just market on the marketing front, like entirely on the marketing front, like even sales wise, like we should probably have somebody doing sales and who's, like, calling into the big companies that use You should. Laravel and don't aren't on Twitter. Right?

Ian

00:21:31 – 00:21:50

But mostly we focus on, like, Twitter and things like that. So even that is, you know, when you're small, it's just like you think you want to do more stuff than you can actually do, but you can it's hard to do more than 1 or 2 things at a time. So Yep. But, you know, you're in there. You're in the mix on the multiple products here.

Ian

00:21:50 – 00:21:51

So you know how to Doing

Aaron

00:21:51 – 00:21:54

it all. Doing it all at once. Yep.

Ian

00:21:54 – 00:22:06

Yep. But But in the beginning too, it's also a little different. Like, you're kinda striking out in a few different avenues. Consulting plus products is also a little different. But anyway, so there we go.

Ian

00:22:06 – 00:22:09

That was the quite the feedback that got kicked kicked us off on a crazy

Aaron

00:22:10 – 00:22:12

Yeah. So you're Linux desktop. Who knows, man? I'm not

Ian

00:22:12 – 00:22:14

gonna I'm not doing that.

Aaron

00:22:14 – 00:22:18

You're good. Good wrap up to the segment there. Yeah. There's there's your answer, Mike Kelly.

Ian

00:22:31 – 00:23:31

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Ian

00:23:32 – 00:24:03

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Ian

00:24:03 – 00:24:30

Thanks again to Button Down for sponsoring Mostly Technical. Oh, jeez. All right. So this will be good, segue to your stuff because we have one more feedback item from Cameron Scott. So he wants to know when choosing a course topic, how much do you factor if there's already other courses out there?

Ian

00:24:30 – 00:24:31

So what are your thoughts on that?

Aaron

00:24:33 – 00:25:01

I factor that very little, frankly. Right. So, I think that I think that, people learn in different ways, but also people teach in different ways. And I I think if I don't if I don't have an angle, if I don't have, like, a point of view, then I'm just not I don't really have anything to say on it. And so there can be a course on, you know, how to record video, and I can still make a course on screen casting because I have a point of view.

Aaron

00:25:01 – 00:25:16

And my point of view is, like, you can do this. There are ways to do it that are easy. There are ways to, like, make your life not miserable while you're editing. Like, I believe in you. And so that's kind of my my point of view in that case, or, like, my workflow.

Aaron

00:25:16 – 00:25:42

But if, you know, we're talking about this Laravel course, yeah, there's gonna be Laravel courses on, you know, performance, and I still think I have a different experience, and I can teach different things. So I wouldn't go head to head with, like, Adam Wavin on TDD back in the day. But, yeah, beyond beyond that, I don't really consider it too much, which I don't, you know, I don't know if that's right or wrong, but it's worked out fine so far.

Ian

00:25:42 – 00:26:00

I mean, I've always had the same philosophy or, like, a a variation on it with, like, products too. It's like, if there's no products that do this thing, then there's probably not much of a market. I mean, everybody's out there on the Internet now. Everybody sees what's out there. Like, if nobody has thought of this idea, it's probably not a great idea.

Ian

00:26:00 – 00:26:20

I mean, obviously, there are exceptions. Sometimes you just are the first, but, a lot of the time, that's not gonna be true. And even in courses, like, even if even in the heyday of Adam Wathan, TDD, like, are you gonna sell as much as Adam Wathan? Probably not because he has like a bigger audience than you, but maybe, but it's also in the air and that creates its own juice. Yeah.

Ian

00:26:20 – 00:26:45

Like, maybe if you did do a TDD course that had some again, like, I don't think you just copy his course. Right? You have your own take on how to do it, or you're doing it with pest instead of PHP unit or whatever, like variation, then that might be something, while people are out there thinking about it and just are going through buying courses on TDD. Yep. I've definitely done stuff like that where I'm like, I buy 2 courses because I'm in that mindset and, like, whatever.

Ian

00:26:45 – 00:26:51

I'm gonna look at both these or multiple books. Right? I mean, I've done back in the day, I did that all the time. Like, I got 7 JavaScript books here. And Mhmm.

Aaron

00:26:53 – 00:26:54

I still do that to this day.

Ian

00:26:54 – 00:26:56

Right. I just buy buy buy buy them. You're on it.

Aaron

00:26:56 – 00:27:09

All the books. Yeah. That's interesting. You could actually look at successful Even and that

Ian

00:27:11 – 00:27:17

Even and that's sort of interesting too. Like, what books are out there? Like, can you reverse course from books? You know what I'm saying? Like

Aaron

00:27:17 – 00:27:18

Yes.

Ian

00:27:18 – 00:27:21

You do know what I'm saying. There's all these sequel

Aaron

00:27:21 – 00:27:21

life books.

Ian

00:27:21 – 00:27:22

Like You can.

Aaron

00:27:23 – 00:27:39

You absolutely can. You can buy 8 books on MySQL and read them all because no one else has ever read these books before in the history. The only the author and the editor have ever read these books. And so you can you can read the books and turn it into a video course, and people will think you're a genius. Yeah.

Aaron

00:27:39 – 00:27:49

It's not that it's not that complicated. It's crazy. And then and then you tweet about it, and people think you're an idiot. It's like, great. That's I I will continue to be successful.

Ian

00:27:51 – 00:28:02

And that I mean, and then there is a bear a validation in that and the idea of, like, there these publishing houses thought that there was a sufficient market to sell these books, and those are, like, with all this extra cost of a physical

Aaron

00:28:02 – 00:28:03

That's what I'm saying.

Ian

00:28:03 – 00:28:08

You know, publication and shipping and all this stuff, like actual overhead.

Aaron

00:28:08 – 00:28:11

Editor and Right. Like they they do the whole thing.

Ian

00:28:11 – 00:28:12

They're spending a $1,000,000

Aaron

00:28:12 – 00:28:13

off the shelf.

Ian

00:28:13 – 00:28:14

Right. Yeah.

Aaron

00:28:15 – 00:28:16

Yeah. It's crazy.

Ian

00:28:16 – 00:28:17

Yeah. Interesting.

Aaron

00:28:17 – 00:28:40

I think that's a completely, by the way, a completely viable way Mhmm. To make a really great course is you just do the research. I think there's this false notion that, like, you have to inherently know everything to be able to do a course. I think you have to have some experience. I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't go pick up a a book on Ruby and try to teach a Ruby course.

Aaron

00:28:41 – 00:28:56

But you can go you can go pick up a whole bunch of books that have been well researched, have been technically edited. So some technical editor has said this is correct. You can read them all and pull out the interesting parts, apply your point of view, and make a course.

Ian

00:28:56 – 00:28:57

And Yeah.

Aaron

00:28:57 – 00:28:59

And you can win. It's not like, it's not that complicated.

Ian

00:29:00 – 00:29:01

Right. So I

Aaron

00:29:01 – 00:29:06

don't know. Yeah. People on Twitter think I'm insane for reading books. But secrets. I know.

Aaron

00:29:07 – 00:29:13

It's like, come on. I can give out I can give out secrets all day long, and people will still be like, hey, man. How does this work? I'm like,

Ian

00:29:13 – 00:29:15

oh, well,

Aaron

00:29:15 – 00:29:16

they kinda just told you.

Ian

00:29:17 – 00:29:22

Yeah. That and the only the idea. Right? It's only 5% or whatever. It's like Yes.

Ian

00:29:22 – 00:29:25

You gotta do the work. You gotta read the books. You gotta distill the information.

Aaron

00:29:26 – 00:29:36

Read the books, organize the information, turn on the camera. Like, the hard part still remains, but at least you have a corpus of knowledge from which you can draw. Yeah. Like, that's pretty awesome.

Ian

00:29:37 – 00:30:10

And and I think, like, the unique and sort of skill aspect where that might really separate people is, like, yes. I mean, there's a just doing the work, which a lot of people will just fall off before that part of it, but then be like, you know, your taste in what nuggets to pull out, how to organize it, like, what's really important versus, like, we're not trying to just reproduce the manual here. So, like, what are the relevant bits that an active software developer actually needs versus, you know, yeah, just pure documentation and things like that.

Aaron

00:30:10 – 00:30:30

This is this is literally what I did for the MySQL course. Like, there there's no extra secret sauce. I bought, you know, these literally these books right behind me on camera. They make great art now. I bought them, and I read them, and I pulled out the parts that were applicable to a software developer, and I ignored the parts that were applicable to DBAs.

Aaron

00:30:31 – 00:30:40

And I put my taste and my point of view on it, and I made a course, and it was the greatest thing that PlanetScale has ever seen. It's, like Yeah. Yeah. It was hard. It was hard.

Aaron

00:30:40 – 00:30:45

It took me a lot of time, but it wasn't it wasn't as hard as I think people think it was.

Ian

00:30:45 – 00:30:47

Yeah. Right.

Aaron

00:30:47 – 00:30:50

So yeah. Buy buy books. They're still useful.

Ian

00:30:52 – 00:30:57

So what's going on with your your I think you've announced the course you're doing, I believe, or no?

Aaron

00:30:57 – 00:30:59

I don't know. We're about to find out. Yeah.

Ian

00:30:59 – 00:31:00

You've hinted,

Aaron

00:31:00 – 00:31:12

I guess. So so, Dave, don't clip this part. Sometimes I say, Dave, don't clip this part, and it's like a little you know, it's a it's a bit. It's a tongue in cheek. It's like, actually, Dave, you should clip this part because it's gonna be hysterical.

Aaron

00:31:12 – 00:31:22

This is a real one. So, Dave, don't clip this part. So this will be this will be for our many, many, many listeners only. We're doing the SQLite course first. This is an exclusive.

Aaron

00:31:22 – 00:31:29

You're hearing it here. Ian has stopped working on his rewrite. Aaron is working on a SQLite course. We're breaking news today.

Ian

00:31:29 – 00:31:30

Yes. We are.

Aaron

00:31:31 – 00:31:51

So, yeah, we're working on the SQL light course first, and we have, we have secured a sponsor for the course. Oh. Very excited very excited about that. We will also be selling the course. So the sponsor, the sponsor does not preclude us from selling the course.

Aaron

00:31:51 – 00:32:07

So it'll be a traditional, you can buy this course and watch it. And so we're starting with that. So I've started I've started studying and reading. I bought one of these books, and I looked up the author. Turns out he's in Fort Worth, which I'm in Dallas.

Aaron

00:32:07 – 00:32:12

You know, they're 30, 45 minutes apart. I sent him an email. I was like, hey. Do you wanna get lunch? And he responded and said, sure.

Aaron

00:32:12 – 00:32:16

Let's go to lunch. So I'm going to lunch with the authors of these books. Yeah.

Ian

00:32:16 – 00:32:17

That's crazy.

Aaron

00:32:17 – 00:32:21

I know. It's 1. New. Books. You can just do things.

Aaron

00:32:21 – 00:32:38

You can just look people up on LinkedIn and see, like, oh, this guy's in Fort Worth. I just what if I email them? And it it can just work. So, yeah, we're we've started on that. I've started, you know, started the early rumblings of of marketing by tweeting that I'm working on it, a little a little hint.

Ian

00:32:38 – 00:32:39

Like you're reading books.

Aaron

00:32:40 – 00:33:02

Exactly. And so we'll start to we'll start to get that machine rolling a little bit. And then, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna launch that, not long. I'm I'm not gonna commit to a date now, but it it won't be terribly long from now. So Steve Steve is working on some of the sites, while I work on this research, and we've got we've got a few goodies, I think, in store.

Aaron

00:33:03 – 00:33:22

And this is really, like this is this is our first big offering to the world as Yeah. As a duo. And so we're we're going above and beyond, I think, because this is, like, look what we can do. Don't you want to give us gobs of money? So hopefully, it it works out.

Aaron

00:33:22 – 00:33:25

But, yeah, we're we're doing it. SQLite. It's coming up.

Ian

00:33:26 – 00:33:34

So how so I love this idea of the sponsor. I mean, this is, like, something where, like, your street cred has earned you

Aaron

00:33:34 – 00:33:34

Yes.

Ian

00:33:34 – 00:33:53

An advantage that other people won't have. Like, so everybody knows you guys produce good stuff and it's like, Hey, like, we're gonna pay you just to produce this thing. We're not even gonna get, you know, any revenue from it. And we just want it to exist, obviously. I mean, their motives are fairly straightforward.

Ian

00:33:53 – 00:33:58

I would think of like SQLite is new and popular. Let's get more information out there. Let's help. Yep. Keep growing.

Ian

00:33:58 – 00:34:14

If SQLite grows, it's good for the sponsor. Presumably I'm assuming they're in the SQLite space in some capacity. And so, that's, but that's great for you because it's like, not just like, yeah, well, it's this X dollars and we're just producing this course and then we,

Aaron

00:34:14 – 00:34:16

and then it's over. Yeah.

Ian

00:34:16 – 00:34:20

Like, no, or it's theirs even, which is a situation we've experienced now.

Aaron

00:34:20 – 00:34:21

Yeah.

Ian

00:34:21 – 00:34:37

Right. So yeah. It's like you can do it, who knows in the future, like obviously you're gonna sell the course now, but maybe there's other ways you can do other things with it in the future or it gets bundled up into some package or who knows? But you own the rights to it, so you can do what you want with it.

Aaron

00:34:37 – 00:34:47

We own the rights. It's gonna be on our domain, not TryHard Studios. We're spinning up a separate, you know, kind of brand for it. Mhmm. Yeah.

Aaron

00:34:47 – 00:35:10

And we own we own the videos and everything. And the hope, you know, the hope for the sponsor is that when people are learning about SQLite, they are also being exposed to this sponsor. And so when they decide, like, oh, yeah. SQLite is right for me. I'm gonna go use that, you know, service that was talked about in in the course or is shown on the, you know, the surrounding page of that course.

Aaron

00:35:11 – 00:35:46

So, yeah, it's really nice for us because it is it's a revenue it's like it's a down payment. I mean, we we now have money in the bank, and so we can afford to spend a month just working on this course, without without really worrying about, you know, where how are we gonna eat? Right. So that's a pretty nice I don't know that that's I don't know that that's, like, universally viable. You know, I think this is a kind of a unique situation because I just came out of a database company, and I'm doing a database course.

Aaron

00:35:46 – 00:36:09

And I've got this, like, this following in this world. And so it it did kind of conspire to work just right. But, yeah, it's really interesting, and I don't know I don't know of another course that's done this where it's like, yeah, you're gonna pay for the course, but also there's a sponsor. So I think it's kinda cool. And we actually have another we have another one on the hook.

Aaron

00:36:09 – 00:36:28

So after this SQLite one, we will do we'll do another one. Oh. This this might this might be this might be a model that we could we could do over and over again. I think, eventually, we'll run out of topics that I can convincingly teach on, but not for a while. Yeah.

Aaron

00:36:28 – 00:36:46

I mean, there are there are several databases. There's also data modeling, which I think is a huge, like, a huge Yeah. Hairy quagmire of of content and Yeah. Could be done really well. So, yeah, I think it I think it could I think it could work, and I'm I'm pretty I'm pretty excited about it.

Ian

00:36:46 – 00:37:16

I mean, yeah, it's I I think this is a underutilized really element of sort of various sorts of, like, software platforms or systems. Like, I think that this is a pretty effective use of marketing dollars to do something like this, Because it's not just gonna be the course. Right? Like, you're gonna have clips and you're gonna have free stuff on YouTube and, like, their brand is gonna get out there in other ways in addition to just literally people who buy the course. But and all but also people who literally buy the course are the kind

Aaron

00:37:16 – 00:37:16

of people

Ian

00:37:16 – 00:37:33

who are more likely to spend money to begin with, so that's all really good. And the amount of money you spend on something like this, while it might seem significant if we, like, set the number, I'm sure, to some people, it's not really that significant in the size of, like, a VC backed company or a public company or whatever.

Aaron

00:37:33 – 00:37:36

Compared to a single full time employee. Right, right. Yeah.

Ian

00:37:36 – 00:38:05

It's less than employee it's like, or Google ads or Right. Whatever else the case, you know, other ways you might spend that money. So, and, yeah, and, like, getting in with influencers is a whole thing that is common in other industries. And I think there is some of it in in our world, but not maybe as much as there should be considering, like, so many more people are making videos and doing things like that these days. There's probably more opportunity there for reasonable rates than, people might assume.

Aaron

00:38:05 – 00:38:17

So Yeah. And it works out great because everyone's incentives are aligned. Like, yeah, we have, you know, we have this just hysterical minimal contract saying, like, what I'm gonna do for them.

Ian

00:38:17 – 00:38:18

And it's

Aaron

00:38:18 – 00:38:39

like, I mean, I'm never gonna look at that contract again, but I am incentivized to talk about this course all the time Right. Because I'm trying to sell it. And so, you know, the sponsor the sponsor is, like, you know, you agree to, you know, tweet this many times, and I'm like, bro, it's gonna be a lot more than that.

Ian

00:38:40 – 00:38:41

Hang on.

Aaron

00:38:41 – 00:38:56

Yeah. Like, I'm gonna be talking about this a whole bunch. This is kind of my livelihood now, and so it works out it works out super great. And I honestly, I think if they had paid if they had paid, you know, 10 times as much, I may even be less incentivized to do that. Right.

Aaron

00:38:56 – 00:39:15

Because right now, the the big carrot is in front of me. Right? I haven't received what I hope to be the bulk of the money. I've received a a solid down payment that buys me freedom for a little while, but I'm really hoping that the carrot is still in front of me. And so I'm pushing super hard, and they're they're just thrilled to death about that.

Aaron

00:39:15 – 00:39:18

So Yeah. I think it works out I think it works out really nicely.

Ian

00:39:19 – 00:39:31

Yeah. And then and then they're they're obviously gonna expose it to their customers. So that should hopefully gain you some initial sales traction there on top of your own. You know, it's a a different angle of people you might not already be reaching that you're gonna be able to

Aaron

00:39:31 – 00:39:31

reach to

Ian

00:39:31 – 00:39:36

the course. So, yeah, that's great. Wow. Yeah. All right.

Ian

00:39:36 – 00:39:40

We're breaking news. I love this. Yeah. Breaking news. I mean, SQLite's definitely in the air.

Ian

00:39:40 – 00:39:49

Yeah. Nuno is just posting about you should only use sequel lite for caching, for everything to start, you know Yeah. We are new products and, like, so yeah. So I think it's, very I

Aaron

00:39:49 – 00:39:54

think, I think DHH uses it for once because it's so easily distributable. Yep.

Ian

00:39:54 – 00:40:18

He just tweeted that too, I think, recently about using it. So, yeah, it is it is easily distributable. I mean, there is like some huge advantages to it. And definitely the, I don't know if you're gonna get into this, but there are some cool, like, other products that like, well, I mean, there's obviously whoever the sponsor is, I don't know who that is, but then there's also like, there's just a couple companies out there doing interesting stuff. Like there's like light stream.

Ian

00:40:18 – 00:40:19

I think it's called a stream.

Aaron

00:40:19 – 00:40:19

It's not

Ian

00:40:19 – 00:40:29

even a company. It's an open source thing. That's just for backing up your SQL light databases. So you can, or, you know, have them be more sort of production. Yep.

Ian

00:40:29 – 00:40:45

Friendly. There's even crazy stuff like, have you seen, oh geez. What company is that? It's like one of the, like, accounting software companies or something. Like, they started on SQLite.

Ian

00:40:45 – 00:40:57

Yeah. They started on SQLite. Man, I can't I'm so annoyed. I can't remember who this is, but, they built some like, everything on top of SQLite, like, way, like, 10 years ago. And, like, they all this custom stuff that, like, distributes it.

Ian

00:40:57 – 00:41:08

So you it's like, multi master and stuff like that across Cool. Different servers. But they built all this stuff way ahead of everybody else. So there have been big SQLite people also. Oh, they got a name.

Ian

00:41:08 – 00:41:10

Man, that's annoying. I can't remember. But, Yeah.

Aaron

00:41:10 – 00:41:22

Let me let's see. 0, Wave, Less Accounting, QuickBooks Online, probably not. Those are all the ones

Ian

00:41:22 – 00:41:25

I think of. Figure it out. SQLite.

Aaron

00:41:26 – 00:41:32

SQLite accounting. I can't even think of other bookkeeping accounting softwares.

Ian

00:41:34 – 00:41:36

Man, this is gonna be annoying.

Aaron

00:41:37 – 00:41:38

Well, listen, dear listener

Ian

00:41:39 – 00:41:47

like, name for it too. Like, it has some open source thing that I feel like nobody actually uses. Classic open source.

Aaron

00:41:47 – 00:41:52

Yeah. Dear listener, if you know who we're talking about, send us send us some feedback.

Ian

00:41:52 – 00:41:55

Yeah. Put it down below. Right? Put it down below.

Aaron

00:41:55 – 00:41:57

Yeah. Like like, comment, and subscribe.

Ian

00:41:57 – 00:42:02

Comment, subscribe, all those things. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not gonna be able to find it.

Aaron

00:42:02 – 00:42:04

Yeah. We'll find it later. But. Yeah. It's bad radio.

Ian

00:42:04 – 00:42:07

Alright. Yeah. The terrible radio. Listen listening to me types not

Aaron

00:42:07 – 00:42:30

Yeah. Listening to you Google things. So on that note, I think, the TryHard Studios, offerings to the market are are evolving. So, you know, we're out there We're out there trying to figure out what the market wants because people want to work with us. That much that much we know.

Aaron

00:42:30 – 00:42:53

We got a ton of inbound, huge number of calls that we've taken, and we're trying to figure out, like, 1, what do we wanna do? 2, what do other people want us to do? And so I think, you know, originally, we started with this notion of, like, we will we'll come alongside your existing dev ed team and make them more powerful. Turns out nobody really wants that. Nope.

Aaron

00:42:53 – 00:43:10

Nobody wants that. Everybody on these dev ed teams are too busy. They're overworked. They don't have time to do video at all. And if they if they do have time to do video, the thing they want from us is to just, they want us to do video for them as well.

Aaron

00:43:10 – 00:43:19

And so, you know, we, we go in and we're like, hey, we'll help, you know, we'll do consulting and help it make it effective. And people are like, yeah. Can you just make videos for us?

Ian

00:43:19 – 00:43:19

Right.

Aaron

00:43:19 – 00:43:22

It's like, ah, no. Not really.

Ian

00:43:22 – 00:43:23

I mean, we

Aaron

00:43:23 – 00:43:30

don't wanna do that. Yeah. It's a lot of work. We don't wanna do that. I'm not knowledgeable on everything, and I I don't want to pretend to be.

Aaron

00:43:31 – 00:43:52

Yeah. And so I think where we've settled is that type of consulting is not really is not really viable. And so we have stopped. We have stopped offering it, and we've stopped trying to convince people to do it. And one of these things, like I have this blog post brewing in my brain, and the title is you can fight or you can win.

Aaron

00:43:52 – 00:43:54

And it's a great title. It's a great title.

Ian

00:43:54 – 00:43:56

Good title. I love it.

Aaron

00:43:56 – 00:44:16

And the, the notion here is that like certain things exist and are true, and you can try to change the world, or you can just, like, knowing that those things are true, you can try to just win based on the rules of the game. Right? Right. And so all the time, I see people doing stupid things. Sorry.

Aaron

00:44:16 – 00:44:18

Doing things that I think are stupid.

Ian

00:44:18 – 00:44:19

Yeah.

Aaron

00:44:19 – 00:44:30

And it's like, well, I'm you know, this this job interview is requiring me to do a 1 hour take home project. And I'm, you know, I'm standing up for my right of no no free work,

Ian

00:44:31 – 00:44:31

and I'm like,

Aaron

00:44:31 – 00:44:45

that's great. Do you want the job? Like, I you can change the world. I am happy for you to try to to champion this banner of no free work. You can do that, or you can just do the freaking project and try to get the job.

Aaron

00:44:46 – 00:44:58

And so, you know, you can fight the system or you can just win. And I Right. Oftentimes, I prefer to just win. Sometimes you have to fight because the system is truly broken, but oftentimes, it's just like, I don't care. I don't care enough.

Aaron

00:44:58 – 00:45:10

I wanna win, and I wanna go home. So as we're talking to all these people, it's like, no. What we're offering is really valuable, and they're like, yeah. We don't want it. And I've I've realized that I don't wanna fight that fight.

Aaron

00:45:10 – 00:45:23

I don't want to be the person that changes DevRel in I don't care. I simply don't care enough to, like, change it. No. The industry of the United Way. The industry.

Aaron

00:45:23 – 00:45:25

Like, I don't have enough energy. And so

Ian

00:45:25 – 00:45:43

There are also some weird incentives for people with actually people on video already. Like, those people are not necessarily inclined to come out to you and say, help us because, like, Totally. It's me saying I'm terrible at this job. Right. Like, I need you guys to spend more money to help me get better at this job.

Aaron

00:45:43 – 00:45:43

Yeah. Because I

Ian

00:45:43 – 00:45:53

I mean, whatever. Different levels of management might be aware of that and be like, yes. Let's help you. Other people might not wanna go to their management and ask for that. So, yeah, there are some weird stuff like that too.

Aaron

00:45:53 – 00:46:21

Yeah. And so instead of fighting the system, we've just decided we want to win, and so we're not gonna offer that. We're not gonna try to convince people that this is a good idea and that we can actually help you. And so I think our offering now has morphed into, we will do a bespoke course for you, and that can be this type of, like, sponsorship model that we've talked about. That can also be, you tell us what kind of course you want, and we will go out and find the talent.

Aaron

00:46:21 – 00:46:33

We will Mhmm. We will help with the content outline, the structure, the recording Yeah. The the packaging, the producing, everything, we will help you do that. Like, we will actually we will do that on your behalf.

Ian

00:46:34 – 00:46:34

You're right.

Aaron

00:46:34 – 00:46:36

It's gonna cost a lot of money, but you're gonna end up with

Ian

00:46:36 – 00:46:38

this We're gonna add some zeros there. I love it.

Aaron

00:46:38 – 00:47:02

Yeah. We're gonna we're gonna add 2 zeros, and you're gonna end up you're gonna end up with this beautifully produced course that you own forever. And the, you know, the the talent gets paid a certain amount, and they relinquish their rights. And then the company gets to own this course forever. And the things that you don't have to do as a company is find the person who's gonna be good on camera, make them produce it.

Aaron

00:47:02 – 00:47:13

Because, like, if, you know, let's get Jeffrey Way on the horn. If you ever have someone produce a course, you know what happens? They're late. They miss their deadlines every single time. You you email them, and they're like, oh, no.

Aaron

00:47:13 – 00:47:21

I just got it. You know, I'm I'm working on it. You're like, you're not working on it. And then we will do, like, the editing and the polishing and the fine tuning and everything like that. Yep.

Aaron

00:47:21 – 00:47:38

So that's our that's our contact us for pricing model. And the other thing, the down market model is just you sponsor our YouTube channel. And so if you want, if you want to get out in front of other developers, great. We have a developer YouTube channel. You can pay us US dollars, and we will say your name.

Aaron

00:47:38 – 00:47:39

It's like

Ian

00:47:39 – 00:47:39

Yeah.

Aaron

00:47:39 – 00:47:41

Oh, that's been done before. That's easy.

Ian

00:47:41 – 00:47:43

That's great. Everybody gets that. Yeah.

Aaron

00:47:44 – 00:47:45

Yeah. So I

Ian

00:47:45 – 00:47:59

definitely think in terms of getting money out of the pockets, like, I like both these, because obviously the just influencer advertising. Great. Got that. Everybody knows that. And the other one is, like, yeah, the other thing before of, like, we're trying to make you into this ongoing forever.

Ian

00:47:59 – 00:48:10

You're gonna have this video production. Like, either they don't have that ability. They don't want that ability. It is a very hard thing to pull off over a long period of time. Whereas, like, yeah, we're gonna go in.

Ian

00:48:10 – 00:48:29

You're gonna spend a lot of money now, but we're gonna build this chunky piece of content that then you can use for years. And you can have newsletter sign ups, and you can have conversion things, and you can have landing pages that get people's contact detail or whatever. Like, people already know how to use that too. It's like you probably already have an ebook that you do this with. Now do it with our video course instead and, like, all that kind of stuff.

Ian

00:48:29 – 00:48:31

So I like that.

Aaron

00:48:31 – 00:48:50

So if you're interested, not not you specifically, you know, although you specifically. If if one if one is interested, do reach out, to aaron@tryhardstudios.com. We, this is gonna blow your mind. We probably won't be able to start on anything new until around September September or October. Yeah.

Aaron

00:48:50 – 00:48:53

So Crazy. So bad. Yeah.

Ian

00:48:53 – 00:48:59

So so what's in the queue here? Is it a couple courses? You think that's the main thing, or you have other stuff in the queue too?

Aaron

00:48:59 – 00:49:12

Yeah. We've got, this SQLite course we're working on followed quickly by a second, second similar course. Mhmm. You know, this is this is listeners only too. It's gonna be Postgres, obviously.

Ian

00:49:12 – 00:49:13

Like, we're

Aaron

00:49:13 – 00:49:21

doing we're doing Postgres next. I love it. Duh. Duh. Then we are also working on this model that I just described.

Aaron

00:49:21 – 00:49:50

We're working on this model for a company. So someone has already someone has already agreed in principle to this idea of, we'll give you a chunk of money, and I want you to throw over the wall a series of videos and, like, go figure it out. And this company has said that the content can be anything too. Like, go find a good, talented, educator and whatever they wanna teach, they can teach and it will be good for our brand. And they're gonna, you know, they're gonna host it on their site.

Aaron

00:49:50 – 00:50:27

So, like, I my face won't be on it at all, but, you know, we'll, you know, we'll throw our marketing weight behind it. And so we've got 2 courses plus a outsourced course, plus we're we're ramping up our, production of, the developer YouTube channel. So it is I'll I'll say for shorthand my YouTube channel, but it is a a company owned property now. So Steve and I will work on that together. But ramping up videos for my YouTube channel, and then where we can, you know, if there's time to slot anything in, it will be screencasting relaunch.

Aaron

00:50:27 – 00:50:30

That was that was originally gonna be first. Like, we were gonna Right.

Ian

00:50:30 – 00:50:30

I remember

Aaron

00:50:30 – 00:50:31

you saying

Ian

00:50:31 – 00:50:31

that. Yeah.

Aaron

00:50:31 – 00:50:47

Yeah. And then, you know, this money came in, and, yeah, it was like the money. We can put ourselves on the back burner and focus on this for now. And so that that will always be there, and that's not like a that's not a pressing need. It still makes sales, and it's still high quality content.

Aaron

00:50:48 – 00:50:53

But the empire expansion is gonna wait probably for mid to late summer on on that one.

Ian

00:50:53 – 00:51:01

Yep. Very cool. A lot to go. This is like the theme of the show is the, like, you can, what was your what was your what was your little tagline there of your blog post?

Aaron

00:51:02 – 00:51:03

Oh, you can fight or you can win?

Ian

00:51:03 – 00:51:13

Yeah. You can fight or you can win. Like that's kind of the same thought, right? Like I could fight and like go through all this headache or I can just win and make more money and Yep. Sell the product people want.

Aaron

00:51:13 – 00:51:15

Isn't that a great blog post title?

Ian

00:51:15 – 00:51:18

That is a great you got you got to do that so I can reference

Aaron

00:51:18 – 00:51:27

it all the time. Because I said it on on air. That's how copyright works, so it's copy right now. So no no listeners steal that. But do tell me if you like the idea because that will make me write it.

Aaron

00:51:27 – 00:51:29

So yeah. Yes.

Ian

00:51:29 – 00:51:31

Get him to write it. Tweet at him.

Aaron

00:51:31 – 00:51:38

Yeah. Tell me. I still need to write the galaxy quadrant theory. I still need to write that out more properly. That's a great that's a great tagline.

Ian

00:51:38 – 00:51:39

Lots of

Aaron

00:51:39 – 00:51:43

We love a galaxy quadrant theory. We love a theory. We'll have a name frame, honestly.

Ian

00:51:43 – 00:51:44

Anything you can name is just

Aaron

00:51:44 – 00:51:45

Anything you can name.

Ian

00:51:46 – 00:51:49

You have the name first, and then you figure out what that means.

Aaron

00:51:49 – 00:51:52

The content behind it. Yeah. Yeah.

Ian

00:51:53 – 00:51:58

Oh, man. Alright. We got a couple of things. Alright. Edge is dead, but it was never alive.

Ian

00:51:58 – 00:52:06

I I saw something about this, but I I I don't understand Vercel and even what they do, so you're gonna have to give me the, like, 2¢ version.

Aaron

00:52:07 – 00:52:22

Understand Vercel is Vercel. They have they have no idea what they do. So sitting sitting on our sitting on our PHP throne overlooking overlooking the vast wastelands of the rest of the developer ecosystem is a great place to be. It's just, you know

Ian

00:52:23 – 00:52:24

Like, Thanos out there.

Aaron

00:52:24 – 00:52:40

Right. I just love being right, and turns out turns out we were right again. So, you know, Vercel has been doing this thing. Never doubt it. Vercel has been pushing this thing for a long time, and their great advantage turns out to be their Achilles heel also.

Aaron

00:52:40 – 00:53:01

They're great at marketing. They're great at hype. They're great at, like, naming things and coining phrases and, like, pushing stuff out there to their to their credit. They did backtrack on this one particular thing when they found out it was technically infeasible, which we all knew it was going to be. So the the edge thing that they've been pushing is like, hey.

Aaron

00:53:01 – 00:53:11

You should put your app closer to your users. And you look at that and you're like, well, it's a pretty good idea. That sounds really fast. Sure. Well, you know what?

Aaron

00:53:11 – 00:53:14

Your data is gonna be far away from your app at that point.

Ian

00:53:14 – 00:53:15

Our parts look good.

Aaron

00:53:16 – 00:53:31

Yeah. And so they tried to push this, like, push your app to the edge. So the edge means all things to all people. And one one thing it means is a physical location. And I think the physical location is good for a lot of things.

Aaron

00:53:31 – 00:53:53

For CDNs, the edge is great For terminating expensive connections and then using a a a fat backhaul or something, that's great. That sounds awesome. For putting your actual app out there, that's insane. But the edge also means, like, a runtime, and it's not it's like a it's like a watered down Node JS. It's like a v eight runtime or something like that.

Aaron

00:53:53 – 00:54:20

And so you you're working with this nerfed runtime, and you're close to your users, but you're still so far away from your data. And so you're making these round trips behind the scenes, but, like, your user doesn't know that it's behind the scenes. It just still feels slow. And so Vercel recently came that came out and was like, hey, That thing that we've been pushing, our bad. Like, we were wrong about that.

Aaron

00:54:20 – 00:54:29

So we're gonna roll that back, and you'll just go back to Node. Js and keep your app close to your database. I'm like, what is happening?

Ian

00:54:29 – 00:54:33

So they straight, like, canceled the product, or they're just, like,

Aaron

00:54:33 – 00:54:47

recommending a different path to cancel the product because they still talk about it in terms of, like, ridiculous things. Like, you can you can quickly stream back a shell of the application while the rest of the app. And I'm like, why are you doing

Ian

00:54:47 – 00:54:52

all that stuff. It's like No. For, like, 3 milliseconds saving. No. Maybe there's the

Aaron

00:54:52 – 00:54:58

occasional database queries, and you'll get you'll get 400 milliseconds back. Don't worry about the 3 milliseconds.

Ian

00:54:59 – 00:55:06

Maybe there's, like, logging things that you can do or, like, some type of just logic processing that could happen on the edge. Like there are use cases.

Aaron

00:55:06 – 00:55:08

Edge middleware is interesting

Ian

00:55:08 – 00:55:20

things, right? Yeah. There's stuff you could do. But like, if you have stuff that has a database, then yeah, I mean, don't I mean, if you're going to do it, see the CloudFlare obviously has huge edge workers and all that stuff.

Aaron

00:55:20 – 00:55:22

I knew you were gonna sneak it in. I knew you were

Ian

00:55:22 – 00:55:41

gonna talk to the book. Yeah. D one part of their thing is that they'll replicate the database close to the users. So, like, if you, if like many of us, like if all your users are in the United States and 20% are in the UK and 10% are in Australia, like they're just gonna replicate it to those places and then it's still fast and then great. Fine.

Ian

00:55:41 – 00:55:44

But like, yeah, if you're just trying to have one database in New York and like

Aaron

00:55:45 – 00:55:45

Yeah. If your database

Ian

00:55:45 – 00:55:47

is locations, like is

Aaron

00:55:47 – 00:55:54

in US east 2 and your your app is running in Australia, well, you still gotta go all the way back to US east 2 to get the data.

Ian

00:55:54 – 00:55:56

The speed of light is a bummer.

Aaron

00:55:56 – 00:56:06

So I don't think they canceled the products, like, the the offering. They're just saying don't use it in this way. So they're still talking about, you know, partial prerendering or whatever, streaming, and whatever. I don't know. I don't care.

Aaron

00:56:06 – 00:56:25

And, you know, edge middleware, which I think is interesting. You know, you can do stuff as the request comes in super fast or super close to the user. That's interesting. But, yeah, Lee Lee Rob came out and was like, hey. We're backtracking, and people people just kinda, like, oh, it didn't seem to go super great.

Ian

00:56:25 – 00:56:36

Perfect microcosm of all, like, JavaScript on the server, everything to me. Like, the whole thing. It never makes any sense. It's always like, it's just the future of everything and blah blah blah. It's gonna be great.

Ian

00:56:36 – 00:57:07

And then, like, it's really not that great. And, like, people are building stuff around it, but, like, doesn't seem any better than you could have just done it in Ruby or PHP and and then, like, gotten there faster and better and safer and all that stuff. So I don't know, especially for like, I mostly hate it when I see the bootstrappers get sucked in on it because I'm like, like, oh man, like you're just getting killed here. Like you could just start in the air box so much easier without like this like multi tier thing and all this stuff you gotta keep in your head and all these layers and services and all this stuff.

Aaron

00:57:07 – 00:57:12

The SAS services you're buying to rent a cron job. You're like, guys.

Ian

00:57:13 – 00:57:23

No. And then you're on like a b a nonprofitable VC dot com. At least like be on CloudFlare, if you're gonna do like a edge worker thing, because like they're not going anywhere. It's a public profitable. I'm great.

Ian

00:57:23 – 00:57:36

Like, like you're, you're doing all this stuff and like the thing you're on might just be out of business next week. Cause they have 400 designers, but like, I don't think, you know, eventually, the money's gonna run out. Like, the money has to run out at some point.

Aaron

00:57:36 – 00:57:39

The free the free plan might just go away. That's possible.

Ian

00:57:39 – 00:57:42

Might go away. Yes. So I don't know.

Aaron

00:57:42 – 00:57:42

Yeah.

Ian

00:57:42 – 00:57:44

Well If you're I mean,

Aaron

00:57:44 – 00:57:46

you can you can fight or you can win. This is not my

Ian

00:57:46 – 00:57:47

fight fight.

Aaron

00:57:47 – 00:57:49

It sure is fun to observe from the outside.

Ian

00:57:49 – 00:57:52

Whole theme. It's a theme of the episode.

Aaron

00:57:53 – 00:58:00

So the edge is dead. Long live the edge, but not in the way that you used to use it.

Ian

00:58:00 – 00:58:19

I mean, you can make these centralized apps so fast now. It's like computers are so fast. It's just like, yeah, I mean, if you're under a 100 milliseconds, it's basically imperceptible and especially with like live wire and, you know, Ruby has its variations of Livewire type things. It's like, you could just make it feel instantaneous. So, like Yep.

Ian

00:58:19 – 00:58:30

You don't need to jump through all these scoops. Or even if you do, like, your regular view, you wanna do a view front end with a regular back end, fine. Like but, yeah, you don't have to go crazy.

Aaron

00:58:30 – 00:58:32

You don't have to go crazy.

Ian

00:58:32 – 00:58:33

Speaking of crazy

Aaron

00:58:33 – 00:58:34

Tell me.

Ian

00:58:34 – 00:58:36

You posted a crazy ass tweet.

Aaron

00:58:36 – 00:58:37

Crazy.

Ian

00:58:37 – 00:58:51

Crazy that you and your wife have the full location sharing 247 247, baby. Big brother satellites around the earth tracking you. I don't know what's the I'm

Aaron

00:58:51 – 00:59:00

always I'm always asking big I'm asking big brother. I'm like, big brother, where's Jennifer right now? Is she close to home? And the brother's like, yeah, she's close. You gotta start cleaning everything up.

Aaron

00:59:00 – 00:59:01

And I'm like, shoot.

Ian

00:59:01 – 00:59:08

There used to be whole the movies about this. I'm like, people terrified by this, and people are opting into this life. I don't know.

Aaron

00:59:08 – 00:59:14

I know. We didn't it wasn't we didn't go down with a scream. It was just a convenience. It was like, yeah. That seems great.

Aaron

00:59:14 – 00:59:17

I'll turn that on. I didn't have to be coerced at all.

Ian

00:59:17 – 00:59:18

Every second. So you're

Aaron

00:59:18 – 00:59:20

you're anti. You're you're you're against.

Ian

00:59:20 – 00:59:27

Oh, well, I'm way against. Woah. Maybe maybe I'm too old school. Maybe it's the gray coming in here. But, like Yeah.

Ian

00:59:27 – 00:59:40

It's not even the, like I mean, yes. It's for your privacy, but it's own it's more just like it just feels it just feels like a lot. Like, if I was like, if, like, my wife's someone

Aaron

00:59:40 – 00:59:41

Inconclusive. Yeah. Tell me more.

Ian

00:59:41 – 00:59:47

Calling I'm calling that place. I'm like, is is Jamie there? Is Jamie there? I'm calling around. Is Jamie there?

Ian

00:59:47 – 00:59:52

People would be like, your husband You're an insane person. Right. You're gonna say person. Why do you need

Aaron

00:59:52 – 00:59:52

to know where

Ian

00:59:52 – 00:59:53

your wife is?

Aaron

00:59:53 – 00:59:54

Same page. Same page you are.

Ian

00:59:54 – 01:00:03

The day. Why are you tracking her every movement? And, like, so I it's the same thing, but I don't have to call anybody, but, like, it's like, where is she? Oh, I could just look it up. Or where am I?

Ian

01:00:03 – 01:00:05

Like, I don't know. I feel like there's, like, a I

Aaron

01:00:05 – 01:00:09

don't know where I am. Level there. 24 7. So that does I'm not gaining anything that way.

Ian

01:00:09 – 01:00:10

Where am I?

Aaron

01:00:10 – 01:00:14

So let's look up let's look up Jennifer right now and find out where she is.

Ian

01:00:14 – 01:00:14

Oh boy.

Aaron

01:00:14 – 01:00:20

Oh boy. Crazy. Actually, do you have my dad's location on? He's at home. Jennifer Jennifer's at home.

Aaron

01:00:20 – 01:00:25

So, like, I know I don't have to call anybody. I don't have to call the restaurant and be like, hey. Is Jennifer there? I just know she's at home.

Ian

01:00:25 – 01:00:26

Seems too. Like, a

Aaron

01:00:26 – 01:00:30

little stuff. No. No? This is no. So here's here's the take.

Aaron

01:00:31 – 01:00:34

I don't I rarely ever check it.

Ian

01:00:35 – 01:00:35

Like Of course.

Aaron

01:00:35 – 01:00:39

We're talking, like, once a week. Mhmm.

Ian

01:00:39 – 01:00:40

I found that rare. Oh, yeah.

Aaron

01:00:41 – 01:00:52

That's pretty rare. You're you're saying I'm, you know, I'm check I'm looking at it 247. That's how many second how many seconds are in a week and compare that to 1. 86,000, something like that. So one one out of 86,000.

Aaron

01:00:52 – 01:01:00

That's pretty rare. Mhmm. So rarely ever check it. Right now, I'm not going to church because the babe the little babies are too young. Right?

Aaron

01:01:00 – 01:01:08

So we can't go put them in the childcare. We didn't it's still flu season or whatever. Pediatricians, like, don't do it. So Yeah. So I'm staying home Sunday morning with the little babies.

Aaron

01:01:08 – 01:01:15

She's taking the big kids to church. She texts she still texts me on the way home from church. Hey. We're leaving. I'm going to get the kids right now.

Aaron

01:01:15 – 01:01:19

So it's not like it's not like I'm constantly checking. Has she left church? Has she she's text me.

Ian

01:01:19 – 01:01:20

Right.

Aaron

01:01:20 – 01:01:32

Hey. On her way home. And I'm like, great. On our way home doesn't always mean on our way home when you have kids. Sometimes on our way home means I'm about to walk to the car and, you know, try to convince a child to put their seat belt on.

Ian

01:01:32 – 01:01:35

We're gonna make 3 stops on the way because you gotta stop and get whatever.

Aaron

01:01:35 – 01:01:46

Yeah. Sunday Sunday early afternoon, I'm in charge of making lunch by the time the the big kids get home. Mhmm. It's helpful to know how many minutes do I have left.

Ian

01:01:46 – 01:01:50

Right? Like Crazy. This is not crazy. Why is this crazy? This is total lunacy.

Aaron

01:01:50 – 01:01:52

No. This is great.

Ian

01:01:52 – 01:01:53

This is wonderful.

Aaron

01:01:53 – 01:02:10

So I'm like, you know, I'm like putting the little the little babies down to sleep. I'm looking, and I'm like, oh, she's actually moving. I I gotta go out and make some grilled cheese or something. And so it's like, that's super helpful. On the flip side, you know, you know, we we're alternating we're alternating going to bible study once a week.

Aaron

01:02:10 – 01:02:18

We don't only just go to church and bible study, but we do go to those things. So we're alternating. So Wednesday nights, one of us will go and one of us will stay home. Right? Mhmm.

Aaron

01:02:18 – 01:02:27

I think that she just wants to know that I'm not dead. I think that's her main, like it's not so much, like, how many minutes before he gets home.

Ian

01:02:27 – 01:02:28

It's Yeah.

Aaron

01:02:28 – 01:02:51

Is he dead in a ditch on the side of the road? I'm like, no. He's moving, or he's still, you know, he's still at Alex's house, and so it's fine. The the the thing that the 2 the 2 takes that came out from this tweet, great tweet, by the way, thought, like, this is this is gonna this is gonna do numbeys, and it sure did. The the 2 takes were one was big tech is tracking you if you turn this on.

Aaron

01:02:51 – 01:02:52

And I'm like, my brother I

Ian

01:02:52 – 01:02:53

don't really care about that.

Aaron

01:02:53 – 01:03:00

Tech is always tracking you. That doesn't bother me. That's good. I'm carrying this GPS device in my pocket with me wherever I go. Right.

Aaron

01:03:00 – 01:03:18

So that doesn't move me. I'm unmoved by that. The other take is I trust my wife, and I'm like, what? Who was who was talking about trust at all? I'm saying it's easier to coordinate when you have kids, when you have this thing on, And people are like, wow.

Aaron

01:03:18 – 01:03:30

You know, even even couples need privacy. And I'm like, sure. That's fine. I I agree. But, like, my location is is not that big of a deal for her my wife to know.

Ian

01:03:30 – 01:03:31

I'm like, come

Aaron

01:03:31 – 01:03:32

on, man. So I

Ian

01:03:32 – 01:03:33

guess I would

Aaron

01:03:33 – 01:03:34

say I'm unmoved.

Ian

01:03:34 – 01:03:53

So, my take is a little subtler, and I'm not even sure I could totally express it, but it's definitely not like, oh, you don't trust your wife or she doesn't trust like, that just inherently means that. Like, that's definitely not my take. I do think you're in a little bit of a strange bubble right now where it's a little less real because, like, you have these tons of kids, and they're all very small.

Aaron

01:03:53 – 01:03:54

So many.

Ian

01:03:54 – 01:04:00

You guys are not going anywhere. Like Yeah. Basically, like, right, you're at home. Like We're home. We're somewhere.

Ian

01:04:00 – 01:04:07

Yeah. Home and this works condo. And, like, okay. You're, like, the condo. The 2 places you go a week.

Ian

01:04:07 – 01:04:15

Right? Like, you don't have, like, a budget spot. You're not all over the place. Right? But, like, but someday, you'll be more all over the place.

Ian

01:04:15 – 01:04:22

And to me, then it gets it's just a little on the whoops. On one side, you could say, well, then it's even more valuable because, like, we're

Aaron

01:04:22 – 01:04:24

Some all over the place more. Yeah.

Ian

01:04:24 – 01:04:26

On the other side, they're popping in just a lay down.

Aaron

01:04:26 – 01:04:28

I'm making deals. Who knows where I am?

Ian

01:04:29 – 01:04:38

Brother, I'm just popping in on you any second no matter what you're doing. How how'd you like that place you had dinner that I haven't even mentioned to you yet? Like, oh, this look, it's weird.

Aaron

01:04:38 – 01:04:39

That's a

Ian

01:04:39 – 01:04:39

little weird.

Aaron

01:04:39 – 01:04:58

Never that just I'm just dumbfounded that that situation could ever even happen. The fact that I could the fact that I could go to a dinner and not tell her, like, beforehand, hey. I'm going to a dinner at this place with this person. That just blows my mind if, like, that would never happen.

Ian

01:04:58 – 01:05:12

Well, I mean, I bet you it's already happened. Like, if you go to, you know, a conference and, like, hey. Afterwards, we're, like, everybody's going over here for a drink or dinner or whatever. Like, you know, it's, like, always gonna be a 100% of the time. Like, here's where I am now.

Ian

01:05:12 – 01:05:14

Here's where I am now. Here's where I am now. Like No.

Aaron

01:05:14 – 01:05:16

That's what the location is for.

Ian

01:05:16 – 01:05:23

Well, that's what I'm saying. So, like, she'll be like, hey. How was that dinner? Or you to her or whatever. Like, I I think that I'm applying this both directions.

Ian

01:05:23 – 01:05:24

Like, I

Aaron

01:05:24 – 01:05:29

think bother me. I'm 0% bothered if she's like, hey. How is Chili's to go? Feel for it. I'm like, that's great.

Aaron

01:05:29 – 01:05:31

Chili's to go was as good as it always is.

Ian

01:05:32 – 01:05:41

Oh, I'll be interested for the feedback. I mean, I guess you already have the feedback. I haven't read the feedback to your tweet, so we'll see what our listeners think about this. I'm a little bit curious. But

Aaron

01:05:41 – 01:05:55

one of the one of the most wild responses was, like, you're you're not keeping it interesting. She's gonna lose interest. Men are logical. Women are emotional, and you need to keep her on her toes. And I'm like, dude,

Ian

01:05:55 – 01:05:59

I don't know what you're talking about. You're like, I got 4 kids under 3.

Aaron

01:05:59 – 01:06:05

I mean, like 4 kids. We've been married 10 years. Like, I think I think we're gonna be okay. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Aaron

01:06:05 – 01:06:12

The final the final great use case for this is always texture when I'm leaving the work condo. So so if people are like, oh, I I you know, I oh, I you know, I like texting my wife. I'm like, that option is still available to you. You can still do that. I haven't taken that away from you.

Aaron

01:06:18 – 01:06:34

So I'll text her when I'm leaving. I'm like, hey. I'm on my way. When I turn the corner onto our street, there's this big bay window in the front of our rental house. The kids are waiting in the bay window, and I honk and they wave and I wave and I honk and I flash my lights.

Aaron

01:06:34 – 01:06:41

And it's like, yeah. That's super easy to coordinate. Like, oh, look. Alright. He's he's, you know, he's on our street.

Aaron

01:06:41 – 01:06:47

Let's hey. Dad's home, and it's fun. And, like, that's great. I love that. There's nothing wrong with that.

Aaron

01:06:47 – 01:06:51

There's there's that is that is not a trust issue at all. That is that is a delight.

Ian

01:06:52 – 01:07:12

Yeah. To me, it's not exactly a trust issue. I wish I had I'd spent a little more time trying to articulate this in my head because it's not exactly a trust issue. It's just more of like a, it could be too many nineties movies in my head, but it's more of like a, a creepiness, a like big brother constantly watching you. Not even for nefarious purposes.

Ian

01:07:12 – 01:07:18

Like not even because I don't trust you. Not even for anything like that. That. Just but it's just always there. It's always in the back of your mind.

Ian

01:07:18 – 01:07:21

Somebody is literally tracking me right now all

Aaron

01:07:21 – 01:07:24

the time. Like You forget about it immediately.

Ian

01:07:24 – 01:07:25

No. It's a little weird.

Aaron

01:07:26 – 01:07:34

No. Cool. Share share your location with me, and we'll see how it goes. We'll just we'll do a we'll do a little sample run. It'll be fine.

Aaron

01:07:34 – 01:07:35

Yeah. Yeah.

Ian

01:07:36 – 01:07:37

It's not a lot of fun talking about

Aaron

01:07:37 – 01:07:40

your Rivian. What are you what are you up to? You wanna talk for a little bit? Yeah.

Ian

01:07:41 – 01:07:46

How's your tacos? Is it good there? How's your, your, Chipotle?

Aaron

01:07:47 – 01:07:59

Chipotle. Insane. I heard speaking of Chipotle, I heard that Chipotle has done 6 price increases since the pandemic. 6.

Ian

01:07:59 – 01:08:02

I guess there are a lot of food costs going up. You know?

Aaron

01:08:02 – 01:08:03

That's crazy.

Ian

01:08:03 – 01:08:17

I feel like, though, for me, what I noticed the most is, like, I know people, the food costs, whatever. And I got a lot of kids, so I do get that part. But to me, the biggest increase in my expenditure of food, and I avoid deliveries for years.

Aaron

01:08:17 – 01:08:18

Gotta be. Got

Ian

01:08:18 – 01:08:24

it. Like, I avoided DoorDash. I avoided it. I was like, I don't wanna get in the mix on this. It's gonna be a headache.

Ian

01:08:24 – 01:08:27

It's gonna be expensive. I don't wanna deal with it.

Aaron

01:08:27 – 01:08:29

$30 to get a bowl delivered to your house.

Ian

01:08:30 – 01:08:35

Freaking insane. Like, anytime I order anything. $30. I wish I knew it was there. It's all $200.

Ian

01:08:35 – 01:08:41

Like, every time we get into $200. Because, like, because all my kids eat, like, adult. I guess. Yeah.

Aaron

01:08:41 – 01:08:41

Yeah. Yeah.

Ian

01:08:41 – 01:08:47

It's 5 adult meals. And then, you know, like, I'm tipping the guy and the fees and the thing and, like

Aaron

01:08:47 – 01:08:55

You've got the Uber fee. You've got the sometimes the restaurant fee, the tax, and, like Yeah. The tip. It's insane.

Ian

01:08:55 – 01:09:03

Like, it's literally $180, $160 like, and I'm like, and then it's like, we're tired and we don't wanna go anywhere

Aaron

01:09:03 – 01:09:05

and drag everybody there. On hold.

Ian

01:09:05 – 01:09:06

You gotta make more

Aaron

01:09:06 – 01:09:08

money to afford the DoorDash. Jeez.

Ian

01:09:09 – 01:09:20

Unbelievable. And, you know, it's annoying that guy, founder of DoorDash. He often will, play poker on one of these poker streams. And so once in a while, I catch him on there. I'm like, this guy just there playing poker with

Aaron

01:09:20 – 01:09:20

my money.

Ian

01:09:21 – 01:09:26

Dang money. Exactly. He's in this huge game with $1,000,000 in front of him with my money.

Aaron

01:09:27 – 01:09:30

Who's got land? Those chips have landsmen written all over them.

Ian

01:09:30 – 01:09:39

Yeah. But, yeah, the DoorDash. It's like, okay. Like, yeah, our costs went up 25% on this stuff, and that's a lot. But then the DoorDash fees and everything, it's double with the DoorDash fee.

Aaron

01:09:39 – 01:09:40

Like Yeah.

Ian

01:09:41 – 01:09:42

So annoying.

Aaron

01:09:42 – 01:09:46

But Man, I almost feel bad for you that your food delivery has gotten expensive.

Ian

01:09:46 – 01:09:48

Yeah. Almost. Almost.

Aaron

01:09:48 – 01:09:49

Almost. Yeah.

Ian

01:09:49 – 01:09:57

My wife hates it. She is like, don't get DoorDash. We'll go pick it up or whatever. Like, sometimes you just gotta do it. It's like, whatever.

Ian

01:09:57 – 01:10:02

It's late. We're tired. Everybody's, like, done. Like, let's just get some food over here.

Aaron

01:10:02 – 01:10:13

You know? I gotta say, I think, I think the going to pick it up is the real dad hack, if I'm gonna be honest. Mhmm. I love How do I do it? I love going to pick up food because Get out of

Ian

01:10:13 – 01:10:14

the house for a few minutes.

Aaron

01:10:14 – 01:10:15

Gonna get out of

Ian

01:10:15 – 01:10:16

the house.

Aaron

01:10:16 – 01:10:19

Gonna listen to, like, 8 minutes of a podcast. I love that.

Ian

01:10:19 – 01:10:21

8 minutes. Yeah.

Aaron

01:10:21 – 01:10:25

Maybe. Yep. I'm gonna go to the restaurant and get a little margarita while I wait.

Ian

01:10:25 – 01:10:27

Oh, a little pregame. Yeah. Go a little early. Yep.

Aaron

01:10:27 – 01:10:31

Is is the food not ready? Oh, what a shame. That's too bad.

Ian

01:10:31 – 01:10:32

I'll just sit right here.

Aaron

01:10:32 – 01:10:43

Can I just sit at the bar? Is that okay? Wow. So I don't you know, I really don't mind picking up food. I I guess I have what's called a servant's heart that I like to go out and pick up the food.

Aaron

01:10:43 – 01:10:44

Yeah. That's what it is.

Ian

01:10:44 – 01:10:51

I got it. I I got to bring that. I I we used to do that. It's been crazy. I gotta put that back into the into the fold, I think.

Ian

01:10:51 – 01:11:00

So, like, go pick it up. Yeah. Maybe pregame a little if you get there early, but either way, you get that 8 minutes of audio book each Oh, that's great. Or whatever.

Aaron

01:11:00 – 01:11:00

That's great.

Ian

01:11:01 – 01:11:06

Just a little something to reset you. So, yeah, it's probably it's probably true.

Aaron

01:11:06 – 01:11:09

Plus you come home and you're the hero. Like, oh, thanks

Ian

01:11:09 – 01:11:10

for getting food, baby.

Aaron

01:11:10 – 01:11:14

You're like, oh, you're welcome. It's I did it all for you. It's great. So

Ian

01:11:15 – 01:11:34

It is annoying the restaurants that don't change the prices when you do pick up. Like some of them just leave the, the, you know, cause all the restaurants are also artificially increasing the price. Like the price is always like 30% more to cover the DoorDash is cut. So then if you just like were to call them and order it and it's like, alright, but if I'm just doing it through here, I don't know. Maybe DoorDash still charges them.

Ian

01:11:34 – 01:11:37

I guess maybe they do some, but some restaurants do change the price.

Aaron

01:11:38 – 01:11:38

So we, you

Ian

01:11:38 – 01:11:39

know, that's true. We

Aaron

01:11:39 – 01:11:44

go direct to restaurant when we do pick up. We use their online ordering system.

Ian

01:11:44 – 01:11:58

Nowadays, most of them do have it since, like, post COVID, like, a lot more restaurants do have their own at least, so you can do that fairly reliably, but I don't know. Tough times, man. Yeah, man. Alright. Let's wrap it up there.

Ian

01:11:58 – 01:12:07

I think that's a good good spot. So thanks everybody. Check us out. Mostly technical.com. Mostly tech pod on Twitter.

Ian

01:12:07 – 01:12:21

We got a lot of feedback things, so definitely hit us up there. And, mostly technical podcast atgmail.com. If you want to write in thanks, to Lara cast and button down, and we will, see you next week. Thanks.

Aaron

01:12:21 – 01:12:21

See you.

Fight or Win

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