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In this episode, host Kevin Griffin welcomes Jamie Maguire, a seasoned developer from the UK who has built a multifaceted career over 20 years. Jamie shares insights into his work on various projects utilizing Microsoft technologies and his in-depth experience in artificial intelligence. He delves into his ventures with multiple SaaS products like 'Social Opinion,' 'Daily Tracker,' and 'Audio Notes,' highlighting the challenges and strategies behind building and marketing these tools. Jamie also discusses the balance between technical creativity and business acumen, the importance of staying active, and his plans. This episode contains valuable lessons for anyone looking to diversify their income streams and navigate the tech landscape.
Jamie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jamie_maguire1
Jamie on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiemaguiredotnet/
Daily Tracker: https://jamiemaguire.net/index.php/category/daily-tracker/
00:00 Welcome and Guest Introduction
01:22 Jamie's Background and Expertise
02:28 Current Projects and Independent Contracting
03:57 The Social Opinion SaaS Journey
06:10 Challenges with Platform Dependencies
09:16 Outsourcing and Marketing Struggles
14:01 Daily Tracker: A Personal Project
21:09 Audio Notes: Capturing Thoughts on the Go
22:25 The Power of Audio Notes
23:44 Monetizing Your Tools
24:36 SaaS Boilerplate Toolkit
27:04 Exploring Other Digital Products
28:48 Choosing Between Platforms and Self-Publishing
31:02 The Joy of Passive Income
35:10 Balancing Work and Personal Life
41:46 Final Thoughts and Encouragement
Creators & Guests
Host
What is Multithreaded Income Podcast?
In the "Multithreaded Income Podcast," host Kevin Griffin navigates the nuanced landscape of generating multiple income streams as a technologist. Aimed at professionals who wish to diversify their revenue while maintaining a focus on technology, this podcast dives deep into unconventional strategies, untapped opportunities, and actionable advice.
It's time for the multi
threaded income podcast.
We're like insurance for a
turbulent tech landscape.
I'm your host, Kevin Griffin.
Join me as I chat with people all around
the industry who are using their skills
to build multiple threads of income.
Let us support you in your career
by joining our discord at mti.
to slash discord.
Now let's get started.
Kevin Griffin: Welcome
back to the show, everyone.
I have a special guest today, Mr.
Jamie McGuire.
How are you today,
Jamie Maguire: Um, very well.
Thanks for having me, Kevin.
Kevin Griffin: Absolutely.
So Jamie, I actually believe you're
the first guest, not in the U S
Jamie Maguire: My.
Ha ha ha
Kevin Griffin: I, I didn't think about
that until just now, but well, my
friend, Michelle Hanson is in Denmark,
but technically she's all American.
So I don't know if she counts.
You're, I think you're the first fresh.
No, no, I'm going to take that back.
Uh, we had Lucas, he's in Germany,
so no, your first one in the UK.
How about
Jamie Maguire: Yeah.
Okay, I'm, I'm, I'm honoured
Kevin Griffin: right.
Well, we'll give you, we'll give you the
props where, where, um, where we can.
Uh, Jamie.
So I've been following you on
Twitter for, for a while now.
And I, we are having some pre show banter.
And it almost feels like you and I are
living the same life, just working on
as many different things as possible.
And trying to build in some stability,
but also building all these different,
you know, quote, unquote, threads of, of
income, um, Jamie, just take a moment,
introduce yourself to the audience.
If they don't know who you are.
Jamie Maguire: Yeah, so my name
is Jamie McGuire from the UK, as
you've just, uh, introduced me.
Um, I've been building, uh, solutions
using Microsoft technology for
over 20 years now, basically.
Um, in that time I've, uh, What for
like massive organizations, startups,
consultancies and everything in
between, um, uh, last five to 10 years
being heavily involved in artificial
intelligence, um, five last five to 10
years I've been pretty active online,
whether that be creating technical
blogs, uh, creating YouTube tutorials,
um, training courses on platforms
such as LinkedIn, Pluralsight, Cloud
Academy, and I've also, uh, been
operating as a freelance Uh, independent
contractor for a few years now, um,
and between all of that stuff, I've
been shipping a few experiments,
uh, using up and coming technology.
So a mixed bag really, um, but
predominantly within the Microsoft space.
Kevin Griffin: let's talk about
just your regular day job.
You said the majority of your work
is as an independent contractor.
Uh, just yeah.
Can you talk a little bit about some
of the projects you're working on?
How many clients do you
usually run at any given time?
Jamie Maguire: So, uh, yeah, the
main of the bulk of the work is
using, uh, Microsoft dot net.
And building web APIs and doing, um, a
lot of upgrades really to older and mature
systems and, and, and pulling them up to
date with, uh, more recent technology.
Uh, and then creating more value,
uh, with that technology, um, to
just basically optimize business
processes and data and, uh.
Create like your innovations.
Um, that's a massive part of,
of, uh, of what I'm doing.
Um, and then outside of that, I'm running
a few, uh, SAS experiments as well.
And, um, those are those I'm getting
either heart, uh, I'd say that's
about 20 percent of my activities.
Uh, I got another SAS out in the wild that
was generating a little bit of revenue.
Um, but there were Circumstances
without my control that, that kind
of blindsided me a little bit so
I've kind of, I've thrown a few
more, uh, uh, calls into the fire and
seeing what direction those go in.
Kevin Griffin: I know we have
a lot of topics we can cover.
Let's start with the SAS and see
where the SAS conversation takes us.
So you had a SAS, um, that
was called social opinion.
Where did the idea for
social opinion come from
Jamie Maguire: Oh yeah, it goes quite
back, uh, goes back quite a bit.
Um, basically, I had a master's
degree a long time ago, right?
And the specialist area was Bayesian
theorem and data mining social networks.
And what I ended up building
was an API that I could point at
streams of data and infer entities,
topics, uh, opinion mining.
Uh, and this is before APIs and AI were
available to be pulled off the shelf.
Um, so there was a lot of grunt work
really involved in building that.
Um, I'm that effectively
turned into a product.
Okay, what used to be known
as Twitter ran a bunch of
initiatives and pitched it to them.
Um, and was basically part
of a program that they ran.
Um, it morphed a little bit into I take.
So what the solution could
do, it would help identify
sales leads in near real time.
So then you could target the right
person at the right time with
the right marketing creative.
Um, that, that iteration
never went anywhere.
And then as time went on, new sets
of APIs were released and developed.
And, uh, started to focus on analytics.
Right.
And, uh, that started to bear a little bit
of fruit, but I just couldn't scale that.
There wasn't enough room
for me up at the table.
I couldn't, you know, Afford the data
retention, um, capabilities that were
needed and, uh, more recently as a
result of the recent takeover, uh,
had to pivot it again and basically
carve out a lot of the heart of the
tooling and create a content scheduler.
Uh, and that is at its heart right now.
It's not a cross platform
content scheduler that targets X.
Uh, Facebook, Instagram
for business and LinkedIn.
So you rate your content once and
it gets pushed out onto all these
other platforms in a, a single click.
Kevin Griffin: You said it
was pretty focused on Twitter.
And then Mr.
Elon Musk comes around and takes it over.
And I would say effectively killed the
platform for anyone outside of Twitter.
How did that?
How did that affect you,
uh, with your product?
Uh,
Jamie Maguire: make
I, uh, fortunately I never bet
the house on, on the tooling.
I thought, right, this would
be 20% of my attention.
The, uh, I, I guess the whole
Peral principle thing, um, I had
80% of the income coming through
from like a stable contract.
And then, um, I had all these
other, um, things on the boil.
And when that happened, it started
to get less and less of my attention.
Um, I shut down the free tier.
I started to, uh, close down,
like, many of the back end.
Processes in jobs that generated
analytics, the follower database,
a lot of the entity detection.
There was just a whole load of
stuff that I just had to switch off.
Right.
And at the time, the only way
that you could get or maintain
that level of service was to
pay, I think, 40 grand a month.
Um, yeah.
So that was, uh, not viable.
It's since changed and you can, I think
you can pay about 5, 000 bucks a month.
But by that point, I had, my
attention had moved on to other areas.
Namely, those other two, uh, micro
SAS experiments that I've got,
uh, running in the wild just now.
Kevin Griffin: We were talking a little
bit just about general platform risk
and you go heavy into a platform.
So Twitter in this case, uh, but
were you supporting the, you said
other platforms like LinkedIn and,
and others, were you supporting those
at all or they just weren't as heavy
as the, the Twitter aspect of it?
Jamie Maguire: They were, I'd made a
little bit of an inroad into Analytics
for Instagram for business accounts.
And, you know what man, like I just,
after going through all that pain with
the Twitter experience, I just never,
there wasn't, I never had enough fuel
in the tank to build out, uh, another
analytics capability for another platform.
Because I've got to tell you man, um,
the, For the Meta Fam, the meta family
of products, the, the application
review process is lengthy and there
there are, there are many checks
you have to go through to get your
application published into production.
Um, I could, I got to a point where I've
never had the capacity, so I started to
outsource the development and management.
of that, of that integrate some of
those integration pieces on the,
uh, the application review process.
Okay.
Um, I just never had the capacity and for
anybody that's listening, if you can get
to a point where you can outsource, do it,
just do it.
There's no glory in doing
everything yourself.
Right.
Um, I wasn't always like that.
I couldn't always outsource.
And it was only like a few times a year.
Um, But I just thought I'd share that.
This is,
Kevin Griffin: What's the easiest
thing for you to outsource?
Jamie Maguire: this is hard.
It was hard at first.
But because I'm from a, come from a
technical background, provided I've got
enough detail in the story, it's easy
for me to screen out other developers.
Who may, like, on maybe a freelancing
platform with Upwork or freelancer.
com and share the story and say, Hey, and
then I'll ask a few targeted questions
and I just get a feel, you know, as well
as I do that you can, you can sniff out
who knows they're not using, who doesn't.
Um, so the development,
um, I'm bad at marketing.
I'm not a marketer.
So I, I, I outsource the
site used to have a blog.
So I onboarded, uh, um, freelance
writer for a few months, uh,
just to create some content.
Um, I'd mixed, um, how can I say
mixed mixed success with that?
And I, I wasn't measuring the
right metrics, but there's,
there's, there's a lot of stuff
that I could have done better.
Which is a lesson learned
from me, actually.
Kevin Griffin: I hear that from a lot
of folks, especially developers trying
to go into SAS, we have to learn a
whole set of skills that we never
thought we would have to learn just
marketing, business administration,
um, learning how to collect metrics.
And I think we.
We just want to write code like we
just want to build cool things and
we want people to pay us for it.
It's so difficult to go do all the
other work and you're just one of many
developer friends I have that run a
sass of some point and they're like,
I need to take a week off and just
do marketing and write blog posts and
build content and no one enjoys that.
So,
Jamie Maguire: Penance.
Yeah.
Sorry, go on.
Kevin Griffin: When you outsource it,
uh, you said it was kind of a mixed bag.
And that's probably another thing
that's difficult is you need to find
someone who can speak in the voice
that you, you want them to speak in.
And that's a hard, that's a hard
thing to outsource because not
everyone is good at that sort of task.
You have to find the right person.
Jamie Maguire: percent and it's, um,
you know, I, it was very difficult
and it was very difficult and I, I've
heard just like pull out some of the
other stuff that you mentioned earlier
was that people with people being from
a technical background, but really
struggling with the marketing aspect.
I've seen initiatives like building
in public or what's been really
successful for other guys and
women is to do one week coding.
One week mark in one week coding on.
I think if you're from a technical
background, it's hard to measure success.
This is the success of your
marketing efforts with code.
You're getting that instant
feedback loop, right?
It's pretty, um, you know, it's
pretty quick, but the marketing for
me, it's like a slow bonding thing.
And I had another idea, which was
to effectively give away 25 to 30
percent of the internal API in the
form of an open source SDK and push,
push that onto GitHub and you get it.
All right, and I was kind of
tentative about doing that, right?
But when I'd done it, it got
a little bit of traction.
People actually started to
contribute to the open source SDK.
And I think the last time that I
checked, it had been downloaded
like 13 or 14, 000 times.
Um, there's a little bit
in the back of my mind.
It's like, hmm.
Maybe I could have commercialized that.
Right, so that, that was a, another form
of marketing in a roundabout sort of way.
Kevin Griffin: Social opinion
pretty much is on the back burner.
Now it's not a not a thing.
You're spinning cycles on.
You have two new ideas
that you're working on.
Um, let's talk about, I guess
the first one daily tracker.
Jamie Maguire: mm hmm, mm hmm.
So,
Kevin Griffin: Is that is
that a good one to move
Jamie Maguire: yeah,
yeah, yeah, it is, it is.
Uh, so yeah, Daily Tracker, um,
it was, it was just an idea.
Like, when, I've got two sons, right,
so, and my youngest, he always says the
funniest of things when we're out and
about, like many other kids do, and it,
it was just an idea that came to me, was
to have like a, my own private, sort of
like, I guess, journal, but that I could
access from my phone, and just, you know.
Record a memory for that day.
So at the end of 365 days, I would have
like a memory for each day and a picture
for each day with a few sentences, right?
And I teased on that idea
for a little bit longer.
And I thought, well, actually, this
could be used to monitor, maybe, Your
mindset and mood and mental health and I
thought about that and I was like, well,
okay, so I started to build this thing.
I built it super quick.
I built it like in about a week, right?
And actually, I built it in
public, the form of marketing
again, but it's on my blog.
There's many blogs that show how
this thing got built literally
from like the scraps of HTML and
JavaScript right to the SAS product.
And what it does is it helps you.
Quickly identify what's affecting your
mood, who's affecting your mood, where
you were, because it uses Azure Maps
to pinpoint the location, and your key,
an entry for the day, attach a picture,
attach your mood using three emojis in
your location if you want, and it's got
rich charting capabilities that basically
help you click into what was making
you happy, what was making you sad,
and, uh, making you feel indifferent,
and you can look over the year.
Of the month or 90 days, and
that's basically what it does.
Kevin Griffin: you go
into an idea like that?
Thinking about how to monetize
it or is this more of a, let's
see how well it works for me.
And then maybe I can make money off of it
if I, if I try, or is that even a concern?
Jamie Maguire: know what?
It wasn't a concern.
Um, it wasn't, it was going to be the
original version ran on json files, right?
It literally ran off the
C drive on my laptop.
Now it's, you know, just key in a
thing each, each morning from the day
before, and it literally sat there.
And I said, I am actually using
this, um, Okay, so I'm on social
media, but I don't want pictures
of my kids on social all the time.
I just don't and it'd be a good
thing to look back on because
they grew up so quick, right?
What were you doing?
And, um, so the initial
intent wasn't to monetize it.
Um, and I thought, well actually, if
I'm getting a little bit of use out of
this, there's many other parents out
there, Um, I'm going to ship this thing.
I'm going to give it away for free.
Um, I already know how to do the Stripe
integration, but I wanted to build the
bare minimum feature, or set of features.
I didn't even want to integrate
the Stripe payments, because
it's like more stuff to handle.
the webhooks, the transactions, I
need to then really consider how
the subscriptions are handled.
So, it wasn't so much of a concern.
Our priority in the first few
weeks, about 30 people signed up,
um, it doesn't, it costs me less
than 50 bucks a month to run.
Um,
Kevin Griffin: that's amazing.
Jamie Maguire: yeah, it's super cheap.
I'm running on the interface
is super light and the bucket.
There's one Azure function.
There's it's very
lightweight and that was.
The way it was supposed to be.
Um, if, if it reaches some kind
of critical mass, then I will
retrofit the Stripe thing into it.
Yeah,
Kevin Griffin: See how people use it.
See if you build that critical mass.
I don't see any problem with that at all.
And I mean, the best thing to come out
of it is you scratched your own itch.
You, you're doing something for yourself
that you thought it would be useful.
And now you can potentially
be useful for other people.
Um, I.
And that's contrary to what you'll hear.
A lot of folks say is you
should do the market research.
You should talk to your
potential customers.
Is that don't build anything
until you've talked to 100
people that might pay you money.
And here you are.
You build something is useful for you.
And I think there's a lot of
value in that, even if it doesn't.
Ever make you any money in the future.
And I'm sure you've learned,
learned a ton of skills as well.
Along the
Jamie Maguire: hey, and
that's the other thing, right?
Like, yeah, it may get
monetized at one point.
Um, that wasn't the sole motivator, but
what came out the other end of that whole
process, Was a massive bunch of learnings
and people, people who want to ship SAS
using Microsoft Azure and NET, they can
go through that seven part series and
see what it takes to go from building a
little prototype, but running JSON files.
Right over to the other end of publishing
it into Azure, down to registering the
custom domain and integrating, integrating
identity and the playbook's there.
Right.
Ah, and this is very meta, right?
But it markets me , right?
So Right.
And to just to like tease that a
little bit more, like another prototype
actually landed me a consulting gig.
Right.
Which was a commercial arrangement.
So, you see, there's sometimes, like,
by shipping stuff out into the world,
there are many, there's like second
and third order effects that can occur.
Um, so I just thought I'd share that.
Kevin Griffin: my friend, Aaron Francis
says this all the time, that whenever
you're putting stuff out in public, you're
just increasing your luck surface area
to, because you're absolutely right.
You just put something out there, the
right set of eyes see it and they go.
I know the guy I'm just called Jamie
and Jamie can help me with this.
I already know Jamie can do it.
Cause Jamie wrote a six
part series on doing it.
Um, I, uh, I'm going to admit I've got
at least a dozen consulting engagements
myself for that same reason, just
putting something out there and.
Someone goes, Hey, I read
your article on whatever.
And, uh, we do a consulting gig with me.
Sure.
It might be one day of consulting.
I have a couple that
have gone for 10 years.
Jamie Maguire: I love it.
Kevin Griffin: just keep
coming back for more.
You never know.
Jamie Maguire: That's awesome, man.
That is awesome.
I love it.
Kevin Griffin: Uh, all right.
So daily tracker.
And then you have another
one called, uh, audio notes.
Jamie Maguire: Yeah, yeah.
So there's another one called Audio Notes.
And, uh, in essence, Audio Notes lets you
create concise notes from the spoken word.
Uh, what do I mean by that?
Uh, well, you can, you can take your, your
cell phone, flick it open, and then log
in, access the website, press record, and
start basically dumping your thoughts.
Uh, using your voice, it will transcribe
your voice using speech to text and
then, uh, AI will then summarize the
content of what you've said and create a
concise note from your spoken thoughts.
So what you can then do, and it'll save
them, so you get a series of titles
with all your audio notes, so you might
be like out on a walk or whatever.
Dictating a blog post, a draft,
or a document, an email, or social
media content, or something.
And then, because inspiration
can strike you anywhere.
Anywhere.
Get back to your laptop,
you've got this summarization.
And then you can repurpose that content
into whichever, uh, channel that you want.
And, um, that's the, literally that's it.
You know, it's got that one feature.
And that's what it does.
It may get more in future.
Um, admittedly, I'm using Daily
Tracker more than I use AudioNotes.
Um, uh, but yeah, that's,
that's what it does.
Kevin Griffin: And I love that idea
because I, I have a lot of, I have
talked through entire blog posts.
I've done.
Uh, I've outlined presentations in
the car and just talking to myself,
trying to talk through ideas and
having something recording and then
summarizing all that for me would be.
In my opinion, really beneficial.
Jamie Maguire: Mm,
Kevin Griffin: I would like, I'll have
to get a link from you when we're done.
Cause
Jamie Maguire: of course.
Kevin Griffin: I would love to try it.
One of the things I do at the end of
every day is I summarize what I was
working on because trying to get my, my
mind back into the context that was in
the day before easily takes me an hour.
And.
When I've started, I started
writing notes to myself.
I call it called notes to future
Kevin and I'll come in the next day.
I'll read my note from past
Kevin and go, Oh, that's right.
I had these big tasks I had to finish.
And I'll just start working on that
now and having, it's easier to just,
like you said, talking to the phone
and let the phone summarize it for me.
Do you have plans to try
to, to monetize that?
Is that more, again, a scratch your own
Jamie Maguire: So, it was, that
one was to scratch my own action.
Here's, here's the thing, right?
I've got a, in creating the first
one, the Daily Tracker, I've got a
boilerplate tooling now to build a JIPSAS.
Or make, that has authentication and
authorization, uh, menu management.
And connected to an Azure SQL back end
so I can ship SAS super quick now, right?
I've got, um, Stripe
integration and social opinion
that's in production, right?
I can integrate payments into any of them.
So, there may come a point where I add
one or two more things onto audio notes.
Um, we'll see, maybe in the next
three to six months, I'm not sure.
Um, but what's more impressive for me
is, is to, uh, I think they're going to
commercialize the SAS boilerplate toolkit
because, you know, it's like sell the
shovels and not go pan for the gold,
that, that cliche, um, because there
are many developers who want to ship a
product, but they don't want to get bogged
down in all of their infrastructure.
Of the setup of the code in the solution,
they just want to like create the
value that they think the market wants.
But hey, here is a sasktel kit and
dotnet in a box, very super simple.
Um, that's going to be my
priority, I think, because
the data is there now, right?
I've got two mini series that show
how these things have been built.
Again, that's almost like
a form of marketing, right?
It's almost like I've built these
things in public um, with the
intent of pushing this toolkit.
That wasn't the idea.
That just happened, that, by coincidence.
So that's, those are
the general directions.
Kevin Griffin: I think there
was a lot of opportunity there.
I have a friend, Andrew Culver.
He had a sass, um, boilerplate for rails.
It was called bullet train
and it was what you said.
He had he had all the bits and
pieces and all you had to do is
generate a new app on top of it.
And so we spend so much time on ceremony.
Let's create the new project.
Let's set up the authentication.
Uh, let's set up, um, I don't know,
talking back to, uh, our data stores.
If you're doing anything with
subscriptions, let's connected the
Stripe or whatever else, and that
just takes so much time and energy.
You forget about the actual idea
that you wanted to implement.
And that's a great idea.
You should totally do
Jamie Maguire: Yeah, that's, that was,
I made my thinking, really, man, is
that if this has been a pain for me,
it's been a pain for somebody else.
Because every, everybody's
got at least one idea.
Mm hmm.
And the only way you're going to be
able to validate that is if you ship it
quickly, you can get feedback quickly.
Um, you can't just build it and expect
people to come, it's never gonna.
But by building and shipping something,
you get some instant feedback.
And if you can minimize that time to
market by using a boilerplate toolkit,
then you've saved yourself a ton of work.
Kevin Griffin: All right, Jamie,
let's switch off of the SAS.
I know you do some other stuff,
some other digital products.
Um, I think you listed
a bunch of them earlier.
You do, uh, eBooks, um,
courses for various providers.
You want to just give us some
general information about
some other stuff that you do?,
Jamie Maguire: I, uh, I'm a LinkedIn
Learning Instructor, a Pluralsight Author
and Cloud Academy Course Creator, and
I've self published some books on Gumroad.
Um, which is a marketplace and,
uh, store for creators where
you can self publish content.
So I'd say 75 to 80, maybe 80 percent of
my courses on across all platforms and
the ebooks are centered around artificial
intelligence using Microsoft AI, uh,
with the remaining 10, 20 percent being
on how to use the X developer platform.
Formally known as Twitter API.
Um, so there's I think I've got 12
or 13 courses out at the minute.
Uh, my most recent one was with
Pluralsight, and that is, uh, how
to develop a AI strategy for your
organization, which has proven
super popular right now, actually.
Surprise, surprise, right?
Um, it's getting like three or four
hundred people taken each month.
Um, which, uh, blew me away, actually.
Um, but those are the other activities.
Kevin Griffin: you make
the decision between.
Going with one of the providers, like a,
like LinkedIn learning or Pluralsight, or
potentially self publishing it yourself.
What, what's intriguing about
using the publishers versus just
putting it out there on your own
and collecting all the money.
Jamie Maguire: Yeah.
You know, that's a good question.
Right, that's a really good question, man.
Um, I would say
LinkedIn are big, Pluralsight are
big, they're all big platforms
and they have the footprint and
the presence in the community.
I'm just one guy and I, you know,
hey, never say never, right?
I do have an idea about an up and
coming technology, um, I could create
it, I could build it, I could ship it.
But I've been through the marketing
pain of building my own digital SaaS.
And I know trying to get
that awareness is super hard.
Um, but when you partner up with one of
these big training providers, it makes it
much, just much more easier to reach the
people that you want to reach with the
message that you want them to receive.
Um, it just, I think it's just a, a
nicer on ramp to reach your people.
Yeah.
Kevin Griffin: You do that enough
times, you build your own audience
larger than maybe you can sell publish.
Um,
Jamie Maguire: Hey, maybe, maybe.
It's self published on Gumroad,
um, like a little, believe it
or not, a WinForms app, right?
And an e book.
And, uh, two e books actually.
I gave one for free, right?
Gave away one for free, and then, uh,
that was almost like a temp check on, is
there a demand for this type of content?
And I got quite a few bytes.
Right?
I thought, hmm, okay.
So that was the litmus test.
I wrote a second version with four new
chapters, plus full application source
code, and I made a little bit of cash.
Off of that.
Yeah.
And I was like, Oh, okay.
That, that was, that was nice.
And I got to tell you, man, like you,
when you wake up and you get that email
and you've had a sailor in your sleep,
that's, that's the weirdest feeling
because normally your income's connected
to, you know, the pressing of the buttons.
Um, but when you wake up and you've got an
email from stripe or gumroad, that's like,
ah, it's almost like an epiphany moment.
That's
Kevin Griffin: I'm in a group of.
Entrepreneurs and we
call it stranger money.
So it's you, uh, you go to sleep and
you wake up and strangers just pay
you for whatever you put out there.
And it's the greatest money in the world.
Jamie Maguire: It's a beautiful thing,
man, and uh, I guess it's valid.
It's the ultimate validation, isn't it?
That you've created something
with nothing but your time, your
mind, and an internet connection.
And somebody else, somewhere around
the world has found value in that.
And that's actually one of the, and
this probably resonates with you and
people who are listening to this,
is that you can build something on a
laptop, but you could even tether your
data connection, build it, ship it, and
somebody will pay you cash somewhere
in the world for that, that thing.
I mean, that, that will
never, not always amaze me.
Kevin Griffin: Your, uh, pluralsight
course, the one on AI strategy,
was that a topic that they brought
to you or did you go to them?
Jamie Maguire: So, they came to me,
Um, with that one, and I thought
that would be a great one to do.
There's other times where I've,
um, I've suggested courses, and
then it, it goes through the
process, and, uh, sometimes they get
accepted and sometimes they don't.
Um, and that's how that goes.
Kevin Griffin: If you were looking
to do a new course right now, that
on whatever topic would it be?
You try to send that to a Pluralsight,
a LinkedIn, or try to do it on your own.
Jamie Maguire: I, uh, Ha
Kevin Griffin: If you don't
want to choose, you can say no.
Jamie Maguire: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
It's like trying to
pick a favourite child.
I guess this sound like a politician,
Kevin, but I, I, I like cre.
I like creating them for, for
all the, all of the platforms.
Um, it, the technical content actually
is creating the content, the technical
content, and building the prototypes.
So I get a lot of enjoyment out of that.
Um, and the other thing is, is that,
and I'm, I'm a firm believer in this,
is, um, we really learn by doing.
But to really internalize the
concept, the code, whatever it is,
if you can teach that to somebody
else in a concise fashion, that's
when you know that you know it.
Um, and that's a big part of
why I write regular blogs.
It's because it's almost like, you
know, you said earlier, like Kevin's
notes from past self to future self,
you know, it's, that's one of the
reasons why I blog, because I'm like,
I really want to remember this thing.
And when I was doing a lot of
conversational AI development, right?
Sometimes I would find my own blogs.
On Bot Framework Composer.
And, uh, that was like the weirdest thing.
I was like, man, somebody must know this.
And I'm like, ah, I've
done this five years ago.
It was me.
Kind of embarrassing, but.
Kevin Griffin: That's happened to me
more times than I can count as well.
I'll search for something and.
Realize I wrote the post that
answers the question I used to be
smart and then somewhere along the
way, I just forgot everything I
I know before you went independent,
you worked a full time job, um, and you
made the jump to, to go independent.
I guess just kind of last conversation.
What made you.
Make that jump.
Jamie Maguire: Yeah.
So, it's not my first, uh, rodeo.
Um, uh, first time round I had, like,
personal reasons for, for doing it.
Um, family reasons.
And then, second time round, I,
I just, like, I'm 45 this year.
So, um.
I still got fire in the belly, man.
So, I was like, I'm the sort of guy that's
like, I cannot leave this stone unturned.
I have to do this.
And I think I can be quite industrious
with that, whether it's shipping content
or creating courses, or I just, I just
had to get there, burn the fire in
the tank, so to speak, and I got some
other aspirations and goals, right?
Um, so I just wanted to see how far I
could go and take it and equally like
set up my kids for future as well.
Ultimately, aging mother, you
know, there's, there's, there's,
there's a whole bunch of different
reasons, um, and this is the means.
It's the only thing that I
know that I'm reasonably good
at and, um, so let's do it.
Let's let's really put the
pedal down and go into the red
and just keep, that's, that's
Kevin Griffin: What's the
ideal end game for Jamie?
Like, what is it a product?
Is it continue to do the consulting?
Jamie Maguire: to keep doing
what I'm doing, but maybe
not to the intensity, right?
Like there's a, there's, there's
a, there's a balance to be had.
Um, I think there's a balance to be had.
I'd maybe like to.
Get more exercise in, focus more on that.
I think, I don't know about you,
right, but sometimes it feels like
you're training your health for your
professional life, and vice versa.
There's that friction.
in the last couple of years, I know,
like, we've just been discussing all
these other, uh, threads that I've
been spinning, but I've, I've taken my
foot off, like, The gas with like some
things which and I've tried to look
at things in a more seasonal approach.
So I've zoomed out a little bit of
the macro and said, well, the typical
Brit here, but the weather's a little
bit gloomy in the autumn and or the
fall and the winter months here.
Let's ramp really ramp up all the
other little threads, see where they
go for six or seven months, but in
the spring and the summer, cool them
down a little bit enjoy maybe some of
the later evenings and what have you.
Um, I think that's like a, almost
like a, a healthier approach, um, but
as I get older, um, as I say, more
into the fitness, um, side of things,
um, I mean, what about yourself?
Kevin Griffin: I, uh, I agree.
I look.
I really like working in the
winter, in the colder months
where it's not nice to go outside.
I don't mind working longer.
More intensive days and we're
starting getting, we're in our
spring, we're going into our summer.
It's very nice outside.
I have other hobbies that involve being
outside and I really don't want to work.
Like when we're done with this
interview, I'm done for the day.
I'm going to go outside and,
Jamie Maguire: mm hmm, mm hmm, mm hmm, mm
Kevin Griffin: I'm very much the same
way it's, and I think it's healthy.
I get burnt out very easily and
if I'm going 100 percent all the
time, I eventually get to the point
where I just burn out completely.
I have to stop and I need to take a break.
Um, I'd like to avoid that.
I'd rather just go 80 maybe
75 percent most of the time.
And not get burned out.
Um, so like I have little things I've done
is every day I have to do an hour and a
half at the gym, I have to go lift heavy
Jamie Maguire: Yeah, yeah,
Kevin Griffin: then come back and I
feel refreshed, like I'm tired, but
I'm refreshed and I have a clearer
mind and I, I can be more, I think
I'm more productive in the day.
If I get my workout in, um,
Jamie Maguire: yeah.
Kevin Griffin: I feel it
on the days when I don't.
Jamie Maguire: You know what
man, I totally agree with that.
Like, I've got a, this is like, I've
got, this is like a small shed, right?
I've turned it into like
a tiny office thing.
And I've got another one.
I've got my gym gear in there.
And the, the days, I do a five by five.
And I do it three times a week.
And those are my best days.
Kevin Griffin: Yeah.
Jamie Maguire: Like, I, it's a good,
you know what I'm talking about man.
That is, uh, that kinda keeps me sane.
Um, I don't know.
I got a campervan I like to get away into
nature, which is a good way to unplug, uh,
Kevin Griffin: Mm hmm.
Jamie Maguire: fire pit,
beer, you know, whatever.
Kevin Griffin: Yeah, if and if I can't
work out because I actually have to drive
to my gym, but if I can't get to the
gym, I will just take a walk around our
neighborhood and 30 minutes fresh air.
Not on a screen.
That's that's all I need.
And I think more people should do that.
Not enough.
There's not enough outside time
for for us in in these offices.
Jamie Maguire: For sure.
Yeah.
Kevin Griffin: All right, Jamie.
Uh, any any last thoughts
before we wrap this up?
Jamie Maguire: Uh, now from me, I just
want to say thank you for inviting me on.
Thank you for, to, to the
listeners for, for viewing this.
And I'll, I'll just encourage anybody
who is, has an idea and actually
want to scratch, um, but they're, if
they're maybe worried about shipping
it around the world, just do it, man.
Um, and, and see where it goes,
because you never know who might
download it, view it, read it.
And, uh, serendipity can be a good thing.
Kevin Griffin: Even if it's bad,
that means people are looking at it.
So just take the feedback.
And there are very few people out there.
They're just complete.
Like most people are constructive
and go, it's not your best.
Maybe if you do something else
instead, it can be better.
Um,
Jamie Maguire: And, and you know what?
Even if people are nasty, it's cool.
It just wasn't for them.
Kevin Griffin: they weren't
going to pay you anyway.
Jamie Maguire: Mm hmm.
Kevin Griffin: All right.
Jamie, thank you so much
for hanging out with us.
We're going to make sure we link to
all your places so people can go.
If they want to go learn how to build a
boilerplate, then go read your post on it.
And.
With that, everyone, thank you for
listening to the multi threaded income
podcast and we'll see you again next week.
Y'all take care.
You've been listening to the
multi threaded income podcast.
I really hope that this podcast
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And don't forget the
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I've been your host Kevin Griffin
and we'll see you next week.
Cha ching!