Beginning of the Empire

Ian

Hello?

Aaron

Mister Landsman, how are we doing?

Ian

Mister Anderson.

Aaron

Oh, great movie.

Ian

Great long

Aaron

Great movie. Oh, god.

Ian

Still wanna do a movie podcast one day. Pretty high on my list of things I'd like to do.

Aaron

I might be a good foil for that because, as you know, my my taste in movies is basically is is the movie good? And that's about it. And that's that's as deep as it goes. Did I have fun? So there'd be so we could argue about movies for a long time, I think.

Ian

I grew up on Sysco and Ebert, and they were bit, you know, the thumbs up or the thumbs down. Like, it's good or bad. That's it.

Aaron

It's a good rating system with the thumbs. Very very understandable. Easy to communicate to the people.

Ian

Not 10 stars, and you're in the middle somewhere. It's like good

Aaron

at that. They did qualify the thumbs sometimes. They would say 2 thumbs way, way up, and you're like, okay. You're adding extra modifiers to the thumb system.

Ian

Yeah. And then actually in Ebert's, like, written articles, I think it was like a 4 star system or something, like, in his written copy reviews. Yeah. Are your system made?

Aaron

I I gotta be honest. Couldn't if they walked by me on the street, I wouldn't know who they are. Sorry to this man. Yeah. Sorry, Cisco.

Sorry.

Ian

It's a little bit quiet. He's one of them.

Aaron

Right? Isn't one of them, resting in peace?

Ian

No. Both of them. I I believe both

Aaron

of them.

Ian

Both of them. Wow.

Aaron

No. Yep. Good good guys.

Ian

They were good guys.

Aaron

Yeah. All

Ian

we had on TV in the eighties. I'd watched Sysco and Ebert. That's what that's what we had.

Aaron

Sysco and Ebert. Yeah. With names like that, they had to go together. You can't just be Sysco. No.

You can't you can't be mister Sysco and hang out a shingle. You gotta be Sysco and Ebert.

Ian

The the the name yeah. They just work great together, don't they? Works great together.

Aaron

Alright. Well, that's that's a little fun aside trip down memory lanes. What's going on over there?

Ian

Nothing. You've had a a trip. Tell us about your trip.

Aaron

Had a trip. Had a big trip. Went down to the went down to the hill country, a little bit, it was in a town called Boerne, boerne, which is insane way to spell Boerne. It's like outside of Austin, outside of San Antonio, and it was it was great. Just had the best freaking time.

So there were, let's see. There were 11 of us, 11 guys. I think we were missing 2 this year. So it's always, like, you know, we're we're very rarely at the full 13 just given schedules and everything. But this year, we got 11, which is awesome.

And we do this every year. So it's it's guys from that I went to college with, many of whom were my roommates either in college or after or something like that. So, yeah, we go down usually, we go down to the hill country every year. It's called sausage fest, you know, because we cook a lot of a lot of sausages while we're there. Yeah.

That's why we named it that because of the sausage that we cook. Very creative. Very creative. I don't know who came up with that, but it was like, hey. Since we cook so many sausages, let's call it sausage fest.

It was great. We sat in the river. You know, that's basically what we do. We basically go down to the hill country, sit in the river, drink beer, and throw rocks at sticks. That's kinda that's kinda the whole thing.

There you go. Total, like, total dude's rock moment was when, like, we walked into the river and we're like, oh, man. We should build a little dam here. And so we spent, like, 45 minutes or an hour building a little dam. Yeah.

And then, you know, one guy was like, hey. What if I what if I go set up a stick, like, 30 yards down the river, and we throw rocks at it and try to hit it. Like, yeah. That's awesome. So we spent an hour doing that.

Ian

Oh, man.

Aaron

You know, typical stuff. Typical guy stuff. So it was fun. Now

Ian

so I learned something in this because I was always in the impression. Like, I saw you tweeting about this, whatever, going back and forth with people. Yep. And I always picture hill country. Like I was aware of hill country.

Okay. And I always thought it was right outside Austin and it's like that area outside Austin I think it's what is it? Like, north or something? I'm not I have no idea. But it's outside of Austin.

But this Mhmm.

Aaron

But

Ian

then when the map, you it was, like, almost closer to San Antonio where

Aaron

It was.

Ian

Where. So, like, is that whole thing, Hill Country? Like, I'm with computers.

Aaron

So it's a little bit it's a little bit of an open question. So, I'm looking at the map now so I can get this right. So, you've got Austin, and then we'll call it down into the left. Perhaps you could say to the southwest, but we'll call it down to the left.

Ian

Down left.

Aaron

Yeah. You've got San Antonio. If only there were, like, commonly understood terms to talk about this. Down and to the left is San Antonio. I think anywhere.

So, Hill Country starts I don't know exactly where it starts. But, yeah, like, west of Austin, you've got, like, Marble Falls, definitely Hill Country. Then you go south a little bit, Dripping Springs, definitely Hill Country. Then in Wimberly, you're starting to get in between Austin and San Antonio, but Wimberley is definitely still Hill Country. Boerne might be pushing it considering how far west it is, but even further west than Boerne is Hill Country State Natural Area.

And so it's like you go. Yeah. I feel like it goes pretty far out. Even Garner State Park, which is way out there, that's Hill Country. So, yeah, it's all kinda west of Austin.

Ian

Yeah. See, I was always just thinking when you look at the map of Austin, if we go left and up

Aaron

Left and up.

Ian

You have that whole the river, the some kind of river over there, lakes and rivers and stuff, and I have

Aaron

the falls. Yep.

Ian

Hill country, like, way or whatever this is. Well, the

Aaron

thing about countries the thing about countries is they can be quite large. So the hill country is is is pretty big.

Ian

It's bigger than I thought, but Texas is a big place.

Aaron

That makes sense. It's a big place, man.

Ian

Big place.

Aaron

Such a big place. One time we drove from College Station to California, and half of our journey was spent inside of Texas. Like, literally, we were, like, halfway to California, and we were in, you know, El Paso or something. Yeah.

Ian

It's a big place. That feels like you're going nowhere when you have those kind of trips where you don't

Aaron

Yes.

Ian

Cross any lines. Exactly.

Aaron

Going.

Ian

No good.

Aaron

So good weekend. Whole lot of fun. Fresh. Lot lot of yes. Very refreshing.

Lot of sitting around. Lot of laughing. Lot of talking. One cheese board, which, you know, I'm sure that you're thrilled about. I'm I'm sure you're thrilled about it.

Ian

Need some pickles on there, some some pickled vegetables,

Aaron

but Nonsense.

Ian

I still like a good cheese board. There was some salami looking stuff and Mhmm. Some cheese.

Aaron

Kinds of cheese. There was a cheese that was too funky for me to eat, so I thought you would appreciate that. Yeah.

Ian

There you go. I'd say I'm not huge on the ultra funky cheese, but, you know, I like the most It was

Aaron

just like blue cheese or something, which is, you know, gross. But, yeah, it was it was really great. Lots of fun. Known these guys since, you know, 2006. So and I think this is our maybe 11th.

No. This has gotta be our 12th or 13th year of doing this. Feel very refreshed. So Pretty good. It was great.

Ian

Very good. Keep up with the college people too much, I have to say.

Aaron

You gotta keep

Ian

up with the college.

Aaron

High school, I'm kinda let high school go. I don't really talk to any high school people. But college people, I see them some of them multiple times a week and all of them at least once a year.

Ian

See, yeah. I've never but I both I both never had a roommate and only ever had roommates, which is a little faster here too. Like, because I've only had I've never had a room to myself in my whole life. Okay. I've never had a bedroom to myself.

I shared a room with my brother until I moved out. And then I shared a room with my current wife till till last night and hopefully future nights.

Aaron

Hopefully, hopefully more nights to come.

Ian

But I've never had just like, hey. It's 3 guys. We share an apartment or whatever or even a college roommate. Like, didn't have any of that. I was a commuter.

No college roommate. Mhmm. So, yeah, I never had any of that stuff. So I don't have those spots. Like, I went to college.

I had a few couple good friends in college, but they were also commuters and everybody lives

Aaron

Yep.

Ian

Weird spots now. Yeah. Mhmm. So that's nice. Everybody's still mostly in Texas of this crew then?

Or

Aaron

Everybody's in Texas except one, one guy's out in California, but he wants to come back. Hell, yeah. He does. He wants to come back. I think he's gonna land in San Antonio.

So we've got, you know, maybe 6 or 7 in Dallas, 2 or 3 in Austin, Wimberly, and then some others scattered about, but I think he's gonna land in San Antonio.

Ian

Oh, it makes it easy then. Yeah. Kinda makes it more convenient for everybody when you're trying to organize. I know we do a thing that you attended this year, and I wasn't there. But, you know, do some stuff with the Laravel crew.

And it is difficult to coordinate because it's just like every single person has to fly and just Right. Orchestrating all that is much more cumbersome. So that way, you could just drive for 2 days away or whatever it's Mhmm. It's nice.

Aaron

It was great. We I drove down I drove from Dallas. I drove my car, and I drove with one of my friends who is an attorney, so he was, like, working the whole time. And so we had texted before. It was like, hey, man.

Are you driving or flying? And I was like, I don't know. Flying, you know, is a waste. It's gonna be the same travel time, but it's just gonna be so much more stressful to fly. So Mhmm.

I told him, I'm gonna drive, but, you know, I'm looking I'm super looking forward to, like, a 5 hour drive. I just this feels awesome. I can't wait. And he was like, well, how about this? How about we drive together, but I work, and you get to enjoy your quiet time.

And I was like, that sounds awesome. So, like, 5 hours down there, he is working the whole time. I think he took 1 or 2 calls. I took, like, weirdly 2 or 3 calls just, like I called Daniel Colbourne. I was like, hey, man.

I'm driving. I'm driving. And he was like, I'm driving. Let's talk. And so I talked to him for a little bit.

But it was great. It was so fun. I had my headphones in the whole time, just cruising through the Hill Country, looking looking at stuff, just, like, feel the pressure coming down. It was great. Great time.

Ian

A nice drive. Do do a little audiobook or podcast or whatever and

Aaron

Listen to a couple podcasts, talked to a few friends, just had just had the best time.

Ian

Should should we have been lawyers?

Aaron

Oh, man. I don't think so. No. I got no. No.

No. No. So there were 3 no. There were 2 2 of these guys are attorneys and 3 of them 3 or 4 of them are doctors.

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

And, you know, as adorable as it is to be like, hey. I'm the YouTube guy. I kinda like it's it felt a little bit it felt a little bit better. Oh. Like, some of the some of the doctors are still sitting for exams and stuff, and stuff, and we're, like, 35 or 6.

Ian

No. No. No. Doctor is not even considered. Okay.

Aaron

So doctor's out. Doctor's totally out. What did I

Ian

learn doctors were real people? I was like, oh, I don't have any injure like, I know all kind of doctors who are horrible, terrible people. I'm like, nah, when doctors were superheroes, I might have had some interest in doctors. Yeah. Then you meet some doctors.

You're like, no. And then also yes. Like, then you really figure out, like, oh, they're just in school till they're, like, 40, and then they start making money. Like so yeah. Yeah.

No doctor. The lawyer is

Aaron

full of On on the record, none of the my friends are bad doctors. They're all

Ian

great doctors.

Aaron

Great doctors.

Ian

I don't mean that that I don't even mean they're bad doctors. It's they're bad people. Not always. You know? They're like any other people.

Aaron

Also, on

Ian

the record, none of my

Aaron

friends are bad people. So whatever you think is bad about doctors who've got these doctors.

Ian

Doctors who are not great, you're like, oh, man. Like, the doctor is not great, and all the doctors are probably not great.

Aaron

They're all great.

Ian

That's good.

Aaron

But these attorneys so one Yeah. I will say I will say, one is in house at a company, and one is at a law firm. And that makes a huge difference to you, which is a huge, huge difference being in house.

Ian

In house, yeah, like a 9 to 5. You're just 9

Aaron

to 5. You can set up an out of office. You can you can piece out. When you're when you're at a firm, it's like, alright. Well, gotta answer my emails.

Gotta gotta get on the phone.

Ian

I do know some lawyers.

Aaron

Mark up the documents or whatever they do.

Ian

It's like, like, I know a lawyer who's a he basically, like, helps companies restructure when they're going to chapter 11 or whatever thing all that kind of stuff.

Aaron

That's what this guy is.

Ian

And he's just like, yeah. They're like, you gotta fly over here. And, like, you're working 24 hours a day because, like, there's a deadline and things are happening and

Aaron

Yep.

Ian

That's just the grind, and then that's it. And so it does seem much more intense. I have some I've known some other lawyers who are, like, more like the real estate type lawyers. I think that's a pretty good angle. Like, those guys were on vacation all the time.

Like I could see that. They were mostly 9 to 5 because there wasn't like this, like, urgency of, like Right. Whatever. It's like house closings only happen in business hours. And so there wasn't like a whole bunch of other stuff going on.

But, yeah, I do think some of these business service type lawyers

Aaron

are maybe a little

Ian

bit different.

Aaron

Guy is funny. Is it specifically a bankruptcy attorney? And so he just my god. He just he just works a lot harder. He just works all the time.

It's like, I don't wanna do that. So

Ian

That that that was good. We are working all the time now to be Yeah.

Aaron

I'm working all the time just making less money. So, yeah, that's great. I'm a genius.

Ian

There you go. You're the genius on YouTube. There you go.

Aaron

Yeah. Exactly. So, no, we should not have been attorneys, and and it's far it's far too late anyway. So we'll just we gotta keep going down this road, unfortunately.

Ian

Would've became an attorney actually in, you know, probably late forties or something like that.

Aaron

Oh, brutal.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

Aaron

Not for me. She seemed

Ian

she seemed to like it, but I don't know. She was in some weird specialty yet. I don't have all the details. It was an acquaintance. But Yeah.

Yeah. I don't wanna go back to school. That's for sure. I

Aaron

don't know.

Ian

Way. I couldn't I couldn't have.

Aaron

I'll read my books for fun, but if somebody makes me read a book, it's like, okay. This sucks.

Ian

Alright. So what else is going on?

Aaron

Where do you wanna go? We could go launch week. We could go profit first. I don't know if you know anything about profit first.

Ian

I haven't read the book, but I'm aware of the concept.

Aaron

That's all kinda right there in the name. That'd be great.

Ian

Profit First. Yeah.

Aaron

I haven't read it either, but it seems pretty simple.

Ian

One of the guys I knew who was into it was, like, they never did that well of business. So I don't know. Like, I'm not sure what to take from it, but that's only a single data point. You know, generally, I think I like the idea. You definitely.

Well, what what's your what's your now?

Aaron

Let yeah. Let me set it up. Let me set it up. You can knock it down. So Yeah.

You know, last podcast, I've we probably were talking about something, and I mentioned I haven't taken any money out of TriHard Studios yet. Right. And Jesse Hanley, friend of mine, friend of the pod, friend of the community. Very

Ian

good guy.

Aaron

Friend's Bento email service. Great email service. Good job, Jesse. He reached out, and he's like, oh, dude. You should take money out.

I was like, yeah. That sounds awesome. And he said, you need to take you need to read profit first. And I was like, okay. I've heard of this.

Like, what's the what's the deal? And he said that Steve and I need to figure out, like, alright. How much are we gonna take out? Let's sit down, have the discussion. How much are we going to get paid, And then just start taking it out.

And, basically, I assume, let the rest figure itself out. That's that's Right. That feels like, you know, without having read the book or even really looked into it that much at all, that's kinda what it feels like. You take your profit out, and then you let the rest of the stuff figure itself out. Because presumably, if you don't, there's no profit left over because it all gets eaten away.

So that was his suggestion. He was like, just even if it's a a little amount, just decide. We're gonna start pulling money out. It's like, that sounds kinda nice. So that was it.

That was all I had.

Ian

Yeah. I mean, I think that is the crux of it. I think if you, like, don't set to me, it's more, I guess, like, from the tech bootstrapping community, there's always been that sort of baked into that mindset to some degree, more so than maybe if you're just like starting a more normal business out in the world where you're like, I'm getting a bank loan and, like, I'm hiring people. And then, like, before you know it, like, you've used all the money and you have revenue coming in, but you're like, well, I have to hire more people to expand into this and that.

Aaron

Right.

Ian

Like, there isn't, you know, haven't baked it in so much as it's, like, so ingrained in your life as most bootstrappers, probably unhealthily due to some level. But So, yeah, it's like I'm gonna make sure I have x profit. I'm just not gonna hire that other person if there's not money to hire that person and still keep my margin where I want my margin. Yeah. I, I do think it's tricky and not like there's like obviously a lot of external factors there, right?

Like if you just don't have money coming in or if you have less money than you would like, like, there's just factors there that are outside of your control and you kind of have to decide, are you gonna run the business or not, on some level, but Mhmm.

Aaron

You

Ian

guys don't have any outside employees yet either. So it's

Aaron

a

Ian

little bit more straightforward. It's like, well Mhmm. Money's just sitting there. You don't have many expenses, in terms of, like, servers.

Aaron

Well, yeah. Hard to hardly anything.

Ian

Yeah. That kind of, like, business expenses. Right? Like, you got new computers, and you're kinda good at that. Record.

Aaron

Steve got a new computer. Aaron is just a idiot. Yeah.

Ian

You're on your old clunker.

Aaron

Yeah. We got new computer. Yeah.

Ian

And then alright. So there's a couple things like that. You should get a new computer too. You just

Aaron

try the

Ian

latest fastest. Like, yeah, that's fine.

Aaron

Yeah. That sounds awesome.

Ian

But then after that, you don't have a lot of expenses. So, yeah. So I think short term, like, I, I definitely think you've taken money out. Like, it's not like a lot of upside to keeping money in the business beyond, like, your people have different philosophies on this, but, you know, 3 months' worth, 2 months' worth, 4 months' worth, like, some amount of expense money. But then beyond that, yeah, I would I would take it out.

But, yeah, Profit First seems reasonable. So are you gonna have that conversation?

Aaron

Way to to know more about Profit First. That's What

Ian

what can we do?

Aaron

What can we possibly do to learn more? I wonder if they cover these edge cases at all. We'll never know.

Ian

We'll never know. We will never know.

Aaron

I mean, I don't wanna I don't wanna be crass, but I am definitely in it for the money. So that would be great to to start getting some of the money out. I would love that.

Ian

A couple things there too. It's like what, like the profit first stuff, it gets also tricky when you kind of like there's my income varies a pretty fair amount to some degree. And it's like, but I want like continuity in the business. So I could say like, oh, man, we hit the threshold. I'm I'm firing somebody because that's just the rule.

Right? But it's like, or my other choice, right, is to like, well, I'll make less money this year. And like, sometimes I have to choose, make less money because the there's too much downside of just like firing somebody who was important to the business because I hit some fairly artificial threshold. And then now I just have to replace that person next year or in some way. So there's like, you know, I think there are these other factors there, obviously, if you're really tight on the personal income, then you won't have a choice and then you have to do that.

But, but the other thing along what you just said is I just read this, old blog post from John Scalzi. I don't know if you know who that is. He's like a science fiction writer. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, and it was basically a blog post to other authors to basically saying like, don't be shy or feel like it's wrong to be in it for the money.

Aaron

And hell yeah.

Ian

That's why I'm, I'm, I'm a writer and I'm in it to get rich. Like that's my goal. And this is what he was already doing. That's for him.

Aaron

At this

Ian

point, but he is like, that's why I'm here. I'm here to get rich. And, Yeah, I think that's like a good mindset, right? To some degree. I think obviously in a business scenario, it's just more expected, than whereas, like, people use that against writers.

Aaron

It's kind

Ian

of his point. Like, you should take a bad contract to get this deal or you should,

Aaron

you know, it's all about the art.

Ian

These other trade offs. Right. It's all about the art. But yeah, I think that is something I do think there's some something with that too in our world like Especially in like b to b software. I don't know.

Maybe in other areas different. Maybe in your area, it's different but where it's like, you know, you're making a product that's to help other businesses. And, but there's not always like an art aspect. They're not always, like, I'm literally changing the world. I'm redefining technology or, whatever.

Right? Like, it's like, no. Like, it's a good tool. It's a useful tool. People

Aaron

like it.

Ian

But is there, like, the big goal? Can I invent the big goal around it? Like, it's a little bit harder sometimes with things. And then you see people do it cheesily and badly and Cheesily. Like that.

Right? It's like, I'm gonna pretend that this app is changing the world, and that seems dumb to me. So Very dumb. Yeah. So I've always approached it more than like, hey.

Like, we're gonna have a try to make a good life for myself, a good life for my employees, Yep. Create a tool my customers like and that their lives are improved by it, but it's also not, like, the only tool that does this thing or they they their businesses would go under without my software. Like, I don't know. There is like, it's hard to get to that artificial place for

Aaron

me. I could I just I just have no desire to, like, change the industry or change the world. Just absolutely 0%. Oh, it's so much to take their on, and you're like

Ian

I don't know.

Aaron

You're like, why? This is this comes back to the fight or win thing. Like, you could fight the entire industry to be like, no. Videos need to be done this way and stories need to be told this way. And it's like, I just I don't I don't I don't have energy for that.

What I do have energy for is hopefully changing my world and my family's world and making the best thing that I can make. That's about it. I don't really I'm not gonna fight an entire industry. I'm not gonna change the world. And that may be depressing to some people, but it's very freeing to me.

It sounds awesome to me. It does

Ian

cut both ways. I think there's definitely been times over 20 years of building HubSpot that I'm like, oh, like if there was some, this other guiding light, like there would be times where maybe that would be motivating. Right. And it's like, oh, that, that you could see the appeal of that at times. But then it's like, then you just come back to like, yeah, but is that even fair to put on the business or yourself or all those type of things?

And, are you really being sincere not that people are always sincere in business, but like, I don't know. I I think I could be that person if I had that kind of thought or idea I was trying to implement, but I can't be the fake version of that person.

Aaron

No. No.

Ian

No. Alright. So launch week, man. Let's do it.

Aaron

Launch Launch week.

Ian

Week.

Aaron

So just just to wrap up profit first. Sorry we haven't read the book. If we ever if we ever read

Ian

it if

Aaron

we ever read it, we'll we'll give you an update, but that's about all we got on it.

Ian

I think we covered it fully, to be honest with you. Like, I think we covered it.

Aaron

Oh, we should do a We should do a segment, book reviews for books we haven't read yet.

Ian

I'd love a good segment. We don't have enough segments on

Aaron

here, and I would love to see have enough segments.

Ian

Alright. Everybody, come comment on Twitter and comment on YouTube comments with books we should review without reading them.

Aaron

Yes. Please. We will absolutely review them in good faith, having not read them. Oh, I love this idea.

Ian

It's a great idea.

Aaron

Alright. Launch week. It's launch week. There you go. There's the big there's the big announcement.

I can't believe it. I can't believe it, Ian. Tell me why you can't believe it.

Ian

I just don't understand how you did that many videos. I don't understand how he's edited that many videos. It all come together very quickly. I know maybe not as quickly as you were hoping, but

Aaron

correct.

Ian

I'm very impressed with the speed here, to get it done inside June. Yep. Got you. It's amazing. And what what's the actual date you're gonna launch here?

Thursday?

Aaron

I think Thursday. I think so if today's 24, that's gotta be, like, again, no way to know these things for sure. 27. 27. Yep.

So we'll launch Thursday 27th. Okay. So, yeah, it was a lot. I still have I still have a a number of videos to do today.

Ian

Okay.

Aaron

This looks like maybe 6 or 7 that I'm gonna try to do today and tomorrow. Getting my hairs cut on Tuesday, so it's like, oh, we really gotta wrap some stuff up here. Yeah.

Ian

You gotta go for that. Right?

Aaron

I know, and I gotta I gotta tell my guy, like, listen. You just take a little bit. Just a little bit.

Ian

Yeah. Just go light.

Aaron

Clean me up a little bit. Yeah. Okay. So today's Monday all day, and I'm gonna try to finish some of these videos today. Steve has been editing like a madman over the weekend too.

So I, you know, I left on Thursday, and so the videos stopped flowing. And so he was able to hopefully catch up.

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

So I'll try to finish up these videos today, work on the site Tuesday, Wednesday, and then we'll be ready to launch on Thursday. We have 2 modules that will be forthcoming. So we're gonna save JSON and full text search for post launch, which I think will be good because that gives us, you know, more touch points to reach out later, more mini launches, more reasons to email. Exactly. Reason to do actual, like, early access discount instead of just, like, fake early access discount.

Ian

And those are those are good ones that people will be interested in and will spread, like, if do a little trailer video or something like this.

Aaron

Yeah. See people getting into that. Hopefully, that'll bring some more people back or push some people over the edge.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

Mailing list. The mailing list, man, it's it's a lot bigger than I expected. I'm I'm gonna be honest. Let's see.

Ian

We get to? I don't know if I can share it. But

Aaron

Yeah. I don't mind sharing at all. Let me see. So I'm in Bento. Hey, Jesse.

Good good app, Jesse. Good job, Jesse. Let's see. High performance SQLite has oh, wait for it. Okay.

How many okay. Here's fun. Here's a fun game. Now don't overshoot it because you'll embarrass me. How many people do you think are on the list, Ian?

Ian

I mean, we got an update at one point, didn't we? And I thought it was like

Aaron

We we did. I'll give you that number.

Ian

Okay. What was that

Aaron

number? That number at the time was, like, 16 or 1700.

Ian

Okay. And that was after DHH, I think.

Aaron

That was yeah.

Ian

I'm gonna go with so you haven't been talking about it as much lately. No. Okay. So that hurt the number a little bit. Am I gonna overshoot?

I would go with 35100. 4888. Oh, wow. That's very good.

Aaron

That's almost 5,000 people.

Ian

So let's see.

Aaron

That's pretty good.

Ian

We don't know the cost. Right? We don't know the cost yet?

Aaron

No. We don't know the cost yet.

Ian

That's still secret?

Aaron

I don't know if it's secret. I think it's perhaps a bit

Ian

undecided. Mhmm.

Aaron

So what are you doing? Some conversions over there?

Ian

I'm doing yeah. I'm doing some math over here.

Aaron

So, like Give me give me your math. Give me your numbeys.

Ian

Well, so if we go I mean, because there'll be more than just the people on the list. Right? Like I mean, what's a reasonable number? What's the number you you wanna convert? What's what are you gonna be happy with from the mailing list?

Your conversion rate.

Aaron

I will not be happy with any conversion rate. I'm just after absolute dollars.

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

So I I I haven't even thought about that intermediate step.

Ian

Okay. I assume, like, you want over, like, 6 figures would be the minimum

Aaron

you'd be

Ian

happy with.

Aaron

Minimum. Yes.

Ian

So I just

Aaron

Give us an equation. What are you doing? Because it's 10%. Alright?

Ian

So 500. Let's say 500 people from the 500 people. Per per per

Aaron

price in there.

Ian

Oh, I know you had some different thoughts on this on if you wanted to go cheaper, more accessible. You wanted to go a little more high end.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

I mean, I'm kind of thinking for this, I think cheaper accessible probably makes sense.

Aaron

That's where I'm leaning. So should do it. So I

Ian

would be 199.

Aaron

Okay. Alright. That's great. It's a 1000000

Ian

for, you know, just if we go take just mailing list, I think that

Aaron

we Twitter, podcast or

Ian

whatever the Terso people presumably be pushing it into their channels. So, you know, I think there's more opportunity out there than just that, but it seems pretty reasonable. I mean, I don't know if you wanted to go all the way down to 99. I think that

Aaron

99 is a bit too low.

Ian

Feels too cheap to me.

Aaron

Yeah. 99 is a bit too low.

Ian

I will probably 49.

Aaron

We'll probably do a sticker price sticker price of 199, with because you gotta leave the

Ian

room for discount or no?

Aaron

For discounts. So sticker price. Discount. 199. Sticker price.

Ian

Manufactions adjusted retail is 199. Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron

Yeah. MSRP is 199. And then there will be, like, a early access, and then probably a mailing list thing. So

Ian

Right.

Aaron

Most people will probably come in paying, I would say, closer to 149 or 139, something like that. Mhmm. But, yeah, sticker price is gonna be anchored, I think, at 199.

Ian

So that's be 75,000 from the mailing list. If if you get 10%, obviously, if you get more than that, then that's Right. Really good. What about and I think you could get more than that because this is like a list of people who signed up for this course. So, like, it's not Right.

Aaron

Again Recently and hopefully the price comes in low. And so then, yeah, the conversion goes up. And so So Yeah.

Ian

But I definitely could see yeah. I don't think higher percentages out of the question. Like obviously in other software type industries, it's like, oh, 3% of, like, final conversion rate

Aaron

is is

Ian

pretty solid. But, like, here, I think you should have high much higher than that. So, I think that feels reasonable. Now what about I feel like you're missing a little something here and that Uh-oh. Are you planning on having a second tier?

Aaron

That's a great question. Tier. That's a great question. I don't know yet. I know that that's the right thing to do.

I don't know what to put in the upper tier. I've had a I've had a hysterical thought where we could just make the exact same content cost more and basically say, my employer is paying. So there's, like, a 199 and a 299. And the

Ian

299 is yeah.

Aaron

The 299 is, hey. My company is paying. Thanks for all the good work. And I don't know if that I don't know if that's ever

Ian

been done.

Aaron

It feels a little silly. I have seen

Ian

I feel like something more the more sort of, I think a a better way to do that, in my opinion would be to make a team version. Yeah. Where like this course is for 1 person, if you wanna give it to all 5 of your developers, then there's a team, you know, a multi license discount or a 5 user pack or whatever you wanna call it. And then so they can properly license the course for their entire team, and they get some kind of discount. I think that might be more compelling because then people are required to do it.

It's more like, oh yeah, I'm doing this for my business. I'm buying this for my 5 devs. I'm gonna license it properly. Versus just like on our sistering systeming it.

Aaron

I think teams will definitely be an option. Yeah. Like, I don't know if that's a tier, though. That feels like a different thing altogether.

Ian

That is a different thing altogether. What about the tier? Like yeah. I mean, I guess, like, obviously, you could just hold back. Like, JSON and full text search could be a higher tier Yeah.

As an option. I I don't know if that's a it is tricky. I think this topic's a little weird to maybe break up. I know a lot of times you see people do it the whole thing, but then there's, like, workbooks or other type stuff. I don't know if you wanna get into all that.

Aaron

I I really don't. And some people will make, like, the interviews a a different, like, tier tier, but I feel icky about having people donate their time, and then I sell the content. Right.

Ian

Yeah. I've got a lot of juice out of that.

Aaron

So, like Exactly. I mean, there's obviously things like timing screen. I can throw up a coffee shop tip screen. That's, like, 18 to 25% tip on top. You know?

Ian

Compelling, though. I feel like Yeah. Something more Mhmm. I guess you could have, like since you do have this whole layoff thing, you could have, like, a you with a, like, empty coffee cup. Like, you really lean into it.

Aaron

Shaking the tin. Yeah. Yeah. I could do that.

Ian

We could do it in half an hour with Anne Francis to answer questions.

Aaron

Could. Yeah. It's gonna be a bit fine

Ian

and commitment.

Aaron

Might just be there to anchor because I don't super wanna do that. But, like, if I put that at, you know, $1,000, then 199 sure looks cheap next to it. Doesn't it? Right. Yeah.

That's interesting. Yeah. I

Ian

don't know. Does 799 for an hour with Aaron and Mhmm. Look at your code base for a bit

Aaron

or something. I really do want to find a tier, but I haven't I haven't found it yet.

Ian

Oh, okay. Here's an outside the box idea for you.

Aaron

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ian

We're we're gonna talk live about this. I don't know if this is okay. Who? What if you go back to Terso Yeah. And you say Hate it already,

Aaron

but yeah.

Ian

Something. Give me something to put in here as a second tier. So, like, you buy the higher tier, and you're getting 4 months of Terso for cheap or free or whatever. And it's like but and it's less, you know, they're saving money by buying it through you effectively. And Turso is getting a direct lead, but it's like actually going to convert for sure right away and start using their service and it gives you like a little extra revenue there.

Aaron

Okay. I, you know, it's not bad. It's not bad. It's a

Ian

little bundling. It's more of a bundling tier. Mhmm. But Mhmm. Something like that.

I could see the I could see the people you're working with in terms of the brands liking a more direct conversion option rather than just their name is on stuff. It's like they would like to probably have, like and then the person instantly signs up when they buy this tier, and they're just in there.

Aaron

We're gonna have we're gonna have some of the data be available in Terso. So you can, like, if you wanna follow along with this video, sign up through this link and the data will be in your account and you can Oh, that's cool. Do some queries there. Yeah. So hopefully that's gonna That's

Ian

a good idea.

Aaron

Hopefully that's gonna bridge the gap between course people and Churso customers. That's the goal. Alright. Yeah. So I'm really I'm really hoping really hoping that our floor is a 100,000.

That is my hope. Yeah. Because which is, you know, just a massive amount of money, but you also have to remember, Steve and I Too

Ian

much money.

Aaron

Have been working on this full time for, what, 2 months now? 3? Yeah. And it's like, when you when you do it across a couple months and a couple people, sure gets divvied up pretty quickly.

Ian

Yeah. And it's not it's like, what would you guys be making if you went and got jobs? Right? So it's like Yeah. Because I can imagine some people be like, oh, a $100,000 for 2 months isn't bad, but, yeah, it's 2 people.

And if they had their, you know, experienced, well respected people who could make a lot of money in a job. And so it has to be enough. Obviously, this one thing on its own doesn't have to be enough to pay for that same level, but it has to be a good solid step in that direction. Yes. So yeah.

So I would think yeah.

Aaron

And this is this

Ian

is the

Aaron

beginning the like, to to lessen the expectations a little bit on my side, this is the beginning of the empire. Yeah. And so this is not this is not the last time that the SQLite course is going to make money. Like, it'll make most of its money on launch, but, presumably, it's a long term durable asset that we will continue to surround with other long term durable assets. So postgres course, my SQL course.

And, hopefully, there's some, you know, there's some synergies there when we start, putting all of the things together. When we become database school, hopefully, people will come there and buy 1 or many courses, but we become that destination. So, you know, hopefully, it makes a ton of money on day 1, but I have to remind myself, this is a long term game, and this is the first brick in the wall.

Ian

Yeah. And I mean, I think for you guys, figuring that part out seems super critical in terms of whether or not it's like database school and people buy for all these databases. Because a lot of times people are only in one database, but even still, like, keeping that so that there's a pretty constant flow of customers. Like, I feel like that's gonna be super important to make this really work. So definitely I

Aaron

think so.

Ian

I think a pro yeah. You you don't want it to really be the traditional course launch, and then there's not much money after that. I mean, obviously, there'll be a nice, like, initial injection, but you you really wanna find a way to make it ongoing, I think, and, like, by releasing new stuff. And also it's the perfect content for it because like, it's not not changing that often. It's changing way less than like Laravel changing or whatever.

So it's like, yeah. Okay. When the when SQLite does some big new change, you can, like, do a new module on it and Yep. Remarket it all and all that stuff. Yep.

And for the next year, you could be working deals with who knows who I don't know, different providers or even things, other training sites or whatever, other service providers and like getting this content out there in other ways. Keep talking about it, coming up with, like, a schedule where you're regularly talking about it and doing new

Aaron

YouTube videos. I think the the database school podcast will continue. I feel like that has been

Ian

Oh, yeah.

Aaron

You know, it started as just like, hey. Let's do a little bit of hype for the course. And now I think, oh, this is this is a good marketing channel. I mean Yeah.

Ian

I like that.

Aaron

The fact that, like I mean, we know we know podcast numbers. I put some of these pod these podcasts on YouTube, and they get 15,000 views. And I'm like, what? What? What's going on?

Yeah. So I think that's a pretty good long term asset, that will help, you know, market the entire the entire idea. And so when, you know, when Postgres comes along, we slot in some Postgres interviews, and it's like Yep. Everybody it's databases. It's still interesting.

So Yeah. I think that'll help. But, yeah, turning it from, like, but, yeah, turning it from, like, you know, we we have to do things 1 at a time. The first thing we have to do is launch the course, but then shortly thereafter, we gotta turn it into, like, a business. And there's a huge difference between launching a course and running a business.

And I think we gotta figure out, alright, how do we run a an education business?

Ian

And even like the thing, like the database sort of interviews, it's like, you've been kind of going to, like, real kind of people deep in the architecture part of it and things like that. But you could imagine like, Hey, let me just interview people who are heavy SQLite users and high performance installations or like you Yes. There's a lot of people out there. And every time Correct.

Aaron

Those

Ian

interview shows are popular for podcasts because it's much easier to bring an audience that way because they're bringing in their people, and, you don't have to generate it all from 0. So I really like that idea of making that a very regular thing.

Aaron

This most recent one was Kent c Dodds, who's not a database guy, but has been very public and vocal about moving from Postgres to SQLite, because of some of the things that gets him. And I feel like that's a good like, that changes it up a little bit. That's kinda more in the vein of DHH, honestly, where it's like Right. You're not a you're not a database guy. You're just a good developer who has touched the database a lot versus somebody like, you know, Ben Johnson, who is the Lightstream, Light FS guy who's like, oh, no.

I'm in the internals. And so

Ian

I'm I'm in there.

Aaron

Keeping it keeping it approachable, I think, is important, which is part of, I think, one of my my strengths is I'm not a DBA. And so even even when the esoteric stuff hits, I'm still, you know, the voice of the the noob to be like, wait. What are you talking about? So

Ian

So what do you think about this then? Because so Here we go. I really like this idea. I think it's a great idea. I think it's like, like a really great marketing channel.

But then I start to get worried about things like the Aaron Francis variety hour you talked about last week. Oh, it's

Aaron

a great idea. It's a great idea.

Ian

But but you can only have so much Aaron Francis time.

Aaron

And Can

Ian

you? You kinda know how much of that Aaron Francis time can be dedicated to other this podcast, which is not, you know, totally on point of, like, making money necessarily. It's it's a it's a bound extension of all the things. Yeah. It's way an extension.

Aaron

Okay. So it's the concern from, my point of view? Like, I don't I only have so much time, or is the concern from dilution brand dilution point of view?

Ian

Not brand dilution so much. I think that part is is fine. But I think, like, in terms of if you're building additional courses, you're doing yeah. Different, you know, multiple podcasts and shows and like just balancing all that in regard to also then building the business part out. Now you have a partner, which is very helpful in that regard.

So it's extremely helpful. Yeah. But, you know, like, the try hard the try hard era as we talked about last week. Can only go so long.

Aaron

It's upon us. Okay. So yes. And concern noted. Understood.

I think part of part of our underlying thesis of the business is, I have people's attention. Yeah. And that is our top of funnel. And so office.

Ian

I get it.

Aaron

Getting getting myself out there is most most likely a net good for the business, for the bottom line. To the question of time, fully agree. Because right now, I'm just, like, a 100% focused on this course, and I would literally be rather be doing anything else now. Like, I'm just so tired of working on this course. Yeah.

Ian

Gotta refresh the creative juices.

Aaron

So I think, like we talked about a little bit last week, you know, it's many small bets unless you hate small bets, in which case it's one big bet. Right. But I do kinda like that aspect of it where it's like, some of this stuff has and has a finish line. And so I can work on this course super hard for a while and then put it down and work on something else and then put it down and work on something else. I think the trick for me is going to be continuing to keep the plates spinning even if it's not my main, like, my main focus.

Yeah. And that I feel like that is gonna be that's gonna be the trick. Like, keeping the super light course selling while I'm doing a super happy, terrific, fun hour on Fridays. You know?

Ian

Right.

Aaron

Like, I gotta keep I gotta keep the course going.

Ian

Yep.

Aaron

But there's some, like, there's some shape of the work where it is, like, the work itself has, like, a fat head and a long tail. Right? You gotta do a huge amount of work up front, and then over time you just gotta continue to keep the thing in motion. And so keeping the thing in motion is gonna be pretty important, but I don't know. I think I thrive on being able to do many things.

I really don't want to just focus on, you know, a single SaaS or a single course for the next 5 years. I just don't wanna do that. So

Ian

So that's interesting because I definitely tend to feel that way myself, but then also what business has taught me is, like, you can also just sell the same product for 20 years and, like, it's pretty much the same product it was 20 years ago with the own. That's not, you know, there's been stuff added and whatnot, but, like, and then every time I try to do something different, it's not, like, as good. So I got it

Aaron

up. Yeah.

Ian

There is that sort of thing.

Aaron

This is different because it's more it's more like and this is the one big bet. Yeah. It's the one big bet that is many small bets. Like, when you created, what was the survey one you created? Thermostat.

Thermostat. That is, like, fundamentally different. It's a fully new SaaS that you created. 1 SaaS is super hard. Just so freaking hard.

The worst. And then it's not, it's not like totally adjacent. I guess it's somewhat adjacent to some work

Ian

that's, but

Aaron

it's not totally. Yeah. I feel like what I'm doing is, I feel like my my big bet is, attention slash distribution. Like, I have distribution. And along the way, I can do things to capitalize on that distribution, and it's not starting from scratch.

Like, it's not starting from 0. I think if I were to start a SaaS right now, that would be that would be more I would be more concerned about Yeah. Pulling myself away from the board. I'm not freaking doing that.

Ian

I'm kidding me. Yeah.

Aaron

Too much going on to be starting to sass. Only crazy people Yeah.

Ian

No. I just figured that. I think the thing more more is just like to make sure you keep selling this course because you put a lot

Aaron

of work

Ian

into it. It's, I'm sure, going to be very good. Right? And it's like everybody makes this mistake. I feel like I'm like, then they're done with it, and they made the money.

Correct. Now they're moving on. But, like, even, like, forget my stuff. Right? Like LARICAS, right?

Like Jeffrey's selling, he's adding stuff, but like a lot of the value is like, I go in there and there's all kinds of stuff from 2 years ago or 3 years ago. And like, I'm still accessing it. And so that this would be an interesting area to maybe augment yourself with somebody whose job it is to just do that part, because that part is a lot about like Making sure you're correctly monetizing this attention you have. Right. And you don't have to

Aaron

be the

Ian

one to do that. Like somebody to manage the mailing list and make sure there's new drip campaigns that aren't just lazily done. Because you don't have a lot of time to 3 messages, but they go out whatever it's 2 years and 15 emails. Right. Right.

And, all those things that somebody else could be doing and doesn't need you to do, that's gonna probably pay for themselves fairly quickly, I might imagine. So that might be something to consider once the copper

Aaron

is a little bit cooler. You know what I want, Ian?

Ian

What do you want?

Aaron

I want I want, like, an office manager. You know how in every like, you walk into a title company or a law firm or a dentist office Mhmm. And there's there's a Linda there's, like, a Linda that's sitting there. Because you're not supposed to be there. The office does not operate without Linda.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

Because Linda knows all. It's a

Ian

key point.

Aaron

She knows everything. Yeah. She's been doing it for 40 years. Everyone else is an idiot, and they all come to Linda because she knows how to do everything.

Ian

That's what

Aaron

I want. I just want Yeah. I just want I think that's maybe, like, a chief of staff or a, you know, a I don't think it's personal assistant. That's different. Executive assistant's probably closest, but I want I want that.

I would just want somebody to basically project manage the whole thing. That's what I want, and it's just very, very difficult to find. I had that at the property tax company. She wasn't an old woman. She was our age, and she was just ruthlessly efficient and didn't get, like, caught up in the emotional, like, oh, what does this what does this work say about me?

It's just like, okay. I'll do the job. I'm gonna do the job really good and fast and go home. And I was like, yes. I love you.

Ian

Yeah. I mean, somebody like that. I could for you guys, I almost feel like you could go with somebody more, just even more direct like, just a pure marketer. Yeah. Just a pure marketer.

Because, like, you guys are ordering the other stuff.

Aaron

Not marketing. That should be my job. Right?

Ian

No. No. No. Because you are out you're the the tip of the sword. Right?

Like, you are bringing in people onto the lists on to the subscribers. Right. All that stuff. But you, I think, especially with everything you've said, you plan on doing.

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

Like, like, just your stuff, but it also, like, the courses and all stuff. Like, you need somebody to follow behind you and do all the stuff that should be done behind that. Like Okay. Okay. Email list.

Like posting social media from the try hard account. Like Okay. Taking quotes and things that people say nice things about you and then doing something with that that you would never going to probably really utilize fully because you're building the next course or you're doing all those things like, you're doing all.

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

You are throwing off all kinds of stuff and it's unlikely, I think, that you are gonna be the one who's able to, like, catch all that stuff or people and contacts and whatever, and then optimize those where I feel like that could just be somebody's job to do that. Mhmm. Like, not necessarily even a full time. Like, it could be 20 hours a week to start or whatever, like, not necessarily a full time job. I mean, I think it could be.

But even if it's not realistic because I have a full time person to start, like, I think that that's a thing. I feel like that just will pay for itself instantly. I don't see how it cannot be a profitable or

Aaron

never enough somebody thinking about that. I need, like, a marketing executioner. Yeah. Like a marketing Executioner's bad.

Ian

Marketing. Yeah. Marketing manager. You know, there's different titles, and they all it's kinda different on different companies. But

Aaron

to gather all the digital detritus and put it to good use instead of just letting it float into

Ian

the way. Marketing manager is not usually the person who's out there creating the buzz directly. Right. Like, they are whatever is doing that, something is doing that. And then the average you know, in a bigger company, there's an advertising department that's doing that.

Right. Or whatever.

Aaron

Right.

Ian

And then the marketing managers are gonna take all that inbound leads and however you wanna think about that. And then do something with those, whether it's following up with them, you know, automated for your price point of item, it's probably gonna be more like automated and posting on LinkedIn, which you don't, like, who wants to do that? Like somebody can be posting there and managing the pages on the different sites to make sure everything's up to date and blah, blah, blah. Like this

Aaron

is This is interesting.

Ian

You have enough stuff there to pull that off.

Aaron

Alright. If you are listening and you think I could do that job, just will you just let me know? Will you reach out to me and let me know thing. Yeah. You think you can do that job?

I would be interested to hear about that.

Ian

Yeah. Or even people who've done it. It'd be interesting to get their take on it too.

Aaron

Yeah. I think you're right because one thing I super do enjoy is being out there and, you know, creating a spectacle. And I'm I think I'm good I think I'm good You're good at that. I'm good at creating a spectacle. That's where you're providing value.

Yes. Yes. That is great value. But, yeah, keeping the the maintenance and the, like, blocking and tackling, not at not as good at that. Not at that.

Fun

Ian

part. I've never been very good at that. That's not my fun part. And then it's like Nope. You have these 5,000 names on this list.

Like some percentage of people are gonna be interested in the next course and how are you gonna, are you transitioning them or is it one whole list or

Aaron

how are

Ian

you managing that? But you should probably tag these people as they came in on the SQLite, blah, blah, blah. And like, yeah, there's just a bunch of stuff you could do there and some emails go to everybody and some emails go to only SQLite and Mhmm. There's a lot of stuff if you're gonna do that all correctly. Stuff.

Yeah.

Aaron

There's a lot of stuff.

Ian

And somebody else whose job is to think about that stuff means you don't have to think about that stuff and you could be out making a a spectacle, which

Aaron

is maybe You know what I love not doing is thinking about stuff. Yeah. I just I hate thinking about stuff. I'm

Ian

just like monkey on

Aaron

YouTube. Yeah. About stuff. I just wanna I just wanna do stuff. I don't wanna think about stuff because then you get into the, like, the whole get into the whole brain, and you're like, oh, man.

It's it's weird in here. Don't wanna think about it. I just wanna do it.

Ian

Stressful over there.

Aaron

It's stressful. I just been thinking of my hands. Yes.

Ian

Some of it's boring over there. It's like, there's a bunch of boring stuff to do over here. And then

Aaron

you're sure thinking I got 4 kids that gotta go to college. I can't be thinking. What am I thinking for? I can't be in here. It's too scary in here.

Ian

I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's like Steve could do that stuff. Like, I I don't know the whole the I don't know if I have the full picture of the whole intricate details of everybody's relationship, but

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

And what you've all thought about that. But, I mean, if you're if you're out there churning out a lot of video, presumably, Steve's pretty busy.

Aaron

Also busy.

Ian

The other side of that.

Aaron

Yeah. Steve's very busy.

Ian

And especially if you guys get into more, like, you've already done a little bit of with, like, things that are animated or, you know, take it off with the notch and quality. Like, that takes more time on his end.

Aaron

Guy. One animation one one video that has animation could take him if he's working on it only, it could take him 3 days to do a video with animation. It's like, good gosh.

Ian

Yeah. So that's a lot of work there. So

Aaron

so good.

Ian

Right. Right. Right. The there's the upside of that. Yeah.

So alright.

Aaron

This is interesting. This is interesting. Okay. I will take this under consideration. If you've if you've listened to this and you think I have experience, in managing those people or I have been that person, do let me know.

Let let me know, Aaron Dufresne is on Twitter. Send me send me an old DM. Yeah. So we'll we will continue to talk about how to turn a course or collection of courses into an empire because that is the goal, And I think we can do it. I think we can do it.

Ian

Yeah. I think so. I mean, there's also a lot of, like, prior art out there. You can start to dig into more of, like, what did these other, you know, educational platforms do in early days and so on and so forth. But

Aaron

I mean, Kent C. Dodds is hiring people left and right for his education platform.

Ian

What's he do? I don't I don't really I've heard the name. But I don't really know what he does.

Aaron

Oh, he's a JavaScript guy, but he's one of the good ones. Okay. And he has a a a framework called epic web, but it's like, it's in the JavaScript style. So it's like a collection of packages that he has vetted and decided. Yeah.

And so, the epic stack maybe is what it's called. The epic stack also has a corresponding, like, epic web training, and he's been in education he's been an educator for forever. Right. But he's got an epic web training, and now he's got other people inside of epic web doing, like, a course on Git and a course on Tailwind. And so he's he's kind of, like, expanding his scope as well.

And he he that's he's actually a perfect, person to bring up because I feel like in many ways, Kent and I are aligned. And if I could have if I could follow in his footsteps, but in like a different kind of area or genre, I would, that would, I would be pretty happy with that. That would be pretty great. Okay. Because I feel like he's done a good job of, you know, being out there, capitalizing on social media without losing his soul and also having a pretty good empire.

And I'm like, yeah. I could I could be kept. So that would

Ian

be spot.

Aaron

Yeah. That's a good spot. Yeah. I don't wanna lose my soul. That's for sure.

That's bad. That would be bad. That's bad. That's bad. Don't wanna lose my soul.

That's for sure.

Ian

That's not bad. That would

Aaron

be bad. That's bad. That's bad. That's bad.

Ian

You only get one of those. You can't get it back, man. Oh, man. Alright. Well, so launch week, you'll also you'll let us know next week how launch week

Aaron

I will.

Ian

Goes. I'm excited to hear the follow-up of how how the the first day or 2 goes in in the weekend. Yep. Alright. Let's do one more.

I'm gonna do one more I have here. Let's go technical. We haven't done technical in so long.

Aaron

Oh, wow. Yeah.

Ian

Time. We've been barely technical.

Aaron

The arc of the podcast is long, and we're not bending towards mostly technical.

Ian

I must admit. That's alright. You know, we have a little stuff to prove it. We don't have technical along. So Alright.

Aaron

Let's do it.

Ian

Alright. So I have a problem.

Aaron

This is where Jennifer turns off the podcast, by the way. So thanks for listening. I'll see you at home, babe.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. Same with my wife. She's like, oh, and you guys get technical. Like, we're never when do we get technical?

We haven't been technical in months. Like, we've been interviewing people, doing all the stuff. We

Aaron

haven't done technical

Ian

in months.

Aaron

Mhmm. Speaking of, big topic at Sausage Fest was HVAC and all of all of the bros, all of those very smart genius brothers

Ian

Lawyers.

Aaron

Totally totally on my side. Totally on my side. And one

Ian

nobody believes that.

Aaron

One one guy one guy there. Mhmm. I don't know what he does. Sorry, Thomas. He's got, like, a PH literally a PhD in, some sort of, like, thermo mechanical engineering or HVAC.

Sure. Just call it HVAC. And he was like, yeah. That makes sense to me. So yes.

Ian

I feel like I should have invited sausage Fest

Aaron

because I don't have time. Killed at Sausage

Ian

Fest, Ian.

Aaron

You would have killed they would have loved it.

Ian

I don't know.

Aaron

Unfortunately, no outsiders have ever been invited, but had you married one of our friends, you would have been And I could. You can marry him.

Ian

Yeah. I can. You can marry him,

Aaron

but I think it's a little late for you. Also, there are no friends left to get married, so it's like, ah. So, anyway, HVAC, great topic.

Ian

Definitely gonna I think this is just showing how the, like, the Texas elites and, the Texas elites are detached from reality as

Aaron

what I'm taking this. Yeah. All these one YouTuber Get together, and

Ian

we're all the elites. Educations, overthinking these simple household to do items.

Aaron

For sure. For sure. For sure. So there's our HVAC follow-up. So Chris Morell, we got 4 episodes in a row, 3, whatever it is.

Alright. Hit us with this last topic, Ian. So cool.

Ian

Yeah. I haven't even I've only started thinking about this. So the there's a lot of caveats. I'm gonna skip all of those because they're not fun. But let's just say, I wanna build a, a service that supports help swap.

Okay. Okay. And basically what in my, what it's going to be primarily doing initially is managing the AI connections for AI features in HelpSpot. And so Mhmm. All the HelpSpot installs out there, both, cloud installed, but also on premise.

Aaron

Right. Right. Right. They're gonna

Ian

be connecting to the service when they have to do something with AI. Sure. And then that service is gonna manage the connections out to AI providers and then get the results and return that back to the help spot that called it. Love it. And I, we could even get into why I would wanna do it this way, but even that is somewhat less interesting to me than like, if you were gonna build a service like this, like it has to be super fast.

Right?

Aaron

Got it.

Ian

Because it's gonna be a proxy between these other services and the ad services are already a little bit slow sometimes. So I really don't wanna add a bunch of overhead in the middle there.

Aaron

Yep.

Ian

But it's gotta do some stuff. It's gotta, like, authenticate that this, you know, be some key that this is a valid request from a

Aaron

Sure.

Ian

Licensed HubSpot. It's gotta, if we have any usage limit, e types of stuff, it's got to take care of that. It's got to, you know, log that this was done and what usage there was if we wanted to charge on different things there. It's gotta then obviously do the HEP connections and all that stuff.

Aaron

All right.

Ian

So it might also, you know, have some logic. I would like to keep it fairly thin, but I think there's gonna be a. Chunk of logic in there about like, maybe there's gonna be different AI services for different types of requests based on what you're trying to do or different, definitely for sure. Different models, at least in cost structure of, like,

Aaron

this is

Ian

a simple thing. We're gonna send it to the cheap model. This is this thing's writing something complicated. We're gonna send it to the expensive model or whatever. So where would you start on the infrastructure part of this?

Like, how would you think about that?

Aaron

Okay. So I'll give you I'll give you 2 answers.

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

If I wasn't if it wasn't AI so this is the answer that doesn't matter, but it's, I just wanna hear myself talk. Yeah.

Ian

Context.

Aaron

So if it wasn't AI and I needed this sounds you know, you hate to say the m word, but it sounds kinda like a microservice. It really does. You you hate to say it. You hate to No.

Ian

I do I do hate to say it.

Aaron

I and I was in I was in your situation where people could have stuff on prem or in cloud. I would probably put it I would probably do a full Laravel application. I wouldn't go I wouldn't reach for some some water down. No. No.

No. No. No. No. No.

This is where I

Ian

was leaning. Mhmm.

Aaron

Nope. I would, go full Laravel application running Octane on fly. Io deployed to 5 or 6 different regions. That's that's what I would do for a service that needed super fast response time Mhmm. And had to be near so I think one of your not a problem.

One of your realities is these servers could be anywhere because it's on prem. Right? And so you can't necessarily control for the fact that, like, well, everybody's connecting through Virginia anyway, so we can just put it next to Virginia. Like, not true. So I have done I have done this exact thing with, a service that I deployed on Fly.

Io in, like, 5 or 6 different regions, running Octane, which keeps keeps you know, shaves off Right. Whatever, 50, 100 milliseconds. And importantly, this may actually play a factor. Importantly, when you're running Octane, you can keep, HTTP connections open, not to the client, but to whatever third party services you're calling. So then you can shave off the connection time between you and OpenAI.

You shave off, like, the renegotiating HTTPS, establishing a connection, all of that stuff. So you could keep that connection open and save another sometimes 50 milliseconds, so you're already saving a bunch of time there. I wonder

Ian

how OpenAI and those guys feel about that. Do they care about that?

Aaron

I don't know. There's there's technical answers to that. I think they could hang up if they wanted to.

Ian

Right. Probably. Yeah.

Aaron

Yeah. And if if they do hang up on their side, then Guzzle will renegotiate it on our side, so it's totally fine.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron

So that's that's one. However however

Ian

Yep. Well, let me add one one little point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Because most well, no. You're you're you're right. I mean, there's basically 2 cloud locations. We run an EU and a US. Okay.

So 2 data centers.

Aaron

Yep.

Ian

And then the other on prem could be anywhere. Right. Mostly they're US, and Europe, but

Aaron

Mhmm. It could

Ian

be anywhere. And there will be some, like when people buy stuff in the store, whatever, like this system's gotta be aware of those sort of changes. So it'll have to be distributed out presumably to something that stores that data local, because we don't wanna have to check back with this one Sure. Server all the time. So Mhmm.

Couple other bits of context over there. Most and 3 quarters of the customers are cloud, so they'll be in, like, 2 data centers. Mhmm. But there are big customers on premise. So

Aaron

So now I'm gonna give you option 2.

Ian

Alright. Give me option 2.

Aaron

And you're gonna like this one a lot better.

Ian

Okay. Let's hear it.

Aaron

Because I'm gonna I'm gonna talk your book a little bit. Oh. I think I think you gotta go Cloudflare with this.

Ian

Oh, okay. I've thought about that a little bit.

Aaron

You just I think this is not a Laravel application at all. Right. I think you go Cloudflare. I don't know the full extent of Cloudflare's AI offerings, but I know they they are legion, which is to say they are many. Uh-huh.

So I think I think this is a Cloudflare Worker. I think this is a Cloudflare Worker that connects to their I think they do some of this, AI model aggregation stuff at their layer, and so you can just swap out a string and be like GPT 4 o or Cloud 35 or whatever. And they're, you know, they're region Earth, so it's like they're gonna be everywhere. The worker's gonna be everywhere. It's gonna be fast.

Presumably, you're putting a lot of stuff on Cloudflare already. Yep. I think this is a Cloudflare worker.

Ian

I have thought that too. I guess my my issue with Cloudflare Worker

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

Is 1, like, we, you know, we don't really have the JavaScript, writing experience in house, so we have to learn it. It's not gonna be crazy complicated app. So it's not end of the world. Most likely I do love the idea of it just being out there in the work. That will be absolutely the fastest way to do it.

Yes. It's just gonna be local to the user and all that stuff. So that will certainly be the fact it's also one of the other considerations I have, which isn't the end of the world, but it's like, there's not too many single points of failure in the way help spot is currently architected. And so even on the cloud side And so having this, like, some big database or not database, some big servers running somewhere that are just doing this AI proxy and stuff, like, kind of becomes that. Obviously, you can, like, have load balancers and auto Right.

Reprovisioning, whatever

Aaron

all that stuff.

Ian

But, like, there is kind of becomes this another choke point where I was like, yes, the workers are just like infinite and everywhere and whatever. Yes. Who even knows how they do it? But it's all Who knows?

Aaron

Magic. Trust them.

Ian

Yes. I do think I mean, it certainly can be done in workers. But again, the more we get into, like, actual logic in there, I do have some concerns about it being in the workers, because I do think well, what are your things thoughts about this? I mean, another aspect, I don't know how much AI stuff you've done.

Aaron

Very little.

Ian

Yeah. But so here's a, here's a one potential issue is like in our work with it so far, there can be a fair amount of distinctions between what you prompt in one model versus another. Yeah. So the prompts are gonna change based on like the model we wanna use. Yeah.

Things like that. And so it's not quite, it's not like a pure writing task, where we might just say like, write this better or whatever. There will be some of that, but it's gonna be more like, Hey, take all this information and tell us what category this belongs in, or give me some other type of answer in that sort of way. And so the prompts are a little more massaged in some, some ways. So I've been thinking, well, maybe it's really that, like, none of that logic is really in the HelpSpot code base.

Like that's in this proxy layer. You basically like call a function that does like a categorization. Right. That the, on the proxy layer service layer. And then that's where, like, the prompt stuff stays.

And so if there are, like, multiple implementations of it from different models, like, that's not then a bunch of stuff that HubSpot needs to be aware of. It's like HubSpot just gets an answer. Right. It just says, hey, this is the

Aaron

time. What you want.

Ian

Here's what this request says. You told me what category it belongs in.

Aaron

Do not look behind the curtain. Yes. I agree.

Ian

It's just black box from the help spot code perspective.

Aaron

I And then the service

Ian

side of those things.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

Right. So then when we get to that stuff, it starts to get a little more like, well, if we did it in Laravel, like, I know what's going on developers. We have to know what's going on. If it's like a worker, what's the best way to do that? You know, I don't know.

Like, obviously, we could learn it. So I guess that's where my worker story is a little like, I I'm a little scared of that, but I also agree, like, it's probably gonna be the cheapest. It's definitely gonna be the fastest. Fastest.

Aaron

Easiest probably to implement because of their AI player. Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. They have some cool AI stuff. They do run some of the open source models and then they run this, like, gateway tool where, like, like, get a little cash, for example. Like, if you send it the same exact prompt body, it will just return the last result. And I'm sure there's settings for how long it can cache that, whatever, but like, so costs savings, and things like that there.

So we don't have to build our own caching layer for those type of things. Mhmm. So yeah. Okay. Alright.

So we're on the same page actually on both regards, I have to say. These are these are my 2 paths I've pretty much thought of other than fly fly, which I don't know. I'm a little, like, you know, these, like, these 4 b

Aaron

c It's a little shakey. It's a little shakey.

Ian

Goes away. I'm a little scared about that. So that part but still the same idea.

Aaron

I want them to make it, but I don't know if they will.

Ian

Yeah. You never you never totally sure about that. So I've always played ultra safe with, like, AWS. I would feel ultra safe about Cloudflare.

Aaron

One thing I would want to explore with the Cloudflare workers thing is you could I don't know what I don't know if this would be useful to you at all, but I think there's something interesting here. You can have a worker talk to their d one database, which is a SQLite database. Mhmm. But then you can also talk to that d one database from your Laravel application. And so that could be like a shared state.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

So that you could, like let's say that you do change the prompt for 1 model. Maybe you store, like, a model prompt map in SQLite in in their d one database. And then from the Laravel side, you could, you know, update it whenever you decide or whatever. I I don't know what their use case is, but I think there's something interesting about using their d one as some sort of global shared state between a worker and some separate app somewhere. Yeah.

But I don't know. And it's too slow. Like, d one is too slow to use as your full Laravel database, and so that's not it. Like, that's not the answer.

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

But what what is a cool way to do something there? I haven't quite cracked that nut yet.

Ian

Yeah. D one is interesting to me. I always find, like, I have, like, sort of interesting use cases for it, but then I'm like, I don't I don't totally know. Still, I guess, new and kind of, and I'm not I don't really build on that stack currently.

Aaron

Right. It's a. Yeah. It's a little bit

Ian

far away. I don't love that idea.

Aaron

It's artificially restricted. Size of the database and because it's over HTTP is quite slow for like real like request response stuff, but background jobs or whatever, I could have I could see it working relatively well.

Ian

Yeah. The other thing, this is more of a business thing, but, and this is something I'm very unsure about right now is like how we end up charging for AI services. Like right now we have some AI AI stuff in HubSpot, but it's more on like the agent writing end and translations and things. And it's just like, people can add their own open AI key.

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

But I don't think that's really gonna work going forward. It's still like a small chance that we go with that option, but I just think it's, you know, it's complicated for people to go and figure it out and sign up for open AI and all that stuff.

Aaron

Yes. Go ahead. My response to that is don't do that. You're right. It's too complicated.

However, here, I

Ian

just had a thought. Yeah.

Aaron

Give me I wanted, you know, I wanted to acknowledge your last thought because I was definitely listening. But here's my thought. Yes. Give me give me. You talk about auth and database.

A shared d one database. So from the Laravel side, you're putting in you're putting in API keys into this d one database that are allowed to do whatever. Then on the worker side, you're checking that d one database, which is gonna be lightning fast because it's a worker to d one, and they're presumably right next to each other. And then you could so you're reading on the worker side, writing on the Laravel side. Yep.

Then you could do you could also increment hits. So, like, whenever somebody calls the API, the worker could increment the SQLite database to keep track of usage. And then on the Laravel side and, you know, their centralized help scout admin area or whatever

Ian

Help spot.

Aaron

You could check. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I said.

Help spot. Help spot. Dave Dave, edit that out. That's embarrassing.

Ian

No. That's fine.

Aaron

So from from the help spot side, you could check the d one database to gather up usage statistics, billing, that sort of thing. And so that might be that's kind of an interesting use case for it because the write the the reads and writes from the worker would be super fast, which is what you need to check off an increment usage. And then it'll be slow from the Laravel side, but it doesn't matter because it's a back office it's a back office function at that point.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. I I don't know. I haven't looked into too much, like, the d one, like, how much it can handle in terms of like, what if there's a lot of people, right? Like a lot of these AI requests go flying around and like, right.

The right. I mean, I obviously we've been, I think we feel pretty good about the like right speed of sequel light in the modern era.

Aaron

We do.

Ian

Especially on like a big beefy server, but I don't know if that's true of how they run D one, like what its limitations are. I haven't like looked into that in a while. It's also not the end of the world. I mean, it's sort of interesting. I don't, I've never really had this use case.

Like HubSpot doesn't have a lot of use cases where, like, I don't care if something fails. Right. But this case is more like that, especially in like the logging end. It's like, well, whatever. If we miss that somebody used a little bit of AI resources, like, I don't actually care.

Like, I'm not gonna hold up the request for that if there was like a delayed right or something like that, I'll just abandon it. And if it's like, who cares? Like it's like 0.001¢, whatever. So yeah, like there could be different types of trade offs than I'm normally used to making of like, doesn't necessarily have to be a 100% perfect, which is sort of interesting. I was looking at that.

I think I tweeted about that, that time scale DB, which is like a thing on Postgres, where it kind of was built for this sort of thing of, like, logging a bunch of stuff and then having aggregates of usage Yep. Which is kinda in like, if we were just doing everything at AWS, that would be kinda interesting. So, yeah, I don't know. There's a couple different options there,

Aaron

but I don't know. I like it.

Ian

Alright. You're on board with you're on board with the

Aaron

Hide hide the best details. So all the all the help spot applications send an API request that says, respond, categorize Right. Sentiment, and then that's it. That's all they know. Yeah.

And then the service does all the messy stuff. And then even beyond the service, the AI does all the black the real black box stuff. Right. Hide hide that implementation detail from the clients such that you can just change it without having to roll out anything new to the client.

Ian

Yeah. That's kinda what I'm that's where I'm leaning. I think that's the way to go. And then, because this will, like, it's definitely not gonna be like a pure micro service where it's actually trying to be ultra micro. Because I have mentioned this as being, having some other things potentially down the road in it as well beyond AI.

But, so it does need to be, I don't know that that's kind of thing that leads me more back towards it. So Laravel app and we know how to build and run those. And if it has to do other stuff someday that works together, like, I know how to do that versus, like, it's

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

In workers. And do I have, like, a separate worker set up and how does that all work? But the workers are so appealing for this sort of

Aaron

person. Like,

Ian

yeah, they do seem kinda magical. So I might have to play with that a little bit and get a better feel for Yeah. The worker side, I think. But

Aaron

It's pretty appealing.

Ian

Yeah. Why can't Cloudsplash keep you busy?

Aaron

Couple serverless bros just hanging out and talking about serverless, man.

Ian

Serverless.

Aaron

JavaScript. We love serverless. Serverless. But it's

Ian

gotta be really fast. That's why I didn't know if, like, Lambda and all that stuff is, like, is it fast enough? I feel like maybe it's not fast enough. Although people say it's

Aaron

very fast. I think it would be fast enough.

Ian

You think so?

Aaron

I think you'd have enough requests that you'd have enough warm stuff. You'd have to deploy it in multiple regions, which is

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

That's the problem with Lambda.

Ian

Yes. That's tricky. Right? That's what kind of what I would call about that as well. Yeah.

It is tricky. Mhmm. Yeah. The multiple regions. It's all real real assassin stuff here.

Aaron

It is real speed of light stuff going on here.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. So annoying. It's crazy how I can

Aaron

get there. One day. We'll get there.

Ian

I know. The quantum computers. I I don't have to send anything anywhere. They can just figure it out before it gets sent. I know.

Answer.

Aaron

Who knows what a qubit is, but that is gonna that's gonna be the future.

Ian

It's out there.

Aaron

That stuff Quibbetting. That stuff blows my mind.

Ian

Yeah. With some weird stuff.

Aaron

The quantum entanglement?

Ian

Yeah. I don't know if

Aaron

I buy it. Dude, I don't know if I buy it. Don't know if I buy it. It's crazy.

Ian

Crazy. That they tested it, but, like, they didn't actually test this. I don't know. I'm not sure.

Aaron

I can't even come up with a test that would that would verify that. Like, how do you you turn you turn a little no. Yeah. We turn a little freaking thing in one side of the country, and you still are like, oh, yeah. It turned at the same time on the other side of the country.

But how do you know?

Ian

But you can't

Aaron

measure it and

Ian

all that stuff.

Aaron

On the phone. You're like, well, the phone goes through speed of light. How do you know? You don't know.

Ian

Well, that's like the thing that always blows my mind, even though it's not quite as crazy as quantum I mean, I guess it's somewhat related, but it's, like, you know, the, the test of light where it's like it could be a wave or it could be a particle just depending on how you measure it.

Aaron

It's like Freaking guys don't know anything. So weird.

Ian

Yeah. How does that work?

Aaron

Figure it out.

Ian

How do we not know?

Aaron

Wave or particle. Give me a break. Yeah. Well, good thing that

Ian

We're simulations simulations breaking down. It's like we're getting too advanced.

Aaron

Talk about simulation theory at some point, today, but we we it's a great theory. What a great theory. Crazy. Ridiculous, but a great theory. I love that theory.

Ian

Alright, man. Alright.

Aaron

I think

Ian

we'll leave it there. We'll be back next week for the update. I'm very excited for the update. And, yeah. So thanks for everybody for listening.

Check us out at mostlytechnical.com, mostly tech pod on Twitter, and mostly technical podcast atgmail.com. If you have any feedback and we'll, see you next week. Thanks. Alright.

Aaron

See you.

Ian

Bye.