in this episode of Full Stack radio, I talkto West boss about getting things done in building your own tools. This is Full Stack Radio Episode 56 Everyone welcome to Full Stack Radio Episode 56 I'm your host, Adam, and today I'm welcoming back to the show West Boss, How's it going? Us? It's going great. Thank you for having me. So it's new. The Imanishi just put out a new ah JavaScript course, I think A day or two ago. Yeah, yesterday, actually, uh, less than 24 hours ago.

I've put out JavaScript 30 dot com, and it's ah, it's a free video course that does 30 challenges in just vanilla JavaScript. So it's really for people who are looking Teoh buff up on their on their buff up. I don't know if that thing that they're looking to buff up on ah on their JavaScript skill set without any compilers or Web pack or all this bullshit that were used awesome, and so has the response been to that? So far, it's going really well. Here. Let's give you a live tally. Ah javascript 30 dot com 25,389 people in the last 24 hours old, Absolutely insane. Yes, it's I think I had a nerve and the people are looking for this. That's awesome. And I saw you had it up on just like a little half gig digital Ocean droplet or something like that.

It's It's still going strong on half gig. Ah, I don't know a lot about surfers, but it's I've been running that thing for about three years now, and that's the only time I've really maxed it out. And I just moved a whole bunch of it was because all of the image requests I had them in, like an images folder. So I threw them up on Amazon and, ah, the spike went way down just cause of ah, serving up images, I guess takes a bit Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, uh,

today, when I was kind of hoping we could talk about it, just kind of diving into sort of all the things that you've got going on and how you sort of stay on top of everything, cause I think a lot of people look at you and they think, wow, like this guy gets a ton of stuff done. He's always putting out, you know, new courses. I'm sure you're always dealing with, like, customer support for, like, customers for your existing products. I know you also like, teach in the evenings and stuff like that.

So I would love to just kind of learn more. About what are all the different things that you have going on? And what are all the responsibilities that you have these days? Yeah. So, um, I don't do any client work anymore. I've been off of client work for about four or so months. Now I'm and I'm just doing full time both teaching. I teach in Toronto twice a week. Ah, at hacker you. And then also pretty much my full time job right now is just making courses supporting those courses. Ah, and marketing those courses, which is a big part of it as well.

So yeah, it seems like I always like the prefaces things with, like, everyone's like, how do you get so much done? And the reality is that I do almost everything I do in public. So the reason why my get hub is so green the reason why Ah, it seems like I get so much done is that I do everything in public. I'm allowed to share everything. Most people work a day job where they're not allowed to screenshot what they're working on or or ask specific questions where I am. So I just share a lot when I think therefore, it it makes it look like I do a lot. But I do have some ideas around productivity, though I do like to be extremely productive. Yeah, yeah.

So So what is your normal day look like? Like, how do you get started in the day? Yeah, Um, usually, what I'll do when I wake up is, ah, I'll start to work on something. I've gotten really good about email lately and we can talk about emails. I'm sure that's a huge thing, but usually what I'll do is I'll start cutting my teeth into something that I'm interested in working on, whether it's recording some videos, whether it's ah, working on my course platform, whether it's ah,

hunkering down on Facebook ads or or whatever it is, I try to get all that work done because there's always a bunch of riffraff that that can happen in the morning. but I find that that's sort of just pisses away. Ah, your entire day. So I try to either get something done, or I scheduled meeting right for 9 a.m. like I did that today. And what that allows me to do is just get those meetings or calls, if I have to. I try not to ever do calls, but if I do, then I'll do it right at 9 a.m. And get it over with. So I'm not, like, sort of sitting around waiting for, like,

a 10 15 call that ends up ending at 11 in the year morning. A shot? Yeah, totally makes sense. So you start today by trying to pick something important that you actually for sure want to get done that day and then kind of pushing off the sort of, you know, less important tasks that can kind of accidentally easily Philip your day until the rest of the day. So at least at the end of the day, if you've got to go back and look and see, like Okay, what did I get done today? You know for sure you we've got one meaningful thing done. Yeah, Yeah, exactly. I'll do.

And like the night before or the morning of will do Just sort of a brain dump into my to do app. It just things that need to happen. And then I'll sort of bubble them up and down and until I get a list, and then I just start chipping away. First things first off and I get something substantial done in the morning. Um, and then, you know, after lunch or so I like toe sort of just motor through some of the smaller stuff. Ah, and in that case, I actually do it backwards. I like to chip away at the smaller stuff first. Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned your to do app.

I know that in the past you've mentioned that you're a big fan of the sort of getting things done. Methodology. You might kind of going into a little bit more about what that is. And kind of what the important takeaways from that are for you. Yeah. So I'm by no means like getting things done, expert, but I've sort of taken some of the core ideas and apply them to myself. So, um, I guess the idea behind getting things done first is to get out of your head and into some sort of system. So, uh, we talk a lot about as programmers cognitive load. And there's there's huge cognitive load when you have things in your head that need to get done, and it starts to bother you so out of your head into your system.

So I use the things. It's a to do app. There's 1000 of amount. There doesn't matter which one you use. Um, I've been using things for so long, and what I like about it is that gives you projects, which you can then put those things those to do lists in the to do items into a list. Uh, and you can sort of categorize it for okay. Right now I'm working on Project Day, a project Be ah, and you started. Just just chip away. What else? Another thing.

If it takes less than two minutes, just do it. Eso, rather than making a list item and putting it, just do it now. Just do it really quickly, and sometimes that's all you need to just fire, often email or get something done really, really quickly. I'm trying to think about what other things from from g t d that I've done. I think really the big thing that I take away is just out of your head into your system. And then you have the ability to just look at it when you have a chunk of time and decipher what you can get finished in that time. Yeah, yeah, I started going through the getting things done book pretty recently, too.

And definitely the thing that stuck out the most to me and has been the most helpful is that idea of making sure that anything that kind of pops into your head that you know you need to take care of. Put it in your systems that you are done worrying about it and stressing about it all the time. And, you know, it's somewhere sort of permanent. That's kind of being held onto for you. It's sort of like crazy to me. I didn't realize how much of an impact that would have on just like my overall anxiety levels, because now I never really have to worry about like little things popping into my head that I have to take care of that I'm worried I might forget about as soon as I just write them down it just, like freeze up all this mental energy to, like, stop worrying that I'm going to forget about it. You know what I mean? It's been really, really, really helpful.

I used to do ist, which is like, a very similar app to I think what you use, but yeah, they're all basically the same. But I'm one's been working well for me. One thing that I've been finding myself doing with it, that has been kind of useful to that I'm kind of curious about what other people are doing is I find myself almost barely using a calendar any more. Like most of the stuff that I need to track that needs to happen on certain dates. I'm actually putting in my two doapp. So if I have, like a dentist appointment or anything like that, I'm actually putting it in my to do app instead of my calendar. Are you kind of using a combination of it to do list in a calendar, or do you use like states for things in your to do app? It'll yeah,

usually if I have something that is very time sensitive. I'll stick a date on it. Um, I don't really put things that need to get done in my calendar. I just put important, like meetings and stuff like that into my calendar. Um, but other than that, I really just try to get as much done. I am in the position where I don't have hard launch dates for things. Obviously, I'd like to get them sooner done sooner than later. But I don't really assign too many days. I just have ideas in my head. And when I should, when I should be launching things.

Yeah, yeah, something else. I actually wanted to talk to you about that I think you have. You know, some good ideas on from what I've seen is just kind of dealing with the email and stuff. So I recently launched a course that has been really successful in a lot of people have been checking it out, and in the first few days I was completely overwhelmed by email from people with questions or, you know, needing support and things like that, just at a scale that I've never really had to deal with. It anyway. Usually my email load is very light, you know, it's very manageable. But I imagine that you probably deal with the same thing at,

like, an even bigger scale on, like, you know, a much more regular basis. So I'd be curious to know kind of what your strategies are for trying to be as efficient about that. It's possible and sort of making it as systematic. It's possible. Yeah, So I think my major breakthrough was like, I've had an email problem for years and years and years and and maybe like six months a year ago, I really started to get a hang of of the email. Um, and it all boiled down to me was that I was just a bad decision maker. It wasn't that I didn't have the right email app or the tagging system or any of that stuff. That stuff definitely helps,

and I have all that in place. It's it's You have a decision problem where you open an email and you go. I'm not really sure this conference wants me to speak. I'm not really sure, or this person has a question about, Ah discount because they live in a country where it so I'm not really sure. And then I just close it and come back to it later. And I'm like, Ah, all respond later. So just deal with it immediately. You should have sort of some sort of system in place where, ah, when someone asks you a question or when someone needs to know something, you can make those decisions right away, even if there's like a high barrier to you,

making that decision like, will you come to this conference, figure it out, and and when you can make those decisions really quickly and you get better at it over time, then everything just becomes so much easier in Rue is still huge. Load off your shoulders because you don't have to really worry about that stuff. You don't have to go back to email and be like because what I used to do is that I would do my email until I hit a hard thing, and then I would just close it, and then I will come back and I would do my email until they hit that hard thing again, and then I would close it and then the emails. After that hard thing would never get answered because they just fall below right. So decision processes number one, uh, just being able to just make decisions in your life and then also just not giving a shit if you don't get to all of your emails like I get to most of them. But if I don't, I don't care like I'm trying my hardest.

But at the end of day, I'm not getting paid. Email is busy work for me, um, and and I'll try to get to as much of it as possible. But your email inbox should not be a to do list that the entire world has access to write. Like I I shouldn't have my day controlled by other people. So if I can't get to it, it's not a big deal. Get to it eventually at some point, and that's that's pretty much practicing. Make decisions, don't give a shit. And then there's there's tools we can talk about that as well, if you like. Yeah,

sure. I mean, ah, one of the things that I really started getting into Ah, to try and solve some of these problems I was running into was making heavy use of, like, text expander style snippets. I'm using Alfred, not actual text expander. But I know I've seen you talk about text expanded in the past. That sounds like you're sort of a power user in that respect. So I'd be interested in kind of knowing what sort of problems that you're solving with text expander and any sort of need tips and tricks that you have that you can share their two. Yeah. So, uh, so text expander for those who don't know,

Surprisingly, a lot of people are like, Oh, I never heard of that before. It's an app where you type in, like, a little piece of short code, and it will expand to a larger amount, but it's it's more than just snippets. Your book. Oh, that's built into OS X. Why don't use use that like you Can I use it? Obviously, four things like people ask for a student discount, and then I just right away hit them with the student discount.

Um, or people ask me all the time. What fun are using? What sublime text theme. Are you using all that stuff? So I have a little page on my website that that links II link out to us. So I just type uses and it expands to Hey, whatever. Um so that's like the very basics of it, obviously writing less text. But the other thing is, it just allows me to be more personal with people, because what you can do is you can copy their name and then your expand the snippet, and it will put their name into, like, Hey,

Bubba, blah. Thanks for the email. And a lot of people would think like, Oh, that's that's cheating That's not very honest. I think it's very honest, cause it allows you not to just shoot, offer really Ah, like aggressive, quick email, but allows you give the people the time of day by just saying the same thing that you've sent over and over again, toe the same people, so putting their name in it. Also, what I'll do is all hit the snippet,

and then I'll do like one little quick thing like, Hey, how's Utah? Her? It's beautiful or hello from Canada. I just add like, one little like thing that lets them know that because sometimes they send it within, like three seconds of getting the email and they're like, Are you a bought? And look no, it's It's me. So I added, like a little like and grads or whatever, like something personal about that. And it allows me to, like connect on that level with the people where I wouldn't be ableto possibly do that without it,

for sure makes love a sense. Eso When you're dealing with email, do you try and, like, bucket it all into a one time of day? Or do you try and deal with it as it comes in? Or what's your kind of general approach? So I'll have it open all day and I'll see everything come in. Um, but being able to not care is again. That's a really important skill because you look at your like stuff that comes in immediately, like a student discount that person is ready to buy. I'll send that back immediately because then they got the page open. They got the tab open and then they more more than likely always by immediately. But for and also like things that are quick questions, I have a snippet.

Aiken, send that back immediately, but for things that require decisions. I'll usually block out maybe once or twice a day, or I'll just blow through it all. Ah, adduce, send an archive. There's a little Gmail extension that you can turn on. Sending archive is the best because you send one archive it and then the next ones in right in your face. It never gives you a chance to escape because you send an archive, the next ones in your face and over and over and over again. And I don't know I can. I can take 45 minutes or so just the blow through my inbox, and then I, ah,

I wait for it another couple hours or so Cool. Do you have anything that you do to sort of try and avoid getting distracted when you're working? So you have more time to sort of stay focused and, you know, working deep on one particular thing. I know for me it's really easy to accidentally get caught up doing something that I know is like, kind of sort of important and needs to get done. But it's not really driving me towards may be getting the most important thing done that I wanted to get done that day. You have any thoughts around that at all? Yeah, there's that's that whole, like working in your business instead of working on your business. Like obviously, I could do some things that aren't really You have to do little that little small stuff every now and then. But like it's important to make sure is what I'm doing right now, making my customers happy,

which is in turn, going to make them buy more courses, Or is it allowing me to create more content? Let's really like my two big goals is to make people happy and make more content. So I like What do I do in terms of that? I'm just pretty good at focusing, and I think a lot of that has to do is just loving what I do. Because when I was doing client work and I didn't necessarily love it, like was that when I was in them in the groove and I was like loving like the Pedro's Building and the the Code I was writing like I could coat all day, but then you're like fixing floats or some shit like I, uh, not really that into this, it's so much easier to get, Ah, to get distracted. So I really don't have an answer for that because it's it's not very nice to say,

Well, just love what you do because that's not an answer. Sure, people, but ah, just just having a lot of fun with what I'm doing. I really like it. So it's sort sort of comes easily. Yeah, yeah, something that is always kind of lurking in the back of my head. That I'm always worried about. Catching up on is just like so of accounting crap, like, you know, as someone who is self employed.

I gotta keep track of all my expenses. I gotta make sure I track all my income that is coming in and make sure that I'm staying on top of you know, all that stuff. And it's something that I've been trying to get better ATS. But I find that it's really easy to waste a lot more time on that than I want to if I'm really trying to be on top of it and really trying to keep things organized. But it's annoying because it's one of those things that you know doesn't directly drive my business forward or, you know, make things better for any my customers. What is kind of your approach to dealing with sort of business owner responsibilities like that that don't have a direct impact on improving your business? Necessarily. So either hire it out where send it, shoebox it to your accountant and let them deal with it, Um, or so I do that mostly just get someone else to do it because I don't feel like doing it or batch it. Like e know, there's people that,

like take a photo of every single receipt that they have but like that will just eat away at my life. And I hate doing that, so I much Rather and I have a stack of them right here. I'd much rather just throw it all into a shoe box and then just deal with it at one time because I'll be in the zone. I'll know what I'm doing. I'll be really good at it, and that's what I do. Usually my wife and I once a year, we'll get a six pack of beer and we'll just blow through all of our receipts, and we just put them into categories and stuff like that, and it's really it really doesn't take that long. Like maybe every year we spend six hours doing it like three hours each or four hours each. And I bet that we would have spent more time if we tried to do it manually every single time. Right? Yeah, definitely makes them a sense. Just wanted to take a quick break to think one of this week's sponsors and that is Roll Bar. So here's what Paul, the founder of Circle C I had to say about one of their favorite features of world bar and how it helps them keep things running at

Circle C I before we is Robot Re is the difference. Air Attracting Service Onda We were shopping for a new one, and so we did. The story looked at the roll bar and all the competitors on it was really the feature set of roll bar that was super impressive, and that made us go there in particular, the people tracking, I think, is really, uh, it's not just a great feature, but it also kind of speaks our language. We're very focused on making sure that customers are happy and We want to make sure that we have, like an individual understanding off what happens to each customer. So the fact that we're able to click on DIS customers experiencing a lot of bugs on to be able to follow the progression of bugs that they've been experiencing is very important. If we get an email from a customer on, the customer says, you know your your website keeps glitchy on May Andi being able to go to Roll Bar added to say OK,

this individual customer this has had their experiencing decide otherwise. You have to give, like, an overall state of things and overall, things are looking good because if they weren't we would be dealing

with it. So I've been using Roll bar a lot lately on my SAS AB nit pick C I and loving it. If you want to check it out, you can head over a roll bar dot com slash full stack radio and you can use their bootstrap plan for free for 90 days. So check that out and thanks again to roll bar for sponsoring full stack radio. So when you're starting on a new project, how do you kind of get things started like, What's the first thing they usually dio I find for me? It's kind of very easy to procrastinate on things, especially right at the very beginning, when you kind of don't have the ball rolling. Yet you don't kind of have that momentum going because maybe it's a really big project and it's sort of intimidating. And, you know, even though you think it's gonna be fun and it's gonna be something that I really enjoy working on, sometimes it's still hard for whatever reason, toe actually get the damn thing started and get the momentum going.

So I'd be curious to know, like what your approach is to starting a new project like this JavaScript course that you just put out? Yeah. Um, I think what I do is ah, couple things. First of all, I have just things a whole bunch of little things started. So JavaScript 30. I've owned the domain name for over a year now and only just released it, and it's because I've been collecting little ideas and little snippets, and I just have this huge file on my computer full of ideas, and every time I have an ideal just dump it into their and then when it's time for me to work on a new course, already have sort of like that, that ground work where you don't have to sit down. So I just I wait for the inspiration to come to me,

and then I put it in a file, and then when it some to sit down and work on it, you already have that that hard part down, which is getting the inspiration and what not, Um and then and then once it's time to work on it. What I'll do is I just share a tone about I email my entire email list about what's coming next, and then, Ah, you should see how many tweets and emails I get from people been like, Hey, what's Is it ready yet? Is it ready yet? Is it ready yet and and seeing people so excited about it and like so looking forward to it is such a motivation to me because a I know they're gonna buy it or if it's free, they're going to really enjoy it. Um, and I don't have a beat.

I just It's just the really motivated to see people really looking forward to it? Yeah, for sure. So with the JavaScript course, did you kind of make up all the challenges and kind of get them already in advance and then go back and record all the videos? Or did you kind of record the videos as you are making them up? Or what was your kind of approach there? Yeah, I always. I always build what we're going to build first, and then I redo it a couple times over and I make sure that it's good code. Um, and then and then I go back and re recorded because something with, like in something like with the Reactor course where it's a huge project. Um, I need to make sure that it's fun,

that it looks good that you can break it down to be linear, that it's actually something that you'd use in real life. There's all these things to it, and I'm doing that right now with the note courses. Well, I'm just building an app, and I'm sort of just like piecing things together. And then once it's done, I can sort of like backwards back, step it into what videos would go and how it would, how it would look in a video Siri's as well as like how you can build it so that it you're not going to get to stuck at any given time. Yeah, cool. So I know for all, of course, is that you've put together so far.

You've kind of taken control of the entire kind of experience from start to finish rain like you built a your whole own course platform instead of hosting it somewhere else. You know, you wrote all your own payment code and all that stuff I'd be curious to new Ah, what this sort of decision making process was like to kind of get to deciding to do it all yourself instead of using some sort of existing platform and what some of the pros have been and what some of the cons have been. Yeah. Um, So the reason why I first did it is because my first product, which was a book and videos on sublime there was no like thing that out there at the time that would would help me do it. And I thought, OK, let me build something that would have full control over it. And there are things like like every single company like skill, share and you to me And in all these say, all these people, they have all contacted me, and they've all had calls with me be asking and ah,

the reason why I didn't do it is a it's. It's a poor experience for my students. I don't have full control over it, and at that point, I'm just another you Timmy course, or just another skill share course where your may you don't make a lot of money off of it. You don't give your your people a good experience like Ah, huge one for me was having the ability to speed up the video. Like a lot of these courses don't have a button, the speed of the video. And, like most developers, listen at least 1.25 acts. So I just wanted to have full control over that experience for the actual students taking the course. Um and then also I want access to my students as well, because if you're selling on another course platform,

you're just building the email list for them and and there's there's not a whole lot of reciprocity where people like you, they just like your course. They like, I don't know, you know me or whatever whatever it is that they're working on, and they'll just take another course there. So I think that I'm I'm able to bring more value and also show more perceived value by having my own course platform and sort of keeping it all in house for myself. Yeah. Has there been any like, challenges with that? Or has been more work than you were expecting in any way? Yeah, it's It's a pain in the ass to build your own thing. Like Like there's a reason why these cores platforms exists cause it's hard, right? Um,

so I have learned a lot along the way. Have had lots of crashes. Um, have had my databases go down. Ah, in the middle of the night, All that good stuff that comes along with it, right? But I know I think it's it's worth worth doing just because of some of the benefits that I've I've had. And it's also fun. Like, um, a lot of people ask me like, Oh, why don't you hire people out to to do X Y and Z. And why don't you use a course pa form?

And why don't you just, like, not write a single line of code and use a piers Appier for everything and just, like string together all these different services? And it's like, Well, I'm a developer and I love this stuff like it's fun for me. It's really fun for me to build a course platform in tow, to learn about all the stuff and to learn about how engine X falls over when you're serving up millions of images and and all this because I'm learning. And then I can turn around and teach this stuff in my courses, right? Because, like, nobody wants to buy a course from a guy who who just doesn't actually build stuff in the real world. So I have a couple of products of my own that I I run, and that's where I So I cut my teeth,

and that's where I learned all of the stuff is by actually doing it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for for the course that I just released, I ended up doing the same thing like build the whole platform myself, but for me, it was really just cause I couldn't find anything out there that really did everything the way that I wanted it to be done. Um, have you ever thought about making your course platform available for other people to use, like either as an open source thing or something like a SAS app or something that people pay to host themselves or anything like that? Yeah, I get emails all the time. People, either one a license it or they want to see the code and just to learn from it. And,

ah, I would love to, but it's like, so specific, like like all a lot of my course data. Like the list of videos. It's all just held in J. Sohn files and like there's no back end like if you change your email, I just open up my database manager and, like there is a bit of a back end, I guess, because you got a log in to see the course and stuff like that. But there's no Count Provo like there's just so much it's so specific to what I want to dio, and I can just imagine the nightmare of emails I would get being like, Hey, how about we support this?

And then it becomes like a huge thing where everybody's invested in their own feature, and I just want to keep building courses right now rather than build a course platform. I'm sure at one point it will become, like, really honed that I could make it a SAS or something like that. But ah, I'm really focused on making more content right now rather than building a product like that and having to deal with the the get hub issues in all that nightmare stuff. Yeah, for sure. Eso working on your own course platform. It sounds like you're still kind of constantly updating again and making tweaks and stuff like that. Do you have any sort of interesting stories to share around like either new things that you're adding to make it better for your customers or kind of things that you've added that have made things a lot easier for you are saved you a lot of time or anything like that? Yeah. Um, so I built in like a whole affiliate dashboard, which was kind of cool.

So people who refer Ah, my courses, they earn a 40% cut of the profits. Um, And then I build a whole affiliate dashboard for the people where they can see what they're selling when they're selling it. Where the links are coming from all that good stuff, which which really helped my sales. Because then people saw what worked. They used to just have to send him a PayPal every month. And they were like, Oh, I guess it worked. I guess it didn't. But this gives them real time feedback. Yeah, Yeah,

that was That was definitely worth it, cause because affiliates are really starting to work out for me, what else? I added. Ah to the video player itself. I've added just skip buttons, speed buttons of added captions, which is really cool. Ah, that I can pipe into the video player. Ah, auto playing. It's there's all kinds of some people are asked me for features all the time. Ah, to be added to it. So it's kind of fun to be ableto to continue on to build all of the school stuff.

So, um, one thing I did was for my sublime book. And then when I moved to react, I just duplicated the whole install and then I was running to at the same time, which is not a good idea. Um, even if you have, like, sub modules and get and stuff like that. So, uh, I moved over to, like, just having a platform. But I also like to run on multiple domains just cause I think people think I'm crazy for having a new domain for every product.

Um, I think it works well, but this thing now powers three of my courses and eventually will power all of my courses. So I just have this one big beast which will be able to power absolutely everything. So with free courses like the javascript courses that even running on the same course platform. Yeah. So, like, I had to modify it toe allow free courses because previously it was just paid courses. So there's a whole bunch of stuff with invoicing and check out. So I modified that Holecek outflow to allow for free courses. And now I can start to move all my free ones over to the same thing, which is kind of cool, because I think it gives you a bit of a better viewing experience than YouTube. Um and also people stop asking me if it's just YouTube videos. Tries me nuts.

As I spend three months on a course and upload it to YouTube willing. I ask him YouTube videos like Like I just slap them together. So we're like Thea, the affiliate system. They're talking Well, that's kind of an interesting thing to have to go ahead and build, I guess, because it has to kind of, you know, it's pretty complex by the sounds of it. You have to kind of integrate with a lot of different things. Eso How does that end up Actually working You dropping like a cookie on people's machines and stuff like that? Yeah, it's it's super simple, actually. Eso I give each of my affiliates a I am a euro.

It's like whatever the courses for sash friend Ford slash their affiliate code. So if you ever see any of those that's an affiliate link someone clicks that drops a cookie in the browser for two weeks, then it pushes him off to the homepage. Ah, which, if they then by it in any time in the next two weeks, Um, then the sale is tagged with their affiliate code. Ah, and then at the end of the month oh, are when they're viewing the course dashboard. I just query all of the purchases for anyone who has that affiliate code in the purchase. And then I can run reports against that and send off payments. Okay, Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Just wanted to take a minute to thank hired for sponsoring full stack radio. So searching for a new job can feel stressful, scary, time consuming. They got pushy recruiters trying to sell you on roles that you don't want or job boards that make you feel like you're throwing your resume into a black hole, never to be seen again. Sometimes you go through the whole interview process only to find it at the very end that the salary offer company culture doesn't match what you're looking for. So hired is the world's most intelligent talent matching platform for full time and contract opportunities and engineering, development, design, product management, data science, sales and marketing. The goal of hired is to make your job search faster, focused and stress free. It's instead of endlessly applying to companies and hoping for the best hired puts you in control of when and how you connect with compelling new opportunities.

So you just fill it. One simple application, and then top employers apply to hire you. So over a four week timeframe, you'll receive personalized interview requests with upfront salary information so you can make informed decisions about which opportunities to pursue over condensed timeline hired offers access toe more than 4000 innovative employers, including big companies like Facebook as well, a smaller emerging start ups and the size and type of company. You want to act with us totally up to you right now. Hired can help you find new opportunities and 17 major cities in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. And they keep all your information totally private. So there's no way that your current employer or past employer can see that you're looking for a new job. The best part of a hard is that it's completely free to you as the person who's looking to get hired, in fact, hired will actually pay you a $1000 hiring bonus.

If you take a job that was offered to through hired and for full stack radio listeners, they're actually doubling that offer to $2000. So if you're a full stack radio listener is looking for a new opportunity, you can use higher to look for a new job, and if you take one through hired, you'll get $2000. So if you're interested in more details about that, you can head over to www dot higher dot com slash full stack radio to find out more. Thanks, hired for sponsoring the podcast back to the show. Actually a topic that I've been talking about on the podcast with a few other people recently. It's kind of around the idea of just kind of marketing and marketing strategies and, um, for you as someone who makes courses for developers and stuff like that. You know, I think developers air kind of a particularly interesting market because I don't think they put up with a lot of bullshit when it comes to like,

kind of crappy, kind of Spain me seeming sales tactics and stuff like that. And honestly, when you're trying to learn about that stuff and trying to learn how to market your products and stuff, that's the sort of conventional wisdom that I find you run into a lot of time. It's stuff that I think doesn't really end up working that well when you're market, our developers and people who kind of have a low bullshit threshold. So I'm sort of curious about what sort of strategies that you've been using for yourself and what you find has worked and what hasn't worked for you. Yeah, there's there's like a really fine line between feeling ski easy because I listened to a lot of these podcasts, like AP Sumo and Neil Patel and all these things, and they're like but 1000 pop ups on the thing and and trick people and, like, do all this stuff and it works great. Like, of course,

it works great. But like developers aren't stupid and also like, it just doesn't make me feel good. But on the same side, you really do need to market your stuff like it's not a build it and they will come. It's it's build it and there's crickets like you really need to work on ah, on marketing it and selling it to people and making them feel that it's worth it. So I don't really My my thing is a being very genuine with people. Um, but but also not being afraid, Teoh Ah, to market a little toe to brag about how many people have signed up for the course. So that's one thing I do is I put the number of sales right on the page, which is some sometimes like weird because people like, Oh, this is how much you made And they have no idea about the costs and affiliates and all this stuff behind it.

But but also it's it's social proof and it shows people exactly ah, what they're doing. Reviews from people work really, really well, seeing like someone prominent in the industry either refute or just tweets of people who Ah, I like to keep those up to date where people are saying I'm having a great time in this course and then I'll throw that on the page. Ah, in there, Um, when you have a sale, a countdown timer because a lot of times the countdown timer some people don't like, But sometimes people just need a bit of a kick in the pants to actually commit to the course. Ah, in when I have, like a black Friday sale or launch sale like that, a timer is enough to be like,

Oh, better grab it now. And ah, that's really good. And then on the same note, I also offer 100% money back, so I don't in any way want toe pressure people into buying it. So if people bought it and then they realize it's not for them or they bought it and they get the credit card statement and there, like, I just can't afford this happy Teoh Happy to refund that because I don't wanna. I just want people toe learn and to get value of the course. And if they feel pressured into it, I don't want them toe to buy it or or to keep it. Yeah, for sure. Maybe a good thing to kind of wrap up on if there was someone who was may be interested in getting into this sort of training products based or wanted to,

you know, write a book or put together a screen cast Siri's or something like that. What sort of things would you recommend that they invest their time into in order to sort of increase their chances of success as much as possible? and make sure that people know about it and that people were interested in it and stuff like that. Yeah. Um, well, first content content content has to be good. You have to know how to explain things simply to people. So, like, spend your time on that. Spend your time learning how to teach, spend your time making good contact, cause that's number one. That's like 90% of it at the end of the day,

but then passed. That email is King. Ah, my email list is 20 times more powerful than my Twitter following Or Facebook or anything like that. That stuff is just it's Ah, email is king. I wish I had known about that a lot earlier. Um, so really just yeah, just just actually build something. A lot of people like toe send me emails and they love toe pontificate about what color blue there button should be when they buy when like they don't actually have anything to buy. Don't worry about a B testing. Don't worry about ah sales copy and all that stuff. That stuff is very important. But get your stuff done first and then and start toe. Don't worry about it.

So how did you go about, Like, building an audience the size of the audience that you have. Like, you have something like 80,000 followers on Twitter or something, and I have no idea how bigger email list probably is at this point. But, you know, what do you think contributed to getting someone in people, Teoh pay attention of the stuff that you're doing? Yeah. Um Well, first, I've been on Twitter for almost 10 years now, so I've been on it forever. Ah,

and I had some success in the early days because there was not a lot of developers on Twitter. But most of my my follows are coming from Ah, I Post tips on Twitter. Like every day or so. I just like saying like, here's a cool thing you could do with JavaScript or Deaf Tools, trick or CSS and And that will get retweeted a whole bunch of times. Ah, and then people will say, Oh, that's cool. And then they'll follow me from that. So just doing that for for three years straight, um has really helped me me break that 70,000 mark. Um and then once you hit that mark And then I also got verified on Twitter. Is it start?

It's so much easier now because people sell. There's 80,000 people following. I might as well like clearly. I'm missing out, right? So it's It's sort of like, How do you get Rachel? You start with a lot of money. And how do you get a lot of Twitter followers? Will you start with a lot of them? So, like that that 1st 0 to 100 in 100 to 1000 and 1000 to 10,000 is is so much harder than going from 50 to 80,000 but really just sharing content, giving people content where they are. So you notice in my tips. I don't link people to my blawg, and people think like Facebook and Twitter is just to drive people to their thing.

It's not like post content where they are posted. If they're on YouTube, put it on YouTube. If they're on Twitter, put it on Twitter and don't pressure them to leave because they're not going to Yeah, for sure makes a ton of sense. Yeah, it sounds like basically what's worked for you has just been to, like, be helpful, right? And help people. Yeah, and teach people suffering. And instead of wasting your time kind of getting sucked up into arguments on Twitter, actually,

you know, be some sort of positive influence there that's actually helping people with what they're trying to learn. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. So, uh, is there anything else you want to chat about or anything before we start wrapping things up? Um, I don't know. I think that's that's good for now. I know. Maybe I can come back if people want to hear more. Awesome. Yes. So,

what's kind of the best way for people to kind of follow what's going on with you and keep up with what you're doing? Yeah, So you can check me out at west boss dot com W e s B O s. There's a button on the side by for courses. If you're interested in taking one of my courses. Otherwise, I've got lots of good block posts. I'm on YouTube west Bossom on Twitter West. Boss, I'm on Facebook West, but I'm everywhere. So wherever you like to hang out, let's do it. Awesome. Well, thanks a ton for coming back on the show due to is awesome trying with you about this stuff.

Oh, any time. Thanks for having me. It's fun. If anyone is interested in, ah, show notes for this episode, they'll be at full stack radio dot com slash 56. If you can read a review of the show on iTunes, that's awesome. And ah, thanks to Roll Bar and hired for sponsoring the podcast as always. Thanks, everyone, See you next time.