Aaron Francis

Aaron is joined this week by special guest Caleb Porzio (filling in for Ian) to talk about everything from solo parenting to Caleb's new project to rejuvenating Torchlight and a lot more. Sponsored by LaraJobs & Screencasting.com. Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more. Chapters: 00:00 Low Energy Jeb 05:37 Time on Twitter (Isn’t Profitable) 11:20 The Thunk Boys 18:10 An Essential Piece 25:48 Caleb’s Solo Empire 31:30 Two Weeks to Laracon 41:58 Why Do You Hate Money 50:58 Torchlight Also 01:06:00 Riddle Me This 01:23:48 I Think I Want To Event Source

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Transcript

Aaron

00:00:00 – 00:00:04

Good morning, mister Landsman. Mister Ian Landsman, welcome welcome back to the show.

Caleb

00:00:04 – 00:00:05

Oh, hello, Aaron.

Aaron

00:00:06 – 00:00:08

That's the worst, Ian. I potentially

Caleb

00:00:08 – 00:00:16

ever heard of him. Like, go into my Ian for a second, and he has he doesn't have, like, a crisp voice. You know?

Aaron

00:00:16 – 00:00:16

Okay.

Caleb

00:00:17 – 00:00:20

It's a little higher, I think. Okay. So that what do you

Aaron

00:00:20 – 00:00:31

That's the I and I didn't warn you, but that was that was flawless. It sounded terrible, but it was perfect execution. Yeah. Absolutely. So welcome to the show, Caleb Porzio, not Ian Landsman.

Aaron

00:00:31 – 00:00:32

Nice to have you here.

Caleb

00:00:33 – 00:00:39

Thanks for having me here, Aaron Francis, filling in for mister Ian Landsman. Welcome to the show.

Aaron

00:00:39 – 00:01:04

Thank you. Welcome to the show. Alright. So we we don't have anywhere to go except that we were just talking about high energy, slash low energy jab. And I feel I feel I feel a little low energy jab these days, which in case you all don't follow 2016 American politics, Jeb Bush was low energy when he was running for president, and everybody claimed him low energy Jeb.

Caleb

00:01:04 – 00:01:08

Know this was an actual legitimate reference. Yeah. They're

Aaron

00:01:09 – 00:01:30

around our around our house sometimes, me or my wife will say, I'm just feeling a little I'm feeling a little low energy jab today. Low energy jab. It's like, I guess, a a Francis thing that we know about now. But, yeah, he had the jab with the exclamation point, which is like, I'm trying to be high energy, but it it didn't really work. So just kinda where I'm at.

Aaron

00:01:30 – 00:01:33

A medium energy jab today. How how we doing over there?

Caleb

00:01:34 – 00:01:41

High energy. Yeah. I'm all You're high energy? On caffeine and, you know, just life. Yes.

Caleb

00:01:41 – 00:01:43

I'm in a high energy mode, Aaron.

Aaron

00:01:43 – 00:01:52

I'll have you know what to tell energies is this a high energy season for you? Because you've just had a child, but you're also working on our super fun project. So what's what's driving the energy?

Caleb

00:01:53 – 00:02:16

Yes. Super fun project, children, literally, I'm on a call with Josh Hanley this morning, way early, because he's in Australia, and I have you know, waking up super early isn't a superpower. Well, I should it's not a huge feat when you have, like, little children everywhere. It's just, like, what you do. I would have been way more proud of myself for waking up early, pre babies.

Aaron

00:02:17 – 00:02:17

You

Caleb

00:02:17 – 00:02:23

know? Now it's, like, you have to wake up early. Right? Like, you what time do you wake

Aaron

00:02:23 – 00:02:25

up early? Merely doing your job at this point.

Caleb

00:02:25 – 00:02:33

Exactly. Like Like, congratulations. The minimum is 7, and it's, like, well, 7 is you're you're late to the party. You know? Yes.

Caleb

00:02:33 – 00:02:38

If you wanna be, like, on top of things, it's 6. Like, for sure.

Aaron

00:02:38 – 00:02:51

I don't know. It was miles. Anytime pre on duty, you have to get up you have to get up pretty early. Because if you wake up at 7, you gotta get up and you gotta go get baby. Right?

Aaron

00:02:51 – 00:02:56

Yeah. Or you gotta go make breakfast for baby or something. Yeah. But if you wake up at 6,

Caleb

00:02:56 – 00:02:57

it's like, oh, I got

Aaron

00:02:57 – 00:03:02

some free time. I'm just gonna I'm gonna make some coffee or, you know, tea or whatever you're drinking over there.

Caleb

00:03:02 – 00:03:20

Tea. Yeah. I've been putting the like, getting the water all set up the night before so I can just, like, wake up, turn the water on on my desk, and start dosing. You know? And we're like, I don't even leave my, like, situation, you know, until 7 or 7:30.

Caleb

00:03:21 – 00:03:21

You

Aaron

00:03:21 – 00:03:33

know, we have a, we have a, like, a Google Smart Home plug. It's, like, you know, $19 on Amazon, and it, we plug our coffee maker into it. And so every morning

Caleb

00:03:33 – 00:03:34

Aaron

00:03:34 – 00:03:37

6 AM, the coffee maker comes on and makes the coffee.

Caleb

00:03:37 – 00:03:42

Yeah. That's great. My mom Yeah. Does that, although she does it with one of those Christmas light timers.

Aaron

00:03:42 – 00:03:42

Yep.

Caleb

00:03:42 – 00:03:46

You know? Classic. And it works great. Yeah.

Aaron

00:03:46 – 00:03:51

This is this is not an insult to your mom, but that is the most boomer thing I've ever heard.

Caleb

00:03:51 – 00:04:06

Totally. And it and it works phenomenally well. Yeah. And my parents' house is lit with those 3 button remotes that that, like, click the, you know, the outlet when they, like, go on, and Yep. It's like Internet's out?

Caleb

00:04:06 – 00:04:07

Nope. No problem.

Aaron

00:04:07 – 00:04:08

No problem.

Caleb

00:04:08 – 00:04:10

Their smart home works. Find find the

Aaron

00:04:10 – 00:04:15

right remote on the on the huge keychain of remotes that turns on the lamp. Yeah.

Caleb

00:04:15 – 00:04:30

Yeah. So, yes, that's why I'm high energy, Aaron. Why are you low energy, Aaron? So there's been stuff going on with you that I I haven't read or received, I think. I haven't checked my email in forever about a post about going offline.

Caleb

00:04:31 – 00:04:36

There's, like, there's things stirring here that, you know, you may

Aaron

00:04:36 – 00:04:43

It's all in here, man. There's, like, a storm going on in the head. Let's see where to begin. I have You don't have

Caleb

00:04:43 – 00:04:44

to cover that, but,

Aaron

00:04:44 – 00:04:50

oh, no. It's great. It's good content. I have 4 kids. 2 are 3 and 2 are 8 months.

Aaron

00:04:50 – 00:05:04

So there goes a big you know, there goes the energy reserves. You know? Yeah. So we're already kind of operating at a deficit there. Last weekend, I was solo parent, so that was just incredibly exhausting.

Caleb

00:05:04 – 00:05:06

That is crazy, dude.

Aaron

00:05:07 – 00:05:15

Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. And, of course, I couldn't do it by myself. So I had, you know, both sets of grandparents coming in

Caleb

00:05:15 – 00:05:17

to, like, help.

Aaron

00:05:17 – 00:05:28

I had a babysitter come over once to help. Like, I didn't leave. She just came over to help because there's, you know, 2, 8 month olds that have to eat, that have to be fed bottles, and then 2, 3

Caleb

00:05:28 – 00:05:28

year olds

Aaron

00:05:28 – 00:05:31

are just, like, running around. Because I definitely have help.

Caleb

00:05:31 – 00:05:33

Seems like impossible without that. But

Aaron

00:05:34 – 00:05:38

Yeah. Totally impossible. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, man.

Aaron

00:05:38 – 00:05:51

I'm just worn out. I think I think kids are a big part of it. Starting a business is hard. Takes a lot of energy. Being this is interesting because I think you maybe came to this realization a while back.

Aaron

00:05:52 – 00:05:59

The time spent on Twitter is just not that profitable anymore. No. Like, you you logged off a long time ago.

Caleb

00:05:59 – 00:06:16

Yeah. Yeah. Twitter, and I even had like, today, I'm sitting with River eating breakfast and just thinking of what was it. It's, my phone case. Somebody complimented my phone case yesterday, and I was, like, this legitimately is, like, the coolest phone case.

Caleb

00:06:16 – 00:06:27

I love it, and it's cheap. And I've thought this about a few things in my life, a sleeping pad that I use. Like, there's these things. It's, like, these are my all time best purchases. This is the best kind of content.

Caleb

00:06:27 – 00:06:40

This is, like, I should put this in a Twitter thread and be, like, here's the 10 things that I love that I have bought and have 0 buyers' remorse, and you should buy them too. People just wanna buy something.

Aaron

00:06:40 – 00:06:42

Would go crazy for that. They would love that stuff.

Caleb

00:06:42 – 00:06:58

I love a list of stuff to buy Mhmm. From somebody that I trust or has good taste, even if it doesn't. Just tell me what to buy. And then I I just realized that, like, oh, that's so, like, silly. If I wanted to do this bit of content, send it to my email list

Aaron

00:06:58 – 00:06:58

Mhmm.

Caleb

00:06:58 – 00:07:25

And it will do far better, and we'll and the phone case I'm talking about was a Kevin Rose recommendation on his email newsletter that he, like, shouted out in there and wrote this little bit about, and I was, like, you used to buy that phone case. So, anyway, yes, it remains to be true. It has always been true, and is becoming even more true that, like, an engaged email list is a far better way to make money than a Twitter account. You know?

Aaron

00:07:25 – 00:07:30

Okay. So here's my guess. Talking about making money. You didn't even you didn't send the email. So you didn't tweet, and you didn't send the email.

Aaron

00:07:30 – 00:07:31

Is that is

Caleb

00:07:31 – 00:07:31

that right?

Aaron

00:07:31 – 00:07:32

I just wrote him

Caleb

00:07:32 – 00:07:33

down on a list this morning on my pad.

Aaron

00:07:33 – 00:07:44

Yeah. Perfect. Question. How big is, how big is your email list? And is that, like, Caleb Porzio, make Versus Code awesome, Livewire Alpine?

Aaron

00:07:45 – 00:07:46

Is it all one big bucket?

Caleb

00:07:47 – 00:07:54

No. I have, like, separate buckets, but I don't know the numbers of each bucket, but I did yesterday, because I need to start marketing this new project, Flux.

Aaron

00:07:54 – 00:07:55

Right.

Caleb

00:07:55 – 00:08:03

So I, like, looked yesterday in ConvertKit to just see where things are at, and it's, like, 65,000 email people. So it's That's

Aaron

00:08:03 – 00:08:05

a lot of email people, man.

Caleb

00:08:05 – 00:08:15

Freaking list that goes largely untapped. Yeah. But, like, Versus Code awesome is maybe, like, 7000. I think I launched it, like, 4 or 5000. Awesome.

Caleb

00:08:15 – 00:08:26

But then there's the Alpine segment, and then there's the LiveWire segment. And that's pretty much it. Three segments. Yeah. And then the old, like, galeforzio.comnewsletter subscribers, which is just you just get everything if you were that.

Caleb

00:08:26 – 00:08:28

Yeah. But, yeah, it is a lot of emails.

Aaron

00:08:28 – 00:08:30

Dude, 65,000 is crazy.

Caleb

00:08:31 – 00:08:40

Well, so I told you how I get how I get all the emails. And it's and my when I send out an email to generally, like, 35,000 people

Aaron

00:08:41 – 00:08:41

Mhmm. Because

Caleb

00:08:41 – 00:09:03

it's, you know, target, like, a live or email. Last one I sent, like, 35 or 40000 people, and the open rate is, like it's been dipping over time. It's, like, I don't know, 50% maybe around that, which is, like, compared to it's good. Like, compared to anyone not in our world, not in, like, the indie creator world, they're like, what? Yeah.

Caleb

00:09:03 – 00:09:13

You get above 10? That's insane. But 50 is not, like, I've had higher. You can have higher. There there's a bunch of people I should call the list, basically.

Caleb

00:09:13 – 00:09:18

I should do and it's costing me a fortune on ConvertKit. I'm up to, like, $650 a month.

Aaron

00:09:18 – 00:09:18

Jeez.

Caleb

00:09:19 – 00:09:28

Yeah. So, like, I could probably save $200 a month if I literally sent an email that said, if you don't hit this button, you're gonna go off the list. You know? Like, you're not gonna get emails from me.

Aaron

00:09:28 – 00:09:37

Isn't isn't that the only way to call these days because of all the, you know, hey.com and friends blockers? You don't really know who's active and Totally. It has

Caleb

00:09:37 – 00:09:47

to be, like link. Yeah. So right. That's, well, you know what? I I I'm just thinking back to, like, when I got really into if I should do this or not.

Caleb

00:09:47 – 00:10:06

I don't think ConvertKit I don't know. Maybe Convert ConvertKit has a bunch of, like, guides on HANA to call your list, and I'm not sure if they require, like, engagement. Maybe they're still operating under the assumption that an open rate is an open rate. But but, yeah, I don't know. I would have I would make it opt in in some way.

Caleb

00:10:06 – 00:10:12

Yeah. So I don't know, Aaron. But, yes, it's a big list, and That's amazing. I need to take better advantage of it. Yeah.

Caleb

00:10:12 – 00:10:13

I do.

Aaron

00:10:13 – 00:10:18

And Are you warming it up, in in preparation for the launch of Flux?

Caleb

00:10:18 – 00:10:22

Yeah. So that's so we just, like I I hired a Thunk.

Aaron

00:10:23 – 00:10:24

Oh, I've heard of them.

Caleb

00:10:24 – 00:10:34

Yeah. Thunk boys. Yeah. I'm so I'm gonna charge for Flux. It was gonna be free before, and I so now I'm scrambling, like, I gotta make a thing that I'm gonna charge for.

Caleb

00:10:34 – 00:10:51

So, yeah, first step is, like, oh, I need a warm email list for this project. So whatever. Thunk helped me think through all these things and not just, like, you know, forget. So, yeah, I have, like, I gotta send something out today or tomorrow that's, like, hey. I exist.

Caleb

00:10:51 – 00:10:53

Here's something of value

Aaron

00:10:53 – 00:10:54

for you. You should buy.

Caleb

00:10:54 – 00:10:56

Here are 10 things you should buy,

Aaron

00:10:56 – 00:11:08

and then actually listen to my podcast notes on work that says buy nothing. Instead, read my emails that say here are 10 things you should buy. Buy nothing for your kids. Buy 10 things for yourself. Yeah.

Caleb

00:11:08 – 00:11:10

Your kids are happy to play with dirt.

Aaron

00:11:10 – 00:11:16

You Yeah. You, on the other hand, have a gaping fear inside of you that needs to be filled with phone cases.

Caleb

00:11:17 – 00:11:18

Yes.

Aaron

00:11:19 – 00:11:29

What are the Thunk Boys helping with? Because, they're a they're a primarily Livewire development shop. So Yeah. Why do you need them?

Caleb

00:11:29 – 00:11:50

They're just smart. You know, like, they're you could think of them as a primarily live or dev chef, or you could think of, like, John Drexler's been in product management forever, and he's an incredible brand. And Daniel has been he could write React Native if I wanted, and he would be fantastic. Yeah. So you just have, like, incredibly capable people.

Caleb

00:11:50 – 00:11:58

And I was just like, yo, I just need incredibly capable people, so let's set a budget and, like, please just help make Flux better. You know?

Aaron

00:11:59 – 00:12:02

Okay. So this is interesting. So John Rudolf Drexler

Caleb

00:12:02 – 00:12:04

is The man of myth.

Aaron

00:12:04 – 00:12:07

Product manager. Is that what you call it?

Caleb

00:12:07 – 00:12:14

Yeah. He meant he's the guy who makes sure everything happens and has lists and is properly brainstormed and he strategizes.

Aaron

00:12:14 – 00:12:18

Can you imagine having a guy like that? Being a guy like that?

Caleb

00:12:18 – 00:12:20

Well, you Steve is your John. Right?

Aaron

00:12:20 – 00:12:28

Steve is my John, and Linda is my new, And Linda's new. Yeah. My new Your John. Kind of John. Yeah.

Aaron

00:12:28 – 00:12:32

Steve Steve and Linda together, and Linda's name is Kelsey, of course.

Caleb

00:12:32 – 00:12:32

Right.

Aaron

00:12:32 – 00:12:43

They'll they'll provide that capacity for me. So is is John Rudolph Drexler, like, basically, like, managing the release of Flux? Is that how this is going?

Caleb

00:12:43 – 00:12:57

So not, like so they're actually they have other stuff going on. So in a perfect world, I would love, I think, to offload, like, all of that maybe, but I'm also a control freak. I have Mhmm. Big control problems. I and I struggle hiring anybody for anything.

Caleb

00:12:58 – 00:13:17

So I maybe thought that they would be that way, but now I'm, like, you know, coming up with a lot of things and wiring up a lot of things myself because I am that way. But yeah. So they're not in charge of the release or anything, but, like, I made a big list of, like, here. Install this stuff locally. This is for, like, Daniel and Jacob.

Caleb

00:13:17 – 00:13:36

Big list this morning of, like, here's access to all the repos. Get it all up locally and just brutally test everything. And anything that's broken or not perfect, make us a file for with a reproduction in a repo with comments explaining for me how to reproduce it. And then tomorrow or the next day or whatever, we'll get on a call. I'll pull down the repo.

Caleb

00:13:36 – 00:13:40

You watch me, and I'll go through and fix everything, and then we'll rinse and repeat that.

Aaron

00:13:40 – 00:13:41

Cool.

Caleb

00:13:41 – 00:14:00

So that is right. QA is hugely valuable to me right now, and I didn't realize it until I'm on the call with them going, like, I just need you guys. And then I realized, like, oh, a massive thing that you guys can help me with is quality assurance. Like, I'm not gonna do quality assurance to the level that somebody would do it if that was their whole job. You know?

Caleb

00:14:00 – 00:14:09

So I'm excited about that to actually, hopefully, because of Thumb, ship something that is, like, bulletproof out of date. Jank free.

Aaron

00:14:09 – 00:14:10

Not, like be jank free.

Caleb

00:14:10 – 00:14:16

Open source. We'll figure it out as we go. Mhmm. Like, let's make this thing good, like, right now. You know?

Aaron

00:14:16 – 00:14:20

So yeah. That's That's great. That's a good use of the thunk boys.

Caleb

00:14:20 – 00:14:26

I'm hiring people for something. Like, I it's not my nature. You. I yeah. Thanks.

Caleb

00:14:26 – 00:14:27

I'm paying money for people.

Aaron

00:14:28 – 00:14:31

It's amazing. You don't have to do everything yourself.

Caleb

00:14:31 – 00:14:42

That's fantastic. This I have this problem where, to me, a developer's time, unless you're Jason Beggs and are doing something hyper targeted that you're an expert in

Aaron

00:14:42 – 00:14:42

Mhmm.

Caleb

00:14:43 – 00:14:55

Is, like, such a waste of time. Like, how much time as a developer when you're working on, like, you know, your your life app or whatever, like anything? How much time is your just finger in your nose? You know? Like,

Aaron

00:14:56 – 00:14:59

very little very little finger and nose time over here.

Caleb

00:14:59 – 00:15:02

Right. You would have a glove on. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.

Caleb

00:15:03 – 00:15:05

My surgical gloves here at the office.

Aaron

00:15:05 – 00:15:07

It was disgusting.

Caleb

00:15:07 – 00:15:16

Like, how much are you chasing a curiosity or fixing a bug that you haven't, like, pulled your head out of the sand to realize is the wrong path? Or you know what I mean?

Aaron

00:15:16 – 00:15:33

These days, primarily chasing a curiosity. Just given the nature of my my work slash business. Like, now it's very important to me that I chase curiosities because that, gives me good stuff to talk about.

Caleb

00:15:33 – 00:15:34

I'm doing

Aaron

00:15:34 – 00:15:41

very I'm doing very little, very little man of the people, every every every man coding stuff where I'm

Caleb

00:15:41 – 00:15:41

just,

Aaron

00:15:41 – 00:15:43

like, cranking out features anymore.

Caleb

00:15:43 – 00:15:44

Right.

Aaron

00:15:44 – 00:16:00

I still have some of that to do because we are running our own, you know, screencasting platform. Yeah. And so there's still some stuff that, like, just is just needs to be fixed. Yeah. A lot of it is just kinda, like, dorking around, you know Yep.

Aaron

00:16:00 – 00:16:01

Figuring out what's fun.

Caleb

00:16:01 – 00:16:08

I mean, I get that because that similarly is, like, a lot of my work, and that's, yeah, that's curiosity breeding

Aaron

00:16:09 – 00:16:09

Mhmm.

Caleb

00:16:09 – 00:16:16

You know, fun ideas, cool stuff Yep. Talk about whatever. You can just you the job is to pull the thread. You know? Yes.

Caleb

00:16:16 – 00:16:19

And follow that, like, as far as Which is,

Aaron

00:16:19 – 00:16:24

if I recall correctly, where LiveWire came from. You just kinda were, like, I wonder, and you just kept going.

Caleb

00:16:24 – 00:16:46

Yeah. It is. And to this and, like, working on a lot of this stuff with Flux, whatever, there's been plenty of threads that I've just indulged, you know, and, like, and come up with cool stuff and, like, oh, this is sick and whatever. But hiring people for, like, you know, if you needed somebody to build out your platform, it's like, I would hire somebody. It's like you hire a roofer, 12 people to send on your house for one day.

Caleb

00:16:46 – 00:16:55

Oh, man. They do the entire roof. They know every step of the process. One person subs and the other person subs in. It's like, that is such a good use of my money.

Caleb

00:16:55 – 00:17:12

I trust it. And if I'm hiring Jason Beggs to convert a design to whatever, it's, like, I trust it. It's an effective use of money. If I'm hiring somebody to figure something out because I don't have time to, it's, like, that is such a waste of money. Like Yep.

Aaron

00:17:13 – 00:17:14

No. I agree. That's just

Caleb

00:17:14 – 00:17:16

a problem with hiring developers for me.

Aaron

00:17:16 – 00:17:27

Interesting distinction. We do, especially yeah. We do like to overengineer and follow our own curiosities. And when we're doing it on someone else's dime, it's even better.

Caleb

00:17:27 – 00:17:29

Right. And we do it all the time.

Aaron

00:17:29 – 00:17:30

Do it all the time.

Caleb

00:17:30 – 00:17:39

It's part of the job. Like, how else do you learn to do anything? But it it's like yeah. Because so much of the work is bespoke. It's, like, here, build this invent a custom machine for me.

Caleb

00:17:39 – 00:17:45

Right. You know? That's the job. It's, like, of course, I have to, you know, pick my nose and, like, yeah, whatever.

Aaron

00:17:46 – 00:17:47

I don't know what's going on over there.

Caleb

00:17:47 – 00:17:53

I have to use a soft lip. I have, like, a it's like the allergies. Lots of

Aaron

00:17:53 – 00:17:54

dry air or something. Yeah. Yeah.

Caleb

00:17:54 – 00:18:06

There's a lot of stuff to pick. But anyway, I thought that was just an interesting thing that that, like, I wonder if others feel or if it's easier for you to hire a developer to do something. It's just hard for me.

Aaron

00:18:07 – 00:18:20

Yeah. It's hard for me too. I think that's why that's why I'm so excited about Kelsey starting today, by the way. So she she starts, she starts after we get off this call. Nice.

Aaron

00:18:20 – 00:18:42

Because she's not she's not a developer, and she's got so many skills that, I don't have and Steve maybe has, but doesn't really have time to and so I'm hoping that with her skills, she can cover a lot of our weaknesses and keep the business, like, going smoothly.

Caleb

00:18:42 – 00:18:54

Yeah. It seems like an essential piece, so that you're not doing this. But just to clarify, like, she's doing support, task management, strategy, stuff like that?

Aaron

00:18:54 – 00:19:25

So she'll be doing she'll be doing frontline support, so she'll be manning, the email inbox. And so that's that's stuff like purchasing power parity requests, question inbound sponsorship requests, which is interesting. You know, she'll be able to negotiate some of that stuff. Yeah. And then she's gonna be doing a lot of the, like so, like, I need to be more regularly scheduling people for this database school, you know, podcast thing.

Aaron

00:19:26 – 00:19:57

And I just need to have her reach out and schedule times with people. And that's just something that I, like, it falls by the wayside because I'm doing other things, and then I look up and I'm like, ah, shoot. I really should be talking to more people about this kind of stuff. So, yeah, she'll be handling all of all of that kind of stuff and including, like, you know, anytime someone sends us an email that has a testimonial embedded within it, she'll be taking that testimonial out and putting it on our website, stuff like that. It's like that's the obvious best practice.

Aaron

00:19:57 – 00:20:06

Right? If somebody says something nice, tell everyone else, hey. This person said something nice about me. Don't you wanna give me money? And it's just like, oh, great.

Aaron

00:20:06 – 00:20:10

I closed that email. I'm gonna move on. But with Kelsey there, she can say, woah. Woah. Woah.

Aaron

00:20:10 – 00:20:16

I'm gonna take that and make the turn that into a testimonial on the website. It's like, yes. That's what I need.

Caleb

00:20:16 – 00:20:34

There's so much of that that's just like that that's such a good pitch for that position is literally just the person who finds the testimonials as they come by and does something with it. Yes. Yeah. And I wonder how much that makes a difference in the, you know, the business itself, like, you know?

Aaron

00:20:34 – 00:21:00

Yeah. I don't know. I think my estimation is there are before we go looking for new novel and interesting ways to grow the business, we need to first exhaust all of the obvious things, and we have yet to exhaust all the obvious things. And so way to think of it. I'm trying to do, like, I'm trying to do everything that is plain on its face a good idea, and we'll see what happens.

Aaron

00:21:00 – 00:21:11

And then beyond that, we can, you know, we can invent the universe or whatever. But right now, it's just, like, hey. People said nice things, and you need social proof on your website. So let's start there.

Caleb

00:21:11 – 00:21:31

Yeah. You delegation is a strength from of yours from where I'm standing, at least because of, like, things like you're the finance person, like, has did that stuff work out? Like, even family help, like, there I I never take initiative even if I think, like, oh, it'd be great to have but you do take at least the initiative. Did that work out the financial thing?

Aaron

00:21:32 – 00:21:50

So I had a a household bookkeeper, and she did bookkeeping for, like, my my holding LLC that doesn't have very much going on there. So I had a household book bookkeeper for, like, a year or 2 Sweet. That just, like, ran our YNAB for us. That's great. And it was it was great.

Aaron

00:21:50 – 00:22:14

Like, it was really helpful. We had calls, we had calls every month with her to talk through everything. And it was helpful, but it wasn't it didn't, like Yeah. And I don't know that, I don't know that it ended up, like, meaning anything to me. So it felt kind of nice to have, like, everything in its place in terms of the YNAB categories.

Aaron

00:22:15 – 00:22:30

But then because I didn't do it, I would look at it, and it wasn't like it it had no impact on me. It was not the fruits of my labor. And so I'd look at it and be like, ah, I guess that looks that's fine. I'm gonna do whatever I want, and we'll true it up later. It's like, wow.

Aaron

00:22:31 – 00:22:40

That's not exactly super helpful. So Yeah. Had to let her go, and it was totally fine. That's just what she does. She's a freelancer who does that.

Aaron

00:22:41 – 00:23:01

And then yeah. I'm trying to think of other areas of my life that I've delegated. I've tried to hire for this Linda position a few times Yeah. But not, in the realm of try hard studios, more in the realm of, like, let's manage Aaron's online life.

Caleb

00:23:01 – 00:23:15

And that's conversation, like, a I don't know, a year or 2 ago. I just remember walking forever and talking with you about, like you're like, I want somebody to show up every morning and just watch me do the things I should be doing.

Aaron

00:23:15 – 00:23:17

Yeah. You know? Yeah. That's crazy.

Caleb

00:23:17 – 00:23:19

That was, like this is what you're talking about. Right?

Aaron

00:23:19 – 00:23:39

It's, like, that person that I'm talking about. Yeah. So I hired, you know, I I hired a few people, and it never, like, it just never really stuck. I think Yeah. I think I hired 3 people on and off part time, and it was usually just, like, friends of friends or, like, my sister-in-law.

Aaron

00:23:39 – 00:23:49

Yeah. And it was never it was never enough time. So they were always like, hey. I have a few hours a week. I can fit in some stuff here and there.

Aaron

00:23:49 – 00:24:11

And it would have been great if I had some, like, like, some very discreet tasks to hand them. But what I wanted was somebody more to, like, man like, take some of the decision making off of my plate and tell me, like, hey. Do this thing. Or you just did you just published that. Now publish this as a compendium or something like that.

Aaron

00:24:11 – 00:24:19

And it was never it was always like, hey. What discreet thing do you want me to do? And I'll get back to you in a week or a week and a half. And it was like, I don't know. I just really don't.

Caleb

00:24:20 – 00:24:31

It's so hard. Like, you want yourself if you if you were in that mode, if, like, if it was your job to just be thinking about what you should do next, you would be excellent at it. Yes. You know? Yes.

Caleb

00:24:31 – 00:24:50

But you can't do that and do the things. But hiring for that is very difficult. Like, somebody to be able to tell you what to do next needs all the context of what you're doing Yes. What you've done and everything, and it's, like, I don't know. At least to me so far an impossible thing to solve, but, clearly, many people have solved it.

Caleb

00:24:50 – 00:24:52

Yeah. And your current Linda

Aaron

00:24:52 – 00:24:53

Clearly.

Caleb

00:24:53 – 00:24:55

Hopefully is it. I hope so.

Aaron

00:24:55 – 00:25:10

And I think one thing that is definitely going to be in her favor is that, we are committing 20 hours a week to her. So it's not just like, hey. Just, you know, do a couple hours a week where you can. We'll add tasks to this thing. It's like, no.

Aaron

00:25:10 – 00:25:19

You're pretty much working a half day every day of the week. And so Yeah. You're gonna be here. You're gonna be a part of the business. It's not just like, this random outsider.

Aaron

00:25:19 – 00:25:40

And so and, hopefully, as time goes on, we can, you know, fill 40 hours. Well, we can probably fill it. We can afford 40 hours of her time every week. That would be awesome. But I think I think this is going to help, her be more integrated, just treating it like a real job.

Aaron

00:25:40 – 00:25:43

Like, that seems pretty straightforward. Maybe I should have thought of that.

Caleb

00:25:43 – 00:25:47

Yeah. Right. That is an important important piece of it for sure.

Aaron

00:25:47 – 00:25:50

I don't know how you're running your empire solo still.

Caleb

00:25:50 – 00:26:10

Yeah. I think you can just do it forever because a lot of the stuff, I mean, I'm sure I'll have like, I I think it's hard to grow like that. But even with paying people the times I've paid people, it's, like, whatever I put my attention on is the thing that grows. Mhmm. Whether somebody else is doing the work or not, it's, like, it's really just a matter of my focus.

Caleb

00:26:10 – 00:26:27

So it just became, like, if I don't hire I'm hiring the people to to help me with this, but I have to even put even more focus on that now. And Yeah. If I'm putting that much focus on it, like, I can do a lot of it myself, and then I don't have to pay them, and then I make a lot more money. Yeah. Yeah.

Caleb

00:26:27 – 00:26:43

So it's probably, like, a destructive mentality, but, and there's a lot yeah. You know, I've heard me blab about this, but it's always, like, what if you did that job yourself? Like, what would like, you could do that too. Or or, like, how much do the testimonials matter? Right.

Caleb

00:26:43 – 00:27:00

Yeah. You look at a a really, like, established business, and somebody clearly is doing that, and that's awesome. But it's, like, does that make the difference, and how much are they wasting on people that do stuff like that as opposed to just, like, shipping valuable things? As opposed to just, like, knowing the thing to ship and driving hard to ship it

Aaron

00:27:00 – 00:27:00

Mhmm.

Caleb

00:27:01 – 00:27:14

And then rinse and repeating that cycle is, like, the only thing I know and I think it could carry me pretty far, but it but I the obvious holes in the plot are maintaining the things after they've shipped.

Aaron

00:27:15 – 00:27:15

Right.

Caleb

00:27:16 – 00:27:18

And then shipping bigger things Right.

Aaron

00:27:18 – 00:27:18

Which you

Caleb

00:27:18 – 00:27:29

can do a lot yourself in a year. If you had 1 year to work on a project, imagine what you could do. Like I can do so much. You could do so much. So that's sort of what I've been toying with as well.

Caleb

00:27:29 – 00:27:36

Like, I've been pretty dark for, like, 9 months on Flux, and and I've just worked on it solely. And now I, like, woke up,

Aaron

00:27:36 – 00:27:39

and I'm like, wow. This thing's freaking huge. Like Mhmm.

Caleb

00:27:39 – 00:27:56

This is cool. Like, one person can do this. I had a designer help and whatever, but, anyway so I don't know. At least that's, like, my working philosophy so far because every time I ever try to get help, it just doesn't work out for me, so I just don't try as much.

Aaron

00:27:57 – 00:28:02

Have you tried have you tried getting help on the admin side versus the development side?

Caleb

00:28:03 – 00:28:11

Jason Beggs is the closest I've had to that, and he's great with that. Like, our the partners program, Jason and I, do 5050. And

Aaron

00:28:11 – 00:28:13

Mhmm. The LiveWire partners program.

Caleb

00:28:13 – 00:28:28

Yeah. It's so fantastic because, it runs unlike everything else in my life. It is just, everybody is promptly responded to, calls are planned and communicated. Mhmm. Everything is really tight, and that's because

Aaron

00:28:28 – 00:28:29

it shows up.

Caleb

00:28:29 – 00:28:39

Yeah. And with Alpine Components, when I partnered with him on that, it was the same way. It's, like, the things are taken care of. Yeah. But the problem with Jason is he's not an admin.

Caleb

00:28:39 – 00:28:42

He's a great dev Right. Exactly. Business person.

Aaron

00:28:42 – 00:28:42

Right.

Caleb

00:28:42 – 00:28:51

So it's, like, every time I partner with him, he costs me so much money. Right. It's, like, the admin stuff, I need, like, Linda. You know? Mhmm.

Caleb

00:28:52 – 00:28:57

So I hope you have success with with Linda, and I can take her other 20 hours or Somebody already asked

Aaron

00:28:57 – 00:29:05

for her other 20 hours. Yeah. Somebody already reached out and was like, hey. What's, what's your Linda doing for the other 20 hours?

Caleb

00:29:05 – 00:29:09

Right. You're gonna regret ever saying her real name. I know.

Aaron

00:29:09 – 00:29:21

I know. Yeah. I think I I agree I agree about Jason. He's highly qualified and therefore expensive. And so to have him have him doing that kind of stuff feels a little a little overpowered.

Aaron

00:29:21 – 00:29:34

But yeah. So tell me, like, during this 9 months that you're dark, who are you spending, like, the first like, Taylor does the first hour or 2 every morning addressing issues, and then you get to go off into into a happy place.

Caleb

00:29:34 – 00:29:38

So I was good about that for 7 and a half months. I was very good about that, Aaron Francis.

Aaron

00:29:38 – 00:29:41

Uh-oh. Wait. 9 months dark. 7 and a half is

Caleb

00:29:41 – 00:29:51

good. Giant pile of issues, full requests, and emails, and support tickets. Dang it. And now the dishes have piled up, and I won't even look at them until after Laracon because Of course not. No.

Caleb

00:29:51 – 00:29:55

It's like they're it's, like, what's one gonna do? You know? Yeah.

Aaron

00:29:55 – 00:29:55

What's one

Caleb

00:29:55 – 00:29:57

It's like after difference is one gonna do?

Aaron

00:29:57 – 00:30:03

You don't respond to a text for 2 days, it's like, he was a good friend. Pity I'll never talk to him again.

Caleb

00:30:04 – 00:30:09

Yep. This is that. Exactly. And I've been too deep. I've gone too far.

Aaron

00:30:09 – 00:30:10

Yep.

Caleb

00:30:10 – 00:30:12

Yes. There's no responding to any of these people.

Aaron

00:30:12 – 00:30:16

Thank you for It is yes.

Caleb

00:30:17 – 00:30:28

Yeah. So that's what's happening with that, but in a perfect world, yeah, I I don't know how Taylor does it, but I will I will always keep trying. You know? Yeah. Sure.

Caleb

00:30:29 – 00:30:35

I'll keep trying to do the Taylor, and, I get better every time. So that's, that's an important thing to know.

Aaron

00:30:35 – 00:30:36

Months is a long time. That's pretty good. Yeah.

Caleb

00:30:36 – 00:30:41

I don't do anything consistently for more than a month. So that was No. Of course. New record for me. Yeah.

Caleb

00:30:42 – 00:30:43

But, yeah, derailed at 7 and a half.

Aaron

00:30:43 – 00:30:44

Yeah. Well

Caleb

00:30:45 – 00:30:46

So It was fun it

Aaron

00:30:46 – 00:30:47

was fun while it lasted.

Caleb

00:30:47 – 00:30:55

It was fun while it lasted. So Oh, I fought my nature so hard for so well for so long, and then I remember I remember hearing about

Aaron

00:30:55 – 00:30:57

it on on notes on Mark.

Caleb

00:30:57 – 00:30:57

Yeah.

Aaron

00:30:57 – 00:30:58

I thought, he's really No.

Caleb

00:30:58 – 00:30:59

I got

Aaron

00:30:59 – 00:30:59

to return the corner.

Caleb

00:31:00 – 00:31:17

To give the real picture because, you know, people, like Yeah. They tout their achievements proudly at the beginning, and then you're like, yeah. It's so much so that when anybody is doing any new habit for any time less than, like, 2 months or something and they tweet about it or whatever, I'm just like I I just filed away and, like, good for you. But tell me in 6 months, like,

Aaron

00:31:17 – 00:31:18

there's

Caleb

00:31:18 – 00:31:26

an 80% chance that this thing that's changing your life right now is just because it's a new thing. You know? Because that's what, you know, not that that's something wrong with that, but

Aaron

00:31:27 – 00:31:36

Not that there's anything wrong with that. So you're about to release this thing. It's, it's August 12th. Laracon is Laracon in 2 weeks?

Caleb

00:31:36 – 00:31:44

Well, I have 2 working weeks. So we have the 2 of this. Week and all of next week to work. Okay. And then the next week, it's Lyrica.

Caleb

00:31:44 – 00:31:45

Yeah.

Aaron

00:31:45 – 00:31:59

So I'll give you 2 options. What is what's the lead up? What's the launch lead up slash launch look like? That's option s, option a. And option 2 is what's the status of the project?

Aaron

00:32:00 – 00:32:08

How do you feel about it? How much more do you have to do? Are you excited, nervous? So you can give us kinda logistics or kinda vibes.

Caleb

00:32:10 – 00:32:22

Yeah. I'm, like, super excited. I'm more excited about this than it feels like anything before, but I was also very excited for pretty much, like, Liveware 3, Liveware 1, Liveware 2, whatever, but I'm super excited about it. Totally amped.

Aaron

00:32:23 – 00:32:23

Caleb

00:32:23 – 00:32:35

I'm super proud of it. I love using it a ton, so that's awesome. That is awesome. And, yeah, I I feel like I should just tell people what it is. Like, let's figure that out.

Caleb

00:32:35 – 00:32:45

Should I tell people what it is before Laracon? Like, I'd do it right now. We could have to figure out. Like, is it is it better? The only reason I'm holding out Yeah.

Caleb

00:32:45 – 00:32:54

Is, like, isn't it fun to show up to something, like, and not know anything and then see it? Like, that's a really fun experience to have as an audience member.

Aaron

00:32:54 – 00:33:06

It is. I've walked into a few movies that way where I'm, like, I literally have never seen a trailer for this. I just know the title and that this person is in it, and I'm gonna go see what happens. I think you should wait. I really do.

Aaron

00:33:06 – 00:33:12

As much as I want the scoop, as much as it would be good for, you know, number to go up, I think you should wait.

Caleb

00:33:12 – 00:33:23

Yeah. So then strategically, like like, for me, it's settled. Right? Like, if you're a an audience member, like, it's, like, an Apple keynote or something. It's just Mhmm.

Caleb

00:33:23 – 00:33:28

So fun to be, like, what is coming out? Like, what is next? You know?

Aaron

00:33:28 – 00:33:29

Yeah.

Caleb

00:33:29 – 00:33:36

There's rumors. We're pretty sure we know. But, like, you know, could be anything. Mhmm. That's fun.

Caleb

00:33:36 – 00:33:49

But, strategically, it's like, well, nobody knows anything about it. So this giant email list has no idea about it. And the 1,000 people who are at Laracon Mhmm. Which 500 of them use inertia or something

Aaron

00:33:49 – 00:33:50

Mhmm. It's

Caleb

00:33:50 – 00:34:07

like the 500 that use LiveWire, I'm I'm doing this all so that they have an awesome experience, or is it, like, no. Treat it like you'd hype anything and, like, start teasing it, showing bits of it, getting people prepped in some way. You know? Mhmm. Should people know the nature of the project?

Caleb

00:34:08 – 00:34:11

Like, because you know the nature. Aaron saw it last week.

Aaron

00:34:11 – 00:34:11

Mhmm.

Caleb

00:34:12 – 00:34:15

Should people know or not?

Aaron

00:34:15 – 00:34:43

I don't think so. I don't think people should know. Okay. And I think the overwhelming reason I think that right now is it's gonna be more impactful if you explain slash show demo the whole thing, and that will that will pack quite a punch versus, like, dripping out screenshots on Twitter. It's possible that people would be underwhelmed by a single screenshot because they don't understand the nature of it.

Aaron

00:34:43 – 00:34:44

That's my guess.

Caleb

00:34:45 – 00:34:58

True. Right. Like, by totally holding out, I reserve the ability to control the narrative in the sense that, like, you get to hear it from me first. You get to experience it through me first.

Aaron

00:34:58 – 00:34:59

Yes.

Caleb

00:34:59 – 00:35:06

Which when you experience it through me, you'll love it. Mhmm. If you didn't experience it through me, you'd have assumptions about it. Correct. You might not love it.

Caleb

00:35:06 – 00:35:10

Yeah. Yes. Okay. That's that's good. I think that makes a ton of sense.

Caleb

00:35:10 – 00:35:11

I'm in.

Aaron

00:35:11 – 00:35:12

Can we ask

Caleb

00:35:12 – 00:35:12

you this?

Aaron

00:35:12 – 00:35:15

The go. Go. Go. No. I won't.

Aaron

00:35:15 – 00:35:21

So then the question is how do you how do you warm up the email list? Like, what are you Yeah. How are you prepping people to buy?

Caleb

00:35:22 – 00:35:24

10 purchases. Send things to supply.

Aaron

00:35:24 – 00:35:33

Yeah. And then do you have do you have launch goals for this? I mean, you've worked on this for 9 months in the dark.

Caleb

00:35:33 – 00:35:46

Well, I thought it was gonna be free for, like, 8 of those months. So Yeah. I the goals have shifted. Uh-huh. But, yeah, I I don't need to I don't need this to be the biggest, like, monetary success launch.

Caleb

00:35:46 – 00:36:00

I just want people to use it and make it better and, and fall in love with it and make it, like, a really good project that everybody loves. Yeah. And then and then maybe we can, like, really capitalize, I guess. But no. I mean, I don't know.

Caleb

00:36:00 – 00:36:02

Maybe you're talking, like, launch strategy or stuff.

Aaron

00:36:02 – 00:36:12

Well, hang on. I wanna ask a question about that. If it's so for 8 months, it was gonna be free. Yeah. And then for 9th month, it's not.

Aaron

00:36:13 – 00:36:22

And then you said it doesn't need to be the biggest monetary success. You just want people to use it, love it, and make it better. Yeah. That sounds like something that would be free.

Caleb

00:36:23 – 00:36:24

Yeah. No. The problem

Aaron

00:36:24 – 00:36:28

is make money. People need to use it, make it better. That sounds like free to the bookstore.

Caleb

00:36:28 – 00:36:36

Free, which was what we've talked about ad nauseam, is that you can't give software away for free and prevent everybody from scooping you.

Aaron

00:36:36 – 00:36:40

Yeah. How many emails or or DMs did you get about that that episode?

Caleb

00:36:41 – 00:36:49

Adam was the only person who DM'd me about it. He was, like yeah. He DM'd me about

Aaron

00:36:49 – 00:36:52

it. Because, yeah. So because because yeah.

Caleb

00:36:53 – 00:36:54

Because yeah.

Aaron

00:36:54 – 00:37:07

Yeah. Moving moving on, I guess. Because yeah. But okay. So the primary the primary reason for charging is to to enforce some sort of, like, a walled

Caleb

00:37:07 – 00:37:19

garden quarantine. Well, now that I've, like, decided to charge money for it, I've reminded myself. So there there was a month before even working on it that I thought there were years that it was gonna be a paid thing. Oh, that was good. Yeah.

Caleb

00:37:20 – 00:37:29

Yeah. And then I just was, like, not for the whole duration of the project, and now I'm back. So there's a lot of good reasoning behind it that, like, this is my big play. You know? Yeah.

Caleb

00:37:29 – 00:37:37

It's, like, this is a play that I could use to turn this into an actual business that functions more healthily and is more productive

Aaron

00:37:37 – 00:37:38

Mhmm.

Caleb

00:37:38 – 00:37:52

And, you know, can set me up to have, like, a real business and a retirement and blah blah blah. So all that stuff. So this is the thing that now my sights are set on it, like, propelling me into the next level of business. You know? Okay.

Aaron

00:37:52 – 00:37:58

So it doesn't need to be the biggest monetary success, but it also needs to provide for your retirement and propel you to the next level.

Caleb

00:37:58 – 00:38:07

I guess what I mean by it doesn't need big be the biggest monetary success is I care more about it being awesome and people loving it. Yeah. Obviously, those two things are intention all the time.

Aaron

00:38:07 – 00:38:08

Mhmm.

Caleb

00:38:08 – 00:38:14

But at the early stages, that this is what I mean. I don't need it to make all its money in day 1. You know?

Aaron

00:38:14 – 00:38:15

Got it. Okay.

Caleb

00:38:15 – 00:38:24

It's better that this thing is well received and is really good and makes money over time. Yeah. So that's what I mean when

Aaron

00:38:24 – 00:38:25

I say that. Okay.

Caleb

00:38:25 – 00:38:25

What I'm saying?

Aaron

00:38:25 – 00:38:32

So this is this is the foundations of a a new or larger empire Yeah. Upon which you will build. Okay.

Caleb

00:38:32 – 00:38:34

Hopefully. That's Hopefully. The goal.

Aaron

00:38:34 – 00:38:44

That's become the goal. Backwards from, Laracon. You're gonna get up on stage, do a demo Yeah. And then and then you're gonna say it's it's ready. Is that right?

Caleb

00:38:44 – 00:38:51

I it's either gonna be beta ready or ready ready. I'm actually toying with the idea of skipping beta. How bad of an idea is that?

Aaron

00:38:51 – 00:38:53

It's a great idea. It's full Right?

Caleb

00:38:53 – 00:38:55

Like, everybody hates beta. Nobody likes

Aaron

00:38:55 – 00:38:59

a beta. Even mean? Nobody What does it mean? It's not gonna stop anybody from doing anything.

Caleb

00:38:59 – 00:39:21

No. It it the thing I'm extremely afraid of is resenting some of the API decisions a month later. Mhmm. And having to, like, wait a year to tag a new release or something. But and that maybe I can just cut scope a little bit, like, keep some things a little, like, sort of, you know, like, I do in Livewire sometimes.

Caleb

00:39:21 – 00:39:47

Like, I'll keep a feature private, basically. Mhmm. Or keep something in user land that you have to copy and paste so that so that I'm not, like, API bound, for, like, a major version. So maybe I just, like if there's anything I'm not a 100% on, maybe just pluck it out so that it's, like, we'll just wait and make sure. Dude, I could even do a 1 point o and then have, like, an experimental branch or something.

Caleb

00:39:47 – 00:39:52

Yeah. Or you know? I don't know. But okay. I mean, from where right.

Caleb

00:39:52 – 00:40:06

Like, for as an audience person, as somebody just you want 1 point o. You want day 1. You're, like, let's get going with this stuff. You know it's gonna have to shake out some things, and, of course, we're all gonna be right there clickety clack in a way to make sure it's rock solid. But Mhmm.

Caleb

00:40:06 – 00:40:08

Dude, 1.0, day 1.

Aaron

00:40:08 – 00:40:10

1.0, day 1. That's a power move.

Caleb

00:40:10 – 00:40:12

Yeah. Beta is, like, wishy washy.

Aaron

00:40:13 – 00:40:15

It is. That's a that's a soft move.

Caleb

00:40:15 – 00:40:20

It's like It's soft. Yep. Show up and just put it down, like

Aaron

00:40:20 – 00:40:21

Put some oomph behind it.

Caleb

00:40:21 – 00:40:22

Alright. So

Aaron

00:40:22 – 00:40:30

on on stage, you're gonna release 1.0. 0.0. 0.0. Say it's you go buy it right now. I'm gonna run out on stage and say congratulations.

Aaron

00:40:31 – 00:40:38

Amazing talk. Everybody go buy it. Okay. So there there's that backing up. What what has to be done?

Aaron

00:40:38 – 00:40:41

You got 2 weeks. What what do you still have? You gotta email people.

Caleb

00:40:41 – 00:40:51

The app. Yeah. I gotta email people. I'm building the app, like, to manage, like Licenses and stuff. Infrastructure licenses and the system to, you know, activate licenses and Mhmm.

Caleb

00:40:52 – 00:40:59

All that stuff. And it's all bespoke right now, and I probably should have just used any stack. Yeah. Any stack. Which you used for refine.

Aaron

00:40:59 – 00:41:00

I did. It was great.

Caleb

00:41:00 – 00:41:01

What do you think about that?

Aaron

00:41:02 – 00:41:07

I think it's great. I mean, if you can make the number, like, the if you can make the numbers make sense, I forget what they charge.

Caleb

00:41:07 – 00:41:09

Yeah. It's worth it, I think.

Aaron

00:41:09 – 00:41:10

Like, $99 a month plus,

Caleb

00:41:10 – 00:41:11

I don't

Aaron

00:41:11 – 00:41:12

know, a percent or something.

Caleb

00:41:12 – 00:41:15

For, like, a 2 25100 active licenses or something?

Aaron

00:41:15 – 00:41:18

It is it's so worth it. Do not I

Caleb

00:41:18 – 00:41:26

think I would need a white label, though, because I need you to to be logged on to flux ui.dev. Like, I don't want you to have to, like, create an an any any stack account.

Aaron

00:41:27 – 00:41:28

I don't I I

Caleb

00:41:28 – 00:41:29

would need it, like, API, like

Aaron

00:41:29 – 00:41:37

I know he's got in a pretty extensive API, but I don't know the extent to which the user management stuff is Right. API driven.

Caleb

00:41:37 – 00:41:54

I mean, it makes sense that, like, for most people using AnyStack, you wouldn't want to manage any of that. Mhmm. But, like, I need people to only have they can't log into 2 things for Flux, and I need them to be logged into my app Right. So that I can track them and know who they are and whatever. Right.

Caleb

00:41:54 – 00:42:25

Right. Right. So I don't know. I'm toying between 2 things, between making it, like, a private packages situation, like, Nova and all that stuff, and, like, hand rolling some kind of custom thing that, like, is more friendly than that, where you just, like, composer require, pop in a license key, and get going and not have to, like so maybe how much do you dislike the experience of, like, putting keys and stuff in a composer dot JSON that accesses a private packages?

Aaron

00:42:25 – 00:42:38

How much friction is that? Medium dislike it. I just installed Nova again the other day, which Nova is great. Love Nova. And, again, I had to do, like, the auth dot JSON Yeah.

Aaron

00:42:38 – 00:43:04

And then figure out, like, oh, f. I can't really commit that to Git, but I'm going to anyway. But, like, how do I then how do I, like, get it into GitHub actions and then get the off that JSON onto forge? And, like, it's it's not terrible. But, yeah, if you had a system that was like, hey, composer require flex installer and then run flex install and paste your key, and suddenly everything works.

Aaron

00:43:05 – 00:43:06

Well, that's kinda cool.

Caleb

00:43:06 – 00:43:07

I don't know how you do

Aaron

00:43:07 – 00:43:07

that, though.

Caleb

00:43:07 – 00:43:10

Oh, it's like, there's no way you do it in a bulletproof way.

Aaron

00:43:10 – 00:43:11

Yeah.

Caleb

00:43:11 – 00:43:25

But you just do it to keep good people good. Mhmm. You know, to make it easy for good people to be good, which I think is good enough for me. I talked to Jack McDade a bunch about it, and that that's his philosophy. It's, like, you you you just keep good people good, and Mhmm.

Caleb

00:43:25 – 00:43:33

And they're generally good. The bad people are gonna be bad anyway. Yeah. Because, like, just don't make it so easy that a good person is, like, yeah. I'll get to that.

Caleb

00:43:33 – 00:43:40

You know? Yeah. Like, put it in their way. Make it so that they have to literally, like, pick a lock. You know?

Caleb

00:43:40 – 00:43:42

And then you'll root out, like, most of the people.

Aaron

00:43:43 – 00:43:53

Yeah. May letting good people accidentally be bad is the pattern of, hey. You can install it, but make sure you pay before you go to production. It's like Yeah. I forgot.

Caleb

00:43:53 – 00:43:55

Right. I'm never gonna do that.

Aaron

00:43:56 – 00:43:56

So doopsie.

Caleb

00:43:57 – 00:44:10

So well, static puts a flag in it. They don't even prompt you for anything until you're in production, and then the admin panel has a flag at the top. Mhmm. But this doesn't have an admin panel. So and I can't, like, interrupt a production process at all.

Caleb

00:44:10 – 00:44:21

Mhmm. So mine's my situation's kinda, like, flipped. Like, I might wanna not put anything in your way in production and just make your life harder if your app is in debug mode. You know? Mhmm.

Caleb

00:44:21 – 00:44:28

But even then, there's all this weirdness of, like, how much are you allowed to ping your own server from Right. From a composer package? It's, like, how much

Aaron

00:44:28 – 00:44:33

are Yeah. People are the there's a certain type of person that's not gonna like that at all.

Caleb

00:44:33 – 00:44:34

Oh, yeah. Right.

Aaron

00:44:34 – 00:44:36

They're gonna say they're spying on them.

Caleb

00:44:37 – 00:44:46

Yeah. Which but there's projects. So I think Astro maybe? A few projects have, like, telemetry enabled by default, like, literally. Isn't that bold?

Caleb

00:44:46 – 00:44:59

I read it in a footnote on I think it's Astro, but it might be another project, a JavaScript project that it's, like, telemetry by default, they're sending usage information to themselves, and I was, like, that is sick. Yeah. It's a container.

Aaron

00:44:59 – 00:45:00

It's, like,

Caleb

00:45:00 – 00:45:07

you know so much about your users, and you can easily disable it. Nobody disables it. Nobody disables it. Nobody's gonna disable it.

Aaron

00:45:07 – 00:45:08

Nobody's gonna do it.

Caleb

00:45:08 – 00:45:09

Nobody's in line.

Aaron

00:45:09 – 00:45:10

Nobody nobody does anything.

Caleb

00:45:10 – 00:45:16

Nobody does anything. Ever. Never. Nobody does anything.

Aaron

00:45:16 – 00:45:20

Nobody does anything ever. That is a 100% true.

Caleb

00:45:20 – 00:45:28

You just gotta, like, put that on a plaque, and then that makes all your decisions easier. It's true. It's like, oh, nobody does anything else.

Aaron

00:45:28 – 00:45:29

Nobody does anything.

Caleb

00:45:29 – 00:45:30

Never. Okay.

Aaron

00:45:30 – 00:45:32

So you're you're you're rolling your own

Caleb

00:45:33 – 00:45:45

just trying to and deciding if it's, like, a horrible idea, but yeah. It's, like because you don't so you you're saying with, like, Nova, you don't wanna commit an auth file to your project Mhmm. Because why?

Aaron

00:45:46 – 00:45:48

Because it's a secret, and you're not supposed to. That's right.

Caleb

00:45:48 – 00:45:51

So if it's, like, a private company project

Aaron

00:45:51 – 00:45:52

Which it is.

Caleb

00:45:53 – 00:45:53

Then it's fine.

Aaron

00:45:53 – 00:45:56

Which is why I'm going to go ahead and commit it. Yeah.

Caleb

00:45:56 – 00:45:58

But there's something in your head that says that's not fine.

Aaron

00:45:58 – 00:46:07

Yes. There's something in my head that says ENV. It should be a secret that you have to go put there yourself so that it stays out of the history forever.

Caleb

00:46:07 – 00:46:10

What if the license key for this was just in an ENV file?

Aaron

00:46:10 – 00:46:11

I mean, that

Caleb

00:46:11 – 00:46:16

better? Because there's a carved path for that. It's like you set a project up. You need stuff. Like

Aaron

00:46:16 – 00:46:17

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Caleb

00:46:17 – 00:46:23

You're gonna need, like, a Stripe webhook thing and my torch light key that I I have to have on, like, everything I

Aaron

00:46:23 – 00:46:36

And even Nova has a key in the ENV file, but the actual package installation is behind a paywall or a password wall. Yeah. And so that's where the auth JSON you have

Caleb

00:46:36 – 00:46:44

to have that for Composer to work. By that with Nova setting other people's apps up. It's like Uh-huh. Why can't I can't set up your app because because of your admin panel?

Aaron

00:46:44 – 00:46:45

Yep. Exactly.

Caleb

00:46:45 – 00:46:50

Oh, that sucks. Yep. So let's say this, the license keys and in the env file

Aaron

00:46:50 – 00:46:50

Mhmm.

Caleb

00:46:50 – 00:47:11

You gotta get that from, you know, your whatever the person giving you the package. Mhmm. They're gonna give you your env.example or whatever. And then, then every new install, it's, like, oh, you have it in your env file, but you don't have some, like, not, get controlled key file that's, like, that is that you're not supposed to touch. Mhmm.

Caleb

00:47:11 – 00:47:21

So it just I gotta make a call to the server quick. Like, you gotta run, like, artisan flux activate or something. Mhmm. And then it goes to server. It's, like, oh, here's a new license thing, validate this project.

Aaron

00:47:21 – 00:47:35

I see. So you're saying you're gonna try to paper over the composer weirdness by saying Yeah. Like, I've got a command that looks in the ENV, and then it does whatever needs to be done to satisfy composer, and then you can install everything?

Caleb

00:47:35 – 00:47:43

Yeah. Well, it'll install so what I'm thinking is I might make this a public repository, but make it a paid project. What do you think of that?

Aaron

00:47:44 – 00:47:47

I don't think that's gonna get you where you wanna be. I think that's

Caleb

00:47:47 – 00:47:49

Is this a why do you hate money? Decision?

Aaron

00:47:52 – 00:47:53

Maybe. I mean

Caleb

00:47:54 – 00:48:02

So statamics /cms is a public repository. Yeah. All of statamics is public. You can install it on your machine right now for free.

Aaron

00:48:02 – 00:48:06

Yeah. We're we're just really back to the what is open source question, aren't we?

Caleb

00:48:06 – 00:48:14

Well, this would be, like, literally the license would not be MIT. It would say this is, like, a paid thing. You can't see this. Available. Like, you can look at it Yeah.

Caleb

00:48:14 – 00:48:14

People.

Aaron

00:48:14 – 00:48:14

You can't

Caleb

00:48:15 – 00:48:30

This is we're not back to that because this is a carved path. Like, Craft CMS does this, Datomic does that, and I would take their license and put my name in it and just, you know, like, if I catch you, then I could, like, DCMA you or whatever and be, like, you're wrong. Good luck. Yeah.

Aaron

00:48:32 – 00:48:35

I don't know. I don't like it.

Caleb

00:48:35 – 00:48:49

But if it's private okay. So you're thinking, like, just make the private part easier. Yeah. Yeah. Just have, like, a composer LiveWire slash use Flux or something that's, like, an easy way to have a nice experience

Aaron

00:48:49 – 00:48:51

I think so. Like that. Yeah.

Caleb

00:48:51 – 00:48:56

Okay. It I don't know. I just don't wanna fiddle with private packages. Wouldn't it be so nice if it was just public?

Aaron

00:48:56 – 00:49:02

It would be. It would be so much nicer. But if your goal is to, like, keep it from the bad guys

Caleb

00:49:03 – 00:49:05

Well, the bad guys can just buy it.

Aaron

00:49:06 – 00:49:07

Yeah. Of course they can.

Caleb

00:49:07 – 00:49:13

Gonna buy it, but are they gonna feel like they have more license to take it if it's totally on GitHub, available?

Aaron

00:49:14 – 00:49:15

Yeah. I think they are.

Caleb

00:49:15 – 00:49:18

Right. Like, just implicitly, they're gonna be, like, well, yeah, whatever.

Aaron

00:49:18 – 00:49:23

And, honestly, you're just you're yeah. You're just never gonna stop the bad guys. You're just not.

Caleb

00:49:23 – 00:49:25

So you need He The

Aaron

00:49:25 – 00:49:29

bad guys. To make it as easy as possible for the good guys to to

Caleb

00:49:29 – 00:49:31

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't know

Aaron

00:49:31 – 00:49:38

if you should even worry about it, frankly. I think you should just use something that's already been made and move on.

Caleb

00:49:38 – 00:49:41

In any stack situation, private packages set up?

Aaron

00:49:41 – 00:49:50

Yeah. Any stack or go your route and make it public. I don't think you should tinker Oh. Too much with coming up with a novel installation solution.

Caleb

00:49:50 – 00:49:54

Well, I feel like that's my only option if it's public. You know?

Aaron

00:49:54 – 00:49:55

Is is the novel is

Caleb

00:49:55 – 00:50:13

a novel solution, because all the source code is there. So there has to be something in that source code to stop you from using it if it doesn't validate, and it needs to validate. And if it's just a license and an ENV key, it's, like, well, I have to make a request to validate that. When do I make that request? Mhmm.

Caleb

00:50:13 – 00:50:33

And how do I know not to make that once it's valid? You know? Mhmm. And yeah. So all roads to me win that path lead to, like, you run a command, and it sets some, like, flux dot key file that's a bunch of jumbled up encrypted stuff that you don't touch, but it's just, like, when in Flux code path, it goes up, this file exists, it's valid, we're good.

Caleb

00:50:33 – 00:50:39

You know? Yeah. I know how long you get updates for. I know all that stuff. You're good.

Aaron

00:50:39 – 00:50:40

Sounds cool.

Caleb

00:50:40 – 00:50:42

So okay. I don't know.

Aaron

00:50:42 – 00:50:48

Sounds like that. That would be very cool. I think, I don't know if I don't know if that's a good use of time at this point.

Caleb

00:50:48 – 00:50:51

Dude, you're telling me. I know.

Aaron

00:50:51 – 00:50:53

Oh, we already knew that. Okay. Well, yeah. It sounds awesome. You should do it.

Aaron

00:50:53 – 00:50:54

Yeah.

Caleb

00:50:54 – 00:51:02

Yeah. You're right. Yeah. Okay. Aaron Francis, if you care to pivot, I have a business idea for you along these lines.

Aaron

00:51:02 – 00:51:04

I love a business idea.

Caleb

00:51:04 – 00:51:06

Do you need another, another

Aaron

00:51:06 – 00:51:08

No. But tell me anyway.

Caleb

00:51:09 – 00:51:15

What's are were you gonna sit like, I don't know how long you guys what what do you do with this podcast? What's your cast

Aaron

00:51:15 – 00:51:20

on this? We record it, and then we release it. That's what we do. Just like yeah. It's easy peasy.

Aaron

00:51:20 – 00:51:23

We'll go as long we'll go as long as we want. As long as I have energy, we'll keep going.

Caleb

00:51:23 – 00:51:31

Yeah. Yeah. You just do the, you know, you do the stuff where you go, like, you're like, yeah. Alright. Well, well, thanks for you know, you just kinda

Aaron

00:51:31 – 00:51:32

the dad wrap up.

Caleb

00:51:32 – 00:51:35

Yeah. Or just even, like, stretch. Just be like, well

Aaron

00:51:35 – 00:51:43

Well, gang, we did another one. Be. That's that's the dad. Well, gang. That's how you know that dinner's over.

Caleb

00:51:44 – 00:51:45

Yeah.

Aaron

00:51:45 – 00:51:55

So, you know, it's time to clean up. Dad's sleepy. We got the old well gang. Sometimes it's with a a you rub the hands together too, so you go, well, alright. I guess we're gonna head out.

Aaron

00:51:55 – 00:51:56

Yeah. Yeah.

Caleb

00:51:56 – 00:51:59

You had a more folksy dad than I did, I think.

Aaron

00:51:59 – 00:52:03

Yeah. I think maybe so. Big guy's not very folksy.

Caleb

00:52:03 – 00:52:05

No. It's too bad.

Aaron

00:52:06 – 00:52:07

Alright. Hit the with the

Caleb

00:52:08 – 00:52:08

idea that I don't

Aaron

00:52:08 – 00:52:09

have time to do what I wanna do anyway. You could make

Caleb

00:52:09 – 00:52:09

money on.

Aaron

00:52:09 – 00:52:10

Here's my premise.

Caleb

00:52:10 – 00:52:12

My language. Here's my premise. I use a project

Aaron

00:52:12 – 00:52:13

of yours on almost all of my

Caleb

00:52:13 – 00:52:26

projects k. For free. I never pay you any money. Bad start. Happily pay you Flare money.

Caleb

00:52:26 – 00:52:32

Like k. Let me pay you $30 a month, please. It would be a no brainer. Torchlight.

Aaron

00:52:32 – 00:52:34

$30 a month?

Caleb

00:52:34 – 00:52:38

The people who need Torchlight are the people who are getting it for free, Aaron.

Aaron

00:52:39 – 00:52:40

Yeah. No. Super, super correct.

Caleb

00:52:40 – 00:52:43

Why are you giving it to open sort they're the people who need it.

Aaron

00:52:43 – 00:52:49

Yeah. Just the goodness of my heart and the stupidity of my brain. That's the two reasons. So stupid.

Caleb

00:52:49 – 00:52:56

It's so stupid. The same decision. I keep wanting to make all these right. I keep wanting to be good. That's my problem.

Caleb

00:52:56 – 00:53:01

So let me tell you why you hate money. Why do you hate money and whatever. So I

Aaron

00:53:01 – 00:53:04

still use Torchlight. That's great, isn't it? It's great.

Caleb

00:53:04 – 00:53:06

It's great. So here's the thing.

Aaron

00:53:06 – 00:53:07

It's not great. Oh, no.

Caleb

00:53:08 – 00:53:13

It is it's better than everything else, but you know that if you gave it a month, it could be way better.

Aaron

00:53:13 – 00:53:15

Right? I do know that. I do know that. You know that. You know I do know that.

Caleb

00:53:16 – 00:53:21

10 things off the bat that Yes. Could be tweaked, even just the docs, like Yep. Even visually. Yep. You know?

Caleb

00:53:21 – 00:53:26

I agree. Everything like that. You could give it a month, and you could make torchlight 2.

Aaron

00:53:26 – 00:53:30

Mhmm. It's a good name. Did you just come up with that? That's a great name.

Caleb

00:53:30 – 00:53:33

2 t o o. Ah.

Aaron

00:53:33 – 00:53:35

I love it. That's so clever. Yeah.

Caleb

00:53:35 – 00:53:44

Yeah. So Torchlight 2, and yeah. And then you just launch it with pricing for people that you have to pay.

Aaron

00:53:44 – 00:54:02

Here here's the thing about, here's the thing about Torchlight. I just I I think it is technically very good, and I agree there are some rough edges and it needs to be, you know, polished and cared for. I think as a business, it's very, very bad.

Caleb

00:54:02 – 00:54:07

Yeah. So it's not a great business. I should have liked that. You said it was

Aaron

00:54:07 – 00:54:08

a way

Caleb

00:54:08 – 00:54:09

to make money. What are you doing?

Aaron

00:54:09 – 00:54:09

What are you doing?

Caleb

00:54:09 – 00:54:17

I don't know what I said, but it's a way to make money because I use it, and other people like me use it. Uh-huh. Do you know how many people use it?

Aaron

00:54:17 – 00:54:19

No clue. Gosh.

Caleb

00:54:20 – 00:54:21

Is it I know I

Aaron

00:54:21 – 00:54:24

know you and Taylor Atwell use it, and that's good enough for me.

Caleb

00:54:25 – 00:54:40

Dude, yeah. We use it, I'm it really is so much better and easier even though it kills me, like, I'm literally making a request to generate this stuff. I know. What? Like, even in production?

Caleb

00:54:40 – 00:54:42

Yeah. This is crazy to me.

Aaron

00:54:42 – 00:54:43

It's crazy.

Caleb

00:54:43 – 00:54:52

I get torchlight exceptions, like, somewhat regularly, but the blade files are cached, so whatever. A torchlight exception happens. You just run it again. It works, then it's cached. Right.

Caleb

00:54:52 – 00:54:53

Who cares?

Aaron

00:54:53 – 00:54:54

Not great.

Caleb

00:54:54 – 00:54:59

It it's not great. I have to carry a license key with me for code highlighting. I that's what

Aaron

00:54:59 – 00:55:00

you're saying what I'm saying.

Caleb

00:55:01 – 00:55:05

But I continue to use it on all my projects. So

Aaron

00:55:05 – 00:55:10

that much better than everything else that it's covering all of those sins.

Caleb

00:55:10 – 00:55:21

Yes. Got it. And for Taylor, it is. It's like, wow. To really have, like, the best syntax highlighting because it's actually Versus code or whatever, like, highlighting

Aaron

00:55:21 – 00:55:22

it Mhmm.

Caleb

00:55:22 – 00:55:36

To have the best blade and, like, more, like, an alpine so, like, stuff that you're not gonna get with highlight JS or anything Mhmm. Server generated super lightweight Mhmm. On the server. It's incredibly on the browser, it's incredibly lightweight. Mhmm.

Caleb

00:55:36 – 00:55:41

And just, like, rendered. There's highlighting. There's all the things that I need. There's blurring out the background. It's great.

Caleb

00:55:41 – 00:55:43

And the the little annotations,

Aaron

00:55:43 – 00:55:45

the browser annotations are great, aren't they?

Caleb

00:55:46 – 00:55:55

They're great, except I always forget, which order the exclamation point goes whatever in the shortcut, because it's inconsistent with another project, and so you guys should just sync up.

Aaron

00:55:55 – 00:55:58

Okay. We'll just have them change theirs. Yeah. Oh, duh. Yeah.

Aaron

00:55:58 – 00:55:59

That's perfect.

Caleb

00:55:59 – 00:56:09

So yeah, Aaron, I don't know. I use it, and I'm, like, man, if there's enough people that use this and Aaron could just, like, hire just pay somebody. Be, like, I'm gonna give you No. Yeah. $500 Jason.

Caleb

00:56:09 – 00:56:18

To yeah. Well, you might pay more than $500. Dig it. Yeah. Just, like, pay someone scrappy or whatever.

Caleb

00:56:18 – 00:56:30

I don't know. Or don't. Put a $1,000. Put $2,000 into it, and just make me pay you 30 or, like, maybe $25 a project. Here's get Alpine, you get LiveWire 1, 3.

Caleb

00:56:30 – 00:56:34

So, yeah, I'd be paying you, like, a 100 something a month.

Aaron

00:56:34 – 00:56:51

Okay. So here's here's the here's the meta question. Am I, do I have limiting beliefs? Because I hear you say $25 a month of project for syntax highlighting, and I think there's no way anyone else in the entire world would pay for that.

Caleb

00:56:51 – 00:57:00

I don't know, dude. It's like okay. So maybe there's a part of it where you have to get people using it before they fork over for it. Uh-huh. But also, like, people wrestle with this stuff.

Caleb

00:57:00 – 00:57:11

You know? Yeah. They see even just your landing page, and it's like, this is better than everything. They wanna use what people use and what's better. Dude, I pay $650 for a month for emails.

Aaron

00:57:12 – 00:57:13

Yeah. But the email's

Caleb

00:57:13 – 00:57:14

gouging me.

Aaron

00:57:14 – 00:57:16

They are gouging you. Yeah.

Caleb

00:57:16 – 00:57:26

Mail coach is free. All of the alternatives are cheaper. It's like but you want that thing. So with Torchlight, here's my premise on why I think you could charge for it more than you think.

Aaron

00:57:26 – 00:57:27

Tell me.

Caleb

00:57:27 – 00:57:35

It's like flair. K. There's a server somewhere doing stuff for me regularly. Of course, I have to pay $25 a month.

Aaron

00:57:35 – 00:57:35

Got it.

Caleb

00:57:35 – 00:57:39

Mhmm. There's a servers or something doing something for me. Right. Right. Right.

Caleb

00:57:39 – 00:57:47

Right. Duh. I need to pay. Yeah. They're literally keeping a computer alive for me, you know, in somebody's basement somewhere, I'm guessing.

Caleb

00:57:47 – 00:57:53

Mhmm. And I have Yeah. Faded to highlight syntax for the rest of its life.

Aaron

00:57:54 – 00:57:56

Okay. That's interesting.

Caleb

00:57:57 – 00:58:05

So, I don't know. You should at least figure out how many people use it. Do you have this information in a database? Unfortunately, you can collect it pretty easily because we're hitting your servers.

Aaron

00:58:05 – 00:58:11

You sure sure are. I do have that information in a database somewhere. Do you wanna

Caleb

00:58:11 – 00:58:14

see how to find it? Databases? Yeah. I don't know. I don't even

Aaron

00:58:14 – 00:58:15

know what a database is. I'll be honest.

Caleb

00:58:15 – 00:58:16

Doing it live, Aaron.

Aaron

00:58:16 – 00:58:22

Alright. Let's see if we can find here's here's here's interesting. I don't even know

Caleb

00:58:23 – 00:58:28

You have a way bigger platform now too. If you did torchlight 2 or whatever, just call it, like, errandlight or something.

Aaron

00:58:28 – 00:58:33

I don't know. Torchlight 2 is is a pretty good name. Alright. Torchlight prod. Nope.

Aaron

00:58:33 – 00:58:41

That's not the right connection. I can't connect to that. I don't know if I know where this database is right now. That's silly, isn't it?

Caleb

00:58:41 – 00:58:59

You keep looking. I think it is incredible that this thing like, you made the decision to host this instead of just put it on their computer and then run it themselves in the background. Like, I would have been, like, oh, yeah. We'll just, like, put cheeky or whatever. Like, we'll bundle it up, and then, you know, and then we'll just hit it locally.

Caleb

00:59:00 – 00:59:01

But

Aaron

00:59:01 – 00:59:04

It's no it's no good. I mean, it's no

Caleb

00:59:04 – 00:59:06

I'm happy. You can't. I'm not happy with

Aaron

00:59:06 – 00:59:07

the browser that well.

Caleb

00:59:07 – 00:59:11

But I'm willing to no. I mean, on this on my server.

Aaron

00:59:12 – 00:59:12

Yeah. Like, why am

Caleb

00:59:12 – 00:59:19

I not generating these things myself on my server? You know, like, puppeteer or something I would do for, like, screenshots or whatever.

Aaron

00:59:19 – 00:59:24

Yeah. The the reason is because of Node. I didn't wanna make people install Node.

Caleb

00:59:25 – 00:59:33

Yep. So that is also the reason why you could actually make money from this and not not not make money. Yeah. Yeah. I don't

Aaron

00:59:33 – 00:59:37

know where this database is. I'll have to find this later. Well Step 1.

Caleb

00:59:37 – 00:59:50

So I don't know something, Aaron, but and it's probably I don't know. I I'm about to say, like, it's the worst use of your time. It's the least good, like, option, but it's the only option that has, like, good recurring income at the moment. Right? At the moment, yes.

Caleb

00:59:50 – 00:59:58

Like a SaaS app. Like Mhmm. Something that could actually build. And once people use it, they're gonna stay on it. They're not gonna switch.

Aaron

00:59:58 – 00:59:59

They're not gonna switch.

Caleb

00:59:59 – 01:00:01

This is not something yeah.

Aaron

01:00:01 – 01:00:09

So so for torchlight 2, 2 o, do does it move you Torchlight also. I don't know what I was also. That's yeah.

Caleb

01:00:09 – 01:00:09

Torchlight also.

Aaron

01:00:09 – 01:00:15

It's like the image of the thing no longer bears a resemblance to the thing. I'm just calling it torchlight also now.

Caleb

01:00:15 – 01:00:16

It's torchlight also.

Aaron

01:00:18 – 01:00:31

So for torchlight also, does moving it away from server side mean anything to you? Like, if you could just drop a script on like, a script tag on your page, does that move you at all?

Caleb

01:00:31 – 01:00:34

I'm not gonna pay monthly for it. No way.

Aaron

01:00:34 – 01:00:35

But is that better?

Caleb

01:00:35 – 01:00:40

Oh, right. I'm probably gonna do that myself. Yes. You're probably gonna do that yourself. Yeah.

Caleb

01:00:40 – 01:00:52

Like, I'm probably gonna so I'm doing all of this editor work for my talk. Like, I need a code editor that Uh-huh. The why do I need something that's not Torchlight? Because for some reason coding. Yeah.

Caleb

01:00:52 – 01:01:12

For some reason, like, Torchlight preclude precludes me from you know, it it already changes the code into the tokens Yeah. Before it hits the browser. I actually need to have the raw code and then the token side of both. But, anyway, yes, I think it there's so many better interesting ways to just make this a front end thing to, like

Aaron

01:01:13 – 01:01:34

So if it still did the if it still did the sends the blocks off to me to do the awesome highlighting. But your the way that you install it is you just drop a script tag on your front end, and you don't have to worry about blade on, you know, parsing it on the back end. Oh. Does that move you?

Caleb

01:01:35 – 01:01:39

Well, then it's then I'm taxing everybody with slowness, because they have to hit your server?

Aaron

01:01:39 – 01:01:40

Potentially.

Caleb

01:01:40 – 01:01:42

Yeah. No. That doesn't move me.

Aaron

01:01:42 – 01:01:50

No. So you like you like the idea of it running on the server, and you sending out fully highlighted stuff.

Caleb

01:01:50 – 01:02:02

Yeah. I want it to that's a big pro of it to me. I think a big selling point is, like, this is, you know, like, static code. Mhmm. So, like, people get it, and it's blazing fast.

Caleb

01:02:03 – 01:02:06

So it's not Java some JavaScript weird thing unrelated is not gonna break it.

Aaron

01:02:06 – 01:02:07

Mhmm.

Caleb

01:02:08 – 01:02:12

Static, easy to style, like Mhmm. No. It's gotta be server.

Aaron

01:02:12 – 01:02:13

It's gotta be server.

Caleb

01:02:13 – 01:02:15

If you're making a request, for sure.

Aaron

01:02:16 – 01:02:30

Well Yep. Yeah, you could do it in such a way, like, you I could make and I've toyed with it. I you you could make it pretty fast by putting it on fly and putting servers all over the place. Yeah. And then the page loads super fast.

Aaron

01:02:30 – 01:02:35

The script picks up the blocks, sends it off, brings them back. Yeah.

Caleb

01:02:35 – 01:02:42

You don't like it. And then, Kat, the benefit to it is that you can then approach non Laravel correct well.

Aaron

01:02:42 – 01:02:43

Yes. You can do it on WordPress.

Caleb

01:02:43 – 01:02:45

Massive benefit.

Aaron

01:02:45 – 01:02:46

But do it on rails.

Caleb

01:02:46 – 01:02:54

Already have everything all built and ready to go. So just, like, launch this first and see if you can get the Laravel folks to pay you. But but yeah. No. You're right.

Caleb

01:02:54 – 01:03:02

Like, if you would wanna target the Astro crew because, like, people using Astro are people who need this kind of stuff because it's a lot of that style of app. It's not

Aaron

01:03:02 – 01:03:15

that But I feel like the people using Astro are already so deep in the JavaScript world that they're just pulling in they're just pulling in Shiki or something, and they're doing it on the server themselves. You know?

Caleb

01:03:15 – 01:03:32

Yeah. It's possible. I don't know. I I think there is, you know, all of this goes against my unwillingness to wrap software, but you can just wrap Shiki, call it something else, market it better, and make it slightly easier, and then everybody will use it even if it costs money.

Aaron

01:03:32 – 01:03:32

That's what

Caleb

01:03:32 – 01:03:46

I'm trying to do. That's how it works. But you there are things that, like, are killer features Uh-huh. Which I guess Shiki, like, has avail alright. What about highlighting a single line?

Caleb

01:03:46 – 01:03:48

How easy is that with Shiki?

Aaron

01:03:48 – 01:03:49

Highlighting, like, drawing attention.

Caleb

01:03:50 – 01:03:51

Your short codes and stuff?

Aaron

01:03:51 – 01:03:52

It's pretty difficult.

Caleb

01:03:53 – 01:03:58

Yeah. There you go. That's the value. That's that's what I need. Like, I need to be able to highlight a line and a group of lines.

Aaron

01:03:58 – 01:04:25

And my my philosophy with that is it has to remain valid code because the authoring experience just falls apart when you're, like, writing JavaScript, and then you're throwing in this invalid, like, made up syntax. And then, like, now you're editing, and you hit, you know, format, and everything's wonky. So I put a huge amount of effort into ensuring every annotation remains valid code.

Caleb

01:04:25 – 01:04:37

That's interesting. That's good to hear you say that because my account so this makes sense, and I go, that's great, and that's why we should use Torchlight. However, using it, I go, why the heck doesn't

Aaron

01:04:37 – 01:04:38

this short code work? Mhmm.

Caleb

01:04:39 – 01:04:47

What in the world? I literally copied and pasted this from the other code block, but I don't own any of the software, so I'm just doomed to, like, not figuring this out.

Aaron

01:04:47 – 01:04:49

And why didn't it work?

Caleb

01:04:49 – 01:04:53

Oh my gosh. It needs to be a PHP comment. Oh. HTML comment.

Aaron

01:04:53 – 01:04:54

Gotta be real code.

Caleb

01:04:54 – 01:04:58

That Yeah. Is an that is a I got hit with that multiple times

Aaron

01:04:59 – 01:04:59

Interesting.

Caleb

01:05:00 – 01:05:05

And burnt a lot of time just, like, I have no idea how to even start debugging this, Yeah.

Aaron

01:05:05 – 01:05:06

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron

01:05:06 – 01:05:11

So So it would just show up as a comment on your front end, and you're, like, no. You're supposed to do

Caleb

01:05:11 – 01:05:13

Yeah. Highlight thing. Yeah.

Aaron

01:05:13 – 01:05:16

Where's the parsing? Where where is the highlight going? Language.

Caleb

01:05:17 – 01:05:24

And it was just the wrong lang and I'm, like, wait. It uses the and I never it never occurred to me that, like, oh, it's really important that it does that. That helps me.

Aaron

01:05:24 – 01:05:24

Mhmm.

Caleb

01:05:24 – 01:05:26

It's just, like, oh, it's annoying.

Aaron

01:05:26 – 01:05:30

Yeah. But It has to be a real comment in the language that you're using. Yeah.

Caleb

01:05:30 – 01:05:39

Yes. If I had heard of the reasoning and been educated sooner, then it would have been part of the delight and could have compelled me to use Torchlight even more.

Aaron

01:05:39 – 01:05:40

Mhmm.

Caleb

01:05:40 – 01:05:47

But, yeah, these are reasons to love Torchlight. Yeah. And there's even, like, things that you could do, like, if you could have sub line highlighting, you know?

Aaron

01:05:47 – 01:05:47

Mhmm. I

Caleb

01:05:47 – 01:05:50

could just highlight like, Tailwind has all over their docs. It's so I know.

Aaron

01:05:50 – 01:05:51

It's so nice.

Caleb

01:05:52 – 01:05:58

And it's, like, this is something that's, like, knit. This is torchlight also. Yeah. Torchlight also I got that now. Highlighting.

Caleb

01:05:58 – 01:05:59

And yeah.

Aaron

01:06:00 – 01:06:17

Okay. So riddle me this. Let's let's walk down this path. Beyond charging Caleb and his, two friends, you know, beyond charging 3 people $25 a month, that's the entirety of the market. What's the other move?

Aaron

01:06:17 – 01:06:26

Yeah. What's the other move? Provided that I don't hate money because I don't, but I don't love money because the love of money is the root of all kinds

Caleb

01:06:26 – 01:06:26

of people.

Aaron

01:06:27 – 01:06:31

You know? Sure. So we don't wanna go that way. But let's say we don't hate it. We don't we don't we don't besmirch.

Aaron

01:06:31 – 01:06:37

We don't begrudge. What's the move besides charging $25? Yeah. Yeah.

Caleb

01:06:37 – 01:06:42

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's okay. Obviously, Torchlight also to me and my 3 friends.

Aaron

01:06:42 – 01:06:42

Right.

Caleb

01:06:42 – 01:06:42

Yeah.

Aaron

01:06:42 – 01:06:44

Which So there's $75 a month.

Caleb

01:06:44 – 01:06:49

Give you the list of things that I want. Okay. And then you can, you know, just do them. I would

Aaron

01:06:49 – 01:06:51

do that. I would absolutely do that.

Caleb

01:06:51 – 01:07:01

Yep. And and then the, dude, I mean, you just launch it to your new audience of a zillion people as opposed to the audience you originally launched it to, which was me and my 3 friends.

Aaron

01:07:01 – 01:07:04

Right. Back when I was poor and stupid. Now I'm Yeah.

Caleb

01:07:04 – 01:07:05

Now you're smart and

Aaron

01:07:05 – 01:07:06

smart and smart.

Caleb

01:07:08 – 01:07:11

You're smart and popular. So

Aaron

01:07:12 – 01:07:13

Yeah. We just changed

Caleb

01:07:13 – 01:07:19

the accent there. You need? Alright. Just do a quick Yeah. Hop over to yeah.

Aaron

01:07:20 – 01:07:26

Okay. So now that I now that I'm smart and popular Now you're smart and popular. Still more popular. Relaunch it to those people.

Caleb

01:07:26 – 01:07:34

Right. So you already, like, will do much better because, you know, now there's gonna be 10, 15 people

Aaron

01:07:34 – 01:07:37

that'll pay you. Huge huge amounts of money.

Caleb

01:07:37 – 01:07:42

But real honestly, so much of this hinges on look at your stats and see how many people are just straight using it right now.

Aaron

01:07:42 – 01:07:42

Yes.

Caleb

01:07:42 – 01:07:51

Because there might be a play where it's like like, oh, they're all using this. Yeah. You need their email addresses. Do you have email addresses? Yeah.

Caleb

01:07:51 – 01:07:52

I have a line up for Torchlight.

Aaron

01:07:52 – 01:07:54

For a key. You you've got Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've got

Caleb

01:07:54 – 01:07:56

your own stuff. And stuff. You just

Aaron

01:07:56 – 01:08:00

Step 1 sounds like find the database. That sounds like step 1.

Caleb

01:08:00 – 01:08:02

That is step 1. Okay. You find the database. I like

Aaron

01:08:02 – 01:08:02

to do that.

Caleb

01:08:03 – 01:08:11

Users. Uh-huh. And and then now you have a list to launch to that's pretty flipping warm, you know, like, that is excited to

Aaron

01:08:11 – 01:08:21

Honestly, I completely forgot that the torchlight list exists, because it doesn't exist in Bento. It just exists in this database that is who knows where. Okay? Okay. So we're good there.

Caleb

01:08:21 – 01:08:29

Find that. It's, okay. You find the database, so there's a chance that there's enough people that this does, like, validate itself. You know? Okay.

Caleb

01:08:29 – 01:08:37

The idea validates itself. So you make the improvements, torchlight also. You do a little product thing, but keep it minimal, keep it MVP, you know,

Aaron

01:08:37 – 01:08:38

like, don't,

Caleb

01:08:38 – 01:09:05

like, let this become the you know, and then and focus on the current target market, which is, you know, Laravel, and and then ship it assuming it's worth your time, which you have to validate. But a bigger play that, like and then this is just, like, a side SaaS app, but I do think that it is unique and that it is a great opportunity for actual recurring revenue Mhmm. That is that there is tons of lock in. Like, once you're on it, you're not gonna wanna get off. Yep.

Caleb

01:09:05 – 01:09:23

And I think those two qualities make it, like, you're not gonna have ideas like this coming out the wazoo. It's already validated. People are already using it and trust it and are happy to hype it. Make sure I'm sure you already have testimonials, but I'll hype it, tailor hype it, whatever. You can say used by Laravel, used by Alpine, used by Libor, used by whatever.

Caleb

01:09:23 – 01:09:32

Everybody else is using it. Yeah. And then I guess then it's then it's a big open question of, like, targeting other markets who's it's people with dock sites that need it.

Aaron

01:09:32 – 01:09:53

Right. But we're still thinking we're still thinking along the lines of charge a few people a certain amount of money. Yeah. Is there another is there another move that is not because I'll I'll be honest. I feel like getting people to pay for syntax highlighting is always going to be an uphill battle to a small lifetime value.

Aaron

01:09:53 – 01:09:54

That's that's my feeling.

Caleb

01:09:54 – 01:10:05

Oh, I don't know if it's a small lifetime value. That's my point. I think it's a big lifetime value. I think it's an uphill battle, and you won't have, like, massive success with it. But So what are we doing?

Aaron

01:10:05 – 01:10:07

No. No. The lifetime value.

Caleb

01:10:07 – 01:10:14

Hear me out. Like, you could have extracted at least 500, probably a $1,000 from me over the past, you know, few years.

Aaron

01:10:14 – 01:10:15

Okay.

Caleb

01:10:15 – 01:10:18

Like, no sweat. And that's Okay. That's a big lifetime value.

Aaron

01:10:18 – 01:10:20

Yeah. I I don't I don't hate that.

Caleb

01:10:20 – 01:10:31

You know, it's like a service, like, again, Flare. I wanna know their numbers on Flare. I bet it's great. Once you're using Flare totally. Every one of my apps pays for Flare.

Aaron

01:10:31 – 01:10:33

40 what is it? 39, 49?

Caleb

01:10:34 – 01:10:44

Something like that. It's less than 50 for sure. Yeah. It's in that, like, 25 Between 2535 is the range that I'm willing to stomach that, like, yeah, another service added to the pile 2535. That's great.

Caleb

01:10:44 – 01:10:53

K. Yeah. Once you're, like, 50, like, email support or something, then it's, like, you better earn your keep. Otherwise, I'm gonna see you on my bottom line, and you're on the chopping block.

Aaron

01:10:53 – 01:10:54

Right. You know? Mhmm. Mhmm.

Caleb

01:10:54 – 01:11:09

So keep it in that sweet spot. It'd be great if you could have some structure for monetizing, like, enterprise y stuff and get, like, not a Stripe, but somebody like that. It's, like, you know, you're you know, you go hunting for, like, bad syntax highlighting and Right. And developer documentation.

Aaron

01:11:09 – 01:11:10

Everywhere. Yeah.

Caleb

01:11:10 – 01:11:13

Yeah. And then just, you know, you pitch it and whatever, but

Aaron

01:11:13 – 01:11:13

Okay.

Caleb

01:11:13 – 01:11:14

Yeah. I don't know.

Aaron

01:11:14 – 01:11:16

I don't know. Yeah.

Caleb

01:11:16 – 01:11:24

Again, there's so much to hate about all these ideas, but there are a few rare good things here, I think, as opposed to a lot of other things.

Aaron

01:11:25 – 01:11:29

Is there and I'm gonna just just for the last time. Is there another way?

Caleb

01:11:29 – 01:11:32

You mean, like, make it all free and benefit from all

Aaron

01:11:32 – 01:11:32

the way?

Caleb

01:11:32 – 01:11:32

Free and

Aaron

01:11:32 – 01:11:34

then what? Yeah. Okay.

Caleb

01:11:34 – 01:11:44

So alright. I mean, you can you can turn this into a an incredibly popular, well loved project. Okay. Guaranteed. Okay.

Caleb

01:11:44 – 01:11:46

But I don't know why you make money from that.

Aaron

01:11:49 – 01:11:51

That was what I was asking you.

Caleb

01:11:51 – 01:11:52

Alright. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Aaron

01:11:52 – 01:11:53

Alright. Come on.

Caleb

01:11:53 – 01:11:54

We got incredibly well

Aaron

01:11:54 – 01:11:54

of right.

Caleb

01:11:54 – 01:12:14

Dude, done. Paywall the obscure highlighting. Paywall blade, paywall MDX, whatever, like Mhmm. Paywall, obscure languages, or paywall certain features like highlighting a word, just paywall the the the niche features that yeah.

Aaron

01:12:14 – 01:12:16

They won't necessarily free free and pro.

Caleb

01:12:16 – 01:12:20

Oh, and, dude, tons of themes? Themes. You get 5 for free.

Aaron

01:12:20 – 01:12:22

Themes themes are paid off.

Caleb

01:12:22 – 01:12:31

You get whatever. Dude, this is ripe for, like and I'm I'm gonna, you know, use the free thing, and it's, like, damn, he has natty dark.

Aaron

01:12:31 – 01:12:38

And dark and light mode being paywall like, the ability to have highlight a code block being dark and light mode.

Caleb

01:12:39 – 01:12:43

Sure. Maybe. Yeah. You gotta decide what's free and not, but that could be 1. That could be 1.

Caleb

01:12:43 – 01:12:44

For sure.

Aaron

01:12:44 – 01:12:44

Yeah.

Caleb

01:12:44 – 01:12:50

I have to manually do that for Torchlight. Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. I think I render do I render 2 blocks every time or something?

Caleb

01:12:50 – 01:12:54

But I I definitely have 2 different themes, different backgrounds, and hot swaps.

Aaron

01:12:54 – 01:12:54

Mhmm.

Caleb

01:12:55 – 01:13:01

So, yeah, that's a feature. There you go. Yeah. There's dude, there is highlight. Js exists.

Caleb

01:13:01 – 01:13:13

Prism exists. I mean, Shee Key exists. All these things exist. Nothing is gloved, like, just yes. I love nobody loves any of those things.

Aaron

01:13:14 – 01:13:36

To me to hear. I'm just I'm shocked because I think I've grown to somewhat despise Torchlight because of its its ability to be a business, which is minimal. But I put a lot of care into, like, the, the way that it is used by the end user, and I'm very proud of that. And so maybe I need to revisit this.

Caleb

01:13:36 – 01:13:43

It's a benefit of Torchlight is you've already done a lot of hard work and a lot of thinking on it.

Aaron

01:13:43 – 01:13:44

So much thinking.

Caleb

01:13:44 – 01:13:53

It's already a business. It is. Weird. It could be on, like, acquire, micro acquire, whatever that's called for, like, I don't know. Do you have make revenue from it right now?

Caleb

01:13:54 – 01:13:57

Does it really pay you? Yeah. How much?

Aaron

01:13:57 – 01:13:58

Not very much.

Caleb

01:13:58 – 01:13:59

Tell me.

Aaron

01:13:59 – 01:14:04

I honestly don't know, but I think it's several $100 a month.

Caleb

01:14:04 – 01:14:05

Dude, that's not bad.

Aaron

01:14:05 – 01:14:06

It's not bad.

Caleb

01:14:07 – 01:14:14

Let's say it's $200 a month. That's $2 a year. You sell it for 3, 5 times that. That's 6. It's close to $10.

Caleb

01:14:14 – 01:14:25

You could ease or yeah. You could easily, you know, you'd you'd even do a minimal torchlight also, get it up to $500,000 a month, god forbid, sell it for 30, 40 grand

Aaron

01:14:25 – 01:14:26

God willing.

Caleb

01:14:27 – 01:14:30

Dude, I don't know. I don't know. Things.

Aaron

01:14:30 – 01:14:30

I don't know.

Caleb

01:14:31 – 01:14:42

You could just bag a quick $40, get in, you know, a little, micro acquire and run, or go for a big play. Torchlight, baby. You didn't expect this. I did not expect this.

Aaron

01:14:43 – 01:14:52

This was a classic bamboozle. The last time you called, you're like, give me all your thoughts on open source licensing. I'm like, ah, shoot. I don't know. Now I'm getting hit up on torchlight.

Aaron

01:14:52 – 01:14:52

You're just

Caleb

01:14:53 – 01:14:55

you're keeping me on my toes. Field.

Aaron

01:14:55 – 01:14:55

I'm coming out of

Caleb

01:14:55 – 01:14:59

left field, Aaron. I don't know. I'm here to tell you things that, nobody else is even thinking about.

Aaron

01:14:59 – 01:15:03

So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here's what I really want. I want Yeah.

Aaron

01:15:03 – 01:15:12

I want Vercel to splash a bunch of that Vercel money on me and be like, we'll just have this now. Be like, great. You can have it. So they can just come in and buy it for

Caleb

01:15:13 – 01:15:15

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta, just make it something

Aaron

01:15:16 – 01:15:18

that $5,000,000, something like that.

Caleb

01:15:18 – 01:15:27

Right. Just make it white Yes. With a, rounded XL Mhmm. P 8 Mhmm. Bordergray800.

Aaron

01:15:30 – 01:15:30

Mhmm.

Caleb

01:15:30 – 01:15:44

And they'll be like that. That's going in Shad cn. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of places you could do.

Caleb

01:15:44 – 01:15:58

There are far places you could take this once you establish yourself as, like, the best code. And some of this stuff I hesitate to tell you because as you have seen doing some stuff with editors and, like, there's an alternate universe where I just decide to, like, build the best, like, editor ever

Aaron

01:15:58 – 01:15:58

Yeah. For

Caleb

01:15:58 – 01:16:02

fun on the front end, but forget about that for a second. Sure. Yeah.

Aaron

01:16:02 – 01:16:02

Just tell

Caleb

01:16:02 – 01:16:16

you the ideas. We'll see each other in court. Mhmm. Like, some AI stuff, in, like, a live edit so, like, code examples that are on a doc site are actually, like, editable, and there's, like, super Maven style. I don't know.

Caleb

01:16:16 – 01:16:25

AI right in there. Could be something could be insanely cool. You could offer dude, you here's a killer feature. You have a copy button built in with that ships with the freaking thing.

Aaron

01:16:25 – 01:16:27

Mhmm. It's kind of a pain, isn't it?

Caleb

01:16:28 – 01:16:39

That's a pain, because it's, like, to do your own copy button Mhmm. Is not that easy. Like, now there's that navigator, like, API that's so awesome. Right. It doesn't work in HTTP, only in HTTPS.

Caleb

01:16:40 – 01:16:42

Mhmm. So, locally, you can't test unless

Aaron

01:16:42 – 01:16:43

you're, like,

Caleb

01:16:43 – 01:16:53

hurts cure or something like that. That. And nobody's gonna do that for that, so I just, like, hope it works in production and whatever. There's just things that make it annoying. Mhmm.

Caleb

01:16:53 – 01:17:00

And offering, like, the code that gets copied is different than the code that they're seeing. Yes. That's a hard thing to do. It is. But that's an important thing to do.

Aaron

01:17:00 – 01:17:01

Mhmm.

Caleb

01:17:01 – 01:17:14

Tab switching like Talend has, dude. Literally, there's so much opportunity, and this stuff can be used in presentations. Mhmm. It can be used on doc sites. It can be used you know, it's so well loved and adored.

Caleb

01:17:14 – 01:17:20

Everybody every developer oriented thing needs code snippets maybe just even on their home page. Whatever. Domination, Aaron.

Aaron

01:17:21 – 01:17:28

That that that's actually my language as well. I just want pure absolute domination. Yeah. Okay. This is interesting.

Aaron

01:17:29 – 01:17:52

You've given me much to consider. I have been feeling a little bit like I should revisit that, and I should do and also because version 1 is, like, I'm tired of it. It needs to go. I got I got improvements I need to make. I still doubt the willingness of the market to pay, but there's an easy way to figure that out, which is to try and see.

Aaron

01:17:52 – 01:17:56

Yeah. I do, however, like the free pro split.

Caleb

01:17:57 – 01:18:00

Yeah. Yeah. Free pro like that. With the big play, I'm on free pro. Yeah.

Caleb

01:18:00 – 01:18:01

I think that's if you want

Aaron

01:18:02 – 01:18:02

I think

Caleb

01:18:02 – 01:18:03

that's big adoption

Aaron

01:18:03 – 01:18:03

Yeah.

Caleb

01:18:03 – 01:18:09

It's free pro all day. Mhmm. Yep. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Caleb

01:18:09 – 01:18:15

And there's lots of good dog feeding, dog food opportunities for you here, like, you're building a platform

Aaron

01:18:15 – 01:18:18

for 4 feet. Is right. Yeah.

Caleb

01:18:18 – 01:18:22

It doesn't sound right. It might be right, though. You know? Yeah.

Aaron

01:18:22 – 01:18:24

It might be, but it's just it doesn't sound right.

Caleb

01:18:24 – 01:18:33

It's probably right. So, yeah, there's lots of cat feeding Right. Yeah. That's a good bet. Like, you Seltzer popping opportunity.

Aaron

01:18:33 – 01:18:35

I swear. That's a good bet. Like, you can

Caleb

01:18:35 – 01:18:41

use it on your own stuff, and then you'll develop it into the thing that you adore, you know, when people are using it.

Aaron

01:18:41 – 01:18:42

Right. Right.

Caleb

01:18:42 – 01:19:08

And this is the, like, the the scope creep you don't want, but right now, like, there are times that I want a simple syntax highlighter to just show people how to compose or acquire the thing. Uh-huh. And then there are times that I want a tailwind play style, like Right. Very limited Versus code experience for somebody to play around, sort of, like, tweak something and have a little demo, whatever. And it the the gradient, there's no gray you know, it's, like, for this, you use the toys.

Caleb

01:19:08 – 01:19:11

For this, you use something that's way too powerful.

Aaron

01:19:11 – 01:19:12

You know?

Caleb

01:19:12 – 01:19:13

Just have nice Just

Aaron

01:19:13 – 01:19:13

monocos.

Caleb

01:19:13 – 01:19:25

Good default. That's the okay. I'll be done with this in one second, but this is the problem with the current market. Nothing is just good defaults out of the box like Torchlight is. Everything else is, like clearly, you wanna customize the crap out of this to all your needs.

Caleb

01:19:25 – 01:19:27

You know? It's, like, no, I don't at all.

Aaron

01:19:27 – 01:19:28

You just want it to work.

Caleb

01:19:28 – 01:19:31

Just want a nice theme, and then you do the rest.

Aaron

01:19:31 – 01:19:37

It's nice to hear nice things about something you've created. That I do like that. Yeah. I do like that. Yep.

Caleb

01:19:37 – 01:19:38

Aaron

01:19:38 – 01:19:49

is a delight to use. I still use it I still use it on everything. I use it primarily through the mark down extension, which I really enjoy because I just I just write it in mark down, and it works.

Caleb

01:19:49 – 01:19:52

Wait a second. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I do that too. Yeah.

Caleb

01:19:52 – 01:19:56

Okay. Because can you make a mark down renderer that's also a service as well?

Aaron

01:19:57 – 01:20:02

The markdown renderer that Torchlight uses calls out to the API. Yes. Is that the question?

Caleb

01:20:03 – 01:20:07

No. Like, can I just never have to compile markdown with common markdown or anything?

Aaron

01:20:07 – 01:20:10

Oh, you wanna send me markdown? Yeah. Well well well

Caleb

01:20:11 – 01:20:14

to use, GitHub. Oh, dude. This is the other play. Okay.

Aaron

01:20:14 – 01:20:19

I remember that. You use their sneaky rendering idea, and it doesn't exist. Yeah.

Caleb

01:20:19 – 01:20:26

Yeah. And I did it forever, and it was like, this is a sick markdown at, like, processor. It's great, and this works great.

Aaron

01:20:26 – 01:20:27

Mhmm.

Caleb

01:20:27 – 01:20:29

Yeah. I think that there's a package available under my name somewhere

Aaron

01:20:30 – 01:20:30

Mhmm.

Caleb

01:20:30 – 01:20:34

To do this. Gl get something it's called Get Down. Get Down.

Aaron

01:20:34 – 01:20:34

Get Down.

Caleb

01:20:34 – 01:20:34

It's a

Aaron

01:20:34 – 01:20:35

great name. Great name.

Caleb

01:20:35 – 01:20:56

If anybody cares, go find Get Down with a neon sign because you're getting down. That's the logo. So Get Down, is great, but it it's so restrictive because of, like, sanitization that they do. And I've tried I did gnarly things in GitDown

Aaron

01:20:56 – 01:20:57

Yeah.

Caleb

01:20:57 – 01:21:02

Like, the bad stuff I encode in ridiculous things and then decode it back when it comes back. Yep. Yep. Yep. But whatever.

Caleb

01:21:02 – 01:21:09

I hate fiddling with markdown, and I'm always wrestling with common mark and making my own extensions for stuff that should just be available. And Interesting.

Aaron

01:21:11 – 01:21:17

I love markdown and fiddling with Common Mark and making my own extensions for things that should be available.

Caleb

01:21:17 – 01:21:18

I I love doing that too

Aaron

01:21:18 – 01:21:19

when Absolutely adore that.

Caleb

01:21:20 – 01:21:21

When I have 4 weeks.

Aaron

01:21:21 – 01:21:22

Yeah. Yeah. I love 4 weeks.

Caleb

01:21:22 – 01:21:27

This is the kind of thing that just want let's have one person do all the fiddling.

Aaron

01:21:27 – 01:21:38

I can fiddle. I can fiddle. So what are you saying? You want you wanna write in markdown and you wanna send it off to me Yeah. To be rendered, including all of the fanciness Including

Caleb

01:21:38 – 01:21:38

all of the code.

Aaron

01:21:39 – 01:21:40

Get it back is just pure HTML.

Caleb

01:21:40 – 01:21:55

And yeah. And I want you to add, links in the headings so that I don't have to do any of that Of course. If that's hard. It's natural. Make a a table of contents available as well, and maybe have some automated stuff that as you scroll it, whatever, the scroll padding, as you scroll it highlights the current thing, Whatever.

Caleb

01:21:55 – 01:22:06

But, yeah, just a markdown render. It's like torchlight. The thing that you send your markdown with your code snippets or just your code snippets to, and it does all the hard work for you, and you're good to go.

Aaron

01:22:06 – 01:22:07

This is interesting.

Caleb

01:22:08 – 01:22:09

There you go, Aaron.

Aaron

01:22:09 – 01:22:12

Sounds like another good rabbit trail. Yeah.

Caleb

01:22:12 – 01:22:13

Yeah. I kinda like that.

Aaron

01:22:13 – 01:22:15

I kinda like that better, honestly.

Caleb

01:22:15 – 01:22:19

Marked just being, like Yeah. The markdown situation.

Aaron

01:22:19 – 01:22:19

But it

Caleb

01:22:19 – 01:22:21

It's a much wider market than It's

Aaron

01:22:21 – 01:22:23

much wider, and it's it's new, so

Caleb

01:22:23 – 01:22:23

I don't know

Aaron

01:22:23 – 01:22:27

what all the baggage is. But it does sound it does sound nice.

Caleb

01:22:28 – 01:22:32

Yeah. I don't know. There you go, Aaron. How's that for a podcast?

Aaron

01:22:32 – 01:22:40

Well, gang. Sounds good. You're telling me big guy never hit you with a well gang, and that was how you knew it was over?

Caleb

01:22:40 – 01:22:43

He's never said gang. What? He'd say gang gang.

Aaron

01:22:43 – 01:22:45

No. That's totally different.

Caleb

01:22:46 – 01:23:00

He no. I I don't know. I'm trying to picture how my dad would send a signal, and it wouldn't be through some, like, indirect communication that's folksy like that, like one of my other friends' dads. It would be it's pretty direct.

Aaron

01:23:00 – 01:23:04

That's interesting. Okay. Well, well, gang, we did it. Thanks for

Caleb

01:23:04 – 01:23:05

stepping in. Yeah.

Aaron

01:23:06 – 01:23:19

Well, gang. What does Ian normally do here? He normally reads this out by saying this was this was mostly technical. Okay. That's your show.

Aaron

01:23:19 – 01:23:30

By the way Oh. I thought I heard I thought I heard you and Daniel talking about, oh, we got a podcast coming. We're we're gonna talk today, and we gotta record a new podcast. What's the deal? Where's no plans to merge?

Caleb

01:23:30 – 01:23:37

We did record 1. The we recorded the one where we didn't talk about anything. Like, we were like, oh, we can't talk about anything on this podcast. Yeah.

Aaron

01:23:37 – 01:23:38

I thought y'all had a new one.

Caleb

01:23:38 – 01:23:39

Did you hear that one?

Aaron

01:23:39 – 01:23:40

I think so. No plans.

Caleb

01:23:40 – 01:23:45

Oh, yeah. There was a new one. Merge. Or there not a new one, but there I tweeted at him. Okay.

Caleb

01:23:45 – 01:23:56

Here's the other thing quick, Aaron, now that we're ending the show. Yeah. I think I think I want to event source. Oh, no. And I've never even been tempted.

Aaron

01:23:57 – 01:24:02

Oh, man. I know. They got you. I think they got me. I hate to hear that.

Caleb

01:24:03 – 01:24:24

Yeah. And I'm working on this app, and I'm, like, I feel, like, I'm really setting myself up for pain with these simple models that are all mutable and blah blah blah whatever. I'm not trying to scoop Daniel's talk either, but I love the model. I I went down the rabbit hole for, like, 2 seconds, and it's like, no. No.

Caleb

01:24:24 – 01:24:25

No. No. No. No. No time.

Caleb

01:24:25 – 01:24:25

Good.

Aaron

01:24:25 – 01:24:26

There's no time. There's no time.

Caleb

01:24:26 – 01:24:46

There's no time. But, honestly, it's, like, if somebody and Verbs would be the thing to do it. If somebody could make event sourcing easy to swallow, like, the benefits seems so undeniable and, like, game changing. Like, the it's it seems like, I don't know how people adore type safety and things like that. It's, like, wow.

Caleb

01:24:46 – 01:24:50

I can like, that kind of thing where it's, like, oh, I could never go back. Not having end to

Aaron

01:24:50 – 01:24:52

end type safety. Yes. I can.

Caleb

01:24:52 – 01:24:58

It's fine. I don't know. Something like that. I mean, I do that. I never use type, but but whatever.

Caleb

01:24:58 – 01:25:10

You know what I'm saying? It's the kind of thing that seems, like, oh, this changes things, like, and and makes you fall in love with it because you don't have bugs, and everything is, like, that's what they deal with. Where they lose me.

Aaron

01:25:10 – 01:25:13

Okay. Man So If they got you

Caleb

01:25:14 – 01:25:34

They haven't gotten me yet because I haven't actually done it, but it definitely has been, like, a brain worm that, like, now that I've seen it a little, like, actually seen that okay. Like, what I'm doing right because I deal with things in my current life Mhmm. That are painful. Like, oh, this webhook got hit, but, like, the the thing didn't get added to the table. So, okay, I'll go in a lemon squeeze y'all.

Caleb

01:25:34 – 01:25:37

I'll add the thing to table myself. Oh, but all the other code that's supposed to run

Aaron

01:25:38 – 01:25:39

Story run. Freaking life.

Caleb

01:25:39 – 01:25:44

And, like, stuff like that. It's, like, oh, this is so stupid. Here's a 100% off coupon code. You know? Yeah.

Caleb

01:25:44 – 01:26:10

Like, stuff like in theory, event sourcing would be the kind of thing that you just be, like, we'll just quick pop that in there. We could just play that event, and everything sings or, like, oh, we'll just scroll back and replay all the, you know, webhook received things or whatever. I don't know. A lot of things like that that's, like, oh, wow. I'm dealing with, like, kind of important things, and it all rests on the state being all perfect.

Aaron

01:26:10 – 01:26:11

You know?

Caleb

01:26:11 – 01:26:12

So whatever.

Aaron

01:26:13 – 01:26:19

I don't know. Man. I'm gonna have to look into event sourcing now. This is how I this is how I do it. I don't do anything.

Aaron

01:26:19 – 01:26:30

I'm a I'm a I'm a laggard. I'm a late adopter when it comes to stuff like this. Like, I didn't see Apple play. Return types in in my Laravel stuff until it was fully in Laravel core. And now I'm like

Caleb

01:26:30 – 01:26:39

Alright. I guess I I don't put return types in. I've never used TypeScript. You talk into the most laggard laggard of all time. That's why I'm so just never event source

Aaron

01:26:39 – 01:26:41

that event sourcing is it because

Caleb

01:26:42 – 01:26:49

It might be the it might be something that brings me out of, like, building apps the exact way I built them 10 years ago. Oh, 10

Aaron

01:26:49 – 01:26:57

years ago was awesome. I love 10 years ago. Okay. Well, that's news. I need you and Daniel to record so that I can I can listen to all of that?

Caleb

01:26:58 – 01:27:00

Yeah. We shall, Aaron Francis.

Aaron

01:27:00 – 01:27:05

Why don't you tell the people that I'm trying to find you, and then I'll tell the people where they can find us? I don't know.

Caleb

01:27:05 – 01:27:07

Find me on the Internet. That's where.

Aaron

01:27:07 – 01:27:27

The Internet. The the mostlytechnical.com, mostlytechpod on Twitter, RIP, and mostlytechnicalpodcast@gmail.com. And go find Ian on Twitter and wish him well, as he is sick. So thanks for joining us, Caleb. Thanks for standing in as Ian, and we'll talk to you all next time.

Jank Free With Caleb Porzio

Transcript

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