The To-Done List

November 26, 2024

Ian and Aaron discuss feedback on ads for the podcast, what the heck Ian does every day, updates on the Try Hard empire, & so much more. Sponsored by Mailtrap, LaraJobs, & Screencasting.com. Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more.
Watch on YouTube →

Transcript

Ian
00:00:00 – 00:00:00
Hello.
Aaron
00:00:01 – 00:00:02
Hello. Welcome back.
Ian
00:00:02 – 00:00:03
Back back on the show.
Aaron
00:00:03 – 00:00:05
So we got a lot to cover.
Ian
00:00:05 – 00:00:06
We have a lot to cover.
Aaron
00:00:06 – 00:00:16
We got a lot of good feedback. We got a lot of good feedback. Oh, what is this? It's it's what we ask people to give us feedback on. Should we do ads?
Ian
00:00:16 – 00:00:17
Yes. Let's talk about
Aaron
00:00:17 – 00:00:26
that first. So what's your what's your vibes? Just we'll do vibes only first, and then we can talk specific feedback. Well well, what are your vibes from the people?
Ian
00:00:27 – 00:00:37
So I think we even have different vibes, which is interesting. My vibe is that people were like, I wanna pay for it, like, because I wanna support the show, and I don't wanna listen to ads. That was the primary takeaway I took.
Aaron
00:00:37 – 00:00:44
My primary takeaway was we don't wanna pay. Just keep doing ads. How did we get different takeaways?
Ian
00:00:44 – 00:00:48
It's crazy. They're big corners of the Internet or something.
Aaron
00:00:48 – 00:00:53
I feel like I sent you all the messages or I sent you screenshots of all the messages that I got.
Ian
00:00:53 – 00:01:01
But even the ones you sent were, like but I would pay. There was, like, the asterisk. They're, like but I put the ones you saw were, like, I'd prefer not to pay, but I would pay.
Aaron
00:01:02 – 00:01:02
Yeah.
Ian
00:01:03 – 00:01:11
Before we even get in deeper in that Okay. Okay. So that's kinda, like, where that shook out. But I have another idea that I think you are going to love, and I
Aaron
00:01:11 – 00:01:12
think I love ideas.
Ian
00:01:12 – 00:01:20
Tell me. Because I think it hits both sides. So I just came up with this idea this morning. It hit me in the shower. It's a shower idea.
Aaron
00:01:20 – 00:01:22
It's fresh. Know it's good.
Ian
00:01:22 – 00:01:32
Mhmm. Alright. So here's the thing. I think the podcasts are much better for brand advertising over direct response. Okay.
Ian
00:01:32 – 00:01:39
Which agreed. Right. Okay. But people tend to use them as direct response. Like here's promo code X for $50 off.
Ian
00:01:39 – 00:01:46
Right. But like I'm walking my dog, I'm in the car. Like when I'm listening to podcast is not necessarily when I'm ready to take action like that. Right?
Aaron
00:01:46 – 00:01:46
Correct.
Ian
00:01:47 – 00:02:01
So, you know, the, the ads we've had on this show so far been like, Hey, two spots, four spots, one spot, like 10. Okay. But like, that's not very good for brand advertising, right? Like normally you want to like hear the name over and over
Aaron
00:02:01 – 00:02:01
and over.
Ian
00:02:01 – 00:02:27
That's like the deal. So what if we took an idea from like, I'm thinking like AM radio, but you also see it in like football games and things like that, where they're what they would call spots. And it's like five to fifteen seconds. It's the name and a tagline. And so it's like, this is an interesting, Everything you need to start sending newsletters, help spot everything you need for, you know, your customer service.
Ian
00:02:27 – 00:02:28
Right? And
Aaron
00:02:28 – 00:02:30
too short to fast forward.
Ian
00:02:30 – 00:02:39
Too short to fast forward. We're gonna go through them. Right. We're gonna read them just live. Presume, I think generally it would be the idea, but either way, and it's like, there's eight spots an episode.
Ian
00:02:39 – 00:02:53
It's a thousand bucks a month for, you know what? I'm making up numbers here, but like, and so, yeah. So if you're the small businesses that are kind of in our circles, like, Hey, you could come up with a thousand bucks a month to advertise on the show. Right. And get your brand name out there over and over.
Ian
00:02:53 – 00:03:05
And I hear mail coach over and over and over for a whole year. So when I'm ready to send a newsletter, I'm like, oh, mail coach is what I send newsletters with. Right. Not just like if I happen to listen the one day Right.
Aaron
00:03:05 – 00:03:05
Where it
Ian
00:03:05 – 00:03:14
happened to be advertising. Right? It's like, no. I've been hearing about mail coach for a whole year. And so to get to the brand, it gets affordable price point.
Ian
00:03:14 – 00:03:20
It would not charging the listeners, but it's also not that abusive to the listeners. So that's that's was what I was thinking.
Aaron
00:03:21 – 00:03:23
Can we still do an auction? Can we still do it publicly?
Ian
00:03:24 – 00:03:25
It could be auction.
Aaron
00:03:25 – 00:03:27
If so, I'm in. I'm in. I love it.
Ian
00:03:27 – 00:03:32
It's almost like, yeah, I mean, the auction's kind of you know, I think it even works better kind of for the auction because I don't
Aaron
00:03:32 – 00:03:36
think the auction Maybe auction is incorrect. Just public Mhmm. Publicly available purchasing.
Ian
00:03:36 – 00:03:47
Yes. Well, that's the thing. I think it fits with that nicely too because the problem with the bigger ads is, like, they're just not that simple. Like, people are, like, they have different needs. They're asking me questions.
Ian
00:03:47 – 00:03:56
They want feedback. They want The Us to prerecord it and send it to them for confirm. There's just a lot of stuff. Right? Like and so whereas it's like, hey.
Ian
00:03:56 – 00:04:03
This a thousand bucks a month. You're getting four ad reads a month generally with, like, some asterisk. We might miss a show. You don't get a refund, whatever, blah blah blah blah.
Aaron
00:04:03 – 00:04:03
But, like,
Ian
00:04:05 – 00:04:19
it's a, it's a lower threshold, right? It's like, this is a simple thing. It's gonna be awesome for your brand. We're gonna talk about your brand, but it's not big and heavy. Like a big ad campaign is or all that stuff.
Ian
00:04:19 – 00:04:26
So so, yeah, I think it works better with that. We could have, like, here's eight slots. Here's how many are available or whatever the number of slots is. Mhmm.
Aaron
00:04:27 – 00:04:27
You
Ian
00:04:27 – 00:04:38
know, maybe there's, like, mid roll and front, you know, or whatever. Maybe those are I don't know. Maybe those are different prices, potentially, I could imagine. So, yeah, there's some stuff like that.
Aaron
00:04:39 – 00:04:39
I love it.
Ian
00:04:39 – 00:04:41
I think. This is great. You would like it.
Aaron
00:04:41 – 00:04:41
This is great.
Ian
00:04:42 – 00:04:43
No. No. You would like it.
Aaron
00:04:43 – 00:04:47
Completely on board. I love this so much. This is perfect. It's everything I've ever wanted.
Ian
00:04:48 – 00:04:58
And it's like less work for us, presumably. It's like, hey. If we get some sponsors, we're like, yeah, we're gonna just do this every month, you know, for six months or whatever. Great. Like, we know who they are.
Ian
00:04:58 – 00:05:12
We read them in the show. It's not new contracts and new whatever. I mean, we don't generally do contracts, but they want contracts. Like we have signed contracts because other people want contracts. So even in that case, it's like, fine, it's not a contract and I'm doing this for six months.
Ian
00:05:12 – 00:05:17
Great. That's, like, not a hassle. It's, like, kind of annoying when it's for one ad. Right. It's like, okay.
Ian
00:05:19 – 00:05:21
So yeah. Alright. You love it.
Aaron
00:05:21 – 00:05:24
I love it. I love it. I think it's great. I think it's great.
Ian
00:05:24 – 00:05:25
That's why
Aaron
00:05:25 – 00:05:43
we don't have to charge the people. We still get to charge the companies. We don't have to do a lot of a lot of back and forth over the ad reads. I think Justin Jackson sent us a screenshot of somebody that was like, this company rejected my ad read because it was twenty nine seconds and not thirty and made me redo the whole thing. And I'm like, this is I'm not doing any of that.
Aaron
00:05:43 – 00:05:43
To
Ian
00:05:43 – 00:05:44
all that stuff.
Aaron
00:05:44 – 00:05:46
And then it's like, it's like
Ian
00:05:46 – 00:06:00
an audience. You know? Like, the people in our audience with businesses could benefit from this. Whereas, like, we're charging more for bigger spots. It's like, well, I'm not gonna pay the $2,000 for one one minute spot or you know, it's like, that's not really a
Aaron
00:06:00 – 00:06:03
bigger company. Beneficial for the listeners because they get
Ian
00:06:03 – 00:06:03
Yes.
Aaron
00:06:03 – 00:06:16
They get, exposed very quickly to several interesting, hopefully, dev tools developer related things Yep. Versus listening to a minute of one thing that they may not need at the moment.
Ian
00:06:16 – 00:06:41
Yep. I think definitely listener wise. I mean, we'll see what people say. And if we do it, we'll see what they say. But I feel like I would definitely prefer the, like, here's, you know, forty five seconds to a minute of, like, three or four brands that are, you know, potentially very interesting to you, and then we're back to the show versus, like, yeah, the minute long on every detail about some services, you know, whatever uptime and soft two compliance or whatever.
Ian
00:06:41 – 00:06:45
Mhmm. That all that whole thing. So alright.
Aaron
00:06:45 – 00:06:50
This is it. So what's next? We set up we throw up a page. Let's throw up a page with some Stripe buy now buttons on it.
Ian
00:06:50 – 00:06:56
Alright. Well, that that sounds like now that sounds like an Aaron thing. I'm not gonna lie. That sounds like an Aaron livestream.
Aaron
00:06:56 – 00:06:57
No. No. No. No. No.
Aaron
00:06:57 – 00:06:58
No. No. No. No. No.
Aaron
00:06:58 – 00:06:58
No. No
Ian
00:06:59 – 00:07:01
the podcast. No.
Aaron
00:07:01 – 00:07:15
Aaron's got Aaron's got too much to do. Ian, on the other hand, doesn't do anything. Ian doesn't do anything over over on the bad place. Brian Castles, he's he's dragging you because what does Ian even do? Nothing.
Aaron
00:07:15 – 00:07:16
So here's here's
Ian
00:07:16 – 00:07:21
bad place. Bad place. You mean blue sky, which I do. Illogical. Yeah.
Ian
00:07:21 – 00:07:22
Okay. Yeah.
Aaron
00:07:23 – 00:07:23
Mhmm. So
Ian
00:07:23 – 00:07:26
I get you over there. When do you need to do it? I know. That's not. I know.
Aaron
00:07:26 – 00:07:36
Listen. I've I've been very clear that after Thanksgiving, if it's still alive Okay. I will come over. I've said this. I've said this many times.
Aaron
00:07:36 – 00:07:41
And even Ian in this very moment was surprised when I said it again. So I guess I haven't said it enough.
Ian
00:07:42 – 00:07:42
Surprised.
Aaron
00:07:43 – 00:08:00
After Thanksgiving, if it's if it's still a thing, which it all signs are pointing to, it will still be a thing. It seems to be going strong against my against my, estimation and wishes. It seems to be going strong. Yeah. So I keep saying this, and everybody's like, oh, Aaron, you gotta come to Blue Sky.
Aaron
00:08:00 – 00:08:08
I'm like, guys, I already told you. I already told you. Post Thanksgiving. I will come over. So the time is rapidly approaching.
Ian
00:08:09 – 00:08:12
Maybe we don't even want you to come over. We have the fake Aaron account that has you like
Aaron
00:08:13 – 00:08:14
That that is fine.
Ian
00:08:14 – 00:08:17
It's like a little sort of Jesus take on it. Yes. I do
Aaron
00:08:17 – 00:08:17
a little
Ian
00:08:17 – 00:08:18
I don't know
Aaron
00:08:18 – 00:08:23
where I'm not wanted. So if you don't want me there, that's great. I don't that sounds awesome to me, frankly.
Ian
00:08:23 – 00:08:27
You should hire that guy. Maybe we should pay that guy to be fake Aaron just full time.
Aaron
00:08:27 – 00:08:36
Well, he already outed himself. He'd one of the screenshots had his had his profile picture in it, and it's like, man, you'd be a terrible spy. You're very bad at this.
Ian
00:08:36 – 00:08:37
You gotta update the game. You gotta have
Aaron
00:08:37 – 00:08:39
a separate browser.
Ian
00:08:39 – 00:08:41
You gotta just be like, that's dedicated.
Aaron
00:08:41 – 00:08:45
I know. Cross cross. But So eventually. Yeah. Eventually.
Aaron
00:08:46 – 00:08:46
Alright.
Ian
00:08:46 – 00:08:48
Alright. So Bad Place. Yes.
Aaron
00:08:48 – 00:09:07
Back to the point at hand. Yeah. So overall, the conversation happens, and it's so much more fun, and everybody engages, whatever. You know? Over on the other side, there was some commentary about, Ian always has these things, these ideas, and they never never come to fruition.
Aaron
00:09:07 – 00:09:21
And I'm always hearing about Aaron stuff moving. But what does Ian even do? Ian always says, this is my Brian Castle. Ian always says, I don't have time, but what do you actually do all day? And, you know, the man makes a good point.
Aaron
00:09:21 – 00:09:25
What do you do all day, Ian? Well, I smoke
Ian
00:09:25 – 00:09:26
a lot of cigars.
Aaron
00:09:26 – 00:09:27
Yeah. Exactly. Drink
Ian
00:09:27 – 00:09:28
the Scotch, Lots of stuff.
Aaron
00:09:28 – 00:09:29
Count my money.
Ian
00:09:29 – 00:09:34
Count my money. Yeah. Broadcast is trying to get after me. He's trying to get
Aaron
00:09:34 – 00:09:34
after me.
Ian
00:09:34 – 00:09:47
So but it was very cool because it spurred me to log my entire day that day. So I logged my entire day. And just a little side note, I've been loving logging my days. And so I logged all day Friday. This was Thursday.
Ian
00:09:47 – 00:09:51
I already been logging today. So now I'm I'm logging my day. And then we say it's great.
Aaron
00:09:51 – 00:09:53
Spite can make a man do.
Ian
00:09:53 – 00:09:54
It's so good.
Aaron
00:09:55 – 00:09:56
It's a spite log.
Ian
00:09:56 – 00:09:58
It's a spite log, but it's
Aaron
00:09:58 – 00:10:00
so good. Listen up, Brian. Focus up.
Ian
00:10:00 – 00:10:04
It's a reverse to do list. It's like, you know how your to do list never ends?
Aaron
00:10:04 – 00:10:05
Yeah.
Ian
00:10:05 – 00:10:12
And it's, like, miserable. Right? Like, just stuff gets added, and you take one thing off, but it's still 30 things. You know? Like, this is stupid It's
Aaron
00:10:12 – 00:10:13
a done list.
Ian
00:10:13 – 00:10:18
It's a done list. And, like, every time you add something, you feel better. You're like, oh my god.
Aaron
00:10:18 – 00:10:19
Better and
Ian
00:10:19 – 00:10:22
not worse. Saying. Yes. I've done another thing.
Aaron
00:10:22 – 00:10:29
Feeling better about adding a thing to a list. God, that sounds awesome. Good. So good. Ever feel worse.
Ian
00:10:29 – 00:10:37
I only ever feel worse. So this has been a huge revelation. So this is look at the blue sky's already produced for me. Friend of the show, Brian Castle, has produced for me. Nice little addition.
Ian
00:10:37 – 00:10:39
We'll see if I stick with it. But so far the
Aaron
00:10:39 – 00:10:44
show also suck it, Brian Castle. You're about to get you're about to get owned by the to none list.
Ian
00:10:44 – 00:10:48
You're about to get forty five minutes of what I did on last Thursday.
Aaron
00:10:52 – 00:10:55
Alright. Alright. Give us the highlights. What did you what did you
Ian
00:10:55 – 00:10:57
do last Thursday? No. No.
Aaron
00:10:57 – 00:10:57
No. No.
Ian
00:10:57 – 00:10:58
No. I'm not giving you highlights. Let's
Aaron
00:10:58 – 00:10:59
just No. Okay.
Ian
00:10:59 – 00:11:05
No highlights. We are going Alright. Line by line. Line by line. I'm glad you got a little beverage there.
Aaron
00:11:05 – 00:11:06
I'm ready. Yeah.
Ian
00:11:06 – 00:11:07
It's gonna it's gonna be a long one.
Aaron
00:11:07 – 00:11:12
Alright. I'm gonna mute the mute the Riverside and switch to Twitter, but, yeah, keep going. Go tell me. Tell me. Tell me.
Ian
00:11:13 – 00:11:20
Alright. So Thursday, last Thursday, 9AM, one on one call with Dave, producer Dave.
Aaron
00:11:20 – 00:11:22
Mhmm. Producer Dave. Hey, Dave.
Ian
00:11:22 – 00:11:29
We talked about Lara Jobs content thing we're doing for Lara Jobs. We talked about the Lara Jobs affiliate program, which is out today, actually.
Aaron
00:11:30 – 00:11:31
I got an email about it.
Ian
00:11:31 – 00:11:58
If you want to, make some money along with us, you can go ahead and sign up for Lara Jobs affiliates. We're giving a hundred and $50 every time you, send a job our way. So, hey, if you have a podcast or a blog you're not, monetizing, might be a little way to do that. And we talked about, mostly technical sponsorship, some stuff with that, and maybe him helping with some of that stuff. So, yeah, so that was the one on one.
Ian
00:11:58 – 00:12:03
10 20 AM. I had to send a contract to a mostly technical sponsor.
Aaron
00:12:03 – 00:12:03
So I did
Ian
00:12:03 – 00:12:08
that as an email. I had to fill out the contract and what? 10:30AM. I don't know.
Aaron
00:12:08 – 00:12:09
It took ten minutes. That's great.
Ian
00:12:09 – 00:12:10
That was not bad.
Aaron
00:12:10 – 00:12:11
That was bad. That's pretty good.
Ian
00:12:11 – 00:12:15
I actually had already done some stuff with it, which was previous days, but, but.
Aaron
00:12:15 – 00:12:15
Got it.
Ian
00:12:16 – 00:12:25
The r and d tax people. So every year we do this, like, r and d. You get the r and d credit. To do that, you have to have this third party company. It's insane.
Ian
00:12:25 – 00:12:35
Like, they do nothing. They literally do nothing, and they just take a quarter of your Yep. Tax credit as their fee, but whatever. Fine. So I had to email them with a bunch of stuff.
Ian
00:12:35 – 00:12:50
So I had to, like, get our payroll report, and I had to get last year's tax return for the business and blah blah blah. Put that all together. Send that to them. Use their I thought I wrote that in here, but use their, that took fifteen minutes primarily because That's good. Their drop box thing.
Ian
00:12:50 – 00:12:58
Mhmm. Totally insane. It's asking me for a password I don't have. It's asking me for an ADP, like, company
Aaron
00:12:58 – 00:12:58
Of course.
Ian
00:12:58 – 00:13:13
Network login that I don't have, of course, because I don't work there. So I had to, like, navigate all that. Ten forty five. I reached out to TinyMCE, which is the Wizzywig, makers for a quote, real time follow-up. They wanted to do a call.
Ian
00:13:13 – 00:13:21
I said no. Actually, well, that's later. That's later in the dice. Let me I won't even guess that. And this is what great radio this says.
Ian
00:13:21 – 00:13:23
11AM. Eleven AM.
Aaron
00:13:23 – 00:13:24
At 11AM.
Ian
00:13:25 – 00:13:36
One on one call with Matt, who's our, DevOps guy here. K. We talked about and programmer. We did some help spot. The next version of help spot is gonna have official translations from us.
Ian
00:13:36 – 00:13:44
So we talked about some tech stuff with that. We also have to move help spot cloud to I p v six from I p v four.
Aaron
00:13:44 – 00:13:45
Sounds like a nightmare.
Ian
00:13:46 – 00:14:05
AWS is a complete nightmare. It's like a six month long project because AWS decided to charge us 4 almost $5 per IP, And we have like 400 servers. So it actually adds up to a lot of money. So we're working on IPV sec, which is free. Noon.
Ian
00:14:05 – 00:14:12
I spent a little time on some help spot dev work, 12:30, I went to lunch. One, I did some random emails for half an hour.
Aaron
00:14:12 – 00:14:14
Thirty minute lunch.
Ian
00:14:14 – 00:14:15
Yeah. Normally, I do an hour
Aaron
00:14:15 – 00:14:17
because normally I walk and stuff like that. Long. Yeah.
Ian
00:14:17 – 00:14:20
Now today was tight because I was very busy. Well, so
Aaron
00:14:20 – 00:14:24
we would get an hour and we could fast forward over some time here, but thirty minutes. Wow. That's crazy.
Ian
00:14:24 – 00:14:26
This is a full day. I
Aaron
00:14:26 – 00:14:27
know. Alright. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Ian
00:14:27 – 00:14:30
We got we got a lot of feedback that people actually wanted to hear this breakdown.
Aaron
00:14:30 – 00:14:32
Yeah. I know. This is great. This is
Ian
00:14:32 – 00:14:33
great. It's gonna be very boring for you.
Aaron
00:14:33 – 00:14:36
01:00. Here we are. What happens at one?
Ian
00:14:36 – 00:14:38
I look like you're gonna pass out. You actually left.
Aaron
00:14:38 – 00:14:39
No. No. No. No. No.
Aaron
00:14:39 – 00:14:40
It's good.
Ian
00:14:40 – 00:14:50
Alright. So 01:00, I just lumped a entry of, like, random email. I had, like, I was cleaning up my email, just whatever random stuff. Nothing, not interesting. 01:30.
Ian
00:14:50 – 00:15:00
I was still in email, but the one I pulled out of this was that, with the tiny MC got back to me. They wanna do a call. I said, I don't wanna call. I sent you all the information. Send me a quote.
Ian
00:15:00 – 00:15:08
Now that was Thursday. I'm just gonna note that they haven't gotten back to me yet. So, apparently, they refused to give a quote without this call. Mhmm. I I I don't understand.
Ian
00:15:08 – 00:15:15
So we could the whole WYSIWYG world is insane. Whatever. So I don't have a quote from them. I'm trying to pay the money. They won't let me pay them.
Ian
00:15:15 – 00:15:19
Mhmm. There's a whole side thing there. Whatever. 02:00. Mhmm.
Ian
00:15:19 – 00:15:23
One on one with Cremo, who's our software developer we hired a few months ago.
Aaron
00:15:23 – 00:15:24
What's the name?
Ian
00:15:24 – 00:15:25
Cremo is his name?
Aaron
00:15:25 – 00:15:26
Cremo. Okay.
Ian
00:15:26 – 00:15:33
Cremo. Yeah. He's actually from France, but he's a US citizen then. Though. So help slot uses a thing called the swift mailer, which is a package
Aaron
00:15:33 – 00:15:34
Oh, yeah.
Ian
00:15:34 – 00:15:45
For sending mail. Yep. It is no longer maintained. So we have to switch to the symphony mailer, which is now part of symphony. Even Swift Mailer was maintained by Symfony, but it wasn't written by Symfony.
Ian
00:15:46 – 00:15:55
You know, and of course, they're not gonna just make it API compatible because that would be nice and simple. Right? Right. Gotta progress that's gonna move forward. Yeah.
Ian
00:15:55 – 00:16:09
So we have to build a thing to, you know, whatever. We have to make code changes, but also do some underlying stuff, whatever. So we're talking about that, and just other kind of what what's on the list for him, going forward. So Mhmm. It's that kinda one on one stuff.
Ian
00:16:10 – 00:16:10
03:00
Aaron
00:16:10 – 00:16:13
is in the morning. The day end just so I'm prepared.
Ian
00:16:13 – 00:16:14
06:00.
Aaron
00:16:14 – 00:16:15
Okay. So Alright. Keep going.
Ian
00:16:15 – 00:16:18
Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna keep going. 03:00, I went and got tea.
Aaron
00:16:19 – 00:16:19
Oh, that's nice.
Ian
00:16:19 – 00:16:23
Took, twenty minutes and walked around the corner, and they just cut the shop around the corner.
Aaron
00:16:23 – 00:16:25
Brian may be right. You could there's time for sidekick
Ian
00:16:25 – 00:16:26
cuts in here.
Aaron
00:16:27 – 00:16:30
Thirty minute lunch and a twenty minute tea. That's fifty minutes, baby. We're cooking.
Ian
00:16:30 – 00:16:35
I shoulda got that. Alright. Okay. Oh, here's a good one. Three 20.
Aaron
00:16:36 – 00:16:36
Mhmm.
Ian
00:16:37 – 00:16:40
I had to read very carefully through an email from the accountants.
Aaron
00:16:40 – 00:16:41
You hate that.
Ian
00:16:41 – 00:16:43
Fringe benefit calculations.
Aaron
00:16:44 – 00:16:44
Oh, nice.
Ian
00:16:45 – 00:16:54
Yes. Because for the owner of a company, at least a C S corp, I don't know how this works elsewhere. Your health insurance is income. You can't write it off. Right.
Ian
00:16:55 – 00:17:15
But then there's also other benefits that you can't write off, like your automobile, although I know people who do. And if you have, like, company paid life insurance and things or whatever. This was a pretty complicated email that I didn't wanna screw up and had a form with it. So I had to, like, carefully go through all that and do all that stuff for the end of year accounting. Three thirty.
Ian
00:17:16 – 00:17:24
Oh, I kind of jumped the gun so we can skip this one. This is ADP wrote back to me and said how to get into their system, and I couldn't get in and all that stuff.
Aaron
00:17:24 – 00:17:25
Oh, getting close.
Ian
00:17:25 – 00:17:35
Delete an invoice for for a customer that, isn't using HelpSpot anymore. And we, you know, we auto build them because they're on subscription.
Aaron
00:17:36 – 00:17:36
Mhmm.
Ian
00:17:36 – 00:17:56
But the deleting of invoices in our new back office system, which is this huge system we have, that's a big app of its own. Under a certain scenario, you can't delete an invoice. So I do it manually, which was annoying. So then at 04:30, I wrote up a issue for us to build the tool to delete invoices so that we can just push a button and delete invoices. So that was 04:30.
Ian
00:17:56 – 00:18:05
Mhmm. 04:45. I had to write an email to a customer who owes us a very large invoice of, like, 30 something thousand dollars.
Aaron
00:18:05 – 00:18:06
Holy moly.
Ian
00:18:07 – 00:18:24
Has owed us this since, like, July. And not that they're not going to pay, but it's, like, stuck in this bureaucracy of a giant company. So I'm kinda dealing with that. It's not, like, escalated to me writing the contact and so on. Let's see.
Ian
00:18:24 – 00:18:37
455. Wrote an email to a HubSpot partner that has a demo server with us that needed some customization for it because they give demos with the server, whatever. Alright. 05:00. We're we're at five.
Ian
00:18:37 – 00:18:40
We're almost there. Oh, there's still, like, ten items to the list.
Aaron
00:18:40 – 00:18:44
No. I know that you they're all, like, ten minute increments. You're killing me.
Ian
00:18:44 – 00:18:52
That's it. This is what goes on. If I just said, oh, I did some email, that wouldn't be that would feel like not I wasn't working. Right? Feel like
Aaron
00:18:52 – 00:18:55
a cop out. Brian would Brian would get you.
Ian
00:18:55 – 00:19:05
There you go. Hold my feet to the fire, so I gotta lay it out. So this is, I just signed an invoice with some information for Laracon India because we're sponsoring Laracon India. So since You
Aaron
00:19:05 – 00:19:05
go to India?
Ian
00:19:05 – 00:19:11
Pay them. I am not going to India. I do want to go to India, but I Yeah. Not this year. Are you going?
Aaron
00:19:12 – 00:19:18
No. Too far. Australia and India are too far away to be family allowed at this point.
Ian
00:19:18 – 00:19:28
Yeah. That's a that's a haul. Yeah. So I wanna go to EU, but I don't think it's gonna happen because my daughter has a big thing the day when like, Sunday before. So I Yeah.
Ian
00:19:28 – 00:19:32
Leave till Sunday night, and then I wouldn't get there till halfway through the conference.
Aaron
00:19:32 – 00:19:34
And Nah. I don't remember. So That's
Ian
00:19:34 – 00:19:42
a pity, though. I know. I would like to do that. Some random email stuff at 05:05, time off requests, and things like that.
Aaron
00:19:42 – 00:19:46
Save it for the end of the day. Smart smart employees. You're tired at that point.
Ian
00:19:46 – 00:19:46
Or they would just say
Aaron
00:19:47 – 00:19:51
Send it to the boss and say, hey. I'd love to yeah. Whatever. I don't care. It's 505.
Aaron
00:19:51 – 00:19:52
So that's smart. That's good.
Ian
00:19:52 – 00:19:54
Yes. Yes. Yes. I always say yes.
Aaron
00:19:54 – 00:19:55
But Good strategy.
Ian
00:19:55 – 00:20:06
05:15, I set up some stuff in day one to log because I hadn't been logging in day one. So I moved this to day one, this logging operation. So it's a little meta. I was logging. What what do you mean?
Ian
00:20:06 – 00:20:06
Logging?
Aaron
00:20:07 – 00:20:10
You set up day is day one like a journaling thing?
Ian
00:20:10 – 00:20:13
Yeah. It's like a journaling thing, which I use for, like, my private journal, but you can have multiple journals.
Aaron
00:20:13 – 00:20:26
So we got a we got a snake eating its own tail situation here now. So you're you're you're logging all day, and then you're like, I gotta have somewhere to put this log. I mean, it's fine for logging, but that itself needs to go into the log.
Ian
00:20:26 – 00:20:27
It's recursive.
Aaron
00:20:27 – 00:20:27
It's crazy.
Ian
00:20:29 – 00:20:34
Alright. We're almost to the end. 05:20. Reviewed some poll requests. We just did this five
Aaron
00:20:34 – 00:20:38
fifteen, and now we're doing five twenty. We're never gonna make it, Ian.
Ian
00:20:38 – 00:20:51
I'm moving, baby. I'm moving. Now we're I'm reviewing pull requests. We're into actual code here. We're viewing pull requests, for some changes to the back office as well as some help slot changes.
Ian
00:20:51 – 00:20:54
05:30, I chatted with you for five minutes
Aaron
00:20:54 – 00:20:54
Yeah.
Ian
00:20:55 – 00:21:03
About some mostly technical some mostly technical stuff. I forget what it was. Yeah. This is like this is like that Seinfeld where he's like, you know, mister what is it? Mister Kramer.
Ian
00:21:03 – 00:21:08
You know, he has the Kramer. It's like mister mister Kramer took tea with mister Newman.
Aaron
00:21:08 – 00:21:11
And with with Darren's help, we're gonna find those chickens.
Ian
00:21:11 – 00:21:17
Yeah. Exactly. Alright. Three more. Five thirty five.
Ian
00:21:18 – 00:21:33
I went back to the PRs. Yeah. At a the content stuff for Lara jobs needed some work for the content pages, so I've been messing with that. Five forty five, pull approve some depend depend the bot whole thing. Do you use it?
Ian
00:21:33 – 00:21:34
You know about the depend the bot?
Aaron
00:21:34 – 00:21:38
I know about it. I don't use it. I think I used to I think, like, GitHub, I
Ian
00:21:39 – 00:21:39
but I
Aaron
00:21:39 – 00:21:41
think it's part of the Yeah.
Ian
00:21:41 – 00:21:46
I think it's So, yeah, I get those. So tells you if you have dependencies that are out of date and
Aaron
00:21:46 – 00:21:47
Mhmm.
Ian
00:21:47 – 00:21:51
Gives you the pull request to update it. Although you have not to be careful because, obviously, it'll do, like, huge
Aaron
00:21:51 – 00:21:53
It doesn't know anything. Yeah.
Ian
00:21:53 – 00:22:01
It doesn't know anything. And six zero three, I left the office to drive. There we go.
Aaron
00:22:01 – 00:22:02
There we go. Five
Ian
00:22:02 – 00:22:03
minutes. It's only ten minutes.
Aaron
00:22:03 – 00:22:06
A day in the life of a small business owner.
Ian
00:22:07 – 00:22:07
One day.
Aaron
00:22:08 – 00:22:08
One day.
Ian
00:22:08 – 00:22:09
A lot of stuff in there.
Aaron
00:22:10 – 00:22:26
Lot of stuff. Why don't you, with with that level of detail, why don't you come up a level and synthesize what is what is having having logged at least two days, which Yeah. We'll see if, we'll check-in next week to see if you get if that continues. Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron
00:22:27 – 00:22:29
What is this what does this tell you about your life?
Ian
00:22:30 – 00:22:34
It's it's hectic. That's one thing. It's a lot of bouncing between types of things. Right? It's like
Aaron
00:22:34 – 00:22:35
a dozen
Ian
00:22:35 – 00:22:48
stuff, business stuff, account, and different right? There's Lara jobs. There's HelpSpot. There's well, I did three one on one calls with the employees. So there's, like, the HR manager thing going on.
Aaron
00:22:48 – 00:22:52
Mhmm. There were at least two or three mostly technical tasks in there as well.
Ian
00:22:52 – 00:23:03
There was several multiple mostly technical tasks, right, which is takes time. And this is where, you know, where the sponsorship comes in. Right? Like, support the show. The show takes more time than you might think.
Aaron
00:23:04 – 00:23:10
More of Ian's time than you might think. More of Ian's time anyway. So Ian's employee's time. So,
Ian
00:23:11 – 00:23:23
yeah, so I think, you know, this was this was definitely a very full day. Like, not every day is this, like, white Mhmm. This packed with random stuff. And, there are definitely days where it's like, oh, I have, like, three hours if I just, like, code something or I'm doing
Aaron
00:23:23 – 00:23:24
a specific That's a dream.
Ian
00:23:24 – 00:23:38
Yeah. That is the dream. But not less days than I would like for sure. So, yeah, I mean, this is, like, I mean, some of it is, like, our size. Like, I imagine some of these things, like, if I had a tier of managers, some of these things would be in that tier, right, and wouldn't come up to me potentially.
Ian
00:23:39 – 00:23:45
So but, you know, we're small. We're only five full time people, and, so things bubble up to me. So I So
Aaron
00:23:45 – 00:23:51
here's here's the other question. Is this looking back, is this what you want to be doing with your days?
Ian
00:23:51 – 00:24:02
So that's oh, now we're getting deep here. You know, I think it's like listen. Of course, I would rather not especially, like, the little administrative stuff is, like, definitely not fun. Right? Like, that's just yeah.
Ian
00:24:02 – 00:24:08
The accountant wants something from you. It's not exciting. ADP wants something from you. No. I don't I that's all terrible.
Ian
00:24:08 – 00:24:18
Right? But I don't know what else I would be doing. That's the thing. It's like, well, I make a reasonable amount of money. What else would I do if I wasn't doing this?
Ian
00:24:18 – 00:24:18
I don't know.
Aaron
00:24:18 – 00:24:19
Other stuff.
Ian
00:24:19 – 00:24:21
Right? Other stuff. Yeah.
Aaron
00:24:21 – 00:24:23
Personal budgeting app or something.
Ian
00:24:23 – 00:24:27
Yeah. I know. But it's like, how how am I gonna fit all that? So yeah. So okay.
Ian
00:24:27 – 00:24:34
Let's talk specifically about side projects. Like, where do side projects fit this? Because, like, obviously, you could get it to, like, when you sell the business and all that stuff, whatever. That's, like, a bigger thing.
Aaron
00:24:34 – 00:24:35
That's awesome.
Ian
00:24:35 – 00:24:42
Could I could I fit side projects in? But the thing is all these things. This is this is what weighs me down. Right? It's like, oh, yeah.
Ian
00:24:42 – 00:24:52
You do the side project, then the side project becomes just one of these things. Right? So it's like it's like Lara Jobs is a perfect example. There's multiple Lara Jobs things I talk about in here from that day. And sorry.
Ian
00:24:52 – 00:24:58
It's a side project, and it makes some money, but it doesn't make, like, life world changing on it.
Aaron
00:24:58 – 00:25:00
But more than anything, it's spawning to dos.
Ian
00:25:00 – 00:25:09
And it's wanting to dos. Right? Like and so it makes it up, but that's worth the to dos, but it's like the any side project's the same thing. Right? Except that's gonna be making no money probably or little money.
Ian
00:25:10 – 00:25:22
And now there's things that come from that. Like, you need to start up a corporation to keep it separate, and you need to, like, have accountants for that. You need to do this, you need that, and you have customers, and people want stuff. And the people trying it are like, hey. These bugs are in here.
Ian
00:25:22 – 00:25:36
Blah blah blah. Like and it's like, it's a lot of work. You know? It's a lot of work to add into all this. And then, obviously, we didn't cover, like, I have kids and wife and all the stuff that goes on outside of work, having bandwidth for that versus just coming home being totally wrecked.
Ian
00:25:36 – 00:25:47
So that's where, like, I don't know. That's where every time I get inside, it's like I want to code some stuff that's fresh and new. It's always fun, but it's hard to justify. It's hard to justify.
Aaron
00:25:47 – 00:25:57
I told our au pair the other day. She's 25. I said, Jasmine, Jasmine, never turned 35. Life is life is such a burden at 35. Never do it.
Aaron
00:25:57 – 00:25:59
And I feel like I feel like you're
Ian
00:25:59 – 00:25:59
what are you?
Aaron
00:25:59 – 00:26:01
45? It's supposed to be better.
Ian
00:26:01 – 00:26:03
Eight. I just turned 48.
Aaron
00:26:03 – 00:26:04
When does it get better?
Ian
00:26:04 – 00:26:13
Well, see, you're just making a chance. So it's like, listen. Do I want the the risk of doing other stuff which may or may not pay off, or do I do the stuff that I know pays the bills?
Aaron
00:26:13 – 00:26:15
Explore or exploit.
Ian
00:26:15 – 00:26:32
Then you get, you get to the, the later you go, you're like, boy, do I wanna, like, put that energy into this? Do I want to, like, what if it goes south and the main business also goes south and now I'm like, I have to go get a job or something like that. You know? Like, it's like, I wouldn't make you out there. I wouldn't make you out.
Aaron
00:26:32 – 00:26:33
No. You wouldn't. So I
Ian
00:26:33 – 00:26:41
wouldn't make it. So it's like yeah. But I do it's it's the responsibility that's weighing you. It's like, yeah. I know I got bills.
Ian
00:26:41 – 00:26:54
I got all the stuff we wanna do. Gotta save money. Gotta have money. And so you take the more conservative route. That's just what naturally occurs, which is, you know, sometimes to your detriment, right?
Ian
00:26:54 – 00:26:59
Like if things change and you're stuck in the conservative route, then that can do that.
Aaron
00:26:59 – 00:27:04
If you if you ride your success over the top and you haven't yet explored new avenues, you might be host.
Ian
00:27:04 – 00:27:13
It's possible. Yes. So, yeah, I mean, that's that's a risk. I mean, some of my personal hedging on stuff like that is like, hey. I have stuff like this podcast.
Ian
00:27:13 – 00:27:23
I have other things, Lara jobs, and whatever. So I do already have some, like, other avenues. It's not that the podcast is gonna meet. I don't know how I'm gonna replace my salary, but it's like people know me. I'm out there.
Ian
00:27:23 – 00:27:27
Right? Like, it's like, if we ever need a few other stuff, it's a platform for that.
Aaron
00:27:28 – 00:27:32
I don't think you're in danger, though, because HelpSpud's been around for twenty years. Right.
Ian
00:27:32 – 00:27:35
It's not there's no imminent, issues like that. Yes. No. No. No.
Ian
00:27:35 – 00:27:35
No. No. No. No.
Aaron
00:27:35 – 00:27:35
No. No. No. No. No.
Aaron
00:27:35 – 00:27:35
No. No. No. No. No.
Aaron
00:27:35 – 00:27:37
No. No. No. No.
Ian
00:27:37 – 00:27:38
No. No. No. No. No.
Ian
00:27:38 – 00:27:38
No.
Aaron
00:27:38 – 00:27:38
No. No. No. No. No.
Aaron
00:27:38 – 00:27:38
No. No.
Ian
00:27:38 – 00:27:38
No. No. No.
Aaron
00:27:38 – 00:27:38
No. No. No.
Ian
00:27:38 – 00:27:44
No or something insane happens. You know? You never know. I mean, I think it's unlikely. Right?
Ian
00:27:44 – 00:27:47
I mean, obviously, lots of big companies have been hacked, and they're still here. So
Aaron
00:27:47 – 00:27:47
it's still not
Ian
00:27:47 – 00:27:50
necessarily, death blow or anything.
Aaron
00:27:50 – 00:27:54
We're not feeling playbook, pretend to apologize, and then forget about it forever.
Ian
00:27:54 – 00:28:09
That's, I mean, pretty much what what everybody does, but you never know. But you never know. But yeah. So I I agree. I mean, I'm not super worried about that kind of thing, but, you know, it's still I also don't have, like, oh, I could just, like, retire tomorrow and not worry about it level of money, saved.
Ian
00:28:09 – 00:28:19
So, you know, it's still out there that, like, only one kid in college, only in his first year. He got two more coming behind. He got other big expenses coming. So, yeah, so that's what I do. I don't know.
Ian
00:28:19 – 00:28:32
I think there's some some of this stuff yeah. A lot of that stuff from that day, though, it's, like, stuff that just it just is what it is. Like, there's not even getting rid of it. It's like just people need stuff from me, and I have to give it to them. Like, the account needs something.
Ian
00:28:32 – 00:28:39
I have to give it to them. Like, that's it. The employees, we I need to talk to them and, you know, run the business. So that has to happen. Right?
Ian
00:28:39 – 00:28:52
And that part is the one on one deploy is actually really good. For people who don't do that, I would definitely recommend it. We do, like we've done different strategies over the years. Right now, we're at every other week. Within the alternate week, we kinda do a big help spot meeting.
Ian
00:28:52 – 00:29:14
So that's like, central that's like so it's like every other week big help spot meeting, and then the other week is one on one. But it's quite, motivating, I think, to have the one on ones because just like you get to talk to the people and see what's going on and, like I don't know. I always find it kinda energizing. So, yeah, I know a lot of work remote dev shops may not do them not much, but,
Aaron
00:29:15 – 00:29:18
I don't think Taylor's ever spoken to any of his employees. I don't think
Ian
00:29:18 – 00:29:19
he does the one on one. Yeah.
Aaron
00:29:19 – 00:29:22
Yeah. I don't think so. Especially now now.
Ian
00:29:22 – 00:29:33
Maybe now they but he's probably not doing alright. But, like, I think there are more meetings now probably with him and some of the executives. And then I don't know if some how the managers are structuring things. But, yeah. Yeah.
Ian
00:29:33 – 00:29:40
That's a different kind of business. You know, everything about I don't know. It's like following D and J, following Taylor. Like, these are not, like, strategies for normal people.
Aaron
00:29:40 – 00:29:42
Right? These aren't communicable attributes.
Ian
00:29:43 – 00:29:50
Yeah. Like, make this thing, like, so everybody in the world's super excited about. And, like, when people get a job there, they're like, this is I've, like, made it to the Right.
Aaron
00:29:51 – 00:29:51
To the
Ian
00:29:51 – 00:30:04
mountain top. Like, I, you know, I don't know if, like, that's something you can just follow. I think it have a different strategy for keeping people engaged and yourself engaged. I don't think that's an a plan for most people, with their businesses. There you go.
Ian
00:30:04 – 00:30:17
I hope Brian's happy. I hope the people are happy who wanted to hear about a day in the life of a twenty year old software company. That's what it is. It's all these little things that have crept in. Others back the back office system, and we can do a whole show on the back office system.
Ian
00:30:17 – 00:30:18
It's a giant application
Aaron
00:30:18 – 00:30:21
I love a back office system. I really do.
Ian
00:30:21 – 00:30:41
It's insane. It's it's probably a similar amount of code to help spot itself. And it just does all these things, all this invoicing and edge cases and deploy for cloud to deploy customers and like it's gigantic application to do all kinds of stuff. And, yeah, that's its own thing that needs maintenance and has bugs and
Aaron
00:30:41 – 00:30:46
all that stuff. Every sufficiently mature business ends up rolling their own accounting at some point.
Ian
00:30:46 – 00:30:50
We kind of have to. It's a kind of have to. It doesn't do it. I know there's the dream. That's another dream.
Ian
00:30:50 – 00:31:04
It's like, oh, I just charge $29 a month, and I just do Stripe, and that's it. And, like, it's not real. Like, you know, it's like and there are obviously businesses that do that, but, you know, you just have big customers. Like, I wanna I want you to invoice me. I want you to set the purchase order.
Ian
00:31:04 – 00:31:13
I want you to take a check. I want you to take a bank transfer. When you know, Stripe does do more of that stuff now. For a long time, they didn't do any of that. And so, you know, we'll be looking for
Aaron
00:31:13 – 00:31:17
become hideously complicated. So hopefully it hand hopefully it handles all of that now.
Ian
00:31:18 – 00:31:34
Right. But even that, it's like we looked into that a little bit before we rebuilt this back office, and it's like even those systems were very complicated and seemed kinda weird how they work. And then, of course, they're also taking, like, a purse 1% Right. Several percent or whatever. So now it's like, well, our biggest customers that send us the most money will now have the biggest fee
Aaron
00:31:34 – 00:31:35
Right. In
Ian
00:31:35 – 00:31:37
Stripe. And it's like, well, that kinda sucks. So
Aaron
00:31:37 – 00:31:41
who, who actually, who processes your credit cards?
Ian
00:31:41 – 00:31:43
We do Stripe for the credit cards.
Aaron
00:31:43 – 00:31:44
Okay.
Ian
00:31:44 – 00:31:45
Yeah. But then we
Aaron
00:31:45 – 00:31:49
do Stripe for credit cards, but you get a lot of what ACH, echeck, other stuff?
Ian
00:31:49 – 00:31:55
Right. Yeah. Right. All the like ACH and, just physical checks. And then so and so we generate
Aaron
00:31:55 – 00:31:55
so
Ian
00:31:55 – 00:32:12
we have our own invoices system. So we make the invoice and it might be paid by Stripe. Or if not, then it's just an open invoice that's a receivable. And then, you know, that gets marked paid when we receive a check or receive a ACH transfer. And that's still, like, 50% of our sales are not Wow.
Ian
00:32:12 – 00:32:14
Credit card. Yeah.
Aaron
00:32:14 – 00:32:41
That's how it was at the property tax firm because people it's a very, like, physical business because we're, you know, sending them letters and working on their house and send them invoices in the mail and everything. And we would get when it was billing season, we would get just hundreds of, checks in our PO box that just had to be opened and processed and invoice marked. And, oh, dude, it was brutal. We used Zoho invoice for that, and
Ian
00:32:41 – 00:32:42
it was okay. Yeah.
Aaron
00:32:42 – 00:32:48
It was fine. But, yeah, it's a it's a the whole the paper check thing is, it's kind of a nightmare.
Ian
00:32:48 – 00:33:03
Yeah. And for us, it's like we can't even just use, like, zero or whatever because it's, like, it's tied to their license count and all these things. Totally. That has to be connected with every I mean, maybe we could have used the thing in API, but whatever you whatever. There's all that stuff, but it's built our own.
Ian
00:33:03 – 00:33:17
It's a lot. I mean, I do think that's another thing where people should consider those kind of things. Like, probably once people ask for them, but, yeah, if you're selling the businesses, like, a lot of them still they wanna transfer, which is good for you too because, like, the fee on Stripe is insane. Like It is. Someone Mhmm.
Ian
00:33:18 – 00:33:25
You know, charge you if you have a $10,000 sale and they're taking $500 of it. Like, that's a pretty big chunk. So
Aaron
00:33:25 – 00:33:37
Yeah. We've started for for bigger team sales. We've started pushing for straight ACH to our Mercury account, and it's it's great. And that seems the bigger teams love it. That's what they wanna do.
Ian
00:33:37 – 00:33:41
Right. Right. That's what they're set up to do. Like, that's how they pay things often. So Yeah.
Ian
00:33:42 – 00:34:06
This episode is sponsored by Mailtrap, an email delivery platform that developers love, an email sending solution with industry best analytics, SMTP, and email API, along with SDKs for major programming languages, and twenty four seven human support. Try it for free at mailtrap.io. How is the team sales going? Give us update. What's update?
Ian
00:34:06 – 00:34:08
Let's do some errands. This is too much yen.
Aaron
00:34:08 – 00:34:12
No. This is the this is the right amount of yen. Okay. So let's see. Update.
Aaron
00:34:12 – 00:34:19
Here's here's something interesting. I don't, pay very close attention to sales at all.
Ian
00:34:19 – 00:34:19
Nice.
Aaron
00:34:19 – 00:34:41
Like, I'm not I'm not checking the dashboard. I don't know how much we're selling. I I think I I'm trying to, like, narrow my scope of what I care about slash what I'm responsible for. And I think I've realized I'm responsible for the production side. I'm responsible for for making the things, not necessarily for selling the things or, like Yep.
Aaron
00:34:42 – 00:34:57
In most cases, not for supporting the thing either. Now when it comes to, like, technical questions, Kelsey does forward those on to me. So that's really nice. Like, when we were in Boise, we I was like, hey. How's the how's the SQLite course doing?
Aaron
00:34:57 – 00:35:03
And Kelsey, like, had it. It just in her brain immediately. She was like, well, last week, we did about this. Week before, we did about that. I'm like, wow.
Aaron
00:35:03 – 00:35:08
That's, oh, that's pretty nice. Good job. That's awesome. I love that. Yeah.
Aaron
00:35:08 – 00:35:48
But I do see, in the sales channel, I do see, like, sales conversations flying by, and it seems like it's going great. We get a lot of we get a lot of inbound. And then, this is just man, I don't know if if this is just, like, a normal guy becomes business guy, but, like, watching Kelsey, like, respond to emails or Steve, like, send outbound cold outbound sales or even Kelsey will use my LinkedIn account and message people, like, sales messages. And I'm like, stuff is happening, and I'm not doing it. This freaking rules.
Aaron
00:35:49 – 00:35:57
I love this. It's the freaking best. Yeah. So I think that part's going super well. You asked me when I was flying to Laracon EU, and I told you, I think it's this day.
Aaron
00:35:57 – 00:36:01
And I said, I think because Kelsey handled all that. She booked it all for me.
Ian
00:36:01 – 00:36:01
Well, he did.
Aaron
00:36:01 – 00:36:05
That's great. That's the freaking best. So sales are going
Ian
00:36:05 – 00:36:06
Business guy.
Aaron
00:36:06 – 00:36:22
Business guy. Love being business guy. Sales in general are holding up quite quite steadily. Team sales, I think, are doing pretty well, but sales in general are holding up very well. This week is, Black Friday week.
Aaron
00:36:22 – 00:36:25
It's also Thanksgiving, but more importantly, it's Black Friday week. Right.
Ian
00:36:25 – 00:36:26
We'll make the money.
Aaron
00:36:26 – 00:36:45
Trying to make some money. Trying to make some money. So, SQLite and screencasting will be on sale. Postgres will not be on sale because it's not yet complete. And we will do the final release of Postgres videos maybe, like, a week or two after Black Friday to give it a little bit of breathing room.
Ian
00:36:45 – 00:36:45
Yep.
Aaron
00:36:45 – 00:37:07
And then we'll use that as an opportunity to say early access is ending, which will hopefully give us the the final bump from that course. And then next year, we can, you know, refresh and do Black Friday, but it's too early, I think, to do a Black Friday on that having just released it. Yeah. So, yeah, hoping hoping to print a bunch of money here this week.
Ian
00:37:08 – 00:37:08
So nice.
Aaron
00:37:09 – 00:37:15
It's great. Digital products. Whoever thought that doing physical products was a good idea? Me. But we'll see.
Aaron
00:37:15 – 00:37:27
Yeah. But, yeah, it's awesome. So, you know, we've got a whole we've got a whole email sequence set up. We're we're ready with the discount codes. We're just like, we're ready.
Aaron
00:37:27 – 00:37:29
We're ready to execute on Black Friday.
Ian
00:37:30 – 00:37:32
That's so nice. And someone else did that, it sounds like.
Aaron
00:37:32 – 00:37:33
But someone else did that.
Ian
00:37:33 – 00:37:34
You didn't have to do that.
Aaron
00:37:34 – 00:37:35
I didn't have to do that.
Ian
00:37:35 – 00:37:57
So it's great about having I mean, a partner is so so nice that you can have, like, divide sides of the business is even if it's not fully divided. Right? It's just like you can take days off of thinking about that's that part of the business, which is really nice. And then, obviously, once you start having employees, like, that's so great because stuff happens and you didn't do it and somebody's on it and Mhmm. Super key to everything.
Ian
00:37:57 – 00:38:03
So so we gotta get Caleb. Caleb went on his podcast on the iron ball. He's not pull the trigger, Caleb.
Aaron
00:38:03 – 00:38:06
Pull the trigger, Caleb. Trigger. You gotta get somebody.
Ian
00:38:06 – 00:38:07
Gotta have help.
Aaron
00:38:07 – 00:38:11
What what does he need? A a developer? He needs a developer. Right?
Ian
00:38:11 – 00:38:30
Yeah. I can see him going either way, but I think he needed the right kind of developer who's willing to do, like, some just customer service, you know, but also, like, obviously, bug fixes. Or he could go the other way and just do the hardcore developer who does a lot of the stuff he does, and he does more of you know, stays on doing that stuff. But Mhmm. I don't see him wanting to give up the,
Aaron
00:38:30 – 00:38:32
like, hard core developer. Yeah.
Ian
00:38:32 – 00:38:41
Yeah. So I think probably which is a hard hire to get somebody who doesn't wanna just code, but Right. They're out there. You know, they're out there. Oh, they're totally the best developer I've ever hired.
Ian
00:38:41 – 00:38:53
Like Yeah. Because I don't ever want a just developer developer because in a small company, it's kinda useless. Like Right. You know, there's just too much other stuff to do that's not just pure coding. So You need a utility player.
Ian
00:38:53 – 00:39:12
Yeah. Who's at least willing to do other stuff, as needed. Creamo, actually, our new employee is the probably the most developer developer in terms of, like, I haven't had him do much other stuff yet, but he is willing to do it. And that day will probably come here, sooner rather than later. But yeah.
Ian
00:39:12 – 00:39:13
So I think, he's
Aaron
00:39:13 – 00:39:25
Here's we should we should hit Caleb with some, what is it, some Yo dogs? Yo dog. Hey, if you're listening to this and you wanna be Caleb's employee, you should just DM him. Yeah. Just send him a message.
Aaron
00:39:26 – 00:39:33
Send him a message. Tell him why you're perfect to go work at the Livewire Empire. Just just go slide into his deal.
Ian
00:39:33 – 00:39:45
I think you should do it. Do that. You should. If you're looking for a gig, DM Caleb. Caleb has the bootstrapper syndrome, which I can relate to, which our president Donald Trump has too.
Ian
00:39:45 – 00:39:47
I see this in him all the time, which is you
Aaron
00:39:47 – 00:39:48
only wanna hire president-elect.
Ian
00:39:49 – 00:39:58
President-elect. Yeah. You only wanna hire people you know and trust. Right? And that is how small businesses tend to operate.
Ian
00:39:58 – 00:40:17
But it is very limiting because you only know and trust so many people and how many people are available for work at the time you need them. So yeah. So this is sort of an in between. Like, people in our circle who Caleb may not actually know, but, you know, they must be smart, intelligent, beautiful people that are listening to this podcast. Yeah.
Ian
00:40:17 – 00:40:22
Yeah. So if they're reaching out to him, I'll give you a leg up. I think that's a leg up right there.
Aaron
00:40:22 – 00:40:27
That's how, that's how we hired our Linda, whose name is Kelsey, is she DM'd me.
Ian
00:40:27 – 00:40:28
There you go.
Aaron
00:40:28 – 00:40:30
Cole DM from the bottom. You can
Ian
00:40:30 – 00:40:31
do things.
Aaron
00:40:31 – 00:40:38
You can. She said, hey. Heard about it on the podcast. Here's the reasons I'm great. And I was like, that sounds great.
Aaron
00:40:38 – 00:40:43
Let's have a call. And it's been great. So dear listener, give it a shot.
Ian
00:40:43 – 00:41:08
Yes. I mean, for people who are resident about the hiring process, it's like you have an opportunity to put yourself in front of them and make it easier for them. And if you have the qualifications and seem like you're gonna be a good fit, leapfrog a huge line of if they actually get around to putting an advertisement out and then it now have 1,500 people to go through. Now you're just one of 1,500. So, yeah, I think, that's a great strategy.
Aaron
00:41:08 – 00:41:15
Also, great word of reticent. We're not just gonna blow by. Yeah. That's that's a great use. That's you can't just let that one go.
Ian
00:41:16 – 00:41:17
Good night's sleep last night.
Aaron
00:41:17 – 00:41:20
Yeah. You're fired on all cylinders. Reticent.
Ian
00:41:21 – 00:41:23
Amazing. Logging. I get the I know.
Aaron
00:41:23 – 00:41:23
Out of
Ian
00:41:23 – 00:41:30
my head. I get it's like, oh, I'm okay. Here's here's the thing with the logging. I might push this too far. Probably.
Ian
00:41:30 – 00:41:33
Right? So right now, it's just a day one. It's just like a bullet
Aaron
00:41:33 – 00:41:35
Sure. Day one. Sure.
Ian
00:41:35 – 00:41:36
Okay. Mhmm.
Aaron
00:41:36 – 00:41:36
But I
Ian
00:41:36 – 00:41:40
feel like, it's like, it would be cool to know, like, how much time am I spending on
Aaron
00:41:40 – 00:41:42
marketing versus
Ian
00:41:42 – 00:41:43
code versus whatever.
Aaron
00:41:43 – 00:41:44
Yeah.
Ian
00:41:44 – 00:41:52
And I wanna spend more time marketing. Well, let me see if I'm actually accomplishing that or not. Right? So it's like, so today I've been playing with toggle, which is like a time tracker
Aaron
00:41:52 – 00:41:53
of like,
Ian
00:41:53 – 00:42:06
so I could put a project. So for me, it's not a project that's just like help spot or Lara jobs or marketing or whatever and, and track it in there. It does feel that little extra heaviness, which I don't love. Mhmm.
Aaron
00:42:06 – 00:42:09
The extra, like, what was invented time tracking from
Ian
00:42:09 – 00:42:09
the whole class.
Aaron
00:42:09 – 00:42:11
That's why. Yeah. I was
Ian
00:42:11 – 00:42:17
I was obviously, I went down the whole path over the weekend. Like, I need to build this myself. Right? So it started as a side a side project.
Aaron
00:42:17 – 00:42:17
Yeah.
Ian
00:42:18 – 00:42:24
Sounds like a kid. Everybody's like, there's 8,000,000,000 versions of this. Right? And we have Correct. Somebody reached out to me with this owl.so.
Ian
00:42:24 – 00:42:31
You should check that out. That's sort of a personal time tracker thing this guy's building. It's not live yet. I checked that out. It's cool.
Ian
00:42:31 – 00:42:39
Nice design. It's a little more on the personal end, I think, maybe than I would be looking for. So then I was like, I stood in town. I was like, time tracker. Like, everybody knows whatever.
Ian
00:42:39 – 00:42:50
It's a million time trackers. Whatever. I pick one. So I'm gonna see how that goes. I might end up back in day one if I just want the pure lightness of, here's a list of text and whatever, but we'll see.
Aaron
00:42:50 – 00:43:02
Thanks. So you said owl.so, and I immediately derided it because I was like, .s0 is the dumbest thing I've ever was. You get a real domain. You go to owl.so, and it's gorgeous? What?
Aaron
00:43:02 – 00:43:03
Yeah. It's really nice. Amazing.
Ian
00:43:04 – 00:43:05
Yeah. It's a very nice website.
Aaron
00:43:05 – 00:43:07
What in the world?
Ian
00:43:07 – 00:43:08
I know.
Aaron
00:43:08 – 00:43:09
Have you used this?
Ian
00:43:09 – 00:43:12
He did let me in, and I did I did use it a little bit.
Aaron
00:43:12 – 00:43:22
Tell tell tell him to let me in. I'm gonna put my name in the little email box, Alright. You can I'm not telling saying my email out loud. Okay. Join the wait list.
Aaron
00:43:22 – 00:43:28
No. No. I'm nowhere to be found. Yeah. Tell this person in rainy Victoria, BC that I wanna try it.
Aaron
00:43:28 – 00:43:29
This looks amazing.
Ian
00:43:30 – 00:43:38
I will let them know. Yeah. It's still, you know, still early, but, yeah, I think he's on to something. I'd send him, like, a nice email. I I think nice.
Ian
00:43:38 – 00:43:41
I'll say it was a nice email with someone.
Aaron
00:43:41 – 00:43:42
An email. That
Ian
00:43:42 – 00:43:47
sounds good. With some feedback and things. But, yeah. No. I think it's really nicely designed.
Ian
00:43:48 – 00:44:00
And this is a perfect look at this. This this is Aaron Francis in a nutshell right here. Uh-oh. Which is I was on Blue Sky, right, cruising, and I was talking about the logging. Mhmm.
Ian
00:44:00 – 00:44:10
And this person reached out and just, you know, publicly said, hey. Just write on the feed. Like, hey. Like, I'm building this thing. And Ben Holman actually said, hey.
Ian
00:44:10 – 00:44:12
It's good. I've used it a little bit. Whatever.
Aaron
00:44:12 – 00:44:12
Mhmm.
Ian
00:44:12 – 00:44:23
And so then I tried it, gave him some feedback. Obviously, I'm, like, in there now and have my eye on it. Now we're talking about the show, and you're trying it, like, just putting yourself out there that little bit.
Aaron
00:44:23 – 00:44:23
It's amazing.
Ian
00:44:24 – 00:44:28
It's amazing. We actually took it down. He posted it. We took it down. People are following me on Blue Sky.
Ian
00:44:28 – 00:44:31
We're so interested in it. They took down the site when they gave them
Aaron
00:44:31 – 00:44:33
that. That's awesome.
Ian
00:44:33 – 00:44:37
Yeah. It was awesome. So, hopefully, we got some sign ups for that and not to stop taking down.
Aaron
00:44:37 – 00:44:47
Yeah. Hopefully, it's, like, high bills and no users. But, here's here's the, here's the meta on that. Yeah. You can't you can just do things,
Ian
00:44:47 – 00:44:47
but you
Aaron
00:44:47 – 00:44:59
also have to have the goods. This guy has the thing already built and out there, and now he can be talking about it. You can't just talk. You gotta you gotta do the thing. And so this person's doing both.
Aaron
00:44:59 – 00:45:00
Way to go, Al.s.
Ian
00:45:00 – 00:45:25
Yeah. And even just even though the product itself isn't totally done, although it's like I'd say it feels, like, set 80% to me or whatever. It's like Mhmm. You have the landing page you're set up to collect email, like get that stuff ready early so that like, yeah, you can put it out there and let when you're ready to let people in early or just the winning. You know, know, because sometimes the moment strikes where you have to talk about it even even if it's before you'd want to talk about it.
Ian
00:45:25 – 00:45:31
And it's like, hey. At least now this is a landing page. You can send people to it. It's nice to sign up, blah blah blah. So Here's
Aaron
00:45:31 – 00:45:46
here's one thing I don't super love. When somebody says they're working, like, you you say something like, oh, I'm building a project or working on a project, and somebody comes along and says, oh, I did I I did something like that once. I just need to I just need to finish it and release it. You're like
Ian
00:45:46 – 00:45:47
Cleaning up. Right. Yeah.
Aaron
00:45:48 – 00:45:55
Okay. Like, everybody did something like that one. We've all we've all got a million things that we've tinkered with. Yeah. They're like, oh, yeah.
Aaron
00:45:55 – 00:45:59
I was doing that. I was doing that first. I I did that. I did that. You're like, where is it?
Aaron
00:45:59 – 00:46:01
Show it to me then. If you did it, show it to me.
Ian
00:46:01 – 00:46:02
If you did it
Aaron
00:46:02 – 00:46:10
But this whole This whole, like, I'm gonna try to glom on to your posts and gain some traction or credibility for a thing that I once did
Ian
00:46:10 – 00:46:12
I thought about doing. It's like
Aaron
00:46:12 – 00:46:15
I that does I'm unmoved. That doesn't move me.
Ian
00:46:15 – 00:46:30
Yeah. It is a fine line too because it's like this like this one, I think, has a little like, it has a screenshot of the actual UI. Right? It's not just like, oh, this is an purely at the idea stage of, like, there's no evidence this actually exists. It's just, you know, a a landing page with some words.
Ian
00:46:30 – 00:46:37
So, no, this feels like it's something that probably actually exists. It's, like, a full on landing page, really. Mhmm.
Aaron
00:46:37 – 00:46:37
So
Ian
00:46:38 – 00:46:42
yeah. So I think that this is, like, on the right side of that law. Mhmm. Totally. Anyway.
Ian
00:46:42 – 00:46:43
Totally. Yeah.
Aaron
00:46:43 – 00:46:48
Alright. Give me give me give me in here. Yeah. Yeah. I'll get you.
Aaron
00:46:48 – 00:47:01
Let's see what else is going on. Last week, we did our first guest, instructor course here at TriHard Studios. Yes. So there was, somebody here in the studio all week last week. Wow.
Aaron
00:47:01 – 00:47:03
I know. It's crazy.
Ian
00:47:03 – 00:47:14
So now how how before we even get to how Yeah. That went, like, what did you feel was, like, your level of responsibility for hosting? Like, were you out to dinner ever? None It's
Aaron
00:47:14 – 00:47:15
a good question.
Ian
00:47:16 – 00:47:23
Over your house. Yes. No. Meet every day. Like, what the, like, what's the vibe of that whole thing?
Aaron
00:47:23 – 00:47:33
Yeah. It was, it was indeterminate at first. I it's not something I super thought about. Like, I'm hosting this person. I more thought about, like, I'm producing this course.
Ian
00:47:33 – 00:47:33
Right.
Aaron
00:47:34 – 00:47:36
And I think I salvaged it.
Ian
00:47:36 – 00:47:37
Oh, so
Aaron
00:47:37 – 00:47:50
I think I was a good host, I think. I'll let you decide. We, so this person's name is Steven. Steven and I went to went to dinner. We went to lunch the first day because he was here and we were, like, getting ready to record.
Aaron
00:47:50 – 00:48:09
We went out to lunch. The rest of the days, I went and picked up lunch because he was, like, recording straight through. Yep. And so I'd go pick up lunch and we would eat out there for, like, twenty or thirty minutes, and then he would come back and record. We went to dinner on I think we went to dinner on Tuesday night, just the two of us.
Aaron
00:48:09 – 00:48:40
And then he was supposed to come over for dinner at our house on Thursday night, but, of course, everyone was sick. So, unfortunately, it was yeah. Not not, who's no longer invited because everybody was sick and nobody wanted to create dinner at home. And, also, our heat wasn't working, so that was that was a silly fun time as well. So, yeah, beyond that, I picked him up from the hotel a few times, and he Ubered a few times, which worked out which worked out great.
Aaron
00:48:40 – 00:48:55
Yeah. But it was a it was a lot more, it was a lot more hosting than I had, like, planned on up front. Right. Maybe that should have been obvious, but that's not really something that I thought about. But I I realized when he got here, he's like, this guy is in Dallas by himself.
Aaron
00:48:56 – 00:49:01
I gotta do something. I can't just, like, have fun. See you later. I mean, so I don't
Ian
00:49:01 – 00:49:08
think that's necessarily true. You know? I think in a pure business environment world, you might maybe you would do one dinner, and you'd be like, hey. You're on your own. You're here recording.
Ian
00:49:08 – 00:49:09
Like, I think you
Aaron
00:49:09 – 00:49:10
did it possible. You
Ian
00:49:10 – 00:49:13
could do that. But you know? But, like, but it doesn't seem like your personality is
Aaron
00:49:13 – 00:49:27
totally different. I've got I've got way too much way too much guilt to do that. Right. So, yeah, I think it worked I think it worked out great. And I also thought if I was in if I was in his shoes, I wouldn't want to do something every night.
Aaron
00:49:27 – 00:49:33
I would wanna go back to the frigging hotel and get in the cold bed and watch what's on cable TV. You know? Right. That sounds amazing.
Ian
00:49:34 – 00:49:37
Yeah. Yeah. I have a I have a week away. Let me enjoy myself with that. Yeah.
Ian
00:49:37 – 00:49:41
I definitely wanna have every night tied up. No. For sure. Yeah.
Aaron
00:49:42 – 00:49:57
So it was it was fun. Fortunately, I enjoy being around him. There's a very real possibility where we do this again with somebody that I don't super like, and that's going to be a lot harder. Maybe I'll send them to Boise, to report to Steve. But, yeah, that that aspect of it was great.
Aaron
00:49:57 – 00:50:09
Very delightful. Nice guy. Love having around lots of good, conversations. So that part was great. Having someone in the studio all week was a little bit weird.
Ian
00:50:09 – 00:50:09
Right?
Aaron
00:50:09 – 00:50:21
Yeah. It's a little bit weird because I'm I'm sitting out there. I know. I'm sitting out there in the living room. Can't really take any calls because, you know, this isn't surprisingly isn't built as a sound studio.
Aaron
00:50:21 – 00:50:32
This is, you know, residential apartments. Crazy. Right. And so, like, if I'm taking a call and stepping out into the hallway or if I'm taking a long call, I'm going to sit in my car. It's like, oh, that's weird.
Aaron
00:50:32 – 00:50:33
This is my space.
Ian
00:50:33 – 00:50:34
What the hell?
Aaron
00:50:35 – 00:50:54
So that part was strange. Not bad. Just different. And then I think there are a few lessons learned in terms of if we're gonna do this again. So, I think this is a great a great, test case because he was incredibly good at recording all the videos.
Aaron
00:50:54 – 00:51:01
Like, he blew through them all. I think he did, like, 51 videos in, like, three and a half days.
Ian
00:51:02 – 00:51:04
Crazy. He got done?
Aaron
00:51:04 – 00:51:05
Yes. He finished.
Ian
00:51:06 – 00:51:10
So inspired you that you could maybe do more of these than you thought
Aaron
00:51:10 – 00:51:15
you'd be? Okay. It does. It's like, I'm so inspired. Also, what's wrong with me?
Aaron
00:51:15 – 00:51:26
Why can't I do this? He, like, came in. You know, one day, he came in at, like, 08:30AM and started recording. You know, comes out at, like, eleven or twelve or something. He's like, alright.
Aaron
00:51:26 – 00:51:44
I got six done. And I'm like, my dude, sometimes sometimes I just wrestle with existential dread until 02:30 or 3PM, and then I start recording. What is going on? And he's like, well, you know, if you'd flown to Dallas from Germany, you you might you might have a little bit more of a fire under you.
Ian
00:51:44 – 00:51:46
Like, yeah. Maybe maybe I gotta fly to Germany to record
Aaron
00:51:46 – 00:51:47
courses. Yeah.
Ian
00:51:48 – 00:51:58
Yeah. Maybe you should maybe you should fly to, Idaho and do it at the kit studios. You got Steve there. You do the kit studios for a week, and you're just like, we're here on business. This is what I'm doing every day.
Ian
00:51:58 – 00:52:03
I'm distracted with other stuff, and I'm just cranking through. That's what I'm doing. Like, new environment.
Aaron
00:52:03 – 00:52:08
Be if my only studio was I had studios all over the country, but not
Ian
00:52:08 – 00:52:09
here. Yeah.
Aaron
00:52:09 – 00:52:09
I know.
Ian
00:52:09 – 00:52:11
Maybe that would be better, though.
Aaron
00:52:11 – 00:52:12
Maybe it would. Maybe it would.
Ian
00:52:12 – 00:52:13
You have the right mindset. You know?
Aaron
00:52:13 – 00:52:21
I know. Another thing was he came super prepared, which I do some of my preparation as I'm recording.
Ian
00:52:21 – 00:52:21
Right.
Aaron
00:52:21 – 00:52:29
But he was like, he came ready to just record at all. Yeah. So that was helpful. But things things that we need to change. So, hopefully, you know, we do this.
Aaron
00:52:29 – 00:52:55
It makes a bunch of money. Everybody's super happy, and we'll do it again. Things we need to change, I need a recording computer, instead of because right now I run I run my dev and my recording all from this one MacBook Pro. Got it. And it works great for me, but we spent three or four hours just trying to get his machine ready to record.
Aaron
00:52:55 – 00:53:13
So we're we're downloading Blackmagic drivers. We're installing ScreenFlow and activating licenses. We're, like, copying these shell scripts over so that he can, like, set his windows up correctly. And I just thought this is this is the dumbest. This is so stupid.
Aaron
00:53:13 – 00:53:14
This is a waste of time. What we need
Ian
00:53:14 – 00:53:16
is Mac minis just
Aaron
00:53:16 – 00:53:29
set up. Exactly. We need a Mac mini m four that the guest instructor or myself will run HDMI out of my computer into the recording computer, and it just shows up as a source. That's what
Ian
00:53:29 – 00:53:30
we need.
Aaron
00:53:31 – 00:53:59
So that was a that was a big lesson learned, which is fine. Like, that's as far as lessons learned goes, that's pretty that's pretty reasonable. So, I do think hopefully, we'll do it again, and it would be nice to invest in a recording computer where all the peripherals and all the recording software run on one machine, and you just you just plug in HDMI from your MacBook and run it into that capture device. That's the ideal. Yep.
Aaron
00:54:00 – 00:54:24
So I think that was probably the big takeaway. I think in the future, if somebody is not if somebody is not as, like, talented as as Steven was, I need a list of, like, maxims. Like, record like, do this, don't do this. Do this, don't do this. He he and I talked about it a lot that first day, and, also, I think he's naturally gifted in that.
Aaron
00:54:24 – 00:54:44
But I have seen some courses where the videos go on for thirty minutes, and I'm like, guys, you you you need six five minute videos, not one thirty minute video. Because in a thirty minute video, you're trying to teach 15 different things, and people are lost. Also, it's intimidating to start a thirty minute educational video.
Ian
00:54:44 – 00:54:45
Feels like a big
Aaron
00:54:46 – 00:54:58
Oh, man. Thirty minute, like, YouTube is like, oh, I'm just kinda, like, having fun. Thirty minute education's like, I'm going to class now. Right. So, I need to write, like, write down some of those aphorisms of, like, do this, not that.
Ian
00:54:59 – 00:55:00
Oh, wow. Nice word.
Aaron
00:55:00 – 00:55:01
$10 words. Yeah.
Ian
00:55:01 – 00:55:03
We're just showing off. Man. This education
Aaron
00:55:03 – 00:55:18
we got. Nice. But he he nailed that part, so I I don't feel like that was a miss. Yeah. But, yeah, I I think provided the economics are there, I think this could be extremely, extremely viable.
Aaron
00:55:18 – 00:55:37
I think flying someone to the studio and having oversight over it, like, takes it to a next level in terms of what the output is gonna be. Yeah. And I think it could be a good model for us going forward. We have to see, can we sell somebody else's course? That's that's the remaining open question.
Ian
00:55:38 – 00:55:48
Yeah. Yeah. What do you think about the, like, the learnings here in terms of your new studio space? Like, are you gonna soundproof it more? So could you could have somebody recording and you still be in there?
Ian
00:55:48 – 00:55:52
Or, like, since you're building out this new setup Right. If you're gonna do anything different now.
Aaron
00:55:53 – 00:56:09
Yeah. I think, I I do think one thing that we'll do different is have all of kind of this recording equipment here, self contained on, you know, a two by two or three by three movable desk or something.
Ian
00:56:10 – 00:56:10
Thing.
Aaron
00:56:10 – 00:56:24
Yeah. A cart. Exactly. That'll be one thing that I've realized, like, that might be kinda useful, especially as we have hopefully multiple recording locations. It'd be nice to be able to set the thing up and then turn it around for someone else to record later.
Aaron
00:56:24 – 00:57:01
And then in terms of soundproofing, I will absolutely test that better when we get there. So there's, like, the office room, which is, like, you know, 12 by 20 or something, and the rest of it is warehouse. And I will need to I will need to see from the office room what can you hear from the warehouse side. And I may end up building out, you know, a false wall with rock wool or something in it that, like, helps isolate those two rooms, from each other. Because, yeah, if somebody's in if somebody's in the little office space recording, I wanna be out in the warehouse and be able to use an inside saws.
Aaron
00:57:01 – 00:57:09
Yeah. Or running saws. Yeah. I don't know how much soundproofing we'll get in that regard, but, yeah, I wanna be able to live in the other space while they're recording.
Ian
00:57:10 – 00:57:20
Yeah. That makes sense to, you know, do some kind of heavy mats or a false wall with heavier insulation or something. Yeah. To we don't wanna make it too hot in there either. I guess that's
Aaron
00:57:20 – 00:57:21
No. No. No. No. Yeah.
Ian
00:57:21 – 00:57:24
All these air conditioning, I guess. It does. Yeah. Texas.
Aaron
00:57:24 – 00:57:26
Mhmm. Both both spaces do, which is nice.
Ian
00:57:26 – 00:57:28
Oh, so that's good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really good.
Ian
00:57:29 – 00:57:32
Alright. So it sounds like going well. When are you guys trying to release it? Next year, you said. Right?
Aaron
00:57:32 – 00:57:41
This is this is the other thing. We're gonna give ourselves some time. We've been, we've been just killing ourselves on deadlines, and this one, we don't have to.
Ian
00:57:41 – 00:57:41
Yeah.
Aaron
00:57:41 – 00:57:57
Like, we haven't even we haven't talked about this beyond, you know, this this podcast and and a vague tweet. And so we're gonna take time. We're gonna edit it. And then I think we'll probably try to release it early in the New Year, maybe maybe late January, if not February.
Ian
00:57:58 – 00:58:06
Yeah. I think that makes sense. Because you're you're gonna have a lot of the same customers, I think, and it starts to feel like if you're just one after the other after the other, it's like, oh, I just paid these guys, like
Aaron
00:58:06 – 00:58:06
I know.
Ian
00:58:07 – 00:58:08
Multiple times. So Give
Aaron
00:58:08 – 00:58:10
them time to get that they paid us.
Ian
00:58:10 – 00:58:14
Yeah. Yeah. That's a key strategy. Mhmm. I like that.
Ian
00:58:14 – 00:58:40
And that also seems like kind of thing where you can do some business dealing maybe too, like, because it's like a rail specific thing. So it's like I don't know why. I have no idea what the big rail sites are, if there's, like, a Laravel news of rails or whatever, but maybe there's some, you know, stuff that they could the business end of your operation could poke around on and see if there's, deals to be had or things that make sense in that regard to to kinda build up more tentacles into the Rails Mhmm. Zone.
Aaron
00:58:41 – 00:58:41
Yeah. Exactly.
Ian
00:58:43 – 00:58:52
Well, it sounds like it went really well. I mean, that's great. Like, if you can get, you know, two or three of those a year, plus you do, you know, one or two or whatever. I mean, that's I mean, that alone is pretty
Aaron
00:58:52 – 00:58:54
The size of the business. Yeah.
Ian
00:58:54 – 00:59:04
Yeah. I mean, like, in two years, you're gonna have ten, twelve courses or whatever if you were to keep that kind of base. So it seems pretty solid. Yeah. Nice.
Ian
00:59:04 – 00:59:08
Alright. What else is going on? Any other action over there?
Aaron
00:59:08 – 00:59:12
Oh, I got on Laravel Cloud.
Ian
00:59:12 – 00:59:16
Oh, yes. I saw you did that. Mhmm. How was it? Is it glorious?
Aaron
00:59:16 – 00:59:18
It's good. It's very good.
Ian
00:59:18 – 00:59:19
I knew.
Aaron
00:59:19 – 00:59:21
It's very it's very good.
Ian
00:59:21 – 00:59:22
I never had any doubts.
Aaron
00:59:22 – 00:59:38
It's very good. It's beautiful, first of all, just like Right. The the website or the application itself is beautiful, but it's also very considered. Like, it's not just it's not just like, hey, let's throw purple rays of light all over the site and
Ian
00:59:38 – 00:59:39
Right.
Aaron
00:59:39 – 00:59:40
Max out your fans. But it's it's
Ian
00:59:40 – 00:59:45
like 500 pixels of white space just to have white space for no reason. Just give me
Aaron
00:59:45 – 00:59:54
a break. So it's beautiful, but it's functional. Yep. And then the actual experience of deploying an application is just it's super smooth. It's great.
Aaron
00:59:54 – 01:00:03
It's just what you want it to be. It's Heroku, but in 2024 for Laravel. It's perfect. It's great. I love it.
Aaron
01:00:03 – 01:00:16
I love it. I have a few a few open questions like, how do I get FFmpeg on the server? Because I want to do, you know, some, like, video processing. Just chop some stuff up. Right.
Aaron
01:00:16 – 01:00:20
And, friend of the show, former employee, Chris Fadel,
Ian
01:00:21 – 01:00:23
the developer. Got a man on the inside.
Aaron
01:00:23 – 01:00:34
Yeah, that's right. He was in Slack and he was telling me some stuff. And so it seems it seems imminently doable. I just haven't tried it yet. But beyond that, it's it just works, which is nice.
Aaron
01:00:34 – 01:00:53
And then we're going to 100%. We're moving, AaronPrincess.com there and the try hard platform, which is all of the courses. We're moving them there because of all of the things that we do that we shouldn't be doing, like, you know, encoding our own video, dealing with servers is definitely one of the things that we shouldn't
Ian
01:00:53 – 01:00:53
be doing.
Aaron
01:00:54 – 01:01:09
Yeah. Like, maybe you can make an argument. We get some value out of being thought leaders in FFmpeg and hosting HLS videos for cheap. Like, maybe that helps. But I don't I don't need I don't need to apply patch updates to a server.
Aaron
01:01:09 – 01:01:18
That's just not anything I ever need to do. No. So So that's what I loved about vapor, but vapor, of course, has its limitations because, you know, it's ephemeral.
Ian
01:01:18 – 01:01:19
Right.
Aaron
01:01:19 – 01:01:33
And so the platform is hosted on forge, digital ocean, and this is like I'm sure that forge is going to continue to exist and be useful to a bunch of people, but I'm not using it anymore. Right. I'm going I'm going cloud, baby. I'm gone. I'm churning.
Aaron
01:01:35 – 01:01:37
So it's great. Look forward to it. Yeah.
Ian
01:01:37 – 01:01:49
That's awesome. I mean, I have a bunch of, like I have, like, 10 servers at Linode. Because I'm big, like, everything gets its own server. Like, I don't like the What's the I know you could put multiple sites on this. No.
Ian
01:01:49 – 01:01:53
No. No. Like, everything's gets its own server. I don't wanna think about it. I don't want one thing messing with another.
Ian
01:01:53 – 01:02:13
So, like, I have, like, 10 of these servers, and they're all just, like, plain Laravel applications that are, like, a website for some you know, it's like even the Laravel site is, like, two pages or whatever. You know? It's like there's nothing there. So, yeah, I think that, hopefully, I'll be moving stuff over to cloud as well. I'm sure some of it for sure and, possibly all of it.
Ian
01:02:13 – 01:02:19
I would love to get HubSpot over there someday. That would Oh. A little more complicated. Yeah. Yeah.
Ian
01:02:19 – 01:02:27
I mean, having these, like, 400 servers we're managing, I'd rather just have them be 400 Laravel cloud servers we're managing. It's not not not managing, I should say. Right.
Aaron
01:02:27 – 01:02:29
Make Fadelloper manage them all.
Ian
01:02:29 – 01:02:32
Right. Fadelloper knows how both sides
Aaron
01:02:32 – 01:02:35
work, which is very interesting. Yeah. He thought he got away.
Ian
01:02:35 – 01:02:40
He thought he got away. He did. He built HubSpot cloud. He's been building Laravel cloud. Managed by fleet
Aaron
01:02:40 – 01:02:42
of servers again, Chris.
Ian
01:02:42 – 01:03:08
Tell us how to do it. But I'm assuming I've, we actually just bought a bunch of reserve instances because we do that to save money on AWS. So I'm not thinking it's gonna happen anytime soon. But when things stabilize over there and they add things, like, be able to install custom stuff easily and whatever, probably need a API, which I doubt or definitely need API, which I'm sure won't be there day one or whatever. But as that stuff comes along, definitely be something I'll be interested in, checking out because yeah.
Ian
01:03:08 – 01:03:23
I mean, that's and think about it. I mean, that's like that's why they're gonna make all the money. Right? Like, we all think about it like, oh, you know, I have my side projects on there, whatever, but I was like, companies like me who is like, I have 400 servers I wanna move at some point, maybe someday. You know?
Ian
01:03:23 – 01:03:31
So, like, there's a lot of companies like that that have hundreds and thousands of servers. And so you get a little chunk chunk of that. Now you're you're talking some real money over there. So
Aaron
01:03:32 – 01:03:35
Oh, yeah. They I think they'll be just fine.
Ian
01:03:35 – 01:03:37
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be cool.
Aaron
01:03:37 – 01:03:38
And that
Ian
01:03:38 – 01:03:43
was I think the design is crazy. They've, like, both private cloud, but also a night watch. Like, that
Aaron
01:03:43 – 01:03:44
night watch is crazy.
Ian
01:03:45 – 01:03:53
It's, like, really crazy. I'm like, this is, like, really, really, really good. It's, like, really high level design. Just so good. Yeah.
Ian
01:03:53 – 01:03:54
I was blown away by that.
Aaron
01:03:54 – 01:04:00
They're just gonna decimate that market when Nightwatch comes out. Yeah. It's just gonna be Nightwatch.
Ian
01:04:00 – 01:04:01
It's just Nightwatch.
Aaron
01:04:01 – 01:04:01
Why would you
Ian
01:04:02 – 01:04:02
They're even
Aaron
01:04:02 – 01:04:08
Why would you use anything else? I don't know if they capture your front end JavaScript errors. That's an open question to me. I don't know if Nightwatch does.
Ian
01:04:08 – 01:04:20
Yeah. It's kinda interesting too because the demo was more, like, about the performance stuff, but it definitely does seem like there's also the, like, you know, bug tracking not tracking, but you know what I mean? Logging and
Aaron
01:04:20 – 01:04:20
Mhmm.
Ian
01:04:20 – 01:04:29
Error exceptions and all that stuff. And, yeah, if they do the JavaScript, it's like, that would seem like the thing to use. Gonna crush it. Yeah. It's interesting how
Aaron
01:04:29 – 01:04:36
that they did. When when Jess was demoing it, she did have, like, three or four or five, things on the sidebar that were blurred out
Ian
01:04:36 – 01:04:37
Right.
Aaron
01:04:37 – 01:04:43
That they didn't even demo. So that could be that could be JavaScript errors. That could be all kinds of different stuff that they're tracking.
Ian
01:04:43 – 01:04:52
Yeah. It's gonna be interesting to see what they do. It definitely I think it makes a lot of sense. I mean, that's both the platforms just make total sense too, which is Yeah. A little bit.
Ian
01:04:52 – 01:05:05
Like, it just is the obvious thing to build, but then to do it so well. Right? And, yeah, just obviously with the Otwell touch on it, I would say. And, yeah, it's gonna be huge, I think.
Aaron
01:05:05 – 01:05:07
I think so. I think so.
Ian
01:05:07 – 01:05:17
It's cool to see too that, like, you know, took this investment and, like, what they've done with that. You know? It's like they're really Yeah. Doing a lot of stuff with that. It's not just it's stuff that Taylor wouldn't wanna do without it.
Ian
01:05:17 – 01:05:17
You know?
Aaron
01:05:17 – 01:05:19
They're not messing around, man.
Ian
01:05:19 – 01:05:22
They're not messing around. Yeah. Jeez. Yeah.
Aaron
01:05:22 – 01:05:23
So They are moving.
Ian
01:05:23 – 01:05:28
You're gonna need another sit down. When do I get my next sit down with Taylor? I want I want another sit down.
Aaron
01:05:28 – 01:05:34
I don't know. I this may this may surprise you. That, in fact, is not up to me. That is up to Taylor. Yeah.
Ian
01:05:34 – 01:05:35
I thought
Aaron
01:05:35 – 01:05:42
it's So I I'm not the one that brings Taylor in. Taylor is the one that says, I would like to be brought in. Yes, sir. How
Ian
01:05:42 – 01:05:43
high, sir? Yes.
Aaron
01:05:43 – 01:05:54
So, I don't know. We'll do another interview at some point soon. That's that's a lot of fun. And, you know, somewhat related, if anyone wants to give me $57,000,000, I will also do awesome stuff.
Ian
01:05:54 – 01:05:55
You got lots of ideas.
Aaron
01:05:55 – 01:06:01
I'll do so much stuff. It'll blow your mind. It's crazy. So I just want that to be on the record.
Ian
01:06:01 – 01:06:07
Yeah. I don't know. I've always torn about that. Like No. Obviously thought about this a fair amount.
Ian
01:06:07 – 01:06:10
I don't know. There's a lot of responsibility with the money. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
Ian
01:06:10 – 01:06:10
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
Ian
01:06:10 – 01:06:10
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
Ian
01:06:10 – 01:06:32
I don't know. I don't know. I I can't drink to other people, though. I just I'm so, like it's so baked into my core now that I just I don't answer to anybody, and that definitely has detriments at times for me, but it also has obviously upsides. Yeah.
Ian
01:06:32 – 01:06:34
Yeah. Money. I don't know. Being being Money is nice. Yeah.
Ian
01:06:34 – 01:06:50
I think it would be cool. The way I would like to do that if I ever do it is if somebody which I can't even imagine is happening, to be honest with you, for a number of reasons. But if somebody ever sold HelpSpot and I had enough money that I was like, I don't have to work. But then I had an idea that needed money. Mhmm.
Ian
01:06:51 – 01:07:02
That's an interesting, like, scenario because it's like, I'm not really beholden to you. Right? Like, it's like, I have my own money. I hope this works, and we all make a ton of money and we're fabulously wealthy. Same time, if it doesn't work, if
Aaron
01:07:02 – 01:07:03
it doesn't work, I don't care.
Ian
01:07:03 – 01:07:04
I don't care.
Aaron
01:07:04 – 01:07:09
That's what I, that's what investors love to hear. I'm sorry. They love no conviction and
Ian
01:07:09 – 01:07:16
skin in the game. Yeah. Dated to them like that. But, but that is, that changes, which is actually like that's kind of Taylor's angle on it. Right?
Ian
01:07:16 – 01:07:41
Like, he doesn't need the money. Obviously, everybody likes more money, but he doesn't need the money. And so it does give him more freedom in that scenario, which I think is interesting versus, yeah, if you're just like, I'm doing a startup and I'm pitching people and, this is gonna be my full time job and I don't have any, you know, significant other money behind, you know, changes the stress levels and all that.
Aaron
01:07:41 – 01:07:42
Yes. Totally.
Ian
01:07:42 – 01:07:45
So I you got less than 57,000,000. I'll take it. I'll take it.
Aaron
01:07:45 – 01:07:56
You gotta you gotta prep help spot for an exit, man. You gotta spend the next five years prepping it to to exit and then exit and just have a bunch of money and chill.
Ian
01:07:56 – 01:07:59
I just had this discussion this morning, with Jamie. I've always
Aaron
01:07:59 – 01:08:01
had Did you log it?
Ian
01:08:01 – 01:08:08
I didn't log this. No. Wow. Because there's, like, obviously, there's, like okay. So I'm 48.
Ian
01:08:08 – 01:08:19
Mhmm. So in, you know, fifteen to twenty years gonna retire. So it's like, obviously, like, the standard software route here is, like, you sell it and that's what you do. Right? Mhmm.
Ian
01:08:19 – 01:08:28
But I always love the idea of, like, user scape and son or Userscape and sons or Userscape and daughter
Aaron
01:08:28 – 01:08:31
or, like, the whole timey. Are you Userscape?
Ian
01:08:32 – 01:08:34
Yeah. I'm Userscape. That's a new company.
Aaron
01:08:34 – 01:08:39
Typically, they go with, you know, Ian and Sons, but I get Oh.
Ian
01:08:39 – 01:08:40
Okay. So you're user
Aaron
01:08:40 – 01:08:41
scape. So it's user scape and Sons.
Ian
01:08:41 – 01:08:44
Yeah. You want, like, landsman and landsman and sons
Aaron
01:08:44 – 01:08:45
or something like that?
Ian
01:08:45 – 01:08:48
Yeah. Yeah. It could be that. I like user scape and sons.
Aaron
01:08:48 – 01:08:49
User scape and sons.
Ian
01:08:49 – 01:08:58
Okay. But that old timey, you could see the sun. Right? It's like the ampersand with the n, sons or daughter or whatever. I got all the options on the table.
Ian
01:08:59 – 01:09:07
And one of the kids just takes over. It's just like a family business. Like, they just just continues. Now none of my kids are interested in software development. I
Aaron
01:09:07 – 01:09:12
was gonna say you should put all of your hopes in that and see see how that works for your relationship.
Ian
01:09:12 – 01:09:18
Mad at everybody. Horrifically mad at everyone for decades when they don't do it. Yeah.
Aaron
01:09:18 – 01:09:31
This is gonna be the great reversal. You have a part of, and they go and be farmers instead. Right. It's like, instead of dad's a farmer, you go to the big city. Dad's in the big city, and you go to farm.
Ian
01:09:31 – 01:09:37
Maybe they'll start, like, a hardware store, and it'll be like sons and dad or something. You know? There you go. It could be the reverse.
Aaron
01:09:37 – 01:09:39
And user scape. It has a nice name
Ian
01:09:39 – 01:09:40
to it. User scape.
Aaron
01:09:40 – 01:09:41
I like that. Yeah.
Ian
01:09:41 – 01:09:51
So I don't know. But I I never really like, it's like the idea of, like, people just taking it over is so interesting. I don't think it's gonna happen because nobody's really interested so far. They're still young. Who knows?
Ian
01:09:51 – 01:10:00
Right? But I don't know. It's not something we ever talk about in software, so I thought that part of it was intriguing. It's like nobody ever is really all these other businesses is a huge thing. Right?
Ian
01:10:00 – 01:10:06
Like, tons of businesses are like, well, the kids work in the business, and then it's someday they take over the business. That's like
Aaron
01:10:06 – 01:10:08
Nepotism is a well trod path.
Ian
01:10:08 – 01:10:09
Very scary.
Aaron
01:10:10 – 01:10:12
What it what was Jamie's take on it?
Ian
01:10:12 – 01:10:16
She just likes it's funny. She was just, like, laughing at me, basically. But, Yeah.
Aaron
01:10:16 – 01:10:21
I'm familiar with those responses too. That's a great idea. Did you take out the trash? Oh,
Ian
01:10:21 – 01:10:22
okay. Right. Yeah. We're we're
Aaron
01:10:22 – 01:10:23
done with this conversation.
Ian
01:10:23 – 01:10:34
She was like, you know because I was like, well, nobody's really interested in this stuff. But she was like, well, they're young, you know, whatever. So we'll see when they're done with school and all that. But but that's not even how that works. Right?
Ian
01:10:34 – 01:10:36
In the old days, it wasn't like when you were done with school. It's like
Aaron
01:10:36 – 01:10:37
Mm-mm.
Ian
01:10:37 – 01:10:56
When you're a kid, you're, like, in the in the hardware store with me, stocking the shelves or whatever, and that's, like, how it goes. My oldest son has worked here for a summer, and my middle kid is gearing up to do something. It's hard. It's not a good business for young kids to do stuff in, which is unfortunate. It's like, what do you have them do?
Ian
01:10:56 – 01:11:05
Like, link check or there's some stuff like that, but it's just like there's not, like, an obvious thing that a 14 year old can really dig their teeth into for a whole No.
Aaron
01:11:05 – 01:11:05
Not really.
Ian
01:11:06 – 01:11:07
I don't know. But
Aaron
01:11:07 – 01:11:29
I think you need to you need to spend the next five years with an eye towards an exit. Mhmm. And maybe maybe that doesn't come to fruition, and you get to hand over a better business to a child, a a business that is, you know, streamlined and ready for sale. And turns out they wanna take it over, and they take it over, and it becomes user scape and sun. Right.
Aaron
01:11:29 – 01:11:38
But the time is going to come when you want all that that stored up equity to become cash US dollars. That's true. The time to prepare for that.
Ian
01:11:39 – 01:12:08
It is. I mean, that kind of overlaps already with my thinking, which is, like, as the kids get bigger and I have more, like, time and energy, this is always kind of that was where I was heading this year. But then this whole, like, gallbladder illness is, like, totally blown up this year. But assuming that 2025 doesn't have a bunch of stuff blowing me up like that, I do feel like there's gonna be just more time and energy I'll have towards the business in general. And so that's kind of the same thing in my mind.
Ian
01:12:08 – 01:12:37
A large part is like, alright. Get the business on better footing, get solve some of the tech debt stuff, which was what we're working on, which then builds, you know, the foundation for, like, the new features and things and all that stuff. So and, yes, worst case scenario, you end up with a better business, which makes more money, and that's a great outcome. And then, yeah, selling selling those businesses is always at the very least, it's always possible just on a straight, you know, spreadsheet Right. Plan of like, well, this is your revenue and this is Mhmm.
Ian
01:12:37 – 01:12:51
The, you know, the multiple business with this size, with this profit, blah blah blah. That's not the best kind of deal, but that is always a deal that's available because it's supposed to be a money person that's like, yeah. I can do this, math this out, and it makes sense. Right. That's fine.
Ian
01:12:51 – 01:13:01
Obviously, if you get something more strategic, that's where you got a better outcome. But, yeah. So I think that's sort of the plan even if it's somewhat indirect.
Aaron
01:13:01 – 01:13:04
New idea. Laravel Inc. Buys it.
Ian
01:13:04 – 01:13:05
Oh, there we go. It's a
Aaron
01:13:05 – 01:13:07
great idea. Help desk game. Keep in the family.
Ian
01:13:08 – 01:13:11
Get in the help desk game. That would be awesome, like, full circle kind of, like
Aaron
01:13:11 – 01:13:17
big thing. Imagine? Alright. One of your former employees acquires you. That would be awesome.
Ian
01:13:17 – 01:13:22
Tailored to acquihire me. Right? Like, just acquihire me. That that's it. Give me a job.
Ian
01:13:22 – 01:13:23
Running coffee
Aaron
01:13:23 – 01:13:24
somewhere around.
Ian
01:13:24 – 01:13:28
Yeah. I'll be business dad, corner office. Mhmm. Business dad advice.
Aaron
01:13:31 – 01:13:40
C COO Tom is gonna be like, what the hell does Ian do here? He's he's business dad. Dad. Of course. Obviously, he's business dad.
Ian
01:13:40 – 01:13:46
How are we gonna operate without business dad? He's a god he's a godfather. That's what he's doing here.
Aaron
01:13:46 – 01:13:48
Tom would hate that.
Ian
01:13:48 – 01:13:53
He just sends the godfather devs. Yeah. Tom doesn't see any kind of guy. He wants a guy who just does godfather dubs. No.
Ian
01:13:53 – 01:13:55
I don't think so. All day in Slack.
Aaron
01:13:55 – 01:13:57
Tom goofs around quite as much as we do.
Ian
01:13:57 – 01:14:00
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well. That's alright.
Aaron
01:14:00 – 01:14:00
His loss.
Ian
01:14:01 – 01:14:07
His loss. Exactly. But it's funny when people project stuff like that. Like, we could predict everybody into that. Right?
Ian
01:14:07 – 01:14:10
Like, oh, they should buy you. They should buy Aaron Francis. Shake. And, like Yes.
Aaron
01:14:10 – 01:14:11
I agree.
Ian
01:14:11 – 01:14:12
The content arm now.
Aaron
01:14:12 – 01:14:19
Yes. I I agree. Yeah. I'm for sale. I'm sorry if I ever intimated that I wasn't, but I am for sale.
Ian
01:14:19 – 01:14:21
You'll take less than 57,000,000. I
Aaron
01:14:21 – 01:14:26
think right now. Way less. Interesting. Yeah. 24
Ian
01:14:26 – 01:14:27
something like that.
Aaron
01:14:27 – 01:14:28
I would take 24,000,000.
Ian
01:14:28 – 01:14:29
You would?
Aaron
01:14:29 – 01:14:31
Yeah. Okay. Not a penny less, but yeah.
Ian
01:14:32 – 01:14:41
Oh, jeez. I don't know what the I feel like they have a plate full. I hope they don't do anything else. I feel like you got two products. You gotta launch these products and be successful with both of them.
Ian
01:14:41 – 01:14:54
They're both huge. Want them to, like, execute on those two for a while and, like, nail those and hit a home run and be so busy with those that Yeah. Like, doing anything else would be stupid because I just feel like those are huge opportunities and seems like
Aaron
01:14:54 – 01:15:01
My guess my guess is they'll launch these two big things. And then for the sake of the narrative, they'll put out some big open source thing. That's my guess. I could
Ian
01:15:01 – 01:15:17
see that. Yeah. I could see some big open source or something they could extract from them that, is a big open source y Mhmm. Type element that is useful and cool, but, something like that maybe. Yeah.
Ian
01:15:17 – 01:15:22
Yeah. It would does. Would make sense for them to have some big open source sort of announcements here.
Aaron
01:15:22 – 01:15:22
Mhmm. I
Ian
01:15:22 – 01:15:26
don't know. But everything seems to be running fine, you know?
Aaron
01:15:26 – 01:15:27
Oh, it seems.
Ian
01:15:27 – 01:15:30
Everybody's happy. They're so happy. For most part. Right? Like It seems
Aaron
01:15:30 – 01:15:32
to be it seems to be going great.
Ian
01:15:32 – 01:15:37
Yeah. I feel like there's no it's not even like the upstart frameworks anymore. You know? There's like
Aaron
01:15:38 – 01:15:38
Mhmm.
Ian
01:15:38 – 01:15:48
There used to be like upstart frameworks that's it's mostly died off. So I don't know. And they're still pretty hey. Every week, there's a release or every other week, it's, like It's crazy. Cranking.
Ian
01:15:48 – 01:15:50
Yeah. They're very productive over there.
Aaron
01:15:51 – 01:15:52
They are. Good for them.
Ian
01:15:53 – 01:15:57
Yeah. Alright. I don't know. Let's do it. Nope.
Ian
01:15:57 – 01:15:58
Wrap it. Alright.
Aaron
01:15:58 – 01:16:08
I do I do wanna hear people's people's feedback on the new and improved sponsorship idea. Yes. AM radio tagline. So that's I wanna hear people's feedback on that.
Ian
01:16:08 – 01:16:13
Ten second spots. Yep. Let us know what you think of that. Yeah. And tell Caleb you want a job if you're in
Aaron
01:16:13 – 01:16:16
the market. DM Caleb. Sorry, Caleb.
Ian
01:16:16 – 01:16:40
Otherwise otherwise, mostly technical.com, mostly tech pod on Twitter Mostly technical on blue sky, which I didn't write down, but pretty sure it's correct and, mostly technicalpodcast@gmail.com, which I need to check if you've emailed I haven't checked it in a little bit, but I will check it today. It'll be on the log And, we will talk to you next week. Later.
Aaron
01:16:40 – 01:16:41
See you.
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.