Zero to $125,000 in 30 Days: My Exact Course Launch Strategy

Nathan

I made

Aaron

a $125,000 on launching our video course.

Nathan

In this episode, I talk to Aaron Francis. We dive into what worked and what didn't.

Aaron

One thing that I thought of the night before, it's a distribution hack. That actually scares me.

Nathan

Are there any mistakes that you made?

Aaron

I sent emails too quickly, and Gmail put us in the penalty box. I should have warmed up the domain better, but I'm hesitant to send emails because I'm a developer.

Nathan

You have to warm up that reputation. Even though you've grown a pretty substantial audience, the numbers that you're putting up in core sales are significantly higher. I have been able to

Aaron

put together an audience that really trusts me. It's not enough to do the work. You have to tell people

Nathan

as well. The expertise comes from showing your work. This was the hardest lesson that I had to learn in my creator journey, and we share all the details.

Aaron

Aaron, welcome to the show. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Nathan

So let's just dive right in. K. And I wanna hear about the course launch that you just wrapped up.

Aaron

Yeah. So me and my partner, Steve, just finished launching our first solo, video course. It's about a database called SQLite. I won't bury the lead. It's at a 125,000 in sales right now, which we're very happy

Nathan

about. Congratulations.

Aaron

Thank you. It's, we we can we can get there, but it's a very good launch, for a moderately niche technology. And I think, proof that what we're doing is sustainable. It's not enough to live on for 2 people, but it is a step in the right direction, and we're very happy with it. So what time period are

Nathan

we talking for that launch?

Aaron

Oh, goodness. We probably launched a month ago.

Nathan

Okay. Yeah. 125 in 30 days. Not bad. Not a bad game.

Not bad. And something to this whole creative thing.

Aaron

Yeah. It might just work out. With a relatively small list size. I think we launched to maybe 4000, 5000 on the email list. Okay.

And a relatively low price. I mean, we did sticker price right now is 1.49. Okay.

Nathan

And

Aaron

they got a $20 off coupon for being on the list. So it's, like, pretty small list with small value, and it's, like, you know, still made a lot of money.

Nathan

Yeah. So you're not doing like, some people are, like, oh, this is a cohort based course, and it's a $1,000 or 3,000. And instead, you're, like, hey, this is Yep. Tightly packaged value, like, delivering far more, you know, value than what we're charging for.

Aaron

That is the hope. Yeah. So right now I think right now, it's, like, at 70 videos across maybe 7 or 8 modules. Yep. And then I've got 2 more modules coming, so maybe another 10 or 15 videos.

And after that, early access will be closed. So I would have loved to have finished it all, but we decided, okay. We gotta launch. Let's launch. Yeah.

And then we can use those as little, like, bumps, you know, in the future. Yeah. Send out another email that's like, hey. There are more videos, and hopefully people will buy.

Nathan

Well, it's exciting. There's a lot of things when it comes to a course where you want reasons to talk about it more. Mhmm. And, you know, we could list out and brainstorm all the reasons that you can promote it again. But one of the reasons is we just launched a new module of 10 videos.

Aaron

Yep. Exactly.

Nathan

So having that in the back pocket.

Aaron

So I'm I'm turning my, inability to finish it on time into this super positive, like, strategy. Yeah. I was I do that all along. So

Nathan

Basically, what you're saying is you've gone fully from developer into marketer.

Aaron

Exactly. I mean, don't yeah. Don't tell my friends, but I am fully a marketer now. Yeah.

Nathan

There's times where conversations come up internally, like,

Aaron

I don't know how

Nathan

we're gonna get people on board with this or how that's gonna work. I'm like, we're marketers. Yep. You know? Part of our job is to understand what's not not we're saying that we're we'll spin it in some way, but really of saying, like, hey, what's the value for

Aaron

Mhmm. You

Nathan

know, everyone involved in this. And Yep. And that's what marketing is. Yep. And they're taking value.

Aaron

Working great so far. So this might actually be my preferred strategy in the future. Yeah. Launch with, like, 90% done, call it early access, which, like, gets people to come in and say like, I'm part of this thing early. And then do the last 10%, get some bumps, reasons to send emails, and then close early access, which hopefully will be another bump to say, like, early access is going away.

You have 2 more days to buy it, and then it's going up to 199 or something.

Nathan

So So let's talk about that, of the different reasons that you can promote a course and how we can bring urgency into it. Because people do this thing where they follow creators and they say, that's amazing. I'd love to buy that someday. Mhmm. And they just never do.

Yep. Until you bring in urgency. So the ones we've talked about so far are, you know, ending early access. Right? So a price increase.

Mhmm. Urgency of some kind, you know, or reason to talk about it around additional modules. What other things maybe have you already used in the launch? Or are you thinking about in the course business as a

Aaron

whole? So like every developer turned marketer, I'm hesitant to send emails. Mhmm. Right? Because I don't wanna bother people because I don't like being bothered.

Right? I gotta get over I know.

Nathan

I know. I know. Yeah.

Aaron

So, one of the things that I have done is, interviews with experts. And part of me feels icky about interviewing experts and then putting that behind a paywall because I'm like, hey, you know, Kent c Dodds. Lend me your time, and then I'm gonna sell it.

Nathan

It's like,

Aaron

I don't know about that. But what I've done is I've done these interviews with experts and then put them on YouTube and on we have a, you know, our own domain where the course lives and on that course domain. And then that that allows a few things. One is I get a whole new audience from YouTube.

Nathan

Right.

Aaron

Right? So I get these people who are like, I've heard of Kent c Dodds. I don't know who Aaron is. Let me listen to Kent because I like Kent. And then it's like, oh, they're talking about SQLite.

Let me go check out this course that Aaron is doing. That also allows me to send out an email, and I haven't sent them for every expert interview, but I have sent them for a few that's like, hey. This is free, which may you know, assuages my guilt. Yep. My my unfounded guilt.

This is free. You can go watch it, like, enjoy. Also, by the way, don't forget I exist. Like, that's the kind of thing that I've done. And then in terms of other so that's like expert interviews, new modules, price increases.

In terms of other emails, honestly, not a lot. I haven't sent out a lot more beyond that. In terms of, like, you know, we do have a YouTube channel that now has, I think, 43, 42,000 subscribers.

Nathan

Nice.

Aaron

And so what I'm doing there is, I'm in a really lucky position because the content available to teach is practically infinite when it comes to databases.

Nathan

Okay.

Aaron

And so I can do a very specific here's an esoteric database thing that makes a really fun, interesting YouTube video. And in that, put, like, a native ad of me saying, I teach more. Like, you like this video. You're watching it. I do a lot more of this over there, and you can go buy it.

And I think that's been pretty helpful. And then to flesh out the different, platforms on Twitter, it's very much like behind the scenes. Like, hey. Here's all my sticky notes on my wall of the videos I need to record. Here's behind the scenes of me actually recording it.

And so I feel like each platform dictates what the message should be, if that makes sense.

Nathan

Have you done behind the scenes content on YouTube?

Aaron

Not on YouTube. I haven't done behind the scenes videos.

Nathan

I wonder if because YouTube is so much more of a search algorithm.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Nathan

But I I'd be curious to see how it how it does. Like, that's something that I would try, like, a behind the scenes, you know, how I made the course Right.

Aaron

And just see. Yeah. The thing that really strikes me as, a good idea to do there is and this I just I gotta get over this, but the the video title, how I made a $125,000 on a launch. Right? It's like, come on.

That's that's an obvious thing you gotta do. Mhmm. But I think in time, we will have a second channel that is more of the business slash creator side where the primary channel focuses on developer content.

Nathan

Just on that title, made me think of the most popular title, I think, that I've maybe ever written, and that was how I made $27,000 in the App Store while learning to code. Yep. And I remember that.

Aaron

I've been around. I remember that. Yeah.

Nathan

When when number 1 on Hacker News, like, 30, 40000 visits in 2 days. And, you know, it was just one of those things where, like, the juxtaposition of the title works super well. It was something that people wanted to wanted to pick up on. And but, yeah, you get into these things where you're like, okay. I know this is gonna work.

Aaron

And on one hand, I

Nathan

I feel like, oh, it works because it's clickbait.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Nathan

But when I actually take a step back, I realize it works because this is the content people want to consume. Yes. Right? It sparks curiosity. It's well packaged, and I just want to consume that.

Mhmm. And so it's like, give the people what they want.

Aaron

I know. I know. And, like, the thing the way that I can, like, justify that is I don't have to promise that everybody can do it. Like, I don't have to sell someone.

Nathan

You're saying how I did this. How I did it.

Aaron

Here's my story. And if anyone can take inspiration, strategy, or tactics from that, awesome. But I'm not gonna go on any platform ever and say, hey. It's really easy to make a $100,000 as long as you buy my $1,000 course. Like, I'm never ever gonna do that, but I don't have a problem necessarily with, here's how I did it.

And hopefully, this is fun, entertaining, inspirational, or something.

Nathan

So we're gonna go we're gonna do do 2 things. 1st, I wanna talk through, like, your business lessons learned, all of that. That's this interview. K. And then we're gonna do a second episode where we'll get up on the whiteboard and, just tease for everybody.

What's the business problem that you wanna dive into when we're, you know Yeah. Brainstorming the future of your business?

Aaron

Going from a successful single event, which is a course launch

Nathan

Mhmm.

Aaron

And turning it into a sustainable business empire. And I use empire very loosely because it's me and Steve. It's me and my buddy, and we just want to make, frankly, a lot of money. But we don't wanna we don't wanna grow into, you know, 30, 50 people. But right now, we're at a point where we have proven the model can work, and now we need to figure out how to make it a business and not just a good event.

Nathan

Yeah. That makes sense. So I wanna go back to the business side and talk about that more. A lot of people, you know, we led with a $125,000 launch. What are some of the things that you feel like you really nailed in that launch that made it so that, okay, this worked really well.

Aaron

Yeah. I think we did a good job of, kind of building up the hype beforehand. So my partner, Steve, is a proper video guy, and so he came to Dallas where I live. He lives in Boise, actually. So I'm, you know, I get to see him.

He came to Dallas where I live, and we shot, like, a, like, a hype video, which you think hype video database course, that doesn't go together. That's what made it so great. It was, like, the most ridiculous hype video ever for this niche database technology. And so, you know, put that out on Twitter, and did great, and we got a lot of people signing up for the list. So gotta have the list ready to go.

We had a really beautiful have a really beautiful, website slash course platform. And I think in terms of, like, the actual launch, one thing that I did that I thought of the night before was I live streamed the whole launch process.

Nathan

Okay.

Aaron

So I got on, you know, I stayed up on I think it was a Wednesday night, stayed up till, like, 4 AM trying to finish everything because I'm, you know, it's very stupid. And Thursday morning, I'm like, alright. We gotta flip the switch. And I turned on Restream and went live on YouTube and Twitter. Okay.

And I was like, okay. We're launching the course. And everybody knew it was coming because I tweeted about it, and they're like, alright. It's coming. Queued up the emails,

Nathan

all that.

Aaron

Yeah. So emails are going out, which is a a funny story. Emails are going out, and I'm like, let's do it live. F it. Let's do it live.

Yeah. How many people that you follow are live streaming on Twitter at any given moment?

Nathan

Yeah. Almost

Aaron

not. Gotta be 1 or 2. Yeah. Barely any at all. So I go live with a title of, like, launching high performance SQLite.

And so already, everyone on on x is seeing that little red banner that's like Aaron Francis is live. It's, like, pinned in the sidebar.

Nathan

The visibility that you get Huge. It's like, would you like a fraction of a Yes. Second of attention Mhmm. For your 280 characters? Or would you like to Or

Aaron

do you want position sticky Yeah. So that everyone sees it all the time? Yeah. And by the time it was done, you know, who knows how they count metrics? It's all it's all made up.

By the time it was done, it had, like, a 120,000 views. And

Nathan

How long were you live for?

Aaron

2 or 3 hours.

Nathan

Okay.

Aaron

Yeah.

Nathan

Yeah. It's all done.

Aaron

It's a long time. And, like, during that time, I'm literally, like I have the microphone in front of my face. I've got Steve on speakerphone and I'm like, hey, man. This thing isn't working and you can hear him talk on speakerphone back and, like, we're trying to figure it out. I'm sharing my screen.

We're, like, trying to do the launch and I'm writing the launch email on stream, and people are, like, giving me feedback. Like, hey. That sounds really dumb. You should change that. And I'm like, that's actually a good point.

And so I think that was, an accidental hack that paid off in a huge, huge way because that brought in a just a huge amount of attention. Yeah. And it was novel, which I think is pretty important. I had a lot of people commenting that this was the first time they'd ever seen any, like, launch behind the scenes.

Nathan

Because most people will do that and they're saying, hey, we're gonna do a webinar.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Nathan

And, you know, or we're going live and we're gonna teach this thing or it's there's a 5 day window for the launch and here's what we're doing each day. And you had this totally casual Mhmm. Like, I'm just gonna show you the behind the scenes. Yep. There's nothing polished about this.

Aaron

Not even a little bit. I am so disheveled, hopped up on coffee, Steve's on speakerphone, and we're, like, debugging. Yeah.

Nathan

Were there any negatives that came from that?

Aaron

I honestly don't think so. I didn't leak any, you know, keys on stream or anything. Yeah.

Nathan

Some of those, like, whoops. There's the GitHub credentials.

Aaron

No. Honestly, I think it was a a pure win, which I was just and to do it just on a lark and have it be one of our best things we did was like, oh, man. That's a good instinct. I'm I'm happy that I did that. So going live, what

Nathan

was the takeaway that you would apply to another launch? Like, are you gonna do that every launch going forward?

Aaron

Or is it 100%. Yeah. Yeah. I will. One is it's a distribution hack because like we talked about, Twitter will pin the fact that you're live on every single person's homepage.

Nathan

Right.

Aaron

And so even if they don't watch it, they're aware that the thing is happening right now. So that was just massive. Plus, you get to benefit if you use Restream. You get to benefit from people on YouTube discovering it. If you use

Nathan

Restream YouTube audience grows. Mhmm. Exactly. You're reaching more and more people.

Aaron

Exactly. So I will continue to to do that, and that is I think that was probably the thing that went the best. The launch to the email list was a little bumpy, but I think the the thing that went the best was all of my friends came and then a bunch of other people came and then a bunch of other people came, and it was like, there's a critical mass watching me do the thing.

Nathan

Was there anything that you did to make that livestream more interactive? Like, how how do those is that people in comments?

Aaron

Yeah. People in chat. So, the the tool that I was using, which I'm not affiliated with, but now I should be for goodness sakes, Restream. It aggregates the comments across YouTube, Twitter, and I think I was actually live on LinkedIn as well, and puts them all in a single chat. And so I could see them.

I have a little confidence monitor, and I could see them and talk back to them. And that's you know, when I was writing the email, they're like, you're burying the lead. Like, you gotta move that part to the top. Like, oh, that's a good point. So, yeah, it was very interactive.

Nathan

Yeah. That's awesome. I think that's something that I'm gonna try. I'm not sure when I'm launching something. Well, the rebrand.

When we rebrand from

Aaron

ConvertKit to Kit things do in public. You gotta do it. Yeah. Yeah. Do it live.

Yeah.

Nathan

And so we'll that'll be fascinating to pull together.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Nathan

You know, like, there's a lot of complex things as we move over in that. And October 1st is the date where we're we'll actually cut over the app and all we'll move a bunch of stuff beforehand. But but, yeah, at

Aaron

some point, you're gonna have to you're gonna have to turn a switch that's like DNS point this way. And, like, if you wanna talk about nerve racking edge of your seat, put that live. People are gonna be, like, it's doing DNS live? What a madman. Yeah.

Nathan

It's gonna be great. That's slightly terrifying. Yeah. There's this thing in content creation where or really business in general of like making note of the thing that scares you.

Aaron

Mhmm. And that actually scares me. Mhmm. It should. It absolutely should.

Nathan

And I think that is it's going to make for great content. It's great content. Because like, if you think about the things that you can do in writing content or whatever else, where you're like, Oh, and now I'm going to build the suspense a little bit, and then I'm going to give that payoff. Right? Or you could just do things that are inherently suspenseful.

Aaron

You could. You could you could do terrifying things live, and people are gonna be terrified, but they're gonna love it.

Nathan

How that popcorn came back. Exactly. Let's see what happens to these SEO results. Exactly.

Aaron

And you're gonna get reports like, hey. I can't reach it in, you know, Arc Browser. And you're gonna be like, guys, I can't reach it in Arc Browser. And it's gonna it's gonna be great. I look forward to it.

Nathan

Yeah. That'll be great. Well, if you can make sure to be there in the comments.

Aaron

Absolutely will.

Nathan

So that was a big win. Are there any mistakes that, you made that others you learned from?

Aaron

Not huge. Big. Sending emails from a relatively cold domain. Mhmm. Yeah.

And this is something that I need your coaching on, which we'll move into at some point. I I sent you know, we had I think by the time we launched, we had, you know, 5,000 people on the list. Mhmm. And I sent emails too quickly, and Gmail put us in the penalty box. And so we didn't get we didn't get blacklisted.

We didn't get You got deferred. We got deferred. Yep. And it was like

Nathan

It's an odd term.

Aaron

So odd. So frustrating. And one of the like, after I after this whole launch thing, I wrote a article on my blog that says like, the title is you're always doing something wrong. And that's how I feel. Like, the cost of doing things is doing some things wrong, and we did that wrong.

I should have either warmed up the domain better, but I'm hesitant to send emails because I'm a developer, or I should have used aarintrances.com, which is literally 25 years old at this point. And I've sent some emails from it,

Nathan

but the domain itself has been in my possession for

Aaron

25 years. So you did a domain to the course. Specific.

Nathan

Mhmm. Yeah.

Aaron

Yeah. So I had people sign up at high performance SQLite dotcom, and I sent all emails from high performance SQLite Mhmm. Dotcom. And there are some technical fumbles there, but I think there are also some strategic fumbles around I still I mean, it's not like I lost the emails. Mhmm.

But around what is our business brand, and are we doing discrete brands for every course? That kind of stuff.

Nathan

Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. So on the deliverability side, you have to warm up as as you've learned. But for everyone else watching, you have to warm up that reputation.

An email sequence is the best way to do it, where people start, you know, high engagement. They're getting those emails. They open gradually over time, but it it does take that time. And you wanna start with the most engaged segments of your audience. And it's another reason, we'll get into this in our coaching segment in a second, but it's another reason to consolidate your brands.

Because some of these things that seem easy of, oh, another domain. That's easy. It's nice. Each project has its own domain.

Aaron

It feels so clean.

Nathan

Yeah. I can I can tell the developer in you? It's just like, oh, yes. The scope is perfect.

Aaron

That's great.

Nathan

And it just it creates all these unknown downstream effects because you're like, well, did you set up Google Postmaster tool for that domain? Mhmm.

Aaron

Probably not.

Nathan

Yep. You know? Yep. I bet you did later. I did later.

Yep. That's interesting. Were there any other mistakes that that came up

Aaron

in the launch that others could learn from? Yeah. I think our timeline was a little compressed. I mean, we turned this thing around quickly because, we we had to. And so I think the timeline ended up being, like, 3 months.

And that put a lot of 3 months from, like, we have nothing to, I've read 6 books on SQLite. I've read the entire documentation of SQLite, and I've recorded 70 videos, and we've made a learning platform. That timeline was a little bit compressed, and it caused me a lot of, like, stress.

Nathan

Mhmm.

Aaron

And so I would, in the future, let it be a little bit of a slower burn, just because of the, like, mental and physical toll that it took on me recording all of that stuff.

Nathan

Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. So thank you for the deep dive in that course.

I think that's a lot of things that first, a 125,000 in a launch is fantastic, you know, in 30 days. Obviously, revenue spikes.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Nathan

And so, like, the thing that I wanna get into next is how we can scale this into a much more established business. Yes. So the last 3 years, you've grown a pretty substantial audience. The first thing I wanna talk about is the relationship you have with that audience. Because even though there's a lot of people there, the numbers that you're putting up in core sales

Aaron

Mhmm.

Nathan

Are significantly higher, you know, and we're talking at a price point that's not crazy high. Yeah. You know, you're not selling 3,000, $5,000 at a time. And so to get that revenue per subscriber, you have to have a really high conversion rate between your offer and, you know, in the list. Mhmm.

And so how do you think about building, like, a high trust relationship with your audience?

Aaron

Yeah. That is well said because I do feel like the relationship I have and I even hesitate to call it an audience because I feel so connected to so many of them. Like, there are, you know, within within an audience, there are concentric circles. And at the very middle, it's like, they're they're my friends.

Nathan

Yeah.

Aaron

Like, they're my Internet friends. And so I do feel like I have, I think through very careful thought, been able to put together an audience that really trusts me. And I have thought about this a lot because what I have seen and there I feel like there have been phases and primarily where I spend most of my audience or social time is on Twitter. May it rest in peace. So I I spend a lot of time on Twitter, and what I have seen is these waves come through.

Right? So there was the, there was the thread wave.

Nathan

Mhmm.

Aaron

Then there was, and continues to be the meme wave where everything is a meme. And as I have seen these things come through, I have noticed that, like, looking back on the thread wave now, a lot of those people that grew massive followings very quickly on, doing these super long form threads no longer have any reach whatsoever. So you look back at somebody who grew fantastically during the pandemic, and they're getting you know, they've got 80 to a 100000 followers, and they're getting a 100 to a 1000 views on their tweets. Right. And I'm looking at that, and I'm like, this is not necessarily the truth, but this is indicative of some truth.

And I think the underlying truth is they have a very tenuous connection with their audience. So they did one really good thread and a lot of people followed them for that. And then later on, it was like, I don't know this person. I am not gonna engage with this person. I have no connection with this person.

And so my goal, my entire goal all along has been, how can I, grow an audience of people who actually know me? Is what as much as someone can know someone else from afar, how can I grow an audience of people that know me? And my strategies there have just really frankly been to to basically share everything that I'm working on and do it in a very, like, a nonpreachy way. Because I think another trap that beginners or or people who are trying to grow an audience fall into is they start talking like Sahil Bloom.

Nathan

Right. And it's like Like they're an expert in some way.

Aaron

Yeah. Position that way. Yeah. And, like, the hard part is maybe they are an expert, but nobody else knows it yet. And when you start talking in these aphorisms and pithy statements, it's like, who are you preaching at?

And so I'm trying to maintain a certain level of, like, authenticity, and I'm figuring this out as I go. And sometimes I do have thoughts that are very, like, deeply rooted in expertise, but I don't ever wanna be preachy. And so trying to find that balance of being a real human being while also trying to gather like minded people around me, it's kinda it's kinda difficult, which is why my growth has been a lot slower than some people. But I and this is maybe a cope. I think it's a lot more dense.

Right? So I don't have a large diffuse audience. I have a pretty good sized dense audience that that trusts me.

Nathan

You brought up the threads and the memes. One thing, like, as we're in our meme phase right now on on x, it's interesting I've heard of quite a few people actually talk about how, like, as they've grown their audience further through memes or these, you know, fairly cheap interactions, that the audience just doesn't stick around. Yes. And so I think about that with, like, if we contrast threads and memes. Mhmm.

They're both in their phases. We're both very good at at top of funnel awareness. Yeah. And so I was thinking about where I ended up, because I wrote a lot of threads and, you know, built up my Twitter following to I think it's a 120, a 130,000. And that worked really, really well.

But I think the twist on it is that I really tried to write threads that only I could write.

Aaron

Yes. Not top 10 chat gpt extensions.

Nathan

Oh, man.

Aaron

Yes. That's what I'm talking about. Or the Yeah. Your reaction is what I'm talking about.

Nathan

Oh, man. Because right now, like, what I'm seeing right now is, people are saying, like, the Olympics are over. Here's the 10 moments.

Aaron

Here's the image of the guy shooting 10 times. I'm like, yes. I've seen it. I've seen it. Yeah.

Nathan

And so it's thinking about what is the thing that brings your experience into it? So like, this is from my experience, how to build a great company culture in a remote team. This is, you know, the story of how we did direct sales to grow ConvertKit.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Nathan

And that, especially in in the world of AI, I think is so important because content creation is is cheap and easy. Mhmm. You know, like before for threads, someone's like, what Wikipedia article can I copy and paste?

Aaron

Yes.

Nathan

And go Wikipedia, Google images, boom, boom, thread, 100,000 views, we're done. Mhmm. Anyone can do that. Mhmm. And so it's really, like, how do you bring in the life experience and the stories?

Aaron

Mhmm.

Nathan

It's like for anyone who's written a book, if you're writing from a position of expertise, it's really hard to trust that expertise until I know, like, when was the painful moment in your life when you internalize that lesson? Yep. Like, what was the mistake that you made? For me, like, the time that I learned to build an email list was when I had that article go viral on Hacker News. I thought that I'd absolutely made it.

And if you, you know, hid that moment in the Google Analytics graph, you would never know that anything happened. Because I didn't capture that attention anyway.

Aaron

It all went away.

Nathan

It all went away. And so, you know, people have told me, like, oh, I trusted you on the advice of build an email list after that because I know the painful moment when, like, you gave up what would have been thousands of email subscribers because of that mistake that you made. Other places where you've told stories or brought in, like, the authentic side of yourself that has added to that connection?

Aaron

Yeah. So I have done a few conference talks. So the world in which I live is primary primarily development. So I've been to a few, you know, development conferences and given what would be considered soft talks because they call, you know, technical talks hard talks and anything that's not technical is a soft talk. So I gave a few soft talks.

Yeah. One of them was at a conference called Laracon, which is a Laravel conference, and I was the last speaker. And I gave, I gave my absolute best talk that I could give, and it was about publishing your work and how, basically, you can increase the amount of luck that comes your way if you just put your stuff out there. And it was like an it was, an impassioned plea to the audience to put their stuff out there. And woven into that were stories of when I watched a bunch of other people get stuff that I wanted, and I was bitter.

And I was like, why is this all happening to them and not me? I'm smart. And the answer was because they're they're putting their stuff out there. And I'm sitting at home bitter, nobody knows who I am through through no fault of their own. It's my fault.

And so that was, like, that was the inciting incident maybe in 2020 or yeah. I think it was 2020 when I realized, like, I've got 2 options here. I could watch other people, make friends, go to conferences, speak at conferences, get jobs, make money. I could watch that and be bitter, or I could just start putting my work out there and see what happens. And the first option is really safe because you it requires nothing of you.

You just get to sit at home

Nathan

and be mad. And no one will ever criticize you for it.

Aaron

No one will ever criticize you for it. The second option is terribly scary because you're exposing yourself to criticism. Mhmm. And that single story has kind of been the through line through all of this, which is, like, my coming to terms with, exposing myself to criticism and being okay being out there in the void all by myself, which is what it feels like sometimes. When you put something heartfelt out and you're like, I'm, you know, bearing a part of my soul here.

Like, what are the people on the Internet gonna think? And then you realize, oh, man. I don't care what the people on the Internet are gonna think. This is all gonna be over so soon. I don't wanna look back and think, I wish I had cared less what, you know, buttcracks72 on Twitter thought.

Like, I don't care. I need to put this work into the world. And so that was kind of, like, my painful turning point that has been repurposed into, guys, do not be like I was. Do it this way. And it has resonated pretty well.

Nathan

What's fascinating to me is you and I have such similar, creator arcs. Basically, you know, I got my start in design and development. And then the first content that I made was, you know, a lot of technical content about about design. And the person that made me switch the way that I was thinking was Chris Coire, who, wrote css tricks.com. Not because I was like, Chris is amazing.

Let me, copy him. But I remember when he started the website, and I watched him launch it. And I had this weird perception about expertise. Like, he wrote an article, and I read that. And I was like, yep.

Who's he to think he's an expert? Like, I know how to do that. Mhmm. And he'd publish something else. I'm like, I know how to

Aaron

do that too. Mhmm.

Nathan

You know what I was like? I'm better at CSS than

Aaron

Chris Goyer. That's option 1, is to sit at home and say, I'm better than Chris Goyer. Yes.

Nathan

And I've I've fully lived in option 1. And then it did get to the point after a while where he would publish an article, and I'd be like, well, that's better explained than I would explain. I knew that, but it's better explained than I would explain it. So let me when a coworker asks, hey, how do I do this thing? Mhmm.

Aaron

I don't know.

Nathan

We're probably troubleshooting Internet Explorer 6 class test bugs.

Aaron

And I'd

Nathan

be like, oh, you read this article and then I'll help you with it. And so it went from, like, I'm better than this to, like, oh, this is useful. And then there was a point where I was like, oh, I I learned something.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Nathan

And thinking back, I'm like, that's such an arrogant place to be.

Aaron

It is. It is an arrogant, cynical place to be, and I can say that because I was there. Yes.

Nathan

And so but the the turning point when I realized because I was like, we're the

Aaron

same. Mhmm.

Nathan

And we're the same is actually generous. What I thought was I'm better.

Aaron

Mhmm. And Revisionist history there. Yeah.

Nathan

Yeah. Exactly. And so when Chris came out with a Kickstarter campaign to say, I want to, raise $3,500 in Kickstarter. What a

Aaron

what a quaint time.

Nathan

So that I can take a month off of client work and all of that and focus on redesigning CSS tricks and make this, like, a great a really great site for the community. Mhmm. If you back it, I will, record behind the scenes. I'll record some training material, all that, and that's what you'll get for backing it and a big thank you. And I was like, $35100?

Like, I I think you could probably hit that. We'll see. And it was something like $87,000.

Aaron

Okay. There we go. Yep.

Nathan

That that makes sense. You know, 45 days later. And it just blew my mind. Because here I was thinking, like, I know more CSS. Now I feel like, well, maybe I'm, like, starting to admit, maybe he knows more than I do.

But I realized, like, we are not the same at all. He had the ability to go in front of an audience and say, here's the thing that I want to do. Will you support me in it? And, you know, 1,000 a 1000 people or more are like, yes, absolutely. And I had none of that.

Mhmm. And so that's when it really hit me that, you know, beyond this baseline of expertise, like, it's not that people teach because they're experts. It's we perceive them as experts because they teach. Yes. And I had that whole equation backwards.

And so it's fascinating as you like, you went through the exact same thing.

Aaron

I sat and watched people tweet stuff, and I was like, yeah. Come on. I know that. I'm so smart. And then it really dawned on me that doing the work and sharing the work are discrete tasks.

And you and I both went through the phase of, like, oh, I could do that. But then the there was an entire vector that was missing, which was sharing the work. And so you and I were both doing the work and very, you know, very good at it, frankly. But you and I doing work, we were good at it. But then these other people were doing work of equal quality or maybe less.

Mhmm. But they were talking about it. And that was the realization that I had that which which was, like, it's not enough depending on your goal, it's not enough to do the work. You have to tell people as well. And so that that 2 pronged doing things and telling people is where I that was the big turning point in in my life.

Nathan

So the 3 different mantras that I really internalized, and then I'm adding a 4th later, but it started with teach everything you know, of just saying, like, it's okay that I'm not an expert. But I I just learned this thing.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Nathan

And I'm not teaching it to the cynical person, you know. The nitpicker. Yeah. Yeah. The nitpicker

Aaron

who was me, you know, 6

Nathan

months ago. I'm teaching it to the person who's one step behind me. Mhmm. Who, like, just learned how to install rails on the console and get get that going. And they're like, I don't know what to do next.

And the expert is like, just do this.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Nathan

And they're like, I you skipped, like, 12 steps because it's intuitive to you. And Yep. I didn't get it. The second thing is work in public. I was doing all of the work, and I just wasn't sharing it.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Nathan

And so I remember doing math homework, you know, in probably early high school. And it was still easy enough in algebra or whatever, where I could just look at the problem, like, that's the answer. Mhmm. And I was homeschooled. And so my mom is my teacher was like, you have to show your work.

Mhmm. And I'm like, but the answer is correct. And she's like, I know the answer is correct. But at some point, it won't be. And you have to demonstrate that you actually know how to do it.

Mhmm. And it's the the same thing of, like, the expertise. The demonstrated expertise comes from showing your work, not the polished end result.

Aaron

Yep. Unfortunately, the the build in public, like, mantra meme now. It is. It's become very thin. It's become very shallow.

Nathan

When in public. Yes.

Aaron

That's what it's I think that is exactly right. Or ask silly questions in public. Like, you know, Mac or PC, what do you use to develop? And you're like, guys, this isn't anything. Like, what we're what we're not we're we're not after is, like, vapid engagement bait.

When when building in public, the way that I view it as anything that I'm doing, that while in the midst of my work, which I think is pretty important, while actually working, I see something that is either interesting or I learned that I should have known already. That's a great one. Like, if you can prove, hey. I'm an expert in some area, and I just discovered this really simple thing that I should have known. Do you guys know about this?

That I find is better fodder for building in public than sitting down on a Monday and trying to come up with 14 tweets to schedule about building in public for the rest of the week. I think that is a huge mistake. I think the real win is do the work Mhmm. And then from that, extract interesting things that you come across in the course of working and share that with the world. And then, importantly, I think once you share it, your responsibility is done.

You've been absolved of your of your duty once you share it. If it goes great, that's awesome. If it goes poorly, that's okay. Your responsibility is to do the work and to put it out there. And then if it resonates, maybe you learn something about what resonates with the audience.

If it falls flat, that's fine. Move on. You've got a bunch more where that came from. And I think I I see a lot of people, putting a lot of pressure on their content to do a certain thing and not necessarily focusing on the habit of putting it out there.

Nathan

Right.

Aaron

So they do something and it fails and they're like, building public is dead. And you're like, no. This is the game, man. Just keep going. And so I think that is an unfortunate, skewing of what I think is a good tactic, which is building public.

It is skewed a little bit cheap and easy.

Nathan

Yeah. That makes sense. I think it's around the journey that you're going on. Mhmm. There's a a creator who I followed years ago named Colaside, who, he built the whole Envato network.

Aaron

Oh, wow.

Nathan

And they, you know,

Aaron

went to Tuts and all of those. Oh, yeah.

Nathan

You know, like 100 of 1,000,000,000, maybe a $1,000,000,000 valuation or more. And he said the best way to be interesting online is to do interesting things offline.

Aaron

Yes. 100%.

Nathan

I think about that of like, anytime someone says, hey, I wanna get into content creation. I'm like, okay, cool. What journey are you going on? Mhmm. And they're

Aaron

like, well, I'm gonna do

Nathan

like the build in public thing. And it's like, that's not a goal. About what? Yeah. And so it's thinking about what's that journey that you're going on, and then tell the story of it.

Mhmm. Like for ConvertKit, when I said I'm gonna build a SaaS app to 5,000 a month in recurring revenue in 6 months, and live blog the whole thing, all these people came around me, you know, I

Aaron

Me included. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah.

Nathan

So I think of like Heat and Sean, Amy Hoye and all these other others who said, like, let me help you. They'd get on calls and strategies. Like Amy Hoye and I wrote a whole bunch of copy together. Because she's like, I see that you're going somewhere. And I'd like to help you to help you get there.

Instead of what I think most people who want to be creators are doing is they're just creating content for the sake of creating content, rapid.

Aaron

Where you get the Wikipedia threads.

Nathan

Yeah. Mhmm. Exactly. And then you're chasing those views.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Nathan

One other thing that you've done a lot of that I know from following you on x is you incorporate a lot of video. Mhmm. And I think that's something that intimidates a lot of creators. Yeah. So how do you think about bringing video into the equation, especially if you're, you know, more heavy on LinkedIn or x or

Aaron

Right.

Nathan

Or a newsletter? And then how that plays into the relationship with the audience?

Aaron

Yeah. It's very interesting, and I think, it's becoming more interesting with the proliferation of AI slop in in written form. Right? So anybody can just throw together written content very easily, not to say that it's good. So I think, you know, going back to Chris Coyer, you, you ascribed to him or you said that he is the expert because he's teaching.

Right? So these people in public get these certain accolades deserved or not. As a podcaster, I'm sure you get people saying, oh, Nathan's got a podcast. You're like, oh, I'm I listen to your podcast all the time. And it's like, I'm just sitting down and talking with

Nathan

friends. It's like

Aaron

behind the scenes, that's kinda normal. But this, the outward, presentation of it, everybody's like, oh, man. He's got a website and he's got a blog. And so I think there are an maybe not unfair, but skewed, weights put on certain types of content. Right?

So at the bottom of the pyramid, most people do nothing. That's just the biggest hugest part of the pyramid is people just consuming. No moral judgments. That is reality.

Nathan

It's still 99% of the population.

Aaron

Yes. Easily. And that's fine. If you lead a quiet life and work with your hands and don't spend all your time on the computer, that's It's more powerful to you. Yeah.

Congrats to you. But for the rest of us, sickos, moving up from there, you have, like, text content, like, short form text content, very easy to tweet. Long form text content writing blogs, a little bit harder. It takes a little bit more thought, less so than it used to, but a little bit more thought. And then you move up to, like, video, live coding, speaking at conferences, and there are fewer and fewer people, up there on the pyramid.

This is not a value pyramid. This is just a population pyramid. There are fewer people up there. So the unfair or, skewed accolades accrue to you more because you're not competing with very many people.

Nathan

Right.

Aaron

So you get to the top and you're doing video and where there are to just use a round number, a 100 bloggers, there are 3 people making videos. Four people making videos. Right? And so the perceived value of video, I think, goes way up because there are fewer people doing it, but also it's just a lot harder to do. Like, it is a lot harder both technically and emotionally to make video than it is to write blog posts.

And I've done both and I find that to continue to be true, to turn on the video and expose my face to the world and be like, this is actually me. There's no hiding behind Grammarly or anything else. Mhmm. It's hard. But I don't think it is without it it is not a cost without benefit.

I think the benefit is people really, really connect, to other human beings. I feel feel like that's pretty well understood, and it's easier to connect with another human being on audio or video over text. And so audio podcasts, great way to start, like, not a good way to grow an audience, but a great way to deepen an audience. And then video, YouTube is just a distribution juggernaut onto itself that cannot be rivaled. And so being able to put video onto YouTube and then hopefully YouTube says, very good.

We will reward you. Like, that's what you're after. It's just an it's unbeatable. Even with with blogging and email, like, you kinda have to bring the people to you. Podcasts, boy, do you have to bring the people to you.

If you can put video on, YouTube, they will bring the people to you. And now that, Twitter or x has decayed into basically TikTok, they're optimizing for video as well. And LinkedIn is like, hey. Make go live on LinkedIn. Why?

To whom? But, like, if the platforms are rewarding it, maybe it's a good thing to think about.

Nathan

Yeah. How do you think about the balance between, you know, the influencer world and the creator world, and your own identity, and how you spend your time?

Aaron

I think about it a lot. So that's, that's how much I think about it. How do I think about it? I have a sort of visceral reaction, and I think it's included in the word visceral that it's a bad reaction to the word influencer. I don't Aaron Francis influencer.

Yeah. Don't love this. Don't love the sound attitude. Please don't, yeah, please don't make that the title of this one. Yeah.

I don't begrudge people who identify as influencers. I make no moral judgments about it. I don't want to be an influencer. I don't mind having influence. I don't I don't mind that at all.

I want to influence people for what I think are pure right and good reasons. However, in my opinion, an influencer is typically someone who has a lot of opinions. Yeah. That is typically, what an influencer is or does. They have opinions on everything that is happening in in the zeitgeist.

I I I simply don't. What I want to be known for is creating really good work and doing things, doing things that are durable and last a long time and are of value. And so if I had to give myself a moniker, I would say that I'm a creator. I mean, before that, I would, you know, maybe even at a lower level, I would say I'm a small business owner. Like, I'm not a startup guy.

I'm just not. Somebody recently asked me, oh, so you, like, run a startup? I'm like, well, we run a small business. Like, it's not a startup. And so the the idea of being an influencer and the value of, the value that is ascribed to me is because I can I don't even know what an influencer is in in our world?

Like, an influencer in the broad world is someone who's very pretty and posts a lot on Instagram. Right?

Nathan

Right.

Aaron

And, you know, the Kardashians have turned that into an unbelievable business empire. And so, like, you can absolutely pull it off, but I want to focus primarily on the work, and hopefully, the work reflects well upon me. And if people follow me for that reason, I'm super happy. But I don't wanna have opinions on what OpenAI is doing, because I don't know.

Nathan

Right. Yeah. And that that pundit aspect of it.

Aaron

Pundit. Yes.

Nathan

We had a, a mutual friend of ours was was asking, like, a thing come out just a couple years ago, and they're like, Nathan, what's your opinion on this? And I was like, I don't have an opinion. Yes. I just I just make stuff.

Aaron

Yes. Exactly.

Nathan

And and I'm here to share my lessons and and, you know, that I've learned from the journey of making things. And that's really the different approach. Instead of this thing coming out, you're like, oh, I have to have an opinion.

Aaron

The people have to know what I have to think about it. I'm like, I don't and I get that often. The most that I get that in my line of work is, hey. Can you do a comparison of this technology and this technology? And I'm like, I can't.

I'm sorry. I don't have enough expertise in one or both, to give a fair comparison, and I'm not going to do something just because it's good content. So all the content that I produce has to spring from some well of expertise, interest, or curiosity. I don't have to be an expert about everything, but I have to, like, be curious about it. And when people come along and are like, hey.

Can you compare Next. Js to Laravel? I'm like, no. Sorry. What else do you have?

Because I can't do that, and I don't wanna do that. And I see a lot of people, doing these, like, these shallow level comparisons of all these technologies. And I'm like, I don't know that you use all

Nathan

of those.

Aaron

And so this isn't this isn't really valuable at all. So I try to stay away from that. Just give us a little

Nathan

bit where should people go to follow you if they wanna learn more about the journey? See what it looks like to to authentically build in public Yeah. As you do?

Aaron

You can find every link at aaronfrancis.com, but where I primarily spend my time is on Twitter x at aaron d Francis. So that's where I hang

Nathan

out the most. Sounds good. Okay. So that's it for this episode. But what we're gonna do is we're gonna get

Aaron

up on the whiteboard, and

Nathan

we're gonna talk about what it takes to turn a $125,000 course launch into a sustainable business for 2 people where we can build this really into, you know, the small empire that they want. If you enjoyed this episode, go to the YouTube channel. Just search $1,000,000,000 creator, and go ahead and subscribe. Make sure to like the video and, drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also who else we should have on

Aaron

the show.