Jank Free With Caleb Porzio

Aaron

Good morning, mister Landsman. Mister Ian Landsman, welcome welcome back to the show.

Caleb

Oh, hello, Aaron.

Aaron

That's the worst, Ian. I potentially

Caleb

ever heard of him. Like, go into my Ian for a second, and he has he doesn't have, like, a crisp voice. You know?

Aaron

Okay.

Caleb

It's a little higher, I think. Okay. So that what do you

Aaron

That's the I and I didn't warn you, but that was that was flawless. It sounded terrible, but it was perfect execution. Yeah. Absolutely. So welcome to the show, Caleb Porzio, not Ian Landsman.

Nice to have you here.

Caleb

Thanks for having me here, Aaron Francis, filling in for mister Ian Landsman. Welcome to the show.

Aaron

Thank you. Welcome to the show. Alright. So we we don't have anywhere to go except that we were just talking about high energy, slash low energy jab. And I feel I feel I feel a little low energy jab these days, which in case you all don't follow 2016 American politics, Jeb Bush was low energy when he was running for president, and everybody claimed him low energy Jeb.

Caleb

Know this was an actual legitimate reference. Yeah. They're

Aaron

around our around our house sometimes, me or my wife will say, I'm just feeling a little I'm feeling a little low energy jab today. Low energy jab. It's like, I guess, a a Francis thing that we know about now. But, yeah, he had the jab with the exclamation point, which is like, I'm trying to be high energy, but it it didn't really work. So just kinda where I'm at.

A medium energy jab today. How how we doing over there?

Caleb

High energy. Yeah. I'm all You're high energy? On caffeine and, you know, just life. Yes.

I'm in a high energy mode, Aaron.

Aaron

I'll have you know what to tell energies is this a high energy season for you? Because you've just had a child, but you're also working on our super fun project. So what's what's driving the energy?

Caleb

Yes. Super fun project, children, literally, I'm on a call with Josh Hanley this morning, way early, because he's in Australia, and I have you know, waking up super early isn't a superpower. Well, I should it's not a huge feat when you have, like, little children everywhere. It's just, like, what you do. I would have been way more proud of myself for waking up early, pre babies.

Aaron

You

Caleb

know? Now it's, like, you have to wake up early. Right? Like, you what time do you wake

Aaron

up early? Merely doing your job at this point.

Caleb

Exactly. Like Like, congratulations. The minimum is 7, and it's, like, well, 7 is you're you're late to the party. You know? Yes.

If you wanna be, like, on top of things, it's 6. Like, for sure.

Aaron

I don't know. It was miles. Anytime pre on duty, you have to get up you have to get up pretty early. Because if you wake up at 7, you gotta get up and you gotta go get baby. Right?

Yeah. Or you gotta go make breakfast for baby or something. Yeah. But if you wake up at 6,

Caleb

it's like, oh, I got

Aaron

some free time. I'm just gonna I'm gonna make some coffee or, you know, tea or whatever you're drinking over there.

Caleb

Tea. Yeah. I've been putting the like, getting the water all set up the night before so I can just, like, wake up, turn the water on on my desk, and start dosing. You know? And we're like, I don't even leave my, like, situation, you know, until 7 or 7:30.

You

Aaron

know, we have a, we have a, like, a Google Smart Home plug. It's, like, you know, $19 on Amazon, and it, we plug our coffee maker into it. And so every morning

Caleb

at

Aaron

6 AM, the coffee maker comes on and makes the coffee.

Caleb

Yeah. That's great. My mom Yeah. Does that, although she does it with one of those Christmas light timers.

Aaron

Yep.

Caleb

You know? Classic. And it works great. Yeah.

Aaron

This is this is not an insult to your mom, but that is the most boomer thing I've ever heard.

Caleb

Totally. And it and it works phenomenally well. Yeah. And my parents' house is lit with those 3 button remotes that that, like, click the, you know, the outlet when they, like, go on, and Yep. It's like Internet's out?

Nope. No problem.

Aaron

No problem.

Caleb

Their smart home works. Find find the

Aaron

right remote on the on the huge keychain of remotes that turns on the lamp. Yeah.

Caleb

Yeah. So, yes, that's why I'm high energy, Aaron. Why are you low energy, Aaron? So there's been stuff going on with you that I I haven't read or received, I think. I haven't checked my email in forever about a post about going offline.

There's, like, there's things stirring here that, you know, you may

Aaron

It's all in here, man. There's, like, a storm going on in the head. Let's see where to begin. I have You don't have

Caleb

to cover that, but,

Aaron

oh, no. It's great. It's good content. I have 4 kids. 2 are 3 and 2 are 8 months.

So there goes a big you know, there goes the energy reserves. You know? Yeah. So we're already kind of operating at a deficit there. Last weekend, I was solo parent, so that was just incredibly exhausting.

Caleb

That is crazy, dude.

Aaron

Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. And, of course, I couldn't do it by myself. So I had, you know, both sets of grandparents coming in

Caleb

to, like, help.

Aaron

I had a babysitter come over once to help. Like, I didn't leave. She just came over to help because there's, you know, 2, 8 month olds that have to eat, that have to be fed bottles, and then 2, 3

Caleb

year olds

Aaron

are just, like, running around. Because I definitely have help.

Caleb

Seems like impossible without that. But

Aaron

Yeah. Totally impossible. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, man.

I'm just worn out. I think I think kids are a big part of it. Starting a business is hard. Takes a lot of energy. Being this is interesting because I think you maybe came to this realization a while back.

The time spent on Twitter is just not that profitable anymore. No. Like, you you logged off a long time ago.

Caleb

Yeah. Yeah. Twitter, and I even had like, today, I'm sitting with River eating breakfast and just thinking of what was it. It's, my phone case. Somebody complimented my phone case yesterday, and I was, like, this legitimately is, like, the coolest phone case.

I love it, and it's cheap. And I've thought this about a few things in my life, a sleeping pad that I use. Like, there's these things. It's, like, these are my all time best purchases. This is the best kind of content.

This is, like, I should put this in a Twitter thread and be, like, here's the 10 things that I love that I have bought and have 0 buyers' remorse, and you should buy them too. People just wanna buy something.

Aaron

Would go crazy for that. They would love that stuff.

Caleb

I love a list of stuff to buy Mhmm. From somebody that I trust or has good taste, even if it doesn't. Just tell me what to buy. And then I I just realized that, like, oh, that's so, like, silly. If I wanted to do this bit of content, send it to my email list

Aaron

Mhmm.

Caleb

And it will do far better, and we'll and the phone case I'm talking about was a Kevin Rose recommendation on his email newsletter that he, like, shouted out in there and wrote this little bit about, and I was, like, you used to buy that phone case. So, anyway, yes, it remains to be true. It has always been true, and is becoming even more true that, like, an engaged email list is a far better way to make money than a Twitter account. You know?

Aaron

Okay. So here's my guess. Talking about making money. You didn't even you didn't send the email. So you didn't tweet, and you didn't send the email.

Is that is

Caleb

that right?

Aaron

I just wrote him

Caleb

down on a list this morning on my pad.

Aaron

Yeah. Perfect. Question. How big is, how big is your email list? And is that, like, Caleb Porzio, make Versus Code awesome, Livewire Alpine?

Is it all one big bucket?

Caleb

No. I have, like, separate buckets, but I don't know the numbers of each bucket, but I did yesterday, because I need to start marketing this new project, Flux.

Aaron

Right.

Caleb

So I, like, looked yesterday in ConvertKit to just see where things are at, and it's, like, 65,000 email people. So it's That's

Aaron

a lot of email people, man.

Caleb

Freaking list that goes largely untapped. Yeah. But, like, Versus Code awesome is maybe, like, 7000. I think I launched it, like, 4 or 5000. Awesome.

But then there's the Alpine segment, and then there's the LiveWire segment. And that's pretty much it. Three segments. Yeah. And then the old, like, galeforzio.comnewsletter subscribers, which is just you just get everything if you were that.

Yeah. But, yeah, it is a lot of emails.

Aaron

Dude, 65,000 is crazy.

Caleb

Well, so I told you how I get how I get all the emails. And it's and my when I send out an email to generally, like, 35,000 people

Aaron

Mhmm. Because

Caleb

it's, you know, target, like, a live or email. Last one I sent, like, 35 or 40000 people, and the open rate is, like it's been dipping over time. It's, like, I don't know, 50% maybe around that, which is, like, compared to it's good. Like, compared to anyone not in our world, not in, like, the indie creator world, they're like, what? Yeah.

You get above 10? That's insane. But 50 is not, like, I've had higher. You can have higher. There there's a bunch of people I should call the list, basically.

I should do and it's costing me a fortune on ConvertKit. I'm up to, like, $650 a month.

Aaron

Jeez.

Caleb

Yeah. So, like, I could probably save $200 a month if I literally sent an email that said, if you don't hit this button, you're gonna go off the list. You know? Like, you're not gonna get emails from me.

Aaron

Isn't isn't that the only way to call these days because of all the, you know, hey.com and friends blockers? You don't really know who's active and Totally. It has

Caleb

to be, like link. Yeah. So right. That's, well, you know what? I I I'm just thinking back to, like, when I got really into if I should do this or not.

I don't think ConvertKit I don't know. Maybe Convert ConvertKit has a bunch of, like, guides on HANA to call your list, and I'm not sure if they require, like, engagement. Maybe they're still operating under the assumption that an open rate is an open rate. But but, yeah, I don't know. I would have I would make it opt in in some way.

Yeah. So I don't know, Aaron. But, yes, it's a big list, and That's amazing. I need to take better advantage of it. Yeah.

I do.

Aaron

And Are you warming it up, in in preparation for the launch of Flux?

Caleb

Yeah. So that's so we just, like I I hired a Thunk.

Aaron

Oh, I've heard of them.

Caleb

Yeah. Thunk boys. Yeah. I'm so I'm gonna charge for Flux. It was gonna be free before, and I so now I'm scrambling, like, I gotta make a thing that I'm gonna charge for.

So, yeah, first step is, like, oh, I need a warm email list for this project. So whatever. Thunk helped me think through all these things and not just, like, you know, forget. So, yeah, I have, like, I gotta send something out today or tomorrow that's, like, hey. I exist.

Here's something of value

Aaron

for you. You should buy.

Caleb

Here are 10 things you should buy,

Aaron

and then actually listen to my podcast notes on work that says buy nothing. Instead, read my emails that say here are 10 things you should buy. Buy nothing for your kids. Buy 10 things for yourself. Yeah.

Caleb

Your kids are happy to play with dirt.

Aaron

You Yeah. You, on the other hand, have a gaping fear inside of you that needs to be filled with phone cases.

Caleb

Yes.

Aaron

What are the Thunk Boys helping with? Because, they're a they're a primarily Livewire development shop. So Yeah. Why do you need them?

Caleb

They're just smart. You know, like, they're you could think of them as a primarily live or dev chef, or you could think of, like, John Drexler's been in product management forever, and he's an incredible brand. And Daniel has been he could write React Native if I wanted, and he would be fantastic. Yeah. So you just have, like, incredibly capable people.

And I was just like, yo, I just need incredibly capable people, so let's set a budget and, like, please just help make Flux better. You know?

Aaron

Okay. So this is interesting. So John Rudolf Drexler

Caleb

is The man of myth.

Aaron

Product manager. Is that what you call it?

Caleb

Yeah. He meant he's the guy who makes sure everything happens and has lists and is properly brainstormed and he strategizes.

Aaron

Can you imagine having a guy like that? Being a guy like that?

Caleb

Well, you Steve is your John. Right?

Aaron

Steve is my John, and Linda is my new, And Linda's new. Yeah. My new Your John. Kind of John. Yeah.

Steve Steve and Linda together, and Linda's name is Kelsey, of course.

Caleb

Right.

Aaron

They'll they'll provide that capacity for me. So is is John Rudolph Drexler, like, basically, like, managing the release of Flux? Is that how this is going?

Caleb

So not, like so they're actually they have other stuff going on. So in a perfect world, I would love, I think, to offload, like, all of that maybe, but I'm also a control freak. I have Mhmm. Big control problems. I and I struggle hiring anybody for anything.

So I maybe thought that they would be that way, but now I'm, like, you know, coming up with a lot of things and wiring up a lot of things myself because I am that way. But yeah. So they're not in charge of the release or anything, but, like, I made a big list of, like, here. Install this stuff locally. This is for, like, Daniel and Jacob.

Big list this morning of, like, here's access to all the repos. Get it all up locally and just brutally test everything. And anything that's broken or not perfect, make us a file for with a reproduction in a repo with comments explaining for me how to reproduce it. And then tomorrow or the next day or whatever, we'll get on a call. I'll pull down the repo.

You watch me, and I'll go through and fix everything, and then we'll rinse and repeat that.

Aaron

Cool.

Caleb

So that is right. QA is hugely valuable to me right now, and I didn't realize it until I'm on the call with them going, like, I just need you guys. And then I realized, like, oh, a massive thing that you guys can help me with is quality assurance. Like, I'm not gonna do quality assurance to the level that somebody would do it if that was their whole job. You know?

So I'm excited about that to actually, hopefully, because of Thumb, ship something that is, like, bulletproof out of date. Jank free.

Aaron

Not, like be jank free.

Caleb

Open source. We'll figure it out as we go. Mhmm. Like, let's make this thing good, like, right now. You know?

Aaron

So yeah. That's That's great. That's a good use of the thunk boys.

Caleb

I'm hiring people for something. Like, I it's not my nature. You. I yeah. Thanks.

I'm paying money for people.

Aaron

It's amazing. You don't have to do everything yourself.

Caleb

That's fantastic. This I have this problem where, to me, a developer's time, unless you're Jason Beggs and are doing something hyper targeted that you're an expert in

Aaron

Mhmm.

Caleb

Is, like, such a waste of time. Like, how much time as a developer when you're working on, like, you know, your your life app or whatever, like anything? How much time is your just finger in your nose? You know? Like,

Aaron

very little very little finger and nose time over here.

Caleb

Right. You would have a glove on. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.

My surgical gloves here at the office.

Aaron

It was disgusting.

Caleb

Like, how much are you chasing a curiosity or fixing a bug that you haven't, like, pulled your head out of the sand to realize is the wrong path? Or you know what I mean?

Aaron

These days, primarily chasing a curiosity. Just given the nature of my my work slash business. Like, now it's very important to me that I chase curiosities because that, gives me good stuff to talk about.

Caleb

I'm doing

Aaron

very I'm doing very little, very little man of the people, every every every man coding stuff where I'm

Caleb

just,

Aaron

like, cranking out features anymore.

Caleb

Right.

Aaron

I still have some of that to do because we are running our own, you know, screencasting platform. Yeah. And so there's still some stuff that, like, just is just needs to be fixed. Yeah. A lot of it is just kinda, like, dorking around, you know Yep.

Figuring out what's fun.

Caleb

I mean, I get that because that similarly is, like, a lot of my work, and that's, yeah, that's curiosity breeding

Aaron

Mhmm.

Caleb

You know, fun ideas, cool stuff Yep. Talk about whatever. You can just you the job is to pull the thread. You know? Yes.

And follow that, like, as far as Which is,

Aaron

if I recall correctly, where LiveWire came from. You just kinda were, like, I wonder, and you just kept going.

Caleb

Yeah. It is. And to this and, like, working on a lot of this stuff with Flux, whatever, there's been plenty of threads that I've just indulged, you know, and, like, and come up with cool stuff and, like, oh, this is sick and whatever. But hiring people for, like, you know, if you needed somebody to build out your platform, it's like, I would hire somebody. It's like you hire a roofer, 12 people to send on your house for one day.

Oh, man. They do the entire roof. They know every step of the process. One person subs and the other person subs in. It's like, that is such a good use of my money.

I trust it. And if I'm hiring Jason Beggs to convert a design to whatever, it's, like, I trust it. It's an effective use of money. If I'm hiring somebody to figure something out because I don't have time to, it's, like, that is such a waste of money. Like Yep.

Aaron

No. I agree. That's just

Caleb

a problem with hiring developers for me.

Aaron

Interesting distinction. We do, especially yeah. We do like to overengineer and follow our own curiosities. And when we're doing it on someone else's dime, it's even better.

Caleb

Right. And we do it all the time.

Aaron

Do it all the time.

Caleb

It's part of the job. Like, how else do you learn to do anything? But it it's like yeah. Because so much of the work is bespoke. It's, like, here, build this invent a custom machine for me.

Right. You know? That's the job. It's, like, of course, I have to, you know, pick my nose and, like, yeah, whatever.

Aaron

I don't know what's going on over there.

Caleb

I have to use a soft lip. I have, like, a it's like the allergies. Lots of

Aaron

dry air or something. Yeah. Yeah.

Caleb

There's a lot of stuff to pick. But anyway, I thought that was just an interesting thing that that, like, I wonder if others feel or if it's easier for you to hire a developer to do something. It's just hard for me.

Aaron

Yeah. It's hard for me too. I think that's why that's why I'm so excited about Kelsey starting today, by the way. So she she starts, she starts after we get off this call. Nice.

Because she's not she's not a developer, and she's got so many skills that, I don't have and Steve maybe has, but doesn't really have time to and so I'm hoping that with her skills, she can cover a lot of our weaknesses and keep the business, like, going smoothly.

Caleb

Yeah. It seems like an essential piece, so that you're not doing this. But just to clarify, like, she's doing support, task management, strategy, stuff like that?

Aaron

So she'll be doing she'll be doing frontline support, so she'll be manning, the email inbox. And so that's that's stuff like purchasing power parity requests, question inbound sponsorship requests, which is interesting. You know, she'll be able to negotiate some of that stuff. Yeah. And then she's gonna be doing a lot of the, like so, like, I need to be more regularly scheduling people for this database school, you know, podcast thing.

And I just need to have her reach out and schedule times with people. And that's just something that I, like, it falls by the wayside because I'm doing other things, and then I look up and I'm like, ah, shoot. I really should be talking to more people about this kind of stuff. So, yeah, she'll be handling all of all of that kind of stuff and including, like, you know, anytime someone sends us an email that has a testimonial embedded within it, she'll be taking that testimonial out and putting it on our website, stuff like that. It's like that's the obvious best practice.

Right? If somebody says something nice, tell everyone else, hey. This person said something nice about me. Don't you wanna give me money? And it's just like, oh, great.

I closed that email. I'm gonna move on. But with Kelsey there, she can say, woah. Woah. Woah.

I'm gonna take that and make the turn that into a testimonial on the website. It's like, yes. That's what I need.

Caleb

There's so much of that that's just like that that's such a good pitch for that position is literally just the person who finds the testimonials as they come by and does something with it. Yes. Yeah. And I wonder how much that makes a difference in the, you know, the business itself, like, you know?

Aaron

Yeah. I don't know. I think my estimation is there are before we go looking for new novel and interesting ways to grow the business, we need to first exhaust all of the obvious things, and we have yet to exhaust all the obvious things. And so way to think of it. I'm trying to do, like, I'm trying to do everything that is plain on its face a good idea, and we'll see what happens.

And then beyond that, we can, you know, we can invent the universe or whatever. But right now, it's just, like, hey. People said nice things, and you need social proof on your website. So let's start there.

Caleb

Yeah. You delegation is a strength from of yours from where I'm standing, at least because of, like, things like you're the finance person, like, has did that stuff work out? Like, even family help, like, there I I never take initiative even if I think, like, oh, it'd be great to have but you do take at least the initiative. Did that work out the financial thing?

Aaron

So I had a a household bookkeeper, and she did bookkeeping for, like, my my holding LLC that doesn't have very much going on there. So I had a household book bookkeeper for, like, a year or 2 Sweet. That just, like, ran our YNAB for us. That's great. And it was it was great.

Like, it was really helpful. We had calls, we had calls every month with her to talk through everything. And it was helpful, but it wasn't it didn't, like Yeah. And I don't know that, I don't know that it ended up, like, meaning anything to me. So it felt kind of nice to have, like, everything in its place in terms of the YNAB categories.

But then because I didn't do it, I would look at it, and it wasn't like it it had no impact on me. It was not the fruits of my labor. And so I'd look at it and be like, ah, I guess that looks that's fine. I'm gonna do whatever I want, and we'll true it up later. It's like, wow.

That's not exactly super helpful. So Yeah. Had to let her go, and it was totally fine. That's just what she does. She's a freelancer who does that.

And then yeah. I'm trying to think of other areas of my life that I've delegated. I've tried to hire for this Linda position a few times Yeah. But not, in the realm of try hard studios, more in the realm of, like, let's manage Aaron's online life.

Caleb

And that's conversation, like, a I don't know, a year or 2 ago. I just remember walking forever and talking with you about, like you're like, I want somebody to show up every morning and just watch me do the things I should be doing.

Aaron

Yeah. You know? Yeah. That's crazy.

Caleb

That was, like this is what you're talking about. Right?

Aaron

It's, like, that person that I'm talking about. Yeah. So I hired, you know, I I hired a few people, and it never, like, it just never really stuck. I think Yeah. I think I hired 3 people on and off part time, and it was usually just, like, friends of friends or, like, my sister-in-law.

Yeah. And it was never it was never enough time. So they were always like, hey. I have a few hours a week. I can fit in some stuff here and there.

And it would have been great if I had some, like, like, some very discreet tasks to hand them. But what I wanted was somebody more to, like, man like, take some of the decision making off of my plate and tell me, like, hey. Do this thing. Or you just did you just published that. Now publish this as a compendium or something like that.

And it was never it was always like, hey. What discreet thing do you want me to do? And I'll get back to you in a week or a week and a half. And it was like, I don't know. I just really don't.

Caleb

It's so hard. Like, you want yourself if you if you were in that mode, if, like, if it was your job to just be thinking about what you should do next, you would be excellent at it. Yes. You know? Yes.

But you can't do that and do the things. But hiring for that is very difficult. Like, somebody to be able to tell you what to do next needs all the context of what you're doing Yes. What you've done and everything, and it's, like, I don't know. At least to me so far an impossible thing to solve, but, clearly, many people have solved it.

Yeah. And your current Linda

Aaron

Clearly.

Caleb

Hopefully is it. I hope so.

Aaron

And I think one thing that is definitely going to be in her favor is that, we are committing 20 hours a week to her. So it's not just like, hey. Just, you know, do a couple hours a week where you can. We'll add tasks to this thing. It's like, no.

You're pretty much working a half day every day of the week. And so Yeah. You're gonna be here. You're gonna be a part of the business. It's not just like, this random outsider.

And so and, hopefully, as time goes on, we can, you know, fill 40 hours. Well, we can probably fill it. We can afford 40 hours of her time every week. That would be awesome. But I think I think this is going to help, her be more integrated, just treating it like a real job.

Like, that seems pretty straightforward. Maybe I should have thought of that.

Caleb

Yeah. Right. That is an important important piece of it for sure.

Aaron

I don't know how you're running your empire solo still.

Caleb

Yeah. I think you can just do it forever because a lot of the stuff, I mean, I'm sure I'll have like, I I think it's hard to grow like that. But even with paying people the times I've paid people, it's, like, whatever I put my attention on is the thing that grows. Mhmm. Whether somebody else is doing the work or not, it's, like, it's really just a matter of my focus.

So it just became, like, if I don't hire I'm hiring the people to to help me with this, but I have to even put even more focus on that now. And Yeah. If I'm putting that much focus on it, like, I can do a lot of it myself, and then I don't have to pay them, and then I make a lot more money. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's probably, like, a destructive mentality, but, and there's a lot yeah. You know, I've heard me blab about this, but it's always, like, what if you did that job yourself? Like, what would like, you could do that too. Or or, like, how much do the testimonials matter? Right.

Yeah. You look at a a really, like, established business, and somebody clearly is doing that, and that's awesome. But it's, like, does that make the difference, and how much are they wasting on people that do stuff like that as opposed to just, like, shipping valuable things? As opposed to just, like, knowing the thing to ship and driving hard to ship it

Aaron

Mhmm.

Caleb

And then rinse and repeating that cycle is, like, the only thing I know and I think it could carry me pretty far, but it but I the obvious holes in the plot are maintaining the things after they've shipped.

Aaron

Right.

Caleb

And then shipping bigger things Right.

Aaron

Which you

Caleb

can do a lot yourself in a year. If you had 1 year to work on a project, imagine what you could do. Like I can do so much. You could do so much. So that's sort of what I've been toying with as well.

Like, I've been pretty dark for, like, 9 months on Flux, and and I've just worked on it solely. And now I, like, woke up,

Aaron

and I'm like, wow. This thing's freaking huge. Like Mhmm.

Caleb

This is cool. Like, one person can do this. I had a designer help and whatever, but, anyway so I don't know. At least that's, like, my working philosophy so far because every time I ever try to get help, it just doesn't work out for me, so I just don't try as much.

Aaron

Have you tried have you tried getting help on the admin side versus the development side?

Caleb

Jason Beggs is the closest I've had to that, and he's great with that. Like, our the partners program, Jason and I, do 5050. And

Aaron

Mhmm. The LiveWire partners program.

Caleb

Yeah. It's so fantastic because, it runs unlike everything else in my life. It is just, everybody is promptly responded to, calls are planned and communicated. Mhmm. Everything is really tight, and that's because

Aaron

it shows up.

Caleb

Yeah. And with Alpine Components, when I partnered with him on that, it was the same way. It's, like, the things are taken care of. Yeah. But the problem with Jason is he's not an admin.

He's a great dev Right. Exactly. Business person.

Aaron

Right.

Caleb

So it's, like, every time I partner with him, he costs me so much money. Right. It's, like, the admin stuff, I need, like, Linda. You know? Mhmm.

So I hope you have success with with Linda, and I can take her other 20 hours or Somebody already asked

Aaron

for her other 20 hours. Yeah. Somebody already reached out and was like, hey. What's, what's your Linda doing for the other 20 hours?

Caleb

Right. You're gonna regret ever saying her real name. I know.

Aaron

I know. Yeah. I think I I agree I agree about Jason. He's highly qualified and therefore expensive. And so to have him have him doing that kind of stuff feels a little a little overpowered.

But yeah. So tell me, like, during this 9 months that you're dark, who are you spending, like, the first like, Taylor does the first hour or 2 every morning addressing issues, and then you get to go off into into a happy place.

Caleb

So I was good about that for 7 and a half months. I was very good about that, Aaron Francis.

Aaron

Uh-oh. Wait. 9 months dark. 7 and a half is

Caleb

good. Giant pile of issues, full requests, and emails, and support tickets. Dang it. And now the dishes have piled up, and I won't even look at them until after Laracon because Of course not. No.

It's like they're it's, like, what's one gonna do? You know? Yeah.

Aaron

What's one

Caleb

It's like after difference is one gonna do?

Aaron

You don't respond to a text for 2 days, it's like, he was a good friend. Pity I'll never talk to him again.

Caleb

Yep. This is that. Exactly. And I've been too deep. I've gone too far.

Aaron

Yep.

Caleb

Yes. There's no responding to any of these people.

Aaron

Thank you for It is yes.

Caleb

Yeah. So that's what's happening with that, but in a perfect world, yeah, I I don't know how Taylor does it, but I will I will always keep trying. You know? Yeah. Sure.

I'll keep trying to do the Taylor, and, I get better every time. So that's, that's an important thing to know.

Aaron

Months is a long time. That's pretty good. Yeah.

Caleb

I don't do anything consistently for more than a month. So that was No. Of course. New record for me. Yeah.

But, yeah, derailed at 7 and a half.

Aaron

Yeah. Well

Caleb

So It was fun it

Aaron

was fun while it lasted.

Caleb

It was fun while it lasted. So Oh, I fought my nature so hard for so well for so long, and then I remember I remember hearing about

Aaron

it on on notes on Mark.

Caleb

Yeah.

Aaron

I thought, he's really No.

Caleb

I got

Aaron

to return the corner.

Caleb

To give the real picture because, you know, people, like Yeah. They tout their achievements proudly at the beginning, and then you're like, yeah. It's so much so that when anybody is doing any new habit for any time less than, like, 2 months or something and they tweet about it or whatever, I'm just like I I just filed away and, like, good for you. But tell me in 6 months, like,

Aaron

there's

Caleb

an 80% chance that this thing that's changing your life right now is just because it's a new thing. You know? Because that's what, you know, not that that's something wrong with that, but

Aaron

Not that there's anything wrong with that. So you're about to release this thing. It's, it's August 12th. Laracon is Laracon in 2 weeks?

Caleb

Well, I have 2 working weeks. So we have the 2 of this. Week and all of next week to work. Okay. And then the next week, it's Lyrica.

Yeah.

Aaron

So I'll give you 2 options. What is what's the lead up? What's the launch lead up slash launch look like? That's option s, option a. And option 2 is what's the status of the project?

How do you feel about it? How much more do you have to do? Are you excited, nervous? So you can give us kinda logistics or kinda vibes.

Caleb

Yeah. I'm, like, super excited. I'm more excited about this than it feels like anything before, but I was also very excited for pretty much, like, Liveware 3, Liveware 1, Liveware 2, whatever, but I'm super excited about it. Totally amped.

Aaron

K.

Caleb

I'm super proud of it. I love using it a ton, so that's awesome. That is awesome. And, yeah, I I feel like I should just tell people what it is. Like, let's figure that out.

Should I tell people what it is before Laracon? Like, I'd do it right now. We could have to figure out. Like, is it is it better? The only reason I'm holding out Yeah.

Is, like, isn't it fun to show up to something, like, and not know anything and then see it? Like, that's a really fun experience to have as an audience member.

Aaron

It is. I've walked into a few movies that way where I'm, like, I literally have never seen a trailer for this. I just know the title and that this person is in it, and I'm gonna go see what happens. I think you should wait. I really do.

As much as I want the scoop, as much as it would be good for, you know, number to go up, I think you should wait.

Caleb

Yeah. So then strategically, like like, for me, it's settled. Right? Like, if you're a an audience member, like, it's, like, an Apple keynote or something. It's just Mhmm.

So fun to be, like, what is coming out? Like, what is next? You know?

Aaron

Yeah.

Caleb

There's rumors. We're pretty sure we know. But, like, you know, could be anything. Mhmm. That's fun.

But, strategically, it's like, well, nobody knows anything about it. So this giant email list has no idea about it. And the 1,000 people who are at Laracon Mhmm. Which 500 of them use inertia or something

Aaron

Mhmm. It's

Caleb

like the 500 that use LiveWire, I'm I'm doing this all so that they have an awesome experience, or is it, like, no. Treat it like you'd hype anything and, like, start teasing it, showing bits of it, getting people prepped in some way. You know? Mhmm. Should people know the nature of the project?

Like, because you know the nature. Aaron saw it last week.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Caleb

Should people know or not?

Aaron

I don't think so. I don't think people should know. Okay. And I think the overwhelming reason I think that right now is it's gonna be more impactful if you explain slash show demo the whole thing, and that will that will pack quite a punch versus, like, dripping out screenshots on Twitter. It's possible that people would be underwhelmed by a single screenshot because they don't understand the nature of it.

That's my guess.

Caleb

True. Right. Like, by totally holding out, I reserve the ability to control the narrative in the sense that, like, you get to hear it from me first. You get to experience it through me first.

Aaron

Yes.

Caleb

Which when you experience it through me, you'll love it. Mhmm. If you didn't experience it through me, you'd have assumptions about it. Correct. You might not love it.

Yeah. Yes. Okay. That's that's good. I think that makes a ton of sense.

I'm in.

Aaron

Can we ask

Caleb

you this?

Aaron

The go. Go. Go. No. I won't.

So then the question is how do you how do you warm up the email list? Like, what are you Yeah. How are you prepping people to buy?

Caleb

10 purchases. Send things to supply.

Aaron

Yeah. And then do you have do you have launch goals for this? I mean, you've worked on this for 9 months in the dark.

Caleb

Well, I thought it was gonna be free for, like, 8 of those months. So Yeah. I the goals have shifted. Uh-huh. But, yeah, I I don't need to I don't need this to be the biggest, like, monetary success launch.

I just want people to use it and make it better and, and fall in love with it and make it, like, a really good project that everybody loves. Yeah. And then and then maybe we can, like, really capitalize, I guess. But no. I mean, I don't know.

Maybe you're talking, like, launch strategy or stuff.

Aaron

Well, hang on. I wanna ask a question about that. If it's so for 8 months, it was gonna be free. Yeah. And then for 9th month, it's not.

And then you said it doesn't need to be the biggest monetary success. You just want people to use it, love it, and make it better. Yeah. That sounds like something that would be free.

Caleb

Yeah. No. The problem

Aaron

is make money. People need to use it, make it better. That sounds like free to the bookstore.

Caleb

Free, which was what we've talked about ad nauseam, is that you can't give software away for free and prevent everybody from scooping you.

Aaron

Yeah. How many emails or or DMs did you get about that that episode?

Caleb

Adam was the only person who DM'd me about it. He was, like yeah. He DM'd me about

Aaron

it. Because, yeah. So because because yeah.

Caleb

Because yeah.

Aaron

Yeah. Moving moving on, I guess. Because yeah. But okay. So the primary the primary reason for charging is to to enforce some sort of, like, a walled

Caleb

garden quarantine. Well, now that I've, like, decided to charge money for it, I've reminded myself. So there there was a month before even working on it that I thought there were years that it was gonna be a paid thing. Oh, that was good. Yeah.

Yeah. And then I just was, like, not for the whole duration of the project, and now I'm back. So there's a lot of good reasoning behind it that, like, this is my big play. You know? Yeah.

It's, like, this is a play that I could use to turn this into an actual business that functions more healthily and is more productive

Aaron

Mhmm.

Caleb

And, you know, can set me up to have, like, a real business and a retirement and blah blah blah. So all that stuff. So this is the thing that now my sights are set on it, like, propelling me into the next level of business. You know? Okay.

Aaron

So it doesn't need to be the biggest monetary success, but it also needs to provide for your retirement and propel you to the next level.

Caleb

I guess what I mean by it doesn't need big be the biggest monetary success is I care more about it being awesome and people loving it. Yeah. Obviously, those two things are intention all the time.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Caleb

But at the early stages, that this is what I mean. I don't need it to make all its money in day 1. You know?

Aaron

Got it. Okay.

Caleb

It's better that this thing is well received and is really good and makes money over time. Yeah. So that's what I mean when

Aaron

I say that. Okay.

Caleb

What I'm saying?

Aaron

So this is this is the foundations of a a new or larger empire Yeah. Upon which you will build. Okay.

Caleb

Hopefully. That's Hopefully. The goal.

Aaron

That's become the goal. Backwards from, Laracon. You're gonna get up on stage, do a demo Yeah. And then and then you're gonna say it's it's ready. Is that right?

Caleb

I it's either gonna be beta ready or ready ready. I'm actually toying with the idea of skipping beta. How bad of an idea is that?

Aaron

It's a great idea. It's full Right?

Caleb

Like, everybody hates beta. Nobody likes

Aaron

a beta. Even mean? Nobody What does it mean? It's not gonna stop anybody from doing anything.

Caleb

No. It it the thing I'm extremely afraid of is resenting some of the API decisions a month later. Mhmm. And having to, like, wait a year to tag a new release or something. But and that maybe I can just cut scope a little bit, like, keep some things a little, like, sort of, you know, like, I do in Livewire sometimes.

Like, I'll keep a feature private, basically. Mhmm. Or keep something in user land that you have to copy and paste so that so that I'm not, like, API bound, for, like, a major version. So maybe I just, like if there's anything I'm not a 100% on, maybe just pluck it out so that it's, like, we'll just wait and make sure. Dude, I could even do a 1 point o and then have, like, an experimental branch or something.

Yeah. Or you know? I don't know. But okay. I mean, from where right.

Like, for as an audience person, as somebody just you want 1 point o. You want day 1. You're, like, let's get going with this stuff. You know it's gonna have to shake out some things, and, of course, we're all gonna be right there clickety clack in a way to make sure it's rock solid. But Mhmm.

Dude, 1.0, day 1.

Aaron

1.0, day 1. That's a power move.

Caleb

Yeah. Beta is, like, wishy washy.

Aaron

It is. That's a that's a soft move.

Caleb

It's like It's soft. Yep. Show up and just put it down, like

Aaron

Put some oomph behind it.

Caleb

Alright. So

Aaron

on on stage, you're gonna release 1.0. 0.0. 0.0. Say it's you go buy it right now. I'm gonna run out on stage and say congratulations.

Amazing talk. Everybody go buy it. Okay. So there there's that backing up. What what has to be done?

You got 2 weeks. What what do you still have? You gotta email people.

Caleb

The app. Yeah. I gotta email people. I'm building the app, like, to manage, like Licenses and stuff. Infrastructure licenses and the system to, you know, activate licenses and Mhmm.

All that stuff. And it's all bespoke right now, and I probably should have just used any stack. Yeah. Any stack. Which you used for refine.

Aaron

I did. It was great.

Caleb

What do you think about that?

Aaron

I think it's great. I mean, if you can make the number, like, the if you can make the numbers make sense, I forget what they charge.

Caleb

Yeah. It's worth it, I think.

Aaron

Like, $99 a month plus,

Caleb

I don't

Aaron

know, a percent or something.

Caleb

For, like, a 2 25100 active licenses or something?

Aaron

It is it's so worth it. Do not I

Caleb

think I would need a white label, though, because I need you to to be logged on to flux ui.dev. Like, I don't want you to have to, like, create an an any any stack account.

Aaron

I don't I I

Caleb

would need it, like, API, like

Aaron

I know he's got in a pretty extensive API, but I don't know the extent to which the user management stuff is Right. API driven.

Caleb

I mean, it makes sense that, like, for most people using AnyStack, you wouldn't want to manage any of that. Mhmm. But, like, I need people to only have they can't log into 2 things for Flux, and I need them to be logged into my app Right. So that I can track them and know who they are and whatever. Right.

Right. Right. So I don't know. I'm toying between 2 things, between making it, like, a private packages situation, like, Nova and all that stuff, and, like, hand rolling some kind of custom thing that, like, is more friendly than that, where you just, like, composer require, pop in a license key, and get going and not have to, like so maybe how much do you dislike the experience of, like, putting keys and stuff in a composer dot JSON that accesses a private packages?

Aaron

How much friction is that? Medium dislike it. I just installed Nova again the other day, which Nova is great. Love Nova. And, again, I had to do, like, the auth dot JSON Yeah.

And then figure out, like, oh, f. I can't really commit that to Git, but I'm going to anyway. But, like, how do I then how do I, like, get it into GitHub actions and then get the off that JSON onto forge? And, like, it's it's not terrible. But, yeah, if you had a system that was like, hey, composer require flex installer and then run flex install and paste your key, and suddenly everything works.

Well, that's kinda cool.

Caleb

I don't know how you do

Aaron

that, though.

Caleb

Oh, it's like, there's no way you do it in a bulletproof way.

Aaron

Yeah.

Caleb

But you just do it to keep good people good. Mhmm. You know, to make it easy for good people to be good, which I think is good enough for me. I talked to Jack McDade a bunch about it, and that that's his philosophy. It's, like, you you you just keep good people good, and Mhmm.

And they're generally good. The bad people are gonna be bad anyway. Yeah. Because, like, just don't make it so easy that a good person is, like, yeah. I'll get to that.

You know? Yeah. Like, put it in their way. Make it so that they have to literally, like, pick a lock. You know?

And then you'll root out, like, most of the people.

Aaron

Yeah. May letting good people accidentally be bad is the pattern of, hey. You can install it, but make sure you pay before you go to production. It's like Yeah. I forgot.

Caleb

Right. I'm never gonna do that.

Aaron

So doopsie.

Caleb

So well, static puts a flag in it. They don't even prompt you for anything until you're in production, and then the admin panel has a flag at the top. Mhmm. But this doesn't have an admin panel. So and I can't, like, interrupt a production process at all.

Mhmm. So mine's my situation's kinda, like, flipped. Like, I might wanna not put anything in your way in production and just make your life harder if your app is in debug mode. You know? Mhmm.

But even then, there's all this weirdness of, like, how much are you allowed to ping your own server from Right. From a composer package? It's, like, how much

Aaron

are Yeah. People are the there's a certain type of person that's not gonna like that at all.

Caleb

Oh, yeah. Right.

Aaron

They're gonna say they're spying on them.

Caleb

Yeah. Which but there's projects. So I think Astro maybe? A few projects have, like, telemetry enabled by default, like, literally. Isn't that bold?

I read it in a footnote on I think it's Astro, but it might be another project, a JavaScript project that it's, like, telemetry by default, they're sending usage information to themselves, and I was, like, that is sick. Yeah. It's a container.

Aaron

It's, like,

Caleb

you know so much about your users, and you can easily disable it. Nobody disables it. Nobody disables it. Nobody's gonna disable it.

Aaron

Nobody's gonna do it.

Caleb

Nobody's in line.

Aaron

Nobody nobody does anything.

Caleb

Nobody does anything. Ever. Never. Nobody does anything.

Aaron

Nobody does anything ever. That is a 100% true.

Caleb

You just gotta, like, put that on a plaque, and then that makes all your decisions easier. It's true. It's like, oh, nobody does anything else.

Aaron

Nobody does anything.

Caleb

Never. Okay.

Aaron

So you're you're you're rolling your own

Caleb

just trying to and deciding if it's, like, a horrible idea, but yeah. It's, like because you don't so you you're saying with, like, Nova, you don't wanna commit an auth file to your project Mhmm. Because why?

Aaron

Because it's a secret, and you're not supposed to. That's right.

Caleb

So if it's, like, a private company project

Aaron

Which it is.

Caleb

Then it's fine.

Aaron

Which is why I'm going to go ahead and commit it. Yeah.

Caleb

But there's something in your head that says that's not fine.

Aaron

Yes. There's something in my head that says ENV. It should be a secret that you have to go put there yourself so that it stays out of the history forever.

Caleb

What if the license key for this was just in an ENV file?

Aaron

I mean, that

Caleb

better? Because there's a carved path for that. It's like you set a project up. You need stuff. Like

Aaron

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Caleb

You're gonna need, like, a Stripe webhook thing and my torch light key that I I have to have on, like, everything I

Aaron

And even Nova has a key in the ENV file, but the actual package installation is behind a paywall or a password wall. Yeah. And so that's where the auth JSON you have

Caleb

to have that for Composer to work. By that with Nova setting other people's apps up. It's like Uh-huh. Why can't I can't set up your app because because of your admin panel?

Aaron

Yep. Exactly.

Caleb

Oh, that sucks. Yep. So let's say this, the license keys and in the env file

Aaron

Mhmm.

Caleb

You gotta get that from, you know, your whatever the person giving you the package. Mhmm. They're gonna give you your env.example or whatever. And then, then every new install, it's, like, oh, you have it in your env file, but you don't have some, like, not, get controlled key file that's, like, that is that you're not supposed to touch. Mhmm.

So it just I gotta make a call to the server quick. Like, you gotta run, like, artisan flux activate or something. Mhmm. And then it goes to server. It's, like, oh, here's a new license thing, validate this project.

Aaron

I see. So you're saying you're gonna try to paper over the composer weirdness by saying Yeah. Like, I've got a command that looks in the ENV, and then it does whatever needs to be done to satisfy composer, and then you can install everything?

Caleb

Yeah. Well, it'll install so what I'm thinking is I might make this a public repository, but make it a paid project. What do you think of that?

Aaron

I don't think that's gonna get you where you wanna be. I think that's

Caleb

Is this a why do you hate money? Decision?

Aaron

Maybe. I mean

Caleb

So statamics /cms is a public repository. Yeah. All of statamics is public. You can install it on your machine right now for free.

Aaron

Yeah. We're we're just really back to the what is open source question, aren't we?

Caleb

Well, this would be, like, literally the license would not be MIT. It would say this is, like, a paid thing. You can't see this. Available. Like, you can look at it Yeah.

People.

Aaron

You can't

Caleb

This is we're not back to that because this is a carved path. Like, Craft CMS does this, Datomic does that, and I would take their license and put my name in it and just, you know, like, if I catch you, then I could, like, DCMA you or whatever and be, like, you're wrong. Good luck. Yeah.

Aaron

I don't know. I don't like it.

Caleb

But if it's private okay. So you're thinking, like, just make the private part easier. Yeah. Yeah. Just have, like, a composer LiveWire slash use Flux or something that's, like, an easy way to have a nice experience

Aaron

I think so. Like that. Yeah.

Caleb

Okay. It I don't know. I just don't wanna fiddle with private packages. Wouldn't it be so nice if it was just public?

Aaron

It would be. It would be so much nicer. But if your goal is to, like, keep it from the bad guys

Caleb

Well, the bad guys can just buy it.

Aaron

Yeah. Of course they can.

Caleb

Gonna buy it, but are they gonna feel like they have more license to take it if it's totally on GitHub, available?

Aaron

Yeah. I think they are.

Caleb

Right. Like, just implicitly, they're gonna be, like, well, yeah, whatever.

Aaron

And, honestly, you're just you're yeah. You're just never gonna stop the bad guys. You're just not.

Caleb

So you need He The

Aaron

bad guys. To make it as easy as possible for the good guys to to

Caleb

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't know

Aaron

if you should even worry about it, frankly. I think you should just use something that's already been made and move on.

Caleb

In any stack situation, private packages set up?

Aaron

Yeah. Any stack or go your route and make it public. I don't think you should tinker Oh. Too much with coming up with a novel installation solution.

Caleb

Well, I feel like that's my only option if it's public. You know?

Aaron

Is is the novel is

Caleb

a novel solution, because all the source code is there. So there has to be something in that source code to stop you from using it if it doesn't validate, and it needs to validate. And if it's just a license and an ENV key, it's, like, well, I have to make a request to validate that. When do I make that request? Mhmm.

And how do I know not to make that once it's valid? You know? Mhmm. And yeah. So all roads to me win that path lead to, like, you run a command, and it sets some, like, flux dot key file that's a bunch of jumbled up encrypted stuff that you don't touch, but it's just, like, when in Flux code path, it goes up, this file exists, it's valid, we're good.

You know? Yeah. I know how long you get updates for. I know all that stuff. You're good.

Aaron

Sounds cool.

Caleb

So okay. I don't know.

Aaron

Sounds like that. That would be very cool. I think, I don't know if I don't know if that's a good use of time at this point.

Caleb

Dude, you're telling me. I know.

Aaron

Oh, we already knew that. Okay. Well, yeah. It sounds awesome. You should do it.

Yeah.

Caleb

Yeah. You're right. Yeah. Okay. Aaron Francis, if you care to pivot, I have a business idea for you along these lines.

Aaron

I love a business idea.

Caleb

Do you need another, another

Aaron

No. But tell me anyway.

Caleb

What's are were you gonna sit like, I don't know how long you guys what what do you do with this podcast? What's your cast

Aaron

on this? We record it, and then we release it. That's what we do. Just like yeah. It's easy peasy.

We'll go as long we'll go as long as we want. As long as I have energy, we'll keep going.

Caleb

Yeah. Yeah. You just do the, you know, you do the stuff where you go, like, you're like, yeah. Alright. Well, well, thanks for you know, you just kinda

Aaron

the dad wrap up.

Caleb

Yeah. Or just even, like, stretch. Just be like, well

Aaron

Well, gang, we did another one. Be. That's that's the dad. Well, gang. That's how you know that dinner's over.

Caleb

Yeah.

Aaron

So, you know, it's time to clean up. Dad's sleepy. We got the old well gang. Sometimes it's with a a you rub the hands together too, so you go, well, alright. I guess we're gonna head out.

Yeah. Yeah.

Caleb

You had a more folksy dad than I did, I think.

Aaron

Yeah. I think maybe so. Big guy's not very folksy.

Caleb

No. It's too bad.

Aaron

Alright. Hit the with the

Caleb

idea that I don't

Aaron

have time to do what I wanna do anyway. You could make

Caleb

money on.

Aaron

Here's my premise.

Caleb

My language. Here's my premise. I use a project

Aaron

of yours on almost all of my

Caleb

projects k. For free. I never pay you any money. Bad start. Happily pay you Flare money.

Like k. Let me pay you $30 a month, please. It would be a no brainer. Torchlight.

Aaron

$30 a month?

Caleb

The people who need Torchlight are the people who are getting it for free, Aaron.

Aaron

Yeah. No. Super, super correct.

Caleb

Why are you giving it to open sort they're the people who need it.

Aaron

Yeah. Just the goodness of my heart and the stupidity of my brain. That's the two reasons. So stupid.

Caleb

It's so stupid. The same decision. I keep wanting to make all these right. I keep wanting to be good. That's my problem.

So let me tell you why you hate money. Why do you hate money and whatever. So I

Aaron

still use Torchlight. That's great, isn't it? It's great.

Caleb

It's great. So here's the thing.

Aaron

It's not great. Oh, no.

Caleb

It is it's better than everything else, but you know that if you gave it a month, it could be way better.

Aaron

Right? I do know that. I do know that. You know that. You know I do know that.

Caleb

10 things off the bat that Yes. Could be tweaked, even just the docs, like Yep. Even visually. Yep. You know?

I agree. Everything like that. You could give it a month, and you could make torchlight 2.

Aaron

Mhmm. It's a good name. Did you just come up with that? That's a great name.

Caleb

2 t o o. Ah.

Aaron

I love it. That's so clever. Yeah.

Caleb

Yeah. So Torchlight 2, and yeah. And then you just launch it with pricing for people that you have to pay.

Aaron

Here here's the thing about, here's the thing about Torchlight. I just I I think it is technically very good, and I agree there are some rough edges and it needs to be, you know, polished and cared for. I think as a business, it's very, very bad.

Caleb

Yeah. So it's not a great business. I should have liked that. You said it was

Aaron

a way

Caleb

to make money. What are you doing?

Aaron

What are you doing?

Caleb

I don't know what I said, but it's a way to make money because I use it, and other people like me use it. Uh-huh. Do you know how many people use it?

Aaron

No clue. Gosh.

Caleb

Is it I know I

Aaron

know you and Taylor Atwell use it, and that's good enough for me.

Caleb

Dude, yeah. We use it, I'm it really is so much better and easier even though it kills me, like, I'm literally making a request to generate this stuff. I know. What? Like, even in production?

Yeah. This is crazy to me.

Aaron

It's crazy.

Caleb

I get torchlight exceptions, like, somewhat regularly, but the blade files are cached, so whatever. A torchlight exception happens. You just run it again. It works, then it's cached. Right.

Who cares?

Aaron

Not great.

Caleb

It it's not great. I have to carry a license key with me for code highlighting. I that's what

Aaron

you're saying what I'm saying.

Caleb

But I continue to use it on all my projects. So

Aaron

that much better than everything else that it's covering all of those sins.

Caleb

Yes. Got it. And for Taylor, it is. It's like, wow. To really have, like, the best syntax highlighting because it's actually Versus code or whatever, like, highlighting

Aaron

it Mhmm.

Caleb

To have the best blade and, like, more, like, an alpine so, like, stuff that you're not gonna get with highlight JS or anything Mhmm. Server generated super lightweight Mhmm. On the server. It's incredibly on the browser, it's incredibly lightweight. Mhmm.

And just, like, rendered. There's highlighting. There's all the things that I need. There's blurring out the background. It's great.

And the the little annotations,

Aaron

the browser annotations are great, aren't they?

Caleb

They're great, except I always forget, which order the exclamation point goes whatever in the shortcut, because it's inconsistent with another project, and so you guys should just sync up.

Aaron

Okay. We'll just have them change theirs. Yeah. Oh, duh. Yeah.

That's perfect.

Caleb

So yeah, Aaron, I don't know. I use it, and I'm, like, man, if there's enough people that use this and Aaron could just, like, hire just pay somebody. Be, like, I'm gonna give you No. Yeah. $500 Jason.

To yeah. Well, you might pay more than $500. Dig it. Yeah. Just, like, pay someone scrappy or whatever.

I don't know. Or don't. Put a $1,000. Put $2,000 into it, and just make me pay you 30 or, like, maybe $25 a project. Here's get Alpine, you get LiveWire 1, 3.

So, yeah, I'd be paying you, like, a 100 something a month.

Aaron

Okay. So here's here's the here's the meta question. Am I, do I have limiting beliefs? Because I hear you say $25 a month of project for syntax highlighting, and I think there's no way anyone else in the entire world would pay for that.

Caleb

I don't know, dude. It's like okay. So maybe there's a part of it where you have to get people using it before they fork over for it. Uh-huh. But also, like, people wrestle with this stuff.

You know? Yeah. They see even just your landing page, and it's like, this is better than everything. They wanna use what people use and what's better. Dude, I pay $650 for a month for emails.

Aaron

Yeah. But the email's

Caleb

gouging me.

Aaron

They are gouging you. Yeah.

Caleb

Mail coach is free. All of the alternatives are cheaper. It's like but you want that thing. So with Torchlight, here's my premise on why I think you could charge for it more than you think.

Aaron

Tell me.

Caleb

It's like flair. K. There's a server somewhere doing stuff for me regularly. Of course, I have to pay $25 a month.

Aaron

Got it.

Caleb

Mhmm. There's a servers or something doing something for me. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Duh. I need to pay. Yeah. They're literally keeping a computer alive for me, you know, in somebody's basement somewhere, I'm guessing.

Mhmm. And I have Yeah. Faded to highlight syntax for the rest of its life.

Aaron

Okay. That's interesting.

Caleb

So, I don't know. You should at least figure out how many people use it. Do you have this information in a database? Unfortunately, you can collect it pretty easily because we're hitting your servers.

Aaron

You sure sure are. I do have that information in a database somewhere. Do you wanna

Caleb

see how to find it? Databases? Yeah. I don't know. I don't even

Aaron

know what a database is. I'll be honest.

Caleb

Doing it live, Aaron.

Aaron

Alright. Let's see if we can find here's here's here's interesting. I don't even know

Caleb

You have a way bigger platform now too. If you did torchlight 2 or whatever, just call it, like, errandlight or something.

Aaron

I don't know. Torchlight 2 is is a pretty good name. Alright. Torchlight prod. Nope.

That's not the right connection. I can't connect to that. I don't know if I know where this database is right now. That's silly, isn't it?

Caleb

You keep looking. I think it is incredible that this thing like, you made the decision to host this instead of just put it on their computer and then run it themselves in the background. Like, I would have been, like, oh, yeah. We'll just, like, put cheeky or whatever. Like, we'll bundle it up, and then, you know, and then we'll just hit it locally.

But

Aaron

It's no it's no good. I mean, it's no

Caleb

I'm happy. You can't. I'm not happy with

Aaron

the browser that well.

Caleb

But I'm willing to no. I mean, on this on my server.

Aaron

Yeah. Like, why am

Caleb

I not generating these things myself on my server? You know, like, puppeteer or something I would do for, like, screenshots or whatever.

Aaron

Yeah. The the reason is because of Node. I didn't wanna make people install Node.

Caleb

Yep. So that is also the reason why you could actually make money from this and not not not make money. Yeah. Yeah. I don't

Aaron

know where this database is. I'll have to find this later. Well Step 1.

Caleb

So I don't know something, Aaron, but and it's probably I don't know. I I'm about to say, like, it's the worst use of your time. It's the least good, like, option, but it's the only option that has, like, good recurring income at the moment. Right? At the moment, yes.

Like a SaaS app. Like Mhmm. Something that could actually build. And once people use it, they're gonna stay on it. They're not gonna switch.

Aaron

They're not gonna switch.

Caleb

This is not something yeah.

Aaron

So so for torchlight 2, 2 o, do does it move you Torchlight also. I don't know what I was also. That's yeah.

Caleb

Torchlight also.

Aaron

It's like the image of the thing no longer bears a resemblance to the thing. I'm just calling it torchlight also now.

Caleb

It's torchlight also.

Aaron

So for torchlight also, does moving it away from server side mean anything to you? Like, if you could just drop a script on like, a script tag on your page, does that move you at all?

Caleb

I'm not gonna pay monthly for it. No way.

Aaron

But is that better?

Caleb

Oh, right. I'm probably gonna do that myself. Yes. You're probably gonna do that yourself. Yeah.

Like, I'm probably gonna so I'm doing all of this editor work for my talk. Like, I need a code editor that Uh-huh. The why do I need something that's not Torchlight? Because for some reason coding. Yeah.

For some reason, like, Torchlight preclude precludes me from you know, it it already changes the code into the tokens Yeah. Before it hits the browser. I actually need to have the raw code and then the token side of both. But, anyway, yes, I think it there's so many better interesting ways to just make this a front end thing to, like

Aaron

So if it still did the if it still did the sends the blocks off to me to do the awesome highlighting. But your the way that you install it is you just drop a script tag on your front end, and you don't have to worry about blade on, you know, parsing it on the back end. Oh. Does that move you?

Caleb

Well, then it's then I'm taxing everybody with slowness, because they have to hit your server?

Aaron

Potentially.

Caleb

Yeah. No. That doesn't move me.

Aaron

No. So you like you like the idea of it running on the server, and you sending out fully highlighted stuff.

Caleb

Yeah. I want it to that's a big pro of it to me. I think a big selling point is, like, this is, you know, like, static code. Mhmm. So, like, people get it, and it's blazing fast.

So it's not Java some JavaScript weird thing unrelated is not gonna break it.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Caleb

Static, easy to style, like Mhmm. No. It's gotta be server.

Aaron

It's gotta be server.

Caleb

If you're making a request, for sure.

Aaron

Well Yep. Yeah, you could do it in such a way, like, you I could make and I've toyed with it. I you you could make it pretty fast by putting it on fly and putting servers all over the place. Yeah. And then the page loads super fast.

The script picks up the blocks, sends it off, brings them back. Yeah.

Caleb

You don't like it. And then, Kat, the benefit to it is that you can then approach non Laravel correct well.

Aaron

Yes. You can do it on WordPress.

Caleb

Massive benefit.

Aaron

But do it on rails.

Caleb

Already have everything all built and ready to go. So just, like, launch this first and see if you can get the Laravel folks to pay you. But but yeah. No. You're right.

Like, if you would wanna target the Astro crew because, like, people using Astro are people who need this kind of stuff because it's a lot of that style of app. It's not

Aaron

that But I feel like the people using Astro are already so deep in the JavaScript world that they're just pulling in they're just pulling in Shiki or something, and they're doing it on the server themselves. You know?

Caleb

Yeah. It's possible. I don't know. I I think there is, you know, all of this goes against my unwillingness to wrap software, but you can just wrap Shiki, call it something else, market it better, and make it slightly easier, and then everybody will use it even if it costs money.

Aaron

That's what

Caleb

I'm trying to do. That's how it works. But you there are things that, like, are killer features Uh-huh. Which I guess Shiki, like, has avail alright. What about highlighting a single line?

How easy is that with Shiki?

Aaron

Highlighting, like, drawing attention.

Caleb

Your short codes and stuff?

Aaron

It's pretty difficult.

Caleb

Yeah. There you go. That's the value. That's that's what I need. Like, I need to be able to highlight a line and a group of lines.

Aaron

And my my philosophy with that is it has to remain valid code because the authoring experience just falls apart when you're, like, writing JavaScript, and then you're throwing in this invalid, like, made up syntax. And then, like, now you're editing, and you hit, you know, format, and everything's wonky. So I put a huge amount of effort into ensuring every annotation remains valid code.

Caleb

That's interesting. That's good to hear you say that because my account so this makes sense, and I go, that's great, and that's why we should use Torchlight. However, using it, I go, why the heck doesn't

Aaron

this short code work? Mhmm.

Caleb

What in the world? I literally copied and pasted this from the other code block, but I don't own any of the software, so I'm just doomed to, like, not figuring this out.

Aaron

And why didn't it work?

Caleb

Oh my gosh. It needs to be a PHP comment. Oh. HTML comment.

Aaron

Gotta be real code.

Caleb

That Yeah. Is an that is a I got hit with that multiple times

Aaron

Interesting.

Caleb

And burnt a lot of time just, like, I have no idea how to even start debugging this, Yeah.

Aaron

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So So it would just show up as a comment on your front end, and you're, like, no. You're supposed to do

Caleb

Yeah. Highlight thing. Yeah.

Aaron

Where's the parsing? Where where is the highlight going? Language.

Caleb

And it was just the wrong lang and I'm, like, wait. It uses the and I never it never occurred to me that, like, oh, it's really important that it does that. That helps me.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Caleb

It's just, like, oh, it's annoying.

Aaron

Yeah. But It has to be a real comment in the language that you're using. Yeah.

Caleb

Yes. If I had heard of the reasoning and been educated sooner, then it would have been part of the delight and could have compelled me to use Torchlight even more.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Caleb

But, yeah, these are reasons to love Torchlight. Yeah. And there's even, like, things that you could do, like, if you could have sub line highlighting, you know?

Aaron

Mhmm. I

Caleb

could just highlight like, Tailwind has all over their docs. It's so I know.

Aaron

It's so nice.

Caleb

And it's, like, this is something that's, like, knit. This is torchlight also. Yeah. Torchlight also I got that now. Highlighting.

And yeah.

Aaron

Okay. So riddle me this. Let's let's walk down this path. Beyond charging Caleb and his, two friends, you know, beyond charging 3 people $25 a month, that's the entirety of the market. What's the other move?

Yeah. What's the other move? Provided that I don't hate money because I don't, but I don't love money because the love of money is the root of all kinds

Caleb

of people.

Aaron

You know? Sure. So we don't wanna go that way. But let's say we don't hate it. We don't we don't we don't besmirch.

We don't begrudge. What's the move besides charging $25? Yeah. Yeah.

Caleb

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's okay. Obviously, Torchlight also to me and my 3 friends.

Aaron

Right.

Caleb

Yeah.

Aaron

Which So there's $75 a month.

Caleb

Give you the list of things that I want. Okay. And then you can, you know, just do them. I would

Aaron

do that. I would absolutely do that.

Caleb

Yep. And and then the, dude, I mean, you just launch it to your new audience of a zillion people as opposed to the audience you originally launched it to, which was me and my 3 friends.

Aaron

Right. Back when I was poor and stupid. Now I'm Yeah.

Caleb

Now you're smart and

Aaron

smart and smart.

Caleb

You're smart and popular. So

Aaron

Yeah. We just changed

Caleb

the accent there. You need? Alright. Just do a quick Yeah. Hop over to yeah.

Aaron

Okay. So now that I now that I'm smart and popular Now you're smart and popular. Still more popular. Relaunch it to those people.

Caleb

Right. So you already, like, will do much better because, you know, now there's gonna be 10, 15 people

Aaron

that'll pay you. Huge huge amounts of money.

Caleb

But real honestly, so much of this hinges on look at your stats and see how many people are just straight using it right now.

Aaron

Yes.

Caleb

Because there might be a play where it's like like, oh, they're all using this. Yeah. You need their email addresses. Do you have email addresses? Yeah.

I have a line up for Torchlight.

Aaron

For a key. You you've got Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've got

Caleb

your own stuff. And stuff. You just

Aaron

Step 1 sounds like find the database. That sounds like step 1.

Caleb

That is step 1. Okay. You find the database. I like

Aaron

to do that.

Caleb

Users. Uh-huh. And and then now you have a list to launch to that's pretty flipping warm, you know, like, that is excited to

Aaron

Honestly, I completely forgot that the torchlight list exists, because it doesn't exist in Bento. It just exists in this database that is who knows where. Okay? Okay. So we're good there.

Caleb

Find that. It's, okay. You find the database, so there's a chance that there's enough people that this does, like, validate itself. You know? Okay.

The idea validates itself. So you make the improvements, torchlight also. You do a little product thing, but keep it minimal, keep it MVP, you know,

Aaron

like, don't,

Caleb

like, let this become the you know, and then and focus on the current target market, which is, you know, Laravel, and and then ship it assuming it's worth your time, which you have to validate. But a bigger play that, like and then this is just, like, a side SaaS app, but I do think that it is unique and that it is a great opportunity for actual recurring revenue Mhmm. That is that there is tons of lock in. Like, once you're on it, you're not gonna wanna get off. Yep.

And I think those two qualities make it, like, you're not gonna have ideas like this coming out the wazoo. It's already validated. People are already using it and trust it and are happy to hype it. Make sure I'm sure you already have testimonials, but I'll hype it, tailor hype it, whatever. You can say used by Laravel, used by Alpine, used by Libor, used by whatever.

Everybody else is using it. Yeah. And then I guess then it's then it's a big open question of, like, targeting other markets who's it's people with dock sites that need it.

Aaron

Right. But we're still thinking we're still thinking along the lines of charge a few people a certain amount of money. Yeah. Is there another is there another move that is not because I'll I'll be honest. I feel like getting people to pay for syntax highlighting is always going to be an uphill battle to a small lifetime value.

That's that's my feeling.

Caleb

Oh, I don't know if it's a small lifetime value. That's my point. I think it's a big lifetime value. I think it's an uphill battle, and you won't have, like, massive success with it. But So what are we doing?

Aaron

No. No. The lifetime value.

Caleb

Hear me out. Like, you could have extracted at least 500, probably a $1,000 from me over the past, you know, few years.

Aaron

Okay.

Caleb

Like, no sweat. And that's Okay. That's a big lifetime value.

Aaron

Yeah. I I don't I don't hate that.

Caleb

You know, it's like a service, like, again, Flare. I wanna know their numbers on Flare. I bet it's great. Once you're using Flare totally. Every one of my apps pays for Flare.

Aaron

40 what is it? 39, 49?

Caleb

Something like that. It's less than 50 for sure. Yeah. It's in that, like, 25 Between 2535 is the range that I'm willing to stomach that, like, yeah, another service added to the pile 2535. That's great.

K. Yeah. Once you're, like, 50, like, email support or something, then it's, like, you better earn your keep. Otherwise, I'm gonna see you on my bottom line, and you're on the chopping block.

Aaron

Right. You know? Mhmm. Mhmm.

Caleb

So keep it in that sweet spot. It'd be great if you could have some structure for monetizing, like, enterprise y stuff and get, like, not a Stripe, but somebody like that. It's, like, you know, you're you know, you go hunting for, like, bad syntax highlighting and Right. And developer documentation.

Aaron

Everywhere. Yeah.

Caleb

Yeah. And then just, you know, you pitch it and whatever, but

Aaron

Okay.

Caleb

Yeah. I don't know.

Aaron

I don't know. Yeah.

Caleb

Again, there's so much to hate about all these ideas, but there are a few rare good things here, I think, as opposed to a lot of other things.

Aaron

Is there and I'm gonna just just for the last time. Is there another way?

Caleb

You mean, like, make it all free and benefit from all

Aaron

the way?

Caleb

Free and

Aaron

then what? Yeah. Okay.

Caleb

So alright. I mean, you can you can turn this into a an incredibly popular, well loved project. Okay. Guaranteed. Okay.

But I don't know why you make money from that.

Aaron

That was what I was asking you.

Caleb

Alright. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Aaron

Alright. Come on.

Caleb

We got incredibly well

Aaron

of right.

Caleb

Dude, done. Paywall the obscure highlighting. Paywall blade, paywall MDX, whatever, like Mhmm. Paywall, obscure languages, or paywall certain features like highlighting a word, just paywall the the the niche features that yeah.

Aaron

They won't necessarily free free and pro.

Caleb

Oh, and, dude, tons of themes? Themes. You get 5 for free.

Aaron

Themes themes are paid off.

Caleb

You get whatever. Dude, this is ripe for, like and I'm I'm gonna, you know, use the free thing, and it's, like, damn, he has natty dark.

Aaron

And dark and light mode being paywall like, the ability to have highlight a code block being dark and light mode.

Caleb

Sure. Maybe. Yeah. You gotta decide what's free and not, but that could be 1. That could be 1.

For sure.

Aaron

Yeah.

Caleb

I have to manually do that for Torchlight. Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. I think I render do I render 2 blocks every time or something?

But I I definitely have 2 different themes, different backgrounds, and hot swaps.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Caleb

So, yeah, that's a feature. There you go. Yeah. There's dude, there is highlight. Js exists.

Prism exists. I mean, Shee Key exists. All these things exist. Nothing is gloved, like, just yes. I love nobody loves any of those things.

Aaron

To me to hear. I'm just I'm shocked because I think I've grown to somewhat despise Torchlight because of its its ability to be a business, which is minimal. But I put a lot of care into, like, the, the way that it is used by the end user, and I'm very proud of that. And so maybe I need to revisit this.

Caleb

It's a benefit of Torchlight is you've already done a lot of hard work and a lot of thinking on it.

Aaron

So much thinking.

Caleb

It's already a business. It is. Weird. It could be on, like, acquire, micro acquire, whatever that's called for, like, I don't know. Do you have make revenue from it right now?

Does it really pay you? Yeah. How much?

Aaron

Not very much.

Caleb

Tell me.

Aaron

I honestly don't know, but I think it's several $100 a month.

Caleb

Dude, that's not bad.

Aaron

It's not bad.

Caleb

Let's say it's $200 a month. That's $2 a year. You sell it for 3, 5 times that. That's 6. It's close to $10.

You could ease or yeah. You could easily, you know, you'd you'd even do a minimal torchlight also, get it up to $500,000 a month, god forbid, sell it for 30, 40 grand

Aaron

God willing.

Caleb

Dude, I don't know. I don't know. Things.

Aaron

I don't know.

Caleb

You could just bag a quick $40, get in, you know, a little, micro acquire and run, or go for a big play. Torchlight, baby. You didn't expect this. I did not expect this.

Aaron

This was a classic bamboozle. The last time you called, you're like, give me all your thoughts on open source licensing. I'm like, ah, shoot. I don't know. Now I'm getting hit up on torchlight.

You're just

Caleb

you're keeping me on my toes. Field.

Aaron

I'm coming out of

Caleb

left field, Aaron. I don't know. I'm here to tell you things that, nobody else is even thinking about.

Aaron

So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here's what I really want. I want Yeah.

I want Vercel to splash a bunch of that Vercel money on me and be like, we'll just have this now. Be like, great. You can have it. So they can just come in and buy it for

Caleb

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta, just make it something

Aaron

that $5,000,000, something like that.

Caleb

Right. Just make it white Yes. With a, rounded XL Mhmm. P 8 Mhmm. Bordergray800.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Caleb

And they'll be like that. That's going in Shad cn. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of places you could do.

There are far places you could take this once you establish yourself as, like, the best code. And some of this stuff I hesitate to tell you because as you have seen doing some stuff with editors and, like, there's an alternate universe where I just decide to, like, build the best, like, editor ever

Aaron

Yeah. For

Caleb

fun on the front end, but forget about that for a second. Sure. Yeah.

Aaron

Just tell

Caleb

you the ideas. We'll see each other in court. Mhmm. Like, some AI stuff, in, like, a live edit so, like, code examples that are on a doc site are actually, like, editable, and there's, like, super Maven style. I don't know.

AI right in there. Could be something could be insanely cool. You could offer dude, you here's a killer feature. You have a copy button built in with that ships with the freaking thing.

Aaron

Mhmm. It's kind of a pain, isn't it?

Caleb

That's a pain, because it's, like, to do your own copy button Mhmm. Is not that easy. Like, now there's that navigator, like, API that's so awesome. Right. It doesn't work in HTTP, only in HTTPS.

Mhmm. So, locally, you can't test unless

Aaron

you're, like,

Caleb

hurts cure or something like that. That. And nobody's gonna do that for that, so I just, like, hope it works in production and whatever. There's just things that make it annoying. Mhmm.

And offering, like, the code that gets copied is different than the code that they're seeing. Yes. That's a hard thing to do. It is. But that's an important thing to do.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Caleb

Tab switching like Talend has, dude. Literally, there's so much opportunity, and this stuff can be used in presentations. Mhmm. It can be used on doc sites. It can be used you know, it's so well loved and adored.

Everybody every developer oriented thing needs code snippets maybe just even on their home page. Whatever. Domination, Aaron.

Aaron

That that that's actually my language as well. I just want pure absolute domination. Yeah. Okay. This is interesting.

You've given me much to consider. I have been feeling a little bit like I should revisit that, and I should do and also because version 1 is, like, I'm tired of it. It needs to go. I got I got improvements I need to make. I still doubt the willingness of the market to pay, but there's an easy way to figure that out, which is to try and see.

Yeah. I do, however, like the free pro split.

Caleb

Yeah. Yeah. Free pro like that. With the big play, I'm on free pro. Yeah.

I think that's if you want

Aaron

I think

Caleb

that's big adoption

Aaron

Yeah.

Caleb

It's free pro all day. Mhmm. Yep. Mhmm. Mhmm.

And there's lots of good dog feeding, dog food opportunities for you here, like, you're building a platform

Aaron

for 4 feet. Is right. Yeah.

Caleb

It doesn't sound right. It might be right, though. You know? Yeah.

Aaron

It might be, but it's just it doesn't sound right.

Caleb

It's probably right. So, yeah, there's lots of cat feeding Right. Yeah. That's a good bet. Like, you Seltzer popping opportunity.

Aaron

I swear. That's a good bet. Like, you can

Caleb

use it on your own stuff, and then you'll develop it into the thing that you adore, you know, when people are using it.

Aaron

Right. Right.

Caleb

And this is the, like, the the scope creep you don't want, but right now, like, there are times that I want a simple syntax highlighter to just show people how to compose or acquire the thing. Uh-huh. And then there are times that I want a tailwind play style, like Right. Very limited Versus code experience for somebody to play around, sort of, like, tweak something and have a little demo, whatever. And it the the gradient, there's no gray you know, it's, like, for this, you use the toys.

For this, you use something that's way too powerful.

Aaron

You know?

Caleb

Just have nice Just

Aaron

monocos.

Caleb

Good default. That's the okay. I'll be done with this in one second, but this is the problem with the current market. Nothing is just good defaults out of the box like Torchlight is. Everything else is, like clearly, you wanna customize the crap out of this to all your needs.

You know? It's, like, no, I don't at all.

Aaron

You just want it to work.

Caleb

Just want a nice theme, and then you do the rest.

Aaron

It's nice to hear nice things about something you've created. That I do like that. Yeah. I do like that. Yep.

Caleb

It

Aaron

is a delight to use. I still use it I still use it on everything. I use it primarily through the mark down extension, which I really enjoy because I just I just write it in mark down, and it works.

Caleb

Wait a second. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I do that too. Yeah.

Okay. Because can you make a mark down renderer that's also a service as well?

Aaron

The markdown renderer that Torchlight uses calls out to the API. Yes. Is that the question?

Caleb

No. Like, can I just never have to compile markdown with common markdown or anything?

Aaron

Oh, you wanna send me markdown? Yeah. Well well well

Caleb

to use, GitHub. Oh, dude. This is the other play. Okay.

Aaron

I remember that. You use their sneaky rendering idea, and it doesn't exist. Yeah.

Caleb

Yeah. And I did it forever, and it was like, this is a sick markdown at, like, processor. It's great, and this works great.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Caleb

Yeah. I think that there's a package available under my name somewhere

Aaron

Mhmm.

Caleb

To do this. Gl get something it's called Get Down. Get Down.

Aaron

Get Down.

Caleb

It's a

Aaron

great name. Great name.

Caleb

If anybody cares, go find Get Down with a neon sign because you're getting down. That's the logo. So Get Down, is great, but it it's so restrictive because of, like, sanitization that they do. And I've tried I did gnarly things in GitDown

Aaron

Yeah.

Caleb

Like, the bad stuff I encode in ridiculous things and then decode it back when it comes back. Yep. Yep. Yep. But whatever.

I hate fiddling with markdown, and I'm always wrestling with common mark and making my own extensions for stuff that should just be available. And Interesting.

Aaron

I love markdown and fiddling with Common Mark and making my own extensions for things that should be available.

Caleb

I I love doing that too

Aaron

when Absolutely adore that.

Caleb

When I have 4 weeks.

Aaron

Yeah. Yeah. I love 4 weeks.

Caleb

This is the kind of thing that just want let's have one person do all the fiddling.

Aaron

I can fiddle. I can fiddle. So what are you saying? You want you wanna write in markdown and you wanna send it off to me Yeah. To be rendered, including all of the fanciness Including

Caleb

all of the code.

Aaron

Get it back is just pure HTML.

Caleb

And yeah. And I want you to add, links in the headings so that I don't have to do any of that Of course. If that's hard. It's natural. Make a a table of contents available as well, and maybe have some automated stuff that as you scroll it, whatever, the scroll padding, as you scroll it highlights the current thing, Whatever.

But, yeah, just a markdown render. It's like torchlight. The thing that you send your markdown with your code snippets or just your code snippets to, and it does all the hard work for you, and you're good to go.

Aaron

This is interesting.

Caleb

There you go, Aaron.

Aaron

Sounds like another good rabbit trail. Yeah.

Caleb

Yeah. I kinda like that.

Aaron

I kinda like that better, honestly.

Caleb

Marked just being, like Yeah. The markdown situation.

Aaron

But it

Caleb

It's a much wider market than It's

Aaron

much wider, and it's it's new, so

Caleb

I don't know

Aaron

what all the baggage is. But it does sound it does sound nice.

Caleb

Yeah. I don't know. There you go, Aaron. How's that for a podcast?

Aaron

Well, gang. Sounds good. You're telling me big guy never hit you with a well gang, and that was how you knew it was over?

Caleb

He's never said gang. What? He'd say gang gang.

Aaron

No. That's totally different.

Caleb

He no. I I don't know. I'm trying to picture how my dad would send a signal, and it wouldn't be through some, like, indirect communication that's folksy like that, like one of my other friends' dads. It would be it's pretty direct.

Aaron

That's interesting. Okay. Well, well, gang, we did it. Thanks for

Caleb

stepping in. Yeah.

Aaron

Well, gang. What does Ian normally do here? He normally reads this out by saying this was this was mostly technical. Okay. That's your show.

By the way Oh. I thought I heard I thought I heard you and Daniel talking about, oh, we got a podcast coming. We're we're gonna talk today, and we gotta record a new podcast. What's the deal? Where's no plans to merge?

Caleb

We did record 1. The we recorded the one where we didn't talk about anything. Like, we were like, oh, we can't talk about anything on this podcast. Yeah.

Aaron

I thought y'all had a new one.

Caleb

Did you hear that one?

Aaron

I think so. No plans.

Caleb

Oh, yeah. There was a new one. Merge. Or there not a new one, but there I tweeted at him. Okay.

Here's the other thing quick, Aaron, now that we're ending the show. Yeah. I think I think I want to event source. Oh, no. And I've never even been tempted.

Aaron

Oh, man. I know. They got you. I think they got me. I hate to hear that.

Caleb

Yeah. And I'm working on this app, and I'm, like, I feel, like, I'm really setting myself up for pain with these simple models that are all mutable and blah blah blah whatever. I'm not trying to scoop Daniel's talk either, but I love the model. I I went down the rabbit hole for, like, 2 seconds, and it's like, no. No.

No. No. No. No. No time.

Good.

Aaron

There's no time. There's no time.

Caleb

There's no time. But, honestly, it's, like, if somebody and Verbs would be the thing to do it. If somebody could make event sourcing easy to swallow, like, the benefits seems so undeniable and, like, game changing. Like, the it's it seems like, I don't know how people adore type safety and things like that. It's, like, wow.

I can like, that kind of thing where it's, like, oh, I could never go back. Not having end to

Aaron

end type safety. Yes. I can.

Caleb

It's fine. I don't know. Something like that. I mean, I do that. I never use type, but but whatever.

You know what I'm saying? It's the kind of thing that seems, like, oh, this changes things, like, and and makes you fall in love with it because you don't have bugs, and everything is, like, that's what they deal with. Where they lose me.

Aaron

Okay. Man So If they got you

Caleb

They haven't gotten me yet because I haven't actually done it, but it definitely has been, like, a brain worm that, like, now that I've seen it a little, like, actually seen that okay. Like, what I'm doing right because I deal with things in my current life Mhmm. That are painful. Like, oh, this webhook got hit, but, like, the the thing didn't get added to the table. So, okay, I'll go in a lemon squeeze y'all.

I'll add the thing to table myself. Oh, but all the other code that's supposed to run

Aaron

Story run. Freaking life.

Caleb

And, like, stuff like that. It's, like, oh, this is so stupid. Here's a 100% off coupon code. You know? Yeah.

Like, stuff like in theory, event sourcing would be the kind of thing that you just be, like, we'll just quick pop that in there. We could just play that event, and everything sings or, like, oh, we'll just scroll back and replay all the, you know, webhook received things or whatever. I don't know. A lot of things like that that's, like, oh, wow. I'm dealing with, like, kind of important things, and it all rests on the state being all perfect.

Aaron

You know?

Caleb

So whatever.

Aaron

I don't know. Man. I'm gonna have to look into event sourcing now. This is how I this is how I do it. I don't do anything.

I'm a I'm a I'm a laggard. I'm a late adopter when it comes to stuff like this. Like, I didn't see Apple play. Return types in in my Laravel stuff until it was fully in Laravel core. And now I'm like

Caleb

Alright. I guess I I don't put return types in. I've never used TypeScript. You talk into the most laggard laggard of all time. That's why I'm so just never event source

Aaron

that event sourcing is it because

Caleb

It might be the it might be something that brings me out of, like, building apps the exact way I built them 10 years ago. Oh, 10

Aaron

years ago was awesome. I love 10 years ago. Okay. Well, that's news. I need you and Daniel to record so that I can I can listen to all of that?

Caleb

Yeah. We shall, Aaron Francis.

Aaron

Why don't you tell the people that I'm trying to find you, and then I'll tell the people where they can find us? I don't know.

Caleb

Find me on the Internet. That's where.

Aaron

The Internet. The the mostlytechnical.com, mostlytechpod on Twitter, RIP, and mostlytechnicalpodcast@gmail.com. And go find Ian on Twitter and wish him well, as he is sick. So thanks for joining us, Caleb. Thanks for standing in as Ian, and we'll talk to you all next time.