RS306: YouTube Growth Secrets w/ Aaron Francis

[00:00:05] Speaker A: Hello. [00:00:05] Speaker B: Welcome back to Rogue startups. I'm your host, Craig Hewitt. Today I'm joined by Aaron Francis. We're going to talk all about video and YouTube. So for those of you who enjoyed our YouTube series around the end of the year, I think you're really going to enjoy this deep dive into how Aaron approaches content, how he approaches content for technical audiences and SaaS the importance of personal branding, and a little bit about his new venture, Tryhard Studios, where he's helping developer dev tool companies create really amazing video content. We talk at the beginning a lot about why YouTube and why video. For those of you who are trying to figure out your growth strategy and what the heck marketing looks like, how does AI affect Google and all this kind of stuff? They could really appreciate Aaron's perspective on just kind of like why YouTube, why video? How the platform of YouTube varies from content marketing and Google and social media and podcasting even. And so that's really great conversation with Aaron Francis. [00:01:08] Speaker A: I hope you enjoy. [00:01:11] Speaker B: Yeah, so it occurred to me the other day that in our previous kind of YouTube series, we talked like four or five different consultants, people who are experts at growing a channel, but had never talked to a person who'd actually like, grown a channel successfully. And so you and I had been in touch a few months ago, had to reschedule because I was sick. But this is a really timely conversation, I think, in light of your new thing and just to continue the thread of growing a YouTube channel. But Aaron, I want to start with why YouTube? Because I have my reasons, but I'd love to hear from you because you're really strong social presence on Twitter, been out there, done a lot of things to start with, like for folks who are on the fence about YouTube as like a content marketing channel, like, what's. [00:01:54] Speaker A: Your, what's the pitch? [00:01:56] Speaker B: You tell yourself, I guess. [00:01:58] Speaker C: Yeah, I think surprisingly, I think competition is way, way, way lower on YouTube, which is like, it feels crazy to say that because it's like, wow, it seems like YouTube is so mature and saturated and like, in some regards it is like, if you're gonna do, I don't know if you're going to do Minecraft. Yeah. [00:02:18] Speaker B: If you're going to do one of. [00:02:19] Speaker C: These topics that has been around for forever, I feel like that's tough. Or if you're going to do one of these topics where everybody in the niche is really comfortable on camera and personable and I feel like that's going to be kind of hard, where it's totally open, I think is developer related content, honestly, because you know, if you look at like the level of effort required to produce any sort of content, like the lowest level of effort is you do nothing. And that's what most people do, right? You just don't produce anything. And then moving up from there, it's like, what's easiest? Well, I could fire off a tweet. That's pretty easy. I could write a blog post that's a little bit harder. If I'm going to turn on the camera and put my face out there like that, not only is it like an emotional labor, but it's also a lot more work. Like you got to edit and editing can be terrible. And so that's one reason is I think it's like the very tip top of the effort pyramid and so therefore it's sparsely populated. [00:03:19] Speaker A: But then like if I were, I. [00:03:23] Speaker C: Think if I were starting today, I would start strictly and solely on YouTube. I would have Twitter still because I think Twitter is extremely valuable. But YouTube can give you distribution unto itself. Like you don't have to build up a following on YouTube or build up a subscriber base. Like if your video is good enough, YouTube is just going to say, great, here are all the views, have fun. And I don't think that's like, I don't think that's still, I don't think that's the case on many other platforms anymore. [00:03:55] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I agree. [00:03:56] Speaker B: I mean if you think about the kind of options you have, it's like social, like definitely have the platform and network effect built in. Like that's the whole idea. Blogging, like pretty standalone. Google maybe like will serve some of. [00:04:08] Speaker A: Your stuff, but really the shit that. [00:04:10] Speaker B: You want to write, like Google's never going to suggest. So I think that's kind of from like thought leadership opinion pieces. Podcasting I think is super interesting. Like my whole kind of world has been podcasting for a long time, kind of in between. I feel like you got to grow a podcast outside of podcasting, which is weird because there's not a YouTube place, right? Not even Spotify to. And I think the big difference to me is like podcasting has like podcast level discoverability, whereas like you're saying YouTube has like episode level, like the homepage or the sidebar is like, ooh, you might like this from this whole different person you never heard of. [00:04:50] Speaker A: Whereas like that, I don't feel like. [00:04:52] Speaker B: That exists in podcasting. [00:04:54] Speaker A: So I think that's just perspective. [00:04:57] Speaker C: Yeah, podcasts are great and I have hosted several in the past and I'm, you know, have one right now and put a lot of effort into it. And I think it's really, really great for deepening relationships, you know, with the audience and less so for, like, growing the audience. I mean, our podcast is growing, but it's not like. It's not like you put out an amazing YouTube video and you get, you know, 100,000 views. It's like we're getting, you know, we're getting many tens of new listeners every episode, and it's. It's a slow and steady long, long burn. But people that listen think that we're best friends, and you can't get that anywhere else. Right? Being in people's ears for an hour, you just can't get through Twitter, frankly. [00:05:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:45] Speaker B: Right. So it's the depth of connection along with the volume. [00:05:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:50] Speaker B: I talked to Dan Andrews last week about this, in fact, so. [00:05:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:54] Speaker B: Cool. Okay, so we're sold on YouTube. So I'll kind of give a little background on my journey in the last few months because I have this goal of 200 videos this year. [00:06:04] Speaker C: I know. [00:06:05] Speaker B: And arguably some of them. Well, this is going to be one of them. Right? So, like, I'm cheating a little bit. Right. [00:06:09] Speaker C: But great. [00:06:10] Speaker B: I think that's fair. So, like, that's across three channels. So that's the podcast. So Rogue startups has its own channel, my personal channel. So talking about kind of sales, marketing, and SaaS stuff, and then Casto's channel, talking about podcasting and our platform and stuff. [00:06:23] Speaker A: So that's that. [00:06:24] Speaker B: Like a podcast episode like this. It's a product, typically, or kind of, you know, how to podcast for the Kastos channel. And then two kind of like talking head videos a week, I ran into a really significant road bump with overcomplicating my tech setup, really, for about the last six weeks. Going back a couple weeks, I've been back on the horse, but talked to some folks. They're like, you got to script your videos. You got to get the teleprompter. You got a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it just totally kneecapped me to where now the teleprompter is sitting right over there, and it's unplugged because I. [00:07:04] Speaker A: Find it's just like, if I just. [00:07:06] Speaker B: Like, outline something in an ocean dock and I have that sitting here, I can just talk for a couple minutes and then look at that and then talk for a couple more minutes, and. [00:07:15] Speaker A: And that's it. [00:07:16] Speaker B: And that's my whole process, so. [00:07:17] Speaker A: Yep. [00:07:17] Speaker B: And it suffice to say, like, I have not been creating, like you said, like, I've done nothing for the last couple months, but. But I'm kind of back on the train. But found that, like, the tech stuff really handicapped me. It was overcomplicating it. I think my setup here is plenty good, and I should just go with that. [00:07:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:36] Speaker C: I think that's a common trap that people fall into, and it's not even wrong. Right? So scripting it out and using a teleprompter, it's great. [00:07:47] Speaker A: Love that. Love that. [00:07:48] Speaker C: For whoever that works for, I have a course@screencasting.com, where I teach people how to do screencast videos. And one of the things that I go into is, should you have a script or should you not? And the answer is, I have no idea. [00:08:01] Speaker A: Like, I have no idea if you. [00:08:02] Speaker C: Should have a script or if you should not. I'm the same way that you are. Where I do an outline, I read. [00:08:08] Speaker A: Over the outline, and then I turn. [00:08:11] Speaker C: On the camera, right? And I find that for me, that is most effective because that gives me the, like, that gives me the live performance energy of it versus just, like, dead reading script off the screen. Now, I know for some people that not having a script just totally paralyzes them. They turn on the camera and they completely freeze. In that case, use a script. But for me, I'm the same way. I'll write something and then try to read it, and it sounds so stilted. Whereas if I know what my few major points are and I figure out as I'm talking how to meander through those points, I feel like it goes much better. And frankly, sometimes I even trash the first video because I'm like, great. Now I know. Like, now I know what I want to say. Like, could I have written a script? Maybe. But for me, it was better to start saying it and then trash it and start over and say, like, all right, now I know my path through the points and I'm going to hit. [00:09:08] Speaker A: It a little tighter. Yeah. [00:09:10] Speaker B: And even from a time perspective, all of that is probably faster than writing the script and revising it and reading out loud. [00:09:16] Speaker A: Um, yeah. [00:09:17] Speaker B: So, yeah, I love that. I love that. Um, cool. So, yeah, let's, let's kind of continue this thread. Let's get, like, really practical with, like, things that you have seen work well for you and that, like, working with your folks, like through screencasting.com that course, or just like, you and your channel. Like, let's kind of, let's go through some best practices or like, places to focus and grow your channel. [00:09:38] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. [00:09:39] Speaker C: Yeah. So for context, I have grown my channel from zero to, like, I think it's like 30 or 32,000 subscribers. And, you know, I just got back from paternity leave. We just had another set of twins. And so I haven't published a video in like, three months or something. Three or four months. And so that all happened within maybe six months. And then at the place I used to work, I grew their channel from, I think, 1000 to like, 35,000 in six months. Same, you know, maybe four to six months. Same, same amount of time. Yeah. And so I think one of the. [00:10:13] Speaker A: Things that, like, I think one of. [00:10:16] Speaker C: The reasons I was able to do. [00:10:19] Speaker A: That is I think I understand maybe. [00:10:22] Speaker C: The type of content or the structure or pattern of content that works on YouTube. In my heart, I'm an educator. I just want to teach. I want to teach people how to do things. And I think teaching people how to do cool stuff is a lot of fun. When you go on YouTube, you have to change. You have to adapt. Like, you have to adapt to the platform a little bit. And I think there are people out. [00:10:48] Speaker A: There who would say, like, I am. [00:10:50] Speaker C: Not going to, like, I'm a purist or I'm an educator or something like that, and I'm not going to adapt to the platform. And to that I say, great. Go ye with God. Good luck. [00:11:02] Speaker A: Like, it's not going to, it's not. [00:11:03] Speaker C: Going to work, but if you don't want to do it, then that's fine. I think there is a way to adapt to the platform and stay true to yourself. Like, you don't have to do, you don't have to do stupid, shocked thumbnail faces. Like, I've never done one. I don't think I will because I'm never going to feign surprise to get people to click on something, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to try to optimize for people clicking on the video, right? Like, I'm not going to say, like, I'm taking a moral stance and I'm not going to do anything that's interesting because I don't want to kowtow to the Google gods. [00:11:36] Speaker A: I'm like, nah, man, I want to. [00:11:38] Speaker C: Be happy and I want to make a lot of money. And so, like, I'm just like that, you know, making a title clickable doesn't go against my moral standing. And so I'm fine saying, like, I'm going to make the title clickable. So, for example, I did a video. I did a video a while back called PHP doesn't suck. And then in parentheses, I put anymore, like, so PHP doesn't suck anymore. And so even that alone is like, a little bit like, ooh. Like, I thought PHP sucked, but now it doesn't. So I'm going to click on it. Or in fact, PHP never sucked. And I'm mad that he said it used to suck, and so I'm going to click on it. [00:12:16] Speaker A: Right? [00:12:17] Speaker C: And so the content of that video was like, hey, you haven't looked at PHP in ten years, dear reader, you haven't looked at it in ten years. Here are all the great things that we have now that you might not know that we actually have. And so an alternative title for that video is PHP's changes in the past ten years. And it's like, nobody cares. Nobody freaking cares about what's changed in PHP in the last ten years. The content is the same, but the packaging is PHP suck anymore. And you're like, really? I thought it sucked. I hate PHP. Let me go see what this guy's talking about. And so that's an example of, like, you can take a piece of content, which is what has changed in PHP since 2013, take that same content and wrap it in something that's way more interesting and way more clickable. And that is like, that's adapting to the platform and making it work for the platform with the exact same content. Like, maybe you change the flavor of the content a little bit to speak back to the title, but you don't go in by saying, here's what's new in PHP. Like, who cares? Nobody. [00:13:26] Speaker A: Nobody cares. [00:13:27] Speaker B: Are you along those lines? Are you kind of coming up with the title or a couple title ideas and the thumbnail first and then you shoot the video from that? Or do you just turn the camera on and start talking and then figure that stuff out? [00:13:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:38] Speaker C: So I always start with, like, what's the, like, the thing that I want to teach or do? And then I think before I record anything, then I think, is there an angle that makes this work? [00:13:49] Speaker A: Okay, if I have a piece of. [00:13:51] Speaker C: Content where I'm like, oh, I just learned that, or I just saw that on Twitter, that would make a good video. Or like, this is something that I have been working on on side projects. And that's an interesting nugget to extract, the question then becomes, okay, it is an interesting nugget. Is there a package that works? Because if there's not a title thumbnail that works for it, it's almost not worth doing, all because nobody's going to click on it. Now. Rarely do I think of a title and then try to backfill, like, oh, how can I make good on that promise? I think that's a fine way to do it, as long as you make good on the promise that the title is promising the viewer. But I usually am like, hey, this is really cool. I would love to teach people how to do this. Uh oh, how do I make it interesting? Like, oh, shoot, maybe I can't. And so I just let that one go. [00:14:41] Speaker B: So, okay, so you're creating a new channel, right? And you're like, you have, I think planning the content for a channel has been really different for me because it's not like SEO and content marketing where you just have all of this shit you want to write about and you just crank them out. Like I've thought about for my channel, like, organizing things in the playlists. [00:15:01] Speaker A: So, like, I have this playlist and. [00:15:02] Speaker B: This playlist and this playlist and those play, like, I have to do these. [00:15:06] Speaker A: I have to do these videos. [00:15:07] Speaker B: So you're kind of saying, like, I have a playlist on, you know, SAS sales. If I can't come up with a unique angle on this topic for a. [00:15:16] Speaker A: Video, then I just shouldn't do it. [00:15:20] Speaker C: Close, maybe. I think if you can't come up with an interesting angle, I don't think all your content has to be unique solely to you because, you know, your, the way that you say things, your personality, like, that's going to connect with people where other videos didn't connect with people. So I don't think you have to be unique in the, what I do think is the packaging has to be interesting to click on. So you have to have an angle. I don't think it needs to be a unique angle, if that makes sense. [00:15:47] Speaker A: Okay. [00:15:48] Speaker B: Okay. [00:15:49] Speaker C: Fair. [00:15:49] Speaker A: Fair. [00:15:50] Speaker B: Do you think it's too much to say that you're kind of like, optimizing for virality in that, like, city at all? [00:15:58] Speaker C: That's exactly correct. [00:15:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:16:00] Speaker C: And you may not, you may not and likely won't get it, but you have to imagine, I think what's different about podcasting and Twitter as those two together and then separately, YouTube is you almost have to treat every video as a standalone artifact where people don't know who you are, they don't know you, they don't know your backstory. Everything basically has to be auditioning on its own. Because if I do a video, I do a normal video and it gets 15,000 views and then I do a video that YouTube likes and it gets 250,000 views. [00:16:37] Speaker A: Like I need to basically that needs. [00:16:39] Speaker C: To be a standalone artifact because I want people to be served that video and watch it all the way through without having to need any sort of like backstory or like anything like that. And so it's totally different. I have to continually remind myself when making YouTube videos, people don't know who you are and that's fine. To like continue to show your personality and your inside jokes and your long running bits and everything like that, that's fine. But if it requires so much backstory and lore like for people to like it, I think you're hamstringing yourself a little bit. [00:17:11] Speaker B: How do you, how do you think about like so, so like, yeah, get an engineering virality, have it be kind of a standalone piece that people can kind of know you and your context and all this kind of stuff. How do you then connect the dots back to like your brand and your website and whatever kind of further engagement or conversion event you want? [00:17:30] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, so I think we can go from the corporate angle. So the company I used to work at, we had a corporate channel and all of the content was not about how to use their product. The content was, you know, it was a, it was a database platform company. And so all of the content was about how to use the underlying like database, MySQL. And the theory was that if you're looking for MySQL content or you're like watching MySQL content on YouTube, then you should know about the company that I work at. And like, so the way that we did it was, everything was branded with the company's name. It was very clear that I was working on behalf of the company and you know, we would talk about the company briefly in the videos, but all the videos were just pure education on database topics. And so from that point of view it's like super top of funnel awareness kind of thing. And the hope is that as you're learning about how to use this database, you are transmuting trust from this educational experience onto the brand and saying, oh, if I ever need to put my database somewhere, I'm going to go to that brand where that guy taught me how to do all that stuff. That's from the corporate angle, from the personal angle. I don't think it's even that different. Hopefully subscribe to me. You begin to know me and you begin to know like my world or my universe of products or attention or whatever. And so I don't, on the personal side, I don't treat it very scientifically. I just, I continue to, like, put stuff out there and basically just say. [00:19:08] Speaker A: Like, hey, here's who I am. [00:19:10] Speaker C: If you want to go to my website, it's in, you know, it's in the description and that's kind of it. Yeah. Now there may, there may come a time when it's like more funnel specific or more funnel focused, but right now it's just about growing the, growing the base. [00:19:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:26] Speaker B: Interesting. I think this has been a challenge for me because, like, well, in this podcast, like, we, there will never be like, hey, subscribe and all that's just not gonna happen. And in my YouTube videos, I know the thing is always like, and subscribe and ring the bell and all this stuff. And I kind of think like, well, it's trite. [00:19:45] Speaker A: Everybody says it, but that's kind of. [00:19:48] Speaker B: Because of the platform effect. That is kind of like one of the things you want them to do. And then, yeah, I've been including, like. [00:19:53] Speaker A: I have a special page for each. [00:19:55] Speaker B: Of them on the site that are in the description. So. Yeah, but I don't, I haven't been taking the time because I think it's tough to, like, where do you, where do you put this bit? You know, like, yeah, but at the beginning people are going to bounce, but at the end they might not stay to get there. And so, like, that's been a, that's been a challenge is like, I feel like I need to have some kind of connection, you know, because they're not just going to stay on YouTube wherever you want them to go, do something. [00:20:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:19] Speaker B: Like how to give them that next. [00:20:20] Speaker C: Step because that's how to get them off platform. [00:20:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:24] Speaker C: Which is tough because, you know, the platform is optimized to not get people off platform. Right, right. That's their entire goal is to keep people on YouTube watching more and more videos. [00:20:35] Speaker A: And so to some extent, like, to. [00:20:38] Speaker C: Some extent, you have to be careful because if you're trying to optimize to get people off platform, you are optimizing for the thing that YouTube is specifically penalizing. Right. [00:20:48] Speaker B: And they probably, and so you gotta be. [00:20:50] Speaker C: Yeah. You want, you want people to stay and keep watching more videos because that's what YouTube wants. But if you want to make money, you got to get them off platform and into your funnel. And so there is a delicate dance of like, how do I do that? I think taking your castos channel, for example, I don't know what kind of content you do there. But the world of content for that channel is wide open. You just make generic podcasting content all day long, every day. [00:21:16] Speaker A: And it's just branded. [00:21:17] Speaker C: Like you have the Kastos logo or whatever on screen the entire time. And then beginning, middle, end, or whatever. [00:21:24] Speaker A: You say, if you need to host. [00:21:25] Speaker C: A podcast, go to Castos. [00:21:26] Speaker A: And you're like, yep. [00:21:28] Speaker C: If you're thinking about it in like a mining metaphor, you could mine that vein of content forever. [00:21:34] Speaker B: There's always podcasts. [00:21:35] Speaker C: That was the same with databases. There's always database content. There's not always castos content. Like, you're not releasing a new feature every week, but there's always talk about microphones. For twelve episodes, you could totally do that. You can make twelve videos on just microphones. We make 50 videos on just microphones. So that's kind of the idea. [00:21:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that's been. [00:21:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's interesting. Like, we have some content on gear and like that, that performs really well on the blog, so I have to believe it would perform well on YouTube. There's a fair amount of just like talking head. Like, this is how you think about like a script and a topic and an intro and all that kind of stuff. The ones I like the best from. [00:22:13] Speaker A: A business perspective are how to use. [00:22:16] Speaker B: Our tool to achieve a thing you want to do in podcasting. [00:22:19] Speaker A: You know, and look at like, Ahrefs. [00:22:20] Speaker B: Does an amazing job of this. Right? [00:22:22] Speaker C: Like keyword research. That's the best business topic for sure. And if that, like that, you just have. I think you have to approach that as fundamentally separate from a good YouTube topic. Yeah, it's like, maybe you have those videos and they are helpful to people who use castos, but no one on YouTube is ever going to click on that if it says how to do dynamic ad insertion with castos. One, I don't know who Kastos is, and two, I'm not looking for that right now. And so are those videos good to make? I don't know. Maybe if they're good for your existing customers, but they're not going to be a top of funnel, broadening the audience type of. [00:23:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting when we think about our written content, we have this concept of what's the job of this jobs to be done, I guess, of this blog post. Is it links to attract links or virality or SEO or conversions? I hadn't really thought of it that YouTube could have the same. The goal is just to broaden our digital footprint. The goal of this one is to show how our tool does a thing. [00:23:33] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. [00:23:34] Speaker B: I think that's been the biggest learning for me, is kind of mapping that content. [00:23:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:41] Speaker B: Because I could talk about microphones for twelve episodes, but that would just feel weird. So just have to stagger that a little bit. [00:23:46] Speaker C: But why? [00:23:47] Speaker B: Why does that feel weird for me as a creator? I would be like, oh, my gosh, I just can't do another microphone video. [00:23:53] Speaker A: Like, I did one for the last ten weeks. Well, every. [00:23:57] Speaker C: Yeah, that makes sense from, like, your point of view. But again, from the consumers point of view, they didn't know you did that. [00:24:04] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. [00:24:05] Speaker C: I mean, they don't care. [00:24:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:08] Speaker C: That is, if you go on Twitter and bang on for six months about the exact same thing over and over and over, people are going to get annoyed. If you publish, functionally, the same video on YouTube for six months in a row, nobody's going to care. [00:24:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:20] Speaker B: That's so bizarre. Yeah, no, but you're right. I mean, and that's just like, that's yet another thing of, like, how YouTube. [00:24:25] Speaker A: Is really fundamentally different than, like, content. [00:24:28] Speaker B: Marketing, which is the other kind of big focus for us. [00:24:33] Speaker C: I think a way you could get double duty out of some of your content is like, I don't know if Kastos does dynamic ad insertion. It just made that up. But let's say you can do x on Kastos this way. Maybe that's a video that serves your existing people or people that are searching YouTube or searching Google for, like, can castos even do this? And a YouTube video comes up, it's like, great. That's awesome. I think you could take that exact same topic and just do a generic one and say, here's how you do dynamic ad insertion in podcasts, and you'd give a little bit of an overview and talk about why it's hard and everything. You're like, but if you use Kastos, which that's the company I run, here's how we do it on Kastos. [00:25:16] Speaker A: And that broadens the top of the. [00:25:19] Speaker C: Funnel for people just looking for this thing in general. Maybe it's audio normalization, maybe it's whatever. And then you get to sneak in, like, yeah, it's really hard. Actually, on castos, it's really easy, but I'll show you how to do it the hard way. Or, you know, whatever. [00:25:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, totally. [00:25:34] Speaker B: We started doing this around video pod. We do dynamic ads, but we started doing this around video podcasting. That's kind of very popular these days. And so just even, like, how do you fucking publish a video podcast? You know, like, half the hosts don't support them. And then Spotify is its own special snowflake. And so we did on that, and then now we're going to do, like, how do you host a video podcast? [00:25:55] Speaker A: So, anyways, yeah, definitely. [00:25:58] Speaker C: I know that we need to move on, but you can leverage other people's brands for that. Like, you know, recording a video podcast. [00:26:04] Speaker A: With Riverside, and then you show them. [00:26:06] Speaker C: How to do it in Riverside. Then you're like, well, f. Now, how do you. How do you get this thing out there? [00:26:10] Speaker B: Well, it turns out interesting. [00:26:12] Speaker C: Yeah, casdos will do it for you. So, anyway, we can move on. [00:26:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, super interesting. I did want to talk about what you're up to now. You mentioned company work before, a fresh start now. And I saw your announcement on it last week, and I was like, this is such perfect timing. And truth be told, we're a month ahead on the podcast right now, but we're going to slide your episode in to go out next week because I want people to hear about this. Tell me what you're up to. Okay, so tell us what you're up to. And then why that? Because I think that's so interesting. [00:26:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:48] Speaker C: Yeah. So, like I mentioned, I used to do YouTube at a company. Then they laid off the entire sales and marketing staff. And so I found myself with this opportunity to be like, what do I want to do next? Which is a spot that I've never really been in. [00:27:04] Speaker A: You know, I've always. [00:27:04] Speaker C: Whenever I search for jobs, it's always like, I kind of have a job. So I got to do it on the sly. And this time it was like, great. By no fault of my own, I'm a public, like, free agent. And let's see what the world has to offer. And so, took a bunch of interviews, and it was like, every SaaS tool developer tool, every company is like, we need help. Like, we need video. I've seen what you can do, and we need you to do our video. I'm like, that's really interesting. And so the calculus was, do I want to go? You know, do I want to go run it back? Do I want to go do the same thing somewhere else? Or do I want to aim a little higher, dream a little bigger? And so me and my friend Steve, we decided we're going to go out and do this on our own. [00:27:44] Speaker A: And so the idea is we're going. [00:27:48] Speaker C: To function as basically consultants to these big dev tooling companies. We can offer two things right now. We'll see. We've got a bunch of calls lined up for this week of people who reached out after we launched. We'll see what the market demands. But so far I think the two things that we will offer, one is we come alongside your existing developer education team to whom you're paying huge salaries and maybe the video isn't actually producing anything of value. So we'll come alongside those teams and basically have these kinds of discussions that you and I just had but internal to them and be like, great, tell me what your content ideas are. Okay, great. How are you going to package that? That's terrible. This is great. Do that one instead. So that's going to be kind of the consulting. We are on retainer to help your team and then the contact us for pricing tier is going to be we can produce the entire, we can do it for you and that's going to be terribly expensive because one, it's a huge time commitment and two, there's some sort of personal branding dilution risk of me teaching courses on or to doing videos on certain things. And so that's just going to, that's just going to have to cost a lot more. So that's the idea is we're going to take the show on the road and help other companies spin up or make their video offerings more effective and more engaging as marketing. [00:29:22] Speaker B: How did you mention the calculus of shall I just rewind and do this over again or do my own thing? [00:29:28] Speaker A: Tell me about, I mean, it's pretty. [00:29:31] Speaker B: Recent, right, that you moved on from your old role? Like the kind of risk of like doing this yourself versus the risk of, I mean, sure, you had a whole bunch of job offers. Like, I saw it on Twitter. [00:29:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Tell me about that. [00:29:46] Speaker C: Yeah, so I, weirdly so as, as backstory, we have four kids that are under three. So we have two two and a half year olds and two four month olds. My wife works way harder than I do, but she works in the house, she doesn't bring in any money. And so yeah, seems crazy. Seems crazy to go from tech salary to no salary. But weirdly, I feel like now is the least risky time to do it for me because I think so, like I became the face of this old company that I worked at. [00:30:25] Speaker A: Right. [00:30:26] Speaker C: Which is a good spot. Like it's a high leverage spot for me to be in, but also kind of a tricky spot because it should I have ever wanted to move on. It's a little like, it makes me feel a little bit like, ooh, sorry, guys. Thanks for, you know, thanks for letting me become the face of your company. I'm out of here. But the way that it went down, I'm at no fault. [00:30:46] Speaker A: Like, not my problem. [00:30:48] Speaker C: And so I feel like right now is a good time for me to try this because, you know, I'm the aggrieved party. I was let go. I didn't, like, leave anyone high and dry. I have a lot of interest from other companies, and I don't think all of that is going to go away. If I try something ambitious and fail, I don't think people are going to look down their noses at me and be like, six months ago we wanted you, but since you, like, believed in yourself and tried and it didn't work out, now we don't want you. It's like, I just don't see that happening. Like, maybe some of the roles get filled and maybe some new roles open up, but, like, the fact that I'm at no fault for leaving my old job, I have a lot of opportunities, and the thing I'm going to do is, like, american dream. I just don't, I just don't feel like there's a lot that could go wrong. Maybe I crash and burn and in six months I get a job. It's like, it's not so bad. [00:31:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:31:42] Speaker B: I think. I mean, from a. I'm just thinking from a business perspective, you probably can. [00:31:48] Speaker A: We'd make a lot more money like. [00:31:49] Speaker B: This way than just having a single salary. I mean, there's, there's some more risk, but, you know, the. Each of those companies would probably pay you about the same as your salary. [00:31:57] Speaker A: And so that, that's pretty cool. [00:31:59] Speaker B: I mean, there's ramp up time and sales, and now you have to figure out all the stuff and the website and the brand and all that. But that's pretty cool. I will say. Just on the topic of being the face of the company as a company, we went through a similar thing a couple of years ago, had someone on the team, his name's Matt, who was largely the face of the company, and he left. [00:32:24] Speaker A: It was my decision. [00:32:25] Speaker B: It was our decision. We just couldn't afford him. [00:32:28] Speaker A: And that was a fair risk, I think, to choose. [00:32:36] Speaker B: Not just allow, like I chose. It's like, man, I want to hire Matt because I don't want to freaking turn this camera on and do this stuff, you know, like, I want to pay someone to be the. And really connected in the WordPress space, which for us was a pretty. And the podcasting space, and that was. [00:32:50] Speaker A: Scary to see happen. [00:32:52] Speaker B: Like, I wanted that to happen. It happened, and then I was like, ooh. But, like, we just can't afford to. [00:32:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:57] Speaker B: You know, still, like, have him on the team. I think fortunately, like, we didn't see a lot of negative backlash, but definitely from a founder perspective, like, that's a big risk. [00:33:11] Speaker A: And, like, I think, you know, talking. [00:33:15] Speaker B: About your two options for your business, like, as a founder, I would want the first one probably, because I want. [00:33:22] Speaker A: To retain as much of that brand. [00:33:25] Speaker B: Identity as I can. And if I can pay you to come in and tell me how to do it better, like, that's. That's just great. [00:33:31] Speaker A: Um, yeah, I can imagine there'll be some of the bigger, some of the. [00:33:35] Speaker B: Bigger brands will be just like, fuck. Guys don't have time to even think about it. Like, here's, you know, 20 grand a month. But that's probably just a different type of company. [00:33:42] Speaker C: The, yeah, I want to empower people in house to, you know, be the face of their company or like, many faces of their company. [00:33:52] Speaker A: The. [00:33:53] Speaker C: I think the interesting thing about, like, the done for you strategy is less becoming the face of someone else's company ongoing, and more producing a discrete asset for them that. So let's say a course. Like, maybe I produce a four or five hour course and hand it over to them, and then I'm just like a guest lecturer on their brand, right? I don't become the face of their YouTube channel. [00:34:18] Speaker B: I do a bunch of work for. [00:34:19] Speaker C: Three to six months figuring out the content, the structure. I work with their team to figure out what they want. We record, edit, do the whole deal, and then hand it over to them and say, here's your course. I hope it does great for you. Thank you for the money. That's kind of the dream. But we don't have any offerings on our website at all right now because we want to talk. We need to have these 15 calls this week and find out, what do you all want? Because there's another world in which we did this big hype video we're launching, and there's another world in which companies just want that. Like, they just want a highly produced, like, Hollywood style. We're launching a new feature, a new product, a new whatever, and they just want one big splash and to be done with it. So it's not a retainer and it's not a course. It's like a fully. It's a commercial. [00:35:10] Speaker A: They just want a commercial. [00:35:11] Speaker C: And like, yeah, maybe we'll find out. That's what people want. So, yeah, we'll have to discover it. [00:35:16] Speaker A: As we go a little bit. Interesting. [00:35:18] Speaker B: Interesting. I know you're well publicly just a few days into it, but, like, what has been the biggest kind of learning or surprise getting to this point for you all? [00:35:29] Speaker C: It's just so much easier and better and more fun to have something that people want. I mean, it's just, like, turns out making something that people want is just better than trying to convince people to want something. And just the, like, even, like, we haven't sold a single dollar of anything, but we've had people. We've had people say, like, please take all of my money. We need. We want you to help us. [00:35:54] Speaker A: And it's like, even the week I. [00:35:57] Speaker C: Was doing all these interviews, I was talking with CEO's, and they're like, hey. [00:36:00] Speaker A: Man, honestly, I think you should go. [00:36:02] Speaker C: Out on your own. And if you do, we'll be your first client. [00:36:05] Speaker A: And it's just. [00:36:06] Speaker B: That's awesome. [00:36:07] Speaker C: Amazing to me how long I've spent toiling on other projects in the past where nobody cared. And this is just like, I think we might do this, and everybody's like, God, yes, we need you. Please help us. So that's been. That's been the biggest surprise so far. [00:36:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:36:26] Speaker B: I was chatting about this the other day, and I said to someone, I said, I think the opportunity, the boat that you're in is the biggest predictor of your success. And I think that's what you're seeing. [00:36:37] Speaker A: And I think that we've seen it. [00:36:40] Speaker B: A little bit, too. Podcasting, pretty cool place to be, was a huge, booming market for a long time and has kind of flattened out now. [00:36:47] Speaker A: And I think that, like, our growth. [00:36:49] Speaker B: Is just, like, exactly that. [00:36:50] Speaker A: You know, like, zero. [00:36:52] Speaker B: Zero interest rate. COVID, great. Podcasting as a medium is not growing, unlike YouTube and video, you know, pretty flat. And that sucks. And I think that, like, we can do a whole bunch of fancy stuff. [00:37:04] Speaker A: And it might change that, like, five degrees, you know? But if we just went and we're. [00:37:09] Speaker B: Like, fuck, we're an AI writing tool. [00:37:11] Speaker A: Now, it would be, you know, potentially. [00:37:14] Speaker B: A whole different thing. So I think. [00:37:16] Speaker A: And that is really hard. [00:37:20] Speaker B: Like, you're saying when you're in the boat, like, when you're in the toiling in this thing, to say, like. [00:37:28] Speaker A: You. [00:37:28] Speaker B: Know, maybe my date to prom just isn't that pretty. [00:37:30] Speaker C: I don't know. You know, like, maybe this just isn't. [00:37:34] Speaker B: As awesome as I want it to be. [00:37:36] Speaker C: Yeah, you get halfway up the ladder and you're like, shoot, I'm on the wrong ladder. [00:37:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, maybe. [00:37:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. [00:37:42] Speaker B: I mean, from a personal level, I've just, I've been kind of, that's a big thing to process, but yeah, yeah, yeah. I tell you, like, along those lines. [00:37:50] Speaker A: One of the, one of the biggest. [00:37:52] Speaker B: Lessons I've seen over the last kind of year and a half is like, the power of, like, a personal brand. [00:37:56] Speaker A: You know, like, you being able to. [00:37:58] Speaker B: Put this thing out on Twitter and have a whole bunch of phone calls. [00:38:00] Speaker A: The next week is like, people shit. [00:38:03] Speaker B: On it all the time. And I think they're just crazy. [00:38:07] Speaker C: They're just crazy. I think, I think there's, it's going to, it's worse than crazy. I think crazy would be like a fine thing. I think what they really are is cynical. I think they're cynical about the personal. [00:38:17] Speaker A: Brand and they're like, they feel some. [00:38:20] Speaker C: Sort of, like, ickiness around it or like it's self promotional or something like that. And so they're like, it's another one of those principle things where it's like, on principle, I'm not going to build a personal brand. And I'm like, that's fine. [00:38:34] Speaker A: I don't like, if that's your principle. [00:38:35] Speaker C: I'm not going to try to convince you to defy your principles. I think it's a silly principle. [00:38:40] Speaker A: Like, I think it's just, I think. [00:38:42] Speaker C: It'S ridiculous, but I think a lot of things are ridiculous and I just, you know, I move on. But I think this whole, like, I'm not going to have a personal brand. [00:38:50] Speaker A: Is, it's like cutting off your nose. [00:38:54] Speaker C: To spite your face. Like, why not? I tweeted that I got laid off and it got more than half a million impressions. And from that tweet alone, I filled an entire week of back to back calls. [00:39:10] Speaker A: And I happen to think I'm good. [00:39:13] Speaker C: At what I do, but a lot of people are good at what they do. The fact that I have this thing where I can say, hey, I've been putting in effort for a really long time, and I've been, like, providing stuff for a very long time. And now, unfortunately, guys, I need some help. And everybody's like, we got you. [00:39:31] Speaker A: I got your back. [00:39:32] Speaker C: Whatever you need, I'm on your team. And that's just the kind of thing. [00:39:35] Speaker A: That, like, I, you know. [00:39:38] Speaker C: Is a personal brand valuable for starting a SaaS company? I have no idea. But a personal brand is valuable just in general. Like, I don't know what the outcome is going to be. [00:39:48] Speaker A: But all things held equal, I would. [00:39:51] Speaker C: Rather have a personal brand than not. [00:39:53] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll see what happens. Yeah, yeah. [00:39:56] Speaker B: No, I agree. I think, you know, is. Is a per. Is my personal brand effective at growing Kastos? I think very small. You know, I think if it's aligned with. If my personal brand is podcasting. [00:40:06] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:40:07] Speaker B: If it's not, if it's just, you know, SaaS and entrepreneurship. No, but maybe one day we'll be so. [00:40:12] Speaker A: So I'm putting maybe 10% of my. [00:40:16] Speaker B: Week into content and social media and stuff, and I feel like that's a pretty good balance. I have a company to run. I'm trying to do some stuff reasonable. And so if you can't give what's a half a day, a week to. [00:40:29] Speaker A: Your own stuff, something's wrong. [00:40:32] Speaker C: And I even think almost everything that I. Videos are different, but almost everything that I tweet is just, boom, spur of the moment, was doing something, thought it was interesting. It doesn't matter if it's Sunday evening or Tuesday morning. That's the other thing that I am. [00:40:50] Speaker A: Just not optimizing for numbers on, let's say, Twitter. [00:40:56] Speaker C: I'm just not optimizing for numbers. My whole thing on Twitter is I'm going to have as much fun as I can while staying totally true to who I am. And so in my case, I don't, like, I'm not cynical, I'm not mean, I don't do rage bait. I don't do engagement bait, because, like, those are things that the platform wants that I'm not willing. I'm not willing to flex on. And so there are things where I'm like, yeah, the platform wants that. I don't want that. Like, I don't want my life to look that way. I don't want anyone to ever meet me and say, wow, he is so much nicer in person. You just have to actually meet him in person. [00:41:29] Speaker B: Like, his Twitter. [00:41:30] Speaker C: His Twitter thing is just a Persona. Like, he's just doing that for. He's just doing that for numbers. If you at him, you would actually like him. That, to me, is like a life failure. If people look at me and they're like, oh, he's actually nice. He's just a dick on Twitter. I'm like, then I failed. I've totally failed. But I don't think of it as, like, engagement. I'm just like, hey, I'm here hanging out with my friends. I had a funny thought. On a Sunday evening at the worst possible time to tweet, and I'm going to tweet it anyway because I'm going to move on with my life. And this, like, Twitter does not control me. But I do think about it as, all right, I just had an artifact come into my brain. Let's get it out there and move on. [00:42:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Aaron. [00:42:08] Speaker B: For folks who want to kind of check out tryhard studio. Tryhardstudios.com. Dot. [00:42:13] Speaker C: Tryhardstudios.com. [00:42:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:15] Speaker C: So me and my friend Steve are@tryhardstudios.com. On Twitter, you can find me aarondfrancis or just aaronfrancis.com. [00:42:24] Speaker A: Cool. [00:42:25] Speaker B: Awesome, buddy. I appreciate it. [00:42:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:27] Speaker C: Thanks for having me.