Welcome to the panel where we talk about building better bootstrap businesses and a better life. I'm Justin Jackson, cofounder of transistor.fm.
Brian:And I'm Brian Castle. I'm buildingbuildermethods.com.
Justin:And also on the call today, we have Aaron Francis. How's it going, Aaron?
Aaron Francis:Hey. Good. It's going great. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Justin:I love this. This is the the serendipity of just being able to have someone jump on right before we start recording.
Brian:Yeah. We don't even have to have, like, a segment where we react to the last mostly technical. We could just have one of the co users. Yeah.
Justin:Do it here.
Aaron Francis:Let's do it live.
Justin:This is gonna mess up with all of our segments. I I for for the listener, I've been sending Brian well, and actually Aaron and Ian new builds of my Vibe Coded topic tracker. So we can click start show. Actually, I've never done this. Oh, now we get a big timer.
Justin:So so we're in the introduction right now. And, yeah, we thought we'd talk a bit about
Brian:Little bug report. I don't see the timer on my end.
Justin:That's okay. Man. You know, it's a it's hard hard one for the vibe code.
Aaron Francis:So interestingly, I see it on the tab that I had opened when you sent it to me. And then I opened the link again, and I don't see it. So there's a there's a little user feedback for you.
Brian:Interesting. Yeah. Because I I just opened it as well, and I don't see it.
Aaron Francis:So We just burned through thirty seconds of the intro just debugging the tool.
Justin:I mean, that's that's that's what we're doing this for. We gotta do it live. So we thought we were gonna talk about what got people what got you into programming building things? And I think what I've noticed other people how other people we know got into programming and building things signals your new business is working or not. What advice would you give to a class of grade twelves about entrepreneurship and a matrix for deciding which projects to work on next?
Justin:But now that Aaron's here, we might have to talk about some mostly technical follow-up.
Brian:Actually, I I let's just pick up on what we were talking about with, like, how did how we get into programming, but more like our kids. I think we all have kids at pretty different ages, I believe. Aaron, yours are probably the youngest, and then mine are nine and 11, Justin, high school and college.
Justin:Which is crazy. How are we all in such different stages?
Aaron Francis:I don't know, man.
Justin:That is that's always when I'm hearing, like I just listened to your episode with Jeffrey Way. Mhmm. And it's like, Aaron's got the youngest kids. Jeffrey's kids are pretty young. Ian, business dad, is actually just slightly below me.
Justin:Like, he he just had a kid start college. And I to be in the the old section of that group with the oldest kids is so weird. It's just like the differences between young kids and kids and old kids. It's just
Aaron Francis:I feel like he is cruising, and I am like drowning underwater. People keep handing me new children, and I'm like, oh, you gotta stop handing me kids. And Ian's like,
Justin:oh, it's great.
Aaron Francis:I'm going on a poker trip.
Brian:Yeah. All of you people with, like, more than two kids, I I don't I don't know how you do it. Yeah.
Justin:I see.
Aaron Francis:I don't
Brian:know if I would recommend We're we're we're pretty slow and steady with with the two. But I I just wanna say about the coding thing, for years, like, ever since they were probably, like, five, six, seven years old, I was trying to get them into learning some basic programming skills. And there there's a lot of these, like, apps for kids that, you know, introduction to, like, logic and, like, just, like, building building blocks of, it's not actual coding yet, but it's starting to introduce you to, like, you know, conditional loops and you you make simple games and there's a lot of like apps like that. My kids sorta liked that a little bit, but they didn't really get they they had the really basic one and then they I couldn't really get them to, like, latch on to the a little bit more advanced, like, starting to code stuff. And I would try to show them things here and there.
Brian:But then just recently, a couple weeks ago actually, just, like, a week ago, I opened up a free Claude account for my kids to share and use. Yeah. And I introduced it to both my nine year old and 11 year old, and my 11 year old really latched onto it. She every single day after school, she, like, she comes off the bus, she rushes up to the upstairs computer and hops onto Claude, and she's vibe coding these these silly little games. But she's actually, like, really good at like, she I could tell she has, like, the like, like a product design mind, like, you know, feature request iterations.
Brian:She she vibe coded her own little app store, and, like, you know, she vibe codes, like, adding, like, video game background music and all all these different things. Like
Justin:I love that.
Brian:And so it it is interesting to me how the ability to build things and essentially ship simple games using VibeCode and AI was what actually latched her on into, like, building. Like, it Yeah. You know, she sees the code being written. She's is not that interested in how the code works, but she's she is interested in building, you know? So that's interesting.
Justin:I I think every generation needs their version of this to get into building things. And I think part of my sadness about the way especially web development kind of veered into everything in the command line and everything is text based is when you talk to people like the the previous generation that got into building things on the web, they'll say, you know, I got into programming and building things through HyperCard and through Dreamweaver and through all the often visual kind of builder things. And I I feel like we kind of lost something when, like, most of getting started on the web ended up being, like, setting up all this stuff in terminal and kind of system DevOps stuff. And there's this, like, big obstacle to people just getting their hands dirty.
Brian:Mhmm.
Aaron Francis:Yep. I agree. I think I think so FrontPage had, like, a preview code tab so you can see it live and then switch to code. And then obviously, MySpace was tweakable, so you could go in there and muck around with yeah.
Brian:I remember that.
Aaron Francis:Change your theme, add horrible background music. Feel like below me, but above probably any of our kids, or maybe Justin, your kids hit this, there was like Scratch where it was kinda like drag and drop, and you kinda like could piece together some logic there. But yeah, the Trough of Sorrow is definitely like setting up Node. Js to build your front end assets. And it's like, what that the the distance between, like, first joy is way too big for, you know,
Brian:a kid at that point. I've always believed that, like, the period from around 2013, '14 up until, frankly, today, but really into, like, the twenty twenties with all the front end craziness
Justin:Mhmm. The node tools.
Brian:You know, the the build tools.
Justin:Mhmm.
Brian:And that was a weird period where I stopped, getting my hands dirty in code for a couple of years there. So I was deep in it from like o five until 02/2010. And then I got into Audience Ops, which was much more of a productized service, much more marketing focused, a lot of writing of processes in Google Docs and stuff like that. And I would tweak my own websites the way that I always have, but I sort of ducked out of the whole development game for five, six, seven years there. Then I got back into it in 2018, 2019, and I was like, what happened?
Aaron Francis:Ran headlock into a wall?
Brian:Like, what happened to my to to the craft of designing on the web? Like, this got so brutally complicated. I it and it pissed me off for
Justin:many years.
Brian:It still does. And that and I mean, that's ultimately what attracted me to Ruby on Rails and, you know, this the tools that veer toward getting us back to simplicity. You know?
Justin:I think especially if you're more visual or you have an intuition for design and for product flow and for UX, there there was not like and I often think about this old article by Ryan Singer. This is from 02/2012, Dancing Without a Partner. And he says, I've been thinking a lot about teaching UI lately. How do you teach interface design if you can't get done in anything done without a programmer at your side? And he said, when I started making interfaces in the sixth grade, I didn't need a programmer because I had HyperCard.
Justin:Shortly after that, it was FileMaker and Microsoft Access. And he said, I haven't seen a UI course that starts with a tool like FileMaker, and HyperCard doesn't exist anymore. Like, that resonates so strongly with me. And I think one of the reasons I'm having so much fun building stuff in v zero is it feels like we're getting back to this kind of building. Like, let me communicate.
Justin:I could give it a a drawing. I could give it a, you know, illustration. I can fat marker something and have it and then interact with it. And it feels like building stuff back with Microsoft Access or FileMaker, any of those.
Aaron Francis:Yeah. I wonder I I haven't looked at it terribly closely, but that new thing that Adam just invested in, the Paper app, I think feels like it could be similar.
Justin:I've never heard of this.
Aaron Francis:It's like I think it's like Figma, but it produces real code. And part of it is it produces Tailwind CSS, which is why he's so interested in it. I haven't dug in because that's really not my space, but I wonder if stuff like that is gonna bring us back to the light side, where you can design visually, but then you get real production grade code. It's like Tailwind. It's not, you know, some made up thing.
Aaron Francis:So I don't know. I I'm curious what the future will be.
Brian:I haven't haven't played with Paper, but I've but I've started to see a lot of, like, sort of, like, buzz about it as they you know, they're I think they're trying to really take on Figma. I think so. And one thing in that phase of the of the of the product creation process, like the design phase, I still feel like there's a huge gap. And and there's still something where, like, there there's there's these the v zeros, and there's a lot of replicas of that. So there's, like, Bolt and Lovable and Replit and lots of others.
Brian:And they're all essentially doing the same thing. I don't know exactly how Paper is doing it, but it's I'm guessing it's similar where you're vibe coding and then it's spitting out a a coded React or Next. Js application. It it feels like a visual design tool, but under the hood, it's still coding a full application.
Justin:Oh, interesting.
Brian:I I think that there's still a gap. Like, I what I actually want, and and this is a a tiny app idea that I'm considering building soon, is, like, an AI first, like, balsamic mock ups. You know? Like, I still wanna get away from using my hand and mouse to, like, drag and draw and create in a design canvas. Because in on the code side, it's becoming I still hand code a lot, but, you know, it's it's becoming more like leveraging AI to actually build out entire features and spectrum and development and all that.
Brian:But on the design side, it's still like the only way to get a professionally done layout or to get a a concept visualized into an actual, like, wireframe, I still gotta open up Figma or Balsamiq or one of these and actually design it. And I would rather go from, like, prompt to lo fi wireframe. And so I'm thinking through, like, a concept where I can I can I can essentially have, like, wireframed components, and and I can prompt it with my product idea or or my UI idea and have it assemble a wireframe, which I can then just export as an image? And then I can use that image when I go into cursor or Cloud Code and actually build it out. But I don't want it to build a React or Next.
Brian:Js application for me. I just want a visual.
Justin:Just the visual. What's the benefit of prompting it, though? Isn't it easier to just draw it? What I don't get Yeah.
Aaron Francis:That's what I was gonna ask. If you're doing wireframe,
Brian:that's See, I don't think I I think that prompting it would be much, much faster than Really? Drawing it. Yeah.
Justin:See, I'm going the other way. I'm feeling like I wanna start with a fat marker sketch and then just drag that into v zero and then
Brian:No. Because if like, that's what I traditionally do. Right? It's like, I'll go into Figma or the the thing is is that, like, it's still totally manual. If if I'm creating a wireframe from scratch or a mock up from scratch, I'm getting in there.
Brian:I'm resizing. I'm making it responsive. I'm, like, moving things around. I'm dragging things. I'm I'm using my mouse for hours on end just to create one, like, drop down menu with an with an arrow and and all the options.
Brian:Then I gotta put, like, text attributes in there. Now I gotta fiddle with those, you know, settings and and the and this text box over here, and I gotta group these layers. Like, it it just, like, it's so much like legwork just to realize a visual interface. And,
Justin:like, yes,
Brian:as a designer okay. Sure. It's nice to have, like, total fine grained control over that stuff. But every little fiddling of every field, every button, every configuration, every setting, like, that's hours of time. And Interesting.
Brian:When it comes to when it comes to, like, building out a whole feature in my app, I can I can prompt that and have it build entire features? Like, things that would take me multiple weeks in a in a day now, and, like, that that type of speed is has not been set up on the design side yet.
Aaron Francis:Maybe you and I wireframe differently because I'm thinking spending an hour on a dropdown wireframe, I would never do that. Maybe that's the disconnect because I
Brian:feel Not like an hour on a single dropdown, but when you have an entire application UI with lots of drop downs, lots of buttons, and lots of layout configurations, like it adds up. But but really all of that, like even just in one entire hour to get a single concept onto the page, like that should be five minutes. But it's not.
Justin:I mean, I will say one advantage of the text prompting is that sometimes I want to give it less context. Like, I don't want to give it an illustration because I want to see what it comes up with first. So sometimes it's just nice to have an AI generate something for you and go, oh, wow. Like, if I'd if I'd prompted it too much, I would have missed out on kind of all these steps that it took. But there are other times where I'm like, no, here's the sketch.
Justin:I want you to just build what I have here.
Brian:And that that is the the creative process to me now with with AI is that, like, I can give it a raw prompt. And by prompt, mean like it could be a couple paragraphs of like describing my product idea. And just based off of that, I I'm not expecting a finished product, but just give me a a decent v one, something to work off of. Like, instead of having a blank page where I have to create every little component from scratch, give me a good v one because that's how I write things now. Right?
Brian:Like, I'll I'll put a raw, like, brain dump of an idea for a newsletter into Claude knowing that, like, this is not my newsletter. This is just the idea of what I wanna say. And then it's gonna give me a good first draft, and then I'm gonna say, alright. I wanna make these four or five edits. Then then we get into a second draft.
Brian:And and I just wrote my newsletter in thirty minutes instead of five hours. You know?
Justin:Yeah. Are you using AI much for your newsletter, Aaron?
Aaron Francis:I am not. So I well, I guess in one way I am. I usually so what I do is I Slack all the tweets of the week over to Kelsey, and she goes off and does the screenshots and everything. And then while she's doing that, I use Super Whisper to dictate kind of, like, my my commentary on the tweets. So in a way, that is AI.
Aaron Francis:And then I don't know if she runs that through AI to say, like, hey. This is a dictation. Like, tighten it up at all. I don't think she does. We used to use lex.
Aaron Francis:Page for that.
Justin:Okay.
Aaron Francis:Which was a good one for writing. I enjoyed that one for writing, but I don't I don't think it's that necessary for this anymore. So she'll send me back a a Google Doc with rough screenshots, and then I just hit, you know, command space and start dictating. And then she'll clean it all up and put it in Bento for me.
Justin:Now for it, like, this past newsletter you wrote about your your experience in the woods. This first section here, are you just you're just writing that? This is just out of your head? No AI?
Aaron Francis:That's just that's all just dictated, usually.
Justin:Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. See, I've found I've found AI sometimes really makes my writing worse. Yeah.
Justin:If I Yeah. If I try to put too much stuff in there.
Brian:I find the complete opposite. Here, let me let me share this.
Justin:Okay.
Aaron Francis:While while he's doing that, I I just wrote some copy for database school, and I tried to have chat do it for me. And it was just the most, like, generic pattern recognizable drivel
Justin:Yes.
Aaron Francis:Like, yet I I'd ever seen. This is I'll take some you know, maybe I'm a bad prompter, but it was like No. This is not it. This is my
Justin:the my least favorite version of the tech bro thing now is they'll be on stage and they'll be like somebody will say, how do I improve my website? And they'll be like, hey, ChatGPT, write me a grant. And what comes out of that is always just so terrible.
Aaron Francis:I know.
Justin:And I'm like, what are you guys talking about? This is that's not a replacement for good writing or good marketing or any of that.
Brian:Alright. So, you know, in my Claude projects, I have a project here called newsletter writer. And let's see. If I go into, like, this one, this is from two weeks ago. It started out with, like, this is my next newsletter message that I wanna that I wanna And
Aaron Francis:that was all handwritten. That that that whole prompt is all you.
Brian:This was handwritten. I I probably use Super Whisper to, like, speak it. Whatever. But this is essentially, like, the core idea of what I want on to write, and then it drafted oh, sometimes it doesn't make an artifact. So then it it drafted, like, a first version.
Brian:Yeah. And then I go back. Yeah. So I gave it like some some revisions that I want. I did a I did a second version.
Justin:I do find it helpful to again, for the listener right now, Brian's just going through and, like, showing us these screenshots. But it is interesting to see how other people interact with these tools.
Aaron Francis:Totally. Seven versions is that's a lot.
Brian:It's a lot, but, like, each one is just a few yeah. So, like, here here's, like, last week's. So this was, like, a bit longer into in what I wanted to say. So Yeah. Again, like, this top one is just, like, raw, like, brain dump.
Brian:Like, this can't be a newsletter. This is just this to me is, like, it's sloppy. It's way too wordy, But it's just getting my raw ideas out. And then like this turned into like, if I go to like the final version down to like version five here, you know, it's this. That's the whole message.
Brian:It's much tighter up. You know, you you It's hard to see on the screen, but
Justin:Yeah.
Brian:That's that's like my process now for really most creative stuff is, like, dump a raw did I stop sharing?
Aaron Francis:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He freaked out.
Justin:I was like, bro, you're showing us your Clod projects? I got some private projects
Brian:in there.
Aaron Francis:Can't show you. Was like,
Justin:oh, be careful, man. Tread carefully.
Brian:I'm a little you know, I would be more careful with with ChatGPT. That's where my,
Justin:Oh, that's where the private stuff goes.
Brian:Private stuff, like chatting and and stuff goes. But a lot I use mostly for work stuff. So, you know.
Justin:Yeah. This is all interesting. The by the way, just to to to close-up what we were just talking about, the one thing I wanna say is I think the web is back in terms of interesting usable web apps. Like, this is that paper app. This is all in the browser.
Justin:God. That's great. I've been using Descript almost exclusively on the web right now. I find, like, Descript in the web so good. I can just upload like two gig gigabyte files, have it there, go home, edit it on my home computer.
Justin:And v zero all in the web, like web apps. They're they're back. Oh, yeah. Like and I would way prefer to use the web app than the Electron app or whatever.
Brian:Totally. Yeah. It is it is really nice to, like and this has been the case for years, but that's another reason why I love using things like Claude and OpenAI is, like, I constantly shift between my office Mac mini computer, my MacBook my MacBook Air, my iPhone. Yeah. I'm just I start working on one thing, and then I pick it up on on the next thing, you know, all the time.
Justin:Do you guys do you wanna talk the signals your business new business is working or not? I wanna Yeah. I wanna know about this.
Brian:I think Erin might have some interesting takes on this.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Seriously.
Brian:So I was this is the main thought that I've had on my mind this week. Builder Methods is, you know, a couple months in, and I'm starting to realize that this like, you know, I've been talking about, like, how I've been pretty happy with how this this business is unfolding in Yeah. In its earliest weeks, earliest months. And I'm noticing multiple instances of of, like, things that I I set out with an expectation of, like, this might totally fail or it might fall flat, and then it completely exceeded my expectations.
Justin:Okay. Me some example of that.
Brian:Yeah. Yeah. So, like, I'll start with this example, but I think there's a larger pattern that we can apply, and I wanna hear your how it applies in your businesses, your your history. But what I'm just noticing right now because this is different from a lot of other recent starts that I've had in the last couple of years. Mhmm.
Brian:Builder methods is different in okay. So number one, I was doing YouTube videos for a couple of years and really not seeing great results. You know, maybe maybe increasing by five or 10 subscribers a week, you know, getting a couple extra views here and there for some Rails videos, but nothing great. And I started doing these these videos, and I'm, like, I'm getting, you know, thousands of of views on on every single video. Yeah.
Brian:I I said to I said to my my family a couple months ago, I was like, I'm at 2,000 subscribers. I I think I can maybe get to 20,000 subscribers by the end of the year. It's it's up it's over 17 today. Dang. You know, like, it it it'll get there by by next month.
Brian:You're cruising. I had the first workshop, you know, last month. And and I was like, I don't know. Who who really wants to actually pay money to go to a live workshop for this thing? We'll we'll see.
Brian:You know, I'll announce it to the to the group. You know, a 100 tickets sold in in a week. Right? Heck yeah. The what else?
Brian:So when I was planning Builder Methods Pro, right, I had a couple of of things here where I was really pretty pessimistic on what to expect. So number one, I was thinking about, like, the pricing for it. And and I was like, alright. So I wanna offer this, like, founding members deal for the very first members. Like, should I and and this is gonna be, a lifetime deal, you know, and but who how many of these should I offer?
Brian:Should I do it for the first 20? For the first 50, maybe? I was like, but if I do the first 50, what if I don't even get 50 members? What if it takes me all year to get to 50 members? I don't want to just keep offering this lifetime deal.
Justin:I
Brian:ended up going with 50 and I sold 50 seats in within the first two weeks. Wow. You know? It it's now, like, up to a 100. And then if you remember a couple of weeks ago, I was talking about the idea of community.
Aaron Francis:Like Mhmm.
Brian:I'm pretty hesitant to start a Discord in a in a community and making that the key benefit that you get as a Builder Methods Pro member because I'm not really a community guy. My history with me starting communities is they become, ghost towns very quickly, and and I don't wanna make that the thing that I'm selling if Mhmm. If I've never really been successful at at a community, and and they're always way too quiet. And I'm not very good at being the cheerleader and getting everyone, like, involved. We have a 100 members in.
Brian:We're just couple couple weeks now, and, like, every single day there's messages in the Discord, and there's chatter happening. There's a lot of, like, sort of support questions, but there's also just people chattering and and and sharing ideas. And, like, I I'm not starting anything. I'm just reacting and responding. Like, it's it's already in a couple in its first few weeks, it's already taken on a life of its own.
Brian:You know? I'll give you, like, one more quick example, and then, like, I I released my latest YouTube video on this past Friday. I usually release on, like, a Monday or a Tuesday. And I was like this this new video, like the topic's not even that great. It's just sort of talking about some new features in Claude.
Brian:And I'll sort of just squeeze it in there on this Friday so that, you know, we'll see how it does. It's right before a weekend. It probably won't do great. Turns out it was like my by far and away my my best video yet. It's it's up to something like 40 k views for So four days, you it's just like time and time again right now with builder methods, I set out to oh, sorry.
Brian:And then like the second workshop, I was like, people bought the first workshop, but they're not going to buy the second because I already sold the tickets on the first. No one's going to want to go to two. Like the second workshop is already
Justin:That was an open question. I was a little bit nervous. Like, is he gonna be able to do it again?
Brian:It's already sold, 50 seats, and that's that's in addition to the Builder Methods Pro members because they get in for free. So these are people paying to get it. So it's like new members coming in for the second workshop, is happening next week. So anyway, the pattern here is all these little events, all these little projects, all these little data points, I I go in thinking like, we'll see how this does. I'm I'm a little pessimistic.
Brian:I try to set my expectations low, and it far and away exceeds it's like this is every time I'm like, yes. That's another signal
Justin:that
Brian:this that I'm onto something here with builder methods. Right? And that has not been the case with most new things I started in the last two, three, four years. Right?
Justin:Yeah.
Brian:Even like instrumental components, which was like the previous product that I launched and sold earlier in the year, it sold some, a couple thousand of revenue. Maybe did over 10 in the first month. But after that, really dropped off a cliff and still sells a few and not overwhelming, exceeding of expectations.
Justin:So what's the lesson? The lesson
Aaron Francis:lesson Okay. Is it feels good to be Brian. That's the lesson.
Justin:Feels good when things are working.
Brian:Yeah. I don't wanna make this thing about, like, bragging or anything like that. It's I still have so much work to do. The the the takeaway that I wanna that I wanna point to here is, like, what are the signals? I wanna relate this to the idea of, like, taking lots of shots.
Brian:Right? Doing a lot of things. You can just do stuff. You shouldn't do in in most cases, you should be doing stuff. You should be taking shots.
Brian:You should be launching new ideas. Maybe you should even be pivoting, and maybe you should even be moving on to a new idea because the current one, you're not seeing these signals. Right? I wanna put I keep harping on this theme month after month, year after year, that there's a lot of advice out there that just continues to drill into other entrepreneurs, like stay focused, don't get distracted. Keep pushing, do the grind, grind it out, put in the hard work.
Brian:Startups are supposed to be hard. What I'm saying is when your startup is working, it just keeps exceeding expectations despite it being half built.
Aaron Francis:Mhmm.
Brian:Right? It just keeps exceeding expectations because you're because you've you've found a wave of of demand. You've you've run into the right timing for the right product for the right market.
Aaron Francis:I'm not
Brian:even saying that I've even totally achieved I don't even know what builder methods is going to be, but I'm just saying like in the early weeks here, I'm seeing those signals that like everything just seems a lot easier. Yeah. Because what I also hear from a lot of entrepreneurs who keep grinding for a year, two, three, four years on the same idea. Then we start to hear people say things like, You know, it shouldn't be this hard. Why is marketing so hard?
Brian:Why does everything I try to do marketing wise not work?
Justin:Yeah. Like Okay. Okay. I I I'm interested to hear what Aaron has to say because I think he'll have you you've probably got a take on this. You've been in business now for a while.
Justin:You've tried a few things. What what what are you what's your kind of response to that?
Aaron Francis:I think it's easy to trick yourself that you're getting good responses, first of all. So I we'll we'll take, like, what I'm what I'm doing now. What I'm doing now, you know, selling education, I think there are, like, discrete and concrete signals that people are interested and it's working. I've done things before that weren't working, that had very mushy and, like, vibes based, this could be working. And it was it's like it's kinda like one of those things, you know, think back a thousand years ago when you were dating, and you were like, do I like this person?
Aaron Francis:It's like, if it's a question, it's not a question. Right? And that's kinda how it like, when it comes to is this working, it's like, is this working? If you have to ask, is this working? It's not really working that well.
Aaron Francis:And so, like, stuff I did with Colleen a long time ago, we would get on calls and people would be like, oh, this is, like, really cool. Can it do this? Like, maybe if you made it do this, and it's like, oh, that feels like they like it. But they they're not like, I need this right now. Install it?
Aaron Francis:They didn't follow-up. Can I install it right now? Mhmm. But with, you know, database school or any of these courses I've done, people will send the GIF of take my money. People will put their name on a on a waiting list, like, with no promise of anything in return.
Aaron Francis:Just like, hey. Put your name on here, and I'll let you know when it launches. And people like, thousands of people will do
Justin:it. Mhmm.
Aaron Francis:And then beyond that, it's like you launch it, and strangers that you've never spoken to and don't know you from Adam are buying. And so I've definitely experienced both. And I'll tell you, one sucks and one is awesome. But I think it's like
Brian:You the know, just I I wanted to put a I wanted to point out the thing you said about, like, it's easy to be what'd you say? It's it's easy to to see, like, false signals.
Justin:Yeah, it's easy
Aaron Francis:to fool yourself.
Brian:That's the thing, it's like almost never does something totally fail, especially if you've been at this game for a few years, people know you already. Like most things you do are going to attract some audience and some first customers. It's a question of, like, how easy does it continue to be after that.
Aaron Francis:Right? And there are lots of very nice people that want, you know, each of us individually to succeed that'll, like, cheer you on. And that feels like that feels like market validation, but it's just your friends being really supportive, which I'm extremely grateful for. It's the stuff when it's like strangers are retweeting announcements, and you're like, oh, okay. There's something of value here that this person I have never interacted with and doesn't follow me and I don't follow them.
Aaron Francis:They're retweeting it. It's not enough like, a retweet is not enough to bet, you know, your family's mortgage on, but it is that early signal that, like, oh, there may be something of value here because this rando off the street sacrificed some tiny amount of social capital to share this with their audience. And so there are better signals than just like your friends saying way to go. Yeah.
Brian:I I wanted to just say one more point on the on the larger concept, and that is, like, a lot of the advice that gets thrown around about, like, stay focused, keep grinding it out, like, don't don't quit or, like, a lot of that is sort of aimed at maybe it's like indie hackers or like people who who are shipping a lot of different stuff throughout throughout a single year. It's almost like the implication is that when somebody has a good thing, if only they they would stick with it, they would be much more successful. But since they went off and did other things, they didn't give the first thing a chance to succeed. Yeah. I think what's much more likely see, I I don't totally buy that logic because if you are seeing these repeated instances of your expectations being exceeded, there's no way you're gonna be launching other things.
Brian:Like most entrepreneurs who have hit on a nerve, who are feeling that wave of demand, you're going to be way too busy to be thinking about shiny object syndrome. And also, you're going to be way too motivated to keep riding this little rocket ship that you found. Yeah. So, like, so the only people who are even like you said, like, the only the only time that ever you're ever questioning whether I should take a take a second or third shot is because the first shot was not the it's it's not getting the the success that a a normal wave would see.
Justin:Sometimes. Sometimes. I've I've experienced the hard part about this is the nuance, which is there's definitely things that I launched where I was really pushing. I kept pushing it, and it just got a mediocre response. And Derek Sivers talks about this in his books.
Justin:Like, he talks about pushing his music for years and years and years. And it just got kind of a mediocre response. And then he launches CD Baby. And it's like, there's so much demand he can't The problem is that when we were building Transistor, you know, we have this record of us recording these Build Your SaaS episodes. And even though my memory is that, oh, yeah, things were like kind of always giving us good signals that things were working.
Justin:It's like, a couple months in, I was like, we got to build a different product. And we had this idea for spots.
Aaron Francis:I remember that. Why
Justin:was that? Well, I was feeling like the pressure of like, I don't know if this is growing too slow. I was doing lots of phone calls with people asking that very question, which is, is this working? Like, I did tons of calls with people just to get them to look at our numbers. And what was helpful was people like Ruben Gammes saying, listen, buddy, this is you're in the early stages.
Brian:Mhmm.
Justin:I wouldn't and they said there's nothing to indicate that Like, you still haven't proven that this is going to work, but there's also no indication that you should stop. And so the question of like, should I stay or should I go? Is so challenging because there's a lot of different nuance. And there were some times where we were like, maybe, yeah, maybe we should stop.
Aaron Francis:Nathan Barry was the same way. I mean, he languished with ConvertKit for forever. Yep. And then he finally did focus on it, and it just obviously blew up. And so, yeah, it is it is nuanced.
Aaron Francis:I'm I am prone to agree, I think, more with the Rob and Ruben that, like, you gotta give everything like, you gotta you gotta put enough wood behind the arrow. And then Yeah. And then you gotta cut it pretty quickly if you realize it's not gonna work. That's fine. I'm totally into that.
Aaron Francis:I don't think you need to grind for three years before you see any hope of success. But I also think the I think so all advice is helpful for some people and harmful for others. And I think Yeah. This advice is helpful for people who the first time they encounter a struggle, they pivot to something else. I think that is who that advice is helpful for, and it's not helpful for people who maybe like you and me, Brian, and maybe you too, Justin, are, like, prone to be like, I am going to, by god, make this thing work.
Aaron Francis:And, like, the advice we need to hear is like, dude, you gotta you gotta cut your losses. This thing sucks. And so Right. It's the question of who are you speaking to, and then does that advice apply to them? You know?
Aaron Francis:Like, I don't tell I don't tell my wife, you need to, like, you need to be less assertive, and you need to be more gentle. I'm like, babe, no. You gotta, like, stand up for yourself. Like, tell tell the waitress that's not what you ordered. And so, like, I'm no.
Aaron Francis:We're telling each other different advice because I understand, you know, where each of us are.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, there's like it feels like having a sense of some of the boundaries around these things is helpful. Like, Jason Cohen has this line, which is like, if you've been really grinding on something for two, three years, and it hasn't produced any results, like, that's it is that by definition, that business probably doesn't have good fundamentals. You've gotta you've gotta do something else.
Brian:The the time frame element is is the last piece that I wanted to, like, sort of bring into the into the fold here. Right? Like like, Justin, you were talking about transistor.
Justin:Mhmm.
Brian:Curious. Do you remember what was the time frame between, like, said a few months you were thinking about pivoting, but then you've then you eventually figured out the growth. Like, when did it start to actually grow? How many how many months or years in?
Justin:I mean, we launched it to the public 08/01/2018. This is gonna sound so silly. But by the following year, 08/01/2019, we were both full time.
Aaron Francis:That's so fast.
Justin:So it it that in retrospect, it happened fast.
Brian:$5.05 figure MRR supporting two full time salaries. Right?
Justin:Yeah. But you know, we started working on January. February. February, we had like 10 early access people. March.
Justin:And then it wasn't until we so we did the Product Hunt launch, 08/01/2018. It's still kind of doing whatever. And then let's say October, we started to find some marketing channels that really just started to give us some rocket fuel.
Brian:Yeah. So a year, year and a half, like you're you're off and running. Right? Like that? Yeah.
Brian:Like, I I feel like that, especially once you have, you know, high four figures, low five figure MRR within the first twelve months, like, of course, like yeah. To me, like, is a signal that that, yeah, you you probably shouldn't be be pivoting. Every case is a little bit different, but that's like that's like this is not nothing, and maybe maybe all this thing actually does need is actually time. But then there's a difference, you know, when you get even in like like, I've been at over 5 figures on on Clarity Flow, but then it's like, what number of years, you know, do you get to a threshold where it's like, okay. Yeah.
Brian:You know, Justin, you've been talking about this thing the last few weeks about, like, how, like, how much is each bet worth to you or how Mhmm. How much are you willing to bet time wise to each bet and
Aaron Francis:Yeah. What's the
Brian:r expected ROI? Like, at a certain point, reach that threshold
Aaron Francis:Yes.
Brian:Which is like, yeah, of course, like, there's there's always different things I can try to do. Like like, for me, like, with Clarity Flow, like, when I had a first pretty big plateau, I I rebranded from Zip Message to Clarity Flow and changed the whole positioning of of the and that was a major effort. It took a whole year to even just do that change. Yeah. Right?
Brian:And that that was during year three or year two and a half. And then gave it another year or two of of full time effort. And then and then it was like, you know, okay. Like yeah. There's so many factors
Justin:in this.
Brian:Then experimenting with pricing changes and experimenting with all these different things. And eventually it's like, yeah, I could still think of a few more things that I could try to juice or jolt growth. But this many years in, I'm I'd I'd rather take other shots.
Justin:Yeah. What what are you thinking, Aaron?
Aaron Francis:I'm thinking it's, like, it's very similar to Matt Winsing's story with Summit. I don't know if that was the final name of it or not. But, like you know, he he took Tiny Seed Funding and talk about a person that's, like, not gonna give up and is, like, willing to, you know, walk backwards into hell. Like, he he gave it everything he had, and it just didn't work in the end. And that happens.
Aaron Francis:And I don't know I don't think you know, we we all have such limited information from the outside. I don't think he did anything wrong there. Like, every time he found a glimmer of, like, oh, this might be the market the product market fit, Like, took a slight redirection and went all for that. But then eventually, he did have to say like, I can't find it. I can't find it.
Aaron Francis:It's over. Like, we gave it a shot. And that's just brutal. And reality. Yeah.
Aaron Francis:Like, that just happens. For every Nathan, there's 10 Matt Winsings where it's like, I did the thing and it just, you know, didn't work out. And that's just
Brian:it sucks. It it is. It's brutal, but it's at the end of the day, it's such a personal decision for each individual founder. What I mean by the personal decision, it's like, how much is this business and this many years or this timeframe, how much is that worth to me in terms of opportunity cost? And nobody can really assume what your personal preferences are for any given shot that you're taking.
Brian:So that's also thing where it's like where any outside advice, you never really know. It's almost like a not that people mean it this way. Of course, people are always well meaning and trying to be helpful. But, you know, there has to be like a a level of, like, respect for the individual entrepreneur because they have the most possible insight into their own value set and their own preferences and their own, like, threshold for, like, how long they wanna go with an individual shot before they're before they're willing to either pivot or say, like, I I'm just not feeling it with this one. Mhmm.
Brian:And let me let me just try something else. You know? Because because I think like that to me, like, that is the hard thing. It's the hard thing about startups is not the work. The hard thing about the startups is not quote unquote grinding it out.
Brian:To me, that's easy. The hard part is trusting your own intuition, your own gut.
Aaron Francis:Yeah.
Brian:Ultimately, the hardest decisions, they sort of have to be different from from what people might be telling you or conventional wisdom
Justin:or Totally.
Brian:You like, you have to trust, like, this is what I want and and, like, you know, that's the hardest thing.
Justin:I mean, I think, Aaron, you've been going through a version of this, which is like you know, you've been working in public. And some people are like, you should do AI. And you were you were saying, I don't want to do that. So how have you navigated some of this? Because now you're going back to database school.
Justin:What's been kind of your journey through that? And you tried some other things too. So how have you navigated like when to pivot? How many shots to take? What?
Aaron Francis:Yeah. With great pain and consternation is how I've navigated it. Yeah. I mean, like
Justin:Is that the name of your book with great
Aaron Francis:pain and consternation? Yeah. I I think I've navigated it, one, by having, like, that objective evidence of what's working and what's not. Like, people pay me to learn databases. Okay.
Aaron Francis:That's a point that's a point in my favor. The the wave, to borrow your illustration, Justin, the wave is obviously AI. And so, like, well, that's a reasonable bet then. Like, that that is a that's a pattern. You find the growing thing, and you get in on it.
Aaron Francis:Mhmm. But for me, it's like, okay. I do have evidence that databases are working. I also happen to look at the market and see, like, for some reason, nobody else is doing this, which is in and of itself pretty bad unless people had already paid me. Right?
Aaron Francis:If you look out at the market and you're like, white space. No one's there. It's like either very, very good or very, very bad.
Brian:Yeah. That's surprising to me to hear that, like, the you don't think of, like, any direct competitors like database school
Aaron Francis:No. In terms
Brian:of, like, really focusing on databases? Nope.
Aaron Francis:Not not a single one. I I there are there are several educators who will teach you, like, more like how to become a DBA, which is not who I'm teaching. And then there are people at the top of the stack that'll teach you, like, how to interact with your database in TypeScript. And, like, that's necessary, but that's not what I'm teaching. For, like, solid full stack back end developers, like, I I need to learn how to be an expert user of the database.
Aaron Francis:I don't need to learn how to host it. I'm just gonna have Supabase, PlanetScale, Neon, Terso, have somebody else host it. Just need to be really good at driving the thing. I don't need to build the car. No.
Aaron Francis:I don't think I don't think there's anybody out there. And so navigating that like, navigating, you know, the the people who are like, AI is the gold rush, and, like, I have proof that this other thing's working, and it feels like there's white space. A lot of it came down to, like, what do I wanna do? Justin, I think you shared with with us, like, the there was, like, you get 12 shots or something along those lines. Yeah.
Aaron Francis:What do I wanna do for the next three years? And the answer kept
Brian:coming back.
Aaron Francis:Like, I don't wanna do what you're doing, Brian. Like, you're crushing it, and I I don't wanna do that at all. Like, I have zero interest in doing that. Yeah. This one.
Aaron Francis:And so it just kept coming back like, I want to do database education, and I wanna do it in a way that, like, I'm super proud of. And so this is this is my this is my bet where, you know, centralizing on database school now is I've got proof. I feel like there's still space in the market. Companies are still reaching out to me to do courses, and so I have enough objective evidence, and it lines up with, like, what's inside my heart. And it's like, alright.
Aaron Francis:Well, we gotta give that a go and see if we can make a living off of that.
Brian:Yeah. And I love I love everything about that. I think you're totally right, to lean into and and really focus on that question of, what do I want to build my business around? What what what do I want my job to be every day? Right?
Brian:And and I've been on board with your with your focus on database school since you've been doing it, but I I never really quite heard you talk about the lack of competition and the white space that you're filling here.
Aaron Francis:Mhmm.
Brian:And that makes me like this even more for Especially when I think about because databases are so it's such a huge market, so much surface area.
Aaron Francis:And it cuts across
Brian:all And you're right. There is a difference between just being a DBA and a developer. Every developer is interacting with databases. Whenever I hear you talk about upcoming courses and things you're doing with database school, I think about it like I want you to create some sort of course that speaks to me because data like, the back end, especially database interaction, is always my weakest or, like, black gray area Exactly. Of my of my personal stack.
Brian:Right? Like, I just use Postgres and and SQLite with with Rails, and I'm I'm sort of afraid to touch anything else. And that That's you I mean, you're you're
Aaron Francis:giving me marketing copy. You're a senior, you know, back end full stack engineer, and you're like, I know that it's there. I can use it, but, like, I do not feel confident. You are the archetype of the person that I am going after. And the good news is you're a grown man with money.
Aaron Francis:Like, that's great. That is the good news. And so when I do fear about missing out on Zoomers and, like, the new vibe coding kids, I remember, no. There are a lot of, like, professional engineers who interact with the database and don't feel good about it. And, like, when when the query is slow, they're like, shoot, what do I do now?
Aaron Francis:And so that's the part that I'm like, yeah, I'll just go after them. And if you wanna vibecode your way into into an app and never learn about the database, a time will come when you will reach out to me. And so I'm okay waiting for now. So yeah.
Justin:Yeah. I think it's also good to distinguish between in terms of the a wave being customer demand. I mean, databases is just a large, slowly growing wave.
Aaron Francis:It's an offshore tsunami. Yeah.
Justin:Yeah. Like, I I was just even thinking, like, how many databases were there in 1972? And then how many databases are now in 2025? Like, this is a this wave of just number of databases out in the world is just steadily growing.
Aaron Francis:The number
Justin:of people who have to interact with them is steadily growing. It's not very sexy. And I do think sometimes those waves have advantages over kind of these gold rush waves. So AI is definitely kind of a gold rush wave. Crypto is an AI gold rush wave.
Justin:And, you know, sometimes those gold rushes can turn into just like really sustainable Mhmm. Solid markets with customer demand, and it pays to be first. But there is more risk, I would say, in some of these things that can go up really fast. They can go down really fast too.
Aaron Francis:Is it NFTs or is it mobile applications? Like, one was a wave that persisted and one was a wave that just fell off the face of the earth.
Justin:Yeah. I don't know. Who can say?
Brian:I really like the I mean, I love what you're doing with database school because it's so fundamental. Mhmm. Like and it's it's one of these, like, there's always gonna be databases. There's so many different types no matter which stack you're on. Even of of course, like with AI, even more so now with AI, there's a like getting into vector databases and stuff, which I don't even quite understand what all that is.
Brian:Know, like God, just
Aaron Francis:writing down all these quotes, man.
Brian:Yeah, man. No. Seriously, that is a real pain point in my personal stack. Mean, I you got databaseschool.com. Like, love how Not bad.
Brian:Fundamental that is so obvious what it is. Mhmm. And I just can't believe that there's not, like, more competition given given the wide span of what databaseschool.com could mean in the market.
Aaron Francis:I know you look at like basically anything else, TypeScript, React, Tailwind, Laravel, and there are a plethora of teachers. And, you know, in the database world, there are some there are some teachers, but you don't see you don't see, like, the the Twitter web dev slick cool kids going after databases. And it's like Mhmm. Why are there 50 TypeScript instructors and zero database instructors? You know, there's a ton on Udemy and there's some on, you know, YouTube, but it's in in my personal opinion, it's not the same level as, like, a Kent C.
Aaron Francis:Dodds or a Matt Pocock reaching the database world. And so I'm like, alright, Kent and Matt. Great. I'm gonna do that. But over here where I'm apparently the only one.
Justin:Yeah. There's like all these inters if there's a Venn diagram, the hardest the hard thing about entrepreneurship is it feels like there has to be all these intersecting It's awful. Venn diagrams. It's like you need founder market fit. You need founder product fit.
Justin:You need product market fit. You need growing demand. You need there to be more customers today tomorrow than there was today. You need like, there's just so many
Brian:Execution. Right.
Justin:Execution. You need revenue. Is fit. Yes. Profit.
Justin:This is actually probably a good segue into tomorrow. I'm going to speak at my son who's in grade 12. I'm gonna go speak at his entrepreneurship class. Cool. And I was like, trying to think about
Brian:Got your slides together?
Justin:I mean, I don't know if I can have slides.
Aaron Francis:That's awesome.
Justin:So so here's the structure I have right now, but maybe you could help me. Because like, it's like, how what do I communicate? Do I communicate like the dozens of things that we just talked about? Well, even like talking about founder market fit is a big topic in of itself. Talking about founder product fit is a big So here's the structure.
Justin:Let me know what you guys think.
Aaron Francis:Oh, a preview.
Justin:So I'm going to start with a story of being in grade 12. And one of the first businesses I ever did is I teamed up with my friend Adrian. We were going to raves in the big city. And we lived in a small farm town. And we decided to put on a rave in our hometown.
Justin:So we rented a venue. We toured around to all of the there's like three different high schools in our area. And we would set up a DJ booth during lunch, spin records, and then sell tickets to people in the cafeteria or whatever. And I think that's
Brian:I could a kid raising his hand. Mister Jackson, what is a rave?
Aaron Francis:Yeah. What's record? Yeah.
Justin:They might they might know. So I think that's a fun story because it's like being grade 12. I think I'm just gonna bring I have a bunch of photos and an old photo album of that rave, and I'm just gonna pass those around. They can look at those. Then I was gonna talk to them.
Justin:So just three little stories about businesses I started. I'm gonna tell them about doing video production and web design in college, a lot of wedding videos, and kind of like, I think illustrating, like, the rave was kind of a sexy event. But, like, there's also this kind of like, just go and see if you can get regular customers every month doing something simple, one hour in, money out, that kind of thing. And then fast forward a lot of years and say, well, today I'm running transistor and this is what we do. But now then, after that, I want to give them something practical.
Justin:And so broadly, I have a bunch of points, which is the the luck surface area talk or the Aaron Francis, you do you can just do things talk or shipping your work increases your luck, those kind of things. And talking a lot about especially how almost every significant step up in my life was connected to a person. So you need to get out. You need to meet people. Here's some ways to meet people.
Justin:All of this stuff is kind of under luck surface area.
Brian:I think if I could boil down, like, maybe one piece of advice I would give to a young person coming out of high school or college, it would be to think so it I mean, I'm speaking to a kid who might have the entrepreneurial bug or or the seed of it, and they're thinking, like, I I someday wanna be an entrepreneur and and be. I wasn't actually thinking that way when I was coming out of high school and college. Even though I I come from, like like, in my family, there have been entrepreneurs. Mhmm. My father, grandfathers, they they all owned businesses, but I didn't actually see myself or think of myself as an entrepreneur until a few years into my career.
Brian:But if I do think back on it, the early jobs like, most of these kids are gonna come out of high school, college with the need to get a real job. Even if they wanna be have a business, they're gonna they they should start with jobs. Yep. But I think the tendency in general, and and a lot of adults around you and institutions will push you toward, get the highest paying job you possibly can. Mhmm.
Brian:That doesn't matter when you're 20 years old, in my opinion. Yeah. Of course, you gotta pay your bills and leave your parents' house and be and rent rent your first apartment and stuff like that. But it's much more important to to use your earliest jobs as your stepping stone to the next thing.
Justin:Mhmm.
Brian:And and that could be learning. That could like you said, like, increasing your your surface area. I I specifically remember going in for an interview at the web agency that hired me in New York. I went into that interview, and I was I said to the person interviewing me, I was like, you know, up until now, I'm sort of an amateur when it comes to making websites with, like, Dreamweaver and a little bit of HTML. I I'm applying for this internship at this agency so that I can transition from being an amateur to a professional when it comes to web web design.
Brian:And they ended up hiring me. I was an intern for, I don't know.
Justin:You gave them that intentionality? Like, you're like, this this is what I want. Oh, that's great.
Brian:And they brought me on as an intern for, like, maybe ten, twelve months. I I they then hired me on as a full time, you know, entry level employee. I was there for, three or four years, and I became a professional web designer. I went from designing websites for my band to working on the website for Pepsi and AT and T and Discover Card at the professional level.
Justin:Right? I love that advice. I I've got that written down. Like, I think early jobs are super important. And that, like, if I hadn't got a job in with a software company, I would have never, I don't think, started a software company.
Justin:Even though I was into computers and into the web and all that stuff. Just working with people and having someone mentor you in a really focused way and being around other people and getting to see a working business. Pretty invaluable.
Brian:Yeah. I mean, your your first especially your first job or first, second, third job, start to observe how the real world works. Mhmm. Because not like, not only did I learn the fundamentals of being a professional web designer, learning how to build things, learning how to learn how to build things technically, But I also got to observe how this agency sells to clients. Yes.
Brian:And how do they structure contracts? How do they have project managers who deal with problematic clients?
Justin:Yeah.
Brian:Like, that stuff was so valuable to me when I when I later went out on my own.
Justin:I think also opening up your world. Like, the businesses I started in my teen years and then my twenties were like small world businesses. Like, I was like, oh, I wanna start a snowboard shop. Well, that's because that's what I could see or that's what I wanted. But once I started working jobs, my world opened up and I was like, oh, this is what companies with money do.
Justin:Yeah. You know, this is how they buy. What about you, Aaron? What any any grade 12 advice?
Aaron Francis:Yeah. I'll hit you with the other side. I would say, you know, the first side is, like, get a job and learn a bunch of stuff. I would say go out and try to make your first service dollar as fast as you possibly can. And I think because I think what happens in grade 12 and through to college and beyond for me was like, I watched the social network, and I'm like, what's the great like, what's the big idea that I'm gonna, you know, come up with?
Aaron Francis:And I would have been better served for truly starting a lawn care company in high school
Justin:Mhmm.
Aaron Francis:And learning how to run a business and talk to customers and get paid and do accounting. Like, I would have been well served to do that versus, like, I'm gonna build the next Facebook or whatever. Mhmm. And, like, my advice to senior would be just get in there and mix it up. And, like, don't don't put all of your hopes and dreams on this first idea.
Aaron Francis:You could tell you could say, you know, Elon started with I think it was, like, Zipcar or something. Mhmm. And, like, you just gotta get in the game and, like, stay alive, and the next thing will reveal itself. And your first act is not your last. I would say, like, get out there, make a dollar, and then just see what happens.
Justin:Yeah. I love this I love this idea of, like, service businesses, I think, are so great. And I I I think I might use this example.
Aaron Francis:There you go.
Justin:But Vernon Spider Control, this guy, Darren is his name, young guy no, sorry, Darcy. And he came over to our house and we we had a bunch of spiders. My wife is freaking out. A bunch of black widows. And I just as a business, I love this kind of business where it's like, hey, I need my car detailed.
Justin:Hey, I need spiders removed. And don't need a ton of training. You just need to you could probably learn it all on your your own. But people like me just wanna hire people like this. And
Brian:I love these. I was I was driving the other day. I saw a a sign on on on some random piece of lawn around my town. It said it said, we pick up dog poop. Phone number.
Justin:You're like,
Aaron Francis:I know what you do. Yeah. I get it.
Justin:I'm gonna write that
Brian:down. And I've had a dog, and that is a that is a painful, you know, chore that you have to do all the time. Like, if if I had known that, like, I could actually hire somebody to go into my backyard and clean it up, it'd be great.
Aaron Francis:Yeah. Yeah. I remember coming across I can't find it now, but I remember coming across one that was like, we fix squeaky wooden floors. So, like, if your wood floors are squeaky, that's what we do. And I just know that, like, if you ever have a squeaky wooden floor, those are the guys you wanna call because everything they do.
Aaron Francis:Yeah. Exactly. I just talked to somebody yesterday who does garage floor epoxy ing, and so he makes those floors super pretty concrete floors. And they have started they have started a a training business where you fly up to Boise. He's up the guy's up in Boise where Steve is.
Aaron Francis:You fly up to Boise for, like, two or three day workshop, and you, like, you take the training. They set up your LLC. You go on-site to a customer, and, like, you learn how to start an epoxy floor business. And, like, is it sexy? No.
Aaron Francis:But, like, are people googling how like, I need to epoxy my garage floor? Because, yeah, is everywhere. Pay you for it. So that would be, like, my, you know, my one zero one business these days would be just start something where people are paying, and you can, like the bar the barrier to entry is very low Pressure washing. Like, just get out there.
Aaron Francis:Because what that teaches you is, dude, you gotta pick up the phone. Like, you gotta go knock on some doors. And that's the thing I wish I had learned when I was 17 is, like, sorry, dude. Go knock on a door. I wish I had learned that rather than, oh, I'll just stay back here and, like, pretend I'm starting a business, but really I'm just coding all day.
Brian:Yeah. Yeah. The the the other thing for young kids, and all of them are gonna hate to to they're not gonna accept this advice, you know, but but they need to hear it is that, like, you don't know what you don't know.
Aaron Francis:Mhmm.
Brian:And and I think that's also the benefit of going in and and getting a job for the leverage that you can. Aside from the basic salary, you'll get an entry level salary fine. But it's it's about the leverage. It's about learning. It's about learning the world, learning people.
Brian:But then you're gonna discover things that you never even knew existed. And that is you you might think you have an interesting idea now, but what you discover out there in the real world in some random industry that you happen to have gotten a job in, that's gonna be the click that could change everything. I mean, I I just think I constantly think back to this. When I got that job at the web agency, I had no inkling, no concept that I might someday go out on my own. Mhmm.
Brian:I never even thought of the idea of becoming a freelancer. I didn't I didn't have the word in my vocabulary. I didn't know that free freelance web designers even existed. Right? Yep.
Brian:So I got a job at this New York agency, worked there for a couple of years, and then I noticed that that agency was hiring freelance web designers. Like this they would hire this guy to come in two days a week and just and just, you know, fill in contractor to help help us fit finish out one website. And then that guy would go off and play with his band and do these other projects with his life. And I'm and I'm sitting there nine to five, five days a week at this agency thinking like, Wait, that guy, I have the same skills as that guy. How come he gets to only come in two days a week and do other stuff and work for other companies?
Brian:That's And when a a small light bulb went on. I was like, oh, freelance web designer. And then I started googling, and I found a website called Freelance Switch, and and I started reading about it. And I was like and then, like, six six months later, I was like, hi. I'd like to resign, and I'm gonna become a freelance web designer now.
Brian:You know? And, like but, like, I had no idea, like, that would be a thing. You know?
Justin:I I often think about the Sasha Grave. Guys remember Sasha?
Aaron Francis:Oh, yeah.
Justin:Sasha Grave. Yeah. He introduced me to this idea of fog of war. And I just love that idea of, like, being in a game map, and you get plunked down in a map, and you can only see certain things around you. And then as you walk around, more and more of the map gets illuminated.
Justin:And so much of life is like that. Like, unless you're getting yourself into those dark areas with your little flashlight, you'll never know.
Aaron Francis:I got I got one more for you that I think is
Justin:Oh, yeah.
Aaron Francis:Hit me. Super important and out of reach for us now is so, like, old old people are always talking about how young people don't wanna work. Right? Mhmm. It's just like for thousands of years, old people have been talking about how young people don't wanna work.
Aaron Francis:Right? So if you're a young person, you have this advantage where you can basically go on LinkedIn and DM an old timer and be like Mhmm. Hey. I'm, like, I'm really trying to work really hard and start this, like, pressure washing business. I would love to buy you lunch and, like, learn how to be a businessman like you are.
Aaron Francis:And you know who's gonna freaking love that? A 55 year old guy who, like, thinks that the kids are lost. He's gonna go home and tell his wife, the kids are alright. I'm gonna and he's gonna pull you under his wing, and he's gonna show you the ropes. And so, like
Brian:a It's good one.
Aaron Francis:That is an advantage that they have. They can play against type and go, like, go literally go on LinkedIn and start connecting with their dad's friends and be like, hey. I'm gonna start this business, and I wanna work really hard. And those guys are gonna lose their freaking mind stumbling over themselves to help them out. Yes.
Aaron Francis:Like I
Justin:love this.
Aaron Francis:That's that's out of reach for us now. But for the kids, the kids can still do it.
Justin:I had a version of this, but I hadn't thought of it with the LinkedIn thing, which is I would always say, like, being a student is like your calling card. Like, that's a get in to any room free. You you can email me. Can call me. You can you show up at my doorstep even.
Justin:And it's like, hey, like, I'm trying to figure this out. I'm looking for people to help me, or I'm looking for my first customer or whatever. You have this one window of opportunity to do that in your life, which is
Brian:That dot edu email address is valuable.
Justin:Yes.
Brian:And and you don't you won't have it for very long. Right? Like, if you so I mean, because, like, I'll ignore every single cold email I get. But if it's from a dot you tell me you're doing a prod a research project into some industry
Justin:Yeah.
Brian:There's a pretty good chance that we're watching.
Aaron Francis:Like you name your business after the local high school because you're a student. So you're like, we're wildcat pressure washers. And you're like, we support the wildcats because I'm actually in high school right now. Parents are gonna lose their minds. They're gonna be like, oh, the kid's trying.
Justin:You can you can share that with the newspaper. They'll do a story on it.
Aaron Francis:Like, there's such a cheat code.
Justin:It's so yeah. I love that one. Totally agree. Well, that's great. I'm I'm excited.
Justin:I gotta
Aaron Francis:I'm gonna fun. I'll have to report back on the next episode how
Justin:it goes. Yeah. Just to see what
Brian:I I do wanna hear, like, what the questions that come up are and, what the reaction is. You know?
Justin:Yeah. I mean, I asked my son and his girlfriend what they because they're both in this class together. And one thing they were interested in is what motivated me when I was young? What was pulling me into this? And that was interesting to think about.
Justin:Honestly, the funny thing was one of my initial entrepreneur heroes was this guy named Phil Fisher, who started the VeggieTales studio.
Aaron Francis:Oh, no way.
Justin:And I just love this idea of this, like, independent guy started this studio. Like, he started just making animations in his Yeah. His room and then grew this company. And that was like I I kind of did need a hero or somebody that was like had kind of demonstrated he was in this creative business and he was building this thing. So, yeah, I've been trying to think about that too.
Justin:Like, how the the kinds of things that actually motivated me when I was 18 and 19 and wanting to do these things and
Brian:I you know, the the mentor or the inspiration from from watching other people, that that was definitely a thing for me as well. But it I started to find those figures after I was on my own. Mhmm.
Aaron Francis:Like, when
Brian:I when I ran it when I started listening to, like, Mixergy interviews, and then and then through that, discovering people like, you know, like Rob Walling and then the stars for the rest of us, and then, like, eighty paint Painar starting Wu Themes was a was a actually really big influence on me at the time. Sort of like stumbling into their stuff. But actually back backtracking that, again, go from the transition from being full time employed and then making the decision to quit and become a freelancer, I did that in 2008 when I was in my twenties. And this is another piece of advice that I would give to young people is when you're young, like, that is the time to take risks.
Aaron Francis:Yeah. Jeez. No kidding.
Brian:It's so, so much harder when you get older. And I literally remember verbalizing this, like, to my parents at the time, like, sort of, like, justifying the idea, like, yeah. I'm I'm I'm foregoing this this safe, kinda low, but but safe salary that I had at the time at this at this nine to five job. Mhmm. And I'm gonna try to figure out this freelance thing.
Brian:And I was I was saying to them, was like, look. I'm single. I I don't have a mortgage. I don't have kids. You know?
Brian:I do have I I have to pay rent and stuff. But, like, if I'm gonna take this type of risk with my career, I might as well do it right now than later on when I'm married and have kids and have had a mortgage. Right? And Yeah. Of course, I I did that in January 2008, and then there was the economic crisis, like, ten months later.
Brian:Unlucky. Which I I look back at at that as, like, a huge stroke of of good luck because I Yeah. I honestly think that if I had held on to that job ten ten more months, I would have held on to it for dear life through the through the economic crisis if if they didn't let me go. And then I don't know if I ever would have gone out on my own after that. You know?
Justin:Paradoxically, starting a business in a downturn is actually sometimes a good thing.
Brian:And as a freelancer, it was huge. Like, they were hiring freelancers. They were not hiring full time employees. Right? Yeah.
Brian:But, like, that that's the thing is, like, take risks. That's that's why it's, like, less important to go for, like, the highest salary you possibly can right out of school. Just just go for the the industry where you can learn and leverage Yeah. Because you can make money later.
Justin:Awesome, guys. I'm gonna take that in. What would we wanna finish on one more thing here? Brian, you had metrics for deciding what product to work on next. Sure.
Brian:Do you
Justin:wanna talk about that?
Brian:Yeah. I mean, you know, maybe this is not such a big one, but I'm just thinking about, like, what's on my mind this week. And, you know, I I just shipped AgentOS two point o, and that's that was like a a big project that is finally out the door and done. And so now I am not done. Obviously, I'm gonna continue updating and stuff, but that was a big project that's done.
Brian:I also earlier this week, I spent the entire day recording a massive video tutorial for that, which is not live yet. It's it's in editing right now. So yesterday, I spent the day sort of, like, decompressing after that big project. And now I'm, like, making a list of all the all the projects and product that I wanna build, and I'm trying to decide which one to do first, second, third, how to prioritize these things.
Justin:I'm interested just on that. Aaron, how are you making those decisions these days? Are you just one foot in front of the other for database school? Or what's your matrix for deciding on what to work on next?
Aaron Francis:I'm just I'm just crawling one knee in front of the other. Yeah. Yeah. So I've got I've got this sponsored course, Intro to Postgres, sponsored by Supabase. That's the next thing.
Aaron Francis:Oh, sweet. So that one's that one's coming out, you know, in the next several weeks. And then after that, I'll do I'm I'm, like, very focused on database school. So that helps. That constrains it all.
Aaron Francis:And then I have my pick of whatever I want after that, and it's gonna be Redis. I'm gonna do a intro to Redis or just, you know, simple k v key value cache with Redis. And then after that, I have another sponsored one coming in. It's like March or April or something. So my my timeline is pretty well planned out.
Brian:Yeah. Also nice that you have these sponsors because it's like you're you're literally booked.
Aaron Francis:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's great.
Brian:I think You've made these commitments to in your schedule that are
Aaron Francis:Yeah. And that's I think that's gonna I'm gonna try to make that my plan. Sponsorship adds a whole level of stress because there's, you know, external parties and timelines and stuff. I was
Justin:wondering about that.
Aaron Francis:Decreases the level because there's money. So it's like, you know, how much you know, what's it worth? So I think my my plan is to try to do a sponsored course and then a couple to, like, grow subscription base. And then sponsored course, which will be free to the end user in most cases, and then subscription base. And then try to do it like that because as we all know, growing subscriptions is just, like, brutal in terms of the the ramp of getting that revenue in.
Justin:When you say subscriptions, you mean, like, people signing up for database school as
Aaron Francis:a school will be a Lyricast style subscription moving forward. Like
Brian:that. Yeah.
Justin:So What are you thinking? Like, is that gonna be a monthly, annual? What's the have you figured out any of that yet?
Aaron Francis:Start with annual only. It's I'm not I'm not married to either, but I may start with annual only. And then Yes. Back it back it down from there. So I'm
Brian:doing annual only with with Builder Methods Pro.
Justin:Yeah.
Brian:I I really have no interest in doing $29 a month, $19 a month.
Justin:Like Yeah.
Aaron Francis:And part of it is, like, in the beginning, you're kinda, like, you're kinda, like, trusting me that in the next year, I'm gonna produce enough content that'll that'll make you happy with that price. And versus, like, you pay for a month and I don't put out enough in a single month and then you bounce. And it's like, guys, like, we're we're we're getting there. So I'm hoping with the back catalog as it is, so SQLite, Mastering Postgres, and MySQL, and this new intro to Postgres will all be in database school under one brand. Yeah.
Aaron Francis:And all of them, except for this one that Superbase has sponsored, all of those will be paid. Like, you have to be a subscribing member to get mastering Postgres SQLite and MySQL. And so I'm hoping there's enough of a draw already to be like, hey. Pay for a year and you get, you know, one of each of the major flavors of database, and there's, you know, Redis to come in the next several months. That's that's my hope.
Aaron Francis:But
Justin:Mhmm. I like it.
Aaron Francis:Yeah. I've got a list of, like, I got a list of, like, you know, 50 things I could do next. And it's just a matter of, like, what do I think is most popular, and what do I feel comfortable with, and what do I think, you know, I wanna I wanna teach.
Brian:Yeah. So you you have the benefit of, like, having these you sort of have, like, a lineup, like, whether they're sponsored or at least you know what the and also you're structuring it in terms of, like, big topical courses. Uh-huh. I also have a annual membership that's gonna be the model for Builder Methods Pro. But I'm thinking less about, like, big standalone topical courses, and it's just growing up growing up a big library of of small bite sized videos.
Brian:And maybe a a bunch of them will string together over time, but it's you know, so I'm not thinking of it in terms of that. And I also don't have, like, commitments to any specific product. So so it's a little bit hard like, I have several ideas that are competing for my like, I wanna do them all.
Aaron Francis:And Mhmm.
Brian:And then there's also, like, little like, smaller projects that definitely have to happen. Like I have a I'm doing a workshop next week. I have to do the slides between now and Tuesday of next week.
Aaron Francis:Right?
Brian:Yeah. But then like okay. So like one small one is like for for Builder Methods Pro, I wanna create profile pages for every member. Mhmm. So that they so people can post like their expertise and their background and and people can search and connect with other members and
Justin:Yeah.
Brian:You know, React people can find React people and Rails people can find Rails people.
Aaron Francis:Mhmm.
Brian:Some of that is already happening in our Discord, but I I would like to have, like, an official member database that people can browse and search. Yep. That's one project. I probably have, like, three actual software app ideas that I wanna build.
Aaron Francis:Yeah. So I have a question on those.
Brian:Can I ask that now?
Aaron Francis:Yeah. So my question on that is like, is that a part of Builder Methods Pro or is that like, I'm gonna use all these things I learned and go build out a piece of software? Like, where does how does that fit into, like, going back to maybe Focus and what like, where does that fit in, and does it is it self feeding?
Brian:It's this is where I this this is why I I used the word matrix. In my current business, I look at that question differently than I have in other businesses. It's very easy to look at what I'll describe as these tools that I'm gonna build as, like, these are all shiny objects. These are all distractions. I don't see it that way.
Brian:These these are three okay. So I haven't I haven't actually listed them. There's, three stand alone product ideas. Call them, like, small SaaS ideas. Most of them are tools that I will use, like scratch my own itch tools that will help me run Builder Methods Pro.
Brian:The the core business is building up Builder Methods Pro. Right?
Aaron Francis:Mhmm.
Brian:But everything that I work on is material for video content. So when I build out tool number one or even when I build out those profile pages for members, like, that's a project that I need to ship Yeah. But I also need to need to be creating videos at every step of the way and pull out teachable moments from these projects. And and those videos become the material in the video library for Builder Methods Pro. Mhmm.
Brian:Also, like, through through building out real projects, I'm learning and coming up with ideas that turn into YouTube videos. Like, this business starts with the YouTube channel into workshops, into Builder Methods Pro, and the content, aside from the from the community, the content that you get is this growing library of videos. And what I'm still trying to figure out right now is like, how do I make these videos not just like documentary of like, here's here's my Tuesday update on this project. But like, when I'm working on a project, I have to figure out like, what can I extract from today's work Right? That is a self contained, teachable lesson that I can put a title on and tag it and and drop it into the library for for members.
Brian:That's like, I need to be getting into the rhythm of, like, every day I'm building stuff, and I'm documenting it with quick ten, fifteen minute videos that are easy to consume for members. I you know, some of these tools will be offered as, like, real tools to the market externally. That's like, if they get a customer base, that's great. If they become, like, little assets in the market that that can get a little bit of extra side hustle revenue or maybe become a small SaaS asset that I could sell off at some point, great. I don't necessarily care.
Brian:My my first order my first ROI for, like or reason why I would wanna do one of these things is, a, it's a it's a tool that will save me time and help me operate my business more efficiently. B, it's a tool that will make for a whole lot of good material for video content. Mhmm. C, just the act of building keeps me fresh and learning and sharp on building with AI. And then and then d would be like, this could be a tool that others could buy and use.
Aaron Francis:You know? Yeah. Okay. I'm on I'm on board. I'm on board with that.
Aaron Francis:And I would say and then I'll throw it to you, Justin. I would say one thing you can do with this is, yes, definitely extract the clean ten minute, fifteen minute video. I would also, either internally or on YouTube, post the two, three, four hour working session, knowing full well that most people won't watch it, but, like, the super fans will, and some people will really, like, super dig the raw version. And that way, you get you get double duty out of the content.
Brian:It's interesting. Yeah. I was literally just thinking about this this morning. I was I I was spending some time thinking through, like, what should be my actual routine for like, I'm trying to reconcile my mind, like, how do I actually work on software products? The way that I like to work and be creative and be able able to ship, and how do I extract and document on video?
Brian:Because I've never done the live streaming of me working. It would just be like me staring at the screen for hours.
Justin:Which is part of live streaming. Sometimes you're just staring there and
Brian:Where where I've come to with it and and maybe you're right, Aaron. Maybe I should just, like, hit record, let it run. Like, I actually thought about, like, what if I just hit record in the morning and just produce, like, eight hours of footage and then figure out a way to cut it down at some point? Mhmm. I don't know how
Aaron Francis:that would work. There's there's a step inside of live streaming, which is that. And so I've done that before where it's like, I'm not live streaming. I'm recording me actually working on a thing, and the video comes out to be three hours, and the recording session was maybe four or something like that. Wow.
Aaron Francis:And it's just like, I don't know, man. I'm gonna throw it on YouTube. And people freaking loved it, and it blew my mind. I'm like, who is watching this and why? Yeah.
Aaron Francis:But something that gets you is people will tell you which parts need to be extracted. They'll be like, oh, shoot. I didn't know you could do. And you're like, I thought everybody knew that. Let me pull that out into a ten minute video.
Justin:Yeah. So The way that I know
Aaron Francis:that I like that. Say go all the way livestream because that adds a whole level of pressure and production and personality that, like, I don't super love livestreaming because you gotta be like, woah. I can't believe this. What's happening? But I would I would do, like, a work like, I this is a working session, and that's a great name for it.
Aaron Francis:Like, this is a working session.
Brian:I do know that, like, you like, the YouTube algorithm, like, there people have reported that, like, these super long videos do well because of, like, the watch time and all that. But the I I I just don't know that I could make it interesting enough. And so what I've what I've sort of come come to is, like, let me just do the work the way I know how to do it privately, not recorded. Sure. That's fine.
Brian:And and then and then, like, throughout the day, like, once or twice in the day, like, okay. I just I just finished an important piece of this project. Let me pause, gather some takeaways, and I'll and I'll record a video like, here's what I just built, and here's my thinking behind that, and and here is the topic of wireframing a new app. Like, today, I just finished the wireframe for this one
Justin:Yeah.
Brian:UI. Do you think you could
Justin:do that live?
Brian:You know?
Justin:Do you think you could do that
Brian:quite live? I think that like, I I think I would still need to create it first and then unpack it.
Justin:That's what I mean. Like, like, could you do the unpacking as a livestream?
Brian:Yeah. Maybe.
Justin:Yeah. The the one thing that's nice about livestream
Brian:And maybe for members, like, that could be, like, a member benefit is, like, they see the livestream.
Justin:You can just pop the the nice thing about livestreaming is that it has this I I don't need to edit this. I just I'm just going to go live. I'm gonna have a rough idea of what I'm gonna talk about. And I'm just gonna describe it. And then that's the video.
Justin:And whoever shows up, that's great. I I like the fact that you don't have to edit it. Like, it's just this thing. It's like Yeah. Here's hey.
Justin:Here's hey, everybody. I've just been working all day. I'm it's still fresh. Let me show you what I've done, and then you show people, and then you walk through that stuff.
Brian:I am I am treating these videos as more raw. Like like, today, I actually just posted one in in the pro Discord. Just looms, just like ten minute. Like, I'm not editing it. I'm not sending it to my editor.
Brian:This is not the way what I do on YouTube. This is just like quick, like, here's the takeaway. Let me show it to you.
Justin:Yeah. I like that.
Brian:And that's what that's what all these are gonna be. And then the other thought is like, okay. So like each one of these projects is gonna take me several weeks to go from start to finish. So I should theoretically be able to pull out at least ten, twelve standalone ten minute recordings of like moments in time in the development of this app. Right?
Brian:And and and so that let's say, like, one app results in 10 or 15 videos that will go into the pro member library, just raw looms. They're they're tighter, but, you know, just record them, upload them. Then okay. I finished the app. I've got these, like, ten, fifteen videos.
Brian:Then I can pull clips from those, like the highlight reel, and and you and then edit together like a like a nice polished YouTube video
Aaron Francis:Mhmm.
Brian:That shows, like, the making of this app, and that might end up being a fifteen or twenty minute video. Yeah. And and I can turn that into, like, like, real content, like, documentary style, like video that that adds value. But then it's like, if you really want the full picture of this and and and unpack it with with 15 different videos Yeah. Become a a Builder Methods Pro member and and you see it.
Justin:Yeah. That's good. Yeah. I I think that's worth trying.
Aaron Francis:For sure. Don't but don't don't forget. People people want and people that follow you specifically want to build products and want to follow journeys. And so, like, if this thing is gonna take you five weeks and you release, you know, a new three hour working session a couple times a week where you're like, hey. I'm building this thing.
Aaron Francis:Remember? Like, I this is the ride along show. And you, like, you put it in that frame, and maybe this is, you know, for pro members only or whatever. I don't know. But you put it in that frame of, like, this is a this is a working session.
Aaron Francis:Don't watch this if you want super tight, like, takeaway tips, but this is my ride along journey. This is my bootstrapped web of Builder Methods Pro. And people are gonna, like, watch that for, yes, AI, whatever, but, like, wants ride along content. Like, they wanna watch people build products. And so if you can and especially if you can get double or triple duty out of something, I'm like, record the three hours where you're working and stumbling and backing up and being like, oh, shoot.
Aaron Francis:This didn't work. I think that's valuable.
Brian:Yeah. I've never really done I've never I was just thinking about this last night. I was like, what if in the morning, I just hit record and, like, stop the recording at the end of the day and, like, see see what get gets on onto the tape and see what's usable.
Aaron Francis:You know? That that's a big swing and feels like a lot of pressure. I would probably if I were you, I would sit down.
Brian:Realistic, there's probably, like, a three hour.
Aaron Francis:Yeah. I would sit down and say, alright. I'm gonna work on newsletter builder, or I'm gonna work on wireframe generator for three hours, and this is my moving the product forward. And you all can watch me. And this, like, also shows, like, I'm I'm I'm in it.
Aaron Francis:Like, this is not coming from a talking head. Like, I'm in the freaking weeds building the stuff. I think I that's valuable.
Brian:I think if I'm honest, my fear with that is is it would it would prevent me from doing my work the way that I know how. And even if even if I know the point isn't for me to, like, narrate what I'm doing and present, I would still be thinking, I'm on camera right now. People are gonna see this, you know, like
Aaron Francis:for you. Record record it a couple times with the commitment that you're gonna trash it, and just see how it goes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron Francis:Just say, I'm gonna hit record, but I am not allowed to publish this. Like, I'm not allowed to show anybody this Yeah. And just do it as if
Brian:That's good.
Aaron Francis:You are going to, knowing full well you're not allowed to to publish it. And then just see, like, what's the vibe. And if the vibe is wrong, forget about it. But if the vibe is right, you've just gotten a three hour, you know, work product that people can watch and, like, become more connected with you.
Brian:I also do think that, like, if I I I like that. That is a good challenge. I should try that. But I I also like the idea of just hitting record, letting it run. I'm not I'm not gonna narrate anything.
Brian:I'm not gonna, like, say anything. I'm just gonna work like I normally work Mhmm. Theoretically. And then at the end of it, if I could just, like, sort of scrub through the footage and and see if there's, like, a quick, easy, streamlined way to cut the most interesting parts and then use those in some sort of finished product.
Justin:Mhmm. I I like Dave Junta's Dave Junta's got an idea, which is to you need a he didn't say this, but he said you need the computer to turn on the camera and record without you knowing. And then I was like, oh, this is a perfect use for AI. It's like, I need an AI agent that just turns on my camera and starts recording, and then it can decide which are the more interesting pieces and just slot it into a video. And
Aaron Francis:then I'm sure that that that announcement tweet is gonna go great. We want you'll never know that the camera and microphone are on.
Justin:It's perfect. It's perfect. I don't know what
Aaron Francis:we got
Justin:it. Mercy. Oh, this is my next product.
Brian:This is
Aaron Francis:I just I just put a link in the chat. It looks like it's not gonna link, but that is a link to a, like, two and a half hour video I did of this exact style. And people, like people, like, were they watched the whole thing. They they, like, brought it to Twitter themselves and were like, oh, this is so valuable to watch somebody work. And it's it's literally
Brian:impression of that. Like, what who who are the people watching this? What are they doing?
Aaron Francis:So I have heard from from, like, the hosts of the Laravel News podcast, Michael and Jacob, they both watched it and talked about it on the podcast. And Michael was saying, like, this is so valuable to me because now I understand, like, how, you know, reasonable people work with AI and not, like, hype boys work with AI. And so, like, I picked up a lot of tips on, you know, talking to the computer and going back and fixing things and that kind of thing. And so I think a lot of people, like, know me and where I stand on, you know, certain spectra, and they watched this and were like, okay. Yeah.
Aaron Francis:I could get there. I could do that. That seems reasonable for me. Yeah.
Brian:But I also Like, I'm just wondering, like, logistically, that type of content, like, you're still the the viewer is still devoting two hours or more of their time in a day to to watch it through. May maybe they're doing high high speed playback.
Aaron Francis:Those are the questions those are the questions we don't ask. Like, who is watching who is watching the Primogen stream every weekday? I don't know. But a lot of people a lot of people are. But
Brian:but that that's literally my question. Right? Because, like, I think us, we are super busy. Like, there's no way I'm gonna spend that time. You know?
Aaron Francis:Some people definitely relevant data point. There's no way that Brian Castle's gonna spend his time. It has no bearing on the rest of the world.
Brian:Are engineers at at in in, like, large companies? And they need to like, turn some hours? Look at
Justin:all the people in chat that are hanging out with us right now. They got an hour and a forty minutes to just hang out on a Thursday. There's people
Aaron Francis:who have time to hang up. I put Prime on in the background. Dave's a working professional. So it's like the people, dude, people want content. Can you imagine sitting quietly with your own thoughts?
Aaron Francis:Too. Right? Never.
Brian:Feel like yeah. But I but I I tune into a lot of content, but it to me, it has to be, like, edited and, like
Justin:Yeah. But That's that's
Aaron Francis:very interesting for Brian Castle. It doesn't apply to this conversation. That's what I'm saying. Like, you can you can produce that, and the people that are like, I want content in my ears at all times, you just gave them something. Then you can produce something that you're like, if I were looking for content, I would watch this.
Aaron Francis:But there are different types of people that consume different types of content.
Brian:The I mean, bringing it back to business though, like, you if you think about it, if you want people who I I could see how that type of content would make sense for your business. Maybe it would even for mine. Like, if you want your if you think about your customer, like who's your ideal customer avatar, ICP, right? Like, is it a person who has that kind of time Yes. To I I maybe the answer is yes.
Justin:Yeah. Because it most people are everybody. They're they're these if it was, like, people who are lots there's enough evidence that lots of working developers put on content in the background. They put on podcasts and videos and music. Yep.
Justin:In chat right now, people are like
Brian:I put in I I listen to music all day, but I cannot listen to talking.
Justin:So the same way you use music, some people have the Primogen in the background or Brian Castle in the background or Aaron Francis in the background. So
Aaron Francis:Well, if you're doing expense reports or, like, you're, you know, you're doing something that is, like, mindless Mundane. That you have to do. Dishes, showers, somebody's talking about. Like, you're you have to do these things, but you don't really your brain doesn't need to be there. And you're like, okay.
Aaron Francis:Am I gonna I can't put on a ten minute video packed with information because I'm kinda half paying attention. I ran out of podcasts. Let me put on this let me put on Prime or Nuno Maduro and just listen to him, like, yap for an hour or two or three, and then I'll turn it off.
Brian:That's the thing. It's like, when I'm doing the dishes, I'm listening to, like, mostly technical or when I'm Mhmm. You know, doing a walk, I'm listening to talking, like like a podcast with with content. But just watching a screen of someone coding with of not much talking for
Justin:I mean
Brian:for hours. Like That's
Justin:what it's like having a coworker, though. Like, you've got someone in the desk right next to you, and they're I working
Brian:do see the value there. Like, if I remember back to the years where I was really trying to learn how to become a full stack developer, I did actually seek out those longer, like, watch me build
Justin:Yeah.
Brian:Videos. But even those, I still they they were still, like, edited and structured and
Justin:and I think a lot of people take
Brian:it from start to finish.
Justin:You know? I think you should try that.
Aaron Francis:The numbers. Justin's right. A lot of people. Yeah. Like, you may not like it, and that like, you don't have to consume that content, but do look at the numbers on those, like, Antonio Codes, does a twelve hour YouTube video, and it's got, like, a 150,000 views.
Aaron Francis:And it's like, there's a 0% chance in my entire life I would watch a twelve hour YouTube video. But a 150,000 people have watched it in the past three months since it was released. And it's like, oh, okay. Well, maybe people are different after all. So I would I would think about it at least.
Justin:And see, Aaron's got the perfect mix here because he's got both sides of this. He can produce the three hour thing, and then he can also tell people to go and be in a cabin for he's got he's got both sides of the market here. Yep. It's brilliant.
Aaron Francis:You gotta play both sides if you wanna win.
Brian:You know? I must say this is, like, something that I sort of struggle with a little bit with Builder Methods in terms of the ICP, the target customer. This is because I care so much more about, like, who is the person who will become a paying Builder Methods Pro member.
Aaron Francis:Like,
Brian:I don't it's nice to see all these view counts go up in in YouTube, but if but they have to convert into subscribers into into customers.
Justin:Right? Exactly why you need to be experimenting with this kind of stuff because Yeah. ICP I don't know. I I've never been a big fan of ICP myself. It's just like, who's actually showing up and paying?
Justin:And then I I like retroactive ICP. So Well, yeah.
Brian:That's for the people.
Justin:Survey the people coming in. But the only the the only way you get there is you just have to try different channels, different formats. And then Yeah. You might find that people watching those long three hour videos convert 10 times better than really tight edited video.
Aaron Francis:And I I would I would completely change my advice if you didn't have to already do this work. I would say I would say it's not worth you ginning up three hours worth of work just to produce a three hour video. I would say,
Brian:like Sure.
Aaron Francis:That's a freaking waste of time. But if you're gonna do the work and the work is in the same realm that people are paying you to watch videos in that realm, let's just record it and see what happens. Yes. And then if it doesn't work, it's like you didn't lose anything except you had to wait for an hour for it to upload and export or So that would be a totally different set of advice if you weren't already doing it.
Brian:Yeah. Getting back to that thing you were saying earlier about you're going for database school because it's the ideal optimal thing that you want to spend your time doing is learning and teaching database content. Something you're passionate about. You're you're a great teacher and all that. Like, that that's exactly how I'm thinking about this builder methods business is that, like, how do I shape a situation where it is literally my job Mhmm.
Brian:To constantly be building new tools
Aaron Francis:Mhmm.
Brian:Because I
Aaron Francis:love You
Brian:love that. Yeah. And designing tools. I also like creating video content, but, like, I have to combine both. Like, I can't just create tools in a cave.
Brian:Have to be sharing it and, like because ultimately, like, that's the product. It's the content and the membership. And the tools are sort of, like, nice to have. Like, I'll use them. I'll get benefit from them.
Brian:But I do have to have that situation where I'm building and I'm video contenting.
Aaron Francis:Yeah. I agree. I think this I think this shape of business fits what I have observed from you for, you know, ten years that you wanna build a bunch of cool products and think about product stuff, and you wanna have, like, a, you know, recurring and up, like, subscription that's going up, and you wanna, like, talk to people. And this this seems perfect. And so I would just say, like, let's get double duty.
Aaron Francis:Why the heck not?
Justin:Yeah. Double duty. That's the name of this podcast episode.
Aaron Francis:God. I can that could be my nickname.
Justin:It's double duty, man.
Aaron Francis:Story of my life. I always get double duty.
Justin:Thanks so much, Aaron, for being here, for jumping in last minute.
Brian:Thanks for having me. It was fun.
Justin:Thanks, everyone in the chat. We got Ryan and Dave and Moving Pangea. I haven't seen I think we've seen them before. We've got Zach in here, of course. Ben Dailey.
Justin:Great to see everyone. Ryan Hefner. Mitchell Davis came for the first time. Emmett was here as well. Simon Bennett was back again.
Justin:Chris, the editor, was also here. Our crew. Good crew.
Brian:Good crew here.
Justin:Yes. See you next Thursday, everybody. Later, folks. Bye.