Mostly Technical · Jun 18, 2024
Ian & Aaron discuss Aaron's various small bets, why they're both so tired, the upcoming variety show 👀, & more.
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Ian
Happy Father's Day.
Aaron
And happy Father's Day to you, sir.
Ian
You're one of the few people I know with more kids than me. Just Oh, wow. Wow.
Aaron
Yes. It's a lot of kids. I'm not gonna lie. It's, I would I wouldn't dare say too many, but it's a lot. Did y'all do anything?
What what what's how do you celebrate?
Ian
What do we do? I my father came over on Saturday, did a little barbecue situation, and, we didn't really do much. I don't know what we did on Father's Day. We Jamie made a nice, spicy noodle lunch dinner thing.
Aaron
Love a spicy noodle. Love a spicy noodle.
Ian
Love a spicy noodle. A couple a little bit of running around. Then went to the pool. So I just kinda chilled. Kids Sounds about right.
Cards. Nice. Nice.
Aaron
I like that.
Ian
Are your oldest, ones ready? Are they, like do they get Father's Day yet, or they they don't fully get it? Okay.
Aaron
No. No. No. No. Not even a little bit.
Ian
Oh, man.
Aaron
You know, they said happy Father's Day, which is nice. And they, you know, they they made me a card, which is nice. But no, they have no they have no clue.
Ian
I saw they got you a beautiful board book, which is really cool. I didn't know existed. That was so cool. I was like, this has something that uses. It's so good.
Yeah.
Aaron
You can make my wife books. My wife got, you know, those, for the listener, those books that are for kids that are that are pretty, like, thick pages. They're cardboard. They're about, you know, maybe 6 by 6 square. My wife got one of those made about me.
I was like, this is my daddy. It was all pictures of me doing stuff and playing with the kids, and even she even got all the wording right. You know? It has that same, like, cadence and complexity for our kids. Like, he is so strong.
One page says, one page says he is so tall, and it's just like that's exactly what a kid would say. Like, why do you love your daddy? Because he's tall. Like, yeah. Yeah.
Something a kid would say. Yeah.
Ian
Yeah. I love the board book era. It's probably my favorite kid book era. It's just like, you just read the little board books. They just wanna hear it 70 times and Yep.
Over and over. That are stuck in my head. Like, I could recite 4 or 5 of those. I could just cold recite the whole things right now.
Aaron
Yep. I think right now, I've got Amelia Bedelia, memorized. Good. There's, like, 5 Amelia Bedelia books that they have that have them
Ian
all memorized. Yep. Yep. Yep. There's the crayon kid.
I don't know. There's a bunch of them. We like hand, hand, fingers, thumb. I think it was what the title of the book was, but that's Never heard
Aaron
of that one.
Ian
Little thing. Yeah. That was pretty good. But, yeah, that was that was a cool cool gift idea.
Aaron
Very cool gift idea. I never
Ian
got I never got one of those. I was a little jealous.
Aaron
Yeah. I don't know.
Ian
Hard things.
Aaron
I know. I wanna give it to the kids, but I don't want them to destroy it. But I also kinda want them to, like, destroy it and then look back on it years later and be like, oh, they loved this book so much.
Ian
You know? So it's
Aaron
kinda like, we'll see. But, yeah, very cool. We didn't do the one one funny thing my wife did was, I think it was, like, Friday or Saturday. Very thoughtful. She was like, what what do you want Father's Day to look like?
I'm like, I don't know. Like, what are, you know, what are the options? I don't feel like I don't feel like we have much, like, help that day, so I can't, you know, just I can't just disappear
Ian
Right.
Aaron
Because, Jasmine's off on the weekends, and it was just, you know, just gonna be us 2 with the 4 kids. She was like, well, what if what if you could just disappear? What would you do? I was like, well, oh, man. Honestly, I'd probably I'd probably go to the movies by myself.
And she was like, yeah. Well, that's probably not gonna work. So it's a good conversation.
Ian
Well, I asked you that.
Aaron
That's so funny. Yeah. That's kinda what I thought. I didn't know where this was going, but that's kinda what I thought. We both laughed, and she was like, I guess that's good to know.
I I don't know what we do with that incident, but that's good to know.
Ian
5 years from now. Yeah. Maybe we could do that.
Aaron
Yeah. Oh my god. I did get a you know, I got the afternoon just to, like, rest, which was nice. K.
Ian
That's nice.
Aaron
From about, you know, 4 to 5:30, I was just, like, in the back watching YouTube, and it was Got an hour. Yeah. Got a got a free hour.
Ian
Tricky too because you're going to the office and you're working there. So it's like Mhmm. You're not like you're just sitting by the pool, hanging out, reading printed out pages or or anything. But still, you kinda get a mental break from the kids, so then it's it's hard on the other times to totally abandon ship. Yeah.
I it's nice when you get the kids get to the age of, like, doing these days on their own, which is kind of where we're at now. Like, maybe with just a little reminder, but it's like, they make the card. They did stuff. Like, it's not like where you're pretending to be the kid and doing the stuff.
Aaron
Yeah. That'll
Ian
that'll be a nice space for you to get to in a little
Aaron
bit. For mother's day, I was like, I had to sneak out at some point to go to Tom Thumb to buy flowers on a card, and then I had to, like, keep the flowers in the car until Jennifer was occupied. And then I brought them inside and hit them somewhere, and I put the cards.
Ian
Like, you
Aaron
know, I stuck them down the back of my shorts and put my shirt over it so I could just, like, walk into the kids' room and then have the kids' color on them. So I'm like, it's doing spy craft over here. Yeah. It'll be nice it'll be nice when they're a little bit older, and they can kinda do that themselves.
Ian
Yeah. Yeah. At least participate in it.
Aaron
Yeah. So good weekend. I'll tell you, though. I'm I'll tell you. I'm feeling tired, man.
Me too. Feeling old. I don't know what
Ian
it is.
Aaron
Too. What is it?
Ian
Tired. I'm so tired then.
Aaron
Tired. What are you feeling?
Ian
I don't know, man. It's like I'm on
Aaron
the phone. That exact same thing. God. Okay.
Ian
Keep going. On. Maybe it's every maybe it's everything. Maybe it's not just me. It's everything.
Aaron
Maybe it's everything.
Ian
You know, I have the seasonal allergies. I feel like that's wearing on me. I've done this, like, move to, like, early morning lifestyle, which I feel
Aaron
like guy.
Ian
Transition and that's I mean, the transition to waking up early has been great. Like, I get up, and it's fine. I posted a picture from my walk this morning on Twitter at, like, 6:0:5
Aaron
or something
Ian
like that.
Aaron
Morning guy stuff.
Ian
Yeah. Like, oh,
Aaron
I'm I'm not having to walk. You're not even up yet, you idiot.
Ian
Yeah. Exactly. Me and the birds are out here. Mhmm. A couple other random dudes who are early riders are
Aaron
posting. Yeah.
Ian
Yeah. Yeah. We're all posting on social media that we're out here better than you all who are Yep. In bed from being able to 2 AM. And but, you know, I still wake up kind of at, like, 4, so throw me off.
Uh-huh. I'm the late night me is creeping in a little bit. Like, the other night, I went to bed at, like, 11:30. Last night was just, like, 1105, but still, I think it's a little too late if I'm gonna be, like, up and at it a little after 5. So
Aaron
Mhmm.
Ian
I don't know. I don't know.
Aaron
Night guy's screwing morning guy.
Ian
I know. And also that was the worst case.
Aaron
Revenge. Morning guy has no revenge. You're I was gonna say you could lose your job like they say in Seinfeld, but you own the job. You can't own the job.
Ian
And then warning guy, like, goes on these walks and figures he's gonna tire night guy out, but I don't know. But night guy
Aaron
comes in with a vengeance
Ian
at night.
Aaron
He's like, I'm here, baby.
Ian
It's like, y'all may get tired at, like, in the afternoon or something, but then, like, night, it's like, yeah. Let's go. We got stuff Nobody ever
Aaron
cares about afternoon guy.
Ian
No. Afternoon guy, What
Aaron
a what a loser guy.
Ian
Terrible guy. Yeah. Definitely a worst version of yourself.
Aaron
So demotivated. Hate afternoon guy.
Ian
I don't know. What do you think is your your issue? Your I don't
Aaron
know, man. I just feel part of it's physical. Part of it's existential. Yeah. You know?
I feel a little bit of existential tiredness. I think I think the some of the the debates on Twitter this weekend, I was like,
Ian
what's commenting. What are we doing? What you were talking about. That I was so happy.
Aaron
I was like, I'm so happy for
Ian
you. That I had no idea what's going on. And I was like, who knows? But I I missed it. I didn't chime in.
Aaron
Yeah. So there's just this debate on Twitter about should you learn Git in college, or is it like a failing of universities that they don't teach you get in school? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't care. Why does anybody Why why does anybody care?
Yeah. And so I just felt a little, like, exhausted by that. And then, you know, it's just like, what are we what are we doing here? I feel like we do this every every month, maybe. Yeah.
Every week, probably. So part of it was that, and I just felt like, you know, I think I need to just mute more people. I think I need
Ian
on you, man.
Aaron
I know.
Ian
The last couple of weeks I've been on the line.
Aaron
I know. I know. I know.
Ian
I just feel part of me
Aaron
feels like part of me feels like I I need to keep some of the people unmuted so that I know what's going on, but that's just like, that's a lie. I don't need to know what's going on. I need to focus on my own things. I don't care. I don't care what some other Twitter person is is saying about Git.
Like, I it doesn't make my life any better, and it doesn't make my work any better.
Ian
It's all bad.
Aaron
It's all bad.
Ian
It's all bad.
Aaron
I just feel like I need to know for some reason, but I don't need to know. Addiction.
Ian
I know.
Aaron
But if you don't addiction. I don't need to know.
Ian
The one thing I have talked obviously on there and is my disgust with the for you tab.
Aaron
I love the
Ian
for you tab. I I I love the idea of the for you tab. Okay? But because the ideal use case here's the real trick with social media. Right?
Is like the ideal use case is you just publish. Yeah. Right. Cause that has benefits to you in different ways. Potentially you publish Mhmm.
And then but your consumption is minimal and focused on specific types of things and upsides. Like, I love when I find out about a new useful package or I love when Mhmm. Taylor tells us something awesome about that's coming in Laravel. Like, I don't wanna miss those things. Right.
And I'd like having access to those things and having them right away when they come out. Great. But, obviously, just scrolling through there and seeing all the shit is horrible. Right? And so they're making you sad.
Aaron
Making me sad.
Ian
Better than you. Everybody's farther along than you. Like, it's all that stuff. That's all the stuff people problems people have social. But it's like, that's where the for you tab.
Obviously, their motivation is not to give you that in the for you tab. Right? They're not trying to be like, boy, let's pick out the 10 things Ian really shouldn't miss and give him those so that he's satisfied with that. Instead, you just get a bunch of crazy shit and stuff that's gonna make you mad or just bizarre stuff. And Yep.
That's very frustrating. And it's like, why can't you
Aaron
get It's very frustrating.
Ian
It's very frustrating. Publish. I wanna publish and share things and whatever, and that's all good. Got you. You got Yeah.
I think you're right. Have to, but I sort of like didn't have to.
Aaron
You have to.
Ian
That's my life. Like to, but that's like the balance, but none of them none of them are motivated by that. It's like Elon's like, okay, well, we'll charge you for Twitter now. Great. I pay for Twitter.
I still don't get a a for you. That's just the shit I want. It's a bunch of yes. That's, like, designed to, like, make me click things or be mad or whatever it is. And it's like
Aaron
I know. My my end game my end game is to log off for sure. That is my end game.
Ian
I brought you around. You're all the way here.
Aaron
That is my end game. I'm going I'm going to log off. The the problem is I just can't do it yet.
Ian
Well, it's like, I do think there is this they we're just not capable of this because we're too freaking gone and addicted. But, like She
Aaron
plugged in.
Ian
But it's like you all we care about is the publishing. There are people out there who just publish. Right?
Aaron
Like, they just publish just publishes.
Ian
He's not there reading every reply or getting in the streets
Aaron
on whatever with all the other pigs. No.
Ian
JavaScript stuff is going on. Alright. No. He these guys
Aaron
are the opposite people doing well. Library, research and changing the world, and he just has some RSS feed that publishes. Meanwhile, I'm down here in the muck and the mire Yes. Just fighting with the other dorks.
Ian
What am
Aaron
I doing?
Ian
Distracted from what the thing you should be doing. What how many, like even if it's minimal. Like, there's 5 videos didn't get done last week because of whatever Easily. The distraction slash
Aaron
Easily.
Ian
Getting back into the zone after you've been distracted and all that stuff. Yeah. It's all bad, man. It's all bad.
Aaron
And then bad. But it's so good. Like, it it's I owe I owe Twitter so much. You know?
Ian
Yeah. I don't owe Twitter anything, to be honest with you. But still.
Aaron
But I do.
Ian
It's something. Yeah. You do owe it something. I guess. I do.
I do it
Aaron
a lot. So I think you heard that strategy. Don't I? Don't I?
Ian
I don't know, man. You owe YouTube something for sure.
Aaron
I owe YouTube something for sure. So you can't
Ian
Twitter something, but I
Aaron
owe Twitter a lot. Let's go all the way all the way back to to my first Laricon online where Ian Landsman is picking picking out speakers. Right?
Ian
It's true.
Aaron
Ian Landsman picks Aaron as a speaker because I had already demonstrated some amount of being good on camera, which came from I started, like, sharing what I was working on on Sidecar on Twitter, and then Frakes saw it on Twitter and invited me to come on Blaire Vell Worldwide, and then I'm on Blairecon online. And then I'm off to the races, baby.
Ian
There you go. It's true.
Aaron
I just don't know. I just I don't know the I don't know the other way. Like, what's the alternative? Blah.
Ian
What is that Is what's true in the past, deterministic of the future? Right? Like, when you were nobody and nobody knew Right? Okay. Like, you gotta be in there.
Aaron
Does not indicate future performance.
Ian
Possible. Right? Like, does Twitter going to guarantee you that you get to that next level? I don't know if that's true. Now
Aaron
It's not gonna guarantee anything. No. Does it increase the odds?
Ian
Help. I I do. It probably does because you're so selling to the everybody. This is where I do feel like people are starting to realize that Twitter's dying. Right?
But it's like Yeah. Just our section has to die. Yeah. Right? But but the devs are still on there and whatever.
I mean, even our our world's being infected. It's like there's less of the Laravel people in some ways. I feel like Less of the happiness. Maybe it's just the algo. I don't know.
There's more of the, like, negativity creeping into our happy corner of Twitter.
Aaron
But It's because we're trying to make make these bridges to other communities. We need to build walls, not bridges. What are we doing?
Ian
So Come on, mate. Or maybe there's other ways to build bridges. But, anyway so I don't know. It's just like you're selling to such a specific group, and that group is still heavily invested in Twitter. Yeah.
Yeah. That is something. But, again, even there, it's like the algo of YouTube does way more for you than the algo of Twitter does, I would think.
Aaron
Maybe. I don't know. Maybe I'm not as skilled or as practiced at YouTube, but I can get a video on YouTube. So my my bar of, like, wow, that was really good, is if I get more views than I have subscribers or followers. That's always my bar.
I wanna do over a 100%.
Ian
Right. That makes sense.
Aaron
Can do that with relative frequency, not like foolproof, but relative frequency on Twitter. I can't do that as reliably on YouTube, and I think maybe it's a skill issue or I just I haven't found the right formula or something. But, yeah, I, like, I feel like Twitter, it's easier to get my stuff out there, but, of course, the value is lower. I mean, people read a tweet. Like, what does that even what does that even
Ian
mean?
Aaron
They watch a video. I have a pretty good sense that they've watched some part of the video, so I don't know. But I do I do agree for the first time ever. You all write it write it in your journals. Not not agree for the first time with you.
Agree for the first time ever that I think Twitter is on is on the decline. I really do. I think I will hold on until the bitter end.
Ian
Sure.
Aaron
I will go down with the ship, and I will arrange the deck chairs along the way. But I think I think the end is nigh. Unless there's, like, unless there's a big, hey, guys. We effed up. Let's change a bunch of stuff, and we're gonna get rid of the porn bots, and we're gonna make everything, like, stable again, and the API is better now.
Like, I just don't see that happening, though.
Ian
I don't see it happening. It's, like, not the right guy heading the ship for that kind of reaction. Maybe he gets bored of it and puts somebody in charge who
Aaron
is capable of that. Yeah.
Ian
So there's,
Aaron
like CEO, but I think she's, you know, I think I don't know if she's been given power. Like Right.
Ian
That's the thing. Like, he's there all the time. Like, obviously, like, literally on the platform making propaganda.
Aaron
And his experience on the platform is so different than the average user, and that's what is causing all the problems.
Ian
And it's like he gets credit
Aaron
100,000,000 followers. So, yeah, your experience sucks. I don't yeah. I believe that.
Ian
And it's like, what he's done with, like, SpaceX, people always point to that. I'm like, it's a whole sort of different thing. He's kind of had to be more hands off to begin with, and he could just come out and occasionally say something about a rocket and he feels like that's great, but he's not like in the streets there making literal decisions, not in the way Did
Aaron
you read the book? Did you read his biography? Dude, you gotta read
Ian
the book. Should I read it?
Aaron
You should read it. It's so good.
Ian
Do it. Is it good?
Aaron
I know. I know. Hey, you came around on DHH. Your DHH's biggest fan now. So you it could happen.
It could happen for you. The book. The book is extremely good. It, it it makes him it doesn't cover his faults, but it does make him more of a sympathetic character. You you almost finished the book and you feel, like, bad for him.
Ian
But the book is pre kind of him totally losing his mind too, I think, isn't it? It's like 10 years old, isn't
Aaron
it? It ends pretty close to him losing his mind. The Twitter acquisition is in there. Yeah.
Ian
Oh, oh, okay. So it's newer than I thought. Alright.
Aaron
Yeah. It's it's very good. It's I am always
Ian
looking for reading material now that I do all this walking and stuff. It's like, I need audio and material.
Aaron
Morning guys. Gotta bring it back to the morning.
Ian
You got this. Gotta do it. I have all this extra time.
Aaron
When do you do this walking, Ian? Tell us. When do you take your walk? So I'm walking in the morning. Yeah.
Ian
Anyway, where are we?
Aaron
So so that and Twitter's a little slow. Twitter sucks. 4 kids are just like it's a lot of kids. A lot of young kids.
Ian
They don't stop. It keeps going. It's like you think you get to that early phase, and it's like, oh, they're not tiny, tiny, and we're on to the next phase. But then there's just a phase and a phase. It just keeps going.
Aaron
It just keeps phases. Phases one after the other.
Ian
Yeah. One of our big big things part of my existential crisis currently, and my wife says, like, you start to get to this phase, like, okay, the kids are getting bigger. What do we wanna do with ourselves? What do we wanna do with ourselves in the future?
Aaron
Like Yeah.
Ian
But then it's like, you start to sort of think that way, but it's the future's not actually here because like our youngest is 11. So like that's still a long time. I mean, you know, it's gonna go fast, but at the same time, it's still 7 years.
Aaron
7 years.
Ian
To college or whatever. Like so you can't just get all the way into, like, okay. What are we doing? We're, like, we we're kid free, and we're on to the next thing. Like, that's it's still a ways.
So Mhmm. Yeah. It's tricky. You gotta find that balance. The 4 kids is hard.
The new job's hard. 4 kids all that stuff.
Aaron
Layoff, job slash business that we haven't we have money, but I haven't taken any money out of it yet.
Ian
Oh.
Aaron
New house.
Ian
New house. Your real estate empire.
Aaron
Real estate empire. Twitter sucks, and I'm 35. So all of those things conspire. They all conspire together just to make like, I'll be curious. Here's a question, Ian.
As the elder statesman on the pod, What so far has been your toughest decade or sub decade, 5 years?
Ian
I would definitely say thirties. Thirties is clearly my toughest decade. Good. Yeah. I think the thirties like, I had to help my, like, kinda dizziness, health stuff I've talked about before.
That was, like, almost all of my thirties. So that was like and then that was also when we're having kids and Mhmm. Babies and businesses, you know, start I started the business in my twenties, but late twenties, but it was, like, you know, getting rolling in the thirties and, like yeah. The thirties Sucks. I was happy
Aaron
to Thirties are the worst.
Ian
Yeah. I was very
Aaron
happy to be
Ian
in the thirties. Forties have definitely been better than the thirties, clearly. It's
Aaron
the worst. So here's the here's the problem. It's crunch time for everything.
Ian
Yeah. It is. It really is.
Aaron
It's family crunch time. It's career crunch time. It's money crunch time. It's your health starts to, like
Ian
You start to realize you're human. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
It's the worst. Yeah.
Aaron
Who would ever wanna be 30? Not me.
Ian
This is where I tell people I I it's always I've I I I simultaneously say it's, like, give my kids this this advice and don't because I see both sides of it. But, like, having children, like, in your early twenties just does have a lot of it. Just just like sure it does. You know? But I'm, like, 40 2, you're
Aaron
like, oh,
Ian
kids are out, and, like, kids are old when they're you're in your thirties instead of being you're carrying kids in your thirties and all that stuff. It really is a huge obviously, it makes other things harder in starting your career and where but you also have more energy, which
Aaron
goes on. Yeah. So much
Ian
more energy. Thirties. You're already, like, getting a little iffy on energy. PM is
Aaron
so sleepy. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy.
Ian
Carrying things and heavy people and squirmy people.
Aaron
So I just carry things. I carry things all the time. Yes.
Ian
And all that stuff. Like, there's a lot to that. Being on the ground playing. Let's play. That means we gotta get down on the ground and play with things on the ground.
Aaron
Only have so many get down on the grounds left on these knees. You know?
Ian
Yeah. So that's the you're halfway through.
Aaron
You're halfway through. Halfway through. 5 years and in 5 years, I'll be rich, carefree, easygoing, and in perfect health. I just gotta live through the thirties so I can make it to the glorious, glorious forties.
Ian
I do think you have to you have to be a little careful here coming up, I'd say, because you the try hard phases can only last so long. You know? And it's like
Aaron
Oh, yeah.
Ian
Like, queuing up another course right behind this course. Like, okay. Maybe you're gonna get away with that, but I feel like you're gonna have to, like, maybe spread it a little later after that just to give you some little down period. Or else it takes its own it takes its own down period whether you want to or not.
Aaron
Right.
Ian
And then that's that's always a problem because you
Aaron
you do that. Would I have to change to the try smart try smart studios instead of try hard studios because we're all over now try smart studios.
Ian
Yeah. We've we've converted. But
Aaron
Man. No. I think you're right. I I do feel like, I do feel like this course is putting a lot of pressure. I don't think anyone is putting pressure on me.
I think I'm putting pressure on myself, but it's like Yeah. I feel I feel a lot of pressure trying to get this thing done. Not only, like, we do have, like, duties and responsibilities to fulfill, but I wanna make some money, man. That's
Ian
always nice. I mean, that would be really great. That's always nice when you make the money.
Aaron
Love to make some money. So just tired. You know? Just real real tired.
Ian
Yeah. I'm in a similar phase myself, I would say. But, you know, you gotta persevere. You gotta just take care of yourself. It's hard.
Aaron
It's hard.
Ian
Life knows
Aaron
your problems. Answers. Yeah.
Ian
I know.
Aaron
It's crazy. You know those things that are always like, hey. If you'd bought Apple in 1980, if you'd put a nickel in, you'd be a billionaire. Are there any of those that we could get in on now? Like, how do you how do you see those coming from far away?
I would love to know that. Because in hindsight, everybody's like, oh, shoot. That's obvious. You should have bought Apple in the eighties. I'm like, well
Ian
I know.
Aaron
Come on. Give me give me throw me a bow now.
Ian
Yeah. It's hard not to have regret on those things when you were like, I owned Apple 24 years ago or whatever. You know? It's like, oh, why didn't I hold my $7,000 out? I sold it for I bought it for, like, the 2 and sold it for 7, and I was like, I'm the king of the world.
Yeah. This is the greatest. I'm printing money. Unbelievable. And now who knows?
It'd probably worth whatever. $2,000,000 or whatever it'd be worth And Whatever it'd be worth. It's like, man, shoulda held on.
Aaron
Yeah. I can't I can't dwell I can't dwell on missing coins, so we gotta move on we gotta move on to another topic. What's what's next up? Or where where do you wanna go?
Ian
You are taught you posted on Twitter about Oh, no. You wanted recommendations for long form YouTube videos and lectures and things, and there was I mean, you got tons of feedback. There's one that went over your father account for sure. Yep.
Aaron
For sure.
Ian
So what what are you up to is my first question.
Aaron
No. No. No. You know oh, you'll never reveal what I'm up
Ian
to. Come on.
Aaron
I'm not up to anything.
Ian
Other than the same place.
Aaron
This is a safe space. Nobody's listening. So here's here's what I'm up to. Looking to diversify my knowledge a little bit.
Ian
Okay.
Aaron
Bought some new books. Bought some books on, landscape design and and gardening in Texas, bought some books on internals of databases. So those will all arrive in 1 in 1 package, confusing, you know, whoever's packing that box for sure. So looked into those, and I also realized, like, I do a lot of, like, I wish there were more podcasts, first of all, which is I'm the only person to have said that. I wish there were more podcasts.
But I started to think, like, I I do I want some of these, like you know, those YouTube videos that you come across every now and then, and it's like a fixed camera from 40 feet away on some guy and, like, you can barely make it out, but the stuff he's saying is just like, holy crap. That just blew my mind. Everybody's got it seems like everybody's got that video somewhere.
Ian
Guy. Yeah.
Aaron
Yeah. Everybody's got their, like, secret oh, yeah. Of course, you gotta see this. It's got 8 views, and I'm I'm 7 of them. And you're like, why didn't you tell anyone about this?
And so, you know, I I put that prompt out there for the for the people, and I was like, hey. I want your, like, I want your secret videos, basically. And so the it was either Saturday or Sunday. I was, you know, trying to clean up the garage again to get everything in order, and I put one of these videos on, like, one of these lectures and just listened to it. And it was awesome.
It was so great. It was, like, in place of a podcast. It was Good. One was, I think Stefan Zweifel sent me one about writing, writing from, like, University of Chicago, and it was incredibly good. And then somebody else sent one about, I don't know, some woo woo spirituality thing, and it was, like, pretty good.
And so, yeah, I'm gonna start I'm gonna make a YouTube playlist out of all of these, so that I can, like, combine them all and share with the people, like, hey. Here's the final result set. And then I'm just gonna start I'm gonna start working through them, with the
Ian
goal of,
Aaron
like interesting. Yeah. With the goal of, not like, basically, just kind of background information processing. Like, I just wanna learn new stuff, but I wanna do it when I would otherwise be wasting time. And I think part of this comes from maybe my Twitter, my Twitter blues over the weekend.
I was like, I gotta do something else.
Ian
Like Yeah.
Aaron
Yeah. I need a different outlet.
Ian
So that's that's the grand thing. You're bored isn't
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
Optimal necessarily. I like that. You're gonna make a playlist of the ones you find best or whatever? So That'd be cool.
Aaron
I think I will actually, I think I'll make a playlist of all of the ones that were recommended. And as I watch them, I'll move them to a playlist of ones that I've watched. And I think I will, like, pull it down and put it on put it on my personal site, And so I'll have all the ones that I've watched and, like, my thoughts on it and stuff like that. So I think it would be a fun be a fun repository for for people to look at, I think.
Ian
Yeah. I like that idea. I agree. I've been in the so I go through the podcast phases of, like, I'm overwhelmed. I'm subscribed to too many.
I can't even get through them because I don't listen to them. And then, like, now with my morning walks, I have lots of time, and I'm like, oh, shit. I just listened to that podcast. Now I don't have another one of these for a week. I'm all through all the other ones.
I got another
Aaron
one of these. Tweet at Daniel Coborn and Jordan Gall the in the past week, like, about their podcast. Yeah.
Ian
Me some stuff. Yes. So, so yeah. So, well, I do also similar. I haven't done the YouTube angle, though.
Like, I saw I usually have audiobooks or different things like that that I fill in the gaps with. But, the YouTube lecture is kinda interesting idea too because it's like something that's done and then you learned it or you were entertained or whatever versus, like, the podcast does have, like, that ongoing element, which, you know, is good, but also sometimes it's like, it's like this never ending thing where it's like, oh, yeah. Like, I heard this lecture and it was cool. And now I know something I didn't know before, and that's it. Bite sized kind of thing.
Does you I never use the YouTube music app. Does it integrate it? I never use that. Yeah. I was wondering if it, like, does something like that.
Aaron
I do I do have YouTube premium, so you can put the video on and then lock it, and then and the video audio, the audio of the video will keep playing.
Ian
So,
Aaron
that's that's how I do it.
Ian
Lock it. What's that? What's lock it mean?
Aaron
Lock your phone.
Ian
Oh, I see what you're saying. She can yeah. Yeah. You can, like, turn
Aaron
it on, lock it, put it in your pocket, go about your business, and the audio will keep playing, which is awesome.
Ian
Yep. I do love that. Didn't realize that was a premium only feature.
Aaron
I think it is. Mhmm. Yeah. I think I think that's actually what kicked me over the edge to go premium was I wanted to, like, listen. This is a long time ago.
I wanted to listen to stuff on YouTube. I kept having to leave my phone on like an idiot, and so I just finally paid for it.
Ian
So I'm on I've I've switched to the ARC browser and this is related to this. And I do I actually really like it, But the only thing, the best thing about it is that it's got a good implementation of the multiple, like profiles and like Okay. Workspaces. I don't forget what they called them. Basically, I have like a work section of tabs and profile and like, not work.
Right. And so every once in a while now, so basically on my personal, I'm logged into like, it's kind of weird. It's reversed. But anyway, my business YouTube, my business email account is like the, the, my real YouTube that I pay for and I subscribe to stuff personally. And, but sometimes I end up on YouTube in my personal tab.
Oh, like whatever I open a link or whatever. And then there's ads. And the ads are I was like, I can't believe
Aaron
How do
Ian
you guys live like this? People are living like this. It's the worst. Unbearable. It's
Aaron
It's unbearable. It's unbearable. Somebody commented
Ian
them now. It's like there's 2 or 3 of them, and it's like, no. You gotta wait to 30 seconds. I'm like, this is horrible.
Aaron
Horrible. Somebody commented on one of my, SQLite interviews and said the ads were unbearable, and I replied with, like, I don't know what you want me to do about that. Like Yeah. That's the I I can't what am I supposed to do? That's not
Ian
my fault. You can't control that one. Like, buy premium.
Aaron
Buy premium. I know I know that it's, like, whatever, $16 a month to watch YouTube, which is crazy, but the ads, it's so frustrating.
Ian
Can we just go back to this for one second? Elon
Aaron
Let's go.
Ian
Obviously, literally lies every time he talks. But, like, the one Elon lies every time he talks. It's really unbearable. But and I never mute anybody, but I actually had to mute or block Elon or whatever. I think I muted Elon too.
Because I just couldn't take anymore. But what he lied to us about that's following me most is that we're gonna pay for it, and then we're not gonna have to watch ads. But now I pay for it, and I still get ads. Mhmm. It's very infuriating, and I get the same stupid ad every time.
I gotta see Sam Parr for the millionth time telling me that being entrepreneur is lonely and enjoy the Hamilton club. Like, I can't I don't wanna join the Hamilton club. Club. Like, just let Hampton. Hamptons?
I don't wanna join the Hampton's club. I don't wanna join any bit.
Aaron
Join the Hamilton Club.
Ian
To be. It's the only ad I get, and I'm sick of it. Amazing. Please stop.
Aaron
I do I do use an ad blocker on, and I only use Twitter on the desktop. I
Ian
use blocker.
Aaron
I use Twitter on the web, so it's I don't really care that much. Got a Hamilton club.
Ian
Ad blocker, but why do maybe I don't see them on the maybe I don't see them. Yeah. I'm only seeing them mobile, I guess.
Aaron
Mobile. Yeah. Anyway. Anyway. Yeah.
Alright. Let's look at
Ian
this one to your give us the update. So how many bit you claimed last week an outrageous claim.
Aaron
Outrageous.
Ian
That you were gonna hit 50 videos or something like that. Not even close. Didn't even get close. I didn't think that would be possible. No.
Seems impossible.
Aaron
I think I I'm I'm proud of how many I did, and I think I did probably 25, maybe.
Ian
That's a very nice
Aaron
A lot
Ian
of it is. It's half
Aaron
of, you know, half of what I wanted, but it's a lot of videos. So I feel good about that. I feel like the vibes are right. The momentum is there. I'm into the easier section for me because it's the section about, like, just basically SQL.
Right. Like, what's the indexes and then we do Yeah. Yeah. Then we're gonna do, like, CTEs and window functions and stuff like that. And that part is just like, man, it's pretty easy for me.
So the the pace is increasing, I would say. Yeah. Lots of, lots of, you know, mental turmoil around that too. You it's like, I can't start I can't start until I'm, like, in the zone, but I just have it it could be it could be 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock before I start recording. And then, of course, I feel like, well, I just wasted the whole day,
Ian
you
Aaron
know, just wallowing in self doubt. And now I gotta record a 1000000 videos before I go home. And so it's you know, it's just it's a lot, but we're getting there. And this is this is the first one. This is the first course I've done full time solo, like, not with a w two backstop, and I think that's adding a little bit of pressure as well.
Yeah. But it's good. I've seen some of the edits Steve has done, and it's it's the best like, it's the best work I've ever done. And so Oh. It's it's just just a matter of, like, doing it, I think, is the hard part.
Ian
Yeah. It's always it's funny because this was my other question I had on the docket, which was, like, about organizing your time and, like Mhmm. I was thinking about, like, you have to get through these times where you, like, have a blocker, but it sounds like you're still working on that yourself. We're in the same spot there too. Like Yeah.
Like, I'm trying to break things down maybe into smaller chunks, and then sometimes people put things on their calendar, like, just like I'm gonna work on this thing, you know, just for yourself, like, not after the appointment. I don't know if you have any tricks you're using there, but it sounds like
Aaron
So far so far, the one thing that I have discovered, which I think is interesting, is, if I start, like, this past week, I one morning, I was having trouble starting, like, working on the course, and so I recorded a separate YouTube video just about Yeah. Who knows what, about Laravel or something. Mhmm. And then after that, I felt like, ah, yes. I can do this.
Yeah. Let's get started. Another morning, I did, like, a 2 hour livestream that was so fun. And then after that, I was like, great. Let's get started.
And so I think, you know, because otherwise otherwise, I sit here in the mornings and just think, oh, shoot. You gotta start, man. And then it just builds up and up and up and up. And then finally, it, like, you know, the the wave crests over me, and
Ian
I'm like,
Aaron
gotta start. Otherwise, I'm gonna
Ian
lose my house. So, yeah, there's
Aaron
some of, like, what is
Ian
what's the on ramp
Aaron
for the day? And I think, weirdly, Steve said that this is insane. Like, making a video is a great way to warm up to make other videos.
Ian
That's interesting.
Aaron
And yeah. So I think I think that's helpful. I think, I think in the future, I'm gonna try to structure my day more like I come in and I do a live stream and then, you know, do that for an hour, hour and a half, and then do other stuff after that. Because I really enjoy live streaming, when I'm not on Twitch. I don't like Twitch.
I don't like the culture of Twitch. Mhmm. So that's kind of the things I've discovered so far, but, yeah, it's 90% mental for sure.
Ian
There is well, 2 things there. One is that that yeah. There definitely is. I've been trying to do that more of, like, can I break something down into, like, a ridiculously small part? Right.
Because it's like, if you could just get that little small part done, then it's like, oh, yeah. I did the small part and, like, I could do the next small part as opposed to, like like, in the software stuff, everything's big typically or feels big. It's like, well, build build this huge new feature that touches a bunch of stuff. We're, like, we're working on the new website, you know, not a full new website, but, like, updating the HubSpot website with some stuff. And it's, like, kind of a you know, it's not the full rebuild, but it's still a big project.
There's just something that to be written. That always is like a blocker for me is like writing stuff. So, like, yeah, can we break it down? It's like, well, I'll just write the outline for this page and, like, okay, then you can get get going in there. I've also had, like, a lot of distractions with, like, people graduating and all this stuff.
So, personally, I've got a little disconnected more so than normal. But but, yeah, I yeah. Stuff like that. I know that you did the streaming. Like, so what's up with the I don't think I've ever seen you do a stream before.
I know you have streamed before, but, like I streamed a little bit.
Aaron
A long time ago. When I was first getting into video work, I did some streaming, and I think the I think, like, the culture of Twitch kinda put me off of streaming because it's very it's very loud and energetic and a little bit skewed towards gamers. And there's lots of, like, secrets, like, chivalis that I don't know. So people will put stuff in chat, and I'm like, I y'all, I gotta be honest. I have no idea what you're talking about.
Yeah. And then there's the whole, like, somebody subscribes, and you gotta shout them out and be like, oh, wow. Thanks for the $3. Crazy. Thanks for the
Ian
$3 I'm gonna get out of that. Like, this is changing
Aaron
my life. I can't believe it. And I'm just like, I don't that's just not that's just not me. That's not my vibe. I'm not, like, the, like, the off the wall kinda guy.
Ian
And so
Aaron
I and it was just a lot of work. Streaming was a lot of work, and it yielded very little return, and I felt a little bit, disingenuous the whole time.
Ian
A little dirty.
Aaron
A little dirty. And so I put it down, and then I was like, wait. I've seen some people starting to stream, video on Twitter. I thought, that's a lot more my speed. And so I did.
I hooked up, I think I it's Restream now. So I'm on Twitter and YouTube and LinkedIn hysterically.
Ian
Yeah. Might as well. We gotta make we gotta get over there. I know. I know.
Somehow, someway.
Aaron
And so I did that, and it was just a lot more fun. It's just so I really enjoy it. So yeah, I like I like streaming. I like the the live aspect. I like the pressure.
I I do enjoy, like, the entertainment aspect of it, but I just I can't put myself into that Twitch mold very well.
Ian
Well, you gotta be I think Twitch gotta be over there throwing punches or be in a bikini or, like, you have to have the you need some of that there's the juice required that people want to be over there, or at least that's the perception I have. Yes. So, yeah, I think this other I like this LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube.
Aaron
Yeah. I it feels a little probably for you. This is not meant to be it's not meant to be pejorative. It feels a little more grown up. Right?
It feels a little more like
Ian
fair.
Aaron
Yeah. I'm I'm in my mid thirties. I'm not gonna come over on Twitch and make dick jokes all day. It's like, I just that's just not what I want to do. There's nothing wrong
Ian
about it.
Aaron
I just don't wanna do that.
Ian
Your stream didn't work for me, though. I tried to tune in. That didn't work. Then I missed then I missed it. Then I didn't catch that.
Aaron
I know. So I don't know. So here's the problem. I don't know if that is a restream issue or if that is a Twitter issue.
Ian
This is always the scary part about that. Yeah. It's like the when you use these services that are that in between, like, if you're just on YouTube, it would work. Right? You'd know it was working.
But now it's
Aaron
like, oh, I'll just say directly directly to Twitter, and it was fine.
Ian
Right. Yeah.
Aaron
But that doesn't mean anything. They may they may have, you know, put some more servers in a truck somewhere, and they're like, ah, we don't need these servers anymore. And so Twitter it could be Twitter day to day. I just have no idea. So Yeah.
I'll try I'll try restream again. And if Twitter if the stream still sucks, then I may just drop that out and try to multi stream myself.
Ian
Yeah. I think people do like the streaming. I know, like, Brandon Sanderson, who I follow fairly closely. It was that was my recommendation to you. I'm in YouTube long form, but he he's built up his social media following a ton, and a big part of it has been he does live streams.
And with somebody like that
Aaron
What is he live stream?
Ian
So it's very interesting. So, like, I don't know if we like, for people like us who are already putting themselves out there, maybe it's not as effective. Well, maybe it is. Because, like, you know, he's an author and he goes away and he writes a book and he comes back. Right?
In in the past, It's like, how do you even talk? His thing with it was in the past, how you talk to authors was you'd go to conferences or, you know, these book fairs or whatever, and she would be there and he'd be on panel and answer questions and interact with the fans. Right. And then basically, you know, like COVID happened and he just couldn't do that anymore. And then also he just got kind of so big that it's not really practical for him to like go and, like, he's, you know, the book signing where somebody maybe in the past could say a couple words to him.
Like, you know, there's 10,000 people that wanna sign up. Right. And he can only sign 2,000 in a day and that's if he does it for 8 hours straight or whatever. And so like, it just becomes impractical. There's a guy gonna live stream.
So he has got like a little setup. He's got some people helping him obviously, and he like answers questions from people. He, like, takes questions over the stream and answers them. He does some other stuff too, but those are the ones I think that really popped off initially. It's like, oh, yeah.
We can interact with Sanderson. And, like, also, obviously, you're getting a lot of the same questions. Now he can answer them all once. He has
Aaron
So is it mostly QA? It's not like watching him work or
Ian
No. You don't watch him work. What he does, he kinda multitasks. Like, so he sells a lot of signed books that he publishes himself, like leather bound books that are more expensive than the one you get in the bookstore. And so like he, how that works, because, his scale is he signs the, like the printer will print this big section of pages.
It's like 16 pages that they end up slicing, but it's before they slice it and it's folded together. And he signs a huge pile of those, and he has to sign 50,000 of them. So he's signing those, which he has to sit there and sign anyway. So while he's sitting there and signing those, he's Yep. Boots up the stream and he's, like, taking questions and he has somebody else there.
He's kinda like hanging out with whatever.
Aaron
So Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.
Ian
Yeah. So it's very fascinating, and to see him grow his following and everything like that. And now obviously become this big thing where because now he has this direct connection, which most authors don't have
Aaron
Right.
Ian
He launched the biggest Kickstarter in history for, like, $45,000,000 he got on it or whatever from What? His leather bound book, the last big leather bound book he did. Yeah. So in the whole publishing industry,
Aaron
he kinda shipped
Ian
by this. $1,000,000. Yeah. So he has a warehouse. He has I mean, he has, like, a whole company.
He's not like most authors are just the author, and they outsource everything to the publisher. But he's now his own little empire here. And yeah. I should write a book.
Aaron
I could make $45,000,000.
Ian
I don't know. Maybe there's I mean, I think Kickstarter would kinda be interesting for you for one of your courses potentially. Like, you have backers from companies, but you could maybe come up with one that where the people backed you or whatever. For sure.
Aaron
We will absolutely do that. Something totally esoteric where no company is gonna pay for it. People would enjoy it. Yes.
Ian
I think you can come up with something like that. But, anyway, so yeah. So you can watch some of his he does other things. Now he does a podcast, a videos like we do. So he does he does do other stuff, but that is never about, like, the books.
Like, the book streams are, like, spoiler streams where he'll answer your spoiler questions on other books, and some of them are not spoiler streams and whatever.
Aaron
I need to I need to study him because I think I'm, I I find more I find more inspiration and value from content creators outside of the tech Yeah. Sphere. Same. Like, I just I I one, I feel like people in the tech sphere are just kinda, like, copying each other and everybody's trying to be the same. But then you, you know, you get a Brandon Sanderson.
He's doing something interesting. The Perkins builder brothers, this YouTube channel that I follow, they don't follow any of the YouTube, like, lore or strategy, and they've almost got a 1000000 subscribers just by, like, being likable and building houses. And I just find that so much more interesting. So trying to I'm trying to study far and wide instead of just, like, how can I copy, you know
Ian
The primogen or
Aaron
Yeah? Exactly. How can I copy the primogen? How can I be a worse version of him? Like, I don't think that's a good strategy.
Ian
Well, there's a couple of fascinating things. First, I just always love studying other people's businesses, and Sanderson shares a lot of the business aspect. And it's like, it's weird because of the other authors, like the business aspect is just we sign a contract with a publisher and we never think about business ever again. Whereas he like runs a whole company and he has a strategy and he's like so I always geek out just on business stuff outside of, again, like, tech, like, even if it's a restaurant or whatever. Like okay.
So that's just interesting. But then it all like, along what you're saying, it's interesting to see him take something that is, like, more of a techie thing and apply it to a different industry. It's like in the old days, it's like you would travel to Japan and find some cool shit into Japan and just all you did is bring it back over here. Like, you didn't invent it. You didn't do it, but you figured out that people over here where I am don't know about this thing from over there and you bring it over.
And now everybody loves your new type of food or whatever. Cause you introduced them to it. And it's like that same kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. It's like, okay.
Authors aren't doing big streams and trying to build up big social media audiences necessarily and stuff. And so he did that and it's like, wow, that's really cool. I mean, he he has a huge advantage. He was already one of the best selling authors, so not exactly starting from nothing doing it. But still, he's like Reinventing stuff.
Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron
Yeah. So here's here's something I've been here's something that I will do once the course is over that is totally outside of, you know, tech content creators. I think, I think it's gonna be a a 1 hour show on Fridays, like a variety hour. It's gonna be we're gonna do a live we're gonna do a live show from from here, from the studio.
Ian
Okay.
Aaron
I've got a couple of different, I've got a couple of different bits or segments that I'm gonna do.
Ian
I love segments. I wish we had
Aaron
Love a segment. Yeah. The segments are gonna have names. They're gonna have graphic teasers at the beginning. So we can just, like we can go into business time, and it's gonna be, you know, Flight of the Concorde singing business time or whatever.
Ian
Right.
Aaron
I can't believe I can't or I can believe it's not diet Coke. We're, you know, we're gonna have a whole segment on that. I'm just, like, I'm gonna do a variety show, and I'm I'm looking at, like, I'm watching a lot of, old Conan episodes, and they're just so good. Old Stephen Colbert episodes, stuff like that. And trying to think, what could I like, what are the different bits or segments that I and how can I produce a live show on different, you know, on different sets here in the apartment all by myself?
Ian
That would talk. You got the other room out there. So you got
Aaron
the other room. Nobody sees the other room. We gotta go out in the other room.
Ian
You could turn the camera around and have something on the other side. You can be
Aaron
double Exactly.
Ian
You would think get 3, 4 locations in there if you
Aaron
I know.
Ian
Turn it out.
Aaron
So I got that capture card. I got a a 4 k capture card that has 4 inputs, so I can run 4 HDMIs into this capture card, and then it connects over Thunderbolt. And so I'm gonna set up, you know, a couple different cameras. I have porta like, lavalier mics, so I'll wear a mic, you know, walking around the studio. Out.
Yeah. It's gonna be great. It's gonna be totally
Ian
over to, like
Aaron
Yes.
Ian
Randomly have somebody show up and actually appear live or whatever. Yes. I like this idea.
Aaron
If I can just get through this course, then then I'll I'll start to do some of that other other fun stuff.
Ian
I feel this is a whole other issue, though. It's like, I have this problem too where I always have a bunch of other ideas. Yes. And then you, like, start them, you don't finish them, or you actually go down the path, but it's actually distracting you from what you should be working on. And, like, there is a fine line there of like how many ideas you can have, when to allow yourself to be distracted.
It's so hard, especially when all of it's doable in a sense. Like, that almost makes it worse.
Aaron
It's all doable. It is. Yeah. Yeah. This is, it's interesting.
This is the small bets single idea debate. Right. Like, made flesh because but the good thing is, like, the the good thing is for me, one, I like to do many different things. And 2, I think that is viable with our business model. Because Yeah.
Let's say let's say that, like, my small bets are, SQLite course, a post Chris course, a screencasting course, a YouTube channel. Those are all my small bets. They all roll up into one business model. Like, they all roll up into one big bet, which is Aaron makes content. That is the bet.
And so Yeah. I can I can talk out of both sides of my mouth depending on who I'm talking? Talking to Matt wincing, I can say, no. It's just one big bet.
Ian
If I'm
Aaron
talking to Daniel Vassallo, I can say, no. It's just a bunch of small bets, and I I just make everybody happy. I just ride that fence all the way.
Ian
Yeah. I I would bring it a little differently for you, but I think there's the media empire Aaron Francis.
Aaron
Right? Empire. Yes.
Ian
Yeah. Love an empire. And, like, a variety show and a podcast and YouTube videos. And these are all part of the media empire of, like, you just have to be out there with some regularity in presumably in ideally different ways. I think really that's not always true, but I think in the case of the internet and how things work on the internet, like it wasn't true of David Letterman necessarily, but I think it probably is true of you that you need to be in different formats and different structures and on all that stuff.
And so that's like the media empire part with adding more stuff there is just your job. And then there's like how you monetize that is where are you going to do a bunch of bets or a few bets or whatever? You have a whole bunch of courses or do you have some day wanna do a SaaS and try to go more all in on one thing or whatever or find some other models there for the the financial bets or or more that
Aaron
part
Ian
of it. You're you're building the platform that lets you then make the bets essentially. Right.
Aaron
So you're saying I'm building the the mini small bets as the top of funnel, and I gotta figure out what the monetization is? Small mini small or one big?
Ian
Yeah. I guess. Like, I feel like just the anything media related is the is is your baseline sort of, that's all part of the one bet. Like kill the media empire is like the big bet. And then from that, how you monetize that might take different forms of small bets or whatever you're starting with the courses.
And that's like, we're gonna see how that goes and then go for that. You might get 2 years in and be like, the other courses pay the bills, but we have to make all these courses all the time, which
Aaron
Right.
Ian
Is its own thing.
Aaron
But I'm almost 40, and I'm not rich yet, so we gotta figure out
Ian
a new strategy. Or, like, I mean, with me, the standard media empire pathway would be, like, somebody else makes the courses like you are the face of the media empire. Yeah. And then you are producing courses where somebody else is the face of them, and then they're being sold through your media empire. Right.
It's the more scalable version probably of what you're doing rather than you always being the base potentially. But it depends how simple they are. If they sell $1,000,000 each course, then who cares, whatever you do
Aaron
a course a
Ian
year and you're good and you do a couple other little
Aaron
things and great. 500 k a year. Yeah.
Ian
Yeah. And you're doing all that. It's not terrible. So no.
Aaron
Yeah. It'll be interesting to see because I think you're correct. Right now, I do provide both the distribution and the material. And I do think both are valuable, but I think the distribution can be more valuable to people who have more money and no distribution.
Ian
Yeah. Yes. For sure. And it's like I don't know. I did that was, again, this is where Twitter gave me something good, and it's so annoying.
Aaron
See? It's so you can't quit it. It It keeps
Ian
you coming back. I re I retweeted this, but, the Justin Khan guy, who I think was the Justin TB guy or whatever back in the day. Right? Like, he he, posted up a meme, I don't know if he created it, of the I got
Aaron
called out I got called out for not correcting you on meme versus meme. Just yeah. My kids are too.
Ian
Like, my daughter's like, it's a meme. Yeah. I'm like, whatever.
Aaron
So alright.
Ian
It's a memo. He posted a memo, and and it's the guy, you know, it's the girlfriend. He's the guy's walking. He looks back at the other girl walking past. It's like that super famous one.
And it's, like, 2nd time founders is the guy, and it's, like, the first product is his girlfriend. Or no. No. What is it? The first product is, how's that going to be
Aaron
so far? Yeah.
Ian
Yeah. No. No. No. No.
Aaron
Power through. Don't look it up.
Ian
Don't look
Aaron
it up. No.
Ian
I gotta look. I gotta look where I put it. No.
Aaron
I'm not. I was enjoying I was enjoying
Ian
it. Oh, no.
Aaron
Not knowing what this meme is. Where did
Ian
I put it? I put it somewhere to have Did
Aaron
you retweet it? Go there. Go to your profile.
Ian
Retweet it. I mean, I I wanna get this right. Because because it was so good. It was, like, so much fun.
Aaron
Making up a meme in hindsight.
Ian
Profile. There's nothing no better radio than this. Let's see.
Aaron
We're both looking stuff up on the Internet. Distracted boyfriend meme. There we go. 2nd time founder. I got her.
Okay. You got it.
Ian
You go. You go. You got it. Exactly. So the girl the the original girlfriend is product.
The guy is 2nd time founder, and he's looking back at distribution. Distribution. That's what you learn. That is so what you learn. It's like, yeah, the product is the fun.
You wanna build the product. It's gonna be so, but then you realize, oh, it doesn't matter. If you have distribution, you could sell anything to anybody. It's so it's so powerful to have that. Yep.
I don't I don't I don't even have that. Like, I don't really have it in the way of, like, I would like it. So, like Right. You can never have too much distribution. You want more
Aaron
distribution. Distribution. Yeah.
Ian
And so, yes, you're totally spot on there. I think, we're spot on, right? That, like, you building a distribution empire is valuable in and of itself and what you pump through the distribution empire might change, or it might not always be you or whatever. Because you can imagine you have 5 people building courses.
Aaron
I can't imagine that. Yes. Easily. Yeah. I think it's an interesting, interesting concept that I'm learning now that I've done it that maybe the easiest or maybe only way to bootstrap a distribution empire is to provide the material yourself for the first while.
Yeah. Like, I don't know that you can get a distribution empire from the get go by just, like, grabbing a bunch of people and telling them what to do. That seems pretty hard to me.
Ian
You definitely can.
Aaron
But Tell me.
Ian
That doesn't mean it's the best way for you to go about it. But then this is how fund like CBS. Right? Like, they hire people to do stuff and, like, whatever. Let's say they need a deal for airwaves.
Like, it's all they they're businessing it, the whole thing.
Aaron
They're doing the whole business thing. They're cutting
Ian
out a bunch of the we know how to do stuff by using money to buy airwave time and buy people to produce things and whatever. But,
Aaron
Money money is crazy, man. New world.
Ian
Us level type of thing. Yes. I think, like, you gotta kinda kick start it yourself. And, obviously, you need to kick start the money train to make sure Gotta
Aaron
kick start the money train.
Ian
Have the money to then because all those other things are gonna take more time. Right? Like, you could just get in there and power through making the course. But if you're gonna hire somebody else to make a course, like, you gotta find that person.
Aaron
Right. The
Ian
first person you hire is gonna suck. You gotta fire them. Then you have another person and, like, whatever. All that stuff that's gonna happen when you start not doing stuff.
Aaron
I feel like this is maybe what Kent c Dodds has done. Like, he he bootstrapped himself into a distribution empire, and now he's got the epic web stuff. And I feel like he's he's bringing people in to do courses under the epic web umbrella. And so he's not he still produces a lot of material, but he's not the only one that does it. But does West Boss do this, or does he still produce all his own material?
Ian
West actually does all his own stuff. I don't know what goes in and can do other stuff. But there's also, like, other things. Right? There's, like, if you end up maybe in all this, you get an idea for an app.
Right? Or maybe it's a mobile
Aaron
app or maybe
Ian
it's a SaaS app or whatever. And now it's just like, as long as it works reasonable with your audience, you don't have to build it. Who cares? You don't you're not nobody's the face of that.
Aaron
Like, you
Ian
pay people
Aaron
to
Ian
go build the app and then the app shows up, and then you're the face of it by being the one selling it. So there's other other models in there too.
Aaron
We need to, we need to sell this podcast to Century like Wes Bosch did.
Ian
Did he sell the podcast to Century?
Aaron
Yes. The whatever show that he he and Scott Talinsky do, it's owned by Wow. By Century Syntax. Yeah. Wow.
Century owns it now. And freaking my first million sold their podcast to HubSpot, and now they just, like, dork around all day.
Ian
But the but the people are still on the show. Right?
Aaron
They're still on the show. Yeah. They just get paid to do it.
Ian
I wonder how long they've committed. Obviously, they're not I don't know. They're gonna do this forever. Right? Like, there's some Right.
Aaron
Yeah. So
Ian
If anybody out there would like to buy a podcast
Aaron
if you're listening and you wanna buy a podcast for a lot of money
Ian
Sure. We would sell that to you.
Aaron
Be awesome.
Ian
We're not above that. We're happy to sell
Aaron
the podcast. No. No. No. Definitely not.
Ian
We're also happy to have advertisers. So if you want to just advertise on podcast without coming up with enough money to buy the podcast,
Aaron
That would be great too.
Ian
As well.
Aaron
Contact us.
Ian
Yeah. Contact us. But, anyway, century yeah. Century. Well, Century's got a deal with Laravel now.
Aaron
I saw
Ian
that. They're out there spending some
Aaron
money. I know. Splashy cashy in the in the PHP world.
Ian
And what are they doing? What are they doing? Distribution. Right? Like, be a deal with Laravel, buy a podcast, because why not?
Like Yep. Buying distribution. That's what they're doing. Because especially in this new world where people are getting scared about search engines, like
Aaron
yeah, totally.
Ian
And if that's not gonna be a go to where, yeah, I can muscle my way into some SEO. It's like, how do I have people find out about my product? Like it's not an because because the search engine is even if you're like, well, I'll just advertise like search engines are where people do that too. So Yep. There's, like, not a lot of great options if the search engines take a big nosedive to any I I don't personally think they're gonna, like, go away, but if they get hurt by this or people just expect more direct answers that are AI ish and they don't want the list of links and the huge list of ad links and all that stuff, I don't know.
It's gonna be tricky. Where do you find that? So hope you're on the podcast.
Aaron
I'm on Is it missing the right I'm on the right track building distribution because I think I think it is becoming harder, harder, harder and harder to come by. So, hopefully, it will become more valuable.
Ian
Presumably so. Presumably. Being on being on a platform too. It's like, if all your big if all your followers are on Twitter, that's not good for you. Right?
Not good. You need to be spread out and have options in the future. So
Aaron
That's what I'm going for, optionality.
Ian
Yep. And if
Aaron
you if you're listening and you're like, you should do one big bet, I am. And if you're listening and you think
Ian
you should
Aaron
do a bunch of small bets, I am. So, yeah, just don't be mad at me.
Ian
Yeah. You're kinda doing you're kinda doing
Aaron
I'm doing both. Should we should we wrap on, on HVAC, feedback?
Ian
Yeah. Give us some HVAC feedback.
Aaron
HVAC feedback is, I am sorely disappointed in our in our extremely intelligent listeners because they all told me that I'm wrong. So what's going on with that?
Ian
You kinda got crushed there. It's, I almost felt bad at one point.
Aaron
Crushed. I got absolutely destroyed. Not a single person took my side.
Ian
Nobody was like, we want 400 extra batteries and Nobody was like thing devices.
Aaron
The the funny thing was, everybody was like, you know, I got it. I'm I'm actually on Ian's side this time. I'm like, okay. So I was everywhere. I had you all this time, and now because of the HVAC, you're gonna side with Ian?
Ian
Bringing him to my side, baby. Bringing him to my side.
Aaron
The the CEO episode, by the way, flawless.
Ian
Great. That was good.
Aaron
But just the feedback that I'm wrong and you're right, it's just resounding. Like, beyond a shadow of a doubt, no reasonable person could look at the feedback and be like, well, it kinda went 5050 there. Not even close.
Ian
No. There was, like, pretty much nobody on your side. I mean,
Aaron
there's people
Ian
who were like, we got we got the equivalent thing you're talking about, but it's got a fan in it or whatever.
Aaron
Yeah. Yeah.
Ian
Yeah. There's a few people who talked about that. Mhmm. Yeah. And it was, like, in one room, we did one of these, and it, like, sort of helped.
And that was it. Like, nobody else had anybody positive to say about
Aaron
this. Everybody was like, fix your ducks. Why don't you just close some of the vents? Or, like, the battery thing kept coming up again. I'm like, god.
Ian
What am I So what did you do? Did they Nothing. I come? I thought they tracked I was coming in
Aaron
I thought
Ian
I was coming anyway.
Aaron
What do you think I did? I called an HVAC company, and they never called me back. But this is what I'm saying. What do you want me to do? I called Patriot HVAC, which is, like Patriot.
Hell, yeah.
Ian
What a Texas name.
Aaron
Wow. America freaking that's awesome. I bet they have a American flag Yep. Like, on their truck. Like, we back the blue or something.
Didn't call me back. Nobody showed up. What am I supposed to do? I gotta buy a bunch of vents. That's the only thing I have left is buying a bunch of vents.
Ian
There's no other HVAC.
Aaron
There's no other. There's only Patriot. What is the Patriot?
Ian
Patriot. They run everything.
Aaron
Their way. They run everything. Oh. They did the free. So
Ian
this.
Aaron
Now I haven't done anything yet. Jennifer, my wife listened to it and was like, are we buying a bunch of VINs? I was like, don't worry about it. Don't worry. She's gonna work.
Ian
Are you losing it?
Aaron
It's gonna work.
Ian
Oh, man.
Aaron
I will say she walked in she walked into our bedroom last night and said, you know, it is noticeably warmer in this room. And I was like,
Ian
yes.
Aaron
That's what I'm saying.
Ian
And the only way to
Aaron
the only way to fix it doubting that. Yeah. Yeah.
Ian
Yeah. Yeah. Nobody's doubting that. We're not a fan. We're not just a nice fan.
Aaron
We have a nice fan.
Ian
Little fan action on.
Aaron
We have a little fan. We have an overhead fan.
Ian
Doesn't do enough?
Aaron
Doesn't do enough. It moves the warm air around.
Ian
You're a cool airman.
Aaron
I'm a cool airman. Love love to be cold. Nothing's better than being cold
Ian
at night. Bed. I thought the bed makes you cool. What happens to
Aaron
the bed? The bed makes me cool. I still have the chili pad, but I need I need the atmosphere to be cool. You know?
Ian
Okay. Alright.
Aaron
Very specific.
Ian
I understand. Yeah. Alright.
Aaron
So I think we'll do that. Big l that's a big l for all Aaron there. That's too bad.
Ian
Excited for you to follow-up with that. You gotta call another HVAC company. Just get them in there. Know. Or try the fan blower thing.
Maybe the blower thing that people are talking about that'll just help suction a little more from the other parts of the system, whatever.
Aaron
Just want a connected I just want it. That's what
Ian
it comes down to.
Aaron
I just want it.
Ian
A good gadget. Right? I just want a gadget.
Aaron
It's a
Ian
cool gadget. I just wanna buy it.
Aaron
Gadget. I just want it.
Ian
See we know the CEO now. It's a friend of ours.
Aaron
A friend of mine. Yeah. Dan.
Ian
Do it. You should do it. You should buy all the stuff. You you know what? There's nobody who has an extra $5,000 than you.
You just go out there, buy all these little gadgets, just blow the money. You're just spending $1,000,000,000 on a new house, and it's $1,000,000,000 more upgrading the house. You know what? What's another 5? 5000 compared to all the money you've spent is not Compared to all the money I've spent rounding out.
Aaron
Yeah. So it's just
Ian
part of the it's just part of the new house build. It's not
Aaron
Exactly.
Ian
Yeah. It's not new money. It's it's old space.
Aaron
Not coming out of, like, household budget. It's coming out of remodel budget, which is just a just on a different planet.
Ian
Yes. Just completely different. Money. That money is spent in your head. You've already spent the remodel money.
Exactly. This is just in there with that. I can I can be down with that?
Aaron
There's there's a 95% chance I'm gonna buy some of these vents. Just I
Ian
mean, you kinda have to go
Aaron
on the record.
Ian
Yeah. Try. Yeah. And the whole thing so now there's a whole another question that came up. I I
Aaron
Tell me.
Ian
So it came out in our interview, and then people talked about a bit more about how they never close more than a third of the vents so that you don't cut too much back pressure. So, like but how does it know? Like, he's also saying you don't need to replace every vent in your house.
Aaron
Right.
Ian
So how does it know what a 3rd of the vents are? Like, I do not it in
Aaron
the app. Mhmm.
Ian
You think you tell it how many vents you have total, but the but your thing's only running 3 of these vents, but there's 20 vents. Yep. So then it just never worries about it after that Correct. Zoomably. Yep.
Okay.
Aaron
Easy solution. Wow. It's a
Ian
lot of work.
Aaron
That was easy.
Ian
That's true. We don't know.
Aaron
That is true.
Ian
I think that's true.
Aaron
That's totally true. Yes. I read I read the FAQ and it said you, you know, you ins you, input how many events you have smart and nonsmart, and then it it calculates off of that. Yeah.
Ian
I'd like you to count the number of events you have because I'm just curious about that number.
Aaron
I think I could do that right now. How many people? They're
Ian
hiding. They're not hiding.
Aaron
You know how many times I've looked at these vents? If they were hiding
Ian
In every little closet and everywhere?
Aaron
Yes. Yes. If they were hiding, I would have found them.
Ian
20.
Aaron
20. Okay. Let's do it. Master bedroom 1, master bathroom 1. So that's 2.
Kids room 3. Dining room 4. Kids play corner, 5. Kitchen living has 2, 3 in the kitchen living. That is 8 downstairs.
Ian
Alright.
Aaron
That's it.
Ian
No. What about upstairs?
Aaron
I haven't I haven't counted the upstairs because I'm not doing the upstairs right now.
Ian
That's what I'm talking about. I'm saying in the whole house. I said, I'm saying 20 in the whole house. I wasn't thinking on 1st floor only.
Aaron
Probably let's see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 upstairs. You think only 5? Either 12 or 13. Yeah.
It's not that many.
Ian
Well, that's only 30 batteries. That's not too bad, I guess.
Aaron
Okay. Yeah. Here we go with the batteries. So I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna I'm gonna at least put some
Ian
smart 1 or 2. Try it out.
Aaron
At least, I think, probably gonna do maybe 3 or 4. Maybe I'll do, like, the living area so that, to get the bonus airflow to the back two rooms, it can turn those off.
Ian
Could you just test drive this by putting like, blocking those 3 vents and before you buy anything and install it? Like, just block those vents. Very, like, very cool. Blanket over it or something and, like, close the vent as much as you can.
Aaron
Close the vent.
Ian
I mean, close it. Yeah. Those like I don't know. I know people say don't fully close. I I know they don't always, like, really fully close the way
Aaron
they do. It's good enough for a test.
Ian
But I think it's probably good enough for a test. You can put some shit on top of it if you wanted to actually
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
And then see how that works.
Aaron
Okay. I could do that.
Ian
Let's do that. Alright.
Aaron
That's your That's just so that's just so easy. Yeah. That's just bad. That's just bad content. Like, oh, I tried it, and it worked.
Ian
Yeah. It's
Aaron
true. Skip that part, buy all the stuff, and then just risk it.
Ian
But I'm gonna I'm gonna go out of here. It's only good content to me if you replace, like, all of them. Them. Because if you just replace 2, we don't even know. Like, I don't know.
Like
Aaron
Well, I guess we're not right. Here and say it works. Like, that would be okay.
Ian
But then you didn't need the smart one. Right? Then you could just close the vents. Like
Aaron
But I yeah. We don't need to do it all again. I'll buy I'll buy I'll buy some and report back.
Ian
There you go. Sounds good. Alright. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Mostlytechnical.com.
Mostly tech pod for Twitter as long as it lasts. And mostly technical podcast at gmaildot com if you, want to get in touch with us.
Aaron
We got we got some really nice emails recently.
Ian
We have. We've got very, very nice emails. Some very
Aaron
nice awesome news.
Ian
Yeah. So anyway, have a, a good rest of your day. We'll see you next week. Later.
Aaron
See you.