The Power of Putting Yourself Out There w/ Aaron Francis

March 31, 2025

A recap of my talk from Commit Your Code 2024
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Transcript

Taylor
00:00:00 – 00:00:04
Sweet. Well, Aaron, let's get the people they want, man. Like, just high level. Who are you? What do you do?
Taylor
00:00:04 – 00:00:05
And we'll go from there.
Aaron
00:00:07 – 00:00:12
Yeah. Both tough questions. Who am I? Let's see. Yeah.
Aaron
00:00:12 – 00:00:37
So like it says on the screen, Aaron Francis and cofounder at a company called TryHard Studios with my friend, Steve. Historically, I would have called myself a a Laravel developer. That is still true, but that's not really what I do, day to day for a living anymore. Before that, I was somehow a a CPA. I was an accountant for a minute.
Taylor
00:00:38 – 00:00:42
That's crazy. Awful. Yeah. That's crazy. You said, like, wow.
Aaron
00:00:42 – 00:00:57
I know. It's one of those things that's, like, a fun, like, a fun thing to drop because it's like, hey. That was five years of my life and in college and then a full year of working, and now it just it's just like a little anecdote. Yeah. So, yeah, I used to be a CPA.
Aaron
00:00:57 – 00:01:16
But now what we do so what Steve and I do at try hard is we, we produce technical content. And so Oh, good. That spans databases. So somebody here just a second ago said mastering Postgres fan. That's one of the courses we've done, mastering We've done one on, SQLite.
Aaron
00:01:17 – 00:01:44
And right now, we are working on, so those are our database offerings. But right now, we're working on something that is completely different but also very exciting, and that's Screencasting.com. So I've got a site with a great domain, that teaches people how to do, like, high quality video. And now that I have, like, a proper video guy, Steve, as my partner, we're gonna reshoot the whole thing. And so that's what we're working on, for the next several weeks.
Taylor
00:01:44 – 00:01:55
I love that. So, like, what so, like, what so, like, what is, like, try hard studios? Is it a is it a people can come in educational content? You said you really aren't taking on client. Like, what Mhmm.
Taylor
00:01:55 – 00:01:57
What is the essence of try hard studios?
Aaron
00:01:58 – 00:02:11
You know, that it's almost been a year, so it hasn't been very long that we've been, an entity. And, you know, in the beginning, we were trying to be all things to all people, and somehow that didn't work out very well. Yeah. Out of town. That's wild.
Aaron
00:02:11 – 00:02:11
Yeah.
Taylor
00:02:11 – 00:02:12
How that works? That's crazy.
Aaron
00:02:12 – 00:02:24
Yeah. So we approached we approached the market with, here's our offering, and our offering is we're very good at video. We'll help your team be very good at video. That was the first thing we went out to sell. And Yeah.
Aaron
00:02:24 – 00:02:29
Companies were like, that sounds great. Why don't you just make the videos for us?
Taylor
00:02:29 – 00:02:30
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron
00:02:30 – 00:02:43
I can't make videos for every dev tool company ever because I lose credibility. I don't have expertise, and that sounds exhausting. Right? Yeah. And so we approached the market with this idea that we thought was genius, and the market said terrible idea.
Aaron
00:02:43 – 00:03:03
And so we quickly pivoted into, we produce we produce in house courses. And so Okay. We still do work with companies like Mastering Postgres and High Performance SQLite. We have sponsors where, like, we go out to a company and say, do you wanna be associated with this, like, what we believe is high quality education? They say yes.
Aaron
00:03:03 – 00:03:06
They give us money. We put their name all over the stuff.
Taylor
00:03:06 – 00:03:06
Sure.
Aaron
00:03:06 – 00:03:20
And so we still do work with companies, but it's not producing, producing videos for them. We will occasionally take a, like, a YouTube sponsor, but that's very traditional. It's not like I'm gonna do a course for your company.
Taylor
00:03:20 – 00:03:25
That makes sense. Cool. Awesome. Let me be honest. I just ask you for me more than anything else, so I'm glad we got that out of the way.
Taylor
00:03:25 – 00:03:30
Alright. So, let's so what was your talk what was the title of your talk at Commit Your Code? Let's talk about that.
Aaron
00:03:31 – 00:03:41
That's a good question. I think it was, publish your work, change your life, something like that. Yes. I think that was at least the the gist of it. And yeah.
Aaron
00:03:41 – 00:03:46
So, you know, this we were both there. I when was this? October, November, December? Yeah. October, December.
Aaron
00:03:46 – 00:03:46
No.
Taylor
00:03:46 – 00:03:47
December. It was December.
Aaron
00:03:48 – 00:04:05
Yeah. Something like that. Here here in Dallas. And, yeah, I gave this talk, which the thrust of it was, like, put yourself out there and good things will happen. And kind of the the structure was a narrative of, like, my past many years.
Aaron
00:04:05 – 00:04:33
You know, Steve and I started this company less than a year ago, but the inciting incident was we both got laid off. And so it was kinda one of those things where it's like, how did I, how did I set myself up for success, and what are the things that, like, I think other people can do to increase their, positive optionality. Right? And you have to be real careful how you say, like, what promises you make. Right?
Aaron
00:04:33 – 00:04:48
Because I can say, if you write a blog post, you'll get a job. But I don't know that that's true. Right? That feels unfair to say, like, because it happened to me once, I can't make a rule out of it because that's just like survivorship bias. Right?
Taylor
00:04:48 – 00:04:48
Yeah.
Aaron
00:04:48 – 00:05:16
And so the whole point of, like, the thesis of the talk is if you do things publicly, which is very vague, good things will happen to you, which is very vague. But I feel confident enough in that, correlation that I can say there is causation there. And so that was the whole that was the whole pitch. And I'll let you, you know, dive in on any of that. But the whole pitch is, like, do things and then other things will happen.
Aaron
00:05:16 – 00:05:18
And I Isn't that crazy? Gave a bunch of stories.
Taylor
00:05:18 – 00:05:19
How it works?
Aaron
00:05:19 – 00:05:22
Yes. And it works every single time.
Taylor
00:05:23 – 00:05:26
I love it. Publish your work. Change your life. Just found the photo. There you go.
Taylor
00:05:26 – 00:05:36
That was Thank you. Thanks, Roxy. Appreciate it. You know, there's so many places to start in this talk, and I know I talk about a lot about just putting yourself out there. But I wanna hear from I wanna hear from Aaron.
Taylor
00:05:36 – 00:05:57
I think your story is so unique. Right? Accountant, developer went into this kind of your own endeavor, which is not easy, even over really the last year, which has not been easy. I I I wanna hear from you. Like, can you give kind of some some kind of pillars or some, I guess, some some, what what do I wanna say?
Taylor
00:05:57 – 00:06:10
So I I was told earlier in my career that as you go through your career, you kinda reach these, plateaus, but in, like, not in a bad way, but more of, like, you kinda reach a new mountain top. Right? You're like, oh, wow. This is really, really good. Right?
Taylor
00:06:10 – 00:06:20
And then, like, you keep climbing. It's like, oh, no. This one's really, really good. And you had some of those in your talk, I remember too. So can you just kind of give five to seven minutes of just like, hey.
Taylor
00:06:20 – 00:06:30
Listen. Here's where I started. Here are some key mountain tops that have occurred because of x y z because I really want the people to hear it from you on what really putting yourself out there has done.
Aaron
00:06:30 – 00:06:37
Sure. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. So prior to prior to, god.
Aaron
00:06:37 – 00:06:41
When did when did COVID start? Was that 2020 or 2021?
Taylor
00:06:41 – 00:06:44
Been 2020. Good lord.
Aaron
00:06:44 – 00:06:56
We've entered a time warp since then, and everything is fuzzy. Okay. So 2020. 2020, let's set the scene. I'm working at a local property tax company here in Dallas.
Aaron
00:06:57 – 00:07:05
I know. All over the place. And at this point, I've gone from being the only programmer to being the COO of the company. So I'm running this company.
Taylor
00:07:05 – 00:07:06
Right? Nice.
Aaron
00:07:06 – 00:07:25
Yeah. And I'm sitting there, and I'm like, you know, I don't really wanna be in property tax. As sexy as it sounds to the outsider, property tax, in fact, not that sexy. And so I'm thinking I'm thinking, this this is not what I wanna do. Right.
Aaron
00:07:25 – 00:07:44
I want to I wanna enter into tech world more. Right? And so at that point, I, like, leave the property tax firm. I go work for a tech company, and I'm starting to, like, enter into the scene. And I'm realizing, like, man, I'm I'm seeing a lot of these people.
Aaron
00:07:44 – 00:07:57
I'm seeing a lot of people that I know, like, and trust and respect online, and they're always, like, out there doing something. Right? And they're getting all these opportunities. They're going to, like they're meeting friends at conferences. They're speaking at conferences.
Aaron
00:07:57 – 00:08:26
They're getting new jobs. They're doing all of this stuff that I'm like, boy, I wish I could do some of that stuff. And the, like, the, the realization I had at that point was I could either, like, I could either watch these other people do this stuff and, like, be frustrated that it's not happening for me, be mad, be bitter, or I could, like, introspect and see, well, are they doing something differently? And the answer came back very quickly. Yes.
Aaron
00:08:26 – 00:08:51
They're doing something differently. Whenever they do a thing, they then talk about it. Whenever you, Aaron, do a thing, you don't talk about it because you're afraid that people are gonna say, Aaron, that is very stupid. And so, like, that was the that was the realization that came to me was like Yeah. Oh, if you want if you want some of these, opportunities to flow your direction, you've gotta be in the stream where these opportunities are happening.
Aaron
00:08:51 – 00:09:23
Right? You can't just sit at home and, like, be bitter that other people are getting neat things and you're not when other people are willing to take the risk to be impressed, like, to put themselves out there and to, like, open themselves up to risk. And so at that point, like, at that point, you know, I'm I think I'm either leaving or have already left this property tax firm. I'm trying to figure out what to do with my life, and I start I realize, like, the answer is just start sharing everything that you're working on. Like, just start putting yourself out there.
Taylor
00:09:23 – 00:09:24
It's so simple.
Aaron
00:09:24 – 00:09:47
And it and, like, lower the bar. I think this is a a place where a lot of people get caught up is, like, lowering the bar of what's shareable, not in terms of quality, but in terms of, like, insight, I suppose. So I think a lot of people think I have to have a, a novel to the universe insight before I'm able
Taylor
00:09:47 – 00:09:50
to Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron
00:09:50 – 00:10:16
In reality, or at least in my opinion, what you have to have is a novel to you insight. If you learn something, if you're working on something, you discover something that is new to you, neat to you, clever, weird, whatever, you can just put it out there. Like, you don't have to, you don't have to play defense to the imaginary critics in your mind who are gonna I already knew that. Like Right. This right.
Aaron
00:10:16 – 00:10:43
This this post is not for you, my friend. That's fine. And I think the place people get caught up is, when they are, when they when they go to share something, they try to posture themselves as the expert. Right? So the way that that looks is you'll go to share something and be like, this is the way that you should be doing this always.
Aaron
00:10:43 – 00:10:50
And then what that opens yourself up to is people saying, no. No. You shouldn't be doing this always. And that's a trap. Right?
Aaron
00:10:50 – 00:11:10
So then you put yourself out there as an expert on something that you might be a novice on, and you make these bold claims, and then they're easily refutable. And then oh, shoot. I'm not gonna do that again. I think the the, the true and better way to do that is to say, I just did this. Who's gonna argue with that?
Aaron
00:11:10 – 00:11:22
Right? Who can say you didn't do that? Or who can say, like, that doesn't meet your needs because you don't know what my needs are? So you can put it out there and say, like, I did this. It worked for me because of this.
Aaron
00:11:22 – 00:11:30
You can even say, I don't know if this is the best way, but this is a way that is working for my situation, my use case, my company, my library, my whatever.
Taylor
00:11:30 – 00:11:31
Right.
Aaron
00:11:31 – 00:11:54
And then then when people come in and, like, have counterpoints or something, then you're just yucking it up with your friends. You're not defending this hard position that you maybe shouldn't have taken in the first place. You're just saying, like, oh, hey. That criticism that you lobbed at me, that's actually good, but it doesn't apply to this use case. It doesn't apply to this, constraint that we have inside of our company.
Aaron
00:11:54 – 00:12:13
And then you get to have a conversation, then you're making friends, you're making connections, you're get you're getting to show, like, the the depth of the thought that you went through for your specific use case. And in fact, you may be super wrong, and that's an easy position to walk back from when you say, like, hey. I did this, and somebody says you should consider this. And you're like, hey. That's fine.
Aaron
00:12:13 – 00:12:15
I didn't hold myself out to be an expert.
Taylor
00:12:15 – 00:12:16
Yeah.
Aaron
00:12:16 – 00:12:25
And so now I don't have this, like, social emotional thing about saying, oh, I was wrong. You can say, no. Great. That that's a that's a great change. I will make that change.
Aaron
00:12:26 – 00:12:56
And so it lowers that pressure on everything that you're not holding yourself out to be, the final answer on every question. You're just saying, here's my lived experience, and that will go also, that has the benefit of being way more approachable in terms of, like, making friends, making connections kind of thing. Yeah. If somebody if somebody's always like, I'm the expert. Here's how you're supposed to do it, and everyone else is wrong, then you're pedestaled, and you're either gonna get taken down or people won't approach you.
Aaron
00:12:56 – 00:12:58
So it's like, just be a normal person, for goodness sake.
Taylor
00:12:58 – 00:13:00
So Yeah. Just be a normal person.
Aaron
00:13:01 – 00:13:11
That was kind of the realization I came to was like, oh, man, you're holding yourself back here. And the reason you're holding yourself back is because you're afraid that people on the Internet are gonna laugh at you. It's like Yeah. Alright. Reasonable fear.
Aaron
00:13:11 – 00:13:37
Like, truly, it's it's it's tough to be laughed at, and it's tough to be embarrassed. I think the the the bigger fear is, like, holding yourself back for your entire career and then regretting it at the end. Yes. Like, what's more devastating what's more devastating than looking back on a life full of regret? Don't know, but I'm not gonna find out.
Aaron
00:13:37 – 00:14:01
So, like, I I made that like, that realization came to me that, I could be laughed at by strangers, and I could embarrass myself. But at least I'm not gonna be 65 and say, boy, Aaron, you could've been a lot more. Like, I'm not I'm not doing I'm not playing that game. And so that was kinda when when things when things slipped for me, and I'll I'll I'll pause there for any, interjections. No.
Taylor
00:14:01 – 00:14:10
I love that. I wanna I wanna get to I wanna get to Jordan's comics. I am curious. I feel like people I have thoughts, but I wanna hear your thoughts. Getting to the habit of sharing is a hard part for me.
Taylor
00:14:10 – 00:14:16
My brain just wants to keep going on to the next thing rather than stopping to share. How have you how have you overcome this?
Aaron
00:14:17 – 00:14:18
Okay. Are you ready?
Taylor
00:14:18 – 00:14:19
Yep. Ready.
Aaron
00:14:19 – 00:14:24
We're ready for a little for a little prop comedy here. Boom. This is it. Right here. Yellow legal pad.
Aaron
00:14:24 – 00:14:37
So whenever whenever I'm working, I have this yellow legal pad and, of course, only a zebra pen. I have that next to me. And whenever I'm doing something, like, I'm in I'm in the game. Right? I'm developing something.
Aaron
00:14:38 – 00:14:58
And I think there's just, like, a flash of, oh, that was clever. Oh, let me write it down on the clever list. And then at some point, like, when I'm when I'm done working or whatever, I'll look at the clever list and be like, oh, yeah. Let me, like, let me take a screenshot of that little bit of code and go fire off a tweet. Or if it's better, it's like, oh, that's a good that's a good video.
Aaron
00:14:58 – 00:15:15
Let me think for, you know, fifteen minutes about how to turn that into a video, and then we can hit record. So I think getting in the habit, there's like a there's like a derogatory way to say this, but it's like content brain. Like, if you can get content brain, which sounds bad, but in fact, it's like it's very great.
Taylor
00:15:15 – 00:15:17
You can be It's great.
Aaron
00:15:17 – 00:15:41
If you can be working and train your brain to think, like, to notice these things that are good pieces of content, you can write it down. You can tweet it in the moment, whatever. But my my promise to you is that if you develop content brain, it will not go away. You won't have trouble coming up with stuff to share. You won't want to sit down on a Monday morning and schedule tweets for the entire week.
Aaron
00:15:41 – 00:15:44
That would feel like that would feel so lame to try
Taylor
00:15:44 – 00:15:44
to once or twice.
Aaron
00:15:44 – 00:15:57
It's It's awful. It's so it's so dead. Like, it's so devoid of, humanity. But if you can develop content brain, you'll never be at a loss for things to share ever again. Right.
Aaron
00:15:57 – 00:16:10
Now some of them will be hard. Some of them, you'll have to sit down and write a 2,000 word article to, like, do the thing justice, and that's still a lot of work. But the, like, actual generation of ideas becomes way easier when you develop Content Brain.
Taylor
00:16:10 – 00:16:17
A %. I'm gonna share I'm gonna share my screen real quick. I I I don't have a yellow legal pad. I have I use things.
Aaron
00:16:17 – 00:16:18
There you go.
Taylor
00:16:19 – 00:16:32
And I have a content idea. At any time, I just pop it up. I literally have it on, like, a widget on my phone, and I'm driving, press it open, boom, like this. And this I mean, this is probably a month worth of content right here
Aaron
00:16:32 – 00:16:32
in and
Taylor
00:16:32 – 00:16:43
of itself. Yep. So love that. Alright. I I I wanna I I wanna give the audience and, again, the the comments have been y'all are insane.
Taylor
00:16:43 – 00:16:55
So thank you so much. I see them all. I can't even keep up. I want Aaron, I want you I you talked about some specific key things. It was one of your slides about how, like, you you got an MC spot
Aaron
00:16:56 – 00:16:56
Mhmm.
Taylor
00:16:56 – 00:17:02
At GitHub, and it's that picture. It was it was GitHub. Right? Or layer layer or something? It was yeah.
Taylor
00:17:02 – 00:17:04
And, like, there was no one there. Right?
Aaron
00:17:04 – 00:17:05
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Taylor
00:17:05 – 00:17:19
Which, I mean, I'm telling you that your talk, like, really stood stood out to me. Can you just talk about some things where you thought you were at the mountaintop, but you weren't quite there? Sure. Mountain tops that were actually mountaintops. Give me some give the audience
Aaron
00:17:19 – 00:17:28
some specifics. Yeah. There's there's some good ones. And like you mentioned, there are some really painful ones. I mean, in in the beginning, I thought and continue to think still that, like, this is it.
Aaron
00:17:28 – 00:17:37
Like, I've made it. Like, there's there's nothing there's nothing higher. I've been wrong every time. But in the moment, I've really thought, like, wow. What a great run.
Aaron
00:17:37 – 00:18:00
And so, like, initially so the the kinda, like, stair step level up story of how I got from there to here is I started working on, an open source library, which, again, is something that's available to every single person. Like, you could just go do that, which is one of the nice things. Like, nobody nobody knighted me. Nobody said, alright. We pick you.
Aaron
00:18:00 – 00:18:13
I picked myself. I was like, I'm gonna do this. And so I started working on an open source library. I had realized, like, I had talked about that, boy, you gotta if you gotta put yourself out there if anybody's ever gonna notice you. So I'm working on this library.
Aaron
00:18:13 – 00:18:22
I'm talking about it a whole bunch, and somebody from the Laravel community reaches out and was like, hey. I run an online meetup. Do you wanna talk about this thing you're building? And I was like, it's happening.
Taylor
00:18:23 – 00:18:24
I'm sure you're pumped.
Aaron
00:18:24 – 00:18:32
It's happening. And so I was freaking out. I was like, this is this is it. It wasn't a conference. It was a online meetup.
Aaron
00:18:32 – 00:18:40
Like, I mean I know. But I'm like, I, you know, I run inside. I tell my wife she doesn't understand, but she's happy. And I'm like, this is
Taylor
00:18:40 – 00:18:42
I respect my wife too. I was like, okay. Great.
Aaron
00:18:42 – 00:19:06
Yeah. I'm happy for you, bud. So I do this conference talk or this meetup talk, and then, this is like this is the I think this is one of the hidden advantages of doing stuff like this is now you start to have this little portfolio. Right? So you have a video of you on speaking somewhere, and, presumably, somebody somebody picked you.
Aaron
00:19:06 – 00:19:20
Right? So now you have this external validation of, like, look. I was good enough for the organizers of this meetup. Here's the video. Here's my here's my, proof that, like, it's undeniable that I did this thing.
Aaron
00:19:20 – 00:19:34
I don't have to tell you. I don't have to convince you that I can do it. I can just tell you that I did do it. And so I took that video, submitted it to a online conference, Laracon online, and they accepted me. That was my first ever conference talk.
Aaron
00:19:34 – 00:19:43
So I gave a conference talk on the same topic at that conference. And then we kinda walk forward. We do a few more conferences, and it's just, like, building up over time
Taylor
00:19:44 – 00:19:44
Right.
Aaron
00:19:44 – 00:20:06
With just, like, proof of work all the way up. Right? So you leverage one thing into the next, and you're just proving your work all the way through. Yep. So we get to a point where we get to a point where, and this is another, I think, another pattern that people should adopt more is you can start asking for stuff.
Aaron
00:20:06 – 00:20:19
You can always just ask for stuff. And that's what people people could say no. That's fine. That was the default state anyway. However, people could say yes, and that is not where you were before.
Aaron
00:20:19 – 00:20:40
Now you have something you didn't have before merely by asking. And so I I noticed that, like, GitHub did these, like, developer profiles. And I thought, I wonder what it takes to be, you know, get on one of these developer profiles. I saw that I had a friend who had done one. Somebody that I'd known online had been featured, and so I reached out to him, and I was like, hey.
Aaron
00:20:40 – 00:20:55
Here's my idea. I've got this great story about, you know, overcoming fears and open source and put me in touch with GitHub. And he was like, sure. Don't know if it'll work, but here's the person I know. So, you know, long story long, I did this, like, profile for GitHub.
Aaron
00:20:55 – 00:21:09
Yeah. Write this article. Wrote an article called publishing your work increases your luck. I think it was their GitHub Read Meade's number one article that year. Like, just blew everybody else out of the water, and they invited me to come to GitHub Universe.
Aaron
00:21:09 – 00:21:09
And I'm like,
Taylor
00:21:09 – 00:21:13
this real quick. I I know where this is going. So so that article blew up.
Aaron
00:21:13 – 00:21:28
Blew up. Yes. Blew up. Like, I'm getting the person that I'm talking to, their boss, and their boss all personally thanking me for writing this article and telling telling me how it made their, like, queue whatever numbers, like, skewed. Yeah.
Aaron
00:21:28 – 00:21:33
On the GitHub, read me. And I'm like, oh, maybe maybe I'm on to something here. Yeah.
Taylor
00:21:33 – 00:21:33
So it
Aaron
00:21:33 – 00:21:34
was crazy.
Taylor
00:21:34 – 00:21:35
Keep going. Keep going. I noticed.
Aaron
00:21:35 – 00:21:53
So they they invite me to come out to GitHub universe as a, you know, as a part of this, like, imprint of GitHub. You know, it's GitHub read me. And so it's like the customer marketing developer facing kinda thing. Right? And so now I'm like, oh, this is this is a big boy conference.
Aaron
00:21:53 – 00:22:01
Like, I'm I'm here in Dallas, Texas with all the oil men, but, like, I'm going to California. I'm going where I'm going to where the tech happens.
Taylor
00:22:01 – 00:22:01
Yeah.
Aaron
00:22:01 – 00:22:12
And so I'm freaking out. I'm telling I'm telling everybody I got a big deal coming. I'm telling, you know, I'm telling friends. I'm telling family. I'm telling my wife's parents.
Aaron
00:22:12 – 00:22:26
Like, it's like, this is this is big, and I want you guys to know about it. And so I show up at GitHub Universe first time, just completely overwhelmed. It's just massive, like, massive. I I think it's a Yerba Buena, maybe. I don't I don't really know, but it's huge.
Aaron
00:22:26 – 00:22:42
And I'm there for sound check the day before, and I'm looking at the program. And it turns out, like, my talk is not listed on the physical program. Then I'm like, oh, not great. Not a great start. There are many stages.
Aaron
00:22:42 – 00:22:51
I'm in the garden stage, which sounds like which sounds very carefree and easygoing. It's definitely like the science stage.
Taylor
00:22:51 – 00:22:52
Just janitor's closet. What do I
Aaron
00:22:52 – 00:23:00
Yeah. It it's not it's not great. So I'm not on I'm not on the program. I'm on the garden stage. So I go out to do my sound check.
Aaron
00:23:00 – 00:23:13
Everything goes fine. And I I that night, I'm worried. Like, nobody's gonna show up because it's, like, kinda like a soft talk at a developer conference, and it's not listed. And I'm like, it's okay. It's still gonna be live streamed.
Aaron
00:23:13 – 00:23:19
It's still gonna be live streamed. Nobody on the stream will know. I can tweet it. I can send it to my friends and family. It'll be fine.
Aaron
00:23:19 – 00:23:32
And I get there, and my talk is not live streamed. And I'm like, boy, this is going from worse to worse. And so they tell me, you know, they tell me an hour before, hey. Yours isn't live streamed. It will be recorded.
Aaron
00:23:32 – 00:23:43
More on that later. And so I go up there on I I'm, like, standing on the side of the stage. It's like the garden stage. So there's no backstage. You're just kinda, like, standing up there like an idiot waiting for your turn.
Aaron
00:23:43 – 00:23:59
And so I'm looking out, and and, Taylor, there's there's nobody out there. There's nobody. There are zero people. There were three people. It was the woman that, was, like, in charge of GitHub ReadMe and two of her employees.
Aaron
00:23:59 – 00:24:16
So it was the three people that basically convinced GitHub to bring me there. It was just them and some staff and some people that had, like, grabbed the chairs for lunch because I'm in the garden area. And so they're like, I can use these chairs. Nobody else is using them. And so, like, the audience is completely empty.
Aaron
00:24:16 – 00:24:25
And the guy the guy on the stage is like, please welcome to the stage Aaron Francis. And there's no he's not talking to anybody. And I'm like
Taylor
00:24:25 – 00:24:26
It's like it's like
Aaron
00:24:26 – 00:24:40
Thanks, man. Like, it's you and me, brother. And I tell you in that moment that, like, I I I'm of two minds. One mind is I wish that the earth would swallow me whole and that I would cease to exist. Yeah.
Aaron
00:24:40 – 00:25:00
Because I'm about to go on stage, and this is the other part of my mind, do my job. And you know what my job is? To do a good job. And so, like, I can't I can't sacrifice, what I believe is my is my duty, which is to go out there and give it my all. But I don't wanna do it because it's embarrassing.
Aaron
00:25:00 – 00:25:24
And that was, like, the most, like, the mo imagine being an author and doing a book signing and nobody shows up except your mom. And, like, you feel so mortified. So I go up there, and I give I give a twenty five minute talk, like, this more or less the same talk I gave at, Commit Your Code. So I'm, like, baring my soul, and nobody's there. You people.
Aaron
00:25:24 – 00:25:42
Not even live streamed. Not even live streamed. Not even live streamed. And so I'm up there, I'm up there doing my duty, which I do think is important and is very important to me is to do your duty. And I did my duty well, and my job is not to get people to show up and sit in the chairs.
Aaron
00:25:42 – 00:25:57
My job is to give the freaking talk, and I gave the talk with everything I had. It was the best I could do. Yeah. And then afterwards, I, you know, I learned that they messed up the recording, and so there's no recording. And so it was just like hit after hit after hit.
Taylor
00:25:57 – 00:26:06
And this is after you had something go mega viral for them. Uh-huh. Half of the world. Holy cow.
Aaron
00:26:08 – 00:26:20
To, like, mortified, beyond embarrassed. Like, yes. Yep. Yes. And so and so I think that, like, the lessons there are many.
Aaron
00:26:20 – 00:26:23
One is this will happen. Like, I think there's a,
Taylor
00:26:24 – 00:26:25
I thought it happened.
Aaron
00:26:25 – 00:26:52
There there's like a on on both sides of, this relationship, there's like the, the person, me in this case, is incentivized to tell a Rosie story and gloss over these things. Right? So on on the, on the speaker side, it's like, look at my my line of successes. Look at how I just I just danced from win to win to win. I feel like a lot of very successful people do that.
Aaron
00:26:52 – 00:27:19
On the other side, on the audience side, there is the, like, the desire to ascribe that to people that they see because as as an audience member, as somebody that's like, I I I wanna make it. You look at people who have made it, and you're like, well, they had it easy. It was success to success to success. I can't do that, and so I'm gonna quit. And I think both of those are wrong, and both of those are, like, a lie because I thought that, like, this was the this was the big break.
Aaron
00:27:19 – 00:27:46
And I went up there, and I was super embarrassed and mortified, and it was awful. And I think if more people, like, if more people realized that that can happen and that you're almost guaranteed that that will happen, it makes you a lot more resilient when it does happen because you're like, yeah. Aaron told me this was gonna happen. Yeah. He he said that, like, you you you're gonna feel like you're on top of the world, and you're gonna be laid low and humbled, and it's gonna suck.
Aaron
00:27:46 – 00:28:00
Well, here I am. He was right. I guess I'll just keep going. So that's, like, that's that's one of the lessons that, I have taken away from that is this will continue to happen. And the other lesson is that's not my job.
Aaron
00:28:00 – 00:28:05
My job my job is to show up and to do the work. That's it.
Taylor
00:28:05 – 00:28:05
Yep.
Aaron
00:28:05 – 00:28:14
And, like, did good things come out of GitHub universe? Yes. Do I wish it would have gone differently? A %. Yeah.
Aaron
00:28:14 – 00:28:27
But now, like, now I've learned this great lesson. I'm able to share it with these people. But also, like, I gave the best talk that I could, and it was a dry run for that same talk that I gave again later. And it was better the second time I gave it. Yeah.
Aaron
00:28:27 – 00:28:56
And and you know what? Performing a noble duty under dire circumstances is always the right thing to do. And the fact that, like, the GitHub universe or the GitHub read me people sat there and witnessed me perform this noble duty under this, like, mortifyingly embarrassing circumstance was a good thing. Like, now these people inside of GitHub, she's since moved on to be VP somewhere else, but she feels, like, indebted to me for, like, bringing me out there. And then the it was it wasn't actually her fault.
Aaron
00:28:56 – 00:29:17
It was the larger GitHub's fault. She feels like Aaron really did his job even though I put him in a tough spot, and that's that's a good thing. And so I think there's, like, there are many lessons that you can take away. One is, like, know what your job is and do your job to the best of your ability regardless of the circumstances. And the other is, like, hey.
Aaron
00:29:17 – 00:29:25
This is tough. This is a tough game, and you're gonna be laid low, and you're gonna wanna cry. And you should cry, and then you should get up and keep going.
Taylor
00:29:25 – 00:29:29
Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Man, it's so good. We have a comment here on TikTok.
Taylor
00:29:30 – 00:29:45
So, for for the the individual who's asking, I'm talking to Aaron Francis right now over on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. You should come hang out. TikTok doesn't allow easy streaming. So, yeah, I mean, again, Jason, you know, could you imagine Michael Jordan giving up after he got cut from high school basketball? Yeah.
Taylor
00:29:45 – 00:30:04
I mean, listen. I think it's and and I will tell you this. I mean, kind of a prime example too, and I wanna encourage people, like, to never never take the small things lightly. In kind of Aaron's thing where he got invited to do a virtual conference, I got invited. I'll never forget my very, very and it's crazy now even saying this again.
Taylor
00:30:04 – 00:30:17
My very first, like, virtual thing as a recruiter being asked to speak as a traditional recruiter was a, code school in Toronto called MintBean or Beam. Beam? Beam? Anyways, like, I I was so pumped. I was like, holy cow.
Taylor
00:30:17 – 00:30:25
I'm gonna speak to a boot camp. Like, this this this is insane. I'm a recruiter. Why am I even being asked? I talked with my current boss at Torque when I was in Boston in January.
Taylor
00:30:25 – 00:30:44
I said, how did how did I come across your radar? Because he said he's been following me for years. He goes, oh, well, so and so said that he got you to speak at Mint Meeb years ago, and he loved your talk. Yep. And if I would have been, oh, I'm too good to speak at a boot camp Mhmm.
Aaron
00:30:44 – 00:30:45
Yep.
Taylor
00:30:45 – 00:30:49
School, I would have never been on my boss's radar, and I never would have been here.
Aaron
00:30:49 – 00:31:07
Yep. It's crazy. Yep. I think it is the I think it is the morally correct and ethically right thing to do to give everything your all is also the strategically optimal thing to do, to give it your all. So, like, you show you show up to a you show up to a meetup.
Aaron
00:31:07 – 00:31:17
I have I, you know, post all of this. I've done meetups where there have been 10 people there. Yeah. And you know what? I give it everything I've got because it is the right thing to do.
Aaron
00:31:17 – 00:31:31
Yeah. That is my opinion. You have a duty to do your best work regardless of what the circumstances are. I also think and it's nice when this happens. I think the right thing is the selfish thing, is the strategically optimal thing.
Aaron
00:31:31 – 00:31:48
It is the best thing for your career if you are known as a person who no matter where you show up, you are doing your job to your the best of your ability. That gets around. It does. Like, people talk. And what you want people what you want people to talk about, what is hey.
Aaron
00:31:48 – 00:32:00
You know what? I saw that guy talk to six people, but, boy, it felt like he was talking to a stadium. That guy gave it everything he had. I bet we should put him in a stadium. It's like, you don't know when that's gonna happen.
Aaron
00:32:00 – 00:32:12
You don't know who's there. You don't know who's gonna find the recording. You don't know who's gonna tell who's who's gonna tell who, who's gonna go on to be a VP at Microsoft. You have no idea. And your job, the right thing to do is do your best.
Aaron
00:32:12 – 00:32:15
The best thing to do is do your best. So let's do your best.
Taylor
00:32:16 – 00:32:25
I love it. I love it so much. Alright. We're about at time. Aaron, any final words of encouragement, before I kinda do a little rapid fire question on you?
Aaron
00:32:26 – 00:32:33
I would just say start start today. Yeah. Start with anything. Just build the habit of
Taylor
00:32:33 – 00:32:34
Talk about this talk.
Aaron
00:32:34 – 00:32:35
Yes.
Taylor
00:32:35 – 00:32:35
I guess what I'm saying.
Aaron
00:32:35 – 00:32:46
About this. Yeah. Write write a 500 word article about how this applies to you. Put it on some blog and just don't stop. Just, like, keep going.
Aaron
00:32:46 – 00:32:55
So post a tweet, post a LinkedIn post, post a blue sky, do a blog post, make a short video, do anything, and just keep going.
Taylor
00:32:55 – 00:33:05
Yeah. And, again, I don't wanna call out names here, but I saw in the chat, oh, I'm still getting my outline ready. Oh, I want to do this. I'm still waiting to get the Notion doc ready.
Aaron
00:33:06 – 00:33:06
Mm-mm.
Taylor
00:33:07 – 00:33:18
Post the damn thing. Like, just go. Like, just go. Like, literally, if I had waited so I started vlogging, like, it's four years ago, and it wasn't good.
Aaron
00:33:18 – 00:33:18
Yep.
Taylor
00:33:19 – 00:33:25
Right? And and if I would have just waited, I would have been four years behind. So, again, just start. Just start. Alright.
Taylor
00:33:25 – 00:33:34
Aaron, few quick questions here. We just missed Valentine's Day. Hopefully, you had a good Valentine's Day. Mhmm. What's your go to candy?
Taylor
00:33:34 – 00:33:44
I always gotta ask individuals around this time. What's kinda your go to candy? Easter is kind of upcoming. Maybe we can go there too. But, like, if you if if you gotta have a piece of candy, what would it be?
Aaron
00:33:45 – 00:33:59
Oh, if I gotta have a piece of candy, I'm probably leaning chocolate. I'm avoiding peanuts. I'm going, crunchy or caramel. So I'm landing on I'm landing on, depending on the mood, the vibes of the situation, Milky Way or KitKat.
Taylor
00:34:00 – 00:34:05
There you go. Love it. Love that. We're answering some heavy hitting questions this morning. Next question.
Taylor
00:34:06 – 00:34:18
If I told you tomorrow that when you wake up, you can't do what you're doing now, you have to pursue a hobby, which technically, I guess, in a way, you did pursue a hobby. But nothing in tech, what would you do?
Aaron
00:34:20 – 00:34:40
I would do hobby electronics and or terraforming. So I would probably buy you know, if money is not an option, I would buy 50 to a hundred acres of rundown, you know, blighted land. I'd buy some tractors since I don't wanna be a farmer. I don't wanna do that. That sounds crazy.
Taylor
00:34:40 – 00:34:40
A lot
Aaron
00:34:40 – 00:34:53
of transportation. Yeah. I don't wanna do that. So I'd have a I'd have a workshop where I could do hobby electronics, robots, that sort of stuff. And then I would go out and I would build swales and plant stuff and build you know, do earthworks.
Aaron
00:34:54 – 00:34:57
That's probably what I would do. That's probably what I will do once I, you know, retire is, like I
Taylor
00:34:57 – 00:34:58
love that.
Aaron
00:34:58 – 00:35:01
Get some land, get a shop, do some hobbies.
Taylor
00:35:01 – 00:35:12
I love that. That's fantastic. Always this is a new question I started to ask. Who do you wanna give a shout to in the community? Somebody who's on your radar right now that you like what they're doing, like what they're building, like what they're putting out there?
Aaron
00:35:13 – 00:35:26
You know who's you know who's vibe I really like, and you know who I think is putting in an incredible amount of work is Roxy. So I'll get the full name here. Roxanna Roxanna Rodriguez Becker.
Taylor
00:35:27 – 00:35:30
Second shout out Roxy has gotten over the last two weeks on this show.
Aaron
00:35:30 – 00:35:48
Listen. I don't I don't know who, I don't know who works harder than Roxy with the I have twins. She has twins. Scott she's got another kid. She's got a, you know, full time job trying to do this thing on the side.
Aaron
00:35:48 – 00:35:56
Waking up at the freaking crack of dawn to do handstands. I'm like, boy, I'm tired. I can't imagine I can't imagine what she's doing. So
Taylor
00:35:57 – 00:36:06
Yeah. Shout out, Roxy. Shout out, Roxy. You're killing it. When it comes to any frameworks, technologies that you're kinda tinkering with, I don't know either.
Taylor
00:36:06 – 00:36:10
Try hard. I know you just released something. I don't know if you wanna give a plug there, to the folks.
Aaron
00:36:11 – 00:36:29
Yeah. My go to stack is always going to be Laravel. I find it to be, massively productive, just with the ecosystem that they've built. So I would always use I would always use Laravel. I would always use, I prefer Vue JS as the front end.
Aaron
00:36:29 – 00:36:42
I really like that. And I'm working on, like you mentioned, the library to combine Laravel and some of these JavaScript, frameworks to be a little bit closer. So that's kind of the the stack that I like to hang out in.
Taylor
00:36:42 – 00:36:52
I love that. Alright. Last question. You kind of answered it. The show is called guidance counselor two point o, who has guidance counselors in middle school, high school, and college, but now as adults don't really have anybody to turn to and ask for general career advice.
Taylor
00:36:52 – 00:37:02
If you can go back in time and that and tell Aaron one thing, maybe not, like, put stuff out. Let's do something else because this whole talk was that. Is there another piece of advice that you would give young Aaron?
Aaron
00:37:04 – 00:37:16
Yeah. I would say try more audacious things. Right. Not like, and the more belongs to audacious. So, like, try try bigger ideas.
Aaron
00:37:16 – 00:37:33
Try something that is stupider. Try something that is, like, more insane. Try something that because I think a lot of people, end up in this loop where they're like, oh, I'm I'm gonna, like, just play it safe. I'm gonna do, like, a notion to Obsidian connector. And, like, that's fun.
Aaron
00:37:33 – 00:37:51
Like, that's a fun, like, you know, side project. The the mind share for that is just incredibly small. And so what I would say is, like, what's a big idea that seems, like, really painful? And can you can you absorb that pain? I'm thinking primarily about open source libraries.
Aaron
00:37:51 – 00:38:28
Sure. Can you absorb that pain on behalf of all those other people? Because if you can, then, Brian, I don't know if you've actually done that, but that may that may be very well true. So, like, the first library that I did that got traction was a way for, you to write functions in your Laravel application and deploy them and execute them on AWS Lambda. And it's like, that's a lot of moving parts, and I wish I had thought earlier on in my career what's kinda like a big meaty problem in the space that I could solve that, people are currently experiencing a lot of pain around.
Aaron
00:38:28 – 00:38:31
And so I would just say dream a little bit bigger.
Taylor
00:38:31 – 00:38:39
I love that. I love that. Well, y'all, thank you again for hanging out with us today. Aaron, thank you, my friend, as always. I hope you all have a great rest of your weekend.
Taylor
00:38:39 – 00:38:54
We are off all next week, so I'll be in Amsterdam speaking at Dev World, and, of course, we will be documenting the whole damn thing. So we'll see y'all next week online. Otherwise, go connect with Aaron. Go connect with somebody in the chat. Set up a conversation, and, we'll see you all in two weeks.
Taylor
00:38:54 – 00:38:55
Peace.
Aaron
00:38:55 – 00:38:56
Thanks. See you.
Taylor
00:38:57 – 00:39:05
Hey. You did it. You listened to an entire episode, and I am very grateful. Because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there.
Taylor
00:39:05 – 00:39:25
There's a lot of episodes, and I myself rarely finish an entire episode. So I appreciate you so so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others, and the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it, please, like, right now. Unless you're driving, then don't do it.
Taylor
00:39:25 – 00:39:34
So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me at t d s n on all social media handles, and I hope you have a fantastic day.
Me

Thanks for reading! My name is Aaron and I write, make videos, and generally try really hard.

If you ever have any questions or want to chat, I'm always on Twitter.

You can find me on YouTube on my personal channel or the Try Hard Studios channel.

If you love podcasts, I got you covered. You can listen to me on Mostly Technical.