Aaron Francis

Ian has a Christmas present for Aaron; the guys look back on 2024 and forward to 2025. Finally, they break down MT ad revenue for 2024 and set a goal for 2025. Gravity Falls - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Falls Disclosure - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disclosure_(1994_film) Solo - https://github.com/aarondfrancis/solo Cowgirls with Cameras podcast - https://cowgirlswithcameras.com/

Watch on YouTube →

Transcript

Ian

00:00:00 – 00:00:01

Hello.

Aaron

00:00:02 – 00:00:02

Good morning.

Ian

00:00:03 – 00:00:05

How's it going? Going on.

Aaron

00:00:06 – 00:00:18

Last time you were hat guy, we spent, like, ten minutes talking about hat guy. You're coming in strong on hat guy today. You got you got big old block text on there that says night patrol. What does that even mean?

Ian

00:00:19 – 00:00:22

I thought I'd sneak this by you. Surprised you noticed this.

Aaron

00:00:22 – 00:00:24

You're not as subtle as you may hope.

Ian

00:00:25 – 00:00:34

I don't know. I just wanna wear a hat today that I got this hat recently. This is from, Galaxy Falls. I don't know if you know that cartoon. It was, like, big in 02/2013 or '14.

Ian

00:00:35 – 00:00:49

Anyway, my oldest son turned me on to it. It's very funny. It's only two seasons, so it's nice. It's, like, tight kind of, you don't have to watch ten seasons or whatever. And the second season, he has this awesome night patrol hat and there's this whole, you know, whatever.

Ian

00:00:49 – 00:00:57

There's some guy who has a little company that makes swag for the show. I don't even know if it's official. I think it's sort of official. A night patrol hat. It's just an awesome hat.

Ian

00:00:59 – 00:01:01

Although, I don't like this whole flat room situation.

Aaron

00:01:02 – 00:01:02

Yeah.

Ian

00:01:03 – 00:01:04

Not a flat room guy.

Aaron

00:01:04 – 00:01:14

Last time I think last time, it was the chrome dinosaur hat and had a weird horn weird horn situation. Like, the front was the front was too was too pointy.

Ian

00:01:14 – 00:01:14

Yeah.

Aaron

00:01:14 – 00:01:20

So you couldn't wear it forwards, and now you got now you got a flat bill. You're all over the place.

Ian

00:01:20 – 00:01:23

I don't know. Should I should I tip it down more? How do you wear one? What do the kids do?

Aaron

00:01:23 – 00:01:26

I don't know. I've never worn a flat bill in my life.

Ian

00:01:26 – 00:01:33

It is very bulky up here too, but then this is how it is on the show. You know, on the show, like, kid wears it. It's just like a big billboard type of thing. Yeah.

Aaron

00:01:33 – 00:01:37

I think the top part is right. It's the flat bill, but I don't I I don't ever know how to style.

Ian

00:01:37 – 00:01:42

Yeah. Whatever. I'm just going with it today. Luckily, this is mostly audio, so it's fine.

Aaron

00:01:42 – 00:01:45

Do you have you ever watched 30 rock?

Ian

00:01:46 – 00:01:53

I have. I haven't, like I don't I I need to re go back through it. I watched it in real time, but I didn't catch every episode. You know, it's one of those kind of things. Yeah.

Ian

00:01:53 – 00:01:55

I haven't rewatched. I need to do the real

Aaron

00:01:55 – 00:02:06

There's a character whose shtick is that he wears a different hat every episode, and it always says something it always says something ridiculous on it. And that's that's the same vibe. You're giving me hair.

Ian

00:02:06 – 00:02:18

I just saw a, clip of that show recently, and it was it was related to him. Yeah. Whatever he had, he had the hat with whatever he's saying was relevant. And I was like, that was such a good bit. And then I said, that was like, they're making these custom hats every show.

Aaron

00:02:19 – 00:02:20

Every show. Such a good bit.

Ian

00:02:21 – 00:02:25

Yeah. Just I love an ongoing bit like that. And I do too. Often they didn't even, like, address it. Right?

Ian

00:02:25 – 00:02:28

I think most of the time they didn't, like, address it. Yeah.

Aaron

00:02:28 – 00:02:51

No. There was, like, one episode one one that I recall where I think Liz is, she's been suspended for sexually harassing Alec Baldwin, her boss, which is hysterical because it didn't happen. But, she, like, tries to come into work, and she stops by security. And she says, what does Frank's hat say? And somebody says and she says, ah, could be better.

Aaron

00:02:51 – 00:02:56

And that's it. Like, I think that's the only time they acknowledge that there's something written on the hat.

Ian

00:02:57 – 00:03:04

We go down, sort of, that that angle for a second. Do you ever watch or listen to the rewatchables?

Aaron

00:03:04 – 00:03:05

No.

Ian

00:03:05 – 00:03:16

Oh, so Bill Simmons, his podcast. You know what it is or no? No. Okay. It's, probably the biggest movie sort of, review podcast, but it's not modern movies.

Ian

00:03:16 – 00:03:26

It's all rewatchable movies. So it's all old movies, like, Ferris Bueller or whatever. Right? And they did a disclosure recently. Do you know what disclosure is?

Aaron

00:03:26 – 00:03:27

Nope. Oh, man.

Ian

00:03:27 – 00:03:28

Alright. So we came out of

Aaron

00:03:28 – 00:03:31

the This segment's not going well, and that's mostly my fault. So I'm sorry.

Ian

00:03:31 – 00:03:45

It's basically just an awesome tech movie where, like, Demi Moore sexually harasses, Gordon Gekko. Why is his name,

Aaron

00:03:45 – 00:03:46

Michael Douglas? Yeah.

Ian

00:03:46 – 00:03:55

Michael Douglas. And but the whole thing's in Seattle, and they're this awesome office. And it's, like, the beginning of the Internet. It's, like, '95 or '4 or something. This movie's in.

Ian

00:03:55 – 00:04:00

And the whole the it's, like, it's just an amazing movie. So go out and watch Disclosure when you have Yeah.

Aaron

00:04:00 – 00:04:07

Sorry. I can't I can't give you anything. I got nothing I got nothing to add here. Well That's my bad. Alright.

Aaron

00:04:07 – 00:04:11

You wanna do a so it's, you know, the end of the year. It's December 23 today.

Ian

00:04:11 – 00:04:12

Mhmm.

Aaron

00:04:12 – 00:04:25

Do you wanna do a little we could do a little, you know, what's going on this week, of course, but we could also do year end review and hopes, plans, and dreams for 2025. How does how does any of that strike?

Ian

00:04:25 – 00:04:27

Yeah. Yeah. I got a present for you.

Aaron

00:04:27 – 00:04:29

You got a present for me?

Ian

00:04:29 – 00:04:30

Yeah. I got a present.

Aaron

00:04:30 – 00:04:31

Tell me.

Ian

00:04:31 – 00:04:43

So I was, driving into the office. It's only, like, a four minute drive. So I pop on Joe Tenenbaum's, side project podcast Yes. Which you are a guest this week.

Aaron

00:04:43 – 00:04:43

Correct.

Ian

00:04:44 – 00:04:52

And so I I've heard five minutes of this podcast. Mhmm. So I'm just going out the first five minutes. But the first five minutes, you guys were talking about mostly technical. Right?

Ian

00:04:52 – 00:05:04

We had we had a little discussion about that. So my present to you this week this week, I am yes, ma'am. No. Whatever you throw at me, your goals for next year,

Aaron

00:05:04 – 00:05:05

I am a yes, man.

Ian

00:05:05 – 00:05:07

Yes. Yes, man.

Aaron

00:05:07 – 00:05:10

Gonna ruin the show, but it's gonna make me feel so great.

Ian

00:05:10 – 00:05:13

One day only. It's just a Christmas miracle. Yeah.

Aaron

00:05:13 – 00:05:16

It is a Christmas miracle. Yes. Oh, that's fantastic.

Ian

00:05:17 – 00:05:20

Yeah. So you gotta throw out some crazy

Aaron

00:05:20 – 00:05:22

stuff. Did I call you a no man in the first five minutes?

Ian

00:05:22 – 00:05:25

You did. But that's okay. That's my role. But that

Aaron

00:05:25 – 00:05:26

is your role.

Ian

00:05:26 – 00:05:27

But today. Yes, man.

Aaron

00:05:27 – 00:05:30

Okay. Oh, man. Oh, yeah.

Ian

00:05:30 – 00:05:32

Yeah. Yeah. You're going to do it yourself.

Aaron

00:05:32 – 00:05:37

Yeah. This is exciting. I have to give you some of my real hopes and dreams.

Ian

00:05:37 – 00:05:42

Yeah. When do you get the guy who has everything? I'm like, okay. What can I buy you? All I could give you I could give you yes, man.

Ian

00:05:42 – 00:05:43

That's better than anything.

Aaron

00:05:43 – 00:05:47

Love yes, man. Yes. That's great. Yes. Oh, wow.

Aaron

00:05:47 – 00:05:50

Okay. Very exciting stuff. I'm thrilled to death about this.

Ian

00:05:50 – 00:05:55

I am excited to listen to the rest of your show too, though. That you were it was it was very good the first five minutes. So

Aaron

00:05:55 – 00:06:01

Oh, that's good. Let's let's stick on this for a second. Yes. Did you also watch the Nuno review of Solo?

Ian

00:06:01 – 00:06:11

I did. Okay. So that was great. I thought he did a really nice job of, like, condensing it down. It was just, like, five minute little segment.

Ian

00:06:11 – 00:06:17

And, yeah, it's you know what? Actually, it was really interesting. So I thought Nuno's thing was great. Mhmm. Nobody should go check that out.

Ian

00:06:18 – 00:06:41

But even in your first couple minutes of, of the side project podcast, I thought it was interesting the context of because I have in Laravel new double project either in this new world order of composer, dev, or whatever this thing is. So that was also a little interesting nugget of, like, oh, like, you're sending people down this this new path, but then, like, yeah, like, who would want all that stuff mixed together?

Aaron

00:06:41 – 00:06:42

That's Right.

Ian

00:06:42 – 00:06:47

That sounds terrible. So that is, more context for solo, which is very cool.

Aaron

00:06:48 – 00:06:54

Yes. Yeah. I I felt like, I felt like the tide turned a little bit on your, your takes on solo.

Ian

00:06:54 – 00:07:11

Well, I mean, I don't know if I had a take on solo specifically. My last week take was more just more generic since I hadn't even, like, really seen solo. It was more of just everybody's on this TUI thing, and I don't know if I wanna do stuff in the terminal. Mhmm. But, you know, this is a little different because there's stuff you have to do in the terminal.

Ian

00:07:11 – 00:07:20

Right? Like, see, that's the thing to me. Stuff you have to do in the terminal is different than stuff people are forcing into the terminal, which does not belong there. So that is kinda my dividing line. So yes.

Ian

00:07:20 – 00:07:37

So in the context of here's an HTTP error, and here's a log thing, and here's a dump of a, you know, bug and, like, all that stuff mixed together, that sounds horrible. Solo bringing order to that sounds great. So I love the idea of that. Great. I love it.

Aaron

00:07:37 – 00:07:38

That's great for me.

Ian

00:07:38 – 00:07:42

And you have a quit button. A quit. I do. You have a help right there. It tells you how to get out.

Ian

00:07:42 – 00:07:43

It shows

Aaron

00:07:43 – 00:07:44

you how to quit. Yep.

Ian

00:07:44 – 00:07:56

And isn't, like, doesn't require special dance like VIM does. Yep. So I probably don't even need it, but I like that it's there because you have other commands there too, which would probably be less guessable. So you got all the good news

Aaron

00:07:56 – 00:08:00

the good news about quitting solo is you can also just hit control c like you're used to.

Ian

00:08:00 – 00:08:01

Just the regular You

Aaron

00:08:01 – 00:08:05

can just interrupt, and it just quits, and everything is fine. That's how it's supposed to work.

Ian

00:08:06 – 00:08:08

Is it control c weird? Like, it just, like

Aaron

00:08:08 – 00:08:10

It is. It makes no sense at all.

Ian

00:08:10 – 00:08:21

Yeah. The the the actual command makes no sense. What it does after you do it makes no sense. Like, you just return, but it's like, you're not even sure what happened. Sometimes it doesn't make sense in the year that, like, you quit the thing.

Ian

00:08:21 – 00:08:27

Is it even actually quit or, like, whatever? Like, it's all it's all, yeah, very old.

Aaron

00:08:27 – 00:08:47

Once again, building something like solo, in this case, solo itself, has shown me how little I know about anything. It's just like, I don't really understand I think I've said this before, the difference between, like, a terminal and a shell and the command line. Is one of those the same as one of the others? Are they all three the same? Who can say?

Aaron

00:08:47 – 00:08:51

I have no idea. Yeah. Whatever. Not not a problem.

Ian

00:08:51 – 00:09:07

Is an actual thing. See, that's where I think it starts to get messy. Like, in in the old days, you had mainframe computers, and you had terminals into the mainframe. So, like, the terminal was just a dumb thing that was the interface to the smart thing, which was the mainframe, which was somewhere else.

Aaron

00:09:07 – 00:09:08

Mhmm.

Ian

00:09:08 – 00:09:16

And now this is all but that so that is, I think, the, like, origin of the terminology, but then, like, yes. With the specifically in the modern era, like, what is a terminal?

Aaron

00:09:16 – 00:09:17

What is a shell? Is a shell.

Ian

00:09:17 – 00:09:27

I think the shell is the software. Right? I think the shell, like, you know, z s h or whatever the stuff is. Like, that's the shell. It's the software.

Aaron

00:09:27 – 00:09:33

And is the terminal my, like, my application? Like, iTerm, is that my terminal?

Ian

00:09:33 – 00:09:34

I guess so.

Aaron

00:09:34 – 00:09:37

Or is that an is that a terminal emulator? Y'all

Ian

00:09:39 – 00:09:44

I don't know. And is there any See, that's what I don't know. Local machine is the it's a command line. And then maybe that's the difference. Right?

Ian

00:09:44 – 00:09:46

I like how we're like, we could look this up. We're not quite

Aaron

00:09:46 – 00:09:46

No.

Ian

00:09:46 – 00:10:02

No. The it's a command line on your local machine, but now when you, like, go into a remote server, you're it's sort of more like a traditional terminal, though it's sort of a little different too. So I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. Comment down below.

Aaron

00:10:02 – 00:10:10

Yeah. Let us let us know. I'm I'm sure I'm sure somebody knows the exact difference. I feel I feel like Florian knows the difference. No.

Aaron

00:10:10 – 00:10:19

He's he's he's the one that left the how to quit them. He knows he knows the difference. Florian, tell us the difference here.

Ian

00:10:19 – 00:10:22

Do we want to know? I don't know if we want to know. Sometimes ignorance is blessed.

Aaron

00:10:22 – 00:10:27

That's true. That's true. I do operate on that principle quite a bit. Don't know. Don't care.

Aaron

00:10:27 – 00:10:28

Works for me.

Ian

00:10:28 – 00:10:28

Yeah.

Aaron

00:10:28 – 00:10:35

It's kind of nice. Alright. Well, your terminal, your terminal convert. So

Ian

00:10:35 – 00:10:42

Well, I wouldn't go that far. I This little thing I like. I I now I want them to bake it in. They gotta bake it in. You gotta have Taylor take it over.

Aaron

00:10:42 – 00:10:54

Yeah. You haven't gotten to that part in the episode yet. What what is your what are your thoughts on, did we did we do this last week? I think we might have done this last week where I said it could end up in the application starter. Yeah.

Ian

00:10:55 – 00:10:59

Like yeah. Just if they would take it over, how that works, the application starter. Yeah.

Aaron

00:10:59 – 00:11:00

Yeah. Okay. We already did that.

Ian

00:11:00 – 00:11:01

Yeah.

Aaron

00:11:01 – 00:11:13

Alright. Do you want to do so we could do we could do a few things. We might we we could have a tease. Let's do I'm just gonna make a call, and you're gonna be, yes, man. So this is awesome.

Ian

00:11:14 – 00:11:15

This is your show, sir.

Aaron

00:11:15 – 00:11:25

We will, at the end of the episode, we will talk about the mostly technical 2024 revenue and if we can beat it in 2025.

Ian

00:11:25 – 00:11:26

Okay.

Aaron

00:11:26 – 00:11:29

So stick around stick around to the end if you wanna hear dollars and cents.

Ian

00:11:29 – 00:11:31

For the business y stuff.

Aaron

00:11:31 – 00:11:33

Don't fast forward. Just stick around.

Ian

00:11:33 – 00:11:34

You got good stuff in between.

Aaron

00:11:34 – 00:11:35

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You don't

Ian

00:11:35 – 00:11:36

wanna miss the good stuff.

Aaron

00:11:36 – 00:11:47

If you fast forward, you'll miss it, so don't do that. So 2024 in review. Why don't you start why don't you start with a look back on 2024?

Ian

00:11:48 – 00:11:52

Man, I don't know. See, my year is so dominated by this whole gallbladder situation. Mhmm.

Aaron

00:11:52 – 00:11:53

That's fine.

Ian

00:11:53 – 00:12:13

Sick from, like, March till, you know, sort of September when they hacked it out, but then I didn't really feel good before March. And then after they hacked it out, I didn't really feel good. You know, it was better, of course, but I would say only in the last, like, month have I felt almost normal. And only in the last, like, couple weeks have I been, like, really normal normal. So yeah.

Ian

00:12:13 – 00:12:31

So I thought I was like, man. So I don't feel like I have I definitely obviously hurt my productivity, all that kind of stuff. Mhmm. Super annoying. So, yeah, I feel like we you know, this is where, of course, it's awesome to have employees because, like, things still happen without me, which is very good.

Ian

00:12:32 – 00:12:54

And we didn't really have, like, any huge stuff. I guess we did, I don't know. Help slot, we did this, like, a rearchitecture of some of the internal stuff to put it more on Laravel fully, which is still a work in progress. That's gonna be some of the upcoming goals too, but a lot of internal big changes, which is nice. Hired a developer again.

Ian

00:12:54 – 00:13:14

So we have another just full time developer, which is nice, and that's working out really well. So, yeah, that's like I don't know. I don't really have, like I was thinking about this earlier. I was just like, it's so dominated by being sick that, like, kinda overshadowed everything. But good news is I don't feel sick anymore.

Ian

00:13:14 – 00:13:14

Aaron

00:13:14 – 00:13:15

That's great news.

Ian

00:13:15 – 00:13:31

That's that's the good news. That's kinda my big takeaway. My big takeaway of 2024 has been get to 2025. And so, like, that's kinda the big the big takeaway. You know, sold the parents' house, which we haven't had an update on a while, but that's like I signed the contracts last night.

Ian

00:13:31 – 00:13:38

So, hopefully, that'll be closing soon. Get that done. Clean slate. So I don't know. Maybe we can talk about 2025 stuff in a bit.

Ian

00:13:38 – 00:13:48

But, yeah, 2024, that I don't even have a good look back other than that. So, yeah, let's jump to your look back. You have a lot of stuff that happened in 2024. Lots of stuff. Big, big stuff, man.

Aaron

00:13:48 – 00:13:50

You had a big a big year

Ian

00:13:50 – 00:13:53

on the on the, happy, good side, I would say. So it's

Aaron

00:13:53 – 00:14:07

it's Yes. Big year big year on the happy, good side. I will also say 2024 was and is the hardest year of my life so far. Yeah. Without without a doubt.

Ian

00:14:07 – 00:14:07

Right.

Aaron

00:14:07 – 00:14:08

Without a doubt.

Ian

00:14:08 – 00:14:09

Close. Yeah.

Aaron

00:14:09 – 00:14:10

Not even close.

Ian

00:14:10 – 00:14:10

Yep.

Aaron

00:14:10 – 00:14:27

There have been, you know, there have been some things, before 2024 that were emotionally very difficult to process. But in terms of just, like, raw stress and pressure and Yeah. Front to back. Oh, dude. Worst year.

Aaron

00:14:27 – 00:14:27

Worst year.

Ian

00:14:27 – 00:14:28

Worst year.

Aaron

00:14:28 – 00:14:32

Worst year by far. Easily. Oh, man.

Ian

00:14:32 – 00:14:35

Worst year. Wow. Worst year or hardest year?

Aaron

00:14:35 – 00:14:36

Yes. Both.

Ian

00:14:36 – 00:14:39

Both. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Interesting.

Aaron

00:14:40 – 00:14:50

It It was it was also a very good year. Which, you know, is a bit a bit of a dichotomy, but it was was easily the worst year for sure.

Ian

00:14:51 – 00:14:53

Welcome to entrepreneurship, sir.

Aaron

00:14:53 – 00:15:00

Boy. Yes. Welcome, I guess. Yeah. So January, we're gonna we're going all the way back.

Aaron

00:15:00 – 00:15:09

January, I'm on paternity leave. I get stricken with rheumatoid arthritis. I have two two brand new babies, you know, two months old.

Ian

00:15:09 – 00:15:09

Yep.

Aaron

00:15:10 – 00:15:14

It's just, like, devastatingly depressing. I'm, like,

Ian

00:15:14 – 00:15:16

just crushed. Shape. I remember that back then.

Aaron

00:15:16 – 00:15:33

It was it was really it was the darkest for sure around then. So I'm struggling through not being able to get up and down off the floor, pick up kids, not being able to do anything, trying to build out this apartment studio. Right. At the same time

Ian

00:15:34 – 00:15:35

Building a house. We do we're doing a house.

Aaron

00:15:35 – 00:15:43

Remodeling a house. Yes. All of that, and then I get laid off in I think that was early March.

Ian

00:15:44 – 00:15:44

Yeah.

Aaron

00:15:44 – 00:15:45

I think that's right.

Ian

00:15:45 – 00:15:47

But you're before that? Jeez.

Aaron

00:15:47 – 00:15:55

I'm on paternity leave. I'm depressed. I've got rheumatoid arthritis. I'm on the hook for a studio. I've got four kids.

Aaron

00:15:55 – 00:16:01

Two of them are brand new, and then I get laid off on paternity leave. Yeah. So that was that was pretty bad.

Ian

00:16:01 – 00:16:06

That's that was yeah. That's yeah. That's true. I've kinda blocked that whole part out. That's You and me both.

Ian

00:16:06 – 00:16:11

Yeah. Only when I went post layoff. Yeah. Yeah. So So layoff rough.

Ian

00:16:11 – 00:16:12

Pretty bad

Aaron

00:16:12 – 00:16:24

start. Yeah. And then, you know, took all those interviews, and then Steve and I decided, now let's give it a go. So Yep. We decided to start our you know, start TriHard Studios.

Aaron

00:16:25 – 00:16:56

And it this whole year has been kind of like a I feel like it's been a exploration process of figuring out what exactly it is that we do. You know, we started out trying to do, like, almost like DevRel video consulting, and nobody really wanted that at all. Right. And so we quickly abandoned that, and moved more sorry. I'm also sick.

Aaron

00:16:57 – 00:17:15

Moved more into making our own stuff. And so we released, we released high performance SQLite in July, and that was the exact same time as the remodel was finally being finished. It was supposed to be finished, the December before, and they finished six months later in July.

Ian

00:17:16 – 00:17:16

Close enough.

Aaron

00:17:17 – 00:17:22

Yep. So that was awesome. And I wouldn't even wanna talk about all the stuff they did wrong.

Ian

00:17:23 – 00:17:25

Yeah. I was gonna say that they weren't actually done because they

Aaron

00:17:25 – 00:17:38

weren't coming back. Done. They just said you can move in. So it was a sprint to SQLite. And then on that same thread, it was a sprint to Postgres, which came out in October.

Aaron

00:17:38 – 00:18:09

And so both of those were just absolutely, like, huge amounts of work and stress and pressure. But I've got them got them both done in the middle there. Had Laracon, Laracon US that I was emceeing. Fortunately, I didn't give a talk, so that made that part a lot easier. But after, you know, after launching Postgres, I feel like TryHard is on pretty stable footing in terms of revenue.

Aaron

00:18:09 – 00:18:10

And so Well, cash

Ian

00:18:10 – 00:18:11

in the bank.

Aaron

00:18:11 – 00:18:48

A little cash in the bank. We're able to slow down a little bit. We had that retreat in Boise, where we sat down and, like, figured out kind of what the plan is for the next three to six months and what it is we do here. And that was extremely helpful. So I feel like going into 2025 or wrapping up 2024, we have a pretty good sense of what we do, pretty good sense of, like, what the plan is, and I think a clear line to make, you know, as much money as we're planning to make in 2025, I think.

Aaron

00:18:49 – 00:19:07

So we can talk about that in a second. But 2024, stressful, stressful, brutal. The number the number of times I stress cried this year higher than any other year. Wow. By oh, my goodness.

Aaron

00:19:07 – 00:19:28

Easily by triple, probably. Yeah. It's just been, you know, because all of that's going on. Meanwhile, we've got four kids, a stay at home wife, an au pair. So that's seven mouths to feed Three three vehicles that we have to pay, you know, insurance and maintenance and all that on new house.

Aaron

00:19:28 – 00:19:32

All the expenses are just, like, continuing to increase.

Ian

00:19:33 – 00:19:35

They don't go down usually. Yep.

Aaron

00:19:35 – 00:19:42

They don't go down. Maybe the tariffs will make everything go down. I don't know much about tariffs, but that'll probably be the opposite way. Shoot. Dang it.

Aaron

00:19:43 – 00:19:58

So, yeah. You know, property taxes in Texas are crazy. So incredibly stressful. But I think I think the bulk of the stress is behind us. That is that is my hope.

Aaron

00:19:58 – 00:20:00

Now that like now that like.

Ian

00:20:00 – 00:20:01

Mystic of you.

Aaron

00:20:02 – 00:20:14

I know. Now that, two of these courses are out there, the company is set up and running. We have Kelsey. We didn't get Kelsey until, like Yeah. Many, many, many months into being, in existence.

Aaron

00:20:15 – 00:20:34

And so, you know, that has already helped in a massive way. So a lot of the things that needed to be started up have been started up, and now it's just, like, keeping the ball rolling. So that is that is hopefully gonna make 2025 a lot better. But, yeah, not not a great year. I'll be honest.

Ian

00:20:34 – 00:20:36

Yeah. I think we're both in the camp of, like

Aaron

00:20:36 – 00:20:37

Great great outcomes.

Ian

00:20:37 – 00:20:57

Good outcomes. I think we're both in the bad year, good outcomes, camp this year. Yeah. It is hard when you especially with the kids, like, you wanna have a certain level of, like, you wanna have a good interaction level. It's not like nineteen fifties where you just wanna, like, go out for the day at your office and come back and go to your library and

Aaron

00:20:57 – 00:20:59

And smoke inside. Wipe. Right?

Ian

00:21:00 – 00:21:14

Not not interact with the kids at all. Mhmm. So you're trying to do that and keep that up, and, obviously, babies are just their own thing. So, yeah, I think, yeah, I don't know. That's that's the summary, I guess.

Ian

00:21:14 – 00:21:19

I don't know what to say. What about what about a rheumatoid arthritis update, though, since you brought that up? Like, how's that going?

Aaron

00:21:20 – 00:21:21

It's going so much better.

Ian

00:21:21 – 00:21:22

It's going good.

Aaron

00:21:22 – 00:21:41

So I still don't drink Diet Cokes regularly. I'll get them when I go out sometimes, but I haven't had as a treat. I haven't had a Diet Coke in the house since, you know, we talked about that. The diet is the diet has relapsed a little bit back to, like, normal.

Ian

00:21:42 – 00:21:42

Same.

Aaron

00:21:43 – 00:21:53

But the I think the the real game changer was getting on this medicine. Mhmm. Also, I started sleeping so much better. So, like, lots of things have gotten better.

Ian

00:21:53 – 00:21:54

Yeah.

Aaron

00:21:54 – 00:22:06

But I think sorry. I keep muting to cough. I think the, the real game changer was this methotrexate. Mhmm. And so I started on that.

Aaron

00:22:07 – 00:22:24

I was on I was on, like, four medications at once. Right. And I didn't like that. And so just just because I wanted to, I I, started quitting some of the medications. And so I quit all of them except methotrexate, and I was still totally fine.

Aaron

00:22:24 – 00:22:34

So then phase two has been taking less methotrexate, each, like, I don't know. I maybe do change it each month or something.

Ian

00:22:34 – 00:22:35

Like stepping it down a bit.

Aaron

00:22:35 – 00:22:43

Yeah. I started on eight pills every Sunday. So it was like eight pills at once, once a week. Very strange delivery mechanism. Yeah.

Aaron

00:22:43 – 00:22:44

Okay. That's really.

Ian

00:22:45 – 00:22:45

And

Aaron

00:22:45 – 00:22:54

now I'm down to four. So I'm down to four pills once a week. I didn't tell my doctor or anything, but it's fine. You do whatever you want. Yeah.

Aaron

00:22:56 – 00:23:10

So. Texas. Yeah. The goal the goal is to see how low I can get it because I figured less mess is better. And there's still part of me that thinks that was it was all situation dependent.

Aaron

00:23:11 – 00:23:27

And now that a lot of a lot of the stressors have gone down, not necessarily away Sure. And I'm sleeping, I'm hoping that everything is is fine now. So I'll continue to to march it down and see how low we can get.

Ian

00:23:27 – 00:23:36

Interesting. Mhmm. Well, that sounds pretty good. Yeah. I mean, that's so hard when they're mixed in with, like, the extreme stress and all that stuff, and you're not sleeping.

Ian

00:23:36 – 00:23:53

And, obviously, it makes everything so much worse. And then it's like, who knows what fixes it? And then, yeah, then you're on a bunch of medicines or you're going for a bunch of tests and who knows what's what. And then you don't even know what help they're not because you're on all the different things and doing different things and all that stuff. So alright.

Ian

00:23:53 – 00:24:00

Well, that's that's good then. And, also, it's nice too where it's like, yeah, if it gets worse or whatever, it's like you have something that is working for you. It seems like. So it's like, okay.

Aaron

00:24:00 – 00:24:01

Yeah.

Ian

00:24:01 – 00:24:16

You gotta go back up, you go back up or whatever, but it's not, you can probably, most likely avoid the whole, you know, round and round of what is even wrong and what works or doesn't work. It's like you kinda have that a little more dialed in, so you

Aaron

00:24:16 – 00:24:21

can Skip the debilitating depression part. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We like to skip that one.

Ian

00:24:21 – 00:24:23

Oh, man. That part's the worst. Yeah. No.

Aaron

00:24:23 – 00:24:24

Part is

Ian

00:24:24 – 00:24:29

the worst. Modern science. I'm all here for it. Like, hacking this gallbladder out was great. It's like, boom.

Ian

00:24:29 – 00:24:36

You're in. You're out. It's like, now, like, that's healed up pretty fully. It's like, you can barely even see the scars. It's like crazy.

Ian

00:24:36 – 00:24:39

I'm like, sort of just killed me, like, a hundred years ago, and now

Aaron

00:24:40 – 00:24:40

Mhmm.

Ian

00:24:40 – 00:24:42

Can't even tell anything happened. So

Aaron

00:24:43 – 00:24:51

Oh, I would have been so dead a hundred years ago from just from the first one, from diabetes. I would have never would have made it to rheumatoid arthritis.

Ian

00:24:51 – 00:24:57

Yeah. Crazy. Hey. Science is good. Let's get out there.

Ian

00:24:57 – 00:25:01

We need more scientists. We're we're down with the science. So get out there.

Aaron

00:25:01 – 00:25:04

Science here on the pod. Love the science.

Ian

00:25:05 – 00:25:11

Oh, man. Alright. So 2024, that's behind us. We're moving on bigger and better.

Aaron

00:25:11 – 00:25:12

Moving on.

Ian

00:25:12 – 00:25:16

All that stuff. Alright. So 2025.

Aaron

00:25:17 – 00:25:18

You tell me.

Ian

00:25:18 – 00:25:19

Me first? Alright.

Aaron

00:25:19 – 00:25:21

Yeah. Hoping some dreams.

Ian

00:25:23 – 00:25:32

My stuff's so it's it's interesting we do this podcast, you know, because, like, my stuff is so, sort of stable and long

Aaron

00:25:32 – 00:25:33

term. Yeah.

Ian

00:25:34 – 00:26:01

And so Yeah. You are. Definitely have goals. I think the big couple are, continued, like, heavy reworking of, like, the internals of HubSpot and some of the not, like, just internal internals, but just the structure architecture, with the big thing in the nearest term being, getting more on Livewire, probably redoing most of the front end actually Wow. Livewire.

Ian

00:26:02 – 00:26:19

And just and in conjunction with that, like, modernizing a bunch of stuff, which is all old school PHP right now, and just also just, like, jQuery Mhmm. And, you know, all all that kind of stuff. So Flux has been the thing I've been sort of waiting for for that because I don't wanna build a component library myself.

Aaron

00:26:19 – 00:26:20

Of course not.

Ian

00:26:20 – 00:26:25

And so now we have Flux. It's like, okay. Great. And I know I also didn't wanna do React. Like, I mean, whatever.

Ian

00:26:25 – 00:26:26

Being in podcast, I was going through that.

Aaron

00:26:26 – 00:26:28

I know. You're a React

Ian

00:26:28 – 00:26:36

guy for a second. I just don't like the React. That's just me either. So, Yeah. So now we have flux and we have live wire three and everything's wonderful.

Ian

00:26:36 – 00:27:06

So now we can proceed kind of down that path of staying in mostly PHP land and, you know, sprinkle of Alpine here and there and all is well with the world. So that's gonna be a big project. Marketing slash website stuff is kind of the other big one, kind of a new website in process. That's gonna take more of like a just trying something totally different. You know, obviously every other help desk out there is standard b to b SaaS template.

Ian

00:27:06 – 00:27:16

So gonna do more of like a sales letter kind of thing. A little bit of a hybrid. I don't wanna go like pure sales letter and the, like, there is only one page Mhmm. And there is literally nothing else.

Aaron

00:27:17 – 00:27:18

Thousand words.

Ian

00:27:18 – 00:27:37

Right. Yeah. So I think it's gonna be a little bit of a hybrid where it's, there are gonna be other pages on the site to some degree, and there will be, like, feature list if you wanna go through all the features, but it's gonna be, like, de emphasized. And, and just the homepage will be more sales letter rate, probably not the full, yeah, 10,000 words.

Aaron

00:27:38 – 00:27:43

But I won't more than a manifesto, more than, like, a once.com manifesto?

Ian

00:27:44 – 00:28:08

I would say that that kind of length probably, but not that style either of, like, theirs is just text. So it'll still have, like, you know, some other elements of, like, screenshots, but not like not like the box of screenshots, screenshots, screenshot with Mhmm. More of text, like standard b two b SaaS. More like, more text to start for sure than, like, there's maybe just one row with screenshots. That's like, hey.

Ian

00:28:08 – 00:28:33

If you want screenshots, great. You could click this and go see the screenshots, but we're not gonna have, like, 40 screenshots on this page. You know, the, like, social proof and all that stuff, testimonials. But more of the idea of, like, starting with the person their problem and the problem that it solves was most obviously are just, like, focused on features. And even if they focus on the problem, it's not, like, descriptive necessarily.

Ian

00:28:33 – 00:28:49

It's more just like, hey. You probably have too many tickets, and then it just goes into features. So I don't know if it's gonna work better than what we do now, but I figure it can't hurt. And if it, you know, it's easy enough to switch back to the more standard Definitely.

Aaron

00:28:49 – 00:28:53

It definitely can hurt, but you'll know pretty quickly if you can switch it back.

Ian

00:28:53 – 00:29:03

That's true. I guess that's a better way to put it. But, but yeah. So we'll switch it back fast enough if we need to. Gonna do a new logo

Aaron

00:29:04 – 00:29:07

for Who's gonna do this long form copywriting? Is that gonna be you?

Ian

00:29:07 – 00:29:15

Yeah. It's, like, me. Jamie's working on it. Dave's and Snyder. So, yeah, so mix, of people kind of in there on that.

Ian

00:29:15 – 00:29:32

But, yeah. So we'll see how that goes. It's almost still like this week. I thought I was hoping to get out before this week because this week I'm gonna mostly be off just for various things. So we will see, when it actually gets out.

Ian

00:29:32 – 00:29:54

But hopefully in the next couple weeks, that'll be out. And gonna do a new HubSpot logo. I don't really even have a good reason for this, but, just to I want a new logo, and so I'm doing a new logo. I don't really love the current logo. I'd love the original logo I loved and but it's definitely, like, really old school now, so I wouldn't wanna use the original logo.

Ian

00:29:54 – 00:30:14

So gonna do a contract with, actually, icon factory to do a logo and some, stuff along those lines. And so that'll be fun. Little, sort of design, logo y project. And, yeah, that's kind of it. Like, once we get through that stuff, then it's gonna be new features.

Ian

00:30:15 – 00:30:37

It's all in the help spot realm. Trying to stay focused on on help spot, and I could also decide projects. No man for myself. No man for myself. But I think there's gonna be so much stuff mixed in there that that's not really like, the side projects are gonna be, like, if we redo the whole front end of the app to, like, LiveWire and Flux, that's like that is that's like making it a side project in a sense.

Aaron

00:30:37 – 00:30:39

That scratches the side project is?

Ian

00:30:39 – 00:30:52

Yeah. It's like, here's the whole new interface for a thing, and it's like, well, yeah, it's just the thing we already work on, but it's gonna be a lot of new stuff. So, that's kind of the current thinking. Yeah. It's kind of as far as I've gotten.

Ian

00:30:52 – 00:31:06

I'm not a big, like, I don't know. I just feel like we're we always operate in such a long timeline. I don't like usually light. I I actually have more plans this year, I would say, than I normally do in terms of, like, this interface stuff, the website. Normally, I'm not even like that.

Ian

00:31:06 – 00:31:13

I don't have that. That's already more things than I normally am planning. So that's kind of the big plan. Personal stuff, I don't know.

Aaron

00:31:13 – 00:31:16

Well, do you have revenue, hopes, dreams, and goals for

Ian

00:31:16 – 00:31:19

Revenue coming up? Revenue coming up.

Aaron

00:31:19 – 00:31:20

Yeah. By how much? Goal.

Ian

00:31:21 – 00:31:31

I don't know. I don't I don't know. I don't play that game. Do I have revenue goals? I would say I don't actually have revenue goals.

Ian

00:31:31 – 00:31:55

I would say I have, more it's sort of the same thing, but not exactly. I have more of a new customer goal. So, like, I I'm more interested in the the count of new customers K. And increasing that a bit over our current levels. And then, the revenue, you know, hopefully obviously, you know, if that customer count goes up, generally, the revenue number goes up below.

Ian

00:31:55 – 00:32:30

It's not a % true depending on, like, the size of the customers and things like that. But yeah. So I'd say, the new website is sort of more targeted in, I think, kind of the core customer group we usually serve, which is sort of, like, very small up to, like, 25 to 50 users. So we're gonna dial in more on that and see if we can get more of that that kinda user. So I don't have a percentage though for sure, but I would just say, yeah, increases there, even modest ones, I would be fine with that.

Ian

00:32:33 – 00:32:40

Jeez. I had some notes along the lines of that. New customers. Yeah. I can't remember.

Ian

00:32:40 – 00:32:46

Lost it. But, yeah. So that's kind of that's kind of the thing there. Yeah.

Aaron

00:32:47 – 00:32:52

I'm bummed to hear about this about no side projects. No no budget apps. No no nothing.

Ian

00:32:53 – 00:32:56

Apps. No budget apps. Maybe I'll come on here and talk about one, and

Aaron

00:32:56 – 00:32:57

it's just gonna have to

Ian

00:32:57 – 00:32:59

be no man to me. You know what I mean?

Aaron

00:32:59 – 00:33:02

That's not gonna happen. Sorry.

Ian

00:33:03 – 00:33:30

You never know. Sometimes stuff pops up too. I mean, it depends a lot also on, like, how fast things go and, like, you know, we have the dev again who's full time and really just working on help spot stuff. And so, you know and, you know, he's been great so far. So if this project goes faster than I think it will, then that opens up more time a little bit even for myself.

Ian

00:33:31 – 00:33:43

So if there's something pops up, who knows? Maybe maybe I'll still work on something, but not not a goal. And the other thing is, like, I'm kind of if I ever did something else, I just wanted, I don't know, software. Okay. Okay.

Aaron

00:33:43 – 00:33:45

Here's a side project. Here we go. Here we go. We got this.

Ian

00:33:46 – 00:34:02

Me here. Here's my if I do a side project Yeah. In terms of ones I'm actively have given any actual thought to, it would be something along the lines Mhmm. Of equine photography.

Aaron

00:34:04 – 00:34:06

Wow. Yes. Okay.

Ian

00:34:06 – 00:34:09

This is something I've been studying a little bit. My daughter rides horses.

Aaron

00:34:10 – 00:34:10

Ian

00:34:11 – 00:34:32

There is, like, a whole you know, there's, like, there's, like, levels, obviously. There's, like, people who would just be like, okay. You know, $200, I'll come take a picture of you and your horse or whatever. Obviously, I don't really have any interest in that. But I would, a, just be interested in doing it as a hobby and just for whatever my, niece rides, my daughter rides.

Ian

00:34:32 – 00:34:44

We know other people. They have friends. Well, maybe I'll get into a little bit and just do photos for people I know. K. But if I get good at it, I would consider doing maybe something in that as a side project is like, hey.

Aaron

00:34:44 – 00:34:45

Wow. If I could

Ian

00:34:45 – 00:34:57

find the right amount of money that's motivating, like, whatever. Maybe it's, like, $3,000. I don't know. I know how much you can get away with. But then again, like, people at my kid's barn are, like, the CFO of, you know Yeah.

Aaron

00:34:57 – 00:35:00

Horse horse people, you can charge them whatever you want. Yeah.

Ian

00:35:00 – 00:35:09

We're we're we're we're, like, we are, like, the very bottom of the barrel. We have no business even being there. Everybody else is, like, fabulously wealthy. So

Aaron

00:35:10 – 00:35:14

Yeah. This is this isn't YMCA soccer. This is this is equine.

Ian

00:35:14 – 00:35:27

Right. So so, yeah, I think that is money around, if I'm gonna give up, you know, a half a day somewhere and go take some photos or something like that. But yeah. So I've been studying that

Aaron

00:35:27 – 00:35:28

a lot. Expect that coming. The

Ian

00:35:28 – 00:35:29

Yeah. I

Aaron

00:35:29 – 00:35:30

didn't see that one at all.

Ian

00:35:30 – 00:35:34

Left field. That's great. Yes. I like the photography a lot. Photography is fun.

Ian

00:35:34 – 00:35:45

And the the thing that's tricky about it is I like the cameras. I like to do real photography with real cameras. Right? But the phone is so good. Like, the the phone is very, very good.

Ian

00:35:45 – 00:35:45

And it can

Aaron

00:35:45 – 00:35:46

is very good.

Ian

00:35:46 – 00:36:03

Do everything the camera can do, but it's like, you really have to push the camera now to do things that the phone can't do. Yep. You gotta really be kind of a little bit more on the edge, in order to get a look that your phone can't produce. Right. And so that kinda ties in with that a little bit.

Ian

00:36:03 – 00:36:13

Like, okay. Like, where could I actually use my camera? Like, my kids don't want the camera in their face. Even if I do do that, it's like, whatever. It's not that much better than if I just pull out my cell phone and take a picture.

Ian

00:36:13 – 00:36:21

So how do I use this in more interesting ways? So I'm kinda dabbling a little bit in some architecture, photography, and things like that, but

Aaron

00:36:21 – 00:36:21

that's not really

Ian

00:36:21 – 00:36:25

convenient for me, like, around here necessarily that much. So

Aaron

00:36:26 – 00:36:29

See, we all just wanna be artists at the end of the day. That's all we want.

Ian

00:36:30 – 00:36:35

Software development is very artistic. I think it's some very, very artistic, profession

Aaron

00:36:35 – 00:36:36

I agree.

Ian

00:36:36 – 00:36:42

In my opinion. Yeah. People always think it's, like, math. Like, if you just talk to a common person, they're like, oh, it's all math, and I'm not I don't

Aaron

00:36:42 – 00:36:42

have a

Ian

00:36:42 – 00:36:44

great job. I'm like, it's like

Aaron

00:36:44 – 00:36:45

It's problem solving. Puzzles.

Ian

00:36:46 – 00:36:49

Yeah. It's like puzzles, and art is basically, like

Aaron

00:36:49 – 00:36:50

Fully agree.

Ian

00:36:50 – 00:36:54

It's much closer to that than to, like, science in

Aaron

00:36:54 – 00:36:54

terms

Ian

00:36:54 – 00:36:59

of a scientist kind of angle on it. So yeah. So that's something I've been thinking about. That that would be

Aaron

00:36:59 – 00:37:01

the stretch. Guy. I like it.

Ian

00:37:01 – 00:37:14

Yes. Horse photo guy. We there's tons of horses around here. There's Saratoga, which is like a big horse mecca kind of thing couple hours away. But even just right around me, there's all these horse farms, various flavors.

Ian

00:37:14 – 00:37:17

And so it could be something. We'll see. I mean,

Aaron

00:37:17 – 00:37:18

I'm gonna

Ian

00:37:18 – 00:37:31

take some horse photos starting with my daughter, and we will, see. It's not the best time of year for horse photos. So this is more of I'm in a kind of a prep phase and then, get to springtime. Maybe we'll do some do some shoots. Plus you

Aaron

00:37:31 – 00:37:32

get to buy new gear.

Ian

00:37:32 – 00:37:33

Love because

Aaron

00:37:33 – 00:37:37

now it's now it's a write off. If you if you get paid, you get to buy stuff, and it's a write off.

Ian

00:37:37 – 00:37:43

Oh, you think I haven't thought about that that long? You made an impetus, baby. I'm like, how could I How can I

Aaron

00:37:43 – 00:37:44

buy more stuff?

Ian

00:37:44 – 00:37:45

This camera gear and

Aaron

00:37:45 – 00:37:46

write it

Ian

00:37:46 – 00:37:53

off. Feel it. Exactly. Feel it in my budget. Some of the stuff, like, which I don't have yet, which is, like, really long lenses and

Aaron

00:37:53 – 00:37:54

things like that.

Ian

00:37:54 – 00:38:01

So there's just no good justification for me personally owning. It's like, I can't I even I haven't bought this because I can't justify owning this thing. Like, there's nothing

Aaron

00:38:01 – 00:38:05

to take apart from this. The horse is far away. What are you gonna do?

Ian

00:38:05 – 00:38:09

Yes. You actually need it for that. That's what it's for. Yeah. That's what I'm saying.

Ian

00:38:09 – 00:38:11

Totally has a purpose for that.

Aaron

00:38:11 – 00:38:12

Perfect sense to me. Yeah.

Ian

00:38:13 – 00:38:27

I'm not really a zoom lens guy, but there are cases for them. And the horse photography might be one of those because the horse is moving at depending on what you're doing. It's not always moving in these photos. But at times, you would be capturing action shots.

Aaron

00:38:27 – 00:38:33

That's that is one thing about horses. They they move. They just They do. They move a lot. This is interesting.

Ian

00:38:33 – 00:38:40

Interesting aspect of this. How the horses move? Yeah. Like, well, well, just like working with the horse. Right?

Ian

00:38:40 – 00:38:53

Because the horse is has its own is a prey animal, so it's very sensitive to sounds and lights and things like that. So you're trying to get the horse to do what you want it to do when a person's there, and you're trying to take photos, and how do you keep the horse chill?

Aaron

00:38:53 – 00:38:54

And Mhmm.

Ian

00:38:54 – 00:39:03

Yeah. There's this cool podcast, Cowgirls with Cameras, which is a horse photography podcast, which is quite good.

Aaron

00:39:03 – 00:39:04

Gut. Yeah.

Ian

00:39:05 – 00:39:12

So if you're interested in equine photography, I would check that podcast out. It's really good. Yeah. So there you go.

Aaron

00:39:12 – 00:39:19

Maybe only search that in, like, the podcast store because I bet if you search cowgirls with cameras, it's I don't know. It seems troublesome to me.

Ian

00:39:20 – 00:39:21

Good. That's a question.

Aaron

00:39:21 – 00:39:22

Yeah. It's questionable.

Ian

00:39:22 – 00:39:23

Don't do it at work. Don't do it

Aaron

00:39:23 – 00:39:27

at work. Yeah. Just open open overcast and search just in there. Yeah. That's probably wise.

Aaron

00:39:27 – 00:39:29

That's probably Okay. Horse guy.

Ian

00:39:30 – 00:39:31

Horse guy.

Aaron

00:39:31 – 00:39:32

I like it.

Ian

00:39:32 – 00:39:33

A little different.

Aaron

00:39:34 – 00:39:35

A little a lot different.

Ian

00:39:36 – 00:39:43

That's the thing. Side project could feed maybe some other aspects of me rather than just more software. You know? That's the thing. That's the thing I'm currently on.

Aaron

00:39:43 – 00:39:44

I agree. So I like that.

Ian

00:39:44 – 00:39:50

Yeah. Alright. What do you got going on? I know you got big I know you got 8,000 plans, and I'm here to say yes.

Aaron

00:39:50 – 00:39:54

You're here to say yes to all of them. This is my day. This is awesome. This is your day.

Ian

00:39:54 – 00:39:55

Let's do it.

Aaron

00:39:55 – 00:39:59

All right. 2025. Try hard studios, Inc. Well,

Ian

00:39:59 – 00:40:00

try hard

Aaron

00:40:00 – 00:40:07

studios, LLC. Yeah. And myself. Alright. At least Mhmm.

Aaron

00:40:07 – 00:40:08

Three courses

Ian

00:40:09 – 00:40:10

Okay.

Aaron

00:40:10 – 00:40:13

From TryHard that I I am the instructor for.

Ian

00:40:13 – 00:40:15

Aaron Francis based courses.

Aaron

00:40:15 – 00:40:23

To say to say nothing of potential guest courses, at least three Aaron Francis led courses under the try hard brand.

Ian

00:40:23 – 00:40:24

All database?

Aaron

00:40:25 – 00:40:27

I think we talked last week about intro to SQL.

Ian

00:40:27 – 00:40:29

Yes. So I think that is definitely

Aaron

00:40:29 – 00:40:42

definitely on the table. There is a possibility that we do a full Laravel from scratch course. Oh, that's

Ian

00:40:42 – 00:40:43

what I'm talking about.

Aaron

00:40:43 – 00:40:54

Mhmm. That would also that would also skew slightly, beginner. So this would follow the same line as intro to SQL, not targeting intermediates.

Ian

00:40:55 – 00:41:04

Now beginner to programming or be like, or beginner Open question. From JavaScript Yeah. And you wanna learn Laravel.

Aaron

00:41:04 – 00:41:19

Oh, oh, open question for sure. Okay. But importantly, not relevant to you. Like, not relevant to, like, the people who have been using Laravel. Like, you're not gonna learn anything new about Laravel in this course if you've been using it for five years.

Aaron

00:41:19 – 00:41:23

You know? Right. You might, but it's not targeted at you.

Ian

00:41:23 – 00:41:23

Yeah.

Aaron

00:41:24 – 00:41:48

So whether it's, you know, switching from a JavaScript stack to Laravel or it's just like, I wanna start dabbling with programming that much, I'm not sure. Yep. So intro to SQL, probably intro to Laravel. New new screencasting courses, several of them. So one taught by me.

Aaron

00:41:48 – 00:41:53

Mhmm. Just the flagship course we'll redo again. So this will be the third time I've redone it. Wait.

Ian

00:41:53 – 00:41:58

Is this now on Screencasting.com or something? Okay. So Screencasting.com, of course.

Aaron

00:41:58 – 00:41:59

Uh-huh.

Ian

00:41:59 – 00:42:00

Okay. Uh-huh.

Aaron

00:42:00 – 00:42:12

So Screencasting.com, is going to grow to be the second leg the second major leg of the business. So we'll have Right. Databases, and screencasting. And then there's

Ian

00:42:12 – 00:42:18

I'd love that. I feel like that hasn't got enough love. I wanna see the screencasting get get love because I feel like you guys have such expertise there, and it

Aaron

00:42:18 – 00:42:19

just feels,

Ian

00:42:20 – 00:42:22

logical, addition there. Yeah.

Aaron

00:42:22 – 00:42:24

I love yes, man, Ian. This is great.

Ian

00:42:25 – 00:42:26

That's not even yes, man, Ian. That's just Ian.

Aaron

00:42:26 – 00:42:37

That's just regular. That was no man agreeing with me. That's awesome. Yes. So screencasting has been, has been neglected, for, you know, good reason.

Aaron

00:42:37 – 00:42:53

We needed to do this other stuff. But now is the time. So what we're gonna do is I'm gonna redo the main course, which is like the flagship theoretical philosophical thing. Mhmm. You know, what to do, why to do it, how to teach, how to record, all that kind of stuff.

Aaron

00:42:53 – 00:43:09

Yeah. Steve is going to do at least three courses that are editor specific. So he's gonna do, you know, Premiere, Resolve, Final Cut, because he's worked professionally with all of them. Right. So he's gonna do all of those.

Aaron

00:43:11 – 00:43:26

He's already he's already rented a little, storage pod and moved all his garage stuff into the pod so he can set up his garage as a studio. So he's like, he's cooking. He's he's he's ready to go. Okay. So we'll have a full revamp on Screencasting.com.

Aaron

00:43:26 – 00:43:40

Mhmm. And then there are a few others that we could potentially, we could potentially knock out. One one would be the MySQL flagship course.

Ian

00:43:40 – 00:43:40

Right.

Aaron

00:43:40 – 00:43:54

So we would round out round out the big three, by doing the MySQL course, with hopes of, you know, absolutely decimating the previous MySQL course that I did. Yes. You know? Vengeance.

Ian

00:43:54 – 00:43:56

I love vengeance. Let's do it. Yeah.

Aaron

00:43:56 – 00:44:14

Yes. Vengeance is the Lord's, but, also, I kinda want a little bit for me. So that's probably healthy. So that is on the table. And then there are a few, there are a few, like, minor courses that I could potentially do.

Aaron

00:44:14 – 00:44:37

And whether these are free or paid is still an open question. Mhmm. But, I could do one on and I want to on, building building a a two e application, building solo. I think that would be very interesting and a lot of fun. And then there's one that I have thought would be very practical.

Aaron

00:44:37 – 00:44:51

The market would be relatively small, but it would be very practical. So at the property tax company, a big part of what we did was importing data, and we're talking, like, you know, four, five, six gigabyte CSVs.

Ian

00:44:51 – 00:44:52

Really? Parson

Aaron

00:44:52 – 00:45:12

stuff. Many millions of rows of CSVs that you're importing. And I think it would be fun to do a course on that in Laravel specifically, like for proper back office. Like, we're we're we're just we got to build a freaking app and we got to import massive CSVs and all the tips

Ian

00:45:12 – 00:45:12

and tricks.

Aaron

00:45:12 – 00:45:20

Your data. Yeah. All the tips and tricks I learned from, you know, these multi hour imports, I think, would be a lot of fun.

Ian

00:45:20 – 00:45:26

Now hold now at one point, there was discussion on here about something along the lines of a high performance Laravel.

Aaron

00:45:27 – 00:45:28

Yes. That's still on my mind.

Ian

00:45:28 – 00:45:31

That being part of that Mhmm. Potentially.

Aaron

00:45:32 – 00:45:50

Yes. But, you know So that that is still that's still on my mind. It is a it's a bit vague in terms of, where it will land. Yeah. I think it's potentially I think, additionally, we need or I need to do an eloquent course.

Aaron

00:45:50 – 00:45:53

Like, that I think that is clear. That is the crossover.

Ian

00:45:54 – 00:45:54

Yeah.

Aaron

00:45:54 – 00:46:01

That's database. That's Laravel. That's obvious. Now the question is, is that high performance Laravel? I don't think so.

Ian

00:46:01 – 00:46:02

Right.

Aaron

00:46:02 – 00:46:26

Because high performance Laravel includes so much other stuff. You know, it includes caching and Octane and all of this other stuff. But, yeah, I still need to figure out the shape of all of that because it is obvious to me that, an eloquent tips, tricks, and patterns, advanced eloquent needs to exist, and needs to exist in our stable of of offerings. So Yeah. Not entirely sure yet.

Ian

00:46:27 – 00:46:30

Okay. I like all that. Yes, man. Ian's on board.

Aaron

00:46:30 – 00:46:39

Yes, man. All all that's good. Okay. So other things. I will be speaking at Laracon EU in February,

Ian

00:46:40 – 00:46:40

Aaron

00:46:40 – 00:46:45

a library that is, you know, 60% done. So I gotta I gotta hustle hustle on that.

Ian

00:46:45 – 00:46:47

It's farther along that path.

Aaron

00:46:47 – 00:46:48

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Aaron

00:46:48 – 00:47:08

I definitely started. I don't talk about it because it's supposed to be a big reveal. You know, the that's the whole point. So, that'll happen in February. I would like to shore up, I think that's a theme for 2025 is, like, we did a lot of expansion in 2024 and just kind of going in every direction.

Aaron

00:47:08 – 00:47:44

And I think we found the directions that work and are profitable, and now it's time to, like, hone those. Right. So shoring up the open source side of the empire, so there's lots of issues and lots of, like, enhancements and that kind of stuff. That is the vision there is to, like, shore it all up, consolidate it, and then put all of the docs and everything on aaronfrancis.com and make aaronfrancis.com the destination for lots and lots of content. So that is, that's also a goal for 2025.

Aaron

00:47:45 – 00:47:55

TryHard Studios will release one, if not two, desktop applications in 2025. What?

Ian

00:47:55 – 00:47:57

Is that what you're talking about, Willis? I don't

Aaron

00:47:57 – 00:47:58

know what

Ian

00:47:58 – 00:47:58

that is. But

Aaron

00:47:58 – 00:48:03

I do. Yeah. I I know it from the quote. Never saw it originally. Yeah.

Aaron

00:48:03 – 00:48:08

So at least one desktop app, maybe two. Stretch goal of two.

Ian

00:48:09 – 00:48:11

Yes. Yes, man. Ian likes it.

Aaron

00:48:12 – 00:48:14

Okay. What's under you?

Ian

00:48:14 – 00:48:21

Little worried. I think he's a little worried about all that, but okay. Okay. Now is this a Aaron Francis production? Is this Steve working on these?

Ian

00:48:21 – 00:48:24

Is this Outsource? Is this combination?

Aaron

00:48:24 – 00:48:34

Combination. So far so far, producer Steve has gotten about 90% done on one of these desktop applications.

Ian

00:48:34 – 00:48:35

Oh, wow.

Aaron

00:48:35 – 00:48:35

This is

Ian

00:48:35 – 00:48:36

stuff happening.

Aaron

00:48:36 – 00:48:36

Haven't touched

Ian

00:48:36 – 00:48:37

it. Behind the scenes.

Aaron

00:48:37 – 00:48:39

I haven't even freaking touched it.

Ian

00:48:39 – 00:48:40

Oh, that's beautiful.

Aaron

00:48:40 – 00:48:49

Yeah. So these would both fall in the, these would both fall under the screencasting arm of the business. Oh. And so they are they are video related.

Ian

00:48:50 – 00:48:54

Oh, I didn't even realize that. I'm like, how you're really throwing curves at me. Okay. Oh, yeah.

Aaron

00:48:54 – 00:48:58

Oh, yeah. So producer Steve has been diligently working

Ian

00:48:58 – 00:49:00

on even more, honestly.

Aaron

00:49:00 – 00:49:00

Oh, yeah. Do

Ian

00:49:00 – 00:49:01

you? Yes.

Aaron

00:49:01 – 00:49:02

Okay. I like this.

Ian

00:49:02 – 00:49:22

That's an area where you guys have, like, a I feel like an interesting advantage in some ways Mhmm. Where, like, you know, things that people in that market more inherently are maybe not as sophisticated in Mhmm. When it comes to, like, marketing and things like that. And so I I like that sort of leveraging that there. That sounds good.

Aaron

00:49:22 – 00:49:24

Okay. Good. Got the sign off.

Ian

00:49:24 – 00:49:24

Yeah.

Aaron

00:49:24 – 00:49:44

This is my day. Yeah. So, yeah, that the the first one will maybe come out, you know, the first one, two, three months of of next year. And then the second one, we are in talks with a with a potential partner to help us build that one out. Interesting.

Aaron

00:49:44 – 00:49:54

And this is our the second one is I think it is our best I think it's our best idea, this this second app. This is our our

Ian

00:49:54 – 00:49:54

biggest opportunity, I think. And so,

Aaron

00:49:54 – 00:50:09

whether or not whether or not it gets done in 2025 is an open question. There's I imagine there's some form of it that will ship next year. That is that is the goal, at least.

Ian

00:50:09 – 00:50:12

It sounds like you wouldn't be doing the production or not entirely?

Aaron

00:50:13 – 00:50:41

No. So the person that we're in talks to, to partner with is somebody who has built an adjacent app, and has just incredible skills and somebody that I've known for ten years and trust. And so, I think it's gonna come together that the three of us will will work on it. They have the deep they have the deep technical knowledge on, like, like, on the rest side and all this stuff that I don't know and don't wanna know. Yeah.

Aaron

00:50:42 – 00:50:48

Steve has the the deep knowledge on some of, like, the UI UX of what this thing should feel like.

Ian

00:50:48 – 00:50:49

Right. And

Aaron

00:50:49 – 00:50:54

I I can create a spectacle. And so I think between, you know, between the three of us, it'll it'll come together.

Ian

00:50:55 – 00:51:05

On the spectacle side, I was wondering about like, so you're doing I know you're talking at like, you're the, keynote at that web dev conference. Yep. I forget the name next year. And Mhmm. I'm sure you're you're talking to LarraconyU.

Ian

00:51:05 – 00:51:08

Mhmm. Not in probably US. Let's assume whatever.

Aaron

00:51:08 – 00:51:10

Talking to Kent's conference as well.

Ian

00:51:10 – 00:51:15

Okay. What about on the screencasting side of the world? I wonder if there's, like, some big conferences

Aaron

00:51:15 – 00:51:16

interesting.

Ian

00:51:16 – 00:51:33

You know, for you to be speaking at or other types of things in that ecosystem where you can be out there with, I don't know, producers, maybe in, like, a pot podcast conferences where it's, like, people wanna get more into Mhmm. Video in some form for their podcast or whatever. Or craft

Aaron

00:51:33 – 00:51:35

and commerce is something that I could speak at.

Ian

00:51:35 – 00:51:42

Craft and commerce. Yeah. Like that. Just like the expansion of outside the pure demos. You know?

Aaron

00:51:42 – 00:51:47

That's also a big goal for 2025 is to just to break out even further.

Ian

00:51:47 – 00:51:55

Yeah. Can you have all the obviously, you can point to a million talks you've done. So, like, you have Mhmm. Which is, like, a big thing people are usually looking for, obviously, when especially Mhmm.

Aaron

00:51:55 – 00:51:55

If it's

Ian

00:51:55 – 00:52:01

someone they don't know, it's like you can point them to here's 10 talks I've done and that were were well received and all that. So

Aaron

00:52:01 – 00:52:10

That's interesting. Watch watch this. Kelsey, I know that you're listening. Can you figure out if there are any conferences like that that I should be speaking at? And let me know.

Aaron

00:52:10 – 00:52:13

That would be awesome. Thank you. Real time. That's amazing.

Ian

00:52:14 – 00:52:15

That's amazing. Look at that.

Aaron

00:52:15 – 00:52:21

That's a great idea. Yeah. I should I should, look into that, which I just did by asking Kelsey to look into that.

Ian

00:52:21 – 00:52:28

Yeah. Or maybe they're Making it happen. Appearances on pod other Right. Podcasts or vlogs or whatever. Yeah, all that kind of stuff.

Ian

00:52:28 – 00:52:32

So that'd be cool to see you out there on the other side. I'd be able to

Aaron

00:52:32 – 00:52:42

see you on the other side. I would I would love that. Yeah. There are there are days not not with our friends, but with the broader tech community. There are days that I'm very tired of of the tech community.

Aaron

00:52:42 – 00:52:48

Tech is so bad. Tech is the worst, man. It's the worst. Okay.

Ian

00:52:48 – 00:53:01

That's one of the worst customers too, even though they're your customers and for what you do, they're fine because they're not coming back to you with stuff. But man, selling stuff to developers, just generally speaking, we've talked about this before.

Aaron

00:53:01 – 00:53:07

We've talked about this. The good news is there won't be developers in in five years. They're just gonna be all gone. There's gonna be more.

Ian

00:53:07 – 00:53:16

AI, right, will license your content so it can learn from you and There you go. Boom. OpenAI is gonna be paying you. Yeah.

Aaron

00:53:16 – 00:53:16

I can't

Ian

00:53:16 – 00:53:17

paid. Sam I

Aaron

00:53:17 – 00:53:24

think if there's a paying. If there's a track record of anything, it's the AI companies paying to license content. That sounds about right,

Ian

00:53:24 – 00:53:30

for sure. Oh, they're calling Mary Frances for the content, baby. They were the check, a big check, big juicy check.

Aaron

00:53:30 – 00:53:52

We'll see. So one or two apps, three or four courses, some open source consolidation. I don't think this will get this this next part will get completed in 2025. But I mentioned it on the last episode, a non technical book out of. Right.

Aaron

00:53:52 – 00:53:54

Out of Aaron Francis's brain.

Ian

00:53:54 – 00:53:55

I know. Something.

Aaron

00:53:55 – 00:53:56

Yeah. You

Ian

00:53:56 – 00:54:02

gotta get on the Nathan Barry five hundred words a day thing. Like, you just gotta set aside, you know, half an hour or whatever.

Aaron

00:54:02 – 00:54:13

I really do. 500 words. 500 words. There's also a very high possibility that try hard releases a, sequelite book, that is Right. Yeah.

Aaron

00:54:13 – 00:54:20

That is, the course above and beyond or with different examples, stuff like that. So that's also on the table.

Ian

00:54:20 – 00:54:22

Like, with a publisher or self published?

Aaron

00:54:22 – 00:54:23

No. Probably self published.

Ian

00:54:24 – 00:54:24

Yeah.

Aaron

00:54:25 – 00:54:36

Yeah. I think, if I can pull off this this other book the way that I want to, it'll be proper look for look for a publisher kind of thing.

Ian

00:54:37 – 00:54:43

Man. I know. You really you you really you got to give us some give us something. Give us a taste. We want a taste.

Aaron

00:54:44 – 00:54:48

Oh, it'll be directionally similar to a lot of my non technical articles.

Ian

00:54:49 – 00:54:49

Okay.

Aaron

00:54:49 – 00:54:51

With a unified there's a unified.

Ian

00:54:51 – 00:54:52

Things that

Aaron

00:54:52 – 00:55:12

kind of. There's a unifying theme that, like, ties them all together, but it will be directionally similar. And so some of, like, what I'm what I'm writing, some of the non technical stuff that I'm writing is workshopping for chapters in the book. Right. So write a non technical article, publish it, get some feedback, get some examples, some counterpoints.

Aaron

00:55:13 – 00:55:18

That all goes into the notes to workshop for the eventual book. So there's a there's a strategy here.

Ian

00:55:20 – 00:55:25

When you become Tim Ferris I know. That's only good for mostly technical. So I might become Tim Ferris.

Aaron

00:55:25 – 00:55:29

I know. I agree. Do it. Right. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Ian

00:55:29 – 00:55:31

Exactly. There we go.

Aaron

00:55:31 – 00:55:32

Or lifts Ian's boat. That's all

Ian

00:55:32 – 00:55:33

we care about.

Aaron

00:55:33 – 00:55:36

Boat. I know. I'd better live with all boats. Give me a break.

Ian

00:55:36 – 00:55:37

Give me a do nothing job where I should

Aaron

00:55:37 – 00:55:38

have been

Ian

00:55:38 – 00:55:40

so you can record for two hours. No problem. I'll be here.

Aaron

00:55:41 – 00:55:47

Gladly give you a corner office and a do nothing job. Revenue goal revenue goal for Yeah.

Ian

00:55:47 – 00:55:49

2025. Money.

Aaron

00:55:49 – 00:55:54

Twenty five calendar year revenue goal for Tricard Studios. Top line, $1,000,000.

Ian

00:55:55 – 00:55:56

Lot of zeros.

Aaron

00:55:56 – 00:55:57

It's a lot of zeros. Six of them.

Ian

00:55:58 – 00:56:01

Another number. That's right. Okay. I think you

Aaron

00:56:01 – 00:56:03

could do it. Imminently doable.

Ian

00:56:03 – 00:56:11

I think you could do it. How's the existing courses going? You wanna give us, like, a, you know, just generally their sales are holding up

Aaron

00:56:11 – 00:56:12

Sales are holding up?

Ian

00:56:12 – 00:56:13

Kind of thing.

Aaron

00:56:13 – 00:56:14

Yep. Sales are holding up.

Ian

00:56:14 – 00:56:17

That's a huge leg up there on, like, getting to a million.

Aaron

00:56:17 – 00:56:18

Huge, huge, huge leg up.

Ian

00:56:18 – 00:56:21

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When you have to invest in stuff every time.

Aaron

00:56:21 – 00:56:35

There is there is a possibility that in the twelve months since having started the company, which it's not happened yet, I think that'll be, you know, March, April, whatever. There's a possibility that in those twelve months, we hit a million.

Ian

00:56:36 – 00:56:36

That's great.

Aaron

00:56:37 – 00:56:43

There's a possibility. It would be it's a little bit of a stretch goal, but that that's definitely possible.

Ian

00:56:43 – 00:56:44

That's awesome. And

Aaron

00:56:44 – 00:57:03

I'm cooking up I'm cooking up a tweet for, you know, end of the year, year end review kind of stuff. Yep. And I'm trying to find the the most, the pithiest, most compact way to, like, write the lead, but I think the lead is basically I got laid off in March, and since then, we've earned three times my salary. Right. You know?

Aaron

00:57:03 – 00:57:10

So I'm trying to figure out how to, like, compress that into to make it the most punchy. But Right. It's a pretty good lead.

Ian

00:57:10 – 00:57:26

That is a good lead. That's a really good lead. I think people will be very excited about that and will want to hear more for sure. So that will be very good. How do you plan on like, what are your thoughts, I guess, on deploying this capital?

Aaron

00:57:27 – 00:57:31

Because So far, we've deployed it into our personal bank accounts

Ian

00:57:31 – 00:57:47

and spin off. Well, that's Right? So, like, every sort of bootstrapper founder has this, you know, question you have to ask yourself. Like, am I putting the money into the business to grow the business, like, aggressively? Or am I more taking it as profit?

Ian

00:57:48 – 00:58:06

Not for myself, like I've mostly taken it as profit. Like I have employees, but I have not like said, okay, I'm gonna take all every dollar and I'm gonna like double down and have twice as many employees, or we could be having big marketing budgets or whatever. Like, that's not the path I've at least previously chosen.

Aaron

00:58:06 – 00:58:06

Right.

Ian

00:58:06 – 00:58:10

So what is your thoughts there on what you guys are gonna do?

Aaron

00:58:11 – 00:58:32

Yeah. So thoughts looking back were, you know, we spent six, seven months without getting paid, so we just kinda took massive amounts of distributions when the time finally came to, like, get back to normal. So Yeah. Steve and I have talked a lot about, we need to spend money to move faster. Right.

Aaron

00:58:33 – 00:58:51

And I think 2025, provided the income or the revenue stays the same, we will try to spend money to move faster. Yeah. And I think in some regards, that will be, hiring an editor for some of our screencasting stuff. Steve doesn't need to be wasting his time editing. He just really he doesn't.

Aaron

00:58:51 – 00:59:22

Okay. So hiring an editor to do some of that, potentially hiring, a part time Laravel developer to both help build out, continue to build out our screencasting platform and also, help push some of the open source stuff forward because that is like a a marketing vector for us, and I am the bottleneck there. Yep. And so we've talked about spending money in those two ways. And then silly stuff, like, Steve and I both pay for o one pro.

Aaron

00:59:23 – 00:59:28

So we're paying $400 a month between the two of us for chat g p t o one pro.

Ian

00:59:28 – 00:59:32

You got right up on that upgrade to the Floshee upgrade, like, two weeks ago or something. I

Aaron

00:59:32 – 00:59:33

know. We're we're

Ian

00:59:33 – 00:59:33

on it. Okay.

Aaron

00:59:34 – 00:59:34

And so

Ian

00:59:35 – 00:59:37

like it. The o one pro isn't good.

Aaron

00:59:37 – 00:59:37

It's amazing. Alright.

Ian

00:59:37 – 00:59:38

Maybe I should check

Aaron

00:59:38 – 00:59:42

this out. I also pay for Gemini. I pay for Gemini advanced research mode.

Ian

00:59:42 – 00:59:44

More. How do I get on these things?

Aaron

00:59:44 – 00:59:45

I gotta check

Ian

00:59:45 – 00:59:45

these out.

Aaron

00:59:45 – 01:00:01

Steve is the one who's really been good about, leveraging these AI tools. Yeah. Like, I told you, he's been building this app. And, I mean, he is I I don't know if he's used Electron before, actually, but it's an Electron app. But he's like, oh, yeah.

Aaron

01:00:01 – 01:00:07

Every every time I have any question, I just go to o one pro and it, like, writes it all out and spits it out.

Ian

01:00:07 – 01:00:08

And then I

Aaron

01:00:08 – 01:00:24

take it and tweak it and put it back in. And he and I are on the same page about, AI that it's very good at discrete tasks. And so he'll, like, copy out a chunk of code and take it over, get the answer, and come back. Neither of us like the, you know, the AI editors that are trying to, like

Ian

01:00:25 – 01:00:25

Right.

Aaron

01:00:25 – 01:00:27

Intuit what you want because they're always wrong.

Ian

01:00:28 – 01:00:28

Yeah. I've been searching

Aaron

01:00:28 – 01:00:29

the cursor.

Ian

01:00:29 – 01:00:48

It's it's nice to have it right in there, but, yeah, it's not, like, it's not that much better than when you copy paste it out. It's just more convenient in some ways, but then it's not as convenient as you feel like it could be. It's not it's not as more as it's not as convenient as I feel like it should be given that it's moved in in some ways. But, yeah, I think you

Aaron

01:00:48 – 01:01:01

know one. Stuff like that. Like, I just, I just resubscribed to Midjourney, and I bought this is gonna this is gonna make some people so mad. I paid $50 for a PDF

Ian

01:01:01 – 01:01:01

Okay.

Aaron

01:01:01 – 01:01:03

Of Midjourney prompts.

Ian

01:01:05 – 01:01:06

I love it. I love it.

Aaron

01:01:06 – 01:01:12

It's business, baby. It's business. Here's here's what happened. We're redesigning aaronfrancis.com.

Ian

01:01:12 – 01:01:12

Yep.

Aaron

01:01:12 – 01:01:41

And it's in a very, like, it's in a very news website style, so, like, Atlantic, CNN, something like that, where it's got lots of lots of cards, lots of columns, lots of stories, that sort of thing. And it was becoming very heavily image dependent, and we needed something that was, like, a consistent theme across all of the images. Yeah. And we looked at, like, hiring a designer to do it. And then not only was it expensive, but the turnaround was so slow.

Aaron

01:01:41 – 01:02:00

Like, you'd say, hey. I need this image, and it would be, like, a week and a half later. They get you something, and you're like, I don't know. So I, you know, played around a bunch with, like, ImageMagick and these APIs that can, like, apply a style to an image, and none of them really looked great. And so I finally went back to mid journey.

Aaron

01:02:00 – 01:02:03

Now that they're out of freaking discord, they have an actual web app.

Ian

01:02:03 – 01:02:05

Oh, do they? Okay. Yeah. Last time I use it

Aaron

01:02:05 – 01:02:06

was just going on. To try

Ian

01:02:06 – 01:02:08

to use the thing. Yeah, this is ridiculous. Yeah.

Aaron

01:02:08 – 01:02:18

I went over there and I was like, All right, This is cool. What do I type? I was like, I have no freaking idea. Right. And so I went looking and I found this pack of it was a PDF.

Aaron

01:02:18 – 01:02:26

I think it was $50 and it had, like, 460 prompts with, you know, example images.

Ian

01:02:26 – 01:02:26

I was

Aaron

01:02:26 – 01:02:46

like, perfect. That's what I need. And so I bought that and scrolled through the whole thing until I found a style that I liked. And now I'm using they have like a I think it's like a reference string or something. And now I'm just using that, and it's just generating consistent images for me over and over and over.

Aaron

01:02:46 – 01:03:29

So what I do is and I think I'll make a video on this because it's it's pretty interesting. I think I find I will start by going to Unsplash and finding a free to license Unsplash photo and then taking that photo over to MidJourney and using that as a starting point. So you can, like, upload a photo and then type out the whole prompt and then add that little reference code and hit generate. And it kinda takes the Unsplash photo and uses that as structure, but then kinda, like, does its whole, like, dream thing and Vudu and draws it in that exact style. And then I'll wait I'll do it over and over until I find one that's that's directionally correct, and then I take it into Photoshop and just manually clean up all the mistakes and then add, like, an accent color.

Aaron

01:03:29 – 01:03:47

So we have this red accent color. So then I add the accent color somewhere. And then I put it on the page, and it's look it looks like cohesive and identical, and it took me, you know, it took me twenty minutes to make the perfect image that is, like, this abstract representation of this nontechnical concept. You know? Right.

Aaron

01:03:47 – 01:03:56

So, yeah, try to do stuff like that. Spend spend money to move faster. In this case, it was like, you know, mid journey is $20 a month and the prompts were 50. So what it you know, who cares?

Ian

01:03:56 – 01:03:59

Yeah. Right. Wow. I didn't know. Yeah.

Ian

01:03:59 – 01:04:09

Every time I'm going with the AI images, it's like, it does yeah. The can't get the same image back out. Mhmm. Super annoying. So but Midjourney, it sounds like has a solution to that problem in

Aaron

01:04:09 – 01:04:32

some There's like a I think it's like a s ref flag or something. Mhmm. And I'm very sensitive to AI images that look like AI. And so the style that we chose excuse me. The style we chose is not, like, photorealistic or, like, you know, flying through outer space or some of these that are very clearly AI generated.

Aaron

01:04:32 – 01:04:53

It is much more like, half tone or dithered, like, black and white, almost newspaper style. Yeah. And so I feel like, it fits better because it's not trying to be realistic. Yeah. And so it it is like a it's like an art artistic representation of the idea, not a picture of the idea.

Ian

01:04:53 – 01:04:57

Yep. I like that. Okay. Check out this mid journey again. Yeah.

Ian

01:04:57 – 01:05:02

Because I yeah. I haven't tried it out since it was just in discord and I'm like, this is That's so good. I can't deal

Aaron

01:05:02 – 01:05:03

with this. It's embarrassing.

Ian

01:05:04 – 01:05:09

Although, I guess it worked for them. Right? Like it it worked, but it wasn't for it wasn't for us at that point. It

Aaron

01:05:09 – 01:05:10

wasn't for the old

Ian

01:05:10 – 01:05:10

for us.

Aaron

01:05:10 – 01:05:10

Yeah.

Ian

01:05:10 – 01:05:21

Yeah. Interesting. And so the o one pro, what does that get you that the regular o one doesn't? Just more capacity or speed? Or

Aaron

01:05:21 – 01:05:37

a lot longer, like, chain of thought. And so it'll think for, like, three or four minutes and then come back with a much, much longer response. So it's not great for, like, hey. Write me a loop that iterates this and then does this in reverse. You don't need it for that.

Aaron

01:05:37 – 01:05:39

That's a waste of money or time rather.

Ian

01:05:40 – 01:05:43

Okay. Interesting. Yeah. I had to check that too. I'm always looking for ways to spend more money.

Ian

01:05:43 – 01:05:44

So I know. There we go.

Aaron

01:05:44 – 01:05:45

End of the year.

Ian

01:05:45 – 01:05:48

O one pro. Yeah. Get it in now. Yeah. I wonder if they'll do annual.

Ian

01:05:49 – 01:05:50

Sometimes they don't these days.

Aaron

01:05:51 – 01:05:52

Yeah. I don't know if they do.

Ian

01:05:52 – 01:05:57

Yeah. I don't know if they do. Okay. So I like all that. That's all good.

Aaron

01:05:57 – 01:05:57

Ian

01:05:57 – 01:06:01

So what what do you got? What else you got? That's it. That's only only, like, 20 things. Come on.

Aaron

01:06:01 – 01:06:03

I know. That's only 20 things.

Ian

01:06:04 – 01:06:05

Personal? Well, personal.

Aaron

01:06:06 – 01:06:11

A little business is personal, man. It's the most personal thing in the world. It's Michael Scott. You got, what

Ian

01:06:11 – 01:06:16

about trip? Any big trips? You packed the whole crew up on a big trip? 25?

Aaron

01:06:16 – 01:06:17

No. No. No. No. No.

Aaron

01:06:17 – 01:06:18

No. No. No. No. No.

Aaron

01:06:19 – 01:06:26

Amsterdam in February, Utah in March, maybe. I'm going to Poland, I think, for a conference

Ian

01:06:26 – 01:06:27

Oh, wow.

Aaron

01:06:27 – 01:06:36

In June or July. And then the the keynote the one I'm keynoting is here in Dallas, and that's, like, October, November.

Ian

01:06:36 – 01:06:39

Right. But that's all just you stuff. That's not the crew.

Aaron

01:06:39 – 01:06:48

Yeah. Big personal update. This is pre 2025, December 27. So four days from now is Jennifer and Mai's ten year anniversary.

Ian

01:06:49 – 01:06:49

Congratulations.

Aaron

01:06:50 – 01:06:55

Thank you. Thank you very much. Ten years. Wow. So pretty big deal.

Aaron

01:06:56 – 01:07:06

So this is personal. And in 2025, once the au pair is back, because she's out of town right now, which is killing us. Oh, man. The au pair can be

Ian

01:07:07 – 01:07:07

I hate that.

Aaron

01:07:07 – 01:07:33

We'll do a a one night staycation. That's all we can that's all we can get away with. So we'll send we'll probably send the older kids to grandma and grandpa, and then the younger kids will have Jasmine watch them, you know, overnight. Yep. And we'll go we'll go somewhere and have a nice dinner and have a nice, like, hotel, and we can sleep in and get a breakfast and a coffee.

Aaron

01:07:33 – 01:07:34

And so that that would

Ian

01:07:34 – 01:07:37

be our That's not a staycation, though. That's still outside the house.

Aaron

01:07:37 – 01:07:39

It's outside the house, but not outside the city.

Ian

01:07:39 – 01:07:40

Yes. Okay.

Aaron

01:07:40 – 01:07:47

So we'll go, like, we'll go to, you know, ten minutes away to a hotel. Right. But it'll be great. It'll feel it'll feel amazing.

Ian

01:07:47 – 01:07:49

It'll be We tried

Aaron

01:07:49 – 01:07:50

that last winter,

Ian

01:07:50 – 01:08:00

like, before I got sick. So, like, I don't know. It was January, February. And, like, two in the morning, my daughter somehow texted this crazy message. I'm sure I talked about it on the show.

Ian

01:08:00 – 01:08:19

And then so we ended up coming back from the station at two in the morning, to the house, and she was sleeping, and it was fine. She, like, woke up and slept walked or something, to her iPad and wrote a weirdo message to me. So good luck. Hopefully, nobody, nobody nobody messages you oddly at two in the morning.

Aaron

01:08:19 – 01:08:20

Yeah. I did not.

Ian

01:08:20 – 01:08:29

No. That's a good plan. That's a great plan. We did also something like that also last year, which was, yeah, it was, like, forty minutes away, but not too our kids are bigger.

Aaron

01:08:29 – 01:08:30

It wasn't too bad.

Ian

01:08:30 – 01:08:45

And it was nice. Just that one night away, it is quite restorative, when you can make it work. Even just the one night of, like, not preparing dinner, not cleaning up, not people screaming and yelling and all that stuff. So I just Can

Aaron

01:08:45 – 01:08:47

you imagine having a slow morning?

Ian

01:08:49 – 01:08:50

No. Just anytime.

Aaron

01:08:50 – 01:08:51

That sounds amazing.

Ian

01:08:52 – 01:09:06

That phase you're in. It's like well, I just, Apple just randomly brought up this, like, video the other day that I was watching, and it was like, all the kids. This is like, jeez. Like, it's supposed to be, like, 02/2015 or something. And Mia was, like, two, and she's, like, learning to potty train.

Ian

01:09:07 – 01:09:15

She's at at the table with food, and she's, like, she's just yelling. Pink underwear. Pink underwear. Over to pink underwear. She's yelling.

Ian

01:09:15 – 01:09:25

But she's, like, laughing. Like, she knows she's, like, pushing it right away. She's, like, pink underwear. Because I think there was something with, like, you know, to get underwear, you gotta go to the toilet, whatever, all that stuff. So she's yellow and pink underwear.

Ian

01:09:25 – 01:09:39

She's getting food, thrown it on the floor. Then the middle kid, I pan to him. He's got a huge Gandalf staff. Yep. And he's banging her in the head now with the Gandalf staff.

Ian

01:09:40 – 01:10:00

And then the oldest one is coming over. Like, I told you not to go pee pee in your pants and, like, he's yelling. And it's just like people yelling and screaming and hitting, but and they were all actually having fun. It wasn't actually even bad, but it was just, like, just the sound of it all, like, the cacophony of chaos. I was like, boy, that was that was something back then.

Ian

01:10:00 – 01:10:01

Just like Boy.

Aaron

01:10:01 – 01:10:04

That is exactly that is exactly where we are.

Ian

01:10:04 – 01:10:08

Exactly. So yeah. My youngest or

Aaron

01:10:08 – 01:10:24

or my oldest daughter lost one of her cheap little, you know, nothing like gloves. And so I asked Jennifer. I was like, Amelia only has one glove, right? And she said, Yeah, I'm going to buy her some new gloves. I actually ordered them at Target, and I need to go pick them up.

Aaron

01:10:24 – 01:10:33

And Amelia starts saying, What gloves? And we're like, We're just going to get you some new gloves. What are the gloves? We're gonna we're mommy's gonna pick up some new gloves. No.

Aaron

01:10:34 – 01:10:38

What are the gloves? I'm like, I don't understand. What do you want?

Ian

01:10:38 – 01:10:40

Not a sensible question. Right?

Aaron

01:10:40 – 01:11:00

I think she was leaving out the word color because my wife then said, we're just gonna get you like, we we got you some new blue gloves. And she's just like That was my started smiling. Like, what are the gloves is a different question than what color are the gloves. That's great. So we're, like, standing outside this this park, and she's screaming, what are the gloves?

Aaron

01:11:00 – 01:11:03

And we're both like, I don't know. I have no idea.

Ian

01:11:03 – 01:11:04

Oh my goodness.

Aaron

01:11:04 – 01:11:08

Yeah. That is totally, totally the phase that we are in right now.

Ian

01:11:08 – 01:11:11

You go. Yeah. Yep. Good stuff. Oh, man.

Aaron

01:11:12 – 01:11:20

So I don't know. Other personal updates, probably no probably no underground garage, but it's you know, it's still there. We'll see.

Ian

01:11:20 – 01:11:21

We'll be in there.

Aaron

01:11:21 – 01:11:22

A quote yet. We could do it.

Ian

01:11:22 – 01:11:24

See how the revenue goes.

Aaron

01:11:24 – 01:11:24

Yeah.

Ian

01:11:26 – 01:11:28

Housing stuff's done, though, right? You're good with housing.

Aaron

01:11:29 – 01:11:32

Mostly. Mostly. Yeah. Mostly. Just.

Aaron

01:11:32 – 01:11:33

Yeah. It's never done.

Ian

01:11:33 – 01:11:38

Well, I guess you might have a you might have a try hard studios move potentially at some point.

Aaron

01:11:38 – 01:11:44

Yep. Might have a hopefully have a factory, April, May, June, something like that.

Ian

01:11:44 – 01:11:48

Okay. That's a lot. You're you're That's a lot. Good on stuff.

Aaron

01:11:48 – 01:11:51

Good on stuff. I got enough stuff.

Ian

01:11:51 – 01:11:56

None of that was really side project to you, though. No side projects? What about something a little out there? Nothing out there?

Aaron

01:11:56 – 01:11:57

You know, I think

Ian

01:11:57 – 01:11:58

Just gonna let it come?

Aaron

01:11:59 – 01:12:25

If we can if we can still pull off the factory, which I think I think we can, I think the physical product is gonna scratch the side project itch? And so that that's where I'm really placing that's where I'm really putting my hopes on, you know, whatever the side project hobby kind of, like, outlet is. Yeah. That's where I'm putting my my hopes and dreams is on that physical product creation. So

Ian

01:12:25 – 01:12:25

Okay.

Aaron

01:12:26 – 01:12:51

I'm still I'm still about 90% sure that we'll be able to do that. The timeline has just shifted back as we've honestly, as I've realized, the business is make courses to make money. So Right. Gotta get gotta get more of those out there to get the, get the baseline a little higher, and then it makes a little bit more sense to allow me to, like, go off and explore a little bit.

Ian

01:12:51 – 01:12:54

Yeah. Yeah. No. It makes sense. Yes, man.

Ian

01:12:54 – 01:12:57

It's all about it. Yes, man. It's approved. Great.

Aaron

01:12:57 – 01:12:58

It wasn't even

Ian

01:12:58 – 01:13:02

I don't feel like you probably leveraged this gift, to be honest with you. I feel like I know it wasn't even that crazy.

Aaron

01:13:02 – 01:13:07

I know. I've been so I've been so trained that I had to to hold back.

Ian

01:13:07 – 01:13:09

You've come in line. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't like this.

Ian

01:13:09 – 01:13:10

I feel like.

Aaron

01:13:10 – 01:13:10

I hate

Ian

01:13:10 – 01:13:11

it. I hate it.

Aaron

01:13:12 – 01:13:20

Got to be a got to dream a little bigger, man. Yeah. But no, that's that's I think that's about it. I don't I don't think. Okay.

Aaron

01:13:20 – 01:13:21

I don't think there's

Ian

01:13:21 – 01:13:22

a lot. That's going to be that's

Aaron

01:13:22 – 01:13:22

a lot.

Ian

01:13:22 – 01:13:24

I think you're going to be busy to do.

Aaron

01:13:24 – 01:13:25

That's a lot.

Ian

01:13:25 – 01:13:30

And half of that. Half of that gets done. Done, I think you'll be feel like it was a lot. And, I

Aaron

01:13:30 – 01:13:30

think so.

Ian

01:13:30 – 01:13:35

It took a lot of work. So Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Especially with the open source stuff.

Ian

01:13:35 – 01:13:44

I mean, you've been on that lately, maintaining that or getting somebody to help maintain it or whatever. Like, it's a lot just in that stuff. Yeah. Is a lot. So Yeah.

Ian

01:13:45 – 01:13:49

Yeah. Alright. Very good. Well, I think that's 2025 wrapped up. Hopefully

Aaron

01:13:49 – 01:13:50

It's a big one.

Ian

01:13:51 – 01:13:56

Let's just get through all those things we said. I don't want any side adventures. I don't want any illnesses.

Aaron

01:13:56 – 01:14:01

I make illnesses. I can't actually, I can make no guarantees on any of that. There will probably be side adventures.

Ian

01:14:02 – 01:14:02

Guarantee?

Aaron

01:14:02 – 01:14:04

There will probably be illnesses.

Ian

01:14:04 – 01:14:06

Let's be honest. No illnesses.

Aaron

01:14:06 – 01:14:07

Not for you. Not for you.

Ian

01:14:07 – 01:14:07

Okay. Good. Alright.

Aaron

01:14:07 – 01:14:08

Not for you.

Ian

01:14:08 – 01:14:09

As long as I'm off the hook. That's fine.

Aaron

01:14:09 – 01:14:11

You're off the hook. You're off the hook.

Ian

01:14:11 – 01:14:14

Thank you. Alright. So let's do mostly technical.

Aaron

01:14:15 – 01:14:17

Let's do it. Let's reveal the big team.

Ian

01:14:17 – 01:14:17

Wrap it up.

Aaron

01:14:17 – 01:14:20

If you fast forwarded to get to this point, how dare you?

Ian

01:14:21 – 01:14:21

How dare

Aaron

01:14:21 – 01:14:23

you? How dare you? After all we've given you

Ian

01:14:23 – 01:14:24

ass.

Aaron

01:14:24 – 01:14:27

Unbelievable. Alright. Give us the numbeys.

Ian

01:14:28 – 01:14:32

So this year, we did $17,000 Okay. In ad revenue.

Aaron

01:14:33 – 01:14:36

We love it. That's better than a poke in the eye.

Ian

01:14:36 – 01:14:53

That is better than a poke in the eye. And we weren't really working at it per se. I mean, there's, like, a page on the site, and that's kinda it. We don't really push it. So, what do we think we so we have a new ad platform coming on at some point here, which I think we're both excited about the possibilities.

Ian

01:14:53 – 01:15:03

I actually had some people messaging me asking me if it's gonna be a SaaS. They're already asking me There we go. All. I was like, oh, I don't think it's built like a SaaS. I don't know how it's actually built, but I'm pretty sure he didn't build it.

Aaron

01:15:03 – 01:15:10

See, we are ninety seconds into saying no side quests for 2025, and I'm already thinking

Ian

01:15:10 – 01:15:12

Like, we should do that. Why is this not a SaaS?

Aaron

01:15:12 – 01:15:13

SaaS. Let's do it, baby.

Ian

01:15:14 – 01:15:25

See, here's what I think, though. I love that it's not built like a SaaS. I hope he didn't build it like a SaaS because I feel like that's even that's better. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like, it started just for us.

Ian

01:15:25 – 01:15:25

No.

Aaron

01:15:25 – 01:15:26

No. No. Ah, yeah.

Ian

01:15:26 – 01:15:26

It's it's

Aaron

01:15:26 – 01:15:27

just for us.

Ian

01:15:27 – 01:15:36

We're using it just for us. Yeah. And if it demands to be a SaaS, then we will then take the the time or the money or whatever to make it into a SaaS.

Aaron

01:15:36 – 01:15:37

Yep.

Ian

01:15:37 – 01:15:45

As opposed to us just being, like, going off down that, it's all SaaS. I want you to do that. They have all these other considerations because it's not just for us, and we can't just hack stuff in there. Right?

Aaron

01:15:45 – 01:15:46

Mhmm. And

Ian

01:15:46 – 01:15:57

so now it becomes a whole big thing, and then we're trying to market it and sell it. But no. Like, just for us. Nope. And if it's awesome and people are like, why can't I use this awesome thing, then we could put in that.

Ian

01:15:57 – 01:16:15

I feel like we're putting we're doing it the correct order. Like, we're proving that it's useful, and then then it's useful to other people as opposed to us assuming it'll be useful to other people before we even know if it's useful to us. So I agree. I like that part. So, yeah, so that'll be out, which I'm very excited about.

Ian

01:16:15 – 01:16:23

Me too. And then, yeah, I don't know, though. So what do we think we can do numbers wise? Do we wanna put a number on it?

Aaron

01:16:23 – 01:16:26

Yeah. Of course. We wanna put a number on it. Are you crazy? Alright.

Aaron

01:16:26 – 01:16:32

Let's put a number on it. So we gotta do a little bit of math again. That's the problem. Well, do you have a number in mind?

Ian

01:16:33 – 01:16:49

I I don't. I don't really have a number in mind. I've thought about the, like, numbers to charge, but honestly, I haven't I don't I haven't thought about, like, what it would be over a whole year. I don't know. I mean, I was thinking my thought was, like, a thousand dollars an ad, and you're basically getting roughly four ads.

Ian

01:16:49 – 01:16:58

You're getting one month of ads. So, I mean, obviously, you could just math that out into being like, well, what how much of our inventory are we selling or whatever? But

Aaron

01:16:58 – 01:16:58

I don't

Ian

01:16:58 – 01:17:05

know if a thousand's the right number. Maybe it's too little. Maybe it's too much. I don't know. We haven't talked about this, you and me.

Ian

01:17:05 – 01:17:06

No. We haven't.

Aaron

01:17:07 – 01:17:11

Alright. I've got I've got a number that I think we can get in 2025.

Ian

01:17:11 – 01:17:12

What is it?

Aaron

01:17:12 – 01:17:13

$50,000.

Ian

01:17:14 – 01:17:16

Okay. I like that number.

Aaron

01:17:16 – 01:17:17

I think we can do that.

Ian

01:17:17 – 01:17:20

So we did 17. So it's like three x this year. Mhmm.

Aaron

01:17:21 – 01:17:22

How does that move you?

Ian

01:17:24 – 01:17:30

I like it. I think it's good for goal. I think I would love a stretch goal of, like, 70.

Aaron

01:17:31 – 01:17:32

I love a stretch goal.

Ian

01:17:32 – 01:17:40

But I don't I think that's gonna be definitely harder. I mean, we know we have the platform on, whatever. We have to see how many ads you can actually sell. Mhmm. See if the the people like the

Aaron

01:17:40 – 01:17:42

ads and all that stuff.

Ian

01:17:44 – 01:17:47

I think fifty fifty seems like it should be possible.

Aaron

01:17:47 – 01:17:49

50 seems imminently doable.

Ian

01:17:49 – 01:17:53

Yeah. And and that's a nice number. Right? It's like, k. 25 each.

Ian

01:17:54 – 01:17:55

That's real money.

Aaron

01:17:55 – 01:17:56

That's real

Ian

01:17:56 – 01:18:04

money. That's useful amounts of money we can use for things. Mhmm. Yeah. I like that.

Aaron

01:18:05 – 01:18:06

50 it is. Let's do 50.

Ian

01:18:06 – 01:18:10

50 it is. Alright. 50 is the goal. Write it down.

Aaron

01:18:10 – 01:18:11

Gotta sell some ads.

Ian

01:18:12 – 01:18:24

You gotta sell some ads. We can't you can't buy any ads yet, but if you want to buy if you wanna buy an ad, let's put it this way. If you wanna buy an ad, you should email mostly technical pod. Right? Is that the email?

Ian

01:18:24 – 01:18:34

Mostlytechnicalpodcast@gmail.com. And I will put you on a little wait list. And when the ad platform is up, you can be in the first group.

Aaron

01:18:34 – 01:18:35

First to hear about it.

Ian

01:18:35 – 01:18:49

Yes. And I actually already do have, at least one, maybe two people on that list already. So, yeah, so I think, hopefully, we can get a few in there. The I think launch day partners will

Aaron

01:18:49 – 01:18:50

Love that.

Ian

01:18:50 – 01:19:04

Will benefit by being launch day partners, and we're likely to talk about this quite a bit, I would imagine, once it rolls out. So, yeah, email, and I'll put you on the list. And, yeah, I think it's doable.

Aaron

01:19:05 – 01:19:06

I think it's doable.

Ian

01:19:07 – 01:19:08

I'd love to get paid to do stuff.

Aaron

01:19:08 – 01:19:09

Can you imagine?

Ian

01:19:09 – 01:19:10

Paid to do things.

Aaron

01:19:10 – 01:19:11

Can you imagine? That'd be amazing.

Ian

01:19:12 – 01:19:17

Paid to entertain people like this is truly the dream, right? Like that is the. Paid to entertain people.

Aaron

01:19:17 – 01:19:20

That is that is the dream. And I think we can

Ian

01:19:20 – 01:19:22

do it. It's like being a rock star.

Aaron

01:19:22 – 01:19:27

It is. It's it's exactly the same as being a famous rock star. Yes.

Ian

01:19:27 – 01:19:38

The only thing it's not the same as, and maybe we gotta think about this. The best part about rock star, right, is not just that you got paid for entertainment people, but that twenty years later, someone plays your song, you get paid again.

Aaron

01:19:38 – 01:19:38

I know.

Ian

01:19:38 – 01:19:42

You're just kidding getting paid. Will people pay us for this podcast?

Aaron

01:19:43 – 01:19:49

In twenty years? How about one year? Not. One year from now. No.

Aaron

01:19:49 – 01:19:51

No. No. No. Not even a little.

Ian

01:19:51 – 01:19:53

Maybe we gotta start singing on here or something.

Aaron

01:19:53 – 01:20:08

No. That would go that would be worse. They wouldn't pay us currently much less one year from now. I think the expansion move for the podcast is obviously ads and then some sort of some sort of, merch or some other monetization thing.

Ian

01:20:08 – 01:20:10

There's no money in merch, but I

Aaron

01:20:10 – 01:20:11

just love

Ian

01:20:11 – 01:20:14

the idea of merch just being out there. I'd love that idea.

Aaron

01:20:14 – 01:20:15

People wearing merch

Ian

01:20:15 – 01:20:16

is is a is

Aaron

01:20:16 – 01:20:20

really cool. Ads are the ticket. That's what we gotta do. Gotta make a bunch of money on ads.

Ian

01:20:21 – 01:20:33

If we did merch, would you wanna do I think a lot of podcasting to do the, like there's a merch season. Right? It's like maybe in the fall. It's like, it's a one month run or whatever. It's not that that there's a store there all the time.

Ian

01:20:33 – 01:20:34

It's like if you

Aaron

01:20:34 – 01:20:40

want merch I do like that. It adds it adds some urgency, and then it lets you it gets you off the hook for the other

Ian

01:20:40 – 01:20:41

eleven months out of the year. Yeah.

Aaron

01:20:41 – 01:20:42

Maybe something like that.

Ian

01:20:42 – 01:20:45

I do like that. Yeah. We need merch, though. We we have a lack of

Aaron

01:20:45 – 01:20:48

merch. We do have a lack of merch. No. We can figure something

Ian

01:20:48 – 01:20:50

out there. That's it.

Aaron

01:20:51 – 01:20:52

Okay. I like it.

Ian

01:20:52 – 01:21:02

Alright. That's the plan. Everybody chime in. Let us know what you, think about the plan. And, if you're interested in sponsoring and helping the show, let me know.

Ian

01:21:02 – 01:21:07

And we will I don't know. We're gonna see them next week. We're thinking about maybe taking next week off, but we'll see.

Aaron

01:21:07 – 01:21:21

I think we're thinking about taking next week off. What's next week? Next week is the thirtieth, Monday, the thirtieth. You know, honestly, I think I might I might be back in the office that day. So we'll play it we'll play it by ear.

Ian

01:21:21 – 01:21:23

We'll see. There's a chance you won't hear from us next week.

Aaron

01:21:23 – 01:21:23

There's a

Ian

01:21:23 – 01:21:29

chance you will. Maybe we'll do, like, a ten minute one. We'll do a quick hit. I like that. Alright.

Ian

01:21:29 – 01:21:50

Thanks everybody for listening. Mostly technical.com at mostly technical pod on Twitter, mostly technical dot com on blue sky, our favorite, and mostly technicalpodcast@gmail.com. If you want to advertise or say hi or anything else, send us email and we will talk to you soon later.

Aaron

01:21:51 – 01:21:51

See you.

Yes Man

Transcript

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