Aaron Francis

In today’s episode, we bring back Aaron Francis. If you haven’t watched our previous episode with him, he is a software developer, fellow content creator and co-founder of Try Hard Studios. In the past he’s been an accountant at a Big 4 but now he focuses on Laravel, web development and all things business and video. This episode will step away from the usual tech focused content and we’ll talk a bit more about the business side of things, how you have to balance entertainment and education when creating courses, Aaron’s High Performance SQLite course, building a personal brand through the discomfort of centering it around yourself, how good presentation matters and how proactiveness puts you miles ahead of the majority, so stay tuned! Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Aaron's X/Twitter: https://x.com/aarondfrancis Aaron's Website: https://aaronfrancis.com/ High Performance SQLite: https://highperformancesqlite.com/ Screencasting: https://screencasting.com/ Mostly Technical Podcast: https://mostlytechnical.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:32 Podcast listening going up when having a kid 02:25 Podcast about earning the first million 08:54 You have to choose the entertainment vs education levels 10:37 You have to shape your material to the platforms 16:40 Long hour videos vs 2 minute ones 20:16 Are the videos in the High Performance SQLite in linear order? 24:19 Figuring out the metrics 28:06 Building courses on other domains 31:46 Building brands is difficult 35:55 quick disclaimer 36:30 Personal brand vs company 37:57 Is this sellable? 40:23 Do you need an audience? 44:26 The strategy is simple but it is also hard to execute 49:31 The presentation matters a LOT 51:54 On being proactive 57:00 Where to find Aaron Like & subscribe for the algo if you enjoyed the video!

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Transcript

Aaron

00:00:00 – 00:00:04

You know, I tried to watch it and I couldn't get through it. Oof, that's a bad sign.

Lane

00:00:04 – 00:00:07

You really probably don't need an audience to get a

Aaron

00:00:07 – 00:00:12

first job as a developer. And I'm like, well, I use PHP and I don't use Go. What

Lane

00:00:19 – 00:00:23

now? Aaron Francis, thanks so much for coming back on the podcast.

Aaron

00:00:23 – 00:00:29

It is an honor to be back. We had fun the first time and I, I guess it went well enough that I'm allowed to come back on.

Lane

00:00:30 – 00:00:45

You were you were among the select few that is gonna be invited back for a second for a second round. So yeah. I'm I'm super excited. Somebody on Twitter just was like, hey, you should have Aaron on. I was like, well, I already had him on, but, like, we could just we just do it again.

Lane

00:00:45 – 00:00:46

Heck,

Aaron

00:00:46 – 00:00:54

yeah. Yeah. So last time we talked about mostly PHP, which I'm always happy to talk about, but what do you wanna what do you wanna do today?

Lane

00:00:54 – 00:00:59

Let's not do that again. I could Yeah. My heart can only take so much PHP discussion. Yeah.

Aaron

00:00:59 – 00:01:00

That's fine.

Lane

00:01:01 – 00:01:11

No. So this time yeah. I've got a few questions lined up. We're we're definitely gonna get to sequel lite. I think that's where we're gonna spend most of our time, this episode.

Lane

00:01:11 – 00:01:19

SQLite's awesome. You've got an awesome SQLite course that's pretty new. So we'll we'll we'll talk about that. But first, you had this tweet.

Aaron

00:01:19 – 00:01:20

I have a lot of tweets.

Lane

00:01:22 – 00:01:26

It it hit me right in my in my feels because k. I listen to a lot of podcasts.

Aaron

00:01:26 – 00:01:27

Oh, okay. Mhmm.

Lane

00:01:27 – 00:01:40

So my daughter is turning 4 in 5 months. And so far, my experience with new dads and podcast listening is that once you have a child, your podcast listening goes up. By podcast listening goes up by about Mhmm. I don't know, 10 to 15 x. Has that been your experience?

Lane

00:01:40 – 00:01:43

Oh, yeah. Yeah. My, my kids are 3 8 months and lots of

Aaron

00:01:43 – 00:02:09

walks, lots of drives, you know, to, like, when nothing else is working, you throw them in the car and drive around. Yeah. Lots of lots of, let's go to, you know, some place and let the kids play. But it's like, you're not gonna go climb into the playground, so you're just gonna sit there for an hour. So, yeah, lots lots of extra time.

Lane

00:02:10 – 00:02:25

Yes. Lots of good podcast listening. So I listen to all sorts of podcasts, but as of, I don't know, the last, again, probably 4 years because I've been doing side businesses and side projects, and of course now boot dev is, like, my full time thing. Mhmm. Listen to a lot of business podcasts.

Lane

00:02:25 – 00:02:40

And you tweeted about the My First Million podcast. And you basically said, man, it would be great if this My First Million podcast was actually about earning your first $1,000,000 instead of just interviewing billionaires. I wanna hear more about what, what is on that tweet. Yeah.

Aaron

00:02:40 – 00:02:50

That would be so awesome. I thought about doing a show, and I would call it My First Million, except it's actually my first million. So it's a it's a great show. So I love Yeah. I love I love their show.

Aaron

00:02:50 – 00:03:14

I find them, equal parts informative and entertaining. I don't you know, sometimes they'll talk about stuff that I know about and I'm like, wait, y'all don't know anything about this stuff. You know, they'll talk about how AI works and I'm like, hang on a second. I don't know how AI works, but I know it's not that. But still, they're super entertaining and super fun and, I really enjoy the show.

Aaron

00:03:14 – 00:03:32

However, I don't love that they have, like, literal billionaires come on or people that are like, oh, yeah. When I sold my first company for 400 $1,000,000, you know, then I just really got into meditation. And I'm like, why does this help me? This doesn't help me at all. Like, I have not made $400,000,000.

Aaron

00:03:33 – 00:04:01

I would love to hear how somebody, you know, was working a job and then started a company and made a $1,000,000 or anything, honestly, anything under $5,000,000 is way more like, yeah, that's what I want to know about. I would love to make $500,000,000 but I gotta start somewhere. And I just, you know, it's I was being partially silly but extremely serious in another way that that would be great content. I would listen to that for sure. So I don't know what to do with that.

Aaron

00:04:01 – 00:04:05

I dare not start another podcast, but boy am I tempted,

Lane

00:04:05 – 00:04:10

you know? You're on 2 podcasts now. Right? Mostly technical and what's the other one?

Aaron

00:04:10 – 00:04:25

I don't know if I'm on another one. Oh, you're not? Oh, I do one. I do a sporadic one database school, that is just like interviewing database people. But I used to be I used to be on one with Andrew Culver called Framework Friends, which was awesome.

Aaron

00:04:25 – 00:04:42

So fun. And I used to be on one with Colleen Schnetler called Hammerstone, and it was so fun. And I just like them. And I listen like if you're an indie developer that has a podcast, there's like a 98% chance I listen to your show. You know, some of them I've listened to for like more than 10 years.

Aaron

00:04:42 – 00:04:52

Like, I feel like the Tech Zing podcast and Bootstrapped Web are 2 that I've listened to since I was, just a young young man. And now we're still listening to it, so I just can't get enough of that kind of content.

Lane

00:04:52 – 00:04:58

I need to check some of those out because so I listened to every episode of the indie Acura podcast.

Aaron

00:04:58 – 00:04:59

Mhmm.

Lane

00:04:59 – 00:05:16

It was like 300 episodes ish by the time Yeah. They kinda shut down. And now My First Million is kind of my my guilty pleasure because, like, to be honest so Sam and Sean, they're the guys that run that podcast. They are hilarious and entertaining. Like they are.

Lane

00:05:16 – 00:05:35

Like, I love listening to it. And but I think I think I just in like, it's basically just fun. Every couple episodes, I'll get, like, a little bit of, like, a business or marketing insight, but it's, like I feel like some of the other podcasts I've listened to, like, Indie Hackers, Star Wars for the Rest of Us, they're not quite as entertaining.

Aaron

00:05:35 – 00:05:35

Correct.

Lane

00:05:35 – 00:05:45

But there was, like, a lot more kind of informative content. Yep. And here's my theory as to why My First Million has has shifted to lack of a theory.

Aaron

00:05:45 – 00:05:47

I love a good theory. So tell me.

Lane

00:05:48 – 00:06:12

Because it started and Sean was interviewing people who had just earned a $1,000,000. Yeah. Just like, you know, bootstrappers and and people that are just starting to get starting to get success. I think they're suffering from success, like, DJ Khaled, in the sense that, like, they've gotten so big as a podcast that in order to, like, filter the guests down, they've had to, like, go up market almost. And so it's like they're talking about mister beast had to, like, go upmarket almost.

Lane

00:06:12 – 00:06:32

And so it's like they're talking about mister Beast, and they're talking about people that own Yeah. Flat you know, private jet companies. Yep. And it might be either either I I feel like it's either it's a filtering problem or it's just that, like, those guys have become so successful that talking about $1,000,000 isn't interesting anymore because they're both worth like 10,000,000 plus.

Aaron

00:06:32 – 00:06:43

Yeah, totally. I don't think they can I don't think they can speak to it anymore? I I don't think it would be they wouldn't be interested. It wouldn't be genuine. And so I think they are the wrong hosts to do it.

Aaron

00:06:43 – 00:06:53

But, yeah. I miss, like Yeah. I love hearing about their basketball camp where Mr. Beast is there, and, like, these other unspoken billionaires that they can't even name. And it's like, yeah.

Aaron

00:06:53 – 00:07:10

We just talked about how to run our companies. And I'm like, that's just not where I'm at. And I agree, Startups for the Rest of Us is great and super tactical. That's another one that I've listened to for like more than 10 years. But the entertainment factor of my first million is is so high.

Aaron

00:07:10 – 00:07:46

And I just think there's so much room for like more At the end of the day, like whether it's YouTube or podcasts or whatever, people want to be entertained. And that's the hard part is like if you're gonna make it grow, you gotta be entertaining and sneak in the stuff that like you want to communicate, which is like know, I'm sure Rob Walling wants to communicate tactics and strategies. You gotta sneak that in around the entertainment because the entertainment is what brings people in. So it's a I mean, Sean and Sam don't care one iota about what I think, but I would love to I would love to hear them scale it down a little to, like, a little more normies.

Lane

00:07:47 – 00:08:04

I'd like them to throw us a bone every episode or 2. The the problem is I know that it's bad it's, like, objectively bad media advice. Like, what they're doing is is definitely, like, working and growing, you know, growing the brand and everything. So it's, like, really hard to play armchair quarterback. Yeah.

Lane

00:08:04 – 00:08:06

You know? Here's my podcast.

Aaron

00:08:06 – 00:08:19

I just want I just want what I want. Yeah. They're successful and happy, but I just want different content. So which is funny because that's what every YouTube comment the every time I make a YouTube video, it's like, hey, great. Thanks for the video.

Aaron

00:08:19 – 00:08:26

Make something different. And I'm like, I don't wanna do something different. And so, you know, now I'm the guy telling them to change their fundamental strategy. So I recognize the irony there. Yeah.

Aaron

00:08:26 – 00:08:29

It's it's interesting building, like, media companies or media brands that are so close or or

Lane

00:08:29 – 00:08:49

I should say, like, the so close or or I should say, like, the let's just call it, like, the edutainment space. Right? So, like, you could argue this this podcast, Back in Banter, mostly technical. Right? Your podcast.

Lane

00:08:49 – 00:09:01

My First Million. These are all, like, edutainment podcasts. It's not just, like comedians being funny. But you've gotta like choose where you wanna be on the scale of like how entertaining you are versus like how much education you provide. Yep.

Lane

00:09:01 – 00:09:18

And you and I both have courses. Right? You've got high performance SQLite is your your latest thing. I've got boot dev. And the interesting thing to me is I I think as you, like, slide that scale up on the entertainment factor Mhmm.

Lane

00:09:19 – 00:09:27

You can expand your reach a lot. Yes. My problem is I'm not funny, so, like, I actually don't have the ability to, like, move that. Oh, I

Aaron

00:09:27 – 00:09:32

thought that was pretty good. I don't know how many times you can use that joke, but that was pretty good. Just one time.

Lane

00:09:32 – 00:09:43

Just Yeah. To find it's gone now. But, like, if you go too far that way, then, like, you're probably gonna have a harder time, you know, selling your course or, like, your info product, I would imagine.

Aaron

00:09:44 – 00:09:57

Yep. I don't know. Yeah. I think I forget. I think Neil Postman in, like, Entertaining Ourselves to Death, great book, a very old book, said the medium is the message.

Aaron

00:09:57 – 00:10:49

And I think that's partially true for what we do, which, to to be specific, I think on YouTube you have to dial up the entertainment a little bit. And when you have a, like, a course or, a captive audience where a student has said, like, I am gonna sit down and dedicate my time or I'm opting in to doing this thing, you can lean more towards educational and and away from entertainment. And then, you know, each each platform dictates a certain type of content. Twitter is currently dictating a very different type of content than it used to and you have to kind of shape or mold your content to the platform, otherwise it's not really gonna work. Which is one of the things I really like about having courses that are off platform.

Aaron

00:10:50 – 00:10:56

Right? That are not just like on Udemy. Because I don't know. I've never used Udemy as a user. I've never used it as a producer.

Aaron

00:10:57 – 00:11:21

But it is a platform and Udemy would dictate how the course is shaped. And I just don't Yeah. I don't want that. I have strong opinions on how the course, like any course, should be shaped and people can opt in or out of that. But I don't want to be pigeonholed, like, I have to make a course that makes sense to sell at $9.99 if I'm on Udemy or whatever.

Aaron

00:11:21 – 00:12:00

And so, you know, I think, people get frustrated when they go into a platform with a message that doesn't match the platform. And so you go onto YouTube and you make a really like in-depth detailed kind of dry video and it bombs and everybody's like, oh, YouTube people are stupid. And it's like, I don't know if I would go that far. I think what you're competing with is a lot of really entertaining stuff, whether that's the Primagen or MrBeast. Like you're in a you're competing with entertainers and that's not to say that you should produce content that you aren't proud of or, like, that you don't wanna produce.

Aaron

00:12:00 – 00:12:32

But you do like, you either you either have to look at the platform and say, like, what does this platform dictate and how does that match up with what I wanna do and I will make that content. Or you make whatever the hell you want, but you can't get mad when the platform is like, ah, this isn't really what we were looking for, so we're not going to push it. And I feel like people get caught in the middle, where they make whatever they want and then they get mad that, you know, you see this on Twitter all the time now, like, oh, the algorithm is really killing me. And it's like, sorry. Like, either change or don't complain about it.

Aaron

00:12:32 – 00:12:38

I'm so I'm sorry. Like, I get it. It sucks. But, like, getting caught in that sticky middle is a bad spot to be in.

Lane

00:12:38 – 00:12:49

Yeah. So you you have a lot of experience with this as well because, like, not only have you done courses off platform, you've done a bunch of stuff on YouTube. Mhmm. I'm kinda the same way. I I don't think I've done nearly as much on YouTube as you have.

Lane

00:12:49 – 00:12:59

But I've done a couple courses on freeCodeCamp's YouTube channel. They're like 7 hours long. Mhmm. They're like these crazy long form videos.

Aaron

00:13:00 – 00:13:02

One video, 7 hours? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Lane

00:13:02 – 00:13:03

I've seen that.

Aaron

00:13:03 – 00:13:04

I've seen that. That's crazy.

Lane

00:13:05 – 00:13:10

Yeah. It's wild. So I've got this this Go course. We'll use that as an example. It's about 7 and a half hours long.

Lane

00:13:11 – 00:13:19

It's up on the free Code Camp channel. It's, like, a full walk through of our Go course on boot dev. And it did great. Like, it's got, like, 700,000 views. Amazing.

Lane

00:13:19 – 00:13:50

But the retention on the video is, like, you know, first 5 minutes, boom, down to, like, 1%. And, like, that's a high performing video. 700 k views is is great. Right? Like, it I don't think it's the the content's bad, but, like, you have to own up to this reality that, like, when people are on YouTube to learn the engagement, the dedication, the the interest come back later and not getting sucked off into another, like, MrBeast video or whatever, it's just not there.

Lane

00:13:50 – 00:14:03

And so, like, a lot of those people do actually convert and then go take the course on boot dev where the retention is, like, way higher. It's not like 99.5% fall off in the first five minutes. I don't know if you've seen any patterns like that in your stuff.

Aaron

00:14:03 – 00:14:08

I mean almost every almost every video I have has that fat head and then the tiny little tail on on YouTube of like people started and then they fall off. Little

Lane

00:14:11 – 00:14:11

tail on on YouTube of like people start it and then they fall off.

Aaron

00:14:11 – 00:14:26

And I'm, you know, constantly trying to make it better. But I think it's just a function of like the platform. People are kind of surfing. Right? People are there and they watch it and then like, you know, they're looking at their phone and they're like, I'm not gonna watch this anymore.

Aaron

00:14:26 – 00:14:47

And they switch away. And, yeah, that's that's too bad. I gotta make better content, but like, it's okay. I think that's I think that's just how the platform works. Now, on something like, something like a course, I actually don't I don't track how many videos people have watched or, like, if they completed the course or whatever.

Aaron

00:14:47 – 00:15:12

I see other people online lamenting, like, I don't know how to get my students to finish the course. And I'm like, I don't care. I just don't I really don't care. I think what I what I really care about is did the student get what they wanted? And if what they wanted, you know, on the very low end, if what they wanted was a feeling of accomplishment by buying a thing, okay.

Aaron

00:15:12 – 00:15:29

Well, it's not really my role to say no. If they want to support me by buying a thing and never watch it, I guess. Thank you. That's really nice. But I think more, like, more what I care about is did you watch 3 out of the 80 videos and solve your problem and you went away as happy as could be?

Aaron

00:15:29 – 00:15:43

That's great. I'm really happy for you. And so the way that I try to judge that is by like reaching out to people that have purchased the course and asking, hey, did you like it? Can I get a testimonial if you did? And reading what comes back.

Aaron

00:15:43 – 00:16:01

Because if I get a lot of people coming back saying like, you know, I tried to watch it and I couldn't get through it. Oof, that's a bad sign. If I get people coming back and they're like, hey, I haven't watched very much of it but the stuff that I watch was super helpful and I, like, implemented it that day. Okay. That's great.

Aaron

00:16:01 – 00:16:26

I don't I I don't I'm not a completionist with with courses. And I think as long as the students get what they want and I'm able to produce what I think is the right content, then I'm I'm very happy. And being off platform really helps that, like being able to produce what I decide is the right content. And maybe I'm wrong, but at least I get to decide.

Lane

00:16:26 – 00:16:34

Yeah. Well, so okay. I've got a question. With with High Performance SQLite, I've seen a couple of the tweets that you've done Mhmm. Like screenshots of of the videos and stuff.

Lane

00:16:34 – 00:16:43

It it looked to me like I mean, there's like a lot of videos. There's like a lot of videos. What's like the average length of the individual videos in the course?

Aaron

00:16:44 – 00:17:00

Oh, yeah. They're, I wanna say they're they're relatively short. I would guess between, you know, it's hard to you you asked for an average. I'm gonna give you an average that is a range, which doesn't make any sense. But I think the average is probably 3 to 9 to 10 minutes.

Aaron

00:17:01 – 00:17:25

So they're not they're not terribly long. And that lines up with teaching philosophy that I have which is like I want to introduce 1 or 2 things per video and land the plane. Because I do like I do consider sitting through a 40 minute video. 1 is is, intimidating. If I look down in the course list and I'm like, shoot, that one's 40 minutes.

Aaron

00:17:25 – 00:17:49

I'll have 40 minutes right now. It's intimidating to even start. And then once you get started, if you're doing it for 40 minutes, you're teaching 15 different things. And that is not the way that I like to do it. I like to teach one thing and then in the next video, potentially say why that thing is like good, bad, or indifferent or improve on the performance or show a like a way we can build upon that.

Aaron

00:17:49 – 00:17:58

So I try to keep each video, like, as tight as I can, and that means I end up with a lot of videos, which I'm really happy about. I think that makes it bite sizable, you know?

Lane

00:17:59 – 00:18:09

Yeah. I I'm fully on board with that. On boot dev, we break things up into like tiny tiny bite sized lessons as well. It's it's just these like giant walk throughs on YouTube. I know.

Aaron

00:18:09 – 00:18:28

I know. I wanna do one, but I I don't like I don't understand who watches them, and that's always something that's hard for me is, like, if I can't put myself in the shoes of the person consuming it, well, how do I create it in a compelling way? I I just don't understand. And it works. Like, you see these 8 hour tutorials on YouTube, and they've got a 1000000 views.

Aaron

00:18:28 – 00:18:30

And I don't get it.

Lane

00:18:30 – 00:18:52

Well well, like, as a creator of several of them, not that I mean, I'm sure there's lots of other creators. I'm sure they have their own opinions. But, like, my view of it is a lot of people watch these, and it's really hard to get lessons to that you, like, take away from them. Uh-huh. Because my worry, of course, is that a lot of people are kinda just zoning out in front of them.

Lane

00:18:52 – 00:18:56

Right. Right? Watching me do the lessons, watching me solve the problems.

Aaron

00:18:56 – 00:18:57

Right.

Lane

00:18:57 – 00:19:18

And so I think, like, the people that are really getting the most value are the ones that are actually, like, pausing the video, going away Mhmm. Doing lessons on their own, building their own projects. Like, I think it's a great way to get people interested in the topic. But, like, I think very few people just, like, watch my 7 hour course on Go and then feel like, you know, an advanced Go developer at that point. Like, it's just not realistic.

Lane

00:19:18 – 00:19:22

You've gotta write a ton of code and build a ton of stuff before that's gonna happen.

Aaron

00:19:22 – 00:19:31

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's probably right. I'm just surprised that there are millions of people like that.

Aaron

00:19:31 – 00:19:53

Like, that you can get a 1,000,000 views on an 8 hour video. It's just it just boggles my mind. But I do wanna try it. I think at some point, like, at some point I'll have some idea, for a course that's like, yeah, this shouldn't be paid. Like, this you know, there's not enough, like, I don't know.

Aaron

00:19:53 – 00:20:10

I don't know if it's like not enough secret sauce or not enough commercial reasoning or whatever. Or if I'm just like out of being magnanimous and being like, oh, I'm gonna be Dale Carnegie and build a 1000000 libraries. And my version of that is make one course free. You know, I I don't know. But I wanna I wanna try it.

Aaron

00:20:10 – 00:20:16

I wanna try it and I wanna see how it works for But boy, it seems even intimidating to produce that kind of content.

Lane

00:20:16 – 00:20:38

So one other question I had about, High Performance SQLite is, the individual videos, are they, like, all in, like, linear order? Or do people kinda hop in and and just, like, take the bits and pieces that they're interested in? Because that would also, I think, influence how you think about, like, success in terms of how far people are getting into the content.

Aaron

00:20:39 – 00:21:10

Yeah. They all they all build on each other in one way or another. It is structured such that you are expected or I expect you to watch it linearly. That being said, the way that that plays out in practice is I don't explain, so let's say early on we talk about data types in SQLite because they're kind of wonky. And then later we're doing something else, and I'll say, you may remember that this data type does this or, you know, whatever.

Aaron

00:21:10 – 00:21:32

I'm not going to go into a full description of it. I am gonna say I will reference a previous video, but I'm not going to like rehash. I just expect you to either know it, which is fine, or have watched it already so you have some frame of reference. And that goes back to like, the videos being small and discreet. They they build on each other.

Aaron

00:21:32 – 00:22:01

And so and if you pop into a video of like, you know, the second or third or fourth video in the advanced queries section, it's likely you're popping into the middle of a query that we have already written in a previous thing. And it's like, great. Now that we know these three things, let's look at this holistically and rewrite it all together. So yeah, I expect people to watch it linearly which is another advantage of being off platform is I can kind of like whether they do or not, I can hold that true in my

Lane

00:22:02 – 00:22:16

mind. Which I really appreciate that in a course. I think a lot of students struggle with like hopping into a platform and just not knowing where to start. Right? Like not knowing where the first thing is.

Lane

00:22:16 – 00:22:44

The second thing is like, oh, duh, you should understand basic data structures before you learn databases because you need to know what a binary like, it they you don't know any of that. Right? So I I really appreciate when the instructor takes the time to lay everything out in order. And one thing that I found, I don't know if you've received this kind of feedback yet, but so so boot dev is all linear. And and not just, like, the lessons in the course are linear, but, like, we've arranged all the courses linearly, kinda like a CS program but without the branching.

Lane

00:22:44 – 00:23:06

So it's just like a straight line. And only, like, half of the students actually take it in somewhat linear order because there's no, like it doesn't force you to. So we have a lot of, like, more advanced students that hop in and just kinda, like, do one course. Yep. And it makes it really hard, like like you were saying earlier, to, like, measure success.

Lane

00:23:06 – 00:23:20

Because it's like that person joined, got a membership, and just took, like, the one course that they came to take, like the Docker course, for example, and then bounced. Not because they didn't like the course, but just, like, that's what they came for

Aaron

00:23:20 – 00:23:23

and Right. They're probably thrilled to death that they got exactly what they wanted.

Lane

00:23:24 – 00:23:34

Yeah. And so I I, like, I I I assume that that happens as well. Like, you have people hopping in that know quite a bit about SQLite, but there's like a handful of advanced stuff that they that they really just wanted to take.

Aaron

00:23:34 – 00:23:45

Yep. Yep. I think so. And that's why I don't measure it. Because you would look at your stats and be like, oh, this person completed, you know, the 8th course but didn't do 1 through 7 or 9 through 15.

Aaron

00:23:46 – 00:23:57

God, we've gotta gamify this stuff. And you're like, oh, woah, woah, woah, woah. Hang on. You gotta talk to that person and see if they got exactly what they wanted and they're happy and you made their life better. Now they don't need the rest of it.

Aaron

00:23:57 – 00:24:08

Yeah. Sure. Everything needs to be gamified. But, like, those stats would lie to you. Like, if what you're optimizing for is, number of videos watched, then that is a good stat.

Aaron

00:24:08 – 00:24:19

But if what you're optimizing for is consumer happiness, that's a that's a bad measurement. Like, number of videos watched is a bad measurement, which is why I don't even bother with it.

Lane

00:24:19 – 00:24:45

Yeah. It's really important to figure out, I think, like, whenever you've got a project or even to zoom out to, like, a business, to have, like, one, maybe 2 quantitative metrics you look at and then, like, it's really the qualitative that's gonna be more important for a long, long time. Yes. We've got one stat that we really care about. We've got, like, some analytics stuff that we look at.

Lane

00:24:45 – 00:25:00

But, like, really, there's just one number that we all, like, internally at boot dev look at, and that's just Mhmm. Number of lessons completed on the platform. Because it's like Okay. That correlates for us at least because of the way our platform works. That correlates to, like, everything else that's positive.

Lane

00:25:00 – 00:25:16

Like Right. If if if there are lots of lessons are being completed, it means people are getting farther into the courses. It means that more people are coming onto the platform in the 1st place. Like, all of them kinda loosely correlate, and it means that we don't have to get into this, like, weird analysis paralysis of, like, trying to dive into, like Mhmm. You know, a 100 different metrics.

Lane

00:25:17 – 00:25:19

As long as that number go up, we we happy.

Aaron

00:25:20 – 00:25:26

Yeah. Yeah. And that's great. That's an amalgamation of everything that matters to you. It's user growth.

Aaron

00:25:26 – 00:25:44

It's, courses on the platform, so instructor growth and user retention. It's like all three of those kinda wrapped up into 1, like, amorphous blob, and that feels nice. Like, if that if that number goes up, then one of those three numbers went up, and that's a good thing. So I like I like that.

Lane

00:25:44 – 00:26:08

But, like, when we were smaller, we didn't even have that metric, and all we did was talk to people. Right? Like, all we did was talk to people in the Discord or via email or on calls, like, to see what they thought. And I think way too many businesses, like, try to jump into the numbers game too fast. It's like just fucking talk to like everybody like a lot.

Aaron

00:26:09 – 00:26:21

Yep. Yep. Our, like, first for so I have a partner at, TryHard which is, the name of our company. For me and Steve, the the number that we want to go up is US dollars in the bank account. That that is our number go up.

Aaron

00:26:22 – 00:26:48

Because, like, at the end of at the end of the day, that is, like, that is our North Star, especially because we're so early. I mean, goodness sakes, we started this, like, what, 3, 4, 5 months ago? Probably 4? And the whole game right now for us is, is this a viable business? And if we get lots of people we get lots of, like, hype and vibes and stuff and nobody pays us, then no.

Aaron

00:26:48 – 00:27:05

It's not a viable business. Right. So that's what we're focused on right now. And the way to do that, kinda like you were talking about, there are downstream effects to that number. How many YouTube videos do we put out will drive that number.

Aaron

00:27:05 – 00:27:15

How many courses do we have? Definitely gonna drive that number. How good? Things that you can't even quantify, like how good is the SQLite course? That makes the number go up.

Aaron

00:27:15 – 00:27:32

Because if people watch it and they're like, oh, it's really good. I'm gonna tell somebody. And then they watch it, like, that makes number go up. And so that's what we're focused on at at this point. And I think at some point that'll that'll change when we have enough money to, like, pay ourselves a nice salary.

Aaron

00:27:33 – 00:27:41

Then beyond that, it'll be interesting to decide what is what is number? Because right now number is dollars, and that seems reasonable.

Lane

00:27:42 – 00:27:50

Yeah. No. The number the the dollar number definitely definitely matters. Yeah. Otherwise, you can't pay your people and or or you can't Being

Aaron

00:27:50 – 00:27:55

the people. Yes. Being the people myself, I would love to get paid. So, yeah, we need that number to go up.

Lane

00:27:55 – 00:28:03

Okay. So I've got I've got a question about TryHard. So TryHard Studios is like, you know, you and Steve. Uh-huh. And you've got high performance SQLite.

Lane

00:28:03 – 00:28:05

That's on its own domain. Yep.

Aaron

00:28:05 – 00:28:06

Right? Mhmm.

Lane

00:28:06 – 00:28:22

Are you considering building more courses on other domains under the TryHard brand? Are you trying to, like are you gonna, like, reuse the platform? Like, I'm thinking of West Boss in my head. Like, this is a very West Boss style thing to do. Right?

Lane

00:28:22 – 00:28:27

He's got, like, 7 different websites, one per project. Yep. Yeah. What what are the plans?

Aaron

00:28:28 – 00:28:54

That is the plan that we're we're doing the West Boss. So it started out with, so a while back I did screencastingdot com which is a course on, you know, making video. That has since been folded into the try hard, enterprise. So we have 2 courses, high performance SQLite and screencasting.com. Forthcoming postgres course, then probably a MySQL course.

Aaron

00:28:54 – 00:29:12

And so like, yeah, we're on we're on the course train. You know, for high performance SQLite, we sent all emails in the beginning. We sent all emails, from high performance SQLite dotcom. Okay. And I think that was like, that was the default.

Aaron

00:29:12 – 00:29:17

It's like you signed up on this website, we're gonna send you emails from this website. Don't overthink it.

Lane

00:29:18 – 00:29:23

That would work fine. Like high high performance SQLite then screencasting.com or were the numbers comparable?

Aaron

00:29:24 – 00:29:26

Which numbers sign ups or dollars?

Lane

00:29:27 – 00:29:31

Sign ups. Well, I mean I guess both would be interesting, but I'm thinking of like the newsletter in particular.

Aaron

00:29:31 – 00:29:40

Yeah. I think we've got like 5 or 6000 on high performance sequel lite. And I launched screencasting.com to like 800.

Lane

00:29:41 – 00:29:41

Oh, wow.

Aaron

00:29:41 – 00:29:56

So, yeah. I I don't know what the numbers are at this point. I'm inclined to say that SQLite is still much, much bigger. But, yeah, the launch list for screencasting was just minuscule compared to High Performance SQLite. And it still it still made a bunch of money.

Aaron

00:29:56 – 00:30:27

So, yeah, we everything the we people sign up on High Performance SQLite, we throw them into Bento which is our email provider. Everyone goes into the same bucket. So regardless of where you signed up, for any product I've ever offered, you go into Bento and you just get a tag. So it's not like on the back end I hosed myself by putting everybody in separate Mailchimp accounts and now I'm just like totally dorked and I gotta like merge and deduplicate or anything. I thought I I was smart enough to think ahead on that one.

Aaron

00:30:28 – 00:30:57

But I thought like, yeah, I'll keep, you know, I'll keep these lists, like these sending domains somewhat separate. And since that time, Steve and I have talked a lot, including on the podcast with my podcast with Ian. We've talked, he and I have talked a lot on there. And I've talked to some friends, including including like Kent c Dodds and Adam Wadden trying to figure out like, hey, what's everybody doing? And it has settled on the West Boss.

Aaron

00:30:57 – 00:31:11

That's what we're gonna do. We're gonna do the West Boss. And so what's gonna happen is every email is going to be sent from aaronfrancisdot com. So that has a couple that has a couple of benefits. One is that domain is 25 years old.

Aaron

00:31:11 – 00:31:16

If I'm 35, which I think I am, I think that domain's like 25 years old because my dad bought

Lane

00:31:16 – 00:31:18

that domain when you were 2 years old.

Aaron

00:31:18 – 00:31:24

My dad bought it for me. Yeah. Oh. My dad was a a computer guy back in the day. And so I got That's so cool.

Aaron

00:31:24 – 00:31:50

Aaronfrancis.com.net.org. My brother has jonathanfrancis.com.netorg. So he bought them all for like all of us, and have just had it ever since. So Aged Domain, really great. And then I think beyond, like, the technical ramifications, something that Steve and I have talked a lot about a lot is building brands is difficult.

Aaron

00:31:50 – 00:32:02

And so Yes. I I have a brand. The brand is Aaron Francis, but it is a brand. Right? And so if we're gonna build high performance SQLite into a brand, seems like a waste.

Aaron

00:32:02 – 00:32:09

What if we put it all under TryHard? That's not a brand. That's a company Yeah. That has no brand that nobody knows anything about. It's yes.

Aaron

00:32:09 – 00:32:37

It's a holding company that nobody's gonna freaking care about. What people care about is other humans, and I happen to be 1. And so we've decided to, like, double down on as as reluctant as I am about this, we're doubling down on I am the brand. It makes me feel yeah. It makes me feel uncomfortable because I have always considered myself, a creator or like a a a maker.

Aaron

00:32:38 – 00:33:04

And like from the early days, from like childhood, I've been a creator slash maker. And I think in the past 2 or 3 years people have looked at me with a like creator slash influencer thing. And what like doubling down on me being a brand feels like an influencer move and that makes me nervous. I don't like it. I don't want to be an influencer.

Aaron

00:33:04 – 00:33:38

I want to be a creator, a maker, someone that like makes a lot of content, sure, but also like somebody who has their hands in like the stuff that they're doing. I don't want to be out of touch with the craft. I actually like practicing the craft and I don't want I don't want to offer opinions on things that I don't know about. And so this is another thing that is like very influencer coded is people will always ask me like, hey, what's your take on PHP versus Go? And I'm like, well, I use PHP and I don't use Go.

Aaron

00:33:39 – 00:33:55

What now? Like, that's it. That's all I've got. And so, yeah, I'm a little reluctant about it just because it feels a little egotistical, but I think it makes perfect sense for a few reasons. One is that's what the market demands.

Aaron

00:33:55 – 00:34:20

Like I don't know how many but some portion of the people bought the course just because they like me. And so like people people want to be, like, in this in this, like, community. And so I think we're gonna move not I think we are gonna move all emails sending from aaronfrancis.com. We're gonna centralize course login to something like courses.aaronfrancis.com. We're gonna have forums on aaronfrances.com.

Aaron

00:34:21 – 00:34:23

So, like, I'm I'm bringing the forum back.

Lane

00:34:23 – 00:34:26

Wait. Are you kicking your partner to the curb? It's it's Aaron's

Aaron

00:34:26 – 00:34:29

Exactly. It's Aaron's Exactly. Instagram. Yes. Okay.

Aaron

00:34:29 – 00:34:51

Exactly. So that's the hard part. And this is one of the things that Steve and I talked about. Like when we when we first got started, I would like, you know, I would write up a tweet and then I would call Steve and be like, hey, so here's the tweet. It says I in a bunch of places, but I know that like, you know, you are doing a big part of this.

Aaron

00:34:51 – 00:35:15

And he was like, hang on, I do not care. Like, he he has been pushing for me to like step out further and he wants to stay kind of in the background. And he's like, I have no desire to grow a personal brand, to grow an audience, or anything. He's like, I want us to win, and the best way to do that is for you to be the face of the company. And so, yeah, that's an that's a

Lane

00:35:15 – 00:35:16

big part of it. You're like the chosen one.

Aaron

00:35:16 – 00:35:44

Yeah. I mean, between me and Steve, I am. And that that's like a that's a big part of it is I'm sensitive to the fact that I don't do any of this alone. And to have it all be like the Aaron Francis show makes me feel icky. But I think with some thoughtfulness and communication and knowing the fact that this is like what Steve wants is important, but also what is best for the business and we both agree on that is pretty crucial.

Aaron

00:35:44 – 00:35:54

And so, yeah, it's like, yeah, this is a this is a try hard joint, but in fact, you may never know that. It's just gonna say Aaron Francis everywhere, which is like, okay. We'll see.

Lane

00:35:55 – 00:36:02

Yeah. So I gotta apologize to the audience because I don't care. But, like, we're just talking business, this whole podcast.

Aaron

00:36:02 – 00:36:02

Oh, yeah.

Lane

00:36:02 – 00:36:09

I don't care. It's gonna be fun. And if you don't like business, sorry. You can skip this one. But I'm having too much fun.

Lane

00:36:10 – 00:36:26

If you ever by the way, if you ever wanna, like, chat about business marketing strategy stuff, we we should Yes. We should talk offline because I I love to do that. I love to do that kind of stuff. But, okay. So here's my perception of of some of the things you've you've you've hit on.

Lane

00:36:26 – 00:36:53

Wes Boss, Kent c Dodds, Aaron Francis, it definitely feels like, yeah, the play is, like, personal brand. Like, you're the brand, you've got a bunch of projects, they all have their own domains. They'll kinda have, like, a mini sub brands to each project, but it's like it's like you're the brand. So it makes perfect sense to me that you kinda consolidate the email lists. I know exactly what you mean when you say, like, I don't want to be the brand, like, I'd rather put the project first.

Lane

00:36:53 – 00:37:19

And for me, it's nice because I'm not as good of an influencer as the rest of you. And so I've been making, like, a concerted effort to step back and, like, put the Boot Dev brand forward. And so I feel like you and I were in a similar decision making point at some point, and I just had I took the opposite route. Yeah. And I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this.

Lane

00:37:19 – 00:37:39

The decision making in my head went like this. I think it will be easier to get started if I do a more of a personal brand because people like people. Like, people like to follow people rather than like, people don't like companies. People like people. But then I think down the road, it becomes easier because you're disconnected from the brand.

Lane

00:37:39 – 00:37:54

So, like, for example, if you wanted to, like, partner with somebody or sell the company or, just, like, grow and bring in other creators, then, like, the brand it's easier at that point that you you you have like kind of this umbrella brands rather than it just being attached

Aaron

00:37:54 – 00:38:06

to yourself. Yep. Yeah. That's something that we've super talked about is like is any of this sellable? And there's an open question as to whether courses are sellable or not, frankly.

Aaron

00:38:06 – 00:38:22

I mean Yeah. I don't know. After the big spike, the launch spike is over, you've, you know, you've accumulated probably 70, hopefully less, but probably 70 or 80% of the benefits. So who's gonna buy out a course? And I'm in all the videos.

Aaron

00:38:22 – 00:38:39

Like, yeah. It's still me, man. So yeah. To you know, in that regard, I don't think, like, I don't think the business apart from my personal brand is super sellable. Like, not as it exists today.

Aaron

00:38:39 – 00:39:13

Maybe along the way we stumble into a SaaS offering or like some other thing And that would be that would be something that we would consider still leveraging my, you know, my brand for but not tying it technologically to my brand. So we Yeah. You know, if we started a SaaS, we would send emails from the SaaS, you know. But, yeah, I I don't know that, like, I don't know that we're sacrificing too much by going with the personal brand because I think that gives us highest leverage on a thing that is not sellable anyway. And so like, well, that's it's moot.

Aaron

00:39:13 – 00:39:17

It's moot that it's now under my brand because it wasn't sellable in the first place.

Lane

00:39:17 – 00:39:32

That's very like drip by Rob Walling. Right? Like, he he made this SaaS and, like, sure, he brought in a ton of people because he's got this media influence. But at the end of the day, like, it's drip. Like if if you want an email product and you like drip, like, you're just gonna stick with drip.

Lane

00:39:32 – 00:39:34

Otherwise, like Yep. It's probably not interesting to you.

Aaron

00:39:34 – 00:39:44

So Yeah. And he said many times as I'm sure you've heard that, like, his personal brand contributed very little to Drip. Many tens of users probably. I think that's probably a little

Lane

00:39:44 – 00:39:46

It's probably not David, but yeah.

Aaron

00:39:46 – 00:40:09

Downplaying it a little bit. But he would say that, like, you know, the regular business stuff brought in all the users. But it just you can't overstate early on how important having many tens of users is. Like, that gets you in the game. And so I still think it's I still think it's important, but I don't want anyone to hear this and be like, oh, I gotta build a personal brand.

Aaron

00:40:09 – 00:40:22

Abs Yeah. 0% true. You 100% do not have to do that depending on your business model. If you're gonna do SaaS, you don't need it at all. If you're gonna do courses where people are buying the thing because they know, like, and trust you, well, I got bad news.

Lane

00:40:23 – 00:40:36

Yeah. Well, so it's it's interesting that you say that. First of all, I completely agree. I think way too many people overvalue the value of an audience when they're building product. Right?

Lane

00:40:36 – 00:41:08

Like, most companies building product don't have an influencer founder. They just kind of either they work with influencers or they do paid advertising or, like, there's a 1,000,000,000 ways to advertise a product that's good. That doesn't involve, like, you personally having a huge blog or a huge social media influence. Right with you there. I do agree as well that if you're doing an info product, like a course, that the audience is more important than, like, the SaaS thing.

Lane

00:41:09 – 00:41:52

But I can also very confidently say that, at least with boot dev, less than 10% of our customers, in fact, probably less than 5% of our customers come through me. Again, I'm not a big influencer or anything, but, like, even those types of businesses, if you have and I would argue boot dev is is very far down the list in terms of like, it's not a SaaS, but it's also not an outright, info product in the sense that it's, like, a very interactive thing. It's, like, there's maybe a little bit of that to it. But I guess all I'm saying is even so, I feel like if you have a product that you really love and that, you know, your users really love, you can you can still get around not having an audience, because there's other ways to get the word out.

Aaron

00:41:52 – 00:42:00

Yeah. Yeah. I think so. And I think if you are building an info product, the way to build an audience is easy. You just talk about the thing that you're building all the time.

Aaron

00:42:00 – 00:42:26

I mean, you you you can kinda you can kinda come by it honestly. Like, if you're doing a course on Elixir, then just, like, write blog posts and tweet and make videos about Elixir all day long. And you know who's gonna follow you? Elixir people. And so it's like, this is something that I've found myself being on about recently is, like, growing an audience of indiscriminate followers is useless.

Aaron

00:42:26 – 00:43:08

And that's like, I tweeted something the other day about like meme based marketing for companies is risky because I feel like it it attracts as many people as it alienates. Like, it annoys a lot of people. And I I think a lot of people will look at, big accounts or like successful accounts or quickly growing accounts and copy their strategy without digging into what is the quality of the follower. And I when I say that, I mean quality based on what are you trying to do. Like, there's no there's no difference in quality between humans, but if somebody that is using Elixir follows me for PHP stuff, that is not a that's not a good match for me.

Aaron

00:43:08 – 00:43:25

Right? And so that's a in my in my to my end, that is a low quality follower because that kind of person is never gonna, like, engage with anything that I'm doing. They're probably gonna be annoyed by me talking about PHP all the time. And so they may mute me or they may unfollow me, and it's like, guys, you have to figure out

Lane

00:43:25 – 00:43:29

stop showing them yourself. Because, like, that's how these algorithms work. Right?

Aaron

00:43:29 – 00:43:40

Yeah. And so he scrolls past my content, and Twitter's like, ah, Aaron's content sucks. And it's like, no. It's just it was never for this person. And so when I see people like, I'm just gonna tweet memes all day long.

Aaron

00:43:40 – 00:43:49

You know who's gonna follow you? People that like memes. People that like memes. And then you stop you stop dancing as the monkey, and people are like, why? You keep dancing.

Aaron

00:43:49 – 00:44:05

I don't wanna hear what you have to say. Give me more memes, man. And so I feel like this whole, like, chasing audience at all costs without being thoughtful is is pretty endemic and is is just like a failing or or poorly thought out strategy.

Lane

00:44:05 – 00:44:25

Agreed. And I also wanna add just one of my own tidbits to something you said just just a little bit ago. You said, growing an audience is is easy if if you're building an info product because you just share kind of the info. And my only take there would be, I would say it's simple, but definitely not easy. Yes.

Lane

00:44:25 – 00:44:28

In the sense of, like, the strategy is simple. Right?

Aaron

00:44:28 – 00:44:28

Like,

Lane

00:44:28 – 00:44:38

take your content, make interesting stuff out of it, share it. Great strategy. Really hard to do. Take Erin's course on screencasting might help. Yeah.

Aaron

00:44:39 – 00:44:51

Yeah. No. No. You're totally right. And I think, I think where a lot of people get hung up is they're like, I have to I have to have a content calendar and plan plan what I'm gonna say.

Aaron

00:44:51 – 00:45:16

And I'm like, that's that's great if that's how your brain works. More power to you. I think you need to tune your brain. I think you need to tune your brain to, notice tweets as you're working. Like, you need to be working and doing something and your content comes out of something interesting you just did, something you learned, something stupid you just did is always great.

Aaron

00:45:16 – 00:45:34

And you just go on Twitter and you say, just learned this about Elixir. Or, man, I'm I ran into that and I have no idea how I'm gonna fix it. Like, you need to even keep a scratch pad next to you when while you're working be like, ah, that was I'm pretty proud of that. That was clever. I'm gonna write down that little clever thing I did.

Aaron

00:45:34 – 00:46:00

I'm gonna workshop a tweet on that later. And I think that is the part that is, that is simple. Is like it should come out of the stuff you're already doing which is why it's so easy for me to tweet because tweeting is a byproduct of doing something else. If I were focused all all the time on like writing good tweets I would feel really anxious because I'm like, from whence does the the the spring well? Right?

Aaron

00:46:00 – 00:46:13

It's coming from nowhere. But if I'm just doing stuff all day long, it's like I have no shortage of stuff that I could share, and in fact I have to hold myself back because I don't wanna tweet 8 times a day.

Lane

00:46:13 – 00:46:25

I'm not gonna say any names, but I have several Twitter accounts in my head where, like, at least to me, it's really obvious that the people behind those accounts don't actually do much day to day technical work.

Aaron

00:46:25 – 00:46:26

Yeah. Yeah.

Lane

00:46:26 – 00:46:46

And not just because the content they're sharing is, like, extremely shallow and, like, kind of the stuff you'd see on, like, our programmer humor, but also, like, the comments and the follow-up conversations are are are extremely shallow. And Yep. There's you could tell. And I'll give the opposite. The opposite is one of our mutual friends, Dax.

Lane

00:46:46 – 00:46:50

Like, you can tell. You could tell this guy actually does shit day to day.

Aaron

00:46:50 – 00:46:51

Yep.

Lane

00:46:51 – 00:46:53

He's also an asshole on Twitter.

Aaron

00:46:53 – 00:46:58

He is. He's got he's got a character, and he he adheres to it tightly. Yes.

Lane

00:46:59 – 00:47:17

I think he's very nice in real life, but He is. On Twitter on Twitter, he is that's that's definitely his his personal brand. But, like, you can tell, like, when he tweets Yeah. There's there's something behind what he's saying, and I appreciate that. And and that brings me all the way around to just a point I wanna emphasize because a lot of people are listening to this podcast.

Lane

00:47:17 – 00:47:43

I have very little interest in building a business at the moment, maybe in the future. Right? There there a lot of people are kind of trying to get a first job as a developer, particularly as a back end developer. Mhmm. And the thing that I'd I'd also just wanna emphasize and I've emphasized on this podcast before is my personal belief is that if you don't need an audience to build a product and you don't need an audience audience even to build an info product, you really probably don't need an audience to get a first job as a developer.

Lane

00:47:43 – 00:47:56

If you like tweeting and you like sharing stuff on social, I don't wanna discourage you in any way. I think it's awesome. I think it's great. But, like, please don't take away from this episode that, like, you need to have a Twitter strategy to get Yes. Your first job as a programmer.

Aaron

00:47:56 – 00:48:02

Yes. I will I will yes a n you. So we're gonna do some we're gonna do some proper, what is that? Improv here. Yes.

Aaron

00:48:02 – 00:48:23

I agree. And, however so I agree, you don't need you don't need a following to get a job. I feel like that's silly to even, to even think that. Like, that's that's not what recruiters care about. I will say, however, it can be extremely helpful when you're trying to get a job if you can point to things that you have done that are accessible via the internet.

Aaron

00:48:23 – 00:48:59

And so forget you can just take Twitter out of it altogether. You don't even have to be on Twitter. However, having a project that you you did by yourself or with a friend that you took from, you know, composer install, you know, it's PHP or like, you know, whatever y'all do, create react react app or whatever. If you took that from your computer to a URL that some recruiter can like go and load, that's gonna put you ahead of maybe 90, 95 percent of people. If you can say, look, here's a blog post that I published on my own domain or medium or dev 2 or whatever, doesn't even matter.

Aaron

00:48:59 – 00:49:08

Here's a blog post that I published. Here's a little side project I built that never went anywhere. It got no users, I built the whole freaking thing. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.

Aaron

00:49:08 – 00:49:31

You did you did a thing. Here's a podcast I was on or I started because I wanted to talk to people. Or here's a video I made once that is low quality but like I decided I was gonna do it anyway. All of those things are gonna put you way, way, way ahead of people that just have a resume that's like, I promise I did this at this company but there's no one you can ask about

Lane

00:49:31 – 00:49:57

it, you know. I would go so far as to say there is there is a there is a bar that it's it's pretty insane not to at least pass this bar of, like, putting your work, right, your projects, stuff you've built and made it easily accessible. And and not just that it's there, I've I've had a lot of students and a lot of people that are applying to jobs that I've been kind of the hiring manager on, like, link me a GitHub repo. And Uh-huh. It's just like the default read me.

Lane

00:49:57 – 00:50:04

Yep. And, like, you expect me to, like, click through your code your code files? Like Yep. No thanks. No thanks.

Lane

00:50:04 – 00:50:29

Just just make it presentable, right? Again, that doesn't mean it needs to be this this this beautiful immaculate thing, but, like, I I would rather read 2 paragraphs of text explaining what the project is and then maybe invest my time in cloning the repo or or poking around for code quality stuff. But, like, I don't want my first step to be No. Digging through your code. I'm probably just gonna, like, move on to the next applicant.

Aaron

00:50:29 – 00:50:58

Yeah. And if send if you send me, I'm not hiring, but if you send me a link to your GitHub profile with like 16 starter projects, and there's one in there that you like have been hacking on, I don't know which one I don't know which one you cloned from a course and which one you're actively pursuing. Don't ever just be like don't ever just throw it over the wall. You have to imagine that the recruiter is trying to get through a 100 or 200 or 500 resumes. And so whether or not it's fair is irrelevant.

Aaron

00:50:59 – 00:51:23

You have to put in some effort to be like here's my best offering and it's gonna take you 4 seconds to figure out what it is. If it takes you more than 4 seconds, well you're starting to put yourself at a disadvantage. So like give me the overview. Link me to the direct repo. In fact, link link me to a file where you think you did something clever, and I can just go look at that file and be like, oh, well, the guy knows Laravel.

Aaron

00:51:23 – 00:51:26

That's good. That's a good start. That's a good start. Maybe I wouldn't do it that way. It doesn't matter.

Aaron

00:51:26 – 00:51:49

They did something and they showed me the thing that they did, and so that that, like, lowers some of the doubts I have in my mind that everyone, like, is lying on their resume. I'm like, well, look, he just it's right there. They just pointed to it. I can see it. So, yeah, I think you have to be a little bit empathetic to the person on the other side and give them the value as quickly as possible because it's a sales pitch.

Aaron

00:51:49 – 00:51:54

You're selling yourself, and you gotta let them, like, taste it as quickly as possible.

Lane

00:51:54 – 00:52:23

Okay. I'm just gonna yes yes this one because I think it's it's super important. It is such a career hack. That's like the cringey influencer way that we're gonna cut this up and, like, post it somewhere. But there's there's this career hack where if you want someone to do something for you, the more that you can just, like, do it yourself and then kinda, like, get their sign off or, like, get their approval or get them to do, like, the last step like, again, such a hack.

Lane

00:52:23 – 00:52:39

Right? So, like, instead like, the the example of the resume is a great one. Instead of just handing someone a resume and linking them to your GitHub profile. Right? It's really great if you take the exact project that you wanted them to see, put a description of it in the resume with, like, a clickable hyperlink.

Lane

00:52:39 – 00:52:48

Right? They go straight to it right when they get there. Oh, there's a there's a link to the demo. Like, you're just taking steps out of the process. And it's not just about getting jobs.

Lane

00:52:48 – 00:53:01

It's like, this applies to this applies to everything. Like, anytime you want something from your boss. Right? If you can do the 90% that you're able to do so that you can go to them and just get the sign off. Right?

Lane

00:53:01 – 00:53:06

Hey. I already did this. I already did this. I think it's a really good idea. Can we just ship it?

Lane

00:53:06 – 00:53:26

Right? It's way better than going to them and be like, hey, I think we should do this and adding something to their plate. Like, I don't know. I I I've I've worked with so many people and it feels like less than 20% of them have have internalized this idea of like Yes. I'm gonna do the thing to get it over the finish line.

Lane

00:53:26 – 00:53:30

Most people don't. And if if you're one of those people that do that, I think you'll you'll go pretty far.

Aaron

00:53:30 – 00:53:42

Yep. Nobody wants to do anything. Nobody wants to do anything. And so, like, this applies to trying to get a job, or trying to get a promotion, or do a take on a project to work. It also applies to, like, your children and your spouse.

Aaron

00:53:42 – 00:53:55

Like, it's so much easier for me to go to my kids who are 3 and say, like, do you want this or this? And they say, this. And it's like, great. I have I have narrowed the universe of choices. I have presented you with 2 that seem reasonable to me.

Aaron

00:53:55 – 00:54:06

Now you decide. That works on a 3 year old. It also works on a 35 year old. When my wife comes to me and is like, what color should we paint the bathroom? And I'm like, oh, I don't know, man.

Aaron

00:54:07 – 00:54:26

Like, there's a lot of colors out there. But if she comes to me and she's like, here's one, here's the other. I'm like, oh, I like the other. The other is great. It's like, just narrow the scope of, like, what I have to emotionally, like, you know, the bar to which I have to overcome with my emotions of, I don't know what colors exist in the world.

Aaron

00:54:26 – 00:54:40

Boy, are you asking me a lot versus that one is better than the first one. It's like, this applies everywhere. Nobody nobody wants to do that leg work. Me, the recruiter, the hiring manager, nobody wants to do it. So do it for them, and it goes a super long way.

Lane

00:54:40 – 00:54:52

I've had employees that I've been managing come to me and say, hey, for this feature I need to send an email. How do we do that? Right? How do I send an email? Versus I've had other employees come to me.

Lane

00:54:52 – 00:54:58

Hey, I looked into it. We don't send emails yet. Should we do Bento or SendGrid? Right? Like Yep.

Lane

00:54:58 – 00:55:05

All of a sudden Yep. It's, like way easier for me to be like, oh, like I you know, I've used SendGrid in the past. Like, yeah, let's just let's just do it. Versus like, oh, okay. Alright.

Lane

00:55:05 – 00:55:08

Let me add that to my to do list to like research Yep.

Aaron

00:55:08 – 00:55:09

Yes. Exactly.

Lane

00:55:09 – 00:55:12

How we're doing this internally and what we need to take as a next step.

Aaron

00:55:12 – 00:55:36

Carry this emotional burden of figuring all this out for you. Yeah. When I was so a long time ago when I was a manager, there was, I I managed a lot of non technical people. And so people would come to me with these problems and my my first and only response usually was, okay, well what have you tried so far? And the answer was usually nothing.

Aaron

00:55:36 – 00:55:44

Oh, I don't know. I just got stuck and I just I just came into your office. This was back the day. I just came into your office and asked you the question. Okay.

Aaron

00:55:44 – 00:56:17

I'm always here to help. Why don't you go try some things and then come back and tell me what did or didn't work, and we can then, you know, figure it out together. But there's a I I learned this from some I don't know if it was Joel Spolsky or somebody else wrote an article a super long time ago called What Have You Tried? And it was basically saying anytime someone comes to me with a technical problem my answer is always going to be what have you tried. Not as like a jerk but like give me the context for things that maybe have or haven't worked and show me that you have thought about how you could solve this on your own.

Aaron

00:56:17 – 00:56:23

You don't have to solve it on your own, but if you come to me and you say I have tried nothing and I want you to fix it for me. Nah. Start over.

Lane

00:56:24 – 00:56:33

You wanna take problems off people's plates. And it's not just about internally at a company like we said. It applies everywhere. Yep. This has been this has been fun.

Lane

00:56:33 – 00:56:43

I feel like there was I mean, we went everywhere. We didn't talk too much about sequel lite, but It's alright. Everyone's still there. This, yeah. Everyone listening to this podcast kinda knows what sequel lite is.

Lane

00:56:44 – 00:56:49

If you're interested in high performance sequel lite, then do I have a domain for you?

Aaron

00:56:50 – 00:56:56

It's not aaronfrancis.com. It's high performance sequel lite.com. You may get emails from aaronfrancis.com.

Lane

00:56:58 – 00:57:09

Yeah. Cool. Well, again, thanks so much for coming on. Do you wanna just take a second, plug all your projects, plug your podcast, just make sure that everyone listening that's interested and, and, thinks you're funny and charismatic, knows where to find you. Sure.

Lane

00:57:09 – 00:57:09

Yeah. We'll do a little we'll do a little My First

Aaron

00:57:09 – 00:57:24

Million thrill of the shill, which is just god. They're just so good at coming up with names. So let's see. On Twitter, erindfrancis, d as in Daniel, and then aaronfrancis.com. And then High Performance SQLite, if you're into SQLite.

Aaron

00:57:24 – 00:57:50

There's like 65 videos there. I'm working on the next set. There's probably gonna be 15 or 20 more. Screencasting.com, if you want to learn how to make high quality video super fast. And then if you're interested in basically this kind of talk, me and a friend have a podcast called Mostly Technical at mostlytechnical.com where every week we talk about some mix of his business, my business, and basically Seinfeld topics.

Aaron

00:57:51 – 00:57:59

Like, what do you mean when you say next Friday? Like, what day do you actually mean when you say next Friday? So stuff like that. So mostly technical.com if you wanna listen to the banter.

Lane

00:57:59 – 00:58:13

Oh, wait. Hold on. I forgot to I forgot to say something. This is one of the last episodes of season 1 of this podcast, just so everyone who's listening is aware. I don't actually know which one it is because we record these in advance, but it the end the end is near on season 1.

Lane

00:58:13 – 00:58:19

So, just expect that. Hopefully, it's not literally this episode or else this will be awkward.

Aaron

00:58:20 – 00:58:23

We'll find out together. Okay. See you. Bye.

How to Be Better than 96.487% of Developers

Transcript

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