We're Gonna Make It

Ian

Hello?

Aaron

Hello, mister Landsman. How are we doing?

Ian

We're back. Oh my gosh. It's been a rough month. Crazy. All kinds of stuff going on.

Finishing it here with a cold that has wrecked my whole house. So I haven't slept in a week. Somebody here some coffee.

Aaron

You slept in a week? Yeah. Basically. We gotta get you a chili pad, man.

Ian

Yeah. Maybe that's it. I don't know. This was a congestion y sort of situation, so I don't know if the chili if the chili pad's

Aaron

not gonna fix that. Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. But that's that's quite a recommendation then. Yeah. But yeah. So we're back.

We'll hold it together as long as I can here. I do wanna start out just by once again thanking Jeffrey Way of Laracast. Let me just bring that up on the screen. Here we go. Thanks so much to Lara Cast for sponsoring the show.

If you haven't checked out Lara Cast, definitely do that. The best resource out there for Laravel and really just web development in general. Obviously, all the courses they have there. New Laravel 11 course. So, yeah, you know, obviously, we're both lifetime members.

Wholeheartedly recommend it. So definitely check out Laracast. Thanks so much to Jeffrey for continuing to sponsor the show, and, definitely check it out if you haven't in the yet because it is the best resource out there. Thank you to Jeffrey. Okay.

Alright. So it's been a couple weeks here. We got a lot of stuff to cover.

Aaron

We got a lot to cover.

Ian

What did you what did you think about the eclipse? You were right in the path. Right?

Aaron

Was right in the path. So we were also maybe, like, a year ago, we were on the the partial path.

Ian

Okay.

Aaron

So a year ago, I saw a almost total eclipse. I was like, yeah. That's kinda cool.

Ian

That's what I got this time. No. It's like 94% or something. Yeah. Yeah.

It was cool.

Aaron

I'll tell you what, the full the total eclipse, completely different.

Ian

That's what I figured.

Aaron

Just We Just amazing. Totally worth it. I mean, I was already here, so I don't know. You know, people did travel, but I think I think the next one that happens in the US, I will definitely travel and take the kids to if they're still kids. If they're grown adults, you know, hopefully, they'll join me.

So Yeah. 20 years. Wow. Yeah. Hopefully, they'll take me in my wheelchair there.

But, yeah, it was it was it was crazy. It was so awesome. We just walked right outside our front door, sat in our neighbor's yard, and, you know, laid in the grass and watched it happen. It was amazing. Totally worth it.

Ian

We thought about going, traveling a couple hours to get in the total eclipse, and we didn't do it. And we were all sick, and so whatever. It ended up being just wouldn't have worked. But, yeah, it was, like, a little, like, the the looking at the sun is cool. It's like this little sliver, but it's like, oh, you look around you, and it's still, like, amazingly daylight out.

Like, it's not like, oh, it's dark in the middle of the day. It's like, yeah, maybe some clouds went overhead. It's, like, incredible how powerful 6% of the sun is. It's still plenty of sunlight. So yeah.

Yeah.

Aaron

It was it was super cool. My, we we checked we checked hotel prices in Dallas just for giggles, and there's one hotel that's, like, $500 a night. But the night of the eclipse, it was $5,000 Wow. A night. Yeah.

Ian

It did seem like people were traveling, but, that's kind of I mean, since you can go anywhere on the path, it's, like, kinda crazy to have so much demand just in Dallas like that.

Aaron

Yeah. Yeah. Super fun.

Ian

So the kids get it? Totally. Were kids

Aaron

get it? Fundamentally different. No. They were in school.

Ian

Oh, alright.

Aaron

So student life. I asked them when I dropped them. I I think I dropped them off that day. I asked the teachers, like, are the kids gonna go outside? And they're like, no.

We We don't have glasses. And I and I said, good. I don't want my 2 year olds looking up at the sun. Like, it's so hard to learn if you're supposed to do that.

Ian

Yeah. They're a little small for understanding those things. They're just messed up, pull their glasses down quick and just to look at it and, yeah,

Aaron

so directly into the sun. Yeah. That that doesn't seem good.

Ian

Got enough going on. You don't need another another thing with a

Aaron

No. I don't need temporary lives. Still joking. Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. Let's pass on that. Yeah. Oh, man. Alright.

What else have been going on? You have so much stuff. You've had a 1,000 tweets. You've got a 1,000,000 podcasts. All kinds of stuff.

I don't know if there's any any stuff we wanna talk about.

Aaron

Tweets and a 1,000,000 podcasts.

Ian

That's so much going on.

Aaron

Just no. That's not right. I was on a few podcasts. Yeah. You were every and I guess I have been tweeting more.

Am I tweeting more? I think I might be.

Ian

I feel like it. I feel like you're more like they're catching on. Like, everything you tweet is really, like, hitting.

Aaron

Like do feel like I do feel like they're catching more.

Ian

I don't know what it is. Zone. You're in the zone right now,

Aaron

or the algorithm is, like,

Ian

pushing you hard. They're like, oh, that Eric Francis, whatever he says, let's just, like, push it. There's some there's something going on.

Aaron

There's something going on. The universe is conspiring, so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna, you know, question it.

Ian

No.

Aaron

Yeah. I was on a couple podcasts. You know, you take a break here, and the energy's gotta go somewhere.

Ian

You know?

Aaron

It's the energy must get out. Gotta get out. Podcasting's gotta get into the universe.

Ian

Yep.

Aaron

I did one with, Ben Ornstein on his, you know, hackers incorporated. That's great. He's out. He's out at 2 people onto the next adventure. I know.

He is living the dream. I know. It's crazy. How do I do that? Yeah.

And then I did a few others about, like YouTube, and I went on the lemon squeezy one to talk about how side projects are a good insurance for getting laid off. Yep. So, yeah, you know, doing the tour, put a couple tweets out. It's it's a we're a media empire, man. Gotta keep it keep it rolling.

Ian

No. That's true. You gotta stay top of mind.

Aaron

And I put out a video that you were featured in.

Ian

So awesome. I was like

Aaron

Ian Lanceman on YouTube now?

Ian

I was, like, in a huge part of it. I was like, man, this

Aaron

is where I

Ian

was feeling kinda down. I was sick. I was like, man, this is, like, cheering me right up. Yeah. It was very, very nice of you to include me, and I think worked really well.

And then also since it was, like, for Cloudflare, I was like I know. Had this whole inside joke angle Listen. People in the know.

Aaron

People inside Cloudflare know your name, Ian. How does that make you feel? Is that

Ian

awesome? Very good. That is

Aaron

awesome. Figured.

Ian

Yeah. So cool.

Aaron

So, yeah, that was my try my triumphant return to independent YouTube was, I made a Cloudflare video, which was a lot of fun. You know? First one in the studio, still a few things. A few kinks I'm working out, but Yeah. It's, it's good to be back, and I think we're you know, Steve and I are gearing up obviously for a ton more video and the personal YouTube is a part of that.

It's a part of that strategy. It's not really personal anymore. It's like Steve and I are both working on it, but still Right. My my

Ian

channel of your distribution channels that you offer. Exactly.

Aaron

Yeah. Exactly.

Ian

Yeah. I think that makes sense. How's, initial sales and leads and all that stuff going? What's the update there on the business?

Aaron

It's going great. Oh. I think we're I like

Ian

the sound of that.

Aaron

Make it. And, you know, not knock on knock on wood. I think this is knock on MDF, maybe. MDF with the wood veneer. But we might I don't know if it'll happen in the 1st 12 months.

We might end up making a lot more than we made as as w two employees. Employed. Yeah. Yeah. Well Uh-huh.

Ian

I'm glad you got up here with it. You got up here. That's the thing. When you charge those, you know, you get into the 5 figures and Yep. High five figures and things like that.

Yeah. That's a lot of months of working. Like, even splitting it 2 ways, it's like

Aaron

Sure is.

Ian

That's a lot of that's a lot of salary there. So, I mean, that's obviously you have to make it continue to happen is where the rubber meets the road a little bit.

Aaron

That's how they get you. Yeah. Yeah. That's how they

Ian

get you. That's what that's when having a abnormal job is appealing again. You're like, oh, yeah. This money just comes in every week, and that's kinda nice. But, but yeah, if you can keep it rolling, obviously getting off to a solid start is the first step in keeping it rolling.

Because if you get off to a bad start.

Aaron

Rolling. That turns out, it's not rolling at all. Keeping it rolling.

Ian

Yes, exactly. So, so that's great. So I don't know. I know you don't probably wanna say too much, but, like, are you, are you still going ahead on, like, the your courses? You have contracted.

You're kinda moving ahead on both fronts.

Aaron

Moving ahead on both fronts. Right now, for, like, our, for the in house side of the business, we are working on a screencasting.com, relaunch and

Ian

Oh, good.

Aaron

Beefing it up. So Steve is working on a premier course right now. So it's like Mhmm. Premier for screencasting. So, you know, only the 20% of premier that you actually need to know to get started, that sort of thing.

Right. So he's working on that. I'm working on, beefing up the main or, like, flagship course and changing the site up, just like touching the site up a little bit to include additional courses, that sort of thing. So that's what we're working on in house right now. And we're gonna hopefully launch that in about 2 weeks.

So May 1st is when we're like pushing that out the door. Hopefully we'll get another big influx of cash off of, you know, the new course and the premier course. And then we have, you know, client projects lined up. But it's really like I get why I get why software development agencies are like, I just wanna build a product. I just wanna build my own SaaS products.

Because I feel like we're already we already feel that, like, we're doing, you know, we're doing client work and thinking, how can, like, what can we own in the future to to, you know, think bigger,

Ian

have some baseline and

Aaron

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I think we've got, honestly, I think we've got like the next 6 months probably pretty booked in terms of like what we're on the hook for. It's crazy. Yeah. And some of it, I can't, you know, I can't talk about it all right now, but some of it is, some of it is like in house courses that are also we're working together with companies on,

Ian

Kinda like sponsored.

Aaron

Yeah, exactly. So we'll do the course and sell it, but they're, they're gonna be a part of it, as a sponsor. And that makes a lot of sense and you can

Ian

be showcasing their platform, but still it's useful just in general for those kind of, you know, just the baseline knowledge. It doesn't matter which platform you're on necessarily, but, the one in the video is, you know, valuable to the company who's teaching you.

Aaron

So Exactly.

Ian

I like that. That's an interesting path.

Aaron

Yeah. We'll see we'll see how that works out. I think it I don't know. I think it I think it could be a really nice model because you get some cash up front. Because courses, you know, notoriously, you don't get cash except for the day you launch and maybe, like, half of the day after.

And then it's. But getting some, getting a, you know, a payment upfront from a company like that, that moves the needle quite a bit when, you know, we're talking about these, the size of these payments. And then we can work on the course for a long time and then get that secondary cash infusion when we launch. So Yeah. It'll be interesting.

I'm excited about it. I'm not working on high performance Laravel right now. Although, got we got a lot of feedback that was like, that's the course you should do. Yeah. And so I received that feedback and I believe it is just gonna take a lot more work to do high performance Laravel than it would like eloquent mastery or something.

Ian

Right. Then you have a lot of other stuff. I mean, it seems like you have a lot of hot leads, so I think there's also a little bit of risk there, like putting those aside or telling somebody it's gonna be 6 months is not as appealing as telling them it's going to be 1 month or 2 months or whatever. So you do have to balance that a little bit probably on the consulting end or this even the sponsored content end. It's like Mhmm.

If you have these things coming in now, you kinda wanna strike while the iron's hot there, I think, as much as you can. I really like the idea of relaunching the screen casting course. I think that is really smart. I think, you know, you launched it, but it was like, I think, like, you've talked about before. It's like, there's kind of just always that cloud a little bit of like, are you gonna be all day every day pushing this thing when you're supposed to be doing other stuff or

Aaron

something else?

Ian

Scale at that time and everything. And it's like, so now you can, like, kinda give it the big push. And, obviously, you also have just, I think, new people in the audience since then and everything like that. So and to me, that's still always, like, the foundational element for you guys.

Aaron

I think that could be I think it could be the baseline that, like, we could then take some bigger risks off of.

Ian

Yeah. And that's so it's so much easier to flesh that out. I mean, like, we've talked about before, but, like, get that SEO going on that. That. Like, there's just a huge market out there.

If you can get the SEO going for people, you know, whatever, however, Twitter followers you have, like, there's still, you know, 10000 times where people out there searching for screencasting. They're never gonna follow you. So, yeah, getting that kind of stuff going will be a huge help to that. And then, yeah, like this premier car is like whatever adding little bits to it where you can relaunch it every couple months. Yeah.

Kind of fresh with some new stuff and just yeah. Keep keep that going.

Aaron

Yep. And we're gonna we're gonna start, like, doing a lot of these gear guides and reviews and

Ian

Yeah.

Aaron

You know, put together, like, alright. You wanna do you wanna do a bundle and you're on, you know, super budget? Here's exactly what you can buy. Here's Yeah. Here's camera light.

And if you wanna do a bundle and you're on, like, an extreme budget, here's, you know, here's the better camera and here's 4 lights and all of this stuff. Right. So, hopefully, we can get a lot of inbound SEO from people look looking for gear and that sort of stuff. Yep. But also I

Ian

could do videos with those too. Like, those could be on YouTube as, like, lead gen videos. Exactly. Like that. I'm in a

Aaron

real I'm in a real, like, everything goes everywhere kind of phase right now. So it's like

Ian

That's the play with these things. Right? Like

Aaron

That's the play. I think I've realized that I'm the top of the funnel here, and I'm like, I'm the person bringing most of this, which is the plan, bringing most of this attention in. And so like, you know, articles, tweets, podcasts, videos, it's all gotta be it's all gotta be used in multiple places. Yeah. And so, like, when I, you know, when I do a podcast or guest podcast, then I gotta transcribe it and pull out any ideas that could be turned into tweets or articles and turn those into articles and then turn the articles into videos.

It's just like the whole thing. The whole thing's just gotta keep going. It's a whole lot

Ian

of work right there too. You know? You have the time for all that. And Yeah. Yeah.

There's even, like, SEO stuff around now. Like, one of the big SEO things is, like, time on page and stuff like that. So, like, when you make the YouTube video of the article about the premier, or, you know, the best camera setup or whatever, like, you wanna have that YouTube video embedded in there so that, like, people watch it and it's longer on the page. Blah blah blah blah blah. So, like, yeah.

So having all that stuff and then getting it organized correctly and getting it published correctly and all that is it's a big project.

Aaron

Yeah. That's what I'm working on. That's what I worked on this weekend for my personal site was getting it all, like, getting it all sucked in and organized.

Ian

And in

Aaron

terms of podcasts, getting those transcribed, all of that stuff so that people 1, people can find it more easily, but 2, Google has some stuff to chew on and hopefully will bring them to my site. So Yeah. It's fun. I like I like setting up, you know, systems to do things for me. And part of like, part of the places, part of the place that I've struggled historically is not having a system.

And so feeling like then, oh, I'm not gonna do the thing, but it would take too long to set up the system. And so I'm just gonna sit here and worry about it. Yep. So instead of doing that, I spent the weekend building out a pretty good system that I'm happy with.

Ian

Nice. Now you just have to do it for all the other sites and then you'll be set.

Aaron

Yeah, exactly. I know. I know. There's so much to do.

Ian

Never never ends.

Aaron

No. I do feel I I will say, I do feel not having a job really opens up how much time you have.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. Big difference if you're talking

Aaron

to Big old big old difference.

Ian

9:30 at night or 11:30 at night or 2 in the morning or whatever versus, oh, I can just do this at 2 PM and Yep. Still pretty awake and fresh.

Aaron

I will say, if you if you need money, jobs are that's actually pretty good. I'm still working. I'm still trying to figure that side of the the thing out, but having the free time is awesome. I just Yeah. I love it so much.

Ian

Yeah. Definitely lets you move faster for sure that you've been able to work that part out enough to have a little breathing room to get going on it. Yeah. Alright. What else is going on?

Aaron

Alright. Let's see. You gotta tell me about I need you to talk to me about this health care stuff. So here's the deal. Here's the deal.

I had a great tweet, and I knew it. I knew it from the time it came out of my fingers. I knew this is gonna work. Yep. So I got my, you know, I got my, COBRA renewal notice, which if you're not in the United States, that's awesome.

Congratulations. Yeah. In the United States, COBRA is like a legal term for, like, continuing health care coverage.

Ian

Yeah. When you leave a job, you can keep your health care coverage for a certain amount of time.

Aaron

Months, but you pay through the nose for it. So I got my renewal, and it was like, great. You can keep your health care. I was like, oh, oh, that's amazing. Thank you so much.

What a kind and generous government. And you'll have to pay $37100 a month. Wow. Oh.

Ian

That's a hefty one.

Aaron

That's a lot of money. Yeah. So I put it on Twitter. Got 1,500,000 impressions. Wow.

Which is it's the best one I've ever had. And it was something so stupid. But I think it touched a nerve with, you know, a certain political demographic, and they took that as a way to advance their message. And I'm like, that's great. Just as long as

Ian

you read me subtext a little there. But yeah.

Aaron

Yeah. And then you're telling me that because Steve and I have a 2 person LLC, I can sign up for for just works, and they're like, what is it, a PEO or something? So what's what's the story here?

Ian

So, I mean, definitely, that COBRA is crazy. I think you'll wanna get off of that. The, you know, like, the marketplace, the health care marketplace we have in the United States, which I think looked into a little bit, just a place to get health care, which could, you know, could definitely work. But that's where Which

Aaron

does work. Obamacare, right? Yeah. Obamacare. The marketplace is Obamacare.

Right?

Ian

Right. Okay. I've never used that myself, but I think it's definitely a thing people do and works. But, yeah, Justworks. I mean, the thing with Justworks is it does a lot of stuff that you're gonna need to do, which you might not even be doing right now, which you're probably, you know, potentially breaking the law and things like that.

Aaron

Wow. I don't know about that. I'm not selling oregano as weed.

Ian

I mean, we're just getting

Aaron

we're just getting started here.

Ian

Okay? Like. Yeah. Stuff the government cares about more than that, actually. That's

Aaron

probably true.

Ian

Basically, you know, the big thing is, like, your payroll. So you have money coming in. There's 2 of you. There's different ways to handle this, but since you're already, it sounds like having some fair amount of money come in, you really are supposed to pay yourself a salary and not just take everything as owner draw. And once you do that, like you have all the payroll taxes, you have social security, Medicare, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the stuff you have to be paying.

So you're gonna need some kind of payroll provider in general. I would think accountants can do it for you, or you could do it yourself, which is insane. I would not recommend you do it yourself.

Aaron

I'm not an accountant,

Ian

anymore. So you could so you could have your accountant do it, which I'd actually did do for a while, but it's not the best. They don't really love do I don't know. It it's kinda weird.

Aaron

You don't like all of this ability. They're terror they're terrible at everything.

Ian

They don't really wanna do it.

Aaron

Can you send me an email once a year and remind me, like, to do stuff? And they're like, nah. You gotta contact me and fill out my organizer that's 40 pages long. I'm like, what what am I I paying you for? Anyway I

Ian

I do now have an awesome accountant. So if anybody needs an accountant, I can recommend you an amazing one. But still, I don't have him do this stuff. Like he does my taxes. That's what he does and he's there for advice and other things and that's it.

Like, he doesn't do any of this other stuff. So yeah, so that's, that's a big one. Once you have some organization doing that for you, then like, at least in the case of just work, you could get healthcare through just works. You are paying just works every month for this opportunity at $99 an employee a month.

Aaron

Just for the opportunity to then pay for health care?

Ian

Well, no. For them to do the payroll and all the other stuff they do plus the

Aaron

entire thing. They're $99

Ian

an employee. Got it. Yeah. Got it. Got it.

Aaron

It. Here's a question. It's

Ian

$59 an employee if you don't go get healthcare through them. If you want healthcare through them, then that adds to go to $99 an employee.

Aaron

That's how that gets you. Here's a question for you. Mhmm. And would it be that Steve and I are a group or do we join some sort of like just works conglomerate group?

Ian

Yeah. You're like in the just works conglomerate group. So you're getting, like, the just works pricing.

Aaron

Okay. So it may not be prohibitively expensive.

Ian

No. Like, I think, you know, it is different in where you live and all this stuff, but I think ours is like for the family plan, like $1100 a month. I wanna say something like that. That's, like, on the lowest one. Like, I just get the lowest one.

Aaron

That is bad. Yeah.

Ian

The high deductible and whatever. You can get fancier ones. I don't have those, but they do offer them. So, yeah, so I mean, that's a path to the healthcare depend, you know, comparing it to the marketplace and what you want to do there. If, but there's other stuff they do too.

Like, there's if you wanted that 4 zero one k, you could get around that right now if you wanna do, like, sub IRA, which you can do while you don't have any employee employees while you're just owners. Once your employees doesn't work as well, which we can get into if you want. But, 401 ks, if you wanna go that route, there's, then, like, contractors, workers' comp. So there is, like, these different things where, like,

Aaron

contract all the 10 the 1099?

Ian

99 and stuff. Yeah. Like, it organizes all that for you, which, again, like, an accountant can do it. Maybe, I guess, you could do it yourself.

Aaron

No. Stop saying that. I'm not doing any of that.

Ian

I'm not doing any of that myself. I know I've been anybody that does anything themselves. Like, it's so nice to just have Justworks. You have a question about something, like, you go to them. They've always been very helpful.

So

Aaron

I don't recommend anybody doing anything themselves. Amen. Right. If I if there's one thing I love, it's just not doing stuff. Yeah.

Just love not

Ian

doing stuff. Somewhere between $59.99 an employee a month, it's like that's a write off. You just write it off.

Aaron

That's a write off.

Ian

Somebody does all this stuff, and they make sure the paperwork gets to you and everybody else who needs paperwork. And they deal with just all the overhead of the, even individual states. If you're remote and you have different states in the mix and, like, each state has their own weird stuff that needs to be paid as part of payroll and all that stuff. So

Aaron

they kind of handle this. This, just works is the same or different than gusto or which you might call it gusto.

Ian

No. It's different. And I haven't looked at gusto in a while, but I believe they were just like a payroll

Aaron

Payroll provider.

Ian

Oh, looks like they've expanded a little bit to say they do HR stuff.

Aaron

Let's

Ian

see. They might have it's a payroll. They do they do more of this stuff now. They don't do it doesn't look like, it doesn't look like they do health care, though. Oh, no health benefits.

Yeah. So I think it is the same as Gusto. I guess, this point it was it didn't used to be the same as gusto, but now it looks like gusto is expanded to, take on the rest because it's kind of like it makes sense because everybody wants to outsource this part of their business. Like, they want the other stuff too. Like, so you just wanna go to one spot and, and have the healthcare and all that stuff.

I mean, the other nice thing is you're not here yet, but, like, as you get employees, like, any trouble they have with, like, healthcare plans and things, like, they go to just works, not you, which is a huge thing. It's like how

Aaron

you, yeah.

Ian

We used to do this, like where we managed the health. Like we went to the insurance provider. We had a health care plan for user escape. If employees had problems, they basically had to come to us first and then go. We would try to send it up the flagpole to, like, the health care company, whatever.

It was, like, a total mess. So now it's, like, no. Just go to just words.

Aaron

And Can you imagine going going to your boss and being, like, hey, I got a I got a tummy ache and my insurance isn't working like that. There's nothing more embarrassing than that.

Ian

Yeah. It's like I don't want to be in the middle of this stuff.

Aaron

No. You're. Tell me about your tummy aches.

Ian

Yeah. So

Aaron

supposed to be a barrier here. You know, I'm not supposed to know that stuff.

Ian

Yeah. That stuff even gets weird. It's like, I don't know. Am I supposed to know about this? Like, what am I supposed to know about?

I don't know. You know? So I like having this all be separate. So yeah. And Just Work's definitely not the only one.

So, apparently, Gusto does it. There are others.

Aaron

ADP is big dog. Right? Don't they do it all? Yeah. ADP and what's the other one?

In Sparelli? No.

Ian

ADP Something else. Used to do it all. They used to just be payroll, which we used to have ADP. Uh-huh. For payroll after we moved off just the accountants, we went to ADP.

But and then we went to Justworks because ADP did not do it all. But now I do think they have also got on the we do it all bandwagon. So I'm pretty sure.

Aaron

So this is the way that you know all of this is you've done you've used every single

Ian

one of these. Yeah. I started with just the accountant and getting my own insurance myself, like, through the whole process of this evolution of these PEOs, and now we don't have to do any of this ourselves and it's great. And so, yeah, so everybody had it much easier now. Of course you I had to suffer you all can live life easy street, but, and yeah, I guess now I haven't looked at anything else in years.

Like, I just paid just works. I don't even think about it. Obviously, if you're just starting out now, yes, you should probably go to Gusto and go to Gusto work to maybe be able to play them off each other and like get, save a few bucks. Who knows? But they're all providing the same type of service where you're gonna be able to, just outsource a lot of this and not have the headache and make sure you're compliant with the law.

Because then, like, when you're not paying these, like, federal taxes correctly and stuff, then

Aaron

you can call them. That. Yeah.

Ian

They care they care about that. They care about that a lot. They get on you for that.

Aaron

Yeah. If there if there's one if there's one thing that the government actually enforces, it's paying taxes. You don't wanna you don't wanna mess around with that. There's even a line on there for, like, I think, on your income taxes for how much money you made via bribery and, like, how much money you made via stolen goods or something like that. Yeah.

And my my recommendation should my my non accountant recommendation is if you make a bunch of money off bribery, put it on just put it on there.

Ian

Just put it on there.

Aaron

Just put it on there, pay your taxes, and figure it out later. Yeah. Exactly.

Ian

Agree. You gotta pay the taxes. And, like, the thing is people try to skirt the, like, personal taxes a little bit by, like, if you just take it all your money you make as owner draws, then you're gonna pay income tax, but you're gonna not have to pay the corporate, like the different, like social security taxes and things like that, pay payroll taxes, which saves you some money. But they look, they frown on that very much. So you really should pay yourself a salary.

Anybody out there who's not paying themselves a salary, you should pay yourself a salary. You're supposed to pay yourself a salary commensurate with what you would be paid if you work for somebody else. I don't go necessarily quite that far with it, but I'd

Aaron

I'm talking, like, 60%, 50% where

Ian

you can make someone else. A reasonable salary. And so because basically here's the thing, like it maxes out at like 120 or 140,000 or something like that. So like, if you get, you know, if obviously you, once you're making more money, but like if you make a half $1,000,000 a year and you pay yourself a 100,000, you're in the ballpark of like maxing out your social security and stuff. So that's what they care about.

If you make if the business is bringing in a half $1,000,000 a year and you pay yourself $10,000 a year in payroll, and then you withdraw $300,000 a year as owner draw that they don't like to see. So

Aaron

That's what I wanna do.

Ian

That's a little

Aaron

That sounds awesome.

Ian

Yeah. I know. My wife is big on that. She's like, screw them. Let's just wait.

Why do I hate she hates pay the taxes. She hates

Aaron

it. But

Ian

I don't like that in jail, so trying to avoid jail time.

Aaron

Yeah. I that is something I'm optimizing for as well. Right. I think that's all. I don't We never been arrested,

Ian

so I don't know. Maybe we should.

Aaron

That's true. And, honestly, a quiet night in a jail cell

Ian

Oh, sounds pretty good. Yeah.

Aaron

As long as I'm by myself, that sounds kinda awesome.

Ian

That sounds a little vacation.

Aaron

Yeah. All of this, of course, only applies, I think, to s and c corpse. Now we're getting real into these because pass through entities, you just you gotta pay tax on everything. And so I think we need to elect s before we file next year.

Ian

Yeah. I know c corps are a whole different beast there. I don't know about the

Aaron

c We didn't we didn't incorporate a c, so we can't Yeah.

Ian

You don't wanna be a c. You wanna be LLC filing as an s, I think Yeah. Would be the play you're working with. You. Yeah.

So that way,

Aaron

Paul, you

Ian

want the protections of the corporation and LLC and all that stuff.

Aaron

Talk talk to a real accountant. Don't get your advice from podcasters.

Ian

Yes. You definitely need to always talk to

Aaron

your accountants. Unless unless

Ian

I mean, you are

Aaron

an accountant,

Ian

and I was an accounting

Aaron

manager. Hell.

Ian

So we kinda know something about this. We know a little more about this than the other side.

Aaron

We know. Yes. We know a lot more than the average person, but a lot less than we should to be giving advice.

Ian

Everybody's particular arrangements are different, what your situation is. So definitely get a good accountant. If you don't, you'll know if you have a good accountant to me, this is like, if you feel like your accountant, like isn't great, that's that means they're a bad accountant and you should go get a different account.

Aaron

Yeah. I need a different accountant.

Ian

I gotta hook you up with my guy. He's the best. He's unbelievable. Yeah.

Aaron

I when I got the guy.

Ian

So, like, I went from the accountant to another accountant. They're both terrible. The first guy was actually pretty good, but he just wasn't like modernized and stuff. We, we outgrew him and then the second guy was no good. And then I was just desperate, desperate.

And I knew this guy way back in the day, there was this thing called slice host, which was like kind of one of the first partial

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

Server hosting things. And he got they got really big and they got bought, whatever. And I knew this guy and I was like, dude, I need an accountant. And he was like, I have the greatest accountant in the world. So I was like, let me have him.

So I got this accountant and he is the greatest accountant in the world. These they're they're unbelievable. They're so good. I bought this guy, like, a super fancy bottle of scotch or something, sent it to him. I was like, this is, like, the greatest thing ever.

Just like when you get in with a good accountant, it's just so much better. They just know what they're talking about on somebody front. So

Aaron

Alright. 22 things. You know, 1, first, you know that that accountant put that bottle of Scotch gift on his taxes, and he paid he paid tax on it.

Ian

He's like, you got the tax amount. Yeah. That's just a compensation.

Aaron

Second question. Are they, are they remote? Can they do the taxes of a person in Texas, for example?

Ian

They're in St. Louis, and I've never met them in person. So they work very well remotely. Yeah. No problem.

Aaron

And are they, like, proactive? Because the problem I have with accountants historically is Mhmm. You hear from them on April 14th, and they're like, hey. Just wanted to let you know, like, where's your stuff? I'm like, we haven't talked.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

We haven't talked in 364 days. Like Yeah.

Ian

No. They are way more proactive than that. They're always on us in, like, January to, like, start getting our stuff together. And then usually before that, like, in November, they'll at least reach out, if there's anything big or weird on the year that we might need to adjust for before the end of the year and things like that. Or just, you know, to sketch out the year where it stands now and if there's gonna be a huge tax bill and if we wanna wanna spend some money, ahead of time or things like that.

So, yeah, for the most part, they're, they're really good about that. And I imagine, like, I've always been pretty hands off with them other than that they you know, we're always on time with everything, and they're always well ahead of schedule of getting our stuff. Definitely not, like, the April 14th stuff. But, you know, I've also reached out to them many times, like, hey. Question, business thing, contract, whatever.

And they actually help. Good. They actually help.

Aaron

Yeah. That's crazy. Alright. We gotta we gotta talk.

Ian

These people up with, like I must have sent them at least 10 or more companies over the years. And as far as I know, everybody, still is with the Lyricast uses them, Titan.

Aaron

Oh, no way.

Ian

So a lot of people Really? In our circles. Yeah. So and they've been happy with them as far as I know. So

Aaron

He should be sending you a bottle of scotch. Okay. I don't know why I don't know why you're sending him stuff.

Ian

When he sends me these 5 figure tax bills, I'm like, Like, I probably sent you and he funded the $5 or 1,000,000 of, dollars. I mean, he is whatever. They'd actually do their he he hooked me up in some different ways, but, yes, like, I do agree. They're they're kinda old school. Not you know, they're not thinking on the modern Internet program sort of thing, but, and whatever.

I just want them to stay in business and be wealthy and keep doing what they're doing because I don't wanna have to find a new account. So No. That account is not easy enough. Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron

Alright. Well, I'll get that name from you.

Ian

Yep. So I don't know. So, yeah, you guys gotta figure that out, but don't put it too

Aaron

long. Doing. So I haven't I have till the end of I have till the end of April. There is a podcast called Startup to Last, kind of the same same as every other Bootstrap podcast. It's Rick and Tyler.

And I listen to

Ian

this one.

Aaron

I've listened to that one for many years. Tyler works as the founder of less annoying CRM, and Rick, his cohost, is the founder of Leg Up Health, which is like it's hard to explain, I think. They serve as like insurance agents or brokers or independent somethings.

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

And one of, like, his, his cofounder just moved to Texas, and so he's licensed in Texas. And so I reached out to him and was like, hey, is this the, like, the kind of thing you do? And it's exactly the kind of thing that that they do. And so I talked to this guy for, like, an hour and he, you know, walked me through all the available plans and stuff. And apparently, if you are an individual and you go through the marketplace, there are tax incentives or credits available.

But unlike other tax credits, they come off of your health insurance premiums upfront. So you put in you put in, like, your number of dependents, and then estimated income, and it calculates, like, here's what your credits are. We'll apply that to this list of premiums that you're looking at now.

Ian

Mhmm.

Aaron

And then if you, you know, if you lie, it all gets trued up on your tax return. Right. And so that I think what I'm told is that is what Obama and his, you know, his, agencies built is that is the marketplace. It's the coordination between the individual and the the company and the tax, like the IRS. That's, like, what the marketplace means.

Right. And so we looked at several plans, and I think we're gonna be able to hit 1,000 dollars, maybe 1215 with with these credits. And so

Ian

These days, that's not not bad.

Aaron

No. It's not bad at all. I mean, unless you're European and you get it for free and, like Right. Yeah. I don't and that's not helpful to me.

I know. No. Thank you for telling me, but that's not helpful. So we'll see. I'll talk to him again this week, and then I will look at Justworks, and we'll see we'll see where it lands.

But the good news is we'll end up with something, and it won't be 37 $100 a

Ian

month. Yeah. That's that's crazy. That's, that's crazy. I don't yeah.

I remember how COBRA works if you could switch plans. I kinda don't think so. Right? You're, like, locked into the company's plan, whatever they had. So then you just end up paying, like, the raw cost and

Aaron

Exactly. Yeah.

Ian

They got that VC money they're trying to blow through. So they're like, let's get the let's get the Cadillac health plan.

Aaron

Yes. Yep. And, apparently, these these health insurance companies kinda, like, kind of gouge the companies like the like the planet scales of the world. And so then when you, are are let go, you get the, like, price gouged price as an individual. So Yeah.

The whole thing whole thing is bad news, but I think we're on the straight and narrow. So Yep. Okay.

Ian

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What is

Aaron

Oh, man.

Ian

What is this? Give me something.

Aaron

Here's the thing. I'm about to say some stuff, and I know I know that, like, I'm mostly in the wrong.

Ian

I love that. That's the best.

Aaron

But but I want you I want you to defend me and back me up anyway. But I okay. So I know I'm mostly in the wrong, but I'm still it's still kind of annoying. Everybody everybody updates their apps too fast. Okay?

So, like, Laravel 11 comes out, and, like, that day, people are like, hey, Aaron. All these packages that you wrote when you had a lot more time, they're not up up to date with Laravel 11. And I'm like, it just it just released literally this morning, and I'm getting DMs. It's like, hey. Do you think you can update this?

I'm like, I just lost my job. I don't know what I'm doing here. So here's the thing. Updating to Laravel 11 on the day of, that's that's that's great. I love that.

For our community that we're, like, Johnny on the spot, that's awesome. As a package maintainer who does it as, like, does it as a hobby and didn't really have that much time anymore. God, you guys gotta give me, like, a just a second now. Yeah. Here's here's here's the bad news.

It was really Laravel 11 was released a few weeks ago now, and I still haven't updated my packages. So I don't have a lot of, like, I don't have a lot of ground to stand on here, but still, everybody updates everything too fast. Like, what how are you updating your production applications in a day? This makes no sense to me.

Ian

I I have so many thoughts and questions on this. This is such a Yeah. Totally.

Aaron

It's crazy. You gotta wait for the point one or the point zero one release because, you know, you don't wanna what are your thoughts?

Ian

Feels like. And I'm sure there's exceptions out there. Part of me feels like the these people on the day one upgrades, these are not real applications. These are people with little side projects. These are not people with thousands of users who are, like, day 1 of the release.

I'm looking to get the new version of our old, the new packages that some guy in the middle of the night, because he's got a day job, just slapped together some fixes. I'm not trying to ship that out to production. Like, I'm just not I don't know why we would do that.

Aaron

No. You gotta let it bake. You gotta let it bake.

Ian

We're getting a little too far behind on our Laravels. So, like, HubSpot has been converted onto Laravel in this sort of crazy way. We're still, like, on 8 or something crazy. So, like, that's one of my projects is to get to 11 here. Talking about.

Yeah. But some I'll I'll try to do it day 1 for sure. So part of me is like that. That's like one of the negatives of the open source maintainer. Right?

Is it's like, oh, like people are on you. And it's like, are these even people who are, like, really shipping this to their big apps with lots of users? Are they really shipping level 11 the first day? Maybe a couple of really hardcore people are, but, like, can't be the majority, I wouldn't think. Can't be.

Even any large percentage. So Yeah.

Aaron

But they're very nice, wonderful, lovely people. And if that's you that's you, listener, I am grateful for you. But, yes, carry on.

Ian

I am amazed that you're able to pull it off. I cannot, pull it off for sure. Yeah. You know, I don't know. What is your, I mean, we could flip the script, right?

Like, Hey, it's open source. It's out there. It's popping you, your packages. Aren't that crazy. Like

Aaron

they're not very good.

Ian

I mean, I don't know. Like how much work could there be to upgrade it to Laravel Levin? It's not like Laravel Levin, like

Aaron

change tiny amount. Yeah.

Ian

All of Eloquine or whatever. Like, everything's totally different. Like, I mean, it can't be that much work. Like

Aaron

Yeah. This, again, is a strike against request

Ian

about that.

Aaron

Strike against me because it's very little very little work, and I should just do it. And so It's

Ian

full size to complain. The kind

Aaron

of person people have, and I haven't merged it because I'm like, I just got I gotta I gotta address this later.

Ian

That that's a little more on you. Yeah. Maybe if they me. If they've submitted a poll request and you'll merge it, that's a little more on you. But, like, if you're the kind of person who's complaining, but you're also shipping Laravel Levin to your production app on day 1, then I think you can make the half an hour to, like, submit the poll request and help Aaron out.

Now if it's in your court now and you just haven't merged it, that's okay. That's a little more on you. Like, you could you gotta maybe carve out a little time. This is part of your media empire.

Aaron

It is. It really is.

Ian

Part of your brand out there. And how many how many of these do you have?

Aaron

Oh, I probably have that people actually use. I've probably got 5 or 6 packages.

Ian

Okay.

Aaron

Sidecar being the biggest, then probably airdrop, and then a bunch of random little stuff.

Ian

Did, I I thought I saw this, but I could be wrong. Didn't Laravel Shift have a thing for packages too, or am I making that up?

Aaron

He'll open PRs against against packages, and he did. I think he did for I think he did for sidecar and airdrop. But and I think Sidecar, I've already updated to 11, and AirDrop, I've maybe updated to 11 to 11 as well. And those those PRs are somewhat helpful. They're automated and so they miss or do some weird stuff.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

But it's it gives me a, it gives me a starting point for sure. It's

Ian

in the ballpark

Aaron

of some of

Ian

the low hanging fruit and things like that.

Aaron

Yeah. So I know that I'm the bad guy here, but it's like, guys, it's day 1. Now I don't you know, that we should've done we should've recorded this on day 1, and it would've hit a lot harder. Now that now that it's, like, day 15 since it's been released, I kinda look like an idiot here, but still, imagine it's day 1. Imagine it's day 1, and people have already up upgraded, and you're like, I just I haven't done it yet.

It's crazy.

Ian

Does Laravel need a release every year at this point? That's kind of an interesting question. You're

Aaron

just you're going broad.

Ian

Software as a agent, not new help spot release every year of, like I mean, we release updates, but usually, every month ish, but, like, they're not a huge new release with tons of new features every year. Like, yeah.

Aaron

Are you suggesting that that Laravel maybe do a, a release once and then call it finished software? We could do we could have, like, a manifesto, like, at like, once.com or something. Yeah. That's a good idea.

Ian

That's a good idea.

Aaron

I don't know. I think it's nice. No. It is nice. Here's the answer.

No. The answer is no. They don't need to release every year, but the really and they've already switched from 6 months. Do you remember when it was 6 months? Major version every 6 months?

Ian

Oh, it's crazy.

Aaron

That was crazy. We were flying, man.

Ian

Things were happening. Yes.

Aaron

I think it's it's just a nice escape hatch for them to do, like, 2 breaking changes that are, like, 6 layers deep in the framework and nobody even knows they're breaking changes, but you know, some person's gonna be like, no, this was technically a breaking change. So but, yeah, the upgrade times are like if you look at the guide, they're like, up estimated upgrade time, 15 minutes.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

This is crazy. How is this so good?

Ian

I actually think even bigger than that, the actual biggest reason is, marketing. Like, this is part of what's helped keep Laravel on top

Aaron

is, like That's true.

Ian

Just constant stuff to talk about. Right? Like, the conferences need stuff to talk about.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Ian

The blogs need stuff to talk about. It's like Laravel Levin. It's a big release. Laravel 12.

Aaron

People need to feel like it's moving forward even if even if, like, the the improvements needed at this point are incremental. It still feels like, oh, we're still moving forward major version.

Ian

Give you a chance to talk about. I mean, they add stuff during the year too, and it's like

Aaron

Yeah. Give you a chance to

Ian

talk about all that stuff where, like, people are actually paying attention because it's just too hard to pay attention all year long to every release. Yeah. Even though you have Laravel News out there, obviously, doing its best to keep people updated and everybody else.

Aaron

Show, which doesn't talk about Lerville, but pretends to. Like, we're keeping you updated.

Ian

We recycle? We spent, like, a whole episode on recycle.

Aaron

Oh, that's a great one. That was a great one.

Ian

Episode. I love recycle.

Aaron

The first versus soul or soul versus own video, whatever.

Ian

Yeah. We've got it set up.

Aaron

You're telling me that you think part of the major version updates is marketing, and you're suggesting that Taylor Otwell might be good at marketing. That's crazy. It's Yeah. Is I'm entitled to to hear that. Yeah.

I can't believe that. I wonder if that has contributed to his success at all.

Ian

Nah. Maybe just a little bit. Maybe a

Aaron

little bit.

Ian

Yeah. The genius. He probably wrote off that Lambo. That's how that's how

Aaron

smart he is. Did? Yeah.

Ian

Off a Lambo as market.

Aaron

Get a you get a license plate that says facade, which makes it a business expense, which makes it a write off.

Ian

Oh, so good.

Aaron

Can you imagine if Taylor at well went to jail for tax fraud because he wrote off

Ian

his Lambo? Goes out in a blaze of glory. This Lambo. Oh, hysterical.

Aaron

That would definitely be a I don't

Ian

wanna tell you.

Aaron

No. I don't need that. Jail Taylor, but that would that would be a major storyline. That would be good that would be good content. So consider it, Taylor.

Ian

He's pretty conservative financially in some ways, obviously, on to Lambo, but he's still at heart is kinda conservative, so I kinda doubt he wrote it off. But, like, I I I, like, internally have this story where I believe he wrote it off. Like, that's what I call myself, and that that's a more fun story to me. He wrote it off.

Aaron

Yeah. He's way too responsible to do that. But yeah. Sure.

Ian

Alright. I'll need an update on the office. You got a butcher block desk. You got a walkie desk. You got behind you, we see it's looking beautiful.

So get get I need the whole thing, especially the walking desk, but I wanna hear the whole you did a lot of stuff since last week talked. So give us

Aaron

a lot of stuff. I'll tell you what. 1 of you know, I've had a lot of good ideas. You know, some people would say

Ian

Mostly good ideas.

Aaron

Mostly. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Mostly good ideas.

This may be one of my best ideas. This whole this whole apartment scheme

Ian

Yep. Is

Aaron

amazing. We'd love to

Ian

pays off.

Aaron

This This is this is one of my best schemes ever. So the the the state of the union over here is I'm in the studio right now, which is, would traditionally be called the bedroom of the apartment, because one would most often put a bed in here and not Got a closet. Yeah. Not a fake wall.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

So I'm in I'm in the studio slash bedroom in here. This is where I have my full on, like, filming gear and lights, camera, microphone, beautiful backdrop, lights everywhere. And so this is it's just is perfect in here. Like, everything looks great. I still have a few tweaks for, like, settings and stuff, but super duper happy.

In the living room right out there, I've got a balcony that overlooks the pool, like, the interior courtyard. Yep. And I now have so, like, I got this this desk that I'm working on here. I got this as a gift from Autonomous. Thank you, Autonomous.

So I have my old desk, a gift. Yeah.

Ian

Hot damn.

Aaron

Unless unless the IRS is listening, in which case, I don't know where this desk came from. Hold on.

Ian

Just a second. I got I got to spend another, so we're not gonna just go past that. So, I mean, I get that. That's awesome. I just wanna say that this is one of these areas where, like, I've always want, this is like physical world products.

It's like, I can't give somebody help desk software. Like it's not

Aaron

a gift. It's not interesting.

Ian

Nobody welcomes it. They're not like, oh, great. Let me spend 20 hours setting this up and getting people. Nobody cares. Nobody wants it as a gift.

But, like, you could just send somebody a desk and they're excited. And they talk about it on their vlog, and they do all this stuff. Like, it's a physical world, but you could send things. It's so glorious. Anyway, that's

Aaron

not It is is pretty great. You know, I don't know if you want to get into the furniture world, but a help desk is kind of a great idea. I don't know what angle is there, but it's like

Ian

We send people actual desks.

Aaron

I'm telling you, it's good branding. It's funny. This is your help desk.

Ian

A pretty good idea, actually.

Aaron

I just came up with that.

Ian

Gotta think about this a little more.

Aaron

The thing about

Ian

this is going. Maybe it's just a little desk.

Aaron

There you go.

Ian

Little wooden desk. Can we just send that out, and it's kind

Aaron

of cool.

Ian

Just a little tchotchke.

Aaron

Mhmm. Here's your help desk. That's pretty

Ian

good. That's pretty good. That's pretty good.

Aaron

That's pretty good.

Ian

Alright.

Aaron

Alright. Alright. I'll send you an invoice. Alright. So, you know, I've got the free desk out here.

And then in the living room, I have my old desk, and I'm like, this you know, it's it's a standing desk, so it's like a it it's a good desk, but the the tabletop is all bowed down from years of use. Right. And I'm like, I wanna kinda have this space be multifunctional, and so I got some casters, some, like, you know, workshop wheels to put on the desk. So now I can just roll the desk anywhere. Right?

Ian

Love things that roll.

Aaron

So I'm chasing I'm chasing the sun around the room. I'm living the dream. Yep. And I'm like, this desktop is kinda 1, it's a little bit, you know, it's a little bit, warped, but 2, it's kinda like a little janky. It's kinda ugly.

Ian

And so I'm giving you the vibes you want?

Aaron

No. The vibes are all wrong. And so I still had an IKEA countertop, because I thought I was gonna make shelves out of it. Mhmm. But I made that first shelf and was like, wow.

Ian

This sounds goofy.

Aaron

So I had a full a full second countertop that I was gonna use, and they're like Mhmm. I don't know, $150, but extremely heavy, and I didn't wanna drive to Frisco to return it. And so I thought, wait. I could use this as a desktop. So I took the old desktop off, put that on my standing legs, and now I've got, like, a, you know, 7 foot long countertop on wheels that I can just roll around.

The right side of it is dedicated to, like, basically makeshift, like, meetings. You know, I've got my my laptop and my camera and my other microphone out there just from taking a casual meeting. The whole left side is dedicated to, like, notes and books and research and room to draw stuff. It's like, this is just this is perfect. It's Wow.

That's

Ian

a great setup.

Aaron

Yeah. And then and then I've got a walking treadmill. And so I can just, like, roll the desk over the treadmill and just, you know, start walking and get to work. It's and I'm looking out the window. The door's open.

I'm drinking a, you know, a non diet Coke soda. It's like, yeah. Might as well. I'm living the dream. It's great.

I love it so much.

Ian

I said that's why when you tweeted the picture, I was like, you're Casey Neistat, baby. You're Casey Neistat of the Laravel world and the YouTube world. It's just like That's insane. Energy of, like, a a space dedicated to your work that's got, like, and things on the wall and everything has its place and things on wheels and top down cameras. And, like, that whole vibe is so good.

Like Yep.

Aaron

Yep. I

Ian

haven't been able to get myself all the way there yet. Now this is interesting. What you just said unlocked it for me because I've thought about the walking treadmill base thing many times.

Aaron

Okay. And I'm

Ian

like this. I'm just so many times I'm like writing email or stupid shit that I could, like, be doing that while I'm getting in some steps. Why not?

Aaron

Yep.

Ian

But it's like, it's in your way. Then when I wanna sit, it's like, now I gotta move this big, heavy treadmill based thing. And like, I know I'm just never gonna do that. I'm gonna move it out of the way once. I'm just gonna sit.

I'm never gonna bring it back. But if you leave the treadmill base where it is and then you move the desk

Aaron

Move the actual desk. Yeah. You gotta replace

Ian

it in. Do it.

Aaron

Yep. That's how you're gonna

Ian

do it.

Aaron

It's great.

Ian

I love this idea. That is the key. I actually have a perfect spot over on the side here where, like, there's a lot of space where I could do it. I wonder if I can edit this desk. Like, I have this IKEA desk.

I don't know. I guess I could probably find a way to attach some wheels to it.

Aaron

I'm telling you, man. The the desk on wheels was a huge that was

Ian

a

Aaron

huge unlock for me. I obviously, I you know, I've replaced my wheels on my office chair to be, like, these roller blade wheels so that I can just, like, I can fly.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

I never thought about putting a desk on wheels until I looked down and saw that it had those little screw in leveling feet. So, like, if your floor is wonky, you can level your desk and stop. I can just swap them. Oh, shit. I'm sure there's size screw in.

I unscrewed one of those leveling feet, took it to Home Depot, and they've got the thing on the wall where it's like, what size screw and what thread, you know, is it? And so I found the thread pattern and the size of the the screw, and then I went online and ordered just ordered them off Amazon, and they just fit. Just screwed right in. It's great.

Ian

It's crazy.

Aaron

It's crazy. It's crazy. I'm living the dream.

Ian

So interesting because I have, like, this night so my office is directly across the street from Vassar College.

Aaron

Cool.

Ian

And so I can look over at the college and stuff, but like where my desk is, I don't necessarily have like the best view and sometimes the light's in weird spots. So like if I was on wheels, I could be moving around My personal base, I could put it on top of that.

Aaron

Yep.

Ian

Oh, man.

Aaron

Yep. You're just out there

Ian

inventing shit.

Aaron

Yeah. So that's out there. In here, the, the desktop is not IKEA countertop. It is IKEA butcher block island. So the IKEA the IKEA countertop is, you know, whatever countertop depth, whatever that is, 32, 36 inches, whatever.

So it's not super deep, for a desk. Right? But it's great. It's great for a mobile desk, hang space, But for an actual desk, it's a little shallow.

Ian

Good.

Aaron

So I got an IKEA kitchen island, which is, like, super deep. I mean, we're talking 4 feet or or more. It was however too long. And so I zipped 18 inches off of the side. Nice.

But that's what I use. That's what I put on top of the autonomous legs in the studio because I've got a whole, like, white and, white and wood thing going on in here. And so now everything everything matches. So we're all we're all IKEA. I just IKEA just

Ian

I do love IKEA.

Aaron

Fitted out this whole space.

Ian

I love IKEA. It's such a great place.

Aaron

Love it.

Ian

I don't like, I don't like their chairs, like office chairs too much. I've been a long time since I looked them. But everything else, IKEA. Yeah. Everything in my office is IKEA.

I love IKEA. It's like you go there, you get stuff. It's great. I did notice you didn't attach your monitor to the desk. Now why why is that?

Aaron

It's crazy. Right? Here's the thought. So, you know, I've got this big desk, and then behind the desk, I've got, like, a little basically, a little buffet table. It's one of the old shelves that used to be behind here until I decided no shelves.

So I bought these janky legs, and now I've got just, like, a little, you know, 10 inch table that runs along the wall behind my desk. So my monitor and my camera and my, my secondary monitor, my confidence monitor, are all attached to that buffet table instead of this desk. The reason I didn't attach the camera to the desk is because when I type, the camera wobbles

Ian

Just shaking.

Aaron

And it just it looks bad. It just looks really bad. And so that was always gonna be back there, but then attaching the monitor back there gives me gives me the ability to swing the monitor all the way to the side and then lower the camera and do, like, a do kinda like a talking head with, like, you know, 3 quarters of the desk in the shot.

Ian

Wanna show some stuff? Or

Aaron

Exactly. So if I wanna show some stuff or not be, like, screencasting and doing more of the, like, sitting at my desk vlogging kind of thing.

Ian

Right.

Aaron

I have that I have that ability with this setup. So that does preclude me from standing in here, which I'm fine. I'm fine with. I don't really care. Yeah.

Ian

Interesting. And how do you secure this buffet table? Because that sounds like a lot of heavy stuff. Is it attached to the

Aaron

wall or counterweighted? Yeah. A lot of heavy stuff leaning outwards. Well Or it's just

Ian

been okay so far? It

Aaron

it's fine so far, but I will I will confess as long as my apartment manager isn't listening. I I did attach that to the wall. Okay. Like, I built an entire wall out of 2 by fours. It doesn't touch the wall at all, but this little buffet table, it's like, I gotta I gotta screw that to the wall.

So it's it's screwed into the wall. Yeah.

Ian

I mean, that's fine. People put stuff on their walls. It's, you know

Aaron

It's fine. I actually I did the don't put a nail or screw in the wall on that kind of as a bit so they can

Ian

Right.

Aaron

And it's gonna make good YouTube content. But the guy, the leasing agent was like, dude, I don't care if you hang a TV. Like, you can do whatever you want as long as you fix it before you move out. It's like Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I guess that makes sense. People hate TVs, don't they?

Ian

Right.

Aaron

I still think I still think of all the crazy stuff that I've done. I still think I'm probably in the top 2% of good tenants in this in this complex. I've got

Ian

to be. I'm sure. You have to be.

Aaron

Gotta be. I'm walking down the hall and I'm smelling weed. People's dogs are throwing up in the hallway, and they don't clean it up. And I'm like, I'm I'm a I'm an insane person, but I'm the best tenant this place has ever seen. It's it's crazy.

Ian

I thought this place was up was high up, but now now I'm thinking this place down a notch. If there's It is high. Dogs.

Aaron

It is. Dogs in

Ian

the hallways, maybe.

Aaron

You get freaking Not ideal. Puked all over the hallway, and somebody just walked off. I mean, we're living in a society here. So I don't like that. I don't

Ian

like that.

Aaron

I don't like don't like that one bit.

Ian

But, yeah, nowadays, to hang a TV. Right? Like, a big one of these big 65 inch, 75 inch TVs, I'm sure people are still putting even in apartments and stuff like I mean, the thing's got 10 screws and a big plate and, like, it's not like, one nail. It's a huge thing with big holes. So

Aaron

Yeah. You're putting lag bolts into the into the wall. Yeah.

Ian

So, yeah, I'm sure you'll be fine with your one one hole. And you're not even you're you're living there 40 hours a week if that. So, like, you're not even messing up the, like, the carpet. They're not even gonna have to replace the carpet or anything. They're gonna be real bad inside.

Aaron

Thing is is so great.

Ian

Yeah. You're not making a mess of the fridge. Like nothing spilled in there from the kids.

Aaron

Nope. Not a thing. Yeah. So I still think I still think I'm a model tenant.

Ian

I think you are so far. We'll see. You never know.

Aaron

We'll see. I may get kicked out, but that's good for that's good plot for the content anyway, so we'll see.

Ian

I got one more thing on the formal list that you put on here. Give it to us.

Aaron

Alright. So here's here's the deal. I got a good life. Right? Great life.

Very good. Great life. You know, loving loving family, lots of great kids. I will say there are there are 2 people that I look at, and I'm like, I, you know, I don't really wanna trade places with anyone, but I I kinda wanna trade places with with you right now. First one.

K. First one, person I want to be is my 2 year old daughter at about 7:30 PM.

Ian

So I put, you

Aaron

know, I put the kids to bed. I put the kids to bed every night. They're like it's kind of it's kind of, like, convincing. You know, I'm doing my best negotiations in there. I'm putting socks on hands and clipping toenails, and I'm like, okay.

There's not there's literally nothing else you can ask me to do. It's time to go to bed. I'm going to leave now. I walk out, you know, put him to bed at 7, walk out. 7:30, check the monitor.

This is every night. This is every single night. 7:30, check the monitor. My 2 year old daughter is laying amongst gotta be 30 stuffed animals. Right?

Stuffed animals everywhere. She's carved out a little hole in the middle, and she's in this little hole of stuffed animals everywhere. She's laying down. She's talking. She's playing.

She looks so happy and so comfortable and cozy. Yeah. And it's like, it's the end of the day. She doesn't have anywhere to go. She's just playing.

She's talking to her brother on the other side of the room. She's got her hands behind her head with her feet crossed over, and she's in her long sleeve pajamas. And it's like, I don't think I've ever seen someone be so comfortable and cozy and cozy without a without a care in the world. She'll she'll stay up for an hour and a half just like blah blah blah blah blah. And I'm like, this you are you are living the dream.

You're so relaxed. This is if I had $10,000,000, I would be as relaxed as her. But she's like, I just you know, I'm in my crib surrounded by all these stuffed animals, and I got nothing to do, so I'm gonna play. Looks amazing.

Ian

And you know what's so unfortunate is that you don't even remember those years. Like, you don't even remember that one point. You don't even remember. It doesn't help you now. You're not like, oh, you know, so relaxed.

You don't remember anything. Like, you

Aaron

don't remember anything. She's

Ian

got it.

Aaron

She's got it as good as she'll ever have it.

Ian

She won't remember. I know. It's crazy. We were just going through this. I was looking at some photos for like kids, yearbook stuff, whatever.

And looking back at this, like our trip to Europe, where we took this big trip to Europe or talked about on here before. And it's like the oldest, you know, he remembers it. It's mostly the middle one, kinda, mostly he, like, didn't remember, like, being dragged around. The youngest barely remembers it at all. It's like spent a $1,000,000,000 on this huge trip Europe.

Yep. Like, they don't they don't remember it. And we were like, oh, they're written it now. They don't remember it. No.

They don't remember it. They they barely remember it. They'd remember, like, an impression of it, but, like, not the thing itself. And their takeaway is the exact opposite of the takeaway we want them to have, which is going traveling's a pain, but I just wanna be home where it's, you know, nice and comfortable and fun. Like, it's like Yeah.

Aaron

That sounds right.

Ian

You around to expose you to all this stuff, and your takeaway is the opposite. Take Yep. No. Hopefully, in the future, they might think about it differently. But

Aaron

Yeah. I feel like it probably yeah. It it left an impression on them even if they don't remember.

Ian

Yeah. They're still on the page.

Aaron

Yeah. That's what I tell myself. So the second second person

Ian

2 year old kid in their room. I get I'm with I'm with you on that. That's a good spot to be.

Aaron

Surrounded by levees. Just living the dream. Yep. Yeah.

Ian

I could go for that right now.

Aaron

There's this guy there's this guy that lives across the street from us. Okay? Okay. So I love my life. Wouldn't trade it for anything.

This guy, though, this guy, I I think he's married. Maybe he has a girlfriend, something. There's a woman that lives there as well.

Ian

Okay.

Aaron

But I don't I don't know how he does it. This dude is watching TV 247. Like, the blinds in the front of his house the blinds in the front of his house are up. And so I'm up. You know, I'm I'm dragging my tired, sorry, broken body out of bed at 7:30.

Ian

Yep. Or, like,

Aaron

out to the kitchen at 7:30 to cook to cook for the kids. And I walk out. Dude's already got, like, game pre pre golf golf on. At 7:30 on a Saturday morning, he's just like

Ian

master.

Aaron

He's got this huge TV and this guy golf on, and I'm like, it's 7:30 on a Saturday. What are you doing? And then,

Ian

you know,

Aaron

I'm I'm cleaning up I'm cleaning up peanut butter off the underside of the table, and this guy's walking out at 9 o'clock with a cup of coffee and a dog. And he's like Yeah. Alright. I guess I'll just guess I'll just cruise around for a little bit. Easter weekend, I swear he spent he spent all day outside just, like, planting.

He's just planting some flowers. He's our age. I'm like, what? How are what life luxury are you leading? He's watching TV all day, every day.

This guy is having friends over. He's just, like he walks out with the dogs the dog's leash around his neck. The dog's not on a leash. He's got his he's got his AirPods in and a cup of coffee. He's just, like, looking around at stuff.

And, like, if you whenever you walk outside and you just look around at stuff, that is

Ian

a life

Aaron

that's a life of leisure.

Ian

Let's talk about that.

Aaron

That is a that he is a king. He might as well have a palace at Versailles. He's just walking around looking at stuff. So

Ian

Yeah. I

Aaron

don't wanna be that guy, but that I kinda wanna be that guy. That guy's that guy's on easy street, man.

Ian

There is. It's so funny. Like, the grass is greener on these things. And, like, obviously, like, people without kids might have feelings about, oh, I wish I had kids and all this stuff. But like, it's just those moments like this weekend for us, like, you know, obviously you're in the deep grind now of just like 4 kids and all that stuff.

But, but like, even just for us where our kids are big and it's like this weekend, our oldest went to see 2 colleges that he was accepted to. So my wife took him all weekend. They drove, like, 700 miles around the northeast to these colleges. I'm home. Everybody's sick.

Where the, you know, the middle kids got karate, like you know? And it was still you know, we're trying to get everybody fed and all stuff. And it was like the, the younger one wants to have a friend over, but we're 6. So we're not gonna have a friend over Like, the whole thing. And it was still even quasi relaxing by our standards ultimately, but it was just like there's just, like, nonstop action.

There's just never a dull moment of, like, somebody needs something. Somebody wants something. You gotta be somewhere. The counter's got 40 things on it. And, yeah, when you look at that guy across the street, you're like, that guy, he could have slept till noon.

He could have done whatever he wanted, And then he's gonna watch golf. He's probably got a DVR where DVR is golf, and he's, like, still, like, 10 years back there. And he's like, I'm just gonna DVR this golf here, and I don't even watch it. Skip the commercials when I go home. And, like, the whole plan.

Aaron

Last night or the night before, I was I was doing something, and it's I just feel like such a creeper. I was looking across the street. His blinds are up in the front. His blinds are up in the back. So I see him and his his wife in the backyard gardening, and a pizza's delivered to his front porch.

And I'm like, this son of a he's he's having pizza. He's chilling all weekend. And I thought, I wonder he he's in the backyard. I bet I could sneak over there and grab the pizza

Ian

before he knows it's here. Steal the pizza and drop 2 kids off. Like, just, like, take these take these 2

Aaron

kids for

Ian

a couple hours.

Aaron

So I'm telling I'm telling

Ian

my wife

Aaron

I'm telling my wife about, you know, wanting to be Emilia and this guy across the street, and she says, you know, whenever whenever I'm, like, watching TV and someone on TV is watching TV, I think, man, it must be good to be them. That looks like so much fun. It's so funny. You're doing you're doing the thing that you the person on TV is doing. She's like, I know, but they just look so much happy.

Looks so much cozier.

Ian

I have this whole theory that, like, I think even still your your age group would probably fits this of, like, the shows that we had as kids where it was, like, all these sitcoms and, like, Seinfeld aside, like, they were all, like, happy and everything ended happy and everybody got what they wanted. And, like, all the families were happy and, like, all the stuff, like, just did us all, like, such as disservice of, like, setting these expectations for what your family's supposed to be, what your life is supposed to be. And it's like, not everything doesn't get solved instantly at the end of the episode, like, in your real life. There's no there's no nice

Aaron

nice neat wrap up at the end.

Ian

Yeah. What what's your theory about this? This is a thing that freaks me out that you brought up here. I'm not a fan of the TV that faces out the window in a direction where a lot of people will see it. Like, I don't like that lot.

Aaron

Hate that. Hate that. Not a not a fan of being able to see through the entire house either. That that weirds me out a little bit. But, yeah,

Ian

having the

Aaron

TV having the TV that faces out and then also keeping your blinds up so everybody can see what you're watching all the time.

Ian

Yeah. It's like people over my shoulder watch it, but then that's how carefree this guy is. Right? He's so carefree. It's like, whatever.

You wanna look over my shoulder and watch some golf? Go for it. I don't care. I'm I'm chilling.

Aaron

If you wanna look over your shoulder and be jealous, you know, yeah, that's great. But, yeah, I don't want that.

Ian

Yeah. That's good for me

Aaron

either. I do like I do like having the big windows that look out, though. Yes. Like, in in the place we're we're renting, we've got this big bay window that looks out into this guy's living room, but it's still it's like, oh, it's so nice. I'm Oh.

You know, have keep these windows open.

Ian

Wait a minute. So what's the update on the second house? The under construction house.

Aaron

House, but not the apartment. So I'm trying to remember all the properties under management. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, that makes sense.

Ian

The one you're gonna move into at some point.

Aaron

At some point. It is almost done, which it's been almost done for forever.

Ian

Okay.

Aaron

But we have we now have cabinets, and we have countertops. All the walls are closed. The bathroom tile is not done, and painting is not done. So they still they still have a good portion to go. Our lease at this rent house was up on May 1st, which I thought, you know, when I started this project, I thought, that's an incredible amount of time.

What a hilarious what a hilarious amount of lead time we've given ourselves. You know, now it's April 15th, and it's not done yet. So we extended our lease by 1 month, but we did not tell our contractor.

Ian

So as

Aaron

far as our contractor knows, we're still dropped dead on May 1st. Yeah. Because the dude told me it would be done in January. It's free. Come on, man.

Ian

Did you, did you redo the kitchen, too?

Aaron

Yeah. Kitchen While you're in there. Kitchen. Master bath and yeah.

Ian

How many bedrooms?

Aaron

It is 5 bedrooms.

Ian

We got full coverage.

Aaron

Got it. Cool. Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. Actually, full coverage. Yeah.

Aaron

Yep. And it has enough stairs, so we're gonna have to be going up and down the stairs.

Ian

It's annoying with the kids because they're little, and you'll be up and down the stairs all the time. But it is nice to have the separation, like

Aaron

Yeah. I think so. Yeah. You'll have to come see it when you come to Lyricon.

Ian

That's what I'm talking about. I like it. I will be there. Hopefully, it's done by then. We'll see.

We'll see if it's ready.

Aaron

If it's not done by then, I am bankrupt. Coming to live

Ian

with me. You'll be up here. We live in New York Prayer?

Aaron

I'll be walking across the street and telling that guy I'm moving in. Yeah. Yeah.

Ian

Oh, boy. Alright, man. Anything else we need to cover?

Aaron

Just one one follow-up that I want to cover. Yeah. Lost lost in the weeds of all just a huge amount of email that we get, to do mostly technical. What I don't know. You'll have to tell us later.

Ian

What's the technical thought?

Aaron

A gift card to Chick Fil A from Josh Hurt. And you know what? I love Chick Fil A. I go to Chick Fil A all the time. Work that.

Ian

So what

Aaron

a nice guy. What a nice gesture. I haven't used it yet, but I did add it to my CF mobile app. So I'm ready I'm ready to go. So thank you so much for that.

That's very unnecessary and very, very kind.

Ian

And we are caught up on follow-up. I've emailed everybody back, and we do have a couple queued up to discuss still that we will try to hit next time here. So, yes, that was awesome. People have been so nice. People are so nice to you.

It's like

Aaron

People are so nice to me. Yeah. That's crazy.

Ian

You you bring up you you put out the good vibes and the good vibes come back.

Aaron

I like to think so.

Ian

Yeah. I think that's true. So and now I beg it to see you up on your feet, which I love.

Aaron

That's right.

Ian

You're out there. Start starting anyway. We're we're getting there. Things are happening.

Aaron

Getting there. It's gonna work. We're getting there. So all signs point to yes.

Ian

Yeah. I love it. Alright, man. Well, this has been a good one, everybody. Thanks for joining us.

You can, check us out. Mostlytechnical.com. Mostly technical pod on, Twitter and mostly technical podcast atgmail.com. So if you have any feedback, hit us up there. Thanks to these sponsors.

And we will see you next week if all goes to plan. Thanks a lot.

Aaron

See you.