The Week of Aaron

September 19, 2023

Ian & Aaron discuss Screencasting.com, why Ian can't leave email alone, how and why the internet is a vast place, and much more. Sponsored by LaraJobs & HelloQuery. Sent questions or feedback to mostlytechnicalpodcast@gmail.com
Watch on YouTube →

Transcript

Ian
00:00:02 – 00:00:03
Hello.
Aaron
00:00:03 – 00:00:05
Good morning, Ian.
Ian
00:00:05 – 00:00:06
Back at it.
Aaron
00:00:06 – 00:00:08
Happy Monday. How are we doing?
Ian
00:00:09 – 00:00:13
Good. Ready to take on the week. Lots to do.
Aaron
00:00:13 – 00:00:21
Yeah. You were pulling back there for a second. You got back from vacation, and you were like, oh, shoot. I've committed to too much. And then do you feel like you you're you're all stabilized?
Aaron
00:00:21 – 00:00:25
Did you pick any of that stuff back up, or are you glad you cut some?
Ian
00:00:25 – 00:00:53
I I picked up one thing back up with the help of, of Dave and the team here just to you know, Dave and I, actually, 2 of my employees. I put one of the things that I canceled back on the table because I was just a little rash in it when I went totally scorched earth. So, but besides that, yeah. No. Everything else I rejiggled, I'm pretty happy with and really focused on the kind of big project we're getting going on, which we'll talk about here in the future, I think.
Ian
00:00:53 – 00:00:54
But Is this the big
Aaron
00:00:54 – 00:00:56
is this the big secret project?
Ian
00:00:56 – 00:01:06
Yeah. I don't know if it's even, like, a secret secret, but I haven't really talked about it publicly too much. So we can can start to get into it, but not yet. Because I've dubbed this the week of Aaron.
Aaron
00:01:06 – 00:01:09
Okay. Wow. I like the sound of that already. This is good.
Aaron
00:01:09 – 00:01:10
You have a good day.
Aaron
00:01:10 – 00:01:10
Do this more often.
Ian
00:01:12 – 00:01:17
Often. You have so much going on this week. We're not an hour is not even gonna be enough time, so we gotta jump in.
Aaron
00:01:17 – 00:01:17
Give
Ian
00:01:17 – 00:01:20
us give us your launch. Let's start with the launch.
Aaron
00:01:20 – 00:01:37
Let's jump in. This week is the launch of screencasting.com. God willing, this is the week that we launch. So the plan is the plan is to launch on Wednesday, which would be 18, 19, 20. Wednesday 20th is, is launch day.
Aaron
00:01:38 – 00:01:51
And I am working furiously, to get everything buttoned up and finalized so that we can do that. It's a lot of work, man. Getting everything ready for a launch is just
Ian
00:01:52 – 00:01:52
So much work.
Aaron
00:01:53 – 00:02:10
So much work. So many so many things to, like, button up at the very end. And I'm trying to do it right this time. Like, I'm trying to do I'm trying to do, like, an email sequence that, you know, drips out over a few days to get people excited. I'm trying to get affiliates to sign up to help.
Aaron
00:02:10 – 00:02:28
I'm trying to do all of, like, all of the stuff that you're supposed to do with launching. I'm trying to do it all right. It's hard. Now I know why launches end up being half assed, which is kind of a shame because you you put in all the work to do the thing, and then you reach the finish line, and you're like, I'm just gonna stop here.
Ian
00:02:28 – 00:02:42
I know. That's a huge, like yeah. Leaving all that stuff to the end is so hard. That's a big advantage of, like, you know, startups and even small companies and things. We could have somebody else working on that stuff or even having a cofounder in your endeavors.
Ian
00:02:42 – 00:02:48
It's like, well, if one person could actually have been working on marketing, you know, for the last, 3 months, then
Aaron
00:02:48 – 00:02:49
that's
Ian
00:02:49 – 00:02:57
a whole different thing. But, yeah, you get to the end, like, in your case, do all the recording, you do all the stuff, and then there's still all this other work to do. Not the book.
Aaron
00:02:57 – 00:03:03
Yeah. For fortunately, I've got so I've got, Jason Beggs helping me on all the technical
Ian
00:03:03 – 00:03:04
side That's great.
Aaron
00:03:04 – 00:03:20
Yeah. Which is amazing, But I still have to do, you know, I still have to do a lot of, like, the not only the content, but the the marketing stuff as well. But if I had to do if I had to do the technical side too, there's just I wouldn't I wouldn't make it. It just wouldn't work.
Ian
00:03:20 – 00:03:30
Can we have a side adjacent Beggs sidebar? Because Yeah. Like, he's everybody's right hand man. Like, every time, like, who who are you using what who's doing this for you? Everybody's always like, Jason Beggs is working on it.
Ian
00:03:30 – 00:03:33
I'm like, this guy is, like, 10 of them. Sure.
Aaron
00:03:33 – 00:03:47
Yes. He also has a twin, and so that's how he does it. But here here's the deal here's the deal about Jason. Mhmm. You know you know those people that are, like, if they tell you they're gonna do something, they just do it, and then they bring it back, and it's good, and it's done?
Ian
00:03:47 – 00:03:48
Love those people.
Aaron
00:03:48 – 00:03:50
Love those people.
Ian
00:03:50 – 00:03:51
Very hard to find those people.
Aaron
00:03:51 – 00:04:00
They're very hard to find. Jason Jason is that person. He'll he'll just be like, well, I'll you know, I knocked this out for you. Here it is. Here's the repo.
Aaron
00:04:00 – 00:04:17
You're like, wait. You already did it. You you did all you didn't have, like, an emotional hang up about, oh, how should I do this thing? How am I gonna you just did it, and it's done. So, yeah, I feel like I feel like Jason is is the secret behind a lot of people in the Laravel community.
Ian
00:04:17 – 00:04:18
Yes. His secret weapon.
Aaron
00:04:19 – 00:04:48
It's amazing. So nobody, you know, nobody reach out to him because I don't want y'all to steal him from me. But if you do need, I think his main thing besides, like, keeping me on track, his main thing is taking Figma or other designs and converting it into, like, proper good tailwinds, HTML or he uses a bunch of the front end frameworks as well. But Right. So design to tailwind.com is his thing.
Aaron
00:04:48 – 00:04:55
But, yeah, he's just like a no nonsense quiet worker, and that's kinda what I need. It's so awesome.
Ian
00:04:56 – 00:05:09
That's such a secret to a great consultant too because I feel like I could I I started out being consultant in the super way back. It lasted, like, 2 2 minutes, literally. And, it didn't work because, yeah, I can't do that. Like, I can't just be like, okay. I'm look.
Ian
00:05:09 – 00:05:11
I got this design or whatever it is. I'm just gonna plow
Aaron
00:05:13 – 00:05:14
through it, get it done,
Ian
00:05:14 – 00:05:22
straight line to the finish line. Like, I'm always like, well, should we do this different? What Maybe it should be this other thing. Like, what about this? And, like
Aaron
00:05:23 – 00:05:25
Maybe we fundamentally rethought your business.
Ian
00:05:25 – 00:05:37
This design will change. Yeah. And, just being like, no, I had this thing. I'm just gonna build it and then it'll be done instead of just taking months of being, you know, down the side path of thought. Yes.
Ian
00:05:37 – 00:05:42
Just getting it getting it done is such a valuable, element to a great consultant. So
Aaron
00:05:42 – 00:05:46
Yes. A real he's got a real protestant work ethic. He just There we go. Freaking works.
Ian
00:05:46 – 00:05:48
It's awesome.
Aaron
00:05:48 – 00:05:56
Meanwhile, I'm like, I should rerecord every single video. He's just over there. Okay. The thing I was supposed to do, that part's done. Now it's on you, man.
Ian
00:05:56 – 00:06:04
What what are you using for this is another eternal battle I have. What are you using for your it sounds like you're setting up an affiliate program. Like, what are you using for that?
Aaron
00:06:04 – 00:06:07
Yeah. We're using lemon squeezy for that. Oh, just the
Ian
00:06:07 – 00:06:09
baked in one. Okay.
Aaron
00:06:09 – 00:06:24
Yeah. We're doing the whole we went all in on the lemon squeezy platform Mhmm. Because the checkout is super, super nice. It does handle the sales tax, which, you know, if you're the government, I really care about. But if you're not the government,
Ian
00:06:24 – 00:06:30
I just don't care about sales tax that much. I'm just like, okay, come after me.
Aaron
00:06:30 – 00:06:30
Like, if
Aaron
00:06:30 – 00:06:31
I didn't if
Ian
00:06:31 – 00:06:32
I didn't if I didn't pay
Aaron
00:06:32 – 00:06:36
my sales tax in Quebec, what are you going to do?
Ian
00:06:36 – 00:06:39
Yeah, especially overseas. I'm totally like, you got me overseas. Overseas.
Aaron
00:06:39 – 00:06:40
I'm gonna
Ian
00:06:40 – 00:06:42
get me. Yeah. I don't this is this
Aaron
00:06:42 – 00:06:44
is not advice. This is maybe why I'm not
Ian
00:06:44 – 00:06:52
a CPA anymore. This this is pretty bad advice. Major and an actual CPA. Our advice is let them come get you. Our advice
Aaron
00:06:52 – 00:06:58
is that's the system. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, Lemon Squeezy does handle all that sales tax, which
Aaron
00:06:58 – 00:06:58
Yeah.
Aaron
00:06:58 – 00:07:00
That's great. Good for them.
Ian
00:07:00 – 00:07:00
Right.
Aaron
00:07:00 – 00:07:22
But I just really really like yeah. I I like I like the built in checkout, and I know that Stripe has some of that. But the built in checkout with the affiliate management is just is super nice. And I'm really hoping I'm really hoping that long term affiliates are a good channel for this. And so I wanted to have something kinda native and first party built in.
Aaron
00:07:22 – 00:07:26
I didn't wanna worry about payouts or registration or tracking clicks or
Ian
00:07:26 – 00:07:36
anything like that. Part with all that stuff is like, oh, setting up PayPal. Like, right there, you have a disaster on your hands. Like, let's figure out how the PayPal works, and that Yep. Never works and, you know, whatever, all that stuff.
Ian
00:07:36 – 00:07:39
So interesting. Lemon squeezy. Alright. I like that.
Aaron
00:07:39 – 00:08:25
Yeah. So Jason's built out Jason's built out a a basic LiveWire site, that handles all of the, you know, registration and the feature gate or the video gating based on what tier that you signed up for. It's really nice because I think we're using, I think we're using Caleb Porzio's sushi for a lot of it, which is we do we do have a database, but for a lot of, like, the content heavy stuff, it's just front front matter in YAML, which is so nice because then I can put, you know, the entire video description as I can do it as markdown and then just have, like, here's the link to the Vimeo ID, and here's the plan that it's on, and here's the slug all in that one file. Text. It's great.
Ian
00:08:25 – 00:08:32
Not the only one updating the database with changes and all that stuff. They said just update the repo and it's magically everywhere.
Aaron
00:08:32 – 00:08:47
And Jason can just, you know, push it, and he doesn't need to have access to the database. He can just change stuff and because it's a flat file. Maybe we're using Orbit. We might be using Caleb's sushi for some things and Ryan Chandler's Orbit for other things. Man, I'm familiar
Ian
00:08:47 – 00:08:48
with Orbit.
Aaron
00:08:48 – 00:08:51
I'm I'm not the technical guy anymore. What Yeah.
Ian
00:08:51 – 00:08:53
You don't know what's going on. You know
Aaron
00:08:53 – 00:08:55
how an idea. Prices. Yeah. You
Ian
00:08:55 – 00:08:56
have no idea what's going on.
Aaron
00:08:56 – 00:08:56
I don't
Aaron
00:08:56 – 00:08:58
know what we're using.
Aaron
00:08:58 – 00:08:58
This is
Aaron
00:08:58 – 00:08:59
so embarrassing.
Aaron
00:08:59 – 00:09:00
Jess, you
Aaron
00:09:00 – 00:09:00
don't know what's
Aaron
00:09:00 – 00:09:01
going on.
Aaron
00:09:01 – 00:09:03
Embarrassing. Go for it. Been here before.
Ian
00:09:03 – 00:09:09
Make this happen, and things happen. No. That's amazing. Oh, what a bad feeling. We'll need
Aaron
00:09:09 – 00:09:15
to edit that out. So I sound I sound like I'm definitely the technical guy. Oh. Oh, man. Yeah.
Aaron
00:09:15 – 00:09:17
The orbit package is great because I think,
Ian
00:09:17 – 00:09:19
Is that similar to sushi or
Aaron
00:09:19 – 00:09:42
It is similar to sushi. It's a little it has more drivers, which I don't super care about except for the markdown driver that you can use, you know, front matter. And so Orbit, I think, has got, like, a JSON and maybe an API, but it definitely has a markdown driver. And so that's I think that's what we're using there. I think some of some of the other models may be Sushi, but that one is Orbit specifically.
Ian
00:09:42 – 00:09:55
I've never used Sushi even though, like, I need to. I I think in this thing I'm working on, we'll probably end up using it in a few spots. But, it does seem I just love the idea of things becoming eloquent models magically. Like, that's a great concept.
Aaron
00:09:55 – 00:10:01
I use Sushi for, my personal site. So my personal site is deployed on vapor. It's just a Laravel app.
Ian
00:10:01 – 00:10:03
Right. Deployed on Vapor.
Aaron
00:10:06 – 00:10:10
Heads up. Jason Beggs did do the re the rebuild of it. That's not launched yet.
Ian
00:10:10 – 00:10:13
Jason Beggs is everywhere. It's just you could just pencil them in. Just assume.
Aaron
00:10:13 – 00:10:19
This is supposed to be the week of Aaron, not the week of Ian outing Aaron for having Jason do all the work.
Ian
00:10:19 – 00:10:22
You mentioned that one previously, though. So that's, like, that's on that's on you.
Aaron
00:10:22 – 00:10:23
Okay.
Ian
00:10:23 – 00:10:24
The previous episode.
Aaron
00:10:24 – 00:10:26
Okay. Blame blame Life Square.
Ian
00:10:26 – 00:10:27
That's all I know.
Aaron
00:10:27 – 00:10:41
Yeah. But, yeah, that one uses that one uses sushi. That was sushi pre Jason Beggs, so I'm gonna take full credit for that. That one uses sushi for the article listing and all of that stuff. That one actually has no database at all.
Aaron
00:10:41 – 00:10:59
It's just flat files on vapor, which is really, really nice. And it could be, I guess, it could be, you know, a static site, but why it costs me like 4¢ to run on vapor. And now I don't have to convert it to a static site and I get full Larabell. So Yeah. Sushi is very good.
Aaron
00:10:59 – 00:11:00
I like sushi.
Ian
00:11:01 – 00:11:05
Awesome. So screencasting.com. So launch. It's on schedule. We're it's happening?
Aaron
00:11:06 – 00:11:10
It's on schedule. It's happening. Wednesday? Wednesday. Yeah.
Aaron
00:11:10 – 00:11:29
You know, when you get to the end of a project, it feels like, man, is this thing any good? Like, I've been staring at this thing for months. Is this any good? That happens that happens to me a lot. I've been, you know, putting the final touches, the final editing pass on these videos.
Aaron
00:11:29 – 00:11:36
And as I'm watching them back, I'm like, these are actually good. This is good. I feel very I feel very proud.
Ian
00:11:36 – 00:11:37
I love that feeling.
Aaron
00:11:37 – 00:11:48
Yes. Thank goodness. I feel very proud of this, like, body of work. And I think, hey, this this is going to be useful. This is going to be helpful to a lot of people.
Aaron
00:11:49 – 00:12:20
And yeah, it goes through, I mean, it goes through the whole life cycle from how do you even figure out what you're gonna teach, like content planning and structuring and how to, like, how to structure it so that people will, you know, follow along, and then in into the gear, and then recording, and editing, and then publishing. And then there are a couple extra, sections at the end on, like, alright. If you're gonna take these videos and put them on social media platforms, what should you think about when
Aaron
00:12:20 – 00:12:20
you put
Aaron
00:12:20 – 00:12:30
them on Twitter? What should you think about when you put them on YouTube? And then the last section is a fun one. It's just people have sent me their screen casts, and I just do the tear downs. And those are
Ian
00:12:31 – 00:12:31
I love that.
Aaron
00:12:31 – 00:12:32
I sent a
Aaron
00:12:32 – 00:12:32
few of
Aaron
00:12:32 – 00:12:38
those out over email, and people people seem to really like those. Those are fun. So, yeah, we're ready, man.
Ian
00:12:39 – 00:12:53
I mean, it's such a I I've been I've given out the URL a few times already. It's not even out yet. So I feel like it's totally a type of thing people are out there. They have questions. Even if it and it's also the kind of thing where it's, like, even if you know some of it, just feel like it's still gonna be very valuable.
Ian
00:12:53 – 00:13:12
Because it's, like, well, these, like, other couple parts I don't know or aren't good at or whatever. It's, like, it's worth it, the money, just for that. Because if it saves me days of trolling around YouTube videos and all that stuff trying to figure out what the heck to do and trial and error and all that, it's like, yeah, it's worth what is it? Like, a 149? Or I don't I don't know if you've announced the price, but
Aaron
00:13:12 – 00:13:24
I have actually not announced the price. It's 2.49 or 299 depending on which one you get. Yeah. So if you're on the mailing list, there will be a a discount. So go to screencasting.com right now.
Ian
00:13:25 – 00:13:26
I can't remember.
Aaron
00:13:26 – 00:13:38
Yeah. I think I think that is I think that is true. I think one of the things I've really focused on in this is, like, there are so many options of how to do every single step.
Aaron
00:13:38 – 00:13:39
Right.
Aaron
00:13:39 – 00:14:04
And and at most places I try to tell you, like, Hey, there are a lot of options here. Here is what I think, and here is why I think it, and you are totally free to disagree, but I'm gonna give you a system, and I'm gonna give you a process, and you can just follow it. And, you know, once you once you get more used to it, you can deviate and make your own style. But for now, just do this, and it'll look great.
Ian
00:14:04 – 00:14:22
I think that is such a huge, thing that people don't realize that other people just want guidance. Like, I was talking to an open source dev who has a open big open source project about this, about, their docs. And this is, like, the advice I gave. Because the docs are, like, you could do this or you could do this. Mhmm.
Ian
00:14:22 – 00:14:38
It's, like, you could put this code anywhere, is basically what it said. Right? Mhmm. Other people, like, guess you could put it anywhere, but the thing is, like, just tell me where to put it. Just tell me what's the right place in your mind for this project in terms of this, you know, the open source project, where this should go.
Ian
00:14:38 – 00:14:54
And then, yes, you could also have in there that, like, by the way, you could actually put this anywhere, blah blah blah, but, like, this is the recommended way to do it. And then that at least gives everybody a starting point. If you have some special case, obviously, you could riff on that or try other things. But, like, give me the main line. This is how I think you should do it.
Ian
00:14:54 – 00:14:59
And, like, just like you're saying with with what you're doing, it's like yeah. Just like I'm trying to make this video.
Aaron
00:14:59 – 00:15:00
Yes.
Ian
00:15:00 – 00:15:02
Let me get a video made. And so if you
Aaron
00:15:02 – 00:15:03
could tell
Ian
00:15:03 – 00:15:12
me this is your opinion. You've done this a lot. This is probably what you need. Then I can start there. And then if it doesn't work for me because I'm doing something different or weird, I can then then riff on that.
Ian
00:15:12 – 00:15:20
But, but yeah. Just give me the the start. Don't overwhelm me with, well, there's 17 ways you could do this, and let's go through each of them. It's like, no. Just give me the recommended.
Aaron
00:15:20 – 00:15:46
And that and that is such that's such a trap for the person creating the content because they know one is, like, they know all of the nuances and all of the, you know, the places where something may or may not apply or work. But I also sometimes feel like I'm especially when writing documentation, which these videos kinda are. So, like, doing these videos as well. I feel like I'm, like, writing defensively sometimes.
Ian
00:15:47 – 00:15:47
Mhmm.
Aaron
00:15:47 – 00:16:00
Like, I'm I'm trying to I'm trying to protect myself from the people that read or watch these videos. And They're like, well, actually, you know, you should in this case. And I'm like, oh, I should just mention that so that they don't so they don't get me on that.
Ian
00:16:00 – 00:16:01
Right. Uh-huh.
Aaron
00:16:01 – 00:16:09
And it's just such a disservice. Like, I just have to be okay, I think, with some people saying, hey. You don't always you know, you shouldn't always do it this way.
Aaron
00:16:09 – 00:16:09
And I'm
Aaron
00:16:09 – 00:16:10
like, yeah.
Ian
00:16:10 – 00:16:10
Yeah.
Aaron
00:16:10 – 00:16:14
You're right. That's great. I agree. Right. So yeah.
Aaron
00:16:14 – 00:16:15
There's a little there's
Ian
00:16:15 – 00:16:18
a little bit of difficulty. Yeah.
Aaron
00:16:18 – 00:16:32
Yeah. So that's what I've been that's what I've been trying to do, and I'm just really I'm this it's a good feeling. I'm just very, very pleased with it. I'm I'm happy to look on it and say, yeah. This is ready.
Ian
00:16:33 – 00:16:40
Yeah. It looks great. I mean, the website looks great. All of, like, going through just, like, the topic covered. I mean, it's quite comprehensive.
Ian
00:16:41 – 00:16:47
You see people launch content oriented things with way less comprehensive, table of contents than this. So
Aaron
00:16:47 – 00:16:48
Yeah.
Ian
00:16:48 – 00:17:06
Like, the money you're getting your value there if you buy this. There's gonna be something for everybody in there. If you're doing any kind of video at all on the Internet, I feel like this is no brainer. Even for, like, things that aren't purely screencasting, just even, like, other kinds of videos and stuff. Like, there's enough topics in there to Mhmm.
Ian
00:17:06 – 00:17:12
Pull out, you know, best practices and and information out of it. So it's gonna be really useful.
Aaron
00:17:13 – 00:17:24
Yeah. Yeah. I hope so. I think I think this could be a good long term durable asset in, you know, the Aaron Francis content empire that is just beginning. So
Ian
00:17:24 – 00:17:33
So what's the future plan? Do you have would there be additions to this or add ons or side thing? Like, I don't know. Do you have
Aaron
00:17:33 – 00:17:33
any plans
Ian
00:17:33 – 00:17:35
for that yet or thoughts around that?
Aaron
00:17:35 – 00:17:44
So many plans. So many so many hopes and dreams. Yeah. So the tiers are, like I said, 249, 299. There is a $1,000 tier, but that's just consulting.
Aaron
00:17:44 – 00:17:55
It's like you get the full course, and then you get an hour with me. Yeah. And so that's, that's interesting, I think, for a couple of reasons. One is price anchoring. You know?
Ian
00:17:55 – 00:17:56
Right.
Aaron
00:17:56 – 00:18:04
A $1,000 is 4 digits. It's a huge number. Mhmm. So that makes, you know, that makes the pricing table look lopsided on the low direction, which is nice. Yeah.
Aaron
00:18:05 – 00:18:37
It's also interesting for me to test the waters with the consulting on this because I can see a future I could see a future where companies are like, hey, we're spinning up a content team or developer education team or something like that. And they want not necessarily consulting on the technical aspects of it, but more consulting on, like, the theoretical aspects of how do we make this content work, not how do we do it, but, like, how do we do this as a business?
Ian
00:18:37 – 00:18:37
And
Aaron
00:18:37 – 00:19:08
I think that might be interesting. And so that that tier is there to kind of see, like, does anybody does anybody care about this? And then I've got lots of plans in terms of broadening the site's content. So we're gonna do the, the creator spotlights where, you know, like, Matthias has already done one where he does a film or a video of his whole setup and talks about his setup and that kind of stuff. I think that's good long term, like, interesting and SEOable content.
Ian
00:19:08 – 00:19:08
Right.
Aaron
00:19:08 – 00:19:25
I also think there's an opportunity here for, like, an old school community. Not not like, hey. Let's get on Discord and send emojis all day every day. I sound like such an old old man, but I do not like Discord. I've kinda
Ian
00:19:25 – 00:19:27
warmed up to it a little bit, I have
Aaron
00:19:27 – 00:19:32
to say. Ian, I we're having the great flippening. You're you're becoming young, and I'm becoming old.
Ian
00:19:32 – 00:19:33
It's amazing.
Aaron
00:19:33 – 00:19:38
Jeez. Okay. I'm I don't have time for you to talk to me about Discord.
Ian
00:19:38 – 00:19:39
I can't yell at the
Aaron
00:19:39 – 00:19:40
back of
Ian
00:19:40 – 00:19:41
the slide question.
Aaron
00:19:41 – 00:19:55
Right now. Okay. Too fragile in this state. But I think there's an opportunity for, like, let's say, content creators, maybe specifically screencasters or people who do video. There's an opportunity for them for us to all hang out.
Aaron
00:19:55 – 00:20:00
And whether that's, like, an actual traditional forum, which would be awesome. Discourse
Ian
00:20:01 – 00:20:02
or something like that.
Aaron
00:20:02 – 00:20:10
Yeah. Something like that. Or it could possibly honestly, it could be a a Discord that's probably great for that. But Or Slack channel
Ian
00:20:10 – 00:20:14
kind of middle ground Yeah. Little more business scenes.
Aaron
00:20:14 – 00:20:29
Yeah. Something for the millennial boomers, a little Slack. But, yeah, I think that's a good opportunity because it is hard work, and I think having other people that you can talk to to be like, hey. How do y'all do this? How do you do this?
Aaron
00:20:29 – 00:20:42
What happens when you just recorded a whole video with no sound? Can we just all cry together? And so I think having that kind of space would be good, and I could be, like, the hub for that, which I think would be interesting long term. Right.
Ian
00:20:43 – 00:21:01
I feel like there's a we don't have to get too far into this, but I do feel like there's, like, almost a product that needs to be built for that. There's probably some out there already trying to do that. But, like, where it is that, like, there's a hub of a person and there's a community around it. Obviously, everybody just uses Discord kind of at this point with the 2nd place Slack sort of, thing. But
Aaron
00:21:02 – 00:21:03
I think But
Ian
00:21:03 – 00:21:05
they do have their their their is downsized to those, I think.
Aaron
00:21:05 – 00:21:07
I think Circle is maybe 1.
Ian
00:21:08 – 00:21:08
Okay.
Aaron
00:21:08 – 00:21:31
I'm not sure. I think once you enter into this, like, community management world, there's a lot of stuff that we just we never touch, you and I. And so I would have to ask some people who do, like, proper community management, which is it's an entire career and something that I'm just like, yeah. We'll set up a we'll set up a Discord. I don't know, man.
Ian
00:21:31 – 00:21:45
There is I mean, that that yeah. That is the nice thing when when you use a Discord or Slack. It's like people are already in there, so they're more likely to just pop over. Whereas, of course, if you're just like, well, I have my own separate place all the way over here. It has to be really compelling, I think, to kind of build up that
Aaron
00:21:45 – 00:21:45
think about it.
Ian
00:21:45 – 00:21:46
Right.
Aaron
00:21:46 – 00:21:46
You have
Ian
00:21:46 – 00:21:54
to, like, go over there, which Yeah. People are already going a lot of places. But, oh, wait. So so business thing here. So what about a team plan?
Ian
00:21:54 – 00:21:58
No team plan? I feel like I need a team plan. What if I'm in a company There is
Aaron
00:21:58 – 00:22:10
there's a contact us. Them or okay. Yes. There's a contact us. And I think I think specifically for I think that is hopefully going to work for, you know, start ups or tech companies that are like, yeah.
Aaron
00:22:10 – 00:22:32
We actually have 5 people on our education team. Or, honestly, if Jeffrey Way was like, hey. If you're gonna do a Laracasts course, you have to watch this course first. That would be that would be awesome. So every new, like, creator that comes on to the Laracasts platform, they would watch this, and they Jeffrey would pay me for that.
Aaron
00:22:32 – 00:22:44
Yeah. That kind of thing, I think, would be would be just amazing. So I don't know I don't know if we'll get any uptake on that, but below the three tiers is a, like, hey. Wanna pay us more money? No.
Aaron
00:22:44 – 00:22:49
It says, alright. You don't have teams? Contact us. So we'll see if we'll see if that works out.
Ian
00:22:49 – 00:23:00
Yeah. I would think you'd get some action there. I mean, not as much as, of course, the mainline stuff. Stuff. But, yeah, if you can get even, like I mean, I think there's other worlds too for this stuff that you might not think about, like corporate trainers, people people
Aaron
00:23:00 – 00:23:00
like that.
Ian
00:23:00 – 00:23:02
Like, if you can get into those worlds, like
Aaron
00:23:02 – 00:23:03
I know.
Ian
00:23:03 – 00:23:19
Whatever. GE probably has 15 corporate trainers. Right? So you have all those kind of things out there that kind of our circle, the Internet doesn't think a lot about generally. Although I actually do think a lot about it because most of my my product's mostly sold to those type of people, not to Twitter type people.
Ian
00:23:19 – 00:23:26
And there's, yeah. There's an amazing number of departments in companies Mhmm. Out in the world. So yeah. Yeah.
Aaron
00:23:26 – 00:23:35
I had to be real careful I had to be real careful when I was recording the content to not just specifically talk to Laravel developers.
Ian
00:23:35 – 00:23:35
Right.
Aaron
00:23:35 – 00:23:45
Because I you know, my temptation was and I actually recorded several videos this way where it was I was assuming that everyone I was talking to was a developer.
Aaron
00:23:45 – 00:23:46
And so
Aaron
00:23:46 – 00:23:52
I was saying things that wouldn't have made sense to other people, like repo and
Ian
00:23:52 – 00:23:53
Shortment. And stuff.
Aaron
00:23:53 – 00:24:01
Yeah. Stuff like that. And people are gonna be like, what are you talking about? And every example every example I used was like, well, maybe you're teaching Rails developers.
Ian
00:24:01 – 00:24:04
It's like, nobody's gonna know what that means.
Aaron
00:24:04 – 00:24:34
And so, honestly, I trashed a bunch of videos and went back and was like, this is oh, it was brutal. I but I I realized, like, I'd been thinking pretty narrow narrowly about who the consumer could be, And I realized, wait. The creator economy alone is it is, like, vastly larger than our friends on Twitter. Right. And that's just the creator economy.
Ian
00:24:34 – 00:24:35
Yeah. Right? Yep. Mhmm.
Aaron
00:24:35 – 00:24:45
That's just and then you've got then you've got corporate training. Like you said, you've got, you know, in house people at AWS who are making videos for the public, but they're not creator economy or whatever.
Ian
00:24:45 – 00:24:45
Yep.
Aaron
00:24:45 – 00:25:08
And so I went back and I I redid I redid it all with a focus towards instead of saying, like, you're a developer and you're trying to, I said, you're a creator. And so my examples changed from solely code related examples to, like, okay. So maybe you're you know, I would talk about the person teaching is the subject matter expert.
Aaron
00:25:08 – 00:25:08
And I
Aaron
00:25:08 – 00:25:24
was like, maybe the area of expertise for you is you're really good at Microsoft Excel, and you're teaching it to attorneys because they don't know anything about Microsoft Excel. Right. And so some of the examples got broader to be so that people can see themselves in the content. So Yep. I really hope that pays off.
Aaron
00:25:24 – 00:25:39
If I could get into some niches that are, like, more, you know, what Nathan Barry has targeted with ConvertKit, where it's just, like, everyone in the world apparently has their own little content business. If I could reach some of them, that would that would be awesome. Yeah.
Ian
00:25:39 – 00:25:56
I think that I mean, well, 2 different things there. 1 is, like, definitely getting in with, Nathan and ConvertKit and what they're doing, talking at the conference, all that stuff. Happy to I mean, I know Nathan. I'm an investor in ConvertKit. So if you need a hookup there, I would be more than anything.
Ian
00:25:56 – 00:25:58
But happy to make intros.
Aaron
00:25:58 – 00:25:59
The week of Aaron indeed.
Ian
00:25:59 – 00:26:10
I'd love to hear that. So happy to get you in over there if, I could help. But, also, and so yeah. And he's, like, super creator creator. They have such a beautiful creator audience.
Ian
00:26:11 – 00:26:28
Screencast.com. Perfect for for that. But then also, this is like a founder thing I think is super important. I've actually been having this with my big project, which is like it start I kinda started this, like, almost a year ago. And, like, I've just been exploring, you know, learn and react, and all these explorations and start something and then trash it.
Ian
00:26:28 – 00:26:40
And then start at a different path and then trash that. And then now I think I'm on the right path with it. But it's, like, it's hard because you're trying to get stuff out. But at the same time, if you know it's not right, then
Aaron
00:26:40 – 00:26:40
Yes.
Ian
00:26:41 – 00:26:55
It's also the time to say, nope. That was the wrong path, and we're just gonna start again if we have to or partially start again or whatever we have to do here to get on the right path. Because once you're all the way down the path, then it's too late. Then you're, like, you are stuck with the thing you have.
Aaron
00:26:55 – 00:26:56
Yep.
Ian
00:26:56 – 00:27:24
And, like, yeah, in your case, if it was, like, all talking about Laravel stuff all the time or dev stuff, then there's definitely gonna be an audience where whatever. People buy it and they see it and that that person bought it, but maybe they don't recommend it because, like, well, I can't really send this to my colleagues because I don't even understand what's going on. So I'm not gonna recommend this or it just was hard to use because I was confused at different points and things like that. And this is such yeah. It's not at all a dev oriented product specifically.
Ian
00:27:25 – 00:27:43
I mean, that'll certainly be your biggest customer base, I'm sure, in the beginning here. But Yeah. You could definitely see where this can go out to the wider world and be useful in all kinds of scenarios. So definitely a smart move, I think, on your part to take that time even though it's super painful. Super painful.
Ian
00:27:43 – 00:27:44
Start again. Yeah.
Aaron
00:27:44 – 00:28:03
Yeah. So so painful because, like, I was I was looking at the videos and thinking, oh, I really need to finish this course. And I was like, why am I feeling like, why do I feel this emotional hang up of, like, getting to the end? And I realized it's because I know I know it's not right.
Aaron
00:28:03 – 00:28:04
Yeah.
Aaron
00:28:04 – 00:28:24
I know I know that I dorked up in, like, a fundamental way, and that is, like, positioning. And I have to redo this. And the moment I decided, like, okay, I'm going to redo this. The amount of work that was ahead of me was enormous, but I felt so much better. Right.
Ian
00:28:24 – 00:28:25
Yep. I
Aaron
00:28:25 – 00:28:30
just felt like this. Okay. I feel good. Like, we can do this.
Aaron
00:28:30 – 00:28:30
I'm on
Aaron
00:28:30 – 00:28:45
the right path. All that is before me is a huge mountain of work, but there's no emotional resistance at all because this is the right way forward. It's like, I can work. I can stay up late and work. What I can't do is be emotional about it.
Aaron
00:28:45 – 00:28:47
And so I was like, this is a win. I'm happy now.
Ian
00:28:47 – 00:29:01
Yeah. Pushing through when you know it's not right, it's like, then you're just gonna not finish it or it's gonna take twice as long because you're just not feeling it. Brutal. You're, like, not gonna put in that effort. You're not gonna be thinking clearly about it when you are doing it and all those things.
Ian
00:29:02 – 00:29:10
Yeah. I mean, that's yeah. When you're a founder, these are the things that are hard that are a little different than, like, what we're talking about earlier where it's like, hey. I got this thing. I'm just, this is the spec.
Ian
00:29:10 – 00:29:16
I'm going. I'm doing it. Yep. I'm not letting my emotions get in the way of this. Like, we're just gonna complete it and then move on to the next thing.
Ian
00:29:16 – 00:29:32
Like, this is different than that. You gotta you have to listen to your gut, I feel like, a fair amount of the time. Sometimes you have to tell your gut to shut up because it's it's leading you wrong too. But usually, if you're really in that, like, you're describing there where it's like, every day, you're like, oh, man. This is, like, feels hard.
Ian
00:29:32 – 00:29:39
It's not right. Like, then, you know, you just gotta listen and go go with the gut there. So Yeah. And I think one of
Aaron
00:29:39 – 00:29:58
the things that is interesting about this is I think in some regards, people will be buying this course and paying me money for my taste. Right? There's some amount of, like, technical knowledge that I I am imparting to them. Them. But a lot of I think a lot of what I'm teaching here is, like, a point of view and and taste.
Aaron
00:29:59 – 00:30:07
And so when it's when I feel like the taste is bad, like, the the thing I'm doing is is not quite right
Ian
00:30:07 – 00:30:08
Right.
Aaron
00:30:08 – 00:30:20
That's when I feel like, okay. I I personally think I have good taste, and I think the thing I've made is bad. And so I have to trust that taste and say, nope. That's bad. I can make it better.
Aaron
00:30:20 – 00:30:26
I'm going to do that even if I have to work really hard. Yep. So hopefully it pays off.
Ian
00:30:26 – 00:30:44
I think so. I'm I'm very optimistic about it. I think there's a lot of excitement I've seen out there for it. So I'm expecting it to definitely launch really well and then go from there and do the building out the network. The affiliate sounds good and starting to get your name in other corners of the Internet that aren't just home based for us.
Ian
00:30:44 – 00:30:45
Yeah. I think we'll be
Aaron
00:30:46 – 00:30:48
And I have a friend who's an investor in ConvertKit, and so I may talk
Ian
00:30:48 – 00:30:49
to him. There
Aaron
00:30:49 – 00:30:51
you go. Yeah. I heard it's great.
Ian
00:30:51 – 00:30:57
Yeah. Awesome. Nathan's amazing guy. I knew him before ConvertKit, actually. We met in, like, booth Japarize Circles.
Ian
00:30:57 – 00:30:57
Okay.
Aaron
00:30:57 – 00:30:58
Yeah. I met him. He's a
Ian
00:30:58 – 00:30:59
great guy.
Aaron
00:30:59 – 00:31:01
MicroConf 2012.
Ian
00:31:02 – 00:31:05
Wow. Yeah. Mhmm. And talked to him back then when
Aaron
00:31:05 – 00:31:14
he was doing, like, the authority and and that kind of stuff. But I haven't, like, I haven't spoken to him since, but he was he was super cool way back then too.
Ian
00:31:14 – 00:31:22
Yeah. No. He's a great guy, and, yeah, it's amazing to see what they've done he's done with ConvergeOne. It's unbelievable. So Yeah.
Ian
00:31:22 – 00:31:29
Yeah. Not an early enough investor. I was trying to get in way back then. Like, way when he first started, I was like, let me, like, throw some money at you. And he's like, no.
Ian
00:31:29 – 00:31:40
I'm not doing investors. And then he was gonna do it, and then he didn't do it then. Then he did do it a couple years ago, but I'm not, you know, I'm not super wealthy from it yet as I would have benefited
Aaron
00:31:42 – 00:31:42
if you
Ian
00:31:42 – 00:31:43
had taken my money
Aaron
00:31:43 – 00:31:43
in the beginning. Come on, Ethan.
Aaron
00:31:43 – 00:31:44
Not yet.
Ian
00:31:44 – 00:31:45
Next thing, take my money early.
Aaron
00:31:45 – 00:31:53
They're they're not stopping. So you should I think I think you should be okay. I know your big investments from from Twitter is Cloudflare, but I think I think
Ian
00:31:53 – 00:31:54
Cloudflare. ConvertKit
Aaron
00:31:55 – 00:31:57
is gonna work out okay for you.
Ian
00:31:57 – 00:32:01
Hey. Mailchimp sold for what? 4,000,000,000 or something? I don't know. 10,000,000,000?
Ian
00:32:01 – 00:32:02
No. Maybe it's more like 10
Aaron
00:32:02 – 00:32:07
I think it was I think it was a lot of billions, and they were totally boot strapped if I recall.
Ian
00:32:08 – 00:32:09
I believe so. Yeah.
Aaron
00:32:09 – 00:32:11
Yeah. Yep. Crazy.
Ian
00:32:12 – 00:32:15
Email. Email. I mean, hey. My business is all you need to do.
Aaron
00:32:15 – 00:32:16
Break. Email.
Ian
00:32:16 – 00:32:19
Email is the is the past, the present, and the future.
Aaron
00:32:19 – 00:32:26
Email. It's unbelievable. I'm over here trying to be clever and invent brand new things, and other people are sending
Ian
00:32:26 – 00:32:37
emails. Send the emails, receive the emails. This is this has been my life for the last 20 years. It's all it's all email. Like, all the little parts of it, but the core emails at the core.
Aaron
00:32:37 – 00:32:39
Turtles all the way down. Yep.
Ian
00:32:39 – 00:32:51
And no and then and you're never gonna replace email because, like, there's nobody's gonna do an open standard for anything ever again. Right? Like, there's not even open messaging. There's no open standards. Email is the last open standard, and it's never gonna be replaced.
Aaron
00:32:51 – 00:32:54
And where where are all the email killers now?
Ian
00:32:54 – 00:32:57
Right. Dead. You can't yeah. No. You can't kill email.
Ian
00:32:57 – 00:33:08
It's like just provides an invaluable service, and they're never gonna there's never gonna be enough community, backing from all the different stakeholders to actually make something else go. So
Aaron
00:33:08 – 00:33:15
We have 2 email providers in our community. Right? The Frake and Spotsy do Mail Coach.
Aaron
00:33:15 – 00:33:15
Mhmm.
Aaron
00:33:15 – 00:33:17
And then Marcel and the Beyond Code folks
Ian
00:33:18 – 00:33:21
do Oh, I use that. Hello?
Aaron
00:33:21 – 00:33:22
SYN Stack?
Ian
00:33:22 – 00:33:23
Oh, do they do that?
Aaron
00:33:23 – 00:33:25
SYN SYN Stack.
Ian
00:33:25 – 00:33:29
Oh, I didn't even know what I'm talking about? God. They built so many things over I can't keep up with all the stuff myself builds. He
Aaron
00:33:29 – 00:33:30
Yeah. I know.
Ian
00:33:30 – 00:33:32
He builds a new thing every week.
Aaron
00:33:32 – 00:33:36
I know. They've got the they've got the desktop Tableau. Yeah.
Ian
00:33:36 – 00:33:40
I don't know how they say it, but that's, like, the test, you know, or, like, local development
Aaron
00:33:41 – 00:33:45
But they had, like, a privacy first email thing that they were working on
Aaron
00:33:45 – 00:33:46
for a while.
Aaron
00:33:46 – 00:33:53
But I have honestly, I haven't heard about it in a long time. So, Marcel, if you're listening, do some more marketing for that because I forgot the name of it.
Ian
00:33:53 – 00:34:02
Yeah. I don't I don't remember that one. But like I said, I can't keep up. I saw them at Laracon and talked to them quite a bit, and, like, I don't know what I don't even understand how you I think there's only 3 of them.
Aaron
00:34:02 – 00:34:05
There's only 3 of them. Yeah. Unbelievable. It's it is unbelievable.
Ian
00:34:05 – 00:34:09
I'm, like, got one product in 20 years. He's got they're, like, got new products every year. And and
Aaron
00:34:09 – 00:34:11
the secret product. You've got that.
Ian
00:34:11 – 00:34:19
I am. But that feels it's kinda similar to the old product. It's email. I can't leave email. Alright.
Ian
00:34:19 – 00:34:26
So what else is going on here? So alright. We got a couple more things in the week of Aaron. I don't know which one. Do you wanna go Flowtone?
Ian
00:34:26 – 00:34:27
Do you wanna go
Aaron
00:34:27 – 00:34:44
Max Effort? Let's go Flowtone, and then we can we can drive into Max Effort from there. Alright. Flowtone is a desktop application that, has recently been pre launched by Boris and I. So we know Boris in in the community.
Aaron
00:34:44 – 00:35:02
We love Boris. Boris wrote, Advanced Inertia, that book on how to use inertia and view and Laravel altogether. Great book. And great book. And Boris was working on some stuff and reached out to me and was like, hey.
Aaron
00:35:02 – 00:35:26
I've seen you talking about this, like, process where you take your videos and you, you know, you normalize the audio and you clean it all up, and that's, like, become your video pipeline. And he actually reached out because he was like, I'm working on a video related product and wondered if you, like, wanna partner up on it. I was like, yeah. That seems really hard, the secret project that he's working on.
Aaron
00:35:26 – 00:35:26
I was
Aaron
00:35:26 – 00:35:39
like, that seems really hard. Is there, like, an easier thing that you could build? What about this, like, no audio cleanup normalization tool? And so he just speaking of machines, he just did it. He just was like, yep.
Aaron
00:35:39 – 00:35:40
I'm gonna
Aaron
00:35:40 – 00:35:44
build a desktop app. It's done. Now can you make the videos and do the marketing? And I was like,
Aaron
00:35:44 – 00:35:44
wait.
Aaron
00:35:44 – 00:35:50
How are you already done with this? So, yeah, so, he built everything.
Ian
00:35:51 – 00:35:52
I I like that.
Aaron
00:35:52 – 00:35:54
I'm the I'm the marketing guy, Ian.
Ian
00:35:55 – 00:35:59
You are. You are the marketing guy. You're the guy with the audience. You're building the audience. It's weird.
Ian
00:35:59 – 00:36:04
It's weird, man. It's weird. Hard building an audience way harder than building a product.
Aaron
00:36:04 – 00:36:08
You know what? I think that might be correct. I think distribution
Ian
00:36:09 – 00:36:10
is about the distribution.
Aaron
00:36:10 – 00:36:23
Pretty hard to come by. So, yeah, so we're we're partnering up on it, and I've written 0 lines of code for it. He wrote, you know, everything. So there's like a there's a desktop app. There's a Laravel server.
Aaron
00:36:24 – 00:36:52
So, like, you drop your audio onto the desktop app. It does a little bit at home, and then it sends it off to the server where we do the rest of it, and then it sends it back. And it's literally every video that I make has been running through it just to, like, clean up some of the background noise, boost my microphone volume a little bit, just make things a little more clear. Mhmm. And so, yeah, we pre launched it, and I think it's gotten, I wanna say, like, $500 of sales.
Aaron
00:36:52 – 00:37:04
And so pretty good. Yeah. And that also segues nicely into, like, the screencasting.com empire. You know? That's a nice Yeah.
Aaron
00:37:04 – 00:37:14
Now I can, like, kinda have these 2 funnels that weave in and out of each other and, like, the whole the whole ship was pointed the same direction, which I feel good about.
Ian
00:37:14 – 00:37:17
Is it a one time per it's not one time purchase, is it?
Aaron
00:37:18 – 00:37:30
It's a one time purchase for a certain amount. Like, I think it's, like, 600 minutes or something, and then there will be, like, you can top up. But it's not a monthly a monthly subscription. Gotcha. So you're buying
Ian
00:37:30 – 00:37:32
the Usage. You're buying resource. Yeah. You're
Aaron
00:37:32 – 00:37:32
using those.
Ian
00:37:32 – 00:37:35
Yeah. Alright. I like that. That's interesting.
Aaron
00:37:35 – 00:38:01
Yeah. And there are some, Yeah. There are some notions that maybe in the future we could do, like, some of it in browser. But one of the benefits of doing it on a desktop now is if you drop, you know, 6 gigabyte video on it, we can do some of the audio splitting locally, and it just makes everything faster, cleaner, better. So, yeah, the desktop app, the billing model, some of it's like, this is interesting.
Aaron
00:38:01 – 00:38:04
Let's try this. Let's see what happens.
Ian
00:38:05 – 00:38:11
I like it. Yeah. I like the idea of resource usage based apps. I don't know. It's a little tricky.
Ian
00:38:11 – 00:38:16
You know, you can't just apply it to anything, but, there is an interesting element to that for sure.
Aaron
00:38:16 – 00:38:46
Yeah. I think one of the downsides of pure SaaS pricing would be like let's take me for example. I'm doing this course, but then I may not do, like, I may not do this bulk of video for a long time. And if I were on a monthly plan and do I go and, like, get the biggest monthly plan, run everything through it, and then the next month downgrade to, like, a standard plan? It's like, oh, that's not good for me, the consumer, or for the business to be like, oh, our MRR went super up.
Ian
00:38:46 – 00:38:46
Right.
Aaron
00:38:46 – 00:38:52
Oh, it went super down because they finished the course. So I think usage based is interesting here.
Ian
00:38:52 – 00:39:06
Yeah. For sure. Alright. Well, let's let's then transition here to, like, something we talked about actually at Laracon, which is Aaron's max effort era. Give us the rundown on what this is and what what you're doing.
Aaron
00:39:06 – 00:39:34
Yeah. The rundown the rundown is basically I was watching all these people on Twitter be rich and retired and just talk about how important it was to, like, do yoga every day and, you know and I was like, why do I feel so bad about this? And I realized I'm in, like, I'm in my builder phase. This is not the time this is not the time where I'm in my I walk to the coffee shop and spend a couple hours journaling. It's like
Aaron
00:39:34 – 00:39:34
Right.
Aaron
00:39:34 – 00:39:39
I would love I would love to be in that phase. Truly. I would. Right. Just simply not.
Aaron
00:39:40 – 00:40:23
And I think one of the one of the disservices that social media does is you usually catch a person's story as like a slice. And so you may come in on someone's story when they're in their semi retired phase and think, oh, I need to start behaving as if I am semi retired because that's what this successful person does. Right? And but you, me specifically, I am not I'm not there yet. And so I'm viewing a slice of their story that is not co linear with my story, and I thought it would be really helpful actually if I could, like, frame or phrase this as something that clearly denotes where I am and where I'm not.
Aaron
00:40:23 – 00:40:35
Because then mentally, I will know, like, I can look at these other people and think, yeah. That's great. They're in a different phase. I don't have to emulate that phase. My phase is fundamentally different.
Aaron
00:40:36 – 00:40:49
And so that's when I decided, like, okay. I'm gonna say I'm not in my semi retired leisurely builder phase, which is what a lot of people are in. Semi retired leisurely builder. Daniel Vassallo with the Small Bets community, semi retired.
Ian
00:40:50 – 00:40:50
Right.
Aaron
00:40:50 – 00:41:15
Leisurely builder. I'm not in that phase. I am in my maximum effort era, which hopefully will set me up for my semi retired leisurely builder era. It's just that I don't know that there's another way besides luck to get to that semi retired phase without putting in a lot of effort. And one thing I'm super careful of is talking about how this is my phase for right now for me.
Aaron
00:41:15 – 00:41:33
Like, I I wanna be very clear that this is a decision I have made for me, and it's not prescriptive. It's descriptive. So I'm not saying everybody needs to do it, but I'm saying there are things I want out of my life. And I think the way to get there is you have to just work really hard. The only way out is through.
Aaron
00:41:33 – 00:41:37
And so right now I'm going through, and we'll see if I get out. Yeah.
Ian
00:41:37 – 00:41:47
I mean, I'm a huge believer in this. I mean, the thing with social media is, like, you know, it the whole it's entirely designed, right, to surface outliers, essentially.
Aaron
00:41:47 – 00:41:48
That's a
Ian
00:41:48 – 00:42:15
good point. And so even though you may follow 20 of the leisurely semi retired entrepreneurs, like, that is, like, the tiniest, tiniest fraction of the number of people who are out there starting businesses every year or who run businesses. Right? It's millions and millions of people just in America alone who are running businesses and working very hard at them. And so, yes, but you get thrown these, like, the 20 cool people on Twitter who are, like, you know, journaling every day and all these things.
Ian
00:42:15 – 00:42:17
Right? Not to not journaling, but you know what I'm saying.
Aaron
00:42:17 – 00:42:18
You know what I'm talking about
Ian
00:42:18 – 00:42:26
though. Right? So and, like, you're, like, oh, man. Like, yeah. Why haven't I made enough millions to be able to be that guy?
Ian
00:42:26 – 00:42:49
And, but it's also, yeah, it's totally unrealistic. And, I totally agree. You have to have the the effort era is definitely a thing. I think you can go in and out of it, which is a thing too to be aware of is, like like, I definitely had a super max effort error, like, when I started HubSpot, and that was just not sustainable. So hired people and things like that, and then I definitely, like, pulled back from that.
Ian
00:42:49 – 00:42:55
And then for a long time, like 10 years, I would say. Like, I wasn't all the way to leisurely retired, but I also wasn't in maximum effort,
Aaron
00:42:55 – 00:42:55
I would say, either. Mhmm. And then, it
Ian
00:42:55 – 00:42:58
was just, like, effort, I would say either.
Aaron
00:42:58 – 00:42:59
Mhmm.
Ian
00:42:59 – 00:43:05
And then, it was just like solid effort. Like, solid effort running the business. Customers are happy. K. Good.
Ian
00:43:05 – 00:43:25
And then now I'm gearing up for max effort era, you know, 3 or 4 or whatever it's been because it's been little ebbs and flows over time. Because, yeah, it's like, alright. Well, I got new stuff we're working on, and that needs more effort and attention and all those things. And also, like, my life is better suited to it now. Kids are older and things like that.
Ian
00:43:25 – 00:43:48
So, yeah, I think you can go in and out of these phases. But, yeah, I think to deny the phases. Like, very big disservice is often done with people who are out there espousing, you know, 4 hour work week and all these other things that are excellent marketing. And, yes, I'm sure there's, like, a handful of people where this is very successful for them, and that's all great. But I don't think that's true of the vast majority of people who are very successful.
Ian
00:43:48 – 00:44:07
I think most of them are working quite hard. And, you know, and, you know, we're trying to work smartly too. Not you know, there's you can't just always plow your way through everything. But, but, yeah, they're taking time savings from working smartly and then working more on other things where they bring value. Right?
Ian
00:44:07 – 00:44:34
So if they can have employees, if they can outsource things, if they can do all those things, they're not necessarily taking that time to gain from that. And then, yeah, you know, using that as leisure time, they're taking that time and saying, okay. Now I can do more of the things that I bring unique value to. And, and then keep going with that. So, yeah, I think that that that's a a very the main strategy, really, even though on the Internet, you wouldn't always know it.
Aaron
00:44:34 – 00:45:03
Yeah. And I think there's there's a, I think there's, like, a turn or a shift that happens to some to some people who are very public when they, like, they climb to the mountain and they get they climb to the top of the mountain and they get up there and it's beautiful, and they turn around and say, y'all, it's hard work to climb. Y'all should really take it easy. Like, that climb is tough, and it wore me out, and I think y'all should take it easy. But, boy, it's beautiful up here, here.
Aaron
00:45:03 – 00:45:04
And you're like, wait.
Ian
00:45:04 – 00:45:05
You can't have
Aaron
00:45:05 – 00:45:16
you can't have both. Like, I understand. I understand getting to the top and being like, wow, what a freaking slog that was. I'm gonna slow down a little bit. Yeah.
Aaron
00:45:16 – 00:45:24
That's the hope. But then to turn around and say, everyone else slow down. I've made it. You're like Right. Come on, man.
Aaron
00:45:25 – 00:45:26
That's the hope. Right?
Ian
00:45:26 – 00:45:33
Also feel as often the some combination of, like, just actually forgetting how hard it was. Probably.
Aaron
00:45:33 – 00:45:34
You know?
Ian
00:45:34 – 00:45:53
Right? And then also, I mean, I think in some people just dishonesty, whether it's intentional or unintentional of like, this is a better story if I say that I just chilled on my way up to the top. Yeah. That's a more interesting story because everybody kinda knows the, hey. Work hard and you'll get to the top story.
Ian
00:45:53 – 00:46:18
So then what's my take on that that's more interesting? But, yeah, I think and especially too, like, you're in this zone where you have more kids on the way and things like that. So you're very specifically right now in a zone where you probably will have you'll have more time over the next few months than you will have over 12 months from now, most likely. So it's also taking advantage of these times when you do have extra time. And it's like, yeah.
Ian
00:46:18 – 00:46:26
I'm gonna put in those hours. I'm gonna work late some nights. I'm gonna do those things, to try to get ahead while I can because I it'll be out of my hands maybe in
Aaron
00:46:27 – 00:46:28
Exactly. 8
Ian
00:46:28 – 00:46:34
months or 12 months or whatever where it'll be very hard to to work till 2 o'clock or whatever on Friday.
Aaron
00:46:34 – 00:46:37
That ain't gonna work because I'm gonna be up till 2 o'clock for
Ian
00:46:37 – 00:46:39
the babies. You'll be out.
Aaron
00:46:39 – 00:46:39
But you
Ian
00:46:39 – 00:46:41
won't be able to screencast, I don't think.
Aaron
00:46:42 – 00:46:43
No. I don't think so.
Ian
00:46:44 – 00:46:59
Yeah, so getting these things done and launched and out there and then be able to maybe, you know, yeah, run it. I doubt you're gonna be all the way out of max effort era even then, but will you be able to maybe dial it down to Yeah. Solid effort era for a little bit? You know?
Aaron
00:46:59 – 00:47:23
I think there will be a phase change when new babies come that is just like, alright. Still maximum effort, but towards these new 2 new humans that have just been born. And everything else everything else kinda goes into maintenance mode or, you know, maintaining what is already hopefully already hopefully gaining steam. I can just give it a little bit of push every now and then.
Ian
00:47:23 – 00:47:23
Right.
Aaron
00:47:24 – 00:47:29
But, yeah, I think, you know, I think there are definitely phases in naming it an era, I think, is
Ian
00:47:30 – 00:47:30
Absolutely.
Aaron
00:47:30 – 00:47:43
A good thing because it's like you can you can have a different era for a while. And I don't know what epochs are. I don't know if epochs are bigger than eras, but, you know, maybe there's, like, a overarching epoch with individual eras. I don't I don't know. I don't know what's that deep history.
Ian
00:47:43 – 00:47:51
I'm gonna tell you, in 2023, to name something era, that's the way to go. It's yet another overlap between you and Taylor Swift.
Aaron
00:47:51 – 00:47:52
We are the same
Ian
00:47:52 – 00:47:58
person. Yes. You have Max's name. Era. I feel like this is the energy in the air.
Ian
00:47:58 – 00:48:00
The air is the spot. Right?
Aaron
00:48:00 – 00:48:01
That's what I'm trying
Ian
00:48:01 – 00:48:01
to say.
Aaron
00:48:01 – 00:48:04
We are literally the same person with one minor difference, and
Aaron
00:48:04 – 00:48:04
that's a $1,000,000,000. A $1,000,000,000. What's that between friends?
Aaron
00:48:04 – 00:48:15
No big deal. The week of Aaron.
Ian
00:48:15 – 00:48:16
Week of Aaron.
Aaron
00:48:17 – 00:48:30
Okay. Talk about we have a couple other things we could talk about. One is, I don't know if you follow Josh Pickford on Twitter. Mhmm. But he's doing a new he's doing a new business kind of technical thing as always.
Ian
00:48:30 – 00:48:31
I saw that.
Aaron
00:48:31 – 00:48:34
And I think that would be interesting to talk about
Aaron
00:48:34 – 00:48:34
if you
Aaron
00:48:34 – 00:48:37
have new businesses. If you have seen this. Do you want
Aaron
00:48:37 – 00:48:38
do you want
Aaron
00:48:38 – 00:49:06
me to give you the the highlights on this one for the for the So Josh Pickford, famously of Baremetrics, which then exited, is a serial maker. He's always starting something. He's got you think I have a lot of projects? This guy has, like, 10 literally 10 times as many projects as I have. And I thought this one was really interesting, because he just kinda, like, dropped it on Twitter and was like, hey.
Aaron
00:49:06 – 00:49:21
It's kinda done. And typically what he'll do is he'll say, I've got this new idea. I'm gonna do it. And then he'll work on something for a while, and then it kind of fades off, and I don't hear about it anymore. This one was totally totally different, where it was like the thing is done.
Aaron
00:49:21 – 00:49:38
So he has a tweet, and we'll put it in the show notes. He says, I recently purchased a small web app, interesting already, called lawncareplanner.com. Great domain. Haven't spent the last few days rebuilding it from scratch, so I figured I'd talk through the details. So he goes through the details.
Aaron
00:49:38 – 00:49:43
He bought this site for, like, nothing. It was like $2 or $1800 or something.
Ian
00:49:43 – 00:49:44
And the way that he did
Aaron
00:49:44 – 00:50:08
it was he was actually searching for lawn care plan for his house and came across this site and was like, hey. This is kinda what I need. And saw that it hadn't been updated in a long time, reached out to the guy, and the guy was like, yeah. Used to make I think he says used to make $1,000 a year, and now it makes, like, 2.50 a year. And so he just went back and forth with him and bought the thing outright.
Ian
00:50:08 – 00:50:09
Yep.
Aaron
00:50:09 – 00:50:42
And so he says he's got 6,000 registered users. Who knows how old, you know, those emails are, and a full, like, infrastructure of, Python and Django to, like, build out this site because it's a lot of, like, programmatic SEO. It's like lawn care plan Dallas, Texas, and so there's a whole database that backs it. And so he, you know, spent a couple of days, rewrote it in Rails, added some stuff, and now it's just, like, out there and running. And he's got a whole plan of how he's gonna grow it, but, you know, he's using some AI to write some content.
Aaron
00:50:43 – 00:51:20
And I thought this was really interesting, because I do feel like I am arcing towards my content era as well instead of instead of pushing super hard on a Sass boulder. I feel like, wait, this content stuff I feel a a knack for, and I feel like this is good durable assets that could last forever. And so this was interesting to me to see him doing this. I don't know what the back end is gonna be in terms of, like, is it just an Amazon affiliate thing or what's going on there? But that's the overview, and I really think it's interesting, but I'd be curious your take on it.
Ian
00:51:20 – 00:51:26
Yeah. No. It's super I I agree. Like, I when I saw that he had done like, he had finished it, and I was like, oh, yeah. He finished 1.
Ian
00:51:26 – 00:51:33
Alright. Like, it's like he did it. Awesome. And then, well, you know, there's kind of 2 thoughts I had. One is that, you know, it seems like a reasonable idea.
Ian
00:51:33 – 00:51:49
I mean, I feel like it's very unlikely he's not gonna make, you know, well The $1800 back. Yeah. To make the $1800 back. Right? And, you know, just even just doing the mass SEO stuff, which is not, you know, Google somewhat frowns upon it, but at the same time, like, you're in for $1800.
Ian
00:51:49 – 00:52:13
So who cares? And, like, if it does anything, instead of just relying on the homepage to have, I think it says 3,000,000 pages or something like that now. So, you know, you're usually supposed to, like, roll those out more slowly and stuff than versus just dump it all out there, but whatever. In his case, it is a little bit different because it is like ZIP codes and things like that. So there is, like, you know, there's, like, a reason to have that many, that makes some kind of sense.
Ian
00:52:13 – 00:52:15
So that is to his benefit, I think.
Aaron
00:52:15 – 00:52:21
And presumably the domain is pretty aged. So he's not popping up a new domain and dumping 3,000,000 pages out there.
Ian
00:52:21 – 00:52:37
It's number and, you know, it's number 6 on when you just search, like, lawn care planning or something like that. So, so, yeah. I mean, this is, like I think this is a very interesting idea. So here's the thing that people, again, in our circles of Twitter are probably not aware of. Like, this is totally a thing lots of people do.
Ian
00:52:37 – 00:52:37
Like, this
Aaron
00:52:37 – 00:52:38
is just
Ian
00:52:38 – 00:52:44
a whole industry of, like, going out and buying domains with, like, domains that have expired,
Aaron
00:52:44 – 00:52:45
and
Ian
00:52:45 – 00:53:08
then just buying the domain because you see it's a domain that's ranked well and the person just let it expire, and you're just scooping them up, and then you're putting stuff on it. Or this type of thing where you're going out and actively acquiring things for cheaply, which have good ranking in certain areas and stuff like that. So it is interesting because it comes across as like, oh, this is, like, crazy idea, but then really it's, like, just an idea that lots of people are doing, but just not, like, people
Aaron
00:53:08 – 00:53:09
Not in our space.
Ian
00:53:09 – 00:53:13
Right? Yeah. Not on Twitter in our little zone of it. But, yeah. No.
Ian
00:53:13 – 00:53:24
I I, I I mean, I had a product at one point way, way, way back, that was like a textbook selling product that was like this, basically. We just have, like
Aaron
00:53:24 – 00:53:24
Really?
Ian
00:53:25 – 00:53:41
Every college textbook, you know, in the world and affiliate links and whatever. But yeah, it was just, like, the late nineties or, like, 2000 or something like that. And, but then, like, then Amazon just, like, totally took over everything directly. Oh, yeah.
Aaron
00:53:41 – 00:53:43
I've heard of Amazon. Yeah.
Ian
00:53:43 – 00:53:43
Yeah. Probably
Aaron
00:53:43 – 00:53:45
got crushed on that one.
Ian
00:53:45 – 00:54:03
So oh, oh, there's a guy. Still people out there doing that, to be honest with you. But, yeah, it's not wasn't I just had better things to spend time on. So it was like, I forget it. But, but, yeah, I could totally see having a little if you're gonna have a content based business to, like, start with a domain that's already ranking is definitely a big advantage.
Ian
00:54:04 – 00:54:14
And so and to have inbound links and things like that. So, yeah, I like this idea. If I had more time, this would be the kind of thing I could see me doing, just like poking around, finding little businesses.
Aaron
00:54:14 – 00:54:15
Or
Aaron
00:54:15 – 00:54:19
And you know who's a semi retired leisurely builder? Josh Pickford.
Ian
00:54:19 – 00:54:21
Yeah. Yeah. And so about leisurely, though, but
Aaron
00:54:21 – 00:54:23
he's semi retired. Yeah. That's true.
Ian
00:54:23 – 00:54:24
I guess.
Aaron
00:54:24 – 00:54:30
He is he is not leisurely. He attacks everything with intensity, which he's working. Respect. I do I do like that. Yeah.
Aaron
00:54:30 – 00:54:36
I I like I like that Josh is, like, always doing basically hobbies. He's like
Ian
00:54:37 – 00:54:37
Right.
Aaron
00:54:37 – 00:54:44
Alright. I'm gonna, you know, fix up my house while I should make a app to keep track of all the tools. It's like, hey, man. He's got
Ian
00:54:44 – 00:54:44
the tool out of all
Aaron
00:54:44 – 00:54:47
the way. You do you. That's awesome. I'm happy for you.
Ian
00:54:47 – 00:54:56
He does have that the convergence of our theme of this episode, kind of, is, like, he has that consulting mindset to some degree, but also the founder mindset. Because he
Aaron
00:54:56 – 00:54:56
does, like,
Ian
00:54:56 – 00:55:08
I'm building this thing and then he'll build it and ship it and then he won't, like, necessarily do anything with it after that a lot of times. So then it kinda falls off there. But he does sort of get pretty far into these things and, like, way farther than I get. I usually get as far
Aaron
00:55:08 – 00:55:09
as I bought
Ian
00:55:09 – 00:55:21
the domain, and I'm like, okay. I got the domain set, and then I never write a line of code or do anything. He's like, no. I got a domain, and I built a thing, and it works. I mean, I haven't talked about it again after that, but I I built it and shipped it.
Aaron
00:55:21 – 00:55:36
He's the triple threat of, like, he's actually a pretty good designer. He's a pretty good developer, and he's a pretty good, like, follow through person, which you usually don't you usually don't get all 3 of those. But you're right. He does, like, finish an app, app, and then he's like, alright.
Ian
00:55:36 – 00:55:40
I gotta go on to the next app. And that's, you know get that juice.
Aaron
00:55:40 – 00:55:57
Yeah. If that's what he wants to do is build, that's great. I like I like this content thing. I think my one I think my one hesitation with something like this is I kinda want I kinda want all of my efforts pointing in the same general direction.
Ian
00:55:57 – 00:55:57
Mhmm.
Aaron
00:55:59 – 00:56:32
And I don't know that so, like, if I were just to buy lawn care planning dot com, my like, everything I've built so far adds nothing to lawn care planning. And lawn care planning adds nothing to everything that I've built. And so that that would be my hesitation. I would much rather buy something that is, like, directionally aligned with the other stuff. But I do like the idea of buying buying something that somebody has neglected and kinda, you know, juicing it up a little bit and seeing what happens.
Aaron
00:56:32 – 00:56:33
Seems kinda fun.
Ian
00:56:33 – 00:56:46
Yeah. And, I mean, it's hard. I mean, I've had I've never been very good with this either. Like, once you have multiple products, just in general, multiple products is difficult for me anyway. And then in addition to that, like, if you have multiple products that are not related, now you just have yeah.
Ian
00:56:46 – 00:56:54
Like, you're marketing. Like, there's no benefits. Yes. There's no co marketing. There's no you're talking to this one group and that has cross like, there's no cross benefits to anything.
Ian
00:56:54 – 00:57:11
You just have to have a whole separate marketing plan and be dealing with that entirely separately. And I don't tend to have enough brain bandwidth to deal with that, I have found. So, yeah, I think in that way. But on the flip side, there are people who are totally comfortable with that and also comfortable with, like, hey. Like, if this makes $500 a month, that's cool.
Ian
00:57:11 – 00:57:32
And I'll just, like, collect this $500 a month and be very happy with it. To me, like, the mental overhead of just dealing with it usually isn't worth things like that. Because it's like, well, it's gonna go down, and I'm gonna have to be aware of it, and I'm gonna have to fix it and, like, whatever. So I'm gonna try to hack it. Like, there's gonna be all stuff with it that's just a pain in the butt that I'm like, well, for this few $100 a month, just not worth the hassle.
Ian
00:57:32 – 00:57:42
But, but, yeah, I mean, I think there are lots of people out there, right, who have, like they have 20 of these and 50 of these or whatever. And it's like, when each of them does $500 a month, well, now Now talk
Aaron
00:57:42 – 00:57:42
to you.
Ian
00:57:42 – 00:57:50
Some real money. So so then you got something. So yeah. I don't know. And then, obviously, you have 1 or 2 that hit maybe and get bigger.
Ian
00:57:51 – 00:58:02
Yeah. It is an interesting model. I mean, the the the Internet is a vast place, and the number of people looking to buy stuff is bigger than you could possibly imagine. Like that's the thing that people don't realize. It's like Yep.
Ian
00:58:02 – 00:58:13
Like when you really think about it, it's huge and there's people out there trying to buy everything. And there are less competitive spaces. Like, we're all in this, like, Internet space of, like, business SaaS apps
Aaron
00:58:13 – 00:58:13
and Yeah.
Ian
00:58:13 – 00:58:15
You know, even content for developers. These are
Aaron
00:58:15 – 00:58:19
pretty competitive spaces. Tough spots to do. There's
Ian
00:58:19 – 00:58:41
a lot of people who are like, oh, that's a good idea. You know, lawn care in, you know, your area is a less competitive space. So there are that is interesting. Those type of angles on the Internet where, like, can you get into a niche that's less competitive, and, you know, float around in that zone of of freedom? Yeah.
Aaron
00:58:41 – 00:59:06
I think that I think the mini like, the portfolio approach makes a lot more sense to me when it's not a portfolio of small SaaS applications. When it's a portfolio of devastatingly brutal. And then you're like, wow. I'm just gonna do 5 that all make $200 MRR. You're like, why?
Aaron
00:59:07 – 00:59:15
No. But the content portfolio, I'm like, yeah. Set it up once. Kick it off, and then you kinda yeah. It's easy.
Ian
00:59:16 – 00:59:22
Yeah. Alright, man. Well, I knew you have a hard stop here, so I don't know if we wanna stop there.
Aaron
00:59:22 – 00:59:30
Few minutes. I wanna talk I wanna talk, content outside of our world for a second. I see you tweeting about Foundation.
Ian
00:59:30 – 00:59:31
Foundation.
Aaron
00:59:31 – 00:59:42
So first of all Alright. I'm way behind because Okay. I'm Oh, okay. I'm editing screencasts, but I have started season 2. I'm, like, maybe 2 episodes into season 2.
Aaron
00:59:42 – 00:59:48
So this is Foundation on Apple TV. Great show, based on a book by
Ian
00:59:49 – 00:59:50
Isaac Asimov?
Aaron
00:59:50 – 00:59:58
Isaac Asimov. There you go. I didn't know. And season 1, awesome. Totally great.
Aaron
00:59:58 – 01:00:03
Season 2, the first two episodes, I'm kinda like, I don't know.
Ian
01:00:03 – 01:00:03
Okay.
Aaron
01:00:03 – 01:00:15
And so here's here's my take on Foundation as a whole. I want the show to be solely focused on the Empire. That's all I wanna watch. I just wanna watch the cool Empire that's, like Right. Got all this technological advance.
Aaron
01:00:15 – 01:00:19
I don't wanna talk about a library on an outer planet for half of every episode.
Ian
01:00:19 – 01:00:20
Oh my gosh.
Aaron
01:00:20 – 01:00:20
It was
Ian
01:00:20 – 01:00:21
so funny. It was
Aaron
01:00:21 – 01:00:25
hysterical. This blasphemy? Tell me tell me what I'm what I'm missing here.
Ian
01:00:25 – 01:00:36
Yeah. So I mean well, so first of all, I feel exactly the opposite. Season 1, I Really? Like, literally had to drag myself through it. Season 2, I don't love it until later.
Ian
01:00:36 – 01:00:51
It gets better to me. Like, like episodes 8 and 9 are actually quite good. So I feel like it gets better later. So, yeah, it's hard for me because I've read the books and I read them recently for the first time, like, last year. Yeah.
Ian
01:00:51 – 01:01:08
The I mean, so foundation is I mean, it's it's called foundation, but it is literally one of the foundational texts of science fiction, period. So, I mean, it has the galactic empire. Like literally that's what's in it. Star Wars has a galactic empire. Right?
Ian
01:01:08 – 01:01:25
These are like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Asimov for a lot of books having to do with robotics and the three rules and all these things and and that is in here a little bit. And so, like so if it comes to robots or space or galactic empires, like, this is the foundational text
Aaron
01:01:25 – 01:01:25
of the whole box.
Aaron
01:01:26 – 01:01:29
Things I love. Robots, space, and galactic empires.
Ian
01:01:29 – 01:01:33
Right. Yeah. Exactly. So so this is huge thing. Right?
Ian
01:01:33 – 01:01:50
That's very, very well known in the science fiction circles. And and the book and so Asimov's thing is he's not necessarily like an amazing writer, but his ideas are very good. Got it. So I don't know. For me, the books are are very like, to turn them into a TV show would be very odd.
Ian
01:01:50 – 01:02:07
So I see why they've done what they've done. Because there's not even really characters in traditional sense. Like, you meet a character. They're there for a couple chapters, and then there's a huge time jump, and then they're gone. And so it's a lot of, like, you're going over tens of 1000 of years across these books, and the books are short.
Ian
01:02:07 – 01:02:25
So you're like really jumping. So they've had to do some stuff to try to keep like Harry Seldon in the books is in like the first couple chapters. He's never in it again, and they talk about him here and there, throughout, but it's it's just sprinkling. He's not a character, like, through the whole books at all. So
Aaron
01:02:26 – 01:02:31
is the Klingon thing in the books? The, the everlasting, like, empire guy?
Ian
01:02:32 – 01:02:35
No. Not in the way. Really? There's not Dawn and Dusk.
Aaron
01:02:35 – 01:02:37
And Dawn, Dusk, and Day?
Ian
01:02:37 – 01:02:44
And Day. Yeah. There's just one guy. And I don't think he even clones himself, if I were to. Yeah.
Ian
01:02:44 – 01:02:48
So it's they've so that's the thing. Again, like, well, how do we make this, like
Aaron
01:02:48 – 01:02:51
Well, that's a clever device. Show. Right? They they did a good
Ian
01:02:51 – 01:03:00
job there. Good device. I don't like a lot of what they did, but I actually really like the dawn, dusk, and day thing. I think that's actually a pretty cool take on that. So yeah.
Ian
01:03:00 – 01:03:24
So I guess I would have liked to have seen them make the show based more on the book even though it would be very nontraditional. Like, it would not at all be a normal TV show, and I see that being very difficult to pull off. But at the same time, I feel like that would be what would be interesting about it is Yeah. Like, yeah, we already have a 1,000,000 TV shows with, like, the character runs through the whole thing, and the main characters are there for 5 seasons. Like, give me a TV show where the main characters are gone every, like, 3 or 4 episodes.
Ian
01:03:24 – 01:03:26
Like, I don't know. It'd be kinda cool. That would
Aaron
01:03:26 – 01:03:27
be so wild.
Ian
01:03:27 – 01:03:43
Set with a whole new thing, you know, a whole new world and stuff like that. 3 every 3 or 4 episodes. But so that's been very hard for me to overcome because it's so it's radically different from the books. It's not even just like, oh, they missed this scene I loved or whatever. It's like it's totally different.
Aaron
01:03:44 – 01:03:45
Fundamental structure change there,
Aaron
01:03:45 – 01:03:46
which is strange.
Ian
01:03:46 – 01:04:03
Fundamental. And I'll be curious to see what like, if you when you finish the show or, at some point, if you go back and read the books, I think it'd be interesting to see, like, from that angle of, like, show first, and then coming back to the books and if it's too just jarring. But,
Aaron
01:04:03 – 01:04:03
but,
Ian
01:04:04 – 01:04:12
yeah, I don't know. I I it's kind of growing. I mean, there's not that much sci fi stuff in general out there. Right? So it's like you kinda have to absorb what you're given.
Ian
01:04:12 – 01:04:16
But so what's not what's not jiving with you on the second second season here?
Aaron
01:04:16 – 01:04:35
Well, so far, the first two episodes have been very Harry Seldon and Foundation focused. And they go to this other they go to this other planet or, I guess, new characters, maybe new characters where there's, like, the padawan and the old, like, the old foundation guy, and he's, like,
Ian
01:04:35 – 01:04:36
the last
Aaron
01:04:36 – 01:04:37
person to see Harry sell
Ian
01:04:37 – 01:04:37
the last priest.
Aaron
01:04:37 – 01:04:45
Yeah. He's a little bit goofy, and his character's a little bit silly. And I'm like, I just want galactic empire. Like, I'm a good guy. Listen, everybody.
Aaron
01:04:45 – 01:04:53
I'm a good guy. I'm team good guys, but I just wanna watch the galactic empire and the technology and the cloning. Like, that's that's what I wanna watch. Not
Ian
01:04:53 – 01:04:53
Yeah.
Aaron
01:04:53 – 01:04:59
Oh, we're farmers tending to a library in outer space. Like, I don't care about that.
Ian
01:04:59 – 01:05:18
Yep. Yep. Yeah. There's this whole I mean, the whole library in outer space, they've cut a lot of elements of that. So it is, like I feel like in the show, it's a little weird because they've kind of given you some stuff ahead that you shouldn't actually know yet, and then they've cut things of that storyline kind of.
Ian
01:05:18 – 01:05:29
So there are places like that where I'm like, I'm confused a little bit. And I also wonder, like, if you if I didn't have the background, how would I even understand what's going on sometimes with, like, the vault and Yes. And that's another thing is,
Aaron
01:05:29 – 01:05:30
like, I
Aaron
01:05:30 – 01:05:32
just don't care. You haven't made me care
Ian
01:05:32 – 01:05:32
Right.
Aaron
01:05:32 – 01:05:34
About this vault. I'm like,
Ian
01:05:34 – 01:05:37
I don't know what's happening here. The vault is
Aaron
01:05:37 – 01:05:37
a
Ian
01:05:37 – 01:06:01
humongous thing in the book and has some very interesting properties. And first of all, it works totally different in the show. And then also, yeah, I feel like they didn't they haven't really set that up for why you would care about the vault at the level, like, that maybe the characters do, whereas it's more clear in the books, like, why people care about it. So, yeah, I don't know. It's okay.
Ian
01:06:01 – 01:06:07
I got through it. I mean, who knows now? It's gonna be like with this writer strike and everything. I don't know. It's gonna be, like, 3 years before we get the next one.
Ian
01:06:07 – 01:06:13
So then who knows? Or if we ever get the next one. Oh, yeah. That sucks. But, yeah, I don't know.
Ian
01:06:13 – 01:06:21
I'm kind of looking for it. There's this big character in the books who's coming presumably in the next season. They've hinted at him. I won't totally spoil it. Yeah.
Ian
01:06:21 – 01:06:34
No spoilers. There, but, I don't think you've seen him yet probably. But, so we'll see if he shows up and what they do with him. He's already very different from the books. You could see he's not gonna be on the same trajectory, I I think.
Ian
01:06:35 – 01:06:40
So we'll see. But, yeah, overall, you know, it's okay. I'm desperate for some sci
Aaron
01:06:40 – 01:06:40
fi.
Ian
01:06:40 – 01:06:52
I feel like there hasn't been enough sci fi. Most of these modern TV shows, I don't really care for. I'm kinda interested in seeing Loki, the 2nd season of Loki. I don't know if you're into Marvel stuff. Not Marvel guy.
Aaron
01:06:52 – 01:06:56
Not the TV shows. I'll see the movies in theaters, but I haven't watched any of the TV shows.
Ian
01:06:56 – 01:07:00
Are you what about Ashoka? Are you on Ashoka? Nope. Okay.
Aaron
01:07:00 – 01:07:06
I'll I will see Star Wars movies in theaters, but I haven't seen any of those TV shows.
Ian
01:07:06 – 01:07:08
Gotta watch Ashoka. And or
Aaron
01:07:08 – 01:07:10
Never even heard of it. I'm not gonna lie to you.
Ian
01:07:10 – 01:07:15
Oh, no. Andor is excellent. Sorry. Gotta watch Andor. It's so, so good.
Ian
01:07:15 – 01:07:20
It's it blows away foundation. It's not it's, like, 10 times better than foundation. So But I'm
Aaron
01:07:20 – 01:07:23
not a big Star Wars guy. Do I have to be a Star Wars guy?
Ian
01:07:23 – 01:07:35
Need to be. No. There's no lightsabers. There's not one lightsaber in the whole thing. With Ashoka, there's literally been the first, like, 3 episodes no less than 20 lightsaber models.
Aaron
01:07:35 – 01:07:35
Yeah.
Ian
01:07:35 – 01:07:44
It's it's it's so ridiculous. It's so I mean, that's why I think I tweeted this. But I'm like, they're making these shows for kids, but the only people who care about them are, like, 40 years old and old.
Aaron
01:07:44 – 01:07:46
Yes. Like, kids people
Ian
01:07:46 – 01:08:02
who grew up in Star Wars. Like, I want I'm I will buy every Star Wars thing you could throw at me, but, like, give me something. It can't be, like the whole plot is for, like, a 7 year old. And I get that's kinda like the idea of the original Star Wars and George Lucas blah blah blah fine. But, like, we're all older now.
Ian
01:08:02 – 01:08:06
We don't want, like, 20 lightsaber battles. Like, I've seen a lightsaber. I got it.
Aaron
01:08:06 – 01:08:08
It's cool. I understand.
Ian
01:08:09 – 01:08:26
But I'm like I used to get very distracted now by, like, okay, it's 20 lightsaber battles. And in this lightsaber battle between a robot and a Jedi, like, the Jedi never uses her powers. So, like, okay. I'm just watching the 20th lightsaber battle, but she's not just, like, throwing this robot off the cliff like she could do in 2 seconds.
Aaron
01:08:26 – 01:08:29
Like fake struggle to make Yeah. Yeah.
Ian
01:08:29 – 01:08:46
Just like, oh, it's so it's so hard to watch. Whereas so Android doesn't have any of that stuff. It's, like, basically, it's all things that's super grounded in reality. It's, you know, reality of that universe, but it's not, no lightsabers, none of that stuff. All humans doing humanly stuff.
Ian
01:08:46 – 01:08:54
Yeah. Some of the like episode 10, I think it is, is just one of the plain best episodes of TV I've ever seen, period. Oh, wow. Okay. At all.
Ian
01:08:54 – 01:09:06
So, yeah, it's it's very good. So when you're there with the with the more babies and they're just crawling on you at, like, 4 in the morning, are you just throwing and or, you know, a couple months from now? That can be just
Aaron
01:09:06 – 01:09:06
a little
Ian
01:09:06 – 01:09:07
thing to get you
Aaron
01:09:08 – 01:09:15
through there. We'll we'll see. If I if I if I do, you will be the first to hear about it. Before that, I'm gonna finish foundation.
Ian
01:09:15 – 01:09:16
Well, you should do that first. Yeah.
Aaron
01:09:16 – 01:09:16
So I
Ian
01:09:16 – 01:09:24
would I would get caught up. You know? You know, it's only 10 episodes. Now TV shows are short. It's, like, not that bad to at least get through the season.
Ian
01:09:24 – 01:09:28
So yeah. I'll be we'll we'll follow-up because then we can talk we can have
Aaron
01:09:28 – 01:09:29
a proper spoiler
Ian
01:09:29 – 01:09:35
sec segment on, foundation and the the kinda wrap up there since I just walked through too.
Aaron
01:09:35 – 01:09:39
So Perfect. Okay. Good idea. Alright. Well, you wanna you wanna read us out?
Ian
01:09:39 – 01:10:00
Yes. So thanks everybody for listening. You can follow us at well, you know, you can find us at mostlytechnical.com. We're on the Twitter slash x, which is a ridiculous thing to say, at mostlytechpod. And, definitely email us at mostlytechnicalpodcast@gmail.com if you have any commentary or feedback on, any of the stuff we talked about.
Aaron
01:10:00 – 01:10:00
So thanks
Ian
01:10:00 – 01:10:04
a lot, Aaron. Talk to you next week. See you next week. Bye.
Me

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

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