Joel Hooks: the like two 25 pound ultra furry cats, just with the zoomies

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: and they go vertical too. They go up on your stuff, through your stuff,

Matt: Oh no.

Joel Hooks: over around

Matt: Yep.

Joel Hooks: in like just everywhere. And then the other thing about giant cats is you can't just have a normal sized litter box.

Matt: Mmm.

Joel Hooks: Giant cats require a giant sized litter box. So

Matt: Okay.

Joel Hooks: that we learned that also like giant. litter box, like

Matt: Bye

Joel Hooks: a

Matt: for

Joel Hooks: four

Matt: now.

Joel Hooks: foot thing that takes like the full 50 pound container of litter and, um, sometimes it's like, wow, is that a grown man in the litter box? No, that's just the, that's just the cats.

Matt: Wow. Yeah, we're not going quite that far.

Joel Hooks: We love them,

Matt: Yep.

Joel Hooks: but they're not without their drawbacks. They're like majestic, but it's also like, wow.

Matt: Mm hmm. You're literally

Joel Hooks: Why would we do that to ourselves?

Matt: keeping a leopard in the house.

Joel Hooks: Yeah,

Matt: Not two leopards.

Joel Hooks: I think if they're like a little bit bigger than they would, they'd probably just kill us.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: I mean, you

Matt: Okay,

Joel Hooks: know, they're cats,

Matt: nice.

Joel Hooks: right? Like cats

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: aren't, that's what they do

Matt: them

Joel Hooks: in the

Matt: less

Joel Hooks: wild,

Matt: nary.

Joel Hooks: is hunt and sleigh.

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: Total TypeScript. Yeah, this has

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: been

Matt: Are

Joel Hooks: a

Matt: we

Joel Hooks: journey.

Matt: doing it? Are we in?

Joel Hooks: Yeah, we're podcasting now.

Matt: podcasting.

Joel Hooks: Or just chatting for future reference, whether anybody is listening now or not is up to them, I suppose.

Matt: Yep. Yeah,

Joel Hooks: So

Matt: that has been a journey.

Joel Hooks: it really has. I remember because you were, I was like, oh, man. PoCock's going to make a TypeScript course, man, that sucks. Cause now we're not going to be able to make one because he's going to make the best one.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: And then, you know, I didn't, I try to like keep my enthusiasm and not chase people will be too thirsty about the whole thing. Um,

Matt: Mmm.

Joel Hooks: and, and cause still like for me, it's better if it's your idea, right? Like if you are like, Oh, well, what if we partnered up? That'd be awesome. And

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: I, you know, like there was that point where you started it and it was, I think it was advanced TypeScript at the time and you were working on your course and then we hung out briefly. I attribute it to the Smashburgers that was like the tipping point, but I was curious, like what, you know, like, what was it like, when were you like, man, I need, I need some, I need some, somebody to come in and I need some help or I need a partner or I need, I need some way to, to like actually get this thing done at what point was the, did you change

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: from doing the whole thing yourself and uh, Partnering

Matt: So

Joel Hooks: up.

Matt: I knew that you did this stuff, right? I knew that you were the egghead guy. I'd followed you for years, I think. We'd even done like a podcast before on, I think, X-State and

Joel Hooks: Mm-hmm.

Matt: X-State catalog and all that old stuff that I was doing a couple of years ago. And I knew, okay, this seems like a cool guy from afar, at least, you know, I saw the D&D reference in your bio. I thought, okay, this guy's got a vibe. And I knew you were extremely successful and competent. I knew you'd worked with Kent as well. And it was, yeah, it was in Utah that we ended up hanging out together with you and Jason Langsdorf making burgers. We didn't even chat that much I think, it

Joel Hooks: No,

Matt: was

Joel Hooks: I was

Matt: at

Joel Hooks: busy like cooking burgers

Matt: U...

Joel Hooks: for 35 people is non-trivial.

Matt: extremely non-trivial. But I got a vibe off you there as well that I liked and I hope maybe you got a vibe off me too. And we literally must have chatted for like five minutes or something. And then I... because I was... that was at RemixConf then and like the next week I went to JSConf in Budapest. And by the way, RemixConf was like my first conference I'd ever been to, you

Joel Hooks: Oh

Matt: know, because

Joel Hooks: nice.

Matt: I

Joel Hooks: That

Matt: got

Joel Hooks: was a good

Matt: into

Joel Hooks: one.

Matt: like tech Twitter in COVID, you know, and so I didn't go to any conferences really for a couple of years when I could have been. And then I went to there, and then I went to Budapest next week, and I was literally like lying on my bed, like knackered after like a full couple days of conferencing, you know, in Budapest. And that's where I text you from. Like I DM'd you from the bed in Budapest saying, do you want to make this course? And... I just got the sense that I needed some help and I needed some backup, I think. And I got the sense that, because I had an idea of everything that I could have been done and needed to be done in order to ship something like TT, and I just thought, okay, these guys have done it before. I just, let's start a conversation.

Joel Hooks: What, I mean, what parts of the, cause we've done a lot of this now, right? Like what, what parts of it at the time before you started were like, Oh man, that's going to be hard. And then like, how did that actually play out? Was it, was your prediction correct? Or was there things that you weren't even thinking about or what, what like aspects of the, the actual launch of total TypeScript from idea to reality were, were maybe surprising to you.

Matt: Okay well because I planned it out I knew that I would have to build a course platform because I knew I didn't want to just you know ship it onto Udemy or something I didn't want to use a I wanted something that was custom that was my own that I owned I knew that I would have to build that figure out some sort of CMS or structure for handling that figure out the authentication figure out all of this stuff you know all of the complexity that comes with that and I was I was quite looking forward to that part but I was also a bit scared of that part because there's so many hidden costs in doing something like that when you're thinking about design and thinking about just the whole, you know, setup for it and setting up provisioning all the services and all that stuff. And then I was thinking, you know, like, okay, how do I handle payments and handle refunds and handle... policies for refunds and how does that work? And the main thing in my head as well was pricing too. Like, where do I pitch this in terms of price? How do I know when it's working and when it's not? I would probably need to chat to someone like you who like knows about that stuff to get a sense for how I should price it because I knew, I mean, I tend to like, everyone I think, if you're not. sure about it would tend to pitch down in terms of pricing in terms of like... and also I was thinking about limiting scope as well just doing something small pushing it out there and just seeing what people thought.

Joel Hooks: That's smart, by the way.

Matt: Smart right?

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah and that's kind of what I would what I'd done with the content up to that point as well I was making lots of very short videos just to see what people thought of them and I mean it exploded and that's what led to all this so yeah and like continuing your question though like going from there to like how it actually met my expectations at launch i mean it was it was i think i described it to you as like being like a passenger in a formula one car right you it just felt like we were going so fast and so much was being done from your side as well that i felt like i wanted to keep up with that and sort of maintain the energy from my side so I mean, there's too much to talk about.

Joel Hooks: Yeah

Matt: How was it from your side? Like, what did you feel that you got? When I contacted you, what did you know that you could bring to the table?

Joel Hooks: So we've done this a lot and I've been building, you know, course platform, like egghead for 12 something years and then we started doing the custom platforms where they're all basically egghead, right? Like the ideas and the patterns and I'm one to like really drive an idea instead of like, oh, I wanna do something new and I used to be more enthusiastic about new things. Now I just like, I wanna make what we do really well. And we had come out of Like at the same time that you and I started talking, we were very much in the middle of testing accessibility, which was a complete platform rewrite. So like starting from scratch and doing all the stuff. But what was really nice is that we can look at egghead, right? Like we can look at what we built and we have the patterns and things like purchase power parity, or this is all the things that they're going to email us about and ask us for. us for things and instead answer those questions ahead of time. So like coming into it, I knew all that. So, I mean, when you reach out and I'd been watching and just, you know. Like you are a savvy individual, you understand social media and you understand wizards and there's an authenticity to like your approach to all of these things where it's not like, it's not a cash grab. It's not like a, a hobby for you. This is, you know, like this is what you do and this is what you're into. And you, you were sticking to a consistent message. And like, for me, it's like how do we're always like, all of this is a gamble for us in some ways where we compare it to a record label. and then there's some investment banking kind of crossover in what we do because it's expensive, right? Like we, to get into a launch of Total TypeScript, we're well into the six figures of... investment and you know, they don't all pay off. So sometimes we'll invest that much and, you know, a little fizzle or, or the creator will, will become disinterested. And that's, you know, that's always a gamble. And with you, I felt like that gamble was less and, you know, like when you said, Hey, do you, do you want to do this? And I'm like, I mean, I probably replied, fuck yeah. Cause that's my, my typical reply to that

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: sort of question. Cause I'm a, uh, like a yes. And kind of, kind of, kind of person.

Matt: The quote

Joel Hooks: Um,

Matt: was, an enthusiastic fuck yeah.

Joel Hooks: Oh, nice.

Matt: You literally described your own fuck yeah as enthusiastic.

Joel Hooks: Yeah, you got, you know, and that's what it was. Cause to me, I was like, oh yeah, fuck. Yeah. But when then it's, it's also like, you don't, you don't know me. I don't really know you. Um, you know, I, I. Definitely felt that same vibe thing. And I was like, Oh, I like this dude. When we, we met in Utah, you know, like it's just like your enthusiasm for American culture, um, was, it was hilarious, uh, to,

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: to witness. And I love that. Like somebody that, you know, like just, you know, America, fuck. Yeah. Like, like,

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: just like, you know, like here's a burger. Oh, fuck. Yeah. Burgers. Like, you know, like that. I love it. Um,

Matt: I'm quite a loud eater I think. I was hanging out with Chance then and like I was eating my burger sat next to Chance who works on the remix team and he was just like what are those sounds coming out of your mouth man I've never heard anything like this so yeah I think that's yeah that's inbuilt

Joel Hooks: So, so, and, you know, like speaking of small steps and that was, that was part of the thing, right? Like it's like, okay, Matt's, Matt's new. It's kind of unknown. We don't know our relationship. We don't know for sure. And then also how do I take that enthusiasm that I have and not scare the shit out of you and run you away with, with our kind of internal process, because I'm particular. Um, I am a particular sort of fella and like working with me isn't necessarily easy because it's, it's. It's my program. I want you to drive, but I want you to drive my program. So

Matt: Hmm

Joel Hooks: like, how, how do we get into that? And I think the first thing was we were like, well, let's do a workshop. Like we can sell tickets to a workshop and you know, if that doesn't work out, then like we're done, nobody loses, you know, like it could, we could just refund the tickets if it didn't work out at that level and nobody would

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: be too sad about it. So how do we do this? Build a relationship and, and kind of like get to a point where, where we build that trust and working relationship, which is always hard because it is, it is a relationship. especially if you want to take this into something that's long term, if you want to build an actual business out of this, then we have to decide, is this partnership right? Because those contracts and that relationship is something that you're diving into. Not that it's not escapable, it's just difficult once you're entrenched. What would you have charged? What did you have in your head?

Matt: I don't know, two figures probably.

Joel Hooks: Yeah, $99.

Matt: Like, yeah, $99. Yeah,

Joel Hooks: Get all the stuff and the recordings from the workshop.

Matt: yeah, everything, everything. Like, I had no idea, really. And it wasn't something that I was enjoying thinking about either. Like, I want to focus on the stuff that I enjoy thinking about, like the right structure for, you know, all the content and trying to put my head in, like, trying to think about the learner, all that stuff. But

Joel Hooks: directed at sick with graphs

Matt: I... Yeah, man, I love a DAG. Honestly, I need to... Should I explain that? Like,

Joel Hooks: No,

Matt: should we talk about

Joel Hooks: we

Matt: that?

Joel Hooks: have

Matt: Okay.

Joel Hooks: an article.

Matt: Oh yeah.

Joel Hooks: You like go to badass.dev. There's, there is an article and a video from Matt explaining what a, how you use directed acyclic graphs, you recorded that video, so it's there forever.

Matt: Cool,

Joel Hooks: Archived.

Matt: nice.

Joel Hooks: Uh, and I, I'm my, you know, it's like, what should we charge for this? Single day workshop, four hours, $1,200. No recordings. That's it. What's the, what'd you like, how did that land? When? What'd you think of that, like, when I

Matt: in

Joel Hooks: first...

Matt: terms of just thinking about the price.

Joel Hooks: Yeah, just like, okay, well, that doesn't... I mean, that's different, right? And like, two figures to four figures is kind of a leap.

Matt: Yes, I thought, let me actually try to remember what I thought, because I think I felt like this was, if this worked, it showed that you knew what you were doing, right? And if I was willing to try it out on faith, and because there wasn't a ton for me to lose, right? Like...

Joel Hooks: No. That was the intent.

Matt: Yeah, I mean, and also like if I publish this out to my Twitter, people say, he's charging, blah blah, however much for workshop. I had a sense that, you know, like... Dev is an extremely expensive business and it's extremely lucrative as well. And so I had a sense for what education budgets would be like and I got a feeling like, okay, if Joel's saying we can charge this and it pays off, then we really have something here. And so I thought of it, I think, as a test of where you were at in terms of your intuition. And after it paid off, we sold that out, I think, or nearly sold it out. I

Joel Hooks: It's

Matt: think

Joel Hooks: sold

Matt: we

Joel Hooks: out.

Matt: sold... Yeah, it sold out, yeah. Then I thought, okay, yeah, he knows what he's doing. And I was kind of happy and willing to delegate a lot of that thinking to you. I don't think I've questioned you on price, actually, ever. Not sure.

Joel Hooks: No, I question myself constantly. Um, and

Matt: Mmm.

Joel Hooks: like, cause it's always a debate, like you don't, you don't really know. And I'm, I'm just guessing, but like my, my thought is that, you know, like I understand TypeScript and there there's nothing really advanced out there. And you know, like this, this is, this is premium. And what's interesting to me, particularly about the subject matter, right? I'm thinking about the subject matter. There. There's frankly the addressable audience of TypeScript wizards that need the actual advanced TypeScript is fairly

Matt: Mm.

Joel Hooks: small, right? Like it is, it is not, this is not, this is not for newbies. This is not, you know, like break into the industry content. This is like, you know what you're doing and you know, like the pitch is there and you understand the value of what we're, we're going to talk about. And to make that actually viable business wise, you have to like, it has to be. higher priced right? I'd love to, you know, think about what, what does a, you know, a multi thousand dollar programming course look like. And that's not like a bootcamp, but it's actually worth it is like a puzzle for me. So it's like, let's, let's go, let's go up. Cause it's way easier to come down than it is to push up. Um, when you, when you start to like set, set the mindset and, and you know, like, what is this thing? And it did sell out, right? We, we offered a discount. So I think we actually, with the discounts and the sell out was, was somewhere in the $800 range when we launched. But a few people actually bought full price tickets also. And that's, you know, like that to me, and there is no clear indicator. And this is why I'm such a big proponent of doing workshops is because will people pay for this is the pitch, you know, there is this a viable product. We know that instantly. And, you know, the most you're out is, I mean, the, the lead up to a workshop and then the, like what goes into building one, as you know, is You know, that's, it's a lot of work. And especially if you're just like a one-off and you're not going to use it again, that's it's a ton, but like. You know, it is just, you know, and the workshop goes how it goes. You get your feedback. People, people show up. Um, they leave there. They're fairly forgiving. You can change in the moment. You can kind of riff, you know, like, so versus like sitting down and recording a bunch of videos, right? Like, Hey, Matt, let's sit down and record a bunch of videos. The risk level is, you know, like once you record it, it's like, you've chiseled it in stone and it's

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: a lot harder to produce. So like that, that is the reason for that. And I think before. We sold some tickets and both of us were like, oh yeah, it's on. Like we're building the whole thing. And what

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: are we going to call this at that point?

Matt: I think we sold two tickets like in the first two minutes that we launched it or something.

Joel Hooks: Yeah,

Matt: Like it was

Joel Hooks: like

Matt: it

Joel Hooks: instantly.

Matt: was instant. Yeah.

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: Bam. Okay. Cool. We're on. I think then like the one thing that, yeah, to carry on with you, like in terms of the amount of risk that was there, I knew that even if we did the workshop and the workshop wasn't that successful, I still, someone was asking me to make all of this content which I could then, you know, I could have repackaged those exercises as tutorials or YouTube videos or something, there was something that I could have done with that content that was not that workshop, you know. So it felt risk-free to me, to be honest.

Joel Hooks: Yeah. And that's the, you know, it's like the, I, I internally often refer to it as a, a set of hurdles. Um,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: I like to set a series of hurdles and I'm maybe sometimes a little cheeky, maybe sometimes a little vague and we'll, we'll set hurdles for folks to, to gauge the, you know, are they going to jump the hurdle? Are they going to keep running? Are they going to like stay in the race? Um, And that's part of the risk, right? Like risk management and just understanding and building that and then also kind of like setting the tone and setting the cadence

Matt: Hmm

Joel Hooks: for the working relationship. And

Matt: Cuz

Joel Hooks: like you mentioned

Matt: we

Joel Hooks: it earlier that like the The pace, right? Like the, where you're matching energy. That's a big thing. And I'm always like with the team, I'm like, look, we're, we're playing tennis. Like we hit the ball and if it's on their side of the court and they don't hit it back, we don't need to keep hitting the ball at them, right? Like we don't need

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: to have them hunkering down with tennis balls, beating them. Like we can encourage them to hit it back or whatever, but until, you know, like, and what's that pace. And if we're going back and forth and somebody is, is really, you know, like we're, we're up there, you know, like, like lobbying back, lobbing it back and that's the pace and we set that and we keep that and that's, you know, is it on us right now? Is it on them? Like who, who's next? And let's keep hitting it back and forth and get that

Matt: Hmm

Joel Hooks: pace to a point where both, both folks are comfortable and getting the ball back and forth. But the back and forth is, I mean, critical in terms of what we're up to.

Matt: definitely. And there was two, like when I was working on that first workshop with you guys, like I did two things like after we met in Utah and after we decided to start together, which was I decided to do two days a week with you guys and then I also got a job

Joel Hooks: Oh yeah,

Matt: three

Joel Hooks: that's

Matt: days

Joel Hooks: right.

Matt: a week

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: at Versel, so which is something you know like that's a job that I think a lot of people would go

Joel Hooks: That's

Matt: wow

Joel Hooks: a dope

Matt: that's...

Joel Hooks: ass job, honestly.

Matt: fantastic job,

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: yeah, you've absolutely landed one, you're in, you're in for life. And so I started there on a three month contract, which is unusual, because usually they take people on full time and I was doing three days a week and loving it as well, amazing team, amazing place to work. And it was the workshop, like around the time that we had the workshop, we actually met in person too for the first time and actually got to spend some proper time together at NextConf in I think October or something.

Joel Hooks: Oh yeah, that was fun.

Matt: and went for sushi, which is incredible. And I knew then that, okay, I'm probably not gonna renew this Versel contract. I'm gonna give up my job at Versel to go and work full time essentially with this guy and produce this course and make it as good as we can. And now that I think is probably the biggest vote of confidence. So, I'm gonna go ahead and do that.

Joel Hooks: Oh, absolutely. Like when you're like, I'm, you know, cause I would, I would assume it could go either way at that point, right? Like, cause you're, you're weighing your life and your livelihood and your, your family and your, you know, household versus like, I can do this thing and go all in on, on with this guy or, you know, like the full, full weight of, of the Versailles triangle, right? Which is, is a, is a, is a powerful thing. And it is, you know, one of the most genius blue chip teams that exists in our space. and they do really cool stuff. So, you know, like that, that in and of itself, it was an interesting decision, which I think, you know, like you make that decision. At that point we go, we were in full production mode doing more workshops, like, like thinking the thing, going like full total TypeScript,

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: not just, you know, not just some TypeScript, but total TypeScript. What is total TypeScript anyway? Like what do you think of when you think of like the totality of TypeScript?

Matt: Hmm

Joel Hooks: Because I don't feel like we're there yet.

Matt: no I agree. So when I was first thinking about branding this thing we I landed on advanced TypeScript and I think what I wanted to do was I wanted to make it more appealing to a broader range of people than advanced TypeScript but it's funny because the type of content that I produce tends to be content that's aimed at making people go exploding head emoji, right?

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: And I really enjoy making that type of content and that type of content positions me as someone who knows about advanced topics. And so it makes sense. Okay, you go to I think this is a perception that still is out there. You go to Matt if you want to level up your TypeScript to the next level. And so it makes sense that our, and also there was no, as you said, there's no actual offerings out there, proper in-depth courses for advanced TypeScript for.

Joel Hooks: From legit, from legit wizards too, not just people that are reading the docs and doing a little studying, right?

Matt: Yeah,

Joel Hooks: You've

Matt: throwing

Joel Hooks: actually done

Matt: stuff together.

Joel Hooks: the stuff and

Matt: Exactly,

Joel Hooks: that makes

Matt: yeah.

Joel Hooks: a huge difference.

Matt: And I know a lot of people too. I was part of the community of people who knew the stuff. And so I knew that if I had a question that I couldn't answer, I could go to the wizards and actually get an answer from them that I would be able to understand and synthesize and teach. And knowing that, like, yeah, your question was, where do I see total TypeScript though? I don't think we're there yet because I feel like the current iteration of total TypeScript is really top of intermediate to advanced plus.

Joel Hooks: Mm-hmm.

Matt: There's stuff in there that is really there to just sort of test you in terms of test your understanding of TypeScript in the compiler. And I think that people who take the course, I do, I mean, I really think they're ready for anything that like the TypeScript can, they're at wizard

Joel Hooks: Yeah,

Matt: level at that point.

Joel Hooks: you got it at that point, I think.

Matt: Yeah, like there's nowhere else for you to go really, but I don't see it as, and I think...

Joel Hooks: Haskell.

Matt: Haskell, yeah, right, right. Yeah.

Joel Hooks: I don't know.

Matt: But like, I don't think I see it as a training course yet, which is weird. So you might think, okay, yeah, you take this course and you sort of like, I don't think it, where am I trying to go with this? I don't think of it yet as a course that you take from beginner all the way to advanced. I think if you threw a beginner at it, we've got a beginner's tutorial, but I don't think the beginner's tutorial properly prepares you for the places that total TypeScript takes you. So I want to extend it so that total TypeScript actually becomes total and becomes like a fully fledged, okay, you wanna learn TypeScript? Take this course. This course will teach you everything you need to know. And you can chop off the advanced stuff if you don't need it, or if you feel like you don't need the basic stuff, you can just go straight to the advanced. Like, that's where I want it to be.

Joel Hooks: So one thing that's interesting to me is... I actually owned launch cocaine.com because of the intense high that you get from, uh, launching a product like launch day is really exciting. It gives you a lot of energy. Um, I never did anything with the site. It's not appropriate. Um, but what, what you also get on the other side of that is a deflation, right? Like there is definitely like you get it, get a peak and then, you know, like you get the, the praise, you get those endorphins, you get, you know, money, you get all this, this kind of thing that comes with, with launching and then afterwards and we did a pre-release and I'm wondering, you know, like how did you internally, did, did you feel some of that? Like after we did this pre-release and there was some success, like we, you know, like we had some, we did numbers on the

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: pre-release and, and you know, like what, so there was a high there for sure. But what about the other side of that? Like how did you like maintain motivation to get through and actually get this done?

Matt: Yeah, it was immediate actually. Like I sort of had like two nights of like sleepless nights where I would, I have the like the Stripe dashboard on my phone so I was checking the Stripe dashboard and seeing you know what was coming through and it was absolutely crazy. And then I think a lot of my motivation comes from the idea of can we make this work? And as soon as I understood, oh, it's working, then oddly the motivation just went. and I didn't know quite where it was coming from because I got the feeling that okay this is fantastic, this is working, this is dreams coming true territory here but then there was this other emotion as well which was kind of like oh man I like where does my... I lost the connection between me actually typing the keys and the motivation to do any work I felt a sort of alienation from my actual work which is so strange given the circumstances. My total time script for me has been a life changing setup because it's changed my personal finances. I am now, I have a totally different relationship to money than I had before. And it's knowing that I was sort of continuing on that path and I still had to push this boulder up the hill, it was sort of... like I felt disconnected and I felt very strange and so I have recovered that and of course the second launch like when we actually launched the thing happened again you know it happened again with the react one that we did recently and it really is I think probably you're right probably it's the intense high and then the intense high actually just kind of like pulling yourself back

Joel Hooks: Well, in the first one in particular, you know, it's like that first one's like, and then,

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: you know, like the next one, by the time, and I'm assuming this, but, you know, like, but by the time we release the react module, which also did very well and, and particularly for its scope,

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: like, you know, you're not, I don't know about you, but like, I'm, I'm not going to necessarily feel that same, same elation that I felt with the, with the first go round.

Matt: Sorry, I missed that last question. There was something happened to it. Internet.

Joel Hooks: Yeah. So, so there's, you know, like the adulation that you get with the first one, when we did the core volume, we do the pre-release and you see that, oh, wow, this works, that's a, that's a very high high, but when we do, you know, something of smaller scope or even just continue to do the same thing. That level of elation isn't necessarily the same. I feel like maybe the high is a little bit lower and the trough afterwards also is not as severe. I don't

Matt: Mm.

Joel Hooks: know. What was your experience after the React module, which at this point in time is still just a pre-release, but we're pretty close to doing that. So we did a pre-release of that one. And I'm wondering how does that compare to that first pre-release that we did of the core volume?

Matt: Yeah, you're right. So if the first one felt like I was a passenger in a Formula One car, this sort of felt like I was on the bus, you know, like,

Joel Hooks: Cooper Mini.

Matt: so, yeah, exactly. Smart car. I don't know if you have smart cars in the US,

Joel Hooks: Yeah,

Matt: but

Joel Hooks: we

Matt: we

Joel Hooks: have

Matt: have

Joel Hooks: some

Matt: them here.

Joel Hooks: of those.

Matt: They're terrible. So it felt more routine, as you say. Yeah. And but there's still the comparable drop off in motivation afterwards. It's really, really strange. And I think, I don't know. I mean, I wonder whether there's a sense of like the remoteness of our working relationship, like just because we're in you know different time zones and different areas and stuff. I wonder whether that's a contributing factor but you're probably right. I mean it's just it's something I still haven't figured out for myself yet because I still get fluctuations in motivation you know week by week. I'm in a real high at the moment oddly enough like I've been really working hard this week but I wonder if that's something that you notice as well because I noticed that like You asked on Twitter, like, you know, what questions should I ask Matt and all that stuff? And, and like someone asked about the details of our working relationship. Our working relationship is extremely async, right? We, it's not like we do daily calls or standups or anything like that.

Joel Hooks: Yeah, who's?

Matt: We really just chat when we need to. And like sometimes like three weeks will go by and we haven't even like typed a message to each other or something, which I actually love because I've really, I mean, I really hate, uh, feeling like my time is being wasted or feeling like I'm doing pointless routines or things like

Joel Hooks: same.

Matt: that and you're exactly the same. But I wonder whether there's something there that because we're not actually in the same office or going for drinks afterwards or anything like that, maybe that would help lessen the deflation. I don't know. It's something I'm still puzzling with.

Joel Hooks: It absolutely would. And I mean, the problem there is that the flight from Portland to London is pretty brutal

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: either direction, right? So I would hang out with you on a regular basis if we could. But obviously the geography is the...

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: And it is true. It's like this... There's just something about it. Like we can hang out and we can do this and it's fine. Um, but it's just not the same, right? Like that, that ability to just go out and, and cheers and, and have a beer and then go back to our respective homes and get back to work is such a, such a nice thing, uh, when you, I've been, you know, it's like, I'm I'm actually scheming about how we can get over there and come visit. So expect

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: us to show up and we can go down to the, I would love to like go to, I don't think I've ever been to a proper English pub and had a pint. So like that I've never done that. I've been to England a few times, but haven't done that. So you got to do

Matt: Oh

Joel Hooks: that.

Matt: man, we'll take some ball games to the pub.

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: We'll have a roast. You're gonna love it. Oh,

Joel Hooks: I will

Matt: you're gonna

Joel Hooks: love

Matt: love

Joel Hooks: it.

Matt: it.

Joel Hooks: I know I'll love it. Um, yeah. So this is, this is kind of getting down to some of the brass tacks about, uh, information architecture and packaging of

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: products. So one of the things that I wanted to do and I really your total type script was the first time I pushed this is you mentioned, you know, like I. I have a little D&D reference in my, my bios around the internet. And I love D&D. And one of the things that I'm interested in from a business standpoint is there's this website called D&D Beyond and D&D Beyond is Wizards of the Coast. Um, their digital offering where you can, you know, like they have all of their books. And one of the things about Dungeons and Dragons, and it's always been like this is you get the core rule books. You'd have the player's manual, you'd have the Dungeon Master's guide, and you'd have the monster manuals, and then you can buy adventures. And, and to me, I was like, wow. what if we, and they have a really interesting marketplace and I wanted to, I wanted to try that with, um, you know, with a product, like with a educational product where we're not doing that typical one, two, three, like low, medium, high tiers. And then, you know, this is the product, this is it. I'm like, now what if we could make something that we could like. expand on and push down the road. And, and what we came up with was this idea of volumes and, you know, like doing a core volume, which is effectively three modules and it's on the advanced side, and I was wondering, you know, it is a little different, I think, than how stuff is packaged and, you know, like what, how has that worked out so far in terms of, of like what you've seen for learners and, you know, like, is, is that working and, and. Do you think that idea is going to pan out and we're going to be able to expand that and add, add more. more adventure modules. It's only coincidental that we also kind of have a D&D theme for the graph. It's not coincidental. I don't think

Matt: It's not coincidental,

Joel Hooks: it all ties together.

Matt: no, no. Come on, come on, come on. Yeah, I've been into magic for like eight years at this point, so it's definitely not coincidental. I think, like, I think a lot of the way I feel about Total TypeScript kind of is influenced by this concept of it that I have in my head that has not yet been realized. So I think because we're making... high quality purchase wants products, it lets us be really careful with what we add, because if we're doing like a monthly subscription or something to total typescript, we just need to keep adding stuff. But this idea of the modules is like, it just instantly, there's instantly like 10 ideas that come to my head, like doing it with node, doing it with view, doing it with svelte, like modules let us do these integrations because what we're really trying to do with TT is to handle core stuff, to handle just this is a language right

Joel Hooks: Mm-hmm.

Matt: and in order to be able to use this language you need to be able to integrate it with different things but the core idea of TT, the actual center point of it, is basically about the language. It doesn't really teach you how to integrate it with React or integrate it with this or integrate it with that and so and even like you know TRPC or libraries like Zod or things like that and so the idea that you've got these adventure modules and I would sort of include the... tutorials in that as well. Tutorials

Joel Hooks: Sure.

Matt: are a space that we can experiment with there, like free modules essentially, or you know small modules. And what it means is there's just a lot of scope to extend in lots of different directions and those extensions don't need to really be linked at all. You know we could make a React one and then we could make a

Joel Hooks: Mm-hmm.

Matt: with that in the future. And it feels like we haven't, like it's nice to have somewhere to direct people. Like if you want the total time-stripped experience, start with this, you know. Like this is almost like the one you want if you just want to learn from the ground up. But then we get the opportunity to extend it in several directions in the future, I think. And it feels like we haven't quite got to, like where were we? where we could get to yet. In the future, if we have like three adventure modules, then it feels more like a decision that the learner is making. And actually, I mean, the React module did really well. Right?

Joel Hooks: Yeah, people like it and it's needed. Like they ask for it. So, you know, it's like, like that's something that's where they go to. And somebody's like, hey, you're gonna make something on this, whatever my personal preferred thing is. And it's like, I mean, you're the literally the only person that's asked, but you know, like maybe like we can, that's the point, right? Like there is less risk and you could make something short and sweet to address some aspect of the market or help people in a certain, you know, that are doing a certain type of work.

Matt: And if it's also if the market moves in a different direction if solid takes off Then we can just ship something to do with solid, you know, and it means that the core volume is still the core volume I don't think TypeScript is going anywhere in terms of if we're thinking like risks for total TypeScript Like TypeScript is just still on a massive boom So being able to adapt in a nice way is useful

Joel Hooks: And part of the idea was, you know, like literally not everybody, like some people react makes them very super angry. Um, and, and like they wake up and curse react on the internet, uh, because of

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: how angry it makes them and they, they write new frameworks or adopt some obscure framework of choice, so you can still learn TypeScript and it doesn't have to have any react in it. And that was, you know, it's like, and then I also think it's like this idea of you can build your own learning experience. All of this is modular. And even in the core volume, it's composed of three. modules that can be split out and you can, you know, they all stand alone and can be, this was a core idea of a get actually, like I wanted everything. There's no learning paths on a kid and people are

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: always like, where's my learning paths? And I was like, huh, we don't do it like that. Um, you know, it's like, I want everything, you know, it's like pick and choose and, and. A lot of people do

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: appreciate paths and packaging it like that and saying, work through it this way. And we've talked about that where it's like, is there an intended path? And you're like, Oh, actually, then people should probably go through it in order if they're going to

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: do that. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, maybe, maybe they should. Um,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: who am I to be the boss of them? Uh, yeah, you know, like, but people do appreciate that. So it's like a balance of, of here's the, here's, here's some guidance, but you're, you're an adult, you're smart. Um, if you are trying to learn advanced TypeScript concepts, you probably have a, pretty good grasp on, uh, complex learning for yourself, whatever that may be. So it's a,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: you know, it's like a, you know, how do, how do we, how do we provide that guidance in an opt-in sort of way, I think is ultimately what's going for.

Matt: Yeah, and also with the core volume, the way it's split into three is interesting because I think we had to be quite careful in terms of packaging it to make sure that they're all distinct from each other, like type transformations being distinct from generics, because I think that's clear to most people, there is a bit of overlap, and then advanced patterns being the sort of bag that we just put all the cool stuff in

Joel Hooks: Mm-hmm.

Matt: basically. And so that's been a challenge as well, I think.

Joel Hooks: How do you like going forward, like you've been typecast as the TypeScript wizard at this point. And you know, like, how does that feel? Like, what do you, you know, like, are you, do you still see that, you know, like, is that fine, right? Like, I'm the TypeScript guy, that's

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: me. Or, you know, like sometimes you're like, man, I just, you know, I wanna do something different, you know, like, how does

Matt: Yeah,

Joel Hooks: that work for you?

Matt: I'm just really glad I'm not the JS.Guy basically. Like, I

Joel Hooks: That's

Matt: think

Joel Hooks: a rough job.

Matt: that's a rough job.

Joel Hooks: He's there.

Matt: He doesn't even want to be the JS.Guy

Joel Hooks: Yeah, like

Matt: unfortunately.

Joel Hooks: quit. Like, yeah, it'll be like, don't

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: add so-and-so because, you know, like I'm mentioning JS docs, you don't need to bring them into the convo.

Matt: please stop it, he hates it, yeah. But like, so I like it, I think. I think it has a shelf life for me. Like, we had a conversation about this, I think, like how long do you wanna be the TypeScript guy? I think I look at someone like Kent, who has been the React guy, and then he became, I can't remember actually what. sequence it was but like the react guy then he was the testing guy and now he's the remix guy and he's able to do that because fundamentally he's just a really good teacher of things so I feel like I can if Kent's done it then and people go okay he's just a good teacher I can learn stuff from him then if I want to pivot to something else in the future I I just don't feel yet that I've hit the ceiling on TypeScript.

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: TypeScript is massive. It's massive. And I think in some ways it's bigger than even React is. And bigger than even like... Honestly, it might even be bigger than like TDD is just in terms of like the JavaScript market and the web dev market because even...

Joel Hooks: A total addressable market, right? Like you have

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: a, it's huge.

Matt: I've lucked into this position where people think of me as someone like I get tagged on every time's question on Twitter which is honestly it's amazing it's how did that happen? um

Joel Hooks: Well, then you're in there happy to help too, which is, I mean, that's the, that's the secret sauce is being energetic and legit, authentically happy to, to come in and talk about this, this subject, not like, Oh my God,

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: like you're, you're tagging me again, like quit fucking tagging me about TypeScript. Like, it's not like that, right? Like, you're like, yeah,

Matt: Exactly.

Joel Hooks: like, like bring it, bring it.

Matt: Yeah, bring it. Because I mean, I always learn something, you know, from the, I genuinely always learn something or even if it's something I've, like a question I've answered 10 times, I know that, okay, I can turn that, there's a challenge there, right? There's something that isn't being answered by Google or chat GPT or something like that. There's something actually that I can contribute into the realm of TypeScript learning. And it just doesn't feel like I'm finished yet, you know, like there's just so much more to do. I've got a huge list of content I wanna make and stuff I wanna build. There's so many formats I haven't really experimented with yet. There's so much total time script stuff to do. Like I imagine at some point I'll get bored when I feel like, okay, I've done this for you know, three years, let's say, and I've got this huge backlog of content behind me, but it just doesn't feel like I'm there yet. It still feels like I've not, I've contributed maybe 20% of all the stuff I could. There's still so much more to do. and TypeScript is changing all the time as well. So they release new minor versions which always has new stuff in every three months or so. There's stuff like TC39 is also really interesting to me, I've sort of pivoted into like being the guy who reports on TC39 on YouTube which is really interesting and been

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: very successful. So yeah there's loads to do. So I'm not finished with being the TS guy yet.

Joel Hooks: One of the things that I see people on Twitter and they're like, Oh, I'm building my own course platform and my like internal reaction is ha ha. Good luck with your inbox because

Matt: Hmm

Joel Hooks: I think what people don't realize is the support. that becomes after, right? Like the, what comes after. And I, one of the interesting things that I've enjoyed is you run an active discord, you know, like it's your personal discord, but it's centered around TypeScript and it's for TypeScript and that's the conversation. And on our side, we get emails, right? Like, and I try to handle all of the technical support, like the stuff that I feel like would just weigh you down if you would make you sad on a daily basis.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: It doesn't, makes me sad on a daily basis, but in the like, Oh, I got to figure out how to make them stop emailing me sense. Um, but then we'll get the, we'll get the code questions or comments about, you know, like TypeScript stuff and I pitch it over to discord. I'm like, I'm not, you know, like, I'm not trying to drive you into the inbox. Like go ask in discord. And I'm wondering how,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: how has that been? And like, how do you think about like the support aspect of, of this? And, and, um, how has it worked out so far?

Matt: It's not something that I thought about like when I was building. advanced TypeScript before I met you guys and it was something that I continued to not think about kind of while we were doing this and it's something that I haven't had to think about because it's just been handled. So sometimes people will like ping in the discord and they'll say you know can I get a refund or whatever or blah and I say you know just email team at total TypeScript and I just get to chuck it over the wall which feels amazing because when I was a... so I used to be a teacher and I used to handle you know singing lessons and like and half of my job was emails right you know just emailing people back and forth about calendars and this was you know before Calendly before uh all these automated services

Joel Hooks: brutal.

Matt: yeah just like emails and I and I got so sick of it I was a singing teacher for six years and I was just misery basically and so just having that handled and handled well and handled in a way that I know I don't even need to check really like I think I probably should check that email address more often you know because you guys leave me comments in there and I but I just haven't had to which just feels amazing because it means I can just take all these when I want to it's just continuing everlasting support is incredible

Joel Hooks: How many times have you had to feel complaints about my personal support style?

Matt: Uh... I think like once maybe?

Joel Hooks: Oh, that's not bad.

Matt: That's not bad, yeah yeah.

Joel Hooks: Yeah. I'll give them the business every now and then if they ask, like it's like, like seriously, like, yeah. And then I'm also a little terse. Like I'm like, I just the facts. And sometimes people would be like, you're being too terse. And I'm like, I'll just reply to that. Tercely. Like, what do you want? Like, I'm

Matt: way

Joel Hooks: not

Matt: to

Joel Hooks: here

Matt: do it

Joel Hooks: to.

Matt: is just to get even more terse and terse and terse

Joel Hooks: Like I

Matt: and

Joel Hooks: could,

Matt: terse.

Joel Hooks: I could go over to chat GPT and say, turn my terse response into something that, that somebody that needs a flowery language will appreciate.

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: Um, I have done that actually in the past. I'm like,

Matt: Okay,

Joel Hooks: just

Matt: nice.

Joel Hooks: as a, mostly that's just me like taking the piss at that point. If I'm over there like doing that to them. But

Matt: Yeah, and I think like all of this just comes down to like I'm just happy to delegate that stuff to you Like I don't I don't do not care if I have to field like a thousand complaints about the way you guys do it Because I just I trust that you've done it before and you know what's going on.

Joel Hooks: Well,

Matt: So

Joel Hooks: one is, is I'm like, yeah, that's great. I'm like, that's,

Matt: Hahaha

Joel Hooks: that's pretty good for me. Cause it is, it's literally me that night. I have like fully like personally managed the TypeScript, total TypeScript support inbox and I do, and it's every day and I go in there and.

Matt: Damn,

Joel Hooks: one

Matt: I

Joel Hooks: of

Matt: didn't

Joel Hooks: my

Matt: know that.

Joel Hooks: like challenges, one of my kind of KPIs is how few emails can I get in that inbox and there's always going to be a few, but it's like, can you change my emails? Like, how do I get them to stop asking me to

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: change their email? How do I, you know, um, can I get a refund? We have, we've had very low refunds, uh, as far as that goes, just statistically speaking, your refunds are excellent. And that's a really, really good sign of the product and the messaging and they, you know, like, how do you prevent people from sending you emails? Will you give clear copy? And

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: let them know exactly what you're gonna get and then give them a taste of what they're gonna get To you know like prevent them from being surprised and you know You'll still get the occasional one where somebody on day 29 of your 30 day money-back guarantee will email you saying they weren't satisfied with the product sure guy

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: I Just happily give it to him and

Matt: Yeah, yeah,

Joel Hooks: go

Matt: yeah.

Joel Hooks: about to go about the business

Matt: Got the certificate on the LinkedIn and everything. Yeah, yeah, but

Joel Hooks: Yeah,

Matt: not happy.

Joel Hooks: just, it's fine. Like they got the certificate on LinkedIn, but was not satisfied with the product overall.

Matt: Okay, sure.

Joel Hooks: Yeah, support is one of those things though. I think when you sit down, it's like, I'm gonna do a course and I'm gonna self-publish. It's like a, I've got like a deep, long standing relationship with the support inbox. And

Matt: Mm-hmm

Joel Hooks: it's just, it's like not obvious, like the amount of volume you have to deal with afterwards.

Matt: Hmm. Well, and to me, it also just means like the income that I earn from the course now truly feels like passive income. Honestly, it's because I know that you guys just have it. So it just feels like something that I mean, I'm just freed up to focus on what I want to focus on, which is more which is the future. You know, you guys basically handle the present and I handle where we're going, which is amazing.

Joel Hooks: Do you think we'll, um, get to the point where one of the, one of my strategies to kind of roll that back for when Matt's had enough TypeScript, right? Cause I, that's going to happen at some point, like, or you just, you know, you want to take a break and cause it's not passive is the thing if we don't keep. Trucking it'll, it'll fade. And that's just how the internet works. Um, do you think we'll bring in you know, other, other wizards offer this opportunity to bring in other folks and get other, other people and what advantages might there be to doing that?

Matt: I think like you always want, it's something that I've always been extremely keen to avoid is this sort of like cult of personality when you're doing anything really online. Like that's something I see that's kind of quite troubling is when people just vest all of their hope and love and they're, you know, they're just willing to do whatever this person wants online. And I have never had ambitions in that direction. It sort of feels weird that anyone might. And so It's always felt to me like total time script. It's just a sort of community efforts, but it's just I'm the funnel through which it goes. Like this knowledge really, I only learned because I had listened to other people and wrote down what they said. And a lot of the people who are doing the really smart stuff here have not contributed to total time script, you know? And so... I love the idea of someday having different voices on the platform and actually the interviews and like the way that we structured like interviewing people and putting their stuff like sprinkled through all of the all of the content was really nice and I want to do more of that as well. So actually having people run the courses is I mean there's got to be a lot of trust there and there's got to be a sense that this person knows how to organise the information and I think I can, I don't think I'm ever gonna lose the feeling of wanting to organize information and teach people about things because that's what I was doing when I was a singing teacher. What I gravitated to when I was a developer as well, so I would always try to make little learning materials and run many workshops for people and all that stuff. I don't think that's ever gonna, like, that challenge is ever gonna get boring because it's something I've always done. there's gotta be something there where it's not me being the face, it's someone else being the face, but I get to do the twiddly interesting stuff as well. So there's gotta be something there.

Joel Hooks: Yeah. And, and, you know, like at that point, just to, like, I would see it as you being effectively executive producer and, or, and, or director, right. And then that would be the way versus like, Hey, go off and do something. That would be really challenging actually, just to like fully onboard somebody. without, without that. And, and I don't, I don't like to me, it's like, it's your product, but can somebody else present is, is a really interesting challenge and just also a way to, you know, give you a break. Um, I think it's a, I love it. And I love that it's not like the brand isn't, you know, MattPocock.com, it's total typescript. So like the potential for that is, is vast. And when the time comes, we're well set up to do it with the modular approach to,

Matt: Yep.

Joel Hooks: I may have been thinking about this since day one, but

Matt: Oh, with the adventure modules, I see. Authored

Joel Hooks: Yeah, you

Matt: by...

Joel Hooks: know, like you bring

Matt: Ah.

Joel Hooks: it's like, you know, the, the wheel of time. It wasn't Robert Jordan that finished the wheel of time.

Matt: Who's

Joel Hooks: So

Matt: gonna be my Brandon Sanderson? Absolutely,

Joel Hooks: Yeah, exactly.

Matt: yeah,

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: quite. I wanna be my own Brandon Sanderson, that's the issue. It's like, I wanna, or rather, I wanna finish like, because the core volume and this thing that we're working on now sort of feels like the, like the end of a saga somehow, you know? Like it feels like finishing something complete and,

Joel Hooks: It would

Matt: I feel

Joel Hooks: be

Matt: like...

Joel Hooks: like, here's, here's the thing. That's like when it comes, you could do the TypeScript and Svelte

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: module, but then, you know, like, do you need, do you need to, is that really you? Or if somebody that was already in that, here's the, like business wise, right? Like somebody that's already in that particular community. would be a, a arguably better choice because then the product gets your reach plus their reach. So like the addressable audience gets even bigger. So like that kind of thing is, is really, uh,

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: it's compelling to me and my, my kind of top hat monocle mode,

Matt: I told

Joel Hooks: I guess.

Matt: you man, I'm a passenger in this car. You've got your freaking sat nav on, you know where you're going, but like, yeah. I'm happy to be here, it's great.

Joel Hooks: Do you see any, at any point where we like, we messed up and recovered or maybe even messed up and haven't recovered, like what, has there been any kind of bumps in the road for you during the process that.

Matt: think so. It was interesting to me that we set like a really fast cadence in terms of the workshops because I was working at like I was working at Vercel at the time and I was doing this two days a week and so I had like four days because we did one workshop then another one two weeks after then another one two weeks after so in total I had four working days for each workshop to prep you know 50 exercises or something.

Joel Hooks: I think, I think you were like, Hey, can we do this by this day? And I'm like, actually, can we do that by this date? That's half of that.

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: And, and I met like, and it was intentional on my part because I'm like, I got to push this cause these things stretch out. And if we, if we want to have something out by the end of the year, if we don't, you know, like if we set this like lackadaisical pace, which is still

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: honestly pretty aggressive, then it's not going to happen. Right. Like it'll, it'll just, and also. Will Matt do this?

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: If I say, no, instead let's get aggressive and do it this way, will you do that? And how do you respond to that prompt is like from my perspective, how does that work? Because we didn't know, I didn't know.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: And now I have a better idea. And we just kind of, as we've worked, we haven't had to have. We just, you know, we just kind of do stuff now and that's nicer because we're not trying to figure each other out

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: as much. Um, yeah, but

Matt: Yeah,

Joel Hooks: that

Matt: I

Joel Hooks: was

Matt: think.

Joel Hooks: it. That was also intentional actually.

Matt: Yeah, that's interesting. Because I remember, it's funny, we're sort of like debriefing on all of these little messages that we sent each other like, like a year ago or something. Like, I remember sending that and thinking, I should probably just say something that I think is conservative. And like, say, how can we do it by, let's say this date, October, whatever. and then you came back with something that I felt was aggressive and good, because I wanted to be aggressive about it. I really, I think personally what I respond to well, I don't necessarily respond well to being like purely independence because I did, you know, purely independent for six years when I was a singing teacher. I need something to push against or like a deadline to do better than to overachieve. and that's what I quite like about our relationship as well because you tend to add these deadlines in that I think oh yeah that's a tough one but I reckon I can make that if I keep pushing and keep going and keep going and that's what I work well with I think so I mean yeah it wasn't a bump in the road really but that was I think the point where we where I felt it kick into gear properly and felt like okay yeah I can get this I can do this

Joel Hooks: If I recall correctly, that the first workshop actually was the same way. Cause it was like, Oh, can we do this in the end of July? And I'm like, how about the end of June? Um, just, you know, like taking that and can we do this a little bit quicker? Because it's, it's really true. Like if you, one thing I knew, and I know is that if you commit and you sell tickets to this thing and promise some group of learners that, that this is going to happen, you are absolutely going to do your best to make sure that they have a good experience and that they get their money's worth. and that they come away from that thinking, wow, that was great,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: um, to the best of your ability. And, you know, like, how can we do that? And then, you know, like, how does that translate into what we do next? Because the slog is the self-paced stuff. I don't know if you'd agree, like for you, it's like, maybe it's not like, I don't know if you're energized by shouting into your microphone alone and your, your shed quarters there.

Matt: I have a kind of, I used to do seven hours of teaching a day, right?

Joel Hooks: Mm-hmm.

Matt: So I... I have a sort of strange recording process, which is I just try and do it as fast as possible with as much continuity as possible. So I don't tend to take many notes. I'm just sort of responding to what's in front of me. And I'm kind of just like coming up with links and stuff as I go on the fly. And so it's very intense and very quick. And so it feels to me like I'm teaching a one to one lesson,

Joel Hooks: Okay.

Matt: which I love actually, like that's my happy place and so I just get back into this mode which feels very nostalgic and very comfortable for me which is just teaching someone and chatting to someone and I mean I've heard my voice repeated back to me I don't know possibly like as much as any other human ever you know so

Joel Hooks: Yeah, yeah.

Matt: I'm very used to it and so I dig it but I also dig the workshops as exciting and adrenalizing and I got a lot out of them I think just in terms of actually contacting learners and being in touch with people.

Joel Hooks: Now I want to do a production where we set it up and actually record and document the way that you produce lessons, because I think it's interesting and people could benefit from us. So maybe I'll

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: follow up on some of that. I just think it'd be cool to, cause that's, that's an interesting approach. And I think one of the things that people do and probably what makes it really tedious is over preparation for

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: these things versus like sitting down and having, you know, cause it is to me. Like teaching a workshop is way easier because I don't have to

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: script it. I don't have to like produce it at that level and can sit

Matt: Yep.

Joel Hooks: down and just deliver, which is, you know, like that, that it's just a less of a drain, less of a chore

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: than, you know, like sitting down and doing a scripted thing.

Matt: Yeah I think to go just quickly into that I was really... because I wanted to do material like that and actually all of my... so when I was getting into Twitter everything I would do would just be a two minute video, no cuts... literally just trimmed the start and the end off and I just explained something for two minutes and people seem to really like that and then I did it in the beginners tutorial or the Zod tutorial I think we did first and People really like that as well We haven't had any complaints about oh this feels poorly edited or he's like saying something stupid or like he you know He's mumbling his words like so It was it has been a shock to me actually how well people respond to essentially me just reacting to stuff in code. And that has felt to me like a superpower that I can make use of, because I just get to skip an entire step, which is scripting, and I just get to talk. And I guess having done all of that one-to-one training and being dramatically trained, as I technically am, then that... has just felt like that's what I've, because you guys bring all this crazy stuff to the table, like in terms of just expertise and business and that sort of thing. And that's literally the thing that I think I bring to the table, which is the ability to produce high quality content quickly.

Joel Hooks: I'm actually taking this course called it's called ultra speaking. And that's part of their deal. It's like the, we, we over prep and you know,

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: like we come off as robots instead of natural, natural folks. And it can be all right, but like, if you want to take that to the next level, if you want to perform, if you want to engage, if you want people to, like, if you want rhythm and cadence and musicality

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: to your, you know, like these are, you know, you're teaching TypeScript for fuck's sake, like, like

Matt: Hahaha!

Joel Hooks: you want to talk something like how do you make that like, you know, keep people from just like, like just

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: completely falling over. Like that takes that approach. Otherwise, you know, it is another one of these where we're teaching TypeScript and clickety clacking through some stuff

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: and you know, like good luck learning it. You are you still here? Probably not. It's fine.

Matt: Absolutely.

Joel Hooks: You know, like, like that's a, that's a big part of it. Um, yeah, Matt, I think, um, My takeaway here is that we need to hang out at the end of the day. Um, so like, I'm looking forward to that and I want to come over your way and you should, you should come over here so we can, we can have smash burgers again. Cause that's always fun. Uh,

Matt: I'm so ready.

Joel Hooks: otherwise, yeah, it's great. I'm looking forward to the next, next chapter.

Matt: Yep, the next module coming out,

Joel Hooks: That's a joke because we're writing a book right now.

Matt: we are writing a book. God, we should talk about the book process as well because it's pretty unique and pretty interesting.

Joel Hooks: Oh yeah, that one's weird and totally different, so that'll be a... We'll definitely get into that.

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: Also, I'm excited to see how that comes out, because I think it's different than how most books are probably produced also, and the final result's gonna be an interesting thing too. Holding our hands. That'll

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: be fun.

Matt: Be amazing. My wife's written a book as well, so we'll

Joel Hooks: Oh,

Matt: be

Joel Hooks: nice.

Matt: a two-book family, yeah?

Joel Hooks: Yeah. Yeah, nice.

Matt: Alright Joel,

Joel Hooks: Well,

Matt: that was wicked.

Joel Hooks: cool.

Matt: Thanks man.

Joel Hooks: Yeah, cheers. I'm, uh...Joel Hooks: the like two 25 pound ultra furry cats, just with the zoomies

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: and they go vertical too. They go up on your stuff, through your stuff,

Matt: Oh no.

Joel Hooks: over around

Matt: Yep.

Joel Hooks: in like just everywhere. And then the other thing about giant cats is you can't just have a normal sized litter box.

Matt: Mmm.

Joel Hooks: Giant cats require a giant sized litter box. So

Matt: Okay.

Joel Hooks: that we learned that also like giant. litter box, like

Matt: Bye

Joel Hooks: a

Matt: for

Joel Hooks: four

Matt: now.

Joel Hooks: foot thing that takes like the full 50 pound container of litter and, um, sometimes it's like, wow, is that a grown man in the litter box? No, that's just the, that's just the cats.

Matt: Wow. Yeah, we're not going quite that far.

Joel Hooks: We love them,

Matt: Yep.

Joel Hooks: but they're not without their drawbacks. They're like majestic, but it's also like, wow.

Matt: Mm hmm. You're literally

Joel Hooks: Why would we do that to ourselves?

Matt: keeping a leopard in the house.

Joel Hooks: Yeah,

Matt: Not two leopards.

Joel Hooks: I think if they're like a little bit bigger than they would, they'd probably just kill us.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: I mean, you

Matt: Okay,

Joel Hooks: know, they're cats,

Matt: nice.

Joel Hooks: right? Like cats

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: aren't, that's what they do

Matt: them

Joel Hooks: in the

Matt: less

Joel Hooks: wild,

Matt: nary.

Joel Hooks: is hunt and sleigh.

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: Total TypeScript. Yeah, this has

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: been

Matt: Are

Joel Hooks: a

Matt: we

Joel Hooks: journey.

Matt: doing it? Are we in?

Joel Hooks: Yeah, we're podcasting now.

Matt: podcasting.

Joel Hooks: Or just chatting for future reference, whether anybody is listening now or not is up to them, I suppose.

Matt: Yep. Yeah,

Joel Hooks: So

Matt: that has been a journey.

Joel Hooks: it really has. I remember because you were, I was like, oh, man. PoCock's going to make a TypeScript course, man, that sucks. Cause now we're not going to be able to make one because he's going to make the best one.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: And then, you know, I didn't, I try to like keep my enthusiasm and not chase people will be too thirsty about the whole thing. Um,

Matt: Mmm.

Joel Hooks: and, and cause still like for me, it's better if it's your idea, right? Like if you are like, Oh, well, what if we partnered up? That'd be awesome. And

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: I, you know, like there was that point where you started it and it was, I think it was advanced TypeScript at the time and you were working on your course and then we hung out briefly. I attribute it to the Smashburgers that was like the tipping point, but I was curious, like what, you know, like, what was it like, when were you like, man, I need, I need some, I need some, somebody to come in and I need some help or I need a partner or I need, I need some way to, to like actually get this thing done at what point was the, did you change

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: from doing the whole thing yourself and uh, Partnering

Matt: So

Joel Hooks: up.

Matt: I knew that you did this stuff, right? I knew that you were the egghead guy. I'd followed you for years, I think. We'd even done like a podcast before on, I think, X-State and

Joel Hooks: Mm-hmm.

Matt: X-State catalog and all that old stuff that I was doing a couple of years ago. And I knew, okay, this seems like a cool guy from afar, at least, you know, I saw the D&D reference in your bio. I thought, okay, this guy's got a vibe. And I knew you were extremely successful and competent. I knew you'd worked with Kent as well. And it was, yeah, it was in Utah that we ended up hanging out together with you and Jason Langsdorf making burgers. We didn't even chat that much I think, it

Joel Hooks: No,

Matt: was

Joel Hooks: I was

Matt: at

Joel Hooks: busy like cooking burgers

Matt: U...

Joel Hooks: for 35 people is non-trivial.

Matt: extremely non-trivial. But I got a vibe off you there as well that I liked and I hope maybe you got a vibe off me too. And we literally must have chatted for like five minutes or something. And then I... because I was... that was at RemixConf then and like the next week I went to JSConf in Budapest. And by the way, RemixConf was like my first conference I'd ever been to, you

Joel Hooks: Oh

Matt: know, because

Joel Hooks: nice.

Matt: I

Joel Hooks: That

Matt: got

Joel Hooks: was a good

Matt: into

Joel Hooks: one.

Matt: like tech Twitter in COVID, you know, and so I didn't go to any conferences really for a couple of years when I could have been. And then I went to there, and then I went to Budapest next week, and I was literally like lying on my bed, like knackered after like a full couple days of conferencing, you know, in Budapest. And that's where I text you from. Like I DM'd you from the bed in Budapest saying, do you want to make this course? And... I just got the sense that I needed some help and I needed some backup, I think. And I got the sense that, because I had an idea of everything that I could have been done and needed to be done in order to ship something like TT, and I just thought, okay, these guys have done it before. I just, let's start a conversation.

Joel Hooks: What, I mean, what parts of the, cause we've done a lot of this now, right? Like what, what parts of it at the time before you started were like, Oh man, that's going to be hard. And then like, how did that actually play out? Was it, was your prediction correct? Or was there things that you weren't even thinking about or what, what like aspects of the, the actual launch of total TypeScript from idea to reality were, were maybe surprising to you.

Matt: Okay well because I planned it out I knew that I would have to build a course platform because I knew I didn't want to just you know ship it onto Udemy or something I didn't want to use a I wanted something that was custom that was my own that I owned I knew that I would have to build that figure out some sort of CMS or structure for handling that figure out the authentication figure out all of this stuff you know all of the complexity that comes with that and I was I was quite looking forward to that part but I was also a bit scared of that part because there's so many hidden costs in doing something like that when you're thinking about design and thinking about just the whole, you know, setup for it and setting up provisioning all the services and all that stuff. And then I was thinking, you know, like, okay, how do I handle payments and handle refunds and handle... policies for refunds and how does that work? And the main thing in my head as well was pricing too. Like, where do I pitch this in terms of price? How do I know when it's working and when it's not? I would probably need to chat to someone like you who like knows about that stuff to get a sense for how I should price it because I knew, I mean, I tend to like, everyone I think, if you're not. sure about it would tend to pitch down in terms of pricing in terms of like... and also I was thinking about limiting scope as well just doing something small pushing it out there and just seeing what people thought.

Joel Hooks: That's smart, by the way.

Matt: Smart right?

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah and that's kind of what I would what I'd done with the content up to that point as well I was making lots of very short videos just to see what people thought of them and I mean it exploded and that's what led to all this so yeah and like continuing your question though like going from there to like how it actually met my expectations at launch i mean it was it was i think i described it to you as like being like a passenger in a formula one car right you it just felt like we were going so fast and so much was being done from your side as well that i felt like i wanted to keep up with that and sort of maintain the energy from my side so I mean, there's too much to talk about.

Joel Hooks: Yeah

Matt: How was it from your side? Like, what did you feel that you got? When I contacted you, what did you know that you could bring to the table?

Joel Hooks: So we've done this a lot and I've been building, you know, course platform, like egghead for 12 something years and then we started doing the custom platforms where they're all basically egghead, right? Like the ideas and the patterns and I'm one to like really drive an idea instead of like, oh, I wanna do something new and I used to be more enthusiastic about new things. Now I just like, I wanna make what we do really well. And we had come out of Like at the same time that you and I started talking, we were very much in the middle of testing accessibility, which was a complete platform rewrite. So like starting from scratch and doing all the stuff. But what was really nice is that we can look at egghead, right? Like we can look at what we built and we have the patterns and things like purchase power parity, or this is all the things that they're going to email us about and ask us for. us for things and instead answer those questions ahead of time. So like coming into it, I knew all that. So, I mean, when you reach out and I'd been watching and just, you know. Like you are a savvy individual, you understand social media and you understand wizards and there's an authenticity to like your approach to all of these things where it's not like, it's not a cash grab. It's not like a, a hobby for you. This is, you know, like this is what you do and this is what you're into. And you, you were sticking to a consistent message. And like, for me, it's like how do we're always like, all of this is a gamble for us in some ways where we compare it to a record label. and then there's some investment banking kind of crossover in what we do because it's expensive, right? Like we, to get into a launch of Total TypeScript, we're well into the six figures of... investment and you know, they don't all pay off. So sometimes we'll invest that much and, you know, a little fizzle or, or the creator will, will become disinterested. And that's, you know, that's always a gamble. And with you, I felt like that gamble was less and, you know, like when you said, Hey, do you, do you want to do this? And I'm like, I mean, I probably replied, fuck yeah. Cause that's my, my typical reply to that

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: sort of question. Cause I'm a, uh, like a yes. And kind of, kind of, kind of person.

Matt: The quote

Joel Hooks: Um,

Matt: was, an enthusiastic fuck yeah.

Joel Hooks: Oh, nice.

Matt: You literally described your own fuck yeah as enthusiastic.

Joel Hooks: Yeah, you got, you know, and that's what it was. Cause to me, I was like, oh yeah, fuck. Yeah. But when then it's, it's also like, you don't, you don't know me. I don't really know you. Um, you know, I, I. Definitely felt that same vibe thing. And I was like, Oh, I like this dude. When we, we met in Utah, you know, like it's just like your enthusiasm for American culture, um, was, it was hilarious, uh, to,

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: to witness. And I love that. Like somebody that, you know, like just, you know, America, fuck. Yeah. Like, like,

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: just like, you know, like here's a burger. Oh, fuck. Yeah. Burgers. Like, you know, like that. I love it. Um,

Matt: I'm quite a loud eater I think. I was hanging out with Chance then and like I was eating my burger sat next to Chance who works on the remix team and he was just like what are those sounds coming out of your mouth man I've never heard anything like this so yeah I think that's yeah that's inbuilt

Joel Hooks: So, so, and, you know, like speaking of small steps and that was, that was part of the thing, right? Like it's like, okay, Matt's, Matt's new. It's kind of unknown. We don't know our relationship. We don't know for sure. And then also how do I take that enthusiasm that I have and not scare the shit out of you and run you away with, with our kind of internal process, because I'm particular. Um, I am a particular sort of fella and like working with me isn't necessarily easy because it's, it's. It's my program. I want you to drive, but I want you to drive my program. So

Matt: Hmm

Joel Hooks: like, how, how do we get into that? And I think the first thing was we were like, well, let's do a workshop. Like we can sell tickets to a workshop and you know, if that doesn't work out, then like we're done, nobody loses, you know, like it could, we could just refund the tickets if it didn't work out at that level and nobody would

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: be too sad about it. So how do we do this? Build a relationship and, and kind of like get to a point where, where we build that trust and working relationship, which is always hard because it is, it is a relationship. especially if you want to take this into something that's long term, if you want to build an actual business out of this, then we have to decide, is this partnership right? Because those contracts and that relationship is something that you're diving into. Not that it's not escapable, it's just difficult once you're entrenched. What would you have charged? What did you have in your head?

Matt: I don't know, two figures probably.

Joel Hooks: Yeah, $99.

Matt: Like, yeah, $99. Yeah,

Joel Hooks: Get all the stuff and the recordings from the workshop.

Matt: yeah, everything, everything. Like, I had no idea, really. And it wasn't something that I was enjoying thinking about either. Like, I want to focus on the stuff that I enjoy thinking about, like the right structure for, you know, all the content and trying to put my head in, like, trying to think about the learner, all that stuff. But

Joel Hooks: directed at sick with graphs

Matt: I... Yeah, man, I love a DAG. Honestly, I need to... Should I explain that? Like,

Joel Hooks: No,

Matt: should we talk about

Joel Hooks: we

Matt: that?

Joel Hooks: have

Matt: Okay.

Joel Hooks: an article.

Matt: Oh yeah.

Joel Hooks: You like go to badass.dev. There's, there is an article and a video from Matt explaining what a, how you use directed acyclic graphs, you recorded that video, so it's there forever.

Matt: Cool,

Joel Hooks: Archived.

Matt: nice.

Joel Hooks: Uh, and I, I'm my, you know, it's like, what should we charge for this? Single day workshop, four hours, $1,200. No recordings. That's it. What's the, what'd you like, how did that land? When? What'd you think of that, like, when I

Matt: in

Joel Hooks: first...

Matt: terms of just thinking about the price.

Joel Hooks: Yeah, just like, okay, well, that doesn't... I mean, that's different, right? And like, two figures to four figures is kind of a leap.

Matt: Yes, I thought, let me actually try to remember what I thought, because I think I felt like this was, if this worked, it showed that you knew what you were doing, right? And if I was willing to try it out on faith, and because there wasn't a ton for me to lose, right? Like...

Joel Hooks: No. That was the intent.

Matt: Yeah, I mean, and also like if I publish this out to my Twitter, people say, he's charging, blah blah, however much for workshop. I had a sense that, you know, like... Dev is an extremely expensive business and it's extremely lucrative as well. And so I had a sense for what education budgets would be like and I got a feeling like, okay, if Joel's saying we can charge this and it pays off, then we really have something here. And so I thought of it, I think, as a test of where you were at in terms of your intuition. And after it paid off, we sold that out, I think, or nearly sold it out. I

Joel Hooks: It's

Matt: think

Joel Hooks: sold

Matt: we

Joel Hooks: out.

Matt: sold... Yeah, it sold out, yeah. Then I thought, okay, yeah, he knows what he's doing. And I was kind of happy and willing to delegate a lot of that thinking to you. I don't think I've questioned you on price, actually, ever. Not sure.

Joel Hooks: No, I question myself constantly. Um, and

Matt: Mmm.

Joel Hooks: like, cause it's always a debate, like you don't, you don't really know. And I'm, I'm just guessing, but like my, my thought is that, you know, like I understand TypeScript and there there's nothing really advanced out there. And you know, like this, this is, this is premium. And what's interesting to me, particularly about the subject matter, right? I'm thinking about the subject matter. There. There's frankly the addressable audience of TypeScript wizards that need the actual advanced TypeScript is fairly

Matt: Mm.

Joel Hooks: small, right? Like it is, it is not, this is not, this is not for newbies. This is not, you know, like break into the industry content. This is like, you know what you're doing and you know, like the pitch is there and you understand the value of what we're, we're going to talk about. And to make that actually viable business wise, you have to like, it has to be. higher priced right? I'd love to, you know, think about what, what does a, you know, a multi thousand dollar programming course look like. And that's not like a bootcamp, but it's actually worth it is like a puzzle for me. So it's like, let's, let's go, let's go up. Cause it's way easier to come down than it is to push up. Um, when you, when you start to like set, set the mindset and, and you know, like, what is this thing? And it did sell out, right? We, we offered a discount. So I think we actually, with the discounts and the sell out was, was somewhere in the $800 range when we launched. But a few people actually bought full price tickets also. And that's, you know, like that to me, and there is no clear indicator. And this is why I'm such a big proponent of doing workshops is because will people pay for this is the pitch, you know, there is this a viable product. We know that instantly. And, you know, the most you're out is, I mean, the, the lead up to a workshop and then the, like what goes into building one, as you know, is You know, that's, it's a lot of work. And especially if you're just like a one-off and you're not going to use it again, that's it's a ton, but like. You know, it is just, you know, and the workshop goes how it goes. You get your feedback. People, people show up. Um, they leave there. They're fairly forgiving. You can change in the moment. You can kind of riff, you know, like, so versus like sitting down and recording a bunch of videos, right? Like, Hey, Matt, let's sit down and record a bunch of videos. The risk level is, you know, like once you record it, it's like, you've chiseled it in stone and it's

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: a lot harder to produce. So like that, that is the reason for that. And I think before. We sold some tickets and both of us were like, oh yeah, it's on. Like we're building the whole thing. And what

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: are we going to call this at that point?

Matt: I think we sold two tickets like in the first two minutes that we launched it or something.

Joel Hooks: Yeah,

Matt: Like it was

Joel Hooks: like

Matt: it

Joel Hooks: instantly.

Matt: was instant. Yeah.

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: Bam. Okay. Cool. We're on. I think then like the one thing that, yeah, to carry on with you, like in terms of the amount of risk that was there, I knew that even if we did the workshop and the workshop wasn't that successful, I still, someone was asking me to make all of this content which I could then, you know, I could have repackaged those exercises as tutorials or YouTube videos or something, there was something that I could have done with that content that was not that workshop, you know. So it felt risk-free to me, to be honest.

Joel Hooks: Yeah. And that's the, you know, it's like the, I, I internally often refer to it as a, a set of hurdles. Um,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: I like to set a series of hurdles and I'm maybe sometimes a little cheeky, maybe sometimes a little vague and we'll, we'll set hurdles for folks to, to gauge the, you know, are they going to jump the hurdle? Are they going to keep running? Are they going to like stay in the race? Um, And that's part of the risk, right? Like risk management and just understanding and building that and then also kind of like setting the tone and setting the cadence

Matt: Hmm

Joel Hooks: for the working relationship. And

Matt: Cuz

Joel Hooks: like you mentioned

Matt: we

Joel Hooks: it earlier that like the The pace, right? Like the, where you're matching energy. That's a big thing. And I'm always like with the team, I'm like, look, we're, we're playing tennis. Like we hit the ball and if it's on their side of the court and they don't hit it back, we don't need to keep hitting the ball at them, right? Like we don't need

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: to have them hunkering down with tennis balls, beating them. Like we can encourage them to hit it back or whatever, but until, you know, like, and what's that pace. And if we're going back and forth and somebody is, is really, you know, like we're, we're up there, you know, like, like lobbying back, lobbing it back and that's the pace and we set that and we keep that and that's, you know, is it on us right now? Is it on them? Like who, who's next? And let's keep hitting it back and forth and get that

Matt: Hmm

Joel Hooks: pace to a point where both, both folks are comfortable and getting the ball back and forth. But the back and forth is, I mean, critical in terms of what we're up to.

Matt: definitely. And there was two, like when I was working on that first workshop with you guys, like I did two things like after we met in Utah and after we decided to start together, which was I decided to do two days a week with you guys and then I also got a job

Joel Hooks: Oh yeah,

Matt: three

Joel Hooks: that's

Matt: days

Joel Hooks: right.

Matt: a week

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: at Versel, so which is something you know like that's a job that I think a lot of people would go

Joel Hooks: That's

Matt: wow

Joel Hooks: a dope

Matt: that's...

Joel Hooks: ass job, honestly.

Matt: fantastic job,

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: yeah, you've absolutely landed one, you're in, you're in for life. And so I started there on a three month contract, which is unusual, because usually they take people on full time and I was doing three days a week and loving it as well, amazing team, amazing place to work. And it was the workshop, like around the time that we had the workshop, we actually met in person too for the first time and actually got to spend some proper time together at NextConf in I think October or something.

Joel Hooks: Oh yeah, that was fun.

Matt: and went for sushi, which is incredible. And I knew then that, okay, I'm probably not gonna renew this Versel contract. I'm gonna give up my job at Versel to go and work full time essentially with this guy and produce this course and make it as good as we can. And now that I think is probably the biggest vote of confidence. So, I'm gonna go ahead and do that.

Joel Hooks: Oh, absolutely. Like when you're like, I'm, you know, cause I would, I would assume it could go either way at that point, right? Like, cause you're, you're weighing your life and your livelihood and your, your family and your, you know, household versus like, I can do this thing and go all in on, on with this guy or, you know, like the full, full weight of, of the Versailles triangle, right? Which is, is a, is a, is a powerful thing. And it is, you know, one of the most genius blue chip teams that exists in our space. and they do really cool stuff. So, you know, like that, that in and of itself, it was an interesting decision, which I think, you know, like you make that decision. At that point we go, we were in full production mode doing more workshops, like, like thinking the thing, going like full total TypeScript,

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: not just, you know, not just some TypeScript, but total TypeScript. What is total TypeScript anyway? Like what do you think of when you think of like the totality of TypeScript?

Matt: Hmm

Joel Hooks: Because I don't feel like we're there yet.

Matt: no I agree. So when I was first thinking about branding this thing we I landed on advanced TypeScript and I think what I wanted to do was I wanted to make it more appealing to a broader range of people than advanced TypeScript but it's funny because the type of content that I produce tends to be content that's aimed at making people go exploding head emoji, right?

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: And I really enjoy making that type of content and that type of content positions me as someone who knows about advanced topics. And so it makes sense. Okay, you go to I think this is a perception that still is out there. You go to Matt if you want to level up your TypeScript to the next level. And so it makes sense that our, and also there was no, as you said, there's no actual offerings out there, proper in-depth courses for advanced TypeScript for.

Joel Hooks: From legit, from legit wizards too, not just people that are reading the docs and doing a little studying, right?

Matt: Yeah,

Joel Hooks: You've

Matt: throwing

Joel Hooks: actually done

Matt: stuff together.

Joel Hooks: the stuff and

Matt: Exactly,

Joel Hooks: that makes

Matt: yeah.

Joel Hooks: a huge difference.

Matt: And I know a lot of people too. I was part of the community of people who knew the stuff. And so I knew that if I had a question that I couldn't answer, I could go to the wizards and actually get an answer from them that I would be able to understand and synthesize and teach. And knowing that, like, yeah, your question was, where do I see total TypeScript though? I don't think we're there yet because I feel like the current iteration of total TypeScript is really top of intermediate to advanced plus.

Joel Hooks: Mm-hmm.

Matt: There's stuff in there that is really there to just sort of test you in terms of test your understanding of TypeScript in the compiler. And I think that people who take the course, I do, I mean, I really think they're ready for anything that like the TypeScript can, they're at wizard

Joel Hooks: Yeah,

Matt: level at that point.

Joel Hooks: you got it at that point, I think.

Matt: Yeah, like there's nowhere else for you to go really, but I don't see it as, and I think...

Joel Hooks: Haskell.

Matt: Haskell, yeah, right, right. Yeah.

Joel Hooks: I don't know.

Matt: But like, I don't think I see it as a training course yet, which is weird. So you might think, okay, yeah, you take this course and you sort of like, I don't think it, where am I trying to go with this? I don't think of it yet as a course that you take from beginner all the way to advanced. I think if you threw a beginner at it, we've got a beginner's tutorial, but I don't think the beginner's tutorial properly prepares you for the places that total TypeScript takes you. So I want to extend it so that total TypeScript actually becomes total and becomes like a fully fledged, okay, you wanna learn TypeScript? Take this course. This course will teach you everything you need to know. And you can chop off the advanced stuff if you don't need it, or if you feel like you don't need the basic stuff, you can just go straight to the advanced. Like, that's where I want it to be.

Joel Hooks: So one thing that's interesting to me is... I actually owned launch cocaine.com because of the intense high that you get from, uh, launching a product like launch day is really exciting. It gives you a lot of energy. Um, I never did anything with the site. It's not appropriate. Um, but what, what you also get on the other side of that is a deflation, right? Like there is definitely like you get it, get a peak and then, you know, like you get the, the praise, you get those endorphins, you get, you know, money, you get all this, this kind of thing that comes with, with launching and then afterwards and we did a pre-release and I'm wondering, you know, like how did you internally, did, did you feel some of that? Like after we did this pre-release and there was some success, like we, you know, like we had some, we did numbers on the

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: pre-release and, and you know, like what, so there was a high there for sure. But what about the other side of that? Like how did you like maintain motivation to get through and actually get this done?

Matt: Yeah, it was immediate actually. Like I sort of had like two nights of like sleepless nights where I would, I have the like the Stripe dashboard on my phone so I was checking the Stripe dashboard and seeing you know what was coming through and it was absolutely crazy. And then I think a lot of my motivation comes from the idea of can we make this work? And as soon as I understood, oh, it's working, then oddly the motivation just went. and I didn't know quite where it was coming from because I got the feeling that okay this is fantastic, this is working, this is dreams coming true territory here but then there was this other emotion as well which was kind of like oh man I like where does my... I lost the connection between me actually typing the keys and the motivation to do any work I felt a sort of alienation from my actual work which is so strange given the circumstances. My total time script for me has been a life changing setup because it's changed my personal finances. I am now, I have a totally different relationship to money than I had before. And it's knowing that I was sort of continuing on that path and I still had to push this boulder up the hill, it was sort of... like I felt disconnected and I felt very strange and so I have recovered that and of course the second launch like when we actually launched the thing happened again you know it happened again with the react one that we did recently and it really is I think probably you're right probably it's the intense high and then the intense high actually just kind of like pulling yourself back

Joel Hooks: Well, in the first one in particular, you know, it's like that first one's like, and then,

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: you know, like the next one, by the time, and I'm assuming this, but, you know, like, but by the time we release the react module, which also did very well and, and particularly for its scope,

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: like, you know, you're not, I don't know about you, but like, I'm, I'm not going to necessarily feel that same, same elation that I felt with the, with the first go round.

Matt: Sorry, I missed that last question. There was something happened to it. Internet.

Joel Hooks: Yeah. So, so there's, you know, like the adulation that you get with the first one, when we did the core volume, we do the pre-release and you see that, oh, wow, this works, that's a, that's a very high high, but when we do, you know, something of smaller scope or even just continue to do the same thing. That level of elation isn't necessarily the same. I feel like maybe the high is a little bit lower and the trough afterwards also is not as severe. I don't

Matt: Mm.

Joel Hooks: know. What was your experience after the React module, which at this point in time is still just a pre-release, but we're pretty close to doing that. So we did a pre-release of that one. And I'm wondering how does that compare to that first pre-release that we did of the core volume?

Matt: Yeah, you're right. So if the first one felt like I was a passenger in a Formula One car, this sort of felt like I was on the bus, you know, like,

Joel Hooks: Cooper Mini.

Matt: so, yeah, exactly. Smart car. I don't know if you have smart cars in the US,

Joel Hooks: Yeah,

Matt: but

Joel Hooks: we

Matt: we

Joel Hooks: have

Matt: have

Joel Hooks: some

Matt: them here.

Joel Hooks: of those.

Matt: They're terrible. So it felt more routine, as you say. Yeah. And but there's still the comparable drop off in motivation afterwards. It's really, really strange. And I think, I don't know. I mean, I wonder whether there's a sense of like the remoteness of our working relationship, like just because we're in you know different time zones and different areas and stuff. I wonder whether that's a contributing factor but you're probably right. I mean it's just it's something I still haven't figured out for myself yet because I still get fluctuations in motivation you know week by week. I'm in a real high at the moment oddly enough like I've been really working hard this week but I wonder if that's something that you notice as well because I noticed that like You asked on Twitter, like, you know, what questions should I ask Matt and all that stuff? And, and like someone asked about the details of our working relationship. Our working relationship is extremely async, right? We, it's not like we do daily calls or standups or anything like that.

Joel Hooks: Yeah, who's?

Matt: We really just chat when we need to. And like sometimes like three weeks will go by and we haven't even like typed a message to each other or something, which I actually love because I've really, I mean, I really hate, uh, feeling like my time is being wasted or feeling like I'm doing pointless routines or things like

Joel Hooks: same.

Matt: that and you're exactly the same. But I wonder whether there's something there that because we're not actually in the same office or going for drinks afterwards or anything like that, maybe that would help lessen the deflation. I don't know. It's something I'm still puzzling with.

Joel Hooks: It absolutely would. And I mean, the problem there is that the flight from Portland to London is pretty brutal

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: either direction, right? So I would hang out with you on a regular basis if we could. But obviously the geography is the...

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: And it is true. It's like this... There's just something about it. Like we can hang out and we can do this and it's fine. Um, but it's just not the same, right? Like that, that ability to just go out and, and cheers and, and have a beer and then go back to our respective homes and get back to work is such a, such a nice thing, uh, when you, I've been, you know, it's like, I'm I'm actually scheming about how we can get over there and come visit. So expect

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: us to show up and we can go down to the, I would love to like go to, I don't think I've ever been to a proper English pub and had a pint. So like that I've never done that. I've been to England a few times, but haven't done that. So you got to do

Matt: Oh

Joel Hooks: that.

Matt: man, we'll take some ball games to the pub.

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: We'll have a roast. You're gonna love it. Oh,

Joel Hooks: I will

Matt: you're gonna

Joel Hooks: love

Matt: love

Joel Hooks: it.

Matt: it.

Joel Hooks: I know I'll love it. Um, yeah. So this is, this is kind of getting down to some of the brass tacks about, uh, information architecture and packaging of

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: products. So one of the things that I wanted to do and I really your total type script was the first time I pushed this is you mentioned, you know, like I. I have a little D&D reference in my, my bios around the internet. And I love D&D. And one of the things that I'm interested in from a business standpoint is there's this website called D&D Beyond and D&D Beyond is Wizards of the Coast. Um, their digital offering where you can, you know, like they have all of their books. And one of the things about Dungeons and Dragons, and it's always been like this is you get the core rule books. You'd have the player's manual, you'd have the Dungeon Master's guide, and you'd have the monster manuals, and then you can buy adventures. And, and to me, I was like, wow. what if we, and they have a really interesting marketplace and I wanted to, I wanted to try that with, um, you know, with a product, like with a educational product where we're not doing that typical one, two, three, like low, medium, high tiers. And then, you know, this is the product, this is it. I'm like, now what if we could make something that we could like. expand on and push down the road. And, and what we came up with was this idea of volumes and, you know, like doing a core volume, which is effectively three modules and it's on the advanced side, and I was wondering, you know, it is a little different, I think, than how stuff is packaged and, you know, like what, how has that worked out so far in terms of, of like what you've seen for learners and, you know, like, is, is that working and, and. Do you think that idea is going to pan out and we're going to be able to expand that and add, add more. more adventure modules. It's only coincidental that we also kind of have a D&D theme for the graph. It's not coincidental. I don't think

Matt: It's not coincidental,

Joel Hooks: it all ties together.

Matt: no, no. Come on, come on, come on. Yeah, I've been into magic for like eight years at this point, so it's definitely not coincidental. I think, like, I think a lot of the way I feel about Total TypeScript kind of is influenced by this concept of it that I have in my head that has not yet been realized. So I think because we're making... high quality purchase wants products, it lets us be really careful with what we add, because if we're doing like a monthly subscription or something to total typescript, we just need to keep adding stuff. But this idea of the modules is like, it just instantly, there's instantly like 10 ideas that come to my head, like doing it with node, doing it with view, doing it with svelte, like modules let us do these integrations because what we're really trying to do with TT is to handle core stuff, to handle just this is a language right

Joel Hooks: Mm-hmm.

Matt: and in order to be able to use this language you need to be able to integrate it with different things but the core idea of TT, the actual center point of it, is basically about the language. It doesn't really teach you how to integrate it with React or integrate it with this or integrate it with that and so and even like you know TRPC or libraries like Zod or things like that and so the idea that you've got these adventure modules and I would sort of include the... tutorials in that as well. Tutorials

Joel Hooks: Sure.

Matt: are a space that we can experiment with there, like free modules essentially, or you know small modules. And what it means is there's just a lot of scope to extend in lots of different directions and those extensions don't need to really be linked at all. You know we could make a React one and then we could make a

Joel Hooks: Mm-hmm.

Matt: with that in the future. And it feels like we haven't, like it's nice to have somewhere to direct people. Like if you want the total time-stripped experience, start with this, you know. Like this is almost like the one you want if you just want to learn from the ground up. But then we get the opportunity to extend it in several directions in the future, I think. And it feels like we haven't quite got to, like where were we? where we could get to yet. In the future, if we have like three adventure modules, then it feels more like a decision that the learner is making. And actually, I mean, the React module did really well. Right?

Joel Hooks: Yeah, people like it and it's needed. Like they ask for it. So, you know, it's like, like that's something that's where they go to. And somebody's like, hey, you're gonna make something on this, whatever my personal preferred thing is. And it's like, I mean, you're the literally the only person that's asked, but you know, like maybe like we can, that's the point, right? Like there is less risk and you could make something short and sweet to address some aspect of the market or help people in a certain, you know, that are doing a certain type of work.

Matt: And if it's also if the market moves in a different direction if solid takes off Then we can just ship something to do with solid, you know, and it means that the core volume is still the core volume I don't think TypeScript is going anywhere in terms of if we're thinking like risks for total TypeScript Like TypeScript is just still on a massive boom So being able to adapt in a nice way is useful

Joel Hooks: And part of the idea was, you know, like literally not everybody, like some people react makes them very super angry. Um, and, and like they wake up and curse react on the internet, uh, because of

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: how angry it makes them and they, they write new frameworks or adopt some obscure framework of choice, so you can still learn TypeScript and it doesn't have to have any react in it. And that was, you know, it's like, and then I also think it's like this idea of you can build your own learning experience. All of this is modular. And even in the core volume, it's composed of three. modules that can be split out and you can, you know, they all stand alone and can be, this was a core idea of a get actually, like I wanted everything. There's no learning paths on a kid and people are

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: always like, where's my learning paths? And I was like, huh, we don't do it like that. Um, you know, it's like, I want everything, you know, it's like pick and choose and, and. A lot of people do

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: appreciate paths and packaging it like that and saying, work through it this way. And we've talked about that where it's like, is there an intended path? And you're like, Oh, actually, then people should probably go through it in order if they're going to

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: do that. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, maybe, maybe they should. Um,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: who am I to be the boss of them? Uh, yeah, you know, like, but people do appreciate that. So it's like a balance of, of here's the, here's, here's some guidance, but you're, you're an adult, you're smart. Um, if you are trying to learn advanced TypeScript concepts, you probably have a, pretty good grasp on, uh, complex learning for yourself, whatever that may be. So it's a,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: you know, it's like a, you know, how do, how do we, how do we provide that guidance in an opt-in sort of way, I think is ultimately what's going for.

Matt: Yeah, and also with the core volume, the way it's split into three is interesting because I think we had to be quite careful in terms of packaging it to make sure that they're all distinct from each other, like type transformations being distinct from generics, because I think that's clear to most people, there is a bit of overlap, and then advanced patterns being the sort of bag that we just put all the cool stuff in

Joel Hooks: Mm-hmm.

Matt: basically. And so that's been a challenge as well, I think.

Joel Hooks: How do you like going forward, like you've been typecast as the TypeScript wizard at this point. And you know, like, how does that feel? Like, what do you, you know, like, are you, do you still see that, you know, like, is that fine, right? Like, I'm the TypeScript guy, that's

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: me. Or, you know, like sometimes you're like, man, I just, you know, I wanna do something different, you know, like, how does

Matt: Yeah,

Joel Hooks: that work for you?

Matt: I'm just really glad I'm not the JS.Guy basically. Like, I

Joel Hooks: That's

Matt: think

Joel Hooks: a rough job.

Matt: that's a rough job.

Joel Hooks: He's there.

Matt: He doesn't even want to be the JS.Guy

Joel Hooks: Yeah, like

Matt: unfortunately.

Joel Hooks: quit. Like, yeah, it'll be like, don't

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: add so-and-so because, you know, like I'm mentioning JS docs, you don't need to bring them into the convo.

Matt: please stop it, he hates it, yeah. But like, so I like it, I think. I think it has a shelf life for me. Like, we had a conversation about this, I think, like how long do you wanna be the TypeScript guy? I think I look at someone like Kent, who has been the React guy, and then he became, I can't remember actually what. sequence it was but like the react guy then he was the testing guy and now he's the remix guy and he's able to do that because fundamentally he's just a really good teacher of things so I feel like I can if Kent's done it then and people go okay he's just a good teacher I can learn stuff from him then if I want to pivot to something else in the future I I just don't feel yet that I've hit the ceiling on TypeScript.

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: TypeScript is massive. It's massive. And I think in some ways it's bigger than even React is. And bigger than even like... Honestly, it might even be bigger than like TDD is just in terms of like the JavaScript market and the web dev market because even...

Joel Hooks: A total addressable market, right? Like you have

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: a, it's huge.

Matt: I've lucked into this position where people think of me as someone like I get tagged on every time's question on Twitter which is honestly it's amazing it's how did that happen? um

Joel Hooks: Well, then you're in there happy to help too, which is, I mean, that's the, that's the secret sauce is being energetic and legit, authentically happy to, to come in and talk about this, this subject, not like, Oh my God,

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: like you're, you're tagging me again, like quit fucking tagging me about TypeScript. Like, it's not like that, right? Like, you're like, yeah,

Matt: Exactly.

Joel Hooks: like, like bring it, bring it.

Matt: Yeah, bring it. Because I mean, I always learn something, you know, from the, I genuinely always learn something or even if it's something I've, like a question I've answered 10 times, I know that, okay, I can turn that, there's a challenge there, right? There's something that isn't being answered by Google or chat GPT or something like that. There's something actually that I can contribute into the realm of TypeScript learning. And it just doesn't feel like I'm finished yet, you know, like there's just so much more to do. I've got a huge list of content I wanna make and stuff I wanna build. There's so many formats I haven't really experimented with yet. There's so much total time script stuff to do. Like I imagine at some point I'll get bored when I feel like, okay, I've done this for you know, three years, let's say, and I've got this huge backlog of content behind me, but it just doesn't feel like I'm there yet. It still feels like I've not, I've contributed maybe 20% of all the stuff I could. There's still so much more to do. and TypeScript is changing all the time as well. So they release new minor versions which always has new stuff in every three months or so. There's stuff like TC39 is also really interesting to me, I've sort of pivoted into like being the guy who reports on TC39 on YouTube which is really interesting and been

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: very successful. So yeah there's loads to do. So I'm not finished with being the TS guy yet.

Joel Hooks: One of the things that I see people on Twitter and they're like, Oh, I'm building my own course platform and my like internal reaction is ha ha. Good luck with your inbox because

Matt: Hmm

Joel Hooks: I think what people don't realize is the support. that becomes after, right? Like the, what comes after. And I, one of the interesting things that I've enjoyed is you run an active discord, you know, like it's your personal discord, but it's centered around TypeScript and it's for TypeScript and that's the conversation. And on our side, we get emails, right? Like, and I try to handle all of the technical support, like the stuff that I feel like would just weigh you down if you would make you sad on a daily basis.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: It doesn't, makes me sad on a daily basis, but in the like, Oh, I got to figure out how to make them stop emailing me sense. Um, but then we'll get the, we'll get the code questions or comments about, you know, like TypeScript stuff and I pitch it over to discord. I'm like, I'm not, you know, like, I'm not trying to drive you into the inbox. Like go ask in discord. And I'm wondering how,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: how has that been? And like, how do you think about like the support aspect of, of this? And, and, um, how has it worked out so far?

Matt: It's not something that I thought about like when I was building. advanced TypeScript before I met you guys and it was something that I continued to not think about kind of while we were doing this and it's something that I haven't had to think about because it's just been handled. So sometimes people will like ping in the discord and they'll say you know can I get a refund or whatever or blah and I say you know just email team at total TypeScript and I just get to chuck it over the wall which feels amazing because when I was a... so I used to be a teacher and I used to handle you know singing lessons and like and half of my job was emails right you know just emailing people back and forth about calendars and this was you know before Calendly before uh all these automated services

Joel Hooks: brutal.

Matt: yeah just like emails and I and I got so sick of it I was a singing teacher for six years and I was just misery basically and so just having that handled and handled well and handled in a way that I know I don't even need to check really like I think I probably should check that email address more often you know because you guys leave me comments in there and I but I just haven't had to which just feels amazing because it means I can just take all these when I want to it's just continuing everlasting support is incredible

Joel Hooks: How many times have you had to feel complaints about my personal support style?

Matt: Uh... I think like once maybe?

Joel Hooks: Oh, that's not bad.

Matt: That's not bad, yeah yeah.

Joel Hooks: Yeah. I'll give them the business every now and then if they ask, like it's like, like seriously, like, yeah. And then I'm also a little terse. Like I'm like, I just the facts. And sometimes people would be like, you're being too terse. And I'm like, I'll just reply to that. Tercely. Like, what do you want? Like, I'm

Matt: way

Joel Hooks: not

Matt: to

Joel Hooks: here

Matt: do it

Joel Hooks: to.

Matt: is just to get even more terse and terse and terse

Joel Hooks: Like I

Matt: and

Joel Hooks: could,

Matt: terse.

Joel Hooks: I could go over to chat GPT and say, turn my terse response into something that, that somebody that needs a flowery language will appreciate.

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: Um, I have done that actually in the past. I'm like,

Matt: Okay,

Joel Hooks: just

Matt: nice.

Joel Hooks: as a, mostly that's just me like taking the piss at that point. If I'm over there like doing that to them. But

Matt: Yeah, and I think like all of this just comes down to like I'm just happy to delegate that stuff to you Like I don't I don't do not care if I have to field like a thousand complaints about the way you guys do it Because I just I trust that you've done it before and you know what's going on.

Joel Hooks: Well,

Matt: So

Joel Hooks: one is, is I'm like, yeah, that's great. I'm like, that's,

Matt: Hahaha

Joel Hooks: that's pretty good for me. Cause it is, it's literally me that night. I have like fully like personally managed the TypeScript, total TypeScript support inbox and I do, and it's every day and I go in there and.

Matt: Damn,

Joel Hooks: one

Matt: I

Joel Hooks: of

Matt: didn't

Joel Hooks: my

Matt: know that.

Joel Hooks: like challenges, one of my kind of KPIs is how few emails can I get in that inbox and there's always going to be a few, but it's like, can you change my emails? Like, how do I get them to stop asking me to

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: change their email? How do I, you know, um, can I get a refund? We have, we've had very low refunds, uh, as far as that goes, just statistically speaking, your refunds are excellent. And that's a really, really good sign of the product and the messaging and they, you know, like, how do you prevent people from sending you emails? Will you give clear copy? And

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: let them know exactly what you're gonna get and then give them a taste of what they're gonna get To you know like prevent them from being surprised and you know You'll still get the occasional one where somebody on day 29 of your 30 day money-back guarantee will email you saying they weren't satisfied with the product sure guy

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: I Just happily give it to him and

Matt: Yeah, yeah,

Joel Hooks: go

Matt: yeah.

Joel Hooks: about to go about the business

Matt: Got the certificate on the LinkedIn and everything. Yeah, yeah, but

Joel Hooks: Yeah,

Matt: not happy.

Joel Hooks: just, it's fine. Like they got the certificate on LinkedIn, but was not satisfied with the product overall.

Matt: Okay, sure.

Joel Hooks: Yeah, support is one of those things though. I think when you sit down, it's like, I'm gonna do a course and I'm gonna self-publish. It's like a, I've got like a deep, long standing relationship with the support inbox. And

Matt: Mm-hmm

Joel Hooks: it's just, it's like not obvious, like the amount of volume you have to deal with afterwards.

Matt: Hmm. Well, and to me, it also just means like the income that I earn from the course now truly feels like passive income. Honestly, it's because I know that you guys just have it. So it just feels like something that I mean, I'm just freed up to focus on what I want to focus on, which is more which is the future. You know, you guys basically handle the present and I handle where we're going, which is amazing.

Joel Hooks: Do you think we'll, um, get to the point where one of the, one of my strategies to kind of roll that back for when Matt's had enough TypeScript, right? Cause I, that's going to happen at some point, like, or you just, you know, you want to take a break and cause it's not passive is the thing if we don't keep. Trucking it'll, it'll fade. And that's just how the internet works. Um, do you think we'll bring in you know, other, other wizards offer this opportunity to bring in other folks and get other, other people and what advantages might there be to doing that?

Matt: I think like you always want, it's something that I've always been extremely keen to avoid is this sort of like cult of personality when you're doing anything really online. Like that's something I see that's kind of quite troubling is when people just vest all of their hope and love and they're, you know, they're just willing to do whatever this person wants online. And I have never had ambitions in that direction. It sort of feels weird that anyone might. And so It's always felt to me like total time script. It's just a sort of community efforts, but it's just I'm the funnel through which it goes. Like this knowledge really, I only learned because I had listened to other people and wrote down what they said. And a lot of the people who are doing the really smart stuff here have not contributed to total time script, you know? And so... I love the idea of someday having different voices on the platform and actually the interviews and like the way that we structured like interviewing people and putting their stuff like sprinkled through all of the all of the content was really nice and I want to do more of that as well. So actually having people run the courses is I mean there's got to be a lot of trust there and there's got to be a sense that this person knows how to organise the information and I think I can, I don't think I'm ever gonna lose the feeling of wanting to organize information and teach people about things because that's what I was doing when I was a singing teacher. What I gravitated to when I was a developer as well, so I would always try to make little learning materials and run many workshops for people and all that stuff. I don't think that's ever gonna, like, that challenge is ever gonna get boring because it's something I've always done. there's gotta be something there where it's not me being the face, it's someone else being the face, but I get to do the twiddly interesting stuff as well. So there's gotta be something there.

Joel Hooks: Yeah. And, and, you know, like at that point, just to, like, I would see it as you being effectively executive producer and, or, and, or director, right. And then that would be the way versus like, Hey, go off and do something. That would be really challenging actually, just to like fully onboard somebody. without, without that. And, and I don't, I don't like to me, it's like, it's your product, but can somebody else present is, is a really interesting challenge and just also a way to, you know, give you a break. Um, I think it's a, I love it. And I love that it's not like the brand isn't, you know, MattPocock.com, it's total typescript. So like the potential for that is, is vast. And when the time comes, we're well set up to do it with the modular approach to,

Matt: Yep.

Joel Hooks: I may have been thinking about this since day one, but

Matt: Oh, with the adventure modules, I see. Authored

Joel Hooks: Yeah, you

Matt: by...

Joel Hooks: know, like you bring

Matt: Ah.

Joel Hooks: it's like, you know, the, the wheel of time. It wasn't Robert Jordan that finished the wheel of time.

Matt: Who's

Joel Hooks: So

Matt: gonna be my Brandon Sanderson? Absolutely,

Joel Hooks: Yeah, exactly.

Matt: yeah,

Joel Hooks: Yeah.

Matt: quite. I wanna be my own Brandon Sanderson, that's the issue. It's like, I wanna, or rather, I wanna finish like, because the core volume and this thing that we're working on now sort of feels like the, like the end of a saga somehow, you know? Like it feels like finishing something complete and,

Joel Hooks: It would

Matt: I feel

Joel Hooks: be

Matt: like...

Joel Hooks: like, here's, here's the thing. That's like when it comes, you could do the TypeScript and Svelte

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: module, but then, you know, like, do you need, do you need to, is that really you? Or if somebody that was already in that, here's the, like business wise, right? Like somebody that's already in that particular community. would be a, a arguably better choice because then the product gets your reach plus their reach. So like the addressable audience gets even bigger. So like that kind of thing is, is really, uh,

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: it's compelling to me and my, my kind of top hat monocle mode,

Matt: I told

Joel Hooks: I guess.

Matt: you man, I'm a passenger in this car. You've got your freaking sat nav on, you know where you're going, but like, yeah. I'm happy to be here, it's great.

Joel Hooks: Do you see any, at any point where we like, we messed up and recovered or maybe even messed up and haven't recovered, like what, has there been any kind of bumps in the road for you during the process that.

Matt: think so. It was interesting to me that we set like a really fast cadence in terms of the workshops because I was working at like I was working at Vercel at the time and I was doing this two days a week and so I had like four days because we did one workshop then another one two weeks after then another one two weeks after so in total I had four working days for each workshop to prep you know 50 exercises or something.

Joel Hooks: I think, I think you were like, Hey, can we do this by this day? And I'm like, actually, can we do that by this date? That's half of that.

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: And, and I met like, and it was intentional on my part because I'm like, I got to push this cause these things stretch out. And if we, if we want to have something out by the end of the year, if we don't, you know, like if we set this like lackadaisical pace, which is still

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: honestly pretty aggressive, then it's not going to happen. Right. Like it'll, it'll just, and also. Will Matt do this?

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: If I say, no, instead let's get aggressive and do it this way, will you do that? And how do you respond to that prompt is like from my perspective, how does that work? Because we didn't know, I didn't know.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: And now I have a better idea. And we just kind of, as we've worked, we haven't had to have. We just, you know, we just kind of do stuff now and that's nicer because we're not trying to figure each other out

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: as much. Um, yeah, but

Matt: Yeah,

Joel Hooks: that

Matt: I

Joel Hooks: was

Matt: think.

Joel Hooks: it. That was also intentional actually.

Matt: Yeah, that's interesting. Because I remember, it's funny, we're sort of like debriefing on all of these little messages that we sent each other like, like a year ago or something. Like, I remember sending that and thinking, I should probably just say something that I think is conservative. And like, say, how can we do it by, let's say this date, October, whatever. and then you came back with something that I felt was aggressive and good, because I wanted to be aggressive about it. I really, I think personally what I respond to well, I don't necessarily respond well to being like purely independence because I did, you know, purely independent for six years when I was a singing teacher. I need something to push against or like a deadline to do better than to overachieve. and that's what I quite like about our relationship as well because you tend to add these deadlines in that I think oh yeah that's a tough one but I reckon I can make that if I keep pushing and keep going and keep going and that's what I work well with I think so I mean yeah it wasn't a bump in the road really but that was I think the point where we where I felt it kick into gear properly and felt like okay yeah I can get this I can do this

Joel Hooks: If I recall correctly, that the first workshop actually was the same way. Cause it was like, Oh, can we do this in the end of July? And I'm like, how about the end of June? Um, just, you know, like taking that and can we do this a little bit quicker? Because it's, it's really true. Like if you, one thing I knew, and I know is that if you commit and you sell tickets to this thing and promise some group of learners that, that this is going to happen, you are absolutely going to do your best to make sure that they have a good experience and that they get their money's worth. and that they come away from that thinking, wow, that was great,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: um, to the best of your ability. And, you know, like, how can we do that? And then, you know, like, how does that translate into what we do next? Because the slog is the self-paced stuff. I don't know if you'd agree, like for you, it's like, maybe it's not like, I don't know if you're energized by shouting into your microphone alone and your, your shed quarters there.

Matt: I have a kind of, I used to do seven hours of teaching a day, right?

Joel Hooks: Mm-hmm.

Matt: So I... I have a sort of strange recording process, which is I just try and do it as fast as possible with as much continuity as possible. So I don't tend to take many notes. I'm just sort of responding to what's in front of me. And I'm kind of just like coming up with links and stuff as I go on the fly. And so it's very intense and very quick. And so it feels to me like I'm teaching a one to one lesson,

Joel Hooks: Okay.

Matt: which I love actually, like that's my happy place and so I just get back into this mode which feels very nostalgic and very comfortable for me which is just teaching someone and chatting to someone and I mean I've heard my voice repeated back to me I don't know possibly like as much as any other human ever you know so

Joel Hooks: Yeah, yeah.

Matt: I'm very used to it and so I dig it but I also dig the workshops as exciting and adrenalizing and I got a lot out of them I think just in terms of actually contacting learners and being in touch with people.

Joel Hooks: Now I want to do a production where we set it up and actually record and document the way that you produce lessons, because I think it's interesting and people could benefit from us. So maybe I'll

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: follow up on some of that. I just think it'd be cool to, cause that's, that's an interesting approach. And I think one of the things that people do and probably what makes it really tedious is over preparation for

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: these things versus like sitting down and having, you know, cause it is to me. Like teaching a workshop is way easier because I don't have to

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: script it. I don't have to like produce it at that level and can sit

Matt: Yep.

Joel Hooks: down and just deliver, which is, you know, like that, that it's just a less of a drain, less of a chore

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: than, you know, like sitting down and doing a scripted thing.

Matt: Yeah I think to go just quickly into that I was really... because I wanted to do material like that and actually all of my... so when I was getting into Twitter everything I would do would just be a two minute video, no cuts... literally just trimmed the start and the end off and I just explained something for two minutes and people seem to really like that and then I did it in the beginners tutorial or the Zod tutorial I think we did first and People really like that as well We haven't had any complaints about oh this feels poorly edited or he's like saying something stupid or like he you know He's mumbling his words like so It was it has been a shock to me actually how well people respond to essentially me just reacting to stuff in code. And that has felt to me like a superpower that I can make use of, because I just get to skip an entire step, which is scripting, and I just get to talk. And I guess having done all of that one-to-one training and being dramatically trained, as I technically am, then that... has just felt like that's what I've, because you guys bring all this crazy stuff to the table, like in terms of just expertise and business and that sort of thing. And that's literally the thing that I think I bring to the table, which is the ability to produce high quality content quickly.

Joel Hooks: I'm actually taking this course called it's called ultra speaking. And that's part of their deal. It's like the, we, we over prep and you know,

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: like we come off as robots instead of natural, natural folks. And it can be all right, but like, if you want to take that to the next level, if you want to perform, if you want to engage, if you want people to, like, if you want rhythm and cadence and musicality

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: to your, you know, like these are, you know, you're teaching TypeScript for fuck's sake, like, like

Matt: Hahaha!

Joel Hooks: you want to talk something like how do you make that like, you know, keep people from just like, like just

Matt: Yeah.

Joel Hooks: completely falling over. Like that takes that approach. Otherwise, you know, it is another one of these where we're teaching TypeScript and clickety clacking through some stuff

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: and you know, like good luck learning it. You are you still here? Probably not. It's fine.

Matt: Absolutely.

Joel Hooks: You know, like, like that's a, that's a big part of it. Um, yeah, Matt, I think, um, My takeaway here is that we need to hang out at the end of the day. Um, so like, I'm looking forward to that and I want to come over your way and you should, you should come over here so we can, we can have smash burgers again. Cause that's always fun. Uh,

Matt: I'm so ready.

Joel Hooks: otherwise, yeah, it's great. I'm looking forward to the next, next chapter.

Matt: Yep, the next module coming out,

Joel Hooks: That's a joke because we're writing a book right now.

Matt: we are writing a book. God, we should talk about the book process as well because it's pretty unique and pretty interesting.

Joel Hooks: Oh yeah, that one's weird and totally different, so that'll be a... We'll definitely get into that.

Matt: Hmm.

Joel Hooks: Also, I'm excited to see how that comes out, because I think it's different than how most books are probably produced also, and the final result's gonna be an interesting thing too. Holding our hands. That'll

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Joel Hooks: be fun.

Matt: Be amazing. My wife's written a book as well, so we'll

Joel Hooks: Oh,

Matt: be

Joel Hooks: nice.

Matt: a two-book family, yeah?

Joel Hooks: Yeah. Yeah, nice.

Matt: Alright Joel,

Joel Hooks: Well,

Matt: that was wicked.

Joel Hooks: cool.

Matt: Thanks man.

Joel Hooks: Yeah, cheers. I'm, uh...