144: First Week as VP  🔗 **Source:** [144: First Week as VP](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfUZOPmdghU) Hello. >> Reporting live on location. Are you Are you in a cabana? >> I'm in a cabana. >> In a cabana. [gasps] >> Unbelievable. >> I wanted to bring the people in, you know, let them experience what's going on here. >> All right. So, your your video is a little choppy, but your audio is fine. Give us a sense of give us a sense of what the hell's going on, cuz you're literally in a cabana. >> I'm literally in a cabana. I'm here in uh Florida catching some rays. I got to get have a cabana when I'm on vacation. Got the cabana. It's very nice. They got some fruit. Got some other things. Hopefully the internet holds up. I'm on my phone. So, we'll see how it goes cuz the Wi-Fi was worse. But, uh so you should watch this one on YouTube, people, if you want to see my cabana or at least pop in. But, um >> yeah, we're chilling first day. There there's a there's a very small chance there's a very small chance that whatever the internet problem is is a you problem cuz you're at home in your like official big boy office and your internet goes down. You're in a cabana, the internet goes down. So I'm picking up on a common thread here. >> Ah, too much energy. >> Too much energy. That's what [laughter] it is. [gasps] >> All right. So what are we doing? Family vacation. >> Yes, family vacation. We don't ever usually do this type of like go to the beach. >> There's nothing else to do. There's no educational aspect. There's no This is just we are on the Gulf Coast of Florida. There is white sand. There is no waves. It's it's a bathtub out there and we're having some drinks and we're having some fruit and we're eating dinner and that's it. So, it's a little different for us, but so far we're liking it. Um yeah, >> that's my speed of vacation. I don't want to go I don't want to go walk around a old city. I just want to go somewhere and sit and relax. Maybe maybe have some fruit. I'm on the bubble there, but the drinks in the cabana that sound that part sounds awesome. >> It's right up your alley. Yeah. So, we normally do we do the bigger trips have always been walk around Old City. We do often do Martha's Vineyard as like our beach trip, but the thing about Martha's Vineyard is not actually very beachy. Like it's just not like this. This is just like you walk out the hotel door, there's a huge beach, the water is super calm. Like Martha's Vineyard, the water, the waves are pounding you. It's freezing cold. Like it's mostly about driving on the beach, which is cool, and setting up, >> but it's a whole different experience than this. This is just like you just walk out the door at the resort, and there's a huge beach, and there's jet skis, and there's stuff. So, this is like a pure beach vacation. Um, yeah. You know, and it's Florida. Florida is not like my favorite scene, but it is easy to get to from New York and it is does have very nice weather. So, so far so good, but we'll see at the end of the week. You know, >> you know, the people were worried with me taking a job that the podcast was going to come to an end. So, we put that fear to bed and now you're on vacation and the podcast goes on. There's no stopping this. >> Nothing stops this podcast. This podcast unstoppable. We just hit our anniversary. [laughter] Okay. Hold on. We got to do with this podcast. Three year anniversary MT. Hats off to us. >> Yes. >> Happy anniversary, Ian. >> Our second uh episode I also did from vacation. Second one. Yeah. So, >> um yes, but all good things must come to an end. [laughter] >> Not this podcast. Don't go anywhere, people. Don't unsubscribe from this one. >> Yes. Stay tuned to this one. However, Token Town, may she rest in peace. So, >> out for Token Town. >> I did. >> Yeah, I did think uh you and I talked about this. I thought two podcasts and a full-time job feels like a lot of, you know, a lot of content time. And this one is much more wellestablished. It's in the it's in the arena that I have my full-time job in. And I don't know. So, we felt like doing and Token Town wasn't just like a smash success out of the gate. It was like the people from Mostly Technical that love AI um didn't really go much broader than that. And so, we're going to we're going to kill off Token Town. >> We had a good time. >> You know, there's nothing better than spending $8,000 on a domain for a podcast, running that podcast for couple months. >> That's it though. It was an experiment. If you're interested in buying tokentown.com, >> it's only $15,000. So, [laughter] get in touch. [gasps] >> I love it though. Who knows? Maybe someday we'll do something with that domain. That'll be fun to consider. >> Maybe so. Maybe. So, >> we coown a domain and I love co-owning things with people that are digital. >> It's a It's a asset. It's digital real estate. It's not going anywhere. >> It's a baby. >> It's a dot. It's great. It's, you know, it's AI adjacent. That's what you want in a in a durable asset. So, thank you all for tuning in to that one. I hope you'll understand. But this one, this one goes on unabated. >> What do you think about the idea of >> I don't think I'd want to do this every time, but occasionally having live MT cuz I think the thing that worked best in Token Town was >> people liked the live. Like we actually did get like a thousand listeners or whatever you want to call that like viewers of the live stream. Um, I don't know. But it does create a lot of pressure. I don't like the pressure of the live stream, but >> it does create pressure. Yeah. >> Something. It's a totally different feeling than this. This is just you and me talking. The live stream is like people are asking questions and stuff's happening and got to be there on time and like all >> we do. We do. We do. >> Maybe specials or something. >> I love the idea of doing an occasional Friday afternoon live live mostly technical. So it doesn't replace Yeah. It doesn't replace the Monday morning how's your father, but it just is a more and we could, you know, we could go off the rails even more if you could believe it. Um, we could go we could go into more AI stuff if there's something we wanted to talk about, >> but not create a discrete property and not create like a weekly schedule out of it >> or well maybe even like uh like I'm talking about under the mostly technical world here still. Although I guess we could do that with Token Town too, but like even >> No, no, no. I was thinking all of that as it relates to mostly technical. >> Okay. Yeah, almost technical. Um, so I think there are times where we have like a hot take of something that just occurred. So it could be that we could occasionally spin it up for that kind of thing too. It just becomes a bonus episode on the stream. >> We like we jump on for an hour just impromptu live stream because something big happened. Laravel announces some huge thing. >> There's some big AI thing that changes everything. Whatever. whenever we get our, you know, we're in the mood to uh vent before uh, you know, Monday comes around, then yeah, I think like a Friday afternoon could be a cool time or >> I I do like I do like like a like a hot take Friday or something. >> Yeah, that's a spand this one podcast into two. One way we just killed the other one. [laughter] Let's expand We're going to split this one into two. Don't worry. >> Oh, yeah. Aaron's so busy he can't do two podcasts, [laughter] so we'll just turn the one [clears throat] into two. Yeah, that worked out well. It's called technical, so it's fine. >> Super well. >> Just that we record it twice a week. That's all. >> That is very on brand for me. Get rid of one thing and add two more. Perfect. >> But I do like this idea. I do like this idea. Maybe not every week, but the No, definitely. There's something here. There's something here where like we could steal some of the good stuff we had on Token Town, I think, and integrate. >> Yeah. >> Um especially the live part where people want to chat, that kind of thing. >> Yeah. I like the expansion of the mostly technical universe. Like we've got we've got the weekly show, we've got the occasional Sweet Hang, which we need to pepper in a few more of those. And then we could have a we could have a hot take Friday. Um where we just do a live show. >> I like I like that idea. Let's go deeper deeper on the one brand instead of doing two. >> I like that. That was a whole different world. You know, think about when we started Token Town. When the idea first came up, you were doing content for AI people. >> I know. >> That was when the idea first came up. >> And we were in San Francisco. >> We were you and I both. >> Yes. We were together in person. And then >> then you built a software product. >> Now you got a job. Stuff's happening. Things that things change and we have to adapt. >> Speaking of speaking of three years, can you can you imagine the things that have changed in three years? I mean, on on my side, you've Larabel nude 42 times. I've actually >> I've lost jobs. I've gotten jobs. I've been depressed. I've been happy. It's just we're all over. >> You're through your arc. I'm telling you, >> I h I have a talent. Okay. If I may pat myself on the back, >> you may >> I am able I feel like I have an eye for talent. Okay. You do. >> And I've I've identified some people over the years and I feel like I have a pretty good track record. >> Yep. I identified to Aaron Francis as this guy's gonna be a good podcast co-host. >> Great podcast co-host. I'm like, I'm boring and this guy's got new every week to talk about. That's what I need. I'm I'm just going to do the same thing every week. This guy's going to have crazy every week to talk about. And you do. It's fantastic. It's great. Um, right. You are. >> You had just had the second set of twins before we started. Oh, I was pre-second set. I was in between there working at Planet Scale and I had two. >> Wow. >> Yes. >> You were pregnant though. You were pregnant, but you weren't didn't have a kid. Wow. Yes. You had children. You've had multiple jobs. You've had multiple businesses. >> Oh, yeah. >> You've had multiple podcasts. >> Oh, yeah. >> I don't know. Now, well, you know, this is we've talked about this before. like you are not a guy who likes to chill. So, I'm excited to see how this goes with your marketing gig. How you going to keep it fresh? It's like a marriage. This is going to be a little more of a marriage for you than you're used to in your professional life, I feel like. So, like >> Well, so far, we can talk about my first week, but so far I've accidentally had zero chill. Even in my even in my, you know, chill W2 job, I've had zero chill. >> I [laughter] wouldn't expect the chill to happen yet. You know, it is, >> you know, let's maybe let's thank the sponsors first. But I I decided I decided I was not going to burst through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man on my first week. >> That didn't [laughter] happen. So stay tuned for that. >> All right. Well, they know what they were buying, you know? I mean, I feel like that's fair. Um, all right. This week brought to you by our super good friends at Dropin Blog. A headless blog CMS and a first class Laravel SDK. Your domain, your design, your stack. dropinblog.com and Bento, the email marketing and CRM platform built for the AI era. Send your product marketing and transactional email with Bento. And check out their new transactional email pricing with rates as low as 9 cents per thousand. Thanks so much to those guys. Big fans of the show. Big supporters of the show. Truly appreciate it. Okay. Um, let me see where we are. Okay. So, first week you were just going to like have some calls. You were just going to make some friends. Uh you were going to write a blog post. Maybe >> maybe just one. >> Maybe. I mean uh my understanding the Laravel sort of uh community inside Laravel Inc. because they like to add emojis. So maybe you're going to add a couple emojis. >> Maybe. Maybe. >> But uh you know you were just going to have a chill week. So what happened? Tell us about your first week. Everybody wants to know. So, you remember the old Kool-Aid commercials, right? >> I do. I love those. Yes. >> There's like a peaceful family sitting in a kitchen. Everyone's just kind of happy >> and then this giant destructive picture of Kool-Aid explodes through the wall >> and is suddenly standing in your kitchen, >> I guess, pouring pouring himself out as a drink offering. That that part Yeah. I get a little lost in the actual functioning of it all, >> but I told myself before I before I started this job, >> I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to burst through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man. There's a chance that I completely failed at that. [laughter] Like 100% failed at that. >> Man, I wish you were taking bets on this cuz I would have loved to take that, >> dude. 100% failure rate. >> Yeah. >> Um, okay. So, first impressions of first week uh at a big boy job. >> Yeah. >> Um >> Laravel is a big company. 100 people or however many it is. I think it's maybe just north of 100. That's a lot of people. >> You're not the HR guy. You don't know. It doesn't matter. >> I don't know. What am I supposed to know? Um that's a lot of people. That's That was my first reaction. >> You can't even know everybody. It's too bad. >> You can't even know anybody. That's past Dunar. Maybe. Uh I think Dunbar is maybe 200, but I have a hundred other friends, so I can't squeeze all those into my head, you know. >> Um so that's a lot of people >> in a not not only like remote first, remote only, >> right, >> situation. There are some clusters, but nobody like actually works together in an office. And so one of the interesting things that um I'm trying to get my head around is like what are the processes for communication and like tracking work and talking to each other and how does how does all of this stuff work? Where does anything live? >> Yeah. >> Um and so that was a lot of what I spent my first week doing was like figuring out what's in Notion, what's in linear, what's in Google Drive, what's in Slack. kind of like where all of these things live. Um, and that's when I just kind of started going ham. [laughter] That's where >> from the outside the big big impression of the first week is like you and Notion going to war. Like that's where I would say we saw a lot of that. >> There are a lot of um >> there are a lot of like higherups at Notion that are very public on Twitter that I very much like. And so I'm trying to be I'm trying to be careful because there are a lot of very smart people there that I have a lot of respect for. >> Sure. >> I've never used Notion. >> And we'll just say that the takeaway is I don't like notion. [laughter] >> That's my takeaway so far. >> Yeah. >> Um >> I think there is a shared responsibility. Um, you know, like when you talk about, let's say, database hosting, >> usually like you go to planet scale and they're like the shared responsibility. We handle this, but you need to make sure that this and we handle that and you need to make sure. >> I feel like notion has a shared responsibility that's not published or like uh surfaced or enumerated very well. >> Um, so there's there's a possibility that people just use people use notion very poorly. I also think Notion is not the tightest of products and it's getting looser every day. >> Oh, that's it's getting looser every day. This is why I had >> They're just shoving stuff everywhere and it's like, man, I don't know. Linear does this, too. >> Correct. >> But I feel like it's slightly more successful. Although, it's also >> I don't love it, but it's like you could kind of ignore some of the crazy and just use the issues and kind of get by. >> Yeah. >> But Notion is just like, man, there's just stuff everywhere. It's crazy. >> There's stuff There's stuff everywhere. And it like >> the product represents the fracture of the team. Not our team, the notion team. Like some people are like AI maxis, some are database automation maxis. Some >> apparently no one is like a long form writing maxi cuz [laughter] that experience that experience is awful. >> Um Dave, don't clip any of this. I don't want I don't I'm not trying I'm not trying to like do a hot notion take. I'm just recounting my first experiences and I don't want to hurt the feelings of my friends that work at notion. >> Yeah. >> So this is meant to be constructive which now gives me cover to say everything else I want to say. So there you [laughter] go. >> I con I construct you notion be constructed. However it sucks. Um, >> yeah. >> So, what I what I found was um and I think this is common I think this is common to long lived notion workspaces. >> Mhm. >> I found a lot of um abandoned systems or processes, right? >> So, I found a lot of like let's make this let's make this database. Let's make this tracking dashboard. Let's make this thing. And then I come into it and it's like this hasn't been touched in six months, >> right? >> And [clears throat] so then as a new person, as a new person, I have a hard time being like, what's active, what's not active, what's real, what's not. And I didn't I didn't look outside of the marketing space at all. So this is not this is not a Laravelwide team space thing. This is like the marketing space. Um, and of course >> we all know there's been a lot of like a lot of turnover in the Laravel marketing side. And so I think that's part of it is like one person would set up a system and then they would kind of phase out and then a new person would set up a system and they would phase out. And so all of the remnants of these former civilizations are like being built upon each other with no like coherent foundation underneath it. So that was that was what I found a lot of inside of inside of notion. And I just like I I told I I did try to be gentle about it, but like I told my team, "Hey guys, I don't really understand what's like what's living and what's dead. I'm just going to start kind of like archiving stuff. I'm not going to delete anything. >> I'm going to archive stuff. I may go too far. Please feel free to restore it." And then my forwardlooking guidance was let's simplify all of this. We don't need we don't need dashboards with databases that have a million emojis that autoupdate if you look the wrong way. Like I just I don't I don't want that. >> I don't think that we're being served well by that. >> Right. >> And my like my >> you know I try I try to never just institute rules without like vision or reason. And the vision or reason on this was if we can if we can just treat notion as like a better or worse Google Docs >> where we keep durable long lived uh reference documents um pitches decisions that sort of thing. I think this is this is my vision. I think everybody's life will get calmer because we're not like tracking this random stuff in random places. So life will get calmer and like execution speed will go up because I felt like it was a lot of >> uh process for the sake of process. >> Yeah. >> And to to my team's great credit, they had all abandoned the stupid processes. >> They were like, "Yeah, okay. Well, that that process driver is gone. That process didn't serve serve us, so we're going to abandon it." So, I didn't get a lot of resistance from my team because I think they felt the same overwhelm that I was feeling. They just didn't really >> they didn't really have like the desire or the power to be like, "F it. We're going to scrap it all." >> Well, Kool-Aid Man can say, Kool-Aid Man can say, "F it." So, I think the the feedback I've gotten so far is they're all glad that it's like, "Let's just strip this back to bare bones." Um, >> and so we're we're trying to define what goes in Slack, what goes in linear, what goes in notion with clear boundaries so that we can spend less time on the process of work and more time on the work of work without also continually bothering each other for like, hey, where's this or where's that or did we make a decision on this? >> So that's kind of like my holistic thought process. What's what's your take and what's your experience with notion been in that regard? >> Yeah. No, same thing. I feel like notion is just like every notion I've ever been in is like a bunch of dead branches. It's like maybe there's a couple live branches in there, but like I don't know how you're supposed to find them. Uh, you know, it's like all yes, you could do anything sort of, but that's like terrible because like who knows where things are linked from and two and there's all that stuff and now there's AI in it everywhere, but it's not like as good as like I ended up moving to Obsidian because I was like I just want to have Claude >> on the command line and it can just do anything. >> Great. Reorganize this whole thing. It's goddang files. That's great. >> Exactly. That's what's great in the AI era. That's the thing where like this is actually a very interesting thing too of like things that are document based that are trying to do AI and like how that's it's kind of limiting if they're not set up right, you know, and like they're trying to shove it everywhere, but it doesn't really work in the same way of if just it's files and the AI can just root around. Um, so >> anyway, yeah, so our notion was just dead branches of crap, so we got rid of notion completely and like nothing's changed. Uh, >> and nothing was lost. >> Yeah. And like nothing was lost. And >> because there just I feel like you need certain tools for certain things and you're better off with that approach. Like we had a bunch of like documentation stuff for like policies and things as we were working towards sock 2 stuff. A first pass of sock 2. Now we're in a second pass of sock 2 and that stuff just lives in this sock 2 application that's going to make our sock 2 dashboard that customers are going to use. You know Laravel cloud has this whatever. Like so there is an a special place for that. that special place makes sense for it. It's not just like you're trying to make a million folders and like inside there somewhere is all this, you know, paperwork basically. But um yeah. No, so I think you I totally think you're doing the right thing. Clear that out. If I feel like if you add a dashboard that should be like an organizationalwide commitment that like we agree this is this is a dashboard. We are all on board with this dashboard and we are going to maintain this dashboard. There's one dashboard or there's two dashboard. These are super important. every meeting we talk about the dashboard. Like if it's just somebody, hey Sally, go off and build the dashboard. That like literally will never work because like Sally builds it and then nobody ever looks at it ever again and Sally's wasting her time update his dashboard for a year and then stops. >> It it it has to carry that organizational weight behind it for it to be valuable. Yeah. >> And I think maybe maybe that's the that's the failure case of notion is like it makes it so easy to build dashboards that it becomes >> it almost becomes like procrastination to just continually this is my whole problem with the second brain thing which I'm sure that we've covered on here. This is outside of organizations and into human behavior. I feel like the second brain wave that has kind of crested. I feel like we don't hear a lot about second brains anymore cuz we only talk about agentic operating systems or whatever which uh you know Pam Beasley they're the same picture. So you know be beyond that >> I feel like the second brain uh mania was was basically like procrastination at scale. It was like what if what if I track literally everything about my entire life and you're like what is your life then? all you're doing is like inventing these things to track and then you live by this like >> notion dashboard that has pretty emojis in it. And so I've always been pretty negative on the over uh dashboardification of notion and fortunately I think the whole marketing team is pretty negative on that too. So I didn't I didn't run into a brick wall of people being like no we love the dashboards. I ran into a very paper wall that was like, I don't know what these dashboards are for. Well, and this is what we and me talked about this a little bit off air, but like um or you know another day, but like I feel like and this is a product I said to you I've wanted to build forever and I'm not going to have time to do it, but like and you're kind of constructing notion in this way of like AI makes it the perfect era for just sending memos back and forth and like, oh, we had a meeting, here's a memo about the meeting, we made a decision, here's a memo about the decision, >> like all that kind of stuff. Throw it all into a big bucket. which is kind of what the second brain people talked about, but they also involved a lot of organization. Screw the organization. Throw it all into the big bucket somewhere. And then the AI could sort out. Hey, what was the decisions? What are the 10 me what are all the memos about feature X? Oh, here they are. And like summarize it for me. Great. Here it is. Like all that kind of stuff. So that's where I think where you're going with like let's do long form. Let's write down our decisions. let's focus more on that angle instead of like how do we extract things and have a real- time dashboard that shows us just the decision like you don't need any of that like the AI >> don't need any of it >> I mean if the notion AI is good enough to do this which I assume it is but uh the AI should be able to go through it all and be like hey here's every time we talked about company X what do we want to do with that or whatever and uh yeah so >> that's so there are there are several people trying to attack this I met one at um Big [clears throat] Sky DevCon his name is Ronin Ronin Ber um and he created uh pages CMS. He's written a couple of other written a couple of other things but at Big Sky he showed me basically like >> the multiplayer markdown first agentfriendly version of notion he's building. Um he's got a lot of links in his uh Twitter so I can't find it right now but I think I think that is >> yeah that's that's more directionally correct um than this blockbased editor where they just continue to bolt stuff on. >> Um at least at least for me I I have to believe that there are they have notion customers using all of these features. I don't think that the the creators of notion are dumb. I just wonder if it works for the way that I work. And I think the answer so far is no. >> I think I want like a memo. I want Twitter but for long form memos so you can see what's going on in the recent past, right? And then with like really good search AI that creates things dynamic. I I want a dashboard of every time we advertised on Google and what happened. Okay. Right. and two minutes later it's like here's our dashboard of like >> time things we tried things that work things that didn't work >> whatever like cuz people dumped it into memos along the way so y >> if anybody wants to build this with me where I do nothing but have the idea and a little bit of money come see >> I think I think one one Taylor might uh want to take you up on that [laughter] because >> I'd love to go in business with Taylor that's >> you you saw him you saw him tweet and I will only disclose public information you saw him tweet He It was like perfect project management and it was Trello to-do, doing done. That was it. That was it. That was all. He was like, I could run a whole company. I could get to an IPO on this. >> Yeah. >> Um, so I have turned it into a memo board just like you're talking about. And I've written a few manifestos. >> I love a manifesto. Give us whatever manifestos you can share. Share them. We need to hear about so many manifestos which does not does not help my Kool-Aid situation down the ivory tower. You're just fire down memos like throwing meos. Yeah, exactly. The poor the poor Laravel Incorporated employees. Before I tell you what the memos are, let me tell you about >> is uh your ability to never get paged again from a broken web hook. You can become eventdriven with Svix. So check out Svix at link.svix.com/mostlytech and that's svix. So they got a 4 character domain but check out link.svix.com/mostly and by our friendly neighborhood hacker and Laravel community member Valerin Security. AI doesn't just help you ship code faster. It helps attackers build tools and find vulnerabilities faster, too. That's why you want a friendly hacker like Steven Reese Carter on your side, catching the holes before they do. You can check him out at valerinssecurity.com. That's v a l o r i nsecurity.com. Member of goodstanding in the Laravel community for many, many, many years. So, he's not a he's not a white hat uh pretender who's going to come and hack your application. He's a real human being. You can trust him. I vouch for him. >> So, my memos, my manifests. >> Yes. Give it to us. Give it to us, Aaron. What do you got cooking? >> So, I tweeted [clears throat] a picture of my my notion marketing homepage. Um, and one thing I'm trying to be very careful about >> is um staying in my lane, right? I am I'm in the marketing organization. I'm not in the engineering organization. I'm not in the sales organization. It would be very inappropriate of me to issue companywide mandates. I feel like that's super bad form, not anything I want to do. Um, and so everything we're talking about is scoped down to the marketing organization. >> If any of that leaks out, that's great. I'm happy. But every every manager, every supervisor should run their own ship in my opinion >> unless it comes from Tom or Taylor who set organizationwide behavior, right? >> So in my thftdom, >> what I have done is uh and you can find this on my Twitter, I turned the marketing homepage into a sort of like basically like a blog. I mean it's like the it's like the homepage of a personal blog. >> Yeah. And so the first the first manifesto I wrote um is called the system doesn't work if you can't trust the system. >> And of course the system is capitalized in both places. It's a proper noun. We're talking about spiritually the system. >> The man. Yes. >> Yes. >> And so the thrust of this manifesto, this was like my first day. Um, so I held off for a cool 4 hours before I did anything. [laughter] Um, the thrust of this manifesto is like I want I want us to be able um to work asynchronously >> to have um clear like lines of communication where people aren't chasing each other. I want everybody's life to be like calm and pleasant while also being able to execute at high quality and high speed. >> And so some of those things feel dichomous, right? Like how can we slow down and speed up at the same time? Well, my dear friends, >> the system is how we do that. The processes are how we do that. And so the thrust of this this one was like, hey, you may have noticed I've gone in and just like started rampaging inside of notion. >> The goal the goal here is to strip back all the stuff that we don't care about so that anything left is something that you care about. This is a problem with uh this is a problem with every tool. But the like the overarching problem is the notification fatigue, right? If everything is important, then nothing is important. And so the importance just completely gets lost. And so my thought is strip it all back until only important stuff remains and then keep your foot on the neck of notion to make sure that like everything everything in there is valuable >> and then we can start to trust notion again which means we can use it again which means it becomes valuable again. But the moment that like >> let's take a different one. Let's take linear. The moment that linear has like 800 tasks in it and two 200 of them are in progress and 600 of them are like [laughter] weird backlog things. You just throw up your hands like >> anyone would I can't I cannot possibly reason about all of this and therefore I'll just keep my own lists of things that are actually important. So that was the first manifesto is you can't trust you can't the system doesn't work if you can't trust the system. >> Yeah. >> Thoughts on that? >> Yeah, I think that that's a perfect starting place. I think uh yeah, I mean I just think that's where you have to start almost otherwise it's going to be chaos. You can't like I think you can't go into like somebody else's old systems that like if like the if you came in and the systems were humming along that's a different story. Then you'd be like, "Great. I'm just here to keep these systems that are already humming. We'll keep them humming. You sprinkle my little stuff on top and we get we go." >> But obviously you got all this dead stuff in there. >> If the team if like my teammates liked the system that existed, I would adapt to it. So carry on. >> Yes, I would uh Yeah, I don't know if I agree totally with that part of it necessarily, but I do think they're those things probably just inherently go together where they would like it a lot if it was working. And so, yes. So, >> um, yeah. So, I think that makes total sense. You got to the first week, that's a good time to get in there. We're cleaning house. We're setting a new foundation. This is how we're going to build. I'm sure you're going to have to modify it over the coming months as you tweak it and optimize it and get the rest of the team in there more and everything like that. But, uh, >> yeah, >> sounds good. Yeah, I think I think keeping it simple allows it to grow organically instead of this is this is just like a codebase. You start with like the simple thing that works and then you layer on the appropriate abstractions that surface themselves as you're building the product. In this case, the team is like the organization is the product and so we start simple and then we'll layer on things that emerge organically out of that system. I feel like especially for marketing like this is going to be a lot of your guys output, right? Like this is going to be this is like I think it's your codebase is like the perfect analogy, right? So like >> I think you probably need to add some quarterly you go back through the whole thing and see like what's working, what's not or like you know like maintenance a maintenance schedule for it so it's not like just getting away >> paying down the tech debt. Yes. >> Pay down the tech debt of the marketing notion database every so often so things don't get outlined so you can cut back things that were you tried and were dumb or like whatever like keep it pruned so that it keeps running efficiently seemed like also kind of an interesting uh thing to try but yeah sounds good. >> Yeah. So my my like overarching like philosophy is and I just continue to be grateful that everyone on my team is very good at their job. >> Yeah. >> Right. And so I'm not really having I'm not really having to do much of that part yet. I'm really just trying to strip away all the crap that is not their job. >> Um and there's just so much of that that process. So then the second manifesto >> I think the one other thing there with that is that like >> um the nice thing about this is you it's like sort of a startup but not entirely and also that even the startupy part of Laravel has been now going for a couple years. So like the people you have your team like they know their day in dayout work. They know the things that have to be produced. They know the events that are coming up. They know whatever I don't know the official marketing stuff you guys are already doing but whatever blog posts and videos that are regularly done those will just continue to happen. Y >> and so you don't have to come in and be like there's a bunch of fires. I have to set up a team. We don't write anything right now. We have to figure out what we're going to write. You could just take a little bit of time on your side to be a little high level and not be down in the trenches with every little detail yet until you're ready to get to that point and things are going to keep operating the way they are and they're things are going well overall. So that's fine and then you can you know build consensus and come up with new ideas and change directions where appropriate. So I think that is like an advantage you have here. So you're not coming in for like day one of a startup and it's like well let's build the marketing team. We don't do anything. what are we going to do? Like you don't have to go through that right now. So I think Yeah, that's huge. >> No, I I came into every individual person doing their job extremely well. And my job I think right now is to make the team make the the work products and work process of the team more streamlined and visible. I don't have to like tell a person to do their job. I'm just trying to surface all of that >> coordination, communication uh in in progress stuff. >> And so that part that part's been amazing. Um so I'll run down I'll run down the other uh manifestos I've written and you can hit you can hit anyone you want. So >> uh oh looks like I I have them dated. Looks like I accidentally did two in one day. So sorry to the team. So, the system doesn't work if you can't trust the system. And how how we use notion, those came out on the same day. How I think about one-on- ons that came out the next day. >> The grand unifying theory of marketing, that came out the day after. >> Using AI in your writing, that came out two days after. And then I have um so you want to write a blog, now what? So, you want to speak at a conference, now what? And you want to go on a podcast, now what? Those are all for like the rest of the company engineers primarily like hey you want to help us in marketing here's your guidelines like we will help you here's the process here's what we need from you here's what you can expect from us so that's like you know maybe five or six manifestos three or four guides but we're getting we're getting the memo culture in place >> I [clears throat] love the memo culture and I also think uh I like the idea of like marketing creating things for the rest of the company that are going to be useful to them like how can yeah you help them facilitate these things that you want them to do and they want to do as well and like building that whole culture which you talked about last week a bit too um of like the other there's so much cool stuff happening throughout the company just like just surfacing that is going to be a huge win totally uh just on its own so starting to build that foundation of like here's how we can help you blah blah blah all that stuff so yeah I love that what's the uh so I think those are kind of self-evident what's the AI writing one what's your take on AI writing I'm curious about Yes. Couple of thoughts on AI writing. Um, >> the overarching principle is I don't want to read eight paragraphs of Claude. If I could read one paragraph of your thoughts, >> like bigger is not better. Um, I don't I don't want to read a artificially expanded version of your main thoughts. >> Yeah. That being said, um AI can help you like cohhere your thoughts maybe better than you feel like you can do right now. >> Um so my my guidance on that is the very first sentence says never let AI conquer the blank page for you. >> Like part of figuring out what you're trying to say is staring at the blank page and saying what am I trying to say? like that is that is not a problem of writing. That is the whole goal of writing is to figure out figure out what you're trying to say. >> Um, >> and this is all from my experience, not from things I've observed inside the company. And so this is like preemptive and not like uh corrective. >> Um, but I just thought as I'm doing all of this writing like how can how can this be profitable for other people? So, first thing is don't let it conquer the blank page for you because writing is thinking and that's how you figure out what you're actually even trying to say. >> Yeah. >> But then the way that I have done much of my writing and and many of these memos is I go to claude.ai. So on the web, just totally vanilla plain jane. I tell it, I'm going to dictate a memo to you and I want you to clean it up, but do not change do not change the tone. do not change the like the meat of it and do not expand on it. >> And I feel like those those things help like defeat what is a lot of problems with AI writing, which is the expansion and like the changing of the the verbiage and stuff. >> And so then I'll dictate for like maybe five or 10 minutes and like circle back on myself and be like, "Oh, actually like, you know, now that I'm thinking about it, XYZ." And then I, you know, I paste in whatever it is, 2,000 characters from uh my speech to text tool. And then Claude will clean it up into like a cohesive like um progressive memo cuz the places I double back, it'll take it out and put it back in the original section. >> So then I take all of the output of Claude and I put that into Notion. And then I read through every single line. Usually there's at least one edit for every sentence, if not, you know, one or two per paragraph. Um, and then I put my name on it. And I think that that's like the important philosophical thing is I'm going to read this as if you wrote it, not as if you and your assistant wrote it. And so if it's not exactly what you're trying to say, >> at the end of the day, that's under your banner. And so you need to be pretty sure that's exactly what you're trying to say. And so in this, you know, this is a short, this is like five, six, seven paragraphs, but I have um I have a screenshot of like my actual Claude session. >> And so you can see >> like the dictation of this actual memo >> that gets then turned into this notion doc that you're reading. So it's kind of self uh referential. But um I do think like I wrote, you know, how I think about one-on- ons and I published that for the whole company to read even though it's just it just applies to the marketing team. But I do think this memo culture of like writing things down and making them available is just so beneficial for a remote organization that I want to give people >> like I want to lower the barrier for them writing something that could be beneficial. And the best and fastest way I found to do that is turn on voice dictation and just like figure it out as you're speaking it out loud and then have the gods reorganize it and then you can like finalize it. I do think the voice dictation is kind of a huge aspect to this which I am not good at and have not done enough of and I want to do more. This is one of the things I want to work on more just whenever I'm talking to the AI. I I do think you just get so much more out of the AI when you give it more and it's so much easier to speak through those 2,00 characters versus type them out. So more likely to do it. >> Um so yeah. So what's your So that was the other one I had a question on. What I'm a big one-on-one guy. What's your one-on-one take? >> Oo, love a one-on-one take. All right. How I think about one-on- ones. Um, so the principle here is the one-on-one is for uh the employee, not the manager. >> Yes, I agree with that. >> Mhm. >> So, what I what I've said in here is this is not this is not my um tell me what you did this week and I will judge you uh you know, nice or impish or whatever Dwight Shrew says. Um. >> Mhm. >> But because we have the system, right? I should be able to gather what you've been doing through the the detritus and the metadata of the system. I should be able to look in linear and see like what was opened, what was closed. And it is a waste it is a waste of valuable human interaction time for me to get on a call and be like, recount to me the discrete items that you finished. It's like, dude, just go look at the discreet items. So, um I say that um let's see. It is an opportunity for you to tell me literally anything that's on your mind. How much you love your job, how you're frustrated, things that are blocking you, hopes and dreams for your work that aren't being fulfilled, places you're continually stuck, relationships that are strained and could use repair, how your family is, how your friends are, what's going on this weekend. And I say, um, I will I will always be like I will always show up to our one-on ones, and you are always free to cancel. Like, if you're having a great week and you're busy and work's just moving and you don't really have a lot to talk about, cancel it. That's totally up to you. I will always be there >> as a like a safe place for you to come and be like, I'm super mad. And I'm like, great. Are you mad at work? Are you mad at friends? Are you mad at me? whatever you want to talk about, let's talk about. And so I think in a like in a remote organization, I feel like that's pretty important, the ability to just have somewhere >> to go and talk about your wins and losses, whether or not they're strictly related to your scope of work or not. Um, but hopefully to have I think there's a so much value in all of life of like having something that you can count on. This is why I think like uh supper clubs or you know weekly breakfasts are so important because you're like I just know that the guys get together on Friday for breakfast. Every Friday they're going to be there and that's safe and comfortable for me. Um that's the same kind of view that I put on one-on- ones is like this is your space. >> I'll always show up. Tell me what's on your mind. We'll figure it out together. If you don't want to do it, that's great. Have fun. and I love a canceled meeting, but I'm always I I'm always going to be there. Is that directionally similar to you? >> Yeah, I'd say so. We're a little less formalized in I would say, but yeah, like it's definitely the place we can talk about anything that's going on and uh work-wise like I rarely bring stuff in from my end of like we need to talk about X. Like it does happen occasionally, but mostly it's the employee talking about it. Yeah. rarely down in the like this is what I did this week. Like it's not like it's definitely not like a give me the check sheet of a status report, right? Yeah. So tends to be more like decisions. >> Um so like there's a higher level thing we're working on or whatever uh and thinking it through or stuff like that when it comes to work stuff, but we usually have some check-in time of nonwork if appropriate and whatnot. So yeah, I think it's just like especially when remote I feel like having the >> just the space to have random interactions to some degree or have somebody go pull something up like it's just like >> there's just a lot of stuff that nobody's ever going to type in Slack that >> uh even in a DM, right? It's like like they're just not going to type that. So it's like having some time to just be in person is huge. Um >> so yeah, what do you what I've gone through different frequencies over the years. >> Yeah. Where we're at now is um they tend to be around an hour, half an hour to an hour and every other week is where we're currently at um for our current team size. But I don't know what what are you doing on frequency? >> I left that up to uh the individuals and some some people chose weekly and some chose fortnightly. Um and it doesn't it doesn't really matter to me. Um it's just whatever is is best for them. And >> so far, I think they've all been I think we've set them all at at 30 minutes. Um, but if I find find that to be restrictive, we can move it. Um, >> but yeah, it adds up. It's a lot. It's a lot of people. It's a lot. It's a lot of one-on- ones. Um, >> and what do you have? 12 or 13 people you have. >> Yeah, something like that. Um, >> yeah, that's a lot. And I have it I have it set up to where again going back to as little process as possible. Every every individual has um a single notion doc, a single doc per individual, not a dashboard, not a database. >> Um and every every week they can throughout the week they can put in anything they want to talk about. Um, and then like I just had one and I just in that doc I wrote notes and then when we were done I put a new heading above it that says next meeting and so the doc just the doc is just going to live forever. We'll see. It's just going to go. >> I think that's a huge thing when you try to break these things out into individual pages. It gets freaking nuts. Like yes, it's a meeting. It's going to have a paragraph a week or whatever. like just or a couple bullet points or whatever comes out of it. You can go forever. It's fine. >> And then when you're on the next meeting, you're looking at the previous one. >> Just see what's in there. Yes. >> And you can be like, "Hey, you mentioned you mentioned this two weeks ago. How do you feel about that now?" And it's like >> I don't have to go and remember how does this page nest in this other page and roll the action items forward. I don't want to roll anything forward database of like all the previous meetings and can't find yeah all that. So anyway, all right enough notion. Sorry. So one I don't know I mentioned this guy to you before. I think you didn't know him but Rans and Repose. Do you know him? >> Ah yes. Uh producer Dave linked me to a a Ransen oneonone doc. >> Yes. He's a hu he's like the godfather of one-on-one tech. >> So he he has a bunch written a bunch of stuff over the years about it. more like engineering focused, but I think the one-on-one stuff is like pretty universal. Not really that doesn't matter there. So, >> yes, we should add that. Um, the title of that one is The Update, The Vent, and The Disaster from Rans and Repose. So, we'll add that show notes. >> He's written a bunch of books, too, and like >> whatever. There's relevant bits in there, too. But yeah, Rans is great. Um, all right. So, anything else from your first week that we didn't hit on? I presented the grand unifying theory of marketing at the all hands. Just straight into the fire. Yeah. >> All hands. The whole company. >> Company wide. Companywide. All hands. >> Okay. Nice. >> Um that went well. Lot of lot of good feedback. Um not as much critical feedback as I was hoping, which is either good or bad. Um I don't know if everyone agrees or everyone's like I can't talk to the new guy about it. >> Yeah. There's also an element of like we got to let this guy cook for a little bit and then we'll see if how he's doing, you know, and then I think they got to give you a little space to start, right? So, >> and I did I did get sign off on on it from leadership before I like proposed it to the whole company. >> Sure. >> Um and I got I got some good sharpening notes there, but all the you know, all the engineers read it and nobody was like, "You're an idiot." So, I didn't go hard enough, I guess. I don't know. We'll see. Um, but yeah, other than that, it was great. Lot of meetings, but >> meetings, >> you know, when I'm not trying to squeeze meetings in around figuring out how to put food on my family, >> the meetings are not as bad. Like the meetings are my job. That's that's what I'm here for. >> That is going to be a lot of your job. Yeah. >> So, I there's some sort of like emotional break on that where it's like, oh, you know what? This isn't taking away from my ability to like go record a new database school course. >> Ah, oh well that feels a lot better. This is nice [laughter] then. I like talking to people. >> Yep. Yep. And I think some of the stuff I'm sure like the first meeting has even extra meetings as that stuff simmers down. I think the one-on- ones will like I've gone through so many like we had one-on- ones weekly when I had like even more employees and then I moved then for a while we had like almost none and then now we're back to like I feel like every other week's kind of worked out but like that stuff will probably fluctuate a bit too and you'll find natural level with each person and like what they need from you and all that stuff too. So >> all right so first week is a success. You're you're having fun so far. They didn't fire you. >> Not yet. Great. >> We live to fight another week. Let's talk about Ian Corner. >> Oh, Ian Corner. What do I have going on? >> Let's Let's move on. Let's move on from Aaron Corner. Let's go to Mega AI coding week. That's what I want to hear about that in there, >> man. So, coming out of our team meeting uh at Larcon, I decided to take on and other people have taken this on over the years. Taylor Otwell took it on at one point. Um like lots of people we've been trying for many years to redo the HubSpot interface and it's just like an impossible thing to sort I mean we've redesigned it at points like just freshened it up but we haven't like redone the architecture under it. We haven't uh rethought through some of the screens and it's just becomes like it's just way back in the day it's like you're doing it all by hand. It's a huge pro project and a huge product and like customers want other things. Nobody actually really cares about this that much. So it's like it's always the back burner. So it always gets canceled. So I was like I think now I am deep enough in the agentic coding. I think I'm ready. Like this is why I wanted to build outro. This is what I wanted to like really understand how to do this. And I feel like I'm far enough along. I know where the AI is not good. I know where it's good. I know how it thinks. So I was like I think I want to try this again. And we have some other big stuff coming out. I've talked about the AI features and stuff and it's like some of that stuff I would prefer to launch it in an updated UI both the technical underpinning as well as just the style. >> Be careful. This is the air and failure mode where you have to do everything before you can do anything. So just be careful. Just be careful. >> This is this is the end failure mode with this in that like because ultimately it's like you have big features you want to ship. If the UI change takes too long, you get this big divergence. Y >> it's just an impossible thing to solve for you guys. Yeah. >> So, but now I'm like, "All right, with AI, in theory, I should be able to replicate what we have on a new foundation pretty quickly." And then AI is also pretty good at, hey, here's this thing. Like, somebody who's working on a new feature in the old version, convert it to this new version. Like, I feel like this is these are both things AI is pretty good at. Like, >> here's an example. It works. >> Just convert it in some way over to here. Agree. >> And so >> pattern. >> So I made a whole >> That's what they're good at. >> They they love that. So it's like I feel like it's much harder. Like the start of outro was much harder cuz it's like it's just open and they're like we'll do this. Sure. We'll go do that. And like you know they go off over there and it's a big disaster. >> Especially cuz they started it four times. So four four times in a row they were like we'll do >> restarted it. This is what we we were learning. It wasn't for nothing people. Larabel knew baby. So all right. So basically I built this was going to be you know more important and also more detail oriented than other stuff uh or even with outro where I don't really care so much about what's whatever I'm fine with the vibey parts of the code base for that. But for this I didn't want to be quite like that. So built out like a whole foundational system which took like a week of like the AI is going to like write a whole huge test suite of browser tests which we don't have we don't have like test coverage in that way of like the literal every field sort of way. >> So go through browser test of everything that this page does. >> You know there's a whole bunch of foundational work of course first like install the framework stuff and like whatever all that. Okay, do that. Then every time we do a we're going to do one page at a time and that's going to have a whole process and it's going to be like build the whole test suite and it's going to then know it's going to be able to rerun that test suite but you got to build the test suite in such a way that it's a little bit flexible for like we want to accomplish the same goal but it might happen in a slightly different way. It'll be a different UI. So like okay so we did all that stuff. >> So how how did Wait, stop there. How did you even do that? How did you write a browser test for things that'll be changing in the browser? Well, it's it's sort of evolved. So, it started as more direct. It's still not going to like the actual code, but it's like look for a button, you know, with this label and do this and that the other thing and then it then it did that and then we did a few pages like that ultimately and that worked well. But then I started realizing like while I'm in here which is dangerous like there just certain things like been there. So I want I the first initial vision was like just straight replicate just purely replicate and that's it. But I decided h like while we're in here we're going to change a few things. So that's where like most of the tests are like it's a pure replication but some of them will be different and like it's going to have to then when it does the final test it's adjusting it's seeing the results and making an adjustment to make sure on the AI now realizes that it's accomplishing the same goal even though it's happening two different ways. So >> we're changing we're changing the implementations and the tests at the same time >> a little bit. Yes. For certain things for certain [laughter] things >> for certain things. So this is where though it's one page at a time. So the AI is confirming that >> we are accomplishing the same goals. So this >> family in the background is that >> family. Yes. Family. >> Come on in. Yeah. >> Come on in everybody. You want to be in the You want to be in the podcast? He just wanted to be on the podcast. Hey, how was you doing? >> The horse girl. >> Hi, horse girl. We've heard about all of She can't hear a thing. >> Yeah. >> Oh, no. No, no, no. Don't miss grabbing your microphone. >> They can hear you. >> Hello. >> Oh, this is Hi. So nice to see you. >> All right. [laughter] Get out of here. >> All right. So, you're changing implementation on vacation here, man. I'm not just like playing vacation. >> It's not a green screen. >> I agree. I understand what you're saying. I was going to go the pure redo, but I was like, we're going to have to build a bunch of stuff that I don't want to build because we're going to make some not not crazy changes, but there's a few things that are just going to be different. So, fine. Um, so I'm on like the fourth or fifth page now. It's going really well, as you would say. It's going very, very well. I'm very happy. We're see if we get to the end, but we're doing, you know, and every page of course is surfacing new things like, okay, yeah, I built this settings page, but it kind of looks like crap, right? So, like, >> sure, >> we're going to go back through the foundational documents because there's a series of like documents and skills that are working together to produce pages. >> So, we go back through the foundational bits and like, okay, like when we hit this scenario, we're going to do this and we're going to have components for that and like whatever. So it knows when it's >> you fix the machine that builds the artifacts. The system Aaron system capital S system >> need a system. >> Yes. So the the system is adjusting itself on the I mean this what the AI is for. The system is adjusting itself as we go, >> producing better results as we go. >> Listen, there's still going to be a bunch of human aspects to this in the end. I'm quite sure we have to run through the whole thing, every little corner like before we ship this to custom. It's going to be still a lot of work, but I feel very good so far that like it takes about like I think once I get through this phase of like this page has something it's never seen before and tweaking it. Like there's not that much different stuff on HubSpot. So once I do that, we're going to be able to do several pages a day or maybe more and there's like 60 pages or so. There's like probably four or five that are real hairy ones. So those ones will be different. They're going to be a lot of work. They're like custom even for within HubSpot. It's like like the page where you respond to a customer. Like there's no other page like that. It's just it's a unique page with tons of going on. Like so speak like an AI. That's a pretty loadbearing page. >> That's a big loadbearing page. >> That's kind of an important one. >> So that's going to have a lot of special attention and stuff like that. So, some of these pages are going to take longer, but some of these pages are going to be not long at all because it's like there's a probably half the pages in HubSpot are settings pages of one type or another. >> And so once we get that dialed in after a couple I mean it might be able to do 20 of those in a day because it's just like boom, bang these out. It's just literally select boxes and check boxes and like so that's going to be I think pretty straightforward. Um, so yeah. So, this is the fir I mean, I really am feeling the AI, you know? It's like the AI is doing stuff. That's straight magic that I've done this already. I've paid people to do this multiple times. I've done it multiple times. We've never even really gotten this far, honestly. Like, it's like we things are happening. The slop level's pretty low. I'm keeping an eye on it. It's all front end stuff, which I also feel a little better slop wise about that. Um >> cuz I just >> slop already. It's front end. >> Slop already. Exactly. So, I'm kind of like, okay, like if the JavaScript doesn't look perfect, like I'm not not the end of the world. Okay, whatever. Um, but I also have like reviews. All right, we're keeping that all tight. Like, there's lots of instructions. I'm spot checking it. >> So, so far so good on that. And, uh, >> yeah. So, I don't know. Very excited. It's only been since Lar, which only a week ago, and got a bunch done on it. I've been on vacation for part of it. But, uh, >> so talk me through process. So I understand you like set up the you know the the system and the guidelines and the rules and the browser tests. >> So daytoday what does that look like? You turn it on soul, you turn it on fable, you having it run through one and commit or like talk me through some of the entries. >> Mostly since like uh since open AI is giving away the house right now with like loads of infinite tokens. I've been on soul ultra. >> Yes. >> Um yeah. Uh, so I've been mostly using that. >> I did have today is the first time I've had Fable review and I've had uh today was the first day I used Fable on the primary task heavily um this morning. >> I immediately ran out of tokens. >> Yeah, I literally immediately ran out of tokens. So then I just stopped it. Actually, I had to go on the show and I was like, well, I'll just stop. I reset at noon. I'll kick it back off because uh for this settings page like Soul, it's just the design skills of Soul are just not all the way there. And this doesn't have to be like the best app you've ever seen. I'm not going to win any awards, but we're redoing the UI here. I want to at least be reasonable. And >> the OpenAI stuff's just not quite there yet on that. So, Fable's first pass at it was already like 10 times better than Souls. Um, so have Fable in there doing componentizing the settings, you know, blocks, whatever, that kind of stuff. Um, and just building out the whole structure and tweaking the design. So, yeah. So, still going back and forth, but primarily using uh soul right now for this to turn out all the work. Cuz if I can do it for a couple soul accounts, then I'll do it for a couple soul accounts. Why pay for the tokens? Um >> how many ah this is this is a reveal. How many soul accounts you got? >> Well, so far still just one full I have a >> Oh, that's not a couple. That's >> I got a regular one that's like a a low tier one that's like part of the business one. Then I have an outside the business one >> class one. Yeah. >> Yeah. And then uh that's what they keep giving the resets. So I've reset a few times. I'm now out of resets. >> So we could be approaching by the end of this week. Um we could be approaching the need to purchase another one, but we'll see. Uh >> it's almost like they knew we would get addicted and then they would [laughter] take it away and now we're yearning for the sweet sweet tokens. >> Yeah. >> Who could have seen that coming? >> Um but we'll see. You know, I I'm not I don't want to get too ahead of myself because I've failed at this many times over 20 years. So, it's it's not in the bag by any means. It will also force part of why this hasn't happened before, too, is because it's going to require some changes on the customer end, which are really good changes ultimately, but like they're going to be changes and we have customers who've been in there a long time, blah blah blah. It's we're going to have to walk them through it. But these are things that just kind of ultimately I think have to happen. We've talked about doing them for a long time. there are things where like right now the customers can do things that they probably just shouldn't be able to do especially in the modern security focused era. So, so there's some stuff like that, but I think it's also we have a strong case now of like listen, it's been a long time. It's been decades like we need to make some changes to some of this stuff. Security-wise, this stuff is very not ideal for you as the customer. Um, not because we have holes in it, but it's just stuff where like the customers can like add PHP to things and stuff and it's like, >> you know, it's just like they could hurt themselves. It's a super sharp knife. >> Yeah. So there's like a lot of stuff like that that's just like in this modern era where the AI is going to be poking around everything all the time just probably not the best thing. >> Don't want a PHP escape hatch, you know. >> Yeah. So I think there's just some things like that that we've been loathed to deal with, but I think now is like a good time to deal with it where the customers will be understanding. There's not that many customers that are doing a ton of elaborate things with this anyway. We can also build better tools now. I feel like just even browser component-wise, there's, you know, if you have a portal and you want to customize it, like we could do a lot now and make it easy for them to like fully customize without them having to like go edit the CSS directly and things like that. And also again, like from 20 years ago, people wanted to do that. Now, like nobody wants to do that. So now it's like a negative, right? It's like nobody >> even even Adam Wavin doesn't want to edit [laughter] CSS anymore. He's over it. Nobody >> wants you tell somebody to you tell somebody to go in and edit the CSS, they're like, "What are you even talking about?" Like, you know? Yeah. And also back in the day our customers were more like IT managers and they had programmers. Now it's like tends to be more like department heads who aren't necessarily technical. So it's just a different world. Um so yeah. So that's the thing. That's the mega AI project. It's going super well I feel like so far. But we will see. It is fun when the AI when you just get it dialed in. It's really cranking and you got the checks of the checkers and it's like >> you leave the sessions open. You don't know what got you here but you don't want to spoil [laughter] a thing. Yes. Yes. No way. >> I normally clear a lot, but I'm like, we're cooking in here. >> Every page has a full session >> and it's going very well. Um, >> there's there's some magic token somewhere in your context that's keeping this thing on the rails and you just let her ride, baby. Don't don't reset. I found I I I'm very happy so far anyway with the balance I've struck of like the foundational documents that it reads every time and the like kickoff skill that spins up a new page. Like I think I've gotten those key bits into that. So it's like I just but I still run the whole page in one session but I can then clear it between pages. So it's like new page but it seems to be doing a good job of like getting back to like okay the new page I know the stuff I have to do. This is what we're looking for. Build the test. Do the other thing. So like it's it's good. It's it feels really good right now. So we will see if it can maintain that. But uh so far so good. >> So it's >> uh who knows >> pretty soon. >> Pretty soon really because like we have this AI stuff again. I would prefer to launch it with this. So that would be in the fall. Um but we'll see. The AI stuff is ready basically. So it could ship before we do the UI. We could do the UI separate. So I don't But I would like to do like a new major version. >> We have some kind of forcing function. You're not going to ship the AI until the AI ships you. So >> this is hurting the outro. We're getting close. >> This is hurting the outro release. >> I am not even asking. We blew past July 9th. Are you crazy? >> So that's a little tricky. >> Today's August 10th. >> Yeah. >> The guy's on the guy's on vacation. >> Yeah, vacation. But >> what the hell? This has kind of worked out beautifully, too, because like these pages are like big projects and I have all the documents and stuff. So, it pretty much runs on its own. So, it's like in the morning, kick it off, you come back at night, there's a page done >> in the morning, kick it off, invite a customer to outro.fm, come back and check on, you know, just a thought. It was just something I was thinking of. Yeah, >> I think I'm going to hold on that. But I do I do want to do some Outro is going to ship. It's going to ship. >> We're doing all the things. >> You know what? Now that you're a corporate man and you're single. >> You got to be chaos man. >> I am chaos man. >> You have to be >> interesting. >> I can't be chaos man anymore. >> This7 counting on me. >> Yeah, I might have to be chaos man for 2027. This might be it. Might be my >> I like it. I would love to see Ian in chaos mode. [laughter] >> We have chaos to talk about. Nacho Gate. >> Nacho Gate. My favorite gate we've ever had on here. >> It's one of my favorite gates for sure. Um, I need to get a voice memo from John Oolan because he claims he claims his representation on here was far from accurate. >> Well, we should have got that. We should have got that for this week. I would love John Oola appearance. We should or cut him in for, you know, your five minutes on your take. >> But it doesn't matter. It's irrelevant because the point is whether he was bamboozled or not, which he obviously was. >> You don't put rice on nachos. Everybody agrees. Everybody read the comments, Aaron. >> No. No. Even >> there's a couple sickos who don't agree. They're sickos. The the best comments I got were about whims not being canon. I agree. Whims are not canonical. We're not making a statement. We're not making a decision. We're operating at the whims of a 2 a.m. hungry guy. Okay. >> Okay. >> I also got uh we unsolicited got uh pictures from Taylor Den of his friend putting [laughter] rice on nachos. We did. >> So, it's not it's not the only I'm not the only No, it looked great. I'm not the only one in the world. >> Uh, we also got some good feedback that goes way back when that the minimum viable nacho is chip and melted cheese. That's awesome. That is what that is what a nacho is definitionally. >> Let's just say definitionally. >> I disagree with that, but let's just even say that's true. I'll even give you that. That doesn't mean you can put rice on them. Those are unrelated. You can't put rice on it. It's disgusting. >> Definitely unrelated. I just wanted to just wanted to register that win for me. Just like six six month year ago call back. >> Right. I am correct. >> Movie theater nachos. Okay. Nobody gives a crap about movie theater nachos. You can't go into any establishment that sells real nachos and get just cheese on them. They will laugh you out. Laugh you out. Well, I went somewhere and got rice and they laughed and I did it. I did it anyway. And it was nachos. It was nachos. >> Understand, dude. That That's I'm trying to help you. Help me help you. N >> I don't want you to be out there. >> I'm not watching I'm not watching your movies. I'm not eating your >> nachos. Movies. >> What about movies? >> What about the studio? So, we've talked about uh >> Yes, we've talked about my looking for a commercial lease >> that is happening. I'll ask Sam Chavez if it's signed or not, but we have the lease. It is in a good building. It doesn't require construction. Um, so I will be moving out of this apartment into a commercial lease paid for by Tryhard Studios LLC, not Laravel Holdings Incorporated. um because I need a place to work and this has been a good place in here, but um I think there there's a more conducive environment for working and it's not, you know, squirreled away in an apartment. So, and this one's a little further from home, which I think will be nice because right now, right now, I can just pop back home or pop to work at any moment. >> Um and part of me wants to be a little more grown up where I like put on hard pants and go to work. um instead of you know athletic shorts or joggers. So that will be happening. I think the lease start date is October 1st. Um and it's in this like trendy cool building >> time, you know, like I think that's nice. Um yeah. So I was going to ask about that. So this is no longer like a garage situation. >> Correct. This is not a contractor garage. This is a um it's like 1,000 square ft in a like 25,000 square ft one-story building and there are like >> architects, designers better for you. I this is 100 times better. When you were going to be in a strip mall with like a nail place, I was like I don't know, man. Like >> maybe trying to do the videos was a little different. I understand. But still, >> that was going to be a fun a fun like project build. This is more I can move in and start working. >> That's so much better. >> And I can I can, you know, >> hang all my art there and that's about all I have to do. Um, so that that is still that is still happening. October 1st, I'll probably have a month of crossover so I can like move everything out. I, you know, I built a wall so you know, >> got to undo that. >> Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Um, so I have to do that. >> The same background or no? Are you going new backgrounds? Um, I will keep probably most if not all of the autraalts, but I will potentially not have the cabinets. There's a there's a great blank wall in this. So, there's like brick on many sides and then there's one drywall. >> Um, and that drywall sits very close if not directly under um a big skylight. And so, going to have a lot of good lighting there. >> So, I may I may switch it up a little bit. I've also, and I shared this with you privately, I also got my first piece of big boy art. So, we might we might have a new we might have a new centerpiece uh artwork behind me. >> Nice. >> So, yeah, we'll we'll class it up a little bit, but the the same >> it's like an actual piece of art. It's a it's an Ivan Earl. It's somebody who did illustrations for Disney back in the day. Um, and so it's not it's not an original, but he like he like handcreen printed I think 50 copies of this one version. >> And so I forget what they call that. I don't know if it's like a lithograph stereograph something like that. Yeah. >> But it it comes directly from his estate. It has a certificate of authenticity. It was shipped in like these two sandwiched pieces of plywood cuz it's like do not bend this thing or it will crack. And I'm like, "Oh, shoot. Real real real art is different than printing a poster off my inkjet." Um, but it is uh I I like being art guy. Turns out like art art can evoke emotion, which is something I discovered independently from first time probably anyone's ever known that. >> Um, [laughter] so yes, we're gonna class it up a little, but it'll stay it'll stay very similarly visually. >> I like it. I like I love this. I like the brick idea. Uh that sounds like a much nicer place to spend some time in a strip mall. Is there like stuff around by any chance? Like is there >> There is stuff around. Um and my particular unit doesn't have none of them do have um like private bathrooms or kitchens, but there's a whole like it's set up. It's not like an artist colony, but it's like a creative workspace. And so there's like full kitchen, full bathrooms that are maintained by the building and not just by me. Um, and so there are some hang spaces and so like if we ever wanted to do a meetup in Dallas, we've got we've got spots. It's going to work. >> Francis, let's do this. >> Exactly. >> Okay. >> So, between my own space and the shared common spaces. So, there's a shared courtyard and then like an internal shared like common area >> rent or whatever. >> So, there's a there's a lot of good a lot of good hang space. So maybe I'll even have like my local friends, you know, come and hot desk. They can come and work in my my office for a day, which would be a lot of fun. Um, >> are you going to have multiple zones in your off a th00 that was a fee? I assume there's room for a couple setups. >> Yep. So I'll take I'll take the chalkboard with me. I'll take the couch with me. I'll have a nice little sitting area. I'll have like a a separate working area where I want to just grab my laptop and go, you know, issue some manifestos. Um, and then I'll have I'll have the full dual monitor set up as well. >> Cool. Well, that sounds great. So, it sounds like in the next couple months it'll be done. >> Yep. >> Well, congratulations. Stuff's happening. You You still keep change going. You're changing things. >> Oh, yeah. We never We never take a day off, you know. [laughter] >> Exactly. All right, let's wrap it up. You have one final item. >> What is the next great illustrated classic that I should buy? So, we're almost done with the uh The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. So, we've done So, me and my 5-year-olds, every night we read a chapter of uh a great illustrated classic. Great illustrated classics.com/default.asp. Best website in existence. >> Um, we've read Jungle Book. We've read Adventures of Tom Sawyer. >> My daughter says she wants a book about princesses. And my son says he wants a book about Spider-Man. So, >> okay. very well. >> I'm I'm thinking maybe like Ann of Green Gables or I don't know, A Little Princess. I feel like Alice in Wonderland is a little trippy. Um >> well, but this is the modified version. So that has some adventure stuff your son might like though, too. And it it sort of got >> I think I'm going to have to go to I'm going to have to go cuz they said I want a boy book. I want a girl book. So we'll we'll take them in order. Oh, there's Cinderella. I could do Cinderella. >> Do Robin Hood maybe. Oh, Cinderella. Cinderella. Cinderella. What about Robin Hood? He's Robin Hood. Spider-Man kind of guy. >> Yeah, I like Robin Hood. I was thinking like um like Robinson Crusoe or Treasure Island for the >> Treasure Island would be good. Yeah. >> Oliver Twist. If you want to get into something >> Little Mermaid is a good girl book. >> That would be >> I could do Little Mermaid and Peter Pan. Or I could do Cinderella and Peter Pan. Peter Pan is such a good one. It's so funny to me that my daughter's like, "I want a girl book." And my son's like, "I want a boy book." I'm like, "Well, you know, nature nurture here." >> Yeah. >> I think maybe >> Snow White. I got Snow White. >> Okay. So, between Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, what's the best girl book out of those three? And Little Mermaid. >> Given what she requested, I would go Cinderella. >> Cinderella. Okay. So, for boy book, so we'll do Cinderella. And what's what's the boy book? You think Peter Pan is closest to Spider-Man? >> Peter Pan would be pretty good. Yeah, you got the flying aspects and stuff, right? Like so. >> Yeah, a little bit of magic. >> Little magic. I think that's a good call. >> And when you go to Disney someday, you can do the Peter Pan ride and he'll know what it is and that'll be fun. >> And uh there are kids movies for both of those. So, one thing we we did with Jungle Book is we watched the 1960s Jungle Book after we finished the the the book. Um, >> you should have rolled right into The Godfather. >> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. I'll I'll I'll read them that. We can all we can all read it for the first time together. >> Um, okay. That's what I want to do. So, if you haven't looked at great illustrated classics, highly encourage it. One picture per every two pages. So, one page is text, one is pictures, and they are abridged uh kid-friendly rewrites of the classic stories. So, I will go with Cinderella and Peter Pan. Each of them costing $755. >> Not a sponsor of the show, but they should sponsor the show. If they knew if you're out there, >> if they knew what podcasts were, they might be inclined, but I'm I'm guessing because they still have this, you know, verified merchant seal on it that their SSL is secure. I'm thinking they may not be up on the times. But we can we'll reach out. Eric Barnes, go ahead and reach out to great illustratedclassics.com. >> Yeah, let's do that. >> All right. Wow. I was like, man, this might be like a 30 minute one. I'm on vacation. We'll keep it tight. No way. Bonus. They basically got two episodes. We could cut this in two episodes. We do that. People love the two episodes. >> Oh, they love the two episodes. Give the people what they want, man. >> Yeah. All right. Thanks everybody. Thanks for the sponsors. Thanks everybody listening. Check us out mostlytechnical.com if you're interested in sponsoring the show and get in front of the entire Laravel community and beyond. Sponsor the show over at mostlytechnical.com. And uh yeah, we'll be back at it next week at our normal locations for now anyway. So, >> see you on Monday. Not on Thursday. RIP Token Town. We love you dearly. >> Token Town. RIP. Good domain. But we'll find some for it at some point >> later. See you., 144: First Week as VP, YouTube, 01kzrj9c15asrkbddwybpwgn6k.