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In this episode, we welcome Jack McDade to the show to discuss Statamic, his Radical Design course, business, marketing, and more.
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What is Laravel Creator Spotlight?
Interviews with creators making cool things in Laravel
Welcome back to the Laravel community
spotlight with me today is Jack McDade.
Welcome to the show, Jack.
And why don't you tell us a
little bit about yourself?
Thanks, Eric.
Yeah.
Uh, my name is Jack McDade and I think
that explains it all.
Uh, no, uh, so I'm
the creator of Stadimik.
That's what I do for, you know, kind of
my, my full main time, uh, gig.
Uh, it's a CMS built on Laravel.
Been around for 12 years and our team is
like up to five or six people now.
Um, so yeah, we're just kind of trying to
build like the best possible CMS ever.
And, um, when I'm not doing that, cause I
always have to scratch an itch, uh, um,
you know, I'm a designer and a developer,
so I've, um, released a design course
called radical design and most kind of
tinkering with some like silly ideas
on the side or whatever, but, uh, yeah,
between Stadimik and my side projects,
that's pretty much, uh, at least the
internet version of me.
Nice.
Um, so my, my first question, um,
is all about Stadimik like I want to, I
don't think I've ever heard this.
So I would love to hear
sort of the origin story.
Like how did you decide, Hey,
I'm going to create Stadimik.
Yeah.
So it was like 2000 end of 2011.
And I had been working on, uh, I kind of
had like a one, one or a one man
design studio sort of thing.
And then sometimes I had a second person,
we could tag team projects and I was
building, designing and building client
websites, uh, using at the time
expression engine, but always trying to
like find a CMS that, you know, was more
efficient or faster to, you know, just to
get stood up the way I wanted.
And I was just so frustrated by the, how
hard it was to maintain multiple
client sites when they all had databases
with the content in it.
So you'd have, so you have five clients
and one client would be like, oh yeah,
I need you to like add a blog to my site.
And you're like, well, I told you you
wanted one and you're
like, yeah, whatever.
Uh, I want it now.
And so like you'd work on the blog on, on
dev, but then they'd be updating
the content on the site.
And so the databases
aren't in sync anymore.
So what do you do?
You like, please stop editing the site or
you have to like recreate some of the
stuff in production or like copy it, like
custom SQL exports, whatever.
It was just always so painful.
And like, this is just 95%
of this is just the text.
It's literally HTML that's
like stuck in a database.
Why can't we put that stuff in a file and
then version control it that way I can
just do a get merge
and just like keep going.
So that was the idea.
Like, is it possible to build a CMS that
relied mostly on flat files instead
of a database for the content?
And, uh, yeah, I started hacking on the
idea and realized like, this is a little
bit, this is gonna
take forever by myself.
I found a buddy who wanted to hack on it
with me for a little while.
And we got a 1.0 out in
early, like June, 2012.
And, uh, yeah, it was, man, dude, the
internet was a different place.
12 years ago.
And just, I'm just laughing at how it was
built, how we sold it and everything.
But that's, that is the
origin story in a nutshell.
I love that.
I love that.
Yeah.
Cause so that was going to be actually,
you kind of let into it.
My next question is like, why did you
decide on the flat files versus, you
know, more of the sort of traditional
approach where it's just like, um, you
know, some sort of database.
Um, so, so you sort of
answered that already.
So that's pretty cool.
So you, you basically, you know, in those
early days, you wanted a better way to
like work with your clients and just pull
stuff down and not have to like sync
databases and do all that headache.
Even a two, when I had two people, me and
another guy, like the two of us trying
to sync on, uh, you know, a CMS build
with the database was like, you had to
have a remote database server and you're
both connected to it.
And like, it just, it just felt so janky.
Like, how is this so awkward in what felt
like the super modern 2012 is like the
internet, like we're not, we don't have
to use gifts to round
our corners anymore.
That we should be able to solve this.
And, uh, yeah, that, I mean, that is,
that is the reason why.
And, um, the problem with it though, is
like it hadn't been done before.
Like right around the same time, there
was like one or two others that came out,
uh, with, you know, totally different
approaches are built on different
frameworks or whatever, but kind of like
doing the flat file thing.
And it was a long road
of like educating people.
Like, uh, is this only for
tiny sites and the scale?
Like, where, what, how does it work?
And, you know, the early versions of
statemic didn't scale.
There was no caching.
There was no, like, it was
just raw, like PHP scanning, like
globbing file directories and stuff.
Um, but over the years, 12 years, there's
a lot of intelligence built in.
And I'm probably answering future
questions, but like it no longer
is a flat file only CMS.
Now we have drivers.
So you can do a database, you can use
Firebase, you could push it all into,
I don't know, Oracle, if you wanted to or
something, but like you can, you can
do whatever you want to now.
Um, but it still starts out of the box as
flat file, because in my
opinion, it is the easiest way to stand
up the one.o of a site.
And then we have a one, one command, you
run it and it like creates all your
migrations and like imports all your data
in the database and you could just
run on my suit, got to that.
So it's really, really flexible.
That's awesome.
So, so that is sort of, uh, that's sort
of your recommendation.
You know, when you first start with
statimic, just go with the flat files,
learn the system and
kind of go from there.
And if you, if you do feel like flat
files aren't the answer, then you can
always, you know, push it out to a
database if you needed to.
Yeah.
I mean, we've got it all
scripted out and automated.
It's like a really quick process.
So in my opinion, like when you are
building out a site and there are no
pages, when you're making your first
ones, but being able to find all and
find and replace in your content, being
able to just like version control,
all the changes is great.
And like, once you go to production,
depending on like why you might need
a database or why you not, like it's not
necessarily like speed, but it's.
If you have millions of entries, well,
now we're talking, that's like
a bottleneck for flat files, or if you
have, um, you know, really, really
huge entries with like, I don't know,
like hundreds of like chapters of books
or like something that's like really,
really, really long, you know, or, uh,
highly relational and you want to
actually use like
eloquent models and stuff.
Yeah.
There's like a number of reasons why you
wouldn't want to go flat file, but, um,
yeah, especially just the dev
workflow is the best workflow.
And it's, it's probably what 95% of
people using Stadimac can get away
with just using flat files that, you
know, I feel like you're talking
about more edge Casey stuff, um, where
most people aren't going to need that.
85 to 90, I'd say, but the ones that need
it, like need it, need it.
And it doesn't make sense for us.
Uh, you know, as a customer focused
product, you'd be like, well, sorry,
you gotta like, technically it does
everything you need it to accept
run fast, you know, like, yeah, but we
love the control panel.
We love the template and we love like how
it all is organized.
You're like, yeah, but
sorry, it's going to be slow.
Like, no, we had to solve it.
And that was Stadimac three was like,
when we rewrote it with, you know,
drivers for a data storage and yeah, I
think we still probably struggled
to like tell people that story, like
Stadimac can, like, it's not like it can
scale, like it can scale.
Don't worry about it.
You know, that's sad.
Yeah.
Well, and to, um, you sort of mentioned
that, but I think wasn't it
Stadimac four where y'all just, y'all did
a whole lot of improvements
on performance across the
board on Stadimac, right?
That was five.
Yeah.
What you came up with.
Five.
Yeah.
This April.
Yeah.
Like massive, massive
performance improvements.
Um, yeah, we have a, we have a secret
wizard who like works part time who
would just like, just built out all these
crazy pro like, you know,
black fire profiling charts and like, got
stuff optimized down to, you know,
like it was 80, 90%
faster for some people.
And it was already pretty quick for the,
like, it is awesome.
I love that kind of stuff.
Uh, that is sweet.
Um, so of course
Stadimac is built on Laravel.
It uses Laravel.
Um, you know, how, how has, you know,
adapting Laravel or, you know,
basically starting with Laravel.
How has that helped you grow Stadimac?
Oh, I mean, it's been, it's been huge.
Like Stadimac one was built on slim PHP.
I don't know if you or
anybody remembers slim.
Oh, I remember it.
I don't remember using
it, but I remember it.
Yeah.
I knew like 90% of the app was all
enclosures, like in a single file.
Like it was like the
routes file was the whole app.
Uh, it's just hysterical.
Um, then in version two, we rebuilt it as
a Laravel app, like as if you would build
your own app and then you'd have it.
Um, but that meant like you're running a
Laravel app, so you can't drop a Laravel
app into a Laravel app if you have a
Laravel application and you want to add
content management, like, well, you can
put it on a subdomain and like put your
blog there or something, right?
So like, okay, that was a
little bit of a swing and a miss.
Um, and so for version three, we rewrote
it as a composer package and, you know,
work through all the being able to defer
logic and make sure we're binding it
late and all this kind of stuff so that
you can drop it into apps and use it for
the marketing pages or
for whatever you want.
Just use the API and pull stuff, you
know, into your app and
like people use it for
iOS apps and like, uh, so people are
using like Apple TV apps.
Like it can do all sorts of stuff.
Cause it's, it can run headless and just
provide you an API and
at a good place to edit your content.
Um, I now don't remember what the
question started as.
I think you answered it.
I was just asking, you know, like what,
what, you know, what
Laravel brought to the
table by you picking that.
Yeah.
So like, once we finally like made it to
Laravel as a composer package, now we
kind of like slot into the ecosystem of
tools available to
you for any Laravel app.
And then that also led us, you know,
building compatibility with other Laravel
packages and take advantage of, um,
being, being able to
let people extend it.
And really comfortable Laravel like ways,
uh, being able to bound stuff in the, you
know, that the app service provider and,
you know, do all that kind of stuff.
So yeah, it just, it gave us convention.
It gave us, uh, a wider audience with
which, you know, to, to reach people with
just, oh, like I'm looking for a Laravel,
see, most I can drop in that, you know,
there's a few options.
Um, but stat to make
is a really good one.
So, um, yeah, it's been, it's been great.
And to have like a stat to make be this
micro, uh, you know, many subset of the
greater Laravel community,
it's just, it's fantastic.
Like it's like the same Laravel vibe, but
like kind of even better.
Cause it's a smaller, like more familiar
crew, which is really cool.
Yeah, it is awesome.
And, you know, it's, it's great to sort
of see stat to make grow, you know, from,
from those really, really early days, I
sort of remember when it was first
announced, um, and, you know, now you've
actually, you know, you've, I
think this is your third year running a
stat to make conference, but it's not
really a conference it's, uh, you just go
hang out with your buddies, right?
I mean, yes, yes, pretty much
depends on who you're talking.
If it's a boss who's ready to write the
check, you know, pull
the credit card out.
There is for sure training and education.
Um, but it is like in the context of like
hanging out on
vacation with like 50 buddies.
Um, so yeah, it's, uh,
we've done two so far.
So I'm currently working on and
researching and
finding the right venue for
2025 and, uh, that'll be our third one.
It's called stat to make flat camp.
Why camp?
Yes.
And, uh, so I believe the first one was
in like Boone, North Carolina, just
out in the middle of the mountains.
Um, the second one was in what Rome or
somewhere like that.
Yep.
Which was amazing.
I mean, like the, yeah, being in the
mountains was beautiful.
We had five or six cabins, like big, big
cabins on top of a mountain.
We just, it was just us up there.
Uh, we had to bring like caterers in.
They like had to drive up the mountain
and bring us our food.
I'm like, I hope they show up.
I don't have a plan B.
It was kind of nerve wracking because of
how, how like rustic the setting was.
Uh, then in Rome or outside of Rome, uh,
it was like this, it used to be an
Olympic training facility that's now like
a private resort for like private
corporate events and like retreats.
And so we showed up and it's
like, Hey, you're home now.
Like welcome.
Everything is yours.
If you see it, you can eat it.
You can wander around in the kitchen.
We have like a games
room full of equipment.
They had like sneakers and socks and
tennis gear and like anything you could
need to like play any of the sports they
had on the grounds, like soccer
balls and cleats and whatever, like help
yourself to the wine cellar.
And you like go down this like spiral
staircase into the basement and it's
hundreds of bottles of wine and it's like
beautiful, like it was grand
piano, take whatever you want.
Just don't waste anything.
Grab a bottle of wine, go to the bar,
make some cocktails.
It was like all set up.
And then they had like,
uh, like private chefs.
They like came in or like on site and
they just had three meals a day.
Just insane.
Like, yeah, it was great.
Like octopus and, uh, you know, steak and
lasagnas and like pastas.
And also, I mean, it
was like, it was insane.
It was like, it exceeded, like, yeah,
here, I'm just gushing about it.
It was like exceeded every expectation
and everyone I think had a good time.
Um, but we learned a lot too.
There was a really, really good amount of
knowledge transfer and
it was, it was fantastic.
Yeah.
I mean, I was going to say, you know, I
made that comment half jokingly, but you
having it that small and so intimate, you
probably actually learn more than you
would at a traditional conference because
all you're doing is listening to somebody
speak for an hour where here you're
actually making those
connections and you,
you know, you're, you're not only getting
the friendships out of
it, but you're able to then
ping those people that, you know, that
were there and they're
super smart with statimic.
So when you run into a problem later,
you're like, oh yeah, hey,
remember when we were in Rome?
Uh, let me ask you this
question that I'm running into.
And I feel like that's just something you
can't mimic from a
traditional conference.
That, uh, that was really sweet with the
way you're doing that flat camp.
Yeah.
A hundred percent.
Like we had a daily
like round table session.
We'd have, you know, we all get in a room
and have, you know, a
couple of things we want to
talk and share and then would chat with
each other, like would
have a Q and a session.
And then from that Q and a session, like
the number one or two
topics that came up,
like people want to talk about more like,
all right, three o'clock by the pool,
we're going to talk
about enterprise statimic.
And so it was like 15, 20 guys, like in
our bathing suits
talking about enterprise,
like, and then, you know, the next day we
were talking about, you know,
Vue JS upgrade and people like stayed up,
like pulled it all night.
You're trying to like upgrade statimic to
like the new version of view.
Like it was, it was, it was super fun.
Like it was a great time.
That's awesome.
Yes.
Super cool.
Cause you know, it is funny cause like if
you, you know, as a normal, you know,
person, when you go on vacations, even if
you go with friends, you don't have that
connection of, or at least I don't have
that connection with
anybody that knows anything
that I do.
So it's, it's gotta be pretty wild having
a, you know, a house full of people that
all do the same thing and have that
shared, shared bonding
and shared connection.
So that's, yeah, that's, I think, I think
you're on to something here.
Oh, I know I am.
Yeah.
It's for sure.
It's it's amazing.
And to have the whole place to ourselves
is like anybody, even
if you don't know them,
you can walk up, Hey,
I'm, I'm Jack, I'm Eric.
And, uh, you know, like what kind of
projects do you work on?
We have this, we already have
commonality between like we do
statemic and probably Laravel too.
And you can just like strike up a
conversation and then you're
talking about your kids and
your family and like, then you're just
friends and you're
grabbing a beer and whatever.
Yeah.
That's sweet.
So to change gears a little bit.
So version five just came
out the, did you say February?
April.
Yeah.
April.
So are you, are is statimic running on
sort of a yearly release cycle like
Laravel itself or do
y'all just more sort of when
stuff gets done, it comes out.
Yeah.
So we, we synced up with the Laravel
release set schedule
along with static force.
So we trail about four to six weeks
behind just to make sure
we have, you know, like,
all right, things are locked in.
We want to, we have to, we're currently
supporting the last two
versions of Laravel so that
everybody doesn't have to do
a Laravel upgrade every year.
If they want to upgrade statimic, because
like for people who
are running Laravel apps
and they want to do that, it's great.
But if you're just using statimic as a
CMS and you're, you quote,
don't care about Laravel,
it's kind of a bummer to have to do a
Laravel upgrade
alongside like every year.
Right.
So we're trying to solve that story.
Like we've been
talking with Jason McCreary.
Maybe we can do like a
shift specific to statimic.
But so we, we bridge two versions, which
means we need a little
extra time when there's like
a hard dependency change between one
version to the next.
We have to bridge support for, you know,
taking advantage of new stuff,
but still making the old way work.
So it's a little bit of a, you know,
complex problem, but
that's what we're kind of on the
framework side of a problem.
Like we solve the problem so
other people don't have to.
And yeah, and so we just, we just trail a
little bit behind and,
but that way we have,
we have a major release every year and
that, that lags behind Laravel.
Yeah.
Sweet.
Well, so it's, it's
might be a little too early.
Any, any big V six things you you're
willing to talk about yet?
Yeah.
So interestingly, like we don't, we don't
like build features
for the major release.
Right.
So like six point out, like we might, but
like we don't, if
we're working on a feature,
whenever it's done, we ship it, whether
it's we're two weeks from
V six or like if it's ready
and it can work on the last version in
the current version or
whatever, we'll ship it because
our audience can take
advantage of it today.
Why hold it back?
I don't, I don't love marketing features
for big version numbers.
We did that for a long time.
We did that for like
seven or eight years.
And it was, it ended up with like long
running feature branches because
you had all these different things that
were codependent on the marketing date.
And then you're like, oh, we got to
redesign the brand and blah, blah, blah.
And like, you've got all
this stuff just sitting there.
Yes, we went somewhere.
And, and, but so, but I, but I can't
answer like the spirit of the question,
which is what cool
stuff are we working on?
Right.
And so we're working on the forms module.
So we want, you know, this, this year we
want our forms to be more powerful,
more end user friendly.
So like a non-technical person could like
whip up a form and do
landing pages and click
funnels and all that kind of stuff.
We're working on two way
relationships right now.
All the static
relationships are kind of one way.
So they're not, they don't like reverse.
You can't reverse the relationship out.
So we want to solve that problem.
There's some add-ons that do it, but we
want it to be like really tightly core
coupled.
We're working on some pretty big SEO
specific features using
open AI and LLMs and vector
embeddings and stuff to like essentially
create like automatic linking,
like cross-linking opportunities and
track, you know, all the linking,
like internal and external links between
all the content in your site,
being able to automate all of that.
And it's come along pretty nice.
What else?
What else?
Let me pull up my board.
See if there's anything
interesting I can say.
Working on, so the statimic control panel
currently is still
running view two because
I think it's the best version of view,
but it's pretty deprecated at this point.
So we're also pursuing view three for
statimic six, which I
honestly, I'm still reluctant of.
I just prefer view two.
Actually, I prefer view one. But yeah, it's time.
So we're doing that as well.
Sweet.
And just to sort of, you know, expand on
the view side with
statimic, the back end,
the admin panel is written in view.
But if you're using statimic, you don't
have to use view on your front end.
You can use whatever you want.
I just don't make sure nobody's, you
know, thinking, oh, well, I have to,
I'm stuck with view now if I'm choosing statimic, but that's not the case at all. You can use whatever you want. Thank you, Eric.
Yeah.
In fact, we have the case.
If you want to build a custom field type
for statimic, currently
it would be a view two.
You know, you have a view two
component that would do that.
But yeah, so that's, that's where the
difference, it really doesn't matter for
like 99% of the users.
But yeah, it's for those out on
developers who want to take advantage of view through packages,
like, oh, we love to drop in this. I don't know, whatever. Like custom field and
use this new cool thing.
Like, yeah, you can't do that right now.
So let's solve that.
Gotcha.
All right.
This one's I got a, I
got a hard one for you.
So, you know, you know, every founder
makes mistakes along the way.
So, you know, in the last 12 years of
running statimic, you know,
is there a particular failure
or anything, you know, that shaped your
approach to the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the,
or anything, you know, that shaped your
approach to now, you
know, made you improve,
made you do anything differently?
Oh, gosh, where to start.
So, so many mistakes.
So you want to talk about today or since
the beginning, I would say,
Does any stand out, I guess, is the
better, better wording.
Yeah, I would say like the, probably the
biggest mistake we made is not making it,
at least not making the repo open source
from the very beginning.
So, static one and two
were both private repo.
And it was one was like, we hadn't, as a
community, as a PHP
community, hadn't really
adopted composer yet.
So like, that was reasonable.
You would buy static and you would
download a zip file.
That's how it worked.
Static to composer was kind of standard.
It was built on composer, but we would
get archive or composer
archive, like a bundle.
And you would still download a zip file,
which is just hilarious now to think that
even did that through a phrase, someone
would steal the code base
and like not give us money.
Because like trying to get it going and
being able to find time to work on it
when you're like a one,
two or at some time, like three person
company and you have
this your only money.
Like I can't work on it
if you're not buying it.
But by having that repo closed, we just
missed out on so much
opportunity for people who were
willing to collaborate, who would solve
the problem because
they're just in there hacking
around because they
need to launch a project.
And just didn't build trust in a way that
just having an open repo does.
So now like, static core is free.
It's open source.
It's not MIT like you can't resell it,
but like you don't have to pay for it.
You can install it.
You can use it for free.
You get one user and one contact form,
but otherwise you have
all the other feature,
most of the other
features and you can just use it.
And so like we have a huge open source
community now around it.
People like we have PRs come in almost
faster than we can
review them at this point.
So I think that's a good problem to have.
I don't see that as a problem.
Some people like PRs.
Like I was talking to, I
think it was, it was Caleb Porsy.
I was like, do you
hate when people send PRs?
I'm like, no, PRs are amazing.
It's literally
someone doing my job for me.
And all we need to do is like read the
code instead of solve the problem.
Right.
And say like, oh, it works.
Tested.
Like we just tinker with it.
Anyway.
So that was a mistake that I would say
really slowed our growth.
Like not having a free to try or free to
use simpler version and having it closed
source, like until we
opened it, we didn't really grow.
Like it was five years of
like not getting anywhere.
And then I'm like, I don't know.
Like, let's just try opening the repo.
And like, if you look at our, like our
revenue, like that's where it ticks and
starts heading in a direction that most
people generally prefer,
which is up and to the right.
So yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and it shows, you know, more, um, I
don't want to say
before it was very isolated,
but it just shows how big, you know, it
just, it has more of a
community feel maybe,
maybe is the right wording, you know, as
you come in and look at
it and you're like, oh,
well, all these people are, you know,
contributing and helping.
And then, you know, from there, then it
builds up your, um, you
know, your, uh, support through,
I think y'all are using discord.
Yeah.
We have this community side.
Yeah, exactly.
But like GitHub issues are where people
submit bug reports and we have
discussions and, you know,
all that stuff.
So yeah, having the standard set of tools
like, oh, you work in
Laravel, like it's, you know,
we kind of have the same set of tools for
the community and code.
And it definitely makes a big difference.
Like, oh, you guys have, I don't know,
whatever it is, like
287 issues closed in the last 30 days.
Like you clearly, this is an actively
maintained project, right?
If you come to a site and you download in
a zip file, like is,
are you guys working on stuff?
Like you can look at all our branches.
Like it's, we try to be
as transparent as possible.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Yeah, I do.
It just reminds me, you know, you're
bringing back old ancient history.
You know, I remember when I first
started, it was like,
you would go to hot scripts
and you would find something and you
would either pay like $2
and you download a file
or, or you would just go to PHP classes
and like download this
random code that somebody put out there.
Code River right on Invana, right?
Download some whatever, like, yeah.
Well, the problem is you never knew what
you were going to get either.
It would could be like
the most horrible code ever.
And it's like, but
I've already paid for it.
I guess I'll just stick it in there all
with the security issues.
Every day.
All right.
So one final thing on the statemic topic
and, um, um, you know, this was,
this one's more for, I guess the
community side and from
you personally, but what, um,
what advice would you give developers
that are wanting to create
their own little products,
you know, within the Liverpool ecosystem,
you know, as far as like, um, you know,
getting started
marketing, things like that.
I mean, um, cause it seems like we have a
very, um, you know, I
guess you would call
it bootstrapper or entrepreneurial spirit
within the community itself.
But those that are wanting to sort of get
started on that route, how would you,
you got any tips or advice for them?
Yeah.
I would say start like by planning
community upfront in the beginning,
have a place where people can access you
and be accessible in a
way that is non scalable
as for as long as you can.
Right.
So if you, if you're building, I don't
know, like a photo
gallery thing for Laravel,
I don't write like some, some dashboard
thing, like answer
questions, be available,
hop on calls with people, go do things
that like, if you added
two zeros to your revenue,
like you wouldn't do it anymore.
But like until then, uh, do those things.
Like I'll still hop on calls with people.
Well, we try to be as
personal as, as, uh, as you can.
And that makes a huge
difference in trust and people like,
because especially when you, we have
something new, it won't do everything.
The 1.0 is going to solve
like the reason why you built it.
And then like your, maybe three other
features that you think
someone might need and two of
them, actually nobody uses ever.
And so getting that feedback from the
community as early as you can,
whether it's a discord server or even
just get hub discussions,
having some place where you can chat,
especially in real time with people,
makes a huge difference
and be as helpful as you can.
Don't resent questions.
Don't resent bug reports.
That's when someone opens an issue on
your project, it's because they took,
they didn't have to do that.
They ran into a problem and like be
concerned when you don't get them,
because that means
they're just giving up.
Like the fact that they take the time to
fill out a bug report,
give you an information,
maybe a dump or whatever, uh,
try to be thankful and, um, you know,
thank them for the PRS,
thank them for the issues
and go, go that extra mile.
Yeah. It shows, it shows they care, you
know, which is huge when
you're running a business.
If you have people care
about the thing you're creating.
Yeah. Absolutely. All right.
I've made custom t-shirts for people.
They send like enough PRS of
like in a certain category.
Like there's a Jack slight as a developer
who did a bunch of
PRS for our Bard editor.
Uh, and so like I, I had a Bard shirt
like ordered for him.
It's like a dude
playing a lute or whatever.
And I was like, dude,
Bard master. Thank you.
Like, just like little things like that,
I think can go a long way.
That's awesome. Yes.
That actually kind of transitions
perfectly, but then,
um, that, I don't know,
now I'm thinking about marketing and how
great that is from a company standpoint,
you know, to make that
personal effort and, uh, you know,
show the people that you, you know, that
you really appreciate them and nothing
goes above and beyond more than making
something custom for,
for a customer like that.
And that's just, that's just
the basic good work on that.
Yeah. Like you could spend 10 times,
a hundred times that on Twitter ads or
Google ads and get
like nothing out of it.
Right. Other, other
people are your best marketers.
Someone who's not your company is
instantly more
trustworthy because they're not like
incentivized to do it mostly. I mean,
paid influencers and
that's the thing, but like,
yeah, people who are, who are talking
about your product, like notice them,
thank them for that and
like, take care of them.
Yeah. Yeah. You can't, yeah, absolutely
can't beat word of mouth. That's a
hundred percent for sure.
But so you, you talked about a custom
t-shirt. So this, this
transitions perfectly into what
I want to talk about next. Um, and we'll
just start with, I had
to print this out to make
sure I got it right, but your Twitter bio
image says you are the
Willy Wonka of the web world.
So, you know, to all that follow you or
know you, um, not
only do you love coding,
Laravel, Stadimik, but you love design
and you have a very unique
outlook on design. Um, um,
it's really sweet cause like you have,
you know, everything now
is just so standardized,
I guess, uh, where every thing Jack
design stands out and
it's like, that's a Jack,
that's a Jack joint that he made. Um, so,
so how, how did you, have you
always just been into design
as well as coding or? Yeah, really always
had been, uh, like I was
actually deciding before
I learned to code, like I would be like
as a teenager in my
bedroom on my 486 or I don't
know, whatever, whatever it was at the
time, whenever like the
first version of Photoshop,
I managed to get, uh, my hands on by
downloading 57 dot rawr files and like,
he's sharing them together, right? Uh,
you know, been doing
Photoshop tutorials and like,
I never really thought like back in the
day that I'd make money at,
I just loved it. I wanted to
see if I could make something and then,
yeah, over the years, like
didn't have a designer work on
something or didn't have a coat. Like I
just keep sharpening both sides of the
tool set until I was
pretty decent at, at both. And I don't
know if it's because I was homeschooled
or whatever. I just,
like, I don't feel comfortable like
sitting in like the
mainstream, you know, like aesthetic or
trends or like with any, like not just
with everything, uh,
sometimes to my own detriment,
but, um, yeah, when it comes to design
stuff though, I just fell
in love with making funky,
weird, wacky, especially like 80s and
90s, uh, based designs.
And not everything I do is,
is wacky. I mean, to be clear, it doesn't
always fit, uh, the need,
but whenever I can, like I will
amp up the personality on everything I
touch as much as, as is
reasonable and a little more.
Yeah. Um, you know, if, if for everybody
that's new to sort of
new to layer of L and
liberal community, there was man, three
or four, it might've been
a little longer than that,
but Jack designed the layer con us
website in this synth
90s, 80s vibe. It was just
Miami vice. Like it had all those vibes
to me and it was, it was wonderful.
We'll have to link that one. And it
looked like Ninja turtles,
like 93. And then there was
vapor wave and like, yeah, that was at
the PlayStation theater
and, um, and times square.
And like, I got to design all these like
crazy size screens, like
it down the hallways and out
front and like times square and like did
all this like neon and like,
it was super fun. Um, I would,
I would love to time travel back and just
like walk through it
again. Cause it was so cool.
Yeah. That was a super fun event. And
then Jack, Jack had the Stata McBoo set
up with, uh, you know,
an old Nintendo with mortal combat on it.
Street fighter. Street
fighter. Are they not the same?
Or was that very offensive? What I just
said, very, very clearly clearly,
clearly, clearly. Uh,
but, uh, one of the other cool things
that came out of that was
you introduced, there was, um,
there was a, there was an album or a band
and that had the same sort
of vibe feel to it. And now I
cannot remember the name of that, but it
was like, do what the midnight. Yes.
Cause I listen to that
all the time. Now it's like a red blind
and kick drums or something. And it's
like, I don't see this
all the time. So it's been on my playlist
ever since that, that event.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm seeing them
in like two weeks. Yeah. Yeah. The
midnight's awesome. You can,
you can look at Stata McBoo,
you can, whatever we'll talk about my
design course in a minute,
but go check out the midnight.
They're the best. This is, this is that
word of mouth we were talking about.
Oh man. That's awesome. Well, so, um, I
guess I'm trying to think
of, of a right thing because
the, it seems like if you're a designer,
you're not a developer.
And if you're a developer,
you're not a designer. So are you like
this sort of like unicorn
special person that was, um, um,
you know, brought up eating like raw eggs
and now you can do all
the stuff or is it like,
you just, you're just made that way or
just hard work. Yeah. It
was, you know, I would have to
stand on an ice block for it. No. Um, I
really, I really think
anybody can do it. I think the key,
the key is you just have to want to, I
think like, if you are someone who can
teach yourself how to
code, like coding is like, like parts of
it are easy, but then like
to get really good at it is
really hard. Like there's a, there's a
lot of time you have to put
into that. If you're willing
to put in a fraction of that time into
getting better at design, I
promise like you could be as
good as me. I get, I feel like, I feel
like I forget how to do
everything every morning when I
wake up and I have to teach myself it
again, like real quick and that maybe
that's my superpowers.
Just I'm fast at learning and like a bad
at remembering. Um, but I,
I really think, and I've,
you know, I put this course together
because over the years I've
like helped people along like,
hey, I want to try and like get better
design and I would just kind
of work with someone one-on-one.
It doesn't take very long to like, it's,
you have, there's like
shackles that, that are on people.
There's like, you're, you're getting in
your own way thinking of
like what the design process
actually is. And so, uh, with my course,
I wanted to walk through
all those steps, like what it
actually takes to design and like strip
back a lot of myths and
things and show like, yeah,
as a designer, you don't have to design
every item in your
design. You just have to make a
unique composition. And so you can use
asset libraries and like
download everything and
copy stuff and change it and tweak it and
like just remix. Like if you
think of it as being like a DJ,
if designers are DJs, they're just like
remixing other people's
music. All of a sudden it gets a
lot easier than like, oh, I need to be
Taylor Swift or whatever and
like create something totally
original from scratch in my basement
without looking at the
outside world. Like that's,
yeah, that's really hard. Um, like
sketching Figma or Photoshop, these are
like, there's a lot of
things you can do, but the basics, you
only need a couple of the
basic features, layers, shapes,
text, shadows. Like it's all about, um,
just putting the time in and
knowing like what to focus on.
And, uh, yeah, I, I don't think I'm
special. I think I, I just
maybe have a special perspective
that I'm just trying to share with
people. And, uh, you know, if that means
eventually I, I won't
have to do design anymore. So be it, you
know, that's okay. Yes. Uh,
yeah. So his course is radical,
does radical design.com, right? Radical
design course.com radical design
course.com. Um, but,
you know, you know, the way you just
described that it's
almost, it's almost the same as
programming, you know, like we have all
these patterns and things
that have been passed through
the ages and now we just kind of figure
out where they should go. Um, so it's
sort of the same with
design. Like you're like, you're just
saying there, you know, you, you see
something that you kind of
like just kind of remix a little bit,
make it into your own style. And there
you go. It's very, it's
amazing how much like the same thought
pattern actually translates
and like you can learn how
to code and make stuff work. And then
like writing clean code is this skill
onto itself, right? Like
refactoring and like breaking it out into
smaller methods and things that like
picking good variable
names, like there's, there's functional
and then there's pretty, and
it's kind of the same thing.
Like you can make a functional design and
then as you get better, you
can pretty it up and tighten
up the layer, you know, the spacing and
the type of, you know, the type flow and
picking better fonts.
And it just builds on itself over time.
Uh, you just have to
like put the time in.
Exactly. Just like everything.
Put the effort in. All right. So moving
on. So we're going to, I
will have links to all the stuff
that we're talking about in the show
notes. Um, but I want to do one more
question. Um, and then I'll
let you, uh, then we'll go from there.
But, uh, so when you're not working on
Stadimac or design or
Laravel and you're wanting to get away
from this screen, what do you go do?
What's your hobbies?
It's fishing. Usually it's fishing. Yeah.
So I live in Florida and
yeah, I mean, I love saltwater
fishing and the rivers going off shore
with my buddies catching,
you know, Mahi and tuna. And,
uh, just got like last weekend, we just
came back from upstate New York and the
Adirondack Mountains
on a fishing trip, uh, where we, a couple
of guys, we like buy like a
trophy and whoever catches the
most like inches and weight or whatever
of like bass and pike, like
gets to take the trophy. So
like, yeah, fishing is probably my number
one. Um, I like video games. I love
reading. I love, love,
like fantasy. I'm a big fantasy nerd. So
always in the middle of like
the next fantasy trilogy or
something. Um, um, yeah. That's awesome.
So I have two fishing
questions. Um, have you ever called a
sailfish and have you ever been, what's
the one where you go into
the stream and you, and you,
fly fishing, have you ever done fly
fishing? So I've got a fishing
crew that I go out with. It's
like four or five buddies. We all go out.
Uh, we're called torch
to, and we actually have a
YouTube channel that I like never talk
about because like most people
don't care about fishing. Like
the intersection is pretty small, the
Venn diagram between Laravel
and fishing. But if you actually
like fishing, go just look at the torch
tuna on, uh, on YouTube.
Anyway. Um, so I, I almost always
go out on every single outing and we've
gone out probably 50 or 60
times in the last two years,
like offshore. I've missed a couple. I've
missed two or three and one
of those three, they caught
a sailfish and I wasn't there. So it's
like, Oh man, I was so close.
I saw one, like I was on the
boat when one hit, but it didn't hook up.
Uh, and it was like jumping
out of the water, which is
pretty cool. Um, but yeah, have not
caught a sailfish yet. Um, I think
they're pretty like, I just,
to me, cause I always heard there's sort
of like this mythical
creature in the ocean that it's
really hard to catch. And then when you
catch them, it takes you
like four hours to pull it in or
something crazy. Yeah, I can. Yeah. They
can get, um, they can get
big. Like Marlin can take a
really long time. Uh, we haven't targeted
Marlin cause they're
super deep. They're down like
thousands of feet. Um, but yeah, sailfish
like to be on the surface and they're
super fast. They got
got a sword and whatnot. Um, and fly
fishing. Yes. I have fly fished, um, up
in the upstate New York.
And I used to do that quite a bit. I
would love to pick it up
again. I've been thinking about
getting to saltwater fly fishing as well,
which is a little bit
different, but it's still pretty
cool. Yeah, that is neat. Yeah. I've not,
I've not, I grew up, uh,
like more like just traditional
like bass fishing and we'd go catfishing
at night, but I've always thought fly
fishing would be cool,
but then it's like, well, then I gotta
learn how to like throw a fly rod or
whatever that's called.
It's not that hard. You can get pretty
good at it in like a day. It's not bad.
Um, tend to maybe, um,
I love fast fishing though. Like there's
something really fun about
being on a boat and just like
in a small mountain lake and just working
the shoreline. It's fun.
Yeah. Yes. Well, that's
the way I was thinking of fly fishing.
You know, you're like in the
stream in the mountains and
there's nobody around for hundreds of
miles probably. And
you're just like out here
fishing in this peacefulness of the
stream. It is therapy for
sure. You're just busy enough
that you're not thinking about work, but
it's peaceful enough that
you're like, yeah, it's great.
That's awesome. All right. So I don't
really have anything else on
my list. Um, is there anything
that I didn't mention that you want to
bring up or, um, you know,
things that I need to, um,
tell the world about? That's a really
good question. I'm, I did not come
prepared for that. No. Um,
I mean, yeah, I don't know. I went to
nineties con. Yes. Like
this weekend. That was cool.
The world doesn't need to know about a
thing that I did on the weekend. So no,
I think that's good. Thanks. Thanks for
having me here. Well, thank
you so much, Jack. This was,
it's always a pleasure talking to you and
I look forward to seeing
you at the next layer con.
Yeah, man. Yeah. Let's, uh, let's chat
again before. Let's not
like have to wait for another
podcast episode. Yeah. That sounds great.
All right. Thanks, Jack. You got it.