Effortless Screencasting

[0:00:00.04] Here we go.

[0:00:01.08] So what we're going to be talking about today is screencasting, but with an emphasis on making it easy because we all have a lot of stuff going on.

[0:00:12.28] And what what I'm really what I'm really going for when I'm creating a screencast is doing it quickly, but also making it very, very high quality.

[0:00:21.32] And I think there are several things that we can do to that end so that we end up with a really fine, like a a really polished final product, but like we can get back to our regular lives and our regular jobs and other small bets that we have going on.

[0:00:35.52] So before we dive into everything a little bit about who I am.

[0:00:41.12] I am the creator and teacher at screencasting.com and I reached out to Peter about this domain and I am just super proud of this domain screencasting.com.

[0:00:52.6] This is a small bet for me.

[0:00:54.2] screencasting.com is.

[0:00:55.44] I am a full, I have a full time job so I work as a developer educator at a database company called Planetscale.

[0:01:03.92] So my full time job is basically educating, educating people.

[0:01:10.44] And so this like this screencasting, small bet kind of came out of that because I was doing so many screencasts and people were like, hey man, great, we love databases, you know, whatever.

[0:01:20.52] How do you make those screencasts?

[0:01:21.72] How do you do these screencasts?

[0:01:22.88] And I was like, hang on a second, I'm small bets member cohort number six.

[0:01:27.6] I know, like I know what to do here.

[0:01:30.64] And so that is where this came from.

[0:01:33.56] And so we'll talk a little bit about some of the screencasts I've done, but I am a full time developer educator.

[0:01:39.72] I do this as a bet I'm a Laravel developer.

[0:01:42.96] I have become maybe a YouTube, which we'll talk about in a little bit, which feels a little bit weird for me.

[0:01:48.92] I'll be honest because in my heart like I feel like I just want to teach people and I want, I want to help people learn.

[0:01:56.52] And I feel like YouTube is kind of more sensational.

[0:02:00.64] And I think I've found a nice, I think I've found a nice place where those things can meet, like what I want to do with my life and like what YouTube wants as a platform.

[0:02:10.36] And I think there's a way to be on YouTube and still be true to that.

[0:02:14.2] And we'll talk about that in a little bit.

[0:02:16.44] And I spend all of my time on Twitter at Aaron D Francis, so I'm always there.

[0:02:20.92] So if you're there, please come, let's hang out.

[0:02:22.76] More important than anything, because I'm dad to two little kiddos.

[0:02:27.8] So I have twins that are 2 1/2 years old.

[0:02:30.12] You can tell they're twins because of how much they look alike there.

[0:02:33.68] So I am dad to two twins, a boy and a girl.

[0:02:37.24] And somehow in a few weeks, we're going to have twins again.

[0:02:41.96] So this may be the last time you ever see me.

[0:02:46.28] So yeah, wish wish me luck.

[0:02:49] We we're having boy girl twins just before Thanksgiving.

[0:02:53.84] So we're going to have four kids under 3.

[0:02:56] So been good knowing y'all All right.

[0:03:00.64] So let us talk about what's a screencast.

[0:03:05.08] That's kind of where we got to start.

[0:03:06.32] Right.

[0:03:06.52] What?

[0:03:06.92] What is a screencast?

[0:03:08.56] And this this is a screencast.

[0:03:11.16] So a screencast is basically just where you as the as the expert are sharing knowledge.

[0:03:19.16] But the primary means of communication is by recording your screen.

[0:03:23.72] So you'll see a lot of you'll see a lot of like high effort, high quality videos on YouTube of people like running around town and blowing up trains and driving stuff into walls and like that is video.

[0:03:36.64] Yes, that is not a screencast.

[0:03:38.92] A screencast is for professionals like like desk computer people to share their knowledge by recording their screen.

[0:03:47.08] I will argue, I will argue that you should show your face on camera, and I'll argue that in in a little bit.

[0:03:55.64] But the primary means of information and value delivery in a screencast is a screen.

[0:04:00.64] That's why we call it a screencast.

[0:04:03.36] Why should we screencast?

[0:04:07] So this is a little bit this, this is a little bit of like my philosophy of kind of putting yourself out there and like building up a body of work to be displayed publicly.

[0:04:20.8] And I've come up with this just based on vibes alone, absolutely no research, but this is totally vibes based.

[0:04:28.76] But if you think about, like, if you think about what are the levels of, like, types of content that I could put out into the world, most people do nothing.

[0:04:39.48] Most people do absolutely nothing.

[0:04:41.56] Right?

[0:04:42.32] And whenever I'm talking about this with other groups of people, I always say, like, hey, if you just want to work your nine to five and go home and never publish anything into the world, that is totally fine.

[0:04:53.64] Like, that's a legit, that's a legit way to live your life.

[0:04:57.48] Which I do believe.

[0:04:59.16] But I know that the group here thinks, yeah, but that's not why I'm here, right?

[0:05:03] I'm here.

[0:05:04.56] I'm here to try to make something.

[0:05:06.56] I'm here to try to do something.

[0:05:07.6] I'm here to try to like better my station in life.

[0:05:10.44] Like I've got, you know, a million kids on the way and like I want to make something and create something and like break free, right.

[0:05:17.68] And so I always give that caveat of like, hey, if you don't want to work outside of your 9:00 to 5:00, that's fine.

[0:05:22.72] But for this group we can skip that.

[0:05:25.48] I think moving up a layer, the the next like the biggest, the biggest amount of content being created by like number of people is people just tweeting, right?

[0:05:37] Because the barrier to entry is so low, Like the bar is so low that you can just anyone, anyone can fire off a tweet at any moment of any, any day, right?

[0:05:47.84] And so there everybody's doing it.

[0:05:49.44] Tons and tons of people are doing it.

[0:05:50.76] Moving up just a little bit, you start to move into like long form content where you actually have to, you know, put some, put a little bit of more thought into it, right.

[0:06:00.04] And now you can have some long form on Twitter.

[0:06:02.28] And so that gets a little, that gets a little mixed.

[0:06:05.76] But as you move up this pyramid, there are just fewer and fewer people that you're competing with.

[0:06:11.88] And you get up to this, this next medium where you're actually talking and like you, you, you, you're kind of depending on how your podcast is edited, you're kind of like exposed because you're presenting your thoughts kind of like stream of consciousness almost.

[0:06:28.84] And so just fewer and fewer people make that leap into really putting themselves out there because the further we move up this pyramid, the more exposed you are.

[0:06:39.48] And that's scary, right?

[0:06:40.52] That's scary for a lot of people to say.

[0:06:42.56] I can't hide behind an anonymous Twitter handle or I can't hide behind a Medium account or wherever you put your blogs.

[0:06:49.48] Like now people are actually hearing my voice.

[0:06:52.2] And then you get to the top and obviously the like you have video where most people, most people do not want to put their face on the Internet.

[0:07:01.64] And like, I totally get that because people on the Internet can be really, really mean.

[0:07:08] But what I have found is that at the top of this pyramid, there are just fewer people that you're competing with.

[0:07:14.96] And this pyramid translates directly to perceived value.

[0:07:20.2] It's not actual value, which I think is interesting because I wouldn't, I wouldn't sit here and tell you that any video is better than any blog post.

[0:07:30.2] I just, I don't know if I even think that that's true.

[0:07:34.28] But what I have noticed personally by going through all of these forms is that people ascribe value to me differently based on the medium, right?

[0:07:48.48] And so if you've ever had, let's say if you've ever had a podcast and you think I'm just talking, I'm.

[0:07:54.16] I'm just talking to like my dumb friend for an hour every week.

[0:07:57.84] And then people come up to me and they're like, oh, you're that guy from the podcast and you're like, what?

[0:08:02.88] Yeah, like I just, I just have a podcast.

[0:08:05.44] That doesn't make me special.

[0:08:06.6] But people think, like, people ascribe this value to you because you're one of a few people doing it, right?

[0:08:13.92] So if you think about, if you think about, like your, your industry or your area of expertise or whatever it may be, you can probably name the handful of people that produce video on a consistent basis.

[0:08:30.04] Right.

[0:08:30.92] But you probably couldn't name all the people who tweet about the thing that you do on even a consistent basis, much less sporadically.

[0:08:38.28] So as you move up this, this pyramid from the outside, people think, oh, wow, like they must be an expert because they're producing video and that we can use that to our advantage.

[0:08:50.72] I do think there's a lot of work that goes into video, and we're going to talk about how to, like, how to lessen that.

[0:08:55.76] But I do think there's a just unfair advantage that people give you that, whether it's like, whether it's legit or not, take it and use it to your advantage.

[0:09:07.52] Like, why do you think?

[0:09:08.68] Why do you think?

[0:09:09.12] I've gotten many of the things that I've gotten?

[0:09:10.96] Because I've put myself out there and people say, oh, he must know what he's talking about.

[0:09:14.52] Like he's got videos on it.

[0:09:15.48] He must know what he's doing.

[0:09:16.84] I think I know what I'm doing, but the video helps me, right?

[0:09:20.44] So let's see.

[0:09:21.2] Any questions?

[0:09:21.88] Not, not a logarithmic increase.

[0:09:23.56] No.

[0:09:25.44] How do you manage your online presence with small bets of different diverse areas of skill?

[0:09:31.24] I think of this and and we'll look in a second when we talk about why screencast for fame, fortune and credibility.

[0:09:39.64] Maybe we'll talk about like all of the different kind of projects that I have and the way that I think about all of the different small bets that I have going on, of which of which there are many, as I think of them as kind of like overlapping, overlapping circles.

[0:09:55.2] And some of my audience is going to care about some, like some amalgamation of these circles.

[0:10:02.96] But for me personally, the way that I think about it is I've got all of these, I've got all of these projects that are basically like like thrust vectors and I'm trying to get them all pointed in the same general direction, right?

[0:10:17.32] So I as as my full time job, I'm teaching people how to use my sequel on video.

[0:10:22.88] So people see me on video and are familiar with me on video.

[0:10:26.36] Then that leads into, I'm teaching you how to create video on the side and getting paid for that independently outside of my day job.

[0:10:32.92] And so all of these things I try to keep in the same universe and like I'm working with a friend on a small like desktop application that normalizes and fixes like audio.

[0:10:43.6] Like that fits into the same kind of like Aaron is a video, audio content creator guy, and that's like his universe and it's all kind of going the same direction.

[0:10:53.24] And then I just make adjustments.

[0:10:54.8] I just make adjustments as I go.

[0:10:56.44] I was working on a SAS for a long time and I realized like this SAS is not playing to my skills.

[0:11:02.92] Like there are a lot of great developers.

[0:11:06.16] I think I'm a good developer.

[0:11:08.04] But what I have learned by putting myself out there in all of these small beds is the ones that people resonate with are the ones where I'm teaching them something.

[0:11:18.52] And so, you know, true to the courses, name the small bets.

[0:11:21.6] I put a bunch of stuff out there.

[0:11:22.64] Nobody cared about the SAS and it was a freaking slog.

[0:11:26.04] And so I was trying to push it uphill.

[0:11:27.88] And these videos, we'll look at the YouTube.

[0:11:29.84] We'll look at my YouTube stats here in a second.

[0:11:31.92] The videos just like took off and I was like, wait, video for me is so, so easy.

[0:11:39.24] And this SAS feels like I'm running headlong into a wall.

[0:11:42.64] Why don't I just lean in and point more of these vectors the same direction.

[0:11:46.2] So that's kind of how I think about, like, how do all of these things relate?

[0:11:50] And at the core of it is me teaching.

[0:11:52] And I feel like I'm.

[0:11:52.64] I'm lucky because that's what I really want to do with my life.

[0:11:57.12] So why screencast?

[0:11:58.96] I think there are three reasons that we'll cover, and all of these are just, like, best guesses.

[0:12:07.36] Here's what I Here's what I don't believe.

[0:12:09.16] I don't believe that you can create a course and get rich every single time.

[0:12:14.2] I think that that can totally happen.

[0:12:15.84] And I think we've seen a lot of people even in this community do that.

[0:12:19.76] I think it is disingenuous and wrong to tell you that if you create a course, you're going to get rich or if you create a course, it's going to be really easy to make a bunch of money.

[0:12:30.32] I don't know that that's true.

[0:12:31.52] In fact, I think that that's probably not true.

[0:12:34.12] But what I can almost promise you, and I what I can almost guarantee you, is that you will have a positive outcome, even if that is some sort of optionality into landing a consulting gig or giving a small bets cohort class or whatever.

[0:12:50.64] Whatever it is, nobody is going to look at a highly polished, quality piece of work and think, oh, I shouldn't hire that person, I shouldn't trust that person, or I shouldn't ascribe to them some sort of, I shouldn't follow them on Twitter, right.

[0:13:07.16] And so we're going to look at a bunch of the different courses that I've done and some of like the standalone videos and look at how some of those, how some of these outcomes have played out.

[0:13:19.48] But I can't guarantee anything except that putting work out into the world will increase the chances that something good is going to happen.

[0:13:26.88] And the form that that good thing takes, I can't really say.

[0:13:32.2] So one of the first things I ever did was record a course teaching, and you got to bear with me here teaching financial accounting to sophomore students at Texas A&M.

[0:13:46.72] So like if you think your niche is too small, I bet it's bigger than that, right?

[0:13:52.16] So the the the universe of a the total addressable market every year I I am fortunate that it rolls over semester by semester, but the total addressable market has got to be under 500 or 1000 students.

[0:14:06.84] Just got to be right.

[0:14:08.64] And so this is a video course that I recorded.

[0:14:11.28] You can find it.

[0:14:11.84] It's still live at accounting2oraccct229.com.

[0:14:15.24] And that's the course identifier.

[0:14:16.92] So, Peter, don't get mad.

[0:14:18.24] Like that means something.

[0:14:19.92] That domain means something to these kids and they look at it and they're like, oh, this must be for me because what, like, who else would say Accounting 229?

[0:14:28.56] So this is a video course.

[0:14:30] And what I did here was I just like, I just recorded all of the lessons and put them online and put it behind a paywall.

[0:14:36.76] And so I haven't touched this thing.

[0:14:39] I haven't touched this thing in years and years.

[0:14:42.6] And you can tell how long it's been because presumably that was me at one point and that's not me anymore.

[0:14:49.4] But that's still the picture that's on, you know, accounting229.com.

[0:14:54.76] So I haven't touched this thing in years.

[0:14:56.12] In fact, my, the Facebook login recently broke.

[0:14:59.6] And so I just, I just took down the paywall because I just haven't had time to fix it.

[0:15:02.96] But I still want the momentum to keep going.

[0:15:04.68] So I just took down the paywall.

[0:15:06.56] So you're thinking like, oh, geez, like accountings for sophomores at this little College in the middle of nowhere, Texas.

[0:15:14.28] Yeah, but I'm not mad about it, Right?

[0:15:17.72] Like, this is, I haven't touched this thing.

[0:15:20.72] You can see where COVID hit and everything went online and it was just like, oh, well, now everything's online, but it's made $120,000.

[0:15:30.36] And this from the beginning was like, should I even do this?

[0:15:34.72] This is stupid.

[0:15:35.6] Everybody is telling me, like, this is too small.

[0:15:38.8] You're teaching college students.

[0:15:41.12] Like, if you want to pick a bad group of people to pay for something, pick college students.

[0:15:46.04] And you know what?

[0:15:47.84] This has been, this has been fantastic and well, well, well worth my time.

[0:15:52.72] So is it a fortune?

[0:15:55.28] No.

[0:15:55.72] But it's better than a poke in the eye, right?

[0:15:57.6] So over many, many years, I've made, you know, $120,000 off of this and haven't had to touch it at all.

[0:16:05.24] And that's what that's one of the things I like about content as a bet is that it can be completed.

[0:16:15.16] Like one of the great problems I think I had with the SAS product that I was working on was the road stretched out before me infinitely.

[0:16:25.56] It was just like, dude, you're going to be pushing this boulder a pill forever.

[0:16:29.32] I recorded this course.

[0:16:30.32] It was a freaking slog when I recorded it.

[0:16:33] And then I published it.

[0:16:33.92] And I I haven't even fixed the website in, you know, eight years.

[0:16:38.12] And it's like, yeah, this thing still produces another way.

[0:16:42.68] Another way that you can get paid from your content is someone else can just pay you outright to do it.

[0:16:49.64] And if you look around, if you look around at some of the big communities, you'll notice there's a lot of, there's a lot of, like course communities like Laravel has laracast.com, Rails has, oh gosh, go Rails.

[0:17:04.2] They're just a lot of these communities and you know what they're looking for.

[0:17:07.52] These guys are always, always, always looking for competent course creators to throw stuff on their platform.

[0:17:14.4] And so you you do something like you prove your worth in, let's say, creating some videos, writing some posts, talking about stuff.

[0:17:23.4] And then you go to one of these course platforms and you're like, look, here is my existing body of work.

[0:17:29.2] I'm good at stuff.

[0:17:30.72] Can I make a course for your platform and make like egghead, I think is another one that does this a lot.

[0:17:37.16] They'll do guest, guest creators or whatever.

[0:17:41.16] And this I won't disclose how much Jeffrey paid for me because that's his business, not mine.

[0:17:46.32] But this was this was a, this was a payday, like this was a good thing.

[0:17:50.64] And now he gets, he gets all of the back end for this, right.

[0:17:54.24] So now it lives on his platform forever.

[0:17:56.88] But I didn't have to do any of the marketing, I didn't have to do any of the hosting.

[0:18:00.84] I didn't have to do any of the anything.

[0:18:02.96] And he just wrote me a check and I recorded this course and this course in particular was very easy for me because it was on an open source library that I had written.

[0:18:13.8] And so when you know, we'll talk about the research and content phase here in a little bit.

[0:18:19.6] The research phase for this was I wrote the freaking library.

[0:18:23.4] And so this is another one of those things where if you can put multiple things together like I am a developer, I do open source work, I can create video and you put all of that into a bucket and you tumble it together and outcomes.

[0:18:38.12] Jeffrey Way saying, hey, do you want to create, do you want to create a course for laracast.com?

[0:18:42.52] I'll pay you for it.

[0:18:43.16] And I'm like, you better believe I do.

[0:18:45.04] I got kids to send to college.

[0:18:46.36] So that's another way that you can kind of get a fortune.

[0:18:49.56] I mean I got paid for it.

[0:18:50.44] It's not, it's not a fortune, but it's great fame, right.

[0:18:54.8] So quick question, I don't know if I may do.

[0:18:57.8] Do you usually get paid up front one time fee for these things or is the arrangement some kind of loyalty affiliate things like that with Larracas.

[0:19:09] So this guy here with Larracas, it was a flat fee and I think I got paid on delivery so up front but after like I delivered the final course you know handed it over to him.

[0:19:21.56] I think Egghead is paid on shared royalties based on watch time and LinkedIn Learning has contacted me and theirs is based on shared royalties of watch time as well.

[0:19:38.2] And so one of the things I would be cognizant of is you kind of you kind of have to push, like with with Larracas, I didn't have to push it all.

[0:19:46.56] He said here is X amount of money, do you want to do it?

[0:19:49.84] And I thought, hell yeah, I do.

[0:19:52.84] But then LinkedIn Learning was like, hey, do you want to record this course?

[0:19:57.72] We can't really tell you how much it'll like, how much it'll get for you, but it's so good to be on LinkedIn.

[0:20:04.48] And, like, if my calculus were a little bit different, if I needed the credibility boost, I would have taken the LinkedIn Learning deal.

[0:20:12.28] But in terms of what I estimated the money was going to be, the LinkedIn Learning deal wouldn't have paid off.

[0:20:19.04] But.

[0:20:20.52] They can pay off in different ways, right?

[0:20:21.96] Then you can say I'm a LinkedIn learning instructor and you can walk down the hall to a better platform and get paid more.

[0:20:29.04] And so yeah, it depends.

[0:20:31.2] Each platform's different.

[0:20:32.2] Egghead and LinkedIn are shared.

[0:20:33.52] Larracas was upfront.

[0:20:34.6] I have no idea what Go Rails does for someone who's completely new to this and and doesn't maybe have the exposure that you have.

[0:20:42.72] Do you think it would still work if they reach out to these platforms?

[0:20:46.72] Like if somebody with no followers, no audience were to reach out to LinkedIn, for example.

[0:20:51.84] LinkedIn what?

[0:20:52.88] What's it called?

[0:20:53.4] LinkedIn education?

[0:20:54.88] LinkedIn Learning?

[0:20:55.48] Yes.

[0:20:56.52] Would they stand a chance in getting picked up?

[0:20:58.96] Or do you still need to have your own audience, your own, your own maybe portfolio before you even sigh?

[0:21:05.92] Yeah, good question.

[0:21:07.28] I don't know that the audience matters as much as we think it does in terms of, you know, reaching out to LinkedIn Learning or or something like that.

[0:21:16.28] I think the thing that matters most is exhibiting that you've already done the thing they would be hiring you to do.

[0:21:24.48] And So what I what I mean by that is if you can say, if you can go to LinkedIn Learning or egghead or something and say look, I I made, you know, 5 or 10 screencasts, even if you don't sell them, you just put them on YouTube.

[0:21:39.04] You're like, I made five or 10 screencasts on this complex topic.

[0:21:43] And look how clean the screencasts are and how well I explain it.

[0:21:47.16] And like here's my body of work.

[0:21:49.84] Because what they're what they're looking to figure out is where can we get more quality content.

[0:21:57.76] And if you can say I have it not, I promise you that I can do it, which is a different thing altogether.

[0:22:03.2] And at that point an audience is probably helpful.

[0:22:05.88] But if you say I have it like look, I've done it, then they'll say, oh, this person has already done it, let's see if they can do it for us.

[0:22:14.48] And that has been my, that has been my experience so far Does that.

[0:22:19] Yeah.

[0:22:19.16] Yeah, perfect.

[0:22:19.72] Perfect.

[0:22:20.12] Final quick question.

[0:22:21.96] When you do these kinds of things are is it common that there's like exclusivity agreements that if you do something for LinkedIn Learning you can't also the purpose it on some other platform and things like that.

[0:22:35.52] Yeah.

[0:22:35.84] So like, I couldn't, you know, I would have to look at whatever contract I have with with Jeffrey, but I can't take this course and put it somewhere else.

[0:22:45.16] That doesn't mean I can't talk about this library or this package or whatever, but I can't take these videos I did for him and put it somewhere else.

[0:22:51.92] Some of the other platforms that have bigger legal teams like LinkedIn may have more like may have more restrictive agreements that maybe like, hey, if you do a Laravel course for us, you can't do a Laravel course for anyone else.

[0:23:05.8] That seems unlikely to me, but yes, for this one I can't.

[0:23:11.56] If I were to put it on Udemy and I have, I have opinions on Udemy, I think.

[0:23:16.52] I don't think it's a very good place to make money.

[0:23:18.2] I think it's a good place to like show your worth.

[0:23:21.8] But on Udemy they're always marking your stuff down to like $6.

[0:23:25.24] How am I supposed to make money off that?

[0:23:26.52] I would rather, I would rather have a tighter knit audience and forge that connection over time, then put something on Udemy where somebody's going to blow through it, you know?

[0:23:37.92] But I think, yeah, I think, you know, somebody saying Udemy doesn't care, Udemy doesn't care.

[0:23:41.8] So it just depends on the platform.

[0:23:43.48] But taking the entire set of videos and repurposing it on another platform is going to be unlikely.

[0:23:50.2] Makes sense.

[0:23:50.84] Awesome.

[0:23:51.32] Thanks.

[0:23:51.56] Thanks a lot.

[0:23:52.08] Yep.

[0:23:54] OK.

[0:23:54.28] So we talked about fortune kind of.

[0:23:55.92] And we'll talk about fame kind of.

[0:23:57.48] So at at some point in the past six months, I was like, all right, if I'm going to point most of my vectors towards video production, video content, what's the biggest, what's the biggest platform in the world?

[0:24:10.8] YouTube.

[0:24:11.24] Let's throw up some YouTube videos.

[0:24:13.32] And one of my great and happy discoveries with YouTube is you don't have to be entirely unhinged, chaotic and you know, 19 years old and full of energy.

[0:24:26.08] I'm 34 years old and losing some of my energy.

[0:24:29.2] And I have like almost.

[0:24:32.48] I have maybe 7 or 8 videos and three of them have over almost 100,000 views.

[0:24:39.08] And it's like, man, I didn't even think that was possible.

[0:24:44.4] And I think there's some like there's some confluence of there's not a lot of PHP content which is my primary language of choice.

[0:24:52.2] Like I am an experienced screencaster and I think I have a good like on camera personality and so this like this kind of works for YouTube.

[0:25:03.8] And I I just love teaching.

[0:25:05.6] And so a lot of what I do is, you know kind of teach people And so the fame, like I don't, I don't make enough money off of YouTube to even like look it up and show you how much it is.

[0:25:14.84] It's like many 10s of dollars, maybe a few $100, right.

[0:25:18.56] So nobody's getting too excited about this.

[0:25:20.92] But I think what's interesting here is again, there are companies that are just, they just need content.

[0:25:32.2] And so I've already had five companies reach out and say, hey, we want to give you multiple thousands of dollars to do a video on your channel.

[0:25:41.32] And like look, I've got 12,000 subscribers.

[0:25:43.88] You know, six months ago I had 30 subscribers.

[0:25:46.96] It's like I am not a big YouTube.

[0:25:49.04] That's why I put YouTube?

[0:25:51.12] Because I think when we hear like become a YouTube, it feels like, ah, that's really not who I am.

[0:25:56.52] Like, I'm just, I'm just kind of a developer.

[0:25:59.12] But like now I'm in this position where I can put out a video and get a lot of views.

[0:26:03.52] And these companies are like, hey, can you do that for us, please?

[0:26:06.16] We'll give you $5000.

[0:26:07.88] Like, sure, I think we can figure that out.

[0:26:10.6] Like I could figure something out there.

[0:26:13.6] So the fame is like the fame is unnecessary, but it's helpful because it gets me to where I want to be going.

[0:26:24.12] Like, I don't really.

[0:26:25.2] I would much rather be rich than famous.

[0:26:27.68] But you know, if I have to like grow a YouTube following such that I can then start to like sell courses or produce sponsored content, that's fine.

[0:26:37.76] And I think staying true to who you are throughout all of that is, is the trick.

[0:26:42] And they're just a few.

[0:26:43.84] They're just a few things I'm not going to do, like I'm not going to do rage bait.

[0:26:46.92] I'm not going to do click bait.

[0:26:48.32] I'm going to talk about things I love and know and I'm not going to talk about things I don't know.

[0:26:51.96] People will always comment like, hey, can you do a video on next JS versus Symphony?

[0:26:58] And I'm like, I can't 'cause I don't know either of those things.

[0:27:02.08] I would love to give you a made-up opinion for clicks, but I just can't do it.

[0:27:06.32] And so I feel like I've landed on a spot on YouTube where I feel where I feel comfortable.

[0:27:11.68] And my job here, YouTube is like a microcosm of small bets.

[0:27:15.76] My job here is to put out videos.

[0:27:18.96] Put out the best videos I can and see what happens.

[0:27:21.6] You'll see the ones over there at the very far bottom right, 10K views and 7.4 K views.

[0:27:26.76] Like, I'm not disappointed by that because the ones on the left have 100,000 views and it's like I thought they I kind of thought they were all good, but that's not really my job.

[0:27:37.92] My job is to create really good content, put it out there and let the algorithm decide.

[0:27:42.52] The same thing has happened at Planet scale where this is, this is more strictly a marketing arm of planetscale, and I made this video that I thought was just as good as all the other videos that I've ever made, maybe even a little bit worse or Dumber.

[0:27:58.2] And it the algorithm was like, haha, great video, 215,000 views.

[0:28:03.44] It's like, why?

[0:28:04.16] I don't know.

[0:28:06.04] It's not my problem to know.

[0:28:07.44] My problem is to do good work, put it out there, see what happens.

[0:28:11.88] So this is the fame.

[0:28:13.08] I think the final thing that that super comes from recording screencast and putting it out there publicly is credibility.

[0:28:21.36] Like this is an 8 hour course, This is an 8 hour course that I did for Planetscale on my sequel targeted specifically at like application developers instead of Dbas.

[0:28:33.6] And we'll talk about framing in a second, but I think this is an interesting example of framing.

[0:28:38.2] This is an 8 hour course, over 64 videos that just teaches people my sequel totally free because it's a marketing asset for Planetscale.

[0:28:47.28] And every, every week, sometimes multiple times a week, people will e-mail me directly and thank just these long profuse emails thanking us for this course.

[0:28:59.12] And it's like that's a marketing asset, Like that's the top of our funnel and people are like telling us how this course is going to change their lives and allow them to get a job and how it they've been working with my sequel for years.

[0:29:12.76] And it's like this, this is, this is credibility.

[0:29:16.96] This is credibility on steroids.

[0:29:18.52] Because now everyone thinks of me as the my sequel expert and we'll talk about how I got to be the my sequel expert.

[0:29:25.24] I wasn't always the my sequel expert.

[0:29:28.36] So the question is how long does it take to have my sequel course ready?

[0:29:31.72] Yeah, a long time.

[0:29:33.04] And we'll talk about in a second the research.

[0:29:35.84] But it took me a long time to research this stuff and lay it out and record it and this, this is the hardest course I've ever done because I felt like the least qualified to do this course.

[0:29:49.32] And so this was really, this was really a growth like moment for me was putting myself out there as the expert at a company full of experts.

[0:29:59.08] Everyone that works at Planetscale is a better DBA than I am, every single one.

[0:30:04.92] I think I am the best person on video at Planetscale.

[0:30:09] And so you can again see kind of like the outsized, the outsized value that's placed on video.

[0:30:14.84] Like there are people that that literally I will search the my sequel docs and see bug reports from 1998 and that person works at our company and I'm like I'm I'm not qualified but but I I was qualified enough and I was willing to put myself out there and now everyone knows Planet scale Aaron Aaron Planet scale scale Aaron works with my sequel.

[0:30:38.12] So let's see how long did it take.

[0:30:41.56] Very very long time many months.

[0:30:43.04] People will thank you for your marketing.

[0:30:45.32] Yeah, this this is a very wild example to me that you can create marketing that developers like.

[0:30:50.76] Everybody's like, oh, developers hate marketing.

[0:30:52.84] You're like, well, not if it's good.

[0:30:55.12] Not if it's good.

[0:30:55.96] I think we, you know, I won't say how many, you know, qualified leads we've gotten out of this, 'cause that's not my role, but it works.

[0:31:03.12] It definitely works.

[0:31:04.76] And so then you get to this spot where the things start to come together and you get a little bit of each.

[0:31:10.12] You get some fame, some fortune and some credibility.

[0:31:12.36] And you get what I think wraps fame, fortune and credibility up into a single word is opportunity.

[0:31:19.08] You get opportunities, you get luck, You get things coming your direction.

[0:31:23.44] So this is screencasting.com.

[0:31:25.4] This is the course.

[0:31:26.4] And I'm just basically going to give, you know, most of it to you all today for free.

[0:31:30] We're going to go through it all.

[0:31:31.24] But this is the course.

[0:31:32.32] And this course got me a little bit of fame, a little bit of fortune and a little bit of credibility.

[0:31:35.96] It got me a little bit of fortune because I sold the thing, right?

[0:31:39.2] Like I I put a price tag on it and people paid me and I don't think I've shared publicly.

[0:31:45.04] So don't tweet this part.

[0:31:46.32] I know that this is recorded and that's fine, but don't tweet it.

[0:31:48.48] But this is, this has gotten me over like I think $45,000 at this point.

[0:31:52.96] And we launched like less than a month ago.

[0:31:57.68] And this is another one of those things.

[0:31:59.16] It's like this is just going to live on and on and on.

[0:32:02.04] Like why would this ever go out of date?

[0:32:04.48] It it's like they don't ever change the curriculum at Texas A&M for accounting students and screencasting is going to be screencasting.

[0:32:11.36] It's like, hey, those are some pretty good topics.

[0:32:15.24] So that's where it got me.

[0:32:16.48] Fame, fortune and credibility.

[0:32:20.36] Like I'm here, right?

[0:32:22.8] So I'm here talking to all of these people that I admire in this community that I'm a part of.

[0:32:28.68] And I would never be on this side of the Zoom.

[0:32:31.44] I would never be on this side of the webinar if I hadn't done this thing and put myself out there and created this asset, right.

[0:32:38.68] And so I've got two, I've got two out of the three, right?

[0:32:41.52] I went on Arvid's podcast.

[0:32:42.8] I'm here in Daniel's community.

[0:32:44.24] There's just one more that I need.

[0:32:46.24] And I'm just hoping at some point he'll say, Aaron, do you want to talk?

[0:32:49.52] I'll be like, yes, I got all three.

[0:32:51.68] So there's like, there's this thing that happens.

[0:32:54.64] There's this thing that happens when you publicly create an asset and declare yourself as the experts.

[0:33:01.84] Like nobody.

[0:33:02.4] Nobody knighted me, the expert of screencasting.

[0:33:05.12] I knighted myself and said like, here I am and now people are saying, great, you want to come talk about it.

[0:33:11.44] I'm like, yeah, I want to come talk about it.

[0:33:13] And so this is the kind of thing that can happen.

[0:33:16.52] And no matter what happens, positive optionality will start to accrue to you.

[0:33:22.4] So this is my, this is my why you should do it because screencasting feels a little bit boring.

[0:33:26.96] I'll be honest.

[0:33:27.44] But this is my like to the small bettors of which I am one.

[0:33:31.12] This is a great small bet.

[0:33:33] Do a thing, put it out there, move on.

[0:33:34.84] This is a great one.

[0:33:36.2] So I'll pause here for any questions before we move on to how to screencast.

[0:33:45.76] I think we could help with the chat unless anyone has more questions.

[0:33:49.6] All right, let's keep cruising then we're we're going at a good clip.

[0:33:53.32] This is great, OK?

[0:33:54.96] I have I have a specific questions, but I think you will probably answer that in the next section I was about to ask.

[0:34:02.56] Do you record your screen and talk at the same time?

[0:34:06.2] Do you have some kind of script?

[0:34:07.68] Do you do it in faces?

[0:34:09.92] First record, then you talk.

[0:34:12.16] How's the process?

[0:34:13.36] Yep.

[0:34:13.76] Perfect.

[0:34:14.16] And thank you, of course, for being there.

[0:34:16.04] Yeah, of course.

[0:34:16.52] No, I love this.

[0:34:18.36] Yes, we'll cover all of that in a second.

[0:34:21.48] And if I don't unmute again and ask me which one.

[0:34:25.76] Yes, those are good questions.

[0:34:27.92] You read my mind.

[0:34:28.8] Would you consider screencasting in multiple different areas, not just vectors in several similar directions?

[0:34:35.36] Yeah, so I have screencasted in multiple different areas and I would definitely I would definitely recommend that.

[0:34:42.84] So I have Accounting for Sophomores Today and M Laravel Screencast, My Sequel Screencasts, and How to Screencast Screencasts.

[0:34:52.52] And so I think one of the interesting things is once you have the meta skill of teaching and screencasting, then you start to see like oh, I could communicate this one skill that I have and this skill that I have and this other skill that I have all through that output medium of screencasting.

[0:35:14.92] So yeah, I would I would definitely recommend it.

[0:35:18.08] Yes, Lux surface area is is I think the phrase that they use.

[0:35:24.36] Why should I not.

[0:35:26.8] The domain did help big time I would yeah.

[0:35:31.56] I think I spent $5000 on the domain and I think it's been worth every every penny that I spent because it just you know it just makes me look super duper professional.

[0:35:43.52] So I think, yeah, so the thing, one of the things going back to the content pyramid is I think those lower, I think those lower rungs of the pyramid are being eaten alive by AI.

[0:36:01.04] Like we've seen, we've seen blog posts and tweets and everything start to be AI generated and you can still tell they're still kind of crappy.

[0:36:10.08] But what you can 100% tell is when you're watching an AI avatar talk to you and it just feels weird.

[0:36:17.32] And so I think even like that pyramid gets even more important as the proliferation of those bottom tiers just explodes because computers are doing the writing.

[0:36:27.12] And that super top tier gets more important as you can connect on a human level by showing your face on camera, which we'll talk about.

[0:36:34.88] But yeah, I I totally agree with that.

[0:36:38.96] All right, let's keep moving and we'll come back to questions in a second.

[0:36:41.84] So that is why you should screencast is how you just screen how to screencast.

[0:36:46.48] And the question must be asked effortless, right?

[0:36:49.36] Because creating video, creating video is a lot of freaking work.

[0:36:53.12] I'm going to tell you a few things that I think decrease the load and spread the load over the stages between recording and editing so that you don't get to the editing phase and you're like, well, now I've got a mountain in front of me.

[0:37:08.36] I'm trying to like bring both of those down to molehills so that it it, it spreads the load.

[0:37:14.64] But I think the point here is we can't, we can't become a professional.

[0:37:22.24] We can't become professional video editors and videographers.

[0:37:25.76] Like the whole point of a screencast is to express technical expertise in the area, in the other area, right.

[0:37:33.76] And so if you get wrapped around the axle of, well, now I have to, you know, research cameras for three weeks and learn how to do, you know, audio production, You're going to get, you're going to get so wrapped around the axle that you don't ever ship the thing that you're trying to ship, which is the value.

[0:37:50.04] And so I am really focused here and in the course on how can we do this super duper fast and how can we use the things that we already have.

[0:38:00.32] So I'm gonna run through a little bit of a a little bit of an outline and we'll talk through, we'll talk through each little section kind of independently.

[0:38:10.24] But the first thing you gotta figure out is, is who?

[0:38:14] Who are you teaching?

[0:38:14.96] I think a lot of people will start with what am I going to say before they figure out who am I going to teach?

[0:38:22.72] And I think that's a mistake.

[0:38:24.88] I think figuring out who you are going to teach informs what you were going to say, right.

[0:38:31.36] So if we if we say that like I'm teaching, what thing do you want to teach?

[0:38:36.92] I'm teaching Excel well, The examples are going to be really, really different if you're teaching Excel to software developers or you're teaching Excel to attorneys.

[0:38:48.08] Like those examples are going to be really, really different.

[0:38:51.12] And the level that you go into on, you know, formulas and macros and all of that is going to be really different if you're talking to software developers versus attorneys, right.

[0:39:02] And so as crispy as you can define that audience up front and try to define like the like the expertise level or the skill, the skill level of these people up front.

[0:39:15.64] Because if you're teaching beginners, you got to start at the very beginning.

[0:39:18.76] If you're teaching intermediates and you start at the very beginning, they're going to be like, this is, this is boring, right?

[0:39:23.84] I mean, I already know all of this stuff.

[0:39:26.04] So the next thing you got to figure out what you're going to say and we have AI have a whole thing on research that I'll show you in a second, but that's the second step.

[0:39:32.84] And then get some gear or just don't like just start where you are.

[0:39:40.24] There's one piece of equipment that I will mandate that you buy.

[0:39:43.24] But other than that, just start where you are because this is a rabbit hole that you can get sucked down into spending a lot of time and a lot of money.

[0:39:52.44] So get some gear or don't.

[0:39:54.68] And then it's just record, edit, publish and then profit, right.

[0:39:59.08] So this, this is kind of the this is kind of the outline that we're going to, we're going to go through and so who are you teaching?

[0:40:05.92] I think a great question is who can you speak to?

[0:40:08.48] Like, who can you speak to intelligently?

[0:40:11.84] I can speak to sophomore accounting students 'cause I was one.

[0:40:16.04] I can't speak to them as well anymore, but I was one.

[0:40:19.24] And coming out of that program I knew exactly what they were going through and I could speak to them.

[0:40:23.28] I could speak to Laravel developers, I could speak to application developers who want to be better at the database.

[0:40:29.76] And another good question is like, what groups are you a part of?

[0:40:34.48] Like you?

[0:40:34.88] Are you part of communities or societies?

[0:40:38.6] Or what kind of groups are you a part of that you have, like an inside knowledge into how they work?

[0:40:46.24] Are you a twin dad?

[0:40:47.8] Are you a stay at home mom?

[0:40:49.52] Are you whatever, Like all of these things help define this audience.

[0:40:54.36] And then what do you know?

[0:40:56.04] Like, what do you know that they don't?

[0:40:58.24] So if you, if you are an attorney who's extremely good at Excel, you're maybe the only one.

[0:41:04.08] I'll be honest, most of my friends are attorneys and boy, do they not know spreadsheets.

[0:41:08.68] I'm always being called in to be like, hey, so what's the formula?

[0:41:11.88] And I'm like, yeah, OK, this is, this is great.

[0:41:13.8] I can totally do this.

[0:41:14.96] But I am not an attorney.

[0:41:16.68] And so if I'm to go in and say like excel for attorneys, I can't speak to that to that group of people.

[0:41:22.76] And then like we talked about what level of expertise are they.

[0:41:25.6] So if you can target it towards a level of expertise, you can speak more intelligently and that makes your content more compelling.

[0:41:32.36] So I think there's, there's a sweet spot of things your industry or audience is bad AT and things that you're good AT.

[0:41:39.96] And right there, right, there is a good, a good sweet spot crossover and the way that like you can you can kind of frame it this way thing that you know for audience that you can speak to.

[0:41:54.6] And this is a fun like this is a fun way to frame what you're going to teach people.

[0:42:00.08] It also really really helps with marketing because if you have a course called bookkeeping for people with ADHD, you know who's going to think that that is targeted towards them, people with ADHD, right.

[0:42:12.48] And so if you are a person with ADHD and you have figured out this, this perfect system that helps you as a person with ADHD keep track of your books, this you will speak to, to people in a way that no one else can.

[0:42:28.8] And so like the thing that you know is bookkeeping.

[0:42:30.8] The audience you can speak to is people with ADHD because you are one.

[0:42:33.76] Excel for attorneys is another great one.

[0:42:35.72] No attorneys painting with A broad brush.

[0:42:37.84] Sorry, if you're an attorney, no attorneys are really, really good with Excel.

[0:42:42] But if you are, well, you can teach them and you can talk about how you use it in cases.

[0:42:47] I can't talk about how I use Excel to prepare cases because I've never prepared a case in my life.

[0:42:52.32] Another thing is like notion for Vice Principals.

[0:42:55.2] How big is the market?

[0:42:56.2] I don't know.

[0:42:56.76] But I bet you could corner most of it.

[0:42:58.8] Like if you're a part of Vice Principal's Facebook group and there are, you know, 10,000 Vice principals across the country.

[0:43:04.76] And they're always like, oh man, how do you keep track of your notes and stuff?

[0:43:08.48] And you're the, you're one of these notion Wizards that's like, oh, I, you know, I track my moods every day.

[0:43:13.36] And I look back over the year and I can see my mood database.

[0:43:17.44] There's a, there's a great one like you know, a thing that your audience doesn't know.

[0:43:21.64] And then again you can do like AI for JavaScript developers because maybe you're you are a JavaScript developer who has dabbled with AI like you're in the perfect position here.

[0:43:32.76] So that's a little bit of framing before I move into researching and talking about how we like how we gather all of this content together.

[0:43:41.96] Any questions there?

[0:43:44.4] Quick question, Alan, do you do you do you suggest explicitly calling your product or your screencast with the flaming like the examples you show, Just like Excel for attorneys, marketing for developers, things like that.

[0:43:58] Or do you think you should be a bit more creative?

[0:44:02.08] Yeah, I think asp.net for aspiring indie hackers, that's what I'm talking about.

[0:44:07.28] I don't know.

[0:44:08.8] I think it can depend.

[0:44:09.8] So like, I've done both.

[0:44:11.28] So the the My Sequel course is called My Sequel for Developers.

[0:44:17.12] And I think why that one worked so well is because there are, there's just a huge, huge, huge number of developers.

[0:44:25.88] And typically when you're teaching, when you're teaching SQL Server for teens, like I'm trying to be focused here, when you're teaching database concepts, a lot of the concepts are like, if you want to be ADBA, which is a database administrator, if you want to be Adba, here's what you need to know.

[0:44:47.24] And the vast majority of software developers do not want to be Dbas, and I don't blame them.

[0:44:54.96] And so I think that was a helpful, like calling that course my sequel for developers instead of just like introduction to my sequel I think was.

[0:45:02.36] Really, really effective.

[0:45:04.84] But on the other hand, like the Accounting 229 course, I didn't call it, you know, accounting for sophomores at A&M, but I did have this like this secret word, this shibboleth, if you will, this shibboleth that was like, hey, I'm speaking directly to you and that was the course identifier.

[0:45:21.36] So no one else in the world would make a an accounting video series called accct229.com unless it was directly targeted at them.

[0:45:31.56] So.

[0:45:32.24] And I and I've done it the other way with screencasting.com where it's just like, I don't actually say, you know, screencasting for X because I actually had to redefine the audience that I was teaching because I at first I scoped the audience too narrowly to software developers.

[0:45:49.08] And then I realized, like, wait, this domain, this branding, this content, this could all be much broader.

[0:45:55.24] And so I I re scoped it in my mind to, I'm going to teach screencasting to people who have technical expertise but don't want to be full time video production people.

[0:46:06.44] And that's just not a very pithy title, right?

[0:46:08.68] And so that one I just leveraged, I leaned on the fact that I have this killer domain and I just went with that.

[0:46:15.8] So it kind of depends on the area.

[0:46:18.28] Does that, Yeah, yeah, makes sense.

[0:46:20.28] So, so, so, so the the persona that you had in mind while you're preparing the the the content of the presentation, Did you still pick like a developer or something or did you imagine something a bit more fuzzy as a little, a little secret here is I recorded the entire course with developers in mind and I realised I'm, I've made a fatal flaw.

[0:46:44.92] And The thing is like, I actually did define the audience up front as developers.

[0:46:50.64] And then I got through the course and realized that was, that was like I was thinking small there.

[0:46:56.56] And I I should have defined it as like technical experts who want to teach and don't want to be, you know, video producers.

[0:47:04.28] And so I re recorded the entire freaking course, the entire thing, because I I realized I hadn't.

[0:47:11.64] I had artificially limited myself and I had that huge strengthofthe.com, theoneword.com domain and so I feel like if I had, if I didn't have that behind me, I may have gone with a little bit more niche.

[0:47:29.44] But I'm hoping this will be a long term SCO play.

[0:47:32.24] And then I realized, wait, I have this beautiful broad domain and now I'm just talking to developers.

[0:47:37.32] So I've re recorded the entire thing and changed basically like all of the examples to be a little bit fuzzier, including like excel for attorneys and bookkeeping for ADHD and that kind of stuff so that people could see themselves in the content.

[0:47:50.52] Like if you had theoretical experiment, like if you had infinite time and infinite dissources, would you record a version for each for each type of person, like screen casting for developers, screen casting for attorneys or things like that?

[0:48:05.96] Or you think in your case it was still better to just blood have a blood screencast?

[0:48:13.6] Yeah, I think that's an interesting question.

[0:48:17.96] I think I, I can't speak intelligently to very many other of the other audiences, so I'm a developers anyway.

[0:48:27.44] So either developers or to do something a bit more abstract, like, it's like those are your only two choices.

[0:48:33.68] Which makes sense.

[0:48:34.56] Yeah.

[0:48:35.48] Yep.

[0:48:35.6] That's exactly right.

[0:48:37.12] Yep.

[0:48:37.4] So if I were, you know, I used to be an accountant.

[0:48:40.2] I was actually CPA for a minute.

[0:48:42.08] But I just don't think, like, I just don't think CP as want to record screencasts.

[0:48:46.24] Trust me, we don't want to watch them.

[0:48:47.88] That's for sure.

[0:48:49.08] So yeah, I went with the broader, like, technical expertise to try to catch a little bit more.

[0:48:54.8] Makes sense.

[0:48:55.24] Makes sense.

[0:48:56.12] Thanks.

[0:48:56.32] So awesome.

[0:48:57.08] Yeah.

[0:48:57.28] Of course.

[0:48:58.4] All right.

[0:48:58.8] So you figure out who you're going to you to figure out what you're going to say.

[0:49:02.36] I think one of these areas of research is you already know everything and if you're in that position, you are lucky and you should count yourself.

[0:49:10.92] So.

[0:49:11.32] So we're going to talk about two things.

[0:49:12.72] We're talk about researching, which I call like the expansion phase and then organizing or like contracting.

[0:49:18.68] And so in the researching phase, you got to figure out, like, what is the universe of possibilities that I'm going to teach.

[0:49:25.96] So in my life for Accounting 229, the universe of possibilities was 100% known by me because I had spent three years tutoring students in person on that course.

[0:49:38.68] And so when it came time to record the video course, I didn't have to sit down and be like, oh man, like I got to get a syllabus.

[0:49:45.88] I got to like figure out what accounting is.

[0:49:47.8] It was just like, all right, I've been doing this for three years, let's put it on video now.

[0:49:52.24] And that was, that was awesome.

[0:49:53.72] The same for the Larocast course.

[0:49:55.16] It was like, I I wrote the library, I just got to put it on video.

[0:49:59.56] The my sequel course.

[0:50:01.32] The my sequel course was different because I just had to, I had to do so much research.

[0:50:07.32] And this is like, this is a great comfort to me because I produced a course in an area that I was good.

[0:50:15.64] I was strong but not an expert in.

[0:50:18.4] I produced a course in that area by just doing the work.

[0:50:23.2] And that that that gives me comfort because I think I thought based on my prior experiences, I can only produce courses where I am inherently an expert.

[0:50:33.52] And if I'm not inherently an expert, someone else should do it.

[0:50:37.92] And when it came time to do this course, I was like, wait, there?

[0:50:41.92] There are people who have done a ton of work to compile knowledge and put it into a nice format, but the framing is wrong for my course, right?

[0:50:53.56] So no developer is going to buy eight books on my sequel and read it, read them all, and take the 20% that apply to developers, right?

[0:51:04.64] They're just going to be like, I'm not ADBA, I'm not, I'm not reading all those freaking books.

[0:51:08.64] But what I can do is I can say, like, all right, I know who I'm teaching.

[0:51:12.72] I know what my frame is.

[0:51:14.16] Let me go gather source data, including on the right side of this, this image.

[0:51:18.76] Here on the right side is the my sequel Documentation like that exists.

[0:51:22.44] And you know who reads it?

[0:51:23.76] Nobody.

[0:51:24.96] Nobody reads the documentations, nobody reads the books.

[0:51:28.48] You can read these things and then just basically parrot the things that are in there and people will think you are a genius because nobody reads anything ever.

[0:51:38.04] And so like if you're feeling, if you're feeling like I I'm pretty good at whatever, but I'm not good enough to teach, go buy four O'Reilly books, read it And then you have more knowledge than 99.99% of the world on this thing and you just take it and you change the frame, you're like, OK, this section down here at the bottom, optimizing for character and string types.

[0:52:02.52] Pretty boring like heading.

[0:52:05] But I can take that.

[0:52:06.72] Like I can take that knowledge and put it in the frame of I'm an application developer.

[0:52:10.76] When would this matter?

[0:52:12.2] Well, it would matter if you're storing you know a first name and you give it 255 characters, that's way too many.

[0:52:16.96] Let's shorten that down.

[0:52:18.08] It's like, OK, you can start to just freaking learn this stuff.

[0:52:21.96] And this was an encouragement to me because I thought that I was static.

[0:52:26.84] I thought that the the number of courses in my life was fixed and I realized here, no, you can just work really hard and produce a new course and people will think you're an expert because you are.

[0:52:39.24] After you read all this stuff, you are the expert.

[0:52:42] You don't have to spend 20 years learning at all by by pain.

[0:52:45.24] You can just go read the books.

[0:52:47.84] So after you do that, it's all right.

[0:52:50.92] You've you've done this.

[0:52:52] You've done this research expand like I know the universe of what is possible and you've got all these you got all these highlights and these little sticky notes and you've got tabs and note cards and whatever.

[0:53:04.6] Then you get to the point where you're like, well how am I going to, how am I going to teach a course on this thing?

[0:53:09.24] Like I I have a huge stack of note cards or in my case you know a scratch pad of like little ideas like just little concepts, little half ideas.

[0:53:19.8] So I think what happens there is you write everything down.

[0:53:24.36] I started writing it all down on note cards and then was like, this is the worst.

[0:53:28.76] There's too much here.

[0:53:29.52] And so then I just put it in a text document.

[0:53:31.96] Avoid.

[0:53:33.48] For the love of God, avoid project management.

[0:53:35.52] Avoid what?

[0:53:36.68] Just put it in a text document.

[0:53:38.4] There's so much to do, you don't have to worry about project management yet.

[0:53:42.24] So put down every idea, half idea, Neat.

[0:53:45.92] Interesting thing you learned something that you looked at and were like, huh, I didn't know that.

[0:53:50.04] That's kind of clever, you know?

[0:53:51.16] Who else doesn't know that?

[0:53:52.44] Not everyone else doesn't know that.

[0:53:53.8] And so I would.

[0:53:54.52] I wrote down every single like thing that I learned.

[0:53:57.68] Some of them, Some of them coming out of my own head, truly.

[0:54:01.08] But some of them you'll see these references.

[0:54:03] HP 4146, that means high performance my sequel edition four page 146.

[0:54:11.12] Avoiding null.

[0:54:12.16] But don't fake it.

[0:54:13.72] And so, like I read that in the high performance my sequel edition four page 146.

[0:54:19.56] And I thought, hey, that's a good tip.

[0:54:21.32] I'm going to write that.

[0:54:21.88] I'm going to write that down.

[0:54:23.24] Avoid null.

[0:54:23.92] But don't fake it.

[0:54:25.28] And so then what happens is you've got this giant list of like half ideas, little tips and tricks and things you learned.

[0:54:32.4] And then what you do is you basically you just start moving you you move these half ideas around until they start to coalesce into these groups.

[0:54:40.8] So you can see.

[0:54:41.44] If we look at schema optimization, you'll see simple is good, smaller is better, avoid null.

[0:54:48.88] In the beginning, those things were all on their own lines.

[0:54:51.4] And I was like, hey, these are all, these all feel the same to me.

[0:54:55.64] So let's put these into a group, Let's put these into like, let's move these lines closer together in my in my text document.

[0:55:01.8] I'll move those guys up, I'll move those guys down until it was like, hey, that's a good chunk right there.

[0:55:06.56] I'm going to make that a video.

[0:55:07.64] Schema optimization is now a video.

[0:55:09.36] I'm going to cover these things and that's going to be like the flow for my video.

[0:55:14.44] And as you start to do that, as you start to like move these half ideas around and they coalesce into full ideas, you start to notice like, oh, there's like a there's an emergent property that that reveals itself out of the content.

[0:55:30.28] That is a linear structure, right?

[0:55:33.32] So if we look, if we continue to look at this, this outline and this is, this is real, this is like I had to pull this out of my scratch pad.

[0:55:39.24] You see it's the title is scratch 395 dot TXT.

[0:55:43.36] Like this is how it works.

[0:55:45.44] So I started to move all this stuff around and I was like, wait, I can't really teach them.

[0:55:50.04] I can't really teach them about integers or even strings until I talk about schema optimization and why it's important and why we would want to do this thing.

[0:56:00.2] So let me take schema optimization and move it forward.

[0:56:03] I can't talk about efficient queries until I explain what indexes are.

[0:56:06.96] So let me take indexes and pull them back and then we'll pull them forward and we move it up and down.

[0:56:11.8] And eventually you realize these things all are interlinked and they have dependencies and you can't teach certain things until you teach certain other things and boom, your outline is done for you.

[0:56:21.32] You take all of this stuff and you move it around until the IT logically makes sense in terms of what are the dependencies and what are the load bearing pieces of knowledge that must precede other pieces of knowledge.

[0:56:33.56] So if we look at the screencasting outline, this again is the actual outline for screencasting.com before it was, you know, refined.

[0:56:41.92] This is what it looks like.

[0:56:42.92] This is in, you know, a Markdown document.

[0:56:46.08] And as I like, as I moved all this stuff around, the linear structure that emerged out of this was, this is obvious.

[0:56:55.48] Let's just structure the course like you would structure a screencast.

[0:57:00.76] And that's how we ended up here.

[0:57:02] You gotta figure out who you're gonna teach, what you're gonna say, how to set up your gear, how to record, how to edit.

[0:57:07.48] And those are the modules in screencasting.com.

[0:57:10.28] Because it was like, oh, that's a linear, that's a linear structure that people, that people can follow.

[0:57:16.24] This is bear.

[0:57:17.48] This is marked down in bear.

[0:57:19.04] And so like, write everything down, move it up and down and watch as the structure emerges out of nowhere.

[0:57:26.24] And if there's a linear structure there, you're you're going to find it.

[0:57:29.88] Because certain things can't be taught until the thing before it is taught.

[0:57:33.24] And that's great.

[0:57:34.04] There's, there's your, there's your outline.

[0:57:36.36] One final thing I think on on like preparing your outlines and preparing your content structure is this notion of of stair stepping and one of the things that I'm always careful of and something that I always want to like, I I want to be thoughtful to the viewer, right.

[0:57:56.04] That is, that is my personality.

[0:57:57.52] I'm, I'm by nature an empathetic person, but I'm also, like, ruthlessly strategic.

[0:58:04.04] And I want the viewer to follow along.

[0:58:07.04] Because the more that the viewer follows along, the more that they feel like they're learning.

[0:58:11.68] The more they're going to watch, the more they're going to trust me, the more, the more they're going to follow me around the Internet.

[0:58:16.88] And so one thing that I'm always thinking of is like, how can I provide the most value, the fastest in a way that the viewer feels like I'm bringing them along?

[0:58:26.44] And the the notion that I've kind of landed on here is called stair stepping.

[0:58:30.64] And that's just like, I just want to take a little step each video that I do, or if it's like a long video that I'm going to like just put on YouTube.

[0:58:39.32] But if it's, of course, it's multiple videos, right?

[0:58:41.04] Each video that I do, I just want to bring them a little way, a little bit of the way.

[0:58:45.32] Just bring them one step in every single video.

[0:58:48.6] Because that makes them feel like, oh, I'm learning one thing.

[0:58:51.6] And then in the next video, that is our foundational truth and we move on and we learn another thing.

[0:58:56.56] And then that's our foundational truth.

[0:58:58.8] As the expert, you are going to be tempted to say, let's start at the beginning and let me teach you not only the thing but also the ways it can go wrong and the optimizations and the reasons you don't want to do that.

[0:59:10.72] And and the the person watching is like, I don't even know what we're optimizing.

[0:59:15.44] Like you're already talking about teaching me optimizations and we haven't even learned the thing yet.

[0:59:21.44] And so as much as you can take one step at a time, little by little by little, and that will make the viewer feel like, oh, I can do this and that's what that's what we want them to feel.

[0:59:33.04] It's like I can do this.

[0:59:35.68] We're going to blow, blow through some equipment.

[0:59:38.32] Any any questions on like preparing your content structure, outline, that sort of thing.

[0:59:48.48] And then we'll do recording, editing after that.

[0:59:53.04] Yeah, looks like we're good.

[0:59:55.64] All right, we're on A roll.

[0:59:56.56] Let's keep going, OK, Equipment, This is me.

[1:00:02.16] It's not live, but that's what I would look like if I were doing that.

[1:00:05.64] So this is me.

[1:00:07.68] We're gonna talk about lights.

[1:00:09.6] We're gonna talk about camera, microphone.

[1:00:13.36] I will bring this up again as we talk about positioning and stuff.

[1:00:17.36] So we're not gonna do lights, camera action, we're gonna do.

[1:00:21.24] Microphone, Action, maybe lights.

[1:00:23.32] Camera.

[1:00:24.04] So this is the part.

[1:00:25.12] This is the part where smart people get super sidetracked and they're like, ha ha, a new hobby.

[1:00:30.24] I'm going to buy a bunch of stuff and I get it.

[1:00:33.24] It's really fun.

[1:00:34.52] It's really fun.

[1:00:36.96] Your goal is to produce a finished piece of work.

[1:00:40.52] Your goal is not to become an equipment expert.

[1:00:42.88] To the extent that you want to become an equipment expert, that's fine.

[1:00:46.8] Have fun.

[1:00:48.2] I would encourage you to keep your eyes on the goal, which is produce a body of work that can bring you opportunities, whether that's money, fame, or credibility.

[1:00:57.04] You must have a microphone.

[1:00:58.32] You just simply must.

[1:01:00.24] If you're going to record a screencast on air pods or your laptop's mic, you would be well served to buy an external microphone.

[1:01:14.32] This is the only thing.

[1:01:15.56] This is the only thing that I will force you to buy.

[1:01:17.24] If you don't have an external microphone and you want to record a screencast, get an external microphone.

[1:01:22.2] This one so, so cheap and totally passable.

[1:01:26.64] So there are tiers of microphones.

[1:01:28.72] I would recommend if you're not, if you don't want to be an audio person.

[1:01:33.04] Stay in the USB tier.

[1:01:34.8] If you go to the XLR tier, then you're like, you got to get ausb interface and you got to get a little cloud lifter and you got to do all like, oh, I'm mucking around with my gain knobs.

[1:01:44.24] Like that's not my job.

[1:01:45.84] My job is to produce screencast, this one perfectly, perfectly passable at $63.

[1:01:50.88] This one is much, much better at $250, but it's still it's still USB, so whatever microphone you get, get an external microphone.

[1:02:01.64] This is the one that all the podcasters use, and this is actually the one that I'm using right here.

[1:02:08.2] It's very good.

[1:02:09] So get a microphone.

[1:02:10.08] And then importantly, that's what Daniel's using as well.

[1:02:12.8] Importantly, regardless of which microphone you get, get it up off your desk as close to your face as possible.

[1:02:20.32] I like to keep mine off camera, but that's just like an aesthetic choice.

[1:02:25.12] But it is.

[1:02:25.88] You know it is.

[1:02:27.2] What is that?

[1:02:27.72] 6 inches from my mouth?

[1:02:29.28] Get it up as close to your mouth as possible.

[1:02:31.6] Get it off of your desk.

[1:02:33.48] So microphones, that's all you have to have.

[1:02:35.84] But let's talk about, should you be on camera?

[1:02:40] Yeah, yeah, you should.

[1:02:42.4] You really should.

[1:02:43.76] And I know that like there are there are really, really valid reasons for not wanting to be on camera.

[1:02:50.8] And I recognize that those exist and I'm sensitive to those.

[1:02:54.16] But I'm going to try to argue the other side that you should be on camera.

[1:02:58.88] And I'm going to try to argue that by saying that you can forge, you can forge a connection with somebody so much better if they can see your face, right?

[1:03:11.76] So even if even if you want to be on camera for like the 1st 30 seconds and then like to intro the topic and then switch to the screen and just be off camera, totally fine.

[1:03:21.76] But if you can show your face, people start to associate your face with you around the Internet.

[1:03:30.72] So people, people will comment on my personal YouTube channel and say hey you're the planetscale guy right?

[1:03:37.6] Because they see my face everywhere and everything I do for planetscale has some sort of, you know, point 2.3 multiplier to everything I do personally.

[1:03:48.64] Because it's me like I'm just one guy.

[1:03:51.64] And if I were a disembodied voice, if I were in disembodied voice, those benefits wouldn't accrue to me quite as highly, right?

[1:03:59.56] And so I I think that the benefits of being on camera are extremely high and very few people want to do it, which makes the benefits even higher.

[1:04:09.8] So I think you should be on camera.

[1:04:11.68] What camera should you use?

[1:04:12.88] You should use the camera that you have.

[1:04:15.28] You should just use the camera that you have.

[1:04:16.76] It's probably fine.

[1:04:17.72] The focus, the attention should be on the screen.

[1:04:20.28] You should use the camera that you have.

[1:04:21.68] If you don't have a camera, we can talk about a web tier or a a webcam tier of camera.

[1:04:28.84] And I kind of separate this into web tier.

[1:04:31.68] What did I say, web tier, web camera tier and DSLR tier.

[1:04:37.08] And those are those are kind of a jump, those are kind of a a jump.

[1:04:40.48] And if you want to stay in the webcam spot, everything that Elgato makes is great.

[1:04:44.96] You can use your iPhone as a camera.

[1:04:46.68] They have that great continuity thing and the camera looks really sharp on that.

[1:04:50.52] Everything Elgato makes is great.

[1:04:51.92] They have a facecam, which I have.

[1:04:54.72] I used to use.

[1:04:55.72] Oh, actually that's an iPhone.

[1:04:56.52] Now I have a facecam that I used to use and this is their newest one, which is a Facecam Pro.

[1:05:01.52] It's a little bit more, it's a little bit more expensive at $300.00, but these are both incredible webcams and so if you don't have one and you want to be on video, just pick up one of these.

[1:05:13.8] What I am using is this Canon EOS M50 and it's a DSLR and it's very good, but I do like I do professionally.

[1:05:24.96] My job is video.

[1:05:26.72] Not just like small bets and like trying to do stuff like plant scale pays for me to do video and so I have stepped up into this tier.

[1:05:35.12] But you do have to run it through another Elgato product.

[1:05:39.16] You run the DSLR camera into this Cam link device and then it shows up on your computer as a webcam.

[1:05:46.88] So if you're going to get a DSLR definitely get one of these Cam link capture cards and that will that will make it just show up as as a webcam.

[1:05:56.52] So got to keep moving.

[1:05:59.64] Let's talk about lights real quick.

[1:06:00.8] You don't need lights, but I would recommend that you get if you're going to like, if you're going to do the thing I would get at least one light.

[1:06:10.32] I don't know how good it's coming through on zoom, but if I turn everything off in here, you'll see I have my environment very controlled in terms of I don't, I don't rely on the overhead light and if I turn on one light here, so if I turn on please come back on.

[1:06:25.8] If I turn on one light here, you can see I've got this dramatic one light over here and that's what this person is doing here.

[1:06:32.36] They've got they've got two that look about equal strength.

[1:06:35.44] But what I do is I have one main light that's over here that like hits my face here and then I just have I've got a little guy over here that adds a little bit of light and you you just don't need it.

[1:06:46.04] If you want super dramatic, go with that.

[1:06:48.24] That's fine.

[1:06:48.84] But I like having the two lights.

[1:06:50.12] In fact, I have a third light behind me, which just adds a little separation because I'm super extra.

[1:06:54.68] You do not need that.

[1:06:55.84] But these lights, these lights are amazing.

[1:06:57.8] Control your environment.

[1:07:00.28] You don't want to be, you don't want to be recording and you start, you start when it's sunny outside and you end when it's dark outside.

[1:07:10.08] And everybody's like, man, that guy, that guy.

[1:07:12.76] It took six hours to record that 3 minute video, didn't it?

[1:07:15.64] So I can record at any time, which is really helpful because I have a full time job.

[1:07:19.6] I can come in here at night and record side stuff and it doesn't look like, oh, Aaron's, you know, burning the midnight oil.

[1:07:25.24] How unprofessional.

[1:07:26.2] It's like, oh, Aaron's back in the studio.

[1:07:27.8] I have no idea what time of day it is.

[1:07:30.56] So that's the way that I have mine set up.

[1:07:32.4] I've got the big light over here.

[1:07:34.44] I've got the the little ring light over here.

[1:07:37.6] And then I have my camera as close to my eye level as possible because I don't want to be like, I don't want to be a little guy looking up at the camera and be like, so I kind of like have to have my monitor lowered and my camera right on top of me so that I can look directly at the camera.

[1:07:52] I also have a little dinky secondary monitor here that helps by like showing my camera and right now it's showing my keynote slides.

[1:08:00.32] And so because I already had it, that's really helpful as well.

[1:08:03.32] And I keep that as close to the camera as possible so that like when I'm looking at it, I'm, you know, not far off from the camera.

[1:08:09.44] So that's kind of my set up.

[1:08:12.6] Start with what you have, unless you don't have a microphone, then buy a microphone and get started there.

[1:08:18.6] All right, we got 22 minutes.

[1:08:19.88] We're cruising.

[1:08:22.24] OK.

[1:08:22.8] So we've made it to the fun part or the worst part, I guess, depending, depending, depending on how you feel.

[1:08:33.4] So we've done, like, we've done a lot of the work and now it's time to figure out like what, what are we going to freaking, How are we going to do this, man?

[1:08:40.64] So there are a lot of things that I think about when it comes to recording.

[1:08:44.48] And a lot of the things that I think about are very, very minor, but they add up to a very polished final product.

[1:08:52.56] And it's going to sound like, oh, I got to think about so many things.

[1:08:56.64] You have to think about a few things.

[1:08:58.52] But what that does is that reduces the time you spend editing and it increases the quality of the final product.

[1:09:06.28] The first thing I think about is consistency.

[1:09:08.76] I want my screencasts to look the same, especially if I'm doing a course.

[1:09:13] I want my screencast to have a consistent feel all the way through.

[1:09:17.56] Because if if every time I start a video or if every time I like even in the middle of a video, if I'm wearing a different shirt, it's like it's kind of a hobby project, isn't it?

[1:09:28.84] Like this.

[1:09:29.88] This screencasting.com feels so professional, but every video is different.

[1:09:34.64] He's in a different place and he's wearing a different shirt.

[1:09:37.12] And so like personally a a aesthetic choice that I have made is I want it to be as consistent as possible.

[1:09:44.92] So I wear a black shirt.

[1:09:45.88] I've got seven of these black shirts.

[1:09:47.72] I just wear them all the time.

[1:09:48.8] This also helps if I ever need to cut footage back in.

[1:09:51.56] I know exactly what to put on.

[1:09:54.28] So in in pursuit of spreading the load across recording and editing, we're going to talk about preparing several things.

[1:10:03.28] So preparing yourself, your space, your screen, and your applications.

[1:10:06.2] Preparing myself, I have a checklist.

[1:10:07.96] I have a checklist for recording and it's stuff like make sure black T-shirt is on, make sure your shelf lights are on, make sure that you have these lights on.

[1:10:18.96] Make sure that you know, when I'm actually properly doing a screencast, I have these glasses that I wear and the only difference is these glasses don't have lenses.

[1:10:27.88] So I can like, I can look directly at the light and there's no, there's no reflection at all.

[1:10:32.52] My real glasses that I wear, you know, they're actually glasses and so there's, you know, there's glass in them.

[1:10:38.68] But on my checklist is put on your recording glasses.

[1:10:41.12] That's just an aesthetic choice that I've made.

[1:10:43.36] So have a checklist.

[1:10:45.48] I leave this bookshelf alone.

[1:10:47.4] I never move anything on it.

[1:10:48.72] That's just another choice that I've made because I just want to be able to come back and record another video and not have a bunch of stuff be in different spots.

[1:10:56.12] So this is like, you know, studio backdrop, but it's just like you you had to move home recently.

[1:11:00.72] However, I remember correctly, lighter than.

[1:11:02.4] So that was a that was something you could easily console.

[1:11:05.72] Yeah, that was.

[1:11:06.56] And so before I moved houses, I took AI, took a video like I I did this.

[1:11:12.92] Basically, I just.

[1:11:14.64] I moved and I took a long video of my old background so that I could, if I had to, absolutely had to, I could like, green screen myself back into the old background.

[1:11:24.68] Fortunately, I haven't needed to do that.

[1:11:26.08] I don't know how smooth that would look, but yeah, I had to move houses and like, I had a deadline of you gotta finish the my sequel course because you're moving and the background's gonna be gone.

[1:11:34.96] So that sucked.

[1:11:36.6] When it comes to preparing your screen and applications, get everything off the screen, hide every freaking thing that you can.

[1:11:45.92] If I were to start a screencast like this, what are you going to be looking at?

[1:11:50.12] You're going to be looking at what time it is.

[1:11:52.08] You're going to be looking at what applications I have open.

[1:11:54.12] You're going to be looking at these files that I for some reason have on my desktop, right?

[1:11:58.44] And I've already lost you, right?

[1:12:01.04] If if if attention spans are like 6 seconds, I've lost you.

[1:12:07.08] And so there are scripts.

[1:12:09.24] There are like, Apple scripts and stuff you can use to hide your desktop icons, to hide the status bar at the top.

[1:12:15.32] I don't need to know that you're recording Obsidian.

[1:12:18.36] See, you're not even paying attention.

[1:12:19.8] He's looking at what apps I have.

[1:12:20.88] I love.

[1:12:21.28] I love Obsidian.

[1:12:22.8] I don't need to know that this screenshot was taken at 11:29 for this course.

[1:12:27.04] I need to.

[1:12:27.4] I was like, oh, I should add a screenshot here or for this, you know, webinar.

[1:12:31.8] And I don't want you guys to know that.

[1:12:33.6] And that makes the content like, jumpy and less Evergreen.

[1:12:36.96] And it's like this dude's recording videos at 1:00 in the morning.

[1:12:41.8] That sucks.

[1:12:42.72] Like, that's information you don't need to know.

[1:12:46.04] And then also the dock, so dock icons, status bar all got to go.

[1:12:50.24] And then you start looking at applications and you're like, what the hell, what am I supposed to focus on here?

[1:12:57] Like if I'm watching this, I don't, I don't know who's this is.

[1:13:00.64] I've.

[1:13:01.12] I've purposely forgotten because I don't want to drag anybody.

[1:13:03.88] But like, what am I supposed to focus on here?

[1:13:07.08] So anything that is hideable should be hidden.

[1:13:10.92] Like I don't need to see, I don't need to see the explorer, I don't need to see that left status bar, I don't need to see all the tabs he's got open, like show me what to focus on and so this is what mine end up looking like.

[1:13:21.84] This is an aesthetic choice that I've made where everything that is possible, everything that can be hidden, is hidden.

[1:13:28.8] You'll you'll have to decide what your style is, but this is the style that I have landed on.

[1:13:34.24] I think the guiding principle is do your best to work on behalf of the viewer to keep them focused.

[1:13:41.76] And so this is where I've landed.

[1:13:43.56] I like it, and at some point it'll change, but this is this is where I've landed A lot of apps.

[1:13:49.88] Do you have presentation mode?

[1:13:51.88] And a lot of apps have things like you can do Command Shift B to like hide the bookmarks bar in Chrome.

[1:13:57.28] And so just take a second to think about what are all of the things that I can hide because that makes the experience better.

[1:14:03.52] But it also makes the editing easier if there's not a bunch of stuff on screen that could be in different positions later on.

[1:14:10.2] So the question if I'm going to record, should I have a script?

[1:14:14.36] I don't know, man.

[1:14:16.52] I don't know what to tell you.

[1:14:17.48] I do know what to tell you.

[1:14:19.84] I I don't, I don't record with a script personally, I cannot.

[1:14:25.28] So part of part of the problem there is it's a style that I'm going for.

[1:14:28.4] The style that I'm going for is very conversational.

[1:14:30.44] It's very like we're in this together.

[1:14:32.76] I'm right there with you.

[1:14:35] I have a hard time personally recording a video on scripts because I sound like a robot.

[1:14:42.16] I also don't think it is.

[1:14:45.36] I don't think it's as valuable to record a voice over and a screen separately because I feel like you are then put in this as the viewer.

[1:14:55.4] You're then put in this position of I'm watching someone explain something they did a long time ago.

[1:15:01.36] Whereas if we're doing it together, you're like, oh, I'm watching this person do this thing live.

[1:15:06.52] And you'll have, you know, turns of phrases and mistakes and little like half jokes that only come out when you're doing something live.

[1:15:15.6] And that, like, adds this rich texture to your personality that they're like, Oh yeah, yeah, I I, I would have done that too.

[1:15:21.92] I see, you know, I see that mistake.

[1:15:23.56] Yeah.

[1:15:24.2] And so I think regardless of what you do, try to record the audio and the video at the same time.

[1:15:29.6] Now you can, if you can record a script and sound like you want to sound record a script like you know write a script and do it.

[1:15:35.88] The way that I do it now is what I will do is I will go into Google doc, Google Docs and I will hit the like it's it's under like tools dictate.

[1:15:49.44] I think I am incapable of writing a script.

[1:15:53.36] The way that I write a script is I pretend to record the video.

[1:15:58.96] And So what I do is I I go to, I go to dictates dictate and I start saying like this is the actual thing that I dictated for the the microphones video.

[1:16:07.56] I said OK, we talked about cameras.

[1:16:09.04] I think the more important thing is audio quality.

[1:16:11.12] And So what this, what this allows me to do is I know like the three or four points that I want to make in the video, that's not, that's not the hard part, right.

[1:16:22.88] We've done all that research.

[1:16:25.16] We've done all that research.

[1:16:26] We know what the topics are.

[1:16:27.88] We know what we're going to step into bit by bit.

[1:16:30.48] The hard part for me is the transition sentences and like the turns of phrase and how am I going to what is that interstitial tissue between .1 and .2 and how do I make that smoothly?

[1:16:41.76] And the only way that I'm capable of doing that is by beginning to speak.

[1:16:46.96] And so instead of turning on the camera, putting on my black T-shirt, turning on the lights and then turning on, you know, hitting record and being like, oh, what's my transition from point A to point BI?

[1:17:00.64] Just leave everything off.

[1:17:02] Hair is a mess.

[1:17:03] I'm wearing a black T-shirt still.

[1:17:04.84] But then I just do it right into Google Docs, and I just sit back with the microphone right in my face.

[1:17:08.84] And I'm like, all right, we talked about cameras.

[1:17:10.96] That was a stupid sentence.

[1:17:11.96] Let me, like, delete that.

[1:17:13.36] And then I start over.

[1:17:14.76] And then this becomes like, this becomes my proper like, oh this is if I were to have a script, this is what it would be.

[1:17:22.56] And then what I will do is I'll take it into chat GT and say like, hey, this is a stream of consciousness without changing the tone, like format this so that it is readable.

[1:17:32.56] And it'll do that for me.

[1:17:34.24] And then what I do is I read through it.

[1:17:36.56] I'll read through it like three or four times and I'll be like, check, GPT sucks.

[1:17:40.16] Take out that word.

[1:17:40.8] Like, I never said that, Read through it three or four times and then put it away and turn on the camera.

[1:17:45.96] And at that point it's as if I've recorded the video three or four times, but I haven't.

[1:17:52.04] And so it's like, it's really easy.

[1:17:53.92] It's really easy to muck around with text.

[1:17:55.92] It's really hard to like, be like, all right, I'm going to record the video.

[1:17:59.44] FI messed it up because I didn't know what I was going to say next.

[1:18:02.36] So this is, this is my style for that.

[1:18:05.32] In regards to script or no script.

[1:18:07.04] Ah, halfway, halfway.

[1:18:09.12] I know what I'm going to say.

[1:18:10.2] I know what my interstitial tissue is.

[1:18:11.96] But if I if I do it this way and then don't read it directly, I get these delightful like, oh, it just popped into my head and it just like adds a little bit of of liveliness to it.

[1:18:22.32] So we're almost done.

[1:18:23.36] We got 1212 minutes.

[1:18:25.04] I'm going to try to finish in five so we can talk if we want to in in the recording process.

[1:18:32.76] In the recording process I do something that I have coined, like recording in chunks.

[1:18:39.68] And so it is really hard and really stressful to get A7.

[1:18:45.48] I get a 5 minute video done without any mistakes.

[1:18:48.68] It's just not going to happen.

[1:18:50.92] And So what I do is I I try to hit chunks of 1 to 3 or 4 minutes and I already know kind of like what my main points are and what my interstitial tissue is.

[1:19:03.72] And so I kind of know like, oh, at this point I'm going to switch from talking head to screen.

[1:19:08.64] And so I have just got to land.

[1:19:10.76] I just have to land the plane and then I can take a break because I'm going to switch to screen and that's like that begins a new chunk and so this is a very, very bad example of chunkiness, right?

[1:19:22.88] This, this.

[1:19:23.84] I would have been better served to rerecord this entire video instead of do all of this work in editing because this is before I started my process of like figure out what the interstitial tissue is and then record.

[1:19:37.04] This is me kind of figuring out interstitial tissue along the way.

[1:19:40.6] And in hindsight, it would have been better to come in here and think, well, that was a good first take.

[1:19:47.04] I'm going to trash it all and start over because then I would have been able to, I probably would have saved time in the editing booth.

[1:19:53.16] And so this is what this is what a chunky video looks like now.

[1:19:57.2] So you can see I did, I did about a minute and a half.

[1:20:00.28] And then I knew that I was going to have like some images on the screen showing like my my sequel books and my note cards and stuff.

[1:20:07.48] And so I knew, like, if I can just nail that intro, I'm good.

[1:20:11.88] I can just, I can just stop and I can re like I can compose myself and start over with with the next chunk and so I will take a chunk 3456 times and then be like, all right, that one was perfect.

[1:20:25.04] I'm going to move on and we'll talk in the editing section just briefly about what we do with those chunks.

[1:20:29.64] But my recommendation would be know what your signposts are and land like.

[1:20:34.92] Land a chunk and then take a breath recoup, get a sip of water, then move on to the next chunk and we'll see in the editing section where this comes back to our great benefit.

[1:20:46.96] One of the other things about not using a script is you make like you make mistakes and you fat finger something.

[1:20:53.2] Like you type in something and you hit the wrong key.

[1:20:55.96] I think these are incredibly humanizing.

[1:20:59.12] And so to the extent that you can fix, you know, what your mistake is and you can fix it in under 15 seconds, just power through, make a little, excuse me, make a little half joke, make a little, well, this would have worked if I did it right.

[1:21:13.64] Fix the thing and say, ah, see, there we go, All right.

[1:21:15.64] Moving on.

[1:21:16.32] Like that shows that, like, brings you down and shows your personality and allows you to connect with people.

[1:21:23.72] And it just makes it makes it a little bit more lively and it makes it a lot less pressure on you.

[1:21:29.12] There are so many times where I will type something on instead of like, first name, I'll put name and I'll run the command.

[1:21:33.92] And it's like, no such column exists.

[1:21:36.2] And I'll look at it and say, Oh yeah, well that's the wrong column name.

[1:21:39.36] Let me fix that real fast.

[1:21:40.2] And we just move on and it makes it feel more lively.

[1:21:43.16] If you go off on a rabbit trail for three or four or five minutes because you messed something up, trash it.

[1:21:48.6] Start over like you.

[1:21:50.32] You want you want to show personality and show humanity.

[1:21:53.72] You don't want to waste the viewers time, just start over.

[1:21:57.08] Your second take is going to be so much better anyway.

[1:22:00.84] Unfortunately we don't like we're.

[1:22:03.76] I don't want to give specifics on this webinar about how to use a specific program.

[1:22:08.36] So I'm going to teach you a philosophy in 3 minutes.

[1:22:11.72] The philosophy of editing is rough cut to fine tune and you can do these separately.

[1:22:17.56] So if we take a look at this, if we take a look at this timeline, the application that I use is called Screenflow.

[1:22:23.28] It is Mac only.

[1:22:25] It is very, very good.

[1:22:26.48] There are much more powerful applications.

[1:22:29.52] I use this one specifically because it's not more powerful.

[1:22:33.76] I use it because it does everything that I need it to do without bothering me, and it records.

[1:22:39.64] It records my screen, it records my camera, it records my microphone, It does it all and it throws it in this iMovie esque timeline and I can just edit video and so that's what I use.

[1:22:48.52] I'm told that Camtasia on Windows is similar.

[1:22:52.16] I can't speak to it directly, but this is what it looks like if we zoom in on this guy a little bit.

[1:22:57.76] This is what chunks.

[1:22:58.72] Look like, so you can see the waveforms there and you see like, oh, I started to record and then apparently I stood up and adjusted something and then I, you know, started to record again and like you can see all these waveforms.

[1:23:12.08] And this is, this is the rough cut phase where you go into all of those lulls and you just chop it out and you say that entire chunk is bad.

[1:23:19.64] And I know that I started that chunk over.

[1:23:21.92] And so after I finish a video, after I finish recording, and I'm like, golly, I'm glad that's over.

[1:23:28.24] I go in and I rough cut immediately, I rough cut immediately and I get rid of all of the chunks that are bad.

[1:23:34.56] And it's like these first probably 234 waveforms, those are probably dead.

[1:23:39.56] And that takes me 8 seconds to do because I'm like, I will hear the first words out of my mouth on the first chunk, and then on the 2nd chunk, if it's the same words, I know that's a bad chunk.

[1:23:48.92] And so I delete the first one.

[1:23:49.92] And I just do that until I have all of the chunks that are good.

[1:23:53.76] And that helps me know I can move on from this video.

[1:23:57.48] Like, the worst thing that could ever happen is you record a video and you come back two weeks later to edit and you're like, oh F this was really, really bad.

[1:24:04.88] I messed this up a lot.

[1:24:06.2] So as quickly as you can, do a rough cut, do a rough cut, and then you can leave the fine tuning for later.

[1:24:12.08] And I often do.

[1:24:13.04] But at that point, I know that I've got the material and I can move on, 'cause it's all about momentum.

[1:24:19.4] And so then at that point and then at that point you just coming back and you're adjusting, you're adjusting some transitions, you're adjusting some stuff on screen, you're putting some like images or pictures on the screen later after you know you've you've landed the content.

[1:24:33.8] So there's a lot more in the editing that can only be shown as I edit, and so I I can't really do all of that here.

[1:24:40.88] But there are a lot more techniques of hiding mistakes with freeze frames and using B roll or like images to cover cuts if that's important to you.

[1:24:49.96] And there are a lot of really good ways that you can hide a bunch of stuff in the editing room that makes it makes your.

[1:24:56.96] Life a lot easier.

[1:24:58.68] The final thing is publishing.

[1:25:02.2] So where where you publish this stuff is up to you, right?

[1:25:05.76] And a little bit the the medium dictates the message or the platform dictates the form a little bit.

[1:25:15.64] If you're going to create a course, you have the luxury of going a lot slower.

[1:25:20.68] You have the luxury of like really getting into the nitty gritty.

[1:25:24.12] That's what people pay for.

[1:25:25.36] If you're going to create a YouTube video, you basically have to be entertaining while you teach them, and so the platform dictates the message a little bit.

[1:25:34.72] But regardless of regardless of what you've done with it, you are now like you're now building your body of work.

[1:25:42.12] And so if you record a video and you put it on Twitter and today Elon is like videos are good, you just never know right.

[1:25:50.36] You never know if you're you discovered some neat thing while you're working on turn on the camera.

[1:25:55.8] Hey guys.

[1:25:56.32] I just discovered this you put a 92nd video on Twitter.

[1:25:59.76] You never know what's going to come your way from that.

[1:26:02.8] What you know maintainer of open source library is going to look at it and be like this is great.

[1:26:06.6] You want to speak at the next conference?

[1:26:07.96] You know, like, sure, that seems awesome, but whatever.

[1:26:12.2] Like, wherever you put this stuff, it becomes a Public Advocate for you, right?

[1:26:17.4] So I don't have a resume.

[1:26:18.8] I haven't had a resume in a long time.

[1:26:20.64] What I have is a bunch of links.

[1:26:22.56] Anytime I apply to a job, I send them links.

[1:26:25.56] Hey, here's some blog posts I wrote.

[1:26:26.72] Here's some videos that I did.

[1:26:28.68] Here's me speaking at a conference, and this body of work is a better advocate for me than anything else could ever be.

[1:26:37.48] People stumble across work I've done a long time ago, They stumble across it and they e-mail me and they're like, hey, do you want this opportunity?

[1:26:44.56] Like, how in the world?

[1:26:46.08] I've got all these little soldiers out there working on my behalf.

[1:26:49.12] So if you're going to publish a course, there are lots of great course platforms.

[1:26:52.72] I won't even pretend to compare them all.

[1:26:54.8] Everything I have done is strictly using Vimeo.

[1:26:58.2] So I put the videos on Vimeo and then because I am a developer, I'll build out a site to host them.

[1:27:03.56] I I enjoy that.

[1:27:04.4] I think it's fun, but there are lots of great ones.

[1:27:07.28] There's, you know, podia and I can't even name them all, lots of great places.

[1:27:10.92] YouTube I would put, I'd put stuff on YouTube as like super top of funnel to get people, you know, get people funneled into other paid things.

[1:27:19.84] But wherever you put it, put it out there and see what happens.

[1:27:23.04] And I guarantee as I'm, I'm risking myself here, I guarantee good things will happen.

[1:27:28.32] I just don't know what form they will take.

[1:27:30.2] So that is a blitzkrieg through a, you know, four or five hour course in 90 minutes with slides alone in the course there's not, I don't know if there are any slides at all.

[1:27:40.12] It's basically just me working through all of this stuff.

[1:27:44.52] But when I was invited here I thought, this is this is an opportunity that came my way.

[1:27:49.64] So I gave you as much as I could in an hour and 28 minutes with two minutes to spare.

[1:27:54.6] If you want to sign up for the full course.

[1:27:56.88] I did create AI think it's $50 off with small bets.

[1:28:00.44] So we did it.

[1:28:02.96] Thank you everyone.

[1:28:05.4] And I'll stick around as long as y'all want.

[1:28:07.52] I'll stop the screen share, I'll stick around as long as y'all want and we can do, we can do.

[1:28:12.24] Questions.

[1:28:14.48] Thanks a lot Alan.

[1:28:15.76] This was, this was really inspiring great presentation.

[1:28:18.8] I think we do have a couple of questions and I've seen, I've seen one that I think you already decided to address but it came up a couple of other times about mixed about different topics, right.

[1:28:31.36] So, and I think it's worth touching on each other because it comes up, comes up often and even there are people ask me this question a lot like.

[1:28:39.8] If you can do screencasts about my sequel, and you can also do screencasts about accounting, or about how to build your own office shed in your backyard or something like that, what are the what are some things to keep in mind to minimise the downside of not confusing people, not diluting the audience?

[1:29:03.64] Especially, for example, when it comes to YouTube, when the people ask should you create a different YouTube channel?

[1:29:08.04] Should it be different?

[1:29:09.12] So and so forth.

[1:29:10.72] So do you have high level thoughts about about?

[1:29:13.48] This do actually and bringing up YouTube is a good, is a good caveat there.

[1:29:17.8] So I think so let's start with Twitter which is where I spend a lot of time.

[1:29:21] I think on Twitter building your empire around your personality is totally totally fine and you may have different expressions of that into my sequel or Laravel or Backyard sheds.

[1:29:35.04] All of which are true about me and people love to just follow along and I think.

[1:29:40.04] I think people love to follow along on Twitter specifically because it is like a very follower.

[1:29:45.44] Well, it's kind of changed a little bit, but it is very like follower centric model where like people are following me For me and I have a lot of opinions on the things that I share on Twitter.

[1:29:55] Like I don't ever talk about sports.

[1:29:56.36] One because I don't watch sports, but I don't talk about sports, I don't talk about politics.

[1:29:59.4] I talk about projects and things that I am doing.

[1:30:02.16] And so people are familiar with like oh, Aaron's always up to something, right?

[1:30:05.52] He's always working on something and I think that creates an image of me as.

[1:30:10.04] As a builder and as a doer that I think is very valuable and so I am not shy about talking about multiple things.

[1:30:16.72] However, on YouTube I have different channels, 100% I have different channels and I would never, I would never mix the two.

[1:30:25.16] So I've got my personal channel is PHP specific.

[1:30:28.04] My work channel is my sequel specific.

[1:30:29.92] I have a behind the scenes channel where I just talk about like, hey, here's what I got up to this week, here's what I'm planning on doing next week.

[1:30:36.92] And then I will have a screencasting channel.

[1:30:40.52] And the reason that I do that is I don't want the algorithm to not be able to pin down an audience for me because it is.

[1:30:49.96] So far I have found YouTube is less follower centric.

[1:30:53.24] If you find a video, if you create a video that YouTube can find an audience for.

[1:30:58.04] It is going to blow the doors off of it.

[1:31:00.52] And so I want YouTube to learn more and more that this channel is about PHP slash web development and not throw in like, all right, let's do some screen casting.

[1:31:11.24] You're like F this guy.

[1:31:12.32] I'm a PHP developer, so yeah, I keep those things very, very separate.

[1:31:17.6] Sounds good.

[1:31:20] So another question and this partly comes from me as well, but I've seen somebody mention something in the chat.

[1:31:26.2] You know, you gave us some really great tips I think on how to create highly polished products and screencasts that was still being sort of reasonably, you know, quick, but how how much do you think, like what's the level of scrappiness?

[1:31:44.24] On the other extreme, like to stress test and play that was that for a bit, Like, for example, all the things you told us about your background, your colours, your lights, whatever have you seen in your experience?

[1:31:54.84] People have been quite scrappy with those things.

[1:31:56.84] They don't really care about their shirt colour and their lighting and they change and maybe even with some clutter on their desktop and things like that, while still being effective and maybe even have successful products.

[1:32:11.28] Is it just mostly personal preference?

[1:32:12.88] You do these things because you make you feel proud of your work or do you think like if you're very rational and you know you could get away with even somewhat lower quality, maybe production content?

[1:32:25.64] Not not information quality, because we all agree that's very, very important, but in terms of production.

[1:32:31.12] Yep.

[1:32:31.8] Yeah, I think there are definitely levels to it.

[1:32:35.84] So one of one of my opinions is, I think the higher.

[1:32:40.2] So let's let's just say that there are, there's a cost benefit analysis, right?

[1:32:43.52] Putting on a black T-shirt to me, I got to put on a shirt.

[1:32:46.36] Well, why not?

[1:32:47] Why not just pick a black one, right?

[1:32:48.72] And so it's all I wear anyway, you know, not touching my background.

[1:32:53.04] It's an aesthetic choice.

[1:32:54.12] I I have a lot of aesthetic opinions.

[1:32:57] I like to think that they're rational.

[1:32:58.28] They're probably not.

[1:32:59.44] But I will say that like many of those things are such low cost.

[1:33:05.08] That I it doesn't even register.

[1:33:07.72] Like I have a button on my stream deck, which is really cool.

[1:33:10.52] I have a button on my stream deck that I push and all my desktop stuff like goes into the right position and everything goes away.

[1:33:17.12] And so the effort is literally like blonk and that's it.

[1:33:20.4] That's all that the effort is.

[1:33:21.84] I have seen of course people people create really crappy screencast, but the value, the information is so high that it doesn't matter and so.

[1:33:33.68] Like if levels.

[1:33:34.48] You know if levels.

[1:33:35.52] If Peter Levels created a screencast of like hey here's index dot PHP, it would probably crush and he would probably break all of my rules.

[1:33:43.92] I'm not him, right?

[1:33:45.4] And so I'm trying to give myself as big of an advantage as I can.

[1:33:49.76] And part of like, part of my brand is polished, high quality, because part of what I want is companies to say he's polished and high quality and I want companies to be like.

[1:34:03.6] Yeah, we'll we'll have Aaron do a sponsored video because it's not just slapdash.

[1:34:07.96] And so it just depends like it depends on what you're going for.

[1:34:10.8] If you're doing a demo of your SAS and you're making, you know, $50,000 a month and you want to do a demo like I don't know that you really need to put that much effort into it because you're doing pretty well already.

[1:34:20.24] So it's just kind of depends on the goals.

[1:34:23.32] Makes sense, makes sense.

[1:34:24.92] Here's an interesting one.

[1:34:25.76] And I I don't know if you can actually speak to this, but maybe you've seen others do it.

[1:34:29.92] Like for people who are not native English speakers, how much do you think, And I'm one of them, by the way.

[1:34:35.88] I mean my my first language isn't English.

[1:34:37.96] How much do you think?

[1:34:38.76] Does it matter?

[1:34:41.4] Does it matter at all, do you think?

[1:34:45.04] Do you think sometimes it can be an advantage?

[1:34:48] What are your thoughts?

[1:34:48.76] Yeah, I think it can be an advantage.

[1:34:50.64] So I thescreencasting.com course has this tier that's like $1000 and people can book these like hands on calls.

[1:34:58.32] And I had one guy book a call and just the nicest guy in the world and he was like, I'm basically going to be you for the Spanish speaking market.

[1:35:06.64] And I was like great.

[1:35:08.6] That's amazing.

[1:35:09.36] Do that and so to the extent.

[1:35:12.08] Like to the extent that that helps you define an angle.

[1:35:17.04] Is a real big advantage to the extent that you're then having to produce, you know, the opposite would be producing technical content in a second language.

[1:35:26.84] I can't, I don't.

[1:35:27.52] I don't even speak another language.

[1:35:29.24] I'm so basic and so I don't know like that sounds really, really hard to me.

[1:35:34.96] So it could it could be either, depending on what your frame is and depending on what your angle is.

[1:35:39.96] There are people in the Laravel community that are Brazilian and their primary content language is Portuguese and they do really well and so I I can't really speak to it unfortunately it's is maybe maybe you as a consumer of screencast like not as a producer like have you ever maybe watched the screencast from somebody who's not who doesn't have perfect English?

[1:36:01.48] Maybe maybe even making medical mistakes, or you're not using the light words or whatever and still felt that this was actually good.

[1:36:08.8] Or do you think we should work hard to make sure that our pronunciation, the quality of how we speak, is very, very, very almost perfect?

[1:36:20.52] Yeah, and I will.

[1:36:21.84] I will say this as you know, a guy living in Texas that speaks one language.

[1:36:27.28] So you know, caveat it as you will.

[1:36:30.72] I think more important to me is being able to connect with that person and sometimes even the fact that English, English is not the first language.

[1:36:42.32] Is itself compelling and endearing and vulnerable and makes me want to connect with that person.

[1:36:49.8] I think the thing I've I've never, that I can even remember, turned off a screencast because it was somebody that didn't speak English natively.

[1:36:57.52] I've turned off so many screencasts.

[1:37:00.44] Where the microphone is all crackly, the screen is like really, really low resolution.

[1:37:08] And so you'll see a lot of screencasts.

[1:37:10.28] You'll see a lot of screencasts on YouTube where it's a a non-native speaker, but the rest of the quality is terrible and I'm like, I just can't listen to this.

[1:37:20.28] You know, fuzzy microphone for 10 minutes and so for me personally, if it's a high quality, readable, you know, resolution and good sounding microphone, I don't care.

[1:37:30.8] But that's, you know, I don't know how instructive that is, but that's that's just yeah, that helps.

[1:37:35.84] Awesome.

[1:37:36.8] Someone was asking, are you using Skype for payments, presumably on your core site?

[1:37:42.12] On Yeah, on Accounting 229, I used Stripe on screencasting.com.

[1:37:45.96] I used lemon squeezy just because it was a little bit.

[1:37:50.24] Lower effort so they handle like the checkout merchant of record for me Got it.

[1:37:56.16] And so basically you just use it as a checkout and use the dialects to your to your.

[1:38:00.28] Yeah, redirect back with.

[1:38:01.6] Yeah, with like a with like a hidden URL or something more sophisticated.

[1:38:05.04] I think they send us a web.

[1:38:06.04] I think they send us a web hook.

[1:38:07.12] Web hook got it?

[1:38:08.76] I think so.

[1:38:10] So let's see Question for YouTube.

[1:38:11.88] And under top of funnel stuff are usually putting little clips from actual videos or creating separate and so teasers presumably.

[1:38:20.4] I think this is about like the purposing some of your stuff for top of funnel, like do you do any of that thing or those things?

[1:38:26.36] Yeah.

[1:38:26.88] So time being finite, I don't do as much like I don't do as much of the YouTube shorts as would maybe be ideal.

[1:38:37.28] We have it at Planetscale.

[1:38:38.88] You can look, you know, I won't reveal all of our strategy, but on the public channel, you'll see we've got a lot of shorts on there.

[1:38:44.72] And one of the ways that I do it at Planetscale is I finish recording the long video.

[1:38:49.36] And then I re I start over and record just like 40 seconds or 50 seconds.

[1:38:56.52] And so by that point I've worked all the way through the long video and I know exactly what examples I'm showing and like turns of phrase.

[1:39:04.76] And I just start over and I do a short.

[1:39:07.2] I'll do it in one take or or one chunk.

[1:39:09.8] I, you know it sometimes it takes me two or three times and then I'll use that as a short that links to the long.

[1:39:14.56] I just, you know, shorts get, shorts get good views, but.

[1:39:18.8] I'm not sold on, I'm not sold on them being totally worth it.

[1:39:22.52] I will say putting teasers on Twitter has been, I think, a good thing.

[1:39:27.6] So you take the long video and just chop it up and say like watch the final thing on, you know, YouTube and put that on Twitter.

[1:39:34.68] I found that to be.

[1:39:35.96] I found that to be helpful.

[1:39:37.24] So the teaser would still be a complete lesson.

[1:39:39.56] Or would it be just no the?

[1:39:41.2] Teaser The teaser would be like the long video and then chopped.

[1:39:48.4] With like, OK, now we're going to look at and then it's like a sound effects and it goes to the next clip and then like maybe the next clip is a joke and it's sound effects sound effects sound effect and then it's, you know, 30 seconds, 40 seconds long.

[1:39:58.92] Watch the full thing on youtube.com.

[1:40:00.84] That's a stink.

[1:40:01.6] That's a stink.

[1:40:02.12] Yeah.

[1:40:03] Awesome.

[1:40:04.04] So let's see, let's see, Yeah, James asked about YouTube shorts with.

[1:40:07.8] I think you just answered.

[1:40:12.32] Let's see, by the way, did you make any effort to just up your personality to make your content more entertaining or how do you approach?

[1:40:20.48] At this, Yeah.

[1:40:22.32] So this is always a challenge for me because I don't want to.

[1:40:26.88] Like, I just don't want to go full unhinged YouTube because it just wouldn't be genuine for me.

[1:40:33.88] But I do focus on pushing myself to the high end of my natural energy boundary because.

[1:40:42.16] It can be really boring if you watch back, if you watch back a screencast and it's like, oh, this guy's barely awake.

[1:40:48.96] And I think if you, if you bring yourself up to your Max limit, when you watch it back, you're going to feel like, Oh yeah, that's pretty normal.

[1:40:57.36] Because I just.

[1:40:58.2] I don't know.

[1:40:58.56] I've watched back several of my screencasts and I've been like, this is depressing and so I have had to like amp up a little bit of like my public speaking skills to be.

[1:41:07.88] Like, keep people engaged.

[1:41:09.12] But yeah, I don't do a lot of like jazzy editing or like gags or gimmicks or anything just because it's not my my personality.

[1:41:17.8] And you did this, presumably, just what with with just back to this site, I mean.

[1:41:21.44] Or did you do some exercises or something a bit more systematic?

[1:41:25.28] No, nothing systematic public speaking helps.

[1:41:27.88] So any chance you have to public speak or practice that either at, you know, conferences or?

[1:41:33.28] You know, speaking groups or whatever, that helps immensely because when you are on camera recording, you're basically public speaking and you have to like think on your toes and have energy and have charisma and like any those two things, crossover.

[1:41:47.2] So, so.

[1:41:47.72] Well, you know, nothing.

[1:41:49.16] Nothing systematic.

[1:41:50.84] Yeah.

[1:41:51] I find this study fascinating, me personally, how different it feels compared to like this, like this, that it's live, There's you and others on the other side.

[1:41:59.96] It feels more.

[1:42:00.88] It feels easier to me, but once you turn on the camera, then there's nobody else freeze.

[1:42:05.52] Yeah, the the brain goes into a different mode.

[1:42:07.84] Yeah.

[1:42:08.36] Yep.

[1:42:08.64] Exactly.

[1:42:10.4] Let's see.

[1:42:10.76] I think, I think the answer, I think I caught up with all the questions in the chat.

[1:42:16.04] Let me know if I missed something.

[1:42:17.32] Feel free to copy and paste it again.

[1:42:18.88] I might have accidentally actually Steve was I think, yeah.

[1:42:23.08] What was your first thing you created that you'd say got your first one?

[1:42:26.4] Presumably it was your accounting thing.

[1:42:28.48] That was the first, yeah, that was the first monetary win.

[1:42:31.16] I think I did like a solo podcast for a while that like built my, you know, built in public muscle up a little bit.

[1:42:39.36] But the first, like, monetary win was the the accounting videos course for sure.

[1:42:44.12] And guys, that was brutal.

[1:42:46.16] I went down to the campus and handed out Flyers in the Business School and it was just like the most miserable.

[1:42:53.16] Suffering.

[1:42:54.2] It was awful.

[1:42:55.04] I was standing there, was like a 25 year old or 24 year old with a backpack on, trying to blend in, being like, hey, check out my tutoring website.

[1:43:02.08] So yeah, it's not all it's not all glamorous, but it did.

[1:43:04.8] It did finally bootstrap itself into into some money, Phyllis asking.

[1:43:10.04] Do you worry about protecting the copyright of your work in public?

[1:43:13.96] Any measures that you take?

[1:43:15.68] Never ever, ever have I thought even once about that.

[1:43:18.28] I think the only thing I think about is it's harder to, like, steal my content with my face on it.

[1:43:23.08] And so like, if somebody's going to steal my content and re upload it to YouTube, usually that'll get fingerprinted.

[1:43:29.2] Somebody did that with our My Sequel course, and it got fingerprinted and it was like, all right, take it down.

[1:43:33.32] And, you know, YouTube took it down, but I just don't worry about it.

[1:43:39.68] Yeah, it's been my experience as well.

[1:43:40.96] And like you say, sometimes with the blatant stealing, it's easy to either from Google or from YouTube to have them take it down.

[1:43:47.92] Yeah, Yeah.

[1:43:51.2] OK.

[1:43:52.12] Any other questions from anyone before we have Pop and you know, thank you.

[1:43:56.04] There's one, there's.

[1:43:57.16] One, forcing myself to record a daily video 1 in Spanish, other in English, correcting things I don't like.

[1:44:01.64] Is this a good approach?

[1:44:02.36] Great approach because you're shipping like, Oh my gosh, if I look back at some of my old videos, I cringe.

[1:44:09.84] But man, they're out there.

[1:44:11.56] They're out there doing work for me and I've gotten better over time.

[1:44:14.48] And so I think, yeah, you record a video, put it out there, and then you look.

[1:44:19.6] Back at it the next day and you're like, I'd do that differently.

[1:44:22.04] Well, do it differently.

[1:44:23.04] Move on.

[1:44:23.92] Yeah, I think 100% for sure.

[1:44:26.2] And like focusing on production instead of outcomes is good.

[1:44:31.32] That's kind of what I was talking about with YouTube.

[1:44:32.8] My goal is to produce videos.

[1:44:34.28] My goal is not to, you know, get a million views.

[1:44:37.16] I would love for that to happen, but my my job is to produce.

[1:44:41.72] I have to say I'm not publishing yet.

[1:44:43.72] I'm just recording it and just practicing.

[1:44:47.04] OK, getting used.

[1:44:49.52] I would, I would encourage you to start publishing, yeah.

[1:44:53.76] I'll do it as soon as possible, thank.

[1:44:55.8] You that is the that is the scary.

[1:44:57.24] That is the scary part.

[1:44:58.28] And once you open that floodgate, you are like you're off to the races.

[1:45:06.12] Awesome.

[1:45:07.88] You have a good voice.

[1:45:08.56] Actually, I I was thinking the same thing.

[1:45:10.24] Delic by the way.

[1:45:11.88] Oh, thank you very much.

[1:45:14.84] Well, both of you do.

[1:45:15.88] I was, I was thinking, oh, that must be me.

[1:45:17.96] That's not no use to me before.

[1:45:21.28] I was.

[1:45:22.2] I was doubting.

[1:45:22.88] But now Daniel told me.

[1:45:24.68] OK, thank you.

[1:45:27.04] And Reid, thank you very much too, James.

[1:45:32.12] Hiya.

[1:45:33.52] Hey, kind of unrelated, this isn't a question for you Aaron, but I I've encountered a lot of folks both at my work and just.

[1:45:41.56] In this community that English is not their native language and they're they're concerned about how they sound to say a native speaker and I just wanted to give you only my feedback as a native speaker.

[1:45:54.04] I speak a few other languages but English is my main one and I think the hardest thing for native speakers is when non-native speakers speak too fast.

[1:46:03.4] It's as simple as that.

[1:46:04.56] Sometimes the accent to me doesn't really matter, but I'm used to people that.

[1:46:10.2] Being around me all the time at work and and elsewhere, but I think when people speak English very quickly and they're still sort of, you know, working on the pronunciation if you will, I don't know.

[1:46:22.64] So if you use Daniel as an example, Daniel obviously has an accent, but he's but he's very clear and he doesn't speak too fast.

[1:46:29.52] So I don't know if that's of any use to anyone, but I I would say when in doubt, maybe slow down just a little.

[1:46:35.84] That's interesting.

[1:46:36.48] Actually.

[1:46:37.2] I sometimes feel I speak too slowly.

[1:46:38.96] In fact, sometimes I watch my own recordings and I do it at 2 speed and I feel like this is how I should be speaking.

[1:46:46.72] To me, to me it's, it's just right, I'd say interesting.

[1:46:52.16] OK.

[1:46:53.12] Thank you.

[1:46:53.4] Thanks, James.

[1:46:53.92] Yeah, this is.

[1:46:54.4] It is very interesting because I think it's always hard to, you know, to to to properly assess how we're sounding.

[1:47:01.88] So good to good to have some feedback.

[1:47:05.52] Cheers, Phil.

[1:47:06.28] Thanks everyone.

[1:47:07.52] Any other quick questions before we have pop?

[1:47:10.2] I don't want to take too much of ours time.

[1:47:12.2] Thanks.

[1:47:15.68] Looks like looks like not OK Well, maybe we can have a pop.

[1:47:19.88] Thank you so much, Allan.

[1:47:20.8] This was amazing.

[1:47:21.56] Again, really, really fun, very inspiring.

[1:47:24.12] Lots of information.

[1:47:25.88] Awesome.

[1:47:26.24] That's great.

[1:47:26.8] Thank, thank you so much for having me.

[1:47:28.56] And I'll see you guys on Twitter.

[1:47:30.88] Yep.

[1:47:31.36] Thank you.

[1:47:31.92] Bye, bye, bye everyone.