Luck Surface Area | Episode 43 with Aaron Francis

And. I tell everyone, you got, you got to find your group, you got to find your core tribe of people and you've been a part of that for forever. I don't think we need to go in too much detail of our, of our group because there's a lot of. There's a lot of people in there. You probably wouldn't expect

I feel like everyone in that group who. Has been active or the past couple of years, everyone's just gotten better.

YouTube channel, um, and sometimes also with courses. So right now I'm working on a big, uh, course for a database called a SQL light. Um, so it's kind of like. Um, it's actually, actually like the most widely used database in the world. Um, but very few web people use it. And so I'm having a fun time, um, learning all about that and translating it into a thing that would be useful for more like web or application developers.

Um, and it's just so rock solid because it's been battle tested in environments where the power could go away or the flash drive could be pulled out in the middle of a transaction. And so it's just incredibly rock solid and the format super stable that it's actually the archival format of the library of Congress here in the U S. And so it's a very good database, but it's got this. You know, giant glaring limitation that it's not client server.

So you have to like be in the same place as the database file. And that's really limited a lot of people using it on web. And so my goal is to, um, teach people how to use it, but also teach web developers that they can use it. And it'll probably. Honestly, it'll probably be good enough for the first many, many years of your application. And if you don't make it past those many years, then that's okay. You haven't wasted a lot of time setting up some other database. Yes,

really, they need five concurrent requests per second. And I'm gonna have to pick that up. I don't use sequel light for for web applications, but I like to scale. Talk about potentially using it. I feel like there's use cases for that. Plus, uh, if you're using production, my SQL or Postgres or SQL server or something else, um, yeah, I'm looking forward to that. How'd you come up with SQL light as the topic

One of the first calls I had post layoff was with the CEO of a company called Terso. And I got on the phone with him and was like, Hey, I would, you know, cause it's a database company. I just came out of a database company and I was like, Hey, I'd love to hear about your company, what you got going on. And he was like, Whoa, let me just. Just like, you should go out on your own. This is the CEO of a company I thought I was interviewing with.

And he's like, you should go out on your own and we will be your first client. Like, I don't have a job for you, but I want to tell you you've got what it takes. And I was like, what is going on here? This is, this is wild. And so I took, you know, I took a bunch more calls during the layoff. And then finally it was like, no, we should, we should start our own thing. And so then I circled back to Glauber, who's the CEO of Terso. And was like, Hey, what if, what if we took you up on that?

What if we really, you really were our first client and we create a SQL light course and torso sponsors it. So torso is, um, hosted SQL light. So they can take your SQL light and make it distributed and put embedded replicas in your different apps all over the world, stuff like that. So it's very, very interesting. And he was like. Yeah, sounds great. And so coming out of my old job, which I was a database educator, a company that doesn't matter.

I was a database educator and I thought I kind of have like, um, I kind of have the attention of, of

database people and full stack developers, and they kind of already view me as an authority on databases. And so this feels very like, um, this feels very directionally correct. And so we started, uh, with SQL light. And then after that. Um, we have a Postgres course coming as well. So kind of trying to stay in that database vein for as long as I can. Cause that's kind of where people, where they know me.

Like you just, you had to know how the database worked. Right. And I come by it honestly, cause my dad was a DBA for his whole career for, with, uh, Microsoft SQL server. And so like, I just kind of like knew and liked the database. Um, and so I'm in the Laravel ecosystem a lot. And I started talking about database stuff and people were like, Oh dude, I didn't know any of that. And I'm like, really?

Oh man, maybe like, maybe I do have a little bit of knowledge here, which I think is always interesting that, you know, how much we discount ourselves. Um, so I started writing about it. And, you know, I bought some more books so that I could, I could like actually bone up on my knowledge. Cause I'm not, I don't have a computer science degree. Um, so I started reading and writing about it.

And that's when the CEO of the database company that I used to work at reached out and was like, Hey, I see what you're doing. Do you want to just come do that for our company and get paid for it? I was like, yeah, that's, that's awesome. I would love to do that. So it was kind of like, It came out of me naturally, but other people, like, I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't been putting myself out there and saying like, Hey, here's some content and people being like, Whoa, this is great.

Like durable long term channel sponsors. Um, so we can say like hey company XYZ for the next I don't know, two months. We'll put a mid roll in every, you know, every video that we do or something like that That's kind of what I'm looking for Because making one off videos is tough Because I want it to kind of be authentic, right? I don't want to just So I kind of have to like research and use the thing and get used to it and understand the trade offs.

And so it's just a lot of work for a dedicated video. Um, but yeah, so the YouTube is a big, a big portion of our income. We're hoping the courses, the course, we, we will sell the course to end users. So there's money there. And TURSO is sponsoring the course, um, so there's money there as well. So TURSO is a part of the course and they paid us for that privilege, but we're also selling it to end users, um, so we'll get, we'll get paid for that.

like genuine knowledge, but the sponsor gets like attention and hopefully customers because those people are going to be like, yeah, I don't want to do it the hard way.

So my goal is always that the learner walks away knowing everything they need to know about SQLite to be successful. Also, they walk away knowing if they want to take the easy path. If they want to take the done for you path, in my opinion, Terso is the best way to do that, but if they want to take the DIY path, you are armed with enough knowledge to do that. Um, and so that, that's kind of the angle. And honestly, when I was at the old company, that's how I did it there too. I taught, I taught.

MySQL, like through and through open source version of MySQL. And also if you want to put your MySQL database somewhere, I think our company is the best place to do that, but you don't have to do that. And it worked incredibly well. Um, so that's, that's kind of the goal for the Terso SQLite course as well.

Like he, he is a video guy, not like a screencasting guy like me. He's like, I could do cinematography. And I'm like, well, as long as I can record my screen and sit here, I'm happy. So I think a big part of it is we know. We know what we like and what we, what we don't like. And I think we have taken the time to identify. 10 to 15 to 20 little things that add up to make the video feel super, super polished. And so, you know, setting up this studio in here was a big, a big thing.

And Steve helped me like dial in the lighting to make sure that I, you know, looked good on camera. Like the way that I record, I record, like I ended up doing it a lot. I ended up redoing a lot of stuff. stuff and that's, that is solely or primarily because I want the final video to not be super choppy. So I think there are some YouTubers that like.

Well, chop up literally every third or fourth word and it just becomes a series of jump cuts and that's a style and I don't, I don't think that any, any style is ever objectively wrong. I just don't like that style. And so I think Steve and I have developed what our style is and we're willing to put in just like the work to make it look like we want it to. to look.

And so like Steve is, you know, matching the rounded corners of the camera inlay with the UI that's shown on the screen and color correction and all this kind of stuff that like other people would look at and say, Oh, that's just a little detail. And we're like, yeah, it is a little detail and we're going to do it.

I just need to get off my butt, but yeah, I've, I watched those videos and I generally don't like watching developer YouTube I like to polish videos, but I watch your videos. I don't even do Laravel.

And so just when I'm looking at that, I think, man, it could be a little more fresh. Right. And so we went, you know, in here we went with light mode. Like my studio is, is, is light and airy and it has plants and the background

is white. And when I use the editor, like when I'm showing my screen, I'm in, I'm in light because I think there is like a little bit of a shift to more like more. Polished and less, um, and I don't mean this in a disparaging way, but like, gamer in the basement. That has been, like, that's an identifiable vibe, and that has been the vibe for a long time. And I think we're kind of like, hey, let's, let's put some effort into this now.

Let's move backwards into your life before try hard because I know you've had a lot of interesting endeavors before that. So you worked at database company and Were you doing anything on the side at database company? I know you had YouTube. right. Let's, let's get into some of the things you were doing outside of the day job.

And so I took everything I know about recording video and creating screencasts and teaching so that people can understand. And I turned that into a video course and put that available for sale. And so when I, you know, when I got laid off. It sucked, of course, but it was also like, I'm not starting from a standing stop, right? I, I'm already in motion. Things are already happening. And if I decide to, which I did, I could just pick up those things and push them a little bit.

Further or a little harder. And that's, that's kind of the plan. So screencasting. com has now been folded into the try hard studios brand. And so we'll be after this SQL light course, we'll be readdressing that course and making that even better. And so these things like. These, these threads that have been open for a while, um, really, really paid off when, when the downturn, my, my personal employment downturn hit.

And then all of a sudden, like, so that's one reason is that the, uh, the projects produced income, which provide a buffer, which is huge because I have four kids, I've got four kids. I've got two sets of twins, so I've got a lot of mouths to feed, um, and then the other reason I feel so, like, at ease is I just have, it feels like, it feels like I just have so much more time because I'm not constantly serving two masters, right?

I'm not trying to do my day job faithfully and then also push on side stuff. Now it's like. You just, you have the one thing and the one thing is actually many things, but I don't have like, it's all mine. You know, it's all me and Steve together. We're not like, Oh shoot. I, you know, I can't do this until 5 PM because at 5 PM, you know what I want to do, go home and see my kids. And so a lot of that stress is kind of just like melted away and it helps that we know.

One, I had a buffer, and two, we've already landed sponsors for these courses, and so there's a little, like, I'm not rushing to get this course out the door to make money, because that's what the sponsorship is for, and so a lot of these things have come together to, to kind of be like, okay, you can, you can work hard, but you don't have to stress out about everything.

She, she does and has put a lot of trust in me for a long time to, to basically figure out the income side of our, of our family. Like we have pretty traditional gender roles in our family. She works really hard. I work really hard. We just work really hard at different things. And so it has been very nice to have a spouse that is so supportive and Believes in me to, to figure it all out.

Um, and of course that is like, that is a, uh, uh, not a bad burden, but that is like a dude, that's a burden or a duty for me to bear up under. And I think, you know, that, that's a good thing. Like that is, it is a responsibility for me as a husband and a father. So far it's, it's working out pretty well.

And then I just walk out to my headquarters and, and to, uh, do my work. Um, and we won't even talk about the shed quarters because you used to have a way better shed quarters than I did. And then you gave that up for a full on apartment. So, um,

I'm going to put up a dark background behind it and so I can do a little bit more like lifestyle content, talking head, that kind of stuff out in the, uh, out in the other room.

Um, I had spent many years in school tutoring it to individuals and just like, so that was my first like kind of gig in college was I'm, I'm an accounting tutor and it was fun and I loved it. And so when I got out and quit, uh, accounting, I was like, how can I kind of want to have something that pays me on the side. And so I created, um, an accounting course and that has made over a hundred thousand dollars. I mean,

it's not, it's not, it's been live for the shoot, um, eight years, seven years, something like that. So it's not like a huge, um, source of income. But it's better than a poke in the eye. And I haven't rerecorded the videos in seven years. Cause you know, one thing that doesn't change, accounting, that didn't change at all. Um, and so yeah, students pay me 39 a pop and that's it. That, I mean, it's just, it's very straightforward. I mean, I, I kind of love it for its purity.

Like I will teach you accounting and you will pay me for it. Great.

login. And I was like, I can't do this right now. So I just turned off payment. So everybody's getting it for free right now, but yeah, it's still, it's still up and still online and hopefully by next semester, it's about to be summer. So I have a good amount of time, hopefully by, you know, August or September, I'll have the payments back on. Um, and I can start getting, it's usually eight to 15, 000 a semester. Um, and at this point, like.

Also, better than a poke in the eye, so I'm gonna, I'll, I'll have to turn that back on. Um, but yeah,

some of like the software specifics had changed, but the course is not how to do this thing in software. The course is how to do this thing. And I will show you a few of the software bits, but it's like philosophically, how do you record and edit and produce and teach?

And so hopefully That's going to stay relevant for a long time, but yeah, it's a real, it's a real, like you, you really have to think about is this thing going to be relevant in a year because you're about to embark on a whole lot of work to, to record a course.

Um, which is a lot less pressure than let me teach you how to be the best developer. It's. I learned this and maybe it's interesting to you. Um, so that, that's just like a side note. That's a good way to approach content is what if, what have you learned? I bet other people might want to learn it. And a company contacted me, um, just out of the blue. Um, I live in Dallas, Texas, and they were in Ventura, California. And they were like, Hey. Can you work for us?

And I was like, sure, that sounds great. And so I, you know, went back and forth to California and this was before I was married and had kids. And so I did that and then, um, started getting serious with my

now wife, Jennifer, and I was like, I got it. I can't be in California two weeks out of every month. And so then I just found a local startup job here. And that was kind of, that was kind of it. At that point, I was. I was in. And so, you know, I think, um, proof of work is pretty important and blogging and videos and, uh, open source is all, is all proof of work. And that gets you in, that gets you in the door.

Um, so I would love for you to talk more about luck surface area, because I think that's the most beneficial thing that anyone could get out of this conversation.

And so the way to increase your luck surface area is, is twofold. Do things and tell people that's it. That like, those are the rules. And I think, um, as developers primarily, we. We do a lot of things and then we just never tell anybody about it. Right. And then as like, uh, I don't know, cause this is derogatory. I don't know. Somebody else, all they ever do is talk about stuff. They never actually do anything. Right. And it's like, okay, you, you kind of, you're paper thin at that point.

And people see through it. The real, the real power is in doing something and, and telling people about it. And so the way that that, Actually manifests itself in the real world is you write a blog post about it. You submit a conference talk, you make an open source package. You, you, you record a YouTube video. You, you put out a tweet for goodness sakes, like you just tweet, Hey, I learned this thing, or wow, look at this. You know, whatever I just built and you put that out on Twitter.

And the interesting thing is, um, you cannot optimize or you cannot predict what is going to come from that. And that's kind of like, that's the, um, that's the fun part, but that's also the frustrating part. So if you have a very specific goal in mind where you're like, I need to get a job. Either in this industry or with this company or I need to get in front of this person. I don't really have a lot of strategies for that.

What I have strategies for is, hey, do you want your life to be better? Well, start putting yourself out there and your life will be better. How? I can't exactly explain, but some of the things that have happened to me, um, I've gotten a couple of jobs through like, literally through putting myself out there, the CEO of my old company DM to me and was like, come work here. I read your blog post. I wrote a post, put it on Twitter. It ended up on Hacker News. Somebody sent it to him.

Then he DMed me. There's no way for me to orchestrate that. There's no way for me to like make that happen, but it's good that it happened to me. The other stuff that's happened is like, I've been invited to speak at conferences and like, that is a dream. Like that's a dream come true.

And I can't force that to happen, but I can like influence the odds by being By putting stuff out there and then, you know, I just make friends like it's just, you make a lot of friends when you're out in the conversation, you know, mucking around with people. It's like you make a bunch of friends. And so I think that is like that has been the, uh, if there's an inflection point in my career and there is, it's when I decided. I am not gonna, I'm not gonna hold back anymore.

I'm just going to put out everything that I possibly can. And that is when like my career just totally changed.

a W 2 job and still, like, have enough money, and like, the opportunities, the opportunities for making way more than my W 2, They're right there. I just need to seize them. And that is by far the most exciting and the thing I'm most proud of. And, and frankly, everything that I have done has like, has, has led me to be here today, which is kind of exciting.

And so figuring out healthcare was a huge, a huge, uh, like barrier to entering this self employed world. I got the Cobra notice, which for people outside the U S is like, you, you as an individual can pay to continue your employer sponsored healthcare. You just have to pay the full portion, like the full amount. And we got it. And it was 3, 800 a month. And I was like, well, I know what I'm not going with.

Um, and so I found, um, I found through, uh, through another podcast, actually, that I listened to, I found leg up health, um, which is basically independent agents. And so I talked, I spoke to their independent agent and we had a couple of zoom calls and he walked me through. Navigating the marketplace. Um, they, you know, I think Obamacare, the marketplace and the thing that I didn't realize was, um, Obamacare. Yes, provides the marketplace, but it more coordinates the tax savings of.

Being a self insured basically person. And so what I was looking at was the sticker price, but I wasn't looking at like what the, the true price would be after tax credits, which are immediate, not when you file your taxes. And so like our healthcare now is like. 800 a month for a family of six or something. And that's because that's because those tax credits come off the top.

Now at the end of the year or come tax time, if try hard studios has made a ton of money and my income has gone way up, I'm going to have to true up some of those tax credits because those are going to go away, but right now, as it stands, You know, I don't, I'm not going to have a lot of money on my tax return. And so I get a lot of those credits up front. And so a lot of stuff I didn't know. I would definitely recommend talking to an independent, uh, agent or broker,

gov marketplace and they do a questionnaire asking you what your income is going to be for the next year. And they, they asked a series of bad questions. It's government. And they asked me like, what was your income for October? And I said, I, I know the question you're asking me and it's the wrong question because I didn't make very much money in October, but I did make a ton of money in all the other months.

So I answered the question and if you went back and look through my PNL statements and such, it would, it would show I made very little money in October. So they said, Oh, well you qualify for all these subsidies. And I go, no, I don't.

Uh, it's, it's a bad position to be in. And also my biggest mistake, like I love my kids to death. It was a mistake having kids because they are super expensive.

looking back, like I can tell that story of it being linear. The whole time it felt chaotic and like, Oh, I'm not, I'm a failure. I don't know what I'm doing. And just, I'm going to try as much stuff as I can. And then some stuff worked and a lot of stuff didn't. So don't be, don't, if you're listening and think, man, he's just, he's got the golden touch. Well, I've tried a lot of stuff that didn't work. So don't, don't let that put you off.

Um, but I don't imagine us ending up in a spot where we're employing multiple like educators or anything like that. Um, so will it be an empire? Hopefully, will it be a empire that just Steve and I control? Hopefully.

Maybe it's differently talented, um, maybe more, more or less is a false, uh, scale, maybe differently. Um, but Steve has no desire to be the front man. And I love being the front man. I think it's fun. I love being on Twitter. I love being on YouTube and on podcasts. And Steve is much more like a background guy. And so I, you know, early on, I would talk to Steve a lot and be like, Hey man, like I'm going to tweet this.

And I know that it says like, I'm launching this or like I just put out a video, but. I like it. That's just for the, and he's like, dude, I do not care. He said, you are like, you are the front man. And as long as we both make money, I am just happy as could be to be in the background. And so that has, that has worked out really, really nicely. Cause I feel like I have superpowers cause I've got, I've got Steve like pushing me forward and not really wanting to take any of the credit.

And I'm like, This is crazy to me. And so that's why I'm always very, um, thoughtful and cautious about telling everyone who the real talent is. Cause he, he doesn't do it. He won't do it. He is just in the background. And so, um, I think the threat for Steve is, is existential. Like if I die, he's in a bad spot. But I think other than that, we're, we're pretty aligned as to like, who does what and what we want out of it.

Facing person, the, the business can't move on because there's no face to be. And I think that's what I was kind of gauging. My question is can try hard studios turn into something that maybe has not just Aaron, but maybe one or two other personalities building out. Okay.

Um, but there are people who are very good at teaching Ruby on rails. And I think what they need. is a little bit of guarantee of money that like, if you do this thing, you'll get paid some distribution, which we definitely have, um, and then some help and on the production side. And so I've talked to two or three, um, two or three creators and given them the pitch of like, Hey, listen, we will fly you to Dallas. And we will record this course in, you know, three or four days.

And then Steve will edit everything. And then we will host it. We will handle distribution and everything. Um, and they've been like, sure, that sounds awesome. Um, so there is, there is a little bit in the works there. And it's more of like a, honestly, a studio. It's more of a studio model than it is. Like we're going to hire people to do things full time. Cause like once, once this person teaches this SQLite and Rails course, if they were full time, Employee.

I'd be like, okay, I don't know what you do now. Um, so I think that's going to be a nice way to kind of mitigate some of that risk.

said the studio model, it's like a publisher. Um, I long, long time ago, I worked for a publisher who did exactly that. They flew me out. I recorded the content. They did all the editing. My life was so much easier and I, and I got a paycheck out of it. I got something up front. I got some royalties on the side. Well, I wish you and Steve all the luck in the world and it's going to be fun to watch you guys just go out there and kick some butt. Um, Our last thought, and this is new with you.

No, we're going to try this with all of our future guests and I'm calling this segment action over inspiration. This has been a super inspirational conversation for me, hopefully for anyone else listening. But Aaron, if you were giving some actionable advice to someone who wants to be just like you, what action item can they take tomorrow to start make that first step?

And then I think it will serve as an attractor for luck that will increase your luck surface area. If you put it out there and the right person sees it, it can fully change your life and you just never know when that's going to happen. So just literally publish. Anything and then keep going.