The Week of Aaron

Ian

Hello.

Aaron

Good morning, Ian.

Ian

Back at it.

Aaron

Happy Monday. How are we doing?

Ian

Good. Ready to take on the week. Lots to do.

Aaron

Yeah. You were pulling back there for a second. You got back from vacation, and you were like, oh, shoot. I've committed to too much. And then do you feel like you you're you're all stabilized?

Did you pick any of that stuff back up, or are you glad you cut some?

Ian

I I picked up one thing back up with the help of, of Dave and the team here just to you know, Dave and I, actually, 2 of my employees. I put one of the things that I canceled back on the table because I was just a little rash in it when I went totally scorched earth. So, but besides that, yeah. No. Everything else I rejiggled, I'm pretty happy with and really focused on the kind of big project we're getting going on, which we'll talk about here in the future, I think.

But Is this the big

Aaron

is this the big secret project?

Ian

Yeah. I don't know if it's even, like, a secret secret, but I haven't really talked about it publicly too much. So we can can start to get into it, but not yet. Because I've dubbed this the week of Aaron.

Aaron

Okay. Wow. I like the sound of that already. This is good.

You have a good day.

Do this more often.

Ian

Often. You have so much going on this week. We're not an hour is not even gonna be enough time, so we gotta jump in.

Aaron

Give

Ian

us give us your launch. Let's start with the launch.

Aaron

Let's jump in. This week is the launch of screencasting.com. God willing, this is the week that we launch. So the plan is the plan is to launch on Wednesday, which would be 18, 19, 20. Wednesday 20th is, is launch day.

And I am working furiously, to get everything buttoned up and finalized so that we can do that. It's a lot of work, man. Getting everything ready for a launch is just

Ian

So much work.

Aaron

So much work. So many so many things to, like, button up at the very end. And I'm trying to do it right this time. Like, I'm trying to do I'm trying to do, like, an email sequence that, you know, drips out over a few days to get people excited. I'm trying to get affiliates to sign up to help.

I'm trying to do all of, like, all of the stuff that you're supposed to do with launching. I'm trying to do it all right. It's hard. Now I know why launches end up being half assed, which is kind of a shame because you you put in all the work to do the thing, and then you reach the finish line, and you're like, I'm just gonna stop here.

Ian

I know. That's a huge, like yeah. Leaving all that stuff to the end is so hard. That's a big advantage of, like, you know, startups and even small companies and things. We could have somebody else working on that stuff or even having a cofounder in your endeavors.

It's like, well, if one person could actually have been working on marketing, you know, for the last, 3 months, then

Aaron

that's

Ian

a whole different thing. But, yeah, you get to the end, like, in your case, do all the recording, you do all the stuff, and then there's still all this other work to do. Not the book.

Aaron

Yeah. For fortunately, I've got so I've got, Jason Beggs helping me on all the technical

Ian

side That's great.

Aaron

Yeah. Which is amazing, But I still have to do, you know, I still have to do a lot of, like, the not only the content, but the the marketing stuff as well. But if I had to do if I had to do the technical side too, there's just I wouldn't I wouldn't make it. It just wouldn't work.

Ian

Can we have a side adjacent Beggs sidebar? Because Yeah. Like, he's everybody's right hand man. Like, every time, like, who who are you using what who's doing this for you? Everybody's always like, Jason Beggs is working on it.

I'm like, this guy is, like, 10 of them. Sure.

Aaron

Yes. He also has a twin, and so that's how he does it. But here here's the deal here's the deal about Jason. Mhmm. You know you know those people that are, like, if they tell you they're gonna do something, they just do it, and then they bring it back, and it's good, and it's done?

Ian

Love those people.

Aaron

Love those people.

Ian

Very hard to find those people.

Aaron

They're very hard to find. Jason Jason is that person. He'll he'll just be like, well, I'll you know, I knocked this out for you. Here it is. Here's the repo.

You're like, wait. You already did it. You you did all you didn't have, like, an emotional hang up about, oh, how should I do this thing? How am I gonna you just did it, and it's done. So, yeah, I feel like I feel like Jason is is the secret behind a lot of people in the Laravel community.

Ian

Yes. His secret weapon.

Aaron

It's amazing. So nobody, you know, nobody reach out to him because I don't want y'all to steal him from me. But if you do need, I think his main thing besides, like, keeping me on track, his main thing is taking Figma or other designs and converting it into, like, proper good tailwinds, HTML or he uses a bunch of the front end frameworks as well. But Right. So design to tailwind.com is his thing.

But, yeah, he's just like a no nonsense quiet worker, and that's kinda what I need. It's so awesome.

Ian

That's such a secret to a great consultant too because I feel like I could I I started out being consultant in the super way back. It lasted, like, 2 2 minutes, literally. And, it didn't work because, yeah, I can't do that. Like, I can't just be like, okay. I'm look.

I got this design or whatever it is. I'm just gonna plow

Aaron

through it, get it done,

Ian

straight line to the finish line. Like, I'm always like, well, should we do this different? What Maybe it should be this other thing. Like, what about this? And, like

Aaron

Maybe we fundamentally rethought your business.

Ian

This design will change. Yeah. And, just being like, no, I had this thing. I'm just gonna build it and then it'll be done instead of just taking months of being, you know, down the side path of thought. Yes.

Just getting it getting it done is such a valuable, element to a great consultant. So

Aaron

Yes. A real he's got a real protestant work ethic. He just There we go. Freaking works.

Ian

It's awesome.

Aaron

Meanwhile, I'm like, I should rerecord every single video. He's just over there. Okay. The thing I was supposed to do, that part's done. Now it's on you, man.

Ian

What what are you using for this is another eternal battle I have. What are you using for your it sounds like you're setting up an affiliate program. Like, what are you using for that?

Aaron

Yeah. We're using lemon squeezy for that. Oh, just the

Ian

baked in one. Okay.

Aaron

Yeah. We're doing the whole we went all in on the lemon squeezy platform Mhmm. Because the checkout is super, super nice. It does handle the sales tax, which, you know, if you're the government, I really care about. But if you're not the government,

Ian

I just don't care about sales tax that much. I'm just like, okay, come after me.

Aaron

Like, if

I didn't if

Ian

I didn't if I didn't pay

Aaron

my sales tax in Quebec, what are you going to do?

Ian

Yeah, especially overseas. I'm totally like, you got me overseas. Overseas.

Aaron

I'm gonna

Ian

get me. Yeah. I don't this is this

Aaron

is not advice. This is maybe why I'm not

Ian

a CPA anymore. This this is pretty bad advice. Major and an actual CPA. Our advice is let them come get you. Our advice

Aaron

is that's the system. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, Lemon Squeezy does handle all that sales tax, which

Yeah.

That's great. Good for them.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

But I just really really like yeah. I I like I like the built in checkout, and I know that Stripe has some of that. But the built in checkout with the affiliate management is just is super nice. And I'm really hoping I'm really hoping that long term affiliates are a good channel for this. And so I wanted to have something kinda native and first party built in.

I didn't wanna worry about payouts or registration or tracking clicks or

Ian

anything like that. Part with all that stuff is like, oh, setting up PayPal. Like, right there, you have a disaster on your hands. Like, let's figure out how the PayPal works, and that Yep. Never works and, you know, whatever, all that stuff.

So interesting. Lemon squeezy. Alright. I like that.

Aaron

Yeah. So Jason's built out Jason's built out a a basic LiveWire site, that handles all of the, you know, registration and the feature gate or the video gating based on what tier that you signed up for. It's really nice because I think we're using, I think we're using Caleb Porzio's sushi for a lot of it, which is we do we do have a database, but for a lot of, like, the content heavy stuff, it's just front front matter in YAML, which is so nice because then I can put, you know, the entire video description as I can do it as markdown and then just have, like, here's the link to the Vimeo ID, and here's the plan that it's on, and here's the slug all in that one file. Text. It's great.

Ian

Not the only one updating the database with changes and all that stuff. They said just update the repo and it's magically everywhere.

Aaron

And Jason can just, you know, push it, and he doesn't need to have access to the database. He can just change stuff and because it's a flat file. Maybe we're using Orbit. We might be using Caleb's sushi for some things and Ryan Chandler's Orbit for other things. Man, I'm familiar

Ian

with Orbit.

Aaron

I'm I'm not the technical guy anymore. What Yeah.

Ian

You don't know what's going on. You know

Aaron

how an idea. Prices. Yeah. You

Ian

have no idea what's going on.

Aaron

I don't

know what we're using.

This is

so embarrassing.

Jess, you

don't know what's

going on.

Embarrassing. Go for it. Been here before.

Ian

Make this happen, and things happen. No. That's amazing. Oh, what a bad feeling. We'll need

Aaron

to edit that out. So I sound I sound like I'm definitely the technical guy. Oh. Oh, man. Yeah.

The orbit package is great because I think,

Ian

Is that similar to sushi or

Aaron

It is similar to sushi. It's a little it has more drivers, which I don't super care about except for the markdown driver that you can use, you know, front matter. And so Orbit, I think, has got, like, a JSON and maybe an API, but it definitely has a markdown driver. And so that's I think that's what we're using there. I think some of some of the other models may be Sushi, but that one is Orbit specifically.

Ian

I've never used Sushi even though, like, I need to. I I think in this thing I'm working on, we'll probably end up using it in a few spots. But, it does seem I just love the idea of things becoming eloquent models magically. Like, that's a great concept.

Aaron

I use Sushi for, my personal site. So my personal site is deployed on vapor. It's just a Laravel app.

Ian

Right. Deployed on Vapor.

Aaron

Heads up. Jason Beggs did do the re the rebuild of it. That's not launched yet.

Ian

Jason Beggs is everywhere. It's just you could just pencil them in. Just assume.

Aaron

This is supposed to be the week of Aaron, not the week of Ian outing Aaron for having Jason do all the work.

Ian

You mentioned that one previously, though. So that's, like, that's on that's on you.

Aaron

Okay.

Ian

The previous episode.

Aaron

Okay. Blame blame Life Square.

Ian

That's all I know.

Aaron

Yeah. But, yeah, that one uses that one uses sushi. That was sushi pre Jason Beggs, so I'm gonna take full credit for that. That one uses sushi for the article listing and all of that stuff. That one actually has no database at all.

It's just flat files on vapor, which is really, really nice. And it could be, I guess, it could be, you know, a static site, but why it costs me like 4¢ to run on vapor. And now I don't have to convert it to a static site and I get full Larabell. So Yeah. Sushi is very good.

I like sushi.

Ian

Awesome. So screencasting.com. So launch. It's on schedule. We're it's happening?

Aaron

It's on schedule. It's happening. Wednesday? Wednesday. Yeah.

You know, when you get to the end of a project, it feels like, man, is this thing any good? Like, I've been staring at this thing for months. Is this any good? That happens that happens to me a lot. I've been, you know, putting the final touches, the final editing pass on these videos.

And as I'm watching them back, I'm like, these are actually good. This is good. I feel very I feel very proud.

Ian

I love that feeling.

Aaron

Yes. Thank goodness. I feel very proud of this, like, body of work. And I think, hey, this this is going to be useful. This is going to be helpful to a lot of people.

And yeah, it goes through, I mean, it goes through the whole life cycle from how do you even figure out what you're gonna teach, like content planning and structuring and how to, like, how to structure it so that people will, you know, follow along, and then in into the gear, and then recording, and editing, and then publishing. And then there are a couple extra, sections at the end on, like, alright. If you're gonna take these videos and put them on social media platforms, what should you think about when

you put

them on Twitter? What should you think about when you put them on YouTube? And then the last section is a fun one. It's just people have sent me their screen casts, and I just do the tear downs. And those are

Ian

I love that.

Aaron

I sent a

few of

those out over email, and people people seem to really like those. Those are fun. So, yeah, we're ready, man.

Ian

I mean, it's such a I I've been I've given out the URL a few times already. It's not even out yet. So I feel like it's totally a type of thing people are out there. They have questions. Even if it and it's also the kind of thing where it's, like, even if you know some of it, just feel like it's still gonna be very valuable.

Because it's, like, well, these, like, other couple parts I don't know or aren't good at or whatever. It's, like, it's worth it, the money, just for that. Because if it saves me days of trolling around YouTube videos and all that stuff trying to figure out what the heck to do and trial and error and all that, it's like, yeah, it's worth what is it? Like, a 149? Or I don't I don't know if you've announced the price, but

Aaron

I have actually not announced the price. It's 2.49 or 299 depending on which one you get. Yeah. So if you're on the mailing list, there will be a a discount. So go to screencasting.com right now.

Ian

I can't remember.

Aaron

Yeah. I think I think that is I think that is true. I think one of the things I've really focused on in this is, like, there are so many options of how to do every single step.

Right.

And and at most places I try to tell you, like, Hey, there are a lot of options here. Here is what I think, and here is why I think it, and you are totally free to disagree, but I'm gonna give you a system, and I'm gonna give you a process, and you can just follow it. And, you know, once you once you get more used to it, you can deviate and make your own style. But for now, just do this, and it'll look great.

Ian

I think that is such a huge, thing that people don't realize that other people just want guidance. Like, I was talking to an open source dev who has a open big open source project about this, about, their docs. And this is, like, the advice I gave. Because the docs are, like, you could do this or you could do this. Mhmm.

It's, like, you could put this code anywhere, is basically what it said. Right? Mhmm. Other people, like, guess you could put it anywhere, but the thing is, like, just tell me where to put it. Just tell me what's the right place in your mind for this project in terms of this, you know, the open source project, where this should go.

And then, yes, you could also have in there that, like, by the way, you could actually put this anywhere, blah blah blah, but, like, this is the recommended way to do it. And then that at least gives everybody a starting point. If you have some special case, obviously, you could riff on that or try other things. But, like, give me the main line. This is how I think you should do it.

And, like, just like you're saying with with what you're doing, it's like yeah. Just like I'm trying to make this video.

Aaron

Yes.

Ian

Let me get a video made. And so if you

Aaron

could tell

Ian

me this is your opinion. You've done this a lot. This is probably what you need. Then I can start there. And then if it doesn't work for me because I'm doing something different or weird, I can then then riff on that.

But, but yeah. Just give me the the start. Don't overwhelm me with, well, there's 17 ways you could do this, and let's go through each of them. It's like, no. Just give me the recommended.

Aaron

And that and that is such that's such a trap for the person creating the content because they know one is, like, they know all of the nuances and all of the, you know, the places where something may or may not apply or work. But I also sometimes feel like I'm especially when writing documentation, which these videos kinda are. So, like, doing these videos as well. I feel like I'm, like, writing defensively sometimes.

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

Like, I'm I'm trying to I'm trying to protect myself from the people that read or watch these videos. And They're like, well, actually, you know, you should in this case. And I'm like, oh, I should just mention that so that they don't so they don't get me on that.

Ian

Right. Uh-huh.

Aaron

And it's just such a disservice. Like, I just have to be okay, I think, with some people saying, hey. You don't always you know, you shouldn't always do it this way.

And I'm

like, yeah.

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

You're right. That's great. I agree. Right. So yeah.

There's a little there's

Ian

a little bit of difficulty. Yeah.

Aaron

Yeah. So that's what I've been that's what I've been trying to do, and I'm just really I'm this it's a good feeling. I'm just very, very pleased with it. I'm I'm happy to look on it and say, yeah. This is ready.

Ian

Yeah. It looks great. I mean, the website looks great. All of, like, going through just, like, the topic covered. I mean, it's quite comprehensive.

You see people launch content oriented things with way less comprehensive, table of contents than this. So

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

Like, the money you're getting your value there if you buy this. There's gonna be something for everybody in there. If you're doing any kind of video at all on the Internet, I feel like this is no brainer. Even for, like, things that aren't purely screencasting, just even, like, other kinds of videos and stuff. Like, there's enough topics in there to Mhmm.

Pull out, you know, best practices and and information out of it. So it's gonna be really useful.

Aaron

Yeah. Yeah. I hope so. I think I think this could be a good long term durable asset in, you know, the Aaron Francis content empire that is just beginning. So

Ian

So what's the future plan? Do you have would there be additions to this or add ons or side thing? Like, I don't know. Do you have

Aaron

any plans

Ian

for that yet or thoughts around that?

Aaron

So many plans. So many so many hopes and dreams. Yeah. So the tiers are, like I said, 249, 299. There is a $1,000 tier, but that's just consulting.

It's like you get the full course, and then you get an hour with me. Yeah. And so that's, that's interesting, I think, for a couple of reasons. One is price anchoring. You know?

Ian

Right.

Aaron

A $1,000 is 4 digits. It's a huge number. Mhmm. So that makes, you know, that makes the pricing table look lopsided on the low direction, which is nice. Yeah.

It's also interesting for me to test the waters with the consulting on this because I can see a future I could see a future where companies are like, hey, we're spinning up a content team or developer education team or something like that. And they want not necessarily consulting on the technical aspects of it, but more consulting on, like, the theoretical aspects of how do we make this content work, not how do we do it, but, like, how do we do this as a business?

Ian

And

Aaron

I think that might be interesting. And so that that tier is there to kind of see, like, does anybody does anybody care about this? And then I've got lots of plans in terms of broadening the site's content. So we're gonna do the, the creator spotlights where, you know, like, Matthias has already done one where he does a film or a video of his whole setup and talks about his setup and that kind of stuff. I think that's good long term, like, interesting and SEOable content.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

I also think there's an opportunity here for, like, an old school community. Not not like, hey. Let's get on Discord and send emojis all day every day. I sound like such an old old man, but I do not like Discord. I've kinda

Ian

warmed up to it a little bit, I have

Aaron

to say. Ian, I we're having the great flippening. You're you're becoming young, and I'm becoming old.

Ian

It's amazing.

Aaron

Jeez. Okay. I'm I don't have time for you to talk to me about Discord.

Ian

I can't yell at the

Aaron

back of

Ian

the slide question.

Aaron

Right now. Okay. Too fragile in this state. But I think there's an opportunity for, like, let's say, content creators, maybe specifically screencasters or people who do video. There's an opportunity for them for us to all hang out.

And whether that's, like, an actual traditional forum, which would be awesome. Discourse

Ian

or something like that.

Aaron

Yeah. Something like that. Or it could possibly honestly, it could be a a Discord that's probably great for that. But Or Slack channel

Ian

kind of middle ground Yeah. Little more business scenes.

Aaron

Yeah. Something for the millennial boomers, a little Slack. But, yeah, I think that's a good opportunity because it is hard work, and I think having other people that you can talk to to be like, hey. How do y'all do this? How do you do this?

What happens when you just recorded a whole video with no sound? Can we just all cry together? And so I think having that kind of space would be good, and I could be, like, the hub for that, which I think would be interesting long term. Right.

Ian

I feel like there's a we don't have to get too far into this, but I do feel like there's, like, almost a product that needs to be built for that. There's probably some out there already trying to do that. But, like, where it is that, like, there's a hub of a person and there's a community around it. Obviously, everybody just uses Discord kind of at this point with the 2nd place Slack sort of, thing. But

Aaron

I think But

Ian

they do have their their their is downsized to those, I think.

Aaron

I think Circle is maybe 1.

Ian

Okay.

Aaron

I'm not sure. I think once you enter into this, like, community management world, there's a lot of stuff that we just we never touch, you and I. And so I would have to ask some people who do, like, proper community management, which is it's an entire career and something that I'm just like, yeah. We'll set up a we'll set up a Discord. I don't know, man.

Ian

There is I mean, that that yeah. That is the nice thing when when you use a Discord or Slack. It's like people are already in there, so they're more likely to just pop over. Whereas, of course, if you're just like, well, I have my own separate place all the way over here. It has to be really compelling, I think, to kind of build up that

Aaron

think about it.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

You have

Ian

to, like, go over there, which Yeah. People are already going a lot of places. But, oh, wait. So so business thing here. So what about a team plan?

No team plan? I feel like I need a team plan. What if I'm in a company There is

Aaron

there's a contact us. Them or okay. Yes. There's a contact us. And I think I think specifically for I think that is hopefully going to work for, you know, start ups or tech companies that are like, yeah.

We actually have 5 people on our education team. Or, honestly, if Jeffrey Way was like, hey. If you're gonna do a Laracasts course, you have to watch this course first. That would be that would be awesome. So every new, like, creator that comes on to the Laracasts platform, they would watch this, and they Jeffrey would pay me for that.

Yeah. That kind of thing, I think, would be would be just amazing. So I don't know I don't know if we'll get any uptake on that, but below the three tiers is a, like, hey. Wanna pay us more money? No.

It says, alright. You don't have teams? Contact us. So we'll see if we'll see if that works out.

Ian

Yeah. I would think you'd get some action there. I mean, not as much as, of course, the mainline stuff. Stuff. But, yeah, if you can get even, like I mean, I think there's other worlds too for this stuff that you might not think about, like corporate trainers, people people

Aaron

like that.

Ian

Like, if you can get into those worlds, like

Aaron

I know.

Ian

Whatever. GE probably has 15 corporate trainers. Right? So you have all those kind of things out there that kind of our circle, the Internet doesn't think a lot about generally. Although I actually do think a lot about it because most of my my product's mostly sold to those type of people, not to Twitter type people.

And there's, yeah. There's an amazing number of departments in companies Mhmm. Out in the world. So yeah. Yeah.

Aaron

I had to be real careful I had to be real careful when I was recording the content to not just specifically talk to Laravel developers.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

Because I you know, my temptation was and I actually recorded several videos this way where it was I was assuming that everyone I was talking to was a developer.

And so

I was saying things that wouldn't have made sense to other people, like repo and

Ian

Shortment. And stuff.

Aaron

Yeah. Stuff like that. And people are gonna be like, what are you talking about? And every example every example I used was like, well, maybe you're teaching Rails developers.

Ian

It's like, nobody's gonna know what that means.

Aaron

And so, honestly, I trashed a bunch of videos and went back and was like, this is oh, it was brutal. I but I I realized, like, I'd been thinking pretty narrow narrowly about who the consumer could be, And I realized, wait. The creator economy alone is it is, like, vastly larger than our friends on Twitter. Right. And that's just the creator economy.

Ian

Yeah. Right? Yep. Mhmm.

Aaron

That's just and then you've got then you've got corporate training. Like you said, you've got, you know, in house people at AWS who are making videos for the public, but they're not creator economy or whatever.

Ian

Yep.

Aaron

And so I went back and I I redid I redid it all with a focus towards instead of saying, like, you're a developer and you're trying to, I said, you're a creator. And so my examples changed from solely code related examples to, like, okay. So maybe you're you know, I would talk about the person teaching is the subject matter expert.

And I

was like, maybe the area of expertise for you is you're really good at Microsoft Excel, and you're teaching it to attorneys because they don't know anything about Microsoft Excel. Right. And so some of the examples got broader to be so that people can see themselves in the content. So Yep. I really hope that pays off.

If I could get into some niches that are, like, more, you know, what Nathan Barry has targeted with ConvertKit, where it's just, like, everyone in the world apparently has their own little content business. If I could reach some of them, that would that would be awesome. Yeah.

Ian

I think that I mean, well, 2 different things there. 1 is, like, definitely getting in with, Nathan and ConvertKit and what they're doing, talking at the conference, all that stuff. Happy to I mean, I know Nathan. I'm an investor in ConvertKit. So if you need a hookup there, I would be more than anything.

But happy to make intros.

Aaron

The week of Aaron indeed.

Ian

I'd love to hear that. So happy to get you in over there if, I could help. But, also, and so yeah. And he's, like, super creator creator. They have such a beautiful creator audience.

Screencast.com. Perfect for for that. But then also, this is like a founder thing I think is super important. I've actually been having this with my big project, which is like it start I kinda started this, like, almost a year ago. And, like, I've just been exploring, you know, learn and react, and all these explorations and start something and then trash it.

And then start at a different path and then trash that. And then now I think I'm on the right path with it. But it's, like, it's hard because you're trying to get stuff out. But at the same time, if you know it's not right, then

Aaron

Yes.

Ian

It's also the time to say, nope. That was the wrong path, and we're just gonna start again if we have to or partially start again or whatever we have to do here to get on the right path. Because once you're all the way down the path, then it's too late. Then you're, like, you are stuck with the thing you have.

Aaron

Yep.

Ian

And, like, yeah, in your case, if it was, like, all talking about Laravel stuff all the time or dev stuff, then there's definitely gonna be an audience where whatever. People buy it and they see it and that that person bought it, but maybe they don't recommend it because, like, well, I can't really send this to my colleagues because I don't even understand what's going on. So I'm not gonna recommend this or it just was hard to use because I was confused at different points and things like that. And this is such yeah. It's not at all a dev oriented product specifically.

I mean, that'll certainly be your biggest customer base, I'm sure, in the beginning here. But Yeah. You could definitely see where this can go out to the wider world and be useful in all kinds of scenarios. So definitely a smart move, I think, on your part to take that time even though it's super painful. Super painful.

Start again. Yeah.

Aaron

Yeah. So so painful because, like, I was I was looking at the videos and thinking, oh, I really need to finish this course. And I was like, why am I feeling like, why do I feel this emotional hang up of, like, getting to the end? And I realized it's because I know I know it's not right.

Yeah.

I know I know that I dorked up in, like, a fundamental way, and that is, like, positioning. And I have to redo this. And the moment I decided, like, okay, I'm going to redo this. The amount of work that was ahead of me was enormous, but I felt so much better. Right.

Ian

Yep. I

Aaron

just felt like this. Okay. I feel good. Like, we can do this.

I'm on

the right path. All that is before me is a huge mountain of work, but there's no emotional resistance at all because this is the right way forward. It's like, I can work. I can stay up late and work. What I can't do is be emotional about it.

And so I was like, this is a win. I'm happy now.

Ian

Yeah. Pushing through when you know it's not right, it's like, then you're just gonna not finish it or it's gonna take twice as long because you're just not feeling it. Brutal. You're, like, not gonna put in that effort. You're not gonna be thinking clearly about it when you are doing it and all those things.

Yeah. I mean, that's yeah. When you're a founder, these are the things that are hard that are a little different than, like, what we're talking about earlier where it's like, hey. I got this thing. I'm just, this is the spec.

I'm going. I'm doing it. Yep. I'm not letting my emotions get in the way of this. Like, we're just gonna complete it and then move on to the next thing.

Like, this is different than that. You gotta you have to listen to your gut, I feel like, a fair amount of the time. Sometimes you have to tell your gut to shut up because it's it's leading you wrong too. But usually, if you're really in that, like, you're describing there where it's like, every day, you're like, oh, man. This is, like, feels hard.

It's not right. Like, then, you know, you just gotta listen and go go with the gut there. So Yeah. And I think one of

Aaron

the things that is interesting about this is I think in some regards, people will be buying this course and paying me money for my taste. Right? There's some amount of, like, technical knowledge that I I am imparting to them. Them. But a lot of I think a lot of what I'm teaching here is, like, a point of view and and taste.

And so when it's when I feel like the taste is bad, like, the the thing I'm doing is is not quite right

Ian

Right.

Aaron

That's when I feel like, okay. I I personally think I have good taste, and I think the thing I've made is bad. And so I have to trust that taste and say, nope. That's bad. I can make it better.

I'm going to do that even if I have to work really hard. Yep. So hopefully it pays off.

Ian

I think so. I'm I'm very optimistic about it. I think there's a lot of excitement I've seen out there for it. So I'm expecting it to definitely launch really well and then go from there and do the building out the network. The affiliate sounds good and starting to get your name in other corners of the Internet that aren't just home based for us.

Yeah. I think we'll be

Aaron

And I have a friend who's an investor in ConvertKit, and so I may talk

Ian

to him. There

Aaron

you go. Yeah. I heard it's great.

Ian

Yeah. Awesome. Nathan's amazing guy. I knew him before ConvertKit, actually. We met in, like, booth Japarize Circles.

Okay.

Aaron

Yeah. I met him. He's a

Ian

great guy.

Aaron

MicroConf 2012.

Ian

Wow. Yeah. Mhmm. And talked to him back then when

Aaron

he was doing, like, the authority and and that kind of stuff. But I haven't, like, I haven't spoken to him since, but he was he was super cool way back then too.

Ian

Yeah. No. He's a great guy, and, yeah, it's amazing to see what they've done he's done with ConvergeOne. It's unbelievable. So Yeah.

Yeah. Not an early enough investor. I was trying to get in way back then. Like, way when he first started, I was like, let me, like, throw some money at you. And he's like, no.

I'm not doing investors. And then he was gonna do it, and then he didn't do it then. Then he did do it a couple years ago, but I'm not, you know, I'm not super wealthy from it yet as I would have benefited

Aaron

if you

Ian

had taken my money

Aaron

in the beginning. Come on, Ethan.

Not yet.

Ian

Next thing, take my money early.

Aaron

They're they're not stopping. So you should I think I think you should be okay. I know your big investments from from Twitter is Cloudflare, but I think I think

Ian

Cloudflare. ConvertKit

Aaron

is gonna work out okay for you.

Ian

Hey. Mailchimp sold for what? 4,000,000,000 or something? I don't know. 10,000,000,000?

No. Maybe it's more like 10

Aaron

I think it was I think it was a lot of billions, and they were totally boot strapped if I recall.

Ian

I believe so. Yeah.

Aaron

Yeah. Yep. Crazy.

Ian

Email. Email. I mean, hey. My business is all you need to do.

Aaron

Break. Email.

Ian

Email is the is the past, the present, and the future.

Aaron

Email. It's unbelievable. I'm over here trying to be clever and invent brand new things, and other people are sending

Ian

emails. Send the emails, receive the emails. This is this has been my life for the last 20 years. It's all it's all email. Like, all the little parts of it, but the core emails at the core.

Aaron

Turtles all the way down. Yep.

Ian

And no and then and you're never gonna replace email because, like, there's nobody's gonna do an open standard for anything ever again. Right? Like, there's not even open messaging. There's no open standards. Email is the last open standard, and it's never gonna be replaced.

Aaron

And where where are all the email killers now?

Ian

Right. Dead. You can't yeah. No. You can't kill email.

It's like just provides an invaluable service, and they're never gonna there's never gonna be enough community, backing from all the different stakeholders to actually make something else go. So

Aaron

We have 2 email providers in our community. Right? The Frake and Spotsy do Mail Coach.

Mhmm.

And then Marcel and the Beyond Code folks

Ian

do Oh, I use that. Hello?

Aaron

SYN Stack?

Ian

Oh, do they do that?

Aaron

SYN SYN Stack.

Ian

Oh, I didn't even know what I'm talking about? God. They built so many things over I can't keep up with all the stuff myself builds. He

Aaron

Yeah. I know.

Ian

He builds a new thing every week.

Aaron

I know. They've got the they've got the desktop Tableau. Yeah.

Ian

I don't know how they say it, but that's, like, the test, you know, or, like, local development

Aaron

But they had, like, a privacy first email thing that they were working on

for a while.

But I have honestly, I haven't heard about it in a long time. So, Marcel, if you're listening, do some more marketing for that because I forgot the name of it.

Ian

Yeah. I don't I don't remember that one. But like I said, I can't keep up. I saw them at Laracon and talked to them quite a bit, and, like, I don't know what I don't even understand how you I think there's only 3 of them.

Aaron

There's only 3 of them. Yeah. Unbelievable. It's it is unbelievable.

Ian

I'm, like, got one product in 20 years. He's got they're, like, got new products every year. And and

Aaron

the secret product. You've got that.

Ian

I am. But that feels it's kinda similar to the old product. It's email. I can't leave email. Alright.

So what else is going on here? So alright. We got a couple more things in the week of Aaron. I don't know which one. Do you wanna go Flowtone?

Do you wanna go

Aaron

Max Effort? Let's go Flowtone, and then we can we can drive into Max Effort from there. Alright. Flowtone is a desktop application that, has recently been pre launched by Boris and I. So we know Boris in in the community.

We love Boris. Boris wrote, Advanced Inertia, that book on how to use inertia and view and Laravel altogether. Great book. And great book. And Boris was working on some stuff and reached out to me and was like, hey.

I've seen you talking about this, like, process where you take your videos and you, you know, you normalize the audio and you clean it all up, and that's, like, become your video pipeline. And he actually reached out because he was like, I'm working on a video related product and wondered if you, like, wanna partner up on it. I was like, yeah. That seems really hard, the secret project that he's working on.

I was

like, that seems really hard. Is there, like, an easier thing that you could build? What about this, like, no audio cleanup normalization tool? And so he just speaking of machines, he just did it. He just was like, yep.

I'm gonna

build a desktop app. It's done. Now can you make the videos and do the marketing? And I was like,

wait.

How are you already done with this? So, yeah, so, he built everything.

Ian

I I like that.

Aaron

I'm the I'm the marketing guy, Ian.

Ian

You are. You are the marketing guy. You're the guy with the audience. You're building the audience. It's weird.

It's weird, man. It's weird. Hard building an audience way harder than building a product.

Aaron

You know what? I think that might be correct. I think distribution

Ian

is about the distribution.

Aaron

Pretty hard to come by. So, yeah, so we're we're partnering up on it, and I've written 0 lines of code for it. He wrote, you know, everything. So there's like a there's a desktop app. There's a Laravel server.

So, like, you drop your audio onto the desktop app. It does a little bit at home, and then it sends it off to the server where we do the rest of it, and then it sends it back. And it's literally every video that I make has been running through it just to, like, clean up some of the background noise, boost my microphone volume a little bit, just make things a little more clear. Mhmm. And so, yeah, we pre launched it, and I think it's gotten, I wanna say, like, $500 of sales.

And so pretty good. Yeah. And that also segues nicely into, like, the screencasting.com empire. You know? That's a nice Yeah.

Now I can, like, kinda have these 2 funnels that weave in and out of each other and, like, the whole the whole ship was pointed the same direction, which I feel good about.

Ian

Is it a one time per it's not one time purchase, is it?

Aaron

It's a one time purchase for a certain amount. Like, I think it's, like, 600 minutes or something, and then there will be, like, you can top up. But it's not a monthly a monthly subscription. Gotcha. So you're buying

Ian

the Usage. You're buying resource. Yeah. You're

Aaron

using those.

Ian

Yeah. Alright. I like that. That's interesting.

Aaron

Yeah. And there are some, Yeah. There are some notions that maybe in the future we could do, like, some of it in browser. But one of the benefits of doing it on a desktop now is if you drop, you know, 6 gigabyte video on it, we can do some of the audio splitting locally, and it just makes everything faster, cleaner, better. So, yeah, the desktop app, the billing model, some of it's like, this is interesting.

Let's try this. Let's see what happens.

Ian

I like it. Yeah. I like the idea of resource usage based apps. I don't know. It's a little tricky.

You know, you can't just apply it to anything, but, there is an interesting element to that for sure.

Aaron

Yeah. I think one of the downsides of pure SaaS pricing would be like let's take me for example. I'm doing this course, but then I may not do, like, I may not do this bulk of video for a long time. And if I were on a monthly plan and do I go and, like, get the biggest monthly plan, run everything through it, and then the next month downgrade to, like, a standard plan? It's like, oh, that's not good for me, the consumer, or for the business to be like, oh, our MRR went super up.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

Oh, it went super down because they finished the course. So I think usage based is interesting here.

Ian

Yeah. For sure. Alright. Well, let's let's then transition here to, like, something we talked about actually at Laracon, which is Aaron's max effort era. Give us the rundown on what this is and what what you're doing.

Aaron

Yeah. The rundown the rundown is basically I was watching all these people on Twitter be rich and retired and just talk about how important it was to, like, do yoga every day and, you know and I was like, why do I feel so bad about this? And I realized I'm in, like, I'm in my builder phase. This is not the time this is not the time where I'm in my I walk to the coffee shop and spend a couple hours journaling. It's like

Right.

I would love I would love to be in that phase. Truly. I would. Right. Just simply not.

And I think one of the one of the disservices that social media does is you usually catch a person's story as like a slice. And so you may come in on someone's story when they're in their semi retired phase and think, oh, I need to start behaving as if I am semi retired because that's what this successful person does. Right? And but you, me specifically, I am not I'm not there yet. And so I'm viewing a slice of their story that is not co linear with my story, and I thought it would be really helpful actually if I could, like, frame or phrase this as something that clearly denotes where I am and where I'm not.

Because then mentally, I will know, like, I can look at these other people and think, yeah. That's great. They're in a different phase. I don't have to emulate that phase. My phase is fundamentally different.

And so that's when I decided, like, okay. I'm gonna say I'm not in my semi retired leisurely builder phase, which is what a lot of people are in. Semi retired leisurely builder. Daniel Vassallo with the Small Bets community, semi retired.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

Leisurely builder. I'm not in that phase. I am in my maximum effort era, which hopefully will set me up for my semi retired leisurely builder era. It's just that I don't know that there's another way besides luck to get to that semi retired phase without putting in a lot of effort. And one thing I'm super careful of is talking about how this is my phase for right now for me.

Like, I I wanna be very clear that this is a decision I have made for me, and it's not prescriptive. It's descriptive. So I'm not saying everybody needs to do it, but I'm saying there are things I want out of my life. And I think the way to get there is you have to just work really hard. The only way out is through.

And so right now I'm going through, and we'll see if I get out. Yeah.

Ian

I mean, I'm a huge believer in this. I mean, the thing with social media is, like, you know, it the whole it's entirely designed, right, to surface outliers, essentially.

Aaron

That's a

Ian

good point. And so even though you may follow 20 of the leisurely semi retired entrepreneurs, like, that is, like, the tiniest, tiniest fraction of the number of people who are out there starting businesses every year or who run businesses. Right? It's millions and millions of people just in America alone who are running businesses and working very hard at them. And so, yes, but you get thrown these, like, the 20 cool people on Twitter who are, like, you know, journaling every day and all these things.

Right? Not to not journaling, but you know what I'm saying.

Aaron

You know what I'm talking about

Ian

though. Right? So and, like, you're, like, oh, man. Like, yeah. Why haven't I made enough millions to be able to be that guy?

And, but it's also, yeah, it's totally unrealistic. And, I totally agree. You have to have the the effort era is definitely a thing. I think you can go in and out of it, which is a thing too to be aware of is, like like, I definitely had a super max effort error, like, when I started HubSpot, and that was just not sustainable. So hired people and things like that, and then I definitely, like, pulled back from that.

And then for a long time, like 10 years, I would say. Like, I wasn't all the way to leisurely retired, but I also wasn't in maximum effort,

Aaron

I would say, either. Mhmm. And then, it

Ian

was just, like, effort, I would say either.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

And then, it was just like solid effort. Like, solid effort running the business. Customers are happy. K. Good.

And then now I'm gearing up for max effort era, you know, 3 or 4 or whatever it's been because it's been little ebbs and flows over time. Because, yeah, it's like, alright. Well, I got new stuff we're working on, and that needs more effort and attention and all those things. And also, like, my life is better suited to it now. Kids are older and things like that.

So, yeah, I think you can go in and out of these phases. But, yeah, I think to deny the phases. Like, very big disservice is often done with people who are out there espousing, you know, 4 hour work week and all these other things that are excellent marketing. And, yes, I'm sure there's, like, a handful of people where this is very successful for them, and that's all great. But I don't think that's true of the vast majority of people who are very successful.

I think most of them are working quite hard. And, you know, and, you know, we're trying to work smartly too. Not you know, there's you can't just always plow your way through everything. But, but, yeah, they're taking time savings from working smartly and then working more on other things where they bring value. Right?

So if they can have employees, if they can outsource things, if they can do all those things, they're not necessarily taking that time to gain from that. And then, yeah, you know, using that as leisure time, they're taking that time and saying, okay. Now I can do more of the things that I bring unique value to. And, and then keep going with that. So, yeah, I think that that that's a a very the main strategy, really, even though on the Internet, you wouldn't always know it.

Aaron

Yeah. And I think there's there's a, I think there's, like, a turn or a shift that happens to some to some people who are very public when they, like, they climb to the mountain and they get they climb to the top of the mountain and they get up there and it's beautiful, and they turn around and say, y'all, it's hard work to climb. Y'all should really take it easy. Like, that climb is tough, and it wore me out, and I think y'all should take it easy. But, boy, it's beautiful up here, here.

And you're like, wait.

Ian

You can't have

Aaron

you can't have both. Like, I understand. I understand getting to the top and being like, wow, what a freaking slog that was. I'm gonna slow down a little bit. Yeah.

That's the hope. But then to turn around and say, everyone else slow down. I've made it. You're like Right. Come on, man.

That's the hope. Right?

Ian

Also feel as often the some combination of, like, just actually forgetting how hard it was. Probably.

Aaron

You know?

Ian

Right? And then also, I mean, I think in some people just dishonesty, whether it's intentional or unintentional of like, this is a better story if I say that I just chilled on my way up to the top. Yeah. That's a more interesting story because everybody kinda knows the, hey. Work hard and you'll get to the top story.

So then what's my take on that that's more interesting? But, yeah, I think and especially too, like, you're in this zone where you have more kids on the way and things like that. So you're very specifically right now in a zone where you probably will have you'll have more time over the next few months than you will have over 12 months from now, most likely. So it's also taking advantage of these times when you do have extra time. And it's like, yeah.

I'm gonna put in those hours. I'm gonna work late some nights. I'm gonna do those things, to try to get ahead while I can because I it'll be out of my hands maybe in

Aaron

Exactly. 8

Ian

months or 12 months or whatever where it'll be very hard to to work till 2 o'clock or whatever on Friday.

Aaron

That ain't gonna work because I'm gonna be up till 2 o'clock for

Ian

the babies. You'll be out.

Aaron

But you

Ian

won't be able to screencast, I don't think.

Aaron

No. I don't think so.

Ian

Yeah, so getting these things done and launched and out there and then be able to maybe, you know, yeah, run it. I doubt you're gonna be all the way out of max effort era even then, but will you be able to maybe dial it down to Yeah. Solid effort era for a little bit? You know?

Aaron

I think there will be a phase change when new babies come that is just like, alright. Still maximum effort, but towards these new 2 new humans that have just been born. And everything else everything else kinda goes into maintenance mode or, you know, maintaining what is already hopefully already hopefully gaining steam. I can just give it a little bit of push every now and then.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

But, yeah, I think, you know, I think there are definitely phases in naming it an era, I think, is

Ian

Absolutely.

Aaron

A good thing because it's like you can you can have a different era for a while. And I don't know what epochs are. I don't know if epochs are bigger than eras, but, you know, maybe there's, like, a overarching epoch with individual eras. I don't I don't know. I don't know what's that deep history.

Ian

I'm gonna tell you, in 2023, to name something era, that's the way to go. It's yet another overlap between you and Taylor Swift.

Aaron

We are the same

Ian

person. Yes. You have Max's name. Era. I feel like this is the energy in the air.

The air is the spot. Right?

Aaron

That's what I'm trying

Ian

to say.

Aaron

We are literally the same person with one minor difference, and

that's a $1,000,000,000. A $1,000,000,000. What's that between friends?

No big deal. The week of Aaron.

Ian

Week of Aaron.

Aaron

Okay. Talk about we have a couple other things we could talk about. One is, I don't know if you follow Josh Pickford on Twitter. Mhmm. But he's doing a new he's doing a new business kind of technical thing as always.

Ian

I saw that.

Aaron

And I think that would be interesting to talk about

if you

have new businesses. If you have seen this. Do you want

do you want

me to give you the the highlights on this one for the for the So Josh Pickford, famously of Baremetrics, which then exited, is a serial maker. He's always starting something. He's got you think I have a lot of projects? This guy has, like, 10 literally 10 times as many projects as I have. And I thought this one was really interesting, because he just kinda, like, dropped it on Twitter and was like, hey.

It's kinda done. And typically what he'll do is he'll say, I've got this new idea. I'm gonna do it. And then he'll work on something for a while, and then it kind of fades off, and I don't hear about it anymore. This one was totally totally different, where it was like the thing is done.

So he has a tweet, and we'll put it in the show notes. He says, I recently purchased a small web app, interesting already, called lawncareplanner.com. Great domain. Haven't spent the last few days rebuilding it from scratch, so I figured I'd talk through the details. So he goes through the details.

He bought this site for, like, nothing. It was like $2 or $1800 or something.

Ian

And the way that he did

Aaron

it was he was actually searching for lawn care plan for his house and came across this site and was like, hey. This is kinda what I need. And saw that it hadn't been updated in a long time, reached out to the guy, and the guy was like, yeah. Used to make I think he says used to make $1,000 a year, and now it makes, like, 2.50 a year. And so he just went back and forth with him and bought the thing outright.

Ian

Yep.

Aaron

And so he says he's got 6,000 registered users. Who knows how old, you know, those emails are, and a full, like, infrastructure of, Python and Django to, like, build out this site because it's a lot of, like, programmatic SEO. It's like lawn care plan Dallas, Texas, and so there's a whole database that backs it. And so he, you know, spent a couple of days, rewrote it in Rails, added some stuff, and now it's just, like, out there and running. And he's got a whole plan of how he's gonna grow it, but, you know, he's using some AI to write some content.

And I thought this was really interesting, because I do feel like I am arcing towards my content era as well instead of instead of pushing super hard on a Sass boulder. I feel like, wait, this content stuff I feel a a knack for, and I feel like this is good durable assets that could last forever. And so this was interesting to me to see him doing this. I don't know what the back end is gonna be in terms of, like, is it just an Amazon affiliate thing or what's going on there? But that's the overview, and I really think it's interesting, but I'd be curious your take on it.

Ian

Yeah. No. It's super I I agree. Like, I when I saw that he had done like, he had finished it, and I was like, oh, yeah. He finished 1.

Alright. Like, it's like he did it. Awesome. And then, well, you know, there's kind of 2 thoughts I had. One is that, you know, it seems like a reasonable idea.

I mean, I feel like it's very unlikely he's not gonna make, you know, well The $1800 back. Yeah. To make the $1800 back. Right? And, you know, just even just doing the mass SEO stuff, which is not, you know, Google somewhat frowns upon it, but at the same time, like, you're in for $1800.

So who cares? And, like, if it does anything, instead of just relying on the homepage to have, I think it says 3,000,000 pages or something like that now. So, you know, you're usually supposed to, like, roll those out more slowly and stuff than versus just dump it all out there, but whatever. In his case, it is a little bit different because it is like ZIP codes and things like that. So there is, like, you know, there's, like, a reason to have that many, that makes some kind of sense.

So that is to his benefit, I think.

Aaron

And presumably the domain is pretty aged. So he's not popping up a new domain and dumping 3,000,000 pages out there.

Ian

It's number and, you know, it's number 6 on when you just search, like, lawn care planning or something like that. So, so, yeah. I mean, this is, like I think this is a very interesting idea. So here's the thing that people, again, in our circles of Twitter are probably not aware of. Like, this is totally a thing lots of people do.

Like, this

Aaron

is just

Ian

a whole industry of, like, going out and buying domains with, like, domains that have expired,

Aaron

and

Ian

then just buying the domain because you see it's a domain that's ranked well and the person just let it expire, and you're just scooping them up, and then you're putting stuff on it. Or this type of thing where you're going out and actively acquiring things for cheaply, which have good ranking in certain areas and stuff like that. So it is interesting because it comes across as like, oh, this is, like, crazy idea, but then really it's, like, just an idea that lots of people are doing, but just not, like, people

Aaron

Not in our space.

Ian

Right? Yeah. Not on Twitter in our little zone of it. But, yeah. No.

I I, I I mean, I had a product at one point way, way, way back, that was like a textbook selling product that was like this, basically. We just have, like

Aaron

Really?

Ian

Every college textbook, you know, in the world and affiliate links and whatever. But yeah, it was just, like, the late nineties or, like, 2000 or something like that. And, but then, like, then Amazon just, like, totally took over everything directly. Oh, yeah.

Aaron

I've heard of Amazon. Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. Probably

Aaron

got crushed on that one.

Ian

So oh, oh, there's a guy. Still people out there doing that, to be honest with you. But, yeah, it's not wasn't I just had better things to spend time on. So it was like, I forget it. But, but, yeah, I could totally see having a little if you're gonna have a content based business to, like, start with a domain that's already ranking is definitely a big advantage.

And so and to have inbound links and things like that. So, yeah, I like this idea. If I had more time, this would be the kind of thing I could see me doing, just like poking around, finding little businesses.

Aaron

Or

And you know who's a semi retired leisurely builder? Josh Pickford.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. And so about leisurely, though, but

Aaron

he's semi retired. Yeah. That's true.

Ian

I guess.

Aaron

He is he is not leisurely. He attacks everything with intensity, which he's working. Respect. I do I do like that. Yeah.

I I like I like that Josh is, like, always doing basically hobbies. He's like

Ian

Right.

Aaron

Alright. I'm gonna, you know, fix up my house while I should make a app to keep track of all the tools. It's like, hey, man. He's got

Ian

the tool out of all

Aaron

the way. You do you. That's awesome. I'm happy for you.

Ian

He does have that the convergence of our theme of this episode, kind of, is, like, he has that consulting mindset to some degree, but also the founder mindset. Because he

Aaron

does, like,

Ian

I'm building this thing and then he'll build it and ship it and then he won't, like, necessarily do anything with it after that a lot of times. So then it kinda falls off there. But he does sort of get pretty far into these things and, like, way farther than I get. I usually get as far

Aaron

as I bought

Ian

the domain, and I'm like, okay. I got the domain set, and then I never write a line of code or do anything. He's like, no. I got a domain, and I built a thing, and it works. I mean, I haven't talked about it again after that, but I I built it and shipped it.

Aaron

He's the triple threat of, like, he's actually a pretty good designer. He's a pretty good developer, and he's a pretty good, like, follow through person, which you usually don't you usually don't get all 3 of those. But you're right. He does, like, finish an app, app, and then he's like, alright.

Ian

I gotta go on to the next app. And that's, you know get that juice.

Aaron

Yeah. If that's what he wants to do is build, that's great. I like I like this content thing. I think my one I think my one hesitation with something like this is I kinda want I kinda want all of my efforts pointing in the same general direction.

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

And I don't know that so, like, if I were just to buy lawn care planning dot com, my like, everything I've built so far adds nothing to lawn care planning. And lawn care planning adds nothing to everything that I've built. And so that that would be my hesitation. I would much rather buy something that is, like, directionally aligned with the other stuff. But I do like the idea of buying buying something that somebody has neglected and kinda, you know, juicing it up a little bit and seeing what happens.

Seems kinda fun.

Ian

Yeah. And, I mean, it's hard. I mean, I've had I've never been very good with this either. Like, once you have multiple products, just in general, multiple products is difficult for me anyway. And then in addition to that, like, if you have multiple products that are not related, now you just have yeah.

Like, you're marketing. Like, there's no benefits. Yes. There's no co marketing. There's no you're talking to this one group and that has cross like, there's no cross benefits to anything.

You just have to have a whole separate marketing plan and be dealing with that entirely separately. And I don't tend to have enough brain bandwidth to deal with that, I have found. So, yeah, I think in that way. But on the flip side, there are people who are totally comfortable with that and also comfortable with, like, hey. Like, if this makes $500 a month, that's cool.

And I'll just, like, collect this $500 a month and be very happy with it. To me, like, the mental overhead of just dealing with it usually isn't worth things like that. Because it's like, well, it's gonna go down, and I'm gonna have to be aware of it, and I'm gonna have to fix it and, like, whatever. So I'm gonna try to hack it. Like, there's gonna be all stuff with it that's just a pain in the butt that I'm like, well, for this few $100 a month, just not worth the hassle.

But, but, yeah, I mean, I think there are lots of people out there, right, who have, like they have 20 of these and 50 of these or whatever. And it's like, when each of them does $500 a month, well, now Now talk

Aaron

to you.

Ian

Some real money. So so then you got something. So yeah. I don't know. And then, obviously, you have 1 or 2 that hit maybe and get bigger.

Yeah. It is an interesting model. I mean, the the the Internet is a vast place, and the number of people looking to buy stuff is bigger than you could possibly imagine. Like that's the thing that people don't realize. It's like Yep.

Like when you really think about it, it's huge and there's people out there trying to buy everything. And there are less competitive spaces. Like, we're all in this, like, Internet space of, like, business SaaS apps

Aaron

and Yeah.

Ian

You know, even content for developers. These are

Aaron

pretty competitive spaces. Tough spots to do. There's

Ian

a lot of people who are like, oh, that's a good idea. You know, lawn care in, you know, your area is a less competitive space. So there are that is interesting. Those type of angles on the Internet where, like, can you get into a niche that's less competitive, and, you know, float around in that zone of of freedom? Yeah.

Aaron

I think that I think the mini like, the portfolio approach makes a lot more sense to me when it's not a portfolio of small SaaS applications. When it's a portfolio of devastatingly brutal. And then you're like, wow. I'm just gonna do 5 that all make $200 MRR. You're like, why?

No. But the content portfolio, I'm like, yeah. Set it up once. Kick it off, and then you kinda yeah. It's easy.

Ian

Yeah. Alright, man. Well, I knew you have a hard stop here, so I don't know if we wanna stop there.

Aaron

Few minutes. I wanna talk I wanna talk, content outside of our world for a second. I see you tweeting about Foundation.

Ian

Foundation.

Aaron

So first of all Alright. I'm way behind because Okay. I'm Oh, okay. I'm editing screencasts, but I have started season 2. I'm, like, maybe 2 episodes into season 2.

So this is Foundation on Apple TV. Great show, based on a book by

Ian

Isaac Asimov?

Aaron

Isaac Asimov. There you go. I didn't know. And season 1, awesome. Totally great.

Season 2, the first two episodes, I'm kinda like, I don't know.

Ian

Okay.

Aaron

And so here's here's my take on Foundation as a whole. I want the show to be solely focused on the Empire. That's all I wanna watch. I just wanna watch the cool Empire that's, like Right. Got all this technological advance.

I don't wanna talk about a library on an outer planet for half of every episode.

Ian

Oh my gosh.

Aaron

It was

Ian

so funny. It was

Aaron

hysterical. This blasphemy? Tell me tell me what I'm what I'm missing here.

Ian

Yeah. So I mean well, so first of all, I feel exactly the opposite. Season 1, I Really? Like, literally had to drag myself through it. Season 2, I don't love it until later.

It gets better to me. Like, like episodes 8 and 9 are actually quite good. So I feel like it gets better later. So, yeah, it's hard for me because I've read the books and I read them recently for the first time, like, last year. Yeah.

The I mean, so foundation is I mean, it's it's called foundation, but it is literally one of the foundational texts of science fiction, period. So, I mean, it has the galactic empire. Like literally that's what's in it. Star Wars has a galactic empire. Right?

These are like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Asimov for a lot of books having to do with robotics and the three rules and all these things and and that is in here a little bit. And so, like so if it comes to robots or space or galactic empires, like, this is the foundational text

Aaron

of the whole box.

Things I love. Robots, space, and galactic empires.

Ian

Right. Yeah. Exactly. So so this is huge thing. Right?

That's very, very well known in the science fiction circles. And and the book and so Asimov's thing is he's not necessarily like an amazing writer, but his ideas are very good. Got it. So I don't know. For me, the books are are very like, to turn them into a TV show would be very odd.

So I see why they've done what they've done. Because there's not even really characters in traditional sense. Like, you meet a character. They're there for a couple chapters, and then there's a huge time jump, and then they're gone. And so it's a lot of, like, you're going over tens of 1000 of years across these books, and the books are short.

So you're like really jumping. So they've had to do some stuff to try to keep like Harry Seldon in the books is in like the first couple chapters. He's never in it again, and they talk about him here and there, throughout, but it's it's just sprinkling. He's not a character, like, through the whole books at all. So

Aaron

is the Klingon thing in the books? The, the everlasting, like, empire guy?

Ian

No. Not in the way. Really? There's not Dawn and Dusk.

Aaron

And Dawn, Dusk, and Day?

Ian

And Day. Yeah. There's just one guy. And I don't think he even clones himself, if I were to. Yeah.

So it's they've so that's the thing. Again, like, well, how do we make this, like

Aaron

Well, that's a clever device. Show. Right? They they did a good

Ian

job there. Good device. I don't like a lot of what they did, but I actually really like the dawn, dusk, and day thing. I think that's actually a pretty cool take on that. So yeah.

So I guess I would have liked to have seen them make the show based more on the book even though it would be very nontraditional. Like, it would not at all be a normal TV show, and I see that being very difficult to pull off. But at the same time, I feel like that would be what would be interesting about it is Yeah. Like, yeah, we already have a 1,000,000 TV shows with, like, the character runs through the whole thing, and the main characters are there for 5 seasons. Like, give me a TV show where the main characters are gone every, like, 3 or 4 episodes.

Like, I don't know. It'd be kinda cool. That would

Aaron

be so wild.

Ian

Set with a whole new thing, you know, a whole new world and stuff like that. 3 every 3 or 4 episodes. But so that's been very hard for me to overcome because it's so it's radically different from the books. It's not even just like, oh, they missed this scene I loved or whatever. It's like it's totally different.

Aaron

Fundamental structure change there,

which is strange.

Ian

Fundamental. And I'll be curious to see what like, if you when you finish the show or, at some point, if you go back and read the books, I think it'd be interesting to see, like, from that angle of, like, show first, and then coming back to the books and if it's too just jarring. But,

Aaron

but,

Ian

yeah, I don't know. I I it's kind of growing. I mean, there's not that much sci fi stuff in general out there. Right? So it's like you kinda have to absorb what you're given.

But so what's not what's not jiving with you on the second second season here?

Aaron

Well, so far, the first two episodes have been very Harry Seldon and Foundation focused. And they go to this other they go to this other planet or, I guess, new characters, maybe new characters where there's, like, the padawan and the old, like, the old foundation guy, and he's, like,

Ian

the last

Aaron

person to see Harry sell

Ian

the last priest.

Aaron

Yeah. He's a little bit goofy, and his character's a little bit silly. And I'm like, I just want galactic empire. Like, I'm a good guy. Listen, everybody.

I'm a good guy. I'm team good guys, but I just wanna watch the galactic empire and the technology and the cloning. Like, that's that's what I wanna watch. Not

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

Oh, we're farmers tending to a library in outer space. Like, I don't care about that.

Ian

Yep. Yep. Yeah. There's this whole I mean, the whole library in outer space, they've cut a lot of elements of that. So it is, like I feel like in the show, it's a little weird because they've kind of given you some stuff ahead that you shouldn't actually know yet, and then they've cut things of that storyline kind of.

So there are places like that where I'm like, I'm confused a little bit. And I also wonder, like, if you if I didn't have the background, how would I even understand what's going on sometimes with, like, the vault and Yes. And that's another thing is,

Aaron

like, I

just don't care. You haven't made me care

Ian

Right.

Aaron

About this vault. I'm like,

Ian

I don't know what's happening here. The vault is

Aaron

a

Ian

humongous thing in the book and has some very interesting properties. And first of all, it works totally different in the show. And then also, yeah, I feel like they didn't they haven't really set that up for why you would care about the vault at the level, like, that maybe the characters do, whereas it's more clear in the books, like, why people care about it. So, yeah, I don't know. It's okay.

I got through it. I mean, who knows now? It's gonna be like with this writer strike and everything. I don't know. It's gonna be, like, 3 years before we get the next one.

So then who knows? Or if we ever get the next one. Oh, yeah. That sucks. But, yeah, I don't know.

I'm kind of looking for it. There's this big character in the books who's coming presumably in the next season. They've hinted at him. I won't totally spoil it. Yeah.

No spoilers. There, but, I don't think you've seen him yet probably. But, so we'll see if he shows up and what they do with him. He's already very different from the books. You could see he's not gonna be on the same trajectory, I I think.

So we'll see. But, yeah, overall, you know, it's okay. I'm desperate for some sci

Aaron

fi.

Ian

I feel like there hasn't been enough sci fi. Most of these modern TV shows, I don't really care for. I'm kinda interested in seeing Loki, the 2nd season of Loki. I don't know if you're into Marvel stuff. Not Marvel guy.

Aaron

Not the TV shows. I'll see the movies in theaters, but I haven't watched any of the TV shows.

Ian

Are you what about Ashoka? Are you on Ashoka? Nope. Okay.

Aaron

I'll I will see Star Wars movies in theaters, but I haven't seen any of those TV shows.

Ian

Gotta watch Ashoka. And or

Aaron

Never even heard of it. I'm not gonna lie to you.

Ian

Oh, no. Andor is excellent. Sorry. Gotta watch Andor. It's so, so good.

It's it blows away foundation. It's not it's, like, 10 times better than foundation. So But I'm

Aaron

not a big Star Wars guy. Do I have to be a Star Wars guy?

Ian

Need to be. No. There's no lightsabers. There's not one lightsaber in the whole thing. With Ashoka, there's literally been the first, like, 3 episodes no less than 20 lightsaber models.

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

It's it's it's so ridiculous. It's so I mean, that's why I think I tweeted this. But I'm like, they're making these shows for kids, but the only people who care about them are, like, 40 years old and old.

Aaron

Yes. Like, kids people

Ian

who grew up in Star Wars. Like, I want I'm I will buy every Star Wars thing you could throw at me, but, like, give me something. It can't be, like the whole plot is for, like, a 7 year old. And I get that's kinda like the idea of the original Star Wars and George Lucas blah blah blah fine. But, like, we're all older now.

We don't want, like, 20 lightsaber battles. Like, I've seen a lightsaber. I got it.

Aaron

It's cool. I understand.

Ian

But I'm like I used to get very distracted now by, like, okay, it's 20 lightsaber battles. And in this lightsaber battle between a robot and a Jedi, like, the Jedi never uses her powers. So, like, okay. I'm just watching the 20th lightsaber battle, but she's not just, like, throwing this robot off the cliff like she could do in 2 seconds.

Aaron

Like fake struggle to make Yeah. Yeah.

Ian

Just like, oh, it's so it's so hard to watch. Whereas so Android doesn't have any of that stuff. It's, like, basically, it's all things that's super grounded in reality. It's, you know, reality of that universe, but it's not, no lightsabers, none of that stuff. All humans doing humanly stuff.

Yeah. Some of the like episode 10, I think it is, is just one of the plain best episodes of TV I've ever seen, period. Oh, wow. Okay. At all.

So, yeah, it's it's very good. So when you're there with the with the more babies and they're just crawling on you at, like, 4 in the morning, are you just throwing and or, you know, a couple months from now? That can be just

Aaron

a little

Ian

thing to get you

Aaron

through there. We'll we'll see. If I if I if I do, you will be the first to hear about it. Before that, I'm gonna finish foundation.

Ian

Well, you should do that first. Yeah.

Aaron

So I

Ian

would I would get caught up. You know? You know, it's only 10 episodes. Now TV shows are short. It's, like, not that bad to at least get through the season.

So yeah. I'll be we'll we'll follow-up because then we can talk we can have

Aaron

a proper spoiler

Ian

sec segment on, foundation and the the kinda wrap up there since I just walked through too.

Aaron

So Perfect. Okay. Good idea. Alright. Well, you wanna you wanna read us out?

Ian

Yes. So thanks everybody for listening. You can follow us at well, you know, you can find us at mostlytechnical.com. We're on the Twitter slash x, which is a ridiculous thing to say, at mostlytechpod. And, definitely email us at mostlytechnicalpodcast@gmail.com if you have any commentary or feedback on, any of the stuff we talked about.

Aaron

So thanks

Ian

a lot, Aaron. Talk to you next week. See you next week. Bye.