From Layoff to Leap of Faith: The Try Hard Studios Story

May 21, 2025

When an unexpected layoff hit Aaron Francis, he didn't just bounce back - he launched forward. Turning adversity into opportunity, Aaron partnered with his good friend Steve to build Try Hard Studios, a developer content company that quickly became a smashing success in the tech education space. Join us for this inspiring conversation as Aaron shares his journey where he reveals some of the challenges he encountered, the pivotal early decisions that set Try Hard Studios apart, and the strategies that contributed to its success. Whether you're facing career uncertainty, dreaming of entrepreneurship, or simply love stories of resilience and reinvention, Aaron's candid insights about transforming a layoff into a launchpad will leave you motivated to pursue dreams of your own.
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Transcript

Ian
00:00:00 – 00:00:06
Hey. Welcome back, everybody. This is Ian. And joining me today, I have Aaron Francis. Aaron's from TryHard Studios.
Ian
00:00:06 – 00:00:09
Aaron, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your story?
Aaron Francis
00:00:10 – 00:00:34
Yeah. Thanks for having me. First of all, like you said, I'm from a company called TryHard Studios, which is a company that me and my friend Steve founded just a little bit over a year ago now. So been doing this out on our own thing for a year, and we'll probably dive into it. But before that, I was working at a database startup, and then they laid off half the company.
Aaron Francis
00:00:34 – 00:01:01
And I was part of that layoff, and so it was super stressful. My wife and I had, at that time, we have twins, and so we had twins that were two and a half years old. And at the time I got laid off, we had actually just had our second set of twins. So we had twins that were maybe a month or two old. So we had two two month olds and two two year olds, and I was on paternity leave and I got laid off.
Aaron Francis
00:01:01 – 00:01:16
So pretty stressful, but, you know, we made it out the other side. So, yeah, I live here in Texas, have four kids under four, and just trying to keep everything just trying to keep everything moving, which is difficult sometimes.
Ian
00:01:16 – 00:01:35
I feel like the fact that we're even here having this conversation right now is insane. Just being a father of four and feeling like my kids have some generous space between them and hearing that you're a father of two sets of twins under four is like, how are you even awake right now?
Aaron Francis
00:01:35 – 00:01:57
That's a great question. When everyone was under three, so we had four kids under three years old, that was even harder somehow. And there are pictures of me sleeping at the gym. Like, I would take the older kids to the YMCA, and then instead of working out, I would just sit in a chair and fall asleep. And my sister-in-law actually goes to the same gym, and she took a picture of me and sent it to my wife.
Aaron Francis
00:01:57 – 00:02:03
So, yeah, being awake is is an achievement, and I will take that. Here I am awake and ready to go.
Ian
00:02:03 – 00:02:17
That's incredible. Wow. I I cannot imagine taking paternity leave and then getting that news. And if I recall that you were told, like, a couple days before you're supposed to return to office. Oh, yeah.
Aaron Francis
00:02:17 – 00:02:28
I was supposed to return on a Friday, and I was, like, getting you all geared up mentally. And then on Wednesday, I got the call. It was like, nah. Don't worry about it. I was like, it would actually be great if I could come back.
Ian
00:02:28 – 00:02:30
You're like, I wanna worry about it. I wanna worry about it.
Aaron Francis
00:02:30 – 00:02:34
Yeah. I was I am now, in fact, more worried about it.
Ian
00:02:34 – 00:03:09
Before we go on, let's talk about that a little bit because, you know, business is business. And when you get hired at a company, you have to go in expecting that there's gonna be a time in the future where you may get laid off or, you know, there might be a reorganization or anything like that. So as adults, we get it, but it doesn't hurt any less, especially when you've developed relationships with the people you work with and you enjoy the company you're at and things like that. It's almost like a relationship, like a breakup, you could say. So talk to me about the transition between losing your job, needing to very quickly replace that income Mhmm.
Ian
00:03:09 – 00:03:17
And the emotions that you're dealing with, essentially, just having broken up with a company kind of against your will. How do you deal with something like that?
Aaron Francis
00:03:17 – 00:03:33
Yep. It was very, very tough. And I will I'll say a few a few different angles. So one is when you at least in America, that's all I can speak to. When you're employed in The USA, you have to understand what the deal is.
Aaron Francis
00:03:33 – 00:03:45
The deal is you give them labor, they give you money. That is the extent of the deal. Like, in The US, there's no, hey. We'll give you at least a year of severance and, like, no. No.
Aaron Francis
00:03:45 – 00:04:04
No. No. That's the deal. That's capitalism, baby. And so I knew that going in, and I think everyone, especially at the beginning of their careers, needs to understand that that if the economy goes sideways, if the company starts needing to trim the fat, they would just let you go, and they wouldn't think twice about it.
Aaron Francis
00:04:05 – 00:04:26
There are people at the company who would feel really bad about it. There are your coworkers who will miss you, maybe some managers that can't protect you, but they have to do it. But as a company in general, their job is to make money. And so if you're not helping them meet those goals, they'll let you go. That is like reality.
Aaron Francis
00:04:26 – 00:04:43
It's maybe not ideal. I don't know if it's ideal or not, but that also works the other way where if you find a better job, you can just go take a better job. And that's kinda awesome. Right? And so I remember early on when my wife and I were first married, she wanted to quit her job because she freaking hated it.
Aaron Francis
00:04:43 – 00:05:10
And she was like, oh, I just feel so bad. I don't know how the team will function. And I'm like, that is very kind of you, but you have to understand the moment that the economy stalls, they'll just fire people and they won't feel bad about it at all. You need to be respectful and give your two weeks notice, but don't feel bad about it. And so when I got laid off, it was for some reasons very hurtful, but in in most of the way, it's like, hey.
Aaron Francis
00:05:10 – 00:05:23
Business is gonna business. You know? I knew that that was the deal going into it. If any company tells you that you're a family, they might mean well or they might be manipulative, but either way, they're wrong. I have a family.
Aaron Francis
00:05:23 – 00:05:37
I have friends. I have a community and my job. Some of those people I really adore, but that's not my family. That's the people that employ me. And so I knew what the deal was, and so when I got cut, I was was like, well, I played the game.
Aaron Francis
00:05:37 – 00:06:01
I played the game, and it the cards came up against me this time. That's too bad. On the other side, I don't think from leadership, I don't think it was handled super well, and so that kinda hurt me personally. But the actual getting laid off, it's like, well, that's the rules of the game, buddy. And so that needs to be that needs to be internalized by everyone, especially people at the beginning of the career.
Aaron Francis
00:06:01 – 00:06:17
Like, what are the rules of the game? And if you know what the rules of the game are, you can play the game a little bit better. Right? And so that was the very beginning of that from a meta point of view, like, companies lay people off. That sucks for me.
Aaron Francis
00:06:17 – 00:06:31
Now what? And so the now what was really, kind of a difficult question. I remember that day. I was up here. I have a little office away from the house, and I was up here getting ready to return, getting everything set up and ready to go back to work.
Aaron Francis
00:06:31 – 00:06:51
And so I'm up here preparing for my imminent return on Friday, and then I get laid off. And so I called my wife, and I was like, hey. I don't I don't know what to tell you. I just got laid off. And her response was just super encouraging and supportive and was basically, like, I'm really sorry, and you're gonna be just fine.
Aaron Francis
00:06:51 – 00:07:07
We're gonna be just fine. I believe in you. And it's like, oh, alright. That's the first hurdle, overcome, cleared. My teammate is on my team still, and that's just a real encouragement and blessing to have a teammate who believes in me and trusts me.
Aaron Francis
00:07:07 – 00:07:33
And I don't take that lightly, but it's just a huge way to give me energy in times of lowness. And so then it was it was a question of what do I wanna do now? Because I had been at this company for, I don't know, eighteen months or something. Had kinda made a name for myself because I was doing a lot of their YouTube content, and so I was very public facing. And the question became, do I wanna go do that same thing again at some other company?
Aaron Francis
00:07:34 – 00:07:58
And the answer was maybe. Maybe I do. Like, that sounds nice to have a job and, you know, health insurance and stuff that, you know, matters to families. But the second question was, do I wanna take this opportunity to go out on my own and figure out, can I do this, start a business thing? And so we decided, me and my friend who also got laid off, we decided, let's take all these interviews.
Aaron Francis
00:07:58 – 00:08:19
So the next week after I got laid off, I had, like, 30 interviews, and I took them all. The goal was if there's anything that just totally blows me away, I'm gonna freaking take it because having a job is awesome when you have a bunch of kids. And there were lots of great options, but at the end of the week, we yeah. I got on the phone phone with Steve and was like, I don't think I wanna go do it again. I don't wanna go play the same song.
Aaron Francis
00:08:19 – 00:08:38
We just did that. He and I worked together very closely. And so we decided to to strike out on our own, and we've been doing that ever since. And that is a whole story unto itself that was very tumultuous, not between me and him, just trying to get the business off the ground. And it took huge amounts of energy, but we're here now.
Aaron Francis
00:08:38 – 00:08:47
We're alive. The company is still going, and, you know, I'm able to put food on the table. So that's kind of the whole story. We can dive in wherever you want, but it's been quite a journey.
Ian
00:08:49 – 00:09:02
Yeah. Let's backpedal a quick second. What you said about, you know, the conversation, calling your wife, letting her know, like, lost my job, and then immediately getting those words of encouragement and that support. That's amazing. Right?
Ian
00:09:02 – 00:09:14
What a relief. Because I'm sure, you know, a lot of the stress that you were feeling was mental. And, you know, how am I gonna provide? What's my wife gonna think? And so just having her take that off your plate, I'm sure Yep.
Ian
00:09:14 – 00:09:19
Opened up a lot of bandwidth for you to be able to cope with the situation and Yeah. Potential options.
Aaron Francis
00:09:19 – 00:09:45
And, of course, there's some, justified or not, there's some embarrassment and almost some shame of, oh, I am the head of this family that and you trusted me in that position, and then I went and didn't do a good job. That starts to creep up and then to call her and not have her say, what the heck are we gonna do? You're supposed to be the money guy, and I'm the stay at home and take care of the kid's wife. She didn't say any of that. She didn't say any of that at all.
Aaron Francis
00:09:45 – 00:09:49
She said, I believe in you. It's like, oh, okay. Well, maybe I believe
Ian
00:09:49 – 00:10:07
in myself too. That's awesome. And so in that respect, having someone near to you who's got your back is instrumental. That not only happened in your family life, but then again with Steve who was also let go. You guys banded together.
Ian
00:10:07 – 00:10:13
And so I'm really interested to hear going off on your own and doing these things. It's possible. People do it all the time. Right? Mhmm.
Ian
00:10:13 – 00:10:34
Sometimes there's a team behind them that you don't really see, but sometimes folks are just doing it on their own more now than ever in the age of YouTube and TikTok and everything else. Talk to me about how much I don't know if easier is the right word, but let's just use easier for now. It was to have another person with you starting out on that venture.
Aaron Francis
00:10:36 – 00:11:02
I can't imagine doing this alone, to be honest. And at this point, I don't think I could imagine doing with anyone besides Steve. Steve and I worked together briefly at the company where we both got laid off. I was primarily making videos, and he was, you know, producing slash editing the videos. And so he comes from a long and varied background of pseudo software development, video production, all kinds of stuff.
Aaron Francis
00:11:02 – 00:11:17
He's a renaissance man. And so striking out with Steve has been wonderful because I think on some philosophical levels, we're very much aligned. What do we think looks good? We agree on that. What do we think matters?
Aaron Francis
00:11:17 – 00:11:38
We agree on that. And then in terms of skills, things that we like to do, types of work we prefer, we're very different. I like to be out in front producing, making things in public, yucking it up online. Steve likes to be behind the scenes. And so early on, you know, there was a conversation of, hey, Steve.
Aaron Francis
00:11:38 – 00:11:48
I kinda wanna, like, you know, we're doing this together. I don't want it to appear as if it's just me. I wanna get you out there and get you a bunch of attention too. And he's like, I don't really want attention. Let's just make money.
Aaron Francis
00:11:48 – 00:12:16
And I'm like, oh, okay. Well, that brings down this whole set of problems where I can go live stream on YouTube and do a bunch of tweets and make YouTube videos, and Steve doesn't really care that he's not growing an audience. Because the purpose of me growing an audience is to be top of funnel so that we can have connections and make money, and he's just like, I just wanna run a business. So we're different in that way. And then Steve is very much a businessman.
Aaron Francis
00:12:16 – 00:12:30
He'll be like, oh, I just got an email from this company about wanting to buy seats for this course. We sell developer education. I'm gonna I'm gonna go work this deal. I'm gonna call them. I'm gonna see if I can get more seats, and I'm just like, no way.
Aaron Francis
00:12:30 – 00:12:43
I would see that email and then be like, oh, I can't I can't I should email him back and offer him even more of a discount. And he was like, no way. They're a big company. Let's charge him more. And so just the ways that we operate are different.
Aaron Francis
00:12:43 – 00:13:12
He gets very excited about doing outbound sales, and I would rather just sit in here and write code all day. And he's he's multi talented. He's multifaceted in terms of he can edit and does edit our videos, but he can also do front end development work. He He negotiates contracts, and so he does a bunch of stuff. And so all that to say is I have done a bunch of stuff on my own, and I think I have aspects of skills, personality, taste, whatever.
Aaron Francis
00:13:12 – 00:13:46
I have a lot of things that are valuable, but coming together with Steve has made the entire entity way more valuable than if either of us did it on our own, because we complement each other in a lot of ways. I think you can get into a situation where you find a cofounder that is has your exact same skill set, and you guys are having a blast, but nobody's doing the work of setting up, you know, payroll taxes. And it's like, well, we don't have anybody that wants to do that. Now Steve doesn't wanna do that, but he's, you know, the businessman. And he's like, yeah.
Aaron Francis
00:13:46 – 00:13:54
I will set it up. And so having someone that compliments my skill set has been just a massive, massive boost to our productivity.
Ian
00:13:54 – 00:14:01
That's awesome. Going from the point of you and Steve saying, alright. We're gonna take the interviews. If something pops up, great. We'll look at that.
Ian
00:14:01 – 00:14:20
But then, essentially, fast forward, you decide, no. We're gonna we're gonna go it together and and do this thing. The success was not immediate. Right? If I'm remembering correctly from one of your blog articles, it took almost a year, at least nine months before you really start seeing that ROI.
Ian
00:14:22 – 00:14:46
I feel like, especially being a video creator, people only see what we put out. And so it can be very easy for people on the outside looking in to say, oh, he's so successful. He went from not having a job to boom. Now he's successful doing this other thing. Essentially, I'm interested in the time period from you guys saying let's do this thing to when you actually would quantify it as being successful.
Ian
00:14:46 – 00:14:48
What happened in between?
Aaron Francis
00:14:48 – 00:15:08
Yeah. So we set out Steve and I set out to basically try to do a few different things. One of which was we had just had all these interviews with tech companies that were like, hey. We need video people, which is why they were interviewing us. So when we decided let's form up our own company, we went back to some of those companies and we're like, hey.
Aaron Francis
00:15:08 – 00:15:33
We will help level up your video team, make them more productive, efficient, better, reach your goals faster, and we will be your consultants to your team. Because I can't go and make videos for every company. I can't I don't have the energy for that, and I don't wanna take the reputational risk of doing that. So we went back with this consulting pitch, and everybody was like, oh, that's a fun idea. Will you make videos for us?
Aaron Francis
00:15:33 – 00:15:52
And I was like, oh, f. Like, nobody wants this thing that we're offering, which is fine. That is the reality of, again, back to capitalism, if you're selling something that nobody wants, you gotta change something. Like, you have to make them want it or sell something different. And so we decided we're just gonna do something different.
Aaron Francis
00:15:52 – 00:16:13
So we took the market this consulting idea, and the market said we don't want that. I was like, shoot. Okay. So then we quickly pivoted to what was originally part of our idea and basically became the whole idea, which was in house content. The name of the company is TryHard Studios, and TryHard Studios produces developer focused content.
Aaron Francis
00:16:13 – 00:16:40
And so after we got told no a bunch of times for this consulting thing, we turned our full attention to producing a course on a database called SQLite. And so for the next few months, we just produced this course on SQLite. We released that probably in late July, early August. We've been grinding on the business since we got laid off in March. And then in July, we finally released our first product.
Aaron Francis
00:16:40 – 00:17:01
And that went exceptionally well. That, like, put money in the bank, allowed us to start paying ourselves a little bit. And then we turned around quickly and did a postgres course, which we released in October. And those were the two big influxes of cash for last year. And so now we're able to slow down just a little bit.
Aaron Francis
00:17:01 – 00:17:27
I mean, you know, course sales dwindle off pretty quickly, but that bought us a little bit of time to step back and think like, alright. What are we gonna do to make this thing more more sustainable? And so that's kinda what we're working on now is how do we build up those sales for the existing catalog? How do we produce more courses without killing ourselves or killing me because I'm the one recording all the video? And how do we expand beyond pure educational content?
Aaron Francis
00:17:27 – 00:17:49
As we're building out course platforms and all this stuff, we're bumping into problems that could be software or SAS shaped, and we're always we have our eye out for alright. Courses are great, but can they fund us onto something that is more durable and not launch driven? So that's kinda been the the past year of try hard.
Ian
00:17:49 – 00:18:04
Yeah. Courses, they they do have an expiration. Inevitably, especially in technology, you're gonna have to revamp them pretty quickly. Some some can last longer than others, but there there's always an expiration. So that's a tricky equation to deal with.
Ian
00:18:04 – 00:18:10
Yeah. It's good that you guys are on the lookout for some kinda Always. Lateral opportunities.
Aaron Francis
00:18:10 – 00:18:10
Yeah.
Ian
00:18:11 – 00:18:28
Yeah. During that time, let's just say that the March to July that and and then even onwards, how did you direct your focus? Because you're still kind of in a kind of a foggy area. Right? You just been, like, oh, you're not sure if this is gonna work yet.
Ian
00:18:28 – 00:18:38
You have kind of pivoted and decided, okay. We're gonna go with this thing. And the courses don't just get created overnight. I mean, five months until the release, that's actually insane. That's really fast.
Ian
00:18:38 – 00:18:47
Yeah. Talk to me about how you kept your focus on this one thing and saw it through until it was done and and got it launched so quickly.
Aaron Francis
00:18:48 – 00:19:10
Yeah. I think the first answer to that is I didn't keep my focus on one thing. In the beginning, we were exploring many ideas because we have this notion of what the business is going to do, and then we go out and we refine it. Right? We're putting out lots of feelers, little experiments, seeing if they work or they don't work, and that is how we kinda narrowed in on SQLite.
Aaron Francis
00:19:10 – 00:19:40
Right? So we're like, let's go have calls with everybody and try to pitch them things, and we're coalescing on this one idea. And so once we coalesced on the idea of SQLite, at that point it was a focus on this until it's done kind of thing. And that just took a huge amount of sheer force of will, almost. I don't even know that it was necessarily discipline as much as it was, like, lashing yourself to the mast and saying you must finish this thing.
Aaron Francis
00:19:40 – 00:19:57
Because in some regards, at that point, the whole company is riding on it. You know? If we launch this course and we make 5,000, which we then pay taxes on and split between two people, we're going to get jobs. This is not gonna work. There's a huge amount of pressure on that first thing, at least in our business because it is so lumpy.
Aaron Francis
00:19:57 – 00:20:16
You know, if you release a product and you get a $100 MRR, well, that's a start. Like, you've got some subscribers, and that'll go up the next month. But for us, the launch is kind of the thing. And so just realizing alright. This is not this is not sustainable work pace.
Aaron Francis
00:20:16 – 00:20:43
I am not signing up to work at this rate or this level of intensity forever, but this is a pivotal moment in the early business slash my life. And so I think a lot of conversation online, maybe rightly so, is geared around, you really gotta work at a sustainable pace. Don't don't overwork yourself. Don't work more than forty hours a week. And it's like, yeah.
Aaron Francis
00:20:43 – 00:21:10
If you're working a w two and that's cool with them, that is true. Don't kill yourself for some other person. Right? But there are times, and I think it's profitable and wise to recognize, that there are times where putting in a massive amount of work is the optimal thing to do. And you don't have to say that it's a sustainable idea, and you don't have to say to other people, you should do this because people are gonna get mad about that.
Aaron Francis
00:21:10 – 00:21:35
But, frankly, you should do this. There are times where you can capitalize on a transition just because you are willing to put in a massive amount of effort. And that's where I felt like Steve and I were was we can capitalize on this if we are willing to work harder than would otherwise be reasonable. And so we did. And we worked harder than was otherwise reasonable, and we put out two enormous courses.
Aaron Francis
00:21:35 – 00:22:12
I mean, I think they're each over a 100 videos, just massive courses. We put it out inside of six months, and that is what allows us to be here today, having not put out a course since late October, and take a little bit more time to work on stuff. I think the the always never advice online gets law gets the nuance gets lost. Always never I don't know. There are times to do certain things, and I think we realized in the moment this is an opportunity that can be seized with high effort, so let's put in high effort.
Aaron Francis
00:22:12 – 00:22:15
And I'm glad we did. I'm glad we did. It was it was hard, but I'm glad we did.
Ian
00:22:15 – 00:22:17
Hence the name, TryHard Studios.
Aaron Francis
00:22:18 – 00:22:19
Hence the name.
Ian
00:22:22 – 00:22:42
So this is this is very reminiscent of something very primal. Like, this kinda going back to something much more recent than that, like a frontier days. You you're going west with your family and your wagon, and you don't really have an option. You either chop the wood and make the house and go hunt the animal and plant the crops or you die. Yeah.
Ian
00:22:42 – 00:22:57
And, obviously, this isn't that, but it's it's kind of a similar concept where it's like, are there other options? Yes. Of course. There's always other options. But this this is the the best option that you've kinda zoomed in on right now, and you're gonna see it through.
Ian
00:22:57 – 00:23:19
And seeing it through, actually, in this case, requires up, like, insane amount of energy, and that's okay. Now is it sustainable? No. Once you've built the house and you've planted the crops, you should probably shift gears a little bit because you can't live your whole life like that. But moving forward, now that you're through that phase, it sounds like you guys have the ability now that the money is coming in.
Ian
00:23:19 – 00:23:34
You're able to shift gears and focus on something more sustainable, like what's next. How do we, continue with what we're doing that works, and how do we reiterate on the things that aren't working and look out for new opportunities. So what does the future look like for TryHard Studios?
Aaron Francis
00:23:34 – 00:24:00
We don't look out terribly far, but I think the path we're on right now is let's shift into a little bit more business mode. We moved heaven and earth to get these massive courses released last year. In the wake of that destruction, we left behind, well, we should be doing some ads. We should be doing some email funnels. We should be doing, like, all of this business stuff.
Aaron Francis
00:24:00 – 00:24:18
Right? Best practices. And so right now, we're really trying to focus on alright. Let's not let's not just continually rush from course to course. Let's have a little bit of time and most importantly energy between courses to go back and clean up the platform.
Aaron Francis
00:24:18 – 00:24:28
We built a software solution that hosts all of our courses. Let's go back and clean it up. Let's go back and add some stuff where it's like, hey. You're buying this course. Might we also recommend this course?
Aaron Francis
00:24:29 – 00:24:42
Because that is a business best practice. Right? Try to upsell. Try to get the average order value up, cart value up, and then let's try some ads. We don't have to just rely on people stumbling upon it.
Aaron Francis
00:24:42 – 00:25:09
There is a strategy that's been around for thousands of years, and it's buying ads. What if we tried that? So we're very much right now in the let's make this product launch business into a business business because we don't wanna be like just a a launch driven business forever. So that's kind of where we're at right now. And then we are actively exploring two software plays.
Aaron Francis
00:25:10 – 00:25:50
We may not release either of them. One, I think, we'll definitely get to. But I do think that the cyclical nature of a course or launch driven business is a little bit anxiety producing because you know that the big bump is coming at some point, but you don't know how big it's gonna be, and then you know it's gonna go away after that. It is a great, great, great business to be in, but we would also like to smooth it out just a little bit. And I think one of the things that has always been true is when you set out to build anything, you discover that everything else also sucks.
Aaron Francis
00:25:50 – 00:26:04
And so you're like, you're on this path of, alright, let's build out a video company where we sell developer education. And then you're like, wow. All the checkout solutions are terrible. Why does nobody build for wow. All the core course hosting platforms are terrible.
Aaron Francis
00:26:05 – 00:26:43
All of the the infrastructure stuff is kludgy. And so one thing that I have always recommended is pick the best idea that you have and just go. And along the way, you may discover something that's five times better, but don't sit around and wait to discover the best business idea. Just get in motion and problems will rain down upon you for better or worse, and you can decide, actually, this problem that I have now discovered because I'm in the bowels of this industry, this problem is way valuable and not the stupid thing I was working on. So let me go work on this problem that I only could have discovered by starting with this stupid thing that I thought was a good idea a long time ago.
Aaron Francis
00:26:43 – 00:26:47
That's the only way to discover these really niche, really valuable problems.
Ian
00:26:47 – 00:27:35
That is great advice. That's the key to a successful few companies that have big pockets, then the math just doesn't math. And so the process that you're going through is innately exposing you to problems that can be solved in the event that the one that you're currently solving, you know, stops going where you wanted to go, which is which is great. If you had to look back or even look at the current state of things, what are some, we can call them habits or just things that you're doing or even not doing on a regular basis, like small things that you do repeatedly that really seem to have moved the needle and continue to move the needle for you?
Aaron Francis
00:27:36 – 00:27:49
Easy. Easy. Easy. Easy answer. The only reason I think I'm able to have any success at all today is because for the past five years, I've been very public.
Aaron Francis
00:27:49 – 00:28:06
I think the moment you get laid off is a bad time to start preparing for being laid off, and that's where a lot of people find themselves. They lose their job and they look up and think, I should start networking with people. Oh, brother. You're you're behind. This is gonna be really hard, and I feel for you.
Aaron Francis
00:28:06 – 00:28:29
Looking back across my career, like, I started as a I'm a I'm a CPA. I'm a licensed accountant, and I started at, you know, an accounting firm. And so I have not taken a traditional path by any means, and so I've kind of had to scrap and claw for everything. A traditional path by any means, and so I've kind of had to scrap and claw for everything. And the biggest lever, the biggest thing that has provided me leverage above and beyond everyone else is having proof of work.
Aaron Francis
00:28:29 – 00:28:52
And so what that looks like for me, for a long time, was I just wrote blog posts. I And so what that looks like for me for a long time was I just wrote blog posts. I would just learn a thing and then write about it, write a blog post about it. And that started to prove, okay, this is a person who knows what they're talking about. And then that also starts to attract people to you beyond just being able to take it to someone and say, look, I promise I'm smart.
Aaron Francis
00:28:52 – 00:29:14
They act as little friend catchers and little opportunity catchers out in the world. Somebody stumbles across it and then they reach out to me and offer me a job, which is literally true. And so looking back, I owe a huge amount of my success to previous Aaron who was like, what if I wrote a blog about this esoteric thing in databases? It's like, oh, thanks, guy. That really helped me.
Aaron Francis
00:29:14 – 00:29:48
And then beyond that, when I got laid off, I had a few income producing properties. And I think while you are working is a great time to take some low risk bets. When I got laid off, I had a few things, but primarily screencasting.com, which teaches people how to make videos. And that was bringing in some money, not enough to live off of, but because I had a job and I had screencasting.com, I had some savings. And then I got laid off, and Steve and I looked at screencasting.com, and we're like, let's make this a thing.
Aaron Francis
00:29:48 – 00:30:10
Let's bring it into the company. Try hard adopted screencasting.com. And later this month, we will be rereleasing it with a whole cast of new characters. We've hired like four or five different instructors to help us teach different things. And starting from a cold start or a standing stop is very difficult.
Aaron Francis
00:30:10 – 00:30:33
And so I am glad that when I got laid off, I had many years of history of blog posts and articles and videos, but I also had a business that was not limping along, but a business that was in motion even if it wasn't making a full time salary, it was in motion. And now we can just be like, hey. Let's push on this one. You gotta speed up. We need more money out of you.
Aaron Francis
00:30:33 – 00:30:56
That, I think, is probably the number one thing that I would recommend is start today building up not your resume, but your presence. Whether that's on LinkedIn, Twitter, your own blog, YouTube, whatever. Start today building up a body of work that people can look at and independently judge you as capable of doing whatever job you're trying to do out in the world.
Ian
00:30:56 – 00:31:00
So it sounds like Steve needs to edit this video. I need you to do my taxes.
Aaron Francis
00:31:01 – 00:31:02
No. No. No. No. No.
Aaron Francis
00:31:02 – 00:31:09
No. No. I might license my license is inactive for that very reason. I'm not allowed to do people's taxes.
Ian
00:31:09 – 00:31:14
Oh, I love it. I love it. I wish my license to work on computers or know anything about them
Aaron Francis
00:31:14 – 00:31:15
Yeah.
Ian
00:31:15 – 00:31:16
Was also inactive.
Aaron Francis
00:31:16 – 00:31:20
Make it dormant over the holidays when you go see family? Yeah. I get that. Yeah.
Ian
00:31:20 – 00:31:25
I I pretend I don't know. Like, people are like, hey. Can you, like, hook up the TV? And I'm like, oh, DVD player. I
Aaron Francis
00:31:25 – 00:31:28
don't know. That seems to be alright. We'll see you later.
Ian
00:31:29 – 00:31:38
So, yeah, all good advice. And you you said this, but for anyone thinking, oh, okay. That's not me. I didn't plant those seeds. So I am starting cold.
Ian
00:31:38 – 00:31:44
Start now. Yes. Alright. Start immediately. There there's no time like the present.
Aaron Francis
00:31:44 – 00:32:05
True? I will say one last thing to people who are afraid of putting stuff out publicly. The goal is not to position yourself as the expert when you're writing your articles, your tweets, your LinkedIn stories. The goal is not to position yourself as an expert because you may not feel like one and that's gonna hold you back from actually putting stuff out there. The goal is to share what you're learning.
Aaron Francis
00:32:05 – 00:32:35
If you are working on something or reading a book or watching a tutorial or whatever, and there's a little part of your brain that goes, that's interesting, that is the bar. Once you pass the that's interesting bar as you're reading, watching, learning, whatever, write it down and share it. And don't say, I am the expert on. Say, I found this interesting, or this solved my problem, or I think this is cool, and that lowers the pressure on you to be like, I can't start blogging until I'm an expert. No.
Aaron Francis
00:32:35 – 00:32:38
No. No. No. That's that's a trap. That's gonna keep you on the sidelines.
Aaron Francis
00:32:38 – 00:32:55
Just share what you're learning, and people will be drawn to that learning process in and of itself. And then you can always defend that position. You can always say, this solved my use case, and somebody can't come along and say, no. It didn't. It's like, I mean, it did.
Aaron Francis
00:32:55 – 00:33:10
They may come along and say, hey. You should have done it this way. And at that point, that's fine because, like, your ego isn't saying this is the best way to do it. Your ego is saying this is the way that I solved it. And if somebody says there's a better way to do it, it's like, great.
Aaron Francis
00:33:10 – 00:33:28
I didn't claim this was the best way. Let me learn your way, and then I'm gonna write a blog post about that too. So that's my little rant on feeling like you must be the expert. I think that keeps people on the sidelines, which is a is a real shame because I'm not always looking for pure experts. I wanna hear what you're up to.
Aaron Francis
00:33:28 – 00:33:31
I wanna hear what you thought was interesting. That's what I care about.
Ian
00:33:31 – 00:34:03
In this new world that we live in where everybody's online and we have these networks of communication and relationships, you're not just attracting people with money that are gonna show up and say, oh, you you solve a problem for me. Here's the money. You're also attracting the people that say, hey. I've got twenty years of experience in this thing that you're talking about, and let me help you understand it better. So if you come from the standpoint that you're talking about, you're opening yourself up to just continue learning, learning, learning, and then you can just iterate on what you're doing, keep talking about it.
Ian
00:34:03 – 00:34:13
And next thing you know, not only do you have a network of people that helped you grow, but then you also are attracting those people that do have those problems and are looking for the person to solve them, and you may end up being that person. So
Aaron Francis
00:34:14 – 00:34:38
Yeah. You basically can materialize mentors out of thin air. If you do it with the right approach of I am learning and I thought this was interesting, people who are way ahead of you are going to see that as like a a humble student ready to learn. And so there may be some jerks that come along and be like, you're an idiot. But there are gonna be so many nice people that come along and say, hey.
Aaron Francis
00:34:38 – 00:34:59
That's that's really cool. Let me show you this other thing. And now you're, like, in the DMs with people that you could never get in touch with because you've proven, hey. I'm down here in the weeds trying to figure this stuff out and willing to expose myself publicly to the Internet. And people above you are gonna look at that and say, yes.
Aaron Francis
00:35:00 – 00:35:12
I was you one time. And they're gonna just offer you the world, basically. And so it's a great it's a great hack for getting jobs. Sure. But it's also a great hack for making friends with peers and people ahead of you.
Aaron Francis
00:35:12 – 00:35:13
So highly recommended.
Ian
00:35:13 – 00:35:39
If I had to focus in on the biggest piece of advice from all this, that that's just huge. That's gold right there. So anybody that's that's listening, if you're looking for a mentor, which I highly encourage anyone to at any point in your career, even if you've been doing this for a long time, There's always someone else out there, even people that know less than you. If you're talking about the thing, there's someone else that's bound to know about some other thing that's adjacent, especially in tech. So incredible advice.
Ian
00:35:39 – 00:35:46
Do you have anything else you wanna end on? This has been a really amazing talk, and I really appreciate your time here.
Aaron Francis
00:35:46 – 00:35:53
Yeah. No. Thanks for having me. This has been fun. I think my advice for, let's just say, me ten years ago, some, what, 36 now.
Aaron Francis
00:35:53 – 00:36:30
So mid twenties, Aaron, I would say I would say everything that you want and everything that you're hoping to achieve is going to come through some, like, level of cringe. Like, you're going to have to be okay being seen, putting in a huge amount of effort for something that seems speculative. You're gonna have to be okay potentially giving a conference talk where nobody cares, nobody shows up. Like, you're just gonna have to be okay putting yourself out there and falling on your face, and that that just, like, minor discomfort. Sometimes it's major, honestly.
Aaron Francis
00:36:30 – 00:36:54
But that discomfort of being embarrassed is what holds back truly ninety eight percent of people, ninety five percent of people from being willing to go for their dreams. It's not, oh, it may not work out. It's it may not work out. My friends might notice that I tried it and failed, and I just can't I can't bear that. And so my advice to a younger me would be like, just embrace it.
Aaron Francis
00:36:54 – 00:37:22
All the things you want to do, some of them are gonna fail and that's gonna be embarrassing, but my goodness, it's so much better to try things and fail than to reach the end of your career and be, like, oh, the only thing I was afraid of was what people thought of me and turns out nobody was ever thinking about me at all. Shoot. I really missed the boat here. And so that would have been my encouragement to a younger me, and that is my encouragement to a 36 year old me as well. So that's where I'll leave us.
Ian
00:37:22 – 00:37:26
Awesome. Aaron, thank you so much for coming on. Appreciate you.
Aaron Francis
00:37:26 – 00:37:27
Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Ian
00:37:27 – 00:37:29
Hope to see you again on here one day.
Aaron Francis
00:37:29 – 00:37:29
Sounds good.
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.