The Contest

Ian

Hello.

Aaron

Good morning. How are we doing?

Ian

Pretty good.

Aaron

I don't know, man. Last week, you came in hot hot and bothered. You were in a tizzy. What's give me give me the lay of the land so I know what I'm walking into here. I think

Ian

it it's light. It's light this week. I don't Okay. I don't have any hot takes. I don't have any, I'm not mad about anything.

No domain disasters. Disasters. I've been playing with a new app. Let me talk about that real quick. I was kind of messing with that.

Kubera. Have you seen this Kubera app?

Aaron

No. Never even that's a ridiculous name. Never heard of that in my life. What is Kubera?

Ian

I was thinking about that.

Aaron

I was like, I don't mind it

Ian

in the sense of, like, the the dotcom is available, and, obviously, they just went, like, let's pick some random letters that are available in the doc. Yeah. Right? And often, I don't care for those type of names, but this one, the way it looks is not bad. To say it sounds ridiculous, but nobody really says

Aaron

it. Silly. Kubera.

Ian

That's ridiculous. Like wealth management app kind of thing. Oh. And it's take, which I like, it's take a lot, is it doesn't do budgeting. Okay.

Aaron

So,

Ian

you know, usually you try to do these things and it's sucking in like every pizza order you did. Yep. You're like, I'm not organizing my pizza spending and whatever.

Aaron

Mhmm,

Ian

this doesn't do any of that. It's just the totals of like your assets and your debts and here's a total and you know, whatever There's some intricacies in that but I'm kind of enjoying it because it's like I'm never

Aaron

gonna do the budgeting not doing it and I'm not gonna

Ian

care how much I spend in each little niche

Aaron

But you know, it's nice to

Ian

have the big picture and then it also like lets you upload documents and have notes so like if Jamie doesn't know where stuff actually is or whatever like different, like, when you're invested in ConvertKit, does she know where the documents are for that? Does she know how to get ahold of somebody if I drop that?

Aaron

Breaking news. You're invested in ConvertKit.

Ian

Yeah. You knew that.

Aaron

I don't

think I knew that.

What are you

Ian

talking about? We talked about it. We talked about it on here now.

Aaron

I don't know. Who knows?

Who can

say for sure? Not me.

Ian

I am an investor in ConvertKit.

Aaron

So Oh, that's awesome.

You mean

Ian

I did get I I did get screwed that I didn't tell this story on here.

Aaron

Man, I don't know, but it all feels new

Ian

to me.

Aaron

So it either happened at right after we had babies and I don't remember, or it never happened. But either way, I'm on the edge of my seat.

Ian

Alright. Well, I'll tell you that story in a second. But, yeah. So, anyway, it's nice to have the central place. Like, we kinda have it in the spreadsheet now, but it's kinda janky.

So I don't know. I I kinda like this this thing. Check it out. We'll put a link. Whatever.

I don't know. It's like a $150 a year or something. I've only been using it for 2 days, so that's the level of recommendation you're getting

Aaron

on that.

Ian

This is not back in

Aaron

a week. Let's let it cool for a second.

Ian

Exactly. Yeah. So I Nathan Barry, who's the founder of ConvertKit.

Aaron

Heard of him?

Ian

I I knew him when he before he started ConvertKit and all this. He would go to these little bootstrapper conferences that I would attend and knew him from there and all that stuff. And he started convert kit and it started doing a little action, but then it

Aaron

kind of just went flat

and

Ian

so on and so forth. Anyway, it started getting some traction kinda on the same time. Like, I don't know if you remember Drip, but, like, Rob Malling's had a similar product called Drip. And so, anyway, he started doing well, and he was thinking about selling, and he always thinking about getting investors. And I ran into him at the SaaSter conferences, like, 17, 16, 18.

I don't know. Something like that. And I'm like, dude, let me invest. I wanna invest. And he's like, okay, I will.

If I do investment, he didn't, he didn't do any investment. Right. So I got screwed because now the thing is worth tons of money. It's growing 1,000,000 of dollars a month or whatever, and I didn't get to invest then. He eventually sold some shares and did this little investment round in like 2021 or 22 or something.

So I did invest some money at that point And it's doubled, I think, in an approximate value, which is nice.

Aaron

Oh, man. It would have been so

Ian

much more. 18. Yeah. I've been I've been retired.

Aaron

I know. I've been done. You were early.

Ian

I was early. I had an eye for these things. Dude, let me give you some money. Just let me write you a check. I was like, literally, right here in this conference.

I'll just write you a check

Aaron

right now. He was like, alright. I'm thinking about it. God. That's the dream.

That's the dream. Having a business for some guy, some guy that you barely know from the Internet,

from some other from the Laravel community. Who is this guy?

Walks up and he's like, hey. Laravel community, who is this guy, walks up to Laravel. He's like, hey. I wanna write you a check right now on the spot. Oh.

That's the dream.

Ian

Yes. Yeah. That angle. Awesome. The other side of it.

Yeah. That is super cool. So, anyway, I feel I feel 1,000,000 of dollars poor even though it wasn't a real thing. And, like, he didn't actually take investment for anybody else, so I didn't didn't actually get screwed, but it feels like I got screwed. You know?

Aaron

Still, it's

Ian

a better

Aaron

story that way. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

I like that. Anyway. Wait. Wait. Last week or the week before, I was telling you, like, oh, I'm gonna work on, you know, building a budgeting system, and you're like You don't need to budget.

Yeah. It's crazy. You're you're wasting your time.

Ian

I agree.

Aaron

Yeah. So now you're you're doing big wealth tracking guy. So what's what's the deal here?

Ian

That's nothing. It took me, like, 30 minutes to input the, like, 7 assets we have into this little app. Like, it's, like, not a big deal. I didn't move it. You're not anti tracking.

Aaron

You're anti rebuilding something, and you're anti micro budgeting.

Ian

Yes.

Aaron

Okay. I I agree on micro budgeting. I don't think it's valuable super valuable to say, like, oh, you spent this much at this particular coffee shop this month. Like Yeah. And the I just want number to go up.

That's all I want.

Ian

Yeah. And it would be cool. I wouldn't even be totally opposed to it if there was, like, some practical solution where, like, the stores fed to the credit card company properly, and it was actually organized credit. But you just, you just get these huge categories that are useless. It's like, okay.

Amazon or well, I mean, I bought, like, a million types of things. I bought food. I bought house stuff. I bought all this stuff.

Aaron

House stuff. House stuff is such a big category. It's like, wait. I spent $800 on house stuff? What is house stuff?

Right. It's like paper towels, a new broom, just random crap, batteries. Like, how do I spend $800 on batteries?

Ian

Yeah. So am I gonna go so that means the only solution is for you to spend your actual time to go in there and literally look up every transaction and categorize like,

Aaron

that's just time to put a for. That's what computers are.

Ian

For. But you can't even do it with even the computer can't

Aaron

do it because there's not

Ian

the data's not anywhere.

Aaron

Watch me, Ian. I'm gonna do it. Lord. Yeah.

Ian

You should not be doing any of this. Please don't

Aaron

do it. Be. This is this is my muse. This is what keeps me going.

Ian

I feel like we could find a better way for you to keep yourself going. There's gotta be something something out there better than micro budgeting.

Aaron

I don't know. It's good. It's good. Yeah. It's good.

Ian

You're gonna use the LLM. You're gonna feed it all in there and

Aaron

all that.

Potentially, yeah. I might become big AI guy. I might do a thread on, you know, 10 surprising uses of AI.

Ian

Even there, I mean, you still can't do it from the credit card feed, so you have to, like, actually log in to Amazon, actually log in to every Rando site you use your credit card on. I mean, it's

Aaron

I'm on it.

Ian

Not gonna be

Aaron

I got it. It's gonna be it's gonna it's gonna be interesting, though. We don't do it because it's easy. We do it because it's interesting. This this is this

is the

life, Ian. This is the life of a a content creator. You don't do things rationally.

Ian

You do it

Aaron

you do it for the content. You do it for the lulz. You know?

Ian

The lulz. I do like doing things for the lulz.

Aaron

That's

true. Have to sometimes just do things for the lulz. Sometimes you do it for the money. Sometimes you do it for the giggles, and sometimes you do it for both.

Ian

Maybe that's my beef for this is it feels too much towards something real. Like, if it was more wacky, then it'd be like, yes, for the lulz. Like, fine.

Aaron

Yeah. But I don't like yeah. So if I'm like, oh, let's create a a game in the terminal. That would be that would be super fun and super fun, but I don't want to do that. You know?

Mhmm. And so for me, it'd be, like, pow. That sucks. I'm too practical. I'm just way too normie.

I'm way too normie. So

Ian

I have that issue myself.

Aaron

Yeah. I don't wanna do something that's just, like, totally out of left field that has no utility that I'm just, like, doing strictly for content. That feels I don't wanna do that.

Ian

I had this idea for the show. I love

Aaron

that he's already smiling. What is the idea? This is devious.

Ian

Idea. Hey. Feels like the kinda thing I we should talk about off air, but

Aaron

Oh, even the latter was so juicy. Unless this is some sort of criticism of me, then we take it off air.

Ian

It's not not criticism. Thank goodness. Okay.

Aaron

Alright. Give us what do you got? So, you know, last week, I

Ian

was talking about my idea and all that stuff. Right? And whatever. I talked to some people about that, by the way. I I don't know if that's gonna go anywhere.

It's probably not. But Oh, man. We just table that first. I kinda like the idea of us doing a contest.

Aaron

I love a contest.

Ian

Love a contest.

Aaron

I love a contest. What are we contesting?

Ian

We are contest it's kinda like a riff on last week where, like, people apply

Aaron

Yeah. With labs.

Ian

Okay. Uh-huh. We pick 1 that we will invest in. Oh, boy. Yeah.

Alright. We each put in, you know, we get a few percent, whatever. We, you know, figure that part out. Right? And then we bring this person on the journey and they bring us on their journey of, like, they're on the show once in a while.

Maybe we have, like, a monthly update. We can give our advice.

Aaron

This is great.

Ian

All that kind of stuff. That's a good idea. Right?

Aaron

This is great.

Ian

Like, we can share

Aaron

the platform,

Ian

get them some initial customers. That's, like, what we're bringing. Yep. Maybe you do a video once with them. Right?

Aaron

Whatever we can video. Yeah.

Ian

Pull them into stuff. And, and, you know, maybe we get a little upside and everybody's equally motivated to make it work. Right? Yeah. That

Aaron

sounds great.

Ian

That's what RB. So that's what it's

Aaron

kind of

Ian

a riff on that.

Aaron

It. This is a great idea. Great idea.

Ian

This is

Aaron

great content too. Okay. So just for giggles, let's let's Yeah. Let's play this out. We're not committing to anything.

We're not Maybe. I don't know. It sounds great. Okay. So bunch of people submit these apps, and we look through them, and we're like, these are the ones or these are the 1 or 2 that we think have financial or potential upside.

Right? Right. And then what are we doing? We're giving them money so that they can spend more time on it. We're giving them money plus marketing.

Ian

I We're giving them advice. Yeah. I think I think the I think I mean, I probably will depend somewhat on, like, what stage they're at a little bit. Right? Like, is this an idea?

Is it already an app that works and has some customers? There's a sort of a gap there, but like, I mean, I think of it as not that much money. I think it's not like we're here writing a $100,000 check. It's like you might have literally, you probably actually have to have some money. So maybe it's a 1,000 or a few 1,000 or whatever, but the what they're getting is not the money,

Aaron

I

Ian

think is in my idea. Like, maybe there's some cases where they really need the money and we love the idea so much that maybe there's a little more money. But to me, it's not the money is not our value. Our value is, like, you have access to us, which is a little value, you know, advice and whatever, but then also, you know, more of a platform, get yourself out there.

Aaron

I think I feel like distribution.

Ian

Distribution. I think it would be fun for the show. That's great for

Aaron

the show.

Ian

I think going through the applications could be fun for the show. So that's kind of my think it's I don't think it's a big money play. I think it's access to the distribution, access to us, and our connections and as well as our experience. So I kinda think that's to me the idea.

Aaron

So here's the question. Are you ready to break more hearts? You've just broken, you know, 999 hearts. And now you're like, okay. Not even not even just not even just people applying for jobs.

I want all of the people in our community to send me their hopes and

Ian

dreams. Literally everyone.

Aaron

No to 99 of them. Are you ready for that?

Ian

90% of our listeners have a project or side

Aaron

project right at this moment. Yes. Exactly right. And I'm sure you got some percentage of, like, listeners slash friends applying for the job, but you know that this is gonna be 100% listeners slash friends. And you're gonna you're gonna come on air and be like, no.

This is never gonna work. Next. I

Ian

don't know.

Aaron

I don't know. I

Ian

feel I have you here. Right?

Aaron

Not you. Well, I don't know.

I don't

have the emotional fortitude for that.

Ian

I'm You're a bad cop.

Aaron

No. No. There's no world in which I am bad cop or emotionally prepared to say no to people. There's no way. I bought a book called the courage to be disliked, and I'm, like, one chapter through it.

So I'm not I'm nowhere close to ready for that. You better hurry up and finish that. Goodness gracious.

Yeah. I don't know.

Ian

I think there's some things we'd have to think about that. Like, I mean, I don't really wanna go through a 1,000 apps, in some ways. Right? Don't want and we definitely wouldn't wanna do that on the show. So anything on the show has to be, like, finalist level, of course.

Right. I don't know.

Aaron

So that's the thing. We could do some sort we could do some sort of, like, you know, public community voting thing, and that would absolve us from some responsibility.

Ian

Yes. I don't know. It's such a big edge, though, to, like, somebody who just has a 100000 followers who wants in on this. Like, they can just win that over somebody who doesn't. You know?

Aaron

That's true. That's true.

Ian

That's true. I think that's hard.

Aaron

Mhmm. Okay.

Ian

Most people aren't very good at

Aaron

Maybe we set up a system where people vote for delegates, and then delegates get to vote for whomever they want. That sounds fun. Right?

Ian

I'm sure that that's never

Aaron

been tried before. I like that. Yeah. I don't know. I like the idea, though.

It sounds like great content. It sounds like a lot of fun. It does. And you know I you know you know I love to have my fingers and things. I love to have a little It's another thing.

Controlling a little puppet out there. That sounds amazing.

Ian

Yeah. Well, this is like over the years, I've just done these, like, $2,000 investments in, like, probably 15 companies or whatever Mhmm. And through, like, these different syndicates and whatnot. And it's like that kind it's like it's nice to just be like, yeah. I'm just a little involved in something.

Like, I'm not I'm not out there doing the work as we talked about last week. But other, you know, other people are doing the work, but Mhmm. But that's, like, totally hands off, which is great, but also is, like, completely hands off. This is, like, a little in between, like, a little hands on where

Aaron

Little hands on, but a lot of credit, but a very A little credit.

Ian

You'd love to credit.

Aaron

Bit of work. I don't know. Is there a way to I mean, you

Ian

could I mean, at the end of the day, you just go through the applicants and, you know, you slash and burn and you

Aaron

come up

with you. Yeah. You lose a bunch of friends. Perfect. Yeah.

I think we should do it. I think we gotta figure out mechanics, but I think we should do it. That sounds awesome.

Ian

Yeah. Don't don't send us anything yet. We gotta we

Aaron

gotta kick this in and out. Definitely don't send me anything. Send it all to Ian. So tell me. You got a lot of you got a lot of feedback from, your you you're like, I I don't know what the correct meme is, but you went out there and you dangled $30,000 in equity, and then you were like, oh my goodness.

I can't believe people contacted me. What am I gonna do?

Ian

This is so interesting because, like, act oh, so I ended up talking to, like, 2 or 3 groups or individuals who I thought who made, like, a reasonable outreach and all that stuff. First of all, just the number of people who are like, yo, dude, pick me. Like, the number of yo, dude, pick me or, like, yo, I could do it. Let's talk. Just like literally one line

Aaron

on Twitter. Dude. I'm like, I don't know, guys. I don't know. I kinda I kinda vibe with the yo dude pick me.

I I dig that.

Ian

Nobody gets picked from yo dude pick me. It's like

Aaron

I don't know. No, man. I don't know.

I mean,

Ian

if it's somebody I super knew

Aaron

Yes.

Ian

Maybe. Right

Aaron

on your reputation with a yo dude, pick me.

Ian

Maybe. Like, if you did it or, you know, Nuno did it or something, maybe I'd be like, okay. Like, I know they're serious and

Aaron

I know

Ian

they're in

Aaron

the game. And the yo dude picked me, like, showed me that you're like in the game and let's talk. Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. Something like that. But this was not people I know on that level. This was just like, there was one there was one of those people, and I did actually talk to that person, but I could, like, super know them super well, and that's fine. Sure.

But, like, if I don't know you and you're like, yo, dude, pick me, I'm not picking you. So

Aaron

I don't know. Dude, pick me's you're gonna get after the podcast?

Ian

For the app?

Aaron

Yeah. Yo. You're gonna get a bunch of people saying, yo, dude, pick me. Guaranteed.

Ian

I know. Here's my GitHub repo. Here you go. Look at it. It's I I got a half bill.

Anyway

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

Gotta put the effort in, people. Put the effort in. And if you don't wanna put the effort in, see, that's where people get mad at me. I'm totally fine if you don't wanna put the effort in. But then don't expect that you will get the outcome.

That's all. Like, if if you're not putting effort in and you know you don't wanna do that, which there's tons of stuff I don't wanna put the effort into it, and I don't. And then I don't see the outcome, and that's fine. Like, that's totally cool. But I don't think you have to write a fate crazy fancy cover letter for every job.

But then also just realize that you are putting yourself, you know, in a worse position than somebody who is. It doesn't mean it won't work out for you. It might still work out for you at some point, but you're not gonna be as far ahead as somebody else. That's all. Exactly.

That's fine.

Aaron

Yep. Alright. We've done that. We've done that bit. Tell me what happened.

Ian

We've done that bit. So, yeah. So I talked

Aaron

to a few people. I don't know. Like, the more I talk about it, the more I'm like, man, I don't know.

Ian

It's like, I think it's a decent idea. But, you know, you're talking

Aaron

more of the idea.

Ian

Maybe I'm cooling a little bit. I'm also, like, just more it still, like, involves me to some degree probably more than I wanna be involved in something else right now.

Aaron

Are you still in a contraction phase? Are you still trying to get things off your plate? I wanna contract. So this is an expansion degree.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. It's a little more it's a little maybe a little expansion y. I did have a little side quest where, I used the GoDaddy service where they'll go hunt down a domain for you.

Aaron

Oh, nice. Yeah.

Ian

Just to try the dotcom version of the domain. Mhmm. And the people got right back to them. Like, it's actually I think that's the first time I ever used that service, so it's actually kind of impressive. But, they got back to me in, like, a day and, like, yeah, the people, they'll sell it to you for a 100,000.

And I'm like, this is, like, a 2 word stain.

Aaron

Yeah. I was thinking more like 3,000.

Ian

How does that

Aaron

strike you?

Ian

So the GoDaddy guy was like, you should count her 15, and I was like, nah. Just tell him, like, whatever. I'm not interested, you know, for anywhere near that. But, but anyway, it's out there. Like, obviously you could go back and forth or whatever, but, everybody does like the domain.

So at some point on here, when if I talk to these people and we end up not doing anything, I will update with the with the domain and, we'll we'll close that loop.

Aaron

But Yeah. By the way, I got a bone to pick with you. There's a back channel, and you're, like, telling everybody else in the back channel what the idea is, but specifically excluding me because you're like, oh, I gotta keep this reaction fresh for the show. So all these people know that I have I have no idea what it is. Still, to this day, still no idea.

Ian

Do you guys out there do you see what I do for you? I I injure my relationship. I injure my relationship with Eren.

Aaron

What I

Ian

do. People, for the listeners.

Aaron

There's no way you're turning this around to get credit for yourself. The credit

for this

one goes to me. I suffer for the show.

Ian

Sacrifice. I will sacrifice anything for the show and the listeners. Yeah.

Aaron

I appreciate you sacrificing me on the altar of the show. That's great.

Ian

Come on. You're the one. You're the king of the lake. Save it. It's a bit for the show.

I love a good bit.

Aaron

Do you love a bit? That is You know the puns line? There. I'm hoisted my own petard on that one.

Ian

When I tell the show, you're gonna be like, yeah. Yeah. That was interesting when you said that. Yeah. I know you need to be first

Aaron

of all, been that boring in my life. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's a good idea. That's the worst impression I've heard of myself.

That's because you don't want

Ian

them to say ahead of time.

Aaron

Don't. So are you gonna reveal so you did you tell these people what did you talk to these people about? Were you like, yeah. We're gonna do it. We're not gonna do it.

What's the deal?

Ian

Idea. A few peep, you know, there everybody was like, okay. Like, let's I'm gonna think about it, and I'll double back with them this week. And I think, like, 98% chance nothing's ever gonna happen. But, you know, 2% chance.

Aaron

Okay. I think you should do it. If you find if you find somebody that if you find somebody that's, you feel like has it, you should do it.

Ian

Yeah. But we got this new app now. Now we got a whole new thing where we do it together.

Aaron

Don't have anything.

Ian

We got we got we got to do it for the shit. People out there, they're on us.

Aaron

We we haven't even do that. We were we were 1 week into a great storyline about Ian being, this angel investor, cofounder thing. And now it's over, and now we're we're starting a whole new storyline.

Ian

Yeah. But that's because it's evolved into a better idea, which is the the show is doing it. And you and me are in it together.

Aaron

That is that is better that is better for content. I will agree.

Ian

And there's already somebody else who's got the idea, who is the visionary. We are just facilitating the visionary, which

Aaron

is wanna extricate yourself from the driver's seat.

Ian

Extricate myself. There's a lot of big guy people have good ideas out there. I'm not the only person with ideas. So you just need a leg up. Just give them a leg up.

Aaron

Okay. Alright. Uh-huh. Okay. We'll see.

Ian

Don't send us anything yet.

Aaron

Don't send us anything yet, specifically me. Don't send me anything ever.

Ian

Send it all to you. Send me a yo, dude. Check out

Aaron

this Send me yo, dog. I'm in, and we'll see we'll see where that goes. That sounds great. I saw on that on that same note, Jason McCreery of Laravel Shift fame

Mhmm.

Tweeted out this morning that he's had some idea for a long time and doesn't have time to do it and is looking to partner up with somebody in the community. So

Ian

I didn't

Aaron

even know. Started a trend. Little did he know the trend is over. It is it is a has been trend. We're we're moving on, but maybe this is a thing with people with, people with a successful or some successful businesses that have ideas that don't have time to do the other ones, bring in, start a little, accelerator.

I like it.

Ian

This is a thing people do in the real world all the time that devs, I feel like don't think about because like, we wanna build the idea. Like we wanna be building the idea and then we realize we don't have time to build the idea. So we just don't do the idea. But in the real world, right, like, you're just a dude with money. And then Is this what investors

Aaron

are? Is that what we call those

times? That's

Ian

exactly investors. Okay. And they're like, why? How do I do this idea? I can't do any parts of this idea.

Literally none of it. How do I do it? And you find people to do it for money.

Aaron

That's interesting. Yeah. We'll have to consider that. I like that.

Ian

I know.

Aaron

I like that idea. I guess one of the problems is the money. You gotta have the money. So that's, like, a 7 0. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a pity. I'll work on that part. Yeah. I'll be curious to see if, if anybody takes Jason up on that.

I'm sure it's a super like, again, super compelling. Yeah. I wanna be involved. I wanna do this. Right.

So we'll see we'll see if he comes out with anything.

Ian

Yeah. I'll give him a a yo dude.

Aaron

Yeah. Hit him up with a yo dude. See what he says. Yo dude.

Ian

I'm in.

Aaron

Yeah. So then you have 2 people that don't wanna build and one idea. That's perfect. Yeah. That's a that's a great team.

You guys are gonna go far. Oh.

Ian

Laurel Shift. Laurel Shift is so good. If that's a little shift, there's a few ideas out there. I'm like, I wish I thought of that idea. I don't think it's good I could build it, but I just wish I thought of it.

It's, like, such a good idea.

Aaron

You could build it. I'm sure it I'm sure it's

Ian

I don't know.

Aaron

Challenging, but it's I feel like mostly a lot of, like, brute force effort.

Ian

It is a lot like that. It is the one of those, in that regard is very interesting because I feel like there's a lot of, like, just ugly. Here's an ugly regex that does a bunch of ugly stuff, which is, like, right up my alley of, like, hack that I do enjoy. So that that part is, is probably true. Yeah.

Yeah. It is just a lot of, like, going through folders, looking for stuff.

Aaron

Yeah. Exactly. I feel like he could charge, and I've told him this. I feel like he could charge 2 to 3 to 4 times as much, and people would be like, yeah. Sure.

That's fine.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

Like, I could these

ships are, like, $9 or something.

Ian

I know. It's crazy.

Aaron

It's crazy. Alright. Where are we going next?

Ian

You wanna do do a you update, or you have one do do your little side quest here, or should we save that for the end?

Aaron

Let's do let's do me update. We'll do, we'll do a we'll keep it on hiring because I think we are going to hire somebody. So TriHard Studios is gonna hire somebody. It's gonna be

Ian

Already expanding.

Aaron

Don't yo dog me, guys. This is not this is different.

Ian

Send your applications.

Aaron

No. No. No. No. No.

No.

Ian

The Aaron's Twitter account right now.

Aaron

Please don't. This is what I'm hiring for. We're

Ian

hiring Okay.

Aaron

You know, few weeks ago, we talked about, the Lindas of the world that keep the world running. Mhmm. You know, the 65 year old person that sits at a title company that knows where everything is and all the all the dumb young people don't know where anything is, that's what we're looking for. And we had a few people reach out after the last podcast, or the the podcast where we talked about it. Steve and I are gonna take a few calls this week with people that could potentially be it's like, it's like a a mix of, you know, executive, admin, chief of staff, marketing managers, basically all, like, frontline support, all of that kind of stuff.

Yep. Because something something I'm continuing to have a hard time coming to terms with, but I am intellect I have intellectually arrived, but, emotionally, I'm lagging that like, my time is not well spent answering emails and taking old podcasts and, you know, putting clips together. Like, that's just a waste. That's a waste of my time.

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

So we found a few people who sent, either emails or or Twitter DMs after that were just, like, spot on. Like, hey. Here's what I've done. First of all, like, I listened to your podcast, which is a great start. Here's here's what I've done.

Here's why I think I can help you, And, like, here's, like, my skill set. And so, you know, we've got, I think, 2 people that 2 or 3 maybe that could potentially just totally nail this. Interesting. And so Steve and I have started writing down a list of things that, like, this person could do. And some of it's, like, as simple as, you know, managing the content calendar or making sure that we have, email sequences built for all of our courses.

Or, like, I was listening to a friend of the show, Nathan Barry, whom you're invested in. Yeah. You know that guy. Yeah. I was listening to one of his episodes on one of his podcasts who can say for sure, and he was talking about, he's got a full time content person for, obviously, ConvertKit, but he's also got a full time content person for his own personal brand, which I'm not at that I'm not at that level of income.

Yeah. Okay. I'm not at that level of income, but we need somebody. Like, every week, I do at least 1 podcast, mostly technical. It's a great show.

I do at least 1.

Ian

Love

Aaron

it. Many times, I do more than 1 podcast, and those podcasts, like, are interesting, and then they just die. It's just, you know Gone. A 100 or a 1000 or 5000 people listen, and then it's just over. Yep.

And that's a waste. And I think being able to, like I I can produce the content, and then this person can listen to the show. And what Nathan was saying was that his person will listen to every podcast that he's on and pull out 2 or 3 or 4 ideas for written, articles or newsletters and say, like, okay. This article should go on your personal site. This one should go to your, you know, $1,000,000,000 creator newsletter.

And that person comes back to Nathan with, like, here are the 3 ideas. Here are the stubs of the articles. What do you wanna add? What do you wanna change? That kind of stuff.

And so as we are doubling down on Aaron Francis being the top of the funnel, the personal brand, I think getting more personal brand content out there excuse me. Getting more personal brand content out there and more stuff on my personal website is going to be valuable. So that's one of the things that this person will do is, like, every week, listen to everything that I do and be like, hey. Here's you know, based on what you said here, here's beginnings of an article. You should finish this out and put it on your website.

Yep. Yep. So stuff like that where it's like, there are things we know we should be doing. It's not even like, come in and help us figure out what to do. It's like, no.

We've got 15 things that we know we should do that we just don't have time for. So, yeah, I think we're gonna hire some it's gonna be part time, probably, like, 20 hours a week, but it is a start.

Ian

Wow. Well, that's very interesting. So and these are only gonna be people who heard about it on the podcast. I don't know if you also tweeted about it or not. I think you might have.

Aaron

But don't think I tweeted about it.

Ian

Steve and I decided podcast.

Aaron

Just from podcast. Steve and I decided if we don't find somebody that is great from these 2 or 3 people, then I'll tweet about it.

Ian

Yeah. Then they'll go through that big big list there.

Aaron

Yeah. I'm gonna have the DMU for the first screen.

Ian

Yeah. I'll do the first screening. Me and producer Dave can do round 1 for you.

Aaron

Yes, please.

Ian

Yeah, it sounds perfect. I think, especially with the content being such a huge part of your guys' angle on things, like, yeah, you just have to always be producing and how much can you do, especially with building the courses. Obviously, something you gotta give. You can't the courses can't give. Your personal stuff gives, and Yep.

That's bad. I go 2 or 3 months with not a lot of action there, and only you can do the videos on your stuff, really. So, yeah, I like the whole written angle to it, and they can make sure it's like you said or whatever. All all the other stuff that that we've talked about, they could do. So I love it.

I think that's a very wise Yeah. Investment there.

Aaron

Oh, thanks. I, I feel like we are transitioning or, like, perhaps realizing that we are a media company. Yeah.

I

think there's part of me that thought, that maybe we were something different, which I don't know what it like, what the different thing would be at maybe, like, a video production company or something. Right. But I think what I'm realizing is we are we are a media company, and the less like, you know, we went out in the very beginning, and we're like, let's be consultants. And everybody was like, no. Just make videos.

And maybe we're still, like, adjusting to that reality. I kinda thought people would pay us for advice, and that doesn't sound like that just hasn't worked. And people are just throwing money at us to create content. So it's like, wait. What if we just created content instead?

Yep. So that's what I I think I'm coming to terms with. And the reality of that is, like, I need to produce more, and I'm already kind of at my limit, perhaps over my limit. And so having someone else take a lot of the work that I'm doing like, even these even these Laravel YouTube videos should be turned back into articles that go on my personal website. Like, that is just foolish that I'm not letting that content live in the written form forever.

So stuff like that, blocking and tackling, I think, is gonna be really helpful.

Ian

Yeah. I I mean, so many businesses are like that. I mean, even, like, other if we take a YouTube angle out like Doug Demiro, I don't know if you know who he is, but he's the car YouTuber. Car. Okay.

Like, one of the biggest car YouTubers. And, so, like, you could think about, like, oh, he's whatever he makes money on YouTube. Right. And he's a YouTube guy and he gets through whatever the ads are and maybe does a few sponsored things. But, you know, he started this website, Cars and Bids, which is a car auction site.

Aaron

Okay. I've heard of Cars and Bids. Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. So he leveraged his media empire effectively into this application or website. So, yeah, it's like once if you stay up there, then you have different options of how you actually funnel those eyeballs into what types of products as opposed to just being like, we make courses. That's what we do. Right.

Maybe you don't make courses forever. Right? Maybe there's other things. Like, once you have people following you and the distribution and the eyeballs and people like you and all that stuff, then, yeah, maybe you do a SaaS app. Maybe you do a different kind of app.

Maybe you do advertising. Whatever. Who knows? All kinds of different things. But or you just make courses and they do better and better, which is great too.

Yeah. That would be great. The only one making the courses. So

Aaron

That is also on the table. I think, mentally assigning TryHard Studios as a media company is helpful for me.

Ian

Yeah. Just reframing. Yeah. I think that's the right frame. Especially since that's how you started it.

Like, that's like, you're already there, you know? It's not like, well

Aaron

Oh, yeah.

Ian

We're going to do this in the future and we're gonna try to build up the YouTube. And we're like, it's like, no. You already

Aaron

No.

We're just Obviously, it could be great.

Ian

But yeah. It's like Yep. You're already successful at that. So well, this is interesting. 1st hire already.

Wow. This is

Aaron

gonna be awesome. In fact in fact, we've already hired some contract help. We hired a a guy that I've worked with before to take some of the SQLite videos, and turn them into articles because it's like, the SQLite website should have more content on it. And so Yeah. We will.

You know, I've got this, you know, so far, 65 videos that may come out to be, like, 85 or 90, and the transcripts are there, which I think is valuable. They need to be cleaned up. But I think having more articles on the site is is pretty important. And that's another thing that I don't need to do. Yeah.

And this is Definitely. The good thing about this guy's guy's, name is JD Lean. He might he's in and around the Laravel ecosystem. The good thing about this guy is he writes, but he also, like he deeply knows databases, and so it's like, this is perfect. Just watch the videos and write about whatever you want about SQLite.

Just go go go go.

Ian

Yep. Yeah. I like that. I think that's really good. I mean, you got all these videos just, like, take a snippet or maybe put it on the page and then have the whole article about the the same topic, and that should do pretty well, I would think.

More

Aaron

than 0.

Ian

Definitely more than 0. Yep. And I think we talked about this before, but, yeah, the SQLite being a little, I just think it's a little more open for you to dominate the SEO end of that than maybe Postgres will be. So I think that's a good one to really I mean, I would do the same thing for Postgres anyway.

Aaron

But Yeah. I think with SQL lite, you could really rank very highly because I

Ian

just think there's less out there on it. So Yeah. Yeah. I like that a lot. That's even like another angle would like when you were talking about going on podcast and stuff, I wanna do more guest spots on podcast.

Yeah. Because I mean, it's like you get the, obviously people hear you, which is fine, but even these subtler things, like you get the links to your products from, usually a high domain rank site and a solid site, which is not that easy to do these days, because it's all kind of gamed out at this point. So even those little, those little benefits add up, if you can get, get the good links back and all that. So, and then, yeah, we're using the content of course is even better, which I've definitely never done, but should. I wanna do a podcast tour at some point.

That's kind of on my list.

Aaron

You should.

Ian

Yeah. No. Podcast tour. Yo yo yo me if you want me on

Aaron

your podcast. Yeah. Hit him with that dog.

Ian

That one, you can yo dog me. If you yo dog me if you want me on your podcast and

Aaron

Give them some topics. Give give the people some topics. What would you talk about? Running a business for 20 years.

Ian

Yeah. I think we could do I mean, I'm usually good with any of it, but I think we could do, like, the business perspective. I think we do, like this is something that nobody ever has me on for, but we could do, like, customer service angles on things for, like well, presumably, this is more for smaller groups. But, even if you have a audience that's for bigger companies, we could do that. Obviously Laravel and all that stuff, just, you know, whatever.

Aaron

Bootstrapping. That's a good one.

Ian

Bootstrapping, all that stuff. And just wanted me to come on and hang out for 4 hours, like, a Lex Friedman style.

Aaron

We gotta get you on start

Ian

ups for the

Aaron

rest of us. Why have you not ever been on start ups for the rest of us? I never really did the podcast thing.

Ian

Was I never on start pot start ups for the rest of us? I don't think it happened. Right?

Aaron

You would know better. You tell me.

Ian

I think so. I mean, it's been around on it? Right?

Aaron

It's been around forever. I probably listened to it for 10 years. Ian Landsman, start ups for the rest of us. Advice on selling a start up early days SaaS episode 160?

Ian

I was men yeah. 1 I was mentioning. Our second question is from a podcast. Okay. So we sent in a a question.

I think I wasn't really

Aaron

and Andre Butov's podcast. Wow.

Ian

Back in the day. To

Aaron

that. That was crazy.

Ian

Back in the day. Yeah. I guess I I haven't been on there. Yeah. That would be cool.

I mean, there's so many good podcasts that, like, would be fun to be on.

Aaron

And

Alright. Some some listener needs to YoDog Rob and tell Rob that Ian needs to come on Startups

for

the rest of us. So somebody somebody do Ian's bidding here. Make it look natural, though.

Ian

I remember being at a conference, business of software, which used to be awesome conference. I think it's still going. I haven't been to it a long time. And Rob was, like, giving this talk about he was had, like, a a drop shipping site that sold, like

Aaron

Beach towels.

Ian

Beach umbrellas or towels. Yeah. And the whole thing.

Aaron

Oh, yeah.

Ian

And it's crazy, man.

Aaron

Look at you. You were about you

Ian

were in the mix.

Aaron

Oh, I've been around. I have been around. Listen. You wanna hear my Nathan Barry, Rob Walling, Josh Pickford crossover story? Yes.

I went to, I went to MicroConf 2012. That's Rob's conference. And didn't know anyone in the world was on the MicroConf forums, like, oh, you know, a month before and saw this guy that was like, hey. Does anybody need a roommate for MicroConf? And I'm like, this is the last thing I ever wanna do because I love to be alone, but this would give me a conference buddy.

And so I looked him up. His name was Josh Pigford. I looked him up on Twitter. He seemed pretty normal. He I could tell that we shared some some of the same background, and I was like, alright.

I'm gonna take a risk. I hope he doesn't kill me. So I roomed with Josh Pickford. I think he, like, slept in the same bed. And, went down to breakfast one day and sat with, like, Nathan Barry and Brennan Dunn and Patrick McKenzie and Josh Clifford.

And it was like it was it was the old days, man. And that was still that was still not the old old days. There's still Joel on software. But this was like the old days of, MicroConf when you could walk in and, like, I think, Jason Cohen was there too. And so I'm sitting at breakfast with all these people that I'm like, you know, specifically patio 11 at that point.

I'm like, oh, just a bingo card guy. You're a hero. And I'm just sitting at breakfast listening to them all talk. I'm, like, this is crazy. And so, yeah, that's my that's my I've been around.

Been around for all the time. Way back then.

Wow. Way back. Only, like,

23 or something. Right?

I guess

Ian

Something like that. Yeah. Patty 11, it could have been that year. Around that time, Patty 11 taught me how to play poker at MicroConf. That was my first time playing poker.

Aaron

Got your first taste.

Ian

Yeah. He he got me hooked, but yeah, no, that those are have anybody ever gotten more juice out of an app that make made like $32,000 a year than patio 11 on the video card creator?

Aaron

Like Absolutely not.

Ian

He got max value.

Aaron

Max value. And he did I think I think some of his old micro comp stories were, like, he would go do a 1 week AB consulting AB test consulting and get paid, like, 60, 80, a $100,000 just for, like, a week. And then would go back to his bingo card thing where he made, you know, $2,000 a month or whatever.

Ian

So good. So good. Then he got the job at Stripe, and now he's presumably wealthy.

Aaron

Presumably.

Ian

I do have patio 11. And he's still he's still wearing the red jacket.

Aaron

He's got Still wearing the red jacket. I need a shtick. You love you love a strong brand. I that's just the best. I thought I could pull

Ian

up something.

Aaron

I'm it's not too late. You don't have an identifiable piece of outerwear. You could do the outerwear brand. It might be too late to, like, change your whole shtick, but if you wanted to add a fun flare, you could do that. You can pull that off.

Ian

See, in, like, high school, my the beard was my thing. Because, like, people didn't wear beards in general, and nobody could have like, nobody could was even capable of growing a beard, so it's like that was the beard guy. But on the Internet, like, everybody's got a beard. So everybody's got

Aaron

a little stand up. Fun red ascot or something that might be a little dramatic, but you could do that. I

Ian

hear you talk.

Aaron

A kerchief or yeah. Just but don't explain it. Don't don't explain it ever. Just show up to Laracon with a red kerchief and be like, what are you talking about? This is I always this is my brand.

Ian

I like pocket squares, but then I need a pocket.

Aaron

Then you'd then you need a pocket. Yeah. Pocket square and a t shirt, you look like an idiot. No. Jacket guy.

Ian

Jacket guy too, like, vish, you know, or something. You know?

Aaron

Trying way too hard. Too hard to be casual.

Ian

I gotta cope with something.

Aaron

Think about it. It's it's worth considering.

Ian

Be colorful. It can be hot guy.

Aaron

Gotta be colorful. Hat guy. Everybody's hat guy.

Ian

Yeah. It's too easy.

Aaron

It's too easy. We don't have we don't have a face tattoo guy.

Ian

I've thought about face tattoos. I do wanna get a tattoo. I want a tattoo badly.

Aaron

I do too. Actually, I don't want a tattoo. I want a sleeve, but I don't know what I would get. And so that's, like, well, it's kinda hard. It's a lot of tattoos.

Ian

Yeah. I don't think I wanna go full sleeve. I feel like it's a little it's a little too much. Plus, there's a lot of sleeves out there now. All the sports guys, you know, they do the neck tattoo.

I'm kinda what about neck tattoo?

Aaron

It's a little ad across the Adam's apple?

Ian

Yeah. I don't know about that. That's a little too much. I I would go side under the ear, but neck.

Aaron

Can you imagine Ian Landsman a neck tattoo?

Ian

Yeah. It would

Aaron

be great. That that that would make more of a statement than a kerchief, I will admit.

Ian

Mostly technical right here.

Aaron

I I love the show, but you're on your own on that one.

Ian

How do you think we'll listen to this?

Aaron

Yes. Anything to listen to the listeners. I will not. Alright. We got 2 more.

What do you wanna do?

Ian

Alright. Alright. Let's have a 25 seat license sale. 25

Aaron

seat license. I got a call from Steve. I don't know if it was I don't know if it was Friday or Saturday. I actually don't remember. I got a call from Steve.

He was like, dude, I think we just sold a 25 seat license. And up until this point, every single sale has been an individual except for 1 3 seat license.

Ian

Really? Interesting.

Aaron

I think so. Yeah. I haven't actually looked, but I think that's right.

Ian

It's around there.

Aaron

It's around there. It rounds to that. And so he called, and he's like, dude, we just sold 25 seats. And that, I think, is, like, you know, $3,000 or something. And we're both like bird.

Yeah. And we're both like, is it is are we getting scammed somehow? Like, is some is somebody trying to take money from us by giving us money? I don't understand what's happening. And, you know, we looked up the domain, and it's some legit, you know, just like health care analytics company or something, and that's it.

Never heard from them. Never emailed us. Never needed a, you know, pay with a purchase order or anything. Just blew my mind. And I think we're gonna get a lot more of this on Postgres.

You know, we have talked on this show about, like, the pricing structure and, like, what's the other tier gonna be, and we just kinda settled on, let's just put a team tier on there. 1, yes, teams need to buy, but, 2, they can give us a price anchor. So if you see, like, 3 seats for $600, but you could buy it yourself for 1.49. You're like, oh, wow. What a deal.

Right. And so I spent some time, like, actually coding up the way to do that, and I thought, this is this is a waste of time, and then I convinced myself that it wasn't. But it paid off. So we, you know, we sold this we sold this license, and what happens is in the background, we send them an email with a lemon squeezy coupon that is, for a 100% off, and it has a

Right.

20 it can be used 25 times. And so rather than being like, hey. Great. Thanks for buying. Why don't you shoot over a CSV of email addresses, and we'll get a it's like, I don't wanna do any of that.

They don't wanna

Ian

do any of that. Build an actual key manager thing on that stuff. Yeah.

Aaron

No. Or, like, build 25 inputs where they need to gather up all the email addresses, and

then they're

gonna be like, hey. I don't have them right now. Can I just send them to you? No, sir. So, yeah, they just get one coupon code that they can just drop in Slack and be like, hey.

The, you know, the dev team, here you go. Go get this course for free. And you know what? They actually get 26 seats because the person that bought it gets, gets a seat. Because I I that's another thing I didn't wanna deal with.

I didn't wanna I didn't wanna sell 3 seats, and then the guy come back and be like, hey. I'm actually the manager. I don't I don't need a seat. I'm just the credit card holder.

Mhmm. Do you

need to give us another seat? I'm like, I don't care. If you if we end up giving away one extra seat or the manager gets a seat that he doesn't use, don't freaking care. I just don't wanna deal with it. So Yep.

I'm pretty happy. I'm pretty happy with not only the fact that we we sold 25 seats, but the fact that the the, licensing thing worked out so nicely.

Ian

Yeah. So I think there's a lot there, actually. So, actually, speaking of patio 11, me and him used to have this little bit of battle because his whole thing was, like, charge more for everything all the time. And I was a little bit of a counter voice to that that, like, you just I just feel like there's a lot of market pressure and you can't always charge more, especially in, like, these competitive spaces, whatever. Like, I don't know if HelpSpot can, I could charge more for it than Zendesk, you know, Zendesk top tier?

Like, I don't know if that's gonna work, but when you go from selling to consumers

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

To selling to businesses, like, that is just an inherent charge more area that is so incredibly valuable because businesses just have so much more money than individuals. And people, like, don't really factor that. And people get very like, like, oh, this is a lot of money. Nobody's gonna pay this amount of money, but it's nothing to the business. The guy's probably got, you know Yeah.

$50,000 training budget, and he just spent $37100 on your SQLite. And now he's looking how to spend the other 47,000 he still has to spend or whatever, you know? So

Aaron

like money and he doesn't care about it.

Ian

His money. He's gotta spend it or he loses it, which is a whole factor people don't even think about. Yeah. If you haven't been selling the businesses, everybody wants to use their budget. There's no glory in saving your budget.

You don't get any credit. You don't get a raise. Like, you fought for that budget and now you're gonna spend it. So, yeah. And I think that's going to potentially be a nice growth area for you on the SEO side, because the thing is you're reaching all these consumers through your channels, but not necessarily like the manager types always.

I'm not sure there's some of them in there. Right. But like the people who are out there, like, SQLite training, SQLite. Like, I'm looking right now for my team.

Aaron

Interesting.

Ian

Somebody just assigned us a big new project and 10 of my iOS devs have to learn the intricacies of SQLite. Boom. Like, they're just out there looking for a solution for that. So I could see that increasing actually, over time as you build up SEO and targets on those. So, yeah, that's awesome that you convinced yourself to do it.

I think any way you could twist your product into being for businesses is usually a good move.

Aaron

It's funny. You know, right after they bought, none of the coupons had been redeemed, obviously. And so the average order value on on our lemon squeezy dashboard was like, the average order value is like $250. I'm like, but the course is a 149. How does that even work?

So it really moved the needle on the, the old averages. And once, you know, once people do the $0 redemptions, it'll go back to normal, but still kinda wild to see, you know, 250 is the value, and the ticket price is 149.

Ian

So And how many of them even ever I bet you all 25 won't even redeem. Like, there's a lot of stuff like that goes on also. So yeah. I mean, we, like, tough If

Aaron

this were an accounting podcast, we would call this unearned revenue, and we would call that a liability. But

Ian

since this

Aaron

is not an accounting podcast, that's cash in the bank, baby. It's called

Ian

cash basis. I hope you're not doing any of your cruel stuff. Cash basis. Money in

Aaron

the bank.

Imagine. Can you imagine? No way.

Ian

Yeah. Well, that's great. Congratulations

Aaron

on more

Ian

of those. So the course is still selling, which is good news.

Aaron

Yep. Still selling. Yeah. I love it. It's good stuff.

Alright. You wanna wrap on this last one? Yeah. Alright. So I'm gonna read this message out to you, and I want I want I want your take on it.

This is this is from the DMs, and it says, hang on. Backing up. Backing up. Alright. Here we go.

This is on a Wednesday, so put yourself in a Wednesday. Mentally, you're in a Wednesday. And I say, does next Friday afternoon work? We're on a Wednesday, and I say, does next Friday afternoon Next Friday afternoon. The response is, no.

My family is coming into town. How about next Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. Is the eternal question. The eternal question. So I've always been on team next This is crazy. Always be the next one coming.

That's what I've tried to stick to. But I think as it gets closer, it gets weirder to set to not have this and next. But there is always confusion there. Like, this gets very confusing, and it's like, if it's if it's Monday and you're talking about Friday, this, you know, it's a little weird.

Aaron

This this is still the next. If it's Monday.

Ian

Thursday night. I guess it's this.

Aaron

If it's Thursday night and we're talking about the the Friday that follows, you say tomorrow. Yeah. You don't you don't you don't say you don't say this Friday you don't say this Friday or next Friday. If it's Thursday, you say tomorrow. But if it's Wednesday and you say this Friday, that means 2 days from now.

And if it's Wednesday and you say next Friday, that means whatever, 9 days from now. If it's Monday and you say this Friday, that means the end of the week. If it's Monday and you say next Friday, it's not the next Friday. The coming Friday is this Friday.

Ian

There's nowhere in your life, though, where next doesn't mean literally the next one

Aaron

Except of whatever. Except that's what I'm saying.

That's why

it's weird. This is it. Now if you preface it with the, the next Friday would be the the most, the closest Friday.

Ian

Okay. Yeah. Mhmm. I see where you're going. It's leaving a lot up to these sort of informal rules, though.

You know?

Aaron

That's all English is. It's informal rules. English is vibe space. We listen. As a language, we have turned snuck into a word.

The word is sneaked. The proper, like, English word is sneaked. I sneaked into the room. And because because we're all we're all just bad at English, we've said snuck enough that they're like, yeah. I find snuck as a word.

We've made literally we've made literally mean figuratively. It's just vibes. Nothing matters. It's all made up.

Ian

So much of the world is vibes based. People, they don't get that. It's all the vibe.

Aaron

It's all vibes based. People want it to be rules and merit and logic and reason. It's just

Ian

the vibes.

Aaron

Well, so I

Ian

used to be more of a hardliner on this, but I I'm I'm not opposed to you. I'm with you. I mean, I I use the, this and the next. I kind of come around to this being a thing, but I still do find it kind of confusing that next doesn't mean next. And I don't like that, but I'm not mad at you.

I'm I'm fine. I appreciate that. They should have known what you were saying, I think, in that scenario, especially pretty close. But I've I don't like it. But I don't I we can't change it.

Aaron

We got a real waffler on our hands, don't we? Waffling.

Ian

Because I know it's like when you know you can't change something, you're like, do I just throw in the towel on it? Do you just fight or

Aaron

do you win? That's the question.

Ian

Why do you win?

Aaron

And if you wanna communicate with the other humans, you just you just go with this and next, meaning what they mean.

Ian

There is always confusion around this, though. So it's not, like, totally locked in stone. People are they usually end up requiring a follow-up of, like, okay, so the 22nd or whatever, you know, like that, that does happen a lot where people are confirming because they don't know how you use the, this and next. So they have to

Aaron

I use it in the correct way and in the way that everyone should use it. Maybe that should be your preface. Like, just so you know That

Ian

is that is yes. Use this and next correctly. So can we meet next Friday?

Aaron

You know what a legal standard is? A reasonable person. And what I Mhmm. How I use language is how a reasonable person would use language. So in a court of law, you would say, would a reasonable person assume that next Friday means 2 days from now or 9 days from now?

And the jury would say, oh my goodness. A reasonable person would assume it means 9 days from now. And so, bingo. Court of law

Ian

it's not the next. You know?

Aaron

Even though it's not the next. Yes. Yeah. Reasonable personal standard. Yeah.

I'm sorry. The jury the jury has found in in my favor.

Ian

I wonder if there's ever been an actual court case on that. That'd be interesting. Like, somebody missed the big deal or they got fired or whatever because somebody told them next Friday and

Aaron

they meant this time. The bodybuilding.com? I think it's bodybuilding.com thread where they're arguing about how many days are in a week.

Ian

I don't think I remember.

Aaron

Oh my gosh.

Ian

This is a nightmare. Classic. When the Internet was a happy place.

Aaron

Yes. When the Internet was fun, there's this, like, you know, PHP BB forum where it goes on for, like, 8 pages of dudes literally arguing that there are 8 days in a week, because if you count them, there are 8. And another guy's like, no. There are 7. And it is the pretty sure Dave's gonna have to find the link.

It's out there. But it is the funniest thing to read because they were so sincere in saying that there are 8 days, and it's just Right. It shocked. Wow.

Ian

That's amazing.

Aaron

So look in the show notes for that one. Good luck finding it, producer Dave.

Ian

Oh, man. I I will read that one because that that sounds good. I like that kinda stuff.

Aaron

That's That's

Ian

good to sass. When the

Aaron

it was the fun

Internet.

Ian

Oh, simples. Simpler time. Simpler time. I love a good PHPBB. PHPBB was fine.

Aaron

I'll tell you what. I'll tell you. We'll break some we'll break some news here. I'm bringing back the forum. I'm bringing it back.

Do it. And you know what?

Ian

Build that. Build that.

Aaron

That's what I'm gonna build. That's what I just said. I just wanna budget. I'm gonna do it all.

Ian

Okay.

Aaron

Here's the thing. When people are like, oh, no. But, like, Reddit is a forum for everything.

Ian

We can hate Reddit.

Aaron

Here's the thing. Reddit sucks. Yes. That's the thing. Why did nobody say that?

The people on Reddit suck. And if you're on Reddit, I'm not talking about you, but it's just everyone else. But the people on Reddit suck. And, like The whole thing is bad. The tone, the vibe, the whole culture

Ian

of

Aaron

it sucks. And imagine, like, going out into the world and telling some normal person you use Reddit a lot. Like, you should be embarrassed about that. If you're like, oh, yeah.

Ian

I spend most of

Aaron

my time on Reddit. No. Don't say that out loud. Don't say that to it. Don't say that to your in laws.

That's embarrassing. So I like it. I'm gonna bring back the forums. I'm gonna start with screencasting and, SQLite, but the it's time. The forum is in.

The the whole feed based, social media is dying. I hate to say it. Reddit you around on this. You're you're not

Ian

bored. You're coming around.

Aaron

I was. I'm coming around. There's deep inside me, like every other developer, I've got the the perfect idea to replace Twitter. Yep. But I'm not gonna and, you know, I'm not gonna build it, so I don't wanna get yelled at.

But it's dying, and so I'm bringing back, like, a nice space, a nice little corner of the Internet to hang out. This has gone too far.

Ian

I like this idea. I like it. It's

Aaron

a great idea.

Ian

I know that you're a Reddit truther. I love that.

Aaron

Oh, it's the worst. That's

Ian

no. Every time I have to look at it for something like where some the search engine takes me in, and it's like, well, this sort of seems like this might be what I'm looking for. And then I click over there, and inevitably, there's a bunch of crap and, like, 7 messages. People being

Aaron

mean to each other, making the same joke over and over again.

Ian

It's never, it's never what I'm looking for. And it's always like, but crack 72 says this. So it's like,

Aaron

I don't know.

Ian

I don't know if I'm trusting butt crack 72 on this one.

Aaron

Like Butt crack 72?

Ian

They always have names like that. That's why we use it like discourse or whatever. Name your favorite for

Aaron

Okay.

Ian

First of

Aaron

all, I thought

you were gonna say Discord and because that's No. Discord sucks, and I hate it. Yeah.

Ian

Discord's not not better.

Aaron

I don't know. Discourse, maybe. Maybe it's fine. I have never really liked discourse forums as a user. I feel like they're kinda

Ian

they're not very Something's wrong.

Aaron

Something's wrong.

Yeah.

It just doesn't feel nice to be in. I am not, dead set on, like, building my own from scratch. I think this is less important, to have, like, cool features than it is to be, like, a space where people don't call each other idiots all day long. So I'm less I'm less worried about the tech side. I think there are even Laravel packages for forums that would probably suffice.

But, yeah, I I think I think it's time. I think we need new spaces. We need new spaces on the Internet.

Ian

Would you consider Campfire?

Aaron

I would if I were going for, more of a live chat. I don't want

Ian

A chat.

Aaron

Want I don't want a big Slack. Like and it's not Slack, but I don't want a big chat room where everybody's just, like, firing off stuff all day long. I want you to, like, have to sit down and type something into the box and then wait 30 minutes or 4 hours for the replies to come in. You know? Right.

That was that was back in the day, I used to I used to frequent Paintball forums and it and, like, macromedia flash forums and HTML goodies. And the forums, so much gold in the forums. It was great. It was so fun. It was very formative in my, early Internet years.

Ian

Well, so much of it too is because there was always not always, but much of the time you would get a, like, solid question with premise and detail and like all that stuff and then answers that were more thoughtful and fleshed out. So I mean, just reading it was better, but even for the search engine, it's better. It's like Yep. The search engine knows what this is about and can guide you to it instead of it being like a one, you know, 1, you know, a 100 characters on Twitter that everybody has to, like, project into it, what the person's actually asking and all that stuff, or obviously things that are just off of not even available to the search engine like Telegram or Slack or whatever. So I know Nobody feels like they have the time for it, but I do I wanna have the time for it.

Aaron

I wanna have I would rather spend my time there, frankly, than Not than getting bombarded by the new algorithm that shows me people dying all the time. Like, I'd rather hang out in a forum than be like, oh, this criminal got run over by a truck.

Ian

I'm gonna watch that. So now back to your centralization of Aaron Francis Yeah. Inc. Wow. Interesting.

Should should the forum really be centralized? I feel like I don't like the idea of it off on your separate properties because it's gonna be hard to get people to do this. And then if they're like, well, some people on screencasting and some people on SQL Lite, whatever, and then some people on Postgres, like, now you've really sliced and diced it. Whereas old forms, they just had different areas. Right?

Like, this is the database area. Oh. This is the, you know, screencasting area, whatever. Like, and then this week, you have some crossover. You're gonna have crossover between Gotta have crossover.

The the courses for sure you'll have crossover. And the screencasting showed up some at least, probably less than what

Aaron

it's. Man.

Ian

Yeah. Consolidation.

Aaron

Price of admission. Yeah. Okay. I feel uncomfortable about that, but I think that's the right decision.

Ian

Hard to manage, like, 3 or 4 forums. You know? Just even for you, Like, if you have one spot, you could see what's new. Other people who are interested in multiple channels can see what's new.

Aaron

It does Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ian

Up the sophistication level of the forum slightly of, like, does have the good tools and better notifications or whatever, Probably a little bit.

Aaron

There is something interesting. People have often asked me, like, hey. What's your Discord? And I'm like Mhmm. Why why would I have a Discord dedicated to myself?

Vanity of vanities to be like, you are my you are my captives. Come to my Discord. However, a a forum hits different. I like that.

Ian

You can have an off topic zone for just stuff you wanna ask Aaron.

Aaron

Mostly technical channel.

Ian

Yes. Now we're talking. Hey. I love that.

Aaron

This is interesting, Ian.

Ian

I like this. Think we're on something.

Aaron

Joel Joel had Joel on software. It's been done. It's not bad.

Ian

And he had different sections for, like, bootstrap or stuff. He had, like, more like software development, and

Aaron

then there

Ian

was, like, a couple other ones. There was, like, 4 sections. Oh.

Aaron

Yeah. This is it. This, I think I think he

Ian

just the brand. Yeah. Empire build, baby. Empire. How do you all the stuff.

Aaron

This is a minor, minor detail. It's just very, very Quibbly thing. How do we get people from sequelite.com? That's not the domain. Sequelite.com to the forum in, like, a reasonable way provided they're not, like, fans of me.

You know?

Ian

But, see, I feel like that's what's even easier. Now SQLite one's a little weird because you start in the other direction. But if everything else ends up being aaronfrancis.com /sequeliteat some point and aaronfrancis/postgresmastery or whatever, whatever you do with all that.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

Or at the very least the emails are coming from you and emails are facing footer and, like, whatever, all that stuff. I feel like it'll be like, and, hey, like, there's a PS. Like, we all hang out in my forum over here and, like, it becomes the logical place. And then they'll just discover more stuff because how many people are you really gonna get to interact in only the SQLite forum?

Aaron

Correct. Yeah.

Ian

2 years from now. Right, right,

Aaron

right, right, right.

You

Ian

know, like maybe it builds up and that's the dream, but like, it's gonna be much harder versus like, if you know an Francis forum, like there's always gonna be something going on and then you can keep it lively. Cause that's why forums do die. Right. Is eventually like, if

Aaron

right, right.

Ian

Then nobody comes back and whatever. So you could keep the action up. And I think, I think it's doable if you're sending the emails from Aaron Francis and the videos are on Aaron Francis and, like, all that stuff

Aaron

is Yeah. The direction. You could convince me otherwise, but as as of now, the properties are gonna stay on their own domains. The emails are gonna come from me. But, like, you know, I think having, you know, let's say, mastering postgres.com is more impactful to than aaronfrance.com/masteringpostgres.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually I'm on board with that. I think for

Aaron

Okay.

Ian

The search engine traffic stuff, that's good too. But Okay.

Aaron

At the end of the day,

Ian

it's gonna have, like, your face plastered on it. Correct. Email's coming from you. Yeah. They probably found you on the Aaron Francis YouTube channel to begin with.

Mhmm. Like Mhmm. So if that's the marketing funnel, I don't think it matters that, like, the actual domain is mastering post, whatever, because it's still like, they're gonna see your name, know who you are, all that stuff. And here's the forums where we all hang out and talk about Postgres. They go over there, and then they get exposed obviously to the other zones.

Aaron

Sure.

Ian

You know, over time.

Aaron

Oh, man. Whoo, boy. That works. We got work to do. This is a great idea.

This is a great idea.

Ian

It's more work and less work at the same time.

Aaron

We love less work. We really do. Yeah. This is get 3

Ian

or 4 or 5 of these, you know, 2 years from now and you have 7 database courses, like, it's gonna be a lot to deal with and not even necessarily optimal. Yeah. Like

Aaron

And and frankly, people people will be Postgres users at work and SQLite at home or, you know, vice versa. And so it's like, I don't wanna transfer my reputation. I don't wanna be checking a bunch of different domains for these forums. I'm just not gonna do it. But if there's one domain, one username, one reputation, I like that.

Ian

I like it.

Aaron

And we have like, every time I do a new YouTube video, there's a thread that started. Every time we do a new podcast, there's a thread that starts. You can discuss the podcast episode in the thread. Yep. Ian I

Ian

like it.

Aaron

Lansman. Top of it. You you, dear listener, could get this kind of advice too if you just submit your applications to Ian Landsman on Twitter and we pick you, you could get this kind of life changing advice as well.

Ian

Don't send anything in yet.

Aaron

I'm trying my hardest to get people to send you stuff. Oh, boy.

Ian

Alright.

Aaron

I think

Ian

you wrap it right there.

Aaron

Let's do it.

Ian

Thanks everybody for listening. Check us out. Mostlytechnical.com. Someday, we'll have a forum over there that And here in case.com/forum/mostlytechnical. Yeah.

Mostly tech pod on Twitter. Definitely follow us. Mostly tech pod on YouTube. I should forget what that is. I forget what the most technical podcast.

Aaron

Confident. Yeah. You keep going all the way.

Ian

Emails at mostly technical podcast atgmail.com, which I haven't looked at in a little bit, but I will look at, this week. So

Aaron

But do email us, and correction, youtube.com/atmostly technical.

Ian

Oh, just mostly technical. Perfect. Mhmm.

Aaron

Alright. Look at this. So as you're reading this out, 740 views on YouTube on the last episode. The one with Taylor has 10,000 views on YouTube. Wow.

Not that much. That is crazy. And we're, like,

Ian

pretty high what's our follow-up? Like, 1600 followers on YouTube or something like

Aaron

that? On YouTube? Yeah. 1.6. That's crazy.

People love YouTube. For subscribing on YouTube. Leave a comment. Tell your friends. I didn't realize YouTube was growing like this.

This is awesome.

Ian

Yeah. I mean, it's it's been really fun be having the video. We did the video right from the start, and I'm so glad we did because there's a lot of people who are like, I wait and I watch it on YouTube Uh-huh. Which I think is is interesting. So yeah.

Thanks, everybody. That's been really cool. And, yeah. I love the YouTube. I've been always wanting to do something on YouTube, and now I'm I'm doing something You're here.

On YouTube, sort of.

Aaron

You're here.

Ian

I'm I'm on there. Alright. Thanks, everybody. See you next week.

Aaron

See you.