How to Get Paid for Speaking | Multithreaded Income Episode 12 with James Q. Quick

And we just actually spent 20 minutes talking before even hitting record. Uh, but I wanted to start a conversation about branding. I know we have so much other content to go into, but I want to talk about branding because I love your brand, James Q quick, and I wanted to talk about why the Q why is that important from a branding perspective? James Q. Quick: Yeah. So I like, we'll probably talk a little bit about brand and then we'll get into a bunch of things.

Understand that all the things we talk about later are directly impacted by like. Being intentional of having a brand that's consistent, all these things. So, uh, my name is James Quinton quick. I don't know if you knew that my middle name was Q Quinton.

And, um, anyway, when I was starting to kind of pay more attention to my social media accounts and stuff and kind of consolidate things to one name or brand, I was looking at James quick and I found out that there was a football player who played at Louisville in the U S and then went to the NFL, anybody that's a professional athlete, like usually has. Pretty good traction on SEO. So if you searched at least at the time, you would find that person and you wouldn't find me.

And so I decided to, um, embrace my middle initial, which is very unique. Also, like most people don't have a Q in their name. No one has two of them in their name. So that's kind of unique. So anyway, by embracing the middle initial and going by James Q quick, um, it is unique across every social media platform I've ever signed up for. It's my website. It's a consistent thing. If you search for James, you quick.

And this is the reason we talked about this was you asked which way to be introduced. And I said like, please include the middle Q because that makes it more unique for me and SEO friendly. So if people are searching for me, They should be able to find me directly and not the, um, the football player. There is a singer of a popular band from the nineties, better than Ezra. And the lead singer of that band is Kevin Griffin. And there is also a Buddhist teacher and speaker.

It's called Kevin Griffin, and he he's the guy who owns Kevin Griffin dot com, and he has not James Q. Quick: how you pay attention to those things. Yeah. it's pick a pick a brand that you can go with, and I really appreciate that, because actually on my website, I use Kevin W Griffin. James Q. Quick: Yeah. Or for my name is for the same reasons, just so it stands out a little bit, but I haven't gone as deeply into it as, as you have.

James Q. Quick: Yeah. All right, let's talk about other subjects. I think that's a really good discussion to have though, is if you're going to put yourself out there, make sure you're putting yourself out as someone that people can find. I actually think you're the only one, but you're right. If someone's typing in the Google, Google doesn't know that I want James quick, the James Q. Quick: The me. yeah, the content creator, the javascript guy, the speaker.

They don't know if I want you or if I want the football player. James Q. Quick: Yeah. It works out so well for the consistency across. Platforms as well. And that's one thing I would recommend for people is fine. Find something that is meaningful to you, like a handle and something that's unique, because then you can keep those things consistent across ideally every platform. yeah, well, let's start at the beginning.

Let's go way back to a younger James Q. Quick and tell us your origin story about how you got started in tech. James Q. Quick: I guess then I would have been just James quick. Um, So I, I started, I went to school of engineering in college, got into the school of engineering. I don't really, I don't know why I like, I think I applied specifically for the school of engineering. I don't remember making that decision, but I did. And I got in and they said, uh, great, you're here.

What do you want to study? And I had no idea. I like it. I. I didn't, I didn't want to do like chemistry and bio. So I didn't want to do like biomed or something like that. I wasn't particularly interested in physics and I really just, I saw computer science and I was like, that, that sounds as interesting or more in comparison to the other options that I had in the engineering school.

And that's where I started, like basically on a whim, I had no programming experience, never done anything with computer science. People had done it at my high school, but I hadn't. So I just, I had nothing like background and I started and obviously really enjoyed it. I think one of the biggest things I ever did was build something outside of class.

I just wanted to build an Android app and had a book and got bored and I was like, I'll just Google stuff to build this Harry Potter trivia app that I did. And anyway. I found excitement kind of building that and then, uh, come senior year had interviews, uh, with Microsoft. They were recruiting on campus and I got turned down twice, which I'm not surprised at all that I did. And I tell this a lot, like I didn't graduate as a very good programmer because I treated school like school.

I didn't actually like care and I didn't really internalize and I didn't really learn to be honest. Um, something I like to So a lot of people, because I don't know, it wasn't wasted time, but I just could have gotten a lot more and I got turned out for Microsoft twice and they came back and said, what do you think about a technical evangelist position? And I said, that sounds ridiculous. I don't know what that is, but Microsoft sure.

Like I'll, I'm definitely interested in, in figuring out about that. And a lot of what the interview was, was about kind of my excitement for stuff. So I had found the. Working on that app was me going above and beyond outside of the classroom, like actually just building stuff and then talking about the stuff that I built and what I didn't realize would become a big part of my career was the teaching aspect. So as an evangelist or an advocate, now you hear more often.

you're, you're teaching in some capacity. And I didn't realize this at the time until later that I really have fallen in love with teaching. So basically kind of the rest of the conversation will come from a place of, I do content, I do speaking, I do all these things because I've found that I really love to teach people. That's amazing. now I didn't know you were at Microsoft. Um, as long as I've known you, I don't think I've known that when I met you, you were at off zero.

And so I'm not sure how much of a gap in years and in career that was, but I met you at a conference or two and you had started getting into the YouTube game as far as I was aware, let's talk about now one day. I guess you have to decide. I'm going to put stuff on on YouTube. Let's talk about how you made that James Q. Quick: Yeah. It actually started with Microsoft as well.

And the very first use case was just solving a problem that I had, which was I would run this workshop in a classroom and I would give like an introductory, like, here's some things you could do is with a game making tool called construct two, which is super cool because it's drag and drop for games. It's so much more exciting to work with and teaching. Java for people that have never programmed before. Like it's, it's such a better option to get interest in computer science, I think.

And so I loved it, but I would do like an hour long, like, here's some things you could do now go build some stuff yourself. And they would ask me the same questions over and over again. And I'd be in a classroom of 20 or 30 kids and have like a teacher who didn't really know what was going on. Not that that's their fault. They were just like trying to help help out. And, um, anyway, so I recorded like a 16 video series of like, here's how you do these things with construct two.

And I put it up on YouTube. I didn't think about it was, it was literally just a logistical thing. I had no plan for brand. I had no scared or no fear of like comments. There was no, there was no thought into it other than I'm going to solve this particular use case where I'm going to show up to a classroom. I'm going to say, here's some things you could do.

When you have a question, go watch these videos and don't ask me like, not in a rude way, but like, here's a resource where you can go and get contact so that I can scale. My ability to teach, right? Like if everyone's asking the same question and I have it documented, here you go. You can go find that and take your time and rewind and slow it down or whatever you need. So that was, that was the first thing I ended up doing after that.

Some other video content on Microsoft channel nine, where I did some interviews with the team. I don't remember honestly how or why that started. I just remember I kind of had. A mini show at one point, it was doing a series and I was doing interviews with other people. And that was super cool. And you mentioned like the potential time gap. So from Microsoft, I left and my wife and I came back to Memphis, which is where I'm from.

I worked for FedEx as a developer, software engineer, and an architect for three years. And while I was there, I was trying to get back into speaking, which we haven't talked about yet. And I was doing some YouTube stuff and I realized I miss doing that. Like I miss the, the advocacy, the content, the teaching, I missed all of that. And that's when I transitioned back to all zero. Cause I wanted someone to pay for me to do all of those things.

And around that time, I started taking YouTube seriously. Like I started looking at it as an option of something you can build. I'm currently in a discord for years. The YouTube, the programming, YouTubers discord. And if you are in the programming ecosystem and you know, like programming YouTubers, like channels, they're probably in a discord and it's super cool because everybody is like super transparent and open helpful. It's really amazing.

So I just started to see it as like, I could actually do something with that. And that's been over the course of four or five years. It's just continued to grow and enabled me to do a lot more, which I'm sure we'll talk about. So we have covered content doing YouTube. You had gone back into speaking and we're going to talk a little bit more about speaking here in a couple of minutes, but I know there was an eventual point in your career where you said, I don't want to do the, The job anymore.

I want to go all in on content. Let's talk a little bit about what was that? What was that spark that said? This is a good idea that I should do this. James Q. Quick: Yeah. Um, I don't, I don't know if you actually know this part, but the, the take is a little bit different than I decided I kind of did anyway. So I was actually let go from the company. I was at planet scale. So I showed up for work one day, got an invite on my calendar to meet with the CEO, small company.

So that wasn't super odd. Send a message. I was like, Hey, anything I should prepare showed up and HR was like, we'll wait until the CEO gets here. And he was like, this is your last day. Immediately sign out of everything. I was done leading up to that point. I had already been, I had already kind of planned that most likely I was going to try to do content full time after planet scale. So. Maybe within six months of when I got let go, or maybe in another year or something.

But I've been thinking about that and I've been making money on the side too, from sponsored content and a little bit from courses. Although, um, you know, I have grown a lot and got a lot better, I think since then. But, um, I had proven myself up until that point that I had the ability to generate revenue. Um, the other most important part for me is my wife who works at All C R O now. I don't know if you knew that. I didn't know that either.

James Q. Quick: Yeah. So it's, it's a super fun overlap where she does events and sponsorships. I work with companies and I go and speak at conferences. We have, it's so amazing for us to have, like be in the same ecosystem together, but, um, she has healthcare, like she has a really good salary from all zero. Like her, her journey is amazing where she tripled her salary when she got into tech, limited vacation benefits, all the things, right? Like it's everything you could dream of.

And so I had that to lean on most importantly, the healthcare. And I took a day, I posted on Twitter. I was like, I just got let go. I don't know what's next for me. If you have roles like in Deverell or like whatever, let me know. And just like flooded my DMS, which is so cool because I think my brand, I had earned my reputation in the community where people knew I was worth reaching out to for open positions because of the work that I had done and the. The trust that I built in the community.

So that was super cool. But I was at this kind of crossroads at that point of saying like, I could go look for another job, or maybe this is that opportunity that I've been looking for. And honestly, I like even six months down the road, I don't know that I would have left to do it on my own. Like this was kind of the jumpstart in a reverse way where it kind of forced me into like, this could actually be that chance. And so I looked at like. How much runway did I have money wise?

How much upcoming content did I have that would make money? And then thinking about if I was doing this full time, how much money, how much more could I do? How much more money could I make? How much more content content could I produce? And it was, it was like less than a day. Um, and I decided like. That's what I want to do. And Monday morning, so I got let go on Thursday, my wife and I went out to a nice dinner that night, like oddly enough.

Um, and then Monday I sat down and I was a full time content creator and it was, it wasn't this huge transition because these were all things I had already been doing on the side. I'd already been creating content. I'd already been working with sponsors. I've already been active on social media. I've already been speaking at conferences, like all of these things I've already been doing. Now I just get a hundred percent control over what I'm doing. To be able to choose where I spend my time.

And I had a lot of flexibility in the past as well. I really enjoyed it, but this is just different because I can look back every day and I can say, like, I, everything that I've made happen in my career on my own has been because of me, right? Like there's a hundred percent ownership over all that stuff. So. Anyway, that was, that was the moment that was in July of 22. So we're now a little over a year. It has been going really well this year over the full year.

I will replace the salary that I had at my previous job and more, um, in a year span. And I think I couldn't be more excited and proud to, to not only say that I went full time, but also like have been successful with money in in that regard as well. that's great news. How do you go from, so you had a job, you got laid off, you find yourself Monday morning here. Having decided I'm a full time content creator. Is that freeing or is that incredibly stressful? Because now you have.

All the time that you wish you had when you were probably full time working. James Q. Quick: It up until recently, and I'll tell you a little personal story in a second up until recently, it has been much more on the freeing side. And the reason is, again, my wife makes good money. I had buffer coming into this. I knew I could make at least decent money. So money was never a stressor.

I was always like so far ahead where my runway was plenty to where I didn't have to force myself to kind of put a lot of pressure myself on any given time span. Personal note, we just moved. We have not sold our old house, although hopefully we're very close. And what we ended up doing was doing this thing called a bridge loan, which I would never recommend anyone doing where you take a loan out on the equity of your original house.

To pay for your new house, assuming that you're going to pay your house or you're going to sell your old house soon, that did not happen the way we expected, which meant basically for a couple of months now, we've been carrying the equivalent of like three mortgages at this point, this is like the most stressful thing I've ever been through in my entire life. Again, it kind of personal story.

The reason I bring that up is now I have more pressure right this second in the last couple of months to get money because I don't have the consistency of a paycheck coming in. So even if I know things are coming, it's, it's a little more urgent for it to come in. Hopefully all that stuff is wrapped up soon. That's the decision we will never make again. And I don't think For any foreseeable reason, we will ever be in that position again.

And so I think that pressure will be taken off, but right now there's a little bit because you're, you're the owner of it and you have to, you have to go in and do the thing yourself. Like you have to make sure you get paid and that, um, I don't know when it's under a little bit of a time crunch as a little bit of pressure to it. And in addition to that, when you went full time, did you give yourself some sort of goal or timeline?

Like if I'm not at a certain point in six months or 12 months, I'm going to give this up. James Q. Quick: Yeah. I don't, I don't remember specifically what they were, but I definitely did. And I remember looking at like talking to my wife, my wife was really nervous about this. I think at the time I did it, I was in a much better position than when we had originally talked about the possibility of someday, which is a year before. So we were already in a better off position.

And I talked to her about like six months, like give it to the end of the year and see what it is. I don't remember what the numbers were. I don't remember what specifics were, but as a couple of months in, I was like, This is legit. Like I'm like, I'm doing this. It's working out really well. And I can kind of see like building up more runway going into.

And I was like, even if I don't make like almost any money for December and January, like that's plenty to get through to February and start making money then type of thing. Um, so yes, there was, there was a gauge at that point. I don't remember exactly what it was. It was about six months in and pretty early on. I could tell that. I was going to be fine with whatever that metric was. And I was going to do this basically as, as long as I could for the foreseeable future. That's excellent.

And content is not all you do now. If I understand right, you're consulting and we'll talk about speaking more, but how much of your, I would say week is consulting versus content. James Q. Quick: Yeah, I don't, I'm, I'm a terrible hours person, which is probably not good when you do consulting because they want to know how much you're working. Um, what, what my goal is in general is to, to help even out where my income comes from.

So up until recently, the vast majority of my income has come from sponsored videos and sponsored videos comes with challenges. I can talk about this in a minute, the kind of the different approach I'm taking to that, which I'm much more excited about than what I did kind of the year leading up to the last couple of months. But I want to get a little away from that of being dependent upon other brands to create one off videos in particular. Um, so that's been the majority of the income.

I wanted to get away from that a little bit and diversify. And so I've taken up a couple of, uh, smaller consulting things. One is on YouTube consulting specifically for a company, a brand that I'm already really excited about and connected to another is for basically like Hours, monthly hours for feedback, like testing out.

Cause I've got lots of experience in like using new products and creating documentation and creating videos and understanding what it's like for someone to onboard to something. So that, um, that is something that I'm, I'm working on as well.

And then the thing, this is still more on the sponsored side, but my different approach to that now is trying to do a build in public initiative where I get a couple of brands to sponsor my time, basically over the course of three to six months to build something and use their products. And then use that core content, that building, the learning from building to create content along the way.

So not all of it, or most of it won't be focused specifically on their products, some of it would, but it'll just be like, here's things I learned as I was building stuff. And I think that's really valuable. And I think it will give me a lot more focus and a lot more prioritization because that's going to be the number one priority. And every, or most things that I do around that, whether it's speaking or to YouTube videos or YouTube shorts or Twitter posts or whatever.

Should kind of come from that core, build a public thing. Yeah. I love building public. I think it's a more, it's a more natural approach. I think people really respond well to it. Uh, cause. We're not going to name names, but there are some fake people out there and they have fake looking content and it's, it's easy to be genuine as a, as a creator. James Q. Quick: I will say it's, it, it is easy to be genuine. It's also developer audiences are very quick to judge.

And even if I think that I'm like, I'm approaching something from a genuine standpoint, you still. People being very hesitant about anything sponsored. And I think some of it's not fair. Like I think some people are just a little ridiculous about it, but also people are just skeptical. And so the building public thing is these are companies and products that I will use over the course of several months. So I can have a deeper conversation.

I can have more use cases because if I do a one off video, I prepare a small demo for that video, and that's all I do with that product most likely. And that's not the most beneficial for me or the brand. Because the brand is going to get more out of working with me if it's something I continue to use, because I'm going to continue to talk about that thing. And people are going to continue to see me use that thing.

So anyway, for all those points, like I, I am really excited about what I've kind of turned the sponsor, the majority of the sponsorship stuff that I have into that. And I think that's going to be a lot of fun to work on. Now, in addition to the content, the consulting, I know you, uh, have a podcast as well. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Is that income producing thing or is it just a thing you do for branding purposes? James Q. Quick: Yeah. Uh, mostly brand and networking.

Uh, so it's the compressed FM podcast, a weekly podcast about web development and design with my co hosts, two of them now. Amy Dutton and Brad Guierpi, who I thoroughly enjoy just hanging out with. And from a networking perspective, we just reach out to people and say, Hey, come tell us about the thing that you do. Cause you're awesome. Right. And that gives us an excuse to meet anyone and everyone. I'm sure, you know what that's like to reach out for guests on yours.

That's why you're on the James Q. Quick: yeah, I know. So it's like a hack for networking, honestly. Um, so that's really good. We have had sponsors off and on. We have not been, um, I think, I think if we spent more time. Being organized and intentionally working with sponsors, it could be more of a revenue generator, but time is hard to come by. And it's like one of many things that.

Um, our intern who does the editing and a few other things, which is really nice to just kind of show up on a Friday record and then be hands off because we have somebody that can take care of the rest of it. Um, anyway, so yeah, brand and networking and cool thing. Uh, tying back to speaking are that the podcast at two or three conferences now. Which is really cool just because it's different than your regular talk at a conference. And I think it's good for us brand wise.

So that's been a lot of fun too. Let's talk a little bit about time because you mentioned there's so much more you could do if you have the time, but between all the things you have going on, I know you have a young family and a newborn. I want to say newborn, but probably at this point, at least six years old. How do you manage? The time for everything that produces the income that helps support the family and still making time for the family.

James Q. Quick: Yeah. Um, so we, our daughter is four and a half months, not six years yet, Okay. James Q. Quick: sure she'll be there pretty soon. Close. James Q. Quick: Um, I, for me, the good thing is. Work life balance has always been my number one priority. And I remember starting my career at Microsoft and not that people were super off on the work life balance. It was just different than mine because a lot of people that were younger didn't have.

Someone to go home to, and this is not like a shot at them. This is just a situation that we were in where my wife and I do everything together. Like we're super cliche, like literally everything I talked about, she works at all zero. We talk about work stuff all the time because we both love it. We now have similar friends and in the tech ecosystem, I'm sure you'll get to meet her at some point at a conference. Like we play soccer together. We like all these things we've always done together.

So for me. We started my career five o'clock came around. I'm like, I don't, I don't want to be doing work stuff. I want to be at home for all the other things that I could be doing. Not that I didn't enjoy work, but because I have so many things in my life that I enjoy and I want to do. And so that's always been a priority for me, which I think makes. Making time for family easy, easier for me than maybe a lot of people who were not used to prioritizing that time anyway.

So another, another big helpful thing is my wife has had a six months maternity leave shout out to all zero for having amazing maternity leave. And that's super unique and special. And so she gets paid the whole time she can be home. And we've also started to have a nanny in the house three days a week. And the beautiful thing about that is it gets time for my wife.

Like she's taken a lot of responsibility to take care of Jamie this entire time while I'm working, but we get to keep, so it frees up my wife, but we also get to keep. Jamie at home, which means at any point, like when we get done recording, I can go down and hold her for a few minutes or whatever. So we're never that far removed from her at any point. And I think that's really beautiful. That has just makes me so happy. So all of us are together the vast majority of the time.

Um, I will say I haven't, I probably haven't worked a 40 hour week, especially since she's been born. That's for a few different reasons, meaning I've worked less than 40 hours. Um, but that's also A good thing to like some days I feel like I don't get as much done as I would like to, but I, I definitely am not upset about not working 40 hour a week. So anyway, it's been, it's been a transition like anything else. It's been a ton of fun.

Um, but I think having already had good boundaries in place has made it a lot easier for both of us to get everything out of the time that we've had that we want. I'll show you a little bit of your future. I've worked from home for 13 years, 12, 13 years. And my, my kids are 12 11 and seven and they've been homeschooled their entire lives. So it's, there has not been a day where. I haven't been able to just go inside, take breaks and talk to my kids for a couple of minutes.

So even if it's just say, hi, what are you working on today? And I don't regret that at all. I love every moment I've had with my kids. So having that opportunity, I'm just telling you, that's going to pay dividends for years and years and years to come. And I think anyone who works in an office and doesn't have that opportunity, or they're going to say the thing that they regret. Regret usually is not being able to spend more time with the kids. So good on you and good on your wife as well.

So, um. Let's pivot a little to what I really want to talk about. Cause I didn't think I wanted to talk about it until we were discussing before the call. And this is stuff that you wish to spend more time on that you're not necessarily spending time on now. And I'll go ahead and let you chime in on, on what that would be. James Q. Quick: I kind of mentioned diversifying income and, and one of the things, by the way that I've learned is my YouTube stats have been a little down.

So the amount of money that I make on YouTube ads is down from where it was a year ago. So you can't. You can't just depend on, like, if you make it to a certain level with YouTube, you're going to make that amount of money the rest of your life. Like, that's not how it works. So you start looking at like, how do you diversify? And I mentioned like sponsored content courses, just content in general. That's one big category. Consulting is another that I want to continue to grow.

And then also paid speaking opportunities. I've had very little of actual paid speaking opportunities. I think we talked about this before. Most of what I've had is people pay for you to go somewhere. And, uh, this past last year, I made a goal for myself of giving my first keynote talk this year. And at the, I'm about to give a keynote at all things open, um, which is semi close to you. Um, Yeah, I, um, that will be either my fourth or fifth keynote this year.

And so it's really amazing from that perspective to have like a specific goal to see that happen, not just once, but like multiple times in a year. And that's super exciting. But I think there's also another level of not just getting paid to go and having a big audience to speak to, but also getting paid as a speaker. Then I've got a really good friend of mine who does professional speaking.

And I mean, you get paid, not that this is why you do it, but it's certainly a nice benefit to it, like five, 10 grand to do a speaking engagement. And these are things that you and I have been doing for years, right? Like we know how to speak. That's what, that's what we've done a lot of for years. And so being able to translate that into a portion of that income. And then also I think there's opportunities. I think a lot of that would come from like private speaking.

And I think the, the impact from a teaching perspective is also still really special for me. I talked about like my love for teaching and to, to show up somewhere, whether it's a conference or a closed event or whatever it is. And to see people respond to what you say, I think you can probably relate to this as well. It just means everything. It makes it so much, so much worthwhile. And so to, to combine something I already love, I'm already doing, I've already done it for a long time.

And then to bring that in, ideally to where it's like, it's a, it's a portion of the income that I make in a year, I think would be really good. So that's something that I'm, I'm working towards, um, you know, the rest of this year slash leading into next year.

How do you make the jump from being a, so there's probably a lot of folks out there who've been speaking for longer than you and me put together and they are used to submitting to a call for papers, waiting for the acceptances and the rejections as they come. How do you make the jump from that to getting that first keynote slot and then that fourth keynote slot and so on? James Q. Quick: Um, I actually talked to Jason Langsdorf about this and I got similar feedback from him.

That I got from West boss. When I talked to him years ago, I talked to West boss when I was looking to get back into content and very few people knew who Wes boss was. I just happened to watch a free video on YouTube of his and, and kind of the advice is not, not exactly fake it till you make it, but like tell people what it is you want to be and what you want to do. And, um, my first keynote opportunity came from that conference. Clark is now one of my really good friends.

Got to see him, um, in the summer of 22 at that conference, Wisconsin. And it was just sitting down and talking and he'd reach out to me, like, wanting to get to know each other and told him like, I want to do a keynote. And he said, why don't you keynote Austin? Which was their second conference of the year. It's coming back up again, by the way, January, February. I'm super excited about it. I'll be I'll be there. James Q. Quick: People should go. Kevin's going. Awesome.

My first that conference. I know I haven't been able to go to at that conference James Q. Quick: Oh, that's so exciting. And for clarification, people listening, it's called that conference. That's the name of it. Cause it's very confusing. I'm super excited to talk about that more in a little bit. Um, but I gave a keynote in, in Austin and, and then at that point, when you have one, you can call yourself a keynote speaker and kind of advertise that.

And that's, I think that's part of what I can still do a lot better of, but just intentionally telling people my brand includes being a speaker. So I've had a tagline of developer speaker, teacher for a long time. I have a speaking page on my site. I just added a writer, which is new thing for me, but it's like my requirements for speaking. I got it from Cassidy Williams who like has done a ton of speaking as well. So I think part of the answer was me just putting it out there.

Another short anecdote. I spoke at all things open last year. I felt like I gave a really good talk, like one of the best of my career. It wasn't a keynote. And I looked at the people on the keynote stage who are amazing. There was a lot of people I looked up to last year, but I look at keynote speakers and I'm like, I could, I could freaking do that. Like, I know I could do that and I could rock it.

And I, when the CFP is open for all things open this year, it was like three, four or five months ago or something, I messaged them and I was like, Hey, like any chance there's a keynote spot available. And I didn't hear anything and I didn't hear anything until. Like a couple of weeks ago, and they said like, Hey, if you're so interested, we've got a keynote spot for you. So it's not, I wasn't necessarily the person that like was number one on their list. Right.

But it's still that keynote opportunity for me, which is huge. And I'm like over the moon excited about, I can't wait for that. So there's a few different things like just putting it out there. Um, is one, I think if you tell people, that's what you do, if you tell people, that's what you want to do. If you're willing to make some concessions about how, so I went to, um, a conference in Toronto where I told them like, this is my speaker fee. They basically said, we don't have that.

I was like, I'll do this one if I can tag it as a keynote. So I can continue to add those to my list type thing. Um, the other thing that I think I want to be like, not braggy about, but transparent about is like my brand specifically from a YouTube perspective makes a world of difference. And it just does like, there's just that many more people. Through YouTube who have seen my stuff enough to think about me as someone that would come out and, and speak.

So I don't want to overlook, like, I could sit here all day and say, like, I just tell people I want to speak and then it works. Like, it also has to do with, like, having an audience in that regard and people knowing that it's a thing that I do, but also having seen. And then a couple in some capacity are me putting it out there of this is what I would like to do. I used a similar hack when I did my this years and years ago when I did my first talk out outside of the country.

I was all of a sudden an international speaker and I've heard. I've heard hacks before from folks to say, if you've spoken at a Microsoft office, you have spoken at Microsoft. And so you use this way to not necessarily lie. You're just, you're bending the truth a little though. And James Q. Quick: That's 1 thing I've, I've learned is you have to control your narrative, like you. And I tell this a lot cause I teach or I have taught like bootcamp students.

And 1 of the number 1 things they lack is confidence, right? So they, they walk into an interview and they say, Oh, I just built this thing. It's a simple thing. And blah, blah, blah. Like they downplay themselves, which means the people. Interviewing them are not going to take them as seriously. Right. And there's a, there's a border. There's a balance between like cocky and confidence, but you have to control that narrative.

And sometimes you can spin it a little bit just to, just to have that tag that you can include. And I, my first international talk, I immediately was like international speaker, like everywhere. So James, is there anything that hasn't worked any failures, initiatives that just. Seemed good, but didn't work out. James Q. Quick: Yeah. It may not be that dramatic, but one thing I haven't done. Since Jamie was born.

So it's been four and a half months is I haven't done tick tock and I really like tick tock. Um, and had some success with tick tock and was trying to take it more seriously. I think one of the things that hurt me was not a consistent style of video. I think people really respond with things that they know what to expect. And so I don't even know what, like, I don't have a great example right off hand, but just consistency.

And I think I have so many things I would like to do, including getting, getting into like humor, like developer humor and satire. So it was part of what I did. And some of it was just. Here's how you do a thing programming wise. Anyway, like I, I had some success with that and after kind of coming back and working after Jamie was born and.

Looking at the amount of time that I have and the impact that certain things TikTok were having or not, it's, I just haven't even touched it and it's been kind of freeing. I really liked it, but it is overwhelming for me thinking about all the things that I want to do. All the time. And I think most of us have this problem of prioritization and accepting that we can't do it all, which is really hard. But that, that is one thing that I just haven't done. And, uh, basically five months now.

And I don't know that I have immediate plans to, to pick that up, but it's certainly something that I miss a little bit and enjoy, just want to make sure it kind of makes, makes sense. Time wise. One thing that we just completely glossed over, and this is my failure as a host, is that you recently just released a full course on Astro. And, uh, as far as I know, this, this is the first full video course you've done, or is it, have there been others?

James Q. Quick: Yeah. There's been other, it's funny Clark from that conference posted like a big congratulations to James for his first course. It's not, but that's okay. But I think that's also a testimony to like, I don't know. You think not that this course has been super big, but you see people that like. Come on the radio and you're like, Oh my God, they got famous overnight. And the reality is like, they've been doing this stuff for years and no one knew. Right.

So my first course was actually a VS code course, which has made more money than any other course I've ever done. It was on Udemy and it was just timed really well, I think from a VS code perspective. And it also got into their like enterprise subscription model, which gave it a huge boost. So over the course of several years, it's now. Dying off, which is kind of sad, but I was making like a grand a month from that, not touching it at all.

And so I was very fortunate for that to just get picked up and. Um, anyway, so that was the first, I did a couple of like free mini courses on YouTube. That was the first paid course. I did another one in between that one and this one, which is reacting serverless. Um, actually that's not quite true. I did. What was it for? I guess it was reacting. Yeah. Reacting serverless.

Sorry. Um, that I published on Udemy and then moved to Podia as my own, like I didn't build it, but like as a course platform instead of doing Podia, but I did both. And that did like. And so part of what I want to get into going back to how do you make money and, and also tying into like the build in public thing.

If I spend six months building something, whatever it is, and ideally I tie it in with like sponsored time to do it, the things I've learned during that and what I'm able to build from a demo perspective are very useful for people, like amazingly useful, I think. Um, so my goal is to kind of go through. Six or eight months cycles of kind of working on something, digging deeper into stuff, and then turning that into course content as well.

So I started, we talked about this on the Astro front of migrating my personal site from, uh, trying to go to next JS and then choosing Astro and said, and then looking at like, okay, here's. Potential ideas for courses. I want to do Astro and I did that. And there's a lot that goes into it. Uh, like I created a separate domain, separate website.

I created a couple of blog posts on that domain, which I didn't take super seriously, but I created YouTube content around the topic to point people to a newsletter where they could sign up for the waitlist, created the course, um, had someone help me with the demo recorded 85 videos or whatever, um, hosted on podium. And got to launch a little over a month ago, and it's been super cool to, to look at like putting an effort over the course of several months and then seeing people respond to it.

Like not just signing up, but also getting good feedback and seeing people progress through the course. That's super, super fun. And so I look at, um, full transparency. The course has made about 15 K so far. I don't expect it to make a whole lot more, although maybe like different ways we'll pick up some, but I had about 600 people on the wait list for that. And I look at like. The potential reach that I have through YouTube and other platforms.

And I'm thinking to myself, like, if I, if I take that as a baseline conversion number, like there's no reason I'm not, I wouldn't be capable of building a course and having a wait list for something of five, 6, 000 people, right? Like tenfold that. And then you look at like, if I were to tenfold the revenue. For stuff that I'm already excited about that. I'm already building. I'm excited to teach all these things. That's kind of a game changer from, um, a content creator perspective.

And you look at people like West boss, like you can go and run the numbers cause they're on his website. He makes millions from courses. That's, I think that's every, every course creator's dream is West boss. And even far removed from that, like, I think there's a lot of potential. So I'm excited about the way it went. I'm excited to continue to refund the process of creating and marketing a course. Yes. And then hopefully just getting better and better.

We, a group of friends of mine and I always make a joke. We're all content creators. We, we talk about West boss and we mean it in the most jealous, lovingly way possible that Wes must wake up one day and go, you know, I could really use a new car and it's a course. Now he goes by his new car on a new house and I'm sure it's not like that at all.

Uh, I've actually, I've never met Weston, uh, in person before, but I, I say from a standpoint of, I'm extremely jealous and I want to be in that position. James Q. Quick: Well, you gotta, you gotta also think too, there's, there's nothing wrong with making a ton of money from your content. And I will always, I, I produce enough free content, I think for people to trust me that I'm not doing it for the money, but I also would like to make a lot of money. There's nothing wrong with that.

And if you look at West boss and the success that he's had, People come back for more because they get the value that was promised. Like I have, I have, yeah, there's, I have no problem investing money if I see an ROI and that's what people see and that's why people come back. And so the more you kind of build that reputation and it scales like West boss has done, it's all built on being really freaking good at what you're doing.

And there's nothing wrong with charging a premium price for that because it's valuable content. And you just, you see the response that people have where they come back. And I just think about, I was talking to my wife about this the other day. If you think about the course topics that he's covered react, no JS, CSS, grid, JavaScript, and you think about in any of those categories.

If I could recommend a couple of resources, some resources to someone, his, and any of those categories is always going to be on that list every single time. And that's because of the job that he's done. James, I have taken up a lot of your time and I have at least 50 more questions I want to ask, but I'm not going to, what we're going to do is we're going to have you back in the future and we're going to talk about some deeper topics. James Q. Quick: please do.

But before we wrap up, is there anything that you'd like to promote while you're here? James Q. Quick: Yeah. Uh, so the Astro course is available at Astro course. dev. It is Astro three updated. I didn't talk about the timing. Like after I started recording, then they launched Astro three and I made the updates to, to ship with Astro three. It's super fun.

It talks about the statically generated content side of Astro and also gets into the SSR side, adding authentication and comments and working with Zeta as a database. And I think there's a bunch of cool stuff and it just shows you the power, I think, of Astro. So check that out at astrocourse. dev if you're interested. Also, one thing is I'm trying to, uh, do a better job of. Promoting is my newsletter. Uh, so James Q quick.

com slash newsletter, or just like, you can see it at the bottom of the page. If you scroll, um, typically I'm a couple of weeks off, so I need to get back on track, but typically I send weekly email. I include some of my recent content. I include something that's top of mind personally, either technically or just personal life. I include a couple of references to content from my discord, my learn, build, teach discord. And then a recent podcast.

So if you're interested in just kind of following some of that content and seeing what's top of mind for me on a weekly basis, you can find that at jamesqquick. com slash newsletter. Excellent. And we'll make sure we put links to all that stuff in their show notes. James, I appreciate having you on the show and we'll definitely have you back sometime in the future to cover a lot more topics because I wish that an hour was enough time, but thank you so much for hanging out with us.

James Q. Quick: Absolutely. Thank you.