Aaron Francis

Today I'm joined by Aaron Francis, Cofounder of Try Hard Studios, to talk through his path that lead him to build a technical media company, and chat about his general business and marketing prowess.

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Transcript

Brian Morrison

00:00:01 – 00:00:13

Alrighty. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the, Fullstack Chat podcast. My name is Brian Morrison. I am developer educator for Clerk, user authentication, platform that's designed to get auth added into your apps as quickly as possible.

Brian Morrison

00:00:14 – 00:00:39

Fullstack Chat is a podcast where I invite builders and dev tool creators on to chat about whether they're building something, where we just have a casual conversation or dev tools will talk about sorry. I got some feedback there. Talked with, builders or dev tool creators. With dev tool creators, we talk about what they're building, how it's, how it helps builders. But today, I'm joined by somebody special.

Brian Morrison

00:00:40 – 00:01:07

Aaron Francis is a well known builder across Twitter, and then blue sky is the spirit of Aaron Francis, which is a new development. I'm joined by the real one today. So Aaron and I are friends. We were former colleagues at a company. He has a very interesting career path, that we're gonna dive into today, and we're we're generally just gonna talk about business and marketing for his, his media company, TryHard Studios, which is is, apparently doing really well.

Brian Morrison

00:01:07 – 00:01:17

So I'm excited just to hang out with Aaron and and catch up, but, we're gonna have a good conversation for you. So, Aaron, I'll pass it off to you, and you can kinda introduce yourself and what you do to the rest of the audience.

Aaron Francis

00:01:17 – 00:01:27

Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's very nice. Yeah. I don't know who started that, spirit of Aaron Francis blue sky account, but it is it is very funny, and they're doing a very good job.

Aaron Francis

00:01:28 – 00:01:46

Yeah. So like Brian said, my name is Aaron Francis. We used to Brian and I used to work together. And now, me and one of our other coworkers, me and Steve, have started a company where we make, we make stuff. We make a lot of different stuff.

Aaron Francis

00:01:46 – 00:02:06

Right now, we've been making a lot of videos. We've created a couple database video courses, lots of YouTube videos, and we have, lots of hopes and dreams, but we're trying to, you know, trying not to overwhelm ourselves. And I don't know if that is working. But, yes, TryHard Studios is going quite well, and I'm excited to be here.

Brian Morrison

00:02:06 – 00:02:19

That's awesome. Yeah. So, one of the things I do with all my guests is I like to kick off with a little icebreaker, just to kinda ease you into the audience. You and I normally, it's also for me to get to know the person, but, again, you and I kinda work together. So this is this is just for fun now.

Brian Morrison

00:02:20 – 00:02:28

My question for you today is what is and and as I ask this question, just a reminder, we try and keep the conversation PG at best.

Aaron Francis

00:02:28 – 00:02:29

Of course. Always.

Brian Morrison

00:02:29 – 00:02:36

What is the, what is the most interesting comment you've ever written in a piece of code or read in a piece of code?

Aaron Francis

00:02:40 – 00:03:17

There was there was a a time when I was trying to create a hash for something, and it didn't it wasn't, like, it wasn't secure. It didn't it didn't need to be secure, so y'all don't come at me. But, I was m d fiving a a string, like a user ID, and then adding a salt. And the what I decided to, throw into the m d five hash so that nobody could ever guess it because I'm a genius was Aaron is number one exclamation. And I was I just left it there as kinda like a test, and we 100% shipped that to production, and it's still in production.

Aaron Francis

00:03:18 – 00:03:33

So somewhere deep in the bowels of this code at this property tax company is some hashing function that just creates a random hash, and part of it is a salt that says Aaron is number one with, like, three exclamation points. So be careful what you use in testing because it will probably end up in production.

Brian Morrison

00:03:33 – 00:03:37

Would you say perhaps that's the original spirit of Aaron Francis before I was able to think?

Aaron Francis

00:03:38 – 00:03:41

Still, yeah, it's still out there somewhere operating a property tax company.

Brian Morrison

00:03:42 – 00:04:03

Awesome. That's hilarious. So let's let's kinda move on to, like, I guess, the big topic we wanna talk about today, which which really is just kind of, like, try hard. You know, you if I if I recall correctly, you used to be a software developer, then you worked into being kinda more of a a technical content creator, which is kinda what we used to do at our previous company. Mhmm.

Brian Morrison

00:04:03 – 00:04:19

And now you kinda branched off from there and are doing your own thing. Now I know that you produce technical concept through TryHard, but it kinda sounds like there might be some more things around the corner. So, if you wouldn't mind, like, yeah, just cover your career path and, like, the decisions you made that got you to the point of what you're doing today with TryHard.

Aaron Francis

00:04:20 – 00:04:39

Yeah. I mean, the career path is circuitous, to say the least. I, I got my degree. I have a master's degree in tax taxation. So I got my undergrad and master's in accounting, took the CPA exam, passed, am a CPA, worked for one year at Ernst and Young, and was like, man, this sucks.

Aaron Francis

00:04:39 – 00:05:05

I hate being an accountant. So I left that pretty quickly. And from there, it's been all tech mostly, and have meandered through lots of different things. Was a I think the biggest chunk of what I did was I was a CTO at that local property tax firm, for five years. I started as the only developer and actually ended as the COO.

Aaron Francis

00:05:05 – 00:05:27

I was running the whole thing, and it was awesome. It was a lot of fun. And then I got, like, I got bored, and I wanted to go, like, into tech more. And that's when you and I ended up working together at, like, a proper tech company. And there, I it was weird because, you know, I had been the most technical person at every company that I had ever worked at, including the accounting firm.

Aaron Francis

00:05:27 – 00:05:48

You know, I was, like, writing macros in Excel that people thought I was a genius. I was like, Oh, it's just kind of more fun than doing taxes. But then I ended up at that company that we worked at together and I was the least technical person. It was like there were all the people on, you know, doing the rails app and then all the people doing the actual database stuff. And I was just kinda like the adorable content creator.

Aaron Francis

00:05:48 – 00:06:18

And it was very weird. It just felt so bizarre to be, like, the least technical person at a company. It was never that's never happened in my life. And so, during that time, I think I discovered that, one, I like creating content, and two, people like when I create content. And so, I just kinda tried to, like, kinda tried to follow where the market was telling me to go, and that that's where I, that's where I felt like it was pulling me.

Aaron Francis

00:06:18 – 00:06:53

And so after exiting that company, Steve and I got together, and we're like, hey. What if we just, like, kinda did the same thing we were doing at the old company, but we do it for ourselves? And so we took a bunch of interviews with companies and didn't feel super jazzed about too much and then decided, like, yeah. Let's do this by ourselves. And so the first thing we did out of the gate was, we did a, a course on SQLite, database SQLite, and then we did a course on Postgres, a a different database.

Aaron Francis

00:06:54 – 00:07:11

And so, you know, we tried a bunch of different we thought our business model was gonna be one thing and ended up being something different. And I think we have, like, kinda settled on we produce educational content for developers, and that has been kinda like our our bread and butter so far.

Brian Morrison

00:07:11 – 00:07:29

Yeah. That's great. Now what, I I know you you linked up with a couple of pretty big names, at least in the tech startup space. How did how did some of those relationships come to be? Like, what kinda what kinda steps did you take in order to, you know, effectively market what you're trying to do to these different, these different companies?

Aaron Francis

00:07:29 – 00:07:57

Yeah. It's a it's kind of an interesting path as well there because in in my previous role, it was very public facing. And so that, like, that really helped elevate my, like, personal brand and connections to people in the industry. Because for a while, I was the mouthpiece of that company on at least on Twitter and YouTube. And then and so people really associated me with that.

Aaron Francis

00:07:58 – 00:08:32

And that, like, helped make a lot of friends, honestly, both with, like, you know, individuals that we know, like, and trust and companies that we, like, wanted to work with. And so then when, when we left, you know, I tweeted that we had just gotten laid off, and it was like everyone on Twitter came out of the woodwork to support. And the next week after that, like, Steve and I took a ton of calls, and that was really great for making connections. And there were a few people on those calls, CEOs of companies that were like, hey. We don't have a job for you.

Aaron Francis

00:08:32 – 00:08:53

But if you go solo, we wanna be your first client. It's like, this is weird. Really? You do? And so I think, just being public and, like, putting stuff out there naturally attracts, the type of people that you want to be friends with.

Aaron Francis

00:08:53 – 00:09:13

And so that's kind of been that's kind of been, like, my, like, my meta secret. The entire my entire career is, like, the more stuff you put out, the more people will be attracted to the stuff that you're doing and the more opportunities it will give you. And that has just, like, totally proven true, in my in my layoff story as well.

Brian Morrison

00:09:14 – 00:09:31

Yeah. Yeah. I I very similar. So I was laid off with Aaron Aaron too here, for everyone listening. And in my work at that company, even though I wasn't nearly as public as you are, like, you had you had built so much more of a following than I've I've ever I've ever seen, you know, to come towards me.

Brian Morrison

00:09:31 – 00:09:48

Even I got a bunch of people reaching out afterwards and asking me for, you know, consulting services or, you know, talking with, with getting a job. That's how I landed at Clerk because I I got a call, pretty close, which Aaron had his hand in that I appreciate. Thank you. Publicly. You know, I got a call pretty much at right away afterwards and we're like, hey.

Brian Morrison

00:09:48 – 00:10:10

Let's let's talk. And, you know, within a day, I I landed at Clerk. So, yeah. It's kinda crazy. I I, one of my one of my other friends recently kind of, told me the one thing that he kind of follows as part of his motto is it's not it's not who you know and it's not what you know, but it's well it's what others know about you that will help you, succeed in this in this world, I guess.

Brian Morrison

00:10:10 – 00:10:21

Mhmm. And that really has resonated with me. I mean, I've got lots of those little, like, sayings and whatnot that have resonated with me over the years, but that was a really good one. So alright. So back to try hard.

Brian Morrison

00:10:21 – 00:10:39

So we talked about how you're connecting with others in the field. Mhmm. What else can you tell us about kinda, like, your mindset as far as, like, running your business? What do you see what kind of things do you do on a regular day to day basis that, I don't know, help grow the thing and make it be as successful as it is?

Aaron Francis

00:10:39 – 00:11:04

Yeah. I think, you know, I think Steve Steve and I are still trying you know, we're what how long ago did we get laid off? Like, seven, eight months ago, something like that. So we're still we're still very early. And I think in some sense, we have found, a type of product market fit even if it is content market fit, you know, because we don't we don't sell a a discreet product yet.

Aaron Francis

00:11:05 – 00:11:30

And I think one of the things that has helped us get there is, just kinda like, iterating on things as quickly as we can. And some part of that feels frenetic. Right? So, like, the more things you iterate on and try and try to figure out what's gonna work, it looks like a lot of, movement with no motion. And that's what it feels like sometimes.

Aaron Francis

00:11:30 – 00:12:09

It feels like, god, we're doing we're doing 10 different things, and I don't know if we can sustain this. And the answer is we can't sustain it, but we are trying to figure out what is the one thing that is going to sustain us moving forward. And so, like, in the beginning in the beginning, we thought Steve and I thought a lot of companies wanted to hire us, and so, therefore, they will want to hire us as consultants to help make their developer education, developer marketing teams better. Like, that will be our offer to the market is we are, you know, consultants for hire to level up your video production at your company. Great idea.

Aaron Francis

00:12:09 – 00:12:18

Sounds super smart. Zero people wanted it. Nobody nobody freaking wanted it. We were like, this is great. We're the geniuses of business.

Aaron Francis

00:12:18 – 00:12:33

And they're like, yeah. We don't wanna do that, but will you make will you make videos for us? I'm like, I don't wanna I like I can't make videos for everybody. And so that was one of those things where we, like, fully went out, offered that to the market, and the market said, no. Don't do that.

Aaron Francis

00:12:33 – 00:12:45

Try something else. And so we're like, shoot. So we tried something else. And there's something else, you know, very quickly after that was, you know, selling education. Like, we didn't invent anything new there.

Aaron Francis

00:12:45 – 00:13:04

And so we moved at a breakneck pace to get a SQLite and Postgres course out the door. And it was too fast. Like, we moved too quickly, but it was one of those things where it's like, we gotta get off the ground. Like, we gotta have we gotta have money coming in. We have to have products in the market.

Aaron Francis

00:13:04 – 00:13:34

We need to, establish ourselves. And so we decided, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna work at an unsustainable pace because we need money coming in, and we need to, like, establish ourselves. And so now that we have now that we've shipped these two courses in six months or whatever, we're taking the foot off the gas a little bit and trying to figure out, okay, what do we want the shape of our business to look like? What do we want the shape of our lives to look like? Because the last six months have been exhausting personally.

Aaron Francis

00:13:34 – 00:14:07

And so trying to figure out what is sustainable, and try to balance, like, how do we mine, like, how do we mine this vein that is a rich vein? I'm not a miner, but it seems like a good metaphor. How do we mine this rich vein of, like, valuable stuff that we have found? But, also, how do we explore new territories such that when we're either tired of mining this or this vein runs out, we're ready to move on to the next thing. And so my my nature is, okay.

Aaron Francis

00:14:07 – 00:14:22

We did a thing. Let's move on and explore something else. And Steve's nature is we did a thing. We need to run it into the ground until we're sure that that thing is dead. And so the two of us together works out really well because, like, I'll finish a course and Steve's like, great.

Aaron Francis

00:14:23 – 00:14:44

I am so excited to go do cold sales for this course. And I'm like, you're a freaking crazy person. I have no I I don't I hear the words that you're saying, but I do not understand them. And so the two of us together work really well because I have this, like, frenetic energy of make, make, make, build new stuff. Let's explore.

Aaron Francis

00:14:44 – 00:14:58

And Steve has this calming executive energy of, like, we have a product. We should sell it. And so we're trying to, like, you know you know, between the two of us going slightly different directions, we head in a nice neutral direction, and it's worked out really well so far.

Brian Morrison

00:14:58 – 00:15:05

Yeah. Yeah. I worked with Steve a little bit too. Not not nearly as closely as I did with you, Aaron, but Steve always did kinda give off that calming vibe. Yes.

Brian Morrison

00:15:06 – 00:15:25

And it sounds great that he it sounds like his his persona and the things that get him fired up really complement what you're doing, like you're saying. Because I I definitely resonate with you more. Like, I am the type of person that will get fired up, go create something, you know, experiment, and and and get the results from that experiment, and then I get excited about the next thing I don't wanna jump off to and start working on something else. Right?

Aaron Francis

00:15:25 – 00:15:26

Yep. Exactly.

Brian Morrison

00:15:27 – 00:15:46

Yeah. So the fact that you were able to do that consistently for six months, especially because, you know, I I I don't know how you do it because I've got kids, but you've got, like, a small army at home. Mhmm. Like, you still look like it still seems like you're you're taking time to spend with your family and whatnot through you through your social posts. So I think that's I think that's fantastic, and I commend you for that.

Aaron Francis

00:15:46 – 00:15:47

Yeah. Thank you.

Brian Morrison

00:15:48 – 00:15:59

Yeah. Yeah. So, now you said you eventually will look into potentially a product. Any any more there, or is that just a teaser you're gonna kinda leave us

Aaron Francis

00:15:59 – 00:16:15

all with? No. I can give you I can give you lots more. So, one thing, one thing that, I think is true is that in the, in the pursuit of something, you always have ideas for something else. Right?

Aaron Francis

00:16:15 – 00:16:31

And so while you're, while you're building one thing, you notice everything that is wrong with that process. Right? And so people that are always like, oh, I don't have any ideas. I'm like, doesn't matter. Just pick anything and start moving on it.

Aaron Francis

00:16:31 – 00:17:26

And then as you're doing it, just note all of the places or all of the things about the process that suck, and you'll have more ideas than you than you know what to do with. And so I think that is true generally, and that has been true specifically for Steve and I as we are, you know, as we're trying to schlep these, you know, terabytes worth of video around the Internet, we're like, boy, sure should be an easier way to do this. And so some of our ideas are around that. A lot of our ideas are, a lot of our ideas are, like, desktop applications, which is a little bit, a little bit, not in the zeitgeist right now. But, you know, when you're working with these massive video files, it's like, well, you've got a freaking m one processor here or an m four if you got one of the new, minis, and you could rip through some video, or you could put it on the Internet and pay through the nose for some underpowered machine to do it.

Aaron Francis

00:17:26 – 00:18:10

And so some of our ideas are around those types of things, like workflow that we are encountering that is not ideal. And, oddly enough, Steve, is also a developer and has, like, started building some desktop apps. And so some of our, yeah, some of our ideas around that, others are, others are in terms of, like, you know, on the database side, some of the database stuff that we're doing. There's a lot of a lot of utility in database applications and not a lot of, like, I hope no database application creator is listening, but there's not a lot of, like, taste and style in, like, database applications. And so we're like, oh, this could be nicer, couldn't it?

Aaron Francis

00:18:11 – 00:19:04

And so some of our ideas around that. And then, one of one of my, frenetic pursuits that Steve has allowed me to pursue is a physical product. And so I think starting in January, I will, in pursuit of having good content to share, and scratch my own itch a little bit, I will start building, a small physical product that people can buy and follow along the journey, on on YouTube. And I think that'll be that'll serve a few purposes. That'll be, like, really fun, interesting content, but it's also, like, an exploration into the physical world to see if, given the distribution that we do have, can we run other products through those distribution channels, or is it strictly, database education that this, this audience cares about?

Aaron Francis

00:19:04 – 00:19:16

Or is it a little bit broader? Because it'd be fun if it was a little bit broader. So those are some of the things that are we're, like, trying to explore and figure out, is this a good idea or not while maintaining the cash cow that, like, you know, puts food on the family.

Brian Morrison

00:19:17 – 00:19:41

As if your ambition with starting a a media company in the tech space wasn't enough, you're getting new physical products. That is Yeah. That's I'm excited to see where that journey leads because I've I've looked a little bit into the the idea of creating and and selling physical products and just just just reading through, like, the general process of, like, the people you have to talk to and I have to go buy it. It just seems painful and it's Yeah.

Aaron Francis

00:19:41 – 00:19:44

Does not interest me personally. And the margins suck.

Brian Morrison

00:19:44 – 00:19:49

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's like it's so much easier. It's there's there's so much more profit, it feels like, in knowledge work.

Brian Morrison

00:19:49 – 00:19:59

But but my understanding, like, is if you can make a product that hits and hits good and you can Mhmm. Can mass produce them, I mean, that's that's potentially a a massive windfall.

Aaron Francis

00:20:00 – 00:20:32

Yeah. And and a lot of, like, you know, a lot of the way that Steve and I evaluate ideas is, trying to think, does this hit two or three or four of our, goals? Like, does this align are are there are there a bunch of reasons that we should say yes to a thing? Because if there's one reason we should say yes to a thing, it's like, oh, that doesn't move me that much. And so when we think about, like, let's say we think about, like, doing a sponsored video for somebody that is kind of random.

Aaron Francis

00:20:33 – 00:20:43

It's like one reason would be to get money, and that's good. Money is good. The love of money, however, is the root of all kinds of evil, but money is good. Right? So it that's a good thing.

Aaron Francis

00:20:43 – 00:20:58

But if a project comes along and we're like, wait. We could get money from this. Like, this is really great for our audience. We get to learn something new. This, like, potentially, gives us the ability to bundle other stuff that we've already done.

Aaron Francis

00:20:58 – 00:21:29

That's when we start to think, we say that, like, the vectors are aligning. We've got two or three things that, like, this project could move forward just by being a single project. And so when we think about the physical product stuff, it's like, okay. Well, this could move forward, a very interesting and fun, you know, content storyline. It moves forward potentially opening partnerships to some more normie brands like Shopify, Squarespace, stuff like that, which have boocoos of money.

Aaron Francis

00:21:29 – 00:21:52

And there's also, like, we get to sell the thing when it's done. And so, it all of these things kinda coalesce to say, like, yeah. That's a project worth taking even if it is a little wacky. Like, even if the margins suck, well, it does have two or three other things going for it. And so maybe we make, you know, many hundreds of dollars selling the physical product and many tens of thousands on the content side talking about the physical product.

Aaron Francis

00:21:52 – 00:22:00

It's like, suddenly that makes sense. And so we try to evaluate it on, like, can we get more than one thing out of each project?

Brian Morrison

00:22:01 – 00:22:14

So it almost sounds like you you would use these different products to create some kind of kind of funnel where where people can purchase more than just one thing and kind of it is I wanna use the term upsell, but I don't know if that's the appropriate term for what you're talking about.

Aaron Francis

00:22:14 – 00:22:19

Sometimes. Cross sell is probably more accurate, but upsell is definitely, on the table. Yeah.

Brian Morrison

00:22:20 – 00:22:39

Yeah. Awesome. Well, I got, I got two more questions for you before we wrap this thing up. I try and keep the interviews a little bit on the shorter side because I I myself listen to three, four hour podcast sometimes, and I know how how grueling it could be through get through some of those. My next question is since you create technical content

Aaron Francis

00:22:39 – 00:22:39

Mhmm.

Brian Morrison

00:22:39 – 00:23:04

You have to have a balance of getting technical to learn deeply the things that you're gonna educate people on because anyone who watches content, you could you could quickly suss out whether somebody actually knows what they're talking about on YouTube, for example. So you gotta really study it and learn that and experiment with it, but you also have to get creative with the way that you present it and do it in a way that is friendly. So how do you balance the the the difference between, the technical brain side of your brain and the creative side of your brain, so to speak?

Aaron Francis

00:23:06 – 00:23:47

That is a good question that I don't know if I'm entirely capable of answering, but I'll give you my first thoughts. I think, there to me is a certain type of art with the technicality, and I felt this about accounting, frankly, and that's why I ended up as an accountant. Because in school, there was a certain type of, it was very mentally pleasing when you balance the accounts. And I know that sounds insane, but it's like you imagine doing a puzzle and you make all the pieces fit. That's the same, like, that's the same, dopamine release that I got when I was, an accountant in school.

Aaron Francis

00:23:47 – 00:24:28

Accounting in practice is awful, but accounting in school is a delight. And that's the same dopamine release I get when I, do something clever and or fast or creative, in programming. And so those to me those things to me are not entirely separate. I also think that I am, I don't know if unique, but I do think I am a little bit different than many people in the tech industry in that, a lot of the technology that I use and create and learn about is itself a means to a a different end. I think there it is good, noble, and pure to, like, learn about technology for the sake of learning about technology.

Aaron Francis

00:24:28 – 00:25:00

I think that's totally fine. That's great. But I think my perspective is I like to learn and understand these things deeply so that I can see these other things come to fruition. And that's one of the reasons, frankly, that I've stuck with a single framework, which happens to be Laravel, but I've stuck with a single framework for so long because my intent, my desire is to create things, on the other side. I happen to use Laravel as a means to get there, and I find it very productive and and a joy to use.

Aaron Francis

00:25:00 – 00:25:34

But when a new framework comes out, I don't have a huge desire to go learn it because my desire is to build things at the end. And so that is part of, I think, part of thing I think what pulls me along is I want to see, discrete units of being come into existence. And the means by which I do that is programming. And in the future, maybe in the next, you know, two or three months, the means might be physical manufacturing. And so I feel like those are that's how it kinda ties all these things together is I'm headed in a direction, and I'm taking different routes to get there.

Aaron Francis

00:25:34 – 00:25:39

One is Laravel. One may be, you know, woodworking and desktop milling or something like that.

Brian Morrison

00:25:40 – 00:25:50

Sure. Yeah. That that's great advice too. I wanna I wanna, like, really lean into that for just a moment, because I I work a lot with React. And and realistically, my my react in fact, you know what?

Brian Morrison

00:25:50 – 00:26:01

I'm surprised it took us twenty five minutes for Laravel to pop up in this conversation. I know. I'm getting better. Yeah. So but I I echo the same sentiment, and and you've tried to convince me to get on the Laravel train for a long time.

Brian Morrison

00:26:01 – 00:26:34

As as exciting as it is, it's like there's a there's a mental hurdle that I'd have to get over in order to actually understand the ecosystem and learn the ins and outs of it. And it's and and if I could accomplish the same the same goals with the frameworks that I know in React, like, I don't I'm not in a super rush to learn it even though I want to, even though it's it's still on my backlog. And I think I really I really wanted to highlight this for the people on on the social media who like to to banter about which framework is the best and how to which which approach or which platform or whatever. Right? You know, you can insert whatever topic you want into that.

Brian Morrison

00:26:34 – 00:26:58

Like, at the end of the day, if you're trying to build and ship things, which the the big part of my my target audience with this podcast is people who wanna build and ship things. Right? The the technology matters significantly less than I think people people think it does. So if you're good with something, there's not gonna be a reason that you should go off and learn the next big framework. If you could ship a SaaS, if you could ship a mobile app, if you could ship a product, do what you know that's gonna get you from point a to point b faster.

Brian Morrison

00:26:58 – 00:27:09

And that doesn't mean don't go explore other things. It just means, you know, make sure you if you're gonna do it, carve out time to do it. Don't make that the focus of of your work. Yeah. And with that, go ahead.

Brian Morrison

00:27:09 – 00:27:10

Sorry.

Aaron Francis

00:27:10 – 00:27:34

Oh, I just think the question needs to be asked, what are you optimizing for? So, like, if you're optimizing for learning, go learn and have a blast. And if you're optimizing for building, don't think that learning a new framework is going to get you closer to your building goal. Learning a new framework is never bad, but if you're optimizing for shipping, learning a new framework is counterproductive in that moment. And so you just have to kind of think, like, what do I want right now?

Aaron Francis

00:27:34 – 00:27:42

And it's okay to want either thing. Just don't delude yourself that you want one thing, and then you're taking the pursuit of another thing. You'll never get to where you wanna go.

Brian Morrison

00:27:42 – 00:28:17

Yeah. One of my way early on jobs in the tech space, We we want we tried adopting this thing, and I don't even know why it was called this, but they called it FedEx Fridays, where the idea being is that, like and I don't know if FedEx does this, but, like, Fridays were supposed to be the day that, like, we we kinda clear the table and dedicate it as a as a day for learning, Whether that's experimenting with a new language or or framework, whether that is even like, hey. Let's all get together in the conference room and somebody can present what they're what they're working on and teach the group something. Right? So it was a way to, like, build continuous continuous education into the job itself.

Brian Morrison

00:28:17 – 00:28:28

And it's something I've kind of tried to adopt. Unfortunately, workloads have a big habit of getting in the way of that. Yeah. Don't they? It just remind what you just said reminded me of that where it's like carving out space to learn and grow.

Brian Morrison

00:28:28 – 00:28:47

I think it's super important, especially if if you, you know, if you plan ahead for it. Mhmm. Yeah. But with that, my last question I ask all of my guests, is do you have any advice beyond what we just spoke about for people who are kind of thinking or interested in getting into building and shipping products? Not side projects.

Brian Morrison

00:28:47 – 00:28:53

Not like I wanna build a Vue app and put it on GitHub, but, like, I wanna build something for users, for people to use.

Aaron Francis

00:28:56 – 00:29:29

Yeah. Lots of advice, maybe. I would think, I think the the first thing I would say is, I think you need to be talking about the thing you're building as as you're building it. Because, if you're talking about if let's say you're you're talking about, building out your product and nobody cares about your tweets or your videos or your whatever blue sky posts are called, nobody cares. Well, then how are when you release the thing, are they gonna care then?

Aaron Francis

00:29:30 – 00:29:47

Unlikely. I think a good example of this is when Adam Wathan was building out Kite Tail back in the day. He was doing live streams about building out basically like a gumroad competitor, called Kite Tail. And during these streams, he kept copying over the CSS from project to project, and people were like, hey. What is that CSS you're using?

Aaron Francis

00:29:47 – 00:30:04

He's like, ah, it's just this little CSS framework. Fast forward to today, and he's a kajillionaire from a CSS framework named Tailwind. And, like, that is a good, I think that is a good case study in if you're out there talking about this thing that you're building and everybody's like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Francis

00:30:04 – 00:30:27

Cool. But what is that? That thing I love. That goes back to the, like, just get in motion and you'll figure out the right path as you go, but you've gotta be in motion. And so I think that's a I think that's a big one, especially for developers who wanna build something, who wanna build something that is the platonic ideal of what a product should be in quiet for six months or a year and then release it.

Aaron Francis

00:30:27 – 00:30:40

And they're like, yeah. Well well done. It's coded beautifully, but nobody this isn't a problem that anybody has. And so the sooner you can figure that out, the better. And I think a good way to figure that out is if you were to tweet about it or post about it or blog about it, does anyone care?

Aaron Francis

00:30:40 – 00:31:05

Because if nobody cares about, like, following the journey or the thing that you're doing when you release the product, nobody's gonna care. So my my advice would be, talk about it early and often and use that as, like, a barometer for what are people interested in. Because you may find that they're terribly interested in it, or you may find that they're terribly interested in some slight variation of it that you can pivot to before you've sunk six months or a year into it.

Brian Morrison

00:31:06 – 00:31:23

Awesome. That is that's fantastic. Well, thanks again, Aaron, for joining me. With that, we're gonna go ahead and end the stream here. But if you, are interested in this type of content, if you're interested in following along with other builders or dove to creators, fullstack.chat is the website to go to.

Brian Morrison

00:31:23 – 00:31:39

There's a small Discord that's also linked there. You can find full stack chat on all the popular podcasting platforms, or I stream this live to my YouTube, my YouTube channel. I wanna shout out to Jason and Andreas for stopping by the stream, to say hi. And, Aaron, where can people find you?

Aaron Francis

00:31:41 – 00:31:55

Still on, still on Twitter for now. Aaron d Francis on Twitter and, on blue sky. Aaron the spirit of Aaron Francis or something. Follow the parody account over there until, perhaps I'll show up on blue sky one day.

Brian Morrison

00:31:56 – 00:32:11

That'd be great. You're gonna make blue sky collapse when you show up over there. Links to everything we talked about will be in the show notes whether you're watching the recap on YouTube or whether you're listening along on your favorite, podcast catcher. And, with that, have a good Friday, everybody. Bye bye.

Aaron Francis

00:32:12 – 00:32:12

See you.

Special Guest Aaron Francis

Transcript

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