Who _Are_ You?

September 24, 2021

Colleen listened to Aaron's solo episodes and it... raised some questions
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Transcript

Aaron
00:00:01 – 00:00:17
Okay. Just Colleen and I today, Sean is I forget where Sean is, but Sean is not here. He is somewhere. He is he is he is not here, which is an improvement from last week. Because last week, y'all had a meeting without me because I was on I was on solo dad duty.
Aaron
00:00:17 – 00:00:23
And so then I did solo podcasts. So we're plus 1 from where we were last week.
Colleen
00:00:23 – 00:00:24
Yes.
Aaron
00:00:25 – 00:00:27
So how's it been going?
Colleen
00:00:27 – 00:00:35
Good. So, Aaron, I listened. Uh-oh. So I listened to your podcast with Greg.
Aaron
00:00:36 – 00:00:39
Oh, really? Greg Skirman?
Colleen
00:00:40 – 00:00:40
Yes.
Aaron
00:00:41 – 00:00:42
Tell me.
Colleen
00:00:42 – 00:00:49
I would like to know more about you because Okay. I don't feel like
Aaron
00:00:49 – 00:00:52
It's a fraud. I'm I'm open book. So tell me.
Colleen
00:00:52 – 00:01:07
I feel like, you know, I'm listening to this podcast and you're like, yeah, I just spent a couple hours and I wrote this thing that like makes your Lambdas magically go to the cloud and I solve the world's problems. And, you know, I just did that in my afternoon.
Aaron
00:01:08 – 00:01:10
So, I realized That was very generous.
Colleen
00:01:11 – 00:01:18
It was a really great podcast. I really enjoyed listening to you. Oh, good. Even though I don't know what inertia or any of that stuff really is.
Aaron
00:01:18 – 00:01:18
Sure.
Colleen
00:01:20 – 00:01:25
Can you tell me more about you and your background? I would really like to know.
Aaron
00:01:25 – 00:01:33
I can. Yeah. Absolutely. So a lot of that, like okay. So I I'm an accountant.
Colleen
00:01:33 – 00:01:34
Right. That's what I thought.
Aaron
00:01:34 – 00:01:56
CPA. Yep. Graduated from Texas A&M, with a master's in accounting, went to Ernst and Young, spent 1 year as a tax accountant at a big four accounting firm. So I did, I like did the whole thing, here, here in Dallas. And after a year so while I was there, I was watching, the people ahead of me.
Aaron
00:01:56 – 00:02:03
Like, your most recent Software Social episode, you said you were looking at the people ahead of you, and they were all depressed and miserable. Right? I
Colleen
00:02:03 – 00:02:04
did say that. Yes.
Aaron
00:02:05 – 00:02:12
So I was watching the people ahead of me and thinking kind of kind of the same deal. There's nowhere I wanna go.
Colleen
00:02:12 – 00:02:13
Like, all
Aaron
00:02:13 – 00:02:37
of all of those jobs, I don't want any of them. And then the thing that really set me off, not set me off, but caused me to leave was I watched a 4th year. So in, in it like in accounting and consulting, that's really like class driven, like your start class is, you know, the 2012 start class or whatever, because they just bring in a ton of people right out of school.
Colleen
00:02:38 – 00:02:38
Okay.
Aaron
00:02:38 – 00:02:57
So you kinda start with a cohort. And so I was watching this guy ahead of me who was just so smart. He was a great accountant, and he was really nice. And, you know, as far as we go, he was cool. And I watched him get passed over for a promotion because he wasn't in the right class year.
Aaron
00:02:58 – 00:03:29
Right. So there was this, there was this manager job open and manager jobs usually go to 5th years and he was a 4th year and he really deserved to be moved up because he was a genius and he was the best in his class. And he got passed over because he was a 4th year and I realized, okay, like, it's not about how good you are. It's about like how long you stay and all they care about is class year. And you move up as a cohort and it gets smaller and smaller until they promote partners at the very end.
Colleen
00:03:29 – 00:03:29
Okay.
Aaron
00:03:29 – 00:03:42
And I wanted to get ahead by working really hard and being the best. Right. And I saw somebody above me working really hard and being the best and just getting totally passed over and it didn't matter at all. So I left,
Colleen
00:03:43 – 00:03:46
After a year? After a year?
Aaron
00:03:46 – 00:04:01
Okay. 1 year. Yeah. I started doing while I was still there nights and weekends, I started doing, like contracts software development on the side, which I learned to program when I was, like, super young, like, 10, 11, 12. And it was just always a hobby for me.
Aaron
00:04:01 – 00:04:13
And so I just picked up some clients, started to do it on the side, was still living at home. I lived at home for, like, 6 months out of college until I moved in to a house with a friend. So I had, like, zero cost of living.
Colleen
00:04:13 – 00:04:13
Right.
Aaron
00:04:13 – 00:04:32
Then me and a friend moved into this dumpy house. So I had like zero cost of living again. And so I'm working 2 jobs, making all this money, not spending any of it, like eating Whataburger and living in basically a a shack. And so then I'd quit my accounting job and Okay. Never looked back.
Aaron
00:04:32 – 00:04:51
I did a couple startups. I did a couple of freelance, like worked at a couple of startups, did a lot of freelance worked in for a California company for awhile while living in Dallas. So I'd fly to California for 2 weeks a month and be at home for 2 weeks a month. And that was insane and something you would only do at, you know, 23 years old,
Colleen
00:04:51 – 00:04:51
right?
Aaron
00:04:51 – 00:05:07
Because it was a lot. I'd lived in a hotel room for 2 weeks every month. So, yeah, I've kinda done a ton of stuff. And you know how, like, for Hammerstone, I'm doing, like, 6 different things at once?
Colleen
00:05:07 – 00:05:08
Right.
Aaron
00:05:08 – 00:05:35
That's that's basically been my whole life. And so with the sidecar thing, it's like, oh, okay. I've done a bunch of Lambda stuff before. Because at one point I had a product that would take an RSS feed from a podcast and turn it into video and publish it to YouTube. And, like, that never it never got off the ground.
Aaron
00:05:35 – 00:06:08
Mike and I, kinda worked on it together, but I it never got off the ground. But I have all this knowledge in my head of, like, how to run Lambda's, like, at scale to generate hour and a half long videos. Right? And so then when something like when something like, sidecar comes along, I'm like, oh, I remember I remember some of that Lambda stuff, and I can pull all of these little bits together. And so it seems like, I think from the outside, it seems like, oh, man.
Aaron
00:06:08 – 00:06:35
He's inventing stuff from whole cloth, and, really, I'm not. I'm inventing stuff from bits and pieces of my memory and, you know, dead code on my hard drive. And I think for me, I've been toiling away for, like, a long, long time, just kind of in obscurity. And now that I'm, like, starting to do stuff more in public, people are like, oh, wow. He's an overnight success.
Aaron
00:06:35 – 00:06:51
He came out of nowhere. It's like, no. I've been working on stuff for a 1000 years, and just none of it's ever really worked. And so now I'm able to kind of like pull it all together and be like, Hey, look at this thing I did in 2 months that took me 10 years to do.
Colleen
00:06:51 – 00:06:52
Right.
Aaron
00:06:52 – 00:06:53
Does that make sense?
Colleen
00:06:53 – 00:07:00
Oh, yeah. That's very, like, James Clear atomic habits. Right? Like, you what is it? Overnight success takes, like, 10 years?
Colleen
00:07:00 – 00:07:04
10 years. Yeah. Exactly. One one day kind of thing. Yeah.
Colleen
00:07:04 – 00:07:15
That makes total sense. So those jobs you had after you left the accounting firm, were any of those, like, kind of traditional w two full time? Or were you always contract?
Aaron
00:07:15 – 00:07:57
The only thing I was contract until, I decided that I was gonna get married. And so when I met Jennifer and was like, I think I think I'm gonna propose, I started looking for full time jobs. Just because, like, for me, it's easy to, you know, live with my best friend and, you know, some 3rd roommate and eat pepperoni for dinner. But it's like, once I get married, I feel like I should be a little bit more stable, and so I got a full time job with a startup here in Dallas. And that was wild because I didn't have any, I guess, any pedigree or any credentials, really.
Colleen
00:07:57 – 00:07:58
Right.
Aaron
00:07:58 – 00:08:15
But at that point, I had been blogging and tweeting and talking about stuff that I was building, and so they didn't, like, they didn't even, like, really look at my resume. They, like, looked at my blog and were like, hey. Do you wanna, you know, do you wanna talk? We have job openings. I was, like, yeah.
Aaron
00:08:15 – 00:08:15
That sounds great.
Colleen
00:08:15 – 00:08:17
Is this the company you're still with today?
Aaron
00:08:18 – 00:08:26
No. So today, I'm with, so I went from that company was called Traxo. It was a start up, a travel start up here in Dallas.
Colleen
00:08:26 – 00:08:27
Okay.
Aaron
00:08:27 – 00:08:35
And I loved working for them, but it was startup y. And so it was like, are they gonna, are they gonna raise money? Are they not?
Colleen
00:08:35 – 00:08:35
And
Aaron
00:08:35 – 00:09:00
I'll get so I, so I left. And from there I went to Veronis. So I worked at Veronis for like a year and a half or 2, and it was amazing and I loved it. And I did the data analyst stuff. So it was like, not really programming, but kind of programming, plus a lot of Excel, plus a lot of like data cleaning to figure out where all of our leads were coming from.
Aaron
00:09:00 – 00:09:21
And then, well, so while I was at Veronis, my sister-in-law reached out to me. Jennifer's sister reached out to me and was like, Hey, I work at this property tax company and they're growing and they're barely holding it together. They were like staying up till 2 in the morning, filling out PDF forms
Colleen
00:09:22 – 00:09:22
and like
Aaron
00:09:22 – 00:09:42
stamping letters. They had so many clients that they couldn't invoice them all because they were creating invoices manually. And so they reached the point where it was like, we we can't we can't invoice everybody. We're we don't have enough there's not enough time in the world to invoice everyone with our current system. And so she reached out to me and was like, hey.
Aaron
00:09:42 – 00:10:01
You do computers. Right? Do can you help them? And so my first my first, like, thing that I did with them was I wrote a bunch of Google app scripts, to automate, like, take the process they were doing currently and just automate it. So like it ran and that way it could run overnight and it could run a lot faster.
Aaron
00:10:01 – 00:10:29
And so I generated, you know, these many, many thousands of PDFs for them, and then they would, you know, send them out to their clients and get paid. And at some point after like doing, you know, 4 or 5, 6 of these projects to help them like, automate things that they were already doing, but not really invent anything new. They're like, hey. Do you wanna come, Like be our every thing technology at the company. And it was like, you know, 8 or 10 people.
Aaron
00:10:29 – 00:10:42
And I was like, I don't think so. I don't, I have a great job right now. I'm about to move to France for 3 years or 3 months. So Jennifer and I went to France for 3 months and just kind of lived over there. Yeah.
Aaron
00:10:42 – 00:10:48
Because we were both remote. We're we're both remote and had no kids. And it was like, do you want to go to France? Yeah, let's do
Colleen
00:10:48 – 00:10:49
it. Yeah.
Aaron
00:10:49 – 00:10:56
And so I told him, I'm about to, you know, move to France for 3 months. You don't wanna hire me right now. And they're, like, oh, no. We already heard about that. That's great.
Aaron
00:10:56 – 00:11:10
We just want you to come in house and build our CRM. And I was like, okay. Seems exciting. Seems like a lot of potential growth opportunities. And so that's where I am now is still at the property tax firm.
Aaron
00:11:11 – 00:11:55
And at some point while I was there, it started by these 3 best friends. These guys who are like 1 year older than me, and this is the only job they've ever had is working for themselves. And so they they don't really have a ton of, like, what are other companies look like experience. And so at some point they were like, Hey, there are 3 of us and you can't really have 3 people steering a ship, because employees don't know who to come to and one will tell them something and the other will tell them something contradictory. And so they're like, what if we put you in charge of all of the people as well as the technology, and then you report to us?
Aaron
00:11:55 – 00:12:22
And that way employees have like one face and one boss, basically. And so a couple years ago, they put me in charge of people as well as technology. And so that's kind of what I do now is I split my time between the COO side of like managing. Now we have like, I don't know, we have like 20, 25 people, something like that. So managing them and then we have 2 extra developers and I still do some code.
Aaron
00:12:22 – 00:12:33
And so the 3 of us write our software together. So that's who you partnered with. That's that's who you're that's who you're in business.
Colleen
00:12:33 – 00:12:51
Well, I was listening to I listened to both your podcasts last last week. So the our the one with Greg about Sidecar and then the solo one you did, and it occurred to me that, like, I don't really know anything about you. I made some good life decisions based on very little information.
Aaron
00:12:51 – 00:12:53
Well, hopefully, you still feel good about it.
Colleen
00:12:55 – 00:13:07
So what so in terms of, like, the indie building, like, building Hammerstone and building out products Mhmm. I understand, of course, how you got started with it, but what are your goals?
Aaron
00:13:10 – 00:13:13
Colleen, my goals are to be happy. Right.
Colleen
00:13:16 – 00:13:17
So
Aaron
00:13:19 – 00:13:40
I think my goals I think my so my near term goals are I would like to cut my time at work. At Resolute. Cut it to 3 days a week and keep my healthcare. Healthcare is a big deal to me. My wife doesn't work outside the house.
Aaron
00:13:40 – 00:13:44
We have 2 kids. I have type 1 diabetes. We need, like, we need real healthcare.
Colleen
00:13:44 – 00:13:45
Yeah.
Aaron
00:13:46 – 00:14:11
So ideally, I think I would cut my day job down to 3 days a week. And in that process, lose the management of people responsibility. So I can't, I can't go to 3 days a week and look employees in the eye and say, I'm still your boss. Like the the boss needs to be there. And so, ideally, I'd cut it to 3 days a week, manage technology only, and me and the other developers would build stuff.
Aaron
00:14:11 – 00:14:15
I would keep healthcare, you know, have some kind of pay cut or whatever.
Colleen
00:14:16 – 00:14:16
Right.
Aaron
00:14:16 – 00:14:23
The other 2 days I would work on hammerstone stuff and, you know, anything else, you know, goof off, hang out with my kids, that kind of stuff.
Colleen
00:14:24 – 00:14:24
Right.
Aaron
00:14:26 – 00:14:41
And this is not news. The CEO already knows this, so I'm not, you know, I'm not surprising him. He actually came to me and was like, Hey, do you want to be the CEO someday? And I said, I really don't. Like, I just don't have a desire to do that.
Aaron
00:14:41 – 00:14:50
And which felt weird and wrong to me. But then I think long term, it would be work on products strictly.
Colleen
00:14:51 – 00:14:51
Yeah.
Aaron
00:14:52 – 00:15:31
You know, Sean has talked about how he has this desire to, like he's talked publicly about, this desire to, like, have his this company and, like, manage employees and, like, do things differently, like, do things that he thinks need to be done in the world in terms of helping people grow and have a company. And I think I'm closer to what Adam Wavin has said, where he's like, I just wanna hang out with my friends and make cool stuff. Like, he just like, Adam Wavin just wants to jam with his friends in the garage. Like, he just wants to set up a jam space and, like, hang. And I think that's more where I am.
Aaron
00:15:31 – 00:15:43
Like, I just wanna build really cool stuff and have fun with my friends. So Sean Sean can manage things. I can just hang out and jam, and then you can do everything else.
Colleen
00:15:46 – 00:15:46
That's awesome.
Aaron
00:15:47 – 00:15:52
What do you do you wanna jam, or do you wanna, like, be a company builder? Or what's your
Colleen
00:15:53 – 00:15:53
I don't know. I
Aaron
00:15:53 – 00:15:54
think it's
Colleen
00:15:55 – 00:16:13
it's hard to see I mean, through all these phases of my growth, it's hard to see the next step until you're actually approaching the next step. Right? I'm a big believer in, like you said, I mean, right? But ultimately, the goal is to be happy. Mhmm.
Colleen
00:16:13 – 00:16:33
And and so I'm a big believer in reevaluating to make sure you are still on the path you thought you wanted to be on. So I don't know. Like, I also I'm with Sean, in that part of my vision is building a company of non assholes. Yay. Like, I've had so many right?
Colleen
00:16:33 – 00:16:50
Good start. I've had so many bad work environments that, you know, providing like, just building that kind of company is really important to me. But who you know, I don't I don't have a lot of specificity in terms of what that looks like.
Aaron
00:16:50 – 00:16:50
Mhmm.
Colleen
00:16:50 – 00:16:56
So I don't know. I think it depends on, you know, how fast we grow and and how quickly we want to grow and
Aaron
00:16:56 – 00:16:57
Yeah.
Colleen
00:16:57 – 00:16:58
And all those things.
Aaron
00:16:59 – 00:17:01
It's it's hard to see that far out.
Colleen
00:17:01 – 00:17:04
Yeah. Totally. Right? Like, especially now.
Aaron
00:17:05 – 00:17:20
Yeah. Especially yeah. Especially now when almost every possibility is still on the table, like we haven't gotten down hardly any roads that eliminate any other roads. And so all paths are available to us still. And that that's difficult.
Aaron
00:17:20 – 00:17:32
That's why I look, you know, a couple of years out and, or may, you know, maybe a year out or 2 and it's, I'm 3 days a week. That's that's about as far as I've gotten is I'd like to cut back at work someday.
Colleen
00:17:33 – 00:17:47
Yeah. I mean, I think my more immediate goal would be after I mean, that's the goal. Right?
Aaron
00:17:47 – 00:17:49
That would be amazing.
Colleen
00:17:50 – 00:17:52
I don't know if it's realistic or not, but
Aaron
00:17:52 – 00:17:54
I think it is.
Colleen
00:17:54 – 00:18:02
That's that's kind of that's kind of the goal. Like, I, like, my shorter term goal, I mean, that's a year. So we'll see.
Aaron
00:18:03 – 00:18:33
I think that's realistic because well, one, I think we're gonna start making, product money pretty soon. So we're making consulting money, and it's all going to you. I think soon we'll start making product money. Mhmm. And probably the 1st and only to be full full time hammerstone for a while.
Colleen
00:18:34 – 00:18:49
Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. But I I mean, you know and and part of that offering could be, like, if the product isn't bringing in enough money, we could do productized consulting that helps us continue to grow, kinda like what I'm doing now, almost, that helps us improve the product. It's good for everyone.
Colleen
00:18:50 – 00:18:51
But, yeah.
Aaron
00:18:51 – 00:19:10
Yeah. And if I'm I don't know. If I'm if I have the time and I could do, like, basically productized consulting, but like the integrations. So you you buy the thing and then you get, you know, 3 days pairing to do the integrations. I was actually thinking about this the other day.
Aaron
00:19:11 – 00:19:45
Like, getting refine and integrated into people's apps. I think a great a great offering there is a full day of pairing or 2 days of pairing or whatever. And that's different. That's different than us, like working on your app alone for 2 days, because with the day or 2 of pairing, you don't have the day or 2 or 3 or 5 of getting the environment, their environment set up on your computer, which is a living nightmare.
Colleen
00:19:45 – 00:19:46
Right.
Aaron
00:19:46 – 00:19:53
Right? So if you're like, hey, we'll do a pairing, then their environment's already set up, and you're just there working in their system.
Colleen
00:19:53 – 00:20:01
That's a great idea. And it helps us develop relationships, which is gonna help when we talk about word-of-mouth. Like, I really like that idea.
Aaron
00:20:02 – 00:20:11
Yeah. And that cuts out A lot. The worst part that you're dealing with is, like, environment. Like, getting the environment set up is not a trivial thing.
Colleen
00:20:11 – 00:20:13
Right. Yeah. I love it.
Aaron
00:20:13 – 00:20:16
I would like to explore that. That I think and I think it would be a lot of fun just to
Colleen
00:20:17 – 00:20:21
I think if well, I think I mean, I Jam. Both of us. Right? Like, you're jammed in the garage. Right?
Aaron
00:20:21 – 00:20:22
Like,
Colleen
00:20:22 – 00:20:27
let's just hang out and do some programming. I think that's a great idea. I really like that idea.
Aaron
00:20:28 – 00:20:38
So and I think we'll have to do it in the beginning. Not have to, I think it would be really good to do it in the beginning to just kind of watch people's experience and see where they get tripped up.
Colleen
00:20:38 – 00:20:43
Well, it's customer development. Right? It's like a customer interview, kind of.
Aaron
00:20:44 – 00:20:57
Yeah. Yeah. So, hopefully, we'll do that. Hopefully, that'll, you know, bring in some money. I think if somebody's gonna integrate this into their app, they'd be willing to to spend a little extra to, like, get it done almost immediately.
Aaron
00:20:58 – 00:20:59
So
Colleen
00:20:59 – 00:21:00
Yeah.
Aaron
00:21:01 – 00:21:08
Yeah. That's the plan. Yeah. We'll see. We've got, what, it's the 22nd.
Aaron
00:21:08 – 00:21:20
We've got a couple weeks until Laravel stuff should be done. And I watched the video that Sean sent us. It looks like the front end is amazing. Awesome. Yeah.
Aaron
00:21:20 – 00:21:32
All of that, all of that, focus, trapping and tabbing in ARIA roles. That just seems miserable. I'm so glad he's doing I'm so glad he's doing that and not me.
Colleen
00:21:33 – 00:21:50
It's so funny you say that because I when we started this project, you know, what, a year ago now, our responsibilities were really split. And so now I have to take over all the front end stuff, and I'm just like, I should have paid closer attention. Oh, man.
Aaron
00:21:52 – 00:21:56
Yeah. That stuff. Oh, man. That stuff looks brutal. But Yeah.
Aaron
00:21:56 – 00:22:12
That I think that's where he I think that's where he he is a he is just so technical on the front end, and he is so good at it. And so I'm glad that he's, like, picking it back up, and we're moving again. He was gone for so long with the hot wire stuff.
Colleen
00:22:12 – 00:22:12
Yeah.
Aaron
00:22:15 – 00:22:21
Okay. So what else? You wanna know anything else? You wanna tell me about the client? I've, you know, I've got 2 brothers and a sister.
Aaron
00:22:22 – 00:22:25
I've got 2 parents. Wow. Yeah. I don't
Colleen
00:22:25 – 00:22:27
know that. Does anyone live in Dallas?
Aaron
00:22:28 – 00:22:34
No. Actually, one brother lives in Dallas, one lives in Galveston, and the sister lives in The Woodlands, which is Houston.
Colleen
00:22:34 – 00:22:37
Oh, but you're all there. Yeah. I used to live in Houston. I think I told you that.
Aaron
00:22:37 – 00:22:37
Oh, yeah.
Colleen
00:22:38 – 00:22:40
But you're all there in Texas.
Aaron
00:22:40 – 00:22:47
Yep. My parents do live in Dallas. So, they've been coming over all day since the babies have been born, which Oh, it's amazing.
Colleen
00:22:48 – 00:22:49
That's amazing.
Aaron
00:22:50 – 00:22:52
It's just so helpful. Good.
Colleen
00:22:53 – 00:23:02
Yeah. Cool. So work is good. Oh, I upgraded my I my OS. That's my big news.
Colleen
00:23:02 – 00:23:14
I have this really complicated set. I have 2 computers. I don't know if anyone else does this or if I'm just weird. So I have 2 computers. I have my computer, which is my primary work computer, and then my backup computer.
Colleen
00:23:14 – 00:23:17
What? And so yeah. So okay. Is that it?
Aaron
00:23:18 – 00:23:18
Yeah.
Colleen
00:23:18 – 00:23:22
Well, here's the thing. If I can't work, I don't get paid. Right?
Aaron
00:23:22 – 00:23:23
Well, that yeah. That's
Colleen
00:23:23 – 00:23:37
true. Like, for example, my primary computer, the battery is dead. It's a laptop, but the battery is dead. So it always has to be plugged in. And I took it to the Apple Store, and they were, like, oh, we can get it back to you in 7 to 10 days.
Aaron
00:23:37 – 00:23:37
And I'm
Colleen
00:23:37 – 00:23:53
like, no. So my backup computer, I let my husband use because I'm kind like that. So my backup computer is my husband's computer, but he doesn't really need a computer because he doesn't really compute things. And so Imagine
Aaron
00:23:53 – 00:23:56
imagine not needing a computer. That's crazy.
Colleen
00:23:57 – 00:23:59
It's so weird. Right? So weird.
Aaron
00:23:59 – 00:24:03
But you don't That's weirder than a backup computer. That's insane.
Colleen
00:24:03 – 00:24:23
Anyway, so every time I have to upgrade something, it's this whole song and dance. Like, I do a complete dump of my primary computer. I then load up the backup computer. I then upgrade the backup computer to the primary OS. Then I switch them out, and so then so now I'm on the backup computer with the new OS.
Colleen
00:24:23 – 00:24:32
Today is my trial day, so I see if it works all day before I then upgrade the primary computer. I'm weird.
Aaron
00:24:32 – 00:24:34
Anyway, so today That's that's wacky. Yeah.
Colleen
00:24:34 – 00:24:37
Right? But but if you think about it, it's a perfect fallback system because
Aaron
00:24:38 – 00:24:38
the
Colleen
00:24:38 – 00:24:39
back of computer
Aaron
00:24:40 – 00:24:43
Okay. Well, pump the brakes a little bit. Yeah.
Colleen
00:24:44 – 00:25:08
The back up computer, right, has a full image, and then my primary computer, I don't touch. Then the back up computer gets upgraded. And so then if I have a problem with the new OS, which I always have a problem with the new OS. Like, I don't it's always something that's really annoying. So if I have a problem with the new OS and I'm working on something time sensitive, which it feels like I am always working on something time sensitive, I can just go back to the primary computer, which is still on the old OS.
Colleen
00:25:10 – 00:25:14
And that's more information than anyone wanted to know about how I upgrade my computer.
Aaron
00:25:14 – 00:25:20
I think the lesson we learned here is you need to buy a new primary computer that has a functioning battery.
Colleen
00:25:20 – 00:25:33
Yes. Right. So now that I have solved this problem because I'm doing a lot of traveling the next 2 months. So today, I'm using the backup computer, which now has the new OS and the image of the old computer, and so far so good. So that's exciting.
Aaron
00:25:34 – 00:25:41
You're going, where are you going first? Where's the first you're going to some retreat with with Michelle and somebody else.
Colleen
00:25:41 – 00:25:45
Yeah. That's at the end of October. That's the founder's exhibit.
Aaron
00:25:45 – 00:25:46
So that's last.
Colleen
00:25:46 – 00:25:54
Yeah. So that's after our retreat. So our retreat's October early, and then that's 2 weeks later. And that's Founders Summit.
Aaron
00:25:54 – 00:25:56
What is that one? Who runs that?
Colleen
00:25:57 – 00:26:00
Calm Company Fund, which used to be Oh, cool. What's the
Aaron
00:26:00 – 00:26:01
biggest Ernest Capital?
Colleen
00:26:01 – 00:26:14
Yeah. It's Ernest Capital, Calm Company Fund now. So it should be really cool. I mean, it has a lot it's they keep the attendance really low and it's more of an unconference. Like there are no speakers.
Colleen
00:26:14 – 00:26:23
There are somewhat curated workshops, I think. But the idea is just to meet other people who are founding companies in the space.
Aaron
00:26:24 – 00:26:24
Great.
Colleen
00:26:25 – 00:26:31
Yeah. And it seems like like I'm in their Slack now. So it seems like most of these people have very successful companies.
Aaron
00:26:31 – 00:26:31
Mhmm.
Colleen
00:26:32 – 00:26:35
And so it'll be it'll be interesting. I'm looking forward to it, though.
Aaron
00:26:36 – 00:26:44
Okay. So I think everybody's gonna be wondering, are you you don't have any investment connection with Calm Company. Right?
Colleen
00:26:44 – 00:26:44
Or I do not.
Aaron
00:26:44 – 00:26:49
Fund or whatever it is. Okay. So you're just going, you're just going as an attendee, I
Colleen
00:26:49 – 00:26:50
guess. Correct.
Aaron
00:26:50 – 00:26:57
So so we'll file upload is not backed by company. Okay. No. It could be. They'll that's crazy.
Colleen
00:26:58 – 00:26:59
I guess not. No.
Aaron
00:26:59 – 00:27:01
That's totally reasonable.
Colleen
00:27:01 – 00:27:08
Nope. Nope. So I'm just going because Michelle is an investor. So she Got it. Is an investor, and she's a mentor.
Colleen
00:27:08 – 00:27:16
So, I wanted to go. So I asked her if she was going, and then and then that's kind of how that started. So we're going to go.
Aaron
00:27:16 – 00:27:18
Great. Yeah. That's gonna be fun.
Colleen
00:27:18 – 00:27:27
Yeah. It's gonna be amazing. I'm just excited to see people again. I'm so much better in real life than I am virtually. Like, just so much better.
Colleen
00:27:27 – 00:27:28
I'm just weird on camera. Whatever.
Aaron
00:27:29 – 00:27:30
I don't I don't know about that.
Colleen
00:27:31 – 00:27:36
I just I can't figure it out. I don't know. And I get so much more energy from Yeah.
Aaron
00:27:36 – 00:27:36
I think you do.
Colleen
00:27:37 – 00:27:47
With people. Right? Like Yeah. I have a friend, and by friend, I mean random guy on Twitter that lives in San Diego that I now work with once a week because I'm that person
Aaron
00:27:47 – 00:27:47
who just
Colleen
00:27:47 – 00:27:54
shows up. He's like, you wanna come to my co working space? I was like, yes. And I'm gonna come every week until you tell me to stop coming.
Aaron
00:27:54 – 00:27:58
Yep. That's a good that's a great quality. We like to have people who are joiners. That's great.
Colleen
00:27:58 – 00:28:11
But my new friend, like, just spending a day with someone else in the self funded business space once a week, it's like an incredible energy burst for me. Like, I don't know. I like people in
Aaron
00:28:11 – 00:28:14
my life. Is Andrew anywhere nearby you?
Colleen
00:28:14 – 00:28:18
No. He's in LA, which is apparently kind of super far away.
Aaron
00:28:19 – 00:28:20
Okay. That's too bad.
Colleen
00:28:20 – 00:28:20
Yeah.
Aaron
00:28:20 – 00:28:27
Because you wanna you wanna talk about energy supernova, the 2 of you together? I know. Right? That would
Colleen
00:28:28 – 00:28:30
We're like, real excited.
Aaron
00:28:30 – 00:28:35
Be cataclysmic. Yeah. Real excited. Y'all get amped. We do.
Aaron
00:28:35 – 00:28:40
We do. So, yeah. So, what's going on client world? Anything interesting?
Colleen
00:28:41 – 00:29:01
Nothing super exciting. I think maybe I didn't mention it. So I've been doing a lot of the front end stuff, and all of this work is leading up to the nested filters, which we talked about a little bit. But I have not implemented the nested filters yet because I kind of wanna get some of these little onesie twosies
Aaron
00:29:01 – 00:29:02
Sure.
Colleen
00:29:02 – 00:29:20
Annoyances done, like, out of the way. And it's been really good because there are things that, generally speaking, aren't that hard to implement, like inline errors on the form. Mhmm. But we're using turbo frames, and so it's been good. I haven't used turbo frames before.
Colleen
00:29:20 – 00:29:38
So it's been really a good way for me to get, like, kind of a gentle introduction instead of, like, you have to implement this all from scratch. It's, like, it's mostly done. Like, it mostly works. You just need 1 or 2 little, little things to make it a little more user friendly. So that's been good.
Colleen
00:29:38 – 00:29:51
So I've pretty much been, for the past 2 weeks, like, doing all this, like, little front end stuff, like the apply button, was waiting for a form submit. So just stuff that's not interesting to anyone but the user, and that's important.
Aaron
00:29:51 – 00:29:57
Is it feeling better? Like, the when you're driving it around, does it feel more user friendly and you're liking it?
Colleen
00:29:57 – 00:30:16
I think we're getting there. There's still some I mean, the turbo frame stuff, like, there's just still some stuff that's a little wonky. And Sean and I did, like, a couple hours of pairing, and we made some progress. But there's just some stuff that's weird, but that's like a turbo frame thing. It's not a hammer stone thing.
Aaron
00:30:17 – 00:30:18
Yeesh.
Colleen
00:30:18 – 00:30:30
Yeah. It's getting there. But I think I told you I was having some trouble I guess this was I talked to you 2 weeks ago. So all of the recursive querying stuff Yeah. I was I was running into an issue there.
Colleen
00:30:30 – 00:30:38
So I fixed that. So that was really exciting. So now the 5 levels deep, should we want to do that, can be done. So that's good. Great.
Colleen
00:30:38 – 00:30:39
Yeah.
Aaron
00:30:39 – 00:30:41
Is that 2 seconds. What was the problem?
Colleen
00:30:43 – 00:31:06
Oh, it was I don't even remember. It had something to do with with applying the pending relationship subqueries, like one of the like, when you popped off the last the last one, it wasn't properly popping off. Like, it wasn't properly popping off the pending relationship subquery array. So then when you sent it into the subset method, you had this extra, like, hanging data piece.
Aaron
00:31:07 – 00:31:08
Hanging, Chad. Yeah.
Colleen
00:31:08 – 00:31:11
I know if you're old enough to say you'd get the hanging
Aaron
00:31:11 – 00:31:12
Barely. Reference.
Colleen
00:31:12 – 00:31:13
Right? You're barely old.
Aaron
00:31:13 – 00:31:14
She's afraid. Yeah.
Colleen
00:31:14 – 00:31:18
I almost said hanging Chad, and I stopped. Because I was like, I I don't know if Aaron's gonna get that.
Aaron
00:31:18 – 00:31:22
Yep. So Cool. Well, I'm glad you got it. That's great.
Colleen
00:31:22 – 00:31:38
Yeah. It was good. It was, like I said, it was just something that I think it was. I think you were doing, like, a Laravel has, like, an array it wasn't a ray pop. I don't remember the details, but whatever it was in Laravel was modifying the pending relationship sub theory data structure.
Aaron
00:31:38 – 00:31:39
Got it.
Colleen
00:31:39 – 00:31:42
In Rails, as you recall, we don't often modify
Aaron
00:31:42 – 00:31:43
Modify in place.
Colleen
00:31:43 – 00:32:12
In in place that way. So and I had missed that, and curiously, it only revealed itself when you had these, like, nested children at different levels. And although we have an incredible test suite, we hadn't tested this particular weird case where you have a has many through and, like, it was like 3 belongs to and a has many through and it belongs to. And so we hadn't tested that complicated of a relationship. So it was making it through like 3 belongs to's.
Aaron
00:32:12 – 00:32:13
Mhmm.
Colleen
00:32:13 – 00:32:15
Then it was hitting the has many through, and it was exploding.
Aaron
00:32:16 – 00:32:17
Man.
Colleen
00:32:17 – 00:32:18
So yeah. Freaking love
Aaron
00:32:19 – 00:32:20
I love that crap. Help.
Colleen
00:32:20 – 00:32:23
Right? Like, you're like, yes. Let's talk about this. Yeah.
Aaron
00:32:23 – 00:32:24
It's all I wanna do.
Colleen
00:32:24 – 00:32:54
So it was something along those lines, like, that that's kind of what happened. So it was a good find because now, you know, we can we can handle infinite depth, which as it was designed to do. But my focus is the front end stuff, which I'll probably finish next week. And then it'll be I got the mock ups for what they want the filter within a filter to look like. So then it'll be trying to implement that, which will be which will be kind of fun and interesting.
Colleen
00:32:54 – 00:32:56
And then we'll go from there and see where we are.
Aaron
00:32:57 – 00:32:59
Man, this is so awesome. Yeah.
Colleen
00:32:59 – 00:33:00
It's really cool.
Aaron
00:33:00 – 00:33:09
I'm so pumped about all of this. I mean, just the fact that you're spending all day every day working on this and thinking about this.
Colleen
00:33:09 – 00:33:10
Isn't it such
Aaron
00:33:10 – 00:33:12
We're getting so far.
Colleen
00:33:12 – 00:33:15
Time is such a luxury. Right?
Aaron
00:33:15 – 00:33:15
It is.
Colleen
00:33:15 – 00:33:29
Such a luxury to not feel like to not feel to feel like you can do something right, and you can take the time, and you can fully understand the problem instead of when you're just trying to get something out as quickly as possible. It feels awesome.
Aaron
00:33:30 – 00:33:35
Yeah. Got it. Totally rules. Cool. I love that.
Aaron
00:33:35 – 00:33:41
That's an exciting update. That makes me so happy. And then our retreat is soon. Right? It's
Colleen
00:33:41 – 00:33:42
It's, like, 2 weeks.
Aaron
00:33:42 – 00:33:42
Or something?
Colleen
00:33:42 – 00:33:47
Oh, and we gotta set up a meeting for next week so we can knock some of this stuff out before we meet in person.
Aaron
00:33:48 – 00:34:12
That's right. I talked to my attorney friend, and he said he doesn't feel comfortable doing it, which I that was what I led with. He said, I that's not my area of expertise, and I wouldn't do it for people I don't know. And so he's gonna refer me to someone who does do operating agreements here in Texas. And so I'll get a name or a couple of names hopefully from him.
Aaron
00:34:12 – 00:34:20
And then the 3 of us need to work through Dalia's LLC questionnaire that should surface all of all of the difficult questions.
Colleen
00:34:21 – 00:34:22
Right. Yep.
Aaron
00:34:23 – 00:34:26
So we'll do that next week. So we have that knocked out before
Colleen
00:34:26 – 00:34:28
Yeah. I think we wanna get that.
Aaron
00:34:28 – 00:34:29
Time. Yeah.
Colleen
00:34:29 – 00:34:34
Yeah. The retreat time is very limited. So I think we need to be focused while we're there.
Aaron
00:34:34 – 00:34:45
Yeah. I agree. Speaking of retreat time, are we going to prepare a group presentation? And if so, do we need do we need to work on that?
Colleen
00:34:45 – 00:35:00
Yes and yes. I'd say yes and yes. I think it's important I mean, one of the things I think that will be beneficial is having really really given it some thought. Like, we've been running at a 1000000 miles an hour since I've joined you guys, it feels like. Right?
Colleen
00:35:00 – 00:35:22
Everything happened so quickly, and now things are happening quickly. And it's really awesome, but I don't know if we've taken a step back to, like, look at exactly where we are and what our goals are and how we wanna achieve those goals. So I personally think that's a good use of time. And I also think we should do it before the retreat. Again, so we're not not figuring it out while we're there, which I think is a total waste of our time.
Colleen
00:35:22 – 00:35:22
Like
Aaron
00:35:22 – 00:35:23
Yes. Okay.
Colleen
00:35:23 – 00:35:25
We need to utilize the people that are there.
Aaron
00:35:26 – 00:35:36
Great. Okay. We should do that next week too then, because we should give the other people at least the opportunity to review our materials before we show up.
Colleen
00:35:36 – 00:35:37
I think so.
Aaron
00:35:38 – 00:35:46
Okay. Alright. Let's chat. Let's Slack and see when Sean has some time or all 3 of us have some time to do that. Perfect.
Aaron
00:35:48 – 00:35:54
Next week, 1 week from yesterday, I'm doing my first live stream, live coding.
Colleen
00:35:54 – 00:35:55
I know.
Aaron
00:35:55 – 00:35:56
Which is terrifying.
Colleen
00:35:56 – 00:35:58
I'm excited for you. It's so great.
Aaron
00:35:59 – 00:36:14
I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. I'm super nervous about it. I think it's pretty low key. The guy running it, Frank said it's, like, between 10:40 minutes. So it doesn't sound like I've got to hit a certain time, like, on the button.
Aaron
00:36:14 – 00:36:30
Otherwise, it's gonna be weird. So I can just kinda, like, you know, do whatever I'm gonna do and stop when it's over. So that's helpful. I don't have to, like rush to finish or stretch it out if I'm going short, but yeah, it's the Laravel worldwide meetup. So it's meetup.laravel.com.
Aaron
00:36:32 – 00:37:02
And I'll be demoing sidecar. So I'll be not only live coding, but live deploying to AWS and hoping everything works on stream. So, yeah, I'm super pumped. So that's next week. And then other stuff on my side, God, I've gotten some really good and helpful feedback on Torchlight.
Aaron
00:37:04 – 00:37:19
Lot of people are using it and coming back and saying, like, hey. I'd love to implement a copy code button. Like, have you thought about doing that? And so, like, you know, they want their code example, and then they want a button that's, like, copy, just like GitHub has.
Colleen
00:37:20 – 00:37:21
Oh, yeah.
Aaron
00:37:21 – 00:37:58
And so I'm adding that in so that there's a clean set of code that is hidden that they can copy from. Some people have had really good ideas on, like, how to integrate it into emails, that kind of stuff. So it's fun because it's it's like it's out there, and it's moving. And while it's in progress, like, I'm picking up more and more, you know, ideas and use cases. And that's one of those things that I've learned is, like, motion begets motion and like progress begets progress.
Aaron
00:37:58 – 00:38:20
And like, the hardest thing is to be stationary. And like, come up with ideas about what you're going to build. Like that's super hard. Once you're moving, you can spot ideas all day, every single day, which is also hard because you're like, well, damn. Now I've got 50 ideas and I can't build them all at once.
Aaron
00:38:21 – 00:38:49
But being in motion with Torchlight has been a lot of fun because, like, people are just giving me incredible ideas. People are putting in great open source work. There's a, I don't wanna talk about it too much because I haven't finished it yet, but there's a guy who's done some incredible work in combining the Laravel and Symphony packages so that both communities can use them. And he's just, like, spend a bunch of time on it and then send it to me. And I was like, here, what do you think?
Aaron
00:38:49 – 00:38:59
You don't have to use it. And I'm looking at it. I'm like, this is amazing. How did you, like, do all of this? So that's been wonderful, and I'm pumped about that.
Colleen
00:38:59 – 00:39:00
That's awesome.
Aaron
00:39:01 – 00:39:11
Yeah. It's great. I'm I'm super pleased with how that's turning out. I'm trying to think. That's Oh, I had my first viral tweet.
Aaron
00:39:11 – 00:39:12
You did? Robots.
Colleen
00:39:13 – 00:39:14
Oh, yeah.
Aaron
00:39:15 – 00:39:27
The robots. Yeah. That was crazy. So I did a tweet thread about building some handwriting robots and put it out there for the lulls. And I got like 800 retweets.
Colleen
00:39:27 – 00:39:28
Oh my goodness.
Aaron
00:39:29 – 00:39:48
And then I put it, I I had maybe 4 or 500, and then I put it on Hacker News as a show h n, because I was just, like, give me more pain. And and they delivered. They freaking hated it because it was marketing. They thought it was the worst thing in the world. Somebody called me, like, Moloch, but I don't really know what that is.
Aaron
00:39:48 – 00:39:56
I think it's a literary character. But yeah, it was great. I went from like 2,200 followers to 2,900.
Colleen
00:39:57 – 00:39:58
So, wow,
Aaron
00:39:59 – 00:40:08
that's wild. If they're looking for more robot content, they'll be disappointed. But yeah, it was it was a wild weekend. A lot of fun, though.
Colleen
00:40:08 – 00:40:08
Yeah.
Aaron
00:40:09 – 00:40:15
So just trying to catch up to you and Sean. I think you're at like 35 and Sean's at like 45 or something.
Colleen
00:40:16 – 00:40:17
Yeah. I don't know.
Aaron
00:40:17 – 00:40:27
Something like that. Jim's just the weakest link here. Okay. I think that's it. Do you have anything else we need to talk about today?
Colleen
00:40:27 – 00:40:29
Nope. That's all I got.
Aaron
00:40:29 – 00:40:31
Okay. Well, we'll talk to you later.
Me

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

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