86: Focus Hard  ## Metadata - Author: [[Mostly Technical]] - Full Title: 86: Focus Hard - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/9c21a616-ddc4-487a-840b-755949604f9b ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Ian's Unlucky Poker Story** - Ian Landsman shared his recent unlucky poker trip where he lost most tournaments despite playing sharply. - He recounted a critical hand where he folded pocket tens and later regretted missing a full house opportunity. Transcript: Ian Landsman Last time i was in vegas had a very good time won a bunch of money right all the poker gods shined on oh this feels like a bad setup this was not it was not a good poker trip got crushed lost all My tournaments no but not for any significant money. Yeah. I only played a little cash. I played just mostly tournaments, but lost in the little cash I played. Yeah. So crushed all the way around. What is going on? You know what? I got in a good zone. I started off, I was rusty on the tournament. And then by the end, I was there for five days. By the end, I felt like I was playing really well um but like the last tournament I played in I felt like I was really on top of my game very sharp but I got no cards at all and if you get no cards Like no matter how sharp you are you could have all the bluffs you could do whatever like you gotta have cards occasionally get a card Even cards just that you could bluff with. Give me like a suited ace. Give me something where I could raise and I could have a flush draw and I could keep betting, but I was literally getting nothing. I was getting eight deuce the whole thing until the very end. I pocket nines. I get all inverse pocket tens. That doesn't go very well. That was it. No, because the tens are higher the tens are higher so i'm in a bad spot there yeah nothing i ate some good food okay i went to i tried to go to some different restaurants i haven't been to Before because i tend to just go to like the places i know so i branched out i went to this place amalfi it's actually like a bobby flay restaurant which was super good. Had an eggplant bolognese. Eggplant bolognese, like chunked up eggplant. I'm not a huge eggplant guy, but this was excellent. Fish was excellent. I don't know. I went to a couple other new spots. But actually, hold on. Let me see. I wrote down. I thought I wrote down a note here. Let's see. Oh, I went to Martha Stewart's restaurant and had some of the best mac and cheese I've ever had in my life. Aaron Francis Now that I'm interested in. Ian Landsman Yeah. So in Paris, there's a Martha Stewart restaurant and the mac and cheese was spectacular. So that was great. Aaron Francis I could miss the egg, chunked up eggplant i could miss that one but best best mac and cheese that i'm interested in right if we find ourselves in vegas we'll have to go check out martha stewart's Ian Landsman Mac and cheese deal that was good yeah i don't know you know in the in the kind of main tournament i was there for, had a spot. So I was first day of it, I busted. I could play the second day. I played the second day. And I chip up table captaining. So I'm just running the table. I'm like, oh, wow. Do they give you a little hat for that? They should give me a hat. But their chip pile is kind of your hat. I had the big chips. I had the most chips. So I'm just abusing people, whatever. And there was a spot where guy kind of played it weird i raised i went i went to a full poker hand for the people one poker let's let's let's hear one poker hand i'll represent the people so Aaron Francis If you say something silly like donk bet i may have you define it but keep keep going all right one full poker hand so i raised pocket tens. Ian Landsman I don't remember the exact positions, but I was in fairly early positions. So one of the first people to act. This other guy's been playing fairly fitter fold. He's raising with good hands, but otherwise folding. He just calls, okay? Then this other guy who's getting kind of low on chips, but we're still early in the tournament, so he's not very low. He three bets me, okay? So he makes it, say 12 000 whatever i have pocket tens i cover everybody i should probably just go all in here uh and isolate versus the guy who raised us okay but i don't know it's early tournament I was trying to kind of not get in spots where like i have the big chip stack i don't really want to like lose my chip stack. I just play too conservatively. So I just call. Now the guy behind me who had just flatted, he goes all in. Okay. He took your move. So yeah. So he took my move. I know this guy has nothing because he didn't like flat with. He's an idiot. He has nothing. So I'm not even worried about him. But then the other guy goes all in. And I'm pretty sure the other guy since he raised and now he's gone all in like he's just gonna have he has ace king at the very least and he probably just has jacks are better so most of the Time i'm in pretty rough shape against him but i think it's a spot especially now i'm getting very good odds because this guy's all both of them are all in so i'm basically only calling One third of the pot to win this huge pot. And I pocket tens, which is one of the best. It's good. Yeah. So I chicken out and I fold. Oh, yeah. I know. I chicken out. So it turns out. This is our one wildlife. I mean, I'm in great shape if I called because I have the guy who back all in who I knew had nothing. He had ace queen, which isn't like horrible, but, you know, I'm ahead. And the other guy had ace king. So now it's even better because they share an ace. So that's less aces out there for them to hit and beat me. And then the flop comes 10 deuce deuce. So I would have flopped the full house. Ah, I would have been like maybe the chip leader of the tournament or at least have a ton of chips if nothing else. So then I was like tilted. I'm like mega tilted for like reverse non-play tilt that like I should have been in there. Of course, I checked the solver, which is like a program that tells you what you're supposed to do in situations. And the solver says I'm supposed to jam against the guy where I thought I was supposed to jam. And I'm also supposed to call on the end when they both go all in. So I just screwed the whole thing up. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I should have gambled. Sometimes you should have gambled. That's the point. I didn't gamble. I know. And I would have had a huge chip stack. I was so tilted. I was very, very tilted. Aaron Francis You're never going to retire by 40 if you keep folding like this. Come on, man man. Where are you going to make all your extra money? Why didn't I call, Aaron? Why didn't I call? I don't know. But this is gambler's regret right here. This is how they get you because now you're thinking, I got to go back and play it right. I know. I got to go back. I could do better. Ian Landsman And then, so then in the next tournament there, where I was playing super well and I was picking the spots, but I didn't get the cards. I never got the pocket cards. So that was all a bummer. Aaron Francis The poker gods saw that you squandered their gift and they decided to withhold from then on. I think ([Time 0:00:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6464b7ef-6775-4a23-abfd-6a1def7581cb)) - **Double Down On Strengths** - Focus on your strengths by doubling down on what has worked in the past, like Aaron focusing solely on teaching databases. - Use sponsor-led courses to reduce risk and secure upfront payment for course creation. Transcript: Aaron Francis Real panic mode all right. So where are we at? We went through the five stages of panic pretty quickly. And they are all panic. Yeah. So we left. I think we recorded on a Wednesday. Right. So we did our normal recording on Monday. And then Wednesday we recorded panic mode. And then we released it six days later on regular schedule which was tuesday we recorded early because you're going to world series of pokers by the between when we recorded it on the Ian Landsman Wednesday and when we released it on the tuesday panic had subsided quite a bit um that's fast i mean that's fast mode in a business yes trouble situation normally lasts more than five Aaron Francis Days so this is good news yes i agree this one this one lasted a few days only and i don't think we're in uh we're not in fat cat mode where we're like smoking cigars and sitting on piles of Money um my favorite mode i can't wait um hate cigars but i would do it just for the image. But we're not in quite all out panic mode anymore. So right after we recorded on Wednesday, I gave the link to the episode to Steve so that he could listen early. And we you know we we both took some time to think about it talk about it and then decided like all right here's what we're gonna do but before we get to here's what we're gonna do there was A real question of are we gonna do this at all like okay is this is this working and it was like maybe maybe not existential existential okay yes we went there we totally went there because It was like we you know we spent six months at the beginning of this year like doing stuff but not having much success like the rails course was fine screencasting was a flop and so we spent Six months not making hardly any money at all like into our own personal bank accounts. And it's like, can we afford to keep doing this? Um, so that was an open question there for a second, which is like, well, crap, I gotta go, I gotta go get a job, I guess. Um, so that was like day one of panic. Um, and then we decided, all right, here's what we're going to do. We are going to double down on two things, but they are one thing. The two aspects of the one thing is Aaron, the individual, teaches courses on databases. That's it. Not another person teaches on databases. Not Aaron teaches on something else. Aaron teaches databases. That's it. So we're doubling down on that because that's where we've had great success in the past. We are doing sponsor-led, sponsor-first courses, which I'll get to that more in a second. And then we really pounded the pavement on YouTube sponsorships and drummed some up there. So we had been talking about another database course with a couple of sponsors. And after panic mode, Steve and I were like, all right, just go back to the sponsors and say, it's now or never. Like one of you has to sign on the dotted line or we're going to move on. And one of them signed on the dotted line. And so, yeah, we got a sponsored course coming. I don't want to reveal everything just yet, but it will be like a beginner Postgres course, basically. Ian Landsman Oh, okay. So it's the beginner Postgres route. Uh-huh. Aaron Francis Interesting. Yeah, so it's beginner Postgres, which won't be the name, but will be the topic. And the thought is that the sponsor will provide the money to make that course totally free. So it's going to be a smaller course that is totally free that will hopefully get a huge like top of funnel people in and then we can sell some of them mastering Postgres on the back end. But if not, you know, we still got the sponsor money. And so like, that's fine that we got we got paid for the course. That's what we wanted. I mean, it should be a lead funnel to some additional sales. Ian Landsman Correct. Yes. Aaron Francis So if we can get I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if we could get 10,000 people on this, you know, to go through this course with that's free. Just provide your email. And then at that point, you know, we can sell them whatever. Ian Landsman If you get 5% of them to buy the advanced course, like it's not bad. Yeah. And that's, you got to really, really get ready for that. And optimize. Correct. Get those people. Yes. You got them doing the free one, right? And somebody else is helping you get those people. Exactly. You have to like get. It's got to be airtight. The conversion flow has to be there and ready. Yes. Aaron Francis And so what I'm thinking about right now. So this course isn't going to come until probably, you know, October or something like that. So it's like, it's a ways out. So we have time to think about what are we going to do? ([Time 0:13:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cbe65649-d72b-41d0-a108-f1af725b483c)) - **Recurring Revenue Through Dynamic Ads** - Creating recurring revenue in niche education requires innovative approaches beyond one-time sponsorships. - Dynamic ad insertion for free content could sustain ongoing sponsorship by attracting continuous viewers and advertiser interest. Transcript: Ian Landsman You know, the thing is, when you have to sell the sponsorships, it's like, okay, you get like a nice chunk of money. But then like that chunk of money, you spend it, obviously, and then like, you need to find another big chunk of money. You're in a pretty tight niche. Only so many database companies of a scale that are going to fork over high five low six figures right and most i'm only going to do it once probably um maybe you get occasionally a second One out of somebody but like so there's only so much of that like even if you're wildly successful in converting them all, like, you only have a couple years worth of companies probably, You know, that are going to be able to fund a couple years of you guys, right? So it's like, how do you go beyond that? And it's like, so I don't know. So that's like, it's figuring out like how you make it recurring in some way. So one idea I had, I guess, is like, there's like the standard, what you've talked about before, like how do you just sell regularly? And I don't know, you know, I don't know how much you've talked to like Wes Boss or like Ken C. Dodd about these things, but I wonder if there's anybody has any, they would give up, I don't know if they want to give up their tips and their secrets, but if then, you know, how are other People getting those recurring sales? But then secondarily, I wonder if you, you have enough database stuff like could you sell it like a tv channel has ads do you mean like sponsors that are for a period of time and basically Aaron Francis Like in video ads yes and you buy up you buy up the whole you buy up the whole school for a month yes that's interesting and i think it's free at that point right like because it's like a television Ian Landsman Station right it's like or youtube right it's like the content's now all free everybody can watch as much as they want we are just going to be backfilling with ads dynamically inserted And that's then how it becomes a current way so now we can build it up because we'll get lots of people viewing because it's all free and it's everywhere and bola but like that's fascinating I don't know there's something there could you do it without youtube it would be hard to do it on youtube because you can't do it with youtube yeah but i feel like youtube is the way you'd Want to do it of course right but like you're not gonna be able to get the ads in then so like i don't know but i feel like that that's's another way of recurring revenue. It's like if you can keep the sponsorships going forever, that's sort of interesting versus just being the launch. Aaron Francis That is sort of interesting. Because my thought has been the sponsors take, de-risk the course creation. And then at some point, the sponsors roll off and it becomes like paid courses, just back to normal. And that's the, you know, sponsor dried up backstop. But this is interesting. It would have to be pretty expensive, which I'm wondering if, I don't know, I would have to see if the economics work because it would have to be pretty expensive for the sponsors yeah Ian Landsman That's where i think it's like does do you do for a couple years to like what you're doing right which is like get sponsors build paid courses sell paid courses right and then build up the War chest but more importantly like kind of build up the content chest. Aaron Francis Right. Ian Landsman And then that, so you're having the creation of all the content funded. And then when you have a big pile of content, maybe it becomes free or it becomes cheap or something. I don't know. You know, it's like, there's something that you could do with all that content to monetize. Cause like whatever, the database companies are going to still need new customers always. Right. So it's like once a year they could sponsor this channel let's call it and uh you know if it does even if it is expensive like database buyers are a valuable set of people right because like You know databases cost a lot they tend to be low churn i would think in general since like you your app needs a database right like you're not getting rid of your database most of the time Unless your app fails. Oh, I don't know. There's something there. But like just kind of chip away at still the idea of like how do we secure it in some fashion. So yeah, like we had this, I've always wanted to do this business model where like we had one competitor. They were sort of a quasi competitors called spiceworks i don't know i remember them yeah so spiceworks angle which i always thought was very fascinating it was like a help desk but it Was more of like a really it it was like a network monitoring kind of asset tracking with more its thing less of the like actual email support although it did that so it was a kind of a quasi Competitor. Their whole business model was that it was totally free and they had millions and millions of users, but it was all ad sponsored. And so they had their own ad sales team and you would go into the Spiceworks UI and inside the Spiceworks UI is an ad. Like, and it'd be like IBM and Salesforce and whatever. And they were selling, you know, $20 per thousand, you know, kind of impression type ads. And it was free. They built up this big user base and they monetized it through ads instead of selling licenses. So I was always fascinated by that. It's kind of a different shape than the model. That's really interesting, yeah. So I don't know, but it's like, can you find other ways to make it recurring that don't require forever finding sponsors or charge making it like an annual fee for people if that ends up Being too tricky? Although like we talked about, I think last week, there are people who've made that work, it seems like. So once you get the content pile big enough, it's like, great. Now we can just charge people $99 a year or whatever. I don't know how much. And you're just adding new stuff and they get access to all the backlog. So that might be the way too. Aaron Francis Yeah, that's interesting. That dynamic ad insertion sounds very fun. Like it sounds like a fun and cool way to do that. I worry it won't, it w I worry it will be hard like to get, we'll have to keep doing sales at that point. ([Time 0:27:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ebb30575-2b0d-4eaa-85ea-971f1e515dfd)) - **Ian's Codex Experience** - Ian Landsman extensively tested OpenAI's Codex browser tool, finding it efficient and largely accurate for UI tasks. - He noted it works better when splitting UI and business logic, with about half the completions nearly perfect. Transcript: Ian Landsman So this week I've been on codex or actually not so much in the week, but over the weekend a lot, I play with codex, which... Open AI's codex? Open AI's, not codex on the command line, which I think... No, of course. Codex in the browser. Aaron Francis Right. But not the codex model, which is the third thing. Codex in the browser. Yes. Ian Landsman Codex and open AI. Come on. Just proof that you don't need good naming and their name is mostly irrelevant because terrible at naming. Terrible. Every name is horrible. Aaron Francis Beyond terrible. Ian Landsman But it's working for them. The product's so good, it doesn't matter that you can't even speak about the products because the name is incomprehensible. So Codex, I think this is it. Let's just start there. I love the Codex. Whoa, this is it. Love the Codex. Aaron Francis You couldn't even get PHP running in the Codex. I still can't. So you don't even need it. Ian Landsman That's this whole thing where you build an environment. It's very like thrown together in the afternoon. It's just like, here's a box. Like put in your commands. Put in some scripts. That's it, right? Which is fine. Like, okay. So I've tried. I literally spent hours trying to get it to just like Marcel. Marcel's thing didn't work? Thing where he said, this is the scripts to do it. I tried that. Didn't work. It was erroring out all the time. Whatever. So I just gave up. I was like, who cares? Aaron Francis I don't need to run my tests. Ian Landsman It's kind of annoying. Mostly it's annoying because it just takes a lot longer because it's like trying to like boot up the environment and that fails and like whatever. But whatever. The whole thing with Codex that's cool is that you, you know, give it a command and then you walk away because they know it's going to take minutes. And I don't know, it's been really, like over the weekend, it was great. It's like, okay, like go do this thing and then I just go away and I'm doing other stuff I'm building a new grill I got I'm doing whatever and then I come back and it did stuff and it's like Okay great and like I'd say about half the time it was almost perfect and about like another 25 percent of the time it was like good but I like gave it some follow-up and had to tweak stuff. And then 25% of the time, like it wasn't like either I didn't use it at all or I just started fresh. So it was not perfect. Half the time it was perfect. Yeah. On what repo? Like a help spot? A new project. No, no, no, not help spot. Okay. So this is like just an experimental type of repo. I do want to try it with Helpspot. I actually haven't used it with Helpspot yet. Yeah, so it was pretty interesting. You know, I've been very like, I think other people might use it more aggressively. I've been more like, just build the UI for this thing. Right. Don't even do any logic at all, right? Like I try to keep it a little tighter on what I'm asking you to do. And then that seems to work really well as opposed to letting it like you're like build this whole feature and then it's like it'll do a bunch of crazy stuff those those people are lying You can't one shot you can't one shot an entire app i'm sorry yeah so even a whole feature you can't i feel like separating the business logic phase and the ui phase has been the best i think And still giving it like, look in this file, check in this place, do this thing, whatever, have your rules file. So it has some baseline stuff. It always does. Like, I think it does a better job than the ID ones overall. Yeah, I think it's better. It seems to just be like, I don't know. I just think it's like the code is tighter. There's less like kind of random stuff in there. Yeah, I think overall it's been better. Aaron Francis So for the edification of the listener, Codex is browser-based OpenAI product that is currently free with your subscription, which is insane. Is it? It's free. Well, I have the big boy subscription. Yeah, with the big one. So maybe it's free with that. Ian Landsman Yeah, I think it's just with the big one. Aaron Francis And you type it in, like, what you want it to do, and it references your GitHub, and it goes out, and the final deliverable is a PR to your repo. Is that right? Yes. Okay. Ian Landsman So that's probably the most annoying part for me, honestly, is that, like, if you're just, like, playing around or, like, this is not in, like, a production thing. So I just want to, like, push it to main. Right. I just want to push a button that says yeah it's great or even if it makes a pull request like i can just do it all in that interface but you have to go to github merge the thing like so it's this Whole like extra step which is unnecessary i think for the way a lot of people are probably using this but um but besides that uh yeah no i've been really i thought it's been pretty good. Aaron Francis So is this like, this freaking OpenAI, is this the same thing as Codex on the command line just run in the cloud for you? Do we know that? I don't know. Ian Landsman Yeah. I guess, but I didn't really care for Codex on the command line. But part of it was like I was using it a little bit differently. So maybe it is. Aaron Francis I tried codex on the command line early on and it was like, sure, let me work on that. Oh, you're out of tokens. I'm like, what? Ian Landsman Yeah. Yes. And it was like crazy slow. Like this has not been like this has never really been more than like 10 minutes at the most, I would say. I do think there is just a little difference of like being in the browser feels more like i can set it and forget it for some reason to me like it's on the command line it's running it's things Are being output it's like distracting asking questions of you yeah like hey am i allowed to do this yeah like the codex in the browser doesn't ask any questions it just goes off and does It uh yep so yeah i don't know i don't know if it's just like identical but it's just a user interface difference that makes it feel better or what it is i mean and the container because it Doesn't have to ask you any questions that's the nice part i mean i'm not even using a container but it has a container in theory that's true i guess yeah you're not i mean i'm used it's using It ostensibly but but it's not. But it's not using PHP. Yeah, so it can't execute anything of mine in there. I don't know, but even without it, it's been fine. So it's been good even without knowing, being able to do the full iterative. Oh, I broke the test. Let me fix that, right? You can't do any of that stuff. Again, I'm not like, I've just been playing around i have a couple ideas that could turn into something i don't know but like right now it's just been more for playing with the ai stuff And uh so i'm not like being super hardcore about that sort of yeah if it breaks something or the tests or whatever like i don't really care about that too much right now so i'm not too focused On that but yeah but for over the weekend it was great it was like I built a lot of this thing yeah without that much time I am I am somehow still getting faster yeah like it it's it's boggling Aaron Francis My mind how much can be done I'll have Claude code running while Junie's working on something and I'm talking to chat GPT and I just feel like what I've I'm getting you know two weeks worth Of work done in a day and it's like how is this possible yeah so ([Time 0:42:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/769a8b3c-adda-47fa-8a50-535d1c3f2419)) - **Building Is Easier, Marketing Harder** - Building products is now much faster and cheaper, lowering the barrier to experimentation and MVP creation. - However, marketing and distribution remain the hardest challenges despite AI easing development speed. Transcript: Ian Landsman That doesn't already exist. Like you should not be inventing a market ever because the biggest, the hardest problem is still like distribution and people knowing about you. And to get distribution when people don't even know they have this problem is like such a hard thing. Yeah, it's very expensive. To create a category is a very, very hard thing to do. So that's always been my number one rule i think that's generally a good rule but it's like so this doesn't right now ai doesn't help with your distribution at all i don't think it's made Marketing that much different or better like maybe at some point it will whatever but you can't i think that's not like anything for right now right So it doesn't change anything there. But it does possibly change the dynamics still of like the cost of the whole thing. Because it's like before, it's like if I had to spend six months and even if I have employees, I'm paying employees for this like whole experimental thing that maybe we're just going To throw out. And that's like then very expensive. And all this stuff that's like, ah, that's just like it's not worth it on the bootstrapper budget to do that kind of thing. But maybe now, maybe now it's different. Like maybe if you could build the MVP on your own or with one employee instead of four, um, and that happens really fast. So if it turns out, then you go try to market a little bit. And if it doesn't gain traction, you don't really care that you have to throw it out. And it was a bad idea because it didn't cost you that much time and money. Like now maybe there is this a little more flexibility for the bootstrapper types to get in there and try different things and take more risks in spaces than and not be totally lost. Like I think in the past they would have been with that strategy. Yeah. Aaron Francis I wonder what all common wisdom has to be updated now that building building has become so much cheaper and so much easier. I don't know if it's easy, but it's so much easier now. Just faster. And it's so fast. It is so fast. And so, yeah, I also feel like the another common wisdom is just like ship early and ship something terrible and i just don't know that that works anymore because like the the the cost From going the cost for going from terrible to pretty good is is pretty low now and so like the whole the whole bar has been risen of what the you know the acceptable quality of a web application Is and that bar has been rising over the past 10 years but in the past two it's like well why don't you just go on v0 and make a beautiful ui why are you shipping this horribly ugly thing so I don't know i i do agree that the like don't build for six months is still the correct advice but i don't think you have to build for six months anymore so i don't know well see that these Ian Landsman Things used to conflict in the sense i was never actually a believer in the like ship fast crappy stuff because i feel like it's hard to convince customers when they don't you have the Vision but the customers don't so when you ship them something that doesn't implement a good chunk of the vision, then I feel like it's hard for them. Occasionally, yes, it's like, it's so revolutionary that they get it and it's awesome. But more of the time, it's like, well, here's this new CRM. Well, it doesn't do 50% of the stuff a CRM does. Well, it's okay. So I can't use it. Like it might be better UI. It might have some better idea, but like just doesn't do enough of the problem i have to to be usable right so like so now though yes i think you don't necessarily have to make that trade-off Because you can just make even if like maybe it doesn't all the features aren't fully realized and stuff you can get to more of the product being complete faster at a reasonable quality Level um so that then you can yeah focus on actually seeing if people want to buy it and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I do. Yeah. There is a lot of conventional wisdom out there that will be shifting, I think. Yeah. Which will be kind of interesting to see too. Aaron Francis And I think you're totally right. The hard part is still marketing and distribution. ([Time 0:49:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/454fd1ab-d931-4332-84b2-c46f252d22b3)) - **Annual College Friends Retreat** - Aaron Francis described a 14-year tradition of annual retreats with college friends, emphasizing the joy and relaxation it brings. - They enjoy cooking, river swimming, and deep friendship, making it a cherished yearly event. Transcript: Aaron Francis It was the freaking best. So great. So there were this year there were 12 of us. And I think that is just missing one. I think only one person couldn't come this year. So 12 of us. And this was year number 14 in a row. 14 years in a row that we have done this. Congratulations. Yeah. So it was great. You know, 12 guys went down to the Hill Country outside of Austin. There's a city town called Wimberley, Texas, and there's a river that flows through it. And so we have ventured outside of Wimberley once or twice for those years, but most of the times we book a house in Wimber And that's what we did this year. We booked a house in Wimberley, just up the hill from the river. So we had a pool in the backyard, and then you walk down the little hill and you're in the river. And so that's what we did. So, you know, we left Thursday morning, Thursday night, did a little pizza in town. You know, say hi to the locals. How we doing? How's your father? A little bit of that. And then Friday, Saturday, all day. We just like, you want to go sit in the river? You want to go sit in the pool? You want to go sit in the river? You want to go inside and take a nap? And then we'll go sit in the river. It was just, it was the freaking best. So fun. So relaxing. You know there's just something nice about i've known these guys now for 19 years you know 2006 was my freshman year of college so wow i know it's crazy um so super fun highly recommended Uh if you if you have a group of friends start something regular and everyone will look forward to it and i don't know anybody who stays in touch almost with anybody from like high school Ian Landsman And college i know that's like 12 14 people like that's not crazy that's a big group was was it like all people in your dorm or just was it a random assortment um so it was the way we all originally Aaron Francis Met. Some like lived down the hall from me in the dorms and some lived, you know, next to each other in the dorms. But the way that we all kind of came together was there's a freshman, say freshman guys Bible study. And it's like, you know, 60, 70 people. All these freshmen are so pumped to be there. And then out of that formed two houses. Uh, so my house had five guys and the house down the street had six guys. It's like, we all met there and then decided, all right, sophomore year, we'll live together. Um, and then we lived together for the next, whatever it was, three or four years, um, and picked up other, a few other people that weren't our roommates but many of those many of those People there were either my college roommates or down the street the you know the second house where we would like go and watch the office and you know light stuff on fire sophomore year Wow oh yeah early not at a&m a&m i feel like that's pretty normal you do freshman year in the dorms, and then you do a house the following years. Interesting. So, yeah, we lived in the same house for three – I guess I did four years because I did my master's year, and that's when the two houses combined. So it was like three years. We lived down the street from each other, and then if you're doing your master's or you're bad at school and you stay for a fifth year then we moved into one house together and it was awesome Oh my goodness yeah it was great so relaxing so fun it's the only time a year i drink beer i don't have a problem with it i just don't super love it but sitting in the river drinking a beer doesn't Get much better than that 90 degrees you got a big hat on so your face doesn't get burned you're just kind of like chilling watching the little fish bite your toes it's great so much fun Ian Landsman Oh they're just little bitty guys they just nibble on you yeah i have this uh billionaire guy i follow his name's bill perkins because he's like he plays poker okay and he's like a natural Gas trader you know whatever yeah whatever he lives in the hill country. Of course he does. And his house is like right on the river there or whatever. So he's always like, he's got a speedboat. And then he's always doing that thing where like they got the rope behind and then you let go and you're surfing on the wave. Oh, wake skating. Yeah, wake surfing or whatever. So like uh so they're always doing that every video he posts rich people rich people love doing that doing rich people stuff he's got the whole rich person playbook he's got the like you Know 29 year old uh blonde wife he's got the boat he's got the house he's got the whole you know now he's got a satellite company which is what billionaires do obviously now um yeah so he's Doing the whole billionaire playbook but he plays poker so you know I like this guy. Aaron Francis We were talking this weekend if we were billionaires we would be so much more creative than the existing billionaires. We'd be so much more interesting. Yeah. Yeah but. Ian Landsman Maybe that's the billionaires you don't hear about that much you know like maybe. Maybe they're out doing interesting things and it's just like the ones who buy their own social networks are the ones you hear about. But everybody else is actually out. The ones who become billionaires and then decide, you know what I should do? Aaron Francis Keep posting. I'm like, no, you made it. Log off. You don't have to do this anymore. You're free. Yeah. Got to get the juice. Yeah, it was great. Super fun time. Highly recommend. You go out to dinner or just eat in? We eat in. We cook. Okay. Some of the best food you've ever had at this guy's retreat. It's crazy. So good. Fucking together. Ian Landsman Yep. This is so wholesome and awesome. It is wholesome. Aaron Francis It's really, really wonderful. It's a lot of fun. Was it three nights? Yes, three nights. So we got in Thursday afternoon. So we did Thursday, Friday, Saturday night. Some people can't come until Friday morning or Friday afternoon. And so they come in a little bit later. We've got a few attorneys and a few doctors. And so the attorneys will come early, but work while, you know, they'll like wake up early and work. And then the doctors have to come a little bit later because they can't work remote. So, but you know, you got these people with internet jobs and they just go whenever they want and don't work. Yeah. We don't make any money while we're there, but still. Ian Landsman That's the part we got to change. We got to get the return. I know. You can make money while you're there. Man, that sounds great. ([Time 0:55:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6d53fa1a-257f-4dcb-94e4-96b27f66588f)) - **Focus On What Works** - Focus on what is currently working instead of jumping into trendy topics like AI courses. - Avoid risky detours and maintain concentration on your strengths to ensure progress and income. Transcript: Aaron Francis I know. I know. Just not doing it. Got to focus right now on stuff that's working. And I'm very humbled that everyone thinks I've got good enough takes on AI to do a full course. I don't think I do. Ian Landsman But regardless of if I do or don't, we got to focus it's definitely would be a like um a sort of burn the ships kind of thing i think because you'd have to really go into the tank on like learning A lot of stuff exactly and be like off the grid probably to some degree uh can't do that or at least like it would you wouldn't be able to probably be doing a database course while you do it Or whatever um so it would be a big Hail Mary kind of. Aaron Francis If I considered myself an expert at AI assisted development, I could do a detour of like two weeks and record everything I know. I do not consider myself an expert on AI assisted development. ([Time 1:04:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a23676d5-1018-4aef-8fd0-d1a9ebfa7c57)) - **Satisficing Over Maximizing** - When ordering from a menu read aloud, stop as soon as something satisfies you to avoid overthinking. - Accept the first good option to practice satisficing instead of maximizing and prolonging decisions. Transcript: Aaron Francis We were going to stop and get tacos. And one of the guys was reading out the menu. I was driving. He was reading out the menu from his phone. And the first time I heard a taco that sounded good to me, I said, that's what I want. You don't have to finish reading the menu. Don't do the whole menu. I don't need to know. This taco, the chorizo egg and cheese has passed my bar of being satisfied. And so if I get this taco, I will be satisfied. I do not need to get the best taco on the menu. In fact, I don't want to hear the rest of the menu. Get me the chorizo egg and cheese. I am now satisfied. That is satisficing. Ian Landsman This might literally be the test. We need to remember this. Is the test because i don't think i've ever ordered off a menu and not read the menu three four times like i gotta read it i gotta reread it i gotta think about which one's gonna really satisfy Aaron Francis Me right now there's no way i'm ever just accepting the first thing that sounds interesting well there you go yeah that's a good test somebody reads the menu out to you because it's a little More costly. You have to like listen and like. That's even more of a test. Yes. And if you stop them and say, that sounds good. I want that. You don't need to continue. You're a satisficer. If you say, all right, that sounds good. Keep reading. What else is on the menu? ([Time 1:07:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cf173b75-919d-4197-8eac-7f0cfb3a7f64))