The To-Done List

Ian

Hello.

Aaron

Hello. Welcome back.

Ian

Back back on the show.

Aaron

So we got a lot to cover.

Ian

We have a lot to cover.

Aaron

We got a lot of good feedback. We got a lot of good feedback. Oh, what is this? It's it's what we ask people to give us feedback on. Should we do ads?

Ian

Yes. Let's talk about

Aaron

that first. So what's your what's your vibes? Just we'll do vibes only first, and then we can talk specific feedback. Well well, what are your vibes from the people?

Ian

So I think we even have different vibes, which is interesting. My vibe is that people were like, I wanna pay for it, like, because I wanna support the show, and I don't wanna listen to ads. That was the primary takeaway I took.

Aaron

My primary takeaway was we don't wanna pay. Just keep doing ads. How did we get different takeaways?

Ian

It's crazy. They're big corners of the Internet or something.

Aaron

I feel like I sent you all the messages or I sent you screenshots of all the messages that I got.

Ian

But even the ones you sent were, like but I would pay. There was, like, the asterisk. They're, like but I put the ones you saw were, like, I'd prefer not to pay, but I would pay.

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

Before we even get in deeper in that Okay. Okay. So that's kinda, like, where that shook out. But I have another idea that I think you are going to love, and I

Aaron

think I love ideas.

Ian

Tell me. Because I think it hits both sides. So I just came up with this idea this morning. It hit me in the shower. It's a shower idea.

Aaron

It's fresh. Know it's good.

Ian

Mhmm. Alright. So here's the thing. I think the podcasts are much better for brand advertising over direct response. Okay.

Which agreed. Right. Okay. But people tend to use them as direct response. Like here's promo code X for $50 off.

Right. But like I'm walking my dog, I'm in the car. Like when I'm listening to podcast is not necessarily when I'm ready to take action like that. Right?

Aaron

Correct.

Ian

So, you know, the, the ads we've had on this show so far been like, Hey, two spots, four spots, one spot, like 10. Okay. But like, that's not very good for brand advertising, right? Like normally you want to like hear the name over and over

Aaron

and over.

Ian

That's like the deal. So what if we took an idea from like, I'm thinking like AM radio, but you also see it in like football games and things like that, where they're what they would call spots. And it's like five to fifteen seconds. It's the name and a tagline. And so it's like, this is an interesting, Everything you need to start sending newsletters, help spot everything you need for, you know, your customer service.

Right? And

Aaron

too short to fast forward.

Ian

Too short to fast forward. We're gonna go through them. Right. We're gonna read them just live. Presume, I think generally it would be the idea, but either way, and it's like, there's eight spots an episode.

It's a thousand bucks a month for, you know what? I'm making up numbers here, but like, and so, yeah. So if you're the small businesses that are kind of in our circles, like, Hey, you could come up with a thousand bucks a month to advertise on the show. Right. And get your brand name out there over and over.

And I hear mail coach over and over and over for a whole year. So when I'm ready to send a newsletter, I'm like, oh, mail coach is what I send newsletters with. Right. Not just like if I happen to listen the one day Right.

Aaron

Where it

Ian

happened to be advertising. Right? It's like, no. I've been hearing about mail coach for a whole year. And so to get to the brand, it gets affordable price point.

It would not charging the listeners, but it's also not that abusive to the listeners. So that's that's was what I was thinking.

Aaron

Can we still do an auction? Can we still do it publicly?

Ian

It could be auction.

Aaron

If so, I'm in. I'm in. I love it.

Ian

It's almost like, yeah, I mean, the auction's kind of you know, I think it even works better kind of for the auction because I don't

Aaron

think the auction Maybe auction is incorrect. Just public Mhmm. Publicly available purchasing.

Ian

Yes. Well, that's the thing. I think it fits with that nicely too because the problem with the bigger ads is, like, they're just not that simple. Like, people are, like, they have different needs. They're asking me questions.

They want feedback. They want The Us to prerecord it and send it to them for confirm. There's just a lot of stuff. Right? Like and so whereas it's like, hey.

This a thousand bucks a month. You're getting four ad reads a month generally with, like, some asterisk. We might miss a show. You don't get a refund, whatever, blah blah blah blah.

Aaron

But, like,

Ian

it's a, it's a lower threshold, right? It's like, this is a simple thing. It's gonna be awesome for your brand. We're gonna talk about your brand, but it's not big and heavy. Like a big ad campaign is or all that stuff.

So so, yeah, I think it works better with that. We could have, like, here's eight slots. Here's how many are available or whatever the number of slots is. Mhmm.

Aaron

You

Ian

know, maybe there's, like, mid roll and front, you know, or whatever. Maybe those are I don't know. Maybe those are different prices, potentially, I could imagine. So, yeah, there's some stuff like that.

Aaron

I love it.

Ian

I think. This is great. You would like it.

Aaron

This is great.

Ian

No. No. You would like it.

Aaron

Completely on board. I love this so much. This is perfect. It's everything I've ever wanted.

Ian

And it's like less work for us, presumably. It's like, hey. If we get some sponsors, we're like, yeah, we're gonna just do this every month, you know, for six months or whatever. Great. Like, we know who they are.

We read them in the show. It's not new contracts and new whatever. I mean, we don't generally do contracts, but they want contracts. Like we have signed contracts because other people want contracts. So even in that case, it's like, fine, it's not a contract and I'm doing this for six months.

Great. That's, like, not a hassle. It's, like, kind of annoying when it's for one ad. Right. It's like, okay.

So yeah. Alright. You love it.

Aaron

I love it. I love it. I think it's great. I think it's great.

Ian

That's why

Aaron

we don't have to charge the people. We still get to charge the companies. We don't have to do a lot of a lot of back and forth over the ad reads. I think Justin Jackson sent us a screenshot of somebody that was like, this company rejected my ad read because it was twenty nine seconds and not thirty and made me redo the whole thing. And I'm like, this is I'm not doing any of that.

To

Ian

all that stuff.

Aaron

And then it's like, it's like

Ian

an audience. You know? Like, the people in our audience with businesses could benefit from this. Whereas, like, we're charging more for bigger spots. It's like, well, I'm not gonna pay the $2,000 for one one minute spot or you know, it's like, that's not really a

Aaron

bigger company. Beneficial for the listeners because they get

Ian

Yes.

Aaron

They get, exposed very quickly to several interesting, hopefully, dev tools developer related things Yep. Versus listening to a minute of one thing that they may not need at the moment.

Ian

Yep. I think definitely listener wise. I mean, we'll see what people say. And if we do it, we'll see what they say. But I feel like I would definitely prefer the, like, here's, you know, forty five seconds to a minute of, like, three or four brands that are, you know, potentially very interesting to you, and then we're back to the show versus, like, yeah, the minute long on every detail about some services, you know, whatever uptime and soft two compliance or whatever.

Mhmm. That all that whole thing. So alright.

Aaron

This is it. So what's next? We set up we throw up a page. Let's throw up a page with some Stripe buy now buttons on it.

Ian

Alright. Well, that that sounds like now that sounds like an Aaron thing. I'm not gonna lie. That sounds like an Aaron livestream.

Aaron

No. No. No. No. No.

No. No. No. No. No.

No. No

Ian

the podcast. No.

Aaron

Aaron's got Aaron's got too much to do. Ian, on the other hand, doesn't do anything. Ian doesn't do anything over over on the bad place. Brian Castles, he's he's dragging you because what does Ian even do? Nothing.

So here's here's

Ian

bad place. Bad place. You mean blue sky, which I do. Illogical. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

Aaron

Mhmm. So

Ian

I get you over there. When do you need to do it? I know. That's not. I know.

Aaron

Listen. I've I've been very clear that after Thanksgiving, if it's still alive Okay. I will come over. I've said this. I've said this many times.

And even Ian in this very moment was surprised when I said it again. So I guess I haven't said it enough.

Ian

Surprised.

Aaron

After Thanksgiving, if it's if it's still a thing, which it all signs are pointing to, it will still be a thing. It seems to be going strong against my against my, estimation and wishes. It seems to be going strong. Yeah. So I keep saying this, and everybody's like, oh, Aaron, you gotta come to Blue Sky.

I'm like, guys, I already told you. I already told you. Post Thanksgiving. I will come over. So the time is rapidly approaching.

Ian

Maybe we don't even want you to come over. We have the fake Aaron account that has you like

Aaron

That that is fine.

Ian

It's like a little sort of Jesus take on it. Yes. I do

Aaron

a little

Ian

I don't know

Aaron

where I'm not wanted. So if you don't want me there, that's great. I don't that sounds awesome to me, frankly.

Ian

You should hire that guy. Maybe we should pay that guy to be fake Aaron just full time.

Aaron

Well, he already outed himself. He'd one of the screenshots had his had his profile picture in it, and it's like, man, you'd be a terrible spy. You're very bad at this.

Ian

You gotta update the game. You gotta have

Aaron

a separate browser.

Ian

You gotta just be like, that's dedicated.

Aaron

I know. Cross cross. But So eventually. Yeah. Eventually.

Alright.

Ian

Alright. So Bad Place. Yes.

Aaron

Back to the point at hand. Yeah. So overall, the conversation happens, and it's so much more fun, and everybody engages, whatever. You know? Over on the other side, there was some commentary about, Ian always has these things, these ideas, and they never never come to fruition.

And I'm always hearing about Aaron stuff moving. But what does Ian even do? Ian always says, this is my Brian Castle. Ian always says, I don't have time, but what do you actually do all day? And, you know, the man makes a good point.

What do you do all day, Ian? Well, I smoke

Ian

a lot of cigars.

Aaron

Yeah. Exactly. Drink

Ian

the Scotch, Lots of stuff.

Aaron

Count my money.

Ian

Count my money. Yeah. Broadcast is trying to get after me. He's trying to get

Aaron

after me.

Ian

So but it was very cool because it spurred me to log my entire day that day. So I logged my entire day. And just a little side note, I've been loving logging my days. And so I logged all day Friday. This was Thursday.

I already been logging today. So now I'm I'm logging my day. And then we say it's great.

Aaron

Spite can make a man do.

Ian

It's so good.

Aaron

It's a spite log.

Ian

It's a spite log, but it's

Aaron

so good. Listen up, Brian. Focus up.

Ian

It's a reverse to do list. It's like, you know how your to do list never ends?

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

And it's, like, miserable. Right? Like, just stuff gets added, and you take one thing off, but it's still 30 things. You know? Like, this is stupid It's

Aaron

a done list.

Ian

It's a done list. And, like, every time you add something, you feel better. You're like, oh my god.

Aaron

Better and

Ian

not worse. Saying. Yes. I've done another thing.

Aaron

Feeling better about adding a thing to a list. God, that sounds awesome. Good. So good. Ever feel worse.

Ian

I only ever feel worse. So this has been a huge revelation. So this is look at the blue sky's already produced for me. Friend of the show, Brian Castle, has produced for me. Nice little addition.

We'll see if I stick with it. But so far the

Aaron

show also suck it, Brian Castle. You're about to get you're about to get owned by the to none list.

Ian

You're about to get forty five minutes of what I did on last Thursday.

Aaron

Alright. Alright. Give us the highlights. What did you what did you

Ian

do last Thursday? No. No.

Aaron

No. No.

Ian

No. I'm not giving you highlights. Let's

Aaron

just No. Okay.

Ian

No highlights. We are going Alright. Line by line. Line by line. I'm glad you got a little beverage there.

Aaron

I'm ready. Yeah.

Ian

It's gonna it's gonna be a long one.

Aaron

Alright. I'm gonna mute the mute the Riverside and switch to Twitter, but, yeah, keep going. Go tell me. Tell me. Tell me.

Ian

Alright. So Thursday, last Thursday, 9AM, one on one call with Dave, producer Dave.

Aaron

Mhmm. Producer Dave. Hey, Dave.

Ian

We talked about Lara Jobs content thing we're doing for Lara Jobs. We talked about the Lara Jobs affiliate program, which is out today, actually.

Aaron

I got an email about it.

Ian

If you want to, make some money along with us, you can go ahead and sign up for Lara Jobs affiliates. We're giving a hundred and $50 every time you, send a job our way. So, hey, if you have a podcast or a blog you're not, monetizing, might be a little way to do that. And we talked about, mostly technical sponsorship, some stuff with that, and maybe him helping with some of that stuff. So, yeah, so that was the one on one.

10 20 AM. I had to send a contract to a mostly technical sponsor.

Aaron

So I did

Ian

that as an email. I had to fill out the contract and what? 10:30AM. I don't know.

Aaron

It took ten minutes. That's great.

Ian

That was not bad.

Aaron

That was bad. That's pretty good.

Ian

I actually had already done some stuff with it, which was previous days, but, but.

Aaron

Got it.

Ian

The r and d tax people. So every year we do this, like, r and d. You get the r and d credit. To do that, you have to have this third party company. It's insane.

Like, they do nothing. They literally do nothing, and they just take a quarter of your Yep. Tax credit as their fee, but whatever. Fine. So I had to email them with a bunch of stuff.

So I had to, like, get our payroll report, and I had to get last year's tax return for the business and blah blah blah. Put that all together. Send that to them. Use their I thought I wrote that in here, but use their, that took fifteen minutes primarily because That's good. Their drop box thing.

Mhmm. Totally insane. It's asking me for a password I don't have. It's asking me for an ADP, like, company

Aaron

Of course.

Ian

Network login that I don't have, of course, because I don't work there. So I had to, like, navigate all that. Ten forty five. I reached out to TinyMCE, which is the Wizzywig, makers for a quote, real time follow-up. They wanted to do a call.

I said no. Actually, well, that's later. That's later in the dice. Let me I won't even guess that. And this is what great radio this says.

11AM. Eleven AM.

Aaron

At 11AM.

Ian

One on one call with Matt, who's our, DevOps guy here. K. We talked about and programmer. We did some help spot. The next version of help spot is gonna have official translations from us.

So we talked about some tech stuff with that. We also have to move help spot cloud to I p v six from I p v four.

Aaron

Sounds like a nightmare.

Ian

AWS is a complete nightmare. It's like a six month long project because AWS decided to charge us 4 almost $5 per IP, And we have like 400 servers. So it actually adds up to a lot of money. So we're working on IPV sec, which is free. Noon.

I spent a little time on some help spot dev work, 12:30, I went to lunch. One, I did some random emails for half an hour.

Aaron

Thirty minute lunch.

Ian

Yeah. Normally, I do an hour

Aaron

because normally I walk and stuff like that. Long. Yeah.

Ian

Now today was tight because I was very busy. Well, so

Aaron

we would get an hour and we could fast forward over some time here, but thirty minutes. Wow. That's crazy.

Ian

This is a full day. I

Aaron

know. Alright. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ian

We got we got a lot of feedback that people actually wanted to hear this breakdown.

Aaron

Yeah. I know. This is great. This is

Ian

great. It's gonna be very boring for you.

Aaron

01:00. Here we are. What happens at one?

Ian

I look like you're gonna pass out. You actually left.

Aaron

No. No. No. No. No.

It's good.

Ian

Alright. So 01:00, I just lumped a entry of, like, random email. I had, like, I was cleaning up my email, just whatever random stuff. Nothing, not interesting. 01:30.

I was still in email, but the one I pulled out of this was that, with the tiny MC got back to me. They wanna do a call. I said, I don't wanna call. I sent you all the information. Send me a quote.

Now that was Thursday. I'm just gonna note that they haven't gotten back to me yet. So, apparently, they refused to give a quote without this call. Mhmm. I I I don't understand.

So we could the whole WYSIWYG world is insane. Whatever. So I don't have a quote from them. I'm trying to pay the money. They won't let me pay them.

Mhmm. There's a whole side thing there. Whatever. 02:00. Mhmm.

One on one with Cremo, who's our software developer we hired a few months ago.

Aaron

What's the name?

Ian

Cremo is his name?

Aaron

Cremo. Okay.

Ian

Cremo. Yeah. He's actually from France, but he's a US citizen then. Though. So help slot uses a thing called the swift mailer, which is a package

Aaron

Oh, yeah.

Ian

For sending mail. Yep. It is no longer maintained. So we have to switch to the symphony mailer, which is now part of symphony. Even Swift Mailer was maintained by Symfony, but it wasn't written by Symfony.

You know, and of course, they're not gonna just make it API compatible because that would be nice and simple. Right? Right. Gotta progress that's gonna move forward. Yeah.

So we have to build a thing to, you know, whatever. We have to make code changes, but also do some underlying stuff, whatever. So we're talking about that, and just other kind of what what's on the list for him, going forward. So Mhmm. It's that kinda one on one stuff.

03:00

Aaron

is in the morning. The day end just so I'm prepared.

Ian

06:00.

Aaron

Okay. So Alright. Keep going.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna keep going. 03:00, I went and got tea.

Aaron

Oh, that's nice.

Ian

Took, twenty minutes and walked around the corner, and they just cut the shop around the corner.

Aaron

Brian may be right. You could there's time for sidekick

Ian

cuts in here.

Aaron

Thirty minute lunch and a twenty minute tea. That's fifty minutes, baby. We're cooking.

Ian

I shoulda got that. Alright. Okay. Oh, here's a good one. Three 20.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

I had to read very carefully through an email from the accountants.

Aaron

You hate that.

Ian

Fringe benefit calculations.

Aaron

Oh, nice.

Ian

Yes. Because for the owner of a company, at least a C S corp, I don't know how this works elsewhere. Your health insurance is income. You can't write it off. Right.

But then there's also other benefits that you can't write off, like your automobile, although I know people who do. And if you have, like, company paid life insurance and things or whatever. This was a pretty complicated email that I didn't wanna screw up and had a form with it. So I had to, like, carefully go through all that and do all that stuff for the end of year accounting. Three thirty.

Oh, I kind of jumped the gun so we can skip this one. This is ADP wrote back to me and said how to get into their system, and I couldn't get in and all that stuff.

Aaron

Oh, getting close.

Ian

Delete an invoice for for a customer that, isn't using HelpSpot anymore. And we, you know, we auto build them because they're on subscription.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

But the deleting of invoices in our new back office system, which is this huge system we have, that's a big app of its own. Under a certain scenario, you can't delete an invoice. So I do it manually, which was annoying. So then at 04:30, I wrote up a issue for us to build the tool to delete invoices so that we can just push a button and delete invoices. So that was 04:30.

Mhmm. 04:45. I had to write an email to a customer who owes us a very large invoice of, like, 30 something thousand dollars.

Aaron

Holy moly.

Ian

Has owed us this since, like, July. And not that they're not going to pay, but it's, like, stuck in this bureaucracy of a giant company. So I'm kinda dealing with that. It's not, like, escalated to me writing the contact and so on. Let's see.

455. Wrote an email to a HubSpot partner that has a demo server with us that needed some customization for it because they give demos with the server, whatever. Alright. 05:00. We're we're at five.

We're almost there. Oh, there's still, like, ten items to the list.

Aaron

No. I know that you they're all, like, ten minute increments. You're killing me.

Ian

That's it. This is what goes on. If I just said, oh, I did some email, that wouldn't be that would feel like not I wasn't working. Right? Feel like

Aaron

a cop out. Brian would Brian would get you.

Ian

There you go. Hold my feet to the fire, so I gotta lay it out. So this is, I just signed an invoice with some information for Laracon India because we're sponsoring Laracon India. So since You

Aaron

go to India?

Ian

Pay them. I am not going to India. I do want to go to India, but I Yeah. Not this year. Are you going?

Aaron

No. Too far. Australia and India are too far away to be family allowed at this point.

Ian

Yeah. That's a that's a haul. Yeah. So I wanna go to EU, but I don't think it's gonna happen because my daughter has a big thing the day when like, Sunday before. So I Yeah.

Leave till Sunday night, and then I wouldn't get there till halfway through the conference.

Aaron

And Nah. I don't remember. So That's

Ian

a pity, though. I know. I would like to do that. Some random email stuff at 05:05, time off requests, and things like that.

Aaron

Save it for the end of the day. Smart smart employees. You're tired at that point.

Ian

Or they would just say

Aaron

Send it to the boss and say, hey. I'd love to yeah. Whatever. I don't care. It's 505.

So that's smart. That's good.

Ian

Yes. Yes. Yes. I always say yes.

Aaron

But Good strategy.

Ian

05:15, I set up some stuff in day one to log because I hadn't been logging in day one. So I moved this to day one, this logging operation. So it's a little meta. I was logging. What what do you mean?

Logging?

Aaron

You set up day is day one like a journaling thing?

Ian

Yeah. It's like a journaling thing, which I use for, like, my private journal, but you can have multiple journals.

Aaron

So we got a we got a snake eating its own tail situation here now. So you're you're you're logging all day, and then you're like, I gotta have somewhere to put this log. I mean, it's fine for logging, but that itself needs to go into the log.

Ian

It's recursive.

Aaron

It's crazy.

Ian

Alright. We're almost to the end. 05:20. Reviewed some poll requests. We just did this five

Aaron

fifteen, and now we're doing five twenty. We're never gonna make it, Ian.

Ian

I'm moving, baby. I'm moving. Now we're I'm reviewing pull requests. We're into actual code here. We're viewing pull requests, for some changes to the back office as well as some help slot changes.

05:30, I chatted with you for five minutes

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

About some mostly technical some mostly technical stuff. I forget what it was. Yeah. This is like this is like that Seinfeld where he's like, you know, mister what is it? Mister Kramer.

You know, he has the Kramer. It's like mister mister Kramer took tea with mister Newman.

Aaron

And with with Darren's help, we're gonna find those chickens.

Ian

Yeah. Exactly. Alright. Three more. Five thirty five.

I went back to the PRs. Yeah. At a the content stuff for Lara jobs needed some work for the content pages, so I've been messing with that. Five forty five, pull approve some depend depend the bot whole thing. Do you use it?

You know about the depend the bot?

Aaron

I know about it. I don't use it. I think I used to I think, like, GitHub, I

Ian

but I

Aaron

think it's part of the Yeah.

Ian

I think it's So, yeah, I get those. So tells you if you have dependencies that are out of date and

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

Gives you the pull request to update it. Although you have not to be careful because, obviously, it'll do, like, huge

Aaron

It doesn't know anything. Yeah.

Ian

It doesn't know anything. And six zero three, I left the office to drive. There we go.

Aaron

There we go. Five

Ian

minutes. It's only ten minutes.

Aaron

A day in the life of a small business owner.

Ian

One day.

Aaron

One day.

Ian

A lot of stuff in there.

Aaron

Lot of stuff. Why don't you, with with that level of detail, why don't you come up a level and synthesize what is what is having having logged at least two days, which Yeah. We'll see if, we'll check-in next week to see if you get if that continues. Yeah. Yeah.

What is this what does this tell you about your life?

Ian

It's it's hectic. That's one thing. It's a lot of bouncing between types of things. Right? It's like

Aaron

a dozen

Ian

stuff, business stuff, account, and different right? There's Lara jobs. There's HelpSpot. There's well, I did three one on one calls with the employees. So there's, like, the HR manager thing going on.

Aaron

Mhmm. There were at least two or three mostly technical tasks in there as well.

Ian

There was several multiple mostly technical tasks, right, which is takes time. And this is where, you know, where the sponsorship comes in. Right? Like, support the show. The show takes more time than you might think.

Aaron

More of Ian's time than you might think. More of Ian's time anyway. So Ian's employee's time. So,

Ian

yeah, so I think, you know, this was this was definitely a very full day. Like, not every day is this, like, white Mhmm. This packed with random stuff. And, there are definitely days where it's like, oh, I have, like, three hours if I just, like, code something or I'm doing

Aaron

a specific That's a dream.

Ian

Yeah. That is the dream. But not less days than I would like for sure. So, yeah, I mean, this is, like, I mean, some of it is, like, our size. Like, I imagine some of these things, like, if I had a tier of managers, some of these things would be in that tier, right, and wouldn't come up to me potentially.

So but, you know, we're small. We're only five full time people, and, so things bubble up to me. So I So

Aaron

here's here's the other question. Is this looking back, is this what you want to be doing with your days?

Ian

So that's oh, now we're getting deep here. You know, I think it's like listen. Of course, I would rather not especially, like, the little administrative stuff is, like, definitely not fun. Right? Like, that's just yeah.

The accountant wants something from you. It's not exciting. ADP wants something from you. No. I don't I that's all terrible.

Right? But I don't know what else I would be doing. That's the thing. It's like, well, I make a reasonable amount of money. What else would I do if I wasn't doing this?

I don't know.

Aaron

Other stuff.

Ian

Right? Other stuff. Yeah.

Aaron

Personal budgeting app or something.

Ian

Yeah. I know. But it's like, how how am I gonna fit all that? So yeah. So okay.

Let's talk specifically about side projects. Like, where do side projects fit this? Because, like, obviously, you could get it to, like, when you sell the business and all that stuff, whatever. That's, like, a bigger thing.

Aaron

That's awesome.

Ian

Could I could I fit side projects in? But the thing is all these things. This is this is what weighs me down. Right? It's like, oh, yeah.

You do the side project, then the side project becomes just one of these things. Right? So it's like it's like Lara Jobs is a perfect example. There's multiple Lara Jobs things I talk about in here from that day. And sorry.

It's a side project, and it makes some money, but it doesn't make, like, life world changing on it.

Aaron

But more than anything, it's spawning to dos.

Ian

And it's wanting to dos. Right? Like and so it makes it up, but that's worth the to dos, but it's like the any side project's the same thing. Right? Except that's gonna be making no money probably or little money.

And now there's things that come from that. Like, you need to start up a corporation to keep it separate, and you need to, like, have accountants for that. You need to do this, you need that, and you have customers, and people want stuff. And the people trying it are like, hey. These bugs are in here.

Blah blah blah. Like and it's like, it's a lot of work. You know? It's a lot of work to add into all this. And then, obviously, we didn't cover, like, I have kids and wife and all the stuff that goes on outside of work, having bandwidth for that versus just coming home being totally wrecked.

So that's where, like, I don't know. That's where every time I get inside, it's like I want to code some stuff that's fresh and new. It's always fun, but it's hard to justify. It's hard to justify.

Aaron

I told our au pair the other day. She's 25. I said, Jasmine, Jasmine, never turned 35. Life is life is such a burden at 35. Never do it.

And I feel like I feel like you're

Ian

what are you?

Aaron

45? It's supposed to be better.

Ian

Eight. I just turned 48.

Aaron

When does it get better?

Ian

Well, see, you're just making a chance. So it's like, listen. Do I want the the risk of doing other stuff which may or may not pay off, or do I do the stuff that I know pays the bills?

Aaron

Explore or exploit.

Ian

Then you get, you get to the, the later you go, you're like, boy, do I wanna, like, put that energy into this? Do I want to, like, what if it goes south and the main business also goes south and now I'm like, I have to go get a job or something like that. You know? Like, it's like, I wouldn't make you out there. I wouldn't make you out.

Aaron

No. You wouldn't. So I

Ian

wouldn't make it. So it's like yeah. But I do it's it's the responsibility that's weighing you. It's like, yeah. I know I got bills.

I got all the stuff we wanna do. Gotta save money. Gotta have money. And so you take the more conservative route. That's just what naturally occurs, which is, you know, sometimes to your detriment, right?

Like if things change and you're stuck in the conservative route, then that can do that.

Aaron

If you if you ride your success over the top and you haven't yet explored new avenues, you might be host.

Ian

It's possible. Yes. So, yeah, I mean, that's that's a risk. I mean, some of my personal hedging on stuff like that is like, hey. I have stuff like this podcast.

I have other things, Lara jobs, and whatever. So I do already have some, like, other avenues. It's not that the podcast is gonna meet. I don't know how I'm gonna replace my salary, but it's like people know me. I'm out there.

Right? Like, it's like, if we ever need a few other stuff, it's a platform for that.

Aaron

I don't think you're in danger, though, because HelpSpud's been around for twenty years. Right.

Ian

It's not there's no imminent, issues like that. Yes. No. No. No.

No. No. No. No.

Aaron

No. No. No. No. No.

No. No. No. No. No.

No. No. No. No.

Ian

No. No. No. No. No.

No.

Aaron

No. No. No. No. No.

No. No.

Ian

No. No. No.

Aaron

No. No. No.

Ian

No or something insane happens. You know? You never know. I mean, I think it's unlikely. Right?

I mean, obviously, lots of big companies have been hacked, and they're still here. So

Aaron

it's still not

Ian

necessarily, death blow or anything.

Aaron

We're not feeling playbook, pretend to apologize, and then forget about it forever.

Ian

That's, I mean, pretty much what what everybody does, but you never know. But you never know. But yeah. So I I agree. I mean, I'm not super worried about that kind of thing, but, you know, it's still I also don't have, like, oh, I could just, like, retire tomorrow and not worry about it level of money, saved.

So, you know, it's still out there that, like, only one kid in college, only in his first year. He got two more coming behind. He got other big expenses coming. So, yeah, so that's what I do. I don't know.

I think there's some some of this stuff yeah. A lot of that stuff from that day, though, it's, like, stuff that just it just is what it is. Like, there's not even getting rid of it. It's like just people need stuff from me, and I have to give it to them. Like, the account needs something.

I have to give it to them. Like, that's it. The employees, we I need to talk to them and, you know, run the business. So that has to happen. Right?

And that part is the one on one deploy is actually really good. For people who don't do that, I would definitely recommend it. We do, like we've done different strategies over the years. Right now, we're at every other week. Within the alternate week, we kinda do a big help spot meeting.

So that's like, central that's like so it's like every other week big help spot meeting, and then the other week is one on one. But it's quite, motivating, I think, to have the one on ones because just like you get to talk to the people and see what's going on and, like I don't know. I always find it kinda energizing. So, yeah, I know a lot of work remote dev shops may not do them not much, but,

Aaron

I don't think Taylor's ever spoken to any of his employees. I don't think

Ian

he does the one on one. Yeah.

Aaron

Yeah. I don't think so. Especially now now.

Ian

Maybe now they but he's probably not doing alright. But, like, I think there are more meetings now probably with him and some of the executives. And then I don't know if some how the managers are structuring things. But, yeah. Yeah.

That's a different kind of business. You know, everything about I don't know. It's like following D and J, following Taylor. Like, these are not, like, strategies for normal people.

Aaron

Right? These aren't communicable attributes.

Ian

Yeah. Like, make this thing, like, so everybody in the world's super excited about. And, like, when people get a job there, they're like, this is I've, like, made it to the Right.

Aaron

To the

Ian

mountain top. Like, I, you know, I don't know if, like, that's something you can just follow. I think it have a different strategy for keeping people engaged and yourself engaged. I don't think that's an a plan for most people, with their businesses. There you go.

I hope Brian's happy. I hope the people are happy who wanted to hear about a day in the life of a twenty year old software company. That's what it is. It's all these little things that have crept in. Others back the back office system, and we can do a whole show on the back office system.

It's a giant application

Aaron

I love a back office system. I really do.

Ian

It's insane. It's it's probably a similar amount of code to help spot itself. And it just does all these things, all this invoicing and edge cases and deploy for cloud to deploy customers and like it's gigantic application to do all kinds of stuff. And, yeah, that's its own thing that needs maintenance and has bugs and

Aaron

all that stuff. Every sufficiently mature business ends up rolling their own accounting at some point.

Ian

We kind of have to. It's a kind of have to. It doesn't do it. I know there's the dream. That's another dream.

It's like, oh, I just charge $29 a month, and I just do Stripe, and that's it. And, like, it's not real. Like, you know, it's like and there are obviously businesses that do that, but, you know, you just have big customers. Like, I wanna I want you to invoice me. I want you to set the purchase order.

I want you to take a check. I want you to take a bank transfer. When you know, Stripe does do more of that stuff now. For a long time, they didn't do any of that. And so, you know, we'll be looking for

Aaron

become hideously complicated. So hopefully it hand hopefully it handles all of that now.

Ian

Right. But even that, it's like we looked into that a little bit before we rebuilt this back office, and it's like even those systems were very complicated and seemed kinda weird how they work. And then, of course, they're also taking, like, a purse 1% Right. Several percent or whatever. So now it's like, well, our biggest customers that send us the most money will now have the biggest fee

Aaron

Right. In

Ian

Stripe. And it's like, well, that kinda sucks. So

Aaron

who, who actually, who processes your credit cards?

Ian

We do Stripe for the credit cards.

Aaron

Okay.

Ian

Yeah. But then we

Aaron

do Stripe for credit cards, but you get a lot of what ACH, echeck, other stuff?

Ian

Right. Yeah. Right. All the like ACH and, just physical checks. And then so and so we generate

Aaron

so

Ian

we have our own invoices system. So we make the invoice and it might be paid by Stripe. Or if not, then it's just an open invoice that's a receivable. And then, you know, that gets marked paid when we receive a check or receive a ACH transfer. And that's still, like, 50% of our sales are not Wow.

Credit card. Yeah.

Aaron

That's how it was at the property tax firm because people it's a very, like, physical business because we're, you know, sending them letters and working on their house and send them invoices in the mail and everything. And we would get when it was billing season, we would get just hundreds of, checks in our PO box that just had to be opened and processed and invoice marked. And, oh, dude, it was brutal. We used Zoho invoice for that, and

Ian

it was okay. Yeah.

Aaron

It was fine. But, yeah, it's a it's a the whole the paper check thing is, it's kind of a nightmare.

Ian

Yeah. And for us, it's like we can't even just use, like, zero or whatever because it's, like, it's tied to their license count and all these things. Totally. That has to be connected with every I mean, maybe we could have used the thing in API, but whatever you whatever. There's all that stuff, but it's built our own.

It's a lot. I mean, I do think that's another thing where people should consider those kind of things. Like, probably once people ask for them, but, yeah, if you're selling the businesses, like, a lot of them still they wanna transfer, which is good for you too because, like, the fee on Stripe is insane. Like It is. Someone Mhmm.

You know, charge you if you have a $10,000 sale and they're taking $500 of it. Like, that's a pretty big chunk. So

Aaron

Yeah. We've started for for bigger team sales. We've started pushing for straight ACH to our Mercury account, and it's it's great. And that seems the bigger teams love it. That's what they wanna do.

Ian

Right. Right. That's what they're set up to do. Like, that's how they pay things often. So Yeah.

This episode is sponsored by Mailtrap, an email delivery platform that developers love, an email sending solution with industry best analytics, SMTP, and email API, along with SDKs for major programming languages, and twenty four seven human support. Try it for free at mailtrap.io. How is the team sales going? Give us update. What's update?

Let's do some errands. This is too much yen.

Aaron

No. This is the this is the right amount of yen. Okay. So let's see. Update.

Here's here's something interesting. I don't, pay very close attention to sales at all.

Ian

Nice.

Aaron

Like, I'm not I'm not checking the dashboard. I don't know how much we're selling. I I think I I'm trying to, like, narrow my scope of what I care about slash what I'm responsible for. And I think I've realized I'm responsible for the production side. I'm responsible for for making the things, not necessarily for selling the things or, like Yep.

In most cases, not for supporting the thing either. Now when it comes to, like, technical questions, Kelsey does forward those on to me. So that's really nice. Like, when we were in Boise, we I was like, hey. How's the how's the SQLite course doing?

And Kelsey, like, had it. It just in her brain immediately. She was like, well, last week, we did about this. Week before, we did about that. I'm like, wow.

That's, oh, that's pretty nice. Good job. That's awesome. I love that. Yeah.

But I do see, in the sales channel, I do see, like, sales conversations flying by, and it seems like it's going great. We get a lot of we get a lot of inbound. And then, this is just man, I don't know if if this is just, like, a normal guy becomes business guy, but, like, watching Kelsey, like, respond to emails or Steve, like, send outbound cold outbound sales or even Kelsey will use my LinkedIn account and message people, like, sales messages. And I'm like, stuff is happening, and I'm not doing it. This freaking rules.

I love this. It's the freaking best. Yeah. So I think that part's going super well. You asked me when I was flying to Laracon EU, and I told you, I think it's this day.

And I said, I think because Kelsey handled all that. She booked it all for me.

Ian

Well, he did.

Aaron

That's great. That's the freaking best. So sales are going

Ian

Business guy.

Aaron

Business guy. Love being business guy. Sales in general are holding up quite quite steadily. Team sales, I think, are doing pretty well, but sales in general are holding up very well. This week is, Black Friday week.

It's also Thanksgiving, but more importantly, it's Black Friday week. Right.

Ian

We'll make the money.

Aaron

Trying to make some money. Trying to make some money. So, SQLite and screencasting will be on sale. Postgres will not be on sale because it's not yet complete. And we will do the final release of Postgres videos maybe, like, a week or two after Black Friday to give it a little bit of breathing room.

Ian

Yep.

Aaron

And then we'll use that as an opportunity to say early access is ending, which will hopefully give us the the final bump from that course. And then next year, we can, you know, refresh and do Black Friday, but it's too early, I think, to do a Black Friday on that having just released it. Yeah. So, yeah, hoping hoping to print a bunch of money here this week.

Ian

So nice.

Aaron

It's great. Digital products. Whoever thought that doing physical products was a good idea? Me. But we'll see.

Yeah. But, yeah, it's awesome. So, you know, we've got a whole we've got a whole email sequence set up. We're we're ready with the discount codes. We're just like, we're ready.

We're ready to execute on Black Friday.

Ian

That's so nice. And someone else did that, it sounds like.

Aaron

But someone else did that.

Ian

You didn't have to do that.

Aaron

I didn't have to do that.

Ian

So it's great about having I mean, a partner is so so nice that you can have, like, divide sides of the business is even if it's not fully divided. Right? It's just like you can take days off of thinking about that's that part of the business, which is really nice. And then, obviously, once you start having employees, like, that's so great because stuff happens and you didn't do it and somebody's on it and Mhmm. Super key to everything.

So so we gotta get Caleb. Caleb went on his podcast on the iron ball. He's not pull the trigger, Caleb.

Aaron

Pull the trigger, Caleb. Trigger. You gotta get somebody.

Ian

Gotta have help.

Aaron

What what does he need? A a developer? He needs a developer. Right?

Ian

Yeah. I can see him going either way, but I think he needed the right kind of developer who's willing to do, like, some just customer service, you know, but also, like, obviously, bug fixes. Or he could go the other way and just do the hardcore developer who does a lot of the stuff he does, and he does more of you know, stays on doing that stuff. But Mhmm. I don't see him wanting to give up the,

Aaron

like, hard core developer. Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. So I think probably which is a hard hire to get somebody who doesn't wanna just code, but Right. They're out there. You know, they're out there. Oh, they're totally the best developer I've ever hired.

Like Yeah. Because I don't ever want a just developer developer because in a small company, it's kinda useless. Like Right. You know, there's just too much other stuff to do that's not just pure coding. So You need a utility player.

Yeah. Who's at least willing to do other stuff, as needed. Creamo, actually, our new employee is the probably the most developer developer in terms of, like, I haven't had him do much other stuff yet, but he is willing to do it. And that day will probably come here, sooner rather than later. But yeah.

So I think, he's

Aaron

Here's we should we should hit Caleb with some, what is it, some Yo dogs? Yo dog. Hey, if you're listening to this and you wanna be Caleb's employee, you should just DM him. Yeah. Just send him a message.

Send him a message. Tell him why you're perfect to go work at the Livewire Empire. Just just go slide into his deal.

Ian

I think you should do it. Do that. You should. If you're looking for a gig, DM Caleb. Caleb has the bootstrapper syndrome, which I can relate to, which our president Donald Trump has too.

I see this in him all the time, which is you

Aaron

only wanna hire president-elect.

Ian

President-elect. Yeah. You only wanna hire people you know and trust. Right? And that is how small businesses tend to operate.

But it is very limiting because you only know and trust so many people and how many people are available for work at the time you need them. So yeah. So this is sort of an in between. Like, people in our circle who Caleb may not actually know, but, you know, they must be smart, intelligent, beautiful people that are listening to this podcast. Yeah.

Yeah. So if they're reaching out to him, I'll give you a leg up. I think that's a leg up right there.

Aaron

That's how, that's how we hired our Linda, whose name is Kelsey, is she DM'd me.

Ian

There you go.

Aaron

Cole DM from the bottom. You can

Ian

do things.

Aaron

You can. She said, hey. Heard about it on the podcast. Here's the reasons I'm great. And I was like, that sounds great.

Let's have a call. And it's been great. So dear listener, give it a shot.

Ian

Yes. I mean, for people who are resident about the hiring process, it's like you have an opportunity to put yourself in front of them and make it easier for them. And if you have the qualifications and seem like you're gonna be a good fit, leapfrog a huge line of if they actually get around to putting an advertisement out and then it now have 1,500 people to go through. Now you're just one of 1,500. So, yeah, I think, that's a great strategy.

Aaron

Also, great word of reticent. We're not just gonna blow by. Yeah. That's that's a great use. That's you can't just let that one go.

Ian

Good night's sleep last night.

Aaron

Yeah. You're fired on all cylinders. Reticent.

Ian

Amazing. Logging. I get the I know.

Aaron

Out of

Ian

my head. I get it's like, oh, I'm okay. Here's here's the thing with the logging. I might push this too far. Probably.

Right? So right now, it's just a day one. It's just like a bullet

Aaron

Sure. Day one. Sure.

Ian

Okay. Mhmm.

Aaron

But I

Ian

feel like, it's like, it would be cool to know, like, how much time am I spending on

Aaron

marketing versus

Ian

code versus whatever.

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

And I wanna spend more time marketing. Well, let me see if I'm actually accomplishing that or not. Right? So it's like, so today I've been playing with toggle, which is like a time tracker

Aaron

of like,

Ian

so I could put a project. So for me, it's not a project that's just like help spot or Lara jobs or marketing or whatever and, and track it in there. It does feel that little extra heaviness, which I don't love. Mhmm.

Aaron

The extra, like, what was invented time tracking from

Ian

the whole class.

Aaron

That's why. Yeah. I was

Ian

I was obviously, I went down the whole path over the weekend. Like, I need to build this myself. Right? So it started as a side a side project.

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

Sounds like a kid. Everybody's like, there's 8,000,000,000 versions of this. Right? And we have Correct. Somebody reached out to me with this owl.so.

You should check that out. That's sort of a personal time tracker thing this guy's building. It's not live yet. I checked that out. It's cool.

Nice design. It's a little more on the personal end, I think, maybe than I would be looking for. So then I was like, I stood in town. I was like, time tracker. Like, everybody knows whatever.

It's a million time trackers. Whatever. I pick one. So I'm gonna see how that goes. I might end up back in day one if I just want the pure lightness of, here's a list of text and whatever, but we'll see.

Aaron

Thanks. So you said owl.so, and I immediately derided it because I was like, .s0 is the dumbest thing I've ever was. You get a real domain. You go to owl.so, and it's gorgeous? What?

Yeah. It's really nice. Amazing.

Ian

Yeah. It's a very nice website.

Aaron

What in the world?

Ian

I know.

Aaron

Have you used this?

Ian

He did let me in, and I did I did use it a little bit.

Aaron

Tell tell tell him to let me in. I'm gonna put my name in the little email box, Alright. You can I'm not telling saying my email out loud. Okay. Join the wait list.

No. No. I'm nowhere to be found. Yeah. Tell this person in rainy Victoria, BC that I wanna try it.

This looks amazing.

Ian

I will let them know. Yeah. It's still, you know, still early, but, yeah, I think he's on to something. I'd send him, like, a nice email. I I think nice.

I'll say it was a nice email with someone.

Aaron

An email. That

Ian

sounds good. With some feedback and things. But, yeah. No. I think it's really nicely designed.

And this is a perfect look at this. This this is Aaron Francis in a nutshell right here. Uh-oh. Which is I was on Blue Sky, right, cruising, and I was talking about the logging. Mhmm.

And this person reached out and just, you know, publicly said, hey. Just write on the feed. Like, hey. Like, I'm building this thing. And Ben Holman actually said, hey.

It's good. I've used it a little bit. Whatever.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

And so then I tried it, gave him some feedback. Obviously, I'm, like, in there now and have my eye on it. Now we're talking about the show, and you're trying it, like, just putting yourself out there that little bit.

Aaron

It's amazing.

Ian

It's amazing. We actually took it down. He posted it. We took it down. People are following me on Blue Sky.

We're so interested in it. They took down the site when they gave them

Aaron

that. That's awesome.

Ian

Yeah. It was awesome. So, hopefully, we got some sign ups for that and not to stop taking down.

Aaron

Yeah. Hopefully, it's, like, high bills and no users. But, here's here's the, here's the meta on that. Yeah. You can't you can just do things,

Ian

but you

Aaron

also have to have the goods. This guy has the thing already built and out there, and now he can be talking about it. You can't just talk. You gotta you gotta do the thing. And so this person's doing both.

Way to go, Al.s.

Ian

Yeah. And even just even though the product itself isn't totally done, although it's like I'd say it feels, like, set 80% to me or whatever. It's like Mhmm. You have the landing page you're set up to collect email, like get that stuff ready early so that like, yeah, you can put it out there and let when you're ready to let people in early or just the winning. You know, know, because sometimes the moment strikes where you have to talk about it even even if it's before you'd want to talk about it.

And it's like, hey. At least now this is a landing page. You can send people to it. It's nice to sign up, blah blah blah. So Here's

Aaron

here's one thing I don't super love. When somebody says they're working, like, you you say something like, oh, I'm building a project or working on a project, and somebody comes along and says, oh, I did I I did something like that once. I just need to I just need to finish it and release it. You're like

Ian

Cleaning up. Right. Yeah.

Aaron

Okay. Like, everybody did something like that one. We've all we've all got a million things that we've tinkered with. Yeah. They're like, oh, yeah.

I was doing that. I was doing that first. I I did that. I did that. You're like, where is it?

Show it to me then. If you did it, show it to me.

Ian

If you did it

Aaron

But this whole This whole, like, I'm gonna try to glom on to your posts and gain some traction or credibility for a thing that I once did

Ian

I thought about doing. It's like

Aaron

I that does I'm unmoved. That doesn't move me.

Ian

Yeah. It is a fine line too because it's like this like this one, I think, has a little like, it has a screenshot of the actual UI. Right? It's not just like, oh, this is an purely at the idea stage of, like, there's no evidence this actually exists. It's just, you know, a a landing page with some words.

So, no, this feels like it's something that probably actually exists. It's, like, a full on landing page, really. Mhmm.

Aaron

So

Ian

yeah. So I think that this is, like, on the right side of that law. Mhmm. Totally. Anyway.

Totally. Yeah.

Aaron

Alright. Give me give me give me in here. Yeah. Yeah. I'll get you.

Let's see what else is going on. Last week, we did our first guest, instructor course here at TriHard Studios. Yes. So there was, somebody here in the studio all week last week. Wow.

I know. It's crazy.

Ian

So now how how before we even get to how Yeah. That went, like, what did you feel was, like, your level of responsibility for hosting? Like, were you out to dinner ever? None It's

Aaron

a good question.

Ian

Over your house. Yes. No. Meet every day. Like, what the, like, what's the vibe of that whole thing?

Aaron

Yeah. It was, it was indeterminate at first. I it's not something I super thought about. Like, I'm hosting this person. I more thought about, like, I'm producing this course.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

And I think I salvaged it.

Ian

Oh, so

Aaron

I think I was a good host, I think. I'll let you decide. We, so this person's name is Steven. Steven and I went to went to dinner. We went to lunch the first day because he was here and we were, like, getting ready to record.

We went out to lunch. The rest of the days, I went and picked up lunch because he was, like, recording straight through. Yep. And so I'd go pick up lunch and we would eat out there for, like, twenty or thirty minutes, and then he would come back and record. We went to dinner on I think we went to dinner on Tuesday night, just the two of us.

And then he was supposed to come over for dinner at our house on Thursday night, but, of course, everyone was sick. So, unfortunately, it was yeah. Not not, who's no longer invited because everybody was sick and nobody wanted to create dinner at home. And, also, our heat wasn't working, so that was that was a silly fun time as well. So, yeah, beyond that, I picked him up from the hotel a few times, and he Ubered a few times, which worked out which worked out great.

Yeah. But it was a it was a lot more, it was a lot more hosting than I had, like, planned on up front. Right. Maybe that should have been obvious, but that's not really something that I thought about. But I I realized when he got here, he's like, this guy is in Dallas by himself.

I gotta do something. I can't just, like, have fun. See you later. I mean, so I don't

Ian

think that's necessarily true. You know? I think in a pure business environment world, you might maybe you would do one dinner, and you'd be like, hey. You're on your own. You're here recording.

Like, I think you

Aaron

did it possible. You

Ian

could do that. But you know? But, like, but it doesn't seem like your personality is

Aaron

totally different. I've got I've got way too much way too much guilt to do that. Right. So, yeah, I think it worked I think it worked out great. And I also thought if I was in if I was in his shoes, I wouldn't want to do something every night.

I would wanna go back to the frigging hotel and get in the cold bed and watch what's on cable TV. You know? Right. That sounds amazing.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. I have a I have a week away. Let me enjoy myself with that. Yeah.

I definitely wanna have every night tied up. No. For sure. Yeah.

Aaron

So it was it was fun. Fortunately, I enjoy being around him. There's a very real possibility where we do this again with somebody that I don't super like, and that's going to be a lot harder. Maybe I'll send them to Boise, to report to Steve. But, yeah, that that aspect of it was great.

Very delightful. Nice guy. Love having around lots of good, conversations. So that part was great. Having someone in the studio all week was a little bit weird.

Ian

Right?

Aaron

Yeah. It's a little bit weird because I'm I'm sitting out there. I know. I'm sitting out there in the living room. Can't really take any calls because, you know, this isn't surprisingly isn't built as a sound studio.

This is, you know, residential apartments. Crazy. Right. And so, like, if I'm taking a call and stepping out into the hallway or if I'm taking a long call, I'm going to sit in my car. It's like, oh, that's weird.

This is my space.

Ian

What the hell?

Aaron

So that part was strange. Not bad. Just different. And then I think there are a few lessons learned in terms of if we're gonna do this again. So, I think this is a great a great, test case because he was incredibly good at recording all the videos.

Like, he blew through them all. I think he did, like, 51 videos in, like, three and a half days.

Ian

Crazy. He got done?

Aaron

Yes. He finished.

Ian

So inspired you that you could maybe do more of these than you thought

Aaron

you'd be? Okay. It does. It's like, I'm so inspired. Also, what's wrong with me?

Why can't I do this? He, like, came in. You know, one day, he came in at, like, 08:30AM and started recording. You know, comes out at, like, eleven or twelve or something. He's like, alright.

I got six done. And I'm like, my dude, sometimes sometimes I just wrestle with existential dread until 02:30 or 3PM, and then I start recording. What is going on? And he's like, well, you know, if you'd flown to Dallas from Germany, you you might you might have a little bit more of a fire under you.

Ian

Like, yeah. Maybe maybe I gotta fly to Germany to record

Aaron

courses. Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. Maybe you should maybe you should fly to, Idaho and do it at the kit studios. You got Steve there. You do the kit studios for a week, and you're just like, we're here on business. This is what I'm doing every day.

I'm distracted with other stuff, and I'm just cranking through. That's what I'm doing. Like, new environment.

Aaron

Be if my only studio was I had studios all over the country, but not

Ian

here. Yeah.

Aaron

I know.

Ian

Maybe that would be better, though.

Aaron

Maybe it would. Maybe it would.

Ian

You have the right mindset. You know?

Aaron

I know. Another thing was he came super prepared, which I do some of my preparation as I'm recording.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

But he was like, he came ready to just record at all. Yeah. So that was helpful. But things things that we need to change. So, hopefully, you know, we do this.

It makes a bunch of money. Everybody's super happy, and we'll do it again. Things we need to change, I need a recording computer, instead of because right now I run I run my dev and my recording all from this one MacBook Pro. Got it. And it works great for me, but we spent three or four hours just trying to get his machine ready to record.

So we're we're downloading Blackmagic drivers. We're installing ScreenFlow and activating licenses. We're, like, copying these shell scripts over so that he can, like, set his windows up correctly. And I just thought this is this is the dumbest. This is so stupid.

This is a waste of time. What we need

Ian

is Mac minis just

Aaron

set up. Exactly. We need a Mac mini m four that the guest instructor or myself will run HDMI out of my computer into the recording computer, and it just shows up as a source. That's what

Ian

we need.

Aaron

So that was a that was a big lesson learned, which is fine. Like, that's as far as lessons learned goes, that's pretty that's pretty reasonable. So, I do think hopefully, we'll do it again, and it would be nice to invest in a recording computer where all the peripherals and all the recording software run on one machine, and you just you just plug in HDMI from your MacBook and run it into that capture device. That's the ideal. Yep.

So I think that was probably the big takeaway. I think in the future, if somebody is not if somebody is not as, like, talented as as Steven was, I need a list of, like, maxims. Like, record like, do this, don't do this. Do this, don't do this. He he and I talked about it a lot that first day, and, also, I think he's naturally gifted in that.

But I have seen some courses where the videos go on for thirty minutes, and I'm like, guys, you you you need six five minute videos, not one thirty minute video. Because in a thirty minute video, you're trying to teach 15 different things, and people are lost. Also, it's intimidating to start a thirty minute educational video.

Ian

Feels like a big

Aaron

Oh, man. Thirty minute, like, YouTube is like, oh, I'm just kinda, like, having fun. Thirty minute education's like, I'm going to class now. Right. So, I need to write, like, write down some of those aphorisms of, like, do this, not that.

Ian

Oh, wow. Nice word.

Aaron

$10 words. Yeah.

Ian

We're just showing off. Man. This education

Aaron

we got. Nice. But he he nailed that part, so I I don't feel like that was a miss. Yeah. But, yeah, I I think provided the economics are there, I think this could be extremely, extremely viable.

I think flying someone to the studio and having oversight over it, like, takes it to a next level in terms of what the output is gonna be. Yeah. And I think it could be a good model for us going forward. We have to see, can we sell somebody else's course? That's that's the remaining open question.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. What do you think about the, like, the learnings here in terms of your new studio space? Like, are you gonna soundproof it more? So could you could have somebody recording and you still be in there?

Or, like, since you're building out this new setup Right. If you're gonna do anything different now.

Aaron

Yeah. I think, I I do think one thing that we'll do different is have all of kind of this recording equipment here, self contained on, you know, a two by two or three by three movable desk or something.

Ian

Thing.

Aaron

Yeah. A cart. Exactly. That'll be one thing that I've realized, like, that might be kinda useful, especially as we have hopefully multiple recording locations. It'd be nice to be able to set the thing up and then turn it around for someone else to record later.

And then in terms of soundproofing, I will absolutely test that better when we get there. So there's, like, the office room, which is, like, you know, 12 by 20 or something, and the rest of it is warehouse. And I will need to I will need to see from the office room what can you hear from the warehouse side. And I may end up building out, you know, a false wall with rock wool or something in it that, like, helps isolate those two rooms, from each other. Because, yeah, if somebody's in if somebody's in the little office space recording, I wanna be out in the warehouse and be able to use an inside saws.

Yeah. Or running saws. Yeah. I don't know how much soundproofing we'll get in that regard, but, yeah, I wanna be able to live in the other space while they're recording.

Ian

Yeah. That makes sense to, you know, do some kind of heavy mats or a false wall with heavier insulation or something. Yeah. To we don't wanna make it too hot in there either. I guess that's

Aaron

No. No. No. No. Yeah.

Ian

All these air conditioning, I guess. It does. Yeah. Texas.

Aaron

Mhmm. Both both spaces do, which is nice.

Ian

Oh, so that's good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really good.

Alright. So it sounds like going well. When are you guys trying to release it? Next year, you said. Right?

Aaron

This is this is the other thing. We're gonna give ourselves some time. We've been, we've been just killing ourselves on deadlines, and this one, we don't have to.

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

Like, we haven't even we haven't talked about this beyond, you know, this this podcast and and a vague tweet. And so we're gonna take time. We're gonna edit it. And then I think we'll probably try to release it early in the New Year, maybe maybe late January, if not February.

Ian

Yeah. I think that makes sense. Because you're you're gonna have a lot of the same customers, I think, and it starts to feel like if you're just one after the other after the other, it's like, oh, I just paid these guys, like

Aaron

I know.

Ian

Multiple times. So Give

Aaron

them time to get that they paid us.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. That's a key strategy. Mhmm. I like that.

And that also seems like kind of thing where you can do some business dealing maybe too, like, because it's like a rail specific thing. So it's like I don't know why. I have no idea what the big rail sites are, if there's, like, a Laravel news of rails or whatever, but maybe there's some, you know, stuff that they could the business end of your operation could poke around on and see if there's, deals to be had or things that make sense in that regard to to kinda build up more tentacles into the Rails Mhmm. Zone.

Aaron

Yeah. Exactly.

Ian

Well, it sounds like it went really well. I mean, that's great. Like, if you can get, you know, two or three of those a year, plus you do, you know, one or two or whatever. I mean, that's I mean, that alone is pretty

Aaron

The size of the business. Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. I mean, like, in two years, you're gonna have ten, twelve courses or whatever if you were to keep that kind of base. So it seems pretty solid. Yeah. Nice.

Alright. What else is going on? Any other action over there?

Aaron

Oh, I got on Laravel Cloud.

Ian

Oh, yes. I saw you did that. Mhmm. How was it? Is it glorious?

Aaron

It's good. It's very good.

Ian

I knew.

Aaron

It's very it's very good.

Ian

I never had any doubts.

Aaron

It's very good. It's beautiful, first of all, just like Right. The the website or the application itself is beautiful, but it's also very considered. Like, it's not just it's not just like, hey, let's throw purple rays of light all over the site and

Ian

Right.

Aaron

Max out your fans. But it's it's

Ian

like 500 pixels of white space just to have white space for no reason. Just give me

Aaron

a break. So it's beautiful, but it's functional. Yep. And then the actual experience of deploying an application is just it's super smooth. It's great.

It's just what you want it to be. It's Heroku, but in 2024 for Laravel. It's perfect. It's great. I love it.

I love it. I have a few a few open questions like, how do I get FFmpeg on the server? Because I want to do, you know, some, like, video processing. Just chop some stuff up. Right.

And, friend of the show, former employee, Chris Fadel,

Ian

the developer. Got a man on the inside.

Aaron

Yeah, that's right. He was in Slack and he was telling me some stuff. And so it seems it seems imminently doable. I just haven't tried it yet. But beyond that, it's it just works, which is nice.

And then we're going to 100%. We're moving, AaronPrincess.com there and the try hard platform, which is all of the courses. We're moving them there because of all of the things that we do that we shouldn't be doing, like, you know, encoding our own video, dealing with servers is definitely one of the things that we shouldn't

Ian

be doing.

Aaron

Yeah. Like, maybe you can make an argument. We get some value out of being thought leaders in FFmpeg and hosting HLS videos for cheap. Like, maybe that helps. But I don't I don't need I don't need to apply patch updates to a server.

That's just not anything I ever need to do. No. So So that's what I loved about vapor, but vapor, of course, has its limitations because, you know, it's ephemeral.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

And so the platform is hosted on forge, digital ocean, and this is like I'm sure that forge is going to continue to exist and be useful to a bunch of people, but I'm not using it anymore. Right. I'm going I'm going cloud, baby. I'm gone. I'm churning.

So it's great. Look forward to it. Yeah.

Ian

That's awesome. I mean, I have a bunch of, like I have, like, 10 servers at Linode. Because I'm big, like, everything gets its own server. Like, I don't like the What's the I know you could put multiple sites on this. No.

No. No. Like, everything's gets its own server. I don't wanna think about it. I don't want one thing messing with another.

So, like, I have, like, 10 of these servers, and they're all just, like, plain Laravel applications that are, like, a website for some you know, it's like even the Laravel site is, like, two pages or whatever. You know? It's like there's nothing there. So, yeah, I think that, hopefully, I'll be moving stuff over to cloud as well. I'm sure some of it for sure and, possibly all of it.

I would love to get HubSpot over there someday. That would Oh. A little more complicated. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, having these, like, 400 servers we're managing, I'd rather just have them be 400 Laravel cloud servers we're managing. It's not not not managing, I should say. Right.

Aaron

Make Fadelloper manage them all.

Ian

Right. Fadelloper knows how both sides

Aaron

work, which is very interesting. Yeah. He thought he got away.

Ian

He thought he got away. He did. He built HubSpot cloud. He's been building Laravel cloud. Managed by fleet

Aaron

of servers again, Chris.

Ian

Tell us how to do it. But I'm assuming I've, we actually just bought a bunch of reserve instances because we do that to save money on AWS. So I'm not thinking it's gonna happen anytime soon. But when things stabilize over there and they add things, like, be able to install custom stuff easily and whatever, probably need a API, which I doubt or definitely need API, which I'm sure won't be there day one or whatever. But as that stuff comes along, definitely be something I'll be interested in, checking out because yeah.

I mean, that's and think about it. I mean, that's like that's why they're gonna make all the money. Right? Like, we all think about it like, oh, you know, I have my side projects on there, whatever, but I was like, companies like me who is like, I have 400 servers I wanna move at some point, maybe someday. You know?

So, like, there's a lot of companies like that that have hundreds and thousands of servers. And so you get a little chunk chunk of that. Now you're you're talking some real money over there. So

Aaron

Oh, yeah. They I think they'll be just fine.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be cool.

Aaron

And that

Ian

was I think the design is crazy. They've, like, both private cloud, but also a night watch. Like, that

Aaron

night watch is crazy.

Ian

It's, like, really crazy. I'm like, this is, like, really, really, really good. It's, like, really high level design. Just so good. Yeah.

I was blown away by that.

Aaron

They're just gonna decimate that market when Nightwatch comes out. Yeah. It's just gonna be Nightwatch.

Ian

It's just Nightwatch.

Aaron

Why would you

Ian

They're even

Aaron

Why would you use anything else? I don't know if they capture your front end JavaScript errors. That's an open question to me. I don't know if Nightwatch does.

Ian

Yeah. It's kinda interesting too because the demo was more, like, about the performance stuff, but it definitely does seem like there's also the, like, you know, bug tracking not tracking, but you know what I mean? Logging and

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

Error exceptions and all that stuff. And, yeah, if they do the JavaScript, it's like, that would seem like the thing to use. Gonna crush it. Yeah. It's interesting how

Aaron

that they did. When when Jess was demoing it, she did have, like, three or four or five, things on the sidebar that were blurred out

Ian

Right.

Aaron

That they didn't even demo. So that could be that could be JavaScript errors. That could be all kinds of different stuff that they're tracking.

Ian

Yeah. It's gonna be interesting to see what they do. It definitely I think it makes a lot of sense. I mean, that's both the platforms just make total sense too, which is Yeah. A little bit.

Like, it just is the obvious thing to build, but then to do it so well. Right? And, yeah, just obviously with the Otwell touch on it, I would say. And, yeah, it's gonna be huge, I think.

Aaron

I think so. I think so.

Ian

It's cool to see too that, like, you know, took this investment and, like, what they've done with that. You know? It's like they're really Yeah. Doing a lot of stuff with that. It's not just it's stuff that Taylor wouldn't wanna do without it.

You know?

Aaron

They're not messing around, man.

Ian

They're not messing around. Yeah. Jeez. Yeah.

Aaron

So They are moving.

Ian

You're gonna need another sit down. When do I get my next sit down with Taylor? I want I want another sit down.

Aaron

I don't know. I this may this may surprise you. That, in fact, is not up to me. That is up to Taylor. Yeah.

Ian

I thought

Aaron

it's So I I'm not the one that brings Taylor in. Taylor is the one that says, I would like to be brought in. Yes, sir. How

Ian

high, sir? Yes.

Aaron

So, I don't know. We'll do another interview at some point soon. That's that's a lot of fun. And, you know, somewhat related, if anyone wants to give me $57,000,000, I will also do awesome stuff.

Ian

You got lots of ideas.

Aaron

I'll do so much stuff. It'll blow your mind. It's crazy. So I just want that to be on the record.

Ian

Yeah. I don't know. I've always torn about that. Like No. Obviously thought about this a fair amount.

I don't know. There's a lot of responsibility with the money. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I I can't drink to other people, though. I just I'm so, like it's so baked into my core now that I just I don't answer to anybody, and that definitely has detriments at times for me, but it also has obviously upsides. Yeah.

Yeah. Money. I don't know. Being being Money is nice. Yeah.

I think it would be cool. The way I would like to do that if I ever do it is if somebody which I can't even imagine is happening, to be honest with you, for a number of reasons. But if somebody ever sold HelpSpot and I had enough money that I was like, I don't have to work. But then I had an idea that needed money. Mhmm.

That's an interesting, like, scenario because it's like, I'm not really beholden to you. Right? Like, it's like, I have my own money. I hope this works, and we all make a ton of money and we're fabulously wealthy. Same time, if it doesn't work, if

Aaron

it doesn't work, I don't care.

Ian

I don't care.

Aaron

That's what I, that's what investors love to hear. I'm sorry. They love no conviction and

Ian

skin in the game. Yeah. Dated to them like that. But, but that is, that changes, which is actually like that's kind of Taylor's angle on it. Right?

Like, he doesn't need the money. Obviously, everybody likes more money, but he doesn't need the money. And so it does give him more freedom in that scenario, which I think is interesting versus, yeah, if you're just like, I'm doing a startup and I'm pitching people and, this is gonna be my full time job and I don't have any, you know, significant other money behind, you know, changes the stress levels and all that.

Aaron

Yes. Totally.

Ian

So I you got less than 57,000,000. I'll take it. I'll take it.

Aaron

You gotta you gotta prep help spot for an exit, man. You gotta spend the next five years prepping it to to exit and then exit and just have a bunch of money and chill.

Ian

I just had this discussion this morning, with Jamie. I've always

Aaron

had Did you log it?

Ian

I didn't log this. No. Wow. Because there's, like, obviously, there's, like okay. So I'm 48.

Mhmm. So in, you know, fifteen to twenty years gonna retire. So it's like, obviously, like, the standard software route here is, like, you sell it and that's what you do. Right? Mhmm.

But I always love the idea of, like, user scape and son or Userscape and sons or Userscape and daughter

Aaron

or, like, the whole timey. Are you Userscape?

Ian

Yeah. I'm Userscape. That's a new company.

Aaron

Typically, they go with, you know, Ian and Sons, but I get Oh.

Ian

Okay. So you're user

Aaron

scape. So it's user scape and Sons.

Ian

Yeah. You want, like, landsman and landsman and sons

Aaron

or something like that?

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. It could be that. I like user scape and sons.

Aaron

User scape and sons.

Ian

Okay. But that old timey, you could see the sun. Right? It's like the ampersand with the n, sons or daughter or whatever. I got all the options on the table.

And one of the kids just takes over. It's just like a family business. Like, they just just continues. Now none of my kids are interested in software development. I

Aaron

was gonna say you should put all of your hopes in that and see see how that works for your relationship.

Ian

Mad at everybody. Horrifically mad at everyone for decades when they don't do it. Yeah.

Aaron

This is gonna be the great reversal. You have a part of, and they go and be farmers instead. Right. It's like, instead of dad's a farmer, you go to the big city. Dad's in the big city, and you go to farm.

Ian

Maybe they'll start, like, a hardware store, and it'll be like sons and dad or something. You know? There you go. It could be the reverse.

Aaron

And user scape. It has a nice name

Ian

to it. User scape.

Aaron

I like that. Yeah.

Ian

So I don't know. But I I never really like, it's like the idea of, like, people just taking it over is so interesting. I don't think it's gonna happen because nobody's really interested so far. They're still young. Who knows?

Right? But I don't know. It's not something we ever talk about in software, so I thought that part of it was intriguing. It's like nobody ever is really all these other businesses is a huge thing. Right?

Like, tons of businesses are like, well, the kids work in the business, and then it's someday they take over the business. That's like

Aaron

Nepotism is a well trod path.

Ian

Very scary.

Aaron

What it what was Jamie's take on it?

Ian

She just likes it's funny. She was just, like, laughing at me, basically. But, Yeah.

Aaron

I'm familiar with those responses too. That's a great idea. Did you take out the trash? Oh,

Ian

okay. Right. Yeah. We're we're

Aaron

done with this conversation.

Ian

She was like, you know because I was like, well, nobody's really interested in this stuff. But she was like, well, they're young, you know, whatever. So we'll see when they're done with school and all that. But but that's not even how that works. Right?

In the old days, it wasn't like when you were done with school. It's like

Aaron

Mm-mm.

Ian

When you're a kid, you're, like, in the in the hardware store with me, stocking the shelves or whatever, and that's, like, how it goes. My oldest son has worked here for a summer, and my middle kid is gearing up to do something. It's hard. It's not a good business for young kids to do stuff in, which is unfortunate. It's like, what do you have them do?

Like, link check or there's some stuff like that, but it's just like there's not, like, an obvious thing that a 14 year old can really dig their teeth into for a whole No.

Aaron

Not really.

Ian

I don't know. But

Aaron

I think you need to you need to spend the next five years with an eye towards an exit. Mhmm. And maybe maybe that doesn't come to fruition, and you get to hand over a better business to a child, a a business that is, you know, streamlined and ready for sale. And turns out they wanna take it over, and they take it over, and it becomes user scape and sun. Right.

But the time is going to come when you want all that that stored up equity to become cash US dollars. That's true. The time to prepare for that.

Ian

It is. I mean, that kind of overlaps already with my thinking, which is, like, as the kids get bigger and I have more, like, time and energy, this is always kind of that was where I was heading this year. But then this whole, like, gallbladder illness is, like, totally blown up this year. But assuming that 2025 doesn't have a bunch of stuff blowing me up like that, I do feel like there's gonna be just more time and energy I'll have towards the business in general. And so that's kind of the same thing in my mind.

A large part is like, alright. Get the business on better footing, get solve some of the tech debt stuff, which was what we're working on, which then builds, you know, the foundation for, like, the new features and things and all that stuff. So and, yes, worst case scenario, you end up with a better business, which makes more money, and that's a great outcome. And then, yeah, selling selling those businesses is always at the very least, it's always possible just on a straight, you know, spreadsheet Right. Plan of like, well, this is your revenue and this is Mhmm.

The, you know, the multiple business with this size, with this profit, blah blah blah. That's not the best kind of deal, but that is always a deal that's available because it's supposed to be a money person that's like, yeah. I can do this, math this out, and it makes sense. Right. That's fine.

Obviously, if you get something more strategic, that's where you got a better outcome. But, yeah. So I think that's sort of the plan even if it's somewhat indirect.

Aaron

New idea. Laravel Inc. Buys it.

Ian

Oh, there we go. It's a

Aaron

great idea. Help desk game. Keep in the family.

Ian

Get in the help desk game. That would be awesome, like, full circle kind of, like

Aaron

big thing. Imagine? Alright. One of your former employees acquires you. That would be awesome.

Ian

Tailored to acquihire me. Right? Like, just acquihire me. That that's it. Give me a job.

Running coffee

Aaron

somewhere around.

Ian

Yeah. I'll be business dad, corner office. Mhmm. Business dad advice.

Aaron

C COO Tom is gonna be like, what the hell does Ian do here? He's he's business dad. Dad. Of course. Obviously, he's business dad.

Ian

How are we gonna operate without business dad? He's a god he's a godfather. That's what he's doing here.

Aaron

Tom would hate that.

Ian

He just sends the godfather devs. Yeah. Tom doesn't see any kind of guy. He wants a guy who just does godfather dubs. No.

I don't think so. All day in Slack.

Aaron

Tom goofs around quite as much as we do.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well. That's alright.

Aaron

His loss.

Ian

His loss. Exactly. But it's funny when people project stuff like that. Like, we could predict everybody into that. Right?

Like, oh, they should buy you. They should buy Aaron Francis. Shake. And, like Yes.

Aaron

I agree.

Ian

The content arm now.

Aaron

Yes. I I agree. Yeah. I'm for sale. I'm sorry if I ever intimated that I wasn't, but I am for sale.

Ian

You'll take less than 57,000,000. I

Aaron

think right now. Way less. Interesting. Yeah. 24

Ian

something like that.

Aaron

I would take 24,000,000.

Ian

You would?

Aaron

Yeah. Okay. Not a penny less, but yeah.

Ian

Oh, jeez. I don't know what the I feel like they have a plate full. I hope they don't do anything else. I feel like you got two products. You gotta launch these products and be successful with both of them.

They're both huge. Want them to, like, execute on those two for a while and, like, nail those and hit a home run and be so busy with those that Yeah. Like, doing anything else would be stupid because I just feel like those are huge opportunities and seems like

Aaron

My guess my guess is they'll launch these two big things. And then for the sake of the narrative, they'll put out some big open source thing. That's my guess. I could

Ian

see that. Yeah. I could see some big open source or something they could extract from them that, is a big open source y Mhmm. Type element that is useful and cool, but, something like that maybe. Yeah.

Yeah. It would does. Would make sense for them to have some big open source sort of announcements here.

Aaron

Mhmm. I

Ian

don't know. But everything seems to be running fine, you know?

Aaron

Oh, it seems.

Ian

Everybody's happy. They're so happy. For most part. Right? Like It seems

Aaron

to be it seems to be going great.

Ian

Yeah. I feel like there's no it's not even like the upstart frameworks anymore. You know? There's like

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

There used to be like upstart frameworks that's it's mostly died off. So I don't know. And they're still pretty hey. Every week, there's a release or every other week, it's, like It's crazy. Cranking.

Yeah. They're very productive over there.

Aaron

They are. Good for them.

Ian

Yeah. Alright. I don't know. Let's do it. Nope.

Wrap it. Alright.

Aaron

I do I do wanna hear people's people's feedback on the new and improved sponsorship idea. Yes. AM radio tagline. So that's I wanna hear people's feedback on that.

Ian

Ten second spots. Yep. Let us know what you think of that. Yeah. And tell Caleb you want a job if you're in

Aaron

the market. DM Caleb. Sorry, Caleb.

Ian

Otherwise otherwise, mostly technical.com, mostly tech pod on Twitter Mostly technical on blue sky, which I didn't write down, but pretty sure it's correct and, mostly technicalpodcast@gmail.com, which I need to check if you've emailed I haven't checked it in a little bit, but I will check it today. It'll be on the log And, we will talk to you next week. Later.

Aaron

See you.