Pretending to Have The Job Before You Get It w/Josh Cirre, DevRel @ Laravel

Having okay, that was weird. Are we live? It just says having problems connecting to the internet. I was like, I've been on the internet all morning. The internet is fine. My modem is literally right here. Just straight brain cancer every day. Um, all right, hold on. I gotta send out the alerts. Alert the troops. Hold on. Drop the torque discord. Here we go.

All right, cool.

All right, good morning, everybody. Happy hump day. It's October 1st. I don't know where this year went. Do not know. Josh, where'd this year go?

It's, uh, that's a great question. Like, all of a sudden I looked up and, uh, it's October. That's basically how it happened.

I feel like corporate— what's not talked about enough is I feel like corporate America makes time liquid or elusive or Like, it doesn't make sense. Like, I'm sure— I don't know, I'm sure you've maybe had this. Like, my wife's like, you know, I'm like, hey, like, you know, you told me this yesterday. She goes, that was 2 weeks ago. And I was like, what?

That's crazy. It's even crazier that, like, um, today marks the— so at my, at my job and live— I know we'll get to this, like, but the reason why time has seemed to fly for me is we have Launched 3 products in this year.

You guys ship. I'm not a developer, but I feel like you guys, you guys are like moving.

It is, it is at a speed. Like, it's nice to be able to like, oh, like this is like a 3rd launch, we got this. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, we have like all of October and November. What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do with our life?

We'll come up with more stuff. I love it. Uh, good morning, y'all. Welcome. Um, it's good to see y'all. Please say hey, we'd love to hear from you. Again, like I tell people, you know, one of the— so I've done this show now for 5 years. It's crazy.

Congrats.

Yeah, thank you. Which is nuts. It was 5 years in March, so we're coming up on 6 years. And for me, you know, I— my original thesis to start this was just to help people. I think now what it's really turned into is it's turned into, in my perspective, a mini conference or a mini meetup. Right? So like yesterday, for example, we had 250 comments on Mark Thompson's live yesterday. 250.

So that's crazy.

Maybe, maybe we'll beat it today. We'll see. Y'all keep commenting and say, hey, and that, for the record, that's 250 just on my LinkedIn.

Yeah.

Right. So like, and also I'm, I'm, I'm super grateful, super blessed. Like we've moved this thing to an hour and there's been no fall off.

That's just nuts. That's crazy.

Um, and so, but what I tell people is this is, this is a networking event. This is a mini conference. This is a mini meetup. Um, actually it's a big meetup, I would say, virtually. So whoa, here we go! Look at that. That was— that was— how many cameras do you have going? That was wild. You freaked me out just then.

Uh, so someone in the chat said talk— started talking about the, the wink and everything. But yeah, I got, I got this main camera. We got a little, little zoom-in action. We've got the side camera on a slider. So what's up everyone over there? It's, it's a, it's a little moving camera shot. Makes it a little bit more cinematic. And then we got one more right here.

You have 4 cameras going on?

Well, technically 3 in this setup and then 1 more at my editing desk.

Unbelievable. You're a monster. I love that. Yeah, I mean that in the best way possible. Um, so say hey, we'd love to hear from you. Connect with everybody in the chat. There's a lot of people in chat already. Um, and, uh, you know, again, you know, and we'll probably talk about today the power of networking, just saying hey to somebody, cultivating that relationship over LinkedIn, over X. I mean, it, it works, right? Um, uh, or you just run into each other at a church conference like Josh did. That was nice. And also connect with Josh, right? It's like I tell people, like, I've been doing this thing for 5 years. If you connect with every single guest that I've had over 5 years, your network would be— I would put my network up against anybody's. I would say Gabe Greenberg maybe have a better network than me at GTY, but I would put my network up against anybody. So please connect with everybody. Also, kind of a few housekeeping things as always. First off, I am an Appwrite Hero as well as my guy Jason Torres. Um, probably the only non-technical, non-developer on a Heroes program. Um, I don't— I've never used their product, but I like the people, so I'm gonna rep it. Um, so y'all check them out, Appwrite. Uh, love the crew over there. Also, listen, we got a brand new refresh situation going on the Torque.community site. It looks great. We have like, we have like references— not references, but like testimonials.

Ooh.

We got like a place to sign up for our ambassador. By the way, we're opening up our ambassador program. Jason, you're in the chat. We need to make an announcement. We're officially opening up our ambassador program signups. For next year. It's— and, and we're going to be very, very intentional with that this year. So, uh, go to torque.community. We're also going to relaunch our second cohort of our mentor-mentee program, so check that out. That's on our Torque Community site. So check all that stuff out. We'd love to have you. Um, also listen, when you— if, if you want to be notified when I go live with guests like Josh twice a week, text LIVE. This is my number. This is actually my number. Um, it's not some AI thingamajigger. So text LIVE to 615-235-5650. Would love to have you a part of that. And I just shoot out one text just to let you know when I'm going live. I won't spam you, I promise. All right, we got a lot of people in the chat this morning. So again, please say hey. We'd love to hear from you. So, Josh, let's give the people what they want. For those of you— for those of the people who don't know you, which, to be honest with you, a lot of people do, who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there.

Yeah, well, first off, sounds like you have, like, nothing going on, so you maybe should get on that and just start. I have a little bit more going on.

Yeah, nothing.

Yes, super excited to be here.

Uh, I've—

I, I feel like I've observed you doing this like for the past like maybe 2 years now, I think way before I was at Laravel. But yeah, um, I am developer relations at Laravel. That's kind of like developer relations engineer at Laravel. That's kind of my full title. I don't want it to fit fully on the little thing down here, but, uh, basically in a nutshell, I I like doing so many things that I eventually got hired by Laravel, the open source company for a PHP framework, but that also has a couple of different paid products as well. And then I just make content as well as kind of like help with kind of engineering for marketing sites, stuff like that, as well as just being able to communicate with community as well. So I'm like one 8th of what you all get to do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it, I love it. Um, also dad, father 2, and then 3rd on the way. We're gonna be—

we're gonna be buddies.

I don't know, we're gonna be like in a— an elite club together. We're catching up with Aaron Francis.

Yeah, we'll make— we'll make the like the 3/4 Aaron Francis club kind of thing where it's like, hey, we're— we're on the way, but we're probably not gonna get there because we're probably done tapping out, you know.

I mean, I thought we were done. Let's just say that.

So there you go, there you go. But yeah, uh, I have— I live in the great state of Arizona where it's starting to get nice and cool, so I'm appreciating that. It's so brown, it's so brown.

But my wife and I went to Arizona like 2 years ago or something like that for like a, like a wedding anniversary trip to a spa place. Everything was brown. The dirt was brown, the houses were brown, the sky was kind of brown. Everything was brown.

Okay, but when the, when the sun sets, the sky— the sun reflects off those mountains, the cactuses were green, which was crazy. There you go. See, we— I— it's always funny, the one thing that everyone freaks out about Arizona, because I've lived here pretty much my whole life. I went to school in Chicago, did a little bit of stuff in like Virginia, North Carolina, Atlanta, and then I went back to Colorado, then I'm back to Arizona, full, full swing of things. But one of the things that, uh, everyone kind of freaks out about is like, we don't have yards in Arizona.

Don't have yards, you have patches of dirt. It's the craziest thing ever.

We— when you like buy a house or like when you're landscaping or you're like, hey, Hey, we should update our yard. It's hey, which gravel should we put in our front yard? So I'm full serious. Which cactus should we use? Like which of these three plants that live in the desert?

Cactuses and dirt. We should get the the red dirt. That sounds great. Also too, hi from Mozambique. Okay, you're just showing off.

All right.

That's crazy. Mauro, thank you for tuning in. Mozambique this morning. We are international. That's crazy.

International.

That's crazy. I love it.

All right.

Um, so I always ask guests to kind of fill out, uh, some topics they want to talk about. I don't have preset questions. I, I like to just, you know, go with the flow. Yeah. Um, I, I, I, but I do want to bring up kind of some 3 things that Josh, I can tell Josh is really organized. Most people don't do this. There's 3 things that Josh wanted to talk about today. Pretending to have the job you want. I'm really big on that right now. Um, the balance of when to go above and beyond and why. Fantastic. And finding where your future employers hang out. All, all 3 are incredible. All 3 could probably be an hour, but—

I'm like listening back to those. I was like, wow, those are like really good topics.

Yeah, these are great. I saw this, I was like, Josh is on top of it. I love it. All right, so I'm really big right now on pretending to, pretending to have the job you want. Fake it till you make it. Do the job before you get the job. Is that kind of in the same vein as what you meant here?

Oh yeah, definitely. 100%.

Talk about it.

It's it's something that I so for example, we'll we'll take it all the way back to where I first started out. Real quick.

Real quick. I want to plug you and Will stuff. You want to plug you and Will show because I love you boys to death.

You that's awesome. You guys yeah we I do so apart from just having and it looks like a couple of people are on my. YouTube stream right now, so thank you so much for watching. Um, but I, uh, I do, uh, content on my YouTube channel, and then me and Will King, who some of you might know, some of you might not know, around the Twitter universe. Okay, oh, there you go, I forgot. Yeah, uh, we do a live show on Friday at, uh, 2:30 PM Eastern or 11:30 AM, uh, Pacific time, and it's just a fun show for us to just talk about like All things tech. We call it Riff and Refine. So basically we're just chatting about anything that the design might have. Great.

Love it.

Yeah, that's all. That's all, Will. I just, I just come with the vibes and the, uh, a little bit, the— this, this is all I come with. Yeah, this is what I come with. Yeah, yeah. But it's, uh, it's great and we'd love to have you there. It's, it's a live show, so it's all streamed live. And so like you, the community, it's fun to have people chatting. That's, that's what we like.

Yes, absolutely. All right, um, so doing the job before you get the job, talk, talk about that, talk about some, some initial thoughts, and then, and then we'll, we'll riff and refine on that.

There you go. I love it. Taking it back. Uh, yeah, I've always been under the kind of guidance of, hey, I don't want to just do what I'm currently doing. This kind of flows into like that second category that we— I kind of like pushing, but I, before I started in tech, I knew that I wanted to get into DevRel because I came from like the performance side of the world, um, in the sense that I thought I was gonna be on SNL. I trained for about 4 years.

Oh, really?

Try to be on SNL.

Yep.

Uh, Chicago, I trained in Second City and I was like, hey, I'm gonna play this politics game of just knowing who I know and going to auditions and the waiting and being in musicals and then figuring out, okay, I eventually learned like, hey, if I'm ever going to start a family, I can't do this right now. So I eventually went to tech and there was a lot of people at the time, specifically Cassie Codes, Jason Lengstorf, who were starting this new role of DevRel.

Yeah. Developer advocates.

And most of them had similar backgrounds to me where like they're in TV, film, stage, theater. And I was like, this, this would be so cool because it blends like the 2 things I really love, technology and learning new things. And then also being able to like teach, be on camera, podcasts, videos, whatever that might be, and be able to share it.

Yep.

Um, and so every single job that I had, which was mostly customer support jobs, I eventually got into sales engineering, which is basically DevRel for enterprise. That's what I like to call it.

Um, I like that.

And And then, uh, there's a couple— that's pretty much it. Like support engineering jobs, customer support jobs. Most of all the tech jobs that I had leading up until this point were not DevRel jobs, but I made it DevRel. So I basically took time outside of my own stuff that I was supposed to do.

Yeah.

And I was like, hey, I'm going to— oh, if 10 customers ask me this question, I'm going to make this video And then when they send that again, now all of my customer support team can be like, hey, Josh just made this video about how you can— and this isn't super technical stuff. This is like how you can, for example, if we had like form building software, it was like, yeah, how you can customize your forms. And so it was just like a how-to type video.

Yep.

But I eventually learned how to get better at making videos quickly.

Yeah.

And then I learned how to get better at like actually providing the information most people wanna have in those types of videos.

Yep.

And so every single job I had, I basically just pretended I was like, hey, this company doesn't have DevRel, but if they did, what would that look like?

Ooh.

And okay. I just, I just started doing it. And so when I got, uh, when I got let go, um, in, uh, September of 2020, uh, 2023. Sorry, September 2023. I just had my second kid, um, and the company I was working at fired me.

Nice. Great timing. Perfect timing.

Perfect time.

Perfect time.

Was on paternity leave. Yeah, I got called in, you know, they're like, hey, you're, you're fired. And, uh, I was like, okay, I don't wanna do sales engineering again. I wanna try DevRel. But, you know, I knew so many people in DevRel at the time who were looking for jobs who were like years of experience, in my opinion, who were much better than I was. And so I was kind of faced with like this confrontation of, okay, I have been doing this for 4, 5, 6 years just under a different name and probably under different pretenses. But I just pretended like I've, I've been in DevRel for that long because I've been making videos about specific topics, talking about technical things, discussing it to non-technical people.

Yep.

And that's what I, eventually landed at Laravel.

How did, how did, uh, how did you find Laravel? How did Laravel find you? I'm curious of that story.

Yeah, it's a wild story. Um, so a little bit of, a little bit of backstory. I, most of the technical support jobs that I was working and the sales engineering jobs, a lot of that was kind of all in the JavaScript world so that even though it wasn't super technical roles, it was mostly me helping out customers with small JavaScript stuff of like, hey, you're a non-technical person, but if you put in this JavaScript script, it was like in sales, it was a Salesforce app. And so if you put in this JavaScript snippet, all of a sudden your form can do a whole bunch of cool things. Or I worked at a company called Help Scout, which is customer support ticketing software. And a lot of the enterprise customers were like, hey, we need to do X, Y, and Z. I was like, okay, well, you can throw up this JavaScript snip script and it can go to, you know, a webhook and you can do all these things. So I learned all like pretty technical stuff. And on my side time, I would just start learning how to build apps because I was like, oh, if I made a SaaS, that'd be awesome. Like, yeah, I can make some money, I can learn how to build things.

Sure.

And so I knew enough JavaScript to basically, every single night I would try to learn a new framework or a new language, a new package. And I would be like, hey, how would I use this if I was building my own thing in a job?

Mm-hmm.

And so I basically, I would, I consider myself like an intermediate developer at JavaScript and I knew Firebase, I knew Supabase, I knew all of those kind of backend-esque kind of things. And so I eventually was like, I just want to have a better stack.

Yeah.

In order to build things faster.

Yeah.

Because there was so much stuff that I was building and it just took forever to build the things I wanted to build.

Yep.

And I felt like, one, I was a terrible developer, and two, I felt like I just didn't have what it takes if I was going to ever be in DevRel.

Sure.

Or working for an actual technical company. Like I was doing interviews and there, this was like, And everyone was like, oh, you know, you don't have the experience that we need, that kind of thing.

Yeah.

And I eventually started building— every night I would build out my demo application of choice. It's kind of like a to-do list, but there's a little bit more intricacies with it where I call it this bookmarklet kind of thing. I have a name for the demo app that I build with different products. Um, but it's called Bookmark. And so basically it's like you have your own— you log in and you can keep bookmarks of like a URL, but those bookmarks are only saved to your specific account. And then, um, you can add notes or a description to them so that way when you're searching for them later, you can find whatever page that you saved like as a bookmark.

Yeah.

Like, okay, why did I save this? And then you can find it. The reason why I had that application was like, it taught— it reaches every single aspect that you might want in a developer tool.

Sure.

Okay. Authorization, authentication. You learn about like keeping things scoped to a specific user. You learn about validation rules, all this kind of stuff. And so every night I would try to— until the wee hours of the morning, I would like try to build that app in like 10 different tools, like a new tool every night. So I'd try it in Rails, I tried it in C# Blazor. I tried it in Elixir with Phoenix. I tried it with all the JavaScript stacks. So SvelteKit, SolidJS. I tried it with Vue.js, Nuxt. I tried it with Next. Next was probably like the one I was more familiar with. And then I eventually tried Laravel and I kind of timed myself. How long does it take me to build this app in all these things?

Yeah.

This is, of course, learning the tool and learning the language, which I had never worked with PHP before. And it took me like less than an hour to build the app in Laravel and I never touched it. And every other app was like close to like 5 hours of me like digging through things and learning how to— mostly because the authentication piece, I had like 30% of it done within like 10 minutes.

Yeah.

And yeah, so I eventually said, okay, any new project, any new side thing that I'm gonna do, I'm just gonna build in Laravel. And so over the years, like as I was still working at all these other companies, I was like, hey, you know, if a new customer came up, I was like, okay, what would I— how would I solve this problem in a Laravel backend? And so I would eventually like any new SaaS idea I had, I would kind of like build it out. And all of my SaaS ideas were trash. Eventually one kind of took off and that was more or less the reason I got fired. And I kind of like used that as a, as a way to make a little bit of money while I was fired.

Sure.

But I eventually just became, I don't know, I became known even though I was barely talking about it. Up until I got fired, I became kind of known as like this person who was like, oh, I started building in JavaScript and all of a sudden, usually people go from PHP to JavaScript.

Sure.

But I went from JavaScript to PHP.

Yeah.

It's like Catholic to Baptist, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly. You're just going backwards at that point. And so I, I kind of leaned into that a little bit. And when I got fired, I was like, I'm gonna do something crazy. I don't have a YouTube channel, but I'm gonna just make a YouTube video. And so I made a first YouTube video of most people on Twitter. And I probably had, I don't know, 600 followers at the time. Most people on Twitter, which is a lot, but it was just over time of me talking about Laravel and maybe JavaScript stuff and stuff like that. And at the time, uh, I made this video because most people ask me, okay, why are you choosing Laravel? Like, why do you do that? And so I just made a video and I was like, hey, this is why I choose Laravel. Um, and the first week I made that video and kind of posted on Twitter, it kind of went around. I think it had like 1,000 views and I was like, that is awesome. That's crazy.

Yeah.

I think I got, I think I got, uh, like I had like 3 subscribers at the time. I think it was my brother, my mom, and like my— an ex-girlfriend or something like that.

Yeah.

From like way, way back. I hadn't really posted any videos. And eventually I like had like 100 subscribers. And then by the time I put out my next video, there was like 200 subscribers. And then all of a sudden that video just like took off where more and more people were like, hey, one, this is really good quality. And then 2, people were like, I agree with all these things. Maybe I should try it. And all of a sudden I was thinking, one, I was kind of nervous to start putting out content about Laravel. One, because I was so new to it. I had started using it like in that last year.

Yeah.

And 2, there are so many amazing educators in the Laravel space.

Sure.

People like Jeffrey Way who have been teaching it since like the NetTuts day, um, who has Laracasts, and he kind of— that's, that's his whole, that's his whole job, teaching Laravel.

Yeah.

And so I had this like fear of I'm not gonna be good enough, so I'm just gonna make it my own, of I'm the guy who is learning Laravel. And so I learned it from this JavaScript perspective. Um, and it's crazy how that first video is still— I think it's one of my top 3 or top 5 viewed videos on my whole channel. Like, it's, it's close to like 50,000 views, I think, right now.

That's crazy. So I know people get tired of me saying this. Yeah, put shit out. Like, I, I don't— is it, is it that simple? Like, I, I just— I mean, even Barrett Blake on here who's in the chat right now, I just— great interview. Uh, I would check it out. We talked more about Azure and .NET with him, but like He got his job because he just kind of like was putting stuff out and got to network with people and found a job. I mean, is it, is it that simple?

That's, that's the crazy part is it's definitely that simple. And I like, like, I feel like I, you know, I had some success mostly because then I got hired by the Laravel company who eventually took on funding and they're like, hey, we don't have any— we have, we have one video guy. His name is Christophe. He was making amazing videos for the Laravel channel. Um, and I eventually applied to Laravel in a support role, and I was like, if I just get to work with Laravel—

Okay, all right, all right, talk about that real quick.

Talk about that.

Why? Like, because I feel like everybody— I feel— listen, I don't mean to be mean here, but some of y'all are so daggum hard-headed. There's like, my first job has got to be a developer. I'm like, there are so many other— I'm keynoting an engineering conference as essentially a recruiter. You don't need to always get that first job as a developer. And I feel like you went that path or tried to go that path.

Oh yeah. There was— so don't get me wrong, like most of the jobs, especially in this time of— I was unemployed. I was— my wife gratefully allowed me to like make videos because I told her, I was like, hey, I— one, I wish I started earlier. I wish I started while I had a job.

Same. I'm mentoring 2 freshmen from South Carolina right now.

Oh yeah.

And one of the girls like, what, what, what would you have done? Just because I have, I don't have enough on my plate as it is. Um, and she goes, what would you have done? I said, I would've started to create LinkedIn content as a freshman in college.

Hmm.

Oh yeah.

Easily.

Can you imagine now?

I, it's funny because I, I've been making videos for my The jobs that I've had for probably like 8 years now, just a little, and they all sucked. But like, I was imagining, like, imagine if I was actually documenting the things I was learning way before Laravel. I can't, I can't imagine. Like, I'm glad I started when I did.

Sure.

But I wish I had started way earlier.

Yeah.

And maybe like when I started, when I did, like, it was like, oh, this guy looks like he's a professional video person because I had been doing it. So it's like that overnight success feeling or whatever. But I don't know, I still wish I started earlier.

Yeah. And even Leah, friend, fellow, fellow Laravel, um, or even as a, even as a web dev, my first role in tech was an email developer.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

I used to hire email developers back in the day.

Yeah. So like, I, I, uh, I of course had worked in customer support. I had worked in support engineering. I had worked in sales engineering. And I remember putting out a video on Twitter. Um, it was right when Jason Lengstorf and a bunch of other like people were kind of like putting more honest content about like, hey, here's what's going on in my head. feel like I have imposter syndrome. What, what's, what's up with life? And I put out this video talking about like, I just don't know what to do because my— I have a family that need me to get a job. And but I also know that I have big aspirations for what I want to do with my life and my career.

Yeah.

And I'm, I'm like, I don't know if I should just apply for a sales engineer job and I could make, you know, probably more than I'm making right now, technically, because I was already doing it. I had experience as a senior sales engineer, as a founding solutions engineer, all those kinds of things. And I was just like talking to people. I was like, hey, I don't know what to do. And so I eventually saw that Laravel was hiring and they were hiring for engineers and then customer support. And I was like, I'm not good enough to be an engineer. People have been working Laravel for Years. Um, I just started last year, so that, there was a little bit of that imposter syndrome there. So I'm just gonna apply for customer support. And in my mind I was like, if I got this customer support role, I could say I worked for Laravel, like this thing that I've been talking about for like a year.

Yeah.

And I applied and Taylor Otwell DM'd me and he said—

Which, shout out Taylor again. We talked about him backstage. I've had the opportunity to meet Taylor at Laracon and then obviously at React Miami. Um, he, Hank, and Aaron crashed the Torque, uh, meetup we had in the hotel. I feel like he's, he's very aware. He probably is watching. He probably tuned in briefly. Taylor, if you're watching, hey. Um, he's very aware of people building with Laravel. I like, I've heard a bunch of people go, he reached out to me, he DM'd me. Like, I feel like he's great at that, which you should be as a founder.

Yeah. Yeah. And so he DM'd me and like, you know, I was at the time in like final stages of interviews with With DevRel jobs in the sense of like, I was like, oh, I get to— like, people are offering me jobs to do DevRel for them. And I was like, this is crazy. And then all of a sudden Taylor DM'd me and he's like, hey, I saw that you wanted to be like customer support. That's awesome. Like, I love what you're doing. What would you think about like coming doing like half customer support and half DevRel? And all of a sudden, like, my mind like exploded. That's like, yeah, it's one of the things. Yeah, exactly. I told, I told my, I told my wife, she's like, Are you sure this wasn't like a scam Taylor Atwell? Like it wasn't like a different account. And eventually I was like, okay, even if I, even if that never like turns into full-time DevRel, which it has now, which is awesome. It's like I get to be around the people that I want to do and I get to be in the community that I want to do it in.

Yeah. Well, I think too, I think I tweeted this the other day. It's crazy. I, I tweeted it, but then I saw some, uh, some— because I've— my, my Twitter's all over the place. A lot of marketing, just traditional, like direct-to-consumer marketing. Like, building a brand is simple. It's posting the same thing over and over again and being known for it. Yeah. And when you become known for it— prime example, somebody mentioned it way earlier in the comments, it's long gone now at this point— you're a big Taco Bell fanatic.

I love Taco Bell. My lower—

I love Taco Bell. My lower intestines do not. So Like what? But like you post about it consistently enough that like every time I go to Taco Bell, which is not much by the way, um, uh, I think of you, not in a weird way, right? That's awesome. But like, so like for example, Naz down here, right? Like, yeah, Naz is starting her journey. Naz, I, again, you don't know the people who see you. Naz starting to post about Python.

I love it.

So guess what? In my mind, guess what I know Naz as? a Python developer. Yeah, you can just be known for something. You could post about— like, I did the marketing Instagram post I saw, is like, you could post about steak and whiskey forever.

Yeah.

And people, you start to notice the steak and whiskey guy. We have, we have a dear friend, he doesn't do it anymore. I keep telling him he needs to. He's— he like wins like local craft cocktail competitions. And he's like a project management, project manager at Deloitte.

Yeah.

And like, but like his thing is like craft cocktails. Like, man, like, like you could do a lot with this here because every, so many people love whiskey and bourbon.

Yeah.

Yeah. Just start. And you can be known for that no matter how senior or how junior you are.

And the funny thing is like the, the 2 things that I'm, I'm known for, the, the JavaScript to Laravel and Taco Bell. Like most of them just started because I was like, well, almost like as a, as a joke in a lot of ways.

Yeah.

Because the JavaScript to Laravel one was like, hey, a lot of people are usually, you see the light of day and then you move to JavaScript. And so it's like this, oh, all you're going, you're doing backwards, you're doing things backwards. And so you're moving from JavaScript to Laravel. And that kind of became like a known as a joke. And the Taco Bell one, it started as a meme. I love Taco Bell. I'm not saying that this is like all fake. It started as a meme though, because, uh, when the WordPress drama was going around, um, Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of WordPress, he put out this— he put out this tweet about like, hey, here's all of my like, uh, financial, uh, contributions, or it was like donations in the last year. These are all the donations. So it was like big money, you know, thousands of dollars.

Yeah, yeah.

And so I, I put out— I put out this tweet that it was like, here's how much I've spent Because I had talked about Taco Bell a little bit about how I liked it, but not too much. And I put out the story of like, here's, here's my budget, here's how much I spent at Taco Bell over the last year. And it was absurd numbers of like thousands of dollars a month and like halfway true. But then also like that, that was like probably one of my most liked and shared and commented tweets. Like, it just kind of went viral.

We put out all this educational content, but then when we talk about like me as cold brew or Taco Bell, like it just blows up. You're like, why am I even doing this?

And so now it's like, It is one of those things where like I you you you become known for something, but then you're consciously aware of it as like a person.

You're like, oh yeah, it's crazy how the mind works.

Yeah, it's it's it's wild. And now I just want to get sponsored by Taco Bell. So all right, so I have to ask.

I love it. I have to ask what's what's your favorite menu item?

I have mine.

Mine's the grilled. I think they went away with it. The grilled steak burritos.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I used to house three of them in college at one sitting.

A lot of— so I, I kind of have— I have tried probably almost everything on the menu. Yeah, sure, of course.

At this point, I had a Mexican pizza the other day my wife got. It was great.

It— I, I don't care for them, but every now and then they hit the spot.

Yeah, that's not my favorite. My favorite is a grilled steak burrito, which I don't think is around anymore. I think they might— grilled cheesesteak burrito that just came back.

Oh, that one's a good one. I, I like some of their, like, uh, seasonal items are so good. Like, they have like these like mini tacos. Anything like this, like the mini taco Within like a little chalupa kind of shell. So good. Okay. All right. Um, but my, my OG item that I have had since like junior high and that is still on the menu today is cheesy bean and rice burritos.

Are they? They're great. They're great. Also, they're one of those.

The hot sauce is great. Hot sauce is great. I actually saw— who was it? There was like a chef. Uh, I don't know if there's this YouTube show called, uh, Last Meal. And I saw, um, I forget who he had on, but like, so he's like a, a like pretty good chef. And so, but he was saying, oh, it was the, the, the Hot Ones guy, Sean Evans.

Oh yeah, he's great. Sean Evans, great interview style. Great interview style.

He's amazing. I love it.

So good.

Sean Evans had on his last meal had a Crunchwrap from Taco Bell. Good choice, can't go wrong. Uh, but he said That the hot sauce from Taco Bell is underrated and is probably like, is probably one of his favorite hot sauces.

Oh, I agree. I have a bottle in my fridge right now.

Me too. And mild.

Yeah, it's so good. We've completely derailed. All right, back to professional things. But again, so my hot take with community is actually the more non-technical stuff you can talk about, the greater, your stronger the community is going to be.

Yeah.

Now that does not resonate well with upper leadership.

Ooh, okay.

Yeah. Uh, right. I mean, you can't go in these meetings and be like, hey, our community is gonna be built off cold brew and Taco Bell. Right. But go ahead.

Oh, I was just thinking it's funny because I think I'm grateful that I work at Laravel for so many reasons, but I think—

Taylor, if you're watching, he's grateful.

But no, no, it's not even a but.

Okay.

But, uh, I guess it is. And I love that Laravel also leans into this, not just from a marketing standpoint, but people are known for so many things. Taylor Otwell is known for drinking a lot of Coke Zero.

Oh, is that his thing? I've never seen that. I know he's got Lamborghini. I obviously got that part.

And I guess that's a good point too, like orange Lamborghinis and Coke Steers. And also, like, that has now become one of the— I don't know, the, the picture of Laravel in a lot of ways too, internal stuff where it's like, oh, they had a hackathon just now for the new Forge just launched, and there was pictures going through Slack.

Was that y'all's AI thing?

Uh, Forge is the, uh, OG Laravel product, being able to basically provision servers to be able to host Laravel. And so yeah, it relaunched with this thing called Laravel VPS, which makes you provision a server in like 10 seconds and then be able to—

Yeah. And listen, Laravel's not paying me to say this, but they can if they want. I would highly recommend attending Laracon. I will say this with Laracon.

All right.

Been to a lot of tech conferences. I would say I would say the most ideal setup for a tech conference. Location, stage, light. I mean, it was— I walked in and I was like, oh my God. I literally verbally was like, holy cow. It was amazing. And, uh, great people. We felt welcome. The Torque boys felt welcome. I mean, it's just shout out. I mean, listen, if, if you are anywhere, even if you're not in the Laravel ecosystem, like, 'cause I'm not, I'm not a coder, but you want to go network with really cool people and learn about some tech. Uh, highly recommend LaraCom. Yeah, I recommend it. And again, I'm not, not being paid for it, just, I, I just love you guys a lot. Um, all right, let's, let's get back to some practical tactical stuff as we kind of wrap up the last 30 minutes or so. Um, the balance of when to go above and beyond and why, do you want to unpack that? I'm curious where your head's at with that.

Yeah, it's this, the, the, the one I, when I wrote that, the thing I was thinking about, um is there's this kind of twofold aspect of when you have a job, and this is like— and this could be the job, your dream job like I currently have right now, or the job that you have and you're like, I am working towards this next thing, this next career.

Yeah.

Usually people are like, I don't owe anything to my company, which I think is true in a lot of ways. I don't owe a thing to my company because like if they They don't really care about me. Like, a company is not your family. Like, I agree with all those premises. Because I worked at a company that I did above and beyond things, and they fired me. And that's, that's just life. That's just how it goes.

Yeah.

But I think there are times, and probably more often than not, that most people don't take advantage of, that you should work more than you or do things that you are not paid to do. And what I mean by that is, I don't think I would have the job I have right now if I didn't do all the things that I did that I wasn't paid for at my last 5 jobs.

Yeah.

Because I would, let's say, like all the video stuff that I did, I learned, I was like, it wasn't like I was getting paid by my job to go get cameras and then make these videos. I'm more in my free time outside of my job, like on nights and weekends, I was like, hey, I made this video. And then I would take it to my job. I made this video. Could we like put this or like have our sales team use this or like put this on the support documentation? Could we use that? And all of a sudden they're like, yeah, we can, we can do that. Yeah. And but most of them were like, but you know, you're not, this isn't part of your job description. Like this is not something you're doing. I'd be like, no, I'll do it on like on my, my own time, on my free time. And so I think there is benefit to having this balance of every time you are in a job, the things that are going to get people to take notice usually are the things that you have to do that aren't in your job description. And usually that means you have to do it during non-job hours.

Yeah.

Yep.

So this is really interesting you bring this up because Mark Thompson and I got on a rant yesterday about—

I listened to a little bit of that.

Say what?

I listened to a little bit of that. I love, I love Mark.

Yeah, he's great. But we talked about essentially that, I mean, you really, you really like, if you want to go for it, you got to go for it. And you sometimes have to put— know when to push. And, and You know, I always compare it— I know this is not a very applicable analogy that a lot of people did not grow up sailing like I did, but sailing, the whole premise around sailing, for those who haven't sailed before, is you have to get to it. You have to get to a place, okay? And you can't get there directly. You can't sail into the wind.

Yeah.

You have to tack, which is turning in sailing terms, back and forth up the lake to get to where you want to go.

Okay.

And to get there, uh, I raced competitively for, for a bit. I was not the person called the tactician. The tactician's the one that kind of monitors where the wind's going. You have to watch where the wind's going.

Interesting.

Not where the wind's been, but where the wind is going.

Oh, we want—

we, we— I raced in a large national regatta, 38 boats. We placed pretty much dead last the entire time. We were like the B boat. We were not good. But our tactician on the last day of the last race saw where the wind is going, where the wind was going. We made a tactical decision and went that way, and we ended up in 10th place out of 38 boats.

Wow.

And so it's like that for your career where you have to see where the wind's going or, or where it's, it's going to potentially go and then shoot your shot.

Yeah. I 100% agree because it's one of those things where I, I think about it in terms of like hobbies that you like to do. For example, I, um, I like playing pickleball. Like, I do it every, every Wednesday.

Nice.

With, with a group of friends. And that's kind of like our, our— it's one of those that's like, it's not—

I picked up golf in my old age. Golf's my thing now.

See, I, I would love to do that, but Like, most of the time, if you like doing something, usually you can't just do it during the set allotted times that you have to do it in a lot of ways. Like, like, if I wanted to get better at pickleball, and I've done this a couple of times, like, I would go out and practice specific things and then like backyard, like, practice. I'm like, hey, here, here we go. Like, or like in my office, like just this wall right here. Bam, bam. Uh, and then, but like, I, I think about this from like a music standpoint. So like, we're, we're both musicians. Both musicians. Yep. And if I was just to show up to every gig or every weekend I play at my church, like, if I was just to show up that— and I, I'm good enough now at this point where I can do that. Yeah, but then all of a sudden I'm not going to get to the point part that I need to be at. Like, do you have to actually, like, put in the practice? I think most people don't put in the practice for the job that they want.

And what I talked about yesterday on Mark's is, in my opinion, it's because of this. Ooh, I know Aaron has talked— Aaron France talked about the brick. I have the brick. Mark Thompson had the brick. Um, I, I will say this, and, and, and again, I said this yesterday, I truly believe that the biggest blocker stopping people is their phone and essentially streaming services like Netflix. Like, people like, I, I don't have People like Taylor, like, how, how do you do— I've had a bunch of people, I'm not bragging, it's just for the conversation— how do you do what you do? I had one guy at Torque message me, he goes, dude, I'm single and have no kids, I don't know how you do what you do.

Yeah.

And I was like, I don't watch TV. My wife and I are working on one TV show and we watched 13 minutes last night.

Yeah.

Like, you, you like that stuff? Just— I was talking to Danny Thompson at Commit Your Code. Right? We were talking about— I think we were talking about some Netflix show. He goes, dude, I don't got time to watch TV. I was like, I don't blame you. Right? So again, like, I feel like to get where you want to go, do you want to sit in 30 minutes and watch your favorite TV show, or do you want to bang out a YouTube video? Yep.

Yep. Yeah. And it's like, it's, it's one of those things. I do the same thing because most people ask me the same kind of question, like, oh, you have 2 kids. You have 3. Yeah, about to have 3. We both are. And then like, okay, you have this job, and then I have my personal YouTube channel, and then I have my dreams and aspirations of where I want to take that. And then I have, you know, my, my personal life, and I have, uh, my church life. I have, I have a lot of things going on, and I have had to cut back on so much stuff that I enjoy. Like, I, I liked playing video games, for example, and I don't think I've played a video game in like 4 years.

But I like them.

I like them. And like, same thing, me and my wife watch probably one show, like 45-minute show every night. She falls asleep, I come into my office, and I work for, you know, 3 hours until 1, 2 AM. And then I go to sleep. Then I do it all again the next morning.

You don't get much sleep.

I don't, especially with kids. I get about 6 hours, 5 to 6 hours every night. Okay, so not too bad. But it's one of those things where I've learned that I need— I want to give up things. I think that's where I kind of started because I had to at some point, especially when I was unemployed. I was like, okay, I, I have to give up doing this because I need to do other things. And then there's this point that I want to give up things because then when I was unemployed again, for example, I knew that I probably should spend these next 3 hours applying for 400 jobs or whatever that number is.

Yeah, whatever. Right. Yeah.

Or I could make one YouTube video and potentially get a job in the future, which I tweeted this yesterday.

I think creating content is first round interviewing at scale.

And I, I'm glad I, I'm glad I went and my wife supported me doing that. Yeah. 100%.

Yep. Um, last topic as we kind of wrap up here, last 10, 15 minutes. So y'all, again, thank you for the comments. I think we maybe eclipsed the 250 from Mark yesterday.

This is insane.

So thank y'all so much. If you have any questions, please ask them. Oh, uh, Teron asked, what do you both play? I grew— I grew up playing drums, so I moved up to Nashville to do drums. Played the honky-tonks, did Studio Row. I was really good in the studio because I was classically trained, so I can play to a click really well.

There you go. And now everyone plays with a click, so like, it's fine. I know. Uh, I, I play, uh, guitar, a little bit of keys, and then I do vocals. I sing. I love it.

I love it. Um, all right, go where the people are. Find where your future employers hang out. What was the reason you wrote this? What was triculating in the brain to make you write this? Because I'm curious.

Yeah, I think people don't realize the value that you have, not just in creating content, but like you've talked about this so many times, of course, like the value of like actually marketing yourself. And I think one of the values of marketing yourself, or one of the, like, the aspects of that is you have to learn, like, who cares? First of all, like, it's crazy that, like, most of the people that I knew I wanted to be hired by were not hanging out on LinkedIn, which I think LinkedIn is, of course, is still incredible.

Open source world, not so much.

But yeah, open source world, they weren't hanging out on LinkedIn. And so I devoted my time as a 600-person follower account on Twitter. to be like, hey, I'm just gonna talk about the things I want. I'm going to be vulnerable about the things I want. And I tried to emulate the companies that I want. I tried to emulate their voice in a lot of ways too. I'm like, I'm still gonna be me. I'm still gonna be unique. But when I wrote this of like hanging out with where your employers are, um, most of the time we forget that like, and again, you've talked about this so many times. Like, I, I love like your aspect for this. Most of the time we forget that. Usually a job that you're trying to get is you providing value for the company. That is the reason why they're paying you. They're like, hey, I need to do this. I need to build a community, or I need to have better YouTube videos, or I need to eventually— like, uh, what Leah, who was in the chat, she was, you know, we need marketing websites built fast. And so she, she whipped up Forge marketing website the past couple of days, past couple of weeks. And so it's like one of those things where you get that job because that's— those are the outputs that that company needs. And so if you don't know what it— what the company needs for an output, how are you going to pitch yourself to them even if they don't have a job listing listed?

Right.

And so I started, and this wasn't just for Laravel, but like a bunch of tech companies. I learned that like most of them, the reason why Aaron Francis, for example, is so popular and was so popular and had thousands of probably job, uh, offers when he was unemployed.

You're talking about YouTube followers with him at Commit Your Code. I was like, hey man, how many up to now? He goes, 50. I go, oh, 50, cool, that's a lot. He goes, no, 50,000. I was like, I know, Aaron, relax.

He's like, hold, hold up.

I know you, you can hear him talk too, you know the way he talks. Yeah, I was like, 50, that's a lot, Aaron.

No, 50,000. Um, But it's like, I quickly learned that I think if I was— if my differential is not just me loving Taco Bell and like not just me being Jason Larebel, my differential, I wanted it to be I create good content, high quality content.

Meaningful. I use the word meaningful a lot in my verbiage. Meaningful content. Yeah.

That was what I learned, like a lot of companies like were after. They wanted to not look like every other company. And so what could I do to not look like every other company?

Yep. Yep. All right. There's some questions. I'm curious though. I, hold on. I wanna, I wanna finish out this thought. Go to where people are. You talking about virtual? What about in person?

Ooh, that's, that's good. That's something I didn't do well. Mostly because I was in a point in my— yeah, mostly because I was at a point in my life where like I couldn't. Thankfully, like, like I love this past year. I got to go to so many conferences. My wife hated it a little bit more than I did. Yeah, same. But like, I— that was something that, you know, I live in Phoenix and there's not too much tech stuff in Phoenix.

Sure.

There should be more. So if you're watching and you're out there, you want to do something in Phoenix, let me know. Um, but I think Like, of course, it's always, it's always who you know, and you're never going to know someone better than hanging out with them in person. I think these few things that I did well in this area, that I didn't go to conferences, but I, I met people like, um, Joe Previtt, who used to go by—

Love Joe.

Fantastic individual. Love him. He, he lives in Arizona, and so we had known each other for so long, and I eventually got to meet him for the first time, even though we live like so close together. But that, that one time kind of carries us, I guess, like for our, for our like friendship and like professional relation— relationship kind of thing a lot of times. And, uh, yeah, I think most people forget the value that they have within their in-person friend group, even if it's not directly related to the jobs that they want.

Yeah, yep, yep, agreed, agreed. All right, we're getting to some questions and then we'll rapid fire, then we will Wrap it up. Uh, heavy-hitting questions today. Sebastian, Josh, what's your favorite paddle?

My current favorite? Um, that's a good question. I don't even know. So like, uh, I actually—

the ball is, is, is Josh's favorite.

I actually don't know what my paddle is. So like, uh, I'll have to, I'll have to look it up on— okay, let me like look it up on Amazon.

But the question fell flat.

The funny thing is I, I'm one of those people that as soon as I like get into a new hobby, I go all in. So I, I did the like literally played pickleball one time with like a cheap Amazon paddle or someone like get—

Yeah, yeah.

Let me borrow their paddle. And then I was like, I really like this. I like that it like gets me moving a little bit. And like, I usually— my exercise routine is just weightlifting, so I'm like, I like a little bit of cardio. And so I researched for like hours on Reddit, YouTube, like looking at all the pickleball paddles. And I bought a pickleball paddle like the— before I played the second time, I had already bought like a You know, a pretty expensive paddle.

Golf, I, I'm so— I have a very like addictive personality, um, people would call it. And like, I'm trying to let golf not be that for me because A, my bank account can't afford it, but also B, um, I'm trying to like let golf like just be super fun.

There you go.

Uh, and like not stressful. But yeah, I'm that way too, researching. Like, there's already a few clubs I want to get.

But, you know, I love the research aspect of a new hobby. That's my favorite part. But it's a Vattic Pro V7 carbon fiber paddle.

Vattic Pro. I don't know what that is, baby. That sounds, that sounds fancy. I bet you hit that ball real good.

It's got the spin. I used to play like a lot of ping pong, so like I, I played—

I missed the days in the office. We used to— I used to play ping pong all the time in Vacaville. We had a ping pong table, man. I used to play all the time. Um, this is a good question by Trey. What is more enjoyable for you, video content or text, like, like written content?

From a— this is both from a consumption and a creation standpoint. I love video content. I watch so much YouTube.

I do too, man. I just consume the ever-living daylights out of YouTube.

And most of it's like not even like stuff that I usually create too. Yeah, uh, but I'm— I am in the same camp as Aaron Francis says this as well, is like if you can put a face to it, usually it's better. And so I even started doing this. I, I suck at writing. I wanted to get better and I just couldn't find the time. So in the past 30 days, I did a— every single morning I talked into a microphone for 8 to 10 minutes as like an audio journal and I made it like a podcast.

That's great.

And so I basically thought of that as like, what if I could write a blog post every day for 30 days? But I can't write very well, so I just talked. And now I'm gonna turn them into blog posts. But yeah, so I love video content and my brain thinks better when I'm talking than if I'm writing.

Same, same. Um, interesting question, Josh. Honest question, is imposter syndrome a naughty word?

I don't— honest question. Uh, I think it's naughty in the sense of when you're thinking about imposter syndrome, when you're thinking about what you want to do, usually you're selling yourself short or you're overcomplicating what you're trying to do. Yeah. And so I think that's, that's when it like can become naughty. It's like, oh, like I'm just gonna chalk it off as that. It's like, eh.

I would say my hot take is if you're not— based off my career and when I started to experience imposter syndrome, I would say if you are experiencing imposter syndrome, you're exactly where you need to be because that means you're pushing yourself. If you are not feeling imposter syndrome, then you're not pushing hard enough. Yep. That is my hot take on this Wednesday morning, October 1st.

In the faith and spiritual world, most people would say, if you're not questioning what you actually believe, then you're probably in the right place.

Amen. Amen.

Absolutely.

That'll preach. Um, give my third kidney for 20 followers. And then there it goes, I'd give my left toe. We got a lot of people wanting to give up limbs for followers. But hey, I will tell you this though, follower count, because of TikTok, the TikTokification of social media— this is a whole nother conversation around social media—

follower count does not matter. Oh yeah, and a subscriber account on YouTube's doesn't matter either. For example, like, I think— and I think consistency matters more than follower count because the videos that I put out on YouTube, I own— like, I have 17,000 subscribers, something like that. Super small in the grand scheme of things. Uh, but I know— there you go, there you go.

I was super pumped to pass 1,500 finally.

I, I love it. But like, I, I— a lot of my videos get more views consistently than channels with like 100,000.

Yeah, I have 35,000, 38,000 followers on TikTok. It doesn't— it hasn't netted me one piece of business yet. Like, it doesn't matter.

That's not making you $3 mil a year?

No, no, it's not. Uh, all right, cool. All right, sweet. Thanks, y'all. All right, so we're gonna do rapid fire real quick. Um, again, thanks y'all for tuning in. This has been— I knew this was gonna be a good one. This is a really good one. Um, all right, Josh, what's one tech tool App that you can't live without, and you can't say anything in the Laravel world.

Tech tool app.

Yeah, mobile app, website, something.

Ooh, that's a good one. I'm going to say I can't live without. I can't live without Linear right now. I use Linear in my personal life. Linear is like a like a Trello, Jira. That kind of thing. So, uh, I use, I use Linear for my personal app, uh, too, like for video ideas. And so I have like this Kanban board of like, hey, here's my ideas, here's what's being edited, here's what I'm gonna record, that kind of thing.

I love it. Um, what's the very first job you ever got paid to do?

First job I ever got paid to do, uh, uh, probably when I was I, I feel like I was an entrepreneurial spirit from very young. When I was, uh, 7 years old, uh, 6 years old, I went around selling, uh, sand art to my, uh, to the 3 neighbor houses that we lived in in Quartzsite, Arizona.

Yeah, you had a lot of sand to pick from, so that's good. Um, uh, what did you originally want to be when you grow— grow up— grew up—

grow—

what did you— what did you want to be when you were younger?

I wanted to be a stand-up comedian. I love it.

I love it.

And then I went into like actor world, maybe like rock star, that kind of thing.

Which is really funny because what we do, I mean, we're standup comedians. I mean, I like, I've had people come up to me and tell me like, I've, I've been compared to the Nate Bargatze of LinkedIn. No, no joke. Somebody said I'm the Nate Bargatze. I've also been compared to Gary Owen, which is hilarious. I love Gary Owen. He's pretty, he's pretty raunchy, but he's my, I love him to death. Uh, what's a career mistake you're oddly grateful for?

Oh, there's a lot of them. Uh, career mistake I'm oddly grateful for is, um, I'm, I'm glad I— this is like, uh, usually I wouldn't do this— I am glad I tried so hard to get a remote job from the start. It's a terrible mistake. You should probably not— your first job In terms of like tech, right? Should probably not be remote.

Yeah.

But I have never not worked a remote job.

That's awesome.

That's awesome. I mean, like after Chick-fil-A.

There you go.

And like waiting food.

My wife's in the other room. She goes, your wife does not think you're funny. So there's that. So I'm proud. Um, all right, next question. Um, if you weren't in tech, I probably know the answer to this, but if I were to wake up, tell you tomorrow that you get paid the same, if not more, money was not a problem, let's say, what hobby would you pursue?

Probably either music or I'd probably like go back to like, I would, I would like love making films a lot. Yeah, not, not even just like making them, like, like filming or directing or writing or probably a little bit of like a little bit of all 3. Like if I could be, I can't think of a good name off the top of my head, but someone who, who like writes, directs, and then stars in it. It sounds very like conceited of me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna be a one-man show. Um, uh, also, John, I have my wife— hopefully this sounds like your wife is funny. Nope, not at all. Uh, actually, she's way funnier than I am. Um, all right, uh, last question, ma'am. Any— oh, oh, uh, coffee or tea?

Uh, tea.

What? Hot, hot or iced?

Iced. Okay, I, I drink— and this is maybe like my Arizona coming out— but I drink so much iced Do you drink a lot of Arizona sweet tea because you're in Arizona? I don't even really like sweet tea, but I like Arizona tea.

But I'm from the South. It just kicked— it gives you cavities.

I used to like it a little bit when I, when I lived in Chicago, but, um, I— and it's funny, in Nashville, like, uh, when I went there, I like— I have to like specifically ask unsweet tea.

You have to ask for unsweet tea.

And then they— there was this one restaurant I went in in Memphis. I asked for unsweet tea. They brought it back in this little paper cup. Everyone else got these glass cups.

I was like, I feel very awesome. Dude asked for unsweetened. We don't have it.

I love it.

Well, at least we have the ice bev in common. All right, last question. This call again, thanks, y'all, for tuning in. Appreciate it. Go follow Josh. Go check what he's doing at Laravel. Show's called Guidance Counselor 2.0 because you had guidance counselors in middle school, high school, and college, but now as adults, we don't necessarily have them give career advice. If you go back in time and tell young Josh, something career advice-wise, what would it be?

I think it would be start now in a lot of ways to be able to say instead of just figuring out like, oh, like most of the time we figure it out as we go. So why, like, why didn't I start earlier? I don't know.

Yep. I love it. I love it. All right, y'all, y'all have a good one. Last show of the week. Appreciate you. Next week we'll be back next Tuesday. Um, and, uh, can't wait for it. Uh, dear friend Alex Burke, he's actually in the Torque Discord. He went to Clemson. I'm gonna have to forgive him for that. Um, but he had a lot of thoughts around hiring, what he looks for. He's a, a lead at a company, so super excited, um, for that conversation next Tuesday. If y'all have a good week, Josh Downs, I can say bye to you backstage. Y'all have a good one. Take it easy. Peace.