Everything really just clicked for me in 2020. I took Daniel Vesalo's Twitter course and it was just kind of like a light bulb went off and just suddenly I had, you know, plus 8,000 followers and just it started.
compounding from there very quickly. Hello and welcome back to Indie Bites, the podcast for writing new stories of fellow indie hackers in 15 minutes or less. I'm your host, James McKinmon. Today, I'm joined by Randall Cannafransen. Randall is a senior software engineer who's written three books and
including one published by O'Reilly and a self-published one, which was made over $70,000. She's also created the course called Hack the Tech Interview, which made $20,000 in the first 24 hours and $50,000 in the first month.
Randall's efforts to share her learnings from almost a decade being a software engineer and growing her Twitter audience to over 50,000 followers. She's also dabbled in a few SaaS products known to be launching and growing CodeTutor which she sold after the birth of her first child.
And if you enjoyed this chat with Randall, there is an extended version available for $60 a year at IndieBytes.com slash membership. But before we get into this chat, I'd like to thank my podcast sponsor, Email Octopus. Email Octopus on an email platform focused on affordability.
with a generous fee plan and ease of use without some of those bloated features that you see so many of these email apps have so you can focus on what's important like shipping and growing your audience which you know if you're a regular listener is essential
growth in the early days so to get started with an email platform that gets out of the way where you can contact up to 2 500 people for free head to email octopus.com or hit the link in the show notes let's get into this episode with randall canna franson
Randall, welcome to IndieBytes. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. So Randall, let's start at the beginning, your background. I want to know what was Randall like when you were young? Did you have ambitions to be a software engineer? Yeah, well, I wanted to be a doctor. So that didn't work out. I didn't like germs and I didn't like blood. And that was going to be a real problem in the profession. I started college at 15.
I was homeschooled my whole life. I went to a community college starting at 15, which was really hard when everyone around you is 18, 21, going out, and you are the awkward 16-year-old who's not. allowed to do anything or go anywhere or get into anything. So it was really tough. And I actually wanted to be a CS major. I went to a counselor and I said, what can I do to be a computer science, you know? Get the degree.
And basically I was encouraged not to do it, said that there's no women doing it. It was going to be a really tough career. I was going to be able to get a job. I wasn't going to be able, I wouldn't be welcomed into the program. It was impacted for years and it just completely discouraged me where I just. completely dropped it which in hindsight i wish i would have endured but at the time it felt terrible wow that is awful do you think it's still the same now or i think it's a lot better now
I mean, back then, even in 2014, 2015, when I was trying to get a job, basically I said, no boot camps, don't even apply here if you have a boot camp, if you don't have a CS degree. And I would go to interviews and there'd be not a single woman in sight.
How did you navigate that when you were younger? It was tough. Honestly, a lot of crying. I never cried at work. That was a pride point for me. Never cried in the office. I would hold it in until I got home and then call my mom crying instead. So it was really rough and it was not. Not inclusive, not welcoming, not inviting, but I stuck with it and it was worth it. Look at me now. At least I'm somewhere.
So what was sort of your career journey? Because we're going to talk about your books and your course and how you got into indie hacking and side projects. But that only really started in 2019. So what was your sort of career journey before then? Got my first job in 2015, two weeks after a coding boot camp. I was so relieved because I had no money at that point whatsoever, and I was back living on my parents' couch.
And extremely panicked about what I was going to do. And I moved back from San Francisco after the boot camp to my parents' couch. And then two weeks later, 10 days, I had like two offers. And then... worked for an amazing little startup that just taught me so much. And really, they were really hard on me, really hard on me, but it was worth it because I got a lot of grit working there. And I became a senior engineer a year and a half later.
So your sort of entry, Randall, into side projects and... Wait, had you not done any side projects before your first book that you did? Were you not sort of dabbling? Because I think a lot of software engineers tend to do... build projects and random things? So really nothing that ever made money. And I think that year I just built like a few, not even side projects. I'd call them side hobbies at that point. They made, you know, zero revenue. They were just for fun. They were for interviewing.
Just kind of all in smart contracts and Ethereum and TruffleJS. It was, you know, nothing. No side repos, but it helped me get a job. It helped me get the books. with O'Reilly. So it really kind of led me to that journey in a way. Let's talk about your books, your first book. You went through a publisher. Why did you go through a publisher for this? Isn't the trendy thing to self-publish?
Yeah, the trendy thing is, and you also get to keep a lot more of the money. But I have to say the credibility with an O'Reilly book, lifelong dream. I had O'Reilly books. for years. I was a teenager holding an O'Reilly book in my hand, thinking it was just, you know, the end-all be-all of engineering books. And it was incredible. And I actually had two publishing offers.
in the same two-month span before I chose the O'Reilly book. And to me, it was just like the end-all, be-all of books. I thought, okay, I've made it if I can do that. And it just, you know, worked out amazing. They were so kind to me with O'Reilly. I actually joined a project. I ended up writing about half the book, anything focused on, you know, the front end. And I wrote a lot about smart contracts in there.
It was so worth it, but yes, self-publishing, you make, keep a lot more of the money. You make a lot more, you keep a lot more. And had you started to build your audience here? Did you make much money from this book or was it something that you set out that you wanted to do and it wasn't so much about the money you were making, but it was that credibility that you built for having a book published? Yeah.
made next to nothing on the book. And it was more of just, it would feel, I mean, I have that book framed in my house. It felt like an honor. I had no audience at the time. I think I had 300 Twitter followers and then a few weeks. During the book and writing the book, I got up to maybe 1,200, and that took me into 2020, basically. And 2020 I guess is where things really started to pick up for you in terms of your audience building and the projects that you launched.
Was this about the time that you started putting effort into building your Twitter? You're now at 56,000 Twitter followers. That's no mean feat to get there. Was this around that time? Yes, everything really just clicked for me in 2020. I took Daniel Vassalo's Twitter course and it was just kind of like a light bulb went off and just suddenly I had, you know, plus 8,000 followers and just started.
compounding from there very quickly. And what was the niche you chose to build your audience in? So I taught myself how to code before I attended a coding bootcamp. So I spent about almost a year teaching myself before I went to it. That's how bad my imposter syndrome was. I didn't even feel I could go to a boot camp before I taught myself for a year. It was probably a mistake. It was time I could have spent doing something else. But I had all this knowledge that...
Because of that, because of all the hard work and things I had to learn on my own, I had just an unbelievable wealth of knowledge and storage. stored up information that people just really resonated with people. And I was able to just kind of share it in one big 2020 explosion. And then I just took off some of my tweets, got 20,000 likes.
just from information that I had stored up for seven years of being an engineer before that. So you started building your audience by sharing some of your engineering knowledge, but you then decided... to write another book having already done this o'reilly one you had the option here as you built your audience randall to launch a course which we will talk about later but you decided to write another book why another book why not one of these other mediums that
do seem to be a bit more lucrative i think i just had so much information to share and i feel like i had a cheat code in the way because my mom she has a marketing and branding company she's helped write or written her own books. She was the founder of homeschool.com way back when eventually it sold.
She wrote one of like the first, I think the very first homeschooling book on the market. And she helped me so much in terms of learning how to have a resume that was pulled together and how to market yourself online.
Back then, that was really helpful, especially as a woman in engineering, because I needed that edge. I didn't have the CS degree. I didn't have the years of background that other people interviewing for the same jobs did. So I needed to figure out ways to stand out. Did you make much money from that book, The Standout?
I think about $70,000. Was that mostly through Twitter? Yeah, mostly through Twitter. I had built an email list the same time. I, to this day, I still have not put my book on Amazon. It's in process right now. It should be up soon, but it just completely on. Gumroad and that was it. How about your email list now? My email list, I think, is about 7,000. I've been pruning it down quite a bit because when you don't email people for eight months...
After having a baby, they tend to want to unsubscribe. That's mean. Yeah. One person said that I wasn't sending them enough information anymore. And I was like, well, I mean, I just had an emergency C-section and almost died. So I'm sorry for you. That was a big fuck you. You know, the next time I'm bleeding out, I'll be sure to email you about it.
Oh, that's so good. Let's talk about your course, Hat the Tech Interview. Randall, this was incredible. At this point, you'd like build your audience. You'd learn your books. You did... 20k in the first 48 hours and 50k in the first month those are insane numbers talk me through making that course and launching it yeah it was kind of a challenge for me because interviewing was not something
I started out in my career as like a strong suit. And I just kind of saw the market need where people felt lost like I did in my early career. And they didn't know how to interview. They didn't know how to kind of narrow down companies. They were just kind of...
blindly applying to things on LinkedIn and doing one click apply. And I really felt like I could help people similar to the book. I wanted to just be able to like share that knowledge. And in the first cohort, I think every single person. Except I think one person who wanted a little bit more time, they all got new jobs. And it was anywhere from 50 to 100% increases.
in races that's crazy do you still make sales through that course at the moment or is it one of those things where you have that initial buzz of the launch then it sort of tails out completely in a little last few months definitely been hard because i have not
been launching it, but when I do a launch, I usually can make like $25,000. So that's nice. What do you do with the money? Are you a splurger or did that just help with... baby costs we actually the course helped contribute to buying our home so now we own amazing yeah so cool that must be such a cool feeling that like be
beyond just from like building your audience and making this course can then help you buy your home just as a side project that is so cool randall what advice would you give to young folks that considering going into tech considering side projects maybe they're entrepreneurial would you advise them to go and build side projects go into tech and get a software engineering job to build an audience at the same time
Yeah, well, I'm biased because for me, working at jobs for so long, it taught me so much. It really helped me know. to like anything from like, you know, talking to users, just discipline to, you know, signing into work every day by nine. So I'm a little biased towards that, but you know, everything works differently for different people.
Going back, maybe I would have just started trying to build projects right away and just taught myself and saved a lot of money on a boot camp. And I do have to say there's a lot of people who go into tech and they get a really cushy, high-paying job. And that's it. They no longer build side projects. They either stop or they lose the ambition to do it. So that's hard for me. I've been, I don't know if it's smart or dumb, but I'm still working for, you know, a smaller company that.
I'm not making enough money that I could sit comfortably. Why is that? Why wouldn't you go and work for a bigger company if you could? Is it because you like that desire to keep pushing? Like, why is that? I like to ship. I like to actually get stuff done in my job and feel like I have an impact. So for me, I love little startups. I love knowing everybody you work with. That's always been, you know, it's like being a little indie hacker inside a company.
I want to briefly touch upon SaaS projects. You're a software engineer, but all of the side projects we've spoken about, Randall, are either books or courses. I'm guessing you have started SaaS projects over the years? Yep. A lot of failed ones. I haven't been able to get traction. So that's been brutal. I've had a Twitter app. I should have stuck with it. I didn't. And then, you know, last year I did sell a cold tutor, but I just had a lot of failures.
Why is that? I feel like audiences lend to info products so well because people are following you for a specific thing and you can then launch your product in that niche or to that audience.
Building a SaaS or a company is a whole different kettle of fish because you've actually got to have a product that solves a person's need. I don't think I've cracked the code yet. You know, info products are... easier uh do you have plans to launch any more info pros because you you've always had a baby so a lot of your time has been taken up by yeah a new side project uh you're spared you're you definitely your new side project but you put a tweet out
the other day saying 2024 no new cyber projects i'm just gonna carry on my job also you bought a new domain did you actually buy a new domain or is this for the likes randall i did i know i wish it was for the likes that would have been I thought, okay, I'm going to make it. I'm not going to buy a new domain. And then eight days into the year, new domain. Just brutal. But I do, yeah.
I think having a baby has made me be even more ruthless about my time when I have three to four hours at night sometimes and that's it for an entire day and I have to be just hyper-focused on it. Yeah. The project that you sold, was that? Did that get to like a certain decent level of MRR before you sold it or was it? Yeah. I had about 35 paying customers. So just really exciting. People had bought like the yearly plans. I unfortunately, you know.
went into labor early i had planned to hire someone but it was doing really well and i'm really happy i sold it to a company that actually has other they have kind of a focus already on education in the tutoring space and engineering space and
It wasn't a life-changing sum by any means, but they were excited about it. So it made me excited that all the customers would be in good hands. That's crazy. So you almost cracked the code, but then... life circumstances put that on pause for a minute so you can yeah and i At the time, I thought, I'm just going to focus on my baby, no more side projects, and then got the side project bug again. So here I will be in 2024.
You can't not. Well, Randall, you've been a fantastic guest. You know, I end on three recommendations. What have you got for me? A book, a podcast, an indie hacker. Yeah, I'm so excited. Every time I listen to the podcast. I swear, I was telling you this earlier, I think to myself, what would I say one day if I was ever honored enough to be on the podcast every time? Podcast. I can't say yours because that would be too easy, but I do listen to it every day as software social.
I am a huge fan of software social. It's like listening to two friends chat about their business. And then The Dip by Seth Godin. I think indie hackers, yes, I think we all struggle with this. We drop things. too early and we don't focus down you know we faff about and then kyle golly is my indie hacker randall fantastic recommendations thank you so much for being on the pod
Thank you, James. Thank you for listening to this episode of IndieBytes. A reminder you can get the full conversation on the IndieBytes membership by hitting the link in the show notes. And a thank you again to my sponsor, Eamon Octopus, for making the show happen. That's all from me. See you next week.