142: Aaron's a VP at Laravel?!  🔗 **Source:** [142: Aaron's a VP at Laravel?!](https://share.snipd.com/episode/7b683da2-963d-48e4-b159-67f88bd6eff4) ## Highlights - **How Aaron Was Recruited To Laravel** - Aaron got the VP role after a DM from Taylor and an in-person chat at a Dallas roadshow that led to Laravel Live UK where he accepted the job. - He initially hesitated because he had just hired an employee, but Taylor assured he'd hire her too, which changed his decision. Transcript: Aaron Francis I would prefer Mr. Vice President Aaron Francis, if that's quite alright. Just like, you know, as my official title. Ian Landsman I think that should be your first edict you lay down when you get in there. Yes. Aaron Francis Only address me as Mr. Vice President and never look into my eyes. So I am the Vice President of Marketing and Community at Laravel Holdings Incorporated. How about that? How about that? All right. So you're going to have to, you're going to have to walk me through it. Guide me through it. Where do we start? What do you want to know? Give me, give me an arc. Let's start. Ian Landsman Let's start at the very, very beginning after an episode, a month and a half ago. Aaron Francis I was at a very young age. Yeah. Okay. Ian Landsman We don't usually stay around too long at the end of the show. We're like, big, bang, boom. We did the show. See you later. You're like, hey, I want to talk to you about something. Sounds like, oh, what's going on? I didn't say that. And you dropped this idea on me about you becoming the vice president of marketing and community, which I didn't even know. It's part of the title. I like that. At Laravel Holdings Incorporated. So, I mean, the people want to hear the backstory. So, like, how do we get to that point where you got offered this job? All those type of things. Aaron Francis First of all, I've been waiting for a very long time to do the I was born at a very young age joke. And I just want to make sure that everybody got that. Let it sit there. Yeah, we can't just run over that. That one's been in the vault. That's been in the vault for a while. Ian Landsman If you want to go back farther, I mean, I do think we, I mean, I actually think there's a tie-in, you know? Everything you've done up to this point is sort of interesting. We could get into, I think it's better to start. Give us how you actually got the offer, and I think it is interesting to tie it into what led to that. Aaron Francis Yes, let's start at the hinge point of history and then we can work forwards or backwards either direction. So the hinge point of history is, uh, I'm hanging out minding my own business one day and I get a DM from Taylor. That's like, Hey, I want you to do this. And it, it wasn't, it, it wasn't like, you know, I, I wasn't out searching for a job, obviously, which we'll get to. I had just hired someone for whom I am completely responsible for her livelihood. So a little pin in that for now. So Taylor reached out and was like, hey, I want you to do this. We know the previous VP, Cynthia, had just moved on to we've come to know as a small AI startup. It was unclear for a second where she was going, but she's going to build a new marketing organization elsewhere. Exciting. Taylor thought, all right, let me reach out to Aaron for some reason, which becomes clear in the fullness of time. But, you know, I'm just sitting here in this apartment and get a DM from Taylor. And I'm just like, oh, wait, what? What the hell is going on? And so he sent over a bunch of like he sent over a bunch of, you know, he had written up a notion doc with like kind of reasoning vision, that kind of stuff. It was like, all right, think about it. Am coming i tailor i'm coming to dallas for the dallas road show and i think it was like a week or a week and a half after he sent me this this opening uh gambit and so you know i read it over thought About it and then he shows up in dallas he does his little song and dance for the people. Then after that, he and I just kind of had a few minutes to chat. And the first thing I said to him was, you know, I just hired an employee. I can't like, I can't do this. Yeah, I can't like, she quit her job of seven years to come work for me a flyer, you know, kind of like, I'm going to go from this 50 person company to go work with my friend. And now I'm going to turn around and say, oh, by the way, we're closing up shop. Thanks for the two weeks. Ian Landsman Yeah, literally two weeks in. Aaron Francis And Taylor looked me dead in the eye and was like oh i know we're gonna hire her too that's big big business stuff and i was like oh man have you been watching those movies ian's always talking About exactly he's been watching wall street on loop that's a power move yes i gotta watch some of these movies man yeah um and so that immediately changed the calculus of course, because It goes from it goes from, oh, man, this is a job that I think I could do really great at. That would be a ton of fun, but I just can't do it to. Oh, wait, you're going to bring my Sam along and give her a job and she's going to get to be super important at this new company. Cool. That sounds awesome. So yeah, we talked through some of the details and I'm just glossing over the whole story. We can talk details in a second, but we talked through some of the details there. And then I was like, all right, you know, let me think about it. I'm going to Laravel Live UK. I think that was like a week after the Dallas Roadshow. So I go to Laravel Live UK. And of course, I'm like, I'm speaking there. So I'm going to the speaker dinner. I'm hanging out with the Lara team. Basically, I'm just pretending I'm part of the Laravel team because those are probably my oldest friends there. And so I'm hanging out with all those people. And while I'm hanging, I'm just like, what am I even... What's the problem? Why haven't I said yes? I'm just of like casting myself into this is my team and these are my people. And like, why haven't I just said, yeah, let's do it. And so while I was in, while I was in the UK, I just sent Taylor a message and said, I'm in. Let's do it. And that was it. That was my mental ascent. You know, that was my verbal signature. ([Time 0:01:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/27e440ed-c45f-4ccd-a27f-efc4be061dd4)) - **Developer Background Gives Marketing Credibility** - Aaron framed his fit as product-market cultural: decades of PHP/Laravel experience plus marketing-adjacent work give him insight into developers' needs. - He plans to set vision and a North Star while relying on an experienced marketing team to execute. Transcript: Aaron Francis Yeah, so this job specifically. So I think there's two ways to answer that. One is this job at this company and one is this job as this like business role. So this job at this company, I think it's pretty straightforward. I've been a Laravel developer for more than a decade, probably maybe 12 or 13 and then PHP for like 20, 25. And so why I fit in at Laravel is pretty obvious. I think the interesting question is like, what about this particular business function at this particular company? And so the role is marketing and community. And, you know, if you if you don't know my full backstory, you might be like, what the hell? This guy's a developer. If you do know my full backstory, you may be like, what the hell? So, all right. So, marketing and community. First of all, this is a management position. I am managing people. I feel very comfortable and very confident managing people. Back when, so I'm going to stop saying my Sam because there are two Sams on the Laravel team. And they're both my Sams. Back when Sam Chavez and I were at our old company, the property tax firm, I managed probably it depends because it was kind of a seasonal operation with the tax deadlines. But it was like 15 to 30 people. They didn't all directly report to me, but many of them did. And so like the management part, I feel great about. Like I've always been, I think it's surprising no one, I've always been somebody that like super cares about people and making sure that people are doing well. And so that part I feel great about. The marketing side is more interesting of an open question. So I think there are a couple things. One is I think Taylor trusts me. Like on paper, I'm not sure that it makes like, I'm not sure that if you just read the resume, you'd be like, this is the man for the job. And so some part of that is like Taylor and Tom have put their faith in me and I intend to live up to that like noble duty, right? I think it does make some sense if I could talk my own book. I think it does make some sense in that Laravel is a developer product. It's a developer company. And so being in the game, I think, gives me insight into both the spoken and unspoken, like, cultural milieu of, like, what do developers want, right? Right. And so I am, and I'm not purely, like, in my life, I'm not purely Laravel, as we've discussed many times. And so I think that gives me a broader perspective. And this will get into, like, my manifesto at some point. This gives me a broader perspective into deeply understanding Laravel, the community, but also seeing outside the four walls and being like, y'all, like this is what's going on in The rest of the world. Maybe we should, you know, move this direction a little bit. I think in terms of like, in terms of like marketing experience, I've been on marketing teams, I've been a marketing data analyst, I've been a marketing engineer, I've been a dev educator. And so I've been on and around marketing teams before. But that's not to say that I understand everything that goes on in marketing. And I think this is this is one of the this is one of the dichotomies is like, I've never run a marketing organization. And so there are all these things. And I've, you know, I've spent many weeks talking to people inside of Laravel, including my own team. And I swear every two minutes, they would say some acronym or some term or something. And I'd be like, I'm sorry, I don't know what that means. Like, I don't know what you're saying. Yeah. And so that and I've told my team this many times is like, I cannot do your job. So we've got, you know, we've got product marketing and demand gen and events and content and dev rel. And we've got all these people on my team. And I think one thing, one thing, if we're sticking to, you know, VP parlance, one thing the previous administration did quite well was they hired amazing people. And so I'm coming in and saying like, hey, y'all, I can't do your job, but turns out you can. So I don't have to, what I can do is I can like, I can set a vision for where we should go. And I think in the past maybe year or two, there's been a lot of, there's been a lot of like turnover in the marketing leadership. And so it's kind of like, where are we going? Where are we headed? What should we do? We're doing this. So now we're doing that. And I think I can set a, like a cohesive and inspiring vision for where Laravel and Laravel marketing should go. And then the team of killers can just execute on like the day to day stuff. But I view my role a lot as let me figure out and communicate some inspirational vision for what we're going to do. And I think, you know, having talked to them, it was like, we just need a North Star. And I'm like, yeah, I 100 percent agree. ([Time 0:14:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3dd188e7-7f39-4a4c-adaf-1a036fa82e81)) - **Grand Unifying Theory Of Laravel Marketing** - Aaron wrote a manifesto called the Grand Unifying Theory of Laravel Marketing to align purpose and tactics. - The thesis: make Laravel's deep engineering talent legible externally, not just celebrate artisan code internally. Transcript: Aaron Francis Well, you know, I love to give things a name you know think things should be named um i take after add adam in that regard um not wathen adam of adam and eve who named all the animals yeah original Original original adam okay um so i love to give things a name and a category so i wrote a document um this is like this is maybe like three weeks ago four weeks ago something like that um So i knew that i was starting on laracon day one um and i knew that laracon week i wasn't gonna get i was gonna get literally nothing done like i didn't sign into slack until friday after Laracon i got my computer and i didn't even open it until Friday after Laracon. So as a way to like prepare myself beforehand, I just took a bunch of calls just in my capacity as a personal citizen. I just reached out to employees and was like, hey, let's talk. Let's chat. I want to figure out how marketing works. So before I started doing that, I was thinking like, I need to, I need to write down my thoughts about where, where Laravel should go. And it's interesting because like, you know, and I i've i've described this phenomenon about giving a conference talk like if you put it in your head that i'm giving a conference talk And this is the topic you put that in your head for like a month or two ahead of time then your your background process just like brings you ideas as you're driving right or as you're taking A shower as you're walking and it makes it makes the like actually writing the ideas down a lot easier whereas if you try to do it like two days before you're drawing from an empty well you're Like all right i gotta sit down and write a conference talk what is it gonna be about oh shoot um so in some regards um i've been stewing on where lar should go for more than a decade. Right. So like that's one of the benefits of being here. And so I was talking to somebody on my team and I was like, you know, I got to write up this this manifesto. And I went off and I wrote it all down and I came back like two and a half hours later and was like, hey, here's my first draft. And she was like, you wrote this in two and a half hours. And I was like, well, I wrote this in 15 years plus two and a half hours. And what I called it was the grand unifying theory of Laravel marketing. You know, we love you. You got to go big. You're gonna do it just put a name on it just call it the grand unifying theory um so I won't go through the whole thing in detail but the grand unifying theory sets out a few premises it's Like um given that Laravel xyz then we should abc And it goes through a few of those beats. The basic like high level takeaway is Laravel has unbelievable internal talent, like on, you know, across the whole board. But I'm thinking from a marketing perspective, the infrastructure and engineering talent internally is top-notch, world-class. I don't think anyone else in the industry knows about that, right? I think they view Laravel more to its origins as like maybe hobbyist PHP shop, right? And I think there's an amazing opportunity to expand what is already internal, like to turn that outward and point it at the rest of the world and start talking about Laravel as one of The top tier engineering shops in the world, right? So we should be up there with PlanetScale, Cursor, Linear, etc. Right. So in communications, like when you go to Hacker News, you should see a Laravel blog post there, ideally once a month, if not once every other month, about hard internal like engineering Things that we've solved. Right. So this is a strategy, right? That's a strategy. What is that strategy in furtherance of? That is in that's in furtherance of getting what we know about the Laravel community to the wide world and raising our credibility with the rest of the world. And you can hear that thread running through it the whole time, the kind of the tension of the internal community that got us here versus making the rest of the world aware of what Laravel Has built. And you can see that like, maybe we, maybe we need to turn some of our energy outward instead of continuing to just speak to the same people. And that is the tension, right? Don't leave them behind, but how do we get, like, how do we pull out further? And I think there's a huge opportunity to do that. ([Time 0:31:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9e563727-4297-4bad-8254-edb1844515b7)) - **Stop Debating PHP And Sell The Stack** - Stop litigating PHP; instead sell Laravel as the most complete way to build real applications from development through cloud. - Pivot external messaging from artisan elegance to product-completeness and operational benefits like scale and deploy speed. Transcript: Aaron Francis That is in that's in furtherance of getting what we know about the Laravel community to the wide world and raising our credibility with the rest of the world. And you can hear that thread running through it the whole time, the kind of the tension of the internal community that got us here versus making the rest of the world aware of what Laravel Has built. And you can see that like, maybe we, maybe we need to turn some of our energy outward instead of continuing to just speak to the same people. And that is the tension, right? Don't leave them behind, but how do we get, like, how do we pull out further? And I think there's a huge opportunity to do that. I think the way that I think about it is kind of of like, um, like internal, not internal to the company, but internal to the community ways of communicating and, uh, external ways of communicating Or like growth ways of communicating. So internally for a long time, we have talked about Laravel as the beautiful um artisanal handcrafted delightful framework and i don't think that i don't think that that's changing Necessarily internally like when we go to lara con and stuff we can talk about the new um you know taylor the new head component or the the new head affordance in Laravel, which is awesome, Right? And that is beautiful, elegant code. But externally, what I think we need to start talking about is Laravel is, and this has been true for years, in my opinion, Laravel is the best way to build real applications, real products. Laravel, like if you want to cast a vision for the people, Laravel is the best way to make your hopes and dreams come true. Right. And that, that is, that's congruent with everything I've said for 10 years. But the story needs to change, in my opinion. The growth story needs to shift from this is the artisanal, beautiful code stack to this is the most complete way to build an application. And that's from building, deploying, observing, and scaling, because now obviously we have the cloud story. So it goes all the way through. And so my thought on the future is we stop debating publicly to the growth channels. We stop debating, is PHP good or bad? Is PHP dead or alive? I don't care. I don't care. The gods have descended from on high with Dario and Sam. They've come down and they've said, this thing this only thing that has held Laravel back being in this language that is underloved that part doesn't matter anymore who freaking I wrote An entire application in a language that I don't know but why did I choose Tari because it has the best ecosystem it was the best way to make my dreams come true with a complete stack. And so my guidance for like outward facing communication is going to be, we don't litigate. We don't litigate PHP. We shift the frame to Laravel and we say Laravel is the most complete way to build. This is the best way to build. The AI agents know it all. It happens to be beautiful, but the AI agents know it all. The stack is cohesive. You don't have to go, you don't have to go have this vendor explosion and grab like a vendor to do cues. Are you kidding me? And so that's kind of like my broad vision is let's make our credibility legible to the outside world and then let's sell the benefits of Laravel, the ecosystem, from the framework all The way up to cloud. ([Time 0:35:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d163fc42-d5e9-4d37-93be-a045312768d8)) - **Use Deep Technical Posts To Enter Engineering Circles** - Prioritise deep technical blog posts aimed at Hacker News and niche engineering slacks over pure SEO for credibility. - Target engineers at PlanetScale, KubeCon, etc., to get shareable posts that enter secret communities and reach CTOs and managers. Transcript: Aaron Francis For sure. Ian Landsman I love all that. That's great. I think that's like definitely the key. And I think like, especially the idea of like finding a lot, I think that one of the things that's really lacked, so we've had that story for a long time of how it's the best full stack experience. Right. And like, and there's a lot of noise in the market around that to me though, like every, every framework and every hosting thing is like, we are the best way to do the thing. Right. So like, right. So it's like, how do you get the tip of the spear to get that attention? Because that's also a longer story to tell, right? It's not one sentence. It's here's the beginning and here's how it goes through this part, right? And the whole thing is a big picture. This is the best. So you got to like have somebody's attention long enough to like tell that story, right? So like, I like the idea of like the technical blog post. You know, I think the most modern example is definitely like the one you brought up, like PlanetScale, but we've seen this before of like, that's the like, the little decisive thing That starts to eke in there and that people start to see the name and read the long technical blog posts and then that brings them in to the website which gives them the time to like, you Know, absorb the whole rest of it And it's like, yeah, and I also think Laravel is not, maybe not, it's kind of getting to that phase right now, in my opinion, in some ways. Because it's like, just having hosting is not really a tip of the spear kind of interesting article. But like, now we're getting to like the, basically, you know, the zero, you know, scale to zero, which is sort of interesting, and then bring it back up in 100 milliseconds, which is super Interesting. Now, this is not a normal thing that other hosting providers have. So that alone, I feel like, is like three or four blog posts that are deeply technical about each part of that stack. That's like, how do we get 100 millisecond startup of your servers? That's a really interesting thing. The geeks are going to like that. That's going to let them dig in. And, you know, then you got them in the, you know, whatever. You get their email, you get them on the website. That's all regular marketing stuff. But like, you have to like get to them first. So it's like, how do you get to them? And so that to me, like, I think you're totally on the right track there. You know, obviously getting the AI to recommend Laravel's own little journey will be a separate thing but those type of tip of the spear things which require the deep understanding Of software developers, what they're going through, what they're interested in is going to be a key part of your success and Laravel's success in this role. So yeah, like that being all part of the manifesto makes sense. Aaron Francis And I think a pure practitioner might come in and say, well, it doesn't make sense to spend a month on a single blog post because for SEO reasons, X, Y, Z, right? I'm actually not concerned when we're talking about these deep technical posts. I'm not concerned with SEO for these deep technical posts. And that I think is an interesting distinction because what I'm concerned with is does this deeply technical post end up on Hacker News and then therefore does it end up passed around The social network that is Slack, right? What I want is I want somebody from, we'll just keep using PlanetScale. I want some engineer from PlanetScale to see it on Hacker News and to DM it to a friend and be like, this is actually really good? Like, I haven't seen anyone talking about this. That is what I'm optimizing for. So I'm optimizing for hearts and minds. I mean, obviously, we'll have a full SEO strategy, but these two things are discreet to me. I'm optimizing for getting inside the walled gardens of the secret slacks where this stuff gets passed around. ([Time 0:39:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/794e3c3e-e04a-4625-863c-01b39e46d8ad)) - **VP Role Is Vision Not Doing Every Task** - Aaron acknowledges he has more credibility with engineers than with marketing folks and plans to lean on hired marketing experts. - His role is to set vision while the team executes product marketing, demand gen, events, and content. Transcript: Aaron Francis It's an interesting position that I'm in because I have the most credibility with the people that I work with the least. And I have the least credibility with the people that I work with the most. Right. But you're going to be able to pull it off. Yeah. I'll be able to pull it off. But coming in, it's an interesting dichotomy because these engineers, we all came up together. Right. Like we were, I was friends with these people before they started at Laravel five years ago, seven years ago, whatever. And so we've been to these conferences together. We've done these, you know, I've been on all these people's podcast. Like we're just friends. And even, even some of the new engineers that I didn't come up with, they like know me from my engineering work. They know me from database school and those podcasts that go super deep and those courses. And so like, I found one of the guys that's responsible for the, you know, the near instant wake up, the 500 milliseconds. I found him at Laracon and I was like dude get ready because I'm gonna be DMing you and you're you're gonna be famous because you're a genius that's that's my goal that's where these two Ian Landsman Things really work well together though right is like before uh like when you're trying to marketing, you're trying to squeeze the juice out of like more of a rock, right? It's a lot harder. I think you might be able to turn that rock into an orange, you know? And like that makes the marketing much easier because like we have more opportunities here than we can even handle. Like we really need more people because we're actually getting so much out of the other 90 people who work here. We're getting a lot more out of them to help us make our marketing job easier. And how do we even like handle all this? What pacing do we want? Like all that kind of stuff. Now we have a different, better set of problems of like, we're not just sitting in a conference room being like, what are we going to do? It's like, no, got a lot of stuff we should we have a hundred things we that would be awesome to do which one should we do because there's just too many options and let's ([Time 0:45:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/95ea12f6-79ac-4e5b-89af-0e055810959b)) - **Make Engineers Frontline Authors** - Surface internal engineers by interviewing them and putting their names on technical posts to gain external credibility. - Pair Aaron's technical interviews with Anna's writing and marketing design to make interactive, shareable deep dives. Transcript: Aaron Francis It's an interesting position that I'm in because I have the most credibility with the people that I work with the least. And I have the least credibility with the people that I work with the most. Right. But you're going to be able to pull it off. Yeah. I'll be able to pull it off. But coming in, it's an interesting dichotomy because these engineers, we all came up together. Right. Like we were, I was friends with these people before they started at Laravel five years ago, seven years ago, whatever. And so we've been to these conferences together. We've done these, you know, I've been on all these people's podcast. Like we're just friends. And even, even some of the new engineers that I didn't come up with, they like know me from my engineering work. They know me from database school and those podcasts that go super deep and those courses. And so like, I found one of the guys that's responsible for the, you know, the near instant wake up, the 500 milliseconds. I found him at Laracon and I was like dude get ready because I'm gonna be DMing you and you're you're gonna be famous because you're a genius that's that's my goal that's where these two Ian Landsman Things really work well together though right is like before uh like when you're trying to marketing, you're trying to squeeze the juice out of like more of a rock, right? It's a lot harder. I think you might be able to turn that rock into an orange, you know? And like that makes the marketing much easier because like we have more opportunities here than we can even handle. Like we really need more people because we're actually getting so much out of the other 90 people who work here. We're getting a lot more out of them to help us make our marketing job easier. And how do we even like handle all this? What pacing do we want? Like all that kind of stuff. Now we have a different, better set of problems of like, we're not just sitting in a conference room being like, what are we going to do? It's like, no, got a lot of stuff we should we have a hundred things we that would be awesome to do which one should we do because there's just too many options and let's figure that out i Aaron Francis Your your beautiful metaphor about turning the rock into the orange and like i got a little lost in that one but one thing one thing i've been saying is there are a hundred dollar bills On the ground there you go we just gotta go pick them up they're right out there like there's there's no reason that fideliper should not be more internet famous right now like sorry chris You're gonna have to you're gonna have to sit through interviews with me on what you're doing yeah and that's part of the strategy is like, we have an amazing content writer on my team And Anna. Um, and I think I'm a slightly above average technical interviewer. And so Anna and I are going to work together and I will be, I'll be doing technical interviews of these people internally. Um, and I have a pretty good, I've got a pretty good track record of like pulling, pulling really good details out of people that are incredibly technical. And so that's going to be part of the way that we like leverage everyone together is I'm going to grab an engineer. I'm going to grab Anna. We're going to do an interview. Anna's going to write it. We've got marketing design. We've got marketing engineers. So we can make the blog post interactive. Make it easy for the technical people. And then we're going to put the goddang engineer's name on it. Like these engineers should be more public. ([Time 0:45:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/65459a32-adb2-4005-90f9-2aa98c4e68a3)) - **Solo Content Slows But Stays Alive** - Aaron will slow his solo content treadmill after joining Laravel but keep evergreen courses and allow lifetime subscriptions. - He plans to funnel his creative energy into Laravel while keeping Solo alive with staff or overnight agents. Transcript: Aaron Francis It's a good question, my friend. So the content treadmill either slows down or comes to a stop. So I have a whole bunch of videos that are working their way through the editor pipeline that will be published soon to, I think, fulfill what I promised to like faster.dev subscribers. And so that's all coming through. That's out of my hands now. Editor pipeline is working. Those will all start to roll out. And then that will probably slow down to next to nothing. I'm going to convert, I think, everybody's subscription to just lifetime. And I'll just keep doing them as i feel as i feel like i have something interesting to say um but i won't continue i won't continue to charge people on that new year database school is more Of an interesting question because like that content is evergreen um but i don't have like after the convex course i don't have any more big courses lined up. Those renewals don't come up until I think October, November. And so I'll think on that for a while. But the crux of that is I just don't have time. I don't have time to do the content treadmill. So those two things start to just wind down. I talked with Taylor about solo. I was like, Hey, what, like, what are your thoughts on this? And he was like, yeah, just keep it going. Like, obviously your job is your number one priority. Um, but if you want to queue up some agents overnight, queue them up overnight. If you want to hire someone to help hire someone to help. And so solo solo will live on with that blessing. Um, but the other more time intensive stuff starts to, starts to wane down. Um, so I've built up a pretty big repertoire of like content and, and properties. Um, and I'm not just going to shut them off. Like I'm not going to take them down, but I don't, I don't feel good about continuing to charge subscriptions for things where I just do it whenever I want. I already feel a little guilty about the lack of faster.dev content. And so I'm like, basically trying to make up in arrears. ([Time 0:51:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3904ddf7-f17d-48ea-bcaf-a03ec64c7c47)) - **Aaron's Shower Wine Creative Ritual** - Aaron coined the ritual "shower wine": a dark shower with music and a cocktail as a 12–15 minute creative reset. - He uses it nightly after family bedtime to rock, think, and generate ideas that he now feels belong to Laravel. Transcript: Aaron Francis What's your shower wine idea? Love to get a glass of wine, get in the shower, turn off the lights, and turn on my radio speaker, and just take a... Ian, I've got four kids. What the hell are you talking about? I'm going through it. I'm going through it, okay? I love a shower drink. Gotta have a shower drink. And you gotta have a shower speaker. You gotta have a shower speaker too. So we put on, we put on some sad boy music. We get, we get a shower drink. You turn off the lights, you take a hot shower. And that is where the day, that's where the day just melts off of you. None of this I've said before. Literally none of this. Oh, shower drink. Ian Landsman Maybe the speaker in the shower was not the shower drink. How have we not covered shower drink? Okay, all right. Have you heard of baths? Because this is where people usually have, they take a bath with a glass of wine and the speaker, and they relax in the water. I've done that. Aaron Francis The only bath we have is upstairs where the kids bathe and there's no god dang chance I'm taking a bath in the kids bath. Yeah. Ian Landsman Oh man, you got to redo the master bath. You got to get a big bath in there. I know. We got to get an underground bathtub too. Yeah. Okay. So wait, I have a question before we run. No, no, no, no, no, no. We've got to spend a minute here. Hold on. I know it's going to be a long one. Open a can of worms, yeah. You got a glass of wine in the shower, right? Aaron Francis Technically, it's a Negroni. Technically, it's, yeah, it's a full-on cocktail. Yeah. Okay. Ian Landsman You got a cocktail. Got a cocktail in the shower. Actually, it's even more difficult. So you have a cocktail that's got a more open mouth than a tapered wine glass might. Of course. What are we doing about water? Aaron Francis There's a niche. We have like three inset niches that are not prone to water. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Literally least of my concerns. Now, how long are you in there? Oh, I would say like three or four songs. So like 12 to 15 minutes probably. Okay. Ian Landsman I mean, I'm a guy who likes to sit in the shower. I do like to spend a little time. Aaron Francis I Oh, love to rock. Thank you. All right, Jamie. Turn around. No, no, no. Turn around. Put the hot water on your back. Just kind of like rock back and forth like a crazy person. Oh, that's where I live. 7.02 p.m. Hits. I walk out of the big kids. I put the big kids down. 7.02. I walk out. Yeah. I'm downstairs in the shower by 7.04. I'm rocking back and forth. I'm crying. Ian Landsman I'm shaking. It's great. That's the best part of this podcast so far. It's great. So this is implying you're a twice a day shower man. Aaron Francis I'm a once a day shower man. Ian Landsman Oh, just night. Night only. Aaron Francis Okay. And then I sink wash my hair. I sink wash it. Yeah. I know. It's hard being a man. I think we have talked about that a long time ago. I told this to many of the women on my team. You guys don't know how hard it is to be a man. I have to sink wash. Oh, they loved it. It was a great, great welcome to the team, by the way. Yeah. So as I was saying. Oh, yeah. Continue. Yeah. All of my shower drink time, which is where a lot of creativity comes from, right? Because you can't look at your phone. You got the music on. It's dark. You're just thinking about life. Sure. All that creative brainstorming now belongs to Laravel Holdings Incorporated, as it should. Ian Landsman It's in the contract. Any thoughts in the shower? They belong to Laravel Holdings. Aaron Francis It's not in the contract, but it is in my personal moral and ethical contract. Part of the reason, especially, I'm coming to terms with this because this is like the highest formal position I've ever held. ([Time 0:55:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fab4b5ad-f24e-4530-86a7-011e50d4a78e)) - **Make Friends With Sales First** - Build executive relationships early, especially with sales, to ensure marketing supports revenue goals. - Aaron proactively befriended the VP of sales before day one to align priorities and remove adversarial marketing-sales dynamics. Transcript: Aaron Francis I think that's a important and like instructive thing to think about as you're coming into a new role. Like I know obviously that I'll be working with my team the closest, of course. I'll also be working with the sales team, like sales and marketing go hand in hand. And so it's been very, very important to me that I become friends with our VP of sales, who's just like an absolute shark. You would love him to death. You might, you might have met him, but he's like the perfect kind of guy. He's a shark and I'm glad he's on our team because he's incredibly good. But I didn't know him going back to I didn't know him from Adam, the first Adam. So it's very it is and has been very important to me that I like I build the bridge, his direction and say, like, dude, I marketing is here to help serve sales. What can we do to help you? Because I think you have to be, when you come into a job, you have to think like, who do I need to be friends with? And for me and the VP of sales, like, it's really important to me that he and I have a good relationship. And so I've spent a lot of energy just like talking to him. And we're like, we're super good buds now. And that is going to be really important moving forward because he and I are on the same team where I think sales and marketing in other places could be somewhat adversarial. Like, you know, the leads are no good. That's a reference you might understand. Yeah. Look at this guy. Yeah. I haven't seen that, but I understand that seven minute clip. Yeah, I have. Yeah. And so I think coming into a new position, like being very thoughtful about, uh, and you may feel like, oh, I'm the new guy. I don't have to do anything. Well, I disagree. I think you have to be very thoughtful about reaching out and like telling these, these people, Hey, I want to serve like your team. How can how can our team support your team? And that just sets, I think, a good tone in the beginning of like, not coming in as the big dog, but coming in as the guy that wants to help all the other teams succeed. And specifically with sales and in my case, and it's worked out, it's worked It's going to be awesome. So I feel really good. ([Time 1:12:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/36b3735b-fc48-4d04-85ac-2a763260d79f)) - **LaraProm Was A Full Send Community Prom** - The Laraprom was a DIY high-school-gym prom with ~300 peak attendees, full tuxes, handmade dresses, pizza, and dodgeball as a low-stakes community event. - Abby organized it; Mark Bender DJed with cross-fades; families attended and kids even played dodgeball. Transcript: Ian Landsman Monday night, the Lara prom. We threw a prom, Aaron. Aaron Francis We threw a prom. We threw a prom. We threw a great prom. Everybody loved it. Everybody loved the prom. I was amazed by how many people dressed up. Oh, a lot. Kudos to the people because people went full send on it. And I was thrilled to death by that. Ian Landsman A lot of full tuxes. Aaron Francis A lot of full tuxes. You and I did full suit and tie. We had some people do full tuxes. We had two sets of Dumb and Dumber, which is just a delight. That's great. Dumb and Dumber's for talking. Ian Landsman We had full prom dresses. Aaron Francis We had custom handmade prom dresses. Ian Landsman Margo from Vehicle. Margo from Vehicle. Margo from Vehicle. It was amazing. Aaron Francis She sewed a custom dress and had Laravel logos on it. It was unbelievable. So we probably had 300, 400 people in a high school gym. Ian Landsman Yeah. I mean, we had 430 or 40 signed up for it. And I think at any one time, there was probably at its peak, it was like 300 people probably moseying around. I thought the vibe was great. I thought like we had streamers and balloons and like it was just, it was just, I don't know. Like Abby, Gen Z Abby, who put it all together, you know, for the most part, thank you, Gen Z Abby, thought like maybe we didn't go far enough or whatever. I was like, no, I think it was perfect. Because like if you go too far, then it's like too real. Like that's the whole point is it's like, oh, it's kind of, it's on the budget. It's just like there's some balloons and there's some lights and, uh, Mark, uh, Bender did the music. Amazing job on the music. Crushed it. Aaron Francis He's a, he's a pure radio guy. Like his job is radio. And so he was giving me all these terms about, you know, radio. And I'm like, dude, I don't know what she did, but it's perfect. The music was so good. Ian Landsman It was like he had made a playlist. He was DJing. Aaron Francis It was more than a playlist. It was like cross-fading songs and matching beats to roll into the next song. It wasn't just like I put together a Spotify playlist. It was awesome. Ian Landsman And the pace, it was like a thoughtfully generated playlist. So that was great. Shouts out to Mark. Good job. Yeah. So I don't know. The prom was great. There was drinks. There was pizza ultimately. 40 pizzas. Yeah. 40 pizzas. I had my whole family there, which was really cool. The kids have never got to see dad in like working. Famous mode, yeah. Yeah, famous. Oh my God, my daughter especially was like, you are famous. You are famous. I'm like, well, I'm famous for four days a year, which is the amount of fame. That's a great amount. It's the perfect amount. I'm like, if you had to be Brad Pitt and you just couldn't go anywhere ever, I don't know. I mean, I'd be Brad Pitt if I could be. I'd get used to it. Yeah, I'd be okay with it. But there are some downsides. There are some downsides. But anyway, so it was really cool. My family there, Jennifer came and Jennifer came. I got to just say hi to her and did not get to say another word. But her and Jamie talked for a while. It was cool. Jennifer had a blast. Yeah. Did she? Okay. She had so much fun. Yeah. Was it fun for her to meet your internet friends? It was. Yeah. So, and she left just, oh no, she was there for your talk the next morning. Aaron Francis She was there for my announcement and then she left from the venue. Yeah. Ian Landsman So, okay. The prom, really cool. I don't know. They're getting really big now. I feel like this is probably the biggest we'd ever want to do. I don't know, 400 people. Aaron Francis I don't think we want to go bigger than 400 people. We need one more bar. If we're going to do 400 people again, we need one more bar. Yeah, I think there's a couple. Ian Landsman Every year we make it bigger and we learn some stuff. So I feel like budgeting-wise we did really well this time, which in previous times we've gone a little over budget. So I feel like we got that been our problem, but now it's kind of my problem. Aaron Francis So that sucks. So this year, I think we got the gym. It was like we got the gym basically all day. So we did dodgeball there and then the prom there. And I think it was it cost like a nickel. It was crazy. It was unbelievable. So for the show, it was free. Ian Landsman So that was there. We had the gym. So that I think everyone was happy about that. Yeah. So that was cool. Another bar. But I do think people love a Day Zero thing. And I think- 100%. Yeah. So I think that works out really nice. And again, like tons of listeners from the show. It's not just like people who go to the conference who don't listen to the show. It's like, I would say 90% people who listens to the show. And dodgeball was flawless as a community event. Dodgeball was cool. Yeah. My son played in that. Yeah. Aaron Francis So we probably had eight teams of 10 that all were participating and then another 75 to 100 people just chilling in the stands. That was the ideal community Low stakes, a lot of fun. Can't see dogs is eight year old son was playing all the way up to like the speakers were playing because it's so fun. Vishal was going crazy because Vishal goes crazy. So I think that was the best community event we've done. Yeah. Ian Landsman I think like basketball is a little intense, you know, like, and golf is just hard to communicate. It's like, you can only fit so many people on the course. So yeah, I do think that seemed like the best one so far, like anybody could play. You didn't have to be like, you know, super fitness guy or anything. Aaron Francis You could be intense or you could be silly. It was totally all levels welcome. Ian Landsman Yeah, I think everybody was on board with the level of competition that was expected, you know, and so yeah, it was great. So yeah, prom was good. Aaron Francis I don't know if there's anything else to say about the prom, but it was awesome. I don't know. We got two minutes. ([Time 1:16:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/db712975-19ee-480b-b90e-d87db7e32c24))