Ideas & Tech Stacks
Bootstrapped Web, we're back at it. I have my window cracked open. It's getting a little bit warmer around here. Pretty psyched. Okay.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's Friday. It is a beautiful day here in Chicago also. Windows cracked.
Brian Casel:Look at us. We're
Jordan Gal:we're in good shape on a Friday. We got podcast. This is gonna be I think we're we're going on hiatus for two weeks. I'm going I'm going Okay. Just one week.
Jordan Gal:But next week is spring break with the kids.
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah. Where you headed?
Jordan Gal:We are heading to Austin, Texas.
Brian Casel:Oh, love it.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Nice. We did Maui the last few years and that's such a giant trip of travel and money. Yeah. We were like, let's go more social.
Jordan Gal:We're meeting a family that we're close with from Portland. They have kids. We're getting two Airbnb's in the same neighborhood.
Brian Casel:Very cool. And we're gonna hang.
Jordan Gal:Very excited.
Brian Casel:I love Austin. I think the last time I was there was before COVID. And yeah. It's a great great town.
Jordan Gal:Cool. What is going on this week?
Brian Casel:Alright. So, you know what? I I tried something different on Twitter today. Okay. Didn't really work as a like I I don't wanna do this show like live or anything, but I want some more interaction.
Brian Casel:I always want more interaction from our listeners. And I my thought was I have a list of like three things I wanna talk about today. I I threw them out on Twitter a couple hours earlier. Maybe try to get some What what the questions would be around this stuff. But Yeah.
Brian Casel:I don't know. We'll, So my three things that I have on my list right now are I don't know which order we'll go in. I So on the Clarity Flow front, I think I'll talk about that a bit. Kat has been coming on board as our customer success person. And I'm still spending a lot of my hours doing support and customer success and and some extra hours now like training her and getting her up to speed.
Brian Casel:And I wanna My goal is to really remove the support and success function off of MyPlate as soon as possible. That's one. The other one is Instrumental Products. The the the product development shop that I'm starting up here and I have a couple couple good projects happening now. A couple pipeline coming through and now I'm thinking strategically about like who really is our best target customer.
Brian Casel:Some some strategy lead pipeline thoughts there and then maybe we'll get a little bit technical. I don't know. I've spent a lot of time this past week digging into Laravel land and the tall stack. And, know, because I'm a rails guy and I'm just exploring. I don't know for sure if I'm really gonna go all in on this on the tall Laravel stack.
Brian Casel:But I'm
Jordan Gal:is not this is not mostly technical. We are mostly not technical here.
Brian Casel:Okay. Yeah. So tall is is Tail One CSS, Alpine JS, Laravel and Livewire. So like those those four things
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:Fit together really nicely. I'm already I already use like two of those things. So yeah, I'm exploring that. And I wanna talk actually about like the business Mhmm. Case for maybe exploring that versus continuing with Rails and and all that.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Cool. I I think of Rails and and Laravel as both healthy communities. Mhmm. It feels to me They are.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It feels to me like Rails is maybe a bigger and more nebulous, like tough to kind of wrap your hands around it. Whereas Laravel, it's it feels like a family. It's like you know all the people. They're all right there. You can literally just reach out and talk to Taylor, founder, or the people around him, or the people Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It's it's very it's very good.
Brian Casel:There there's definitely that. Yeah. I mean, that that's definitely one of the one of the things driving this. And I, you know, I don't know for sure yet. I'm still I'm still learning.
Brian Casel:I'm still exploring. But I I think it's a direction that I wanna transition into. I have some business thoughts on that we can get into. Okay. So, don't know.
Pippin Williamson:What what
Brian Casel:do got on your end?
Jordan Gal:And we we've been Laravel since Cart Hook.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Yep. So we we love it also. What do I have? Let's see. I wanna talk about what Aaron Francis should do.
Pippin Williamson:That
Jordan Gal:to opine on someone else's Of course. You know, life in general. So I wanna talk about that.
Brian Casel:I mean, he's he's been the story on Twitter this week. So let's I mean, how how can we not talk about Yeah.
Pippin Williamson:I think I
Jordan Gal:think it has some interesting dynamics around it. Around audience, around personal affinity, and the difference between that individual person and the company that they work for.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and he Aaron and and Ian had a great conversation that came out a couple days ago on their pod all about that. So Yes.
Jordan Gal:So we can get into that. And then I feel like the my evolution around the pivot just continues. And I'm I'm I'm very happy that I'm about to go away. I'm about to step away from the desk and the computer for a little while. On Sunday, I head out to Las Vegas for Shop Talk.
Jordan Gal:And my goal in that type of environment in a conference is is not to close deals. I'm there with team members and their goal is to close deals.
Brennan Dunn:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:I am looking for lack of a better term to catch a vibe. I wanna I wanna feel and sense what's going on. Yeah. And this week I started reaching And that thing
Brian Casel:is huge. Right? That's like a
Jordan Gal:It's a big one.
Pippin Williamson:It's a And big
Jordan Gal:there's there's a lot of advantage in that because I mean Vegas is weird. Right? You're just indoors in a hotel for three days and that's not fun. But what it does create is so many hours of potential hangout time with people. And everyone's kind of in the same boat where they kind of hate life while they're there.
Jordan Gal:So going off and grabbing a beer and having a meal and talking for an hour is a welcome respite. And for me, that's not a respite. That is the goal of actually going.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I feel like that's the goal of any conference that I go to these days. It's like who am I hanging out with, having dinner, getting a drink with, you know. Talks are and the activities whatever like those are nice but it's the people.
Jordan Gal:Yep. That's right. And speaking of people, I wanna talk about MicroConf later also. I haven't been in years and I'm considering going to Atlanta. And I think that is it's part of my evolution on how to think about our situation and rally and what product we offer and where it should go.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean micro this might be I I think as of right now, I'm probably skipping it this year unfortunately. I might I might grab a last minute ticket. I'm not sure. But I'm I'm I'll be down in the Florida Keys for a buddy's wedding like just a few days before that and I don't really love the the the back to back trips.
Brian Casel:So
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I don't know. I hear you. I I will actually be in Florida visiting family. I've got some of my cousins from Israel that I haven't seen a while.
Jordan Gal:They're coming to Florida with their kids. So that's too good of an opportunity. So I'm heading down there anyway. I feel like I could just kinda, you know, hit up Atlanta for a night on the way. Yep.
Jordan Gal:So that that would work. It'd probably be exhausting but still fun.
Brian Casel:Cool.
Jordan Gal:So I go from Las Vegas shop talk. I get home on Wednesday, my kid's birthday. Woo hoo. And then the next day we go on spring break for a week. So I'm kinda Oh, man.
Jordan Gal:Gonna be away from my desk for almost two weeks.
Brian Casel:You know what? Like Okay. We we travel a lot. You're you're like an animal when it comes to traveling, dude.
Jordan Gal:It goes through waves. I won't do anything for two months or three months and then it'll be you know, four or five trips within like a two month span.
Brian Casel:I I I love traveling and my and my whole family does too. Like we we do a lot of trips and stuff and we get excited about booking them and looking forward to them. I have noticed in the last couple of years, the the back to backs are like, I used to handle them no problem. But now, it's like, I need a good like two, three, four days to like rest my body after after a trip. Especially if it's like a conference where I'm just like super social for Yeah.
Brian Casel:A bunch of days and I I really just got like I gotta like be be in a bed for like three days after that, you know.
Jordan Gal:That's like classic introvert. I I Totally. Opposite. I'm so energized when I get home. My only real issue around travel is just being away from the kids and my wife Right.
Jordan Gal:And the stress that that adds to to my wife. That that's the only reason Same. Same. Yeah. Travel continuously.
Jordan Gal:But that trip to LA last week for the Montgomery summit, I got so much out of that. And again, zero having to do with like the talks. One of the talks was actually very good Mhmm. Around AI and where enterprise spending is going toward AI and what they're looking for. It was really interesting.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. But I I come out of those trips with a different world view and I almost like want more of that. So I'm excited for Vegas. I'm excited for Austin. I'm excited for Atlanta.
Jordan Gal:Or it's like I I wanna think differently thirty days from today than I'm thinking now.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep. It's true. These trips, especially like the micro comps and the You know, anytime I'm hanging out with other other entrepreneurs, like, it's it's such a treat to like get my mind into. Especially like talking to other people about their businesses.
Brian Casel:Anytime I like It's it's such a It it's it's a refresher and it and it just fires up the the inspiration on all all sorts of new ideas, you know. Yeah. And then you let it like incubate like on the flight home and you're and you're doing these different things and yes.
Jordan Gal:That's the the the best part is leaving and your head's just spinning with different things and you're trying to formulate that chaos into some insight worldview something different. Yep. I just have this I have
Brian Casel:this
Jordan Gal:nagging worry that I'm not looking at our situation the right way.
Brian Casel:Something that's that's the worry I always have for for years, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. But sometimes you kinda live with it and sometimes you're like, well, I I demand to change it now.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So I think I mean, I'm very energized, know, since the pivot that like disconnection emotionally from the product itself. I'm almost viewing the product once removed. It's not my product and my baby and our company. I'm looking at it as like this entity that lives out on the market.
Jordan Gal:And let's see how the market reacts to it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, what You know, we we've we've we've been talking about this, but like I I have the same sort of view of Clarity Flow at this point. And and it it But the the thing is, I think this is the same for both of us. It definitely is. Is that like, we both still own these businesses.
Brian Casel:So we'd still very much care about these businesses. But but like at You have to hold two ideas at In your head at the same time. One is like, this business that I own and has some legs, has a strategy and it's And we're executing on that strategy. But at the same time, I need to be looking ahead to what's next. Where where we're going next?
Brian Casel:And that requires like me going off in a different direction while that strategy over there is still operating with people, with execution, and we have to give it what it needs. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yes. That that's very well said. That splitting your brain in half that way. Continuing, setting a strategy, following it, let giving it air, letting it, you know, do its thing for for a bit to understand the feedback. Yep.
Jordan Gal:But you're you're almost moving on from the strategy before it gets a chance to succeed or fail Yeah. That that also itself feels a bit dangerous. Because like, where are you? Where is your head? Is your head and attention required to see if the initial strategy worked or not?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Or does it have a life of its own?
Brian Casel:I I view it. Objective. This is like a I feel like this is like a constant debate with with people like, oh, you gotta be a 100% focused on a thing in order for the strategy or the execution to work. Mhmm. And and I think some sometimes that's absolutely true.
Brian Casel:Especially if if there's all this like momentum that's going in in the right direction, you wanna sort of feed that feed that fire and and stay focused on it. But if but there's a flip side to that I think where it's like, so many of these strategies require so much time to develop. And and it's easy to get impatient with it. Yeah. So like, so sometimes like like, I mean what I'm doing with ClariFlow is like this this customer success thing.
Brian Casel:It's And and we have other like lead flow stuff that just happens. It doesn't require me to actually operate the tools or do the job. So I need to let it do its thing and it And and that execution actually doesn't require I mean, I'm building the customer success function right now. But like, our lead flow thing, I have somebody who's running that operation right now. I'm not the one like sending emails every day, you know?
Brian Casel:Yes. So
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I'm trying to figure out how like what is the decision matrix? What are these different parameters to actually look at on whether or not to stick with something. Right? What what strategy makes sense right now given our resources, constraints, talents, shortcomings, all these things?
Jordan Gal:Is it a well, you you have the resources to stick with it for a year. Is is that the right strategy? Or is it put the thing out if it doesn't come back as an obvious market fit pull, know it when you see it kind of thing within sixty, ninety days, then drop it and move on.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Because an extra year would be too expensive for that, you know. Or or or an extra two years, whatever it might end up being. Like, yeah.
Brian Casel:Maybe you can just like grind it and hammer it to some to some level of moderate success but but if that if that costs two years to execute then that's not Yes. That's not the plan. Like you you need something that's gonna catch fire that then you can add resources to. Right?
Jordan Gal:Yes. That that I think that's a good way to look at it. It shouldn't require a tremendous amount of resources to get it going. Yep. If it if it gets going, then you have the resources to to push and to hire and to do all these other things.
Brian Casel:Yeah. We we always come back to the same theme.
Brennan Dunn:It's Yeah. Like
Brian Casel:either it's a push or a pull, you know. And Mhmm. Yeah, man. This is that I mean, on on Clarity Flow, I just wanna touch on that because I I feel like I haven't, It's it's weird because I've I still spend a lot of hours on Clarity Flow but I'm not talking about it as much on the podcast because Mhmm. That's not the new thing anymore.
Brian Casel:But it it's still I'm I'm spending I I would say at least 50% of my hours still on Clarity Flow. And that and those hours are split between product work. Directing my developer and and prioritizing her queue and making sure that we're building the right things and taking customer request and designing features and So there's that product work which I love to do and I feel like I I I need to be the head of product for the foreseeable future on all of my products that I'm running especially Clarity Flow. That's where I that's where I function. That's that's my top function I would say is is being the head of product.
Brian Casel:I happen to also be the founder and I talk to customers. But the But there's a lot of those hours that are just spent doing straight customer support. So, answering emails, checking in on on customer accounts, seeing what's going on. Oh, this this customer reported a bug. Let me go replicate that bug.
Brian Casel:See if I need to file a ticket. Alright. This customer is doing a feature request. What is the feature request? Have we have we heard it before?
Brian Casel:Are we filing that? This customer is asking for advice on how to use Clarity Flow. This customer wants a call. This customer want You know, like there's all that stuff and that adds up. Even even though each one of those little tasks might take me ten minutes or twenty minutes, they add up to multiple hours every day of just support work.
Brian Casel:You know? And so I My goal at this point, You know, because I am spending a lot more energy and hours on instrumental products. My new business. That's that's where I see the most opportunity. And and I feel like the best direction for me overall is to is to build that business out.
Brian Casel:So, I need to reduce my personal time investment on Clarity Flow from like let's say 50% down to like 25%. You know, and just doing the product work. Cutting out the customer support work. So, Kat has come on board. She's about three or four weeks into this customer success role.
Brian Casel:And it's it's definitely more than just support. It's customer success. And it's a strategic thing where I The the strategy is like, I think that with her And she's already like doing some things like way better than me. Just Yeah. Communicates so much better with customers.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But she can really help convert these trialing people to long term paying customers. Whereas, currently with me sort of like half assing it on the customer success role. It's it's it's a little bit too easy for them to just get frustrated and drift away. Whereas, if she's like a dedicated person there to help them.
Brian Casel:So, you know, it's it's been So that means it's like on top of the customer success work. It's also like for every ticket, I'm spending double the amount of time explaining to Kat or showing to Kat like, here's why I answered it this way. And so I've done a a bunch of those. And and then I also had, I I asked her to create her own like demo account on Clarity Flow and then record like a presentation walking through it and that was a good exercise. And we kinda picked apart like, I I like to talk about these features in this way and kinda connect it back to this use case when I'm talking to a coach and things like that.
Brian Casel:And she and she's doing just an incredible job with this stuff. And so, I think at this point, I'm really close to just saying like, alright, I'm turning over the reins. Like now, it's We're gonna shift from you shadowing me to me shadowing you. And, you're gonna be the the frontline customer support person. You'll still escalate a lot of stuff to me but Right.
Jordan Gal:Maybe correct here and there.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So so, I'm I I think we're really close at this point to like, these incoming emails everyday go to her first instead of going to me first.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:I'm not fully out of it yet. I don't think I ever will be. But like But if it can get It can get to a point where What Here's my ideal scenario. I hope I can get here in the next two to four weeks, frankly. Is like, there's We're still gonna get all this inbound support and feature requests and bugs and things.
Brian Casel:And she should be able to like take those, replicate it, write up an issue in linear and I can review it and then I can think about it and prioritize it in our product queue. And she's still the one like interfacing with customers. So so there's that piece plus doing the customer success thing like converting trials to to paying customers. So, think that's coming along. It's still like a lot of extra hours that are like kind of filling up my week.
Brian Casel:But I I A few weeks ago, was like, oh man, I I hope she can do this. But it seems so daunting to go from just me doing everything to having somebody else handle this. And now I can sort of see like a light at the end of the tunnel where where I think we're just a few weeks away from Clarity Flow like finally doing its thing on its own and I'm just doing the product work on it. That that would be that's the goal I think at this point.
Jordan Gal:It's it's always surprising how capable people are of taking over the tasks that we thought only we could do.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Like we we overestimate dramatically the knowledge required because it's become like intuitive to us and we say how do I how is someone possibly gonna learn enough to have this level of intuition and it oh, it's always surprising. I don't know it's what what does that. If it's like a mental block or if it's just unfamiliarity or inexperience with doing it. But people people are capable, man.
Brian Casel:Not only that, you know, the other thing that I I have to keep reminding myself of is that like different people, different professionals have completely different strengths. True. And her Kat's strengths are not mine. And and I'm already seeing that like flat out like, you know, we're doing this exercise now where actually she she is taking the inbound requests and she'll like draft a response as if she was gonna be the one to do it and then I'll I'll send the actual response. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And and sometimes it's like recording a video for a customer. She has this ability to like explain a feature in a way that's like way simpler than I would explain it to a customer. Right. Even though I'm You know it better. Right.
Brian Casel:Even though I know it better, I designed it, I developed it. But I'm like way too close to the features. I built them. I'm also probably more technical than coaches need to hear. And she she can start to speak coach language or customer language.
Brian Casel:And Yes. And like tie it right back to the use case and we don't need to get into technicalities. And so like, yeah. Just little presentational things or communicate She's also just a fantastic communicator and writer and and so. But but she's also picking up on like all Literally, how all of the features and functionality work in Clarity Flow.
Brian Casel:Way faster than I expected which is great. So, I I think we're pretty pretty close, you know. And and there's still gonna be a lot of stuff that like, yeah, I would have answered that differently. Sure. At this point, like, it's worth it.
Brian Casel:It's it's way more valuable to me to to get me out of that function than for every single message to be perfect, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's not even perfect. It's perfect according to the way you would have done it.
Brian Casel:Exactly. And in many ways, better than than how I would do it, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I had that experience in sales conversations of where, you know, I had Dina, our salesperson on with me and we'd hang up the phone and it would be this obvious thing like, oh, here's what I did wrong. Here's where I over explained. Here's where I should have asked for
Brian Casel:this. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And a few it needed to happen because she needed to hear how I demo and how I sell and then Yep. Very very quickly after that, it was obvious that me being on those calls is actually hurting us.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:And I was very very happy to kind of let that go as was she happy to be able to do it on her own.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yeah. For sure.
Jordan Gal:Alright. So what Francis do with his life?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Alright.
Jordan Gal:I I think with all those kids.
Brian Casel:To to me it seems obvious. I'm guessing it does to to a lot of folks. And of course, none of us can really speak for Aaron or we And none of us even really know all the ins and outs of what's behind the scenes with PlanetScale and all that stuff. And you know, we're not gonna speak to whatever they're Whatever. So, but the I think the thing is like, if you're because it's clear Clearly Aaron has has has wanted to do things outside of his employment.
Brian Casel:Like starting startups and doing products and I building businesses and and all that. Like it If if you're gonna go out and do your own thing, like there's no better time to do that than right this moment. In in my view, you know. Okay. Yes.
Brian Casel:Same time, and I know how difficult that is, especially when clearly you have so many incredible offers being thrown your way like right now. Like that is the most difficult thing.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I and where that
Brian Casel:Difficult like and amazing. Fine.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Where that connects is to your personal life. And and Aaron has many dependents. Yeah. That's true.
Jordan Gal:So that, you know, an offer in the abstract But
Brian Casel:that's not gonna change anytime soon.
Jordan Gal:No. But but it has a it has a cooling effect on people's ambition.
Pippin Williamson:Of course. Because it Okay.
Brian Casel:I mean, it click If you have any sort of ambition to do your own thing, build your own business and be a full time business owner, not that's true. Like we we start with that assumption. If it if if you're happy to have an amazing career doing what you do, then that's great too. But the
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Let I think we can assume that everyone wants to make a million dollars a year. Yes. But because I think
Brian Casel:Not only not only make money but own your own business.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I think I looked at it from a slightly different angle as opposed to he should go out on his own now. I just looked at it as if you are capable of building the single most valuable thing in today's economy on the internet, which is an audience, then whatever you do you need to continue building the audience. Because at some point that audience can turn into whatever you want it to be. It whether it's its own business or you can command whatever you want in the market from employers or you can be a co like whatever you wanna do.
Jordan Gal:So I think I looked at it as there is a very very teeny tiny top of the of the content pyramid. Right? The overwhelming majority of the content pyramid are just viewers. Then there are the top 10% that are creators, and then there's the very very little tip top that are actually good creators. Right.
Jordan Gal:And and we know them. We because they're at the top of their pin. We watch them and we enjoy being entertained by them. We fall in love with them or we fall in hate with them. It's this thing.
Jordan Gal:It's like they're like the popular kids in high school just at a global scale.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:So I think Aaron has built up the knowledge and skill to create content in such a way that that and I think what we're all seeing on Twitter and Aaron, don't let this get to your head, bro. I I know you're listening. But he has the ability to do that without without the hate which is a very powerful way to get Yes. There. Does it with love.
Brian Casel:He he is exactly. He he very very positive. Just a positive personality which is why so many people like him. I Yes. And that's why I like him as especially in a at a time in our industry and you see this I think mostly on Twitter.
Brian Casel:There's a Even like good well meaning people come off as snarky or negative or oh, you know, like like condescending on on Twitter. And Aaron is none of that.
Jordan Gal:That's because those things are rewarded. Yeah. Being an asshole is rewarded. Being confrontational, being declarative, this is the only way to do you know, these things are rewarded and so people fall into that trap and it they do get both sides. They get a lot of people that don't like them and they get a they get a fan base with it.
Brian Casel:I think the other thing Aaron pointed this out on his podcast. They had He and Ian made a bunch of great points here. Basically agree with all of it. But the the the other thing about Aaron is that he's so well entrenched in data Not only like dev education, but database education. Right.
Brian Casel:The other He factor it he was he was like, all the other thought leaders in this space are like neck beardy. Like super nerdy, know, like super super technical like not Don't don't have that like on camera personality that you know
Jordan Gal:Yes. I'm not technical enough to really understand the differences between, you know, who's a back end influencer, a tailwind influencer, and a database influencer.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'll I'll leave that chain, like like the database is like the the most like technical, you know, deep down the stack that you know, whereas like up at the top you've got like the the pretty tailwind CSS Yeah. Design y stuff. Know, in
Jordan Gal:the version of things and Yeah. So it it gets like less you know, like substantial. So whatever protects that and make sure that that continues to me would be the priority. Because because all of that leads to like my actual when I when I have been watching this thing unfold, the the thing that really stood out to me that came came out from like my emotions of it was just be really ambitious.
Brian Casel:Yeah. The
Jordan Gal:so big these days. You can make a million dollars a month if you have that talent with the audience and the love, the sky is the absolute limit. I think mister beast kinda shows there is no ceiling. There any self is self imposed.
Brian Casel:I know that Aaron is ambitious. He's been bigger. I know he's been talking about his ambition and everything like all of that is right here for the taking and the you know, none of this he doesn't know but like the I I also think that there's a huge benefit to this moment. Like, right now. Like, and I and I also know I think he talked about this publicly like like that he's considering the the option of just launching some sort of like consultancy business court like courses and or consulting in the dev education content space which makes perfect sense.
Brian Casel:He he made a point of saying like, he's not starting a SaaS product which I also make think makes perfect sense. But the idea that like I mean, just look at his tweets this week. How how how viral, how how much engagement they're getting.
Jordan Gal:Like Yeah.
Brian Casel:Right there, you can you know, you can easily spin up healthy client base for a new business that can And look, like, you He The the difficult thing here is that he's also going to weigh that against some very very attractive job offers. Very very attractive
Jordan Gal:For his For
Brian Casel:his tribe. Course. Health insurance. But like the To me, look. I I mean, I honestly can't speak to what it must be like sitting in his position.
Brian Casel:Sure. But, as an outsider looking in like from an objective What's difficult is is weighing There's clearly, you know, there's there's some level of risk in starting your own business and you technically will make more dollars, especially in the next twelve months if you take some some job. Sure. So you have to go into this thinking like, I'm going to make less upfront. But but so much more on, you know, going And you can make a a still a lot upfront.
Brian Casel:Like, if you're doing consulting and courses and not a SaaS in the first year. Yeah. And and look you own Like owning your own business to me is is is key. Know, like
Jordan Gal:Yeah. But he he has his own business technically. Right. He he sell things on the side.
Brian Casel:Yeah. On the side. But but I'm saying like something that you can grow into a sellable asset. You know? Sure.
Brian Casel:That that that can be hugely profitable for years to come and you are an owner. And like that's what we do. We build assets. That's what we do.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. The thing with assets is that they take time. And so I think that the danger is ending up in a somewhat adversarial relationship between your employer and your ambitions.
Brian Casel:Well, that's the other thing is that his audience is a massive massive asset and when it's not owned by him. I mean, he he he clearly does have a personal audience that is Yeah. But but like all the subscribers that he grew for PlanetScale are are not his.
Jordan Gal:Right. And I that is a great lesson to walk into the next step. Which is if I'm signing an employment contract, I have clearly delineated rights in that employment agreement to build up my own audience, to keep ownership over certain things. Right? When when someone's when an engineer signs an employment agreement with Rally, what they're signing is that whatever you invent and create from the time you start to the time you end your employment is owned by us.
Jordan Gal:We that's how our contract started anyway. Mhmm. When I took another look at that and realized, oh, that's not the intent at all. So let's create a carve out. We have Or like five projects or whatever.
Jordan Gal:Exactly. We have two carve outs. The carve out that you walk in the door with. So for example, our DevOps engineer Goran built up a DevOps system that he has brought with him from company to company and it's incredibly valuable. So when talking to him, carve out number one is name that in the employment agreement so that the company can't touch it.
Jordan Gal:So it's yours. You bring it into the company. We get value from it. If you leave the company, you take it with you. If you don't do that, then the company's gonna end up owning it.
Jordan Gal:And then the second carve out is side projects are explicitly allowed as long as x y z. Right? Don't use don't use company property. Don't do resources. Don't spend money from the company and and so on.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. So that from a legal point of view, if you're looking into employment, you gotta get those carve outs no matter what. Yeah. And then I and then you have to acknowledge, I'm going to build an audience and this is not my last employer. And so should I email list?
Jordan Gal:Should I start building my own YouTube channel? If I were him, the ideal would be to be able to dedicate a significant amount of time to your own thing. So if somebody
Brian Casel:Especially with this type of skill set and value that he brings to a company which is like audience growth, know.
Jordan Gal:Leverage to just name that situation though. And say, I will help you build an audience, but I'm building my own audience at the same time.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, and they touched on this like that This is so tricky. I feel like, somebody who is relatively unknown, who is good with video content and goes like like Aaron I think like Aaron was maybe near the beginning of his employment at at PlanetScale. He had some some traction before that I guess. But like, somebody who's like relatively unknown and goes goes into a company and and proves their value, proves their skill at growing an audience within a company.
Brian Casel:Like, it sort of does the job. You you get the best of both worlds. You're you're getting a great salary. You're getting exposure and you're and you're going to grow your personal audience just as a byproduct You're of doing getting paid to once you have achieved that and clearly Aaron has, it doesn't make as much sense to go do the same thing for another company. If if you're already at this level of of of recognition, you know.
Brian Casel:Yes.
Jordan Gal:But I bet I bet you could structure things where a company can get a lot of value from you working with them, you can trade that for getting paid. Right?
Brian Casel:The companies like get that value from quote unquote influencers is they hire them to they they sponsor them. Right? Sure. Might like buy out somebody's website website or something like that. But
Jordan Gal:like Right.
Brian Casel:Or you
Jordan Gal:could buy someone's YouTube channel. Right? Yeah. But but you can you can ideally maintain your independence while also providing value to a company. So I think what I'm trying to think back if we've done it or someone I'm thinking of.
Jordan Gal:But let's just say for example, you have a a DevOps type product that Aaron would be great for. You could go to him and say, okay, we'll give you you know, $75,000 over the next six months and we want two videos per month and
Brian Casel:we'll economy of that. People sponsor YouTubers all the time. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:You're right. You well, you invoice us from your company. You're not an employee.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's a that's a creator business right there. Right? It's like you're sponsored content, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yes. As the as the company, I would see tremendous leverage in Aaron's audience even if he doesn't join full time. The truth is if he joins full I know he's leaving anyway. It's just a matter of It's just a matter of time.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. And and I mean, yeah. I also really really question this whole idea of Like clearly, sometimes it can work like it did in in the case of hiring Aaron to grow the planet scale YouTube channel. But I feel like most companies, and I've tried this unsuccessfully, trying to hire someone to to be I don't know, like like to grow like Like the the face?
Brian Casel:Like the media brand and and be like the personal face of of the company. Like, that's so difficult to do. It's dangerous too for the company. And it's dangerous. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like clearly it's dangerous, know. Yeah. You you want you
Jordan Gal:want you want the brand and the company to be out in front and the and the
Brian Casel:individual help. It's different to be to to hire people to execute on YouTube with like a wide range of different content. But like putting all the eggs in like this person is our face of the of the company. It's not impossible. Some companies have done it, but it's it's just tricky, you know.
Jordan Gal:And I don't know how big PlanetScale was. I don't know if it's like a series b company c, if it's Bootstrap. I have no idea. But the scale of value is exponential. So a company that's doing $10,000,000 a year in revenue, Aaron coming in and making a campaign and helping them, like, build out a series of videos and get their YouTube channel off the board, that might be worth a $100,000.
Jordan Gal:To a company that does $300,000,000 a year, it's worth, you know, many times that. And they have the budget for it, and they also don't have the expertise for it. Yeah. So there there is there is an opportunity to kind of go basically go up market with the individual agency like services and in the meantime work on your very scalable product that you can build a funnel for and then sell a 100 copies of or 500 copies of in a month and it doesn't add anything. Right?
Jordan Gal:So that strategy of effectively agency revenue
Brian Casel:doing that. I I think he's doing like Jokes about kids. I I mean, yeah. Like like you can get the like the influx of cash by selling a course or a couple courses and and you can get the the high end consulting dollars. And that can look like Not just like teaching someone how to do video, but like how your company can hire another Aaron Francis.
Brian Casel:Like what's the playbook for that? You know, that that's the that that's the high value, high dollar consulting thing that that his company could could do. But like the thing that I've I've said for years on other podcasts and stuff is like, there's there's always starting your first I know it's not his first business, but like starting your first business, the the decision to leave a company or phase out personal freelancing to start a larger business, it's always going to require some upfront risk. Some risk. You're gonna have a dip.
Brian Casel:There's no way around the dip. You're gonna You gotta go into it thinking like, alright, we we have enough savings for my family. We're good for this number of months. Let me give this thing a shot. I'm going to make less for this amount of time before it You know, and because on the other side, you build an asset that can That should be profitable but can you know, you I
Jordan Gal:he beat the system. I think he could
Brian Casel:And and when you have an audience like that, you you can beat the
Pippin Williamson:system to
Brian Casel:a certain extent.
Jordan Gal:You can just turn those those full time employment offers and just say, I'm not ready for that right now but I will take a three month contract and do x y z. Yep.
Brian Casel:That's what I'm saying. It's like you like this moment that he has is the perfect time to launch a consultancy and and and get 10 clients in the door done. Yeah. Like in a month, you know.
Jordan Gal:Go Aaron. Hell yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah, man. Man. Let's talk, you know, sort of speaking of let let's let's get a little bit slightly technical, I think. But we're gonna stick to the business side of it. Alright.
Brian Casel:So like a few years back, like several years back now. Six, seven years ago, I I made the decision. I remember when I was So, my whole career I've been front end designer developer. Right? And then, it was around 2018 I decided to learn full stack development.
Brian Casel:I wanted to be able to build my own apps. And I remember at that time, I took a month or two to decide between Rails Mhmm. And Laravel. Took courses in both. I I had I've had experience with PHP before that.
Brian Casel:I was actually brand new to Ruby at the time. I took two courses. I I took a bunch of Larocast and then I I did a Rails course. And I just found that that Rails at the time was easier for me to pick up and then go build another app. And actually, I I launched like Sunrise KPI a few a few months after that using Rails.
Brian Casel:And from that point forward, since 2018, I've been all in on on Rails. And I love it. I To this day, Clarity Flow is built in it. Process Kit was. And all of my full stack products have been in Rails.
Brian Casel:And I've I've built a deeper and deeper understanding of of the framework and Ruby and and that that has also extended into JavaScript and and I've been a big tailwind guy for a while and
Jordan Gal:Right. It's clear you can get whatever you need done with Rails. And it's Yeah. For the community.
Brian Casel:And it it is still very much People may love it or hate it but it's still great today. It And especially And Rails seven is great. You know? I'll be honest like there's this The new Hotwire stuff in Rails seven. I I don't I I've played with it.
Brian Casel:I've learned it. I've tried it out on a couple small projects. I don't love certain things about it. I feel like it over complicates things. I don't know how much Anyway, like, so so the the new hot wire stuff in Rails seven is not super attractive to me.
Brian Casel:The way that it is to a lot of other Rails devs for whatever reason. Laravel, I feel like at this point in 2024, like we were talking about earlier, the ecosystem seems so much So so well developed at this point. Mhmm. And that's on a number of fronts. It's not just the tooling, it's the community, it's the training material.
Jordan Gal:Yep.
Brian Casel:People. And it's the integration between the different elements. So like, a relatively new piece of the puzzle is is this LiveWire thing, which is sort of like an alternative to the HotWire thing in Rails. Okay. Tailwind CSS is like kinda
Jordan Gal:Built in.
Brian Casel:Basically baked in at this point. Alpine JS is like a lightweight JavaScript thing that that's, you know, and it's all sort of right there like linked from the homepage on Laravel. It's there when you're installing a new app like
Jordan Gal:Into like MVPs, we do stuff like you know Laravel Nova.
Brian Casel:Yep. There's a lot
Jordan Gal:of stuff that helps you avoid building the most basic functionality that needs to be in every web app. That's one of the reasons we've always loved Laravel.
Brian Casel:And to be clear, all this stuff is available in Railsland. Like Sure. If you want authentication, there's devise. And there's all these different tool. And there there's there's you know.
Brian Casel:You can you can do everything that you need to do in both worlds. And to be frank, like for me personally, I still build much faster in Rails because I have more experience with it now. But the reason why I spent this past week watching a bunch of Lyricasts and building some practice projects using using what they call the tall stack, Tailwind, Alpine, Laravel, Livewire. And I'm already I've already been using two of those four things. So, it's it's not totally new to me.
Brian Casel:But the the reason why I'm taking this moment to Let me step back and see if I should start to transition myself into Laravel from from Instead of continuing to be all in on Rails. Like I Okay. I've I've been all in on Rails for the last six seven years. I don't know for sure that I'm all in on Rails for the next six or seven years. And I and I and I feel like right now, this is a good moment for me to reassess that question.
Brian Casel:And I still don't even know the answer. I still might come back after the next week or two and say like, you know what? I'm I'm just better.
Jordan Gal:Right.
Brian Casel:So you Do you see this more of a business thing for instrumental products.
Jordan Gal:Right. Which which it makes sense. Like you said, in this moment as you're starting to build stuff there, do you see that as expanding from being able to do one thing going over to do two things or two universes whatever?
Brian Casel:Some of it is that
Jordan Gal:like Or do see it as a switch? Like focus somewhere else.
Brian Casel:Some of it is having both tools in the tool belts because like I I have been talking to a bunch of leads and and taking on a few a few new ones now and it has come up where like sometimes they just have a preference for Rails and sometimes they have a preference for Laravel because Right.
Jordan Gal:Off to their team afterwards. Yep.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So so I do like the idea of being well versed in both and having resources on my team for both and having experience in in both worlds to be able to build and deploy apps either way. So Rails, like the big check mark is already there. Laravel, like I I would say in the next couple of weeks here, I'm I'm building a practice app on it right now. Like, I'm getting The other nice thing now is that like I'm so much more further along in my experience as a full stack developer that like, I can learn things so much faster than I did years ago.
Brian Casel:And there's so many similarities in the in the patterns and structure. Some differences which are interesting, but the I don't wanna get too too technical on this. I want I wanna stick to the business side, which is the other thought is I'm Instrumental Products as a business, what we do is we build lots of products. And we I expect to be building lots and lots of products going forward. I've talked about before You need a bit of
Jordan Gal:a conveyor belt kind of approach
Brian Casel:We need rinse and repeat sort of system. That on rails or is that gonna be on Laravel? Like are we gonna reuse the same tool set and the same code base and conventions and things? Like the more that we can keep that consistent, the better. And whichever one is faster and more effective to to build really solid future proof apps, the better.
Brian Casel:And so, I I think I still think that both are good options. But I'm just taking this time to like, maybe we we would be better off, like, from an operation standpoint, to start to start So I I could see this going a couple different ways. One is, the more I learn on Laravel, the more comfortable I get with it. The more opportunity I see and and the and then it's like most or all new products going forward, especially ones that I own outright, I'm just gonna choose Laravel and and commit to to that path while still maintaining some some of the apps in Rails. Another another option might be like, you know what?
Brian Casel:There are some technical things that I don't love in Laravel that I that I'm just more comfortable or faster or I think are more effective in Rails land. Maybe I maybe I I took this time to explore and I say like, nope. I'm I'm sticking with Rails. And then and then we are just totally a Rails shop. And then like I guess the third option would just be like, yeah we do both and we could go either way.
Jordan Gal:Right.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:Agnostic on that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And my team that I work with like my developers, which is like a big team from India. And they I can source developers from them sort of at will at this point or within a few weeks notice. They are half and half too. Like they have plenty of Rails and plenty of PHP develop Laravel developers too.
Brian Casel:So it works out on that front too.
Jordan Gal:Cool. It it makes me think of Bullet Train. Yeah. You know, like the the So that's rails. Is there something equivalent in Laravel or is
Brian Casel:Well, the the thing in Laravel is that like almost like Laravel itself. Like they've they've got they've got like Laravel Breeze and Laravel Jetstream which are sort of like official like first party Like when you use Laravel, you're Like, you know, for example, you're like in in Rails, you gotta use things like like Bullet Train or Jumpstart. You you don't have to, by the way. But those take in all the all the separate third party gems like, okay. We're gonna we're gonna put in devise.
Brian Casel:We're gonna maybe put in tailwind. We're gonna maybe put in the pay gem for for Stripe. We're gonna do this and that like And all those individual pieces are created and maintained by different separate Like very separate third party entities. Mhmm. Which is fine.
Brian Casel:They they're super popular, so they're all well supported. Right. But in Laravel, it's just like the it's like it's like this like crew of like friends almost that And and it's like literally like, it just seems more officially bundled into the core thing.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Know? Laravel crew, man. Protect.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. But if you go to laravel.com and you go to that eco I like forgot about all this stuff. Have cashier and forge and no Exactly. Forge. Wire and just so And then Laravel
Brian Casel:cast too. Like what Jeffrey White has built. It's such an incredible resource. And that too is linked right from the homepage on laravel.com. Yep.
Brian Casel:And that's just to say that like, look how integrated and readily available whatever training material you ever need is right here. Whereas, there are some fantastic training I got a ton of value from Chris Oliver's gorails.com over the years and a bunch of other resources and people in the rails world. But, I don't know, it's just like It it it just seems Especially like it it like the Laravel world and just hearing you and so many other SaaS companies. It it just It seems like more people are now defaulting to Laravel than they are defaulting to Rails. And that's like a directional shift that I feel like it's worth If my company is in the business of building products for SaaS companies
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Pippin Williamson:You gotta
Brian Casel:We should sort of pay attention to what's happening in the in the Laravel world. Yeah. I feel like know.
Jordan Gal:Cool, man. I love it. So we're gonna be away from the mic next week, but back the following.
Brian Casel:Yes, sir.
Jordan Gal:Have a great weekend. I'll see you in Vegas, whoever's there for Shop Talk.
Brian Casel:Awesome.
Jordan Gal:And maybe MicroConf, but that's in a few weeks.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Alright. Alright, folks. Have a good weekend. Later.
